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TRANSCRIPT
Unknown Speaker
This is an ohs.com.au production
Brendan Torazzi
Welcome to Episode 55, of the health and safety business podcast for Australia. I'm Brendan Torazzi, the host of the show and today and with John to me from wide awake wellness. Hi, John.
Unknown Speaker
Brendan pay going.
Brendan Torazzi
I'm really well. Thanks for Thanks for coming on the show. I'm curious to hear all that you do. Because you seem to have a lot of feathers to your, your Bose speaker, health educator, thought leader. what's your what's your background? How did you get to where? What you're doing today?
Unknown Speaker
Well, go ahead. I mean, that could be that could be an Air sign itself, I suppose. But yeah, it's very funny. I mean, I started out. I studied phys ed. Okay. So I came out of school and studied phys ed and love that but didn't really want to teach. So I've worked in health clubs and then worked in professional sport. I was in high performance roles for seven different AFL clubs. Wow.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, any of them went premiership on the euro.
Unknown Speaker
While I was there, no, I wasn't lucky enough to be part of that. But when pause, but yeah, but not quite. But, you know, the them's the, you know, that works out sometimes, isn't it? But yeah, and along the way, you know, I did Master studies, and I lectured in in Phys. Ed in the 80s, and did some lecturing in medicine, I taught wellness to medical students. And along the way, when you when you working with elite athletes, you're constantly coming up against those athletes that don't fit what your western science textbooks say. And you realise they're different animals. So you're going to start thinking outside the box. And so that caused me to start exploring and talking to Yogi's and Qigong masters, and then, you know, doctors and traditional Chinese medicine and I invited medicine and started to really expand my learning and became very developed a really broad skill set, I suppose. And because I've always been really curious sort of person, and up along the way, you know, probably the, the skill that I carry through all that was that I just have the capacity for taking something that's complex, and delivering it to somebody in simple terms that they can understand when spoken, and maybe that was my upbringing in a pub in Collingwood. That, you know, in the Darling Downs in Queensland, so I moved to Melbourne when I was 10. And we did have a pub in the Darling Downs. And that was my first connection to construction workers who travelled to work because a lot of the lodges in our hotel at the time were transferred workers who are building weed sites. Yeah. And from a safety perspective, I remember one old guy, he liked our lovely men, you know, they're away from their families, and now myself and my siblings became quite close to them. And they was one of Philip Clary. And he used to say to me, Hey, give me 10 cents. They say, Son, can you run up the shop for me and get me decent pack of soap? Because, you know, in a pub, we have the little little cakes of soap, you know, Mike dives. And anyway, one day, Clara didn't come home from work, a crane that toppled over on the site, and fell on him and crushed his side and he bled out under the crane. So gosh, my connection to safety goes back to being a nine year old, you know, and
Brendan Torazzi
that must have had a big impact on you at that age.
Unknown Speaker
Well, yeah, it was just it was amazing, though. The way the adults the cup with around that was well, yeah, wow, that happens, you know, it's like so it was a really odd space to be in as a kid because this lovely man was no longer with it. But the adults around it were like, they didn't seem traumatised by it was like, something that would have been late 60s in Australia, and I suppose people dying on remote work sites was not uncommon.
Brendan Torazzi
Do you think it was a different era back then? I like it. People were tougher or something in a way than what we are today.
Unknown Speaker
Well, you know, we talk about I mean, I wrote the book that I wrote last year on FIFO. Yeah, you know, people talk about how hard FIFO is and I think to myself, really, you know, like those workers who came and stayed in our pub that didn't get to go home every two weeks. Brian shear isn't the Stockman because we're I actually was born on carob station at the Roman, the Stockman, those guys that didn't get to go home, they just lived away quite spot and conditions, but that's how they earned a quid and they would send money back to their families, you know, and
Brendan Torazzi
maybe it's the coming and going that's the hard part that you've not quite settled in either either place.
Unknown Speaker
It could be, you know, I mean, I mean, there's a lot of elements to it. And of course, those guys didn't get paid the way these guys get paid.
Unknown Speaker
Okay, well, that's a point as well.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, it is. And that because often that's the root of the problem, too. But yeah, I think that, you know, we're people tougher back then. I think that people were sort of more and because there wasn't much media around so that, you know, tragic things weren't in your face all the time. Now, they just sort of happened and everybody went, Okay, you know, how can we learn from that and then everyone moves on. I remember, we when we moved to Melbourne that the there's a lovely fellow, his name was Vern Vern. Ferran camp, I think was his last name. He was the manager of the local pool at Moz. And he and his family left miles not long after we did, and he went to Ipswich and started working in the coal mines. And he died in a in a coal mine collapse in Ipswich in the early 70s. That was us those there was a whole bunch of miners that died down in that mine, you know, so remember that one affecting me more because like, you know, we spent we used to spend your whole summers at the pool, you know, and it was, it was a lovely man, you know, it took care of itself.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, do you think that those early experiences have sort of shaped your career path? In some ways?
Unknown Speaker
Well, maybe they did. You know, some, it's so interesting, isn't it? So I suppose, you know, people say to me, how did you come to be a speaker and I said, Well, growing up in Collingwood in the 70s, in the first half of the 70s, you are the head to be able to fight, run fast, or talk. And I couldn't fight and I wasn't very quick. But I have got the capacity to see a conversation that doesn't matter if somebody is a CEO, or they're digging trenches, you know, yeah, so I do have that. And I do love. I just love people. You know, like, that's probably even more significant thing about growing up in pubs, you just meet so many people and you see the good evolve?
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. So is that is that the skill set with? Like, it's at finding common ground? Or is it? You said, you said before you've hurt you're a curious person. Is it sort of the finding out people's stories? What What? What do you think gives you that skill to be able to connect with people? I
Unknown Speaker
think that I mean, that's a really cool thing. It's I can, you know, I'm genuinely interested in other people. I love hearing their story. So like, if I meet up with you for coffee, I want to know where you're born, where you grew up what your dad did. Yeah. Where did you go to school shooting or out with What sports did you love? Just want to know, yeah, who was your favourite bands? Who did you see play live? You know, like, where did you go on holidays as a kid? Because the more interest you have in another person, the more you learn about them? At some point, you find a connection with them in in in your life. Yeah, yeah. There's a connection there somewhere, you know, and it's like, that's amazing when you discover that. It's very cool.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. 100%. And so the FIFO book. I wasn't, I wasn't aware that you had done that. I mean, that's a big undertaking. Is that your first book? Or have you done you've? I've got a sneaking, feeling. You might have had something in the past as well.
Unknown Speaker
Look, I've written hundreds of articles, you know, yeah, yeah. And some of them be articles and they've been published all over the world, you know, but this thing, are your football following yourself?
Brendan Torazzi
Well, I have been recently the last few years because my youngest son is become AFL craze a couple of years ago. So I am now into big time into AFL CIO, who's, who's the fellow are well, we're in Sydney. So he's just one he's supporter. Gotcha.
Unknown Speaker
Okay, so well. It's so interesting. So there was a fella by the name of John Nia. So Johnny is from Claremont originally. Then Johnny's work, he's well, Johnny 63 Next week, right. And it's a bit of a reputation as being one of the fittest men that ever played AFL footy. Like, one day he he was like he started out he came across a play for Collingwood, then for Richmond, and that's where I met him when I was conditioning coach at Richmond. And then he went back to Western Australia and he was the original vice captain of the West Coast Eagles. Wow. And, and one day, they played a game at too long and they all played really badly and they lost and they shouldn't have lost and he was dirty on himself for the way he played. So when I arrived back at Perth airport, he pulled out his shorts, these runners these t shirt, and he said that those take the gear home, we already ran home to Claremont from the airport, which was 20 something kilometres, you know. So that's ja, and he's a beautiful bloke. And he's got a number of physiotherapy clinics in Perth, and he's very caring, deeply caring guy. And I was having a conversation with him one day, he was saying how he'd been trading at a senior mining executive upon his table, and he said, the guy was nearly in tears because he was so upset, and another worker had taken his life on one of the mine sites and, and we'd send as to what to do about it. And that really touched me and I sort of sat with that for over a year. And then during lockdown wasn't getting much work and contribution, I thought, I'm gonna write a book about FIFO because I want to help the workers and the families to make a better fist of that. And whilst I've never worked, well, I did work FIFO when I was 18, I worked out on the gas platforms and best straight as a kitchen hand. I've travelled, you know, for between 2006 and 2020, I travelled 240 days a year with my work. So I was always living out of suitcases and that sort of thing. So I understand that whole thing of being away. But so anyway, I sat down and I wrote that book, and I call it in it for the long haul. And the subtitle is making the most of the FIFO lifestyle. A few people got pretty excited about it. So Greg Chappell wrote the foreword for it. Yeah. And Paul Roos, and many Richardson wrote introductions to it in the book. So yeah, so that was, that was a real labour of love. And we've got it out there now. And so we're putting a lot of attention on the big mining companies to get them to buy it for their employees. You
Unknown Speaker
know, that makes sense. So have you got is it self published? Or
Unknown Speaker
is that and it's in paperback ebook and audiobook. So we've pretty much got everything covered. So now we're just working on getting those bigger orders, always selling them off the website, you know, but yeah, that's just small numbers that the real focus some of the big companies do, there's a really good construction company in Perth mazing, bunch of people called premier Oh, construction. So they're really good guys. They really take really good care of their people. And they bought a bunch of the books to give to all their people. So yeah, that was that was very sweet. Yeah, that's
Brendan Torazzi
good. So that would have been a learning journey in itself, writing a book, publishing it, then now working out how to distribute the thing. And
Unknown Speaker
yeah, you know what it does to your downside? What's that? Well, I'm probably gonna write, they're
Unknown Speaker
gonna take you got a taste for it now.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well, yeah. I'm fascinated with what's happened with men in Australia in the last 50 years. Yeah, I know, I've got a lot of thoughts and a lot of ideas on that. So I think it's time for me to write about men in general. So that'll be interesting. So,
Brendan Torazzi
but I think, you know, going back to this firefight book, it's like, you've got, you know, you've put your passion into it. And you know, the amount of lives that you can potentially touch by, you don't know who it's going to affect, but the positivity that you can put out there by writing this book, congratulations. It's, it's a wonderful thing to do. Yes,
Unknown Speaker
thank you. And when you also do a good thing, when I went on to online to a website called Fiverr, to see if I could find a cover designer. Yeah. And, and I looked through all these different cover designs, and I stumbled across one of them. That feels like the sort of thing that I want. And I contacted the designer. And I said, Look, I've written a book, and this is what it's about. I probably wrote 100 words. Yeah. And he said, 475 bucks. I'll give you two designs. And I didn't even look at the second design. I couldn't believe what he created. And I thought, Wow, this book is meant to do something because you know, for guy in India to get it by he got it was amazing.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. Funny. You should mention Faraj just, I was just on there last night for the first time myself. I'm designing a logo. And, and yeah, incredible what they can do on that platform that and you're right, the quality is just, you know, incredible. Yeah, yeah. And so, so you were saying 2006 to 2020. Let's say your 200 and 40 days a year was that yeah, travelling? That just That must make an impact. I mean, do you have a you have a family in Melbourne or?
Unknown Speaker
Well, yeah, I do. And, but like, oftentimes my parents travelled with me. So that's nice. Yeah. So we we sort of, yeah, it was never a huge problem. We worked together. We're not together now. But we did for that length of time. And that was all okay. But, you know, 50% of that was international.
Unknown Speaker
So I can fun make it fun. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
Well, I probably went over that period of time, I probably went to America at times. Wow. That was, you're very good at doing that. When it goes that direction? Yeah. Yeah, for
Brendan Torazzi
sure. What so what what was the appetite in America for? What were you speaking about to Well, I
Unknown Speaker
was doing a couple of things, I was doing some speaking on going to some conferences, as well, on workplace well being. And so there's an organisation in Miami called the Global wellness Institute. And it's pretty much the foremost institution in the world for the dissemination of evidence based Wellness Educator information. And they have a number of initiatives in various areas of wellness, and one of them is workplace well being. And I'm the Global chair of that initiative. So I'm constantly on zoom with my team work spread out all over the world, from Nigeria, to Tel Aviv to Cleveland to London, you know, like, it's Stockholm, you know. But also, at the time, I was doing a lot of work, I was delivering avatar courses, which is, the avatar course is a nine day experiential programme, exploring human consciousness, and whilst doing that work on it, and it's a beautiful programme where people can get in to control their own minds, you know, and it's a programme that doesn't present any sort of dogma or belief system, it just really is exploration. And so, over that journey with all of the learning that I did, I developed such an understanding of human consciousness and how humans behave and think and evolve and operate, that that in itself was a huge foundation for that to be able to write the book to load it. So. Okay, so that course is taught all over the world. And, you know, right now, I just learned recently that it's just gone Buddha in Iran, you know, because it doesn't matter, one of the things we learn is that human consciousness works the same everywhere. It doesn't matter which language it's been programmed in, you know,
Brendan Torazzi
is that like, it's like, it sounds like NLP or
Unknown Speaker
you're not really I mean, it's really very, very unique. And it and it was the work of one man who is a teacher who is running programmes for kids who are thrown out of school, he had this vision for wanting to understand more about human consciousness any he tried everything. He studied Hindu yoga, and he read all the old, you know, the Dow is philosophies and the Buddhist teachings and any, any realise Yeah, that was just more and more intellectual stuff. But it wasn't an experience and ended up buying himself one of those sensory deprivation tanks or the float tanks. And he thought, wonder what will happen if I get in there and take all stimulus away from my mind, because in the floating the waters of body temperature, see can't feel your extremities end. And there's, it's dead silent, and it's pitch, Black does nothing for your mind. And he ended up spending every waking hour of six weeks in that tank. And that's where all the epiphanies came, and all that understanding all the tools for this work. And he basically said down when he came out of the tape that he discovered a way to awaken consciousness without having to pick on somebody in a brine solution for six weeks you.
Brendan Torazzi
And that's all condensed down into nine days.
Unknown Speaker
Nine days. Yeah, it's extraordinary work. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people don't, don't go and look at it because they think they already know. But that's, that's just a great. You know, the old mine sabotage, but I'll go into that course because I was curious. Yeah. Yeah. I'll never forget the morning of the last day when I woke up. It was one of those experiences you never forget. So yeah, so a lot
Brendan Torazzi
of times on my course, what is it? It must be there must be some kind of practice involved. Is it? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker
you walk away with tools and tools and you can use them and there's once you've done that, cause If you do the advanced course, you will end up with so many tools, you just sort of taken at your own intuitive sense of which tool is going to be the best one for yours. And what you do learn from it if you do enough of the work because you get your attention out into the world, and so you're not walking around with your attention on yourself, you know, will come in thinking, you know, like, I'm probably the, one of the most significant benefits I've got from that work is that I've got a really quiet mind when Why yes, never busy. Even when there's things happening that I don't want, I'm still not reacting Tura suppose, you know, some, like tensions out, connect with the world? And yeah, it's a beautiful way to live. But it took work, you know,
Brendan Torazzi
it sounds like more or less like a meditation technique, in a way like you're not resisting to your thoughts in your head. And
Unknown Speaker
yeah, well, it's so interesting. When I first did the the master course to learn how to teach it. I was in Orlando in Florida. And there was a table full of Buddhist monks there. And like, was 500 students from all over the world. And these monks were all from Korea, and I went over to their table, they all had translation equipment on, you know, and I said, Dave, you guys speak English. And one of them said, eight. And he told them all when I say it, and they'll laugh joke, very happy chaps. And I said, I have a question for you. And he said, certainly. And he told them more what I said, and they all laughed again. And he said, What is your question? I said, What are you guys doing here? And he told him, I laughed their heads off. And he said, we come here because it gets us to where we want to go much faster.
Unknown Speaker
Oh, wow. Okay, they go.
Unknown Speaker
So apparently that work is huge. And all the Buddhist monasteries in
Brendan Torazzi
Korea, yeah. Okay. And then so this is all under the global wellness Institute.
Unknown Speaker
The global wants, it should separate. So that's, uh, the guy Harry Palmer, who created that work, he basically, you know, he trained people how to teach it, and then handed them materials and sit down and teach it, you know, he wanted to spread out across the world. So it's sort of like anybody who's licenced, to teach that they become sort of part of a network of teachers, but it's not some organisation, whereas the global wellness Institute is a not for profit organisation that's charged itself with disseminating all information about human wellness. So whilst they're ones in Miami and ones in Orlando, they're not related.
Brendan Torazzi
So do you think wellness has changed because I remember, or years ago, we, I had a business called Metro apps, which was all about, we imported the sleep pods from the US this was around 2006 to 2008. And we're trying to get people to nap in the workplace. And I remember, yeah, the 20 minute nap. And that was like, it was lots of fun. But God, it was challenging, because you're just at that stage where I don't know, wellness was almost like a dirty word that HR managers were scared to bring up as, how's that change moving forward? Sort of 15 years? Like, is it expected in workplaces? Or does it depend on the on the workplace? What What are your thoughts around that?
Unknown Speaker
See, I think, you know, up until COVID, it was a sort of a nice to have some companies were serious about it. Generally, you know, people saw wellness as cholesterol checks and fruit baskets. And, but now the biggest companies all across the world are appointing chief wellness officers. Yeah, wow, why Deloitte PwC, the bank show they've all got their heads of well being. And, and we realised this at the Global wellness Institute, there's actually no cost for that. Where does somebody learn how to do that? So we got together and we really poured all of our own all of our collective expertise into it and developed a job description for a chief wellbeing officer. And we've made that available on the website that anybody can gather. And in fact, there's a fantastic young lady Daniel Watkins, who's in Geelong. She did the lion's share of the work on that on that tree for being opposite. She was amazing, the what she pulled together and then we also decided to create a set of standards for organisations around wellness, because what does workplace wellbeing look like? So, we created the standards that are designed to be a combination goalposts and guideposts. I suppose organisations can use them. And now any organisation in the world can go to the global wellness Institute website and download those guidelines and your job description. That's all a free service. And but, you know, then on top of that to sort of take the the answer a little further, he's in Australia and across the world, we've noticed that companies have been reactive and realising they need to do something about wellness. Number one, because COVID Frightened everybody about in terms of how healthy everybody is. But also secondly, trying to create a workplace it's more desirable to a limited workforce. And, and so what's been happening is boards are throwing the responsibility to the HR personnel, the safety person. So a lot of these safety people are being thrown this wellness ball and saying do that. Yeah. And so I created a service myself called Wish VIP, which is wellness in safety and health. And it's a free service that people can, can subscribe to. And when they do I give them access to those that job description those those standards, but also every fortnight I send out a bulletin with some updates and some tips and some ideas just to try to help them get more skilled in in that space. Because it is an exploding space. It's it's quite significant.
Brendan Torazzi
Because I'd imagine you have to be you know, to execute this well, you have to be authentic and it has to be like almost like heartfelt otherwise, I would imagine that employees would just go be quite cynical of like, you know, in inverted commas wellness programme. Yeah. Is there any like? Like you mentioned the fruit baskets? Is it that or is it? Is it? I don't know, memberships to gym? Or does it? Does it just depend on the workplace? Because I think the challenging thing is that would have to be quite curated, wouldn't it? Well,
Unknown Speaker
it's got to start with a genuine sense of care. Yeah. Right. So care is really interesting thing. In fact, I'm just about to publish a set of posters, they're all created, they're all ready to go. And the posters like there's one main poster and it talks about the power of care, and talks about how to care for yourself and your family and community and your friends and your workmates and your employer, and your suppliers and your customers, what that does, what the ripple effect of that is. And then we talk about 12 points of things that you can do to improve your capacity to be caring. And so these 12 points where there's a heading and a bit of an explanation are things like kindness, acceptance, acknowledgement, empathy, gratitude. What else is there? Purpose, forgiveness. God anyway, there's 12 of them, I can't remember now, but patience, you know, and, and then what we do is we take those 12 items, and we've done a more expanded poster on just each one of those talks fun bit more so in the company can put the big posters up and then once a month for at least one of the new small posters, so we can educate people in the workforce to become get their attention off themselves. Because in modern societies, people become very self absorbed. And wellness comes when you get your attention off yourself and start putting on the welfare of others because they are what happens. You start doing things in life that leave you feeling good about who you are. start liking yourself. And that that to me is the gold standard of wellness when you've got a bunch of people that actually like themselves. Yeah, yeah.
Brendan Torazzi
Now that makes a lot of sense. But you put out what you what you would like in yourself, I guess so.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Brendan Torazzi
That's amazing. So as the speaking you know, started to start it back up again now or
Unknown Speaker
has, you know, not my most popular topic is at the moment. What's that? optimising your immunity? Right. Okay. Well, because in a lot of workplaces that in mining and construction, a lot of the workers are just saying, no more jacks, you know. Yeah. That's Jeff's if two didn't work. Yeah. And so the company is going well, what about if we throw the personal responsibility thing out there inside of the workers? We'll teach you about how to manage your immune system when you go and do that work, it's got yep, that's what we want to do. So that's been really good. So that's mining construction. I mean, tomorrow, I've got to go worldwide. I could do three seminars tomorrow for beam Centauri the big distiller? Yes, I'm doing one seminar into Singapore that I'm going to another one in the Buffalo owner. And then I think the one on Friday mornings going into Kentucky, maybe, you know, yeah, wow. Workforce around the world. Yeah. So that's,
Brendan Torazzi
that's brilliant. All right, John Mueller. It's been absolutely fascinating. Speaking to you and hearing about the different projects that you're doing and all the wonderful work that you're doing, if people want to connect with you, what's the best website?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, look, look, they can find me on LinkedIn if they want John to me, or just my website is wide awake. wellness.com delay you naturally pretty easy to find and send the message through there. Brent, thanks
Unknown Speaker
so much, John.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you, Brennan. It's been a pleasure.
Unknown Speaker
You've been listening to an ihs.com.au production.
Brendan Torazzi
I hope you've been enjoying listening to the podcast if you are. It'd be great if you could help us out by leaving us a review and sharing this with friends and colleagues.