Build a Healthy Mindset with Nick Bracks

0:02 A listener production. This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Doun. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. In two thousand and seven, Nick Brax hit the national headlines for all the wrong reasons when he drove the family car into a tree while he was drunk. The story was so huge because at the time, his dad, Steve, was the premier of Victoria, and that night was the culmination of many years of struggling with obsessive thoughts, crippling social anxiety, and addictive behaviors.

0:54 It was a huge mistake for Nick, but after finding his own path to healing, Nick now uses that experience and all of his experiences for the greater good. He has faced his own demons, He's confronted his biggest fears, found healthy ways to manage his mind and his mood, and through his company Move Your Mind, he now works tirelessly to champion the importance of looking after your mental health and well being. In this fascinating chat, Nick shares with me how he went from being barely able to maintain eye contact to appearing as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars on national television. How he developed a love of acting, appearing on iconic Ozzie TV show Neighbors.

1:36 He became a successful entrepreneur, running multiple businesses and ultimately, as I said, founding his own media company, Move Your Mind, which has a mission of engaging communities about mental health to inspire and create change. If you have ever struggled with mental health issues, then you are going to get so much out of my chat with Nick. Here he is Nick Brax, Welcome to the Crafita Heavy podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm glad we finally got around to doing this. Finally, we've been talking about this for I realized it's probably been almost a year that we've been trying to do this, so I'm really glad to have you on here. Nick. I want to start with I know this is not the beginning of your story, and it certainly was not the end of your story, but it was obviously a pivotal moment when you crashed the family sub when you were drink driving and your dad was premier of Victoria.

2:25 Can you just share with me, I guess what was going on for you in the lead up to that kind of fateful event. Yeah, I mean there was definitely a big lead up. I mean a whole growing up. I had issues with overthinking, OCD, whole range of behaviors that came out from that extreme behavior, addiction to sport as sort of eleven twelve year old training six seven hours a day, you know, compulsive behavior that I knew was wrong, but I didn't know why I was doing it and couldn't control them. There was a whole lot of things happening, and I'd finished it at school and my body had broken down, couldn't compete in sport anymore, had been on a gap year, wasn't coping because I had such low self esteem and just didn't have any social skills. I couldn't, you know, look people in the eye and have a conversation. So I'd come back from that, I dropped out of a course at university, had sort of discovered alcohol for the first time, which I'd never touched before that because I was so fixated and focused on being this professional athlete that I just wouldn't touch it. But then it went the opposite, where I was so lost that it became my catalyst to cope and I was abusing that to escape, and that progressively spiraled. And it had been spiraling for well over a year by this point. And if it wasn't that car crash, something else would have happened. I was putting myself in life threatening situations on a weekly basis.

3:50 I remember Mum and Dad, you know, retrospectively telling me that, you know, they would be at home and just you know, praying they don't get a phone call that something bad has happened, and when they did get it, thinking okay, I hope, you know, not too bad, and they were doing the best they could. And yeah, that was I mean, there's a whole, much longer version of that story, but that was we'll get to it. That was some of what was happening in the lead up to that car crash. How did the family deal with that, I guess, I mean that was huge. Your dad was it was a very public figure at the time. What was the fallout from that? Yeah, I mean, my dad was Premier of Victoria at the time, and you know, we have a younger brother and sister, and we you know, he'd been premier since I was twelve until my early twenties, and we knew how the whole system worked, and we knew that if we did anything publicly, it would be reported on and we're always you know, so we had that knowledge. So it wasn't a surprise what happened, but it was again, you know, it's a kid stuffing up. So that was an interesting situation because you're sort of doing something that is not good and you know, I obviously wouldn't do again, and you know, learn so much from but you know a lot of kids make those mistakes. And my parents really handled it in the same way where their number one concern was are you okay? You know my friend who was in the car, my best friend still to this day, who also was okay luckily, just making sure, you know, all the fundamentals were in check, and they

5:20 then took the you know, necessary steps to try and deal with it as any parent would. There was only the added pressure that you know, my dad was having to that day do press conferences and I wasn't able to leave the house for three days because we had media camped out the front and it was, you know, the biggest story in the country for a week, and it was on front page of every newspaper and you know, ended up gaining my own notoriety through it, not you know, not what I wanted, but there was a byproduct of it. And yeah, very unique and interesting thing to deal with. And I think from my parents' perspective and from my perspective, you know, there's no blueprint on how you handle those things, and you're sort of learning as you go, and you know, still sort of trying to process some of it, probably to this day, I guess. But it's also at the same time, you know, which I talk about a lot, it shaped me into who I am today. And I wouldn't go and crash that car again. But those kind of events, you know, they actually put me on the path that I'm now on now. So I don't really regret anything that I would never do it again.

6:22 Yeah, I completely get that. And you have got on to become a huge advocate for mental health and mental health awareness, which we will get to. What I wanted to do is dig into a little bit of what you said at the beginning and ask you as you look back. You talked about being obsessive with exercise and having obsessive tendencies when you're a child. I would really love for you to share in hindsight what you recognize now were early signs of mental health issues mental health struggles which you probably at the time obviously didn't recognize. Like, what were some of the earliest signs for you now in hindsight that something wasn't really right?

7:04 Yeah, I mean, like I said, and I think a lot of it is nature and nurture, and really as far back as I can remember, as a very young kid, I was very obsessive. I would fixate on things. I guess I saw things differently than a lot of people, and my brain functioned differently. I mean the earliest I mean, I tell when I do talk Sevan, I was more of a funny story, but I was AFL football obsessed and Gary Ablett Senior was my hero. And I remember in religion class where us to draw a picture of God, and I drew Gary Ablet kicking a goal in football, very matter of factly, and then I was at a game the week after that with my uncle and I was sitting on the forward line on the boundary and saw Gary able to kick up the stivet of grass, and there was sort of five minutes left and I was on the boundary, hanging off the edge with my uncle holding me back, just desperate to get this grass.

7:54 City's boot had touched and as a sign when I jumped on and weave through security, got the grass and ended up taking it home and planting it a odd water it every morning and wake up and eat the grass, and then I would pray to I'd pray, please make me as good at football as Gary aublitz so and that went on for all. So that's probably, I mean the first sort of story, I guess, or that period when I was incredibly young, you know, five six, seven years old of that kind of stuff, and then that quickly started to manifest into I want to play AFL football, and that very quickly turned into obsessively training and becoming so fit through doing that that I was excelling in middle distance running, winning you know, state events. And then I thought, okay, I don't even have to rely on anyone for this. I can you know, punish myself and not have to rely on you know, teammates or whatever, and that. You know, that was around the eleven twelve year old sort of mark, and that's when I really, if I look back and see it, when it got pretty serious. You know, I was hiding bricks under my bed.

8:57 My parents were well aware of what was going on, but I was hiding it. I remember getting up one time at two three in the morning hearing my dad come back from Parliament, and I was getting up to do all these weird routines with bricks. And then I'd wait till my mum got out of bed at like six in the morning, seven in the morning and go for a run for an hour and a half and pretend to her I'd just gotten up. Then I'd go to training that night and triple what my coach got me to do, and often not even be able to walk upstairs to get to bed. I'd be that depleted. So wow, that's yeah, that was the first period. But again sort of didn't really understand what was going on and didn't really care because I sort of enjoyed, in a six sort of way the feeling of obsessing this.

9:40 I guess it's addiction, the same way as you would if you're a drug addict or whatever. I think that's a really important point to make that when you have these obsessive tendencies, you can become obsessive and addicted to things that can be considered positive activities or behaviors. Right, you were like obsess about exercise and fitness to the point as a twelve year old you were training six seven hours a day, like literally destroying yourself. Yeah, you know, stunting my growth, delayed me going through puberty, or a whole lot of things that really, you know, mentally traumatized me that you know, it taken me a long time to process and well into my twenties to process.

10:21 But like you're saying, and it's a big thing I talk about in the work I do and with my company, Move Your Mind, we do a huge amount of work on things like that, trying to educate people about addiction, about these day to day behaviors that we accept of people. And we're very quick to label, Okay, that person's got a drinking problem or a gambling problem or alcohol problem, But what about people that are workaholics that are using that might what they're going or any you know, and there's so many levels, but we actually applaud that. We say, you know, that's great they're achieving. You know, we could see the external result of that, so that's okay, But it's literally could be the exact same person, and they've got all of these underlying things that they're not dealing with. And you know, if you don't deal with it, you're either going to remain unhappy and not be the best version of yourself, or you're eventually going to explode. But you know, none of them are good thing. No matter how much you achieve it, you're not going to get what you want out of life unless you do that work.

11:12 You can't really avoid it from what I've learned. Yeah, and so for you, you talk about also being incredibly shy and insecure, and so I guess you know, it's easy to see again in hindsight, how that would develop into like young people experiencing those sorts of issues discover alcohol. Feel it makes you feel really good. It's a great way to numb and escape everything and spirals out of control. What was the turning point for you where you really like was it the accident when you said, Okay, that's it, I've really got to do something about this, or what was the turning point where you decided to make that positive change.

11:54 Yeah, I mean that was the interesting thing, because that accident, I mean it was, Yeah, it was turning point in a sense, and I remember thinking, Okay, this is crazy. I've almost killed my best friend, my family's been brought into this, this this has to stop. And I tried to stop, but I didn't really actually seek help or talk about the problem properly and tried to brush it under a rug, and after about a month I was falling back into the same behavior. So the turning point for me was I had spent another year or two doing that and got into this new course at university which I had just had happened just after I started seeing a psychologist for the first time, and through that, I guess I found a bit of relief in learning Okay, you know, this isn't unique to you. This is something a lot of people go through, and you just need to because I really was at a point where I didn't really even want a future, because I was so passionate and black and white about how I sort of see life in If I don't feel something or I don't really want it, I find it very hard to commit to something that just for the sake of doing it.

12:58 So but I knew I had to just do anything. So I got into this course at university. I was a business entrepreneurship course, and was looking at that as just Okay, let's just do this, to just put one foot in front of the other and just get any regularity, any routine, any sort of normality back in my life. And found out we had to do fifteen oral presentations in the first semester of that course. And this was this was a tiny course in front of like five people for these talks. But I was so shy at that point that I literally I would be trembling if I looked, if I was one on one with someone, I'd be looking at the floor. I couldn't. I was afraid of my own shadow, and I was about to pull out of this course. I was meeting the course coordinator. I was I wasn't sleeping for weeks on end leading up to it, and I almost did pull out. And it was only because at this point I had sort of my mum, my psychologist, my best friend all there knowing what I've been going through and knowing that, you know, if I did pull out of it. It would be not just wasting a bit more time, but you know, potentially almost life and death, like who knows where I would have spiraled to. So because I had to do it, I would front up and do these talks. I'd literally be vomiting in the toilet before the first few of them, and I'd have it written out on a sheet of paper and I'd be staring at the floor, shaking, mumbling.

14:08 But I think people couldn't even understand what I was saying. But I actually I'd get through them and I'd be like, Okay, I actually did do a shocking job of this thing, but you did it. I did it, and nothing bad happened. And that was a turning point because I had to keep doing them, and for me, what I learned was sometimes well, the most effective thing for me was just almost like exposure therapy of go and just do it. Face that fear. If you, I think, and I think for people that are anxious to overthink, you fall into that tendency of wanting to try and think your way out of it, which ironically is the worst thing you can do when it's spirals. So whenever that starts happening, it's like, Okay, I'm just going to stop thinking and go and do something. And yeah, that taught me a huge lesson because then I was able to think, well, I got over this, what else can I do? And then I ended up being on a year after that this reality show Dancing with the Stars, where I I had to dance on Life TV and I was like, Okay, well I'll do it. And I use that as another catalyst to consolidate that lesson, and it really did it.

15:07 To this day. It's sort of in my head when I'm scared of things, I think back on how scared I was back then. I'm like, you know what, who cares? It's like I was more terrified then I'm sure I can do it. That's quite a leap nick from vomiting before doing a talk in front of five people to dancing on national television. Like, what a progression. Yeah, it was a big progression. It was a weird and a weird I guess, like, yeah, unusual sort of set of circumstances. But the same thing. When I got asked to do that show, I was about to pull out of it, and then I said yes, and then I woke up the next day, calling the producer trying to pull out. But then I draw on that experience, thinking well, you know, maybe I can learn something out of this. And I was pretty bad, probably one of the worst dances on that show. But you know, this cheesy reality show consolidated incredibly the most meaningful life lesson that I've learned. It also opened the door I got to work with Beyond Blue at the time, and that led to the whole mental health advocacy path for me.

16:08 So it was sort of again, you know, it's interesting the chain of events that can happen to put you on a completely different trajectory that you would have never imagined. If someone said to me back then you were going to go and become a public speaker and do acting and do all these things, I would have laughed at them because it was sort of you know, I just thought, well, that's not me. I can't do that. But it was because I was suppressed, which you know a lot of people are. I hope that you're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying the show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you epps drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review. What were the techniques that you the most to manage that anxiety and go out and do the things that terrified you?

17:06 Yeah, no, I think so. The things that helped me to manage the anxiety and do the things that terrified me were really trying to get to that point where I understood that it will not be comfortable. It'll actually, you know, it's going to be very uncomfortable. I might make mistakes, and it's okay to not be good at something. And you know, I really started to understand that even these people that I admired and these leaders that I saw, they had started from also being at a point of not really probably not being great at the beginning. And you know, I'd remind myself that and give myself permission to fail, give myself permission to make a fool of myself, not need to control every outcome of what happened, and accept that even within that all of that acceptance, I'm probably going to be terrified, and that's okay as well.

17:56 Who cares. Let's just go and do it, and you know, looking at it in extreme ways of being well, you know, I'm not going to die here, you know, hopefully not anyway, Like it's sort of not life and death, So what's the worst that can actually happen? Just really rationalizing that, accepting it, and doing it, And for me, that was really, you know, the best way to this day. You know that I've been able to deal with a lot of those kind of things. Yeah, I think that is stellar advice there, that whole like it's going to be uncomfortable and that's okay, and I might stuff it up and that's okay as well. I mean, I work with a lot of people adults who to this day are gripped with fear and holding themselves back because it's going to be uncomfortable or they're going to fail, or they're so afraid of what somebody might think. I think that such a brilliant lesson to learn as early as possible.

18:47 Yeah, I mean, I guess one hundred percent as early as possible. And I think you know when you say you know, and I agree with you, you know, it's surprising how many adults struggle with that stuff. And if you peel back the layers of even people that are very successful for how many of those fears they have. But it's not really when you look at it, it's not actually that surprising because they've probably found something that they've been able to use to sort of as a way, like we're talking earlier about you know, addiction or you know, using something to mask what's actually going on underneath, so that becomes your protective sort of cave or whatever you want to call it, and then they don't have to go and do these things that you know, their gut or the intuition has been telling them for years that you know, they really want to do or should do, or need to do. And you know, the more successfully you've become, often can it can be a negative, It can stop you from making those changes.

19:37 I think, yeah, yeah, absolutely So, Nick, how did you get from dancing with the Stars to running a mental health company internationally? Yeah? I mean, I'll try, and I'll try and give the nutshell version, the nutshell version, because I've done a lot of different things and that's probably been my problem as well. Initially I was trying to run three businesses that once do this with that, which was good because it sort of led me to where I went, but I sort of went on Dancing with the Stars. As I was on that, I was doing underwear modeling. I was getting booked for a lot of jobs, and people kept saying, Okay, you're getting all of this publicity, you should start an underwear label. So I thought, well, I want to start a business, why not? So I launched an underwear label called Underbracks. That then led to me sort of opening a cafe in Melbourne that I learned from that I don't want to do anything in hospitality. I then went on to doing a health sort of an wellness product, and then in amongst all of that, I was getting booked to do these talks, initially doing them for free, and then that built into me getting trained with behavior change companies, and over a ten year period, I just kept doing them. You know, that was the common thread of just doing these mental health talks skill. I enjoyed it and got so much value and would see the value it would bring and kept learning, and you know that was the thing that lasted. And in amongst all of that, trained as an actor and was neighbors for a while and sort of built that site as well, and it got to a point where I was sort of looking at how do I combine all this stuff, and it was really building what moved your mind, I

21:09 guess is as a media company, where it just stemmed from the talks to then building digital programs and working with technology companies and you know, running these school and corporate well being programs, and then combining the media side with the podcast and the book and the different things that we're doing to get those messages out there. And even right now I'm producing a TV show. It's sort of a comedy based TV show centered in mental health, so sort of using combining all the things I like into this one thing, and that's how it came about. But anyway, I always find it hard to say these things in simple terms, and I probably my problem in general is I ramble too much, and I'll go on tangents.

21:52 So that's the most simple version I can give. But I think that none of those experiences are of a wasted though, aren't they. Like you said at the beginning, Oh that's my problem. I do too many things. But all of those things teach you something. You get some experience, and you find But the common thread is I think that's a really important message for young people. Too, like you don't have to know what the end goal is at the beginning, you just keep following that curiosity, and yeah, it sort of comes together. I think it's a really important message. And I think there's only so much you can learn from a textbook. You know, you've got to go and do things and make mistakes, and you know by doing that you'll narrow down that funnel of Okay, what are the things I enjoy doing and that I'm good at doing and that I could make a career out of and finding that path through that. And then I think, like you said, the other part that I think everyone needs to remind themselves or is that you know, there really is no end goal anyway, you know, what is that so called end goal? Or you know, if we do achieve what we're saying, we think we need to then be okay and at peace and everything's fine after that, we're sort of kidding ourselves because what do you do after that?

22:55 You know, it sort of doesn't actually work that way. So it's realizing that, hang on, how do I reframe this and think, yes, I want to have all these big lofty goals, but really, what's the core thing? What are the values and what's the you know, what's my purpose? What's the reason of what I'm trying to do every day? And I you know, I'm incredibly ambitious, and I get anxious all the time and compare myself and I fall into that and I look at that this person's doing this, what about this actor or this company? And then I go back to thinking, hang on, that's not the stuff that matters. What do I really care about? How do I make a difference? Well, I just want to try and you know, push the needle forward or have one you know, having this conversation today might be the only thing I do that might help one person. Well, that's good I've done, you know, living on that purpose. And then if you can think that way, you sort of have that nice calm feeling. I think when you sort of start comparing and you know, thinking about outcomes, it becomes this very anxious feeling. But it's so hard to navigate because you know, we live in a world that teaches us that we should you know, be capitalistic and we should try and compare and blah blah blah. So it's like that's crazy.

23:56 Nick. You go out a lot and talk to I know, you do a lot of talking in s gouls, and you mentioned that you do corporate well being workshops as well. I'm curious to know when kids come up to you, when young people particularly come up to you and they share with you afterwards what they got from your story, and they share with you what they're struggling with. What are the things they're telling you. What are the challenges facing young people today in terms of mental health. I think a lot of the time, you know, it's getting better with theo weenes, but a lot of the time they don't really feel like it's acceptable to talk about it. They don't know who to talk to, they don't know, you know, they don't really have the tools to know what they should be doing, they don't have the guidance to you know, try and implement those tools. And then they also feel like they need to have more answers and are thinking, you know, but I don't know what I want to be or what I want to do or you know, and all that kind of thing, and it's trying to remind them, hey, you know, you know what, if you did know what you'd wanted to do, that's probably even that's potentially you know, some people might stick to it, but it's potentially a negative thing. It's actually good. You should you absolutely should not know, and what you should do is go out and try and live your life, make mistakes, do things, and let that in form where you end up. But I think it can be that pressure, especially in you know VSE, where you feel like, well, I need to you know, I need to make a decision. I ad to work out what am I going to do for the rest of my life? And it's so so hard to know that.

25:15 So I talk a huge amount with what I'm doing about sort of failure and how we reframe that and looking at it like almost wanting to fail at things and looking at failure as learning because I think we do learn so much more from that. So then if you can reframe it in that way and thinking, well, I hope I'm going to try and do all these things, and if I don't get the outcome I want, I'm going to so called fail, but really that's not failing, it's learning or I'm actually going to achieve it. Then you then you reduce that anxiety and you're more likely to just try and put yourself out there and you know, try a whole lot of things, so all those kind of messages. Yeah, and Nick, I guess my other question is, I mean I work a lot with women, and I'm very aware of the challenges that women experience in life and the pressures on women. What are the challenges that are unique to men? Do you think we talk about men's mental health? Like, what do you see in the conversations you are having and what you've experienced as being the biggest issues that men are facing.

26:14 Yeah, I mean, I think for men there always has been, but I think it's a really big issue. And we're in the process at the moment of launching like a movie Your Mind Men's community group for that reason as well, because I get a lot of men messaging me and you know, reading different things that we've posted and getting value out of it. And I think for men, the big issue is not feeling like it's acceptable to be vulnerable and show emotion and express themselves and they're not knowing where they can do that or feeling like they need to be given permission. And I've seen it in workshops I've done where you're in a factory and you've got these men that have been there for thirty years and they've never talked about this stuff, but then when they do actually open up, there's just this huge relief and you know, they can't believe, like how they're just so relieved that they've actually been allowed to talk about this.

27:03 So I think creating those spaces, I mean, toxic masculinity is a really big problem. And I think also with where the world's moving now, I mean, which is great with all the equality and you know, what's happening socially, I think it's fantastic, but I think also within that man often thinking okay, where do I see how am I meant to conduct myself and what you know, so really trying to just distill things down to how we can all learn, you know, to be just to be ourselves and to be okay with that and you know, to show vulnerability, which yeah, it's definitely got a long way to go in that area, but so important. And I think, you know, interesting that you use the term toxic masculinity because I think sometimes that men who hear that term almost take that personally like we're saying like men are toxic. It's like, no, toxic masculinity is like really detrimental to men as much as it is detrimental to women. You know, we talk about the patriot and look no like it affects you just as negatively as it might affect women. So I think it's really important.

28:13 I love that there are men like you who are out there and advocating for other men and you know, young people and women and everybody to speak up and share their struggles because I think that you're right and having those spaces to share openly is so important. Yeah, what are your fundamentals? Like, You've come a long way in terms of your own mental health and now you're out sharing with other people. What are the pillars I guess for you that you draw on to keep yourself well? Yeah, I guess I've learned through trial and error a whole bunch of things that I do daily now or as much as I can. The biggest ones definitely exercise for me, I guess, coming from a competitive sporting background and it being such a big part of my life, I have always continued that, and I exercise in some capacity six days a week. I normally do it in the morning, which I mean for me and I know for a lot of other people. I find just almost a game changer in how much, because I'll wake up that's when I get anxious. I'll wake up in the morning and my mind's racing, and it can be hard to get out of bed sometimes. But if you get out and I start moving, you start processing things, and then I feel so much better for the rest of the day. So I just find, yeah, exercise huge and so important. I've been meditating for over ten years now, and on and off I fall in and out of it, but I try and do at least at twenty minute one in the morning. And then I do gratitude journaling every day, and I do it pretty simply. I just write three things in my phone because again, if I

29:45 had to go and get a notepad and write it and all that, I won't keep it up. So I always try and make it as simple as I can. And then outside of that, I would say things like acting, you know, and I've gone in and out of having the time, you know, really pursue it and you know, do things in that area. But for me, it's that creative outlet. And you know, recently in New York, I went and did a play for the first time, and it was a small community play and purely just did it, you know, it was there was about sixty people that came and watched it, and it was this thing of just purely doing it for myself, not caring about it, not wanting any outcome. Going through this thing with you know, the other actors, where you're just doing it because you'll want to create and have that space to create and you know things like that, it just, you know, it reminds you how important it is that we you know, yes, we need to you know, have our careers and work towards all these goals, but also doing these things that we really want to do, you know, just for ourselves and not having to rationalize why, just doing it because we want to do it. And every time I do that, it's just, yeah, it's I think it's one of the best things you can do for your mental health. So that helped a lot. And then the final one just having you know, I've got I'm lucky to have incredibly close relationships with you know, a select number of people, and just having that ability to be able to sort of share and be there for my friends as well, I think that really helps.

31:08 Yeah, it's interesting. I just recently had Eve Rodsky on the podcast and we talked about her book called Unicorn Space, and Unicorn Space is that creative self expression, and her whole thing is about how important that is to just do things for the love of it and just for the joy of putting something out there and creating something. It doesn't matter what it is. And sounds like that's for you the play or the. Acting or yeah, definitely doing those kind of things. But on the flip side sort of that's why I took a break from auditioning for a while as well, because that was becoming I was at a point at one stage I was when I was really into it. I was auditioning five six times a week, and then it actually does go the other way where it's becoming a chore, it's causing anxiety, it's becoming purely about booking the job.

31:55 So it's so hard within all of these kind of things that but like you're saying, for me, it really is at the core just going back to doing it for that creative outlet and it doesn't make such a huge difference, same as exercise, I guess for me doing it just because it makes me feel good, you know, that's I think that's a good enough reason for any of us to do anything, isn't it. Yeah? I think that you raise a really good point there, and I think it's worth just that ability to have the self awareness to know what is motivating this. And it's not about it's not that you shouldn't have goals, you shouldn't aspire to achieve things, but just being able to check in with yourself about is am I doing this in a healthy, balanced way, Like is this healthy striving or is this like potentially unhealthy obsessive kind of behavior?

32:44 And it's I think through mindfulness and that level of self awareness and self reflection that you're able to make those distinctions. Would you say absolutely, oh no, one hundred percent. Yeah. I think I wouldn't have in my sort of early twenties, probably wouldn't have been able to make those kind of just diinctions or decisions. And it's been from working on myself and continuing to and having that self awareness. But I think, yeah, I think everyone knows. You know that feeling in your gut when when you know something's wrong or it's not aligned with you, you get this yuck feeling inside. I think everyone knows what that feels like, but we conveniently ignore that a lot of our time because when we're not wanting to really listen to it or tune into that. But I think we all know the feeling. So when you know your intuition is so strong, and if we can just allow ourselves to trust that normally, that will lead us to making a better decision for ourselves.

33:37 It's just giving ourselves, you know, permission to do that, I guess is such an important thing one hundred percent. And I will add that meditation is also very good for enhancing your intuition, that capacity to hear yourselfs quietening your busy mind and giving yourself the opportunity to slow things down a bit goes a long way to helping you to get in touch. I teach mindfulness of meditation. You obviously fully on board with that. And I always tell people that as well, like I've got us quite down that noise to be able to connect with that intuition because it always knows. Yeah, well how can you otherwise? And I think we've got the noise in our head. And then most people, you know, feel their lives or a lot of people fill their lives up to the point where it's you know, you're working a full time job, you're socializing, you're doing all these things where literally, you know, sometimes they don't have five minutes to themselves. And you know, I've recently come back to Australia and I had two weeks of sort of working a lot, seeing family, seeing friends, doing stuff, and I almost broke down. I was like, I cannot sustain this. For me, I need copious amounts of time alone.

34:46 So I'm trying to achieve the opposite because I can't stand not having that time, because I'm like, where do I get the time to recalibrate and think about, you know, try and think about what I want to think about. You just don't have the time to even create satively think about things. If you're just filling every waking moment with noise and people and things, it's like it gives you no space. There's a Socrates quote I think as Socrates unless it's been misquoted, but this quote that I love, which is beware the barrenness of a busy life. Yeah, just so so wise, Nick, what is the one message that you would like anybody listening to this podcast to take away One message? I would say, just reminding yourself that you are you're already enough. You don't need to prove yourself. What you should be looking to do is just trusting yourself and learning to listen to yourself rather than other people and outside noise, because especially in this day and age, you know, you don't have to leave your bed and you've you've got sort of you're being bombarded with just information through social media, through all the different media platforms out there.

35:56 So being able to you know, quite all of that and just listen to yourself I think is so important and really trusted that. I think if you can do that, you'll be on the path to sort of making improvements in your own life and being a better person to other people as well. Fantastic advice and Nick, Where can people find out more about you and how they can work with you? Obviously your book is called Move your Mind, and we'll put the link in the show notes, But how else can they get in touch with you? Yeah, probably the easiest place would just be to go to my website, Nick Brax dot com. If you go there, it comes up with all the pop ups from my book that we released last year and other links. And then if you go to Move your Mind dot me, we've got a link. I mean it's got a sort of landing page at the moment we're building the website, but we've just launched a community platform and we've got a link on there where you can have a look at what we're doing with that. And it's got courses and live events and community features and all sorts of things on there. So yeah, they are the two places you can go brilliant.

36:55 We will also put those links in the show notes. Nick, thank you so much for the work that you doing. Incredible and thank you for your time today. No probill, same to you. You know, I think it's I've had a look at what you're doing, and yet it's really incredible work. And love connecting with people like yourself, and yeah, really appreciate you having me on the Show's. Next book, Move Your Mind, is available in all Good bookstores. He also has a podcast with the same name. Nick is on Instagram at Nick Brax and his website, as he said, is Nick Brax dot com. Don't forget I also have a brand new podcast called The Confidence Coach with Kastan. I would love for you to have a listen and tell me what you think, share your feedback, with me hello at kast done dot com or cast Done underscore XO on Instagram. I'm also cast one Underscore XO on TikTok and all three Crappy to Happy books are also available in bookstores, and you can listen to them for free on Audible. If you're an Audible subscriber, you don't have to use a credit. You can download all three of the Crappy to Happy books on Audible.

37:56 I cannot wait to catch you on the next episode of Crepy to Habby Listener