#1683 My (Personal) Non-Negotiables - Harps

the PM, of course, not the AM. It's Tuesday. And one of the things that I talk about a lot when we're designing our life and we're trying to get clear about our values and who we want to be and how we want to be and what is okay for us, what is not okay for us, And when we are trying to find clarity around decision making and action taking and direction for our life or a part of our life, I talk about this idea of non negotiables, and that means based on who you want to be

and how you want to be, how you want to show up in the world, what you want to do be, create and change. As I always say, what you want to do be, create and change based on that stuff, based on your values, based on your morals and ethics, and what matters to you, based on what your internal sat Nav tells you. Based on all that stuff, what

for you would you call a non negotiable? And what I love about at least identifying them naming them, maybe even writing them down, committing to them, is that it increases our likelihood of living a life aligned with that who, how and why we want to be the way we want to be. And so I get asked often, you know, can you give me an example of values? Or can you give me an example of what is non negotiable

for you? Can you give me an example of you know, when we talk about goal setting, the what and the why, can you unpack that a little bit? And I've done a fair bit of goal setting, and I think most of you have a pretty good insight into how I work. That is, how I think and how I live. And by the way, of course, I'm not an example for anyone. I'm flawed, and I'm a you know, sometimes I'm a fuck up and sometimes I'm not and sometimes I do

good stuff and dumb stuff. But in the middle of all of my humanity, I am consistently trying to live up to my own standards and trying to live up to the ideal that I would like to be or like to be closer to. And so I want to share with you what are some of my non negotiables? Now, when I say non negotiable. I am saying my intention is for these to be absolutees on planet me. These are meant to be things that are literally non negotiable.

Do I always live up to it? No? But what I like about having some clarity about the things that are for me the high watermark for me of my behavior and my decision making, and my lifestyle and the way that I treat people and the way that I communicate, the way that I, broadly speaking, do life. I like to have these. I've literally got these written down, and this is not all of it, but I've picked a dozen or so that I think some of these might

resonate with you. In fact, I think for many of you a lot of them will resonate, and they might be you might want to adopt a version of these, because these are not relevant only to me. I think a lot of the ideas or the thoughts or the intentions that I share here are probably broadly relevant on a level anyway. So my non negotiable number one is

to be self aware. Obviously, my PhD is around a kind of self awareness and to try to to try to understand the me experience in order to be able to build and maintain healthy and productive personal and professional relationships. So when I understand me more, I can build a high level of connection, respect, rapport, understanding, and engagement with others.

But also greater self awareness for me helps me be accountable for and more conscious of the things that I am doing and whether or not those things are aligned with my higher intentions. So for me, self awareness and again, self awareness is work. Self awareness is effort. Self awareness is more than just a thing that we say me. Saying I am self aware doesn't mean I am just like me. Saying I'm in shape doesn't mean I'm in shape. I need to do the work to create the out

and so too with self awareness. It is an ongoing work in progress. It is something that I commit to being and pursuing and improving. Non negotiable Number two for me is to be able to be the person or be a person who can consistently take action, do what's required, do the work in the middle of demotivation, in the middle of discomfort, in the middle of uncertainty, in the middle of inconvenience, in the middle of I don't feel like it, I don't want to do it. This is

not fun, this is not painless, This is not. This is not what I want to be doing in the moment, but I know that I need to. I want to be that person so that I'm not I'm not the person who is constantly starting and stopping. I don't want to look up in ten years and goo wow, I've almost done a hundred things, but I've actually done fuck well. I don't want to be that person. And the reason that for me that needs to be a consistent kind of commitment is because I am not that person who

will just magically rise to the top. I am not that gifted, highly intelligent, super creative, super brilliant overachiever. I'm not that person. And so for me to be able to be the best version of me, that's going to in part be dependent on my willingness and ability and courage and consistency to be able to do what's required to do the work, to stay the course when many people might typically give up because they're not motivated anymore

or because it's hard. And so I think, this ability or this willingness, I guess to be able to find a to be proactive and productive and effective in the middle of demotivation and inconvenience and discomfort is a bit of a superpower. So number three is to have a purpose bigger than me. And I've spoken about this recently in my kind of ape step framework of you know, self reflection and self awareness and ending up in self actualization and the last step being self transcendence and all

that means all it means for me anyway. For me, it means I need to have a purpose and a focus and a reason bigger than Craig Harper, because when I do that, I am better for others. I've tried selfishness. I've said this many times. I gave selfishness a good go. I still give it a good go sometimes when I'm not aware, when I'm not self aware, and I revert

to that, I can revert to that. But for me, having a purpose bigger than me, a focus bigger than me, a reason bigger than me is not only is it good for others because I'm now I'm serving, but also it means that now I've got I've got a reason bigger than my own ego, my own comfort, my own happiness, and I'm becoming I'm becoming a better person by helping

others rather than by trying to help myself. Constantly. Number four is you know this idea of equanimity of which we have spoken many times, and that is to be

able to be the calm and the chaos. That is, to be able to find myself in the middle of what could be mental or emotional, or social or practical you know, mayhem at times, but to be able to self regulate in a way that now I am not being controlled by the energy of the situation or the chaos chaos of the situation, but rather I am I am managing me in the middle of all of the stuff that I can't manage, to be to calm in the chaos, to not be controlled or managed by the

numerous manifestations of my fear, anxiety, self doubt, avoidance, procrastination, overthinking, all of that stuff that can hijack my emotions, that

can hijack my brain, can literally hijack my body. And so for me, and I don't always nail it, but I have put myself in stressful and high pressure situations for most of the last forty years, taking lots of risks and getting uncomfortable on a regular basis, and doing things many, many, many things for the first time anxiously and intentionally choosing the narrow path, choosing the discomfort because for me, not always by the way, but many times,

and for me I know that that's that's where I grow. And the more that I the more that I do that stuff, the more that I expose myself to that tough, that inconvenient, that uncomfortable stuff, the mayhem, the things that are out of my control. The more that I do that and survive, the more I build that competence and that skill and that calmness under pressure. And you think about life, you know, apart from all the great stuff that life can be, life can also be chaos. Life

can also be terrifying. Life can also be, you know, an avalanche of shit we didn't see coming. And in the middle of the avalanche and the periodic chaos, you and I need to control what we can and ultimately that is ourselves. My next one, my next non negotiable, is to be okay with my imperfection, with my flaws, with my lack of ability, with my average genetics and my dysfunction, so that I'm not striving for perfection. I'm

not miserable in the middle of my mediocrity. In fact, for me and I've said this probably a dozen times over the last few years, but for me, in some ways, my mediocrity was the catalyst for me to be able to succeed because the fact that I am not inherently super super talented or super genetically blessed or super brilliant, the fact that I'm not innately any of those things

was a source of inspiration and motivation for me. In fact, I think I think if I had have been naturally just brilliant and naturally super athletic and super creative and things came very easily to me, I think if that was the reality of my childhood and early years, I think I might have been less successful than I currently am because I could be wrong, but I feel like I probably wouldn't have had the discipline, the self control, the resilience, the work ethic, the mindset that I currently

have that came through my mediocrity. That came through falling down and getting up, that came through being picked last for every sporting team, that came through struggling academically, that came through all the uncertainty, and so for me to be a seeker of growth and development and improvement rather than a seeker of perfection just makes it, and it's for me, and I believe for all of us, it's

a much healthier objective. My next one is to be a lifelong learner, a lifelong developer of my cognitive, emotional, and creative and practical skills. That is, to just committing myself to being a forever student. And I think in terms of doing that living in alignment with that non negotiable. You know, I'm sixty one, I'm still I'm at university. That's not a bad indicator that I'm at least trying

to be a lifelong learner. And for me, that ability to be able to recognize what I believe or what I have believed, or what I think that is in fact a self imposed limitation. To be willing to not only to learn new things, to try new things, to expose myself to different experiences and ideas and energy and humans, but also to be willing to unlearn the things that I have intentionally or unintentionally learned over my journey that do not serve me anymore, or perhaps never did serve me.

Think about some of the things that you've learned and I put learned in inverted commas that now are hardwired beliefs or ideas or concepts in your brain that actually

are a form of self sabotage. For example, all the I could never I am not this kind of person, I couldn't do that, all of that self kind of deprecating and that self limiting and that self sabotaging internal dialogue that we have as a result of you know, thinking or believe or ideas that we have acquired along the way, which actually not only are they are not serving us, but they're also for the most part, generally not true, especially when it comes to all that over

the top self limitation kind of self destruction thinking. So for me to be a lifelong learner, so that whether or not that's experiential learning face to face, whether or not that's trying new things, whether that's developing new skills, having different experiences with different humans in different places, whether it's listening to people that I don't agree with but I may learn something from and in fact I may

even change my mind. Whether it's learning in a more formal setting like I am currently doing with my doctorate, whether or not it's just reading nonfiction books that aren't really in my kind of I guess wheelhouse, But nonetheless it's great for me to expose myself to different stuff.

Not only are there the obvious benefits of having greater understanding, greater knowledge, and greater awareness for all the practical reasons of navigating life knowing more, having better knowledge, better understanding, better awareness, but there's the biological advantage of having a brain that works better because it's constantly being upgraded, it's constantly being trained, it's constantly going to that cerebral gym

and doing a workout. My next non negotiable is to be present and to be grateful, and to not waste energy on things that I can't control. And I have wasted energy, as I'm sure many of you have, maybe way way too much energy focusing on obsessing about being frustrated by complaining about things that you can't control. Now,

that doesn't mean we don't care. It just means that we are mindful of investing our energy, investing what we have so energy, time, emotion, skill, attention, passion resources where we will get the best return. I consciously choose not to invest me in things over which I have no control. I will control my controllables, and I will recognize my time,

my emotion, my mental energy, my intelligence, my skill. I will recognize that for what it is, which is maybe my most valuable resource, and I will invest all of that stuff where I believe I'll get the best return emotional, psychological, and energetic ROI return on investment. My next non negotiable is to be able to happily coexist with the uncertainty, the unpredictability, and the unfamiliarity at times of the human experience.

Is just to be able to I spoke before about being in the calm and the chaos, being the carm and the chaos, but also being able to adapt. You know, we talk about IQ intelligence, we talk about you know, or intellect. We talk about EQ. And this is not a which is emotional intelligence, but there's another term that people use or yeah, another idea which is AQ, which is adaptability quotient. And you know, considering we all live lives which have at least a part of that life

that is uncertain and unpredictable. If we are the person in the middle of that life that has to have everything the same and everything known, and everything familiar and everything certain and everything predictable all of the time, we are the person who is destined to failure, because that ain't the world that we live in. You and I live in a world where maybe most of the time, most of the things that you expect to happen, or want to happen, or are comfortable happening. Maybe that's where

you live. Probably not, but maybe, but even nonetheless, there will be a percentage of your life where the reality stick is going to smash you over the head with something you didn't want, you don't understand, you didn't negotiate or see coming. And in the middle of all of that, you need to figure out how you're going to move forward.

And so I think the idea year of intentionally putting ourselves in different situations, having new experiences, getting out of our very very familiar groundhog day, our holding pattern of behavior, stepping out of our normal to do things that are somewhat atypical for us, something that we're not good at, something that we're not comfortable in the middle of, something where what we're doing is is unfamiliar and uncertain, to deal with that, to navigate that, and one of the

many byproducts by the way, we might learn something fucking amazing and we might have a light bulb experience, by the way, But one of the many benefits of that is that now we develop that capacity for being adaptable because life requires us to adapt. In fact, how humans got here, of course, over the evolutionary timeline. You consider how small and weak we are compared to many animals in the animal kingdom. We're just another animal. We think

we're smarter. That's fucking debatable. All the dumb shit that we do as a species to ourselves and to each other. So that's another podcast. Maybe the dumber species in some ways, but anyway, but being able to, over our evolutionary timeline get where we got. Three hundred thousand years or so, we've been around and here we are built everything that we've built with this somewhat phenomenal brain of ours, and so we have adapted and not just survived, but thrived

for millennia. And we're going to continue to, hopefully unless we kill ourselves. That's another podcast. All right, let's do a couple more. I like this one. So another one of my non negotiables is not to be the excuse maker, not to be the rationalizer, the justifier or the blamer, and to maximize what I have to work with, but to be totally accountable for, responsible for, and take ownership of what I do. To take ownership of my choices,

my behaviors, my responses, my reactions, and my outcomes. To be the author of my own story. To live consciously, to consciously write my story rather than unconsciously be a passenger in a story that my situation or circumstance is writing for me, or, in the case of some people, to be an unconscious passenger in someone else's story. My next one is to recognize, acknowledge, own up to, and work on my personal shortcomings without beating myself up, without

opening the self loathing door that doesn't serve anyone. And for me to be and I try very hard to be this and do this, to be publicly authentic about my flaws, my mistakes, my fuck ups, my failures first my personal challenges, and so that we can simultaneously, you and I can simultaneous simultaneously acknowledge the things that we haven't done well or don't do well while still intentionally developing who we are and how we are through courage

and conscious effort. Recognizing our issues, recognizing our own limitations and shortcomings is of little value if we're not then doing something positive to address all those things. All right, So we'll do one more. And this is a bit feel good and fluffy, but it's true and for me it's very important. And my last one for this episode anyway, is to live my life from a platform of love. And by love I mean any form of or any

expression of love. By that, you know, kindness, tolerance, generosity, service, humility, you know, investing quality time in people, patience, you know, to be for me to be a positive force in the life of others. And you know, sometimes that that love is just listening to someone. Sometimes it's doing something practical for them. Sometimes it's giving someone a hug. Sometimes

it's donating a few dollars here or there. Sometimes it's you know, I don't mean this to sound good or bad, but last week I did two gigs for an organization, which good organization, really good, really good program that they were running, and I decided it would be a good use of my time for me and hopefully for them to donate me to them, so to speak. And I do that because I think that is the right thing to do. I think that is a way of me

demonstrating and expressing and serving through love. And I know that when my intention I don't always nail it, obviously, but when my intention is to come from a place of kindness and tolerance and service and generosity and love, broadly speaking, I'm a better person for me, and as I said earlier in the show, I'm a better person to be around, all right. So some of those might resonate with you or not, but you get the idea.

I think it's really important that you know in the same kind of conversation as what are my values, our values, and our non negotiables, they're probably first cousins or maybe even siblings for you to think about, what are the things that for you, based on who you want to be and how you want to be, what are the things that for you day to day should be non negotiable that is just interwoven into who you are and

how you are and what you do. Not the thing that you do when you're pumped or excited or in the zone, but the thing that is now part of the fabric of your day to day operating system. See you next time.