She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.

I'm tiff.

This is Roll with the Punches and we're turning life's hardest hits into wins.

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Welcome back to an episode of Roll with the Punches.

Little Christmas time end of year rap up.

This is so I haven't done a solo chat for bloody Red Hot Minute day.

It's been a red Hot minute probably only done one solo episode this year because I've got great guests and I've been doing some new things, which is kind of what prompted this conversation or monologue.

Maybe because there's no one to chat to, there's no one to converse with live right now.

But as I do at the end of every year, which seems to come way too quick.

I was having a think about, especially right now, that the last month to two months of this year has been enormous, enormous for me, and I was having to be a reflect and thinking about the good and the bad and the relationship of that and the way I view it and the story that's wrapped around it and what comes out of it based on the story that I wrap around it, and I thought they might be some good thought bubbles to share on the pod.

So here we are.

That's what I'm going to do.

So this year I did some new and different stuff.

Last year was a really big year for me in terms of I spent a lot of the year treading water with energy levels and burnout and perimenopause and sleep issues and needing to change my training up and finding a new normal, and that was that was exhausting.

I was very exhausted last year.

And at the end of the year I went on a relatively impromptu to a degree trip to the Himalayas, and I talked about that a lot.

It was amazing, amazing, life changing, definitely a trip that changed me.

I came back feeling incredibly different.

I need to get in those mountains again, I'll tell you that much.

But I came back from that trip, I launched some online programs, I ran some great programs, I did some deep learning, and then I made some big changes in my life and my operating system which were really good, which should have been made a long time ago, freeing up time, having days off, taking myself down to the Dandenong's once a week by myself to hike in nature, in silence and be present, and it was beautiful and I got so much out of that.

Early in the year, I came across some content around speaking and a speaking coach that I really liked.

Her name is Jack, and I made the decision to jump into a course, invest in a course, in a program that opened myself up to massive learning in this space and different learning and also a new network of people and friends, education information craft.

It was really really cool.

So I started that in early in the year.

So again it made a lot of my day to day very very different.

So I was spending days with different people and it was amazing and for me, it was quite a big investment, and I don't invest lightly into things like that, So put on a big girl pants to say yes to that.

Hooray for me.

So it came out the end of that.

So the first half of the year, cool cal made some changes feelings in diving into a whole bunch of new stuff and then you know how the year goes really fast.

And part of this program was that a small number of the participants would get selected.

So speaking course, there was maybe twenty something people in the course.

And part of the course was part of the program I should say, was that Jack hosts a substantial event in Queensland to showcase seven of the speakers, and in order to pitch to be a part of that event, we needed to pitch to, unknown to us, some anonymous certified professional speakers who were going to watch to look at our pitch criteria, so videos, one sheets, everything that speakers present in the industry to introduce themselves.

We had to submit that and those people selected the speakers for this event, and fortunately for me, amazing I had the opportunity to speak at that event.

And if you're a regular listener of the show, you would have heard a little bit about that, you would heard have probably heard a lot about that, especially if you're on my socials.

It was amazing, but it's what I really loved sitting back.

I love being in the middle of something and having an ability to observe and notice things about how I am, or think, or operate, or shift and change given how I think I would, but then also reflecting back on how I did think and change and observe myself in the middle of all of that.

And I've made a few obbs of recently, not just in that but in other areas, which is really funny.

So had that that was amazing, big, scary, exciting, had to go to Queensland, had to present in a way that was way outside of my normal operating system, so I came dangerously close to pulling the pin on even going.

My reasoning for that was saying to myself and others that I didn't feel like this particular way of presenting was my natural style and sh and I was talking myself into the idea that to do something that may not reflect the best of me in front of industry professionals that might matter wouldn't be a great thing.

So in the end, saft it up and I did go.

I had people that book tickets and their fares to that event.

So I was like, well, you kin't have to go now, mate, don't waste everybody's time.

What's interesting is at the beginning of that, the beginning of the whole course, doing this very differently, I said and believed until it came go time.

This is interesting, I said it.

This is not my natural style, and I should I will try it, And maybe I have to get worse before I get better.

Maybe I have to get have a terrible outcome in the first iteration of this before some learning kicks in and I evolve and I get better at it, or you know.

I had this just being a white belt and being a learner of a new thing.

Yet when it came time to face that potential discomfort, I was making up a whole bunch of stories of why I shouldn't do it.

So that was interesting.

So one of the points, I guess, So I've got a little list of things that I kind of learn and remind myself and you of at the end of this year based on these things, and one of them is that no matter what, things will always scare me.

And getting on that stage scared like it was scary, right, And I've done it a bunch of times before, and I've never had a bad experience, which I think is really fortunate.

So I've done a lot of hard things and a lot of things that scare me, But in this arena, I've always been terrified stepping into it.

I've always been I've always overthought and been bass Craig Harper I ring him every time I've got an event coming up that I'm speaking at and he has to deal with Tiff who's freaking out and losing a shit, and then he gets a phone call five minutes after it's done, going, oh, it's so fun, it was amazing, got really great being back rarah.

So so despite that evidence, every time I lose my shit, and this one was no different.

It's one of no different.

But I did have a lot of fun.

So I constantly remind myself, and I will remind myself in twenty twenty six that things will always scare me because I will always choose to do things that matter to me, things that require optimal performance, then things that activate my nervous system and have me functioning in that fight or flight environment.

That's where I thrive and what's on the other side of that.

Just like the first ever boxing fight that I did.

What's on the other fight, other fight, other side of that intense fear and unknown is the most amazing growth and sense of achievement and rewards.

So Tiff needs to suck it up and realize that that is going to continue for the rest of her life.

So if you feel like that too, welcome to the club.

The other thing that I jotted down around that next stage speaking event was that I will always second guess myself.

I will always second guess myself and think that I am not prepared enough, not knowledgeable enough, not talented enough, not clever enough, not all of the filling, all of the blanks, all of the not enoughness.

I will always second guess that.

So it is learning to manage the perception and the voice.

Here's an example of that.

I did a workshop a couple of weeks ago for small workshop, a long workshop in person, and I had all of this new learning around presenting, and then I had the pre learning TIF you comfortable, this is how I run things.

And then I had a new environment to do this in with a new group of people who were not my tribe.

So all these new variables.

When I went and delivered this workshop and this is interesting.

So my perception, my sense in the middle of that was I was not happy with my presentation.

I was not happy with my preparation.

I was not happy.

I did not feel great about how I myself for that particular event.

The feedback that I got immediately and afterwards was excellent, the engagement was excellent, but my perception of it in the middle of it, which and my experience of it myself, was crap like not great.

And funnily enough, the final subject in that, the final thing I remember talking about quite extensively to that group of people was how ironic is this was talking about?

And I was relating a lot of things to my boxing experience, because I learned a lot of I had a lot of experience and learnings, and there's a lot of metaphors that come out of the art of boxing and the experience of fighting for me that I can translate into real life.

And these guys were sports people in a different arena, so I was relating that.

And the topic that we finished on was the understanding, and I shared a lot of examples of how our perception of our performance is often utter bullshit.

So I shared where at a time when I was boxing sparring, sparring a girl called Carli, and it was a hell of a session.

And I remember getting out of the ring, sitting down, taking my head gear and mouthguard out, and just being so defeated in myself.

I was like, really down on my performance.

And my coach comes over after a while and he goes, what's the matter with you?

And I was like, I just I was just frustrated, you know, like I just wish you know, And he goes, what, No one, that's the best you have ever sparred, And nobody in this gym has ever put that pressure on Carli before.

Now, Carlie was ten years in the sport before me.

She had so many more fights than me, she had won titles.

She was yeah, it's crazy, right.

So here I am sitting right after the best performance against a very worthy opponent in sparring, and I am sitting there saying this, this is my worst performance.

And it's ironic because I'm telling that story in the middle of doing the exact same thing, running that workshop and leaving that workshop and going that was that was so terrible.

It's really difficult.

We have to do this, Like when we put ourselves in performance in areas where we want to perform or we need to perform or do things like this.

That narrative is kind of it's always going to be there, so I have to figure out ways to accept it and manage it and go yep, cool, and have other performance other metrics of understanding that, Okay, I know that I felt like that, but was that the case?

How do I want to perform?

And what was really what?

You know?

What are the areas of actual proof of whether or not something was good or not good.

A third point I made on my little list of things to share is always reminding myself because it's easy to talk about stuff in theory and not do it.

It's easy just to go along day by day after day, living a bit of a groundhog day in your life and not putting into practice things that I share, that we share that I share, and I do it a lot.

I notice a lot.

And one of those things is the fact that I need to get out of my life to see my life.

So we are always saying we can't have a perspective of what we're in the middle of, especially when it's something emotionally charged or we're in a familiar environment and we're getting up and we're doing anything.

We're hardwired for habit and routine, and so when we're in that habit and routine, we get really comfortable with that.

It's really hard to see, do I still feel good?

Here?

Is this taking me where I want to go?

Am I wasting energy on things that that waste my resources?

My timeline energy?

Like and for me, the Himalayas was a beautiful, huge experience that I really got to do.

That was amazing.

I got so much out of that for a couple of reasons.

One, I'm in the other I'm on the other side of the world.

I'm right out of my environment.

I am not in a familiar country.

I was not I was around people I knew, but not my day to day people.

So a lot of new people, very different people, very different energy.

And two people that I knew one Jim.

He's a regular on the show and a very good friend of mine.

Shannon.

We're very good friends, but she's not in my day to day world, and we don't share these same interests as much as a lot of my other friends, so we are not gym buddies.

We met in business networking she's a business coach.

She's amazing.

But we have this with great connection that's based on different things to a lot of the people around me.

So that was amazing.

And the thing that I implemented when I home was that taking myself down to the Dandy Nungs to hike by myself.

That is something that I always remind myself I need to do.

Get out of my life to see my life, even if it's just a morning a week or and that means getting out of the familiar environment.

Every time I'm driving down there, I'm like, this is an hour's drive.

It's a waste of time.

It could just go walk in the beach.

I could do a thousand things, maybe just go to the gym and do this, do that.

But it's the there's something about nature and getting in the energy of nature that just once I get there, no music, no podcast, no listening to anything, just the sounds of the environment that I'm in, and after a few minutes, I just bubble up with gratitude and emotion and love for life and it just feels quite amazing.

And I'm like, oh, that's right, that's why I'm here.

So always do that, get out of your life.

To see your life get out, you have to get the perspective from out of the environment you're in.

Another thing that I've reflected on this for years, and I feel like it's something that I say at the end of every year, and it's something I've been thinking about a lot this week because I had some really, really horrible news exactly one week ago today, and that was that a beautiful client of mine and friend.

I will say that I have that I've been coaching for the last twelve months and interacting with every single day took his life and it was devastating and hard and in the middle of in the middle of all of that, there's been a lot of mixed emotions.

There's been a really it's been a really tough time experiencing it naturally, of course, but I always think the good will always match the bad.

That's my philosophy.

My philosophy is in life, your highs will very likely match your lows.

And whether I don't know whether that's how we rate the circumstance or just how we rate the experience of it.

But Brene Brown always talks about you can't numb the bad feelings without numbing the good.

Feelings.

You can't numb shame without numbing joy, And so in the middle of dealing with this really horrific, heartbreaking circumstance, I have at times sat in the middle of that and thought how grateful I am to have the capacity to have opened myself up to love and to be there for somebody like that that was struggling, and especially for me, because I believe I've spent a lot of my life safeguarding myself against loss.

And I remember in twenty twenty one of my clients coming to speak to me.

It was a member of my gym, and he reached out in the middle of COVID and he shared with me which he hadn't shared with many people in his life, that he had been diagnosed with cancer and that he wanted to train with me physically to keep himself in the best shape to be healthy and survive the fight he had a head.

And I remember how confronting that was at the time.

So I remember I remember sitting in Elstonwick Park in Elwood at the time of that conversation, walking around on the phone.

I remember hanging up the phone and realizing that I was being asked to let somebody into my life openly, who may one day not be there, And they were asking me to be a part of the inner circle and sit with them and be a part of that pain.

And it was a really big decision to make, and of course I did it.

It was beautiful and sadly they were on this podcast twice.

His name is Chris Arms.

If you want to look up the sessions, it was quite a while ago.

Now.

We did two beautiful conversations and he eventually passed away.

And so when these things have happened now, I do feel a sense of gratitude to have the capacity to feel the level of pain that I have and not shut it down and not suppress it, and not walk away from it and realize that that that is growth and that is a beautiful thing for me.

And in the middle of that this year there have been some pretty amazing highs as well, And so you look at it for your capacity not just your capacity to feel about what's happening, but the capacity to actually see the anormity of the circumstances, but the capacity to also experience amazing shit, like getting those opportunities to speak on stage, like the year prior having a fucking song written about me and being on the front cover of the album of one of Australia's most incredible singer songwriters, Mark Seymour, like that.

I will forever pinch myself about that.

And so these are the things I remind myself of when the hard stuff happens.

And the more I remind myself of that, the better I deal with the hard things, the more present I stay with them, and the more I just allow them to come up, Like, how are you going to deal with this?

Iff?

I'm not sure this hasn't happened before.

So I'm just going to wake up each day and I'm going to check in with me and I'm going to I'm going to slow down a bit.

I've never slowed down.

I've always sped up.

I'm not gonna I'm not gonna run away from it.

I'm not going to get busy, and I'm not going to judge how I feel like each day.

I've felt so differently.

Some days I've felt responsible.

Some days I've looked for what I did wrong, how I could have helped more of all of the things right.

And yes, I can hear you all saying you can't think like that.

Yes, people have said that, and I get that, and I don't entertain those thoughts.

I know, but that we can't deny the thoughts that arise.

It's like, Okay, that's interesting.

Of course that's natural to feel like that.

And also in the middle of feeling like that, there's there was nothing I could have done differently than what I did, and I know that, and so so yeah, that point was the bad will always match the good and vice versa.

So when things when things are hard, know that in a heartbeat, at some point something's going to happen.

It's going to be amazing.

And also when it's amazing, be present and enjoy it and take it in because it won't be there forever.

I thought of that, you know that whole year when the album was rolling out, I was like, this won't last forever.

Like, in a heartbeat, Mark's going to write a new album, Mine's not going to be the album is singing and talking about.

So this moment while it's here and now I'm going to live every fucking second of it, and it's amazing.

And the last there's two there's two more things on my list.

One is that our circumstances will change us.

So I feel like there's been a lot of things that have changed me this year.

We think that I have every conversation on the podcast has changed me.

When I first started the podcast, I remember would have been two to three months in thinking all, my goodness, I am not the same person living in the same world as I was before creating this podcast and having these conversations with these incredible humans that have experienced incredible things.

It changed me so much to the degree that I would often think what I wouldn't give to sit for an hour with pre twenty twenty Tiff as the TIF I am now and have a conversation and see what she thinks and believes and knows and how she interprets the world around her because it had changed so much.

And that happens every time I have a conversation.

I always talk about don't just do the theory, you have to do the work, And that is true.

You don't get got it boxing by watching videos of people boxing.

However, you do learn and you do interpret what you're watching, and that will change what you know and think and believe.

So yeah, I think circumstances will change us.

That is unavoidable.

Like what I have just experienced this last week will one hundred percent change me.

However, it is my response that dictates how it will change me, and that I have control.

We don't have control over what happens in our life, always, the vast majority of we don't have control over how people choose to treat us.

We have the opportunity to respond, to create boundaries, to put ourselves in the best possible situations, and to respond in ways that will dictate how we experience things moving forward.

We can't control what we experience.

When I get in the boxing room with someone, I cannot control what punches they throw at me.

I can only control how I wear them and how I choose to respond back, So change is inevitable.

The last point that I want to make is that the work is never done.

I guess because of the world I'm in and the work I do people, I'm always dealing with people that want to get better.

And whether that's in the boxing gym, or just in life or in my coaching programs, it is people that want to do better, overcome things, get fitter, faster, have better relationships, change their relationships with food or exercise or people, or work, or their self, talk self esteem.

The work is never done right, So every I remember years ago starting doing you know that idea of doing the work.

I remember, okay, specifically, I remember a time when I'd started boxing and I started bringing up unresolved trauma from my childhood and going, oh, that's interesting.

I've put that in a box twenty thirty years ago and thought we'd moved on, But no, we hadn't.

And so I started dealing with that and seeking out therapy and unders learning how to understand it and how it might have changed me and what I would like to take control off back and realizing at the time the work is never done.

Like each time you make amends with something, each time you overcome a challenge or learned something.

I think self awareness was enormous.

It was like, oh, you know that.

When I opened that door, I went, oh, this is the answer to why I am and think and feel and have a certain set of behaviors around things.

Oh that's interesting.

And the part of me was like, oh, you're broken.

Oh okay, so you're broken.

Now you've got to go fix it.

And I thought in those initial stages, I thought, oh, so we go get a therapist and we have a couple of sessions and they and I'll say, oh, yeah, this happened, and they'll go wave their magic want and I will be fixed and then I will be the same as everybody else.

Like that was definitely pre twenty twenty TIF blood dear, Hell yeah, I'll just fucking wave your magic wand to make me like everyone else.

There's a lot I thought, and then as you go on, you you learn new things, and then there's more new things.

So you resolve one thing and then there's another thing that you go, oh, this is a challenge too, or there's something else, or there's always challenges, Like I just think we can start the journey thinking that we're going to get to the end and then we're going to be happy and at peace and content and still and nothing's gonna and that's so not the case.

It's like, just like last week, life is going to come out and punch us in the face.

And with everything that happens, every hard thing is going to open up a wound, Like I am sure that what has happened losing Ben is going to open up a bunch of wounds that I'm not even aware of yet and bring a whole another set of work that I need to do.

I think this is life, like we have this expectation that it's that it's always going to get better, like we are, like the thing we're overcoming now is the thing, and once we're over that, we're going to sit on a mountain and be happy and it's all okay.

Or we think that the thing that we're dealing with processing the thing that happened when you know, either years ago or yesterday or whatever it is, we think that once that's resolved, it's smooth sailing, and it's just not the case.

And I think if we realize it's not the case, then when these things happen, you go, Okay, in the middle of this, this is hard, and that's okay because because life is hard, and in the middle of a hard life it can still be very very beautiful.

There is there are still so many things to appreciate and to feel, and even in the middle of the hard stuff, there are ways to sit with that.

I'll leave you with that little thought bubble.

I am looking forward to one hell of a twenty twenty six.

I'm gonna have a couple of weeks chilling out and then get on it and hit it hard.

If you don't follow the show, I would love you to follow the show.

If you have any guest suggestions, hit me up, follow me on socials, reach out all of the things.

If you've got any particular topics that you want to have unpacked, I will always seek out the best human on the planet to have that conversation.

Since from amazing people on this show this year and for the last five years, thank you so much for your support, especially those who have been with me from the start.

I do notice you.

I notice you interacting, and I feel deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply grateful that you are still around.

So thank you.

It does not go unnoticed.

Have an amazing end to your twenty twenty five.

Big love to you.

She said, it's now never.

I got fighting in my blood, got it you, bloody God's got a dude, gotta