Leave A Light On Podcast
Welcome to "Leave A Light On Podcast," the podcast that brings you inspiring stories of ordinary people overcoming extraordinary challenges in their lives. Join us as we delve into the lives of individuals from all walks of life, exploring the adversities they face and the resilience they demonstrate in overcoming them.
In each episode, we'll introduce you to a new guest—a parent, a teacher, a healthcare worker, a student, a veteran, or perhaps your neighbor next door. Through heartfelt interviews and candid conversations, we'll uncover the personal battles they've fought, whether it's overcoming illness, navigating through loss, breaking free from addiction, or facing societal barriers.
From tales of triumph over adversity to stories of perseverance in the face of hardship, "Leave a Light On Podcast" celebrates the human spirit and the strength found within each of us. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and most importantly, you'll be inspired by the resilience and determination of these everyday people who refuse to be defined by their struggles.
So, tune in and join us on this journey of hope, empowerment, and the celebration of the human spirit. Because in the end, it's the stories of everyday people that remind us all that we are capable of overcoming anything life throws our way.
Leave A Light On Podcast
S2 Ep3 - Tommy Pulliene's Story: From Combat Zones to Community Care
What if overcoming adversity could reshape your entire life? Join us as Tommy Pullein, a former Australian Army infantry soldier, shares his journey from a challenging upbringing to military service and beyond. Tommy's compelling stories about his deployments to Timor-Leste, Solomon Islands, and Iraq reveal not only his resilience but also his passion for veteran mental health and homelessness. With a focus on mental health first aid, Tommy is transforming the way individuals and organizations approach mental well-being, emphasizing authentic storytelling and the power of community support.
Transitioning from military to civilian life is no easy feat, and we're unpacking the unique challenges veterans face during this process. With insights into the roles of the Department of Veteran Affairs and ex-service organizations, we highlight pressing issues like financial management and compensation. Tommy shares personal anecdotes about the importance of local engagement, such as joining a gym, to build connections and foster belonging. We also explore how emotional intelligence and resilience play crucial roles in both personal and professional leadership, showcasing businesses like Mindset Training that empower individuals with essential skills for success.
Balancing profitability with employee well-being is more important than ever, and we discuss how neglecting this balance can impact business outcomes. Drawing inspiration from various industries and Richard Branson's philosophy, we explore how prioritizing employee satisfaction leads to enhanced customer service and company success. By encouraging open dialogues, early intervention, and the use of Employee Assistance Programs, we emphasize the significant benefits of mental health support. Through Tommy's insights, we learn the value of vulnerability, the strength of supportive communities, and the transformative power of self-reflection in mental health advocacy.
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Share your stories with us and lets Leave a Light On
Hello and welcome to Leave a Light On Podcast, a show that looks to tackle the everyday struggles in our everyday lives. It's time to shed some light on it. Leave a light on podcasts not a licensed mental health service. It shouldn't be substituted for professional advice or treatment. Things discussed in this podcast are general in nature and may be of a sensitive nature. If you're struggling, please seek professional help or contact Lifeline on 13 11 14. Here's your hosts, shane and Shev.
Speaker 4:Hey, hey, welcome to another episode of Leave a Lot on Podcast. We've got your host Shev Alongside me. Shano, how you going, buddy?
Speaker 5:Yo, what's happening? Shev Chevron Chevrolet.
Speaker 4:Chevrolet.
Speaker 5:Yeah, what's happening, buddy?
Speaker 4:Oh, not much at all, just super keen for this episode today with our guest.
Speaker 5:I feel like you're and we've said this before but you're keen for every episode.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, because I'm excited just to be here. You're excited to be here.
Speaker 5:I need to go to Spotlight and get some new material. Yeah that sounds good, that was good.
Speaker 4:I enjoyed that Anyway. I'll do it for you.
Speaker 6:I've got the touching pad, I've got the touching pad. I've touched my buttons.
Speaker 4:That's awesome. But seriously, this guy, I'm going to call him the male man. You know why? Why, because the listeners are in for a real treat and this Blake delivers. Oh okay, yeah, the amount of diplomas this dude's got and stuff that's obviously in his arsenal is amazing. So the listeners are in for a real treat today. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Well, let's get into it. Today's guest, obviously, is someone by the name of Tommy Pauline. So Tommy started his career in the military serving Australian Army. He was an infantry soldier and he spent 17 years in service. He was deployed to places such as Timor-Leste, solomon Islands, as well as Iraq, and during his time he relied on resilient mindset to not only survive but thrive in his roles.
Speaker 4:Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 5:Which you'll learn as he gets into this podcast was pretty intense, by the way, but yeah, one of his main things is obviously resilience and developing resilience, which is so great. He has now left the defense force and now runs a security company and worked in veteran mental health and veteran homelessness.
Speaker 5:Tommy has had a passion for veteran mental health issues and has run a variety of programs supporting veterans, including mental health first aid, which is quite cool, resilience first aid, which we'll hear him get into, which for me was, yeah, very unique um, I haven't heard of anyone uh running something called resilience first aid, as well as peer support and mental programs. Um. So, yeah, really, really cool. Um, and his passion is is bringing the best uh in terms of preventing mental health training to individuals and organizations, which is awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and tommy aims to preventing mental health training to individuals and organizations, which is awesome.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and Tommy aims to bring a lived experience to fund an interactive course to our community. He was phenomenal. We've had the privilege of hearing him speak before yeah, yep, and yeah, he really was super captivating. I love the way he he just brought across his message in such an authentic way, yeah, of course. So yeah, really, really excited to have Tommy on the podcast with us, and I hope that every listener that listens to this gets a real kick out of it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it gets some sort of value.
Speaker 5:And so, without further ado, we're going to introduce the one and only, and obviously, as we do, we have a theme song, which I think this is very fitting for him. Yeah, so we're going to introduce the one and only Tommy Pullein. Tommy, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate having you on today.
Speaker 6:Thanks for having us mate. Yeah, no, thank you. Thanks for the meeting.
Speaker 5:Thanks for giving us your time. Thanks for giving us your time. I know we've been wanting to get you on for quite a while now, actually Probably, I would say maybe eight months now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, probably, I would say close to when we first started this whole thing. Tommy was our very first interest in the guest.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's for sure, yeah, I'm pretty elusive boys Must be that background of yours. We just don't want to be found. It's all good, yeah, so let's get into this. Tommy, thank you so much again for being here with us. Obviously, we've had the privilege of hearing you speak before, like we just said, and it was something that really resonated with us, your message that you do bring you do a lot of public speaking into the area that we'll get into in a little bit. But for anyone who doesn't know you, let's go back. Who is Tommy Pullian?
Speaker 6:Well, tommy Pullian. So I grew up in a little country town called Yonge, central New South Wales, with my parents. For a little bit they moved there quite a bit. I had a pretty turbulent childhood which you know resulted in me looking to join the military in some aspect to have a stable lifestyle. So at an early age I joined the Army. I actually went in to join the Navy because I thought I needed somewhere to live. And when I went in to join the Navy there's no Navy recruiters. This Army bloke put a video on the telephoning. It was parachuting and stuff. It looked good. Then he told me I could live on base for two years so I signed up with the Army. That was as much interest as I had in the Defence Force at the time.
Speaker 5:I got a house for two years. That's all that matters.
Speaker 4:That's probably better than being on a ship full of semen.
Speaker 6:Anyway, 100% you won't get another Navy guy in here. You've just ruled out any Navy guys. They're going to come in to work with three other blokes. Mate any time.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. How old are you when you obviously signed up for the Army?
Speaker 6:I was 18 when I first went in yeah, so about 17 when I went in to join. Yeah, After joining I obviously did Kapuka and Singleton out here where you guys live now, yeah.
Speaker 6:Become an infantry soldier. I went up to Townsville for my first posting and I loved it. I had the time of my life, made some of the best friends I've ever had deployed up there for the first time over to East Timor during InterFET had one of the best deployments. Great bunch of blokes did some stuff that you know was hard to deal with at the time. Well, probably not at the time, but later on, when I started having my own kids Deployed back there a few times In 2001, I went down to Sydney and joined 3AR, which is a parachute unit. I'm scared of heights. Yes, you're in it a little bit. Yeah, it wasn't a great idea in the first place.
Speaker 6:but I had a great time in that unit as well. But at the time we were deploying a lot. So whilst I was in three-hour I deployed another several times, year after year, and that started adding up on me. After my time in three-hour I had to try to get a rest posting, so I went down to Kapuka. It was Kapuka where I sort of started my interest in working with humans, like working with other people, like watching how we created soldiers out of civilians and seeing that. You know it's a process. Once you're on that, you've got no choice. You're part of a bigger system. But when we're trying to work with somebody to improve mental health, improve physical fitness, it's got to be individualised, it's got to be coached rather than forcing somebody. It's got to be individualised, it's got to be coached rather than forcing somebody.
Speaker 6:And then I got to go to DFCE, which is the Defence Force Jail, and that's where the first time I got to work with now my ex-wife to build coaching for detainees. We're getting all these great blokes in for crimes that they committed which might have been AWOL, by the way, like if you go to jail for it yeah.
Speaker 6:Some other serious stuff, but generally it's all around that mental health space. So these guys aren't doing anything really bad, but you go to jail for it, where they actually needed some nurturing, some coaching around behaviour, around what's happening for them, and we were missing it as the Defence Force. So we got to do some work there for the first time and it gave me sort of that passion. This is sort of the field I think I'll end up in next. Yeah, at the same time, whilst I was doing all that, I was having kids. It's hectic as.
Speaker 5:Make sure you put a load on yourself there.
Speaker 4:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 6:Well, you know the selfish thing about it, it wasn't a load on myself. Yeah, Selfish thing about it, it wasn't a load on myself. Yeah, it was probably more of a load on my first ex-wife, you know. Yeah, she was dealing with the kids whilst I was running off the country doing what little boys want to do, right, play soldier, so, and that sort of stuff. Overseas was really great. You know you're getting to do the things that you love, but back home somebody else is taking care of everything. You're missing out on fundamental first things that the kid should be doing.
Speaker 4:You know, essentially, she becomes the main.
Speaker 6:Yeah, she becomes both mum and dad, and you know Kate did an amazing job, also was deploying, but it became really hard after a while. So that's why we chose the posting at Kapuka. Get there, you work 18 hours a day. That marriage breaks up. Yeah.
Speaker 6:You know bad behaviour as well, which you know not understanding why there's bad behaviour there from myself, and just drifted apart and ended up breaking up. Yeah, so my kids now sort of live with me, live with my now current ex-wife. Yeah, they're all doing really well Like they're in a very vulnerable space being a veteran's kid, but they do the work that they know. They see mum and their step, they see dad and their stepmum doing you know things in the mental health space and when they've needed it, they've reached out as well. So, as a father, that's probably one of the things I'm proudest of the most yeah, showing that vulnerability to my kids, that at times I'm not going to be well and this is what I've got to do to be well. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:So it's led me into working in community services, mostly at the start with veterans in homelessness yeah. And I did that for about 12 months and found it too difficult. It was too hard for myself to work in that space and keep myself physically and mentally well.
Speaker 5:Wow, in what way. So what was it about that, in particular, that space that was so hard.
Speaker 6:The veteran space is difficult for lots of reasons. There's lots of chatter around the community about how bad veterans have got it, but we actually get lots of stuff thrown at us, so I get all the counselling I could ever want. The white card system under DVA is really powerful to get people help in lots of different aspects. But what I found when I was working at Homes for Heroes it was mostly about getting veterans in so that we could get more money, all right, and we weren't really trying to work with a veteran to get better, just house them and keep them there so that we could keep getting funding. And that's not so different to lots of other organizations. Yeah, for myself, it was about when I found out that I, when I found out I knew I had a mental illness for ages, right when I decided I was going to do something about it. There was plenty of resources there for me to do something Plenty of psychoeducation, plenty of therapy.
Speaker 6:I just had to reach out to do something. Plenty of psycho education, plenty of therapy. I just had to reach out and do something. So the biggest barrier to me getting help was me for so many years. Yeah. Like I was the stopgap. Yeah. Because I didn't want to admit it. Yeah, yeah, I didn't want to be vulnerable. You know a thousand different reasons, but once. I did things changed.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, it's the age-old saying you can take a horse to the water, but you can't make a drink. So you can have all these resources available to you, but if you're not invested in the fact that I want to do this, I want to get better, I actually want to take responsibility for the issues that I'm having then it's meaningless. There's just no point 100%.
Speaker 6:And whilst we serve in the military, we've got real good vision on what we want to do. Okay, 100%, we want to serve our nation, we want to do the right thing. When we leave the military, you lose some of that vision and if you don't refocus it quickly what is my purpose? What is my vision in life? What are my goals? What do you do? You fall off the bandwagon. All of a sudden, toxic behaviour creeps in because there's a void there that's not with the military. So for me, it was about realigning my vision with my purpose. So the most important thing is my kids, and the last thing I wanted to do was not be around for them. So the first thing I had to do was work on myself. So I'm not. You know, I don't take my own life so that I can work, that I can function in community and that I can show them what it's like life after service. Yeah.
Speaker 6:You know I reflect back on what my grandfather did after World War II and that's the standard that I wanted to set. I can do more after service. I am valuable to an organisation, to myself and to my family, and that's the purpose I've got to work with.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I'm going to ask you probably a very interesting question and it might be tough for you to answer. Do you think that veterans are looked after when they're released from service, or do you think that it's like, well, we've got what we needed out of you now? And thank you for your service, but move on.
Speaker 6:It is a tough question to answer, mostly because of the backlash that I've caught, but I'm okay with it. I think that there's enough support systems out there for veterans to be able to transition. We haven't done transition well for many years but, you know, over the last six, seven years I've seen DVA, department of Veteran Affairs, transition into helping more people, you know, trying to pick up the speed of cases so that you know they can get compensation, things like that. But there is also, you know, systematic things that are wrong, like we give veterans that are mentally ill $600,000 because of their injuries and then release them into the wild without you know. You do get some money for financial planning, but somebody that might be a bit unwell getting all that money, I'll tell you what poker machines and drinking and drugs become the best place to spend it, because now I've got something, something that's filling me up for a little bit, and then I've got to have more of it.
Speaker 4:There's no sort of structure there for when they leave, it's just like you're on your own. There's your money, yeah but there is.
Speaker 6:You know you can reach out to different groups and transition. But one of the things again ESOs ex-service organisations try to bring veterans back in and belong to the year. So Invictus Games is great for it. They get to do these amazing things. But if we want to transition well, we've got to transition back into our community. We've got to build the resources around us so that we can have a fulfilled life, have mates outside. I didn't do that until I moved to Newcastle. The way that I did it was through the gym that I joined. I joined Andre's CrossFit gym out at Gateshead, the dodgiest place I've ever been.
Speaker 6:He's a great mate, the dodgiest place.
Speaker 4:I've ever worked out and you were in the military, so for you to say it's dodgy.
Speaker 6:It's closed down now. It was the best gym because I made community. I've made lifelong friends there, but from there I made other friends in the community but also returning to work in my local community and moving away from the ESO world and working more with like four-size training where I do leadership and mental health training, awful mindset training and making new roads there, so that I've got actual activities to look forward to. And that's what we sort of need to start thinking about in the veteran space is it's great that we can go to the RSL and get some support, but what are we doing once we get to the RSL in our local community? Are the RSLs supporting you to get into the horse riding, whatever it is you might be into? So if we don't transition back, you sit at home, you're lonely, you're bored, your headspace goes away. Everything that we talk about in mental health doesn't happen. Yeah.
Speaker 5:So you've obviously got quite a huge passion into the area of mental health, which is amazing. It's originally why, obviously, one of the areas we wanted to focus on during this podcast was mental health, but we've expanded it to not only mental health because, as important as mental health is, it's one cog in a big machine, a really big one. Let's not take the thing off that. But you've obviously decided that that's the area that you want to really hone in on. The psycho.
Speaker 6:You got it, you got it. Come on Psychosocial responsibilities. Psychosocial responsibilities.
Speaker 4:I only know that because it's a Slipknot song. That's right when you said it.
Speaker 6:I remembered it straight away Psychosocial responsibilities, psychosocial Singers alone. No way.
Speaker 4:I love metal but I cannot sing it. I'm sorry, tommy. Massive metal headbutt.
Speaker 5:So you've got a real big passion into the psychosocial responsibilities side of it. Let's delve a little bit more into that. In terms of what you do, you've obviously started your own business in this area, along with a few others that you've partnered with, and you travel not only the country, but you go all over the world with your business. What is it that you do and what is your business called?
Speaker 6:The actual business I work for is my ex-wife's business, which is called Mindset Training. Now I work for Forsyth because that's a medium for us to be able to get these products out there, especially where they're really needed in where we live in the Hunter Valley. So Melissa and myself we work in the mental health space with organisations. So for Melissa, she's the one that designs most of the work I do, most of the workplace or some of the workplace training, but it comes from her being a workplace psychologist and seeing that it's on a continuum for psychosocial responsibilities. My passion is meeting people that look like me, that talk like me, that I can connect with and similar to the talk I had to do for you or I got to do for you guys around psychosocial response Sorry, what was it? Emotional intelligence and resilience.
Speaker 5:Emotional intelligence- Emotional intelligence and resilience yeah.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and for me it's about being able to connect. Now I'm lucky, I can do that leadership space as well. So quite often when we're working with companies, you know we're working with organizations that haven't invested in leadership and don't understand the impact that they can have on their employees if they're not investing in not just mental health support. But you know, how do we lead people correctly without hurting them?
Speaker 5:how do we manage people so that they get the most out of their work life and also the most out of you know their home life, their family life, to make work part of their life yeah, it's huge because, like you say I think you and I mentioned this before we started everyone leads in some capacity.
Speaker 5:So we talk about, obviously, the leadership side of things in a business, but you might be the leader of your family, you might be the leader of a young child, or you might be the leader of a small group, whether it be church group or community group or whatever group it is. Everyone leads in some capacity in their life, even if it is only themselves, they have to lead themselves. So the tools that you are bringing forward in terms of this leadership side of things and having the emotional intelligence and emotional maturity to lead people is just as important for every individual, because we're all leading in some capacity. So that's why I said to you even before this like your talk, even though you're referring to leadership in a corporate space, it resonated with me because for me, I need to be emotionally mature in order to lead myself in this journey that we're on in life, which is getting harder and harder, and we see it because the rise in mental health cases people struggling with these issues is just astronomical. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And so I think the work that you're doing in this space is so, so important and vital and, like I said, I can't commend you enough for it. It's just phenomenal.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. I got something out of it. Yeah, like it was awesome. This is what Shane pretty much what Shane said. Your talk was amazing and hence the reason why we both put our heads together and said we want this dude on because it was awesome. It was really good.
Speaker 6:I appreciate that and one of those things out of those talks like that was quite a talk that your organisation obviously wanted to expand on from the last lot of training they'd done and that's great right and emotional intelligence for a lot of people on that day might have been, just, you know, 7.30 in the morning. From what I remember it was a cold day, like it might have been a bit over the top, like you know where are we aiming this at and especially relating it to resilience?
Speaker 6:Yeah, resilience is the place that I love to work in. If we can work on resilience and being proactive about mental health and leadership, great, we're doing what we need to do to protect people, but quite often we're being reactive. Yeah, so I get to teach a great course called Resilience First Aid yeah, which talks a great course called Resilience First Aid, which talks about how to make ourselves individually more resilient and work with other people that have got less resilient tools, and that workshop that I did out there. I would have loved to take it back two steps and just talk to the blokes about how do we name our emotions, tell me how many emotions that you know right now, because I sat down with a clinical psych once doing some cognitive brain testing when I was leaving defence to make sure it was all good up here, and she goes name me all the emotions you can. I sat there and I looked at her and I'm like why are you doing this to me? I've got this Tommy, hungry, horny, thirsty, sad, happy, angry. She's like some of them aren't emotions For that room and like in the military and for a lot of us.
Speaker 6:Our emotional range was sort of slowed down because mum and dad mightn't have encouraged us to show emotion. Yeah, you know, in the military, in the mining sector, you know, in construction. You know it's not always good to talk about your emotions when you're having a bad day, because the other blokes around you mightn't be ready for it, they might not be compassionate or empathetic, they mightn't have the tools to be able to take in what you've said. And most people do care about their workmates, right? Yeah, we just don't have the tools sometimes to do it, because we've never thought about training people to be part, of, you know, the management system, the leadership system inside of the organisation. On this one subject, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:We talk about. The expertise in skills and mining is amazing in it. There's so many data points around it. You know, after working in the mining sector, like with leadership and management for the last couple of years, seeing these awesome guys that come to leadership training. They're great at their job, but they just haven't been given the opportunity to learn the skills that they need to become a great leader or a great manager. Yeah, okay, mind you some rock up and they are great leaders, but they're terrible managers, and vice versa. Or they're good at both, yeah.
Speaker 6:They just sit around with me for a year and do nothing.
Speaker 5:Well, you and I were actually talking about this before this as well, and I made the comment to you and I was saying leaders nowadays are not promoted on the fact that they're good leaders. They're promoted on the fact that they're results driven and they're very good at it. So they, they get results and they, they excel in a particular thing, so they, for instance, if you're in sales, you hit the highest numbers or whatever the case is. But the the key thing about leaders is you don't have to be good at sales to be a good leader, or be good at machine operator to be a good leader.
Speaker 5:A good leader is someone who knows how to, and if you go back to any major point in history where there was a dramatic shift whether it be Martin Luther King, hitler obviously what they did is they sparked emotion, they got people to follow them in their belief system and they had the people doing the work that they needed that would have been given to them. So they were good people, managers, or good people like people, people. I want to say that, if I can say that People, people inspiring people.
Speaker 5:Yeah, they were good at, like you say, the emotional getting the emotions of people to align with their beliefs and their thought processes. So good leaders are not necessarily ones that are good at the job. They're good at leading people, and I feel like what happens in the world nowadays is that you're promoted based on the fact that you're good at the job, not good at leading, and that's where a lot of companies have teams that are failing because there's no lack of inspiration from the person above them, or it becomes a dictatorship. I'm going to tell you what to do, and this is what you are going to do, and if you don't like it, there's the door. And you said how many people aren't happy in their job nowadays?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's huge Sort of one extreme to the other, isn't?
Speaker 6:it 100%. It is, I see it all the time NDIS workers, for instance. I do a lot of mental or first aid courses in that field and whenever I get them in the course, I've got to make it clear at the start of the course this is not group therapy. I'm not a therapist. This is a psychoeducation course and what I need to do with these guys is to give you the information so that you can use it. But they're so unhappy in their field because of mismanagement, bad leadership and sometimes not knowing how to do the job properly.
Speaker 6:So a simple psychosocial responsibility is to have a job description that you know and understand. When you don't have that, there's a lot of variables there that you could do the wrong thing. So when I'm running that course, the one thing I have to make sure with predominantly the female clientele and some really caring males and females that want to do that work because it is that's all you've got to be is a great carer and learn the skills is to make sure that they're getting help somewhere else. It's not it, but you need to make sure that you reach out and look after yourself when you're working in this field as well. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:And that's because the management, these businesses pop up. They're all well-intended, but execution for staff sometimes is not great.
Speaker 5:I feel like capitalism has played a big part in that, in the fact that a lot of companies nowadays, if you go back to the 1980s, a lot of businesses back then were family-oriented businesses. So you know, for instance let's just talk about this podcast you know we started it. We've brought someone in. They've bought into the vision of what we're doing. They stayed with us for a couple of years. We've brought other people in and we've inspired them to do what we're doing and we've led them in the ways that we do things. And you know, they've gone through some hardships and we've stuck by them. We've stuck together and we've built this thing together. It might be small, it might not have been massive, but it was a unit that gelled together, that worked together, that functioned with one another and our weaknesses it didn't matter. The vulnerability of one another didn't necessarily mean it was a weakness. It meant that we were strong enough to be vulnerable with one another.
Speaker 5:And I think what's happened now is companies have shifted away from that and they said no, we want to be profits driven. So forget the fact that now we've got these people that have been with us for years. We want people who are going to drive the sales, so we need to bring in younger blood, or maybe we need to cull a few people that have been here for however many years and have been the heart and soul of this business, but now it's like, oh no, we need to bring the money in and it's all about money, and they lose the heart of what's happened, and I feel like that's what happens when it comes to the leadership side of things as well, is that we start to bring in people that we think are going to be goal-driven and orientated and are going to get the highest numbers or achieve the most sales or whatever, rather than the people that are going to lead the company to fulfill the best that they can fulfill.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 5:It's such an interesting concept You've just described the mining industry. It's every industry, I know, I know, but you've just pretty much described the mining industry.
Speaker 4:They don't care, as long as they make their money. It's every industry.
Speaker 6:Like, how often do you hear someone say that I'm just a number at work? Yeah, you hear it all the time. I always start out that everyone starts out with good intentions. But good intentions get derailed sometimes by the bank balance sheet, whatever it might be the cost-benefit analysis of a project. But everyone starts out with good intentions.
Speaker 6:The problem is when we look at specific minds any industry it's not just that the security industry is rampant in it they will use up and abuse people because they know that somebody else will come in. But we know if we invested in that human being, you don't have to recruit somebody else. You give somebody else a job that's meaningful to them. You nurture them. You've got to put effort in with that human being. You know when that person comes to you and shows vulnerability, you've got to do something about it. And how do you do something about it? Because that's one time you'll lose them.
Speaker 6:As an employee I went to whoever it is. They didn't listen to my problem. I don't feel valued by the organization. So it doesn't always have to be about money, but just teaching people how to care empathetically, compassionately, in their decision-making about what they do with somebody. And sometimes it will affect profits. But if you're saving money, saving money on retention from sick days, from people you know injuring machinery because they're not happy, they're not, you know, conducive with work that day, then you're actually saving the business money as well.
Speaker 6:So I don't feel like we've got to separate the two. We can look at it as how do we do a cost-benefit analysis to improve the working life of these human beings and increase you know, increase production, increase happiness on the site and measure that somehow?
Speaker 5:Well, richard Branson was one of the key. I'll never forget what he said. He was like how do you get your employees to buy into the vision? How do they follow you as a leader? Because we live in this age where the customer is always right. So he says, well, no, he doesn't go with the vision of the customer's always right.
Speaker 5:He backs his employees, he looks after his employees because he knows if he can look after his employees, the employees will look after the customers, whereas everyone tries to do it the opposite way around. They try to look after the customer and their employees are. Their employees are unhappy and therefore it's this never-ending cycle of either just unretained, like the unpassionate people that are driven behind it, just because they have a paycheck at the end of the day, and it leads to this whole new phase where people are what they call quiet quitting, where it's just like they'll be there, but they know in their hearts that they're ready to move on, so they don't add any value to the business. They just they're doing the job in order to get a paycheck at the end of the day yeah, and you see it all the time, and quite quitting is one thing you know.
Speaker 6:Then you've got loud quitting as well, yeah, which just demoralizes an organization as well when you get some big personalities that don't know how to control their personality. I might have been one of them, especially when I was in the Army. Look, at the size of me.
Speaker 6:If I got angry I could dominate somebody, you know, get them to be a bit quieter or not show their opinion. That's a really toxic trait, but it's something that I learnt from other soldiers and other commanders as I was going up through the ranks, and if I had my time over, would I do things differently? I'd hope so, you know. And especially being able to be more nurturing sometimes, rather than you know that disciplinary that we're taught to be.
Speaker 6:Now getting to work with other people on that place, the first thing that I'm working with anyone is you know what is vulnerability to you? You know, when I say that to you, do you see it just as a physical vulnerability where you know bravery is done because you've run over a pit and you know you stormed the trenches. You know, the hardest thing, the most brave thing that I've ever done in my life is actually put my hand up and say I need real help. Except to that point, I was a liar, you know. It was easier just to say I was fine. You know, my poor ex-wife was driving me to the hospital on base three nights a week for a couple of months, whilst I was having panic attacks thinking I would only accept that I had a heart condition. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Because I didn't want to accept the vulnerability of me having a mental illness right, yeah.
Speaker 6:As soon as I did that, it empowered me to do something about the problem that I was running away from, because now I can name what's happening for me. I can go and research what is depression, what is anxiety, what is PTSD? How do I get better? So when we work with other people showing that vulnerability as a leader, like hey, mate, what you've just told me is really tough. What can we do to support you in a way that's going to be conducive for you to recover, not just for you to be at work? Okay.
Speaker 6:So it's an interesting space to be able to work in, and I'm lucky that I get to work with people to share my story in a way that, hey, what can I do to get help? What can I do to get help? Where can I go to get help? How can I make myself even better than the injured person that I once was?
Speaker 5:Okay, so let me ask you that question then. So let's just say someone's listening to this. They resonate with some of the things we said. Maybe they're unhappy at work or they're struggling with a particular issue, whether it be anxiety, PTSD. What would you suggest to this person in order to say how can they get assistance, how can they help themselves, what can they do in order to get themselves out of the space that they're in?
Speaker 6:I think the first one we need to do is talk to our mates. Like when you've got a mental health condition. I close off, I know I shut down, but I go into a room of 20 people last week with 20 train drivers Not train drivers, but they work on trains, right and run a mental health course and the first thing I say is I'm a facilitator, I'm going to deliver the information to you on the board, but I bet you it's already in this room. So the more we talk about it, the more it shows that you guys already know this information. So talking to a mate is the first thing that I would suggest. Put yourself out there and say this is what's happening for me. Generally, you'll find that person has been through something similar or has done something else themselves. Then the go-to is go to your GP. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Keep checking in with your GP. I left my GP appointments too long for a while. You know, my physical health drops off, same as your mental health. That's the first place we want to go so that we can get a referral. You know, get a referral to somebody that can help us. It might just be mental. You might, you know, for me once my back goes my head space goes.
Speaker 6:So for me sometimes it's a couple of referrals, but also medications and then to see a psychologist, whatever it might be. Eap in the workplace is underused yeah because?
Speaker 5:because I think people see it as a weakness, like you. We've said yeah, um, you know, if you use that facility, people are going to then pinpoint you as being weak.
Speaker 5:You're never going to um. You know, if you use that facility, people are going to then pinpoint you as being weak. You're never going to excel. You're going to have a target on your back now at work and meanwhile, let's be honest, how many people are not even looking at you. But it's the stigmatism of like it's it's almost so like arrogant, in a way that you just think we're so big and popular in the workplace that if we do this, that uh, everyone's going to look at us and like point fingers and, oh, he's so weak, he's so blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, everyone's got their own issues.
Speaker 4:I'll be the first one to admit it. I've used them twice at work and I'm not ashamed to say that They've helped me through some tough times and hopefully that extends on to other people. You know what I mean.
Speaker 6:I'm not ashamed to say it.
Speaker 6:I on to other people. You know what I mean. I'm not ashamed to say it. I've used them twice, yeah, yeah, they've been good. So when I'm running leadership courses, the first thing I say to anyone that's about to be promoted is if you haven't caught EAP already because you're about to go through a transition, you've probably let yourself down a little bit, but here's an opportunity for you to do it. They quite often get well. I'm not having mental know stressed or anything yet, but if you can learn skills off a free service for yourself to prepare yourself becoming more resilient before you do it, great.
Speaker 6:But that time when an employee comes to you and says you know I'm not doing so great, you now have a reflective practice that you can practice with that human and say I've had to call the AP myself before. It mightn't be for a mental illness, but you've gone through the process right, so now you can share that.
Speaker 6:You can be a bit vulnerable about it and you've got an in with this person to talk about getting better. I've done this so I could perform better, so I love EAP. The other thing that we get with EAP is I rang them and they were terrible. You probably got a little intern for the first time and they weren't great. You've told them some stuff and you think you've scared them. Trust me, they've heard everything, some of the stuff I've told my psychologist over the years. It's fun to remember about but it's not shocking to them. They've heard it all. But if you don't get on with that person, if you don't gel with that psychologist, that doctor, you need to look for somebody else. You can't just throw it out and say they're no good because you've tried one person and this is the stuff I hear all the time they weren't any good, it wasn't for me. No, that person wasn't.
Speaker 5:And I use the…. They label the entire industry based on one recollection or one account.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they just shop around.
Speaker 6:And I'll tell you the truth. I started probably proper counselling in 2014, 13. And my first psychologist was this beautiful old man from Italy and I'd go to Newtown and sit there and we'd have coffee and what do you see in front of you? An ex-combat soldier that has PTSD. And that's what we talked about. I love my war stories so I didn't really have to gauge into anything. Stuff is traumatic More around going away, the excessive amount of time. My next psychologist, after he retired twice. Every time he'd come in, every time and I went back with him. I still keep in contact with him. He's a good bloke.
Speaker 6:All she wanted to talk about was PTSD and I moved up here to Newcastle and I'm like this is it? You know, there's stuff there that I'm not sorting out. I didn't quite know what it was right, but I caught around to different Open Arms, which is a veteran organisation, and got a counsellor and the first time I went in there we spoke about all the military stuff, but I think it was like the third or fourth session Went in there and she says tell me about your childhood, oh, wow, yeah. And I felt that like I'm like no, no, this is something I don't want to delve into, you know, and it was really hard. And I left that day going I'm not going back. She's just challenged me in a way that I wasn't prepared for and I've had this big emotional outburst and that's the thing. Like I was walking along the bay in Lake Macquarie there, or the lake, and going what was the thing about that? That's hurt me All right, I need to investigate this more. So I went and did schema therapy about things that happened as a kid and it was one of the best things, but it hurt.
Speaker 6:There was 12 months there that I was in constant, you know, anguish about the next session, about what I had to write, about things that happened, you know. But the recovery was so great and at the same time she gave me books to read about how the body keeps score, you know, things like that, where what my body is holding in is part of that trauma, not just from my childhood but from the military as well, or some of the silly things that I've done in life as well. So you've got a responsibility to yourself not to quit after the first time, but you've got to continue on and try to find the right person. And yet, once again. I'm going to say it again you're going to get sick of it. You've got to be vulnerable in that space because you've got to go ask somebody else. That didn't work for me. I didn't like the way that he spoke to me. I didn't like the smell of the room Plus, trust me, I've been there.
Speaker 5:Too many candles, I'm out. It's um, it's something that I've said on the show as well before, and it's just based on what you're saying here.
Speaker 6:To me it's like.
Speaker 5:You have to learn to get comfortable in the uncomfortable. Love it, I love it. Yeah, you're gonna be put in uncomfortable situations and if your first initial thing is to run well, you're never gonna achieve anything. You're going to be put in uncomfortable situations and if your first initial thing is to run well, you're never going to achieve anything, You're never going to grow, You're never going to it's. You've got to get comfortable in that space of being uncomfortable, because from there, that's where all the goodness comes from. That's where you're able to say, right, why am I sorry? Why am I feeling like this? You know, like this, you can ask those questions and then say, right, let's get real with me. Because how often? I sometimes find that people can get real with a friend but they can't get real with himself.
Speaker 6:Yeah, you'll lie more to yourself. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:Like I can. I can very much tell Shiv like you've you've stuffed up in this, but to say that to myself, I'm like, oh, wow, that's not as easy to say that it's so easy, and I feel like that's why we, in order for us to to overcome these things, it's to have a real conversation with ourselves, to say what I want to achieve out of this and then say, right, let's to have a real conversation with ourselves, say what I want to achieve out of this and then say, right, let's get comfortable in the space of. This is not a very comfortable space to be in and say, right, okay, let's get to work.
Speaker 6:And I love that. Have you ever read David Coggan's book? You Can't Hurt Me. Most of the stuff I won't listen to in that book. He's a machine, right.
Speaker 5:He's a beast.
Speaker 6:When he talks about the accountability mirror, having post-it notes up there around the accountability mirror, so every morning he's got to rock up to that mirror, face it, and am I hitting all these marks? So being overcritical to oneself is a terrible thing to do, right? So have somebody that you can reflect off. This is the thing that I've done, but having an open conversation, doing an aar after an activity and after action review.
Speaker 6:It's a military term. What did I do well? What did I do bad? Did I stay within my moral compass? Am I living up to my values? Is something that we need to practice. So when I'm thinking about what I'm doing in mental health like, am I following what we need to do to change men's predominantly men's life where we work right, and women's the way that we go and get help? We put so many barriers between us, but the stigma about us getting help is predominantly in our head, because if I said to you I'm not doing so great, you wouldn't judge me. No, but I think that you are judging me. So for me, the judgment is inside of me. What is inside of me that says I can't go get help now? Nothing. It's that internal critic saying that everyone else is going to judge me. I'm not good enough yeah, it's.
Speaker 5:We rely on other people's opinions way more than we rely on our own sometimes.
Speaker 5:That's it, and we might trust their opinion more, and they might be the most trustworthy person, but they're confident in the way they say it yeah, but they're also going to give their their opinion from a place of where they're at in their own personal journey, so they might not understand necessarily the struggles you're dealing with. So, for instance, depression if you haven't been through depression, trying to tell someone how to come out of depression it's not going to work, they're not going to. You're not going to really understand what that person needs from you in order to overcome that. Unless I have walked in those shoes and I know that I've come through on the other side and this is how I've done it therefore, here is my advice to you. That's where the power comes in in terms of the accountability.
Speaker 6:Yeah, that power of communication, right Collaboration, is what we use in resilience to talk about what worked for you, what didn't work for me. And the worst thing I see these days is influencers going you want to get off depression? Don't take medication, get out in the sunlight, wow that might have worked for you, mate, and I'm guessing it did. Yeah, great, the sun's great. What are you going?
Speaker 1:to do in winter. What's the choice there? Are you going to fly to Bali for the whole winter?
Speaker 6:But talking to several people and finding somebody that's had similar things to you, that gels with the way that you think you can find a modality that will help you. Yeah, Not just relying on I've tried this thing. Nothing's going to help me with depression, Depression, you know. Two to three weeks sitting in that is one of the worst places you can be.
Speaker 5:It's funny that you say that To me. I've always heard of the opinion that someone's second opinion is a good thing because, in order to, you can find the difference in between both opinions. So, for instance, depression like, let's just say, shev's had depression, you've had depression, right? I go to Shev and I say I'm really struggling with this. Tell me what happened with you and he'll give me his opinion. I might resonate with some of it, but I might not necessarily also resonate with a lot of it. I come to you and I hear hey, tommy, tell me your like journey through depression and you'll tell me. I'll pick up the commonalities. I might say, hey, tommy, what you said here really resonated with me and what she said here maybe resonated with me a combination of the two. To, rather than just say well, his is like gospel or yours is the way to go, to say, right, I'm going to gather as much information as I can and then say, right, how can I now compile my own list of things that are going to work for me?
Speaker 4:Love it and I reckon that's better in the long run. Anyway, if you get so many different opinions and gel them all together, because the more information you've got on board I think the better off you are.
Speaker 6:Yeah, there's another big piece there is if you just do what other people say, you don't learn how to work on yourself. Yeah. So you know, when we're teaching mental first aid, you know that's how mates talking to mates right, having true conversations about what they need. What I'm saying is you don't make these appointments for them. You don't make these appointments for them, you don't come up with what help they need, talk to them and you coach them to get what they need in the conversation.
Speaker 6:You know that listening, communicate with a person is about hearing what they might want to do. How do we then put that into action? That's the support network we need to be not coming up with. Oh, you need to be in the sunshine for five hours because you've got depression. Yeah. Tell you what this skin? You put me out in the sunshine for five hours now we've got skin cancer.
Speaker 4:Yeah, with a handbag.
Speaker 6:Yeah, but when we collaborate with other people, we're doing one thing already we're talking to somebody else, we're having good, positive engagement. You know, when we get depressed we retreat. So I know when I'm getting in depression, I start watching the Office from start to finish.
Speaker 4:The American one's good.
Speaker 6:And then I'm like okay, I'm in season three, what's going on here? Who do I call? You know? So I'll call somebody and say you know, I started watching the Office again. Yeah, do you want to go for a walk and a coffee? Let's go have a beer on Friday, arvo, whatever it might be, so that I'm not sitting in that space. But knowing my triggers now is really important. So what is putting me in that space? Who can I talk to? Who can I relate to as well?
Speaker 5:Yeah it. Who can I relate to as well? So, yeah, it's creating that community, like you're saying, of people that are you're able to go and be vulnerable with and not have judgment or a sense of what's a sense of weakness in that space, but in the vulnerability there's strength, it unites one another and in your vulnerability it might allow someone else to be vulnerable, and I think that's the beautiful thing in this is that that's what I think the world is lacking is community nowadays. Yeah, community, and the fact that we're isolating everyone, we're isolating ourselves. Like you say, when you get into that oppression state you, the first thing you want to do is like withdraw and we're saying no, no, no, come to this community and and and let's work on it together yeah, exactly you know, because, because we're, we're always yeah, it's that old saying, like we've said before, is is a problem shared, is a problem halved.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know, and if you've got three, four or five people that you're sharing it with, imagine, like now, you're halving that problem between, or you're dividing it between, all of you. Now, and what I hate is when someone says to me and I'm looking at Shiv, because he said this exact- same thing to me is. I don't want to burden you with my problems.
Speaker 4:Yeah 100%, especially when I was going through all my stuff. As I said, when I called the EAP and all that, it was like that I don't want to bother anyone else with my problems, and that's how a lot of people, I think, would feel.
Speaker 6:Yeah, a lot of people do feel that way, and you know, especially in the military, you think somebody's doing it harder. It's called the Anzac spirit monkey, right? So somebody's always done it harder, tougher and faster and you don't want to be the person that burdens them. But if we think about what our friends are going through, if you're going through this, there's likelihood somebody else in your friendship group is as well. So if you go get help and you put yourself out there, you show vulnerability. You do what you need to do to go do the work. Then you learn tools to help somebody else.
Speaker 6:You're also a leader in your community showing the right thing is to get help early, as fast as possible, so I can get back into doing what I love, that's being dad. You know, husband, coal miner, whatever it might be, playing footy, that that's it. The longer we leave it, the harder it is to fix that problem.
Speaker 6:I was pretty lucky recently I got to do a talk with the knights about getting help quickly and being vulnerable, putting yourself out there because that's professionalism. I was pretty lucky recently. I got to do a talk with the Knights about getting help quickly and being vulnerable, putting yourself out there because that's professionalism. If you've got a torn calf, you go to physio straight away, straight away yeah.
Speaker 6:If you're having intrusive thoughts, I'm not good enough. You know I'm depressed. The media says this. You know I didn't make my times in the mind, you know, and that's going through your head constantly and that's interfering with your other activities in life. That's when we need to do something about it. You know that basic thing. Why am I thinking about this more than I'm thinking about the barbecue I'm having on the weekend? Why am I thinking about work more than planning a holiday in six months' time? You know why am I having these intrusive thoughts? Why am I having these intrusive thoughts?
Speaker 6:Why am I thinking I'm not good enough? That's when we need to go get help, because as men that's professional, so that we can keep working supporting our families?
Speaker 5:Yeah, of course, and doing good fun things.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I always feel like that. It's such a cop-out because either way, you are going to be burdening your friends if they are really your friends with something, because if you leave it, something else is going to happen and therefore you're leaving the devastation of something else with your friends to now deal with, whereas if you said, if you'd gone earlier and shared it, even though you think it might be a burden, it's a way less burden to try and carry than it is if you leave it to fester and just get worse 100% and you know I've had plenty of mates that have taken their lives over.
Speaker 6:You know the last probably 20 years. You know from service outside of service and every time you're sitting around at a wake, right. I wish I could have chatted with him. I would have done anything to have that conversation with him, right? Yeah. And you mean it. Yeah.
Speaker 6:But you didn't get that opportunity and so after a while there I knew the same thing that was happening to me, that I needed to make sure that I was reaching out to people as part of a professional. You know, do feel like sometimes you're a burden on somebody, especially those people that are really close to you. You're actually being more of a burden on because you're not dealing with your staff. You've got, you know, anxiety being around them.
Speaker 6:You might be angrier more than you need to be and they're putting up with you. You're not fixing, you're not helping them Now. You're a burden to them in real life, where you can just go do some work right. Yeah.
Speaker 6:And it's not going to be easy and I want to remind people that it is not easy. When you decide you're going to get help, you've got to go through some stuff. It's the same as getting fit again after taking six months off. Pt which I'm about to do, and it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt, but I know that's going to help my head space as well, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a long hard road, but it's just. You've got to persevere, yeah.
Speaker 6:But it becomes easier every time you do it. Oh 100% Because you're learning more tools and you will find that somebody will reach out to you because you are open about your own struggles, about what's happening and sometimes they're not struggles right, it's just a mental health illness, same as if you hurt your leg. You've hurt your leg or I need to go work on this because I'm having too much anxiety at the moment. That's okay, we hurt your leg, or I need to go work on this because I'm having too much anxiety at the moment, that's okay.
Speaker 6:We're human beings where our body is not always going to do exactly what we want.
Speaker 5:Yep, so if we can just say, all right time is, I've got to go deal with this, because I know that I'm anxious too yeah, I love the fact that you obviously use the gym as an example there, because I feel like when you start at the gym let's just use the gym as an example you might not be able to lift heavy. You might be obviously start off very light. The more you do it, the heavier you get. The stronger you get, the more you're able to then, obviously, to be able to lift.
Speaker 5:And I feel like it's the same when it comes to, obviously, the mental side of things here is, the more you talk about it, the more you grow in that area of saying I can do this, I can get stronger, I can get resilient. The more you're able to say, okay, I can do this, I can take more. I might be struggling today, but hey, I can take more. Now I'm getting stronger in this area and therefore I'm able to then house a lot more of the responsibility to say, okay, I can do this, I can handle it. And it tells a lot more of the responsibility to say, okay, I can do this, I can handle it, and there's that drive that starts to develop in you. Anyone who started in the gym and starts to get stronger and sees the gains of that will tell you that it drives them to do even more and do better.
Speaker 4:That's right. Well, I started last year, as you know, shane, and I was just lifting two kilo dumbbells. Now I'm lifting four. Yeah, get this son. No, I'm joking and in all honesty, I started last year, tommy, honestly, and it was yeah, it's been the best, because, you're 100% right, it clears your head space.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and you don't need to lift big. One of the things that I'm getting out of the gym. You know, my last gym that I was going to was the community that I built up there. It wasn't a CrossFit gym anymore. I kept injuring myself at CrossFit. So next thing, you know, I've got all these friends that I could make you know relationships, have coffee with if I needed to. My two boys live with me. Now I'm pretty much living in a frat house, Two teenage boys and myself, and it's a wild time. I'll tell you right now how old are your boys 16 and 18. You're in trouble. Yeah, I'm in real trouble. My ex-wife got my daughter out of the breakup and she seems like the clean one, but me and the boys have got our groove on. That's awesome. That's good. We're still interviewing house cleaners, if anyone wants to.
Speaker 6:Be a good bonding session anyway, dad and boys.
Speaker 6:We get in the rhythm of going to the gym together, and just spending that time with somebody else is really powerful, because you're lifting weights, you're doing other things and you can communicate even more about what else is going on in somebody else's life. The gym's a really powerful thing. There's several other modalities there that we could use as well. So, whether it's motorbike riding or I love going to the farm my brother-in-law's farm and taking teenage boys up there with us, these young kids from my kid's school. We go up there, we have a great time riding, motorbike shooting, and they get to talk to me about what's going on as well on these long drives. Normally they're sleeping on the way home and I'm driving.
Speaker 5:Teenage boys yeah, well, you know, on these long drives, normally they're sleeping on the way home. Teenage boys yeah, that's amazing. I mean I love, like you say, it's. It's just creating a space where we can all just come in, feel comfortable and in that comfortability we're starting to share, yeah, things that are maybe we're struggling with, or maybe it's not even the strings we're struggling with, maybe it's just thoughts that we're having, um, and through that then it just creates that community of saying that when something does come up, maybe that's a bit more serious in the future. I know that the boys, for instance, can come talk to you because you've had these moments of camaraderie or community where they feel safe enough to do that. So that's amazing. Let's kind of bring this into land, as I like to say.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think let's kind of bring this into land. As I like to say, you need to think of some new material. Bring this into land. Yeah, it's beautiful.
Speaker 5:It's a beautiful analogy. What does the future look like for you, tommy? Obviously work-wise. What does that look like? What is the vision for you in what you want to achieve in the next few years?
Speaker 6:It's to continue on pushing resilience training inside of organisations. We've been doing mental health first aid inside organisations for far too long. It's a great course when people are injured. But to start working on the resilience and the psychosocial responsibilities of organisations it doesn't matter what company I'm working with that lived experience in that space. Utilising that to try to change behaviours inside of workplaces to make it more productive and happier for guys to be there. Yeah.
Speaker 6:But the main goal, mate, is to get my kids through school and hopefully they can move out somewhere and then I can go live overseas for a few years.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I like that. That's awesome. Where are you thinking?
Speaker 6:Probably the States.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, yeah, nice or Mexico. Oh, Mexico probably the states yeah, okay, yeah, okay, it keeps. Or mexico, yeah, tacos every day if someone wants to get a hold of you, tommy yeah, what?
Speaker 5:how can they reach out, like what's? How can they if there's a business or individual that just wants to connect with you?
Speaker 6:yeah, just um. My instagram is actually tim tam tommy from a boxing fight that I had a couple years ago tim tam tommy yeah, um, otherwise, just on linkedin or just through uh mindset training uh website, just go through their email addresses there.
Speaker 5:My phone number's on there as well yeah, I know your website, obviously mindset training. They've got a whole list of uh things that you and the company are obviously invested in and what you guys do, so if there's anyone who's wanting more information on that, I encourage you to jump onto the website. There's so many things there. You offer courses for people on their like certs, on, like you said, their resilience, first aid, which is phenomenal.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and we're about to do a piece of work for men, like I'm doing the Lara Pinter Trail for Jenny's Place. Yeah, and just so emotional intelligence, workplace masculinity courses, so that we can talk about this stuff in a safe way. Wow, so over the next couple of months you'll start seeing that on our website and we'll do some public stuff there as well. But yeah, that sort of stuff is where I'm at. Yeah. And I'll continue on, but I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 4:That's awesome. No, we're in your episode drops.
Speaker 5:We might chuck the link down and just so they can get straight to you, to your website yeah, we'll definitely attach the link to the to the description in this podcast. So if you want to get hold of tommy, um, we'll just put all your, all your details there for anyone who wants to get hold of you. That'd be great. But, tommy, again, thank you so much for, obviously, the work you're doing in this, in in this particular sector.
Speaker 4:Uh, we are fully supporting your vision on what you want to do.
Speaker 5:We appreciate you. We thank you for, uh, like I even said to you right in the beginning, your authenticity. Uh, it was one of the things that really was a draw card for me. Um, when you spoke to us that day, it was just how authentic you were. You didn't sugarcoat it, you didn't come up with these massive fancy terms, you just said it how it was and I applaud you for that. I really do. I encourage anyone who is struggling in this particular area to reach out to Tommy, even just to have a chat.
Speaker 4:Yeah, pick his brain yeah pick your brain.
Speaker 5:It's really great.
Speaker 4:Even if you're not sure, I it's really great.
Speaker 6:Even if you're not sure, I'm sure you'd be able to point him in the right direction, and that's it. The more people you talk to, the quicker you're going to find the answer you're after If I don't know it somebody else I know knows it and that's part of being in the community of mental health and resilience.
Speaker 5:That's awesome. So thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate you we applaud you.
Speaker 4:We Thank you so much.
Speaker 5:And good luck in the space and area that you're doing. Shev, thank you very much.
Speaker 4:No thank you, no, that's awesome.
Speaker 5:Wonderful episode. This is great. Jump on our socials. Leave a Light On Podcast. Go check us. Give us a follow.
Speaker 4:Yep Our website which is Leavealightonpodcastcomau, not sa.
Speaker 5:And if you haven't got your merch yet this is South Africa, sa.
Speaker 4:No, no, no it's coza that's sorry went off track. That's all good if you haven't got your merch yeah, jump on, go grab it.
Speaker 5:Obviously, the shirts are there if you need a size, if you need any particular orders, but all the info is on our website.
Speaker 4:Go over check if you want to listen to us.
Speaker 5:You can listen on the website spotify wherever you listen, wherever you download your podcast.
Speaker 4:Thank you for joining us again we look forward to the next one. It's going to be a doozy.
Speaker 5:It will be yeah, too easy you guys. Stay safe out there, stay safe, leave a light on, we'll see you hey, thanks for listening.
Speaker 3:We hope you've managed to gain some insight from today's episode. Jump onto our socials and reach out, and until next time, wherever you are, let's leave a light on.