Midlife Awakenings, Fulfilling Your Potential, & Feeling Good Enough Today | Jem Fuller

“Pause often.” – Jem Fuller

EPISODE OVERVIEW: 

Did you hear the one about the young boy around six years old that had an instant moment that broke his relationship with his dad on a deep level and left him feelings of inadequacy and just not feeling good enough?

You know, the one where he takes the baggage and us on his journey through life, not only through his twenties, but also into a marriage that probably should have never happened. And although he has two amazing boys out of it, it was painful.

Watch or listen now to learn how and why he decided to walk across India for a year barefoot, how he struggled with drug use, and how his sister helped pull him out. Today’s guest not only shares his story, but how he learned to stand on his own two feet, take the steps that he needed to take, and find balance in his life. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Jem Fuller story!

GUEST BIO: 

 Presently, Jem is an award winning author, TEDx speaker and trusted advisor to CEO’s and senior leadership teams across the government, private and not-for-profit sectors. He specializes in resilience and conscious communication. Jem is the Director and Facilitator for his own international leadership retreat company, and has been taking leaders to the remote Indian Himalaya, jungles of Northern Bali and Kimberley region of NW Australia since 2014.

Previously, from his punk days squatting in London to his years of barefoot backpacking around the Indian sub-continent and then years of corporate ‘high-flying’, Jem has lived the extremes. He has been a global tattooist, kindergarten teacher in Asia, motorcycle courier and fire dancer, Chinese masseuse and reflexologist, travel agent and senior leader with a multi-national company. Over the last decade he has studied and become qualified in Coaching, Behavioral Profiling and NLP. 

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Guest Contact Info:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemfuller/
• https://www.instagram.com/jemfuller/
• https://www.facebook.com/jemfuller.me
• https://twitter.com/JemFuller
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkAwvXrYHQ8pSmQES6Yhlmw
• https://jemfuller.com/books/

Remarkable People Podcast Listener Special Offer(s):

• Here is the gift Jem mentioned for

Transcript

Midlife Awakenings, Fulfilling Your Potential, & Feeling Good Enough Today | Jem Fuller

Hello friends. Welcome to this week's episode of The Remarkable People Podcast, the Gem Fuller story. This week we're gonna talk with a TEDx speaker, an author, an entrepreneur, a coach, and so much more. But his journey was in all rainbows and lollipops. He talks about from his childhood, Around six years old having a, an instant that broke his relationship with his dad on a deep level and left him feelings of inadequacy and just not feeling good enough.

He takes us on his journey, how [00:01:00] this stuck with him through life, and not only in his twenties, but also into a marriage that probably should have never happened, although he has two amazing boys out of it. So get your pens and paper. Be ready to take notes. Jim has a remarkable story. Walked across India for a year, barefoot.

Struggled with drug use and his sister helped pull him out, but also just learned on his own that he needed to take. The balance back in his life. And in this episode, he helps not only show us how, but offers you a free promo code to take a class from his website, completely complimentary to our remarkable People podcast listeners.

And he's doing this just cuz he wants to help. So there's so much more in this episode. Get your pens and paper out to take notes and like our [00:02:00] slogan. Don't just listen to great content, but do it and repeat it each day, each week so you can have a great life in this world and an attorney to come. So at this time, let's listen to the Jim Fuller story.

Midlife Awakenings, Fulfilling Your Potential, & Feeling Good Enough Today | Jem Fuller

Hey Gem, how are you today, Dave? I'm awesome, man. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I've been looking forward to it. Oh, please. I just told my listeners a little bit about you and your story, and we are all excited to have you here, to have you here today. So we are gonna jump in and just move chronologically through your life from birth, what your upbringing was like, parents, siblings, situation, good, bad, ugly, you know, whatever it was.

And we'll go through your life in that method. And wherever you wanna stop and land and talk about, that's what we're gonna do. Because whether it was what we consider bad or good, those are all the things that [00:03:00] made you the man you are today and brought you on your journey of helping people the way you are.

So at this time, Jim, tell us where were you born? What was your upbringing like? Yeah, cool, man. I was born in a town in Holland called Harlem. I think it was the original Harlem before the Harlem in New York. My parents are not Dutch. My father grew up in England and my and my mom grew up in Australia.

They just happened to be in Holland when I was born. So I was born there, spent the first year of my life in England. And then mum and dad moved out to a new suburb in Melbourne, the city of Melbourne in Australia. And that's where I grew up. And, you know, my, my childhood was pretty boring, really pretty straightforward, you know, middle class suburban kind of, you know, straightforward childhood, although there were, there was obviously for all of us is landmark moments, you know?

And and one of the landmark moments for me, you know, upon reflection, looking back when I was six years old [00:04:00] you know, look, I, I had. I loved my father massively deeply, and he was a beautiful, wonderful man. But he was also a conundrum man, and he had his own stuff. And I've, I've unpacked a lot of my relationship with my father.

You know, he died 12 years ago. And, and he, when he died, we were completely reconciled. But it was a bumpy road. The relationship with my father anyway, when I was six years old he lost his temper with me and, you know, he kind of threw me around the bedroom and, and beat me up a little bit. And that, that was a turning point for me as a kid.

And I didn't really know or appreciate this until many years later when I was looking back. But that was when I lost my innocence, you know, That's when I really started. Question whether I was good enough, you know? And then I start, And so in the background now, so from the age of six onwards, there's, in the background, there's this background belief fostering of am I enough?

Am I good enough? Anyway the rest of my childhood was pretty fun, man. You know, we, we [00:05:00] lived out in the, you know, there's a lot of land around us and we rode motorbikes and horses and kind of country style living. And then the next kind of event for me, I mean, I was always trying to rebel. I was always trying to not be my dad.

So, you know, I was piercing my ear when I was young teenager and you know, stealing booze out of the, out of his bar and going out at night and drinking with my mates and, and that kind of thing. When I was 17, actually five days before my 18th birthday, my best friend had an accident on his motorbike and was in a coma.

And he, he was on life support for 10 days. So on my 18th birthday I was sitting bedside with my best friend. And then five days after my 18th birthday, the decision was made to switch off the machines and let him die. That's when I was in my final year of high school and that one hurt. That, that really hurt, kind of sent me in a bit of a spin.

And from that point on, then I was, [00:06:00] then I really was anti-establishment. I, I really didn't want a part of the system at all. So I finished high school and just took off, man. I just got on a plane and flew to the other side of the world and, and then pretty much my twenties and early thirties, I just became super addicted to travel.

And it wasn't just travel to any country. I really was fascinated about getting to places that were as different from where I grew up as possible. You know, I wanted to explore. Yeah. Sorry ma'am. What were you saying? Oh, no, no, no. There was a delay in the line. I apologize. So finish what you were saying. So you wanted to explore and just places different than your, your upbringing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was really fascinated with different cultures, different people's, different, you know, landscapes. I just wanted to see. You know, I wanted to get as far away from my normal paradigm as possible, I guess, you know, so most of my, my early twenties, well actually right [00:07:00] through my twenties, was me either in a foreign land somewhere or earning money somewhere else to get to another foreign land.

And so that's, that's was pretty colorful years. You know, I, I earned money doing everything from being a fire dancer to a motorcycle courier, to a tattooist kindergarten teacher in Taiwan for a year. You know, a, a volunteer in third world countries, a laborer on building sites you name it, whole bunch of stuff.

And they were, they were cool. Pretty cool years. Came home, fell in love with a, with a, an Australian girl. And, and we got married and kept travel. And then eventually when we wanted to have kids, we came back to Australia and and we started having kids. And that's when I went, Oh, I've got children.

I'm a father. Wow. . I better get serious Now I gotta, I gotta raise these kids, right? I've gotta put food on the table. There's responsibility now. And I had no career. I had no qualifications. I didn't, I hadn't been in a job for more than a year, you know? [00:08:00] Yeah. So I didn't know, I didn't know what to do. And I, and I thought, Right, I'm gonna get a job in travel, cuz I've been traveling the world for more than a decade.

So I got a job with an international travel company. I had a inverted commerce, successful career with them. Spent eight years with them. And, and the last three years of that, I kind of worked my way up the ladder. Mm-hmm. . And in the last three years I was in senior leadership had 150 staff. My, my part of the business that I'd bought into was turning over a hundred million bucks a year.

And, you know, so lots of numbers on the spreadsheets, lots of pressure. Corporate pressure to drive net profit growth like quarter on quarter on quarter. In fact, month on month we reported. And if you weren't growing net profit growth, you were in trouble. You know? So this pressure to con just continually keep growing this, this profit pushes people away.

Well, it certainly pushed me away from my core values and you know, I was work hard, play hard. I was drinking way too [00:09:00] much booze. I was working super hard, partying hard, but I wasn't there really there as much as I wanted to be for my, my kids or my wife. And I was deeply sad. Deeply, deeply sad and pretending to be happy, man.

I had the, I had the Instagram life on the outside before Instagram was even a thing, you know? And I was, people would look at my life and go, Wow, you know, you've got the dream life. You know, you're earning lots of money and you're flying business class, and you've got your beautiful wife and children and house and white picket fence, so to speak.

And so from the outside it looked all good, but on the inside, man, I was deeply unhappy. And that, and unfortunately for the marriage, it just, it all went too far south to the point where we couldn't rescue it. And, and then I had my midlife awaken. I call it most people call it a midlife crisis.

But in my early forties, I lost my job, lost my marriage, lost my home, had to sell everything. I was deeply in debt. [00:10:00] All I got to keep, which, which was the most I. Part was my two boys. So my, my ex-wife and I went into week on, week off. We're still, we're still, we still do week on, week off with our, our young men.

They're 18 and 16 now. So those two boys you know, cuz I hit rock bottom and proper and having those two children there was the, the, the little tiny piece of glimmering light that I could hang onto and say, I've gotta get, I've gotta get it together. You know, I need to get my act together. And so I began this reparation of my relationship with myself.

I really went to work on myself. This was nine years ago now. And ever since then, I've created a daily practice of self-love and self-care, which has made me a better person which has made me a better father. I started my coaching practice nine years ago and have since then, you know, created some really healthy habits that have helped me, [00:11:00] you know, create the success that I've created now.

Super stoked to say that I get to, you know, feed my children and create wealth, doing what I love, which is coaching and running leadership retreats around the world. Published author, TEDx speaker, blah, blah, blah, all the cool stuff. So that brings us to here now, man. And I'm, I'm coming to you from the studio that my, my partner and I have built.

And so I I, I've been in a beautiful conscious relationship with my other half for seven years now. We're a blended family. We've got four teenagers between us and and it's, it's the life I always hoped was possible. You know, the, the level of. Consciousness in my relationships. Now, the conscious love that I have with my woman, the, my relationships with our children, my, with my mom, with my other siblings, you know, really, really quite incredible.

And just one last thing I want to add in there, because it was a big part of this whole journey was that 12 years ago my father [00:12:00] died of a brain tumor, which we knew was coming. So that was, that was, you know, it was still death and it was grief, but it was kind of okay cuz he's the next generation above.

And we knew that he, it was coming. But four months after my father died, my youngest brother, who was 30 years old, had moved home from Canada. He'd been living in Canada and he moved home to look after mum and died on his motorbike four months after dad died. And that one hurt, That one really, really hurt.

That was super hard. And that was a pivotal part of the whole story as well, to really understand grief. You know, losing that, losing our younger brother. So suffice to say, man, I don't ride motorbikes anymore. I used to, that was my thing. I used to ride motorbikes everywhere and I don't ride motorbikes anymore.

Mainly for mum, cuz she, she'd probably have a conniption about riding a motorbike. But yeah, man, there's, there's a bit of a nutshell of the, of the story. Yeah. You went through a lot and normally we [00:13:00] take breaks along the way, so I'm gonna do my best to remember and to break it down. So when you grew up, you did have siblings.

How many brothers and sisters did you have? So I'm the oldest of four. There was four of us. Okay. And like I just said, the youngest one's not around anymore. Yeah. And I'm truly sorry for that. When you were all growing up, were you guys close? Was it a distance and super close. Okay, good. And well, yeah, I mean closer as adults actually, because you know, I was eight years older than my youngest brother, so by the time he was 10 I was gone.

Mm-hmm. . So from his point of view as a 10 year old, and then growing up through his teenage years, I was sometimes there, but mainly I was around the world, you know, And sometimes I was a, you know, visit and stuff, but I wasn't there all the time. But then as we all became young adults, we were super close.

No. Did your, It was, did your siblings have the same relationship with your father where they had that, [00:14:00] you know, maybe some abuse or disconnect? Or did they have a different experience? Yeah, different, Yeah. I think they, I think they had a different, they had a different childhood experience. To a certain degree.

I was the, the eldest and dad was trying to figure it out, right? None of us know how to be a parent. We just kind of figure it out. Although they, obviously he was the same father they had their slightly different relationships with him. And in his later years you know, he was a reasonably high functioning alcoholic.

But, but he certainly was an alcoholic. He would start drinking at lunchtime every day. And in the end, in the last years of, of his life, we had to close his business down because he'd run it into the ground. And, you know, look, he wasn't, he, it's important to, to kind of make it clear that my father was a good man.

Mm-hmm. , you know, he was a good man. He was the, he was on the church council. He was a dedicated Christian. He was [00:15:00] the Secretary of the Rotary Club, which is a, you know, a, a community club that does good in the community, raising money and all that sort of stuff. And if you ask other people outside of our family what they remember of my father, they'll tell you that they remembered a kind, caring wise man.

Yep. You know, but we all see the different sides. Yeah. In life, there's, there's always, you know, you never know what goes on behind closed doors. Mm-hmm. and just because somebody has a struggle, It doesn't make 'em a terrible human, but at the same time, if there's struggles in a particular area that you had to grow up in, it makes it tough.

So, yeah. How did the alcoholism affect your childhood personally? Like, and what did you do to learn to deal with it? Like, did you have any me coping mechanisms that you'd wanna share with the audience that may help them? Or maybe looking back you're like, I wish I used this coping mechanism that I learned in my adulthood.

Yeah. [00:16:00] Yeah. Look, I wish I, I wish I knew how to practice self love, self self care through affirmations and meditations, that sort of stuff. Because I had, in the, in the background subconsciously, I had created this belief that I wasn't good enough for my dad. And as a young boy all you want to be, is that good enough for the man on the pedestal, you know?

Good, good enough for the hero archetype. And, and I, I felt like I wasn't good enough for him. And, and that played out later on in my adult life, in my earlier adult life, where I would sabotage any success because I didn't believe I deserved it. I put all of my anxieties into the most intimate part of my existence, which was sexual intimacy.

And I became very, very anxious in my marriage in that space. And that was torturous man, cuz I was too, too ashamed to tell anyone. So that became a very [00:17:00] secret torture. And so, yeah, look, I wish I had known about that. I wish I had have known that, that his struggles weren't mine. You know, they were his.

But it was eggshells, dude. Like I, I grew up on eggshells cuz I'd walk through the room and I'd never know what mood he was going to be in. And if I walked through the room that he was in and he was you know, sitting on the couch. Watching TV and having a drink. And if I walked through the room and I wasn't smiling and looking happy, he would clap his hands twice.

He just did these, these two claps and would bark the order at me, smile, and I'd put on a fake smile. Cuz he, he didn't wanna see me unhappy. He just only wanted to see me happy. So he would force me to smile, . Oh man, Looking back, that was his way of loving you, you think? [00:18:00] No, no. That wasn't his way of loving me.

That was his way of dealing with life. His way of loving me was fully supporting me. And, you know, because I wanted to be an actor and I didn't want to go to university. And I went to drama school and he fully supported that. I wanted to start riding motorbikes and my mom was terrified and didn't want me to, and he supported that.

He helped me get my first motorbike, you know, he, he supported me in, in many, many ways. You know so no, he, he loved, he, he loved us really well. He took us, he would take us around the world. He would take us, you know, skiing and snowboarding and you know, on holidays, camping and hiking, adventures and, you know, lots of wonderful stuff.

So you feel like when you were six he had an outburst like every father has at some point, aside from God. Yeah. And he did something that harmed you, but that literally put a schism between you guys, or was there [00:19:00] more after that one account? There was more, you know, his, his his discipline with us.

If we had, you know, if he wanted to discipline us or need, felt like he needed to discipline us he would get us to hold our hands out and he would smack our hands. So it was kind of mild physical discipline, but it was still scary. I was scared of him when I was little and Yeah, so the, you know, there was, there was stuff over the years, I think there was stuff over the years, and I never stood up to him when I was a kid.

My younger brothers stood up to him, you know, that when they were young, young teenagers they, they would stand up to him and say no. Whereas I never did. And I, growing up as a kid, I was a really sensitive boy a sensitive child, but I always got told, you know, suck it up, man up. Don't cry like a girl.

Be tough, you know? And if I showed emotions, he would get angry at me. So [00:20:00] I didn't know how to be, because I was naturally emotional and sensitive, but I was told that was wrong, not to be like that, you know? And I think this is quite a common, a qu, a common cultural indoctrination for our young boys. I know in the States and here in Australia, culturally.

People still say that to their boys, you know, they still tell their boys to suck it up and man up. Which has its whole, you know, repercussions to us as a society. Yeah, there's definitely a balance. I mean, we don't want to grow men with no backbone, but we don't want to crush men either who are developing into a man who are sensitive.

So there's like, the Bible says, a false balance is abomination to the Lord. So everything needs to be in balance, you know? That's so true. So when you were in your 18 and forward, you're traveling, you're seeing the world, did you always have a sense like you need to prove [00:21:00] something to, to accomplish something on your own?

What were you thinking during those years and how did that relate to that relationship with your dad? Yeah, it's a good question, Dave. I, I, I guess subconsciously there was always seeking approval. For sure. But, but consciously, you know, if you had have asked me as a, you know, a 22, 23, 24, 25 year old, if you had have asked me how I identified, I would've told, told you I was anti-establishment.

You know, I was punk, man. I, I was living in a, in squats in London. I was covering myself in tattoos and piercings back in the nineties, you know people weren't doing facial piercings really back in the nineties, but me and my crew were, and we were just anti-establishment man. I was just trying to, I just didn't wanna be a part of it.

I didn't wanna, I, I saw anything conservative as being you know, the hamster in the wheel, [00:22:00] and I didn't want to do that. So I went to the extreme. You know, it's interesting that you, you talk about balance and how important that is, and my partner and I talk about that as well, that we've found, we've found happiness and balance in, in the middle.

But I've been to both extremes. You know, I've been right out to the extreme of punk anti-establishment and then I've been out to the other extreme of full corporate suit and tie, play the game thing and and now exploring happiness in the middle. Yeah. So let's continue on. You unpack so much good stuff, Jim, but I wanna make sure we don't miss any parts of your story.

And I wanna make sure we give the listeners who are connecting with you as much of the practical help, as you know, steps 1, 2, 3, that they can start their journey of healing. So as we're going through your life, you end up meeting a woman, you fall in love, you get [00:23:00] married, you have two boys, you said.

Yeah, that's right. Two boys. What

would you say was going on in your marriage? That led to, you know, the divorce and then what have you learned from then that now you're saying this, this relationship is amazing. What was the difference between the two along your journey? Yeah, and that's a, a big beautiful question as well, Dave. I I think, I, I think the fundamental part of it that I can own that is that, that is my responsibility, was that belief that I spoke about before, That I'm not good enough, that I'm not enough.

And so when we have a belief around something, we inadvertently seek evidence to back up our belief, you know, [00:24:00] and, and at least we distort the information from our environment around us to make it match our belief. So I fell in love with a woman who was evidenced to me that I wasn't good enough, and she would tell me, Regularly.

Why aren't you more like him? Why aren't you better at this? Why don't you do that? You're not good enough at this. And that was all evidence for me. I chose that, you know, I, I called that to myself. Now that's the fundamental part of what was different then to, to now. Because now I have created the knowing and the, I have remembered that I am exactly enough, you know, to be me.

But there was also a whole lot of other stuff about human behavior that I've since studied and, and I am fascinated in human behavior and understanding how and why we operate and how we operate in relationship. You know, when our ego gets in the way of communication [00:25:00] the, the intricacies. Of, you know, the difference between feminine and masculine energy and the way that they communicate and relate our human behavioral styles.

You know, we have this different behavioral styles that we're born with. So the understanding of all of this stuff has just made me a much better partner. You know, it's interesting actually, Dave, my current partner, she didn't show up in my life until I had already rewired my neurology to, to believe that I am enough, that I'm good enough, and I do deserve happiness and connection and grace.

And it wasn't until I had believed that, that she showed up in my life and that's when she showed up. And so my current partner loves me completely just the way I am. She doesn't hope for me to be better or different in any. And as I evolve and grow, which is what we do [00:26:00] she's very happy for that. But she doesn't hope for me to be anything more or less

She loves me just the way I am. And let's, let's stop there for a second and talk about that. Because a lot of people, they go from relationship to relationship and they have the same problems over and over again, and they don't see the pattern. And so if you're listening to this now, and I don't care if you're in Australia, New Zealand, China, you know, Madagascar, if you're in New Guinea America, it doesn't matter.

Humans are humans. There's one race. The human race cultures are different, but people are people. So when you're looking back at your life, Jim, and your relationships, You had someone with your dad and we didn't really talk about your mom. So I don't know how much of an impact she played, but she did play, have an impact.

She had a role, whether it was not being there, not stepping in or whether it was, [00:27:00] she was the opposite extreme. You can talk about that however you want to, but you went from a relationship where you felt like you couldn't satisfy or you weren't enough to putting yourself right back in the situation with your first wife, it sounds like.

Is that a good assessment? Yeah. Yeah, man. And that pattern would've continued to repeat through your whole life. So you made a beautiful and important distinction that you were ready and you changed so you could accept the gift of your new partner. So what did you do? So for our listeners, taking notes, right?

What did you do to start changing Gem so you could be prepared for the blessing that you've been waiting for? Because I'll be transparent with the audience. I grew up with a mom that had narcissistic tendencies and you could never please her, and I never felt good enough. And guess what I look for on my wife, Someone I couldn't please and had narcissistic tendencies and someone that I'd have to be [00:28:00] Superman.

I still wasn't good enough and it always ends badly. So I learned the hard way. You learned the hard way. But for our listeners, what have you learned to snap yourself out to be healed and to get on this new self love and self healing, which isn't wrong. God wants us to be joyful and happy and have peace.

So what did you do in your life to get to this point, Jim? Yeah, when I had that midlife awakening I, I had a realization, I had an experience and a, and a, a profound experience, and then a realization that there had been this subconscious and, and now conscious belief that I wasn't enough, that I wasn't good enough.

And I realized that, and realized that that was the reason I was, the reason that I'd created the life that I'd created [00:29:00] and was so far away with my connection to divinity. To truth, and I'd gone so far away from that. And so really the to I, I wish I could say that there was an easy fix where I could, where I just could flick a switch and all of a sudden I believed I was good enough, but there's not, unfortunately, you have to go to work and roll up your sleeves and do the work.

But I came across different books on, based off the understandings from neuroscience around neuroplasticity. And how our brain is changing and the neurology of our brain, the, the wiring so to speak, we can have something to say about the changing of that when neurons fire together in a particular sequence.

So for example, to have a, to to say any sentence like, I am not good enough to say that sentence, neurons have to fire together in a particular order. When they fire together repetitively over time, they kind of wire [00:30:00] together, they become a path of least resistance. They become like a reflex thought. So we have these reflex thoughts, which are our beliefs, and we, like I said earlier in our chat, we kind of distort the information from the environment around us to match our beliefs.

So if you believe that life is tough, you will have a tough life. If you believe that people are horrible, nasty, then you will meet horrible, nasty people. You know, it's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I had read some books saying that we can change our wiring. Through high repetition. And so I created an affirmation, I am good enough just the way I am.

That was my affirmation. And I went to work and I said it out loud many, many, many times a day. And it didn't even start to create a belief for at least six months, but more about 12 months the first year of doing this. And then I started to believe it. I started to believe my own [00:31:00] hype. I was literally consciously brainwashing myself to believe that I am enough just the way I am.

And then as I started to believe it, I was like, Ah, wow. Of course, of course everybody is enough. Everybody is exactly the right amount of everything to be them. And, and I shouldn't be more like anybody else because I'm not. I should be just like me. And of course, as we move through time and we evolve, Hopefully we expand into our potential and we continue to improve along the way.

But I came to a deep understanding that I still practice in my daily meditations and affirmations, that everything that's happened in my life up until this moment should have happened. Why? Well, because it did, can't change. It can learn from, it can learn from all of the experiences and interactions. And I can learn from the, the, the [00:32:00] ups and downs and the challenges and the joys and the triumphs.

I can learn from all of it, but it all should have happened exactly the way it did because it did. And so here I am in this moment, chatting with you right now, Dave. And I'm exactly who I'm supposed to be, you know, And this radical self acceptance, which is a, which is a habitual practice. You don't just kind of understand it intellectually and everything's okay.

It's a daily practice of radical self acceptance is liberation. You know, for me it's been liberation anyway. Because when you are completely loving of, of yourself and and accepting of who you are, then you are connect, connected to something spiritual, then you're connected to something beyond yourself.

Cuz it's our ego that gets in the way, that creates the separation from the truth. And the truth actually is that we're all one, we're all part of the same field, right? We're all part of the same universe. And we forget that [00:33:00] we, I, I forgot that as a younger person. And so for the last nine years it's been really beautiful to vibrate and resonate in the truth that I'm a part of something much bigger than me.

You know, to get out of my own way, stop making it about me, and now I can serve. Now I can you know, do the good work that I do. Yeah. And if you're listening to this and you're hearing gem say, if I say it enough, it's gonna come true. There's a lot of truth to that because. If you've ever done the experiment, like if you're miserable, like absolutely miserable right now, listen to this podcast.

Thank you for sticking with us, right? But I want you to just smile, like, smile, like crazy smile, and just hold it and keep smile and look at yourself in the mirror. And not only will you probably laugh because you're looking to shelf crazy smile in the mirror, but you'll actually start feeling better because your mouth moves, your physiology moves, and then your brain starts connecting synapses of oh, face equals smile.

Release happy [00:34:00] chemicals. So yeah, like if you're watching this episode, me and Jim look like crazy guys right now, . But it's true. There's a physiological connection to the psychology, to the, to the spirituality. Everything's connected. Yeah. So by, it's such a great example. Yeah. So by repeating these affirmations, some people have never heard this before.

Some people are like, they practice it every day and they know it works. Some people are like, Man, I know a crazy lady who does that, and I don't want any part of it. Listen, there's again, balance everything within balance. But what gem's saying is so true that if you repeat the good truth, I mean, don't go say I'm a skilled heart surgeon and go cut somebody open.

That's bad. But when you're having this self love, like, I am worthy, I am talented, I am good, you know, I am wealthy, whatever it is, you're, you're counting the good, counting the blessings. And like Jim said, for him it took six months. For some people it takes six days. For some people it takes a year, but it will catch up because you know when you're following God and you're [00:35:00] faithfully pursuing him, you reap what you sell.

So if you're so in, good, good will come back. But if you sew trash, If you're so evil, that will come back to you. So, Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's so true. And you know, it's interesting because I think that what you just said then, Dave, around, you know, what you sew is what you will reap when you create, because we experience life.

Us humans, we experience life in our mind, right? So there's this, there's life around us, the environment around us, and we receive all of the information from the environment around us, through our senses. You know, this, we can see and hear and touch and taste and smell. And then we represent all this information in our mind.

So our connection to God, if, if you wanna use the word God or universal life, our connection to life is experienced in our mind. And so the quality of our mind matters. [00:36:00] Yeah. If, if you are, if you are generating. Whatever quality of your mind you're generating, that's what you will project and that's what you will perceive.

That's what you will receive. This is the reap and so thing, you know, And if you are creating a, a place of turmoil and and horrible stuff, then that's how you are gonna go out and be, and that's what's gonna come back. Cuz that's all in your mind as well, you know? And yes, we impact the world around us a hundred percent, but the quality of our mind matters.

You know, And we can, we can curate that with love and care. We can create daily practices, little 1% habits of self care, self love, you know, I still look in the mirror regularly, make eye contact with myself and say, Hey dude, I love you. You're a good man. Go out and do good work. Go out and contribute in whatever way you can.

You're a good, you're a good person. I still say that to myself regularly. And I think it's important, you know, [00:37:00] I have a sticker jersey, the Bill Murray sticker. I think it was from one of his movie Tap Not Taps, it was the military movie he made. That was hilarious. He was like, You're awesome, right?

And I got that on my refrigerator and I'm like, You're awesome, Bill. And he is like, You're awesome. And it's just, it's good, healthy, it's good for you, especially when somebody in the world are just negative, not even towards you, just everybody's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's all negative that you need that positivity and you need that love.

And sometimes you look in the mirror, all of us do it, and we're hyper critical. Yeah. And sometimes we look in the mirror and we're like, Hmm, not too bad. So it's like you want to harness those good moments and keep repeating them not to get a fat ego. And that's gonna be my next question for you is we just talked about kind of your journey in the prison.

It was really making for you. And then you had that instead of the midlife crisis, you had that mid midlife awakening. And so now you're seeing that you had to get real with who you were. [00:38:00] And address the ego and say, No, this is who I was. Good, bad or ugly. This is who I was. And then once you accepted that, it sounds like you went to, Okay, now I'm gonna set a vision of a man who I want to be and start those affirmations and working towards being that, like you said, 1% a day, you know, 1% steps.

Yeah. First off, was that tracking right? Is that the, the first couple steps of progression? Yeah, yeah. That, yeah. You've, you've put that together. Well, I, I've had two identity crises in my life. One in my late twenties. And, and after that kind of, that was a breakdown. And I then I spent a year, well, actually closer to two years, wandering around India and the subcontinent of India and Pakistan, and Tibet, Bangladesh.

And I really was on a, on a, a search to try and understand who I was. You know, cuz I'd lost myself. That was in my ear. Late twenties and then again in [00:39:00] my early forties. Similar identity crises. And what I've, what I've found out is that when we identify with our vehicles, so our vehicles are our, our job, our career, our hobbies, our relationships.

So we say, I am her husband, or I am their father, or I am a coach, or I'm a bus driver, or I am a surfer, or whatever it is. When you identify with those vehicles, when the vehicles aren't there anymore or aren't working very well, your sense of identity takes the hits. You know, if you've identified as.

My, my children's father, I'm a father. And then when that relationship is struggling, when you're going through tough times, then your sense of identity is going through tough times. Or if you've identified as a piano player and then you have an accident and you can't use your hands anymore, then you don't know who you are.

You're like, If I can't play the piano, who am I? Right? Because we [00:40:00] identified with the vehicles. So I thought, Okay, well if I'm not gonna identify with the vehicles, what can I identify with? Who can I choose to be on a each day? And I thought, You know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to identify with my values.

So if you were to ask me now, Gem, who are you? I would tell you, well, really at the essence of all of it, I am a kind, caring, open minded, loving, action taking generous man. That's who I, that's how I identify. So there's some of my core values, kindness. Generosity, open-mindedness, love, care. These are my core values.

And so this is one of my daily mantras that I say out loud each morning. I'm a kind, caring, generous, open-minded, loving, action taking man. That's my sense of identity right there. And no one can take that away from me, that that can't be taken away and I can [00:41:00] choose to, to do my best to show up like that in the moment each day, right?

Because the past doesn't exist anymore. It's gone. And the future is only existing in our projection into it. You know, as you know, Dave, there is only this moment, only this moment, and my, the quality of my character and how I show up in this moment, that's the truth of who I'm choosing to be. You know? And that feels good to me.

So, yeah, that's a part of. Yeah. And we don't want to go too deep and drive people insane or get into the theories of space and time and relativity. But what Jim just said, if you haven't really slowed down, you know, I think in most countries, not just America, we're born, we get put in school, were driven hard to be in school and to learn and to perform.[00:42:00] 

We get homework when we get home. Cuz it wasn't enough being gone for 12 hours, right. Or eight, eight to 10, 12 hours depending on your schedule. Now you come home and do more work and then we go off, whether it's to the workforce, it to university, and then we go from there to having families and raising them.

And then we have to provide, like we start off this interview with Jim and he is like, You, you got a wife, you got kids you gotta provide, right? And then when you finally get a chance to slow down and breathe, that's when most people, not just men, have midlife, crisises. It's cause the first time you had to take a damn break, breathe and say, Who am I really?

Or what do I want? So wherever you are in the world, what Gem is saying is super ultra important. Now is the present. And this is the gift. This is, it's like getting a present. It's a gift. It's a gift from God. We can learn from the past and even the most horrible thing, [00:43:00] God didn't cause that. God made everything perfect for us to be happy.

Saint's the bastard that screws everything up. He's trying to cause misery and chaos. So if you don't understand that, there's a huge step. But now when we're here, we wanna plan ahead, like we're gonna be around for 50 years. But we have to live for today. And again, it goes back to balance. So what Jim's sharing with you is finding that balance where, yes, I'm gonna be responsible and planning for tomorrow, but I'm also in the presence of today.

And just finding peace in it. Because there's always gonna be betrayal, there's always gonna be pain, there's always gonna be heartache, but there's also gonna be joy and love and kindness and the ability to share with people. So when you're looking gem at today, what kind of advice do you have for our listeners with all the distractions and all the things pulling at 'em to stay in today?

I know you already mentioned you start your day with affirmations and, but what are [00:44:00] the things, if you were given, hey, try these five things. What are things, or three things, or 10, whatever you think, but what are some things our listeners should try to get that balanced, peaceful life? One of my favorite.

And it's, it's deceptively simple, but it's so powerful to create this habit. One of my favorite practices, I call them pause moments, right? And I'll, I'll talk to, I'll talk to how to create a habit in a sec, but before I do, just pause moments. Very simply, stop what you're doing. Pause even just for three to five seconds, just pause and take a couple of breaths, right?

It's that simple. Now I like to add a, a, a little piece of mindfulness into that. Mindfulness is very simply the attention to the present moment. So just noticing what you can notice in the present moment. So I pause, take a breath, [00:45:00] notice what I could notice, and then. I heard about this at the Mindful, the Global Mindful Leader Forum in Sydney, Australia in 2014.

And there was a meditation teacher from from the States, and he said, Pause often. And it was just the right time for me to hear it. You know, I probably have heard that advice before, but in that, on that day with this particular man saying, Pause often, I took it and I thought, I'm gonna create a habit around that.

So you can pause in between tasks. Maybe you've just finished a meeting and you're about to go to your next meeting. Pause between the two. You can ju you're going to make a cup of tea and you put the kettle on. Just pause before you put the kettle on, or you're on the way to the car to go and pick up the kids from school on the way to the car.

Stop, stand still. Pause, take a breath. And just notice this habit that I've formed has become the most. Wonderful [00:46:00] little micro recalibration back into the moment. Cause we get so carried away, right? You wake up in the morning and your alarm goes off and it's quick, quick, quick, you know, get in the shower and get ready, get the kids off to school and get the lunch boxes packed.

And then you're racing to work and then you've gotta a meeting and then you've gotta go to the shops and oh, you've gotta go and do a supermarket shop. You to the day's just busy, busy, busy. And then you're cooking dinner and then everyone's asleep and you do the dishes and clean the kitchen and you're like, Oh gee, wow.

Right? Go to bed, get up the next day and do it all over again. We never pause right Apart from sometimes to sit down and watch Netflix, and that's just kind of numbing yourself from the moment anyway. So these pause moments are like little moments to recalibrate and come back to your place of equanimity to your calm center.

Right now to, to create a habit. This is, and James Clear in his book Atomic Habits, which is doing really well at, you know, over the last few years, he talks about this as well. I kind of came across, he calls it habit stacking. I came [00:47:00] across this many years ago, somewhere else, and I call it Habit Association.

So you take the new habit that you want to create, so say pause moments, and you associate it to an existing habit. So brushing your teeth, say for example, we all brush our teeth twice a day, right? So you get a little sticky note and you stick it on the mirror in the bathroom next to the toothbrush that says pause.

And so every time you go to reach for your toothbrush, you pause. You take a pause. What happens is over time, You, the neurologically, you associate those two things together. So you reach for the toothbrush, you don't have the sticky note anymore, you just automatically pause. And I had sticky notes all around my house, Dave.

I had them next to the coffee machine. I had them next to my toothbrush. I had them on my laptop saying pause. And so now I've created these things. When I open my laptop, I pause. When I go to make a fresh coffee, I pause brushing my teeth, I pause. So I've created habitual moments to pause. So that's only one You said.

You said a few pausing. I [00:48:00] don't feel pressure. Don't feel pressure. I'm just saying like for the people listening, what are some things they can try? Cause you and I know we've heard a thousand things. But what's stuck is what you're talking to us about. But there's probably techniques that may not work for you, but may work for somebody else.

So we're just trying to say in gem's life, what worked, and let our audience try it. Let me try it. Let's see if we can, you know, be free. And you know, you reminded me what the sticky notes if I can find that, I'll put a link in the show notes. And I don't wanna butcher his name, but there's a great MMA fighter, Bass Rudin and he used to put sticky notes all over his house with the moves and, And Uhhuh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He saw, he, he'd remember, Okay, I gotta practice that move. And he, I met him with his wife where he'd throw her in rear naked chokes and stuff, but the guy became a world champion. You know? I mean, Yeah. Making these associations, making these connections. It, it really works. Yeah. It works for everybody.

I've got another one go. I thought of another one. Gratitude. [00:49:00] The conscious act of gratitude. You know, before when you were sharing about how you can you can kind of reverse engineer your state of being. If you, if you put a smile on your face, you're telling your brain to send out the happy chemicals, right?

That's the same with gratitude. When you practice gratitude consciously, it changes your physiological state. The chemicals come out and you feel good. So, you know every, every night before. My family, we say what we're grateful for, grateful for the food, grateful for the person who cooked it, grateful to have a roof over our heads.

You know, I, I've actually created that to be habitual. I, I'm saying that I'm grateful. A lot , my friends and family probably think I'm a little bit too heavy on the gratitude, but it works man. It feels good, you know? And yeah, I spent a lot of time in India and and I still go to India and run leadership retreats in the Himalaya Mountains.

And I know [00:50:00] some some people who are very close to me who have not much at all, man, like almost nothing. They're poor and they're happy. Mm-hmm. and they're happy. And I was wondering, how can you be so happy when you really don't have much at all? And they're grateful, you know, so they express their gratitude on a daily basis for just the little things, and that's the source of their happiness.

So yeah. Gratitude's a good one, I reckon. Good man. Yeah. You can never be grateful enough. And even our meals, you know, some people think you're praying for your food to cleanse it. It says in the Bible that it's not what goes into the mouth that corrupts you. It's what comes out. So it's our heart, right?

You're, you're supposed to be thanking God for the food and being grateful for the bound and the blessing and the provision. Yeah. Alright, well we've been kind of jumping back and forth through your life, but from birth through today, Jim. [00:51:00] Mm-hmm. , is there any area that we skipped, missed, went too fast over that you want to dig into that you know what this really has value?

Like, you know, you talk about your book, The Art of Conscious Communication for Thoughtful Men, You know, is there anything in here that you want to talk about before we transition to where's Gem today and where are you heading? So now we can help you get there. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I think, I think something that's worth talking about is that a lot of our human suffering exists in our, in the illusion that we're separate, right?

That I'm a separate entity to you. I'm separate to life around me. I'm separate to God that I'm, that I'm, that I'm cut off and separate. And there's, there's suffering in that, in the ego. Ego's not necessarily a bad thing. Ego is just our sense of identity and it's functional. I mean, we, we've all got one.

So we must [00:52:00] need to have a sense of identity. It helps us get through life and do what we need to do in a very pragmatic, practical sense. But, We do a lot of, we do a lot of anguish and suffering in, in our ego, in our taking ourselves so seriously and, and our woes and our troubles. And, and the fact that, you know, I'm separate from life and for me the remembering that I am a tiny, tiny, tiny part of the much greater system you know, of the whole life energy that I'm a part of it, that you and I are intrinsically connected.

You know, that has been a real liberation from suffering for me. You know, it's not so much about me anymore. It's more about how can I serve, what good can I do, what good conversations can I have? That's why I was excited to come and have a chat with you, man, because you're doing beautiful work. And, and so how can I play my part [00:53:00] to help and.

Yeah. And I think that's a big part of it. So just remembering, yes, I'm, yes, I'm a human being and yes, I was born here and this is my story and this is who, who I am. And at the same time the balance that I'm also a part of, the greater system of God as we all are, and that we're all beautiful in that way, you know?

And we're all from the same stardust, so to speak. Literally, like very literally, you know? Yeah. Now let's do this. Let's try to thank, First off. Thank you for saying that, that ties everything together so well and leads us to this next part. So we all have a journey. and we all make some really dumb decisions, really bad decisions.

And we, Satan's gonna always, you know, I always think when you look at hunting, you can sit down and watch, you know, the, the animal channel, I don't know what it's called in your country, but like, we have like animal planet or whatever in America. Yeah. National [00:54:00] Geographic. Well, what does the prey always do?

They, they, I mean, what's the, the hunter always try to do, they try to isolate its victim, right? Uhhuh. And that's what San does with us. He wants you to feel away and alone and, and abandoned so he can pounce on you. Right. Ruin you. So I've made terrible choices in life that saying try to trick me that, Oh, you can't recover from that.

What's one or a couple really bad decisions you've made in your life, Jim? And how did you overcome that mentally? That's to say to yourself and to saying, anybody else who's accusing you, Like, that's a lie. Yeah, I did do it. But now we move on and we grow and we help other people with that knowledge. Yeah.

When I was in my twenties, before I had that, that breakdown I was talking about, I've made really bad decisions, man. I started using drugs and yeah. And it, it could have [00:55:00] gone, it could have really, I could have actually, that could have been the end of, of me, you know, I got lost. I was really lost and deeply sad.

And my sister was my angel in that time. My sister was living in Europe and she flew to London and she saw me and I was a mess. And she said, Jim, what are you doing? And I said, I don't know. I've forgotten. I felt separate. I didn't, I didn't communicate with my family. My fiance had left me. I was alone and lost.

And Anyway, my sister turned up and she said, Hey, remember you were saving up to go and travel around India again? And she said, I'm gonna be there in December. Why don't you get a ticket and let's meet up. And she kind of helped me and you know, and then I went to to India again. And that's when I had this, this year of walking barefoot around India and seeking my, my sense of spiritual connection again, my sense of [00:56:00] reconnection to God.

Yeah. And that was that year for me of healthy living and lots of yoga and meditation and cooking on a fire. And, you know, it was a beautiful, beautiful year. But I can't remember how we got onto that. You asked me a question and I kind of, No, I was somewhat like decisions we make that are bad and in our minds seeing tries to convince us that you'll never recover.

But that's a lot. Yeah. That was the drugs. That was the drugs. Anybody can recover from anything. Like there might be consequences of our actions, but there's always freedom and, and. Yeah. Yeah. So what are some you can recover? Yeah. So like you drug use, you got in deep. Yeah. How did you get out of that? You know, what was the journey like, good, bad, the ugly?

And what are steps that somebody listened now could take to say, I don't need to go to India for a year and walk barefoot. That's cool. That's what Jim did, but what can I do right here in OK Okinawa? Or what can I do in [00:57:00] Kansas to, to get through this? Yeah. I, I think that if we, you know, when we make bad choices and we start to become stuck and whether it's drugs or alcohol or pornography or you get stuck in something that's not good for you, not healthy, and if you are stuck there, I think it's because now I might be wrong.

I don't know, but I think, I think it's because we don't believe that we deserve a clean, healthy, happy, connected life. We don't think we deserve it. So we're doing terrible things to ourselves because we, we don't think that we're good enough. So I think if you can just somehow create a daily practice of self care, like we were talking about earlier, you know, if you can just have a, a sentence written down next to your bedside table and you wake up in the morning, and even if you're feeling desperately depressed or sad, or wherever [00:58:00] you're at, if you could just force yourself to read out this one thing, you know, I am connected to life.

I am worthy of love. I'm a, I am enough, right? If you can just read that out each morning, just, I believe that gradually, day after day, you will slowly start to remember that you do deserve grace and happiness and love. You know, I think.

Well said, my friend. So when people are saying, Okay, I'm gonna work on me, what's your schedule look like? They don't have to have a schedule exactly like you, but give them a sample of what's your daily morning schedule look like that you work on you? Mm. So I, I get up [00:59:00] earlier. I wake up earlier than I need to, and, and I wake up.

The first thing I do is mindfulness meditation. And so mindfulness meditation is quite simply in attention to the present moment, like I mentioned earlier. You can have a guided meditation. I've even got a mindfulness made easy course. I, man, let's give it to your listeners if you, if you're okay with that, we can put a coupon code in the show notes.

They can have it, man, rather than pay for it. I don't want money to be the obstacle for people who want to make a better life for themselves. So I've got a, an introduction course we can give to your listeners. So every morning I meditate for 20 minutes, and then while I'm, you know, getting ready in the, you know, having a shower and whatnot, I do my affirmations.

So about five minutes of affirmations. And then depending on the day and, and my schedule, different forms of exercise. So whether it's a run or a walk or a weights session in the [01:00:00] gym different forms of exercise. So that's my kind of morning routine.

All right. And like start to finish, how long does that usually take you? Like what, what do you dedicate to that each morning, roughly? Half an hour to meditation and affirmations, and then 45 minutes of exercise, which will fit somewhere in the day. I, that doesn't have to be first thing, you know, if I've got a, you know, an early podcast, like for example with you this, this morning, I had to come into the studio early because you're in the States and I'm here in Australia, so it depends on my schedule.

And I've got, you know, we've got four teenagers that we all go to school and, you know, doing all the family stuff as well. So the morning is half an hour before every, before anything else starts. I've got my half an hour of meditation and affirmations and then exercise somewhere where I can fit it in.

Yeah, and again, you're, you're focused on body, soul, spirit, every part of it, not just one. Awesome. Jim. We'll put a link to the show [01:01:00] notes to that free class and that way people can connect with you, sign up, be part of your mailing list, and then get that. Thank you for that very generous offer. What about, where are you today?

Where is Jim and where are you heading? How can we help you get there now? Yeah, that's, that's beautiful. Thank you for asking. I'm, I'm in a wonderful place in my life. I, I'm really excited to, to have become a published author. And, and that book that you mentioned, The Art of Conscious Communication for Thoughtful Men, it's for anybody.

I, I'm having women around the world who are emailing me and saying, Thank you so much for your, for your book. I got a lot from it, you know, and I'm now passing it on to my husband or brother or son. And that's, so that, that, that's wonderful. And the TEDx talk that came out with that I've been running Conscious Leader retreats in the Himalaya and Bali up until Covid.

And now that where the restrictions are easing and we can [01:02:00] travel again. So those retreats are starting to happen again. I love those retreats. They're, they're really a beautiful experience for people. And my and my partner and I run them together, which is, which is lovely, and I'm making some really cool connections in the States, man.

I'm I'm coming over your way and October this year to come and meet. I've, I've got representation over in the States now, a literary speaking agency representing me and some cool connections with you know, various different people who are doing good work. You know, and I'm on this mission as well, like you, and it's one of the things I love about being a podcast guest is that there's a lot of podcast hosts who are on a mission to do good work and spread light and love and try and make the world a better place.

I don't watch, I don't consume mainstream media because it's also negative and I just don't want to see it. And I know there's a lot of terrible stuff going on, but I just don't want to consume it. So I don't watch that. I would rather spend my [01:03:00] time with people like you positive and trying to do good work, you know?

So yeah, man, my life, my life is pretty wonderful. We live down the coast here. We live in a small surf town, and my kids and I surf and we spend a lot of time in the great outdoors. We camp a lot and hike a lot. So very connected to nature and and doing this beautiful work. I, sorry, I, I didn't even say what my bread and butter is.

I'm a leadership coach, so I coach executive and senior leaders in government departments, private organizations not for profit organizations, a lot in the health sector. So I coach leaders and and I feel really lucky, man, because they engage me as their leadership coach, but then I get to help them become more conscious as humans and help them communicate.

And do good work more effectively as well. Now talk about that then for a second. A lot of people hear about executive leadership coaches all the time, but let's take a second cuz we have a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs from all around the world who listen to our show. What does [01:04:00] working with you look like?

Like what would someone expect if they contact you through your website? Again, all your information's in the show notes, but go ahead and share the best way to contact them for the best way for people to contact you. And then what does leadership coaching look like? Like what should they expect? Yeah, so there's, well, okay, so the best way to contact me is through my website, www.gemfuller.com and just fill out one of the contact forms or just email me gem gem fuller.com.

So working with me, there's, there's different entry points. So you can, you could jump on right now and go and purchase one of my online courses. I've got a course in resilience or a course in mindfulness meditation. We're building another course in relationships. We, we've just launched a course in communication for the modern leader, so you can find these courses.

So they're entry point engagement with me. Then there's the next [01:05:00] level in where you would engage me to run some workshops with your teams. And then the, the, the highest level of engagement with me is one to one. So I have leaders around the world who've engaged me as their coach. And the regularity of our coaching sessions depends on how much engagement they want, A couple of times a month, once a month with weekly accountability.

So any of my clients that are engaged with me, they hear from me every Monday. They get a message from their personal message from me saying, Hey, how you doing? What you said you were going to do? And that and that leadership coaching. Look, it's tailored for each different person, depending on where you're at and how engaged your team is.

But essentially it comes down to your ability to communicate as a leader. Because as a leader, you are wanting to engage a team of people, and you're wanting them to thrive. Yeah. You're wanting them to, to to lean into their meaningful work and for you to all create outcomes together that are serving some [01:06:00] kind of higher purpose.

Right? It's not about just making money. If it's just about making money, you're never gonna be happy. There's gotta be some sense of meaning to what you do, right? So I help leaders communicate that, meaning, communicate that purpose, and then communicate more consciously with the people in their teams. So they create engaged teams and they get better outcomes.

Now, of course, down the track, you go, Wow, we're, we're doing really well. We're turning a great profit. Our company is financially viable, right? But that's a result. You know, if, if I'm coaching you, that's not the focus. If you, if all you wanna do is make millions of dollars and get rich, if that's your focus, I'm the wrong coach for you.

If you wanna live a meaningful life and create an environment for people in your teams to live a meaningful life that's worthy of something, then perhaps I might be the right coach for you. Excellent. Excellent, excellent. Yeah. And I echo 100% [01:07:00] what you say, that if you're looking just to make money, it's a shallow hole you're digging yourself into.

It's not gonna end well. So make sure you have that substance and purpose that gone intended for you so you can have peace and joy and let gem help you get there. So, Jim, between your birth and today, anything else we forgot or any closing thoughts you wanna leave with our audience and community? Wow. 51 years to look back over.

No problem, man. I feel bla Yeah, I look, I feel blessed. I really do. I feel very, very fortunate. I feel blessed to have been born to the parents I was born to. I feel blessed my, you know, my formative years, right through my teenage years. I was at church every Sunday and, and the Christian Foundation was my moral foundation of, of what's right and wrong, you know?

And so that, I feel, I feel very grateful to have had that. [01:08:00] My sense of connection to God now is not through any one particular path. It's, it's more openly spiritual, but I'm definitely a spiritual person and I believe that as long as we're here, we may as well connect with our sense of purpose and meaning and try and make the world a better place than when we turned up into it, you know?

And I feel very lucky to to be doing that. So have I left anything out? Probably, man, 51 years. This Be Lost Don Shop for sure. But that's the essence of it, I think. You know? Oh, I just meant when you're like, I don't want you to look back and like, Oh, I can't really forgot that. That's like a core of my story.

Or man, I really wanted to say that to help people all. Well Jim, you truly are a remarkable man. Thank you for being on the show with us. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. Hopefully you not only enjoyed Jim's story and just getting to know Jim, but you connected, but now you're [01:09:00] gonna do, like our slogan says, Don't just listen to great content, but do it.

Repeat it, just like Gem said each. So you can have a remarkable life in this world, and more importantly, an attorney to come. So I'm David Paco alone. This was our friend, Jim Fuller, and we both love you. Thank you. Hope to hear for you and for me in the next guest. We'll see you in the next episode. Jim, thanks again from me here.

Here, brother. Thanks, Dave. Thank you so much. All right, chow.