Rob Malicki

It’s New Year’s Eve, and my coffee table is covered in old photographs. Decades of memories, some so distant they almost feel like they belong to someone else, waiting to be looked at properly and digitised.

Somewhere between scanning one photo and the next, a thought lands, uninvited.

And suddenly the maths becomes unavoidable.

Oh bugger.
My life is half over.

New Year’s Eve has a way of doing this to you.

It’s already a slightly melancholic day, one that quietly forces reflection whether you’re in the mood for it or not.

You look back at where you’ve come from. You glance forward at where you’re heading. You take stock.

I keep scanning.

There are photos from my Year 10 formal. Kids in grown-ups outfits. Girls glammed up looking great. Boys looking out of place in suits, and holding the kind of confidence that only exists when you don’t yet know how little you know.

Grainy shots from my student exchange and a travel club trip to Cairo. The pyramids sit crooked in the background. Blurry smiles. Proof that I was there, even if the camera struggled to keep up.

Then there are the photos that make no sense at all, like the poorly framed, badly lit snaps from a house party where I met my wife-to-be.

If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d skip straight past them.

But they’re all we’ve got. In the analogue world, these imperfect little rectangles are the only evidence those moments ever happened.

They’re not curated. They’re not beautiful. They weren’t taken for an audience.

They’re just real.

Some of the people in these photos are no longer in my life. Friendships that drifted. Relationships that faded.

People I could have stayed in touch with if I’d made more effort.

If I’d tried harder. If I’d been better at holding on.

That realisation sits heavy.

But then something else clicks.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the same New Year’s resolution. Not a goal. Not a habit.

Just a simple promise to myself: to make next year the best year yet.

I’ve said it at 18. At 25. At 40. Every single year.

And suddenly these photos stop feeling like evidence of what’s gone.

They start to look like proof of what built me.

Every one of those people shaped how I show up now. Not just through the good times, but through the mistakes too. The moments where I was arrogant. Or careless. Or hurtful. Or just a teenager who thought he knew more than he did.

I got things wrong. Often.

But those moments mattered.

They taught me, sometimes the hard way, how I wanted to live in the world. How I wanted to treat people. What kind of friend I wanted to be. What kind of partner. What kind of person.

Those friendships aren’t failures.

They’re foundations.

I’m deeply grateful for what those people gave me, even if I didn’t always give enough back.

The earlier chapters of my life aren’t competing with the ones I’m living now. They’re the scaffolding underneath everything that’s still unfolding.

It's the ultimate reminder that the past isn’t gone.

It’s in me.

6 months ago | [YT] | 0

Rob Malicki

"I've quit my job".
My friend is looking across the cafe table at me. We're both holding cups of
coffee, and his expression is... questioning. Obviously, this is big news, and
he's wondering how I'm going to take it.

I look at him for a moment, without saying anything.

My mate has (had?) a great job: diverse, impactful, and overseeing an important, and growing, part of the business he’s in. He's an experienced,
charismatic person, and the growth in the size of his team has reflected his
skill as both a leader, and an operator.

It was one of those jobs that in a few short years would have turned into a
"Senior Executive blah of blah blah", with commensurate salary, prestige and network. The kind of job paying big bucks for big results, but also one prone to finishing with a mid-age heart attack.

So he’s walking away from it all?

I slowly put down my cup, then offer my hand... as a high five.

"Congrats mate, that's awesome". And high-five, we do.

There’s not much more I can say than that. I know what it feels like to walk away from something in its prime.

Our 13-year-old student travel business was booming when Covid hit. We looked at the medium-term prospects, realised things were terminal, and put the key under the doormat. It hurt, badly. But we took our family travelling around Australia and the world for two years and have zero regrets.

Sometimes the hard call is the one that gives you your life back.

For the past few years, over these occasional morning coffees with my friend, I've heard stories about his work. It's sounded challenging, interesting. But also
full of intense pressure from a business known for pushing hard.

Then, a few months ago, a photo suddenly popped into a WhatsApp group.
It was my mate, lying in a hospital bed... "So, then this happened…" the caption said (or words to that effect).

He was at a regular heart check-up. Nothing crazy, just checking in to to make sure everything was working as it should be. And...
"Oh? What's that?"
"I believe we call that particular issue a 'widow maker'".

It was a very close call.

He gives his coffee a final swirl and downs the last of it.
“I knew at that moment that my company had lost my heart,” he says. The words hang between us for a moment.

The truth is, his heart almost left him first. And he knows it.

One routine check.
One sharp-eyed clinician.
One decision not to cancel the appointment because he was “too busy”.

That is all that stood between my friend and... the alternative.

He was lucky.

But he is also smart.

Because some people climb the ladder, and others fall off it whilst scrambling for the top.

He saw the next rung on the ladder and paused, before firmly saying “yeah, nah”.

Now he owns his future, and no title comes close to that.

7 months ago | [YT] | 0

Rob Malicki

We're skiing up in the French Alps in the ski station of Val Thorens. This is big mountain territory where the peaks rise to well over 3000m. If you take a cable car to the very top, you can ski downhill for 30 minutes before you have to get back on a chairlift again.

Skiers will understand what a luxury that is!

After a big morning, the rest of the family decided to take it easy and rest after lunch. Being motivated to make the most out of being here, I chose the alternative: to head out for a second session in deteriorating conditions.

I hit it hard. Charging slopes, feeling my legs burn as I sank from the summits to the valleys through good snow. It was epic.

Then partway up the final, enclosed cable car, I reached for my phone in my pocket to check in with my family and.... discovered that my jacket pocket was unzipped.

My heart sank, and I sank to the floor of the cable car.

I checked all of my other pockets. Nothing.
Somewhere, along my route, my phone must have dropped out into the snow.

I race home, knowing that time is limited. With the cold, the battery won't last long. I need to get to my wife's phone so she can use "Find My iPhone" to track down where I lost my device. It could be anywhere along 10km of ski runs, so it's my only chance.

But back at our apartment, disaster number two strikes. We've picked up French sim cards and somehow my phone has become disconnected from our shared "Find My Phone" settings when we arrived from Australia.

In my mind's eye, I picture my lonely little phone, half buried in a snow drift high up on a mountain, its battery ebbing away...

Then I get a shock - my wife is already dialling my number!

Duh! Of course! Maybe somebody's found it!

And here's the funny thought that struck me in that moment: amongst all the brilliant experiences of the week, I already know that this ski trip will be labelled as "Ahhh, that was the time I lost my phone out on the slopes!"

Which is funny because there will be far more enjoyable moments that happen this week: excellent skiing, good meals and great time spent with family.

But the "headline" of the trip, the one thing that will really stand out, is the most memorable moment - whether or not that moment was the most pleasurable, the most exciting or positive.

Because even the best meals eventually melt into one. The best ski days dissolve into each other under a blue sky. And hours spent playing card games after dinner become a distant warm glow of time in each other's company.

And what we're left with are the stories.

So at least this one's a story with a happy ending.

2 years ago | [YT] | 0

Rob Malicki

I’m staring out over the Indian Ocean from under a crisp blue sky. There’s just a puff of wind in the air and I’m feeling light and free, having just finished two weeks of Covid self-isolation with my family.

Cape Leeuwin lighthouse, just outside Augusta, is Australia’s most south westerly spot. Here, the Indian Ocean runs down the west coast and turns the corner to become the Great Southern Ocean that props up the southern coast of the continent.

The next stop over the horizon is the ice of Antarctica, some 5,000km away.

Having been locked in a house for a couple of weeks, where my exercise consisted of walking laps of the steep driveway carrying 20kg jerrycans of water just to keep it interesting, it’s great to be out exploring.

I’ve been to Cape Leeuwin once before, years ago, as part of a multi-day mountain biking race called the “Cape to Cape”.

That day was the opposite of today: a wild beast where the unrelenting rain came in sideways in gale-driven squalls. As we waited for the race to start, people huddled behind buildings in miserable little groups of colourful lycra, glad just to be out of the worst of the wind.

Once the race was underway, the pounding weather made for tough conditions: a day spent head-down, teeth-gritted, battling the mud and the cold.

But as I stare out over the cheery little white-sheep waves under today’s clean blue sky, I’m confused. Why am I suddenly feeling warm and fuzzy about possibly the most horrendous day of mountain biking weather I’ve ever experienced?

The human brain is exceptionally good at pattern recognition… and at spotting exceptions to the rule. If you think about a primitive human in the jungle, it makes sense – you needed to spot the wild animal lurking in the shadows that was about to eat you.

Pattern recognition: normal jungle.
Exception to the rule: tiger’s hungry eyes peeking from behind a tree.

It’s behaviour that evolved and reinforced itself over millions of years.

The things we suffer through can become our most potent memories… because as we grow, we learn to avoid the things that put us at the greatest physical and psychological risk.

Staring out over the ocean, breathing in the salty air, I remember the epic-ness of that difficult day, even though the discomfort of it is long gone.

And that’s when I see the opportunity:
In the hardest moments I face, I can always pause and project myself forward into the future to the time when I’ll look back and say, “Wow, that was hard… but it made me stronger.”

And maybe that difficult moment will be made easier by its future value: it’s the heat that forges us into steel.

I smile. Long after memories of easy, fun days of riding have blended and faded, I’ll never forget that day battling mud, and wind and cold.

And the next time a day like that arises, I know that I can not only handle it, but eventually look back on it… and laugh.

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2 years ago | [YT] | 0

Rob Malicki

I'm playing a game of Monopoly Deal with my daughter. She's unhappy because I'm winning. But I'm frustrated because this was supposed to be fun, yet has degenerated into a mess.



Monopoly Deal is the shortened, card-game version of the famous big-box board game, Monopoly. A round can be played in 15 minutes and it has none of the desperately long "I'm-on-the-road-to-doom" slow-losing feeling of the full-length game.



There's some strategy involved, but you really need luck to win.



A minute ago, my daughter was riding high. She had 10x more money than me, and more properties. But a couple of good card draws and I'd turned the tables, pilfering most of her cash.



Which is when the despair had begun.



"I never win at this game" lamented my daughter, throwing herself back from the table, "I'm sooo unlucky! It's not faaaair!"



I try to console her.



"Sweetheart, don't give up. Card games are a bit like life - sometimes the luck works in your favour, and sometimes it doesn't. But just like the tide, luck will always eventually turn"



But it isn't cutting through.



I think about the truth in what I'm saying.



Years ago, running an international travel business, we were subject to the whims of currency exchange. Between the time we published a price, and when we had to make our payments overseas, the currency could swing wildly.



In the early years of the business, sometimes we would win, or sometimes the tide would change and we would lose. One time, we received a call from a student who'd already paid for an expensive program. They were making sure they wouldn't have to pay any extra. Confused (because they'd already paid) we discovered that the currency had dropped about 10% in just a few days and we ended up eating a loss when we transferred the payment to our overseas partner.



It was a hard lesson for a young business and we eventually took currency options, almost a sort of "insurance", in order to remove the risk of the currency-tide turning on us.



Sometimes luck is with you. And sometimes it is not.

But the tide will always turn unless you've succumbed to it.



"Lunch is ready!" calls my mother-in-law, and my daughter is grateful to escape the game for a few minutes. As she heads towards lunch, I slip two exceptionally strong cards out of my hand and onto the top of the deck.



The game is momentarily forgotten over a convivial family meal. As it concludes, my daughter sighs, "Okay then. Let's finish the game. Surely I have to have a little more luck!"



It's her turn and she draws two cards. Instantly, a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth... but she's fighting not to let it show, feigning cool a indifference to what she's just picked up.



But moments later she's dropping bombs on my game, blowing me to smithereens. Within minutes, it's all over.



She smiles as she trots away, "Don't worry Dad, you'll probably be luckier next time!"



It's a beautiful moment: the tide has turned, but we've both won.

2 years ago | [YT] | 1

Rob Malicki

In the concert hall of the ‪@SydneyOperaHouse‬, the ‪@sydneysymphony‬ Orchestra is warming up. Flutters of notes dance the room like butterflies, disjointed from one another yet strangely harmonious. An oboe is playing a scale, a violin plays a passage of what’s to come, and a double bass clears its throat... anticipation is building and it’s melodious and exciting.

Then stillness and silence sweep the room. There’s a burst of applause and conductor, Donald Runnicles, strides onto stage, his shock of white hair making him look ever the musical genius. He takes a bow, raises his baton and… the piece begins.

Instantly, it’s strange and discordant – piercing notes and percussion racing off-camber, as swirls of colour from across the orchestra surge over one another like river rapids.

Having grown up listening to experimental music, I’m right into it. But I can see part of the audience shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

Most of us are here for the main course: Tchaikovsky’s magnificent 1st Piano Concerto – a classical masterpiece. By comparison, this first course tastes a little too acidic, too spicey, for expectations. I see one couple high up in the side stage seats get to their feet and leave.
They don’t come back.

The music is unconventional but, as it unfolds, it’s also consistent and coherent. I can follow the strands as they rise and fall… and maybe that’s exactly what the composer, Henri Dutilleux, was thinking when he wrote this piece: Metaboles. An exploration of metamorphosis.

Then I realise why the orchestra is playing this strange piece at all. It’s to create a dramatic musical juxtaposition between this opening, and the famous, easy-listening classic that will follow. The whole show is a journey, a transformation. It’s genius!

Sure enough, pianist Alexander Gavryluk is soon carrying the audience away into wild forests of melody and drama. Yes, it’s magical, memorable and audacious. But it’s also a castle: a brilliant fortress of secure convention.

As the piece sweeps towards its finale, my mind drifts back through the show and a larger lesson begins to dawn on me.

Without doubt, the Tchaikovsky masterpiece will still be played in 500 years.

Yet the unusual piece of music by Dutilleux is still being played by a world-class orchestra 50-years after it was written and might also still be played in hundreds of years.

A last thought joins the orchestra's final notes.

Whilst the conventional world is a congested, tangle of rising talent and sinking sands, maybe being a little unconventional is actually a safer path?

Because “unconventional”, when it is honest and reflects who we truly are, can be more memorable. It can resonate with our “tribe”, even when it misses most of society.

And maybe when we follow our own “unconventional” path, not only do we increase the chance that what we create might outlast our days on earth, but we guarantee that we’ll live more vivid, authentic lives in the process.
𝄅♩♩♩♩𝄂

#music #classicalmusic #sydneyoperahouse

2 years ago | [YT] | 0

Rob Malicki

I grew up amongst the trees in a leafy suburb in the north of Sydney. It was a large block of land backing onto the bush, a property full of dozens of tall, native trees.



It was a wonderland. For hours after school with my brothers or alone, mucking around in our garden. My lack of fear about dangerous Australian snakes was born from the fact we never saw one in our wild yard during all those years.



Last week, I pulled into my parents’ driveway for a birthday dinner, a moment of nostalgia wrapping around me as I parked: our little house standing amongst the trees, its exterior wearing a fresh layer of paint like make-up, but its interior still an unchanged warren of treasured memories.



As I climbed out of the car, I noticed how the roots of one of the eucalypts in the front yard have pushed up the driveway. That tree has doubled in size since I was growing up – it’s proud white trunk now a mature giant stretching skyward. Like me, it was just a kid all those years ago. How we’ve both changed.



Looking around, there are other trees, and I realise that so many of them have a story to tell.



There’s the Liquid Amber, its deciduous maple-leaves in full bloom for the summer. My older brother used to chase me up that tree, knowing I could never escape him since he fearlessly pushed higher into its branches that I would ever dare.



There’s the old Cotoneaster “red berry” tree right up the front by the street. I was hiding up that tree when Charlotte, my crush from up the road, came to drop off her response to the “love letter” that 10-year old me had written to her. I remember the car pulling up and her Mum jumping out with an envelope. Her Mum didn’t see me, but Charlotte, in the front seat, did… and ducked quickly out of sight. I distinctly remember thinking to myself “Oh, I wonder what that means?”



Later, wandering around the backyard with my Dad before dinner, we chat about the giant Angophora (a Sydney “red gum”) that must be over 300 years old. It’s dropped the odd limb, leaving huge holes in the trunk where the cockatoos now like to nest.



There’s also a tall tree, far off down the back and hidden from the house, where I used to spend hours as a kid. High up, I’d sing songs, write poems and carve the names of girls that I liked at school, safe in the knowledge that my brothers would never negotiate the complicated climb up. (1. Climb to the top of a smaller adjacent tree. 2. Swing across to the larger tree, with 6m of emptiness below you. 3. Pull yourself up with arms only, there are no footholds. Let’s just say I wouldn’t do it now…)



My Mum is calling dinner and my Dad and I head back towards the house. As I do, I cast a glance back at the yard.



The sunset light is filtering through the branches, and suddenly I’m grateful. These trees hold stories for me. Laughs. Secrets.

And because of their companionship, their trust, it’s not just in this house, but every time I’m in nature, that I feel at home.



#nature #storytelling

2 years ago | [YT] | 0

Rob Malicki

Let's do a little activity: I'd like you to picture "Paris" in your mind.

There's the Eiffel Tower, people watching the world go by whilst drinking coffee outside a bistro. There's wide boulevards and charming apartment buildings.

But there's also a problem, because the Paris you're thinking of doesn't look anything like the Paris I know. I mean, what you're thinking of IS Paris, it's just not the Paris that I immediately think of.

And therein lies something interesting about human psychology - we tend to get anchored on the things we've been exposed to. It might sound crazy, but if I tell you the moon is 300,000km from the Earth... you're likely to more willingly pay $3.50, instead of $3, for a can of drink.

It works because when I tell you a large number (300,000) you're mind tends to get anchored on that number... and by comparison, the extra 50c I'm hoping you'll pay for the drink seems irrelevant.

Anchoring can have both good and bad effects, which we'll talk about as we go for a walk around Paris. MY version of Paris!

2 years ago | [YT] | 0

Rob Malicki

I'm on the overnight long-haul flight from Singapore, heading to Paris for Christmas. The cabin is dark and there's nothing but the stillness of sleeping bodies and the dull drone of the engines and air conditioning. I’m tired, but struggling to sleep.

To kill time, I'm watching some old travels videos on my laptop, the radioactive glow lighting up my face as I'm transported back in time.

3 years ago to the day I was in Western Australia as the heat of summer was dialling up. Crisp blue Summer skies, flies, and long days of sunshine. We were 6 months into what would become 18 months travelling around Australia.

And I was 6 months into what would eventually lead to me becoming a "serious" runner - capable of running 30+km - not just a 5km weekend warrior.

In the video I'm in Margaret River, enthusing about the quality of the trails, and I set myself a goal: I want to run 100km in the 10 days left before December 31st.

In the darkness of the airline cabin I chuckle, knowing that I'd achieved that goal. As a result, I’d ticked off the respectable milestone of running 1000km in the 2020 calendar year.

A hostess drifts silently down the aisle, an apparition offering glasses of water to the handful of people awake at this ghostly hour.

As she glides quietly past, it occurs to me that something important came out of that 10-day effort 3 years ago.

We humans have a tendency to focus on beginnings. We wait for the start of a year to make new resolutions or until the start of a new week to begin a new habit, or to end a bad one.

Yet life is so much about momentum.

The things in our lives that are good tend to keep themselves going by force of their success. The things that are going poorly tend to hold us there by force of their inertia and familiarity.

And it strikes me that maybe we should be focused more on ending things strongly, rather than beginning afresh, because there is power in a good ending.

A strong ending slingshots us forward. It gives us momentum.

My 100km of running in the last days of 2020 launched me into 2021 where I ran 1,130km despite some injuries.

Without looking, I know that 2023 is coming to a close and I sense there’s a significant opportunity awaiting me when I touch down in France.

It’s the chance to set myself up for 2024… by ending 2023 with some serious focus and commitment.

So I mentally set myself some goals: Each day of the rest of the year I’m going to write. I’m going to meditate. To stretch. And to hug my kids like there’s a meteorite heading towards earth.

Then suddenly I have a flash of realisation! I pull out my phone and open Strava my sport-activity tracking app.

Scrolling my stats, I find the one I’m looking for: so far this year I’ve run 1,833km. If I were to run just 167 more in the next 2 weeks….

Quietly, I put my phone away and close my laptop, falling into darkness. I adjust my pillow and tilt back my seat.

I’m ready to sleep now… because I know exactly what it is I have to do.

#2024

2 years ago | [YT] | 0

Rob Malicki

The audience is looking back at me blankly and silence fills the room.
I’m standing in front of them, frozen. I’m sunk. It’s a presenter’s worst-case scenario.

Most facilitators have run into this at some point: the dreaded “wall”, where an activity you’ve planned falls flat. This is never the fault of the audience, it’s always because something in the flow of your keynote or workshop isn’t calibrated quite right.

Normally, I’ve got a half a dozen tricks up my sleeve that can recover from this situation. But today, I’ve blanked.

Realistically, this is most people’s definition of a nightmare.

Today, we’re doing an introductory workshop on storytelling. It’s a powerful session that, in one hour, boosts people’s confidence in their ability to tell a story and how to spy good client testimonial stories. I’ve run it dozens of times.

But the stakes are higher today as the room is full of some of my best colleagues.
If I shine, they might consider bringing me into their organisations to do longer workshops.

Yet here I am – a goldfish in the headlights.

(A momentary aside here: yes, that analogy is intended. Picture it: a fishbowl sits in the middle of a darkened, lonely mountain road. A goldfish swims lazily in circles in the darkness… but then a car comes barrelling around a corner… the goldfish stares, eyes bulging, into the looming headlights with nowhere to deer-spring away to. That goldfish is me).

We’re staring at each other, the audience and me. Seconds go by and suddenly I’m not sure who feels more awkward: me or them.  

“Okay” I say finally, “Something’s not working here – let’s see if we can figure out what’s just gone wrong”.

Bit by bit, we get back on track and get through to the end of the session. As I’m starting to wrap up, my brain skips again.

I’m referring back to a story about a guy I just met, “So back to that story about the tall blue haired, blond-eyed guy I was telling you about earlie…”

Everyone’s laughing now, and so am I: “Time to wrap up I think! Looks like the red eye flight has just caught up with me”.

Last night, I took the midnight, cross-country flight from Perth to Brisbane in order to be here.

Later, walking to lunch with a colleague, he tells me “That was incredible! So many actionable strategies in just an hour. We’re just about to rework our client testimonials and marketing, so it was timely!”

I start feeling better about things. By the time the fourth person has gone out of their way to say thanks, I’m good. But I’m still curious as to why an exercise I’ve used before stalled with this group.

Eventually, after chatting with several attendees, I find it. I’d missed a single part of the instructions that would have made the exercise clear right out of the gate.

Later that evening, I add a note to my session outline to never again miss that key sentence.

I also write up a “To break in case of emergency” index card, listing those half-dozen “recovering” techniques I would usually be able to pull out without prompting.

Jump to a story
Move to a discussion exercise
Back up to previous section and restate the connection to the exercise…
Panic…

Every time you present is different and you truly never know what’s coming your way. It’s a great reminder for me.

Because preparation might be the difference between being a good or great presenter, but being ready for emergencies is the difference between being the car cruising up the mountain road… or being the fish in the headlights.

2 years ago | [YT] | 0