Latest / The You Project / #2100 Bridging The 'You' Gap - Harps

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#2100 Bridging The 'You' Gap - Harps · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, t yp family. I hope you're good. I think
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: this might be my first solo for the year. Now
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: that could be good or bad depending on your predilection.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Is that the word preference? Anyway? So I want to
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: talk to you about a thing that I call the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: U gap. And the U gap just means on planet
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Crag anyway. It means the space between the metaphoric or
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: literal space in some senses, between where you are now
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: listening to this and where you want to be. So,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: where am I, say, physically or mentally, or financially or professionally,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: or personally or sociologically, like, where am I in my
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: life in that part of my life? How am I going,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: what's going great? What's not going great? What are my
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: results telling me? All that? Where am I? And where
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: do I want to be? Let's just round it up
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: or down and let's just go a year. It could
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: be three weeks, it could be three months, six months,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: could be ten years, right, but just a future version
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: of you, and I think it's good to try to
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: identify what is the gap between where I am and
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: where I want to be, or who I am behaviorally
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: or practically or financially, and who I want to be.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: We all have a gap so well. I don't think
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I've met anyone who doesn't. I don't think I've ever
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: met anyone who has zero aspiration or ambition or intention
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: or hope to be a slightly better version of themselves
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: in some way at some point in the future. So
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I think we all have that gap. But it's trying
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to identify what that gap is, what that means to us,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: how important it is to us, and what's at the
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: what's the underlying cause of the gap. What are we
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: doing too much of or not enough of, or what
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: are we not thinking about or not addressing, and what
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: do we need to do? And like the tough thing
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: about one of the many tough things about being a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: human is that we're emotional, and when it comes to us,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: we're often very unreasonable. We're often very hard on ourselves,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: or at other times the other end of the scale.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: We just want instant gratification and fun and easy and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: quick and painless, so we just hit up on all
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the fun stuff, the comfortable stuff. But there's always some
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: kind of underlying reason or cause or mechanism that's keeping
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: us behaviorally or psychologically or physiologically or financially trapped in
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: a spot that we don't want to be, which is
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: not say life is currently shit. It's not say that
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: at all. It's just to say that many of us
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: have wanted to be in inverted commas b in another
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: place for a very long time, but we're not there
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you know, Like there was a time
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: when I was working on the gym floor and then
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I realized I wanted to own a business. I want
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: to work for me. So there's the oh, well, here
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I am working in this place for this much though,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: for this bloke, in these circumstances, in this culture, it's okay,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: but I don't love it. You know, it's a five
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: out of ten. I don't love it. It's not My
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: life is not horrible, but this is not where I
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: want to be. So then I would and I did.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: In that moment, I'd go, well, this is my current status, situation, income, environment, circumstance,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: level of responsibility, level of power. I wasn't running the show.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I couldn't run the show because it wasn't my business.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: And this is where I would like to be at
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: some stage in the future. I don't necessarily think I
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: timelined it to win it within a day or a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: month even, but just to recognize that this ain't it
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: for me. This is okay, but this ain't it in
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: inverted commas for me. And then what does it look like?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: You know? And you're always redefining and kind of realigning
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and thinking about what that means over time, and that
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: you know that what it will look like, what will
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: be the ideal situation, circumstance, scenario, income, culture, environment, task, role,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: job that will be different for you at different times,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: just as it has been for me. But right now
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I'm listening to this. You know, where are you at
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and where would you like to be? And what is
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: that gap? And let's see if we can talk about
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: bridging it. So what I've done, Groovers, is I have
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: broken it down into kind of like the macro and
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: the micro. There's the big rocks and the pebbles, and
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: the big rocks of which I speak grasshoppers are ah
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  Speaker 1: for today anyway. They are these physical health, mental health,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: lifestyle habits, career financial stuff, relationships stuff, brain function and
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: mental health stuff. And putting our current operating system under
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: the spotlight as well, so we can take a look
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: at all of these kind of individual kind of components
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: of the US experience, and then maybe the the micro
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: that sits underneath the macro of each of those headings.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: So I'm not going to make this too long. It's
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: just kind of, I guess, an introduction to this concept
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: between bridging the gap, and obviously there are a lot
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: of gaps for many of us. Some of them are
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: really important. Some of them are like, yeah, I wouldn't
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: like I wouldn't mind being a bit better at that,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: that would be nice. But if I don't get any
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: better at playing my guitar, that's okay. Or if I
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: don't lose three more kilos, that's okay. Or if my
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: income stays at you know, whatever it is or whatever
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: it is plus ten percent, I'm probably going to be okay.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: So it's not a big thing, but there will be
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: big things like I cannot currently or I can't continue
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: on my current workload, so the hours I work, the
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: stress that it puts me under the level of sleep
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: that I'm getting, like, it's just not working. So that's
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: something that really needs to be addressed and immediately. So
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: top of the list is physical health, and in that
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: like no surprises here, I think When I think about
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: my physical health, I think about the impact of food
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: and everyone's physical health. Is how I frame it food?
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: How much am I eating? Am I overeating? Am I
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: under eating? And am I eating high quality food? Where
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: do I get it from? Do I prepare it? Is
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: it ultra processed? Is it somewhat wholesome and closer towards
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the organic end of the spectrum? How do I eat
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: in terms of my relationship with food? What about social eating?
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: What about compulsive eating? What about reactive eating? What about
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: numbing out with food? What about all of those things?
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: So I think it's just to be. And as most
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: of you know, my biggest challenge for a lot of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: my life has been food in terms of me keeping
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: my shit together, managing me, making good choices, and giving
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: myself the best chance to live a long, healthy life.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Food has been my number one priority because that was
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: my biggest issue. That was my biggest kind of emotional, psychological,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: behavioral tipping point. So think about the things. If food
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: is an issue for you, don't beat yourself out, don't
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: jump up and down. As emotional as we all are,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: recognize the emotion around it, feel it. That's all cool.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: But then try to turn that volume down a little
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: bit and start to be a bit strategic, just practically,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: what am I doing that doesn't work? What am I
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: bullshitting myself about? What am I telling people that isn't true?
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: What am I currently doing pretty regularly that is dumb
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: as fuck? You know that this is You don't need
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: to be super educated or highly intelligent. I know most
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: of you are, But you don't need to be a
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: genius to figure this stuff out. You don't need to
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: be a genius to know that you are doing things
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: which don't align with who and how you want to be.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: So food is a biggie under the banner of physical
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: health exercise, of course, I don't really need to explain
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: it to you. But more than how much do you exercise,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: or do you have the perfect program, or how hard
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: or how easy, my kind of number one priority for
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: people is that they exercise consistently. Most people that I
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: have met over the years I'm talking about the totality
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: of the people I meet in life are not consistent.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: And that's very reflective of the stats around exercise consistency
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: generally speaking in the research. So we know that a
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: lot of people start a lot of people stop. A
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: lot of people do a whole thing for a while,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: they get results, then they stop, then they lose results,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: and then a whole bunch of stuff happens, and then
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: we're getting to October November, it's getting warm in Australia anyway,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: and then people go, right, that's it, I'm back baby,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: And there's another cycle. It's hard to be consistent. And
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean it's hard for everyone all the time,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: but it means it's hard for a period of time
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  Speaker 1: until that exercise that works for you, until that exercise
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: that produces the outcomes that you want becomes ingrained into
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: who you are, Like, this is part of your operating system. Now,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: this is part of your hardwiring. This is you on default.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: This is normal mode you, NM you why sorry, n
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: M why normal mode you? Because then once that exercise
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: gets integrated into our subconscious and our day to day
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: patterns and rules and rituals, and now this is just
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: us doing us. This is not us trying to be
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: spectacular or become an Olympian or being credible. This is
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: us just trying to build an operating system around As
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I said, initially, food and exercise, which is going to
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: work for us, And by work for us, I don't
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: mean get us in the Olympic team or some kind
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  Speaker 1: of physiological specimen that's superhuman, but rather just a version
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: of you that is consistently as healthy as you can be,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: optimizing your physical potential. Of course, under the banner of
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: physical health is sleep and stress and relationships. Sleep and stress.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: You kind of get it. If we're under sleep, we're
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: not recharging the batteries. And I actually just read an
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: interesting paper talking about or abstract of a paper, I'll
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: be more accurate about how you know, there's a thing
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: that happens with sleep, and that is that over time.
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  Speaker 1: You know, people say I'm really good with five hours.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: What happens is when you under sleep. Now, virtually nobody,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: very very few people can be consistently physiologically healthy on
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: five hours sleep. There may be a few unicorns out there.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: But what's happened with many people who go, oh, I'm
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: great with five or six hours is that their body
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: has adapted so that they feel good, so they have
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: the perception of I'm okay, while below the surface physiologically
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: things are not okay. So we don't even know sometimes
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: because we can't pick up on the data on the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: biodata that our body is sending us so sleep, even
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: if you think you're going okay sometimes with four or
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: five six hours sleep, the research seems to suggest, and
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: my observation and work with people seems to suggest that
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: there are very few people who can consistently live on
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the five to six hour range and be
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: genuinely healthy optimal immune function, cellular energy, cellular health, cognitive
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: function on very little sleep. And then the last one
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: on the list here on the physical health as relationships
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and just because you know what's happening in your relationships
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: more specifically you'll or close relationships, it impacts you. And
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing because it's not something I
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: used to think about a whole lot. I didn't really
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: think about it, you know what. I didn't actually understand
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: it as being such an important factor in physical health
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: in mental health, because if your mental health is not great,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: your physical health it's not going to be great, and
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: vice versa, like they're intertwined to think that, as I've
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: said many times, to think that you know, psychological, emotional
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and physiological kind of states or outcomes are not intertwined
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: with each other. Is ignorant. It's not science, And the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: only place that those three things exist in isolation. You know,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: emotional stuff, psychological stuff, cognitive stuff, physiological stuff. More broadly,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the only place they operate in isolation is in research,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: as in science. But as a human being just fucking
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: navigating life on the big spinning rock, navigating the blue. No,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: all that shit's intertwined. That if something bad happens, I worry,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: that affects my body, That affects my cognitive function, That
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: affects my nervous system, my emotional state, my ability to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: think clearly, to communicate rationally. Everything is intertwined with everything
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: with us humans. So having relationship problems and ranging from
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: not great through to horribly horribly destructive and toxic, that
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: has a big physical health, probably bigger than everything else
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: in the short term, in the short term sleep maybe
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the exception. All right, mental health. So where am I
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: with my mental health? If I could, you know, crag
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: a fight and just go well, ken is I feel
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: fucking great? Most of the time? I don't. I feel
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: very stressed, very anxious. I don't feel saddy, make sad stuff.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I don't feel depressed. I kind of process life pretty
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: good and you know, overall, like not perfect, but overall
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: actually genuinely pretty good. Well, that's amazing, and I think
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: that's obviously possible. And I think for me, most of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the time, not all the time, but most of the time,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: I'm near that end of the scale. I think if
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: we averaged it out for me ten being at the
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: end of the scale, I would think most of the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: time I'm a seven to nine, And there are times
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: when I'm a one like you, or a three like you,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: or a five like you, and maybe now and then
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: a ten like you for a minute. But just trying
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to understand, remember I metacognition, thinking about how I think
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: and how I feel and who I am the way
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I am trying to understand your mental health from an
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: anxiety point of view, from an overthinking point of view,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: from the decisions that you're making every day, from the
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: reactions that you manifest to certain stimuli, like the way
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that you respond to stuff good and bad, or people
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: good and bad, or situations and circumstances. Your ability that
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: equanimity thing that we speak about, your ability to be
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the calm and the chaos. Can I be in the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: middle of a shit fest and not be in a
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: shit state? How do I do that? And maybe that's
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: something you want to or need to develop over time.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: How does the firefighter who's in the middle of complete
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: chaos and turmoil and smoke and fire and panic and
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: screaming people and uncertainty and danger, how does he or
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: she run into that environment and be exactly the person
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: that we need in that moment to be our best
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: chance of saving lives. That's fucking amazing. I love that.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: So how do I become more of that? Do I
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: process experiences? What is do I process things? Something happens.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: My go to is negative, this is bad, this is
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: going to end badly. There's not good, blah blah blah
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: blah blah, I'm an idiot, I fucked up. Whatever. So
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: there's the thing that happens, and there's our response, and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: our response is based on our story that we tell
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: ourselves about the thing. An event happens and ten people
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: are there, so it happens to all ten. Nine people
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: respond absolutely fine, no major drama, trauma, stress, anxiety, and
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: one person in the middle of that interprets it differently,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: has a very negative reaction. This is not weakness or
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: badness or you know, this is a human response. This
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: is that person's response. So thinking about how do I
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: change that? We can't. We can't fix that in this podcast.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: But I've I've thought about these things forever. When someone
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: says something, why do I want to impress them? Or
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: when someone's around me that I think is impressive, Why
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: then do I try to boill? That's ego, that's insecurity,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: that's self doubt, that's fear, that's all my bullshit. Now,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: this is not me beating me up. This is me
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: understanding me. This is me recognizing how I am and
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: what I do and trying to park that in the
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: logical space, turned down on the emotion, on all my bullshit,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: of which there is much, and then try and create
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: some kind of approach to or method or system to
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: do something about that. But to do something about that,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I need to understand that. I need to understand me.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I need to understand why I make the decisions I do,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Why I process things the way I do, Why I
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: react and respond the way I do, Why I over
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: or underreact, Why I blame instead of thinking, well, maybe
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: I'm part of the problem. Why I do that? Why
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: we do that. Next on my list is lifestyle, which
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: is more practical, so it's kind of almost a big
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: picture of how do I manage me in the middle
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of my life? I reckon one of the most important questions.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: It's very broad and it covers everything. But you know,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: often even when I could be talking to one hundred
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: lawyers or one hundred blokes who work on a construction site,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: or one hundred nurses or a thousand doesn't matter. But
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: even though I work in different professional environments with different
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: kinds of people who do different kinds of jobs and
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: different incomes under different circumstances, really I rarely go in
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: there and talk about their job or work or productivity
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: or you know, outcomes on a business level about how
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: do you manage you? Like how do you manage you
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: at work? And we can extrapolate this to at life.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: How do you manage you? How do you manage your
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: mind and body and emotions and choices and actions and
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: reactions and energy? How do you manage that stuff? Do
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: you have a plan? Do you have a plan or
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: you just get up today and kind of do what
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you did yesterday, even though yesterday was shit and the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: day before was pretty shit in the last hundred days
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: have been somewhere between not awesome and kind of average.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe for some people. Again, that's not a criticism, that's
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: just for some people their reality. Now, there's no magic fairy.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: No one's going to come in and magic up your life.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Nobody's going to come and fix it for you. Nobody's
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: going to come and solve it for you. Nobody's going
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: to come and sprinkle happiness dust all over your s Gone.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: It ain't going to happen. So we acknowledge it, we
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: realize it, we see it for what it is, and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: we try to practically address it. And I might say, okay,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: so how often do you drink booze? Someone says every night?
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I go cool, Well, that's something we can change, perhaps
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: not easily. But do you think drinking alcohol every day
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: is good for your mental and emotional and physical health?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: And they know the answer is no. Great, Well, now
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: we're starting to understand maybe one part of what the
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: problem might be. If we're talking on this macro level
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: of your life, then we talk about maybe caffeine, and
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: caffeine's fine but not for some people. Coffee or two
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: a day's great, but not seven or eight for most people. Drugs, well,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the odd voltaire and for your saren probably okay, the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: odd aspro or panandole or paracetamol probably fine, depending on
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the individual, of course, not recommending anything, but consistently using
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: drugs that are mind altering or physiologically altering in not
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: a good way. Well, that's problematic. And what about rest
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and what about relaxing, and what about recovering? How's what's
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: your plan around that? How do you reset? How do
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: you push the reset button? How do you come back
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to work all the kids or the whatever it is.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: What's your little kind of metaphoric retreat from the manic?
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: What's your metaphoric retreat from the chaos and the busyness
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and the responsibilities and the demands. And I know some
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: of you are going you don't understand my life, blah blah.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: I get it. I get it. I understand you are
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: very busy. I understand. And it isn't a contest. But
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: for the last six years I've been working a lot.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I've been recording mostly seven podcasts a week. I've been
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: doing a PhD. I've been navigating old age with my parents.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I've been you know, I get it, it's and we
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: can either say, yeah, I'm fucking busy, Shut up, you
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: don't understand my life. Fuck off. We can go yeah,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I'm fucking I'm busy. But is there something I can
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: do out of the fourteen hundred and forty minutes a day?
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Is there ten minutes a day that I could do something?
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Is there something little? Maybe it's five minutes that might
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: move the needle If I do that five minutes every
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: day and build it in six or seven or eight
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: or ten or who knows, maybe one day thirty minutes.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: So we're doing this thing for thirty minutes a day,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: that's so fucking great for us. But we're not doing
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: it for fourteen one hundred and ten minutes. That's great,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: that's not a massive request. When we'd be brutally honest
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: and we go, well, like if I said, even though
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I just told you how busy I am, do I
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: waste time on the phone? Fucking yes? Is it good
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: for me? No? Am I a dumbass? Yes? Will I
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: do it today later? Yes? Right? But do I do
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: it less than I used to? Yes? Am I working
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: on it? Yes? Can I find thirty minutes? Twenty minutes,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: ten minutes a day if I had to, well, if
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: I had to, I could, well, let's just pretend that
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: you have to. So lifestyle is a big one. Now
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: these ones are a little well, the next one's a
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: little closer to the macro, but it's still massively important
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in terms of the quality of the results that we're
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: producing now and will in the future, and in terms
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of bridging the gap, the U gap of which we
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: speak grasshoppers. And that's just your current habits. Like you've
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: got lots of habits around the way you communicate, the
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: way you do your job, the way you drive to work,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the way your little rules and rituals that you do
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: every morning. You get up, you do this, then you
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: do that, then you do that, then you check that,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: then you check that, then you do this, and then
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: eventually you walk out the door and jump in the car,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: or you go to the office upstairs at home, or
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: you whatever it is that you do. You have rules
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and rituals and habits and behaviors that are programmed into
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: your hard drive. And that's not good or bad, that's
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: just thing. So what is great for us to do
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: is to put our habits, good and bad, under the
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: spotlight what am I doing all the time that's for
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: the most part good for me. I can recognize that
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I can go well. I walk ten thousand steps plus
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a day. I lift some weights every day. I try
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: to be kind every day, and if I have the opportunity,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: I'm kind every day. I try to eat good food.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I try to be productive, I try to be creative.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I do all of these things, which are pretty hard
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: whirled into who I am and how I am. I
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: don't always produce good results, but I try very hard
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: to do all of that, and truthfully, it's mostly just autopilots.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: So that's a habit. There's some shit that I do
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: that's good. There's some shit that I do that's not good.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: So have a look at the way that you do
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: things typically typically, and then think to yourself about whether
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: or not the way that you do that typically or
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: daily or routinely or habitually, whether or not that is
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: working for you, whether or not that is working for you,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: whether or not that's a good thing. And we don't
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: need to turn our life upside down in terms of
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: habits and behaviors by the end of the week. But
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: what we can do is recognize things and work on
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: things one at a time. I think you'll know the
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: story of a year and a half ago or so.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I kind of realized how few steps I was taking
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: because I do so much work where I am right now,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: which is in my office, which is in my studio,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: and I'd like, I live in this fucking chair. And
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: sure I would pride myself that I would go to
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the gym and list shit every day, and that's good.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: But there was one thing that I wasn't doing enough,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: and that was just general movement. That was just incidental activity,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: occupation activity. Some jobs require you to move a lot,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: like I've got friends who are trades, lots of friends
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: who are tradees, and they would probably do ten to
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand steps a day without actually in inverted commas
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: going for a walk, so to speak, whereas my occupational
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: and incidental kind of step count is somewhere in there
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: three to four. It's like very low. I actually have
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: to consciously go for walk to get so I recognize
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that one little thing, Hey, Craig, walk more. I didn't
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: change anything else. I I didn't change my food, didn't
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: change my last oh my kind of my operating system.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Other than that didn't change food. Everything stayed the same
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: except that one thing, and that made a massive impact.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: We can move the needle. If you are currently you know,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: doing three thousand steps a day, just go all right, well,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do one thousand more. I'm going to
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: do four thousand, and then we'll see how long that takes.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: And I'm guessing that's going to take I don't know,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the ballpark of ten minutes, ten minutes, give
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: or take. And then next week you might go, you
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm going to go from three to three
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: to four to five. I'm going to do five great
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: And these are just little things that are not hard,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: do not require money, do not require skills, do not
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: require a PhD. Are they sexy? No? Is it quick? Well?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Kind of, but in the context sometimes people would go no, right,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: And so much of the things that we need to
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: do to bridge the U gap are that, you know,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: they're kind of Oh, you just got to batten down
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the hatches and do the thing when no one's looking,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: when it's not fun, quick, easy or painless. Got a
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: few to go. I'm dragging my feet our career. What
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: is my relationship with work? This is something I think
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: about a lot. I think about like me. Right now,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a little bit of an
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: insight into the Craig experience right now, so you all
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: know that you don't all know. Some of you have
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: been informed that I have this thing called U station
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: shoe dysfunction, and I often have blocked the ears. So
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: right now my right ear is really blocked. And I
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: started and stopped this little extravaganza about three times before
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I just went fuck it. I'm just going to record,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: and if my ear blocks, it blocks, and so I
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: don't need any sympathy. But it's actually hard for me
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: to do this right now because my voices echoing in
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: my head, which makes focus and concentration hard. But anyway,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: that's just what's going on for me right now. Let's
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: go back to career and the consequences of staying in
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: a career. Perhaps that doesn't rock our boat or work
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: for us emotionally or mentally or I'm not even talking
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: about practically or financially, that's a big part of it.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: But here I'm talking about more what are the health
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: consequences of my work. I talk to people very often
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: whose biggest issue is not money. It is not the
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: job itself. It's not the work itself. It's that their
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: situation or environments or relationships or culture or experience at
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: work is shit, or their experience personally of it. Not
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: say everyone in the same place is feeling or experiencing
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the same thing, but these people, which is very normal,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and you probably are that person at some stage. Like
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: going to work is not a great thing, Like you
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: don't get excited, you don't look forward to it, you
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: don't love it. It's a thing you do because you
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: feel you have to do it. And the truth is,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: for some of you, you do have to do it
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: because you're financially have your hands tied, so you need
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: to do it. And I totally understand that. So I'm
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: always thinking about for myself and the people like coach,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: what are the health consequences of what you do of
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: your job and how can I change that? And even
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: though some people might be in a high paying, high flying,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: high respect, high social status job, fuck, how important is
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: that social status job anyway? All that, all those boxes
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: are ticked from the outside looking in, tickety boo, fucking
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: well done, But from the inside out the experience is terrible. Emotionally, psychologically, physiologically,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: experientially it's shit. So yeah, I think career and financial
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: staff in general. You know, financial security, your relationship with money,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: stress about money. All of these things can have absolute consequences,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: good or bad depending on your situation and what's going
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: on right now for you. And then let's quickly go
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: through the three in the bridging the gap saga, it's
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: become a saga. Relationships are so our life is built
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: largely around relationships, friendships, work people, family people, friends, peers,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: incidental people that we kind of nudge up alongside somewhat
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: regularly that are just in our life, perhaps circumstantially that
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: we didn't choose all okay, but we know that the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: quality of our relationships, as I think I mentioned before,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: like especially on a personal level, has a real impact
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and what's going on in those relationships, and especially that
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: when there is emotional and psychological turmoil, even if everything
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: else is going great in our life, if we're in
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the middle of psychological and emotional turmoil with someone that
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: we love or care about very much, be that intimate relationship,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: a best friend or a family member, it's going to
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: fuck you up, and it's going to fuck you up
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: for a while, and so trying to for me, trying
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: to build relationships as much as I can control, not
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: the person, but control as much as I can or
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: as much as I can contribute, is better way to
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: say it. To a healthy relationship, Then that's what I'm
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: going to do. Understanding that what I think often doesn't matter,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Understanding how they think is extremely important. Understanding that their
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: reality is not my reality. Understanding that the window through
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: which they view, experience, digest, and understand the world is
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: not the same as mine. So of course there'll be differences,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and of course I need to navigate and negotiate those,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and of course I need to I don't always do,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: but I try very much to operate primarily through love,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: through kindness, through compassion, through empathy, empathy, through awareness. Yeah, relationships, big, big,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: think about one relationship that you have that matters to you,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: that you would like to do better at. Doesn't mean
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: you're all the problem, doesn't mean that at all, doesn't
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: mean they're none of the problem, doesn't mean that at all.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: My experience is that most of the time, not all.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Most of the time it's a bit of a combination
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: of both. People Sometimes it's one hundred zero, but not often.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: All right, let's do one more. So I've got to
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: here brain function and brain health. And I probably wouldn't
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: have put this in twenty or thirty years ago because
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't really get it. I got it theoretically, but
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't get at it experientially, like I get it
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: experientially even right now as I'm talking, because I have
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: low level frustration right now. That's not me being weakal terrible,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: but I just like telling you. So you go, oh,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: he gets frustrated. Oh he has bad days. Oh he
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: can't fucking hear out of his right ear. Oh that
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: must be so imagine just put imagine cover your covering
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: your ear with soundproof headphones and then taping it up
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: with two feet of tape, and you can't hear anything. Well,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: that's my experience and some right now, and sometimes that's both.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: So my voice is an eleven out of ten in
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: my head, and your voice talking to me is a
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: one out of ten standing two feet from me. And
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: so you know in the middle of that, that affects
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: my brain function, affects cognition, affects my emotions, it affects
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: mental acuity in my ability to execute things to do
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: my job. So brain function, how well your brain works,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Like I said, memory, creativity, focus, mental acuity, your ability
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: to problem solve and talk to people and overcome conflict
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: and problems and navigate life on an interpersonal level, linguistically, sociologically,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: practically with other humans. It's so important that your brain
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: works well. If you're a leader, it's important that your
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: brain works well, if you're a mom or a dad. Obviously,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: if you're in anyone right, there's no one for whom
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: this is not important. And just think about those things
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: which might impact your brain function or your brain health.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: You know what you put in your body, sleep boost,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: all the things we've spoken about, and how you might
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: how you might improve your cognitive function or performance. So
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: for me, choosing to do a PhD at fifty six,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: very atypical. I would say, I don't know how many
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: first year PhDs in psychology start at fifty six, but
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: I would think less than point one of one percent,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: which doesn't make me good or bad. It just makes
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: me very atypical. And that makes me a little bit
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: sad because I wish people would intentionally learn as they
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: get older. I wish they would consciously study. If not,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I don't necessarily mean in an academic environment, but do
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a project, write a book, do your own research, take
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: up a language. Write with your opposite hand for a week,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Like I know that sounds random, but I did it
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, and I still do it periodically now.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Because I have two whiteboards in my office, I will
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: often get up. I'm left handed, I'll get up and
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I'll write the alphabet in my right hand. And the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: way that I could do it a month ago, which
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: looked like dogshit, now it almost looks like, oh, that's
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: just my writing my good hand and my bad hand.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: For one of better terms, the gap is, you know,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: speaking of the U gap, the gap has drastically reduced.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Like if one of my goals, for example, was how
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: do I write with my left hand? And also what
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: are the benefits? But how do I write with my
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: right hand? We'll crag. You just write with your right hand.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: It would look fucking terrible, And then you do it
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: again and again and the next day then it will look
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: less terrible. Instead of being ten out of ten fucking horrible,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: it'll be a seven. Then eventually it'd be like neat
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: writing so people won't people won't know. People wouldn't know
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: because I've done the work to create the neurological gains
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: between what I want to do and then what my
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: body is capable of doing, down to the fine motor
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: skills of holding the pen between my thumb and index
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: finger and then producing that completely different look of writing
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the same guy at sixty two practicing something and literally
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: creating new and different neural pathways in my brain to
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: be able to operationalize this thing of writing with my
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: wrong hand. Well, there are so many fucking things that
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: you and I can do that are going to upgrade
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: your brain, things that people do not think about. I
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: might do a whole episode on that right team. I
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: may abhored you, I apologize for my stumbles mumbles here
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: and there, but I want you to listen to the
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: whole podcast with your index finger shoved in your idea
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: and you can empathize with me. See Team