Connecting the Dots

Connecting the Dots...with Gordo the OAM (Sean Gordon)

• Adam Leishman • Season 1 • Episode 48

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Sean Gordon OAM joins me for Episode 48 of Connecting the Dots — and what a conversation.
A former teacher, principal, Telstra exec, and SES rescue leader, Sean is now a leading mindset coach and speaker. We unpack the pivotal moments that shaped his life: multicultural childhood, traumatic rescues, political forays, and the creation of SchoolAid.
This one’s about impact, gratitude, and the lifelong quest to serve others.

Hashtags:
#MindsetCoach #AustralianPodcast #LeadershipJourney #SchoolAid #Gratitude #OAM #ConnectingTheDots

Speaker 7:

Okay, connecting the dots. Episode 48, and this is my first order of Australia medal recipient on my little passion project. and one thing I've learned about Order of Australia medal recipients is they all have one thing in common and it's this desire to give back to the world and serve those around them. And that's actually. The premise of why I wanted to chat to this guy today because of the work he does, well, let's go find out more about what he does.

Speaker 4:

This is Sean. And while I actually am more fascinated about what you do now. I actually want to find out how you got here. So I want to go back to the beginning.

Speaker 3:

Well, the car actually. Oh no.

Speaker 4:

Well, you we're at your place and this is a lovely view.

Speaker 3:

Where'd you go to school? Gee, I went to school in the snowy mountains. Very lucky man to do that. I. No one's asked me for a long time, but my family moved here in 1956, so mum and dad for two years to make their fortune and go back to Ireland and open a pub. Right. So I should be pouring Guinness. However, we buried dad down there about 30 years ago, and mum's still in a town called Omet in Country New South Wales. Yeah. Wow. She's 90, but I was very lucky when I look back and these days, as you know, I coach and I'm around mindset. I grew up in these snowy towns, particularly a place called Tingo, and I reckon it would've been. One of the most multicultural places in the world at that time. So we had, you know, Saki next door and we had Ziggy up the street and we had Charles and we had Giovanni and we got to each of their houses. But I, as a little attacker, I didn't know any different. That was just my world. I didn't understand there was a Caucasian towns were just full of Caucasians, maybe Chinese chef or something. Didn't discover that until I was 14. So for me to grow up in that way, you've gotta get, as a retrospective, how lucky I was. I had no clue that the world was different to that. We had one school, Al Bingo primary school, and we all went to it. We had one shop and we all went to it. We had one church and all the churches who wanted to worship in the Snowy Mountains, Catholic Katia, it wouldn't matter who you were, you used the church and they rostered it around. So these days, as you know, we've got churches everywhere and they're mostly empty. There was one, one building and everybody used the same building.

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

But as I look back, I think, it just left me very open to everyone. I, I went to different houses. I met different kids and I went to school. We had a little mixing pot and they built the snow mountain scheme, so it was a fascinating, fabulous place to live. High energy. A lot of people up there play hardball in the singles barracks. And there, my dad was a, a catering manager, so he served a lot of alcohol and food and so forth. And anyway, we had a great life. Then we moved into a town called tme, and I went to the Catholic high school there. I only went to year 10, so that was a another. Great experience really. But yeah, Caucasian town basically. It was an interesting change at age 14. And then because our school ran out at year 10, I went to a, a boarding school called St. Patrick's in Goldman. So two years there for 11 and 12. Yep.

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And where did you go after high school?

Speaker 3:

After high school? Well, I left home at 16 basically,'cause I went to boarding school. Then we never came home. I came home for holidays, of course. Played footy and we, we worked and whatever we did on the holidays. But then at straight after high school, I went to Canberra. Yep. To what was then Signa, do Teacher's College. I did my teaching training there and I started teaching at St. Edmond's College in Canberra. Okay. So four years in as a teacher. And, and great school. And we had George Regan, Ricky Stewart, who beat us yesterday bastard. I got to play touch footy with him and we had had some really great sports people went through that college. But I did two years there. I had four years there. And then I became, I believe, one of the youngest principals in New South Wales. I took over a country school at Art Lham about an hour north of Wagga to teacher school. And I spent two years out there as at turned 26 and 27.

Speaker 4:

And I'm guessing back then a a a male teacher was a rarity.

Speaker 3:

No, we, I think we had a lot more of us back then. I think we've got less now.

Speaker 4:

Okay. Is it one of those,'cause I was, I'm based on what I read about it these days, there's not, they want to bring more men to teaching, but it's, it's because it was a drop off. Was there?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Look, there was a lot of women and a few of the places. I guess I was the youngest on staff and I was the only bloke. So, but there's, there was a lot more men around in the game then. Yep. I think some of the things that have happened have had seen men escape. That's a whole other conversation about education and what I think's wrong with it and that we need to rebuild it. And some of the challenges that teachers, God love them, are fabulous people, like nurses touching the community. They're just being put under ridiculous pressure for no good reason.

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, I did two years that I'd left and that was great. Really fabulous couple of years out there. Then I moved to a town called Gundy. Guy fell in the Tucker Box.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

Which is close to where my family lives. And I did six years as a principal there in a larger school. A primary school that was fabulous. Terrific town, terrific people. And I got involved in a whole bunch of stuff there. Rescue work.'cause I used to go to join committees to do community service and join in, but. I found, I became the president or the secretary, just about always, I'm sick of always doing meetings and so forth, so, so I joined the fire brigade and I left and I joined the rescue squad in Gundy guy. And we had, sadly we had the worst place in Australia for car accidents. We had up to 60 call outs a year, 30 or 40 fatals. And we were just volunteers. So we were primary response. We did the jaws of life. I drove the wall, drove the ambulance to Wagga Base Hospital. Sometimes we drove the police cars. Wow. We, you know, the ambulance came past to pick me up once or twice to go to a crash. And anyway upside of that was it gives you a lot of perspective about what matters in life. You think, you know, I've just been out in the road. We just brought someone home in the body bag, put'em in the fridge and help the help airplane up there. And then you come back and there's a little problem at school that's, you know, got maybe your mum or dad really upset. When you put it in in comparison, you think, well, this person just died here and you've got this little problem there. Do you think we could maybe turn that back a bit?

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So mindset and attitude became, for me, between the al Bingo experience and the rescue experiences really started to become a front of mind. I think some people need different experiences to get more perspective.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

And yeah, that's the same with our kids and the malaise there. And you know, we've got first world problems, young kids with, with issues sometimes that are just not worth it. Not worth the angst that they've experienced.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

So if you get'em involved doing something different, or if you could take'em to a third world country and just hang out there for a couple of weeks, you'd think, eh, compared to them, I don't really have a problem.

Speaker 4:

I read somewhere once that life is really only just a collection of responses to the things happening around us.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 4:

So how did you end up in Queensland?

Speaker 3:

Well, I went down to another town after Gundy guy. When my dad died. I stayed one more year in Gundy guy. Then I applied for a job in a couple of jobs as a principal, and I went to a school in Bega, which is, was landmark place as well. So

Speaker 4:

where are the cheeses?

Speaker 3:

Cheeses, yep. Beautiful town, great cheese, nice cows, happy people. Yeah, so anyway, Bega was about a six year stint and Josie our eldest daughter was born there. And. It was just a great experience. But after the six years there, I, my brother said there was a job up here at a place called Nudge Junior College, and I thought, so I applied for a job at Bay Haven in New South Wales at CAN Bar in the a CT and up here at Nudge Junior. And the people up here offered the job first and I said, well, let's give it a go. So we moved to Queensland. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Wow. And when you say Nudgee boarding school,

Speaker 3:

Nudgee Junior was 24 acres on the river at in.

Speaker 4:

Right. Okay. 25 acres

Speaker 3:

just. Stunning place on the river. Yeah. Wow. So, prior, it was interesting to try, after being in country schools with not much money, Catholic primary schools with not much money. We'd take leftovers anywhere. Stuff from, you know, the state school down the road and, and to go to a private school where we had parents who were well healed, but also really involved in the kids' education and so forth. It was an interesting experience and I stayed there for three of a five year contract. Yep. Decided it was time to move on.

Speaker 4:

Right. And where'd you go to there?

Speaker 3:

Well, then I moved on to career corporate business. Yeah, I'd had a, I'd had a marriage breakdown after Nudgee Junior. Long story there, but, so I had to, I restarted and I'd probably needed a regular job, you know, I going rent somewhere while we had a house. Anyway, it's a long story, but I had to go and get a regular job, so I jumped into a player hinter Telstra. I did six years in there. I was, wow. I was, area. Sales manager, account manager, area sales manager. Then took over area sales manager on the Sunshine Coast in Norton Bay and that was an interesting, fabulous corporate experience. Yep. But being promoted pretty quickly on a few occasions I got you, got quite high, got to experience some really interesting people and some really interesting businesses. And sunshine Coast, half of rural Queensland was in my patch and. And so I had an office in the city. I had an office here in the house. I had an office in Ipswich. And I had an office in Harry Street in Toowoomba, and I commuted from here to Toowoomba. Wow. So it was about hour 50 each way, but only, you know, go up there once a week or something and Yep. So great people, great organization. But there came a time when I thought. I love what Telstra's doing for me. I really like the company. I love the all what I learned and so forth. But I was really just a number and I was part of the sausage factory and I think I was called to something else. And so in education, I was teaching in my Telstra while I was teaching in a, in a multilevel marketing company, I was part of, I did a lot of coaching of people and I was teaching all the time. And then I thought as a, I was quickly promoted in Telstra, but I was coaching and teaching, you know, account managers and so forth, and I thought I might just try and do that myself. I love coaching. Yep. So I love speaking. So as you can tell, I talk a lot. So I was coaching and speaking and I decided I was just gonna bail out. So of my own volition Monday, I said I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna stay in Telstra after six years. And

Speaker 6:

yep,

Speaker 3:

I bailed out.

Speaker 4:

And is that around the time I would've started hearing your name and you know, there was this calling to have a look over the fence of politics.

Speaker 3:

Oh, maybe could have been around then. I, I was called to look at politics a lot, but more local government I think. But anyway, for better or worse, and it's a story, I won't go down that track right now, I think. But yeah, the political scene for me is one that I found. I like people that either put up or shut up.

Speaker 6:

Yep. And

Speaker 3:

I hear a lot of people who talk, but they don't try to do anything so. Yeah. So without jumping into allegiances, I decided to stump up and have a go, as you know. Yep. And I thought, well, at least I can, I can whinge.'cause I've had a go. I nominated, I had to, for me to, to go and and nominate, I had to give up my Irish heritage. I had to give up Irish passport.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

That was a huge commitment. Like it really mattered dearly to me.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

But I was that committed to the cause. I thought, I want to get in, I wanna stop talking to the tv. And I, I think in government we need more people like the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Rather than just career politicians or unionists or, or lawyers, frankly.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

I think we need people who represent the community and who can then listen to the community, represent their ideas in town and argue for them, and then if it's if there's wisdom and there's some other decision, come back and articulate to the community why the decision or the policies being made. So people at least understanding on the ground. But anyway, I missed out for a little and I'm, and I think I was lucky

Speaker 4:

I having some experience in that regard. I think you were too lucky. It's interesting, it was that moment in your life where I heard about you first. Somebody that was involved in that process spoke very highly of you, was impressed with some of your views. And you know, from there, you know, I was able to, you know. Somewhere down the track, meet you and had already an idea about this. You know, man, that I'd, I'd, I'd heard a lot about and heard, you know, a lot of good things about. So

Speaker 3:

here we are today, a long time later. Nice to hear.

Speaker 4:

So missed out on what, what, you know, going down the political path and I, I, I commend you for that in terms of having a go and, and then deciding or realizing it wasn't for you. Tell me about what you do now.

Speaker 3:

Well, what I do now is what I love to do now. I, I'm a coach and a speaker, and I'm particularly a mindset coach. And so I think a lot of my experiences in life led me to this place where I had that disposition. But when you live in that place and then you, you suddenly experience a town that's so different from what I grew up in. I think this is our country. Interesting. And then when you do rescue work and you, as I said, you go and take someone off the road and put'em in a mor and then turn up at a school and you've got. Parents with the wrong level of angst, you think, what? Something's wrong here. And then I, I was also part of a significant rescue. You might remember the three Bay landslide. So for my sins, I was a, I was a, I became, I was in the SE, s and B and Eden, and we had a commander who had to move on, or a local controller had to move on. And so they said, Gord, can you just fill in for a couple of weeks and be the boss? And I said, oh, no, no. I wanna be an Indian in this world. I've got enough. I was already chairing the state principals committee and I, national committees. I said, oh, I've got enough going on. Anyway, I acquiesced. I said, I'll give you six or seven weeks, I'll just fill in. And so that became several months. And then during that time we had the Sydney Hobart yacht racing. We had people out spotting there. But in particular, the Bel Landslide happened. And so I took a team up there and, and I was on site when we heard Stuart Diver's voice come through the rubble and. You people who know the story will know that was just life changing.

Speaker 4:

I think the whole country were glued to their TV during that period,

Speaker 3:

I believe, until Kathy Freeman's 400 meter a hundred meters run. That was, that was the most watched TV in Australian history.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

But anyway, I was there, but also got promoted there too. So that night on the site around midnight, I was made the leader of the SES on site. So there was Paul Featherstone, myself, one of the police, and Steve Hurst, the fire brigade guy. And it was a significant place to be. It was, it was a whole other keynote that I talk about. What happened, what leadership lessons I got from it, and just what happened? How transpired as a, as a rescue. And while it was a great rescue, it was a, it was a retrospective. Again, people say Great rescue, but I've asked when I do keynotes, how many people died? Ask you, do you know?

Speaker 6:

No,

Speaker 3:

no one does. But everyone remembers Stuart Diver. Yeah. Everyone remembers a great rescue and they a great rescue Gorda. And I said it was, but you know, it was a big tragedy. We lost 18 people. Wow. I saw some of them. It's not pretty, you know, it's a terrible situation. But it caused me to think, how can we remember Stuart Diver? And it's almost a good thing because we rescued him and yet we lost 18. Does that make sense? That little, I thought. Interesting how we see that. And that gave rise to a charity I started called School Aid. It's a love job on the side, but. Two other things happened. One other thing happened in Bega was there's a work called Brendan who was in year five. So say about 11, wandered into the office with me carrying a box. He put it on my desk and I put my box in. I just making conversation with Brendan and I said to him, so, buddy, what do you reckon you'll be doing when you're 25? He said, oh, gee, Mr. Gordon, I don't think we'll be here. And I said, oh, I, I didn't know you were going anywhere. He said, I we're not. And I said, well, I don't understand. He said, I don't think any of us will be here. And he's thinking, you gotta remember, 1999 was the time of Armageddon. He's sitting watching the TV news at six o'clock being informed by the information and informed by this stuff. And he got a very poor worldview some of our kids have now, and he was stuck with that. He said, I don't think any of us will be

Speaker 6:

here. Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 3:

I said, mate, look out the window. Lucky just a blue sky, green grass, happy cows, nice trees. Didn't cut it. So I went home. A very depressed principal from that and I couldn't believe that I had a kid in my school feeling that way. I had Josie, who was then about two. I thought she's gonna grow into this world as well. How can and the other kids feel like that? I did some research and I found that, you know, one in 16 kids are feeling, feeling anxious. One in six, actually one in 16 were, were depressed. Mm-hmm. That's two. Two in a glass and in the year they looked. There was about 9,000 calls to kids helpline, specifically talking about suicide by kids. Wow. By young people. Gobsmacked. So I spent a few days thinking about it and I had a few beers and more than a few scotches, and, and I've even got a bit of a paid deal with a scotch glass mark. And as I pondered what could I do? And my little spot, and I spoke to my staff and I said, you know, this kids in our school, I don't know why they bother coming. Like why teach him maths and science if he has no hope? And what I did discover was that when kids are involved in philanthropy, when they're helping someone else, when they're kind to someone, when they show gratitude, they feel good. So, so the problem was anxiety, depression, suicide, but I reckon, and so it's a long answer to your question. What I do now is I coach, but I coach for solutions, not problems. And I think what you focus on expands. It just does, if you focus on debt, you'll be in debt forever. And I think we're focusing on anxiety, depression, suicide, too much, not on hope. Agency resilience grit. Does that make sense?

Speaker 4:

Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

Kindness, gratitude. So I thought, well, if I get the kids involved in stuff, which they're doing anyway, but there was a scale thing going on, I thought. You see some bad stuff happen in the world. We have a little fundraiser at our school, but our school is just a little silo and, and if you've got kids and they go to school and they take a gold coin along, quite often they have no clue what it's going for. So I just, I can wear these clothes, but I've just taking a gold coin, I wanted them to get a sense of, I'm bringing this along'cause it makes a difference to something else. So I called the schools in Bega together and I was about 25 of, they all all come to the club and they agreed with my idea that we do something together. Just happened that the Turkey earthquake had happened. So we collectively, we raised about$40,000, which is a lot bigger from country schools. And you just knew the whole town. Everyone felt good about it. And we'd done this thing and we made a difference to something in Turkey that I can't recall now. But we sent the money there. But more important for me, and it's, it's more than nuance, more important for me, was that kids who gave the giving felt better.

Speaker 6:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3:

They'd seen all the disaster. Right. But they felt better. They'd had a sense of agency. So then I took, I was on the national council and I was on the, I was on the council for. Professional development for all schools in Australia. So I had this idea with the 10,000 schools I took to the Hobart Primary Principals Conference in 1999. This idea, I said, what if we, what if we all work together? Like if all 10,000 schools got together in the wake of a tragedy and we say, we'll just chuck in a hundred bucks. There's a million dollar aid fund. We could use it on behalf of kids. And then they could be going home on the bus and on Triple J they could hear that, well, the government sent 4 million and the kids already raised a million and they're doing something too. In response to crises.

Speaker 6:

Yeah,

Speaker 3:

so we did that. It was, was resoundly resoundingly accepted by the, the state systems, the Catholic systems and the independent systems. And then I popped over and spoke to the secondaries and they all jumped on board. And then we had our first appeal in 1999 and we had a crack of raising money for East Timor. So you might recall East Timor. They had been raised pretty much by the departing Indonesians and Peter Cosgrove was over there doing his thing. And so we raised without any, any, any organization, no legal structure. It's had all this money coming, like 160,000 bucks I think came, I gave it to someone else to manage a principal's group. I said, send it to the treasurer there. I don't want to touch the money. But it was a beautiful project and we just said, it's on, you know? I said, oh God, that's a good bloke. It's a good idea. We support it. And that was 26 years ago. And. We then went over, I've got to go over to his Timor and we opened the first school in Dili.

Speaker 6:

Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 3:

So, you know, we had them, we had a little bit of money with the World Bank and the world, other groups. We just decided to do a open a school anyway, and there was, the word was spread around on a Sunday and we were Catholic nation. This word was pastor churches. Apparently we had 500 places in our school and 5,000 people turned up.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Awesome.

Speaker 3:

Anyway, we did that and we did another one. The following year we built a, an education slash medical center up at Letty Foho, south of Dilly, up in the hills. And that was fantastic. And then, and subsequently, we've done lots of projects and we've now raised two 6.7 million. We've involved about 60% of all schools in Australia prior me secondary, from all, from all walks. But more importantly, we've got kids who are giving, feeling better about themselves and their place in the world and their ability to actually respond to drama.

Speaker 4:

It's interesting you talk about, you know, focusing on what you focus on as where, what was your, whatever your turn of words were there expands. Expands. I like that. I, I grew up understanding that the concept of gratitude and that you should do it, but there was never a why around it. And it wasn't until I saw a YouTube video with a, I dunno if you've ever come across him, a Sean Anchor a, a psychologist in the States. Yeah. And he talks about why you do it and, and, and it trains the brain to look for the good in the world. And, and it was just like the penny dropped for me. And I went, ah, now I understand why. I should sit down each day and absolutely write the three things of gratitude for me.'cause it's priming my brain to continue the day looking for the other things that are good about it.

Speaker 3:

Totally right. We think we can multitask, but we really can't. Your brain can only deal with one thing at a time. Your mind and, and I don't confuse the mind with the brain. The brain's a component, part of the mind, which we can chat about. But gratitude is so powerful. All of my clients get a book, a gratitude book when they start working with me as a coach. And all of them are asked to fill in six things every morning and to reflect on them at nighttime that they're grateful for. There's no question it's so powerful. It's, it's life changing. I actually call it vitamin G. This is Gord's. Vitamin G is gratitude that you had your vitamin G today if you haven't, get on with it. Alright, so I have do that bit and it takes a little bit of practice. Like a lot of people think they wanna. Find what's great for something they're grateful for. And it's gotta be really lofty. And I had one client years ago and he said, oh God, it's so hard. I said, what is, we're doing the gratitude every day. Look, we have to do it every day. I said, yes, every day. Just all you do is just put the date and write six things down. It's nothing really easy. And then that's it. You don't have to write a letter to anyone. And that just it, but it's really hard. I like, I run out. I said, well, you can repeat some, you know, but what's hard about it? Just thinking of new things. I said, oh, righto. I said, tell you what, you stay where you are. I'll come pick you up. We'll just pop down to the hospital here where they've got the people having their chemo treatment in the lounges. And we'll just sit there and have a cup of coffee and you, and I'll just chat for a bit. I think you'll think of. So things to be grateful for. And at the same time, the the Winter Olympics were on, it was a disabled on the Special Olympics that were going on at the same time. And I said to him, we might watch a bit of sport tonight too. Well, I think you get some ideas there too, from people skiing with no legs, you know, with one ski strapped to their bums like. I think there's a lot to be grateful for.

Speaker 6:

Yeah, absolutely. So,

Speaker 3:

so I teach people to do that and it's life changing. Yeah. It just flicks a perspective from how bad is it? Like when I saw a parent who's stressed out about a kid's getting a spelling word wrong and a test, and I've just come back from a road rescue where someone's died. You can just have to have that chat to say, can we just shift the, shift this a bit?

Speaker 4:

I, I've even found with practicing it that you can even be grateful for the opposites of things. So one day I might be grateful for the sun and the sunshine and the next day I'm grateful for the rain too. Yes. It's, it's a powerful exercise.

Speaker 3:

Totally is.

Speaker 4:

I grew up with parents that drove around in their car with cassette tapes, shoved in it. I dunno if it was for them or me. Listening to Zig Ziglar.

Speaker 3:

Oh, Zig Ziglar was great.

Speaker 4:

But you've got a bit of a guru you like.

Speaker 3:

I do, I've got a number of'em, zigs, one of Bob Proctor's, my big guru, and Jim Rain. But Zig, Zig, I love his comment about if you help enough other people get what they want, you'll get everything you want.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

And that's just, you know, like the school aid thing, like some of the other things I do, if you look out to help other people, it comes back to you. Yep. It's karma. It's a, it's a law like gravity and whether you understand it or not, it affects you. You know, it's just easier to walk down hills and walk uphills whether you understand gravity or not. And if you help people. I've actually made up a word, I'll give it to you on my business card and the word is inReach. It took me a long time to understand this good feeling people have when they help somebody else out. So I coined the word in 1999. I'd love people to, to use it. The Governor Generals used it. Various people have used it, but when you help other people, that's outreach. And then people say, but I feel good. You know, and the kids will describe how they feel nice and lots of things. I had a lady who was leaving my tuck shop after, I don't know, 16 or 17 years before me. And she was leaving after this year, volunteer at the tuck shop three days a week. You imagine what you put up with. Anyway, she's beautiful. And I said to her, thanks vi. Here's a, you know, here's some scones and here's some flowers and a and a lovely thank you. And she said these words, it struck me so powerfully. She said, oh Sean, you know, it's been lovely and I've got so much more outta this than I ever put in. She came three days a week for 16 years and she felt good because she'd serve the community, help the kids. Made a sandwich and some kid who didn't bring the money that day and just a beautiful human being. So in reach, I, I just found you couldn't describe that feeling in one word, so I made up for it in Enrich. Yeah. Awesome. It describes the feeling you have, good feeling you have when you help someone else out, which is what I want for our kids through school aid.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

As for my guru, yeah, I, I bumped into a guy called Bob Proctor and I actually bumped in him after having joined a multilevel marketing company of all things. They were selling comp products that I just loved, so I thought, I don't care how you buy'em, I just wanna get'em. And then they said, well, if you tell a few other people about it, you make a few dollars. I thought, well, that's fine with me. I, I'll tell people if they're Woolies and Coles and I like'em, so I share it and suddenly I had a black alpha, a May on the driveway and trips to America, and we're making big money out of it, like over 10 grand a month. I'm happy to do that. It's a highly leveraged, very fair non Ponzi thing. It's, you spend money, you get a product. So, but while I was there, I, I was exposed to people like Zig Ziglar, like Jim Rohn, like Bob Proctor, and I was amazed at the, what I hadn't learned. Academically at university and I'd post my first teaching, I did two more degrees while I was principally things about mindset, things about paradigms, things about who are you? Like, why do you feel the way you feel, which is a function of the way you think. And we teach children a lot of knowledge. So they come out and sad. They come out, not sad, but they come out with a lot of technical knowledge that they can pass tests and do well at NAPLAN and get good ATAR scores. But they don't know much about themselves. Mm. Or how to drive themselves or how to, how to change if they're feeling bad. And so what I learned from these people is that it's actually a choice. You've been brought up by people who love you and care for you, and they will teach you what they, what's worked for them. But if their life isn't that good, you might not think, maybe I should think of another way to do stuff. And so I help people interrogate the beliefs they've got. I don't tell'em what to believe. Just interrogate the beliefs you've got. If you're not getting the right results, I can show you strategies that are proven now from the likes of Bob Proctor over 15, 60 years. But you can design your life and live the life you want on purpose. Just choose to, and then big D discipline, you've gotta do the thing.

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So probably if I use a sporting analogy, I'd say that, you know, in sport you don't run to the ball. You run to where the ball's going to be. Right. So you're running to a nothing, and a lot of people don't have that destination. They're running to the ball, they're looking at the target, or they're just standing, still spinning their wheels. So I try to articulate where's the goal? Okay? And on the way to the goal, where do you need to run now in order to get the thing to kick the goal or to score the try, you've gotta run to the gap. And a lot of people don't think of that place. Does that make sense?

Speaker 6:

Yep. Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

So I hit'em over there. But I, I think coaching helps you do that because if you're running your own life, you, you are doing it all yourself. So I'm a coach. I've got three coaches. I need someone else to help me. And I learn, and I learned from my clients too. You know, I'm,

Speaker 6:

yep.

Speaker 3:

It's just the most powerful thing. So in 2002, I flew to Sydney. I spent about four grand and had a weekend with Bob Proctor at a, at a seminar, a weekend seminar called Born Rich. The word money didn't come up, know the word. Money's not even in the book, but rich being prosperous, happy, fulfilled, loving life, that sort of stuff. Money's part of it, but it wasn't about money and he was born rich. Seminar was so moving for me. I. And luckily there was hundreds of people there, but luckily on the second day, I was one of about eight that were invited to have lunch with him in the hotel rooms with Star City down there. And a guy called John Canary who wrote a book called Breakthrough Limitations. Anyway, at the lunch we were chatting and I had my name badge, and Proctor says to me, so who are you? And I said, oh, Sean Bob. Yeah. I thought we meant no, no, no. That's Who are you? I said, oh, Sean Gordon. And he said, that's just your name. You know you, you'll probably use that till you die, but you could go down to the, down to the law office and change that. You could have another name that's not who you are. Then I started feeling a bit self-conscious and I'm surrounded by people looking at me and he said, so who are you? And I, I started getting, I went, I'm, I'm Sean Gordon. He said, oh, that's just your body. He said, you moved into it, you'll move out of it. That's not who you are. And I was sitting there thinking, I'm not my name, I'm not my body. Everyone's looking at me. I'm a, a leading educator in Australia and I can't say who I am, and he was sort of pushing on me a bit, and he just sort of, he said, look, you live on, you exist on three planes. You're a spiritual being. You don't have spiritual experiences. You are a spiritual being, which is not a religious thing. You just are, we're all connected. You have an intellect and you live in a physical body. Collectively, that's who you are. And so. You can't just think everything up. It can't all be in your conscious mind. You've got a subconscious mind. And the subconscious mind is what actually drives the thing you walk around in. You know, so you, you sub, when people say what you think about you become, they don't mean what you think about in your conscious mind with your knowledge. Like, I could think about jumping off here. And people have crazy fantasies and they're not actually going to do it. They don't actually think that, that's not what they're thinking. What they're thinking is, I'm worthy, I'm beautiful, I can, I can't. You know that thoughts, that talk to your little voice that talks to you before you go to sleep at night, that's what you're thinking about. I'm broke. We can never do that. We've lost, we've won. And that's the, it's the learning how to understand the subconscious mind, which sadly it's subconscious, therefore you can't see it. You can only see the external results with your conscious mind and the interplay between what you know and what you feel and what you actually believe at a subconscious level fronts up in how you turn up and how you. Do your sale, ask for a handy marriage, ask for him. Whatever you gonna do. It becomes how you show up and how you play your game. So Proctor taught me incredibly that there is ways to use the conscious mind and six higher mental faculties that I teach, that I've never taught in school to help people use the conscious mind to reprogram the subconscious. And over a period of 24 weeks, I take people on a journey and their life changes like night and day if they want to. And the, I look at my website, the, the testimony is ridiculous. I'm a function of it. I did the same, I used the same strategies and, and my life just got better and better. So Bob Proctor's been a hero. He died three years ago and I I was a bit messed up about that'cause he was such a great person. But we we captured his wisdom and I've got the videos. I use him in all my lessons. I use his material and it's very powerful. But more importantly, with, with my world, we have it as a, we've codified it. So it's a curriculum. It starts here, goes to there, you know, and it builds and builds and builds. So you can get a lot of your stuff online and it's terrific. But when it's in order and it's organized and you come with me for 24 weeks, yeah, he, as he says, you need a telescope to see back to where you started from.

Speaker 4:

There certainly must be a benefit to being a coach of those types of things today with an educational background so that you know how to. Roll it out.

Speaker 3:

I was lucky to have the teaching background and if you care, and I do care about people, but it's, yeah, that helps. There's, there's a funny sort of paradigm of mindset in Australia anyway, and, and particularly Australian men, many of them, it's, it's less so, but many men don't want have a coach. They think it's a sign of weakness. I've got three, by the way. I know you've got coach. Coach. Cheers. Probably. And one particular story you'll probably like, but I was talking to one guy and he was a bit stuck, but I knew he loved sport and I knew he loved tennis, and I said to him. So he is gagging on the idea of engaging a coach.'cause it sort of, they, I weak. And I said to him, well, I said, you, you love your tennis? He said, oh yeah. I said, and it was a few years ago, I said, Federer is your favorite, isn't he? Yep. I said, Federer's got a coach. He said, I know. And I said, well, well he has gotta coach, but, and he, and he got that. And I said, well, you gotta get this. Federer can beat his coach at tennis. The penny dropped. And I said, the coach is not superior to you. The coach has a different game to play. So I've coached an ethicist, lawyers, teachers, mompreneurs, tradies. I treat us all as equal. I'm not less than anyone. I'm, but I'm not better either. So everyone I get the privilege of coaching with, I walk with them and I learn from all of them. And I said to Joel, I'm a, he was a, a doctor anesthetist in Melbourne. I said to him, I hope when you put these people to sleep, you can wake'em up again.'cause I'm your coach, but I certainly can't do that. Does that make sense? Yeah. And when So Federer's coach can beat him and and, and Wolfie can't play football as well as the boys playing for the Dolphins these days. It's not the point. He's in the coach's box watching what's going on. We have a strategy. We say we're doing this. I get on the phone and say, thought you're gonna be over here. Like, what's going on there? People get in the game and in the game of life, and they get lost. They get in their business and they're in their business, not on their business, and they get lost. So a coach is someone who just sort of tap on the shoulder and says, Hey, how are we doing this? How's that going for? Why are you you know, procrastinating or whatever it might be? Or, or even just getting a plan to say, where are you gonna run to, where's the gap that you're running to'cause you, you're actually sitting here spinning your wheel else.

Speaker 4:

There's a lot of times when I come across people and they go, oh, coaches, they're not gonna teach me anything I don't already know. And that might be the case, but Are you applying it now? Yeah, totally. It might be they teach you how to apply it.

Speaker 3:

Totally.

Speaker 4:

Or they keep you accountable too.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Well, and not all.

Speaker 4:

Or, and,

Speaker 3:

and absolutely. And, and I do teach a lot of new concepts for, for many people, and I guess the people I coach are usually already successful. They've already invested a bit in themselves and they get the value of coaching. But they know there's a piece missing or they just know they need someone external and they've, and you've gotta have a good feeling about it too. Someone's gonna meet me and I meet people that high sales pitch.'cause if, if you don't feel right, it's not right. You know, I'm not the key for every door, but I'm the key for enough doors.

Speaker 5:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

And so I work with people and get, I get their knowledge. They've already, they've already got enough knowledge of, I've even written an article, which you can get from my website called Crossing The Knowing Doing Gap.'cause I argue and I did with kids at school. Most people already know enough and can already do enough to have a spectacular lift in their performance, but they don't do what they know. So, you know, people I know have lost a few kilos in life. They already knew how to do it at the beginning, but they didn't do it right. So if you read my little article, I explained a little bit about why that happens and, and the, the levels of knowing, but it's not enough to know. Mm-hmm. It's not enough to be able to do. It's the application. So I teach people to use the knowledge they've got and the skills they've got, and I turn on what they've already got and then they accelerate, like literally accelerate.

Speaker 4:

I look back at my weight loss journey and sometimes wonder if knowing what I needed to do to lose weight was actually my Achilles heel, because I always thought at some point I could just do it. And what I never did was just do it

Speaker 3:

and then you did it spectacular. Well

Speaker 4:

then I did it, but it, I

Speaker 3:

was might proud of you a

Speaker 4:

a long time after. I should have.

Speaker 3:

Well, having seen it before and after Maori, and I've quoted you on, I've had photos of you on On and others. I've got people in my group two in particular, lost two, two different people at two different times. I've lost 40 kilos and I don't talk about diet.

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I talk about what do you want, what do you want out of your life? They already know what to do. They already know how to do it. So I support that. I encourage that. I challenge that, but that becomes a goal and they want me to keep them accountable. I do that too, but by and large people have gone, yeah, their wealth's gone through the roof. They've got this, they've done that. Their relationships have got better. And it's all about a function of feeling worthy and knowing how to drive themselves at a subconscious level, using those six high mental faculties of the conscious mind chief among them. Imagination.

Speaker 6:

Mm,

Speaker 3:

intuition.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

Persistence goes on.

Speaker 4:

What's one thing that you wish you could, the concept, the main concept that you wish you could spread the most around the world?

Speaker 3:

Wow. Sounds like you're on, you know, fashion Pro. Sounds like we have a beauty page of the just people to just trust each other, you know, to just to have a, a sense of the fear that we feel in community, and that's being ramped up by social media is it's a scourge and people's anxiety is ramped up because of that. And it's good for viewers, it's good for money. So bad news sell, but my biggest message is that I believe that ignorance is the only problem we've got on this planet. It's like a disease. Ignorance. And I don't mean stupid, like you could be a brain surgeon, be ignorant about gardening. It just means you don't know and you don't know that you dunno. And we've all got places that, well, things that we're ignorant of. Some things I wanna stay ignorant of, just by the way, anyway, so ignorance is the problem or the disease, and I think education is only cure. And if you get people educated enough about what's going on with even the stuff that's happening now in the political center without giving a left or right or up or down view on it, the big issues that are going on, you know, welcome to country or stuff that's happening in America, or stuff that's happening in, in the Middle East. If you've got enough education and in Africa, education would change the problem socially, spectacularly. And if people knew enough of the other side, I think we'd have high trust. So I'd like people to, and I don't, and can I qualify too? I don't wanna confuse schooling with education. This is, this is a 20 year school principal. Schooling being, you know, learning stuff, learning facts. So we've got kids leaving school Now, as I mentioned, they've got a lot of knowledge, but they're anxious, depressed, disaffected. They don't know, they're not, they're not educated. If you're educated, you can get what you want without harming other people. You can drive yourself effectively.

Speaker 6:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

Does that make sense?

Speaker 6:

Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

I. Yeah, there's some great quotes around it. Mark Twain said, I never let my schooling get in the way of my education. And John Ruskin, another great person I like to read, said education is about getting people to know what they don't know. Education is about getting people to behave as they don't behave. In order for you to lose weight, you had to behave differently. You already knew enough, you didn't behave that way.

Speaker 6:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So if people wanna get my little article Crossing the Knowing Doing Gap, two things happen. I'll, that's, I'll give you a warning if you get it, it's free on my website@seangordon.com au. But that will trigger a newsletter. So then you'd get something from me every week. Alright. But you can always unsubscribe if it's too boring. But

Speaker 4:

yeah. So

Speaker 3:

thank you very

Speaker 4:

much for chatting with me today.

Speaker 3:

My pleasure.

Speaker 4:

Thank you. Go. What are you gonna be doing in 10 years time?

Speaker 3:

I'm gonna be traveling. I'm not gonna be living here traveling and living somewhere closer to the water, but on the peninsula.

Speaker 6:

Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3:

So I like it. I like it

Speaker 6:

here.

Speaker 3:

I love it here.

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Adam Leishman

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