Video Transcription
Hey, we just wanted to say a huge thank you for making the purchase and making a positive difference.
Uh, Al, I don’t know about you, but I know that the amount of workshops you’ve done and worked in, you give a whole heap of different skills and triggers to just help with those conversations.
And I know throughout my journey in life, um, you want to check in on someone but you don’t necessarily know how or how to structure it.
Can you just touch on what that can look like?
Yeah, so one of the tools that we really wanted to be able to give with these pair of socks is our framework for a check-in.
This is something that we use with the boys in all of our workshops that we run, but we also use it as an organisation.
To be honest, I use it with my partner, I use it with my friends, I use it with housemates.
This has just become a ritual and a routine in all my relationships.
And for me, it’s really relationship hygiene.
You know, as you said, like sometimes when we catch up and we’re hanging out with the people around us, we can have these things that are really present for us in our life that we don’t feel like we have an into the conversation to be able to put them in.
That sometimes might be struggles and things that are going really hard, or it might be things that are amazing—things that we’re really proud of or excited about—that we just, we’re not quite sure how to inject into the conversation.
So the check-in tool is kind of three easy steps.
Firstly, we say our name, checking in— so, our checking-in that shows that we’re starting the check-in.
And then you’ve got three dot points:
1: What emotions or feelings are present for you right now?
Not with judging them—not like trying to unpack them heaps.
You’re not trying to nose-dive into vulnerability.
It’s just these are the things that are alive and present for me in this moment right now.
2: What’s present for you in your mind, body, and spirit?
- How are you feeling?
- How’s your mind?
- How’s your mental health feeling right now?
- How are you feeling in your body?
- How’s your physical body going?
3. And then your spirit— what’s keeping you alive right now?
Do you feel like you’re on purpose?
Do you feel like you’re heading in the direction that you want to head?
Finally, closing with:
4. Do you have any needs today?
If I’m sitting next to somebody who’s asking me how I am,
is there anything that I need from them in our interaction?
That might be, “Hey, I actually just don’t want to answer any more questions about what I’ve shared,”
or, “Hey, I’d love you to ask me more about this,”
or, “Hey, I wish we could catch up more.”
And then you finish by saying your name, checked-in.
So often, we get interrupted in conversation.
This is an opportunity to have one, two, three, five, 50 minutes—
however long you want to take—that you’re not going to get interrupted during that time.
Thanks for sharing.
I’m sure that those key elements to a check-in are really important.
[Music]
Have you seen, you know, clearly, a lot of the time, it’s people carrying weight—
have you seen how much their world opens up when they actually do feel like they have the space first and foremost,
but, two, there is someone who is willing to actually give them the space to open up?
Yeah, it’s a funny thing where so often when we see somebody else share authentically or vulnerably, we see strength.
It’s like, “Wow, that was amazing, you had the opportunity to do that, but I could never do that.”
But actually, the people around us are looking at us in that same way.
And so it is this moment of:
How can we share what’s real for us?
And sometimes it’s like putting a little bit of trust or authenticity on the table that might not be received,
but it’s that trust that we can put out that means that, yeah, we can—
a lot of people that do check-ins either speak about the fact that they’ve had a bit of a weight lifted off their shoulders,
which I think we’ve all had the experience of in some way or another,
where we get to share with somebody in our lives, like, what’s actually going on.
It’s this weight that can lift off,
or, you know, it feels like someone’s not standing on our chest anymore.
Or, you know, we hear that the people in our lives are actually going through the exact same thing as us,
or we learn things about what other people are going through that we had no idea about.
And now we can find a way that we can help those people more.
Yeah, I love that.
I think as a human race, a lot of the time, we can be distracted—
whether it’s mobile phones or, you know, thinking about work and making sure that,
“Oh, I need to prioritize getting that done”
rather than, you know, checking in with myself or checking in with a friend.
I don’t know where I was going with that, but it was beautiful.
I think the tech thing is an interesting point because, you know, I think we look at tech as something that separates us,
but we can also make time on tech.
You know, I leave check-in voice notes for friends,
or I ask for check-in voice notes so people can do it in their own space and their own time.
Sometimes it makes it feel safer.
But I think making time for this and choosing to do it at the start, as awkward as it might feel when you start doing it— like, “Hey, can we actually start with a check-in?”
—the first 10 times is going to feel super awkward doing it,
but then it’s routine for me now.
It’s like stretching in the morning,
it’s like putting your socks on in the morning,
it’s just routine for me now.
And the more you use it, the stronger you get, the more impact it has.
It probably takes less time because you know exactly the direction you want to take it in.
And, as you said, it builds the trust and the care element,
so it just naturally and organically happens more often.
I would say it’s like an emotional muscle.
You know, that’s what we talk about with the boys—it’s like going to the emotional gym.
You know, it’s like these, the first few times you do it,
like you go to the gym, you work out new muscles,
you get new reps on things—it’s like you hurt a lot the next day.
But, you know, a couple of months in,
it’s like this is now part of your routine.
You can start, like, incrementally adding more weights,
and, you know, that’s where you can start to practice dipping into a little bit more vulnerability or authenticity
or however you want to go with it, you know, as you start to use the tool more.
Yeah, and I think that’s another important part.
Like, what we’re saying here today might be the starting point for whoever it is that’s watching this video,
but have fun with it—be creative.
You know, that sense of play—
like, as we grow up, we need to continue to find that inner child,
and that’s really important as to building those relationships, nurturing them, fostering them.
And if you can have fun with it,
well, it becomes even easier to do,
and you want to do it more often.
And the best thing about this is, like, with the two socks,
you can always just start with checking in with yourself.
And with the check-in with yourself, you can just practice this.
You can, like, check in in the mirror with no one else there.
You know, like, you actually have the ability to do these reps by yourself before you take it to anyone else.
Love that.
Well, thank you so much for watching our video.
You are worthy and you are loved,
and we look forward to coming across your path at some stage in the future.
Video by ManCave
