It was an honour to have the opportunity to interview Sebastian Bates, not only a friend, but also someone I look up to, admire and see an incredible role model for the next generation of children and young people looking to develop their moral compass as they endeavour to navigate their way through the day to day challenges of life.

Sebastian Bates is the Founder of The Warrior Academy, an Entrepreneur, Mentor, Best Selling Author of the book, The Warrior Method, and host of the, “The Warrior Academy Podcast.” With a strong background in martial arts Sebastian launched a Martial Arts club in 2011 and Within 8 years it became a 7 figure, global organisation with 5,000 training, voted top 5 in the UK. By 2020 Sebastian was living in Dubai as the Personal trainer to the Royal Family and had launched a Global Anti Bullying campaign “Not A Victim,” which is regularly featured in the national press/radio.

During this episode I interview Sebastian about character development, self-discipline, parenting, ant-bullying, empowering children, protection verse over-protection, how to nurture your children, empowering children to become independent, preparing your child for adult life, the most important trait of parenting, getting through bullying, addressing negative attitudes towards bullying, developing your courage muscle, the three zones comprised of the comfort-zone, protection-zone, and the high performance-zone, dealing with hyper anxiety, and building resilience.

Some key points that were made included:

• If the child is in the comfort-zone, the parents are in the comfort zone.
• Parents need to step outside their comfort-zone first, and then encourage their child to follow them outside of it, then encourage them to do it on their own. This is how children move from the comfort-zone into the high performance-zone.
• When a child is in the high performance-zone, it’s when they do something that is within their ability, but feels uncomfortable.
• It’s in the arena of parenting that you really find out a lot about yourself and you have to learn how to live unselfishly. It’s a journey of self-discovery, just like Martial Arts.

We talk about Sebastian’s first gig as a Personal Trainer at the age of 19 running an Inner City Thai Boxing Club, the struggles that come with having no moral compass to guide you and lack of character, planting black belt seeds of good conduct, resilience, higher confidence, self-esteem, self-love, concentration, respect courtesy, integrity, moral values and good character.

Sebastian’s own unique story, living a life of adventure, taking huge risks pursuing base jumping around the world, while teaching martial arts in-between, how he escaped death and overcame the odds of never being able to walk again after a horrific wingsuit crash. While all this was going on, he ended up losing 15 of his closest friends doing the same sport that he loved. As this was happening, the Doctors treating him, believed he would remain disabled for the rest of his life and were shocked to see him make a full recovery.

Some final key points that were made included:

• True fulfilment in life comes from serving others. Service through sacrifice leads to true fulfilment.
• Life is not about chasing happiness, part of the human experience isn’t just about happiness, since it is like a fleeting emotion that you transition through.
• The point of the human experience, is experiencing fulfilment and fulfilment is not a fleeting moment.
• The happiest people on earth are the people who make the greatest contribution to humanity and the more you impact people, the more you empower them, and ultimately the more fulfilled you become.
• If you can create a business which exists for a reason beyond making money, then suddenly you’re putting yourself in a position where you can have the worst financial year ever, but from an impact point of view, you might have had the best year ever.