Latest / The Uplift- with Luke Pollock / #15 - Why You Should Ask More Questions - Solo Pod
Transcript
- Luke Pollock: Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Uplift. your host Luke and I'm back with another solo pod this week, which I'm quite excited about. I quite enjoyed last week's solo pod and I hope you did too. If you've had a listen, thank you for doing so. If you haven't, we covered my main rehab pillars, which I have been thinking over the past few months. And I've been thinking about... a lot more recently as well since that podcast. And for an upcoming presentation I'm doing with Cardiff Uni. So yeah, it's been really, really fun. Bunching ideas off other people who have listened to the podcast, et cetera. You can see in the background if you're watching on video, if not, I've got my new mic. It's not set up yet, but I've bought the Shure SM7B. So gonna be fully on the Chris Williamson. ⁓ Joe Rogan, Vibe Now. So hopefully the audio will be improving in the next few weeks. I just need to get a few more bits in Bob's box before I've it fully set up. The theme of this episode, however, will be asking better questions and how that served me really well so far in life and how plan to ask better questions going forward in future to continue to serve me well. So what I mean by asking better questions, you might've heard this before in like motivational stuff, but it's not very tangible. Like, instead of looking for answers, ask better questions. That's sort of the path I'm gonna go down, but I'm gonna try and break it down into really practical ways you can ask better questions and and I've used to ask better questions and where asking better questions has led me and how it's led me on the different path. It's gonna be mostly business related, there'll be rehab principles in there as well. So if you are an athlete with an injury and that's why you're here, I think this will also, this episode will really help you out. ⁓ better questions of yourself and of your rehab process. So when I preparing for this episode, and I haven't actually prepared, I'm riffing quite a lot. I'm just going off the top of my head. I thought what has got me to this point now that I'm out today where I've got a podcast, I haven't worked today, I woke up at half eight in the morning. I haven't worked for someone else or I've worked for myself. And it's been a pretty chilled out day, a really enjoyable day, but my income hasn't dipped down loads compared to when I was working at nine to five. So how have I got to this place? And I suppose I just came back to that I continually asked questions of what I was doing and why I was doing certain things. And led me down many different rabbit holes. when, before I joined uni, I read a book called The 4-Hour Workweek, which I've talked about before. And that was asking a question in and of itself, like this sounds too good to be true. Most people would set that book back down because they think, ridiculous you can't work four hours in a week. But I picked up the book, started reading and that book made me ask loads more questions about my beliefs around working, retirement, what both things really looked like. So obviously the traditional path was to work till you're about 60 or 70, then retire, enjoy those few years of retirement and then die. But the actual premise of the book is we're not going to enjoy retirement that much because you wouldn't have much time left and all the things you want to spend money on. The time sort of passed for that. So that started that made me ask questions very, very early on. And then going to uni, I sort of kept going down that route. So I had preconceived ideas of what I wanted to do. So I thought I wanted to be a sports team physio if I wasn't going to be a professional rugby player. So then I went and asked the question, okay, what does that look like? The uni couldn't give me any sport experience. So I went on to LinkedIn, reached out to people, got experience with Harlequins Rugby who had just won the premiership the year before I joined them. So the best rugby team in England that year, I managed to get in for four weeks with, because I just asked why not? Why couldn't I just reach out to them and LinkedIn via their medical staff and get that? up and running, I wasn't going to wait for anyone else to do it. And I get loads of people asking me now, like of students asking me, or how can I step like sports rehab or get experience with teams. And I'm the wrong person to ask in that scenario. Like I just say on ⁓ and ask people, better questions, ask people who ⁓ are in this field, don't ask me who works with athletes one on one. So when I got the experience with Harlequins, I realized actually this probably isn't what I want to do, you know, and I was very open, asked a lot of questions when I was there. How many times am I going to say ask questions as well as around this about like their lifestyle beyond just the treatment stuff? So how do you find balance in work and what is the initial, remember them saying there's like, there's an initial grind phase where you have to work loads and loads of hours before you get those senior roles. And I asked the... the academy physio, what does that look like? And I remember a picture of my life thinking, I don't really want to do that. it seems appealing from the outside, being inside it, I've realized I don't really want to do that. So I was a little bit lost, but being lost is better than being ignorant being unaware of what you're going into. Okay. So I'd rather be aware of what the whole situation is and then feel a bit lost than unaware and blindly run into something. Then I finished uni and I started work and I thought this sucks. Like I don't like the nine to five. I don't like how monotonous it is. don't like how little I'm learning day to day in different rotations. I find that completely different. So some rotations I would quite enjoy what I learned, but I just didn't enjoy the pace of it and how it was quite slow every day. So I wanted to ask about a question. Was there a better way? Could I work for myself? a question which I had asked multiple years before when I read that book initially and those thoughts were just creeping up, creeping up more and more. Then I saw a reel from ⁓ an Irish guy who I've had on Darren McGurn, who was an online fitness coach. And I thought, wow, I wonder, could you do that for physio and rehab? Did a bit of research looking into it. Then I realized you can and there's people doing it. It's like David Gray was doing it. By the time people were asking me, how can you do this? What is your Instagram page, et cetera, et cetera. I just. tried to ask questions of the norm at the time. Is there a better way to do rehab? Can you do rehab online? Do I have to follow the traditional norm approach of a nine to five job? And when I asked all those questions and found out answers that I wanted to hear or maybe that I didn't wanna hear, it just directed my path a lot more to I'm at the point where, Three years on now, from when I asked those initial questions, from when I'm working, I'm now self-employed. And to be honest, living a lifestyle that I would really, really almost dreamed of living back then. And it's not like I'm living a super luxurious lifestyle, but I just have so much more control over my time in this last month since been self-employed. And even from this month, I'm you know, it's given me more space to ask questions of what do I want my work to look like? So I've been intentional with, know, two days in a retail, two days, clinic days in the gym, because I don't want, I don't want five days a week facing, facing patients. So the days I'm in the gym and one, see in patients, three or four of those hours. And then the Wednesdays are completely off for online rehab stuff. and that is designed by purpose because I asked the question, well, can I actually work less terms of face-to-face work? So yeah, question the norm even of the self-employed situation and I'm not asking questions of long-term, will I want a big clinic? Is that actually what I want or is that just what the norm is? Do I want something a little bit different? terms of a rehab setting as well, just asking loads of questions of is this normal? Is this correct? From NHS stuff I've learned compared to the sports stuff, obviously a lot of that conflicts. A sport will say, NHS is... you know, you can't see patients much and it's all like psychosocial model, which just hiding from the truth. Whereas NHS will say, sport is completely It's not addressing the root problem. It's just getting people back on the pitch no matter what, which is elements that there's elements to both. And obviously I'm completely oversimplifying both of those sectors and there's really good practitioners both. I learned I've learned everything from those sectors pretty much. Yeah, it's just asking questions, not which one's right and which one am I going to completely buy into, but how can I implement both of those mindsets into my rehab? How can I implement my sporting experience into my rehab? Is there a way I can cross that over rather than just, this is the way things are. I to believe this is the way things are, so that's what I've been told and that's what everyone else does and that's what I'm going to do. You're not going to serve clients as well. if you're rehabbing yourself, you're not going to find as much progress. If you go up to your first physio, you meet and say, this is what's happening. And you take everything they say as gospel and you don't ask questions of what they're doing of else that's available to you as well. think athletes ask questions as well of their, their their treatment plans, what's going on. because they deserve to know because, it's their body that is supposedly being looked after. if it was any, if it was the other way around, if I was being treated by a doctor, I want to know what medication I'm being prescribed to you. It's you're, you're allowed to ask questions of your rehab plan as well as like a business and career point of view. But I continue to ask questions of myself. So like, why am I doing a podcast? Why am I taking my time and distraction away from what would be better for business. Like the podcast does not make any business since at all, because it takes up a lot of my Wednesday, which is my free online day. It takes up a lot of mental space as well. It takes quite a lot of organizing. It doesn't make business since. So why am I doing that? And you have to constantly ask why, why, why. And you will find answers to those things. And as you find answers, it's like wading through mud and then the, or wading through like long weeds. And then the outside becomes a little bit clearer. Or I remember the, I don't know where I heard this, but it was like, like a business and self-development is just kind of like going round. if you remember those dark video games where you would go round and as you explored more of the map, more of it would open up like in the little mini map. I don't know that was confusion, confusing, but like in open world game as you go round. A lot of the map was dark and then as you discovered the places, they started to light up. And that's kind of what I'm getting to by asking questions, by digging that layer deeper behind why we do things, you find a lot of progress. So yeah, I hope this hasn't been too warfully, just a short podcast for myself and for the listeners about reminding as I reminded myself, as I step into this new stage of my career in life and being self-employed and really taking the business to the next level, do I want that to look like and do I want it to look like that? So am optimizing for money? Am I optimizing for time? Or do I want a balance of both? I'm being really with my steps forward rather than just going head down, not asking any questions. Something else I've decided to do this week is I started a TikTok, which I never thought I would say, but I started a TikTok where I just, I'm going to upload one video a day, really whatever comes to my mind, whether it's like just off a client call or I'm just off a call with my business mentor or just been in a walk and something's come to my mind. But the idea is it's 30 to 60 seconds long. uninterrupted of me talking ⁓ it's to try and improve how I articulate things as the podcast has really highlighted to me where I struggle to block out the mm's and the ah's and how struggle sometimes to really portray what I want to portray. Like this podcast is a good example. It's been a little bit warfully, could have been more succinct. So those 60 second clips hopefully is just like practice and reps of learning to speak in front of a camera, putting it out there and sort of detaching the discomfort with that as well. So that's a fun little challenge I'm doing at the minute. The other thing that is coming up is the Sports and Exercise Medicine Conference at Cardiff Uni, which I'm preparing and need to prepare a lot more of my talk. And just, it's a little bit intimidating because everyone's a consultant or consultant level pretty much who's talking and I'm 25 year old physio and there goes my dishwasher. So I'm just trying to... focus on what my strengths are and what I can bring to the table and hopefully just give some value to some of the students some the older people who might come to that conference while my dishwasher is really going now. So I am gonna end this podcast here. I hope you enjoyed listening and thank you very much for listening. If you any questions at all, please find me at Luke Pollock online and. subscribe and like this podcast. think it's just subscribe and then leave a review as well would be really, really good. And chat with your mates if you feel like they are at a stage where they're not asking questions and they'll just head down at the minute. yeah, I hope you have a really good week and I hope you ask questions. Thanks and goodbye.