Cameron Bailey - From High Performance to True Fulfilment

Sridhar Krishnamurti: Hey everybody, welcome to the Mind Shift. It's a podcast where we explore how you can live a life without limits. I'm Sridhar. I'm the facilitator of the Mind Shift process, and my very special guest today is Cameron Bailey. Many of you, particularly if you're in New Zealand, will know Cameron as a household name as the top person in real estate in our country for a very long time, and just an all-around great guy. So firstly, Cameron, thank you for being here.

Cameron Bailey: Thank you. It's great to be here. I love talking to you and spending time with you. We don't get to see each other in person as much these days, because we do our sessions on the phone or over video, so it's great to see you.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: You moved away almost four years ago now, so we've moved from seeing each other on a regular basis to now doing it through a screen or your phone most of the time. This is quite special for me too, because a lot of you recognise Cameron since we were co-hosts on a previous podcast. It's really great to connect with you again in this way and have a chat, because some real gems always come out.

I said to you earlier that I was really excited. I know what you've been through this year, and we've had some conversations about it. It's been an extraordinary year for you in many ways, and I'm looking forward to unravelling that as today goes on. We were having a chat the other day, and I was saying I didn't know whether to be quite excited by it or a bit annoyed, because one of the hardest questions I ever have to answer is, "What do you do?" There are so many different arenas and aspects of the work. Someone had asked you what I do when you were sharing the work with them, and you had a fascinating answer.

Cameron Bailey: Yes, a family member of mine has gone through a bit of a tough time recently. He's dealing with a separation, children, and some addictions, and I wanted him to talk to you. I always believe that until someone wants to talk to you themselves, it's not productive. You can't just tell someone to go and talk to you; they actually have to internally want to do it. The only way you can make them want it is if they can really grasp and understand what you do.

It's a really hard question. We've known each other for at least four years, and it probably took me a couple of years to actually come up with an idea of what you did in my head. When we first started talking, I came to you as a business coach. At that time, I was going through a separation in my life, and we ended up spending the first six months or so just talking about the separation and about life. Once I got really clear on what I was doing with that, we moved into business, children, and all sorts of things.

So it's really hard to box you into a corner and tell people what you do. But when I talked to this person a few weeks ago trying to help them see you, I managed to come up with an analogy. The way I described it to them is that we spend our lives rolling down the highway. I think so many people, as we've talked about before, are not living their best, true, and authentic lives. That's like going down the highway with no lanes. I imagine you're veering across the highway, you've got no structure around you, you don't really know what you're doing, and you're just drifting down it.

I explained to him that what you do is put lanes on the highway. You showed me what my lane was. It's really difficult to stay in your lane all the time, but as you keep doing sessions with you, you stay in your lane a lot more. As you start veering off, you clip them back in. The other thing we fleshed out the other day is that when you're in your lane, and everything is going your way, the universe is providing for you. I imagined it in my mind as being like the Starship Enterprise when they go into warp factor nine, and all you see beside you are the lights stretching out. You're not worried about the rest of the world or what everyone else is saying and doing, because you're just in your lane. That's how I described it to this person.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: I've now adopted that as a way to explain what I do!

Fulfilment Over Success

Cameron Bailey: I think the one thing I've learned in life is that you need the right people around you to help you, whether we're talking about relationships or business. There's that great saying: success leaves clues. You can help someone's life be fulfilled and maximised to its best.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: That's a really great word. I was chasing success for a long time in various ways, and I found that you can work hard and achieve some success, but it doesn't necessarily bring fulfilment. I'm really appreciative that you brought up that word, because that was what was missing for me. It's really both. That's what inspires me about you and your dedication to this work.

You're at that very top echelon of success, and have been for quite some time. It's not the easiest thing to say, "How am I going to mix fulfilment into that?" You've shared a few times that what it took to maintain that wasn't always fulfilling. I just look at what you're doing now to make sure your whole life is fulfilled. When we deal with what's going on inside, it helps tremendously in business and in relationships, because at the end of the day, we are the business. We show up every day, we're the ones doing it, we have the vision, and we're enacting it out. I really appreciated your dedication to real fulfilment. Would you agree it isn't easy when you're already at the top and you got there a certain way?

Cameron Bailey: Yes, it's fair to say that I'm at the top of real estate, but in a lot of the other things in my life, I've been at the bottom. The effort and time I put into friendships, family, and my children was very disappointing. I've had to lose things to realise how much they mean to me.

My father passed away this year. He had a heart attack in May, and we were lucky enough to get another four months with him of what I would call quality time as a family together. What I believe he was here for in those four months was to bring us all together—my mum, my brother, the children, everyone. We all thought we were doing enough, but none of us were. When we almost lost him, it showed us what we were losing.

I don't think you realise what you've lost until you've lost it. Losing my father was that for me. Now that he's passed away, we still have a lot of rituals within the family where we catch up on Sundays for a barbecue or a meal with mum. All those things are so special. It doesn't matter about being number one in real estate when your father is on his deathbed; there's nothing else that matters. That was a real lesson, and it took losing him to realise that.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: On this podcast, what I hope for is to ask questions that bring out that gold. The first one there for me is: we don't realise that we've lost something until we've lost it. It's a real tragedy because if we take that in and say, "If I know that now, what would I be doing with the people that are here?" we wouldn't want to wait until the end to figure it out. I appreciate you sharing that.

Cameron Bailey: We spent four months thinking that every day could be his last day, and that's literally life, isn't it? You don't know when you can say goodbye to somebody and you're never going to see them again. Every time I said goodbye to him, I gave him a hug. We weren't really a family of huggers, but we became one, and it was amazing. Little things like that made a big difference to everybody.

I still remember the morning I went out for breakfast with Dad and his partner. He was as good as I've ever seen him. I remember telling Mum, "I saw Dad this morning, and he was great." I gave him a hug, and that was the last time I gave him a hug. That night he passed away. It was a sobering experience.

The other thing I've learned this year is how quickly life can change. When you're doing the work and you are in "warp factor speed," life can change so quickly. Where I am today compared to where I was a year ago feels like black and white. Not just mentally, but physically. I finished a relationship, started a new one, and I'm seeing my kids a lot more—though still not seeing them enough, but I'm working on it. It amazes me how quickly life can really change if it's meant to.

Wake-Up Calls from the Universe

Sridhar Krishnamurti: I'm going to bring up something that happened in our conversations. I remember at some point this year, everything was happening at one time. You were dealing with the relationship, your father getting ill, and you even broke your foot. I said to you, "Cameron, in my experience, these things aren't necessarily bad. What if they're a gift? Like a wake-up call to show you where you're not being authentic to yourself and how you're living your life?"

It's really hard when you're in the middle of it all. I remember speaking with you, and it was all on. But you had the courage to look at it. I've said before, it appears to me that this universe we live in is here to make sure we live an authentic life. If we're going with it, it's like warp nine because we're going with the flow of our true authenticity. If we're not doing that, we get these "bad things" that happen. But they're not bad; they're guides trying to help us get back in our true lane.

If we use that opportunity, our lives start to flow. If we don't, it gets louder and louder. When I hear people say, "Why do bad things always happen?" my response is, "Because you're not listening to what it's trying to give you." You did listen. It wasn't easy, but you looked at it, and the changes that have come about are why I'm so excited for you to be here.

Cameron Bailey: It's really true. At the start of the year, I felt like I was getting beaten up and kicked in the guts all the time. With finishing a relationship, I was excited about being by myself, getting my fitness back together, and travelling. As soon as I moved towards that, I broke my foot, so my fitness couldn't get back together. Then I had some issues with friends and lost contact with them, and then there was Dad. I just felt like nothing was going to go right for me this year.

But I was looking at it the wrong way. I was thinking, "Poor me. How can this happen?" As soon as I changed my mindset, the whole thing shifted. In the last couple of months, I've been in such a wonderful space. It's just easy. I'm not stressed, I'm not feeling under pressure, and a lot more stuff is coming my way that I'm not even expecting. It's amazing how quickly it can change.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: The analogy I'm getting is that when you're plugging in your coordinates for warp drive, you want to make sure everything that's important to you is part of those coordinates. We're not just heading off in one business success direction; our coordinates have to include the relationships we have. I know there was an important friendship in your life that had some strain. You woke up to how much that was important to you and put effort into it. Now you've got everything that's important to you in your coordinates. Tell me, what's it like compared to the hyper-focus on an outcome which you've done extraordinary things in?

Cameron Bailey: The word that comes to me is calm. There's an analogy that you learn your best skills on choppy waters, and people think you have to go through all this hard stuff to get out the other end and be successful. I don't think that's true. If you can find balance and fulfilment, you'll get everything you want, and it's actually not that hard. You don't have the stress and the worry. It's just calm.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: It's almost wordless, isn't it? Just connecting with who you are. We can see it. When we started this podcast, it was in the hopes that gems like that would come out. How many times have you heard in your career that to get where you are, you have to work harder, sacrifice more, force, and struggle? It just creates its own resistance. It is absolute gold to hear you come from that place, and now just have peace and calm come over you. And your business isn't suffering, is it? You're the most known in the industry, and you were still up on that stage.

Cameron Bailey: Actually, the business comes easier. I've worked less this year than in previous years and sold just as many houses. You attract the right people around you to help you get through these things. That's the real magic. It's exactly what you don't think you need to do, that you actually need to be doing.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: It's the opposite! What you don't think you need to be doing is exactly what you need to be doing. Are we listening to our true self, or are we caught up in an external push or pull? It takes something to get to that space because we worry about what other people will think if we do what we really want to do. But at the end of the day, it just doesn't matter.

Cameron Bailey: It really doesn't. Losing Dad showed me that nothing really matters. As much as you can theorise about that before it happens, it's not until you lose someone that it really digs into you. I thought I was too busy for everything, and as soon as Dad had his heart attack, I was there. Nothing else really mattered. My brother cancelled work for the week Dad died, and I did as well. We were just together as a family. The world didn't stop.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: In fact, it started working for you. You started getting more support and help to do all those things.

Cameron Bailey: I'm far from saying that I've got everything right in my life, because I sure haven't. I want to spend a lot more time with my daughters, and relationships with friends still aren't perfectly right. But I think maybe I'm just starting to head in the right direction. You have to keep constantly working on it. You can't just ease off. That's what you do; every week when I catch up with you, you clip me back into line nicely. I'm still in the lane, but when I veer off, I talk to you, and boom, I'm back in line.

The Limiting Story

Sridhar Krishnamurti: We end up in these places of so much stress because we have stories that we believe. We have something happen in life, and all of a sudden we decide we're not good enough, or we're a failure, or somebody is better than us. So we get this incessant drive to prove ourselves. That's what sets us on the path to not be that genuine self. It builds momentum decade after decade, creating a whole identity with habits and patterns.

But none of that ever ends up being fulfilling. People never look back and say, "I'm so glad I did it that way." They say, "What did I not do that I came here to do?" It's a speeding train. You keep adding boxcars to it, and the train gets longer, making it harder to stop. The key is focus, and that's what I've watched from you this year. You didn't just make one decision and get sucked back into the train; you utilised the opportunity to really get in touch with what's important to you. You've had consistency.

Cameron Bailey: I've had moments of it, drifted back, and then had moments of it again. You've known me for four or five years. What do you think my big story was?

Sridhar Krishnamurti: I think your big story had to do with a comparison you made a long time ago. You were in an environment where people had what you perceived you and your family didn't have. In that heightened emotional state, you locked in the idea: "I'm less than." Because that's painful, you locked in an unconscious identity: "I'm going to spend the rest of my life proving I'm better than those people, or as good as them."

That actually created the drive for you to succeed to the level that you have. But it ruined your peace because it's a stressful pathway where you never get to rest or enjoy what you're doing. It's a treadmill you can never get off of because there's always the next person you have to beat. In your case, it became, "Now I'm number one, I have to keep number one." It becomes high-pressure but not fulfilling. Does that feel right?

Cameron Bailey: Yes, it's something like "not good enough."

Sridhar Krishnamurti: These stories are contextual to the circumstance we were in at the time. We lock in an identity to make sure nobody ever finds out we're not good enough. We idolise successful people, but having worked at the very top levels, I know there's a lot going on behind that success. A lot of these people aren't having fun lives. It looks fun on the outside, but the pressure is immense.

We create these filters. Once we have the story, we see life through it. When something happens, we unconsciously say, "See? I knew I wasn't good enough." It literally gets into our physiology. That's why people say, "This is just who I am." But if you remember being two or three years old, you didn't have that story. Something happens, and we shift into it.

Cameron Bailey: So that was my story four or five years ago when you first met me. Is that story still the story today when you talk to me now?

Sridhar Krishnamurti: Definitely not as much. It's obvious just seeing who you are today. You have a peace and a calmness about you. You are far more authentic now than when we started. In the beginning, that "not good enough" story was pretty much all-encompassing, and you wouldn't have even known you had it. I'm acknowledging the consistent work you've done because it's not easy. Even now, the mind will try to bring that identity back in, but you catch it and get back in the lane of your authentic self.

Cameron Bailey: I ask because sometimes we don't sit down to think about how far we've come. We spend all our time thinking about how far we've got to go, and we never get there because we keep moving the bar. I remember when I wanted to earn the first million dollars, and then the bar just kept going up. I love reflecting back to see how we've changed as people.

Sridhar’s Own Wake-Up Call

Sridhar Krishnamurti: This has been a tremendous year of growth for me as well. People often think that in my line of work, I can't ever have anything going on, but that's a lie. We're human beings; it's just about how we deal with it. I hadn't been sick for 15 years—not even a cold. But this year, I got massively sick. That was my turning point after a few years of dealing with challenging circumstances.

I went to work and asked myself, "What's going on in my mind that's contributing to this?" I believe what we repress in the mind shows up in life, either through relationships or the body. In this case, my body was showing me something. I was so sick I couldn't sleep, but I was having these awakenings. I realised I had lost my gratitude for life. I had started looking at life in a negative way because of recent challenges.

I was working with people telling them the universe is an amazing place, but behind the scenes, I was complaining about things not working out. I got to a place where it was very difficult to breathe, and I realised it was because I felt I was suffocating in a particular area of my life. I woke up to how ungrateful I had become. Once I turned that around, it prepared me for a whole different level of my life. That's what I see happening with you, too.

Cameron Bailey: Who puts you back in your lane? Is there someone that does it for you, or do you do it for yourself? When you were talking, what I felt is that you were trying too hard and trying to force things, and it wasn't working. As soon as you realised you didn't have to try, and you just had to be grateful, it all started to happen.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: Yes, I was trying to force something instead of relaxing into it. I have amazing teachers whose techniques I utilise, but ultimately, I had to stop forcing.

Cameron Bailey: I've spent a lot of my life trying to force wealth or success, and it always blows back up in your face. It took you getting so sick that you couldn't work to realise what was going on. Earlier in the year, when I broke my foot and left the hospital because I was waiting too long, you firmly told me that if I didn't stop and listen, something even worse was going to happen. I took it to mean if I didn't reshuffle how I was doing everything, the universe would keep punching me, and the next punch would be harder. So I woke up to it.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: Everything that happens in this universe is here to help us in one endeavour: to live authentically. If we're not on that authentic path, it gives us a reminder. It's gentle in the beginning, but if we don't see it, it gets louder. You had about five major things happening at once. I said that to you because I could see the writing on the wall. The universe is so loving that it will not give up on us. When you did wake up and started connecting with what was true—putting effort into your friendships, spending time with your kids, travelling—it became easy.

Sacrificing the Story, Not the Success

Cameron Bailey: It's funny because you actually end up loving your work more when you enjoy it. When I was in bad spaces, I blamed work. I hated it, and it was a terrible way to live. But to change, I had to sacrifice the thing I was trying to protect the most: my work. Because I was at the top of the tree, it was scary to change course. When I was unhappy in my relationship, I had a wonderful year in real estate because I poured everything into work. I had to do the exact opposite to get out of it.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: What you're really sacrificing is your story. You aren't actually sacrificing your work—you're still at the top. You sacrificed the way that you worked and the reasons you were doing it. It's giving up the story that needs to run your life. When you do that, it opens the door for everything else. I remind myself of this when I get stressed about my to-do list. I stop and say, "Look at what you get to do right now." I fill the action with gratitude.

Cameron Bailey: That's been my mantra for the year: we get to do it, rather than we have to do this. I get to go to work, I get to see my kids. It's such a powerful way to look at everything. So I didn't work less; I worked differently. I sacrificed the story of all the "have-to's" because they weren't true.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: And when you do that, you start living by your true priorities. Our recent conversations haven't even been about fixing things; you've just been in a really good space.

Cameron Bailey: Yes, I haven't felt like I've had stuff to talk about regarding me. It's almost like I'm a little bit empty. We've just talked about general life and situations involving other people.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: The word "empty" is so powerful. It's not the empty most people talk about. It's an emptiness where all possibility can exist. You're finished running from that story, and you have space. Now you have an infinitely open space to fill up with what fulfils you.

Cameron Bailey: I feel that capacity. We tell ourselves we can't do any more, but when you get there, you realise that it is limitless. You can have everything you possibly want.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: We are literally limitless beings, but we limit ourselves to the size of a grain of sand because of our stories. The universe is infinite, mostly empty space, and in that space, all possibilities exist. We have that as our nature. When we believe we aren't good enough, it's a tragedy. Getting to this peace of mind is what we all truly want. We want freedom to just be comfortable in who we are, rather than constantly having to prove ourselves in a rat race.

Cameron Bailey: It's easy to give up on this path, but the reward of staying with it is life-changing. It's like taking your blinkers off; you can see a whole different world. It's an awakening. I think a lot of people are going through their life almost like zombies. I went to Japan a few months ago, and in the train stations, there were hundreds of thousands of workers in white shirts and blue pants going up the escalators. It felt like I was in The Matrix. I could see that 90% of the people were just clocking in and clocking out; they weren't awake. I realised I didn't want to live in that matrix.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: If you get off the escalator and actually wake up, you can create whatever life you want. This conversation has blown away any expectations I had. Thank you for your courage to share as honestly as you have. This podcast is all about helping people, and this episode is really going to do that.

Cameron Bailey: It's my pleasure. Thank you, because I've seen how you've changed the lives of friends I've referred to you, some of whom were in dire, life-threatening situations. We both teach each other.

Sridhar Krishnamurti: I have the greatest job in the world because I get to learn every single time I speak with someone. If it's limitless, there's no limit to how much we can grow. Thanks again, Cameron. And thanks everybody for watching this episode of The Mind Shift. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.