Hey, how are you? And if you say you're fine, I'm gonna
assume you mean, like, the acronym. Freaked out, insecure, neurotic,
and emotional. So,
have you heard the term life quake? Well, in this podcast,
we talk about life quakes, those unpredictable seismic shifts that,
in time, lead to profound personal growth and empowerment.
Here you can expect heartfelt stories that reveal both the joy and the
discomfort of unexpected change. And I think you're gonna like it
here. My name is Shawn,
and this is something shifted. Today's story belongs to Jasper.
Beginning of 2015. I had a liver transplant.
Essentially, I became like a living upcycled human. That's next.
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Okay, so this is going to come out of left field.
But I'm interested to know what you've thrown away today.
Like in the bin. You haven't been paying attention
to that. Well that's fine. I've been keeping track on my side.
So so far. I'm up at an empty yogurt container,
a milk bottle and two banana peels, although those did go into the
compost bin. So those things that you've
thrown away, do you know where they'll go next?
Because, spoiler alert, there is no away, right?
All of our waste lands up somewhere. The best case scenario is that some
of your recyclables might actually be turned into something new, but the
regular waste in the black bin that's most likely going to a landfill
site that's running out of space. So what would it take for you to
see waste differently? To see potential value?
How about an organ transplant? Will that help you see things
differently? With my, um, liver transplant?
Blonde. Essentially, I became like a
living upcycled human. Because when you die,
you you're done in that form. And in in a transplant form.
I was able to continue the life of part of that person, which encouraged
me to think about, like, how do you recreate things when they've
finished in their primary form? It really was just like inspiration
of like creating new value to waste and looking at how do we protect the
natural playgrounds, which we love. So that's Jasper, the recipient
of a liver transplant, is also a lover of nature, a surfer of waves,
and the co-founder of Sealand Gear. I just wanted to surf and be
creative and, like, design things and make things.
Um, but I just really wanted to surf. I didn't think about too much
else than that. I just I wanted to finish school
so I could say if I wanted to, I wanted to finish university,
I could serve. Yep. Jasper lives for the surf.
Tall, lanky, dark, curly hair. Not even a chronic liver disease
could keep him out of the water. When I was surfing,
I was I was slower to getting to my feet and not making as many waves,
and it was frustrating. Primary sclerosing cholangitis.
Try say that three times fast. Primary sclerosing cholangitis
or PSC for short. Thank heavens is a rare chronic
liver disease. When you have PSC, your immune system
attacks the tubes that drain bile out of your liver into your bowel.
This immune system attack causes the bile ducts to harden and narrow,
which makes it harder for bile to drain sufficiently from your liver.
And that can cause painful infections and liver damage in the long run,
people with PSC experience many different symptoms.
The most common being fatigue, pain and itching.
Your energy levels are lower. You look like the Irishman.
And, uh, your urine looks like tea. You and I will agree that PSC
symptoms would impact the way you live day to day.
An unpredictable disease that makes it really difficult to carry out
daily tasks with a smile on your face and plan anything for the future.
You can't survive without a liver. I was en route to liver failure.
A liver transplant, as with all transplants.
You've got to wait for a donor. And it was a full transplant.
Which means that you only have one. You only have one liver.
And for me to get a new one in my body, somebody else has to pass away.
The reality of it is, is that somebody's somebody's life ends,
which is going to then continue my life.
And it's a pretty gnarly topic to talk about.
I've confronted death, and I'm more comfortable talking
about death because I've experienced near death myself and
had close people around me die. Having spoken to a few
transplant patients, they referred to the strange
limbic time in which they live, where hope and uncertainty coexist.
You're living with an illness and its limitations, and you're also bound in
time and place because you need to be within three hours of a hospital,
because you just never know when you might receive that transplant.
So you're waiting for a call. You're waiting for the phone to ring.
You're waiting while you're still living.
And while I was living in that time, it was.
It was definitely a lot more of the the orange, red light kind
of feeling than the green light. So for that period of time,
it was like very limited travel and like I couldn't go for long serve.
So I had to be by my phone, which was a very different take
on my life as a free spirited individual who likes to travel,
who likes to get away from the hustle and bustle, and it's not pleasant.
But at the same time, like my belief with all these
things is like mindset. Mindset is like, it's the one
thing you have control of. And in my view,
it's one of like the single most powerful things that one can do.
And I've always been the more optimistic,
like glass half full kind of person. And I truly believe that that
was my ultimate strength through getting through this whole thing.
Jasper adopted a take the bull by the horns approach to getting
through this whole thing of waiting. I knew that the stronger I could go
into the procedure, the better the possibility of a successful procedure
and recovery post procedure. And as much as I struggled in doing
it because of the fatigue the week before, I managed to run up Lion's
Head before I had a transplant. Now, of course, he didn't know that
he was a week away from receiving a liver transplant as he was running
up Lion's Head that day. Limbo. Remember, like waiting for a payment
to land in your bank account. Or to learn if you've aced an
exam or watching the clock when you're late for a meeting and
the traffic light is stuck on. Red can be anxiety inducing while
Jasper was on the waiting list. Living in that anxious orange to red
traffic light zone, he prepared for the operation mentally with therapy.
I didn't opt into. Like, oh, I need to go for therapy.
Prior to a liver transplant. It's something that's like part of
a program where they prepare you. They assist you in that journey.
Everything stems from your mind. If you're strong in your mind.
That's that's the first big step that anybody can make in any
challenging moment. It's not an easy thing to do,
but it is proven that it can have huge benefit.
I would contribute the biggest portion of my life changing
moment to that being positive and applying a positive mindset.
Optimistic. Realistic. Optimistic. In addition to the mental
preparation, Jasper also prepared physically by,
you guessed it, surfing. I think it was probably like 630
on a Friday evening. I got out of the surf, had this
amazing moment, and then received a phone call from the liver professor.
Only one reason he's burning at that time.
It had been ten months of waiting in this haze of uncertainty.
And just like that, things were crystal clear.
In an instant, Jasper was going to have a liver transplant.
Of course, all transplant procedures are major surgeries,
and nobody can be 100% sure of how things will turn out.
Each surgery carries significant risks, but Jasper had been preparing
himself mentally. Remember? I saw it as an opportunity versus
like being scared about it, because if I didn't get it,
then I would have died. So for me, it's like an opportunity
for a second chance of life. There's also no guarantees in the
procedure. It's a massive procedure. Jasper was on the operating
table for about eight hours that Friday evening in 2015.
All of his mental and physical preparation pushing through the
fatigue was worth it. He only needed one blood transfusion,
and although he had mentally been prepared to spend up to three
months in hospital post operation, he was out of there within ten
days and ready to embrace his second chance at life.
And that's kind of where Sealand was born in 2015, which is the same
year that I had my transplant. So it was really significant, like we
had been talking about this idea of this business and what it was going
to look like prior to my transplant. It really was just like inspiration
of like creating new value to waste and looking at how do we
protect the natural playgrounds, which we love as the two founders of
the business, and we both served and loved the outdoors and so on.
I can't be sure if it's Jasper's story that drew me to his brand, or
if it was the story behind the brand that got me interested in Jasper.
But either way, Sealand Gear happens to be one
of my favorite apparel brands. I really like the design,
the functionality, the aesthetics are so pleasing to my eyes.
Sealand has that secret sauce blending function with looks and
they get it just right. And they do this in a way that
upcycled waste materials combined with other carefully selected
materials, and they've transformed them into new high end products.
It's a brand that just feels like surfing, running, hiking.
It feels like adventuring and being on the move in the great outdoors.
We're really lucky to live in where we do in Cape Town, and we've got all
these natural playgrounds around us. How do we protect our natural
playgrounds? Through creating products which are a
necessity within the lives of us as a kind of outdoor people employ people
locally and create value from waste, which is being generated in
multiple different forms. Jasper's love for nature has been
a constant presence in his life. Growing up, you wouldn't have
found him sitting still in front of the TV playing video games.
In fact, you would have been lucky to find him at all.
I wanted to play in the garden. I wanted to build things with my dad.
I wanted to go down to the beach and do life saving or nippers,
or go surfing, or go swimming, or go hiking in the mountains or camping,
like, those are the things that, like, I really got excited about
as a kid, and I still do today. And the signs of his creativity
and curiosity were also there from an early age.
I come from a family with two creative parents and, um, yeah,
that was kind of instilled from an early age and encouraged.
And when my parents were successful through being creative entrepreneurs
and that's, you know, ultimately they mentored me and, you know,
showed me what was possible. Jasper pursued his creativity and
studied product design at Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
That's kaput for us locals. And he started his own design label,
Jasper Eales Original. One of his first ventures was
making furniture in his garage in Cape Town, which is when he
started to experiment with this potential of so-called waste.
Offcuts things that are left over. Jasper started making these little
characters from the offcut, pieces of wood and other bits of materials
lying around that had been used, discarded as far as furniture was
concerned. He called these robots. And I started to really sell a lot of
them, and they were really desirable. And all it was, was made from waste.
When you think of it, waste is really a manmade concept in nature.
Things don't go to waste. Decaying material becomes
nutrients that are then upcycled into new organisms.
Creating these elegant, intricate closed loop systems.
Because I love nature, and I see the way the world is progressing and
the way that people consume and the way that people produce, there's
obviously huge problems there. And with problems,
there's opportunities. The foundation and foundational
principles of our business, and the way that the business has
continued to develop and evolve is ultimately an extension of
what I believe in and who I am. In the Sealand world, it's about
being authentic and transparent and trustworthy and respectful and doing
that in a way that looks after the planet and people on the planet.
And if anything we can do is be an aspirational brand which has this
educational voice, then I feel like we're making a difference.
These values are almost tangible when you step into one of his
physical stores. You know, when you're in a space that
just feels right, like attention has been paid to the smallest of details.
It has an element of handcrafted with love.
And that's where the value really lies in.
It is building a strong brand which has got a good reputation,
and it's going to continue to. It's like stands the a test of time.
And that's our objective. It's got to do with family and
the team in which we've created an environment we've created at
Sealand is it has a feeling and a personality of like a family.
It's personal. Not in a weird way. It's just lovely. It's.
The culture is open and honest. At the same time,
there's a team dynamic where, you know, high performing team,
you've got to perform. If there was a recurring theme for
the season of Something Shifted, it would probably be the importance
of the we, the people who endure the life quakes with us, who help
us rebuild and grow in new ways.
Just a quick one to say. If you subscribe to our emailer
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Back to the story. Where were we? Ah, yes.
The importance of having others around you.
And essentially, Jasper has two families.
His work family and his bloodline. His supportive entrepreneurial
parents, the two brothers, his soulmate since 2010 and now
two little girls. All the more reason to make the
world a little bit better. Yeah, sometimes it's hard to be
hopeful. So. But I also I'm a big believer of
like focus, energy and things that you can control.
And that gives me hope because I know the things that I'm focusing
on can make a difference, and it is making a difference.
I'm not going to try and change the world like in one go, but if I
can make little steps and little progressions in a good way, then I
feel like we're doing a good thing. So it doesn't feel,
doesn't feel tiring. And while doing good doesn't
tire him out. Jasper knows that it takes
effort and intentionality to keep your mind strong.
He's no stranger to therapy because of the transplant preparation
program, but it still taken him some time to find the practices that
feel good and feel right to him. For at least the first five years.
I was like, all good. I bounce back and I was like,
the purpose of having transplant is to improve your quality of life,
not to take it backwards. So I got back into living the
way that I would always that I always did live.
But then when you start to have little challenges, health challenges
which are connected to the procedure, Knowing that every challenge can
be really problematic. It does start to play on your mind.
And as somebody who's gone through those kind of health challenges,
I'm very in tune with my body. So as soon as there's something
a little bit out, I'm like, my mind has to be controlled
very quickly as to not to think the worst or freak out about it.
Again, like in a relationship, it becomes difficult to you
don't want to burden people with this sort of stuff and stress,
stress your loved ones out. And I would say that over the last
two years is definitely become more prevalent, where I realized that,
like, I hold a lot of stuff in and it wasn't really healthy.
More and more recently, I've felt the need to have
somebody who I can talk to very openly who's outside of my, like,
closed circle, not because I don't want to talk to people about it.
I just don't want to stress people out when it's unnecessary.
There's a lesson there for all of us, something that we don't talk
about often enough. If you don't connect well with a
therapist, it doesn't mean that therapy isn't for you.
The important thing is to respond to your inner voice that is saying,
we need some help here. Let's find the confidant that we
trust and that we feel safe with. I'm open minded to spirituality,
but also my life is sad because of like Western medicine and
science and but there's very few integrated versions of that.
And I speak to the profs who saved my life and supply me with
the medication drugs which I need to stay alive.
But they don't necessarily see the value in the spiritual side or
the you feeding your body side. And then on the other side,
there's a lot of like eastern medicine or more spiritual people
who then don't have the science. And I can't just not take my
medication like it's not an option. So to find the right integrated
professional has been a bit of a journey.
But I'm currently working with somebody which there's a good
connection going, which is great. And this is how Jasper is taking
care of his mental and physical health through balance and
intention and surfing, of course. Like, I genuinely feel like I'm
doing good things in my day to day. I'm healthy, I'm active, I surf,
I have a lovely family. I now have a lovely business.
I protect the environment. I look after people's rights
like not in any form of an arrogant or ego way.
Like it's always been important for me is to be confident, to know
that the decisions I'm making, the way that I'm leading my life,
I believe, is a responsible one. It feels right to me and it
feels good. Jasper has the perspective of
looking at his life before and after a life saving liver transplant,
which has changed the way that he sees life quakes.
With challenges comes growth. There's a lot of good that comes
from the challenges without the challenges.
I believe your growth is going to be stagnated and you're not going to
necessarily see your full potential. Jasper says that having options
is one of the biggest luxuries that life has to offer him,
and that's his goal to create an environment where options abound.
You've got to prepare for the future, but not today.
Right now, the moment you're in is the most important thing and you got
to, like, enjoy what you're doing. Like, you know,
I couldn't think of anything worse. Waking up and not wanting to live
my day because I'm not enjoying my work or the people at my work
or that kind of thing like that doesn't exist in my world,
and we're in control of that. Like, everyone has different
scenarios and situations they're in. But at the end of the day,
you're in control. And if you're not,
then you need to get yourself in control and remind yourself that
you have the power to create your journey and your your destiny.
The next time you see a beautifully functional Sealand gear product,
remember what it represents a family of dedicated high performers.
The stories of all the waste materials that went into its
production. The clear mission of a brand
that is trying to take care of the people and the planet.
And behind that mission is an upcycled man.
Jasper Eales lives in Cape Town with his wife and lovely family, and can
most likely be found in the surf. Thank you for listening to this
episode of Something Shifted. You can find me on Instagram at Sean
Lewis and join my mailing list. 321 shift which gives you three
things for your mind. Two things for your body and one
thing for your soul. Plus a few little fun surprises
along the way. Every second Sunday. Oh, and don't forget to use my
code shift 50 at checkout when you place your first order on Yukos
today and you'll get 50% off. I'd love it if you left this
show a five star review and followed something shifted on
Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also leave a comment,
which I might very well read in the next episode.
Don't forget to share this episode with your friends or
family right now. Oh, and all the links to the
things that I've mentioned are in the show notes.
Thanks, as always to my executive producer,
Rhonda Lewis, and to you, of course, for believing in possibility.
My name is Shawn and this is something shifted.
I'll see you in two weeks. Bye.