#2127 How To Use More Of Your Potential - Harps

work with. I have been since I was a fat, fourteen year old little kid with not much talent and not much genetic potential on all of those things. Sorry to bang on about that, that's just my life and my story. But having been someone who's somewhat turned around his life and his behaviors and habits and thinking and sporting outcomes and later in life, academic outcomes and all

of those things, I've been really curious about. Not so much what we have to work with, you know, talent, IQ, resources, time, genetics, That is of interest. But what I'm more interested in is what you and I as individuals, what we do with what we have available to us. So some people have a yearly membership to a gym that's got a million bucks worth of equipment, but they don't go. So the gym is not the problem. The resources are not the problem. The equipment is not the problem. Knowledge is

not the problem. Having a program is not the problem. Quite often, the problem is that they don't go. And if we don't operationalize what we have available to us, then we can't get great results. So I'm when I meet people and I'm talking to them about where they are and where they want to be. Like virtually everybody comes to me my workshops or me as a you know, every now and then one on one or reads a post or listens to a podcast or reads a book

or whatever it is. It's because on some level they want to do different or be different, or think different or produce differently. That is, we all want to create great outcomes. However, something that doesn't get spoken about a lot broadly, I speak about it a bit. So for some of you this might be a form of revision. For some of you, it might be a reminder. For some of you it might be hey, I've never really

heard this articulated in this way. Is our ability to get the most out of what we have to work with. So some people can do or produce what would comparatively be a seven or eight out of ten outcome, but they're still only working at five out of ten, if you know what I mean. Some people will produce a six out of ten comparative outcome, but they're working at ten for what they have to work with. So, for example,

I might run a marathon. I doubt it, but let's let's say right now, Okay, I'll put on my axose physiology had Let's say right now, I stopped doing all the strength training. I'm pretty light at the moment. I'm seventy eight kilos, which is very light for me. But let's say I got down around seventy kilos in my sixty year two year old body, and I trained great, and I did all the things I wanted to do to run a four hour marathon, which for me at

my age would be a pretty good outcome. Now, let's say I did all of that and I ate well, slept well, trained well, supplemented well, talking about supplements, not drags. I did all the right things, sleep all of it, and I ended up running a four hour marathon. Now, for me, with all the things I have to work with. So, in other words, what is possible for me? What is my potential? What is me using nearly all of what

I've got? The four hour marathon for me might be somewhere close to Craig Harper optimizing what he has to work with. Somebody else could run a three and a half foul marathon thirty minutes quicker than me, and they're still running on sixty percent. They're not anywhere near close to optimizing what they have to work with because they're genetically gifted, they're younger than me, they've got better hormones levels than me, and they're just way, way more predisposed

to running fast times than me. So it's not about what am I doing compared to what are what are others doing? It's not what are my results compared to her results or his results. It's really about am I doing whatever I can do to get where I want to go? Or am I just telling myself a story that I'm working optimally or I'm using my genetics or my time, or my resources, or my brain or my

creativity or my energy optimally. So I think we quite often reach for something else, someone else power a potion, a product, a book, a gizmo, a gadgets, some kind of thing that will help us create the one the result we want to create quicker. And maybe sometimes that is not a terrible idea. But sometimes I think it's just more about this sounds boring in old fashioned, but

digging deeper. It's about working harder. It's about opening our mind to the possibility that the problem is not the program. The problem is not the idea. The problem is not the plan. The problem is the way or the level that I am executing the plan that I am doing the thing. And you've heard me talk many times about rate of perceived exertion in a gym, which is essentially how hard somebody thinks they are working. John, you just did a said of this exercise on this weight for

this many reps. How hard do you think you were working based on your absolute limit? Ten is your physiological capacity. That's all you could do, That's all that's humanly possible for you. Where are you working at the moment, Oh, Craig,

I'm working at eight or nine. And there's someone who's vastly experienced in this place, with both minds and bodies and training and all of the physiological and sporting and adaptive things that go around that I look at them, I watch them and I know, like I absolutely know, they're nowhere near an eight or nine. They're nowhere near they're optimal. They're nowhere near their limit, their ceiling, their potential.

Then when I come back and I say, let's have a couple of minutes, John, Now what I want you to do is the last time you did this week for X reps. Now we're going to do the same way, but I want you to do two X. I don't want you to do ten. I want you to do twenty, and I want you to do it like your life depends on it. So John comes back, and you've heard me tele version of this, but it's just true. And I've seen a version of this with my own eyes in the real world, probably more than a hundred times,

because I've asked people to do this many times. He will come back. The guy that was working at ninety percent allegedly doing ten reps, now he does twenty four reps on the same way. Now he's working at ninety percent. Now he's getting close to his physiological capacity at that time. He wasn't before he was just telling himself a story. So there's the reality of what is possible for me, Where am I actually working in terms of my capacity and my potential, and where do I think I'm at?

Where do I that's the perception performance gap is my story. I'll say that again, the exception performance gap. That is where I think I'm at, how hard I think I'm working, or how intelligently or how effectively or how productively I think I'm working, and what the true story is. Now, this is not about beating ourselves up. This is about realization. This is about understanding our own capacity. This is about me knowing that I actually have much more potential than

I am currently using. Because you can't get more potential, you can't get better genetics, you can't get more hours in a day. You might free up some of your ours, but we've all got fourteen hundred and forty minutes a day, twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days for most years anyway, per year, all of those things, all of those kind of old fashioned, boring metrics that we talk about, right, But then there's what we do in the fourteen hundred and forty minutes a day that's

how well we use those hours and minutes. That's how well we use that time, those resources, those advisors, those books, that information, that education, that capacity of one's body, what we do with it. This is the thing. But I guess the inhibiting or the limiting factor here quite often is that the thing that we need to do to optimize our genetics. Why did all mate John tell me that ten was his limit nearly when he then went and did twenty three or twenty four, Because twenty three

or twenty four is fucking hard. It's hard. We don't like hard. And the truth is to optimize our genetics, to optimize all the things that we talk about, right might be just our brain potential, but to optimize that, we've got to dig deep and do shit that's uncomfortable and hard. That is how our capacity and our performance

both come closer together. So I know I'm not genetically gifted, and I know at sixty two, the likelihood, if we're speaking typically across the board, most people are definitely not getting better at sixty two. That's great. Guess what I'm not most people. I'm a human. You're not most people. You're one person that's not saying I'm better. I'm definitely not better. You're not better. We're just another bum on

the seat, when just another human in the room. But here's the thing that you and I get to do. You and I get to choose how we will behave. You and I get to choose what we will do with what we've been given and what we have available. And what other people do or be or create or don't do or get right or get wrong or fuck up or winge about or can what they do called,

that's their business. But if you, like me, are truly interested in improvement, you listen to me because most of you anyway, you want improvement, you want learning, you want evolution, you want development, you want less chaos, you want more calm, you want better results, you want better experiences. Guess what, nobody's going to fucking create those or do those, or them to you on a platter. So it comes down

to your capacity. It comes down to my capacity to do the things at the level that produce the results that you want. Conversely, you might say, as many do are too hard cool, there's no judgment in that, there's no criticism of that. Then set the bar lower. Learn to be happy. Where you are, learn to be content where you are there doesn't need to be striving or there doesn't need to be necessarily any kind of linear growth.

If that's and I mean that generally. If some people it's like, oh where that's good, great, knock yourself out, you should stay there. If you're in the middle of that, content and happy and relatively mentally, emotionally physically healthy, then you are ahead of most people. Well done. If that's not you again, not better or worse, just different. You are you. I am me. I want to improve my brain function as I head towards my sixty fifth year and my seventies. I want to. I don't know if

I will, but that's my intention. What I definitely know is I will not accidentally improve my cognitive capacity or function by just doing life. So I need of the fourteen hundred and forty minutes a day, and maybe I need to spend ten twenty thirty minutes consciously doing something which is essentially a version of training for my brain. I want my body to be as fit and strong and functional and flexible and healthy as long as I as long as it can be. That's what I want.

So then you go, well, craz cool. It's nice to want that, but will you do the work, the hard work, the uncomfortable work, that tapping into your potential work to create it? Because everybody fucking wants it. Nobody wants to live longer, shorter, I should say, Nobody wants to be less healthy. Nobody wants to be weaker, nobody wants to be more sick. Nobody wants to age. We're all going to age chronologically, but the way that we age we

can manipulate. Right, So all of these things are Yeah, there's all the nuts and bolts, and there's do this and eat more of that and eat less of that, and lift that and run there and jump on this, and fucking that's the best program. And do you know what it's about? How we do it? It's about Yes, there's the variability of genetics and what's best for me, Craig. If I want to get strong as the body weight as the pilate is, is it going to a fucking

climbing gym? Is it old fashioned? Body building is a power look, it depends it depends on you. It depends on what you're going to keep doing, perhaps, and it depends on what you need based on your individual goals and your physiological capacity. So so much of this is about our willingness to consistently do the thing that most people won't consistently do. What won't most people do? They

won't train consistently, they will not work out consistently. And maybe in your bubble where you live or in your group, that's not true. That's cool that you are surrounded by people who are atypical. If we go to any random area, we go to a supermarket or a shopping center, or we go to the beach, or we go wherever, we get one hundred random people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all ages, all ethnicities, all cultural whatever, all

religious kind of persuasions, all that. We just get one hundred random humans and we put them in a room. There's probably less than ten people who consistently, methodically intelligently train their body to get better. Probably not even five, right, so we're looking at a vast majority. But if you said to all of those hundred people, would you like your body to be in better shape, stronger, healthier, perhaps a bit leaner, a bit more functional, less pain, you know,

better movement. Probably one hundred out of one hundred would say I would like that. How many will do that? Less than five? So the question is will you do that? I want to run through some of the bullshit. I'm going to say that some of the bullshit that we tell ourselves or that we do that is an inhibiting factor on the optimization of your potential. I've written these down. Obviously, everything I just said was freestyle, but I'm going to

unpack these a little bit. I want to try and keep this to about a thirty minute extravaganza or thereabouts. So top of my list is stop waiting for the perfect time. Some people have been waiting. You know, we have this story. It's not a good time for me. It's not the right time for me. You know, you'd think someone was talking perhaps about I don't know, building a house, where timing and money and councilor approvals and again the times an issue. But so many times for people,

so many times timing is a factor. But it's not the reason and for me to grow or learn. Now, perhaps I can't join a gym, or perhaps I can't enroll in a program, or perhaps I can't build a business. It's not a good It literally isn't a good time or whatever the pursuit is doesn't need to have anything to do with fitness or health. By the way, I

kind of default to that and probably too often. But the point is, Okay, you are in a certain place, whether that's financially, commercially, pecially personally, physiologically, academically, emotionally, you're in a certain place and you want to be somewhere else. And sometimes when we're at that starting line, we look down the track at the terminus, the finish line, and we go, ah fuck, and then we go it's not a good time because we just get overwhelmed by the

totality of what's going to come. So what can we do? That's a great question. What can I do? So what if today I just did a really small thing that wasn't majorly taxing, it wasn't majorly difficult or complicated, and it didn't take a long time. What if you could do something that would move the needle a little bit to get you to where you want to go. Let's say you want to what's something that's less craig and

more often more calm. I should say, because I always kind of related to shit that I'm into, let's not do that Let's say let's say you want to this is more a block one, sorry ladies, well less ladies restore cars. Let's say you've got an old car in the garage and you want to restore that car. But it's so fun to you're like, oh god, where do we even start this? Like the engine, there's the gearbox, there's there's the juco, there's the interior that's fucked, there's that.

You know, there's so many things. There's so okay. Could you go out in the garage and could you just clean today? Could you just move all the ship that's around there? Could you make the garage in which it lives. Could you make that a more conducive environment to working on the car. Could you spend an hour out there, get some of the dust off, throw some of the shit out, just get it a little bit more presentable so when you go in next time, your mind is

in that. But what if you just start chipping away at one thing where you don't need to spend any dough What if you just start creating a list about the things that you need to do. And what if after you've got the list, you kind of prioritize and then if you do that, then maybe you create a timeline, and then maybe you do kind of a cost kind of assessment of what you know. And now you've started.

You haven't actually rebuilt the gearbox, you haven't put in a new motor or recondition, you haven't done anything mechanical, but you've started the process. So stop waiting for the perfect time, stop waiting for the planets to align. Number two is, and this is tough, is sometimes we need to step up when most people would give up. Some people at the drop of a hat. It's a bit unco comfortable, it's a bit inconvenient, it's a bit and okay,

no criticism in this, just observation. I've watched people who are working at a one and a half out of ten. They're like, ah, hands in the air, too hard, too hard. Then I watch other people who are at fucking ate in terms of discomfort, and they just fucking knuckle down. Now I'm not talking about being silly or reckless or

a hero. I'm just talking about the very practical reality that there will come a point in the journey for you, multiple points, multiple times, where the thing sucks, The thing that you're doing sucks. You do want to do it. It is not fun, it is not convenient. It is all the shit that you don't want. But guess what, it's also the shit that one progresses you and two changes you. Because, as I've said to you many times, when you do

the shit that is hard, you change. Shit is still hard, but over time you build a different relationship with the thing, like with a dumbbell that you lift, and now the thing that was hard eventually for you becomes easy, not because it's less difficult, but because you're more capable. And now that thing, as an experience is easier because you are different. So difficult becomes easy, Heavy becomes light, complicated becomes simple, Overwhelming becomes Tuesday, Right, it's just today. I'm

just doing this. Why. Well, because you've conditioned yourself. You've built resilience and strength and adaptability and cognitive flexibility. You're now a fucking weapon, and so now you'd do stuff so much easier because when everyone else was given up, you stepped up. When everyone else was given up, you stepped up. Number three is a super duper simple. Create

a plan and execute the plan. Most people don't really have a plan, And by a plan, I'm in structure, process, accountability, organization, resource identification, all of these things where you're creating a strategic, logical, well thought through plan that you can then execute, and a plan that is built around critical thinking, resource optimization, you optimization. It's not a thought or a feeling or

a vague goal in the back of your head. If it isn't written down in some way, if there isn't a strategy wrapped around it, if there isn't a timeline, if there isn't an accountability process, if there aren't if there isn't a clear path created logically not emotionally created logically, then you don't really have a plan. You have an

idea in the back of your head. And so many people, as I've said to you, wake up at fifty or sixty and they're in a place metaphorically, literally, physically, financially, relationally, they're in a place in inverted commas that they don't want to be and they say something like this wasn't my plan, And then I say, can I see the plan? And they look at me bewildered because they had no plan. They didn't really have a plan, They just had an idea of what would happen. They had an idea of

how things would turn out. They had an idea of how they would be and their life would be when they turned this age or when they got to this stage of their life. We do not accidentally succeed. Let me resay that I think there are times where people stumble into something fucking amazing and brilliant. I think those times are the exception. So let's not rely on that possibility. Let's just say that most people won't accidentally get where they want to be, will strategically get where we want

to be. Number four on my list of eight is don't call excuses reasons. Don't rationalize your laziness or your fear, or your avoidance or your lack of willingness to do the work. Don't try to justify that into some legitimate reason. Now, Also, you don't need to beat yourself up. But the truth is, most of the times, not all of the times, but most of the times when I didn't achieve it an outcome that I could have. But I'm not talking about

something that was unattainable. But most of the times when I didn't achieve the outcome that I set out to something which was within my capacity. The problem was me. The problem was I got lazy. The problem was I got distracted. The problem was I made excuses. The problem was I rationalized bad behavior. I justified doing things that were inconsistent with who I wanted to be, where I wanted to go, and the outcomes that I wanted to produce.

And this is a big part of the I need to own up, not in a self loathing way and a self awareness way. I need to own up to my strengths and weaknesses. When I fix something, it's me. When I fuck something up, it's me. Tuesday, I'm the problem, Wednesday, I'm the solution. Either way, I'm taking ownership. And so there's this very integral component to the transformational journey which is built around our capacity to realize when we are derailing ourselves, when we are self sabotaging, when we are

the problem getting in our own way. Number five is I was hesitant to say this because I've said it thousands of times over the years, but I'm going to say for anyone who's relatively new to me, the rest of you get self cup see, and that is, don't

rely on motivation. Motivation as I describe it as a state that we get in a heightened state of emotion and excitement and depending on what we're talking about four and whatever, But it's when we are sitting above our kind of normal, kind of flatline typical existence of energy and perhaps even the heart rate and all of those things where we're excited, where pump, we're in the zone. Things are good and we're crushing, we're killing, and then

two days later we're not. We don't feel that motivation. We're not in that state of I am motivated, I am inspired, I am excited. That's gone not because we're bad or we're broken, but because we're human. Right. So the challenge is not how do I stay motivated? The challenge is how do I stay proactive and productive or when I can't? Be fucked and shhrt you so many times. So motivation is great when it's there, but it is

an unreliable transformational tool. What is great is consistency and commitment and non negotiables built around all of the things that we're talking about. Number six is and I touched on this a little bit, but become the solution person. Yes you're going to have problems. Yes, bad things happen to good people. Some people are going to be fuck. WIT's to you. Some people are going to want you

to fail. We've spoken about that thing. It's concept in psychology called Shardenfreuder, where people actually want to see you fail. How fuck does that because it happened? Yes, do people revel in other people's pain? They do sometimes. Nonetheless, nonetheless fuck them firstly, fuck them. Secondly, you're the solution. There are going to be resources and all of those things.

But ultimately, even if we get the right pill, or even if we get the right program, or even if we get the right fill in the blank, you still need to take it. You still need to do it. You still need to operationalize it. You still need to be able to be the doer. Nobody can be resilient for you. Nobody can solve your problems. People can help, of course, but you need to be a big part of that. So identify your problems. We're not putting our

head in the sand. We're not going life's amazing when life's a piece of dog shit, which it can be. We're not doing that because we're not fucking idiots, we're not dumb. But we go, well, here's what's happening right now. This is shit, And I would go to you, old mate Cocker two dogs, I would go that is shit. The situation you're in right now is shit. You have my empathy, you have my compassion. That's nice. Now what the fuck are we going to do? And it's that,

what the fuck are we going to do? Which is where the change begins. Number seven is invest your energy optimally? So your energy is not a limitless resource, just like petrol and diesel, as we are well aware at the moment in Australia and beyond, we don't have endless supply of energy or diesel. Neither do you have endless supply of emotional or psychological or physiological petrol at your disposal. It's fine art. And so every day you might get up and you might think to yourself self, what is

the best use of my energy today? What do I? What do I or what have I in the last week, month, year? What have I wasted energy? What bullshit am I obsessing about? Am I spending my emotional tickets on them? Am I giving control of my mind? Too? We all do that. I do that. I still despite the fact that I'm on this show saying this to you, do I waste emotional energy or mental energy or physical energy every day. I would say, yes, hopefully it's not a lot, but

definitely it's less than it used to be. But this is you know, and it's not life or death. But I think just become mindful of and conscious of what you do with what you have mentally and emotionally is a game changer. So what do I need to do and be and create today? Where does my attention need to be today to get where I want to go? Or to move closer, to move the needle, to create some change, to build some momentum. Where does my and

where does my energy not need to be? And the last one is number eight, which is a very old fashioned Craig Harper expression, which is naming on negotiables, So naming on negotiables, So in terms of the ship that you want to get done, in terms of the ship that you want to change, who you want to become, who you want to move away from? You know, remember, when we're setting goals, we're always moving away from something that we don't want or moving towards something that we do.

And I think that moving away from something negative or bad or destructive or limiting is sometimes more powerful and more relevant and more appropriate than moving towards something we do want. I say sometimes so based on the behaviors or the choices, or the habits, or the protocol or the lifestyle or the diet or the work fucking whatever that you want to step into and maintain. What are your non negotiable rules and actions and standards and values? What is that? But you name it and do it,

be it, live it. I don't know how long that was, but I had I had a crack. It's twelve twenty nine on Sunday, the twenty second of March twenty twenty six. I'm meant to meet the crab at twelve thirty, which is one minute. I sent a message that I could be five to ten late, and I'm gonna be. I enjoy your day, kids, Love your dots,