Latest / Man In Your Corner with Shaun Tucker / Ep. 38 | Founder Dad Burnout: How Letting Go Fuels Mental Fitness & Presence
Transcript
- Shaun: Welcome back to another episode of the reset with me, Sean Tucker. This is episode 38. What if the change you were looking for didn't come from forcing it, but actually came from letting it happen? So you'll notice I'm little bit of a different environment today. I'm actually in my kitchen and I've got some cooking to do. So I'm just gonna cook and basically share my thoughts at the same time. Maybe you'll like this, maybe you won't. ⁓ Let me know if you like it. Comment on my post wherever you see this. Or ⁓ if you don't like it, equally tell me. Because I want to find what works and what will resonate with you and what will actually keep the engagement happening. Because I'm all about serving the community and yeah, if we don't know what to change, we can't change. ⁓ And that's the thing, we need to understand what it actually means to change, not just try and force ourselves to change. So right now what I'm doing is I'm actually making ⁓ some boiled potatoes to go with our beautiful stew that we have for dinner. And the thing with change is, I guess the thing that I've noticed is the more that I've tried to force something, whether it's fitness, whether it's business, whether it's maybe trying to get more clients or you're trying to get more money, maybe... looking a bit green, I'm not gonna eat that one. Maybe you're just trying to lose some weight. ⁓ The thing that I've noticed is like, you can control the inputs, but you can't control the outputs. You can make changes to your inputs based on your outputs. If you're not measuring, you don't know where you're going. But the thing when it comes to real change is just focus on the things that are actually working for you. And just be. Be enjoyment, like enjoy the process of unfolding. Because if you're making changes to your diet, the way that you operate the strategies, the tactics, like I'm trying something different here, it may or may not work, I don't know. But if we make these changes and we're not taking note of the metrics that are being measured, one, we don't know if it's gonna work, but two, If I'm not having fun executing these changes, then nothing's going to change. So I don't change unless something changes, nothing changes. But at the same token, if I'm attached to the outcome that this must do this certain result, I'm gonna hate it. I'm gonna hate the process of it and I'm actually not gonna keep the result anyway. what's really important is to enjoy the process of it. And for me, I actually really enjoy the process of cooking. I am a part-time stay-at-home dad, which means that I get to take care of my daughter one day a week. And the rest of the day, she's in childcare while I work on my business and serve clients and stuff. But the thing here is if we are... resisting the change as well. It means that... probably something is stuck in our identities and yeah I don't know where I'm gonna go I don't know where I'm gonna go with this but this is not a cooking show this is me talking about change and the more we try and force ourselves to change the less likely it is to happen and that is partly because the process of getting to where you want to go if it's not enjoyable well you're gonna hate you're gonna undo it very quickly. Because that was certainly was me and if I look back in my own journey, when I first started training for my bodybuilding competition, you know, I have a love for training and exercising. But the motivation for me to get into the most ridiculous shape in my life and be ready for a competition means that Training was not really fun anymore. Sure, it was fun to see the results of the hard work that I was putting in, but it always comes at a cost. And when I rebounded straight after my competition from... What was I? I think I was 80 kilos to about, I think I gained close to 15 kilos back in about two or three weeks. If I look back at that moment. I felt good for about two weeks because I was ripped, was lean, was feeling good because I was back eating my full diet. I wasn't restricting myself like I was during my preparation. The thing that gets me now is I'm no longer looking like that. even if I was, even if I was able to sustain it like I built the discipline for sustainable success. I think the life that I'd be living now would be very different. So I'm grateful that I had the experience to know what it takes to look a certain way. But I guess we all have our comforts. We all have our things that we do. And for the longest time, I think I actually have and still have an undiagnosed eating disorder. I eat with my emotions. I think a lot of people do and a lot of people hold shame. know I was certainly holding shame around around this. And so one of the things I've noticed is that when I get in these patterns. It's that shame and guilt cycle. You know you shouldn't do it so you feel ashamed doing it and then you go ahead and do it because it's like, well I know how to get myself back into motivation. If I do something like that I'll feel guilty and then I'll punish myself and I'll go and do the strict diet or enter the bodybuilding competition or whatever it is. We'll commit ourselves even harder. We need to punish ourselves even harder. But the thing I've learned only recently is when you can let go. And what I mean by that is... Interceptor. probably collide with that pattern and change and rewire your mind to guilting yourself into back that cycle of shame is when you celebrate yourself and making a little bit of progress. Like I just, I did the bodybuilding competition and I felt ashamed that I did it. It doesn't make any sense. It's like now I'm only starting to celebrate myself. for how I handled myself, for how disciplined I was, all of these things, for how hard I was on myself. I'm starting to actually love myself more because I was so hard on myself that I wasn't even good enough. I placed fifth on stage, but how many people, and what's the percentage of people who can actually get that ridiculously cut to even get on stage? I didn't even. get close to celebrating myself for that because it was too damn hard on myself to say that, I didn't win so every place after first is last. So understanding what a broken mind does to your experience, can really damage how you show up and how you are as a human being. And so don't mind me as I move in and out of shot because I am once, like I said, I'm in the middle of prepping my dinner and my family's dinner. So. It's... It's hard to say what the... what the real driving force is, what actually motivates you and what motivates me like shame is probably one of the most strongest forces that I have to motivate me to change. But if it's patterned with guilt, You know, I found myself back in those cycles and almost just falling back into cycles of mild depression, like not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to... ⁓ sort of experience life and... I guess the thing about me is I've always been so optimistic. So even if I've been falling in and out of these quote unquote like mini depressions, like I didn't really want to get out of bed. I'd say that in those mind frames and in those mind states, I was not feeling my best and probably feeling quite depressed. Because the version of myself that I created wasn't actually. enjoying that experience of life. So. Because I was so attached to changing and trying to force myself to change, I kept on ending up in the same cycles. And so the thing now that I'm employing and actually sharing with you is I've stopped forcing myself to change. I'm letting change happen and I am doing work, but I'm not really attached to the feeling of needing to change. I'm not attached to that feeling of, ⁓ I don't want to have this feeling. No, I just actually am open to experiencing it all. Yeah, and that's a very different approach to how I've been operating from in the past. So, yeah, can you maybe take a lesson from that and ask yourself is the change you've been looking for equally been trying to find you as well? And what would it look like if you stopped forcing yourself to change? And. just focused on. creating a joyful experience for yourself. Because if you hate what you're doing... Well then, it's quite easy to understand that if you don't like what you're doing, then maybe you should stop. But because the changing aspect of changing who I need to be gets in the way, or having this level of comfort that I've achieved for myself, people have ridiculous waking up or awakening experiences from being burned out. creating a professional life or career life that they've worked so hard to have. Like let's not get to the crisis point. Let's get to the point of, I realized I don't wanna be overweight anymore. But actually I don't wanna be the person who shames themselves constantly for messing up their diet because the thing I hope to get across to you in this way of recording the podcast is actually, this is imperfect. It took me how many minutes to actually put the potatoes on? Because I'm trying to understand the process of what I'm trying to share and demonstrate that the change that I'm looking for is being able to capture dynamic thought in motion. And for me to do that, I need to show you how imperfect it is. because this process is not refined. This process is just me being me. So if you found value in today's episode, just share it with one person. I would appreciate that. And yeah, I look forward to seeing you in tomorrow's episode. Thanks for tuning in.