The Hope Initiative

“And I remember having no food, no preparation, just a pair of bloody runners and some board shorts on. Just no idea what I was doing. And it was in the middle of the night it rained and I thought about turning back a thousand times and it was just like this - I talk about it in my book, the conflicting voices in your head. So that one voice that's derogatory and brings you down and it's self-depr...

A new kind of episode, dropping Tuesdays. Strangers in the Streets. This week: Damian. Location: Edinburgh Gardens, Fitzroy North, Victoria.

In 4.5 years, 145 podcast episodes totalling over 180 hours, it's time to raise the bar. Let's get creating.

“I got to 25 and I was like, shit, if I don't do this now, I'm never gonna do it… Why not do it now? You got nothing holding you back. There's no hand break, so just go send it. See what you can come up with. At the end of the day, if I come home after a year of traveling and all I've got is a bunch of good stories, that's better than not having them. You get out of life what you put in and I want...

“I have a journal where I just like write anything and everything that's on my mind and I find that it's a really good mindfulness hack, mindfulness practice to do, it really helps. It's really good for your mental health. And you don't worry about punctuation or anything, or if it makes sense, you just write. You just write. And it also really helps when it comes to art as well, or like writing a...

“There’s endless books on happiness and being happy. And I just believe on a very simple, practical level, happiness is fleeting. If you think about it, if I've got an ice cream cone, I just got handed an ice cream cone at the ice cream shop, and I've got it and I'm happy and I'm enjoying it, great, I'm happy. I've got an ice cream cone. And if it falls and hits the ground, I'm not happy anymore....

“I remember I walked into that jiujitsu place, and the guy was some Brazilian guy. With his accent, he was like, ‘Come tomorrow, I'll look after you’. I was like, fuck, I can't let this guy down now. So I went the next day and then that whole month I went, I was working out or doing jujitsu every day of the week. And that month just changed my life completely. I came back; license, job, found a pa...

“It's hard to say where that voice came from that night on the beach that was telling me it was the right thing to do. I sat out there until 4:00am. I had a thousand reasons to stay in training, but I don't know, I knew I had to do the right thing. I knew what the right thing was. That's what I went with. I just trusted it and I promised myself I would never, never hold it against Luke. I would ne...

“So from that moment, I really developed a sense of believing and trusting in my knowing, which is really the only compass I've got to work from. It's not out there, it's inside. One time I was working on this artwork, and I had my beautiful classical music on and a glass of wine, and I was right into the zone and my dad spoke to me. So again, not words, just a felt experience, but the thought and...

“I feel like I've changed some of those defaults, and so now it strikes me more when I have an upset moment. I'm like, oh man, what's going on? Why am I frustrated by this? Whereas it used to be the other way. It was like, okay, now how do I find gratitude at this moment? How do I be joyful? How do I be present? I had to kind of force it, but I feel like now that's the default. That just is, and n...

“It's about getting started. It's not about working on perfect, because I think that's what gets in so many people's way. It's like they're gonna put something off until things are… it's taking the step and it's getting better as you go along. And one of the things I like is that doable changes, right? So what you can do today is completely different than what you can do six months from now. But j...

“I'm so passionate about telling people, you are not your trauma. You are not this identity that you've chosen to believe. For me, my social anxiety. These labels that you think that you are, or these personality traits, unless you choose to believe that you are. Which is why I'm like, you can truly change your beliefs and you can change the persona that you are portraying to the world. You can ch...

“My perception was that Australian people, like if you are born in Australia and like your parents are from Australia, you were slightly richer. And I felt like I could recognise that we didn't have certain things like money wise, but I didn't feel like we were necessarily poor, but I felt like we were definitely a bit under that… Cause just little like small things, you see people celebrating Chr...

“When you talk about like Hope, ‘Hope Initiative’, right? He gave me hope that being interested in thousands of things is a worthwhile pursuit. I think if I just dialled it to down to that, growing up, we're put in this bucket of go to school, pick the one sport, pick the degree that gives you the highest probability of reaching success. But most of the time we haven't tried enough to pick the rig...

“I think that the art came out when it was meant to come out. I feel like the timing with most things, well everything is perfect. Basically what happened with the artwork is I just started painting and I'd sell, when the kids were little, I didn't sell straight away… Also, that's another story. I mean, the power of not giving up is another thing. It's a bit paradoxical, isn't it? It's like saying...

“You almost have to be on and really live those values every day… But I don't know. I guess the thing is whatever you're gonna do in life, it's not gonna be fucking easy. Like if you wanna make some money or you want to, whatever you want to do, nothing's easy. So that goes back to just trying to do as many hard things as possible and yeah, just trying to live your brand and trying to set enough t...

“The power of vision, right? It became so clear to me over this two year journey that I've gone through where I've actually seen change occur. I spoke about that before, mental masturbation and then actually applying, two different things and I think to get any change in your life, yes, you need to do the reading, then you need to visualise it, and then you need to apply it. It's the Be, Do, Have....

“I just want to create unique style YouTube videos that kind of reflect that. I haven't really told anyone this, and I don't know if I wanna say it on the podcast, but I'm going to anyway. But I think this idea, ‘my life is a movie’ has kind of stuck with me and one of my basketball coaches, Brian Rolfe actually to told me this, that you can write your own script with your life. You don't have to...

“I don't think I would've been inspired to leave and to go all in if I didn't have this thing looming over me that I had to take care of, that I had to pay off, which was that student loan debt and when I decided to quit and to go in all in on myself to partner with my dad, that was just one option. The other option was faking my death and moving to South America… It was definitely a joke, but I s...

“In order to create, you need a space. So what happens I think is if you don't have space to create, you are in that grind. There is a period of your life where people wanna skip to the creative part but I think we evolved into that. I think initially it was just hard work, grinding, trying to make money, trying to get space… For some people, they might create space to enjoy their sport or they mi...

“It's a very easy lever for people to pull on. It's taking care of their bodies and health because it is the gift that given us, not just life, but the actual vessel that we get to manoeuvre and shape in this life. And once you establish a state of optimum health and balance, you're just much, much more receptive to not just the mystical elements, but to what you really want to get out...

“When I quit heroin on my own for 60 days and started drinking a lot. That's when I learned the lesson of; energy cannot be created nor destroyed. And if you have an addiction or anything, and you get rid of it, that energy is gonna go somewhere. And if you don't place it somewhere positive, it is just gonna bring you down.” Episode #124 of The Hope Initiative with Alex Cherry.

“I think the other thing that he said to me was, I don't want you to be here because I want you here. I want you to be here cause you want to be here. And I think you were there the other day at his house when I had to run in and pick up a charger and I said, ‘Hey guys just running in’. I want… and he said, “your man.” I said, no, no, no. I need, I need to get something inside. And he goes, “you n...

“The whole philosophy of my gambling was really betting on a lot of value opportunities. You're chipping along, you're treading along for 30, 40 weeks of the season, and you don't know when you're gonna make the money. But there'll be five or six weekends, or five or six weeks that everything goes your way. And those are the weekends. It's not like you're making five grand every week, and it's how...

“I'm chasing a lot of things and I just find that that keeps me going. That keeps me motivated. That's what makes me want to keep going and striving for more. And then the more I start to change and I can start to see the change in those around me, drives me even more to wanna keep changing because it's really cool when you can share something with someone and then you start to see that they're ma...