Inside Out with Jimi Hunt - The Mental Fitness Podcast

Join Jimi and Libby as they delve into the art of emotional intimacy in relationships. In this episode, they explore the transformative power of deep emotional connections and uncover common barriers that prevent us from achieving true closeness.

With personal insights and practical advice, they navigate the path to building stronger, more resilient bonds. Tune in to discover how to foster a profound emotional intimacy that enriches both your life and your relationships.

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Join us in our milestone 100th episode where we distill the essence of our journey into ten transformative insights.

Discover how the quality of your relationships shapes your life, the significance of introspection for self-improvement, and why connection is your most powerful ally. Uncover the art of transforming reactions into responses and the power of gratitude. Learn why personal boundaries matter, the strength of unity, and the undeniable impact of consistency.

This episode is more than a celebration; it's a culmination of invaluable lessons for a more fulfilling life. Tune in for this special blend of wisdom and inspiration, tailored for anyone on a path of personal growth and meaningful connections.

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Thank you so much for supporting Inside Out.

Ways you can do that:

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Dive into a powerful episode featuring Ivy Miller, a renowned Mindset & Relationship Coach. We tackle the tough yet essential topic of ending relationships that just aren't right for you. Ivy shares insightful signs of misaligned relationships, effective communication strategies, and tips for setting healthy boundaries.

We also explore emotional well-being during breakups, dealing with loneliness, and the impact on self-image, particularly for those in their 30s or 40s. This episode goes beyond the end of a relationship, offering guidance on personal growth and preparing for future, fulfilling connections.

Join us for an enlightening conversation that's all about empowerment, healing, and rediscovering your individuality. A must-listen for anyone navigating relationship challenges or on a journey of self-discovery. Press play for this transformative discussion with Ivy Miller.

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Thank you so much for supporting Inside Out.

Ways you can do that:

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In this episode Jimi and Libby dive into the transformative world of Men's Circles. Jimi shares his initial skepticism and journey to discovering the profound impact these circles have on men’s mental fitness and overall well-being. The episode explores the core elements of Men's Circles, including emotional expression, support and solidarity, and personal growth.

Jimi and Libby discuss the format of Jimi's Men's Circle, emphasizing the significance of sharing highs and lows, setting accountability goals, and fostering open discussion. They address common challenges in starting a circle and offer practical advice for those interested in joining or initiating one.

This episode is not only for men interested in Men's Circles but also for women who play a pivotal role in supporting and understanding their impact. It's a call to action for deeper connections and personal development, wrapped in personal anecdotes, practical advice, and a shared passion for mental fitness.

Listen to this episode for a comprehensive guide on Men's Circles and how they can enhance your life and the lives of those around you.

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Thank you so much for supporting Inside Out.

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Join us in this intimate episode as we revisit the 5 Love Languages, not in the context of our relationships with others but as a tool for deepening our relationship with ourselves.

Jimi and Libby share personal stories and insights on how to use these languages for self-love and mental fitness.

Don’t miss our 'Challenge of the Week' that invites you to practice self-love in a language that speaks to you.

Tune in and learn to speak your own love language!

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Alrighty people! This is the last of it. I've answered all your questions, all Libby's questions and it's time to move on! (For now...)

But here are the last of my lessons from 91 days on the Te Araroa.

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In this episode Jimi talks to his friend, endurance athlete, author and many others things; Josh Lynott.

They discuss why we should all slow down, appreciate the 1%ers and figure out where our 'north star' is.

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In this episode Jimi and Libby go over how to Identify, Implement & Negotiate Personal Boundaries - one of the things that permeates every single relationship you have, but something we don't usually actively thing about.

As usual, it comes down to communication, sexy, sexy, communication.

This week Jimi and Libby go through MojoUpgrade to show how openly communicating their own desires can lead them to be able to love each other on a deeper level.

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In December this year I'm off on a big adventure, for FOUR MONTHS!

It's all about encouraging connection. Connection with self, with the land and with others, all to increase your Mental Fitness.

Would love for you to join me for parts of it or help me out along the way.

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I've just come back from 6 talks in 6 days... I got asked this question at every talk and almost every other talk I've ever done. 

The answer I have probably isn't what you think, but it's the only answer I've seen work.

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Jimi takes a few minutes to reflect on some of the choices that made him who he is today. The most influential one definitely isn't the most obvious one.

And he also challenges you to take a look at some of you own choices so that you can better make some in order to change your own future.

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Thank you so much for supporting Inside Out.

Ways you can do that:

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Jimi and Libby have a three-way chat with Somatic Sexologist Morgan Penn in this no-holds-barred episode. They dive deep into one of the most common issues couples face in a relationship - Sexual Desire Discrepancy (SDD).

Speaking openly and frankly and drawing from their own personal experiences, Morgan helps Jimi and Libby understand where SDD can stem from and dishes out some excellent (and FUN!) practical tips, tools and techniques to help narrow the divide between their sexual appetites.

Morgan expertly guides our hosts to ask themselves some thought-provoking questions that will allow them to work together to enhance their relationship both physically and mentally and enjoy each other’s company for many years to come.

Around 9 years ago, Jimi and Libby attended a seminar on Unconditional Love presented by an Ananda devotee. A five-word sentence in that talk profoundly changed Jimi’s thinking forever - You don’t pray for outcomes.

Jimi explains the impact this sentence has had on how he deals with all of the challenges and difficult situations he faces and how can use it to do the same.

Thank you so much for supporting Inside Out.

Ways you can do that:

- Make sure you’re subscribed/following

- If you’re enjoying listening feel free to leave us a lovely review!

Following on from the ever-popular Love Languages episode, Jimi and Libby dive even deeper into the realms of love in intimate relationships, this time discussing Love Archetypes - aka the personal attributes you bring to a relationship and how they impact the decisions you make and how you treat those around you.

Revealing their own love archetypes they dissect the benefits and pitfalls of each type and talk about how being on complete opposite ends of the spectrum helps them work together to find the best ways to share a life together.

They explain how an understanding of your own and your partner’s love archetype can be a useful tool for your relationship. Love Archetypes are not hard-wired and discovering which ones work well in a relationship and which ones don’t can help you make the changes you need to curate a loving, mutually beneficial and more honest relationship that allows each of you to be the best version of yourself, for yourself and for each other.

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Thank you so much for supporting Inside Out.

Ways you can do that:

- Make sure you’re subscribed / following

- If you’re enjoying listening feel free to leave us a lovely review!

Jimi is joined by renowned neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis and together they talk about mental fitness realting to children and adolescents.

Touching on a range of topics from technology and screentime, addictive personalities, behaviour modelling and why children need to learn to self-regulate, this chat helps offer parents and caregivers of young people some practical tips to help support them through the trials of life that teenagers undoubtedly will face.

Acknowledging that parents in today’s modern world have to walk a fine balance between providing financial stability by working and emotional and psychological stabiity by spending time with their children Nathan emphasises the importance of thh first 1,000 days of a child’s life.

But, if those days are long gone, he also offers some practical advice on what you can do to mitigate the issues that arise and help your child navigate their way up the mental fitness continuum.

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Thank you so much for supporting Inside Out.

Ways you can do that:

- Make sure you’re subscribed / following

- If you’re enjoying listening feel free to leave us a lovely review!

It’s estimated that 40% of marriages and 25% of all relationships experience infidelity. And these numbers are quite likely to be low compared to reality.

Why is cheating so prevalent? Who’s doing it and what are the two main reasons that drive people to step outside of their relationship?

We all know that cheating is a harmful behaviour that causes a lot of pain for everyone involved, so in this episode, Jimi and Libby get into the nitty-gritty of what causes people to cheat and how you can identify the warning signs BEFORE it happens. They talk about their own experiences with infidelity and discuss the steps you can take to bulletproof your relationship from cheating.

TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of suicide.

This is a positive and proactive discussion about suicide and it is a topic that should be discussed. But, if you are not in a good place right now or sensitive to the topic then please place your mental health first and go and seek help if needed.

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Jimi talks candidly with experimental psychologist, Professor Jesse Bering, a leading scholar, essayist and science writer specialising in evolution and human behaviour.

Focusing on Jesse’s most recent book; ‘Suicidal - Why We Kill Ourselves’, Jimi & Jesse have an honest and frank discussion about their own history with suicidal thoughts and what helped them get through.

They talk through some of the research about what causes people have suicidal ideations and urges and outlines some of the ways to help get through and overcome them.

A greatly important topic that needs to be discussed, suicidal thoughts affect a huge, and perhaps surprising, percentage of the population at some point. It’s a uniquely human phenomenon, it all depends on what we do with them.

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When someone asks you what Superpower you would choose; you would probably go for something like invisibility, x-ray vision or the ability to fly, right?
What if there was a superpower that was actually available to us and not just in a make-believe comic book universe?

In this episode, Jimi explains why he considers (and many scientific studies prove) gratitude to be a real-life superpower and that simply by cultivating more gratitude in your life you can access a myriad of mental, spiritual and physical benefits.

He details many of the ways you can cultivate gratitude, even if you’ve never tried before, and explains why, as humans, gratitude doesn’t always come naturally to us but why you 100% should add gratitude practice to your mental fitness toolbox.

Death is inevitable. It’s one of life’s few certainties, and yet it is a topic that most of us shy away from discussing.

In this episode, Jimi and Libby talk about their own perspectives on death, their fears, their responses and how this has impacted their relationship together.

They discuss some of the unique practices that people around the world adopt to embrace the notion of death, including fake funerals, keeping skulls in your house and death meditations as well as psychological tools to help overcome death anxiety and cultivate death accpetance.

They also delve into how having a healthy attitude towards death - your own, or someone else’s - can boost enjoyment of other facets of your life and improve your overall mental fitness.

Returning to the podcast once again is one of Jimi’s favourite human beings of all time, the person who he credits as helping him make the very first moves up the mental fitness continuum, Dr John McEwen.

In this episode, they dive deep into the waters of grief.

Death is inevitable and grief can appear in many forms throughout our lives. It’s unavoidable, but are we handling it well as a society? And how do we move forward when we’re experiencing grief?

Jimi and John discuss how to move through grief in an active way, not letting it consume us or become part of our identity.

They offer effective, actionable steps to take to process grief and the feelings and emotions that come with it.

They talk about the difference between pain and suffering and how understanding that difference that can impact our ability to move through grief.

Believing that grief is a gift, John explains how to build on what grief teaches us, not wallowing in the emotion - as he so eloquently puts it:

“Let the grief educate the life.” 

“The active processing of pain is that we are dealing with it, and we’re confronting it and we're being honest with ourselves and with the pain.

Suffering is ‘oh, woe is me’. I think suffering is defined in terms of narcissism where we’re starting to get ‘secondary gain’ so rather than recovering, we’re getting, actually, a gain by being debilitated.”

What are deal-breakers and why is knowing what yours are so important?

Join Jimi as he explains what deal-breakers are, how to identify yours, whether they be in your intimate relationships, friendships or even your work environment and how having a clear understanding of where you draw the line can benefit your mental fitness.

Using his own deal-breakers as an example, Jimi outlines some simple exercises that you can do to understand not only why we need deal-breakers, but also how they can help us identify what we truly value in life which leads to making better choices to help your life head in the direction that YOU choose and move you up the mental fitness continuum.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Recorded exactly ten years to the day after the BEST FIRST DATE EVER™️ today’s episode sees Jimi and Libby discussing the top 10 (+/-) things they have learned during their ten years together.

What lessons have they learned along the way? What is their top advice to others who want to foster fulfilling relationships? What does it take to have a healthy, mutually beneficial partnership?

Listen, to find out the answers and learn how to apply some of the lessons they have learned during their ten years together to make your own relationships bloom.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Dr Amy Silver joins Jimi as this week’s expert guest to talk about Fear. A psychologist specialising in helping people manage their emotions for high performance, Dr Amy has written an award-winning and best-selling book ‘The Loudest Guest - How to Control and Change your relationship with Fear’.

We can be courageous in some areas of our life but not in others. We all sit with a natural level of fear which may be helpful and keep us safe but some fear may be simply keeping us from moving forward.

In this 60 minute episode, they discuss the difference between necessary/healthy fear and the type of fear that stops us in our tracks.

As Amy sees it, there are two ways to manage fear; taking small, baby steps or big, giant leaps and throughout this episode she imparts a ton of excellent, practical advice on how to manage fear and helps us understand which approach to undertake in different situations.

They delve into how to have courageous conversations and Jimi tells Amy what his greatest fear is. He also talks about how he manages his smaller fears and why that helps his mental fitness.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Benchmarking your fitness is easy! We’re able to measure our physical fitness in a myriad of ways and there are countless options and apps available to input and analyse our health and fitness data. We can use this data to make informed decisions about how and where we want to go with our fitness journey…

But what about measuring and quantifying our mental fitness? What apps and resources exist to allow us insight into how we are functioning mentally and to allow us to track our progress up the mental fitness continuum?

In this episode, Jimi explains just why benchmarking our mental fitness progress is so important and he provides some useful tips and resources to help get you on the right track.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Seeking growth as an individual can lead to some serious enrichment in any relationship and Jimi and Libby are back with another episode to get into what it means to grow together as a couple.

They talk about how they see their roles in each others’ growth, how their individual growth experiences shape their way forward together and they touch on how they navigate the not-so-pretty side of it all.

They also offer some sound advice on how to communicate within a relationship whether there is mutual growth or one person doing it alone and what to do if you don’t have a partner who is supportive of your growth and not interested in their own.

Sometimes it’s okay to grow apart, but if you’d like to learn how to grow together - this episode might hold some of the answers for you.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Jimi is joined once again by good friend and Human Performance Consultant, Nigel Beach to dig into grounding. Also known as Earthing, they discuss the science behind the practice and outline some of the profound systemic benefits of grounding and how it can improve our physical and mental fitness.

Calling it the single most effective modality that he has used for his health, Nigel draws from his personal experience and as well as the experiences of some of his clients including elite level athletes, to espouse the wide and significant physiological benefits of grounding while also explaining how simple it is to do.

They talk about some of the negative effects on our physiology when we are not grounded and how numerous studies have shown that approximately 95% of disease states and poor mental health states come from inflammation. Nigel explains why he approaches the prescription of grounding from an inflammation point of view when assessing and assisting his clients.

Listen to discover how doing something as simple as putting your bare feet onto the earth can have a massively beneficial impact on your overall wellbeing and find out some of Nigel’s top recommendations for how to incorporate grounding into your own mental fitness toolbox.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review or sharing it with a friend.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Every journey starts somewhere, for Jimi, his search for universal truths started on a sand bank in NZ's longest river because five women had told him he would end up there. 

This story is the catalyst for Jimi's Mental Fitness journey. The lessons learned here opened him up to a much bigger world than he ever imagined. Hopefully these lessons may help you along your journey as well...

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A special two part episode where Libby interviews Jimi about his first major public adventure and how it completely changed his life and shaped his future. Jimi talks about some of the lessons he learned in the build up and on the adventure itself.

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How many ways are there to love? According to research by Helen Fisher; the answer is three.

Jimi and Libby discuss each of the ways that love can be experienced and reveal a little about the impact each one has had on their relationships past and present.

They explain how to identify what stage you are in and discover the pros and cons of each stage and how they can enhance (or take away from) your relationship and by extension your mental fitness.

Jimi chats with Paul Glezer, Founder and Head Coach of Hero (hero.cm) about helping men become the best father they can possibly be.

They dig into where we are failing as fathers and Paul explains the techniques he uses with the dads that he works with to help them improve their physical and mental fitness and create healthy and rewarding relationships with their partners and children.

They discuss the tools and techniques that Paul prescribes for his dads and *spoiler alert* discover that it’s not just dads who can benefit from doing these.

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