#36 Handle Change, Own Your Sh*t, Walk the Talk | Jon Bond
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
- Alan Watts
In this episode, we delve into the delicate balance of living purposefully with the people we choose, while also acknowledging that life has its easy and hard moments, and that living with anxiety can be managed in a healthier manner.
Jon shares personal experiences about navigating friendships in the context of anxiety, including discussions around **suicide and the importance of being the friend who is willing to talk about the hard stuff. We discuss the concept of "bargaining chips" in relationships and how transactional interactions can impact our mental health. Along with handling constructive feedback, the tendency to take every negative comment as criticism, and finding ways to thrive despite life's challenges
Tune in to this episode for a candid exploration in the dichotomy between emotional and logical responses to anxiety and other emotions, and how they affects our decision-making within relationships and work. It's a true pleasure to share this authentic conversation with a fellow health and fitness coach / cancer survivor / all around bad a**!
**Trigger Warning. timestamp 22:52 mentions suicide
About The Guest:
Jon Bond is the president and co-founder at Hybrid Personal Training, MMA & Fitness, currently based out of Los Angeles, California. His experience in the fitness started when he was 13 years old and have since grew with his love for everything that has to do with gyms. From building communities to building businesses globally, Jon isn’t afraid to care fiercely about what he does. Jon’s business in Hong Kong
Connect with Jon on Instagram
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About Emily:
Tackling Minds Podcast Website | Tackling Minds Instagram
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TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Jon Bond: And I don't have any issues saying what drives us cuz it's fucking true. You know, if, if you don't believe that both drives you and drives a lot of decisions, then you're not taking a look at your life. Like there are times, don't get me wrong, but what I'm gonna sacrifice my whole life to lie on my death bed and go, fuck God.
[00:00:19] Jon Bond: I was good at sacrificing happiness for what money that you now can't spend, you know, people that you now can't spend time with. Success doesn't equal looks, success doesn't always equal happiness successfully. These words that we see all over social media that everyone's fucking pushing you towards.
[00:00:36] Jon Bond: And this is how you shouldn't live your life and you have to sacrifice.
[00:00:39] Emily Tan: So John, I have been wanting to get you on the podcast for a long time and it is largely because we have both been in the fitness industry for a long time. I think our topics and our language have always been around health and fitness and nutrition.
[00:00:54] Emily Tan: Like those are the only aspects of health. But you and I both know that health also [00:01:00] largely covers mental fitness, mental muscle. How are we putting in those reps when it comes to our emotional and psychological health? So, just to catch everybody up, could you give us a rundown on how you have been dealing with your obstacles?
[00:01:18] Emily Tan: Maybe not from the beginning, cuz we ain't got all year, but more recently, what have you been really working on and how has it shaped you to who you are right now, this minute?
[00:01:29] Jon Bond: I think that I, I guess the most recent thing that I've, I've started to, to have, which I've never had in my life before is, is a level of anxiety.
[00:01:38] Jon Bond: And I don't talk about it much to anybody. Like I think I've told one or two people that I get anxious about things. My process is always to try and work out or at least do some sort of study as to what generally causes these things so that I have an understanding of which fits me right, because, uh, anyone can kind of give you [00:02:00] advice on how to do things that help, you know, ease something like anxiety, let's say.
[00:02:06] Jon Bond: But the bottom line is everybody's anxiety, everybody's stress, everybody's problems are very different and very personal. I've always been a feelings type person anyway. I'm very logical, but I don't, I, I don't run on logic. Everything I've ever done's generally been emotional and, and feelings, and I think we, we are driven by that.
[00:02:27] Jon Bond: In my opinion, we're not driven by logic. If we were driven by logic, we would be very boring people and we wouldn't have many problems because logic, we always know the right and wrong and the fucking sensible thing to do pretty much. But when something's going on and everyone's what feeling of anxiety, I guess is different, it's a feeling that it's not, it's not a mental thing.
[00:02:48] Jon Bond: It's not something that I'm kind of, you know, I can control easily just with my brain because I, I get, you know, I can't even explain the feeling to it. It's not so much a shortness of breath, but there's, [00:03:00] there's, there's something going on and I feel it physically and I have to try and work out how to kind of calm that down.
[00:03:06] Jon Bond: What is it that's making me feel anxious and then I have to take some sort of action to get rid of it. Cuz what I thought and what I realized when I was younger and how I've usually dealt with stress and, and any of these sort of things is to train. Usually I just fucking train my ass off and I feel better.
[00:03:22] Jon Bond: But more recently, the last year or two training's not been quite enough. I, I am still stressing about it whilst training and that that never used to be me. And that's when I was like, okay, fuck, this is a bit of a problem. Normally I just go and sweat it out and I feel better when I'm still feeling enjoying training.
[00:03:38] Jon Bond: I'm like, okay, I have to probably try to come at this from another angle. So now what I tend to try and do is acknowledge very quickly what it is that's causing the anxiety and do something about it. And my anxiety's based around fear and it's fear of losing everything I've built up over the last however many years.
[00:03:59] Jon Bond: Right. And it's [00:04:00] completely illogical. You know, I have never, since I left school at 15, I've never not had a job. I've always worked. I've never not had any money. Now I've no, it doesn't mean I've had a lot of money, but I've never, you know, I've never been homeless. I've never not found a way to make just enough money to get by.
[00:04:18] Jon Bond: Right? And yet, all of a sudden at 48 years old, I'm like, fuck, what if, what if the business didn't work? What if, what if all of a sudden had to go and get a normal job? What if, you know, this was my salary and not this, and how would my life change? And all of a sudden it's been this big thing of like gaining things.
[00:04:36] Jon Bond: And maybe like my biggest growth spurt from, I guess a wealth point of view has been the last 10 years in a way. It's been a short amount of time. All of a sudden I've gone from being scraping by and being happy till I was like 40 years old and being fine. Like I, I didn't really care as about my lifestyle to the last 10 years being about, okay, I need to try and earn more money.
[00:04:58] Jon Bond: I need to try and save. I need to try and [00:05:00] think about my future. And I think a lot of it's come from like, you know, this could all be taken away, which is totally logical because all taken away is an exaggeration. I'm not necessarily gonna go from running my own business to being homeless overnight.
[00:05:15] Jon Bond: Right? Yeah. So my, my stress is illogical and I know it is like, I'll do little things, like I avoid knowing maybe the exact numbers or something like this. So let's say it's a financial thing. I'll just not look at my bank account. So when I feel this coming on and I notice myself like not checking on things because I want to wait till it looks better so that that makes me feel better, I go, fuck it.
[00:05:39] Jon Bond: Get on the bank account, look at the numbers, start planning, talk about what we can do to improve whatever I need to improve, put some things in in place, and that tends to take it away. Once I've actioned something, whether it works or not, at least I've done something. To try and kind of appell whatever the problem and [00:06:00] the issue is forward.
[00:06:01] Jon Bond: If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I've always been a take action type person anyway, and I do tend to preach that a lot to people, but I think I've had to practice it more on myself the last few years than ever. I think I always thought I was, I'm a take action guy, da da, da. Until you realize or something shows you that actually you're a take action guy on most things.
[00:06:21] Jon Bond: But there's always something where you go, I don't really want to face that. Maybe I'll look at it tomorrow, maybe. Let's see what it looks like next week. And I, I know I have to catch myself putting things off rather than face whatever the truth of the situation is and just go, fuck, right. This is the situation, what we're gonna do about it.
[00:06:38] Jon Bond: So I've been working. That's probably what I've been working hard at, hardest. With myself recently, uh, is not, not avoiding things. And for me, I've never avoided much anyway. But I've found myself, even if it's for a few days or a week, it's not, it doesn't help. So I've been like, I'm not letting it go anymore.
[00:06:56] Jon Bond: It's like, okay, deal with it. Let's work out what to do and let's move forward. Cause all I care [00:07:00] about is taking that feeling away cuz it's, if anyone gets anxiety or anything, like, it's a horrible feeling. I've never had it in my life. It's not, it's not terrible. But like you said, there's that chance of it manifesting and getting worse and, and knew I had to kind of find a way of easing it.
[00:07:16] Jon Bond: It's not always about curing it. And I say this to a lot of people have with that get stressed about things. It's like, well the only real way to get rid of a stress is to get the stress out of your life. And that's not always possible. Like, I have to accept there's a level of stress and ownership that comes with running a business that until you maybe get it wherever you need to get it, that you, that's always gonna be a problem.
[00:07:40] Jon Bond: I can't run away from it. You know, I, I gotta just go, okay, fuck it. Jump on a plane and leave. And my stress would go away. But then I'd get a new one cuz I've left the business and, you know, I might, I might enjoy the beach for a couple of weeks and then I'm kind of like, oh fuck. Now, well, understanding that to a certain degree, sometimes you're semi [00:08:00] trapped is not the right word, because I've always wanted what I have.
[00:08:03] Jon Bond: I've always, I've worked in gyms my whole life. I've always wanted my own gym. I love being in the gym. I'm not very good with the online world. I, I don't wanna master being an online coach and all that stuff. I, I love the visceral feel of people being in my gym, speaking to people one-on-one. I don't ever want to lose that.
[00:08:21] Jon Bond: I know things are going very, you know, uh, online, uh, nowadays and it's good for a lot of things, but I still think that person to person is crucial. And if I'm talking to clients and things like that, it. It's the same thing when they have issues, whether it's food, nutrition, uh, you know, training or it's like find something we can, action.
[00:08:41] Jon Bond: Doesn't have to be the big picture, doesn't have to be do everything perfect from day one. But what, what action can we take today that will hopefully make you, you know, continue with that tomorrow and so on. And then add more actions and, and so on until these things become new habits or until we work out ways to, [00:09:00] to deal with it a little bit better.
[00:09:01] Jon Bond: Or you get yourself in a better place and all of a sudden what was stressing you out for maybe 12 months is no longer stressing you out because you, you've dealt with it. You've, you've fixed the problem, you've got over that hurdle, and then maybe it'll be something else.
[00:09:15] Emily Tan: Yeah. And the action doesn't have to be so big and so grand that it seems unfathomable to take action on.
[00:09:23] Emily Tan: Sometimes we imagine a big, an action is a big giant step, and the more we, the more we magnify that, the harder it is to take that step.
[00:09:32] Jon Bond: Yeah. And a hundred percent right. I mean, I think that's the biggest problem. And I think things nowadays to a certain degree, you know, are so magnified and, and people's statements are so grand that we see, you know, the introduction of social media and things like no one puts on social media, you know, that they took the smallest baby step of action today in order to hopefully better themselves in the future.
[00:09:55] Jon Bond: It's not very, It's not very interesting. You're not gonna get a ton of people go, oh wow, [00:10:00] you, you made that change. Like you just said. What all we see all day on our phones is people making grandiose fucking things. And we think that's the answer to fixing all our problems. And really we need to dial all that back a bit and go, okay, what steps can I take?
[00:10:16] Jon Bond: An understanding that, you know, by the time someone puts some big, you know, statement out on social media that they create, well, they may be spent the last five years taking small steps to get to that big step. But it's the big step I'll show off about. And I think getting out of our own heads and understanding the, you know, any step is, is better than no step and even preach, you know, even sitting back and knowing what, what your ultimate goal is and going, okay, how, how can I get from A to B, what are the little things that I, that, that I can kind of tick off or at least get used to that's gonna help me get there at some point? We all want things fixing overnight, I think. And you know, the world's got faster and faster. Mm-hmm. Um, [00:11:00] I was thinking about this a little bit the other day. I was like, fuck, there's sometimes I'm just, I can't keep up.
[00:11:05] Jon Bond: I don't know. That's cuz I'm old and slow, you know, compared to how things were in my twenties. But the speed of technology, the speed of like, no sooner I do, I feel I sorted one thing out and you run onto something new. You know, I'm, I'm not the most technical person in the world, but you know, at one minute it was like, okay, 45 second reel.
[00:11:28] Jon Bond: And all of a sudden I was like, no, no, no. 30 seconds, no one looks in it for 45. I'm like, fuck, I've only just got used. Okay, now it's 15 second reel. No one watches a reel for more than 15 seconds. I'm like, part of me doesn't care. But you running a business and half of it's run on social media and I'm just like, fuck me.
[00:11:45] Jon Bond: And then it's like, ah, yeah, get on TikTok. I'm like, whoa, calm down. I, I can't, I can't with TikTok, I don't understand it. Luckily I have young people, you know, work around me and they can, they can deal with the speed of all that stuff. But I think, you know, bringing that round to [00:12:00] our issues and our, and our problems and things we're looking to fix, I think dialing everything back and sitting down and talking to people like, okay, right, we don't have to fix all this yesterday, but we all want our pain to go away as fast as possible.
[00:12:13] Jon Bond: And, and mental health is pain as well. It's not just physical pain, which is why there's such a huge issue with fucking, you know, pharmaceutical drugs and stuff. Like, it's the quickest way to get rid of your pain. Doesn't matter whether it's mental, physical, or whatever. Take this. And it's got not really the answer.
[00:12:30] Jon Bond: You know, and anything that is ailing us or or making us suffer, you know, we sh we, we shouldn't suffer. People shouldn't suffer hope. You know what we all do in different ways. I think trying to embrace the fact that that is a big part of life and that the steps to eliminating suffering and mental suffering is probably by far the hardest and the longest to, to fix.
[00:12:55] Jon Bond: You know, I'd rather have a broken arm. I mean, I wouldn't, cuz I won't be able to train. [00:13:00] But broken arm, simple. You, you, you got the other arm. But yeah. And also I know I, it's very clear, have surgery. It's in a cast for six weeks. It'll take eight weeks for, there's a very clear look. In about six months you'll be absolutely fine.
[00:13:14] Jon Bond: That's a, it's frustrating at the time, but it's a very nice thing. Your head can go, okay, I can get around what I have to do. I've had multiple injuries and been absolutely fine. Mentally. It's been frustrating, but mentally I've been fine because I know it will be fine. Mental health and mental stress and sort of, you know, mental problem.
[00:13:32] Jon Bond: There is no end date. No one can sit and tell you if you do these steps, you will feel better in one month, two months, three months. It could take 10 years. You, you might never fully get over stuff. Um, who knows? Our goal is to lessen over time, try and lessen the suffering, whatever it might be. That that is, there's a problem for you.
[00:13:54] Jon Bond: But also we have to learn to replace things with better experiences. We're all made up of our [00:14:00] experiences, you know, and when people try to give people advice on some of this stuff, sometimes we're kind of like, look, I can only give you my experience. I can only tell you how I deal with things. But what you deal, what you are dealing with, could be very, very different.
[00:14:13] Jon Bond: And getting to the root of, of why and how you feel like that and why that makes you feel this way, that's a lot of deep diving sometimes. And it's a lot of unwinding, you know, especially if it's negative experiences, well, you're gonna need some positive experiences to help outweigh some of those negative experiences.
[00:14:31] Jon Bond: If you don't find a way of finding these, you're gonna live with this cause this is how you, it's how you think life is. Life's hard. Life's always bad on me. I always get badly treated, you know, whatever the circumstances are. Someone else on the other flip side, you know, is like, well, fuck, everything's been great for me.
[00:14:47] Jon Bond: Everything's been positive. I'm, I'm great. And they both have issues to a certain degree. You know, the over positive never had an issue in their life is a problem because when they do have something to deal with, they can't always deal with it. It's, it's difficult, you know, it's much easier to, in [00:15:00] my opinion, to, to deal with your physical health.
[00:15:02] Jon Bond: And hopefully the physical health transcends into if you do have problems mentally it transcends, it transcends into helping you deal with that stuff better put you in a better place if you feel better about yourself. If you like yourself better. Because, you know, I say this all the time, and it sounds vain, but you know, the way we look does make us feel better. And look, we're not, you know, we're not all necessarily gonna be on the cover of Men's Health or whatever, but you know, once you start liking what you see in the mirror, it becomes a little bit easier to deal with other things. But when we don't like ourselves, it gets really hard to fix a lot of other things.
[00:15:36] Jon Bond: So not only do we not like the way we look, we don't like the way we do certain things, the way we react to certain things the way. So it just becomes this downward spiral of not liking ourselves. And I fucking hate that. Why live your life not liking yourself? You've only got one of you. I was talking to someone the other day and I'm like, fuck, stop writing these negative lists about what you need to fix and change.
[00:15:59] Jon Bond: I [00:16:00] think everybody should write a positive list. Mm-hmm. And not just a negative list. Because we're taught to fix all the things that we don't like about ourselves or that we think are holding our back or that we think are a problem. And I'm like, have you ever stopped to write down all the cool shit you do?
[00:16:17] Jon Bond: And all the cool things about yourself and balance out a little bit and go, okay, I'm not, I'm not completely fucking useless. I'm pretty good at all this stuff, you know, and start leaning into the stuff that you like about yourself more, and stop leaning into all the negative stuff. I'm not saying we don't need to change and become better people and grow, but when that becomes our life, the grind, you know, how are we fixing ourselves?
[00:16:40] Jon Bond: What are we trying to be better at? We should always be trying to be better, but at the same time, don't neglect what you are already good at. Don't neglect what a good person you actually are, as well as all the things that we need to fix. I'm an emotional person, and I say this all the time. Sometimes you have to marry up the roof with the smooth and [00:17:00] control it a little bit, right?
[00:17:01] Jon Bond: If I, if I took my emotion away, I don't think I'd be as good at what I do. Now, that might mean every now and again. You know something's going on in the gym and it look shit, and I get pissed off and I explode. I explode cuz I'm frustrated. I get angry because I'm like, we need to be doing better cuz I give a shit and I care now.
[00:17:23] Jon Bond: Yeah. Is my reaction sometimes a smidge over the top? Yes. But what on the flip side, what you get is a very emotional positive person. When I'm also trying to educate and help people get better, help people do better. I don't just sit there and go, here's the facts of how to lose weight, look better, da da da.
[00:17:40] Jon Bond: There's a hundred percent emotion behind it cuz I know the training and eating well, all these things. There's a feeling to all of that. And if I don't inspire you and I'm not excited about it, I've been doing this for 30 odd years, I still run over every single education session. It's supposed to be an hour. I rarely keep it to under an hour and a half.
[00:17:59] Jon Bond: Trainers start [00:18:00] disappearing cuz they've got sessions and I'm still talking about where you going? I'm fucking, I, because I go off on tangents because I love talking about this stuff. I've done this for 30 years, I'm still, I could quite easily like, yeah, yeah, this guy do and, and, you know, shoot off and care about myself with the minute I start, I, I, I can't stop.
[00:18:15] Jon Bond: And that emotion has to go both ways. You take away my emotion when it's negative, which is sometimes, you know, anger, frustration, say something I shouldn't, you know, I'll catch myself later, apologize, be like whatever. And it's not good. And I have to kind of work on it a little. But at the same time, instead of dwelling on, I have to fix, you know, my, I guess let's say temper frustration when it arises, it's like, yeah, but if you didn't have that, you wouldn't have the flip positive side.
[00:18:47] Jon Bond: You'd be this neutral person with no emotion. And in my industry, I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing. I'm not showing life is a good thing. We live on our emotions, acknowledge when our emotions are not serving us [00:19:00] very well, but also acknowledge that they also help us do a lot of fucking great things.
[00:19:06] Jon Bond: You know, I think we dwell way too much on the negative and try to fix all the negative over understand what within our whole makeup that mechanism means to us. How does it impact my life? Look, if, if your negative emotions and reactions get you in jail, then you better fix that, right? Mm-hmm. You know, so there, but there's a balance and, and if you can catch yourself, it's that, look, I'm emotional person, you're gonna, you're gonna get what you see.
[00:19:35] Jon Bond: If I, I cannot hide facial expression. If I'm pissed, you'll, you'll know. Oh no. But to be fair, I don't slide a lot. So when I'm happy you won't know either, but I'll tell you. So, you know, that's probably the worst example I could have said there. Yeah. I always look a little bit frustrated and pissed off at things, but.
[00:19:51] Emily Tan: There has to be a balance there. John. You know how you are right now just seems so real. Like, dude, this is [00:20:00] a real dude and this is a real dude who is, who sounds proud that he is driven by emotions. At the same time, you're not letting emotions overrule you. And I think that is the big thing that people think that it, what emotions are gonna do.
[00:20:17] Emily Tan: That emotions are gonna make you irrational, which scientific evidence say yes, but it doesn't make you a different gender than what you are. Let's say if you're a man and you feel emotional, it doesn't make you less manly.
[00:20:27] Jon Bond: Yeah. And, and, you know, you touch on a whole other point. I think this whole, like you say, culture of what we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to look at.
[00:20:35] Jon Bond: Like, look, I'm, I'm as old school as they come. Fuck. You know, when it comes to talking about feelings and things like that, it's like, you know, I do it a lot more now with, with without a doubt, with with certain people. Generally. I've come from a culture of hiding all of that, uh, uh, a generation of pretty much hiding all of that stuff, you know.
[00:20:53] Emily Tan: It's the stoic generation. Everything is grand.
[00:20:56] Jon Bond: Well, it's always, and, and I, we've all got friends, right? You're always the one where you're like, [00:21:00] fucking, nobody ever, and I don't mean this disrespectfully at all, but because I've always been the, I guess the helper, no one ever asked me how. I've got best friends every now again, we we're starting to do it.
[00:21:10] Jon Bond: Now I've got a couple of best friends in the uk. We're all in our forties and it's took till the last year or so for us all to start going, Hey, are you okay? And we're like, and we would never have done that. So things are getting a little bit better. We're all from the same generation now. We do. And I think social media helps cuz you, you know, you if you know your friends, they start posting weird shit and you're like, what's going on?
[00:21:29] Jon Bond: You know? And even then look, you know, men are typical. We're like, yeah, yeah, I'm all good. Alright, cool. You know?
[00:21:34] Emily Tan: But it's getting past that first three seconds of Yeah. Yeah. I'm all good. Kind of overriding that instinct of leader right there and just move on to the next topic or just hang up. How do you push past that with friends of yours?
[00:21:48] Emily Tan: Maybe some friends who you've already don't need to do that, but some other friends who you can feel there's a lot of resistance there.
[00:21:55] Jon Bond: I think you have to create an environment and you have to listen, uh, [00:22:00] you know, and you can't force someone to open up and nor should you probably, because can build your wall up more if you're not ready to share.
[00:22:07] Jon Bond: Right, and I think it comes back to what we were just saying earlier, like, you're not gonna fix someone's problem in one call. Maybe you might call someone and you might get a feel that there's something going on and you might be, Hey, you, you, you okay? Is that, you know, anything you need help with anything help.
[00:22:22] Jon Bond: And, and you can tell whether there's a little bit resistance or talk. Don't push them at that point. Just talk, maybe move on to another topic, duh da, hang up, you know, and then reach out again a week later. I think the problem is if we don't feel we can help immediately, we kind of stop trying.
[00:22:39] Emily Tan: Yeah. We think that the solution must be present in order for us to connect themselves.
[00:22:42] Jon Bond: They're not, they're not gonna tell me anyway.
[00:22:44] Jon Bond: So what's the point in asking? What I do nowadays a lot is I just ask anyway. I'll send her, Hey, how you doing? Especially with some, we we're terrible fucking, I've got some of my best friends, we barely speak, but when we do, it's like straight back into the old group. Yeah, I'll go to the uk. I might not send 'em sometimes for two years and straight away we're talking like I [00:23:00] never left.
[00:23:00] Jon Bond: You have to be in a position where you're willing to open up a bit yourself. Maybe to help the other person open up. So, you know, if you know that someone's going through an issue, especially someone like me, because again, you know, I think the, the impression of me sometimes is that I don't ever have any problems mentally.
[00:23:17] Jon Bond: I'm very strong and duh da da, which is not true. We're all mentally weak in certain areas of our lives. But the impression that different people give off, we assume everybody assumes this is why. You know, unfortunately not to go down a dark path of suicide and things. But I've had a lot of friends, you know, over the last few years, especially in my forties, you know, unfortunately kill themselves.
[00:23:40] Jon Bond: And I would never have known that they had that big a problem because when it's that deep rooted, it's very hard to see. Um, well, maybe whilst afterwards you'd put a few things together and go, fuck, actually, I didn't realize. Right? Because people are never gonna really open up straight away, and you ha and again, that's what I mean about sometimes [00:24:00] creating the, the environment.
[00:24:01] Jon Bond: So sometimes if I'm sat with a friend and I can see they've got a bit of a problem, they start to really talk, uh, talk about it a little bit. But I know they're not gonna really open up if I can share some of my own vulnerability so that they go, oh fuck, you've got issues as well. Like, yes, I have issues.
[00:24:19] Jon Bond: Yes, you're human too. Yes. I'm worried about, it's like, I, like they look at me, you know, and you, you can look at my Instagram, they go, fuck, amazing Jim, you live in la. Like, what problems have you got? And it's like, doesn't matter where you are in the world. Like, Don, I'm wrong. It's nice. I wake up, it's sunny, it's beautiful.
[00:24:34] Jon Bond: But at the same time, that doesn't take all your problems away. It's being. And not expecting them to maybe open up and tell you their issues on the first call or the first chat. Maybe it might take three calls, four calls, five calls. You know? And even then, I'm not there to help. Like I'm not there. Help's the wrong word.
[00:24:53] Jon Bond: I am there to help, but I'm not there to give you solutions and, and try and fix your problems. I've learned as I've got older, [00:25:00] you know, when I was younger, you try and you listen, then you try and give someone advice. And I fucking hate that now. Like now I'm now as now I'm older, I'm like, what the fuck do I know?
[00:25:09] Jon Bond: You know? The older I've got, the less I know, right? And I think, come, you'll know this from the fitness industry. Nothing kills me more than, you know, listening to some 25 year old trainer tell some 40 year old who's going through a divorce, got three kids, and then they start trying to give them advice. And you're like, shut the fuck up this.
[00:25:29] Jon Bond: First of all, this person doesn't want advice and they definitely don't want advice from a 25 year old who's still maybe either not had a relationship or is in their first one or whatever, and I learned, I literally learn a young kind of age really, to be like, that sounds shit. What are you gonna do about it?
[00:25:46] Jon Bond: You know, ask them what they're thinking. If that helps, let them talk it out because me going, wait, just leave her. Like, that's fucking, like, that's logical. You can't fix emotional problems, [00:26:00] which most of our problems are emotional. They're not logical with logical answers because we know the logical answer.
[00:26:06] Jon Bond: I've confront males as well, like all male, go into some relationship and their partner's clearly not a nice person to them, and they sit and tell you all this stuff, and your answer is always fucking leave them. What's wrong with you? I know. Yeah. But, mm-hmm. Right. And you sit there like getting angry almost, that they're not listening to you and they're not changing and they're coming back to you a month later telling you the same problem.
[00:26:26] Jon Bond: He did the same thing again. But until they come to their own conclusion, they are not gonna make that change. Something is gonna have to happen whereby the they, you know, they either hit their bottom and go, rightly enough, enough, I'm out. Or by and large, sometimes I've seen this whereby they've gone, you know, on and on, and they've just talked about relationships now, but maybe they meet someone else.
[00:26:46] Jon Bond: It's nice to them and they go, fuck, actually, I'm gonna leave this guy. Maybe it needed that. Me just saying leave them is shit advice. But it's what we jumped to because we think we're trying to help by giving them the most obvious advice ever. They already know that. [00:27:00] But this is emo, these are emotional issues.
[00:27:02] Jon Bond: They love that person. Better or worse. There's a, there's something that right now, no matter how bad this guy or this girl is or whatever, they can't just pull themselves apart from whatever the good stuff is. And also, by and large, when people talk, I mean, I'm a Brit, so I fucking, or, or Brits moan the British, you know, we, we love the fucking good, a good moan and we look complaining about shit.
[00:27:24] Jon Bond: We tend to, when we open up and talk to people, whether it be your trainer or people that we know, but we, we don't know, well, we tend to only tell people what's going on that shit. So we're not even painting the full picture anyway. We're only telling you this, this one part of it. And it depends, again, like everything depends on the problem.
[00:27:40] Jon Bond: But if someone's telling you about a relationship issue, it's like, well, clearly there's some good shit because, you know, you've not left yet. Things have gotta go one way or other. But I think, you know, for me, I'm always like, try and listen. I don't really give advice anymore unless I really feel like, ha, like if, if I, if I feel I [00:28:00] can share a scenario.
[00:28:02] Jon Bond: That was similar than I will, but even then doesn't matter, like, uh, the way we all react to different things is very different. What I might do in the exact same scenario versus what you might do could be completely different. And that doesn't mean my way's right or your way, right? It's just how we we deal with things, right?
[00:28:18] Emily Tan: What's right for each of our situation and scenario and time, uh, that happened. Yeah, and I think what what's highlighted there as you're, as you were talking is being the person who's asking the other person, how are they doing? Being the person who's reaching out you as the person. If you wanna reach out, be sure that you are also in the head space and ready.
[00:28:40] Emily Tan: Be what that person needs. Yeah. But not reaching out with the intention of, Hey, yo, I feel like I'm smarter, or I feel like I got some gift. Absolutely. And I'm here to give you a solution. Because that's not essentially creating anything positive in that.
[00:28:55] Jon Bond: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think if you are reaching out and asking people how they are, I mean, hopefully [00:29:00] you should be reaching out and asking your friends how they are all the time.
[00:29:02] Jon Bond: But anytime you do that, I think sometimes the world's become almost like this, this fucking bargaining tool for everything, right? And I catch myself sometimes. There's been times when friends of mine or people I thought that were quite close, I'm very good at reaching out and saying, happy New Year to people.
[00:29:17] Jon Bond: You know, Merry Christmas, happy birthday. I, I probably do that. Probably a five to one ratio of people that do it back to me. It doesn't matter. I'm doing it because I, I, I want to wish that person to have Merry Christmas if they don't fucking say anything about to them. And look, over time, some people are drop off each year and some people like, keep, but people that I've kept close have been like, look, you know what, they're going through different things at the moment.
[00:29:40] Jon Bond: And then randomly, like, you know, sometimes three, maybe four years later, I'll get a message, Hey, how are you doing? And I believe it's cuz I kept that connection. Even if they didn't, you know, they, they maybe they've come outta a relationship or whatever and all of a sudden it's like, you know, maybe I'll just see how John's doing.
[00:29:56] Jon Bond: And it's always random, but I think, okay, well maybe it's cuz I at least kept that [00:30:00] connection with people I care about for whatever reason. Whether they care about me back in the same way, needs not to be relevant. And I, and I think, you know, we live in a world world, they haven't spoken to me French, so why should I speak to them?
[00:30:10] Jon Bond: If those people were close to you at some point in your life and you want to keep them close in some way, or at least keep it open that if you ever need me, you know, you can contact me. And, and even if that's just a simple, like I said, wishing happy birthday, wishing merry Christmas, wishing happy New Year.
[00:30:26] Jon Bond: Even if they've not messaged at you for a couple of years, who knows? That might be just enough that when all of a sudden they're in a situation where they're like, I need to talk to someone, or I just wanna say hi to, and they remember how we used to converse or talk and, and they contact me then great.
[00:30:40] Jon Bond: And some people will drop off your list. But I have a handful of people on my list and no matter what, I'll, I'll message and if you don't message, you don't message back. But I'm not going into it anymore with any feelings of, I'm expecting a response if you don't respond, that's cool. That's up to you.
[00:30:53] Jon Bond: I'm doing it cuz I want to reach out.
[00:30:56] Emily Tan: Yeah. You're really doing things for you. Things like reaching out is, it's [00:31:00] for you things like forgiving someone. Yeah. It's actually for you than that, than actually for that son.
[00:31:05] Jon Bond: Yeah. I know.
[00:31:05] Jon Bond: I've done it and I feel better for doing it and I've learned to not feel bad if it's not massively reciprocate.
[00:31:09] Jon Bond: Right. I remember the first time, you know, I, uh, homeless person was like rattling the thing for some money and I, you know, I remember years ago, again, I'm not, don't give her money because they're just gonna go get drugs. I, I've learned actually though, just give 'em a bit of what they want by this to them, but I was, I'm holy than fucking dial people and be like, look, I'll go in and get you a sandwich.
[00:31:30] Jon Bond: Because you need to eat, right? Do you need to eat or do you want money? And I gave this guy a fucking sandwich, I think it was like a Greg's back in the UK or something, and he literally fucking threw it in my face, like I wanted money. And I was like, I was so fucking annoyed. But I, but I learned, and this is back.
[00:31:47] Jon Bond: And you know, again, this was like go, I was going a little bit more into, you know, I was looking into the spiritual side of things. And this is back in Manchester. I was doing a lot of yoga [00:32:00] and, you know, I went down a path of trying to work all that sort of stuff out. And, and again, an old teacher of mine taught me that, you know, your intentions, if your intentions are pure, the reactions shouldn't matter.
[00:32:10] Jon Bond: And I was like, it's a good point, especially talking to someone who's emotional, right? You, you, you give me a bad fucking reaction and I'm likely to fucking explode. And this was like, uh, nearly 20 years ago maybe. And that, that one lesson. Stuck with me. Cause I was like, look, you know what, regardless of that person's reaction, I wanted to do that cuz I thought that was a good thing and it was still a good thing.
[00:32:37] Jon Bond: Their reaction is not my problem. And I've slowly took that into business and work and all these sort of things. Sometimes tough conversations maybe have to be had. I've had to let certain members of staff go here and there. Over the years I've been running, you know, this business for four, four years now and I was managing my previous business.
[00:32:56] Jon Bond: So, you know, my last sort of eight years has been all managing uh, [00:33:00] people and I've done it previous when I was even younger. And I used to sometimes avoid certain conversations or avoid certain things. And I teach this all young managers and new managers now cause they're always concerned about the other person's reaction.
[00:33:12] Jon Bond: I'm like, well, okay, if you are dealing with a situation that is based pretty much on facts, obviously there's a way to deal with the situation. There's a way to talk about it, but you cannot control that other person's reaction that's on them. So even if you had to fire somebody, let's say, and they explode and start swearing at you and pick something up, throw it, walk out, that's your reaction.
[00:33:34] Jon Bond: I can't do anything about that. I had to do what I had to do. And there's many different reactions. You could have someone sit and start breaking down and crying, or someone could just go silent. Someone could start throwing and, and you know, cause I used to spend a lot of time overthinking conversations back and forth.
[00:33:47] Jon Bond: You know, if you ever touch an awkward conversation, even whether it's with your partner, whether it's in a work situation, you start assuming their responses and their answers, and you start trying to combat them in your mind. Right? I lay awake all night and I've created [00:34:00] a, I've created a massive dialect.
[00:34:02] Jon Bond: If they say that, I'll say this, if they mm-hmm. Fucking waste of time. Because they never react exactly how you think they're gonna react. Nope. So you usually have to be, you know, on the fly with the reaction. I'm not, I don't really worry about how someone's gonna react about anything now. And as long as I know my intention with whatever I'm doing or saying to that person at that time is pure.
[00:34:22] Jon Bond: And it's either, in my opinion, for their own good, for the businesses', own good for the good of whatever it might be, they take what I say badly. It's like, you know, criticism. I don't try to criticize anything ever like personally, but I'm in the business of educating coaches and trainers and teaching people to become better coaches.
[00:34:42] Jon Bond: If I just pat you on the back all the time and tell you're amazing, I'm not really doing a very good job. Sometimes I, I'm gonna have to say, I, I think we can do better with this. Or maybe we need to work harder on, on this area of, of your work or whatever. You know, worrying about how they're gonna respond is a complete way of time.
[00:34:58] Jon Bond: How someone [00:35:00] respond is up to them, you know? And hopefully you create an environment where people will respond positively. Because your environment's crucial, just like sports teams, all these sort of things. You know, people grow in an environment where they don't mind taking on a bit of constructive criticism because it's done in the right way.
[00:35:14] Jon Bond: And it's also done with here's how to make it better. Criticism for the sake of criticism's. Always gonna get a bad response. So I never go into anything without a solution and some education and how you can do it better. But yeah, worried about people's responses and the homeless scenario made me take a look at how I deal with how people respond 20 years ago.
[00:35:34] Jon Bond: It's about your intention, not their reaction. And you can't control other people's reactions. So don't try.
[00:35:40] Emily Tan: I really like how you're able to take something that happened 20 years ago sounds so irregular to your schedule. It's not every day you have that kind of encounter. No. And the one time that you had that kind of encounter, it turned into something that you're able to pluck wisdom out of that for you.
[00:35:54] Emily Tan: It became something that that could kind of ground you, especially moving forward [00:36:00] in a lot of situations. It become like a trigger, uh, like a trigger placeholder.
[00:36:04] Jon Bond: Yeah, like in anything, right? You know, any experience you have to try and get, gain some sort of lesson from, you know, whether it's positive, negative or whatever.
[00:36:13] Jon Bond: If we're not learning lessons from our experiences, then how are we even growing? And that doesn't mean to say there's some things in my life that I will make the same mistake probably until I die, right? There's some things that I am hardwired that, you know, the fucking, the red buzzers on the left and the fucking green buzzers on the right and for whatever it is, even though I've done it a million times, I'm gonna go, for some reason, I'm fucking gonna do that one.
[00:36:39] Jon Bond: And you're like, I've done it again. Right? And sometimes accepting that, look, maybe I just need to not be in that environment. Maybe that will solve that problem. You know, acknowledging these things and trying to learn lessons so that we can kind of grow. You know, improve our lives a little bit. Again, they're not, they're not black and white answers that we're all searching for.
[00:36:58] Jon Bond: Sometimes acknowledging what you, [00:37:00] what you, what you can't change, and accepting it as a flaw and going, okay, this is a flaw. And, and I, and I don't, I don't wanna waste my whole life fixating on this floor and trying to fix it. And maybe the answer's just, okay, but I only ever fuck up in that environment.
[00:37:19] Jon Bond: So maybe it's time to stop being in that environment. Maybe that's an easier approach. I do agree with facing your fears. I do agree with, you know, being able to become the person you want to be in any environment. That's fucking easier said than done for me, and I'm sure you think the same a little bit.
[00:37:39] Jon Bond: You know, we've both got similar history, you know, with, with the cancer side of things and how we look at life as a whole. And ever since I got sick at 20 years old, I've always had this fucking life is short mentality. And it just is so, I choose my battles. No, I'm not saying more wisely than other people, but like I said, when it comes to [00:38:00] what I'm gonna stress myself out about myself, you know, I, I choose my battles as to what I wanna work on and what I maybe want to avoid and, and, and how I can navigate becoming a better person whilst not getting all fixated on everything I need to fix about myself.
[00:38:14] Jon Bond: Because it's just not a positive way to live your life unless the negative things are causing big negatives in, in your life. And you have to get out of that stuff. You know, when I was doing a lot of the yoga stuff, I went off to, um, New York, and this is why, where I realized that environment and time, and I was only there a month, but was on this retreat in the middle of fucking nowhere.
[00:38:37] Jon Bond: And all we did every day was like meditate, which I was shit up. Um, a yoga. We, I had a vegan fucking diet for four weeks and we was in there, and you know what, by by like week three, I was the most somber, calm, chilled, happy like person because all we were like, there's about a hundred or so people on the, on this course, and you know what you've [00:39:00] got.
[00:39:00] Jon Bond: Don't be wrong. You've got the crazies that, you know, believe they're already living this yogi spiritual lifestyle. I'm a bit obsessed with it. I was the odd one out. You know, I rock up, you know, looking like a bodybuilder who can't touch my fucking toes and people like, fuck's this guy, dude, the yoga course.
[00:39:15] Jon Bond: But I, I really enjoyed it, but I kind of learned a lot. And, but the, the somber calm bit was down to my environment. Everybody was super nice. I've never had that many people be that nice to me and genuine in my life. I was like, I'm just, I'm new. Well, the way I grew up and where I grew, I'm just not used to that.
[00:39:32] Jon Bond: At the end of the course, I get on the train and I, I was staying, uh, to get the train to New York City. I'm listening to fucking. At this point, I'm now listening to somber chilled music. I've got Xavier Rudd in my fucking ears and I'm like, everything is life's happy and great and no one can touch me. And I got off the train and this fucking guy smacked into me cuz New York's super busy.
[00:39:55] Jon Bond: And my initial reaction was a fuck. I was like, oh my God. [00:40:00] Seconds within seconds, a month's worth of somber not getting angry, not getting frustrated, being super. And, and, and there was almost that moment it was like it took a second for me to go back to my normal self reactive self, which makes you guys, it's very easy for people to preach living this way upon a fucking mountain in the middle of nowhere.
[00:40:24] Jon Bond: Right? But the real skill is bringing as much of that into the chaos of the real world as possible. And, and it was an emotional thing cause I've not felt, I don't wanna say the term angry cuz this guy bumped into me, but I've not felt that reactiveness to anything. For like nearly four weeks.
[00:40:41] Emily Tan: It kind of felt like you didn't have control over it.
[00:40:44] Jon Bond: No.
[00:40:44] Jon Bond: I was like, fuck. Like I've, and I was annoyed by myself and like I've just spent all this time listening to these people kind of talked to you about how to control your emotions, how to become more them, how to, and it took one little fucking thing within seconds of getting off that [00:41:00] train teacher.
[00:41:01] Jon Bond: Okay, here's a real skill. You know, you can go away and hide and try and fix your shit, but it's not really the answer. If you really want to hide and fix your shit, stay hidden and you'll be fine. Don't come back. Don't come back to your real life because the minute you come back to your real life, if you can't bring those lessons with you and find a way to bring it into the fact of okay, you come back and live in the hustle and bustle, the busy, dangerous city, shit's gonna happen.
[00:41:29] Jon Bond: And it's not all gonna be perfect, right? If you want to live having no problems, go back up to your mountain. Where there's no problems. You, you know, and trying to balance the two. So I, I, I learned hard, not a hard lesson, but I learned when I was going off on a lot of that spiritual stuff, thinking this was the answer.
[00:41:47] Jon Bond: I was 30 years old thinking that I've got my shit together and thinking that this is maybe, cause I've never been religious, so, like you said, the higher power thing, I'm kind of, well, I'm not religious. I, I don't believe in God. I believe, I guess growing up as a [00:42:00] kid that maybe there was the, the story of Jesus is maybe real, I don't wanna upset religious people here, by the way.
[00:42:04] Jon Bond: But it just never sat well with me. And I, the logical side of me went, I don't get it. I don't, that said, I've always believed in the, something more, I dunno what, yeah. I still don't know. What if someone says, you know, what do you see as your, like, as a higher power? I'm like, I don't really know. But the one thing I did learn, the spiritual kind of yogic, it's not so much yogi religion.
[00:42:28] Jon Bond: A lot of it's taken from Hebrew. But they do teach that basically whether you call, you know it God, or you give it a name or whatever, really it's, it's you, you are your higher power. If God's the thing that you are, you're chasing it. It lives in you. Really, your, your whole life comes down to you and your own decisions and how you, how you deal with things and how you communicate and relate to other people.
[00:42:51] Jon Bond: You know, I still have a big belief that we are all one and not, I don't talk about this stuff a lot and when people are like, oh, what do you mean? It's like, well, we're all [00:43:00] fucking connected in some way. I don't know what way. I'm not gonna give you some spiritual or even scientific mumbo jumbo, but you've only gotta live on this earth long enough to know that everything you fucking do has some sort of reaction somewhere.
[00:43:13] Jon Bond: So I do take that into a lot of my thoughts and decisions that my actions have consequences, whether it be to myself, whether it be to other people, whether it's be, be to my environment, everything that I do. Has a ripple effect to something else I've tried, especially as I've gotten older to, to live by a more of a solid moral code, I guess, over rules.
[00:43:38] Jon Bond: You know, rules are one thing, you know, and I don't wanna break rules that might put me in jail and stuff, but I don't make my decisions based on laws and rules and things like this. I kind of try my, make my decisions based on my morals as they are now. My morals as they were kind of growing up, what kept me on track?
[00:43:55] Jon Bond: You know, I've been through a lot of shit and there was times, especially in [00:44:00] my late teens and early twenties, where my life could have took many, many different turns and I believe certain morals just just kept me away from it. Going bad, bad. I have reasons as to why I went off the rails, but luckily there was some moral compass somewhere that steered me.
[00:44:23] Jon Bond: Just about in the right direction. And after that, things kind of got better. So I, I still try and kind of live with that. Um, I think that higher power morals, having some guiding compass that you use to make decisions is, is kind of crucial, whatever that is to you, you know, uh, we all think everything's cool.
[00:44:42] Jon Bond: It's like, well, we all live in some sort of cult. That's why we do our own little thing. And anything outside of that feels a bit alien. You know, you put me in the gyms and I'm any gym, fight, gym, fucking gym, gym. And I'm like, I'm. You know, you put me in another environment and I'm like, I feel a bit awkward here.
[00:44:56] Jon Bond: This doesn't feel normal. I'm not used to this. You know, and I'm, [00:45:00] I'm nearly 50 years old. I can talk to anybody, but there are environments that I don't feel as comfortable in. It's not, it's not me. It's not, it's not my thing. So we all gravitate to our own, what we feel are our, it feels familiar. Yeah. Our own people-ish.
[00:45:12] Jon Bond: And we're so community-based.
[00:45:14] Jon Bond: Yeah. I, I, and I think finding that is also crucial. I think people get lost when they don't have have something. So I don't believe it's a bad thing. I think, you know, a lot of people just haven't necessarily found it yet. I was very lucky. The gym was my thing from the kid.
[00:45:29] Jon Bond: You know, I think I started lifting weights at 14, but even at school, everything was about sport. Everything was about being active, training. So I found my thing very. And it's been a massive positive in my life. And if there's any negative, it's that I'm very, I'm very black and white. I only like a handful of fucking things, you know, drives daddy nuts sometimes.
[00:45:47] Jon Bond: She's like, do you wanna go here to eat? Do you wanna go there to eat? I don't, I don't care. And I don't mean that in a bad way. She doesn't mean I'll eat anything. I'll eat, I'll eat anywhere. And I'm not really bothered about the, the type of place, or the ambience or the food. It's like, I like anything to [00:46:00] do with gyms and training.
[00:46:01] Jon Bond: I like training. I like watching sport and I like cars. And then beyond that, I don't, I'm a bit indifferent to most of the things in life. I don't want or need much, but it kind of makes you a bit tunnel vision. This is all I really care about. If there's anything I probably should work up on, I like traveling.
[00:46:16] Jon Bond: I'm not doing so much of that recently, but, and, and, you know, sampling new places. I like that. By and large, I don't have a lot of, I'm not into a lot of things, which can be a problem. If you know you're with other people and other people like other things and you kind of like, I need to be forced to explore some stuff and I, and then I, then I do enjoy it.
[00:46:33] Emily Tan: So you need some coercing to get outta your comfort zone. But at the same time, I don't think it's necessarily bad to, to not be interested in so many things. I, I think we kind of unintentionally shame people and to, and to feeling like they're not enough if they don't have interest in certain things.
[00:46:48] Jon Bond: No, no.
[00:46:49] Jon Bond: But I think there's a time coming back to like, especially when you're in relationships and things like that, you have to have an appreciation for other people are into, and whilst it might not be a hundred percent your thing, you want to make [00:47:00] an effort to support and do some of that. But also sometimes I go off and do these things like, cuz it's an inbuilt reaction to me, ah, I don't like that.
[00:47:07] Jon Bond: And then I go and do it. I, my, actually, that's pretty good, you know? And then again, maybe that's my generation. I'm very quick to, I'm same, I was the same with food growing up and I don't like that food. Fucking all, I'm not eating it. And then someone would force you to try it and you're like, well that's, that's all right.
[00:47:19] Jon Bond: I, I grew up making decisions based on no, no real facts. I dunno what was wrong with me. I dunno why I did it. I would not like the look of a food, but I'm not eating used to drive my parents mad.
[00:47:29] Emily Tan: And of course they would label it as, oh, he's a picky eater. Exactly. But unfortunately that label sticks.
[00:47:34] Jon Bond: Yeah.
[00:47:35] Jon Bond: And then I'd be forced to try it at some point as I got a bit older, be like, oh, this is really nice. This is what I've been missing out on. And that was purely my own stubbornness. When I first moved to Hong Kong, you, you know, everyone in Hong Kong's obsessed with fucking walking, you know, hiking, right?
[00:47:49] Jon Bond: And I was like, fucking, I fucking hate hiking because I'm a hundred mile an hour. So I don't really like walking, you know, walking to me is getting from A to B, and I'm still a little bit like this now, but when I got [00:48:00] forced to do some of those walks, I say, force, force not the right word, but you know, you done yourself, let's go and do this.
[00:48:05] Jon Bond: I'm going, because the views are amazing. I'm like, wow, this is really fucking cool. Right? I have been to some of the most amazing countries in the world. I've driven 10 hours, you know, to look at an amazing view in Australia. And after about a one minute look at the view, I'm like, right, we're gonna go and get food now.
[00:48:19] Jon Bond: I know everyone bit like, can you just soak this in? I'm like, trees, it's great. Beautiful. Let's go. So, you know, I have to learn to, to, to slow down a little bit and, and appreciate other things in life other than what I like. So I do, I do think there's, there's still work to be done now to, to appreciate things.
[00:48:39] Jon Bond: I need to slow down, stand and look at shit around me a little bit more, which I think helps you appreciate everything. You know, when you're under my hours, you're stop appreciating things.
[00:48:48] Emily Tan: Yeah.
[00:48:48] Emily Tan: Including our relationships. Absolutely. When you start appreciating what you have at home instead of always kind of being stuck in that critical mode or looking for things that are lacking. [00:49:00]
[00:49:00] Jon Bond: Yeah. And, and cause I think unfortunately that emotion is more powerful than negative emotion tends to supersede positive emotion to a certain degree. If we're not careful the honeymoon period in any relationship, that first, whatever, however long it takes, maybe six months or so and everything's perfect, everything's amazing.
[00:49:18] Jon Bond: And, and I fucking love that part where all of a sudden nothing else matters. Your work's a bit secondary, you're doing things you wouldn't normally do. Like let's deal with a few drinks on a fucking Wednesday night, you know, and then slowly you're both simmer back into kind of your routines cuz you're like, look, this living like this can't necessarily go forever cuz I can't go to work tired all the time.
[00:49:39] Jon Bond: And how, but you're during that phase, you're not tired. That's the, the funny thing about getting like love in general, whether it's love your, your partner, your work, your environment, whatever you do. And I think chasing that as part of your life's mission is fucking crucial. Because if I didn't love what I did, yes, sure, I'm tired.
[00:49:56] Jon Bond: Sure. I don't always wanna do it, but I can be, you [00:50:00] know, falling asleep one minute and wide awake, you know, teaching the team or a client comes in and as soon as I start doing what I do, I get at this second window of energy. Now I might pass out later, especially now I'm a little older and I'm fucking tired and I get complained that for going to bed at half eight.
[00:50:16] Jon Bond: But I find energy no matter what, for this environment, I'm, I'm as tired as everybody else. Fucking alarm goes off, don't wanna get up. But once I'm on, I'm on. And I'm finding that new relationship energy's like that. You know, you do, you do a ton of stuff that you wouldn't normally do and you're never tired.
[00:50:32] Jon Bond: You could not sleep for weeks. You know that feeling and it's like fucking amazing. And we should attempt to chase a little bit more of that. For me, certainly, it's definitely there's an age fucking thing. I'm not as energetic as I used to be without a doubt. But at the same time it's like, okay, I need to make sure I'm not getting bored.
[00:50:48] Jon Bond: And I, like you said, I'm looking at the positive. Things I'm looking at, these are good things. I'll deal with work, stop worrying about being tired, stop worrying about if I do this, then I'll be tired for work. And [00:51:00] then this one goes well. It's like when you have little phases of your life where you focus purely on something you love, everything else fucking works well anyway, you know?
[00:51:09] Jon Bond: So relationship work, find communities, find things that you, that you love doing. And you know, I think in generally it just makes life a little bit easier. So I've been very lucky, you know, I've lived my life in, in an environment I love. By and large. I've had some positive relationships, you know, in my time.
[00:51:28] Jon Bond: I've never really had a bad relationship, I wouldn't say so. I've been surrounded by things I love pretty much my whole life, which is a good thing. That doesn't mean to say I've not had a ton of like issues and problems.
[00:51:39] Emily Tan: But I think that also speaks about your choices. Cuz you, one, you might say that, oh, I've always had good relationships and really have the bad relationship.
[00:51:46] Emily Tan: It's not to say that, oh, you were handed something really easy to deal with. But from everything that you just shared in the really short amount of time, only an hour, I wish we had more hours, but in the short amount of time that you had shared [00:52:00] about your experience and the way you are able to reframe things and, and the choices that you made, the, the way you take ownership of everything.
[00:52:07] Emily Tan: Of course you wouldn't feel like you had bad relationships because they are largely based on the choices that you made and how you owned up to them.
[00:52:15] Jon Bond: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, God didn't even touch on ownership and all that sort of stuff, but yeah, owning your problems, owning your mistakes, owning your part in something you know is crucial and the relationship's no different, right?
[00:52:27] Jon Bond: So you've gotta understand that, you know, it's two people trying to gel together. You're not both perfect. Something gets you together. There's some sort of, I don't know, chemical, fucking, whatever. Foot knows how that works. You know, what do I need to be to make sure that this person stays as as happy as possible without, you know, losing yourself, without being false.
[00:52:46] Jon Bond: You know, in most of my relationships, I just learned to be honest from day one, and that would put some people off. Maybe we'd never see them again. And other people would be like, you know, receptive to being like, look, this, this is who I am. And I [00:53:00] learn from other relationships, you know, to not be that, okay, not pretending you're not into certain things, but don't go from pretending you're not into watching things on TV all the time, like sport and whatnot, to all of a sudden never leaving the tv.
[00:53:12] Jon Bond: And I love sport and Daniel will tell you, it drives the nuts. I can, I can sit and watch sport all day and if there's big things on, I'm not moving. You know, and this is a little thing, but nowaday, I would be very much like, you know, especially with Daniel, I was like, look, I'm gonna tell you upfront, this is me, so this is what you're getting too.
[00:53:26] Jon Bond: You know? And of course I'll make compromises and there'll be times I'll miss a big game if it's really important to do something else. But by and large, this is, this is what I need. But at the same time, it's like, what do you need? What makes. You know what's important, as long as I'm, you know, I will be cool with whatever you do, whatever your thing is, just understand, this is my thing and let's not try to change each other on those things.
[00:53:50] Jon Bond: Let's blend a bit. So ideally you get into sport, make my life easier. Start watching which she, which she already is. Yeah. So you know, those [00:54:00] things, you know, and again, I've been lucky. Like I say, my whole environment's always been Jim. So luckily I've met people a little bit like-minded. And it may not have always stayed that way for the long run, but at least, you know, initially the gel of lifestyle was, was understanding each other's lifestyle.
[00:54:13] Jon Bond: So, but yeah, it's two, it's a two-way thing, you know? And I have to catch myself, you know, I'm a man, so I obvious selfish issues every now and again, and I have to catch myself or I have to be told, well, men really need to be told sometimes. And then I'll sulk and then I'll go, yeah, okay, I'll try and fix that.
[00:54:30] Emily Tan: I will not argue against that. But at the same time, it wouldn't be fair to generalize that and speak for the whole species there, but I, I, I would say that it is not common for me to hear from, from a manly man, you know, from a dude about most of the things that you just talked about. Most of the things that you owned up about.
[00:54:50] Emily Tan: For example, let's, let's use the power of words. You used emotions, you used feelings, used love, you use care. These are all [00:55:00] words that you don't really hear a lot of men, let's say in the coaching authority scene. Mm-hmm. Like to use, they might, they might like to use the words like grind and hustle and, you know, you gotta toughen up, you gotta do this.
[00:55:15] Emily Tan: I still get that vibe that you gotta make sure that you show up and do what you choose to do. You chose to be in that situation. Yeah. Yeah. Own up and do it. This is your choice. And if you wanna change, you wanna change your mind, fine. Change it. Own up to the change. Yeah. Yeah. Like don't kind of like bounce back and forth because your action or inaction is also an action.
[00:55:36] Emily Tan: It also has consequences.
[00:55:38] Jon Bond: Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think, I think life gets a lot simpler as you get older, right? If you just spoke to me and tried to have the same conversation 30 years ago, oh, sorry, 20 years ago, let's say about 30 years old, you'd have got a very, not a very different me, but you would've heard more of that stuff.
[00:55:55] Jon Bond: Grind fucking hard work, da da, da, right? And, and all that stuff's is what it [00:56:00] is. We have to work hard, we have to sacrifice, we have to do things in order to get to where we want to be in life. Back at that age, I would've maybe told you things that I thought sounded profound, I thought made me sound clever and smart.
[00:56:12] Jon Bond: But 30, I really didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing. I thought I did. I thought I'd got the world fucking figured out. And I think each decade that passes, you realize you really don't. So talking now at my age, you know, and again, I'm maybe even different in another 10 years, I've, I've slowly whistled down I believe to a certain degree as best as I can, what really fucking matters.
[00:56:34] Jon Bond: And I don't have any issues saying what drives us, cuz it's fucking true. You know, if, if you don't believe that love drives you and drives a lot of decisions, then you're not taking a look at your life because I've made some of the best decisions, whether it's love, infatuation and all the other emotions that go on with meeting people.
[00:56:52] Jon Bond: You know, whether, whether it drives really good decisions, it's social, drove some fucking terrible decisions, right? And they were all out of [00:57:00] my control because there's something else going on that's a little bit more powerful. You try and explain fucking love, it's almost impossible.
[00:57:06] Emily Tan: And it means so different to, to every single person.
[00:57:09] Jon Bond: Yeah, you can gimme some scientific fucking mumbo about what, what it is. It's, it's not, and and, and it's different to, to, to, to different people, right? So, you know, 90% of what should drive our emotions should be, should be low. Whether that's love for your job, love for your fucking community, love for your lifestyle.
[00:57:26] Jon Bond: Look, you know, if you're not driving yourself by that, what, what, what are you driving yourself by? What are your markers? What is your moral compass? How are, how are you? Trying to, you know, I hate this term, live your best life, but how are you trying to do that if that's not your goal? I don't mean you have to love everything.
[00:57:44] Jon Bond: There's many, many things I don't like, but what I mean is, yeah, my about not loving things. Yeah. My direction is towards, I want to do things I love doing and the more things I can do that I love doing that I would assume they're happier. I'm gonna be, obviously I have to do things I don't like, you know, there's things within my [00:58:00] career, my job, there's, there's all sorts of things I, I do that I, I can't stand.
[00:58:03] Jon Bond: You know, anything that's technical computers, blah, blah, blah. But I have to do it. If it doesn't get done, if I don't do it, it's not getting done. The whole success thing pisses me off, like striving for success. Success doesn't equal love. Success doesn't always equal happiness. Success are these, these words that we see all over social media that everyone's fucking pushing you towards and this is how you should live your life and you have to sacrifice and fuck.
[00:58:26] Jon Bond: Like, well, we've got one fucking life. Why am I gonna spend it sacrificing like there are times, don't get me wrong, but what I'm gonna sacrifice my whole life to lie on my deathbed and go fuck God. I was good at sacrificing happiness for what money that you now can't spend, you know, people that you now can't spend time with.
[00:58:46] Jon Bond: Don't get me wrong. There's gotta be a lot of balance and I've always been driven to things I enjoy. My whole career has been about what I love doing. That's why I never cared about money. And I do believe that's why money stresses me out more than it ever has because it's just something that's [00:59:00] never been a factor in my life until these last few years, and not just my own personal wealth, you know, the financial health of the business and all these other things. Unfortunately, money's a big part of it. So what I have to keep reminding myself is, yeah, but am I still doing by and large what I love doing? Because if I am, fucking keep going, if there's a day when I stop loving it or having some sort of love for the industry, no difference with, with your, you know, your partner, your wife, husband, whatever, then you have to make a decision and try and go a different direction.
[00:59:29] Jon Bond: Otherwise, you're gonna get stuck in a life that you don't really love. And what's the point in that? And if you don't love it, I guarantee the people around you don't love it either. We all think like, we don't want to hurt the other person. You're not hurting them. Trust me, they might be hurt for a little while, but you, you are also allow them to move onto their fucking life because if you don't love them and you don't love what you're doing, don't do it.
[00:59:47] Jon Bond: And that sounds really fucking simple. And look, there's times not, I mean, look, the world's changed. Look, people got kids in all, there's all sorts of circumstances that don't make it that simple, but. We do only have one life and sacrificing yours [01:00:00] completely either not wanting to hurt somebody else or some misguided goal of, well, I said I'm gonna be successful at owning gyms.
[01:00:07] Jon Bond: Like, well, if I'm not successful, I'm not successful, I'll do something else because I'm not gonna put my, bury myself into the ground for the sake of everybody being, oh, he said that's what he was gonna do and that's what he's doing. It's like, look, if if I need to make a change at some point because I'm not loving what I'm doing, then I will, then I will.
[01:00:24] Jon Bond: Because we all deserve to be fucking happy. So stop, stop doing shit you don't like.
[01:00:28] Emily Tan: I think that's a good note to, uh, finish up our conversation there. Yeah. John, this has been an absolute blast. I feel like I took so many nuggets from everything that you had just said, and the main, the, the consistent trend I see there is you gotta take fucking ownership.
[01:00:46] Emily Tan: You gotta take look at your life. If you are always running away from looking inwards, reflecting on your life, reflecting on your choices, you're just going to continue doing what you're doing blindly [01:01:00] until it's too late.
[01:01:01] Jon Bond: The, the things that you fuck up, the things that go wrong in your life is, is on you.
[01:01:04] Jon Bond: You can have something bad happen to you, but that is how do you react? How do you get outta that situation? How do you, how you, it's the on you.