She said, it's now never.

I got fighting in my blood.

I'm tiff.

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Welcome?

Hey, tif, I love a bit of tiffness on my Tuesday.

We've landed in the same room as each other twice this year, and it was time to drag you into this room for a chat.

I agreed.

I know what a great community the old speaking community has turned out to be.

I love it.

I love I seriously walked into that room in June and got talking to people, and I'm like, I think I found my people.

I think I've found my people.

I've been looking for our community that was sort of all about lifting other people up and filled with people who want to make their own little dent in the world.

And that was just like juice for my soul.

And I'm like, I have to be part of this and I want to be around these people as much as possible.

That is exactly how I was.

I was like, I'm big on that.

I'm big on that energy in a room, and I just could like to go to Gold Coast and sit in a room with what was this seventy or eighty people or something, but to go, Oh, I feel like I'm hanging out with my people and I haven't even met most Like I've met maybe five to ten of them, Max, But I feel like this is the room full of my people that I've known all my life, and they all want me to do well and I want to hang out with them.

How awesome is that?

That's so cool?

Yeah, I knew nobody when I walked in.

I'm just going, how'd you land there?

It's the cold outreach email.

I think I'm not exactly sure.

I'm still trying to unpick how it got there.

I think somehow Jacqueline ended up in my not spam folder and it was weird, Like the book come out in May, and then this thing was on in June, and I'm like, I want to stand on stages and I want to learn about how I can transition from what I'm doing into speaking more.

And it was like this serendipitous moment, that's there's this business a speaking conference on and it's really easy for me to get to, and so I just went along.

And now there's like ninety people that know my nickname.

And I did a speaking gig on Sunday, got up and told a story on Sunday, and there was like ten people from that same room that we met in June together in the audience, smiling back at me as I was telling my story so such, so powerful, so good.

And I don't know.

There's one bloke that was in our pro the seven month program I've just done with Jack, who we were all kind of sat talking about how we ended up there, and he was like, actually, actually, I think while I was in Brisbane we went out for dinner.

I went for dinner with him and his wife and I was like, so, how did you, like, how did you land in Jack's world, and he was like, I actually don't know, because like I don't know, I don't know.

I just I'm in the course and I don't know how.

I don't know how.

To that's crazy.

But we also figured out, and I don't know how we figured it out, but that our parents know each other in Tazzy.

They do, Yeah, they do.

I was like, I met this Tiffany Cook chicken.

She's a boxer and she grew up in Tazzy and I think she's on the Northwest coast.

Somebody, do you know do you know any Tiffany Cook?

He well, I know this the Cooks that you used to live in the Turner's Beach.

Yes, and they had the store.

And I'm like, what, how do you know these people?

So yeah, So now every time I speak to my dad he asks about you.

Oh that's so good.

Yeah.

In fact, my dad asked, just the other day, have you spoken to that boxer girl again lately?

I'm like, yeah, actually I saw her the other day.

So good.

What what made you want to get into speaking.

There's two, probably two elements to it, tiff and maybe you can resonate with the first one.

I'm I grew up playing a fair bit of sport, and I don't play that much sport anymore.

If I do, it's not super competitive.

But standing on stage and those moments just before you stand on stage and the moments after you get off stage are like little snapshots into the pregame nerves and the postgame exhilaration that comes from competitive sport and if you can learn to sort of tap into that.

So it's a bit addictive to have that you do the work, you prepare, you execute, and you get the results at the end of it side of thing, And it just reminded me a little bit of that.

That's sort of the first reason is that many people get, you know, is that Jerry Seinfeld quote, if you're asked to give the eulogy at a funeral, ninety nine out of one hundred people would prefer to be the person in the box and the person giving the speech.

So some people struggle struggle with that, but for me, it's a real People confuse anxiety with excitement and nervousness with you know, energy that you're stretching and striving.

So I'm pretty good at differentiating those two.

And for that reason, I really like that the preparation and the execution elements of that.

The second reason is that I come to a realization, maybe ten years ago tif that I wasn't doing enough of the stuff that really gave me energy.

I was doing a lot of stuff that people expected me to do and not enough about what I thought was really important to me to do.

So what I realized was I did a little values exercise, and out of the values came so two core values for me.

One is growth and the other is connection.

And I define those as growth as being a little bit better the application of my energy each day.

I apply that to me, the people I interact with, the things that I've products and that I've got to generate, whatever it might be.

But if I can apply some of my energy to it and make it a little bit better, then I get a lot of positive sort of fulfillment from that.

And then connection is I don't want to have a million connections.

I don't want to be some type of Instagram influencers who checks their followers count all the time.

But when I talk to somebody, I want to strengthen the connection that I have with them, and I do that by asking what I call big talk questions so, and what I found was that when I leaned more into those two things, not only was I more effective at work, I was happier, more content and more fulfilled.

And the thing that I found the most that lent into those two values was having one on one conversations with other people about how they could potentially improve and get a little bit better.

And that inspired me to eventually write a leadership and personal development style blog and I did that for like one hundred weeks.

Every Tuesday, I just released a blog post and eventually turn that into a book just this year and release that this year, which tries to summarize all of those types of conversations I've had over time.

So sort of the culmination of that is I love talking one on one with people and helping them be a little bit better in their leadership journey.

I like doing one to more, like small groups and getting together.

And I think if you really want to have an impact, you've got to do it one to many.

So one on one's good, wonder more's all right, but one to many is where you can have the biggest impact overall.

And the most effective way of getting one to many reach is standing on stages and talking to people.

So that's my motivation tip.

I want to help as many people as I can stop pivot the way they think about how they show up in the workplace and potentially be the leader that somebody else in the workplace needs them to be for their special moment.

And I want to do that by trying to reach as many people as I can, and I think the most effective way to do that is is to get in front of their people and teams on stages or in front of classrooms doing workshop facilitation and stuff.

So that's sort of that was a really long witted answer to say, I'm a competitive little shit.

It's still like speaking, and I think that I've got something useful to say that might help a bunch of people have a less sucky workplace, and so I want to get on stages and try and help them fin Did that shitty leadership?

Yeah?

Did that come from a place of like, what's your journey with work being?

Where did you Where did you start?

Where did you think you were going?

And was it being at the on the receiving end of shitty leadership or seeing shitty leadership or maybe at some point modeling shitty leadership that made you want to get better at it?

What was the journey?

Yeah, So I grew up in the Top Gun generation.

Tiff and my best friend and I watched Top Gun in like year seven or eight or whatever, and he was going to be he was going to be Maverick and I was going to be Goose and we're going to go flying around in the sky.

So maybe I was Maverick.

I'm not sure, but maybe not Maverick with these but I was always destined to be an engineer.

But we went we're going to be Maverick and Goose together, And so I got this seed plann and I was going to join the Air Force.

And there's not a lot to do in the northwest coast of Tasmania if unless you get out of there.

So I'm like, that's a good opportunity to get out as well.

So I had in this sort of seed planned.

My mate left a high school in year eleven, dropped out and joined the Navy to fix engines on boats.

And I'm like, well, I'll still join the air Force.

So I joined the Air Force as an avionics technician.

So I was working on electronics on aircraft and eventually did an engineering degree and as you go through the military, you're expected it's just sort of get promoted in the different levels you're expected to do leadership development courses.

They take you out of the workplace for a few days at a time, depending on what level you've been promoted to, and trying to educate you on understanding team dynamics, understanding strengths and weaknesses people and the team, becoming aware of policy and processes that the military utilizes around leadership.

And it was, like I said to you about ten years ago, I was going through going through a divorce and marriage breakdown.

I was pretty unhappy with how I'd been showing up and leading myself outside of work.

Work felt like the safe zone for me.

I was excelling at work and people were giving me lots of pats in the back and going great work leon but at home I wasn't getting any of that validation as the marriage sort of broke down and I felt like I was failing my kids.

And at the same time, I got sent away on this leadership promotion course down to Canberra for two weeks, standing laying down on these little single bedrooms with a little sink in the mirror and a mess kitchen up the hall on a military base, and I was just stuck there for two weeks and we covered famous military campaigns and we talked about military management principles, and we had discussions about perhaps how he might do a coaching conversation with a junior person.

But I was sitting there in that room, going this is not cutting it, Like, this is not going to help our leaders become better leaders.

They got promoted to this level because they were really really good at what they do, and we're not preparing them for being really really good at leading people to get stuff done.

And so I was on that course.

So given a book by an air traffic controller and the book was called Turn the Ship Around by David Marquay, and he was a US Navy submarine commander and he trained up for like six months to get ready to go on too a certain submarine in the US Navy Fleet, and then in the last moment they switched into a different submarine that he knew nothing about.

So he had to switch from being like a know it all.

I know, I know the submarine, I know all the systems, I know how people interact with the systems to go into a completely new submarine type, and it happened to be the worst performing submarine in the fleet.

And it tells his journey of turning it around by instead of telling people what to do, asking them what they're going to do.

And it just made so much sense to me that why within the military, why don't we start to think in this way?

Why do we always feel like we have to push all of the information up to the top of the chain of command so that they've got information and can make a decision instead of giving them some constraints about what they can do, but let them make decisions at their levels.

And he implemented a whole of different systems to help him do that, and he went from the worst performing ship and the fleet to the best performing ship in the fleet in his time there, and had a higher promotion rate of all the junior people on the fleet.

And I was reading that on a weekend when I was meant to be learning military leadership from the military leadership people, and I'm like, this book just made so much more sense to me than everything that I've been tried and to be told on my leadership journey.

And so I was like, if I can get this one piece of information in my head and internalize it and realize that I need to show up differently.

Perhaps I need to help other people come to that same realization.

So I was sort of two factors to answer your question.

One, I didn't feel like I was leading myself very well.

I felt like I was being incongruent, like I was excelling in some areas and failing in others.

And so I'd rather be really good in every area than exceptionally in one and not so good in others.

And that I thought that leadership was being overly complicated in how it's approached and that the military wasn't quite getting it right.

So I took it upon myself to start sending emails to everybody at work with his leon's leadership thoughts, and I called them leaderships, and I invited people to have conversations about them.

And I just tried to introduce a little bit of a change in the organization.

And like I said to you, I started to affect people one on one, and I started to affect people one to a few, so me to a couple of people.

But I didn't feel like I was having the reach I wanted to have.

So that's why I wrote a three hundred page business card called a book, and now I get to try and work with other people and their teams to try and the same sort of gifts of introspection and revelation that I had to work for as I went through my career.

What are probably the most important principles for leaders that aren't generally at the top of people's list.

Yeah, so I might ask you that, Tiff, what do you reckon that you've done.

You've had a lot of good trainings, like people to help you in your life.

You've done lots of different things that you've generally done well at.

What have you seen that differential people, differentiates people that are really good for those that are not memorable?

I have for as long as I can remember, I have spurted out the saying lead by example, and it's a huge value of mine personally.

I lead by example.

I go first, and I am I am just really honest.

I have a real aversion, a visceral aversion to mask wearers, which is why so much of my keynote talks about masks and personas.

I have a real trust switch on that.

So I think for me, I mean, I don't work in corporate leadership spaces like you do.

But yeah, I think being human, saying when you're wrong, saying when you don't have the answer.

I mean, they would probably be my top three.

That when that's when I will follow someone, when they are willing to say I don't know, I'm not sure they did this fucked up.

Yeah, that you can develop a lot deeper empathy and connection with people and you realize they're not perfect right when you stop, when they when they're comfortable enough to step down off this pedestal that you've put them on, whether or they deserve to be there, and just be real with you.

So I think there's probably three things answer your question if The first is that until you can lead yourself, you don't deserve to leave anybody lead anybody else, right, And so that was a realization that was really impactful for me.

I was I'm going to be not humble here, but I was really really good at my job.

I was always really always getting stuff done.

I was the person that they could give the problem to.

I could go away and fix it, but I couldn't fix the problem as to why my marriage was failing, why I couldn't show up in the same way and get the same results at home until I realized that, like I said, I was not.

I was trying to be trying to focus on external validation, so people telling me I was doing good things, then internal validation of leon, you're doing the hard work and you can get better, and it doesn't matter if anybody else notices it matters.

It matters that you acknowledge the fact that you're growing yourself.

Right.

So I had to make that shift from external validation internal validation.

But I personally believe the I think it's John Maxwell quote that the most important team you'll ever lead is a team of one, and if you do that right, you earn the right to lead more people.

So that's I want to ask a question before you move on to the other ones.

I want to ask, how does a person know?

How does a person have the self awareness to know whether or not they are leading themselves?

Well, like, what if their eye is so firmly on this prize of the leadership label and the aspiration to go and lead and do something, how do we know?

So my personal belief, Tiffany, is you can measure it.

You can identify it by looking at how you're measuring success.

So too often people have an external measure of success.

If I get when I get promoted, when I get the pay rise, when I seal the contract or win the deal or whatever it might be, or you know, win the fight.

Is that it's an external measure of success, and when you talk to people that instead have an internal measure of success.

So I'm going to set myself goals to achieve or want to improve in this area.

I acknowledge that I've got growth to do in this area, and I want to do some work to develop it.

I want to see these other people around me succeed in this way, and I want to help them lift up through my contribution to their to their work rather than being you know, the finish line is not the goal.

The work that goes in to getting you towards that, So focus on focus on the systems and processes, not the outcomes.

So what the stuff that you can control, not the stuff that you can't.

So I think that's the first measure.

The second is what i'd call and I mentioned to you before, how I did some work to identify my values.

How much of your daily activity and actions and behaviors are in alignment with your values?

And how much of it is you have you're doing because it's expected of you by the environment in which you're in, but isn't in alignment with your values.

So that'll be the second the second measure, and then the last one would be that you know, if you want to go far, go alone.

No, So if you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

And so who you're moving with, what's your circle like?

Who have you surround?

And we mentioned we started this talk talking about the people we met in the room right that want to make a little dent in the world and are really supportive of lifting each other up.

And I'm a big believer.

If you don't have that mentality of my role is not just for me to succeed, it's for us to succeed, and what can I do to help you in achieving that, then you're not self aware enough of your role in life and your role in the people around you, and you potentially need to refocus that so that maybe answers my question and any of those jump out to your tiff is super important.

Yeah, absolutely, I remember what that idea of values I remember years ago doing I think it was John D.

Martini's little values determination process, and I would have it would probably be over a decade ago, and I just started business networking, much to my disgust, I was part of a company that merged and one of the owners was part of a B and I it was like, you're in sales.

I'm going into production after this merger, so you're you can take over this.

Oh dude, dude.

The terror of doing a sixty second introduction in front of sixteen people in Saint Kilda Road was fucking palpable.

I was terrified, but that was a tangent.

I didn't need to go on for the values determination.

But the point I want to make is I remember doing these questions, and I remember at the time because it's kind of after a while I'd got I liked I loved seeing people who could captivate a room and influence and shift energy.

I really always appreciated that my dad had an ability to do it when he gave speeches at family things, and it used to just lodge itself in my heart.

I had a boss who would do it in print, and he wasn't all that, he wasn't doing anything hugely inspiring.

It would just literally be a tip, but there was something about the way that he shaped his words that I really appreciated and the way that that could influence a team.

And so I remember doing this values determination and thinking I kept saying I'd like to do speaking, but thinking that's not going to show up.

And then when it churned out my results, it was really high on the list and I kind of didn't I wasn't identifying it in my answers.

So that was really interesting to me.

Sometimes I don't think we're aware of our actions and our values and how they align.

So I think that is an important one.

Yeah, it's really I think that your values are like though, is like energy buckets, right, and you have to do you have to have regular actions or behaviors that put the lines of your values to fill for your bucket.

Right.

That's the fuel that moves your moves your body and motivates you to do things without If you don't fill that bucket up, you're running on empty.

You're trying to work on determination to get things done rather than inspiration and motivation.

Yeah.

Yeah, before boxing, I remember i'd unrecognized, but I realized that I would do things that people said I was good at if there were, if I was a sure bet, so never took my gym gear to school.

But come the athletics carnival, I would win first in one hundred, two hundred, four hundred meter sprints and all of the jumping events.

And then I'll go to into high into club like the inter club competitions.

So I would annihilate that I was the superstar of the day, spend my gym sessions actually smoking cigarettes, Mum's cigarettes behind the bloody behind the gym when getting in trouble for not in inverted com was bringing my gym gear.

Then I'd have to race against the other schools and they all trained, so I was the shittert so I hated it.

So I was like this one day where I know I'm going to be the best in the superstar, I'm all in, and then this next day where I'm against people that actually trained, hated it, didn't want to go.

Boxing was the first activity that came into my world at twenty nine where despite having a win in that first like that twelve week challenge and the hell that it was and the terror and the fact that I wasn't good at it and it was embarrassing, it was embarrassing to be that uncoordinated and not feel good at it and not be a sure bet.

And it was so hard, the work was so hard to turn up and do that.

And then for some reason I got to spat out the other side and I was like something kept pulling me in and I'm like, what what is this?

Because I don't do this, I don't do the hard thing.

I don't do.

I do the sure bet and no one, no one has told me I'm good at this, So that really cap That was really interesting to me.

I've had a similar story with I call it gold star behavior tiff, where you do the thing that you know you're good at, yes, because you know you can get the little gold star pinned on your chest at the end of the day, and anything that you're even potentially marginally a little bit shit at, you just I didn't try.

But I didn't try.

I wasn't trying and it wasn't hard.

So you never have to put yourself out there and risk potentially trying really hard and still not being good enough.

You only do the things that you know that you're going too.

Thought, I was a big sucker for that gold star Go Sar validation and some of the stuff I had to unpack with the psychologist.

So I was going through the divorce and trying to get a little bit better.

Was how do I how do I stop this little kid inside of me always seeking out the activities that he knows that he can get gold stars out instead of doing the hard ship that he might be the last finisher and never get a never get any acknowledgment for the work that he put in.

But he's better than he was the day before.

And so I've struggled a lot with that internal child and trying to to acknowledge the fact that that internal child is still very, very motivated by pats on the back and added boys and we're joking about championship belts and gold medal.

It's just just today, right, I'm like, I feel called out.

You're still going to fight against each own fact.

I lost to you in a speaking competition at that conference we went to.

I wasmingming you because that.

Was a very funny, funny story.

You told I the beauty of a sport like boxing, and I think it was the gift to me.

Was this unders standing that there is a winner and there is a loser.

There is no second best right, but also shittest sport in history for being a measure of success, because you are a winner based on your performance on the day with one person who stepped in the ring with you with the only things to measure are you have a body weight, a three kilo body weight to match, right, so you're equal in body weight and number of fights.

So we get people get these belts and people choose to fight or to not fight.

But Australia is the worst.

People people are choosing fights, They're getting fights imported from overseas to bump up their ranks.

You get bad decisions.

Judges can just not like you and decide that Like my particular coach, especially in my first image fight, not well liked in the amateur scene.

My housemate had had fights under him.

So I knew in my very first fight, the one I spoke of in my keynote, I knew that I that I had to win convincingly because if I just won, I wouldn't get the win.

So when I won, you would like, if you watch the end of that fight, you would think I just won the fucking tats lotto, Like I just set myself.

I was like, oh, my God.

But I think to be in a sport that means so much to you and to consciously have those realizations along the way that hey, this is no measure.

Hey no one cares.

I'm getting my head pummeled and no one actually cares.

Doesn't mean anything to anyone but me.

And also the w or the l that I get at the end of this that also has no meaning, Like how wild is that?

Yeah, that's hard.

I mean, I'm sure you've had losses that have taken a little while to soaken as well.

I had a loss in twenty nineteen that was I had a win when because I'd had three or four years break probably one, I can't remember, maybe three.

Anyway, first fight won it.

The girl was way heavier.

I was so miserable about my perform I was like, don't even that was the worst performance.

The next fight I lost on split decision.

Best.

Oh, you could have sworn again that I'd one test lot.

I was like five round five or six rounds, I think first first one of that length.

Super happy with the two things that irritated me.

In the first fight I lost on split decision.

This chick was hundreds of fights, like she'd had so many more fights than me, and I was like, you don't even have to tell me that was good.

That was good.

And I was like, t if you lost, I'm like, I don't care.

I just I won that.

I won me, which is a weird experience because it's like, mate, there's all these people in this room just saw you lose.

Like that's the that's the How old were you in that fight?

One that was in twenty nineteen, So I'm in my thirties.

So here's the thing I reckon And I don't want to be I don't want to focus too much on age as the delineator in this, but I truly think it's the case.

I think there's a moment in your thirties where you reade fine success for yourself, I think, and some people never get there, and that's for whatever reason, maybe they haven't had to go through those crucible moments that you talk about, Tiffany.

But from my perspective, I think there's a moment in your thirties where you switch from trying to achieve everything everybody else tells you should do to here's what I think I need to do and what I want to do that will help me be happier.

And I don't think you can get there until you're in your thirties.

And I think it takes a crucible moment that you've got to You've got to go through it.

You can't go around it or over it.

You have to go through it, Chick.

There's no cheats way through it.

You've got to go through it to come to that realization, because it forces you to sit in introspection and reflection and think about why am I motivated for the things I'm motivated and are they still important to me?

And so I think for you, like if I chatted a fair few times Stiff, I know I resonate with you.

I'm a competitive person as well, and the measure has always been where you finish, until it becomes not about that, and it's about how proud you are of what you've overcome, the effort you put in your ability to follow the plan that you put in place for yourself and follow the systems and structures in a way that it made you feel that you gave it your best shot.

That motivated changes a little bit, and I feel like it happens in your mid earlier mid thirties.

I don't feel like you can get there in your twenty if I don't think your self awareness is enough your sense of health perhaps rather than self awareness, but your own self identity is rich enough to be able to start to pick that apart.

I think it's also maybe we have to we have to achieve the wrong things, or we have to have an expectation of what achievement's going to mean and get to something to realize that there's something isn't the thing that we want.

Yeah, there's an analogy of working so hard to push your ladder up against the wall and build this ladder and climb and climb and climb and climb and get to the top of the wall.

I need to realize once you get there that you've put the ladder up against the wrong wall and you aren't even climbing in the right direction, and you've got to go back down and put it against a different wall and start climbing over there.

And that analogy is quite rich for me, because I think it's true.

But what I've realized, I think in that time, is that if you do do that work and you redefine what success means to you, that you become more successful and happier and more content and fulfilled, And you'll lead a much richer life than the one you would have left if you kept striving for success in the wrong direction.

So what did you learn about you in the middle of the failed marriage?

Many things that I think that we are as a nation, even as a global entity, the human race, becoming more disconnected from human connection by the amount of technical barriers that we put in front of places.

So I found that I was fighting so hard to look perfect that I could never be excellent at anything.

And I'll talk about the difference between those two in a minute.

And so what I realized was that I can't fight for perfection and have people understand.

We talked about it at the start in your response that people that say I don't know, people that say I fucked up, people that say I'm not sure what we should do, and I'm a bit worried about the future and what we're trying to achieve.

People that are honest enough to have those conversations can't also be perfectionists, right, because they exclude those two things.

So what I found was that I was holding so tightly to this identity of good enough.

You know, I'm great at this things.

I'm good at everything that I was, excluding all these other parts of my life where I wasn't that and I wasn't brave or courageous enough to be able to have those conversations with other people who I was worried about, breaking down this veneer of being perfect along the way.

So just on that, I think perfection shuns external criticism.

Perfection is an internal locus.

I believe it's good enough.

I think that I'm good enough.

I've done the thing as well as it can be done, and I think it's good.

Whereas excellence seeks external feedback.

So I've done this thing, can you help me make it better?

I don't know how to do this thing?

Can you help me start the strategy?

So it seeks external feedback.

And so when I made that shift, the big shift for me tift was to forget perfect and strive for excellent, and that meant giving away your own internal measures of enough isms and starting to talk to people in a real and honest way about what you're trying to achieve, why you're trying to achieve it, why it's important to achieve, and having them support you along the way because they understand where you are and where you're trying.

To get to.

So I love that.

How what what do you what was the process?

Like, how did you like you mentioned psychology before, how did you work with some of the stuff that you learned?

I think I was.

It's odd to say we talked about being gold star before TIF right, I was a gold star student inside of the psychologist's office as well, Like whatever they gave me a piece of information, I'd go away and I'd research and I'm like, right, leand how can I apply this?

And I come back to the psychologist and I'd like trying to hand my homework in and tell me I'm a good guy, like telling me I'm a good student psychologist, And I'm like, no, it's not about understanding information and doing your own research and thinking about how it might apply to you.

It's about choosing to take the information and then show up in a different way based on this shift in understanding that you have.

And so that I mean that it's brutal to do, right, because it's easy to be.

It's easy to be like I'm good at learning all the information.

I guess it's the difference between problem the talk about don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions, and too often we get we identify solutions, but they turn into just solutions that we admire.

We get to, oh, yeah, I know I need to do that, but you don't do it because it's hard or uncomfortable or it makes you feel weird, and so you don't do it.

And but you know what you need to do, but you don't do it.

And so that was that was a pivot for me with a psychologist was yes, I understand, here's these different models.

Understand I need to show up differently and think about things differently.

And then you go greatly on are you doing it?

I'm like, no, I'm not.

I'm not doing that.

So for me, I think that the key part was if that I was showing up like I mentioned to you before, incongruently, I was aiming for excellence in one area and not willing to do the work in the other area.

I didn't know a part of how to get to the answer, so I didn't so I didn't even try and walk down the path.

I didn't interact with people that might help me git down that path.

What I found was when you when you stop fighting to hold everything together and start being brave enough to let other people in.

Then you start to have a shift in the way you show up in the world, and then that shift is an evidence of progression in a certain direction that reinforces the journey that you're on.

And then bit by bit, just bit by bit.

I mentioned it the other day, it's just tiny moments of unarmored leon's just stucking on top of each other where you just drop the armor of perfection and you just show up without any armor, and you get hurt a little bit along the way, but you've got a network to help you through it.

So I know your keynote Tiff Hooks leans heavily into that, and I absolutely resonate with it as well.

Is that you just got to keep showing up even if you get hurt sometimes or it hurts to show up in that way.

Yeah, I know.

For me, I found like the idea of looking in the mirror and discovering something about yourself is a really profound moment.

And then for me it was followed by an incredible amount of frustration and angst because it was like, well before I realized this was the catalyst for who and how I am, I had a pretty cool story and it felt good and I felt empowered and I was the fucking tough guy and without doing things and my story was real solid and that was cool.

And then I had the I don't know wisdom or courage or opportunity or whatever it was, but I came to a point in life where questions I asked myself, questions, I made discoveries.

I realized that there was some shit I had to deal with.

And then it was like, for a moment that felt really promising and hopeful.

I'm like, fucking yeah, I just discovered this.

Whooa, we're on the path.

And then it's like this what felt like a long time of what what now?

Like what's the point?

What's the point of doing the work that?

What do I do with it?

How do I change it?

Because I've been me for thirty something years and now I've realized that there's a part of me that's got some flaws that need to be that that can be worked on.

And that was so fun, you know, like sitting in the being okay, we're sitting in the mess.

And then I think further to that, I almost look at life now and go, we will We're have this.

We developed this idea that we're over the humph.

I learned this lesson.

I'm going to tell the world and then I'm going to share this and we're on the way, and it's like, mate, you probably aren't even that's probably the one tiny little pot Oh, you've just gone over that way till you see what's coming life.

Yeah, it's one of that that being you mentioned it being brave or well supported enough to sit in the pain.

People grow when they're uncomfortable.

So doing hard things forces you to grow.

But if you're in pain, you'll end up changing, and it might not.

Some people don't positively change.

Some people get pushed into that pain and they make decisions that lead them into a path that's perhaps less positive.

Others get into that pain and they make some decisions that helps them come out of it in a positive way.

And other people don't deal with the pain.

They just try and numb it.

So they just they immerse themselves in a thing.

Whatever it might be, you know, it could be.

It could be any type of addictive substances.

It could be social media or trashy TV, or talking shit with your mates all the time and that makes you feel good.

In the moment in the boxing ring a few times to do a different hard thing to so you don't have to deal with the other hard thing.

There's plenty of plenty of the adventure racing industry is founded on that.

I think so.

But if you're if you're not brave enough to And for me, I numbed for a long time in that lead up to the marriage breakdown.

I didn't deal with the thing because I didn't know how to and it felt too hard to deal with, so I distracted myself from it.

So you're one hund percent right.

You've got to feel comfortable to sit in that pain.

And too often we chuck on masks or armor or whatever it might be that helps us feel a bit protected from that pain instead of taking them off and sitting in that pain and being exposed to it.

But I think the key part is you've got you've got to have a system or support network that will help you get out of it eventually.

Right.

It might take you a while, but you need to be able to talk to other people going, hey, I'm really struggling with this and have that conversation.

And if you don't have a network of people that you can have that type of conversation with then people feel isolated and feel like they have to try and do it themselves, and they get frustrated and can never escape it properly.

So yeah, it's important lesson, but if you don't have the tools to get through that moment, then you can sometimes get stuck in it or go the wrong way out of it.

And like the idea that how you do one thing is how you do everything.

I like, I love That's part of why that whole boxing metaphor was so meaningful to me and showed me represented that in a particular space, but I know it exists every I call the podcast my emotional boxing ring because I I saw the growth of how I could see me unmasked in the boxing arena, and how when I changed things in there, how tightly the metaphors landed, how tightly I learned about real life boundaries and vulnerabilities and visibility and all of these things that were actually the reason that that place felt sacred to me, because they were all the things I struggled with in real life.

When I addressed them in there, it gave me a framework, and I saw myself changing out of there same thing with the podcast because I started stepping into these open, vulnerable conversations and stepping into trusting people and asking them to trust me and having these deeply vulnerable stories.

And I remember sitting in the first couple of months in conversations like this and thinking, you don't you don't open up like this, and you don't, like, who what's this?

You know?

And I went, well, it's happening here, and if I practice this here, this will flow out into my real life relationships.

And that's what happens.

It's bloody awesome like but you know, it's the same with yourself.

You have a version of you showing up at work and then a version of you showing up at home, and you're like, oh, what can I what can I learn from that?

What's the lesson that you're trying to learn or perhaps the universe is forcing you to relearn at the moment?

Nice question, ah, self belief right, hey say more.

It was interesting.

There was a it's been a turbulent couple of years with like, I'm in the midst of perimenopause at the moment.

So I went to go back to fight tre I was going to have a profile in twenty twenty two, I think it was went back into fight camp and physically just crash, like started waking up at one am.

So but because of a bunch of stuff, I thought it was a I thought it was just the training.

And then I thought, because I'd again done a lot of psychological workaround stuff, I was like, maybe it's the Maybe I'm just reading into some metaphors again and it's just a bit triggering emotionally, I don't know whatever.

But maybe a couple of years after that, I remember messaging my coach and now he's coached me quite maybe three or four different occasions for whatever bunch of times in between breaks, but only ever, like I walk in as a box, I'll go in.

I have two hours there.

But it's an incredibly intimate space, right You're seeing somewhat like I saw at twenty nine years old.

I saw a version of Tiffany Cook that I never knew existed.

So it stands to reason that the person who sees only that version of you is in part they're seeing the realist version, and they're making assumptions and that not the rest of whatever goes on.

And at some point I sent him a message and it was something along the lines of kind of as you know, you've coached me for a very long time, now, you know since what a twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, I think I started training with him, and I was kind of interested in what what do you make of me?

What do you see in me?

So, however I worded it warranted and he got back to me twenty four hours later with a very introspective, beautiful message.

But I remember the one thing that kind of landed and I was like, what are we talking about?

Was this fact that you don't you don't believe in yourself.

And I was like, but you know, I look back at training now and I and there were so many times I was parking what I knew and how I wanted to find I was grappling in the middle of these sparring sessions of the unknown answer to what he wanted me to do.

And It's like, but I know I have the innate intelligence of how I cope right now, what I need to do in this situation, but I'm trying to read this mystical answer because I need him.

That was one of the other people believing in me was one of the things that along with shame that I burned in the Himalayas on the mountain and left up there a year ago.

Like the second thing I wrote on my list was the need for other people to believe in me because I'm a go get it.

I go, I make a decision, I go get it, I make shit happen.

But then once it happens the first time, I think, oh, that's just luck, and then I it's like I cling to somebody or I have at times.

Then I cling to somebody who I think if they believe in me, then I'll make it, and then my self sabotage.

So which part of your identity is the one that's changed?

Is it your d is it the fighter part of your identity that you might not get back?

Is it the feminine part?

Is what is the part of the identity that's being challenged at the moment that's affecting your self belief?

I think well, I would say my biggest lesson all the thing that's changed most recently was and I think I've grappled a long time with the idea of surrender and letting go.

That's been in high rotation with a lot of Marklebust episodes on this podcast, my inability to let go or relinquished control and to not fight.

And so I've parked the fighting now and I talk a lot about our fight to surrender like that.

That's been a term that has been in a lot of my conversations, the ability to let go, the ability to surrender and to just be and be what's left, and to not achieve and to pause.

Yeah, and I think stillness and not achieving.

The reason I bring it up to, if i'll distruct with my story for a little bit, is when I was going through that moment in my life, I and you can pay me out for this analogy if you want, but if you think of the like a marble statue like you see up on pedestals or whatever, that I had this mental image of the key parts of my identity were like labels that fit inside of the big parts of this statue.

But the core of this statue where the core parts of my identity, and then the less parts, you know, the less significant parts of my identity out in the extremities, right.

And I was going through a divorce, which meant I wasn't going to be married, which is part of my identity.

I was struggling with this perspective that I wasn't going to be around my kids full time for in separate house, and so what did that mean for this part of my identity that was father?

And then not long after that, I left the military, and so I had this other part of my attachment that had been from eighteen to forty was part of my identities, another big hole that was left.

And so I had these three things that were all being sort of challenged at the same time, and that really affected my self belief, really manifested as a sense of shame for some parts of it, an uncertainty for other parts of it, and my self belief really dropped off.

So my motivation for asking you the question that I did was that I've struggled with self belief when those parts of my identity are changing or absent or missing and need to be replaced.

And so what I went through is that, okay, divorce, that's okay, I was married.

That's not a super important part of who I am, it's what I was.

So I replaced sat with you know this other part to me, your father.

I'm not around my kids full time, but I can manifest you I can still be in their life in a meaningful way.

So even though I'm not just always going to be sitting down sitting on the couch when they want to come up and give me a HRG or whenever we're together, I want to spend be more purposeful about the time we spend together.

And then this identity is military, I'm like, well, that's still always going to be a part of me.

It's no longer significant anymore.

So perhaps it shuffles off to a shoulder or or down a leg somewhere or whatever, but I'm still attached to this idea of doing work that is more meaningful than individual outcomes.

It's a significant has a purpose greater than your individual contribution, and so I still want to be around work that fits into that category.

So I'm going to be a purpose driven you know, how can I identify that the outcomes we're trying to achieve are meaningful?

And my role in that plays apart and so I mean a defense adjacent role, and I want to get into leadership speaking.

All those things lean into that.

So I was able to rebuild that sense of belief and identity that was attached to that through going through a bit of a mental process of rebuilding.

Okay, who I'm That's what I was.

Who am I going to be in the future, and how do I take actions that will help me show up in that way in the future.

So you said self belief, and the story that went through my mind was that there's a part of your identity being challenged at the moment and you've lost a bit of belief because of that.

And I think I think I'm coming out of this part of it.

But I think the boxer identity the fighter was a big one, and especially like twenty twenty four the boxer album gets released.

Yeah, tips the Boxer and it's and basing my keynote.

You know, all my list I will always talk about boxing is the analogy.

And I guess there was a part of me that I mean, I kept training when my body wasn't loving it with boxing for most of last year until I just went you, in no uncertain terms, your body doesn't want to train like this right now.

Put it away.

You don't have to do it.

You can still train fighters, You can still use all of the wisdom that innately exists.

You can still expose people to this sport without being a boxer.

You don't have to be a boxer.

You don't have to pick up the gloves ever again.

And that was part of when I went to the Himalayas.

I remember just wanting to leave behind every part of my identity, the label, every label.

I wanted to be on that mountain with people that weren't in the gym with me, and weren't on the podcast with me, and weren't in my tiff world here, and I wanted to be reintroduced with everything that was left after that was stripped.

And it was an incredible experience because we get so wrapped up in who we are an inverted commas by the things we do or the people around us that tell us who we are.

We are that to them because that makes them feel like them, So that's not even about us.

Yeah, there's a Harold Green Probably are the name wrong, But there was a quote when I was going through the process of writing the book.

It talks to that exact thing.

Tear fits I am not who I think I am.

I am not who you think I am.

I am who I think you think I am right, which is a bit matter to unpack, but it's talk to the fact that your identity is built up by how you think other people need you to show up.

Yeah, right, And so if you are hanging out in the boxing gym all the time, then they expect you to be showing up as the boxer, right, And so you've got to do that work to peel those layers back, going, Okay, I'm not going to show up how you think I think I should.

I'm going to show up how I think I think I should.

And it sounds like you went through that pairing back of identity through your through your you know, moment on the mountain in Nepal.

Big time, big time.

Even when I started this show and then I started working on the new project with Craig.

Now, Craig's been a massive mentor of mine for many years now, and I'd started years ago doing volunteering at his events and had a bit of coaching from him, So it was a huge mentor of mine.

And then after I'd started this show a few months later, he rang up, he said, you want to do a show a week online.

I'm like, fucking amazing.

For a very long time, and I see that myself do this in other instances, I've picked myself up along the way and go and you do that like mirroring people, or be my psychologist, cause it's growing down, growing down in situations.

So I would get on a podcast with him.

Here's this guy that's doing a PhD in self awareness and metaperception and he's super smart and he's my mentor, and I would dumb down.

I would become and I would change.

I would be complete, not completely different, but I just know I would not play to my strengths.

And I want to think, why do you?

Why do you do?

You actually have more to say and what you have to say matters, but you just turn into this fucking nervous little schoolgirl that whose voice isn't worthy of being heard on.

This was a weird thing to notice.

It's part of that sitting in the mess, you know, and it's part of I think psychologists for me are worth their weight in goal because it's you don't see that till you get to reflect on it and in a conversation.

And then when I started having coversations where I learned that was happening, then I could see it happen in the moments.

And then when you start to capture yourself in the moments, you can plan for it and you can change it, like training in the boxing gym.

Then you can start to show up and be like, actually, I'm just going to show up and not do that in time.

Yeah, I always found the psychologist's office is that ninety percent of the value comes from the silence, right because it forces you to sit there and just this stupid frigging gray matter just percolates away in the background on this one question that's been asked, and rather than just too often we try and fill that space or we distract ourselves with something else.

But sitting there in that psychologists office, you're forced to sit in the silence for a moment and think about what was just said.

And so it's a weird thing.

You're essentially paying for quiet time, which is a weird thing to do, right, But I found most the value come from just being, you know, someone staring at you, waiting for you to say there is something meaningful back, but being patient enough for you to come up with the words, rather than just try and fill that space.

So yeah, I find that I talk about oppressive silence in psychologists rooms that it just forces you to strip away everything else and focus on just one thing.

So yeah, I agree to you that that very important, But I think there's if you can get yourself in the right crowds, you can spend some time with other people who can say you.

Also create similar spaces for you to have contemplation and reflection and ask good questions.

You're an ACE mate.

You better tell everyone where they can buy your book, how they can contact you, and how they can book you to talk to their leadership team.

Yeah, I'd love for people to head over at eleon pertin dot com and look me up online.

All my stuff's in there.

You buy a copy of the book The Ignited Leader.

It's in the background here, but I'll just flushually copy of the bamk Cup recently won gold medal for Leadership and Management at the Able Book awardins pretty ace.

I've got a gold medal that Tiff doesn't.

So I'll go to lord that.

Over game on.

And you can brought me from speaking now.

And I want to speak to the executives and middle managers who are sick of their their leaders driving people out the door instead of driving results.

And they know they've got to and I've got a problem there, and they perhaps haven't quite got the right language or tools to help their teams.

So thanks, Tiff.

I've really appreciated mate.

I love spending time with you.

Was looking forward to this chat because it felt like I just got someone on one time instead of us all being crowded around in a conference room.

And I am going to come to Melbourne.

I'm going to get up in your space and we'll spend some more time together in the future.

Well, mate, when you do, I'll take you for a cookie.

I can't wait.

I hope you get them.

I might even ask you to punch me in the face.

Tiff with pleasure, with pleasure, mate, it's been awesome.

I hope you do make it down to Melbourne.

I'll be glad to see you.

Everyone.

Go buy a book, go book him in, check out the website, do all the things and we'll see you next time.

I appreciate you, Tess.

Thanks mate, back

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