Glenn Sandford

Transcript

17 years ago, on a warm night in Bali, I killed over a dozen people. It was my first holiday from work and my professional football career in over a decade. I'd just sat down in a cab. Boom! My ears were ringing. The streets were littered with people screaming, crying, bleeding. I realized that I'd just been blown out the back windscreen of a cab. The cab driver, who'd just asked me where I wanted to go, was slumped on the front seat, glass all through him, dead.

The nightclub in front of me was on fire. I stumbled towards the front door. Boom! I'd been hit again. When I got to that front door, it was a thing of nightmares. People were bleeding. People were on fire. Body parts were both detached and semi-attached to people. I made eye contact with a young woman, her leg barely attached. Next to her, a man, chest blown open, bleeding. Both moments away from dying. I had the ultimate life and death decision. Who would I help and who would I let die?

What would you do? I grabbed some cloth, wrapped around the woman's leg, carried her outside, put her onto a motorbike, and sent her towards the hospital. I never saw her again, nor the man I chose not to help. I want you all to look around this room. I want you to imagine a nightclub twice this size with twice the amount of people. And every time I walk back into it, you had a choice of who you would help and who you would ignore.

At the same time, everybody in this room was screaming at you for help. I went through that over and over and over again. Hour after hour. It was those choices that would haunt me for the years to come. I returned to Australia. I told everyone I was fine. I even went back to work. But my reality was I was terrified. I was hiding. I had a straight jacket of guilt. I knew that I'd killed people. But instead of seeking help I ran and hid.

I drank 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. I gambled most evenings. I struggled to do my job and I'm still living with this straight jacket of guilt. Now, most of you, like my friends, would be saying it was the terrorists that killed those people. But my reality was I chose who lived and who died. My inner truth was that I'd killed people. And when you're hiding that inner truth, it's debilitating. You can't think, you can't talk, you feel like you have no control.

And at all times, you are terrified that that secret's going to get out. I can guarantee that every one of you in this room right now is probably hiding from something or someone. The issue with that is is while you're hiding, you can't move forward. Months and months down the track after utilizing every vice possible my breaking point was when I was escorted to my my office. She with tears in her eyes, she fired me. My drinking had got out of control.

My whole identity had always been surrounded about my job and my sporting career. Without either, who was I? Unemployed, unable to play sport, still recovering from my injuries, and still carrying this disgraceful secret that I couldn't share. It was here at my lowest of lows that I realized I needed to take back some control. That I needed somehow to get out of the shadows and come into the light, to jump out of the shadows into the light. But the idea of jumping just terrified me.

So, I crawled. I crawled 1 in at a time. My first inch was making my bed. Something that seemed so simple and insignificant, but for me it was terrifying and absolutely debilitating. All I wanted to do was stay wrapped in my sheets and hide away from the world. But eventually I did it. I did it for a complete week. My next inch was to go to the gym. Then another inch and then another. But those inches made me feel like I had some self-control, that I had some self-respect.

You see, when you put those inches as individually things, they seem small and insignificant. When you compound them together, they're absolutely transformation. Each inch of inch gave me some self-respect. Each inch gave me some control. And when you feel you have some control, you can actually come out of hiding and seek the help that you need, even the redemption, or try to overcome. You see, it was because of these game of inches, as I like to call them, that I realized that I had a choice.

I had a choice to either be the victim and continue to hide, or to be a survivor and to move forward. And to realize that my experiences did not have to define me. Here's what I want you to remember. When I started this journey, I realized that my choices had killed people. But because of these game of inches, I realized that by one small decision, you could truly transform your life. I hope none of you ever have to go through a terrorist attack.

But I can guarantee that every single one of you in this room right now is hiding from something or someone. What is the first inch you can do right now to get out of those shadows? Thank you.

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.