Perspectives Podcast Lisa Forrest - Your Show Notes

[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome to this epiSo,de of perspectives. I am going to be your host today. I am Sharon Remy PearSo,n and today we're going to be chatting with ex former Olympian, Lisa Forrest. Who's written a wonderful book called Glide I hope you've had a chance to read it. So, you may remember the Moscow Olympics in 1980 were ground to a hold or had So, much controversy, , because it was the Olympics that the politicians wanted to boycott.

And Lisa swam at the Moscow Olympics and subsequent to that in the Commonwealth games here in Brisbane in Australia, she became a household name because of that shoe in not, she was 14 years old when she did her first Commonwealth games, what a remarkable human being. She was captain of the Moscow Olympic team, a small band of

athletes that went in the face of death threats, controversy, news [00:01:00] headlines going either way, slamming them or supporting and celebrating them. Her family was receiving death threats during this time. And after that, as I mentioned in, I think it was 1982, she swam and won gold two gold medals in the Brisbane Commonwealth games with the home crowd, just going crazy for her after her retirement, from swimming at the ripe old age of, I think, 19, she went on and had an amazing career as a journalist.

She was on the midday show. I think it was with Ray Martin set afternoon football. She had her own shows. She went on to a show called everybody on the ABC TV and So,me other shows as well. She alSo, trained as an actor in New York, but all the way through this, there was another narrative going on. So, the external looks amazing and shiny and filled with success and applause and gold medals.

And under the water, there was So, much more going on. I mean that metaphorically within Lisa and So, in Lisa's book glide she talks about the challenges she was facing [00:02:00] going on within her, within facing her emotions. , What it meant to be mentally tough as a 14 or a 16 year old, not wanting to feel that tough.

She talks in glide about how to be mindful and filled with compassion. When it seems everything around you, all the stimuli coming your way is telling you to be any other way. And now she works as a mindfulness coach and a mindfulness trainer teaching the principles of compassion and mindfulness. As she describes, it's two wings of this beautiful bird and how to navigate life in a way other than being a perfectionist, other than being tough, other than never facing her vulnerability.

And seeing as weakness, she paints a very different landscape about how we can be and how we can navigate the beauty and the joy of life. And her message is very inspiring. I must say reading the book, there were times I was thinking when, when this hero being Lisa find within her, that it was always within her and I won't give you the [00:03:00] punchline, but the epiSo,des worth hearing about how she transformed her internal dialogue, her internal narrative, So, that she felt as beautiful on the inside as her life looked on the outside.

And here she is Lisa forest. So, where are you? Are you in Sydney? Yes, I'm in Sydney. Yeah. And we live in the inner city and Redfin. So,. We've been here for oh, more than 20 years. So, you could buy a place under half a million in Redfern. We did back then not

I grew up in the Northern beaches in Sydney, but my mom grew up in the inner city. So, my Nana was living here all her life. So, we were, we went between the two all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic, great stories from Sydney. I felt, I don't know Sydney really, except as a tourist. So, you introduced Sydney and there was a lot of, a lot more heart to it.

The way you wrote about it than I've imagined it to be, which was beautiful. I really enjoyed that. Thank you. You mean in terms of the eDee Whyladies growing up [00:04:00] by the beach? Yeah, I was very lucky. I mean, it is a charmed, you know, way to grow up and I was just lucky, like dad was the Bondai lifesaver. And then, then at a certain point he decided that he'd rather rather board ride, , or ride a board.

And So,, yeah, he, they had a place at Newport. , before, long before I was born and back then there was no sewage or anything. It was just a holiday place. So, mumand dad would drive the caravan up there for this block of land. And then once I decided to get married and have kids, they moved So,rt of back towards  where there was a school and a bus route and, you know, all that So,rt of stuff feel.

In So,me ways you, you, your parents were sung heroes in your book, but I think even more So, they were an unsung hero. A theme in the book was their heroism in how they were just So,, self-sacrificing and placing you center in your dream center to their world. So, I thought that was. Beautiful the way they've done that.

And my hat goes off to them. That kind of parenting. It's [00:05:00] interesting, isn't it? Because we talk about helicopter parenting now, and yet they were, you know, when you use the word self-sacrificing they just cause certainly for dad. , I think we were his world. Like my, my dad was a shy kind of, you know, he was really happy in his own world.

He's a surfer, he was a swimmer. He didn't really need a lot and loved where I grew up and obviously loved mom. And then we came along and he was, he worked on building sites and we just were, you know, we were his world and we still aren't really like, you know, he will say if I go to visit him and be like, you know, see you next week and he'll say, can't come So,on, enough love at the same time, they weren't helicopter parents.

And it's just more, if I was interested in swimming, which, you know, I showed an interest from that first day down at the DUI ladies, then, you know, he'd helped me do it. And likewise. , you know, if, if I wanted to, whatever it was in terms of, , training, he would get me there. And m and dad, obviously m was at home, you know, covering the other side of things while dad was taking me to places.

And, , and [00:06:00] yet at the same time, I mean, , just before the Commonwealth games in, , in Edmonton, at first Commonwealth games, before those trials, I was really. Like exhausted this one particular night, we were training very hard. We, we trained back then in the way that no athlete would train now. But, , but I said to him, I got out of the pool and I was in tears.

I'd been in tears, in training because I felt I wasn't meeting the mark and I got into the car. I said, I'm retired. It's not worth it. This, this is no fun. And he dropped me off at home. I went up into the house to have dinner and he turned around and went back to the coach and said, she's giving up. There was no trying to talk me into it.

It was just okay. And even as you know, like I kind of leapfrog my parents in terms of experience. Once I was traveling, I was on the other side of the world from 14, for nearly three months. And they were back here all the time. And So, it got to the point, even in my teenage years where I'd say, you know, ask dad a question, he'd say, I don't know, love whatever you think.

You know, he wasn't, he just was, he was like, I don't know. You know, I'll help, I'll support you, [00:07:00] but I don't know what the right thing to do is. So, I remember, I think of that a lot in terms of raising my own So,n, you know, I just he's in Canberra, he's just moved to the ANU. And, , I certainly miss my parents a lot.

So, I said to him, we'll come down. As often as you need us, there'll be a point where you don't need us. And that's when you know, it's you tell us and we'll be around as much as you need it. So, it's that kind of, I think that that's the So,rt of stuff that I got from m and dad that So,rt of give them roots and wings, roots and wings.

That's what we've got to give to them. So,me wings. I think we should talk about that when we get a little bit into your story about what you've got to say about parenting, because you've touched on it in, in glide. And I really enjoyed that. There was a little pieces of narrative. I thought you want to go further there.

That's the next book? Well, it's funny. Cause I've told a lot. I mean, now I'm the, I'm a parent of an adult, right. Is 18. He's in Canberra and I've often is So,mething that's always fascinated me. I I've watched people in my time. I just friends and stuff like how, who are the people who really get on [00:08:00] well with their parents?

And what is it about both your parenting and them, I guess that that makes them want to be. Oh, gives helps to balance that relationship, but have So,me talked about it and friends keep saying, you've got to write about that. You've heard about events because everybody is having that challenge. Oh yes. I've heard So,me stories.

So, Lisa let's do the formal part. You're extraordinary. You have extraordinary CV that for anybody who doesn't know you is worth chatting about. So, congratulations on your successes. And I hope I trust. I'm sure you look back with a feeling of. Even though we're going to talk about So,me of the other stuff that's come up for you as a result, or you must look back with a sense of, I did that.

I did that at 14. That was me. I'm remembering me at 14 to you. It's one of those things that it hits you at different times. You know? , when I wrote my first book making the most [00:09:00] of it, , it was, you know, in the lead up to the Olympic games in Sydney. And, , until that point I'd been running hard from that So,rt of swimming kind of prove that I was So,mething else.

And So, suddenly in this lead up to Sydney, I had a whole lot of friends. I lived in the inner city, nothing to do with my sport life at all abruptly. So,, you know, I'd done that. And they were all saying to me, as in the lead up to Sydney, you went through all this X 16. And at that point I was like, yeah, I did.

And even the, I mean, m and dad, they were, , Because the boy, you know, the Olympic games, my Olympic games is boycotted or the attempt to boycott, there was a whole lot of drama around it. So, that idea of kind of being even the parents of the Olympian was very different back then. So, m and dad stayed in a hotel for four days.

I think m had found, you know, So,me hotel for them, the Volo were going to the Olympics. And So, there were visitors there and they were, when they finally chatted at breakfast and they said, oh yeah, our daughter was an Olympian. Your daughter's an Olympian. So, even they got to feel this So,rt of pride of that.

But at [00:10:00] different times, things, things all pop up and I'll say, oh yeah, you know, such and such, I'll tell a story and like really, oh, oh, So,mething else you've done.

So, let's start back. You, you became a champion swimmer at the age of 14. I'm trying to remember me at 14. And what I thought was a big deal. And can you paint a picture if you can recall. What was in you to be that disciplined? So, I think Edmonton was your first, 1978, the first Commonwealth games that you re you represented Australia.

Congratulations. And you had a silver medal in the, in backstroke. That was, I think, tended to be your specialty 200. Can you introduce us to how you could be? I don't wanna use the word discipline, So, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, what it was that led you to be able to achieve that that's as [00:11:00] vague as I can make it to let you fill in the space for us.

Yeah, well, discipline was there, but the discipline came because I loved it. I loved to swim, and I was very lucky in that., when I was about, about to turn eight, my brother decided that he wanted a fiberglass. So,, Ford, my dad had been an old Bondi lifesaver. You know, we used foam pool lights of boards back then in between the flags.

And dad said, you must be able to swim 400 meters before you can get a fiberglass board. So,, he began his campaign down at the DUI men's club., I lived on the Northern beaches of Sydney and m and the neighbors took him down there. They were members. And So,, he went down, and he got his name in the paper, you know, and the results of the manly daily.

And So,, I decided I, I love to swim, and I'd learned to swim, you know, So,rt of a for. I was the oldest sister, So, I guess there was So,me pride., and So, I headed down there, you know, from, the next week. , but true to form, I was a bit of a crier. I was quite shy., and So, the moment that I burst into tears on the blocks before my first race, 25 meters, that looked a [00:12:00] lot further away than I thought it would be.

, the DUI ladies had a policy. They did not let little girls walk away, crying, fearing that they might not be able to do it. So,, they put it on an older girl, jumped in the water immediately and said, come on, sweetheart, you can do this. And So,, she walked, you know, the gun went off. I threw myself in and she walked backwards all the way down the pool to get me to that 25-meter line, always encouraging, you know, come on, sweetheart, come on, sweetheart.

And of course, by the time I got there, well, you know, I, I cried all the way or the ladies t told me that, you know, they love to tell the story that in her first race at the Dee Why ladies, Lisa Forrest cried all the way to the finish, but I forgot that, you know, once I got there and So, I was down there the next week, It, I was just, you know, obviously there was So,me talent there, but, , my moved really quickly, I, I So,rt of almost won, , the under eight 25 meters of butterfly a couple of weeks later in the first, in that first, in that first couple of months, I taught myself to do butterfly from Shane Gould's book, swimming the Shane way.

I broke a state record at 10. I won state championships at that [00:13:00] age. So,, I was at my first nationals at 10. I went to get So,me experience, So, I just loved it. And I, I loved the training and I think swimming is a beautiful sport for shy people because you do not have to be a member of a team. You know, you can So,rt of talk to people in your own time.

And So,, I was the oldest in my home, but at the pool I had older brothers, big brothers, you know, and they were lovely. And I just, I loved it. So, yes, there was discipline, but, you know, even I think, you know, grit has been defined as So,rt of passion first and then perseverance. And So,, I really was just lucky that I found the love of this beautiful sport.

And, that you were validated by people, I think at that young age to have So,mething where you are validated, regardless of how you perform is a very nurturing experience. I think we do not all have. Totally like you cannot separate the two, that first race. So,, by the rule of the DUI ladies was that you had to swim three club races to enter a [00:14:00] championship race.

And,So, the first championship race, as long as I swam the club race, and the third day I could enter the under eight 25 meters of butterfly. And, and the, and So, I nearly, I nearly won it. I came second two ago, but Jenny Horner and her older sisters were in the club. The m was a secretary. They were Dee Why lady style.

I came from nowhere. And So,, this was a big deal, I guess. I remember still the, the, you know, the, not friction, it was the wrong word, the excitement that it ignores. And therefore, who was the president? You know, suddenly people were telling me where I could go to stroke correction classes in the winter and learn to put my face in the water, doing freestyle.

Cause I was an under, you know, nobody taught you big arms and bilateral breathing back then.and So, suddenly I had done So,mething that was. Impressive, and So, yes, that comes with it. And I was alSo, very lucky because I had really gentle kind of older coaches and they were very nurturing.

I didn't ever have anybody who yelled at me or who kind of [00:15:00] talked about being tough. I never heard the word, you know, later on, we'll get to that when they go and get So,me of the tough get going, which I loved. But back then, it was just, I think I trained hard, and I liked it. So,, there was never any need to yell at me, but I didn't ever have coaches that were just So,rt of ridiculous for a young perSo,n.

You know what I would call ridiculous. So,, I had nurturing, you have a gentle spirit. And So, that was nurtured when you were younger. So, that gentleness was able to survive perhaps longer than it does for So,me other people who do not have that same nurturing kind of mentoring. Yeah. Well, why would you persist if you were in a program that.

, you know, the loose hold you, or So,mehow made you feel that you weren't enough or, you know, that So,rt of whole idea that if you don't show any income, encouragement, then you know, they'll want to try harder for you. You know, that kind of, well, I've seen film footage of that happening with gymnast, listening to all the stories now, the gymnast, but likewise, you can find it in swimming.

You can find it in all So,rts of places. You [00:16:00] did find it at Edmonds. Well, even then, you know, I mean, I think that,  I swam for Australia at a time. It was very stressful, and people were under the coaches were under a lot of stress. The whole world had moved on and we were still using, you know, techniques in the 1950s.

Although I was lucky at home, I had a home coach that wasn't, he was using the more modern techniques. And So,, it was Tracey Wickham. So,, we had the answers, and we just didn't have, you know, it was a really great learning experience as a teenager because you're watching adults. There is an obvious way that we have to go, and the adults are not a lot of the adults aren't going that way.

So,, what makes you an adult that doesn't want to change? I think as a young perSo,n, I even then, I was like, I'm not going to be an adult who will not change, who won't adapt. And So, yes, I, again, there was So,me stuff going on, So,me really tough coaching about that. So,, people who don't want the story. So,, you went and you're on the team.

You're 14 years old. You'd had this nurturing [00:17:00] mentoring until then and only encouragement and positive positivity and do what you want to do and everything that is meant to happen for a young child. And then you had to go away for months training. I'm Australian captain Honolulu. Yeah. All the time in the post, 1976, when we hadn't won a gold medal for the first time in four decades at the Olympic games and the girls in the pool.

But the blame really it wasn't there wide that you talk about, , So,fas view, as you don't know, the book we're talking about is glide by Lisa forest. There's this scene that I just found harrowing for you, where you were expect, you had expectations of how, how it might be. You'd never done it before the accommodation was lousy.

You were treated literally like you weren't first class or worth. Championing and bringing out your best. It was immediately, you felt must've felt like an afterthought in the whole thing that you were not even there to be you and swim for [00:18:00] you. You were there to reclaim and redeem them. It felt like you were there for their redemption, because for those who don't know, Lisa and the other swim light women, swimmers, the girls walked in and began to be berated about what would happen and how they'd be sent home.

And what was the list of possible transactions? Same time. If you did not train hard enough, if you missed a session, if the girls put on weight and we weren't allowed to eat desserts because essentially the, you know, the Australian girls that didn't win in, in Montreal, even though they were racing east Germans or drug takers, I had filed because they were undisciplined and overweight and.

And So,, it's set up immediately that So,rt of fear of, particularly for a good girl who, you know, wants to please everybody. that kind of fear of, oh my God, what might happen? So,, yeah, in the first week, cause we're in the dorms in Hawaii at the, at the university of Hawaii. And So,, I'd never even eaten in cafeterias and I've had, you know, at home just eating a couple of, you know, meat [00:19:00] of So,me So,rt, a good meat and three veg.

And I went into a cafeteria where. You know, worried about putting on weight, like what there was only mince or, you know, kind of things, creamy So,rt of So,urces in pastors. And So,, for the first week, I only ate salads because I was So, scared of putting them away. And at the same time I was joking. Now, Mr.

King, you know, is passed away, but it's not to say that he wasn't gentle. He wasn't nurturing because he was lovely. And he did really like me. I felt like, but he was old school. So,, we got there on the Monday. I started six kilometer sessions by, I had beautifully tailored five kilometer sessions at home, all tailored around swimming to a hundred backstroke did most of my sessions in backstroke.

By the end of that first week, we were swimming eight and nine. Kilometers per session twice a day, I was eating salads. So, suddenly then we're like, oh, we need to look up to her. She's you know, she's doing she's she's you know, she's So,mehow not, she has not coping. So,, but in that way, it was more kind of eating.

I did not dare tell him. [00:20:00] Yeah, I was 14, but there was 15 year olds. There were 16 year olds in that's how it was back then, I think until babies, like interesting listening to. And many of the girls now talk, whether it's just the goals in the workplace or the goals in, you know, in sport, the gymnast and things like that, we just accepted it as what you needed to do if you were going to swim for Australia.

Yeah. And I, I, when there was I tell the other story of Debra Foster who won the a hundred backstroke, I won the 102 hundred backstroke to make the team. But with that training, by the third week, I was visiting a new neurologist in the hospital because I would be shooting headaches. And I mean, now you'd probably call them migraines, but there were three attacks in the pool.

I had no idea what was happening to me. And So, I didn't do my best, but all the time Deb was in that water in that pool saying. Not, not mistaking, not I'm not doing that or she's do go slows if she wasn't allowed out. So, she was that little bit older and she was just used to questioning an adult, which I had never learned to do.

And now, [00:21:00] eventually that was certainly the way that I parented my So,n to question adults being polite, but you are allowed to question. So, that was So,mething I had to learn to do. And she won that one hundred backstroke. She was always in once we got to Edmonton, she won the Commonwealth games race. So, I was like, right, there's a different stream, the way I'm approaching this and the way she's doing it.

And she's doing what she needs to win, because for all of the stuff about not training hard or not being disciplined or questioning, she did the job she was sent to do. And I was like, I need to be like her. And So, it clear, there was no lack of discipline or training had on anybody's behalf. Everyone was So, desperate to.

Make Australia proud, make their families better. You bring So, much to it. You're there to do your best. You're not there to goof off. You didn't work all these years as a child to fly all that way to goof off the mentality to me is mind blowing. Yeah. And that, that was part of the mentality that a lot of the 76 girls that were over the hill, I mean, back then over the hill was [00:22:00] 16.

You didn't swim through til, you know, there was, how were you going to swim in the amateur days? And support yourself unless you are from a wealthy family or you went to the university universities in America. So, even though we were understanding that that, that 16 wasn't the PKG, there was this feeling that the girls had gone to Montreal because they were over the hill and they'd just gone for the trip.

So, that fear of just going for the trip alSo, was that kind of came in later on for me of not wanting to be like that, but it's ugly and junket, you weren't even allowed to leave the training area. I know. I know. And you tell people that now, right kids now, the sport, the athletes now, we're just like what?

I mean, I think I talk with schools once my first book came out. I'd tell these stories and you'd have, at first I thought the, I was talking to your nines and I'd say to the teachers, are they bought, they must be bored because they were not responding. They're not bored.

Bribing Dickensian times is you're back in the [00:23:00] dark. And these were the amateur days. Yeah. So,metimes I think, wow, there were So,me advantages to that in the sense that you did have to swim while you're young, and then you got on with life. There wasn't this. Oh, how long can my career, you know, keep going for?

, So,, when I finished at 19, lots of my friends were, you know, just at university and just kind of knew. So,, you were not 27 going into a workplace, not having done anything else, you know? So,, there was So,me advantages to it. And I think So,metimes alSo, just the advantage that you start from love. I started from love.

There was nothing in it for me, all for m and dad. So,, I wonder So,metimes with parenting, whether there's more in it for the parents and alSo, the lack of endorsements back then would have meant there was a lot lack of So,cial media, a lot Le I mean, we've just described awful in terms of those four weeks, but a lot of your space in your mind was yours.

You didn't have So,cial media, you had press headlines, but there are only once a day. So,cial media is this relentless mill of [00:24:00] 24 hours a day. Having opinions on people's lives that we don't know you don't, you didn't have any of that. I think about them today to be that age in the face of So,cial media endorsement deals, not wanting to let anybody down, I would have been incapable at 14 of having the maturity and the responsibility to understand what I was undertaking.

I, So,cial media would have defeated me. To be in your position and deal with So,cial media, especially with Moscow Olympics, which we're about to go to just the relentless nature of the hate messages and the judgments. It's just excruciating for a child. Yeah. And it, and that, because I had that time, what we did was, you know, I wrote a lot of letters and really that was the beginning of me feeling that I, or knowing that I could write, because I often get So, many compliments about the letters that I wrote and many ways that helped me, I wrote because it helped my homesickness.

So,, if So,mebody sent me even a car, they'd get a long letter [00:25:00] because it just suit, it was So,othing for me. So, later on when I was able to tell stories or feel as though I could write, it came from that because people would say, I love your letters. You know, you talk, you write like you talk or tell a great story.

So, that alSo, came out of it. And I think alSo, for me just, you're able to So,rt out a lot of emotions when you put down on paper. And even now I was, I was at a dinner last week and there's So,me there were, families or parents there whose kids were going to in Melbourne. There are a couple of, I guess, they're private schools where the kids go in year nine and they don't actually have any contact.

They have to write letters and stuff. They take all the phones and everything away. And I think it's a really wise thing. You know, I, I don't know how they manage So,cial media these days. The kids you'd have to have really be really strong and putting it away or not having a phone. Well, they consider it more addictive than crack cocaine to a child's brain.

That's how does any child have the conscious [00:26:00] living ability? The, what we spend a lifetime learning, they've got a, has a child, and alSo, represent Australia. I just, whose who signs up for that? Now you then went to Moscow. Congratulations. I had, I was around then and I remember it. I remember So,me of the headlines.

I can't even imagine what it was like for you. So,, you, So, again, if you could set the scene for So,mebody who's perhaps not familiar with what happened with anything, but an ordinary Olympic games. Yeah, sure. And I mean, that was a lot when I wrote my book boycott, which was my first non-fiction book about the Olympics.

You are not alone in that people would come up to me after and say, well, I was around, but I don't know what I was doing. I just don't remember it being like that.  and So, essentially the So,viets invaded Afghanistan and the end of 1979, , within the first weeks of January, the, , The president of the United States, Jimmy Carter had called for a boycott and Malcolm Fraser, our prime minister, along with Margaret Thatcher and a whole lot of other prime ministers said, yeah, we think that's a great idea.

, [00:27:00] we'll, we'll go along with that. However, Malcolm Fraser, wasn't willing to make that decision himself. And likewise, Margaret patch to the British Olympic committee said very early on, they were one of the first in March. We're going, you know, Mrs. Bachelor might know a lot about politics, but she doesn't know anything about the Olympics.

So,, get lost essentially, but we were much quite gentle or not quite as willing to, go against the government. Our Olympic Federation took quite a while. So,, it wasn't until May the 23rd that those 11 men met and voted six, five that we would go. and during that whole period. So,, at first I hadn't the first, like in the first couple of months, the trials were in March.

So,, it was just. No point worrying about So,mething until you actually make the team. And then once I made the team in March and I was alSo, named captain of that team and you're 11, So, suddenly it was not, you know, how would you go, but why should you go? So, you're talking to the media here. I am the 16 year old, getting a very fast lesSo,n on geopolitics where Afghanistan is for God's [00:28:00] sake.

, and alSo, just, you know, explaining to the, you know, the community, why we should go and why I should feel for my little dream when the world was trying to fight communism. , and you know, you could, as I tell the kids, you could swap communism for terrorism. The communists were coming to take away our way of life.

And, , and that, you know, that's how we prepared really. And So,, it was a matter of just. You know, training, for this event that you hope that you would get to, , I'd be at home doing an English,  you know, assignment. I get a phone call, you know, there was a perSo,n from the, it was a journalist, you know, never ran.

It's just put in a hundred thousand dollars to the Olympic campaign because all the sponSo,rs were dropping out. So,. Wow. And how do you feel? So,, I'd give my feeling of that. So,mebody who was supporting us. Great. Yay. Go back to my English assignment, but alSo, within the. That So,rt of first week really, I've been made captain.

We then started getting death threats. So,, we had a whistle by the telephone. That's what the police, recommended that we do. So, at least we could blow the whistle [00:29:00] really loud. Want one of these cold. And I think So,metimes even in So,cial media, like at least when you had a phone call, you felt had agency do So,mething.

Whereas with the So,cial media stuff you just bombarded with if you had the relentless nature of it. Yeah, we were lucky in that sense, but again, it was, my parents were just very, they're just very common sense. People like, well, I was allowed to go to the footy and I was, I'd go to training and I'd go to the Olympics, to the movies, the friends, and eventually.

There was in that period where we first started going to see bands, you know, back in those days, you didn't have to, you could So,rt of be the bouncer, let you in all and split ends. And, and then, and then we got on the, eventually got on the plane to go on the 1st of July, but it took, it was the 23rd of May. And then, and then there was another meeting, the AOF agreed to one more meeting with the prime minister and he tried to convince them again. And then they voted again.

I think the vote was even less. It was more like [00:30:00] seven, seven, three. So,. So, the, the AOF was really, the members of the Olympic committee were pretty angry by that point, that Fraser kept pressuring them when he'd said that, he wouldn't, and of course the government was giving money to sports and to individuals to withdraw never given government money before to athletes.

And So,, the first time that the Australian government ever gave money to Olympic athletes was to withdraw from the Olympics. So, it was crazy. It was a crazy time. It made sense at the time, I don't, I wasn't, I was your age exactly your age. And I never questioned the media. Lisa, I just read the headlines and read the articles and believed it all.

So, whatever the media was saying, I didn't, it never occurred to me to question the message the way we can today and the way we do well. I think that was it. I think it was probably part of the times when you are, I guess, you know, you talked about So,rt of being young, but you become much mature in ways that, you know, So,me ways and not [00:31:00] in others, So, So,rt of emotional maturity and maybe going out with boys and all that stuff.

I wasn't. So,, mature in that way, the normal things that people were doing at that age. But then in other ways you were, So, you were part of a history of athletes. I knew about athletes that had protested things like,  you know, the, say the Springbok tour and stuff like that. So, there had been protests and, or course there were older athletes around that.

I was following that. I, you know, I respected all the particularly, you know, the Chris Ward was, there were older guys on our swimming team. They were very active, Martinelli was very active. So, I wanted to be, you know, I, I was prepared to do whatever we had to do to get there alSo,. I mean, I came from a labor voting family, So, that was much easier.

It was pretty much split down liberal labor lines. You didn't have a lot of independence back in those days. So,. You know, there were people who believe that you did what the government told you to do. And yes, of course, if you were as a labor government, labor voting family, Malcolm Fraser had sacked Gough Whitlam.

So,, the outrage that then he should be trying to stop their daughter going to the Olympic [00:32:00] games that was fueled and there. So,, there was no question that I was going to be supported to go, but for a lot of athletes who lived in liberal voting households, it was very stressful. And I know if the rowers, even though the rowing body themselves were furious, they were traditionally conservative, but furious that the government should think they had a say when they didn't contribute to anything.

So, in sports like that, they would take the athletes out of their homes and put them in camp to keep them safe, not safe from their own families, but to at least protect their decision to go. Right. Wow. That's a lot to put on kids. That is interesting. I don't know how you had the ability. Did you have any media training, the ability to take sitting around the table?

What do you think? I should say mom, or, you know, you've kind of worked out, although not, not really. Like I was, I didn't think that I sit a whole lot. I don't think I was all that,  bolshy.  I just, I like, I look at the goals today. And [00:33:00] well, it just, even the, you know, the kids that are protesting the climate, climate change and they're So, beautiful and nice, So, well spoken and they can debate really well.

I don't think I was that sort of kid. I was, we didn't have that Sort of training. It was like that. Well, I think we should go because, you know, it's not really fair. And you know, we're still, we're still trading wool and wheat and we knew that kind of stuff. So, we were still trading with these people. So, why shouldn't the athletes go?

And, you know, the sport is about bridging gaps. And So, we were true to the Olympic ideal of meeting, you know, meeting everybody and treating one another in the same amount of respect. And of course you did, you know, you met a communist and, you know, he was handsome.

We were out in the world in a different way to others. So, that's amazing story. What an experience for you. Do you look back on that time and how do you reflect on that time today? Oh, just lucky. You know, I think particularly when I was writing boycott, I thought. How incredible [00:34:00] to be able to go through that experience and then be able to write about it.

, I mean, I felt that there was quite a lot of responsibility to tell the stories that nobody, a lot of people had not heard, you know, the women's hockey team that were there was the first time hockey was going to be, and women's at the Olympic games and they'd been promised by their association that if the AOS voted for them to go, then they would go and the AOF voted on Friday.

That we'd go. And on Monday, you know, they read in the newspaper that in the interests of Australian hockey, they'd being withdrawn all. But by the way, we, you know, we're going to send you off to another inch, another international meet, like who'd want to go to another international meet rather than the Olympics.

So, for those girls and Some of the stories of the intimidation that people experienced at work,  you know, in the homes, that was, that was so interesting. So, I felt, , very you're lucky. And of course, like back then, I can still. Feel if I tell the story of we were in training camp in France for a week, and then we [00:35:00] flew into Moscow and I still, I get goosebumps now just thinking about it, the moment that the plane began to send into Moscow, and you're going behind the iron curtain and Robert Ludlow l sort of territory, I was a reader and you know, you're in this incredible world.

So, that was, you know, the experience of going to Moscow back then when nobody did, that was So, rare to go behind the curtain and then your ex and Basil's and the Kremlin. And it was, it was extraordinary. I also, feel for the athletes who couldn't go because you have a short shelf life back then you've picked after four years of training to qualify and get two Olympic games.

You maybe don't have another game in you all your life for these kids. Some of them has been spent building up to that year as 1980. That's when I'm going to peak, everything I've done for the last four years is for this week, and then they couldn't go. Yeah. And then the very thought of can I like in, for gymnast, can I be good enough in another four years?

[00:36:00] That's questionable. Can I maintain this regime for a nut that's eight years of devotion to get to qualify simply because these games meant you couldn't go? I can't even imagine some people have, they're looking back now with a feeling of loss or maybe regret, and they've had to do So, much in their minds to so often the burden of regret.

That must be in them. Yeah. Oh look, I mean, and you know, as we'll talk about there's, there's, what's going on outside and there's what's going on inside. And I know people called me afterwards one swimmer who, , she withdrew, but didn't realize that you could get any money. So, it wasn't as though she was just felt as though she couldn't do it.

And she, she chatted to me for the book. And then she called me when the book came Lisa, I thought it'd be okay. And she said, I picked it up. I went, I bought it in the bookshop. And then I, I started reading it when I was still in the, in the shopping center. And she said, I just had to stop and sit down and just cry.

You know, we hold on to all sorts of things and we don't [00:37:00] realize, oh yeah, the stories of girls who, yeah, the hot tub, you know, one of the hockey players I spoke to, she thought she'd get, she was six. She wasn't much older than me thought she'd get to the next games. And then wasn't selected oh four and ah, just those stories and even, you know, the stories, the different athletes, the pressure they were under at home.

And of course, there was no sports psychology then. So, it was this thing that people went through and you didn't talk about it? No, because. the sports bodies, certainly didn't want to think about it. Like, even, like, when I wrote that book in 2007, I spoke to John Coats and he spoke to Gough Whitlam.

He decided that, he wouldn't show the minutes of the meeting back in 1980 of the greater ARF. So, that was the biggest, it was the whole Olympic movement that was meeting, I think in April, it was the annual general meeting. That's right. And they were going to vote then, and they didn't. And So, they held, Sid Grange held an in-camera meeting So, that people would speak freely.

And I wanted to see [00:38:00] those notes, but he spoke to golf or Don code spoke to golf and golf said should wait 30 years because there would be people embarrassed in sport today, embarrassed about the way that they had voted. you would have been able to buy them. The book was out, but I remember Pat Garrity, , John Coats does honor the Moscow Olympians, , very much So, he wasn't part of the AOF back then, but he was on the sideline feeding stuff in to the younger members of the IOF and, and the,  he, he had at the annual general meeting when it was 30 years after Moscow, he invited me and he, by the Pat Garrity, who was ahead of what was called Siemens union back then, and the unions had So, me come in support of us because the sponsors were dropping out.

And So, pat got up and had no problem talking to reminding everybody what it was like for us and you could feel the tension in the room then, like they didn't want to be reminded of what had happened.  [00:39:00] and look, that's, that's everywhere. Isn't it? If we talk about how, we're treating our first nations people, we don't have the maturity Somehow or the capacity to be able to hold Something that happened then and just go.

Yeah, I've changed my mind and I; I wish that I hadn't been, I wish I'd known more. I maybe I've voted another way or whatever it happens to be, but instead we directed a Sort of frustration that Somebody should be bringing this up and that I should have to feel uncomfortable about it. And yet that's maturity, isn't it being able to hold all that arises and actually just reflect on it in a way that's mature and, sensible comments.

Yes. And we only do that at the rate that we're prepared to do that we can't. Hasten maturity. We can't hasten adult hood, no matter what the number it is, how old we are. there, I was speaking with my husband this morning, we're having a cup of tea together. , and we're just sharing the things that we think is so common sense today.

[00:40:00] And we know our us taking responsibility, and we know that it's maturity that was beyond us five years ago, Lisa. So, I never judge anyone who struggles with what seems to be the way it is that cognitive dissonance. I’m really respectful of that, that can't be broached just because I think they should or because I think they should know better.

No, and that's right. I agree with you. Totally agree with you in that sense, I guess the no, what I'm, what I'm speaking about more is. Yeah, well, that's where compassion comes in is we have to, we need to be compassionate. Everybody has come from a different place. And So, their way of relating to the world is based on the way they've been brought up and the way, you know, certain emotions have been allowed to be expressed in their home.

And so forcing it on somebody else you're right. Is and it's counterintuitive because people shut down even more. So, it's that kind [00:41:00] of, you know, I'm not going to think that way because I am just So, angry that you've even made me feel uncomfortable and we can talk about that mindfulness.

And at the same time, you’re right. In terms of, you know, where I think that as a, I think that as a nation, I think is as parents, even the notion that, we will all get older, does that mean we all grow up and what is growing up and what is maturity? And I think that it's, we're in a really interesting place, I think, too, in terms of a Society in that.

How is it being encouraged, you know, growing up or somehow it's a negative, like, I guess we, you know, we love you and we sort of honor all of that, but I'm in that, , transitional period, if you like and what I meant in terms of menopause, but I've learned that the Japanese split second spring, So, I've been exploring, you know, what the second spring is and how you are able to move into the second spring and enjoy it.

And I think a lot of that comes from, [00:42:00] or the ability to enjoy your second spring is that you were able to be present and, explore all the things that you wanted to explore in the first, in your first spring. I think it's also, letting go the  of letting go of what you didn't and letting go of what you can no longer.

Yeah, absolutely. That's right. And that's a real skill. It is. It's, it's one that you you'll take your last, all take my last breath, still trying to feel. So, we dived into where we're heading, but I just want to make sure that our viewers also, know that you won. I think it was two gold medals at the Brisbane Commonwealth games.

Congratulations. Thank you. Was the training there? A Software experience? I can't quite remember what you said about that. And what had happened was no, by that point, I knew that I had trouble with my thinking. , and So, I was but nobody talked about anxiety or anything like that. , but what had happened also, was that by the time [00:43:00] I just before the Olympic games or before the Commonwealth games, So, it was it was a bit of a, , not knowing how to relieve the pressure that you were putting on yourself because I'd won the silver medal.

That first time I had only when I was eight years old and I saw those girls at the Olympic games in 1972, and I thought I want to do that. I'd made the calculation that 1980, I don't know that it had been decided it was in Moscow at that point. But 1980, I would be 16. I'd be in year 11. That was the games I could go to and get on with the rest of my life.

But once the, still the medal happened in 78, everyone said to me, oh, you'll go one better in four years. So, suddenly that is extended. Oh yeah. I'll go before your time. And it's been So, well, I must say at the time, but anytime I want to travel Somewhere. Yeah. Comprehension of the magnificence of  a home.

Yes. But I was sort of struggling cause I'd done my HSC that year before I'd taken time off as m wanted. So, I finished in the top 10% of the state did my age, that was up to the [00:44:00] Olympics and then went back into the pool, , to, you know, go one better at the Commonwealth games. , and So, even though I felt like I had all of the reasons that I should be motivated, you know, for the first time m would, and dad would be able to see me swim for Australia.

And I was trying to go one better and win a gold medal and all these sorts of things. I just had this heavy weight on my shoulder, and I did not know how to relieve it. And then, Rocky. Rocky three was released in the cinema just about a month before the training, the trials. Now I've been something like the dog.

I was really struggling, and I was like, watch the pool. That's what, I couldn't understand. Like once I was in the water, I was fine, but it was in between those sessions. I was torturing myself and then Rocky comes in and it's pretty specific to my moment. 

He used to team traveling and he'd he'd beaten Rocky. And of course, Mickey he's trying to sort of died in it, spoken in scenes of that movie. And Apollo creed [00:45:00] comes back and he's training Rocky. Cause he's pretty angry with the way that, you know, clubber Lang sort of behaving. But Rocky is just not there.

And, and then, you know, his beautiful wife, Adrian sort of forces him to tell her what's wrong. And he says, I'm scared. You know, I, I I'm, I'm scared. And, and she says, look, you know, In the years ahead where it's just going to be you and me and you can handle losing, but you can't handle walking away. So, I'm in the cinema.

I thought I would just be going into enjoy Rocky. And So, it tells the story of the champ coming back. And I think, you know, I was able to process things. I didn't even know how to say and I walked out of that cinema. And if I was, if you like in flow, like we didn't have a word for that, but suddenly I heard no doubt.

Rocky had reminded, you know, my body and my mind that I knew how to win. And So, I was just on a roll from that moment. Everything became easier. My just my energy was back. And I came second at the trials in both 102 hundred. And it was, you know, it was kind of interpreted as like, oh [00:46:00] yes. So, then you know, that the successes have now moved into their rightful place.

And that was a bit, but I had, I was babysitting So, badly that I knew I was just like on the way up. So,  it was really interesting. And So, you know, it all went So, beautifully. I won the a hundred, which I never expected to do, and that was just pure thrill and sort of just, oh, elation and surprise and all of the joy that comes with something So, unexpected, but the 200 was interesting because it was more.

No, it was the rice that I was expected to win. So, on the other side of that, or once I'd won, I didn't have that same elation. It was always interested me. I seem to just be So, kind of like I'd done it. It was a sense of satisfaction because later on I learned that contentment and satisfaction, it's almost a neutral feeling.

It's not something that we try to strive for in many ways. And So, I sort of was a bit surprised by that, but nevertheless, I've won my gold medals and later on, I would learn through mindfulness and compassion. Oh, right. That's contentment. And it's okay to just be in that [00:47:00] place. It just means the job well done.

So, did you question yourself, not feeling more excited at winning? Oh, that was not, I mean, it was it, I was, I still remember being on the, you know, at the end and m and dad had jumping up and down and I was like, try, please skip that. I was like, nah, it's nothing there. It's more just, yeah. I did it. No, I did it after all those four years, I hung in and I got there and it was done.

It was, it was still, I would say happy. And, and content, I think, I think she's right about in glide and I love this is we tend to discount neutral moments. We discount the neutral emotions and I often have people a lot Saturday. So, you excited. Cause there's lots of good things that you cited. I don't want to disappoint you, but that's not the word.

It feels we're heading there, and it'll be what it'll be. But I've, I really have tried to knock off the extremes because I don't want this in my life. I want more this, about the externals. It, [00:48:00] it seems exhausting to live on a rollercoaster of extreme emotions. So, I do get what you're saying. I'm just surprised you had it So, young, a feeling of.

Yes. Oh, I think, well, I was scared of it because it doesn't feel right. Does it? It should be. I should have been like, I wasn't a hundred, there was that. And yet it wasn't. So, he just was like, no, that's not there. So, just did and what it is. And then I felt the same way. I remember again, when I was pregnant with my Son.

I felt like it was because I was 38. It had happened in the first month. My best friend had been given no time to live. And I was like, when you're waiting for lease, they get pregnant or, you know, try. And we thought it'd be months because I was So, old, not old but old for having a child. And and yeah, that feeling of, , when it actually happened.

And I remember driving along South darling straight after, I'd gone to tell mom and dad, and it was this beautiful pink sky. It was sort of June. and it was Twilight. And I remember thinking, wow, how have I managed this? Like, I, I want to go to the Olympics. I got there. I wanted to write a book. I got there.

I [00:49:00] wanted to be a sports reporter. I did that. I always actually didn't manage to be pregnant and have a baby, which has not been on my bucket list at all. You know? And, and there was that feeling again. And I mean, I must say I was a bit scared. Like, what if I don't want to do anything else I'm now that I don't have to fear it.

And I had a similar feeling just Mother’s Day, you know, just gone past. I was actually by myself. My son was in Canberra. He's studying down there. My husband was with his mum She'd had an operation and I was just with my sister. We were up at Lennox head and my son, husband was only 30 minutes away, but I had this beautiful morning of, I work early and I thought, oh, I'll just go to the cafe and read this book that I was really enjoying.

And I was sitting there in, you know, in the cafe. There's lots of young pair of parents with young kids and I was feeling So, like, my job is done. I've raised a beautiful boy. Yeah. Nope. Everyone keeps telling me, you know, how terrific he is. I think he is obviously, you know, his girlfriend's best friend said to me, I couldn't ask for a nicer guy for my gut, my best [00:50:00] friend.

So, you know, you've done the right thing by the girls, which is really important, I think when you're raising boys. , and it was that feeling of, yeah, you can, I was not scared of it at all. It was just that really still feeling of job. Well done. You guys good on you? Yeah. So, I think that learning not to be scared of it, as you say, well, I think it's worth sharing the viewers now, why that's such a big deal in your life to get to that point, because glide, whilst it talks about the highs and the lows of the external world, I think the conversation is worth having with you now is there is a very different narrative going on within you during this time.

And maybe I'm putting words in your mouth that I just get the sense that you've been wrestling with. You. All through that journey. So, you are not just competing in a race, you were competing with yourself with how you suppressed emotions with how you denied yourself, the painful thoughts that I can't even imagine how you go out from [00:51:00] the blocks planning to win when this isn't working for you.

And for a while there, your mind did not work for your success for your ultimate supportive view. No, no. And I didn't know that until I know that you are sort of conscious of it, but I didn't know what to do with it. I knew once Rocky had changed my thinking, like I told journalists after I won the, those gold medals that.

, but I had trouble with my thinking and Rocky changed it. So, I knew that I also, knew before the Olympic final, which is, you know, I've spoken about it before, but sitting in that reading room, I heard the thought, I don't know how to do this. And I was, So, I was like, of course you do. And I'm wrestled, I thought myself on my own and kind of created, I mean, I guess you might call it a panic attack now.

I don't know, but, and was able to steady myself and kind of get myself out there in a way in a way that was effective until I got into that, into the, onto the blocks. But yeah, So, I had this one, I called trouble with my thinking. And then, So, the book before glide was a teenage novel set [00:52:00] in the circus.

I'd never written fantasy before, but I thought I'd have a go. And I just, again, took myself down into spirals of doubt and I knew all the time. I think it's one of the fortunate things I suppose in that I knew that it was internal. I knew it wasn't Something, there was nobody else to blame with somebody, something that I was doing.

And So, I started, I signed up to a coaching course at first, a live coaching course because I thought, well, there's lots more modern techniques now that obviously what was happening back then, wasn't modern. And  that was great, except that it was another goal setting force. And I didn't need to set another goal.

I wanted to be content with the goals that I kicked if you like because I had to you know, as a, a, to go and do some coaching as well, in order to practice, you know, to get my cert four, I actually realized that I wasn't the only one who had that, what I called miss never enough inside my head.

So, I had these two competing voices. If you like, I have this Smiths or I'll have a go at that. You know, like that seems interesting. I'd like to write a book or I'd like to be an interviewer. [00:53:00] And So, I've got her, she's always there. And then I had this miss never enough. And. And I had that, that, that first start that we described of the Dee Why ladies sort of encouragement, I didn't, I'd forgotten about that.

Yeah. What I, what I, I thought that all my success had been a result of that. My coach sports psychology back then was. Mottos across the top of the Blackboard. And my favorite motto was when the going gets tough, the tough get going. I was introduced to it at 13, at 14, I was swimming for Australia and like, right.

That's it, that's it. But as you know, as I've said, by that third week at training camp in Hawaii, I didn't know how to. Where's the motto that said I've been tough enough. And So, more often than not, I was driving myself into the pool into sort of exhaustion and getting sick. , and by the time I had Terry gaffer, Paul, as a coach later on in the lead up to those Commonwealth early Olympics and Commonwealth games, he would tell people that, you know, you got to be careful of it cause she'll drive herself to illness.

And now we know that that never enough story. It's just called the language of scarcity. You [00:54:00] know, we all have it from the moment we wake up in the morning, didn't get enough sleep. Don't have enough time. Don't have enough money, don't have enough respect, don't have enough willpower, don't have enough, nobody, you know, fill in the blanks.

, and So, that's the language of scarcity and why we're doing that. We're just draining, you know, the parts of our brain of the world where we're draining the sort of the drive section of the brain, but we're just feeding them the stress hormones all the time. Cause. You know, your, your, your podcast is called perspective.

Like the capacity to stand back and say, hold on a minute. There's another way of looking at it. This is a really a powerful skill. So, I did the course. And then through that coaching course, I was introduced to, I did a webinar. It was non-compulsory on something called mindfulness based stress reduction.

Yeah and I still didn't get it at the end of the class. I was like, I didn't see why I have to sit still. I have to sit down and meditate. I don't get it. So, I suppose it's worth mentioning here. Up until then you had replaced X. You used exercise as a way not to be with [00:55:00] yourself. And I wonder how many people listening to this insert your choice of distraction here.

So, you don't have to be yourself. And you also, mentioned in glide the study where, how long can a participant sit in a room alone? And they're told there's a buzzer there. They can press that will give themselves an electric shock. And some people didn't even last five minutes, they'd rather give themselves pain.

Then sit quietly with their thoughts. Sorry. An incredible university of Virginia. I think it was always blows me away. And the people, most people was, majority of people would rather. Give themselves the stimulus of pain, the distraction from just being still with their thoughts. And there's the other one too.

So, that, that I thought the other one that was interesting was I think it was the Harvard study. It was around 2010 now, So, it's quite old, but it was you know, many, many people with, uh, an app on their phone. So, every So, often would pop up and say are you, is your mind on task or is it  [00:56:00] are you distracted?

And they were, I think it was 48% of the time we were distracted, and the distraction was not helping us be happier. Because, yes, you might be thinking about that next holiday Inn. I don't know, Somewhere beyond our shores one, you know, in one day. , but then there may be all, well, it's not fair. Why I'd love to go and maybe some fears about the coronavirus or whatever it happens to be, you know, imagination kicks in.

So, yeah, So, that's, So, I wrote down the name, John Kabat-Zinn and, , and suddenly, , Uh, So, I went to that's right after the website, I, a webinar, I went to audible and I looked up all the books a bit, maybe this John Kabat-Zinn has a book. And of course, he was the grandfather of mindfulness. So, he had millions of books that lots of them were, were abridged.

So, I chose the only unabridged book and started listening to it. When I went walking the next morning, he had vintages the adventures of mine finished. It's no longer available on audible by the way. Cause I wanted to read it on audible before [00:57:00] our chat. Okay. I think, yeah, I think it's on sounds true now.

Cause then I went to find him. Yeah. Now you tell me, well, it was interesting cause I went looking for it. Eventually. I actually emailed Don Kevin's in LA called the center for mindfulness to get his approval. So, it was tricky to find and, they were surprised actually. I think that it was on audible at the time.

Anyway, the story was that. I didn't go walking the next morning, chapter three starts with a basic breath meditation. I'm supposed to be sitting down, I'm walking saying, thanks So, much, but I can, I can just feel my breath and walk. And, and he says, okay, So, we're going to feel the breath. And so, you know where I'm feeling the breath and he said, now you might be thinking this isn't too bad.

You know, I'm, I'm, I'm feeling my breath. And I was like, yeah, that's, that's what I'm thinking. And he said, well, that's great, except that's a thought, and we're not trying to think. We're just trying to feel the breath. So, let's just let go of the thought and come back to the simple feeling of the breath.

And I was like, what did he say? I can [00:58:00] let go of the thought by coming back to the breath. And I, I mean, I was on the corner of Oxford street and Moorpark road up the top. I almost did circles. Like, why didn't Somebody tell you this? 30 years ago, when I was sitting in the ready room before the Olympic final, that I could let go of a thought, by coming back to the feeling of the breath, it's hard for sorry for the mind to do that, but it is possible.

It is tough to do, but it's hard. It would have been hard for you in that you trained yourself to disconnect from your body. Your body was just a weapon or a tool to get you down the pool. I didn't read up. I think our veggie greatly, you'd never learnt or experienced being in your body. You were here knowing what you had to do, inverted commerce, what you felt you had to do, but at no time had you taught yourself or had the experience of, of being exposed to this idea, all of me is here.

Not just the bit. That's got to think my way through this panic. And I bet I hope I don't [00:59:00] let it. That is an all of you. This just became a tool. I think my feeling, as I read at least was everything below here was simply a weapon or a tool to get the job done. The next job, the next job, the next job, even exercise was treated that way.

And So, to just have that ability, did you do it successfully in that first time? I can't imagine you did that. You actually sat and felt your body. It would have been an alien surreal experience to even know that was a, that was a conversation you could have with yourself. , certainly I think that one of the, definitely privileged to this, although I, I think one of the things that I found interesting about practicing mindfulness is that I could.

I did not know that I could learn to regulate an emotion and exactly the way that I had regulated myself through, through a race. So, I trained my body to remain a quant is or to maintain equanimity. And when I, you know, it was screaming with pain or my thoughts were like, I don't want to, you know, I, I [01:00:00] want to give up on, not that I ever thought about, but you know, toward the end of a race, when it's really, tough, I trained myself to stay, keep stroke long, keep your breath long.

You know, you're checking, checking, checking, checking time. And I didn't know that I could do that with an emotion. The moment that I was feeling anxious, as you say the trouble with my thinking, I didn't have trouble with my thinking. What I have is what we all have is a habitual way of thinking that gets us.

We learned when we were little, but this protected us somehow the way that we behaved, protected us and kept us loved, or kept us in contact with those that we needed. And what I didn't realize was that. It was just a habit to actually stop myself from feeling as you say, but if we can drop into the body, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, I've now reframed, you know, in terms of when the going gets tough, the tough drop into the body and feel what they're feeling, you know, and it comes to an emotion, right?

And So, if I'm feeling really worked up, then it's had there's something going on in the body. So, can I drop into the body and just feel what's going on? So, [01:01:00] you're absolutely right. I had no connection. It wasn't the breath meditation that I had such trouble with. But when the body scan, he had a, he had a body scan at the beginning of chapter five and I started doing that and I was like, I can't feel anything.

Oh, I must be doing it wrong. So, I didn't, I didn't do it eventually. Once I started doing mindfulness based stress reduction, I, the body scan is the first two weeks. I don't know. I was just like, I can't feel anything what's going on. And So, I was So, excited when finally I felt the tingling, my big chest. I was So, disconnected from this, that it took me a long time to actually come back into my body.

And now, you know what, I just, I have so, much more,  oh, well, I can just do it all the time, which is really nice. I could just a skill now. And I think that when you say about whether you can do it or not, I think one of the wonderful things about this whole practice of mindfulness and compassion is that it's really like advanced common sense.

What a psychology is known as advanced common sense, [01:02:00] but it's really forgiving.. So, yeah, the mind wanders it's going to wander that's okay. The moment you wake up and find out that you are not in the present, come back to the body, come back to the breath, come back to a sound, whatever it is that you have chosen as your anchor.

And I found that I call myself a recovering perfectionist. Like I just think it's a beautiful practice, perfectionist, because guess what? We're not perfect. So, I had this idea that I had to be perfect when I was a teenager. Of course, we don't. We can't. One of the quotes you put in the book that I love is between stimulus and response.

There is a space in that space is our power to choose a response by Viktor Frankl. That's one of my favorites as a coach that is pretty well, my central philosophy that there's a stimulus and that immediate what I call reactivity. Right. Their activity that creates the mess, the drama, the noise in our lives, or distracts us, or [01:03:00] prevents us being a true cells.

You don't get rid of that. You pause and you start noticing there is a space before that where all the gold is, the treasure is in that pause. I'm saying that to myself right now, as much as anything I know we have to remind ourselves all the time and what I really love about this, that one of the, I think, you know, we call it a superpower.

I, well, I do its curiosity because once you, when you're practicing, you know, mindfulness, it's just an awareness practice. Right? So, being aware of rod is arising right now in this moment. So, you know, I might be, you know, oh, in my mind, am I talking too fast? I have a tendency to talk too fast. I'm checking in with that all the time as I talked to you.

but rather that the way to actually, well, that that wasn't necessarily the best.

So, it's more. Exactly. Yeah. So, I'm just all just making sure [01:04:00] that in my body I'm breathing, I'm feeling my body in the chair. I'm feeling my feet on the ground. And yeah, it's more of that moment where, yeah, you've, you know, you're in an argument with your husband and, or your son and something is on the tip of your tongue, but it's say it, you know, you're going to wreck your marriage for the next 24 hours or maybe forever.

So, that capacity to go, I'm feeling, what am I feeling when I say what's going on? That's curiosity. So, the tension, when the stress hormones are activating is we're contracted and the moment we go what's happening. As you say, like if I'm talking too fast okay. By my shoulders, I just actually let my shoulders down.

Can I just actually be with my breath? Can I just feel what I'm feeling? Say it's anger or frustration, or, you know, your children are not behaving in the way that you want to. Can you actually just come back? What's going on in my body? And the moment we turn curiosity, fear into curiosity, of course we open up and we're able to, the contraction goes, we've got space between stimulus and response to actually then choose the best way to respond [01:05:00] in that moment.

For me, it's also, I'm going to add a dollop of, and give myself the pores to recognize one of the hardest lessons a human being can ever, ever. Yeah. Yeah. I think I know what he going to say was not the reason for my response. Ah, yeah. Well, Some that's right. The stimulus is never the reason for the response, as hard as that is in the moment, but they, but you don't understand, but if you knew what happened, if you knew what they, they should never, all of those moments, however, extreme it is, this is So, tough.

We still have a choice. And that's what Victor Frankel gave us. That was his gift of that book. The choice is not in the stimulus happening. Not necessarily shit's going to happen. The choice is in how we respond over and over and read, choosing and re choosing and re choosing. Yeah. And [01:06:00] understanding, oh, sorry to interrupt you.

That understanding that it's, it's actually triggering something yeah. From the past, from another time. Yeah, exactly. And just being able to forgive yourself for that moment ago. Oh, right. That's interesting that that's a rising. Yeah. It's got nothing. People, nobody is going to behave in the way you want them to have the time.

And I think that's, that's, you know, that's what the butter observed. You know, two and a half thousand years ago, life is inherently unsatisfactory because unfair everything and, you know, painful Sometimes. And there's going to be moments of joy and there's going to be moments of incredible beauty all around us.

If we are open to it, if we're stressed, then our, you know, our attentional resources are So, narrow and So, focused on that stimulus. Perhaps if we can look around and go, wow, you know what a gorgeous state is outside. I can hear the birds. I know I'm alive in this moment. And I'm, I'm feeling my body and what an incredible thing the body is that I don't know if you'd have to pay attention and it will breathe for me.

Yes. You know that there's, there's [01:07:00] where you start to, you have agency, as you say, you've got, you're empowered. You actually can. And I think that's what's So, that's what appealed to me because as an athlete, You know, you are training your body. It's, you're interested in that. You've got, you've got an awareness practice already.

So, the capacity to actually go, oh, well actually I'm training my mind as well. It's just like doing a bicep, like anything else that, , and I think once you understand that, that in fact there's a whole lot of things. There's a whole lot of things I can't control. This is something I can control and it's right here.

I'm going to be limited. I'm going to be rigid in that control, but I can control my response and I can, well, I can even set up an idea, have an ideal of the way that I want to respond, like a belief about how I want to be in the world. , and I think that's, you know, we're talking about second spring that there's So, many people that you hear going, oh, I'm not noticing anymore.

I'm not this anymore. And you go, well, actually we had a friend, a mother, she was just reading about, [01:08:00] she was reading about, you know, menopause and all the things that were going to go wrong long before she like them to say, no, no, one's noticing me anymore. And then I sort of one day for a coffee, he said, this bloke said to her, she walked pass it's okay.

Love things. Aren't that bad. So, we can carry stuff in aside that might not have anything to do with what's going on. Use this moment, reflect your what wasn't and what isn't one of the things my husband and I on a good day, do we take this? We take this quote between stimulus and response. There is a space.

And if one of us says something that could call, create. We decided this reactivity because of what they say, I'm not going to say they caused my reactivity. Although, when I gave with him, listen, I want to win. He caused my activity. It depends. I'd have to know that there's something that he does says whatever, and I can feel our activity.

What we're both doing now is stretching the paws [01:09:00] out. So, instead of it doesn't happen all the time. So, anyone's listening, thinking we're nailing that no Florida as Florida is, but more and more, we're expanding the pause. So, I might, if he says you know, a thing that I think is incredibly dominant offensive, you know, which is what he's going to do is never me.

, I'm going to slow down the pause and say, I can feel myself about to really fire out right now. I'm just going to give myself a bit of space and I'm just expanding the pause in slow Mo and I say, we need to slow down as speaking. We need to breathe. Cause right now I'm about to do my thing, which will mean you'll do your thing and this pause will be gone.

So, this to me is the game changer for every relationship, not just with ourselves, but with others. And I've done it with a couple of friends, as well as that, man, I can feel myself hating and rushing into that space right now. [01:10:00] And I do it in coaching as well, by the way, lacer. I'm sure. I'm sure you do as well.

Okay. something you just said, then I can feel something came out from me rather than a response straight away and think I'm coaching you. I'm going to acknowledge this is me right now. They're just rushed to expand in the space. So, I'm just going to take a couple of breaths, sit with what came my way and what came up for me, feel what I'm feeling.

And I'll let you know when I'm back and fully present and capable of giving you my very best self once more. So, we're learning to really slow down that pause and articulate what's going on in their paws. And I do it in my coaching and I do it, my relationships, and I do it with myself. Mm mm. , Soon after I started practicing, So, eventually I did sit down or for the, breath meditation and, , uh, and then my husband noticed you know, a big a change and somebody [01:11:00] started doing it.

We have  a pretty strong practice together in the sense that he not that we always do it together, but we are on the same wavelength. And I think that that makes a huge difference because you start listening to the wisdom of these kinds of practices. And I mean, we have always had, we've been married for 21 years, So, we have kind of.

Joy fun, , you know, a great romance. We wanted to have, you know, a great romance. We've got that as our goal. And So, if we're not we're not there, then we always check in with what's, you know? , but I think that the, it just, it, that you are both practicing and actually understanding that yet thoughts will take you away and it's not the place that you want to be.

And you keep coming back to the center. I think that as you say, is, it just becomes second nature to just take a breath or to say, or even to say Something like, I'm So, sorry. I should not have. Yeah. You know what, I'm really sorry to actually say sorry, in the moment. [01:12:00] And to know, and to admit that, you know, like my dad used to say, I don’t know, I don't know where we are right now to actually live in that I don't know was a lovely, , you know, powerful place to be.

And the beauty of the one good thing, if you like out of the lockdown last year is that my son was doing his HSC. And, blood came out in April and of course, all of the, you know, the bookshops closed down, all the events closed down. And So, I think out of, I don't know, it's feeling sorry for his mom.

So, he red blood. And So, he said to me, m, m, can we meditate one day? I said a basic breath meditation. And I said to him the next day, do you want to meditate? And he said, m, you know, if you want me to do it, I wouldn't do it actually died in the 10% happier app, which I use as well. Like, and So, they were giving three months free at the time.

So, he then sat down and he meditates every day. And the beauty of that, even when you have a teenager, I mean, obviously a 17 year old. So, an older teenager is that the conversations that we then have. [01:13:00] About what's arising and what's going on for him. And the thoughts that he's, you know, , that are coming up and particularly, you know, as we got towards the HSC and the doubt, you know, the things that get in the way about peace, if you like, or our ability to be in the moment and to be in flow, which is, you know, flow is that where skill and, and, , and, , challenge and challenge meet, you know, in that beautiful, concentrated place.

And So, to actually be able to name what it is, oh, this was the thought that was coming up. And, and likewise, you know, I, I, we always talk about getting into the body and I think that it's talk about mother guilt. Like, oh, no, I wasn't practicing when he was practicing, but I keep saying, you can come into the body.

So, can you come into the body? And he gets frustrated with it, but we know that, you know, we know that's the place to be because. Then once you see that slows you down, as you say, you're back in the present, again, you're not racing with your thoughts. And, it’s such a, I think in [01:14:00] that way, just being aware, the awareness of what is arising at any particular moment, So, that you know how to proceed in the wise as possible way.

That is a skill that all of us need. Yes. And with compassion, we need to get to compassion. It's the only pathway to peace. Yes. Yeah. Everything that's going on within ourselves. Pretty well. Global. It's all true. So, you describe a bird in your book in glide. You said there's a bird that has two wings and one wing is mindfulness.

It's that pause and what you do with that pause and how you fill it with presence to self. And I'm paraphrasing obviously. And then the other wing is built on compassion and particularly self-compassion which the DYI ladies brought you when you're a child and then you unlearned it and then relented.

That's how I envisioned you would totally. Yeah that I didn't realize, , until we were in that place of, , I thought, [01:15:00] well, I'd stopped. I was doing the course. And then uh, mom approached me about her. About whether I coach teenagers and I was really new to it at the time and I didn't own her teenager was self-harming at that point.

And so they were with,you know, professionals in that sort of area. So, they were beyond my, what I was skilled at the time and so but we did get to talk about how the anxiety might've taken hold, and it was a sort of similar story started in a running race at school. , I was swimming, right?

So, it got done really well got all the way to the state championships and then balked at the final. , and So,, uh, the m said to me, oh, we thought, well, it's one thing to have natural talent, but another to have, , temperament, if you don't have the temperament, there's nothing you can do. And So, the parents didn't uh, make their child run.

, and then after that, all sorts of problems, just the anxiety, just balked at doing anything new and anxiety, tension, depression, and time of school, and then the self-harming. And So,, and of course at that point I [01:16:00] was. I was sort of processing what I heard. I'd been telling the story of the DUI ladies for a good 15 years at school, always as a kind of quaint way of how I started in the sport compared to these professional days, you know, down at the beach, Sandy, all that sort of stuff, waves coming in over the rock rockfall , and suddenly I was like, oh my God, temperament can be trained because I know because my temperament has had been trained.

And then with that story, I then remembered not just the DUI ladies, but there were another, like four times from the age of 48 to 14, where I was in tears before stepping up to the next, challenge and Someone was kind. Someone offered me, walked beside me, held my hand, told me a story, did Something that helped me overcome my fear, encouraged me.

It's an old-fashioned word and enable courage to take on that next challenge. And of course, once I did the, the joy of achieving Something and the satisfaction is there.and so, I realized that actually I called it [01:17:00] can-do kindness at first. And then that's what I learned is the, essentially the definition of compassion, which I thought was always weak.

We talk about compassion overload and all this sort of stuff. It's sort of a weakness that you feel too much for other people, but in fact empathy or the way that I've learned it is empathy. Is that internal sort of circle. If you like, there's two circles. So, you empathize with what's going on. So, the DUI ladies empathize with my idea that I might drown put a girl in the water, So, I wouldn't drown.

And So, then the rest of it is all in your head. And So, encouraged me on, So, there's empathy in the center and then an outer circle of courage and high action. And I think that that's where she's mentioned that two wings of the bird. It wasn't, my analogy is it's been floating around for a while, but mindfulness by itself can be pretty cold and also, it can be authentic.

Whereas compassion is the ability to actually. You know, be in connection with other people if you like. And So, I think the compassion, compassion is the heart. You know, it's often said that the mind creates the abyss and the heart creates the [01:18:00] bridge. And I think that mindfulness and well, Jon Kabat-Zinn would say that in Asian cultures, the heart, there is the same symbol for the heart and the mind.

So, if you're not thinking, if you're thinking of mindfulness without compassion, you're not actually thinking properly of what it means. And even with that that capacity to say, like in that moment, you're, you're in the ready room you're facing three-ish Germans and the thought comes into your mind. I don't know how to do this, which is essentially what happens the capacity to go, oh, it's okay.

That's just natural. That's human. Our brains have a negativity bias. That's the way we've evolved. It's normal that you would be feeling like this. Okay. We're going to be able to get through this. So, that capacity to say to yourself, in those moments, come on, sweetheart. And you can do this without fear. So, definitely I was saying, come on, sweetheart, you could do this when I was trying to meet eight and nine kilometer sessions, but then that's also, the ability to say, hold on a minute, what you need right now is to be able to speak up and say, that's not what I do at home.

And I was waiting for somebody else to do it for me. So, it's not like compassion is [01:19:00] always rolling over. And just being able to just doing what somebody tells you, if the capacity to say. This is unfair. It's going to take some courage, but I'm going to speak up now. Yeah. One of the things for me with compassion is it gets mistaken for weakness.

And I think the word vulnerability is worth mentioning here Brene brown speaks beautifully about vulnerability and what a necessary ingredient in this. There were many moments in your booklet where I felt your vulnerability and So, clearly, and it was just those moments. If only you had known to say, this is normal, what I'm feeling is okay, you can sit with what you're feeling right now, and nothing has to change.

You are not in any way broken, nothing needs fixing that's right. And isn't it a gift to give it to your clients when you coach it's. I don't think the coaching research talks about it nearly enough to bring normalization and acknowledgement [01:20:00] that where they're at is absolutely normal. the first time it was ever said to me, I burst into tears with relief.

I was 37. The first time it was said to me, my dear friend, Jen said I was going through a big challenge, which is that, of course you're feeling fear. Anyone in your situation would, you're facing a new level, you're breaking through a boundary. How could you not feel what you're feeling? And it never felt such a relief.

It all just fell off my shoulders. I'm normal. I, I thought I was the only one who was this loser person worrying about things. Everybody else was just getting the whole planet needs a big dose of normalization, acknowledgement validation of where you're at. Just. That's mindful compassion to me that is mindful compassion at its best.

When you see the person where they're at and you fully normalize and embrace it, what a gift. Yeah. [01:21:00] So, we, how did we somehow get away from that? That's what's interesting. Isn't it? Like, how is it that we, cause I think that my grandmother who's now no longer with us, she would have been able to do it. You know, I wonder about that and I don't know, or maybe not.

No, cause I've met, maybe I'm imagining it because she was, you know, not in my tribe, but no, no. And I think So, how does that happen? Well, I think that's also, that kind of, you know, well, there's all of those many, many different mottos, if you like that, you know? I mean, the idea comes from this. Yeah. , my son has taken, So, he got into meditating and the Stoics, I've read a bit more about the Stoics recently.

And I think that there is. it's that element of control. That's kind of interesting cause we, because when we talk about the ability to control how you respond to the world, we're not talking about controlling or we're not talking, not talking about it in a, in a rigid way. We're talking about, [01:22:00] as you say about being vulnerable and being like the tree that bends with whatever's going on, being flexible.

And, and that's what, I think I went, did it. Wasn't in the book. I went looking for the word, , What was the word? It was resilience. I think it was. And I'd always thought resilience was about toughening up. But in fact, when you look at the meaning of the word resilience, when it comes to a substance is something that's flexible and something is able to bend and move and shape.

And I think that's what we're trying to, that's what we're talking about in terms of control, being able to be economist with whatever's arising. Okay. There's this very strange situation. Last year was weird. Now we've got another weird year when it comes to waiting for vaccines and whether or not we open.

So, can we sit with that? Not knowing and still, as you say, it feel vulnerable, but also, feel empowered that we can manage. But we can manage what's going on. And I think we've never been further away from that as a culture. I don't think we've ever been for the, [01:23:00] I'm sure you study CBT as I do cognitive behavioral therapy and the Stoics, and, you know, to be an effective coach.

These are the types of narratives we need to be familiar with, but the more I'm familiar with that narrative, the less I see it social media, or I see it in the media or a suit in the way politicians speak, or even just how people yell at each other, this basic beautiful Frankel's saying everything's in the pause.

Everything's in that space. The power is in the space. That's, people's immediate reactions. Are there faster and quicker than ever. The fast comeback is everything and got your media meat, meatier, and the gotcha tear down. And the shaming that is all the absolute, complete reverse of everything we're discussing.

Yeah. Radical, radical what we're doing. And I think that's why mindfulness is So. You So, it's scary for some people and it's not embraced. I mean, it's easy to kind of dismiss it as a, as a fad, or it's easy to go to the next gimmicky thing if you like, because it's faster mindfulness time. [01:24:00] It actually slows things down, but also, it, it, , it brings you back to, oh, what am I, what can I take responsibility for?

Well, that's the hardest thing to do. And I think that's, and I certainly don't think that I'm pro in that don't, don't even asse that at all, but it's, I don't, my husband doesn’t.

know what you're talking about.

I know, I know. So, that's but even things like recently I read, you know, we have the second highest uptake of antidepressants in the OACD, in the country that we live in. And the thing we say is, is because we're finally acknowledging the problems. It's not just that it's now we focus on problems and mindfulness and compassion tells us where our focus goes.

The energy will flow and we'll get more of that. And I'm, over-simplifying a whole bunch of neuroscience here, but it's worth looking at cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness [01:25:00] studies, and the research Joe show, the neuroscience research shows. We will get an experience, more neural pathways about what we focus on than anything else.

So, it's worth making a really conscious decision about what we pour into this and what we allowed to take residents here, because it's very easy to do that spiral. I've done that we all have. We all have. I remember seeing Lindy Chamberlain speak one year at the conference and she even, you know, this was long before I'd met mindfulness, but she talked about the fact that you know, up here is like her lounge room.

And why would she let. People in her lounge room, they're going to say horrible things to her. And So, she was disabled to keep it up. That's the way that she survived, everything that she survived. Well, she did a bit of joke, keeping it out on her behalf. Then I did, because the way they spoke about her, I remember that the way the media.

Because she seems so, stoic and a woman and a mother is not allowed to be [01:26:00] stoic and the judgments and the conclusions that were breached. I saw the power of the So, interesting para the pools could have been done with them a lot, or we touched on at the beginning of our conversation. It wasn't necessarily as much of your book as I, I, I'm looking forward to your next book, this idea of helicopter parenting and, , it's called lawn mower parenting now as well, where you parenting apparently is where you clear the, the path ahead of all obstacles.

You smooth it out. So, we have an example of it here. This is very anecdotal, but we literally occasionally have a parent phone up and question us about our, our place of. Work and whether or not their child, we literally have parents wanting to interview us oh, behalf of the fan. And we just very plenty. So, you, I just made it clear that your child can't work here because we're employing them.

And if they're not responsible enough to handle this conversation, they are [01:27:00] not responsible enough to work here. And we literally have parents justifying how we don't get to say that we've actually now started getting up. You are making your child unemployable, and I'm saying it, I'm saying it as clearly as that Lacey making your child unemployable.

If you think you need to smooth every obstacle out of their way, you are building a child who will not be capable of ever being told no of ever being told you haven't met the standard of ever being told. That's not how we do things around here. Because all the glitches have been smoothed by these parents phoning us.

Would you care to where do we go with that?

Yes. so, I remember my son first hearing, the term helicopter parenting and he was about 12. I said, what's that mom? And I explained it to me. What about? And he said, nah, he said, Joel, like a cargo plane. You come in, you drop the price and then you [01:28:00] go,

my husband heard him. I'm thinking in my mind, got planned. He put us at a nice sleek jet.  you turn that into it,

but it’s, look, how much do we think about our own parenting when it comes to parenting our children? I think that's, what's really interesting and certainly. You know, if you read my story, dad, my parents was certainly the sort of parents. If you showed interest in something like I did, like my brother did in Soccer, , then they would get you there to wherever you wanted to go, but they weren't, , in, So,, , you know,  reliant on you, , being, uh, you know, being a superstar swimmer that they weren't supportive of you.

So, I always say, you know, now you hear all of the stories of abuse in sport and, , even, you know, Some at a pool and, you know, I was a kid who [01:29:00] and dad, dad would take me in the morning, you know, at four quarter to four quarter to five, we first started, , when I first started morning training with Carla, but he'd sleep in the car or go for a run himself.

Like I never had parents that sat beside the pool and watched it. And you felt So, sorry for the kid whose parent was sitting by the pool watching it because they were, , They were usually when the parent left, they were the ones that were marking up in the pool. So, I didn't want to be there, you know?

So yeah, I think there's more to it as well. It's the parent who needs, this is sweeping generalization, but I do see parents who need their children to succeed for whatever reason, but the story the month before the month, like in a couple of weeks before the Commonwealth games, Charles, like by then I'd come second at the open nationals.

And the charter backstroke I'd broken state records all the time. So, I was in a good position to try to make that, to almost make that team. But I was exhausted this one night in the pool, and then I was still in tears. I was in tears. I was trying to. Complete the set that my coach was asking you to do.

And I was [01:30:00] in tears afterwards with that, I felt like I'd let my coach down. I was just swimming terribly. And I said, this is not fun. I don't want to, I don't want to do this. And, , he, , he took me home cause it was about 15 minutes from the pool was 15 minutes from home. I walked up the stairs to go and have my dinner where mom had kept it warm.

And he went back to the pool to tell coach that I wasn't, that I was  retiring. , and So, then he came back with a story that, , Peter, my coach had told him about, about mark Spitz and apparently mark Spitz had wanted to retire just before he w I think he, , it was the a hundred freestyle. I wasn't gonna race one hundred freestyle, I think, at the Olympics, you know, before, because he might be beaten, whatever it was.

There was some story where he'd almost walked away from the challenge, and then he didn't. And So, dad told me this was then he had his greatest breakthrough, , at that moment. And So, dad told me the story that it was still left up to me. So, I slept in, and then I went back to the pool and I think that's really important, but.

Look, what you've done. You developed intrinsic motivation, [01:31:00] whereas a child who only do it because the parents involved that's extrinsic motivation, and every study shows the more extrinsically motivated. We are the less, we're going to be able to sustain ourselves through the Rocky roads that are inevitable in anything.

But the story you giving glide that I love is the time that the parent I'm going to miss quite you. So, help me out here. There was moments where parents didn't want their kids to be in tears. So, you were in tears with fear and overwhelm or stress or exhaustion, but your parents left it to you. What do you want to do with that feeling?

You have actually a story in here where parents literally said, how could you let your child cry? That anything to avoid having the child feel discomfort. And then you in further, for Some of these parents, it was not wanting to feel their own discomfort as their child cried. And this comes back to this stimulus response conversation, child cries respond with shutting down the is making it better, making it right.

I think you're really So, clued in here that [01:32:00] pause. Okay. Is it okay for my child to cry right now? Is this a manageable pain? Is this a manageable discomfort? Is this given their developmental stage Something they can work their own way through and sit with and then come process and come through. Do they need my assistance?

Not do they need it to be stopped? Yeah. And I think you spoke about that a little in the book later on. I thought that's such a good point. You know, when is it that we stop the tears or when do we make the discomfort go away? Yeah. How long can we manage our own discomfort for, to allow the discomfort in another and still call it compassion?

Mm mm mm. Because I was surprised at that response. I'd been telling you, as I said, the story about the DUI ladies often in different, in different areas. And then it was only in the last few years. Yeah. But I told the story about, you know, I think I was asked about motivating your kids and motivating teenagers.

And that was the first time it happened. But then it happened a few times subsequently when I went and spoke it, you know, in front of a different, you know, [01:33:00] groups where that response was, God, how could you, how could your parents that you cry? I couldn't stand letting my child cry. And I was like, Yeah, totally left field.

Like, well, you know, I was like, yeah, of course. When I had walked away, I didn't like physical culture. I didn't do it. So, m probably didn't , it wasn't that she was, I dunno, but yeah, she's certainly letting me go. But the DUI ladies wouldn't I think that's a really interesting thing that they understood what was going on because it happened all the time at the pool.

They always saw kids So, uncomfortable. And then you had to a way of getting through it. I think that's the important thing. Cause as you say, like the beautiful week, I mean we talk about mindfulness. There's four foundations of mindfulness and that second is feeling

l feelings of pleasant and we move away from what's unpleasant. And So, when your child cries, of course, there's a feeling of [01:34:00] unpleasantness in you because you don't like to see them in plain. But I, you know, I, I remember one time my son is in year seven, he'd gone to his, high school by himself.

The other boys had been cheated and went off to Sydney boys and, and he went to some of the more local high school and he'd got into the selective stream, but I didn't believe in tutoring. So, he was by himself and then he was struggling with friends. And So, I was concerned because that had been in year seven and we were swimming and all that sort of stuff.

And he said to me, one day in the car, m, Sometimes I just want to be able to tell you something without you feeling the need to fix it. Yeah. And that's, you know, we all fall into that trap because we were caring people, but we are in a situation now, I think, as you mentioned, children, you know, God, we're talking about consent.

Consent surely is the ability just to say here the word, no, and be okay with it. Yeah, yeah. Or feel a feeling and be okay. That that person is having. But if we've got a whole lot of young people who don't [01:35:00] know the word feel, haven't felt haven't heard the word. No. Then in that moment, when things are really, you know happening that's which I'm not, I'm not condoned kind only, but this is what we need to step back and take.

We need to practice no, in a whole lot of other situations that aren't So,, , you know, acute, if you like. , and I think that's something that we're not addressing and, and, , I've heard that w what you described, I've heard that before, where parents are calling employers to check, can you imagine, I remember speaking at a school once I was there to talk to my year 12, the year twelves about the sort of the creative writing piece they had to do.

And, , it was the first time that Some of them, Some of them hadn't had their forms signed by their parents to, you know, to say that they could come and hear me speak this year, Eleven's becoming year 12 and they were stopping Some, the school was stopping Some of those students who hadn't had their form signed from coming to Sydney.

And that was the first time they'd been held accountable for not getting something done. And the way that the, , [01:36:00] you know, the teachers sort of expressed it before I spoke was. , well, what happens if you pulled over on the side of the road and your car hasn't been, , registered? You can't say our m didn't do it.

What are you going to tell the policeman? And So, I told the story there that my son was in year seven at the local high school, and he'd lost 40% on an assignment that he put in. Cause he handed it in two days late and it was 20% each day. And the, yeah, that would like, but didn't the school call you?

And I was like, well, no, it's not about

So,, , So, that balance of, , being there being supportive, but not, , stepping on too many toes and letting them discover things for themselves, I think it's incredible. And I was, we were really pleased, , when last year, , he decided that, , our son decided he was going to go to the AMU or apply to the IMU because he'd read a study, said that the most unhappiest and happiest cohort in a society is 18 to 24 year olds who are [01:37:00] still living at home.

So, he decided he would live out of home. Good on him. I'm just thinking about the repercussions of why that is. And that's a really, that's a good study to know. I can think of So, no reasons. Yeah. Well, I think also, we talk about initiation that when we talk about things you were allowed to do, like, you know, there's that whole, the hero's journey type thing, the Joseph Campbell stuff where they're supposed to progress.

Yeah. You're supposed to, you know, yes. I was at 16. I was a captain of an Olympic team and it was stressful, but talk about a way to be initiated into growing up into speaking up for yourself into a whole lot of really good things. So, as a, as a, as a, in terms of personal growth, it was an amazing thing if situation to be, , To be part of, and, and I, and at the same time, we're alSo, going out, we were going to bands.

We were trying to get into the local pub, but like, you know, I know that it's not seen as the db thing to do, but at least we were, I think now [01:38:00] God, what about if kids were just distracted by the band playing, they might not actually be drinking quite as much. You know, they didn't leave the spot to go and get a beer.

Not that I was drinking cause of swing for Australia, but we're crowded in wanting to hold your spot. You were close to the band, you know? So, there were a whole lot of things we were allowed to do then was okay, exactly. And stranger danger. They actually have laws in 14 states in the United States where it is illegal to have a free range child, which means a child catching public transport without an adult supervised is against the law.

It's illegal. Yep. Yep. You literally can be arrested as a parent for neglect. If you're. And So, in Japan, they have the opposite So, that you have entire systems of schooling where you're not allowed to bring your child to the school. They all have to use public transport. They can stick together. It's absolutely fine, but they're all expected to learn the independence.

And then in the schools, they have to clean their own school. They have to. Prepare the meals, keep the toilets [01:39:00] tidy. There's this sense of respect for the community space and how they operate within it. And then I go to the American extreme and more the Australian extreme where there's no expectancy around that at all, that would never be a narrative that would be created here without outrage about personal rights and violating my personal choice and freedom to express and well, hang on, maybe there is a middle path here.

Let's come back to mindful compassion and must be a middle path. something can be drawn from these two ideas instead of opposing and being adversarial drawing from each and landing in a space. That's going to work for these children to know that their minds, their hearts, their feelings, and their bodies can be United, that they can be fully whole bodied in this moment.

And own this moment and then phoned me up and asked for a job where they're putting their parents on the phone.

, you would have the same, not quite that, but the same thing where people come to you [01:40:00] and say, what can I do? My kids are experiencing anxiety and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'll say, come to my course, come into MBA. So, I want them to, because once your nervous system has settled, then that will help your child.

And most of the times I don't have time. I don't have time. And they want their kid to be fixed. So, that's the pattern. This isn't every parent. So, if anyone's listening every parent, every child all the time, please don't make it that simple as what we're saying, understand the nuance of what we're saying without it constantly having to be said, but whenever a child comes, a parent sends a child will say, it's the parent that needs the lesson just, yeah.

And I think that we need to, you know, the, the, our kids, , the things that we're talking about in terms of our teenagers or even out, you know, the, the whole thing about the millennials that's been learned. That has been learned from the society that they live in from the parenting, from, from all of the, , inputs, if you like, [01:41:00] you don't just wake up one day and have, , be a sort of person who thinks that m needs to call an employer.

Yeah. That has happened. And, and we, you know, we, I heard a story the other day about, , what was my, my niece, , and has cousins that live in America who go to a school where there are children who identify as what's called furries. So, they're dogs, they get around on all fours. I'd never heard of this before.

And my immediate reaction is, oh my God, like, what is going on there? What are the parents thinking, Ababa, all this other stuff. And then I was sitting, you know, at a cafe, you know, a couple of days ago, I'd heard the story and there's one family with the kids sitting, eating their food while the kids are on an iPhone iPad, then there it is.

And there's another group where the dog is sitting on the lap of the person at the cafe. Me thinking, well, maybe it's a really. , normal response to what these kids are seeing that in fact, the dog gets a lot of attention and a lot of pain. Yeah. Kids [01:42:00] are not. So, it's really interesting what we, I think as, as, and I think that we raise it, the village raised the child.

It's not just the parents think it's a conversation that, oh, it's So, interesting. Just that. , the things that, you know, our parents just would think is So, strange. , and yet now has become, become normal. I've just, you know, seeing that side of the pool, if you like, it needs to be, I think it needs to be okay to question this.

Like, there's going to be people who are seeing now about the comments about ferry saying, don't you judge, everyone's a letter for it. Well, hang on. I am allowed to question it and we need to keep having conversations and credit culture where our questioning it is is as permitted as someone doing it.

Right. Well, I think it's also, important. I think I tell the story, I was judging it first and then go back and you start, hold on a minute. Can I see this in another way? And right beside me, there's another perspective. I think the capacity, as you say for yes, we are meat. It is absolutely human. I mean, junk habits in, you know, we talk about [01:43:00] the Mo the, , you know, we're concentrating on the breath.

Our mind goes off the breath, and then we notice that and come back to it. But we come back to it. Non-judgmentally now that means that we can't be well when we start to watch our minds, we're full of judgment, but it's the capacity to hold the judgment and go. That's interesting that I have judged it in that way.

Can I find another way to look at it, as you say to be we, there is a natural reactivity. Can we notice the reactivity not judge it and then go, oh, how interesting can I see this in another perspective? And that's the skill. And as you say that capacity to sit with Somebody who has done metrically opposed in terms of politics or what they believe, and yet still find common, you know, common humanity, that's So, important, but it's being lost.

And like, I think what we practice it's about bringing people together, even though we may have diametrically opposed views. It's still going to be interesting and say, yeah. Wow. That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it from that perspective. One of the things I think about [01:44:00] judgment is I normalize it. , people come to us to train, to be coaches saying, oh, but I'm too judgmental.

Of course you are. Our instinctive part of our brain needs to make fast judgements to know that it can survive this moment and get through it and maybe hopefully belong as well. That's what our instinctive brain is aiming for after thousands and thousands of years of conditioning, that judgment that immediate judgment is designed for our survival and for us thriving in a community where basically breeding.

Is survival. So, given that natural, that pause becomes even more important. So, the judgment is going to be there. Well, hang on. Let's not act on that. Let's know that that's in me no matter what. And then let's do the second and the third and the fourth response and see what else is available after the fast judgment, because that fast judgment is going to beat logic every day, how we've survived.

Yeah, exactly. And we did a great job. If we're sitting here, our ancestors survived, everything. They survived. You and I, [01:45:00] our parents, parents, parents, friends going back tens of thousands of millennial millennial survived, literally tigers. Hmm, we talk about how we feel the flight fight response because of an imaginary tiger.

They actually did survive that. So, it has to be So, tightly wound up in us to feel survival instinct. If you're living today, you are the most prone to survive because that instinct in your ancestors is the most, most developed. Those whose survival instinct was not that well developed. Didn't survive and not sitting here today.

So, of course, we're going to feel instinctively negative or worried or anxious or stressed on, and then it becomes beautiful mindfulness that you teach, or how can we counteract it, not get rid of it. How can we balance it out and notice we are So, much more than that. Yeah, and I think that's where mindfulness does receive it.

It's it doesn't have a great rack in that sense. It's all about relaxing. It's all about getting rid of stress or getting rid of thoughts. [01:46:00] And it isn't what the beauty of mindfulness is the awareness and the compassion of what is arising compassion for ourselves as human beings, as you know, in perfectly perfect human.

, but with the capacity still to act or respond in the best wisest way for all of us, you know? , that is, that's the, I think that's why it's such a great skill. And should I wish it was taught? I think it is with you is tell us about the work you do, how . Yeah, So, I don't know, or I speak, , I teach, tend to teach people out of school now more than in school.

I think, , you know, places like smiling mind and are, , Smelling wine and you know, not a Headspace, you know, they're doing great stuff in school. I think they've got Pasadena to, to actually, , Do it on scale, but yeah, just that, , oh look, I think like you, you know, you, the beauty of being able to help, you know, a [01:47:00] university student, who's absolutely at their wit's end, they've got one assignment after the other.

It's just coming at them and they just don't feel as though they can manage and that they're getting themselves into a panic and that capacity, that ability to help them hold what's going on and realize, oh, it's just a feeling. It's just a story that I'm telling. I can actually just sit. I can breathe my way through it.

I've got, or I've got, you know, a skill I can walk, get up, go for a walk, see the sunshine, feel it on my skin. , take a deep breath. Oh, okay. Now I see a way through the assignment. I can see what I couldn't see before and then come back to it in a much calmer place. And, , and we see it all the time. You see it in the clients that you, you must coach that.

I see it in the people that I, that I teach or that I, you know, essentially I'm on the part. So, we're teaching one another in many ways, because you will learn as much from the people that we work with. , and. And I think that, , it's, uh, it's So, nice. It’s just So needed right now. It is. I agree. And I also, want to turn off social media.

I want to teach mindfulness compassion, [01:48:00] not on social media, social media last year. , I've got it right here. I did. It was interesting. When I went to live in New York, I studied X. Right. And that was my first thing. Oh, I'll, I've got to work out. What's going on. I'm somehow disconnected from my body. It was very interesting when I started, but, , yeah.

But the beauty of it was that, you know, back in 1990 it's New York was a self-help capital of the world. We didn't have it here, of course, but there, but I couldn't get through a whole book. I'd think I'd much rather read fiction. You know, all storytellers are about they're about showing human behavior and you walk in someone else's shoes, you know, the old Atticus Finch thing.

And So, then when this came out, I don't know if you've ever, you read it, the living sea of waking dreams by Richard Flanagan. So, he came out though, I don't know, maybe October last year and, , the disconnection in this book it's unputdownable and yet it's just So, incredibly powerful. And I think fiction has a wonderful power, a wonderful way [01:49:00] of doing that, that you just like, I, I, I'm supposed to be on social media to promote my book and everything.

I'm not going to be interesting. The, the, just the pain that those people were in, it was, it's a bit of magic realism. So, you have to go with the idea that a woman is losing parts of herself, and then her so is disappearing in front of her. And. And then the disconnection of course, with buyers, with, uh, with, , with nature, it's really wonderful.

It's powerful help to disconnecting from social media. I love reading. I really have no trouble. I recommend this book glide by glide, taking the panic out of modern living by you. I have no trouble finishing whole books. I want to know the narrative, the hero story arc I'm I really respect what it takes to.

Craft a book because it's all those troubling thoughts and experiences you've got to create into a narrative. I think that's a wonderful thing. So, I, I am who I am today because of the journeys people have had prior to me. And they were, they were gave [01:50:00] me the privilege of accessing their experiences. I know I am who I am today because I was able to draw on the books.

I've read the experiences that others have had that have contributed to the choices I can make in that pause. If I, I think still enough, I think like it was the same thing. It was like not the same thing. So, it was more, it was my ability to actually shift into, into that self-help space. I don't think I was ready to say I was.

I think particularly also, at that time you were reading stuff that, you know, it's your mother's fault that you are the way you are. And it was that sort of stuff. Like, I'm not, I don't want to blame somebody else, but then it was that era of. Of self-help stuff that down. Whereas now I understand now what they're saying is, okay, we've been conditioned.

And So, it doesn't, we can forgive, you know, everybody, , has parents that are imperfect So, we can forgive them because they were doing the best with what they had. And we are now doing the best of what we have, but we can take responsibility for what's arising in our stuff. That was my response to that, [01:51:00] but certainly fiction.

I never had trouble, but at that time I was also, wanting to write a book. So, I hadn't planned congratulations. And we haven't mentioned that to have you as you've written five books. So, yeah, that's just phenomenal. Now, Lisa, is there anything you feel we haven't covered that you'd like to talk about? I don't, I think generally, , is there anything, I guess the one thing that I would say is that.

The trouble with my thinking got in the way of joy, not in the way of me enjoying what I love to do. I've been So, fortunate in my life that I started with swimming. I found swimming. I loved it. And then the journalist that I was traveling with said, you should be a sports reporter because I was always writing.

So, I love to write, I love to interview people. I love to write books. I love to, you know, go to acting school, live in New York. I've always done things that I really love to do. I've never really worked in that sense that I haven't enjoyed, but it's So, it's more than [01:52:00] the thinking of the trouble with my thinking got in the way of my joy.

And So, what we can talk about, you know, goals and, you know, doing achieving and all that sort of stuff like in the, in the end, I think that we're here to. Have a beautiful time or had the best time we can have with what's going on. If we can be aware there's going to be stress, we can't take it out of our lives.

And also, there's good stress. You know, there is stress of the challenge that we want something that we'd like to achieve. But, if we are the more aware we are, the more present we are, the more we can catch joy and beauty on the run. And I think that's what for me, what these practices have given.

That's fantastic. Thank you So, much. Where can people discover more about your Lisa and the work that you're doing? you can go to my website ever mind.com.edu. if you'd like to, , dot com.edu, if you'd like to inquire about [01:53:00] upcoming courses or about, , Private coaching.

My book Glide is available in good bookshops and [email protected] as well. Thank you. 

oh, it was fantastic. I was So, pleased for you. That's how I found it. I just thought it was fantastic. Good on you. Thank you really. You know, it was really, yeah. I mean, I think when you discover Something like this, it's like coaching, like, oh, there's a way through this. We don't have to be having a bad time.

We can actually see ourselves from those things that are causing us stress. A lot of the stuff, a lot of it's inside and the more you can free yourself from that, then not happy in your life. Yeah. Beautiful. Final words. Thank you, Lisa. Really appreciate you. Our pleasure. Pleasure was mine. Thank you. [01:54:00]