by admin | 27 Sep, 2025 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
Here’s an observation; most people walk around with their heads down. What about you? I’m not sure why that’s the case, maybe they’re feeling sad, depressed, lost, alone, or just getting through the day doing the best they can. All I know is this; life gets better when we look up.
When we look down, there’s not much to see other than things that are not that exciting. When I look down, I see my feet, and whilst I like my feet, it’s not doing much for me. When I look down and I see the ground, largely polluted with garbage, it’s quite depressing. When I look down, I start to get pain in the back of my neck. When I look down, I can’t see where I’m going, and I definitely can’t see possibilities that Life has to offer for me. So again, I really want to encourage you to look up.
I remember many years ago flying into Kathmandu, Nepal. I was with a group of friends, and we were going to trek through the Himalayas. As we were approaching and preparing to land, the person I was sitting next to prompted me to have a look at the mountains. I looked out the window, looking down expecting to see them. But when I looked down, I couldn’t see anything except clouds. He elbowed me and said, no not down there, look up. I looked up, way above the plane and the clouds, and there was the peak of Mount Everest and the Himalayas. It was awe inspiring and gave me a shiver up and down my spine.
The other week I had one of those amazing experiences as I was training at the beach one morning. This happens for me only once or twice every single year. I am blessed to see dolphins swim by, only metres from the shore. I looked up and I saw them. Not one, not 2, but three pods of dolphins, and I was so excited.
As I was watching most people walk past, guess where their heads were? Down, in their phones, missing the joy and beauty that was there for them to enjoy if only they looked up. My greatest urge for you this week is to make the most of everything that this beautiful life and world has to offer. The only way you’ll do it is to look up.
Did you know that your mental, emotional and physical state has a lot to do with your posture? Did you know that when you look up, you significantly improve your well-being. When you look up, many things shift. Your mood improves, your concentration improves, you are more creative, and you are able to find and see different perspectives to solve problems. In addition to that, it’s much easier to find moments of awe & wonder, be more mindful, and really connect to the world around.
As you can tell, these things are going to definitely help your physical well-being, your relationship with others, your ability to deal with challenges, and your vision for the future you want to have. All it takes is a decision to look up. Look up to see the beauty that’s around you. Look up to see the sky, the trees, and the different colours that this world provides. Look up to see people‘s faces and the smiles that you can bring to them. Look up and know that you are good enough.
Trust me, when you look up, your life will get better in every respect.
To help you on this journey, please enjoy my two podcasts this week. I speak with Jonathon Aslay in a podcast called Getting the vibe, and I speak with Sue Carr in a podcast called Start from strength. It’s such a simple thing to do, also a simple thing not to do. Be deliberate this week to lift your head, lift your eyes, and look up to see the beauty that’s all around.
by admin | 20 Sep, 2025 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
Have a think about all the people in your life that you consider good friends. Think about all the people in your life who are important to you. Think about all the people in your life you help, do things for, go out of your way for, and invest time, emotion and energy in. Let me ask you a serious question, are you on the top of all of those lists? If not, my goal this week is that you will work on becoming your own best friend.
If you’re anything like me, and several of the people I’ve spoken to this week, their lives are absolutely full of doing for others. They have families they need to be there for. They have jobs to do and people they are responsible for. They have friends who they want to support. There’s nothing wrong with that, however, it leaves people with no time or energy for themselves, Why? Because they feel they are at the bottom of the friendship list. If you don’t prioritise yourself, if you’re not your own best friend, then you may think you are there for others, but you can never be what you want to be for the people in your life.
Putting yourself on the bottom of the list, always doing for others, always feeling you have to be productive, and leaving no time for you is exhausting, right? Not only that, it’s like chasing your shadow, crazy and a fruitless pursuit. Not only that, and here is a powerful one, particularly if you are a parent, you are setting an example and creating a ripple effect that will be copied by people you care about. Is that what you really want? Do you want those most important to you, the ones you are trying to help by running around after, to do the same in their lives? I am sure the answer is no. So, there is only one solution. That solution is to become your own best friend, ahead of your children, ahead of your colleagues, and ahead of all your other friends.
That may be hard to do, as it was for me. I remember days when I was a personal trainer working long hours with no time for me, because I kept thinking I had to do for others, or they would not like me or respect me. I was definitely not my own best friend, in fact, if I am being honest, I was my own worst enemy. I was always overly critical, I never lived up to my own lofty standards, and I really never felt good enough. If I ever rarely took time off, I would feel guilty and would quickly find something to do to be ’productive’ or help others. If things didn’t change for me, I knew it would be only downhill. Do you know what I mean? So, I started on the journey of liking myself, then loving myself, and then becoming my own best friend.
Initially, being my own best friend felt like arrogance and conceit to me. However, what I learned was that being your own best friend doesn’t mean thinking about yourself more, it means thinking more of yourself. Putting myself first seemed selfish. What I came to discover was that it was actually selfless, because it allowed me to have more energy when with others, and it was actually setting an example I hoped people would see. In my own life, prioritising me has helped me build stronger relationships, be healthier, and be more productive. Most importantly it has helped to find purpose and allow me to have a bigger impact on the lives of others.
So, what does it mean to be your own best friend? Great question. It means loving yourself for who you are, not what you do. It means talking to yourself in a way that lifts, encourages, and builds yourself. It means being forgiving and compassionate to yourself. It means prioritising time for yourself. It means taking care of yourself. It means doing things you love to do. It means saying no at certain times. It means making choices that will enhance your self-worth, your health, and your influence on others. It means knowing deep in your heart that by focusing on yourself, by being the best you can be, by being authentically and unashamedly you, by loving yourself, by becoming your own best friend, you are leaving a legacy that will live on for generations.
You are worth it. My two podcasts this week will help you in this area. Christine Sadry and I talk in a podcast called ‘Let it go’, and Andrew Davie and I in a podcast called, ‘Life happens’. You may be thinking to yourself, how can I do this? How can I make time for me when so many people and things depend on me? I understand that thought process. Think about this; the less you do for people, the more they will learn to do for themselves and the sooner you become your own best friend the quicker the people you care about will do the same. Be your own best friend today.
by admin | 26 Jul, 2025 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
The tragedy for so many people – including myself for much of my life – is that they make decisions about what they can do and achieve based on what they already have and where they already are in life. The problem with making these kinds of decisions is that they’re limited by current reality and past experiences. Where you are right now may be tolerable to you, but is it the life of your dreams? If not, I encourage you to think about the possibilities of what it’s like on the other side.
There was a time when running a mile in under four minutes was considered impossible. Based on current and previous attempts, it was believed that there was no physical way a human could run that fast over a mile. All the experts agreed that the muscular structure couldn’t endure it, the lung capacity couldn’t sustain it, and it was an impossibility. Then, in 1954, along came Roger Bannister. He didn’t make his decision based on current reality or past performances, he decided he would explore his capacity and see what was on the other side. The result, he was the first man to ever break the four-minute mile barrier.
Then, guess what happened? In the next 12 months, 37 other people did the thing that was considered impossible, and in the following 12 months another 300 people broke the four-minute barrier for the mile. So, what happened in those two years where 337 people did what just two years earlier was considered impossible? Were they all of a sudden infused with greater lung capacity and muscular endurance? Did the training methods improve dramatically? Was the track surface improved and the quality of footwear of a higher standard?
Maybe a couple of those things happen, but certainly not in that two-year period. What really happened was that people got to see what was possible on the other side. So, where is the other side and what’s there? It’s a wonderful place where you are stronger, more joyful, enjoying the abundance that life has to offer, and is actually just a decision away.
For the last couple of weeks, as I have made reference to, I have faced a barrage of things happening in my life that would be considered undesirable. I won’t go into the gory details, however what I will say is there’s been a couple of times in this period I’ve been affected very heavily. If not for some wonderful people in my life, it would’ve been much more difficult. The thing that has helped me the most is knowing and believing that very soon I would be through it and on the other side. The other side is a wonderful place, and it is ready for you to start enjoying today.
On the other side of conflict is resolution. On the other side of adversity is opportunity. On the other side of a decision is hope. On the other side of a different choice, is a new direction. On the other side of a dark day is a new dawning. On the other side of a storm is a rainbow. No matter where you are right now in your life, no matter what you might be going through, on the other side is something wonderful.
All you need to do is believe it and expect it, and that is not always easy. The other side is really just a decision away, and as soon as the decision is made, you step across to that side. I couldn’t have predicted the path my life was about to take when I was in possibly the darkest place of my life. In $100,000 debt, working seven days per week in two businesses, one failing, and I had no life. I was feeling lost, alone, helpless, hopeless, and as deep into the mud and muck as I could be. In that moment, I started to imagine and visualise what the other side looked like. A life I loved. At that time came an idea, and with that idea a decision. Immediately after that decision, I stepped across to the other side. The decision was to write a book, and the other side was hope that I had the answer. As a result of that one seemingly illogical decision, my path changed, my life changed, and I am today, more than 20 years later, still enjoying the fruits of that decision.
What I am saying here is that the other side is waiting for you. All you have to do is decide and then step across. To help you with this exciting transition, please enjoy my two podcasts this week. I speak with Jeff Bailey in a fabulous podcast called Liberate the mind, and Caroline Trickey in a wonderful podcast called The pause. No matter where you are in life right now, have faith, get excited, make a decision, take a step, and you will be enjoying all the blessings that reside on the other side.
by admin | 19 Jul, 2025 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
Perseverance is a powerful concept. All of us have used perseverance at least once in our lives to help us achieve something that we truly wanted deep in our hearts. Unfortunately, for most people, including myself, as much as we intellectually understand what perseverance means, what it requires, and what it can deliver in our lives, we don’t always let it do its work.
Perseverance works every single time, if we let it work. Perseverance requires no natural ability. Perseverance can never fail. Perseverance is available to every single person. Perseverance can help all of us create any outcome we would like. All of those statements are true. That being the case, why aren’t we all living the lives we are created for? Simple, we don’t let perseverance do its work. I need you to understand this idea very clearly; when you start in the process of creating any result you want, there are only two possible outcomes. You will either achieve it, or you will give up.
People believe that the two outcomes possible with any aspiration are success or failure. However, there is no failure if you persevere. There are lessons, modifications, and different approaches, but if you keep going, there is no failure, only the outcome you desire. The condition is that you allow perseverance to do its work. The definition of perseverance from a well-known online dictionary: continued effort to do or achieve something, even when this is difficult or takes a long time.
Perseverance is our servant, our employee, and our greatest ally. However, no servant, employee, or ally can help if you don’t let them work. In addition to that, all employees need certain things provided for them to work well; trust, training, purpose, and compensation. So, what does perseverance really need to work well? Simple; time, effort, perspective, and patience.
There is no way I would have ever played professional football if I hadn’t let perseverance do its work. It was 20 months between my first and second senior games of professional football. The only way I made it through all the rejection, heartbreak, doubt, fear, anger, frustration, and temptation to give up, was perseverance. I let it work, and it worked. It was that second game of professional sport which really started my career.
There is no way I would be the author of almost ten books today if I hadn’t let perseverance do its work. Over twenty years ago, I was working seven days per week in two businesses, and in almost $100,000 debt when I made a random decision to write a book. I believed it would be the ticket to help me live a life of meaning, joy, and abundance. I had no idea how to write a book, I had minimal time, and really didn’t know how long the process would take. Without letting perseverance do its work, I would not have survived the day-after-day struggle to find time, to believe I could write a book that would make any kind of difference in the world, or to find a publisher. Then after two years, with a publisher, I required more perseverance to see if it would sell and do what I needed to do to make it successful.
What perseverance delivered was beyond my imagination. Four years after starting this process, with no idea what I was doing, with just faith and allowing perseverance to do its work, I was able to retire from an 80-hour per week personal training career and get out of debt. All from the decision to write a book and allowing perseverance to do its work. Perseverance is the most powerful tool we all have, as long as we let it do its work.
It’s not all sunshine and roses, as I wish the same could be said for many other areas of my life where I didn’t let perseverance do its work. I gave up on playing the guitar far too soon when I was younger, and it’s something I regret today. I have lost many relationships because I didn’t allow perseverance to do its work in terms of building strong connections. Even today, as I am going through some challenges in my life, I am tempted to find a quick-fix and reaction-based answer, when the only way through is to let perseverance do its work.
I think I have made my point loud and clear. So, all I will ask you is, what area of your life do you know would be better, as you would like, if you just let perseverance do its work? I will leave you with that thought. To help, I would encourage you to listen to my podcasts from this week; When I stop fighting, with Daryl Dittmer, and The brain revolution, with Dominika Staniewicz. It works every time, and it will deliver everything you want, so, this week, why not just let perseverance do its work.
by admin | 5 Jul, 2025 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
I think it’s fair to say we all want freedom in our lives. There are many things limiting and constraining us we would love to break free from. I know that is certainly true for me. Many of the things we are trying to gain freedom in will take time and work. However, ultimate freedom is readily available and a decision.
Where would you like to create freedom in your life? Would you like to be free financially so that you can do all the things you want to do? Do you want to be free from health challenges and limitations so that you can be the best version of yourself? Do you want to be free from conflict so that you can enjoy amazing relationships? Do you want to be free from stress and anxiety so you can focus on things that are important? I think it is fair to say we all want these things.
All of those things will require focus, hence why maybe you haven’t achieved all of them at this point in your life. However, there is one type of freedom, the most important type of freedom, that is ultimate freedom, and you can have it right now if you choose. So, what is it?
That’s a great question, and as always, I’m not going to answer it straight away, but see if you can work it out. I’ve already told this story at some stage; and it goes back to the time when COVID-19 first started to impact our lives. As a speaker, a large percentage of my income relied on me standing in front of people and talking to groups. At the start of 2020, I had many paid speaking gigs booked for the first half of the year. It represented speaking to many people and earning many tens of thousands of dollars in return. We all know what happened in March 2020 when the word started spreading about this global pandemic.
All of a sudden, panic set in all around the world. Places started shutting down, events were canceled, and consequently, every single one of my paid speaking gigs evaporated in front of my eyes, all within a couple of days. Did I feel free at that time? Not only did I not feel free, I felt imprisoned by uncertainty, by anxiety, by all the things I could no longer do. In that moment, fear rose in my body, anxiety hit me, and I slid down the wall and dissolved into a massive and earth-shattering tantrum. After about 15 minutes of stomping, crying, swearing, and all the other normal stuff that goes along with a tantrum, I stopped myself.
In that moment I knew there was only one person responsible for moving forward positively and productively, and that person was me. I decided to stop focusing on all the things I’d lost, all the things I couldn’t do, and the uncertainty of the future, and I responded by asking myself a question. The question was, there are things that, right now, I can’t do. So, what can I do? In a heartbeat, God went to work putting ideas in my mind about all the things I could do at that time. I knew there was a greater need for my message and skillset. I knew that, with technology, everything I was doing face-to-face, I could do online. I knew that I could move from a local audience to a global audience. In that moment, I felt ultimate freedom to do whatever I wanted to do. I felt empowered, excited, and free.
Within a few short weeks and months, I had replaced the speaking gigs I had lost, and was working with companies, schools, and groups, not just in Melbourne, but all over the world. 2020 and 2021 were the best two years I have ever had from a speaking and influencing perspective. This situation taught me about ultimate freedom. It taught me that circumstances are not my prison. It taught me that losing money was not a limiting factor. It taught me very clearly that ultimate freedom is not something I have to earn or work for, but something I already have within me. Have you guessed it yet?
Ultimate freedom is contained in one word. That word is responsibility. Really? That’s it? I can hear you asking. Yes, that is it. Let’s just look a little more closely at the word, because it is the amalgamation of two words that made this a little clearer for me. Those two words are Response Ability. In other words, your ability to respond, not react. Reacting happens when we look directly at the circumstance and think about how and why it is so bad. Responding is looking at how the situation can actually work for you. Can you see the massive difference? Reacting will imprison you in fear, lead to poor choices, and trap you in a dark place. Responding will liberate your mind, open up options for you to learn, grow, and improve and give you ultimate freedom to be the best version of yourself.
This message is very much reinforced in my podcasts this week with Wilk Wilkinson, called Ultimate Freedom, and Back pain be gone, with Ben O’Loghlin. The next time something happens in your life that looks on the surface, like a bad thing, ask yourself a very simple question. That question; how is this happening for me? The moment you ask that question, ultimate freedom is yours. It will unlock ideas, it will empower you, and it will leave you knowing that you can never be held hostage by any circumstance ever again. That truly is ultimate freedom.
by admin | 17 May, 2025 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
I recently had a wonderful conversation on podcast with Jonah Primo called Your philosophy, and as the names suggests, was wonderfully philosophical. The conversation started with Jonah talking about a funeral he had to attend, and we very quickly dived into this philosophical and reflective conversation. We both agreed it is not morbid or depressing to talk about death, in fact, the more we’re aware of our certain demise, the more likely we are to focus on the life we have.
I surprised myself when I came out with the statement as we were discussing how many people can find talking about death a negative and depressing topic. They even worry about when they may die. So, I said, the question is not when will we die, but when are we going to live? The reality is that every day we live is one which gets closer to our last, and I’ve spent too much of my life drifting through, watching the days pass without really focusing on living every single moment. So, in this week’s blog, I want to encourage you to ask yourself the question, if it’s not happening now, when am I going to really start living?
So, what does that mean?
That depends on what your definition of truly living a joyful life is, and what that life looks like. It also relies on you honestly evaluating the time you are spending right now, and whether you would consider it actually living, or just existing. For me, I know when I’m just existing because I feel more anxiety, I experience more stress, and things annoy me more than they normally would. For me, that means I don’t have a positive purpose or focus, and so I allow situations and circumstances to affect my moods and behaviors.
I know when I’m really living, and it has nothing to do with what I’m actually doing, but everything to do with how I’m feeling. I was asked in a podcast recently, with Steve Hodgson, what my definition of success is these days. For much of my life, that definition would be reliant on the achievement of some external goal. Whether that be, selection in the senior team, publishing a book, money in the bank, lifting a certain weight or running under a certain time, a business level attained, or some other external accomplishment. That is no longer what I aspire to.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy all those things. I am proud of my sporting, writing, health, and business achievements. And, I am still aspiring to create more in my life, however, it is no longer how I define success. These days for me, my definition of success is a feeling. When I have that feeling, I know I’m truly living. So, what is that feeling? When my eyes open in the morning, and it’s very early by the way, I know I’m living when my initial feeling is excitement, gratitude, and anticipation of a wonderful day. To me, that means I have exciting, purposeful, joyful, and wonderful things I’m working on. Whether that’s business related, in my personal life, or connected with contributing to the community in some way.
If I wake up with anxiety, stress, uncertainty, confusion, or other associated feelings, then I know I’m just existing and it’s an immediate trigger for me to reflect, reevaluate where I’m at, refocus and get back into purposeful living. If I am honest, this ebbs and flows, however these days I am much more aware and can get back to living very quickly. My question now is for you. Do you feel like you are living or just existing? Please take the time to reflect on and answer this question honestly. How do you feel when you wake up? Excited, grateful, and purposeful, or stressed, anxious, and tired? If it is the former, then keep living, and keep doing what you are doing. If it is the latter, then my next question is; are you ready to change it? Are you ready to start really living? What does that look and feel like for you? What do you need to stop doing and what do you get to start doing? Please take the time to answer these questions. We get one shot at life, so why not make it a cracker!
If you feel you need help in this area, please listen to my podcast with Jonah, and my other podcast this week with Mark Firehammer, called Who you think you are. If you still need more help, please reach out to me. Death is inevitable, existing is temporary, and living is a choice. Please make the choice to live every moment with joy, gratitude, and meaning, starting right now.
