Andrew Hall: Living a Not Unusual, Extraordinary Life

Sridhar Krishnamurti: Hey everybody, and welcome to The Mind Shift, our rebranded podcast, and one where we discuss creating a life beyond limits. This is really exciting. It's our first episode with a real guest, and I really can't think of a more appropriate guest to launch this whole podcast than Andrew Hall.

I say you're the perfect person, Andrew, because I've really wanted you to be a guest for quite a long time. I think about your life, and everything I've learned about it is about moving beyond limits and living a life that isn't limited. I know the great work that you do, and for me, you just demonstrate what a life beyond limits is about.

We've known each other for around six or seven years now, and you've been engaged in The Mind Shift conversations. I realised, regarding the mind and some of the things you're going to talk about: what have people achieved with it?. What have we got past that we never thought we could?. What brought you to The Mind Shift conversations?. What had you say, "Hey look, I want to have that conversation and see where it goes"?.

Andrew Hall: About seven years ago, I was in a different job to the one I have now. I was technical lead on quite a large-scale IT project—a $60-plus million project—and I was working 80 hours a week for the last nine months of the project. It was just mental. The whole thing was completely over the top.

I had been moaning about my work-life balance—or lack thereof—to a very good friend of mine. She and her husband were clients of yours. She recommended I speak to you because of how I was operating—wanting to throttle those around me, managers who didn't understand, and staff who wouldn't do what they were told, and all the rigmarole of a project of that nature. Very quickly upon meeting you, you ruthlessly coached me to look at myself and say, "Well, what do you know? How have you caused this? And how's this come about, and what are you doing about it?".

It made a heck of a difference to how I was within that environment. The project delivered successfully, and it was tough, but it was incredibly rewarding. In the end, it was clear to me that that wasn't what I wanted to be doing longer term. Relatively soon after that finished, I changed to my current job. In terms of that shift in career, your influence had a lot to play in doing that.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: There was a lot in that opening. I think a lot of people might listen to that and say... well, if we think about the way life goes, that's just not the way we do things. If something's going on, we look for whose fault it is or who's not doing something right. Particularly as a lead or manager, you're looking for who's not doing their job right.

I think about the courage it takes to do the work and to actually get in and look at yourself. It is very courageous. One of the reasons we designed this podcast was to ask: what happens when you show that courage?. What happens when you are willing to hold up a mirror and say, "This is what's going on"?.

I remember you were just at wit's end with that project. Tensions were high. I think if I'm listening to this and I haven't heard The Mind Shift conversations in the past, I'm going, "Well, what does that mean, 'look at myself'? Don't I fix it out there?". What did you find that assisted you to turn that around?.

Andrew Hall: One of the key things that you taught me was to really look at a situation and say, "Is your perception of the situation true?". Like, you perceive that person to be hopeless, or slack, or making it up as they go along. To be honest, there is a certain amount of that going on—people pretending they know when they don't—but I would be judging people, thinking, "You don't know what you're talking about," or "You're mucking me around," or "You're hiding something". That was my judgment.

As soon as I went there, I stopped listening to them. I stopped wanting to work with them. I stopped trusting that they would do what they were supposed to do. In a large-scale project, you can't operate that way. Understanding "Is this true?"... look, it may be true, but it's actually not relevant to me if it's true or not; it's how I perceive it.

The best example of that was a manager—it wasn't my manager, but they were senior to me—who would be running a meeting with about 20 people. It was held every week at the same time, with people Zooming in from all over the South Island. I was in the same room as this guy, sitting next to him. During the meeting, he was on Facebook on his phone.

I sat next to him, and I could see he was on Facebook. I used to sit there and watch him on Facebook, and it just used to do my head in. He's supposed to be chairing the meeting, and I'm sitting there watching him. I was telling you the story, thinking, "Oh yes, you'll agree with me that this guy's obviously phoning it in." You said, "So what was your contribution to the meeting whilst you're watching him on Facebook?".

Not only is he not contributing to the meeting, I'm not, because I'm so busy focused on him on Facebook. It was a real penny-drop moment. I realised that if someone was sitting next to me watching me, then I'm clearly not paying attention because I'm looking at him. That doesn't justify what he was doing or explain the truth behind it—I've got no idea what the truth was about why he was on Facebook—but it's irrelevant to me. I was there for the work, and I needed to turn my attention from him back onto the call and what we were there to do.

I'll be honest and say that the following week, I turn up, the same thing happens again, I find myself doing it again, and I have to stop again. It's not "one and done." I have to keep focusing on that and keep understanding what's really going on here.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: There's a lot to unpack in that, Andrew. Compared to the way that we do things, 999 people out of 1,000 will go, "He should be off that". I think about that perception... you said something early on about "Is my perception really the right one?". It doesn't matter if it's the right one, because the moment that you see it that way, that's who that person becomes to you.

I have always found that whatever I am judging a person to do is what I'm doing, without exception. If someone comes up to me and says, "Sridhar, you're whatever," and I go, "Oh, well, that person's judging me"—I'm judging them. Because if I look carefully, I haven't stopped to ask if there is something going on with that person.

I want to pivot to something else because I remember when we sat down to really find out what your life is about and what you want to do. We came up with your mission. When I think about what you're up to in the world, it's changing things. You had an accident when you were a younger man.

Andrew Hall: Well, I'm 61 now, and I was 19 when I dived into shallow water and broke my neck. That was August 1983, so just coming up on 42 years.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: Just when you think about that, I think people could be stopped. You could be bitter with the world, you could be resentful. But when I look at you, Andrew, I look at someone who said, "No, that's not me". Not only have you broken past those limits, you're helping other people to break through those limits. I'd love for you to share your mission.

Andrew Hall: Basically, what I'm devoted to now, and I'm privileged to be able to work at it every day, is to normalising the experience of disability for those who've got it, but also for society as a whole. I firmly believe the sooner that everyone accepts a bit of variety in the world—a bit of diversity—as being normal, the better.

In some ways, it's kind of in opposition to what human nature tends to crave. We tend to crave sameness. But I think a society that normalises variability would be fantastic.

At a more specific level, if I as someone who has a disability am feeling different and unusual and abnormal—and that's a bad thing—that's dangerous. But just as dangerously, someone has been made to be super normal, like someone who's been held out as an inspiration. "Oh, you're so inspirational." Oh God, don't start me. I don't want to go there. "If what happened to you happened to me, I'd want to kill myself." And you go, "Oh right, great. How am I supposed to feel about that?". People think they're being nice and not quite understanding why that's unhelpful.

To me, it's about encouraging everybody with a disability—in my case, a spinal injury, and I work in the spinal injured community—to live what I call a "not unusual, extraordinary life".

Sridhar Krishnamurti: I remember you saying one time that when you complete your mission, what you'd love to see is people just saying, "There's nothing to see here".

Andrew Hall: Right, there's nothing to see here. That person uses a wheelchair, or a cane, or is deaf. It is the same as someone who has spectacles, or wearing earrings today, or whatever. It's just a feature about that individual. They've got blonde hair, or they're tall, or they're short. It doesn't define them.

Because I'm now working in the Burwood Spinal Unit, I am working with people newly arrived to the world of disability who are really struggling to get their head around it. It isn't an easy transition to make, but if we were successful and there was none of this perception in society before they became disabled, it makes that transition less of a shock. At the moment, it's quite a shock, and I'm not underplaying that. No one's pretending it's good news.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: When you say it's not good news... one of the premises of the work here is that it's quite another big concept. We looked at your life in a way that asked, "What's actually positive about this?". People might say, "Sridhar, why are you doing that?". Because it's happened. If you don't look at what's positive about it, the other option is to just feel bad about it for the rest of your life.

I remember you saying, "Well, if that hadn't happened, maybe I just lived an ordinary life". I know whether you like to hear it or not, you are doing very extraordinary things. You're making a difference.

Andrew Hall: Shit happens, and it happens to everybody. Sometimes it's more visible for some—whether it's death, divorce, illness, or accident. Even the word "coping" is a terrible word. How you cope with that stuff is critical. The key thing that I learned from you wasn't about positive psychology or reframing; it was around "How does this situation serve me?". What have you learned through that, and what has that equipped you with?.

If you wind up on the spinal unit, you learn a hell of a lot about yourself, your family, and your friends in a pretty short space of time. I did 42 years ago, and hopefully, I didn't ever stop learning from then on. I'm not going to be Pollyanna and pretend it's easy, because it ain't. Life's not easy, but it's still fantastic, and it's still extraordinary. There are a lot of pitfalls and little holes you can disappear down if you're not careful.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: You said the line, "Life isn't easy, but it's fantastic". If that's the mentality we can live with, then those "not easy" things don't get on top of us.

Andrew Hall: Part of the reason I try to socialise the phrase "not unusual, extraordinary life" is that "normal" sounds kind of boring. Before I broke my neck, I was planning on living a normal life. After I broke my neck, I wanted to continue to live a normal life. But our lives are better than normal. Everybody's life can be better than normal.

Our organisation, New Zealand Spinal Trust, set up a programme called Kaleidoscope Vocational Rehab. We engage with people in the disability employment world. There are certain agencies devoted to helping you find a job, and I don't agree with that. If I want an agency to help me get back to work, I'll go online. I'll look at Seek. I'm normal. I don't need a special employment service. I'm not saying I could just bowl into a job that's up three flights of stairs with inaccessible bathrooms—there are certain accommodations I'm going to need—but we don't find people jobs. We encourage them to find their own job using the normal channels. It's that normalisation of that whole experience.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: What I'm getting from this conversation is that normal is actually extraordinary. Life is meant to be extraordinary, and we get caught up under all these concepts and perceptions that take from that.

Andrew Hall: I'm just thrilled that I'm where I want to be, and every day I get to do what I want to do. It's a privilege. In our family, every night at dinner, we go around the table and say our favourite thing that happened today. Typically, if I've had a direct conversation with someone—either a current inpatient or someone in the community—nine times out of ten, that'll be my story for the favourite part of the day.

It could have been chit-chat about their rugby or the weather, but often it's more personal than that. I'm listening and contributing where I feel I can, or just keeping still and letting them tell me their story. That's a privilege. I sit there and think, "Gosh, I'm lucky to be here. I'm lucky to be in a position to listen with that person with a shared understanding". They could be an ex-Mongrel Mob member, but they're in a chair, and we have that in common. We understand each other at that level, and they're able to share with me things that they wouldn't share with anybody else.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: Something's coming to mind which is a little bit on a different topic... one of the things we talk about in this work is the impact that the mind can have on our physical self. I remember one of our conversations where we were talking about your future, and you said, "Well, I won't be around anyway". You said, "Yeah, I'm not going to be around because all the men in my family—my father, my grandfather—die young".

Andrew Hall: My father died at 57, my mother's father died at 53, and I have this story that men in our family die young. I was going to calculate exactly the day... put it on a spreadsheet... work out exactly what the date was that I would go past on his death date. I deliberately didn't do it because I don't care.

My mother died at 90. One of my grandmothers was in her late 80s. Genetically, that's nonsense. I like to say now that when I turned 60, I was going to drop down to four days a week... Then when I turn 70, I'm dropping to three days a week, and when I turn 80, I'm dropping to two days a week. I suspect when I turn 80 that my staff will probably murder me because I'll be a grumpy old prick, but we'll wait and see.

I love what I do. I don't want to stop. I get frustrated because I listen to people who think that they are on a limited lifespan. I used to be like that, and I don't see any reason why; I feel healthier now than I did 10 years ago.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: That conversation came from you realising, "Okay, you're not going to die young at 60". We investigated it: "What's the truth? Do you absolutely know that you're going to die young?". You went, "Well, I don't know when I'm going to die".

If there's one thing you would say to people watching this who say, "I want to get past my limits in life and live the greatest one," what would it be?.

Andrew Hall: Ask questions. Ask questions of people you're working with, ask questions of your GP, ask questions of your nurse. Ask questions of your own mind: "Is this the truth?". Keep asking.

It doesn't mean you're living a life of uncertainty; what you're doing is living a life of curiosity and never-ending learning. It's about not figuring you know it all, but constantly asking and seeking that information. In an interpersonal way, it's engaging for people. It's kind of a power relationship where I'm on an equal footing with you. We are equal because we have a question and answer thing going. Don't just assume you know the answer.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: "Ask, ask, ask." I love that. I know for me, that's my answer to it: I've just asked a lot of questions.

Andrew, I knew you were going to bring a lot of really profound insights to The Mind Shift journey, and you certainly have. What I'm going to cap this episode as is: Normal is extraordinary, and we're all extraordinary. That's the life that, whatever happens to you, you could choose to live.

I love what you said: "It's not easy, but it's a fantastic journey". Thank you for being here again. What a perfect person to launch this first Mind Shift podcast.

Andrew Hall: It's a privilege to be involved. I love what you're doing, and I support it, and the more that hear about it, the better.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: Awesome. Andrew, well, thanks again. Appreciate you being here, and thank you for watching The Mind Shift. There'll be a lot more to come, so we'll look forward to seeing you next time.