#1924 Doing Better Than You Feel - Harps & Tiff

got to do whatever it is that you do. Yeah, you know, and it might be you doing parenting, it might be you doing selling apples at the mark, doesn't matter.

But especially when it's kind of I guess communication based or interpersonal or people based, and you just like, you know, you're a five out of ten, but you don't want to look like you're five out of ten, or you don't want to saund and you want to you want to do a ten out of ten job, and you're kind of there, but you're just like, fuck, I'm not even feeling what I'm saying. You've had a bit of that.

of a continuation of that shocking sleep, shocking energy. And I said to you before, like I've had a few podcasts lately or meetings where I'm just you know, when you're sitting in the middle of it and you're like you are, oh, the any critic, Like, brain's not firing, not my usual self, I can't engage the same way, aren't thinking as fast And then just start observing that and criticizing myself in the middle of it and just being so embarrassed for myself, just like, oh, God, like,

what's wrong with you? Plan to pull the pin on the whole thing. You might have to move to blow Canber and get a job washing dishes somewhere.

but you can't. It's like I say to my clients, my trainers, I should say, everyone pays the same amount for you, So whether or not if you're training with TIF at seven am or seven pm, you should get the same tiff because I'm not paying more or I'm paying So the challenge for you as the coach or the speaker or the trainer in this example, and the challenge for me was trying to have as much energy, focus, attention and quality of product at seven pm when I

got to the gym at five am. And so now we're fourteen hours in because they don't I can't go, oh, look, I'm really tired. It's been a big day. You're my thirteenth appointment, so you know it'll probably be shit, but you understand because I'm tired. Well, no, you know that's got nothing to do with them and everything to do with you. And I used to talk about this idea. This could become the title or not. So there's two

terms for it. One is your performance threshold. And your performance threshold means how much of a certain thing can you do at the level that you want to do it before you need a break or a rest or, you know. So that could be training clients, that could be podcasts you might know. I mean, of course there are other variables. But you can do three podcasts in a morning and they all be pretty good because you've got half an hour an hour between each. But by

lunchtime you've done three, they're good. But you probably can't do six good ones, right because it's just it's mental overload or physical overload, and you get angry and with

nobody he fucking wants that. That's terrifying. And the other term I used to use for it, other than performance threshold as shit threshold, and it's the same thing, but it just means how many whatevers can you do, how many hours, how many sessions, how many phone calls, how many lawns can you mow, whatever it is that you

do before it turns to shit. And I used to say to my trainers, figure out what that number is, and then don't do more than that number, because people don't deserve that people deserve if everyone's paying a premium price, and of course we're human and all of that, but as much as humanly possible, they need to get the same level of quality each time.

well you are, but you're a bad one. Like your job is literally to prescribe people individual programs, exercises, experiences based on a myriad of variables. And if you like, I won't. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus. But even lately, I've seen people who would come to

the gym, They'll be trained by a trainer. Then the next person and who's nothing like the previous person, essentially does the same workout, and then I'll see them another day, and then there's like a complete another person doing essentially the same workout. I'm like, this is not personalized prescription. This is a generic program that you're comfortable with. It's

like you go to the doctor. Ten people go to the doctor for ten different reasons, and she gives them all the same drug because she can't be fucked you're all getting the blue pill. You're all getting predness alone. What but I've got a headache. Oh yeah, but my dick's falling off. Yeah but I've got heck and whatever. It's like, No, you're all getting this. It's ridiculous, But

that happens, you go go see it fucking annoying. I feel like there's about ninety eight percent of our listeners gone, well, this is completely irrelevant to me. You know, it's you can apply that idea. Yeah, there's two percent going, oh fuck, that's me. Well, I mean the idea of personal training is that it's not the same as you know, it's you're not doing the same thing as everyone. Ergo personal, ergo the name. It's in the name. Otherwise it'd be called generic training by Brian.

just soldier on? Or do you have a hack where you can get yourself kind of.

It's very rare that I that I am The only times I will struggle on personal training clients is if they're in the afternoon and I'm and I'm really run down, and I've only got two sessions that I run in an afternoon for a group and they are super fun. They normally just lift me up anyway, So I'm like, thank God for that.

me up. Now, I'm talking about in a professional capacity here, I'm not talking about friendship. Yeah, you know. And the the amount of just because I've done so much right and even though it's a very small percentage, maybe one or two percent of the time, but because I've done so many sessions and talks, still ends up being quite a number of sessions where like I remember, I've told

this once, I think on the show. But one hundred and fifty years ago, when I had a girlfriend when I wasn't old and weird and hermity, Me and the aforementioned girlfriend had been having all night conversation about some of the challenges, right, and it was just that's not me. I've only ever done that once in my life, and it was that night right where it was just it was going around in circles and anyway. It wasn't a very it wasn't to but it wasn't a great it

was anyway. So I literally had about maybe thirty minutes sleep, and then I had fifteen appointments. I had six am to nine pm, back to back one hour sessions or maybe fourteen or thirty. And this is back in the day when I was young. I used to do. I was like a weapon, Like I could do lots and lots and lots, and there would be you know, because I owned my own business, I would sometimes which it

seems inappropriate, but in the context it was fine. I'd eat my lunch while I was training someone, but it'd be you know, like i'd have a protein bar or a little bit of and it'd always be with someone that I knew well and they're fine with it, and i'd do a workout with a clientel. But I remember just I didn't even want to turn up for the first person, like, I was emotionally drained, I was exhausted, I was sad, I was anxio. I was the opposite of what you need to be to do that job well.

And I just remember thinking, the last thing I want to do is to be an inspiration to anyone. I just want to fucking cuddle. I just want to I just want to lie in front of the fire, like you know. And and I guess I could have canceled everyone, but it was my business and it was new and I was yeah, but that's you know, I mean, in the context of no, I just got through it. But in the context of real world problems, I think I had one cancelation, so maybe I slept for thirty minutes.

But in the context of you know, somebody having cancer, or somebody being in a bloody war zone, or somebody not having clean drinking water, these are these are not problems at all. But you know, the reality is like for us as individuals, whatever it is, hard for you? Is hard for you? Do you know what I mean?

I played music, positive music. I listened to some shit to get like I just I put so much effort into changing my state because I was like, okay, because this is because this is happening frequently. At the moment, this becomes a story real easy, and I can either drag my fucking bottom lip all the way to the gym and drag that story in. But like I put yeah and I've been good all day, still been it's good, not like not sharp, not good on cognitively, but.

a chance. You know, it's like I like I'm doing I'm up to my eyeballs at the moment in kind of the run home to what's called submission where you submit all your work for your PhD. So but there's still a lot of work to do. But I know that if I do it somewhere around eight am till midday or not that that's the totality of it, but for that particular cognitive task, which is not a fun task. I'm much better in the morning. So one of the mistakes that I've been making is, you know, doing other

shit and then starting my PhD at four. I'm like and going, I'll just do this between four and ten or whatever, and it just doesn't work. It does, but for other people it does. Like there are other people, as you know from pH three sixty, where like later in the day they come alive. But for fatty harps

like my brain. In fact, it's funny because for that kind of cognitive load, that kind of work, that kind of task where it is real intense focus and problem solving and trying to understand stuff, for me, it's earlier in the day. But there's things like this where it's not that kind of work, you know, it's not that kind of brain work where I'm just banging on with you and I'm quite present and I'm not saying this is the world's best podcast or the world's best episode.

But I find this easy, but I don't find the other stuff easy, you know. So I think it's figuring out your own timing with everything from training to sleep to you know, food to you know, cognitive performance.

done workshops there before. But if Melissa's got to do some you know, typ stuff corp stuff like events stuff, business stuff, and I've got to do stuff. Quite often, we'll just jump on zoom and we'll do we'll do a lot of it together where we're just working through something and I'm typing, she's typing. Her head's on the screen, My head's on her screen. I'm like, what do you think of this? Okay? So when should we launch that? She's like, have you written a copy for that? I'm like, no,

when do you need the copy by? I go, all right, well, what do we how much money are we going to spend on that? What do you think? Blah blah blah, you know, do you think we could go with this? Do you think okay, what do you think the price point is for that? Should we do an early bird off? Or do you think? You know all this stuff? And you know we're going to go to Perth alright, so do we want to like try and get two hundred bums on seats or five hundred bums on seats? What

do you think? And what venues do you think? And like just all of that and we get ten hours of work done in and out? What do you laugh at? So?

desert boot from a banana, right, so I don't. But that's his and he's a genius at it, and I think he does very well at it. But he lives in the apartments right next to the cafe. But every morning when I get there at stupid o'clock, he's already there, and he sits there with his computer, sits there with

his phone, he's got earphones in and he's working. And he also often has this like spiral bound book or this little diary where he's writing with a pen in that he's working on his computer, and he'll be there before me and after me. So he's there for hours and then sometimes not often, I go back in the middle of the day to get a coffee and he's still there and I go, have you been here since six o'clock? He goes, nah, I went and worked out and I came back. So he literally lives thirty meters

from that table. But he's much more productive in the middle of Mayhem than sitting in his apartment by himself, like beautiful apartment. He's like, yeah, I need I need stimulus. I need stimuli around me. And it's funny. You would think that that would not be good for focus or attention or productivity or efficiency because there's so much shit going on, But like, I'm quite productive in the morning too, because I do a bit of work, then I say

low to someone, then they go. Then I do more work than someone else, and then yeah, it seems to be me sitting there completely engrossed in something for five hours. Typically ain't happening when I.

And then I come and I sit the computer, and I'm like, right, all that amazing stuff and everything just shuts down. And I'll find it weird that I can listen to a conversation and then have another method of thought happening in my brain creating an idea at the same time.

need to move, you know. It's like I feel like I have which is probably not true, but I seem to have really good ideas in the shower and the amount of times I get out of the shower wet and then write something because I have a big whiteboard in my room because I'm a weirdo in my bedroom and I get out wet and I just write this thing on these ideas on the whiteboard before I forget it,

or before I forget that. It's like I might have two or three or four lines which are the start of a post, but if I don't get them out of my head and onto paper or onto a whiteboard or onto a computer screen, they vanish.

I can't even remember who it was. But you know, one one kind of war LORDI dude, he built basically this great, big, huge, as big as my house timber horse, which was beautiful and amazing and it was on wheels, and he bought it kind of as a he made it, and he built it to this ruler king whatever as a gift, as an offering to you know, and the king the other dude was like, oh great, I know

I'm mangling this everyone so o emami. But anyway, they opened the gates and they wieled in this big, beautiful present of this ginormous timber horse, which was majestic and all of that. But inside the timber horse were a bunch of his soldiers and warriors who came out, and that was how they got inside the walls of this

compound to then attack the people in there. Right. So that's called a trojan horse when you go in kind of under the guise of oh, look we're doing this nice thing or we're doing this thing, but really we're actually doing something else. Right, And I was thinking about

this idea of psychological trojan horses. Now this is how my mind works, right, I'm like, how do I share human behavior and psychology and you know, all the shit about theory of mind and metacognition and all these kind of dry, boring ideas in a kind of a psychological or cognitive or conversational trojan horse. And so you tell stories or you use humor and you think about like, really, for the most part, the you project is about you know, it's about how do we think better, do better, be better,

create better. It's about the human experience. It's about your mind, it's about your body, it's about your potential. It's about all of those things. But then how do we get to that, Like what's the between the intro and getting to that point where? And so often it's about like, you've told stories today, you woke up at two forty three.

I've told stories which you shut down like a motherfucker about how Melissa and I work, which apparently I talk too long and it was incredibly fucking boring and you should have put a time out signal in front. No thanks for that back in therapy for fatty harps. But anyway, but I mean, this is how we get to the point of, oh, how do we talk about these interesting things like performing under pressure, and how did we talk about like trying to work at an eight or a

nine out of ten when you feel like a three. Well, you tell stories, right, because this is part of the human experience is you're going to have days where you feel like shit, but the reality of the day is you've still got to show up, you know. So yeah, for me, that's that kind of conversational trojan horse where I don't stand on a stage and go all right, everybody,

I want to talk to you about your mind. You know, I just go, hey, put up your hand if you're an overthinker, and everyone goes, oh fuck, their hand goes up and they go me and I go, how's that working out for you? And they all laugh, and you know, I go, it's exhausting, isn't it. And then so we have fun and we have interaction, and I'm telling a story.

And then but I'm opening the door on this really important issue is the relationship between anxiety and fear and overthinking and self sabotage and all of these interesting things that you need to kind of kind of get in the trojan horse and surprise them, you know, by ah, look, I'm not just telling you a story or being funny. I'm teaching you something. But it's coming in a kind of a conversational trojan horse.

and she'd just wrap it all up. And I think about the stories I tell and the times when I was sparring and doing the same thing and feeling like I was never getting better and I was shitty shit, and then being told by my coach it was the best session ever, and like the times that it just but boxing always hurt. It was always hard, and it wasn't overnight, and it was every day, and it was fucking hard work, and I loved it anyway, Like it

was hard work all of the time. And after remind myself of that when I'm doing what I do, that I chose to do, that I love to do, and I chose it because I love it, and you've got to do it every day and you get better and better but it hurts and you get punched in the face and in the middle of getting better and Betty, you tell yourself shitter and shitter at times.

Like what where do you build resilience? Well, not sitting on the couch, not not taking the easy option, not avoiding the decisions you know, you know, not by stuffing stuff into your body that's bad for your body, like you you're fucking killing yourself and sabotaging yourself, your own genetics, your own health, your own potential, you know, by not trying anything, by you know, by letting your fear control you, you know. And yes, it's all easier said than done.

And just me on a podcast, just saying shit doesn't mean anything, right, but when you actually go, look, I'm real scared, but I'm going to have a go great like that now you've conquered some fear and that now you've been courageous, and you might fuck up, you might fall down, you might win, you might learn something. It could be a disaster, it could be good, it could be somewhere in the middle. It could be a bit of both. But you're probably not going to die. You're

probably going to learn something. You're probably going to develop a better resilience and a bit of insight, and then you do better, Like when from the first time you put on gloves to the best moment of your life as a boxer was just like a long journey and you start off with no skill, no confidence, no awareness, no ring craft, no knowledge, no science, no fucking anything. But nobody's ever started boxing career with twelve fights under

their belt. Nobody's ever started nobody's ever got into the ring for the first time and been good. Yeah, like this is literally where you start. You start being bad, you start being inept, you start being unqualified, you start being unskilled, you start being scared. Like that's the starting points, but you know, we can't move to like for people who want mastery, well, fuck, mastery comes with miles and lots and lots, and you want to be a master

at something. You want to be better than not anyone else necessarily but maybe, but you want to be way better than your current level in whatever it is. Will then just keep working, Just keep working and stop looking for the magic pill you know, and go where you grow. I know it's cheesy, but all right, Well, I feel like you better have your chicken breast. I really hope

you don't choke. I feel super bad if you do so after you've consumed that, if you could send me a text say it's actually calm down, well, just make sure, really make sure you chew well tonight, could you?