Hugs over Handshakes

04/08/2026

Tonight could have gone two completely different ways.

Dinner was done.

Gwen had actually made her own dinner tonight. I just guided her through it, which was pretty cool.

Then we both ended up on the couch.

I was on my phone doing a few bits.

Gwen was watching YouTube.

There wasn’t really anything wrong with it.

But then I had one thought.

If I don’t do something now… this is probably how the rest of the night plays out.

“Nah… f**k this.”

“Gwenny, wanna play Skip-Bo?”

“Yep.”

That was it.

One sentence.

One decision.

The phone stayed where it was.

Out came the cards.

Some chocolate and a glass of milk.

Three games.

A heap of laughs.

And me getting absolutely smashed.

What’s been sitting with me tonight is this…

Connection isn’t normally built by grand gestures.

It’s built by tiny decisions.

One decision changed the entire direction of our night.

We went from two people sitting on the same couch, each in our own little world…

…to laughing, competing, talking s**t, eating chocolate and just being together.

The crazy part?

Making that decision took about three seconds.

And yeah, it would’ve been much easier to stay on the couch.

But it would’ve been anywhere near as much fun.

And the best moments in life rarely come from taking the easy option.

22/07/2026

One thing I’ve noticed about myself over the last couple years…

When something really s**t happens, I don’t stay there for very long.

Not because it doesn’t hurt.

Because staying there doesn’t help.

When I got hacked for my life savings, I had a choice.

I could lie in bed for weeks feeling sorry for myself and sit in the misery of it……….

Or I could accept what had happened and ask,

“What’s the next move?”

The money wasn’t coming back because I was miserable.

My daughters didn’t need a broken dad.

The people who relied on me didn’t need me stuck.

So I felt it. And I felt it.

Then I moved.

I’ve had to learn this after losing my life savings.

After a cancer diagnosis.

And more recently, after losing someone I genuinely thought I might spend my future with.

Does it hurt?

F**k yes.

Do I wish things were different?

Of course.

But wishing doesn’t change reality.

I’ve learnt there’s a point where pain stops helping and starts becoming somewhere you choose to live.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling disappointed, angry, heartbroken, confused or even scared.

Feel all of it.

Just don’t unpack your bags and build a house there.

Eventually you’ve got to ask yourself,

“Okay… this is where I am. What do I do now?”

Neither option is easy. One just leads somewhere better.

It’s almost never easy.

Sitting in the s**t isn’t easy either.

At least moving forward gives you a chance.

Because we don’t control everything that happens to us.

But we do get to decide what happens next.

Sometimes that’s the bravest decision we make.

22/07/2026

Yesterday one of my team members sent me this.

No message.
No context.
Just a Facebook link.

Now… I’m not sure if they reckon I’m one bad Monday away from completely losing my s**t…

…or if they just know I’m always interested in anything that helps people.

Either way, I clicked it.

It’s a free coaching program for small business owners through Beyond Blue, so I booked myself in for next Monday.

Truth is, I don’t feel like I’m in crisis. I’m actually in a pretty good place.

But I’ve learnt that waiting until things get hard isn’t always the best time to ask for help.

Sometimes the best time to learn is when things are going well.

So I’m treating this as a bit of an experiment and no doubt I will take away something helpful.

I’ll go through the process, keep an open mind, and then share honestly what the experience was like.

If it’s useful, hopefully it’ll encourage other business owners to give it a crack.

Owning or running a business can be bloody lonely at times.

If there are good services out there, we should know about them.

I’ll report back after the session and let you know whether it’s worth your time.

New Access by Beyond Blue is mental health coaching for small business owners, sole traders & self-employed.

21/07/2026

Last week Dad and I spent the week at the shack.

Stormwater.

River water.

Rainwater tanks.

Just two guys working side by side.

He’s nearly 80.

And he still works bloody hard.

To be honest, I think I pushed him a bit too hard because he wouldn’t stop while I was still going.

Watching him all week got me thinking.

I spent a lot of years focused on what I didn’t get growing up.

There wasn’t much emotion.

There wasn’t much encouragement.

Praise wasn’t really a thing.

For a long time, that’s all I could see.

As I’ve got older, it’s changed.

It doesn’t change how it was.

But it changes how I look at it now.

Dad grew up without a father.

No one showed him how to be a dad.

That doesn’t change everything.

But it does help me understand why some things were missing.

Maybe I’d spent so many years looking at what Dad wasn’t…

that I’d never really stopped to look at what he was.

Or what he’d given me.

A bloody good work ethic.

A positive mindset.

A sense of humour. (He thinks he’s funny too.)

The ability to build a business.

The determination to keep going when things get hard.

I don’t think I’d ever really given him credit for any of that.

Then something happened this week that caught me off guard.

Every day we’d finish another job and Dad would look at it and say,

“You’ve done well.”

Every time I’d say,

“We’ve done well.”

Because we had.

It made me wonder how often we do that.

We get so focused on what’s missing…

that we never stop to appreciate what’s already there.

I can’t change what I didn’t get.

But I can make sure I don’t miss what I did.

The best part was, we just enjoyed spending the week together.

15/07/2026

We’re up at the shack getting some jobs done, moving furniture in and putting beds together.

Up until now, we’d all just been sleeping on mattresses on the floor. No dramas.

Gwen asked if I’d put one together for her.

“Yep.”

Built the frame.

Put the mattress on.

Only problem…

The mattress was too small.

To me?

Who cares.

It’s a bed. It’ll do for now.

But she looked at it and said,

“I don’t like it, Dad. I don’t want to sleep there.”

Years ago, I’m sure I would’ve pushed back.

“Why?”

“It’s fine.”

“Just sleep in it.”

Not because I wanted to be an ar****le.

Because I couldn’t see the problem.

And if I couldn’t see the problem, I assumed there wasn’t one.

This time was different.

I just said,

“Okay.”

“All we can do is take the mattress off and put it back on the floor in the other room.”

Literally one minute later it was done.

She was happy.

I was happy.

No argument.

No tears.

No one trying to convince the other they were wrong.

The interesting part is…

Nothing changed except where the mattress was.

The outcome was exactly the same.

She’s asleep.

Perfect.

I didn’t have to prove a point.

Sometimes, as parents, we spend more energy defending a decision than it would take to simply solve the problem.

Sometimes we fight because we don’t understand someone else’s problem, not because there actually is one.

Not every hill is worth dying on.

Sometimes a peaceful home is as simple as saying,

“Okay… let’s move the mattress.”

09/07/2026

The last couple of weeks have been a reminder of something I never want to forget.

I’ve had key staff away, which has meant a lot of their workload has landed back on me and the rest of the team.

It’s temporary.

They’ll be back in a couple weeks.

But it’s shown me exactly how burnout starts.

Not with one catastrophic event.

It starts when you become too stretched.

I’ve noticed my memory slipping.

I’ve been rushing.

I’ve made mistakes I normally wouldn’t make.

I’ve been shorter with people. Not because I don’t care, but because my brain is already onto the next problem before the current conversation has even finished.

The worst part is that everyone around me feels it too, no one has said it but I can see and feel it.

When the leader is rushed, the team feels rushed.

When the leader is stretched, everyone else gets stretched.

It’s contagious.

I’ve still been trying to regulate. Still trying to breathe. Still trying to slow myself down.

But if I’m honest, some of those habits have started falling away because I’ve convinced myself there’s something more urgent.

That’s exactly what happened years ago.

It’s how I ended up burnt out.

Back then I thought I needed to push harder.

Now I know I needed to protect my capacity.

This has reminded me of something important.

Running close to your limit isn’t a badge of honour.

It’s a warning sign.

Because when you’re constantly overloaded, you don’t just lose productivity.

You lose your patience.

Your presence.

Your judgement.

And eventually, you lose yourself.

The biggest lesson I’ll take from these two weeks isn’t that I survived them.

It’s that I never want to build a business that depends on someone carrying this much again.

For me.

For my team.

And for the families waiting for us to come home at the end of the day.

07/07/2026

At swimming this week, Gwen’s instructor was…
full on.

Loud.
Direct.
No messing around.

At the end of nearly every lap, Gwen would look over at me with this face that basically said, “What’s her deal?” We’d have a little smile and she’d head off again.

After swimming, we chatted about it.

I said, “It’s funny, I don’t think we saw the same instructor.”

Gwen saw someone who was intimidating.

I saw someone who genuinely cared.

I saw someone who was passionate about helping kids improve. Someone who’d probably spent years around swimming pools and knew exactly how quickly things can go wrong if kids don’t listen. Her care just came out with a lot more intensity than Gwen naturally responds to.

Then I said, “You know, the way people treat us is usually a lot more about them than it is about us.”

The way people show up is shaped by their experiences.

Their personality.

Their stress.

Their values.

The things they’ve lived through.

The more we remember that, the less likely we are to take things personally.

Sometimes what one person experiences as intimidating is another person recognising as passion.

Maybe that’s a reminder for all of us.

We never really know what has shaped the person standing in front of us.

07/07/2026

This morning didn’t start well.

We’d already had a disagreement before we’d even left the house.

Then Gwen told me she didn’t even want to go shopping.

“I’d rather go with Mum.”

I asked why.

“Because she’s got more time than you.”

Then came the one that hit me.

“You won’t let me get what I want.”

I realised she wasn’t really talking about shopping.

She was talking about what she expected the morning to feel like.

She expected we’d be rushing.

So I said, “I’ve blocked out the morning. We’ve got a couple of hours. We’re in no hurry.”

And that was it.

No convincing.

No debate.

We just went.

A couple of hours later we walked back to the car with a few bags, a heap of laughs, and a daughter who’d had a completely different experience to the one she’d expected.

It reminded me how often our kids make decisions based on yesterday’s version of us.

Not because they’re wrong.

Because that’s the version they’ve experienced.

They don’t need more promises.

They need enough new experiences that they start expecting something different.

That’s how the story changes.

07/07/2026

This morning didn’t start well.

We’d already had a disagreement before we’d even left the house.

Then Gwen told me she didn’t even want to go shopping.

“I’d rather go with Mum.”

I asked why.

“Because she’s got more time than you.”

Then came the one that hit me.

“You won’t let me get what I want.”

I realised she wasn’t really talking about shopping.

She was talking about what she expected the morning to feel like.

She expected we’d be rushing.

So I said, “I’ve blocked out the morning. We’ve got a couple of hours. We’re in no hurry.”

And that was it.

No convincing.

No debate.

We just went.

A couple of hours later we walked back to the car with a few bags, a heap of laughs, and a daughter who’d had a completely different experience to the one she’d expected.

It reminded me how often our kids make decisions based on yesterday’s version of us.

Not because they’re wrong.

Because that’s the version they’ve experienced.

They don’t need more promises.

They need enough new experiences that they start expecting something different.

That’s how the story changes.

04/07/2026

One thing I’ve been thinking about this week…

Watching Gwen at swimming, after every lap she’d look up at me to make sure I’d seen her.

Not because she wanted a medal.

Not because she wanted to know if she was the fastest.

She just wanted to know I’d seen her.

It got me thinking.

People often say, “Don’t do things for other people,” or “Don’t care what other people think.”

I don’t think that’s quite right.

I don’t think we do everything for other people. But I do think almost everything we do happens in relationship with other people.

Children do this naturally.

They don’t ask, “Am I objectively good at this?”

They ask, “Did you see me?”

Developmental psychologists call it social referencing. Children look to trusted adults to understand not only whether they’re safe, but whether they matter.

The interesting thing is… we never really stop doing it.

We just become more subtle.

Instead of looking up after swimming a lap, we:
Tell our partner about a win at work.
Check whether people liked our post.
Look across the room after telling a joke.
Hope someone notices we’ve been working hard.
Wait for someone to say, “You look healthy.”

We’re all still asking the same question.

“Did you see me?”

I don’t think that’s weakness.

I think it’s part of being human.

Where I think we’ve gone wrong is turning “Don’t care what anyone thinks” into some sort of life philosophy.

If you genuinely didn’t care what anyone thought, you wouldn’t be capable of empathy, belonging or love. All of those require caring about another person’s experience.

Maybe the healthier version is this:

Don’t let other people’s opinions become the only thing that determines your choices.

That’s very different.

Caring whether your partner feels loved…
Caring whether your kids are proud of you…
Caring whether your team respects your leadership…

Those aren’t flaws.

They’re relationships.

Watching Gwen look up after every lap reminded me of something.

She wasn’t looking for praise.

She was looking for connection.

A smile that says, “I saw you.”

That moment lasts maybe half a second.

But if it happens thousands of times throughout childhood, it quietly becomes:

“I’m worth noticing.”

And if it rarely happens, many people spend adulthood trying to answer that same question through everyone else.

Maybe that’s the balance.

Not pretending we don’t want to be seen.

But becoming someone who knows who they are, while still deeply enjoying the experience of being seen by the people who matter.

Because when I really think about it, loving each other, caring for each other, and helping each other feel seen…

That’s kind of the whole deal.

We’ve just made it a f**k load more complicated than it needs to be.