Good day, champions. Hope you're great, Welcome to another installment of your Favorites podcast. Is it, though, he says optimistically, I don't know. Let's hope it's in the top hundred. I hope you well. So we've all heard the saying go where you grow, Go where you grow. It's kind of cheesy, isn't it. I agree, it's totally cheesy. It's cheesy. I don't use it. Mah, maybe I use every now and then despite its cheesiness. But what I do love is I love the idea. I love the idea of putting.
I'm going to personalize it and then you can personalize it to you if it's relevant. But I love the idea of putting myself in situations or circumstances or environments or challenges or roles that are going to help me get better, help me grow, help me evolve, help me learn, help me develop skill and confidence and competence, and help me become a better version of me. And again this comes back to the stepping away from the theory and
stepping into the doing. Being proactive so that we can be productive, so that we can do things that are uncomfortable or unfamiliar or inconvenient or uncertain, because that's all of those uns the unfamiliarity, uncertainty, the uncomfortable stuff, the uncertain stuff, that's where we grow. That's often where we grow, and so that's where we need to go quite often. And growth can be like growth is a really individual
thing for you. So you know the area of your development or your psychology or physiology, or skill or career or financial status or relationship status or communication skills or athletic ability or athletic prowess. Perhaps more accurately, it could be relevant to any of those things. And so growth or improvement or positive change all the same thing that's
going to be represented differently to different people. So I'm really interested in becoming a world class podcaster, and I know that I can't become a world class podcast and maybe I am already who knows. I don't know. I'll let you be the judge. Maybe I'm shit, But anyway, I know that I can't become really good or better. I can't grow and learn and evolve. I can't develop the skill and the art and the science of podcasting to world class level without doing podcasts. I can simulate
it all I want. I can talk to myself in the old bedroom sitting on the end of the bed, who does that and not you are But it's only when I step into the process, when I step into the doing, when I go where I grow, which is sitting there like I am right now in front of a microphone in a room by myself on a Saturday evening at six nine pm in Melbourne on the seventh of the sixth It's only when I do this, and I've done this a lot, and I try to be
fully present. I try to share thoughts on ideas and stories which are relevant and potentially helpful and powerful for you. It's only when I keep showing up and keep doing it where I grow. I can't develop skill. I can't get better at this by not doing this. I can't build muscle by not doing strength training. I can't become more knowledgeable unless I am consciously and proactively putting myself in a situation where I'm learning. Now that could be
incidental learning. I guess when I'm going through a process or an experience, or be something more formal like an academic process, whatever it is. But I can only learn when I put myself in situations and environments where learning is a possibility, and so learning could be growth. Becoming a better researcher could be growth for me, becoming a better communicator or writer or teacher, even like this is I love this idea. Becoming a better thinker For some people,
that's growth. And I don't necessarily mean being smarter or knowing more stuff, but just being maybe more aware of our thoughts, you know, opening that metacognitive remember metacognition, thinking about thinking, Open that metacognitive door to start to think about is the way that I think helpful or hurtful? Is it empowering or disempowering? Is the stuff that typically goes on in that space between my ears? Is it making me more anxious or lets anxious? Is that making
my life better or worse? Am I telling myself stories of doom and gloom or power and possibility? Like what is happening? And so so perhaps by putting my own you know, this is a special kind of self awareness, isn't it metacognition? Is by putting my own thoughts under the spotlight, maybe I can grow, Maybe I can develop new awareness and understanding, and I can start to think more effectively. I can start to think in a healthier way. So growth on an individual level, growth for you could
be whatever the fuck you want it to be. It might be becoming a better leader. Well, how do you become a better leader? Well, I guess you can talk to other leaders. You can do some research. You can be around people who are doing leadership and see what they do. You can read about it, you can study it, you can research it, you can do it formally informally. They're all good things, I guess. I guess you can also try to get yourself in some kind of a
position where you're leading a group of people. It might be I don't know, talking to some kids at a school, it might be it might be running a group at the local rotary club or whatever it is. But we can't get good at the thing that we're not doing, or at least we're not around. So I know that I've learned lots of stuff about leadership and communication and connection and building rapport with an audience and understanding the
science of public speaking and professional and corporate speaking. I know that I've learned a lot by being around great speakers and being in that environment and being right in the fucking middle of it being at the coal face of professional development and professional speaking and that corporate culture. I've learned a lot being in and around it, But where I personally have learned the most is when I'm on stage. I learn the most when I'm on stage,
not saying the other stuff is not good. It's all good, But I want to put myself in a situation where now I'm doing the thing, and hopefully I'm doing as good a job as I can, but I'm doing the thing that I want to be good at. So what is the thing that you want to be good at? What do you want to be better at? What do you want to become a world class at what? Or maybe it's not that, Maybe it's something way, way simpler
and more manageable. But maybe it's just that you want to be better at saying no to people because you're
an overwhelming fucking people pleaser. And while it's nice to be nice, you know, it's also fucking exhausting to be an emotional or social doormat for people because you're so worried that someone won't like you, or someone will get the wrong impression, or you don't want to be the reason that someone gets their nose out of joint that for the last twenty seven and a half years, you've been saying fucking yes to everyone about everything, and now
you're fucked, you're tired, you're and you're compromised, and you're not living your best life. And in the middle of all of the people pleasing, in the middle of all of the bloody emotional doormatting, in the middle of all of that, guess what, you're not making people happier, or
you're not keeping everyone in the world happy. Let's say that your job, my job, as best I understand anyway, your job is not to keep everyone happy, and sometimes in our endeavors, to keep everyone happy and nobody unhappy and nobody sad and nobody angry, and which is good
luck with that, because that's fucking ridiculous. But is that all you do is you make yourself exhausted, You make yourself sad, you make yourself anxious, you make yourself an overthinker, you make yourself the person who can't fucking sleep at night and worries about everything at level fifteen because you so desperately want to keep everyone happy. And that arises out of low self esteem and fear and whole bunch
of shit that we won't talk about today. But the only way that you can grow in this space is to go no, no, and you know what, just and when they go oh oh, you don't need to give them thirty two explanations because you're not six years old and they're not your dad or your mom like you're an adult. And do I want to, like people say to me all the time or not all the time, pretty regularly, hey, do you want to do? Whatever it is? And depending on the situation, I'm not always a selfish prick.
If it's if it's going to help someone or you know, if it's it's doing a nice thing for someone, then more often than not I will do it. But if it's like, for example, a bunch of people who want to go and do something socially that I don't want to do, I have no interest in. If I'm there or not's really not going to make any difference. There's fifteen people going do I want to be number sixteen? Do I want to go bowling on a Friday night? And do I want to put on those stinky size
eleven fucking shoes at nine thousand people? And do I want to no, I don't want to do that, and that's okay. So me saying thanks for the invite, they're not my thing though, that's not me saying, hey, you're a cunt. No, that's me saying that's me saying I don't want to go bowling, and it's all right that I don't go bowling. And by the way, if our friendship is contingent upon me doing what you want and
me keeping you happy, then that ain't friendship. That's a fucking conditional, unhealthy relationship that we should talk about or I should get out of. So sometimes the thing that we need to do in this space of growing and learning and developing, and I'm assuming I'm making a big assumption here and for the twenty of you that just got offended because I said, count oh, I'm a bit sorry, sometimes the thing that we need to do is really not the thing that we're comfortable to do. But that's
the whole point, isn't it. Like think about when do we grow, Well, quite often it's when we're in the middle of you know, that hard thing, that uncomfortable thing, that embarrassing thing, that thing that might we might call failure. So many times as a child or a teenager, I guess more accurately, but also as an adult, I've been embarrassed, I've been humiliated. I've done things well, I've done things terribly. I've been criticized, I've been all kinds of things, and
I'm fine with that. And honestly, there's probably many times I deserve to be criticized, or there are many times when whatever I was doing I didn't do a good job, and I'm okay with that. I don't it's not my goal to do a bad job, but of course I need to be prepared for the fucking reality that sometimes I'm going to do a bad job. Sometimes I'm going to be shit sometimes, sometimes I'm going to get embarrassed.
Sometimes I'm going to be the dumbest in the room, the least skilled in the room at whatever it is that we're doing right, And that is okay, that is okay. But how I get better in that room, how I grow, how I learn, how I evolve, is I be around people sometimes who are better than me. If I've got to be the smartest in the room, or the best in the room, or the most skilled in the room, or the funniest in the room, or the one in the best shape in that room. Then that's all about
my insecurity and fear and giant ego. I'm not grown in that room. I'm not learning, I'm not developing. Why do I train with a guy who won multiple Mister Australias was a pro bodybuilder and it is bigger and better and stronger than me and has got better genetics than me, apart from the fact that we're friends, which is the main reason. But the other reason is because I like training with somebody who's going to drag me up, not down. I like training with somebody who's better than me.
I like studying with someone who's got more knowledge than me. I like being in business with Melissa because Melissa's got skills and knowledge and insights that I don't have. And so it's being, you know, being around other people sometimes that keeps us hungry and keeps us driven, but also gives us the opportunity to be dragged up, almost like personal development osmosis, you know, and we know I've spoken many times about like what's the principle of strength training
or resistance training? With the idea and this applies outside of the gym and in the gym, and not just to muscles, but also to minds, right, and emotions and brains. Is that we go to the gym and we do a hard thing. We lift something hard. We literally work against physical resistance that we call a weight. You know, we work against ten kilos and it's hard, fucking hard.
That when we do it, and then a while later, a week or two, we might be doing eleven or twelve kilos and we're doing it easier than we did the ten, that the weight is actually heavier, but it feels less heavy because we've grown, we've evolved, we've gotten better, we've improved, We've built strength, we've built neural adaptation, our bodies working better. We're building understanding and efficiency. Right, we're
getting better at something. We are putting ourselves in an environment and in a protocol and in a system where we can grow where we can. And when I say grow, I don't mean physically bigger. I mean grow, improve, learn, adapt, develop, whatever it is, whatever it is for you. It could be I could say go where you're going to improve, but it doesn't sound the same, does it. So growth? Development, skill learning, getting better, improving is a byproduct of working
against resistance. And that resistance could be a barbell, it could be a fear, it could be an inherent, long held fear that fucking controls you, that hijacks your nervous system and your mind and sends you down an emotional and psychological fucking rabbit hole, and you need to you need to work against that at some stage perhaps that perhaps for you, it's not about learning new stuff or
getting another this or getting another that. It's just about saying, I'm going to do this thing that fucking terrifies me. I'm going to face this fear because I don't want I don't want to be controlled by fear. I don't want fear to manage me. I don't want fear to destroy my potential and possibilities and power. And so I'm that's the place I'm going to grow. I'm going to grow in the middle of fear. I'm going to grow
in the middle of zero confidence. I'm going to grow in this place where I have no skill, no understanding, I'm going to grow. I'm going to walk into the gym my out of shape body, and I'm not gonna in my mind, I'm not going to fit in. But by the way they don't care. They're not looking at you, They're looking at themselves. But I'm going to go me and mine not very healthy, not very fit body. That's the starting point. That's where growth is going to happen.
You might grow through out the other side of your shitty childhood. You might grow through revisiting that and unpacking some stuff. You might you might outgrow the bullying, you might own it up and step up. You might have some awareness. You might talk about shit that you needed to talk about, forgive someone. Maybe maybe not. But all of these things, all of these things are opportunities for us to grow. We have to create for the most part.
And this is the thing, This is the this is perhaps the key for this little pep talk is not to just sit back and hope shit kind of eventuates. That means, oh, we might accidentally spontaneously get better because this thing happened. No, let's go seek out the thing that is the conduit to growth. What is the thing? What is the conversation? What is the skill? What is the environment? What is the challenge that I need to move towards for growth? Where will I grow? What? What
is growth represented by? What's the mechanism what's the protocol, what's the recipe that I need to open the lid on, so to speak. So let's wrap it up. Let's wrap it up. Oh boy, my pumped for a Saturday night. So you're not going to accidentally get amazing. You're not going to accidentally wind up with lots of skill and
lots of resilience and lots of anything. But what you might do is you might consciously and intentionally create some amazing outcomes, which are all different forms of growth and development, learning and evolution of you. And obviously there's you know, there are limits on what we can do. Of course, we can't all do everything. But I'm cheekily going to suggest that you haven't peaked yet. Maybe with some things
in your life you have peaked. But maybe there are other areas of your life, Maybe there are other opportunities for growth. Maybe there are things that you need to own up to and step into that for you is going to be the catalyst for something fucking amazing. All of the stuff that I share with you is theory. Me sitting here just banging out a whole lot of words to you for twenty minutes. It's just theory I'm sharing ideas and information, hopefully a bit of inspiration and education,
but ultimately everything comes back to you. If this is just another podcast that you listen to, but you've actually resonated with things that I've said, but this is just another pot, there's going to be no benefit other than maybe you enjoyed twenty minutes of whatever this is. And I want you to like what I share. I want you to like the podcast. I want you tell all your friends. I want you to like me because I'm
wildly fucking insecure. But more than all of that stuff, I want you to be the person who operationalizes the theory. I want you to be the person that's ready to go where you grow