#1792 An Unambitious Life - Harps

probably being a little bit silly. Any of you who feel like you need a little bit of momentum, need a little bit of a kick in the but Tom, I need a little bit of support to get the wheels turning, to get the wheels of change turning, to start to get a little bit of focus, to start to perhaps step into some kind of process structure, accountability. There's no hooks or catches, there's no on sell upsell, you don't pay anything. The way that it works is

every day I'm going to put a video. Starting on Friday Friday, I'm going to put a video which is going to be fatty Harp sitting in his computer like right now, talking into the camera and the microphone, setting a range of different kind of tasks or goals or

challenges for the day. There'll be different levels, so some of them might be physical, some of them might be more cerebral, cognitive, psychological, but there'll be there'll be something pretty much that everyone can do and it's not really somebody asked me today about it and they're like, how much can you change in seven days? Well, that's a good question, and there's I actually wouldn't mind doing an episode about that because the answer is you can change

a lot in seven days. But there's a few variables around that, but it's not so much. Or we're going to get in shape, or we're going to completely you know, drop ten kilos, or we're going to reinvent our mind, or we're going to change all of our nasty habits or destructive habits, or we're going to overcome that thing that we haven't mean able to overcome for ten years. It's really about can you just do something for seven

days and do it? Can you commit to something and just show up every day, whether it's fun or not fun, whether it's painful or painless, whether it's sexy or not sexy. Can you just go I'm going to do this thing and then every day turn up, watch the video, figure out which one of the challenges or tasks you're going

to do, and then go away and do that. So for me, I'm way more interested in your a bity to just stick something out for seven days, even if you get to the point where you're like, fuck it, I'm not loving this or you've lost motivational focus, because this is kind of a metaphor for life. You know, if you can't do seven days, by the way, you know, if you want to jump in, good, If you don't, also good. But for those of you who do want

to jump in, it's really your first goal. Your main goal is about just completing the seven days, because what we're trying to do is we're trying to create a little bit of psychological and emotional shift so that we just do something that maybe sucks a little bit and we don't throw in the towel anyway. I'm rambling. So if you want to get involved, go to the you Project Facebook page, you Project podcast facebook page and you'll see a little ad for it. Yesterday's podcast, which came out.

What's Today's podcast? I record it yesterday, so Sunday's podcast. Just go below the promo for Sunday's podcast and right, I'm in, Right, I'm in, and then we'll know you're in. We're all going to start this Friday. Yes, we're starting Friday. Why are we starting Friday? Because fuck it, No one starts on Friday. Everyone starts on Monday. Monday's bullshit. Fuck it.

We're starting Friday. Anyway, that's there. If you want to get involved, all right, Today, I want to talk to you about something that I've been thinking about for quite a while and I've been talking about for quite a while with clients, but I really haven't opened the door wide on the podcast, and that is to talk about ambition and whether or not ambition. And you think about the way that we operate. And I'm speaking generally and broadly, but in our culture very much, we are encouraged to

be ambitious, be all you can be. You know, hustle, grind, make lots of dough, build a brand, build a business, build a career, do all that stuff. Get ripped, get jacked. I don't mean ripped as in off your head on drugs, I mean, lean and fit, get strong, you know, all

that stuff. And of course there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I think sometimes a good thing to do is to consider whether or not having that default setting of being ambitious and continually striving and wanting to grow and to push and hustle and keep climbing and keep climbing and keep climbing climbing. I wonder if that's always a good idea. I wonder if I wonder if for some people that's a good idea, but for some people it's not.

And maybe for some people that hustle and the grind and the being wildly ambitious and driven and focused, maybe that's great for a period of time, and then maybe it's not. You know, there was a time in my life where I would say I was very ambitious and I built, you know, multiple businesses and did lots of cool things and made a few bucks and employed lots of people. And I don't think it was bad. I don't think it was bad. There were lots of boxes

that got ticked. I helped people, I successfully launched multiple independent businesses, my career blossomed, my bank balance when okay, all of those things right, but there was for me a period of time where that worked, and then emotionally, psychologically and even dick practically experientially, for me, it didn't. I got to the point where, even though I was ticking all the success and ambition boxes and from the outside looking in, this is really important, from the outside

looking in, it looked like I was doing great. And again, this is just my personal experience and my personal story. It won't be for everyone. But I kind of got to the point where I thought, I don't know that opening another gym and another business a different business, and writing another book necessarily or working on another media outlet not bad. But I don't know that that will necessarily equal more happiness, more contentment, more joy, more fulfillment. I

don't know, this is what I was thinking. I don't know that there's a direct correlation between more achievement, more ambition, more success, and more joy. I don't know if all the boxes that I'm ticking in my external world are really ticking any or many boxes in my internal world. And I don't know for you either. So I think you know, things happen in our life, and there are times when something will work, and it could be a diet. It could be a relationship, it could be a job,

it could be a certain operating system around something. A certain lifestyle will work, and then it won't because you've evolved or you've changed. You're different now, and so you need to employ some different kind of protocol or create a new operating system, or change your lifestyle, or change your career, or change the way that you do certain things because you're now different. And that's not good or bad.

That's human. But as an observer of other people and a coach of other people and working with lots of people over the years, I'm pretty confident that being ambitious isn't always a great idea. I'm pretty confident that ticking all the boxes and even earning more and more money and building a bigger and better brand. While I don't think it's in and of itself a bad thing, of course, but I don't know that it always equals joy or happiness or contentment for the person in the middle of it. Now.

I'm being presumptuous here because I'm assuming that the person in the middle of it doesn't want to have sleepless nights and doesn't want to be a chronic overthinker, or worrier, doesn't want to be anxious. And because we know that those things can coexist, we know that that external practical reality of success can coexist with an internal reality of mayhem,

of psychological and emotional mayhem, mayhem and even devastation. We know that from the outside looking in someone's life as as an as an appearance or as a representation, somebody's life could appear to be bloody awesome on an external level, but we know that on an internal level, their life experience, that is how they experience life in the middle of all the stuff that we see, could be somewhere between

average down to horrible and depressing and self destructive. So as I've gotten older, and again this is just me, but I'm less ambitious. I want to do things, I want to change things, and I have goals, but I for me, I'm I'm more about building I guess different, a different kind of bank balance. And yeah, it sounds nath maybe and it sounds I don't know, cliche. And of course I'm not allergic to making money, and of

course I need to make money. I have people that work for me, and I've got bills to pay, just like all of you. But it's not my it's not my overarching goal. I'm well aware that I can make and there's been times in my life where I've made lots of money, way more money than I needed. I've made way more money than I needed. But I can absolutely say that those in those times, I wasn't exponentially happier than when I made less money. Again, this is

just my experience. And so when I got clarity about what I wanted to do, which was I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. I didn't want to have fifty businesses, I didn't want hundreds of people working for me, And this is just my revelation and my journey. And I figured out that, you know, what I wanted to do is essentially what I do now. I wanted to speak, I wanted to mentor, I wanted to coach people. I at the most wanted to have one or two employees. I wanted to write books. I wanted to be a

lifelong student, which I am. I wanted to put myself in the middle of an ongoing learning and teaching journey. And I did that, and for me, that's been for me, that's been almost like the toning down of the ambition and the leaning into kind of that inner voice rather than that external kind of cultural voice where we're taught

that success is about what people can see. Success is about what you know, what you have, and what you earn, and what you own, and what you drive, and where you live, and what you look like and what people think of you. And it's fair to say that we have something of a societal and cultural obsession. Well in Australia where I am anyway, we have something of a cultural success obsession, I should say with success, and that is generally focused on the stuff that I just mentioned.

It's about it's about wealth and status, and it's about this constant growth, and it's about career and it's about ticking boxes. But I think it's good to pull back the curtain behind that when we look past the success and we look at the person behind it to see

how they're traveling. And I think it's the same with us to be able to do something of a psychological and emotional and perhaps depending on your belief system, spiritual self audit where I'm like, well, in one way, my ambissi is producing results and my energy and my inspiration and my drive and my motivation, and I'm doing all of these things that are on a level good, But does that equate to the existence, the internal and external

existence that I want to inhabit. I know for many people that I work with, the cost of ambition is anxiety, is stress, is burnout, is lack of satisfaction is the never enough mindset for some people, you know, no matter where they are, what they have, what they've achieved, what they're doing, it's never enough. It's not wherever they are, either literally or financially, or physiologically or professionally in their career or their business. Wherever they are, there's no contentment.

And I don't know we've spoken about this before, but that relationship between contentment and ambition, it's an interesting one. I don't know too many ambitious people who are particularly content and I can't tell you whether or not I think they can coexist, but in certain circumstances, and I think that, you know, like, there can be not only an emotional and a mental cost, there can be there can be a relationship cost where and I've seen many

times I've seen relationships destroyed and families destroyed. And you know, best friends who go into business together and that doesn't work out well. I've had I've had relationships myself professional personal relationships that became professional relationships that didn't end in devastation, but didn't end great. If I'm going to be honest, and so I don't know that that's always a great idea.

And I think also, you know, there's this there's this concept called the you know, the identity trap, and that is like when all of our sense of self and who we are and self worth is tied into being that high achiever, like the box ticker, the super ambitious. You know, I'm always on the journey, I'm always climbing the mountain. What happens when the goals are met? What happens when we get there? And what happens if our identity is really tied in strongly with our ambition and

our sense of achievement or our ability to achieve. What happens to our identity and our sense of self if all of a sudden that stuff's not there? What if we're not achieving and doing and creating the way that we were, who are we? Then? And I think, you know, I think sometimes, look it's a bit of a dance. I think I was going to say, sometimes the more we chase it through external achievements, the more elusive it becomes.

And I do think that, But I also think that we can do both, Like we can we can build this business and brand and bank balance and image and body and relays. We can do all that. But I think the pendulum needs to swing. I think that there needs to be for most of us to be truly

happy over the long term. I feel like there needs to be real attention paid to the stuff that doesn't come under the banner of ambition and striving and the typical kind of definition of success, Like what if what if you just what if you're not making lots of dough? What if lots of people are not following you on social media? What if you're not crushing it and grinding and hustling. But what if you're just really fucking content? What if you've got just good friends, And what if

you've got safety? And what if you've got clean sheets? And what if you've got cold water and a hot shower, and you know, what if you're you know, what if you just live in a place that's like do we have to be driven? And does that drive? Does the person who's driven end up ahead psychologically or emotionally, or financially or practically, do they end up ahead of the person who's just not that I don't know. I don't know,

and I'm not giving you direction today. I'm not trying to give you direction anyway, and I'm not trying to tell you what to do and what not to do. But I'm just I just think that there's a real case for an unambitious life. I'm trying to be more of this. Like I think there's you know that, like there's freedom in needing less. It's psychological and emotional freedom

in wanting less. And I think when we're all about getting more and doing more and having more and being more, when we're only about that, we're always projecting into the future, and we're never in the now. We're never in the moment. We're never in the present. Because right now, I just have what I have. Right now, I just have mentally, emotionally, socially, relationally, financially, profession I just have what I have. And the only

moment I can ever really live is in the present. Obviously, when next Wednesday comes, as you've heard me say before, but I won't be living in the future. Next Wednesday, I'll be living in just another installment of right now, because right now, this moment, what I call this moment, the never endingness of this moment, it's the only place

we can live. I think there's a real beauty to finding joy in the ordinary, not the extraordinary, finding finding joy and meaning in daily rituals, in nature, in quiet, in simple pleasures, in putting your feet in the grass. And I don't mean to sound like Deepak Chopra or bloody air cart toole, which I realize I am, but I don't know. It's like sometimes for me anyway, I go I have this weird ritual that I do. I

go sit in my front yard. I have a couple of big comfy chairs, and I pull the chair up in front of a tree, and I kind of sit with shitty posture. I slide down in the chair and I put my feet on the tree. I put my bare feet on the tree. I put my bare feet

on the tree. I put all my shit down from home, and I put my phone down, I put my whatever I've got down, and I just kind of do my own little version of a Craig meditation, which is not really There's no mantra, there's no focusing on a particular thing. In fact, I'm trying to not focus, But I don't know. There's something that for me in that extremely unambitious moment of just being still and just putting my feet on that tree and just feeling nature literally between my toes.

For me, there's something for the guy who spent so much of his life being ambitious and striving and having to write another bloody book or having to open another business or make more money, or be more popular or be more seen or you know, all that. Not that it's all ego driven, but a bit of it was insecurity driven, ego driven, love me, please, love me, look at me, want me, approve of me? All that shit for me anyway. But what if, like what if success

isn't about more? What if success is about enough? And what if what if in a piece, what if that inner calm is a bigger achievement than any professional milestone. What if creating that internal wealth Some might call it spiritual wealth, but let's just call it in could be psychological, emotional, spiritual, whatever all that stuff means to you. But what if being rich internally is a better achievement for us? As humans than anything we might create build grow in our

external world. Or maybe it doesn't need to be one or the other. Maybe it can be maybe as we maybe as we build the whatever it is that we're building in that three dimensional space, maybe we're also building something spectacular in that place that nobody ever sees or experiences except that. So I won't bang on for too long, because even I get sick of me. But a couple of I don't know, reflections or thought. For you, Am

I chasing something because I truly want that something? Or am I chasing that something because I think I'm supposed to? And that for me was really powerful because I was And I don't blame anyone for this. In fact, nobody's at fault except me, and even me. I'm not throwing me under the bus. It's just it's a result of my programming and the people that I've been around, and my conditioning, so my you know, obviously, you know that whoever we spend a lot of time with, eventually they're

thinking becomes our thinking. Maybe not in totality, but certainly there's a percentage. Certainly there's an influence. And I was around people who thought a lot about building and striving and Craig, if you've got one gym that's working, you should have too, because that's growth. If two are working, you should have three, and so on and again, it's

not bad, it's not bad. But I was more inhabiting that paradigm because I thought that's how it worked, and I was meant to do it the way that it worked. But when I started to think for myself, I had a different awareness. I had a new awareness, a new awakening. Think about this. Think about when in your life have you felt the most content, whenever you felt the most piece, whenever you felt the most joy, was it tied to an external achievement maybe it was, or did it come

from somewhere or something else? And would what would your life look like if you stopped trying to prove anything to anyone, If you stopped trying to prove anything to anyone,

including yourself, what would that look like? And I won't bore you with all the different theologies and philosophies and religions that talk about, you know, just being, but you know, it's probably not the worst idea to open the door on some of those ancient philosophies and spiritual traditions that talk about, you know, being present, and I don't think that being ambitious and being present need to operate in

isolation in a person's life. I think we can have periods where we're driven and working and ambitious, but also periods where we're not doing that, where the striving has been put on a shelf for a period of time, whether that's an hour or two, or whether that's a week or two. But I think, I think maybe the question for today is not what do I want to achieve, but how do I want to feel? Not what do I want to achieve? But how do I want to feel? And maybe a life well lived is less about climbing

and more about grounding. I don't know just where I'm at. I thought i'd share that with you. I think I'm becoming less ambitious. Still want to do stuff. I'm not without ambition, but I'm definitely I don't know if this is a good thing, but I feel personally it is. I don't know if it's great for business, but personally. You know, here's another thing. I wasn't going to say this, but quite often the less I strive and the less ambitious I am, by the way, the more work I get.

And as I'm kind of heading into this stage of my journey where I'm still going to keep working for as long as i can because I love to work, and it's not really worked for me. But as I'm entering this phase where I'm less ambitious and I'm less focused on and growing you know, brand and bums on seats, and still want to do all that, but it's not it doesn't hold the same fascination or excitement for me. But interestingly, I'm recording this Sunday. Last week I had seven,

seven speaking gigs from seven different organizations booked. Now, in a typical week, I might get one or two, and I probably do around one hundred a year, But to get seven gigs booked in a week, it's quite weird, quite fascinating, and it's funny. I'm like trying less, but things are happening more so, maybe the secret to success is not to chase sixcess. Yeah so yeah,