I closed my eyes to shut out the countdown.
Images of humiliation flashed by.
You’ve completely forgotten the rest, you’ll have to walk off the stage in shame. Everyone will know you as the one person who only got half way through.
I’d spent probably over 60 hours for this chance.
And there I was, on stage before an audience of hundreds, about to ruin it.
Public speaking is much easier alone in the bathroom!
This was the highlight moment of the entire year, I’ll finish the story later – for now let’s dive in to 2023’s Year End Review.
Heads up, it’s been a big one.
Intention For Sharing
Firstly, this section is your measuring stick.
Please bash it against everything you read here.
You’re the judge, jury and executioner to answer: does this article follow through?
It’s what I most look forward to writing each year.
Because it’s so self indulgent?
Possibly.
Because it’s so exciting to dream…
More likely.
In the future I’m part of an enormous network of system innovators. We build resilience and anti-fragility into communities and ecologies. Anyone who wants to look back at the path I took can read these words and improve upon these lessons to design their own dream life.
This essay is a review of the year, a home for big lessons and a way to ask: are my actions aligned with my values?
Writing it is bloody tough. I’d love to read yours if you’re up for the challenge!
In more detail, there’s three main intentions for writing this.
1 Cut Through The ‘Idea Jungle’
Nothing is as fun as exploring fresh intellectual territory.
New ideas offer a joy like no other, they bring a world of promise. Just think how much society changed when the idea of wheels spread. Relationships, psychology and personal development undergo similar changes all the time.
Cutting through the jungle of ideas into the untested wilderness means accepting I will be the exception. It’s a tough choice because my brain rages at me trying to make me fit in and stop acting like such a nutter.
Opening up and sharing about courage, boldness and taking risks, makes me vulnerable to rejection and being exiled.
It’s scary!
But I suspect it’ll become less scary as I get better at presenting ideas so they’re easier to digest.
In that way, this is also about practicing the skill of sharing.
2 Make Meaning Of Chaos… In Public
Life is hard.
It’s confusing, it hurts. You’re up one minute, dashed against the rocks the next.
The best strategy I’ve found for this is to write and share publicly. The better I write, the better value you receive.
These public musings feel like a reflective fight-club. I step into the ring with ideas and events, driven by your presence to keep me accountable to my word.
I still journal, but making it public makes me think a lot more. If I were alive a hundred years ago this would be a ten page letter handwritten to friends across the ocean, today it’s a blog post low-key hoping to inspire you to join me.
I don’t want people to have to go on this journey of life alone, so next intention is…
3 Leave A Pathway
I still remember suicidal Said.
Hurt and alone, wanting to be loved and to feel understood.
He didn’t know the things I know now, but what if he did?
There’s a lot of people just like him going through life without the words for things like trauma healing, self worth, emotional intelligence, trust, boundaries, vulnerability and so many other life changing concepts.
For these people who might either be you, or might be connected to you, I want to leave a pathway.
In the long term, I hope to inspire you to cut a path through your own inner nature to help those in your life to get closer to you and you to them.
Why? Because I have a lot to thank you for, and…
Gratitude Is Best Paid Forward
As you may have figured out, I did finish the one minute pitch from stage.
Later on I’ll tell the story, before that let’s jump to the end.
From the moment I got off stage people treated me differently.
It was the same Said who they’d spoken with beforehand, but in a way it also wasn’t.
Cutting my heart open to bare my soul before hundreds did something I didn’t expect.
Even though I’d thought about that moment maybe a thousand times in the weeks leading up to it, I never expected I’d be so overwhelmed with gratitude.
Sharing from stage turned me into a lightening rod for powerful stories.
For the rest of the day people approached to share their own experience with suicide, struggles with mental health, their own parents with schizophrenia and so much more.
Later that day Marissa was sitting on the couch across from me and asked something I’d failed to articulate all day; how do you feel?
I finally found the words.
‘I feel like a shot glass at the base of a waterfall of gratitude.’
Absolutely floored and totally overwhelmed.
Surprisingly… it was very uncomfortable.
Have you ever struggled to accept a compliment?
The discomfort is instant, as quick as it’s deflected. Well imagine getting a total outpouring of compliments to the point where strangers want to come and shake your hand, talk to you and share from the deepest corners of their heart.
It’s a lot!
I had to battle the discomfort immediately because deep down I knew something that only made sense later.
Gratitude is best paid forward.
My instinct to deflect, deny or disconnect myself from what people wanted to give was essentially selfish. It was my own inner ‘Tall Poppy Hater Said’ who scrutinises any gifts he receives and spouts a stream of fear, uncertainty and doubt. It was a voice whose words only serve to keep my gaze away from seeing others. This keeps me (and very much suicidal Said from over 10 years ago) trapped in ego-centricity.
If you want to bless those around you, take your eyes off yourself.
This blog post and the entire series of yearly reviews is my attempt at forging a pathway and paying forward the biggest lessons I’ve received. I’ hope they help you like my favourite writers have helped me. I’ve gotten so much from reading yearly reviews of other writers, I hope these articles help you in that same way.
The day I got off stage, discomfort was my teacher.
It offered the chance to look beyond the limits of my self worth, receive from others and pay forward my gratitude.
Yet of all the epic victories of this year, the greatest one came later that night.
Sitting on the other side of the couch, Marissa took a deep, calm breath and shared words that cut my heart wide open.
‘I’ve always known we can do anything, Said. I’ve always known it in my mind – in theory. But when I saw you step onto that stage, that was the first time I believed it.’
Hearing that, something melted inside me.
If you want to see someone blossom, believe in them.
It takes an active level of faith to hold belief in the face of evidence. It’s scary. Luckily I’m surrounded by people who offer belief when my own faith falters. This is why I can cut through the jungle of new ideas.
I’m surrounded by courageous people. Without them I couldn’t dedicate my life to spreading courage, to all of them I’m eternally grateful.
I want to pay that gratitude forward to you.
I want to encourage you to fan the flames of your own belief. Hold onto your faith that you will heal and you will make it, despite all the noise.
Knowing that you’re reading this, whether we’re friends in real life, or we haven’t met yet or somewhere in between, the fact you’re there reading these words is like wind in my sails. I will do everything I can to make it worth your while!
So let’s dive in to 2023 and see how it went, starting with the most important part.
Relationships
This year Marissa and I discovered with more clarity how different we are.
Last year it was a revelation to discover Marissa’s autism and ADHD. Diving into resources, information and studies about autism revealed so much about our different maps. This year, our maps went from 2D to 3D.
We’ve uncovered the core wounds which caused us so much tension over the years, we’ve identified with clarity the parts of us who interrupt communication, but most of all, we discovered that Marissa doesn’t even think the way I do!
Did you know some people don’t have a voice in their head?
I have this constant rundown of assessment, judgement and evaluation in the form of a voice of Said who lives in my head.
I can make it silent when I’m focused.
Marissa’s is always silent! She instead has visual narratives playing similar to how wormholes are depicted, these epic tunnels transporting her through alternate realities based on fears, threats and dangers, or joy, peace and playfulness.
We’re making maps.
The archipelago of childhood trauma, the mountains of ego and pride, the parched deserts of detached observation… We’re making sense of this stuff in a way that will let us tell stories and teach others how to do the same.
Starting with our podcast! You’re welcome to have a listen, click here for the home page, it’s called Said With Courage wherever you get podcasts.
We have some big projects incoming, to help you map out the hearts and minds of people you love, as well as help those people make maps of you.
It all started in one great place.
Our Values
Last year we wrote our top five shared values, printed, laminated and pasted them round the house.
It gave us a clear sense of direction for any discussions or decisions. Our shared values act like a constellation in our life, pointing the way to guide us through treacherous seasons.
This year we went even deeper by asking a powerful question.
‘What values do you need me to live by, to create the relationship you want most?’
Marissa needs certain forms of masculinity in me, the same way I need certain forms of femininity in her.
We’ll dive into this in way more depth in the future.
It’s mind blowing to think how far I’ve come in a very short amount of years.
These end of year reviews are something I really look forward to, yet just a decade ago I found this time of year so painful I almost killed myself.
Christmas, new years, this whole time is typically full of celebration, social media overflowing with people’s pride and achievements. I spent years feeling like others were getting ahead, while I watched from the sidelines. University, starting careers or families, all these milestones other people achieved were reflections of my own unworthiness.
I’ve since learned how wrong I was…
You can’t see what people are going through by watching their highlight reel.
Of those I thought of as successful, many are now unhappy.
The older I get, the more I appreciate that life really is about the friends you make. There’s no point having everything and nobody to share it with.
The crazy part is that now I see people who truly live the life I want to live, they have time freedom, they can pursue their passions and have beautiful relationships, yet the thing they seem to have more than others is close ties!
Incredible Friends
As a young adult I projected my loneliness and disenfranchisement on everyone around me. I was so deep in ego-centric despair that I couldn’t comprehend a plain and simple truth.
Life struggles hit softer for those who nurture deep ties.
From getting on stage and speaking from the heart, to building a community for the volunteers at my work, to the wonderfully fulfilling relationship I have with Marissa, none of it would be possible without the beautiful friends in my corner.
Some of whom I got to spend more time with this year!
Marissa and I regularly attend a big leadership conference and this time we got there early to hang out with our mentors. We had a few extra days together which when your mentor is a whole flight away is a very big deal!
Marissa said something deeply profound the other night:
‘Find trustworthy people who trigger you.’
Maybe the best instructions for designing a good life I’ve ever heard.
We were so blessed to have their wisdom and experience guiding us through the big ups and downs this year. Without their support I really don’t know that we would have made it through.
Big Challenges
We had some enormous challenges this year.
Marissa basically had three months off work. Somehow we made it through without selling our kidneys, I genuinely have no idea how.
Kind of reminds of this quote I heard (can’t find the source).
Don’t wish for a lighter load, wish for a sharper axe and a stronger back.
I didn’t realise what growing a stronger back would cost!
Physical, mental, emotional, social, financial…
This year absolutely represented lifting heavier loads, for the both of us.
I worked on a tech transformation project that almost beat me. Handling the tension between the needs of frontline staff and those who make decisions, trying to deliver and improve our service, countless hours of extreme stress were poured into the project under levels of confusion that were… Let’s just say I can lift a lot more emotional weight than at the start of the year.
Things worked out well in the end and a big part of that was taking total ownership when stuff went wrong.
If I got treated poorly, if I got pushed, silenced or cut out of dialogue I had to stand back and realise what part I played in that.
I had to look long and hard in the mirror, it sucked.
But the best lessons come with pain.
This year, I had a lot to learn!
One thing that kept occurring over and over is that Atlas asked Zeus for broader shoulders, not a lighter load. If I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and help a million people master listening skills, it will take very broad shoulders. This reminder gave me a lot of strength.
If you’re still struggling, you’re getting stronger.
During our struggles I never stopped pushing the flywheel. I kept showing up for the missions important to us, building and growing momentum where I could with whatever little I had and to be honest, I’m still recovering.
The level of burnout has been very high, causing me to show up with less in many ways.
Despite that, I’m proud of how we took the excuses life handed to us and turned them into reasons to get going.
Marissa and I have held one another to higher standards, in spite of the increased difficulties.
This is what it means to wish for a stronger back.
It means asking for obstacles.
Woven amongst it all were pretty epic milestones.
Big Milestones
It seems each year brings bigger things.
The challenges are growing, but so too are the treasures.
I don’t want these milestones to read like a bragging session, but I do want to share the things I’m proud and excited about.
I hope this post inspires you to pay forward what you’ve learned, you never know when a page of your story might make its way into someone’s survival guide.
Lifeline Media
I got invited to do more stuff for Lifeline!
This is an absolute dream come true. Just a couple of years ago I reached out hoping for a role to let me tell stories and help further Lifeline’s mission. I never dreamed it would be my story!
I wrote basically non-stop last year, it was crazy.
Out of all that writing I finally decided at Christmas that I’d write one small thing about my own personal experience, literally a single post about my own experience with suicide. The very first time sharing my own story and it led straight away to a podcast invitation!
What on earth.
I was terrified!
So I said yes…
Holding Onto Hope Podcast!
Sharing my own story really opened my eyes.
I had no idea it was so bloody difficult. My own fears and irrational doubt, the levels of tension it generated… I could have powered the whole city with the calories I burnt in overthinking.
The day the podcast episode came out, imposter syndrome went full Mr. Hyde.
I was lucky I had the day free of meetings so I could shuffle paperwork and emails while bursting into tears every ten minutes. Huge waves of surprise grief attacks would come and go like storms in a timelapse video. Relentless intrusive thoughts telling me I’d get fired, that my colleagues would label me attention seeker, that I don’t know what I’m doing sharing my story so what if someone hears it and decides they will end their life because I say the wrong thing?
It was a shock just how many absolutely crazy-making thoughts I had from start to finish.
The only thing that got me through the day was reminding myself over and over again that it might help someone.
It’s a principle my mentors have hammered into me; take your eyes off yourself.
Any time I’m taking a risk and putting myself out there, I have to say out loud multiple times and speak it into being. This is about more than you, Said. There’s others who might need this so think about them and get going.
The year was had quite a few chances to practice it!
Filmed Stuff
I got to film media for new crisis supporters to get a sense of what they’re signing up for, as well as share my own story for the Christmas fundraiser campaign.
Every step of the way brings with it new demons of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Confidence comes from evidence and so much of what’s wrong with our education system is how we give people confidence.
We train people so they can pass or excel at tests and ‘bolster their confidence’ by offering shallow participation rewards. We feel how false these accolades are, even as children. They’re completely out of alignment with reality, no natural system on earth or off earth will behave in this way, preparing you for the test so you pass it.
In real life confidence comes from evidence that we can handle getting in the arena.
The unexpected, the painful, surprising, grief ridden, uncomfortable, downright awful. Confidence comes from gathering the evidence by going through these experiences and coming out the other side with something valuable, a lesson, a tool, something to pass on like a map of the territory.
Media stuff doesn’t seem to be getting any easier, but I am learning that I’m getting better at it.
I have some absolutely phenomenal colleagues not just in my organisation but also in the wider mental health industry. I’d never have gotten the chance to see their raw, open hearted 10,000 watt brilliance if it weren’t for the painful struggles I went through in sharing my story.
They normalised, validated and helped me battle through those demons time and time again, a key attribute I’m starting to suspect lurks behind all the world’s movers and shakers.
Attended TEDxUQ
Each year feels like The Slight Edge is digging its roots deeper into all areas of life.
Attending TEDxUQ massively lifted the belief lid, seeing the passion and heart of a wide range of speakers.
Sharline Allsop left me so devastated by the quality of her speech, I’m going to write a complete breakdown of why I think everybody in Australia needs to watch it.
Any writers or speakers out there, check out this masterclass in showing, not telling.
I even got to say hi after!
They were inspiring, humble and so very encouraging.
I cannot wait to read Sharline’s book The Great Undoing.
Got Asked To Publish
Each year that passes seems to hammer home this lesson deeper and deeper: you never know what good will come of it.
For example an editor of a real magazine with many thousands of readers (!) asked if I’d write something for her publication. This is the first time I’ve been approached by someone and asked to write, she even offered to pay! Real money!
This blog has cost me over $5,000 so far, so this was lowkey a very big deal.
I spent weeks crafting that 700 words, even networking with some suicide prevention and lived experience experts to validate my thoughts and make sure I wasn’t putting something dangerous into the world.
After all of that effort the editor and I tried on four separate occasions to get together and chat so we could hit publish, we never managed it!
Didn’t meet up, didn’t hit publish, didn’t get paid.
Telling people this story has led to surprising responses: ‘Oh I’m sure it’ll get published,’ ‘It’s ok it’ll come through eventually,’ ‘You will get printed I believe in you’.
But these replies, as well intentioned as they were, miss the whole point. I was already over the moon at the idea.
The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
I didn’t even need the outcome because the process of change already took place.
The sheer act of being approached by someone with a huge audience totally legitimised how I thought of myself as a person worth listening to. Prior to that I’ve always felt like the equivalent of a digital lunatic scribbling away on the walls of an internet cave, raving about stuff nobody cares for or really wants to hear about or can even properly understand!
I’ve had incredible moments, where someone might tell me the impact my writing had on how they think of their relationships or view of trauma or healing, and those moments are touching but it still feels like I’ve just got one visitor in my cave with me.
Being asked to publish like this massively changed things, giving me the confidence to think (foolishly, really) ‘why shouldn’t I throw my hat in the ring for TEDxBrisbane?’
So that’s what I did! And…
I Almost Gave Up On TEDxBrisbane
What a rollercoaster.
Easily the most terrifying experience, despite endless hours of practice.
Hard to put a number to it, but it was probably 30 – 50 hours of practicing the one minute pitch over a month, plus another 30 to write it and whittle it down. All while other crazy stuff was happening, Marissa’s health was on the fritz, I was flying to Sydney and back for media things, and I was still working to grow our side hustle.
Have you ever sprinted down a mountainside?
If not maybe you can imagine it. Sometimes movement is key to actually getting through safely, the less you think, the less chance to stumble.
Event after event, milestone after milestone, it was quicker than I could process so I just focused where demand was highest, until every aspect of (and person in) my life got hit with neglect at least once.
I put so much into writing the pitch, I almost gave up on it completely.
I asked probably over fifty friends and family for feedback.
I’d send it, take feedback, rewrite it, refilm it, send it to someone else, take feedback, rewrite, refilm, over and over.
It went like this for weeks, all in-between an overstuffed schedule with flights, events, hospital visits, practicing the pitch wherever I could squeeze it in.
So imagine my response when the first expert feedback I got was, ‘It’s a good story, but… what’s the point?’
Ouch.
I knew I needed to hear it, but I couldn’t face what I was hearing.
What’s the point? It is a good story, but what’s the whole point of the pitch? It’s just a story. To put a tip on the end of the spear would require a rewrite.
The next day, I quit.
I didn’t have the energy, time, emotions to continue investing into this. The weight of sunk cost finally tipped over the scale and all the financial stress, physical exhaustion and emotional tension of the past few months caught up to me at once.
Obviously that didn’t last…
I want to illustrate a theory about success.
I’ve had a lot of recognition since that day on stage, some people treat me different, they say stuff like ‘I could never do that’ and they lift me up like I’m somehow different from them.
This makes me sad.
If you’ve said this kind of thing to me, the following is for you: it’s not fair to put me up by putting yourself down. You’re giving yourself an escape, a way to maintain a limiting belief, ‘well that’s good for you, but you’re special’ in other words, ‘I can admire what you did, but I’d never dare to dream of it for myself, because I don’t belong on a stage, I don’t belong in the arena, I’m just a bystander’.
I don’t belong in the arena any more than someone on the very furthest seat in the crowd.
I did give up, which is why I really desperately want to illustrate this point.
Marissa had to put up with my moping, emotional, drained, exhausted burnt out self for weeks throughout this period (in and out of hospital trips, health mystery struggles and so much more mind you!).
She’s been fighting my imposters by my side for years, often prodding me to open up and then encouraging me through the endless doubts that bubble to the surface.
Well, not long after I got that crushing feedback, a good friend was listening to me whine.
I told him I was genuinely ready to throw in the towel.
‘I really don’t have the time. I’ve just spent so many hours on this already, I can’t rewrite the whole thing but I have to for a new ending to make sense. It was great feedback, exactly what I needed to hear, but it’s too late now as the deadline is in a few weeks and I’ve got way too much other stuff on. I probably just saved myself the heartache of submitting it and having to deal with the rejection.’
Matti listened with patience as I outlined each and every pain one after the other.
Maybe you’ve talked yourself out of taking a shot before, this is what it sounds like for me. I find convincing reasons first, then try them out on others and when I’ve got enough confirmation I slink back into my comfort zone where it’s nice and warm and cozy and comfortable.
Where Courage and self worth turns to rot.
Matti listened… Until he didn’t.
‘I don’t think I believe you.’
‘…What?’
‘All those reasons why you can’t just overcome this problem, I’m not sure I believe you mate. No, actually, I’m sure I don’t believe you.’
Matti had the Courage to challenge me.
‘Not enough time? You’ve had enough time thus far with all you’ve been going through. Not enough energy? Well what if you expected to cross the finish line later on, you’d still be running. The only difference is your expectation didn’t match reality. After months what’s another week going to cost you, really? Not enough brain power? You’ve already done the heavy lifting, for all you know you might just sit down to try and rewrite it and you’ll fly through in five minutes. As much as I respect you, I don’t think I believe you, Said.’
Matti took an extra hour from his night (before a long drive home!) just to sow belief into me.
He spoke articulation and focus into me, gave me a view point I resisted until finally I saw how paper thin my reasons were. This whole narrative of being exhausted and flat, how was that story serving me? It would offer an escape from the pressure of growth. It would keep me small where I wouldn’t risk people’s envy or discomfort. I’ve already had people abuse my partner for being with me (yep, people – plural) for wild reasons, it’s easy to convince myself to play it small with bullshit like that happening – to stay out of the arena.
Matti helped lift me up out of my own perspective by taking the time to challenge it.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s an excellent coach and an awesome person, he’s got candour and compassion in spades, without that there’s no chance his message would have gotten past my wounded pride.
But… it did.
What felt like reasons not long ago, now felt like excuses. That word has a big stigma, but think about it. ‘No problem, I’ll excuse you.’ ‘You’re excused, you can go now.’ Go where? Away from responsibility. Away from promises. Away from my word.
Which leads me to the biggest lesson about success of 2023.
Battles are not won alone.
If you’re struggling to get something going, to make a change, to lose weight, get focused, clean your scrolling habits, invest in your future, develop discipline, grow courageous, serve at a higher level, break through a business barrier, write a book, renovate your home, keep your marriage together, parent your teens, scale your business, change your eating, say no to people, whatever – you will notice others who succeed.
Everywhere you look, the thing you struggle with is right in front of you.
Happy marriages, successful businesses, healthy people, kids who don’t scream at their parents.
Whatever it is you want, you’ll find others who have it just by being amongst humans.
Their battles are not won alone.
I’m not some special hotshot speaker who can captivate a crowd because I’m super talented. If anything my superpower is that I can open my mouth and complain to the right people, because I’ve spent years choosing who gets to influence me.
I’ve chosen to listen to people who hold me to a higher standard, who believe in my capability, who see something in me that I can’t.
Success is just having the right people around to help you with the right problem for the right amount of time.
I think this is why I’m so obsessed with Courage.
If you want to become courageous it’s a powerful forcing function that will move many aspects of your life. You’ll learn to open up to others. To do that, you’ll learn to recover from opening up to the wrong people, and how to select the right people. To do that you’ll learn how to process your experiences and emotions, finding wisdom from pain. To do that, it goes on forever – you get the idea.
If you want to win at anything in life, cultivate meaningful relationships with trustworthy people who trigger you.
People like Matti.
Didn’t Quit, Submitted the Pitch!
Turns out he was 100% correct.
I pulled my phone out two nights later and spent fifteen minutes rewriting the pitch completely.
Found the right ending for it, cut lots of fluff, made it way more succinct and to the point. I hear maple syrup takes fifty barrels of sap for one bottle of syrup.
This was my bottle of syrup.
I submitted the pitch with just ten minutes to spare!
I deleted over a hundred takes off my phone before I finally got a recording without breaking, pausing, messing up, whatever.
My whole life I’ve underestimated two things when it comes to success.
- The amount of work it takes to succeed.
- The amount of work I’m capable of.
So… Skipping forward after all that, you’d think after all that rehearsal, I’d kill it right?
I Got On Stage… And Nearly Bombed
After so many bloody hours of practicing for one minute… I choked up!
Standing before hundreds I totally forgot my line.
Tears were not part of the plan… I’d said the words I don’t know maybe a thousand times, not even once did I have a single feeling about them, they were just these abstract leggo pieces I had to fit together in the right order in mind numbing repetition.
Never mind the story they told… about my mum’s struggle with suicide, living amongst a society with no empathy nor understanding for schizophrenia…
If you watch the footage there’s a moment where everyone thinks I paused for effect, nope I paused for sheer panic scrambling to find the next word.
If you want to watch, it’s on Facebook in the live recording, timecode 2:33:31.
https://fb.watch/nGV6Ml3NjL/?mibextid=Nif5oz
Endless rehearsal saved the day.
I rushed the end of the pitch and beat the clock by a solitary second.
The relief getting off that stage…
Privilege can sometimes feel like burden.
Anyone who works in suicide prevention has probably felt it. The weight of responsibility can be heavy to carry especially for those of us more sensitive. Speaking my mum’s story felt the same. Such an enormous privilege and also such a heavy burden. The feeling of duty to get it right and treat this opportunity with the respect it deserved…
Stepping off stage, I felt 30 kilos lighter!
It was over, now I could finally relax and enjoy myself.
Or so I thought…
Boy was I wrong lol.
The Discomfort Of Growth
After getting off stage, people treated me differently.
I still felt the same fears and doubts and uncertainties, tempered by immense relief that it was over, but still I was me.
To everyone else, I had changed.
Sharing turned me into a lightening rod. People with struggles of their own to share, stories of their parents, their own mental ill-health, suicide or suicide of others, so many people found their way to me to share.
There was a palpable desire to talk about this stuff.
It was humbling to hold that space for so many and hear such personal stories, it’s very different being on the phones or working on text, than it is to receive while looking people in the eye.
Many thanked me, which itself was hard – to my surprise.
I still have imposters.
There’s parts of Said who want me to play it small and stay safe. To stop saying all this crazy shit (like ‘I’m going to change the world! Who wants in?!‘) and just fall into line.
Between my inner chaos and the stream of heartfelt gratitude from the audience, my cognitive dissonance broke the richter scale.
First instinct was to push away, deny or deflect. A strategy that served well my whole life… but to what purpose?
Denying someone’s gratitude protects you from the discomfort of expansion.
As gratitude continued to pour in, I had to grow. Sitting in the discomfort of receiving revealed something deep down. I have yearned for recognition my entire life and never ever allowed myself to fully receive it.
But similar to accepting a compliment, a gift like recognition isn’t just for the receiver, it’s for the giver as well.
It’s way more selfish to refuse a gift than it is to simply say thank you and allow someone to give from the fullness of their heart.
My lifelong desire to deny people from recognising me was rooted in a lack of clarity. Self-centeredness stopped me from truly seeing beyond the limits of my own fears into the souls of others, where none of those painful self-imposed limits had any value or meaning.
The more I thanked people for sharing, for listening, for their kindness, the more gratitude I felt. There I was thinking, ‘Have I seriously been missing out on this my whole life, because of my own fear of acknowledgement?’
And then the craziest thing happened.
I Got Recognised… Big Time
Back in my seat after the break, Marissa gripped onto me for dear life as the organiser of TEDxBrisbane read out the names of those who won the pitch competition.
After two people were called out, Juanita (the MC) said the next person won TWO awards, the People’s Choice and the Judge’s Choice. ‘And I hope I’m pronouncing this right’ hit like a magical spell of strength, Marissa all of a sudden ready to yank my entire arm off my shoulder.
‘Said Bouziane’.
Surreal.
Marissa didn’t miss a beat, all but yelling at me, ‘Now can we shoot those fucking imposters?!’
It’s funny how much effort it takes to change the way we see ourselves, isn’t it?
Life has a way of hammering it’s point home over and over again, repeating the same dynamics or events until the lesson finally gets in. There’s nothing on earth as elusive as self knowledge, yet sometimes it seems everyone else can see what you can’t.
I have a lot of people to thank for their efforts in helping me change how I see.
If it weren’t for the ground work my mentors laid in my soul over countless hours, uprooting my negative self image, catching my moments of projection and challenging them, if it weren’t for the incredible colleagues I work with who’ve normalised and validated my bat-shit crazy level of fears and uncertainties, Sharline for stirring me and so many others from stage, the generosity of that publisher discussing her magazine, if it weren’t for Matti staying back an hour more before a long drive and an early start to call me on my bullshit, if it weren’t for the overwhelming amount of support I’ve gotten from so many incredible friends and family, above all if it weren’t for the generosity, patience and dedication of my partner (she’s drop dead gorgeous and legit her heart is yet still even more beautiful) if it weren’t for all of this, if it weren’t for my mum having the courage to have such difficult chats with me and give me her blessing…
I’d never have gotten the chance to grow into gratitude. To get on stage, stretch, crack, expand and see exactly how messed up those limits were around recognition.
I owe so much to so many.
Thanks to the support we received, we continued to show up, fail forward and expand.
It legit was a huge year.
We Grew Our Team!
We’re ending this year with three people honouring Marissa and I with their trust in our mentorship!
It’s such a privilege to pay forward what I’ve received.
The word potential once occupied a frightening space in my life, like a spectre that would destroy and sabotage everything I put my hand to. Grades, passions, studies, you name it the word potential felt like huge burden. I can finally say I am starting to allow potential to take its root in my soul.
First I had to look inward to meet my own needs, so I could learn to look outward to help others meet theirs.
Taking my eyes off myself was 100% impossible when I was younger, my pain was greater than my ability to perceive others.
I needed to heal, I needed to do the work before I could grow in personal development. Now that I’ve gotten some of that down, it’s an enormous privilege to help others do the same.
I’ve not yet found anything more rewarding than investing into people who want to grow.
To that end I want this entire blog to act like a kind of lighthouse, a beacon to blast optimism into the cold darkness of the night to help people find their way, to you!
The Blog
Content has slowed down, yet also… sped up?
2022 had a massive breakthrough in writing.
For over a decade I’ve been chipping away at this writing thing and in 2022 it became truly purposeful.
I published 71,822 words! Compared to 1,200 the year before…
A mind boggling number.
Mostly they were Atomic Essays, those pretty pink and purple photos I put on socials. Yet this year Atomic Essays came almost to a complete halt. Because of this, the feeling of not having done enough was… vey strong.
But I just did a count and this year I published 73,629 words!
But… what have I got to show for it?
Honestly, I have a lot of really heartfelt conversations to show for it.
Quite a few people in my life have shared how these words have touched them in one way or another, which is absolutely epic. Yet even if nobody were reading I’d still be writing, it’s fast becoming my main way of processing life. Of making sense of the chaos.
Although there’s a very difficult to swallow reality that has been settling in, which is the cost of this blog, combined with the cost of living all leading to some big shifts in how I think of all this influence building.
Branding As A Concept
The concept of ‘branding’ no longer feels right.
The word has a nasty history of sticking a boiling hot poker into the side of a living animal so we can tell who it belongs to. This makes the animal easier to sell, it makes our reputation easier to manage, amongst many other things. From a practical view it makes perfect sense, but emotionally it leaves a dirty taste, especially considering how we use the word now.
If I’m ‘branding’ myself, am I the poker, the hand holding it, or the animal being branded?
What are you, my dear reader?
It’s dehumanising.
I have no real answer to this, but for now I’ve decided to comb through all my writing and change the words ‘brand’ and ‘branding’ over to something more humanising.
Content Isn’t It
But.. by the same token, ‘content’ doesn’t feel like it either.
What is content?
Content is for consumption.
You don’t ‘make’ content so much as ‘produce’ it. Content is a commodity to be exchanged and traded.
Is that what I’m doing? ‘Producing’ ‘commodities’?
This writing doesn’t feel like that. It feels like wrestling with my own bloodied thoughts until they make sense with the intent of showing you how to do the same on the off chance you want to come along and join this weird personal-yet-public fight club.
So is it art?
Maybe it’s just plain and simple blogging.
For now, ‘content library’ is the best fit.
What’s this place to you? Let me know via comment or DM.
Regardless of what I call this place, I constantly lift my gaze to the horizon to check what direction it’s all going.
To do this, the concept of North Stars are really helpful, I realise the irony of using this concept when actually we see the Southern Cross down here, but who cares.
North Star
I like the concept of a North Star because it challenges me.
Life has so much chaos. This year more than any other for me.
In our personal life, mental, physical and financial health. In the world, there’s political unrest, trade wars, violence and so much horror to get lost in.
Cutting through the idea of a North Star is tough because…
Stars don’t give a shit.
A star or constellation doesn’t care what’s happening a zillion kilometres away on earth, let alone on one country or in my tiny heart. A North Star simply is.
It’s not permanent, everything will suffer the heat death of the universe, North Star or whatever constellation included, but we are all so small and insignificant, the life of a star might as well be permanent. They will point far longer than you or I might turn to them for guidance.
Thousands of years ago when ancient Egypt was the largest civilization on earth, the North Star was still there pointing the way for travelers.
Thousands of years from now, after the world’s current empires have fallen or whatever the cosmic writers have planned for us, these stars will still point the way.
So what internal parallel could possibly equate something so vast and old?
What simple concept will be so bright that it could offer the same deeply reliable sense of stability, no matter what?
The best one I have right now is harmony.
More life, in more diversity, in more harmony.
Currently my North Star is: to become an agent of harmony, to help groups, ideas and realities co-exist, share in mutual benefit and synchronicity.
Suicide prevention work is one aspect of this. Advocating for courage, another aspect. Eventually there will be more.
If I spent my life on this, I think I’d be ok with that.
Toward that pursuit, life gifted a new obsession this year.
System Thinking
Do you ever feel like explanations for why society sucks just don’t cut it?
My whole life I’ve felt this way.
Governments bombing one another, education system crushing the hopes and dreams of children, people disengaged from how their country is led, ecologies destroyed for extracting resources, poor management of land and water to maximise profit, greed powered systems who grow by spreading hate and ignorance, it goes on.
None of it makes any sense to me.
At least, it didn’t until I discovered Systems Thinking.
The explanations I’d always received were lacklustre at best. ‘That’s human nature!’ ‘Can’t beat em, join em’, ‘Just how things are’ and other cop-outs.
As it turns out, there’s a large group of highly influential people who speak the language of cause and effect at a way more detailed level.
They’ve figured out that all systems have ‘properties’ that can be understood. Makes sense, right?
Ecosystems, computer networks, weather systems, immune systems, social systems, economies… There’s a big group of people who focus their brainpower on understanding systems and figuring out why stuff goes so wrong and how to help it go more right. These people have WAY better explanations for why society sucks so hard.
I struggle to articulate how it feels to discover this.
It got me so excited I made a system diagram.
To learn something, do it, then teach it.
How to fight less with your lover, hardcore nerd edition.
Huge breakthrough!
Here’s a two minute explainer.
I learned to make it from a book called Thinking In Systems by Donella Meadows.
She shows how to visualise the parts of a system so you can watch the whole and make much deeper observations. Seeing visually how ideas relate to one another offers more info to make meaning.
One day I’d love to map out concepts like this in three dimensions.
Through the serendipity of the internet I met a system design expert in Canada, as well as a video game designer who mostly lives in Bali, which led me to two organisations based right here in Brisbane whose work has lit my soul aflame.
Complexability, who teach a framework to help leaders navigate complex and chaotic situations.
Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation, who work on big projects to create more sustainable futures.
I cannot sing praises loud enough of the Complexity team, needless to say there are many blog posts cooking about the Cynefin framework and their work.
Both these organisations offer very empowering ways of thinking and problem solving. I’m convinced that systems thinking through complexity theory is how we need to approach suicide prevention and community building.
It’s 100% my agenda to learn all I can now so I have the experience to go all in on this when I’m no longer working, perhaps through consulting, community engagement work, building infrastructure and platforms for communities to interface, who knows.
Complexability
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the folks over at this organisation.
Learning about their key leadership framework and such subtle, sophisticated ways of handling the natural biases we all fall into.
They offer subtle, sophisticated ways to handle the natural biases we all fall into. Leaders especially are susceptible, being surrounded by people below them in status or power, yet this power is often handled in ways that minimise and marginalise alternative voices.
People who see things differently to the prevailing culture (colonial / capitalist) like those with autism or people from mixed backgrounds.
Our voices often don’t make it above the rabble, which can be extremely painful when looking at a crisis in hindsight and realising the warning messages were hidden, lost or ignored because they didn’t come from the right person or weren’t yelled loudly enough to be heard.
I did their 10 week flagship course in complex facilitation and I can’t wait to build these ideas into community building efforts in suicide prevention.
I’ll be writing a lot about this stuff in the future.
Said With Courage
Mostly this year everything came to a complete halt, except for emails.
The plan was to write much, much more than I did. Old Unrelenting Standards my childhood demon wants me to feel down for this.
I see you buddy, we are safe, it’s ok.
I’ve come to accept that no matter how much work I do he will never be appeased. We can live in harmony if I acknowledge his demands. When I ignore him he plays up, acting like a poltergeist. You know it’s bad when work colleagues pull me aside to ask in a grave tone: ‘Are you ok, Said?’ which did happen a few times this year.
So, aside from being pulled aside and gently reminded that my burn out was showing, what else happened?
In 2023 I published a total of 73,629 words.
This is 1,807 more than the year previously.
Holy shit.
That’s a whole novel! It’s a whole book! It’s a whole thesis!
Looking at numbers to measure progress can be a weird and dehumanising experience. All of those numbers don’t represent the amount of hearts touched, or compliments received, or lives changed. They don’t show the real world impact of helping people think or act differently.
But there’s something very useful, even pragmatic, in abstraction.
Abstraction, before it was used for making cold, hard sense of the world, was found in art.
Through abstraction we learned to symbolise ideas, to capture and pass on to others.
Abstraction helps change our thinking.
Like drawing concepts into diagrams, you get to see ‘the whole’ through a different lens.
So what do these numbers mean?
They’re disconfirming evidence.
Unrelenting Standards would constantly have me believe I’m not doing enough work, these numbers help me stay rational in the face of that noise.
They’re also a challenge, what if I had more time? How much more could I write? How many more ideas could be shared? How many more people could I reach if I had the time to try and find them?
This content library has been a labour of love.
I’ve poured hundreds of hours into the content here and something quite painful occurred to me through this whole 2023 review process.
In fact I meant to publish this post at the end of the year but it’s been so difficult to grapple with it’s taken an extra month. To help you see what I see, have a look at these numbers.
So… What is it?
A commitment to lean into the discomfort.
Bare with me.
See I believe the majestic is hidden in the mundane. Great things aren’t achieved by heroic feats.
True greatness lies in the middling, boring, grueling hours of practice and refinement.
Hollywood gave us the montage to glorify transformation. But the lasting transformation is not glorious. It’s boring. For every villain a hero slays, thousands of hours were spent training, studying or simply moving rocks. Those thousands of hours didn’t happen on fast forward. They were experienced at the speed of consciousness, often in disciplined boredom.
The donut chart above represents my commitment to look at the rocks I’m moving day in day out, to measure them and ask the difficult questions…
Am I going to get where I want to go? If I keep this up, will it net me the skills, experience, network, capital and influence I need to keep my promises? Am I aligned in my day to day life with my hero Buckminster Fuller?
They are the result of an experiment I kept up all year, tracking how I spent my time.
In other words:
- I spent almost 4x the number of hours at work, as I did with my partner
- Despite the leave I took, I still worked roughly the same hours as if I’d taken none
- I wrote 73,629 words in 241 hours, including the time to edit, proof and upload
- That’s 305 words published per hour of work
- I spent almost 700 hours building a secondary income so small most people would laugh
- Because it’s hard to see an orchard inside a single apple
- Of the time I spent writing, I spent almost 1/3rd that doomscrolling (separately, of course)
- I chalk this up to poor burn out management (aka self care)
All of this adds up to a big, painful realisation.
I need more time.
When I first started blogging, I didn’t have it in me to create a ‘business’.
So far this has been an expensive hobby. I can pay for blogging because I don’t drink or smoke, but the costs are high and climbing. I don’t know what the future holds but we wont get there unless we figure out this whole capital, profit, cashflow equation.
So, let’s talk about the most uncomfortable part of all this personal development yearly review stuff.
Big And Uncomfortable
I have to focus on money.
I’ve wanted financial freedom for many years, but haven’t felt ready to go all in and fight through the discomfort of selling. In other words, I’ve been avoiding growth.
In 2024 and for every year from now on, I simply must get my hands on more time. The number of hours I spend shuffling paperwork and managing emails… Don’t get me wrong it’s an amazing privilege to be able to pay my bills doing work that’s aligned with my life’s mission, however I spend an enormous amount of time managing spreadsheets, admin and doing work that could easily be done by AI plugging data where it belongs.
Seeing the hours all laid out like that… it hurts.
From now on, making money is a much higher priority.
I’m still going to write, but what was originally planned as an endless email sequence will now have an end date in mind. It’s tough to go back on my word, but now that I see a future for Marissa and I where we can unlock that roughly 2,000 hours a year each, I can never unsee that.
This means the blog and content cycle wont be as frequent, email writing will slow down. Atomic Essays are going to be retired for now, I’ll come back to it in the future.
A perfect point to segway into…
Goals
| Last Year I Said I Would (in 2023) | This Year I Did (in 2023) |
| Publish: | Publish: |
| 52 Emails | 34 Emails |
| 1 Notion Template | |
| 1 Convo Breakdown | 0 Convo Breakdown |
| 1 Microskills Worksheet | 0 Microskills Worksheet |
| 104 Atomic Essays | 37 Atomic Essays |
| 156 Videos | 22 Videos |
| 6 Blog Posts | 5 Blog Posts |
| 10 Podcast Episodes?! | |
| Grow: | Grow: |
| Email list to 100 subscribers | Email list to 50 subscribers |
| TikTok account to 2,000 followers | TikTok to 516 followers |
I hit one of them! 🤩
Thoughts On Past And Future
Some of these accomplishments are pretty epic, like publishing 140,000 words in two years or building a small but consistent readership, or growing a small but consistent side income, or hell even the simple fact of tracking my hours spent for a full year!
I’m quite chuffed about the fact that one day, say ten or twenty years from now these words will be here and you can read them, look at the crazy stuff I’m getting into and say, ‘well, he didn’t always keep his promises, but he never stopped trying – in public’.
The thing is, all of these big accomplishments, they really aren’t enough.
Not for the level of change I’m looking to play a part in.
But that’s how change works. Nobody ever had a big idea and then executed flawlessly. Everyone has small tests, experiments, lessons, experiences that grow them step by step. The key is just to take one step, check the direction and keep going.
But you do have to really observe your trajectory, for me I like to let Unrelenting Standards help here.
Learning to allow my pet demon out of his cage through these review processes has really uncapped the scale of my dreams. The trick is to only let him focus on things that excite me. If he starts dragging me into a space of self criticism I’ve got to take the reign and pull him back in.
It’s painful to embrace his presence though, he has an insatiable hunger and conversations with him leave me feeling hollow and exhausted. If it wasn’t for Marissa, I’d not have discipline over him, and instead of being a powerhouse of energy and movement he’d just be the torturer of my self worth, stomping out my dreams before they ever took root.
This is why that word potential haunted me so badly growing up, Unrelenting Standards had free reign due to total lack of discipline.
But having this almost psychotic level of self expectation is a super power in some ways.
It let’s me truly observe the scale and level of change taken place over the past two hundred years. Like, can you fathom a world without machines, tires, schools, internet, phones? That was very recent! The level of change people are capable of is absolutely immense, but we just get our thinking flattened so young.
Because of this pet demon, I get to entertain questions others don’t even ask.
Why can’t we change the world?
What if kids were taught suicide prevention skills and could hold conversations about mental health?
What if CPR for the soul was mundane because everyone knew it?
What if growing your imagination was a normal part of society?
What if the move toward AI placed a higher value on social and emotional skillsets and emotional literacy became the new literacy?
What if systems thinking was taught to children?
What if you didn’t limit what you thought is possible for you, for your life, for your impact, your contribution?
How different might the world be in 50 years because of it?
Many in my generation harbor a darkness in their spirit.
There’s a deep hopelessness and hurt at inheriting a drowning planet – which makes perfect sense when you see the data and narratives they’ve grown up in. Yet those data, those narratives come from a voice of disempowerment, a voice that says ‘systems just happen to you, like the weather’.
What if we show people how to actively participate in designing the systems they belong to?
Goals For 2024
Overall, the year was great because I remained consistent despite life’s raging chaos.
I got tested and rather than break, I cracked a little and in those cracks grew more resilience and self knowledge.
I learned more about my limits, self care, tracking and measuring, masculine containership, leadership and so many other things.
The universe wants you to grow, so it tests your resolve.
In that spirit, I fully expect the following goals will be tested.
In 2024 I will:
Publish:
- 22 Sequence Emails – To end the sequence
- 2 Free Email Courses
- 1 Notion Template – For purchase
- 1 Convo Breakdown – For purchase
- 1 Microskills Worksheet – For purchase
- 20 Videos
- 6 Blog Posts
- 20 Podcast Episodes
Grow:
- My public speaking skills
- Email list to 100 subscribers
- TikTok account to 2,000 followers
Conclusion
These reviews are getting out of control, this thing is wild!
Thank you so much for reading, this long in you must be the only one. Seriously, I pray to god it struck the right ratio of indulgence to insight. I hope you will one day know what a blessing it is to endure this flight club with the keyboard and invite people to witness.
Thank you from the bruised and battered corners of my heart.
It was a big year, bigger than the last one. I’m definitely in the messy expansion phase of my life and looking forward to contraction. Yet even while I type these words something tells me it’s the memories of struggle and strife that will ring most fondly one day.
Realistically though, in all seriousness, something tells me life will only have more epic battles ahead, the universe wants me to grow, after all.
So, how did it go? Did this post live up to the promises made at the start?
For the review in 2024 I’ll try be a little more prepared, last time I hinted at maybe a cute presentation or slides, a YouTube video even. I did find space for pie charts!
P.S
More and more, it feels like I should just pull my thumb out and write a book…
What do you think?