Outback Mind: Creating change for men’s mental health

In this enlightening Stronger Together episode, we tackle the often overlooked topic of men's mental health with our esteemed guest, Aaron Schultz, founder of the Outback Mind Foundation. Aaron's insights shine a spotlight on the unique challenges faced by men in today's fast-paced society, particularly those grappling with the unpredictability of shift work and other modern-day pressures.

Drawing from his extensive experience and personal journey, Aaron underscores the significance of aligning with the Earth's natural circadian rhythms. He believes that by attuning ourselves to these inherent patterns, men can find a more harmonious mental space, even amidst the complexities of contemporary life.

We further discuss a myriad of actionable strategies for maintaining balance and mental wellness. From the grounding effects of nature and the calming benefits of stretching, Aaron offers practical techniques to help men release tension and achieve inner tranquillity. The conversation also touches on the vital role employers and communities play in creating supportive environments for men's mental wellbeing.

Emphasising the importance of community-wide efforts, Aaron passionately advocates for a collective approach in addressing and de-stigmatising men's mental health issues. This episode serves as a poignant reminder of our shared responsibility to uplift and support men in their journey towards mental harmony.

Thank you for listening to this episode of "Stronger Together" We hope you enjoyed the conversation and gained valuable insights.

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Transcript

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Welcome to Stronger Together, a powerful podcast series hosted by IMPACT Community Services. Join us as we discuss the importance of wellbeing support systems and how a strong community can be a lifeline for those in need. I'm Tanya O'Shea, managing director of IMPACT. And Hi, I'm Kate Rumballe IMPACT's communications officer. This episode may contain discussions on topics such as mental health, violence or other sensitive issues that could be triggering or distressing for some listeners. If you find this content challenging, we encourage you to pause the episode and seek immediate support. Information on where to seek help will be provided at the end of this episode or on our website. IMPACT.ORG.AU. Please prioritise your well-being while listening. Before we begin, we wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we live, work and meet. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present and future for they hold the memories, traditions, the culture, hopes and values not only of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people but for all Australians Now let's delve into the important conversations awaiting us in today's episode. Hi, welcome to our latest edition of Stronger Together. Hi, Kate. Hi, Tanya. It's great to be back. Yeah, it absolutely is. I love these opportunities to have conversations, particularly when we have someone in the room with us. And today we have Aaron Schultz from the Outback Mind Foundation. Gidday, Aaron, welcome. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, it's lovely to have you. Now, Kate had the privilege of going to a session that you hosted here at IMPACT Community Services this morning. How was it, Kate? Tell us a little bit without giving too much away. Without giving too much away. It was fantastic. And I think that what you're doing with the Outback Mind Foundation is such an important mission. Definitely need more of what you're doing in this world. So thank you. Thanks for having me again. Thank you. So today, as we're recording this, we're coming to you during Mental Health Month, we're actually decided here at IMPACT. We would like to focus on educating around mental wellbeing, looking for opportunities to talk about it, talk openly about it. And we were connected to Aaron. Now, interestingly, Aaron worked for us on a couple of projects in the Discovery Coast. So for those who don't know, about an hour and a half north of Bundaberg, we have this amazing piece of paradise called Agnes Water and we refer to it as the Discovery Coast region. Beautiful, Aaron, how lucky you to live in that part of the world. It's special and I feel grateful to be there it actually holds a lot of Indigenous history and heritage there that's been created into a place of relaxation, a place of, you know, beauty and natural abundance. So yeah, very lucky. I think it's yeah. Such a beautiful combination and such an enriched. such an enriching area, I guess from a calming perspective, because I love water beaches and that brings me an amazing amount of calm. We all have our things, though, don't we? But for you living in that region and that sense of calm and peacefulness that you bring to your practice, what do you sort of lean into in your own practice? Yeah, that's an interesting one. Thanks for asking that one, because, yeah, I have a practice that I do every day for 2 hours in the morning. So it's getting up before the sun, if I can, and just tuning in. So it's physical activity, moving the body, stretching the body, and then it's going into meditation. They call it the Ambrosial hours between three and six, you can get up and tune in at that time. Then you find that your nervous system starts to relax a little bit, but it's good to move the physical body and move what we call Chi around the body. And then sort of once that's working properly, then meditation works a lot easier. The body seems to be more subtle. And yeah, I was very fortunate to be able to start learning those practices quite a few years ago, and it's still something that I do every day. So for me personally, it's about creating the right environment for me to feel calm and relaxed. I couldn't do that pretty much, you know, as well in the middle of the city. But I certainly think that area that provides a special gift because it's got a nature and it's also got, you know, access to ocean and rivers and those types of things as well. So, yeah, it's very important for me to be able to support my wellbeing, to be in the right environment. And Aaron you're a meditation coach and a yoga teacher as well, aren't you? Yeah. How does that influencing what you're doing with the Outback Mind Foundation? Look at certainly a reasonable component to it because it actually helps people understand a little bit about the technology of the nervous system. And we've all got one when we're in the red zone, as we talked about this morning, it's about how to be able to use tools to be able to get you back into feeling balanced and calm again. Because when we are experiencing poor mental health, we're in that red zone consistently. So to be able to provide people with education and tools and how to self regulate is a really important part of what we do. And it's something that we don't learn you know, in modern society. We're pretty much educated to support the economy and we sort of go down that path without, you know, looking after ourselves. So the self regulation piece is really important. So if you look at the human body, yoga is very good for us, the physical practice of yoga, but that basically leads into our meditative practice as well, which is basically helping the mind become more subtle and settled. And that that helps us be who we really are. And we are meant to be calm and relaxed most of the time rather than stressed and anxious. I got to tell you, I'm just listening to you and I'm actually feeling calm myself just as you're talking. You've got this really calming nature that you bring through your presence and your energy, which is just it's beautiful. People must feed off of that because you would just create a ripple within the people that you meet, I would imagine. I guess for me personally, I come from a very busy environment, farming community, and it's always, you know, you're on the switched on all the time the only relaxation time is through drinking or eating sponge cakes or whatever, you know. So for me to learn to relax took a lot of work. You know, I was, I was always outside myself looking for something to do. So I guess because I do practice it, I do every day, it helps with that. You know, you know yourself. If you can provide people with a calming influence, you can help them learn to get into their parasympathetic nervous system a bit more quicker because I feel safe. That's why it's important in the men’s circles to, you know, provide that space for people. So they can feel, you know, they can talk about things openly. I think that's really important without fear of judgement or, you know, anything which we mainly experience in modern society. You know, the first thing that a man's cautious of is being judged. You know If you can help them feel safe and able to communicate freely, it's amazing how they can shift themselves rather than looking outside themselves for something to help them shift. That unlearning. So you talked about, you know, these lifestyles and these patterns that we build over time. You know, your busyness, the always switched on, I think you called it. And I think for many of us, we get into that sort of Groundhog Day where it becomes challenging to find the time to wind back some of those practices and actually spend the time needed to unlearn, and then change and find new practice that actually serves us better. Yes. what advice do you have for people? Because you've been here, You've just said, you know, always switched on. So where did you start in being able to start winding that back? It really it comes down to providing yourself with a structure which is achievable for you. So committing to something on a daily basis and that's not negotiable. So I believe in humanology. The early morning is best before you start your day to do something which gets you grounded. So for me personally, it was committing to going to the gym to start with. This gets right back to the fear factor for me living in Tasmania, I was so stressed with my job that I went to a GP and I said, You've got two options. You can either take medication or you can exercise. So I was fearful straight away because I didn't want to go to the gym to be judged. So that night I got home and we lived in a regional area where we never got junk mail and there was a flier to the first 24 hour gym in Australia was going to open. So that started with day one and then it was day 7 and then day 30 and all of a sudden it became a habit after a while. But I committed to changing myself and I really committed to consistency so that that really transformed my life. Then I realised after a while that my mind was still busy, so I took that into learning meditation. So yes, that's where I turn the corner and started to realise that I had to balance the two. If you look at Chinese tradition, they call it the yin and the yang. So you know, if someone's at a point of crisis to be able to help them learn routine I think is really helpful because if someone can turn a corner and start to pick up a routine and start to look after their own self-care, it can be amazing what can happen. But I think if you can start to take autonomy yourself and empower yourself rather than be disempowered, that can make a huge difference to the way you perceive yourself and your own wellbeing as well. so much of what you just said resonates with me. The visit to the GP, that was me, the GP, giving me a fearful narrative around if you do not change the way that you are living your life by the age of 50, you will have had a stroke. Because I was running that high, my adrenals were just absolutely crashing by two, three o’clock in the afternoon. So I absolutely am hearing that story, you know, and that fear that drives the change in behaviour. Wouldn't it be nice if we had those skills that sat underneath that? As you said, we were taught this stuff earlier so that it wasn't fear that was driving the change that we were actually committing earlier to turning out for ourselves, you know, to doing the things that matter, to keeping that accountability and consistency to our own self leadership practice that enabled us to turn up as our best selves so that we could get that calming state within the mind, but also allow the body to rest and recover as well. I just there's so much, so much that I want to dig into and I know we've only got a small amount of time. Kate Sort of looking at me. Tania There's lots of other questions we need to ask here, and I'm indulging myself in and squeezing every bit of knowledge that we can out of. Aaron Well, while we've got him here, so thank you for indulging me. Aaron I have handed in some questions in set questions, I haven't asked one of them yet. So let's dig in to the questions that we were actually going to ask. Aaron So all of this beautiful learning that you have grounded within yourself said, you know, it's there's been awkward, there's been uncomfortable moments for me where I've actually had to push myself outside of my comfort zone. So all of these beautiful learnings, you've felt it yourself, you know what it's like. And then one day you went, I want to teach this to other people and I'm going to establish my own foundation. Tell us about the Outback Mind Foundation. What inspired that spark in you to go, I want to do that. I want to create that now for others? Yeah. Thank you. Well, just to sort of start before I sort of go back a little bit, I come from a farming community and I know I felt peaceful in that community where there was just space, open space to feel calm again and comfortable within myself. So the outback for me personally makes me feel grounded and helps me feel grounded. And, you know, if I need to reconnect, I can go out there and just disconnect. And that's something that we're not doing very well as humans in modern society. So getting back to that, the story with Buddhism, one of the monks said to me, How about we get a men's circle going here? So I did that back in 2013 and just created space for guys to come in, to have conversations, which they were probably not used to having. I originally come from a clinical mental health background, so I sort of diverted into that for a while. So it just made sense for me to be able to provide education from a prevention point of view, sort of fast tracking a little bit. 2017 My mum died back in Victoria and she died before that, my dad was struggling with his mental health. So I went back to look after him basically moved back to Victoria. I thought, What am I going to do? So first thing was to go back and do my yoga teacher training, bring that into the community because there's lots of issues with suicide and the facilities that I have fortunately. So I started the Outback Mind, back in Victoria, in Horsham where I'm from, started the men's circle type thing where guys come together to have conversations. I actually started to work with football clubs, so the community actually like had a dip in suicide in that period while I was there. So that's where that all sort of started the Outback Mind was sort of born then I wrote a book around the same time just about my own journey. So people could read it and sort of see evidence on a pathway that people could possibly take. Long story short, I moved back to Victoria in 2017. I decided February 2020 to move up to Queensland just before COVID. So that's how I ended up sort of up here in central Queensland working in the mental health space. And I just noticed that there was the same issues here as what there was back in Victoria, guys weren’t talking and there wasn't spaces for them to communicate. So that's pretty much where it became, you know, just a bit of a side thing into our, into a charity set up as a DGR charity, it's sort of gone from there. So we were sort of creating spaces for guys to have conversations throughout smaller communities throughout Queensland. We wanted to be able to expand that a hell of a lot more moving forward because I know what we do works really well and if we can provide that access to people, I think eventually people will start to gravitate, to it more and more, and they'll start to realise that there is otherwise communicate other than around booze. But to be able to help men learn that they can break those cycles, I think, you know, our role moving forward and be able to provide space that's critically important. And so you touched on with men in particular, that stigma. Some of those issues, I guess, that men are facing. Tell us about that and how you're starting to break down some of the barriers around that. Yeah, look, you know, there's probably a couple of most common that that guys face and that is, I suppose, stuck stuck behaviours with regards to the why that dad it and why he does it and way he wants to change, he doesn't want to feel judged and, and shamed for doing something different. So guys have got this undercurrent of curiosity there and it takes a lot of courage for someone to come forward to be able to open up about that because they don't talk to their wives about it or anyone in their family. And that's pretty common. So to be able to provide a space for someone where they can see others talking openly and honestly, it's amazing what happens in the gears shift for them. So that's the first one. You know, the next one is usually a habit that their finding hard to break guys, you know, it's drinking, drugs, porn, god, you know, there's also there’s a plethora of different things that they get stuck in. They don't feel I wouldn't say brave enough, but confident enough to go to a clinical system for fear of being labelled with, you know, a diagnosis of something. And as I mentioned before, I think a lot of a lot of people can shift, I their given autonomy and they're empowered rather than being disempowered. People, men particularly don't want to be disempowered. They want to be empowered, but also given the ability to feel safe doing so. So that's probably the most common. What happens from there is they actually feel this bond and it's a regular part of their wellbeing strategy to come to these things so if they can come every fortnight. It gives them structure and stability. It's not something that they just do occasionally. They know how good it is for them to have conversations which are vulnerable because you do walk away. They are different from every one, a different person. We talked about the red zone this morning. A lot of guys come in the red zone and I do too, like, you know, because you take on a lot and you get there and you start to feel able to relax and open and express your emotions rather than suppress your emotions. In Australia, we're very good at suppressing our emotions and that's been intergenerational. So it's time to flip that around. And that's the most important thing that we actually can help a man do, is learn that skill to be able to learn how to shift gears, rather be sort of stuck. And it's a terrible feeling to feel stuck on that like personally. And that leads us to have poor mental health outcomes. And it's interesting as a woman sitting here listening to you, so I've got, you know, two boys in my household. I've got a husband and a son and I have learnt over the years that the way to have these conversations is not sit across from them, looking them straight in the eyes and going, okay, can we have a bit of a chat about this? Because it's making me feel uncomfortable or, you know, I want you to walk me through how you're feeling at the moment because in my experience, that's not the best way to actually find out what's going on internally for them. And I think those safe spaces that you talk about, you know, a safe space isn't sitting across from someone and eyeballing them. So as a mum, as a wife, what is the best advice for us, you know, in these situations when we might be concerned about a loved one or a family member or a friend, what's the best thing that we can do to support them if we're a little bit concerned about them? That's a good question because guys will put this shield around them pretty early if you're going to, you know, possibly ask the question. It's pretty much, you know, from my experience in my experience, actually giving the ability to be able to find a pathway that suits themselves, like giving you some options. You know, as I mentioned before, I think this prevention this continual prevention needs to be part of our make up moving forward, not waiting till something's wrong before we have to interrupt that because it will happen. It's inevitable that something will happen. But if you've got these tools and skills in your life that can actually help you shifts, then it's tremendous to see someone actually empowered. So that can do so. So you know, someone is feeling stuck, I think the first thing that we can possibly do is to start to get them to move their physical body more because we're all cocooned. And if you can actually help someone realise that that energy needs to be released, that can really help them, particularly for a man. So to be able to utilise that energy positively I think can help them move away from a feeling of trapped or closed in possibly. And that's what guys do, you know, and that's where learning to balance, you know, our lives it a little bit and we do end up, you know, feeling trapped and that energy sort of gets stuck in their bodies. So there is definitely room for clinical guidance and support there. But I wouldn't say it's a permanent solution that needs to be able to be identified and then some strategies put in place to try to help that individuals wellbeing to be able to find out why you're feeling a certain way and then be able to say, well, I'm going to do what I can to get on top of this feeling rather than sort of know have it sort of ebb and flow consistently. And a lot of it can also come down to diet, too, with the way we feel. So there's lots of different options you can possibly give an individual to help them find something which works for them, and then they become curious once they start to become curious rather than judgemental of themselves, and they'll start to open up from a wife’s point of view and maybe start to equip myself with some options. So you've got to go back to them and deliver it to them in a calm manner rather than a forceful manner you know, if wife or a mother comes along and you must do this, you must do that, they'll get pushback straight away, pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's a great bit of advice because we actually can't control what they do next can we, we like to think we can, you know, because we're coming from a place of love and support and want them to do something. However, we have to be comfortable with the fact that we actually can't control what they do next. And I love that idea of just providing those options for them to then come to their own decision. Yeah, absolutely agree, and it goes the other way too. The male needs to be able to understand what's happening with the females, what we need to be able to get education as men to be successful fathers and husbands in that too. So to be able to actually understand what's happening for our wives, I think is really important rather than just having an expectation. And that's it. That gets back to that intergenerational stuff too. Different parenting options, I think is a key for another key problem that we experience in men, men’s stuff. So, you know, the guy's got an expectation the way the kids should be raised and what's going to different expectations, the way the kids should be raised and that clashing all the time and that leads to conflict and potential separation and so forth too. So we provide awareness and education around that sort of stuff, which can really help them in the family unit too. Yeah, beautiful. And I'm just thinking blended families, you know, there's so many different dynamics within families and within relationships I'm sure that people need to navigate. So tell us more about what you do and how you do it differently that's actually creating change. Well, it's you know, first and foremost, we it's hard because we don't get any financial support or assistance for what we do, I sort of done it all my bad and give a lot of my time to it. I wouldn't say it frustrates me, but, you know, a lot of a lot of the funding and the support goes to the reactive side of mental health rather than the proactive, proactive and the preventive side of mental health. So we’re not actually like getting at it before it becomes a problem, and that's where we've missed the mark, you know, continually over generations, now it's time to disrupt that. So we got to keep doing what I do or what I do. But it’d be nice, we’d be able to have so much more impact if we had more assistance and people to collaborate with and that type of thing too? So yeah, that, that sort of things is tricky. But the change that I see people from having awareness and education and the ability to be able to, you know, express themselves, the ability for them to be able to learn new skills, life skills, which they've never had before, is very rewarding. You know, it's tremendous. But I need to make sure that I look after myself, too, and make sure that I'm sort of balanced before I can do that for others as well. So we train facilitators now to run these circles in other areas, and that's come from my own education. But also I have a lady that's a counsellor which is run women's circles for years. So we've been able to design this, this training program which talks about the masculine feminine type stuff and, you know, the things that guys will experience when they come into a circle and what to look out for, but also to be able to guide someone that's having that that relationship problem or whatever into a pathway. It's important for us to make sure we're guys are equipped with the awareness and tools of what could occur and for me to provide supervision for them afterwards. I think that's really key. That's something that I never got, you know, in the roles that I'd had over the years. There was never any one for me to express or talk to. You had a problem. You got to the app, which most blokes don't want to do because I want to feel like they're being labelled or or whatever with having an issue. So that's not the option. I think we've got to do more pre EAP work and that's what the men's circles are. They're actually pre EAP whether that be at home or whether it be, you know, at work or whatever. it's crisis prevention. Absolutely. So that EAP, we're talking employment assistance program, we're talking counselling, we're talking you know that that after exactly what you said after the event has happened. So it's the, the intervention, the pre work, the ownership. There's this A-word that I always use that I think is important and that's accountability because the only one that can do the work that's required is me. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to do the work, you know. Because it is hard, isn't. It is might work but it's talked about this this morning, it's a key function of human ology to do the work and not be in comfort consistently. We only grow when we're in some form of discomfort. And if we've got a choice at six in the morning to be able to get out of bed and do something which is going to set us up for the day or do something which is reactive, then we're going to get some currency from that. You know, we're going we're going to get an outcome from the work we do or the work we don't do, we've got a choice to do that. So to really start to invest in things, you know, so important, we invest heavily for things that are outside of our control but what we don't actually like, invest well into things that are inside our control. And I love the analogy of the grinding the gears, the, you know, keeping keeping things moving because people invest in cars, they get regular services on their cars or on the things that they've had a lot of money for. And in their own health, their wellbeing, their welfare. For some people, it doesn't even factor on their radar that they've actually got to invest upfront and regularly make a consistent investment, whether that's time, whether that's money, whether that's energy. They've got to put that investment into the bank. And for me, I look at it as a daily practice. So for me every day it's a practice in the way that I am, that I'm making that commitment to myself and I'm with you non-negotiable. I'm a lock, so I'm up early. One of the conversation, one of the conversations people often ask me about is What time do you go to bed then if you get up at that time. So you said, you know, between three and six, what time do you go to bed? Aaron Last night that was about 7-15, but usually it's between, you know, 7-30 and, you know, 8-30 most nights go to bed early and you get up if you get up in that time, you've got the world to yourself. It's peaceful. You can get to know yourself better. You know, you got no distractions now, interruptions at all. And it's just amazing. So being able to, you know, find that rhythm, but that rhythm sort of takes a bit of discipline and effort to be able to do that. And I just think if we can work with Circadian Rhythm of the Earth to be able to tune into that a little bit more, but things start to work better mentally for us. Absolutely. Yeah. And so it's making those key decisions for yourself because, you know, the ideal scenario is everything just runs like clockwork. And if we want to go to bed at 7-30, we get to go to bed at 7-30 and get this beautiful night's sleep and quality. And, you know, we wake up all chipper the next day. But that's not life, right? That's not how it how it rolls. Yep, that's right. Yeah. You've got to be able to understand that sometimes you get knocked out of whack, but then to be able to sort of come back into some form of alignment again, it's like, you know, some of the guys come to events like, what do you do, shift work, you know, 24 hours and things like that. So we actually like help them learn structure, what is a positive way that you can end your after your shift, like when you get home in the morning and how can you easy out and how can you get back up so you're going to be in some form of balance. So when you do got back into this normalisation, how you can do that a bit better? Most guys are going home and knocking off five or six beers. You know, to help them like start to break that habit to start with and then start to learn how they can proactively manage their nervous system rather than reactively. And that's the type of education I'm trying to deliver into those workplaces but they don’t want to have a bar of it. I need to be able to help an individual learn a post shift in a pre shift intervention, which can help them, you know, and if they’re starting to get that education they start to figure themselves out a little bit more and then you've got better mental health outcomes you know for the workplace but more importantly it actually goes into the community and to their families and so forth too and that's how we get better at mental health moving forward. So, Aaron, in this morning's workshop, you spoke about some techniques that people can use to regulate their nervous system. Can you just touch on those now? You know, a lot of people, particularly a lot of people, experience a lot of tension into their body with what they experience throughout the day. So whether you're at work or whether you're in operating modern society, you know, we're taking on a lot of tension. So the first one is to stretch. If you can stretch the facia in the body for three or more minutes by holding our posture open, it will just help the functionality of the nervous system learn to be able to settle down. The other is to lengthen the spine. So do a stretch, which helps your spine lengthen again. You'll you start to feel a lot of release. So when you start to feel that release and you start to feel a little bit more calm and balanced too. So that's that, that's a couple certainly being able to, to do some meditation is good to be able to learn how to sit quietly. But stretching before meditation is good because it actually helps that tension relieve from the body to release from the body. So have it, you know, meaningful, open conversations with people which are deep about what you've experienced through the day or just in general to release that. This is releasing practices which basically help relieve tension physical or verbal so that's pretty much what they are. The other thing is to make sure that your digestion system is working well, making sure that you're trying to nourish yourself properly there. They're probably the main ones. The other is to do some sound therapy which can actually help you learn to calm down. You can imagine our sympathetic nervous system being switched on all the time in modern society that's really not getting much of a break with the devices that we're on consistently. So it's about a switch in your parasympathetic nervous system, which is our calm natural state. So to be able to be aware of that and do things which you can, you can switch from your sympathetic parasympathetic, it's really necessary, but using the physical body to get to the mind is really important and understanding when your mind's at speed how to learn to settle that down, and calm it down it takes time now nostril breathing, being able to breathe through your nostrils more than your mouth. And notice when you're actually breathing through your mouth shallow, your breath is. So you can regulate you nervous system by getting in tune with your breath again, too. So I really recommend having a deep stretch before you go to bed. It is helps you learn to relax into sleep rather than keeping that tension in the body. You can see body is going to be agitated where trying to sleep have a deep stretch and then go to bed and then you'll actually sleep better. Yeah. So this is a few tools, certainly. Find out what's good for you and what works for you, but learn a bit about what switches you on, but also learn you know, how to switch off. We've got to learn how to switch off and get better at that for sure. I often hear people give a common excuse is I don't have enough time to do these practices. Now in what you just shared with us, I heard 2 to 3 minutes, 3 to 4 minutes when not talking about a lot of time that you need to dedicate to this every day as a practice that you can do before you go to bed and just really calm that system. And those are things. I guess what I love about some of those things is you could do them at work. That's right. Simply enough. You know, when you're taking a break, you can just do those simple things at work. And that's going to be embraced and made common in the workplace. So, you know, to learn that it's okay to switch off and provide the right tools for yourself to do that, I think it's critically important, you know, and have that is a non-negotiable for yourself. And if as an employer recognise you're doing these prevention strategies to help yourself, they're going to get a better employee. That's as simple as that, you know. So it's going to be sort of driven from the top too. The management have got to be able to observe it and embrace it and try and encourage it throughout the workplace and notice signs when someone is a little bit wired or amped up to help them and that they can they can calm down safely in the workplace and be able to, you know, do that with encouragement. And modelling, I think to, you know, modelling those behaviours, sharing experience through those behaviours for us. I guess it's important to have internal and external spaces so that people, if they want to go outside, we've got this huge amazing fig tree that is all set up that people can go and just wander down there and hang out doing the whole nature bath type thing, but just hang out in nature, you know, and it might only be a few minutes, but it's amazing just getting some sunlight on your eyes, getting out in the sun, under the tree. It just energises you instantly, getting your feet on the ground, taking the shoes off. I talk about that a lot, taking the shoes off, just feet on the ground. Get them dirty. It's just. Beautiful. Absolutely. Where we're meant to be in nature, that that's a natural environment and consistently in modern society, we are being de-natured. So to have that reconnection is really critically important for me personally as I have said to have that in my own environment, my own ecosystem I'm surrounded by, it is really, really important. But if you're not able to access that, try and make time to access it as much as much as you possibly can, get an earthing blanket for your bed, you know, do some things which can actually help you feel grounded if you haven't got the ability to be able to go and get your sand on your feet or jump into a river or the ocean or whatever, there's some simple things you can possibly do to help you, you know, feel more grounded. I think that's key, you know, and we've got to be able to do that better because when we're not grounded, that's when we start to have disease. Absolutely, yes. I read this article the other day and I hadn't heard this term before, soft hiking, it was called. So there's so much, you know, physically, you know, getting out there and hiking. And this was very much around mindfulness. Yeah, mindfulness. And when you're going for a hike, thinking more about mentally, how you are recharging when you're out there, I thought it was super cool. I love some of this language. Some of it's a little bit wanky, but some of the language, you know, I really like hearing these new terms that people have come up with and yeah, it's pretty cool. I used to call it the secret to natural walking back in the day. So being able to mindfully, you know, walk your way through a situation environment, but it's getting back to what we already know. We're just going to start to remember. Yeah, absolutely. I've loved this conversation and Kate keeps looking at me giving me without giving me the wind up signal. It's like, okay, I'm getting the evil eye from Kate that we need to find it up. But there's two more things if I'm allowed to, Kate, that I'd like to ask. It's just as well I've got Kate keeping me on track because we could literally be here all day. I love this conversation, self awareness and reaching your full potential. So for us here at IMPACT, we're very much around improving lives and providing opportunities for people to reach their full potential if that's what they want, whatever that looks like for them. Let us, you know, tell us what we can do to support you to do that. What does that look like for you and the Outback Mind Foundation? Everyone's got a gift they just, they don't know it a lot of the time. You just got to learn to unpack that to be able to help an individual find what that actually is and what lights them up and to be able to help them on that journey I think is really important. You know, So having the awareness itself, first and foremost around some of the skills that we may not know, that's, you know, understanding the body, understanding the way we operate, empowering ourselves rather than being disempowered, I think is really key. And staying on a pathway of self-care and self commitment is really, really key. And if men are provided a space where they're in an environment with people that are on that journey, the chances of them lifting up and being able to go on that journey as well is very, very possible. We've got to start to shift away from disbelief into belief. If we can actually believe that where we're here for a reason and we've got a, you know, a genuine purpose for being here and try and stay along with that, we're going to have better mental health outcomes and we're going to start to live life fully because we're not here just to be disempowered. As I said, we've got to where we've got a unique reason for being here. If we can actually help people start to learn what that is and start to help them on that journey, then we can have better outcomes in communities. So I think for sure. Beautiful and the Queensland Alliance Mental Health use this term around building the mental wealth of our nation. You know, how do we how do we, everyone of us in communities, how do we do that and reduce the stigma around mental illness. So what would be your advice on how we can better work together as a community to reduce the stigma, particularly surrounding men's mental health and wellbeing? Yeah, certainly if you look at a place like Bundaberg, which we’re in today I would like to see key buy in from the councils, so from, you know, the mayor, the CEO, so it actually starts to be embodied, embraced from, from their perspective. I like to see large key industries starting to do the same thing. So I really recognise and this has been possibly a crisis in the area and what they can actually do to help them make a shift in the community. Unfortunately, anything that's an announcement they'll gravitate towards because it'll make them look good I don’t want that. I want them to actually like, believe this and embody it. And actually you deliver it properly rather than just doing it be really driven from the top down. So I'll set it to the Gladstone community. You've got a great opportunity because we've got so many issues of male suicide in this region and we're not doing anything about it. You've got a great opportunity to be able to flip this around and I've invited key industry leaders to have conversations which they are too afraid to have. They're not actually, you know, fronting up and having this. So if we're going to be serious about it, we've got to get serious about it, and if the mayor is on board or someone of power and influence in the community and they’re starting to have conversations about it, then we'll start to see some changes. I can give you an example. We started out a men’s circle in Roma, the mayor came to that, the week before he went to his best mate son’s funeral, who took his life and he was able to share that with us. So all of a sudden he's seeing the power of what this actually does. And now they're hopefully starting to make some changes from that from that level. So it's got to be a whole of community effort to make changes. And I'm still looking for the first community in Australia to say well yeah, we're taking prevention seriously now and we need all, all organisations that are operating under our watch to be able to do a well because it's got such a tremendous ability to be able to impact that mental health of the community moving forward. Wow. That's a that's an incredibly strong call to action, calling out to our mayor, to our local members, to our industry leaders, to our local business leaders, particularly the males, to step into this space and say we want to create change and we want to lead this change as a community for sure. I know if I can stand in front of a room of 100 men, there'll be the majority that walk away from that conversation with some different thinking than they possibly had before that walked into it. And the more consistently we can do that and we're going to start to see some changes moving forward, for sure. So if you look at mental health, for an example, it's 100 men in the room. There's probably a reasonable amount which are already experiencing poor mental wellbeing. If they can learn to be able to change that. One other area that we do, which I'm really passionate about, is domestic violence prevention. You know, there's a reasonable amount of those guys which are potentially at risk of offending as well if we can help them learn how to manage emotional charge and do that proactively. And that's driven from the top down through the workplace and through community, we can have a better impact in these communities. We've got ridiculous rates of that at the moment that's just being accepted. You know, we're not doing much to prevent it, so it's very much similar. Those outcomes come from poor mental health primarily. So to be able to do some prevention, we've got critical mass. I think it's really, key and important. Yeah. And to get that long term change, we're not talking changing everything overnight. We're talking exactly how we're turning up and making that commitment to ourselves. It's these small commitments daily, adjustments, the shifts that we will see that will start to accumulate over time. That's the commitment that we're asking for. Is the consistency we'll look at. physical safety in the workplace, which start to be implemented 20 years ago. We're starting to see better evidence of that now. If we can take the same approach with the way we approach mental health, we're going to start to see better outcomes next decade and beyond for sure. It's got to be like a commitment from a community and people of influence that can actually make those changes. Yeah, well, we're lucky to have you leading the charge in this space Aaron, thank you so much. As I said, I could keep talking, Kate, but I think we. Do have to wrap up unfortunately now. We do. What a great conversation. Thank you for being so generous with your time and all that beautiful wisdom and experience. Congratulations. As you said, this is a it's a labour of love for you turning up and doing this work is what I'm hearing. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. It's not easy, but I know if I just keep doing it, then hopefully, we'll get some support and we can start to have more of an impact. So how do we learn more about the Outback Mind Foundation? Just the website outbackmind.org.au, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook? Pretty much. Yeah. And we will make sure that we drop some links down in comments of this episode. Excellent. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Aaron, for joining us today. What a pleasure. And we've got another workshop this afternoon, so I'll be attending that one for sure. Looking forward to that. No worries, thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Stronger Together. Sometimes the issues we discuss in Stronger Together may be triggering for some people. If you've been affected by the topics we have discussed today, please reach out for help. You can call Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14, or you can use the chat option on their website. If you live in the Wide Bay BURNETT region, you can also reach out to us at IMPACT Community Services. Go to IMPACT.ORG.AU and click on the make a referral button at the top if you wish to Self-Refer. We hope you've enjoyed today's episode and if so, please remember to hit the subscribe button. Until next time, Remember, we're stronger together.