#322 Craig Boss – Transcript

Jess Brady
Hi, Craig.

Craig Boss
Hi Jess, how are you?

Jess Brady
I’m great. I am really excited. And I feel very humbled to be having such a very important discussion with you today. And from the very outset, we need to say that today’s conversation is going to be quite personal, and that it contains information that is pretty heavy. So I should probably issue a trigger warning. But we both discussed this. And we think it’s vital as an industry that we have more open and frank conversations. And so we hope that you will explore these important topics with us, Craig, before we get into those, I think it’s important that we learn a little bit about you and your story

Craig Boss
should Yes. So just from a biographical perspective, I’m not 57 years old, I was born in South Africa, grew up, they’re married, they had three children in Cape Town, and emigrated to Australia in 1999, became an advisor in the early 2000s, mid 2000s, and have been a risk advisor specializing in insurance ever since then. So that’s kind of a brief potted history of how I got here. But I have a you know, my personal story is much more complex and obviously, much more detailed. But I thought I’d just give some background as to who I am and what I brought up my children in Australia. They’re all grown up now they’re or other still studying or graduated. My wife is a medical mental health social worker. So yeah, that’s us in the industry, pi. So I guess that without you having to prompt I’ll probably just launch into a bit of a story of you know why I’m here today and what I want to talk about and the things that are close to my heart and dear to my heart. So, as I mentioned, I grew up in South Africa In South Africa in those days was a very conservative society. And very, I grew up in a very protected environment. But from about five years old, the moment I started to enter school, I found myself different to the rest of the of the boys and was largely ostracized, ignored, to some extent bullied right from my early school years. So Not school years were tough. And especially in primary school, when everything originated and you try to form your friendships and your social surroundings, I had a tough time. But I didn’t let on that, how tough my life was higher and higher light allowed the people around me to believe that I was happy, and that I was enjoying life. And that was, everything was going well. But I was I was a lonely, lonely boy. So I used to spend my days, like by myself, especially as I grew a bit older, and my parents became less involved in my day to day social environment. And I would spend my weekends, you know, riding on my bike near my house, and watching sports. You know, I would just go and watch, it was a sporting club near where we lived. And I would go out and watch balls or tennis or cricket at the club. And I spent often, you know, Saturday afternoon, doing exactly that. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about what happened. But one Saturday, I was lured into one of the club houses at this by by a man at one of these at one of the sporting clubs. Here he offered me some free cold drink. Obviously, I took up on the offer, I had no fear or trepidation. I was 12 years old at the time, he lured me in and he raped me in this, in that kind of the backstory of this clubhouse at 12 years old, that is any sport at any point in your life. It’s incredibly traumatic. But at 12 years old, when you’re just, you know, probably prepubescent. And you’re entering, starting to enter, you know, the early stages of being a teenager, it was proved to be an incredibly impactful event on my life. I never told anyone. And it is a

I suppose it’s a common theme among survivors of sexual abuse, especially male survivors of sexual abuse, they don’t talk about it. They hide. And there’s all these feelings of guilt. There’s feelings of, you know, What, did I do something wrong? Did I deserve it? There’s all sorts of questions which, you know, would take ages and ages to run into that tend to go through your mind. But like I’ve learned over the years before, to pretend to be happy, I just had this place in my head, where I could file these things where I could put them and store them and not think about them and get them and go off into my own world. And that’s what I did with this particular incident. I told no, I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell authorities. I didn’t tell a single soul. I went through my high school years, you know, just getting on by and it wasn’t totally unhappy. And I wasn’t totally unsuccessful. I was captain of the swimming team. I did reasonably well academically, not as well as a career but reasonably well. And I graduated high school with no direction of where I wanted to go and what I want it to be. I went to university, I started to take various courses. But what I was really searching all the time to find direction and I was becoming increasingly lifestyle. Even fewer friends at university. And I just kind of wandered around going from class to class and doing some sort of doing things that I enjoyed, but wasn’t really getting anywhere. And I was very lucky that my second year of university I met the woman who would one day become a wife. And at that stage in my life, she literally rescued me because in hindsight looking back in my early 20s I was already on a very rocky slope downhill. But came someone who loved me. She appreciated me. It felt as if to prove myself or be anyone else with her. And we were together for four years before we got married. We then moved to Cape Town we had this three beautiful children and emigrated to Australia. And soon after we go to Australia, things started to go downhill. I made one or two bad business decisions. coming to Australia with three young children, not knowing the place is incredibly stressful immigration in and of itself. It’s an extremely stressful exercise. And I got into financial trouble struggling for money. We had to sell a house that we had bought in order to keep going. And mine was tough. But I kept going. And I got involved in the insurance industry, I do quite well, I’ve actually started my own practice. And besides the fact that there was always financial stress, I built a business, I built a little business, it was a one man show, but I built it into a reasonably good operation that produced a living, and things were going reasonably well in that regard. But when I got to my 50s, I had probably the quintessential midlife crisis. And I won’t be surprised if there are other advisors in the industry, people like me who find have found that they’ve gone through similar kinds of things. So the kids have grown up, they were at university they are or they were working, my elder daughter had moved overseas to study, I was now lifted home. My kids didn’t need me as much anymore. I looked around. And so you know, my friends and my colleagues, who in my mind were doing better than me, who further down the road, in terms of their financial success than me.

There seem to be just generally more successful. And so I did silly things. Well, yeah, I got a tattoo or two. And, yeah, I’ve got a couple now got a few, adequate. But, uh, yeah, I got to get my wife’s name tattooed on my shoulder, and I got my kids initials tattooed down the other side of my torso. So just just just a little bit of rebellion. Suppose, and equivalent to, you know, I got very involved in my exercise, I was exercising, sometimes twice a day, anything to kind of reverse the aging process, and, you know, try and stretch up years, they’re younger, but then other things started to close in on me, the life life industry reforms came in, with less revenue, less money, then the Royal Commission, more compliance, which was a hell of a burden, especially to, you know, a one man band like me, the, I was then working in under a license of a cover, and got the guys who guys who own their own FSL and I was working under their license, the, the environment in that office with the, you know, the impending reforms became very, I wouldn’t necessarily say toxic, but they were very stressful. And these guys just wanted me off the license because it was going to cost them a lot more API to have insurance, I was looking for somewhere else to go. And I was lucky that I found the current business who steadfast life who bought my book. So they offered to buy my book, and then employ me as an advisor. But because of my frame of mind, where that has turned out to be a really positive thing, I saw it as a failure. So I saw it as having been able to cut it had to sell my business have been able to be successful by myself, I have to go back to being an employee again, because of my thought processes. And my sense that I was a failure. Having to sell the business exacerbated all of that. And, okay, I then I got physically very sick. This was in about August 2020. And they didn’t know what was wrong with me. Took a couple of weeks to find out we were, you know, imagining the worst. And eventually they found out what was wrong, it was treatable. I was treated, and I was subsequently I’m okay. But that whole thing had completely drained me of any energy that I had. Just to go back a couple years before 2020 I had finally under one very stressful, very difficult day. I came out and I told my wife what had happened to me at age 12. I’ve never even told her. It looks like this has been

Jess Brady
first time. You’ve told anyone about what happened to those decades ago.

Craig Boss
Ever, ever. It was I’ve kept it buried for I don’t know how long 40 years, and have never told a single soul. And I remember, I was feeling incredibly vulnerable. We had a spare bedroom, I was lying on the bed in the spare bedroom talking to my wife and I just burst into tears. And in literally, I was in the fetal position. And I told her through my tears and cry what had happened. to even hear myself say aloud that I was right was it was traumatic in itself, because I’ve never said those words out loud. Following that, I went into therapy. And this is probably this is probably my first piece of advice that I can give anybody is it’s so important to find the right therapist, because I didn’t. She was a really nice lady. And she listened to what I have to say. But I don’t think she have the necessary skills. So what was happening was I was opening myself up in the sessions, that she wasn’t giving me the tools and skills to deal with what I was exposing. So it’s like opening a wound, but they’re not redressing it, or not giving me any method to heal. And so my trauma became even worse. So sort of getting better, it got worse. And in September 2020, after about 18 months of therapy that really didn’t work. I just broke down one first afternoon, and I live in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, I got into my car, I lift a note, on my, on my bed, on our bed with my wedding ring. And I got into my car, I drove by three o’clock in the afternoon, I drove all the way to North Head in manly. If anybody knows Sydney, you have to go. I live near South End. And you have to go all the way around the harbor to the other side of the city, through the city to North Head. And the reason I went there was I love the view from north. I think it’s the most beautiful view in Sydney. And I had resolved to take her life. So in the car, I had with me an entire bottle of Valium tablets, and half a bottle of whiskey. And I’ve done some research I’d heard that die as a pan, which is the driving value, by itself won’t necessarily do the deed by combining it with lots of alcohol very quickly. And it certainly will. So I’ve got to North Head, I sent out a few texts now. In the interim, the family had found out where I at I wasn’t there. Then I left the house. We were working from home with the time COVID. And my my children who were at home, my adult children found the note on the bed. They tried to find me their phone, my wife came home from work. Pretty soon the entire family and the police were at the house. And I wasn’t answering the phone I had written I was driving to North hair with the intention of killing myself. Neck was what I was going to do. It’s probably worth I’ll just tell you a bit more of the story. So I got to North Head, I sent out some texts to some people, including my family. I said don’t try and find me.

And I wrote in the text that I have gone to die in looking at my beautiful Sydney view. And because I love the city and that’s what I wanted to die for. It’s going to die. That’s where I wanted to die looking at that view. got there, I swallowed the entire bottle of Valium. So just to give him some context, if you have valium as a pre med or because you’ve got a back spasm Doctor probably give you two milligrams, maybe maybe four, maybe five, if you’re a big person. I took 244 milligrams with half a bottle of scotch in space about two minutes. I just drank like a bottle of water. That last text I sent that I told you about was taken a few was sent a few minutes after I’d finished swallowing the pills and the whiskey. And just a happen there. Because I was already drifting off. The last word were suspect to say View came out as Jim GYN with a lot of different things. It’s trailing after that. So beautiful city Jim didn’t make any sense. And at my house was my sister, my daughter, and my sister said she doesn’t think the gym makes any sense. And the police were saying what does he mean by beautiful Sydney gym. And my daughter said, Well, if it’s not you, it’s probably a mistake. You probably mean something else or it’s autocorrect it probably means beautiful Sydney view and if he does that, it’s definitely North Head because I know he loves it if North Head so it was just her intuition and her knowledge of Me. The police said okay, we’ll give it a try. They’re called Northern Beaches. Police they rush to the parking lot, they found me in my car doors locked windows closed. This was about five o’clock in the afternoon, quarter by five. I was unconscious, they smashed the window open, drag me out the car, called the ambulance. I was rushed to Northern Beaches hospital, I was intubated because my breathing was so shallow it was about to stop. And the doctor said that I was probably 15 minutes away from dying 15 minutes later not. But due to faith and my doctor in some clever minds and give it deduction, I will say. And I think what, what I want to tell some people tell people is this, there is this view of suicide that people who takes years to commit suicide are selfish, or cowardly. And there is this pervasive view? And how could they do this to their children? And how could he do it to his wife? And how could he do it to his parents and his family? There’s always those kinds of questions. But as a survivor, I can tell you what happens in the mind. When you do decide to take your life, you get what’s called the The psychologists call it cognitive dissonance. Think of it like tunnel vision, think of it like you’re looking through through a metaphorical straw. And all you see is this tiny.at The end. And that’s the only solution you see. So when you have normal crisis in your life, your mind naturally thinks of about four or five things to try and resolve that particular issue. When you have cognitive dissonance, there’s only one thing and you believe, you truly believe that you’re doing the best thing for yourself, because it will take away all the pain that you’re suffering. And it will, it’s also the right thing for your family. Because why should they have to pay you? Why should they have to deal with you the failure, the depressive the just the one that causes trouble and pain for them as well. So it’s best for everyone, if you’re gone. And you that’s how your mind thinks that’s how you resolve to make such a decision. It. I can’t speak for everyone who’s tried to commit suicide, of course, or those who have been successful, but this is how a lot of the science is and as a survivor this is I can tell you how I thought. So you go and you do the act because you think it’s the right thing for you and everybody else. Subsequent to that I was in hospital and then transferred to a psychiatric facility. I was very lucky. My wife,

given the industry that she’s in put me in touch with some amazing or got me involved with some incredible people, a fantastic psychiatrist, a great clinic. And, and he referred me to a psychologist. So the moment I entered the clinic, I was diagnosed literally within 24 hours with major depressive disorder. So I’ve been depressed. Now looking back, probably all my life, most of my life and it never diagnosed or treated. Ever since then, I’ve been in therapy and working on my mental health. In fact, only last week, I actually terminated with my psychiatry, my psychologist, so in the sense that I don’t need ongoing therapy, but she’s there if ever I need her. That is a very positive milestone for me. But the purpose of me telling the story, and I don’t know if this is a question that might come up. And I know we’ve been doing a lot of talking but is that I wanted to tell my story to do two things one, to D stigmatize both male sexual abuse, which is often very hidden and kept under wraps, as well as mental health in general, especially for males. Because there is this attitude that males have to be strong that they have to be stoic, that there has to be, you know, credibly resilient. And, you know, they don’t talk about these things. And that’s attitude still exist. I mean, society is changing in some respects, but it’s very much people don’t talk and they’re afraid to, and they’re afraid to seek help, and they’re afraid to be vulnerable. And I want to de stigmatize that. And I want to say that I am now healthy, and I’m happy, and I’m happy to be alive. And that’s only because I’ve got the help that I needed. And I was obviously got to the point where I had to get the help, but there are so many opportunities now to intervene earlier and to get the intervention yourself for people able to not only, you know, it’s all very well to say to somebody, are you okay? But they generally most people are gonna sound fine, because they don’t want to worry you. So there’s two sides to that one asking, are you okay? is just not enough? You need to go further. If somebody doesn’t look, okay, they are not okay. And you need to go further than just asking. And the other thing is that if you’re not okay, and this is the other side of the coin out there and get help, ask somebody to help. I think that’s so important.

Jess Brady
It’s so important. And I, you know, to have to have this conversation today is so, so humbling for me to have someone on who is willing and able to share the darkest corners of what has happened to them. And so you’re right, there is a long way to go. But I think the fact that you’re able to, and want to come here and make sure that other people don’t feel alone. We know from industry research, Craig, that the advisors of Australia are not mentally well, as a as a gross generalization. We aren’t for all of the variety of reasons that we know, you know, we know people have personal lives and histories. And we know that there’s been so much change from a regulatory perspective and financial stress. And, you know, the cumulative or compounding impacts, and everyone’s story is different, but we can’t keep pretending that we can help everyone else and not acknowledge that as a profession, we have so much more work to do to have these conversations so that people know that they’re not alone, and that they’re not a failure, and that they’re not invalid for having these, you know, human feelings. And so I just want to say before we continue into sort of more pointed questions. A huge thank you, I can’t imagine that this story gets easier to tell, even though you you do tell it so well. It’s really important that I pause and just hold space to say that it’s very brave of you. And I want to say thank you, because I know that there will be people who listen right now, who feel really grateful for you to share your story. Oh,

Craig Boss
I appreciate that. Yes, I appreciate you saying that. And that’s the exact purpose of me doing this i i Just telling my story, because I want other people to tell theirs. They don’t have to tell it in public. But I certainly want them to tell it to people who can can help them.

Jess Brady
Greg, what did you think about the concept of mental health? Before you were able to really acknowledge what was going on in your world and get help? Did you have any? Did you have any thoughts around mental health? Did you believe in mental health? I said Believe in sort of inverted, sort of? Yeah, I think it’s like, yeah,

Craig Boss
I mean, yeah, I mean, my wife was involved in mental health, you know, all your career. That was her career. She was a mental health social worker. That’s what she does. So obviously, I believed in the concept of mental health. But the thing is that you think of mental health is or I did think of mental health as somebody who had a specific condition, right? That was easily identifiable, right. So that person has got manic depressive disorder, and it’s easily identifiable. Okay. This person is, is depressed, and it’s easily identifiable. So it’s like chickenpox, right? You break up in spots all over your face, and that person’s got chickenpox. But so you think mental health issues are easily identifiable. But what I’ve learned is that it is a silent epidemic. It’s because you can’t really see it, you have no idea what’s going on in people’s minds, you have no idea what’s going on in their hearts, you’ve got no idea what their thoughts are. Now, there’s a quote by Robin Williams, the comedian and actor who sadly did take his own life, and was successful. And he said, you never know what’s going on in somebody else’s life. So be kind, always. So and that’s one attitude that’s really changed for me, is I’ve changed this Muy Thai approach to people to first be kind and then see what happens and even at work, the first kind, you know, so if I’m, if I need something done or and I’m not happy with an underwriting decision, or or you know, something’s not happening right at first try the nice approach, a kind approach. And then if that doesn’t work, I go the other route because you never know. You know, if an Right doesn’t get back to me for four days and I want him to and unneeded speak to him, I would in the past that would have been angry with the underwriter. But I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on in his life. He could be at home with depression, he could have a sick child. wife could be having trauma in her family, you never know. So the default position now is Be kind, and then can make judgments when you know further. So it’s just that’s sorry, I did digress from the question a little bit about what I think of mental health McQueen of that. But it does. It’s really important as a society, that we are kind in the first instance, that we are compassionate in the first instance, that we give pause to understand first before we go crazy, and angry, and aggressive and judgmental.

Jess Brady
And your point earlier is an interesting one that I’ve just been thinking about. You know, it’s wonderful that we have, we have actually come a long way as a society in time in terms of talking about mental health, and we have things like, are you okay day, but to your point, it can become a little bit tokenistic. And as we live, increasingly busy, frantic frenetic sort of lives where we’re racing around, to actually pause and to stop and to say to someone, Hey, are you actually, are you actually okay? Like, tell me what’s happened, something doesn’t feel right. You know, it takes courage to even have those conversations. And it takes space to have those conversations. And it’s probably something that each of us just need to be reminded of how important they could be for the person that you’re having that conversation with, and no matter how busy and tired and crazy life gets, taking those moments to check in on your team, your staff, your family? And your friends. Very, very.

Craig Boss
Yeah, I agree with you, Jess. And I’ll make two points. And that one is that, you know, with the new hybrid, working models, that some people working from home, with some people working in the office, we’re actually coming into less contact with people. So there’s less opportunity to check in than there was before. And people are now at home. And if home is the source of all their problems, or the source of where they are, and they’re there are at home in that environment. 24/7 and they never get to escape. Also, they have less than this interaction with people who could say, wait a minute, you don’t look right. Are you okay? Can I help you? What can I do? Let’s have a conversation. And I think that that, you know, we are a naturally sociable people that human beings are, we are sociable, we interact, we have always built societies since the beginning of humans. So to now have societies where we are distance, and we separated and we can’t see body language and facial expressions. It you know, even the color of somebody’s skin. It’s, it’s, I think that there’s a massive impact on that to the other point I want to make is that you spoke about checking in on somebody else, I think it’s really important for us to check in on ourselves. Okay, how often do we actually pause and think and say, Wait a minute, I’m angry, or I’m aggressive, or I’m sad or but why? And if it’s something you’re entitled to your titled to be sad or angry, sometimes these are normal human emotions. But if you’ve, you’ve got to check in on yourself. You got to say, Am I okay? Am I really feeling okay? Is this something wrong? Am I Am I talking back with you, you know, you’ve got a sore knee or, or a fever, I’m talking about your mental health check in on yourself. There’s nothing wrong with doing that and think it’s very important. And that’s one of the techniques that I’ve used, is to check in on myself. I mean, at the beginning of my therapy, it was almost constant. I was almost exhausted from checking in on myself all the time. Now, I’ve learned to do it more subconsciously. But yeah, ask yourself the question, and be honest with yourself. If you’re not okay, say yes, I’m not okay. And then do something about it. Don’t just ignore it. Don’t just ignore it. It’s like cancer, depression. Yeah. Okay. Depression can be like cancer. So if you if you ignore it, it just grows. And the longer it grows, the harder it is to fight. So if you get it early, and you recognize that, you know, you’re not feeling right, and it’s not only depression, other mental illnesses as well, but if you check in on yourself, and if you don’t feel right, go and get help. And the sooner you get it, the better.

Jess Brady
And if the first therapist isn’t the right one for you find another one. Hmm,

Craig Boss
absolutely. Yep. sympathy, it’s like first tablet, you know what some one antibiotic might not work fine. Another one, you might get on with one particular GP go find another way, it’s the same thing with a therapist. In fact, it’s even more important with therapists. So find the right one. And one of the key things about therapy, and I learned this is you have to be honest, in therapy, you have to be honest with your therapist, and you have to be honest with yourself. If you lie to yourself, and you lie to the therapist, or you don’t tell the truth and the whole truth, then it’s not going to work. And you’ll come away. The therapy didn’t work for me. You’re probably not being as honest to you can’t be in therapy you need to be it’s brutal, it’s brutal. And it brings up another point, you have to really work hard at being mentally well, you know, I train every day physically for an hour. So I do an hour train workout every single day, Sunday, it’s included every single day, and it’s part of my mental health program. I like to feel physically healthy, makes me feel mentally healthy. But you need to actually train yourself to think, right. And it’s hard work. It’s hard work, especially if the neural wires in your brain have been wired wrong for so long. And you need to rewire them. That takes a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. I’ve worked for 18 months now, really hard to rewire my brain and my thought processes. And it’s it’s not easy. And it’s there’s no easy fix to mental health, it’s not going to come from just taking an antidepressant. I do. But it’s not going to that’s not it at work in and of itself won’t help. You can’t just take medication, think you’re gonna be okay. You have to work at it. Just like anything else. And but if you do, you will be successful, and you will be healthy again.

Jess Brady
Great. I have one last question. Before we get into some rapid fire leases, I want to talk about that point that got really dark, and really hard. And when you started to see very few options, do you think the people around you and knowing that it was it was COVID? So this is probably a hard question to ask. But I think the piece around looking at yourself is very important. But I also want to know, is it easy to spot for someone outside? Or is it is it’s is it so hard to notice behavioral changes? Like when you look back to people say to you that they could see something wasn’t? Right. Were there a lot of signs? Was this something that?

Craig Boss
I think it’s, you know, what I’m asking basis? I know what you’re asking, Can you spot when you somebody who gets their point in your life, you know, having spoken to other people who have tried to commit suicide or be with them in group therapy and or, you know, some people you can see them becoming very, very depressed. You can you can actually see. Sometimes that switch over, is so insignificant, so small, so quick, that, you know, people might be depressed, but then often the decision to actually okay, now I’m going to do it is just there and then others cleanse things. And they plan to do it for a long time. And they see no outs but a lot of people disguise it. A lot of people you don’t see. So it’s not like well just keep your eye out. Of course, there’s no telltale signs. And if you know somebody really well, you might see some changes in their behavior. I mean, the other traditional, well, we know about people who become extremely depressed, they become reclusive. They may not want to get up in the morning, they drag themselves out of bed, the appearance becomes, you know, they’re in take care of their appearance. There are well we know their textbook, signs of depression. But you’re asking about that moment when decides do well, now I’m going to do it. No, I don’t think it’s that easy to spot. I think it’s, it’s, it’s very, very difficult to spot in fact,

Jess Brady
because you and I had a conversation when we were planning for this. And we sort of said that we want to use today to create meaningful conversations around something that is not often talked about. And we also said that we want to have conversations that people possibly are too afraid to ask because you are now starting to talk about this more and more in your quest to help other people feel less alone in their journey. And I think also as a message of hope, and as a beacon of hope that in a relatively short space of time, Craig, you can go from the place that you were in to where you are right now, which seems like you’ve done My goodness, you must have done and continue to do quite a lot of work. And that’s it. So commendable. And I want to say a huge thank you to you. Is there anything else before we get into the rapid fire questions that you want to leave our listeners with today?

Craig Boss
Look, I was very lucky. In my case, to have the wife and my wife and kids, my wife was absolutely incredible. And, you know, I don’t think I would have been able to be as well as I am now if it wasn’t for her support. She’s, she’s been incredible. And I’ll be forever grateful. You know, she rescued me when I was 21, or whatever. And she rescued me again now. So her my life, I literally do, but nobody is completely alone. And if you don’t have your wife next to you, or somebody who will do that for you, they’re up in amazing people who worked for organizations like lifeline and Beyond Blue, and other organizations where they are incredibly compassionate, caring people who will care, they do care. And you can get the love and support that you need. To again, it takes a lot of work to be mentally healthy, but the benefit that it’s worth it, it’s worth the effort.

Jess Brady
Absolutely. I think that’s a good note to end on, other than me asking you a few rapid fire questions, if you don’t mind. Sure. Go ahead. I mean, the first one, these are the same every week. Okay. The first one is going to be interesting, given the conversation that we’ve had today. And that is what do you do to look after your mental health?

Craig Boss
I said there’s probably a four pronged approach. One is that exercise, exercise is really important. And there’s a lot of research. tons of research to say that physical health is linked to mental health. Okay? So very quickly, when you exercise, release endorphins, in your body. Endorphins are a natural hormone, but they’re also linked to morphine, okay? makes you happy. Okay, so exercise, release the endorphins, you’ve got happy, horno hormones running around your mind and your brain. That’s number one. Number two, I use mindfulness a lot. So it’s mindfulness. It’s not some, you know, Hocus Pocus, religion, or some kind of cut off. It’s just technique. And if you learn to do it, and again, it’s again, you work and you learn how to do it, it’s a great way to check in on yourself, to detach from the stresses around you, and just recenter yourself. The other thing is the self check in which I mentioned earlier, I do check in on myself, am I okay? I just asked myself that question. And if I’m not accepted, acceptance is a big part. So you’re not okay, that’s fine. It’s okay. To be not okay. And then if you can find the source of it, think through it logically. The third thing, the fourth thing is, I try and balance my lifestyle. I hate the term work life balance, because work is part of life. So it’s not working and living works part of life, you know, it’s a huge part of our lives. So I just talked about how I balance my lifestyle. When I’m at work at work. You know, if I’m at work, and I’m stressed, and I need to take time out, I’ll just go walk around the block. There’s nothing wrong with doing now just go work on the book, clear head, get out of the office. It’s appreciate that kind of thing. And yeah, have a social life. Find other interests, look for things, get involved in things you know, interested in, learn to paint, learn to sing, you can go to ceramics class, go play. Go visit museums on the weekend, get involved in movies, join a book club, wherever you are, that sparks your interest. Do something else the outside of work. Yeah, so just balance your lifestyle be sociable. You sociable things, you know, take yourself off to coffee shops or restaurants, even if you do it by yourself, get out into society. There’s nothing wrong with it. Yep.

Jess Brady
No, and then you don’t have to share the popcorn. I’m quite an advocate of that.

Craig Boss
Does not COVID-19

Jess Brady
Ah, see, I just go by myself. Nobody else

Craig Boss
puts your hand in

Jess Brady
what’s a piece of advice that you would give your younger self

Craig Boss
can help sooner? Just get help as soon as you can. If you need to get help. Yeah, ask for it. Don’t be afraid to ask for it. Don’t be too proud. Don’t be too brave.

Jess Brady
Do you have something that’s big on your bucket list that you’re yet to tick off?

Craig Boss
Look, my wife and I love to travel. And I’m a huge foodie. So I cook and I love to cook and I love food. So what I’d love to do is take a few months off and drive around Italy in France. So no CO travel again. I think just drive and experience the food and the scenery and the wine and the culture that way, Italy and France though. I want to drive around at mons typeface, that’s a goal.

Jess Brady
Sounds amazing. Amazing. Amazing. And my last question for you today, Craig is do you have a book for me to read as part of my fake book club?

Craig Boss
It’s when I grew up. When I was growing up this there was a there was a comedian, British comedian called Spike Milligan. And a lot of people don’t know who he was, he was part of a revolutionary group called the goons, and they used to have thing called the Goon Show on BBC Radio that I used to listen to, but spike was a fantastic Gosh, and only many years later did I realize that spike was actually serious depressive, but he writes the most hysterical Memoirs of his time in the British Army during the Second World War. And there are about six volumes of his memoirs. And it’s written very comically about what he went through, and his stories of being a soldier in the war. And I used to read them over and over and over again, and I never knew why I had some kind of connection, the sky and only when I read his biography, years later, did I find out that he suffered from depression or does life. So I think there was some kind of connection but even today, I read spike Milligan’s memoirs, I’ve got these dog eared paperbacks, and I still read them. And yeah, they are like relief. Deeply insightful.

Jess Brady
Craig, I very genuinely very heartfelt they want to say a very, very big thank you for coming on today and sharing your story. And as I said before, it requires a lot of bravery, a lot of vulnerability and a lot of courage. We need to have more of these styles of conversations as a profession because you are not sadly alone in in the situations that you’ve been through and you know, your your need for help. And the more that we can normalize this, the better we’re going to be as people so thank you for being today’s guest.

Craig Boss
Thank you Jess, and thanks for the opportunity and thanks for the great work that you guys and that x y advisor are doing for the industry.