For half a second I catch myself. I have been talking with a freedom I have rarely known, sharing with flow and without filter; about how I am feeling here, now; about what is really going on in my life. There is humour as I share and there are tears. Both from me and the 14 or so guys whom I am sitting with in this dimly lit room.

Some of these men are strangers. Others I have known for a while. But despite our differences in shared experience, there is a rare energy in the room, of commonality, humanity, and camaraderie.

One of the men in the room is this week’s guest, Jimmy Ferne who, together with Luck Wallace, last year founded this gathering and called it The Men’s Collective.

Every fortnightly gathering of the group is different, but the underlying purpose remains the same: to bring men together and provide a setting where they can have the types of conversations they don’t typically have, and are most likely to actively avoid. The type of conversation I found myself part of: delivered from the heart rather than the head. The type that, even though they are often about failings, insecurities, and vulnerabilities, have the impact of strengthening the speaker and drawing those who are listening closer together.

Jimmy grew up (probably like many of us) feeling like he did not fit the mould of what a man should be. Creative and artistic rather than blokey and sporty, he tried on a number of ways to feel like he was worthy and that he belonged, all of which failed. Upon reaching a point of crisis, he started to realise the power of authenticity and connection; of dropping the barriers and trappings we are told we need, and finding something real in its place.

To see Jimmy for the first time you would probably think he is a cool guy. And you would be right. But his type of coolness is not the kind that differentiates, creates walls, and keeps its distance. It is the type that is humble, open, embracing and joyful.

I love this man and think the work he is doing is so necessary and important, helping men of all backgrounds develop the type of skills we need to survive and thrive in the reality of the world we find ourselves living.

It is a joy to know him and a privilege to have him on the podcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

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I can’t help myself any more, and it is getting a bit annoying. Whenever I see something that I think is poorly designed, I can’t help but to start to redesign it.

Perhaps thankfully in most situations this redesign is limited to the confines of my head and being, but I do enjoy indulging in how the layout of a city could be improved, how my office could feel better to work in, and how the flow my home could be enhanced.

For Kate Challis , (@katechallisinteriors) my guest for this week, the linkages between the design of the places we live and work in, and our mood and wellbeing, is front of mind for any of the interior spaces she designs.

While we may not always be aware of it, the things we see when we wake-up, the colour of our rooms, the manner in which we move through a space, all contribute to how well we are, our relationships, and what we create and contribute to this world.

During our conversation Kate reflected on her own design style, and that some have noted she doesn’t seem to have one identifiable look. This she takes as a compliment, as she sees her job as a designer to connect with the person for whom she is designing, creating something that reflects their personality and needs rather than her’s.

In a culture where sameness, not standing out, and ease of resell are valued more highly than expression and personal congruence, Kate hopes to be part of moving us away from this mediocrity and blandness and towards a mindset that brings an every day awareness of design and our relationship with it.

Kate is a good friend of mine and it was a privilege to be able to sit in her studio and the office of her husband (both of which she designed of course), and talk with her about her life in design.

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What is it that sustains us being our best? Can we be high performing and look after our wellbeing, or are the two mutually exclusive?

For my guest this week, Dr Adrian Medhurst, these are the questions he started asking himself pushing himself as an elite 400m hurdler, and continues to find answers to thorough his work as a consultant, an author, and dabbling in technology based mental health tools.

Stress is omnipresent for most of us, and while some of it is not helpful and is best removed or avoided, other forms can be harnessed for our benefit, and reframed to push us to know more about ourselves and our capabilities.

When Adrian is asked to talk about these topics, he first gets those he is talking with to reflect upon their past experiences, about what has and has not worked for them previously. He does this to remind all of us that we already have an arsenal of things that we have successfully called upon up to this point in our life. We can call upon these things again to sustain our wellbeing and aid our resilience, or to help us through moments of crisis.

This can be part of a process of contemplation, concentration, and cultivation, where we build practises and routines that set us up for consciousness, flow, wellbeing and performance.

Speaking personally, some really basic things have come out of my own working through a process like this. Things including eating well, sleeping well, meditation, movement, removing harmful stress, and sustaining good friendships. While I have seasons when things get totally out of whack, having this list of essential practises etched into my mind helps me quickly get back to easy to implement fundamentals.

Towards the end of our conversation Adrian and I start talking about one of my favourite topics, that of wellbeing and performance in the workplace. Adrian talks about how we still work as if there is only one place we can do our job because of the machines and people that are there, when for most of us this is no longer the case. Many more jobs have now moved from working with objects external to our bodies, to working with ideas and concepts within our bodies and minds. This is a change we are still adapting to.

We can bring mindfulness and curiosity to our contemplation about the nature of work, aiding us to discover what changes we can make to improve our output at work, and how we are in our work, simultaneously. Ideas like bringing in more play and curiosity, trusting those we have working for us to get their work done no matter where they are, and ensuring we take time to completely switch off from work.

Adrian hopes one day to support people being at their best through simple, technology mediated experiences. With mental health issues becoming more common and placing greater loads on human practitioners to try and meet these needs, Adrian thinks that people could use tools like an artificially intelligent chat bot to supplement human services. Tools like this are already being developed, and could provide a fast and convenient first point of contact, pointing people in the direction of resources and practises to help them build their resilience.

And in his own life Adrian reflected that in learning to let go of attaching his identity to his achievements, and focusing on how he can be over who he is, has allowed him to maintain his own wellbeing as he maximises his own performance.

Adrian and I chatted on RUOK day, a day to remember to check-in regularly with those around us, to compassionately connect with them and ourselves. After our conversation I know I felt more in-tune with my own self, which after listening to this conversation I hope you do with your own self as well.

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Walking through the doors of ‘Our Little Caravan‘, I feel something lift inside me. Its hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, or what is causing it. I look around at the shelves, stocked with one-off pieces including pictures, jewellery and candles. Each piece seems to have a story behind it; made with love and purpose, and made by hand.

I meet this week’s guest, Christina Douglas, and we walk through the shop and out the back. Parked in the back yard of the shop is Mabel, a 1960’s Viscount Ambassador caravan. We step inside, the location for this week’s conversation.

As I set up my equipment Christina asks me about the origins of the podcast and why I am doing it. I am not sure if it is the vide created by the shop or the caravan, or Christina herself, but I find myself opening up to this person I have only just met. I talk about the challenges of the past two years, my dreams for the podcast, and the impact I hope it is having.

While driving to meet Christina I had been reflecting on how drained I felt; but after being in the store, sitting in the caravan, and now talking with and feeling heard by Christina, I feel my energy levels return. I was going to be in for a good conversation.

I tell this story because from what I have experienced and heard, I think it comes close to capturing the mission of Christina and that of the business she co-founded: to create a place where local people can create, connect, collaboration and be heard. A place open to anybody willing to have a go at making something with their hands. A place to show up as you are.

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Today I go to the place I have largely tried to stay away from: tech disruption and its implications. Its not that I have something against it. My own personal history means I keep an active interest in it. But I wanted this podcast series to be about things other than tech disruption, because that was the most obvious place to go. I knew that there was so much other positive, non-tech disruption out there, subtle disruption that was having a positive impact on people’s lives and that was not, in general, being talked about.

But there was only so long I could hold off before having a guest on to come and talk about it. There is no denying that science and technology are changing our lives – the question I had for myself was, How do I approach this? I want to talk about purpose, benefits and harness technology for good – not about techno utopianism or technofying for its own sake. I needed to find the right person.

I have met this week’s guest in a few different ways: I have heard him speak as part of his work through Future Crunch; I regularly read his newsletter; and when I recently started a new job that enabled me to meet him in person, I jumped at the opportunity to have a conversation with him.

Gus Hervey had excelled at the things he put his mind to right up to completing his PhD in Political Economy. What followed was 18 months of unemployment and a deep personal crisis forcing him to confront failure and the type of person he wanted to be. Three experiences helped move him on from this incredibly difficult place: an article by George Munbiot encouraging those in the environmental movement to preach hope instead of fear to effective galvanise people for change; a bike trip and conversation with his now business partner, Tané Hunter, about the rate of change in science and technology and its potential for good; and a moment of journaling where he realised he wanted to be more like his open, optimistic, expressive California self, rather thanks his rational, serious, objective Father-stuck-in-the-1970s self.

Gus and Tané founded Future Crunch, a business whose mission is described by Gus as ‘…to be field guides for the new economy, with the goal of fostering intelligent optimistic thinking about the future, with the aim of making things better.’

For Future Crunch making things better means improving the life of our planet and life on our planet, through things like using technology as a means for democratisation, and making goods and services available to those who previously did not have access to them.

In our discussion Gus answers three questions that constantly sit at the back of my mind about this topic:

1. Will the changes we are seeing through science and technology bring us closer to our natural environment, or move us further away?
2. How can we ensure that the developments we see are harnessed for good of our planet and those most in need, rather than concentrating wealth and benefit with a chosen few?
3. And is the only way we will collectively make changes in they way we treat our planet when we experience the crisis of environmental melt-down first hand, or can we be affected through awareness and hope?

I wasn’t sure if my usual question about a disruption he wanted to be part of one day was relevant for Gus, considering by the nature of his work he is already part of every disruption there is! But he was quick to talk about the potential of blockchain to change the way in which any transaction is executed, removing friction, cost and any guaranteeing middle parties, and the profound and as yet largely unknown benefits this technology could bring.

And for himself, Gus talked about a subtle change he has made recently to open himself up to world views, perspectives and opinions outside of those he currently identifies with. It has been through understanding diverse views from religion and politics that he has been able to reflect and challenge his own views, and at times even change his mind.

Gus brings hope, wisdom and humanness to the potentially heady conversation of science, technology and change. Fittingly and ironically we sat on a bench in a park for this conversation, a conversation I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

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I wonder about the things that make it so easy for me to throw something away, even though it is still functional or close to being functional.

One reason I come up with is that I am so disconnected from the source of the things I buy. I have no comprehension of how many millions of years it took to form the materials that make up that thing I now have. I have no appreciation for the amount of somebody’s life that went into designing and creating the thing I now wear.

Another reason is that I haven’t developed the skills or mindset to prolong the life of the things I purchase. In regard to clothing, I can barely sew a button on. And when it comes to anything that plugs into the electricity network I am useless. It would be easy to blame my culture for this, whatever that would actually mean. I am constantly marketed to, encouraged to purchase the newest thing, making the old thing I own redundant and inferior. I earn so that I don’t have to repair – I can just buy a new one.

Both of these reasons feel lazy and extravagant. They don’t feel justified.

Karen Ellis is living proof that we can change our mindset, buck our culture, learn the skills of reuse, repair and upcycling, and save a hell of a lot of money in the process. She and her husband Danny live a frugal life, sourcing most of their material needs from the kinds of places where the things I throw out end up. Karen documents the way she lives on her Rude Record blog and Facebook page, helping others to learn the skills and develop the mindset she has honed over a number of years.

I hope you are also inspired by Karen to move a small way towards living a life of consciousness in the use and reuse of the material things we bring into our lives.

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**First, a warning: this episode contains sexually explicit content that may not be to everybody’s taste.

This week’s guest is probably the one that has the subtlest and deepest disruption on my own self. It may not be my guest so much as the focus of his work and the topic of our conversation. The topic is sexuality, something that I am not yet that comfortable is discussing in a public forum, but at the same time something I feel is so necessary for me, and all of us, to openly discuss.

It affected me so much that I have wondered since the time of its recording whether this interview is something I want to release. What will people think? How will this reflect on me? Is this aligned with what Subtle Disruptors is all about?

But I know that this is an area I personally need to explore more, and I take my reluctance and uncertainty as indicators that releasing this episode is part of me moving in a positive, if not uncomfortable, direction.

I expect that those reading this post and who listen to this episode will fall onto a continuum of that stretches from feeling very comfortable and integrated with their sexuality, to feeling nervous and triggered even at the mention of the topic. Regardless of where you may fall on this continuum, I hope that through this episode you start to feel even slightly more comfortable with this subject as a topic of conversation.

There are certainly some great podcasts out there that are exploring this in much more detail and openness than I am yet ready to do. The Savage Lovecast and The Hook Up are two that I recommend. And while I think they are ground-breaking in the conversations they are normalising, there is a piece of the puzzle they seem to be missing that this week’s guest makes a focus.

Eyal Matsliah is a human potential coach who has written a book on the female orgasm and has an on-line course on ejaculation control for men. And while people come to him to talk about a particular sexuality issue, they come away from him with a greater integration of all aspects of their life.

I like his philosophy and approach. The idea of the interconnection of all things. I recognise the truth that if there is one area of our life that is dark and dysfunctional it will inevitably impact and constrain many other areas of our life. And in integrating and breathing life into a dark and dysfunctional area, many other aspects of our life are also improved.

I don’t think there an area of our collective lives that is more hidden, shamed, repressed and misdirected than our sexuality. If we could embrace and understand our sexuality, learning how to express and explore it in an enabling, opening and life brining way, what benefit could there be for all of us as we create, connect and love?

I come from a conservative background where sex was compartmentalised and restricted, and I am on a journey of understanding how explore, express and integrate this into and through my life. I am excited and terrified by the things Eyal talks about, but have a hunch that in exploring I can only benefit.

I hope you are challenged just enough by our conversation, and are taken a bit further towards sexual integration.

Here are some links to some of the other things we talked about in this week’s episode:

• 5 Rhythms dancing: Connecting with your body through dance
• Carol Dweck: Growth verses Fixed Mindset
• Napolean Hill: Think and Grow Rich
• Tim Ferris: No booze, no masturbation experiment
• Dave Aspery: The relationship between orgasms and business performance
• Simon Sinek: Start with Why

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My disconnection from the natural environment sometimes startles me. I can go for weeks without touching anything alive with my feet. I have no idea where most of my food comes from or how it is grown. I am much more concerned with having clean hands that getting my hands into some dirt.

The very fact that the word ‘dirty’ has a negative connotation is reason for question in itself. Is dirt really that bad? It is the stuff we break down into; where our food comes from; and which is responsible for so much goodness and life.

There is an abundance of evidence about the benefits of growing our own food: for example, that getting our hands dirty makes us happy and healthy; that growing our own food means we are more likely to eat healthily; that community gardens have both environmental and social benefits. Given the global trend of more people moving to high-density urban areas and away low density rural areas, is there a way to easily enable city-dwellers to get into the garden and grow some of their own food?

My guest for this week is Kate Dundas (@dundask), who was struck by this question when asked to respond to a Vic Health tender enquiring about ways to improve supply and access to fresh food and vegetables for people in Victoria. Kate and her colleagues responded to this tender with a response focused on making it easier for people to grow their own food through straight-forward access to land, resources, and like-minded people.

Inspired by a similar project in Brooklyn, the exciting initiative 3000 Acres that was born out of winning this tender. 3000 Acres is now a stand-alone organisation helping Melbournians map the unused space in their city, find others who might be interested in jointly creating a garden, and making it easy for them to identify owners of land plots and draft leases with them. Kate estimates that in Melbourne there are thousands of hectares of available unused land, and hundreds of these sites have already been mapped on their website. With eight gardens now established around Melbourne, Kate talks about the respect show to these places by both those who tend them and others who make use of them.

One day Kate would like to disrupt the way we have designed work. Questions like, if we all didn’t work Monday-Friday, 9-5, if some kids had different times that they went to school than others, could we reduce much of the daily chaos and stress we have created for ourselves?

And interestingly for an urban planner, it is a lack of planning to which Kate’s ascribes the interesting path she has taken. Relying instead upon intuition and value-led decision making, she has been able to go along the moment without too much worry, and grab opportunities as they have been presented.

You can hear more of Kate on her weekly radio show Greening the Apocalypse on Triple R (which also has a podcast). I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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I feel unnerved. I’m not yet sure about this guy. I am at an event to hear him and a few others talk about workplace culture. Some of what he says doesn’t make sense. He seems jittery; in a rush. I keep listening though because there is something about him that draws me in, keeps my attention, has me wanting more.

He isn’t following the rules of public speaking, but somehow I am getting more from him than those who are. Its more than just the words he is saying. He is communicating from a deep part of himself, and connecting with a deep part of myself. And whatever it is he is imparting is lodging itself to stay.

I realise that I am not seeing a slick, over-prepared TED talk here. I am part of a show-up-as-I-am, whole-hearted, bare my soul, performance. This guy is giving me all he is and all he has, and he is making use of something I am yet to have access to. I want what he has.

That was one of the first times I met this week’s guest, Mykel Dixon, and I was experiencing what I would later know to be artistry in action. Artistry is something that used to disturb me whenever I witnessed it, because I knew it was not accessible by following the rules. And I was a rule follower.

I worked hard and followed the rules at school so I could go to uni. I went to uni and got a degree so I could get a well-paid, secure job. I got a well-paid, secure job so I could pay the bills, buy the house, have the relationship, and go on the holiday.

As I play back these rules they do seem like sound thinking even if they are a bit dull. But they left me lifeless. And in talking with Mykel he reminded me that even the security that these rules promise is not actually available anymore.

Some are predicting that in the not too distant future most of the work that is currently being done today will be automated or unnecessary, and a majority of the workforce will be part of what is being termed the gig economy: freelancers coming together on project-based, short-term, engagement-driven work.

What then is the work that will need to be done? What are the skills that will be most crucial? How do we become more of what we are going to need?

Answers to some of these questions came to Mykel while he was hanging out in his geothermic dome on the coast of Cambodia. He had lived the life of an accomplished musician and needed to spend some time exploring other parts of his creativity. But after spending an inspired 12 months writing songs, poetry, and musicals, there was still something missing. He realised he was hiding out, and that while creating was magic, creating and keeping for himself was only half the game.

Hanging out and having glorious conversations with Mykel Dixon is up there with the things I enjoy most. I hope you also enjoy our conversation as we drive around Melbourne, and I find out about what Mykel did with his Cambodian realisation, and how it can help awaken the artisan within each of us.

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I remember asking a personal development friend of mine recently why he seemed to avoid the one topic of food. He covered almost everything else: meditation; purpose; movement; sleep; positive psychology; values; alignment – all amazing topics from which I personally gained so much. But the topic of food and what we eat was conspicuous by its omission.

I think I get why my friend stayed away from teaching about food and eating. It is a difficult topic. There has been so much written already. There are so many opinions. There are so many diets. How can one teach others about this without dividing people, without raising more questions than answers, and generally not contributing anything helpful or new?

However, as I look around at the culture I live within I wonder if this is the thing that could have the biggest impact on improving the way we live. The obvious candidate for improvement is our collective weight, but I think there could be more subtle improvements in areas like mental health, sustained energy levels, happiness with our own self, the capacity we have for being present in each moment, and our ability to create and contribute our best work.

For me the top five things that have led me to living with the health and energy I now experience are sleeping well, meditating daily, lower my stress levels, being open and vulnerable with people, and eating well. I find it hard to separate these five, and they all impact and feedback on each other. But I think that eating well is pretty close to being #1.

And as I have started to understand some general principles about food and nutrition and to experiment with my personal requirements, my body shape has changed, I have stable energy levels throughout the day, and I feel more able to give of myself to the people I interact with. Eating poorly on a consistent basis is no longer an option for me – the circumstances of my life require me to be mindful about what I eat. If I don’t, I can’t show up in each moment the way I want to and need to.

It was this desire to find something of quality to eat when walking hungrily around the city one day, that led me to Seedling Cafe where this week’s guest is the chef and co-owner. Georgia Clarke-Edwards is all about the food, and Seedling cafe is one of a few emerging eateries in Melbourne that is putting the wellbeing of those who eat their at the forefront of what they put on the menu.

And while food and eating is the focus of our conversation, Georgia also shares her own journey of fad diets and unhelpful beliefs about her own worthiness, to 30-day cold-shower challenges, practising daily gratitude, and her dream of being part of the disruption of our education system.

Georgia is great to talk with, makes an awesome Turmeric bullet-proof, and has some great insights into how each of us can get the best out of ourselves in small, incremental ways. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Here are some other great, healthy Melbourne eateries:

• Serotonin – the plant food option
• Thrive – the food court option
• Shokuiku – the raw food option

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