
ยทE967
A Life That Should Have Broken Him | Jason Blyth - 967
Episode Transcript
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2I'm tiff.
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Jason blythe welcome to Roll with the Punches.
Speaker 3That's so good to be here, man, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2You have made me wait a lifetime for this.
I feel a lifetime.
Speaker 3Oh look, it's a revealing So I'm glad that I get to do it with you of anyone, because we've obviously had like a really good relationship over these last few months.
So it's now it's really exciting to be here.
Speaker 2We have I've just done a podcast episode.
I think it dropped on Monday.
As we record this which will be probably a couple of weeks by the time this airs.
But talking about my rollercoaster and my petulant attitude emits that what turned out to be a brilliant experience in program with Jacqueline and how good are the people in.
Speaker 3It, Dude, this cohort, this world that we've just been in through the PSA stuff that we've been doing over these last few months, this has literally changed my view of humanity.
I feel revitalized in the goodness of the depth of people that are going out into the world with a message, and it's actually made me look at everybody in the world differently, just valuing people's stories, and I feel in a way just like deeply connected to want to have people really feel their innate value because everyone's story is so amazing and incredible and deep.
But it's almost like people don't understand, Like you don't know what you don't know, do you?
And if all you've ever lived is your life, you just think it's normal.
You don't think it's exceptional until someone else maybe says that it is.
And there's just so many awesome people that I've met in this process.
You obviously being being like at the absolute top of the list for that, and yeah, it's it's it's been a twenty twenty five has been an awesome year and the last seven months has been beautiful.
Speaker 2How did it change you?
Like if you look at Jason before starting that course, and how you felt and what you thought you'd get out of it and who you thought you might become, I mean, did you think it become someone different?
And who's been shot out the other side?
Speaker 3I hoped that would be someone different.
I just thought I would have some more confidence and some more clarity around my messaging sort of my identity.
And I absolutely one of the things I think that's changed to me most drastically is I like you, you know, like I have a big background of you know, the whole imposter syndrome type of thing and questioning your worth, coming from difficult childhood and all that.
And now I can walk into a room and know definitively that I could walk into any speaking room and completely hold my own like I know I have and I've known for a while, but being able to step into like I know I've got a phenomenal, massive story, and I also know I have a gift.
So I'm like it's a double whammy combo.
Speaker 2Oh mate, Like when you delivered yours, I just stood there looking around like I was what.
I just kept looking at people goosebumps, and I was going, are we really seeing this?
Like?
Were we really witnessing this guy like this?
Surely an emerging speaker doesn't step on a stage and do what this guy's doing right now.
And I'm not even blowing smoke up your ass like I was.
I said to you, if I was the speaker straight after you, I would have shot out the back door and went now mate, going after that?
Not going after that?
It was like biblical, which is very apt word to be using for you.
Speaker 3Yeah, thank you so much man, that it's a really really awesome commment.
Like we were just talking about.
Then, the biggest thing that's happened in all of this is is just that identity shift of going, this is totally on my shoulders to have a red hot crack with it's it's not going to be an f but a win moment.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Yeah, how interesting is like this on this idea of our identity and who we are and who we think we are and all the stuff that's inside and all the work we do.
And I know you've done so much work in so many different ways over your life, and we're going to hear about I want to hear it.
I want to pretty much if we need to reel out your cup, your keynote.
Speaker 3But isn't it.
Speaker 2Interesting that still in the middle of all that work we do, it still takes stepping into something with complete uncertainty and imposter syndrome and then watching the roll out to convince you that, oh, I am this, or I am okay, or I am not shit, I am not broken.
I do have a story, Like isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3Yeah, totally man and like, but this for me is for me my own journey unfolding in real time of learning to overcome everything that people have said about me all my life and learning to go no.
I do have some actual here.
That's why I'm pursuing this path because to be an example for others, like it requires being able to overcome the fear.
And I had a really interesting conversation with one of my friends earlier this week who's got like a really hectic science mind, just not my kind, like this is not how my brain works.
But we were talking about imposter syndrome.
And he goes, I've got a theory that it doesn't actually exist, and it's just that you need more evidence to actually understand, like you need to be able to stand on a stage as an example, and go, yeah, I can do this, And then that part of the imposter syndrome or whatever you call it starts to break down because you've got enough evidence to know that that is actually true, that you can do what you were thinking that you couldn't do before.
And I was like, well, that it does make sense, doesn't it, rather than you know, we just branded as imposter syndrome.
But it's that we just don't have enough evidence to know that we're actually capable of doing the thing that we really want to do until we've done it, and then we do the next thing, the harder level, and the harder level, and every level you can I do it to five people, Can I do it to a thousand people?
Can I do it to ten thousand people?
And each of those stages you go, yeah, okay, I can do it.
And then this is an eveness based thing according to him, And it just seems to make logical sense to me.
Speaker 2Yeah, it makes me think of you know, and I talk about it a bit in mind.
That idea of the relationship we have with words and our emotions is like, I think sometimes we grab hold of words that other people use because we have an emotion and we go, oh, that must be that, and then we process it as that, and then that becomes our belief.
And it's funny because you know the amount of people that said to me before before doing this event that I almost bloody pulled out of because I'm a big baby.
The amount of people that were like, you'll be fine, and I just want to punch him in the face.
You'll be awesome, You'll just you'll nail it, you nail everything.
And I'm like, I appreciate the sentiment, cool, I appreciate your confidence in me, But also that's not true.
Anything could happen.
You don't know.
You actually don't know.
I don't know because this is a new arena or I'm stepping into but made not punch people in the face, Jason.
Is that a fair call or is that overaction?
No?
Speaker 3No, I think it's definitely a fear col a couple of years ago.
I'm not big on the whole news or resolution thing because I think it's a bit cliche, but I made a point a couple of years ago of really embracing putting myself in as many difficult and uncomfortable situations as possible because I knew it would cause me to grow.
So as as scary as these types of things are, I made a very intentional point of doing it and trying to be observant about how I felt in the moment, and that was a big thing about what happened on next stage for me is and I said this to you before as well, when t everyone else is like, I just want to be present.
I don't want to run away from the moment of feeling uncomfortable because I'm here for a certain reason.
It's so easy to go.
I just want it to be over and then not be present.
But it's through being present and the connection that we actually create that resonance that obviously impacts people, which is what you and I both got.
But of course that then means that we can we can actually grow and start to believe.
I think by having more and more successful experiences of overcoming hard stuff so that you talk about all the time like that, you get the evidence to go, Yep, I do feel really uncomfortable because this is a new level of hard.
But I feel confident because of all the evidence I've had historically that this is going to be okay.
Speaker 2Too, and I reckon like I think for me, I always talk about the idea of using your voice, like a lot of my story and the idea of that childhood stuff, that childhood trauma was around silence, shame and silence and not speaking up and not using your voice, which we don't want to realize the correlation between that and everything I do now, podcasting and speaking.
And it was like, oh oh, I said, obviously I was going to always take this path, was always going to become a huge value of mine and for yourself, I feel like it would almost be safety, like are you safe to be you?
So not so much the voice as much as the way I experienced it, but safety like you were never you weren't sure of your identity and you weren't sure if you were safe to who you were safe to be.
Speaker 3Exactly.
And I said this on a podcast with Jack a couple of a few weeks ago.
Was that I'd learned that the world couldn't be trusted and because the world had said to me that there was something wrong with me.
I thought that I couldn't be trusted either, so I couldn't even trust myself.
In a situation like that, you almost feel like you're going in saying because you're going what's true and who around me can I actually believe to guide me along the right path?
And this has been a big part of my overcoming personally as learning to know that the truth is inside all of us, and I had to relearn to rewire my comfort to actually know which direction I was going to and to listen to that still small voice inside that was driving me towards what was true and good in the world.
So, yeah, it's been it's this process has been massive, confronting, But this is I think the journey that we're all here to do is it's the self actualization of how far can we take our own lives to be of service to the rest of humanity.
And this is I think part of the journey that you're on, what you're trying to discover and then convey to the world, and what I'm doing as well, and what many other people are doing in their own corners of the world too.
Speaker 2Yeah, Yeah, let's hear a bit about your life, dude, what do you want to do and all of the things.
I mean, it's a big story.
Speaker 3Yeah, where do you want me to start to start?
Speaker 2Start start with mum?
Speaker 3Okay cool, so yeahm my mum was like one of those absolute prodigy children.
She had everything ahead of her.
At sixteen, she was training with the New Zealand Olympic Swimming tam She was taking the highest level piano exams in the world, and she was on trajectory to be like a world level pianist.
And she was about to leave school early as well to go and study dentistry at university.
So she was so so so advanced in all of these different areas.
And then one afternoon she decided to get on the back of a motorbike with the boyfriend that she had at the time, and they were cruising through a tiny little town at the top of the South end of New Zealand called Motawaka, and as they came to a round about, a vehicle came out of nowhere and failed to give away clip the back of the bike sent her flying.
She landed hard on her head, was instantly knocked unconscious and was rushed to hospital where she was placed onto a ventilator for life support, and the doctors came in and told my grandparents that she'd never be anything more than a bedside vegetable.
So my grandparents eventually decided to switch off the ventilader, but she breathed on her own, and that was like the first part of what shouldn't have happened.
So this was first part of the miracle.
But then my grandparents decided to take her home because after a few more weeks there was nothing really the hospital could do, and they felt like they wanted the hospital want to do bid back.
So then after six months, one afternoon, as one of my uncles was visiting, she woke up and the first thing she did was asked for a cigarette.
So she was always she wasn't she was an athlete, you know, she wasn't supposed to be smoking.
She wasn't supposed to be on that motorbike.
It was until the day my grandma died, she maintained categorically that her survival was a miracle.
There there's still no medical explanation for her survival.
But she's not she's not she wasn't the person that she was when she got on the bike.
She's totally brain injured.
Now today, when my wife met her in person a few years ago, she was like, I had an idea.
She's really unstable on her feet.
The conversation's really basic now, it's just like how's the weather type of thing.
She's got a full acquired brain injury and her the worst part was that her emotional regulation, that her ability to regulate her emotions was entirely gone, and she'd go from hysterically laughing to crying to rage just in the click of a finger.
And that would be a big part of my childhood.
But then yeah, so that was at sixteen.
Then ten years later she met this guy Mark through a classified ad that was in the local newspaper and he was seeking friends.
So she obviously decided she wanted some friends and met up with him and they had like a platonic relationship.
He had had a really long history of gangs in New Zealand.
He was a jockey five foot nothing like heroin addict for twenty years and then he eventually moved away.
But one Sunday, my mum was at church with the family and the priest was talking about like the good Samaritan type of story of like helping people that are downtrodden and outcast, and she felt convinced that she wanted to go and help Mark.
So my grandparents booked her a ticket for a week away to go and visit and help them.
And then one night, in the middle of the night, he snuck into her room and he raped her.
And she was a virgin at the time, and he'd snuck in their imagine this like raping a brain injured woman.
That's hectic.
So anyway, she came back home and then didn't really reveal anything about what had happened, but it was obvious to my grandma that she was deeply traumatized by something that had happened while she was away.
And then eventually my grandma coaxed out of her that you know, Muma said she she had been raped.
And then that's how I was conceived.
So until today, I still haven't met another rape baby.
Like, I know they're out there, but it's not you know, it's not something that I i'd ever met.
So I had this really dark identity shaped over my life.
My mum was not also supposed be able to have kids well after the accident as well, So you're Americ baby.
Yeah, So God had to literally perform two miracles for me to be alive.
Wow.
So it's yeah, it was always but growing up like it was weighed on me.
I thought that I'd been created to be destroyed because my life had looked totally different when I was as two years old, you know this stuff I speak about my key.
Two years old, I had my first psychology appointment because my mum was trying to kill me because I reminded her of being raped and I reminded her of him, of Mark.
So from a baby, she rejected me like a bird would reject a baby like I was rejected as a baby, and and she would do bad things, you know, like I have.
My mental health records were pretty thick.
By the time I left time at fifteen.
I've seen about twenty different clinicians, and there's reports in there that like, please see Margaret and Jason, because Margaret is having thoughts about wanting to kill him and it's taking her frustrations out on him and this kind of thing.
So she'd go to anger management courses and all this kind of stuff, and then there was reports written it's like she's not going to change.
She's got a brain injury.
But then I was thrown into psychology, psychiatry, child psychology from a very young age, and I was made out to be this problem child.
And I did have problems, right like I had problems because I was being raised in the super unhealthy environment where I was rejected by my mum and I was getting beaten and not by her, but I was being sexually abused as well.
So I was growing up in just a bad world, which is just not conducive to raising a young child that would grow up to be healthy.
So then I was being made out to be this problem child.
And I remember being nine years old.
I remember this clearly, and I went to this psychiatry session, and I'd seen so many different people by this stage, and I told them different parts of my story, but nothing I'd never been taken away.
And I went into the session because my mum, like I had a huge scar on my hands, which I still have on me from my mum had clawed me with her nails.
I can still see it.
And it was and I went into the session and I yelled at this guy at nine years old, and I was just so confused by the unjust, unrighteousness of the situation.
I was like, why do I have to come to these sessions when I'm the one that's being abused.
Why aren't the people that are doing this to me the ones that are coming here?
Like why am I coming to these appointments?
And I just refused to go.
And then at eleven years old, this is my report.
I went to a doctor's appointment and I begged the doctor to be taken away in front of my mum.
I told her what was happening, how her and my stepdad were beating me and doing bad things like that.
And in the report he writes and it goes to the police because it requires certain investigations and child Protective Services in his end, and he writes like, I can't believe this eleven year old kid spoke to me like this.
It seemed like he was a young adult the way he had to handle him asking for help and being brave in front of his family.
And then there was another investigation that started.
Another report was started through Child Protective Services, and the police went to my school and police started viewing my grandmar and all that kind of stuff.
But then the lady who was working at Child Family Services and New Zion left the organization and the investigation was lost for two and a half years, So this was the kind of stuff that would happen and then they never picked it up again.
So at the end of twenty twenty two, I said it a historical abuse claim with the New Zeon government, where they admitted fault.
They gave me an apology letter and just a measly amount of compensation money.
But it took four years to go through that process just because of the amount of claims that there are.
And this is a big part of the youth ad because he work in the space the I'm moving into now as well.
Just because it happens here, it happens all over the world on any of the western nations.
It's disgusting and children aren't being protected.
Now, I was just a statistic around that, but I'm one of the rare ones that comes out of that.
But it also makes me furious to go, well, how much of my life did I lose to not being protected, to not being taken away when I should have been taken away because they knew nothing was going to change.
They were like, she's brain injured.
So I spent little bits of time in foster care and that kind of stuff as well, but ended up leaving home at fifteen, dropping out of school at sixteen.
But in that time as well, I was an international athlete.
I did inline speeds, getting I went to the junior word Championships.
Who got top tens there?
I was a national record holder, national champion, international medalist.
Lots of people I raced went on to win Olympic titles and medals and stuff.
They're still racing now, you know, the Winter Olympics.
And so that was definitely my path and that's pretty much my That's a very very short version of my childhood.
Speaker 2Man, What was it like being foster child?
Of spending a lot of foster parents?
And I feel like, as much as it is a beautiful thing to do, people seem to be hamstrung in their ability to really care for or make these kids a part of their family.
And I've never actually spoken to a foster kid like yourself that had to be put into that environment, Like, what was that experience like?
Speaker 3So I didn't have to spend a huge amount of time and foster care, So I grew up my grandparents most of the time.
So I'd spend most of the week with my grandparents and then some of the week with my mom and my stepdad, which was always dangerous.
But then when my grandma went away or my grandparents went away, I'd have to stay in temporary foster care because I couldn't stay with my mom and my stepdad full time.
So the lady that I stayed with, she was basically just like sort of a guardian, like I wasn't there full time, so she didn't have full time access rights or anything like that, and she obviously just wanted to make my life as coumful as possible.
Or I remember she'd take me every time i'd go and stay there.
She'd take me to the lolly shop and she'd buy me those you know, those really big lollipops, the color full swirl ones.
I remember those so clearly.
They're really hard ones.
And I should just do things just to try and make me feel safe.
But it didn't ever feel safe, you know, like being out of your home, having to be an environment like that.
It was always scary, and childhood for me was a very scary, weird thing, and all I wanted to do.
The only place I ever felt safe was with my grandparents, but they were getting older, and as I got older and stuff as well.
My grandma couldn't care for me anymore because I was becoming too problematic.
I was becoming a real problem child.
The amount of people she had to get to kind of mentor me, and I had like a policeman coming around, like the senior constable in the town were coming around every week just to try and essentially scare me straight.
And yeah, it was.
So I can't give you like a full, like in depth detail of what it's like to be like a full time foster care it, but I think I think it would be very difficult and obviously there's not enough of it in Australia, are really any of these western nations, And the process, the time as well to get kids into care there's nowhere near good enough.
And again it's always the kids that end up suffering in these type of situations.
It's the resourcing isn't anywhere near what it should be for any of these things.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, so you went to the dark side before you came to the light side.
Tell me about those two decisions.
Speaker 3A man, I definitely went to the dark side.
So after when I was doing skating, after I finished with the International sport sports saved my life.
Like I was from thirteen years old.
I was an international athlete, so I was on doping registers and if we went on holidays and stuff that you'd have to report where you were going just in case they wanted to turn up and drug test you or whatever.
So sports saved me from a young age because really a lot of drinking or drugs and stuff was just not part of my world.
It just was not even effect.
It didn't it was not at all part of my world.
When I was sixteen and I went to Junior World Championships, We're training fourteen times a week.
I was see me going to school.
I had a girlfriend at the time, was trying to be semi normal.
The rest day was a fifty k bike ride, so you know, it was just it was a distraction.
It was teaching me discipline that school couldn't teach me.
But after I stopped skating and doing like sport like that, I went completely the other way.
And then I went into music at around eighteen years old.
I'd had a lot of history of music as a kid, and I decided I wanted to go onto music because for me, it was a way where I didn't realize it at the time, but I was chasing the world's adulation because I'd grown up in a world where I wasn't loved.
So I thought if the whole world loved me, then I'd be I'd finally feel loved.
So I chased.
I chased this, and I did like this really heavy rock rap type of thing that was kind of like a hybrid b routine Eminem and Marylyn Manson, and so I went down that path.
But it was just an excuse to be as vulgar and as hectic as I wanted to and just call it art, and I think that was what you could do with music.
So my shows were just hectic, hectic, and you got into a lot of trouble, got shows shut down, Like okay, So one show, pretty early on, I stuck forty liters of jelly into a venue and these big buckets and I had them behind the stage.
And then by the time we got about I think three quarters of the way through the show, I just started unleashing all this jelly all over the dance floor and chucking all over the venue, got all over the sound disk and stuff, and they even they had to shut the whole show down.
There was like a fight on the dance floor because everyone was slipping and falling over and it weren't mentally like.
They just shut the show down.
They called the cops.
And then the next day two of our band members quit because they were like this is just this was that was too much.
And then we're about to go on a North Island tour in New Zealand and the vin I'm only laughing because you're laughing.
I feel bad, like I look back at it now, but laughing because you were laughing.
And then and then the venue had to ring.
Every other venue we were about to go on tour too, and they were like if this guy, like, don't let this guy come, and they contacted all the other bands we were touring with and they're like, if this band comes on tour with you, you will not play.
So that was just one example.
That was one example of the types of thing, but it was it was worse than that, Like that was that was That's the PG version for Roll with the Punches.
So yeah, So anyway, I was doing a lot of music and then moved over to Australia when I was twenty one.
That was twenty ten, and then in twenty twelve, I ended up getting invited over to America to go on record with some massive producers.
Like this guy discovered Lincoln Park, Limp Biscuit, Corn Macy Gray, you know that pictures are you pictures on me?
He wrote that, like just just full on high level stuff.
And so we went over there recorded this EP, which is basically this guy is famous for being what's called A and R reps.
So his job was to discover acts and then get them signed to massive record deals and this is how he made his money.
So this is what he did, Like Lincoln Park and all of these guys, like he discovered them.
And that's so he lived at the very very top of the Hollywood Hills.
His neighbors were Quentin Tarantino and Jack Nicholson and he lived in Olivia Newton John's old house.
Like this was the very very top, and so this was the world that we were knocking and everyone was like you're going to make it, like you're absolutely you're about to like absolutely crack it right now.
And then we come back to Australia, everything just fell over and like I know this was supposed to happen because at that stage of my life.
I would have either ended up in prison or dead for sure, because I was just it was.
It was bad that stage of my life of where I was, and I was just a mess.
I was lost day so you know, I came back, I was really depressed.
Everything fell apart, My band fell apart.
From there, as it was meant to.
I took a couple of years off, but then I started like looking into essentially how I could get famous, and I totally went into the dark side.
Without going into a huge amount of detail, I went into some Satanic cults and literally joined Satanic cults and started getting going through initiations and with the intention of being able to promote my music and do all that kind of thing.
And this was the process of me really starting to lose my mind, and I was overriding my conscience, you know, like my conscience was screaming at me to stop.
Like through this point it was like you need to stop, because you're going to cross a line that you can't undo.
And I kept going further and further and further, and then it got to the point where I don't even I was just I was insane, Like I was literally insane at this point, and for two months straight.
I was trying to kill myself with alcohol, and I didn't even realize this is what I was trying to do.
So I would wake up at seven in the morning, drink a Leader of red Wine just so I could be asleep, and I'd pass out, and then i'd wake up again around mid day and I would drink another Leader of red Wine until I could pass out again because I just couldn't handle being awake.
And then i'd wake up again around six or seven pm, and I'd drink a third Leader of red wine and I'd either pass out again or i'd drive blind drunk to like KFC or macus my one meal of the day, and then I'd just pass out until the morning where I could do it again and again and again.
And I just got so so sick, like I was vomiting multiple times a day, just because the amount of acid that was in me because of all the booze.
And I got a call from my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, and she goes, if you don't check yourself into a site, wuards that I can never speak to you again.
Because I was When I drunk, i'd black out fifty percent of the time I would black out and it was no longer me inside.
I was a creature.
I was as like a full demon.
So yeah, ended up ended up going from there into a site card for three days, then too stabilization unit for three weeks, and then I was checked into the Dodgiest rehab in Sydney, where I was housed with thirty five guys, all of which had been paroled there as part of their release from prison.
And that for me was rock bottom.
And I sat there and that's when I had my thirtieth birthday.
So I was like whoa, And I was faced with this reality of like I was leaving my twenties behind, and I felt like it was almost a symbolic period where I was starting a new decade and I could either choose to do it differently or I knew that if I carried on again, I was in this position of I would either end up in prison or dead.
So the only option was to change.
Speaker 2How long were you in that relationship at this point?
And where did you guys?
Where?
And how did you guys meet?
Speaker 3Oh God, it is such a beautiful story of how we met.
We met on Tinder.
It is very beautiful, classic classic ausie romance story.
So we were, Yeah, we were together for probably gosh, it must have been must have been four years at that stage, because we've been together for eleven years now, so I'm just over seven years sober as it stands.
So yeah, that was.
That was it.
So we've gone through a lot, and during that time, it was just bad for her, like bad for her mentally, bad for her in every single way because I was just like I said, I was, I was a menace.
I was in a really bad story.
And I'm playing this down just to spare some of the gory details, but it was.
It was not good, and it got to the point where for her mentally, she had to she had to draw the line.
It was like, I have to walk away now because you're you're damaging me and everyone else around.
Speaker 2It's just dark, so interesting, you know, from the outside looking in to go, here's this person that back then, I don't know, maybe she liked the bad boy kind of identity and then knowing the person you are now, but realizing that she was there for four years of that and then drew this line in the sand and then has watched you become a completely different person and she's still there, like what a gift?
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, totally.
And this is like my book's about to come out in a couple of weeks and in the very you know, the start when you do like your dedication thing, I just said and to my wife, like you've seen me at my worst, you'll have me at my best.
And this was like she saved me man Like if it wasn't for if it wasn't for her, you know, I speak in my keynote about how it was the love of my grandma, the one person that that got me through that.
And then my grandma died in twenty nineteen and that was like just after I'd got out of rehab, and she never got to see my wife and I married or anything like that.
But she she knew, she knows Maddie, she knew Maddie, and it was it was her, like it was she's I don't know why she she's still all can't answer it, like people always go when they hear about like the depth of our story, they're like, why did you stay?
She goes, I don't know, I don't know.
She can't answer it, and I can't answer it either, But I'm obviously glad that she did.
Speaker 2What at what point did you discover or turn to faith and how did that come about?
How did your your relationship with God muscle in on the satanic?
Bloody rock boy punk fucking.
Speaker 3It was always there, you know, So even as even as a kid, I just knew God was real.
Like I I could look and I could see the world, and I could see the proof of Him and everything and all of creation and and all the animals and design and just in everything.
It was.
It was undeniable for me.
My grandparents kind of raised me with the basic faith, but I I wrestled with us and I got really angry with God because because I was raised to know that He was real, because of the life that I was given, I thought that I had been created to be destroyed and created to be evil, just because of the way that I came into the world, the circumstances of the way that I was raised, the unlike just the injustice that I went through as a kid of I was just like, what have I done to deserve this?
How do you justify that?
As a kid?
Like when you're a little kid, you know, five years old, six seven eight, going through your formative years, and you're in this world as like a child of rape, born to a brain injured woman that rejects you once you dared, does horrible things to you, you've sexually abused.
You're then chucked into these environments where people are supposed to care for you, like the psychological field, and they're making me out to be the bad guy without investigating or doing anything to take me away from the circumstance.
It just felt to me like I was trying to be broken, like mentally just broken.
None of it, none of it made any sense.
So I became angry at God because no one would listen, so I had all I had to do was yell out to the only thing left to yell out to, and it was like, just got furious, Why have you created me?
If this is what you've made my life to be?
So I always knew he was there, but then because you know, I went down this path and I was like, if you want a bad kid, then I'm going to give you the worst kid ever.
So that's why I ended up kind of going into the satanic world because it was really just like chuck in the middle finger up at him, and I was like I'm just going to I'll serve.
I'll serve the you're en of me then, like and I'll do a real good job of it.
But when I was in when I was in rehab, sitting there, it was like in that first few days, I saw a tiny bookcase that was in this rehab and it was like just all these books.
There wasn't many, but it looked like they were barely, barely touched.
It wasn't kind of the reading reading type of crew, but there was.
I looked through and there was this one book that I wanted to read and I'd always wanted to read, and I grabbed the Bible.
And because I was in this environment where I was, it was literally like a prison mentality this rehab, like everyone, as I said it, was paroled there as part of their release from prison.
So it was very much everyone acted like it was still prison and it was horrible, like it was horrible to be there.
So I just used to I would just take every moment I could that I wasn't an AA or a meeting type of things, and I would just read the Bible and somehow I knew it just had the answers to change my life.
I just knew it had the answers for me.
So I read it and I read it and I read it and I read it and just was like, I'm just going to start applying the things that are in this book to my life.
And I did and that was That was yes, over seven years ago, and this started the journey for me of coming, you know, coming back along along this path.
Speaker 2Do you think that if that book wasn't sitting in there accessible to your time, that you would have taken this path or found it eventually?
Speaker 3I think the book was always going to be there, you know, I very much.
If I look back in my life and I look at everything that's happened and it's happening now, I feel like I personally feel like there's a lot of orchestration to the path for my life and that I had to go to where I did.
I came from what I came from to go on the journey that I went on so I could be where I am now, to have the information that I do, to have I've been to do what I'm doing now.
I've had all the training that I would need through all of the years of music.
I have the discipline from all the years of sport.
I know how hard you have to work if you want to achieve anything, Like I've was given all of the education and all the specific disciplines and the things that I would need through my life, the skill to be able to stand on stage, to be able to hold an audience in the way that I did, Like I learned all of that stuff through music, and what I used for the dark side could just be flipped and repackaged and used for light.
So I think the book was always going to be there.
I can't imagine that it ever wouldn't have been for me to end up on this path.
It was just I had to be brought to that specific moment to be ready to accept it at that time.
Speaker 2How do you surrender and how do you whether it's process or let go or purge the weight of the emotions, the weight of the injustice is was those were those the answers you found in the book or was there a process?
Like how do you even do that?
Speaker 3Yeah, there is definitely a process through that kind of thing.
But it's this is the idea of if you want to talk about, like you know, biblical principles, then this is the process of two things it's the process of a what the Bible would call repentance, like acknowledging that we've done wrong by other people.
And this is where stuff like the twelve step process in like AA and NA is goodness based in spiritual principles, because a big part of that is having to admit that you've done the wrong thing.
And a big part of my early journey, I just felt really convicted to go back to everyone that I had heard, like had bad relationships with.
There was a lot of people and admit my fault and asked for forgiveness.
And it was it was a big whether or not they forgave me.
It didn't matter.
I was owning my part of it because I knew that in doing that, it meant that it was far less likely for me to go back and do it again.
By going to someone and saying, hey, you know, will you forgive me for what I've done?
I'm acknowledging that I've wronged you like this, and you know, if people overpaid me, Like there was an instance where I got overpaid at work years before, and I like contacted the account at the company.
I said, Hey, you guys overpaid me this, and I just need to pay it back, and he goes, don't worry about it, like, just just keep it, and I was like, I have to, Like I have to because it was I just knew I had to make things right with everything that I could, and this was just part of the process of my life was just starting to get cleaned up and I stopped swearing.
I used to swear a lot.
I've got swear words tated all over me.
Speaker 2You got sea bomb bro, you got sea bomb tatty.
I know.
Yeah.
Speaker 3So it was just it was just so part of my life.
And this may not be a big deal to a lot of people, but it was a big deal to me because it was just the way that I was representing myself.
And I hated liars, and I just was really strong on me that I needed to stop lying.
So I just made a really active effort to stop lying.
And it meant having to admit some really really bad things that I'd done.
That meant that I could lose a lot from it, important people, different things.
But I just was actively this process of knowing that I had to remove myself from my old life, and so there was the repentance process of that, and that was admitting that i'd done I've done wrong, because we all have right, we've all done wrong.
That's like a principle that's biblical or just a good person principle.
Speaker 2How do you Well, I get that, and I feel that, But then I think of this baby that was born into this injustice, and you go like, how did you get past that?
How did you go?
Well, like I hadn't done wrong before.
Maybe you did, I don't know, like souls and stuff, But how do you without proof go, I didn't do wrong before I got here, I was born into this shit storm?
How do you let go of that injustice?
Speaker 3Well, this is a big part of my journey and why I think I have the authority to speak on what I do was.
The other part is forgiveness.
A big part of any like the anything to do with the Bible as at being able to forgive.
And one of the principal tenants in there is that you can't be forgiven if you don't forgive.
So I had to go through this process of forgiving all of the people that had hurt me too, right, and this is why I was going through the process of asking other people for for forgiveness, regardless again of whether or not they did.
But I had to forgive my mum, I had to forgive my stepdad.
I had to make peace with my past and acknowledge that although I can't change it, I can define my future.
And for the majority of my life, I saw myself as a victim.
And I think one of the big things that's an issue in our society today is we feel disempowered because we expect that a government agency like child protection or the police are going to step in and save us, or someone's going to come and save us.
I was waiting for someone to save me.
I just was as crying out, begging, begging, begging save me, like you have to save me, you have to take me away from this.
And it poisoned me to the point where I saw myself as a victim, and then that poisoned my behavior.
So I started then living my life as a villain, right, And that's why I speak about how heroes and villains have an origin story and pain and trauma.
It's just the path that they choose from there.
But to rewire myself, going through the process of forgiveness allowed me to make peace with the past, and I realized that I had the power to control my destiny, that could control my future.
And I started to learn that all of the bad stuff that had happened to me had actually given me these amazing superpowers, like my ability to see things going on.
I see on a totally different level.
I'm so much more deeply conscious than most people because I've experienced the human condition in a way that most can only ever known theory like psychologists and stuff like that that in most parts are dealing theoretically right.
This is why I have credibility to be able to speak the way that I do and I have the insight that I have is because I've lived the life.
You get that through lived experience.
And I said this before we even started, is that I'd normalized my life.
I've normalized the story.
People like, Oh, isn't it really hard to tell?
Isn't it really hard to share?
No, because this is all I've ever known.
This is my life.
You know, if it's all you've ever known, it's normal.
And I think this is a big part of the stuff that we have in our will today.
As we've the definition of the word normal has been hijacked, and what people really mean is that it's common.
It might not be normal.
So I had a common experience that I had normalized, but it was categorically abnormal.
But I didn't know I had these superpowers until I started to go through life.
And for the most part, I'd thought that I was just weird and different, or you know, you get teased for being weird and different and thinking differently.
But it was because I was just deep.
I was deeper.
I'd live a different kind of life, and I was looking for deeper connection that most of this world doesn't seem to be able to offer, because most people just wear masks.
As you speak so so much about, so you feel like an alien, and I did feel like an alien.
My life was totally foreign to everyone else.
Is it my entire like the entire world, I don't know, And I'm not saying this for like a place of like pride.
I don't know other people that have a story like mine.
But it was all preparation for this.
So yeah, So there was the repentance, and then there was the forgiveness element, and forgiveness whether you believe in faith or not, like oh no, obviously a lot of your audience won't won't have a faith thing, and that's that's cool, like that's their thing.
But regardless, like if you've been through pain and trauma, forgiveness is really the only way that we can become free of the pain and not live as a victim to someone else, because without forgiveness, you will always be destined to remain someone else's victim.
You have to forgive if you want to not be a victim.
Otherwise there will always be the element of bitterness, that darkness inside that can easily be exploited, the hatred, that the animosity, the underlying sense of identity that says I was wronged, I'm a victim, I'm entitled to behave badly because that's what I thought.
And it's those little hacks in the system.
It's like we're a computer.
It's like were as humans are a computer system, and those bits of trauma are like hacks that we've been infected with a virus where our operating system doesn't quite function the way it's supposed to and doesn't take any outside influence for us to shut ourselves down through the self sabotaging.
But then we'll hack and we'll infect everyone else as well because of this wrong programming.
So I think that the forgiveness element is how we rewire and like reset essentially our system to being able to function properly.
Speaker 2I'm interesting, God, you speak so well on this stuff.
I'm interested in your relationship and experience now with and how you developed it with intuition, because with trauma and especially a little level you have experienced our body and our mind escapes, we dissociate.
I talk about dissociation a lot, and it's a super how that's why you were so damn good at sport because you learned you get to dissociate from reality and be something in the moment that's distracting.
How do you what is intuition to you now?
And how did you learn to trust that?
Speaker 3So it was being developed because I was in this world of extreme danger.
My mum, like I said before, could go from hysterically laughing to crying to rage literally with the click of a finger.
So I was hyper vigilant.
I was all looking and always aware of just the slightest shift in her energy because it would go from zero to one hundred literally like the click of a finger, and it would be dangerous.
She would turn become like a beast and like it was extremely violent and rapid, and there was only one door out of our house, so I had to learn to get there before she did.
Or I knew that there were times where she would have killed me if I had not got out of the house like I know that.
So I learned to always be watchful.
And then I learned because I was in psychology from such a lot from an early age, I was always watching, always watching when people's eyes and mouths said different things.
I learned to read people, and I learned to say what people needed me to say to keep myself safe because no one else was keeping me safe, and I didn't know I was earning these skills.
It was purely survival as a child, and I just I learned.
As I said, I left home at fifteen, so I had to learn to survive.
I wasn't prepared to leave home.
I was completely traumatized.
I thought once I left that I was going to be sweet.
I thought my problems would completely go.
I didn't realize that I was infected with trauma that followed me, and that my problems followed me wherever I went.
But as I went through the journey of growing up and going through all the different types of things that I did.
I was an observer.
I learned to blend in.
I dropped out of school at sixteen.
People don't normally talk like I do with the kind of language and the way that I can speak.
When you drop out of school, I don't have any formal education.
Like I'm someone that's watched humanity.
I've learned.
I've watched a spot patterns and others.
I can see generally when I have conversations, and as I said, I can feel things.
I can see what people have generally been through, and I've learned to spot the similarities and people that have gone through similar kinds of things.
And I've just I've listened.
I'm observant, But I would say that observants probably not a good enough, strong enough description for what I've I've had to learn to be able to survive and fit it so intuition for me coming round to that to answer your question, because that was what you originally asked, Was it it learnt?
I was learned to be trusted.
I learned through this process of being sober and not numbing myself through cigarettes, through drugs, through sex, through gambling, through drinking, through every type of addiction gambling that you could have porn whatever, all these numbing agents that this that I was always I always actually knew what was what was right.
And by putting myself in these more difficult situations, as I went further along my journey to I learned that my own inner war was accurate, you know, like I as I started to speak up more, I learned that people were like, yeah, that makes sense, that's true.
And as I speak about these deeper insight type of things, and I could speak to people that have gone through similar things, they go, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
So I started to learn that the way that my mind work was right.
And the more I trusted that, the more I kept testing it.
The more I kept testing it, the more I learned to trust that when I said something, it was right.
And I kept putting myself out there, kept putting myself out there to the point now where I speak confidently because I know that what I'm talking about is true, and I know that it is on a completely deeper, different level.
And when I listened to different studies, I listened to different podcasts, I listened to different people that speak on these types of things.
They're saying the stuff I've been saying for years.
I just knew intuitively, and it was that it was just in there, and I learned it by observing human behavior.
Speaker 2I think you're going to have to come back on for another conversation.
Speaker 3I love talking to you, happily, talk to you anytimes.
Speaker 2Great because I don't even I don't want to open the door on your father because there's so much I want to cover there, and you've just had your own son.
So I just feel like there's a whole nother conversation we can have here that I do not want to cut short.
You're so I mean.
I heard your keynote, I watch, I heard it from over the last seven months.
I heard parts of your story I watch.
I've got goosebumps right now because I'm remembering watching you deliver it.
I was beside myself.
But there's this other level of you speaking now that is just as incredible, and I'm like, and it I don't know, it's You're powerful.
You're going to change a lot of people's lives because there's something about the answers that just come out of listening when you speak.
Speaker 3It's pretty cool, pretty the real things.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah, and I'm learning this and this is this is part of the journey.
Like I said to you, this, this for me is part of the journey of being able to step into this is that I know, I know that I have a gift.
And it's more than just delivering a keynote.
I'm saying that I have a gift of understanding this stuff and being able to communicate it.
And people go that.
You know, people don't like when you say you have a gift or you accept that, but I'm starting to really go, no, no, I do actually have a very very special gift that maybe I can and pack people's lives by being able to communicate stuff that they've never been able to communicate.
And they just need to know that there's other people out there that are like them.
Like That's why I specifically, I specifically use X Men in my keynote because all of the X Men only had their powers activated through trauma right and all their life, most of them, until they realized that there was more mutants out there, they just thought they were fricks.
They didn't realize that they had the gifts that they did until it was put to good use, and it either drove them again to good or to evil, And by speaking, I've come to realize that there's more and more people like me out there, but they've been silenced and they haven't had the ability to be able to find their voice.
So by speaking and by stepping out and doing this, I'm hoping in a way to shine a light that then lets other people know and gives them the permission to go.
It's okay, you're not alone, and you can speak, and your gifts through the experience of the pain that you've experienced are going to be the things that can be your greatest gift to help them and part save some of humanity too.
Speaker 2Yeah, And it's like, I don't know from my experience sitting here right now, I feel like some of the questions I've asked are questions I have, but the moment I thought of asking them, you emanate the answer.
It's like I asked them for the sake of the conversation.
But I can see the like I can see or feel the answer, okay, just by watching you talk in the lead up, and it's like, I feel like I just learned the answer to this before I even asked the question.
That's like, which feels weird to me.
It's a cool it's a cool thing.
So you're you're a special dude.
Tell people where they can find you, follow you, how they can book you to deliver that keynote.
Keynote.
Let's get you out in front of all of the you know, kids out there that have choices to make in their own lives.
Speaker 3Yeah, okay, this is like, this is weird for me.
You know, like I'm not a big I hate the whole self promotion thing and it's kind of part of the battle.
I think we're kind of you're good at it.
You're really really good at it that it's been something that I've kind of head from for a while.
You can follow me on Instagram at Jason j dot P for Papa dot lithe, B for Bravo, l y t H Jason dot p dot lithe.
And you can find my website at Jasonblythe dot com.
And you can email me to book me for the keynote at info at Jasonblythe dot com.
And man, I was honestly such an antif to like be able to sit here and have these conversations with you.
I it's awesome.
You know, you've got a You've got a gift man to be able to have these type of conversations and peel these layers back.
And I'm just gonna like quickly take this moment as well to congratulate you and to to give you a bit of a bit of a puff up too, because you you do have a gift.
And I love that you came, not that you were in your shell, but that you just let yourself have fun on that stage too.
And I've I feel blessed to have been in your presence over there so closely over these last seven months as well, and I I feel like I'm just I'm just excited to be part of your journey too and to see the difference that you can make.
And I really hope that our paths, just say, stay interlocked for many many years to come.
Speaker 2Dude, I'll be making sure of it, don't you worry about that.
Everyone go check it out.
I'll have links in the show notes.
And I am not joking when I say that keynote is well worth getting booked, So go handbook it.
Thank you, Jason.
We're going to talk again, so bad luck if you don't want to.
Speaker 3Thanks for that, Thanks Tiff.
Speaker 1She said, it's no never I got fighting in my blood
Speaker 2That a