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Chris
Hello and welcome to the ending Body Burnout Show, where your hosts, Chris and Filly co-founders of multi award winning Functional Medicine Practice, serving busy people with energy, mood and gut issues.
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Filly
Well, busyness, overworking, addictive doing and perfectionism might be the norm. It's not normal and it's a major contributor to health issues.
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Chris
Our goal with this show is to give you a holistic root, root cause approach to healing your body so that you don't have to continue doctor or diet hopping or popping a gazillion supplements, hoping something might stick.
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Filly
So get ready to heal your body, get your spot back deeply, connect with yourself and step into the life of your dreams. Let's dive in.
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Chris
Oh ho!
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Filly
Hello, everybody. It is Chris in Philly here today. We are going to flip the tables. So last episode I shed my body burnout story. Now we're going to hear from Chris to share his healing journey. We've actually been calling it the hero's story, actually. Well, the hero journey.
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Chris
Love it.
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Filly
So shall we kick off? All right. Starting right back when you were a little boy.
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Chris
Yeah. Cool. All right. Starting back from when I was a little boy, I guess. Ever since I was a little. Little boy, I've really been interested in sport, physical activity, performance. I just. I really enjoyed being around people, and. And I wanted to do the hard things. I think the small, easy things really bored me, and. And I really lost interest easily.
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Filly
And that hasn't changed.
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Chris
No, I'm still a little boy.
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Filly
Do the dishes, Chris. No, that's boring.
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Chris
I don't say that, but. But I feel like ever since I was a little boy, I've been very interested in challenging myself. And I have also had a bit of a rebellious streak in me as well. I know my mom could probably come up with a bunch of stories about when I was this little, little rebel. I don't know how she did it.
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Chris
She she has a lot of patience anyway, so. Oh, I've got this. This history of pushing myself, challenging myself, and enjoying the challenge. I feel like it's probably good to talk about my relationship with my family and and my dad and and even my and my grandad as well. I've got. I've got this. I'm the oldest grandson. I'm the oldest grandson in a in a very large patriarchal, close knit extended family.
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Chris
My mum's the second oldest of 12 kids and there's including great grandkids. I think there's like over 70 people in my, in my extended family, real close, close knit family. And my relationship with my grandad was was a very moral, ethical, loving, caring, very balanced, very, very kind hearted, masculine guiding hand. And and I think he he was a massive role model in my life growing up.
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Chris
My dad was to my dad was super into sport and athletics and performance and being a military guy, there's a lot of military culture that passed through him to me as well. And I think.
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Filly
It's interesting too. I think in your dad's line, like the history of violence in terms of he's well, it's his career, the army as well.
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Chris
Yeah, our Air Force.
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Filly
Air Force. Yeah. And so no, yeah, not violence as in he hit you but more like that you.
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Chris
Know this.
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Filly
Trauma.
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Chris
Well there was a bit of that. Yeah.
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Filly
Like the.
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Chris
That's it. So, so coming from a military background, the profession was a profession of violence. And I think the the line between war and profession and family got blurred a lot. And and I think and when I say violence, I don't necessarily mean in terms of physicality, but emotional violence as well. And and that that was a real for any one of you who have a military background or have have you know that little t passed on lived experience trauma from from a loved one a parent you probably know what I'm talking about.
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Chris
It's hard to not leave work at work. And when you come home, there's a massive culture of of that coming into families anyway.
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Filly
Also to I think it's interesting you have the generation of war going right back to your Viking ancestors as well. You always like to bring in the Viking.
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Chris
Yeah.
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Filly
So, so fighting war, all that sort of stuff.
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Chris
It's ancestral. It's, it's cultural. And I'm living my life is the result of my ancestors. Really. When you when you look at it, that's not airy fairy, but that's, that's literal. I've got the genes of, of, of my ancestors and they've, they've led me to this point. And so the patterns of my, of my past ancestors have been passed on to me.
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Chris
And that's affected me genetically and morally, culturally. And so my starting point really started started there. So anyway, I guess moving on, I've always had a gift for and this innate gift of intuition and a real care for the for the wounded and for people who I've been blessed with, with health of of body and mind my whole life and physical ability to do things that a lot of people haven't.
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Chris
And my my gift has always been helping those who are less fortunate than than me. That's not arrogant. That's I feel like that comes a little I mean, that to come from love and I can spot a mile away when someone's doing it tough and I might come across as rough around the edges sometimes, but but I really do care about people being okay.
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Filly
Um, let's talk about maybe fast forwarding a little bit to older person. So a big dog. Big Dog.
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Chris
That was my.
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Filly
Nickname. Your nickname when I met you?
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Chris
Yeah, I guess battling, battling with these themes in my life that the common themes of fight, aggression, ego, proving nature, all that stuff inside of me. Part of me was, you know, this big dog, this big cuddly guy who might flip and bite your head off. I struggled. I struggled to bring balance to that for for a long time.
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Chris
And and as a large part of my life growing up and the lines really were blurred on the court, I could be this this team mate that would do anything for you. But then if you do something, I really struggle with that that stress fight response.
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Filly
And I think to be like that ego went into the performance high achieving do do do you do you got to win the gold to the detriment of also your health. So even before we met you were eating atrocious. You aren't recovering yet doing stuff with your body at such an elite level, but there was no time to actually recover or restore your body.
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Filly
And I remember when we met too, you were working two full time jobs, one in the daytime and one at night time. So, like, you weren't even sleeping very well.
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Chris
Yeah. All to me, though, nothing was more important than the victory. The victory I had this this, this archetypal vision a while ago, speaking of Vikings, where I. I literally had this thought, this dream recurring. I was a Viking in a war. And, you know, with or there was this line of opponents in front of us and here was I, I didn't have a sword or an axe.
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Chris
I had a club and I envisioned myself with this club and I would charge in a battle and I would jump into the fray and I would kill 20, 30 people and then die, keep myself die for die for the cause. You know, I had this vision, this this dream recurring over and over again. And I think that described my life.
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Chris
I would give everything that I had, even my life and my body, for the cause and.
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Filly
Yeah, yeah. And then I feel like that really trickled into business as well. So after we got married, you started your first business and you're you thrust your body doing that as well?
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Chris
Yeah, I sacrifice my body for the cause where if that cause was more points than the opposition on a basketball court, that was it. If it was lifting heavyweights in a strong man competition, that was it. If it was in business, that was it. I would I would sacrifice my body for the cause. And I think one day, one day, it just it got to a point where I realised I was in a I was in a tunnel.
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Chris
I was in this this dark place where where I just couldn't it was mid, mid to late thirties. My body started breaking down. I based my sense of self, my identity on what I could do, identity based on what I could do. I was the guy who did the things and I relished in that and all of a sudden my body started breaking down.
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Chris
I couldn't do those things anymore. My ego, my ego over it all was I was constantly inflamed. I was in pain. Ten out of ten out of ten pain in my joints, exhausted, chronic headaches, burnout, compulsive addiction, depression, all that sort of stuff.
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Filly
Can we dig into that a bit, seeing as this is the body burn out show, let's chat about like what that actually looked like for you. So I mean, I can give you my yeah, my version of what I saw. So Chris was so exhausted, but he didn't realise he was exhausted. I remember driving, you know, we would drive from our house to say, My mom's, which is about 20 minutes away back then.
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Filly
And Chris couldn't even stay awake to drive that long, let alone a three and a half hour trip to the other end of the state. And he just thought that that was normal.
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Chris
I don't know if I thought it was normal, but I know.
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Filly
You're brushing it aside as if it's not an issue.
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Chris
Oh, suppressing it.
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Filly
And suppressing it.
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Chris
I was suppressing it because it wasn't like I was. I definitely didn't think it was normal, but I knew that I just had to get over it. Otherwise I couldn't do the things. So shush up, Chris. Just ignore it. Get in there. Get in the thick of it.
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Filly
Yeah. It's like the kind of my patterns that I said last last week for a different reason. I mean, it's just like, just go. Just keep doing, do do do do, do do. Yeah. And then you were getting pretty bad, chronic headaches that were patterns. And this is really interesting because you were okay during the week day or the work days, but Sunday's your day off.
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Filly
You would wake up with this atrocious headache that would thump like even to the point of a migraine. Yeah, And basically it was because he was.
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Chris
Doped myself up on caffeine during the week pre workouts to get the work outside ball.
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Filly
Yeah and then oh Sunday you didn't have any of that forced.
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Chris
Myself to keep going you know like just keep going, keep going, keep going. Don't quit, don't give up. Yeah. You insert really negative main word about myself, you know.
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Filly
But even then I remember saying, Oh, it's probably because you're having too many Red Bulls and again, suppressing, deflecting like, No, no, no, no, no, no. There's something wrong with my head. It's like, Yeah, there is. But yes, there's a reason or there's.
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Chris
A lot wrong with your.
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Filly
Early mistakes.
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Chris
I so. Oh, I feel like I was in this tunnel. Is dark place body falling apart?
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Filly
I'd say depression as well.
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Chris
Yes.
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Filly
To some point. Yeah.
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Chris
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And anxiety. And then my body falling apart. Business started falling apart. A family falling apart. Our marriage was on the rocks Falling apart. I wasn't present. I definitely wasn't connecting. And and to top it all off, I feel like just to tie it all in, maybe I couldn't do the things that I thought or that I'd base my sense of self, my identity on.
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Chris
And in addition to this tunnel, this this existential crisis, this void during this time, my grandad passed away, this man that I really looked up to and, and it was a really hard time at that at that period of my life. He was my he, he meant so much to me. And, and I think that's where I was.
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Chris
I had a choice. I, it was lose my business, lose my wife, my family, lose my body, lose my life or get some help. And so I started looking for help. You know, I'm not a very smart guy, but I started looking for help. And and I hope that if any of your listening to this maybe going through this tunnel, I just probably want to speak to this while it's in my mind right now.
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Chris
That's right. Like, if you feel that you're in the tunnel right now and you feel like it's all a bit dark and and you can't do what you've always done and you feeling like you've got this existential void, this identity crisis, I really want to speak to you specifically. Everybody, whoever can listen. But but I'm talking to you, especially because I care about you.
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Chris
And that's ideally that's why I want to share this. This story is with you if that resonates with you. But everyone else keep listening to all. At that time, I think it came into my world, FEMA, FEMA Strength Institute, and I met some mentors, some guides of mine, Mark Buckley and Mark Luxon. And they introduced me to oh, they helped me to hone my rehab skills and my strength conditioning skills that I already had and that I was pretty good at.
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Chris
But they really just took that to another level really, really high level stuff.
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Filly
And there was a lot around preventing burnout as well.
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Chris
Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. And they also introduced me to, to mindset and high level business skills as well at a, at a higher level that I'd been exposed to up to that point. And, and really helped me to to be they taught me more about being a high level man a high value high value man, and became less about doing and achieving and more about just being being the being high value, you know, serving a purpose, having, having utility that's actually purpose driven.
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Chris
And and so my, my life evolved. My life evolved, my body changed. And I did a lot of inner work on myself. And and then all as I was also met with, I knew I knew.
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Filly
Before you go to that next chapter, because we also did a bit of functional medicine, adrenal work as well.
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Chris
Hey yeah yeah.
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Filly
There was I if you listen to my story last week, my initial first chapter, one of my healing journey was very much on the physical plane. Chris You probably took it more on the inner mind plane first and foremost as the big, huge transformation for you. But on the side as well. I'm like, Your adrenals are fried, let's do an adrenal test and sure enough, stage two adrenal fatigue is similar to my results, fully cooked.
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Filly
But it was cool because you were still training in Strongman at that point in time as well, and you had a national competition and you came second. This was after doing all the like really honing in on recovery and rehab and healing from burn out and doing all the adrenal protocol work. You came second and I remember standing there with your competitors and they were like, Oh, what do you what's your training regime like?
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Filly
Chris And you said, Well, actually I haven't done a lot of training leading up to this. Nothing comparison to what I was doing. So that was kind of really cool testament to that. Not only were you healing physically, but you were performing better while doing less.
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Chris
Yeah, yeah. I think at that sort of time I with my work with Mark the marks, Mark and Mark and FEMA, my, my, my heart really changed. I flipped a switch and and with that inner work, I was I was met with another challenge and it was it was more around the incongruence of being like a mate head and into into something more than that.
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Filly
Which you always had as part of you. Like if you think about the way you described yourself as a boy. Yeah. And having that more role model of your granddad who is like very kind hearted and ethical and, and you even felt within you had that innate intuition for other people as well. So here he's just a walking contradiction right from the moment you were born, I think.
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Chris
Well, maybe.
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Filly
And fighting between the two, I think is what led to the burnout.
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Chris
Yeah, I guess coming home to myself and and who I actually really was. I think that was that was that challenge. That was the challenges letting go of this forceful desire to do and achieve and just come back to, to to who I was and what my, my purpose in life really was. And so that was my challenge at that point.
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Chris
And then I woke up one morning COVID hit bang.
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Filly
Into.
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Chris
Lockdown Central. Awesome. It was awesome in in the in the silence in the quiet. And it was I had some really beautiful moments of being alone and also not being a lot like connecting with with you and the girls and my past life of being a gym owner, being away from 5 a.m. to probably more like 430 really?
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Chris
430 to 10:10 p.m.. It just wasn't congruent with this new high level man that I was trying to become. And and so I pivoted my business, you know, the gym and, and you and I, we joined forces, created Chris and Philly in that time of COVID because a fully functional medicine.
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Filly
So back then I don't know if we clarified you had a gym during this time had a gym and a personal training business even before that. Yeah. While in the midst of all of that, I was practising functional medicine just as a sole trader. And so then over 2020 happen. We'd been talking about it for ages. Oh my gosh, wouldn't it be amazing if we joined Forces Body and Mind combined?
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Filly
Yeah, and so COVID gave us that opportunity to get our clients better results was like the main goal, but also to just from our lifestyle perspective. And especially for you, It was, it was meant to be like it. It led to the lifestyle that we wanted to create so that we could both be healthy and happy and be able to connect as a family.
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Chris
Absolutely. And and it was in this time where I thought, you know, it's pivot time. That was the buzzword at the time is pivot, pivot, pivot. COVID equals need to pivot. And I thought, you know what? I want to dive deep, dive deep into mindset, really improve my professional coaching credentials and stand it and get better at that.
00;22;21;15 - 00;23;11;06
Chris
And so being the hyper focussed, deep diving, high achieving, go getting kind of guy that I still was at that time, I found my mentor, Kylie Ryan from Supercoach Academy and she taught me and the community of, of faculty as well taught me to be a high level mind coach mindset coach. You know, I was still tempted. I had temptations to revisit old habits and I was really in this time in my life, I was coming face to face with my patterns as I started to let go of the old and and adopt the new, I started to realise, Oh, some of this stuff ain't easy to put down.
00;23;12;01 - 00;23;46;10
Chris
And so in my work with Kylie about learning how to be a better coach for others, I received coaching support and guidance on how to notice and be aware of and understand and take responsibility and ownership for my patterns and and to rethink and reframe the way I was doing things and also to just let go and and, and, and drop a few things that I was carrying around at that time.
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Filly
You always had this nice I'm going to use the word feminine, even even before you did any of this work and when you were like going hard and doing all the things in our relationship, you were still always probably the more feminine one, like the more intuitive when we would have conversations or if we'd had a fight, you were always the one that would say sorry first and try and draw out my issues from my brain.
00;24;16;27 - 00;24;42;19
Filly
And then when you did work with Kylie too, it was really balancing that over dominant masculine energy to then drop down into it. Safe to be slow, to be more feminine, but still be a man, and to really let go of like it took you, I would say even a couple of years to really let go of these need to do more sport.
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Filly
Yeah. When? Now you're doing what is it? B.J Yeah, but just for fun and you go swimming in the cold ocean all year round. Oh.
00;24;54;06 - 00;25;17;15
Chris
So I feel like I entered into a new abyss, You know, I'm in the tunnel and I feel like, oh, I can see light. I know that light is just around the corner and, and I feel like I, I was still in that as I'm over the last couple of years since COVID. For the first part of that, I was still in the tunnel.
00;25;17;15 - 00;25;45;22
Chris
I just took a bend. And although I pivoted our business and my roles and profession and I felt like I was still in the abyss, that the tunnel and and I was starting to witness this evolution as I was going through this this dark night of my soul. And I was really witnessing the the death of the the ra ra and more.
00;25;45;22 - 00;25;47;01
Chris
This birth of the.
00;25;47;17 - 00;25;48;10
Filly
Re re.
00;25;48;10 - 00;25;51;05
Chris
La la.
00;25;51;05 - 00;25;52;22
Filly
Yeah. Now that's probably better than.
00;25;53;18 - 00;26;17;20
Chris
Ra ra la la and I feel like I was coming home, I feel like I was coming home like almost a full circle. Like you mentioned. I was, I was remembering my granddad and, and the, the guidance and my upbringing and my purpose and the reason I'm put on this planet. And I was starting to get to know that.
00;26;17;20 - 00;27;01;17
Chris
And so as I've come out of that tunnel, I've seen the light, I stepped into the light and, and my transformation has really been this evolution of, of me as a, as a person. It's not just about doing equals having, it's about prioritising, taking care of myself, connecting with the most important things in my in my life. Being a high value man, living by my heart centred values and my come in, I've, I've come into this new version of me and maybe it's like it's not even a new version.
00;27;01;17 - 00;27;30;03
Chris
It's more of like a return iteration of Old King is to help you to navigate these dark moments of your life and and become who you be, who you are born to be, and connect you to. To get you to connect to your heart and your soul and and to address the deepest root cause of body burn out and to integrate that into into this new way of being in your life.
00;27;30;03 - 00;27;30;20
Filly
Amen.
00;27;31;08 - 00;27;34;14
Chris
Boss. And I think that's awesome.
00;27;34;14 - 00;27;56;11
Filly
Thank you so much, Chris, for sharing your story. If anyone has any questions or even, you know what, actually seeing as this is a new podcast, we would just love to hear from you if what we have been sharing so far has been resonating. If you want to see anything specific on the podcast, feel free to message us.
00;27;56;11 - 00;28;00;22
Filly
We want to give you the best of us based on what you need.
00;28;01;04 - 00;28;17;04
Chris
Absolutely. Thanks for listening, guys. We appreciate it. Goodbye. Have the best day ever.
00;28;17;04 - 00;28;26;05
Filly
Thank you so much for listening. We so appreciate you. If you'd like to give us extra smiles, drop us a review and spread the love by sharing this episode.
00;28;26;08 - 00;28;46;01
Chris
You can also write your own state of burnout and the root Cause contributors by taking out a ending body burnout assessment on our website. And if you're interested in learning about our group one on one ending Body burn, our programs should us a DM via Instagram or Facebook. Have the best day ever.
