Glen from alight wellness

Two friends discuss their experiences with boxing and how it has impacted their lives. One friend joined to find a sense of community and improve his physical and mental health. The other friend joined because he felt his life was not fulfilling and wanted to feel alive. Both friends have found boxing to be a discipline that teaches them about themselves and helps them overcome challenges. They also discuss the camaraderie and sense of brotherhood in the boxing community. The friends also share personal experiences, such as one friend going through a divorce and the other friend returning to New Zealand after living abroad for many years. Overall, they express how boxing has been a positive influence and has helped them grow as individuals. All right Glenn, how are you man? I'm good. We finally got this podcast going. It took a while but we got there. We got there, yeah. Obviously this would be my second podcast episode. I've done others before but this will be the first one that I've done in a while. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me man. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Yeah. I suppose I just wanted to, yeah, so thank you. I suppose really just go over how we know each other man. You and I have known each other for what, maybe two years now? No, it can't be that long. I haven't been at the gym that long, have I? We met in the boxing gym. A year and a half? Yeah, probably about a year and a half. That sounds about right. Okay, about a year and a half. We've been training in boxing since, well I joined up, I might have joined up, no I joined up in 2021 at the end of it and you were there already. Oh yeah, I was there first, was I? You were there first because I remember you had just come from the States. Yeah, that's right. Right, and so you were living in? L.A. L.A. and then you had come to? Tauranga. Yeah, Tauranga and I thought you were a chef at first. A chef? How did you get that idea? I don't know man, you just looked like a chef. Try my cooking, you might change your mind. And I remember, this is kind of my first memories of you bro. I remember we were on the heavy bag and as you walked down the stairs you kind of, you buddy up with people and they're like, find a partner. And I just kind of moved into the, from the beginner 530 classes to the more advanced ones because I knew ultimately that's where I wanted to go. I didn't want to be shadow boxing forever. And I remember going down there and you were like, jump in here and you just had this phenomenal cardio man. You were just punching the bag like crazy and I was fat and overweight. I was, jeez, I had the man boobs going on and all. I was unhealthy. And I remember just looking at your face bro, this dude's like, you know at the time, because you know, when you join you don't really know much about boxing. So anyone who's like above you in whatever, you just think that they're like been boxing forever. Yeah, that's true isn't it? Yeah, and I just remember you, yeah, you just got a massive sweat up and you were like leaking. You were like leaking perspiration everywhere all over the floor. And yeah, that was kind of like my first, first interaction with you bro. That's right, yeah. And yeah, so what made you want to get into the boxing? There's a few things. I had got back to New Zealand in September of 2020. Right. So I'd spent six years living in Los Angeles. Prior to that I'd spent eight years living in India. And prior to that three years living in Perth. So I'd been out of the country for a long time. Yeah, the occasional visit back here to see my family and stuff. So when I got back I didn't really have a community as such. A lot of my friends were not here. They'd moved away and so forth. So part of it was just wanting to get out and connect with other human beings. You know, be around other people, chat to them and just build, start building some kind of community as part of my sort of like stabilising my mental health type idea. Another reason was wanting fitness. For the same reason, you know, partly brain health, partly physical health. You know, investment into future well-being, etc. And I also wanted to learn something new. I'd never done boxing before, never done any kind of martial or combat sports. So I wanted to learn a new physical skill. So those three things came together. There was also actually an element for me of wanting to explore, I guess, or maybe round out some of the more masculine aspects of the personality. I was definitely feeling at that point some kind of, like it wasn't rounded out, like it wasn't fully expressing. And that had especially come, that was especially playing on my mind based on what had happened in Los Angeles and, you know, the breakup of my marriage across that time. So it was partly that as well. So it was a few threads all sort of coming together and boxing seemed to be it. And it was close to my home. It was, you know, a reasonable price in terms of the gym membership. So, yeah, next thing I know I'm doing a trial class and then, hey, I'm in. So, yeah. Right. What about you? What brought you to boxing? I was fighting things, man. I was fighting battles before I got to that boxing club. I was, yeah, that's an interesting question. Life just was not working for me. It wasn't working for me the way that I wanted it to work. And so I did not feel alive in what I was doing with my life. And I really started searching for something that would make me feel alive. And I don't know. I just, you know, I was looking for something that would make me feel alive. And I don't know. I just, I had gravitated towards watching fighters and, you know, why not other sports? But for some reason boxing or MMA and combat sports in general, there was something there for me that just really made me admire them. These are these people who are putting it on the line out there and the discipline and the training. And it was something that was absent in my life that I just, I just wasn't doing. And so that's why I had just been attracted to the boxing gym. And I was working out at a normal gym. You know, when I say a normal gym, I'm talking like the bench press gym with people doing the, you know, the bodybuilder stuff, right? And so for me, man, it was boring, bro. It was just boring. I was not into it. You know, you get there and there's a dude fucking looking at his triceps in the mirror. And, you know, I just, I didn't think that was a very healthy atmosphere to be a part of. And also I wasn't getting the results. I just, I wasn't into it. I didn't, there was no camaraderie really there. And I kept turning up, but my workouts were not, I don't know. I just didn't feel fulfilled there. And I didn't want to be a bodybuilder. And don't get me wrong, man. Running's cool, but running on the treadmill, it just didn't sit well with me. And so I remember the first time I joined up to that boxing gym, I was pretty, you know, I was pretty like, well, where am I? And they take you down and you join the beginners class and you're looking in the mirror. And I remember there was a kind of a shorter guy there and he was real cool, a moldy dude. And he doesn't come to the gym anymore, but it would be cool to see him back there. But he had a word with me and he kind of just asked him why I joined up. And he was just looking real good, man, shadow boxing. And so, yeah, immediately I was hooked already. There was someone who was cool, started talking to. And it was exciting, bro. And it was exciting watching the guys who were like, you know, the amateurs, the guys who were in that next class that you wanted to get to. And I always felt like I wanted to get to the next class, like the next level up, the next level up. And so there was that hunger there straight from the beginning. And I suppose I walked in there. I wanted to fight, bro, probably pretty much from the first day I went in there. I knew that, oh, one day I'd love to have that experience. I just didn't have the balls to be able to say that out loud. But I knew in the back of my head that that's what I would have liked to do because I've known people that have had fights and stuff. And just being around them, it was really inspiring hearing them talk about martial arts or karate, whatever it might be. Yeah, it's interesting that you talk about what drew you there was that sense of not being alive in various parts of your life. Yeah, there's something about combat sports, which I think has a different dimension of aliveness compared to other sports, compared to other competitions. You know, you're vying for the rugby ball or you are running next to someone else to try and beat them, et cetera. OK, there's competition there, but when it comes to combat sports, you're getting into an arena where someone's trying to beat you up. You're having a fight. And it's, as we've talked about before, it's not logical. You know, getting into a fistfight with someone is something which is unacceptable. You go to jail for it, you know, and it's something that you don't want. The body goes into fight or flight mode in those sorts of situations. And here you are deliberately putting yourself into that situation. Normally when you get into a fight elsewhere, it's escalated to that point. But here you are training for something where the other person's trying to punch you in the face and the gut and the side of the head. And so there's something which is quite illogical about it, but you're consciously choosing it. You are overcoming all of those biological and psychological alarm bells which say, don't do it, and saying, I'm going to do it anyway. And so there's a real sense of that aliveness in terms of making an autonomous choice. And that, I think, is part of the key elements of combat sports that really draws people in. Even if you're not necessarily getting into a fight, I think it's that whole arena. You're learning it. And so there's a sense in which it's a very conscious decision to train for a fight. And as you said, you knew it from the outset. And where I'm going with this actually is with some of the other elements of boxing as well, and perhaps why it's so attractive to people, or combat sports in general. There's that autonomy side of it, that's one. The other is what you talked about with the camaraderie. That's something that surprised me, the degree to which there's real care and interest and connection with the people who are doing it, especially those who are getting into fights. There's a sense in which you're really connected. There's a real sort of – I don't want to use this phrase too globally or cliché, but it's a real brotherhood. It's not just the men, of course. Our most recent fight, there were plenty of women doing this. But there's a real sense of camaraderie and community around that. And people caring about your success and people showing up to help you with it, that surprised me, the degree to which that is there. And so that's the second key need that we've all got, which is for relatedness or connection. And the third one that it takes care of is competence. And competence is not just being competent to achieve a specific goal, but competence really is watching yourself grow in your skills and your abilities. And you see that week in, week out. As you said, your cardio gets better, so you can go for longer. Your punches get crisper. You retain defensive responsibility better. Your footwork gets better. All these things gather these slight improvements, and so you really feel like you're incrementally just improving in whatever you're doing. And so all of these three needs come together in this arena, and that's what makes it so attractive and so motivating to go there continually. And as you talked about, the discipline. And some of the skills you learn, some of the mindset skills that you learn, they are directly applicable in other areas of your life. The sort of resilience that you develop. When someone puts you in an aspiring situation for 10 rounds, you walk out of there, you've taken some hits. But you're walking out of there, and you feel good. And so there's a sense in which you're developing a physical resilience, and it becomes a psychological resilience as well. And you can take that elsewhere. So it really is a remarkable discipline to engage in. Yeah, so there's the why I joined up originally, right? And then there's why I stuck with it. And I will continue to stick with it. And they're very two different answers. So why I stuck with it is because for me, I felt like boxing kind of emulates life a little bit, or it has for me. And so there's fights going on in life, and then there's fights going on at the gym, and you're trying to overcome fights. Yeah, for me, boxing has just been a real good anchor for me to be able to deal with all the other stuff that's been going on in my life, which we won't get into. Famous last words. Yeah, but it has been a really good – it's taught me a lot about myself, a lot about my character. And, you know, not all good, but all things to work on, right? And, you know, do I have what it takes to step in the ring? Do I have what it takes to really commit to the training, to the program? You know, when no one's watching, do I have the integrity? You know, when I say I'm going to do this, do I have the integrity to really stick to it? Am I going to eat well when no one's watching? Am I going to train hard when no one's watching? Or am I just going to do it when, you know, I don't know, fucking Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, you know, at the classes? Or am I going to come in on my own? And the answer for me in a lot of ways has been, yeah, I am. I do have the integrity with my word around those things. And the results have shown. And I feel like if I can take what I've learned from this beginning part of the journey that I'm going through, bro, with boxing, I feel like I can really apply that to other areas of my life and have success in those areas as well. And that's the great thing that I really enjoyed about boxing is that, you know, you can apply this in many of these, like, lessons, I suppose, that I've learned, and apply them to other areas of your life. And you can emulate the results that you're going to get out of it as well. You talked about, like, I think you said something about, like, masculine. Yeah, there's something quite, like, warrior-ish about being in a boxing gym, man. Yeah. That it's just fucking cool, bro. Like, you know, yeah, it's just, it's fucking cool. It's just like, ah, look at that guy. He punches really hard, or that guy's so slick. He's fast. And you've got different types of dudes with different types of personalities. And it emulates over to the way that they box as well, you know. For example, even some of the nicknames that people have when they fight. Yeah. Like, some really have a fitting nickname, and some don't. So I'm just like, you're like, what? You know? But, and I really do believe, man, that when you think of a nickname, you should really think it through. That's why I didn't give myself one. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know, man. I just, I'm falling in love with boxing. Yeah. I'm glad that we met through boxing. Yeah, me too. We haven't known each other for too long, bro. But, you know, hearing your stories about what you're up to and where you come from and what you were going through before you joined that gym, I'm sure boxing played a massive part in helping you get over some of the things that you were working through. Absolutely. So you broke up, you and your wife? Yep. Now ex-wife. Ex-wife. Split? Yep. You moved into New Zealand? Actually, the other way around, in terms of chronology, I came back to New Zealand for a family holiday. And she remained in L.A. So we were obviously, at that point, unsure about our future. And while I was here, we were continuing to talk and have conversations, and it was while I was here that we made the decision to actually split up. And due to COVID, my flight back got cancelled. Ah, right, OK. And so I haven't been back since. When I left Los Angeles, I was married with the intent to return, and I'm now unmarried and haven't returned. Yeah, right. So, yeah, that was one of the toughest separations or, I guess, circumstances to go through in terms of dealing with that whole movement out of being a married person to a divorced person. Not just in moving here, but even the 6 to 12 months before that, it was pretty clear that things were perhaps not going to work out. And that was really confronting as well, because that wasn't anything to do with us as individuals or the relationship. The relationship itself was good. We were very well suited in terms of our temperament, our values, the lifestyle that we wanted to live. There was just one issue around kids or not. And so we got married on the basis that we were going to remain child-free. And then a few years into living in Los Angeles, my wife's mind started to turn towards wanting a family. And through her own exploration, she found that that was really something that was a part of who she was. And her early decision around not having kids was made from a place where she didn't know herself as deeply as she now did. And so it really would have been a suppression of her nature, and it would have been wrong for her to not go down the path of family and having kids. And for me, it was the opposite. It would have been a suppression of my nature to force myself to go down the route of family when I wasn't wholeheartedly into it. I couldn't look within myself and say, yes, this is something I want my life to be. I wasn't intrinsically motivated into that. I wasn't part of my purpose as a human being or as a man to raise a family. And not only that, but I also felt very connected to the sort of freedoms that come with remaining child-free. And so it was simply that difference in life paths that made our continued connection together untenable. And that was what was so difficult. If we hated each other or if there'd been someone cheating or if we'd just turned into a toxic relationship, then now thank God we got divorced. It was a great thing. But it wasn't that. It was still very much loving and caring about each other, still feeling very connected, but just there was this barrier that we couldn't get around. So that was really tough. My blood pressure was up for six months and I lost like 6 kg, I think just out of the energy associated with the constant anxiety. So that was really tough. And I know that, again, the boxing helped with that. I don't want to make it all about the boxing, but I think the hard workout, I think that's what it is. If you choose boxing, great. If you choose something else, I think it's pushing yourself to a physical wall with the workout and then pushing through that wall, saying, I'm going to keep going anyway. Even though the body wants me to stop, the mind wants me to stop, I'm going to push. I'm going to work through this edge. There's something about doing that that makes managing all of your other battles somehow easier. I agree. I agree. Question, does she have kids now? She doesn't at this point, but she's very much in the, how do I say this? I don't want to be speaking on her behalf, but she's in the dating pool and she's met someone. Okay, cool. She's looking at going down that route. That's great. Good for her. From what I hear, yeah, she wanted kids. You didn't want them. That's kind of what, yeah, it sounds tough. It sounds tough. You've moved to New Zealand. You've taken up boxing. What was the plan at that point? You're back home. Yeah. You've been living away for how long? 10 years? 17. Wow, 17. So you've been living, man, now I've lived abroad and coming to New Zealand from being abroad for just a few years was tough. How was that coming back after almost two decades? Is the country slower, different, smaller? Yeah, I actually really liked the slightly slower pace, the less culturally entangled aspect of New Zealand compared to living in Los Angeles. The heightened sense of appearance and keeping up appearances that is there in Los Angeles compared to New Zealand. I think one of the areas I noticed was with regards to kids, like that sort of 12 to 17 age group. They just seemed less hung up on the sort of appearance side of things and more like they were kids. So I really appreciated that aspect of it. I missed the bigness of Los Angeles, the anonymity that comes with being in such a large place. It's a cultural hub, everybody knows Los Angeles. I missed being there. There was a sense of almost failure, bit of a loser, come back to New Zealand because you couldn't make your marriage work, that sort of idea. So I was struggling with those a little bit. And the plan was figure out my life, start again. And I didn't know what that was going to look like. But I did have some ideas. Before I left LA I had started doing a coaching certificate from Fielding Graduate University, 12-month course. Prior to that I had been running a non-profit in Los Angeles teaching classes and courses on Vedanta philosophy. So that was the connection to India. So I'd been studying Vedanta philosophy for a number of years and teaching it. So Vedanta is basically a personal development philosophy and a set of principles, values and practices aimed at, of course, personal development. So it's a spiritual tradition that dates back thousands of years. What are some of these values and these philosophies just to give me an idea of what Vedanta is? So some of the key values... I'd say the key value really is self-knowledge. That's the, to my mind, the central pillar of what Vedanta is. It's knowing who and what you are. And rather than being something that you know, I actually like to think of it more in terms of a process. Because the identity that you come to know, it evolves over time. You know yourself in deeper and deeper elements as you get more and more into this. So it's a search. And it's really a direction for your attention. It's a direction for your life. It's what you were talking about earlier on with the boxing. And I think that this is what's key to understand is that what you got out of boxing, what I've got out of boxing, you can't get it from boxing per se. It's got nothing to do just with the boxing. Because the implication would be then that everybody who goes into boxing or a combat sport would get what we got out of it. It's not the case. Right. It's what we brought to it. We were able to pull out of boxing the gold that is in there. Because we brought to it an intention of self-knowledge, personal development. You know, we hadn't been talking very long and I identified it quite quickly that you were also looking to know yourself better. Yeah. So I have to interject there. So I said something, just because it's on topic of what you're talking about, I said something to our coach, well, my coach, because I just had my fight on the weekend and then I lost that one. And look, it is what it is. But I talked to him and I said, I now know myself as someone I did not know myself as beforehand, which is a fighter or boxer. And even though I lost that fight or that match, I really do see myself as someone I never thought I was before that event. Right. And it wasn't just the six minutes in the ring. It was also just the whole experience, bro. The whole thing. The training, the sparring, the punching someone. Yeah. That. And so, yeah, that's what was there for me. I was knowing myself as someone I did not see before that experience. Yeah. Yeah, it's key. And so that's the beautiful thing about any kind of personal development practice is that wherever you go, you can use it. So you go to your business and you find that you have a difficult relationship with that person. You find that you have a hard time getting up in front of people and speaking. And you go to your family and you love this one and you have an antagonism with that one. Your cultural, your politics, whatever area of life you're engaged in, if you bring to it the lens of personal development, you can draw out of that situation the gold so that you know yourself better. So I know myself as someone who really struggles to speak in front of people. I know myself as someone who can do it as long as I've got the support of, say, my boss and my colleagues. Same thing with all these other areas. You get to know yourself better. And so having a personal development practice completely changes the way that you view your life situations and it gives you a way to manage them or I should say a way to relate to them that gives you some balance. It gives you some stability. And really out of everything else, I think that's the key element of the Vedanta philosophy which is begin to understand the importance of self-knowledge. So I've never heard of this before, this Vedanta philosophy. So how long has it been around for? Who created it? And what drew you to this particular thing? How long has it been around? So the earliest texts we have... Where does it come from? Yeah, it comes from India. So it's from the Indian subcontinent. The earliest texts we have date back, I've seen, anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 years. I've seen some reports that say as far back as 10. I'm not sure how reliable that is. But it certainly predates the Abrahamic religions. What does that mean then? Predates... You're talking to me here. Predates Judaism, Christianity. So all of the earlier texts are all BC in terms of their dating. Who created it? We don't know. That's one of the beautiful things about Vedanta philosophy. There's no authors. There's no prophets. There's no messiahs. There's nothing like that. We have these Upanishad texts which have no author associated with them. There's no names. Just sort of a Socratic dialogue. It's more of a question and answer session between a student and a guru. And that's what we're learning through. Guru. That's your nickname, by the way, isn't it? Guru. I prefer not to have it, but there's not much I can do about it. I'm not going to fight it. It just makes it stronger. Don't call me that. So who made it? We don't know. But, of course, we've had many names along the way that are commentators and have written their own treaties and so forth. And what drew me to it was I had actually injured myself doing running many years ago and couldn't run. I was feeling a bit stir-crazy. And someone said, Try yoga. I said, OK, I'll give it a crack. So I gave yoga a go. Loved it. Loved doing yoga straight away. There were some books lying around, the yoga class. And this one had Atman and Brahman and all these words in it. And I'm like, this is quite interesting. So I started just exploring a little bit and came across meditation and started doing transcendental meditation for a number of years. I enjoyed that to start with, but that very quickly went south. And the transcendental meditation that I had learned as I continued to practice it religiously was having a fairly detrimental effect on my headspace. OK. In what way? I found that I was becoming fanatically attached to the practice. I had to do it. And I had to rearrange my life around doing the practice. And when I first started doing it, I definitely found a sense of mental peace. I found some calm. I found some relaxation. Fanatical. When you say fanatical, what comes to mind for me is, yeah, extreme. Yep. Yep. Extreme in the sense that my beliefs around how powerful it was and how magical it was were not open to being changed by reason or evidence. Right. I knew myself as a meditator. Not just a meditator, but a transcendental meditator. And it was sold to me as the Rolls-Royce of meditation. That's actually the phrase that was used. It's the Rolls-Royce of meditation. And I paid my $2,000 and got my mantra. And I began to experience some frustrations. Like I was becoming more angry and frustrated and so forth just during the day. So I went to my meditation teacher and told him, and he said, just keep meditating. That's the response. So I just kept meditating. And, of course, it got worse. And I went back and he said, just keep meditating. And I can't remember what it was exactly that made me decide to give it a break, but I did. And I turned to my partner at the time and said, I think I'm going to just give up the transcendental meditation for a bit. Clear as day I can remember this. She put her book down and looked at me and said, good. So she hadn't said anything to me, but she'd obviously been noticing that my mental space wasn't great. So I gave it up and immediately felt better. So the meditation I subsequently learned was what I was doing was actually suppressing the mind. I was trying to achieve the results that sort of came naturally at the beginning just because it was novel, interesting, enchanting to do this thing. And I was sort of squeezing the mind onto the mantra and trying to hold it and trying to be a meditator. And I was becoming very attached to the practice and everything else. So I was suppressing the mind. So the moment I stopped, I felt better. But what's key was that I was really interested in the underlying principles of it. So I began to look a little further. This is when I was living in Perth. So I went to the local library and put in Vedic philosophy. And out popped a book called Vedanta Treatise by a Swami by the name of A. Parthasarathy. I started reading it and could not put the book down. And specifically in chapter 16 of that book, he describes what happens when you meditate on an unprepared mind. And it was exactly my experience. And I'm like, ah, this guy knows something. So I visited India and just visited him at his academy there and just knew that I had to stay. These values of living and life, the exploration of what is true, what is real, who am I, it was just so immediately attractive to me. I knew that I wasn't going to do anything else. So I went back to Perth, paid off my student loan and got back to India as soon as I could. Yeah, so what I hear from is, you know, we're all on a journey. And I hear that for you as well. This search of values, and it sounds like you found it when you went to India. Yep. Where does this constant search for values come from? I don't know. I have a sense that it is baked into the cake of being a human being. I think that there's an element of our personality that is searching for meaning. I mean, we've talked about this at length. We're always making our experiences mean something to us. What does it mean to you to achieve the win in the boxing? What does it mean when this person does this to you? That person ignored you when you walked past them. What does that mean to you? Everything has a meaning to us. We're meaning-making creatures. I think that's part of it. And I think there's this element that we always want to know more. And that is true in terms of our meaning as well. We want deeper meaning. We want deeper understanding. So I think that that's part of our makeup, is the drive for a deeper understanding of whatever our attention happens to be alighting upon. For me, my values have always been the same. Maybe I've just decided to look at them a little bit differently. But I've always found that my values have been pretty similar. But you're right about the meaning side of things. I think we all kind of make stuff mean things that really doesn't mean nothing, right? And I totally get that. And we have talked about that quite a bit outside of this conversation. I suppose what I'm really asking, though, is the values that you're looking for, did you not find them in your own... Were they absent from you growing up in terms of European or Western culture? I think I'd say I don't really know what values I was looking for per se. Like if you'd said to me when I was going out to India, what values are you looking for? I think the answer would have been, well, I don't really know. That's the whole point of going. I want to explore what values are out there and what beliefs and what principles are out there that are a more deeply accurate representation of the reality. But your question still stands. Why did you have to go to India to do that? And I think there's two answers. One is, yeah, I didn't find it anywhere in Western culture. I'm not saying it's not there, but it wasn't in front of my face and it wasn't anywhere obvious to me. The closest I sort of came was dabbling in religion because it starts to investigate the inherently unknown, the unknowable, the mystical. But I'm not a really big fan of religion and all the baggage that comes with it. I think there's possibly also an attraction to the foreign, to the exotic. It feels more exploratory to go to a different land and explore it. And so there's that aspect to it. Right. But the other aspect is really I don't know why. I mentioned this to my teacher once. I sort of said to him, I could have gone anywhere and done this. There was something about this particular field of knowledge that I knew I had to be here. And I said, I can't really say to you why I am here except that I knew I had to be here. And I was looking for an explanation for that phenomenon. And he's still spooning daal into his mouth as he's talking to me and says, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's mumukshatwa. So mumukshatwa is the desire to liberate yourself. And it does have this sort of mystical or perhaps a bit of an intuitive element to it. And I think that is also an answer to your earlier question is that every human being has the desire to liberate themselves. Freedom is our inherent nature. We are autonomous. We are free. And so any time we find ourselves in situations either created by others or created by ourselves in which we are constrained in our nature, we naturally want to break free of that and find greater freedom. And there was a sense in me in which understanding these principles of life, of living, and how to explore self-knowledge, that to me seemed like the path towards greater liberation. And so I just knew that I had to go there. So I didn't know that at the time. I wouldn't have told you that then. This has only become clear to me in retrospect. Right, OK, gotcha. And so you've come back here. How do those values that you've learnt stand up today? So I'd say the values that, so yeah. In this environment with what you're doing now. Yeah, so as far as, I guess I only touched on one, self-knowledge. That's one that I've touched on. The other key, I'd say two values that I've picked up and I've really been trying to integrate. The other is surrender. Another word for it is humility, but I think surrender is slightly better. It's recognising your areas of unknown. And more than that, it's recognising the areas that are inherently unknowable to you. Example? OK, so I'll give you an analogy first and then I'll get into an example. An analogy is like, you know, you've got a pain somewhere in your body, you don't know what it is, you don't know what's causing it, you don't know how to fix it. It's an area of unknown. And so what do you do? You surrender to a doctor. You say, I don't know this thing and I have no way of figuring it out. So you go to a doctor, you sit in front of her and you tell her your symptoms and she gives you a diagnosis and a treatment. So what have you done? You've recognised what you don't know and you've acted on that basis and you've surrendered your exploration, if you like, to someone else's expertise. So there's that area of surrender. The key element is that moment of surrender, of saying, I don't know. So that's an analogy. An example in terms of especially the inherently unknowable is, you know, some of those philosophical or if you want to call them cosmological questions around, or ontological questions around, why is there something instead of nothing? There's something going on here. There's a big universe and there's conscious creatures and all the rest of it. Why? Why is there something? Why is there not nothing? Why is there a manifestation or an expression at all? Does there need to be a why? Well, there may or may not need to be, but the point is that that question comes to the human being. It comes to us because we want to know what we have meaning making structures. We have the search for deeper knowledge. Now, there may not be a why, but it doesn't stop us from asking. But I think the point here is to recognise that at least at this point in my evolution as a species, we don't know that. And we can't know. And so surrender is to recognise that area of unknown and to peacefully exist in that state of I don't know. And this is where you get theories of creation and this is where you get theories of dissolution because I don't know how the cosmos came into existence. There's a sense in which that's a very destabilising space. I don't know. I have to have a meaning or a reason why the world exists. Same thing with when I die. What happens when I die? I don't know. Why hasn't humanity just stuck with I don't know? Why have we got all these theories? We've got reincarnation, we've got heaven and hell, we've got the materialists who say that the light gets switched off and that's it. I'm sure there's more that I'm not aware of. Why do we have all these different theories of dissolution or death? Because not knowing what happens when we die is an untenable situation for us. We don't like that I don't know. The unknown is too uncomfortable. So the surrender aspect is to recognise where you do not know and to live in harmony with that sense of lack of knowledge. From there you can then go to a source of wisdom and enquire. And so these two elements that we talked about, the first being self-knowledge and the second being surrender, they're two sides of a coin. Who am I? What am I? How did I come into existence? And what happens when the body dies? All these things about myself I don't know. That's the surrender. You have to recognise I don't know who I am. Now for most of us to have no identity is entirely untenable. We can't handle the thought that I don't know who or what I am. So we create an identity. We create it around our bodies and our genders and our wealth status and our family history and our culture and our religion and all these things. We create an identity around it because we have to have something. Recognise you do not know. That gives you that magical space that creative space where you can start to gain knowledge. That's the self-knowledge part. I don't know who I am but I'm going to enquire into who and what I am. So these two are two sides of a coin. The surrender and the self-knowledge. The third of the values that we talk about in terms of what values did I pick up in India is that of service. So the self-knowledge is an intellectual discipline. The surrender is an emotional discipline. And the service is for the body. You act. And so that's taking what you know about yourself, the principles that you've learned that are genuinely part of your well-being and then expressing those as your values. And then expressing those as action in the service of others. So that's the third way of deepening your self-knowledge. The first way is direct enquiry. The second way is surrender. The third way is this service. And these really are the three pillars of whatever you're doing in life, this becomes your personal development practice. Self-enquiry, surrender and service. And those are the elements I've tried to integrate into what I'm doing here. The work I'm doing as a coach. So tell us about the work you're doing as a coach, just so we can kind of get a sense of exactly what it is that you're doing and wrap or tie into how this is all applicable to what you're doing with your life. So the work I'm doing as a coach is primarily the mission is to bring people to their own recognition of how important it is to have a personal development practice. That's the key purpose. To make them see that in order for me to progress in any area of my life, to be emotionally balanced within myself and to have harmonious relationships with other people, the easiest, most efficient way to do that is to have a personal development practice. So that's what I'm trying to ultimately do. What it looks like in terms of my coaching practice is to find those areas of life where you're not living and succeeding and feeling as free and intrinsically motivated as you would wish and to figure out why and to figure out a good mindset and a plan to get there. So it's taking specific areas of life and approaching them in a personal development or through a personal development lens so you learn a process. One of the things I contract with my clients is my job is to make myself redundant so that when you've done a few of these things with one or two areas of your life, you're starting to get a sense that, OK, I can apply this way of thinking and this way of looking at things to any area of my life. So that's the idea is to find those growth edges which are those areas of your personality where you are functioning on outdated beliefs. Beliefs that are temporary, that have some accuracy to them but they were only accurate really within a very limited scope or circumstance. What do you mean by outdated? They were true and they were useful at a prior time in my life. They were functional. They were productive for me. They got me what I wanted. And because it worked 20 years ago, I'm still continuing to work on it now but I've changed, my environment has changed, my relationships are different, the stage of life that I'm in is different, my expectations of myself, the expectations of my community are different, and yet I'm still living the beliefs around what it means to be a good person from a 20-year-old. Take an extreme example. When you're 12 years old, you have beliefs around who you are and what your path towards well-being is. You wouldn't put it necessarily in those terms but you have those beliefs, ways to function. Who am I in this family dynamic? I'm the youngest of four children and so on and so forth. And you have a particular role, you have a particular way of functioning, you relate to people, you have certain loops of thought that go on in your mind and they work. You find your place in that situation with your family and with your friend group. Now when you're 18 years old, you've moved away from your family, you're in your first year of university, you've got a new friend group now, different responsibilities, different expectations of yourself. Now no one's checking up on your homework anymore. I can buy alcohol now. All these different things. Now if I relate to my friends and relate to my schoolwork and relate to my other things the same way I did when I was 12 or 13, it's not going to be productive. It's immature. I've got to update my beliefs. Same thing happens now when I have my first relationship. I function in a particular way and it works. But when I'm 35, if I'm acting in my relationship the same way I did when I was 19, my partner's not going to be happy. I'm not going to be happy. So as your situation changes, as your relationships change, you need to update and upgrade your beliefs. The problem is because they've worked, we stick with them and we don't know what belief to bring in next. So having an old belief is better than no belief. But what's really the problem with our old beliefs is that we don't know that we hold them. And so this is part of the coaching work. And this is actually the most fun part for me. Getting people to identify the beliefs that they hold, but they don't know that they hold them. The unknown knowns. Yeah, okay. So, I have a couple of questions. The term life coach gets thrown around quite a lot. And there is a lot of criticism from people that, well, I was one of them, right? And so I always thought, you know, we're talking about beliefs, I always thought, what's the point? Who are these people to tell me, who are these people that say they're a life coach? I mean, we're all kind of going through this thing and I had always thought no one's really got this thing figured out. Yeah. What do you say around that? I would say that a good life coach is someone whose training is based on evidence. That there are, the science of well-being is the name of the course. Because there is a large body of research that does tell us what can contribute towards your well-being and what does not. My Vedanta philosophy is sort of the ancient wisdom tradition that I draw from that tells me a lot about that. The other one that works for me because it's much more contemporary and has clinical trials and peer-reviewed journals and all those sorts of things associated with it is self-determination theory. And that talks about some basic stuff and some basic psychological needs that when they are met show us that we have a greater sense of well-being in ourselves, that we have greater effectiveness in our lives, greater intrinsic motivation for what we're doing and it's evidence-based. So a good coach is someone who, like a doctor, has the training. So it's possible, for example, to go to a doctor who's overweight and get good advice on how to make yourself healthy. Now, is your doctor applying it? No. But is your doctor giving you the right advice? Yes. Now he's not taking it clearly. I see this fellow, he's, you know, clearly overweight. But he's telling me the things that I need to do. So it's a little bit like that. You don't have to have it figured out. But the other aspect of coaching is that the coach doesn't give you information. The coach doesn't tell you what to do. That's an advisor. That is a mentor, perhaps. A coach asks you the questions that you need to be asked so that you can figure it out from within yourself. So one of the key principles that comes from coaching is that the client already has within them everything they need to get where they need to go. They already have the answers. Your job as the coach is to help them bring those forward. So a coach doesn't tell you anything as such. A coach helps you to figure out what you already know and piece it together and develop a plan that is yours. And that's actually one of the reasons I really was drawn to coaching. Now one of my own coaches said to me, some coaches act as accountability partners, and he said to me, I don't do that. He says that to me undermines one of the key principles of my coaching which is that you are responsible for your choices. And you are responsible for your actions and you have the ability to make it work. So if I act as an accountability coach it's almost like I'm saying you need me to push you. You don't need me. You've got everything you already need. I'm just here to help you bring it out. Okay, so what I get a sense of is what you're really out to do is just help others, right? Be a service of others. That was the third value of some of the teachings that you've learnt. And through doing your coaching you really get to achieve that. And you get to achieve that through some of the things that you've learnt from India, the books you've read, and the time and effort that you've put into it. I suppose a background of relatedness from what I understand is it's just life in general, right? So for yourself you've been through some things. You know, with your ex, you and I for example, we did the boxing together. And that's what I really get a sense of when I'm hearing you and listening to you speak is that you're really out to help others. And so what does that look like for you in the future, Glenn? And, yeah. Yeah, so what it looks like in the future for me I think is there are two aspects of it. Because this journey that I'm on of creating the coaching business for example, this is part of my own personal development journey. Being an entrepreneur. Being a business owner. So it means developing, in my personality, greater initiative. And being more of a creator, making things happen rather than being reactive and reacting to situations. So for me that means maximum reach. So one of the things that I really enjoy the most about the coaching is that one-to-one connection. Really learning about the person, getting inside their personality, having them, and developing that trust. There's a really trusting relationship that comes over a period of time in the coaching relationship. And watching them self-discover. So that's one part that I definitely want to keep because it's, to be perfectly honest, just so intrinsically motivating for me to get into. And I do see that that one-to-one work is very beneficial. Because it's very concentrated in terms of the work that the client is doing. As long as they have that willingness to put the effort in. But in terms of wanting to reach more people, the next element for me is starting to get more into group trainings. And bringing people some fairly simple-to-apply techniques or processes to their own engagement that is going to help them do two things. One, manage the situations that they are in. And two, keep an awareness on themselves and their growth edges that we talked about, their personal development journey. So that's the second element for me is looking to do some more group-type work. Right, so seminars. You've got seminars coming up soon. Yeah, and so that's kind of what I was alluding to. So for the future, you've got some seminars coming up. You talked about being an entrepreneur. What does that word mean to you, man? Because I've always felt like I'm an entrepreneur. This was well before the phrase was even coined, man. What does it mean to you? And I'll tell you what it means to me. Because it seems like that is something you've had to take on. And it has been something. There's been a tug of war there for you, perhaps? Very much, yeah. Right. So it's interesting you say that because we've had conversations offline about different things in life. I have thought to myself very often I've actually had this thought in my head. There is that entrepreneurial mindset. There it is. And we're talking about something that's got nothing to do with business or nothing to do with making money or nothing to do with anything like that. Just the way you look at situations has more of an entrepreneurial mindset. So yeah, I'm not surprised to hear you say that you've been one since before the word was coined. To me, an entrepreneur is someone who generates their own vision of what they want their situation to be rather than letting it be generated by forces outside of themselves. So you go to a workplace, you work your nine to five job, you've got the boss and you've got the boss's boss and so on and so forth. You get told what your job is. You get told what the vision of your work is for. An entrepreneur is someone who creates that. Creates something new, novel. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that no one's ever done it before. But the idea is that you have created something that is novel for you. And you could be creating the same business that someone down the road is doing, but it's coming out of you rather than coming from outside of you. The second aspect is that initiative. Not waiting for permission and not waiting for the go ahead or the checking off of your actions by anybody else. It's doing it yourself. And that's part of the hardest part for me because I'm in an area that is not natural for me. At least this is the story I'm telling myself. But I'm not natural enough that I don't have an intuitive sense of how to navigate that. I can see other areas of my life where I definitely have a knack for it. I can just see it. I was born with it. I have an intuitive sense of my way around it. So that's why it's tough for me because I sense that I'm having to take information in and figure out what to do next. And there is a lot of questioning around is this what I do next? And so that initiative is the second element. This is a good question. This is not a question I've really answered or really had a lot of time to or put a lot of time into answering. So if I'm going to be it I should really make sure I do have a lot of have put a lot of time into understanding what I am being. Yeah, the reason I ask is because yeah, it's just an interesting question. So for me it's on like a default mode. It's kind of I'm always looking for the opportunities and it doesn't happen consciously. For me it's always unconscious. Yeah, I am in a way a bit of a self-promoter when it comes to things that I really love and enjoy. And so I always want to be able to share those things with other people whether it's a music festival because I'm like I'm ecstatic about this thing and I just want other people to enjoy it. Whether it's holding an event like a music event that we've got coming up in July, right? My idea is to tell everyone about it charge heaps of people about it and then bring my friends so that they can enjoy that for free. And I'm always looking for the opportunity and how to bring people with me. And yeah, money is associated with it. I like to start businesses because I believe that when you have businesses other people can thrive and there's opportunities for those that may not be able to see them. And that kind of comes naturally for me in terms of being an entrepreneur. I never really considered myself one but I do hear what you're saying in terms of like being able to go out there and kind of get it. Not waiting for things to happen to you but being cause in the matter of I suppose your life or your situation and really kind of going at that. And I just wanted to know what it meant for you when you hear that term and how that appears for you. You mentioned that there are some things that kind of hold you back. Yeah, okay. Is it the term entrepreneur or is it because that's an area you have not seen for yourself as well? Yeah, the term holds very little emotional charge for me. It's the sense in which I haven't seen myself as that. You talked about earlier on I see myself now as a boxer because I've done the training and I've stepped in the ring and I've had a fight and I see myself as a boxer. I never saw that before. Yeah. Same thing with being an entrepreneur. I've never seen myself as that. You know what I think of when I see an entrepreneur or rather when I hear the word entrepreneur what I think of is the sort of 0.1% who are massively financially successful who are very famous who have created an idea that has never been done before and it's world changing. I think really is that going to be me? Am I going to be an Elon Musk? Got it. That's the 0.1% of entrepreneurs but you can still be an entrepreneur and it really is what do you want your life to look like? You don't have to work 95 hours a week to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to be a billionaire to be an entrepreneur. It's a mindset and it's creating a life that is genuinely suiting your nature and what is going to advance your well-being. So for me I don't think well I could be wrong but I don't think entrepreneur is a result. What I think it is is that it's a way of viewing the world a way of viewing life and it's an opportunistic way of viewing things. I think that's a really key element that I missed out is an entrepreneur is someone who naturally looks for opportunities. Yes but also takes action. Yes. So like it's alright to have a plan to talk about it but it actually takes the action needed and don't get me wrong Brian there's heaps of things that I've said I'm going to do and kind of rethought it through and went oh well maybe I shouldn't have done that you know I jumped into the wrong things but that's kind of how I view being an entrepreneur and yeah look it is all about trying to create a life and this and that and the reason I bring this up is that when we talk about being a life coach which is something that you are which you're a life coach the thing that comes up to me is the word charlatan okay and so I hear that's what I hear oh charlatan you know there's just you know life coach what does this guy know and that has been my blind spot I've in the past I've heard people say oh I'm a life coach and I've kind of gone yeah okay but I actually see massive benefits in having a life coach man I really do I mean I've got I've got mentors I like to call them mentors in my personal life and in business and other areas of my life you know with my boxing coach definitely a mentor business mentor self development programs I've got mentors as well but yeah something that comes up for me is that yeah charlatans when it comes to life coaching however oh sorry however man what I would say is that in hearing your way of saying what you said about an entrepreneur mindset and that that's not naturally you know a way that you've imagined yourself then it seems to me that you really when you really break it down the real reason that you've really got into this is purely only because you really have a desire or it seems like you have a desire to really want to help people with what you've learnt it really you know originally hasn't been you know you can't function as a business it's hard to survive man when you're not making any money but at the core of what you're doing it sounds like what you're really just out to do is not just to make money but it's to really help people right it's really interesting it's hard to explain the way I relate to that because it's very true that everything I do in terms of my coaching the output is helping other people with their self knowledge and helping people to advance their own well-being through achieving their goals and so it very much is helping them with their well-being it really is an act of service so I know that that's what's happening and I know that that's the action I'm engaged in and when I see it when I see people have like little breakthroughs in their understanding and when I see them take action and achieve a good result it feels so good it feels just amazing to see that and it feels very humbling to be part of it so there's that but at the same time I don't feel a sense of like I don't feel a pressure or an urge to help people in the same way that I feel a pressure or an urge to say I'm in a boxing match to win the boxing match so so is it a desire to help people again I don't feel that that's what's motivating me in the sense that if I couldn't help people I'd feel deflated it's more like this is what I am this is what I do you know does the bird feel a desire to sing or is it just that's its nature it feels the light coming up and it just begins to sing because that's its nature and it's almost like a desire to help people is a constraint you are more free doing what is your nature without desire I'm not doing it because I have a desire for recognition or for making money that's like what you might call a selfish desire I'm not doing it because I have a desire to help you which is an unselfish desire which is definitely better and more productive to happiness than a selfish desire but it's still a constraint in a way what this feels like is that I'm just doing what is me and it's a much more freeing way to look at your activities rather than it being promoted by desire because when desire is frustrated then there's a lack of motivation or if you don't achieve a specific result based on desire there's a sense and so desire is it can be a sort of an unstable or an unreliable motivator to your actions a much more stable and intrinsically freeing feeling is to do something just because it's your nature right and so passing on this knowledge and asking people questions to get them to self-inquire and talking about higher values and use that beautiful word integrity that is that's just my nature I could do it forever you know I spent six years teaching classes and courses on self-development and you know very much ignoring the business side of that and part of what enabled that to be the case was the fact that I was just so free in the discussions around self-development and spiritual growth that was enough for me whereas I should have actually that was actually me ignoring my obligations and not paying enough attention to the business side of it so now I'm sort of redressing that imbalance ok cool yeah ok man that's a lot we've covered a lot there so coming back to New Zealand you know all these you kind of direction on where you want to take this you've got seminars coming up what you know what are some of the issues in NZ that are facing man we've got heaps right like when I look at like I should probably give some just share my own opinion on things I think like the whole world's gotten a lot more PC is that the word politically correct politically correct that's how it sounds PC man like you can't say anything anymore without being cancelled I feel like I can get away with some things but it's only because I don't have a boss but for others I don't have a boss yet but I feel you know and in some ways I do have a boss but I just feel like you can't say anything man you can't make a joke it gets taken out of context but the landscape of just life has changed so much since what you were over there for 17 years since 17 years ago you know you've got you know man what does it mean to be a woman like that's a question I didn't even know I would people would ask what is a woman sorry then you've got like just these groups of people online and life's just it's really changing man it's gone so weird as a life coach how do you navigate some of those you know 2000 year teachings in a landscape that's having people ask a question on what is a woman so for me man me when I hear that kind of stuff and I'm pretty old school in the way that I think sometimes but I am very open to hearing what other people have to say and I feel like I do it in a respectful way but also I just wonder I just I wonder if we're heading in the right direction man I wonder if we're heading in the right direction maybe I'm asking you a few too many questions but I wonder there's a few key questions I'll take the last one first ok I think as far as humanity goes I think we are headed in the right direction I think the way that we tend to do this is that we stumble and fall over and get back up and stumble and then go in the wrong direction for a little bit and then sort of correct ourselves and start going back in the correct direction I do think it's a matter of stumbling and falling and getting up and taking the occasional wrong turn I do think we're also at risk of a a large mistake I think that's part of the problem I think that we have a natural tendency to make mistakes the problem is that the mistakes that we're capable of making now are much bigger than they were in the past you know if someone makes the mistake of you know there's a lot of talk at the moment about the dangers of artificial general intelligence and what happens if we put the AGI in charge of the nuclear arsenal that's a big mistake to make and that's one that we may not come back from so I think that's the confounding issue is that our technological advancement hasn't or rather it has outpaced our the vehicle in which they have come that is culturally shaped so what's a good example of this ok so I'll give you a good example of this in terms of 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of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the language of the