00:00:00
Speaker 1: What do you do with a part of you that still wants to swing a fist at a problem?
00:00:05
Speaker 2: Not the version of you that.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: Packs the lunchboxes and answers the emails. The other one, the one that goes all hot in the chest when somebody cuts you off in traffic before you've even had a chance to think about how you might respond. Now, most of us were never taught what that thing, that part of us, we weren't taught what that's for. So we either pretend it isn't there or we can Sometimes let it run the show.
00:00:28
Speaker 2: I'm Osher Ginsberg. This is Better Than Yesterday. Thanks for being a part of it.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: Harry Garside walked into a boxing gym when he was nine because he, in his words, felt soft next to his two older brothers. But he kept turning up and he did that until he became an Australian champion and then the first Australian to win an Olympic boxing medal in more than three decades. Harry also paints his nails, has done ballet, and has spent years in rooms full of teenage boys who just won't talk. This episode is not how to be a tougher man. It's about what you or the young man in your life can do with the strength that's already there. Inside all of us, there's an animal. Sometimes it doesn't ask for permission or wait for you to think about things. Harry spent 20 years in a boxing ring learning to sit next to that thing instead of running away from it. So what actually changes in your mind when you know your body can handle itself?
00:01:24
Speaker 2: Of course, we are disconnected, as I just mentioned, from the animal kingdom. It's like, What you just said, you watch a situation happen where it's like a mom who's a grown adult is in between a dangerous situation and her kid. You watch that primal mother nature come out and it is beautiful to watch, but she'll move mountains to get in that way. It's a beautiful thing. And it's like, I think combat sport, not just boxing, but combat sport does that for people, right? It doesn't matter if you're a boy, it doesn't matter if you're a girl. It gives you a space where you can find out what your body's capable of, what your body isn't. You learn a bit of self-confidence, a bit of self-love. Because I know right now, and I'm not flexing, but I know right now that we live in a beautiful country. It's very unlikely. But if someone come in right now and was dangerous or deadly, I would feel like I would run straight at it. I would put myself in the firing line and go at it. And I have noticed this with, say, someone like my dad. This happens inevitably. He's 55, 56. He's getting towards past middle age now. And it's like, I feel like he doesn't feel like he can protect his family anymore. And then in that, he's getting more pessimistic. He's getting more like, because his body isn't capable. He's lived a hard life and his body isn't capable of like, if an intruder come, he would be very fearful, right? And I noticed his mindset changed. I think it's really important for humans to be able to protect themselves. It's in us, right? And I feel way more secure because I know I can. I know I can right now. And I think it's really important for humans to feel that.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: We can all picture the kid who's the biggest one in the room, the loudest one in the room. Every question that you ask him comes back as a joke that everybody laughs at. Harry has run workshops full of kids like that for years. And he reckons that the loudest kid is almost always the one who's carrying the heaviest story. But you just have to stay in the room long enough for that kid to feel safe enough to put it down.
00:03:13
Speaker 2: There's always someone in the room that holds a lot of power and it's often that that rat bag kid who can say at the age of 15 16 they can sort of pick on people and they're tough they're strong they're usually quite big and they're the ones that like it's so interesting because they're the ones who i wouldn't say they have the biggest story but they have a rich story as well and then there's like a hook and there's a moment where you chuck a few hooks out and they it's like that uh that call to adventure they get the opportunity to go on the hero's journey and if they take that hook there's a lot of resistance and But often, if you get them early in the day, it gives everyone else the permission to be vulnerable. Such as?
00:03:48
Speaker 1: Right. What kind of hook we're talking?
00:03:49
Speaker 2: So, you ask them a question, right? And it'll be more real. Now, often, so in a situation, you would ask them a personal question like, what's home life like for you? And often, it's males, they would take the piss at that age. They take the piss and make a joke. All their mates are laughing and thinking, how good's this? And you ask a couple of other follow-up questions, right? You pay more attention. And then eventually they will get slower to the surface. It doesn't always happen, but I would say eight times out of 10, it does. And they give, they take that chance, right? Because no one, they have most likely felt in their life, no one has listened to them. No one has cared about them. Once you start hearing their home situation, you start realizing they've got a story and they need someone to be there for them, to care for them, to listen to them, to actually validate them. And then in that moment, All the other people in the class or the year level are looking at them like, whoa, we never realized this because kids are, we don't, as young people, we don't realize that, right?
00:04:45
Speaker 1: No.
00:04:45
Speaker 2: These people who are bullying and picking on other people, they've also got a hectic story, right? They probably had to look after their parents or look after their brothers who are injecting drugs or doing this, doing that. Like it's a wild story for some young people in our society worldwide. And I just, I love those moments because they take, and it doesn't always happen, but they take the chance and they step to it. And they're often great leaders when they do.
00:05:08
Speaker 1: If you're hearing my voice, I'm going to suspect that a warm shower, a couch, food delivered to your door, these sort of things are probably things you take for granted. Our ancestors did such a good job that most of us will go an entire week without our body being asked to go through anything hard.
00:05:28
Speaker 2: I think I've turned myself into the man that my younger self didn't think he was. I'm quite proud of that. This weird challenge, I do one challenge a month for the last five and a half years. I'm actually currently doing my 68th month in a row. It's called the Uncomfortable Challenges. I've done things like 50 hours no talking, improv class, warm makeup, full face of makeup for a day. I begged for money for a couple of hours. I've washed windows at lights. I've done a number of things. Some are fun, some are hard, some are physical, some are emotional. But each challenge I've learned something from, and I think the world we live in right now, the Western world, it's almost like our ancestors did too well, that it's like, we've got it real good in Australia. Most people have got it real good in Australia. And it's like in that, our body is naturally hardwired to protect itself as much as it can. So if we can conserve energy and be in a comfortable place, we can conserve energy for the time that we're going to be in stress, right? Because that's how we're hardwired. And it's like right now, It's like the comfort is the Netflix, the couch, the clothes, the heat up, the warm showers. These are all things we didn't have a hundred years ago, right? It's wild to think that. Not that long ago, we didn't have that. And it's just like, I think there is so much in our society pulling us in a way of comfort so that it keeps us stuck. It keeps us small. And I think the more that you can consciously push yourself, whether that be a hard training session, whether that be having a cold shower in the morning, whether that be You know your poison, you pick your poison and make sure you do it and feel that elation when you achieve it and feel how you shend your skin and you get a little bit bigger and you continuously do that day after day after day. You watch that transformation.
00:07:15
Speaker 1: Because our body has an adaptation response to stress. When I got quite sick, a large part of it was turning away from the thing that I was terrified of. I want to scroll past those stories and I know, no, man, You got to read it.
00:07:33
Speaker 2: You got to read it. So I click on it. I read it.
00:07:36
Speaker 1: I feel all the shit in my body.
00:07:38
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, there it is.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: Take a couple of breaths. And then it's not as scary as it was five minutes ago. But if I scroll past it, it's even scarier the next time. It gets harder.
00:07:50
Speaker 2: Way harder. That's why I generally have empathy for people that if they've lived a certain way for so long, It's so hard to bite the bullet and change that thing, whatever you want to change inside yourself. That's why I think it's always like start small. Start small. Cold shower in the morning. And even just finish in a cold. You don't have to start on it, but just do something, right? Just do something that's– you could even like mow the lawns out the front. But just say you're going to do something that you don't want to do and do it and then feel that. Actually sit in it for five seconds and go, I did that. I did that for myself. I chose to do that. Like, oh, what a feeling. What a feeling.
00:08:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. As someone who's a man, sometimes it can be like you were handed a set of instructions for how to be a man, and the person who handed you those instructions got them from someone who got them from someone else. And none of those men along the way ever asked why those instructions were like that. So how do you tell the difference between a thing that you value, a thing that you've chosen, and a habit that you've simply inherited?
00:08:52
Speaker 2: I think it's just, and I felt this most of my life. When I was in high school, I felt I had to play the role that was pushed on me by society, and that was being more like my brothers, play the role of a garside. And I'm guilty of this in many environments in my life. So I think the biggest thing is it's just like we've been told stories upon stories upon stories about how to live our life from generations and generations before, and no one really knows. And I don't think we spend too much time questioning those things. And I heard this story and I absolutely love it. It's like this man saw his wife cooking a roast and she chopped half the roast in half and then put it in the oven. He's like, what the hell is she doing that for? So he asked, so why did you do that? He's like, my wife, my mom did that, sorry, when I was older. And then when I was younger, sorry. And then they went to the mom, they asked her, why did you do that? And she's like, grandma used to do that. And grandma was still alive. She's in the retirement village. And they went to her and they said, back in my day, we had to chop the lamb in half to fit into the oven. It's just like we live stories upon stories upon stories, and some of them don't serve us anymore, right? But it's like we live in this archaic world of what does it mean to be a man? It means to be stoic and strong, and some of them are really good traits. There's also some traits that I'm like, oh, we probably, could look at that and maybe evolve that a little bit more. I'm not sure. That's what I think anyway. I'm just trying to challenge it and question it and do it with like honor and pride and come from a pure place. I never try and disrespect anyone. I'm not right. I'm not wrong. I'm just doing it how I want.
00:10:16
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with you more. It's a great way of talking about what's not really serving us. What have we been doing without thinking about it? It's kind of fascinating.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: I've just noticed in my life that it's just patterns after patterns after patterns until you recognize the pattern. And then hopefully, if you want to level up, you can level up. If the pattern serves you, keep running it, right?
00:10:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
00:10:37
Speaker 2: But that's what I'm just trying to do is try and recognize the pattern. Just try and recognize what I always do. And it might look different, but the same emotions are coming up again and again and again. And I'm just like, it's up to me. If it doesn't serve me anymore, then I'll try my best to evolve it. If it does, keep going.
00:10:53
Speaker 1: That's Harry Garside. That is Harry Garside.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: He's a lovely man.
00:10:57
Speaker 1: I got a chance to dance with him on Dancing with the Stars, and I got a chance to hang out with him backstage. He's a fabulous human being. I'm really proud of the bloke he is. If this episode was good for you, please share it with a friend. Like, rate, subscribe, follow, comment, whatever you can do. All those things really, really help us in the show notes. Like I said, I'll put a link to Harry's work. That's also where you can find links to my books and the live shows that I do regularly here in Sydney. I'll be back here on Wednesday. And I guess now all you've got to do is go off and be better than yesterday. Go on. Enjoy.
Speaker 1: What do you do with a part of you that still wants to swing a fist at a problem?
00:00:05
Speaker 2: Not the version of you that.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: Packs the lunchboxes and answers the emails. The other one, the one that goes all hot in the chest when somebody cuts you off in traffic before you've even had a chance to think about how you might respond. Now, most of us were never taught what that thing, that part of us, we weren't taught what that's for. So we either pretend it isn't there or we can Sometimes let it run the show.
00:00:28
Speaker 2: I'm Osher Ginsberg. This is Better Than Yesterday. Thanks for being a part of it.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: Harry Garside walked into a boxing gym when he was nine because he, in his words, felt soft next to his two older brothers. But he kept turning up and he did that until he became an Australian champion and then the first Australian to win an Olympic boxing medal in more than three decades. Harry also paints his nails, has done ballet, and has spent years in rooms full of teenage boys who just won't talk. This episode is not how to be a tougher man. It's about what you or the young man in your life can do with the strength that's already there. Inside all of us, there's an animal. Sometimes it doesn't ask for permission or wait for you to think about things. Harry spent 20 years in a boxing ring learning to sit next to that thing instead of running away from it. So what actually changes in your mind when you know your body can handle itself?
00:01:24
Speaker 2: Of course, we are disconnected, as I just mentioned, from the animal kingdom. It's like, What you just said, you watch a situation happen where it's like a mom who's a grown adult is in between a dangerous situation and her kid. You watch that primal mother nature come out and it is beautiful to watch, but she'll move mountains to get in that way. It's a beautiful thing. And it's like, I think combat sport, not just boxing, but combat sport does that for people, right? It doesn't matter if you're a boy, it doesn't matter if you're a girl. It gives you a space where you can find out what your body's capable of, what your body isn't. You learn a bit of self-confidence, a bit of self-love. Because I know right now, and I'm not flexing, but I know right now that we live in a beautiful country. It's very unlikely. But if someone come in right now and was dangerous or deadly, I would feel like I would run straight at it. I would put myself in the firing line and go at it. And I have noticed this with, say, someone like my dad. This happens inevitably. He's 55, 56. He's getting towards past middle age now. And it's like, I feel like he doesn't feel like he can protect his family anymore. And then in that, he's getting more pessimistic. He's getting more like, because his body isn't capable. He's lived a hard life and his body isn't capable of like, if an intruder come, he would be very fearful, right? And I noticed his mindset changed. I think it's really important for humans to be able to protect themselves. It's in us, right? And I feel way more secure because I know I can. I know I can right now. And I think it's really important for humans to feel that.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: We can all picture the kid who's the biggest one in the room, the loudest one in the room. Every question that you ask him comes back as a joke that everybody laughs at. Harry has run workshops full of kids like that for years. And he reckons that the loudest kid is almost always the one who's carrying the heaviest story. But you just have to stay in the room long enough for that kid to feel safe enough to put it down.
00:03:13
Speaker 2: There's always someone in the room that holds a lot of power and it's often that that rat bag kid who can say at the age of 15 16 they can sort of pick on people and they're tough they're strong they're usually quite big and they're the ones that like it's so interesting because they're the ones who i wouldn't say they have the biggest story but they have a rich story as well and then there's like a hook and there's a moment where you chuck a few hooks out and they it's like that uh that call to adventure they get the opportunity to go on the hero's journey and if they take that hook there's a lot of resistance and But often, if you get them early in the day, it gives everyone else the permission to be vulnerable. Such as?
00:03:48
Speaker 1: Right. What kind of hook we're talking?
00:03:49
Speaker 2: So, you ask them a question, right? And it'll be more real. Now, often, so in a situation, you would ask them a personal question like, what's home life like for you? And often, it's males, they would take the piss at that age. They take the piss and make a joke. All their mates are laughing and thinking, how good's this? And you ask a couple of other follow-up questions, right? You pay more attention. And then eventually they will get slower to the surface. It doesn't always happen, but I would say eight times out of 10, it does. And they give, they take that chance, right? Because no one, they have most likely felt in their life, no one has listened to them. No one has cared about them. Once you start hearing their home situation, you start realizing they've got a story and they need someone to be there for them, to care for them, to listen to them, to actually validate them. And then in that moment, All the other people in the class or the year level are looking at them like, whoa, we never realized this because kids are, we don't, as young people, we don't realize that, right?
00:04:45
Speaker 1: No.
00:04:45
Speaker 2: These people who are bullying and picking on other people, they've also got a hectic story, right? They probably had to look after their parents or look after their brothers who are injecting drugs or doing this, doing that. Like it's a wild story for some young people in our society worldwide. And I just, I love those moments because they take, and it doesn't always happen, but they take the chance and they step to it. And they're often great leaders when they do.
00:05:08
Speaker 1: If you're hearing my voice, I'm going to suspect that a warm shower, a couch, food delivered to your door, these sort of things are probably things you take for granted. Our ancestors did such a good job that most of us will go an entire week without our body being asked to go through anything hard.
00:05:28
Speaker 2: I think I've turned myself into the man that my younger self didn't think he was. I'm quite proud of that. This weird challenge, I do one challenge a month for the last five and a half years. I'm actually currently doing my 68th month in a row. It's called the Uncomfortable Challenges. I've done things like 50 hours no talking, improv class, warm makeup, full face of makeup for a day. I begged for money for a couple of hours. I've washed windows at lights. I've done a number of things. Some are fun, some are hard, some are physical, some are emotional. But each challenge I've learned something from, and I think the world we live in right now, the Western world, it's almost like our ancestors did too well, that it's like, we've got it real good in Australia. Most people have got it real good in Australia. And it's like in that, our body is naturally hardwired to protect itself as much as it can. So if we can conserve energy and be in a comfortable place, we can conserve energy for the time that we're going to be in stress, right? Because that's how we're hardwired. And it's like right now, It's like the comfort is the Netflix, the couch, the clothes, the heat up, the warm showers. These are all things we didn't have a hundred years ago, right? It's wild to think that. Not that long ago, we didn't have that. And it's just like, I think there is so much in our society pulling us in a way of comfort so that it keeps us stuck. It keeps us small. And I think the more that you can consciously push yourself, whether that be a hard training session, whether that be having a cold shower in the morning, whether that be You know your poison, you pick your poison and make sure you do it and feel that elation when you achieve it and feel how you shend your skin and you get a little bit bigger and you continuously do that day after day after day. You watch that transformation.
00:07:15
Speaker 1: Because our body has an adaptation response to stress. When I got quite sick, a large part of it was turning away from the thing that I was terrified of. I want to scroll past those stories and I know, no, man, You got to read it.
00:07:33
Speaker 2: You got to read it. So I click on it. I read it.
00:07:36
Speaker 1: I feel all the shit in my body.
00:07:38
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, there it is.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: Take a couple of breaths. And then it's not as scary as it was five minutes ago. But if I scroll past it, it's even scarier the next time. It gets harder.
00:07:50
Speaker 2: Way harder. That's why I generally have empathy for people that if they've lived a certain way for so long, It's so hard to bite the bullet and change that thing, whatever you want to change inside yourself. That's why I think it's always like start small. Start small. Cold shower in the morning. And even just finish in a cold. You don't have to start on it, but just do something, right? Just do something that's– you could even like mow the lawns out the front. But just say you're going to do something that you don't want to do and do it and then feel that. Actually sit in it for five seconds and go, I did that. I did that for myself. I chose to do that. Like, oh, what a feeling. What a feeling.
00:08:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. As someone who's a man, sometimes it can be like you were handed a set of instructions for how to be a man, and the person who handed you those instructions got them from someone who got them from someone else. And none of those men along the way ever asked why those instructions were like that. So how do you tell the difference between a thing that you value, a thing that you've chosen, and a habit that you've simply inherited?
00:08:52
Speaker 2: I think it's just, and I felt this most of my life. When I was in high school, I felt I had to play the role that was pushed on me by society, and that was being more like my brothers, play the role of a garside. And I'm guilty of this in many environments in my life. So I think the biggest thing is it's just like we've been told stories upon stories upon stories about how to live our life from generations and generations before, and no one really knows. And I don't think we spend too much time questioning those things. And I heard this story and I absolutely love it. It's like this man saw his wife cooking a roast and she chopped half the roast in half and then put it in the oven. He's like, what the hell is she doing that for? So he asked, so why did you do that? He's like, my wife, my mom did that, sorry, when I was older. And then when I was younger, sorry. And then they went to the mom, they asked her, why did you do that? And she's like, grandma used to do that. And grandma was still alive. She's in the retirement village. And they went to her and they said, back in my day, we had to chop the lamb in half to fit into the oven. It's just like we live stories upon stories upon stories, and some of them don't serve us anymore, right? But it's like we live in this archaic world of what does it mean to be a man? It means to be stoic and strong, and some of them are really good traits. There's also some traits that I'm like, oh, we probably, could look at that and maybe evolve that a little bit more. I'm not sure. That's what I think anyway. I'm just trying to challenge it and question it and do it with like honor and pride and come from a pure place. I never try and disrespect anyone. I'm not right. I'm not wrong. I'm just doing it how I want.
00:10:16
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with you more. It's a great way of talking about what's not really serving us. What have we been doing without thinking about it? It's kind of fascinating.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: I've just noticed in my life that it's just patterns after patterns after patterns until you recognize the pattern. And then hopefully, if you want to level up, you can level up. If the pattern serves you, keep running it, right?
00:10:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
00:10:37
Speaker 2: But that's what I'm just trying to do is try and recognize the pattern. Just try and recognize what I always do. And it might look different, but the same emotions are coming up again and again and again. And I'm just like, it's up to me. If it doesn't serve me anymore, then I'll try my best to evolve it. If it does, keep going.
00:10:53
Speaker 1: That's Harry Garside. That is Harry Garside.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: He's a lovely man.
00:10:57
Speaker 1: I got a chance to dance with him on Dancing with the Stars, and I got a chance to hang out with him backstage. He's a fabulous human being. I'm really proud of the bloke he is. If this episode was good for you, please share it with a friend. Like, rate, subscribe, follow, comment, whatever you can do. All those things really, really help us in the show notes. Like I said, I'll put a link to Harry's work. That's also where you can find links to my books and the live shows that I do regularly here in Sydney. I'll be back here on Wednesday. And I guess now all you've got to do is go off and be better than yesterday. Go on. Enjoy.
