The hardest negotiation is the one you have with yourself.

I learned to read people long before I learned to read myself. I left home at 16 and Australia at 32, and over the years lived and worked across South-East Asia and the Middle East, including Iraq, Jordan and Yemen. Emergency management, humanitarian crises and hostage negotiation taught me to notice what happens to people under pressure; fear, changes in behaviour, shifts in power, and the things people communicate without actually saying them. I became very good at seeing patterns in other people. I was much slower, and at times completely blind, to the patterns in myself.

For years, I carried a lot of anger. I could understand danger, conflict and human behaviour professionally, but becoming a father forced me to look at what I was carrying personally. I started asking what I wanted to keep, what I needed to change, and what I no longer wanted running my life. That pushed me underneath the anger towards asking what I was protecting, what I was actually feeling, and what I needed before emotion became reaction.

That experience shapes how I coach now. I know conflict from the outside through negotiation, risk and behaviour under pressure, but I also know what it is like to do the work from the inside. I was never trying simply to become calmer or more balanced. I wanted to understand myself well enough to stay clear in both calm and chaos; to know what I was feeling, understand what was driving it, and choose how I responded instead of reacting automatically.