Mark Berridge · 88 min
After a devastating cycling accident crushed two vertebrae and nearly stole his ability to walk, former Rio Tinto executive Mark Berridge discovered that becoming a fraction stronger, one small, deliberate step at a time, was the only path back to himself, and ultimately to a richer, more human life than the one he had before.
Hear this story
On a March morning in Brisbane, Mark Berridge was cycling downhill at 40km/h when his front wheel hit a sunken piece of road. He flew over the handlebars and crashed into a stormwater drain five metres below. The impact crushed two of his vertebrae and compressed his spinal cord by nearly 80 percent. In hospital, as doctors explained what had happened to his body, Mark faced a question that would shape everything that followed: how do you rebuild when you can barely breathe, when your legs won't move, and when the identity you built over 25 years in corporate logistics suddenly feels out of reach?
Mark discovered that the answer lay in fractions. Not grand transformations, but small, deliberate movements in the right direction. He learned to breathe through the crisis. He reached out for help even when shame told him to isolate. He noticed the people around him, the pain specialist who adjusted his medication to ease his mental load, the physiotherapist who understood when to push and when to offer crutches instead of walking sticks, the friends who showed up at exactly the right moment. He learned that vulnerability, not invulnerability, was the path to real strength. Over time, these fractions added up. A lap around the oval. An article on LinkedIn. A book. A TEDx talk. A life that looked different from the one he planned, but richer in ways he could not have predicted.
This is a story for anyone who has felt their world shatter and wondered if they could ever feel whole again. Mark's answer is quieter than it sounds: you don't have to. You just have to become a fraction stronger than you were yesterday.
“Dad, you were so depressed. You were confused about how the accident happened and you were constantly apologizing for letting us down.”
“The more broken we're feeling, the more inclined we are to rush for isolation. And actually, that can be the wrong strategy.”
“If we're willing to let people in and listen, there's people around us all the time that are helping us change our perspective, explore different perspectives, lift our gaze from our current moment.”
The hero, today
Mark found that breathing was the first thing he could control in the moment of crisis, and that ability to focus on breath came partly from Pilates classes and CBT therapy he had done years earlier for anxiety. When Mark felt most broken and wanted to isolate, reaching out for help, even vulnerability that made him cry, turned out to be what built real connection and let people around him actually help him. Mark learned that aiming high and falling short of his goal felt better than succeeding at a lower target, because it meant he could look back and know he had given his children a role model of genuine effort. Mark discovered that 'a fraction stronger' meant small movements in the right direction repeated over time, not sudden transformation, and even a tiny bit of progress over 30 years amounts to something worth doing. Mark stopped trying to return to his old corporate identity and realized the accident placed him exactly where he could have the impact he had wanted all along: helping people see what they are capable of.
Yes. Mark Berridge is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
Mark found that breathing was the first thing he could control in the moment of crisis, and that ability to focus on breath came partly from Pilates classes and CBT therapy he had done years earlier for anxiety.
When Mark felt most broken and wanted to isolate, reaching out for help, even vulnerability that made him cry, turned out to be what built real connection and let people around him actually help him.
Mark learned that aiming high and falling short of his goal felt better than succeeding at a lower target, because it meant he could look back and know he had given his children a role model of genuine effort.
John Milham (Host) · 00:05
Welcome back to Kintsugi Heroes, helping people tell the stories they need to share so you can find the stories that you need to hear. In this episode, John Millum is joined by Asher Pakman. Asher's journey is a powerful testament to resilience and transformation. Diagnosed with blood cancer and facing immense grief, he turned to unconventional methods like the Wim Hof Method and heart math to find healing. His problems didn't stop his growth; instead, they allowed him to delve deep into personal development. Asher has moved from corporate life to guiding men through meditation and embracing their true selves. Stay tuned as he shares how he turned trauma into a journey of self-discovery and healing. Enjoy this one with Asher Pakman.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 01:08
Ladies and gentlemen, friends of the podcast, my, uh, Kintsugi Heroes fans, uh, welcome to another conversation, uh, another, uh, discussion, another, um, representation of stories that matter. And today, another, um, privilege and, and, uh, uh, a personal excitement to, to meet a bloke who, um, has done what I have, uh, like, always, like, probably always wanted to, but always thought it was like a bit of a, you know, it was a bit of a wank maybe, like, you know, like, personally, like, I built my own barrier to it. And yet I, uh, I, uh, I, I watched your, uh, TED Talk, and I just really, you're like, I've always wanted to have that experience, but never really wanted, never felt like it was something I needed, I could step into, right? So, and I guess that's a little bit of the theme of where we'll talk about today because I know your book behind you, A Fraction Stronger. I love the name and I think that's what we're going to talk about. But first, Mark Barridge, thank you very much for agreeing to share your story and wisdom on Kintsugi Heroes.
John Milham (Host) · 02:29
Excellent, thanks, John. Not the first time I've been called a wanker in my life. Okay, can I say that? Is that all right? But hopefully not that many times, but never, never that I stood.
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Mark discovered that 'a fraction stronger' meant small movements in the right direction repeated over time, not sudden transformation, and even a tiny bit of progress over 30 years amounts to something worth doing.
This conversation includes a corporate escapee sits down, from albany to rio tinto, twenty billion dollars of accounts, the sunken piece of road, eighty percent compression and finding his feet again.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 02:39
I'll make sure I, I'll clarify, I wasn't calling you. That was my personal, um, excuse for not stepping in out of my comfort zone, right?
John Milham (Host) · 02:48
I fully understand that. And I dropped you just by being cheeky and having fun to start.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 02:52
No, no, I do appreciate that. I probably started controversially, right? Which is good because podcasts and so on can get formulaic. And I guess the idea about what we're sharing today is a little bit of not just the reporting of your story, but some of the why you have and how, right? If that's okay. And I'd like to start— you and I can go back to the idea of being a corporate person, right? I'm a corporate escapee. How did the early days of little Mark Barridge roll out to be in a place where you were sort of, you know, had this fancy corporate career going forward?
John Milham (Host) · 03:42
Luck, I suppose, you know, definitely a big factor in that. So, I finished high school in Albany, a little town on the south coast of Western Australia. Beautiful granite rock formations and wild seas of the Southern Ocean. Really special place for touching with nature. And those times I do get to go back there, I still just love the nature of the place. I love nature in total and I love it there. And yeah, so, you know, finishing school and didn't really know what I wanted to do. It's hard, I think. My parents were both schoolteachers. I sort of had worked out I didn't want to be that. From, I guess, the stress. Yeah, they had tremendous reward out of it, um, from the people they helped and the feedback you'd get for many years from the kids you really touched. And my parents certainly were very skilled at touching, you know, touching kids in a way that helped them develop to and reach their potential. But, you know, didn't really know what to do. And my cousin had just gone through a business degree and started working for Shell, and he was starting to do some national travel, and it looked a bit exciting. And I just sort of had the idea that I I wanted to make a bit more money than my parents made, I guess, as school teachers. I probably didn't fully appreciate that meant giving up lots of school holidays and all the sort of flexibility of life they had. But yeah, I just had this idea of going into business somewhere. I felt like that was a calling I had. So I went off to UWA. So, you know, I was barely 17 when I arrived, you know, for university or left Albany, um, because I turned 17 during my final exams in November, um, 1988. And then, yeah, went off to, um, university and just probably, you know, enjoyed playing hockey and drinking beer and not studying well enough. And then, uh, that was, you know, 1987 crash had sort of happened and the job market had dried up a bit, so I was very lucky to get a job at all actually. And I got this job in Rio Tinto running ships. So I was running these ships that you imagine them being, you know, 300 meters long, 50 meters wide, you know, so 3 times a football pitch for people that want to visualize that way, and running them around the world. And they cost more per day than I cost per year. So that was pretty good to go, okay, all I've got to do is save a couple of days here and people start noticing. So it's just really, yeah, lucky, you know, made so many great friends at university. Just, you know, the— I guess the memories from University of Western Australia Hockey Club and the things that set up for me. The friends I made, and then, you know, getting lucky and getting that job in as a graduate for what was then Hammersley Iron, but part of the Rio Tinto group of companies. Yeah, just an amazing experience.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 06:25
And you became a logistics expert, right? Which is—
John Milham (Host) · 06:29
yeah, initially. So I was shipping iron ore around the world, and I knew nothing about iron ore. And then after a few years, they said, well, you know, maybe you shouldn't learn something about iron ore. And they shipped me off to Hong Kong, to the office we had up there. And I had 3 years in Hong Kong as a— starting as a 24-year-old, which was just a great life experience. Fortunately, my liver survived that experience. It was certainly touch and go for my liver there for a while. Yeah, yeah. And then met my wife at the end of that time. She was English, a lawyer in Hong Kong, and we came back to Brisbane and settled here largely. So we've had a few years in Singapore in between, but mainly the career sort of flowed along mostly with Rio Tinto through, you know, I guess those Hong Kong, Singapore, Brisbane assignments and traveling around the world with work. And yeah, just great exposure, great opportunities, predominantly sales and marketing, account management, large-scale industrial account management and negotiation. So I ended up being a sort of specialist in negotiating big, big deals. I was looking after $20 billion worth of revenue late in my career. Wow.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 07:32
It sounds like it's an incredible place in the world to grow up and then you've got a couple of schoolteacher parents, right? I guess that was kind of a potentially useful kind of kickstart. It sounds like a very, in some ways, that's such an Australian, you know, of the time kind of story you're telling, right? Like Australians falling into the opportunities that were around at the time and then some loyalty and some corporate development over time and a chance to connect with what seemed to be a pretty healthy kind of place to be, right? Did you feel like it was a healthy thing you were doing?
John Milham (Host) · 08:31
Yeah, totally. I mean, definitely went through phases. Perhaps I was, you know, just too career-driven. I mean, I really, I think it was always from a good place. Like, I just from a young age wanted to be a good father and be able to, you know, provide well for my children. So I definitely drove myself really hard at work with the view of being in a better, I guess, strengthening the financial position of the family and my wife likewise. But I was always keen to get home for bath time. I was cognizant of, I guess, the work travel I was doing and the impact that might have on our family at different stages. And I'd change jobs or didn't take jobs. So we had a job opportunity to move up to Tokyo when the kids were young, and my wife just didn't want to go. And we didn't end up pursuing that, although it would have been really interesting. So yeah, I guess I was probably always that balance of how do I drive my career, but also as best as you can judge, because you're guessing about the future, of course, but protect the, um, I guess the, um, the balance of my family and, and try and set things up in a way that's good for them. Because I think, um, you know, I was really blessed with a childhood, you know, we— the two teachers, and one was math-centric and one's very arts, music-centric. So, you know, quite a breadth there, I guess, for the talents of my parents. But we did go through 5 different schools and that was tough. And I was really keen on my kids not having that same level of change. I think change is great and overall it helped me, but it came with some side effects too.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 10:08
It's a sense of almost expectation that baby boomers and Gen X in Australia have, right, that life will turn out that way. It's changing. The world is changing. In Australia, Australian culture is changing. Do you, you know, do you recognize, you know, do you have any thoughts around how that, how our children will, will, you know, operate?
John Milham (Host) · 10:34
Um, well, I think, you know, for me, probably wanted to be loyal to the company I started with a lot, and I had a really strong sense of that loyalty. And I think, you know, with, you know, successions of layoffs and, and just I guess that change in job tenure, our kids won't grow up in that same way with that same sense of loyalty, I don't think, in general. I mean, everything's always, whenever you're talking about, I guess likely you're talking about part of the distribution curve. There will always be people that are different through everything, every choice. But I think they'll be more transient. They'll be more willing to just try things and fail, whereas we probably really wanted to, if something wasn't quite work, we'd stick it out, we'd persist, we'd find a way to try and make it work. They'll be more likely to adapt and change and just go, no, that's not working for me, I'm gonna move on to something else. And, you know, sometimes it gets dismissed as, you know, kids of today not having that resilience, not having that ability to keep pushing themselves when it gets hard. Well, I think they can and they do, but at the time, you know, perhaps we were occasionally too dogmatic about it. And I think also, you know, when I grew up, you know, it was a bit more difficult to— well, it's always difficult to talk about your feelings, but it wasn't really done to talk about your feelings and to embrace help and say, I need help. And I think so we suppressed our emotions. And I think the kids are actually doing a remarkable job today, like the schools help them of being able to verbalize stuff and, uh, and to talk through their issues. And like, I know, for example, I won't go into the full details of it, but my daughter was having a really tough time with something the school did in her final year of school. And she wrote a letter about it because that's what the school had taught her to do. And she showed me this letter and I, as a parent, I had to take action with the school and say, hang on, this is, you know, my daughter's written this letter to express her feelings. You know, we now need to talk through what's going on here. And, you know, just beautiful skills like that, I think, that sometimes get overlooked in this generic view of, you know, kids today are not as hardy as we were or whatever else. And let's face it, generations have been doing that for years about the fish that got away and how things were better in my day and all the rest of it. And it's important we don't overplay.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 12:56
No, I guess we look back and see them missing some of the things we relied on without actually realizing they don't need those, you know, that particular process, right?
John Milham (Host) · 13:07
Yeah, no one had a mobile telephone when I was doing stupid things. And, you know, when I was going to the Hong Kong Sevens when I was 24 and 25 years old, and, you know, we're just drunk and pretty obnoxious, probably sometimes, never really in a terrible way. But, you know, no one had mobile phones then in the same way. Certainly didn't have phone cameras. And it's a lifestyle and my social media, you know, really. Yes. The life that our kids are dealing with is just vastly different from us, and they're doing a brilliant job.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 13:39
Excellent, excellent. It's interesting because, you know, the idea of your upbringing and your, you know, the opportunities that you jumped into, you know, the next question is like when you bump into something that isn't terrific, like, so your story is that You then had a terrible accident at some point in this corporate journey and you've got a choice in front of you, like how you respond to this terrible situation. And of course, we'll go on and talk about the amazing things you did to process and recover from that. But I'm interested, do you think the origin of your positivity, the origin of your, your reframe and resilience in this moment was in your childhood, or is that something that's a, a little bit of nature, or are we talking nurture, or what?
John Milham (Host) · 14:44
Uh, it's always hard to tell, isn't it? I, I think, um, I would favor nurture was a big factor in it. Like, um, my mother certainly always had that in impression that she could do anything, but she was fragile amongst it. Like, she had anxiety, you know, sort of never diagnosed, but clearly some sort of anxious moments around stuff. Yeah, that just belief she could do anything. I could remember, you know, putting together, um, you know, plays at school using ultraviolet light and these magical puppets that would, um, you know, appear and disappear and glow in the dark, and everyone was raving about it. And, you know, she just basically had gone to see some puppetry in Perth and thought, wow, I can teach my students how to do this. And then they all sat down and they designed how the play was going to work. And they had these frogs that would leap over each other and disappear. And, you know, because you could just do that with, you know, stuff that's painted black on the back and puppeteers are all in black and these puppets. So I think that sense that, you know, I guess my parents, you know, my dad went through some mental health issues, but he still managed to have the resolve to drive, you know, us around Australia as a family for 6 months, with me and my brother, um, being perfect citizens in the back seat, as 2 boys always are, you know. Um, we overtaking trucks and not running over cows, and, you know, whilst antagonistic little brother here was giving his older brother a hard time.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 16:09
Probably maybe your dad was engaged in self-CBT, right? Like putting himself in the Yeah, the most difficult situation possible with young folks and young kids in the back.
John Milham (Host) · 16:19
Definitely immersion. And yeah, back in those days, like in the old XB Falcon, not sure how much of a radio he had. I'd imagine that there wasn't too much in the way of sound to distract him as we were in the middle of the Nullarbor or north. There was no, none of those toys to suppress the kids. No, and you know, again, that creativity of my mother, we'd come up with, you know, games to play in the cars, whether it be just be looking at number plates or signposts or whatever. There'd be stuff going on all the time that stimulated creativity and thought. And I think all of those things, that ability to, you know, whether it be a mundane situation or whether it be a really tough situation where you feel almost defeated, to find some curiosity and find something that sort of breaks that moment really helps. And again, we will get to it. And I do hope we've got to remember to go back to the TED Talk and talk about that because I actually had some similar feelings to you. And I, you know, I was obviously playful at the start, but yeah, I fully agree with the way you started this podcast. So hopefully come back to that too. But yeah, I think all of those ability to just be curious in the moment, it helps you pick yourself up when you need to and just break, um, break those wallowing moments. And, and yeah, you know, I had choices about how I handled my situation, but you know, I had the full range of emotions at all, you know, different stages that I had to get through.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 17:39
So let, let's explain, jump into that moment, right? Because You know, you're ticking along and your career is ticking over and family and stuff, and then you're doing something that sounds really healthy, like jump on a bike and go for a ride. What happened?
John Milham (Host) · 18:00
Yeah, so I'll just momentarily go back. So, we've got 3 lovely kids, life's busy, life's hectic, they're all playing, probably I think at that point in time, 5 or 6 different sports across the 3 of them. You know, just the logistics of— lucky I started in logistics in the company, right? So the logistics of getting the family organized, we were busy, life was hectic. And I was on a project in Salt Lake City actually, but, you know, still based in Brisbane. And I'd just been over there, we'd been preparing for this big workshop, been preparing in between times. Last time I was over, I skied for a couple of days, was the best ski days ever, had an amazing time. And I'm scheduled to fly back to Salt Lake City on this Sunday night. And I thought, no, I'm going to sleep better on the plane if I make sure I get up and do the morning cycle. So I did that, um, halfway through a typical 70km ride. I was riding 250ks most week, and the bike's just— I'm coming downhill, 40km/h, um, you know, it's just this beautiful dappled light, smell of fresh air. It was actually not too humid for Brisbane in March. It was just perfect. And I remember having curse myself with those words in my mind of how lucky am I, how good is this, coming downhill. And, and Pip, who's a couple of bike lengths in front of me— I was riding with 9 other guys— goes through the corner a bit— I, I felt a bit tight, and I thought I'll just go around a bit wider on the corner than him. And somehow the bike's just— the front wheels hit this sunken piece of road. They call it a shoved piece of road. It was caused by the, um, equestrian, uh, vehicles in that area. We're near the equestrian park in Figtree Pocket in Brisbane. And so it was probably an inch sunken piece of soft bitumen on otherwise, you know, hard course road with an inch lip. And something about the way my front wheel hit that, it suddenly lost traction with the road. So the bike's imbalanced. It's amazing how quickly you can process stuff like, how do I regain control of the bike? What can I do? And I regain control and then look at the corner and think, I'm not making that corner. And I can see this big curb and I'm thinking, if I hit that in an uncontrolled way, that's going to be really bad. Okay, grassy park straight ahead, that's my better of two bad options. I'm going with that. I put the— slammed the brakes on, anchors, tried to take some pace out of the bike, knew I was going over the handlebars, flew really high in the air, came down quite sharply into the bottom of stormwater drain that was about 5 foot below ground level. So crushed my way into that, left wrist got hit the ground first, it got crushed. And long term, they say that they'll have to pin my left wrist. But so far so good. Helmet did an incredible job. Fractured left scapula, 3 ribs, but most materially I crushed 2 vertebrae. So one of those, 40% of its original height. If you can picture it as an ice cube, like a big ice cube, like one of the ones you buy down the servo when you're having a party. One of those big ice cubes, then maybe a sugar cube size of my vertebrae went for a little walk into my spinal cord. I remember that was the worst bit of news a few hours later when I finally presented to hospital, was obviously spinal cord damage. But they said this thing, you know, got more than 50% compression in your spinal cord. And later on, I learned that it was actually close to 80%. But when they said that, more than 50%, I just remember thinking, well, hang on, you know, if I don't really know much about the spinal cord, but if that's what's sending power and control to my legs and there's only half of it left, and more than half my weight's in the top half of my body, especially at that point in my life, um, then, you know, literally I'm in a bit of poo here. And I remember that being probably, you know, that, that, you know, my wife, who's just like incredibly strong through anything she'd been through, cancer, and provided real inspiration for me in this journey by the way she'd handled that cancer journey, you know, she all but fainted. She had to push herself from the wall and slide around the corner into a chair. So, you know, when she's impacted like that, you sort of get I can understand why those particular words just, you know, really floored me at that point in time. It was pretty hard to sort of pick yourself up.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 21:59
It must be like, you know, I dare say, you know, most, most people listening have bumped into something and caused some damage, you know, greater or smaller at some point. Accidents are a fact of life. That moment when you're lying there, you, you can't move overwhelm? Is it overwhelm that takes you, you know, or is it, do you start to put things together then, or is this a process? You know, it's a pretty significant thing, like you're conscious and but, you know, really, really, you know, buggered.
John Milham (Host) · 22:35
I guess it'll vary for everyone. I would feel like the words you just gave there are a perfect summary of sort of what it was. It was this tug of war between overwhelm, like I could feel myself almost feeling overwhelmed by the, um, by the situation. And, and how do I just tug that back to some level of control? Okay, what can I control? I can control my breathing. Yeah, because the— apart from the absolute searing pain.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 23:00
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 23:01
Um, and it was just horrific. Um, the other worst thing was that I just couldn't breathe. Now, later on, when I discovered I had 3 fractured ribs, obviously I put together that was a factor. But then later on again, when I was having so much trouble learning how to walk again and recovering, I learned that also the body's just so clever. Yeah, it had literally contracted every muscle it possibly could do around my wound site to protect that area and to stop, you know, and it was the one thing I don't like. I can't even remember not being able to move. I just remember not wanting to try. Yeah, my body, body just knew and it shut all that area down. So because I've got this, like, so my wound site is at the bottom of your rib cage, basically T12. And so you imagine everything that's on at the bottom half of my, you know, lung area is just compressed. So there's no air getting in or out down there. And then fractures at the top of the lung. So I really was struggling to breathe. So, you know, maybe that particular challenge that, you know, was pushing me towards overwhelm really helped at the start because my first focus just became breathe, just breathe, like just slow down and breathe because the situation is only going to get worse if you can't find a way to get your breathing under control. And I think just such a crisis that created such a point of focus for me was really helpful.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 24:27
It's amazing that, um, you know, had you done any breathwork or meditation or if I was to to offer, um, anything useful, you know, in one line, the— in for someone in a crisis of physical or emotional or psychological, I'd say just breathe is the very first thing you need to remember to do.
John Milham (Host) · 24:47
So probably a couple of different factors. I had done some floor mat Pilates when I was living in Singapore to try and get some core strength and exercise into me. And so obviously you concentrate on your breathing a lot more in those sort of classes, and we had some teachers that were really great at that. So a little bit's there perhaps. And I'd also, you know, because I was such— pushing myself to be a high achiever at work, I'd had some anxiety issues through the early to mid-2000s, changing roles, trying to prove myself in new roles.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 25:16
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 25:17
Um, where I'd had to go through some CBT-type therapy, so I'd sort of had some understanding of that too. And there would have no doubt been some breathing elements to that. So I think again, those You know, I like to think that the hardships we go through in life, and we're always having variable levels of challenge thrown at us by life, that's just, we're all going to have that, you know, sometimes the bigger, sometimes the smaller. And that ability to sort of remember and tap back into those times where, you know, you're having some challenge in life and you, you know, even if it was wobbly, even if it took a while, you got your way through that. Okay. Righto, you've got through stuff again, you know, you can get through this now. So yeah, I think that really did help, that breathing.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 25:58
So you find yourself with a long-term challenge, right, physically, right? And you were saying that process of finding out what was actually wrong and getting that, you know, that crisis attention. What happens? How do you listen to this material. And I— there are, as you said earlier, there— I know there are as many responses as there are people going through it. But we, you know, so often, um, you know, someone chooses to be, uh, you know, to take, you know, useful, resourceful, you know, ways forward, or there's a real struggle and some of the thinking and feeling is unresourceful. How do you think that happens?
John Milham (Host) · 26:48
So when I, when I look back now, I think, you know, um, like, I couldn't feel my feet at all, and it's getting barely any movement out of my feet, and that was scaring the, the hell out of me. Yeah. You know, that particularly the first couple of weeks. And, you know, so I, when I think about my journey now, I put it in that, that context that I had to find my feet again. And, and I think about feet in terms of ability to focus, which we've talked about already. You know, how do I explore perspectives? So how do I see this a bit differently to how I'm currently seeing it?
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 27:18
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 27:19
You know, how do I engage support? And that sometimes is really difficult because the more broken we're feeling, the more inclined we are to rush for isolation. And actually, that can be the wrong strategy. So how do we remember those times? And then how do we trust? How do we keep trusting our own judgment? How do we keep trusting the process, trusting what we're hearing and driving ourselves forward even when there's little sign of progress. So I guess coming back to the, I guess, the query of the moments where you are successfully driving yourself forward and the times you're not. Well, that's OK. Like, we're not perfect. Like, you know, Kintsugi Heroes, right? It's about celebrating imperfections. So, you know, how do we build off those imperfections? How do we put them back in together in their own time? That might take some time to set., you know, we might have a whole broken cup. Sorry, I'm going to go deep in the Kintsugi analogy here. But, you know, a whole broken pot, you're not going to try and put it all back together at once. You're going to put the first two big bits that you think are the most logical to put together that create stability. And then you might pick out the next bit that you need. And so I think it is that waves and how do we ride the waves of momentum when things are going well for us and make as much progress? And how do we not give up too much ground when things are tougher? But, you know, not be hard on themselves. Like, realize there are times where it's just slower progress. We don't feel like making progress. That's okay. But then I always broke myself out of those— I call them periods of wallow— by, well, what's the smallest action I can now do? All right, let's just break it back to the smallest thing I can do. If that's— if I'm feeling really bad about the progress I've made, or I feel like I've missed this rehab session that I should have found a way to do, Well, I know I can get on the ground and stretch. That helps. Like, stretching my body is so important to me these days. So just put the floor mat out, Mark, get on the mat, put the phone away, and just stretch. And then you sort of start to feel, you know, once you get that first achievement, that sense of momentum, then you can pick up the next thing. And, you know, like, you know, that particular example actually happened one day where a friend had wanted to have coffee with me and I just didn't feel up to having coffee. And so then I just said no. And then I thought, well, that's pretty, you know, and I understood why I felt like it, but that's not the best strategy, Mark, actually, you know, meeting people and being in the world is better than not. And I sort of broke that by then, you know, just making myself feel better about myself by stretching. And then just by chance, another friend had picked up and wanted to do lunch and I go, righto, well, having just penalized myself, if you like, or told myself off for turning down the coffee. I'm definitely saying yes. And then we just talked about, you know, here's someone else that also lived in Singapore and sort of understood, you know, we could talk on a world economic scale that I wasn't really talking on, you know, because I was so focused on just rehab all the time. And suddenly I'm forgetting the woes of my current rehab is hard, I've got to sustain the energy, I've just got to keep doing it. And I'm actually being in touch with a different side of me, a mental side of me, stuff that isn't that impacted by the physical challenges. And that was so invigorating. And I always write a little bit about that one, I think, in the book. You know, and there's that, the good chance at that stage that Brad had wanted to have lunch and we just were able to, you know, even talk through some of his work challenges at that point in time, World Economics, and just Yeah, just change my focus. And, you know, I think if we're willing to let people in and listen, there's people around us all the time that are helping us change our perspective, explore different perspectives, lift our gaze from our current moment. And if we allow them in and reach out for that, then we're always stronger.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 31:09
I love that. And particularly the idea of, you know, seeing yourself The mirror that people hold up when you connect with them helps you give you another perspective, not only on them and the world, but on yourself as well.
John Milham (Host) · 31:23
Yeah, it's invigorating. Yeah, I mean, any chats like this, they're all invigorating, right? And hopefully it is also for listeners.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 31:32
Yeah, I hope so. The early days where, just from my experience, pain and that process of feeling pain take you away from who you are, who you know, and what you can do is such a challenge on a psychological, psycho-emotional level. But we don't treat that. They're giving you a Panadol and sort of rehab and bandages. But that is an important element of healing. How was that experience for you?
John Milham (Host) · 32:15
Oh yeah, I mean, last week I was blessed. I got to speak at a celebration of giving event for the Royal Brisbane, and, you know, one of the lines I had in there was about how grateful I was for all the people just doing their job that made a difference to the way I, you know, was able to drive myself forward. And so, of course, when you're writing a speech like that, you can't give all those examples. But one of the ones I was thinking about was the pain lady. Like, some, some lady came in after about 9 days, and, you know, the pain had been so intense. I'll try not to go too far off point, but the, you know, like, on the first day, the first, the first day obviously in the ditch was just incredible, and then you're in hospital and sort of all just a whirlwind. And I find a way to generate hope, but then I wake up after the 5.5-hour operation with 2 massive rods down my back to give me a slim hope of walking again. And the pain was just off the scale. And then I'm trying to push myself a centimeter out the bed and I can't do it. And the pain was just so overwhelming for so long. And, you know, and I'll live with pain for the rest of my life. But as one of my friends who's got a, you know, more difficult condition than me, Keith, says, well, you know, every time the pain in my fingers is just awful, I remind myself, well, the alternative would be I'd have no pain at all. Because his was so touch and go, and he had that feeling for quite a while at the start. So anyway, this lady came in, and because I guess the, you know, the ketamine and other things I was on was really, you know, challenging my mental health, I suppose, as well. Like, you've got to find a way to keep the lows out and to drive yourself forward. And I was just so, so much intense painkillers. And she basically just sat down and we tried to talk through— and such a difficult process— exactly where's the pain and how bad is it. And and what, and in what ways does it strike you and all the rest of it, you know. Like, again, like, I feel I'm a pretty determined bugger and I'd had some surgery a long time before this, like early 2000s, and I remember that surgeon saying, mate, you've got an incredible pain threshold. How have you dealt with this? And then, and so I'm sort of determinedly trying to think of this in my mind as I'm going through this journey. And, you know, you've got the automatic bolus machine where you can insert your own painkiller. And I thought, you know, I was doing a great job of never using this thing. And I remember one of the nurses at one stage walking in and said, geez, you're going through that fast. And I'm thinking, if you had any idea on this side how hard I'm trying not to use it at all. So, you know, just this lady just sitting down and doing her job and just changing up my medication and just making it so I had less side effects and I felt overall more balanced, but still We largely got— I mean, the drugs are so clever, I suppose. They just changed up the drugs that were probably more likely to be targeting the sort of nerve pain that was particularly intense for me. Yeah.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 35:09
And it's interesting, again, a little bit of my experience. It's not just the physical pain, it's the sense of lack of control, the anxiety of, you know, of being out, you know, being, um, uh, broken, the anxiety of the shame of being broken, right? That, that all sort of adds to the pain, you know. It's not until you, you, you start to gain control.
John Milham (Host) · 35:39
So grateful you said that and acknowledged it. And I hope, you know, again, you know, those listeners that need to hear that now, um, it really resonates for them. Because, you know, I did feel guilt. I felt, you know, I felt stupid guilt. Like, I held up the cyclist, my cycle team, for 40 minutes whilst they waited for the ambulance and getting me in the ambulance and then get going, you know. I felt guilt about that. I felt guilt about the workshop that I'd let down in Salt Lake City that I was supposed to be leading the project and the people on that. I felt guilt obviously to the impact of my busy family and my wife who's trying to juggle a full-time job and now having to come to the hospital and look after me, you know. Sudden digression, but I'll never forget the moment where the paramedics looked down at me and said, "Oh, what hospital do you want to go to?" And I go, "Oh, Greenslade's private because that's handy near home." I was trying to minimize the impact on my wife. And he just gives me this look like, "You idiot, you've got no idea what's wrong with you." You're going nowhere near Greenslade Private Hospital. But, you know, and shame, because the broken is so spot on, and shame. And I did talk before about that, you know, that when we feel so broken, we sort of want to put the barricades up, we want to isolate ourselves more, and that's the wrong strategy. And it's how do we actually find a way that just because we're feeling that sense of shame that we're not the person that we once were, and, you know, and don't ever look like we're going to be that again, that we don't then put up barricades, that we don't draw further into isolation, that we find a way to reach out and embrace the help that's offered. Because people like helping, and when we embrace that help, they feel better about the help, we start to feel better because we've been able to open up a little bit. And yeah, for me though, there were some instances like that that were just so powerful.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 37:17
Reaching out for help, I suspect, wouldn't have been your, you know, wouldn't be something that you were used to.
John Milham (Host) · 37:26
No, I think my mother in particular, her style of mothering was all about teaching kids how to cook, teach them how to be independent, have them do their washing. Everything was just drilled into us to be up and independent. And that, you know, no doubt helped me through so much of my career at coping in complexity by being able to say, well, I'll find a way through this. The actual moment that really helped me, and there'd been little instances of where reaching out for help had already had some momentum post the injury, but I remember one of my friends coming in and saying, you know, well, Bike Queensland gives us some insurance. Have you talked to Bike Queensland? And I sort of thought, no. I thought that was just like if I knocked someone else off the bike or something, or ran into a pedestrian or something, you know, that, you know, hopefully would never ever happen. Um, anyway, so I remember typing out this email to Anne Savage, who was then the CEO of Bike Queensland. Or I didn't know I was going to her, it's just going to Bike Queensland. And just full of tears because it's the first time, like a week, week and a bit after my accident, I'm having to verbalize just how bad I feel, how hopeless I feel, um, what's happened to me and how I'm desperately trying to cling on to some hope that I'll find a way through this, but not really sure that I will. And she wrote the most beautiful— so I cried writing the email, I think, probably cried pressing send of I'm actually facing the world how bad I feel.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 38:56
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 38:57
And then she wrote me the most beautiful response back, including wanting to know where the site was, because she then rushed out there to check out the site to make sure it was safe for other cyclists, etc., and what they could do immediately.. And that was just so beautiful. And I guess that helped me. That gave me a really good platform, a foundation of, wow, you know, as much as I didn't really like the tears either side of that transaction, you know, if I'm prepared to show my vulnerability in this moment, it can be so powerful. And perhaps that also helped me then when I went to write A Fraction Stronger. And, you know, the publisher was saying, well, you know, it's nice, but you're not, you know, you've decided to be vulnerable in this little bit of the intro, which is way too long. So we need to shorten that intro and you need to be vulnerable like that all the way through the book. So we need to push that, basically, this little bit that you've decided to be vulnerable at the front and then trying to be all businessy for the rest of the book and be that vulnerable. And again, I suppose, you know, those experiences of, oh well, you know, as uncomfortable as it was being vulnerable did help me in that way and it seemed to, you know, help others., that, that I could push myself back into that again. And, you know, again, when I'm speaking or, you know, opportunities like this, I will remind myself that even if I'm telling a story and it's feeling just a little bit uncomfortable for me, um, you know, to be prepared to be vulnerable in it, because that helped me when people were able to do that. Like, the people that came into hospital on that first weekend when I was just feel like couldn't feel my feet at all, my legs were so heavy, the pins and needles were so awful, my legs were so cold The hospital was so sterile. I was just, you know, as you said, broken. Shame. You know, I had moments where I didn't want to see anyone. Um, my family had tried to come in to see me in hospital on this Saturday afternoon, and for various reasons— bad traffic, and they had movie picture tickets— they got to the hospital. I was lost in the x-ray department somehow. Someone had lost me down there, not brought me back. Things happen in hospital. And they didn't see me at all. I drove, drove to hospital late, turned around, went straight out to the movies. And I just remember that horrible feeling of, well, on the one hand, I want you to go out and do that, I don't want to be disrupting your life any worse than I already am. But on the other hand, God, I'm feeling lonely in this moment. And then, you know, whether I was actually dozing and woke up, or I can't quite recall, but next thing you know, this teacher from school, Brian, is in the room with me, and I'm going I don't really want to see anyone. Not quite sure, I think it's Brian, but I can't quite recall your name. And then he just was able to tell me about his own, you know, 6 vertebrae fractures. And, you know, took him 8 years or 10 years or something to run post that, you know, but just talk me through the whole what had gone on and, you know, I guess him getting through it. And yeah, he didn't have spinal cord damage like I did, so, you know, not, you know, so a different journey. But I wasn't looking for points of difference. I was looking for points of similarity. Here's someone that was in a really, really tough spot, and actually I wouldn't have been none the wiser that they'd found their way through that. How do I— okay, maybe I can pick myself back up again and find a way to, you know, tackle this thing. And perhaps that's a really key point I want to just harp on right now. That was my journey. You know, generate hope on the first day when, when, you know, that took hours and I felt like there was no hope. Get up from an operation and feel like there's no hope again. Feels like it's even worse than it was because now I actually realize how damn hard it was yesterday. I was just imagining a solution, not realizing quite how bad my situation was. Now it could not be more stark. You know, the next day they lift me up onto the rollator, like 2 people, 2 physios either side of me and a nurse. Hoiking me up, and then my legs just quivering— well, more than that, quaking, really— with the load of, you know, unable to hold me up, and like jerking uncontrollably. And you— there's no way I can possibly relate to anyone that hasn't had that same situation, how confused your body is when legs are shaking below them, that they just don't even know what they're doing. And, you know, it's completely, um, just eroding your whole sense of trust in your body of what's going on. And so you have all those moments of ups and downs. And, and the people that would come in and give me the ups were just the nurse that sat with me and was kind when I needed kindness, just the nurse that was better at the other nurses at organizing my tubes, because my left, left side of my body was completely useless, basically couldn't use it. My right side had piles of tubes hanging out of it, and the nurse that could somehow make me feel more comfortable than any other nurse, and how that made me feel brighter. You have all these ups and downs through this journey, and you've— if you can find a way to see those ups as well as the downs and to enjoy the bits of them, then you're just in so much better a place to keep driving yourself forward. And the only person really that's going to drive this forward is you. So you do need to find those ways, but it is helped by all these cheer people and I guess supporters if you let them in and they want to be let in.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 44:13
Yeah, it's so valuable what you're talking about. It really resonates. And one thing I want to do is maybe unpack that just a fraction more for people to understand. Is it intentional Did you get to a place where you went, this is what I can— it's almost like saying, okay, you know, when we're in the gym, we've got a load to lift, right? And I know the shape of the exercise. I'm going to— good form is important. Did you have form? Like, did you say, I'm going to do this exercise, which is like finding a way to see the positives, finding a way to reframe my circumstance to more vulnerability, more positivity, more hope?
John Milham (Host) · 44:59
Well, I really feel I did, and I pushed really hard at doing that. And I thought, you know, I thought I was doing a great job at it, you know. But I'll give two examples, quick one first. You know, one of my ex-bosses had come in to see me in hospital, and I remember a few years after the accident and that hospital visit, he said to me, yeah, Mark, I knew you pretty well, and I could just see every ounce of your body was trying to sort of put this picture on of it. So, all right, I've got a way through this, I'll find a way, and to talk the positive game. And he said, I could just see that— how, I guess facade's the wrong word, but how much of a veneer that was and how that was important to you and it was powerful, it helped. I think he was definitely saying that side of it. But it was only just there. Like, it was just there. It's just there, there, you know. And, and the, and the longer example would be, um, came from my then 13-year-old boy who's currently first year university. And he, he and I were sitting down at a friend's place, and, uh, the friend didn't really know about the accident, so I was getting like, you know, here's a chance for me to practice telling my story. Being a school teacher, the bugger turned, you know, pretty much straight from me and my boring version of the story and goes to the the 13-year-old boy Charlie, because, uh, so Charlie, what was it like for you in that first week? What do you remember? And, uh, you know, those situations where all of a sudden you can't follow the conversation anymore because you get so, um, like dazed by what you're hearing. And, um, I started back into that moment of overwhelm, you know. I was completely overwhelmed. Yeah, because Charlie's 21 words were Dad, you were so depressed. You're confused about how the accident happened, and you were constantly apologizing for letting us down. So no matter how hard I was trying at being positive, no doubt those that knew me well could see the frailties. And, and maybe that's the joy of it. Like, I was successful, um, at like whenever I was feeling low, finding a way to have something light me up a bit, or just to change to, well, I can't do much, I can try and move my toes. And if I just lie here and strain at wiggling these toes and these feet as much as I can, then at least I'm— I'll know that if nothing comes back, I've given it my best shot. So I think I had that element of determined positivity. But, you know, just because it's feeling fragile. And just because those who know you best probably can see it's fragile doesn't mean it's not working. It doesn't mean it didn't work. And for me, it worked. And I think that thing— and I've actually got a little, little mood chart here, and I'll digress just slightly longer. Um, so this one, I've got rocking here for people at the moment. But my wife brought this into hospital for me around that time because all I was saying every time the family came in was, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry about the impact I'm having on you. And I was using that, like, that was positive, like, I'm going to drive myself forward, I'm not going to be—
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 48:08
it was a motivation, a burden.
John Milham (Host) · 48:10
It was motivational, motivational. But I would— whenever they came in, it would just be this download of sorries. So she bought me this I'm sorry button that was bloody annoying, had 6 different apologies on it, and I was pretty pissed off about that. But I was even less, uh, thrilled by this little thing, which I actually literally would have thrown in the bin if I had arms that operated or any ability to get out of the bed and throw it towards the been. But I think I just jammed it somewhere next to the bed anyway, cooled down, and a day or two later I got one of the nurses to get it out for me. And the first thing I pull out is Adeld, and I'm thinking, well, I'm feeling damn Adeld right now. So, um, you know, again, then I could embrace that and go, um, oh, let's put this somewhere fun. And I got the nurses to— there was only one little tiny ledge that I couldn't reach, but it's at the end of the bed. I got them to put it up there, and then it would just become a talking point. Well, You know, when people come in to visit me, what mode do you think I'm in? What mode do you think I should be in? What mode— let's have some fun with the thing and turn it into it. But so again, those, I guess I call them in the book, gentle interventions, people coming in and letting you see a different perspective on how you actually are versus how you want to be. And don't punish yourself for that difference. Just find some fun in the difference and start to move yourself on from that gently. I love that.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 49:24
What's coming to me is this: you had the physical rehab journey, right? And of course there are therapists, um, you know, physios and everyone's, you know, um, involved in that, you know, the nursing and medical staff and doctors. But you're also rehabbing, like, it's— you're going from like this very, very normal, very organized and and comfortable existence, and suddenly you're in a, you know, you're in the wild again, you know, like it's a survival thing. And so you've, you've— were— it sounds to me like you were going on a, a psycho-emotional rehab journey as well, right? And, and out of that, you know, leading to the book and so on, you, you, you know, became, you know, not just physically growing and achieving, but you achieve milestones emotionally and psychologically.
John Milham (Host) · 50:22
Yeah, and sometimes you need to reset a little bit as you go on that journey. So for my case, you know, initially just drive myself hard as forward as I can, being as, you know, absolutely focused on pushing that rehab as hard as I could every day, like to exhaustion, um, was so powerful for a long period of time. And I was trying to do that to close the gap back to my old identity, but at some point in time I had to work out, well, yeah, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to reach that. That's just not working. I'm never going to get there. And where am I shifting to now? What's the future for me? And definitely other, you know, people help that. So, um, they like had this absolute like number of amazing physiotherapists in hospital, post-hospital. I'm so lucky they've become, you know, enormously close friends because of the impact they've had on me. But I had this one lady, Karen, who was just incredible, looked a bit like Dolly Parton. She was just, you know, a few years older than me and just fun. You know, and she, at one point, because I was getting a lot of other complications, I was just thrashing myself too hard, desperate to recover. You know, she just brought it back to this sort of almost focus your approach type. How do we isolate specific muscles, right? Let's take, Overall, you've got yourself in pretty good shape, but if we're gonna tidy up your walking to make it more sustainable, because at that stage I was getting a lot of side effects out of trying to push my walking too hard, then we've got to strengthen individual muscles. And she would sit there and pre-plan for each physio class, right, how do I isolate this specific muscle and work it so hard? And then, and she'll just crack it, like she'd go, Mark, can I touch you? Like, in order to, like, because she'd want to touch the actual muscle that she was trying to move and see if I was actually mentally being able to process to, you know, because even that was like really hard. Like, if any, all my, any friend that ever listens to this that's had the misfortune of golfing with me, and, you know, I was not someone that was able to isolate muscles and go, right, perfect golf swing, right? It was a challenge for me. And then suddenly I'm having to say, right, how do I learn my body? How do I focus on controlling just that muscle and strengthening just that muscle so that I can support the stability of my overall frame and my walking? And, you know, obviously there's, with the nerve damage I have, there's some muscles that will just always be weak and are never going to, you know, always going to compromise, never going to walk. So I have to have a lot of trouble with my left foot in particular. Like, on my left toes, like, you know, big weaknesses there. But there are other muscles where we can just slowly strengthen. How do we focus on them? So, you know, and then if I wasn't getting it, Mark, are you listening? And she was just— she's just— but just, she could get away with it. We just had fun together, and she was just beautiful. And it was just uplifting sessions. And, you know, just one of the many, many great pleasures and fortunes that's come out of, you know, what was obviously You know, not a journey I would have asked for, a journey that was definitely really tough at different stages but has delivered so much. And again, when I look back, you know, I achieved what I achieved, I think, by having the courage to aim high and by convincing myself that it was OK to fall short of that high target because I would feel better about myself for the rest of my life. I'd feel better about the role model I'd created for people around me, in particular my children, by aiming high and giving it my all. And that was worth more to me than actually the level of recovery, that feeling that I'd given them all, that I couldn't look back in years in the future and have regret. All that was, you know, worth, um, you know, so much to me. Um, but yeah, the people that then came into my life and the, I guess, the impact that, um, the journeys had and the opportunities it's presented, you know, they're amazing. Yeah, I'm really blessed.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 54:22
It's an interesting thing to get to a place where the worst thing that happens to you can be appreciated as a gift in some ways. Do you feel like you've been given things?
John Milham (Host) · 54:36
Absolutely. Like, you know, I'm— yeah, just the, you know, the opportunity to write a book and then, you know, just the first couple of examples of that book having a meaningful impact on somebody. Beyond my expectations. I mean, I was literally writing, attempting to write some form of rubbish that I was going to turn up and deliver to the 3 hospitals that had, you know, taken care of me and hope by some random fluke a few patients read it. I mean, I just had no idea of that world or what I was attempting to achieve there. And, um, and then obviously, you know, book coach helped. And then, then the publisher picking it up took it to a whole new level. And I guess, you know, I've always, you know, again, just good fortune. I've always thrived off that. You know, people like, for example, the— we talked a little bit about the publisher before saying, you know, your intro is too long and the rest of it's not vulnerable enough. You know, the very first words were, look, it's, it's good but not good enough. And, you know, people said, oh, didn't that flatten you? I go, no, actually, that means that they're encouraging me to try harder. Like, you know, it's quite the reverse, isn't it, for somebody to tell you that something has some more improvement? So, you know, again, how do we, how do we see the gains we make rather than the gaps to the things we don't have? And, and I guess I try and pull myself back to that thinking regularly. You know, I don't like putting my shoes and socks on. That's still hard work. But, you know, that's a blessing to be able to do that.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 56:06
Totally. Just before we head into some of the post-recovery stuff, not that, you know, it's obviously a work in progress, but pain in particular can get into the way. Like, you're so positive, but you're talking about the difficulty to navigate through that, the curtain that pain offers. Right? What do you now know about it, and how to, you know, and do you have any thoughts about pain and, you know, that particular obstacle, how to get through it?
John Milham (Host) · 56:43
Yeah, I don't know. When it was so bad at the very start, I guess I just almost tried to isolate my thinking from it. Like, my, the pain, like, the way I sort of would say is that I worked out really quickly that— sorry, the surgeons are so clear, the physiotherapists are so clear that the bulk of your improvement is going to come in the first 6 weeks, maybe 12. You'll improve for maybe a year, maybe 2. We won't know. We'll only know when we look back and see that you've stopped improving. So I sort of had this really strong mindset of, well, there's pain anyway. Like, the marginal amount of pain for me sitting up on the side of the bed versus lying there feeling sorry for myself in bed is relatively small compared to the total amount of pain. So I'm just going to take that on. I'm just going to do it. I'm going to do whatever drives me forward, no matter the incremental pain. So I guess to that first start, um, that really helped. The living with the everyday pain is, you know, that's hard. Like, there's lots of people that live with much more chronic pain than me. You know, I wake up with nerve pain overnight that's sort of pretty sharp and nasty at stages, my feet would tingle the whole time. They always sort of feel like they've got some pain. And today I've got a bit of neck pain that's a bit more abnormal. I've got lower back pain. That's normal. I guess I just try and go, well, you know, I've put all this work in to try and just keep living. I'm not going to stop living now. And, you know, my wife and I, we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. We were able to have an amazing holiday this year. And oh God, did I have to suck up some pain that whole trip. But, and not tell her about it because otherwise she'd say, oh, let's have a list, you know, let's, let's take care of you and have a down day. And I just want to be in this world. I just want to have experiences. You know, we never know when we're not going to be on the right side of the grass, right? So how do I just embrace it? If that means I've got to push through some pain, then I'll do it. That works for me. It's not, you know, other people's pain is going to be worse. It's different. They maybe don't have those same drivers. So I guess find the driver that works for you to do the things that you value the most despite whatever, you know, chronic or traumatic or, you know, sharp pain you might, you know, have from time to time. And, you know, don't do the things that are— try and find ways to outsource or to change the things that are just causing you pain and frustration and focus on, okay, what also brings me joy? And I'm prepared to make that trade-off. And I think if you're willing to think in terms of trade-offs, that, that there's sufficient joy or sufficient satisfaction or sufficient gain and progress to be made out of this transaction with pain, I'll make it. And I think that's the method that works the best for me.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 59:39
Excellent thought and advice, you know, making the why big enough to get through the almost impossible. Wow, yeah, I love it. And of course, as you moved on through this process, right, the concept of reintegration, like you mentioned, redoing your identity. Well, you became someone who contemplated a book and contemplated, you know, appearances on podcasts and, um, you know, speaking to groups and so on. So, right, you became— your identity shifted into somebody. What was, what was the driver behind that? What would, what would those milestones being set mean? What did they mean to you?
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:20
Yeah, so it really stemmed from a low point. I had tried to go— as I said, I was chasing this identity, the old me, and I tried to go back to doing some consulting and I just didn't feel like I was having the impact in that that I wanted. And, you know, it was, it was tough going every day. Like, I remember one day, like, there was no parking that close to work and, and where I was working, and I'd have to walk quite a long way to the car. And there was actually a cheaper car park that, and a more expensive car park, but the cheaper car park was more of an uphill post-work, and I just learned quite quickly I couldn't go for that one. I had to go for the one that was closer to being flat. And I remember one day, I think there was a storm or something, so I had to really hustle. I didn't have an umbrella, I had to really hustle back to the car. And I remember sitting back in the car and my legs were shaking so wildly. I mean, like, um, some people would still say a spastic shake, but a hypertonicity shake in my legs.. And I remember sitting there for nearly 10 minutes before I felt safe enough to drive the car home because my body was so overwhelmed by, by that walking sense. Anyway, so gone through this project, I just don't feel like I'm ever going to succeed, you know, returning back to full-time work as a consultant, you know, at that stage. And so, you know, what else can I you know, might I be able to do, can I do. And then somebody said, well, your story is really powerful, you should talk. Oh, so I actually wrote, I wrote an article about it on LinkedIn. So I actually thought, well, what can I— back to the same methodology we've talked about, what can I do? Okay, the spinal surgeon said I'd never run again. Well, I've been doing pre-running drills at that stage for something like 7 months or something, like just doing stuff in my backyard every day. To try and train my body how to run, like these certain exercises and heat, you know, little toe ankle flicks up your bum, you know, like heel flicks, high knee walks, you know, walk on tiptoes. I'd been doing that stuff for 7 months or something. I thought, I'm going to go down the oval and just try and run a lap there. I did that and then I wrote a thing about it. And of course, I hadn't really been outside of our really supportive circle. I hadn't been that public about it. And there was a lot of feedback to that article of, you know, resonated for people, and people said you should write more. And I wrote a couple other things, and all of that sort of built a head of steam into people saying you should write a book. And I guess I dismissed it for a while. Was, was it because it was comfortable to dismiss it? Maybe, you know, writing a book's hard. But I think most of all I just felt like, but I look pretty normal, like, and I'm not going to go on and do the, you know, be an Olympian or anything else. I'm not a Paralympian. I'm, you know, I was relatively normal before. Yes, a privileged normal Australian, but, you know, relatively normal. And all I'm trying to do is to return to relatively normal. People aren't going to see me as anything different, and they don't seem to want to hear from just normal. So why would my story have value? But I had enough people in my corner. Again, I was willing to I guess, engage that support, explore those perspectives, you know, trust them, you know, that finding the feet type thing again that I found the focus on that particular task. And as I said, started to, you know, this idea of a pretty, you know, pretty cheap and cheerful version because no one's much going to read it. Well, take that attitude and they probably won't! To getting a few people encouraging me, "Yeah, this is good!" You know, yes, one of my early writing peers, he, like, one of the most beautiful moments, he, he, I had the courage, and it did take some courage to share my opening few chapters, and he just said, Mark, it's just so human, it's just so beautifully human. And, you know, maybe more than anything else, that's what this, um, journey has brought out of me. I was quite a human human. We, you know, I think we all are. I definitely capped out from a corporate career perspective, like, you know, I'm sure that the said individual was just taking the mickey out of me. But, you know, one of the guys that interviewed me, you know, I caught up with him years later and he said, you basically came in here like you're going to be the CEO in a few years. And I think, I don't think I tried to come across that. I just wanted to look interested and, you know, that I want to achieve. I didn't mean to come across quite like that. But, you know, to him I did, you know, but that drive worked. But then I think by the time I got to GM level, general manager level at Rio Tinto, which is still pretty senior. I'd reached the stage of actually, I don't think I'm cut out to go any higher than this. It's not me. I love results. I've got to this level because I love results. I mean, by means, I like, I can look back on so many things in my career that we achieved incredible results as a team, but I just not willing to tread on people or I guess there was definitely constraints to the my willingness to chase results. And I think I just reached the point where I realized that I probably wasn't in the same compete mode as the people that wanted to go higher. And I just— that was fine, actually. You know, that was a really nice moment. So I reached that anyway.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:05:38
Bit of a values gap, maybe?
John Milham (Host) · 1:05:40
Yeah, who knows, really. But, you know, or maybe it's just a different perception I had of myself than the reality of what was required, or I had a different perception of the reality that was required versus me. But at that point in time, I just felt like, you know, that's enough. I'm ready to move on anyway. And then of course the world intervened and I moved on in a really big way.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:05:58
So amazing how sometimes, you know, what's best for us is taken out of our hands sometimes, right?
John Milham (Host) · 1:06:08
So yeah, I've definitely had that comment, like people say, my audiobook producer, you know, Mark, this accident put you exactly where you're meant to be. 'Yeah, maybe, maybe that's true. I got no many, not many other choices, so let's make the most of this one.' And it's a challenge to accept that, right?
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:06:26
It's a challenge to say, 'My, uh, you know, I have to be, you know, grateful, you know, or own the steps that, you know, that I— that would cause me so much trouble and pain.' So yeah, fantastic, fantastic thought. A little bit, you know, put you— putting you on the spot a bit. Um, if we were to say, you know, you know, rate your old you, you know, who you spoke about having to, to try and get back to and realizing you, you couldn't, and your new you, who, who do you like more?
John Milham (Host) · 1:07:00
Well, it's a continuum, right? There was no, you know, the old you and, and new you, so, so to speak. Um, I love lots of elements about me now from my life and the, I guess, the friends I've met. Like, again, I think I've got lots of good friends that are engineers, but, you know, in a mining company, you're hanging around with a lot of engineers. And I've loved having the opportunity to interact with authors. You know, I went to a— my book won an award in the States, and I met all these amazing authors over there, the authors through my writing community and other communities. I think being in touch with those creatives I wouldn't otherwise have been in touch with has been immensely rewarding for me as an individual. So those sort of emotional rewards, and perhaps, as I said, like, I'm now in the spot I should have been, and I sort of was making the best of the spot I was before. Yeah, I'd say that's true. When I talk about the continuum, well, you know, look, I can look at the times when, you know, I was too driven as a 25-year-old, and, you know, condescending is a bit too harsh way to frame my thinking. But, you know, the guys that did have young families that were going home early, and when we were really struggling with a crisis or something, and I'm just thinking, well, I'm still here and you've gone. Yeah. Well, whereas that was exactly the wrong thinking, now I can see. But, you know, see, we've got to be, again, forgiving of the lifestyle phase we're in and what our eyesight are. And then only with, you know, more experience do we get that perspective to see, well, actually, I would, you know, I would— not that I said anything or not that I was particularly harsh on them externally, but internally I was definitely processing, you know, in a way that I just wouldn't process now. So we, we always got that level of maturity and our perspectives get broader over time. And again, you know, I've had something that's really shifted my perspective so much more. And I'm— I can, you know, perhaps before where there's so many people doing so many kind things for so many people in this world that I wasn't seeing before. And now I'm hypersensitive to all that wonderful stuff, and I get joy out of seeing, and I get joy out of celebrating people that are doing wonderful things for others and to help elevate their platform, you know. So again, that whole change in my perspectives and what we see, and we know that, you know, you decide to have a new car, and of course you're seeing that new car all the time. And once you're in a different world of just had so many people touch you in such a good way and make, you know, help you put your life together, all those little bits of cup, um, and, and form that gold and bring you back together, then you start to see that happening all around you and see how beautiful it is. And, and, and, and, and more than that, just feel like, doesn't everyone deserve that privilege? Doesn't everyone deserve to have people around them, helping them put together, and how do we just celebrate that together so that more people want to do it, or, you know, the efforts that get made get a bit more momentum and a bit more reward. And yeah, it's beautiful. It is.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:10:01
That's, um, that's really cool, uh, perspective. Thank you, mate. Um, interesting, uh, we like so much vulnerability now. Like, you've really, you know, you've you really developed that skill. The muscles of vulnerability seem to be part of it. And I'm fascinated because a fraction stronger and the courage and will and drive that you needed to set those goals and then keep getting back up after those, after the stuff wasn't easily achievable. How is vulnerability stronger? How do you see that? Because it feels like it's not, but it's actually what the journey is about, vulnerability.
John Milham (Host) · 1:10:52
Isn't there the story of Brené Brown on the plane and it's courage and vulnerability in those two examples and somebody saying, well, aren't they the opposites? Well, they're the same. Maybe we could say it's the same of strength and vulnerability. But to me, I found strength in support. I found it inside myself too, thinking back to the times where I was challenged and found a way through it. But I found it through support, and the support is going to be most effective if you're vulnerable.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:11:30
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:11:31
Like, you know, if you can't communicate or if you're unwilling, if you're shielding and not communicating what it is you're feeling and what's going wrong, then the help is going to be more clumsy. And if the help is more clumsy, you're less likely to embrace it. So I think I would say it's that being strong in your thinking around what is it, how do I need to articulate this, how am I going to be willing to You don't need to say everything like that. Just, God, there's some stuff that happened in my journey that, you know, in particularly in hospitals that wasn't going to go in the book. People don't need to read. They don't want to read about the worst, worst, worst bits. And they were bad. But there's certainly, you know, plenty that was really challenging for me. And then finding a way to, I guess, you know, be helped in that moment was really important. And sometimes I wasn't able to be vulnerable, but I was still helped. So, you know, a great example I'd give is this beautiful physio, Lucy. So my wife is also Lucy, so Lucy is mentioned a lot in the books, and I think the physio might actually be mentioned more often than my wife, which is a bit embarrassing. But particularly, I also mentioned Lucy Hone, New Zealand author and TEDx speaker. So You know, in that situation, like, she, she knew, I think she could sense I just wanted to get home on the weekend. I wanted to be out of hospital and she was trying to help me and she put me on these walking sticks that there was no way I could at that point in time walk on these walking sticks. So it was actually, she made an error, I think, really.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:13:08
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:13:09
But with good intent.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:13:10
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:13:10
And I was just defeated. I went back to my room, probably had one of the longest cries I'd had. And then some friends fortunately came into hospital at the right moment and I didn't really want to see them, but I came out and lunched with them. And then, well, I think I actually lunched alone, but they arrived at the back end of that lunch. And then Lucy, this godsend of a physio, has arrived with this huge smile on her face and two crutches, one that was sort of what they call a gutter crutch because I had a— still had a fractured left wrist that was in cast, and then one was a normal Canadian crutch. And she said, I want you to try on these. And I was pretty wobbly, but she said, like, so long as you're only walking a few meters around your kitchen at home. You can use these over the weekend, get home for a couple hours each day and just see how that goes. And, you know, again, whilst on that occasion I didn't have the courage to verbalize my vulnerabilities, it was coming out anyway. She'd worked enough with me to that point in time to see them, and she took action on them. And I was, I guess, again, um, you know, gave permission for, you know, her to come in and to to help me out of that, you know, what was another, you know, could have been another wallowing-type situation. But, you know, just her arriving with this big smile on her face at the right moment picked me up. So yeah, I'd say that those are examples of just, you know, having the strength to let people in when you feel like it's your preference to isolate and barricade and hide from the world. And as I said, like in that morning after that struggling on those walking sticks. I'd gone back to the room, I'd had a really long cry. I couldn't even care that the guy next to me, who's, you know, this 80-year-old tough-as-nails guy that probably thought, you know, God, I've never seen Mark cry yet in all of this struggle, and he's going at it like nothing else right now. It must be bad. But he didn't say anything, just let me do it, um, which is, you know, maybe what I needed. And then, um, you know, I eventually just pulled myself out and thought, no, I've got to have some food. I'll go sit on the kitchen bench and at least have some food, albeit by myself. You know, which meant that I was well placed when these people came in. I was well placed when Lucy came in. So, you know, despite how tough I guess that moment was, I found a way to just go, you know what, I'm going to, as much as I've got tears in my eyes, I'm going to pick myself up and just go sit down at the table, even if I do it alone. And, you know, just that small movement of still being isolated, but at least in a public space, opened the door up to other opportunities. Opportunities. So, you know, you know, maybe that's why Fraction Struggle is such a good title for the book, is it is those little fractions that you don't need to get it right. It doesn't need to be a perfect move in the right direction. It just needs to be a move in the right direction. And even if you're still isolated, be isolated in a slightly public place. Let the shield down just a little bit if someone's trying to talk to you, and, you know, just see where that goes. Just have a little bit of flexibility and curiosity in that moment.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:16:00
I love it. Yeah, I think that you really hit on something there, a fraction stronger, because strength can be all sorts of things when you're open and vulnerable. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:16:11
So at one point, I sort of had the working title for the book was It's Not About the Fall, It's About How You Get Up. That was really my strong sort of idea when I was writing the book. And then at one point, somebody said, well, how do you really want people to feel at the end of this book? And I thought, well, stronger. And then I think I Googled it and some guy that had swum around the UK or something absolutely incredible, or some maybe Welsh rugby player or whatever had a book called Stronger, maybe both those examples. And then later on, Dinesh Palipana, um, translator of the year, had a book Stronger. Um, but that was after, well after mine came out. But, um, you know, I just then think, well, I can't compete with that book. Well, what I really want, you know, what really worked for me, what was just a little bit, it was just a little bit over and over and over again. Because when you add up those little bits over and over and over again, they amount to a hell of a lot. And even if they didn't, even though I only added up to a tiny bit, I hope to be alive for another 30 years. And a tiny bit over 30 years is worth a lot. And those sort of ideas all really worked for me and drive myself forward.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:17:11
It's best practice in resilience, isn't it? Just a little bit more, you know, a little bit more, a fraction stronger.
John Milham (Host) · 1:17:17
I love it. And probably we're so lucky, you know, that again, that corporate background and that, you know, I had worked in business improvement. I had that idea of, of, you know, just a marginal gain or a marginal extra dollar in a payback of an NPV, net present value, of a project had so much value. And I saw myself as a project and how do I just get a little bit better net present value for, or future value for me as a project and just drive myself forward at the margins, drive myself forward.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:17:46
I love that frame in any way that works, right?
John Milham (Host) · 1:17:49
That's right.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:17:50
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:17:51
Now we're running out of time. We've got to get back to the TED Talk given how I this.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:17:56
Yeah, yeah, which is, which is absolutely like the, the idea. I, I love that because it's the ultimate statement of, you know, it kind of brings together the old and the new. You know, like if you've got a new identity, it's like a, you know, a Deb Ball introducing to society the new Mark, right? So, you know, what, why, why, first of all, why did you decide to do a TED Talk? And then You know, how, right? You know, what was involved?
John Milham (Host) · 1:18:27
Yeah, so very much like you, probably, you know, felt like I didn't feel like I had anything meaningful to say as a TED Talk. I wasn't driving to do a TED Talk or anything. And then I'd gone along to TEDxBrisbane in October 2023 or December 2020, sorry, 2022, the year before I did mine. And I remember just sitting there thinking, oh yeah, if I did one, I'd talk about this and I talk about that. But you know, this show is all about imperfection. So just another example of how imperfect I am: I didn't write any of those ideas down, so of course they were jettisoned by my busy mind. Gone, wasted. Sorry, Jane Anderson and your ability to hashtag things and record things and your brilliant productivity, but I'm not. Anyway, anyway, we, um, And so yeah, I'd lost those ideas. Anyway, out of the blue, June next year, um, TEDx called me and said— TEDxBrisbane called and said, look, we're interested in, given the overall lineup we've got, in having you speak and speaking down this sort of theme. Um, are you interested? And I sort of sat on it for a couple of days and then, um, thought, yeah, no, I'm gonna give it a crack. And I think it was as much as anything, it was that the idea of the challenge of how do I get a good speech and do it well. And, you know, I didn't deliver the speech on the day as well as I'd hoped. But as one of my author friends said, well, I was word perfect, but I was emotionally tense, would be the way I'd describe the way I presented relative to how I could. Not conversational as I probably am when I'm at my best. And Mello said, well, Mark, you might think you didn't do it that well, But you're not the listener. And the idea— who are you to say that the idea you had of the way you should deliver that speech is actually the best one? You know, it's a fragile speech. Dealing it in a fragile way might be more powerful. Have you ever thought of it like that? Because it's one of those challenges when you really— and you had a little bit at the Celebration of Giving talk last week, like I was determined to take people to the moment. And Simone, my speaking coach, had said, "For this, make sure you take them to the moment in this." And there was a new line with, basically, I had a really lovely poetic start. And she said, "Mark, get more direct at the start. And, oh yeah, that's pretty good. But tell me how you really feel." And I came up with this line of a bit similar to what we talked about with Brian being there that day, about this nurse Nicole coming in my room, of, "Why now? Why is she coming in my room now? I can't I can't face anyone right now. And she said, when you deliver that line, you've got to actually feel how you felt. And so, you know, just so pushing to be so fragile in that moment, but still be able to be me and have that warmth of me in the rest of the speech is always a bit of a challenge for me. And I'll get better at it as I just practice more. But if I have to be wrong one of the two ways, well, I'd prefer to use it that you saw that I'm an individual that still achieves but can be fragile. And I guess, again, that's another learning that's just come out of throwing myself into difficult, you know, what I saw as a difficult task, like trying to deliver a 6-minute fully memorized TED Talk, you know, word perfectly and have an impact on somebody. And, you know, again, same as my book, it doesn't matter if it's 5 people or 100 people that has an impact on it. I wrote it because people came in and had an impact to me and I wanted to impact somebody. And, you know, and if that's all the book does, that's what my TED Talk does, if that's all this conversation does, how immense that one person, one life, one— the total impact they can have on whatever they go on to do because you move their needle just a tiny bit. I'm not saying we ever move it. We're not asking to shift it. We're just trying to just shift it just enough to, in this moment, actually, like sometimes that we need, we need the flicker in the moment. And then it helps us. We can go back and relive that flicker in the moment. We can relive that energy we had. We can relive that feeling when we need it. And I had plenty of times in my journey where I needed it. I needed to go back and think, okay, yeah, that time you're waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning before that massive negotiation, you had no idea how you're going to pull that off and you did all that. That time when, you know, the negotiation went on for 17 hours across 3 days and you finally got a deal that was good enough that both sides of the table got up and hugged each other. Like, just probably relief that they'd finished. But, you know, that you could actually be so tense and such a difficult environment and big dollars in that negotiation but still respect each other and still— and actually, you know, the hard things we go through in life we build relationships that last forever. And I'm immensely lucky to have gone through a number of hard things. I found the TEDx process hard at times, and certainly the recovery is hard. And I've built so many amazing relationships out of having gone through those hard things.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:23:30
That's brilliant. And I would take away, but first of all, the TEDx, I found not the usual wank. So, you know, that was a That was a great effort. So well done, congratulations on that because I love the message. And yeah, look, to be honest, yeah, real is better in my mind, right? So I think it was a tricky job.
John Milham (Host) · 1:23:55
If I'd broadened the message slightly, like I think I just didn't quite get across what I really wanted to say, which was I did a hard thing, therefore you can do a hard thing. But it's not because I did the hard thing, it's because I know you can do hard things because I did a hard thing. Like, I know that sounds a bit circular, but it is in you. It's not because of the example I am. It's in— it's in you now. It's in you thinking about all those times somebody had your back. Because right now, when you don't think you can do this, well, guess what? At some point in the next minute when you don't expect it, the next day when you don't expect it, someone will have your back. And when they have your back, you will feel so proud. And you will find a way to find that strength in you and that next energy to go again. And when you go again, suddenly your perspectives are broadening, you make some progress, you can give yourself some celebration for that progress, or just even if there's no progress, celebration for having a crack. Yeah. And yeah, so if I had found a way to sort of just get that balance slightly better in that message, but hopefully it's there for Well, I think it's the whole idea of seeding.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:25:05
I saw in another piece someone describing how the generational benefit, right? So it was not the person who was influenced to buy, who saw the TEDx, it was what they did, passed on to their son or what their family produced as a consequence of the life he had after he was influenced, right? So like we're changing the world by, you know, on a generational level with that kind of connection and that kind of communication.
John Milham (Host) · 1:25:41
And again, isn't that beautiful? Isn't that life? So I talked before about 25 years of corporate Rio and I probably felt like, you know, I wasn't, you know, cut out for going any higher, but I also felt like, and I've only got so many years left on this planet, what's my legacy going to be? So I really wanted to get actually shift from Rio and move into whether it be electricity reform or something that I felt was going to change, um, you know, I guess our approach to the planet going forward. And that didn't quite work out, but, you know, you know, eventually I positioned into something else where maybe I'll have a— well, no, not maybe, I'll be proud. I'm definitely having a far different impact than I would have done had I just let my last, uh, 20, you know, 10, 15 years of corporate life play out and just, you know, just tried to survive within the rat race of corporate. And, you know, and I've got lots of great friends who are still in corporate, and I've treasure, treasured the experiences I had there. But for me, at that point in time, it was no longer going to be the right place. Um, and, you know, I can't see how I would have had the same impact that I've been gifted to have, um, out of, you know, what was a situation I didn't want. No, absolutely.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:26:50
And I'm, I'm very glad to have met and had a wonderful discussion today with the new Mark, right, which is the—
John Milham (Host) · 1:26:59
and hopefully there's lots of people that listened on beyond our playful start, and I was just being playful.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:27:05
No, it's perfect. And the interesting thing about this is I'm going to take away a couple of things, but particularly the gentle intervention, right? I love that idea that, uh, you know, if you open up and connect to the gentle intervention, right?
John Milham (Host) · 1:27:25
Yeah, it didn't feel gentle at the time, but no, I can see how it was, you know. And I guess when we're fragile, we're actually likely to not see things as gentle. But if we can start to use that thought pattern in our head that it was meant to be gentle, it is gentle, it's in our interests then we're more receptive. And ultimately, if we're more receptive, we can listen better, we can be curious better.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:27:49
What would the world be with lots more gentle interventions? So it's been an absolute treat to talk, and thank you so much for your sharing today, your real open and honest description of what is in many ways, right, you know, unimaginable but it's so impressive that you are where you are sharing this and so important as well. So thank you, Mark.
John Milham (Host) · 1:28:17
My pleasure. Thanks, John.
Mark Berridge (Guest) · 1:28:18
Good on you.
John Milham (Host) · 1:28:23
Thank you for listening to this episode of Kintsugi Heroes. Thank you to Colin Lilly for permission to use Broken as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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