#1783 Business As Usual - Harps & Tiff

I don't know.

You know, let's say I've got to I've got to do an intro for a pre recorded whatever, and I'll go all right, here we go, all right, all right? Oh fuck? And then you know it's like that, you know, like I was going to do I was going to do a podcast the other day on a particular topic. I know the topic. Well, I fucked it up literally about I don't know seven times, and then I crack

the shit. So I threw the glow mesh in the shag pile, I threw the dumpy butt and window threw all the toys out of the fucking cot and I went, fuck that title, I'm not doing it. You can all get rooted and the world clearly doesn't need to hear that shit. Fuck it, And then I sulled.

think this is relevant. But I did a chat about you know, the difference between what we think and what is real, like the the the perception versus the data. You know, it's like I feel or I think not like I'm not good enough, but there's actually data and evidence to say, well, you are good enough. You know, you're not the fucking best, but you're good enough. Or I'm on lovable or whatever. Well, yeah, I get it, you feel that, but people love you, so you're not

unlovable or do you know what I mean? But despite the evidence, we can still believe stuff that isn't true, so much so that we've even got real world outcomes and data and evidence to say that, no, you're not fucking useless. Yet in the middle of that knowledge, we can still feel or even think or believe we're useless.

And it's like I'm sixty as fuck and it doesn't go away, like it doesn't it just like the volume goes down and I've done some great shit, like as in, I've done really cool things in my life that I never thought I would do, but the feeling of supreme confidence just is never there.

do a big U Project event at the Communi this year. Everyone, So batten down the fucking hatches, start saving because it's going to be super expensive. So sell a kidney and get ready. Now it's not going to be expensive. But I remember, you know this, self doubt this, I'm not good enough. Who the fuck would want to listen to you or read you or watch you. You know that's been ever present despite the fact that I know that some people do, but I still feel like, who would

and why would they? And even though I'm going okay at the moment, I'm just lucky, it's just a phase. It's going to go. But I remember one day at Deacon when we had a room full, we had just under seven hundred people, and I was just in the zone. I don't know why. It's one of those days where it feels like it's coming through you, not from you. It's like you're throwing three pointers at the free throw line and every ball is going in every basket without

even touching the net. It was like that, and everything was just working and I kind of had this moment where I looked up and I don't know if this is true, but it seemed like there were seven hundred people in the palm of my hand, just captivated by what was going on, and they were just fully present and they were and what I was saying was landing and there was connection and there was tears and there was revelation and there's like and I just had this

moment where I went, fucking the hell, I'm not shit, I'm not shit. This is oh my god, I can do this. You know, this is I'm not terrible, you know, And I remember thinking, I don't this is what I thought to myself. I've had the few times in my life, right, and this was one of the maybe five times in my life where I've gone, don't forget this moment. This

is an important moment for you. And I remember it really clearly, and I remember at the end of the day because it was you know, we have lots of good days with those workshops and seminars and conferences that we do, and You've been involved in lots of them.

But at the end of the day, everyone had kind of gone and just picking up some shits, and Melissa comes up to me, and we were on the stage and the last person had filter out of the filtered out the room, and she was just packing up her suitcase with a myriad of things that she takes and she just looks at me and she goes, this is actually what she said. She goes, what the fuck was that? And I go, I don't know. I go, I don't know.

She goes, oh my god. It was like, you know, when there's just something special that happens, you know, it could be a one on one conversation with someone. Yeah, you know, and even on that day, Yeah, but I don't know. That's the thing about connection and communication and being able to, you know, be in the middle of something amazing with people and creating that experience.

there's only one way. It's like, when I changed to do the stuff I'm doing now, we were in the middle of a pretty shitty situation where things will looking grim. I'm like, well, it can't get worse than this, so I'm I'm going to do something new and brave and bold and wonderful. And the only place to go is up. And then all of a sudden, when you start to build on that and you get a little bit better, a little bit better, you're not at the bottom rung anymore,

and it's like I could also fall. There's lots of hope. There's all that hope up there, and I'm closer to it, but also I could fall from here.

There's like, oh, well, I'm in a shit spot, all right, so you just acknowledge I'm in a shit spot or I fucked up, or I'm physically or mentally or financially or professionally out of shape or got that's cool, all right, Then what's one thing you can do today tif to make some ground? What's one thing you can do. What's one conversation, What's one decision, What's one action? But yeah, and that I think that ability to be able to feel like you're not good enough but still try.

naturally gifted than me. I'm not sure, but I don't think you think And I definitely don't think I don't think either of us inherently think that we're fucking geniuses, so we're probably similar in that, And I don't think either of us were inherently you know, you're probably well, you're definitely more genetically and probably more sporting in terms of being gifted than I was, you know, But I think we're similar in that we both don't think highly

of ourselves, or we didn't. Maybe we're getting a bit of confidence and awareness now hopefully not arrogance, but yeah, I think that being able to recognize maybe I don't have great self belief, or maybe I don't have heaps of talent, or maybe I might fuck up. But definitely, if I don't try, I'm never going to grow, learn evolved, that get better.

an opportunity or feedback on something. I notice internally that almost the unworthiness or I'm not this or stuff comes up or I go, so how do you manage? Because that's for me, it's probably one of the biggest things that I keep coming up against.

that's that's really overselling what it was. But I was talking to a group and I did get paid, right. But so the first one was in at a timber yard, and it was in the staff room or the lunch room, talking to a bunch of blokes who didn't give a fuck and you know, really weren't interested. But the guy, the guy that owned the business, I was his trainer, and he loved the shit I said, and He's like, the shit that you tell me, My blokes need to

hear that shit. And I went and told them the same shit, and clearly they weren't him, and they weren't interested. But one or two guys. But in the middle of that quite painful thirty minutes in the lunch room, there were just one or two glimmers of connection and hope. And it may be a smile or maybe a laugh or and I just I just had this speaking of hope. I just went ah, like those little so those little moments of connection or those little, tiny little wins, they

felt amazing. And I went, oh and a few times, like for the first year that I did stuff like that, and I did probably seventy percent of what I did in the first year was for free, and thirty percent

I got paid a dollar fifteen, right. But it was in the middle of doing all of that and every time coming away having done a three out of ten or a two out of ten, or a four out of ten, or sometimes when I was on fire, a five, right, but being able to learn and see in my self growth like I knew, I I like, I'm not good yet. I know I'm not good, but I was terrible and

now I'm just less shit. Right. So it's like, if you know you know Brad, that you and I both know jiu jitsu Brad, Right, So if I go and roll with Brad, if I do jiu jitsu with Brad, I know that Brad could kill me seventeen different ways in sixty seconds and I couldn't do anything about it. So, and he's a he owns in a cab jiu jitsu academy, he's very experienced, is very good. He's one of the best probably in Australia in terms of in that you know. And so, but my job is not to go and

beat Brad. My job is to go in and go, right, well, Brad's great at this, I'm shit at this, and to work at getting better, not at work at beating at Brad or being as good as Brad, but going well, Craig, you're a You're not even a one out of ten. He's a nine. So you're you're a half out of ten. And so yeah, for me, it's just about that, you know,

It's just about going well. I've just got to work at being better and maybe down the track, I don't know, maybe I'll have a podcast that thousands of people listen to. Or maybe I'll write a book and someone will buy it, you know. Or maybe I'll write a few books. So maybe I'll do a talk and I'll be fucking terrible, but maybe one day seven hundred people will pay to listen to me and I'll be great. Who knows, or you know?

to this stuff. And after the first we did a co working day together, that night, I messaged him and said, hey, with love, fuck you because yesterday I was a speaker and I knew what my message was and I knew what I spoke about. And right now I feel like dogshit that doesn't know anything and can't even articulate to you in an empty room what I'm talking about, because it was introduced to this entirely new level of a way of thinking and understanding things that just wasn't familiar

to me. Yeah, and that that's so confronting.

my head, it's like the messy fucking sock draw. It's everywhere, and my brain goes from I can't categorize cleanly and clearly and create flow with my points, and I know I do it on the fly, but I just feel like there's value in understanding that if I want to be able to portray what I do when I have opportunities to connect with people and companies.

twelve kids amazing. We did it at ballaratt Uni. And whether or not I'm talking to you know, elite sporting team, which I do, or I'm talking to a company like a corporate space, you know, in a fancy fucking conference center, or I'm talking of blokes on a construction site, or I'm talking as seventeen year olds at a school or at a university. It was. The common thread is that you're trying to help them think better, do better, be better,

create better outcomes. Right, And so I reckon you can distill it down to a ten twenty second elevate a pitch as they call it, which you can then build on. So when someone goes to me, what do you do, and they're really asking what my job is, I go I help people change stuff. The end it's like I don't know what that is. You know has seven words or six words? I help people change stuff five words, right, and they're like, what is what stuff? I go, lots

of stuff, you know. I go head stuff, mind stuff, life, life stuff, habits, behaviors, you know, thinking outcomes, results. Oh, how do you do that? And I go, well, you know, I'm an excise scientist. I'm doing my doctorate in the mind PhD in you know, psychology. So we think about all the human stuff, you know, like the thing we have in common is we all want to succeed, we all want to be healthy, we all want to be happy.

And so we open that door. And oh and then so just by going I help people change stuff, you know, then people go generally almost everyone says what people what stuff? I go, all people, all stuff. You know. It's like at least open the door, Like here's what we know. It doesn't matter what environment or what person or what situation. Nobody in front of you wants to be less happy, Nobody in the room wants to be less healthy, Nobody in the room wants to be more of a failure,

nobody wants to be more fearful. Right, and so it's like I think once you try and over talk it or over explain it, you do yourself a disservice, you know. So I tend to go, oh, look, I work with teams and athletes and companies and individuals about just helping them create better outcomes in their world the end, you know, or whatever, because invariably there's a question, nobody goes ah and walks away. They go ah, cool, thanks by, Like

they don't do that. I've never had that done. So what I do is if I go, oh, well, thanks for asking. Well, actually I do a range of things. I'm an author, you know. Then people are shut up, like I'm always like undersell over the liver. Just open the door, say something a bit interesting but also authentic, open the door a bit, and then let them come through and ask you stuff if you want. But I mean,

the nutshell of what you do is the same. Your job is to help people perform better whatever people and whatever perform means better habits, better thinking, better decisions, better operating systems, better protocols, better lifestyle. You know, it's all the same stuff, right even you know, It's like, I'm not a corporate guru at all, but I work successfully in the corporate space. But I've never ever been corporate myself, Like I've never been a corporate employee ever in my life.

Yet I can go into the corporate space and thrive because everyone in the corporate space is a human and I'm pretty good with humans, you know. So yeah, but I think over time, I don't know if this is very podcasting what I'm saying, but fuck it, I feel

like it's just you and me. I'm coaching you. But I think over time, you're going to get more succinct and more clear, and you know, it's just going to become more where, more and more, as you get more experienced and more confident and more competent, it's going to be not that you are in any way choreographed or you know, you're more person than persona, but as you do more and more my experiences anyway, for me, you just it's almost just like you're having a conversation, but really,

you know, really like yesterday, sorry you go.

I want yeah, I want to leave people with all of the directions I've looked in so they can go and look there too, like real clarity around I think just even the idea of it's made me go back and read books I've read before on specific topics and bring to mind, get real clarity on why I've landed where I've landed with all of this stuff, and what is the research and other people who talk about it, what are the things that I've agreed with and disagreed with, and how can I talk about that to a room

because that's all relevant, Like all of it, all of the stuff that's my stuff is just a decision that's built on stuff that I have agreed with and disagreed with and maybe changed my mind about over time. So I've loved the process of going back to that and playing there, but it's just left me in a bit of a whirlwind of oh, I'm not used to thinking in this one's being used to thinking in a different way. And I know I use my brain a lot in

what I do, but like it physically hurt. I was physically at home going my brain hurt feels like I've done a workout with my head.

going to connect. Some people are going to be fucking inspired. Some people are going to be looking at their Facebook while you're talking. Some people are going to walk away and go, she's a gum. That was the best thing I've ever fucking heard. And a few people will go, ah, right,

that's what we do. You go in there and you go I'm going to tell you some stuff that I think, some experiences, I've had, some insights I've gained, maybe a story or two, and then I'm going to explain why I'm telling you all that, and then you're going to maybe do something with it or not right. And so it's not like I never you know, I would never tell someone how to think, but I would talk about thinking. I would talk about metacognition and you know, metaperception, all

of that. I would never tell someone what they should eat,

but I would talk about nutrition. You know, I would never tell someone what would be the best job, but I could talk about the psychology of work and fulfillment and connection and purpose and what tends to work for some people in terms of you know, thriving not surviving in work for forty years, and you know, so you can talk about things without directing people, because there's some stuff that we know, Like I think we can safely say that if you have a job where you feel

like it's meaningful and you have purpose and you have connection with other people and you feel like you're doing good and growing and evolving, and well, there's a fair chance you're going to like that job. But if you get paid a million bucks a year, and I know some people that think it wouldn't matter what it was.

I would fucking love it. You wouldn't love it like I mean, if you had a job where you've got a million bucks a year, twenty grand a week, but you fucking hated every moment of it, guess what your life is not. That's not success, that's not joy, that's just income. And so you know, I think there are these things that are broadly relevant, if not one hundred percent applicable all of the time. But as I said to these kids, yes there's seventeen. Yesterday was day one

of year twelve. I'm like, what a fucking exciting time it is for you, you know? And I said, here's the thing. You know, No, there's no optimal career. There's no optimal plan, but there's there's the best plan for you, though, but your best plan will be the worst plan for the person next to you, and the career that blows your socks off. I'm like, how many of you want to be an influencer? Right? And of course no, not all

the hands. I thought it would be everybody, but a few hands went up, you know, and you go cool. So for some of you, maybe that's what you should or could do for Maybe you'll be an architect for some of you, maybe you'll be a world famous chef, or maybe you'll be none of that. Maybe you'll buy a truck and you'll have a truck driving business and

you'll transport stuff around it. Who knows, it doesn't matter, but it's trying to find this, you know, Like what's going to work for tif cook won't work for the next person. And you know, it's like I say that people don't don't do what I'd do because most people would hate it because I don't actually have a job or predictability, or I don't have a set wage. I don't have you know, I don't have holiday pay, I don't have sick pay. I don't have much security in

that sense, or predictability or certainty. Most people would hate what I do because it's extremely financially vulnerable, you know. But I thrive in that. But most people don't.

holiday pay. I'd love to be able to leave the job at work at five pm and turn my head off like there's and you go, well, you get a choice of what you are willing to pay for that, and you get to pay it like because seven days a week, any time of the day, I can go and walk my dog at my will any day I could, I couldn't theoretically just do whatever the fuck I want.

And that's the price I pay. Is well, that you can do that, You've also got to fucking make enough money to pay yourself in super so you can eat when you're sixty.

I feel like I've been cheating for forty years. I feel like the fucking kid who got away with the cake, right, I'm like, just I'm the fat kid in the corner with a fucking chocolate cake and I'm just getting away with it, you know, like my mum, I reckon my mum for about the first twenty years, is like, what the fuck do you actually do? You don't have a job? You know. She didn't like even when I owned like a proper business, gyms and stuff, to me, that was

a fucking scam. Like if I didn't own a gym, m'd be in a gym two hours a day anyway. And now I could just be in the place I want to be in and people give me money, and nothing that I do feels like a job. I'm around people who are happy, people who are getting in shape, people who are having good conversations, people who get excited to come to see you, people get excited to come to the place that you work at, and it's just this fucking massive, kind of amazing energy. And you're like, yeah,

this is not a job. This is a scam. And I'm in the middle of this scam. I'm making dough fucking don't tell anyone. I hope it doesn't catch on.

I'm not I'm not tiny. I'm five ten and I'm eighty six kilos.

doctor because that's what you want. Become a truck driver or a train driver, or a personal trainer, or a fucking artist or a street performer, whatever you want. Like oh, yeah, but you've got to pay the bills. Yeah, you know what, You've also got to live and have some joy in And the thing is that it's like, well, let's find let's get an income, but let's have joy as well, and maybe we could do both. Maybe we can make a fortune and also do the thing that we love.

And just trying to get across to them that you don't realize how much potential you have at this time in your life. And also you don't need to figure out the next forty years by Friday week. You know, it's like this doesn't I talked to thirty year olds who don't know what they want to do, and I'm like, guess what you've got another fucking fifty years, so chill, like there is no hurry, like even when I finished my current study, and like I reckon, I don't know.

I don't know what I'm going to do, but I tell you what I'm not doing thinking about winding down or retire. I'm excited. I'm excited.

primarily nearly all of it online. I mean, it's full on, it's a lot of work, but like and just to just to like talk to these kids and go, hey, the world is your oyster, Like there is so much stuff that you can do. But also then too like presenting with them the idea of intentional living, which is having said that, yes, there are so many options and so many roads you can choose, but also you're not going to accident wind up in an awesome place like you need to choose it. You need to do the

work you need to. You need to keep getting up, You need to be resilient, you need to, you know, find your reason. You need to outlast the motivation. You need to. So also, it's not all fucking you know roses and you know puppies. It's like there's there's still work, and there's still discipline, and there's still effort and energy

and you know, there's all of that. But at the same time, if like most of my listeners do, if you live in Australia right now, it's a pretty fucking good time despite all the doom and gloom that we're exposed to, you know, twenty twenty five, Like, there have been so many periods evolutionary, evolutionarily where humanity has been in a way worse place than we're at now.