The Loud Whisper Takeover
Featuring interviews with actors, stunts, dancers, filmmakers, action movie directors, athletes, Krav Maga teachers, acting coaches, and more.
Epic tales of changemakers, authentic personal stories, and top tips about the industry, the podcast is a treasure of knowledge helping storytellers of all kinds on their own journeys, and inspiring people to take action upon their own dreams.
Ever heard your inner voice getting louder and louder, urging you towards a new path? When our inner guidance starts to become so loud, we can no longer ignore it, and we MUST take action... This is often a time when life changes direction drastically. We are literally being called to take that leap of faith, make that phone call, write that script, make that film in other words, time to embrace our wildest dreams, shift gear, and grow exponentially.
Let's dive into the art of listening courageously to our inner compass. Because every one of us is destined to live a grand story and adventure while walking on planet Earth!
Headphones on, notebooks out, and buckle up!
Hosted by Cindy Claes.
The Loud Whisper Takeover
26: Optimal Performance for Artists - Reality Check with Derrick McManus
Our guest Derrick McManus, a former sniper and elite member of Australia's STAR Group, is coming back for a second episode! (We interviewed Derrick in Ep7 about how he got ambushed and got shot 14 times as a special elite police officer!)
Today Derrick is sharing how this incredible story of survival and resilience shaped his unique philosophy on "human durability". He travels the world supporting both individuals and companies, about maintaining optimal performance by anticipating obstacles and preparing for challenges.
Our conversation focuses on how these principles apply to Artists, Actors, Dancers, Filmmakers, working in an industry where so much is "up in the air". Discover how Derrick's experience in high-risk environments can translate to the unpredictable world of the arts.
How do we "bounce back" from setbacks?
How can we embrace failure as a tool for growth?
How can we have conversations about the worst case scenarios?
How do we strive long term in a high-pressure industry?
In this episode Derrick offers insights into the framework of "human durability". Let's explore the delicate balance between peak performance and sustainability.
Guest's Website and Email:
https://humandurability.com.au
derrick@derrickmcmanus.com
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Derrick McManus
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Welcome to the Ladris for Takeover podcast. In a previous episode I had a very special guest and I interviewed him for some character research. As you know, I'm an action actress and I'm obsessed with those roles with. You know that we play in action movies.
Speaker 1:So he came on the podcast sharing his experience as a former sniper. He was part of the elite special police forces in Australia the STAR Group Special Tasks and Rescue Group. From counter-terrorism to hostage siege situations, high-risk arrests, vip security, cliff and cave rescues, helicopter operations, riot control he did it all. He got shot 14 times and survived being attacked by a military weapon. Last time he shared a lot of his experience of working in just high risk environments. Later on he founded his own business because obviously he gathered a lot of big life lessons along the way. His business is called Human Durability. And what better way than to talk about how we as artists can stay long-term in the industry? Because, let's be honest, as freelancers artists, dancers, theater makers, filmmakers, stunts we work project by project. Very often there's momentum, we're building and then we're back to square one. Burnout is real in our industry. So I can't wait to go in-depth in this topic. Please welcome back for a second episode Derek McManus. Hi, derek, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:So good to be back. You said that you enjoyed the first episode a lot. So did I, and particularly because your questions go deep, but in a slightly different direction than what I've been asked before, and it's obviously your mindset and your purpose. So I'm looking forward to where this one goes oh, thank you so much, derek.
Speaker 1:I hope that I will be, you know, able to do this interview as much justice as last time and ask the right questions. First of all, can you tell us about human durability, the philosophy behind it? So?
Speaker 2:human durability has been born out of my experience of being shot 14 times. And it started because, five years prior to the shooting, I sat down and I had a conversation with my ex-wife now, but my wife at the time. We had a conversation with my ex-wife now, but, but my wife at the time, we had a conversation. Do you know something? I'm joining star group. Uh, high risk arrest, as you said before. High risk arrest, hostage siege, counter-terrorism, vip security to the queen. I was a sniper, I was a diver and I was trained by the military in counter-terrorism. So that was reality for me. And I just said to myself do you know something? I've got to have a very serious conversation, open, honest, confronting conversation about the reality of the challenges but also the reality of the opportunities that go with it. But most people look at just the opportunities and they're aware of the challenges, but we don't want to talk about them because they're just that little bit scary and we hope they won't affect us or I'm the lucky person they won't affect, they won't get me. But I sat down and I had this conversation and, as a result of having that conversation about the reality of my future opportunities as well as obstacles. I prepared myself physically, mentally and emotionally for the challenges that I could realistically expect to encounter as a result of my choices or my circumstances that I found myself in, and it was about sustaining optimal performance.
Speaker 2:Now resilience is what a lot of people talk about, and I know that some people and I laugh, because I just find this quite humorous that people are getting tired of resilience. They're getting resilience fatigue. What does resilience actually mean? I know I keep on getting told I'm resilient, but as much as I'm resilient, still things are going wrong. So resilience is our ability to bounce back. When things go wrong, we're able to make it better. We're able to bounce back. Human durability is about understanding what might happen and then having a plan to sustain optimal performance so that we don't have to bounce back. It's about seeing the signs that tell us it's going well, leveraging those, making the most of them, but also seeing the signs that tell us it's going badly and that we need to make a change.
Speaker 2:Now what often happens is people see the sign that it's going wrong and they go. I don't know what to do. I get completely overwhelmed. So we go into flight, fight, freeze or fawn, and in the flight and fight stages of that. We just go I don't know what to do. We either freeze up, we run away, or we don't know what to do. And so, having some idea of what we're going to deal with, some idea of how we're going to deal with it because we have this conversation before they come up I know what the sign is. If I see that sign, I'm going to take this action. As soon as we see the sign, we take the action and then we can alleviate or mitigate the circumstances that are going to cause us stress. So it is about sustaining optimal performance and the basis to it is just having some idea of what we're going to deal with and some idea of how we're going to deal with it if it does happen.
Speaker 2:Now, to give it some context for you, I certainly use that in my industry of high-risk arrest, hostage siege, counter-terrorism, and I called it expecting the unexpected. It's the unexpected only because we won't talk about it. And if we don't talk about it, we can say it's unexpected. And when it does happen, you go oh my gosh, I don't know what to do. But if we have some idea of what it's going to be, it is no longer the unexpected. It's not what we want, but it's not a complete surprise when it happens and we are better prepared to be able to manage it.
Speaker 2:Now I'm also reading a great book at the moment called Predictable Surprises. Right, predictable Surprises. It's a great book, but it's about the disasters I should have seen coming and how I would have avoided them. Okay, and this again goes back to having some idea of what you're going to deal with. Re, in reality, for all the people in your industry of making films, being actors, uh, being bit pieces and sometimes being stars, there is a reality that sometimes work is going to dry up. There is no two ways about it. You'll have all the right connections, but nobody's making a movie at the moment, or they like someone who's better than you. You're not going to be able to get there. This is not a surprise. This should not be unexpected. Sorry, this is not something we shouldn't expect is going to happen. So, if it does happen, how are you going to manage it? It's always a surprise when it does happen, but it shouldn't be unexpected. So we should have some idea in our mind If this happens, I've got a backup plan.
Speaker 2:I've got a friend who owns a coffee shop. I'm just going to make a few dollars, keep the dollars coming in until I get the next role. I've got somewhere I can go and I can do temp working, whatever it might be. Or I've got enough funds in the bank. I can just sit back and I can wait. But that means that if you aren't getting regular jobs, you can't go out and buy yourself a Lamborghini with the money you got on the last job. You've got to bank it and store it. So it's just about having that preparation and it is about sustaining optimal performance. It's what I did in the shooting, but I now talk to 10 year old kids in schools. I talk to fighter pilots. I talk to hairdressers. I talk to banking and finance. I talk to real estate. The philosophy that I talk about applies to anybody and everybody, and I look forward to having this discussion with you tonight.
Speaker 1:And that's really why I invited you as well, because when you said that you were talking to hairdressers and 10 years old kids in schools, I was like, ok, he's not just talking to the big organizations and you know the high profile leaders, he can really relate to all human beings and I think that is fantastic and that's what we need as artists to feel supported. So when you're talking about sustaining optimal performance, the first things that come to mind to me where artists struggle, is the creative block. I would say there are moments where we feel very creative and then there are moments where, oh my gosh, I don't have any idea, I'm stuck, I'm stuck, I'm stuck. Then there's the financial part, like you said, because we don't know if the next gig is coming, and sometimes there is a lot of work and sometimes there isn't, and it's finding, you know, this sustainability in regards to finances. Then there is also preparing ourselves for the climax of our career and the after climax. Why am I saying that is in the dance world, I've seen it many times Like all of a sudden you start to become well known in the industry and then you win a competition or a battle and then everybody's talking about you.
Speaker 1:You're at the peak of your career, so to speak, because at the dancer, everybody talks about you and then, all of a sudden, your fame fades out. It does fade out and there is nothing to do about it, because somebody else won a competition, and it's, I think, the same thing with actors or stunts. Maybe at a certain age you might perform, you know and do bigger things than you know later in life. So there's also that that we need to deal with. That's what I wanted to put in context as well, when people are listening to all the wisdom you're going to share.
Speaker 1:Another thing I wanted to say that I found interesting, because you're talking about having confronting conversations, being realistic, talking about opportunities and obstacles, but there is something very different from positive thinking. There's a lot of things around positive thinking, positive thinking, think positive, but I feel you're an incredible positive person. Like when I interviewed last time, there was a force in your mindset that made you move forwards. Yet there was not. There was no toxicity of over positive thinking. Can you explain a little bit what the difference is with your work in regards to just positive thinking?
Speaker 2:So, yes, I have a reputation among my friends of being a very positive thinker and always positive and always smiling and always seeing the good side of everything. But I think that comes from having that realistic conversation about this is what could possibly happen, and if it does happen, how am I going to be able to manage it? So it's about looking at all the good things that could happen, but also acknowledging all the bad things as well, and so when one of those bad things comes up, I'm not destroyed by it. I've already got some plan of action. If that happens, I'm able to encounter it. Take a random event we go camping, and you can only go camping when it's a wetter season here in south australia, because we'll start bushfires. But if we go camping in the wetter season, all the wood may be wet. And if it does get wet, what are the contingencies? Some people go out there and they get destroyed. Oh my gosh, I can only have uh wet wood. I can't start a fire. What do I do now? I'm destroyed, I'm upset, my camping weekend is destroyed, whereas I've already got an answer in my mind I've brought some sort of uh accelerant that I've been able to use to start a fire, I've got some dry canning, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:So in the acting world, it's about saying I'm going into this acting world, I know there's a real possibility that I'm going to get some really great scenes, and it may not be that you're missing out on work, but you're only getting the smaller roles. You're not getting the star roles or the intermediate roles, you're only getting the smaller roles. And it's about not being completely destroyed by that and just saying this was always a possibility. I've now got to make a decision. Do I want to stay in this industry and keep on accepting those small roles until I can prove myself, until somebody notices me and then I start getting the larger roles? Or do I make a decision and go? No, this is not for me. I'm not getting what I want. I need to go somewhere else to find myself.
Speaker 2:It's always going to be disappointing if you have to get out or you're not getting the roles you want. But it shouldn't be unexpected because in all the history of making movies there's always been those people who only get little roles. They never get the scene. I mean, los angeles is um renowned for being the city of broken hearts, because people don't make it in the acting industry. So if it's happening to other people, we need to be able to have that realistic, open, honest, confronting conversation with ourselves. It may not happen for me, and the more we anticipate that, the less we're going to be destroyed Now not being destroyed and I think I'm repeating myself a little bit here but it doesn't mean we're not going to be disappointed.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean we're not allowed to have tears about it. That's reality. We do get disappointed, but it's about instantly turning that around and going okay, I'm going to make the best of whatever else it is, or I'm just going to enjoy what I can and make the most of it. And I'll give you a little bit of an insight. I play small roles in some movies as well. I've been on the ABC TV, I've done a couple of major commercials and I've had intermediate roles. And I've had one role in a commercial where there was only two of us, a husband and a wife. So I had the lead male role because it was only one of us. So I've done a little bit. So I've got a little bit of an insight into the industry.
Speaker 1:Oh, so here we know a little bit of a secret that we didn't know about you before. There is still something that I want to unpack, though, because you are able to look at the bad things in life, like the things that could be disappointing. Like, for example, you had that conversation with your wife hey, I could get shot, I could get in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, I could get really badly injured. But there is something, so I make the parallel right with artists. But there is something, so I make the parallel right with artists.
Speaker 1:Our anxiety would be I never make it in the industry, but our anxiety could also be I'm going to stay poor for the rest of my life, you know, or I'm on earth.
Speaker 1:My purpose on earth is to creatively express myself, and I might not fully fulfill my potential before I die. Here you know, like these are the kind of anxieties or things that could hit us really hard, but you somehow were able to look at these things. I'm not saying that you were not affected by it. Emotions touched you, touched you, like you said, but you were able not to go spiraling down, associating a story to it and making your whole life dependent on it and you remained very grounded and you remained very passionate about you still going in those houses Arresting the bad guys, even though they attacked you with military weapons, knowing that your life, it was a life or death kind of situation. What is it, you know, in your mind that made you still so grounded, lived passionately what you were doing. Yet look at the things and not spiral down, because I think that's what art is. You know, we're so passionate human beings.
Speaker 2:We do spiral down from time to time, you know, or we attach our self-worth to it yep, so I I think again, this goes back to the conversation I had with myself, as much as I had a conversation with my wife five years before the shooting. I then had to have a conversation with myself, and I've put this model of conversation into a circular model, which I call the human durability model, and this is about having that conversation. These are opportunities, these are the challenges, these are the resources that I have to manage it and these are the gaps that I have in the resources, and these are the trigger points that tell me it's going well, or these are the trigger points that tell me it's going badly. And then we go into a planning phase as a result of those trigger points, and then we go through some other phases as well.
Speaker 2:The point of the model is that there are two levels of comfort that come out of this model. The first level of comfort is yes, I know what my vision is, I know what the opportunities are, I know what the opportunities are, I know what the obstacles are, I know what the resources are, I know what the gaps are, blah, blah, blah. I can cover all of that. I know exactly what's happening in my life, I know what resources I have. I know what my emotional control is like. Even if the worst thing happens, I can handle it. I can keep on going, I can manage, I'll survive. And going, I can manage, I'll survive. And that changes your mindset that even if the worst happens, it doesn't matter. So now you can make bold, positive outward decisions and take action that other people go. How can you do that? Because I'm very comfortable. If the worst happens, I can handle it. The other level of comfort that comes out of it is I don't know whether I can handle those obstacles. I don't know whether I can handle those obstacles. I don't know whether I have the resources. I know that I've got big gaps and I don't know whether I can fill them. If that does happen, it will destroy me emotionally. I won't be able to face my friends, I won't have the finances to survive it.
Speaker 2:And if you get to the point where you start getting overwhelmed, oh my gosh, I don't know what I can do. I don't know whether I can handle that. You need to make a different decision. You need to take a different action Now. That doesn't mean that you step out of the industry completely. It may just mean you take a little bit more time building up your resources. You build up your support system behind you. You build up your acting ability. You build up your financial resources so that if the worst thing happens, you have the ability to manage it. And if you do the building up, you can come back in. Or it may just be, you know, something that would destroy me. I don't think I'd be able to handle it.
Speaker 2:So the acting industry, the filming industry, is not the industry for me. Now, this is sometimes a challenging decision to make, but sometimes it's the best one. And a great analogy that I use on a regular basis is I've got an accountant and I love my accountant and there is no way in the world that my accountant could ever operate in star group. She does not have the nerve for it. She does not have the nerve for it, she does not have the passion for it. She has no interest in it. It would absolutely destroy her if she was in there. But, by the same token, if me from Star Group had to go and do accounting, that would destroy me. I would not enjoy that. I wouldn't have the focus, the time, the patience. I would do a terrible job.
Speaker 2:So it's not the industry. For me, we've got to find that industry that we do have the passion, we have the skills, we have the abilities, we have the resources to be able to handle it, so that, if the worst happens, our passion will carry us through. But we've also got to know we have those extra resources as well. So there's two levels of comfort. One I know that this could happen, but I'll be able to handle it. Excellent, let's go forward. The second is actually it would destroy me. I don't think I'd be able to manage it.
Speaker 2:I need to take a step back, and the beauty about going through the model and doing the planning is when you go to that level, you can actually say I'm not going to do this for this reason, this reason, this reason, this reason, rather than just going, oh, I'm not sure, it doesn't feel right, I don't know. You're able to articulate the reasons, and articulating the reasons makes you feel good about yourself because you know exactly what it is, but it also lets other people help understand you. Now, if it means that you're going to go away and do some training and then come back, you're able to articulate and say, no, I'm not ready yet. I want to go and do and people will go. Excellent. That makes sense and they'll be more able to support you as well.
Speaker 2:But it's those two levels of comfort that really come out of it, and I had that level of comfort for the industry that I was in and I wanted to go back in there. I also had conversations with my family. If I get shot, I want to go back into that industry. When I got shot so badly we had to have another conversation, but I always had that support from my family, so that was a bonus as well.
Speaker 1:So you were talking about, okay, if we're going to say, if the worst happened, I can handle it, you've been able to feel at ease with that sentence If the worst happened, I can handle it and kind of sit with the how am I going to do it? But how do we train for it? For example, in our last episode I was sharing about my Krav Maga training. In Krav Maga, we do drills like it's self-defense, we fight, we do sparring and we cannot give up, like one of the things that our teacher says you cannot give up. And you were making the parallel when you got shot, lying down on the floor for three hours. For three hours you were I'm not going to give up, I'm going to stay alive, basically. And so you were sharing about how your training for the special police forces gave you this unstoppable energy and mindset to stay alive on that floor for three hours losing blood. But then what is your training to find comfort in? Well, if the worst worst happen, I can handle that. How do you train your mind?
Speaker 2:you know to feel at ease so it comes down to incremental growth. In your krav maga, one of the things you said in our interview and I'll paraphrase, and I hope I do you justice um, that when you get punched in the face, generally speaking you don't know what to do. So when you first started Krav Maga, they didn't throw you into a ring with a black belt and let you get absolutely beaten up and see whether you've got the strength to keep on going. No, you were introduced to other people at your level and you got a small hit. It was on the arm and you've gone. Oh, that hurts. No, I can keep on going. So it's incremental growth. Going into the special forces, it wasn't okay. Here's an AK-47, here's a Uzi submachine gun, here's some sound of flash grenades. Go and attack that building and see how you go. No, it was incremental growth. We were introduced to weapons. We were introduced to tactics.
Speaker 2:I had been in the police department for a number of years. I had some exposure to that sort of stuff before I started in star group. But when I entered star group, we had people who were performing at the elite level. I was a beginner right, and that's the role that I was given. I was given the beginner's role and then I built my skills slowly, passionately, and so long as I kept on enjoying it, I would keep going.
Speaker 2:The thing that gives us the greatest strength is our belief, our knowledge, our comfort that if we stop enjoying something, we make a decision and we get out of it. We go and find something that we're passionate about. Okay, your Krav Maga, your acting, your action roles, that you take on the stunts that you do. You didn't go into those straight away, you trained up to them, and I'm sure there's going to get to the point where some movie director is going to say I want you to jump off that 10-story building into a small pool of water and you're going to go no, that role is not for me, that's too dangerous, I'm going to make a choice not to do it.
Speaker 2:So the power and belief and the comfort of saying no, I'm not going to, I'm going to do something else is where I probably find comfort. In that as well, I'm quite comfortable. I don't have to do it, I'm not proving anything to anyone. I know I want to take on the role and I know the stuff that I don't want to do as well, and I'm quite happy to say no.
Speaker 1:I love what you said about incremental growth because it also means that our worst case scenario is also incremental. When you start your career, it can be well, my worst case scenario is not knowing what I'm going to earn in six months time, but then eventually you can take more risks. Well, I'm okay to handle I don't know what I'm going to earn next month. Or it could be incremental growth, could be I don't know what I'm doing because it's my first ever movie that I'm making and it's going to be a five minute short, and worst case scenario is it fails. And then the next incremental growth is I'm making a feature film and if this fails, I'm okay. So incremental growth is also. Our worst case scenario is incremental, but we are building up the skills, the mindset, the capabilities of handling a bigger worst-case scenario. Would you say it's correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely no. I completely agree with what you're saying there and as you were talking, I was just processing that. There's also another comfort that says I know where my benchmark is, that I know my performance is 100% reliable. I want to take on the higher roles. But if that doesn't work out, I know I'm still brilliant at this role. I'm still brilliant at this level. I've been successful, I've proved it. I may try this one. It may not work this time I'll come back here. I'll regain my confidence again and then I'll try that next level up in another arena or in another place.
Speaker 2:And failure is okay, because failure is something we're going to do over and over again in our life. Every time we decide to take on another level of challenge. The first steps are going to be difficult. Most of the time we're going to have some failures in those first few moments, first few times. But it's because we're growing.
Speaker 2:But failure is okay and I'm quite comfortable and I've got to say quite comfortable making a mistake and embarrassing myself. Now it depends on context, but I know that when I'm deliberately trying to grow, deliberately trying to gain a new skill, that embarrassment of oh my gosh, I just stopped that up 10 times. I did it so much when I was doing weapons development, when we were changing from one firearm to another firearm and we had to be able to field strip it and go through our instant action drills. They weren't comfortable, they had to be built up and we would be making mistakes. But it wasn't just me making mistakes, everybody was doing it. Some people picked it up quicker than others and I was maybe one of those slow ones, but it didn't matter. I was passionate. I understood the process and growth comes from making a mistake and keeping on going.
Speaker 1:Can you give us another example of your relationship with failure, a moment where you were working in the special elite police forces where you really failed? What was it?
Speaker 2:what happened, oh, wow, there are so many of those moments. Which one do I go to? So I, um, I've been a gymnast in my life and, uh, you know, there's obviously lots of skills we learned there. But I also used to play basketball, and there's just a moment here which has just come to me. I was playing basketball at a reasonably high competitive level and it was the very beginning of a game and we jumped to the tip off. The ball was tipped straight to me, me and I just laid up straight underneath the basket and I was ready to score the basket, but I could hear down the court people going no, no, no, and I've gone. Oh my gosh, I've gone the wrong way. There must be something wrong. So I've got this absolutely clear layup. There was nothing ever going to stop me. Two points, absolutely perfectly. And I just kept on bouncing the ball around to a spare place in the court and I've gone. What's wrong? And they've gone. Why did you stop? I said you were telling me no, no, no, derek. We were telling you go, go and it's this. Oh my gosh, I completely heard the wrong thing.
Speaker 2:But I also still had that confidence within myself that I'm a good player. Make a mistake. There are lots of mistakes that get made in basketball. You know you take three point shots and you completely miss the basket, you completely miss the, the backboard. But you know that your skills are there. You have proved yourself in other areas, so you keep on going. Your confidence is there.
Speaker 2:If I was to take shots and miss five shots in a row, I would then start reassessing and saying, okay, I need to settle down, I need to take some time out, I need to get off the court and just relax and regroup myself. Let the others play on um, and that again is still okay. It's a matter of processing it. But oh, there are so many times that I've stuffed up. Uh, driving a car, I've had my fair share of accidents. I'm not a perfect driver, even though I've been trained to drive in high speed chases. I could take on the lowest level of racing cars on racing tracks and I'd be able to hold my own at the lower levels of racing cars on racing tracks and I'd be able to hold my own at the lower levels of racing. But I still make mistakes, I still have accidents and and I regret them there's no two words about it and they're embarrassing, but it doesn't stop me driving, and the same should happen in your roles in movies and making films and action and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2:Not everything's going to go perfect. It is the same for absolutely everybody. Look at any actor you want in the world and they have all made mistakes. They've all made their B grade, c grade, d grade movies before they got to the A grades. It's a process that everybody's gone through, so it shouldn't be unexpected for us to make some mistakes as well. It shouldn't be unexpected, but it can be a surprise, but it shouldn't destroy us. We should already have said this may happen. If it does. This is how I'm going to respond to it I just want to go back to the basket oh no, don't go back to my embarrassment, yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, because I think it's very interesting. So you're about, you're like, you're about to put the ball in the basket. You hear no, no, no. People say go, go, go, you stop. That's a moment of embarrassment, like you know. I would imagine that you would feel shame and guilt and you let your team down. Now you're saying at that time, if this incident had to happen several times, you would have reassessed yourself and basically you would have said, ok, there's a pattern here, let's sit down. There's a pattern and I need to address the pattern, but this was a one moment thing. Now, a lot of people in this one moment thing, could make a decision about themselves. I'm not worth it. They would like just shiver going back on the court. What is it that you know, thinking about it, that maybe now exists in your model of analyzing what happened in your mind? That you were like well, I'm not going to make a big deal out of it, you know, and keep going, because everybody doesn't do that.
Speaker 2:So what you're talking about now is mindset. What was my mindset? How did I control my mind? How did I control my emotions? And I have a four-phase mindset of human durability. It's a four-phase mantra that I'm able to repeat anytime, any challenge, it doesn't matter what it is. And the first one is stay strong physically, mentally and emotionally. Stay strong. This is about having a very clear idea of what we want to achieve and having enough passion for it that it doesn't matter what mistake we make. We don't care, we just want to keep on going.
Speaker 2:The second part of the mantra is find a system right, and this is the system that works for you. It is your system, it is your way of playing. I played on a basketball court. We all got trained by the same trainer, the same coach, we had the same ball, we had the same, all those sorts of things. But everybody shoots a different way, everybody does a layup a different way. Everybody does, you know, does their own little bit. But it's about finding the system that works for you. You are an action actress, and I'm sure there are plenty of others, but no two of you are the same. You have your different way of interpreting what people say. So it's about finding your system and the third part is work the system. So, stay strong, find a system, work the system, and that is absolutely immerse yourself in what works for you. Do it over and over. Your system got you to where you are. Your system will get you to where you want to go next.
Speaker 2:But the fourth part of it is tweak the system. If it is getting you what you want and everything is going and you're starting to grow, tweak the system. Leverage what you're doing and doing well and do more of that. If it becomes a plateau, then you've got to go. Okay, is this time to take a rest? Take it easy on myself, go and have a bit of a holiday, whatever it is, because it easy on myself. Go and have a bit of a holiday, whatever it is, because it's plateaued. It's going along nicely. But if it's in decline, we don't need to throw the system out, we just need to tweak it. Okay, and this is something that I now repeat in my mind over and over and over Stay strong, find the system, work the system, tweak the system.
Speaker 2:Now, what you'll find interesting is this did not come out of the shooting. This did not come out of star group. This came out of cycling. Okay, and I've give you some context. I love cycling. I rode from adelaide to melbourne, which is 800 kilometers. We did that in four days, so 200 kilometers a day, four days in a row. In at the end of 22, 2022, I rode a mountain bike over the top of the himalayas at 5 416 meters, at minus 15. So I love my cycling.
Speaker 2:Now, I've had a few accidents on my bike as well, and there was one time where I was off my bike for about nine months and when I got back on my bike, I didn't have the energy, I didn't have the um, the strength, that didn't have the endurance that I had in the past, and I started riding up a hill and halfway up the hill which I used to love riding up I started getting tired and in pain and I've gone stuff. I'm going to turn around. I'll come back and do this again later, but all of a sudden, my mind just switched and I've gone. Derek, stay strong. You want to get to the top of the hill? You know it's a slow process. You know you've done it before. Okay, stay strong. You want to get to the top there. What do you need to do.
Speaker 2:And I then reflected back to when I first started cycling. I wasn't strong, I wasn't strong, I didn't have endurance, I didn't have skills, and to get up the top of the hill was hard when I started. But what did I do when I started that allowed me to gain the strength that I'd be able to charge up those hills and absolutely love it. So I had to be humble enough to go back to my beginnings and find the system that worked for me back then. Back to my beginnings, and find the system that worked for me back then and once I knew what that system was. And basically that system was just keep the pedals turning, and I'd always say it like that because my pedals were just turning slowly. But if I kept the pedals turning, I would make it to the top. And then I just worked that system. Each time I I came out for a ride, I would just keep the pedals turning, and then I started to get faster and I've gone to myself. Okay, I remember this is the easy part of the hill. I can push myself a little bit harder here, so it would stay strong.
Speaker 2:I wanted to get to the top. I wanted to become good. Find my system. Be humble enough to go back and find what works for you, implement it. Work that system over over and, when it starts to work well, leverage what you're doing well and get more of it. When it's not working so well, okay, tweak that system. How can you do it better? What do you need to change? And that came out of my cycling, but it applies to everything in life. There's not one person that I've spoken to who goes nah, nah, that would never work for me. They just go. That's so sensible, it's just so easy to understand and I think it works for everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if I can apply it directly to, for example, an acting career, you know, this moment of embarrassment that you had with the basketball, for example, it could happen when you're doing a casting. You know, all of a sudden you have the impression that a casting director is like, oh my gosh, not this and or you take it very personally.
Speaker 1:Then it's like stay strong. Also, find your system, like in acting. There are different ways of finding a character or analyzing a text. There are loads of methods. There are different systems you can fall back on. If at some point you're unstable or destabilized, work on it, tweak it and make it work and, yeah, continue climbing the mountain. You know, even if you feel in that casting moment or during filming, sometimes filming costs a lot of money, so sometimes you're really under pressure to get. Yo, we got to get it in two shots, three shots, we don't have 10 shots, so better be good now, and that can also be stressful.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, if I can just pick up on that. If I can just pick up on that. It may also be that you come to a casting, you come to make a film and you're feeling sick. You haven't slept well that night, okay, and so you have to stay strong. I want to make this movie. Let me think what is it that I can do that? I know I don't have to work hard, but I will be an absolute, acceptable, not exemplary. I will be an acceptable actor if I keep on doing this.
Speaker 2:What is your system that works for you every time without fail, and you can just work it, work at work and if you start to feel better, leverage it and do that a little bit more. But if it's not working for you, what is the system that does work and find it and rework it, because we all have different levels of passion, different levels of interest. We may have a cat that is in the veterinarians that day, so we're not able to focus. So we've just got to say, despite the challenge, where's my base level? And it's not about going back to basics, it's about going back to the baseline where you know you're 100% reliable and just implement that system if that makes sense yes, absolutely, and also one of my favorite speakers.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you know Lisa Nichols no, I don't she's an American, she's a public speaker and she also she talks about that, the things we're really good at, you know, and where we shine. Actually, our 50% effort is probably 150% for someone else and we don't realize how much you know. Our 100% is 500% of someone else and also acknowledge that. So when you talk about, well, I'm going to be an acceptable actor in your mind, you're acceptable, but actually you might be perceived as the amazing, extraordinary actor.
Speaker 2:And we spoke about this before and I'll just mention it quickly here. I have two different models of resilience one to get through day to day, week to week, and we'll talk about these in a moment. The second one is aspirational resilience, where we're trying to push ourselves hard. The first step of aspirational resilience is silence that inner critic that's telling you you're no good, that everybody else is better than you. And it's not about sorry, it's about challenging the inner critic. Um, why is it saying this?
Speaker 2:But point four, picking up on what you were saying, point four says be great at what you do best. The little inner critic is telling you you're no good, even though you're doing it well. The little inner critic is saying everybody else can do better than you. You're not so good. If you can do it well, everybody else is great. But if we can challenge that inner critic, acknowledge what we are good at and just absolutely leverage it, work what is working well for us, even if we think other people are good. If this is what we are great at, be great at it and be proud of it, the proudness, the pride, will lead to more confidence. That confidence will attract interest in you because you'll appear more relaxed and that confidence is is a massive, massive part of anything that we do there are so many things I want to bounce back on, so we're going to talk about your two models in a second.
Speaker 1:I want to dive deeper into the inner critting in a second as well, in confidence. But before that I want to go back to the let's be an acceptable actor, because there is something that you talk about a lot in human durability is peak performance versus optimal, sustainable, long-term performance, and I think that's a really important topic. But, for example, in the world of dance, when I was full on dancing, I sort of lived with that mindset. Full on dancing, I sort of lived with that mindset I have to be at the peak of my performance 365 days a year, and that is absolutely not sustainable. But it's the same thing with our creativity. You know like we want to be the most creative and the best actor and the best dancer at all times. But tell us what your take is on this peak performance versus optimal, sustainable performance okay.
Speaker 2:So peak performance, very simply, is the very best you can be and once you get there, you need to stay there and we all want to be peak performance. But we've got to understand that we reach peak for a reason. You can't get to the peak of a mountain and then keep on going. You get to the peak of the mountain, then you come down going. You get to the peak of the mountain, then you come down. The other side. The same with our performance. We can get to the peak, but then we've got to come down again because the peak is absolutely testing us. On a mountain the peak there's low temperature, low oxygen. You've expended a whole heap of energy to get there. Peak of our, our performance. We have focused on that performance, whatever it is, and we've got to the top. We've expended a lot of energy. We've ignored our family because we've been focused on this. We've ignored our health because we've been focused on this. We've ignored sleep and all sorts of things. So we can get to peak, but then we've got to find a way of coming down and relaxing so that we can sustain an optimal performance. And sustainable optimal performance takes in. I need to peak at certain times, but once I've had that peak, I then need to go away and get a massage. I need to go away and have a holiday. I need to actually have lunch and get good nutrition in. I need to take some time out. I've just spent three months absolutely in a pressure cooker making a movie and I've ignored my family. I need to go and spend some time with my family, my loved one, my partner, whatever it might be. So sustainable, optimal performance is what you need to do so that you can continue on and still peak where you need to and take a rest.
Speaker 2:In star group, we were seen as the guys and in my days we were guys. We have actually had one female come in and be a star group operative. So, um, I now change my language, I'm picking up on myself. We are the people who come in when nobody else can handle it, when they need some extra strength, skills, equipment, whatever it might be, and in star group, when we are performing, we need to be peak performers 100. If we drop the ball in any ways or form, um, it's either our life that's on the line or our partner's lives that are on the line. So when we're in work mode, we are 100%. When we come out of work mode, we know that we need to relax, we need to regroup, replenish, all those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:But for the shooting and this is the important part, the shooting I was at work. I needed to be 100% reliable, 100% peak performer. But because I had done the thinking beforehand and said, if I get shot, what do I want to do to ensure that I'm going to stay alive, I had to accept that I wouldn't be able to be peak performer. My performance was going to have to. I had to accept that I wouldn't be able to be peak performer. My performance was going to have to come down here somewhere to a lower level.
Speaker 2:Because I had to control panic, not let panic take control of the situation. I had to control shock, not let shock control the blood flow in my body and just bleed out. To do that, I needed to slow down my heart rate and I needed to slow down my breathing. That meant that I needed to be able to relax in the midst of this adversity. I could no longer be the peak performer If I tried to be peak performer and still keep storming the house and trying to fight and wrestle and run and all the rest of it I would have bled out like that and I would have died.
Speaker 2:So I had said to myself beforehand if I get shot, what have I done in the past in situations where I've been under massive stress? What's happened to my mindset when I've been under massive pressure either an injury on my bike or basketball or gymnastics when I've had those injuries, what's happened to myself and how would I like to perform better? And I had to work that all out beforehand so that if I did get shot because I knew this was going to be a massive challenge if it did happen, what would I want to do in my mind so that I could control my body and my emotions, so that I could sustain a performance where I wouldn't bleed out and I'd give myself the best chance of surviving until I could get the medical help and then start climbing again. And it really was a mindset of being. If I want to sustain optimal performance, I need to know how to take care of myself, not just physically, but in my mind as well.
Speaker 1:I just want to clarify something as well. When you were in those elite forces so obviously you told the story last time of you being shot 14 times. So you said there was a moment of preparation and that preparation was very mental. Then, peak performance you get into that house to arrest the bad guy. Essentially, he attacks you with um military weapon, you're on the floor, you're bleeding out. You stay alive. A lot has to do with mindset, because even the doctors thought, okay, this is a miracle that this guy is still alive.
Speaker 1:Then it took you two years and a half to get back on your feet and go back to your job essentially. So that's really two years and a half of giving yourself the time to get back into it. It was not two weeks, it was not two days, it's like two years and a half. I'm also guessing that in between operations you were not doing a helicopter rescue on a Monday and then an anti-terrorist attack on a Tuesday, and then a cliff rescue on a Wednesday. Andist attack on a Tuesday, and then you know, a cliff rescue, you know, on a Wednesday, and deep diving on a Thursday.
Speaker 1:There is time in between. I feel as artists as well, sometimes we get one job after the other, and sometimes we have no jobs at all and we are like, oh gosh, when is the next one? And then sometimes it's okay, here we go, go, go, go, go go, you know, and we just we don't even take the time to let it sink in and to celebrate the small wins and to prepare ourselves for the next one. What would be your top tip number one for this sort of, you know, gig to gig?
Speaker 2:This purely goes back to the mantra Stay strong, find your system, work your system, tweak your system. That is the mindset that gets me through almost everything in my life. Now, the staying strong and the finding the system probably changes no matter what the circumstances are. I have a system for cycling. I have a system for gymnastics. I have a system for keynote speaking on an international stage. I have a system for talking over a system for keynote speaking on an international stage. I have a system for talking to kids.
Speaker 2:We have different systems and it's about accepting the fact that we can change and we can keep on going, but the most important one is to stay strong, and the easiest way to stay strong is be doing something that you are passionate about. If you don't have the passion when those challenges come up, you're going to go. Oh, you know something? This is too hard. I'm just going to sit and watch Netflix until the next gig comes along. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:If you are absolutely passionate about something, you will just keep on wiggling and weaving and zigging and zagging and talking to people and embracing different ideas and finding some way to make it happen. It is still a struggle. You can zigzag, weave and wander and still not find anything. And it may just be an unusual opportunity that comes in and you go didn't even see that coming. But it means if you're doing something you're passionate about, something you absolutely love and you want to be successful, you will keep on pushing yourself.
Speaker 2:You will also find other ways of sustaining. You know, get a job in a cafe, do some temping, you know, in admin, whatever it might be, until you can get back to what you want to do. But it is about finding. Stay strong, find the system, work your system and tweak it where you need to. If you're not getting the gigs you want, what do you need to do to tweak that so you can get back in front of the right people, put yourself in a position, or just what do you do to sustain your energy as well as your finance?
Speaker 1:Now I would love to dive deeper into both of your systems. So there is a functional and an aspirational resilience model. Can we dive deep into your world?
Speaker 2:Oh, I love and I really do. I love talking about these For many years. I was talking about just resilience and I feel like most people talk about resilience. If you need to be resilient, you need to be able to do X, y, z, and after a while I've just gone. Do you know something? It's not working for me. It doesn't seem. What I'm teaching doesn't seem to apply to absolutely everything. People say you know what in this situation? Oh well, maybe you need to tweak it just a little bit. So I came up with two models. The is functional resilience, the second is aspirational resilience.
Speaker 2:Functional resilience is what we need to do to get through the day-to-day, week-to-week monotonous stuff that we need to do just to make life work. We're not always excited about it, but these are the processes. I spoke about my accountant doing my accountancy before I. I hate it, but I know I need to do my books. I need to be able to do enough book work to get it to her. I hate doing it, but I've got a model that we need to go through so that I can do that. And then there's aspirational resilience, and aspirational resilience is what we need to do to keep our energy high so that we can keep on pushing ourselves. We can keep on going to rehearsals and screens, the tests and all those sorts of things and then get that role that's going to take a demanding, passionate, energetic performance for three months, six months, 12 months, whatever the project might be, and we're able to keep ourselves going with that energy and and I'll go into what the six steps are in each of those in just a moment. But aspirational resilience is when we are talking about being a peak performer. This is when we are pushing ourselves all the time and, as I've described before, if we stay in peak performance mode all the time, we will get to the point of being burnt out, all right. So we need to be able to push ourselves far enough that we go.
Speaker 2:I see the sign and again, this is about knowing what the signs are that tell us it's going well or it's going badly. If we see the sign that we go, oh, this is leading to burnout. I'm not sleeping well, I'm starting to get overwhelmed, I'm not remembering my lines, I'm making some mistakes. Okay, I need to come out of aspirational and go back to functional. Maybe just for 10 minutes, maybe just for a couple of days, maybe just I need to take a lunch break and I need to get my energies back up, whatever it might be. But if we stay in aspirational too long, we will go into burnout. We've got to know when to flick back to functional. But if you stay in functional too long, where you're just resting, relaxing, replenishing, you will go into rust out. So you can choose rust out or burn out.
Speaker 2:But the human durability comes from knowing how to flick from one model of resilience to the other and then back again at the appropriate time, rather than just saying, oh my gosh, everybody else is so strong, I've got to keep on going.
Speaker 2:And that, in my world of policing, this leads to either burnout, anxieties, stress, depression and, in worst-case scenarios, people take their life because they feel that they cannot perform at the levels of everybody else. They just become a burden, and we do have a lot of people that don't know how to handle it and they take their own life and it's an absolute obviously. It's an absolute tragedy when that happens. So we need to know when we go from pushing ourselves to going. Do you know? This is taking too much out of me, whether it's personally or whether I'm not seeing my family or I'm not taking holidays, or I'm not eating, or whatever it might be. I'm going to flick back to the functional system for a while and it's relax, rest, replenish and then re-engage. Okay now there are six stages. In each of those, I'm happy to take your questions on what I've discussed so far and then happy to dive right into those models.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to ask two questions. The first question is you said we go from aspirational to functional, from functional to aspirational resilience because we can go into, rust out or burn out. I love that rust out if we rest, into, if we rest, relax and replenish for too long, but we do that at the appropriate time. So we go from one model to the other at the appropriate time and that can happen after 10 minutes, or it can happen after 10 days, or it can happen even, you know, after longer. When do we know that it's the appropriate time?
Speaker 2:okay. So, um, I honestly believe that we all know when the appropriate time is. Our gut tells us I should be doing something different. The unfortunate thing is that we were talking about that inner critic before. That inner critic is saying everybody else is still pushing ourselves. You have to keep pushing yourself, otherwise you're weak. Right? It starts telling us all this false information. We know when we're not doing well. We know when we need to take some time out. We know when we're starting to get stressed, overwhelmed, not sleeping well, we're starting to rely more on alcohol or other additives to keep our energies up or reduce stress. But the really key thing is to be really proactive right from the very beginning.
Speaker 2:I'm going into this industry. I know that in this industry, people do go into burnout, people do become alcoholics, they depend on drugs. I don't want that for my life. And before we get into it, we say to ourselves what is the sign that tells me I'm starting to go that direction? If we start to notice ourselves and this is not just actors, this is police, this is emergency services, finance industry or everybody gets into this. Okay, I am starting to drink, not just twice a week, I'm starting to drink four times a week. Now I'm not drinking four times a week, I'm drinking six times a week, and now I'm drinking twice a day and we go. I know it's happening, but it's okay, I'll be able to handle it, I'll be able to bring it back later. And it just keeps on building up and compounding.
Speaker 2:If we are able to say to ourselves beforehand if I start drinking four times a week, I need to start taking action then and saying, no, I'm only going to drink three times a week, or I'm going to cut down, or I'm going to cut it out for two weeks so that it doesn't become the compounding problem. And you can apply this to anything that's happening in your life. If you know what the indicator is that tells you you're going badly, take action immediately and that will take you from aspirational and back to functional. To be able to manage this, I need to take some time out. I need to actually rest and relax. I need to make sure I get proper sleep so that I don't have to rely on the alcohol right, and we need to be able to flick between one and the other. Go home, take a rest, take one night and get really good sleep and then come back and push yourself at work again, knowing that you don't want to continue with whatever bad habit is that you're getting into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I personally cannot relate to the alcohol because I don't drink, but I like, for example, for me it would be irritability, I would get really grumpy. You know, like there is a grumpiness, like I'm not a nice person anymore, like I'm just grumpy for a yes or for a no.
Speaker 2:I think that's a big trigger that I can recognize in myself can I ask you, what is it that causes you to start becoming that grumpy person? Do you know what the indicator is? Do you know what the, the catalyst is that makes you into that?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's what you said. It's the everybody else is in action. And so there starts I start to build a huge amount of guilt and shame around. If I'm in resting mode, you know, in replenishing mode, I'm like I shouldn't, should not, I should be in action. You know you cannot, you're not allowed to push the pause button. But then I'm also.
Speaker 1:I'm a very extreme person, like, for example, when I started Krav Maga. For four months I was training 17 hours a week, I was pushing my body to the limits and I have that sort of hyper focus and I go really deep into things and on one hand, it works really well. That's my way of functioning, but on the other hand, I have to be very careful of burnout and that burnout comes with a physical irritability in terms of I need my sleep and sometimes I just have to, and again it comes to guilt and shame. Right, it's like, but you should be at peak performance all the time and that's my dancer's spirit, you know, like 365 days a year, because tomorrow there could be a casting. What if tomorrow there is a casting? You cannot lean back. So, yeah, those are the triggers I would say I should the guilt, the shame, and I put the bar so high that I don't allow myself to function up my 70%.
Speaker 2:So the shoulds, the coulds, they are always positives in our lives as well as being negatives, and you've got to recognize when it's pushing you. Well, that's great. I should be doing this yes, actually I should, because I may get a role tomorrow, so I need to be well prepared. But the should, the could, is actually causing me to lose sleep and, generally speaking, and when I look at my functional resilience, sleep and nutrition are number one. You've got to focus on those two things and we could speak for two hours about how to get good sleep and ensure your nutrition without being nutrition and sleep Nazi, but just we could talk about it for two hours. But that sleep and ensure your nutrition without being nutrition and sleep Nazi, but just we could talk about it for two hours. But that sleep and nutrition.
Speaker 2:If you're not getting them, that's when people start getting irritable or they start losing their lines, they're not able to focus and concentrate, they're not able to do their best work because they're not able to stay in that hyper state which we need if we're in aspirational. So recognising what those triggers are is part of that circular model for human durability that I was talking about before. What are the indicators that tell you it's not going well. I'm not sleeping well, so I probably won't perform well. If I haven't slept well for four days, okay, what do I need to do to change that? And take that action straight away as soon as you start finding yourself and I do this for myself as soon as I start finding myself starting to get snappy, starting to get bitey, irritable when I shouldn't be. I'm not normally this way. Why don't you really annoy me today Actually, it's probably not about you, it's probably about me and go and do what I need to do to take care of that and bring myself back to being the performer I want to be.
Speaker 1:I want to ask another quick question, which is about going again from functional to aspirational, from aspirational to functional. You were shot 14 times. You lost all your blood. Then you had two years and a half of rehabilitation before you went back on the grounds in your job. Those two years and a half I know there were moments where you were able to just move a pinky finger and that was a huge achievement because obviously you had injuries all over your body. But those two years and a half, was that a two year and a half of functional resilience that you went through? Or during those two years and a half, would you say there were moments of aspirational resilience? Did you still go through that flow of aspirational functional or was it just two years and a half of functional?
Speaker 2:No, I think if any of us analyze our lives, we will be able to recognize times when we're in aspirational and times when we're in functional. We are forced into it at different times, not by choice, and in that two years and a half of trying to get back to star group, there were highs, there were lows. There were times when I had great efforts and I was achieving. There were times when I'd try things and I'd fall and I would be in tears and I would have to take time out and I would cause myself an injury that was going to set me back by six weeks before I'd be able to get back to where I was, so flicking between functional and aspirational and in the zone and out of the zone and performance, and I didn't have any of these models that we're talking about at the time. It was just things that I was doing intuitively and sometimes I just had no idea what to do. And that's when I broke down and I was in absolute tears because things weren't going well. But there's also times where I thought to myself I'm going to take on the challenge of walking five steps today, and sometimes it would be too hard to walk five steps and I'd collapse at four steps and I'd have to go. Okay, at least I did four but then I started walking down the hallway and then I was walking out into the shopping centers and all those sorts of things and sometimes I'd come home and I'd have strained a calf muscle or twisted an ankle and I'd have to be sitting down for three days, not walking at all.
Speaker 2:So it's highs and lows, but definitely flicking in a functional and aspirational backwards and forwards all the time, and we all do it. We just need to sit back every now and then and go. Actually this is an aspirational moment. Actually I was in functional mode then and it's okay to sit back, rest, relax and replenish. We need to be able to do it. If you look at the elite athletes and the olympic cycle is a classic four years between olympics there are world champions here, a world championships here, and then they go back and they rest and they only do three days of training for about three or four weeks and then they start peaking for the state champions or the national championships and then they rest and relax and then they're back at peak again for the Olympics. So that cycle of aspirational and functional certainly affects every one of those.
Speaker 1:So let's dive back into the model. You said there were six stages in the model. Tell us more.
Speaker 2:Okay, in the essence of time, I'll just articulate the six steps without going into them in too much depth. Functional resilience it's about rest, relax, replenish and then re-engage. And so it starts with sleep and nutrition. They are the baseline Whenever anything is going wrong. They are the first two check-ins for me, and I like to try and make sure I get good sleep and have good nutrition most of the time, but as soon as I start getting snappy, I go. Am I getting enough sleep? Okay, so sleep and nutrition are always my go-tos. The the next level. Step two, meaningful have people that you can have conversations with, and real conversations, okay. Step three is have empathy for yourself and empathy for others. Empathy for ourselves is what you were talking about before, about, oh my gosh. My performance is only so good here. I'm not all that great, but that performance is sometimes 150 or 500% better than other people, right? We also have our bad days where we haven't slept well, where we're worried about our cat or our dog going to the vet, where something's happening with our parents or our children. Our mind is distracted. We have bad days, right. So have some understanding that everybody has those. Be kind to yourself, but also be kind to other people, right people. There are some people in the world who are just evil and nasty. There are some people who will want to undermine you, but most of the time it's not because they want to do badly by you. They may see it as a competition competition is healthy but, generally speaking, people make mistakes, they say things that they don't mean and we take it personally and that becomes our focus for the next 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 years, and people live with hatred because somebody said something to them and if you talk to that other person, they go. Well, I don't even remember saying that. So have some empathy for other people, and this applies when you cut off on the road and you know how people get road rage. Oh my gosh, you are such a that person probably just made a mistake. So have sympathy, empathy for yourself and empathy for other people. Number four of functional and this is about rest, relax, replenish and re-engage number four is get active. It's not about being an elite athlete or performing at the highest levels. It's just about having our body moving, and the more. The fitter you are, the fitter you are, the fitter you are, the fitter you are, the fitter you are, the more you can do. But even if you are not fit at all, just get active, move. It's not always just about the physical body. Being out there and being active is good for our mental health as much as it is for our physical health. Number five is the one that most people go. Oh, that's me. I love this one.
Speaker 2:It's about guilt-free indulgence. Now, sleep and nutrition are my first go-to Guilt-free indulgence. If I feel tired, I'm having a bad day, things are going wrong, I will sit down in front of Netflix and I'll have two packets of chocolate biscuits next to me and I'll eat every biscuit in those two packets and I will not feel guilty about it. Yes, I know it's going to impact my health. Yes, I know it's going to impact my body, my fitness, but I don't care. It's what I needed.
Speaker 2:And our guilt-free indulgence extends to you know something I've been working hard for X, y, z. I'm going to go away for a weekend with my kids and not answer the phone and not focus on work. Just enjoy my time with my family. I'm going to take 10 minutes in the middle of casting or in the middle of a high pressure movie scene on set where your performance is not great. You've got to be able to be bold enough and confident enough within yourself to say to the director I need to take 10 minutes, I need to go and get a drink, I need to get my energy levels back up. I need to just get my focus back into place and then come back and get right into it. But you've got to do that guilt-free. Okay. You've got to be able to indulge yourself in what you need. If you feel guilty about it the whole time, you won, won't enjoy it, you won't get the benefit from it. So it's got to be guilt-free. You've got to be bold enough to look after yourself.
Speaker 2:And the last one is, once you've done those five, reframe your challenges. Once you've had enough sleep, you sometimes come back and you look at it and the problem and you go. Actually, I don't know why that was a problem. I can see what the solution is now Because you've had sleep, you've rested your mind. Sleep just reframes all your cortisol levels. Sleeping actually eats up the cortisol in your body. It puts your thoughts into files where you can access them easily. Your short-term memory increase, all those sorts of things. But come back and reframe your challenges. So sleep and nutrition, meaningful connection, empathy for yourself and others. Get active, guilt-free indulgence. Then reframe your challenges and step back in. So that's functional resilience. Any thoughts or questions about that one?
Speaker 1:No, I absolutely love it and I think I will probably write it down on a little piece of paper and just have it, you know, in front of me on my desk. Especially the guilt-free thing Like for me, the being guilt-free of not being in peak performance is such a big thing for me as an artist. So that will be a very big lesson to practice on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:And Cindy. Let me and I'll say this probably at the end again as well If any of your listeners want to email me and say, derek, can you share those with us? I'll send them an email with details of both functional and aspirational and be very happy to share them. So aspirational resilience again. Six steps.
Speaker 2:It starts with challenge the inner critic, right, because sometimes that inner critic is actually our best friend. It is stopping us from taking too many risks that we're not well prepared for. Okay, so challenge the inner critic. And that's that little voice inside your head that's going you idiot, you can't do it, you're not good enough. Everybody else is better than you. We've got to challenge that voice and make sure that we're making fair assessments. And this goes back to step three of being, uh, having empathy for ourselves. But challenge that inner credit.
Speaker 2:Step two is practice self-appreciation, right, and this is about looking at the good things you have done, the successes you have had, and being able to say to yourself damn, I'm good, and I don't care whether 20 000 people are better than you. If you are good at what you are doing, you're better than what you were yesterday. You have improved, you have refined. We need to be able to practice self-appreciation and say I got better today than what I was yesterday. If I can do that, I can keep on going, okay. The next one is draw strengths from those successes, and this goes back to the mantra stay strong, find the system, draw strengths from your successes there was a system that allowed you to create success. Understand what that system is right and then work it. Stay strong, find your system and work that system. Immerse yourself in it. Step four is be great at what you do best, and this is what we were talking about before. If you are good at it, there's probably other people looking at you and going I wish I could be as good as you, but the little inner critic is saying no, don't get too big a head, you're not that good, others are better than you. If you are good at it, be great at what you do best.
Speaker 2:A really important one, which most people find difficult, is just to sit back and accept compliments. When someone genuinely pays you a compliment wow, you did that well. You may be thinking to yourself that was just an accident, I don't even know how I did it, it doesn't matter, they have paid you a compliment. We've got to remember those compliments, because that little inner critic is going to keep on feeding us with criticism and you're useless. But you can fight that inner critic by saying, okay, I'm thinking that I'm useless, but they said I was good at it, so maybe I'm better than what I'm thinking myself. We've got to remember what those compliments are and accept those compliments.
Speaker 2:And the last one is be congruent with what's meaningful to you. Right, be congruent with your purpose. What are you here for? Are you here to take on any role whatsoever it doesn't matter what it is or are you a, a person who is looking for action parts? Right, as an action actress? Would you accept a role as a singer on a kid's daytime tv production? Probably wouldn't fit with what you want. So you've got to stay congruent with what's meaningful to you. Okay, as soon as we start doing stuff that is that isn't meaningful to us, then we'll start getting bored, angry. We will look for the alcohol to keep us going through. We will be looking for the sugar kicks. It'll start stressing us. So be congruent with what's meaningful to you.
Speaker 2:And this is what allowed me to go back into star Group afterwards. It was a passion for me. It was what was meaningful to me. But the most meaningful thing for me was being with my family and being able to interact with my kids, and so if anything interrupted my ability to do that, I would cancel it from my life. And if, after the shooting, my family, my children, my wife, other people that are meaningful in my life, said Derek, I don't think I can handle this. It's going to cause me to not stress. They were more important to me than what Star Group was.
Speaker 2:I would have found another reason to be passionate in some other place, because my family was always number one, and people find that hard to believe. My gosh, you have to be so dedicated to get into special operations, special forces, but my family was always the number one. I would have gone out of special forces if it was causing me stress in my family and I thought that was going to break us up and it wasn't going to be the direction that I wanted to go. So challenge the inner critic, practice self-appreciation, draw strength from your successes, be great at what you do best, accept genuine compliments and be congruent with your purpose. And both of those models fit back into that mantra of stay strong. Find your system work your system. Tweak your system. Our systems have to include times where we are in aspirational and our system has to include times when we are in functional. And we need to be able to do that guilt-free, because that will give us the power to sustain an optimal performance.
Speaker 1:And I love the fact that you talked about accepting compliments, because I feel there is so much power in accepting compliments, letting it sink in In a lot of my leadership programs for dancers and choreographers.
Speaker 1:I actually have an exercise which is we're going to compliment each other after they've been working together for six weeks and they are not allowed to dismiss the compliment. The only thing they can say is thank you. They are not allowed to say oh yeah, but you know, I just did it once, or they cannot dismiss it. They have just to say thank you and it allows both, or both sides, to grow. Really, because people have to start accepting and taking it in, that people see potential in them and also you have to complement others. So you have to also start seeing potential in everyone, not just the people that you find likable and you had a good vibe with, and no, you have to start also looking at people you know through a different lens, and usually that exercise takes over and people do not want it to stop, you know, and they cry and they hug this.
Speaker 2:Actually, what you just said actually helps you to remain in a positive mind frame and be a positive thinker. Right, we need to be able to recognize when people are doing the wrong thing or when they're not performing well. But I don't care who it is you're interacting with. There is something about that person that you're able to go you are brilliant at that now. Maybe a person that annoys you, you know in overall, but there is something about them that you can find to complement. And when we look for the good in people, instead of always just focusing on oh my gosh, they're bad, so they can't be doing anything right, just looking for that good allows us to start creating positivity in our mind. Not about denying the negative or denying the bad, but it's about being able to see both sides exactly, and seeing people in a more balanced way.
Speaker 1:The other thing I want to sort of ask you, um is I love that you said we don't silence our inner critic. We challenge our inner critic. So when you don't silence our inner critic, we challenge our inner critic. So when you talk about challenging our inner critic, can you clarify a little bit? Is it having a conversation with our inner critic in terms of let's see if there is a part of truth in what you're saying, or how do you challenge your inner critic?
Speaker 2:Okay, and it is about looking at the truth of that. And I find that those other four, those next four steps uh, the practice of appreciation, drawing strengths from success, being great at what we do and accepting genuine compliments help us to challenge the inner critic. Okay, I'm doubting this about myself, but those people have just given me compliments about it. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, right? So we've got to go back to step three of functional and go let me reassess myself. Can I be kinder to myself? Can I reframe it? Can I look at it from a different perspective? Is there something else I can see? We challenge the inner critic by, uh, looking at our successes and practicing self-appreciation. Um, oh, my god, I can't do this. What have I done similar in the past? Or actually I've done that which was similar and I was actually really successful at it. And going back to the mantra, my system for creating success over there is xyz. Maybe I can challenge the inner critic and if I use that system, I can actually start growing here. And challenging the inner critic is about saying I use that system, I can actually start growing here. And challenging the inner critic is about saying do you know something I am being congruent with who I am. I don't care if I embarrass myself. Inner critic's going you idiot. Everyone's going to laugh at you. No, this is so meaningful to me, I want it so much, I don't care if everybody laughs, because I'll be the one who's laughing last when I get what I want, when I achieve where I want to go. And there are so many people and I'm sure everybody can relate to it we look at people in life and we go oh my gosh, they are so embarrassing. How could they be so pushy, passionate about what they want? They're never going to be successful. And then you go, oh my gosh, they've just got the role that I wanted. How did they get that? It's that passion, that belief, that silencing the inner critic inside their own head. And this is about our risk tolerance and risk acceptance that if I push myself so far, how far do I go before I start getting too embarrassed for myself? But if we're passionate about what we want, we will go through people laughing at us and those sorts of things. So there's a whole range of things that we do to challenge the inner critic, but it is just probably it comes back to looking at functional resilience, having that meaningful connection, because those meaningful connections will give you the compliments, having empathy for ourselves.
Speaker 2:There's another thing that I like to do with people, and it's about affirmations. Affirmations is something that people say oh, if you make positive affirmations, you will find yourself being a positive person. I find them absolutely draining, unless you add another step, and this comes back to the resilience models. I am really good at this. I should be able to do it well. I am really good at this. I should be able to do it well.
Speaker 2:Inside your head, your little inner critic is going I should be able to do this. No, you can't, you're an idiot. I should be able to do it. No, you've never done it well, that's what the inner critic's saying. But if you add another step of saying I should be able to do it no, you've never done it well, that's what the inner critic's saying. But if you add another step of saying I should be able to do this well, because I did it the other day and I was successful, I should be able to repeat it the inner critic's going oh yeah, okay, you did do it well the other day, can you repeat it? And then you've got to start justifying. So it's about having those affirmations with reasoning behind it. So I am good because of this reason, and it's the reason that will make you believe it, rather than just trying to repeat I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. So those affirmations are really important to have a reasoning along with them.
Speaker 1:I want to also jump back on what you said about seeing what we're really good at, and I feel sometimes it's very difficult to see what we're really good at In the world of the arts. We are very often multi-curious, multi-passionate, multi-talented people and I'm sure you must have gone through that as well, because you were in Star Group, you were in the special elite police forces and then you got into the business of coaching, being a public speaker, you know, sharing your knowledge with independent small businesses and big organizations. You must have come to a realization oh, I'm not only good at being a special elite police officer, I'm also good at something else. So how did you come to that realization and how can anybody else also kind of broaden their vision about, yeah, you're good at this, but also this and this and this?
Speaker 2:so this came back to congruence, following what was meaningful to me when I first got asked to do some speaking about the shooting. People have gone. Oh my gosh, that's an amazing story. You've got to come to our company and we will pay you x dollars to tell that story at our conference. And it meant nothing to me because I believe they wanted the hero story and I didn't see myself as a hero. The heroes were the guys who came and got me, risked their lives to save mine, and basically I said, no, I won't take money for it. If you want to pay money for a hero story, pay then, because I would feel guilty if I was doing that on stage and taking money for it. But then I used 24 units of blood in a seven-hour period straight after the shooting. The body only holds 10 units of blood, so I used virtually two and a half times the blood volume in blood that had been donated by other people. And the blood service came to me and said Derek, how would you like to say thank you to blood donors for what they did for you? By telling your story to them and letting them know what a difference it made that their blood was able to save your life. And I've gone. Yes, no problems, I will stand up and say thank you all day long, because it was about saying thank you.
Speaker 2:And I still remember my first speech. Even though I wanted to say thank you, I was so nervous about getting up there in front of all these people and making a speech. I had my speech written out word for word. It was right there in front of me and it wasn't quite this bad, but it symbolizes basically what it was like. I stood up and I said hello, my name is, oh, derek, my name is Derek and I thank you. Blah, blah, blah. But it was almost that bad. I didn't know how to breathe, I didn't know how to talk. I was so nervous. But because I was saying thank you, I got up and I did it again. And I did it again, and then people came to me afterwards and gone oh my gosh, what you said about what you did, how you handled that, really made a difference to me. That's, I'm going to be able to change my life as a result and I've gone. Hang on, where's this come from?
Speaker 2:And that then fueled my passion of I wanted to pass those messages on, and so then I started getting more and more confident about the message and more comfortable about that's what I was delivering, and started loving seeing the changes in people and how they were embracing it. And so I just kept on going and refined my skills, recognize and this is the important part I recognized when I performed well in front of other people and I recognized when I didn't perform well. And yes, I was critical of myself, yes, I was embarrassed when I didn't perform well, but it was about saying you know something, I want to get better, I want to be able to do more of this. So what was it that I didn't do well that I can improve upon? What is it that I have done well that I can leverage more of? And again, I didn't have these models way back then, but I now see how those models have played into my life throughout my life, and they just make sense and help me to get on.
Speaker 1:And now that I can articulate these models, it just makes me really, really pleased but very comfortable about talking to people there is another thing as well that you mentioned earlier on be congruent with your purpose, and also you were saying that you also always went back to what is really important for you, which was spending time with your family. In the arts, there is very often an identity crisis. I would say we identify so much with our art, like we are the product. You know, our body is the product that we sell. Like we are the actor on screen, the dancer.
Speaker 1:We use our, our, our body and I'm not saying that people don't, you know, give importance to their families, but they give so much worth to their career and their artistic expression is that when that goes wrong, their whole life crumbles. And I think that in careers as in, you know, the special elite police forces you were a part of, because there's so much passion and dedication involved, people are dedicated to their duty, and maybe there's also a similar identity crisis, you know where sometimes you have to step back and say, hey, actually there is Cindy or Derek, the human being, and then there is this professional life that I'm leading. Have you ever gone through this sort of identity crisis at some point?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And I had to get my head around it. In fact, I put a post on my social media, both Facebook and LinkedIn, and it was a reasonably lengthy one, but it started out with I am not my job, I am not my past, and it was looking about who we are right now and what value we are to each other. Blah, blah, blah. But I think the important thing and I go back to another different model, which I call the continuum, and I go back to another different model which I call the continuum, and the part that I'll pull out of that continuum is that when we take on another challenge and we start failing, we fail at one aspect of our lives, we fail at one aspect of our skills, but then we globalize it. Like you just said, I am useless in my life, my life is out, pointless because I can't do this one thing.
Speaker 2:And we've got to remember that we are not our job, we are not our past, we are not our successes, we are not good at that skill, but we're still good parents, we're still good partners, we're still good uh siblings, we're still good children to our parents. We are still good people in the community. We still have value to other people in our industry. It is one aspect, one skill, and we've got to recognise that that is the only thing that we need to build up. Everything else is still good, and this is about being kind to yourself, having empathy for yourself and being congruent with your purpose. This is what I want to do, but understanding. I'm still good at all these other things in my life, but I've had that down as well.
Speaker 1:Um, when I underperform at star group and we go out for a quality qualifying shoot and I am the lowest score, Thank you so much for all the amazing top tips, guidance, all these little nudgets and gems that we can also, you know, take away from this episode and apply in our own artistic careers.
