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Episode Transcript
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Jem: People who have managed to create a level of success in any aspect of their life. And they question it, they're like, do I deserve this? I don't think I deserve this. And I think the imposter syndrome comes from this very common human belief of, I'm not enough.
And I realized that I'd been running that belief for 40 years. And then I was curious, as to whether we can change our beliefs, can we change our neurological wiring?
Sharad: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to Live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host Sharad Lal. This is episode 25. How do we tackle imposter syndrome? What is it like to be a man in today's world? We discuss all this and more in today's podcast. We have with us Jem fuller. Jem is a TEDx speaker, published author, communications expert, and an executive coach who coaches CEOs and business leaders across the world.
Jem's led a colorful life from years of barefoot backpacking across the Indian subcontinent to senior leaders and global companies. He's done it all. He's also worked as a reflexologist, Chinese Masseur, Reiki practitioner, kindergarten teacher in Asia, a global tattooist, fire dancer, motorcycle career, actor, singer songwriter, travel consultant, prior to commencing his coaching practice.
Jem, I hope I didn't miss anything, hopefully I got it all through. As you will notice from this conversation. All these varied experiences have made Jem wise and a very good communicator. In this episode, apart from imposter syndrome and being a man Jem, and I talk about limiting beliefs and how to change them, midlife crisis and awakenings, accessing our feminine and masculine energies for both men. And difference between acceptance and approval and a lot more.
But before getting into the interview, here's thanking all of you for supporting this podcast. With your support, we hit number three in Singapore, top 5% globally and are listened to in over 65 countries. Over 500 cities. Please do consider giving us a rating on Spotify, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening to this.
Thank you in advance. Separately. I'd love to share a podcast I recently discovered and loved. It's called Just So We Are Clear. It's hosted by Hanley Hofer and Marissa True. Hanley's been a VJ with MTV, a model and actress, and Marissa's got a degree in psychology.
These ladies come together and have a casual, playful, and deep conversation where they talk about mental health, relationships, therapy, authenticity, and a lot more. Have a listen. I think you guys might enjoy this. I'll drop a link to the podcast in the episode details and the show notes. Now here's the interview.
Sharad: Hi, Jem. Welcome to How to Live. How are you doing this afternoon?
Jem: Hello Sharad, yeah, thanks for having me. I'm doing really well. Thank you.
Sharad: Thank you for making time. Let's get right to it. I know a big pivotal moment in your life was when you had some sort of a midlife crisis in your forties. Can you describe what you were going through at the time and what came out of it?
Jem: Yeah, absolutely. Generally people think of this episode as a midlife crisis. And for me, actually, it was a midlife awakening, and it's easier for me to call it a midlife awakening now with the benefit of hindsight certainly at the time losing my marriage, losing my career, losing my house.
It did feel pretty crisis like, it was pretty intense. I ended up after losing everything, I kept my two children. I've got two sons. I had my boys, week on week off, but apart from that, and obviously that was the most important thing to me, but everything else, I lost everything in my early forties and I had a hundred thousand dollars-worth of debt and nothing. But having the boys was really. The emotional leverage that I needed to help me really re-identify and to heal my relationship with myself and to create the changes that I needed to create. In terms of my mental wellbeing so that I could build the life that I'm building now, which is really quite a remarkable life.
I feel very blessed, lots of gratitude. So nine years down the track since my midlife awakening. And I'm very happy to say that I'm living quite a wonderful life.
Sharad: That's great to hear Jim. And like you said, it was an awakening versus a crisis or an opportunity out there. What do you think made it more an awakening versus a downward crisis?
Jem: Pivotal to the whole thing happening. I had a realization, I had a realization that I had been running a racket subconsciously. I'd been running this belief in the background that I wasn't good. I wasn't enough. Since then, I've found out that this is quite a common human belief. A lot of people have this background feeling that they're not good enough or smart enough, or clever enough, or committed enough or strong enough, or man enough or woman enough.
That leads into the imposter. People who have managed to create a level of success in any aspect of their life. And they question it, they're like, do I deserve this? I don't think I deserve this. And I think the imposter syndrome comes from this very common human belief of, I'm not enough.
And I realized that I'd been running that belief for, 40 years. And then I was curious, as to whether we can change our beliefs, can we change our neurological wiring? And so I went on a bit of a mission to read up as much as I could. And I read books from neuroscientists and philosophers and coaches and NLP, neurolinguistics programming practitioners and all stuff.
I was just really thirsty to find out whether there was a way that I could change my beliefs. And I found out that there. There are ways we can change our beliefs. And so I went to work on myself and very, literally changed that belief to a belief that I am enough and I do deserve all the happiness and success and anything that I can create.
Of course I deserve it and I am enough to do that. So by changing that fundamental belief, the outward experience of my life could then change as.
Sharad: Very interesting points there. First is just coming to that realization that you have this limited belief. Was there any event that brought you to this realization or did it just happen? How did that realization come about?
Jem: There was actually an event. Before I share with you the night that happened I guess it is also important. To understand the context that there had been years of unhappiness and years of me creating a life that matched the belief that I wasn't enough. So I had created a marriage where I constantly felt like I wasn't good enough.
I'd put all of my anxieties, into intimacy. And I had I was sabotaging my career and all of these things inadvertently. I didn't know why, I didn't understand why, but the context was that I had the outwardly, I looked very happy. If someone from the outside would look at me and say, wow, he's got a great life.
He's got a great job and a wonderful wife and two children and a house. And they live in a beautiful village by the sea, from the outside, it was very Instagram, ish. It looked wonderful, but very privately, I was desperately unhappy and unsure of myself and I didn't know how to tell anyone. I was covered in shame and this will lead into other stuff in this conversation. I'm looking forward to talking with you about what is it to be a man and how does that play out for us? I've been sitting in men's circle for about 12 years now.
There's a group of us men. We sit around a fire. Once a month and we talk about important themes and it's just an opportunity to be heard and to listen. And one night we had, what's called a North American Indian sweat lodge, and it's a traditional practice from the North American Indians where they create a small closed in space and they bring hot rocks from a fire and into this dark space. It is outside in the nature. And it's a closed in space, essentially. It's like a sauna, gets very hot in there. And it’s pitch black. I'd never done it before. And we were on traditional Aboriginal land here in Australia. And it was ceremonial. It was a ritual. We were led by an elder someone who knew how to hold space and lead this ritual.
And I was in this space and look, I don't know, Sharad, maybe it was the heat exhaustion, but I hadn't out of body experience after several hours in this very hot enclosed dark space with other men. And I had an out of body experience yeah, it was quite bizarre actually. My experience was that I was five years old and I was flying around in the universe, so to speak, it sounds strange, I know. But this was just my experience. And then I went back to when I was five, because that was still the age of innocence for me when I was six years old. There was an event that happened with my father where he lost his temper and he beat me up.
And that was the time when I first started to question whether I was good enough, am I enough? Am I good enough for the man on the pedestal? My father, the one man that, that a young boy wants to be good enough for his father. And so I think subconsciously I started to question everything when I was six.
So I went back to when I was five, which was still the age of innocence for me. and then that night, I went home after the sweat lodge and that night, and I had a very amazing dream, very prophetic dream, and also super, super lucid and clear, those dreams where it's vivid, where you can see everything as much as if you were conscious and awake.
It was one of those dreams. And I had a serpent in the dream. I had this serpent that was living in the core of me and I had to get this serpent out of me. Anyway, long story short, I got the serpent out with the help of some other men in the dream. And when I woke up in the morning, I knew it straight away, crystal clear.
And I went, I said to myself, wow, that serpent was the belief that you are not good enough. And I had no one had ever told me this. I just, it just came to me that serpent was the belief that you are not good enough. And it's time to shed that belief. And it's time to replace that belief with a more functional belief.
Like I am enough just the way I am, I'm doing the perfect job of being me perfectly imperfect, of course, with all of my stuff, but I am exactly who I'm supposed to be. So it's about coming to full radical self-acceptance, which is acceptance of reality, in reality is always right.
You can argue with reality as much as you want, but reality will always win. And the reality is that you are exactly who you're supposed to be because there you are. I had this understanding and it really was. You know that night when everything started to turn around. And then I changed my belief.
I started working on my self-belief and repairing my relationship with myself and radical acceptance. And it was after that, not long after that, I lost my job. We ended up having to consciously uncouple from the marriage. And then I had to sell our house because I couldn't afford it anymore.
And, that's when everything changed.
Sharad: Thank you for sharing that story. That's such a deep, powerful story. Thank you very much for sharing it.
Jem: You're welcome.
Sharad: And as I was thinking about that innocent boy, it just struck me that we have so much of innocence in us. And then things happen along the way, which bring out these limiting beliefs.
And many of us live our whole life without realizing the serpent within us. But you are fortunate enough to be able to realize that, before things started going downhill for you. So you had the right mindset through which you could build your life together. Would that be an accurate way to think about it?
Jem: yeah almost I certainly feel very fortunate to have had that awakening. I think things had gone so far downhill for me. That was the reason that I got to the point of having the awakening. Because things had gone so far downhill. I was desperately unhappy and hiding it.
Losing everything actually felt a shedding of the old and the opportunity for me to create, to have a second chance. It felt like I was giving myself the opportunity to have a second chance. So losing the house was like losing the burden. Losing the marriage was freeing myself.
And I say this with all due respect to my previous wife, because the love is still, will always be there, but, losing the marriage was really liberation from a relationship that was toxic and not functional and horrible. It was, we weren't being nice to each other and we'd been trying to fix it for years. So that felt like a liberation, and starting all over again. When my boys and I first moved into a rental house, the three of us, we had nothing. And I didn't even consider that moving into this house. And we got into this empty house and it was like, wow, we don't even have a knife or a fork or chopsticks.
We don't have any bowls or plates. We don't have any beds or linen. We don't have any towels. We don't have a microwave or a fridge. We had absolutely nothing and I didn't have any money. So we I don't know if they have it where you are, but Facebook has this a local community called surf coast free stuff.
And it's just where people in our local community, when they don't want their microwave anymore, they say, does anyone want a microwave? Basically they just, people give away stuff for free. So I jumped onto this Facebook group and said, single dad starting all over again. I need everything. I've got nothing.
And it was really remarkable. The community just rallied and it created this little movement on this Facebook group. And, we completely decked out the whole house. For free, everything. Knives and forks. And you think of anything you have in a house? We got given it, it was really beautiful.
Sharad: Were you living in Melbourne at the time or
Jem: No, we're an hour and a half Southwest of Melbourne down on the coast on the great ocean road. We're near a famous surf beach called bells beach.
Sharad: Wow. And then building your life back, like you said, you did NLP, you did a few things that were able to help you cement the new belief that you had. What were some of the things that helped you move in the direction of life that you've got into right now?
Jem: Yeah. Look some really rudimentary, repetitive, boring, to be honest and roll your sleeves up, go to work on yourself stuff, I hate to say for anyone listening to this, there's no magic pill. You don't just get to click your fingers. And then all of a sudden you have completely different neurological wiring and beliefs.
These beliefs, a belief is really just a reflex thought. It's a thought that fires off its own accord, right? You've thought at so many times that the neural pathway that, that fires, when you have that thought is a well-worn pathway. It's wired together. These neural pathways are persistent, right?
If you want to create a new neural pathway, you've gotta go on high repetition, and that's very literally what I did. I picked the new belief that I wanted amongst other beliefs as well. But my primary one at the beginning was I am good enough just the way I am. And I said it, Sharad, out loud every day, hundreds of times a day.
And I didn't even believe it to begin. I was saying I'm good enough. Just the way I am. And I didn't believe it. And it took six to 12 months of high repetition before that neural pathway started to wire together. And it did. And it's now it's not like you tick a box and go, I know I'm good enough now.
I don't ever have to practice self-love or self-acceptance that has become habitual for me. I say affirmations every morning. I meditate every morning. I say affirmations every morning. I look at myself in the mirror regularly and remind myself that I. Completely. Okay. I'm a good person. I have good intentions, I'm human, I make mistakes, but I'm trying my best that I love myself.
All of this positive self-talk has become habitual for me, and it takes time. People are like, wow, I'm really hard on myself. And I want to change. I'm like, okay are you committed to that? Because it takes time and dedication and persistence to do that. I was fortunate enough to be a father, because if you've got children, they're a very strong, motivational leverage that you can use on yourself because you look at these two, these young people who are your children and you feel, I will do anything for. And so I said I need to be a better father for them. I need to be a better man for them. So that was the leverage for me to be persistent and to do the work.
Sharad: Very inspirational, Jem, very inspirational. And I think this is a good segue to talk about manhood. We grew up being men and what we were taught about manhood, at least me was, courage was holding back your emotions not crying. And it's changed a lot. Now we asked to be vulnerable and it's changing so much that I wanted to get your sense.
And how have you seen what being a man was 30 years back. How have you seen that change and what do you think has brought about that change?
Jem: It's such a, a great question. And a worthwhile conversation, I think to have, you think about our fathers. And the way they were raised as males and they were raised by their parents who had come through, depending on where you were in the world, but who'd come through two world wars.
Who'd come through. Great depressions, Tough times. Where they didn't have the luxury of being able to sit and contemplate or be introspective or, keep a journal or, that generally speaking some, obviously there were philosophers and poets and thinkers that did, but the general average person on the street, they were primarily concerned with survival.
The world was a violent place and it was hard times. So it's understandable that parents would say to the boys, because back in that time, this is where the patriarchy was really stemming from back in that time, the boys had to grow up and become the breadwinner. They had to become men and go, and their primary responsibility was to earn enough money.
So the family could survive. So they didn't have time to be emotional. Suck it up, toughen up, stiff up a lip. Don't cry like a girl, blah, blah, blah. And that's the way boys were raised. And so that's our parents, that's the way they were raised. So they didn't know any different other than to raise us like that.
Times are necessarily changing, but we all suffer under the patriarchy, the patriarchal structure, which is a structure of dominance, not just women, females and males, anybody, however, you identify. All of us are oppressed under a patriarchal structure, which is a structure of dominance.
And that structure for me, never felt right as a boy. I never, in fact it repulsed me. I felt repelled from it. And I was a very sensitive young boy. I was very emotional and my father told me not to be emotional. My father told me to suck it up. Don't cry like a girl, stiff up a lip.
So I didn't feel like I was good enough for him. I thought there was something wrong with me. I, as a heterosexual male growing up, I used, I was questioning him because I'm very connected to my feminine energy. I even questioned that for a while. I was like, wow, does this mean that I'm gay? Because I'm emotional, but I was never attracted to boys or men.
I was only ever attracted to girls. I'm like, okay, I'm heterosexual, but I'm emotional. What's wrong with me? I used to think. And I didn't realize there's nothing wrong with me, but the patriarchal structure or system tells boys that they need to amputate that emotional part of themselves, that they need to mutilate themselves essentially, and cut off from their emotional self, which is damaging.
And then we end up becoming Men who are trying to figure out what is it to be a man? And now we're being told vulnerability is a strength. And we're like, wow, how does that fit? I think this change is important. I believe the world is a different place now.
I believe that we can explore functional masculinity. Functional masculine can also be completely switched on and fovea vision like completely focused on a goal on an outcome and be wonderfully attentive to that goal that can be a wonderfully functional aspect of masculine as well, and for us as men, to provide, I don't mean that's exclusively a man's job.
Anyone can provide, I'm not being sexist at all. I'm just talking about masculine energy. And by the way, too Sharad, I, I think that we all have access to masculine and feminine energy. So there, my, my partner. She runs her own businesses. And when she's when she's got a goal and she's completely focused on her goal and she's taking action to achieve that goal, she's accessing her masculine energy, and when I'm nurturing or caring for our children and, in those moments, I can access my feminine energy, so being a man doesn't mean just being masculine. You can be a man and still be human centric. You can be a man with compassion, with empathy. You can be a man with emotions.
Sharad: And that's a very interesting point where, you know, gender as well as energy are different. And a lot of us men have grown up in because the reasons that you described only accessing our masculine energy, which is goal oriented decision making, those kind of things. How do some of us, who've never accessed our feminine energy whether it's the emotion side, vulnerability side, how do some of us start the process of peeking into it, looking into it, figuring out what it is and trying to incorporate that to become a little more complete.
Jem: There's a chapter in my book. I published a book late last year. And it's called The Art of Conscious Communication for Thoughtful Men. First of all to decide that you are curious, that's the first place to start. There's gotta be some curiosity if you're not at all curious in self-development or exploring aspects of yourself that have up until now been left, unknown, then there's not much point, but once you've got that curiosity, dedicate some time to sit alone, quietly, dedicate some time to practice introspection. And I would suggest that when you begin to just notice yourself, do it with kindness, just be kind, just be curious. There's no right or wrong with this. If you sit still in a moment when you are feeling something, when I say feeling something, you might not even notice that you're feeling anything, but when your mood is in a particular state, just say something's happened.
Someone said something and you've been triggered by that. If you can remove yourself from that situation and go and sit somewhere on your own and just notice yourself, notice, wow, I've been triggered right now. What am I thinking? Notice your thoughts. What am I feeling? See if you can actually put some language to what you are feeling now, you might not even be aware that it's an emotion, but when you start to give it some language, some words you might go, oh, wow. Yeah. I am feeling really frustrated right now. Or I'm feeling angry right now, or I'm feeling to be honest, I'm feeling stupid right now. Whatever it is that you are feeling, give it some words, this is a very simple practice, but over time it'll become more familiar for you. It's practicing self-awareness. Really?
Sharad: That's a good starting point. Just noting down. There's no objective. It's just curiosity, noting down feelings, noting down emotions. That's a starting point to understanding yourself. And then of course you move from there.
And normally when you make a transformation like this, when you change from who you were, there's always times where you go back to older patterns. So I don't know if that's happened to you and how do you deal with it? How do you manage yourself during those moments?
Jem: Yeah, it really does. One of my older patterns was if I was challenged or questioned on something, I would revert back to the kind of teenage boy stomping his feet. And I did that in my marriage too. So my then wife would question me over something and I would become like this, impetuous teenage boy, and go you don't understand and blah, blah.
And then she'd go into mothering, going, oh, I feel like I've got three sons and mothering you as well. And we'd go into this old pattern. And since then, I've been really trying to be aware of not going into the defensive boy, but the other day, literally just a few days ago, my mother my, my real mom. She questioned quite innocently.
She was asking me a question about my parenting, about her grandson. And I got defensive and I went back into that teenage boy, and I was like well, you know, and I got, I noticed myself just get, getting a bit defensive. And I walked out of the room and I caught myself and I went, oh, Jem, look, you just did that old pattern mate.
And I just stopped and said to myself, it's. You're human and this new rewiring is pretty insistent and sometimes it comes back again and that's fine, but you're all good. And I went back into the room where my mom was and I gave her a hug and I said, “Hey mom, I realized I just, did an old pattern of mine.
And please forgive me. I didn't mean to react like that.” And she said, oh, I didn't even notice. That's fine. Gave me a hug, whatever. But yeah, it does. It comes back. I think when we're coaching ourselves, even when we have the best of intentions, there are times we're human, right? We trip over ourselves and we sometimes behave in ways that we ideally didn't want to.
When you are coaching yourself around that. I think it's important to be really careful about the quality of self-coaching, because we, our natural tendency is to be horrible to ourselves. We speak so cruelly to ourselves. I'm not gonna swear on your podcast, but inside your head, when you've done something, when you've let yourself down, you're swearing at yourself and it's abusive.
It's self-abuse. And I don't think it's healthy at all. And I used to do it massively. I would look at myself in the mirror and be horrible to myself. And so I've been, that's another part of the practice that I've been developing over the nine years is, when I let myself down, I coach myself positively. Come on Jim, you can do better than that. It's okay. You slipped up. That's okay. All good. But come on mate. You're better than that. You can do it. I believe in you. That's the kind of self-talk that I use now. I think it's really important.
Sharad: That's a big one. And that was gonna be my next question, which you answered the, whether you had a critical self and how did you change it to self-love. And you've answered that so well, because that's so important. Self-forgiveness. Self-compassion, self-love, especially when you're transforming and making these big changes in your life.
You will slip, things will go wrong and to handle yourself gently is the best way to be able to move towards where you want to go.
Jem: Yeah, absolutely. And you can, it doesn't mean that you have to drop your standards or drop your values. It doesn't mean that you can be kind and gentle and strong. You can be kind and gentle and still strive to keep expanding into your potential, to keep improving and growing and evolving and becoming the next version of you.
If you at all driven to evolve, you can still do that. And be kind to yourself. I, I think that cruelty is just simply dysfunctional. I can't think of a time when cruelty is the most effective or functional avenue to get what you want to get.
Sharad: Yeah, you can constructively be upset with yourself and not holding the standards, but you need not have a cruelty, like you said.
Jem: Completely. People say to me, if you practice radical acceptance, does that mean that you then become apathetic and you just go I accept everything is the way it is. So then I don't want anything to improve and no, that's not the case. Acceptance doesn't mean approval. I accept that there are some dysfunctional people in the world doing horrible things. Now I accept that. That is what it is. Do I approve of it? No, of course not. Do I hope that we can get better? Yeah, of course I do. Acceptance is the radical acceptance of everything that's happened in the past and the past is this moment right now, because in every split second, the present becomes the past. So there's this beautiful, fine line where anything that I can't control or influence anything that I can't change, I'm accepting. But that doesn't mean that we don't want things to improve moving forwards.
Otherwise I wouldn't be having this conversation with you, and I think that's a fine point to make, and it's the same with self-acceptance. You can completely accept yourself in this moment and for all of your past all your ups and downs, all your functional and dysfunctional decisions and actions, a hundred percent accept yourself and still.
Be curious about how you can improve, your experience of life moving forward.
Sharad: That's a great point, because like you said, a lot of us mistake self-acceptance for approval, and that distinction is extremely important.
Jem: Yeah. Yeah, I think
Sharad: Jem as you've changed, how have people around you responded to it? Because quite often, people are used to seeing us in a certain way. And when we make big shifts to ourselves that sometimes is very uncomfortable for people.
So how's that happened and how have you managed that?
Jem: It depends on who we're talking about. For my immediate family those who are left my father and my youngest brother both died 12 years ago. But for my mom and my other brother and sister, I think for them, it's been relief. They've just been so relieved.
They're like, oh, cuz they always knew me. We're a very close family and they're my blood. So I think they were relieved. I think my current partner, for example, she only met me after I'd started to do this work on myself. So she's just been watching me blossom. And of course I've told her we've we communicate about everything.
And so she knows my story as a story, but not firsthand experientially. She wasn't with me before. My midlife awakening. So she's just seen me going from, strength to strength, really flourishing. And she's just so happy for me. She's always believed in me, right from the word go she's believed in me and what I'm doing.
And then there's people who have their own identification with the way you were in the past. So my ex-wife, for example, she was very identified in the way I was when we were married. So it was much harder for her to accept my change. Like you're saying, when you embark on a reasonably remarkable journey of change, there are people around you who will resist it because it's challenging their own sense of identity because we all only exist in community with each other. My sense of identity is a part of the people around me and their sense of identity and our sense of each other. So when someone has formed a sense of identity and you are a part of that, they will resist your change cuz it threatens their very sense of identity, so yeah, it, in answer to your question for some people it's hard and some people we need to move away from. Some people you can't be close to them anymore, and if you wanna change, there's been people in my life from before that.
I just don't see. I don't see. And we're not in touch anymore because I couldn't blossom. I couldn't flourish if I stayed in touch with them.
Sharad: Yeah and this is such a relevant point in Asian societies, which are very collective societies and you're part of a whole and any shifts and changes, impact the whole system. And there's so much resistance to that.
I know we only have eight minutes left, so I have this question that I ask everyone at the end of the interview. At the end of your life, how would you know you've lived a good life?
Jem: Look into the eyes of those that I love. That's how I'll know, and that could be today, we're all going to die and we don't know when I think that's amazing. And that informs us on how we can live. Given that I don't know when I'm going to die and, look, there's been lots of research done around the quality of our life and evidence shows that the quality of our life is directly correlated to the quality of our relationships. So when I look into the eyes of my partner, my woman, or when I look into the eyes of my children or my mother, or my brother or sister, or close friends in a moment of quiet, when we're not speaking or talking when we're just present and looking into each other's eyes, that tells me how good my life is.
Sharad: Wow. That's beautiful. That's really beautiful.
Thank you, Jem, for such an engaging and wise conversation. If you listening, enjoyed this conversation, you could consider listening to episode two, where we talk about achievement versus fulfillment and episode 21, where we talk about facing emotions and being vulnerable. There are so many action steps from the stalk.
Here are two, we could all consider, first. What's a limiting belief we all hold. Just thinking about that question will not uncover the belief. It took Jem 40 years to figure out that the belief of not being good enough was holding him.
Some of us live our life without figuring this out. But just asking that question and writing down whatever comes up is a good starting point from that place we can periodically reflect on this and over time uncover what this belief is. Second. As a man, what feminine energy can we access? And as a woman, what masculine energy can we access? The way to think about it is what could be an interesting addition to who we are today, or what's the energy we've suppressed due to societal concern. And it's time has come now, can we try to identify it, maybe try it out in baby steps and see what it does for us.
For me, a recent edition has been accessing my emotions. I'm more conscious of my emotions and I'm developing this part of me. That's it. For today's episode, we will be back with another episode two weeks from now on October 11. I hope you join me for that till next time.
Have a wonderful day ahead. Bye.
Jem: People who have managed to create a level of success in any aspect of their life. And they question it, they're like, do I deserve this? I don't think I deserve this. And I think the imposter syndrome comes from this very common human belief of, I'm not enough.
And I realized that I'd been running that belief for 40 years. And then I was curious, as to whether we can change our beliefs, can we change our neurological wiring?
Sharad: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to Live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host Sharad Lal. This is episode 25. How do we tackle imposter syndrome? What is it like to be a man in today's world? We discuss all this and more in today's podcast. We have with us Jem fuller. Jem is a TEDx speaker, published author, communications expert, and an executive coach who coaches CEOs and business leaders across the world.
Jem's led a colorful life from years of barefoot backpacking across the Indian subcontinent to senior leaders and global companies. He's done it all. He's also worked as a reflexologist, Chinese Masseur, Reiki practitioner, kindergarten teacher in Asia, a global tattooist, fire dancer, motorcycle career, actor, singer songwriter, travel consultant, prior to commencing his coaching practice.
Jem, I hope I didn't miss anything, hopefully I got it all through. As you will notice from this conversation. All these varied experiences have made Jem wise and a very good communicator. In this episode, apart from imposter syndrome and being a man Jem, and I talk about limiting beliefs and how to change them, midlife crisis and awakenings, accessing our feminine and masculine energies for both men. And difference between acceptance and approval and a lot more.
But before getting into the interview, here's thanking all of you for supporting this podcast. With your support, we hit number three in Singapore, top 5% globally and are listened to in over 65 countries. Over 500 cities. Please do consider giving us a rating on Spotify, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening to this.
Thank you in advance. Separately. I'd love to share a podcast I recently discovered and loved. It's called Just So We Are Clear. It's hosted by Hanley Hofer and Marissa True. Hanley's been a VJ with MTV, a model and actress, and Marissa's got a degree in psychology.
These ladies come together and have a casual, playful, and deep conversation where they talk about mental health, relationships, therapy, authenticity, and a lot more. Have a listen. I think you guys might enjoy this. I'll drop a link to the podcast in the episode details and the show notes. Now here's the interview.
Sharad: Hi, Jem. Welcome to How to Live. How are you doing this afternoon?
Jem: Hello Sharad, yeah, thanks for having me. I'm doing really well. Thank you.
Sharad: Thank you for making time. Let's get right to it. I know a big pivotal moment in your life was when you had some sort of a midlife crisis in your forties. Can you describe what you were going through at the time and what came out of it?
Jem: Yeah, absolutely. Generally people think of this episode as a midlife crisis. And for me, actually, it was a midlife awakening, and it's easier for me to call it a midlife awakening now with the benefit of hindsight certainly at the time losing my marriage, losing my career, losing my house.
It did feel pretty crisis like, it was pretty intense. I ended up after losing everything, I kept my two children. I've got two sons. I had my boys, week on week off, but apart from that, and obviously that was the most important thing to me, but everything else, I lost everything in my early forties and I had a hundred thousand dollars-worth of debt and nothing. But having the boys was really. The emotional leverage that I needed to help me really re-identify and to heal my relationship with myself and to create the changes that I needed to create. In terms of my mental wellbeing so that I could build the life that I'm building now, which is really quite a remarkable life.
I feel very blessed, lots of gratitude. So nine years down the track since my midlife awakening. And I'm very happy to say that I'm living quite a wonderful life.
Sharad: That's great to hear Jim. And like you said, it was an awakening versus a crisis or an opportunity out there. What do you think made it more an awakening versus a downward crisis?
Jem: Pivotal to the whole thing happening. I had a realization, I had a realization that I had been running a racket subconsciously. I'd been running this belief in the background that I wasn't good. I wasn't enough. Since then, I've found out that this is quite a common human belief. A lot of people have this background feeling that they're not good enough or smart enough, or clever enough, or committed enough or strong enough, or man enough or woman enough.
That leads into the imposter. People who have managed to create a level of success in any aspect of their life. And they question it, they're like, do I deserve this? I don't think I deserve this. And I think the imposter syndrome comes from this very common human belief of, I'm not enough.
And I realized that I'd been running that belief for, 40 years. And then I was curious, as to whether we can change our beliefs, can we change our neurological wiring? And so I went on a bit of a mission to read up as much as I could. And I read books from neuroscientists and philosophers and coaches and NLP, neurolinguistics programming practitioners and all stuff.
I was just really thirsty to find out whether there was a way that I could change my beliefs. And I found out that there. There are ways we can change our beliefs. And so I went to work on myself and very, literally changed that belief to a belief that I am enough and I do deserve all the happiness and success and anything that I can create.
Of course I deserve it and I am enough to do that. So by changing that fundamental belief, the outward experience of my life could then change as.
Sharad: Very interesting points there. First is just coming to that realization that you have this limited belief. Was there any event that brought you to this realization or did it just happen? How did that realization come about?
Jem: There was actually an event. Before I share with you the night that happened I guess it is also important. To understand the context that there had been years of unhappiness and years of me creating a life that matched the belief that I wasn't enough. So I had created a marriage where I constantly felt like I wasn't good enough.
I'd put all of my anxieties, into intimacy. And I had I was sabotaging my career and all of these things inadvertently. I didn't know why, I didn't understand why, but the context was that I had the outwardly, I looked very happy. If someone from the outside would look at me and say, wow, he's got a great life.
He's got a great job and a wonderful wife and two children and a house. And they live in a beautiful village by the sea, from the outside, it was very Instagram, ish. It looked wonderful, but very privately, I was desperately unhappy and unsure of myself and I didn't know how to tell anyone. I was covered in shame and this will lead into other stuff in this conversation. I'm looking forward to talking with you about what is it to be a man and how does that play out for us? I've been sitting in men's circle for about 12 years now.
There's a group of us men. We sit around a fire. Once a month and we talk about important themes and it's just an opportunity to be heard and to listen. And one night we had, what's called a North American Indian sweat lodge, and it's a traditional practice from the North American Indians where they create a small closed in space and they bring hot rocks from a fire and into this dark space. It is outside in the nature. And it's a closed in space, essentially. It's like a sauna, gets very hot in there. And it’s pitch black. I'd never done it before. And we were on traditional Aboriginal land here in Australia. And it was ceremonial. It was a ritual. We were led by an elder someone who knew how to hold space and lead this ritual.
And I was in this space and look, I don't know, Sharad, maybe it was the heat exhaustion, but I hadn't out of body experience after several hours in this very hot enclosed dark space with other men. And I had an out of body experience yeah, it was quite bizarre actually. My experience was that I was five years old and I was flying around in the universe, so to speak, it sounds strange, I know. But this was just my experience. And then I went back to when I was five, because that was still the age of innocence for me when I was six years old. There was an event that happened with my father where he lost his temper and he beat me up.
And that was the time when I first started to question whether I was good enough, am I enough? Am I good enough for the man on the pedestal? My father, the one man that, that a young boy wants to be good enough for his father. And so I think subconsciously I started to question everything when I was six.
So I went back to when I was five, which was still the age of innocence for me. and then that night, I went home after the sweat lodge and that night, and I had a very amazing dream, very prophetic dream, and also super, super lucid and clear, those dreams where it's vivid, where you can see everything as much as if you were conscious and awake.
It was one of those dreams. And I had a serpent in the dream. I had this serpent that was living in the core of me and I had to get this serpent out of me. Anyway, long story short, I got the serpent out with the help of some other men in the dream. And when I woke up in the morning, I knew it straight away, crystal clear.
And I went, I said to myself, wow, that serpent was the belief that you are not good enough. And I had no one had ever told me this. I just, it just came to me that serpent was the belief that you are not good enough. And it's time to shed that belief. And it's time to replace that belief with a more functional belief.
Like I am enough just the way I am, I'm doing the perfect job of being me perfectly imperfect, of course, with all of my stuff, but I am exactly who I'm supposed to be. So it's about coming to full radical self-acceptance, which is acceptance of reality, in reality is always right.
You can argue with reality as much as you want, but reality will always win. And the reality is that you are exactly who you're supposed to be because there you are. I had this understanding and it really was. You know that night when everything started to turn around. And then I changed my belief.
I started working on my self-belief and repairing my relationship with myself and radical acceptance. And it was after that, not long after that, I lost my job. We ended up having to consciously uncouple from the marriage. And then I had to sell our house because I couldn't afford it anymore.
And, that's when everything changed.
Sharad: Thank you for sharing that story. That's such a deep, powerful story. Thank you very much for sharing it.
Jem: You're welcome.
Sharad: And as I was thinking about that innocent boy, it just struck me that we have so much of innocence in us. And then things happen along the way, which bring out these limiting beliefs.
And many of us live our whole life without realizing the serpent within us. But you are fortunate enough to be able to realize that, before things started going downhill for you. So you had the right mindset through which you could build your life together. Would that be an accurate way to think about it?
Jem: yeah almost I certainly feel very fortunate to have had that awakening. I think things had gone so far downhill for me. That was the reason that I got to the point of having the awakening. Because things had gone so far downhill. I was desperately unhappy and hiding it.
Losing everything actually felt a shedding of the old and the opportunity for me to create, to have a second chance. It felt like I was giving myself the opportunity to have a second chance. So losing the house was like losing the burden. Losing the marriage was freeing myself.
And I say this with all due respect to my previous wife, because the love is still, will always be there, but, losing the marriage was really liberation from a relationship that was toxic and not functional and horrible. It was, we weren't being nice to each other and we'd been trying to fix it for years. So that felt like a liberation, and starting all over again. When my boys and I first moved into a rental house, the three of us, we had nothing. And I didn't even consider that moving into this house. And we got into this empty house and it was like, wow, we don't even have a knife or a fork or chopsticks.
We don't have any bowls or plates. We don't have any beds or linen. We don't have any towels. We don't have a microwave or a fridge. We had absolutely nothing and I didn't have any money. So we I don't know if they have it where you are, but Facebook has this a local community called surf coast free stuff.
And it's just where people in our local community, when they don't want their microwave anymore, they say, does anyone want a microwave? Basically they just, people give away stuff for free. So I jumped onto this Facebook group and said, single dad starting all over again. I need everything. I've got nothing.
And it was really remarkable. The community just rallied and it created this little movement on this Facebook group. And, we completely decked out the whole house. For free, everything. Knives and forks. And you think of anything you have in a house? We got given it, it was really beautiful.
Sharad: Were you living in Melbourne at the time or
Jem: No, we're an hour and a half Southwest of Melbourne down on the coast on the great ocean road. We're near a famous surf beach called bells beach.
Sharad: Wow. And then building your life back, like you said, you did NLP, you did a few things that were able to help you cement the new belief that you had. What were some of the things that helped you move in the direction of life that you've got into right now?
Jem: Yeah. Look some really rudimentary, repetitive, boring, to be honest and roll your sleeves up, go to work on yourself stuff, I hate to say for anyone listening to this, there's no magic pill. You don't just get to click your fingers. And then all of a sudden you have completely different neurological wiring and beliefs.
These beliefs, a belief is really just a reflex thought. It's a thought that fires off its own accord, right? You've thought at so many times that the neural pathway that, that fires, when you have that thought is a well-worn pathway. It's wired together. These neural pathways are persistent, right?
If you want to create a new neural pathway, you've gotta go on high repetition, and that's very literally what I did. I picked the new belief that I wanted amongst other beliefs as well. But my primary one at the beginning was I am good enough just the way I am. And I said it, Sharad, out loud every day, hundreds of times a day.
And I didn't even believe it to begin. I was saying I'm good enough. Just the way I am. And I didn't believe it. And it took six to 12 months of high repetition before that neural pathway started to wire together. And it did. And it's now it's not like you tick a box and go, I know I'm good enough now.
I don't ever have to practice self-love or self-acceptance that has become habitual for me. I say affirmations every morning. I meditate every morning. I say affirmations every morning. I look at myself in the mirror regularly and remind myself that I. Completely. Okay. I'm a good person. I have good intentions, I'm human, I make mistakes, but I'm trying my best that I love myself.
All of this positive self-talk has become habitual for me, and it takes time. People are like, wow, I'm really hard on myself. And I want to change. I'm like, okay are you committed to that? Because it takes time and dedication and persistence to do that. I was fortunate enough to be a father, because if you've got children, they're a very strong, motivational leverage that you can use on yourself because you look at these two, these young people who are your children and you feel, I will do anything for. And so I said I need to be a better father for them. I need to be a better man for them. So that was the leverage for me to be persistent and to do the work.
Sharad: Very inspirational, Jem, very inspirational. And I think this is a good segue to talk about manhood. We grew up being men and what we were taught about manhood, at least me was, courage was holding back your emotions not crying. And it's changed a lot. Now we asked to be vulnerable and it's changing so much that I wanted to get your sense.
And how have you seen what being a man was 30 years back. How have you seen that change and what do you think has brought about that change?
Jem: It's such a, a great question. And a worthwhile conversation, I think to have, you think about our fathers. And the way they were raised as males and they were raised by their parents who had come through, depending on where you were in the world, but who'd come through two world wars.
Who'd come through. Great depressions, Tough times. Where they didn't have the luxury of being able to sit and contemplate or be introspective or, keep a journal or, that generally speaking some, obviously there were philosophers and poets and thinkers that did, but the general average person on the street, they were primarily concerned with survival.
The world was a violent place and it was hard times. So it's understandable that parents would say to the boys, because back in that time, this is where the patriarchy was really stemming from back in that time, the boys had to grow up and become the breadwinner. They had to become men and go, and their primary responsibility was to earn enough money.
So the family could survive. So they didn't have time to be emotional. Suck it up, toughen up, stiff up a lip. Don't cry like a girl, blah, blah, blah. And that's the way boys were raised. And so that's our parents, that's the way they were raised. So they didn't know any different other than to raise us like that.
Times are necessarily changing, but we all suffer under the patriarchy, the patriarchal structure, which is a structure of dominance, not just women, females and males, anybody, however, you identify. All of us are oppressed under a patriarchal structure, which is a structure of dominance.
And that structure for me, never felt right as a boy. I never, in fact it repulsed me. I felt repelled from it. And I was a very sensitive young boy. I was very emotional and my father told me not to be emotional. My father told me to suck it up. Don't cry like a girl, stiff up a lip.
So I didn't feel like I was good enough for him. I thought there was something wrong with me. I, as a heterosexual male growing up, I used, I was questioning him because I'm very connected to my feminine energy. I even questioned that for a while. I was like, wow, does this mean that I'm gay? Because I'm emotional, but I was never attracted to boys or men.
I was only ever attracted to girls. I'm like, okay, I'm heterosexual, but I'm emotional. What's wrong with me? I used to think. And I didn't realize there's nothing wrong with me, but the patriarchal structure or system tells boys that they need to amputate that emotional part of themselves, that they need to mutilate themselves essentially, and cut off from their emotional self, which is damaging.
And then we end up becoming Men who are trying to figure out what is it to be a man? And now we're being told vulnerability is a strength. And we're like, wow, how does that fit? I think this change is important. I believe the world is a different place now.
I believe that we can explore functional masculinity. Functional masculine can also be completely switched on and fovea vision like completely focused on a goal on an outcome and be wonderfully attentive to that goal that can be a wonderfully functional aspect of masculine as well, and for us as men, to provide, I don't mean that's exclusively a man's job.
Anyone can provide, I'm not being sexist at all. I'm just talking about masculine energy. And by the way, too Sharad, I, I think that we all have access to masculine and feminine energy. So there, my, my partner. She runs her own businesses. And when she's when she's got a goal and she's completely focused on her goal and she's taking action to achieve that goal, she's accessing her masculine energy, and when I'm nurturing or caring for our children and, in those moments, I can access my feminine energy, so being a man doesn't mean just being masculine. You can be a man and still be human centric. You can be a man with compassion, with empathy. You can be a man with emotions.
Sharad: And that's a very interesting point where, you know, gender as well as energy are different. And a lot of us men have grown up in because the reasons that you described only accessing our masculine energy, which is goal oriented decision making, those kind of things. How do some of us, who've never accessed our feminine energy whether it's the emotion side, vulnerability side, how do some of us start the process of peeking into it, looking into it, figuring out what it is and trying to incorporate that to become a little more complete.
Jem: There's a chapter in my book. I published a book late last year. And it's called The Art of Conscious Communication for Thoughtful Men. First of all to decide that you are curious, that's the first place to start. There's gotta be some curiosity if you're not at all curious in self-development or exploring aspects of yourself that have up until now been left, unknown, then there's not much point, but once you've got that curiosity, dedicate some time to sit alone, quietly, dedicate some time to practice introspection. And I would suggest that when you begin to just notice yourself, do it with kindness, just be kind, just be curious. There's no right or wrong with this. If you sit still in a moment when you are feeling something, when I say feeling something, you might not even notice that you're feeling anything, but when your mood is in a particular state, just say something's happened.
Someone said something and you've been triggered by that. If you can remove yourself from that situation and go and sit somewhere on your own and just notice yourself, notice, wow, I've been triggered right now. What am I thinking? Notice your thoughts. What am I feeling? See if you can actually put some language to what you are feeling now, you might not even be aware that it's an emotion, but when you start to give it some language, some words you might go, oh, wow. Yeah. I am feeling really frustrated right now. Or I'm feeling angry right now, or I'm feeling to be honest, I'm feeling stupid right now. Whatever it is that you are feeling, give it some words, this is a very simple practice, but over time it'll become more familiar for you. It's practicing self-awareness. Really?
Sharad: That's a good starting point. Just noting down. There's no objective. It's just curiosity, noting down feelings, noting down emotions. That's a starting point to understanding yourself. And then of course you move from there.
And normally when you make a transformation like this, when you change from who you were, there's always times where you go back to older patterns. So I don't know if that's happened to you and how do you deal with it? How do you manage yourself during those moments?
Jem: Yeah, it really does. One of my older patterns was if I was challenged or questioned on something, I would revert back to the kind of teenage boy stomping his feet. And I did that in my marriage too. So my then wife would question me over something and I would become like this, impetuous teenage boy, and go you don't understand and blah, blah.
And then she'd go into mothering, going, oh, I feel like I've got three sons and mothering you as well. And we'd go into this old pattern. And since then, I've been really trying to be aware of not going into the defensive boy, but the other day, literally just a few days ago, my mother my, my real mom. She questioned quite innocently.
She was asking me a question about my parenting, about her grandson. And I got defensive and I went back into that teenage boy, and I was like well, you know, and I got, I noticed myself just get, getting a bit defensive. And I walked out of the room and I caught myself and I went, oh, Jem, look, you just did that old pattern mate.
And I just stopped and said to myself, it's. You're human and this new rewiring is pretty insistent and sometimes it comes back again and that's fine, but you're all good. And I went back into the room where my mom was and I gave her a hug and I said, “Hey mom, I realized I just, did an old pattern of mine.
And please forgive me. I didn't mean to react like that.” And she said, oh, I didn't even notice. That's fine. Gave me a hug, whatever. But yeah, it does. It comes back. I think when we're coaching ourselves, even when we have the best of intentions, there are times we're human, right? We trip over ourselves and we sometimes behave in ways that we ideally didn't want to.
When you are coaching yourself around that. I think it's important to be really careful about the quality of self-coaching, because we, our natural tendency is to be horrible to ourselves. We speak so cruelly to ourselves. I'm not gonna swear on your podcast, but inside your head, when you've done something, when you've let yourself down, you're swearing at yourself and it's abusive.
It's self-abuse. And I don't think it's healthy at all. And I used to do it massively. I would look at myself in the mirror and be horrible to myself. And so I've been, that's another part of the practice that I've been developing over the nine years is, when I let myself down, I coach myself positively. Come on Jim, you can do better than that. It's okay. You slipped up. That's okay. All good. But come on mate. You're better than that. You can do it. I believe in you. That's the kind of self-talk that I use now. I think it's really important.
Sharad: That's a big one. And that was gonna be my next question, which you answered the, whether you had a critical self and how did you change it to self-love. And you've answered that so well, because that's so important. Self-forgiveness. Self-compassion, self-love, especially when you're transforming and making these big changes in your life.
You will slip, things will go wrong and to handle yourself gently is the best way to be able to move towards where you want to go.
Jem: Yeah, absolutely. And you can, it doesn't mean that you have to drop your standards or drop your values. It doesn't mean that you can be kind and gentle and strong. You can be kind and gentle and still strive to keep expanding into your potential, to keep improving and growing and evolving and becoming the next version of you.
If you at all driven to evolve, you can still do that. And be kind to yourself. I, I think that cruelty is just simply dysfunctional. I can't think of a time when cruelty is the most effective or functional avenue to get what you want to get.
Sharad: Yeah, you can constructively be upset with yourself and not holding the standards, but you need not have a cruelty, like you said.
Jem: Completely. People say to me, if you practice radical acceptance, does that mean that you then become apathetic and you just go I accept everything is the way it is. So then I don't want anything to improve and no, that's not the case. Acceptance doesn't mean approval. I accept that there are some dysfunctional people in the world doing horrible things. Now I accept that. That is what it is. Do I approve of it? No, of course not. Do I hope that we can get better? Yeah, of course I do. Acceptance is the radical acceptance of everything that's happened in the past and the past is this moment right now, because in every split second, the present becomes the past. So there's this beautiful, fine line where anything that I can't control or influence anything that I can't change, I'm accepting. But that doesn't mean that we don't want things to improve moving forwards.
Otherwise I wouldn't be having this conversation with you, and I think that's a fine point to make, and it's the same with self-acceptance. You can completely accept yourself in this moment and for all of your past all your ups and downs, all your functional and dysfunctional decisions and actions, a hundred percent accept yourself and still.
Be curious about how you can improve, your experience of life moving forward.
Sharad: That's a great point, because like you said, a lot of us mistake self-acceptance for approval, and that distinction is extremely important.
Jem: Yeah. Yeah, I think
Sharad: Jem as you've changed, how have people around you responded to it? Because quite often, people are used to seeing us in a certain way. And when we make big shifts to ourselves that sometimes is very uncomfortable for people.
So how's that happened and how have you managed that?
Jem: It depends on who we're talking about. For my immediate family those who are left my father and my youngest brother both died 12 years ago. But for my mom and my other brother and sister, I think for them, it's been relief. They've just been so relieved.
They're like, oh, cuz they always knew me. We're a very close family and they're my blood. So I think they were relieved. I think my current partner, for example, she only met me after I'd started to do this work on myself. So she's just been watching me blossom. And of course I've told her we've we communicate about everything.
And so she knows my story as a story, but not firsthand experientially. She wasn't with me before. My midlife awakening. So she's just seen me going from, strength to strength, really flourishing. And she's just so happy for me. She's always believed in me, right from the word go she's believed in me and what I'm doing.
And then there's people who have their own identification with the way you were in the past. So my ex-wife, for example, she was very identified in the way I was when we were married. So it was much harder for her to accept my change. Like you're saying, when you embark on a reasonably remarkable journey of change, there are people around you who will resist it because it's challenging their own sense of identity because we all only exist in community with each other. My sense of identity is a part of the people around me and their sense of identity and our sense of each other. So when someone has formed a sense of identity and you are a part of that, they will resist your change cuz it threatens their very sense of identity, so yeah, it, in answer to your question for some people it's hard and some people we need to move away from. Some people you can't be close to them anymore, and if you wanna change, there's been people in my life from before that.
I just don't see. I don't see. And we're not in touch anymore because I couldn't blossom. I couldn't flourish if I stayed in touch with them.
Sharad: Yeah and this is such a relevant point in Asian societies, which are very collective societies and you're part of a whole and any shifts and changes, impact the whole system. And there's so much resistance to that.
I know we only have eight minutes left, so I have this question that I ask everyone at the end of the interview. At the end of your life, how would you know you've lived a good life?
Jem: Look into the eyes of those that I love. That's how I'll know, and that could be today, we're all going to die and we don't know when I think that's amazing. And that informs us on how we can live. Given that I don't know when I'm going to die and, look, there's been lots of research done around the quality of our life and evidence shows that the quality of our life is directly correlated to the quality of our relationships. So when I look into the eyes of my partner, my woman, or when I look into the eyes of my children or my mother, or my brother or sister, or close friends in a moment of quiet, when we're not speaking or talking when we're just present and looking into each other's eyes, that tells me how good my life is.
Sharad: Wow. That's beautiful. That's really beautiful.
Thank you, Jem, for such an engaging and wise conversation. If you listening, enjoyed this conversation, you could consider listening to episode two, where we talk about achievement versus fulfillment and episode 21, where we talk about facing emotions and being vulnerable. There are so many action steps from the stalk.
Here are two, we could all consider, first. What's a limiting belief we all hold. Just thinking about that question will not uncover the belief. It took Jem 40 years to figure out that the belief of not being good enough was holding him.
Some of us live our life without figuring this out. But just asking that question and writing down whatever comes up is a good starting point from that place we can periodically reflect on this and over time uncover what this belief is. Second. As a man, what feminine energy can we access? And as a woman, what masculine energy can we access? The way to think about it is what could be an interesting addition to who we are today, or what's the energy we've suppressed due to societal concern. And it's time has come now, can we try to identify it, maybe try it out in baby steps and see what it does for us.
For me, a recent edition has been accessing my emotions. I'm more conscious of my emotions and I'm developing this part of me. That's it. For today's episode, we will be back with another episode two weeks from now on October 11. I hope you join me for that till next time.
Have a wonderful day ahead. Bye.