Seriously, its amazing to see that this program can be just as applicable to other countries as it is to Australia. I guess we all face the same challenges and temptations, no matter where you are from. 

The succes of our launch over there is most certianly a product of the hard work of Jazz (our Community Manager in New Zealand), our incredible celebrity supporters (Dai, Mikey, Michelle, Daley and Sam) and our fantastic PR Agency, Media Key, for some expectional publicity over the past week (here is an example).

+ Next week, I will be in London – meeting with potential parters over there (hopefully to ultimately do a launch like we just did in NZ late 2012/2013) and to also meet some of you UK HSMers (yay!). 

+ Thanks so much for your feedback on how we should improve the site in last week’s blog. If you have any more thoughts – please send them through.

+ Furthermore, we are looking for some celebrity Australians to take up the challenge in this country. If you have any suggestions for people we should approach – please pass them on. 

Hello Sunday Morning has some new exciting partnerships which will be announced very soon. 

The best thing is that these partnerships will enable us to invest significantly in an improvement of the Hello Sunday Morning experience and platform in a big way! 

Two years ago, I dreamed up the iteration of Hello Sunday Morning you are using now from what I ‘thought’ would be what people who want to take a break from drinking would like.

I think it has worked pretty well – but now, we want to build something that is much, much better. A platform that will give you and future HSMers the best possible help, encouragement and experience we can. 

SO – to help with this build, I want to hear from you. We want to understand how this tool fits into your life and how it can fit better. I want to know what you think we need to change about hellosundaymorning.com, how should it look?, How could the epxerience be better? Why do you do it? – so we can build a better profile of our community’s needs. 

Before we start some more extensive research, I was hoping you could comment here on your general thoughts around these three questions.

1) What is the change you want to get out of doing a Hello Sunday Morning?

2) What is/was the cost of not signing up?

3) What has been the benefit of signing up to Hello Sunday Morning? 

We are very excited about our upcoming launch in New Zealand! If you are from NZ and keen to get involved here are some more details. Jazz, our New Zealand Community Manager is behind our media launch. 

What has been really great about this launch was that in New Zealand we have a long list of great celebrity supporters of Hello Sunday Morning who will be there. We have found having these people supporting us has really helped us open doors with media and get more companies and people behind what we do. We hope that we can take our numbers in New Zealand from 360 into the thousands!

On this note, we hope to use this strategy with our launch in the UK in June and launches in each state of Australia (starting from Queensland) from June – December this year. 

So, if you are following any celebrities on twitter (or even know them personally) who you think would be great supporters the change we are trying to create… it would be great for us to get in touch with them. Please do pass on your suggestions. 

Have a great weekend!!

As a charity, Hello Sunday Morning isn’t technically ‘owned’ by anyone – but I personally like to think that we are a kind of public listed company and each of you has an equal share in how we develop and achieve our strategy and goals. Each one of you is brave enough to give a bit of yourself to this idea, to this blog, to this movement – you deserve to have the best chance possible to be part of where the organisation is going as well. 

I therefore would like to make sure I keep you all in the loop as to what we are doing, operationally, so that if you have any ideas or ways to make this cause even better – you have a direct line to me as the organisation’s CEO. 

Our goals for 2012 are threefold (numbers, sustainability and the website) and the team of Jamie, Rhiannon, Jazz and myself are working hard to make those goals happen. I want to use this blog as a way to keep you all informed as to what we are doing to achieve them. 

This initial post is something that I hope gives you a general outlay of what we are up to. In future editions, I hope to be a bit more specific about areas of strategy and goals in which we are trying to implement so we can generate some more debate  

Goal 1: Have 10,000 people registered on Hello Sunday Morning (presently at 3750)

- After two years of trail and error, we have worked out that PR is the best way to get people aware and registered on Hello Sunday Morning. 

- Thanks to some great financial backing of ALAC, we now have a launch planned in NZ for the 14th of May where we will be jumping of the Auckland Bridge (with a rope tied to our feet). The campaign will be driven by our NZ Community Manager, Jazz, and you can find our more details here.  

- Queensland Health is supporting us to do a similarly massive launch in the Sunshine State in June, more details to come soon!  

- We have also got a UK launch ready to roll in June.

We will continue to search for launch partners to spread the world through media across the world. It is this way that we can surely hit out target by December this year, and beyond. 

Goal 2: Develop a sustainable business model for Hello Sunday Morning. 

- With some great work by the HSM Board and our Business Development Manager, Jamie, we have built a sustainable business model for Hello Sunday Morning

- What we need to do is ultimately offer great experiences and products that are aligned with the Hello Sunday Morning brand to our growing membership base, while taking advantage of our charity status to keep the purchasing costs of these low. Once Hello Sunday Morning reaches a large scale (50,000 and above), we will then be able to sustain ourselves, rather than rely on government funding.

- Until we get to that point, we are building many relationships with people across the community to invest in our growth. We have so far had $250,000 invested in our charity from government and regular givers. We need to build that to about $500,000 per year for the next three years then we will be able to completely sustain ourselves as a community organisation.

- To get to this point, we are primarily targeting health and mental health ministers, large family trusts and also the alcohol and hoteliers industry. If you are interested in finding out more, please email jamie(at)hellosundaymorning.com.au.

Goal 3: Redevelop the website and program.

- As a starting point, we have now reduced the requirement to start with three months, down to a month or week. Hopefully opening up the experience to a much larger audience. 

- We have spent several months putting together a web development brief with the main issues that we have had with the existing program and website. This brief is now out with several design agencies to identify the best partnership. 

- If you are interested in being part of the website redevelopment, please get in contact with rhiannon(at)hellosundaymorning.com.au. We are hoping to have a cross-section of people who use Hello Sunday Morning to provide feedback as we develop the next iteration. 

Lastly, I want to give a special acknowledgement to the community moderators who volunteer there time to say ‘hello’ to new members and be super supportive of those who are finding the experience a little trying. You guys are the heart of Hello Sunday Morning. 

For those people around you who have ever said, ‘I want to join HSM but three months is a little too hard’ OR ‘I’ve got a (21st/wedding/birthing) coming up in 2 months time’, we now have a way for them to get involved. 

Hello Sunday Morning is now available to support people who are looking to start with a 7 day or month-long challenge.

Our goal is that we can get more people registered and involved and that with the achievement of this smaller challenge, they will be able to reach a three month-er when they are ready. 

So, if you have any friends or family who like the HSM idea but aren’t quite ready to make the three month commitment – please send them a challenge and see what they say.

http://hellosundaymorning.com.au/tell-a-friend/

We still strongly feel this way. Getting people to take three months off drinking and reflecting on the experience seems to have the most long-standing impact. 

However, we are now a global movement. A movement to change the world’s relationship with alcohol. The biggest challenge for expanding our community is that often three months seems TOO daunting at the outset. Often people will only write about themselves once they have completed a month to see that it IS possible. We are missing a massive segment of people who want to get involved. More importantly, people who want to change the way they drink don’t register on Hello Sunday Morning because our initial commitment is too large. I beleive we should be encouraging people from all walks of life to take on whatever challenge they are ready for, as soon as they are ready. 

Therefore, we have made the decision to open up the Hello Sunday Morning to those that might not be ready to do a full three months, but want to see change in their life. As of a fortnight from now, people will be able to register on Hello Sunday Morning and start with a 7 day or 30 day challenge. Our goal as an organisation is to support a change in drinking culture around the world through offering an accessible experience/challenge to anyone who wants to see that change. To give everyone a way to be part of the movment. 

We believe that opening up the website and the community to those who are taking it just ‘one day at a time’ or even those that feel one month is their current limit, that one day, with the right support – they too can reach a three-month Hello Sunday Morning.

We are now over 3,500 people, all connected by the intention of change. Imagine the kind of movement of change we could be with 10,000 or 100,000 or even 1 million people registered on Hello Sunday Morning – all making a change in the way we drink. No matter how small that change is. Each one of those changes is as important as another and collectively they have the power to change the world’s relationship with alcohol. 

The last couple of months have been extraordinarily strange for me. If I am being honest in some ways I lost myself a little in the hype of awards and accolades and forgot why I am doing this in the first place. (What an embarrassingly human admission to make).

I came back from the Australian of the Year awards with this strange feeling of emptiness. All of a sudden, I have a national platform to talk about Hello Sunday Morning with the PM and the Governor General (an opportunity that most NGO’s would kills for)… and I felt like… a phony. WTF?!

I hated myself for not feeling honoured and special to have an opportunity like this – as everyone was saying I should – but this is how I felt. I didn’t know why I felt this way and all I could think was ‘what the hell was wrong with me??!!’

I now know the reason I felt empty was that, getting these awards in my name felt like I was taking credit for something that wasn’t mine. Because the reality is, I am no more an owner of this idea than any single person who signs up. It is so much bigger than me and it was this brief sense of false ownership in my head that gave me the sense of emptiness. 

Last week, I spent a couple of hours reading the recent posts on here. The inspiring, wonderful quilt of human experience and triumph and I remembered why I am doing this. Actually I remembered why WE are doing this and I was filled with fullness again. 

To the HSM community: thank you for being there. Thank you for giving me the chance to contribute to the growth of this movement and my commitment to you is that I will take opportunities like this to contribute to this as much as I possibly can. 

I now see these awards as not for me, but as small projectiles to be thrown into a metaphorical pond to increase the ripples of this idea and movement. 

I have been going to a yoga class almost everyday (and loving it!!!), my debt is down to $1,500 (down from about $50k over the past three years of setting up Hello Sunday Morning) AND I have researched and written the foundations for a book about why we drink. 

Personally, I\’m doing pretty well in this HSM…actually… I\’m kicking ass! Yew. 

I love how many great, funny, deep, inspiring stories are getting posted on here all the time. I learn so much. I\’m so gratefull to be a part of this movement. To reflect on what I do for a job and know that every hour I put into it has the very real possibility of changing someone\’s life in a meaningful way, makes me just want to give more.

Thank you. 

Doing a Hello Sunday Morning is reverse acupuncture for me. In acupuncture, you jam a tiny pin into the skin and, all of a sudden, a whole muscle group seems to relax. You put something small in and a whole lot of change happens around it. With Hello Sunday Morning I take away one small thing in my life that gives me great pleasure in the short term (drinking) and all of a sudden a bunch of things that give me great pleasure in the long-term start happening at a much greater rate. Reverse acupuncture. These things include saving money, getting healthy, having a clarity of mind, motivation, social challenges, emotional and psychological growth as well as just getting to know who I am, for better or worse, just that little bit more. 

I am now onto my third 12-week-HSM. My five HSM goals are:

1. To make sure I haven’t lost me touch. 

     I like drinking, I really do. I will rarely say ‘no’ to a drink if offered in almost any occasion. I drink about 10% of what I used to drink but I still seem to have at least a couple every time the occassion arise. I very rarely say no. The mind does wonder after nine months of saying ‘yes’, how much the drug is adding to the experience and how much is just me thinking it does. I love having an incredible time sober, great conversation, horrible dancing and knowing I can do it without the extra push from the placebo. 

2. To learn more about why we drink. 

     Running Hello Sunday Morning last year meant that I lost a lot of time simply learning, but learned a LOT about doing! We really did and acheived a lot! (We now have 3000 people) But… I want to focus these next three months on setting Hello Sunday Morning up so that I can spend at least 30% of my time reading, reflecting, presenting and writing on ‘why we drink’ – I hope to use this blog as a way to get my thoughts out there. 

3. Building foundations for my future. 

     My ultimate goal (3-5 years from now) is that I want to run a global agency that works with governments around the world to foster healthier cultures. Applying social psychology to health promotion. We have work coming up with Queensland Health and our partners, ALAC, from New Zealand so I want to add as much value as I can to those projects to build a foundation for future work in this area. 

4. Improve my health

     I have always focused my HSM health goal on losing weight or putting weight on. This time, I want to focus on doing it a little differently. I am committed to doing more alternative health activities over the next three months to bring a little ballance to the calorie counting sheet. Yoga, Boxing and Mediation I reckon… See how I go. 

5. Get out of debt. 

     I have worked my $25k debt from three years ago when Hello Sunday Morning up down to $4k. Almost there

My commitment is to share a weekly/fortnightly blog with you on this forum about what I am learning these three months as well as any personal revelations and experiences that come up along the way.

What an amazing 12 months of learning!! 2011 didn\’t quite finish in the easiest possible way but, thanks to the efforts of many of you, we have managed to turn our position around and we now have two major funding partners for next year who we are really excited about working with.

Thank you so much for everyone\’s effort, contacts and of course, cash. We pulled through to make ourselves and this movement even stronger. 

Hello Sunday Morning\’s strategy for 2012 is simple – numbers, sustainability and redeveloping the website. That\’s it. This post highlights how we plan to achieve each of our strategic goals, however if you have any other ideas or suggestions – please do comment below or get in touch! 

1. Have 10,000 people registered on Hello Sunday Morning by DEC 2012.

- After doing our research in 2011, we know that getting one person to do a HSM has massive value to society – our job is now to just find more. 

- Employ consultant to manage #12in2012 PR campaign throughout the year with region specific and national media

- Develop media partnerships with ABC, SBS and commercial stations. 

- Develop partnership with Facebook for advertising

- Develop the HSM Brand

- Chris to do 30-40 speaking engagements over the year. 

2. $1millon in committed funding over three years (be able to sustain HSM in interest earned)

-  Employ an experienced part-time corporate relationships manager and develop volunteer team

- 5-10 corporate partnerships across AUS and NZ

- Get commitment of three other state health departments

- Develop effective online and offline fundraising strategy

- Engage grant writing services

3. Re-build website and program

- Develop and design a state of the art web platform from the research we have done in 2011

- Organise and categorise the content on Hello Sunday Morning so that people can access the most valuable stories to them. 

- Develop a partnership with Google

- Build on NGO partnerships to improve the service experience and support for those that need it

I have certainly been both shades in my lifetime, but it is the later that seems so much more appealing to me these days. 

Last night I went to my sister’s dentisry ball and I must say that I saw my former self partaking in the kind of drinking many people there were doing. But then 10.30 came around and something in me switched to water. Call it the ‘tomorrow’ part of my brain or even just common-sense, but something now stops me from gambling away the morning after on the night before. 

Maybe I am just getting older (although there are certainly people much older who don’t have a ‘tomorrow’ switch) maybe it’s ‘wisdom’, but whatever it is, I have really changed over the past couple of years. But my realisation is that I am still the same excessive person, just exceeding at different things. 

Last night I lucky enough to be awarded Young Queenslander of the Year on behalf of Hello Sunday Morning.

It is a big high-five to the work of HSM team this year – Laura, Nat, Ben and Steve as well of course to everyone who has stood up and done a HSM themselves. As it is with Hello Sunday Morning being owned in equal share by the people who contribute to it, this award is also owned by each and every one of you. 

After the ceremony, my step-father was recounting the the night I told them I would take a year of drinking to find out what it takes to change the culture around us (while drinking at the time of telling them!). He told me that they all thought I was a little crazy but now, three years later, here we are – all 2,400 of us recreating a culture around us. Sometimes a being a little crazy is a good thing! 

More than anything, I hope to use this award as another platform by which we can get more people behind this message (10,000 people to go #12in2012) and truly change in the way we drink in this country and around the world. 

Why not?  

I have spent the past two months trying as hard as I can to find some short-term corp/gov partners to support the organisation we have built, but I haven’t been successful at scaling this mountain, no matter how steep the learning curve has been. I hope that with future funding we can bring more talented people on in an employed capacity within this organisation but until then, I have to let the talent here go to survive this ‘winter’.

I wanted to put this post out there for two reasons. Firstly, to honour to two amazing and talented women who have poured their heart into something that has changed the lives of thousands of people and secondly, to explain what this means for HSM.

Nat came onto the team earlier this year to help me organise and run the projects we had engaged in and support the team behind those contracts. She has been immensely successful at, ‘cracking a whip’ as we say, and has helped set up operational systems that will take this organisation to success.

It is really sad to see her have to move on. Laura has been the heart behind the love that beats out to the Hello Sunday Morning community from our HQ here in Brisbane. She has helped built exceptional relationships with universities across Australia and it really hurts me to not be able to keep her on as an employee, but unfortunately I had to make a decision to put the organisation first.

I started this organisation last year with a single-minded vision: to bring the life-changing experience I had by doing my Hello Sunday Morning in 2009 to 10,000 people by 2013. Above myself or anyone else, I am committed to that vision. We are a movement above an organisation. This unfortunately means that we have to operate on next to nothing at some points in our history… especially in present global financial times. But this is the road, the challenge, the opportunity, that I have personally committed myself to, for better or worse.

I want to take you on a journey. A journey that I’m inviting you are all part of. 

It begins exactly three years ago, in 2008, I was sitting in the Kings Beach Tavern with Adam Penberthy.  We were throwing ideas around over a couple of VB schooners as to how the ad agency we working for could create a government campaign to change binge drinking culture in young people.

That conversation led to a discussion of what it would take to change our own semi-wayward drinking habits.  Neither of us could come up with anything so I made a commitment to do an entire year sober to find out what it would take to change my own relationship with alcohol and possibly even that of those around me. Hello Sunday Morning, the experiment, was born.

By the end of 2009, my gonzo experiment had turned into 12 other people who were “crazy” enough to believe that they too could make a difference to the drinking culture around them. So with those 12 people, no money and/or real funding prospects, I made a commitment to the world to turn this experienceinto a full time passion. Hello Sunday Morning, the movement, was born. 

After a million “no’s” in 2010, no income in Melbourne and surviving off a Bear-Grylls-meat diet, I was successful at obtaining a few “yes’s” from our friends at Brisbane City Council, Macquarie University and TACSI. This enabled me to turn 9 months of full-time vollunteering into an actual income and more importantly, employ a talented team of HSMers (Nat, Laura, Steve, Ben, Simon & Adam) who have now taken the HSM idea global with 2232 people from around the world all standing up wanting to change their lives and desiring a better drinking culture.

Unfortunately, while our growth continues to be exponential, it has come with great challenges and hard work, (this wouldn’t be a HSM post without a little bit of vulnerability would it?)…..

The bottom line is that, to keep the team we have, we need to find people/organisations that want to invest in us. However, all I seem to be getting is advice from people from outside of the HSM community that takes me down cull-de-sacs to someone else with advice that takes me all the way back again. 

At times I feel like I am back in my Melbourne days again, seeking the approval of people in government and foundations to invest in a vision of changing our drinking culture only to find that in their eyes it is an impossible feat and someone else’s problem – even though we now have over 2200 people and the evidence to show that it works! 

In my darkest hours, sometimes, I think that maybe they are right, that I am insane for trying, that I should just go and get a “real job”. But, then I stop and look at the posts on here every morning, from everyday people who are making their life better.. and go, you know what, who am I actually doing this for?.. I need to stop listening to the sane people who don’t believe and start listening to YOU insane people on HSM, who do believe. 

So as an equal shareholder in this vision – I am asking for your help. Actually, I am asking for your voice. I can go another thousand rounds, but I want to know that I have you guys behind me to do this.

If you would like to help, here are some simple ways to get involved:

1. I am going to form a fundraising team from the HSM community. If you have skills or even a passion for raising funds and would like to work with me, please email me at anytime to discuss this on (chris@hellosundaymorning.com.au). 

 2. Please write an email/ letter or testimonial to your local/federal politician or share it with us at (http://hellosundaymorning.com.au/care-to-share/) about the impact Hello Sunday Morning has had on your life/the lives of those around you – this will help us access government funds which are already allocated to this issue. 

3. If you know any rich/powerful moguls out there that want to do something about the drinking culture or the future of Australia – give them a call and tell them about HSM or tell us and we will do it    

We need your help – please share this with your friends and family on Facebook or through any other medium because together as a community we believe we can achieve great things.

At the time I had no major funding, was living off a $250 per week NEIS Payment (Centerlink) to set HSM up and we had less than 200 people in HSM.

Today – It has all nearly come to fruition down to the word. HSM has recieved over $300k in funding, there are 5 staff in HSM. We have expanded into NZ. I travel the world for work. I live 5 min away from our office. 

This to me is what Hello Sunday Morning is about… removing the excuses (be they alcohol or otherwise) to achieve your dreams. 

My advice ->> Dream big. Write it down. Work hard <<-

\”Bigger picture…

Will have 1000 people having done or doing a HSM. With 10 corporate partnerships, 5 city council partnerships, 5 university partnerships. 5 full-time staff working in Program development, corporate relations, Grants and Donations & Administration. I can manage the team online. The team is an inspiring mix of individuals whose future visions are aligned with the HSM vision. We negotiate and create an office experience that defies the norm but is most effective for the team and individual. We have expanded into New Zealand and are looking at other countries and opportunities. I invest heavily in their personal growth and aspirations. Our workplace models off Google. I rent a nice, simple apartment in West End, close to work in a warehouse on the south side. Regularly travelling across the country for work. I am at peak fitness and entertaining the thought of doing a tri. I have Australia’s most inspiring people contact me every day to meet me. I carry no bad debt and earn over $1000 per week.

The average day…

Wake up around 8am to a clean, white room next to a beautiful, inspiring woman. Make the bed. Have a shower and get dressed. Plan the day over healthy breakfast of fresh bread, eggs and fruit and spend 20-30 min quality time with my partner. Get the laptop out and look at my and the HSM team’s to do list on my Mac Book Pro, check the stats on the website and make changes and schedule the day. Pick up my money clip with $300 on it and my iPhone. Go to the HSM office by 9.30 and work for 3-5hrs doing HSM stuff. Then 2 hrs of exercise time (yoga, surfing, running, gym), including travel. Shower and change at the gym. Lunch – calls, twitter, Facebook and emails (1hr). Have an hr sleep or quiet time in the afternoon (if necessary). I then write or work on presentations for 2hrs after I wake up. 1 or 2 30-45min meetings. Do any left over HSM work to be done following, then social time, elephants homework/networks, reading or cultural/educational advancement. Have a well-portioned, healthy dinner with my partner and/or friends. I sleep incredibly well.\”

It’s not the alcohol that is a problem. It is the way we invest too much time in it for too little return.  If you spend 20hrs per week (a conserative figure in my case) from the age of 16-26 – that’s 10,400 hours. That’s how long it took for the Beatles to become ‘The Beatles’. That’s how long it took for Steve Jobs to turn Apple into a multi-billion dollar company. That’s how long it took for Usain Bolt to train to run the 100 meters in 9.76 seconds. It just takes time. 

What we do have, is a country of experts at mediocrity. We dont even do drinking that well (like the French for example) because we do it as default.

How many geniuses would we have in this country, if we halved the amount of time we invest in drinking? If we actually drunk alcohol for a reason, to celebrate our success… Not to excuse us from it.

Sure you might say that “we are not given the same opportunities as the aforementioned geniuses”, “We weren’t blessed with their talents”. Wrong. In this country we are. Some more than others, but we all have an opportunity to be be happy, to live in purpose. It just takes time. Effort. Work.

If you live in the first world, there is so much opportunity that passes under your nose every minute and it is only a coward who is afraid of the opinion of others or afraid of failure to not take one.

All you need is time.

For more information about the concept of the “Shadow”, check out:

Wikipedia
Carl Jung
David Richo

1) Grow to the next level of leadership.

Professionally, this has been extraordinarily hard. When it comes down to it, the HSM model is breaking ground here with very few precedents to follow. It seems like more and more I am finding myself having to predict the future to make decisions that now affect the livelihood of others (HSM has a team of 5) and I have to find and understand the concept of ‘value’ in the minds of others if HSM is to be supported financially following December this year. It is a good challenge to have and I feel very supported and inspired by those around me to stay in the question.

2) Grow a new relationship that is supportive, challenging and most of all fun and adventurous.

Another groundbreaking area. I’ve never been so engulfed in connection one moment, yet so speechlessly vulnerable in the next. At times, I find the process a little awkward for me – but this is to be expected from my first real relationship. I’m ready to step up and I’m all in.

3) Get to 78kg by September

I put on a cheeky kilo thanks to a large amount of traveling. I think it is gone now, thanks to some advice from Laura. I now take my sneakers everywhere and I have one commitment – to at least put my runners on and step out of the door. Once I get that far, I usually feel like doing more exercise and once I get started, I don’t want to stop. I call it the ‘shoe tie commitment’.

4) To save $200 per week (x12) towards ticket NYC

On track for this.. Actually putting my money towards my debt though. I feel it is more important ATM.

I started a couple of weeks ago, and 10 weeks from now I envision for myself the following:

1) Grow to the next level of leadership. a) by working harder to support the HSM team (asking good questions) b) being more accountable to the person I want to be in ALL areas of my life. Accountable to each moment.

2) Grow a new relationship that is supportive, challenging and most of all fun and adventurous.This is a new, but exciting chapter for me.

3) Looking like the Vitruvian Man or ‘Raine-aissance Man’ (how bad!). Get to 78kg by September. (gym > 3 per week), Eat healthy.

4) To save $200 per week (x12) towards ticket to NYC.

Two years ago, I saw a performance that changed my life. I wrote about that experience here. That performer was Michael Franti and that performance was at Bluesfest 2009.

Seeing him inspire thousands of people to forget their inhibitions and jump around and sing for a couple of hours then walk home singing the songs together – I was like, “I want HSM to be that.”

“Relative to people like Michael Franti, I may be at the busking at shopping centre stage of my career, playing two notes on an old recorder, but I’m really enjoying it for what it is. One crazy adventure.” (BLUESFEST REVELATIONS – Posted 15/04/09)

That was a turning point in both myself and Hello Sunday Morning. It wasn’t going to be enough for just me to believe in the HSM idea, I needed to find others out there that also believed.

A couple of months later, I quit my job. I moved to Melbourne. Starved for about 8 months while I worked out how to turn it into a job. Hustled a way to fund the organisation I needed to build. Moved back to Brisbane. Employed a team of exceptionally talented people and 24 months later there are 750 people that are doing a HSM, tens of thousands of people that have been influenced by the idea and… we are only just getting started!

In full circle, I managed to line up an interview with Michael Franti when he came to Bluesfest this year to personally thank him for the inspiration and find out a little about what inspires him.

Here it is.. Enjoy.

PART I

PART II

Thanks to Matty Roberts from Projucer for putting the video together for HSM. Also, thanks to WE CAN ALL BE HEROS for being a content partner –> http://www.facebook.com/we.can.all.be.heroes http://michaelfranti.com/

What I have learned since starting HSM to make sure I have a good time when I go out during my HSM:

1) Find your own rhythm

I know for me to have the best kind of night, I have to have being going to the gym regularly, exercised that day, eaten well and had an afternoon nap. When I am in my strongest rhythm, I know that I feel the most empowered.

 2) Let go of expectations

Not all nights are going to be amazing. You will have great nights and average nights whether you drink or not; that has a lot to do with the environment and the people around you.  Also, there is so much sugar in most drinks that you get this kick of energy that is much harder to immitate natually. The good thing is, you don’t get the cost of that spike which is the hangover. But if you are consistently improving your rhythm, over time, your energy increases.

3) Treat it like an experiment

A big reason why we drink is so that we can pretend to be someone else, to have a reason to do things we wouldn’t normally do. Push yourself to do these things or be that person sober and see what happens.

A great way to do this is to set yourself little challenges. To meet someone new, to be the first on the dance floor (no matter what song), to compliment a stranger. I find this is the BEST way to get out of my head and into the moment. It’s even better when you have a wingman as wlel. 

4) Talk to everyone.

The quickest way to get out of your mind chatter in your own head is to just chat to everyone else as much as possible. Talk to everyone. Ask questions, even if they are straight up boring. There is so much you can find out about somebody and everyone likes to be complimented or talk about themselves. If I am going out somewhere by myself, I talk to the first person I can find, then the next one. 

It all starts with hello.

5) Have a reason to be there

That previous tip is much, much easier to do if you have a reason to be somewhere. When I’ve been on a HSM, I’ve realised that it’s much easier to go up and meet people that have a common purpose for being there.. ‘so how do you know (insert mutual friend/birthday person)?’ Networking and birthdays are great for this. 

I firstly want to say publically: ‘Damn you Jill Stark!’. In one single article you have inspired more people to do a Hello Sunday Morning than a combination of every presentation I have done over the past 2 years put together. You have really set the bar high and I am embarrassingly inspired by what you have done.

I also want to acknowledge all the ’crazy-enough’ people that have done or are doing a HSM. Not only are you committing to making your own lives better, what you learn from this experience and share in your blog, those around you get to learn as well. 

In this post, I am going to explore the question that is perennially asked by nearly every HSMer – “how the hell do I go out and have a good time without drinking?”  (These are some HSM posts from this weekend alone… Tim, Ellee and Alice)

In my experience… getting to a place where you can go out and have just as much of an awesome time without drinking is both the easiest AND/OR the most difficult thing to do in the world. However, if you are like me and often end up in the ‘difficult’ basket, there is good news for us ‘over-thinkers’ because…  I have found the secret.

BEFORE I FIX YOU ALL BY TELLING YOU THIS SECRET THOUGH>>> I want you to put a dollar figure in your mind. Think about how much it would be worth to you to be able to go out and have the night of your life without needing anything at all (to be able to dance like this, grow your wolf-pack and/or throw some killer chat at babes or dude-babes at the bar)… now add up all the cash you have spent on alcohol to make that happen for you over the years… got a figure in your mind? OK good.

Now here is the secret:

The only difference is what YOU believe. If one person can go out, not drink, and have an amazing night (as demonstrated by these posts… Tim, Liv and Starkers) then, god damn it, so can we all!

There you go… do you believe me? Was that advice worth the figure in your mind?

Not quite?

I’ll tell you why not, because saying that you believe that, is much different to actually believing that. You don’t get that from day 1 on a HSM. That is why we have a 3-month minimum. It takes that long for our slow-changing minds to start seeing the truth, to be immersed in reality.

…Until that point though, you’ve got to ‘fake it until you make it’. You have got to do the work, have the reference experiences, to trick your mind into believing something that was always true.

Everyone is different and many words have been written on Hello Sunday Morning as to the many ways you can go about doing this… and I’d like to share what I have learned as THE best HSM ‘tricks’ to help an individuals, just like me, get out of my head and into the moment. 

I shall post my list up tomorrow, so if anyone has come up with a few success strategies for themselves, please do comment on this or that post or send me an email at chris@hellosundaymorning.com.au. 

Until then… 

Four weeks ago, my grandma and I had what would be our final conversation. She told me about her life’s purpose has been and how she lived it. She asked me what mine was and about the kind of difference I want to make in this world. ‘I want to halve Australia’s cultural dependence on alcohol’ I said. I have been thinking about that conversation quite a lot since. Do I believe in what I want to do? do I believe it is possible?

Two weeks ago, after giving a lecture about Hello Sunday morning at a university, Nick Crocker also said to me something that really challenged me and my sense of purpose. He said, “Chris, there is a part of you that sounds too apologetic for what you are trying to do. Don’t be.” I had to admit he was right. Even though I had spoken about Hello Sunday Morning thousands of times to tens of thousands of people and I might look confident… there was still a tiny quiver in my voice that came from a fear of what people (or more so, projections of myself) thought of me and what I believe – a part of me that still believed that the culture we are trying to change is too big, too complex to ever make a difference through the work we are doing.

—

On Monday, my mum called me up into the hospital to say a final goodbye to my grandma.

Holding her hand, I felt my grandmother’s fragile fingers squeeze my hand for the last time. My world stopped. I felt this feeling come over me as though her soul was speaking to me. Our conversation from the month earlier echoed through my mind. I felt as though, for even just a moment, those final squeezes of hope gave me the strength to stand up to that purpose. There was such pure love and strength in that last connection. It was her final gift to me.

In her honor, it was that love and strength that I will carry with me in the rest of my life and into my work. This has been the biggest lesson, or should I say gift, that I have received in my Hello Sunday Morning.

My original intention was to write a blog post about all the challenges one faces while doing a HSM and use this video as part of what I had to say. The problem is that there are SO MANY challenges in doing a HSM, that my original intention seems to be a never-ending one. However, after listening to this speech for the fifth time this morning, I’ve realised that it says everything I want to say without using any of the words I was going to use. I imagine that is why Ted Kennedy simply read the speech verbatim at his brother’s funeral.

Those of you that are like me and are doing a Hello Sunday Morning and questioning why it is you have chosen to take this path, a path that is so much harder, so much more lonely, so much more challenging to the people around us, the people we love; when you are facing the challenges you inevitably will face in this choice to question, I implore you to listen to this clip in it’s entirety. There is a force between the words in this speech that rise up from generations past, from something that lives within us all and says, “Some men see things and say ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?’” (Robert Kennedy)

Not the ‘would you mind?’ I was asked on Friday. ‘Would you mind being the MC for the speeches?’ my brother says to me as we step into the reception venue. It’s these kinds of ‘would you mind’s?’ that you never forget.

So there I was, in the time-still moment before giving him my answer, thinking about how it was my first wedding while doing a HSM and thinking about how I had my game plan of fielding the questions when a toast was proposed as to why I had a cup of tea in my hand. Well… now I was the one who would be proposing the toast.

‘Yeah sure’ my adrenal glad spurts out.

‘Well you are on in 10 minutes,’ my brother says.

So the next 10 minutes I run around frantically conferring with who was actually speaking, what I actually had to say (thanks to the DJ who had obviously been to a few more than I). It was short and sweet, with none of the humorous anecdotes I would have hoped to have said… but I did it.

We then did the cake cutting and then the bride and groom’s dance. I ran around, dimmed the lights and… my job was done. I grabbed one of the bridesmaid’s hand and hit the dance floor for most of the rest of the night. Loving this Hello Sunday Morning!

It’s amazing how much in the dance of life we are guided by two jealous partners – the light and the shadow.

The film The Black Swan, is a brilliant portrayal of this perennially-conflicting dance. Without giving it away, the film is centered around the protagonist’s thrilling internal exploration of her own shadow. Brilliantly, the movie culminates in a moment of unity as these two forces collide in what can be described as an expression of wholeness, or ‘perfection’.

This film spoke so loudly to me because I know that in in doing a HSM, it is so much easier to simply dance away in the light of day and pretend that the shadow of night is simply just not there. Life get’s good. I save a heap of cash, I get healthy, do a bunch of things that are good for me and everything seems to be going tickety-boo!…

…But then…unexpectedly (and often annoyingly) in my mind pops a thought. A shadowy thought.

Nights like last night are a perfect example. The full moon is out, the night is young and I’m keen to play! It could be something as simple as throwing a bit of banter, to sneaking somewhere I shouldn’t be, to a little midnight romance. Whatever it is, it’s usually something that could get me into trouble. (Why we want to do this is all part of this theory I am working on based on the work by a guy called Maslow, it’s called – ‘Raine’s Hierarchy of once-we-have-our-needs-met-let’s-get-fucked-up’.)

Sadly, however I have been trained to believe that the only way for me to dance with my shadow is solely with the chaperoning consent of several shots of tequila. I have to have an excuse to explain why I want to be a little bad, right?

Well, without going into to much incriminating detail, I have been learning to embrace the shadow rather than ignore it and… wel.. just do it anyway. It has been interesting to explore doing the things I would have normally only have done once drunk, I think, because I just want to know that I can.

I doubt that I will do them every weekend like I would if I was drinking, because they seem significantly less desirable once you learn the illusion behind the magic… but, its good to know that I am working towards embracing all elements of my psychology. I don’t want to need alcohol to be a little bad, every now and then.

Has anyone else had a similar restrictive or confronting experience?

Hemingway - a life of love and poetry

A couple of months ago I went to new Zealand to present at the New Zealand Drug Foundation AGM. I was also fortunate enough to also be invited to a conference that was put on by the Mental Health Foundation. At this conference there was one idea that was presented which has stuck in the back of my mind since.

One of the speakers, a doctor, was talking about depression and how his practice has started using mindfullmess activities as a way to help patients deal with today’s most common affliction – the black dog. What was fascinating in his presentation is that he would often substitute the word ‘depression’ with ‘love and poetry’. He did it initially without a trace of humour or insight in his face until he finally told us what on earth he meant by it. He told us that we need to look at depression/sadness/suffering as part of life, to in a way be grateful for it, for like every experience in life there is no such thing as good or bad. It was this wise doctors little homage to some of the great songs, ideas, philosophies and art that has been produced in states of depression and his way of embracing it as part of life, rather than cancerous-like repulsion from perfection we often give it.

I thought the gesture incredibly charming and found myself smiling at the thought of him prescribing mindfullness as a medication to his patients in their efforts to live with their ‘love and poetry’.

It has been interesting to see a few of the latest posts on HSM have made mention of taking away drinking to open up a lid on the ‘love and poetry’ in their own life that they have been masking with alcohol. To those that are willing to step up to their own internal ‘love and poetry’ and post about it on HSM, I want to say that I find that intention massively inspiring. Giving those thoughts voice through the words that come from your heart and find themselves on this obscure website little website of ours, moves me to embrace and own the shadow part of me even more.

I have found already in my own HSM that I have needed to embrace the ‘love and poetry’ in my own life, on an even deeper level. There are thoughts of insecurity that do crack their way into the mask of confidence I want people to see. I am far from the perfect trisector of success through confidence, health and mental strength that forms the driver behind doing a HSM… But in the same breath, nor would I want to be. I wouldnt want to be without the doona days, the human-ness, the little disappointments, the awkward moments, the saddnes that comes creeping into the night because really, what’s a life without love and poetry?

A few years ago, I was lying in bed with a pretty bad case of ‘love and poetry’ and my mum said something to me that has also since stuck with me, “without days like these, you’ll never be able to play the blues.” I have come to understand and appreciate what exactly she meant by that.

Lastly… I especially want to thank Sue, Ellen, Ben, Emmy and Simon for being the most incredible support over the past month.

Sent from my iPhone