#1927 Better Than Yesterday - Harps

But I guess the one thing that most humans anyway have in common is that they would like to be in a better situation or circumstance or environment than they

currently are in. And while of course that means different things and to different people, but we all want to get better at something, improve ourselves on some level, grow, learn, evolve, get healthier, earn more dollars, be more productive, be more efficient, be more resilient, Be the person who doesn't lose their shit all the time, be the calm and the chaos. Be a better boss or leader, or parent, or partner or friend or in my case son, role model also friend.

I guess podcast to speak a motivator mentor coach walker of my own talk. I'm always thinking about how I can be better for myself and for others, what I can do to develop more skill or knowledge or patience or compassion or empathy or awareness or understanding, or to be on a practical level, more productive and more effective at what I do. And there are a lot of ideas and a lot of principles which are pretty universal,

a lot of strategies that we can embrace. And so today is going to be really just more a little bit of a pit stop for you. Like we do so much on this show, so many conversations about how people did, stuff, changed, grew, you know, one loss, you know, peaks and troughs, pitfalls, tears, laughter, joy, you know all that stuff. And what I want to share with you today is just ten really fundamental ideas or fundamental questions really that you might want to jop down or at

the very least think about lean into. I've got ten of them. They might not all be relevant or important for you, but one or two of them might, or a bit more. But I'll let you be the judge of that. So what I'm gonna do is talk about them, unpack them a little bit, and then you know, so much of our outcomes results abilities to transform, be better,

do better, think better, create better. So much of that is about our willingness to step out of the theory of a podcast, out of the theory of a workshop, or the theory of a book, or the theory of fucking self help meme or whatever it is, and to be able to operationalize that idea or that message or that insight or that science or that wisdom, so that not only are we tuning into good stuff and we're hearing good stuff, and we're learning good stuff and listening

to and maybe even remembering good stuff. But more important than all of that theoretical stuff is we are activating it. We're doing something with it. And as cheesy as this sounds, transformation lives in the application of the information, the doing, not just the knowing. And so many of us are so knowing, we're so clever, we know so much stuff. We've got such a huge kind of bank of theory just logged away in our little brain or our giant brain.

But also so many of us have really been fucking around for a very long time and not doing what we know, certainly not optimizing what we know, certainly not optimizing our potential or our time, or our genetics, or our resources or our skills, quite often being held to ransom by our self doubt or our fear, or our insecurity, or our overthinking, chaotic underperforming at times mind and all of the stories that we tell ourselves about why today's not the day and we can't do it, and all

of those things. So let's try to step out of the emotion for a little bit. Let's try to step out of the emotion of I'm not good enough and but you don't understand, and it's hard, and it's all that shit right, and I get it, and it is hard at times. But also one two things can be

true at the same time. One, yes, it is true that some things are hard, too, It's also true that sometimes we make things hard that are not, and then eventually it becomes hard not because of the task itself, but rather the anxiety or the fear or the avoidance that we've wrapped around it. So what we want to try to do is to listen to this stuff objectively.

I ask myself all of these questions, and there are times when I need to take myself into the room and mirrors and have a good look at myself and my behavior and my reactions and my outcomes and my choices, because you know, I'm just like you. I'm human, I'm flawed. I have good days and bad days. You have good days and bad days. You do great shit, you do dumb shit, You fall down, you get up. You're human.

But in the middle of all of the trying to build the best version of ourselves that we can, we at times need to turn up the strategy and the logic and the reason and the planning and the accountability, all of those very practical things and turned down as much as possible easier said than done, but turned down the emotion, turned down the fear, and turned down all of that internal kind of chaos that stops us from doing Alright, here we go. So question one is simply this,

what do I need to get better at? What do I? So? What do you? What do you need to get better at? What is the thing that you are not currently doing well? What is the thing that you need to do better that will improve the quality of your life, the quality of your experiences, interactions, relationships, health, work, experience, communication, understanding others,

decision making, all of that stuff. What is the stuff that you need to be better at that is going to make your life or your life experience or the experience of others around you. Remember that, what's it like being around you? What do you need to get better at? So that could be anything in the personal space or the professional space. It could be physical health, it could be mental health. That could be producing outcomes. It could

be persevering. It could be being the solution person, not the problem person, recognizing the problem, but being all about the solution. It could be being the person that stops giving up, the person who finishes stuff, the person who sees things through, the person who, as difficult as it is, chooses to be positive. And no, we can't just magic up a new emotion. But guess what. When we focus on things, we shift our focus, We ask different questions,

we tell ourselves a new story. We can start to shift our psychology, which means which means we can start to shift our motion and our physiology around. So question one is what do you need to get better at? Don't overthink it, don't complicate it. It doesn't need to be too scientific or high level. It might just be something really simple, like I need to stop putting shit in my body. The end, I need to stop putting shit in my body. I need to stop waiting for

the right time. I need to stop bullshitting myself about the destructive things that I do. Whatever it is, acknowledge it, write it down, and then do something about it. Most importantly, do something about it. Number two is how much do you want it? How much do you want to change

that thing? These are real fundamental questions, right But the reason that I ask these real fundamental questions is because I talk to people, as you know, all the time, and I have for forty years, and oftentimes people will tell me what they want to do. But at the same time, other than the words that are coming out of their mouth, everything else about them is telling me that they're not going to do it. Though yeah, I want to, yeap, I really want to improve this or

change that or be healthier. I'd love to, I'd want yep, yep, yep, But everything about them is like, but I'm not fucking doing it because I don't want it that much. My experience is that people love the idea of success, the idea of living in an amazingly fit, strong, healthy, functional body, the idea of a dream job, the idea of a dream situation. But while some people will do what's required,

many people will not. Many people want the top of the mountain, as I've said to you before, Many people want to sit on the top of Everest, but they don't want to climb Everest. They want the summit without the climb. They want the reward without the work. They want the prize without the effort, all of those fucking metaphors.

That's what they want. And if you think about it, if I've got the skill, and I've got the talent, and I've got the resources, and I've got a cheer squad, and I've got all the things I need except the willingness to fucking do the work no matter what, then

the rest doesn't matter. Without my absolute commitment and willingness and courage to do the transformational work, then all the rest is just superfluous noise, all the cheer squadding, all the resources, all the well Craig so this or your so that, or all the potential or the IQ or the great genetics or the ability or the opportunities or

all of that stuff is redundant. If the person in the middle of all of those great resources and things, is not willing to do that work that creates better that creates growth, that creates improvement, that creates positive ada aptation, that produces better results on planet you like, there needs to be And I know this sounds a little bit motivational speaker, one oh one, I don't mean to. Actually,

I'm not trying to motivate you. I'm just trying to get you to understand that everything comes at a cost. And yeah, theoretically we know that, but everything and it's not always a financial cost. Sometimes it's time and effort and pain and sacrifice and rolling up the sleeves. And sometimes it's just repetition, repetition. Sometimes it's falling down and fucking up and getting smashed and getting embarrassed and getting back up and going, I look like a fuck with.

It's okay, though, I'm prepared to look like a fuck with. I'm prepared to get punched in the metaphoric face fifty times because this is how fucking much I want to get better. This is how much I want to learn, improve, grow, evolve, build that business, build that body, build that fucking bulletproof mindset. I am going to do the work right, and this

is the this is the antithesis of the shoulder shruggy brigade. Ah, I'll see how it works out, Like if you're already in that look, I'll give it a go and I'll see how it works out. Either one you need a massive shift in story and thinking and approach, or you need to throw it in. Number three is how much will I inconvenience myself? Which goes with number two a bit. But success, getting better, winning, whatever we want to call it,

is inconvenient. And we are people who are hardwired for convenience. We love convenience. We love things to be quick, easy, fast, painless. We want to get to the you know, the next floor without walking any stairs. We want the escalator. As I've said before with the Mountain analogy, it's just the tragic, tragic.

Maybe that's overdoing, maybe not. Maybe the tragic thing about twenty twenty five is that we are so addicted to convenience that we would rather push a button, We would rather reach for some junk food that tastes amazing for twenty thirty fifty sixty seconds or three minutes of five minutes, but is over the long term killing us. But it's convenient. It's right there, and it's high fat, high taste, high salt, high sugar, high whatever, but it's low nutrition and it's

slowly killing you. And the truth is that sometimes we just need to be able to grind through the miles and the minutes and the decisions and the inconvenience of what's required, because what is required to be awesome is almost never convenient. Think about anyone who has become a master, and by that I mean very very high level, anything like a master at business, a master at Brazilian jiu jitsu, a master at self control, a master at communication, a

master at research and study. All of those people, all of those people roll up their slaves and got inconvenienced for a long time. It's one of the prices. Number four, Question four. Of all the shit that you want to get better at, what's at the top of your list? What is what is your priority? In other words, right now, what is the most important thing for you to address and focus on and pay attention to, what needs to

have your energy? And how many things? This is a great question, how many things can you change at once? My experiences, we might have a few things in mind, but there's probably one thing, one key thing, which might involve other things. Like, for example, if your primary focus is to get physically healthy, well that's going to involve other things, isn't it. But your primary focus, your number one goal for the time being, that's at the top of your I need to get better at list is

physical health. Now, of course that's going to involve probably exercise, probably lifestyle, I'll probably sleep, probably nutrition, and probably a bit of soap, a bunch of stuff. But it all kind of it all kind of melds into the or spills into the getting physically better kind of bucket, doesn't it. So? And my experience is also that we tend to be better at focusing on one or two key things. Doesn't mean we're not going to have where we're going to

neglect everything else in our life. But when you say there's ten things I really need to get better at, and I'm going to do all ten at the same time over the next week or month or whatever, the chances are you'll change nothing. So what's the best investment of me regarding this thing that I really want to change? Where should my attention and time and skill and energy and resources be based on The thing that's at the top of my list number five. Question five is how

do I self sabotage. We all sell sabotage. We all get in our own way. For some people that's avoiding shit we should not avoid. For some people it's procrastination, fucking around. Probably those two things go together. For some of us, it's lying. We don't want to say that, do we. No one wants to think they're a lie. We'll lie to ourselves, I think, probably the most, and

then maybe to others periodically. But I'm really talking here about the self awareness, the self, the self reflection and what comes out of that, Like what am I aware of. I'm aware that I avoid certain situations, or that I won't have certain conversations. I'm aware that I bullshit myself and others about certain things. Self sabotage might also come, as I spoke about a minute ago, in the form of instant gratification. I'll have this piece of I'll have

this piece of cake now, and I'll start tomorrow. I'll have whatever it is, this beer, this whatever, I'll do this dumb thing over the weekend because it's my brother's birthday, so I'm going to go hard for the weekend, but then I'm going to start Monday, and from Monday everything will be amazing. And of course it won't be amazing

because you've said yourself. You've said that to yourself or a version of that story many times, and here you are and you're still spinning your wheels and you're still not doing the things that you said you would do one hundred times before. I guess we also self sabotage, or we can also self sabotage by choosing easy, you know, taking the easy path, taking the path of least resistance. But let me be clear, if there's a hard way an easy way to produce the same outcome, I'm taking

the easy way with you. But typically that's not how it works. So how do you currently self sabotage? How do you get in your own way? It might be any one of those. It might be that you constantly need a round of applause and a cheer squad, an endorsement, and a pad on the back, and you need someone to tell you that you're amazing and all of those things. And while those things are nice, we all love a pat on the back, We all love a cheers god,

we all love accolades. We all love being appreciated and valued and seen. We love all of that. But what's not good is when we're dependent on that, when we can't do what we need to do unless there are ten people standing by clapping. So how do you self sabotage? What are you going to do about it? I'm realizing a couple of these are overlapping, so I'm going to skip one or two. I'm going to go maybe my second last question is what are my results telling me?

What are my results telling me? You and me, we are always producing results. We're always doing stuff and getting an outcome. We're producing data, and whatever the result is, it's just it's a result. It's objective information. It's not an emotion or an opinion. You might do a piece of schoolwork. You're hand it in and you get it back, You've got eighty percent. That's the result. That's your objective piece of information. I got eighty percent, or I got

fifty percent. Or you might try a little project and you want to lose four ks in four weeks. You do the project, you undertake the new protocol, You change some decisions and behaviors and habits for a bit or behaviors at least. Probably habits take longer. But in four weeks you lost four kilograms. You lost kilogram a week on average. That's just data. That doesn't mean anything until you give that one kilo per week or that four kilos of four weeks kind of outcome. That data, that information,

you give it meaning, You give it meaning. You might go four weeks as a good result. Four weeks is not a good result because I wanted to lose six or maybe four weeks is a great result because I was aiming for half a kilo ish a week and I've lost one kilo a week exactly, which is bloody amazing. So but the point is that we're always producing results

in our world. Need to figure out if based on the results that I'm getting with whatever it is my relationships or my bank balance, or my career or my fitness project or my research project or whatever it is that I'm doing being and trying to create, are my results aligning with what I want to create? Are they a positive reflection of my effort and energy and focus and choices. Now, this is not to rate ourselves, but rather just rate the results. We're not trying to make

ourselves feel good or feel bad. We're trying to figure out what works. So if I do a certain thing trying to create a good outcome or a particular outcome, and I do the thing and I create the outcome I wanted or hopeful, then I go, wow, that is a pretty good protocol because I did that thing, I created the result I wanted. Or maybe I do that thing and I create half of what I wanted, and I go, well, look, it's definitely moving in the right direction.

It's moving the needle. There's some good in there, but I probably need to do a little bit of tweaking, or it might produce no result or a bad result. Either way, we're learning. Either way, you are always producing results and outcomes that are for you if you make them. They are lessons. This is interesting data that you can then reflect upon way up the outcomes with the thing that you did. Figure out if that's what you wanted or not. If it is what you wanted, great, can

it be improved upon even further? If it isn't, what do you need to change? What happened? Why was it a bad plan? Why was it a bad protocol? But nonetheless, either way, pay attention to what's happening in your world as a result of your choices and behaviors, because in those outcomes, in that data is gold is gold. All right, let's do let's do let's do this one. What's your and you've heard me say this many times some of you,

what's your post motivation plan? In other words, if I inspire you a little bit today, or prompt you a little bit today, or you get whatever reason, you go, fuck it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do this bit, I'm gonna I'm going to make that decision, do that thing, and from today I'm starting. I'm starting, and you're a little bit more focused, a little bit more inspired, you're a little bit more in the zone. And then so you start, and then a week passes

and now you're not motivated. You still have the same need to do that thing, because you're the same person with the same issues, but now it's a week later, and the feeling that you have at the start, I'm pumped, I'm a little bit excited, I'm a bit more focused, I'm a bit more motivated. I have a bit of self awareness because Craig pointed out this thing that I do. I recognize myself in his words, and now I'm fucking doing this thing. Go me right, And then we fast

forward seven days. All of that energy's gone, that emotion's gone, that feeling's gone, but the need to change, the need to get better, the need to improve, is still there. So the ever present question is how do I keep doing what I need to do when I can't be bothered? How do I stay proactive and productive and effective and doing what's required without being in the zone, without being

excited all the time. Because the challenge is that the challenge is that you and I are not perpetually motivated in the sense that I'm talking about motivation right now. We're not perpetually put your teeth in aps. We're not perpetually in the zone. We're not perpetually excited. We're not perpetually pumping the air where all of it, all of the time, where or overtime anyway, We're up and down, we're excited, we're scared, we're confident, where competent and incompetent

depending on what we're doing. But the challenge for us is just too hopefully, in general terms, keep moving forward, keep taking ground, keep improving, keep learning, keep developing, and there will be weeks when we go backwards, but you look at the overall month and you go, yeah, the second week of this month was shit, but the overall result for this month is a net gain, or it might even be a loss. But then we kind of zoom out and we go, yeah, that month was shit.

But overall these three months, I've moved forward. I've learned, I've grown on producing better results. I'm doing less of that bad thing more of that good thing. So overall it's good. And in the middle of all of that, you and I need to find a way to build an operating system and a lifestyle and a way of doing and being which isn't dependent on motivation, which isn't dependent on excitement or the cheer squad or any of

those things we've spoken about today. How will you keep doing what you need to do in six months from now when you can't even remember a word I said? How will you keep doing? What can you put in place? What structural process or accountability, What non negotiable can you truly commit to? Not Oh, I'll do it when i'm pumped. No, fuck it, this is what I'm doing. This is my new normal. This is me. This is how I am now. I don't need to be inspired or motivated. It's like,

I just do this. And I've bored many of you with my revelation about my steps about seven or eight months ago now where I realized that I just didn't walk much, and that was part of one of my problems with a few things, with back pain and all of these things. Anyway, I made a decision on that day and since that day, which was I guess eight months ago now maybe October or November last year, it's

currently heading towards July now as I record this. But I don't need to get pumped or excited or disciplined or in the zone, because I literally went, oh, this is what I do now. I walk ten thousand steps a day. I don't walk ten thousand minimum. I don't walk ten thousand steps a day when I want to or when it's sunny, or when it's convenient, or when I've got spare time. I just walked ten thousand steps a day. So the question is not will I or won't?

Either is when will I? And the other question is will I walk more than ten? And the other question is, well, I'm really busy today. So how do I do it? All? Right, Well, I'm going to do I'm going to walk five here and five there, give or take, and then anything above that as a bonus. Okay, this is really one of the keys, is that you and I need to be able to get better. Whatever better is without the need for a tail breeze, without it needing to be downhill

and easy. Sometimes it's going to be fucking uphill into the wind, seemingly through quicksand but that's just sometimes where we've got to operate. I don't know if that was any good or not. I felt like I shared a few good ideas, and as that's coming out of my mouth, I'm sounding very insecure. Anyway, kids, have a great day, have a great week. Whenever you hear this, if you hear it tomorrow, when it goes up, it'll be a Monday. Otherwise, whatever day you listen to this, have a great day.

See you next time.