How To Live In The Present Moment | Kevin Wathey #555

Discover Kev's inspiring journey from loss to professional hockey success and beyond. This episode dives into living intentionally, balancing life, and the power of now. Learn how curiosity and genuine connections fuel personal growth and a fulfilling life. A must-listen for anyone seeking to own their path.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:51

Kev, welcome back on the show. Thank you for having me Been three years. It was actually May 2021. You're on last 306. Yeah, be around 555. So a couple of episodes have come and come and gone and it's been like seven or eight years since we've known each other.

Speaker 2: 1:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:10

I know Wild, and I was saying when I walked in the door it feels like a lifetime since I've seen you.

Speaker 2: 1:15

I know, and because we went two days.

Speaker 1: 1:17

We were hanging out every day and then we've been busy the last couple of days, so it's good to be back connected. But I wanted to kick this. Kick this off with the bio on your website, because it does cover a lot A bit of a recap, almost, of our last episode, and it will also give people an understanding of your mindset, which I think is a really important part that I do want to dive into. A lot of people listen to this show as they are high performers or they're trying to develop that high performance mindset to Get better outcomes in their life, and that could be financially, that could be improving their relationships, that could be improving their health, and you've seemed to juggle it all, and I really get inspired by people who managed to juggle it all.

Speaker 1: 2:02

I speak into James Lawrence, the Iron Cowboy last week, rory Farbarns, bradley Farqua, like all these guys who are excelling on an exceptional level, and they're bringing their family with them, they're bringing their friends with them, and I find that fascinating is the old way of thinking is like I have to sacrifice everything to succeed in my career, and I think that's complete bullshit. So trauma, a trigger word in our society, yet it doesn't exist. Mealier label, some place on a specific reference point in time to justify why they have yet to create the life of their dreams. I lost my mother to cancer at 17, best friend at 19 and got two DUIs while drinking myself into oblivion during the darkest point of my life. Some would never have recovered. Yet I know these experiences were happening for me and would be a blessing.

Speaker 1: 2:58

I went on to play ice hockey semi-professionally, acted professionally for both stage and film, opened properties for Fortune 500 hospitality companies, have traveled extensively and have founded four companies. My past has uniquely prepared me to design my own destiny and redefine what it means to care for others along the way. I now write about systems, psychology and technology, host a podcast and maintain a select list of private clients, facilitate three international wellness retreats per year and you're opening a well-being resort in Costa Rica. That is a summary, a snapshot, which I want to dive further into. You lost your mom at 17, which we touched on, and you spiraled. Can we start from there? What that experience was like, what rock bottom was for you and how you bounce back?

Speaker 2: 3:57

So, growing up, I was always closer to my dad than my mom, which was an interesting thing, because when she got sick I became closer to her than my dad and I've had to rekindle that relationship with him over the past decade or so because I almost pivoted, because I subconsciously knew that my time with her was finite, even though our time with everyone is finite in some way. So she was 16 when I got died. When she got, I was 16 when she got diagnosed and part of what she had set out to do that year was to choose. In the best shape of her life, she had set out to run a triathlon and she trained for four to six months, ran the Tempe Town Lake Triathlon and after the race had low back pain, thought she had hurt herself in the race, waited a couple months to see if it subsided and then it never did. And then went and got an MRI, was told she had stage four pancreatic cancer and they gave her three months to live. I was 16 at the time. I was a junior in high school and it took her a month to tell me and a month. So she has three months to live. She waits a month, yeah, so it's January 2010. She sits my younger sister and I down on the couch and she says that she's been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She has three months to live and she's going to outlive the prognosis by a year and spend one more Christmas with us.

Speaker 2: 5:27

And that year, the course of that year, was one of the most challenging moments of my life, but also one of the most beautiful, because she showed me by example that you're capable of whatever you set your mind to. She ended up passing away December 26th at 10 am, so the day after Christmas, and To be able to see someone fight like that for their life. But then, the moment they know that it's their time to go to say I've done my part, like Let me pass the torch and then on to the next. It's something that I will. It's just like seared into my mind and that I will. I will recognize and see for the rest of my life. And it's also why I hold people to such a high standard too, because it's you. You don't know what you're capable of until you actually take a step back and recognize that you're in control of everything that you do in your life. And when you recognize that you're in control, everything you speak, everything you see, everything you hear, everything that you interact with, every person that you surround yourself with, is a reflection on the life that you're creating for yourself, and if you're not intentional with all of those pieces, you end up taking some path or you end up going down a route that isn't meant for you, when you fall out of alignment.

Speaker 2: 6:49

And After she passed, I, that wasn't rock bottom after she passed. After she passed, I was confused. I didn't know who I was, I didn't know what I wanted, but I had a clear goal in life, which was to play Pro hockey. And she passed. I was 17,. Three months later, I went and tried out for for a junior team and ended up going and playing two years on the East Coast and the Eastern Junior Hockey League, the EJHL, and that was always the path that I knew that I was going. Like growing up. You're like what are you going to be when you grow up? You're like pro hockey player, hard stop, like a period and and so because I had that, it's almost like a Victor Frankel mentality, like you can get through any what as long as you have a Y.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Yep.

Speaker 2: 7:38

My Y was that I knew where I was going, I had purpose. The second that hockey finished and I knew that I wasn't playing pro and like hung up the skates metaphorically, because I still play a little bit the that was when things got really bad was because I didn't know where I was going, I didn't know who I was, I didn't know what was coming next. There was this realm of uncertainty that surrounded everything that I did in life and that uncertainty led me to search for importance and search for significance in drinking and partying and girls, in everything that was like superficial but like some, like you feel it's tangible, you know it's, it doesn't technically exist, but you're like, oh, I can kind of grasp of that thing for a little bit of time. And I remember I, I, I partied a lot, I drank almost nightly for four or five years and that was like I'm living the life that I like this is awesome, like this is, this is the life that you're supposed to have.

Speaker 2: 8:41

Until I realized what laid on the other side of that, and it wasn't until I don't think I had the aha of like shifting my thought process and recognizing what I was capable of, until I was Probably 27, 26, 27,. I'm 30 now the, the. The entrance to that, though, was when I discovered, when I discovered yoga, and, and we can double click on any pieces that you want to there, but oh yeah, I've got a few pieces that I've taken notes on.

Speaker 1: 10:17

But finding out your mom's diagnosis because I often think about death it shifts my perspective with the people that I want to spend you know my parents, for example. Time is finite. How did it change how you lived in the relationships that you develop during that period?

Speaker 2: 10:35

It's a great question. I think that my thought process and how I view relationships now is different than how I viewed them back then. But I think that subconsciously, because I recognize that things weren't infinite. I had an immediacy of action that I don't see a lot of people have. So if I have an idea, I act on it in the moment. I iterate as quickly as possible until I get to the solution that I want and then I'm like okay, on to the next thing.

Speaker 2: 11:06

And that's been a consistent piece for everything that I've done in my life, whether it's business, work or business relationships, travel experience, whatever it ends up being. If I have the idea, I act on it immediately. If I think of someone, I'll text them or I'll call them, and I think the biggest shift in it is recognizing that the only thing that we have. It sounds cliche, the only thing you have is right now, but it's more through the lens that I know that this could be the last time. Hard stop, and knowing that this could be the last time, I never want to and it can be as trivial as I never want to I throw a piece of trash at Mrs the Bin. I don't leave it because I know that that could be the last time, kind of thing, and then I'll know in my heart that I did the moral piece.

Speaker 2: 11:56

It almost comes down to an OCD element at some point.

Speaker 1: 11:59

It's always a standard, though as well, right, a standard that you've set for yourself, because some people do do that and they walk away and they think that's someone else's problem. You only got to walk down the street to see the trash and the litter around the place.

Speaker 2: 12:10

But through. That's a very trivial element to it, but it's the same thing. It's like we talked about when you were on mine. We talked about our relationship with our fathers and it's like I intentionally go out of my way to tell them I love them, because what if it is the last time? Or every time I see someone like I don't want to go to sleep on an argument, I don't want to end a conversation and say let's just put this off to tomorrow, because you don't technically know if tomorrow exists. And I think that my relationship with death has, in my experience with at an early age, has given me a beautiful ability to be able to see things as if the future and the past don't exist, and it's this pinpoint in time that nothing else matters.

Speaker 1: 12:55

How do you manage to juggle that, though? Because for me, it's like I want to be present I think we did speak about this but I'm also then thinking about the future and relying on the past to sort of guide me and a lot of people you know living in the moment, being present as like thrown out, it's like that's where we need to be, that's where ultimate happiness and fulfillment is. Yet marketing and having goals and dreams and desires pulls us towards the future and shifts our focus. So how do you manage that?

Speaker 2: 13:27

So I'll give. I'll give a story on this that will help tie it together. That's something that I discovered this past year that really summarized that element for me. So I went and checked myself into Miravol, which is a wellness retreat center in Tucson, arizona, for my quote unquote annual review, and it was the first time that I had taken I wrote about this too, but it was the first time I had taken myself out of my own environment in order to create a container. That was something that was fresh. So I was. I was experiencing a place of news, so I was able to think in new patterns, rather than this is my home and here's the things that are, that are routine to me. You know, action show up, and so I'm. I'm.

Speaker 2: 14:09

I've always been a very physical person, meaning like. I've always challenged myself physically. I've always played sports, I've always done different things that pushed me outside of my comfort zone, which I know we'll talk about a bit today the. So the. The intention for the trip wasn't to focus on the physical. It was to be more cerebral and more introspective. But they had this one activity called out on a limb, which is you climb this 30 foot high telephone pole, you walk across a wooden beam and then you come down the other side and you're strapped in, obviously, but this otherwise, and and so it was the morning of my check-in. So I, literally I woke up at like five AM to drive there so I could be there in time for the eight AM class, before I even checked in for the hotel, and it was like the only physical thing that I wanted to do is like I'll be there for it, because they didn't have it the next day. And so I'm not and I'm not afraid of heights. I, I see the people before me go and everyone gets up there and they're shaking and they're freaking out, and I'm like that's, this'll be, this'll be easy. And I get up there, I go shit, this is, this is higher than you think, like I, the, I remember speaking to the guy and he and he said, like be glad that you're a little bit nervous, because if you weren't, you probably wouldn't be alive, because that's your defense mechanism of like regulating you so that you can actually survive.

Speaker 2: 15:29

And so I get to the top and I look across the beam and I see the other side of the, the, where I'm getting to, and I'm like I take a breath and I'm like, all right, fuck it, let's go. And I literally started to run across the beam and then I get halfway through and he stops me and he goes no, stop, take a breath, he goes. The depth of your breath is the depth of your experience. And I took a deep breath and I looked up and it was the first time that I got to see the mountains and the horizon. It was the first time that I heard the birds chirping that were on the beam next to me. It was the first time I felt the sun on my skin. And all of these things happened, that they were happening. I was just not aware of them.

Speaker 2: 16:07

I took a breath, I walked the rest of the way to the other side. I got to the other side and I said I want to challenge myself. I'm going to do it backwards as I would. Yeah, I go backwards. And it was easier for me to go backwards than it was to go forwards. I'll get to. So watch, I, I, I come down, I repel down, I get down there. And I asked the guy. I said I asked the guy to say thank you for this, but I have an interesting. I had an interesting experience, it was easier for me to go backwards than it was to go forwards. Why is that? And he goes there's.

Speaker 2: 16:43

There's a couple of different types of people, but up in this in general, there's people who go off of vision what you see and there's people who go off of feel. When I was walking forward, I was looking at where I was going and I wasn't in tune with who, I, how I was feeling. But when I was going backwards I was tapped into, how I felt and I trust myself more than I trust anything or anyone else. But by going backwards I was able to feel with my feet and my balance and I felt more stable. And then, when I was walking forward, I was trying to get to a place but I wasn't tapped in and I wasn't. I was aligned on where I was going but I couldn't feel that where that like gut connection to where you're going.

Speaker 2: 17:23

So, to bring this all in, I think that there is an importance of having vision of where you're going and there's an importance of seeing an outcome, setting a goal, working towards something, but not at the expense of losing the connection that you have to yourself. And in my life and in business, the things that have happened, like the Costa Rica acquisition was the largest acquisition I did to date and it was the least amount of work that you would perceive someone to do for something like that and of anything. And I remember telling a friend I was like I'm playing life on. I've been playing life and business on hard mode up to this point, but the interesting piece was that I knew where I was going, but in the in today, I felt aligned, like in the moment. I felt aligned and that's something that I've expanded upon a bit because it's it's interesting that if you, if you break it down, the outcome and the goals are relevant because you're going to get somewhere.

Speaker 2: 18:22

Whether you set out to get somewhere or not, there was always a destination, whether you set the, the intention for where you're going or not.

Speaker 2: 18:30

But if you focus on what you have today, meaning if you focus on the alignment to how you feel right now, if you focus on the thing that that you know in your heart and you know in your gut is meant for you, you don't need to worry about the outcome, because you're going to get somewhere and most of the time it's going to turn out, if not all the time it's going to turn out better than you ever imagined, because when you're in alignment today, you compound that over enough times, you get somewhere that at the time was only limited by your imagination, which is the goal that you're setting. So if you're only thinking in terms of that's where I need to get to, you only know that that's the goal you need to get to, because you can see it. But what if? Where you? What if? What if? What's meant for you is something you can't see right now because you haven't pulled those layers back and you haven't uncovered that piece for you yet.

Speaker 1: 19:18

So do you set goals. Do you believe in goal setting?

Speaker 2: 19:21

100% believe in goal setting, but I'm also completely open to pivoting at any moment If it feels right. You know when you wake up and you're excited to work and there's a difference between. There's a difference between doing something that's tedious but required and doing something that feels unaligned. There are two very different feelings and two very different energies in the body of like how you show up. If I go this is a line for me and I know that I'll do any whatever the work is to to to accomplish that thing, to move the needle but if I show up and I'm like this, just it doesn't feel right, there's something off. That is when let's take a step back, let's simplify and then let's recreate from there.

Speaker 1: 20:06

How do you get comfortable with doing that? When I set a goal or build a plan to work towards, I'd really struggle to quit things because I've committed to it. An example I'm doing the daily hard. I'm really over filming that fucking thing immensely because not because I've run out of things to say, but I'm like as a consumer, I don't like watching it, but I've committed to doing it. So how would you, what would the process look like, to sort of separate from something if you don't feel it's like jumping you out of bed to get the job done? How long did you commit to do it?

Speaker 2: 20:40

for 366 days, oh, okay, the whole year, man and you're 90, something in 94, 95 today. And what was the intention for recording each?

Speaker 1: 20:49

day. The intent was to document my thoughts and my learnings and do something hard that inspired that growth. So, and that's just not physically, because as we we will talk about, it's like. It's easy to. I find it easy to challenge myself physically. It's other components like sharing vulnerabilities or learning new skills. That's hard. I think that's important for people to learn, so that's why I chose to do it.

Speaker 2: 21:10

So I would reframe it. You're doing it for a year because you assume that you're going to get something from documenting it. Yes, yes, okay. So I would reframe it to through the lens of. The reason that I don't want to do it now is because this is the point that I've gotten comfortable with getting to in the past. So in everything that you've done I know you did the rowing, the marathons, and you've done other physical tasks and you've documented a lot of those things too the thing is you accomplished that task in 90 days. That thing's over. Then you shift, now it's on to the new novel thing. But if you shifted the new novel thing, now you're thinking about sure, you're still documenting, but you're documenting something new. So it's different and you're keeping it fresh. But you're expanding yourself right now to actually peel back the layers of letting yourself be authentically you, which correct me if I'm wrong In the past you get to a place that is 90% of the way there or at 90 days.

Speaker 2: 22:07

That's like the check mark, and then you go oh, let me, let me pivot rather than double down on the consistency piece that is actually going to allow you to go deeper.

Speaker 2: 22:17

And so there's there's two elements to this and the first thing that it comes to is something that a friend of mine told me last, last year, in which he focuses on deep, not wide, friendships.

Speaker 2: 22:29

He focuses on he goes I.

Speaker 2: 22:31

For a lot of time I thought having a strong and huge big community and a big company was what I wanted, but I realized that big and not always, but can often be disguised for a lack of self worth or lack of importance, because you feel like you get it from associating with something else.

Speaker 2: 22:47

Deep is actually meaningful and is where you actually get your importance, but we don't perceive that because society conditions us that more is better and through the lens of this, like, my word of the year for 2024 is consistency, because that's been something that has been challenging for me in the past two. I'm really good at going from zero to 80, 80 to 100 is extremely challenging for me because it forces me to double down on the boring, forces me to double down on the tedium, forces me to double down on the things that I don't necessarily enjoy in the moment, but I know we're going to get me the returns and if we look through the lens of business, more often than not the reason you're not where you want to be is because you haven't done the boring work long enough.

Speaker 1: 23:32

It's a very good point and probably a good segue into business. So you went through and, just to recap, everyone bringing everyone back up you your mom, passed away when you were 17,. Your buddy passed away when you were 19,. And you went through peaks and troughs, but success isn't linear. So you had this found moment when your mom told you she was diagnosed with cancer. It made you think about death and how you were showing up. You got on the right trajectory. We were playing hockey at a high level for two years and then you made past where you've dipped again. Then, all of a sudden I'm saying all of a sudden like you're an overnight success all of a sudden you're built for companies. You've now acquired a resort, you're in the process of acquiring a resort. How did you get there? What are some of the key points that we need to fill in there for the listener? He wants to go. Okay, I've gone through some peaks and troughs, not happy with my life. I want to really start taking responsibility and creating something.

Speaker 2: 24:33

The biggest piece for me is the recognition that everything that you do uniquely prepares you for what comes next. So if you're, if you're in the shit and you're going through it, recognizing that that is preparing, protecting and propelling you towards what comes next, whether you know it in the moment or not, it's very, very challenging to see it in the moment, and when you're in it and you're looking forward, you think that it's this like a leads to F, leads to R, leads to Z kind of like connect the dots kind of path. But then, in hindsight, everything's linear and when you look backwards, you have this 2020 vision because you're like oh yes, that connected to this, that connected to that, that connected to that. If you look at my path, I go from hockey to acting, to yoga, to corporate hospitality, to retreats, to resorts, to resort consulting, to a resort acquisition. In hindsight, you go how does hockey turn to acting? How does acting turn to hospitality? But they're all interconnected. When you break down and like, go into the fine tune-ness of each detail, and on that B.

Speaker 2: 25:40

The first things that I did hockey, acting and hospitality were all based on the value of wanting to feel important and wanting to find my worth, because I felt like I lost that when I lost my mom, because she was the glue that held my entire extended family together, and when she passed away I lost all of that. And I thought when I'm a professional athlete, I'll be accepted. When I'm a professional actor, I'll be important. When I am a manager of a hotel or a GM of a property, I will be XYZ. And it was almost an element of dependability, like I needed people to depend on me. Or I thought I wanted people to depend on me to prove my own worth, because I didn't depend on myself. And when, again, the thing in all those, I didn't know it was an alignment at the time, but I was like this feels right, I'm going to run with it, which is how I discovered yoga. So I acted and then I was playing hockey and then I started acting. Acting was a way for me to cathartically express who I was, without actually expressing my own emotions. It was expressing as a character. But it gave me this.

Speaker 2: 26:55

Yeah, and my second year at uni, I got asked to go perform in Asia, in Bali, and that was where I discovered yoga and we lived in a commune for like two months. It's like compound. It was all of our entire groups. That wasn't like this. It wasn't like a hostile vibe. It was our whole group that was acting there. But we did yoga every single day at 6am and there was a day like two, three weeks into it that I came out of Shavasana and the sky was bluer, the trees were greener, I could smell differently and like life was different. And I remember making eye contact with my vocal production coach and I saw my mom and her and I just broke. It was the first time I had grieved and cried and like of my mom is passing and that was four years after she had passed, five years after she had passed, and that was the first time that I had ever allowed myself to actually express as me.

Speaker 1: 27:50

Why had you resisted that For long, for four years?

Speaker 2: 27:56

I think in part, like I don't even remember my dad crying after she passed, I remember my dad crying when we lost, when we lost his first dog, which was Bruxy, our golden retriever. Growing up I remember him like and I don't know if this is just, I've tuned it out because I don't want to remember that moment in time but I remember when she passed I said goodbye to her Christmas night. I went to sleep 10 am the next day my dad comes in the room, wakes me up, says your mom's gone, and I remember, like, rip the covers off, run into the room and like, go, like, jump on her bed and body's there. She's not. And I immediately turned to drinking, to numb that out, following like literally that day, like I went and got a couple beers and just like drank myself to oblivion and I was 17. And I continued to do that repetitively as a way to.

Speaker 2: 29:04

At one point I almost made me feel more connected to her because I was like I don't know. It was one of the things that I always wanted was to have a beer with her on my 21st and I felt in some way drinking removed this level of like wall that I had put up, like released inhibitions, so it allowed me to feel more, and that feeling made me feel more connected to her, because I couldn't feel that when I was sober. So I think it was a removal. Again, growth is a game of subtraction. I was using alcohol to remove this wall that I had put up, but and then acting was the same thing. It was a removal Interesting. I never thought of it that way before, and so I take it back to Bali. I came out of this yoga class I saw differently, saw my vocal production coach, saw my mom and her, and that was the first moment that I was like oh, it's okay to feel, it's okay to grieve, it's okay to be not okay.

Speaker 1: 30:08

What was it in that moment, though, that allowed you to give yourself permission? Because, as I guarantee you, there's so many blokes listening to this, or men listening to this, or people listening to this that have experienced events in their life and they haven't allowed themselves to just let go. And so what was it about that experience? Do you feel that just made it sit differently?

Speaker 2: 30:30

I think there were two parts. I think the first part it was I had bottled it up for so long it was going to come out in some way or another. Like yeah, it was, I was underwater and it was just like an explosion. Number one, number two, I think it was the community that I was around, because the community that I was around was the reason that I actually ended up like going into yoga teacher training. I had no desire to teach yoga at the time, but I remember after that experience, I was so well received by that community and the people that I was with and all of them like yes, they were actors, but all of the ones that supported me were all also yoga practitioners. And so I remember coming back to the States and I said I don't know what just happened, but I want to learn more about myself and I want to do it through this avenue. And I came back to the States. Two weeks later I was in a yoga teacher training. And this is you acting quickly.

Speaker 2: 31:27

This is me, yeah, yeah, this is me, then, acting quickly. And so I enrolled in a teacher training, strictly to deepen my relationship to myself, and two, two months into the six months training program, I was teaching full time at the studio.

Speaker 2: 31:43

That I was getting my certification at because I already had the anatomy physiology background from playing sports. So I already knew that I didn't know the spiritual side and and the breath, the pranayama, the breath and as well as the yogic teachings, like the philosophy of it, but that was all I was teaching, primarily like Asana, which is like physical movement, as well as a core based yoga class, so it was like a very westernized take on on yoga. So I think that, to answer the question, I think that the people that you are around, if you feel comfortable being yourself, like 100% yourself not I'm my way with you and they're two different things, but like I am, who I say I am in every moment. I think that was the first piece that allowed me to actually let my guard down and say, like this is me, take it or leave it.

Speaker 1: 32:40

Community is a very important thing and I believe, like fitness experiences will for me, obviously, and for yourself that will provide that environment for you to. This is who I am and I also find that when we put men in challenging environments like that, they do let themselves down, because the pain that you're going through, if you're suffering with someone, it's like unity Now you've. That's why team sports is such a unique thing. You've got the common goal, which is to win the finals. Really, like at the start of the season. What do we want to do? We want to win that you wouldn't be playing otherwise, like, I guess, professionally and semi professionally, and you ride the highs and lows. You go to the training sessions where it's freezing out, or it's raining out or you could be doing everything else. You make the sacrifices together and you become brothers. Ultimately. You know what it's like to ride that path and that's why you cry when you win a final, you cry when you lose the game and you let that guy down. As you said, it's take it or leave it. And I going back to sort of tie into when you were talking about going across the beam when you're walking backwards, your feeling right, you're trusting your instinct, you're trusting your intuition, but running forward, you're sort of looking to the vision.

Speaker 1: 33:47

It triggered a memory for me when I had to choose school. So I got a scholarship at a couple of schools, from primary school to high school and all of my buddies we go into one specific school and naturally you want to go where everyone goes. But some of you in my gut had me wanting to go to the other school. And this is back. You know, this is 2000, 2003. So the thing at the time was, if you go to that school, you're a gay. But you know all of that's. You know the world was a lot different then and I was really worried about that stigma that I was like man, I can't go to that school because I don't want everyone to think I'm gay and like, how crazy is that? As a 12 year old boy, you're worried about that, over what you actually believe is going to be the best fit for you.

Speaker 1: 34:28

And this school wasn't the most prestigious school where I lived, but I just didn't want to go because of what my mates were telling me. Anyway, I still remember sitting on the stairs, mom's, like you need to make a decision because we need to accept one of these scholarships, like, is it this school or this school? And I was like, yeah, that's cool. I had to just trust my God, I have to go to that school. I didn't tell anyone because you know how, like the last three months of school, which school are we in the same classes? And I'm like I don't know. I haven't found out what class I'm in yet because I knew I wasn't going to that school, but I didn't have the courage to step up when I wasn't confident in myself. Two, I didn't want to be picked on and three, I just didn't know what it was like, how that was going to play out or what was next, because there was a lot of uncertainty.

Speaker 1: 35:11

But when I went to this school, there was this whole pattern of trying to fit in. I was, you know, this is who I'll be for you guys, and which is what led me to similar experiences of you drinking alcohol and a lot of confusion. I then recognized, hey, this is who I am, take it or leave it. And from those moments I've built this incredible. You know, people like yourself have come into my life and I am the same person across the board and if you don't like that it doesn't impact me, but because of that, every year I seem to have this whole new emotional release.

Speaker 1: 35:43

It feels like an unimpeded pill back and the quality of my life and the connection of my relationships with the people because, yeah, definitely started wide, you wanted to be accepted by more people, you want more followers on social media, but now it's like that's not important to me anymore. I still I said it on your podcast I still feel like there's something within me that hasn't released yet and I don't know what it is, but I feel every year I'm getting closer to that because I'm having conversations with people like yourself or ending up at events or investing in coaching where they're helping me peel those layers back, and because of that my life just continues to go to those whole new levels. And that wouldn't have happened if I didn't trust my gut in the beginning.

Speaker 2: 36:27

I think, a big piece for me too, and the expanding on this belief has kind of paved ways in my life and I think that, to summarize, I think that we're born complete, we're born perfect. Society convinces us otherwise and we spend the rest of our life should we have this aha moment that we want to get back to that state, that we spend the rest of our lives working to get back to where we started? More growth is a game of subtraction, not addition. It's peeling back the layers. I also relate life to a baseball rather than an onion, reason being I much prefer that Reason being an onion doesn't really have a core. You just keep peeling layers until there's no more layers to peel. But if you think of a baseball, you have a core. Then there's a bunch of string and rubber bands over it the Aussies will use a cricket ball and then there's a leather covering and then there's nice red stitching and it's like tied up with a bow. So if you think of it that way, your external shell is this white, shiny piece with red stitching and a bow, and that's what you want to put out to the world. That's this like Instagram-able viewpoint of here's my life, here's Instagram versus reality, which is the inside core. Well, some people come and they hit the ball a couple of times and you get shooken up. Now you got some dents on it and people can see that because you're like, oh, here's the external persona I want to have. But, like shit, this got posted about me. Now, fuck, there's two contracting and conflicting beliefs. Then they get a couple more hits, some of the string comes off, maybe the leather peels off in a piece. Now the inner workings are exposed and you continue to do this until eventually you peel back enough of the layers and you get to the core, which is solid, which is what you actually are.

Speaker 2: 38:25

And in that whole philosophy, I think that in order to become more so, we want to grow. We want to become more. Become more of what? Well, if we're born perfect, we want to become more of what we already are. So you don't need to do more, you need to be more. And if you need to be more, how do you do that? You remove the things in your life that weren't actually meant for you, that you've been conditioned to think, that is meant to be you and you've been conditioned to say like on retreats. One of the first exercises we do is we go around and say who are you? The correct answer is I am, but everyone goes around. I am Kevin, I am a businessman, I am this, and it's all these labels that we place on ourselves to add importance and make sense of a world in which we don't need to make sense of it, we only need to exist in it. So, in order to become more, be more of what you already are.

Speaker 1: 39:25

A very important point, though good to dive into, with the labeling, because it's how many of us find ourself lost once that label gets removed, because a lot of things we do in our life, the positions that we take, the roles that we accept, they are finite. We've established everything's essentially finite, even parents. They will come a point in time where your kids leave home and they're like why now? That's why it's so important to go back to the who you are like, what you stand for, what you enjoy. So there's so many elements to you and that sort of segues. A conversation.

Speaker 1: 40:01

Then, kevin, because you've done the athlete acting, yoga, and then business, how do you go to putting in pieces in these deals together? Because I know for those who follow Kevin on social media and even last year it was last year you came out and visited us in Australia it's very rare that someone from across the world is like, yeah, I'll just come hang out for a couple of days and we'll do the David Goggins challenge and all of those sorts of weird things. It's like if they're going to make an effort, they'll come for like four weeks and plan a holiday around it. You literally flew to hang out and you've designed that life and it's something that I think is very unique in going back to a goal and put a limitation on what, potentially, you think you're capable of.

Speaker 1: 40:52

I do want other people to understand the process that you went through to be able to design this life, because there are a lot of people who are doing things that they don't like. They're not happy, they're not getting paid their worth, maybe they don't have the time freedom to spend with their family or invest in their health. You're doing all of that. How the hell did you get there?

Speaker 2: 41:15

I heard I believe it was Ed Milet say recently you're only ever limited by your most successful thought.

Speaker 1: 41:22

That's good, that is brilliant.

Speaker 2: 41:25

And in my life I've consistently aimed to put, consciously or unconsciously more so consciously now, but in the past, less less consciously I've always aimed to put myself into positions that made me feel uncomfortable, not because I was trying to grow from them Like I'm putting, I'm forcing myself to be uncomfortable situations because I want to grow from them, but because that's where I felt I felt most at home. So, losing my mom, losing my best friend, and that entire late teens, early twenties, I was living in uncertainty and I was living in uncomfortability. So that was where which is crazy to think about that's where I felt most regulated when things were in chaos. And in doing so, I consistently put myself into these situations saying, okay, I've done the thing up to 80%, I'm like all right done, onto the next thing, onto the next thing. That way I say I've lived many lives, I've had multiple different careers and then, as I've wanted to pivot, I have, if we circle this up and try and find us a sink like how have I gotten to where I am today?

Speaker 2: 42:45

I think curiosity is probably the number one piece of things, that but it's like how is that tangible? It's like, if there's ever something that I'm interested in. I have this OCD, adhd, whatever label you want to put on it. Monomaniacal, focus on a specific thing, so much so that I forget to eat. The world, the world stops, literally the world stops and like like, this room is kind of similar to the room that I built my first online course in when I did the whole marketing craze over the pandemic, and in that room I literally I blacked out the curtains, I put LED lights that were on timers, so I literally had no idea what time of day. It was Like a casino. So I could just roll through things and if we, let me try and piece together how the curiosity led to each.

Speaker 2: 43:43

So when I lost my mom and I knew that hockey was where I wanted to go, hockey, I was curious, if it was possible. First piece when I left hockey and I again I was searching. Actually there was less curiosity in those first three hockey, acting and hospitality initially, hockey acting and yoga. There was less curiosity in those first three because they were more self-worth and identity focused. The first time that the curiosity stemmed was when I had that breakthrough in Bali and I said, oh, I want to learn more about myself. That was the first time that I led from curiosity rather than because, if anything, at that time it was like a guy going to yoga teacher training. You're like this is a little weird kind of thing. Yeah, 100%. And that was the first time that I was like I don't care what people think, I'm curious about myself.

Speaker 2: 44:43

I want to know more about the why behind Kevin, who is the who, and that transitioned and led into business in the way that, when I so, I had a marketing and consulting company that I still run today, but I built it during the pandemic and I had a staff of 12 from all over North America and I had never met most of them in real life. And so I remember getting served an ad for Tony Robbins Unleashed the Power Within event in Palm Beach, florida, and I was like what a great. I was wanting them to level up. So I was like what a great way, I'll bring them to a seminar. It won't be me coaching them with someone else coaching them, but we'll all get to learn together and all expense paid trip for the whole staff.

Speaker 2: 45:30

We had a team offsite in Florida and I remember the second day in that room, mike, they came up on on, they came up on the screen and they said Tony Robbins Platinum partnership, worked directly with Tony for a full year, kind of thing, huge investment, and it's like 120,000, right, 120,000 US, yeah, and it's 85. And then there's three additional events that are like 10 to 15 grand a piece on top of it, and that was basically all of the cash and then some that I had at the time. I put the initial deposit on a credit card, but there was something in me that I was curious of who would be in that room. It was less about learning from Tony Robbins. There were some great things to learn from him, but that wasn't the. That's not why you go into that thing.

Speaker 2: 46:17

The people who go into that are the ones who let me tangent real quick. There's three people in that room. There's people like you and I who go and get what they want, learn what they want and leave the shit. There's people who want the notoriety of working with Tony Robbins, so it's like a status, very much status thing. And then there's people who are addicted to solving the same problem year after year, who have been going for 20 years, but every single year they have the same breakthrough and it's. It's crazy. It's the one sitting right in front and they're like hey John, hey Tony, and they're like you've been here for 20 years.

Speaker 1: 46:51

What are you doing, man?

Speaker 2: 46:54

But so my my belief at the time was that I wanted to gain proximity to the people in that room. So it was less about who was on stage, it was more about who was to my right and my left. And I went to the first two events in in Tony studio in Palm Beach. And then I came back and I got really interested in this philosophy called infinite banking, which is using cash value life insurance to act as your own bank and you can go to the whole. You could read plenty on that. I got really interested in this philosophy and I read the week leading up to what was the next event was called finance mastery. The week leading up to that I read seven books in a week like literally auto audible all day long. And it was just so. I told you like I hyper fixate on something and that's the only thing I think about. I remember I was in Arizona living there at the time and I sat in a hot tub for like three hours just listening to a book. I came out on my fingers of prune. That was like a raisin, and so I go to this event.

Speaker 2: 47:52

And another piece about me is is anytime I learn something, I'm fascinated by it. I want to share it with others. I'm like this is the next best thing. Let me teach it to you. I'm the exact same and you, you I think I shared this when I was on on the, when you had me speak as well, the, the, the learning pyramid. Yes, teaching is the highest level of retention that you can possibly have, and I think that's why I've been able to like, learn, teach, repeat, learn, teach, repeat so much in my life. Anyways, I I learned this thing. I go to the event, I start teaching people this philosophy, and the people like this is interesting, how did you figure this out? It's a very like wow, how did I not know about this kind of thing? And then one guy goes have you met Andre? I go who's Andre?

Speaker 1: 48:42

Yeah, andre 3000.

Speaker 2: 48:44

No, he goes. Have you met Andre? Who's Andre? And he goes. He owns an insurance company in in Scottsdale, arizona, where I lived at the time. I was like, oh cool, point him out to me next time you see him, next intermission. I go, yeah, point him out to me, where's Andre. He goes, that guy over there. And I literally just like be lying straight to him. And I go hey, I'm Kevin. I think we're supposed to meet. Like I was just curious, like that was it.

Speaker 2: 49:06

We talked for like 15 minutes. I go back to my seat. We listened to the next thing. Next intermission comes up. We start talking. Again. He grills me, grills me on this philosophy, this topic. I passed with flying colors because I had actually read these books. And he goes. He goes. Why don't you come back with us on Monday? And I'm like back where he goes? Scottsdale, I go. I live in Scottsdale, I go. Where in Scottsdale do you live? He goes the air park, I go. I live in the air park, where's your office? And he was literally like four minutes away from me is where his office was of where I lived.

Speaker 2: 49:46

And so I go, okay, cool, what flight are you on? And I'm like I was like, what flight are you on? And he goes, what do you mean? It leaves when I get there. And I was like, oh shit, Big dog, yeah. So then we get to. So then I'm like, all right, call American Airlines. I'm like I got to cancel my flight, like I've got a better offer. I've got a better offer right now. And so we show up, we get there, and he's like, oh, by the way, I'm sorry, my plane's in the shop right now. This is Robert Kiyosaki's jet, we're borrowing it for the weekend. And I was like, all right, well, cool, we're going to the same place, right, robert?

Speaker 1: 50:21

can I be on?

Speaker 2: 50:22

there. He wasn't, unfortunately, but we ended up having a really good conversation and nothing came of it for almost a year and he lived next to me and once a month we'd get dinner and just kind of chat about life. But what was interesting was he always included me and he always brought up like internal workings of he has like five or six companies. He always brought the inner workings of the companies up to me at dinner and I was always fascinated, like why is he bringing up these internal issues with me at dinner? And then one day this is like after we built some rapport and this is like after knowing each other for a little bit I was like why do you keep? I don't work for you and I don't work with you and I'm like I have no affiliation to any of your companies why do you keep bringing up these topics to me?

Speaker 2: 51:09

He goes because you're extremely curious and you always ask the most insightful questions. He goes when I bring up this to you. It's an unbiased point of view and you ask a question that causes me to think in a different way than I did before and that has led to some breakthroughs in some of my other companies. So I always bring things up to you when I'm trying to figure out a problem, because it's not about you knowing the answer. It's about you being curious enough to ask the right question for him to figure it out, or to figure out who can then figure out that problem.

Speaker 2: 51:43

So in all of this, the curiosity piece and Andre is now my business partner with the Costa Rica acquisition a diagnostic protocol that is essentially pre-retreat testing so your entire retreat experience is based on your own biology and an app that integrates this. The biggest problem we have right now at Tech is fractional data, so it integrates everything into one seamless app to get a baseline score. Partner with me on those three things. But none of that would have happened if I wasn't curious on a philosophy that led to a question that led to me just staying interested in what someone else was doing.

Speaker 1: 52:19

There's also a few other things that you invested in yourself like a significant amount, and I want to touch on value, because people look at investing in a coach or a program as an expense, right, and when you look at it like that, you're missing the point. You invested in it to get in the room and see who was in there right, curious about who was in there, because connections are the biggest believer in community and connections opening everything, even if it's just sparking an idea for you to go down a rabbit hole where, somewhere in the future, that's going to pay dividends.

Speaker 2: 52:54

So the I mean double click on a couple of things here. The first thing is, my belief is that in order to get what I want out of life, I need to become the person capable of having those things. So it's less about doing something to get an outcome and more about becoming the person capable of handling that like entrepreneurship. You grow in entrepreneurship directly proportional to the level of risk that you're willing to entertain. Like that's. That's it Like. Look at Musk. Musk has an un-proportionate amount of risk and he just continues to double down bets. Often that leads to a negative conclusion, because you double enough that eventually everything, like one bet, wipes everything out.

Speaker 2: 53:39

But when you, when I, when I invested in in the partnership, I remember calling my dad and I told him what I had done and I'm like. The price of it came up and he was what the fuck are you doing? Like this is he goes. This is the dumbest decision you've ever made. Get your money back.

Speaker 1: 54:02

Cancel that.

Speaker 2: 54:02

Cancel that, fly home, fuck off, like don't do any of this. And I was like what do you mean? Like it just feels right for me to do it. There's, there's something in this I didn't know what it was, but there was something that was calling me towards that and he's like, well, I hope you get some business out of this to pay for it. And I go, I just not about business. It's like I wasn't viewing it as a transactional thing. He views a lot of things as transactional pieces and that's a.

Speaker 1: 54:29

I gotta get something for it.

Speaker 2: 54:30

Yeah, yeah, it's like if, if this, then that kind of thinking and I've worked a lot to remove that thought process because life is exponential, not linear. Do you think that that's?

Speaker 1: 54:40

from a financial gain Cause obviously you get the, you know the relationships, you get the growth. That is something that you do get from that.

Speaker 2: 54:48

You do get a lot of it, yes, but I was going into that room from a I wanted to learn more about myself through the lens of business, through the lens of relationships, through the lens of community, similar to when I had invested in the yoga teacher training like, similar to that. He viewed it through the lens of I'm going there as a way to network, to get business, not as a way to connect with people, to learn and grow as a person. And so if we, if we break it down, that investment, I he's like, I hope you, I hope you you get a couple of business to pay for the involvement of it, just the relationships I meant from that. It's like a 30 to 40 X on the investment from what I put into it. But I think that there's something to be said about the transactional ness, because that's something that I I think I asked you this too. It's like how do you avoid the transactional relationship? Because it's not like, yes, I want to align with people who are where I want to be. Yes, and maybe I don't have much to give them in this present moment, but as as an example, like I didn't have quote, unquote anything tangible to give Andre at the time when we were having those dinners, like there was not, like guy who has everything, what do you give that person? It's not and that's again a faulty belief that thinking that in order to give him something is that I need to match him on a on a playing field from a either monetary or physical standpoint Jump on my jet, sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 56:24

Yeah, and I remember one day following there was another meal and this was before I asked him why he continues to bring these things into uh looks. This was uh, um. I remember asking, before he brought up the thing, saying why, uh, before I brought up the thing saying why, why, why are you involving me in your business piece? I remember saying like no, no, no, I got dinner tonight. He goes no, no, no, looks, lay down, girly. He goes no, no, no, no. I go no, no, no, I got dinner tonight. And he's like no, no, no, we're not going to tit for tat, that's not what this is.

Speaker 2: 57:05

I get dinner and, like your company is invited to be with dinner, like, don't steal the enjoyment I get from being able to support people around me Was the environment and the vibe that I got from it and that altered how, then, I view relationships? Because I used to think I needed to surround myself with people who I could get something from, but I never ended up getting the thing I wanted, because I viewed it as this give then take, or like take and take, and you're not equating out the balance sheet. It's like I'm taking so much away from it. I'm not actually returning the favor or giving to it, and it doesn't need to be one for one. It doesn't need to be money for money, which is obvious in this scenario, and that's how I've started to shift and view relationships as well, and less of a collaboration and more of a partnership.

Speaker 1: 58:00

Very interesting and just as you're attaching on that, when we moved to America within the first two weeks, one of my old clients is like go to this event. Had no idea what it was. Walked into the room, long story short, it was like the who's who of a lot of places and I was like what on earth are we doing here and how did we end up here? Anyway, fast forward, we've made some incredible, met some incredible people and they just kept inviting us to stuff and I was like this is like is this what America is? You? Just you know we're in a boot box at KISS and I'm at Queen and then we're playing Shepard, are playing at the Preds game, and I started feeling guilty. Like what do I have to give these people? I can't afford the lifestyle that they're living, so I can't provide value.

Speaker 1: 58:46

So I started going internal and one guy who I've become really good friends with literally speak to every couple of days Chad. He was on the podcast a few weeks ago, successful dude in his fifties and thinks really well. He pulled me aside and he was like dude, we don't want anything from you. Like there is some enjoyment to back up your point, for us to be able to help you guys on your journey, wherever that ends. We're not, you know we're not guaranteeing you anything, but we're learning from you guys. We're enjoying seeing the growth and that's enough.

Speaker 1: 59:18

I don't feel like you have to give something, because now you're not being being who we. You know who you are. You're so focused on fuck, I'm not enough, or I can't give this back, or I'm not gonna have that drink because I don't wanna. You know it's always like getting yourself into debt and it's not like that. But I think that's a specific mindset that a lot of us grow up having, because everything is so transactional and most people are afraid of money because they never talk about money and they don't understand it. And then that whole philosophy or framework then goes into other transactions in your life.

Speaker 2: 59:54

I think that love in this carpet For those that are listening and not watching. My dog decided to enter the conversation and I have a very soft carpet we're on and she loves to scratch her back on it. To continue down that path, though. I think that I think that the transactionalness and because there's a fine line obviously there's a fine line between it where you. This is hilarious.

Speaker 1: 1:00:30

I wish this was on camera.

Speaker 2: 1:00:33

There's a fine line between it, because on one side there's the guiltiness of taking something that you know that you couldn't afford or wouldn't be able to, and I always I like to be in positions where I know that I can, so that should hits the fan and something happens and then I have to cover the bill. I can't be like, oh, I can't cover this kind of thing. I never wanna be in a situation where that's the case. But I think that from she's really thrown, she's thrown us for a loop right now.

Speaker 2: 1:01:09

Hey go to the couch. Go to the couch, but she does listen well. So fine line between the two of actually being able to and then taking advantage of. I think there's a difference between the two, because I know that there I have some friends out here that have been very successful or are very successful, and they just have people that assume that they're owed something. Now because of they're like we grew up together you owe me this. I don't like that, but I think of earning your keep and then showing up and saying how am I going to show up in a way that is beneficial for this relationship? Because it doesn't have to be monetary, like we've talked about. It doesn't have to be any of this finiteness that we assume is the only way to repay a debt or we assume is the only way to build something up. In the past and, if we go way back before, we actually used money as like a monetary exchange. I was good at X and you were good at Y and someone was good at Z, and we're all working together in unison, which is really what a company is. A company is working together and focusing on your skill sets in all these different places.

Speaker 2: 1:02:25

And a book that I read years ago. That paved the way for a lot of my business. Success was who, not how, and it's a great book. I literally read that a few weeks ago. Incredible, amazing, incredible book. Because we're conditioned to say I or at least I was. I need to figure out how to do this thing because I need to be in charge of everything and I need to be in control of everything and anything that happens must pass through me. But then you're your own bottleneck in life and business. But when you start to ask the question who is better than this than I will ever be? Now, you start to plug people in into a position that is actually better than you would ever do it yourself and then you skip the line.

Speaker 2: 1:03:06

So before the Costa Rica acquisition, I knew that I wanted to own property, like I knew that I wanted to open a retreat center. I knew all of these things in my gut. Logically speaking, I thought this had to lead to this, had to lead to this, had to lead to this, to get to that point. And that's what I was working towards In the span of three months. In the span of three months, I went from not needing any of that because of the relationships that I had built, not because I was built them on transactionalists. I didn't meet him going to oh, I'm gonna open a property with this guy one day. I met him thinking that, okay, cool, I wanna learn how this guy lives his life. Because, again, the proximity piece my belief is that they are doing something, or my belief at the time was that they're doing something I'm not, which I learned was wrong. They're not doing things that I am. That's the difference in the growth piece.

Speaker 1: 1:04:00

That's hard to even, that's hard to believe possible. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2: 1:04:06

They're doing more of less is probably the best way to put it. So, rather than saying this goes here, this goes here, this goes here, this goes here, and you're putting 20% into five different things, they're putting 100% into one thing until they're able to replace themselves in that thing, and then they replace themselves with someone who does it better than they ever could. So it's the inverse way of approaching business, because and that's from, like, an ownership point of view If you view it from an employee point of view, which is how most of us are trained to think it's I'm going to do the actions, but someone else reaps the reward from it because you're the who, not the how, or someone else You're the who who acts as the how. So someone else is like okay, I need someone to do this, this, this, this, I'm not going to do that. They're believing the who, not how. Philosophically, they plug you into it. You're the who. That is the cog to for them to create what they want.

Speaker 2: 1:05:12

But and it's also tiered because then they also are with someone else above them and above them, and this is very big pyramid. But when you start to shift the beliefs around this, you recognize that everything that you are doing in your life from business, from relationally, from consumerism when you start to think, okay, who could do this better than me, and what do I need to? What environment or who do I need to surround myself in order to getting in connection with them? Same thing with finances and same thing with with like acquisitions. It's not how much money do I have, it's how much money or resources do I have access to. And if you shift that thought again, I could have access to person one, but person one has access to person two. And if person two is the person that I need we were two degrees of separation you still have access to it because you've access to the resources.

Speaker 2: 1:06:08

It's never and I learned this from the Tony Robbins world. This is like one of his most famous quotes is it's never about the resources, it's about your resourcefulness. Resources are infinite. The only finite resource you have in life is your time. Yet we view it as infinite. We view money as finite, but not. But. Money's technically infinite, money's fake like money, 5% of money's in circulation, if not less, and it's a number on a on a keyboard, a number on a computer. And when you shift that belief, saying okay, I need to figure out where I can become more resourceful, because the resourcefulness is what's going to lead me to where I want to go, you shift how you show up in the world and you shift the conversations that you start having.

Speaker 1: 1:06:57

Such a powerful piece. The thing that I'm thinking about is my ego would have not now, but previously. My ego would have held me back from doing that, and in a manner of one I don't want to ask for help to what if they don't like or appreciate who I am, or what if I'm just not good enough. But that then probably circles back around to a few other things we've discussed throughout. This is like for you. It was yoga that said I need to improve the relationship with myself through improving the relationship with self. You then start improving your value because you start seeing your strength, you start working on your weaknesses and then you start getting curious about other things that you want to explore, and then, when you lock yourself in a room with LED lights and go all in on something, you can provide tremendous value.

Speaker 1: 1:07:42

I think it's Gary Vee talks about it. He's like most people don't even do 20 hours worth of research on anything before they're fucking throwing opinions and stuff on the internet. So sorry in saying that, if you do do 20 hours or more, you're probably going to have a greater understanding than most people. It's how I found myself throughout COVID, helping a company go on for an IPO Through that, as I was about to go bankrupt. And now they're listed and once again, that came from me working with the CEO. But then, yeah, it's like I was asking good questions, I was throwing different perspectives in the mix and that became valuable to them. That wouldn't have happened. How do I just go fuck it? I'm prepared to sound stupid, I'm prepared to fail, I'm prepared to look like I don't understand things. But it's going back to when you don't understand things, you ask the simple questions and you simplify stuff and simplicity allows for growth, I think, from the self-worth piece to their response and their reaction is not your responsibility, correct.

Speaker 2: 1:08:49

And when we, when we remove at least for me, when I remove that, when I remove that need to control the situation and control how someone else is going to respond to something, I no longer have to shift how I show up and when I can show up authentically of, authentically myself and authentically who I want to be, you're no longer having to, like, put on different hats and all these different situations and things start to happen for you because you're operating in this, in this path of flow. I say again, from simplifying things too, I've done a lot to structure my days and to structure my life so that I have freedom, and I think I'm curious what you're going to pull up here, but I think that people I used to at least think that structure was the in opposition of freedom, exactly what I was going to put up.

Speaker 2: 1:09:50

I used to think that structure is in opposition of freedom, but a river without banks ceases to flow. So you need structure in your life in order to create the space that you in order to do the things that you want to. So I recognize the things that weren't important to me and I either removed them or I simplified them to a way where I was able to structure them so that I didn't have to do them or outsource them or delegate them, or just they're gone completely, and that then freed up my ability to be like I'm coming to Brisbane for five days, or like I'm, I'm, I want to come to Vegas for a day and like move these things around. I always wanted to be.

Speaker 2: 1:10:33

I think it's a control piece, but I always wanted to be in control of what I do, who, when I do it, who I do it with and at what rate I do it.

Speaker 2: 1:10:43

Those are, those are the biggest things for me, because I struggle with being told what to do. A lot and if, if, let me let me rephrase that I do, yes, but I only struggle with it if there's not a better way that we can pose that may work. It's something that may work better. So if you tell me this is the way that it must be done, because that's the way we've always done it huge red flag I'm going to have a lot of problems with that and I'm going to go out of my way to find a way to do it easier, just to prove you're wrong. But if you go, here's how we've done it, because we've tried this, this, this, this, this, nothing else has worked. If you find a better way to do it, but this is the way that it works right now, cool In in a grants it's. It's the need for control for the sake of control that challenges me.

Speaker 1: 1:11:39

Speaking of Vegas, we're heading there in literally 45 minutes, so we'll have to wrap this up. Unfortunately. This is hugely insightful. I've taken away so much and I feel like we're going to have to do a part two when I'm back in a weeks as well. Kevin, where can people find you? Obviously, you've got the incredible podcast, social pages and newsletter. Where can people plug in?

Speaker 2: 1:12:03

anything on socials. My name Kevin Wathi, and that anything to do with the podcast or newsletters. Inputs onlycom.

Speaker 1: 1:12:09

I'll have it all linked in the show notes so you can check it out. Definitely read the newsletter. It is phenomenal Like when I'm reading it, a lot of my own thoughts and things that are happening in my life are just really. You're plugging the missing pieces in and it makes a lot of sense. So it's a brilliant newsletter. Definitely subscribe. If you got value from this episode, make sure you share it head over, leave a rating review and then also find the links below to follow Kevin.