Latest / Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories / Applied Stoicism | Are You Carrying Burdens That Aren’t Yours? With Arky Jones | Ship's Log #52

Transcript

Applied Stoicism | Are You Carrying Burdens That Aren’t Yours? With Arky Jones | Ship's Log #52 · Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories

• 0:03
  Arky: You get one chance at this.
• 0:06
  Arky: You get one life.
• 0:07
  Arky: When it's gone, it's gone.
• 0:09
  Arky: If the sacrifices you make are bringing you, your family genuine benefit, then absolutely there is value in that.
• 0:20
  Arky: But if you find that you are paying a price that is beyond the burden that you should carry, you're paying a higher price than you deserve.
• 0:32
  Jeanne: Welcome to Project Candor, the podcast where ordinary people share unexpected stories.
• 0:37
  Jeanne: I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen, and I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:40
  Jeanne: Today we make a voyage to the down under and sail to Australia.
• 0:44
  Jeanne: My guest today has spent his life chasing one question.
• 0:48
  Jeanne: Why do people think, react, and live so differently from one another?
• 0:52
  Jeanne: That curiosity led him to build Personality Peak.
• 0:56
  Jeanne: PersonalityPeak is a platform that blends personality insights, stoic wisdom, and practical self-help to help people understand who they are and lead themselves better.
• 1:06
  Jeanne: He believes knowing yourself isn't the finish line, it's the starting point.
• 1:11
  Jeanne: Arky Jones, welcome to Project Candor.
• 1:14
  Jeanne: Thanks for joining us.
• 1:16
  Arky: I'm super excited to be here.
• 1:17
  Arky: Thanks for the opportunity.
• 1:18
  Arky: Thank you.
• 1:20
  Jeanne: Well, you hail from Australia, so I looked your town up in Google Maps.
• 1:24
  Jeanne: It says Calwell is a medium-sized suburb of Canberra, Australia, in the district of Tuggeranong.
• 1:31
  Jeanne: Tuggeranong Hill is on its southern border, and the Tuggeranong homestead is to the north.
• 1:38
  Jeanne: Calwell is located close to the Monaro Highway, which provides a direct route to Canberra City and to Kuma.
• 1:45
  Jeanne: I am absolutely lost.
• 1:48
  Jeanne: Where are you in relation to Melbourne or Sydney?
• 1:54
  Arky: So interestingly, Canberra is the capital city of Australia, although no one's ever heard of it.
• 2:00
  Arky: So they um years and years ago, there was an argument between Melbourne and Sydney as to who is going to be the boss.
• 2:09
  Arky: And they couldn't decide.
• 2:10
  Arky: So what they did, they created a new it's it's not quite a state, they call it a territory.
• 2:16
  Arky: So but it is an independent area, uh, and it's called Australian Capital Territory.
• 2:22
  Arky: It's about two and a half hours from Sydney and about seven hours from Melbourne.
• 2:26
  Arky: Uh, it's it's also it was built in at what I believe was a strategic location because when it was uh when it was made, it was kind of walls were a little bit more conventional.
• 2:37
  Arky: So it's surrounded by a mountain range, so it was at the time it was defensible.
• 2:42
  Arky: Also, it's um kind of it's landlocked, so it's it's everyone in Australia always thinks of sun, sea, surf.
• 2:51
  Arky: We get a lot of sun, we don't get any sea or surf, though.
• 2:56
  Jeanne: Okay, well, that's a great explanation.
• 2:58
  Jeanne: And uh you just proved that I did not know how to pronounce those names.
• 3:02
  Jeanne: Well, I I'm glad you are joining us from so far away because it's always interesting to see other countries' perspective.
• 3:11
  Jeanne: So, what we'll do to get started is I'm gonna ask you some questions and then toward the end we'll transition to our signature game to Truth and a Lie.
• 3:18
  Jeanne: You ready to go?
• 3:20
  Arky: Absolutely, definitely.
• 3:22
  Jeanne: Uh, so you described yourself as someone who's always been fascinated by why people think and live so differently from one another.
• 3:29
  Jeanne: Where did that curiosity first come from?
• 3:31
  Jeanne: Was there a person, a moment, or something you witnessed early in your life that made you start asking that question?
• 3:39
  Arky: Yeah, oh no, absolutely.
• 3:41
  Arky: So life is made up of a series of moments, and any one of those given moments can set a direction for any given day.
• 3:49
  Arky: But if you apply certain things over time, if you apply the certain stimuli, external stimuli over time, then that can shape your meaning, shape the way that you go.
• 4:01
  Arky: And uh when I was a younger fella, I would often be asked questions by uh people in authority over me that were very difficult to fully be accountable for.
• 4:12
  Arky: So I would observe like my friends, the way they interacted with the uh peers.
• 4:17
  Arky: I also, even at school though, I also always struggled a little bit with the concept of the teacher having authority in areas where it didn't feel that they they had authority just because they had more power than you, that they they would assert this authority.
• 4:37
  Arky: And because I've always been quite a wide thinker, I've always thought about like the broad picture.
• 4:43
  Arky: Even when I was little, I don't know if it's a gift from God, gift from the universe, whatever you want to call it.
• 4:47
  Arky: I I could see patterns early on, and I've been that's been a gift throughout my life.
• 4:52
  Arky: But those patterns led me to think like, why are you acting this way?
• 4:56
  Arky: What made you do that?
• 4:57
  Arky: And then as I grew, I kind of realized, and and this is this is not to say I'm better or worse because I'm not, we're we're all individual, we're all sovereign, but I was able to see patterns in people, and I realized that a lot of these people that did like have this domineering personality, or they did have this kind of this sense of self-importance where they would impose on others, and also people that would retreat into themselves, be quiet.
• 5:26
  Arky: That many of it was patterned, and you could almost pick what was going on, and also you realize that a lot of that was defense mechanisms as well.
• 5:37
  Arky: It wasn't that they are ultra confident, the loudest person on the room was actually possibly the most scared, and the one that forced the most authority, often for I realized it's because that maybe they weren't as competent as they wanted the world to predict or they were scared.
• 5:54
  Arky: And so as I realized all this, it started to knit together that the reality is that all of us are just trying to get through in a way that is good, but because of the way we've learned, because of our life experiences, it's kind of forced us into a box.
• 6:15
  Arky: And I've just I realized at that point that hang on a minute, this isn't a box, we're not in a box from the moment we are born until the moment we we leave this earth is an opportunity to grow, and so I guess to answer the question is I realized because of my interaction with others, because of what made me uncomfortable, because of what I didn't understand, I realized that most people they don't have all the answers.
• 6:43
  Arky: So not most, no one has all the answers, and so therefore, community is both beautiful because it can bring a tapestry of shared experience, shared knowledge together, but also it is individually there is good and bad in all of us, and I guess mapping that as a initially as a defense mechanism to for my psyche to understand how to interface properly with the world, and then secondary, it just became an interest because it worked, and mapping and understanding helped me navigate the world better.
• 7:17
  Jeanne: That's great, that's a great answer.
• 7:19
  Jeanne: You made me think of something when you started talking about the boxes, like think about the boxes under the Christmas tree.
• 7:24
  Jeanne: What is it?
• 7:25
  Jeanne: The bigger box is the one everybody wants because they think something great is in it.
• 7:29
  Jeanne: So you're saying oftentimes people that are the loudest at a party are not really the most comfortable.
• 7:37
  Jeanne: And also the biggest box under the Christmas tree is not always the best surprise.
• 7:41
  Jeanne: Could be an iron or something I don't really want for Christmas.
• 7:47
  Jeanne: But anyway, I like the way you say that people aren't boxed.
• 7:51
  Jeanne: So when you kept thinking through these things, at some point that curiosity stopped being just an interest and became something you built a platform around.
• 8:01
  Jeanne: So, what was the moment or the slow realization when you knew that wasn't just a personal fascination anymore?
• 8:07
  Arky: Yeah, so there's a there's a couple of things.
• 8:09
  Arky: So about eight years ago, I published a book um called Applied Stoicism.
• 8:15
  Arky: And stoicism meshed really nicely with my framework, in that my framework had great insight.
• 8:24
  Arky: But one issue I have, and a lot of creators I believe uh struggle with this is I can see one idea here, but then another seven ideas appear at the same time simultaneously.
• 8:36
  Arky: Now, that is sometimes super healthy when I'm in a brainstorming stage, when I'm in a fact-finding stage, because you're able to examine a plethora of ideas, but when you utilize it negatively, so let's say, for example, you had an interaction with someone that you know there was maybe a slight adrenaline release, there was a little bit of an anxiety cycle that kicked in.
• 9:00
  Arky: So your um sympathetic nervous system had released adrenaline because of words.
• 9:06
  Arky: And the truth is that that system was designed for when we used to have to run away from saber-toothed tigers, it wasn't designed for a chat with the boss in the office, and then you'd replay this a thousand times in your head.
• 9:18
  Arky: And what I found is that those same that same superpower was also a weakness because I would imagine 10 different catastrophic outcomes from this one small interaction.
• 9:32
  Arky: And let me tell you this: in the the 20 years, 25 years I've been, you know, doing my thing full-time, I've only had one really thing that was was um, you know, could have been done better.
• 9:45
  Arky: But even that, it was settled within the hour.
• 9:48
  Arky: But in my brain, I'd catastrophized it.
• 9:51
  Arky: So therefore, the stoicism basically taught me to control in its fullest what is mine and let go of what is beyond my control, and that meshing with my deep fascination in human behavior began the journey.
• 10:12
  Arky: No, it was it was definitely not the there is no end, but it was definitely demarcation line in my history where I was like, ah, so this is what's happening.
• 10:22
  Arky: This is one framework you can use to make sense of it, and then kind of meshed it together.
• 10:29
  Jeanne: Well, okay, so the discipline that I was in most of my career has been project management at whatever level that was.
• 10:37
  Jeanne: And, you know, part of project management is risk assessment.
• 10:41
  Jeanne: That's a big, you know, better do a risk assessment to when you get started with something and you continue that risk process throughout the project.
• 10:50
  Jeanne: And so you're always thinking for those scenarios, you're always looking for the negative.
• 10:54
  Jeanne: What would happen if?
• 10:56
  Jeanne: Is this a risk we have to watch?
• 10:58
  Jeanne: It and it's constantly playing in my mind all the time.
• 11:01
  Jeanne: So I sort of applied that to my own self.
• 11:04
  Jeanne: And so, where you say you went in and you had created all these catastrophic outcomes when you would walk in to talk to your boss, but you learn to limit that.
• 11:13
  Jeanne: You'll have to help me with that.
• 11:15
  Jeanne: I come by it honestly.
• 11:18
  Jeanne: I want to know the risk, and I always want to think, could I have done better?
• 11:21
  Jeanne: What happened?
• 11:22
  Jeanne: What is she heard what I said, or he heard what I said differently than I think I meant it.
• 11:28
  Jeanne: You know, it just plays on and on and on.
• 11:31
  Arky: So it's an interesting one because the truth is that the brain has not evolved the way that society has evolved in the last 2,000 years.
• 11:43
  Arky: Uh and what that means is that we are now living in ways that the human wasn't ever designed for.
• 11:53
  Arky: And what that comes back to is the tribal kind of need, survival.
• 11:59
  Arky: This is why community, this is why friendship, this is why loyalty, honesty, respect are so important.
• 12:06
  Arky: Because as we evolved, getting berries, harvesting meat, living in our communities, everybody had a defined role.
• 12:15
  Arky: And it was obvious when someone was performing, someone wasn't performing.
• 12:19
  Arky: Now that brain still exists now.
• 12:24
  Arky: Those same reward systems that helped us survive, helped us, you know, live through an ice age still exists now.
• 12:32
  Arky: But the modern framework is such that it is so safe that we perceive threats to ourselves that would be like, say, for example, am I gonna get fired?
• 12:45
  Arky: Am I going to, you know, not get the pay rise?
• 12:48
  Arky: Am I not going to get the job?
• 12:49
  Arky: And even socially, or do they like me or not like me?
• 12:53
  Arky: Triggers systems that are actually designed to keep us knitted with a very small tight community and be of value to that community and and them of value to us because the idea of this 150 comes back to what did we need to do?
• 13:15
  Arky: And around that number was just enough that people could take care of home and people go and find food and then shelter, defence, and all that.
• 13:23
  Arky: Now, as we developed, and I won't don't worry, this is this is I'll make this point quickly, but as we developed agriculture, farming, housing, medicine, a lot of those dangers got taken away.
• 13:35
  Arky: But the brain's reward system is still there, the old brain, the adrenaline system of fight or flight.
• 13:40
  Arky: And as I made the joke earlier, running away from a saber-toothed tiger, basically, if you look back at the um olden days, the the Vikings came, you know, and and and you had to you had to fight because if you didn't, you were gone.
• 13:53
  Arky: And at that time, it was absolutely right to worry the Vikings might come, but it's not about the worry, it's about what you can do with it.
• 14:01
  Arky: And the thing in the modern world is we've set up a system where there are a million things to worry about, but very little that you can actually control.
• 14:11
  Arky: And that outside of you, outside of you, of course, bring it in.
• 14:16
  Arky: And so the whole philosophy for me is trying to understand uh taking maximal responsibility and maximal truth seeking for the things that are within my remit, within my control, and letting go of things that I cannot influence the outcome of.
• 14:37
  Arky: Because if you can do something, just do it.
• 14:40
  Arky: But if it's truly beyond your capacity, worrying about it will not change an outcome.
• 14:46
  Arky: Thinking about it, even will not change the end outcome.
• 14:50
  Arky: So this is how this is what it evolved to is if you can do something, so say, for example, you know, whatever the job is, let's just say you're working in an apple farm and you don't pick enough apples.
• 15:01
  Arky: Either pick more apples, or if you're not, if you're literally at your limit, you're doing your best, find another job.
• 15:07
  Arky: Because that's a practical thing you can do.
• 15:08
  Arky: But what you can't do is you can't make the tree grow more apples that are easily accessible.
• 15:14
  Jeanne: True.
• 15:14
  Jeanne: And you know, the way you're stating that is very much like the serenity prayer.
• 15:20
  Jeanne: I don't know if you've ever heard that or been around it.
• 15:23
  Jeanne: It's like, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
• 15:31
  Arky: That's really good.
• 15:32
  Arky: I actually didn't know that, but it is that is very close to philosophy.
• 15:37
  Jeanne: Yes.
• 15:37
  Jeanne: I was hearing that in my brain when you were talking, and I was like, wow, that's really good.
• 15:42
  Jeanne: And if you can help people along the way to get that right, that's the thing.
• 15:47
  Jeanne: The prayer sounds good, and it's like, I think I did a needlework on it and it's on my wall.
• 15:52
  Jeanne: Well, I know I did.
• 15:53
  Jeanne: I don't know why I say I think.
• 15:55
  Jeanne: I know it's on my wall in the other room, but you know, I can read it, but I can't put it into practice.
• 16:01
  Jeanne: I still don't have the wisdom.
• 16:04
  Arky: But also not trying to, you know, uh reflect on sorry, reduce responsibility, but the truth is we are also biological creatures.
• 16:15
  Arky: And so a lot of that stimuli, a lot of those triggers, it's not necessarily that we can ever fully control them.
• 16:24
  Arky: It's just that by being aware of it, you can be like, ah, I know you, I see you, and then you know, not acting on it.
• 16:31
  Arky: And so I still definitely experience all of those things.
• 16:37
  Arky: It's just I will look them in the eye now and try to be honest with myself.
• 16:42
  Arky: So maximally truth seeking is probably the best way to do it.
• 16:46
  Arky: However, it doesn't mean I don't ever feel inappropriate anxiety because I do.
• 16:52
  Arky: It's just instead of letting it spiral into this doom cycle, I generally nip it in the bud the earliest possible opportunity.
• 17:01
  Jeanne: Oh, that's very good.
• 17:02
  Jeanne: So self-awareness sounds like a good thing, and it is, but I imagine looking closely at your own patterns isn't always comfortable.
• 17:10
  Jeanne: So, was there something you discovered about yourself along the way that you really didn't want to see?
• 17:16
  Arky: Well, you see, this is where I will caution anyone because you are on a journey, and the thing that you did at that time with that situation most of the time was the best you could have done at that time with the information you had available.
• 17:41
  Arky: Very, very, very few of us go out to maliciously cause harm, to maliciously be negligent, to do things that would make other people suffer.
• 17:53
  Arky: Incredibly few people do that.
• 17:55
  Arky: Almost everyone is has good intentions, but the the the media will tell you different, but that is not true.
• 18:01
  Arky: Almost everyone sets out with the information they've got available at that time to do what they think is best at that time.
• 18:08
  Arky: So to hold yourself to fully to account for the decisions you've made that at the time you believe were the best is a really big responsibility and it's hard to do.
• 18:18
  Arky: So now I will answer your question.
• 18:20
  Arky: I just want to just put that little caveat in there.
• 18:22
  Arky: But absolutely, so how I do it is I will constantly reflect on how I can be better, how I can improve, and I take feedback from many of my daily activities.
• 18:38
  Arky: So when I've had an interaction with someone that did cause me to either feel good or feel bad, I will have that conversation with myself.
• 18:47
  Arky: Okay, what about that could have done better?
• 18:50
  Arky: And the thing is that I think that my biggest one, and it's pretty hard to admit this, but it it's true, and it it's it's not shameful, but it is I used to very, very, very heavily take responsibility for how other people's feelings.
• 19:10
  Arky: So almost I was like, you know, the empath type.
• 19:13
  Arky: So I would pick up if someone was sad in a room, or someone wasn't comfortable, or someone was dissatisfied, and then I felt it was my jump role to take that away, to make them feel better, and then over time I realized that that burden wasn't mine.
• 19:32
  Arky: I couldn't own that, I couldn't take their pain because the more I took, the more was taken.
• 19:39
  Arky: And the problem with it is that it was never my millstone to wear around my neck, and in letting go of that, it doesn't mean when it is asked for that you cannot show, but you cannot take other people's pain as your own and try to make it right because in doing so, you're taking agency from them, and so that was my realization that through my empathy, through my ability to read a room, through my ability to feel other people's feelings, I was actually taking agency from them and allowing them their journey to recover.
• 20:18
  Jeanne: So I don't understand that term, agency.
• 20:21
  Jeanne: When you say agency from them, is that maybe the way you say it in Australia and I don't get it, or maybe I just don't get it.
• 20:29
  Arky: Yeah, no, no, understood.
• 20:31
  Arky: So to take agency, to take control, is that they are responsible for themselves and their journey.
• 20:37
  Arky: It is up to them to come to you for asking for help.
• 20:41
  Arky: It's up to them to vocalize what they need.
• 20:43
  Arky: It's not for me to predetermine what someone else needs because of how I feel that they feel.
• 20:48
  Arky: And um previously I might have jumped in early and been like, oh, you're sad today, or you and it was taking away their own responsibility, their own journey, not allowing growth for them because you were trying to solve problems that you weren't asked to solve.
• 21:05
  Arky: And so it doesn't mean if you see someone struggling with shopping bags, you don't offer to help them, you see someone crying, you don't shut the door and leave them.
• 21:15
  Arky: What I'm saying is on those the smaller ones where you would pick up on a non-verbal cue, and it might not even exist because some of that was you projecting.
• 21:25
  Arky: And so I guess what I'm saying is that if help was asked for or in undeniable need, that's okay.
• 21:34
  Arky: But I stopped looking to solve other people's problems when I wasn't invited to do so.
• 21:39
  Arky: Does that make more sense?
• 21:41
  Jeanne: Yeah, that's perfect.
• 21:42
  Jeanne: That's perfect.
• 21:43
  Jeanne: I thought it might be that, but I just never heard that word used in that way.
• 21:47
  Jeanne: But I I get it because that means you're acting for them and they they aren't given the opportunity to reach out for help or to fix it or repair it for themselves.
• 21:59
  Jeanne: themselves because sometimes I make mistakes and I get down.
• 22:03
  Jeanne: If somebody came to me and said, Oh, are you down?
• 22:06
  Jeanne: How can I help you?
• 22:07
  Jeanne: Let's go have a coffee or let's go to lunch or whatever.
• 22:11
  Jeanne: And I'm just needing to, you know, pull back and work it out myself, then yeah, I understand how that would is that going in the right direction?
• 22:21
  Arky: It is.
• 22:21
  Arky: I mean, it is.
• 22:22
  Arky: It is absolutely.
• 22:23
  Arky: And and I would take it even to a very, very low level.
• 22:27
  Arky: Like for say, for example, you see someone sad, and then you take the responsibility onto yourself instead of just letting it sit to try and make them smile when they might not need to smile at that point in time.
• 22:39
  Arky: Now, again, you can only control you and and they control them, but it's often not being comfortable with discomfort that is actually itself is a problem because the truth is the world is filled with discomfort, and you have to allow people to grow for themselves.
• 22:57
  Arky: You can't keep taking that pain away.
• 22:59
  Arky: Because if you do, you don't allow them to experience it.
• 23:03
  Arky: And it's through growth, through hardship that growth will come.
• 23:07
  Jeanne: Yeah, that's that's a great way of looking at it.
• 23:10
  Jeanne: Um, yeah, that's wonderful to hear you say it that way because the world revolves around let's fix every problem, let's fix um, you know, homelessness, let's fix people that are addicted, let's put things in place, let's give people money because that'll help them.
• 23:27
  Jeanne: You know, it's always trying to fix, fix, fix.
• 23:29
  Jeanne: But sometimes it's like they have to stand up for themselves, and we're not allowing that at times.
• 23:35
  Arky: On an individual level, it's exactly the same.
• 23:37
  Arky: You have to allow someone to grow.
• 23:40
  Arky: And I think that you've ever seen, like in the in the movies where you've got a child who grew up as a like as a as a king, and the reason I'm using the movies is that I don't want to single anyone out, but we'll we'll all know it from modern history, where the child is given everything and they never ever have to suffer, they never have to feel pain.
• 24:01
  Arky: Every whim is catered for, and then years later you see them hurting people for their own pleasure because they were never told no, but they were also never given the opportunity to develop.
• 24:13
  Arky: And I would argue that the biggest thing that makes us grow is adversity where we have agency.
• 24:23
  Arky: Now, I do draw the line, let's say that you're, you know, you're locked in a basement and someone else has complete control over your life, then this is a different story.
• 24:32
  Arky: But for most people, most of the time, there is agency.
• 24:37
  Arky: And sorry, there is uh self-ownership.
• 24:39
  Arky: And if you remove that self-ownership from an external force, you deny them the opportunity to grow.
• 24:46
  Jeanne: Yeah, that's that's very insightful.
• 24:48
  Jeanne: Thank you for sharing all that.
• 24:50
  Jeanne: You talk about stoicism alongside personality, and that's an interesting pairing.
• 24:55
  Jeanne: So stoicism is about responding rather than reacting, staying steady when life doesn't cooperate.
• 25:01
  Jeanne: Has there been a chapter of your life when you had to practice what you preach where the philosophy got tested in a real way?
• 25:08
  Arky: Oh, yeah, no, 100%.
• 25:09
  Arky: I mean, the stoic thing has helped me so, so much.
• 25:13
  Arky: So we we sit on this ball that evolves around this bigger ball that's hot, that sits in this universe that is is infinite.
• 25:23
  Arky: And the idea that we are special is absolutely true beyond belief.
• 25:32
  Arky: The very fact that we exist is astronomically ridiculously low.
• 25:38
  Arky: It's almost impossible, odds, that we even exist.
• 25:41
  Arky: Okay.
• 25:42
  Arky: So taking that as a baseline, you know, you you can put into perspective the challenges that you face and where stoicism can help you because the very fact that you exist, that you can breathe, you're already winning.
• 25:55
  Arky: Now, that doesn't mean that what comes at you isn't real.
• 26:00
  Arky: And so probably the biggest one for me was I bought a car on finance, and this was a life-turning point.
• 26:10
  Arky: I was 20 years old.
• 26:12
  Arky: I bought a car on finance, and it was great.
• 26:16
  Arky: You know, this really nice car, but it was my annual salary in debt at like 18% interest.
• 26:24
  Arky: I just had no idea what I was doing, and I couldn't afford insurance on it.
• 26:29
  Arky: And two weeks later, I put it into a wall um with five guys in the car.
• 26:36
  Arky: Luckily, I knew everyone, it was dealt with from you know, no one was badly injured, thank goodness.
• 26:43
  Arky: But this car sat there in a lot for the next five years, completely written off, and the the debt was still owed.
• 26:56
  Arky: And so at first I got really down because I now had to sacrifice life energy to generate revenue to pay for something that no longer existed in any functional way.
• 27:10
  Arky: So I had paid a heavy price that then involved ongoing sacrifice for something that no longer existed in any meaningful way.
• 27:19
  Arky: And I got a bit depressed really because it just didn't make any sense to me.
• 27:24
  Arky: And I was using probably 30% of my wages to service this debt at the time because I wasn't well paid.
• 27:30
  Arky: And eventually I realized I had to change the way I was thinking.
• 27:36
  Arky: And I'd come across a book from Marcus Aurelius called Meditations.
• 27:41
  Arky: Um, he was an emperor of Rome, and he he seemed to deal with whatever was thrown at him in a way that was with a not a cold detachment, he was very human, but in a way that allowed him to actually control what he could.
• 27:56
  Arky: And the truth was, once the car was gone, it was gone.
• 28:00
  Arky: And I accepted that I'm now going to have a 500, because at the time I was living in England, a 500-pound car, which is about an $800 car.
• 28:11
  Arky: And do you know what?
• 28:14
  Arky: I've never gone back.
• 28:15
  Arky: And my entire life changed at that moment because I then started to think about okay, well, what can I control?
• 28:21
  Arky: Well, what I can control is I can buy a car for that is safe for cheap, and then I can afford insurance.
• 28:29
  Arky: And then, do you know what?
• 28:30
  Arky: Touch wood.
• 28:31
  Arky: I've never had an accident again.
• 28:32
  Arky: But nonetheless, I've never been in a situation where I'm beholden to life energy being sacrificed for something that the other car does absolutely fine.
• 28:43
  Arky: So so that I I know that's a bit of a like a crazy analogy, but truth is, I realized that what do you need versus what do you want?
• 28:52
  Arky: And the stoicism part was letting go of letting go of the things that was beyond my control.
• 28:58
  Jeanne: Yeah, it's not a crazy uh analogy.
• 29:01
  Jeanne: I'm seeing I'm sitting in my mind.
• 29:03
  Jeanne: Uh sometimes I kind of look off thinking because you're talking about 22U, and what did you want the car for?
• 29:12
  Jeanne: Fun, joyrides, chick magnet.
• 29:15
  Jeanne: You were gonna do it no matter what, right?
• 29:18
  Arky: Oh, absolutely.
• 29:19
  Arky: But at the same time, when it became like that the loss, it was very apparent that I was working to pay for something that didn't exist.
• 29:27
  Arky: And I think that's what hurt me because I'd sacrificed life energy for something that I, if I'd have just thought about it, I could have bought a car for half that price that was still beautiful and then paid insurance on it.
• 29:40
  Jeanne: Nice.
• 29:40
  Jeanne: Yeah, it's a hard lesson to learn, but it it it's carried with you for the rest of your life.
• 29:45
  Jeanne: So you won't overspend or over uh estimate.
• 29:49
  Jeanne: Like sometimes I'd like to get a um, you know, Range Rover or something that's very expensive in the US.
• 29:56
  Jeanne: So never mind.
• 29:57
  Jeanne: I'll stay with my car.
• 29:59
  Jeanne: Don't want to do something that puts me in harm's way, actually.
• 30:03
  Jeanne: So when people go through PersonalityPeak and start to see themselves more clearly, what shifts?
• 30:10
  Jeanne: What do you actually see change in people when they are start understanding themselves?
• 30:15
  Arky: Well, the idea is uh actually let me just give a little story.
• 30:19
  Arky: So when we first launched it, we put it out to a few hundred people because I wanted to know what does this give you?
• 30:30
  Arky: And the response was overwhelming in that the accuracy, because it is across six dimensions.
• 30:37
  Arky: For example, the Myers Briggs is is four-dimensional, the modified one is five-dimensional, so five sets of of binaries.
• 30:45
  Arky: The big five is five dimensions, it speaks for itself, and you you make a choice, and and we went six dimensions for a couple of reasons.
• 30:54
  Arky: One is that two to the power of gives 64, and 64 is is a really is a really clean number.
• 31:02
  Arky: But what we were finding is that a lot of people took the test, they said, Yep, I can see myself right now, and it it makes sense, you know.
• 31:11
  Arky: Like, of course, it's not all you because you you're not defined that easily, but but most of it people could relate to, you know, let's say 85%, 90%, like, yep, that's me.
• 31:21
  Arky: Boom.
• 31:22
  Arky: And that was great, but almost everyone said what now.
• 31:28
  Arky: And so where PersonalityPeak differs in the what now, it sits in that pocket because it offers you ongoing quizzes in that you can take a test on how you handle dilemmas that's based on your personality.
• 31:43
  Arky: Uh, you can the you can answer a question, question out of 32 questions that is the what I believe is one of the most detailed available.
• 31:51
  Arky: And I will personally curate your answer based on all the research I've done around your archetype, around your personality, and then take into account your scoring.
• 32:00
  Arky: And ultimately, we do we do phone calls as well where we can actually just talk through your personality and what you want to do with it.
• 32:07
  Arky: Now, back to the original question of the PersonalityPeak and and what we wanted to do was we actually wanted a little bit of fun, we wanted a bit of joy, and we wanted to give people a direction.
• 32:20
  Arky: So the whole concept of it, the the mirror I used earlier, I I use it all the time because genuinely, genuinely, that is one of the core foundations to it.
• 32:31
  Arky: So when you look in the mirror, okay, you adjust your hair, you brush your teeth, you might, you know, check there's no sleep in the eyes, put some moisturizer on, whatever you do in the mirror.
• 32:44
  Arky: But it is just a snapshot of you at that moment.
• 32:48
  Arky: If you go out and you eat a burger with sesame seed on it, you may get some sesame seed in your teeth.
• 32:54
  Arky: You know, you don't know it, but it wasn't there in the mirror earlier.
• 32:57
  Arky: So all we've tried to do is show people a snapshot of themselves, hold a mirror to them at the time they take the test, give a genuine opportunity to reflect.
• 33:09
  Arky: And then if you want to come on the journey with us, we do have a method.
• 33:14
  Arky: Well, I've developed a method because stoicism is one path, but it's not the path.
• 33:19
  Arky: So I've developed a thing called the three-way system, where I've looked at stoicism as one way.
• 33:27
  Arky: I call it nature, but it's about surrender as the second way.
• 33:32
  Arky: And then the third way is called the PEAK way, which is a framework, and the K at the end stands for keep or kill.
• 33:38
  Arky: And normally one of those paths will work for most situations, but the it's all very easy.
• 33:47
  Arky: In easy is not the right word, sorry.
• 33:49
  Arky: It is all very self-evident once you begin to practice it because it fundamentally comes down to input and then a logical, felt, meaningful output that gives you a solution that is not just best for you, but is best for the situation.
• 34:09
  Arky: And so, PersonalityPeak, what it aims to do is it aims to give you a mirror, and that's all it does.
• 34:14
  Arky: It aims to put you on the map, but the direction that you walk has to be your direction.
• 34:21
  Arky: And there's there's a there's an old story about the footprints in the sand, and there's two sets of footprints, and then at a time there's one set of footprints when they're when you're being carried, but but when when they're carrying each other, because at times you do need to lean on people, but where PersonalityPeak would pick it, pick up is at times you're at a crossroads, and the footprints might go their own way, they might diversify.
• 34:48
  Arky: And when you are at the crossroad, when you are unsure of a direction, taking that quick test, little snapshot in time of what you are feeling right now, because we've done it so you can drag it to the exact percentage that you feel if you want to.
• 35:05
  Arky: But we've also I've also labeled it in a way where you can drag it to like, yeah, this is me.
• 35:09
  Arky: You'll have to think too much, but you can.
• 35:12
  Arky: And then not only that, you can then map over time how that's progressed, and that's included in the free tier.
• 35:19
  Arky: It will track your personality over time, it will track your percentage scores over time so you can see where you are.
• 35:27
  Arky: What you can do with that is either you can keep walking with us or you can use that and then find your own way.
• 35:35
  Arky: There is no right answers.
• 35:36
  Arky: All we ever want to do is we want to show you a mirror and we want to give you a starting point on the map, but the trig points, the top of the mountains, there for you to decide which direction to walk in.
• 35:48
  Jeanne: Very nice.
• 35:49
  Jeanne: You've written that a man loses his life every time he calls the truth inconvenient and chooses the warm lie instead.
• 35:56
  Jeanne: That's a very striking line and it sounds personal.
• 36:00
  Jeanne: What did you have to stop lying to yourself about and what did that cost you?
• 36:06
  Arky: I think that with self is that there are times when you can look in the mirror and not like what you see.
• 36:18
  Arky: There are times when you're on the map and the magnet is all around you, so the compass spins in all directions, and it is not obvious which way to go.
• 36:28
  Arky: Now, there was a guy who took a ship to the Antarctic and he got basically shipwrecked and walked for days and days through whether that he should never have survived.
• 36:44
  Arky: Uh Ernest Shackleton, I think his name was.
• 36:47
  Arky: I'd I'd be happy to be stand corrected.
• 36:49
  Arky: And he he got through no matter the odds, and no matter the cost of survival.
• 36:57
  Arky: And I think that for me, sometimes maybe the cost you've paid to be liked by others was too high.
• 37:08
  Arky: The price that you paid to feel included, to feel part of a group, to feel that you belonged was a price that wasn't worth paying.
• 37:18
  Arky: Because the easier I the realization was the more available you are, the more people will take you for granted.
• 37:28
  Arky: Whereas I used to think that if I was always there, that I was always be valuable, and so changing that into mutually beneficial interactions and genuinely mutual beneficial interactions.
• 37:44
  Arky: Because it wor genuinely mutual is it works both ways.
• 37:48
  Arky: We both win.
• 37:49
  Arky: Whereas previously I might have been happy to lose to keep someone else satisfied, whereas learning to walk away when something was no longer of mutual benefit, and I don't mean in any given day, of course not, because there's times when someone needs the car to be pushed, there's times when you're sitting in the car getting pushed, that exists, but over time, realizing that you are consistently giving and receiving only angst and then letting go of that was a big turning point for me because I used to want to please people even at my expense.
• 38:29
  Arky: But once I realized that in not doing so, in working in the pocket of win-wins, in working of the pocket of mutual respect, mutual humility, that actually allowed me to have a much, much better life.
• 38:45
  Jeanne: Wonderful.
• 38:46
  Jeanne: I don't know how you put all this together.
• 38:48
  Jeanne: It's a lot, I think.
• 38:49
  Jeanne: And I think you've how long have you worked on um personality profile?
• 38:54
  Arky: So PersonalityPeak, so my whole life.
• 38:56
  Arky: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 38:57
  Arky: It it is it is ultimately there's a profile to it.
• 39:00
  Jeanne: I know I remember going out to this site.
• 39:02
  Arky: So So the um the idea is that it's been a lifetime in the making.
• 39:08
  Arky: I think that when I wrote uh don't give too s words was a good point for me of bringing because I wrote that after Applied Stoicism, so that would have been like six years ago.
• 39:18
  Arky: I wrote the the the don't give to so I wrote that book as well, and and what that did that pulled together a lot of concepts.
• 39:25
  Arky: So I read a heavily about like uh the stories about narcissists.
• 39:28
  Arky: I think Ernest Shackleton's in that book, I think that's where that comes from.
• 39:32
  Arky: But the truth that in all honesty, it's been it's been an accumulation of life work and then four to five years of building the archetypes, then marrying them up, reading, for example, um, I've got uh like uh I've got Sigmund Freud, I've got uh Young, I I read all I read a lot of the classics for psychology, the foundations.
• 39:58
  Arky: Now, this is what I have created is fun.
• 40:01
  Arky: This is not it's it's not a diagnosis, it's supposed to be it's supposed to be fun, but insightful fun.
• 40:07
  Arky: And so in answer to the question, I started putting it together seriously about five years ago, and then about I'd managed to save up enough money to put it into actual action about 17 months ago in terms of build and structure, and then I I actually have only just finished the while it's been out in the world a little while, I've only just finished the actual full structure about four weeks ago.
• 40:37
  Arky: Where it's ready, it's ready almost completely.
• 40:40
  Arky: The only thing that's coming is I have written a number of books that I didn't publish, and I'm opening on this that was the foundation for Peak, and they will be getting published in a library that I'm about to launch on the site that will be available for subscribers.
• 40:58
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 40:59
  Jeanne: So I know the reason why I ask you how long it had been in there, because I I think after we've talked before, it's really important for people to know this is not half baked.
• 41:08
  Jeanne: This is years of research.
• 41:09
  Jeanne: This is stuff that you've lived, stuff that you've watched other people live, and you've put it in.
• 41:16
  Jeanne: And like you said, it's not a diagnosis, it's not uh, you know, therapy from a psychiatrist.
• 41:22
  Jeanne: It's just for fun, but it is helpful and it can help people turn their lives around to see who they really are.
• 41:29
  Jeanne: What how they're perceiving the world.
• 41:33
  Jeanne: I mean, I should take that test.
• 41:36
  Arky: Yeah, it's just that insight into that moment, how you're seeing the world.
• 41:41
  Arky: But the beauty with the moment is, as I said earlier on, you are but a series of moments.
• 41:46
  Arky: You exist only in the now.
• 41:49
  Arky: The past has shaped us, but it doesn't have to define us, and the future is not yet written.
• 41:53
  Arky: Sometimes just seeing that snapshot, it's like, okay, what I would advise very strongly is even if you think that's definitely not me, say one element of it.
• 42:05
  Arky: I would stop and ask yourself, why am I so adamant that that isn't me?
• 42:11
  Arky: Because the truth is, we are, we are all to certain degrees, things that most humans experience to certain or lesser degrees.
• 42:22
  Arky: So let's just say this.
• 42:24
  Arky: And let's say so from a positive, you will have a capacity for love that is even beyond what you fully realize.
• 42:32
  Arky: But the inside that same person with that capacity for love, that capacity for joy feeling, genuine shared emotion.
• 42:41
  Arky: There is also that same person that angers when someone cuts them up in traffic.
• 42:46
  Arky: And that anger is just as real.
• 42:49
  Arky: But what I'm trying to do is show you, shine a light onto those blind spots, shine a light onto those shadows.
• 42:55
  Arky: And it doesn't mean you can ever own them.
• 42:59
  Arky: You can never get over them because it's part of you, but you can control them, you can keep them on a leash because through ownership, because if you don't shine a light into the dark, you can pretend nothing's there, but it is.
• 43:13
  Jeanne: That's pretty profound.
• 43:14
  Jeanne: And ending on that note seems kind of um harsh, but we need to transition over to our signature game, Two Truths and a Lie.
• 43:24
  Jeanne: So anything else you wanted to add to what our discussion's been?
• 43:28
  Arky: No, just it's been wonderful, and um I'm really uh glad that you were able to, you know, clarify the points that you needed to, because I've obviously been living this for years, and so it's comes out, it's not easy.
• 43:40
  Arky: It's hard to say some of this, but it it brings me a genuine joy to share it with the world.
• 43:45
  Jeanne: Oh, well, thanks for sharing it here, because I uh I think it's fantastic.
• 43:50
  Jeanne: So let's transition.
• 43:51
  Jeanne: So for those listening, here's how we play.
• 43:54
  Jeanne: Arky has provided me with three headlines about his life, not necessarily about what he's doing now.
• 43:59
  Jeanne: Now, but things that have happened to him in life.
• 44:02
  Jeanne: And uh, we're gonna go over those three headlines.
• 44:05
  Jeanne: I'm gonna guess two of them are true and one of them is a lie, and I'm gonna guess which one I think is the lie.
• 44:11
  Jeanne: Then Arky is gonna walk us through each of those headlines, tell us a little bit more about that story, and then he won't reveal the truth until the end.
• 44:19
  Jeanne: You can play along with us, so let's get going.
• 44:22
  Jeanne: This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts.
• 44:30
  Jeanne: Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, Life can be different.
• 44:40
  Jeanne: Whether you're navigating a career shift, dreaming about a new direction, or standing at the crossroads wondering if it's time for your own 180-degree turn, Rebel 180 is a reminder you don't need permission to change your story.
• 44:54
  Jeanne: And now, as we open the door to our second sponsor, we're stepping into the world of tech.
• 44:58
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• 45:24
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• 45:30
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• 45:32
  Jeanne: So headline number one: Arky spent his teenage summers competing to become the greatest carrot packer in the factory.
• 45:44
  Jeanne: That one still makes me laugh.
• 45:46
  Jeanne: While raising number two headline, while raising tiny kids, Arky secretly thought an overseas military deployment sounded relaxing.
• 45:55
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 45:56
  Jeanne: And number three, the public speaking course Arky joined turned out to be community theater group, and he ended up playing a very convincing drunk police officer.
• 46:09
  Jeanne: So I don't know.
• 46:11
  Jeanne: I'm gonna guess the number two is a lie, but don't tell me, and you just go over the stories, and then I'll see if I got it right at the end.
• 46:19
  Jeanne: So number one, let's get going.
• 46:21
  Arky: All right, number one.
• 46:22
  Arky: So the Carrot Factory was a really it was an interesting one because I needed it to survive.
• 46:29
  Arky: I had rent to pay.
• 46:30
  Arky: I was 16, I'd moved out already.
• 46:33
  Arky: I had rent to pay, so it was a it was a meaningful job.
• 46:37
  Arky: But the uh like car insurance, um basic survival.
• 46:43
  Jeanne: Now the thing with it is the car insurance that you didn't buy.
• 46:48
  Arky: This was a bit younger.
• 46:49
  Arky: So I had uh that I had a at the time I had a 500 pound Ford Fiesta.
• 46:53
  Arky: This was when I was a bit younger, yeah.
• 46:55
  Arky: So it must have been 17, let's say 17.
• 46:57
  Arky: So the idea with the carrots was that you basically um are stuck on this production line, and it is absolutely mind-numbing.
• 47:09
  Arky: And the manager on the production line was a little Hitler, so he had very little power in his life, very little power, and he was actually one of my core inspirations in life to do better, to be more efficient, work harder, because he wouldn't let us speak.
• 47:26
  Arky: So you had to stand there putting carrots in a bag for eight hours a day for £1.85 an hour, which is about three dollars an hour.
• 47:36
  Arky: And um in short, the only thing that you could do to stay sane was to try and beat yourself, putting the best carrots in the bag and getting the fewest rejections.
• 47:49
  Arky: So fundamentally, if you're going to do something, do it well.
• 47:54
  Arky: And so if your role at that time was to put carrots into a bag, then try to be the best at it.
• 48:02
  Jeanne: They were in a bag, they weren't in a can, they were in a bag.
• 48:05
  Arky: Yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 48:06
  Arky: They were they're basically it was the ones that you know you get in the supermarket, like in the plastic bag, where it's like one kilo, two kilos, three kilos.
• 48:13
  Jeanne: Oh, are they frozen?
• 48:14
  Arky: No, the uh fresh ones, fresh carrots.
• 48:17
  Jeanne: Oh, okay.
• 48:17
  Jeanne: All right, gotcha.
• 48:19
  Jeanne: Like the little snack ones or something.
• 48:21
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 48:22
  Arky: Yeah, you can peel them and you know put them in your stew or whatever, but yeah, it was um well, I mean, one good thing about that you could get as much carrots as you wanted, so I could see in the dark quite well for a while.
• 48:35
  Jeanne: Good one.
• 48:36
  Jeanne: All right, number two.
• 48:38
  Arky: Uh number two, so when my kids were little, uh, I remember my wife would uh, you know, ask me to help, which is absolutely right, and so she should.
• 48:48
  Arky: And I fathered the kids, so I should help with all that.
• 48:53
  Arky: But I was also like my second one was born when I think when I was 23, and still young and still stupid.
• 48:59
  Arky: And I'd been home for a little while, maybe a couple of weeks, and my in-laws lived with us at the time, which was great because um I was away a little bit of the time with with work, and short version is that it I'd been home for two weeks.
• 49:16
  Arky: I've been given some leave, some privilege, and well, let's just say I put my hand up to go overseas because I sent an email to the the boss because it was a short deployment, and uh I just wanted a break because I I I had been in forests in the middle of winter for three nights in a row um on watch and got better sleep than I had with those two terrors.
• 49:47
  Jeanne: Oh man.
• 49:48
  Jeanne: Yeah, so uh you were in the Navy, had told me before.
• 49:53
  Jeanne: And so overseas deployment for Australia is what?
• 49:59
  Arky: I was I was still in Britain at the time.
• 50:01
  Jeanne: Oh, you were still in Britain, but what's overseas for you?
• 50:04
  Arky: Well, we went to at the time it was a non it was a non-combat deployment, so it was to kind of one of our overseas territories, and um and then just as a as a as a support role.
• 50:18
  Jeanne: What like Saint Martin?
• 50:20
  Arky: Yeah, you know, like you guys, you guys rent Diego Garcia from us, and then there's Cyprus, there's uh Gibraltar, there's St.
• 50:27
  Arky: Helena, there's Falkland Islands, you know, like that type of like you you just go there for a short while to like do a backfill role, basically.
• 50:34
  Jeanne: Yeah, that didn't seem tough.
• 50:36
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 50:38
  Arky: No, yeah, I wouldn't have volunteered for anything hard.
• 50:41
  Arky: Okay.
• 50:41
  Arky: I would take the kids in that case.
• 50:46
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 50:46
  Jeanne: What about this public speaking course that you accidentally ended up in a theater group?
• 50:52
  Arky: Well, this was like a as you we just had that whole conversation about like evolving and growing and and and becoming kind of more more control over yourself and and your your stuff.
• 51:03
  Arky: Like before, like I told you, I didn't like to let anyone down.
• 51:06
  Arky: And you know, you show up at this place thinking, you know, I don't know, really fully what you're thinking.
• 51:13
  Arky: You're just like, oh, I'll go and see what happens, and you end up just getting roped in, and like because it before, as I told you, one of my biggest things was like not being able to look after myself, not being able to say no.
• 51:24
  Arky: So before you know it, you're on stage with um, you know, have you ever said have you watched a pantomime in England?
• 51:30
  Arky: So he's behind you, yeah.
• 51:33
  Arky: And then you're you're the drunk guy, you you're acting the drunk guy on stage, and and then you're like, How did I get here?
• 51:39
  Arky: And then you look in the mirror and you don't know answers.
• 51:42
  Arky: And that was where my journey began.
• 51:45
  Arky: Wow, am I here?
• 51:47
  Jeanne: Oh, wow.
• 51:48
  Jeanne: Well, public speaking, it's sort of public speaking, but and you get to hide behind a character, though.
• 51:52
  Jeanne: But did you get something out of it?
• 51:55
  Arky: Look, I mean, you could argue that a lot of what we do is acting, and um, it's just more formalized.
• 52:02
  Arky: Uh there is no true self, but um not really.
• 52:06
  Arky: I just just wanted to just die.
• 52:09
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 52:09
  Jeanne: All right.
• 52:11
  Jeanne: So I guess two.
• 52:13
  Jeanne: So can you reveal the lie?
• 52:14
  Jeanne: Which one was it?
• 52:16
  Arky: Number three is the lie.
• 52:18
  Jeanne: Oh, okay.
• 52:19
  Jeanne: Yeah, that's that's a funny one though.
• 52:22
  Jeanne: I would not want to be a carrot packer either.
• 52:26
  Jeanne: Uh, I know growing up in a little town, my older sister, she used to do the summers picking cucumbers for for them to pack them, you know, like Mount Olive pickles.
• 52:37
  Jeanne: I don't know what kind of pickles y'all have over there, but anyway, she hated it.
• 52:41
  Jeanne: They had to get certain size.
• 52:43
  Jeanne: Don't pick these little ones, don't pick the two big ones.
• 52:46
  Jeanne: Oh, it's terrible.
• 52:48
  Jeanne: Uh well, I really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit more, and I know everybody else did, but uh, they will want to get in touch with you about PersonalityPeak, and so I will give them that information.
• 52:59
  Jeanne: You can reach out to Arky at uh his website and YouTube links are here, and they'll be in the show notes as well, so you can connect with him.
• 53:10
  Jeanne: You have a good quote up here, so if you want to talk about that, we sort of talked around it in our last question, but you might want to say a little bit more.
• 53:19
  Arky: So if you you heard the concept of like a million deaths slowly, like a million paper cuts, you can apply that to so many different things.
• 53:31
  Arky: A paper cut doesn't have to represent a physical wound, it doesn't have to represent bleeding, because the idea of bleeding, the idea of sacrifice, the idea of necessary sacrifice is incredibly valuable because if it is necessary, then there is honour in it and a price you're willing to pay.
• 53:56
  Arky: But if you're doing things that do not bring satisfaction, do not benefit you, and and what I mean by benefit you is it doesn't mean about being selfish, it means about what you're doing brings you joy, brings you reward, makes you value yourself.
• 54:17
  Arky: So a man, women as well, they can pay a heavy price because they live their lives for other people.
• 54:25
  Arky: Sometimes because that's what they know, sometimes because what's that's what they think society expects or demands of them.
• 54:31
  Arky: But you don't have to you get one chance at this, you get one life, and when it's gone, it's gone.
• 54:41
  Arky: If the sacrifices you make are bringing you, your family genuine benefit, then absolutely there is value in that.
• 54:54
  Arky: But if you find that you are paying a price that is beyond the burden that you should carry, you're paying a higher price than you deserve, then the life is not yours.
• 55:08
  Arky: There is an external force taking that energy away, and it is on you to bring that back to your locale of control, to your ownership, because no one is gonna do it for you.
• 55:20
  Arky: It is your life, live it, live one of service, but of service to the self, and through proper service of the self, you will serve others.
• 55:29
  Jeanne: Oh, that's beautiful.
• 55:30
  Jeanne: That's beautiful.
• 55:31
  Jeanne: Thank you.
• 55:32
  Jeanne: You're also asking people to go out and take the free PersonalityPeak test, which I told you I've been out there and I should have taken it.
• 55:39
  Jeanne: I'll have to go back.
• 55:41
  Jeanne: And then, you know, reach out to Arky because I know he's really open to building what he's got here and helping others.
• 55:49
  Jeanne: Um, that comes through loud and clear.
• 55:51
  Jeanne: So I appreciate you being on the show today.
• 55:54
  Jeanne: Thank you so much, Arky.
• 55:55
  Arky: No, thank you very, very much.
• 55:57
  Jeanne: Oh, you're quite welcome.
• 55:59
  Jeanne: It's an honor.
• 56:00
  Jeanne: So, for those listening, I hope you will join in next week for another great guest.
• 56:04
  Jeanne: And until then, this is Jeanne, your Admiral of the Unexpected, and I wish you all smooth sailing.
• 56:11
  Jeanne: Bye for now.
• 56:12
  Jeanne: Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories are unexpected, and the treasure is always real.
• 56:20
  Jeanne: If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew.
• 56:25
  Jeanne: Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck.
• 56:28
  Jeanne: I'm Jeanne Andersen, your Admiral of the Unexpected.
• 56:32
  Jeanne: See you on the next voyage.