Waterpeople Podcast
Stories about the aquatic experiences that shape us.
Listen with Lauren L. Hill and Dave Rastovich as they talk story with some of the most adept waterfolk on the planet.
Waterpeople is a gathering place for our global ocean community to dive into the themes of watery lives lived well: ecology, adventure, community, activism, science, egalitarianism, inclusivity, meaningful play, a sense of humour. And, surfing, of course.
Waterpeople Podcast
Layne Beachley + Tess Brouwer: Mental Fitness
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Two friends chart a path from pain to agency: Layne Beachley examines the drive behind seven world titles and finds a search for self-worth, while Tess Brouwer turns a hidden spinal injury and a hospital-bed reckoning into a mental fitness toolkit.
Together, Layne and Tess are the co-authors of the book Awake Academy, wherein they share the life altering changes that shook their respective senses of purpose.
Layne details the comedown from her 19-year professional surfing career, and Tess, former head of partnerships for Virgin Australia, shares the tumultuous road to recovery after injury in frozen water.
Their stories and friendship led to the creation of the Awake Academy workshop, and the book adaptation of that popular workshop features their personal stories, positive psychology principles and practical exercises to boost energy, emotional intelligence and empathy.
They talk us through adoption, shame, midlife freedom, and why labels become lenses that shape every relationship and result. There’s no toxic positivity here, just candid stories and actionable tools for stress management, trauma recovery, and sustained success—at work, in sport, and at home.
This episode is live from The Byron Writer’s Festival – a celebration of the act of creation, of writing and art making, community building, and the good, hard work of progress. Courtney Miller joins as cohost - she’s chair of the Byron Writer’s Festival, relentless advocate for art and community engagement and a veritable surf rat.
If you’re curious about cultivating resilience, mental health, high performance, and the kind of friendship that tells the truth, this conversation will land.
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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich
Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander
Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll
Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander
Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast
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Opening, Land Acknowledgment, Setup
SPEAKER_02Kelly won five in a row, Lisa won four in a row, I'm going for six in a row. When I got there, I realized I'm not going for world titles, I'm going for self-worth. Worthy of love and affection and attention and respect that I was denying myself of until I'd wrapped the accolade around it first. And then when one of my friends asked me, So, are you enough yet? What's driving you? Do you think it's because you're adopted? It's like, oh shit, that that hurts, but it's true. Yeah, you're right.
Guests Introduced: Layne and Tess
Byron Festival Flood and Pivot
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Water People, a podcast about the aquatic experiences that shape who we become back on land. I'm your host, Lauren Hill, joined by my partner Dave Rastevich. Here we get to talk a story with some of the most interesting and adept water folk on the planet. We acknowledge the Bunjalung Nation, the traditional custodians of the land and waters where we work and play, who have cared for this sea country for tens of thousands of years. Respect and gratitude to all First Nations people, including elders, past, present, and emerging. This season is supported by Patagonia, whose purpose-driven mission is to use business to save our home planet. Today, we're in conversation with seven-time world surfing champion Lane Beechley and Tess Brouwer, self-proclaimed corporate athlete turned mental and emotional fitness coach. Together, Lane and Tess are the founders of Awake Academy, where they lead programs that awaken self-awareness, resilience, and emotional intelligence in workplaces and communities. This episode is live from the Byron Writers Festival, a celebration of the act of creation of writing and art making, community building, and the good, hard work of progress. Except, our region had an unexpected deluge and completely flooded out the venues for the second and third days of the event this year. Unexpected cancellations opened up the opportunity to chat with authors like Lane and Tess, who are the co-authors of the book Awake Academy, wherein they share the life-altering changes that shook their respective senses of purpose. Lane details the come down from her 19-year professional surfing career, and Tess, a former head of partnerships for Virgin Australia, shares the tumultuous road to recovery after a life-changing spinal cord injury amongst frozen water. Their stories and friendship led to the creation of Awake Academy, and the book adaptation of their popular workshop features their personal stories, of course, as well as positive psychology principles and practical exercises to boost energy, emotional intelligence, and empathy. In addition to Tess and Lane, Courtney Miller joins me as co-host this episode. She's chair of the Byron Writers Festival and is a relentless advocate for art and community engagement. Courtney has been a political advisor, worked in the arts and fashion, and currently heads up a philanthropic foundation focused on the next generation. Just as an aside, she's also the eldest daughter of one of our previous podcast guests, Rusty Miller, renowned big wave surfer and octagenarian surf coach. I'll let Courtney take it from here live from the abbreviated 2025 Byron Writers Festival.
SPEAKER_00Normally we would be at a huge festival site in a big tent with lots of people screaming and cheering and laughing when we're funny and all of those things. But we really wanted to get the insight from these two wonderful people who I'm about to introduce in a second to get what they're doing out into the world still in some form. So without further ado, I would like to introduce someone who needs no introduction, Lane Beachley, an absolute iconic female world surfing champion. And particularly for this conversation, she's a wellness advocate. She now works in the Business and Mental Wellness Advocacy Awake Academy. She very much knows the importance of mental resilience, determination, and overcoming those big hurdles and challenges. Welcome. Thank you. Good to see you. And she has done that with the wonderful Tess Brower, who's also sitting here. My sidekick. Tess is the CEO of Awake Academy. She's a practitioner of positive psychology and well-being. She's a corporate athlete and mental wellness mentor. And she experienced a completely life-changing physical change with a spinal cord and brain injury, which she used as an extraordinary awakening. Awakening to, you know, build that resilience, mental fitness, and effective tools that we're going to talk through a little bit, which anyone can use in whatever way that they need. Surfing, business, writing, etc. I'll pass to my, I'm sorry, I'm not Dave today, but I will pass to Lauren.
SPEAKER_01It's nice to have all female voices on the podcast today.
SPEAKER_00I have reeled my very good friend Lauren Healing to help co-host this conversation today.
Tess’s Injury: Shame, Symptoms, Collapse
SPEAKER_01Well, we're here because the festival unfortunately has been canceled due to incredibly abundant rain amidst a climate that is changing in ways that no one is predicting accurately. And so we are flowing with what life has in store for us. Courtney is the chair of the Byron Writers Festival and has done such an incredible job gathering incredible authors like yourselves from all over the world to support art and artists and culture and dialogue. And unfortunately, we're having to have this conversation not in front of a live audience, but here together. Nevertheless, really important your work. Thank you so much. And appropriate that it is water that canceled the event. And here we are in a space where we always talk about the aquatic experiences that we have in the ocean with frozen water or wherever we find water and how those experiences shape who we become back on land. We always begin by asking about a time or experience after which you were never the same. I'm sure you have many. Is there one in particular that is particularly relevant to the book? And would you be willing to share over to you traces with us?
SPEAKER_07I mean it would be hard not to go to 2018 when I had my spinal cord injury. I just want to honour you, Courtney. I've worked in events my whole life and to put on such a huge festival and then at the 11th hour for it to begin and you see the magic in it and then it for it to be paused for things out of your control and to everyone who bought tickets and participants and authors and to everyone who's feeling a sense of loss or grief in that. So I wanted to honour you for showing up today because I rang you this morning and I said, What can we do? How can we help? And you said I'd get back to you. And you said to me, Well, I think it's important that we have a conversation and honour where we're at, and that's what has brought me to writing a book was being honest with myself. So yeah, to all the listeners out there that are feeling it, hopefully we can well, I trust that we'll give you a little bit of light and an awakening through this. When I was flat on my hospital bed, staring at a wall with a neck brace on in a s in a spine and brain unit at 33 while all my friends were getting married, having babies. I was staring at this white wall thinking my life is over. And I had no expectation of what life would look like outside the hospital walls. Because at that point, it was just about me getting up every day and having a shower. And if that was if that was done, that was success. And then that meant going to the gym. And I really applied that theory today, actually. It's like when when the messages came through, I thought, well, the only thing I can control right now is getting up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_07And going out into the ocean and you know, just honouring how I was feeling in that again, that sense of loss and grief. But I remember when I was lying there and I was looking at this white wall for so long, like just days would go by and I'd just be staring at a white wall and a terribly coloured curtain. Hospitals have the worst curtains. And I was thinking, what can I do with my life? Where can I go? I was a corporate athlete. I'd worked, you know, for virgin for so many years. My identity was wrapped up in what I did, not who I was. And I had all of these labels surrounding my life. Like I'm broken, I've got a spinal cord injury, a brain injury, like I had everything. I was complex PTSD, depression, anxiety, like there was just every label was coming at me. You know, your bladder and black bow will never work properly again. And like it was just so much to take on. I thought, like, well, who am I now?
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_07And the privilege that I had was at Virgin, I worked with many different people, including Courtney, believe it or not, in a roundabout way, um, who came from all walks of life and they all wanted sponsorship or money from Virgin. So I was the woman with the golden ticket, but I met Lane, I think we like 2014, 2015, yeah. One of those 20 something teen. And when Lane walked into the boardroom at Virgin, she'd already secured the sponsorship for her foundation, Aim for the Stars. And I thought it was another CEO special, and I just had to like, you know, accept that we've just sponsored another thing. And I walked in almost begrudgeonly because I was in the middle of the AFL season and Virgin Australian Melbourne Fashion Festival, and Lane walks in and I was like, what a breath of fresh air. And you only have to spend like one second with Lane and her beautiful eyes, and she just looks into your soul and really holds space and tells her story so vulnerably. And I was like, Whoa, who is this woman? And I mean, you meet a lot of people too, so it was, you know, you knew you knew how to connect and see people, but I there was something in this that I thought, well, we'll just get to know each other, and the universe has these plans where you just kind of always meet. So we'd meet at all of these like media events and events, and we'd always be sat next to each other. Yeah. It was weird how that happened.
SPEAKER_02It was, wasn't it? Yeah. We tended to find ourselves at the same events drinking the same rose.
SPEAKER_01So can I just ask how you ended up in that hospital room?
SPEAKER_07Oh I had a skiing accident that I ignored. What does that mean? Well, just don't a frozen water. Frozen water, yeah, which is really hard. I mean, I'm sure it's like hitting a a brick wall of um a wave. No. But I was skipping down a mountain um in France, and I was on a black run, and like Australians in on black runs just don't make sense sometimes to rush off the plane. And I had gone down a mountain and cut into the they cut through the wall with like they're like ice walls because you're going down huge mountains. And I lost my footing and I skied straight into a wall and lost my skis and headbutted the wall. I felt a rush of pins and needles through my body, felt myself like almost wet my pants, cracking headache, like pins and needles, all of that. And I just thought, well, I can't fail in this moment. I'm with my new team, a new business, and did what any normal people or what any high performance person does who's never doesn't want to feel shame and managed to get my skis back on and ski down the mountain. And I left with a really bad headache and a sense of I've done something.
SPEAKER_00But then you left it as well, right?
SPEAKER_07How long? Three months.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Were you having residual symptoms?
Diagnosis, Surgeries, Identity Shifts
SPEAKER_07Having huge symptoms. So I was wetting my pants at work and going to the shops and buying two other pants to put them on, and I was pins and needles up and down my arms, loss of feeling with my legs all the time. So I just walk and just fall over. Um, couldn't hold a pen, forgot how to turn my computer on. Okay, so what is the story that you're telling yourself through this period? Don't fuck up. Can I swear? Yeah. Always. Shame. And that was the journey that I found on the bed staring at a white wall, is like so much shame. What got you to the hospital though? I just I was I couldn't function. You crashed. I literally, like at this point, I couldn't even walk in a straight line. Probably. And so did you take yourself to the ED or did you make a doctor's appointment? I took myself to E D. I had diet self-diagnosed myself with MS because there's a lot of the symptoms are pins and needles, loss of feed. And I thought, I'll just deal with it when I get home in Australia. And I said to them on admission, I hit my head, and they said, No, I have this anxiety tablet and go home stressed. And then at the office, I still couldn't feel my hands. And they said, You've got to go back to hospital. Like we've got to, you know, advocate for yourself. And I went back in and said, I hit my head, and they started doing MRIs, but they only MRI'd my brain. They weren't looking anywhere else. Then I was like my body was shutting down. I my speech was getting distorted, and then they had two lumbar punctures, and I had everything. I had electrolysis through my brain. I was literally a guinea pig for a week in a non-English speaking country or second English. And the shame that I had gone overseas to live a dream life, to you know, be corporate Tess in a world that was, you know, the universe was sort of saying, like, go get it, you know. And I was on a corporate ladder that I wanted to keep on climbing. So I didn't want to fail.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_07And that failure is something I've recognised throughout my whole life and through the work that I've done is don't fail, don't stop, don't be a burden. You like you're not bad. There's wars going on, like, you know, there's way worse medical injuries than what you're feeling right now. So I just suppressed, suppressed. So the shame that I felt in my soul that I had done something and ignored it. I didn't want to be seen as the victim or the injured person. It was a story I've run my whole life and avoiding pain. So I didn't call home until I had one last scan, and the radiologist said to me, You hit your head, you hit your head, and I said, Yeah. And he I he said, You've got a spinal cord injury. You you you need to have emergency surgery. And I just that was when the world shattered. So because I thought I could deal with an autoimmune disease. Like, I'm pretty strong, I can deal with that. I mean, all credit to the people who deal with that every day. It's horrible. I probably couldn't deal with it. But yeah, they gave my mum 24 hours to get over to Switzerland and had a routine surgery, which I thought would be a six-week healing time, but it came back to Australia and I still couldn't feel my legs. I was still wetting my pants every day, and they noticed that it my spinal cord was swelling from the trauma. And they rushed me in for another emergency surgery in Australia. So then I woke up in a spinal ward and was told I wouldn't get out for another three months. And that was when like the world truly did shutter again because you just you're surrounded by paralysed people, but I could still walk. So kick in survivor guilt and all of those things that happened to you. But it was on the flat of my bed when I called Lane and said, Um, my life's over. I think I need you. Let me come visit with a book. Yeah, yeah. And so she arrived with a book called Your Dream Life and said, I think this is your opportunity to create your dream life. And I was like, Is this chick for fucking real?
SPEAKER_00Spinal surrounded by and what and what cup of half full are you drinking?
SPEAKER_02What you what are you thinking? You've got no money, you've got no car, you've got no home, you've got no clothes, you've got no job, you got no partner, and you're in a spinal ward under psychiatry. Don't you care?
SPEAKER_06In a neck brace. In a neck brace. Here's your dreamline. I mean, it's ridiculous, isn't it? She's known for being audacious though. I have very yeah, I am known for that.
SPEAKER_02What gave you the courage to give me that book? I I I didn't see it as courage, I saw it as an opportunity just for you to change the story or write the story around the life that you wanted to live, because everything around you was suggesting that your life was over. And yet I truly believed in your tenacity and your courage and your bravery, and also your just inner fortitude to build a life that you can subscribe to that's not dictated to by scientists or diagnoses. Yeah. And you have admitted that you only wrote one thing in that book, and that was to build a business. Yeah, and here we are. I know.
SPEAKER_07I know. Yeah, that was the only thing I've written in that book because I couldn't write. Yeah. So I was just imagine myself writing in the book, and I remember picking up the pen and just start a business. And and I mean I had no idea it would be with you. I know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you weren't very specific, weren't you?
Layne’s Visit and The Dream Life Book
SPEAKER_07But you've applied that courage, your well, not the courage, the fortitude, your whole career.
SPEAKER_02I have. And and so when we go back to that question about when were you never the same, I look, after every good wave, I'm not the same.
SPEAKER_00A good wave does that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, even after every bad surf, I'm not the same. You know, we all ride the the highs and lows of life. I think as surfers, we have the advantage of being able to adapt to those changing tides and the changing conditions of life and have the the resilience and the ability to keep it in perspective because we are as humans, we're creatures of comfort, but as surfers, we're adapters to change.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I was thinking about Tessa's story and just how painful that, you know, that experience was for you. And I'm thinking most people, when you ask that question, would go, would resort to a place of pain. Like, when were you not the same after that? It's like, well, pain is is the easiest place to come back to because it's so powerful and so strong. It's like fear is way more powerful than love because we're more familiar with it and we spend more time in it.
SPEAKER_07And it keeps us alive.
Layne’s Fear, Ours Slab, Surrender
SPEAKER_02And it keeps us alive, and we are, you know, we're negatively wired through survival mechanisms that we inherited from cavemen. Whereas I thought, what's one there was one time when my life completely changed. Um actually there's been a million times in my life when I'm not the same. My dad, my mum dying when I well, first being uh given up for adoption, and then my mum dying when I was seven, my dad telling me I was adopted when I was eight, being bullied at school, um, fighting surfing for the first time. I think the the one that I just came back to was a wave that I rode at a place called Ours off Cornell. And the reason that I wasn't the same afterwards had a lot to do with the feeling and the fear that I was able to overcome and the surrender that I had to death in that particular moment in time. Like I literally, when I let go of the tow rope, when I was towed into this wave, and for anyone that wants to see it, you can see it on YouTube. Just just type in Lame Beach Lee at ours, which is O-U-R-S. In case you would need to spell ours. Yeah, in case you don't know how to spell it. It's a wave that breaks off a over a very flat barnacle-covered slab of rock into a rock face, and it's a really big, death-defying barrel. I was a slab. It's a slab by any any surfing terminology, it's a slab. And I was invited by the Braboys to be the first woman to surf this wave, and I was ready to politely decline the invitation, but my husband actually encouraged it, which phenomenally, I don't think he had any idea where I was being sent. He's like, Yeah, sounds right. Go have fun, honey.
SPEAKER_07I mean, this is a guy who has like performed in front of 100,000 people that went to the house.
SPEAKER_02250,000 people and rock and remote. So sending me to my desk was no problem. So when I rocked up, I was overwhelmed, it was scary. Then I jumped into the lineup and I edged my way into the into the uh lineup where I was able to catch some waves, and then when I finally took hold of the tow rope and it took a lot of courage to do that and a lot of encouragement. When I was towed into this particular wave, first I remember the guy screaming at me to watch the bubble, which at the first point I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? And then when I What is a bubble? It's a where the wave kind of um changes shape, it morphs over a particular rock, creates like this step in the wave. So it's hard to explain. But anyway, I navigated the bubble, and then when I stood up in the barrel and I looked ahead of me, the wave was so big and so far ahead of me, I literally the first thought I had is I'm dead because I know the consequences of not making this barrel is being on the rock face and being taken home in an ambulance. So I thought, but while I'm here, and it's amazing how many thoughts you can have in a split second.
SPEAKER_07Can I just for context for the only non-surfer in the room? How big is this wave? Oh it's actually less about the height and more about the width.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So slab waves aren't necessarily tall, but it's like the a slab of the ocean is engulfing you back into itself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's heavy. And the power, like you can, there's a difference between big and friendly or even small and powerful. This is a powerful wave. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02And it was a big groundswell too. So it was moving with a lot of force and a lot of energy. So if you think about every square meter by square meter of water is a ton, and there was a lot of square meter each over my head.
SPEAKER_05There's a lot of tons coming from it.
SPEAKER_02Ahead of me, too. So the barrel was already 20, 30 feet ahead of me. And I literally stood in it going, okay, I'm dead. But secondly, why don't I just keep looking for the exit and give myself the benefit of the doubt and enjoy the beauty of my last view of the ocean? And some miraculously, because I surrendered and I relaxed, the whitewash ball came up underneath me and literally lifted me and pushed me out. Because and I I've learned obviously in life where you look is where you go, and surfing, that's so important. I kept looking for the way out, not oh shit, I'm about to die. And when I came out of that barrel, I think everyone was as relieved as they were stoked because they weren't going to have to put me in an ambulance. Lane didn't die today. Uh, and she just got you know one of the biggest barrels that a woman has ever got, especially, and it was the first one a woman had ever ridden at ours. So it was pretty miraculous, and I earned more respect and recognition from my peers for that one ride than I did for winning seven world titles. Wow. So my life changed quite considerably after that. But I literally put my board in the boat and went, thanks, Alison. It's been fun.
SPEAKER_07Either of you written that way?
SPEAKER_01Oh no. No, I've watched it from the beach. I've watched my partner clip it from the beach. Yeah. Well, yeah, sorry, the rock the rocky shore line at at the edge of it. It's tremendously powerful. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00I have zero desire to surf a wave like that. And I'm so like with total respect because Well, I didn't either.
SPEAKER_02I had zero zero desire to write it either. But I was invited to do so. I was grateful that the Bra Boys invited me to do it. Thanks, Bra Boys.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Shout out to an amazing um effort.
SPEAKER_07Thank you. Wow. It sounds a little bit, and that sort of surrender to the moment or surrender to the death of that moment is like it's a little bit like birth too. It's that ultimate surrender that you you almost have to leave your mind and stay in your body. And I really found that in birth. And and it was When you gave birth, sorry, when I when I when I was baby. Instinct kicked in. And I feel like I wouldn't have had that moment if I didn't go through such a loss of feeling of my body. And when because you gave birth how many years after the accident? I gave birth five years after the accident. And I had because I'd lost feeling of my body so many times, and particularly whilst I was in hospital, that medical trauma and all of that hit me when I was giving birth. And I wanted to really feel my body, like I wanted to be present in that moment. And when they gave me, I had to, I was a high-risk pregnancy and I had to have cintocin, and my whole body went numb. And I paused the birth. I was like, I can't like you can't do this to me. I can feel like the epidural was kicking in, and my they didn't know how to turn the machine down, they only knew you know knew how to give you more. And when they when they turned it down, I could feel my body again. That's when my body relaxed and I gave birth. And that reminds me of when you say that, it's like when you truly trust your body, you're looking for the way up and out, not and just surrendering. Yeah.
SPEAKER_0150-foot wave. Sometimes it takes a lot of failures or non-makes to get to that point of building the instinct to know when to relax, to be able to relax.
Training for the Beating: Surf Wisdom
SPEAKER_02Well, you know the consequences of the failure, don't you? So I was thinking this yesterday when I was paddling out at 10 foot my local beach break, very under-equipped and underprepared. And I thought, I've stopped chasing those waves now because I've stopped training for the wipeout. You need to train for the beating. You don't train to write it. You train for the beating, and I've stopped training for the beating. That's those are wise words. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I feel like that's a a book you could do, you know, just train for training.
SPEAKER_07Training for the beating. Do you know what? It's a very good segue into the Awakening Academy, the book, because it is a train for the beating. Because, you know, both of us have struggled so deeply with mental health issues that these are the tools that were shortcutting the struggle to get us into our body because you can't lead from a body you've left behind. And both of us, this was like a journey home. And these are all the tools that we've had to rely on every day and still do every day and give to people because it's not common knowledge, mental health or training for the beating is not well.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's not common vernacular.
SPEAKER_00No, maybe it is now. Before we get to a wake academy, can I ask a question that's just kind of goes back to how you got to that point? You know, so like what drove your ambition in the very beginning, both of you respectively, to want to be at a point where you are at such a high level in your respective worlds that you have to train for a beating, you know, like that or you avoid training for the beating? Well, no, like I think I mean, whether you're in corporate world, whether you're surfing, you like you were aiming to be the best. You're aiming to But what was driving that? What was driving that? Yeah.
What Drives Ambition: Adoption and Worth
SPEAKER_02So from the that beginning, kind of if I if I reflect on my professional surfing career, what was driving the desire to be the best in the world was self-worth. It was love. I had decided as a kid that when my dad told me I was adopted, that I was undeserving of love. And the only way that I could prove to the world that I was worthy of it is become a world champion. Then I became a world champion, I was like, I'm not worthy yet. I became a second, third, fourth, fifth, still not worthy. And then when I went my sixth one, I chose to be worthy because no one else had done that. Kelly won five in a row, Lisa won four in a row, I'm going for six in a row. When I got there, I realized I'm not going for world titles, I'm going for self-worth, I'm going for that worthiness of being worthy of love and affection and attention and respect that I was denying myself of until I'd wrapped the accolade around it first. Yes. And then when one of my friends asked me, So are you enough yet? You know, like have you like well first she said, What's driving you? Do you think it's because you're adopted? It's like, oh shit, that that hurts, but it's true. Yeah, you're right. It's that fear of rejection, that fear of worthlessness, that fear of not being loved. And then I got there and went, ah, that all comes from within. So that's what this journal, yeah, also known as a book, is a reflection of, or all the lessons that I learned along that way and all of the all of the things that I let go of along the way, which were loving relationships, supportive sponsors, love of my body, love of myself. I I let go of all of that because I put everything outside of me ahead of me. Yeah. And that's what most people, that's how most people live their lives. Yeah. And they feel that success has to have that pain, right? Yeah, we all believe success has to be painful. We all believe, well, the majority of us believe success has to be hard, and because we're self-fulfilling prophecies, we'll find ways to make that true. So learning from that has then propelled me to here, but there's been a lot of shit in between. Yeah. Like I've gone way back into self-sabotage and self-destruction and almost compromising not only my health and well-being, but also my marriage and my support crew to now find myself in another awakened state. But those awakenings continue to happen. It's not like I'm the enlightened one, but I'm still figuring the shit out.
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SPEAKER_00We had a bit of a chat about this specific question as well, where we kind of went through that cliche of tortured artists like, do you have to have had pain or had trauma in your life in order to be the best to reach for these goals?
SPEAKER_07Such a profound question. And I've reflected on that from a science perspective or like positive psychology, it's they've done research into engagement of people. And if you go on a holiday and you tell someone about this holiday and it was amazing and it was wonderful, and went from A to B and nothing went wrong. It was like you watch even like someone just zones out and drifts off and they think, oh yeah, like another, you know, they put you in that category. But if something goes wrong, everyone leans in, they're engaged, how did you get through it? They're starting to look at, you know, your mannerisms and how did you handle that adversity? And it's actually been fascinating sitting at Elements watching everyone deal with the cancer festival. Like, because we are a lot of us are tortured artists who have gone through some element of pain and have written about it to heal ourselves. And I I feel like that's the high performer is like they really want to use pain not as a vice but as a virtue. But somewhere in there, there was a bit of pain and that grit, and that is really like light shines through the dark, and you get an edge. There's a resilience, like when you really deal with it. And I feel like that to me is the modern high performance, right? Yeah, it's the person who sees that and goes, Well, is it serving me or sabotaging me about like what can I do with this pain? Like, how do I ride that wave?
SPEAKER_02Well, nature replicates it, yes. You think about from the grub to the butterfly, yeah the pain that it goes through to morph into something so beautiful, or the darkness right at dawn before the light. Yeah, because like before the light breaks through, yeah, you can feel that sense of struggle and tension. Yeah. Does the caterpillar go, I'm gonna fly tomorrow?
SPEAKER_00No, it doesn't realise it, you know. So do you need pain to evol in order to evolve?
SPEAKER_01No, you don't need it, but it's certainly it's an inescapable part of being alive. It is inescapable, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's part of it's a part of being human.
Do We Need Pain for Greatness?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, absolutely. So your question, Courtney, is like we reflected on a lot of high performers have been through some sort of pain, and I I feel like, and we work a lot with corporates, is they're using it as fuel, they're using it to drive and like to be seen as being smart because they were told they weren't smart when they were younger. Like everything it propels you forward, but at what when is the burnout point?
SPEAKER_02Like some of the greatest gifts in this world have been the result of torture. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I wonder how much in a culture where we're expected to be unique and special, we use our pain to define that specialness. Yeah. I feel like it's part of what what we reach to to define our stories for many of us.
SPEAKER_02And that comes down to the stories that we're telling ourselves. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So a whole nother layer.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So what what was the point at which you two realized you wanted to create a book together? Books obviously take an incredible amount of time and energy. It's a huge undertaking. Why this project and why now?
SPEAKER_02Well, a publisher approached us. They came to one of our public events that we hosted, which essentially was the course that we created during COVID that went online and became a digital course. And then we realized that people needed their hands held to finish it. So then we hosted it online, and that was a huge success, which then turned into a corporate business model, which then got continued to be uh groundswell. Yeah, well, it just continued to be refined until it became a one-day course, and then she attended the course and went, We love this. You need to turn this into a book. And we're like, Okay, okay, so where was the impetus from for the course then? Yeah, so the impetus came from uh after Tess walked out of hospital, I had decided I was burnt out. I was exhausted. I was giving 65 talks a year around the world. On the I was on the road over 180 days a year. That's not why I retired. And I uh I asked Tess, I thought, well, first I thought I want to see whether I have created any uh what's the word I'm looking for? Um what value have I created in the market where people actually pay and come to me versus me being paid to go to them? So I thought I'm gonna host a public workshop and I put a value on it and I established the content very haphazardly, had no idea around marketing. I had a digital agency supporting me, but they were asking me questions I didn't know how to answer. And I knew Tess was a bit of an expert in this field. And when she was walking out of hospital, I said, I've got a course that I'm hosting, it's a workshop, it's one day, I haven't sold very many tickets, I haven't even really developed the content. Do you think you could help me?
SPEAKER_07And we have a book club with Holly Ransom, who's another author, and like was interviewing Barack Obama at that point in time, and we laughed because we're the only book club that have written more books than we've read. And we ran, I ran that, I said, Well, can we start with a bit of a workshop? Like, where are you at? Like, let's do a life stock take. And I we drew up on this board what Lane was up to, and I thought, How are you feeling?
SPEAKER_02Well, my theme around my presentations was sustainable success, and I was a fucking hypocrite when I had a look at my life stock take. I was like, okay, I'm we teach what we need to learn. We teach what we need to learn. So after the success of that workshop, I said to Tess, um, I want to digitize myself. And at first glance, I thought, I just need to write another book. And she said, Do you have the content? I said, Well, I've started crafting it out and had 12 chapters because in my mind I thought, if AA can give you 12 steps to sobriety, what can Lame Beachley give you 12 steps to achieve sustained success? So I established this sustained success model over 12 steps. I pressure tested it at a keynote for News Corp. Went kind of well, but there was a few dead spots. I was like, okay, I need to refine this. Long story short, I came up with these seven chapters or seven rounds to achieving sustained success.
SPEAKER_07And um This is over a long period of time. Like we were doing a lot of therapy, we were coaching each other, we were engaging other therapists. Like it was a really like this is the tortured artist process is like, is it and I was coming out of hospital, yeah. You still had you all-ups and your hands would yeah, stop working. And it was quite literally the tools that rebuilt my life. Yeah. And rebuilt yours. And we were bringing in every modality because it's I think Eastern meets western meets, spiritual meets like we are a whole body experience, and we were bringing in everything.
SPEAKER_02Everything we'd done ourselves. So that what we've pride ourselves on saying is that we won't take anyone anywhere we haven't been ourselves. So this is the modalities that we rely on, as Tess said daily to help us maintain consistency and happiness and more purpose in our lives.
SPEAKER_01What has surprised you about each other in this process?
Building Awake Academy: From Workshop to Book
SPEAKER_02I think from my point of view, because I'm a solo artist, uh, finding someone who brings the best out in me every single day, working with someone who truly I mean, the the mutual amount of respect and admiration and joy that we have from working with each other, and there's no there's no place where we don't have the courage to go. Like we we go to the depths of despair and we come out and we just see each other, like we hold that space for each other and we see each other in every single moment. And that's surprised me because I've attempted to collaborate with other people. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Um, and just being able to feel safe in that has really surprised me. What about you, my friend?
SPEAKER_07Oh, it makes me emotional even thinking about it, because I feel like when you came into that hospital room, I feel like you shone back something that I had lost in myself and I had lost trust, I'd lost love, I'd I mean, I was there because I didn't love myself enough to go and get medical treatment or help. And when you sort of when you handed it, you put your hand out to me, you met me in a place as like, I see you, I'm here for you, I'm with you, I'm in this. And I mean, that's what everyone's experiencing right now with the the grief of losing this festival. You have to dig deeper and find something so deep inside of you. What was interesting about what I learned about you is you were finding yourself in that as well, and the new you, the retired you, like who were you now? And you I you were reforming an identity. And I never imagined that you could have a business partner that wasn't about making money. That's never been a conversation to us, it's been about creating something meaningful, yeah, nurturing our friendship. Nurturing our friendship, like everything always comes from trust first. And of course, we have these funny little like married couple arguments and big conversations because you know it is a successful business, and now we're having to, you know, look we're building teams and managing income and all of that, and we just find so much joy. But it's like I think the thing that has there's a lot of times when you're when I'm working on my own and feeling, you know, when you feel that a little bit of isolation when you you're self-employed, it can be really lonely and you don't have anyone to like double check your thinking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's yeah, yeah, and it's not collaborative in the same way as a duo or a team or whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and we talk about this left brain, right brain, which doesn't exist because they've done scans and brains far and wire all the time, so it's a whole of brain experience. But I realize like how much power to broken souls when they get together, what energy is created. And I just get on the Zoom with Lane and we just have these big things that we're working on and holding space for thousands of people, and we just I don't know, there's a authenticity and a beauty in you that just meets someone exactly where they're at and exactly the right time. And I know that in a business partnership or in any friendship or connection, you just when you look into someone's eyes and like I've got you, is the greatest friendship, business partnership of all. So yeah, that safety is and trust is resonance with me as well.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Magella.
SPEAKER_01That's really beautiful. So this book is about rewriting the rules of mental wellness. Can you talk us through some of those rules and why they need to be rewritten? What needs to be changed in the space of how we think about caring for self in the context of community?
SPEAKER_02I love what Vishan Licchiani calls this. He refers to these as brules, so bullshit rules. Because that's what we create within our own minds and our lives. And from my perspective, when it came to writing this book, it was around normalizing the conversation around the fact that we have highs and lows and ebbs and flows, and we have good days, bad days. And it's not about being a victim, it's actually about being a victor, it's about navigating our way through them and recognizing that life's not happening to us, it's happening for us, and that we have an opportunity to choose. And even by not choosing, you're still choosing not to choose. And a lot of people will go, fuck you. You know, it's all right, you know, you're sitting there on your little moral high horse with all the great life with the rock star husband living a beautiful life. But I've been through my shit too, and I chose to be a victim, and now I've chosen to be more of an architect or a victor because I know which choice will lead to what, and I've started to take responsibility for that. But I've also had it, as Tess said, reflected back to me that uh sometimes I make really bad decisions, and I've done once again being human. So this book is essentially a mirror. Uh, it's our life's work, it's our life experience, it's our life stories, reflect diary entries. It's our diary entries, it's positive psychology, it's science, it's reflected back to you for you to navigate your way through your life through the lens of our experiences for the best way I can explain it.
Partnership, Trust, and Co-Creation
SPEAKER_07For me, and it was interesting. We just have met with um the lady who helped write the science part of this book, Sue Langley. Shout out to Sue, who lives in Byron as well, and she runs the Langley group, and I did my diploma of positive psychology and well-being with her, and she helped me a lot understand, like take really complex scientific thought and theory and research and data. And like that was a surprising thing that these seven Lane Beachley's seven steps was actually grounded in really solid scientific research and data, and that was that was a huge growth for me. Was like I have worked in some of the most high-performing teams in Australia, done multi-million dollar business deals, but I was never taught around sustained success or mental well-being. It was always about how to get the most out of your team, how to perform your team, how to get extraction. Extraction. And we talk about the oxygen mass theory, and everyone, you know, you've got to put that on first. But I'm like, but you're not always in a crisis plane going down. Like if you're in fear or flight, you're kind of always in the crash, or you're on a slow burn to a crash, and that's not always obvious to you. So when I learnt around the number one thing in my life was the labels that I had subscribed to me and put around me. And Sue says, like, the science is the label you put on yourself is the label you'll subscribe to, the lens in which you see the world, the relationships that you'll attract, the energy, like everything, we're energetic water beings. Whatever you subscribe to is what is gonna happen to you. And I went back through my whole life and I was like, oh my gosh, like chaos is following me. The only person that is responsible for this is me. And I see these, I see people in these positions of power, influence, even just parenting. I'm like, if we all just understood that only we are the ones that are in control of how our exterior world shows up, like wouldn't the world be a greater, more human, more loving place?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and if you don't know what you believe, just take a look at your life. Yeah. So that's a direct reflection of what you're believing or subscribing to, or listening to, or tuning into. Yeah. That can be a little hard to accept. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Coco and I were just on a boat trip together. So I was wondering whether we were going to mention that because that happened. I'm on the precipice of turning 40, so I'm like, I feel like I'm entering this new phase in life, midlife. And I was curious to ask you both about the experience of being in the middle of our lives, if we're if we're lucky, if we get to live out the second half or second two-thirds. How has this point in your life, being in midlife, played into the construction of this book? I mean, could this have could I mean this book couldn't have been written at any other time in your life, but how much a part of middle life has delivered the awakenings?
SPEAKER_07You get a wisdom when you go through life. And I love that saying is like you can do more in a year than you can do in a lifetime, and that is liberating. And these tools because I have always lived a burnt-out corporate life, I never really understood that if you did 1% less, if you nurtured your body, your soul, you took micro breaks, like these are all all everything in this book is free. It's just it's not a magic pill. And I that's what I want people to understand is like if you have a toolkit, when the days are good, they're really good. And when shit goes down and festivals get cancelled and the weather is, you know, or the wave is crashing in on you, the low isn't a low when you have that toolkit. So the as I approach, I'm approaching 40 next year as well. And I'm in this constant battle of embracing um my fine lines. I'm doing that with the sunspar. Yeah. And and again, it enters you into these new labels. But I think what is incredibly freeing to me is I'm reaching the age where I've created the life that I love, and I love it because I can truly look in the mirror now and say, like, I love you. And when you have the courage to do the work and to forgive yourself, like I have to forgive myself for everything that I did and didn't do to my journey to that hospital bed.
SPEAKER_05And when I have that for self-forgiveness, I found love so in myself. So that's the greatest gift of approaching 40 is like, I've got that, I've got it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, congratulations. Yeah, well done to get to this point. And then you get to 50 and you don't give a fuck. Tell us lane.
SPEAKER_05We call this dynamic juro, Lane is the punch in the face, and I'm the warm up. We're just too gooey. Often gooey.
SPEAKER_00I'm the refrigerator camera. What about you? Yeah. Can I lead a little bit into that? Which is like I kind of felt all of that, and we spoke a little bit just before we were supposed to do our writers festival chat, but that difference between the physical pain and the emotional pain, and I feel like Tess just did that for us. The emotional pain. They're both pain, but yeah, what is the difference and how can these tools help you to deal with both kinds of pain?
SPEAKER_02Well, pain is pain. Yes. Irrespective of whether it's experienced emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. Pain is pain. And it's the labels that you put around the pain or the stories that you write around the pain that will determine how far or how much the pain dominates your life. I like to say that when you're in shit, it's actually impossible to see anything other than shit when you're in shit. And that's what pain does. It takes you into the depths of your soul and it makes you either do everything you can to escape it, or you just go, fuck it, I can't do anything about it. So I'm just gonna subscribe to the fact that my life's just gonna be like this for the rest of my life and and you don't take any action.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. But you've struggled physical pain. I've struggled with immense physical pain. And that, like, to your question, what's easier or what's harder, like physical pain has a date. There is no not really. Well, like if you've got a broken leg, your leg goes in a cars, you've got a lead time, emotional pain. There's no people don't notice that you're going through it. We don't have those labels.
Rewriting Mental Health “Brules”
SPEAKER_02But with the physical pain, as we all know, the body keeps the score. So I have we both have neck injuries. I both we both have spinal cord injuries. Yes. And mine has a lot of it is a physical component, and then it's the emotional trauma stored in that part of my body that I'm working on letting go. Uh, and every time I go to the gym, for example, I feel myself bracing against it because I'm trying to protect or hold on to something. And ever we're trying to protect something, we're ultimately trying to protect ourselves. We don't want to experience that pain and that discomfort. Yeah. So physical pain doesn't always have an end date. Like I'm I'm in constant physical pain management because I chose to ignore it when I had the injuries. So when I've had waves that are 10 foot high or 20 foot high land on me and crush my spine or sever my spinal cord or hernia disc, or you know, I've got scars, you know. So from from my board hitting me in the face, my nose being broken three times, like I've had extraordinary high pain, I have a high pain threshold. Yeah. Um the difference is it's not what happens to you, it's how you respond to it. That's just the difference because we all experience pain.
SPEAKER_07When I left hospital, I was in hospital with two boys in a wheelchair, Alex and Harrison, and I sent them a message about a couple of months ago and I said, Would you go back to the life previously? Like if you could walk again. And they both said no. Because the the growth that they've had in their souls because of that physical pain is greater than they would have ever imagined, and the life that they lived would be is better now because of that pain and suffering has created an awareness and awakening in their lives. And I feel like we feel that. It's hard to imagine how that's true. It is, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's really hard. An extraordinary way of thinking and surviving in your own brain to or accepting and accepting, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because I I'm often asked the question, do you think you would have been a six times consecutive world champion without that ferocious drive and relentless pursuit of success? And I can honestly say, yes. I definitely would have won six consecutive world titles, but because I believed that success had to be hard and that it was only worthy through pain and suffering, I made it so. Yeah, and I made it a lot harder and a lot more painful than it needed to be. And I proved myself right because we'd rather be right than happy. Yeah. That's an ongoing learning. Yeah. But I also know that with world titles number one and seven, which were my love baseball titles, they were joyful, they were fun. They weren't without disappointment and heartbreak and failure, but they didn't define me. Whereas once I became outcome-driven, everything defined me. So when I won, I won, but when I lost, I was a fucking dismal failure and there was nothing. Nothing in between.
SPEAKER_07I mean, like you like say, like I enjoyed the adventure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Fuck the journey, it's all an adventure. So sick of come with me on the journey. So sick of journey. I feel like that's what 50 brings. Yeah. If you think I'm this intolerant now, wait till I hit six. I'm 53 now. Woo! We are on a run.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. So this toolkit really is for people suffering emotional and physical pain because they both do have such big impacts on your life. Some that you see, some that you don't see. And I feel like in that, it's like that is our gift back from our pain, like from pain to purpose. It's like, here you go. Just do the work, read the book. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Is there a particular tool that you want to highlight or something that you would like to leave us with as a good starting point? I mean, this is this book which I'm looking at is a chocker block full of great tools. But is there something that you would love to just mention in particular?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so as you said, there's an abundance of tools accessible to anyone and everyone, and they're applicable for any moment in time. The beauty of having a toolkit is you can adapt it to the different situations that you're experiencing. One of my favourites is the one that I'm wearing. It's a t-shirt that says I'm happy, I am healthy, and I'm abundant. I am are the two most powerful words in the English language because what you put after them helps you feel a certain way. Most of us use them in a negative way and wonder why we attract a lot more negativity and fear and shit in our lives. It's because what we focus on expands. So having a very positive, reaffirming, centering I am helps me hold myself accountable to how I want to show up. So today when I woke up thinking I am tired and I am feeling like I have vertigo because I did, I could walk out and complain to the world that everything's really dizzy and I'm I'm not feeling, or I could ask myself, how do I want to feel? How do I want to show up? And I I want to be, you know, I know I am also feeling happy and grateful and I'm excited, and I get to see Tess at breakfast. You know, there are moments of things to look forward to. So look think about the event and then determine or ask yourself how do you want to show up in that particular moment and hold yourself accountable to doing that. Because everything that outside of us actually doesn't dictate our lives to us, it's how we feel within us. But we need to make that conscious choice.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that's my mantra. I am happy, I am healthy, I am abundant. Problem is I attract too much abundance. Too much rain. You attracted the rain. No, there's sunshine, which is your mantra.
Labels, Agency, and Positive Psychology
SPEAKER_07Yeah, my mantra is I am sunshine, and I had to gaslight myself about it because I didn't want to be broken test. I wanted, I needed to be something that was greater than me. And sunshine survives all storms, it lights up rooms, it radiates from within, and it's warm. And that's who I really subscribe to being every day. And this morning when I woke up to your text and uh saw that the festival was cancelled, and I learned this trick in positive psychology, is like I was so disappointed and so upset. And I just said to myself, I'm feeling really angry, really sad, really depress, like really disappointed for you. And then I just let it go because emotions only last 90 seconds in the body, but the story we wrap around it is can last for years or a lifetime. It's like, well, what do I want to be? Like, how am I gonna show up to support Lane and to support Courtney and the team? And I thought, well, I am sunshine.
SPEAKER_02And the first um, the first toolkit, the first part of our toolkit is about identifying, connecting, and expressing your emotions. And I know we need to teach kids, actually, we need to teach adults how to do this, and that they're starting to embrace that uh education in schools. So Tess this morning, you know, identified and expressed and connected with her feeling by identifying and connecting with it, not being defined by it. So you can say, I am angry, or you can say I am feeling angry.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it gives you that space for it to pass through you. Yeah. So that's the like controlling what you can control is absolutely like is allowing yourself just to feel that moment of pain. Uh back to the start. Let it flow through you, and then I was like, okay, I am sunshine. Like, what would I do? Yeah. And that is the biggest tool that I would give everyone is write it everywhere.
SPEAKER_01Time is precious. Thanks for spending some of yours listening with us today. Our editor this season is the multi-talented Ben Jake Alexander. The soundtrack was composed by Shannon Soul Carroll, with additional tunes by Dave and Ben. We'll be continuing today's conversation on Instagram, where we're at Water People Podcast. And you can subscribe to our very infrequent newsletter to get book recommendations, questions we're pondering, behind the scenes glimpses into recording the podcast, and more via our website, waterpeoplepodcast.com.
