Burn the Ships 2: From Chasing Success to Embracing Intentionality: Finnian Kelly #151

Highlights

• Thinking about his independence in his early days (1:53)
• The beginning of his life of “chasing” (7:37)
• Chasing was not about materialism (12:46)
• The crash that led him to rewrite the lives under which he lived (14:37)
• Choosing to sail a new ship (15:33)
• The “brave path” of tackling the journey within (22:20)
• The importance and practice of intentionality (38:49)
• Pursuing a path to an extraordinary life can include needing a new ship to get you there (41:54)
• Finnian’s final word of empowerment for listeners (47:36)

Transcript

Gary Schneeberger:

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Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Finnian Kelly:

It was a really challenging time where it was just getting through each day was hard enough because all my normal drivers, they were stripped away because I knew the illusion, the illusion had masked and they were like, “That’s not going to work this time.” Like going in, distracting yourself, going in, focusing on business, traveling, I knew none of it was going to work. So then I even felt even more alone and even more hopeless because my normal drivers, my normal tools, were outside. They were no longer relevant.

Gary Schneeberger:

What do you do when your normal tools are no longer relevant? When the ships that have taken you to a crossroads or maybe a cross waters in your life are smoldering? According to our guests this week, Finnian Kelly, you set sail in the new craft to a new destination. Intentionality. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In this second episode of our winter series, Burn The Ships, Kelly discusses how all the success he chased and caught a prestigious military career, top shelf entrepreneurship, star of a National Geographic channel documentary eventually failed him because he had never cared for the wounded soul he suffered as a boy. His world crashed around him in the wake of a difficult divorce. That’s when he finally did the inner work necessary to allow him to move on to a life of authentic purpose. And he’s not taking that journey alone, but helping others to also live in the now and get on their own unique path to significance.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Finnian, thanks so much. And Finnian, as you’ll hear his accent is a fellow Australian from Tasmania. I understand. So kind of island off the southeast coast of Australia. Not quite as many people in that state as some others, but a beautiful state, mountains and hiking and just a beautiful corner of the world. But Finnian, I love what you do with Intentionality, but you had an interesting upbringing and the way you described it on your website, you’re a really good writer. I love the phrases you use, it’s just so intriguing. So just tell us a bit about how you grew up and it set you on a certain path that maybe in hindsight wasn’t quite as helpful, but looking back at it. But just tell us a bit about going up in Tasmania, family and just the path that you set yourself on, if you will.

Finnian Kelly:

I will. Well, thanks Gary and Warwick for having me. I’m excited about this. And Warwick, I’m interested to see how our Australian accents will start morphing back to Australian because we’re both in America and it’s sort of after a period of time with some other Australians we’re like, “All right, here comes our language again, our slang. So let’s see how we go.

Warwick Fairfax:

There you go.

Finnian Kelly:

Go. Yeah. So I grew up in Tasmania. I was actually born in Sydney, grew up in Tasmania to very different individuals. And they’re are very important part of my story because you can see if you can think about living with intentionality, I don’t think they parented with intentionality. It was a very different approach. They were doing the best they could and it drove me to really start thinking about my independence at a very young age. I had a pivotal moment on my 10 year old birthday, which was the moment where effectively I split into parts. We’ve heard a lot of this part language and internal family systems, how we have these different elements of ourselves, which are formed over time, often to protect ourselves. When we’re young, we are not in a place where our conscious mind is developed enough to identify that, well, the way they’re behaving actually has nothing to do with you.

It’s all about their own issues and it feels too grand to process on your own. So they form a protector and an event occurred, which I felt that I’d lost all trust in my parents, and I didn’t know at the time, but I created a core belief that I was going to be abandoned. So my protector kicked in and just said, “All right, if you are going to be abandoned, you can’t trust your parents. You’re going to be a very independent person from a young age.” So straight away I started earning money, created a plan on how to get myself into a school, which was a private school where I identified that their families had a bit more connection and perhaps I could go right on their journey and resulted me being the youngest person to graduate from a school youngest army officer in Australia.

And it just set off this sort of chain of progress, achievement. I had a lot of success as an entrepreneur and you get celebrated on that journey. People keep saying, you get recognized with awards, I’ve done a lot of cool stuff. And it literally, it always comes crashing down if your core program is built on fear. And my core program was built on fear, which was abandonment. So effectively one day I woke up at 32 with everything around me being abandoned. And that was my real crucible moment where I went, “Okay, this isn’t working anymore. I have to unlock this inside of myself. I have to explore what faulty coding I have inside of me and I have to go, “Okay, I have to take responsibility for my actions, but I didn’t code this. Someone else coded this inside of me and it’s time to take back control of my operating system and code myself with the beliefs that’s going to serve me from now on.”” And that’s been really my path to Intentionality.

Warwick Fairfax:

As I mentioned, I love some of the phrases that you use on your website. I love how you say I needed to learn independence so I chose a farm and Tasmania and parents who didn’t care too much about what I did or achieved, as you talk about a sort of, I made their lack of interest mean they didn’t love me. Not to say that they didn’t, but we interpret messages in ways that may be true or not true.

You talked about feeling abandoned and lacking. And then I find this phrase fascinating, a couple phrases. You said, “I tried to fill that hole in the only way I understood it through the achievement of external things.” And you say this. “And so I began my life of chasing and the process, I forgot who I was.” So talk about how somehow that sense of abandonment or lack of love or however, whether it’s real or not real, that’s how you interpret it, that was your reality, which is really the important thing. So talk about how that morphed into achievement of an external things and chasing, because it feels like for part of your life, it was the external and the chasing that was who Finnian Kelly was, right?

Finnian Kelly:

Yeah, you’re right. And I don’t believe it was who I was. In my core fundamental essence, it was a reaction to an experience. And I’m really glad you picked up on the interpretation. People often they hear my story and then they make it about their story, but they don’t realize it’s an interpretation. And that’s all that really matters is it’s never about the facts. It’s never about the story. It’s never the content. How did you experience this? What are your feelings? And it’s something that is done really poorly in relationships. We never just acknowledge that the other person is feeling this way. We get too caught into the content. So I’m just glad that you picked up on that. So for me, ultimately what happened is I didn’t have a home. I didn’t feel a foundation. Yes, there was a physical home, but to me, home is safety, it’s love, it’s nourishing, it’s the ability to be grounded and trust.

And if I didn’t have that, then it’s a very, it’s almost like you’re an orphan, you feel disconnected. So what I would do was, well, in order to mask the really unpleasant sensations of actually the gravity of that situation, I went, “Well, I don’t need that.” So what did I do? I created a life where I did anything but home. I joined the army, traveled around the world, constantly jumping from one thing to the next, never bought a home, any of these things because if I actually went and claimed a home, then it potentially could be taken away from me. And that had already happened once. So I never wanted that possibility again. So that’s where it really set off that thing of success because it was a way to distract myself from my core feelings because it was actually too hard to face, to actually identify that this who I actually believe I’m a very loving, kind boy and not being fully accepted or understood or seen, which are the core desires of humans, is to feel seen and understood.

That was confronting. So I just did everything to distract myself. Now it’s not saying that wasn’t the right path for me, it was actually my path to my spiritual awakening. It’s just many different paths and I would love the people to identify this earlier on and actually acknowledge their feelings and then work through it. Because you can do a lot of damage to yourself and to others in that time and you don’t always wake up from your crucible moment as well. I think you’ve probably experienced that with yours. It’s a pretty tough time. And yes, it can be an incredible catalyst for growth. It can also be a catalyst for destruction. It can be something that you just never recover from and your soul just goes, all right, next lifetime will. We’ll do it next time.

Warwick Fairfax:

And that’s so true. I love this image. I know you’re sort of army background. And just for American listeners, when you say you went to Duntroon, that is the US equivalent of West Point. It’s a big deal. It’s the elite army military college, you founded a couple businesses. One, I think you sold for seven figures. You were really, really successful in everything you did and was truly impressive.

But I have this image of this ship being unmoored. It’s like going to port is not safe. You got to keep cruising at as high a rate of knot as you possibly can. If you pause and go to port and have to think about a home, bad things will happen because you’ll have to confront feelings that you don’t want to. I’m not saying that’s right necessarily, but that was your reality of constantly chasing and moving and charging so you don’t have to think about home or some of these feelings. It’s a lot of people kind of stuff it, push the feelings under and just go forward and don’t think just move because thinking is too painful. Is that feeling somewhat your reality at the time?

Finnian Kelly:

And I’ve actually just changed that language. It wasn’t that thinking is too painful, it’s feeling is too painful. So instead we avoid the feeling and then we actually think, we ruminate and we distract ourselves and go onto these coded belief loops, which is ultimately my work now is helping people identify these coded negative belief loops and how to rewire them. And I think what’s interesting about my story is when people hear this sort of chasing success, they think it’s all about the materialism side of things. I wasn’t driven by materialism at all. It was never about that. It was just how could I feel like I’m doing something that makes me feel valued? Because my core is I didn’t feel valued. And so that’s why all my businesses were purpose driven. It was why I’d always shop for friends traveling around the world to go to their parties, whatever it is. I had to feel like I was worth something because my origin story defined that I wasn’t.

Warwick Fairfax:

That is fascinating what you’re saying because obviously there’s a pivot which we’ll get to here in a millisecond, but it seems like your friends wouldn’t necessarily say “Finnian’s a bad guy. It’s all about money and power.” It sounds like you were doing some worthwhile endeavors during that time. So people might say, “Finnian’s a good guy, he cares about his friends, he tries to give back, he tries to live a life of purpose. Finnian’s a good guy.” So it sounds like it wasn’t like, you’re the sort of character and Citizen Kane and it’s all about money and power and treading on the whole guy. And just if I can crush somebody, then I do because it’s so fun. That wasn’t who you were pre-crash if you will, which is fascinating. Your average friend would say, Finnian’s a good guy and he’s doing great. Right?

Finnian Kelly:

Yeah. And a lot of people looked up to me at that time as well. So when my crash came, it was very confronting to them because they thought that I had life worked out. So that was a very, very confusing moment for a lot of people. And it’s one of those things I often talk about, I always get a little bit wary when people say that they’re here to save the world and they’re got this high altruistic side of things because often a lot of the time it’s masking just their own unpleasant sensations. They don’t want to feel this side of themselves. And also as you go along this journey, you start realizing, who am I, my limited self to think that this world isn’t perfect just the way it is. Why do I need to be the one who meddles with it? So it’s not about giving you away the altruistic desire to help people, but this whole idea of the world is broken and I need to fix it. There’s a lot of ego hanging out in that as well.

Gary Schneeberger:

And there’s a quote that you said, Finnian that I think really speaks to this point before we pivot into the crash. And again, this series is called Burn the Ships. And as you’ve talked about the things that you accomplished, the things that you were doing and how people looked up to you, I mean, you didn’t just burn one ship, there were a lot of ships that were floating that you had going, that were a lot of different ships sailing under different flags. But you did pivot, but you said this about what you were just talking about, you will always have a sense of emptiness when you’re looking for fulfillment from outside of yourself, even if what you’re looking for is that altruistic thing. That seemed to be, it came to a point that you could no longer live unriven by having that perspective, right?

Finnian Kelly:

Yeah. So right Gary, what actually was the most interesting point about my sort of pre-crucible moment was I was living a life of Intentionality. I had a very clear vision. I had achieved it. I just sold my second company. I was financially independent, I was married, I was moving over to America to live in a ski resort in Beaver Creek, like skiing 100 days a year. And to top it even off, I had been recognized as a philanthropist and I was doing a documentary with National Geographic about supporting, I was in Bulgaria and I had to find a project, I find out what was wrong, funded all myself in this beautiful experience, which was really the highlight of my career. And at that exact moment, I was also, the illusion was starting to break away, or yeah, I was starting to discover the illusion because I’d always told myself that when this happens I’m going to feel fulfilled.

And in an exact moment I achieved everything in my life vision pretty much. Obviously there was more things I could have been open to, but I’d had the foundations, it was almost like the lie just suddenly started to surface. I just went, this is one giant lie, this isn’t actually working for me. So at that peak moment was actually where it was all starting to fall away. And that’s what will always happen if your foundations are built on negative belief loops. Eventually the core program of fear or I’m not enough, will always end up manifesting because that’s the soul journey, is the soul journey, is to realize you are enough and you are love. And so that’s something for people to remember.

Warwick Fairfax:

Wow, that’s so profound. So talk about some of the elements of the crucible or the crash that really led you to turn inward and do what you’d avoided your whole life in a sense, which is get in touch with your feelings, get in touch emotionally with what’s going on in your inner Finnian Kelly, if you will. So there are a couple of different elements to the crash that change the course of your life. So just tell folks about those couple elements.

Finnian Kelly:

Yeah, I look back and the way I describe the Crucible is that your soul has a journey in this lifetime and it’s really here to grow and there’s a particular reason and this higher self of ours, this is just my view, but it puts us in into this environment with these parents, into this situation and with these circumstances in life to learn a particular thing and apply it. And when you have that view, once again it’s just a belief. All beliefs are made up. So why not have beliefs that serve you? That’s a foundational part of my work is I don’t care what you believe in, just are they serving you? So that makes me feel a little bit better. So in this, I almost think if you are not paying attention to your soul’s journey, spirit will pick you up and smash you on the ground to wake you up, to force you.

Because some of us are very stubborn, some of us with our intellect, super smart, we can rationalize everything and we can sort of manipulate our way through things. But eventually it goes all right, it’s time, it’s wake it up. And for me it required a few different elements all happening at once. So one, my wife’s dad suddenly died in a really tragic accident and he was a father figure I was starting to accept, I never had a father figure and I was starting to accept in a life. So once again, that abandonment program kicked in. And then we sold a business to some just not very ethical people who from the first moment had the strategy of putting us in a litigious fight. And in that moment you never win. And they weren’t paying us the money. So huge financial loss. Then I’d launched a bunch of other businesses at the same time and I then suddenly went in through this really challenging experience because my relationship with my wife just wasn’t the same after her dad died.

And I didn’t have the tools that I do now to understand that this wasn’t about me, it was her experience. And also we have this story around our relationship was like the golden couple that when any crack started coming, we didn’t want to actually acknowledge them because it would be too confronting. So we sort of swept them under the carpet till eventually I had a burnout and I just went, “I can’t do this anymore.” And I had to shut down a company that I just raised money for. I paid all the investors out of my own pocket. I didn’t have to, but it’s just an integrity piece. I felt like they were backing me and I couldn’t deliver the way I did. And that sort of just all started spiraling. And then eventually one day I addressed this with my wife, and she wanted some space and then just never came back.

She just never came back to Beaver Creek. So I was sitting in this house after all of this had happened and that was my crucible moment. And the key part of this moment, I remember this, I woke up one day and I was just sitting there and I just went, “I don’t ever want to feel this way again.” Now I want you to focus on those words. Notice I didn’t say think, I said feel. I don’t ever want to feel this way again. And that was my moment where I just went, “Okay, I’ve tried everything with my intellect, my rational mind, and it still didn’t work. I have to go explore and go what is inside of me, which is driving this.” And that was my real moment of I suppose my big awakening and my spiritual progression.

Warwick Fairfax:

So in that moment when you said, “I never want to feel this way again.”, what were you feeling in those lowest moments? What was going on inside?

Finnian Kelly:

There was a lot of aloneness, just feeling completely alone, not understood, shame, lot of self-criticism. I’m someone who some people take on victim, some people take on more responsibility and both aren’t a good path. I could take on too much responsibility. So there was just a lot of self-criticism and just ultimately just sad. I was just so sad that this had occurred and that somehow through my actions that this had actually happened. So it was just those feelings and it was a really challenging time where it was just getting through each day was hard enough because all my normal drivers, they were stripped away because I knew the illusion the had masked and they were like, that’s not going to work this time. Going in, distracting yourself, going in, focusing on business, traveling, I knew none of it was going to work. So then I even felt even more alone and even more hopeless because my normal drivers, my normal tools were out outside. They were no longer relevant.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah you would say potentially all your ships burned, all the things that got you from one place to the other burned. That is a moment where that’s what we’re talking about in this series is that moment where you face that and then you decide to move forward in a new ship in a different direction. And that’s certainly what you did.

Warwick Fairfax:

As you’re talking, you spent a lifetime running away from your feelings and emotions because you didn’t want to deal with them. So the problem is when you stop or you hit a brick wall, those feelings like a tidal wave hit you. It’s easy to say in hindsight it’ll be amateur psychologist. When you have those negative feelings and trauma, it’s better to deal with them at the time because if you don’t deal with them it hits you like a Mack truck. I mean it’s dozens of psychologists could tell you that and that’s great, but didn’t help you with the time. Thank you. But I am where I am and the tidal wave is hitting me. And you talked earlier and stuff you sent us about negative belief loops and unhealed trauma, memories from childhood. So all of this is just hitting you just wave after wave of I’m sure intense emotion.

So it’s hard. That’s the benefit in a weird cryptic wave of a crucible, it’s so painful. You can’t ignore that tidal wave of emotions. No human could ignore that. You can’t say I’m going to ignore that. You can’t. It just your mind and agony and pain. So you faced this trauma and so what did you do then? Because one of the things we say at Beyond the Crucible, you have a choice. “You can say this is unfair, my wife left me, my family upbringing wasn’t great. Maybe I made some bad choices. I don’t know”, but a combination of “Why did this happen to me?” Or “Of course it happened to me because I deserve all this stuff.” Or whatever the negative cocktail is. Some people would say, “You know what, I’m just going to spend the next 50 years in bitterness and anger.” And some people choose that.

And we talked earlier, but you chose a different path. How did you choose a path of healing and intentionality, if you will? I don’t know if you even thought of that word at the time, but you made a choice and we cannot minimize the pain and the tidal wave of agony you were going through. How did you make that choice not to just dwell in the pit of agony and trauma and anger and bitterness? How did you get out of that pit, if you will?

Finnian Kelly:

Well, I’m really glad Warwick, you just repeated the word choice eight times because we needed to hear that because it is choice. That was the biggest thing I realized was perhaps I didn’t have choice in my younger years. I wasn’t developed enough. But right now I did have choice on how I handled this and how I was going to move through. And how I actually handled that choice was I basically looked at the paths that were available to me and the one path which was the familiar path, which was the running, the distracting, focusing on external things. One, I just recognized that those tools weren’t even available, but it was built on fear. And I could just see where that was going to go to because I’ve already done that path and then ended up exactly where I was right now. And it was probably going to be even worse because I could, I wasn’t in the illusion anymore.

So then I went, well what’s the other path? And in that path I started going, “Well I have to take responsibility for this. I can’t blame anyone else and I have to explore what could be potentially inside of me that could have brought this on because I had enough realization of that time that we are the creators of our own reality. I was already starting to teach that to people. And so I had that awareness and I went, “Well, if I’m the creator of my own reality, I’ve created this somehow. And yes, it’s not conscious, but it’s unconsciously I’ve created it. I’m still a creator.” And that there is agency when you realize you are the creator. So in that moment it’s challenging because at one point you’re like, “How could I have done this? This is too painful to even comprehend.” But if you realize that you have done this, it’s also the liberating moment because you realize that you have the choice to get yourself out of this.

And that there is, when people can fully accept that, that’s the moment of transformation where it starts beginning because they realize, all right, there’s a way out of it. So in that moment I went, well really it was the path of love. And I had to go, “Well, how do I get to know myself? How do I feel this? How do I process this?” And I started looking at all the things that could have contributed to this moment. For example, I hadn’t spoken to my dad in 19 years that probably might have contributed in my relationship. I had resentment against my mom, I had body complexes, all these little different things where I went, perhaps that’s taking its toll on me. And I realized I also had this starting to understand this concept of time and about how time is just a construct and we don’t understand it very, very well.

And one of the worst coded negative belief loops out there is that time heals all things. It’s a complete lie because if time heals all these things, why was I in this situation from something that happened 22 years ago and it was still affecting everything in my life? And that was my moment where I went, “Well I tried the time thing, I tried that and it was still affecting me.” And I realized, well if I don’t address this now, this is going to just compound and it’s going to affect me for the rest of my life. And that was when I first discovered that trauma doesn’t operate in time. It doesn’t at all, it doesn’t even remember time, it remembers it like it was happened yesterday. And that’s when I realized energy is what mattered. And I had to put the right energy into this experience and that entailed me.

I sat in my big nine bedroom mansion in Beaver Creek alone by myself for multiple months. I didn’t party, I didn’t distract myself completely celibate. And I just started focusing on every day what are the behaviors that will help me feel a little bit more, a little bit more peace, a little bit more joy, feeling a little bit more love for myself. And that started a chain of events. And before you knew it, I was walking across Spain doing the El Camino 500 mile pilgrimage, I’d done medicine journeys, I had gone to Burning Man, I had done a lot of spiritual healing work with my younger self. And that was really where it all started awakening for me.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I want to just dwell on what you’re saying, Finnian, because people really need to understand the profound truth that you’re talking about is often the hardest journey. The bravest journey is the journey within, is dealing with the inner trauma, emotions. A lot of guys especially trying to bury it stuff it move on, pretend to be tough and cool and all that, which is not a helpful typology if you will. But you chose the brave path. You chose to go full on to go, I don’t know, to go to skiing metaphors like the triple black diamond approach. I’m going to head down the toughest slope I can, which is the journey within. That is the ultimate frontier, the Mount Everest, if you will. So I really admire that because obviously listeners know with, they know my journey pretty well by now with the 2.25 billion takeover of my family’s large 150 media company in Australia.

And when that ended in 1990, yeah, I’m like you in the sense if there’s a problem in the world, I assume it’s my fault. That’s my go-to. And so I was self flagellating metaphorically. And how could have been so dumb? I had a Harvard MBA, how could I thought the family wouldn’t sell out, how could just beat myself up. And yeah, there was a fair share of dysfunction in my family without getting to details. So yeah, I had certainly opportunities for forgiveness, put it that way. But I guess to me, I learnt some things, which I’m sure you have is with forgiveness, you’ve got to forgive yourself. It’s like, I’m 26. When I launched the takeover, I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I honestly didn’t. I was just naive, young and idealistic, which is not always a good combination. I had my reasons and I’ve talked about that often and other podcasts.

But so unintentionally caused a lot of damage, some relationally. But I had to forgive myself. I was young, naive and I made some mistakes and then I had to forgive others. And we talk a lot on the podcast, forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning, you know, forgive not because other people and necessarily what you forgive because you are worth it. And again, it doesn’t mean condoning what was done to you, what was to anybody. So obviously you’ve learned all this I’m sure over the years. So just talk about some of those elements that people can understand of part of the way getting out of the pit of trauma is forgiving yourself, accepting yourself, forgiving others, not condoning, just talk about why those elements are important and you know, want to live a life of intentionality. You can’t do a thing without dealing with that first, right? So talk about how you would characterize that.

Finnian Kelly:

Well thank you Warwick, that is very nice to hear that compliment. And also, yeah, I fully have compassion for your journey as well. It’s an incredible one. And I’m also, it’s such an interesting thing after you’ve been on this journey, I just want to touch on this quickly is that we will never give it back as well. I look back at that period and sometimes I’m almost envious of that version of myself. It’s just completely, everything was open and you’re just discovering new things each moment. It’s confronting, but it’s also a very, very invigorating period of my life. So I just want to address that. So the forgiveness and the acknowledgement bit. So I was saying that forgiveness sets you free, acknowledgement sets the other person free. So forgiving isn’t really about the other person. Forgiveness is all about you. It means that there’s some energetic connection which is affecting you.

So I had to do a deep period of forgiving myself. And I remember on the Camino, each day I would pick a different theme. And this was a little bit, what’s that word where you’re just sabotaging yourself a little bit on or bit macho, but it was needed. And I’d pick a day, one day it would be ex-girlfriends, another day would be business things. And I just went through and I just did an inventory of everything that I needed to forgive myself for. And it was that, it was this awareness that I just knew that this wasn’t serving me, it was putting my lower energy centers and I had to get back into my heart center and having compassion for myself and going, “Well I do this for other people, so why can’t I do this myself?” So that was a very, very important cleaning out of the inventory.

And then the acknowledgement piece is understanding how your behaviors may have impacted others. And when you acknowledge so often people think it’s about shaming yourself and it’s not. It’s just actually recognizing that yeah, your younger version, just like you just said, you can see now, yes, you may have gone in with good intent, however your actions had consequences and hit other people. And you can acknowledge that now. And that there is just, what it does is it helps people get back to that core desire of feeling seen and feeling understood. And I’ve never seen a point where when I’ve done some acknowledgement or someone’s acknowledged me, I’ve never pushed them away. I’m always like, “Oh thank you.” They get it. And it feels really nice. And it’s been the core thing I’ve always wanted from my parents was just proper acknowledgement, just understanding that yes, some of the behaviors could have had an impact on us.

And unfortunately a lot of people don’t have the courage to do that. Cause they operate from fear and they believe that they’re going to be found out or that person’s going to be left. And I can tell you, the other person already knows. The fact that you are, even having the opportunity to speak to them shows that they want to forgive you, they want to love you. And this is the most shocking thing I see with parents when they give up on children, it’s coded into the child to forgive the parent. They naturally love the parent. And when parents give that up, I’m just like, “Oh, you’re missing out on an opportunity here. Even if you think your behaviors were right, it doesn’t matter because it’s not the content, it’s how the other person is feeling.” And that’s something which is with super important.

So that was really what it was all about. And the doorway to doing that is that self-compassion actually going, how can you be kind to yourself, love yourself, realizing that you’re not perfect? And this whole story, one of the greatest traps is I should have known better. Why did I do this? And I always go, “Well, if you did, you would have.” That’s the thing. So this whole thing of hindsight where it’s like, oh, if I should have done this. And I’m like, “Well no, you shouldn’t have. You just weren’t at that level of consciousness yet. And that’s okay. But now you are, now you’ve learned.” And that’s the moment is am I going to repeat these mistakes? And if we don’t forgive and we don’t acknowledge, then we’re just creating programs down to our subconscious because the subconscious receives orders through the strongest emotion and it just then creates more outcomes of your life like it. And that’s the moment where I now go, “Well, that was your missed opportunity. That was sad.”

Warwick Fairfax:

Well said. Yeah. And from my standpoint, you’ve got to give yourself some grace. We all make mistakes and you acknowledge, try and atone to the degree that it’s necessary. But I want to just pivot to what you do now with Intentionality is obviously, I’m sure linked to what we’re talking about. And I think you wrote somewhere that Intentionality guides people to be purposeful and aligned in their beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors so that they can be more in love with their lives. So just talk about your mission in life now of just helping to guide people into a life of Intentionality, which I kind of love that concept. So just talk a bit about that, your mission and why that’s important and what that is.

Finnian Kelly:

Thank you. So we’ve actually expanded the definition of Intentionality to be rooted in science and psychology. Intentionality is a principled and transformative approach designed to help people harness the power of the present, crack the elusive codes of social conditioning, and effectively create and sustain the path to extraordinary life. So the key points are is this sort of the power of the present. That’s all that matters, Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. And we have these codes of social conditioning which are determining everything in our life. And we think that this is what we want, but it’s actually not us. It’s through other people. And then how do you become the conscious creator? And that’s really when we think about our overall mission, it’s really how do we help people find their path, experience, the lasting transformation, and we do that through cracking the code to conscious creation.

So each day we’re looking and I’m like, we’re all testing as a team and going, “What’s the code? How do we make people more and more consciously create?” Because we’re all creating every day, but most of us are creating through an unconscious mechanism. And that’s why we keep repeating the sabotaging behaviors and not getting the desired feeling. So that’s what we’re really doing. And it’s super exciting. When I think about my life’s work, this is definitely it because it’s for my own needs. I’m solving my own needs. That’s where Intentionality was born out of. I never thought of anyone else. It was the first time where I stopped thinking about other people. I just purely thought about myself and went, “How do I get myself out of this? I have been coded with some faulty beliefs and I don’t want this anymore.” And through a period of discovery, I really uncovered that there’s five core sort of beliefs, these belief programs which are sabotaging us.

And then I created five principles which are the loopholes to these beliefs. And it’s super exciting. It’s applicable to individuals, organizations, communities, culture in general. And now I’m just focused on how do I get people to realize that there is another way and that they do have choice and they have agency and it can be a lot easier. That’s a big thing that I want people to realize is that life doesn’t have to be hard. That’s another belief that we’ve brought in to. Life can be easy and there’s magic out there.

And it’s amazing. I pinch myself each day that I get to live this right now. And that’s where I’m just so grateful for these younger versions myself and just going, “You did it.” And then I look at all the people that I brought into my life effectively, like conspired into my soul journey and played out their roles and I have gratitude them to them. Now, it doesn’t condone some of the things that they did to me, but I do have a deep sense of gratitude and that just helps me live more peacefully anyway, so that’s another example of a belief that works for me.

Gary Schneeberger:

That sounds, you heard listeners was the captain of our Qantas airline. Since we have some Aussie accents here on the show indicating that we’ve begun our dissent, we’re not going to land yet because I’ve got a couple of questions I want to ask you and then also give you the chance to tell people how they can find out more about Intentionality.com. But back, I don’t know, 10 minutes or so ago you offered the revamped definition of Intentionality. And I used to be a newspaper reporter, so I took bad notes because that’s what newspaper reporters do. But here’s what I got out of the back end of that. It’s about creating and pursuing the path to an extraordinary life. And it seems to me in the context of this series that we’re doing called Burn the Ships, that can include sometimes that creating and pursuing a path to an extraordinary life can include that pivot, can include that path, can include needing a new ship to get you there.

Finnian Kelly:

It definitely can. And the great thing is that you don’t actually have to create your ship sometimes. There’s a lot of ships out there waiting for you to jump on and go on that journey. And so often, I don’t know, we try to reinvent the wheel, but this truths of humanity have been there since the day of dawn. And all the different spiritual texts, if you look at them at the essence at the core, they’re all speaking the same thing, approaching it from different parts, but they’re having the same messages. And so what I really encourage people to do is just go find some people who you look like you respect their life and go on a journey. Now it doesn’t mean hand over your agency to them, that’s very important. That’s how people get end up being in organizations where they’re getting taken advantage of.

And we’ve seen that in mainstream religions, whatever we want to do at cults, whatever there is. But you don’t have to do this alone. There’s other people out there who have left truths out there and you can go on that journey. And that’s where I think I found truth through meditation. I’ve found truths through nature. Nature is the greatest truth vehicle. If you just go spend more time in nature, that is the greatest ship of all time, isn’t it? And it holds you never asks anything of you, it supports you. And that might be a ship that’s available for everyone. And unfortunately we don’t take it.

Gary Schneeberger:

I’ve co-hosted 150 plus episodes of this show with work, and I can see him nodding his head. He wants to say something really quick, but before I let them do that, I would be remiss, Finnian if I didn’t give you the chance to let people know, I mean we’ve said Intentionality.com a lot, so that’s probably where they can go see more about it. But tell listeners what they’ll find there, what kind of services you offer, how can they find you online, and what will you help them do when they get there?

Finnian Kelly:

Great. So the, that’s your probably best place to start would be Finniankelly.com and-

Gary Schneeberger:

And that’s two ns in the front part of Finnian right?

Finnian Kelly:

Yeah, yeah. Finniankelly.com/podcast. And I’ve created a bunch of gifts that will just start them on the journey just exploring. I’ve an intentional living guide. There’s a bunch of Intentionality tools to start applying into your life. We’re just in a rebrand of Intentionality right now. So the website where we are launching a new website, so that might be up by the time we’re there. And my whole thing is that it’s a behavior-based approach. So that’s the loophole, is you get focused really on the desired feelings. That’s the key essence of all this is like what are my desired feelings? And then what’s the behavior that’s going to start driving to that? So I always say “You’re only one breath away from Intentionality.”, because when you take one breath, you slow it down and you have a chance to go, do I want to activate the old program?

Do I want to react or do I want to get connected to my desired feelings and respond with a behavior that’s going to lead me to me, that feeling. So just do one thing today, which is a little bit different. And that’s why we create all of these tools and when people go on that tool journey, they start seeing it. We have different retreats, online programs, but the key thing for me is I just want people just to start living this life. So we’ve got a bunch of free content there and just go on that journey. And then if you feel like our ship could potentially accelerate your journey, come join us. It’d be a lot of fun.

Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick, the last question as always is yours.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Finnian, thank you so much for being here. I mean, it really is inspiring your journey and it’s a courageous journey that you’ve been on to finding who you are, dealing with some things, living a life of Intentionality, which it’s a brilliant faith, your should lead intentional lives. So I’m thinking that maybe some people listening today, and maybe they’re going at mock three, they’re founding businesses, they’re getting degrees, maybe they’re saving the world in a sense of, oh, maybe I feel better about myself, of the more people I “save” maybe it’s motivation for me is everything. It’s great to help people, but what’s the motivation? What’s the inner… But maybe people listening here, were going at a very fast pace and it’s like, “Well, I can’t stop because stuff will catch up with me or I’ll crash.” And so I don’t know if it’s a word of hope or warning, but for those that are the pre-crash Finnian Kelly’s, of this world, what would you say to those folks who are listening right now?

Finnian Kelly:

Well, I would empower them to start reclaiming their feelings and start seeing that this is actually their greatest asset. Their feelings become their greatest asset, and it’s ultimately how we take back control of our systems. So I would inspire them to just start really being curious and going, “Is this really the life that you want? Are you making conscious decisions? Or is this from some form of programming, which it may be from people you don’t even really respect? And in that moment you have self-exploration that will start opening up things, you’ll start asking the right questions and you’ll start getting the right answers, and it will prevent you from having the crucible moment, which in itself, that is the crucible moment if you start asking the questions because you start realizing that, okay, I need to burn the ship down. Don’t have to burn it all down, but I can change my life right now.

Gary Schneeberger:

I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on the subject’s been spoken and Finnian Kelly just spoke it. Thank you listener for spending this time with us on this special episode of our special series, Burn the Ships and remember this truth, if your ships are not sailing in the direction you wish they were sailing, if you feel like you’re drifting off course a little bit, now is the time to get a match. We’ll see you next week.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond The Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what’s been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.