Powerful Communication & Storytelling with Manny Wolfe

Ian Hawkins 0:02

Are you ready, ready to release internal pain to find confidence, clarity and direction for your future, to live a life of meaning, fulfilment and contribution to trust your intuition again, but something's been holding you back. You've come to the right place. Welcome. I'm a Ian Hawkins, the host and founder of The Grief Code podcast. Together, let's heal your unresolved or unknown grief by unlocking your grief code. As you tune into each episode, you will receive insight into your own grief, how to eliminate it and what to do next. Before we start by one request. If any new insights or awareness land with you during this episode, please send me an email at info at the and Hawkins coaching.com. And let me know what you found. I know the power of this work, I love to hear the impact these conversations have. Okay, let's get into it.

This week's guest Manny Wolf, many Hi my man

Unknown Speaker 1:04

doing good man, how

Ian Hawkins 1:05

are you? Very good. I've done a fair bit of work with this man this year. He's helped me with marketing and a number of different things. But the thing that I really get out of the sessions, the group sessions that we have is I laugh. Like, one of the things from leaving corporate was missing that group we get together and laugh and like to tell you like, I just love your sense of humour. Manny. What Where did that where did that sense of humour come from? Like, it's obscure, right? I like obscure here. What do you think?

Unknown Speaker 1:44

Man? I don't know. I don't know. It's it's a it's a reflect it's tough to answer a question like that without sort of sounding falsely self deprecating. Well, you me this is the same, but more refined version of who I've always been. It really is. And it wasn't always met with you know, warmth or appreciation. But it's it's it's an externalising of how I process information. How I see the world, probably, since we're talking about grief, probably with a fair amount of learning how to create levity through humour, because, you know, of tough situations, and lots of them. I think that was one of my, one of my strategies. Growing up, one of my strategies as a kid was get funny, fast.

Ian Hawkins 2:46

Yeah, and you're right, I think that we deal with grief in our own unique way. And thinking about it. Now, as you say, that is that's one of my go to strategies too, right? Whether it's an avoidance or a way to bring warmth that other people are at least attend to, but being able to laugh things off. It's probably why why some of the more obscure references that you that you talk about, I laugh at, actually, I have to share this Manny. So we for those who to catch up, I was talking about how we view Volvo drivers in cinco, many being a Volvo driver. And we're just talking about the expression that we may use for a Volvo driver they drove past had to in front of me the other day, man, he swore at them. I even got my son to take a photo of the cars. There you go. So where do we go from you go,

Unknown Speaker 3:43

at least I hope they weren't driving the nice ones, you know, if they're driving the old ones. So we can maybe maybe shed some light on that whole thing, at least from a west side of the United States. Western Hemisphere perspective, there are definitely two kinds of Volvo drivers. There really are, maybe it maybe three subsets. I'm in the minority. Right? They I drive mine fairly fast.

Ian Hawkins 4:17

Yeah, it's gonna be in the minority here for sure.

Unknown Speaker 4:20

It's got a lot of power, because it's a hybrid. And so it's got that electric motor too. And so I don't know how you guys measure power in Australia, but is it horsepower? Is that like a global, globally accepted way of thinking of it? It's like a 400 horsepower and that thing, and it's like a boat but it handles really well. It's like really big it's anyway blah, blah, blah. But growing up, Volvo's were here's how the here's how they would work and over over educated, super liberal, like usually like college professors would buy Volvo's. And that's fine. Yeah, that's about right. And they drive them for about 20 years, then they give them to their kids as their kids went off to college, after filling their kids with 20 years worth of their own doctrine of the world. And so the kids would then take the Volvo's and cover the backs of them with bumper stickers that were like revolutionary, you know, like scathing indictments of capitalism, like, you know, kill your TV and, and what liberal bias in the news and bumper stickers like that. And so for the longest time, that was my experience of them was like, Oh, God, they're all 20 years old. They're all driven by these these kids that, you know, they're acting like hippies, they don't know what a real hippie is. And, and they clearly have wealthy parents. And then, at one point, I needed a car. And my dad said to me, I've got I've got a car, you can buy my son, okay. And it was a Volvo 740 Waggon or not waggon sedan, and it had a turbo on it. So he says, Test drive it. So I'm test driving, it has now hit the turbo button. Now, I was like, whoa. And, you know, see, whatever else you will about them. They're beautifully engineered, and they drive like a dream. They really do. So it's, it's, it's too badly got co opted by a certain group of people.

Ian Hawkins 6:35

Yeah, well, it's perception more than probably reality reality. That tends to stick. And it's certainly been the case here, too. So thank you for filling us in on that. Yes, there is something about speed, raw speed. It's

Unknown Speaker 6:50

it's like I part of me wants to feel like I've grown past that. And I'm more mature than that. But it's not the case

Ian Hawkins 6:59

at all. All right. You mentioned the hippie aspect could lead in. So you, when I was asking you about those sort of defining moments from your life, and you were saying, you pretty much lived in a hippie cult?

Unknown Speaker 7:13

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much lived in a hippie Colt. We got I don't even know where to start with that. There were 60 or 70 of us at the biggest when it was at its at its peak. We live very, very close to the legendary corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. Or I guess, technically, on the border of San Francisco and Berkeley, Haight Street goes right down to UC Berkeley. So it was and it was, it was a fascinating time and a fascinating place until we left. Because when we lived there, we blended in perfectly. You know, we had Jefferson Starship living right down the street while they were Jefferson aeroplane, back then. We had Janis Joplin had a house near us, but you don't I mean, it was just big brother in the holding company and other like 60s and 70s Seminole bands, it was part of the scene. It was part of the thing. Very cool. Yeah, that that I mean, that part was cool. And again, I didn't. I mean, there was such gross negligence among the grownups where I lived. But somehow, as a kid, at least when I lived in Berkeley, I felt pretty safe. Yep. You know, I actually, I don't think I've ever shared this on an interview before I would grow up and learn that there was all kinds of like, the kids that I grew up with were some of them were being molested all the time and stuff. It was it was actually it was about as as effed up as you would imagine an organisation that will pretty much let anyone walk through the door and not really vet them. Your Wow would be and that's how it was because everybody was so lost in the idealism and so lost an end. Look, let's be honest, lots and lots of drug use.

Ian Hawkins 9:12

Yeah, right.

Unknown Speaker 9:13

So this whole countercultural idealism, but also tonnes and tonnes of drugs.

Ian Hawkins 9:19

What could go wrong?

Unknown Speaker 9:20

Right, exactly. It's I don't I don't see a problem there. Jim.

Ian Hawkins 9:26

Yeah, wow. But then you said you moved. And that changed everything.

Unknown Speaker 9:32

Yeah, it was. It was. It was crazy. It was like I was telling you before the show, from my perspective as a kid, one day we lived in in the San Francisco Bay Area. The next day, we're packing everything up. And we're driving off to live in this new place. And the new place was in Stockton, California. And so that would have been, let's call it But what would have been 48 years ago? 48 Yeah, 48 years ago, 47 years ago, is Stockton has never once been off of the top 10 most violent and dangerous cities in the United States. And that whole time. It's funny to me, because all these other cities get all the like, street cred in the movies. You know, but yeah, I mean, Stockton has been one of the most dangerous places to live for at least 50 years. So we moved in our, in our hippie buses and our hippie waggons and are like, literally with like, big slogans painted on the sides. You know, and, and flying saucers, UFOs on the sides and all this stuff. And just, I mean, we stood out like crazy. Yeah. And we move to I mean, you just can't write better. You can't use can't write a better story than this. Right? So the whole the whole area we live in, is a straight up chainlink fence, dilapidated houses. It's a ghetto. It's a ghetto. It's like cars parked on the lawn, you know, kids running amok. People leaving their their violent dogs off the leashes. It is a ghetto. And there's one house. That is a perfectly preserved three story mansion. It's a historical landmark. And that's where we moved. Wow. Yeah. And so we were just a target. We everything was

all those families, all those families into that one place.

Yeah, yeah. We all lived under one roof.

Yeah, again, what could go wrong? Right. So you're a target. What what did that look like? Like?

Well, so one of the memories I have of pulling in. And it was actually very poetic, I thought, because we were pulling into the house, and I'm looking at the back window of like a bus or a camp or something. And I'm watching the sunset. And there's all these, these Cholos these vato logos, because that's that was the hood we were in. And they're looking at us. Like they don't know what to make of us. Yeah, right. And I remember making eye contact with this one guy, and he stands up, he raises his hands like this. So his shirt separates, and he's got a gun sitting in his belt. And I think my so I refer to all the other kids that grew up with me there as God, brothers and sisters. Just for the ease of explanation, right? It's so much easier than saying every single time like, okay, it was a kid I grew up with when I lived in the school. One of my god sisters like unpacking boxes, and some kid rides up on his bike, and says, Hey, are you new? Here? She goes, Yeah, my name is Tara, blah, blah, blah. And, and I'm gonna start school at Hazleton school. And he goes, I'm going to beat your ass tomorrow at school. Just right off. Yeah. It's just. And so from pretty much the day we moved in, I was just thrust into like fighting every day. I didn't have time to figure out why they were so mad at us or why they hated us so much, or, or anything like that. It was just constant, constant fighting.

So you said you're eight. Is that right? So you know. Yeah. And you're going in from a place that you had some challenges, but essentially, it was a a reasonably safe feeling for you place into what you described as then moving into help. Pretty much. How did your young brain process that at the time? How did you get through that time?

That is, here's what I think. I think that as kids, we are better suited to accepting our environments at face value. And only as we get older, does the trauma come out? Yeah, that seems to be the case. And so for me, it was a question of, I was scared all the time. But it was just I was just scared all the time. I had to fight all the time. And you know, sort of just went on high alert. Super, super high alert for like four years. And that you know, you were asking some stuff earlier before we jumped on the gut live, about how I do some of the stuff I do and honestly I think it's because my my sort of senses that evaluate situations and read people were just spiked through the roof for so long. I really do think that that's part of it.

So at a survival instinct, kicking in at a level that most eight year olds don't have to deal with which Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't you develop certain skills at that time that you wouldn't have developed in any other situation?

I think so. I think so. I mean, one thing that I sort of came into this world with was a real passion for language and communication, a real passion for whether it be verbal or nonverbal. Like, that's always been something I've been interested in. I think that the time that I spent in Stockton, particularly the first four years, but all of it, I mean, it was always dangerous there really sort of took that and merged it with, you know, survival instincts?

Did you have to use that communication at different times to talk his way out of trouble? Or was it more that you were sitting there reflecting on on how important it was to be able to do that?

Any answer I could give you would be would have the benefit of a lot of years of hindsight?

Of course, you know, they

mean, yeah.

I mean, if you look at it, like other people listening to this, and looking at their own journey, looking through the lens of what is a really dark time and trying to make sense of it. Yeah, looking back from a lady is where the is where the gold is, right? We can see where these these finer skills that we've developed, were honed,

yeah, I suppose so I suppose so. So the answer, then I think is I would fight my way out of a corner, I would talk my way out of a corner, I would run I would climb, you know, whatever it was. But I think the communication and language piece really came was more so present in my long term sort of assessment of the situation. I really do think that that's probably the the most accurate way to put it, you know, I started to sort of make a map of the world.

So you know, even at that point, you're looking at the long term prospects for your life, or you're saying looking back now in hindsight, seeing that

sort of sort of making long term prospects for my life, but but more so like, creating like, a meta layer of how to understand what I was going through. Yeah, but yeah, that's probably more, more.

Yeah. And that's powerful. And again, when you think of the work that you do, trying to understand things, and helping other people to understand the, the, their story, so we'll come back to the journey. Do you see the link there now around this, this whole thing around communication and your ability to tell stories, but also to be able to help other people tell their stories?

Yeah, I do. See I do. I'm the only and I don't know how much it's worth exploring for myself personally. But the only question would be how much of it was sort of forged in because of Stockton? And how much of it was just inherently the way that I sort of interact with the world I remember my mom telling me, and she swears up and down. This is true. She said, my first word was a complete sentence. Here well, she's, she's like not being playful. She said, the first thing I ever said was, I want a candy bar. So I think for me, and I said that at nine months, or eight and a half months. Wow. Yeah. And so I've been hyper verbal all my life. And honestly, I mean, this is a bit of an aside, but I think that's the reason that that I've been able to come. However far I've come from where I started, I just think it's all because of that, you know, like, I was able to do code switching at a very young age so that I could sound like whoever I was around and, and stuff like that. Yeah, I would say I had a lot of smart friends who just didn't have that that ability with language and they just get stuck.

Oh, that's fascinating, because I've always felt that myself I didn't have language around to how to explain it or whatever it's called. But like yeah, it's almost like chameleon like blending in and talking the same language is that grey around like in particularly for me is like trying to fit in. One of the easiest ways is when you just talk like people you look at even young kids now Right? Or dressing the same haircuts the same in Australia, the mullets back the long, long hair and the shorts. How did that happen? But I guess it's true.

So it's really fascinating that you say that so being able to talk about that both languages is something that is that you really can identify with now.

Yeah, man. And I think that I think that that's easily the best thing I was given in this life. easily the best thing, you know, because one of the things that I learned was how you look is far less important than how you sound.

Yeah, and taking that at a deeper level, it's what comes before you even open your mouth. Right? That's a nonverbal communication.

Yeah, that's, that's huge as well. But like in those like in, in crunch type situations, or in in, you know, the idea of code switching, or is that something? Does that happen?

I haven't heard that term before.

So what it is, is, it's the ability to like, you know, elevate your diction or adjust your lexicon so that you can speak like the people you're around. Yep. Yeah, and that has been, I'll give you one example. I remember we had a footbridge over over a levee. And you could either walk the footbridge route home from middle school, or you could walk an extra two and a half miles, right. And the footbridge was, it was a coin toss whether or not there'd be some punk waiting to just beat kids up. And one day, we took the footbridge and there was this kid Benny on the other end of the footbridge, and my friends without saying anything, as soon as we got on the footbridge, they just turned around and left. And it's just me, like I didn't even know they weren't still there with me. And I kind of realised like halfway down the footbridge, and it's narrow and it's fenced in, I gotta get either turn and run. And he's bigger. Probably catch me if he wanted to. And he was a black kid. And so I just walked straight. I walked right up by him, and I was yo, Benny, what's going on, man? And he was so surprised that I did that. We had never spoken before. So it wasn't like we knew each other. I just knew him because he was a troublemaker in school. Yeah. And, and a big old grin crossed his face. And he like gave me a you know, he gave me a high five and a little like, you know, the bro hug? The one the one armed hug. Yeah, he just gave me a high five and a bro hug. He walked on my way.

And if he couldn't wait until those suckers who've taken the two mile walk?

Yeah, wait a long time because our walk?

Well, that's cool. It's interesting, like what my brain goes is like, how the world has changed. And if you did that now, that would be frowned upon Ron. Well, you can't. Anyway, that's a whole other story. But that is

a whole other story. I do have something to add on that. Yeah. Yeah. Unless your first filter into the world is that self righteousness? You know what I mean? Like the first way you judge everyone and everything you see? Yeah, people love the feeling of being connected with in their code. Yes, that's why I didn't get my ass kicked that day. Yeah, it there's something so powerful.

meeting people where they're at?

I think so. Yeah, I think so. It's a hugely powerful thing. And it doesn't have anything to do with how you're dressed. You know, what I mean? Or what what sort of group you look like you belong to, if you can switch the context and the code and connect with somebody in I guess really, you could say in a language they understand. It's just a powerful thing. And I think that I hope it's deeper than any temporary social sort of like, you know, the woke ism we're seeing in the all that that stuff that yo, I am not with that for anyone watching. Come at me, bro.

Yeah, people get too offended too easily. And it's too many names for things and there's too many eyes that causing offence. Ultimately, yeah, like our nature, we want people to be able to connect with us in a way that we understand. Now. I love that. That's awesome. So in this world of hippie culture, and then thrown into this basically gang culture, you said like yeah, it was like thinking back now they were like hardcore organised gangs that you were suddenly immersed in. Yeah. How quickly like was was the turn to drug use. You said from the age of 10. Was that a result of constantly living in fear? Or was that just because that's what everyone else was doing? Around I

guess is that it was just because it was normal. Yeah. You know, we would have discos every Sunday night. And you know, the people that were, it's funny, I call them grownups, but none of them were even the age I am now. I was probably about 40, before I realised that the people I called grownups all my life, were just kids. Yeah, primarily speaking, they were like, in their 20s. Yeah. So everybody would smoke a bunch of pot, drink a bunch of wine. You know, you could take LSD, if you wanted, you could take mushrooms, it was kind of open field. And they weren't super uptight about, you know, passing a joint to a kid if a kid was standing there. Or, you know, like, in my case, after my first drink a wine or something, I just walk around, say, looking for people who I thought might give me another drink of wine, because I like that feeling right away.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So much so that you said basically, from that age through to about 28. You were basically every day you were using?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Pretty much every day. If I if, if I if a day went by that I didn't it was not by choice.

Yeah. So you said you used the term? Well, first, you said life was basically surreal looking back now, but you said you don't know if you've known a more enthusiastic, enthusiastic drug addict in yourself. So how does that like is that 18 years or bluer?

No, no, it's not a blur. Parts of it are blurry. You know, you know, the one that blurs Yeah, is alcohol. The others don't blur yet. At least not the ones I liked. So started off with pot and alcohol. moved pretty young into amphetamines, like, like, but but pills, like, you know, low low grade uppers. Then from there, cocaine and methamphetamines. And if you do enough cocaine, and methamphetamines you're gonna find yourself in need of stronger downers at some point. And then, I had a, I had a period that I did a law, Hatha psychedelics. That would be the only one I don't really regret.

To say, it sounds Love is a story there. So what did you find in that space that just lit you up? Just then?

Evening, the psychedelics in particular?

Yeah.

That's, that's something that, here's what I can say about it. And if there are any other people who have done psychedelics more than that, like I did it once in high school, and I had a bad trip. By the way, if you say that, I don't believe you. I think you're just trying to be cool. And code switch and connect with me which I'm find it, but I don't believe you. Anyway, here's what I can say for sure. There was a there was a period of about three, three and a half years where me and my same group of friends. Every weekend, we'd start on Friday, and we wouldn't come down till Sunday. And for all of us, it was wonderful. Sorry. Sorry, not to you. But if the censorship board is out there listening, sorry. It was it was. It was fantastic. And there never really was a downside for me. We had a couple of times I did, I had a couple of times, where sort of external circumstances that we put ourselves in, made us kind of freak out a little bit. But it was never like, the archetypal bad trip that you hear in drug circles. I never had one of those. Yep. And I came away from that, that period of my life. It's hard to define exactly what I came away with. But it's something clear, there's a clear before and after, do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, from what I've learned, is that the healing properties of psychedelics and to be able to cut through all the noise and all the all the stuff that's not real. Does any of that resonate if you think back considering how much of that stuff that felt very, really real was really intense and really dark? Okay.

I think that, um, I think that it gave me, hey, Alison, it gave me lots of very creative, very spontaneous ways to. Just to look at life. And to, to sort of, I had this one cool experience. But while while on psychedelics, we were hanging out with one of the grownups in the cold, who at that time would have been probably 2820. But he, he was a math phenom. He was, he was a mathematical genius, the guy was just at a level with math that was baffling. And so we're hanging out with him. And he's showing us all of this really cool geometric stuff, and he's explaining it to us. And we're having a really good time. But he veered off into this thing where he was like, he was using math, as I remember it, to, to sort of tell us what each of our individual sort of deepest gifts were. Those atoms, you know, if you've done psychedelics, you'll instantly recognise this as a psychedelic experience.

Well, I straightaway got very intrigued.

But what he said to me was, he said, your gift is mapping. And I didn't understand that for years. But he said, you have an ability, and you will, as you go through life, you'll have a better and better ability to take ideas from one domain, and be able to make them understandable in other domains. Wow. Now, this is something that you can relate to, and Allison can relate to, but unfortunately, for the rest of you guys watching, you may not be able to relate to this. You know how when I'm coaching, I use Anna logic. That's a to me, that's what that is. It's like, read the audience, read the people that are on the call and go, Oh, I think I have an analogy here that will make you guys all understand.

Here's the map for your board and on what you on your story and your message. Yeah, let's go. Even thinking about like the words that you use or like positioning, and I know that their marketing words are not new, but how beautifully they tie into, to that ability. Yeah. Did that. Okay, so you said, Well, you're not sure. But there's a clear delineation between that part of previous part of your life and from there going forward. But moments like that, there must have been a fair few of them, where suddenly it's almost like it's making sense of, of a world that prior to then didn't seem to make sense, right. Particularly when you'd have those contrasts between San Francisco and Stockton Yeah.

I had a lot of those moments. Especially during my my sort of psychedelic mini era. But that's kind of what psychedelics are famous for, you know, like, my mom was dating a guy during that period of my life. And he was, he was like, Cool with a capital K. You know, he wasn't just a cool guy, which he was, but he was cool. He was like, Fonzie cool. He was, he was a guitar player in a rock band. And you know, he read he read philosophy books, and you're not I mean, he was that kind of cool yet. And he once said, he just made it this off the off the cuff quip about psychedelics, and it was something to the effect of, Oh, what was that revelation I had last night that would have solved everything. So there are quite a few of those moments. You know, that's sort of what that's one of the things that that, that psychedelics predictably deliver, is those moments of like, oh my god, I see it all. Yeah, and so yes, we made myself and my friends we have a lot of those moments. I think they stick with you even though you can't quite grasp them the next day. I think they stick with you.

Yeah, well, so when what level of your programmes do I need to reach before we do the psychedelic work?

You have to come over to California. Whatever level that is.

Okay, so, so you mentioned like, there was another sort of defining moment what let's start here. What what had what 28 stopping that daily, using?

So let's back up to twenty one, 21 was when I left Stockton. And I left because one of my best friends and I were walking to the store in one of the good sides of town. In the middle of the day, I had just recently, narrowly avoided having myself just beat possibly to death. I mean, just was like three weeks earlier, in a different city with a different one of my many crazy crazy friends. We got through 100% our fault. And when I say our fault, I mean mostly his fault. And we wind up getting jumped by seven guys. Seven seems to be the magic number, by the way. And we I mean, I ran for my life, and I got away from them. But at the end of the chase, I tripped and I fell on the asphalt and I hurt my knee. And it was a whole thing. The whole thing. If you want more on this, you can read my book, but nice. So my knee is still bad. And I'm walking to the store with my best friend and we're getting beer and we're walking back getting the beer. And again, this is the daytime and this is one of the better sides of town. We here. There they are. somebody yells out of a car. There they are. And we think because this is Stockton, oh, let's let's wait here if somebody's gonna get in the fight to cars whip up on either side of us and people get out in circle us.

Oh, there you are. Yeah, yeah, it was us.

And we didn't know these people. This was just this was a total random event. And I got really, really bad really, really fast. They got fucking scary.

So when we guns in your face sort of scary, like, what are we talking? Oh,

we're talking surrounded by, I don't know, seven or eight people. And one guy is. I remember writing about this in my memoir. It was like he was speaking in tongues. It was just I knew something. I knew this was a serious moment. And the way I remember it was like he was just possessed by a demon or something. Yeah. Anyway, I sort of blink out a little bit. And I come back to and somehow even with my bad knee, I'm on the other side of this circle. And I'm grabbing my friend. I'm trying to pull him through. The guy grabs his vest, and stabs him right in the nipple. Shit. Yeah. stabs him right there. Well, you can't see. But anyway, yeah. The paramedics or the whoever it was that operated. Somebody told us the blade was only about that long. But it went in at an angle, and it nicked his heart and it nicked his lung. And so he almost died. Wow. He, we got through the circle. We turned around, started throwing beer cans or bottles at them. We run up to the apartment that we were staying at. And by the time he gets up the stairs to the apartment, he's white as a sheet. And he's like, I do not feel good. And we look and we realise he's bleeding profusely.

Why did he not even realise he'd been stabbed at this point? No idea. So keep going. We'll come back to that.

So thank God, we acted fast. And really, Thank God my friend Jeff was there my friend Jeff? x, not x, but like he was currently like in the Air Force. And he had been trained and he was always really really level headed in a clutch in a clutch situation. He came out and he just immediately put pressure on the wound, started giving orders you know, we got the ambulance there. There was a there was a psychotic moment where the ambulance drivers are arguing over where to take him as he's like laying there bleeding out. Yeah, and I remember again, bad knee and all I rush up to this ambulance driver and I grab him by his shirt and I slam him against the ambulance. Just get my friend to the fucking hospital now. Here well, it was it was really really bad. That was the moment where I was like I'm done. Up until then. I was like, you know I'm tough enough to live in Stockton and your your environment kind of defines you I was done. I was done after that.

Yeah, wow. Happy you sort of gone deeper into that moment where you said it was almost like a blink around like what like what was that it was it was it almost like just an in in instinctive, intuitive involuntary moment of your survival part of you acting and just going to get out of here sort of thing i'll give you sort of, yeah, that was

very much what it was. I don't I could only tell you that I knew that right where I was, was the worst place to be.

Hmm. I like those moments, but I love hearing stories about the part of us that's like, what what else are we capable of when, when those sort of lies like the override switch comes on? Like, yeah, maybe maybe a message comes directly into your head. I don't know, if you've had those moments, or there's something else that just happens. It's like, Whoa, where did that come from? But what I get a sense of is like, if that hadn't happened, your friends not here, right? Yeah,

absolutely not. And maybe not me. Yeah, right. Yeah. And maybe not me. Yeah. I mean, there's it didn't make any sense that I was able to break through that circle of people. You know, I mean, not only that, I have a bum knee. I weighed about 150 pounds at that time in my life. Like I was not a strong person or a powerful person. Yeah. You know, physically. This version of me, you might expect me to be able to break between a couple of guys, but not then.

The tough Volvo driver that you are. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So you said so that was when you got out of Stockton?

Yeah. And so I moved up to a city called Chico, where one of my best friends had previously moved. And I mean, Chico was started off pretty idyllic, you know, it's a college town. You it was friendly. Like it took me two years to relax my face. Because everywhere I go, people would just wave at me and say hi. And I was like,

fuck. What do you want?

Yeah, yeah, totally. And yet, I still managed to find Chico's dark underbelly. Because, you know, because I brought myself with me. And so that was the city I was in when I, you know, found myself in that, that that moment where I was holding that gun, and I was making those plans? To Yes, literally, someone down. Yeah.

Yeah. So we again, refer back to your work it how important it is, when you're telling your story to know that pinnacle moment. And so had Tell us how that came about. Like where did we get to?

So, hey, Alison. When I got to Chico, it's hard to overstate how different that was than Stockton. I mean, I literally went to one party, and met a whole group of people that became my best friends there. Well, that kind of thing didn't really happen in my experience in Stockton everybody's way to on edge. And, you know, quite the opposite. Quite the opposite. Yeah. So. So I found this, this, what would prove to be a really, really great set of friends. But we all had

birds of a feather, right?

Yeah, we all had proclivities. And, you know, it was just that was, I didn't know it at the time. But my my sort of soul contract with myself was that this is the place where I take it to the line. And I did, I did you know, Chico was great, but it also had tonnes and tonnes of methamphetamine. And when you've got tonnes of methamphetamine, you've got this the element that, you know, like Chico's, this beautiful little city that in the hills around it, lots of like, bikers and you know, just other kind of troublesome people. Yeah. And so little by little I sort of found myself with a weirder and weirder and more and more dangerous crowd and a more and more sketchy crowd of people and just kind of hit bottom.

Was Was there any moment when you were hanging out with these people? We got a sense of what do you remember feeling like, I probably shouldn't be here or but like, whatever or like it wasn't me. Not at

that time. No, at that time, I was pretty subscribed to the the sort of persona that I had spent the last, you know, 20 years or so creating. I bought into it pretty much. Yeah, right. And it took but took that moment holding that gun, where that's when I said Okay, wait a minute. Hold on. This is ships getting out of hand.

How do you get from there? Like so you've upped the methamphetamine usage to then holding a gun actually contemplating killing someone?

Well, it depends on how much time you have. But it's it's it's a good story. So here's how it went little by little, you know, like I said, the the crowd I ran with just got shady or and shady or yet I find myself living with a prostitute. And she is basically paying for everything for me. In exchange for me living there. So it was it was kinda like I was a pimp.

We're gonna say that.

It was, I mean, seriously, like, for my integrity, that was a low point. did not feel good. That we had, you know, copious drug use in common for sure. Yep. And we had been up for a couple of days. And we decide one one at one morning at 530 in the morning. Let's go to one of the local breakfast spots. We'll eat a big breakfast, we'll go home and crash. Okay, so we're on our way to this breakfast spot. And she, she did not have the ability to hold it together after two or three days that I had. So we're driving, she's driving, and we pull onto the main street through downtown Chico. There's nobody on the road, right? It's I mean, it's just sun up. And it's like a three lane road. And then you go one block over and it's three lanes the other direction. So it's a one way road, three lanes wide. We pull on to it. Two or three blocks ahead of us. is a is a police car, just going about their business, and she just panics. And when she panics, I mean she's like swerving back and forth across three lanes of traffic. She's basically hysterical in the driver's seat. And I'm like, Well, this is it. It's been a good run. Just like I I know something's happening. So the cop car quietly pulls off, pulls off turns the corner. Well, they just went around behind us. And they came in they arrested us. They pulled us over. Now, at the starting of this two or three day run, I had been hanging out and somebody gave me a money belt. No money in it. Just the money. Don't you know? So I've got it under my clothes. And all this money belt has in it is a little tiny Ziploc bag with just the littlest bit of speed left in it. And I completely forgot about this. Yeah. So when we get pulled over, I get searched. They don't find it. We go and I'm totally cooperating. In fact, I'm trying to sweet talk. The police.

Yes. Is your communication skills, communication skills.

Yeah, it's funny because I totally code switched, you know, start talking their language and we got pulled over by two female officers. So I was doing pretty good. So we go to the jail. And they search me again and don't find it. I have to sit and do processing. And you know, it's it's, I was there for three or four hours. You know, I had done such a good job of ingratiating myself that one of the ladies came back to me four or five times just to chat with me.

Hey, Ross. No,

it was going pretty well, right? Yeah. Finally she goes, okay. You're free to go. And I was like, great. You know, I'm going home to go to sleep. She goes, Yeah, you look like you need some sleep. And so as I'm leaving, she goes, You know what, just to be safe. Let me search you one more time. And she finds the money felt. Wow. And that was it. That was it. That brought me that wound me up in county jail. I don't remember how long I stayed there. But when I got out of county jail. It turned out I had made the papers.

Wow,

this ridiculous little nickel and dime happenstance bust. I'm on the front page of the Chico Gazette.

Famous, it's just

it's so weird, man. We're looking back on it. My best guess is that They were somebody was trying to make, you know, make hay, like, look at what we did. And so they trumped up what it was. I don't know, I honestly don't know what that was all about, but I get out. And while she's, she's still in jail. And so I'm homeless. She rot, yeah. And even though even when I was staying with her, I had a lot of my stuff distributed among, at friends houses. And so I go to one friend's house to try to take a shower. And he answers the door, and he looks like he's seen a ghost literally slammed the door in my face. This happened two or three times. So finally, I managed to connect with two friends of mine who are big country boys. And we literally go and we kick a door in to get some answers. And so kick the door in finally got someone to talk to me. And he said, that one guy who I had considered to be one of my close friends, had gone around and created. It just told all these crazy stories about me while I was in jail, that I ratted on everyone, by the way, with, you know, 25 years of hindsight now, yeah. If you're a nickel and dime, hanging out in little apartments, drug user, you really don't have to worry that they're watching you. None of us knew that. At the time, though, we were convinced that it was like the DEA is watching us. We're transacting these like 20 and $40. drug deals with the DEA is watching us, because they got nothing better to do. But what I found out was that this friend of mine went around. And not only did he sort of turn everyone against me, he took all my stuff. Cool. Wow. Yeah, I was homeless, and he stole all my stuff.

So he was kind of like, protecting himself and worried about this celebrity now who was in the newspaper what that meant, what that meant for his world,

maybe? I don't know, I never spoke to him again. And so yeah, I'm left to just guess at his motivations. So anyway, word travels fast in those kinds of circles, right? And, and this guy happened to be a black guy, which was of no concern meant nothing to me. I love this guy. This was I thought that this guy is one of my best friends. But I also was like, friends with a lot of very, very racist white guys, the guys that lived up in the hills. Yep. And they heard about it, and then it became an issue.

Right? So

I get a, I was gonna say I get a call, but I get a page effects. And my little pager goes off. And so I call and it's one of my friends from up the hills. And he says, I heard about what's happening. Be on the lookout for me. I'll be there and a half an hour. Well, he comes down. proceeds to make sure that I'm plenty, you know, plenty high on drugs, because you're good. No, I haven't had anything all day. Oh, here. Do this. Gets me all high. Yeah. And then he says, Come out to the truck. I want to show you something. And that's like, like it sort of like in the circle when those guys were jumping us. I knew something was wrong here. Yeah. And he reaches into the glovebox, and he pulls out what turned out to be like a snubnose 45 puts it in my hand. You know, it's in an oily rag. And somehow, the first thing I noticed, the first thing I noticed is the serial numbers filed off the bottom of it. The first thing I see

clarity, even amongst all that,

well, it's like the relevant thing. And other relevant details jumped right out. Yeah. And he just starts saying, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to come back at midnight, you know, if we're actually at that point, he said, let's go find this guy right now. He puts one gun in my hand and shows me another one that he's got. So let's go find this guy. And I'm processing at two different speeds here. externally. I'm like, Yeah, man. Yeah, you know, cuz you got to play that. You can't. That's not the time to go. No, I don't think that's a good idea. But internally, my mind is going about 1000 times faster and I just concoct this whole plan. Great. Sounds good. meet me back here at midnight. He's like, okay, it's on. Soon as he left I got on the phone started making phone calls frantically. For those of you that don't know, this is a push button phone And within about an hour, I had a ride back to Stockton to my mom's house to small boxes of belongings that was it. And I'm wired to the teeth riding back to my mom's house in the back of a little Honda CRF. X. If you guys don't have those in Australia, they're very small. We did it. Okay. And, and that was it. That was it. I showed up at my mom's house, crying wildly high on drugs. And I just was like, I'm done.

Wow. And so were you able to stop using there? And then

yeah, that was it.

Wow. In the, in the days, weeks, months after, and also like, years and even sort of currently, how often have you looked back at that moment thought? Could it have gone another way? What if it had gone another way?

I mean, that moment kept me up till four in the morning for a year, probably. I'd be tired all day, I go to lay down at night, and just be wide awake, panicking, wide awake, just reliving everything, not just that moment, but all the conflict and all the trouble. And, you know, I made a lot of enemies toward the end there. I had a lot of people that didn't like me. I don't know that it could have gone different. I mean, there was there was. It's hard to say it's all speculative now, but yeah, I felt like there was a clarity inside of me that no way at all. Am I doing this? Yeah, yeah.

Well, maybe that's the question that Have you have you thought about the fact that you had that ability, because I'm sure there'll be other people put in that same situation, where they've been under the influence of something for that exact same situation? And haven't had the presence of mind? Haven't had the clarity to see the parts that you could see the mapping, if you will, that they were able to help you to navigate that externally doing something but internally processing in a completely different way through all of that?

Yeah. I don't really know. You know, I just know. I know that. As soon as I realised what my friend's intent was, that wasn't going through with it.

So what what happens for your life, then, when you've been used to something for using for 18 years, especially through those teen years, which are, which is so influential to where we end up? Yeah. How, like, how did you get through that time, by what what else showed up that, that made it even more challenging?

I can everything. Like, I brought it all down, man I did, I grabbed my whole self, just by, you know, by the foundations toward me back down to the studs. It took a long time to you know, so immediately, I went into Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, started going to meetings all the time, and just basically living there. And I saw other people seeming to make progress faster than me. And then the next thing I realised was they weren't digging as deep as I was. And so at a certain point, I stopped. I mean, I still identify as an addict. But at a certain point, I stopped going to those meetings, because it seemed like everybody got complacent after a certain point. And it was just about like, doing your time.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that, because I've had other people who have been in that system. And it's like, it's just another system that replacing the old system. And it actually just keeps you in the story rather than allowing you to release it. So how is it because you are willing to dig deep and actually go, well actually want to get to the root of this that allowed you to step out? Was it something else that happened? There? We went, Okay, I need to remove myself from this situation.

I think it was, you know, it was this need to feel like I had gotten to the bottom of these questions. Really? Yeah, I would say that's it. And also, trying to date those women was really hard. So that was part of it, too. And, you know, I mean, I came to some points in my life where I was like, I don't think I'm gonna have to just be celibate for the rest of my life. Because I just can't find anybody who's like, on this, like, let's seriously get to the bottom of our Ship path.

Hmm. We'll come back to that. I wanted to ask you about something you use the phrase beforehand. You said like through that, that time, like previously 28. You said the your ability to perceive and evaluate becomes warped. Yeah. So how does that play out? Like? Is it result in you making decisions that are just looking back at just madness? Or what? What else happens in that space when everything is warped?

Well, we see we see a different, we see the same thing showing up in a different way with like social media tribalism. Right, yeah. I don't know about you. But when I go on social media, and use that as my sort of litmus test of how people are doing, it's one thing, and I got my front door. And it's, it's another thing entirely. Yeah. Like, sure. Maybe the people that I'm interacting with in my, in my city, are on social media being trolls, maybe. But like, it's, it's, uh, you don't see it out there. You know. And so that's kind of an example of how, you know, if we surround ourselves with input that supports our biases, it turns into like an echo chamber.

So all of that those environments you ever were confirming. And keeping you in that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The confirmation bias space around that whole like what you said that that place of hell that you went into at that young age? Yeah.

And we all do it. We all do it. Until we know until you know, like. Do you ever you ever see that movie labyrinth with David Bowie?

Yeah, I can't remember much of it. If I'm honest. That's without drug use. It's

yeah, it's it is just beautiful metaphor after beautiful metaphor, beautiful analogy after it's just a teaching tool. But there's this. There's this one moment where they're walking along, and there are three rocks that all look a little bit odd, right? And as they walk to one point, their perspective has the rocks all lined up with each other. And when the three rocks line up with each other, they make this really cool, like, one side of the face relief of David Bowie's face, because he's the he's the Goblin King. But, and that's cool. But it's a great way to describe how all of us are interacting with the world. Right? If, from this perspective, if you look straight on and you see half of the goblin King's face in stone, but you move over here, and it's just three rocks. Yeah. Yeah. It's just about that different perspective. Now, here's, here's something to keep in mind. If you start getting really good at having different perspectives, being able to switch perspectives. People won't invite you to be part of their club as often.

Yes. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you don't see, you don't see things our way then. That's fair enough. I feel quite as comfortable in your presence. Right. Exactly.

Exactly.

And being able to do that, for ourselves is one of the most critical skills I believe is to be able to take that like almost observer look at our own world and common Yeah, ourselves from that different angle. And so everyone's trauma and everyone's grief is different, right? And I can still be drawn into the comparison right? But like you live, so you don't you built the coping mechanisms and you were able to move through it for me, like I'm like, all I have to do so much ongoing healing and releasing, what what sort of processes have you been through that have helped you release so much of this because when I when I talk to people, I get clear Till's in my body from body language where there's unresolved stuff and and of course, everyone has it right and different things have shown up for you. But in the main it's like, it feels like you've made peace with a fair bit of this. So how have you done that?

I have made peace with a fair bit of it. There were a few different so remember, we talked earlier? About the psychedelics, the period of my life is probably from 15 to 18. Whereas, yeah, heavily psychedelic period for me. And I really believe that that facilitated, if nothing else, and ability to look at things from a lot of different points of view. And an ability to sort of, at least more often, I think, then then is typical to recognise and let go of schemas and matrixes that sort of frame how I'm looking at shit, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And so that's been huge. It's been a huge, huge thing. I always think of the hero's journey, and how the hero will always get some little gift at some point. And you're like, what the elf Queen gave him that? Why didn't she like, you know, give him 10 boats and 50 Archers. But the thing comes into play perfectly, yes, at just the right time. That's kind of how that has played out. So the specific things like I got into a period, where it was, it was about lifting heavy, heavy weights. And that was honestly one of the most spiritual things I've ever done. It Well, it was, if you know, you know, but if you don't, there is something just profound about getting yourself into a zone where it's just you. And that weight that challenges the outer boundary of your ability,

the presence and then all at the same time, it's also challenging the inner part of you, right, because how much of that when you pushing the boundaries is about, like, beliefs and, and the mind Angley.

Exactly. And I think it wasn't nice, maybe lifting the heavy weights as much as it was realising how much of my idea of what I could do was self imposed. Yeah. And it's not it's not abstract, like, like talking with somebody, and they share an idea with you that hey, maybe your thought process is limiting you. It's different because you're under 300 pounds of iron. You know, it's very real. It's very tangible. And if you don't figure it out, you're not a real problem. Yeah, that was, that was huge. It's studying exercise. And heavy, heavy weights is still really huge for me. But that was, there was a period there where I had developed like breathing techniques to get myself into the zone. I had developed centering techniques, and it was just like, my, I'd have my headphones on tune out the rest of the gym. And it was just how much could I get to this? This sort of blissful simplicity of it's just me, and this thing. I'm trying to move

on, man, that's powerful. Sorry. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. Breathing, tuning in presence, removing the rest of the stuff. Oh, it's like a meditative practice, right. 100% 100%.

Powerful. So I know on the the grief journey, and also that when you talked about those gifts, that you get the the prizes along the journey. Yeah. When we, when we go on this journey, we sort of fall into the place of we're helping people with exactly what we're meant to be helping them with, because it's aligned to our own journey and views, specifically around perception and evaluating the mapping and different perspectives. I love how that plays out beautifully in the work that you do now. What I know is that we tend to continually have challenges in that area, which is why we are so such experts in it, because not only we gone on the journey will continue to strive to, to push the boundary so so where is the next boundary that that you know, you need to push around yourself? And how will that help the people that you serve?

I think I think the boundary for me, so I was I've been fortunate enough if I mean, some people wouldn't call this fortunate because it was very, very difficult to get to it. But I've been fortunate enough to be able to connect to what I'm pretty sure was my primary wound. And that was a wound with my mother. And I was able to connect to it in a way that was very meaningful and able to sort of build change in behaviour off of that. But I do recognise that I have tertiary boundaries that are still pretty unclear. I don't Know what will come in terms of how to serve other people. But I know that that's, that's something that's still present for me. Like I'm pretty good with boundaries communication sort of self evaluations, self awareness. But I do also recognise that I think my attachment style to my mom as a kid would be characterised as anxious ambivalent. That's the textbook. Most of us, unfortunately, you know, it's not a small club. And it it dogs your steps through all meaningful relationships of your life. And it gives you that sort of like crazy making feeling of how do I keep reliving the same fundamental situation over and over and over again? Gallup Well, one of the one of the things that I've been able to bring into some elements of my coaching and my work that I learned from that, there are a couple of cool ideas there. One is like, maybe it's because I'm a man, maybe it's because I'm, like, I don't know, super alpha or something. I don't know if I really am that, but I like healing through catharsis. You know what I mean? I love a good old fashioned catharsis man, a lightning bolt that just blasts me and I like, get it after that. Even if I'm left smouldering and ash, I like that. But here's the thing. Most of that primary wounds, stuff doesn't get healed by catharsis. It's the opposite of catharsis. It's like, a super soft, like, feminine process of like inviting in and just sitting with it, you know, and I had this wonderful therapist, I guess, in my early 40s, was it anyway, whatever it was, she would always use the phrase, just get curious about it. Just get curious about it. Right. And I feel like marketing, and especially positioning and writing your story is it's self help. Yeah, it's a very spiritually driven process. And what I see with people, especially when it comes to writing their story, is they get stuck in these places. And so far, no one has been aware of this idea of like, just just be curious about that. Just develop an interest in it, and don't ignore it. But you see what I'm saying. But don't rush to some like cathartic conclusion. Because those tend to be the equivalent of like, a really good orgasm when you're alone.

Best analogy on the show. So where do we go from there? The words that come to mind? Patients, right? Yeah, I think again, about even how you coach and you teach and you guide absolutely patients, whereas a lot of people in the marketing game and the coaching game for that matter, and anything where you're being a service, society in general, 100 miles an hour, people wanting the magic bullet quick fix all these different things. Some things take a bit longer. And sometimes we need we need our hand held through that. Interestingly, like I feel like we were stuck in a circle. Yeah. And that's probably if I think about it now. Yes, I, I stay for the humour. But that's, that's what I'm drawn to you by is the is the hand holding through things and that's a different times I haven't experienced and it's why I deliver the same way as like, I want to be with in this with you not so I can go into the pain but so I can help guide you out into the other side. Yeah. So what dawned on me is like something that already knew from my work, but even what how you mark it is that we're helping people tell their story. And we're helping people to get their story. You're actually you are healing them through a cathartic process by taking them through that Wow. Have or maybe maybe Allison who's watching now is another one of your students could could share whether that's been the case for her but it's there's so much power in telling our story of being heard. Beings same way that yeah, that we weren't when we're younger.

Of all the things I've done to try to rebuild and understand and heal myself. I will tell you that taking myself through the process that that distilled into what you guys know as the question mark story model was two orders of magnitude or three more powerful than everything else combined. It was the single most powerful, it would almost be like a catharsis except it took nine months for me to write my memoir. Yeah, but it was really now now that I'm thinking about it even. I got to the end. And I was like, How do I end this thing? Man, this is my whole life. In this, and I thought back on. I think it was my, one of my English teachers in college was talking about Ulysses by James Joyce. And he was he was marvelling at how I think the whole last chapter is written stream of consciousness with no punctuation. Now, I haven't read it yet. But I took that idea. And I was like, what if I just took the gloves off, and I just vomited out? All the hate all the frustration, all the vitriol that my family? And everyone because I spent the whole book holding myself equally accountable to everyone else.

He Yeah. And it actually was a catharsis to end the book. Yeah, awesome. Awesome. It was so brutal. Yeah. And so Alison did chime in there. And she said, when I first started writing my story, I was shocked at how intense the memories were. Absolutely. And if I think about what you just described, there, many it was part of the early stages of my healing was exactly that it was getting all those things out about what I felt like other people had done to vie right still in that space. Yeah, but being able to tell it and write it down. And even if I just told it for my own benefit, that the healing powers of that, like I remember, just in tears writing. Just you got to get that stuff out.

You gotta get it out. And yeah. I, I went through a process, writing my memoir, where I was never sure if it was good or not, as I wrote it. And so I'd have to read what I wrote every night to my wife. And only by her reaction was able to gauge okay, this stays as it is, or it changed this. Literally, you know, and so I got to that last part. That last part, it's just, it's just fury roll, it is raw. And I look up from reading it, and she's just tears are just streaming down her cheeks. And then that, like, I realised tears had been streaming down my cheeks the whole time. Yeah. Wow. It was It was intense.

tingles all through that, that's, that's healing, right. Like, just releasing what no longer serves. And, and, and the most powerful part of that is the audience or the reader is healed in the process.

100% Man, it's, it's, it's, it's a pretty powerful thing, you know? Yeah.

Oh, magic. Many, I never know where we're going to hit in these chats and, and got to be honest, when I knew about your story, and the fact that, you know, we're going to touch on that idea of the thought of, of actually ending somebody else's life. But always marvel at the magic that comes out from from other people's stories and the realisations that I get and that the guest gets as well. So thank you so much for sharing. And yeah, I appreciate I appreciate you sharing. I appreciate you and you're doing awesome work in this world robber.

Thank you, man. It was an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you tuning in.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Grief Code podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please share it with a friend or family member that you know would benefit from hearing it too. If you are truly ready to heal your unresolved or unknown grief. Let's chat. Email me at info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com You can also stay connected with me by joining the Grief Code community at Ian Hawkins coaching.com forward slash The Grief Code and remember, so that I can help even more people to heal. Please subscribe and leave a review on your favourite podcast platform