A midlife awakening: rebuilding from the inside out - with Ty Humphries

#222: Ty Humphries is a firefighter, men’s coach and founder of Whole Man.  He explains how he reclaimed his identity after years of people-pleasing, the power of men’s groups and why extreme ownership is the key to a better life.

What you’ll learn

• [04:01] Why identity can’t be defined in black and white terms.  
• [06:13] How a life crisis can be the catalyst for change. 
• [11:10] How to take control of the direction of your life.
• [13:13] How to start discussing challenging concepts with your partner. 
• [15:08] The mindset needed for a positive relationship. 
• [17:11] What men’s groups are and the benefits they have. 
• [19:57] The difference between real masculinity and toxic masculinity. 
• [21:15] Why people join men’s groups and how to find them. 
• [23:46] How to overcome the negative preconceptions of men's groups. 
• [26:44] The different areas of yourself you should invest in. 
• [30:20] The universal experience of suffering and how it can be used as a catalyst for change. 
• [33:56] The causes of the dark sides of human behaviour. 
• [37:09] How childhood trauma affects us. 
• [42:08] How to express your fears and vulnerabilities to others. 
• [49:42] How to measure your progress on the ongoing journey of self-development.
• [55:45] What people do at men’s groups that cause positive changes within them.
• [59:55] The different superpowers people can build. 
• [62:22] The value of vulnerability. 
• [65:39] Why people continue engaging in negative behaviours.
• [66:40] How people react to others working on themselves. 
• [76:36] How to start your own self development journey.

Resources mentioned in this episode
Please note that some of these are affiliate links and we may get a commission in the event that you make a purchase.  This helps us to cover our expenses and is at no additional cost to you.

• Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink
• Bulletproof Husband
• Heroic Husbands
• The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

For the show notes for this episode, including a full transcript and links to all the resources mentioned, visit:

https://changeworklife.com/a-midlife-awakening-rebuilding-from-the-inside-out/

Re-assessing your career?  Know you need a change but don't really know where to start?  Check out these two exercises to start the journey of working out what career is right for you!

Transcript

0:00

A previous guest on the podcast said that for things to change, I must change. You can change your external situation, move jobs, move to a different city, even a different country, even split up with a partner, but none of these will give you the results you want if what's really going on is that there's something inside you which needs to change. People talk a lot about doing the inner work, but what does that actually look like? What does it mean? That's what we're going to be talking about in this week's episode. We do go pretty deep, and we do cover some topics which people might find a little bit upsetting, but boy, if you're able to, is it worth a listen. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello and welcome to Change Work Life, the podcast where we're all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. I'm a career coach, you can find out more about that at changeworklife.com/coaching, and in each episode, my guests and I bring you tips, strategies, and stories to help you enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life. Everyone's heard of the midlife crisis. But my guest this week has reframed what's going on for him as a midlife awakening. This episode's going to be a bit different because I'm talking to someone who's still very much in the thick of his own transformation. Whilst a full-time firefighter, Ty Humphries is on a journey of what he describes as recovery. Not from injury, not from addiction, but from disconnection. He's also the founder of Whole Man, a project which helps other men re-engineer their beliefs and values and clarify their own place in the world. Ty, welcome to the show. Jeremy, it's a pleasure to be here. So, I gave you a very brief introduction there. I am curious, how do you introduce yourself to others when people ask what you do? I love that question, man. That is beautiful. I'm kind of in a transition point right now where this question is actually at the forefront of my mind. When people do ask me, I feel like I'm transitioning into a new answer, and I feel like I'm caught in between the old answer and an answer that I'm developing in real time. The old answer was, I'm a firefighter, I'm a dad, I'm a husband. And while those things are still extremely true about me, those things, especially the firefighter piece doesn't feel like the most true thing about me. In a sense, it's where I make my money. And so, in a physical sense, it still feels like it's very true for me. And yet, there's a deeper spiritual, mental, psychological sense in which I'm transitioning away from that and moving into just more who I really am. And part of how I answer that now is, I am a person who offers to create space and protection for people's remembering. And there's so much more there, but that's kind of the gist right now of what I want to say more. I still feel a hesitancy in myself because I don't do that. I don't make money doing that, I don't do it professionally necessarily. And yet, that's what my soul longs to do. And I do do it on a regular basis. I just don't get paid for it. You described there about whether something was the most true or not, which I thought was quite interesting, because it sounds like for you, in this context, truth isn't a binary. It isn't something is or isn't true, but it sounds like much more of a continuum. Can you maybe develop that a little bit? Yeah, it feels like layers to me. It feels like there's just a deepening happening in my life. And while all of the layers are beautiful and true and real, a big part of my journey just feels like it's deepening. I feel like I was stuck at a shallow level for a long time in my life, and I am allowing myself to become curious and courageous and experimental, to start to dig into the deeper, deeper levels of my reality. And it takes courage because it's scary. So, as far as your first question goes, the surface level of that answer is, I'm a firefighter. That's where I make money. That's how I keep my body alive. But as I deepen into that question, I realise, for so much of my life, my body was alive, and I was keeping it well maintained, and yet, I felt my soul dying. I felt like I had prioritised one aspect of my being and my reality to the detriment of so much more of who I am. And yeah, so for me, it doesn't mean that the physical isn't still important and that my job as a firefighter isn't still important. But there's so much more beyond that, and for so long, I didn't really prioritise anything other than just making money. Where did this journey start? I am 41 years old right now, and it was about three years ago, my wife and I came to a point where things had just gotten to the point where it wasn't working, and we were both extremely dissatisfied. And I moved out of the house for about three months while we recalibrated and figured out what we were going to do. The word divorce was on the table, and for me, divorce was the perfect wake-up call for me, because I had created a such an elaborate facade of who I was based on my religious beliefs. And so, when divorce was on the table, and the reality that people were going to see, oh my gosh, Ty doesn't have it all together, it caused me to go into crisis mode, where it was a wake-up call. It was like, wow, this facade is about to be shattered. And all of the people that I had built up around myself to insulate myself from the truth of what my wife had been telling me, my kids had been telling me, the people who were really close to me and who really knew me were telling me, all those people who kept telling me, 'Oh, Ty, you're such a great guy', they were about to see that maybe I wasn't this great guy that I had propagated myself to be. And so, in that moment, I read a book called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and just gained a whole new perspective on life. Previous to that, I had externalised my value, I had externalised my power. And after that book, I realised my life is my responsibility. And so yeah, that crux moment where my wife was like, 'I am done, I can't take this anymore', was the start of this journey for me. What was it initially that took you from that point where your wife said, 'I'm done, this isn't for me', to that book to begin with, rather than some other course of action like, I don't know, couples therapy or a divorce attorney? Wow, that's a good question. I haven't thought of that. Part of me thinks it was just some lucky, lucky coincidence. I know, I mean, I had always been interested in Jocko Willink leading up to that, and I was in an environment where other men around me were reading his book. And so, I know for quite some time at that point, it had been on my reading list. And I don't know, I don't know if there was some deep intuition in me that looked at that title and was like, that's my next move. That's where I need to go. But it wasn't like a deeply conscious thing where it was like, all right, I'm in this really hard place, so I'm going to read this book because it's going to help me. It was just like, I think that was kind of just next on the reading list. And yet, I do think there is some deeper magic at work all around us and at all times that is constantly giving us opportunities to take our next powerful and beautiful steps. So, it sounds like it was the right book at the right time. Whether that was coincidence or some kind of a, call it what you want, faith, grand design, whatever, that was it. It just gave you what you needed right there and then. It certainly feels that way, yeah. When you first started to read that book, what was it telling you in terms of your options and the directions that you could go? Because I'm guessing there were many options, including getting a divorce and starting fresh. Yeah, the gist of that book, the gist of what I took from it was, my life is my responsibility. It felt like a harsh awakening to the reality that I had created my reality. Previous to that book, and somewhat unbeknownst to me, unconsciously, subconsciously, I had allowed myself to point fingers at everything around me, and especially my wife. This is your fault because you're not doing this, and you're not doing that, and you're not this kind of person. The amazing thing about that, I still deeply struggle with that on a daily basis. It's deep in my psyche to want to say it's your fault. And that has progressed. It's not so much like it's my wife's fault now, sometimes now it's my kids' fault, they don't respect me enough, or I don't have enough money, or why isn't my business taking off, or things like that. That's always still pointing out. But what that book woke my nervous system up to was, it's not outside of you. It's not someone else's fault. Your reality is always your opportunity. And what it felt like was, it gave me the power to create and direct my life again. And I had no idea that I wasn't directing my life. I felt like I was. I felt like I was in control because I was a hard worker, and I would accomplish the things that I wanted. And so, in that sense, I felt like I was directing my life. And yet, as far as happiness and my mental and that deeper spiritual, mental, psychological state, I wasn't. It was all externalised, and the power was given to everyone but me in those areas. So, at what stage did you explore with your wife some of the themes in this book? So, I mean, were you in a place where, having read it, that gave you enough to go back and say, 'I've got an idea where to start on this', or was there still more work that you had to do before you could get up to the place where you even started that conversation? I love these questions, man. Yeah, honestly, I don't feel like I ever really had a conversation about that book necessarily, or even necessarily about those direct concepts, for quite some time, really. It's been, like I said, about three, probably a little over three years at this point, and I feel like my wife and I are just... I mean, the conversations that we have now are unbelievable. And looking back, I don't think I could have ever imagined that we would have the type of conversations we do have today on a very regular basis. But it doesn't feel like it was like a clear moment where it was like, 'All right, I read Extreme Ownership, here are the principles, and here's what...' It just felt like a very slow, organic progression that, in large part, really didn't involve her for quite some time. It was a very internal work that was happening in me, and a big part of that work was joining a number of men's groups. I started with one, and then I joined another one, and did both simultaneously for a while. But so much of the progression with my wife was just, it actually didn't really involve her in a direct way. It was a lot of just internal, backend work on myself that seemed to slowly develop into me becoming a safer person and a person who she could trust more slowly but surely. I mean, a lot of trials along the way as well. But yeah, I feel like we're still having that conversation today. Was there a point maybe where the dial was out of the red zone, and it was beginning to get back, go towards green, to such an extent that you and your wife thought, 'Okay, we're out of this danger zone, we can start to reconnect, get back to a bit of normality'? In a sense, it felt like that transition happened fairly quickly, and yet, there were many points along the way where, because of all the hurt and the stored-up pain over 12+ years of marriage and not dealing with our issues for so long, throughout the last three years, there have still been points where there's parts of both of us, myself and my wife, and I'll just speak for myself, where I go back to that place of like, is this going to work? Is she on board? And will I ever get what I want here? And those are the old voices again coming back up, trying to, what I now see, it's the old externalisation, it's her job to do something to make me feel a certain way, and all that kind of stuff. But I moved out for about three months, and yeah, during that three months, we stayed in communication, and at the three-month mark, somewhere around there, I moved back into the house. I didn't sleep in the bedroom that she slept in, so it was another couple months of me sleeping in another bedroom. But I would say after that three months, it felt like we were back on a path towards connection and growing together. You mentioned men's groups. Tell me a bit about what that is, what they were. The first group was a larger, just a really robust group called the Bulletproof Husband. And they have a really solid framework, a module system that you can go through at your own pace. They have daily group calls with coaches and men who have gone through a lot of the same things that I had gone through. And the thing for me there was that it was a safe... And I like this distinction, it wasn't a safe place, but it was a protected place. It was a place where I felt loved and protected. Not that it was safe, because as I brought my reality and my struggles to that space, there was direct feedback. And it wasn't just gentle and kind, and it was direct, and it was like, that's not okay. But it was protected in that, no matter what I said, I was loved. And there was a whole new context that it was an innate valuing of every man there. No matter what you had done, no matter how far you had gone, what atrocities you had committed, you were still valuable, and you were still loved and protected. And that, being in that group just expedited my growth, to be in a space like that where I could be open and vulnerable, which is something that I wasn't allowed to be. I didn't allow myself to be for the previous 38 years of my life. There are some people who will hear you talk about men's groups and probably leap to a conclusion that this is something that has been labelled toxic masculinity, those sorts of men's groups. But clearly, from what you've described, that's not the case. I'm really interested to know, how did you find this group? And then, once you'd found it, what motivated you to give it a go? Because this is clearly somewhere where you've got to be vulnerable and honest. Well, first, I want to make a distinction. I don't think there is such a thing as toxic masculinity. I think those two things are oxymorons. Masculinity is a precious and beautiful gift to this earth and everyone who behold it. The toxic part, and I don't have a good way to describe, I personally just don't like putting those two words together, because I don't feel like there can be such a thing as toxic masculinity. There are toxic, there are men who choose toxic behaviour, and yet, even that, a big part of what I am trying to do and what I am trying to create is a space for men and women to witness their own, what might be called toxicity, or maybe their shadows or broken parts of themselves. And rather than shaming those parts, to get curious with those parts and to seek the wisdom that those parts are offering them. So, while I totally get the idea behind toxic masculinity, I just offer a different perspective there. Your question was, how did I find the group, and then what made me willing to join it? I went to my 20-year reunion, which is the first high school reunion I had been to, and I got reconnected with a friend who I played football with in high school, and we just started talking. And I had always looked up to this guy. He was the guy who had a beard when we were in sixth grade, and he just felt like a man-child. And so, I always looked up to him when I was young. And we reconnected at this reunion and just started talking. And the experiences that he had been through, the experiences that I had been through, were very similar and just started to recognise this pattern of, oh my gosh, just kind of find that camaraderie and that brotherhood in the struggle that we had been through. And he had joined this group, the Bulletproof Husband, and just said, 'Hey man, what you're going through, these guys helped me out a lot.' And so, it took me a little while from that point to really, in a sense, get the courage to join. A big part of it was a financial commitment for me. I think it was 300 dollars a month, which was kind of a big, big step for me. And yet, and I honestly don't remember what pushed me over the top to actually make that step, but I am so glad that I did. It was an investment in myself. I think that's another piece of all of this, is that I never felt like I was worth investing inn unless the investment was going to result in me making more money. And that's kind of that discussion we were having earlier, just focused on the, okay, I'm making money, and I'm progressing in my career, instead of like, no, I deserve to live a peaceful and joyful life. And this group that costs this amount of money is saying that they can help me find that. And I am deeply grateful, deeply proud, and deeply, the men in that group will forever be a beautiful and precious part of my journey, and I am grateful to them from the bottom of my heart. You must have had some doubts whether you were joining a cult, whether there were going to be some people in that group who weren't there with the best intentions. As someone myself who tends to overanalyse things, what got you over the line? Yeah, there's definitely concerns there. I come from a deeply religious background where I took my religion very, very seriously for most of my life, and most of my life leading up to that point. And so, I think part of what pushed me over the line was actually a recognition that this group and these guys, it wasn't a religious group. They didn't claim to have any religion that they were following. There were many people in the group, men in the group who were religious and had their own faiths. But I think that was part of what attracted me to the group, was religion had failed me miserably. And the fact that this was not a religious group was attractive. I think other than that, I had an introductory call. I got to see some of the material that they were offering, and then just to be able to talk to this brother who I loved and trusted and looked up to and hear his testimony about what he had experienced there, and actually hear some of the practical experiences and tools that he had gained. I think that's such a big part of what I'm realising, is there's so much practicality and just basic simple understanding and contexts and mind shifts and tools that are so readily available to us, that we just weren't taught the basics of life, like how do men and women interact, how are men in general. Obviously, it's a spectrum, and it's wide, but there are a lot of patterns. And that's a big part of what I learned in The Bulletproof Husband was just, okay, in general, when you say this, your wife will think this or feel this. And I got to test that out and find, okay, yeah, that's true in our relationship, it's not true. But it gave me what felt like just some footholds on this cliff that I was trying to climb, and just in real practical terms. And that was really attractive to me. I was struck when you talked about the investment piece, and I remember one of the very early guests on my podcast telling me the importance of, for her, investing in herself. We're recording this second half of January, and I've been through an exercise where I've been figuring out what I want to do this year. And I've realised that beyond the business, doing stuff for money side, there's also the health side, which is becoming ever more important. And also, I'm going to say spiritual nourishment side. So, doing those things which might not necessarily go directly to improving health, wealth, or anything physical like that, but which are, for some reason, still important and something that I can give myself permission to seek to do. And I don't know what it is, but people seem very wary, particularly when it comes to spending money on those kinds of things. You know, we'll spend money on Netflix or on takeout, but perhaps less so on these things which are all about personal maintenance. I totally agree. It seems like a big part of it is that our biology is, we have a biological mandate to keep this body alive, and there are immediate gratification tools like Netflix and McDonald's, and these things that are immediate gratification. And yet, what we're building when we prioritise those things over the deeper realms of our being is, we build up suffering. And I built up a lot of suffering in my life, and I now look back on that suffering, that suffering was precious to me. The fact that I was, for the analogy, gorging myself on McDonald's and sitting on the couch watching Netflix and building this suffering of a lack of connection to who I really am and to the most precious things in my existence, my wife, my children, my own passion, my own desire, my emotions, all that was happening there was a building of a suffering that would eventually one day bring me to the point where my wife was like, 'I'm done.' And that was the straw in the suffering that was like, oh, this actually doesn't work. This doesn't lead me where I want to go. And I look at all of that now, and that precious moment on top of it all, as a precious gift. And I experienced that suffering, and no one can take that away from me now. I experienced a level of suffering that now is in me. It's a part of my experience, and I know I don't want to go back there. I don't choose to live those ways anymore. It doesn't mean that I do it perfectly by any means. I still like watching Netflix and having a Big Mac every once in a while, but I have an awareness now, that is different than it was before. It feels to me like everyone probably has their own suffering, and it's interpreting your own version which is important here. Because you read a lot of these business books or personal development books or self-help books, and quite often they start with the personal journey about how the author got to a place where they were bankrupt and didn't have a dime in their account, or they had a major health scare when they were 32 years old, there's some kind of big thing. And it's very easy to go, yeah, but that hasn't happened to me. I've actually been pretty comfortable. But that doesn't mean that the pain isn't there. That doesn't mean that the suffering isn't there. It's just that it takes a different form. And I guess it's then a journey for everyone to figure out at what point that cumulatively gets them to the enough-is-enough stage. Yeah, I love what you're saying there, because I remember growing up in the Christian faith and witnessing people, these huge breakthrough moments, a murderer who comes and finds God and changes their life. And wow, what a conversion, what a major life transformation! And I remember feeling like, well, I haven't murdered anyone. I'm not... And the crazy thing was, I was the exact opposite. I was the complete goody-two-shoes, always trying to walk the straight and narrow. Don't say any bad words. Don't have sex with anyone. Don't... All of the things that I had believed were my path towards being good and being acceptable. And yet, that, that was my suffering. And there's a sense in which maybe I suffered as much as that murderer. I just decided to take it in a different direction. I didn't go kill someone. And yet, there's a sense in which I actually killed myself. I was killing myself all along that path. I was killing my desires, I was killing my emotions. And I've heard, I have a dear friend whose wife... This friend grew up very similar to me, very religious, and his wife grew up very different, to the point where she was abused and treated very poorly. She looks at her husband with pity for the way that he was raised. She was abused physically. The way she looks at him was he was abused psychologically and spiritually. To be told that you're going to hell if you don't do things this way or that way, and the deep psychological trauma that that has on a young child, that's what I have realised in my life, and I can now relate to that conversion story of a murderer who finds God, so to speak. I feel like I was the murderer of myself, and I have now found God, and I'm not interested in murdering myself anymore. I'm interested in discovering myself and experiencing myself. Is it always external factors that get you to that point, or can it be your own choices as well? So, rather than being abused by a third party, could it just be, when I was young, I was a dumb schmuck who made bad choices, which cumulatively affected me in the same way? I think there's a sense in which it's always the latter that you're talking about. There's always that aspect to it, in my opinion, from what I can tell. The internal suffering that we create, the stories that we tell. Yeah, it seems to me that life, while someone may be abused physically, and this goes back to what we started off the whole conversation with, the prioritisation of the physical realm and the physical world, we look at that person as having more reason or right to become what we would typically call bad or evil. They have more right to that because they were beaten, or they were... And I'm just recognising that their physical body was beaten; my spiritual and emotional and mental body was beaten. For me personally, the way that came out was, I became a kleptomaniac. I stole things constantly. I was addicted to pornography, the using of images and other people for my own pleasure. And I became someone who just shamed the people that I love the most, my wife and my children. So, for me, it's such a deep, deep conversation that would take so long, but someone who murders someone, I was slowly murdering my wife and children on a spiritual and psychological level, just treating them so poorly. And I look at that, and I'm like, I didn't know what else to do. I don't shame myself for that. I look back on it with great compassion because I had no... I wanted good things. I absolutely did.. And yet, I had no way, I didn't know how to create those good things. And that came from a belief system that started with, I am bad, I am evil, I deserve bad things. And in that sense, if I were to extrapolate that on the murderer, I have great compassion on people who do the things that our society deems as more evil than the things that I did. And I look at them like, I get it. The process that you've so far been on and continue to go down, using a housing, building analogy, is this about a refurbishment? Is this stripping back to the brickwork? Or is this demolishing the entire house and building it back up again? That's a good question. To use the building analogy, I would say that, this is what I'm playing with in my own exploration, I don't know if I can use the building, can I riff off of that? Absolutely, yeah. Okay, so the way I see it is, when we enter this world as little babies, my perception and my belief is that we enter perfect and pristine and infinitely beautiful, and very quickly, that building starts getting made. And some of the most influential factors and construction materials that go into the building of that new being are things like fear and what I would also describe as lies. And to me, it feels like a generational reality that is passed down from generation to generation. The minute I come out of my mother's womb, I'm in a world that is full of fear. And that's not even to shame the world. It's just to say that my perception of reality is that that is just the reality of what's happening in this world. It's a world full of fear, and that fear leads us to create stories, which I believe so many of those stories are lies. And so, right off the bat, I come out of my mother's womb, a couple days later, I'm circumcised. One of the most sensitive parts of my body is mutilated and cut. There's one example that just, it's like, what does that do to a six-day-old psyche? I don't think any of us will ever truly know. And yet, in my journey, I've tried to explore where did the fear in me come from? And that's one of the points where I'm like, who knows what neurons fired in my brain as my penis was being cut as a little six-day-old being? Like, this place is not safe. This is a scary place to be. And then, you just start stacking, and you start building on things like that. The way that my dad looked at me when I spilled some milk, and you just start building this building of fear and shame. And to answer your question, the process that I'm in now is deconstructing all of that fear, all of that shame, all of those lies. And I'm on a mission to return back to who I started as, which was just this beautiful being who was so full of desire and wonder and excitement and curiosity and like, oh my God, look, look at where I am. The world could be seen in such a different perspective. And I'm returning to that. And my experience is so vastly different today than it was three years ago. And the crazy thing about that, to go back to the Extreme Ownership thing, is I get to do that. That's another piece of this for me, that I didn't realise that I got to choose what I create in my life. I didn't realise that I get to choose what I believe. I thought that, oh nope, there's just truth, and it comes from the Bible and this pastor and mom and dad. And so, I tried that way of life, and I tried it deeply. I went all the way there, as deep as I could. And it brought me to the place where I was a kleptomaniac, ashamed, someone who was shaming the most precious people in my life, pushing them away. I got to the point where I didn't want to be on this earth anymore. I was contemplating suicide more and more and more. And thank God I had those precious moments where I was awakened, and I had the right things line up to put me on a different trajectory and start to open me to a whole new way of perceiving what's happening here. Talk to me a little bit more about the fear aspect and how you're looking at those again. Where I'm coming from is that one of the things I'm doing at the moment is trying to encourage my daughter to be more independent when it comes to crossing the road. And there has to be, I don't know whether you'd call it a fear or a caution, or at least a recognition that if you're not careful, then you can get hit by a car. Which I think we could both agree, that's probably not a great thing to happen. So, is this about reframing stuff which is out there to keep you safe? Is it about creating a dividing line between the fears or the knowledge which is helpful and that isn't? And then, how you come across that? Yeah, I'd be really interested to hear you riff on that a little bit. Man, I love that. I love that question. And yeah, I'm in the midst of playing with that in my own reality, in my own existence as well. Because I hear the concern there, and I have the same concern in my own life and with my own children. And so, one of the things that I would say, or one of the tools that I use to explore things like this is my own experience. Our friend Mark Usher gave me the tool. He always talks about being a results-based practitioner. We're practising life, and we're actively witnessing the results of our practice. And as I look back in my experience as a parent now for 14 years, I can see clearly that the times when I was acting out of fear as a parent, and they are many, numerous, constant, the result of fear-based practise led to the things that I didn't want to happen. And I'm finding that to be a law of the universe. When I act out of fear, it leads to the exact opposite thing that I actually want. It doesn't mean that my desires in the first place were not infinitely beautiful and perfect and precious. My desire that my child would not be hit on the road crossing the street, perfect, I love that desire. It's beautiful. But when I inject fear into the way that I communicate that to them, my experience is that it actually leads to a greater probability that they will be hit. And I don't have the scientific data there, but I know there's research, just as far as coaching and just learning, the way the human brain learns, the most effective way is not through fear. It's through safety. And in that specific situation, the way that I would want to handle that would be first to recognise the fear in myself. I'm afraid of my daughter walking across the street and getting hit by a car. And to explore that fear and to allow that fear to teach me the lessons that it has for me, and to allow that energy, in a sense, to pass through my body, rather than bunching it up and holding it inside and acting out of that fear, I want to allow that fear to pass through me, I want to experience it before it actually happens, in a sense, and to recognise that if that were to happen, I would be heartbroken, I would be devastated, in a sense. And yet, this is where more beliefs come in for me. My former beliefs were that, okay, well, that's done. She's either going to heaven or hell. Game over. I don't believe that anymore. And so for me, situations like that don't hold the power that they used to. I believe that there's something so unbelievably beautiful and magical happening in the fact that you and I are in this conversation, the fact that you are alive, the fact that your daughter is alive. She's in that body, but there's something so much bigger than that body happening there. And so for me, if my daughter gets hit by a car crossing the street, I will grieve deeply, and I now have the ability, and I allow myself to feel everything that this life offers me. And at the end of that, I'm open to the mystery of what's actually happening here. I don't know where she's going to go or what's going to happen, but I have a deep belief that beautiful things are still happening, and she is still, and maybe even, I don't know, but maybe you understand what I'm saying, but if I can process all the way through that fear, what happens for me is then I get to the other side of that fear, and now I can sit with my daughter and explore reality with a curiosity and an openness that's like, hey, it allows me to slow down in that moment and to say, 'Okay, we're standing at this side of the street. Look, cars are going by. And look, the light just turned, and now they stopped. And look, the little walking man signal just turned on. What do you think that means? And maybe even sit there for three or four cycles of like, oh, wow, when do you think we should walk across? Oh, right now? Well, what would happen if you walked across right now when the cars are going by?' And it just creates this beautiful, precious experience of learning and growing, rather than what I would have done in the past is just like, 'Don't you walk across the street right now! Oh, can you imagine what would happen!? You'd get killed.' And I have so much empathy and compassion because that's how I parented, and that's how I still do to a large degree. And yet, I recognise that when I parented those ways, my children, I passed on more fear, and I passed on more stress and angst. And now they're looking around as they walk through the world with this wide-eyed, like, 'Oh my God, what's going to try and kill me next?' Instead of... And what that does, in my experience, is it actually attracts, and it closes your mind down to be something that is more prone to be hit by something or to be taken advantage of. When we have an open mind, I actually think that our vision actually opens. And I think there's science behind that. I don't know it, but when you're in a safe state of mind, I think that there's science that says that your vision actually allows you to see more and perceive more. So, that's a long, long way to answer your question. There's clearly been a huge amount of realisation along the way. When you started out, and I'll let you decide whether that's started out with the book or started out when you first joined the men's group, I'm pretty sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you realised pretty early on that there probably wasn't ever going to be an end point. There'd never be, okay, done all that, learned everything there is to know, no more exploration for me. But what did you think might be the checkpoints? What were the things when you first started that you'd be able to, I don't know, tick off or recognise as signs of progress? I have to say, Jeremy, I love talking to you, man. And from the first time that we ever had conversations, I love the way you think, I love the way you ask questions. It's beautiful, man. You have an unbelievable gift, and I'm so grateful to have this conversation with you. For me, I don't think I had, again, it wasn't like a conscious looking into the future, other than maybe like, well, if my wife stays married to me, that would be a good thing. But I don't remember having those checkpoints in my conscious mind, because honestly, I think, in a sense, I was just a fish in water. And if you ask a fish, 'Hey, how's the water today?', he has no idea what you're talking about. And I feel like that's who I was. I was just so deeply immersed in the reality that I had created, the belief systems that I had created, that I couldn't see out into the future for what I wanted. And yet, I would say that there was a deep innate knowing. And I remember this as a kid, and perhaps you do too, I feel like when we're kids, and I've heard authors, I've read authors who talk about this, when you're a kid, there's a knowing inside of you that you are a superhero, that there's something so beautiful about you, and I think that gets converted at different stages with different people. But I remember feeling that feeling of like, I could do anything. I have such unbelievable power and so much energy and beauty inside of me that if I wanted to fly, I could, you know. And you hear the stories of the kids who jump off of stuff thinking they can fly, and I remember doing that off the couch and feeling like I was flying. And at some point, that gets taken away from us, and we give that away, I would say. But all I can say now in answer to your question is, as I look back over the last three years of this journey, there are those moments where I recognised that I had become someone different, that I had made truly meaningful change in my existence. And I'm trying to remember. I journal a lot, so I have a lot of those written down, but they are increasing. The further along on this journey that I go, those moments are becoming more normal, even to the point where it feels like it's becoming more of a weekly and sometimes even daily realisation of what I'm creating. And I love my existence now. And part of that is just some of the tools that I've gotten, recognising the preciousness of breath, and recognising that anytime I feel stress, that is an opportunity. And so, I can bring breath to that opportunity. I can slow down enough to take a deep breath and explore that and try to understand what's going on, be curious, rather than afraid. And yeah, so it doesn't feel like it's a looking out into the future thing. It feels like it happens in the moment. But I wonder, my curiosity now is, sitting where I am right now and trying to answer your question for the future of me right now, I don't know that I even have, it feels to me the things that I long for are fairly metaphysical. They're things like, I want to be a more deeply present person. I want to be a creator. I want to continue to be curious and courageous. I want to continue to find the fear that still lives inside of me and expose that and release it. And so, the specifics of how I'm going to do that, I have my tools, and I have the way that I'm walking this journey, but I don't have like, okay, when I make a million dollars, then I'll know that I've become a different person. Or when my children graduate their PhD, then I'll know that I was a good dad. That's not a part of how I'm experiencing this. You mentioned tools a couple of times. I'm interested to know practically what some of these tools are. So, if someone has read the book or has participated in one of these men's groups, maybe let's turn to the men's groups, what are one or two of the things that you actually did which have led to some of these changes in yourself? Yeah. I would say one of the things that I actually did that I think is extremely valuable is to just gather a group of people around me who were supporting me. I think that's one of the most powerful tools that I have created in my life. And I am no longer a part of those. I was a part of two specific men's groups. I'm no longer a part of either of them. And yet, the relationships that I made in those spaces, I meet with five men from one of those groups on a weekly basis. We formed together and said we need to continue this, even though we're done with this structured space that someone else was structuring. We are going to continue on our path together. And I have men from the other group who I'm in communication with on a weekly basis as well. So, for me, that is one of the most powerful tools that I created in my life. Some of the things that we did in those groups, one of the first things that comes to mind, it's interesting, it still holds some kind of embarrassment or a hesitancy in me to even share, but it's moving my body, dancing or flowing my body, allowing my body to express what it's feeling. And in the group where I learned more about that and took my first steps in that world was with Mark Usher in Heroic Husbands. And Mark would challenge us and give us these exercises, and we would do it together as a group. So, it was like, you know, you were with each other. One of them was just move as slowly as you can and just try and feel your body as much as you can. And then, some were like vigorous, letting the anger out, and just screaming and flexing and jumping. And then, some were more of like a sensual flowing type. But moving my body, I was so ashamed of my body, so ashamed to move it in any kind of way other than just walk from point A to point B. All right, I'm here now, let's accomplish the next. So, that was a huge one. I think breath is another unbelievably powerful and precious superpower that every human being on this Earth has. And I heard, I think there's an ancient Chinese sage who said that the power of the breath is such that any human being could experience the pleasure, orgasmic type pleasure within three breaths. And things like that just kind of piqued my curiosity. And then, breathwork is such a huge, huge thing these days, at least as far as I can tell. And that just led me to start to explore breath more. And I have had some of the most pleasurable breaths. And it's so available. That's something that I'm realising, is that the superpowers of humanity are... I have a new definition for superpowers, and the definition includes things like, it's always available to you in every moment, it's always available to everyone in every moment. It's things like vulnerability. It's things like breath, things like slowing down, things like movement and curiosity and courage. There are these things that are available to all of us all of the time, and yet, we think that the superpower is making a million dollars. We think that the superpower is finding the trophy wife and creating this incredible business. But the superpowers, we can do them at any moment and all the time. And I think the crazy thing is that when we employ those superpowers, the million dollars, it either comes, or it doesn't, but we're not focused on it, we're not affected by it, because we're living so beautifully in this present moment that it's like, I don't need a million dollars, I love getting to talk to Jeremy Cline. I love getting to be vulnerable here. I love getting to take a breath and remember the truths and the beautiful experiences that I've had on this journey. I don't need a million dollars right now. I love being right here with you. You give me the impression of someone who, the longer you've been doing this, the more comfortable you've got with describing it to other people. So, what it looks like, the sorts of things that you do. But I'm guessing that maybe early on, there was a time where maybe there were doubts in your mind about whether this was something which a person like you did, whether it was a manly thing to do. I mean, you know, firefighters still, I think, have a bit of a reputation as being quite a macho profession. And also, whether there was more hesitancy about telling other people what you were doing. So, were those two things true for you? And at what stage did they flip? Absolutely. They were absolutely true for me, and I think still are to a far lesser degree than they were. But again, I don't know that I can give like the moment that they flipped. I think they're still flipping. I think it's a constant flipping. As I take courageous curiosity into the darkness of my being, as I explore, and I use my fear and my emotions and my beliefs as my guide to courageously and curiously explore my existence, I find every time, that leads to more beauty and more openness and more love and more passion and excitement. Vulnerability is one of those things that was so unavailable to me for most of my life. Don't be vulnerable. That's not what a man does. If you're strong and self-contained, then things will go well for you. I experienced that things didn't go well for me. I didn't know that vulnerability was a factor when this kind of transition started to take place. But as I took those courageously curious steps on my path, I started to recognise that vulnerability always led to more beauty. And I have proven that a thousand times now. So, every time I bring my vulnerability to any space, it leads me where I want to go, and it leads to deeper connection and love. And so, results-based practitioner again, the results of me not being vulnerable for so long led me to the brink of suicide, led me to the brink of divorce, led me to a place where my kids despised me, didn't want anything to do with me. I filled that cup of suffering to the point where it's like, all right, I'm done trying that. I still do on a regular basis, but I can see it now. And now I'm exploring into this new curiosity of vulnerability, and the results of being vulnerable are creating what I want. And so, at that point, as a logical-brained man, I'm just like, duh! I'm going to be vulnerable! I'm going to do the thing that creates what I want. I feel like sometimes we need to be told more than once about that. So, I don't know, I finish a coaching engagement, I mean, where I'm the person being coached, and I realise how valuable it is or how valuable it was. And yet, for some reason, then there's still a reticence sometimes in me in re-engaging with someone or something like that. You know, there's a kind of, I should be okay doing it by myself. But you eventually get to that stage where it's like, I made real progress then, why aren't I doing it again? I love that question. I love what I hear in that question. Why aren't I doing it again? There's two ways to ask that question. One is a shaming way, and one is a curiosity way. Well, why am I not doing that? The shaming way, for me, and I do it constantly, it shuts me down. The curiosity way opens me up. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that was so amazing. I loved that. I learned so much. I grew. Why...? And actually, asking the question honestly, why am I not doing that? Because there are reasons. There's always really good reasons at the bottom of truly curious questions, and they're always so precious. There's always so much wisdom on the other side of that curiosity. What reactions have you noticed from other people to you? And I'm interested to know if there's a distinction between the reactions from the people who really know what sort of stuff you've been doing, so like your wife or family, and those who maybe you haven't talked about it with and aren't aware of what you've been doing on the side? I'll start with my wife. In general, she is the happiest I've ever seen her. She is the most fulfilled and joyful. I am witnessing her right now just blossom into this beautiful, beautiful woman. And it brings tears to my eyes to recognise just who she is remembering herself to be, and who she's recreating herself to be. And there is a beautiful sense in which I have been a part of that. There's a sense in which I have led that. There's a deep sense in which she has led to my opening. It's this beautiful back and forth between us. Again, three years ago, I could have never imagined how precious my relationship with her could be and how beautiful it could be. And yet, along the way, even over these last three years, there have been really, some of the things that I've done, some of the experiments that I've conducted in my own life have scared the crap out of her. And she has come to me with that. She's a very, very open person, and she doesn't pull any punches. She expresses herself very, and that's one of the examples that she is to me, of just being honest and being open. But we've gone through some really difficult conversations as I've chosen to live my life the way that I need to and the way that I get to. And the beautiful thing is that, every time on the other side of those conversations is more connection, more understanding, more love. And it doesn't always end in agreement. It's not always like, 'Oh yeah, now I see what you're doing, and I'm totally okay with it.' There's plenty of times where she still leaves with like, 'I don't think that's right.' And I think maybe that answers the question for her. I experience, a part of my mission for vulnerability in my own life has led me to start posting a lot more on Instagram and Facebook, and I've started my own podcast and things like that. And it's interesting, it's just such a precious experience to feel the responses of reality and of the world and of different people. I've got the men at the fire department, and some of them I'm really close to, and so we'll talk on a deeper level, and they'll tell me like,'Yeah, people are talking about you behind your back, and they think you're crazy and they think you're...' And that is such a precious experience for me to feel, because I am a person who has talked behind many, many people's backs. And it's so wonderful to get to experience the other side of that, because it makes me a person who doesn't want to do that anymore. I've gotten a lot of calls from people who are concerned. Like, dude, are you okay? Like, what? They recognise a major shift in my life, and they're concerned about me. And the interesting thing that I learned from that was that, when I was my most unhealthy, on the verge of killing myself, and stealing things constantly, and in a horrible relationship with my wife and children, at those points, there was no concern. And obviously, I was hiding it, so that's a huge factor in it. Or I didn't even know, honestly. It was just like, this is just how life is supposed to be. But then, the minute I start opening up and being more vulnerable and being more me, people are concerned. They think that something bad might be happening to me. So, that's just an interesting thing to recognise and experience. But yeah, it's been a beautiful experience getting to, and a big part of what it is, is the way I used to live my life was so for everyone else. If I'm here with Jeremy Cline, my mind is constantly thinking, 'How do I impress Jeremy? How do I say the right thing to make Jeremy like me?' And just becoming this chameleon with everyone I was with, it was always about the external, it was always about the other person or how this relationship could lead me to something better. I'm so much more free from that to just be me and to just express... I don't have it all figured out. I've got so much more to learn. And I love that that's the case. And yet, I also get to just express who I am in this moment, and in all of its messiness, in all of its silliness, in all of its confusion, I get to say what I think and believe. That vulnerability for me, I believe, will lead to my next step and my next learning and growth and opportunity. So, picking up on what's next, and when we were talking about checkpoints, you said it was quite hard to think about what the future might hold, but I'm going to press you on that anyway, so where could things be, say, a year from now, or what are you curious about what might be different, or whether something is different, say, a year from now? Yeah, I appreciate that. If I were to envision myself in a year, just based on the trajectory of the last three years, I see an even more deeply connected marriage. I see a team aspect and an interdependence between my wife and I, where both of us have become even more self-sufficient and independent in a sense, but then bringing those two more healthy beings into this relationship where it becomes this even more beautiful interdependence than we have already created. And from there, honestly, the sky is the limit. We have dreams that we have had from day one. And so, all of those dreams just feel more within reach from a place of that interdependence and that stability. Things like travelling or living abroad, things like creating our own businesses and our own offerings to the world, our own gifts to humanity. For me, one of those things is my Whole Man offering. That has been such a precious experience for me, and that's part of my vulnerability. That's part of my step into my vulnerability, is just saying, this is who I was, this is what I did, this is what I invested, and this is who I've become. And I'm just getting started. And yet, I have this deep desire to provide space for other people to create who they want to be and to remember who they always were, in a sense. I'm going to continue to do my podcast. I'm going to continue to be vulnerable on Facebook and Instagram. And I'm going to continue to redefine that first question that you asked me and continue to mould and develop what is my gift to this world and to humanity. I also see a deepening relationship with my children. That is one of the main battlefields of my courageous curiosity right now, is taking their feedback, learning how to connect with them more, how to support them more, rather than trying to create them and make them in my image and tell them what they should be and should do. I want to learn who they are and just be there to witness it and support it. So, yeah, those are kind of generic, but I want to be creating. I want to be offering my vulnerability. I want to be more connected to the Earth and to my people and to humanity than I am today. To the person who is listening to this and who perhaps identifies in themselves as being someone who might be more towards the beginning of your journey, so they're in that place where something's not right, something needs to happen, what's a first safe step that that person can take? Oh! Well, to that person, I would say you are beautiful, you are precious, you are magnificent, you are innately intelligent, you are infinitely valuable. And anything that says anything other than that is a lie. And I think that's a great first step, is to witness any place that you don't believe any of those things that I just said. If there's any resistance to that, if there's any fear around that, or anger that comes up, or sorrow, or like, no, I'm not valuable, or I'm not wise, or I'm not intelligent, or if there's any reaction that you have to the statements that I just made about you, I think that's an incredible first place to start to explore. Because if you don't believe it, what is that creating? And how is that working out for you, as Mark might say? And if you don't believe it, just know that I'm here, and I believe it for you, and I will stand in that gap for you because I know that it's true. You've mentioned the book that started this off, and you've mentioned a couple of men's groups that you've been a part of. I'm sure that there are lots of other resources either you've been a part of or that you've consumed. I'd love to know whether any particularly stand out which might be a good place for the person listening to this to start? No, man. Oh yeah, there's so many, so many wonderful resources. One of the most recent books that I read that is just, it is gold. It's called The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Have you read it, Jeremy? I haven't read it, but it's definitely been mentioned more than once on this podcast before, I think. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, that's the most recent book that I read, that I will read at least once a year for the rest of my life. It is a precious story and parable for what I believe is available to every human being. Yeah, I think it's a great place to start. And assuming that you would like people to find you, where would you like to send them? Probably the easiest place is wholeman.org. That's my website, and from there you can find my YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, all that different stuff. Awesome. Ty, I don't think I've ever had a conversation quite like this on the podcast. It's been a pleasure, it's been a privilege, it certainly got me thinking. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and sharing your wisdom. Jeremy, from the first time I got to talk to you, I loved you, man. You have such a precious gift that you were offering to the world and that you offered to me. And your wisdom, the way that you walk through this world, the way that you ask questions, and the way that you coached me in our times together, it shifted my mind, and I am forever grateful to you, and I love you from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate you saying that. Thank you so much. Okay, hope you enjoyed that interview with Ty Humphries. I don't think I've ever had a conversation with someone who has described in such detail the inner work that they have done. Ty still has broadly the same job that he had. He's still got his family, his kids. But it's clear mentally how things have shifted for him in quite a radical way. There was this wake-up call when Ty and his wife were having problems, and he realised he had to take this radical responsibility for the change within himself. Frankly, it sounds, at least on one level, completely terrifying. There's examining and uncovering any elements of shame, as being vulnerable to people around you. But for Ty, even if outwardly it looks like nothing has changed, for him, everything has changed. And speaking of change, I've got a bit of an announcement to make myself. After the better part of seven years, I've decided that it's time for me to stop doing the podcast. I don't yet know whether this is going to be a temporary pause or a complete stop, but as much as I genuinely love these interviews, love these conversations, it's not serving me just at the moment for where I am in building my own business. So, there's going to be a couple more interviews coming out over the coming weeks, and then I will probably do an episode just which goes into a bit more detail about how I've come to this decision and why I'm doing this. But if you've made it this far, I just wanted to let you know that that's what's happening. In the meantime, the last two episodes are really going to be worth a listen. In two weeks' time, we're talking about toxic bosses, but we're not talking about the toxic bosses that you may experience at work. We're talking about the toxic bosses that live in your mind. You know, that person in your head who says you're not good enough, you're not doing this right. So, make sure you're subscribed so that you don't miss the last few episodes, and I can't wait to see you in two weeks' time. Cheers. Bye.