EVERYDAY BUSHCRAFT

Pick up a shovel after a long time away from physical work and your hands will soon remind you. The skin is soft. The handle rubs. Jobs that experienced hands take in their stride can leave yours sore. Over time, with regular work and enough recovery, calluses develop. Your hands become better prepared for the work you ask them to do. There’s a useful lesson here for how we approach difficulty. We can develop calluses of the mind: experience that helps us meet discomfort with

I’ve always been an avid reader. My reading tends to wander across a fairly broad landscape. Military history. Leadership. Success literature. Philosophy. Stoicism. Psychology. Personal development. Stories of people who have been tested, failed, adapted, learned and found a way forward. I don’t necessarily read because I’m looking for the answer. I’m interested in ideas. Sometimes you come across an idea that changes the way you look at something you thought you already unde

Sometimes we know exactly where we are going. Other times, life gets noisy. We get tired. We get frustrated. Things don’t go to plan. We make mistakes. We lose confidence. We get distracted by what other people are doing, what they think of us, or by everything that seems to be going wrong. And before long, we can feel a little lost. In the bush, when you lose your sense of direction, one of the first things you want to do is stop and reorient yourself. Where am I? Where am I

Sometimes you find yourself on a path you’ve never walked before. You don’t know exactly where it leads. You can’t see around the next bend. There may be no signs, no map, and no guarantee that you’re heading in the right direction. But standing still won’t get you there. At some point, you have to put one foot in front of the other. Then do it again. And again. That is how almost every worthwhile journey begins. You Don’t Need to See the Whole Track When we are uncertain abo

There’s an old saying: Prior preparation prevents poor performance. It makes sense. Prepare properly, practise your skills, check your equipment, make a plan, and you give yourself a much better chance of success. But there’s a problem. How do you prepare for something when you don’t know what is going to happen? You can prepare for bad weather. You can prepare for getting lost. You can carry first aid equipment, extra water, a shelter and emergency supplies. But life rarely

There is comfort in doing what we have always done. Familiar routines feel safe because we know what to expect. We know where the problems are, we understand the rules, and we can usually predict the result. But familiar actions often produce familiar outcomes. If we want something different—greater confidence, better skills, new opportunities or a way through a problem—we may need to try something we have never tried before. That is the meaning behind the old saying: Nothing

On a recent Scout camp, one of our Trangia cooking sets came back a little worse for wear. Actually, a lot worse for wear. The Trangia had been used incorrectly, and one of the bowls had been badly damaged — the side had effectively melted. Naturally, we were disappointed. Equipment needs to be respected, particularly when it involves fire and heat. What had happened was irresponsible, and there needed to be a consequence. So the Scouts involved lost the privilege of using th

How CBT and Bushcraft Build Capability One of the most powerful ideas in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, is surprisingly simple: What we think influences how we feel, and how we feel influences what we do. But the relationship works in the other direction too. What we do can influence how we feel and, over time, change what we believe about ourselves. That idea fits closely with what we teach through Everyday Bushcraft, The Everyday Way, and our 1 Day 5 Skills program.

Sometimes life just doesn’t go our way. You make a plan. It falls apart. You try another way. That doesn’t work either. Then another problem lands on top of the first one, and suddenly you’re standing there thinking: “I honestly don’t know what to do next.” That’s when I try to come back to something we teach at Everyday Bushcraft: You don’t have to solve everything. You just have to work out the next thing you can do. In the bush, when things go wrong, running around trying

Have you ever started a fire with a magnifying glass? It seems almost like magic. You hold a simple piece of glass between the sun and a piece of tinder. At first, nothing happens. Sunlight is everywhere—on your hands, on the ground, on the trees, on the tinder—but nothing is burning. Then you adjust the lens. The scattered sunlight begins to concentrate into one tiny, intensely bright point. You hold it there. A little smoke appears. You resist the temptation to move it arou

Practice Makes Proficient: Stack the Wins We’ve all heard the saying: “Practice makes perfect.” It sounds good. It’s probably been said to every kid learning to kick a footy, shoot a basketball, play an instrument, tie a knot or light a fire. But there’s a problem with it. Perfect is a pretty unforgiving target. If practice is supposed to make us perfect, what does it mean when we miss the goal? When the knot slips? When the fire doesn’t catch? When we forget a step? When we

You Cannot Harvest What You Haven’t Grown There are some things in life you simply cannot cheat. You can find shortcuts. You can become more efficient. You can learn from people who have gone before you and avoid some of their mistakes. But some things still require time, effort and consistency. This is the Law of the Farm. And it is one of the simplest ways of understanding success, resilience and what we call The Everyday Way. Two Farmers Imagine two farmers. At the beginni

It Only Looks Like Magic Until You Know How The other day, AI accidentally renamed my business. I was researching some ideas and asked AI to consider how a particular concept aligned with things we’d previously discussed through Everyday Bushcraft, the Everyday Way and our Five Skills. The response came back referring to: “Everyday Witchcraft.” Obviously, it was a mistake. But it made me stop, and then it made me think. Maybe the mistake wasn’t as ridiculous as it first appea

Sometimes getting started is the hardestt part, but when we do, we develop momentum. Read more about the Everyday Way for some ideas on how to overcome the mental battle that hinders starting what you need to do, and achieve it.

Last night my wife and I watched the film Outback. It follows two young American tourists travelling through Australia on their way to Uluru. What begins as an exciting adventure quickly becomes a survival story—and a tragic reminder that the wilderness has no sympathy for poor preparation. They lose mobile phone coverage. Their GPS becomes unreliable. They drive off their intended route. Their vehicle breaks down. From there, almost every decision makes the situation worse.

“The greatest gift you can give someone isn’t your time. It’s your attention.” We live in a world that constantly competes for our attention. Notifications buzz. Emails arrive. Social media scrolls endlessly. Even when we’re sitting with our family, we can be thinking about work. When we’re at work, we’re thinking about home. When we’re studying, we’re checking our phones. When we’re out in nature, we’re taking photos instead of experiencing the moment. We’re everywhere… Exce

Every one of us has something that makes us hesitate. For some, it’s speaking in front of a group. For others, it’s applying for a new job, making a difficult phone call, sitting an exam, asking someone out for coffee, walking into a gym for the first time, or lighting a fire with a ferro rod instead of a lighter. Some fears are big. Most are surprisingly small. Yet those small fears have an incredible ability to shape the direction of our lives if we allow them to. The Every

“Think of a context.” There’s a powerful scene in Saving Private Ryan where Private James Ryan admits to Captain Miller that he can’t remember his brother Danny’s face. Captain Miller quietly replies: “Well… you gotta think of a context.” Ryan begins remembering moments from childhood—their porch, playing together, the sounds, the feelings. Suddenly, the memories return. That scene isn’t just about grief. It’s about how memory works. Our Brains Remember Stories Better Than Li

One of my favourite sayings is simple: Knowledge weighs nothing. It doesn’t matter whether you’re carrying a heavy backpack through the bush, sitting in a classroom, starting a new job, or trying to navigate one of life’s tougher seasons. The skills and knowledge you’ve earned don’t add a single gram to your load, yet they can make every challenge lighter. That’s the remarkable thing about learning. Nobody can steal it. Nobody can wear it out. And once it’s truly yours, it tr

Why the Challenges You Face Today Become the Foundation You Stand On Tomorrow Most people see failure as the opposite of success. It isn’t. Failure is one of the building materials of success. Every worthwhile achievement begins with uncertainty, awkwardness, mistakes, and moments where you wonder if you’re capable at all. The people we admire aren’t successful because they avoided those moments—they became successful because they learned from them. The challenge isn’t avoidi