#1901 UNSTUCK-IFICATION (The Process of Getting Unstuck) - Harps (PT2)

choose to do what scares you. That is the thing that you need to do to create the outcome you want. I'm not just talking about what scares you running in front of a truck do that, and no, of course not. I'm talking about strategic, intelligent, purpose driven facing your fear. Be courageous. Your goal is not to be fearless. Your

goal is not to eradicate all self doubt. Your goal is, despite your fear, despite your overthinking, despite your self doubt, despite your insecurity, do something really fucking brave because you can. Because you can. I know you don't want to sometimes, I know that you doubt yourself. At the very least, you're going to have an experience. You might fuck up, you might fall down metaphorically, you might get it wrong, and then at the end of that you have a

challenge by the way. You might get it right, might be fucking great. Whatever the outcome is, you're going to learn something. You're going to learn something. I've spent years doing things that didn't work. In fact, most of the things that I tried, at least initially didn't work or I got a four out of ten, not a ten out of ten outcome, sometimes a minus two out of ten. And that is because I knew. I knew that well, I didn't know. Actually, I thought that I could probably

do this thing eventually. But in the moment, at the start, I knew that I wouldn't win, that I wouldn't get it right. I knew that it wouldn't be perfect. I knew that it would be flawed. But I also knew that that imperfection and that flaw and that three or two out of ten result was a pathway. It was a conduit to understanding and skill and development and growth and better outcomes. It's in the middle of doing the

things that scare me that I get better. It's in the middle of doing the things that I'm uncomfortable with, that I'm unfamiliar with, around which there is little or no certainty. It's in the middle of that that I become the best version of me. It's in the middle of letting fear control me that I become the worst version of me, because if I don't manage my fear, it will manage me. And I do want to not be a prisoner in my own emotions, and neither do you.

Number five is practical, not sexy, not mind blowing. Number five is write yourself for to do list. And that might just be two things, that might be two hundred things. Let's probably not go with two hundred. Right yourself a to do list and fully commit to it, like fully, this is me, now, this is what I do. Now, remove the escape clause and the safety net, take away the get out a jail card. Tell somebody else, perhaps,

so that now you've got a level of accountability. Take the emotion whatever it is that you feel, the thing that you want to do, that you're excited about but scared to do. And then with that emotion, that excitement, that goal, that vision, that dream, that thing that you want to change, that thing that you are moved to change or do, or be or create. Take that emotion and wrap it in a strategy. Wrap it in a plan, Wrap it in logic, Wrap it in accountability, wrap it

in wrap it. I'm not saying rabid wrap wrap, wrap it in something which is almost impossible for you to not operationalize. In other words, do so many people set themselves kind of a goal or write themselves a to do list, but they're on no level committed. Like if I'm fully committed to something, fully committed I mean mentally, emotionally, behaviorally, one boots and all. Then on the days when I

don't feel disciplined, I'm not. I'm not you know, inspired, I'm not motivated, I'm not feeling it, I'm not loving it. It doesn't matter because I'm fully committed, So barring sickness or injury or some unavoidable reason, but barring that, I'm doing it. And the reason that I'm doing it is because I am fully invested and fully committed to this process to create the thing I want to create. And we need to get our head around the idea that

this won't be fun, quick, easy, or painless. And not only is that okay, it's fucking great because in the middle of all of that, I'm still gonna I'm going to create better results anyway because I'm doing the workhead down, bum up, I'm focused. But also the bonus and maybe even the real gift in the middle of all of this,

is that I'm becoming better. I am making me a stronger me, a better me, a more resilient me, a more capable me, a more resourceful creative me, and hopefully a better me for others, a better leader, a better communicator, a better dad, a better mum, a better sister, a better brother, a better friend, a better problem solver, a better career. Like this is kind of the refiner's fire, where we put ourselves in the fire of that challenge and we come out the other side. Ah. So that

was five and six. Number seven is extricate yourself from people who perpetuate your stuckness. Oh, I'll say that again. Extricate yourself from the people who from people who perpetuate your stuckness. In other words, as much as possible. And I know there are a lot of variables around this. You say, yeah, cool, Craig, but what if one of those people is my partner or my brother, or my sister or my barcelma. I get it. And so that's why this is global, That's why this is broad and general.

But as much as possible. When you realize that there is a personal person's on planet, you that and we're not blaming them, but we realize that perhaps they are a contributor. Then either if possible, if possible and appropriate, we extricate ourselves from that relationship or that environment, or we perhaps change the dynamic, that is, we maybe see them less, we maybe realize there are certain conversations we

don't have with them. There are people in my life virtue of situation and circumstance who over my journey have not been encouraging or supportive, and that's okay, have not had faith in me or confidence in me, and have at times undermined, questioned, and done a whole lot of things that really did not help me to move forward

to grow to a vole. In fact, if I had paid too much attention, and I did pay too much attention, but if I hadn't have been able to extricate myself from that influence, I would not have done a lot of the things I've done. And definitely no high watermark for success or post a boyd for success. But I've done some really cool things and I'm very happy and

proud of that. But I realize that there are certain people that, although I may have to have a relationship with them courtesy of just my life or situation, there are certain people that I won't have particular conversations with, I won't open certain doors. And that doesn't mean I hate those people, are dislike them. It doesn't mean that at all. It just means it just means that there are there will always be people who don't understand you,

or your potential, or your possibilities or your vision. And that's okay. We're not about hating on people. We're just about realizing, okay, I need to And by the way, we're not just looking for people who tell us what we want to hear. That's the opposite of what we need. But we're talking about people who people who genuinely love us and care about us and will support us but also give us intelligent, critical feedback, you know, when required.

So we don't need the haters, and we don't need the over the top, gushy, backslapping, you know support group. We don't need that because that can create problems of itself. But just realize that who you hang around with matters. In other words, hang out with people who drag you up, so that I kind of meshed seven and eight there. So number nine is this, do new things again? What are we talking about? We're talking about getting unstuck. Do

new things, step into unfamiliar territory. I know that when I do new things with new people in new environments, I expose myself to new ideas. I expose myself to even different cultures and conversations and people when I do something unme all of a sudden, I'm doing something new in a way that I've never done it, perhaps different place, different experiences, and it opens my brain. It makes me realize that I've been living in a corridor or an

echo chamber. At times, when we have new experiences, it exposes us to things that we are generally not exposed to in our day to day. Sometimes it builds or arouses curiosity. Sometimes it creates awareness or insights. Sometimes it gives us a different understanding. Sometimes it creates momentum. You know, for example, the amount of people that I have worked with over the years that have done something physical which was a challenge for the first time, and I coached

them towards that. They did the work, they did the event, they got the outcome, not me, but I supported and coached them towards that. So somebody who'd never run in their life, never run one kilometer, always considered themselves unfit, unhealthy,

a complete non athlete. People love trained up to eventually do marathons, but even say a ten k or a five k fun run, when something amazing happens, when people do shit that they never thought they could do and they get unstuck, they get unstuck, they get out of the groundhog danus of overthinking to an extent anyway, But what it does is it opens It opens new doors. It opens possibilities and understanding of possibilities and understanding of potential.

Because when people do something that they never thought they could do, instantly they have a new belief or the belief is I can run a marathon. I know because I just ran one, or a half marathon. The belief is like, oh wow, I actually have more capacity and more potential than I believed. I got it wrong? What

else did I get wrong? If I can do this, what else can I do if I can get out of my own way and run a marathon, or register a business, or build a business, or do a degree, or lose thirty kilos or menda relationship or overcome a distractive habit. If I can do that, what else can I do? And it's in the doing of especially new things that we've never tried, that we change and that we open new doors and we create momentum. You know, it seems I'm kind of weird perhaps that I say

I'm not particularly academic, But I'm not particularly academic. That's just the truth. But I'm in the middle of this academic journey right now. And apart from the you know, the work and hopefully we'll see, hopefully the outcome of a PhD and all of that stuff, which is, you know, interesting, and I guess the good achievement and all that, But you know what's really interesting for me is I just know so much different stuff now. I just have a

different insight. And I'm not a better person than I was, but I've had in the last four years of my PhD journey, so many new experiences, new conversations, new insights in new environments, being exposed to new ideas, and just so much stuff that is so different from the rest of my life that it's fucking mind blowing. And it just and honestly like, what are we now do I'm sixty next month, which is fucking ridiculous. But I've never been maybe I've been this excited, but I've never been

more excited. I don't think I've never been more curious, like to do, to keep learning, to keep evolving, to keep optimizing everything from my body to my brain, to my knowledge, to my performance, to my emotional state, to my outcomes, to my relifeationships, to my business and brand and all of those things. I'm so fucking excited because my life is well. Fortunately, yeah, fortunately, I'm very blessed and very lucky. I acknowledge that. But at the same time,

I've worked like a motherfucker for forty years. I've born in a great country with great parents, and so I had lots of I had a running start, as most of us who were born in Australia did not all. But it's for me a lifetime of doing new things and to stepping into unfamiliar territory, to exposing myself to

new things, hard things, difficult, unfamiliar things. For me, that's what's kept me unstuck, opening businesses, building, helping build an industry, personal training, writing the first course, writing books, getting books published and distributed, working on the radio, working in television, going back to or start doing my first degree at thirty six years of age, going back at fifty six, you know, for another crack, just this capacity that we

all have to just keep doing new things, having new experiences, that we might keep growing and learning and evolving. Number ten is a bit deep and philosophical, but that's me tap into you. Number ten is tap into your internal sat Nab. And if you know me, you've heard this term many times. Your internal sat Nab is that kind of knowing, that wisdom, that insight, that intelligence that comes from I don't know where. Maybe it's instinct, maybe it's intuition,

maybe it's divine. I don't know what it is. I really do not know what it is. But I do know that I have that you have. That we all have a knowledge, a knowing, and an understanding and a level of wisdom and insight that is innate. I'm not talking about things that we got taught or things that we got told, or I'm not talking about acquired knowledge. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about in the middle of the bullshit. There's always this still quiet voice.

There's always this deep seated knowing of what we should do and shouldn't do. And sometimes we just drowned that out with noise and with chaos and with busyness and

booze and drugs and lack of focus and attention. But when we can be still, where we can hit the pause button, when we can find some space and some time and some quiet, then we can realize and come to see and understand things that we don't when we're in our head, when we're trapped in our head, when we're trapped in the momentum and the chaos of life. And this requires again, discipline, This requires some time. This is not something that you can do in the middle

of the bullshit. This is something that requires you. Maybe it means that five minutes, you know you have fourteen hundred and forty minutes a day. Maybe it means five minutes you sit somewhere and you try to switch off and you just see what comes up for you. You just feel what you feel, and maybe you get out of your head and maybe you get into your heart. Maybe you see what's going on in there. Number eleven, we've got three more to go. Number eleven is keep trying.

And that's one of those things you think, well, you wouldn't have to say that, But the truth is people don't keep trying. The truth is people try and then they stop. But if they kept trying, and they kept trying, and they improvised and adapted, you know, and overcame and survived and just figured it out and fell down and got up and fell down and got up and you know, fucked up and got back up, and you know, sometimes it just comes down to not giving up. That's not set,

that doesn't require three HDS. You didn't need to pay for that. But some people just don't give up, and they're not, you know, and they outperformed people with more talent and skill and a higher IQ and better genetics. And I think part of the reason I've done okay is that, like and for me, I've said this before, because I wasn't the naturally gifted, talented, genetically blessed kid,

I always had to work harder for everything. I had to work harder to get in shape and harder to make sporting teams, and harder to get academic results, and harder to even fit in socially because I wasn't the naturally charming, charismatic, gifted kid. I wasn't that, and so my mediocrity in some ways for me was a gift.

And it was the gift that turned into resilience. It was the gift that turned into the capacity that I have to keep going to not give up, to be able to deal with what many people would call I will generally call them insight into you know what's working and what's not. Fall down, Get up, Fall down six times, get up seven. Number twelve. This is an interesting one. Actually, now I'm going to do that one last number, so

we'll call this one number twelve. You don't know what I'm talking about, but I just switched my own list around. Number twelve is build a new relationship with discomfort. I talk about this too much, probably, but I'm saying this for those of you who are relatively new and haven't

heard much of me. I'm going to tell you that our capacity to be able to deal with discomfort and do things that we don't want to do and things that are not fun, quick, easy, or painless, that is a superpower that is a personal development superpower because when we can, when we can lean into the discomfort, when we can when we can embrace the hard thing, when we can choose to physically, mentally, emotionally work against resistance, just like we go to the gym, we work against resistance.

The byproduct is strength. The byproduct is we build resilience and capacity and insight. We do a hard thing and we develop. And when we are prepared to change our relationship with discomfort, that is, we are prepared to lean into the pain in an intelligent, strategic, not a reckless or silly way, but prepared to embrace pain on a daily basis sometimes or embrace discomfort, then we accelerate our growth,

We accelerate our learning, we accelerate our resilience. Every day in my life, I do things that I don't want to do, things that are uncomfortable, but things that I need to do to live my best life. Every day, every day, I do things that if it was just up to my comfort level or what I would like to do or what is fun or what is convenient, there's shit that I would absolutely not do. But because of my commitment to being the best version of me.

I do that stuff on autopilot. I don't overthink it because I realize that's the commitment, that's the price that I need to invest every day. That's the emotional, physical, mental investment that I need to make every day to create the outcomes I want to create. And the last one, Number thirteen is is is deep. Number thirteen is don't ask me why thirteen. I just came up with thirteen points.

Number thirteen is consiting or mortality. One of the things I think about is where I am now, Not in a morbid way or a dark way, but where I am now in the totality of Craig Harper's life. I think about nine am sixty three, and I think about

twenty twenty three, So nineteen sixty three September. I was born September twenty eight, So next month, September twenty eight, I'll be sixty And I go, wow, if I'm a typical Australian male, whatever that is, but I'm going to live if I'm typical to around eighty might be eighty one or eighty two, but let's just round it out to eighty. So if you go, well, Craig, if you're typical, your three quarters done. If I'm typical, let's hope I'm not. Let's hope I have a few more years than that.

But if I'm typical, I have about twenty years to live. Now, I know that you might go, oh, that's fucking sad or dark or also real. Also potentially that's my reality. Potentially, like I said, hopefully I can live longer and better. But who knows? And so I think sometimes it's good to, albeit somewhat uncomfortable and scary, to think about where am I on my journey, on my human journey? How much longer on my human journey am I going to wait? How much longer am I going to feed myself bullshit,

either cognitively, emotionally or literally eating shit crap food? How much longer am I going to waste my time, my talent, my potential? Am I going to do it till I'm seventy? Am I going to do it till I just dropped dead? One day? Like? What? In the context of what really matters to me, in the context of the totality of my life? This is my only life. I can't get

another one, I can't get another body. And so for me, who looks at the you know, just I once drew a dot on the left hand side of my white board, a dot on the right, and then I kind of I've figured out my timeline where I was at, and I looked at the context of the totality of my life based on eighty years, and you know that that

line was three quarters complete. I'm like, wow. And of course there are a few variables that hopefully I can influence and control about doing the next twenty years or longer, perhaps better. But this is great, sometimes as uncomfortable as it might be, but it is great to step back and go, fuck my life, my life, what am I doing? Like,

where am I at? What's going on with my job and me and my relationships and my body and my staff, and my happiness and my purpose and my reason and my spiritual life and my religion norm whatever it is that matters to you, Like one day, you and I we ain't going to be here, yeah, and we need to think about well, we don't need to do anything, but I'm keen on figuring out, Okay, what am I going to do? Be? Create? Change? What am I going

to do in the next twenty or thirty years? And it's not all about ticking boxes and achieving, and it's not all about that. I also want to have I also want to laugh. I also want joy. I also want to watch Netflix and ride motorbikes and fucking hang out with friends. But at the same time, I want to be the best version of me. I want to live as long as I can optimally. I want to eat great food. I want to live in a great body. I want to I want to have a great, healthy mind.

I want a healthy brain. I want healthy relationships. I want to do shit that's rewarding, fulfilling, and fun. I don't want to let father time or mother nature take a hold. There are things that I can do to self regulate and self manage, which means I can live longer for better if I do certain things well. I feel like that was worth sharing. I'm not sure if it was worth listening to. I enjoyed sharing it with you. I love your collective guts is enjoy day, over and out.