How To Survive A Shark Attack

[Music] what's up buddy man it's good to see you yes for early in the trip yeah for be thinking it happens we talked about for quite some time I know so you first came on to my radar via John Joseph or Paul he's a badass get him on the show he didn't say just that knowing John yeah sixteen more sentences yeah we're taking your breath yeah yeah yes I start following you on Instagram and I was like wow this guy's inspiring that's doing some cool stuff and then we just bumped into each other up at Point Dume now here we are man yeah man worked out it was nice baby yeah I'm excited to share your story you're definitely an inspiring cat and what you've overcome is just mind-blowing and the extent to which you extend yourself in service of others and in an environmental context is really impressive and like I said inspiring the funny thing is none of that feels true does it feel like yes feels like like I'm just living life yeah it's weed and this story has now kind of just lost it's not like it lost meaning it just really to me never felt like it had a huge meaning everyone says oh my god you know that must have been horrible I was like yeah it's you know it's a bad day at work and that's really all it was and I maybe that's testament to why I don't have any PTSD or I don't have any nightmares no flashbacks I've never had counseling that's not I think I'm pretty normal except for the things that I do for my job they're not normal do you find that when you get up you do a lot of talk to get up in front of people all the time and share your story do you have that weird experience of kind of being disassociated from your own story because you've told it so many times you like my is this actually happen editorial eyes especially when you're doing it a lot so I did a company where they wanted me to hit every shift and I had to do it 16 no 18 times in six days you say three times a day four and by the second day I hated the sound of my own voice I I didn't know which part of the story I was up to I was thinking to myself have I already told this part I can't remember I've said it so many times by the 18th day I just I couldn't do it anymore I wrote a whole month off uh-huh and just didn't talk about myself at all one of the things that I found though is that when I get up and tell it it starts to tell me more about the story like I learned more about myself because I realize like oh that happened because of it like I make these weird connections ya idly wasn't really kind of consciously aware of and things that you might have forgotten about that you have been retelling the story for a certain amount of time and then all of a sudden 20 times you've been onstage and all of a sudden the twenty first time you'll be telling this story and you'll think oh [ __ ] well actually this happened as well and I totally forgot about that so there's elements over the years that have added themselves and made the story even more powerful especially to me because it makes it more interesting when I remember things I've forgotten or I talked to someone that was there that day and they remind me of something I forgot right sticking one of the guys having to stick his hand inside my leg and pinch closed an artery so that I wouldn't die mm-hmm it's crazy stuff it's crazy well rather than just kind of launch into the the day that kind of catalyzed all of this I'd like to go back to the beginning because this is very much like like a hero's journey you know I mean I think in in order to kind of really fully appreciate and understand like where are you where you are now and and what you had to overcome like I think it's important to understand your upbringing in your childhood because that in and of itself is an amazing story yeah yeah that was interesting not the sort of thing I do I'd rather relive the shark attacks enjoyed growing up I think as adults we forget how hard it is being a kid and being a teenager because back then you have no frame of reference you have no idea how to deal with anything everything is new every stress is real it's only when you get older that you realize off you know this is just another thing I can get through this but when you're a teenager right rough I mean you were just the way I read it is you're a kid who just didn't connect with school and have this lust for adventure and excitement and because maybe healthy options for how to pursue that weren't necessarily totally available to you you kind of went over to the dark side for a while yeah well it didn't start out that way normally when I was younger I was okay at school and when you're young you don't realize that you're poor there's six people on a policeman's wage in the 70s and 80s we were doing it pretty tough month with our brothers and sisters I'd myself my two younger brothers and my baby sister and mum was from Eastern London so we ate sheeps brains and livers and kidneys and all the garbage that no one else wanted what part of Australia we were down in Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne about an hour and a half south of Melbourne dad was away a lot with the cops he was out late at nights and we moved to Canberra which is the capital of Australia when I was 10 and he got posted and we all just sort of picked and move and still going okay you know I don't know how you guys call it well we I got there about year five and year six and then moved to an all-boys Catholic school because my parents always made us go to church what older boys went to Catholic schools and that's where it started to go downhill a little bit I started getting picked on quite bad because I was very short I was very skinny I had big E's freckles all over my face I was I was no an easy target mm-hmm so it wasn't a lot of fun at school but I was quite well-read whenever dad went away with the cops and he came home he'd always bring me a book as a present sorry we had the you know the full volume of Encyclopedia Britannica from something like 1966 or something so I'd read all of those and I had this wide knowledge of the world and how the universe worked back in nineteen somebody listening to this who was born after you know 1980 is like what are you talking yeah yeah yeah so the Encyclopedia Britannica was like how many volumes I don't know we had it too oh man but it basically encompassed all of the world's knowledge and so I was well-read and I and I knew there was adventure out there to be had and I grew up on David Attenborough you know that was my hero the guy that traveled the world and saw all these crazy animals and you what then you see you jnana Jones and it's like oh my god this is a crazy world out there and I so badly want to see it and be a part of it but I'm in Canberra and it sucks and Canberra is very pretty to Canberra if anyone who doesn't know is the capital of Australia it's where all the politicians hold Parliament it's also funnily enough the only place in Australia where weed pornography and fireworks were decriminalized funny that but I hit about 14 15 and I stopped swimming because I was just hard had a gut full of it I started like you're on the swim team or whatever yeah dad was the coach so he couldn't really get out of it so we're up at five o'clock in the morning before school swimming a couple of Kay's every day and then after school as well I mean both my brothers are all state swimmers so I stopped that I stopped running I was doing I was a cross-country athlete and I started looking at girls and started smoking and drinking and because marijuana was decriminalized there was a bit of a floating around so I started smoking weed as well hanging around unsavory characters and I just fell deep into it and at the same time I was listening to Snoop Dogg and NWA well before Snoop Dog's time you know NWA and ice-t and all these west coast rappers talking about smoking weed and hanging out and I was just like yeah that sounds cool and I sort of lost my focus for a bunch of years there but I also think you know Canberra or Canberra how do you say in Canberra Canberra or anywhere else like our school system just isn't set up to really support somebody who has that flair for adventure it's sort of like you know what are you studying for well you're gonna go to college and you and here's the four careers that are exact mobile and for somebody who's got a wild hair up their ass it's not like developing that is anything that's that's really kind of encouraged and on top of that they don't teach for the specific techniques of the people learning I had trouble like a lot of people too reading what was on the blackboard while the teacher was writing listening to the teacher and writing in my book all at the same time you know I'm I'm the impeding me of a very poor multitask and tasking man so I couldn't I couldn't keep up with it all so I'm I'm writing what's on the board but at the same time I can't listen to the teacher because I'm focused on this oh I'm I'm missing out on something if I don't do that and I listen to the teacher that I'm not taking notes to study at home and it was just all a mess and I just could not keep up so the the techniques that they used back then and still use in a lot of schools today just they weren't right for me so you start finding you know way to you know find that adventure yeah okay dope partying in line we were still poor as well and we didn't have all the cool stuff so I found a way to go and get all that you just took it between the lines I got I got busted we were breaking into cars and breaking houses very occasionally and shoplifting I got caught shoplifting twice but I told him my dad was a cop and they let me off no then we go out drinking and I had a fight with someone and I kicked a bus shelter window in and ended up a night in jail and it still still didn't give me the kick and ass I just yeah as a cop and you're the oldest one right yeah I was place to be setting the example in your ass he kicked my ass out at the house mmm sorry I hit seventeen he's just he called me in my friend's house and he said I'm sick of your [ __ ] come and get your stuff and [ __ ] off hmm and I instantly had all of that freedom that I wanted and I had no idea what to do with it he split so where'd you go I was very lucky that I had two friends of mine from Indonesia two girls and their parents paid for them they were quite well-off the parents paid for them to live and study in Australia and they had their own apartment so they took me and I lived with them for about a year and a half still didn't get my ass Geir sat around smoking weed leading their leftover Indonesian food and just I look back on those days and I just I wonder what the hell's our thinking how could I be so down into that hole that I don't realize I'm wasting my life away and it just went on and it's probably one of the the only regrets that I ever have in life nothing else really just wasting time because it's so valuable and you never get it back and I spent all of those those years not learning a single thing and not growing as a person all of those Domino's play into making you the person that you are today you know what I mean like perhaps you wouldn't be doing what you're doing now how do you not have that experience to motivate you in a certain way to grow in in later years well it's true there was a moment where all of that came into play where I was in hospital but I finally got a job working at the lofty heights of kitchen hand I think I was 19 or 20 and it was at one of the most popular clubs in Canberra so obviously lots of people go there's lots of girls lots of drugs and I fell down that hole for a little while as well but eventually I came up I was just about to turn 21 and I was living with a couple of the guys from the club and I went to a farewell for a friend of mine who was being deported back to Papua New Guinea no gettin kicked out of the country for criminal activities obviously he's one of my friends and so at that party I got jumped by 20 guys one guy was trying to get me to buy him a drink and I was just telling him to basically [ __ ] off and he threw a glass of beer at me and I just thought that's enough so I got up to have a go at him and I I hit one guy one of his friends that tried to pummel me in the face and then all of their friends jumped up and I just I ended up getting my house really badly kicked and I went home and I did I took that long hard look in the mirror that your parents always tell you to do I did I looked at my beaten up broken face and I just thought something's got to change or I'm gonna be dead or in jail by the time I'm 23 and I didn't want that you know that I still had this vision of this incredibly adventurous world and so I did the only thing I could think of which was remove myself from that environment that I become a product of and I threw everything I owned into a tiny little car that I had no license for and I'm drove 12 hours up to the glimmering lights of Brisbane well when you're from Canberra Brisbane is pretty glimmering yeah yeah and a friend of mine got a job for me behind a bar in his strip club that he was worried he was DJing at and I started making rap music with his flatmates to two American guys one was from New Jersey one was from Pasadena they were working at the record stores they were running a community radio station running night I like little hip hop dance parties around the place and making music and I grew up on the firm I for the first cassette that I've ever owned was Run DMC's tougher than leather and then Ice T's iceberg and then NWA and then Westside Connection it was that was you know I had by that stage I had about 340 cassettes in a box so I loved rap music and so I just thought well I've been listening in to it long enough might as well start making some took a little while has had like oh yeah kind of a moment right yeah we put out an EP and then off the back of that we got the opening act for Snoop Dogg in in 98 which was incredible coming from little old Melbourne a little picked on kid to opening for Snoop Dogg was a pretty brave step how is that music like online anywhere I think it's on iTunes but I'm not sure if it's on American iTunes it may be be strictly tied to Australian I played it for my girlfriend in the car the other day she was pissing herself but she also she also said it was quite good she expected worse but I wrote about the things that I knew about so my song was called smokin hydro but after that not a lot of money in white rappers in Brisbane in 1998 and the financial constraints ended up taking its toll and the whole group just imploded right and there you are just working at a strip bar I'd actually quit the strip club at that point to focus on the music and so I had nothing myself and my other friend from Canberra who'd moved up there to work on the music with us we were just stuck we talked this real estate into letting us live in one of their houses for four weeks until we found another place and my friend who's now a famous comic artist you know has his own stalls at Comic Con and stuff he drew characters of the real estate agents to pay our rent and we slept on ripped couch cushions we showered at the local pool because we had no water we had no electricity we ate off paper plates and ate two minute noodles and that was it for weeks and weeks and weeks yeah yeah so did you have another moment of looking in the mirror and go yeah kind of I was just I was just thinking I can't keep doing this you know I didn't know where to go I was really lost I tried to change my whole life and I failed and I just thought where do I go from here I don't know where else to turn and so well because when you moved to Brisbane isn't this solution you took yourself to Brisbane yeah I was the problem but I was trying you know it wasn't like I wasn't just moving and then sitting on my ass again I was really trying to grow as a person and build a career and I thought that was in rapping and it wasn't but that like we do sometimes when we were a little bit lost you turn to the person that will always be there for you and I called mum and I keep been in communication with your parents during this time or a little bit by that stage yeah dad and I had not made up we hadn't talked but I'd been talking to my mum occasionally once you know once we started I was working in the industry club and making some money and I felt a little more achieved and she just said we'll talk to your brothers they've both joined the military it should be noted that one of them joined the army to stay out of jail he followed you my foot yeah probably yeah forcefully but you know I did all right there's no point asking for advice and they're not following it up so I talked to my brothers and they said yeah look it's great you know you get that we're both in artillery so they said you get paid to travel you get paid to play sport you get to hang out with your mates you get to shoot guns and rockets and cannons one thing they said though was don't join infantry so I joined infantry why did they say that though because it's just hard it's it's no it's the hardest job physically in the military and they just didn't think that I'd be able to do it so they were trying to convince me to go into something a little simpler where I wouldn't get kicked out and so that was that decision to do that in defiance of them or what was the motivation to go the harder route it was a little bit in defiance to them but to me I didn't see it as the harder route I saw it as if you join the army you join as a soldier that's the definition of being a soldier you everyone has their different opinions and I agree artillery and everyone is part of the military working system but being a soldier there's something really prideful in that that you as an infantry grunt you stand a little taller and you wear that uniform with a little more pride because you know that if you go to war you're going to be up there in the front seats you know trading bullets with the enemy so that's where I want it to be right that sense of adventure was like I'm not sitting back there shooting cannons at people I want to be up there fighting and so I did that and I passed basic training which was a surprise to everyone the biggest surprise was to my friends that the army actually gave me a gun I mean you're all jacked up right now but were you still like a like a skinny that point I was like nothing I was a yes what do you guys I was gonna call it a paddle pop stick do you guys like and what do you guys call popsicle stick yeah I was tiny I had no I could not keep fat on my body I ate like an animal but from all the years of running and swimming I just couldn't keep any muscle or fat on so I was worried though I was strong I could walk forever I could run forever past basic training past employment training for the infantry and at the end of that they said you know who wants to jump out of a plane mm-hmm and I'd never been accused of doing anything too clever so I put my hand in the air with this goofy expression on my face it's a yell and they went congratulations you're gonna be a paratrooper and I just thought that sounds badass yeah and so it was off to Sydney first time to Sydney to be a newest soldier at the third Battalion Royal Australian regiment parachute battalion and I got my ID when I did my parachute course got my maroon beret made me stand even taller and I just felt this incredible sense of achievement and one of the biggest turning points there was when I was doing my my psych evaluation before I joined the army and I passed everything I passed the aptitude testing I pass the medical and I finally passed the psych evaluation and as I was walking out of the room the doctor said good luck with your career and it hit me that I had this thing called a career that I never thought I would have to me a career was like what a lawyer had an adductor and now something you can build on and you can grow you can never underestimate the power of one word in changing someone's whole mindset about something I thought [ __ ] me I'm gonna have a career this is real I have a real job that I can be proud of and that powered me through some of the darkest days being an infantry soldier is not easy a 10-mile fighting withdrawals in full gas suits and gas masks in the middle of the night in pouring rain with a hundred and twenty pound pack on your back and things like that but you remember why you're doing it and it drives you on you're doing it for your mates and what so what year's work was this that I joined the Army in November 2005 2000 and I stayed there until April 2005 and how did you not get deployed I did once okay so Afghanistan I got deployed to a place called East Timor and most people have never even heard of this place it's a small Southeast Asian island half of it is owned by Indonesia and the other half is owned by the natives they steam Ares and there's a thin you know river that separates the two from each other except the Indonesians didn't care about that and they were going over and slaughtering these people I the the stats was 250,000 of them were killed murdered starved and died of illnesses I've never even heard that yeah yeah it was really bad so Australia went in a multinational force went in under the United Nations Australia played the biggest role because it was so close to us and we went in there and I spent six months in 2002 patrolling that border to keep the Indonesians out you know kidnapping soldiers that cross the border and interrogating them went on snipers course did airborne repelling out at the Blackhawks and just a lot of it was boring a lot of the society action or was it just no no they recon and the Indonesians that there was a lot of rumors going around about the Australians and one of them was that we ate babies so the Indonesian soldiers in East Timor were not too confident in dealing with us so that one of the guys of we kidnapped and took up into the mountains because he was stealing money from the locals we sat him on the edge of a cliff while we discuss where we were gonna take him and he was praying and he was crying he thought we're gonna just shoot him in the head and kick him off the edge of the cliff was we would never do that right you're some kind of savage yeah exactly but you know that's in part to what the special forces guys did when they went in there first off there were some pretty hairy moments when they were dealing with the Indonesians in those periods like you know one of the New Zealand Maori SAS guys got got captured and they cut off his ears and cut off his nose and cut off his head and all this stuff so the museum an sas commander just said off you go boys and is that conflict still going on it the conflict itself isn't going on but there is civil unrest still there a nation that is divided by a political system which is very common all around the world obviously you can now you can still you can go there you can go to Delhi the capital of East Timor which is where a lot of the major conflict was and you can go there as a tourist so it's not hugely dangerous it's not like Papua New Guinea one of the most dangerous places in the world that most people have never heard of also so that was a huge turning point for me right but then you decide you don't want to stay in the army right yeah well I just look I hadn't seen action but I'd done my job for real and it made me realize made me appreciate so much for starters I'd never been to a third world country before I never even been overseas before that so I was seeing these people raking through our rubbish with homemade rakes and we'd set the rubbish on fire mind you and just to salvage whatever they could people with nothing but they were happy and they collected their water in the street or washed in the river but that was still happy and I went home with this appreciation of everything that we have especially a toilet and a shower and just healthy food and not having malaria all of that stuff and so I was like oh I want to do it again I want to do my job for real and I got asked to go to Iraq I mean it me and one of my teams and they cancelled the trip four days before we left and so that just kind of crushed us all and I just thought little stuff this I'm gonna go somewhere where I can get deployed and I'd heard about these guys called clearance divers I didn't really know much about him I knew they were a bit special they're a little like that SAS and the commandos no one looked directly at them right it's sort of like a Special Forces SEAL team kind of situation it's similar to that but it doesn't come under the Special Forces umbrella we only have SAS and commandos and they fall under SOCOM Special Operations Command as a clearance diver you can go and join a unit called the tactical assault group for the East Coast and that's the commandos and the clearance divers working together as a counterterrorism unit which is very cool that's very fun job lots and lots of shooting in gas masks and heckler & koch mp5 s and very accurate close quarters shooting it's a lot of fun blowing up doors killing terrorists yeah but uh so I get excited about that stuff but like it's I think of it sort of like the frogman yeah I guess the seals are now the the antecedent of the frogman exactly.the you know like being specialized in you know water tactics they were referred to as Navy divers or clearance divers but unlike America we don't have as many people in our military branches so as clearance divers we have to do everything we do the salvage and repair that we do the mine countermeasures underwater we do the land-based explosive ordnance disposal we do the maritime tactical operations you know attack swimming in the middle of the night reconnaissance swimming on pure oxygen rebreathers using the minimum magnetic rebreathers to dive deep and deal with anti acoustic anti-seismic anti diver tampering device mines all this crazy [ __ ] I understand about five percent of what you decide what I'm imagining is you know Hurt Locker underwater exactly yeah it's a lot of fun I was living my dream line this is the elite of our Navy and the training I read a little bit about what the training is like for for you know getting into that I mean it's super intense yeah it's it's you like swimming across Sydney Harbour in the middle of the night yeah five or six hours and then followed by five-hour PT sessions on the soft sand stretcher carries pack marches first-aid stands mind games breath hold on and on and on and on for ten days and I I was talking about one of my Chiefs the other day and the course was called see that they've changed the name of it something now but I was asking him um how it was going because they were running a selection prop course and he goes oh it's got a pretty good where we started at 42 we're down to 17 and I said oh well what day is that day - yeah 50% we lose most of the people on day one because you turn up and you get your issues and then you break straight into PT and it's this grueling 5 hour run session and you finally make it back to the dive school that's dark you're hurting you get probably five minutes to stretch and rehydrate and then they say all right boys line up we're doing it again hmm and that's whenever I just yeah and you're wearing these high vis Blazers and people just not they take it off and they hand it in and they're out of there yeah but you had been a runner and you'd been a swimmer so yeah like sort of sorted out you were good to go yeah but you know I still for some reason I didn't believe in all of these fancy sneakers and all this fancy gear all the guys had I just had this beat-up pair of old converse that I used to run in and I turned up and they're like oh look at this army guy in his converse like straight up those flat bottom yeah like like nasca Paul Cameron yeah nothing just they just and they've got all their fancy adidas Brooks and what-have-you and they're kind of like chuckling at me and then we jumped in the water or went for a run and I smoked them all and I was the second oldest on the course I was 28 by that stage and they were all 21 22 23 but you don't hurt you'd have the army training also exactly that's all that is realized prepared and my feet you know after doing two days of pack marching they all collapse in their bunks and they're all taping up their toes and strapping tape one of the guys have to tape up both of his balls I just took my boots off and went to sleep because I don't resist a pack marching every day well you're probably going to get up in an hour anyway exactly so you're finding your groove like this is this is working for ya man I hate I was eight thirty years old and I was just living my dream I was living down at Bondi Beach I was riding a big black Italian sports black I was traveling the world with my mates shooting guns and blowing stuff up and then you turn to work one day and a [ __ ] shark eats you right so let's let's walk through it let's walk through that day yeah it was early in the morning we were doing a counterterrorism exercise the the goal was to test this new equipment that the R&D department of the military had created it was unmanned video and sonar designed to detect attack swimmers and attack divers coming in to put bombs on our ships and equipment so they set it up on the PR in Sydney Harbor along the alongside the Navy base and it's very central to everything you can see the Harbour Bridge it's not that far away the Opera House that everyone knows about you can see all that and just out there last year and I took one of those fairies so I was visualizing it perfectly yeah so when you're moving away from the Sydney Opera House and that's behind you on your right-hand side yeah and you get to that fort in the middle of the harbor for Denison so if you look 45 degree angle over to the Navy base right by the pier right there is where I got attained no one has been attacked in Sydney Harbor in 60 years at that point no no that was it that was kind of a banner year though overall for shark attack were like 21 that year I think that was a it was a little less than that but there was a guide the day after me at Bondi which is you know as the crow flies probably five miles away and he lost his hand as well so I've got the new guy in the water he's pretending to be an attack swimmer all the Rd guys and my chief are up on the bow of one of the warships watching and this equipments on the P trying to detect him and he's swimming around for about half an hour and I thought I'd do him a good turn I said jump out mate I'll take over for you you know I rolled over the edge of the little black zodiac in a black wetsuit and a pair of fins and I was doing what we call finning I was on my back on the surface just kicking my legs and it was a 3-tier thing we were gonna do surf or swimming to see if it could detect us we're gonna do scuba to see if it could detect us and then pure oxygen rebreathers with no bubbles to see if we could detect that so we're still in the first phase yeah this is 40 minutes into testing and the form the very first day and I'm in the water on the surface almost it's like this is simple routine chair this is nothing this is like the boringest day ever and I to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning for this [ __ ] so it's end of February February 11 so the start of February which is the end of summer for us it's probably the hottest season of the year but it was kind of chilly it was overcast the waters murky in Sydney Harbour so combining all of that you can't see through the water at all and I'm one of my first runs towards one of the warships that I'm you know pretending to attack and I look over my left shoulder to make sure that I'm going in the right direction and before I can turn back I just get this massive whack in my leg like someone's hit me with a baseball bat and it didn't really hurt it was just surprising more than anything else and I turned around to see what it was thinking the guys in the boat maybe got too close I couldn't hear cuz I had water in my ears and I turn around and my brain couldn't comprehend what I was seeing because I had never seen a shark's head up close in real life like that before and it took me a few seconds and I I thought oh [ __ ] it's a [ __ ] shark and all these things ran through my head and I thought okay okay okay I've seen I've seen the Crocodile Hunter I've seen Discovery Channel I'll jab it in the eyeball right and so I tried hunch it in the face right that people have said it works I just thought eyeball because that's the softest spot so I tried but I couldn't move my arm for some reason and I looked down and I could see all the teeth half embedded into my thigh I could see the lips pulled back all the pink gums and the teeth going all the way up my leg over my wrist which was by my side so it had my hand in its mouth which is why I couldn't move it and it's still at this point it didn't hurt I could see the teeth embedded in my hand on I just thought okay left hand so I reached for the eyeball but had me by the back of the leg and I I was inches away from that eyeball just desperately trying to get my finger in it but I couldn't reach so I tried to grab it by the nose and push it off sort of lever it off that way but all that did was push the teeth of the lower jaw deeper into my hamstring so I stopped that and I cocked back to give it a whack in the nose and just as I was coming in it started to shake me and this all-encompassing pain rattled me to my core and all the strength went out of my punch and I yelled and I think that's when the guys in the safety boat saw what was going on and when it's shaking you the lower jaw detaches right and it goes side to side so it comes like this sawing effect on yeah it's it's movable so that yeah it just basically was sawing the flesh out of my body while I'm in agony terrified drowning this is my worst nightmare I was terrified of sharks really the only two things are scared of with sharks and public speaking so and now this is your life I know it's Regis [ __ ] that's the way the universe works it out man yeah you know you'll your greatest fears can actually become your greatest strengths and I think at the end that's really the theme of your of your whole story yeah you know you gotta embrace that [ __ ] mm-hmm because you don't know you don't you're not fully aware of what you can accomplish if you're letting especially if you're letting fear hold you back mm-hmm and to be confronted with that in the most vicious life-threatening way possible I mean it's just it's it's beyond imagination you know and and I've seen that there's photographs online you can see the pictures of your arm yeah the actual attack video is on YouTube yeah yeah it looks like that i watch that and it's sort of like a loch ness monster thing it's all like grainy and you're like what's actually going you can't really tell what's going on but those still photographs of your armed and in the back of your leg are just yeah and then I know when you got appetite you tight you say like you show these pictures and some of that and like 50 guys like passed out yeah 50 I really use 53 people of pasta 51 men only two women man yeah I mean it's as gruesome as it comes that image of your arm is I almost wish I didn't see it I don't think I've had any pass out in America though I'm heading up to Atlanta to talk to IBM on Sunday so I'm wondering if I'm gonna get my first American casualty yeah I'm a little bit worried though because you guys like to see people give the warning I do I give the warning I make very light hearted of it we have a good time but some people just tell him to turn away I do one of the guys said he wasn't even watching he said he just listened to me speaking any passed-out me that guy needs to hear your message a little bit more than yeah yeah but it's a lot of fun not that day though that was not fun at all so so there you are these guys are hauling you out you know it's interesting that that like fight-or-flight response typically you hear that the pain comes later you know because the adrenaline is so you know on on overdrive in the situation but you are already feeling the pain I mean yeah the the the amount of blood that you were losing I mean I it's it's shocking that you're alive like it's incredible that you didn't just bleed out yeah but it's testament to what the human body is capable of when I was be super capable guys you know the exact best guys ever yeah like you know deal with the situation and to be you know calm under fire yep well one of the guys hadn't even slept that night he was actually hungover as hell passed out in the bottom of the boat you imagine waking up to your buddy being eaten by a shark and having to do first aid you know a lot of the guys literally reached his hand in and like pinched an artery yeah right yeah because they couldn't stop the bleeding they put a tonic how on using the strap from a life jacket because we didn't have any medical equipment we didn't think it was going to be a day like that at all because this is where we work every day so one of the guys the new guy who I'd pulled out of the water earlier I had to stick his hand inside my leg and pinch closed an artery otherwise I would have died and it should have been that guy right he were like we're swapping out for him well everyone was saying that if it was him there's no way he would have lived he was much smaller than me the shark would have killed him so maybe it was for a reason mmm well unconsciously maybe yes all right so so you're rushed to the hospital they save your life walk me through this next phase of this ordeal I remember I remember waking up one point and looking down and seeing that my foot was still there and that was that was pretty a pretty big deal I thought well you know I've seen my hands gone I've processed that there's nothing I can do about I'm very realistic person I generally don't let emotions get away with me and I've used that as a I guess a coping mechanism for quite some time so I'm just thinking okay hands gone but if I can keep my leg then maybe life will go on as normal maybe I can keep this job that I love so much and then I passed out again and the next time I woke up all my family and friends were there and had that you know worried trying to be smiley positive faces on and I had tubes all down my throat so I couldn't talk and I made up this board for me with letters so I could type tap out the words I wanted to say my first words were [ __ ] shark which made them all laugh but I was more about trying to ease their worry than anything else because I was drug to the eyeballs so I couldn't feel anything I was in a very jovial state and I still have my legs they crush you with vicodin in the in the boat right no we didn't have anything oh yeah no nothing so no so the the pain went away basically as soon as the shark had ripped out my hamstring and ripped off my hand and swam away because it took all the nerves with it so I knew what was going on because I got to the surface and I started to try and swim back to the boat and I saw my hand was gone didn't know how bad my leg was because I couldn't move it I was swimming back to the by with one hand in one leg through a pool of my own blood I've got my right arm above my heart to stand in that video you can tell like you're swimming back to the to the boat yeah with the the step of my arm out of the water trying to stem the bleeding above my heart and so and you you were able to maintain consciousness or yeah pass out no I had to I had to get back to that but I didn't think I was gonna make it I thought the shark was gonna come and kill me but the guys got to me I passed out once I got into the boat but then one of the guys thought I was going into cardiac arrest so he started pummeling me in the heart in the chest to wake me back up and it worked and I woke up and I'm like oh hands freakin being eaten off by a shark I look up and my buddy's beating the [ __ ] out of me I'm just thinking today's [ __ ] and the pain still didn't kick in at that point I was cracking jokes I was till I was looking at my buddies saying hey so you reckon you can get someone to look after my motorbike because I don't think I'm riding at home today and the pain difficult military guy the human body is amazing that it has defense mechanisms that can that can put you into that kind of State yeah survive it's an incredible thing I was just trying to focus on anything except dying right and we should say cuz I don't think we did it was a nine-foot bull shark yeah right yeah and what is it you know what's the difference between a bull shark and a great way a [ __ ] bull sharks are generally smaller than great whites they're much more aggressive I was told by people that they have more testosterone than an adult bull elephant they will bite first ask questions later they will investigate with their mouths they'd like to live in murky waters they can live in saltwater and freshwater and they've found all the you know one of them was found 1500 kilometers or miles up the Kentucky River I think it was so all those years of going up thinking that swimming in the river you were safe oh now I see them in a very different light right but we're gonna get into that yeah there's there's a lot of bull sharks in Sydney Harbor and we knew that were there they just never bothered us so eventually has there been any attacks in Sydney Harbor since no mm-hmm no but the pain really didn't come on strong again until the ambulance got there and then they started banging the morphine in they gave me so much they couldn't give me anymore and I was still in agony and but my I was my blood was at such a low level that I didn't have any oxygen I didn't have any energy and I was physically having trouble making my chest go up and down so I could suck in air so I had to get coached through that as well because I actually thought I was gonna die from suffocation but that didn't happen either thankfully had some good paramedic coaches helping me breathe and I spent a week in hospital with my leg thinking and hoping that I might be able to keep it but every day my foot got a little bit darker and a little less lifelike and I started to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for for having to lose it and the surgeon came in one day and broke it all down for me told me exactly what was going on with the leg you know 25 centimeters of this sciatic nerve was gone the whole hamstring was gone I would never be able to move it or feel it again but I could keep it mhm and I just thought there's no way I don't want to carry that unfeeling unmoving lump of was around with me around yeah I'm gonna have this huge chunk missing out of the back of my leg my fitness will suffer my motivation my happiness or suffer and I I don't want that I just want to get on with life and so I decided to have the leg removed and that was pretty bad actually afterwards I was dead like they had you all jacked up on ketamine and you were like turned me into the Terminator that was my mind said I'm just like doc take my leg and tow me in a determinate well two things first of all you can't are the Terminator incredibly badass you know appendages now that that are I mean you're literally the bionic man you know like those are some high end yeah this is the best is it yeah I'm very lucky up thankfully I don't have to pay for it the leg is I think two hundred thousand dollars it's got a running mode it's waterproof really really good stuffs got six micro processors in it I don't know what any of that [ __ ] does but like when you shook my hand like your fingers yeah then yeah it's good how does that is there like something on the end of your it's all in the socket Wow so the hand is all the mechanics in the socket that goes up to my elbow there's the brain they call it the battery's like two little phone batteries and then two sensors one on the top on the inside and one on the bottom on the inside of the sock and they press against my skin they're in exact spots where I have strong forearm muscle activation so if I say I pretend to make a fist and then I pull my fist back towards the top of my arm and flex that top arm muscle that activates the hand to open if I want to close it I flex it the other way force it down and it closes Wow you take a little while to wire your brain to be able to send those signals properly yeah yeah because I hadn't used them in so long your muscles cramp up because you're constantly trying to flex them and then you can't rub them out because you've got this hard carbon fiber socket over it so a lot of painful days with the leg muscles cramping up that you can't get to but and other like foundations that pay for that like how does that all work I was military sorry I say in the military paid for it to begin with and then once I left the military three years later Veteran Affairs started looking after it all right very lucky right alright so the other thing I wanted to mention is you know and you and you were counting this you're like I just wanted to get on with my life that's I have to believe that on some level that's a function of the mental and emotional training that you received in military because the more predictable human response would be like I don't want to live or like you know just more of a giving up kind of impulse I think the drugs helped I'm not gonna lie the ketamine mixed with morphine I think you're right but it more so came into play about two days later because immediately after I had my leg removed they that couldn't control the pain they were jacking me up on so many drugs and nothing was stopping me stopping the pain I was jacked up on ketamine going down the K hole I was on morphine that put me back in general population instead of the little quiet corner I was in so all I could see was this curtain around my bed my legs gone in agony my hands gone I can eat all these voices in visiting hour the guy in the bed next to me sounded like he was dying I'm tripping out I mean agony and all I wanted to do was die I had in those 20 hours of pain it lasted in those 20 hours all I wanted to do was die I wished that the shark had killed me I even asked my mom to go and find me a gun so I could kill myself this was my absolute lowest point ever in my life and I wouldn't wish this feeling on another human soul but fortunately I got through it I got through the twenty hours and after that I was laying in my bed thinking okay what now what am I going to do and it was just such a complicated situation but I hate complicated situations it's they're too bloody complicated I like things to be simple and I feel like a lot of times in our lives we over complicate things when most things can be broken down to a simple choice so I made a simple choice what do I want do I want a good life or drawn a bad life it's the fundamental choice that you get to have what do I want that's our power it's the only real power we have is our choice so I thought okay well obviously I want a good life because no one's willingly going to go and have a bad life unless you're special so I'm thinking good life okay how do I do that what am I going to do I can't even get up out of this bed how am I going to fast rope out of a helicopter they're never gonna let me play with explosives my whole career is based on the fact that I can do anything that these people ask me to do and now I can't so what am I going to do and I thought well I can sit here and I can cry myself to sleep and I can wallow in my self-pity and say Paul Paul woe is me and I could get addicted to my amazed pain meds at our self-administering I can push all of this love and support that I was being given away and people from around the world I didn't even know was sending me letters of support I could just reject it all or I could do what the military trained me to do I could pick myself up dust myself off and get on with the job I could use all of that love and support that I was being given use that as a tool and I could look at the great things I still had in my life and the great things I still had yet to achieve and have a good life it seems like you you ran that calculus in an incredibly compressed period of time because when you listen to other people that have suffered the loss of limbs or you know whether it's you know veterans coming back from battle like they avenge them you know the ones that you hear about who are out inspiring the world like they eventually get to that place but more often than not there's months you know or long extended periods of time where there is that wallowing in self-pity and all of that before they can kind of get it together to move forward yeah well I knew the hardest part was still to come so I didn't have time to waste on all that deciding [ __ ] like I said I'm a very realistic person and I just I knew what I wanted to do because I was scared I was really scared of losing my career and everything that I felt completed my identity so I needed to work straight away now two days after I had my leg chopped off I'm trying to train in my bed I'm doing one-armed chin-ups on the bar above my bed when the doctor walks in and as I what the [ __ ] you do blow out his stitches but there was no way I was going to stop no I I had a goal I had a huge big ridiculous goal of being allowed to go back to work and now you make like a conscious decision to come to maybe compartmentalize it's not the right word but to sort of train yourself to focus on that forward path and not dwell it was it like a second nature thing because of the training that you had or was it like a practice that you had to kind of you know cajole yourself into getting into that I had to remind myself a lot and one of the reminders was exactly what we were talking about before remembering how low I had been in the past remembering the days of sitting on the couch day after day stoned out in my brain remembering what it's like to live in a house with no electricity no running water you know and swearing to yourself you will not go back to that anything is better than that so you just work your ass off right and you said that you regret all that time wasted as a kid but now you're relying on that memory to empower you forward exactly that's a duality of what you you needed that experience in order for you to weather this storm it's funny how life works out so you you sort of launch yourself immediately into this rehab situation and you're like doing push-ups and all kinds of things and stuff like right okay my doctor actually whenever he gave me because I had to kick continue going in for new surgeries had another surgery on my hand another surgery another three surgeries on my leg and he would double the amount of time he told me that I had to recover and not do pt because he knew I was gonna have it and try and heal twice as fast so I spent nine weeks in hospital training the whole time my family and friends were amazing that brought me weights and protein powders and i sweet-talked the nurses into giving me double rations because I needed I'd lost ten kilos in ten seconds so I needed to bulk up and get strong again and I read constantly I had to keep my mind active so that I wouldn't dwell on the [ __ ] I knew that was gonna be the biggest thing so what were you reading I was reading Dan Millman's peaceful warrior yeah amazing that really changed my perception a very good friend of mine Tania Morrison gave me that and what did you get out of that like what was the applicable like tool it was the idea that you are limitless that your mind is far more powerful than anything you can imagine and you need to listen to it you have to listen to your body as well obviously when you injuries and you know what that's like after doing five lineman but your mind is the is de hammer your body is the nail and if you can remain motivated and positive through your mind reminding yourself that you're limitless and you are strong and you can do things that you tell yourself you can't do you know that's you telling your brain instead of your brain telling you that you can achieve all this [ __ ] so just trust in it and if you say to yourself I can do this I'm going to do this just [ __ ] do it mmm don't think too much about it don't dwell because that's when you let doubt creep in but also the sense that you are not your body and you are not your mind I mean this is for warriors very much a spiritual thought yeah you know I mean there's some crazy out there [ __ ] up but I mean that that has you thinking more broadly about what consciousness is and and what the kind of you know your universal flow of energy means and how to kind of leverage that yep it's been a few years since I read that book I need to touch that again he's done a few since then as well as he yeah but it just it got me on the path to where I needed to be instead of worrying about what was to come I was setting goals and challenges for what was to come and I was worried about the pity and the people staring and not having a hand in a leg and so when you worry and you do that you do something about it so I got onto the internet they wanted the Navy wanted me to talk to a counselor and I didn't want to talk to some person I didn't know about how I was feeling because I already knew how I was feeling [ __ ] I didn't want to talk about it I just wanted to know that it's like classic classic military cop like you didn't a cop shows you know when there's a shooting and then they make him go talk to the shrink and they don't want to say anything yeah it wasn't like an alpha male thing it wasn't that I didn't want to deal with it it was just that I was already dealing with it I already knew what I needed to do so I didn't need to waste time talking to someone about it so I got onto YouTube and I got onto Google and I used technology to help me you can the wealth of the world's knowledge is in a few keystrokes so I started Google what is the greatest prosthetics in the world what hands are out there what legs are out there and I got onto YouTube and I started watching these videos of Paralympic athletes doing ridiculously amazing things and that started to give me hope that if they can do it there's no reason that I can't do it as well I'm gonna have the military in my corner paying for these prosthetics so I might as well try and get the best that I can right and so so what have I got to worry about and I would presume that when you're in this you know rehabilitation phase you're in some kind of center where there's a lot of other veterans that are dealing with something similar right no no we didn't it's not like America we don't have huge big military hospitals it was a wing of the general public hospital so there wasn't anybody else kind of going through the same thing that you were going through they did at least connect with and I was the only one mmm yeah everyone else is a huge story in Australia yeah I was like a major they went all over the world I was getting letters from kids in Germany and France and Italy but yeah it was pretty massive because like we said that no one had been attacked instantly Harbor in 60 years so there was media all over it and luckily my family were dealing with that at the end of the the nine weeks in hospital sixty minutes came and wanted to do a story I did two of those that the reporter became a very good friend of mine and we went and dive with sharks together and yeah but after after six months I went back to the Navy and asked them if I could go back to work and they said no and they said to go to the diving teams you have to be deployable for war and obviously you're not deploy before I said well look I get that that's fine I'm not a Swift on my feet anymore and my trigger finger doesn't work all the time so what I can do though is I can go and pass on this knowledge that you've given to me and you know I the the movie man of honor with Cuba Gooding jr. and Robert De Niro it's like a staple and so I'm just like he went and taught diving I'll just go on each doll having his meme rationalizing in my head like haha exactly and so they said I okay well look you can go and teach at the school three half days a week and so I went five full days a week and just didn't leave and I I really felt that I needed to prove myself and prove that I deserve to be there so I just busted my ass every day and I did that for three years and I was literally killing myself it was so hard trying to keep up with everyone also maintain my training and the long hours we were doing we'd be at work at 6 o'clock in the morning sometimes finish it two o'clock in the morning and then have to be back there at 6 and it was just wiping me out and I went to my boss at the dive school one day and asked him what the chances of me moving back to the dive teams or somewhere else for divers was and he said zero and so that was when I decided that I was going to leave the military and that was terrifying how long ago was that that was I left August 2012 officially I stayed part of the Navy Reserve diving team and continued to do work with them but it was on my own terms and the idea then I mean are you looking at like ok I mean you have all this sort of notoriety in Australia right yeah not by that stage you know this is three years later so it had all of the media stuff it had settled down a bit but I did get asked I'd started speaking a little bit and nothing terrified me more than that but and I turned down speaking jobs while I was in the Navy but a group called canteen which is a group for kids with cancer they asked me to talk to their kids at a camp and I just thought well I don't want to but how do you say no to kids with cancer so I thought alright and I put this little presentation together and I went in and did it and I made these kids laugh and I made them forget that they were sick and forget that they grew up in a hospital ward and it made me feel so good to make them feel so good and it was this realization I wanted that feeling again you know it was like serving my country coming home and and feel like oh my god that was amazing I walked out of that room feeling on top of the world and so I went from there to my old school I did 30 kids and then went to 1200 at my old school which was a terrifying again there were some of the same teachers there yeah yeah that look like he's leading me around the school like I always knew Paul would be something great I'm like dude you used to kick me in my ass and where's your dad in this whole thing dad's still back in Canberra at that point not actually he was um he was working in Abu Dhabi I in the UAE so he was working for customs integrating a lot of their computer systems so they'd talk to each other mum was still in things with you a long time ago yeah we around my sister's sister's 18th birthday party me and a few of the army boys rode down on our motorbikes and we sat around and I had a few beers with my dad for the first time and that was squashed at all that's so Australia but yeah it was just a moment came when I was talking to those two hundred twelve hundred kids at my old school and my mum had come and my best friend had come and I stopped halfway through and before I went onstage the principal was talking everyone all the kids are coughing and spluttering and talking about how he is you can't hear anything and then I get up to talk and halfway through I stop and it's dead silent like you can you can't hear a single thing you could literally hear a pin drop and I looked at my friend and he's like wide-eyed looking around going holy [ __ ] this is crazy and so I continued on and it just gave me this know this sense that I was making a difference you know all of their lives at once and that made me feel pretty amazing and maybe I can help them through some of the the crap that I went through and guide them around the obstacles so I continued on and I just started getting paying jobs and it turned into this whole big career and that's why I felt comfortable leaving the military terrified because I didn't know how long are you the flavor flavor of the month how long is this do I want to be ten years down the track I was a little worried about once it all fizzled out what I was gonna do I just figured I well I can't live in Sydney on my pension but I could probably live in Vietnam like a king so that's still my fallback plan yeah but the irony is that quite the opposite has occurred yeah and I think there's something you know beautiful and magical about what happens when you give yourself over to service right I mean obviously this this impulse to serve is nourishing you and giving you a sense of purpose and fulfillment you know perhaps on an even more profound deeper level than anything you had done prior and to trust that and to say like I'm just gonna keep I'm gonna keep doing this and when you're in that spirit and action of giving of yourself for the betterment of others in my experience and what I've seen with other people the universe shows up Oh Oh 100% I I've become a firm believer in whatever you want to call it the universe karma everything great that I have in my life now is because of things that I've done selflessly and it's people like well you can't just do things to get things back now that you know that I I know I know I don't I actually really really enjoy doing things and expecting nothing I like to help people that I know will never be able to do anything for me I walk my dog for instance down this little lane way down at Marina del Rey and there's rubbish everywhere and I hated it bothers me so much as cigarette butts and so I started picking up the cigarette butts I take one of my doggie bags and poop bags and I start picking up all the rubbish all on this little walkway and now I walk down there and it's clean it's amazing and the last day that I did it I got down to the beach and I met this guy and he gave me free tickets to The Comedy Store mm-hmm you know just a little thank you he's along the way like yeah karma coming quick yeah exactly and now I have this out I would change a thing I wouldn't take my hand in my leg back to have my old life back that's that amazing thing so you like that was what I wanted to kind of work towards like this idea that this gratitude that you have for that experience as opposed to you know why me yeah not enough I'd call it gratitude it it definitely but gratitude for the life that you you the gratitude for the life I have right now it's ridiculous I live in LA did you know I have a view of the ocean and I was in Bondi last year and I was like this is pretty good yeah definitely hang out here yeah you can see while I was living my dream yeah at that point and I still love I'm heading back to Bondi and a couple of weeks to do some speaking jobs I loved it there but this is America this is like everything you see in the movies like I was watching Goliath with them what's the guy's name used to date Angelina Jolie it's a series with Billy Ray Thornton with the Wraith on his right Billy Bob Billy Bob Thornton and they're filming this show called life all through Santa Monica and I'm like oh I go there to drink oh I go there to eat and it's just it's such a surreal experience coming from a tiny little town in Australia to living in LA in I ride my bike along Venice Beach with the dog and I trained at Gold's I talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger at the gym most mornings yeah he's nice freak now still show up I haven't seen him yet but apparently he comes Mickey Rourke was there the other day that gym is so crazy like when I used to live on on on marina and forth like riding on the horn from there a long time ago and I would go there and there's so much history mmm you know it's like this is the this is the birthplace of bodybuilding it's just packed with like so much so much of that is just bred into the DNA of that place and yeah there's Arnold like these people come in but there's also this weird thing where you know it's like the same people every day clock in at like 9:00 in the morning and they clock out at 5:00 like they're there all day yeah and it's this weird like mishmash like porn set meats yeah yeah yeah I've got this buddy down there who used to be a celebrity bodyguard a tall tall black guy I think he's like 65 70 and he had a stroke and he can barely move one side of his body and he's still there every day he can barely move between the machines without falling over but is there working out there's as young as all this fat there Skinner there's such a melting pot of people and it's inspiring just to be there without all the celebrities and stuff there's people just there because they want to work on their fitness and they want to be strong and healthy and they want to make their lives better yeah and you're always posting those Instagram videos yeah well they're all film by Arnold's training partner he want to follow me around and and make a mini docker out of my training so and my friend Mike Ryan who's a trainer there he's always on my ass about my he's like oh you know how the the shark stuff is good but have you noticed how all your views peak when you do some workout stuff so I'm like alright I'll test this out and he was right yeah I got a lot of views on the workout stuff and people write to me asking questions about my prosthetic and my weightlifting arm and how I use my leg to train and do squats and stuff have you ever gone in and worked with veterans that are kind of in the early phases of dealing with what you've you've been dealing yeah back in Australia I did I went to work with the soldier recovery center in Brisbane I was actually dating a navy nurse a few years back now down in San Diego as she worked at one of the hospitals down there and I used to go in and chat to some of the wounded guys still in hospitals still in the hospital beds but not not lately I don't like to force myself on groups or all people because I know that there's a lot of people that want to get involved and always bothering you know the veteran services about and I don't like to be like that if people asked me to go and help I would do it no problem at all but I'm not good at asking hey do you want me a little or pull together they haven't asked you like I was thinking like you know there's so many veterans in the US that are dealing well there's so many veterans in the u.s. that have overcome so much now people like marcus luttrell right and Noah Galloway that there's a huge group of these people that are doing just incredible things for their veteran community and their injured veterans as well so I think they probably have their coffers full but that's not so I would never turn them down right so you're in this incredible situation you get to speak to all these groups and travel all over the world like what was the impetus to come to the United States like how did that all come about I was doing lots of speaking in Australia and Discovery Channel asked me for an interview on you and I saw yeah it's just another interview whatever by that stage I was quite comfortable in front of the camera it wasn't a big deal and they liked it and they liked it so much they they flew me out to LA to go on the late-night talkin show during Shark Week called shark after dark and I guess they that with me and Mark Cuban or on the couch together and I guess they liked that because they gave me a co-hosting job the next year with this this insane cameraman called Andy Casagrande II this guy the things he does man the things he's we've done together now I saw my first great white shark with him I did my first cage diving with great white sharks with him in the same shown the same two weeks of filming they like that's so much they gave me another one and another one to the point where I was out here having some meetings a couple of years ago about TV shows and my managers said everyone out here loves you everyone knows who you are but you're not here you need to be here if you want this to grow and so I thought all right now I went home and I thought about it and I broke up with my girlfriend and decided to move to America she was holding me back anyway so romantic yeah well you know she didn't she didn't want to move to mesh so many things she didn't want to do and I just wanted to continue to grow as a person and with a career and so I decided just gonna move to America and then a month after I made that decision I was still in Australia I got an offer by NatGeo wild to have my own show and I just thought holy [ __ ] this is how is this happening it just keeps getting better and better and so we talked to discovery because I was doing some shows with them and they said no you can't go work with our competitor so I decided well do I want my own show why do I want to stay with my loyalty's to discovery and stay on Shark Week and I saw you know I I talked to everyone who got everyone's opinion and I decided to stay with discovery and they gave me three shows a year for two years a working visa in America development money for my own show and so I just I moved to America and I Airbnb but weensy Nina and America for 18 months and finally got a place three months ago and now I'm just waiting for a green light for one of my shows to get cleared I'm working on another show with one of your friends about it and I can't talk about it yet but is um what an amazing dude if we can pull this off it would be it would be not just good for me in him but the main focus is it'll be good for a small subsection of the community which is the best part and now it's just getting bigger and bigger I just got the sign to one of the biggest speaking bureaus you know in the world so I'm out here for the long term and I love this place Americans are so sweet they're so welcoming I just had two days ago I was having lunch with my girlfriend and a couple secretly paid for my lunch Wow that doesn't happen in Australia yeah I think I've been thanked for my service three times there and it's not that you expect it it's not even that you wanted it's just that it's very sweet for people to say it still and so I still appreciate that because we've never had it before right and you're part of this Shark Week ecosystem which is just massive yeah that's like a cultural phenomenon here and it's such a big deal but I want to explore the evolution of you being someone who is victimized by a shark to being somebody who you know basically now advocates for shark reservation and the you know the ecological implications of you know our relationship as human beings to sharks well it's the right thing to do and ever since I joined the military my focus has been more on serving and doing the right thing and you know I have been trained as a protector so I see now that I'm not a soldier anymore that's not my job but my job is to protect and to serve and I see a lot of wrongs being done against our planet against the environment against the oceans and especially against sharks and over the years out of necessity I had to learn a lot about that because every time there was a shark attack in Australia guess who the the media tells so you are yeah and you're the guy who's typing you know [ __ ] shark yeah one theater or whatever you know like from the hospital bed and now you're like the spokesperson for shark exactly and so everyone was asking me how I got into sharks and I was like is that a necessity I have to how did you get into shark you didn't have a choice you got on to me yeah but I didn't want to get on TV and sound like a dumbass and so I started to do my research and I started to talk to the conservation groups and learn from them Sea Shepherd and a bunch of others that are out there sharks for kids out of the Bahamas is an amazing one for kids and so I learned and I learn and as we know knowledge dispels fear so break down the situation with respect to shark preservation like how do we treat sharks what's the problem you know what are we doing wrong you know for somebody who has no context for this other than like I'm scared of sharks or I know that sharks are threatened and certain people eat sharks or whatever like what's actually going on there's a lot of smaller satellite problems involved with sharks such as people actually fishing for them for sport fishing them to eight there's the drum lines and the trial just kills buttons that's the big one this is the commercial fishing is the major contributor legal and illegal so Sea Shepherd I think last year found a a Chinese trawler with 1,500 tons of shark fins on board just the fins just the fins just the fence so they were catching all these sharks slicing the fins off then throwing the carcasses overboard and there's over a hundred million sharks killed a year in the ocean that's unbelievable yeah and some of these sharks they don't reproduce quickly some of the ones that they fish for actually take 35 years to fully mature before they can have pups so the birth rate is so slow and the kill rate is so high 90% of all the oceans large fish have been wiped out and so explain how it works with commercial fishing though they drape these gigantic nets as there's two ways that they do it the way you're talking about where they yeah they like football-field-sized Nets they just drag them through the ocean floor picking up everything just totally destroying coral reefs and habitats for fish catching whales dolphins sharks seals everything indiscriminately and it's all dead and anything that they don't want so they'll have a quite a certain amount of fish that they've been asked to catch like they're trying to catch tuna exactly and if that if they've got you know ten tons of tuna and 20 tons of everything else they'll just throw the rest of that away a lot of the time until they can get more tuna it's all dead so it's just waste they call it literally call it waste and then they've got the monofilament nets as well where they will lay them on the bottom of the ocean maybe two kilometers at a time there's probably about 200 kilometers worth of these monofilament nets surrounding Australia everyday and they stand about 6 meters high and they catch everything that swims into them indiscriminately and kill it and then they did the same thing so it's the commercial fishing so that's why Richard operon Lander calls fishing by its definition as overfishing yeah there is no no sustainable fishing is a myth you cannot sustainably fish and people think well I'm just kidding I'm gonna I'm gonna eat these farmed salmon holy [ __ ] you know bear they are for you there they're full of bacteria diseases they're full of antibiotics to get them out of the diseases the the salmon actually have to be fed died pellets so they have that pink color because they're like dirty muddy brown if they don't because they're not eating their natural food eating a lot of eating pig [ __ ] out of China and now they're gonna be genetically modified mm-hmm yeah yeah that's safe so explain the role of the shark as the apex predator in the ocean and why why the shark is so important to maintaining a proper ecosystem they keep the balance and the easiest way I've found to explain this to people who don't quite understand and that was me for a long time so I know what you're getting at saying apex predator and they keep the balance and they're good for the ecosystem it's a lot of words that don't really mean a lot to most people so I'll give you an example um there's a lot of them and there was a town in America I come and what it was and they fished all of the sharks yeah because they were eating the food that they wanted to catch the fisherman sorry so they're fished all of the sharks out there was no sharks to eat the Rays the Rays decimated the mollusk population and destroyed the mussel and scallop industry so all of those people were all out of work all lost their jobs all their boats were wasted lost their homes because they couldn't pay their mortgages because they killed the show and they think at the time they're doing the right thing in the best interest of enhancing their ability to you know increase their yields he's all right it's that classic human hubris of thinking like oh you know I we just take care of this one thing and we'll solve the problems without appreciating the cascading effect of those kinds of disease comes back it always comes back on to us in an untold effect that's that's the thing that's why every time we mess with nature wood we're disrupting it all and so what's going on like in Australia with the Great Barrier Reef and the this sort of line I want to slam my head on the table I mean it's insane you know it's reaching a tipping point if it hasn't already passed it these mining and oil companies as well keep trying to put a mining route directly through the Great Barrier Reef this is the only thing that would even be considered they want to put an oil rig in the greatest giant bite which is the big bite looking thing at the bottom of Australia it is a massive whale sanctuary there is so much life out there and I just want to put this big old rig out there and do blast testing and destroy the sonars of the whales and the Dolphins and everything living out there so all of the citizens are having to fight this because the government is just yeah let's make money they've slashed the country's marine parks by 50% the the biggest cut of marine park protecting marine parks ever that's happened under our new prime minister and they're putting out nets and drum lines to pretend that they're protecting the swimmers yeah it's amazing you know it's interesting in the context of diet when people say well you know I'm pretty much like on your page rich but you know I like fish or whatever and fish seems harmless in the context of thinking of sentient beings because you can see like you see yeah or yeah it's just like oh well you know our one thing pigs are one thing but like fish is in a different category but when you fully appreciate the impact of commercial fishing and what it's doing to our planet it's just it's indefensible yeah and it's wrong as well like the science has shown that fish have complicated social groups they have a centralized nervous system they have memories there there are a lot more than we thought they were than the dumb goldfish memory thing they feel pain and talking to we're talking about you really got the chance to talk to you earlier but I'm talking about you too John Joseph and another friend of mine Ian Norrington who's a Brit in Australia and The Bodyguard guy that John initially like Wow he was the connect between you two guys he was yeah he reached out to me in the early day saying hey read it all about you you have quite an impact on the community you could make it even more drastic if you thought about going plant-based and the proceed had already been planted by a guy called Damien manda yeah yeah I don't know personally but I know his story is incredible yeah he's an amazing man and him and I worked in the same Navy Department the clearance divers and I went out there to Africa to film a documentary for Nat Geo and I embedded with his anti poaching unit we went out hunting poachers and I did the the shooting training unarmed combat and all that stuff and his meals were always separate from the Rangers I what are you eating - means like our I'm I'm a vegan I was like what's that and he said I don't need anything that's from an animal okay why do you do that for he said well because I felt like a hypocrite now I was out here protecting the animals and eating the animals and me being the rational guy that I am I'm like err okay that makes sense totally how are you still so huge I know so explain who Damien Mandor is for people that first of all Damien did an incredible TED talk everybody should watch I'll put it in the show notes but I mean this guy is a [ __ ] bad uh-huh he's a monster and so he was a navy clearance diver like me he went over and joined that special forces group that I told you about the tactical assault group then when he got bored with the military he became a private military contractor out in Iraq and he did probably 12 13 tours of that place and then just got sick of the death and the poverty and the anger and the hate and he went on Safari looking for a new cause and on safari in Africa they came across a rhino with its face hacked off and he just thought okay this is my call this is why I came here I was meant to be here to see this to help make this stop so against every known possibility he this giant white man from Australia went to Africa and managed to get together this group of people and convinced them to be Rangers instead of poaching the animals and it's turned into this a beast of its own right our way has just started the can never pronounce at the ashik of Inga this group of women the first women anti-poaching Rangers ever and they out there hunting the poachers protecting the animals selflessly you know he sold all of his homes in Australia to get the money to put this together he lives very not poorly what's what I'm looking for minimally minimally with him and his wife and his child and when I lived at their house and it was kind of perfect at the end of the day we sat back in his hammock and had a beer and listen to the hippos sing a hundred metres away in the creek near his house and listened to the crocodiles and it was one of the times I I actually did feel a little bit threatened in my life because it was nighttime and I needed to go to the toilet but the toilet was on the other side of this dark patch away from the house and I was literally thinking everything he wants to eat me I'm not sure I need to go to the toilet that bad but what he did really was take this special forces sensibility and apply that to a world where he could make a difference that has traditionally you know you know people of his mindset they've been like you know kind of the tree huggers right you know you know sort of very you know love exactly and he comes in with all his training and his you know ability to like make [ __ ] happen in a very real way he basically created a paramilitary group out of these range yes like the they're not [ __ ] around nope they're legally allowed to shoot poachers on-site yeah it's amazing I didn't know that you I didn't know that you knew him yeah yeah we've spent a bit of time together he's a good man yeah and I think he you know because of who he is in his background he you know he's a powerful figure because I think he's somebody that like a dude you know like a like a Type A personality gun can look to and realize like oh you know being plant-based like being quote-unquote like compassionate can take the form of somebody like that that you know like an average guy can look to a guy like that and say you know I want to be like that guy and I relate to that person yeah I take great pride when people see me working out in the gym and I'm doing chin-ups with 70 pound dumbbell around my waist this morning I was doing 120 pound dumbbell presses and they come they always come over for a chat because you rarely see a half robot dude lifting weights oh and it's gold so everyone talks to each other and they'll all come over and have a chat and they're like ah you know how are you so fitting you ripped and blah blah and I say well it actually started and became more prevalent when I went vegan a year and a half ago and that mind what steroids you're on where I'm like broccoli yeah this is a steroid called spinach so it's been a year and a half yeah and so it was Damien and John and and in Ian's were the main influences all play that pot yeah and it just kept I tried it once and I failed dismally because I went in unprepared and then I gave it another guy a few months later and I went because I was the sort of guy that I had to eat all the chickens in the world I had to get all that protein in me to get the muscles and I know they never delivered I never had big muscles I just couldn't put weight on and didn't didn't work and so I thought okay well I'll cancel out red meat I did that pretty easily cancel out white mate did that pretty easily because I still had my beloved fish I love seafood I grew up spearfishing with my grandfather and eating stingray and all that so that was the big one at that in eggs I was lactose intolerant when I was 15 so dairy wasn't a problem stole money from the poor box at church and so God's moded me because I bought chocolate with his God money so I lactose-intolerant since I was a teenager so eggs and seafood and I got rid of the seafood but it was the eggs it was like okay this is my last this is my final source of protein I must protect it and then I learnt so much about all the other sources of protein and now eggs literally grossed me out and what is that what is the impact that on your training and recovery what recovery I don't need any recovery I train every day in some form or fashion I haven't had a serious injury in since I started in over a year and a half it was almost like it just happened instantly I'm the modern day meal that we most people have is so much now a huge chunk of meat that's sort of how we we value our meal okay my meals big enough because I have this huge chunk of meat in it and then a little bit of veggies or it's like pasta with meat all through it and no veggies at all and now that I don't have that distraction of the animal products I'm so much healthy I have so many more nutrients because I'm eating all of these vegetables that I never ate before like who knew spaghetti squash was incredible and I make that stuff all the time I make tofu scramble it looks exactly like eggs but tastes better when you add all the veggies and hot sauce and it's just I by no means starving I'm by no means grossed out by the food I eat I make gourmet meals my girlfriend is not a vegan at all but I cook most of the time and she's at my house all the time so she's eating vegan yeah basically yeah my breakfast every day I actually look forward to going home after the gym because I make this bowl I call magic oats I discovered probably the best vegan protein on the planet it's better than any whey protein I've ever had by a company called high-performance nutrition I'm not sponsored by them or anything but um it's banana maple french toast flavor mmm and my smoothie bowls are probably 80% broccoli and spinach and you can put just one scoop of this stuff in and it tastes like Gold yeah I get some some pb2 and some chia seeds it's a buckwheat and just combine it all together big scoop of almond butter and it makes me happy every time I eat it yeah so when you're at the gym and and you tell these guys while I went vegan or and then and then they ask you where you get your protein or like the conversation I didn't really think that it was gonna happen as much as everyone makes fun of it about happening you know what I mean like everyone's like Oh Wade you get your protein and you see the means all the time on Instagram I way to get protein I was like oh that's just whatever I don't really say that all the time here they do its in what the health actually and the doctor says I've never in my whole career had someone come in dying of a lack of protein or a protein deficiency yeah I think that's Garth Ennis yeah yeah so I get it in food like the same place the cows and the gorillas and you get yours from I just don't get it from meat because it's not good for you it's interesting that rule that your life keeps getting better as you are removing things from your life now you're removing animal products it just keeps getting better yeah do you live your own kind of version of minimalism it's a different guy yeah that's just gonna be made the dog soon yeah shed the girlfriend shed the meat products gained America and I've you know I'm strong and I feel good not just in body but I feel good in my soul I live a whole life where nothing has to die for me to live and simply because it's unnecessary it doesn't have them and I and I would assume that most of your listeners are probably vegans vegan is not necessarily know I mean this show you know look I have lots of people on that are plant-based but I want other people on too I mean there's a lot of vegan plant-based people that listen but I wouldn't categorize it as a vegan hot cat like there's all kinds of people that yes I I just got to a point where I realized a lot of these as I did because I was misinformed or I felt like I had to because I was a man and I'm soldier and I had to keep up that illusion I'm so comfortable in Who I am now I don't need to prove myself anymore I served my country in two different branches of the service I survived a shark attack I go and do volunteer work and charity work I can wear a pink shirt if I want and I can eat vegetables and as long as I'm doing good for people and I'm not being a dick and I'm healthy then I'm happy you know I'm really in a good place and it's a lot to do with not having death in my life it's pretty powerful to hear that coming from a guy like you you know someone like me long-distance runner or whatever you know it's a very different animal from you know a military guy you know a kind of guy who looks like you and has done the things that that you have done and I think it speaks to a larger conversation about how we define masculinity and and what it means to be a man and it calls into question a lot of these paradigms that we've set up about what that looks like you know if you're a man then you need to eat this way and behave in a certain way and in truth I think it beckons or it or calls for really considering the truth of what it means to be masculine which is to be a protector exactly yeah to know when to exert your strength and to know when to show compassion see it a few I have to eat these animals why would you do that and when you realize by removing them from your plate that you actually feel better and perform better it's like a light switch goes on and then you can become that ambassador that protector that that spokesperson for you know a kinder more compassionate world and do it in the frame in the body of you know this this very kind of you know typically masculine persona yeah it's the big bad man thing to go on a dia matin ribs and baby blablabla and I've had a couple my friends give the vegan plant-based lifestyle a crack and my mum for one and she was looking after my dog when I first moved out here and she she called me one day she said look I don't think I can do this much longer you know he's too big he's a great day in Cross and I just you know my hips hurt my rheumatoid arthritis is really bad I get up in the middle of the night and I nearly fall over all the time I'm gonna have to get a cane and I just thought okay this is it I've tried I've tried to talk to her about it so many times and she's just so stuck in her ways and so it might it might sound gross but I I went and booked her in for three colonics to flush out start flushing out the toxins I banned her from wine and coffee and I gave this huge list of things that she shouldn't be having and I gave her a whole list of foods that she can use to cook with and how much water she needs to drink and within four days I'm not even joking within four days she calls me back and she says Paul I got up in the middle of the night last night and I did I just walked to the toilet I didn't feel bad I didn't feel dizzy my hips weren't hurting I actually this morning went out walking with the girls again something I haven't been able to do in months that's crazy it's amazing the difference that it can have on your health and well-being I'm 41 now I don't feel like it I feel stronger and better than I've ever felt in my life yeah and it's just not part of the conversation when you go to the doctor no the two weeks with the nutrition Col stay how your hips are yeah well you you need to take this and you're gonna need to take that you're gonna have to start slowing things down and that's I mean that dramatic of a difference in such a short period of time I mean even drugs can't do that no yeah that's incredible yeah it's old me well let's talk a little bit about this you know this evolution from being attacked by a shark to being you know somebody who like how long did it take before you got back in the water to go be with sharks again and what was that like oh man that happened quick because 60 minutes came to the hospital before I was even at home and I wanted to do a story and say I they convinced me to go diving in an aquarium with some grey nurse sharks and while I knew nurse sharks I think you guys call them sand Tigers while I knew enough about sharks to know that they weren't gonna harm me they still look scary you know they got all the teeth hanging out of their face and so I didn't feel very comfortable looking at that so much I looked at the tail but I did that very quickly and then I didn't do it again for quite some time any progression from there I did that same dive a few times for charity events and things like that but by then you know they didn't even feel like sharks they were just like swimming puppy dogs and then 16 minutes came back around again and they said look it's amazing what you've done getting back to work we want to do it you know where's Paul now and they wanted me to go to Fiji and go diving with bull sharks and like we want you to face the animal that you know 60-minute cycle of the big deep for its face the animal that changed his life forever it'll be great for reading yeah yeah and so I'm like all I'm thinking is they're gonna pay for me to go to Fiji yeah they'll probably pay for my margaritas to you all right yeah I'll come to Fiji so when I shot that and to be honest and not one point did I feel threatened I didn't feel like the Sharks were after me I got to see them in just a natural light there was I think six different species of sharks there billions of fish the only thing I got bitten by was an eel mmm no someone once told me if you put something bigger than its mouth in front of it it won't bite you so this eel came out I was like I wanted to get close to it I put my fist up to it which was bigger than its head and a little bastard bit me on the knuckle it finally let go and I started pumping my fist and all this green stuff came out of my hand I thought oh my god what does it injected me with and then I realized I was a hundred and ten feet down and there's no red at that depth that was just my blood but the shark's eye it was eye-opening at the end of that dive I got to hand feed a bull shark and it wasn't trying to eat me it wasn't trying to kill it wasn't a vicious lurking monster waiting to do faces you're just out knock I just no cages no just out there yeah and no PTSD about doing it no yeah I sometimes wonder if I'm a little bit broken shouldn't I by all accounts have something wrong with me I don't know it's funny I had I had Alex Honnold in here yesterday you know world's greatest free soloist climber that guy climbed El Capitan without ropes like he's done just the most unbelievable things and he had you know everyone asked him like about his relationship with fear and his relationship with death and I think there's some overlap between how he perceives it and and perhaps how you perceive it coming from different experiences and what was interesting is that he was saying look you know what I do like if you know he's on those rock fit you you lose your grip like you're dead like there's no I mean there's no if ands or buts about it it's not like oh you're putting yourself at risk it's a very binary thing right and so that makes him have to be very present with the reality of death so he lives with a sensibility about death that most people just compartmentalize or put in their you know in their unconscious mind like we walk around thinking we're not going to die or yeah we kind of academically know everybody's going to die but but you know maybe it's not gonna happen to me you know that kind of thing yeah and as somebody who survived what you've survived you had a you know a brush with death in in you know the most palpable way possible and so I would imagine your relationship with death and your appreciation for life is different than most human beings but the other thing about Alex was that like how can this guy do this stuff and maintain hit maintain his focus and concentration and and and presence when he's in this situation of being on these were these rock climbing walls so they did an MRI on his brain to see if there's like something wrong with it they're like this guy's amygdala must not fire which I you know I guess is responsible for the fear impulse all right and they found out he's like no I actually have an amygdala you know but it but it doesn't it doesn't like you know function in the way that most human beings do so there's something there amuse you yeah you're an MRI of your brain well I think it has to do with your experience like Oh totally you I mean after you've survived what you survived for I would imagine your relationship with life and death is is different like what you know what does fear look like for you well I I here already accepted death when I was under the water for those 10 seconds drowning in total agony I came to a realization that I was going to die my brain was telling me okay you're gonna die right now you're not going home today this is it and so I accepted it already and I just thought everything sped up in my brain and I was thinking a million miles a minute and I just thought well I've lived 10 lives in these 31 years if it's my time to die then I'm okay with that and so I let go and a Carm came over me and then the shock removed my hand removed from my hamstring and because of my wetsuit I was positively buoyant and I popped to the surface and I looked around and the the tail of the shark splash water in my face and I saw my safety boat and I thought oh [ __ ] I'm not dead I better get out of here so I started to swim me back to the boat and so I I already accepted death and I realized that it's not it's nothing to be afraid of yeah so how does that color your day-to-day life well I I don't have to hold on to the mortal coil like everyone else does because I know that death is not scary you know what's scary not living not doing everything that you possibly can to live the best life you have because trust me when you come to the end of your days the only thing you're gonna have is your regrets and if you don't have any of those so sweet home run you've got nothing to worry about so then you're feeding bull sharks by your hands yep and now you know they had a shock wake last year at the start of 2017 I was diving with great white sharks without a cage in the middle and nowhere [ __ ] Western Australia like a handful of people maybe have done it that's insane and yeah it's it's incredible to be 110 feet down with three massive male great white sharks swimming around you and all you have is a GoPro on a stick how do you I mean what is the you know the situation in which a great white or bull shark is going to be provoked to attack you versus being you know simpatico with them in the water look the first thing is they're a wild animal you never going to be able to predict what they do 100% of the time you kind of have to just rely on your experiences and rely on your knowledge and I've learned from the best that the guy Annie Kuster grandi I've done a bunch of shows with him now and I always keep my mouth shut and my ears open when I'm dealing with people like that I have a lot of trust with him I did that dive with him and so I've learned how to read the Sharks how to read their posture and really the greatest thing the greatest piece of advice that anyone ever gave me was don't act like food they won't treat you like food even how what is it what does that mean might never retreat always keep your eyes on them sharks and actually see looking at them a lot of the times tiger sharks great white sharks they'll try and ambush you from behind as soon as you turn around they actually register that you're looking at them and they swim in the other direction yeah it's mind blowing as funny to see because they come out of the murk at you and it's literally like you're watching a horror movie at this gigantic great white shark swimming directly at your face and you want to turn and you want to swim as fast as you can back to that cage but you can't because it'll eat it'll chase you down and I'll eat you and you've been in that situation yeah coming at you and you have to maintain your composure to such an extent they like staring down the bull Wow yeah it was crazy and it did it it swam up to me and I saw the nose and I saw the eyes and the teeth and then the fins out the side and was like a mini bus with teeth and fins coming at me and I just had to stay there even though I was very very nervous that it was gonna bite my head off and it just went around me mm-hmm and that was it and then eventually we swam back to the cage and I came to the surface and I was fine and I got to see these remarkable animals without the bars in the way one on one not acting like food not as prey so if I find myself out in the ocean and I'm confronted with a shark stare them in the face yeah just keep your eyes on it try and watch it at all times I don't know if I'm gonna be able to handle that well it's your other option do you go out in and out here and like Malibu or Westside and go in the ocean no I haven't had any need to mm-hmm I'm I used to like surfing but I'm just not very good at it on this prosthetic leg I've seen this kid as this he's created this really great surfing prosthetic I want to get one of those because it looks much easier to stand on because I do like surfing I'm just really terrible at it when I can't feel my foot or my knee but um I he led out he has a motorized surfboard or something I want to get one of those I don't know I have seen those like hydrofoil surfboards that are like boosted board skateboards but yeah surfboards and they rot right they serve rise up with a hydrofoil and they're like electric motorized yeah and people ride around on that I love one of those so I've surfed a 10 foot wave but I got towed into it on the back of a jetski the only problem I don't have surely all right here in Australia I don't have anyone to tie me around into Jessica's just to watch me surf unfortunately so when you go and you give these talks what is the you know what's the message that you're trying to leave people with it really depends on what the client asks me to talk about because I talk to everyone from primary school kids six seven eight years old surprisingly enough all the way through high school all the way through college all through military groups or big business now I've got IBM coming up Microsoft big investment corporations twelve bankers - twelve CEOs in a room - and just me right I'll talk about whatever they need to focus on so there's a lot of common themes as embracing change because a lot of them go through takeovers and they're getting melded together with other companies and it's a change of culture and it's a change of personnel and everyone always fights against change because it makes them uncomfortable and that wanna do something different when they're comfortable doing it this way so talking to them about embracing change and the opportunity that comes out of changing with the situation overcoming adversity obviously working that the team Network being able to focus on looking after each other and doing a better job that way so it's not just helping people on a personal level it helps people throughout the whole process of living being happy the secrets of being happy so you wouldn't you would probably believe I would normally say you wouldn't believe you would probably believe how many unhappy people there are there's no question about it and I've made them every time I finish my presentation sometimes they break down in my arms just because they're so grateful because you've given them a little nugget to make them believe that they can still be happy and what is the message that you're delivering unhappiness well that's it's all about what you value and what is going to improve your life the they have to be on common ground what we were talking about earlier doing things for other people I've never had a greater sense of happiness than doing things for other people that can't pay me back it's mostly weaved throughout the story the things that have really broken my heart and the things that have made me elated and the value that I found in things that I really didn't think I would and that giving with no expectation of receiving is a big one even if it's something as simple as going to the blood bank it doesn't cost you anything cost a little bit of time going in throw some blood down a tube because I went through 150 donations and I could have all the doctors in the world I can have the best surgeons but without that blood from those 150 amazing people I would not be here today it doesn't take a grand gesture it just a pat on the back a well done a handshake take someone out for a coffee and be a kind ear if it's one that maybe doesn't have anyone to turn to a work because they're not really well-liked maybe just put up with it and and go and have a chat with them and make them happy because you might change that person's whole day or whole outlook on life and that only comes back to you it makes you feel good that's where happiness is found in service it's so true and it's it's such counter-programming from what we're kind of told growing up because we're kind of set in motion on this on this path of like trying to get as much as we can out of everything and we approach situations with a perspective of like how am I gonna gain from this what's in this for me like how am I gonna come out of this better than I was before and that doesn't really lead to happiness you know it does not and when you approach a situation and encounter whatever it may be from a perspective of how can I give how can I contribute to this then you're on you're on a different you know that's that's a different plane of consciousness and it's not my default but when I remember and I practice it's exactly it's a practice it's a practice it's like it's not just like oh well that guy just that's his instinct and that's how he does it like no you have like what how do you know if to do that and you get good at anything how do you learn to ride a bike or learn to read or play a sport or do your job you do it over and over and over until you get really good at it it's the same with happiness the same with gratefulness it's the same with positivity and motivation you have to keep practicing it and the more you do the easier it gets mm-hmm improvise adapt overcome yeah that's the best year's trifecta I am in and that's what they drill down on you in in the military right with that Kant did that come from experience it did it's it wasn't really drilled into me like it is I think it's one of the matches for the Marine Corps out here I think I heard it maybe once or twice way back in basic training but it had an impact on my brain like it was seared into my brain and I had no idea why and then I got into the gym one day after hospital and I had one hand and one leg and that'll really throw out your benchpress and squats and so all of a sudden that improvise adapt and overcome clicked in and I'm like okay alright I might not be able to do push-ups I can't wait there on the end of my arm I'll improvise and I pulled a bench over and I put my right elbow on the bench and my right hand left hand on the floor and I did push-ups like that and I thought well I can't do dumbbell curls and I thought well I'll adapt you know in the next step I'll adapt and I got online and I found the lifting hooks that they use for heavy deadlifts where you you loop it around your wrist and then you use the hook to put under the bar and you can lift heavier without gripping it and I got that thing and I slipped the material loop over my forearm and I rested I let it hang down and I put a dumbbell in it and I can do 70 pound curls with that thing now I flick it up into the hooks and I can do flies with it you don't have two legs for squats does that mean you skip leg day mmm you never skip leg day you do pistol squats you do them on the smith machine where it does the balance for you there's there's always a way with the right tools and sometimes the right tool is just the right mindset that's an example on a very micro level but on a macro level like this these three ideas are really the arc of your life right are using everyday you you had to improvise you had to adapt and you ultimately had to overcome in order to be sitting here and getting to do what you get to do mm-hmm and now I'm just enjoying the ride no that's it's all gonna come back you know I use those every day there's always trials we all have our stories you know that's one of the big things I I do try and share everyone says ah Paul you know you were a late military-trained and you can do this and you can do that and I was like no I'm like I was a failure first and I still struggle with a lot of stuff and I drop mugs in the kitchen and I smash them because I'm clumsy and I'm just a person just like all of you I make the same mistakes but I don't give up because I know that there's always going to be a better moment there's always going to be a better day I find joy everything that I do in everything that I share with people and there's just no reason to quit we have this overwhelming suicide and depression problem going on at the moment it's all around the world it's it's huge in Australia it's huge here and it's just really sad to say especially amongst the our veteran community of people just not feeling like they can deal with it anymore that maybe there's nowhere to turn to bidets always somewhere to turn to and there's always a better date it's interesting that that sometimes these calamities you know like you experienced are are really the catalyst to to growth and being able to embrace life and the way that in the way that you have because they force you to your needs and you have to confront yourself in a very profound way and you know I know that's why you look back on this experience and like you know you've you value the life that you have right now most people are not going to get attacked by a shark or bottomed out on drugs and alcohol or have a near-death experience they're just living their lives in a kind of monochrome you know no not this way where they feel like they're doing everything right like I made the right decision and I got the safe job and I'm doing all these things and I'm super depressed and I'm on these medications and I'm overweight and I feel like [ __ ] and I can't see my way out of this because it's a situation that's not so bad that you're gonna just walk out of it mmm it's like a low agreeable in there Azeri yeah it's a low-grade discontent that's the wood there's a world right live like that stop stop eating [ __ ] work on your fitness go have a frickin adventure there's a big bad world out there with so much adventure and fun to be had go and see some [ __ ] that you've never seen before which is probably most of the world if you're comfortable comfortable in your misery already in life just get uncomfortable it's it's the the best thing ever and that's a muscle just like anything else like the other things we were talking about like that can start with a very small thing oh yeah to exercise that and then you can turn the volume up on mm-hmm step by step yeah it's it's so much easier it's it's exactly what I did when I left the hospital I had that huge goal of getting back to work it didn't just happen that was impossible don't believe that it could actually be done a one-legged one-handed clearance table you can't go back to work and go diving and I did it in six months now I did it by small goals and challenges get up earlier eat better drink more fluids get off the drugs exercise more just tiny little things that built up over time to learn how to walk go to the gym box jump a meter high going the ocean swim more it progresses but the smaller the goals and challenges you set for yourself the more they build up the more you turn back and you look behind yourself and you go holy [ __ ] look at all of that stuff I've done okay what's next now I know I can do all of that what's next let's do something a little harder a little more fun a little more challenging and before you know it those small easily achieved goals have become an impossible dream yeah it's the imperceptible actions that you take anonymously every day with you know rigorous consistency that change your reality and people want to pay it's like they want to they want to you know do the dramatic thing overnight they want the hut to hack in the shortcut or whatever it's like it's not about that man it's about it's just like you do that tiny thing that makes you a little bit uncomfortable flex that muscle you get a little history with that you realize like hey I didn't die like I can do this now and that's what that I think is the path that it's the less sexy path it's not the dramatic path that you're going to be able to like get a bunch of likes on Instagram for but that is truly the method for sustainably changing your life in a profound way if Instagram locks is what you're after then just make a story about all the little things yeah I was hanging out with the yesterday who did the the hundred things hundred things to make people happy I think it was and his mission is just to go out and start helping people in need and he's made a website and now he advertises these people who need help and all these other people are offering to give them assistance in some form or fashion as well so they can help out it's it's just the act of giving an act of just small stuff and that started with an idea yeah yeah and in perceivable little atom hmm I think that's a good place to end it dude all right are you uh speaking publicly anywhere coming up soon if people want to you know figure you out and come and see you in person is there any opportunity to do that or not at this point now everything that I've got going on is for private corporations but I've only just started out here so I only have a few I've got you know I'm doing some stuff in Hawaii in Atlanta and for the entrepreneurs organization if you're part of that and also for the Nantucket project if you've got any idea what that is I do because I went to high school Tom Scott no idea right Tom is actually coming over here in a week or two I haven't seen him in a long time and I have him do the podcast when I we were high school classmates yeah he's an Oscar I watched it I actually have it pulled up here I was I was watching your presentation at Nantucket project and it's it's quite amazing what he's built with that I did not realize what it was when I got there it was just another speaking job for me and I turned up there and I literally got off the plane past the summer yep yeah I got off the plane went straight to the school talked for 45 minutes to the to the school kids went from there to the stage went on stage and did my presentation then I got off and then I found it was the rest of them like the President of Mexico the President of Rwanda the guy who started TED Talks captain Paul Watson I'm just thinking geez I'm glad that I went on first you know Jennifer gana Mach Shriver and I'm just thinking oh my god and little old pulled together yeah it's cool it's cool what he's built did you meet Neal Phillips I not sure presented last night he's a african-american guy who started a school in Florida for kind of empowering underprivileged african-american kids I did meet someone very similar to that I'm not sure if it was from Florida they anyway he was another classmate of mine like Neal and Tom were like best friends in high school I can't collaborate on stuff and I know Neal presented it and took a project I don't know if it was last summer but okay we heard of a guy called um Jason Flom yes so he was there and I got talking to him and him and I became pretty good friends in a very short amount of time and the things that he's doing is amazing yeah it has 43 convicts remaining falsely accused convicts yeah he's got a foundation set up for that I mean yeah that's amazing I follow those stories all the time and you think your life's hard try being in jail for 30 years falsely accused so you're doing more with Nantucket project man yeah I got a couple of satellite keys coming up Palm Beach and the Hamptons but it's only you know this is very early days for me out here now that I've got the well the contraction not exactly signed our publishing I said that but I'm more than likely gonna be signed with the American program Bureau and so I'll have a team of people advertising my services Sony the CEOs out there and want to who want to hire Paul to come out and talk to there oh hell yeah I'm always trying to get my my passing out numbers oh yeah cool and and the best way to connect with you probably Instagram right I Paul de Gelder Instagram the website Paul de Gelder comb they're the two best and most fluid ways and the book and over fear yeah pick it up right and the second estate second ones in the editors now surrounded by monsters what's the next one gonna be about it's it's a bit of a follow on with more lessons that I've learned along the way behind the scenes on Discovery Channel Shark Week shoots catching crocodiles and diving with sharks and stuff cool when is that coming out what's with the editors now so if it was up to me it'd be tomorrow but hopefully within the next couple of months mmm nice man all right dude well you're an inspiration and I can't wait to see where you take this dude it's incredible what you're doing and and yeah you're impacting a lot of lives and a really profound in positive ways that's are you for that thank you for your service all right and come back and talk to me anytime yeah I'll hopefully I'll run into you Malibu again a cool piece [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 18,765

Keywords: rich roll, vegan, health, fitness, diet, nutrition, athlete, podcast, inspiration, motivation, plantpower, plant-based, wellness, mindfulness, self-help, paul de gelder, shark attack, sharks, navy diver, mindset, perseverance, shark week, environmentalism, sustainability, shark preservation, amputee, amputation, PMA, oceans, navy seal, armed forces, combat soldier, UN peacekeeping forces, survival, survivalism, survivalist, poaching, anti-poaching, damian mander, marcus luttrell

Id: cp55ZSW4C-o

Length: 126min 22sec (7582 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2018