But why did you choose that then for the title of your book?

Yeah, a lot of the work I do is in storytelling and helping people make sense of their story and realize that their life story is not their life, it's just their story and they're the authors of it and they get the ability to tap into imagination and go back to those moments or those memories when we told ourselves a story that I wasn't pretty enough or good enough or successful enough and realize we've got the power to reframe the stories that we tell ourselves.

In order to do that, we kind of need to tap into our imagination and So I wanted a book that had a fictional sense to it, a bit like Where the Crawdads Sing or Where the Wild Things Are.

But for me, we're all on our own hero's journey.

And often, especially in chapter two of our hero's journey, we often get stuck in our metaphorical dark forest.

And we need to overcome our fears and slay our dragons and work our way back into the light.

And for me, the greatest discovery of all time is how someone can change their entire life simply by changing their perspective.

And I know I asked this before, but it is the pushback to what you've just said, isn't it? Because how do you still take stock in that way and pat yourself on the back and see where you've come if that's surrounding you?

How did you help her manage it? the immense pressure and expectation we shouldn't use that word uh particularly in australia where she uh she carried the hope of a nation and were there any tools or or mantras that you you told her to use in order to stay grounded to play for herself through that noise

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, Asha's story is fascinating.

You know, she starts playing tennis when she's five years old.

And fast forward 10 years, like she wins junior Wimbledon, right, at the age of, you know, 15.

But she thought it was going to be the best day of her life.

But it became one of the worst days of her life because as soon as she won Junior Wimbledon, she got completely distracted by the demon of expectations, whether it's from media or social media organizations and so forth.

So it's so important, Ben.

And they said, okay, what are we gonna replace it with? What are we really trying to, what are we trying to instill in them by taking away the expectation, but still having something to aim for that's tangible?

Yeah, I've had many CEOs around the world who have taken the word expectations out of their performance reviews in terms of how they measure individual performance in terms of meets expectations, exceeds expectations.

And they've replaced the word with standards.

The standards, the way things are done around here, the goals, the dreams, the hopes, anything but expectations.

And it's not so much the word as is the way it's being defined today.

When you and I were growing up, Ian, expectations used to mean something you can control 100%.

I can want the sun to come up tomorrow, but there's no guarantees.

Yeah,

What was your thinking behind Where the Light Gets In?

Yeah, I've been curious for quite some time.

In 2019, I think it was, I took a gap year to try and work out whether these principles resonated globally.

And I traveled to like 27 countries.

And then the whole world took a gap year in 2020, right? And I've never seen the world so distracted as it is right now.

And- Yeah, I could clone myself a thousand times and still not keep up with the demand.

I've just never seen so much fear in the world right now.

extraordinary.

Why do so many of us find that such a difficult thing to, to uncouple?

Yeah.

Um, well, in recent times, yeah, the words have gone so external and extrinsic, money, fame, status, and recognition, rather than internal and intrinsic to get to know who we are, the human being that is, not the Human doing.

So we learn, unfortunately, that we believe if we do something and achieve something, we will be someone, you know, we'll be someone.

And, you know, you can blame media, you can blame social media, you can believe-- blame materialism or consumerism, but it actually starts in grade three.

In most countries around the world, in the education system, in grade three, that's when grading gets introduced, and that's when kids go from intrinsically playing with numbers and playing with shapes to extrinsic.

Suddenly there's grades, and suddenly my parents are interested in my grades, and suddenly I'm not in that class anymore, I'm in that class.

I, I suppose my last question for this is, um, what would you say is one practical tool that you would want a listener to walk away from listening to this to know, to do, to understand on how they can introduce more play into their lives?

the city group and like those are some pretty big expectations but to hear families abandoning the word expectations with their kids and things like that what what what's with the word expectations and why are you so passionate about it not being in our vocab

Yeah, I used to say that word, expectations, is killing the world in a performance sense, which it is.

But I would go further and say it's killing the world in a suicide sense.

Because we can't live up to the expectations of our school or our parents or our society.

And they think they have to in terms of, you know, what kind of life they're actually living.

And it's, you know, it's now the number one deathbed regret.

I wish I had the courage to be me and live a life true to me rather than the expectations of others.

But yeah, the work you did with him, take us a bit behind the scenes because not only did it launch a dynasty for Richmond fans that will live on forever, but you talk about the human side of it, a much deeper cause.

What's the process of that continual performance and unlocking that potential over and over again and not burning out? Unpack that for me a little bit in terms of how people can continue to get that level of performance.

Yeah, the first thing I do when I work with someone is just to make sense of their story.

And through making sense of their story, we can kind of identify the beliefs that are helpful, but also some that may be unhelpful and might be holding us back.

And we just, unfortunately, we're really hard on ourselves as a human race.

And so we don't set goals and dreams because we confuse them with expectations.

And we don't want to put that unnecessary pressure on ourselves.

But when you can separate goals from expectations and still have these beautiful big goals and dreams and tap into the play state, it's incredible that's what makes life exciting right this beautiful adventure into the unknown so so um if you can make sense of your story and and kind of separate your self-worth from whether you get there or not we say the human being and the human doing um you've then got this courage to dream and to dream big and to put these goals and dreams out there um but don't define success on whether you get there or not i think it's really really important um So we help them find two different types of success.

Does that become easier over time?

Very opposite [laughs]

... very different shows.

Um, and these private equity companies all had equity in, um, sporting franchises like the New York Knicks and LA Galaxy and so forth, and I was there kind of after dinner, um, speaker and, and, and catch up.

And yeah, the MC did this incredible introduction.

He did his homework and he said, "Three years before Ted Lasso came out in 2017," you know, you'd like this story, "I started working with Richmond and, uh, that had a female leader," uh, the same as Rebecca in Ted Lasso with Peggy, um, "that were berated as one of the worst performing teams in the competition as, as, as Ted Lasso's team was." Um, they had a journal- an in-house journalist that comes in and writes a book on the journey, right? Which was obviously Conrad.

Um, they use themes of authenticity, vulnerability, connection, storytelling, gratitude, and love to create this connection and competitive advantage as Ted Lasso did, right? And this all happened three years before Ted Lasso came out, and the name of the team was Richmond FC.

I was like, "This is ridiculous," right? [laughs] So he does this very, very funny introduction, and what they didn't realize was that morning I was...

Let's do it.

... because we had someone jump on the back of that straight away and say, replying to Annie's question, how do you support your child going through the above? Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Um, when I'm talking to teenagers about their careers, I, I, I tell them to focus on two things only.

What am I excited about? Like, what am I passionate about? And what am I good at, or what do I think I'm gonna be good at, right? And it's a, it's a life journey, right? The curiosity guide.

Well, what's the answer to those two questions, right? It's, you're not gonna figure that out at the age of 18.

I'm 58, and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up, right? So staying curious to what is it that I could be best in market at and really good at from a capability point of view, and what is it that I'm passionate about, right? And the third question is, okay, how do I make a dollar [laughs] from the answer to those two questions? Now, you don't have to make a dollar.

It could become a hobby, right? You- you're running, for instance.

Yeah.

Mm.

Right? You can't control other people's expectations of you, but you can control the expectations you put on yourself.

You know, you can't control whether your, your extrinsic motivations, but you can control your intrinsic ones.

Right? You can't control the past or the future, but you can control the present, right? And you can't control what happens to you in life a lot of the times, but you can control how you respond.

So in all situations of life, we do have this ability to identify, acknowledge, and then accept the things we can't control.

A lot of my clients write an acceptance list.

Yeah.

What if you're someone who is really struggling to get by or is in a category that is not valued by society?

Did you have it? Massively.

Yeah.

I had to lie about my age when I used to go to Japan because of the whole respect thing.

Yeah.

I remember having an anxiety attack at Nike as well with all the vice presidents in a meeting about the Sydney Olympics leading up to the Atlanta Olympics.

And someone asked me a question and I thought I was just there to listen, but they actually asked me my point of view and like, I don't have a point of view.

And I just froze.

have your own mentors?