Jim Hughes Shows Us How To Become Untamed In Life

Jim Hughes Joins Us On The Steve Jobs Inspired Join Up Dots Podcast

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Introducing Jim Hughes

Jim Hughes is today’s guest on the Steve Jobs inspired Join Up Dots podcast interview. 

He is the founder of Become Untamed, a coaching, deep immersion and adventure events programme, and the place where he helps you find yourself often using the wilderness as the way forward.

He has been on a hell of a journey of personal discovery over the last few years, but now seems to have found the point when it’s hard to drag the smile off his face.

But let’s go back a few years and the smile was lost, or at least mislaid.

As he says “I burned myself out treading someone else’s path.

I changed myself to fit into my environment, I questioned – and then quietened – my instincts, and I lost confidence in my abilities.

 I stressed myself out questioning everything.

​I’d always pushed through challenges so this lack of clarity was crippling. 

How The Dots Joined Up For Jim

Show Highlights

During the show we discussed such weighty subjects with Jim Hughes such as:

We share the difficulties that Jim shares by being quiet and disconnecting one hundred percent in his life.

Jim discusses the awareness that he has developed and why he thinks that are three elements to change.

We discuss how the coaching business  “Become Untamed” came to the fore and the steps he took to make it happen.

and lastly

Why the phrase “Show me your friends and ill show you your future” can be a real wake up call in life if we only pay enough attention.

How To Connect With Jim

Website

Linkedin

Return To The Top Of Jim Hughes

If you enjoyed this episode with Jim Hughes, then why not listen to some of our favourite podcast episodes such as Ron Stelle, Ted Yoder,  Sean Swarner or the amazing Sabotager
 
Or if you prefer just pop over to our podcast archive for thousands of amazing episodes to choose from.

Full Jim Hughes Interview Transcription

Intro [0:00]
Life shouldn’t be hard life should be a fun filled adventure every day. So now start joining up dots tap into your talents, your skills, your God given gifts and tell your boss, you don’t deserve me. I’m out of here. It’s time for you to smash that alarm clock and start getting the dream business and life you will of course, are dreaming of. Let’s join your host David route from the back of his garden in the UK, or wherever he might be today with another JAM PACKED episode of the number one hit podcast. Join Up Dots.

David Ralph [0:39]
Yes, good morning to you and welcome to Join Up Dots a parent you solo shows recently, but we’re back on the interview trail. And I’m certainly glad that we’ve kicked it off with today’s guest because he is the founder of become untamed, a coaching, deep immersion and sort of adventure events programme and the place where he helps you find yourself often using the wilderness as the way forward. Now he’s been on a hell of a journey of personal discovery over the last few years, but now seems to have found a point when it’s hard to drag a smile off his face. But let’s go back a few years and the smile was lost or at least mislaid as he says, I burned myself out treading someone else’s path. I changed myself to fit into my environment. So I questioned and when I quieten my instincts and I lost competence in my abilities, I stressed myself out questioning everything. Now, I’d always push through challenges so this lack of clarity was crippling. Eventually my discomfort became too great I reached a crossroads, and I had no idea which path to take. All I knew was I needed to make a change. After a long journey of self discovery littered with painful realisations and tough choices, I now feel in complete alignment with my values and gifts. So how did he know that this was where he should be heading in his life after many wrong choices so he could move on with total conviction? And when the doubts obviously come creeping back in what does he do to become loud, proud and full of energy instead of quietening his instincts once more Well let’s find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only the founder of become untamed Mr. Jim Hughes. How are you?

Jim Hughes [2:25]
Rude health Thank you David. Rude health What a delightful intro. You made me sound way more philosophical, and tuned in than I actually am in real life.

David Ralph [2:34]
Because he was telling me that last night you basically was feasting on square all you was out in the wilderness. You were swimming naked with mermaids. You were living a life on your own terms. So that’s, that’s kind of exciting to me.

Jim Hughes [2:49]
Yeah, fair one. I mean, as ya know, as my dancers never let the truth get in the way of a good story. So we’ll just run with that version. But yes, I was in the wilderness and it was absolutely lovely. Woke up to a morning dip this morning and then commuted home through some nettles with the use of a stick. And here we are.

David Ralph [3:06]
So let’s talk about that. Because over the last I don’t know what’s happened to me over the last three months or so I’ve become obsessed with Bear Grylls. Now Bear Grylls has been on TV for like 20 years, and I kind of dipped in every now and again. But I’ve been on a kind of mission to sort of learn 100 different ways to make fire. And I can start with batteries and tampons and God knows what and even a bag of Oui oui, I now know how to make fire with a bag Away We Go Go me. But it’s all about disconnecting and understanding that the quietness is the biggest win you can have in life and it’s something that people kind of mislaid somehow they’re always putting in headphones are always trying to fill in the silence. So what does it give you when you’re sitting now on night? I don’t imagine that you get your your stereo out and start blasting Kylie Minogue. What’s what you actually do?

Jim Hughes [4:02]
know that’s an interesting question. And now of course, keep it clean. The I’m one of these people who are still battle with being quiet and being still and like a lot of people. I love being distracted by stuff. I’ve worked a lot on over the years. So camping is a really interesting one where I feel it’s a bit of a cheat because yes, I don’t necessarily don’t take headphones and I didn’t I didn’t play any music. I took a book which I didn’t really get to read much. But with camping you can just sit there you light a fire and then you put your food and so last night I let the fire put my tinfoil over the grate and then I put some chicken on to cook. And then I just sat there and thought right? I’ll be still now this would be nice. And then five seconds later to kind of look over the chicken and right that needs turning Oh, it’s there’s too much over the phone. So I suppose there’s two answers to that. This does this. In an ideal world. I will sit there cross legged and just listen to the birds I do more of that than I used to. But there’s still the we, I suppose the reason company works for me is because there’s still lots of things to do lots of light, you’ve got to set up your bed, you’ve got to make the fire, you’ve got to, you’ve got to whittle the wood, you got to do all that kind of stuff. So you kind of have distractions, but they’re the different distractions, and that’s the main benefit for me is taking yourself out of your normal day to day, you’re, it’s something phenomenal, like we have 90,000 thoughts a day, or 70,000 thoughts a day, and 90% of them are exactly the same. So if you’re going to change who you are, you’re gonna say

David Ralph [5:31]
that again, because I don’t want that point to sort of just be lost. Say that again, because that’s powerful.

Jim Hughes [5:37]
It is. And I reserve the right to have these numbers slightly wrong, but they’re still they’re still phenomenally high, you have something like 70,000 thoughts a day, and 90% of them are the same. So just imagine your brain is just on this like tape recorder, just the same shit, same thoughts going through and occasionally of new ones. And then you would get triggered by an old memory. So the same thoughts come up. And we get up off the same side of the bed, we drink the glass of water, we go and clean our teeth, we do our stretches, we check our phones, whatever. And unless you are if you’re trying to, if you then ultimately want to change who you are, how you live, how you think how you behave, you’ve got to start changing those thoughts and changing his thoughts. You can do that by changing environment by breaking patterns by doing new things. So yes, I don’t sleep very well when I’m well camping. Yes, I’m not very clean. Yes, there’s lots of things but it’s a different experience. It’s breaking that pattern. And there’s something about force discomfort as well which makes a huge difference because our lives are so sanitised now and that’s a whole nother rabbit hole to go down but

David Ralph [6:40]
I love it rabbit holes I’ll go into anyhow I want so interestingly is why when you know the benefits, do you still struggle with being quiet?

Jim Hughes [6:52]
Habits? Simple as that? I would I would say Yeah,

David Ralph [6:56]
but you coach this out, you know, the the rewards are there to have I often think this when people are out there doing stuff and you think you know this, you know this yourself and you’re still struggling with it yourself? It’s It’s weird, isn’t it? How the message even though it’s clear to us sometimes it needs a sort of life situation to occur before we totally buy into the words that we talk.

Jim Hughes [7:24]
Oh, 100%? Just, I mean, I think the editors even do a song called smokers outside the hospital door. How many? How many? How many doctors are there? Who smoke? Yeah. How many? How many personal trainers or wellbeing instructors or whatever, have a stressful relationship. I mean, it’s kind of a do as I say not as I do type approach with with a lot of these things where we it’s we can spot problems, we can spot solutions in other people much quicker than we can do them for ourselves. But the big thing for me is awareness. I’m I am aware of the challenges I face when it comes to distraction and to be ended up. I don’t want to over dramatise it. I’m 100 times better than it used to be. And I can just sit there and just have a cup of tea and just look at the river. And I’m fine with that. I can’t quite do that for about an hour like some people can but there’s just at least I have the awareness when I’m getting distracted when I get Oh yeah, look at that. How funny is that? I’ve just been distracted by the fire. I didn’t need to twiddle you know, tweak without fire. But I just did because I got bought. And the awareness of the first step

David Ralph [8:26]
is that for everyone out there, you know, I came to a life crisis when I was 30. And I allowed another 10 years to go past before I went up, I can’t do this again, I’ve really got to make a leap. And so I sort of leapt, and 12 years later, I’m still sort of working away and doing my own thing and stuff. But it was not an awareness that I was aware of. It was more like a feeling that I ignored. And it was like I gained more from watching films, thinking yeah, that’s what I should be doing. You know, it was like I was watching somebody else and answering my own questions. But I just ignored and suppressed those feelings all the time.

Jim Hughes [9:10]
This is a topic I love to talk about the what helps change what inhibits change. And I did a talk on this if you a few weeks ago, actually, I believe there’s three elements to change some you can that you can sort of stack in your favour to in order to create it, or at least at least gain awareness as to why you haven’t changed up to now. And the first step is quantifying the cost of your current situation of the status quo. So a lot of us we go or we watch a film about an adventurer or a musician or whatever. Yeah, that’ll be cool. But our current reality is not painful enough to actually need to make the change. We’ve kind of a five out of 10 Happy six out of 10 happy and that’s not typically enough And let’s say for a big life change that requires a lot of unknown and uncertainty which we’ll get into in a second. We have to be at a certain level of pain, that noise that you talked about that that feeling needs to be amped up. Just imagine like a little noise in the background that you don’t even tune into, that’s a call for something to change. It’s only when that noise gets too loud that we can’t ignore it. And the existence of the the way, we accept the pain or the discomfort, or the unhappiness that we’re currently experiencing enough for us to take right now we need to start making changes. So then in comes the second phase of change, which is to fall in love with a new thing with a possible alternative reality. And that’s where watching films comes in. That’s where listening to podcasts comes in and reading books. Because we start to imagine another reality, oh, wow, okay, that’s not just for somebody else that could be for me. And the more we can relate to that, the more we can fall in love with it, the more we can crystallise it, it’s something we can do, then the the shorter that gap becomes. And then the third one, because you know, Better the devil, you know, humans don’t like change, our brains are designed for us to survive, not for us to thrive. So if we’re going to jump into something new, a lot of the time, and depending on your risk tolerance, we need to know what that new thing is. Because people can I really want to quit my job, but I’ve got no idea what to move to, I’m just gonna stay here, I want to I need a divorce. I’m miserable in my current relationship. But hey, I don’t know anybody else out there who would have me. So it’s about falling in love with that second alternative. And then the third element, and if so the visual for your listeners is imagine a pipe and you’ve got the first time at the cost of the status quo, that’s the push energy. That’s the motivation to move away from the thing that you’re currently doing. So imagine the force going into the pipe, then the second element is the the the falling in love with a new thing. That’s the inspiration, that’s something that you move towards the pull energy imagine, then the the thing being pulled out the pipe at the other end. But then right in the middle of that pipe, squashing down on it, you put the third element, which is resistance. And we have so many resistances, we have resistances, we are afraid of judgement, if we do change, let’s say we’ve been trained as a lawyer for the last 15 years, and our parents paid for our college education, or a doctor and we’ve got all these student debts that only maybe not even ours, the thought of then getting rid of all that and pursuing an entrepreneurial life or not, there’s so many negative emotions around that the fear of judgement, then there’s the fear of failure, if we get it wrong, the fear of not having enough money, the fear of rejection, and a lot of the time and and he talked about self sabotage recently, recently, the fear of success, which is also huge on so we’ve got all these resistances pushing down on that pipe, the greater the resistances, the greater the disparity needs to be between the push energy going in and the pull energy going out, ie, your current scenario needs to be so unbelievably painful and misaligned and miserable. And the new thing needs to be so unbelievably great. You can’t imagine doing anything else other than that. And that’s the point that I got to with my change. And that’s usually what leads to most people making a change, I believe,

David Ralph [13:08]
I got to a point where a manager came in, and she was a complete cow, she really was. But I think I’d had 10 years of being that coiled spring getting tighter and tighter. So it could have been any one that came in. It was just I was at that moment to go, I’ve had enough of this and go. But interestingly, with my journey, and I’ll be interested to see how this sort of dovetails with yours. I started Join Up Dots 10 years ago now coming up 10 years ago, just on the basis of I think I could do that. It just seems like something that I used to be able to communicate, I could stand up and do presentations. I was a trainer. So I just thought sort of communication was my thing. And then I went at it with an absolute passion. But then I lost the passion. And there was about a two year period where I was thinking, is this really as good as it should be? You know, it just seems like I’m just churning out podcast episodes time and time again. And then I hit illness. And when the illness came along, I then focused in on myself and ultimately, I found the passion for what I was doing again. So what I say a lot now, Jim, is that success doesn’t build happiness, happiness, build success. And everybody out there sitting there eating bags of Doritos on the sofa, feeling slumpy having a carry every night and smoking. The first thing that they’ve really got to do is actually start working on themselves because otherwise it’s incredibly difficult to make the changes that you want, unless you become the change yourself.

Jim Hughes [14:49]
Yeah, I totally agree. I wrote a newsletter about this centre on Tuesday, I think or one day about if you’re in a crossroads in your life. Are you about to go through a transition? Are you in the middle of a transition? What couldn’t you do to sort of find clarity amongst the chaos and one of the things I suggested is take purposeful action, and make room for the things that you love. And that purposeful action is like its momentum is what you need right now, isn’t it? So as you say, if you’re sitting eating Doritos watching Netflix, that’s not momentum building, that’s you, that’s a reinforcing of a pattern that, oh, I’m miserable. So I’m going to do something that’s going to make them feel good in the short term that’s not healthy. And then you feel guilty about that, which is, which is a vicious cycle, what you want to create is you want to flip it on its head and create a virtuous cycle where you put the bag of Doritos down and you go for an evening stroll with your with your spouse, or by yourself or your your play, you listen to a podcast, such as this one that’s gonna get you inspired. You get up earlier in the morning or you go wild, can you do something purposeful, where you’re being proactive, that you know in your core is healthy. And it could only be it can be a tiny little change? And that’s incredibly rewarding for us. Because when we then start to reinforce a story that oh, yeah, you aren’t making change, this is important enough to you and you find new for me to do more change, you’ve made slightly more change. And that’s what builds momentum. It so yeah, I completely agree.

David Ralph [16:08]
Or as we say, the dots join up. You It’s only when you look back and you see all these tiny little things. And you got it all makes sense. Let’s listen to Jim Carrey. And we’ll be back with Jim,

Unknown Speaker [16:20]
my father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job. And our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

David Ralph [16:47]
Now, I’m gonna blow some smoke up you Jim about it’s as it is, and I’ve got to say it. I have many, many people request to come on to the show. And when I go over and I look at their profile or their website, it kind of just leaves me cold. I’ve seen it a million times before. Yours excites me. And I look at it. And I know why it excites me because a lot of it is about disconnection. It’s about wilderness. It’s about it’s about everything that I’ve been watching bloody Bear Grylls night after night. It just seems to speak to me at this moment. When did it become the thing when you went? Ah, yeah, that’s where I should be heading.

Jim Hughes [17:27]
Well, firstly, you obviously know that flattery will get you everywhere with

David Ralph [17:30]
me always does, except I was talking about

Jim Hughes [17:37]
this the other day, actually. And I don’t know if there’s a definitive answer to this. But I suppose some context I was born and raised in the countryside. I mean, I wasn’t born in the countryside. I was born in a hospital in the city of Chester, but raised in the countryside, we lived 30 minutes outside, surrounded by fields me and my two older brothers would go and play army and build dens and we were given the autonomy to to go and do that kind of old school, like come back when it’s dark type lessons, which is unfortunately not not so common anymore. So there’s that strong part of me that is always drawn to that. And I remember I used to go and stay at a friend’s house. It’s even just in Chester, which is like 100,000 people or maybe 80,000. And going sit, stay with them in the suburbs for one night, and then I’d get on the bus on the way home. And as soon as I got into the Greenbelt, I remember feeling right. This is amazing. I just felt more at peace and then you go to school and university and your, my priorities were about boozing and playing sports and womanising as best I could, which is not very well at all. And, you know, trying to get the girls and studying with about fourth and wilderness and stuff was just not even part of the conversation then But then I moved to Whistler after that, in Canada, Western Canada, where ski instructing and adventuring and that’s where I reconnected with that side of myself where we it was just movement every day, whether it was being whether it was my job, because I did some plumbing work out there, but it was it was out in nature, it was full of amazing people who were also doing similar things. So that really stoked my that rekindled that side of me but then that was just like five years of fun. hedonism pretty much and then I was like alright, I’ve got to be an adult. You know, I drank quite a lot during that time. So I started having the shakes even though I was only 26. And my my liver couldn’t take any more my wallet couldn’t take any more. I had broken my back and broken my wrist got concussion from mountain biking. So that’s when I knew I needed to be more of an adult or thought I needed to be more of an adult. So I moved to Australia to try and get my first proper job basically, which I ended up doing. But that was completely the other way. Then I was like from my job in particular. I was in an office I was in a light industrial estate I was I was driving up the motorway to work every day. So the weekends I was doing a bunch of stuff but like that side of me got drained out I became more and more misaligned. And then I realised that so similar to you, you had a bit of a moment when you were 30. Mine was not too far off. I’ve realised my life. I’ve had these cycles of five years, so five years in Whistler five years in Australia. And then it was like, right? Well, if Whistler was the fun, and Australia was the work, what about if I combine the two? And that’s when I realised, right? My, the thing I love to do the most thing I’m most alive when doing is being connected with other people, preferably outdoors, preferably doing something that gets the heart rate going, although not all the time. So that’s so untamed, was basically founded off of those ideas. It was like, right, how can we start from the ground up where I can live nomadically and we set it up. So I was on Zoom, you know, back in 2017. So it’s been I’ve been nomadic, or I wasn’t nomadic for the first three years in the business living all over the world. So now settled down again, but

David Ralph [20:55]
you just being settled down again, you know, because I’m somebody that loves adventure, I love to travel. But I know that I like a hub. I like to come home to somewhere, but I can lock the door and go, the weld is left behind. Do you know?

Jim Hughes [21:13]
Totally, yeah. So we, my wife, and I were living in Bulgaria and COVID hit. And we had all these years, with the whole year, pretty much booked or six months worth of travel booked, we’re gonna get Oman and we’re gonna go to Greece and all this stuff. Obviously COVID Put paid to that. But that was when we both sat down and thought right is now the time that we actually buy a house and put some roots down because we’d had enough of living out of a bag. So that’s what we did. And for the first we said, we haven’t quite been in the house, even for two years yet. So the house was a big fixer upper. It was about finding new friends around here, but getting your feet under this. And that was that was kind of distracting for want of a better word. And I was perfectly content with having a house. And I’m still quite minimalist. So I’m very cautious about the things that I add into my life. But it’s only recently in the last, probably four or so months that I’ve now started to get right. I’m kind of getting itchy feet to do something, again, to be more disconnected to have and the hence why the wild camping and I’m still I’m still going to get wild camping, semi regularly taking the kayak out on the river. But yeah, to answer your question, I’m I’m kind of being called for that again. But I do fundamentally understand the importance of having a hub and a bass because I never had one. This is the first house in my life at the age of 30. When I bought it was what 3534 When I put pictures on the wall, like first house since I was a kid. So having roots down and being able to chat to friends that you know, you’re going to still be able to chat to in six months or 12 months, that has been really big. But now I’ve got that anchor. Now I’m looking to kind of explore again.

David Ralph [22:52]
Now you said a word which is hugely powerful, that you’ve got that calling again. And this this interests me, I read an article by a guy the other day. And it was an interesting article, because he left and blinded all the way through it. And I thought okay, this must be his style. But he made a good point. And he said, I received 11,000 emails a month, asking me to help with somebody’s how to find their passion, how to find the thing that they want to do. And he said, Look, I’m not a wizard. He said, I’ve just got a website, how the bleeding hell do I know what you want to do? You should know what you want to do, you know, because you do it. And he made a valid point. He said, Look at what you waste the most time doing the thing that sort of hit hard. Yeah, I should have done that. But I’ve spent time doing this because it’s it’s more enjoyable. And you could waste an awful lot of time camping, you could do an awful lot of time out in the wild. And that’s your calling. That’s what drags you there. That’s what what sort of inspires you. So why do you think most people out there struggle with this concept of finding the thing, when we won’t call it passion? The thing that they like doing the most? Because it should be obvious because it’s the thing they like doing the most?

Jim Hughes [24:10]
Well, a couple of layers that firstly, I would I would actually challenge the notion that it’s what they currently like doing the most because a lot of people don’t haven’t even connected with the thing they like the most or they’ve become so disconnected from it that they’ve forgotten. So they used to do it as a kid but then they put it they become an adult and they go well, and you know, let’s say they’re speaking to a coach or a friend and they go well, I used to do that as a kid actually. But now you know, obviously times change and you can’t afford to do that anymore. You can’t you’ve got to be responsible. So I think people disconnect from what they truly love to such a high degree partly because they genuinely forget it and partly because they don’t want to connect with it because then they will be aware of a change they may need to make which may scare them and make make them feel guilty or on Cape in case Making a change. So they just would rather hide from it. And then there was a second element to that answer, which I’ve completely forgotten,

David Ralph [25:07]
don’t worry, because I’m going to jump in with my second element to sort of push you back into it. So why do you think that we disconnect with the things that we love doing as kids because I used to talk about this all the time on Join Up Dots. And I say at the end, I believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our pasts is the best way to build our futures. Why do we forget, and I’ll give you an example, somebody the other day was talking to me about the weird rules that we had to go under, during COVID, where you couldn’t go to a pub, but if you did buy a pickled egg, and Ben, you could have a pint. And if you didn’t get your hand, it was all weird stuff. And I’d forgotten literally everything. And it was only like, a couple of years ago, it’s just kind of blanked. So why do you think that we were so good at wiping out parts of our life? And, and forgetting what actually means something to us?

Jim Hughes [26:03]
Yeah, very good question. I’d say there’s a lot of layers to that. In terms of people’s passion, so to speak, or inspirations, if you want to call it something else, I, the first thing that comes to mind is the power of your environment. And again, the same newsletter actually the other day, the your environment, who you spend time with the inputs that you receive, not necessarily just the friends that you hang out with day to day or your family, but the podcasts, you listen to the books you read, they are so unbelievably important for how our life is going to turn out. There’s a great quote, show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future or telling your future. And I read a stat that if you are if you hang around with somebody, if you’re with one of your close friends is obese, your chances of becoming obese is 57%. Higher. And it’s the same with divorce really true. Yeah. It’s according to this study, and it’s at Harvard, and it’s somewhere so I took it as Golden, obviously, because they got Harvard, and then each study immediately sounds legitimate. But there’s a lot of studies out there about the power of environment, it’s the state they talk about. I think the biggest study into happiness and life span, just to go off track a little bit is the it’s not what how much you smoke, how much you eat, it’s your relationships, it’s the quality of your of your close relationships. So the inputs that go in, if you think go back to that tape recorder, we’ve got of those 10s of 1000 thoughts every day, if we’re hanging out with the same people that same thoughts are gonna go in, because we’re going to say in conversations, let’s say you’re hanging out with somebody who plays the victim, or moans about COVID, or the war in Ukraine, and how their their role, their job would be better if it wasn’t for those things, or they’d be happier, they’d be married to Miss Nevada, who you spoke to the other day. If you if you’re constantly surrounded by those inputs, your chances of you taking on those are so much stronger. So if linking it to your passions and your purpose, what if you’re surrounded by people who are disconnected from theirs, and they’re dwelling on the past or they’re dwelling on external things, then you’re also going to become your chances are you’re going to become disconnected from those if you start hanging around with people who don’t like the things that you used to, like, let’s say you’re an outdoor lover, and you’re living in London, or, you know, anywhere, any big city, you’re let’s say you’re surrounded by people who’ve never been to the countryside or don’t really like it, and their their thing is all about going for a complicated coffee in the morning and then go into a, you know, a city type activity all the time, those conversations about the wilderness in the wild aren’t going to come up. So your chances of disconnecting from the overtime are going to be much stronger. So it’s the the inputs that you get, I think is probably like so there’s many layers that question, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind, it’s been one of the most significant. So if you think there’s an inkling of a passion that you may want to rekindle. Just start by surrounding yourself by that. And you’ve watched that passion, great. There’s another another quote where you’re where your focus goes, energy flows. So you start focusing on that passion, that purpose, that inspiration, you’re going to see it all over the place you’re going to be you’re going to find people who love that, you’re going to start attracting those people who live in those conversations, like

David Ralph [29:13]
when you’re buying a new car in it and you suddenly see the same colour everywhere. And you think, oh, everyone’s got this card. never noticed it before. So it’s interesting base because these these 10,000 thoughts. I didn’t say this at the time, but they say that men think about sex, I don’t know, every two minutes or something. So if we’re thinking about that overtime, how do we have time to think about all the other stuff as well? The the 10,000 balls? What kind of example am I thinking about 10,000 times a day?

Jim Hughes [29:42]
I can’t comment on how many times how many things you’re thinking, Oh, how many times you’re thinking about sex day, but I imagine it’s probably more than a couple of 1000 just to just as

David Ralph [29:52]
as your voice is your voice is getting me going, Jim?

Jim Hughes [29:56]
Yeah, if you were to look at an average over the day, they were all those 10,000k In between 11 and 1150 today, yeah,

David Ralph [30:03]
that’s exactly it. So how many how many? You know what, what examples? Are people thinking about this? This is the question that I’m posing. Because it’s, I can’t get my head around this that we’re thinking the same thing time and time again. Just think just think about your,

Jim Hughes [30:22]
your environment, the things that stimulate your brain, the picture that you look at on the wall, that stimulates a memory, your house, subconsciously smells a certain, a certain thing. You our senses are triggered all the time. Smell, I think, is one of the oldest senses. The things we hear, if we hear a car or is it may remind us of something, we see the same, if we go to the same coffee shop, every morning, we chat to the same person. There was simply there’s just memories experiences that have been brought up. And then we get triggered by it, let’s say we hear a baby screaming that has been lodged in us could have been lodged in our subconscious ever since we were a kid. And that baby screaming might mean pain, it might mean you need to save them. It might mean it might be an annoyance, frustration, but that just hearing that noise, can suddenly spark 1020 thoughts which all happened, you know, within a split second or, or two seconds or whatever, it’s amazing how quickly your brain can kind of join dots in his head before then moving on to something else. So I’d say the more habitual people are, the more likely that is to happen. You think about work, you receive an email, or you send an email, and then you realise two days later, they haven’t replied. So then that fearful voice comes up where you’re not enough where you’ve been rejected again. And then those same thoughts happening from from how that was sparked, as a kid when you first got you know, bullied in the playground. There’s, there’s so many examples of it. And you’re right, I can’t, I can barely get my head around it either. I certainly couldn’t sit down and list 10,000 thoughts that people may have. But there’s the sort of the basis as to why that may happen.

David Ralph [31:55]
Because I have a weird thing. And I did it just before you joined on the call today. But I I’ve every now and again, I am on Messenger. That’s about the only way you can communicate with me on a personal nature. Everything else goes through email. And I sent an email message to a guy who I first connected with through Join Up Dots before it was Join Up Dots. And he read it and he hasn’t responded for four days. So I sent another message to him. And he didn’t respond, even though he read it. And I thought I’ll block him boom, and he’s gone. And I do a lot of that I do a lot of if you can’t be bothered to say hello, may my efforts aren’t going to be pushed in that way. Now my wife says, Yeah, but they might be yield I might be in hospital when I go out hard is it just responds, you know. So I do that a lot what you’re saying I have that feeling of being slighted somehow. So I go right, clear them out the decks. Which is great, because when good people come into the mix, it’s like you’ve preserved the garden somewhat. I tell you what, I watched his programme last night on Disney Channel, right, Jim. And it’s got nothing to do with this conversation. But it’s in the back of my mind. It’s got something to do with this conversation. And it was called the return of the biggest little farm. And it was this couple in California that bought this farm that had been farmed to an inch of its life in 45 years. So it was just a dust bowl, it had nothing going for it at all, why they decided to buy it because I didn’t know anything about farming. And so they just kind of went at it and wanted to create a vibrant nature based farm. And through that process, they did quite well. And the crops were growing, but then rabbits came in at the crops. And then starlings came in and at vets and snails and it was all sort of falling into pieces. And so what they did in their life, they just let nature take control. And then the coyotes came in and started eating the rabbits and then the rabbit started eating this and, and everything sorted itself out. And I think that’s what this is why I’m saying this, it’s just linked up in my head now. Because I lead up to just join Yeah, they let space into their life. The issues kind of sorted themselves out. It’s when we’re too constricted and we’re trying to force the issue. That’s when we cause the problems for ourselves. That’s what my meaning of it. I’m like a professional podcaster that can join these things up.

Jim Hughes [34:26]
Yeah, you know what, you’re, you’re creating space and allowing things to flourish naturally. That’s I think that’s brilliant. I’d go another slightly different direction with that as well, which is the when we actually silence ourselves, our brains even for a few seconds and listen to the noise. It’s and we stop trying to manipulate or we stop trying to engineer and we go with the flow. It’s I calling it I call it force versus flow. It’s like trying to engineer a farm to do what you want and the In the entire time you’re pushing ships uphill, not literally or maybe you are. You’re you’re fighting nature, nature’s got its own way there’s homeostasis is trying to happen. All these all these cascades from the food chain are trying to happen and you’re trying to fight them back or engineer things because you think that is best for what you want. And it’s the same in our life, we have an assumption of what we think we want based on the people we hang around based on the what society may suggest, or the market may suggest we do. So we then create an answer, I think goal setting is so often coming from a wrong place, we create a goal that we think we want, which is let’s assume it’s based off the wrong assumptions. We then try and engineer everything in our life to fit that goal, which may not be an incorrect in the first place. So an opportunity may come your way. Which in any other world is an amazing opportunity. But because it doesn’t line up with what your perception of what you need, you ignore it. Half the times subconsciously, it’s not like you, you just say no, you just don’t even pay attention to it, these things are just floating by. And I’ve done that. So so much, I will continue to do it. But I’m so much more aware now of just following the flow of things. So when you know when it’s not a rejection, it’s creating space for something even better. So when I’m trying to create a group programme, and I put the message out there to, you know, 20 people that I want to invite into this small group programme, and either people don’t come back or they say our sounds good, but now’s not the time, the old me would have been disheartened by that. I don’t know, there’s something about me, I’m not the value, I need more, I need more of an audience. And now I’m like, Well, hang on, let’s assess, and you talk about motivation. In your previous podcast. What’s the reason behind this group? was the reason behind this group just creating revenue? In which case is that the most healthy and selfless reason? Maybe not. And the market will tell me instantly, or the university’s non workload thing will tell me instantly. And they so just tune in and get right. Okay, well, that’s maybe a sign that that is not the right thing for now. So what if so then let’s just sit with it. And so what are the signs? Well, actually, now with no, I sit with it I’ve been I’ve realised that I’ve had feedback from however many people for so long that they’d actually like to see this from me. So what about if I just do that, and then the market responds immediately. So there’s so much to be said. And we go, I suppose it’s joining full circle joining the dots about about creating space to disconnect. You can you can hear those signals, either positive or negative ones, and you can allow and you follow them. Michael singer talks about it a lot in his book, The surrender experiment, I highly recommend that book to anyone, if there’s just so much power in that.

David Ralph [37:39]
Now one of the things that I know that you do remarkably well, because you’re basing a lot of your business in the wilderness is getting people in to the moment when they’re not thinking about in boxes, and in trays and landing pages and sales funnels and stuff. They’re just interested in what they’re doing. They’re, they’re walking through the countryside, they’re smelling roses there. But whatever it is, getting into that moment is so powerful, but so many people struggle with it. Now, recently, I got diagnosed with quite bad tinnitus. And it drove me mentor for a period of time. It really it was like, Oh, this buzzing in my head is just doing me in. But now I spend a lot of time listening to it. Because it stops me thinking it’s kind of like meditation in my head somehow. And I now see it as a gift. But I’m learning to control because I’m now disconnecting from thoughts. I’m disconnecting from everything and just becoming centred. When you’re out there in the wilderness. I imagine many of your clients will say, this is the first time that I can remember I’ve been truly happy in the moment would that be true?

Jim Hughes [38:56]
We had a our last event was in May at the into Valley and not far from Bristol. And we’re in a glamping site. And we had it all to ourselves. And because the weather was lovely we had we were outside probably apart from sleeping time we were outside 100% of the time. So the content was done outside obviously going on walks with cooking outside, we had a sea shanties band come and play for us on the last night everything was outdoors. It was quiet that we had a massive view over this lake. There’s a couple who’d come from North Carolina for this event and there was a guy and then a few you know the rest of them are English. One guy in particular come from North London spend a lot of time in in the city. And the Bowman event was only two nights. separately. I had feedback from the from the lady who’d come cheap so she came with her husband but she fed back to me. They’d stayed in London the night before the event and the night after the event so they could you know for flights and stuff she couldn’t handle. London, when she got back just after the two nights, she was like, I can’t deal with this level of commercialism with the noise, it just feels heavy. The guy who’d lived in London for the last 20 years said, I think it was two days later after the event, he’s like, I came home and we put our house on the market, I can’t deal with the with the intensity of it all. And that goes back to that noise that we just don’t, we just, it happens that that sort of annoying buzzing sound that we just drown out because it becomes the norm, we get conditioned to it. And it only took two days of immersion into nature and connection with themselves like really deep connection with themselves. At one point we did like a meditation, which lasts about 30 odd minutes, which for me is I don’t call myself a leader of meditation at all, it was kind of off the cuff. And that being like 3030 odd minutes, they were connected with each other. Really importantly, and there was loads of space during that two days where they could just go for a walk or what have you. And it was incredible how much of a reset how quickly their brains resetted or reset sorry, to being more aligned with nature for being more aligned with slowing down. And I think ultimately, that’s where we all come from, isn’t it? We’re hunter gatherers, 10,000 years before we create off hundreds of 10s of 1000s of years before we became the species that created civilizations, and we’ve we the agricultural revolution happened. So there’s a big part of us that yearns for that. But most of us just don’t have it in haven’t don’t want it in haven’t got used to it don’t even aren’t even aware of it.

David Ralph [41:32]
Now, what do they gain when they come out of the upper end? And no, I’m gonna ask two questions. What are they looking for when they go in to your events? And what do they gain when they come out?

Jim Hughes [41:44]
So, for me, the nature the disconnection or whatever that is a vehicle. So the work I do is coaching, the work, the coaching work is centred around, helping them so I suppose that until the first part of your question, but they come to me because they’re in a transition point in their life, they’re at a crossroads. They that noise, that buzzing noise has gotten to great, they’ve probably been hearing it for years, but they didn’t want to admit it. And now they’re at a point where they do, they have admitted that they do need to make a change, they know that they have more to give, they are usually the high performing types. So they used to knowing the answers, and now they don’t and that freaks them out. They are, they’re usually burnt out or not usually. So that’s, that’s not maybe 30% of the cases 20%, they’re often exhausted, they’re just tired of being misaligned. It’s like the car wheel, you know, one wheel pointing in a different direction to the other three wheels of a car. Just think of the stress that puts on the tires, not just that tires out of alignment, all the other ones, all of the connecting components think how much noise it creates thinking much more fuel you need to burn just to go in a straight line and get much harder steering becomes. So that’s what they’ve been doing. But because they are the high performing types, when they have previously been in doubt as to what direction they’re going in, they respond by going harder. Something’s not working, I’m going to double down, I’m going to work longer hours, I’m going to listen to more podcasts, I’m going to do this than the other and, and all it does is it pushes them in the wrong direction faster. And that’s usually at the point where they come to me. And they have no idea what the next step looks like. They know they’re misaligned. But to what extent they don’t know and how to get out of it, they don’t know. The work that we do is about So we’re talking about disconnection a lot on this on this chat. But the work I do is about connection with themselves specifically with their their true authentic self or self that most of them become disconnected with in the same way that I had. The The analogy I use is they’ve been imagining you’re swimming in the sea, you’ve got your head down, and you’re just swimming blindly. You and because there’s no land references, because you can’t see the bottom you you’re drifting. You’re being dragged Heather and other by the tides and the currents and things. And then you put your head up after a while you know, I have no idea where I am. So I help. The work that we do is is all I do is to connect them with their former self like who are you at your core? What are you inspired by? What do you love to do? Who do you want to serve? What pain have you experienced, that you want to help others avoid? Or what wins? If you experience you won’t really want to share with other people, what gets you into your flow what energises you and then and then helping them get to a point and beyond that one of the fears they have you know, we talked about fear of rejection fear of not being enough, when we when we send an email out and no one responds that that’s a trigger. So where’s that trigger coming from? When was the first time we created that side of ourselves? Where are we do we respond by with anger in certain situations? If so, why? So fundamentally understanding who they are the emotions and therefore with that we can manage their own state, they can start to paint a picture of what their true path might look like and then you can start to move towards it.

David Ralph [44:59]
Now that moment that everybody has, when they’re listening to somebody were immersing themselves in a situation and then suddenly, it wells up in them. I can imagine that’s quite an emotional time, I can imagine people are quite freaked out when the realisation of what was going wrong comes to them.

Jim Hughes [45:23]
It’s yeah, it’s phenomenal. And it’s, I always feel so privileged to be if I’m, if I’m there for that. It’s such an amazing moment. I mean, yes, it’s painful in the short term. But having done the work for a while, I know that, ultimately it’s beneficial. So it’s such an, it’s such an amazing idea whether it’s one on one with somebody on Zoom, or whether it’s going for a walk with somebody on a on a one day intensive, all these events, it’s in particular particularly powerful when it’s in in a in a group setting, because often it, it creates the space or allows other people to feel the same. But yeah, I tried to engineer those moments, so much in the past. And now it’s all about creating the space for them to happen. And people react in different ways.

David Ralph [46:09]
Now, let’s hear from Steve Jobs, powerful words, let’s say from again,

Unknown Speaker [46:13]
of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards, 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path. And that will make all the difference.

David Ralph [46:47]
Now I’m 100% convinced in life, every experience is leading us to somewhere is believing of life, which is the real gift. And when people are going I don’t know what to do, I don’t know. And that’s actually part of the journey. And that’s the part that I should just relax and go. Ah, so with yourself, I’m intrigued. The question is, when did you realise that become untamed? Was the thing and it wasn’t just something that you were doing? What When did you realise that? Yeah, this is really, this is my legacy work. There was

Jim Hughes [47:27]
a particular moment. It was a journey of when I realised how misaligned I was, when I was I was running this engineering business in Australia. And that noise became too great. Then I just dived into like, right, who am I? What do I love all the questions that I’ve just been through, mentioned that clients asked me. And one of the, I suppose one of the biggest breakthroughs was attending a, like an accelerator programme type thing, even though I was still employed in Bali. So I was living in Western Australia flew to Bali for this thing. And that’s when I realised that I’m at my most energised when I’m with other people, when I’m being my authentic self. And my authentic self is, you know, someone who’s not afraid to be a bit of a dickhead who doesn’t take themselves too seriously, who wants to have fun, which is the side of me that be missing for so long. So that was a really big catalyst. But then the actual initial business idea is not wasn’t coaching, it was about getting investors with, with potential entrepreneurs together in a really cool, fun setting. So that was what I started with initially. But then when I realised that was too big for me that I actually sat and listened to what I’d been through and like, actually, what I really want to do is help people go through that same level of discovery that I’ve just been on. So then that’s where the coaching business was born. But even then, it wasn’t coaching in its current form, it was actually sort of I wasn’t happy with the word coaching, mentoring, and it was business mentoring, because I wasn’t really connected with myself on an emotional level properly yet. So it was business stuff, because that was easier to talk about when it was more, in my mind more sellable. So I suppose the analogy I use is like a sailing, imagine you’re in a sailing boats, people think that it’s about getting from A to B in a straight line. But if you if you think when you’re sailing, you tack so you’re in a boat, and you you want to narrow down the horizon, you don’t need to know exactly where you go. And but you want you don’t want to have a 180 degree field of vision either because you’re just lost. So you kind of narrow it down by asking some key questions and then you attack you go, I’ve got enough information now to move forward. But I’m going to do it crucial. I’m gonna do it with my eyes open, which is not what I was doing prior. So you’re purposeful with the actions I started the business I’ll try this I’ll do it as a business mentoring to these types of people. And then after a while you go actually well, this is working, this feels good. This doesn’t so you ditch some things you keep others you double down on others and then you move you tack again and attack again. And as you go the zigzags getting narrower and narrower and narrower and you never need to know the destination because there is no destination, but you sure as hell have got to enjoy the journey somewhere. I know that you agree with.

David Ralph [50:02]
I agree 100%, but I don’t think I did at the time. You know, I think at the time, it was all force force force trying to make things happen. But now I’ve kind of got to a place I get. It’s, I’m that annoying person that has kind of got all the answers that I didn’t have at the time. But you can’t give it to someone because they they’ve got to go through the journey as well think,

Jim Hughes [50:27]
Oh, 100%, you’ve got to, you’ve got to feel it for yourself. You’ve got to you’ve got to try. I mean, how many times do we do we do things that our parents have told us a million times already, then? And then you do it, you made the mistake? I told you so. There’s something in us that we need to try and let ourselves and that’s okay, if you’re aware of it. If you say to yourself, you know what, actually, this may be wrong, but I’m going to try it, but I’m gonna try it with my eyes open. And if it fails, I’m not I’m sure it’s I’m not gonna blame anyone else. I’m going to use it as a learning tool. And I’m not going to consider it as failure. And I was talking to someone about this yesterday, a while not too long ago, actually being completely honest, I was having the business was having some cashflow challenges. And my, my mom was like, I’m happy to loan your money. And she offered me like three or four times I kept saying, No, I need to go through this myself, I need to experience this because that’s what’s going to absorb the lesson, the greater I need to feel it for myself, if I loan money off you that’s going to paper over the cracks. And that won’t actually help me uncover what’s wrong in the first place. And what I needed to do, because I kept trying to engineer it, what I needed to do was actually listen to what the signs had been telling me all along, and I ultimately killed a lot of elements of my business. So yeah, it’s ongoing. It’s ongoing, but we you’re right, we’ve got to feel it. We’ve got to feel it ourselves, but just do it openly. And with purpose. And I know that it’s a lesson. Not a failure.

David Ralph [51:52]
Yeah, great stuff. Well, we have been on a journey today. And we’ve been a journey leading towards the Sermon on the mic, when we get to send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self. And if you could sit in a tent somewhere with the gym, what advice would you give him? Well, we’re going to find out because I’m going to play the music. And when it fades is your time to talk. This is the Sermon on the mic

with the of the show the sermon on

Jim Hughes [52:42]
top of that, Jim, let’s go for a chat or maybe a ski, or maybe mountain bike, let’s do something, you’re probably not gonna listen to anything I’m about to say. Because you kind of are quite strong mentally, and you like to do things yourself, and you like to make your own mistakes. And that’s okay. I’m not going to tell you anything about how you should live your life because I think you you’re doing the right things already, just explore just have fun. All I will say is because I have a feeling this may turn out to be true. The one thing I would implore you to do is to focus on the concept that being happy is far more important than being right. Because you can spend so many hundreds of 1000s of calories, you can burn bridges, you can stress yourself out completely unnecessarily just for the purpose of being right about something you don’t maybe even care about that much. And nothing puts people off more than when you’re just trying to pursue when ego is letting you pursue the idea of being right versus just being okay with being wrong. And trusting the being happy is far more important. So whatever you do in life, whether it’s going skiing, struggling in western throwing yourself off cliffs or being misaligned in engineering business, you’ve got to figure that shit out yourself. And you’re gonna have a great time doing it, but just don’t spend so long trying to be right, focus on being happy instead of that

David Ralph [54:03]
a that is profound. I’d say that is so profound. Say it again. Because I love that.

Jim Hughes [54:10]
You can do whatever you want in your life, you have to do it yourself. You’ve got to trial it, you’ve got to just be have fun. throw yourselves off cliffs, be an engineer, or run an engineering business and be miserable. The only thing I will ever suggest you do is focus on being happy rather than being right, because you will burn so much energy. If you don’t.

David Ralph [54:29]
Yeah, and I’m gonna play that to my wife every morning because she likes it. She likes to be right. And I think it makes her happy as well. So I’m gonna play that that’s gonna be our wake up call. So what’s the number one best way that our audience can connect with you sir?

Jim Hughes [54:45]
They can email me Jim, become untamed. Or they can go through my website. I’ve got a cool little quiz. It’s called find your true path. It’s like a three minute quiz. And it lands you on a quadrant and it’s helping you establish how close you are to Knowing yourself and finding your playground to the things that I think are the most important. So if you can take that quiz, then you can book a call with me if you want to discuss, it’s just a 15 minute freebie, where we can dig into your results, we can learn more about you. It’s not a sales call, if you want to discuss working together longer afterwards, we can get to that point, but it’s about me helping you out. So I’d love to love to chat to anyone who’s listened to this and think this is there’s possible conversations to be had. I, I love what I do so much, and I want to help. So if I can do that to more people, then I would love the opportunity

David Ralph [55:35]
to Yeah, and I took that quiz, I actually used a fake name. So you didn’t know it was me. And it came out that basically it said, You’re smug, you’re smug, and you’re, you’re in the right place. I was literally spot on to where I should be. Excellent. Happy Days, happy days. So Jim, thank you so much for spending time with us today, joining up those dots. And please come back again, when you have more dots to join up. Because I do believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our pasts is actually the best way to build our futures. Jim, thank you so much,

Jim Hughes [56:10]
David, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

David Ralph [56:14]
Mr. Jim Hughes from become unattained it’s a business that helps you connect by disconnecting and the thing that came out through the conversation was the importance of giving yourself space, giving yourself space from your thoughts, giving yourself space, from your environment, from your friends, to allow the new part of your journey to come in. And if you aren’t constantly surrounding yourself with the same old same old, unfortunately, you’re gonna get the same old same old results. It’s just the way it happens. So powerful stuff and jump over to become untamed jump jump on these newsletter connect with Jim. And let’s see if we can get your life changed for the better. Until next time. Thank you very much for listening to Join Up Dots and we’ll see you again soon. Cheers. See ya. Bye bye.

Outro [57:07]
See ya end of Join Up Dots. You’ve heard the conversation. Now it’s time for you to start taking massive action. Create your future create your life is the only life you got. Will be back again real soon. Join Up Dots during the gods Join Up Dots. Gods Joe Join Up Dots