The Top 5 Needs of the Living

Hosted by us, Tess Brouwer, and seven-time world champion, Layne Beachley, we're the founders of Awake Academy. This podcast mixes raw life lessons, expert wisdom, and practical tips to help you stop

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Welcome back, Dream Team. Today's episode is something we are incredibly proud of. Over the last six years, we have been surveying people pre and post all of our incredible

workshops that we do, and what that has enabled us to see, feel, and articulate is what everyone is feeling right now. The study itself has 1750 responses of pre- and post-surveys, so it's about 100 different

businesses over a six-year period, and everyone from CEOs to everyday humans and everyone in between. We've got frontline, female, male, you name it.

We've captured it. We wanted to look at that and say, "Well, how can we best help people?" Or, "How have we helped people?

What are people really needing? What are they asking for? What are they learning?"

And then, "How can we provide the solutions?" Yeah, and we love the observation of humanity. We do.

We love capturing data too. So, Bronnie Ware is someone we both look up to. She was a palliative care nurse, and she looked at the top five regrets of the dying.

And they're things like, "I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I hadn't lived up to other people's expectations. I wish I let myself be more happy."

So, they're really fundamental truths that give people wake-up calls on their deathbed. Yeah, which is a pretty late time to have a wake-up call. It is a pretty late time to have a wake-up call.

But a valuable life lesson and lessons that have been beautifully shared in her book. Yeah, and it inspired us. And I said to Layne the other day, "We've got all of this research."

And I said, "What's our top five regrets of the dying?" And Layne said to me, "Why don't we have the top five needs of the living?" And I said, "That is it."

Because the question we asked people was, "What do you need right now?" So we're going to share with you this response of what we've got and what we're launching, which is called the top five needs of the living.

So number one... Which form part of our white paper called the capacity debt. Yeah.

So, yes, let's go into number one. Let's go into number one. Top five needs of the living.

Okay.

Caveat. Caveat. Yeah.

So this was our number one need. Time was number one request. It never arrived alone.

It came wrapped up in guilt. 2:59 apologizing for it.

The striking part, which is how much they had already given to everyone else and how foreign it felt to ask for any of that back. Yeah.

The number one barrier for asking for more time was the confidence. Men, women, CEOs, frontline. It didn't matter.

It didn't matter. Yeah. And this was pretty confronting because as we know our greatest asset is time and...

And health. Well, the greatest, our greatest asset outside of ourselves is time, our greatest asset within ourselves is our health.

And if we don't have our health, then it doesn't matter how much time we have or do not have. Yeah. And this was a pretty confronting data point because I know from my personal experience,

as a kid, I think time is infinite. And now as I'm getting older and also I have a husband who's 14 years older than me, I'm realizing the finite nature of time and the proper utilization of time and how bad I was

at asking for what I needed without feeling guilty. Women tend to have this more than men because we feel guilty for slowing down, for stopping. We pride ourselves in being the do-it-all machines.

We have a heavy load that we need to carry, both at work, at home, emotional load, mental load. There's so many loads.

We feel like we have to fulfill an abundance of roles in our lives. We don't tend to stop and ask for time for ourselves because we haven't earned it. Yeah.

And that's frightening. And the other thing that was so interesting in this is people don't know what to do with that time when they get it.

So they feel it with like scrolling or drinking or watching Netflix, which is like everyone has that. But it was, "What do I do in that time?

I have no idea." Which is why we keep ourselves busy. Yeah.

Because I know a lot of people who have worked their whole lives. They say, "Well, if I stop working, what am I going to do with myself?" Yeah.

So let's just keep working. Let's keep feeling. And then you find happiness and purpose in that work until perhaps something is compromised

or sabotaged, such as your health, connection to family, connection to loved ones. And now all of a sudden, you're trying to make up time and you're lacking the, first, the confidence to embrace it without the guilt associated with it.

And then second, embracing the understanding of knowing what to do with that. And if I look at this in a corporate perspective, 70% of people are burnt out right now. AI is giving us back one day, but we don't know what to do with time.

A week? Yeah, a week of time. But we don't know what to do with it.

I keep on coming back to that because it's so funny. It's like, "Hey, you can have a day off 'cause you're sick." And then we spend the first half of the day trying to catch up on emails.

Yeah. Let's keep on top of work.

Yeah. And the big call out here, and I'm always a big advocate of this, is people were asking for permission.

Yes. And you can only give permission to yourself, but if you do see someone and you're in a relationship or a working relationship with someone, give them the permission slip to have more time.

Exactly. Or especially as a leader, if you see your people, for example, if you've got a big project or a big event and they've invested months and months of their energy and time into fulfilling

that obligation, and then you expect them back at work on Monday, that's not okay in my eyes. Onto the next thing.

Onto the next thing. World title, world title, world title. I found that when I staged the richest surfing event in the world or my charity event, if

I didn't take a couple of days off at the end of that because it's such a dramatic come down because there's so much energy and emotion built up in the delivery of it, once that pressure valve's released, it's like, "Okay, I can relax now," but then I've got to be back at work

the next day. That's not a good utilization of time and energy. You need a couple of days to decompress from a really big effort.

Giving people permission and actually being at the forefront of that, seeing it in the lead up to it, go, "Okay, now two days after that, you guys don't come to work. Don't be on your emails."

Yeah. Set those boundaries for them and then they'll learn to trust it because as we're learning through this data, it's the culture that establishes the permission, which then establishes the

confidence to ask for it. And the behavior, and then it just keeps on going around and around. All right.

Number two? Number two.

It's the body that they need to fall back in love with. The majority of our attendees in our workshops arrive near empty, resort really low on energy and health, and beneath all of the diaries and the deadlines, the honest need was simple.

Nothing left at the end of the day for the people they love and the life they are meant to be living. I certainly learned this when Kirk stopped me in my tracks one afternoon and said, "Why

do I always get the broken Layne?" I often reserve the best version of ourselves to people who don't even know us or people that we work with every day or just everybody else and then come home depleted, exhausted,

and no time for the fun stuff. It's the fun stuff that brings us back to life. It's the active rest that actually rejuvenates our souls and reminds us as to why we go to

work every day and do what we do because it rewards us and awards us the time to do things that light us up. Yeah.

I talk about it's the life in your years and even in your days, I think we try and look at things, "Oh, this year I want to be, but it's like today I'm going to be more present, be more caring."

I recently had therapy on this around how I came home to Benji. My therapist said, "So many people come home to their kids and say, 'Oh, I've had a bad day.

Give me a hug.'" Yeah. But it's not up to the kid to make you feel better.

It's not a kid's responsibility to soothe you. No. The bigger question here is people are lacking energy because they're just giving and giving

and giving.

No. They were lacking the capacity to go to the gym, to look after themselves, to think differently, to slow down, to be more present because they've just been on a hamster wheel and going and

going and going. Yeah. They didn't have a handbrake.

Well, they did. They just didn't pull it. Yeah.

That's because the barrier to feeling alive again is believing that rest is allowed. It's not believing that the rest is earned. It's believing that rest is actually necessary to help me sustain the performance under all

the pressure. Yeah. And so many businesses have sick leave debt, holiday debt.

People aren't taking holidays and when they're sick, they're still working. But I think about this even in my own world. If I'm not doing the basics, like exercise, nutrition, water, sleeping right, I can fry

myself so quickly just in that. Yeah. So I guess it's ... If you're not alone, people are ... Like you ask everyone, "How are you

going? Busy? Tired?"

She's busy. Yeah. Wired.

Yeah. I think to your point around knowing what you need to do to help you sustain the performance that you're currently operating on because there's a lot going on.

Knowing the little things and committing to doing them is what is actually helping you achieve the output. The capacity debt is essentially the visible output.

And underneath that is the invisible borrowing from the person delivering that. And the good thing is, is that when you recognize that you're borrowing from a depleted energy tank, you stop and do something about it.

And as we know in this data, it's not the knowledge, it's actually the permission to do it and having the capacity to keep doing it. Unfortunately, what we're seeing is that people who are at the top and seniority, as we know,

is not the protection and they're the most depleted, they're the ones that actually keep going and keep pushing and then wonder why they fall apart. And if they just stopped for a moment to recognize that the little foundational things have fallen

away, then that empowers them to bring those little things back in and keep going. Yeah. So when you're saying them, I'm thinking us, you know, like that really is us.

We both had to learn those foundational things that we could do every day because both of us are high performers. You give us a bone and we'll run with it.

Yeah. And I have really in this last period had to lean on every single micro moment to restore running off a depleted tank as well.

Yeah. So because you've been sick for a little while. Yeah.

Yeah. That doesn't mean life stops. Doesn't stop.

No. Yeah. Because like people are doing, there's more and more and more to do.

The load is going up and up and up. And we know depleted people can't drive growth. Yeah.

And they can't grow themselves either. So they have to have to feel alive again, literally means stopping in the life that doesn't feel worth living.

That's it. Yeah. Because otherwise what's it all for?

What is it all for? I saw this, I had this beautiful moment at the beach the other day and there was a young family there having a coffee, the kids were playing on the beach.

And the dad gave the mum a hug. And I said to them, "Can I just take a photo of you, give me your phone. This looks like such a beautiful moment."

And she was like, "Oh, thank you so much." And I took the photo and the kids were playing. It was just like a casual thing, but the sun was rising.

It was just such a beautiful moment. And you needed to capture it. And I needed to capture it because I'd love someone to do that for me.

And the wife had tears in her eyes and she got the phone and she's like, "Thank you so much." And the dad said to me, "We've had a bit of a morning."

And I said, "Oh, I think, yeah, I understand." He goes, "We canceled swimming lessons in soccer practice and we've just come down here just to chill and you caught that moment."

And she's like crying, not saying anything. And I said, "I get that." And that's what I feel in this is like we just go and go and go, soccer practice, kids practice,

like we've got so much this, but then when you stop, the beach is waiting for you with the kids, you know, just having those micro moments. Simple moments.

And that energy, that just brings you back to life again. Yeah. Nice.

All right.

So underneath the busyness sat a quiet question, why? People had lost the thread between what they do all day and what they actually care about. Energy and purpose, not another method.

What they needed was not more motivation, but a reason worth the effort they were already making. It was the second thing they named time after time after time.

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It helps us grow the show and keep bringing these conversations to more people. Isn't that fascinating that businesses work so hard on purpose and on values? Yeah.

Vision. Yeah. Yeah.

The why was the real question? Well, as you get depleted, it's really easy to stop and ask yourself, why am I doing this? Where's the meaning?

It doesn't light me up anymore. Yeah. It doesn't excite me to come to work every day.

If you're waking up in the morning going, oh, I've got to go to work today, then that's an indicator that you're depleted. You need a day off or you need to take a morning off or you need to go and do something that

lights you up. If you move your body, if you don't have the flexibility to not go to work that day, you may have some annual leave accrued.

Use it. But I also think humans are wanting to be more human. They want to know, why does this work matter?

How can I make an impact? Even when I used to work in alcohol, I know this is a bad scenario I used to work at Coke, and I was like, oh, well, I make people happy.

Then I left there because I realized I didn't want to be part of that industry anymore. I really have tried to apply this theory all the time. Like at Virgin, it was about experiences.

I gave people these experiences. I think in any work, you can find those micro moments, but people are asking for purpose at work and at home.

One of the ways that you can help articulate that or provide that for your individuals is to find out what their gifts are because people want agency in their role, which then gives them more investment into the role that they play and more ownership of it.

I think all leaders are looking for leaders within their teams that have more accountability and ownership for the work they do. If you're giving them more agency and seeing what their gifts are and promoting those gifts

within individuals, they actually can become a bigger gift within your organization. People don't have the capacity right now to even stop and have those conversations with others.

I think what this really unlocks is we're working through the working, working through the working. We're just pushing and pushing, pushing through the volume of work.

People were saying in here is they need space and time to reconnect with what matters most. Yeah. Yeah.

And creating that space. I remember having a conversation with Julia Gillard about this actually after she filled her role as prime minister.

She wishes that she made more time for those cones of silence conversations, just created the space to have those moments of reflection and digestion and understanding what's going on and solving it with good minds around the table.

But I think when you become a leader, you're expected to have all the solutions and have it all figured out, and that's unrealistic. And when we think about our roles as leaders in society or in organizations, if we don't

give ourselves the space and the time to understand why we come to work and what we do each every day and whether it's adding value to not only the organization, but also to our own lives, then we're never going to take the time to see it within our team.

It's easy to say, "Oh, I'm bringing up children. That's my purpose." But then you get into the go, go, go mentality, and you don't actually stop to eat pasta off

the floor. Well, like those people at the beach. Yeah.

The people at the beach. Don't take the morning off. Smell the roses.

Take the morning off from kids sport. Yeah. Bring them to the beach.

Yeah. Yes. Enjoy the sunshine.

Yeah, exactly. I'll take you and take the photo. Okay.

Number four. Okay. Number four.

a real day and a real life. So what they asked for was practical and small routines and structures that are simple enough to hold when the pressure comes.

Not another model to admire, but a handful of things that work when everything else isn't. And this is what we pride ourselves on delivering, especially during The Edge and the Own Your Truth program, because all the lessons that we share are lived and learned.

They're personal life lessons. They're backed by science and they're incredibly impactful and practical and relatable. And I think like, you know, you often talk about your, your time in corporate.

There was so many personality profiles out there, like we're all told that we're what? Disks. Disks.

Yeah. Eagles. Gloves.

Colors. Shapes. No disrespect.

There's a real important part of psychographic and like profiling. Profiling. Yes.

But ultimately, I mean, the barrier to this, to answering this particular thing is, is providing simple structures that people can use immediately. Yeah.

And in the moment, when you're triggered, when something doesn't go your way. I don't need to know that I'm a mosquito or a Labrador or whatever. I've never done a Myers-Briggs profile.

So I don't even know what those things are because I've never spent a day in corporate, 19:17 Pigeon.

But what's really important in regards to this particular finding is that it's not the knowledge of them, it's the application of them. And it's got to be super simple.

And the one thing through all the conversations that we've had on this podcast, there seems to be a consistent theme around whether it's biohacking or life-maxing or optimizing.

And it's just remembering to breathe and doing it intentionally because it has such a profound impact on our parasympathetic nervous system, gets us out of our head, calms the farm, everything cools down for a second, which creates clarity and certainty of action.

Yeah, but this is a tool, right? Yes. And a lot of the times, and I think that that's the important part to note is it's not one

size fits all. No. It's one size fits one.

And when you're so fried and busy or you go through a busy period, you've got a lot going on at home and at work and it's a high pressure environment, which it is for a lot of people. Sounds like life.

Sounds like life. And then someone comes in and goes, "You should just do this. You should do that.

You should do this." And really, your lifestyle is nothing like mine. But then if you're just so tired, you're lacking energy, you've got no permission, it's like,

"Can you just give me one thing that I can do and simplify the process in the busyness of my life?" And I think that that is really important for leaders and businesses, is like no one's got

it all worked out. So when someone is having a hard day, what can you do for them? And the reverse is what toolkit can you build so that when you're having a hard day, you

can actually ask for permission for rest or put it around you and see how you can get through it. Or take those micro breaks.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've got to also provide the evidence as to why these particular tools do work.

Yes. Fortunately, we've used them all, so I know they do. But people don't, they'll be like, "Oh, you're doing breath work again."

But actually, it's a psychological tool that you can help to regulate yourself in the moment. And when people understand that, they're like, "Oh, that's the edge. It's that easy."

Yep. Yeah. So I think simplifying the process to give people so when the hard days come around,

they can use it. And making them simple, applicable, relatable, but also trusted. Yeah.

Because you actually have to try before you buy. Right? You're not going to buy into it if it doesn't work for you.

But that's why so many people don't go back to meditation because they try it once. They are looking for some sort of magical transformation or shift, but it's a compounding thing that works over a period of time.

Yeah. So it's consistency over discipline. Yeah.

Compounding microhabits are the ones that change you the most, but you've got to learn them. That's it. Yeah.

That's where we come in. Yeah. We're happy to teach them.

People wanted confidence that held regardless of the day. Steadier than the last result, louder than the self-doubt underneath. Not arrogance, just the settled sense that they were enough for what was being asked

for them. Oh, this just reminds me of myself in so many ways, that quiet self-doubt and self-criticism that lives within me.

And that surprised me the most. I know that CEOs and leaders are the most lonely because they have to have the answers to everything and everyone, but I do know that that runs through everyone that I know.

You've got to have it all together. You've got to ... I find it runs through women, also the men too, because they're also carrying a much bigger emotional load.

But in saying that, I think about my dad who was a single parent of two kids and carrying the load also at a time where they didn't have a true understanding of emotional intelligence. Feelings weren't spoken about, it was a matter of get on with it and find a way.

And I'm sure that cost a lot with him. It wasn't safe for him to cry, it wasn't safe for him to express himself in a way that wasn't through aggression or hostility, it was just he was a result of his upbringing.

So I think about people today who are navigating all of these different experiences and challenges and things in life and backing themselves to get through it seems like an impossible task.

There's just ... I don't even have the time to think about whether I have what it takes or not. I just have to.

Just have to get it done. It's a matter of life or death. It's survival.

It is survival. And it's keeping these kids alive. Yeah.

And we've had a lot of guests who are in leadership positions and who are in positions of being neuroscientists who still feel that as well. So everyone experiences it.

And it was good to see it come out in our data because we all experience self-doubt. No matter whether you're the number one performing leader in your organization or a seven times world champion, we all experience moments of self-doubt.

But it's the insidiousness of it that can actually erode our confidence and belief in ourselves over a period of time. So recognizing that you're in that is how you shorten it.

If you don't connect with it because you're so rapidly or your needs are never met, everyone else's needs are met, then that's going to completely erode your sense of self and you're never going to feel worthy of asking for any of these needs of the living, let alone being

able to provide that for others. And I love the documentaries that are coming out on Netflix right now and the sporting documentaries and Nadal and following the like sports psychology because people do love

to equate athletes as the best and the best of being able to capture, become aware, capture it, change it and move on with it. Yeah.

But in this instance, having group learning and people go to get learning together, what I've, I mean, it wouldn't be a Netflix show, but just having people understand that they're not alone in a corporate or mum group or, you know, that's why it's so important to get

these groups together, that they hear all of these stories that make them feel more human again. Yeah.

And this is like, this one was probably the most human of them all because to back yourself is self-love, self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, empathy, compassion, understanding, which is the key.

Like if we don't have that for ourselves, you've got no connection, you've got no connection to anyone else. Yeah.

And what's fascinating is as you were referring to that, when we sit back, when we're in a room of leaders having those conversations and we sit back, I can actually see or feel viscerally the barriers coming down, the walls that they've built around themselves, the protection

mechanisms that they've wrapped around themselves, like no one can see that I'm experiencing this or that I believe this way or that I'm harboring this.

The masks come off. Yeah, the masks come off. And when they give themselves permission to express it, it's like one less thing they

have to carry and it's like, "Oh, okay. I am human." Yeah.

Or do you feel that? I feel that. And you're going through that?

Oh, so am I. And building that common bond and that connection is what actually makes us human. And it's the vulnerability to express it and feel safe in it and being seen in it and heard

in it and not judged by it because it's our judgment of ourselves that actually causes the most harm. And then we think that others are going to judge us as harshly, if not more harshly.

That's what prevents us a lot of the time from expressing ourselves that way. Yeah. So we stop backing ourselves because we don't think anyone will back us.

That's a hard way to live. It's a hard way to live. Yeah, and you would never assume that a leader weren't backing themselves because they're

outworking them. Outworking to prove. How many of them are winging it?

Yeah. We're all winging it. Okay.

So there you have it, Dream Team. They are the top five needs of the living. Which one resonates with you most?

So I need more time for myself without the guilt. I need to feel alive again. I need to know why this all matters.

I need something that holds on the hard days. And I need to back myself again. I reckon all of those I've experienced throughout my life and my career.

I think when we're going through a rut, actually I know when I'm going through especially a rut in confidence, especially if I've had bad results over and over again or I can't seem to find the solution to something, backing myself to do it is the last thing I come to.

And one of the ways that I can actually reignite that confidence in myself is to go and do something that makes me feel alive. But to do that, I need to commit the time.

Yeah. So they're all interrelated. They do, don't they?

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

So we are going to publish this on our website, awakeacademy.com.au. It is copyrighted to Awake Academy and we are going to go on the road. If you want to book us to talk about the top five needs of the living or book a workshop

for your office, we'd love to come in there and present and give you the tools that you need. Or if you feel like this would benefit someone, please share this podcast with them because

we explore every single one of these needs through all of our wonderful guests and the stories that we share on this podcast. And through all of our workshop material as well.

And our book. Yeah. So you are not alone.

Nope. This is all about you not getting to your bed through burnout or illness or injury that you say I wish I looked after myself a little bit more, I wish I listened.

This is all about you avoiding the top five regrets of the dying. Yes. This is all about embracing you and enabling you to ask for the needs of living right now

a happy, healthy, more purposeful life. Thanks Dream Team. We'll see you next week.

Toodles. Awake is a center of human performance. So if you want to bring more energy, motivation, and connection to your team, reach out to us

at [email protected].