TRANSCRIPT
G’Day. Video Included.
One of the most important things I advise parents and partners and business people is to get out of town and go back to nature, to get out of town, get away from the mobile phone, get away from the laptop, get out of town.
That doesn’t mean you have to camp in a rural tent and, and live with mosquitoes and flies. You can get out of town and go for a little walk for a day, in the mountains or the Hills, you can get out of town and go for a bike ride.
Each Sunday, my partner and I jump on our gravel bikes, throw them on the car, drive to a country air and go for a ride for a couple of hours in the rural area.
We do it because riding around the city, things are different. You probably know already from the work we’ve done, that I’ve run around three and a half thousand retreats in nature with people.
That’s been my business, my entire life, taking people to the Bush. What do I find? Well in the simplest possible way to say it. People are different, very, very different when they get out of town. And that’s because their perspective is different. It’s not just because they’re in nature, not just because they’re in the Bush.
It’s because they’re away from the things that trigger them into their memories, trigger them into their stress mode, trigger them into their judgements.
So getting out of town and gaining some perspective is really important for you as a leader and as a person involved in business management and a person involved in family management, but it’s even more important for your kids.
Now, let me just tell you a story. When I was a young delinquent, I was 12 or 13. I thought my father really didn’t know how bad I was as a delinquent, but I think he might’ve. So dad bought a block of land and a place in Melbourne, out of Melbourne called Monbulk. This property was overgrown with blackberries. It had been farmed. I think a couple of acres of it had been farmed. We had about 15 acres and my dad decided to clear the land.
Now there was no real purpose in clearing the land because the land wasn’t used for anything that needed clearing, but it was dad’s mission.
Every Sunday. I had no choice. I had to jump in the car with a Hacksaw. Sometimes we even used a chain, so, but mostly it was a handsaw that needed one person on each end.
And one of the things we built, very cleverly on my father’s part I must say, was a track around which we could drive quite safely.
And I, at the age of 12 learnt to drive a car and was driving solo around this Bush block in the car.
And so I developed sort of an incentive in a way to be there and to work hard. So we really did slave and chop the wood and felled trees and burnt blackberries and did all sorts of stuff after which I was allowed to have a drive of the car around our self-made track.
And so I think that saved my bacon to be truthful. I was heading down a very delinquent and very violent path.
I was involved in gangs and street fights. I was involved in theft from shops at night, late night robberies, never assault, but certainly break and enter at a major level.
And at 12 or 13, this stuff can become quite a pathway to of no return. And I honestly can say even though I played footy every Saturday and was in the running team and had a lot of masquerade going along as to my prowess in sport, I was mischievous and agitated and and my domestic environment, wasn’t all that supportive.
So getting this perspective, I believe changed my life and the best therapy on earth. So I’d encourage you. I know with carbon footprint and what have you, we are trying not to burn petrol and, and not necessarily travel five or six hours to a place we spend two hours and come back. So you may have to do a little research as to how to get to nature on a daily basis.
I commit myself to walking my beach, which is a couple of hundred meters away. I’m sure there’s a park or a garden or something nearby you where you can just actually go to walk and change your perspective.
This is Chris. Have a great day. Bye for now.
