Challenges That Change Us

Book into the RHPLS: regional high performance leadership tour: https://events.highperformanceleadershipsummit.com.au/regional-tour-2025 Work with me: https://trialtitude.as.me/schedule/7f8ae792/?appointmentTypeIds[]=35227528   Trigger warning: Suicide, PTSD, depression and anxiety   There are many paths to PTSD and Suicide and many of us would expect a military man like Kevin Humphreys...

Book into the RHPLS: regional high performance leadership tour: https://events.highperformanceleadershipsummit.com.au/regional-tour-2025 Work with me: https://trialtitude.as.me/schedule/7f8ae792/?appointmentTypeIds[]=35227528   Just how bad is the recovery after an accident that should have killed you? In last week’s episode we spoke with Pete Harris about his motorbike accident that he mirac...

We’ve all heard stories of people surviving accidents that should have killed them, but when it happened to Pete Harris it wasn’t just a case of ‘walking away’. It was a period of significant recovery and hardship. Peter Harris is a seasoned educator and leader with over 24 years of experience in teaching and executive roles across New South Wales schools. Peter currently teaches at Camden Ha...

This weeks episode is a story close to my heart. Not just because it’s a close friend of mine, but because it shares the life altering and terrifying experience of suffering a stroke. Erin Benjamin was in her early thirties when she had a stroke and it changed her life forever. The initial experience, the hospital arrival and the recovery process were all huuuge hurdles for Erin to overcome and sh...

Challenges That Change Us –   Finding out you have a degenerative disease is a huge, life altering discovery, and for a parent it can be even more distressing to think about those you may leave behind. Matt Butler was a parent of two when he first discovered he had muscular dystrophy, but while he has experienced the struggles, the stress and the challenges that come with it, his story is a s...

The sudden impact of an unexpected injury can have instant, life changing consequences, and that was the case for Richard Tombs when a freak accident left him wondering if he would ever walk again. During his time whilst juggling his career Richard also represented the Wallabies from 1988 thru 1996, which included 5 test matches and a part of the 1991 World Cup winning squad and 1992 Bledisloe vic...

One experience that all parents hope they never have to go through is losing their child. The grief and loss can be overwhelming and figuring out how to navigate that can be incredibly hard. Sadly that was an experience Barbra Schulte had to go through when she lost her son Zane to bone cancer. Since working her way through how to process her grief she is now a High-Performance Coach, Cutting...

If you’d like to do more work on resilience check out our course here.   Can you believe we have made it to the end of 2024? I know the past year has been a big one for many of us, myself included, so before we hit 2025 I thought I’d jump on here to give a few tools, strategies and tips for how to can approach adversity and nurture resilience.   In this episode I share:   - &nb...

One person whose journey to success could be described as a struggled laced with tragedy is Beau Robinson. Having experienced multiple attempts and hurdles before finally making and playing in the Super Rugby Final with the NSW Waratahs and then in 2011 he found himself at the Queensland Reds and became a Super Rugby Champion winning the Super Rugby title. He also went on to play for the...

It’s shown time and time again that family abuse and violence is rife in our communities, and it’s often the other family members who keep things quiet. Caroline Brunne’s story shows just how far families can go to hide abuse, and the impact it can have when the secret does finally come out.  Caroline Brunne is a survivor coach, breath work facilitator, author, professional speaker and Founde...

In this episode of 'Challenges That Change Us,' we are joined by 18-year-old cyclist Toby Inglis, who details his extraordinary journey in the sport. Toby shares his experiences growing up in a small farming community and his rapid rise in the world of cycling despite significant challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, unexpected health issues, and living arrangement problems. Toby has developed a...

We’ve had guests speak about growing up in a controlling religious sect before, but for this episode we are getting a close up look at what it was like to grow up in one of these groups, while also being gay. Craig Hoyle grew up in Invercargill, NZ in the restrictive Exclusive Brethren Christian sect, which banned television, radio, pets, and social contact with outsiders. He was excommunicated fr...

The impacts that body image beliefs can have on limiting our ability to grow and succeed are honestly hard to quantify, but make no mistake, they can be absolutely crushing.   During her 15+ years of experience in corporate leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies, Nma Emeh encountered countless women, including herself, who struggled with their body image. This experience inspired her to em...

Trigger warning: Child sexual abuse   We’ve said before that survivors of child sexual abuse often end up more resilient than others, purely because of what they have had to live through. Well Malika Reese is possibly the purest example of that, because not only did she survive abuse as a child, she also went on to face her perpetrator and see him charged, survive a robbery and survive having...

Welcome to part 2 of our chat with the incredible Nathan Stapleton. In our last episode Nathan shared the highs and lows of life in elite sport, and immediately afterwards, as well as the mindset he needed in order to thrive in that sporting space. For this episode we are discussing the serious topic of his sudden accident that left him a quadriplegic and what life has been like since. In this epi...

Few people know what is required mentally to achieve at the highest level of elite sport, and fewer still know what it’s like to have to apply that mindset to a life changing injury. Nathan Stapleton is an Australian professional rugby league player who most recently played for the London Broncos in the Kingstone Press Championship. He previously represented the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the N...

Motherhood is a big journey for any woman, but many of us consider that taking that step in your teenage years to be limiting and negative. Julie Allyson experienced this opinion from those around her when she fell pregnant at 16, but it was her mindset and determination that helped her reframe her situation so that she could not only go on to achieve great things professionally and as a mother, b...

Trigger warning: Anxiety Welcome to part two of our chat with Stephanie Burns. In part one Stephanie shared her remarkable life and some of the huge challenges she has faced, including having to navigate violence in the home and abandonment in her teenage years. In part two she shares with us the impact those experiences have had on her and how they influenced her social anxiety. This episode is n...

Trigger warning: domestic violence Today we are joined by someone who has truly lived a life of challenges, lessons and intriguing turns. From navigating violence in the home as a teenager, to being a woman in the military when they had only just started accepting women back into the technical fields, Stephanie Burns has seen a lot. In 1973, Stephanie became one of the first women trained as an en...

What exactly does it take to go from not being able to run to the end of your block, to running ultr marathons? Desiree Stanley is the host of the Pockets of Knowledge podcast, and she discovered exactly what it would take to go from a non-runner to completing multiple ultramarathons in her 40s/. Desiree's entrepreneurial spirit drives her various ventures, showcasing adaptability and commitment t...

Trigger warning: domestic violence and mental health When it comes to domestic violence, no two situations are the same. That is why it can be so hard to understand from the outside what exactly is going on. We might look at someone driven and successful and find it impossible to believe they could end up in such a situation, but there can be all kinds of factors that influence self worth and affe...

Do you love High performance then check out our 3 day summit in October this year, only 30 places :  https://events.highperformanceleadershipsummit.com.au/october-summit-2024 Trigger warning: Domestic violence, sexual assault, mental health While abuse within the family is something we have discussed on this podcast, one topic we have not covered as much, which often goes hand in hand, is the...

Do you love High performance then check out our 3 day summit in October this year, only 30 places :  https://events.highperformanceleadershipsummit.com.au/october-summit-2024 For many of us reading and writing seems pretty common place. So much so that we might not even consider what it must be like to navigate our modern world without an ability to read and write. Graham Neville dropped out...

Do you love High performance then check out our 3 day summit in October this year, only 30 places :  https://events.highperformanceleadershipsummit.com.au/october-summit-2024 Trigger warning; domestic violence It’s so often the case that one trauma can result in an entirely different one down the track. That is the case for Marleen Mour, a 38yr old single mum who ran away from Egypt and an un...

Do you love High performance then check out our 3 day summit in October this year, only 30 places :  https://events.highperformanceleadershipsummit.com.au/october-summit-2024 Trigger warning: sexual assault, hate crime, attempted murder In this episode we will be discussing the experience of David Keck, a man in the U.S. who was brutally attacked 9 years ago and left for dead, simply because...