Playing Injured
Playing Injured reminds us that life challenges us all—athletes aren’t the only ones who play hurt. Whether it’s setbacks or unexpected curveballs, our response defines who we are and how we grow. This podcast explores the universal journey of resilience and perseverance, inspiring listeners to face adversity head-on.
Ranked in the top 2.5% of podcasts globally, hosts Josh Dillingham and Mason Eddy—entrepreneurs and former collegiate athletes—deliver over 100 episodes featuring diverse voices. They explore mindsets, uncover strategies, and motivate listeners to thrive and play through anything.
Playing Injured
Self-acceptance, and Managing Your Ego with Jem Fuller (EP 132)
Conscious communication is the foundation of a fulfilling life, transforming our relationship with ourselves and everyone around us. Jim Fuller shares wisdom on living in the present moment, practicing self-acceptance, and understanding the ego.
• Accepting reality as it is frees up mental bandwidth for what we can actually influence
• Practicing non-attachment to outcomes allows us to enter flow state more readily
• Self-acceptance ("self-okayness") is the foundation for all personal development
• Our internal world determines how we experience external reality
• Practical affirmations work best during states of heightened dopamine
• Mindfulness meditation allows us to experience emotions without identifying with them
• A healthy ego can serve us rather than control us
• Communication quality directly correlates to relationship quality and life satisfaction
• Quality communication is about "sharing" not "telling"
To get Jim's free introduction to mindfulness meditation course, visit jemfuller.com, go to the courses tab, and enter "podcast" in the coupon code field during checkout.
Follow Playing Injured on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/playinginjured/
Welcome to another episode of Playing Injured. We have an award-winning author of the book the Art of Conscious Communication for Thoughtful Men. We have an executive coach, a TEDx speaker, a retreat facilitator. We have Mr Jim Fuller. How are we doing?
Speaker 2:Josh, we made it dude Three years down the track to the day and we made it. Thank you so much for having me on your show, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me and Jim, we actually got in contact with each other exactly three years ago. We were looking at old messages and Jim reached out February 20th 2022. Today we're recording this podcast February 20th 2025. 2022. Today we're recording this podcast february 20th 2025. And um, you know, I guess I want to take it here because I think in life, we, um, we can get too ahead of ourselves or we can always be thinking about the past, right, and I feel like this is an example of being um present with where you are today.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And one I appreciate you because I didn't get back to you until three years later. But two right is well, you know how can folks just appreciate where they are today, not looking too much in the past, not looking too much ahead, but just allowing life to just unfold. Right, obviously you have intentions, obviously you have goals, but taking the stress off and kind of detaching from outcomes I can kind of get into that.
Speaker 2:I love this conversation and there's two kind of I mean, there's many answers to this or many things we could talk about, but there's two things that come to mind. One is that when we can really just stop arguing with reality right, when we can just let go and stop fighting with reality because it's a pointless fight, you are always going to lose. Reality is always going to win only 100 of the time, but reality is going to win right. So I know that you and I were meant to connect today. How do I know this? Because reality told me.
Speaker 1:Because here we are.
Speaker 2:We weren't meant to meet last year, because we didn't. We weren't meant to record this next year because we're here now. And it's the same with accepting everything that is in this moment. Apparently it's supposed to be this way. Now.
Speaker 2:That's not saying that we don't hope for a better future or we don't hope to improve our lives or improve the lives of others around us. I'm not talking about the future. We're talking about the present moment. Right here, right now, Everything is exactly as it's supposed to be Apparently the good, the bad, the ugly, the good, the bad, the ugly, the tough, the hard, the easy, the wonderful, the unpleasant, all of it. Apparently it's exactly the way it's supposed to be because reality told us that right.
Speaker 2:And when we stop fighting with that, it frees up so much of our own personal bandwidth to focus on the things that we can influence, Like the quality of how I'm going to be here with you in this moment.
Speaker 2:If I'm distracted, thinking about the past, or even subconsciously still struggling with the past, which is creating a whole bunch of static in my internal world, then I'm less present with you right now. Or if I'm sitting here thinking about what do I want to get from this podcast, or I want to sell something, or I want to achieve something. If I'm stuck out in the future, then I'm less present with you here in this moment. So the quality of me in this moment is diminished, right, and therefore, if I'm diminished in terms of the quality of my character and my presence in this moment, then the quality of what I'm doing ie being in a conversation with you, Josh the quality of that is less, so then the quality of what I'm doing is less so then my results are worse. They're not as good, right. So if you want great results, you want to get good at being more present in this moment, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. I think so much of us. We look for the next promotion, the next house, the next spouse I didn't mean to rhyme but the next car, right, the next accomplishment, the next goal. And you know, even like you know this year, obviously, you know you start the year off. You're like, ok, these are the goals that I'm going to have and I need them by this time and I have to have it. Yeah, yeah, time passes and yeah, um being able to, um be comfortable with that and understand that it's going to unfold when, when it's time right, yes, yes yes, it's a much more um well, there's many things.
Speaker 2:It's more relaxing way, it's way less stressful, so much more relaxing way to go through life. But also, what happens when you adopt that practice that you just shared, when you, when you, as you get better at doing that, you access flow state more. You also access the divine timing and I'm going to sound to people who are not spiritual this might sound a bit woo-woo, but you are accessing the divine timing of your connection. To call it God, call it life force, call it energy or universe, call it whatever you want, it's the same thing. We're an intrinsically and inseparable part of the greater system of the universe.
Speaker 2:You and me, we're part of the same thing. We're connected to everything. When we fight time and we try and make things happen in a way that is not meant to be, we're expending all this energy and we're getting frustrated. That is not meant to be. We're expending all this energy and we're getting frustrated. But when we drop in and connect to the greater system, we go into flow state right and things happen in ways we couldn't even imagine that they happen in, and quite often in more beautiful and divine ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, it happens A lot of times. Things unfold better than you ever imagined. Yeah yeah look back on it, you realize that oh, I, oh. That's why it didn't unfold that way, because this right and so we have to remember that, even in the present moment of, of just realizing that, um, if we allow, um, you know things to unfold without us clinging and controlling and trying to make it happen a lot, of times it's always better than we ever imagined.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a beautiful nuance in this. There's a beautiful thing as well. It is also true, like you said before, it's good to have goals. It gives you a sense of it, gives you some direction, it gives you something to aim for, something to strive for. It's good to have passion. It's good to have goals. It gives you a sense of it, gives you some direction. It gives you something to aim for, something to strive for. It's good to have passion. It's good to have hope.
Speaker 2:I hope for a better future, you know. I hope I can provide a good life for my children. I hope that you know, etc. So it's good to have hope and aspiration and to practice non-attachment to the outcome. Yeah Right, so I have hopes, but no expectations. I strive, but if it doesn't end up being what I was striving for, that's completely beautiful, that's fine, that's okay. You know, I'm engaged today. I wake up in the morning and I have my morning routines around, living my best life, and I go out and do what I can do to try and be of service and make a positive difference, but the actual outcome itself will be what it will be. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and being comfortable, and, like you said, it's great to strive and go after what you want. It's just important to remember to detach from it, because better, right, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, to be better. Uh, I'm thinking about another thing of acceptance is self-acceptance, right, accepting ourselves as we are 100 I wish I was smarter. Wish I was taller. Wish I looked better. Wish I was scared.
Speaker 1:Wish I was more ripped, more jacked wish I had more. You know, we kind of thinking about ourselves, right, we don't accept ourselves as we are. Yeah, compare, look at different folks. Yeah yeah what's your thoughts on that? How can folks get a little bit more?
Speaker 2:you know, if someone said to me what's the most important thing for me to work on, they said jim, I'm reading all of these self development books. I'm reading all of these books around making my best life. And where should I start? Like, if I could just pick one thing to work on, what should it be? I would say that Self-acceptance. I call it self-okayness. It's not like I'm the best and it's not like I'm terrible. It's just like I'm exactly who I'm supposed to be in this moment, right now. And again, I'm not talking about the future version of me. Hopefully I learn and grow wiser and get better at some things, you know. So I'm not talking about the future version of me. I'm talking about me in this moment, right here, right now. I am exactly enough to be me. I shouldn't be more like anyone else because I'm not. I shouldn't be taller because I'm not, you know. I shouldn't be skinnier because I'm not. Apparently, I should be exactly the way I am right now, with all my stuff and a practice, and I'll share with your listeners in a sec how we can actually implement this in a practical way.
Speaker 2:But the practice of self-acceptance, self-love, self-okayness is ultimately important because your relationship with self comes before your relationship with the whole rest of life. And if your relationship with yourself isn't great, your relationship with life isn't great, because you can only experience life in your mind, in your body, in your soul, through your relationship with yourself, which is your internal world. Right, I'll just? I'll just riff on this a little bit more. So, all information that is around you, that tells you that you are in a system, that there's an environment around you, everything you can see, everything you can touch, everything you can smell or hear or feel or whatever, all of that information is coming to you in bits of information, data, light through your eyes, sound waves to your ears, physical sensations through your nerve endings right, it's all coming to you in data, and we receive these bits of information through our filtering system, through our biases and our beliefs and our hangups and our kind of meta framework of reality inside our mind. And then in our mind, we represent that information in this beautiful, seemingly very real holographic projection or hallucination in our mind, right? So everything you see around you, you're seeing it in your mind, and the quality of your mind determines the quality of your version of reality, right?
Speaker 2:So if you are having a terrible day. Maybe you just got some really terrible news on the telephone, or you're having a really terrible day if your internal world is in a in a storm and it's tumultuous and it's dark and gray and there's strong winds blowing and and rain and hail coming down on you in your mind. When you walk outside, you walk down the street and that's the world you see. You know you bump into things, you bang your knee, you slam your fingers in the car door, you meet people who are aggressive and hard, and that's your experience of the outside world. This is because of the quality of your mind.
Speaker 2:But you could walk out into the very same day and you've just had a beautiful phone call from someone that you love who rang you up with something wonderful's just happened to them, and you're on top of the world. You walk out into the same day and it's a completely different day for you. It's all to do with the quality of your mind. So this circles back to your point. When we do the work on self-acceptance, which is acceptance of our past, acceptance of our relationship with ourself, then we can actually curate a more beautiful internal world, which means our experience of the external world becomes more beautiful right. So yeah, dude, I could not agree with you more. I think it's the place to start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you know, I know you talked about practical things, right, what are some that folks can do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, man. So, practical right, when I first heard about affirmations long time ago and I was, I used to be a bit of a hippie, with dreadlocks and no shoes and I was wandering around the world lots of time in india and places like that, meditating and just you know, in in some way I was kind of avoiding, avoiding the real world, quote unquote I didn't want to go get a job and do whatever I was doing, man, I wanted to wander around the world and smoke weed and try and meditate, you know, and so I was doing that for years. And so back then, even back then, I was kind of, you know, I I thought that affirmations and mantra, I thought it was just some woo, woo kind of thing. I didn't understand the science behind it, I didn't understand how affirmations could work. Now, having turned my whole life around and part of turning my life around when I had my midlife crisis which for me was a midlife awakening was understanding the limiting belief I had. I had a belief that I wasn't good enough. And to change that belief, all these books started coming to me. I read Joe Dispenza's book Evolve the Brain, and then a whole bunch of other books around neuroplasticity and how the neurons fire together for us to say a particular thing. When we put something on high repeat, like saying the same sentence over and over again, every time you say that sentence, the corresponding neurons in your brain have to fire in that particular sequence for you to say that sentence, right? So when you do it on high, repeat with consistency, over time the neurons form like a little neural highway, right? They fire together more and more easily until they become like a reflex thought. They fire off their own accord.
Speaker 2:This is a belief. So you can literally brainwash yourself not to believe anything. I mean, you can't brainwash yourself that you can fly. Obviously there's certain natural laws of the universe, like gravity. But you can certainly brainwash yourself to believe that you are good enough. You can certainly brainwash yourself to believe that I do deserve love. You can brainwash yourself to believe that you know, I accept who I am, I am who I'm supposed to be and I'm good enough just the way I am. And how do you do that? You wake up every morning when you're, you know, in the bathroom getting ready for your day and you say it out loud over and over again. And if I can just add, josh, an extra little tip. I heard on this from um through the huberman lab podcast. I don't know if you've ever listened to the huberman lab podcast yeah yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2:So, um, he was. He was explaining that when your brain is in a heightened state of dopamine, the neuroplasticity is accelerated, so these neurons kind of make associations with each other thousands of times faster. And then I was reading about the listening to and reading about the benefits of cold water immersion. Now I don't have an ice bath at my house, but at the end of my hot shower I do 60 seconds of full blast cold right, and when you get out of the cold it's like when you get out of the ice bath, you feel amazing.
Speaker 2:You're like you yeah I'm ready, let's go right, because the dopamine's high and you're feeling good. When you're in that state, that's when I run my affirmations because the neurons wire together heaps faster. So I do it. When I'm in that state, I've my cold. 60 seconds of cold get out. I'm doing my affirmations when I'm getting ready for work. Now I'm getting dressed and ready for the day and that's when I'm doing my affirmations. So that's a practical, practical tip.
Speaker 2:Another time when your dopamine is high is in the expectation of the reward. So our dopamine levels go up when we are, when we think we're about to get the reward. So if you're on a sunday, you go to your favorite ice cream shop and you're going to get your ice cream. On the way to the shop, the dopamine's going up because you're like, oh, I'm going to get my ice cream. When you actually get the ice cream and you start eating it, the dopamine dives straight away. It's like oh right, I've had my ice cream, what's next? What can I have now? Right, I bought the house. What can I buy now?
Speaker 1:so, yeah, right, yeah, I man, I. Um, I just had a another podcast, uh, with a lady who was talking about self-talk. She wrote a book about self-talk and how it is right. Yes, talk to yourself. Yes, it's something that I've heard for most of my life, and it's so easy to do, but it's also so easy not to do, right? Yeah, wake up in the morning and affirm yourself.
Speaker 2:Talk to yourself yeah, yeah, pay attention, man. Yeah, pay attention to the quality of the words that you use, because we, when you're not aware of it, when, if you're, if you have never paid attention to the way you speak to yourself, especially when you're not feeling good about yourself, it's abusive. Man, we wouldn't talk like this to anyone else. You know you wouldn't talk like this to your kids or to your family or your friends, you know. You know when you feel like you've failed or you've fallen short or you dropped the ball or you didn't do as well, you know, listen to the quality of the words you're using, because we cuss at ourselves horribly right. That's not healthy. That's like this woman would have shared with you. You're creating a relationship with yourself that is abusive, you know. And then we wonder why we become addicted to drugs or you know, or other things, or drink or whatever it is, or why we don't look after ourselves because the relationship isn't healthy. So it's a really important point that you bring up, man. We need to be more aware of the choice of language. Now, you can still hold yourself to account. You can still aspire If I aspire to be a certain character, level of character, my core values, and if I drop the ball and you know, maybe I'll lose my temper at one of my boys, right, and then afterwards I'm like, no, jim, that's not good enough. Man, you can do better than that, right? Come on, man, I believe in you. You're a good man.
Speaker 2:Now. You dropped the ball, you lost your temper at your son, but go and apologize to him and tell him that you want to be a better dad, right? So this is me coaching myself in a positive way, rather than the old way which would have been. I don't know man, can I swear on your podcast? Are we allowed to swear? Yeah, so old way, old way would have been oh, you, fucking dickhead, what are you doing? You're such a loser man. What the fuck, dude? You're an idiot, you're stupid. Yeah, this is how we talk to ourselves, man. That's that's.
Speaker 1:That's not good, that's not healthy, you know yeah, and you know we do it so regularly. Right, it's so normal that, yeah, you know at first, when you first start doing affirmations, it can kind of feel a little bit weird to talk yeah you're in a positive way.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, um, over time, like you said, your, your mind, starts to change and your outlook of the world around you just so differently. And, yeah, you know, you talk about consciousness and I'm, and and that's something that I want to talk to you about is like consciousness, the consciousness of your thoughts, and the nature of our thoughts and how, um, we aren't our thoughts. It's something that I've been practicing more and more is, when I get a thought, being able to analyze the thought almost from, like a third party view. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, I'm understanding more and more that, hey, my thoughts are kind of from old programming. It's going through past trauma, is going through past experiences and, like you said, it will distort reality and apply to you and then you'll start to see certain situations that aren't reality uh, yeah, yeah, it's so true.
Speaker 2:It's so true, and you know that that that third party perspective you were talking about, the more I've been practicing mindfulness, meditation, which is the practice of um, being as consciousness and just noticing all the different things that show up in our conscious awareness and the more I've been practicing that, the more I've been experiencing that that third party isn't really a third party. It's the very, very first fundamental party. It's the underlying awareness that is always there, that we can tap into, and it's shared. Consciousness is shared. This is you and I tap into consciousness. We're tapping into the same thing, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's a space that connects us with well, with everything you know, with all life, and we get to experience a unique expression of consciousness through being a unique being like you're you, and there's no one exactly the same as you, no one or me. So we get to experience the expression of consciousness in a unique way, which is beautiful. And also, when we drop down into that perspective you were talking about, then we, then we can experience being as consciousness and just noticing what arises. It's pretty trippy, hey, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:yeah, it is, it is. Do you feel like meditation has helped you with that, though?
Speaker 2:Massively, massively, yeah. Meditation, mindfulness meditation I've been practicing now consistently now for over 12 years and it's like a superpower, dude. You know, one of the superpower benefits that comes from a long-term practice of meditation is that you can become more and more the driver of your own bus. You know, whereas in the past you're a passenger on your bus. You're walking down the street and someone disrespects you and shouts at you and you get triggered and then all of a sudden you're in a really bad mood for the rest of the day and you don't even know how to shake. Sudden, you're in a really bad mood for the rest of the day and you don't even know how to shake it. You're like, man, I can't shake this mood. You know I need to go and punch something, or I need to go and drink something or I need to go. I can't shake this mood. Man, that person was so rude to me and we hold on to it. It's like, wow, you're suffering, being in a really unpleasant state of being because of what someone else said, right?
Speaker 2:But the more we practice mindfulness meditation, which is the practice of going to the place as consciousness and simply observing what happens, is that, from that place of observation, the physiological state that we're in, the emotions, say that we were in, that we identify with. We don't say I'm experiencing anger right now. We say I am angry, we identify with it. That's who I am right now, I'm angry, right. And when we identify with something, we're holding onto it, our ego is holding onto that. It's our sense of identity, right? But as we practice going to a place of observation, everything passes. This too shall pass, and it actually passes really quickly. And what I've noticed over the years, the better we get at it if something triggers me and I experience anger, and then I go into a meditation state and notice it, the anger dissipates within seconds and I'm not pushing it down and sweeping it under the rug and letting it store up like unresolved anger. No, no, no, I'm processing it really quickly and then it's actually gone and I'm back to my place of equilibrium.
Speaker 2:So this is a superpower. Because just say, for example, you get asked to do a keynote talk and you're sitting there before you have to go up on the stage in front of a few hundred people and you're feeling nervous, anxiety, adrenaline pumping, but you don't want to, but you want to be able to deliver your talk in a calm way so people can understand you. The ability to be the driver of your bus, go into a little meditation. No one even knows you're doing it, you're just sitting there and you're going into a meditation and the nerves settle and you walk up on stage and you present.
Speaker 2:You know that's a bit of a superpower, right? Or or just say you you've had an argument with your partner and you've got to go and talk with her, but you're you're feeling like frustrated and you're emotional, but you really want to be calm and clear for your woman or man or whoever, the ability to be able to bring yourself back to your centre and then go into the conversation this is. I reckon that's cool. I reckon that's really cool, it's so cool, it's so cool.
Speaker 1:And when people start to realise that, like you said, you know, I've heard the phrase right, you know you are not your thoughts, but when you put it that way, it makes me understand it know even more of you know, saying I experience, I'm experiencing anxiety, yeah, oh, I'm anxious, I'm angry, yeah you know, yeah, this is what you're experiencing, but it's, that's right I'm not identifying with it yes, that's it, man.
Speaker 2:Because when we identify as that thought or as that emotion, our ego, which is our sense of identity, our ego, grabs onto it. And for the ego, that's the only way it can know that it's real by grabbing onto this identification with things that are transitory. So the ego is always a bit defensive and a bit desperate dude. That's the. That's the reason that let's take the us, for example but it happens in lots of places but the us at the moment, with the recent election, it's the reason that friends are not friends anymore because they voted for different parties. And it's like, hang on a second, but you guys were friends and they're going yeah, but you voted for that and you voted for that. So they're identifying. They're not saying I voted for republicans or I voted for democrats. They're going I am a republican or I am a democrat.
Speaker 2:It's like, hang on, when you were born, you weren't any of that. You were just a soul in a baby's body going wow, lights and sounds and toys and stuff. You weren't born as a Democrat. That's just what happened through your life. That's not who you are, but we identify it. It's like someone who's pro-choice or pro-life. They say I'm a pro-choicer that's who I am by identity, right, or pro-vax, anti-vax.
Speaker 2:I had friends here in Australia, family members, who said you are not a part of this family anymore and you are not welcome here. I'm like, oh my Lord, you, just you, just what do you call it when you cut? You just cut someone out, you just cut your daughter out of your family, out of your life because she didn't want to get vaccinated. But the reason they've done that is because their ego identified with I'm a pro-vaxxer, so and our ego gets super, super defensive. And for the ego it's it's life and death, it's war man. We're going to go to war over this. And it's like, wow, can we remember that we're spiritual beings, all connected and we actually um can come, come back into a place of love and understanding with each?
Speaker 1:other. You know, yeah, that's I mean. What you just said is huge. You know the ego, right, and the ego wants the labels. The ego is the one that wants the labels right, the house to identify with, the car to identify with right. Talk about that. What's the role of the ego? How can folks get a better understanding of? Is this my? That's why I think meditation is so huge and quiet time is so huge. Is because a moment to really think about like wait, do I actually want that?
Speaker 1:or yeah, my ego that wants that, to get the validation and to have that label, you know, but is that actually me? Is that truly what I value? Right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:So, look, we need to have an ego, apparently, because we've got one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're supposed to have one, right, because there it is. And you know, and apparently the ego evolved with us as a species. You know, as we evolved as a species, we developed this sense of separation, this sense of identity, and our ego really is quite simply our sense of identity. It's who we think we are, separate from the outside world, and it developed as a protection mechanism to keep us safe. Right, there's a lion running at me right now, and I'm not the lion, we're not all one, it's not kumbaya. It's like no, no, no, the lion's going to eat me and I got to save myself. So I have this sense of me, protect myself, right.
Speaker 2:And then we understood each other in relationship to each other. So you and I, if we were part of the same tribe, and then I have this experience, and then I look at you and I'm like, did you have that experience? So we look at each other and we see each other and we connect in relationship, and then language forms and we start to be able to talk, right, and so we're working together. But I know you're you and I'm me, and I notice our differences. You know you're taller than me or something, or you're a bit faster than me or whatever. We notice the differences because the ego is trying to understand itself. So the ego looks around and goes well, I know what I'm not, I know what I am. And it's trying to understand itself as a separate entity. But the ego is an illusion, right, we're not born with one. Brand new babies don't have an ego. They're just all spirit. They're just coming out, looking around and it's just. They're connected to everything around them, right. But the ego forms when we're little and we start to think that we're separate. So it's there to protect us. It's very defensive. It's fueled by fear right, because it's a protection mechanism. So it gets its petrol, it gets its juice from fear, whereas the spirit gets its fuel from love. Right. The ego says we're separate. Our spirit says no man, we're one, we're connected. Right.
Speaker 2:The ego judges, has to judge everyone, judging around, judging people positively and negatively, but it's all about itself. The ego notices difference. You look different to me. Now I'm going to judge you because you look different to me and it's fearful of difference and many other things. The ego wants to look good. Hates looking stupid. The ego wants to look good. Hates looking stupid. The ego wants to get even. You know, you got me, I'm going to get you back. Ego, that's all ego. Right, the ego needs to be right, right. Someone says something that doesn't even matter, yeah. Someone says, oh, at the super bowl there was like how many people go to the super bowl? How many people roughly were at the super bowl, do you know?
Speaker 1:uh, it has to be in the six figures maybe right.
Speaker 2:So someone says, someone says there was 112 000 people at the super bowl and someone else goes no, it wasn't, it was 118. And they go no, it was 112. They go it's 118. And they start fighting over it's like, guys, it actually doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, but to their egos it does, because their ego needs to be right. Or how's this dude, you go to a dinner party, right, and you're sitting there and your friends are there and they're a couple, and you're sitting around the dinner party and you're talking about vacations, right? And he says, oh, yeah, we went. Yeah, we went to Costa Rica in 2012. And he wants to tell a story about Costa Rica and she says, no, honey, it wasn't 2012. That was 2013. And he goes no, I'm pretty sure it was 2012. And she goes no, it was 2013.
Speaker 2:And they start fighting about the year. And everyone else at the table is going tell about costa rica. Guys, we don't mind which year it was in, right, that's just your ego needs to be right. So as we start to get more awareness of our ego, we can notice it and, like you suggested before, it's a really, really powerful habit to form. To pause, right. So someone says something. You're about to react. Just pause, take a breath, use that awareness, check in with what you're about to say. Check in, oh, ego, you were just about to try and prove that we're right. And is that serving the greater good? Does it actually matter, or can we just let that go? You know, have that little moment to check in and is this the, the values that I aspire to be right now? And check in with your core values and go. Actually, no, I don't want to fight over what year we went to costa rica. I'm just gonna say yeah, yep, yep, and tell the story about costa rica.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, so are you saying that it's we need to have a a healthy relationship with the ego, right? You know? You hear, yes, the, the phrase like ego death, right, kill the ego, right? No, but like you said, hey, we, because the ego has um in our lives, it's been some benefit, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:ego right, it's lots of.
Speaker 1:It's helped us, you know, achieve. It's helped us, you know, even you know our friends and maybe getting the spouse that you have, like you know, your ego allowed you to go and get things in life right.
Speaker 2:And kept you safe as well, and kept you safe as well, and you can have a healthy sense of identity, you can have a healthy ego, and so, yeah, I don't think we should try and kill the ego or get rid of the ego. I think we should be curating a healthy ego which you can do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's healthy and healthy ego.
Speaker 2:Well, if my sense of identity is that I'm a kind, caring, generous, loving, open-minded, action taking man who's on a mission to help amplify positive ripples into waves of good contribution, that's a sense of identity that's healthy. Yeah, my sense of who am I kind, caring, caring. This is what I aspire to be right, kind, caring, generous, open-minded, loving, action-taking, compassionate. This is a sense of identity. This is who I think I am, and it's healthy, it's good for me and it's good for those around me, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love the fact, as you said, you know, the ego is driven by fear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll be okay yeah, I do, I have that conversation. I do man like when I, because my ego is still as as noisy as everyone's right yeah I'm just more aware of when it's my ego, because I've been practicing it for a long time.
Speaker 2:And I'm walking down the street and I hear my ego. Or I'm driving in my car and you know, and there's a slip lane coming in and we're merging and I leave a spot and and someone cuts in front of me and they don't say thank you or anything, they just kind of cut in or maybe they even do the bird out the window or something right, and my ego goes you know, fucking rude person or whatever it says, judging them, gone, like. And I hear it and I go hey, ego, bless your cotton socks. I know you're trying to keep us safe, right, but there's no lion coming to eat us right now. We're fine.
Speaker 2:That driver's an upset person, that's their story. That's okay, right? So I have this little conversation with my ego and when you call your ego out, it kind of goes, yeah, but it kind of just goes. It's like busted, you, busted me, all right. It's like, for me my ego is like a 13-year-old boy, right, who knows everything and is trying to get his own way. And then, when you call it out with love, right, and my spirit comes in and says hey, I see you, darling, it's all right, you know.
Speaker 1:And the 13-year-old boy goes oh bastard.
Speaker 2:And then also too, when you do that you're able to kind of reframe things. Yeah, completely reframe things, Reframe things.
Speaker 1:You can change your perspective on things Completely. Usually it's out of love, hey. It's out of love. Yeah, that person's in a rush. We have no idea what's going on. That person has just cut you off. Hey, nothing is wrong with them. Maybe they're in a rush, we don't know right, yeah, it comes out of love. Once you reframe it, it feels like. It seems like, like you said, the spirit, what feeds the spirit, is love.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. And when you reframe it like that and you change to coming into that place of coming from a place of love, that is way healthier. You're living a much healthier life now. You're spending way less time being angry and stressed and driven by fear. You're spending way more time feeling that you're coming from a place of love and you're a quantumist and the parasympathetic nervous system is activated and it's just healthier, you, you, you stay healthier, you live longer, you're happier, your relationships are better, your work is better, everything gets better, you know 100.
Speaker 1:So I want to wrap it around, because we talk about communication, right right, and you talk about conscious communication. We just talked about all the things that we need to be conscious of thought, ego, right, and we talk about communication and you kind of just open the door up to it. It's like, you know, not allowing our ego to get in the way of you know, when we're leading teams, when we're leading people, communication with a friend, communication with a spouse, communication with a stranger, communication with your kids, siblings, whatever the case may be. Yeah, where did all of this kind of get created? Conscious communication, why is it important? We'd love for you to walk us through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fundamental, isn't it? I mean you just mentioned it In every aspect of our life. Our ability to communicate underpins our ability to be effective. In every aspect of our life, I mean, whether it's just taking something from an idea and manifesting it into reality. If you can't communicate your idea, you know, if einstein couldn't communicate the theory of relativity, all of his genius understandings of the universe wouldn't have meant anything to anyone. Right? When you're in relationship with your spouse, if things are not going well, it's because you're not communicating well with each other. You both love each other. You're just missing each other in the communication piece, right in, in work, in, in sport, in, in everything that we do.
Speaker 2:Communication underpins our ability to be effective in relationship and the quality of our relationships is directly correlated to the quality of our life. Not the hat, not how big your house is or how many cars you had or what. None of that constitutes happiness. It's the quality of your relationships and that is the quality of your communication. Right, and man? I've been watching. You know like I wrote the book in the first year of COVID and I was watching man. I was locked up at home and here in Victoria in Australia, we had the longest, strictest lockdowns in the world. Anyone who thinks they got locked down, pretty bad. You weren't living where I lived, man. We got locked down for two years, dude.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I had time to write a book and I was noticing that the communication is deteriorating. The quality of our communication is deteriorating and people are shouting at each other with the caps lock on, you know, especially in the digital world and cancelling each other and going after each other with vitriol online, and the algorithms love it because it's attention bait. It's keeping us glued to these screens. Bait, right, it's keeping us glued to these screens so the algorithms keep putting more of it in front of us because, because the business model of meta is to just have us have us glued to the screen as long as possible, right? So there's this kind of train wreck and watching this communication deteriorate.
Speaker 2:I'm like, wow, we need some help with this. We need to bring our attention back to communication, and communication comes from the Latin noun communicatio, which means a sharing, not a telling, a sharing, and it comes from the verb communicare, which means to make common, the word common, community, communication, commune, and I thought we need to bring our attention back to that. So I started writing the book and then I got a book writing mentor and she said, jem, you need to pick a niche, because it's a great book but it's too broad, so you need to pick someone to write for. She said, I think men could do with this book. I think men really could do with some help with this, you know, because we don't raise our boys to communicate, we raise our boys to be good at sport or to win. And so I wrote the book for men and, funnily enough, man, it's mainly women that buy the book, and I get emails from women saying, hey, thanks for your book, it's awesome. Now I've got to try and get my husband to read it.
Speaker 2:But the book got picked up by Mango Publishing in Florida. Thank you, shout out to Mango and my agent, um, scott Scott Miller, um, who's the Miller Gray agency over in the states. They picked me up, they they believed in this random Aussie guy and said yeah, yeah, we've got your back. Come on, let's get this book out. So it's been republished second edition, with all of the American spelling and everything like that, and, um, and it's available, man, and there's the plug. Yeah, I can tell my agent, I plugged the book.
Speaker 1:But, hey, I wanted you to because, first of all, communication is so important and being able to communicate I couldn't tell you how being able to effectively communicate helps your confidence to be able to just share and communicate and also to add value and also to get value added to you and hear folks stories.
Speaker 1:You know, I was just in Mexico and I don't speak Spanish very well and I couldn't tell you how much it was a wake up call for me that I couldn't communicate the way I wanted to and how it made me feel right, made me feel like an outsider to something. Right, that I couldn't really hear the stories of all these amazing people that I was walking past. Right, maybe I could have a, you know, hola como estas, but I couldn't really go deep, right, yeah, yeah, deep conversation it is. I don't know what brain chemicals fire off when you have a deep conversation and you build connection and community, but it's so important and, like you said, a lot of folks, you know they're online, right, it's not necessarily in person that you hear people shouting at each other and counseling each other. That's right, yeah, right, most of the time, yeah.
Speaker 2:Online or in their car because they're in a closed steel box? Yeah, online because they're sitting in their lounge, because they're in a closed steel box. Online because they're sitting in their lounge room right, but in person, you're right, man, it's like it's different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. So I think it's huge and I love the work that you're doing. Jim, where can folks find you? And I forgot to even mention to my audience that you are in australia. Um, yeah, so hopefully they they realize that as they heard the podcast. But, um, where can folks find you? Where can folks follow your journey, get in touch with you? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, well, I mean, best place to start is the website jemfullercom. On there, man, man, you can get access to all my resources and you can contact me. I'm still really accessible and also I'd love to give a gift to your audience, man, if they would like. Yes, I have a course on there which is an introduction to mindfulness meditation course. You just go to my website and follow the tab to courses. When you get to the checkout page, rather than paying for it in the coupon code box, just put the word podcast into into there and it'll make it free and you can download it. Keep it forever. It's a super easy, simple introduction to mindfulness meditation. Um, yeah, so you can get everything there.
Speaker 2:You can follow me on insta jam fuller. On insta I post content. I try and help people there as well, and we run high ticket retreats in the himalaya in india. Um, I'm actually going to be stateside in a couple of weeks, man. I'm speaking at a conference in santa barbara with a friend of mine, and then I'm hanging out with some friends in san fran, and then I've got an in-person event down in san diego. So, um, I'm gonna be. Yeah, at least on the same continent as you in a few weeks bro and and you'll be in a beautiful place um chicago.
Speaker 1:The midwest is uh. I don't think you would want to be here right now, not until may or june anyway.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, I'll come. I'll come visit you um in your summer. I'll come visit you. It might not be for three years, but it'll happen I love it.
Speaker 1:So, yes, um the mindfulness made easy. Right, we go to your website, um go to the courses and um hit pat pot podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, sounds great. Well, jim, we appreciate you adding value to us. It was a lot that folks can listen to. They might need to listen to this a few times, but some very great ways to be more conscious and to kind of live life so that you are in more of a flow state, and so I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate you too, brother. Thanks for having me on your show, thank you.
