Earlier last month, Gus Worland and Dr Tim Sharp aka “Dr Happy” released their podcast series “Be a Man”, brought to you by PodcastOne.
Although I highly recommended you take the 30 minutes to listen to each and every segment, if you do not get the chance, then I plan to scribble my own top 10 takeaways from the episodes I liked the most.
Please be aware in some cases I have paraphrased but hoped to capture the sentiment of what was said.
Today’s summary is from the episode “The Enemy Within with Joe Williams”. Joe is an ex-professional NRL player and boxer.
- Suicide prevention starts at our kitchen table, in our family jokes, in our sports teams, in our workplaces.
- Stigma is our own heads.
- Try not use negative language such as “suffer” – Joe now “struggles” but does not term is as suffering.
- How many times have we walked past someone that we can physically see not doing well? We should be waiting that long. We need people to reach in to us.
- Always keep planting that seed.
- Ask “what can I do to make it better?”
- The turning point for Joe was when a doctor said “you shouldn’t be here anymore, you’ve got a second life, what are you going to do with it?”
- Joe always tries to show gratitude, compassion, empathy, love, humility and vowed to try and make a positive impact on someone’s life every day.
- When you come from hurt you struggle to show kindness. It breeds negative behaviour and can show there is more going on than you can see.
- Self-care and self-love means keeping your cup full. Joe is lucky enough to go bush with his indigenous family and culture is his biggest healer.
- Joe still deals with issues from concussions in his rugby and boxing days. He can forget things, appointments and go blank, but has a great team that support him.
- In indigenous culture, they heal for example with talking around a fire. It is all about connection to people, connection to country, connection to culture.
- He follows the mantra of “Knowing where you are, where you belong and where you are from” – the indigenous community do exactly this.
- Anyone of any culture can experience connection.
- When feeling in crisis, you don’t have to stop, just pause.
To listen to the full podcast episode you can access it here: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/be-a-man/id1380932528?mt=2
You can also read more about Joe and The Enemy Within (including buying his book) at www.joewilliams.com.au