Latest / The You Project / #1605 5 Life-Improving Ideas: No. 1. The Right Path - Harps
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I'll get a Tom Hope, You're terrific. Welcome to another
- 0:02Speaker 1: installment of the You Project. So I've decided I'm going
- 0:08Speaker 1: to do a little series. I'm gonna do a little
- 0:09Speaker 1: series this week. So this will come out on Tuesday.
- 0:13Speaker 1: So Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Don't ask me why I'm
- 0:17Speaker 1: starting on a Tuesday, fuck it because I can. Because
- 0:20Speaker 1: I can. And the idea excuse that noise in the
- 0:24Speaker 1: background and moving shit on my desk. The idea for
- 0:27Speaker 1: this short this is going to be somewhat reminiscent of
- 0:32Speaker 1: my Life podcast episodes. If you remember, back in the day,
- 0:36Speaker 1: I did two hundred episodes of Life, which were like
- 0:38Speaker 1: these little ten minute installments, like little daily coaching sessions.
- 0:43Speaker 1: So for this week it's going to kind of be
- 0:45Speaker 1: a version of that. I've got a bunch of really
- 0:49Speaker 1: good stuff lined up, some amazing guests coming, lots of
- 0:52Speaker 1: great things. I've got a few interview this views this week,
- 0:56Speaker 1: which will go live from kind of Sunday Monday onwards.
- 1:00Speaker 1: After this stuff. But I thought we'd do something different,
- 1:03Speaker 1: might work, might not, who knows. It's what you do?
- 1:06Speaker 1: You ever go, don't you? So I want to share
- 1:09Speaker 1: a different idea or construct or strategy or life improving
- 1:14Speaker 1: kind of technique that might help you create some kind
- 1:19Speaker 1: of internal or external positive shift, some kind of improvement, growth, development, evolution, understanding, insight, awareness,
- 1:27Speaker 1: some form of improvement on planet you. And some of
- 1:33Speaker 1: the things that I'm sharing, a lot of what I'm
- 1:37Speaker 1: sharing has really been stuff that has just become evident
- 1:42Speaker 1: to me through my own trials and tribulations, falling down
- 1:46Speaker 1: and getting up for sixty odd years. So you know,
- 1:49Speaker 1: in business, in life, with health, in relationships, with money,
- 1:52Speaker 1: with you know, lifestyle, with trying to figure out who
- 1:56Speaker 1: I am and who I want to be and how
- 1:57Speaker 1: I want to be and how I might make that happen.
- 2:04Speaker 1: But also, you know, from my experience working with thousands
- 2:11Speaker 1: of people in a personal training capacity thousands of sessions.
- 2:18Speaker 1: I've said this a bunch of times, but I did
- 2:20Speaker 1: over fifty thousand sessions of personal training. Think about that.
- 2:25Speaker 1: Fifty thousand sessions of personal training. That's a lot of conversations,
- 2:30Speaker 1: that's a lot of interaction. That's a lot of different
- 2:32Speaker 1: minds and a lot of different beliefs, and a lot
- 2:34Speaker 1: of different bodies, a lot of different backgrounds, a lot
- 2:37Speaker 1: of different expectations and a lot of different needs that
- 2:41Speaker 1: I needed to navigate and negotiate and understand and have
- 2:45Speaker 1: some kind of insight into in order for me to
- 2:48Speaker 1: be able to help people create the outcome slash outcomes
- 2:54Speaker 1: that they wanted to create with their body. And while
- 2:59Speaker 1: mostly we know that mostly people go to the gym
- 3:02Speaker 1: because they want to change something about their body, a
- 3:05Speaker 1: physiological kind of shift, of course, we also know that,
- 3:11Speaker 1: you know, even when we just talk about getting in
- 3:13Speaker 1: shape physically, we know that it's not just about the body.
- 3:16Speaker 1: As I've said many times quite often, it's almost like
- 3:18Speaker 1: the body is the consequence. It's really a behavioral and
- 3:23Speaker 1: practical and social and emotional and psychological process with a
- 3:29Speaker 1: physical consequence. You know, it's about choice, it's about thinking, habits, behavior,
- 3:34Speaker 1: all that stuff. And so, you know what was really
- 3:38Speaker 1: interesting for me as a young trainer, as a young
- 3:40Speaker 1: gym instructor, as someone who kicked off their health career
- 3:44Speaker 1: fitness career at eighteen with really no fucking idea. But
- 3:50Speaker 1: as I was primarily at that stage anyway, an experiential learner,
- 3:54Speaker 1: I was quite good at understanding people and reading people,
- 3:58Speaker 1: and intuitively, while I didn't have great academic or theoretical knowledge.
- 4:04Speaker 1: I was not bad at intuitively and instinctively being able
- 4:09Speaker 1: to meet people where they are at. And you know,
- 4:13Speaker 1: the common denominator, as I've said many times for people
- 4:17Speaker 1: who go to a gym, is that they want to change.
- 4:19Speaker 1: And so in a way, you're not just a gym
- 4:22Speaker 1: instructor or a personal trainer, or an exercise physiologist or
- 4:27Speaker 1: a gym manager or whatever I was at that stage
- 4:30Speaker 1: of my journey, But you are an agent of change.
- 4:35Speaker 1: You are a change management expert of sorts, or you
- 4:40Speaker 1: become that over time because you start to realize that
- 4:46Speaker 1: helping someone change their body, but also change their understanding
- 4:52Speaker 1: and change their knowledge, and change their thinking, and change
- 4:57Speaker 1: their habits and behaviors, and change their their day to
- 5:01Speaker 1: day operating system, and to change the way that they
- 5:04Speaker 1: think about food or relate to food, to change the
- 5:08Speaker 1: relationship that they have with food and their body and
- 5:11Speaker 1: with exercise, the way that they socialize, the way that
- 5:16Speaker 1: they self regulate or don't self regulate. You realize that
- 5:19Speaker 1: this is like a really multi dimensional, complicated, integrated process.
- 5:26Speaker 1: It's not about one thing, It's about many things, and
- 5:31Speaker 1: often it's about people's willingness to do the thing that
- 5:38Speaker 1: they have been unwilling to do up until that point
- 5:41Speaker 1: in time. What do I mean by that, Well, how
- 5:44Speaker 1: many of us, how many of you listening? I know
- 5:48Speaker 1: I have done this, But how many of us know
- 5:50Speaker 1: what we should do, but don't do what we know
- 5:53Speaker 1: to do because it's uncomfortable or because it's not convenient,
- 5:59Speaker 1: or it's not quick, or it's not painless. And the
- 6:02Speaker 1: answer is, obviously, many of us, or perhaps all of us,
- 6:04Speaker 1: have done that at some stage. And so there's the
- 6:07Speaker 1: thing that we're capable of doing. That's one. And two,
- 6:13Speaker 1: there's the thing that we're actually doing with those capabilities
- 6:17Speaker 1: or with that capacity or with that potential. And it's
- 6:20Speaker 1: my experience that while a lot of people have most
- 6:23Speaker 1: people I would say have a capacity for significant change, shift, growth, evolution, development, resilience, competence,
- 6:31Speaker 1: you know, all of those things that there's also a
- 6:35Speaker 1: large percentage of people who never really even open the
- 6:37Speaker 1: door on that stuff because they're too lazy, they're too inconsistent,
- 6:42Speaker 1: they're too fearful, or they're too unwilling to choose the
- 6:51Speaker 1: right path, not the easy path. As pursuant to the title,
- 6:54Speaker 1: of this episode, and that is, you know, there are
- 6:58Speaker 1: the things that we need to do, and they're the
- 6:59Speaker 1: things that we want to do. Are the things that
- 7:01Speaker 1: need to be done to create the outcome we want
- 7:04Speaker 1: to create with our body, with our brand, with our business,
- 7:07Speaker 1: with our lifestyle, with our relationships, with our bank balance,
- 7:10Speaker 1: with our academic journey, with our capacity to live our values,
- 7:15Speaker 1: to walk our talk, to live that life of spirituality
- 7:20Speaker 1: that's aligned with our values and beliefs. There's the path
- 7:24Speaker 1: that we can choose that's somewhat easy and convenient and painless,
- 7:29Speaker 1: but my experience and observation is that that doesn't get
- 7:32Speaker 1: us where we really want to go or could go.
- 7:36Speaker 1: And so you know, this willingness to be able to say,
- 7:41Speaker 1: I'm going to take the right path, and by the
- 7:43Speaker 1: right path, I mean the most effective, the most productive,
- 7:48Speaker 1: the one which is the most likely to open the
- 7:52Speaker 1: door wide on my capacity, on my potential, on my gifts,
- 7:57Speaker 1: on my genetic potential, so that I can get close
- 8:03Speaker 1: to or closer to the version of me that I
- 8:08Speaker 1: want to be. Now, if you're listening to this and
- 8:12Speaker 1: where you're at is already good, and you are with
- 8:15Speaker 1: your body, with your health, with your habits, with your life,
- 8:17Speaker 1: with your income, career, all the stuff that makes up
- 8:23Speaker 1: your life. If for the most part, you are genuinely
- 8:26Speaker 1: pretty happy and pretty fulfilled and kind of there in
- 8:29Speaker 1: inverted commas there, then this probably ain't for you. But if,
- 8:34Speaker 1: like many people, you have been the one day soon person,
- 8:38Speaker 1: or the it's not the right time but it will
- 8:41Speaker 1: be the right time soon person, or the I'll start
- 8:44Speaker 1: Monday or I'll start January one person, then maybe this
- 8:48Speaker 1: is for you. You know, for me, I have spent
- 8:52Speaker 1: or I spent a lot of my early years trying
- 8:55Speaker 1: to trying to get to the top of the mount
- 9:00Speaker 1: without the climb, the metaphoric mountain without the climb, choosing convenience,
- 9:08Speaker 1: choosing the quick fix, choosing instant gratification. And while all
- 9:13Speaker 1: of these things are super attractive and sexy, they might
- 9:20Speaker 1: be good for marketing. Convenience, instant gratification, quick fix, the hack,
- 9:26Speaker 1: the this, the shortcut, the whatever it is. All of
- 9:30Speaker 1: those things are better or worse. They're good marketing tools
- 9:34Speaker 1: because they seem to sell stuff because people love that idea.
- 9:37Speaker 1: But what they're not good for producing is long term
- 9:41Speaker 1: change or long term success or growth within humans. And
- 9:46Speaker 1: the irony is that, you know, the thing that we avoid,
- 9:52Speaker 1: which is the right path, is the thing that helps
- 9:56Speaker 1: us become that more evolved, more developed, more capable, more adaptable,
- 10:03Speaker 1: more resilient, more skilled, more aware version of us. As
- 10:11Speaker 1: most of you know, I've spent a lot of my
- 10:13Speaker 1: life educating myself, and that is, you know, experientially and academically,
- 10:17Speaker 1: I've been at the cold face of learning. I'm still there,
- 10:19Speaker 1: you know. I'm still reading, I'm still listening, I'm still watching.
- 10:22Speaker 1: I'm still formally studying and informally studying. I see myself
- 10:28Speaker 1: as a perpetual student, and I'm well aware that the
- 10:33Speaker 1: times where I have really learned and really evolved and
- 10:39Speaker 1: really gone to another level in terms of my own development,
- 10:44Speaker 1: my own understanding as a human using the limited ability
- 10:48Speaker 1: and knowledge and potential that I have. But when I've
- 10:52Speaker 1: really gone to another level, and I'm not saying this insincerely,
- 10:57Speaker 1: but is when I've just leant into the starfy that
- 11:00Speaker 1: terrified me, which is not to say that everything needs
- 11:04Speaker 1: to terrify us, or perhaps lent into the stuff which
- 11:08Speaker 1: was for me somewhat somewhere between uncertain, unfamiliar and uncomfortable
- 11:15Speaker 1: and at the other end of the scale fucking terrifying.
- 11:18Speaker 1: But somewhere in that mix there where you know. When
- 11:22Speaker 1: I set up my first personal training business, which was
- 11:26Speaker 1: in nine ninety thirty four years ago, there weren't any
- 11:29Speaker 1: in Australia. I didn't know how to lease commercial premises.
- 11:31Speaker 1: I didn't know how to buy commercial gym equipment. I
- 11:34Speaker 1: was twenty five when I was in the setting up process.
- 11:37Speaker 1: I'd never owned a business. I'd never done a leadership course,
- 11:41Speaker 1: a management course, a business course. I didn't have a degree.
- 11:45Speaker 1: Nearly every adult, because I still felt like a child
- 11:48Speaker 1: at the time, nearly every adult who gave me feedback
- 11:51Speaker 1: told me it wasn't a good business model, it wouldn't work.
- 11:56Speaker 1: I had a belief that it would work. I don't
- 11:58Speaker 1: know that I had the optimal bitin business model at
- 12:00Speaker 1: that stage. I probably well, I definitely didn't, But I
- 12:04Speaker 1: had an inherent, intuitive, very strong belief that it would work.
- 12:11Speaker 1: But what was required of me in that moment that
- 12:16Speaker 1: like the easy path would have been to continue on
- 12:18Speaker 1: working for someone else in someone else's gym, but one
- 12:22Speaker 1: I fucking hated it. But with it, with that job
- 12:26Speaker 1: came predictability, came, familiarity, came consistency of wage, came holiday pay,
- 12:33Speaker 1: came sick pay, all of those very easy, convenient things.
- 12:37Speaker 1: But what didn't come for me was growth. What didn't
- 12:41Speaker 1: come for me, or not at the level that I
- 12:43Speaker 1: wanted it was was that capacity for me to be
- 12:47Speaker 1: able to climb some metaphoric ladder so that I could
- 12:52Speaker 1: be in charge. That that wasn't really available to me
- 12:56Speaker 1: beyond the point. And it's not that that model or
- 12:59Speaker 1: that particular environment that I was in was bad. In fact,
- 13:03Speaker 1: that business at that time and my boss at that time,
- 13:06Speaker 1: they were both good. It was a good business. I
- 13:08Speaker 1: liked the business, I liked my boss. But there was
- 13:11Speaker 1: only so far I could go, and I'd gone that far.
- 13:16Speaker 1: And what I couldn't do is I couldn't create new things.
- 13:22Speaker 1: I couldn't come up with an idea and just act
- 13:24Speaker 1: on it. Everything had to be run through my boss.
- 13:27Speaker 1: And it didn't want to be anything too big or
- 13:29Speaker 1: too different, because that would get quashed. And I understood
- 13:32Speaker 1: it because, like a lot of my ideas and a
- 13:35Speaker 1: lot of my thinking was very unconventional. The idea of
- 13:39Speaker 1: building a stand alone, for want of a better term,
- 13:42Speaker 1: a stand alone, public gym that was only open to
- 13:46Speaker 1: the public if they were making appointments. There were no classes,
- 13:49Speaker 1: there were no memberships, There was no group exercise, there
- 13:53Speaker 1: was no pool, there was no circuit classes there. It
- 13:58Speaker 1: was all appointment. It was more like a even though
- 14:02Speaker 1: to walk in it looked like a gym, it looked
- 14:04Speaker 1: like a private gymnasium, which it was. It operated more
- 14:09Speaker 1: like a clinic. It operated more like a medical practice
- 14:12Speaker 1: than a fitness center. And on a daily basis, I
- 14:17Speaker 1: had people. By the way, there's no self pity in this.
- 14:21Speaker 1: These people weren't trying to undermine me. These most of
- 14:25Speaker 1: the people who gave me this kind of negative feedback
- 14:29Speaker 1: or this feedbay feedback that was somewhat doubtful of what
- 14:34Speaker 1: I was doing and how and its potential for success.
- 14:38Speaker 1: I truly believe that most of those people believed that
- 14:40Speaker 1: they were coming from a good place, and in essence
- 14:43Speaker 1: they were. Turns out they were wrong, though, turns out
- 14:48Speaker 1: they were totally wrong. Turns out I was totally right.
- 14:52Speaker 1: Also turns out that I still didn't know a lot
- 14:54Speaker 1: of shit. Also turns out that I fucked many things up.
- 14:58Speaker 1: But what happened when I walked away from the easy path,
- 15:03Speaker 1: which was option A the gym with the other guy,
- 15:06Speaker 1: and I got paid reasonably well. But I chose for
- 15:09Speaker 1: me based on my values, based on my personality, based
- 15:14Speaker 1: on the kind of relationship I wanted to have with work,
- 15:19Speaker 1: like I wanted to just create this thing which was
- 15:23Speaker 1: basically a convergence of my passion, my curiosity and the
- 15:32Speaker 1: potential for making money around that, and to design my
- 15:36Speaker 1: own career and therefore, more broadly, to design my own
- 15:41Speaker 1: life and lifestyle, which at that point in time was
- 15:44Speaker 1: built around this new model, this new thing, this personal
- 15:50Speaker 1: training center. Of course, they were going to happen anyway.
- 15:54Speaker 1: Of course, at Craig Harper didn't invent personal training globally.
- 15:58Speaker 1: I was definitely in the ground floor in Australia. But
- 16:03Speaker 1: what that you know in setting up a business in learning?
- 16:06Speaker 1: How to manage people in learning, how to be a
- 16:08Speaker 1: leader in learning, how to hire and fight in learning,
- 16:11Speaker 1: how to have grown up conversations with accountants and real
- 16:16Speaker 1: estate people and business people, and to understand all the
- 16:22Speaker 1: legalities around all the stuff that I needed to do
- 16:25Speaker 1: and know and implement to be able to have, you know,
- 16:30Speaker 1: hourly conversations with people who are older than me and
- 16:34Speaker 1: in many ways more smarter than me, and definitely more
- 16:36Speaker 1: business savvy than me. To be able to put myself
- 16:39Speaker 1: in that situation and to be okay with looking silly,
- 16:44Speaker 1: to be okay with getting things wrong, to be okay
- 16:48Speaker 1: with apologizing when I needed to apologize. For me, it
- 16:53Speaker 1: was this, you know, this opportunity to be able to
- 16:58Speaker 1: lean into doing the right thing, not the easy thing,
- 17:02Speaker 1: the inconvenient thing that just happened for me, to be
- 17:07Speaker 1: the best thing, because sometimes the inconvenient thing is the
- 17:11Speaker 1: best thing for you. Sometimes the thing that people think
- 17:16Speaker 1: you shouldn't do is actually the thing that you should.
- 17:21Speaker 1: I remember, you know, most of you know, my like
- 17:26Speaker 1: swimming sports experience, where I was you know, humiliated and
- 17:29Speaker 1: all this stuff, which was all again all my doing
- 17:31Speaker 1: though self pity. But what I don't talk about much
- 17:34Speaker 1: is subsequent to that. I went home that day after
- 17:39Speaker 1: I had this horrible experience, self created experience, and I
- 17:47Speaker 1: decided I was going to go for a run. I'd
- 17:49Speaker 1: never been for a run. And even though we had
- 17:52Speaker 1: compulsory cross country running at my school, that is, we
- 17:56Speaker 1: we once a week on you know, for parts of
- 17:59Speaker 1: the anyway, we had to because I went to a
- 18:02Speaker 1: boys college and in year seven we did these very
- 18:06Speaker 1: regular cross country runs. And because I was morbidly obese,
- 18:09Speaker 1: because I was wildly unfit, because I was the furthest
- 18:12Speaker 1: thing away from an athlete you could imagine. I walked.
- 18:17Speaker 1: I didn't run because I couldn't run because I was
- 18:19Speaker 1: thirty to thirty five kilos overweight, and I was wildly unfit.
- 18:25Speaker 1: I had an aerobic conditioning, it would hurt because my
- 18:27Speaker 1: body was so heavy to run and so on. So,
- 18:30Speaker 1: to be honest, I'd never really been I've never really
- 18:34Speaker 1: trained properly either. I've done bits and pieces of sport,
- 18:38Speaker 1: but in terms of in terms of getting my body
- 18:42Speaker 1: and going right, I'm now going to train this body.
- 18:44Speaker 1: I Am now going to consciously and intelligently manipulate my
- 18:49Speaker 1: physiology to create a different outcome so that I can look, feel, function,
- 18:54Speaker 1: and be different on a biological and a functional level.
- 18:58Speaker 1: I'd never done that. So I got home from the
- 19:01Speaker 1: swimming sports and I I went I decided I was
- 19:09Speaker 1: going to go for a run because I understood. I
- 19:12Speaker 1: understood essentially that if I moved more, if I increased
- 19:15Speaker 1: my energy expenditure, I'm sure I wouldn't even have known
- 19:18Speaker 1: that term then. But if I knew that if I
- 19:21Speaker 1: moved more and consumed less, that that would probably make
- 19:25Speaker 1: me lose weight. I didn't really understand, you know, the
- 19:29Speaker 1: science of energy, you know, input and output. I didn't
- 19:33Speaker 1: really get that, but I kind of knew. So what
- 19:36Speaker 1: I did was I literally said to myself, whatever I
- 19:42Speaker 1: eat normally, I'm going to eat half that. So it's
- 19:45Speaker 1: not like I started choosing better foods and different foods
- 19:48Speaker 1: and I went to the bloody whole food section of
- 19:50Speaker 1: the soupermarket and I started eating salads, salads and fucking
- 19:55Speaker 1: almonds and you know, watermelon like a chat. I just
- 19:59Speaker 1: had what? So if for breakfast I would have eight
- 20:02Speaker 1: week bits, I would all of a sudden, I would
- 20:04Speaker 1: have four. If I would eat two rolls for lunch,
- 20:06Speaker 1: I would have one. If I would have, you know whatever,
- 20:10Speaker 1: five hundred grams or four hundred grams of something for dinner,
- 20:13Speaker 1: I would have two hundred grams. I didn't weigh it,
- 20:16Speaker 1: but you know what I mean. I literally harved everything.
- 20:19Speaker 1: And some of the food I ate was healthy food
- 20:21Speaker 1: because it was the seventies, and some of it wasn't
- 20:26Speaker 1: particularly healthy food. But what I did was, I don't
- 20:30Speaker 1: know what my calorie intake was, but let's say my
- 20:33Speaker 1: calorie intake was it was probably somewhere around four thousand
- 20:36Speaker 1: calories a day, I would estimate, well, I harved it
- 20:39Speaker 1: to two. And I don't know what my energy expenditure was,
- 20:43Speaker 1: but it wasn't much other than incidental activity, other than
- 20:48Speaker 1: just ambulating my ninety odd kilo body around the planet
- 20:54Speaker 1: and getting in and out of a chair and on
- 20:55Speaker 1: and off a bus and walking to you know, school,
- 20:59Speaker 1: and not that I walked to school because I caught
- 21:01Speaker 1: a bus, but you know, walking from the bus to
- 21:04Speaker 1: school and moving through the day and you know, all
- 21:06Speaker 1: that kind of incidental and what we might even call
- 21:09Speaker 1: as an adult occupational activity, all that stuff. It wasn't
- 21:13Speaker 1: a lot. So then on top of my harved calories,
- 21:18Speaker 1: I introduced, you know, running. Now, when I started running,
- 21:22Speaker 1: I literally remember I remember the first time that I consciously, voluntarily,
- 21:28Speaker 1: with nobody looking or coercing, I went for a run.
- 21:34Speaker 1: I can't remember how far, but it kind of mean
- 21:37Speaker 1: more than two hundred meters before I had to stop.
- 21:41Speaker 1: And when I say running, yeah, jogging, And that is
- 21:44Speaker 1: where I started. And honestly, I do remember vividly how
- 21:49Speaker 1: painful it was for me to run. I do remember
- 21:53Speaker 1: how uncomfortable it was. I do remember gasping for air.
- 21:58Speaker 1: I do remember feeling like a whale fucking running around
- 22:03Speaker 1: the streets of Latroe Valley, specifically moe at that time. Yes,
- 22:09Speaker 1: you can laugh, Moey, And I remember how I just
- 22:14Speaker 1: felt like I was in a body that didn't really
- 22:19Speaker 1: belong to me, and I, you know, everything, all the
- 22:23Speaker 1: emotional and mental and physical kind of discomfort you could feel.
- 22:28Speaker 1: I felt it anyway. So I made my self go
- 22:31Speaker 1: for a walk slash run, and I can't even remember
- 22:36Speaker 1: how far, but I think it was probably somewhere in
- 22:38Speaker 1: the four or five kilometer. You know. I was probably
- 22:40Speaker 1: outside for thirty forty minutes, maybe a bit longer, mostly walking,
- 22:45Speaker 1: some jogging, and over time, you know, I did less
- 22:49Speaker 1: walking and more jogging, then eventually less and less walking,
- 22:53Speaker 1: more and more jogging, and then eventually, I don't know,
- 22:56Speaker 1: maybe maybe six weeks, four weeks, six weeks in to
- 23:00Speaker 1: the process, maybe eight weeks I was jogging. I was
- 23:04Speaker 1: jogging very slowly. And I can tell you because you know,
- 23:09Speaker 1: I'd halved my food and I'd probably doubled my energy
- 23:12Speaker 1: expended to the weight started to fall off. And while
- 23:15Speaker 1: it hurt and it was uncomfortable, and I was constantly
- 23:18Speaker 1: fucking hungry at the start, and I obsessed about food,
- 23:22Speaker 1: and I had had a really unhealthy relationship with food
- 23:26Speaker 1: until that point in time, there was enough internal leverage,
- 23:31Speaker 1: enough emotional and sociological because I didn't want to be
- 23:35Speaker 1: fat in front of people, and psychological leverage. There was
- 23:39Speaker 1: enough leverage. There was enough of a reason for me
- 23:43Speaker 1: to override those cravings for me to override that obsession,
- 23:47Speaker 1: for me to override that desire to sit on the
- 23:50Speaker 1: fucking couch and do nothing, and to override that desire
- 23:55Speaker 1: slash obsession that I had had with food to eat
- 23:59Speaker 1: anything that just made me feel good. I was such
- 24:03Speaker 1: a foodie. I was so obsessed with eating for pleasure.
- 24:08Speaker 1: And this process was hard, This process was uncomfortable, but
- 24:15Speaker 1: it was the right path for me. The easy path
- 24:19Speaker 1: was sitting on my ass and eating junk. That was
- 24:21Speaker 1: the easy path. And I'm not trying to sound like
- 24:23Speaker 1: some big, noble, high performing, you know, dickhead, but it's
- 24:30Speaker 1: everything that I've done in my life that's created a
- 24:33Speaker 1: really good outcome or some significant form of growth or
- 24:41Speaker 1: improvement or insight or learning. Even down to what I'm
- 24:46Speaker 1: doing right now with my PhD, everything has had at
- 24:52Speaker 1: times on that particular part of my journey, everything has
- 24:56Speaker 1: had a significant component of disco. And for me that
- 25:03Speaker 1: is and we don't need to live in perpetual pain
- 25:05Speaker 1: or discomfort, of course, but for me that's where the
- 25:11Speaker 1: growth has come. And for me, that uncertainty, that unfamiliarity,
- 25:14Speaker 1: that discomfort, that's always for me been the path of growth,
- 25:20Speaker 1: the path of understanding myself, the path of understanding how
- 25:27Speaker 1: I could optimize and operationalize my potential. How I could
- 25:34Speaker 1: stop letting my innate ability and my genetic potential and
- 25:42Speaker 1: my largely unused IQ. How I could start to be
- 25:50Speaker 1: more productive, How I could start to get more out
- 25:53Speaker 1: of what I had to work with. Of course I
- 25:56Speaker 1: couldn't have I couldn't wake up the next day and
- 25:59Speaker 1: have a higher IQ or more hours in the day,
- 26:01Speaker 1: or different genetics, or wake up with new skills. But
- 26:05Speaker 1: what I could do every day is I could go, well,
- 26:08Speaker 1: how do I optimize what I have? And the way
- 26:11Speaker 1: that I optimized it was constantly doing the work and
- 26:15Speaker 1: the way that you do it is the same. And
- 26:17Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that all days have got to be
- 26:18Speaker 1: hard days or all ours have got to be hard hours.
- 26:23Speaker 1: But it means that at some stage we need to
- 26:26Speaker 1: I believe, we need to need to hit the pause
- 26:28Speaker 1: button and put our life and put our behavior, and
- 26:30Speaker 1: put our health habits, and put our career and put
- 26:34Speaker 1: our behaviors around money and all of these things that
- 26:39Speaker 1: comprise the totality of planet you, you know, thinking, habits,
- 26:43Speaker 1: behavior's outcome. Put them up on the old metaphoric hoist
- 26:47Speaker 1: in the metaphoric garage and walk around and kick the tires.
- 26:53Speaker 1: What's work and what's not? What am I doing that's
- 26:56Speaker 1: serving me? What am I doing that's a form of
- 26:58Speaker 1: self sabotage. Am I taking the right path? Or am
- 27:02Speaker 1: I taking the easy path?