Chad Taylor - It's You: relationships fail because we're unconscious of our own shit. And if we can come a little bit more conscious, we've got a little bit more choice in how we behave. Because the world's becoming more polarised.
Dame - Djaara Country: Hello and welcome to what is a rite of passage? I'm your host, Dame Smith, and our guest today is Chad Taylor. Chad is a psychotherapist, he's the author of the book It's You, Fuck It's Me, and the host of the podcast by the same name. We acknowledge the Djaara people and Chad, I'm gonna ask you,
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yuin country.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yuin country. Thank you. we acknowledge elders, knowledge holders, past, present and emerging. May their ceremonies and initiations be remembered, and may this feed and heal the country on which we live, work and play. Well welcome Chad.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Welcome. Who's in charge here? Me or you?
Dame - Djaara Country: Well, that's funny, hey? 'Cause I was so tempted to ask who the fuck you are. Who the fuck are you?
Chad Taylor - It's You: Who the fuck am I? It's funny, isn't it? I'm usually the one asking that question. I am I'm gonna go into the logistical stuff. I'm a father, I'm a partner, I'm a recovering alcoholic, I am a psychotherapist, but I'm a seeker. Really underneath all that, I'm a seeker, I'm a Yeah, I'm I suppose that's the best way to describe myself. I'm always seeking. I'm always seeking to find out on of this journey that we're on. I'm I really wanna and not that I wanna know it intellectually, I wanna experience it, I guess, and that's what I'm seeking. I'm seeking the experience more so than the knowledge.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, thank you. You really went from the doing to the being pretty quickly there.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, I I've just had a Alcoholics Anonymous study here with about seven people around my dinner table and it was all about we had a couple of new people there and we had a couple of people who've relapsed and we had a couple of maybe three of us that have got long term recovery. Something that I do once a week at home in my house. I think speaking of rites of passage, that's how Alcoholics Anonymous started. Not that this is a a poster podcast for Alcoholics Anonymous, but it started with one person w working with another, one realising that one alcoholic or one person helping another person could actually in fact help that person stay sober by the intention. So in a way, i it's what I try and pass on that twenty or thirty percent of my week or my life is done as unpaid giving back, which yeah, is to me part of the you you mentioned the doing in the being, part of the being. I think we've lost everything now has to have a price tag or has to make us rich or has to yeah, give us some sort of notoriety or there's always generally there's an angle where for me there's an angle that I want people to get well.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. It's interesting that you it's interesting that you're here in this conversation now for a few reasons. and one of them is because this question of what is a rite of passage has gone from, you know, how do we take teenage boys out into the bush and, you know, and not waste four days, make it meaningful and make them sort of contributing members of society. and Now it's suddenly it's suddenly well, what are the transitions that we have in life? Like what is what is an event that moves me from one state of being to another? Like I just released an episode with Steve Hill, who you know, and and his writer passage story was falling out of an aeroplane and the chute not opening. and so that's a completely unplanned event that had d obviously moved him from one state of being to another.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, it's it's interesting to think about that, these transitions that we we go through but we don't really name and we don't understand anymore. 'Cause there's a lot of transitions as you probably realise w as you would realise doing this work and being in this work that the biggest we we talk about disconnection and connection and transition, that the biggest transition I think we ever have, even though we don't remember it, is coming out of the womb, right? Is really that it's a first time we're actually on our own and that's As a baby, we cry and we do those things because it's the first experience of disconnection that we've ever had. And I think we spend the rest of our lives trying to make sense of that disconnection, in my opinion, that and those transitions. I've got I'm not gonna ramble them on now, because we just talked when we've just met each other online about losing ourselves in a conversation, but fuck, there's so many transitions that we go through, men and women. The women's ones I think are more you know, they're more Y you can observe them more, right? Where, you know, growing boobs and and then menstruating and things like that. I'm not a woman, so I didn't actually have to go through that. I've got two daughters. I'm heterosexual, so I've also got a partner who who, you know, those transitions. I think at both ends, they seem to have more profound ones that we observe physically, where men probably don't have apart from maybe our voice dropping and going a bit croaky as a teenager. I don't think we have as many transitions that are observable.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, that's an interesting way of looking at it because when, you know, one of the questions around rites of passage is are our boys are kind of moving through without this ceremony or without this acknowledgement of crossing and maybe men can kind of sneak around that threshold a little bit, whereas women just don't get the opportunity, nature just happens.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, and there's so many studies and there's there's so much out there about rites of passage and I did a Christian I'm not a Christian, but I did a Christian based one 'cause there's a there's a a I suppose you'd call him a I feel like he's a sort of like a an enlightened human being who's wrote a lot on Richard Raw. It's R O H R if anyone's interested and he's wrote a lot of books on on many things, but especially about these, you know, his the favorite book of mine is his book called falling upward, which talks a lot about the two halves of life, making sense of the two halves of life. And I went and did a a a men's Rite of Passage in Brisbane that was based on his work. And yeah, it was part of it gonna say what it was for me. Part of it was almost like it felt like some men sort of running around the bush and I don't know, kind of I know, some of it felt a bit corny for me if I'm a hundred percent truthful, but I sort of just accepted that very hard, right? We're in a I suppose where I'm going with that is we're very hard. We can't really it's not about running out into the bush and learning how to fucking light fires without matches and things like that. I think a lot of people get confused that it's not going back to we can't go backwards, I don't think. We can't go backwards. So how do we how how in two thousand and twenty six do we create rites of passage that isn't Little boys running around in the bush becoming men by fucking starting fires and collecting woods and wood and killing a deer and skinning it and eating it on the fucking fire, right? Or with our bare hands. Like it's not, you know, eighteen fucking eighty six anymore. It's two thousand and twenty six. So part of it was we you know, we stripped down to pretty much underwear and we'd do these ceremonies and they'd paint like fate blood on us and we'd go off into the bush for for half a day on our own with nothing nothing to sort of stimulate us, no books, no phones, no reading. And yeah, the process was great. But I think for me it yeah, I probably there's parts of it that I really embodied and there's parts of it I don't I don't think were for me.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, it's so good to name that stuff. I r it and what it brought up in me was, you know, feeling that I haven't been with for probably five years or so. when the ritual theatre kicks in at some of, you know, at some of these rites of passage and and initiation ceremonies, it's a bit like, fuck, here we go. And I remember really having to suspend my disbelief to get through some of that. And I I kinda see the benefit in it, in that it can help to sort of get the unconscious mind or even get the get the conscious mind to come along into this liminal state, where kind of change or a different perception is possible.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah. And that limit that liminal state word or or liminality gets a lot of work like a lot of talk in men's writer passage, right? There's that liminal space or liminality and and I think even under I think a lot of people don't even understand, even when they've done one, what it's about, right? It's not just about a boy becoming a man. It's about almost that separation from the mother, right? That we don't see anymore in the world. A lot of us live in grow up in single parent homes or where the the mother is the dominant Caregiver because father's working or father's absent, he's at the pub or he's fucking playing golf or he's doing whatever. So a lot of boys, especially now more than ever, and this has been pretty much forever, really. It was really if you look at the rites of passage where it started from, it was that disconnection from the mother. And it wasn't just becoming a man by running around in the bush and killing an animal. It was really about taking on a different role, almost being disconnected from the feminine. And almost taking on that masculine role and then having a different relationship with femininity. And I think we've lost like we look at the manosphere and we look at all this crazy shit in the world, right? And you know, I'll openly say twenty or thirty percent of that manosphere sort of appeals to me, right? And people can turn the podcast off now if they want to, especially if they but I'm not saying I want to out there and fucking believe in the shit that Andrew Tate carries on with, but I can see why. I work with a lot of teenage boys and I work with a lot of teenage girls. I have two I have a teenage girl and yeah, so I'm mindful I'm catching myself now not going on a rant. But I think understanding what it's all about, that I would say that 30% of men, and again, turn this off if you want, are having an incestuous, emotionally incestuous relationship with their mothers as a fucking grown adult man. Where And I see it day in, day out. And that's what the Rite of Passage is meant to it's meant to stop. It doesn't cut our relationship up with our mother. It changes it and transforms it. Because our mums want to keep us little boys. Not because then they're bad or they're evil. Because they're unconscious and it gives them a fucking purpose. My mum wants to treat me like I'm thirteen, right? It gives her a purpose in life. Don't speed. Make sure you don't use the phone. There's lots of police on the road. Text me when you get home. It's like I'm I'm doing that at a forty forty well, I'm now I'm forty seven, but when I my fiancee Sophie, we met when I was around forty two and I sort of had to say to her, Hey, look, when we go to mum's, like, she's gonna carry on like this and please don't think that I have this incestuous sort of relationship with her. But I've tried yelling at her, I've tried having the conversation with her, I've tried everything under the sun, but because she hasn't gone through any initiation about, hey, your son's A man now, right? She still almost as much as we want to sever that connection and I love my mum and I I have a relationship with her. She comes around for dinner every Monday night and you know there don't don't think for anyone I'm saying I've cut my mother off. But so for me it's not a good look when I'm leaving her house and she's standing on the balcony and I've got my own two daughters in the car, I've got my new partner in the car, and she's out there don't don't do this and don't do that and please don't do this and it's almost it's But fuck, there's this is just a worldwide epidemic of this shit.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. And I got really deep in that conversation with Steve a few days ago around the impact of the men or the uncles not coming and getting the boys at a at a certain point in time. Yeah. Yeah, because there's something biologically impossible for for a mother to to do with a son.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah.
Dame - Djaara Country: To to hand him over or to to get him across that threshold. It's just like fuck and and it's not to say that Women don't try and haven't done amazing work on it, but yeah. I think to have a community well, an intact community and a community of men that can come and get the boys, and acknowledge that that transition. I think there's something really, really relevant and we don't have to kill a deer and it's not the eighteen thirties and we don't have to dance around and paint our faces and some of it is redundant and I I guess that's what I'm seeking. I'm just trying to get r just fucking let go of whatever it is that I've no fuck all of anyway. and just go, well, what do we need now? Like what what is healthy masculinity? look like now? And how do men need to show up in the world and how are they not and Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Big question. What is healthy masculinity? And I think depending on where we sit in the world would be completely different. And that's
Dame - Djaara Country: Okay.
Chad Taylor - It's You: that's another thing. Like our culture, our religion, if we've got one, all there's so many distinctions on what is healthy masculinity. And we live in a world of polarity, right? Where it's this or that, and that's another, you know, Richard Raw really talks about dualistic thinking, this term dualistic thinking that we're almost trapped in a world of dualistic thinking now, which means it's this or that thinking where it's not really both end thinking. And I think again, what healthy masculinity is to me might be different to what it is to you, might be different to what it is to your wife or my partner Sophie or my daughters. And, you know, I think it's it's again, it's it's getting your understanding. There's a really Jonathan Wineland did a did a good talk about the s the six pillars of sexual intimacy. years ago a YouTube clip and I've got it saved to my phone because, you know, something in there that he said, he talked about, you know, the masculine energy almost being this safe container. That it's about creating this safe container and then the feminine energy being able to flow inside of that, right? And not saying again that men, for anyone listening to this, it's not that men are always in their masculine, right? And men create the container. But I think what I see more is now the women are creating the container and the men are the ones having a fucking emotion. inside of there. Like punching a wall in anger isn't actually masculine. It's feminine. Like it's a feminine energy. When you can't control your emotions, that's more of a feminine energy. The the strong, stoic, collected leadership energy, that's masculinity. Control and losing your shit couldn't be more unmasculine in a lot of terms than you can't get much more unmasculine than that.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, and that's interesting because I know for myself I've come up against that. If I don't do some sort of violence in this situation to defend myself or my family, I'm not being a man. And I don't do that. But when I r play through the reel of the impacts of what that might look like, it's like fuck, that's not masculine and it's not together and it probably not gonna help fucking anyone and it's gonna create a whole shit storm for me and everyone around.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, and I suppose that's something we battle with. Like I had a fucking neighbour from hell. I I built a house about five year four or five years ago and I had this fucking ca psychotic male neighbor from hell that started from the minute I bought the I bought this block of land that did have all these nice trees on it and had backed onto his block and anyway I had to chop a lot of them down and change the block around and he didn't like that, right? So he he really like it was really psychotic and I was just at the end of my degree, well just at the end of doing something that I was doing as well, right? And I had to I had to handle things differently. Like I still had a criminal history from when I didn't handle things well when I was a plumber, where I went around chasing money up and it turned into an a push altercation, which gave me, you know, charges that didn't really reflect what happened, but I was in my early thirties then, I didn't have the know I wasn't who I who I am now. Cut a long story short, I had three years of this fucking clown, like just kill animals and throw them over the fence and you know shot my windows out with the BB gun during the middle of the build and I had all dings along the colorbond side of my house and and the you know, just fucking just, you know, put rocks down my drains and just crazy shit, right? And I really the the universe really had to I really had to work strong on not jumping the fence and I had so many mates saying, you I'll just go around and fix him up and and s part of me really and there was this battle and I took it to therapy every week. I'd take it to my own personal therapy about I feel like this fucking I feel like I'm not a man with this cunt next door carrying on like this, right? I I feel like I'm almost letting him get away with it and I'm being a pussy and like it was a fucking battle. And even as I say that I can feel the energy roaring in me, right? And it was a real battle of You know, what what was the masculine thing to do in there? And and really it was a test from the universe. And as it turned out, I moved in there and it kept going. And I had two daughters and my partner living there. And the final straw, not that I'm boring everyone with my life story, but I bought all this bamboo, right? This bamboo that would grow three meters high and I planted it along the fence line. And I had three blocks along the edge anyway, and he just poisoned the fuck out of it, poisoned all the water tank as he did it over the fence and I was like, I'm out, you know? And and I sold, right? And again I felt like felt like I'd sort of been defeated, right? I've at the time I felt like like you know, but I couldn't get any peace. My my daughters were scared. We were walking the dogs a completely different longer way so we didn't have to go past his house because he'd come out and yell at me and my partner and but he'd come out with a camera and like just trying to wait and right. So it was a tough time. And in the end, where I'm going with this is it was the universe and I sold that house right at the peak of the boom. I got fucking way more money than what it was worth at that time. And then I rented for two years and now I bought this fucking amazing little house, half the size, in a better spot. We're so happy. so yeah, it was a big test, right? Because you know, I it it was like, do I want to get revenge on this guy or do I want to keep doing counselling and and working with people because I can't do both here. So yeah, talking about masculinity and I look back and, you know, the guy that bought the house off me was pretty tough, strong dude, and I don't think he put up with this guy's shit. And he ended up moving out. Cause like he's all paranoid from me and they end up moving out of there, right? So it was almost like, and I don't want to bore too much with this story, but it was one of those people that first it was a neighbor on the other side of him, then it was a lady across the road that he always needed a target. I talk a lot about projection in my book, right? A lot of people we need a target to project onto, right? Whether it's literally when we think of the word projection, the easiest way I describe it is it's like project projector screen We need a screen, right? Someone's the overhead projector and we need a screen to put it on and we literally try and put what's in the in the projector onto somebody else. And I was just in that moment, that was just me for him. He was unwell and I was the target. Did it make me any more masculine? I still don't know. I still think about it. When I say that I'll go away tonight and I'll probably think about it and think, should have I fucking you know, should have I physically as asserted my dominance back towards him or was the smartest thing to do what I did? It's a hard one, right?
Dame - Djaara Country: What's the answer?
Chad Taylor - It's You: The answer is looking at the whole picture, I think I made the right decision. But there's still that part of me that's like you're fucking weak. Right? You know, you should have done it. And I know I could have done it. I wasn't I'm not physically scared of him at all. But there was no
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: worry, there was no fear there of that. The fear was I don't want to keep working with people. I was working at the school at the time. That was the fear. So I had to use my consciousness or my awareness against my running around in the bush like a wild animal killing deers. I had to had to battle right there.
Dame - Djaara Country: Fucking amazing. Yeah, it's tough. That's a fucking great story.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, and and now like I've got y I I work in jails, I work with DCJ, like Department of Community Justice, employ me to work with people. I work with heaps of underprivileged youth in in areas. I'm actually going on the panel on a talk around the manosphere with two doctors and then Chad Taylor, like well like Australia wide. None of that would have been happening. If I had of retaliated in that moment, none of this would have been happening. I know that for a fact. It was a test from the universe that it was like You know, if he had a touched my actual partner and my kids, might have been a different story, or hurt my dog or anything like that. Like so it like I think maybe it might have been a different story. But even then, I I I watch I hear stories of people that have forgiven somebody who's killed their their child or something, and there's you know, there's a there's a level of I want to embody a level of that to think that Somebody could do that. Like somebody could actually see that, you know, that forgive me for they know not what they're doing type mentality. You know, there was deep compassion
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: for this guy. I know it sounds crazy, but right through it, I had a mentor who was like, do a meditation on this. Like, what do you think's going on for him? And, you know, I'd end up writing things down after the meditation. He must be so unwell, must be so sad to be living in his skin. Like, I've got a real compassion for him. So it's a Yeah, it was the right thing to maybe he's like that because of what happened to him when he was younger and he never went through a rites of passage. Something was going on.
Dame - Djaara Country: You know, there's parts of that that might it might sound like a rambling story about a shit neighbour, but it just it feeds right into I earlier I had an intention around and I don't think I'd even finished a book by this stage. But the intention was to have a chat about the transition from the transition into awareness, the an initiation into awareness. and it's kind of exactly what that story is. It's a choice.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Consciousness brings choice, right? That's what I really honed in on with like the more conscious we are, the more we have a choice. And that can be in any area. Like a guy turned up today and I'm I'm not gonna say his name and I'm sure he wouldn't mind me saying this, but he's a drummer and he's trying to get sober, right? And he went to a gig on the weekend and he's been trying to get sober for a long time and he had two non alcoholic beers. And I sorta had to say to him that Unfortunately, non alcoholic beer is still a a point five point zero sorry, point five a percent of alcohol. So they're actually called non-alcoholic, but they're not non-alcoholic. And they can lead to an episode of a bender, right? And he wa I could see him almost want to argue with me about it purely because he was fearful that he might have relapsed. And I was sort of saying, Hey, look, it's not a comp this isn't a competition. A lot of people can get carried away like in anything. You know, you're not sober if you use antidepressants, you're not you're not sober in NA if you use Suboxone or you use a you're on methadone and as far as I'm concerned, like everybody's journey is their journey. And my qu my thing to him was just just be a bit careful because they could lead to a relapse if if you believe in that model. So where I'm going with that is I could see afterwards it was a bit rattled and I said, look, I don't think in but where I'm saying with this as well is I think some AA sponsors or mentors would want the person to count their days again starting from there, from that, seeing it as a relapse, right? But my whole philosophy is, and thankfully this comes from a man in in AA, was about it's it's about the intention. And for him it was almost what you said then of the transition that he didn't know and now he knows. So now if he drinks maybe he might need to re reset his his days. That's completely up to him and his higher power and really it's not up to me. But where I'm going with that is at least consciousness and awareness brings choice, right? If we don't we don't know what we don't know. Like for me, I'll drink a lemon, lime, and bitters when I go out for dinner with my partner, even though I'm in recovery, and yes, there's a tiny bit of bitters in the alcohol. Sorry, a tiny bit of alcohol in the bitters. but for me, or I you know, in the early days, there's no way I would have done that. I'm 25 years clean and sober now. Or if I go somewhere and there's a Christmas pudding, right, and it smells a bit like alcohol. I'll be truthful, I will eat it because now I know that's not gonna set up the allergy in me. So I guess I'm rambling. But consciousness brings choice in any single thing. We can't solve something we're not aware of.
Dame - Djaara Country: Mm. I'm gonna really throw myself off the deep end here. and and 'cause I'm looking at your fucking hat, right? And suddenly the whole transition is just the whole rite of passage or the whole hero's journey is just in those three lines. It's you. fuck. It's me. and You know, I've been on sort of in the men's work stuff. I'm you know, I'm a builder and so I've sort of raised around this whole whole thing. and then kinda got really interested in men's work and then, you know, a lot of other into sort of transpersonal work. Felt like I was fairly deep into it. And then you know, not long ago I was just like the classic, like the danger the danger of a person that knows a little bit. I'd been introduced to Virginia Satir and these five like stress responses that she's got. It's like computer distractor, blamer, placator, leveler. And so I get this bit of information I fucking just hurl it at my wife. Like it's just like, yeah, you're a fucking blamer and I'm a placater and you blame me and I try and do this thing. And that's the bit when I said that there was parts of your book that was fucking really confronting, I just went, my God my god. I'm sitting in this fucking whole victim role while I get to tell you that you're fucking blaming. like eating from both ends of the banana or something and just fucking like my god I'm blaming I am blaming the shit out of you here and when I could see that that fuck She felt safer. She didn't say that. And you know, this is not a conversation we've really had, apart from the first, you know, me saying this is what you are. But I could tell by how our relationship's going. And since then, you know, we're in couple therapy. we've got kind of a A way of communicating now that we didn't have She feels safer
Chad Taylor - It's You: Everyone should be in fucking couples therapy and everyone should be in therapy, right? It goes back to the rites of passage. You know, you said there you're eating eating from both ends of the banana and then you find out it's a fucking mango. Right? That's kind of what happens. That's what it's like. It's almost like,
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, right? Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: wow, like when you when you when you really drop into that that like this book, it's pretty confronting for people, right? And I'll listen to it in the car. People not think I'm a fucking lunatic when I pull up at the lights. And I'm listening to my own audiobook and it's my own voice, but I need to take my own medicine continuously, right? So what you just said then, it's an epiphany when you realise like, fuck. I'm seeing the world through like the the narcissism weapon that is all around the world now. You know, three my joke is three percent of the world are narcissistic and ninety seven percent of people think they've fucking married one. Right? It's like someone's maths is wrong. People don't like that when you say that because it it's sort of thrown in your face that which one are you? You know, are you the three
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: percent or you're the 97%? Or either you're really bad luck, you're having real bad luck, or you're not fucking seeing the truth. And I think a bit like you, right? It can be a bit confronting and and IA makes you dig d so deep. A lot of this stuff in my book, like we really have an inventory process. The 12 steps really has an inventory process that makes you it's so simple. But it actually so powerful where it's a five column process that makes you look at your part in things. Like say even, you know, let's just say the neighbor. Let's say I put put my neighbor down there from before. I'd write his name and then I'd write what happened. He bullied me. He did this, he did that, right? Victim, victim, victim. But at the time I wasn't victim. I was like, I was fucking in pain. And then the next column is really the main column, one of the main columns is what instinct does it what instinct is it affecting here? Is it my sexual instinct? Is it my social instinct? Is it my security instinct? Right? Well it didn't I wasn't really having a sexual well, I wasn't having a sexual relationship with him, but it probably did affect that when I was pissed off or c upset and carrying on and I wasn't really available to my partner. But the main two right there were the social. Well, what do people think of me if I don't if I don't stand up to him, right? All these sorts of things. There's a big instinct there and then security. Right? Security really it is financial security or actual physical security, I was our security was as a family unit, our security was threatened, right? So the social and the security were really affected. And then the next column goes into, you know, when have I behaved this way before, right? In other words, when have I been a prick? Like I'll be blunt. I was a cunt of a neighbor in my 20s. I had a seven second drag car. If you know anything about cars, it was a blown hemi was a supercharged outlaw car. I lived on a house block with houses around me. I'd rebuild the motor in the garage, tin shed, no insulation, no acoustics. And I'd start if if it was finished at three o'clock in the morning and I was going on a race the next day, I'd start this fucking thing up. At three o'clock in the morning, dogs would be barking, babies would be crying. Obviously I wasn't intentionally doing what he was doing, but I was the same, I was a a cunt of a neighbor, right? There'd be complaints all over Facebook, the police would come round regularly and and I was just like I was and then I did some things to a neighbor that I didn't I wasn't proud of. right, which again vandalized his house if I'm truthful in my twenties and thought I was justified to do it because of his behavior towards me. So I've lost myself here, but I'm coming back. So it really gets you to see, and then the last column is what can I do differently? So the last column for me was move move away, have compassion. So that process just on one thing, imagine if we did that on our relationships. And me and my partner are both in recovery. So we'd call it, you know, I'm not going to take your inventory, I'm going to do mine. You know, we'd say it a lot, right? I'm not going to take your inventory. And we don't turn around and weaponize it and say, but you should fucking do one. Right. Because then again, that's that's almost coming in the back door. We we have a little bit of awareness and we use it as a weapon, right? Which the world's full of. We intellectualize everything. I've learned about nonviolent communication or I've learned about a a certain way of communicating or like you said, I I've learned that my love language is acts of service and you're not giving me acts of any acts of service. So I'm gonna weaponize that as to why I'm justified not to give you a hug because that's not my primary love language, right? Or we can weaponize anything. So yeah, where I'm going with that is I have a real and AA teaches us that even if we're even as cliche as it is, even if you're ninety percent in the wrong, right? And I'm 10% in the wrong, rather than focus on your 90, Because that's what the egocentricity or that part of us wants to do. I focus on my 10. And doing the inventory process, you can't not but see your part in it because it's written down. This all would have been, they would have all had every spiritual teaching and religious teaching had this that we've lost the last two, three hundred years when we've moved away from it. And then we make amends. I know that then we make amends, right? So then when we go we say, Fuck, you know, I'm really sorry that I couldn't see that I was blaming you for being blaming or whatever it is in your relationship. And you work with a mentor or a sponsor, so it is almost a rights of passage away. We try and have men for men and women for women in AA. It's an unwritten rule for that reason, so that you know, if I'm on here tonight with you, that's okay. But if I was sponsoring a twenty-one year old woman in Alcoholics Anonymous, And she was good looking and I'm just like to my partner Sophie, anyway, me and fucking Danielle are going out to we're gonna go to thai tonight and we're gonna do some step work. That doesn't that's not okay with me. That's disrespectful to my partner. So we have a real, a real sort of unwritten rule of men for women men and women for women, which I like. So many, so many parameters of probably what you do in here that of of your in your work and your life that you know, yeah, plays out.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Yeah, so one c what comes up for me is ethics. Yeah, I've been getting into yeah, I've been doing a therapeutic coaching course just 'cause it's an extension of stuff that I've been really interested in and when we got to the bit about ethics, it took a little bit of getting and then you know, 'cause I was looking for the these are the commandments, these are the rules and And what it sort of showed me was that, you know, ethics are a bit subjective. My ethics, my ethical boundary might not sit at the same place that yours does. there's a few sort of kind of obvious ones maybe, but it really made me check in of just like, is this right? Is this relationship right? Or for me to coach this person if I have this relationship somewhere else. Is that okay or am I just kinda convincing myself that it's okay because it's kind of convenient or there's a payoff in something?
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, I love
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: that. And I I break every like if we look at the rules, I break every rule in the book, right? But if they're done with the right intent, and again, I've got to make sure that I check in with a sponsor or a mentor or someone further my own therapist, right? I've got to I and I've got to be fully truthful to them. Like I've got a young client of mine, Hugh, if anyone prays or believes in an universe, he's really unwell with cancer and his family are really struggling because They're just sort of they're just I wouldn't say they're battlers, but you know, they're not they're not rich, right? And one parent already had to stop for the last twelve months of work to take him to chemo and he wasn't getting any better. So they've flown him to America and it doesn't look like that's working. I gave I gave him an envelope with five hundred bucks in it when he left to have some fun while he's in America because his parents were only just meeting ends meet to get there. They didn't want to do a GoFundMe because they're sort of They're kind of like, Well, we don't want it's our it's our lot to So what I'm saying is imagine if if someone said, that guy gave five hundred dollars to a fourteen year old boy in an envelope, like what's is he grooming him? Like what's he you know? So again, everything comes back to intent. His mum knew that I did it, it was all above board, it was a surprise for him. you know, I might give a client a hug if they if they try and hug me, I might give him a hug, right? But I again like that that is against the rule. I've worked in places with youth where if they go to give you a hug, you've almost got to move sidestep them a bit and give a high five, right? Well
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: these kids have fucking been in foster care and been abandoned and and you're this fat like as soon as we're older than right? We're almost a father figure, whether it's a boy or a girl. If they come in to give us a hug and we almost like high fi step out of the way and high five Fuck go to give your wife a hug and s let let her sidestep you and give you a high five and see how that goes down, right? So I know again I'm I'm carrying on a bit here, but I'm passionate about this shit. There is no it all comes back to intention and my whole thing of if you had a camera on you and it was broadcast to the world, twenty four seven, like the Truman show, I use this a lot with my clients and myself. Would you be okay with that being shown to the whole world? And if it wouldn't, maybe adjust your behaviour. And I don't mean the nose picking or the straining on the fucking toilet every now and again or whatever it is. I mean the the intent like is this per I get it a lot with domestic violence where when I work with men that have been perpetrators there's always this but can I just tell you what you did? And I'm like fucking no you can't and they'll keep going right can I just tell ya? Can I just tell you right? And then and then they just I'm sure you know what I mean. And then it's like no you can't. And in the end I'll s I'll pull out the so we're fucking sitting around here, mate. There's a big screen TV, your mum, your sister, your brother, your wife's family, your kids and everyone's here. And you're still telling me why you're watching what happened. Yeah, but can you see what she did to me? Shuts them up pretty quick. They're like, Yeah, I see what you mean. So again, ethics. Very, very trans very transpersonal or very what what's right in one culture.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Might not be riding another
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: So how you going with the course? Like you're enjoying it, you're getting a lot out of it.
Dame - Djaara Country: Loving it. Really fucking loving it. Yeah, like I think when when I Yeah, so doing men's work, men's groups, rites of passage, teenager work, getting a l the kind of a certain language together which f felt weird to start with. And then, you know, sit with men, do my work, calling it men's work. And then suddenly women started showing up and you run a co gender group and suddenly it's like fuck, I can do my own work with women in the room. This is a this is pretty weird. Like w what's men's work then suddenly it gets a bit kind of redundant or something. And then yeah. So as that just became the work, yeah, I got involved with Steve and this and the therapeutic coaching course with primal intelligence and just started to build on the language and the skills and there's some aspects that I've been interested in. N L P I've been interested in for a while and I really love that. And then through that too, I've started seeing a internal family systems therapist. my wife and I are getting couples therapy. yeah, so in that well there's another one that I've really got to fucking dob myself in for, right? It's and this is still really recent. Kind of that Almost blatantly accusing my wife that, you know, the reason for The reason for our issues is her not facing her trauma, right? And then she turned around and said, Well, you've got trauma too And I went, Maybe, maybe I got a little bit, but fuck it's nothing compared to yours. And I don't think my trauma's the fucking problem. And then I went and started getting therapy and just went fuck. It might it might you know, whatever fucking comparison meter that I've got, mine might be small and hers might be big, but the me not dealing with mine's having this massive fucking impact on our relationship and all
Chad Taylor - It's You: It's like the squid, right? I I make a joke about the squid ink. I don't know if anybody knows out there, but the squid, when it's under threat, it the reason it has the ink inside of it is it shoots out the ink to escape, right? Well, as humans, I think our squid ink is fucking projection of play. Where
Dame - Djaara Country: Ha ha.
Chad Taylor - It's You: it's like, yeah, but I might have a even when you do that on the screen, right? I might have a little bit of trauma, but fucking your trauma's the thing that's ruining the relationship. And I see that It's very hard. Like I can work with people for years and I still can't penetrate the egocentricity, right? It's almost like it's not that I'm doing anything wrong. It's just that it's so fucking strong. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's been like intense sexual abuse or physical abuse or neglect. And I think I write in my book about well, I know I write in my book about little t trauma and big T trauma. That we all We all have trauma, right? And big T trauma to me is those those big things sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, neglect, all these sorts of things are a big T trauma. Death of a parent. But then when we start looking at little T trauma, little T trauma looks like, you know, Dame is at home, he draws a picture for his father, he thinks it's really good, he's three years old, dad comes through the door, he goes to give him the picture. And his dad ain't interested because He's got something else that he needs to do that he can justify why it needs to be done right now instead of acknowledging the picture. As we say that, we all feel shit because we all do that, right? That's little T trauma and it happens fucking day in, day out. Every time my partner wants to connect with me over something and I'm distracted somewhere else and I'm half listening and that's a that's a trauma, right? Any any separation. Is a trauma in a way. It's a separation from the connection whether with ourself or with another person. So it's great that you're seeing this stuff because you could go on forever learning and weaponizing all this stuff. You could be the smartest person in the room. So I I I I know I'm not this I never I know I'm not the smartest person in the room. And I don't try to be. I know that. But what I am is I'm fucking passionate and I'm and that that makes up for the intelligence, right? Where And and I don't so I don't need sometimes I sit in a case conference with a kid I'm supporting and all these people are using all these big lingos, like, you know, probably even you know, I don't know, I can't even think so I can't even think of one, I don't know, like talking about the assessment, I don't know, like a fucking whatever it is. See I can't even think of it. I don't know it. I'm clinical psychotherapist, I don't know it, and I'm sitting here way out of my depth. And when I open my mouth, it's like this. And they're probably all looking around going, Fuck, is this blank even qualified? But the problem the not the problem, the thing is I am the most consistent person in this kid's life. I've been supporting him since he was eight. He's just turned twelve. For the first three months, six months, he wouldn't even speak to me, he'd hide under a blanket at the school. I'd go in every week into the into this classroom. He I couldn't even see him outside of the school. Now I pick him up every Thursday morning before school. We go and have an hour together and I'd drop him to school. And in the school holidays He wants to get up so he doesn't miss out seeing me. Every other worker he's had over that four years has left because it's been an organization, right? It's been, you know, like, yeah, sorry, fucking Damien's moved on to fucking I don't know, wellways now. He doesn't work for fuck flourish anymore. Or, you know, the occupational therapist has fucking gone off. She's gone
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: on maternity leave and she isn't coming back. So I just watch. These fucking people coming in and out to this kid's life, right? And I'm the as all I do is I show up and I really you know, again, I buy him I bought him a a birthday present, right? Probably giving a kid a JBL speaker that's eleven. Probably isn't ethical, right? Really. But I gave it to him in front of his mum. And she sort of said, I thought you weren't meant to do this, but I'm really appreciative that you did, you know, and I said, I wouldn't have done it, I wouldn't have done it sneakily. I would have always done it in front of you. So yeah, it's it's all about integrity, right? Is a word that we don't, you know. If you ask a I don't know if you do that in your rites of passage, but when you ask a teenager who their role model is, especially a man, they can't fucking name one really. They can't name one. And it's never their father. Never. Never is it their father, you know, and you can hear my voice raised there. My father wasn't my my role model either. I love him. I've accepted him, but he's definitely still not my role model. He's not someone I aspire to be. And I want I don't have sons, but I want my daughters to hopefully within reason want to role model, you know, what they see as a man, as their father, and I work towards that. I think we've lost that, right? We've fucking lost that.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Remember the last teenager event we did in Central Victoria, there was a young fella, he came with his dad. Took a little while to get him there because his mum was kind of probably she thought maybe there was something a bit sort of spiritual that might conflict with her beliefs. so I was having a chat with him at one point and just talking about his relationship with his dad and he's talking about relationship with his stepdad and the way he communicated his relationship with both of was sort of like, yeah, yeah they're both okay. It's just fuck, you know, when you sort of look at that, you know, who are the men that is who are the men that you're looking at that you wanna aspire to be like or you wanna take a part of and sort of to build yourself into. It's like he was just rummaging through the bottom of the fucking Lego bits when it came to his dad and his stepdad. And it's like, fuck, that's really sad. But that's also a massive part of it. Like you line twenty blokes up in front of these, you know, six or ten or twenty Boys or teenagers and you know, that guy's cooking sausages and that guy's digging a hole and this guy's fucking facilitating and that guy's fucking off in the dark up a tree. It's just such a fucking scape, different scape of parts and attributes and traits and stuff that then they can go, I'll have a bit of that, like fucking little bit. I like how he does that. Well none of none of the rest of it. That's all fucking weird, but I like that bit. I like a bit of that bit. Yeah, it's a huge part of it.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Who would you say your obviously you probably haven't got one, but who if I asked you if there was a million dollars on the line and I said, Who are your three or five main male role models in the world, who who who would you name?
Dame - Djaara Country: man, it's interesting. there's just been something really captivating about Gandhi my whole life. you know, been a martial artist for twenty five years and Yeah, like kinda laughing at myself as I build up this physical skill to be able to defend myself that kinda never comes into use. And then I look at that guy and he's fucking just skin and bones and he's in his jocks and he he took on the f the fucking British Empire without without this sense of knowing that he had all the power to do it. He just fucking stepped in with himself, he stepped in with his being, he stepped in with his belief. and you could blow that guy over. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Would you say he's masculine?
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, I'd call him a warrior. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Isn't it? That we've ended
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: up at this point in the conversation to say that someone we could blow over whose skin and bone is a warrior.
Dame - Djaara Country: It's been a real journey for me. I think along along with that, you know, whatever that part of me that that took on martial arts, wanting to kind of project this external power part of me's because kinda I'm forty nine yesterday or day before. part of me's just clued into the fact that that's fucking exhausting. All of that external projection's really fucking exhausting.
Chad Taylor - It's You: What would your wife say? What if we asked your wife what what attracted what what attracted her to you or what still attracts her to you, what qual what would she say do you think?
Dame - Djaara Country: It's interesting because I think it was a lot of that external projection. But then once we're in relationship and I was still doing external projection on other women and other people and other men and it was just fucking not okay. you know, the last
Chad Taylor - It's You: Do you think she'd say that? Do you think she'd say that that was what she was attracted to? Or do you think we just think that?
Dame - Djaara Country: I don't know. I'm gonna go and ask her when this call.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Cool. Bring her on. It's interesting, isn't it? Because we again we have all these we have all these sort of preconceived ideas about it's funny that we could be with someone for five, ten years or however long and not really know. Like there's so many things about each other that we don't know and we just assume like the world's full of fucking ash assumptions, right? I assume that you're rich or I assume that you're a certain type of person because you're a builder and now you want to become a coach or you want to become a a therapy. Well, my journey was the same. I was a plumber. I got sober in AA. I finished my plumbing trade. By twenty-three I was a boss because I was driven. You know, my my a addict just transferred onto car racing, building houses. I flipped I think I flipped 12 houses in I'm 47 and I flipped 12 houses between twenty two and about well, about a year thirteen months ago when I built this, right? So I'm a goer. Like that's the addict in me can really be the
Dame - Djaara Country: Mm. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: double edged sort of addiction is. Right. So yeah, it's funny just to see those things, right? That what what we assume is completely fucking different in each person. Yeah, there's you go. There's a converse and that's what podcasts are about, in my opinion. They're about stimulating a conversation. And that's what I do in my in my group that you just mentioned. And I'm not gonna give myself a plug, but I'm I've got a co-ed group that is it's virtually the principles of AA into because it it's so powerful, into people that don't need to go to AA that may not be alcoholics, right? That we're all addicted to something, though. We live in an addicted culture, right? And So it'll it'll open with like a reading or a teaching or and I don't mean I'm teaching, I'm just putting together something in my own words that is pretty you know, I did I bought the four noble truths of Buddhism two weeks ago and then last week I bought something from Anthony DeMello, who I don't know if you've ever read his book or heard r listened to his book Awareness, and then this week I bought you know, about a three minute read on attachment styles and gave the understanding of where attachment styles come from and And then there's twenty five of us at the moment in in a room, it's growing quickly where we can share and link that back to our relationships or previous relationships or how we show up in the world. We've lost a lot of this kind of this ritualistic and we a lot of I think there's a lot of men's movements and women's circles, but I don't see that many of co ed, right? We so what I'm hoping to do with this is and there's a lot of couples turning up to stimulate the conversation. You know, and it's corny things like love languages and things that seem corny, but super important as as a not as a a be all and end all tool, but super important as a tool. Like my my bottom two love languages out of the five love languages are my partner's top two. So we've got a problem, right? And you don't choose them. They either come from what your family did really well or what they did fucking hopeless, really, is the the way I sort of see it. So I
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: grew up in a home where it was Pretty emotionally violent and physically violent at times and very on edge. And words were thrown around pretty nastily, right? By my father predominantly. And then I meet a partner and she comes from a cre completely different home. And her top two love languages are physical touch and words of affirmation. And for me, like but I can't just turn around and say, Well, mine aren't those two and bad luck. I'm gonna love you. By buying gifts, right? I've got to say, okay, well, again, projection blame. I've got to remember that I it doesn't matter how much of the other ones I give are. It's a it's a different language. I'm speaking Japanese and she only understands Chinese, right? So it doesn't matter how much I'm talking to her, I could be saying, I could be doing the most amazing things. It's not actually hitting where she needs it. So it's not love. Like if you don't love someone how they want to be loved, it's not love. That's that's just the way it is. It's every Disney movie, right? The father buys the fancy things and buys the stuff and the kid's just crying out for quality time, right? But then in another home where there's heaps of quality time, the kid might actually be crying out for a gift. So it's about understanding these. And I get again, I'm carried away a bit, but it's so important that I can't just say to my partner, Well, I'm sorry, I grew up in a home that was traumatic and, you know, I'm not gonna work on trying to hug more because that's just that's traumatic for me and I'm a fucking victim here and let me tell you about how bad it was and No, I've got to say, okay, well if I wanna love her and I choose to be in a relationship with her, I've got to slowly work on trying to be more aware and more conscious about how do I make her feel more loved. And if her if that's by words of affirmation and by by act by physical touch predominantly, how do I move towards that? How not just go, you know, well fuck it, mine's acts of service, so I'm gonna mow the lawn and you should be happy about that. How many guys do you see that on the building side or whatever? Fucking couldn't do more for a mate. Renovated the house, gave her the kitchen
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: she wanted. She fucking still hates me. She don't want those things, probably. Maybe she wants a holiday. I don't know. Maybe she just wants a hug. Maybe she wants you to fucking go for a walk on the beach with her for an hour. And don't give a fuck about the new kitchen you just spent 40 grand on. Maybe that's what she really wants. Yeah.
Dame - Djaara Country: Just wants you home
Chad Taylor - It's You: But he'll justify and tell you, mate, I don't know, she's so fucking ungrateful. Like I fucking she drives around a Lexus all day and I fucking pay for the fuel through the business and then she's hassling me about fucking working.
Dame - Djaara Country: fuck. Yeah, I'm glad you plugged the group and I'm gonna put some links in the show notes and I want you to take a little bit of time to talk about the book too.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, so book looks like this, pretty basic cover. I don't know how much of this you'll put on video, but the book came someone asked me the other day how long did it take to write? And I
Dame - Djaara Country: I heard that.
Chad Taylor - It's You: yeah, I had to sort of think, right? 'Cause it was three and a half weeks from start to finish, but it was really forty seven years. But it came about it's my journey, you know, I've been I've been I've got two daughters to two different women. I've probably had five proper live in relationships in my life. I've like I said, I've flipped houses, I've fucking just and if you had a got me ten years ago, I would have gave you all the reasons why I justify all those things that it was was everybody else's fault, right? Or where now I you know, I really see that, you know, that that sort of cliche saying of it takes two to tengo. I was unedu the biggest problem was I was unconscious, right? I I I was ignorant. And like the Buddhism talks a lot about ignorance and people get offended. What you're telling me I'm ignorant? Right? In AA they use on power you're powerless. You know, in AA the first step of AA is you're powerless over alcohol and your life's unmanageable, right? We're all powerless. To me, I'm I was powerless over the way I seen the I was literally powerless over the way I've seen the world. And that's how this book come about. Not to make money, not to get rich, more to reach people. I know that I'm working really hard on myself and I know that I'm reaching a lot of people. And it was more for me as as a way to reach more people. You know, and I've already got my own deal with the universe that, you know, if if for some reason it ever becomes really popular, that like I said, thirty percent of my my time already goes back into giving back and even more of that would go back into giving back. Like Because it's you know, I've sent out more probably as many free books as what I've as what I've sold, right? And don't bother me. You know, you guys down there at the the Mankind weekend, I gave you know, I sent them down at cost, right? Which fuck I don't care if if forty men get a book, right? And then we get to have this conversation, fucking not making money off that is jack shit, right? It's not it's not a big deal. So for me, it really is and I I take I guess I take you through a journey of And I've tried to I've tried to write it in my own way, in who I am. And it's good because people that know me say it's like I'm having a conversation with you as you're reading the book, right? And that's what I wanted. And it covers a lot of spirituality and it covers a lot of I suppose a lot of this rights of passage stuff that we've lost we've lost the ability to un we're always, I know, I know, I know. We go through that as a teenager to get kicked out of the tribe, right? That's why we go through that, I know. But I don't think we ever We ever go away from that, yeah I know mate. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. And that's why that whole it's you, fuck, it's me. And I work really hard on that. Work really hard because, yeah, I could always fuck, I'm always working on something. Could be me getting upset about the way my daughter's eating her food. What the fuck is it a big deal to me? What what what is it? It's about me, it's not about her. It's not bothering her. Why is it bothering me? And I'm sure if you're a parent, which I'm sure you are, right? You know exactly what I mean. Why why does it bother me if that person doesn't wash their car and they're ungrateful? Why, you know, for me it's more about I have the the longest lawn in the street, right? Or but other people pride themselves, that guy's fucking weak or lazy, look at his lawn. So I guess I'm I'm ranting a bit, but the bo I started off with really relationships fail because we're unconscious of our own shit. And if we can come a little bit more conscious, we've got a little bit more choice in how we behave. Because the world's becoming more polarised. And it isn't always them. I wanna write another book called It's Them Fuck It's Us and the parenting version of this, right? Because even it's a hard job being a parent, and I'll probably finish on this and hand it back over to you, that it's a hard job being a parent because at what point is it our will and at what at what point is it the kids' will and as at what point i are we making them conform so that we're okay and at what point it's a very that one's a hard one, I think. Right. we're domesticating we're animals and we're domesticating each other and how we domesticate each other is w our on our belief system. If my daughter doesn't want to clean a room, it's very hard, right? I could say, yeah, it's my house, it's respect, it's all those things. But it's my will against hers in that moment. And I think we've lost a lot of the understanding of even questioning that. Because it's not long ago that kids were seen and not heard. And I've gone away from the book a bit here, but I talk a lot about this message is everywhere if we look. It w it's in all nursery rhymes, it's in all a lot of songs, it's in poetry, it's even that, you know, that kid's that kid's little chant from preschool. Can't go under it, can't go over it, can't go round it. We have to go through it. We sing it and we chant it, but we don't really ever look at what it means. It's not talking about a fucking a fence or a rock. It's a it's a metaphorical
Dame - Djaara Country: The
Chad Taylor - It's You: yeah. It's metaphorical, you know, teaching about we've got to go through it. We live in a world where we don't. We'll take a medication or we'll just trade our partners in and get a new one. Or, you know, we're not getting our ends meet, so we'll go jump on porn. Or like we live in a world where we don't have to grow up because the world's catered to not growing up. So yeah, this book really for me was about it's more of a journey and it's not something that you you read and just tick and say, yeah, I've done it. know, hopefully things I've put in there, references and parables at each chapter, hopefully what it does is not to keep rereading my book, but it stimulates it stimulates something in you to go and search more because that's I think that's what we're not we're not we become pretty narrow minded in the world that I know where
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, and it's like catalogue too, like every chapter, you know, might steer me towards Victor Frankel or to Joseph Campbell or, you know, a whole bunch of other people that I hadn't heard of. just like okay, great. A bunch of resources in there.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, I've got I've got my next door neighbor, Josh. He's only a younger fella and he said, I stopped at the Mexican fisherman parable. That was enough for me, right? He's a builder, he's just starting his own business, he's got young kids. Just that one parable. If you just open it up to that's in chapter two and read that and meditated on that, right? That's enough of a I'm not gonna tell anyone what it is because they can either, you know, you could Google it if you wanted to, but that Mexican parable, right? It's if we just meditated on that every day, that one parable.
Dame - Djaara Country: Cracker. Hmm.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Life would change. And I didn't write it. I just fucking it got given to me somewhere along the way and I put it in there. And I openly say that in the book. I haven't created anything. I haven't I'm not a guru. I'm fucking I've just hopefully gone through enough shit of my own and found my own way out enough that hopefully I've been able to piece together some of that journey and and condense it into a a simpler language than sometimes what other stuff teaches. If you can and that's something, you know, not that I'm giving you advice, but with coaching and everything, right? It's not so much the lingo. It's more about condensing it. If you can take a really a really big topic and you can learn how to speak it out simply and get people to understand it, that shows you really know it. It's a bit like the builder, right? When some someone will come around they've got no fucking idea how to fix something. If you can go in there and you're skilled enough and you've you've fucked up enough really. To know that, yeah, right, I will this we'll do it this way. And you can actually explain that, you're probably gonna get the job. Right? Because you know you more on personal experience. And that's what all tradies that come to my house, I think they find me pretty easy because I say, you okay if I do this, and I say, Hey, look, dude, I'm not gonna complain. You're the professional. I've engaged you to do it. Don't rip me off and just do it however you do it if it was your own house. And then I just leave them go. Where I'm sure you know. We're off topic of the book, because we could talk for the next ten hours and we'd still keep going. But you know, the the one you hate is the homeowner who's looking over your shoulder, A, because they're trying to work out how to do it themselves next time, or B because you're not doing it the way they wanted you to do it, yet they've employed you to fucking do it. So yeah, the book is about really it's not gonna it's not gonna give you five tips on how to save your marriage or get more sex or become a millionaire. It's not gonna do any of those things. But if you if you get something out of it. Whether it's the quotes or the parables or someone, you know, I think it might have been you said, I love that you included Tool in it. I've had that a few times, right? Surprised how many people love Tool. And the you know, other other people love that I've I've sort of almost brought Christianity into it or Buddhism or people love what they love. Victor Frankel quotes, my partner loves Victor Frankel You know, between stimulus and response, there's a there's a there's a choice, right? And it's about that choice. She loves that quote. It's her most favourite quote. And I don't even know it properly, but I knew what it's about. It's about are we responding or are we reacting? And if with with the more consciousness we get, yeah. So buy it guys. Like it's fucking it's pretty cheap. It's pretty it's pretty and if you really can't afford it, just email me, get my details, I'll send you the the audio book and the ebook out for free. Like seriously, I'm not it's not about Becoming a millionaire and pay it forward. Right. If you really can't afford it, email me. Get in contact with me. And then I'm sh if it means anything to you, pay it forward. Buy someone a coffee or fuck I don't know, buy some old lady a packet of biscuits or do something.
Dame - Djaara Country: I sent a picture of it in a in a blokes group chat and asked the boys if they want to do some light reading and and most of the responses were just like this. It's like and my mate said that book's got a strong spine.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Brother.
Dame - Djaara Country: got a fucking strong spine, all right.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, and like everything, it's not for everyone, right? I got it outside a cafe, Kindred Coffee, if you're in the south coast of New South Wales. She's in Milton Little Caravan, just up from the church opposite the servo. She's so supportive of my book. A lot of people are, and she's but she's really promotes it and she sort of laughs about how many how many couples come for a coffee and then they're like, you should you know, you should get that book to their partner, right? The projection. And it's like, hang on, I don't need it. Maybe I should buy it for you. It's like buy two copies and study it.
Dame - Djaara Country: That's right. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: There you go, guys. Buy one, get one free for your partner.
Dame - Djaara Country: That's right. Yeah. I think it it is hard work. It came at a time where I was ready to get to another level of truthful with myself. Fuck. I mean though I shudder to think how much more truthful there is to get. 'Cause I thought I was already there and realised I was nowhere near it, so But I guess it's the right path to be on, isn't it? Regardless of where the end is.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Layers, right? Like it every every spiritual teaching is always about two steps forward and one step back, or five steps forwards and six steps back, right? That's that's what I want to leave you with, right? And leave everyone, unless you've got a camera on your 24, if you've got a camera on your 24-7, like are you flirting with the coffee lady or are you being nice? Is your wife in the car observing that? And then you get back in, you almost grunt to her as you pass over the coffee, and you've you've asked the coffee lady. how her morning was or how her day's going and commented on the great sunny day and then you get back in the car and like there's like you talk about work to be done. I think the layers are fucking endless. You know, like you could study even the AA book, right? It's only 164 pages, the actual program part of it. I've studied it for 26 years, religiously pretty much, and every time I go through it with someone or I I've see something new about myself. So the the print doesn't change. Hopefully this changes. So just remember that, guys. You know, if it's you know, we never know. How much do we know? Like we don't. We don't. It's you something will stimulate something in you, and you'll think, wow, fuck, that was, you know, and I'll throw it out to the men here. Like, we like to we like to project. You can't tell me that some of us haven't been unconscious in sex, right? Even as a teenager, people like to believe that, you know, when you're a teenager, right, you don't understand ethics of Whether you're pushing for something the girl might not want to do, you're co commenting about blue balls. Like there's the work is so deep. Most people go, I'm not gonna fucking I'm not gonna look at that. Like I was just a teenager and it's just normal. It's fine. But just don't do it now. If you go back and do an inventory, you go, okay, well, you know, you hear that a lot, right? fuck, you know, I did all this stuff and she still doesn't want to have sex with me. Well, maybe there's a reason. Have you actually really sat down and and not reacted? You know? Have you actually sat down? You know, like medications will change something I'm dealing with at the moment where a friend of mine, he's had to go on medication. And I know both of them, they're not a client. And, you know, his sex drives really low. And they're struggling, they're struggling in that, right? And every time she wants to bring it up, instead of instead of accepting it, talk about it, you fuck it's me. She's saying, like, is it that we're not, is it that you don't have desire for me? What is it? And he's like, fucking talk about it. So there's a problem that he won't talk about. And it's a bigger problem than what we need, right? Otherwise it'll manifest into something else. So there's always a layer. Fuck, there's always a layer. Right? How do you speak to your kids? How do you think about a different race or sex? How do you treat this person? Like there's you know, how are you towards dogs? What do you think about Trump? What do you think about fucking this? What do you think about the the stuff about the vaccine? Like it's it's endless to go deeper in yourself. Why do you Why do you believe that? Most of us don't even know why we believe what we believe. This could go on forever, mate.
Dame - Djaara Country: Fucking eyes. We'll have to chat again.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, you come on, we'll we'll spin the rolls. Not that there's been a role here anyway, but we'll we could
Dame - Djaara Country: No, it's been pretty fluid.
Chad Taylor - It's You: we could almost just I could just post this on mine as well and we could have the not that I'd do that, but you know, I've done that with another guy. Yeah.
Dame - Djaara Country: No, but just flip the screens around. Yeah, all right. I reckon yeah, I reckon let's wrap that up and I'll stop recording.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Hm.
Dame - Djaara Country: yeah. I'll just check out with yeah, a lot of appreciation, and pretty fucking swollen in my heart just for the opportunity to reach out and connect and they just up my game and broaden my sphere with a conversation with you and yeah, thanks man.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Might been the same, right? Like b it whenever we have these conversations, both of us grow. You go into a conversation open minded, like I come into this to see, you know, what you know, not what can I give you and not why can I self promote, more what how can I connect with this dude? You see the difference, right, in podcasts with people who just want to keep self promoting, right? It's like I'm not a fucking business card, I'm just trying to have a conversation and that's why I think people want this conversation. Yeah, we might throw in a little bit about our book or about whatever we're doing, but it's not like a business card for it. My brother, I'm gonna go and have dinner. Have
Dame - Djaara Country: Cheers mate, good on ya.
Dame - Djaara Country: Hello and welcome to what is a rite of passage? I'm your host, Dame Smith, and our guest today is Chad Taylor. Chad is a psychotherapist, he's the author of the book It's You, Fuck It's Me, and the host of the podcast by the same name. We acknowledge the Djaara people and Chad, I'm gonna ask you,
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yuin country.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yuin country. Thank you. we acknowledge elders, knowledge holders, past, present and emerging. May their ceremonies and initiations be remembered, and may this feed and heal the country on which we live, work and play. Well welcome Chad.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Welcome. Who's in charge here? Me or you?
Dame - Djaara Country: Well, that's funny, hey? 'Cause I was so tempted to ask who the fuck you are. Who the fuck are you?
Chad Taylor - It's You: Who the fuck am I? It's funny, isn't it? I'm usually the one asking that question. I am I'm gonna go into the logistical stuff. I'm a father, I'm a partner, I'm a recovering alcoholic, I am a psychotherapist, but I'm a seeker. Really underneath all that, I'm a seeker, I'm a Yeah, I'm I suppose that's the best way to describe myself. I'm always seeking. I'm always seeking to find out on of this journey that we're on. I'm I really wanna and not that I wanna know it intellectually, I wanna experience it, I guess, and that's what I'm seeking. I'm seeking the experience more so than the knowledge.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, thank you. You really went from the doing to the being pretty quickly there.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, I I've just had a Alcoholics Anonymous study here with about seven people around my dinner table and it was all about we had a couple of new people there and we had a couple of people who've relapsed and we had a couple of maybe three of us that have got long term recovery. Something that I do once a week at home in my house. I think speaking of rites of passage, that's how Alcoholics Anonymous started. Not that this is a a poster podcast for Alcoholics Anonymous, but it started with one person w working with another, one realising that one alcoholic or one person helping another person could actually in fact help that person stay sober by the intention. So in a way, i it's what I try and pass on that twenty or thirty percent of my week or my life is done as unpaid giving back, which yeah, is to me part of the you you mentioned the doing in the being, part of the being. I think we've lost everything now has to have a price tag or has to make us rich or has to yeah, give us some sort of notoriety or there's always generally there's an angle where for me there's an angle that I want people to get well.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. It's interesting that you it's interesting that you're here in this conversation now for a few reasons. and one of them is because this question of what is a rite of passage has gone from, you know, how do we take teenage boys out into the bush and, you know, and not waste four days, make it meaningful and make them sort of contributing members of society. and Now it's suddenly it's suddenly well, what are the transitions that we have in life? Like what is what is an event that moves me from one state of being to another? Like I just released an episode with Steve Hill, who you know, and and his writer passage story was falling out of an aeroplane and the chute not opening. and so that's a completely unplanned event that had d obviously moved him from one state of being to another.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, it's it's interesting to think about that, these transitions that we we go through but we don't really name and we don't understand anymore. 'Cause there's a lot of transitions as you probably realise w as you would realise doing this work and being in this work that the biggest we we talk about disconnection and connection and transition, that the biggest transition I think we ever have, even though we don't remember it, is coming out of the womb, right? Is really that it's a first time we're actually on our own and that's As a baby, we cry and we do those things because it's the first experience of disconnection that we've ever had. And I think we spend the rest of our lives trying to make sense of that disconnection, in my opinion, that and those transitions. I've got I'm not gonna ramble them on now, because we just talked when we've just met each other online about losing ourselves in a conversation, but fuck, there's so many transitions that we go through, men and women. The women's ones I think are more you know, they're more Y you can observe them more, right? Where, you know, growing boobs and and then menstruating and things like that. I'm not a woman, so I didn't actually have to go through that. I've got two daughters. I'm heterosexual, so I've also got a partner who who, you know, those transitions. I think at both ends, they seem to have more profound ones that we observe physically, where men probably don't have apart from maybe our voice dropping and going a bit croaky as a teenager. I don't think we have as many transitions that are observable.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, that's an interesting way of looking at it because when, you know, one of the questions around rites of passage is are our boys are kind of moving through without this ceremony or without this acknowledgement of crossing and maybe men can kind of sneak around that threshold a little bit, whereas women just don't get the opportunity, nature just happens.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, and there's so many studies and there's there's so much out there about rites of passage and I did a Christian I'm not a Christian, but I did a Christian based one 'cause there's a there's a a I suppose you'd call him a I feel like he's a sort of like a an enlightened human being who's wrote a lot on Richard Raw. It's R O H R if anyone's interested and he's wrote a lot of books on on many things, but especially about these, you know, his the favorite book of mine is his book called falling upward, which talks a lot about the two halves of life, making sense of the two halves of life. And I went and did a a a men's Rite of Passage in Brisbane that was based on his work. And yeah, it was part of it gonna say what it was for me. Part of it was almost like it felt like some men sort of running around the bush and I don't know, kind of I know, some of it felt a bit corny for me if I'm a hundred percent truthful, but I sort of just accepted that very hard, right? We're in a I suppose where I'm going with that is we're very hard. We can't really it's not about running out into the bush and learning how to fucking light fires without matches and things like that. I think a lot of people get confused that it's not going back to we can't go backwards, I don't think. We can't go backwards. So how do we how how in two thousand and twenty six do we create rites of passage that isn't Little boys running around in the bush becoming men by fucking starting fires and collecting woods and wood and killing a deer and skinning it and eating it on the fucking fire, right? Or with our bare hands. Like it's not, you know, eighteen fucking eighty six anymore. It's two thousand and twenty six. So part of it was we you know, we stripped down to pretty much underwear and we'd do these ceremonies and they'd paint like fate blood on us and we'd go off into the bush for for half a day on our own with nothing nothing to sort of stimulate us, no books, no phones, no reading. And yeah, the process was great. But I think for me it yeah, I probably there's parts of it that I really embodied and there's parts of it I don't I don't think were for me.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, it's so good to name that stuff. I r it and what it brought up in me was, you know, feeling that I haven't been with for probably five years or so. when the ritual theatre kicks in at some of, you know, at some of these rites of passage and and initiation ceremonies, it's a bit like, fuck, here we go. And I remember really having to suspend my disbelief to get through some of that. And I I kinda see the benefit in it, in that it can help to sort of get the unconscious mind or even get the get the conscious mind to come along into this liminal state, where kind of change or a different perception is possible.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah. And that limit that liminal state word or or liminality gets a lot of work like a lot of talk in men's writer passage, right? There's that liminal space or liminality and and I think even under I think a lot of people don't even understand, even when they've done one, what it's about, right? It's not just about a boy becoming a man. It's about almost that separation from the mother, right? That we don't see anymore in the world. A lot of us live in grow up in single parent homes or where the the mother is the dominant Caregiver because father's working or father's absent, he's at the pub or he's fucking playing golf or he's doing whatever. So a lot of boys, especially now more than ever, and this has been pretty much forever, really. It was really if you look at the rites of passage where it started from, it was that disconnection from the mother. And it wasn't just becoming a man by running around in the bush and killing an animal. It was really about taking on a different role, almost being disconnected from the feminine. And almost taking on that masculine role and then having a different relationship with femininity. And I think we've lost like we look at the manosphere and we look at all this crazy shit in the world, right? And you know, I'll openly say twenty or thirty percent of that manosphere sort of appeals to me, right? And people can turn the podcast off now if they want to, especially if they but I'm not saying I want to out there and fucking believe in the shit that Andrew Tate carries on with, but I can see why. I work with a lot of teenage boys and I work with a lot of teenage girls. I have two I have a teenage girl and yeah, so I'm mindful I'm catching myself now not going on a rant. But I think understanding what it's all about, that I would say that 30% of men, and again, turn this off if you want, are having an incestuous, emotionally incestuous relationship with their mothers as a fucking grown adult man. Where And I see it day in, day out. And that's what the Rite of Passage is meant to it's meant to stop. It doesn't cut our relationship up with our mother. It changes it and transforms it. Because our mums want to keep us little boys. Not because then they're bad or they're evil. Because they're unconscious and it gives them a fucking purpose. My mum wants to treat me like I'm thirteen, right? It gives her a purpose in life. Don't speed. Make sure you don't use the phone. There's lots of police on the road. Text me when you get home. It's like I'm I'm doing that at a forty forty well, I'm now I'm forty seven, but when I my fiancee Sophie, we met when I was around forty two and I sort of had to say to her, Hey, look, when we go to mum's, like, she's gonna carry on like this and please don't think that I have this incestuous sort of relationship with her. But I've tried yelling at her, I've tried having the conversation with her, I've tried everything under the sun, but because she hasn't gone through any initiation about, hey, your son's A man now, right? She still almost as much as we want to sever that connection and I love my mum and I I have a relationship with her. She comes around for dinner every Monday night and you know there don't don't think for anyone I'm saying I've cut my mother off. But so for me it's not a good look when I'm leaving her house and she's standing on the balcony and I've got my own two daughters in the car, I've got my new partner in the car, and she's out there don't don't do this and don't do that and please don't do this and it's almost it's But fuck, there's this is just a worldwide epidemic of this shit.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. And I got really deep in that conversation with Steve a few days ago around the impact of the men or the uncles not coming and getting the boys at a at a certain point in time. Yeah. Yeah, because there's something biologically impossible for for a mother to to do with a son.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah.
Dame - Djaara Country: To to hand him over or to to get him across that threshold. It's just like fuck and and it's not to say that Women don't try and haven't done amazing work on it, but yeah. I think to have a community well, an intact community and a community of men that can come and get the boys, and acknowledge that that transition. I think there's something really, really relevant and we don't have to kill a deer and it's not the eighteen thirties and we don't have to dance around and paint our faces and some of it is redundant and I I guess that's what I'm seeking. I'm just trying to get r just fucking let go of whatever it is that I've no fuck all of anyway. and just go, well, what do we need now? Like what what is healthy masculinity? look like now? And how do men need to show up in the world and how are they not and Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Big question. What is healthy masculinity? And I think depending on where we sit in the world would be completely different. And that's
Dame - Djaara Country: Okay.
Chad Taylor - It's You: that's another thing. Like our culture, our religion, if we've got one, all there's so many distinctions on what is healthy masculinity. And we live in a world of polarity, right? Where it's this or that, and that's another, you know, Richard Raw really talks about dualistic thinking, this term dualistic thinking that we're almost trapped in a world of dualistic thinking now, which means it's this or that thinking where it's not really both end thinking. And I think again, what healthy masculinity is to me might be different to what it is to you, might be different to what it is to your wife or my partner Sophie or my daughters. And, you know, I think it's it's again, it's it's getting your understanding. There's a really Jonathan Wineland did a did a good talk about the s the six pillars of sexual intimacy. years ago a YouTube clip and I've got it saved to my phone because, you know, something in there that he said, he talked about, you know, the masculine energy almost being this safe container. That it's about creating this safe container and then the feminine energy being able to flow inside of that, right? And not saying again that men, for anyone listening to this, it's not that men are always in their masculine, right? And men create the container. But I think what I see more is now the women are creating the container and the men are the ones having a fucking emotion. inside of there. Like punching a wall in anger isn't actually masculine. It's feminine. Like it's a feminine energy. When you can't control your emotions, that's more of a feminine energy. The the strong, stoic, collected leadership energy, that's masculinity. Control and losing your shit couldn't be more unmasculine in a lot of terms than you can't get much more unmasculine than that.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, and that's interesting because I know for myself I've come up against that. If I don't do some sort of violence in this situation to defend myself or my family, I'm not being a man. And I don't do that. But when I r play through the reel of the impacts of what that might look like, it's like fuck, that's not masculine and it's not together and it probably not gonna help fucking anyone and it's gonna create a whole shit storm for me and everyone around.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, and I suppose that's something we battle with. Like I had a fucking neighbour from hell. I I built a house about five year four or five years ago and I had this fucking ca psychotic male neighbor from hell that started from the minute I bought the I bought this block of land that did have all these nice trees on it and had backed onto his block and anyway I had to chop a lot of them down and change the block around and he didn't like that, right? So he he really like it was really psychotic and I was just at the end of my degree, well just at the end of doing something that I was doing as well, right? And I had to I had to handle things differently. Like I still had a criminal history from when I didn't handle things well when I was a plumber, where I went around chasing money up and it turned into an a push altercation, which gave me, you know, charges that didn't really reflect what happened, but I was in my early thirties then, I didn't have the know I wasn't who I who I am now. Cut a long story short, I had three years of this fucking clown, like just kill animals and throw them over the fence and you know shot my windows out with the BB gun during the middle of the build and I had all dings along the colorbond side of my house and and the you know, just fucking just, you know, put rocks down my drains and just crazy shit, right? And I really the the universe really had to I really had to work strong on not jumping the fence and I had so many mates saying, you I'll just go around and fix him up and and s part of me really and there was this battle and I took it to therapy every week. I'd take it to my own personal therapy about I feel like this fucking I feel like I'm not a man with this cunt next door carrying on like this, right? I I feel like I'm almost letting him get away with it and I'm being a pussy and like it was a fucking battle. And even as I say that I can feel the energy roaring in me, right? And it was a real battle of You know, what what was the masculine thing to do in there? And and really it was a test from the universe. And as it turned out, I moved in there and it kept going. And I had two daughters and my partner living there. And the final straw, not that I'm boring everyone with my life story, but I bought all this bamboo, right? This bamboo that would grow three meters high and I planted it along the fence line. And I had three blocks along the edge anyway, and he just poisoned the fuck out of it, poisoned all the water tank as he did it over the fence and I was like, I'm out, you know? And and I sold, right? And again I felt like felt like I'd sort of been defeated, right? I've at the time I felt like like you know, but I couldn't get any peace. My my daughters were scared. We were walking the dogs a completely different longer way so we didn't have to go past his house because he'd come out and yell at me and my partner and but he'd come out with a camera and like just trying to wait and right. So it was a tough time. And in the end, where I'm going with this is it was the universe and I sold that house right at the peak of the boom. I got fucking way more money than what it was worth at that time. And then I rented for two years and now I bought this fucking amazing little house, half the size, in a better spot. We're so happy. so yeah, it was a big test, right? Because you know, I it it was like, do I want to get revenge on this guy or do I want to keep doing counselling and and working with people because I can't do both here. So yeah, talking about masculinity and I look back and, you know, the guy that bought the house off me was pretty tough, strong dude, and I don't think he put up with this guy's shit. And he ended up moving out. Cause like he's all paranoid from me and they end up moving out of there, right? So it was almost like, and I don't want to bore too much with this story, but it was one of those people that first it was a neighbor on the other side of him, then it was a lady across the road that he always needed a target. I talk a lot about projection in my book, right? A lot of people we need a target to project onto, right? Whether it's literally when we think of the word projection, the easiest way I describe it is it's like project projector screen We need a screen, right? Someone's the overhead projector and we need a screen to put it on and we literally try and put what's in the in the projector onto somebody else. And I was just in that moment, that was just me for him. He was unwell and I was the target. Did it make me any more masculine? I still don't know. I still think about it. When I say that I'll go away tonight and I'll probably think about it and think, should have I fucking you know, should have I physically as asserted my dominance back towards him or was the smartest thing to do what I did? It's a hard one, right?
Dame - Djaara Country: What's the answer?
Chad Taylor - It's You: The answer is looking at the whole picture, I think I made the right decision. But there's still that part of me that's like you're fucking weak. Right? You know, you should have done it. And I know I could have done it. I wasn't I'm not physically scared of him at all. But there was no
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: worry, there was no fear there of that. The fear was I don't want to keep working with people. I was working at the school at the time. That was the fear. So I had to use my consciousness or my awareness against my running around in the bush like a wild animal killing deers. I had to had to battle right there.
Dame - Djaara Country: Fucking amazing. Yeah, it's tough. That's a fucking great story.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, and and now like I've got y I I work in jails, I work with DCJ, like Department of Community Justice, employ me to work with people. I work with heaps of underprivileged youth in in areas. I'm actually going on the panel on a talk around the manosphere with two doctors and then Chad Taylor, like well like Australia wide. None of that would have been happening. If I had of retaliated in that moment, none of this would have been happening. I know that for a fact. It was a test from the universe that it was like You know, if he had a touched my actual partner and my kids, might have been a different story, or hurt my dog or anything like that. Like so it like I think maybe it might have been a different story. But even then, I I I watch I hear stories of people that have forgiven somebody who's killed their their child or something, and there's you know, there's a there's a level of I want to embody a level of that to think that Somebody could do that. Like somebody could actually see that, you know, that forgive me for they know not what they're doing type mentality. You know, there was deep compassion
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: for this guy. I know it sounds crazy, but right through it, I had a mentor who was like, do a meditation on this. Like, what do you think's going on for him? And, you know, I'd end up writing things down after the meditation. He must be so unwell, must be so sad to be living in his skin. Like, I've got a real compassion for him. So it's a Yeah, it was the right thing to maybe he's like that because of what happened to him when he was younger and he never went through a rites of passage. Something was going on.
Dame - Djaara Country: You know, there's parts of that that might it might sound like a rambling story about a shit neighbour, but it just it feeds right into I earlier I had an intention around and I don't think I'd even finished a book by this stage. But the intention was to have a chat about the transition from the transition into awareness, the an initiation into awareness. and it's kind of exactly what that story is. It's a choice.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Consciousness brings choice, right? That's what I really honed in on with like the more conscious we are, the more we have a choice. And that can be in any area. Like a guy turned up today and I'm I'm not gonna say his name and I'm sure he wouldn't mind me saying this, but he's a drummer and he's trying to get sober, right? And he went to a gig on the weekend and he's been trying to get sober for a long time and he had two non alcoholic beers. And I sorta had to say to him that Unfortunately, non alcoholic beer is still a a point five point zero sorry, point five a percent of alcohol. So they're actually called non-alcoholic, but they're not non-alcoholic. And they can lead to an episode of a bender, right? And he wa I could see him almost want to argue with me about it purely because he was fearful that he might have relapsed. And I was sort of saying, Hey, look, it's not a comp this isn't a competition. A lot of people can get carried away like in anything. You know, you're not sober if you use antidepressants, you're not you're not sober in NA if you use Suboxone or you use a you're on methadone and as far as I'm concerned, like everybody's journey is their journey. And my qu my thing to him was just just be a bit careful because they could lead to a relapse if if you believe in that model. So where I'm going with that is I could see afterwards it was a bit rattled and I said, look, I don't think in but where I'm saying with this as well is I think some AA sponsors or mentors would want the person to count their days again starting from there, from that, seeing it as a relapse, right? But my whole philosophy is, and thankfully this comes from a man in in AA, was about it's it's about the intention. And for him it was almost what you said then of the transition that he didn't know and now he knows. So now if he drinks maybe he might need to re reset his his days. That's completely up to him and his higher power and really it's not up to me. But where I'm going with that is at least consciousness and awareness brings choice, right? If we don't we don't know what we don't know. Like for me, I'll drink a lemon, lime, and bitters when I go out for dinner with my partner, even though I'm in recovery, and yes, there's a tiny bit of bitters in the alcohol. Sorry, a tiny bit of alcohol in the bitters. but for me, or I you know, in the early days, there's no way I would have done that. I'm 25 years clean and sober now. Or if I go somewhere and there's a Christmas pudding, right, and it smells a bit like alcohol. I'll be truthful, I will eat it because now I know that's not gonna set up the allergy in me. So I guess I'm rambling. But consciousness brings choice in any single thing. We can't solve something we're not aware of.
Dame - Djaara Country: Mm. I'm gonna really throw myself off the deep end here. and and 'cause I'm looking at your fucking hat, right? And suddenly the whole transition is just the whole rite of passage or the whole hero's journey is just in those three lines. It's you. fuck. It's me. and You know, I've been on sort of in the men's work stuff. I'm you know, I'm a builder and so I've sort of raised around this whole whole thing. and then kinda got really interested in men's work and then, you know, a lot of other into sort of transpersonal work. Felt like I was fairly deep into it. And then you know, not long ago I was just like the classic, like the danger the danger of a person that knows a little bit. I'd been introduced to Virginia Satir and these five like stress responses that she's got. It's like computer distractor, blamer, placator, leveler. And so I get this bit of information I fucking just hurl it at my wife. Like it's just like, yeah, you're a fucking blamer and I'm a placater and you blame me and I try and do this thing. And that's the bit when I said that there was parts of your book that was fucking really confronting, I just went, my God my god. I'm sitting in this fucking whole victim role while I get to tell you that you're fucking blaming. like eating from both ends of the banana or something and just fucking like my god I'm blaming I am blaming the shit out of you here and when I could see that that fuck She felt safer. She didn't say that. And you know, this is not a conversation we've really had, apart from the first, you know, me saying this is what you are. But I could tell by how our relationship's going. And since then, you know, we're in couple therapy. we've got kind of a A way of communicating now that we didn't have She feels safer
Chad Taylor - It's You: Everyone should be in fucking couples therapy and everyone should be in therapy, right? It goes back to the rites of passage. You know, you said there you're eating eating from both ends of the banana and then you find out it's a fucking mango. Right? That's kind of what happens. That's what it's like. It's almost like,
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, right? Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: wow, like when you when you when you really drop into that that like this book, it's pretty confronting for people, right? And I'll listen to it in the car. People not think I'm a fucking lunatic when I pull up at the lights. And I'm listening to my own audiobook and it's my own voice, but I need to take my own medicine continuously, right? So what you just said then, it's an epiphany when you realise like, fuck. I'm seeing the world through like the the narcissism weapon that is all around the world now. You know, three my joke is three percent of the world are narcissistic and ninety seven percent of people think they've fucking married one. Right? It's like someone's maths is wrong. People don't like that when you say that because it it's sort of thrown in your face that which one are you? You know, are you the three
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: percent or you're the 97%? Or either you're really bad luck, you're having real bad luck, or you're not fucking seeing the truth. And I think a bit like you, right? It can be a bit confronting and and IA makes you dig d so deep. A lot of this stuff in my book, like we really have an inventory process. The 12 steps really has an inventory process that makes you it's so simple. But it actually so powerful where it's a five column process that makes you look at your part in things. Like say even, you know, let's just say the neighbor. Let's say I put put my neighbor down there from before. I'd write his name and then I'd write what happened. He bullied me. He did this, he did that, right? Victim, victim, victim. But at the time I wasn't victim. I was like, I was fucking in pain. And then the next column is really the main column, one of the main columns is what instinct does it what instinct is it affecting here? Is it my sexual instinct? Is it my social instinct? Is it my security instinct? Right? Well it didn't I wasn't really having a sexual well, I wasn't having a sexual relationship with him, but it probably did affect that when I was pissed off or c upset and carrying on and I wasn't really available to my partner. But the main two right there were the social. Well, what do people think of me if I don't if I don't stand up to him, right? All these sorts of things. There's a big instinct there and then security. Right? Security really it is financial security or actual physical security, I was our security was as a family unit, our security was threatened, right? So the social and the security were really affected. And then the next column goes into, you know, when have I behaved this way before, right? In other words, when have I been a prick? Like I'll be blunt. I was a cunt of a neighbor in my 20s. I had a seven second drag car. If you know anything about cars, it was a blown hemi was a supercharged outlaw car. I lived on a house block with houses around me. I'd rebuild the motor in the garage, tin shed, no insulation, no acoustics. And I'd start if if it was finished at three o'clock in the morning and I was going on a race the next day, I'd start this fucking thing up. At three o'clock in the morning, dogs would be barking, babies would be crying. Obviously I wasn't intentionally doing what he was doing, but I was the same, I was a a cunt of a neighbor, right? There'd be complaints all over Facebook, the police would come round regularly and and I was just like I was and then I did some things to a neighbor that I didn't I wasn't proud of. right, which again vandalized his house if I'm truthful in my twenties and thought I was justified to do it because of his behavior towards me. So I've lost myself here, but I'm coming back. So it really gets you to see, and then the last column is what can I do differently? So the last column for me was move move away, have compassion. So that process just on one thing, imagine if we did that on our relationships. And me and my partner are both in recovery. So we'd call it, you know, I'm not going to take your inventory, I'm going to do mine. You know, we'd say it a lot, right? I'm not going to take your inventory. And we don't turn around and weaponize it and say, but you should fucking do one. Right. Because then again, that's that's almost coming in the back door. We we have a little bit of awareness and we use it as a weapon, right? Which the world's full of. We intellectualize everything. I've learned about nonviolent communication or I've learned about a a certain way of communicating or like you said, I I've learned that my love language is acts of service and you're not giving me acts of any acts of service. So I'm gonna weaponize that as to why I'm justified not to give you a hug because that's not my primary love language, right? Or we can weaponize anything. So yeah, where I'm going with that is I have a real and AA teaches us that even if we're even as cliche as it is, even if you're ninety percent in the wrong, right? And I'm 10% in the wrong, rather than focus on your 90, Because that's what the egocentricity or that part of us wants to do. I focus on my 10. And doing the inventory process, you can't not but see your part in it because it's written down. This all would have been, they would have all had every spiritual teaching and religious teaching had this that we've lost the last two, three hundred years when we've moved away from it. And then we make amends. I know that then we make amends, right? So then when we go we say, Fuck, you know, I'm really sorry that I couldn't see that I was blaming you for being blaming or whatever it is in your relationship. And you work with a mentor or a sponsor, so it is almost a rights of passage away. We try and have men for men and women for women in AA. It's an unwritten rule for that reason, so that you know, if I'm on here tonight with you, that's okay. But if I was sponsoring a twenty-one year old woman in Alcoholics Anonymous, And she was good looking and I'm just like to my partner Sophie, anyway, me and fucking Danielle are going out to we're gonna go to thai tonight and we're gonna do some step work. That doesn't that's not okay with me. That's disrespectful to my partner. So we have a real, a real sort of unwritten rule of men for women men and women for women, which I like. So many, so many parameters of probably what you do in here that of of your in your work and your life that you know, yeah, plays out.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Yeah, so one c what comes up for me is ethics. Yeah, I've been getting into yeah, I've been doing a therapeutic coaching course just 'cause it's an extension of stuff that I've been really interested in and when we got to the bit about ethics, it took a little bit of getting and then you know, 'cause I was looking for the these are the commandments, these are the rules and And what it sort of showed me was that, you know, ethics are a bit subjective. My ethics, my ethical boundary might not sit at the same place that yours does. there's a few sort of kind of obvious ones maybe, but it really made me check in of just like, is this right? Is this relationship right? Or for me to coach this person if I have this relationship somewhere else. Is that okay or am I just kinda convincing myself that it's okay because it's kind of convenient or there's a payoff in something?
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, I love
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: that. And I I break every like if we look at the rules, I break every rule in the book, right? But if they're done with the right intent, and again, I've got to make sure that I check in with a sponsor or a mentor or someone further my own therapist, right? I've got to I and I've got to be fully truthful to them. Like I've got a young client of mine, Hugh, if anyone prays or believes in an universe, he's really unwell with cancer and his family are really struggling because They're just sort of they're just I wouldn't say they're battlers, but you know, they're not they're not rich, right? And one parent already had to stop for the last twelve months of work to take him to chemo and he wasn't getting any better. So they've flown him to America and it doesn't look like that's working. I gave I gave him an envelope with five hundred bucks in it when he left to have some fun while he's in America because his parents were only just meeting ends meet to get there. They didn't want to do a GoFundMe because they're sort of They're kind of like, Well, we don't want it's our it's our lot to So what I'm saying is imagine if if someone said, that guy gave five hundred dollars to a fourteen year old boy in an envelope, like what's is he grooming him? Like what's he you know? So again, everything comes back to intent. His mum knew that I did it, it was all above board, it was a surprise for him. you know, I might give a client a hug if they if they try and hug me, I might give him a hug, right? But I again like that that is against the rule. I've worked in places with youth where if they go to give you a hug, you've almost got to move sidestep them a bit and give a high five, right? Well
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: these kids have fucking been in foster care and been abandoned and and you're this fat like as soon as we're older than right? We're almost a father figure, whether it's a boy or a girl. If they come in to give us a hug and we almost like high fi step out of the way and high five Fuck go to give your wife a hug and s let let her sidestep you and give you a high five and see how that goes down, right? So I know again I'm I'm carrying on a bit here, but I'm passionate about this shit. There is no it all comes back to intention and my whole thing of if you had a camera on you and it was broadcast to the world, twenty four seven, like the Truman show, I use this a lot with my clients and myself. Would you be okay with that being shown to the whole world? And if it wouldn't, maybe adjust your behaviour. And I don't mean the nose picking or the straining on the fucking toilet every now and again or whatever it is. I mean the the intent like is this per I get it a lot with domestic violence where when I work with men that have been perpetrators there's always this but can I just tell you what you did? And I'm like fucking no you can't and they'll keep going right can I just tell ya? Can I just tell you right? And then and then they just I'm sure you know what I mean. And then it's like no you can't. And in the end I'll s I'll pull out the so we're fucking sitting around here, mate. There's a big screen TV, your mum, your sister, your brother, your wife's family, your kids and everyone's here. And you're still telling me why you're watching what happened. Yeah, but can you see what she did to me? Shuts them up pretty quick. They're like, Yeah, I see what you mean. So again, ethics. Very, very trans very transpersonal or very what what's right in one culture.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Might not be riding another
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: So how you going with the course? Like you're enjoying it, you're getting a lot out of it.
Dame - Djaara Country: Loving it. Really fucking loving it. Yeah, like I think when when I Yeah, so doing men's work, men's groups, rites of passage, teenager work, getting a l the kind of a certain language together which f felt weird to start with. And then, you know, sit with men, do my work, calling it men's work. And then suddenly women started showing up and you run a co gender group and suddenly it's like fuck, I can do my own work with women in the room. This is a this is pretty weird. Like w what's men's work then suddenly it gets a bit kind of redundant or something. And then yeah. So as that just became the work, yeah, I got involved with Steve and this and the therapeutic coaching course with primal intelligence and just started to build on the language and the skills and there's some aspects that I've been interested in. N L P I've been interested in for a while and I really love that. And then through that too, I've started seeing a internal family systems therapist. my wife and I are getting couples therapy. yeah, so in that well there's another one that I've really got to fucking dob myself in for, right? It's and this is still really recent. Kind of that Almost blatantly accusing my wife that, you know, the reason for The reason for our issues is her not facing her trauma, right? And then she turned around and said, Well, you've got trauma too And I went, Maybe, maybe I got a little bit, but fuck it's nothing compared to yours. And I don't think my trauma's the fucking problem. And then I went and started getting therapy and just went fuck. It might it might you know, whatever fucking comparison meter that I've got, mine might be small and hers might be big, but the me not dealing with mine's having this massive fucking impact on our relationship and all
Chad Taylor - It's You: It's like the squid, right? I I make a joke about the squid ink. I don't know if anybody knows out there, but the squid, when it's under threat, it the reason it has the ink inside of it is it shoots out the ink to escape, right? Well, as humans, I think our squid ink is fucking projection of play. Where
Dame - Djaara Country: Ha ha.
Chad Taylor - It's You: it's like, yeah, but I might have a even when you do that on the screen, right? I might have a little bit of trauma, but fucking your trauma's the thing that's ruining the relationship. And I see that It's very hard. Like I can work with people for years and I still can't penetrate the egocentricity, right? It's almost like it's not that I'm doing anything wrong. It's just that it's so fucking strong. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's been like intense sexual abuse or physical abuse or neglect. And I think I write in my book about well, I know I write in my book about little t trauma and big T trauma. That we all We all have trauma, right? And big T trauma to me is those those big things sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, neglect, all these sorts of things are a big T trauma. Death of a parent. But then when we start looking at little T trauma, little T trauma looks like, you know, Dame is at home, he draws a picture for his father, he thinks it's really good, he's three years old, dad comes through the door, he goes to give him the picture. And his dad ain't interested because He's got something else that he needs to do that he can justify why it needs to be done right now instead of acknowledging the picture. As we say that, we all feel shit because we all do that, right? That's little T trauma and it happens fucking day in, day out. Every time my partner wants to connect with me over something and I'm distracted somewhere else and I'm half listening and that's a that's a trauma, right? Any any separation. Is a trauma in a way. It's a separation from the connection whether with ourself or with another person. So it's great that you're seeing this stuff because you could go on forever learning and weaponizing all this stuff. You could be the smartest person in the room. So I I I I know I'm not this I never I know I'm not the smartest person in the room. And I don't try to be. I know that. But what I am is I'm fucking passionate and I'm and that that makes up for the intelligence, right? Where And and I don't so I don't need sometimes I sit in a case conference with a kid I'm supporting and all these people are using all these big lingos, like, you know, probably even you know, I don't know, I can't even think so I can't even think of one, I don't know, like talking about the assessment, I don't know, like a fucking whatever it is. See I can't even think of it. I don't know it. I'm clinical psychotherapist, I don't know it, and I'm sitting here way out of my depth. And when I open my mouth, it's like this. And they're probably all looking around going, Fuck, is this blank even qualified? But the problem the not the problem, the thing is I am the most consistent person in this kid's life. I've been supporting him since he was eight. He's just turned twelve. For the first three months, six months, he wouldn't even speak to me, he'd hide under a blanket at the school. I'd go in every week into the into this classroom. He I couldn't even see him outside of the school. Now I pick him up every Thursday morning before school. We go and have an hour together and I'd drop him to school. And in the school holidays He wants to get up so he doesn't miss out seeing me. Every other worker he's had over that four years has left because it's been an organization, right? It's been, you know, like, yeah, sorry, fucking Damien's moved on to fucking I don't know, wellways now. He doesn't work for fuck flourish anymore. Or, you know, the occupational therapist has fucking gone off. She's gone
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: on maternity leave and she isn't coming back. So I just watch. These fucking people coming in and out to this kid's life, right? And I'm the as all I do is I show up and I really you know, again, I buy him I bought him a a birthday present, right? Probably giving a kid a JBL speaker that's eleven. Probably isn't ethical, right? Really. But I gave it to him in front of his mum. And she sort of said, I thought you weren't meant to do this, but I'm really appreciative that you did, you know, and I said, I wouldn't have done it, I wouldn't have done it sneakily. I would have always done it in front of you. So yeah, it's it's all about integrity, right? Is a word that we don't, you know. If you ask a I don't know if you do that in your rites of passage, but when you ask a teenager who their role model is, especially a man, they can't fucking name one really. They can't name one. And it's never their father. Never. Never is it their father, you know, and you can hear my voice raised there. My father wasn't my my role model either. I love him. I've accepted him, but he's definitely still not my role model. He's not someone I aspire to be. And I want I don't have sons, but I want my daughters to hopefully within reason want to role model, you know, what they see as a man, as their father, and I work towards that. I think we've lost that, right? We've fucking lost that.
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Remember the last teenager event we did in Central Victoria, there was a young fella, he came with his dad. Took a little while to get him there because his mum was kind of probably she thought maybe there was something a bit sort of spiritual that might conflict with her beliefs. so I was having a chat with him at one point and just talking about his relationship with his dad and he's talking about relationship with his stepdad and the way he communicated his relationship with both of was sort of like, yeah, yeah they're both okay. It's just fuck, you know, when you sort of look at that, you know, who are the men that is who are the men that you're looking at that you wanna aspire to be like or you wanna take a part of and sort of to build yourself into. It's like he was just rummaging through the bottom of the fucking Lego bits when it came to his dad and his stepdad. And it's like, fuck, that's really sad. But that's also a massive part of it. Like you line twenty blokes up in front of these, you know, six or ten or twenty Boys or teenagers and you know, that guy's cooking sausages and that guy's digging a hole and this guy's fucking facilitating and that guy's fucking off in the dark up a tree. It's just such a fucking scape, different scape of parts and attributes and traits and stuff that then they can go, I'll have a bit of that, like fucking little bit. I like how he does that. Well none of none of the rest of it. That's all fucking weird, but I like that bit. I like a bit of that bit. Yeah, it's a huge part of it.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Who would you say your obviously you probably haven't got one, but who if I asked you if there was a million dollars on the line and I said, Who are your three or five main male role models in the world, who who who would you name?
Dame - Djaara Country: man, it's interesting. there's just been something really captivating about Gandhi my whole life. you know, been a martial artist for twenty five years and Yeah, like kinda laughing at myself as I build up this physical skill to be able to defend myself that kinda never comes into use. And then I look at that guy and he's fucking just skin and bones and he's in his jocks and he he took on the f the fucking British Empire without without this sense of knowing that he had all the power to do it. He just fucking stepped in with himself, he stepped in with his being, he stepped in with his belief. and you could blow that guy over. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Would you say he's masculine?
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, I'd call him a warrior. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Isn't it? That we've ended
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: up at this point in the conversation to say that someone we could blow over whose skin and bone is a warrior.
Dame - Djaara Country: It's been a real journey for me. I think along along with that, you know, whatever that part of me that that took on martial arts, wanting to kind of project this external power part of me's because kinda I'm forty nine yesterday or day before. part of me's just clued into the fact that that's fucking exhausting. All of that external projection's really fucking exhausting.
Chad Taylor - It's You: What would your wife say? What if we asked your wife what what attracted what what attracted her to you or what still attracts her to you, what qual what would she say do you think?
Dame - Djaara Country: It's interesting because I think it was a lot of that external projection. But then once we're in relationship and I was still doing external projection on other women and other people and other men and it was just fucking not okay. you know, the last
Chad Taylor - It's You: Do you think she'd say that? Do you think she'd say that that was what she was attracted to? Or do you think we just think that?
Dame - Djaara Country: I don't know. I'm gonna go and ask her when this call.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Cool. Bring her on. It's interesting, isn't it? Because we again we have all these we have all these sort of preconceived ideas about it's funny that we could be with someone for five, ten years or however long and not really know. Like there's so many things about each other that we don't know and we just assume like the world's full of fucking ash assumptions, right? I assume that you're rich or I assume that you're a certain type of person because you're a builder and now you want to become a coach or you want to become a a therapy. Well, my journey was the same. I was a plumber. I got sober in AA. I finished my plumbing trade. By twenty-three I was a boss because I was driven. You know, my my a addict just transferred onto car racing, building houses. I flipped I think I flipped 12 houses in I'm 47 and I flipped 12 houses between twenty two and about well, about a year thirteen months ago when I built this, right? So I'm a goer. Like that's the addict in me can really be the
Dame - Djaara Country: Mm. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: double edged sort of addiction is. Right. So yeah, it's funny just to see those things, right? That what what we assume is completely fucking different in each person. Yeah, there's you go. There's a converse and that's what podcasts are about, in my opinion. They're about stimulating a conversation. And that's what I do in my in my group that you just mentioned. And I'm not gonna give myself a plug, but I'm I've got a co-ed group that is it's virtually the principles of AA into because it it's so powerful, into people that don't need to go to AA that may not be alcoholics, right? That we're all addicted to something, though. We live in an addicted culture, right? And So it'll it'll open with like a reading or a teaching or and I don't mean I'm teaching, I'm just putting together something in my own words that is pretty you know, I did I bought the four noble truths of Buddhism two weeks ago and then last week I bought something from Anthony DeMello, who I don't know if you've ever read his book or heard r listened to his book Awareness, and then this week I bought you know, about a three minute read on attachment styles and gave the understanding of where attachment styles come from and And then there's twenty five of us at the moment in in a room, it's growing quickly where we can share and link that back to our relationships or previous relationships or how we show up in the world. We've lost a lot of this kind of this ritualistic and we a lot of I think there's a lot of men's movements and women's circles, but I don't see that many of co ed, right? We so what I'm hoping to do with this is and there's a lot of couples turning up to stimulate the conversation. You know, and it's corny things like love languages and things that seem corny, but super important as as a not as a a be all and end all tool, but super important as a tool. Like my my bottom two love languages out of the five love languages are my partner's top two. So we've got a problem, right? And you don't choose them. They either come from what your family did really well or what they did fucking hopeless, really, is the the way I sort of see it. So I
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: grew up in a home where it was Pretty emotionally violent and physically violent at times and very on edge. And words were thrown around pretty nastily, right? By my father predominantly. And then I meet a partner and she comes from a cre completely different home. And her top two love languages are physical touch and words of affirmation. And for me, like but I can't just turn around and say, Well, mine aren't those two and bad luck. I'm gonna love you. By buying gifts, right? I've got to say, okay, well, again, projection blame. I've got to remember that I it doesn't matter how much of the other ones I give are. It's a it's a different language. I'm speaking Japanese and she only understands Chinese, right? So it doesn't matter how much I'm talking to her, I could be saying, I could be doing the most amazing things. It's not actually hitting where she needs it. So it's not love. Like if you don't love someone how they want to be loved, it's not love. That's that's just the way it is. It's every Disney movie, right? The father buys the fancy things and buys the stuff and the kid's just crying out for quality time, right? But then in another home where there's heaps of quality time, the kid might actually be crying out for a gift. So it's about understanding these. And I get again, I'm carried away a bit, but it's so important that I can't just say to my partner, Well, I'm sorry, I grew up in a home that was traumatic and, you know, I'm not gonna work on trying to hug more because that's just that's traumatic for me and I'm a fucking victim here and let me tell you about how bad it was and No, I've got to say, okay, well if I wanna love her and I choose to be in a relationship with her, I've got to slowly work on trying to be more aware and more conscious about how do I make her feel more loved. And if her if that's by words of affirmation and by by act by physical touch predominantly, how do I move towards that? How not just go, you know, well fuck it, mine's acts of service, so I'm gonna mow the lawn and you should be happy about that. How many guys do you see that on the building side or whatever? Fucking couldn't do more for a mate. Renovated the house, gave her the kitchen
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: she wanted. She fucking still hates me. She don't want those things, probably. Maybe she wants a holiday. I don't know. Maybe she just wants a hug. Maybe she wants you to fucking go for a walk on the beach with her for an hour. And don't give a fuck about the new kitchen you just spent 40 grand on. Maybe that's what she really wants. Yeah.
Dame - Djaara Country: Just wants you home
Chad Taylor - It's You: But he'll justify and tell you, mate, I don't know, she's so fucking ungrateful. Like I fucking she drives around a Lexus all day and I fucking pay for the fuel through the business and then she's hassling me about fucking working.
Dame - Djaara Country: fuck. Yeah, I'm glad you plugged the group and I'm gonna put some links in the show notes and I want you to take a little bit of time to talk about the book too.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, so book looks like this, pretty basic cover. I don't know how much of this you'll put on video, but the book came someone asked me the other day how long did it take to write? And I
Dame - Djaara Country: I heard that.
Chad Taylor - It's You: yeah, I had to sort of think, right? 'Cause it was three and a half weeks from start to finish, but it was really forty seven years. But it came about it's my journey, you know, I've been I've been I've got two daughters to two different women. I've probably had five proper live in relationships in my life. I've like I said, I've flipped houses, I've fucking just and if you had a got me ten years ago, I would have gave you all the reasons why I justify all those things that it was was everybody else's fault, right? Or where now I you know, I really see that, you know, that that sort of cliche saying of it takes two to tengo. I was unedu the biggest problem was I was unconscious, right? I I I was ignorant. And like the Buddhism talks a lot about ignorance and people get offended. What you're telling me I'm ignorant? Right? In AA they use on power you're powerless. You know, in AA the first step of AA is you're powerless over alcohol and your life's unmanageable, right? We're all powerless. To me, I'm I was powerless over the way I seen the I was literally powerless over the way I've seen the world. And that's how this book come about. Not to make money, not to get rich, more to reach people. I know that I'm working really hard on myself and I know that I'm reaching a lot of people. And it was more for me as as a way to reach more people. You know, and I've already got my own deal with the universe that, you know, if if for some reason it ever becomes really popular, that like I said, thirty percent of my my time already goes back into giving back and even more of that would go back into giving back. Like Because it's you know, I've sent out more probably as many free books as what I've as what I've sold, right? And don't bother me. You know, you guys down there at the the Mankind weekend, I gave you know, I sent them down at cost, right? Which fuck I don't care if if forty men get a book, right? And then we get to have this conversation, fucking not making money off that is jack shit, right? It's not it's not a big deal. So for me, it really is and I I take I guess I take you through a journey of And I've tried to I've tried to write it in my own way, in who I am. And it's good because people that know me say it's like I'm having a conversation with you as you're reading the book, right? And that's what I wanted. And it covers a lot of spirituality and it covers a lot of I suppose a lot of this rights of passage stuff that we've lost we've lost the ability to un we're always, I know, I know, I know. We go through that as a teenager to get kicked out of the tribe, right? That's why we go through that, I know. But I don't think we ever We ever go away from that, yeah I know mate. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. And that's why that whole it's you, fuck, it's me. And I work really hard on that. Work really hard because, yeah, I could always fuck, I'm always working on something. Could be me getting upset about the way my daughter's eating her food. What the fuck is it a big deal to me? What what what is it? It's about me, it's not about her. It's not bothering her. Why is it bothering me? And I'm sure if you're a parent, which I'm sure you are, right? You know exactly what I mean. Why why does it bother me if that person doesn't wash their car and they're ungrateful? Why, you know, for me it's more about I have the the longest lawn in the street, right? Or but other people pride themselves, that guy's fucking weak or lazy, look at his lawn. So I guess I'm I'm ranting a bit, but the bo I started off with really relationships fail because we're unconscious of our own shit. And if we can come a little bit more conscious, we've got a little bit more choice in how we behave. Because the world's becoming more polarised. And it isn't always them. I wanna write another book called It's Them Fuck It's Us and the parenting version of this, right? Because even it's a hard job being a parent, and I'll probably finish on this and hand it back over to you, that it's a hard job being a parent because at what point is it our will and at what at what point is it the kids' will and as at what point i are we making them conform so that we're okay and at what point it's a very that one's a hard one, I think. Right. we're domesticating we're animals and we're domesticating each other and how we domesticate each other is w our on our belief system. If my daughter doesn't want to clean a room, it's very hard, right? I could say, yeah, it's my house, it's respect, it's all those things. But it's my will against hers in that moment. And I think we've lost a lot of the understanding of even questioning that. Because it's not long ago that kids were seen and not heard. And I've gone away from the book a bit here, but I talk a lot about this message is everywhere if we look. It w it's in all nursery rhymes, it's in all a lot of songs, it's in poetry, it's even that, you know, that kid's that kid's little chant from preschool. Can't go under it, can't go over it, can't go round it. We have to go through it. We sing it and we chant it, but we don't really ever look at what it means. It's not talking about a fucking a fence or a rock. It's a it's a metaphorical
Dame - Djaara Country: The
Chad Taylor - It's You: yeah. It's metaphorical, you know, teaching about we've got to go through it. We live in a world where we don't. We'll take a medication or we'll just trade our partners in and get a new one. Or, you know, we're not getting our ends meet, so we'll go jump on porn. Or like we live in a world where we don't have to grow up because the world's catered to not growing up. So yeah, this book really for me was about it's more of a journey and it's not something that you you read and just tick and say, yeah, I've done it. know, hopefully things I've put in there, references and parables at each chapter, hopefully what it does is not to keep rereading my book, but it stimulates it stimulates something in you to go and search more because that's I think that's what we're not we're not we become pretty narrow minded in the world that I know where
Dame - Djaara Country: Yeah, and it's like catalogue too, like every chapter, you know, might steer me towards Victor Frankel or to Joseph Campbell or, you know, a whole bunch of other people that I hadn't heard of. just like okay, great. A bunch of resources in there.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, I've got I've got my next door neighbor, Josh. He's only a younger fella and he said, I stopped at the Mexican fisherman parable. That was enough for me, right? He's a builder, he's just starting his own business, he's got young kids. Just that one parable. If you just open it up to that's in chapter two and read that and meditated on that, right? That's enough of a I'm not gonna tell anyone what it is because they can either, you know, you could Google it if you wanted to, but that Mexican parable, right? It's if we just meditated on that every day, that one parable.
Dame - Djaara Country: Cracker. Hmm.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Life would change. And I didn't write it. I just fucking it got given to me somewhere along the way and I put it in there. And I openly say that in the book. I haven't created anything. I haven't I'm not a guru. I'm fucking I've just hopefully gone through enough shit of my own and found my own way out enough that hopefully I've been able to piece together some of that journey and and condense it into a a simpler language than sometimes what other stuff teaches. If you can and that's something, you know, not that I'm giving you advice, but with coaching and everything, right? It's not so much the lingo. It's more about condensing it. If you can take a really a really big topic and you can learn how to speak it out simply and get people to understand it, that shows you really know it. It's a bit like the builder, right? When some someone will come around they've got no fucking idea how to fix something. If you can go in there and you're skilled enough and you've you've fucked up enough really. To know that, yeah, right, I will this we'll do it this way. And you can actually explain that, you're probably gonna get the job. Right? Because you know you more on personal experience. And that's what all tradies that come to my house, I think they find me pretty easy because I say, you okay if I do this, and I say, Hey, look, dude, I'm not gonna complain. You're the professional. I've engaged you to do it. Don't rip me off and just do it however you do it if it was your own house. And then I just leave them go. Where I'm sure you know. We're off topic of the book, because we could talk for the next ten hours and we'd still keep going. But you know, the the one you hate is the homeowner who's looking over your shoulder, A, because they're trying to work out how to do it themselves next time, or B because you're not doing it the way they wanted you to do it, yet they've employed you to fucking do it. So yeah, the book is about really it's not gonna it's not gonna give you five tips on how to save your marriage or get more sex or become a millionaire. It's not gonna do any of those things. But if you if you get something out of it. Whether it's the quotes or the parables or someone, you know, I think it might have been you said, I love that you included Tool in it. I've had that a few times, right? Surprised how many people love Tool. And the you know, other other people love that I've I've sort of almost brought Christianity into it or Buddhism or people love what they love. Victor Frankel quotes, my partner loves Victor Frankel You know, between stimulus and response, there's a there's a there's a choice, right? And it's about that choice. She loves that quote. It's her most favourite quote. And I don't even know it properly, but I knew what it's about. It's about are we responding or are we reacting? And if with with the more consciousness we get, yeah. So buy it guys. Like it's fucking it's pretty cheap. It's pretty it's pretty and if you really can't afford it, just email me, get my details, I'll send you the the audio book and the ebook out for free. Like seriously, I'm not it's not about Becoming a millionaire and pay it forward. Right. If you really can't afford it, email me. Get in contact with me. And then I'm sh if it means anything to you, pay it forward. Buy someone a coffee or fuck I don't know, buy some old lady a packet of biscuits or do something.
Dame - Djaara Country: I sent a picture of it in a in a blokes group chat and asked the boys if they want to do some light reading and and most of the responses were just like this. It's like and my mate said that book's got a strong spine.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Brother.
Dame - Djaara Country: got a fucking strong spine, all right.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, and like everything, it's not for everyone, right? I got it outside a cafe, Kindred Coffee, if you're in the south coast of New South Wales. She's in Milton Little Caravan, just up from the church opposite the servo. She's so supportive of my book. A lot of people are, and she's but she's really promotes it and she sort of laughs about how many how many couples come for a coffee and then they're like, you should you know, you should get that book to their partner, right? The projection. And it's like, hang on, I don't need it. Maybe I should buy it for you. It's like buy two copies and study it.
Dame - Djaara Country: That's right. Yeah.
Chad Taylor - It's You: There you go, guys. Buy one, get one free for your partner.
Dame - Djaara Country: That's right. Yeah. I think it it is hard work. It came at a time where I was ready to get to another level of truthful with myself. Fuck. I mean though I shudder to think how much more truthful there is to get. 'Cause I thought I was already there and realised I was nowhere near it, so But I guess it's the right path to be on, isn't it? Regardless of where the end is.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Layers, right? Like it every every spiritual teaching is always about two steps forward and one step back, or five steps forwards and six steps back, right? That's that's what I want to leave you with, right? And leave everyone, unless you've got a camera on your 24, if you've got a camera on your 24-7, like are you flirting with the coffee lady or are you being nice? Is your wife in the car observing that? And then you get back in, you almost grunt to her as you pass over the coffee, and you've you've asked the coffee lady. how her morning was or how her day's going and commented on the great sunny day and then you get back in the car and like there's like you talk about work to be done. I think the layers are fucking endless. You know, like you could study even the AA book, right? It's only 164 pages, the actual program part of it. I've studied it for 26 years, religiously pretty much, and every time I go through it with someone or I I've see something new about myself. So the the print doesn't change. Hopefully this changes. So just remember that, guys. You know, if it's you know, we never know. How much do we know? Like we don't. We don't. It's you something will stimulate something in you, and you'll think, wow, fuck, that was, you know, and I'll throw it out to the men here. Like, we like to we like to project. You can't tell me that some of us haven't been unconscious in sex, right? Even as a teenager, people like to believe that, you know, when you're a teenager, right, you don't understand ethics of Whether you're pushing for something the girl might not want to do, you're co commenting about blue balls. Like there's the work is so deep. Most people go, I'm not gonna fucking I'm not gonna look at that. Like I was just a teenager and it's just normal. It's fine. But just don't do it now. If you go back and do an inventory, you go, okay, well, you know, you hear that a lot, right? fuck, you know, I did all this stuff and she still doesn't want to have sex with me. Well, maybe there's a reason. Have you actually really sat down and and not reacted? You know? Have you actually sat down? You know, like medications will change something I'm dealing with at the moment where a friend of mine, he's had to go on medication. And I know both of them, they're not a client. And, you know, his sex drives really low. And they're struggling, they're struggling in that, right? And every time she wants to bring it up, instead of instead of accepting it, talk about it, you fuck it's me. She's saying, like, is it that we're not, is it that you don't have desire for me? What is it? And he's like, fucking talk about it. So there's a problem that he won't talk about. And it's a bigger problem than what we need, right? Otherwise it'll manifest into something else. So there's always a layer. Fuck, there's always a layer. Right? How do you speak to your kids? How do you think about a different race or sex? How do you treat this person? Like there's you know, how are you towards dogs? What do you think about Trump? What do you think about fucking this? What do you think about the the stuff about the vaccine? Like it's it's endless to go deeper in yourself. Why do you Why do you believe that? Most of us don't even know why we believe what we believe. This could go on forever, mate.
Dame - Djaara Country: Fucking eyes. We'll have to chat again.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Yeah, you come on, we'll we'll spin the rolls. Not that there's been a role here anyway, but we'll we could
Dame - Djaara Country: No, it's been pretty fluid.
Chad Taylor - It's You: we could almost just I could just post this on mine as well and we could have the not that I'd do that, but you know, I've done that with another guy. Yeah.
Dame - Djaara Country: No, but just flip the screens around. Yeah, all right. I reckon yeah, I reckon let's wrap that up and I'll stop recording.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Hm.
Dame - Djaara Country: yeah. I'll just check out with yeah, a lot of appreciation, and pretty fucking swollen in my heart just for the opportunity to reach out and connect and they just up my game and broaden my sphere with a conversation with you and yeah, thanks man.
Chad Taylor - It's You: Might been the same, right? Like b it whenever we have these conversations, both of us grow. You go into a conversation open minded, like I come into this to see, you know, what you know, not what can I give you and not why can I self promote, more what how can I connect with this dude? You see the difference, right, in podcasts with people who just want to keep self promoting, right? It's like I'm not a fucking business card, I'm just trying to have a conversation and that's why I think people want this conversation. Yeah, we might throw in a little bit about our book or about whatever we're doing, but it's not like a business card for it. My brother, I'm gonna go and have dinner. Have
Dame - Djaara Country: Cheers mate, good on ya.