And you told the story super well total awareness of story arcs and everything, but it's a really interesting story. Yeah, that's true. It is. And, you know, I will say though that I've met some people who are natural storytellers and they make magic out of the most mundane life experiences through their ability to use words. And I think words are somebody who's good with words has an ability, I think, to cast a spell on someone in a positive way, because when you can get put words to something, there's a healing that can happen for people. Like, I think a lot about people who maybe they have some sort of medical issue and that keep going to doctors trying to get a diagnosis. And once they get a diagnosis, even if it's not great news, there's like a healing to just knowing what they're working with. And I feel like that's what words can do. Like, you know, artists can put words to the human experience in a way that can help people make sense of their day to day life. And so whether you have an amazing story or not, if you are a born storyteller, I think that that you can make art out of the boring. I definitely not that boring story. Let me take you back to a particularly stressful moment in your life, well, stressful for most people, but you turned it into an opportunity. Your dad is in his kitchen and his telephone rings. Take it up from there for us because this goes crazy pretty fast. Yeah, so I was at a meeting. I was recording my own podcast and- Give a shout out there, give it a plug, give it a plug. Yeah, the U-turn podcast. Shout out to the U-turn. But yeah, so I love doing that. And that's what I was up to. And while that was happening, my dad, he got a phone call. He was just in his kitchen making a coffee. And somebody called and they had screaming on the phone in the background. And they said, we have your daughter. And if you don't listen to everything, we say we're going to killer. And they kept having the screaming sound from this woman in the background. And you know, the amygdala and the brain was pretty hijacked at that point and he was in fight or flight. And he was listening to their every word and he was terrified. And they ended up escalating the phone call to him, going to the bank to wire them money. And it was in that moment that I got a text message from the police and I was able to say, I'm literally recording a podcast episode right now. And that's what I'm up to. I'm not kidnapped. and I got on the phone with my dad, he was in tears. I've never heard him like that before. And I got to salute him. He doesn't even like to watch my TED talk about it because he's so upset that that happened to him. But he was able to handle a crisis situation with a pretty even energy. And I think that's a very challenging thing to do. I often think it's what stays here in when the crisis arrives that really determines largely the outcome. Like the crazy story of that everyone knows with the Nigerian prince is trying to launder. You know, everyone's got the Nigerian prince and I have 10 million. If you send me a thousand euro, I can send you the 10 million. And you know, for me or you that have the luxury of, you know, I'm not assuming your background, but the luxury of middle to upper class and education, comfortable life, that doesn't arrive to us in a place of panic because we're like, we don't need that money that badly. This is most likely a scam and the rational side of our brain kicks in. But if that arrives to somebody who's death-stricken, about to be thrown out at our house, it arrives like a last chance and it's in a very emotionally driven state. I don't have a daughter, I can only speculate. That's a father's worst nightmare. Anything to happen, especially, you know, you opened up on your TED Talk about your sister had recently been brave before that, which heightens your dad's sense of, you know, desperation to not have another family tragedy. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's also very real, where perhaps because he had lost a daughter before this happened, you know, my sister, maybe he was more sensitive to that fear And that was more traumatic to the point where he was buying into it more than he would have otherwise. Maybe if that didn't happen, he would have seen that it's a scam.
But it's such an example for how the mind works. What is going on for us is not about what's happening. It's about what we think about what's happening. Because what was happening was I was doing a podcast interview and what was happening for him was he was having coffee. And what was happening for the scammer was there are busy scamming people on the phone. But in his world and his soul, what was happening was extreme loss, extreme fear. And it's almost like we play movies in our head all the time to feel pain or to feel positive experiences. And what's crazy about this is we hear scams every day of the week, but actually how far it went. Like your dad got to the point to staying on the phone with the scammer and driving to the bank before this actually came to light by, you know, I think the police somehow managed to track you down in the meantime. Exactly. Exactly. It's interesting too. I read the comments sometimes on the talk and people have a lot of different feedback around, you know, why the police shouldn't have texted me or why they should have. And I mean, life is such a mixed bag of chips. Like everybody's doing the best they can. These experiences are so weird and we're all just trying to navigate life. And so to me, it's always really interesting to see all that feedback. But I think that's an interesting analysis as well that everybody's doing the best they can because you talked about that and listening to the talk, I tell taught, it's a totally rational sentiment. Everybody's doing the best they can when you apply it to your dad. But you actually were able to step back and you said, well, I can actually equally apply this to the kidnapper. Yeah. Yeah. That's like an insightfulness or a level of EQ that most people don't exhibit during a family crisis like that. Thank you. You know, I do think everyone's doing the best they could. And I think that if they knew better, they would do better. And we live in a high stress world. And it's, And I think that's why people's mental health right now is at an all-time low. There's so much stress to perform even for me as a content creator. I love putting clarity and fulfillment and all sorts of different content out there for your career. But even with my contracts, I'm getting with companies or different business opportunities. I do feel a sense that I'm expected to always be producing highly innovative content. and the reality is life has seasons and art has seasons. Like I need to go inward and do nothing and be in silence in order to produce art and magic. And I don't really live in a world, the business world doesn't stop. You know, the calendar is 30, 31 days and a month and it keeps going with the eight hours a day. So I've had to really work hard on my boundaries so that I can create that space for my own self-preservation and my own innovation. But you know what, I struggled with this as well. And until I came across one piece of content, which I'll share with you now, because I published a podcast five days a week and it's largely, I believe, why it's grown so fast because it's five days a week. And people, you know, it's a part of their routine. You know, they know at six a.m. every day, I'm gonna have this guy and he's gonna be talking some type of cycling, health, happiness and longevity. But I struggled with that. We're on episode, almost, I think, three seventy four hundred round there somewhere. And I struggled with this idea that, how do I make tomorrow's content better in today's content? Yeah. How do I warn up next week? How do you keep turning this style? And you get to a place where that's not particularly good for your mental health because you're trying to outdo the best version of yourself always. And I came across a video and I'll share it offline with you from the founder of Patreon. And it's called Work to Publish. And it's brilliant. It's about, I think it's 90 and 20 minute long talk where he talks about what publishers do is they publish when it's incomplete. They press, publish and they press go when they cut us down and written another six pages, seven pages. He said, when you look back on careers like the Beatles and John Lennon, you go, well, how was he such a prolific songwriter? Because he just published. When you ask him about, you know, before his life was taken, you ask him about his career, you say, you know what, I wrote some good songs, I wrote some bad songs, but I was never a guy who was going to, at the end of his career, look back and say I had seven songs.
Like, I just put them out, I put them out, I put them out, I put them out, because that's what publishing is. It's the difference between, you know, blogging and academia, you know, I come from an academic background in law. And it's never finished. It's never perfect. And you're your own worst critic. And that's not what blogging is. That's not what podcasting is. It's incomplete. I think it's important to draw out a distinction I feel for creators. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, it's funny, when I wrote my book, my mom's, I had writing block and I was in Bali for a few months trying to get the creativity going and I called my mom in agony and I was like, oh, I've got writer's block and she was like, that's funny because you never have talking block. And I remember, you know, in that moment realizing, you know, I say this in my TED talk, perfectionism is a mask that people wear when they're afraid of failure. And I think writer's block or just staring at the cursor on a Blake screen is a form of perfectionism. And so the healing for me as an artist has been to keep writing even if I don't like it and to not stop whatever creative force is channeling through my hands even if even if I don't like what I'm seeing because at least I'm not blocking that energy in my life and I love that tail about genius and how genius is something that visits you it's not something that you have and you kind of capture genius in the moment it's visiting or else it goes on on to someone else. And I kind of view my creativity. And like as long as I have that energy channeling and I'm not blocking myself and I'm giving myself permission, my little genius friend can visit when they want. Yeah, and it has a way of showing up when hard work is there as well. Yeah. Absolutely. It's post kidnapping and reflecting back on that. I heard you make a statement. I'm not sure it was in your head talk on your Instagram. And I reflected on that a lot myself as well. said I'm my own kidnapper. What did you mean by that? Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think that we far too often are so desperate to have a plan and we want one for the sake of having one. And so we hold on to that plan. And we kind of rob ourselves, we stop listening to everything else, we hold on to our vision so tightly. And our hands aren't loose enough for other things to come in that might be more right for us. We get tunnel vision and we don't see what's on the periphery anymore. And so to me, what's so important I would say is holding your vision lightly so that other things can come in. And if we don't do that, we do become our own kidnapper. We take ourselves on journeys that can be really soul crushing, that we don't even want to go on. We choose career paths we don't want to be on because we think we're going to survive or we're going to make more money or we're going to be more fulfilled. The truth about goals is that we set goals because we think we'll feel a certain way when we get to the end. And the problem and the reason that we see so many celebrities, for example, like Brittany Spear shaming her hair off, is because the goal doesn't feel like what we thought it would. There's a discrepancy. And so, you know, we've got people all over the world working their butts off to make something happen. And then when they get there, it doesn't even feel like that. And they put years of their life into something. And there's this disconnect. So to me, I would be more interested to look at how do I want to feel now and what would make me feel that today. And how do I bring those feelings into my day to day expression and way of life? And if I live in that energy field, what are some ideas that come from there versus the amount of people I've had come into my practice as a coach? And they've said, I got this job offer. I'm so excited about it. And after they're done telling me how excited they are, I'm like, okay, well, how do you feel about the tasks, like the job itself, like doing it? And they're like, oh, well, you know, obviously I'm going to have to climb the ladder and it's going to suck to do this or that. And I'm like, well, but that's your experience.
It's almost like they just kicked me back into alignment. And from that place, I can more viscerally feel what's a yes and what's a no for me. But what is it about the girls or the guys that make you feel yourself? Is it like a personality clicks or what is it? Yeah, I think everybody in our life, we're kind of creating a cocktail with, right? Like let's talk about romantic relationships. Like, you know, I work in self development. So a natural thing to say or do is to say, I need to work on myself. if this thing isn't going well and we can put it on ourselves. That's something that's not right. And a lot of times we do need to work on ourselves in grow. But the truth of the matter is that sometimes the combination of one person plus another is not healthy or not positive and they bring out the worst in each other. And I think so is the case with friendship. There are certain combinations where you're just not a match and there's certain combinations of personalities where when I'm around them, there's like a groundedness that comes over me. Maybe it's them. Maybe it's their own force field that they're carrying for me to come into. A lot of the times I feel seen and understood by them in a really deep way. I feel relaxed around them and through that relaxation, I stopped performing and being someone else. So are you really auditing your time? You're looking at experiences, whether they're, you know, roising on a, in a diary on the beach or going to the cinema alone or meeting certain friends, you're auditing all these experiences. And are you giving them like a subjective score or how are you grading them? You're just putting in, I, for me, to your body, like, you know, You speak in my TED talk. I did a lot of research on the gut, also called the second brain and all the neurons that are in there. There's a wisdom to when our stomach sinks. There's a wisdom to when we have butterflies in our stomach. I feel like we can feel when something feels good. We can feel when we're pulled towards something. And when we're cut off from that feeling, it's because we're cut off from ourselves. And so for me, it's about saying, when was the last time you felt like yourself? When was the last time you felt at home in your body, in your mind, when did you feel peace? What was it that you were doing? It's brilliant advice. I'm just thinking back to Aikenshu Law School, and then I briefly practiced law before pursuing a professional cycling career for a little bit. And I can distinctly remember a period sitting in court, sitting at legal dinners, and just thinking, this isn't me. I don't want to say it was impostor syndrome because it wasn't. I'd gone through seven years at University of the Beader. And I finished one of the top of my class. I was like, I'm definitely good enough to be here, but I was like, I couldn't articulate at the time, but it just wasn't my jam, it just, it wasn't me. Yeah. And the thing that people do when that happens is they try to make sense of it, and you don't have to. That's what's so important, is you don't have to put your time into understanding every reason why things don't work. You can let it be enough that something doesn't work. And this is the case with relationships too. You know, I've had so many friends get their heart broken and they'll say to me like, and they'll just sit there for hours trying to figure out what it was. And it can be helpful for the mind to make sense of why something didn't work. But for anyone who needs the message, you know, I just wanna remind you that it's okay to not have that answer either. It's okay to just know that something's not working for you and that's enough for you. And that's it. That's brilliant. So if I've started out of my time, and now I feel like, okay, whether it's relationship or job or how I'm spending a portion of my time isn't working for me. And I've boxed that off. How do I start to, I think there's a feeling of helplessness that goes with this being kidnapped into the house, the car, the title. How do I claim back that feeling of control from it? Cause I know what makes me happy, but that's almost depressed me more. Cause for a lot of our listeners, it's like, yeah, I know riding my bike for four hours makes me happy, but I'm stuck in work for 12 hours a day.
And then I got, you know, a fat partner. I don't even like anymore. you know, two kids that aren't even mine. You know, where did you get out of this? Yeah, yeah. Well, I would say the first thing is to really honor your values. If you value riding your bike four hours a day, and that's a non-negotiable value for how you want to live your life, then it's time to look into alternate work setups. It's time to look at what you actually need to be making every single month. Like the amount of people who tell me that they can't quit their job because of money, but they haven't even calculated their bills and looked at whether they can afford to quit is incredible. So I would say, right now I'm seeing the rise of polywork more than ever and it started with millennials. They were taking on multiple jobs just to keep the lights on, but now I'm seeing polywork amongst Generation Z and what they're doing is they're using it for self-expression and for variety and honing skill sets. So instead of if you want to work in film having one job, they take three part-time jobs and they get different nuances in something that they want. So I think it's really important to just remember that there's other ways to work. And so if your goal is to be able to ride your bike four hours a day and have more balance, right at the top of a piece of paper, what can I do from where I am now with what I have now to get closer to riding my bike four hours a day? And just like I don't block my creative energy with my fingers typing, even if I don't like what I'm writing, just let yourself write every possible idea of what could happen for you to create that four hours and then ground yourself and star the ones that feel like possibilities. Far too often we negate something before we give it a shot because we're operating out of the same limited mindset. The truth of the matter is you are as free as a bird, you don't have to quit anything, you get to quit things if you don't want to do them anymore, you get to rework your life and it's not too late unless you're in your 90s. The reticular activation system, like that filter which allows us to notice things that are helpful for a goal. It's so powerful because I remember so briefly my career trajectory, I qualified as law, then I tried to make a career in professional cycling, but at some point I thought, you know what, A, I'm not good enough to get to the top of this sport, and B, it's getting too dangerous, and I don't want this anymore. But I came home and I was just reflecting on it, and I was like, I still wanna ride my bike all day. I still wanna ride my bike tree four hours a day, or at least have the ability to do it. And I started with that as an art star. And then I started looking, and I remember reading, you know what's quite cliche now, but I remember reading early Tim Ferriss's four-hour work week. And straight away, that just made sense to me. I was like, well, for our work week, that leaves a lot of time to ride the bike. And it was definitely not a perfect answer, but it started me on a path to asking direct questions. Right, exactly. And that's what's so important is we live in a world, especially on social media, where we are being sold a vision of quick success. And I think it's about getting clear on what are your skills, what are your gifts, what makes you feel like you, and how can you manage your expectations to start at least creating your life? because the key to happiness is not always reaching your goals. It's having that momentum and that progress. Like losing the 10 pounds never feels as good as the first five. You know, it's like you feel the progress. It feels so good to know that you're going the right direction that feels right in your life. And so I would encourage anyone to not only do this work on themselves and ask themselves these questions, but remember like a really good career, a fulfilling one, often as a marathon and not a sprint. But if you're not even working today towards that vision that you truly believe in, what are you doing? It's great advice. And I know quite a device of character around the world is our very own Ireland's, excuse me, Ireland's Conor McGregor. And there's early clips of Conor McGregor.