#1659 What They Should Teach You At School, But Don't - Harps (PT2)

i'm if I'm time efficient and energy efficient. It's one thirty three. I'll get this done in thirty odd minutes. You can have a little listen and I'll go and watch the GF or some of the GF. You know what else it is? I actually forgot about this. It's me Birthdy. It's me Birthdy, and I don't like lots of attention on me Birthdy, which is good. That's why I'm telling you now, because by the time you hear that it's me Birthdy, it's gone, which works well for me.

I don't know why, and I'm not saying that insincerely meaning I actually really I actually if nobody knew for me. I don't know what that's about. It's probably some deep seated issue, but I kind of I kind of like the non fuss. So anyway, sadday afternoon, sharing some thoughts and ideas with you about this door that I opened yesterday on this topic, which is what they should teach you at school but don't. And when I say they should teach you at school, I'm not really being serious.

I'm just talking about some of the lessons and insights and truths that kids don't seem to get taught at school or at home quite off and learn later on in life, not always in a fun, enjoyable way. And yes, we need to learn through pain and uncertainty and discomfort and piques and trust, we do need that, But there's also some pretty simple but powerful life lessons that we

could share with kids. Not that it's going to make their life painless or smooth or a perpetual Disney kind of movie, but what it might do is make them more prepared, more practical, more realistic, and more aware of what might be coming down the pipe, so to speak. So yesterday we did six and as I said, yes, say this non indictment on the academic system. I don't think these things really necessarily should be taught in schools. I just think kids somewhere, somehow should hear some of

these messages because I think they're valuable for kids. So that the six went through yesterday as a recap. One, life doesn't care about your feelings, self esteem, health, happiness to Statistically, you're quite likely to end up unhealthy and or in debt and or divorced, perhaps more than you are happily married, healthy, and financially secure. We backed all this up with statu yes day. And that's not an uplifting message. Nonetheless, it's true, and I think truth is good.

Number three, the path to success is rarely easy, fun or comfortable. Doesn't mean there's not fun or there's not comfort, or it's not a party now and then. But it's never all that all the time. We know that, and I think that's a good lesson for kids to learn. Number four was you can't do anything, as in all things, anything you choose, you can't do anything you set your mind to. And the message, the messaging for some people from some people is whatever you want to do you

can do it. And as I said yesterday, it sounds nice and it makes people maybe it makes people feel momentarily good. But telling everyone that anything is possible, not only is it not true, which is not a good start, but it sets people up for frustration and disappointment and resentment. And while yes, most people can do more than they're currently doing, and most people can if they really work hard, roll up their sleeves, be brave, be resilient, and lean

into their potential. Most people can do some pretty amazing shit, but not everyone can do anything they set their mind to, And so we want to encourage and support kids, but we also want to be practical. Number five was sometimes the people who will undermine, backstab and sabotage you will be family and friends. Number six was and we know

that number six was. Your intentions are often not someone else's experiences, and that is people are not necessari the getting what you think you're giving them, and at some stage your good intentions will absolutely produce bad results or a bad outcome. All right, I'm with today, So number seven on our list across the two days. Number sevent is bad things happen to good people, and weirdly good

things sometimes happen to bad people. Don't ask me, Take it up with God or the universe or whoever your bloody high power or deity, deity of choices. But bad things happen to good people, and weirdly, good things sometimes happen to bad people. You might never understand that, and you'll definitely never change it. So invest your mental and

emotional energy where you will get the best return. I've had awesome friends of mine, great people, beautiful human beings die who through a range of things, and so have you. But moving through life with this awareness and this not so this is a burden on our shoulder, but just maybe maybe so that it gives us. Like for me, what this knowledge does is it gives me a perspective that every day is a gift. And I know that

sounds cheesy. I know it sounds cheesy, but you know, right now I'm working with helping a few people I should say, probably five or six people whose lives are very difficult for a range of different reasons. I don't mean you run in the mill kind of garden variety issues and problems. I mean really really difficult. And when you know, when I work with these people hopefully I'm

helpful and valuable to them. But when I work with these people, apart from the joy that I have with the connection and the involvement and the support that I can hopefully bring to them, it's a blessing for me because it gives me a level of awareness and perspective and gratitude for how few problems I actually have. And so I think, you know, while we don't want to scare the bejeebas out of kids at all, we want to let him know that not anything or not everything

perhaps is guaranteed. You know, one of my best friends in the world who worked with me. He was my first personal trainer, as in, he was my first worked for me trainer, my first employee, Maddie, amazing human being. We trained together every day, We ate breakfast and lunch together together every day. Were joined at the hip. And he died at the age of I think twenty four, and he never got to live his whole life. And I think about him every single day. And he was

an awesome person. He was a beautiful human being, and he ain't here anymore. And while we don't want to be more and we don't want to make people sad, I think it's great that we're practical and we're down to earth and we teach not just kids but grown ups that, hey, can you breathe? Can you walk? Can you turn on the tap and get cold water? Can you turn on a share and have hot water? Can you open a fridge and get food? Do you have at least one or two or three people who love

you? You know? Does your spine work, does your brain work? You know? Are you for the most part healthy, Then that's great. Your life is awesome, or at the very least you've got a great running start to life. Number eight is and this is really a self awareness thing, which I think teaching self awareness, situational and social awareness for kids is really really potentially powerful and transformational. The number eight is the only person living in your version

of the world is you. Your personal reality is a subjective interpretation of and response to the events, situations, environments, and outcomes you find yourself in the middle of. In other words, your version of the world is a story that you tell yourself as a byproduct of the window through which you view the world. So let's use this metaphor of a window. We all have a window through which we individually view the world. Your window is not mine. Yours is not the bloke across the road or the

lady across the road. And so we all have our own window because our window is a byproduct or the filter, the window, whatever you want to call it, the thing through which we evaluate and view and disseminate and make sense of the world around us. That is a byproduct of where we've been and what we've seen and what we've been through, and beliefs and values and experiences and faith and all that kind of stuff and everyone, you know.

So if you're a tea, you're up the front of a classroom and you've got thirty kids in there, You've got thirty kids having a different experience. They're all in the same room at the same time, listening to the same teacher, and they're all in the same practical physical reality, but none of them are in the same psychological, sociological, emotional, or experiential reality in real time. And it's fucking important.

Not that we understand this down to the PhD level, but it's important that kids go, oh, people think differently to me. Just because I think this doesn't mean they think this. Just because my intention is good, that doesn't mean their experience will be good. So having this understanding and applying this in real time, this kind of bigger than you awareness. It's a conduit to better communication, to problem solving, to conflict resolution, to situational awareness, and to

more productive, more valuable, and meaningful social outcomes. So, and this is where we teach kids the space between your world and their world. Metacognition, thinking about your thinking, theory of mind, thinking about their thinking. Number nine, speaking of thinking, is that you and me we have all been programmed. We've all been programmed by the experiences of our life up until this point in time listening to this podcast.

Wherever you're at, So, whatever you've been through, what school you went to, what books you've read, what media you pay attention to, what social media you pay attention to, what religion or lack of religion. You grew up in the way that your family communicated and socialized and interacted or didn't interact with other families, The type of food you ate, the cultural influences. All of those things have programmed, or let's say less dramatically influenced significantly the way that

you think. And when we realize that the way that we think, remember thinking about thinking metacognition. When we realize that the way that we think, if I personalize it, when I realize that the way that I think is a little bit about my genetics and who I am in terms of DNA and just what I was born with. It's a little bit about that, maybe twenty percent, but it's a lot, maybe eighty percent, a byproduct of everything I've been through, all those things I just described to you.

And so this is not something to worry about, because this is not a bad thing. This is a human thing. But what we can do now is we can start to open We can start to open the consciousness door. And the consciousness door is for me. My definition is

where my programming finishes and I start. So where is the where is the cognitive cerebral real estate of mine that exists separate to the programmed me, the one that's been taught and told and trained and programmed what to think, not taught how to think, teaching someone how to think, how to think critically, how to disseminate information in an unbiased way in an objective manner, how to arrive at

our own conclusions and thoughts and evaluations, and beliefs. This is this is a big deal, this is a big challenge, and it's almost impossible. It is almost impossible to be objective because even though I'm talking to you about this, and even though we understand this the concept objective subjective. Something happened. Craig picked up his thing of chewy, he dropped it. That's an objective event. Then there's the subjective experience of what happened. I don't know if you heard

that I just dropped something. It's a terrible example if you didn't hear it. But then there's the subjective experience around that, Oh that was noisy, Oh that that was annoying, or that didn't sound like a box of chewy or whatever it is. It's just so there's the thing that happens in our world, then there's our subjective interpretation of it, and for us to be able to realize that, by

the way, can we be objective on any level? Of course we can, and I believe the path to I don't think we can ever be completely objective because we're always going to have certain ideas and beliefs and values and expectations and standards and knowledge or what we believe to be knowledge anyway. But I think what we can do is we can become less intertwined with being right, less identified by our beliefs and our thinking and our

need to be As I said right. So I've never been less sure of things than right now in my life, which doesn't mean I don't have absolute thoughts and ideas and beliefs. But those thoughts and ideas and beliefs, I hold on to them loosely because I know. I know that I can be wrong. I know that I am probably wrong about several things, even right. Things that I currently think nothing comes to mind, but I'm sure there

are attitudes, opinions, ideas, beliefs. What I think is knowledge, But isn't that I currently have that currently resides in my cerebral HQ that is actually somewhere between a little bit wrong and complete bullshit. But I don't yet know it. But here's the thing. I'm okay with that, and I have to be okay with it because if I'm not okay with it, then one I'm a fraud to all of you. And two, if I'm not okay with it, then now I'm unteachable because I fucking know everything. So

remember your thinking is not always your thinking. Number ten. This a little bit tough, but I think some of you will resonate with the thought. Over your lifetime. Many people will pretend to care about you because at that point in time you serve a purpose and or are valuable to them in some way. So what am I saying? There's going to be people who come into your life that will play the role of a friend or someone

who cares. They will have the persona that you are important to them, that they love you, that they care about you. But you will find out at some stage down the track either that wasn't true at all, or it was not totally true, or maybe at one stage they did, but that changed, And so you know, this is not now kindness or love or friendship. This is now a strategic alliance. This is now somebody being a

persona not a person. And I've had this many times and I still have it, where people will role play friendship to me because I know that at this point in time I can open doors for them that are valuable to them. So they're all super friendly and gushy, borderline creepy, But I know exactly what's going on. And I only know that because I've had that happen a lot. I'm sure you've had it as well. And having said that, I think there are times when you will have relationships

with people which are primarily strategic in nature. And that's okay, because you will serve a purpose for them, they will serve a purpose for you. It's a win win. It's not necessarily a straight friendship, although you might get on well. It's more a strategic alliance or partnership, and everyone knows

what it is, and that's cool. But what I'm talking about today, in this moment is the people who, over the course of your lifetime, will pretend that they care, but when the shit hits the fan, you know that they don't, or it's evident that they don't. Now, we're not feeling sorry for ourselves about this. We're not going whoy with me. We're going that's okay, that's part of the human experience. That's fine. But what a couple of things are going to happen. One is I'm going to

do my very best not to be that. I don't want to be that in anyone else. I don't want to be that person who's using somebody. And this is a hard self inventory to do, because I think we've all done it. Have I Craig Anthony Harper birthday Boy? Have I ever taken advantage of somebody or or kept a relationship afloat because they were in some way helpful or valuable to me? I would be lying if I said I hadn't. I'm not doing that at the moment that I'm aware of. I don't do that that I'm

aware of. I'm aware of this particular thing, and so I work very hard to be the person that is of value and service to others. Having said that, I don't want people to take the piss, and I will not let people take the piss. I will definitely help people, look after people, encourage and support people where there's nothing in it return in return for me, of course, because

that's called love and kindness. But when somebody is role playing or feigning that they care about me, that we have some kind of special connection or bond, which I know is bullshit, I shut that down, and I shut that down because I just won't. You're probably going, how do you do that? I just don't play along. I just don't play along. I don't I whatever it is that they want from me, I cut off access to

that because I'm a good guy. I won't be used and manipulated for a range of reasons, for a range of reasons. Number eleven is this not being good at school, And this is good news for me. Not being good at school or sport or creative stuff, for tech stuff or fucking fill in the blank. Not being good at certain things at school doesn't mean you can't be awesome

at life. How good is that? How good is it that you can be you know, even the kid that got picked on or the kids that got picked on or the kid that got you know, like, by the way, my school wasn't hard, but I was literally the kid that got picked last for sporting teams and all that shit, right, But that kid, those kids can be fucking rock stars

in life. You whether or not, you know, not being great academically for example, or not being a brilliant athlete for example, or not being a musical or creative genius for example, or even not being popular at school, it doesn't necessarily indicate anything for the future. And I would say, and this sounds kind of a little bit like bullshit, but for me, this has been true anyway, For me, this was true, and so I know that it can be true for others. My mediocrity, my averageness, my inability

to excel at stuff naturally. For me, that was a superpower, and it was a superpower because it made me realize early that I would never be a high achiever, a high performer, or successful in inverted commas, whatever that means. But I realized that I would never just fucking land

on my feet. And I realized this quite early because I looked around me at kids who are more talented, smarter, better looking, better genetics, all that stuff, right, I looked at those kids and there wasn't jealousy or resembs, but there was awareness. I'm like, well, that motherfucker can run one hundred meters in eleven seconds, you know, three minutes

after he's eaten a bloody hamburger. I could train for a year, and I couldn't do that, right, So for me, it was just an awareness when I would see what other people could do with little or no efforts, some effort, and of course there were people who made lots of effort. But I was surrounded not constantly, but you know, reasonably regularly. I was surrounded by people who were just really quite gifted, quite smart, quite blessed in all of those things, and

good on them. And that's amazing. I think that, you know, for me, that the fact that I didn't have that running start with all of these innate abilities or gifts, that was my superpower. That was my fuel, that was my motivation, that was my reason. It's what got me going, It's what it was my compelling force. You know, I knew that I wouldn't succeed because I had some amazing unfair advantage over the other kids, you know, be that academic, intellectual, genetic, creative, whatever.

I knew that. I knew that for me it was going to be about work, self controlled discipline. But I also, I don't know why, but the times where I really did set my mind to something, I actually produced some good results. So I had I had a few wins on the board, but I also had a bunch of losses on the board. And so the good news is the good news is if you're shit at school, if you don't love school, if you're not the bloody, prettiest

or handsomest or fucking whateverest doesn't matter. Like and this is not me trying to make people feel good. The problem is some people get destroyed for life before they even fucking start life in a way. And this is obvious with the amount of mental health issues and even tragically teen suicide that's happening. We see all these numbers go up. It's so tragic, it's so it's so sad,

and I wish. I don't know, if you're a teacher listening to this and you don't live a million miles away, or you're a principal, hit me up with an email if you would like me to, I don't know, do a talk or something. You know, I can't do a million talks, but I can definitely do one or two for me. It's just really really important that kids that all kids talented, not talented, you know, academically brilliant, strugglers,

battlers or everyone. You know, we're not just like we care about because even some of the gifted kids still struggle mentally and emotionally. We know that. And the last one for today is sometimes success is got nothing to do with money or staff or winning. I mean, think about how many people are ticking for one of better term, are ticking the success box, but are simultaneously unhappy. So many people are from the outside looking in they are successful.

And if you evaluated their career or their financial situational status or brand or bloody even their physical appearance, Like for a lot of people, you go, wow, they're successful because we evaluate success by these observable, measurable KPIs. They own, that, they drive, that they live there. She is gorgeous, he is handsome. Their kids are fucking superstars. Oh he's going to get drafted into the AFL. She's got a singing career. Bibody,

bobbody boo. Tick all the boxes, what a Hollywood beautiful, amazing, successful family. But behind the image and the kpiyes of success and all the box ticking is misery. Sometimes his loneliness is, frustration is depression, anxiety is inability to sleep is social, emotional and psychological dysfunction. There is nothing wrong with making lots of dough and driving a good car and living in a good house, of course, and I'm not telling you what your measurement of success should be.

Success is individual. For somebody running ten k's in an hour is bloody amazing. For someone else that's devastatingly slow, they get the same outcome, and one is happy and one is sad. For somebody to make two thousand dollars in a week would be mind blowingly incredible. For somebody else the same number in the same amount of time, two grand in a week would not be enough to cover their expenses. Right, So different things have different meanings

to different people. So that the same whatever, the same outcome two grand, one hour run. You know, somebody gets a science degree, somebody's delirious with it, somebody thinks it was a waste of four years. Whatever. It's all about what it means to that individual. So wealth doesn't always look like money. Wealth doesn't always look like stuff like

for me personally. Again, these are just If you find my personal examples boring, I apologize, but I can't talk too broadly about too many other people because it ain't fair. But for me, you know, when I was in my early thirties, I was ticking what would be considered to be nearly all of the success boxes. I was going from the outside looking in, I was going great. But while I was going great, while I was driving this and living and owning that and earning that and looking

like that, while I was ticking all those boxes. In the middle of all of that, I personally was spiritually, emotionally, and mentally bankrupt. I was fucking behind the curtain, behind the public curtain, behind the success persona, away from the fucking Craig show. I was shit. I wasn't successful at all. I had the representation of success, but I didn't have the experience. And I was really good at hiding that from people. And people would be like, Wow, you're killing it.

You're this, You're that. I'm like, thank you, thank you. I know it's fucking amazing, and through their eyes, based on what they were seeing, they were right. But the truth was that the personal truth for me was away from the razzle dazzle and the Craig Show and the smoke and mirrors. I wasn't successful at all. I was sad. I was anxious. I was not sleeping. I was questioning what the fuck I was doing, even though it was

all working. I was living out of alignment. And so while we all need the resource of money, of course, we need dough, of course we need stuff to function in society. But for me, happiness and contentment and calm, or we might say the absence of anxiety. That's generally, and this is what people really want. What people Yes, we need to pay the bills and feed the kids and educate. Well, of course, of course we need that, But the people that I talk to, it's not generally.

Sometimes it's that, but most of the people I talk to most of the time, success for them is really about their internal state, not the external show. It's really about mental, emotional, and social wealth. It's about being the calm and the chaos. It's about being able to exhale. See you next time.