Great champs and Taps, Well, Taps and Tiff, it's both of us. We're sliding in towards Easter chocolate, a bounds, hopping bunnies, eggs. TIFFs just raised both her index fingers in a kind of celebration chocolat. I reckon, like people are chocolate people or they're not. There's not really anyone in the middle, like I'm not. I mean, wow, yeah, I can eat it, but I don't enjoy it, Like it's nice, but then I go eyah, I'd rather I don't know chicken breast, but I know it just doesn't.
I'm like, are you generally savory or sweet? Sweet? Right?
Sweet chocolate? Yes? Yes?
Yes? What do you reckon? The split is? You know, most people either they love like a fucking lasagna or a roast chicken with veggies and salt, or spag bowl or you know, tie takeaway, like most I think dudes are more that and maybe ladies are I mean all of it, but like if they had to pick one or the other, it might be sweets.
Do you reckon when it's even when it's savory, it's carbs and salt, like carbs and salt versus shot. Yeah, yeah, except for harps is really go with chicken bresh right now.
And have no no fat, the fat fuck that lives not that far below the surface, A little one who's fucking beating his chest these fists against the fucking chest cavity. He's like, give me cake, you can't, but he's he's more like, gimme lasagna. But I used to inhale pastor when I was a kid, which the significant substantiveness of me,
the totality of me. Yeah, but then then I kind of tried not to be one hundred kilos and at ten and yeah then but over time, yeah, I still like if I took a big gobful of lasagna, I would laugh it, but then I would feel terrible, not emotionally mentally, just physically feel terrible.
Yeah, I'm not part sea pasta and like even rice pasta and rice and like savory carbs, and I reckon. I don't know, maybe it's a learned behavior where I go, like, I all my naughty foods are going to be shock of that, they're going to be the best, They're going to be something that makes me like and I will forego stuff that I call savory junk and so I eat really nutritiously with my real food, and then I try and pack everything into just pure bliss, pure bliss and east What a great time of.
Year, huh. I reckon, like on a practical level, Like everyone talks about optimal this and optimal that. Yeah cool, most people can't do optimal potentially forever, right, I reckon really if most people ate eighty percent clean, like I'm in real clean, like healthy, no bullshit, no bad food, nothing processed, no no significant sugar or no overload of
you know, starch, and just really healthy, clean food. But twenty I'd rather ten, but maybe fifteen ten percent of the time, eat whatever the fuck you want, but make sure that your total junk calories for the week don't exceed fifteen percent of your overall calories. You know. So if you have two thousand calories a day, I would say, let's that three hundred. If you had three hundred calories a day of something that's not great, that's fifteen percent?
Is it?
Seven and a half? Can? Hell? No, yeah, three hundred calories. Fuck my brain's not working out and had lunch. Yeah it's fine, it's fine.
To get through this calculation.
Let's start the show. Again, yeah, I think that's And again everyone, this is not advice. I'm not a dietitian, but just having worked with literally thousands of people, and it's always a big part of it, but nearly everyone, A big part of it is food. You know, we can train great, but if you eat shit, you can't
be optimal or close to optimal. And yeah, so I don't mind the od I've told you recently because I'm skinny as fark, I've started having the odd pie and I couldn't be happier like people like you had a pie, yes, Judge mcjudge, I did, and I nearly eight three of my fingers shoveling that bitch in. It was so good now. But the thing is, have I pie like I don't have six. In the old days, when I was twenty four, I would have had six or three. Three really, so
I have one. I feel good. But the funny thing is when I ate a bit of junk like that, which is kind of high salt, kind of high fat, a fair bit of starch because of the pastry, I will eat that. If I ate that like I had one the other day. I don't know, I told you I was walking down Hampton Street and I accidentally ate an onion pie and I went into the bakery to buy an apple right and they fucking sucked me in. So I ended up against my will with an onion pie.
They always do that.
Oh, I know, they're so manipulative, and then poor vulnerable people like me accidentally eat fucking onion pies. Anyway, I ate that at about twelve thirty good, like a little but you know what I do because I don't want people to see me, because you know that would they would be bad. So I sneak around off Hampton Street up to a side street that's got one of those little chairs that they was, you know, bench seats, and I sit there and I fucking scout the area like
an elite military operative. I do a reki, make sure no one's within three hundred meters, could only take me two hundred and fifty meters of walking to eat that. I look around, do w reki, and I'm like, and go take it out of the brain brown paper bag like a fucking widow.
So good, and then you tell everyone on your podcast, and now all of Australia knows. Anyway, you didn't know it anywhere.
But I would have one a month, you know, but I think you could have something like that.
One of my one of my mates, who is a nutrition it's one of the favorite little I guess catchphrases or bits of simple advice that I loved that she said was count nutrients, not calories. Did you talk about creeping out? But you know how many people have a bad meal like binge on sugar or junk and then think, well, I won't have I'll restrict now, and it's like, nah, like what does your body And especially as you get older, I think it's more about energy. What does my body need?
And because I ate a thousand calories of Easter eggs at lunchtime, what did they have? And how can I get as much of that in still for the day?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I Mean, funny thing is when you look at like the pie gets not generally the ones I get like once a week or fortnite I get. And by the way, everyone's going to roll their eyes and go at least if you have a pie, have a good one.
Now.
These are the shittest pies in the world. They're fucking four and twenty traveler pies from seven to eleven, right, and I'm like just wrapped in plastic full of salads against the pie. So I'm making myself sterile and also all the other things that go with that, which is great, but I need to be virile. I guess cusban in the racks ince the late nineties. So that's right. Oh fuck,
I was going to say something else. I can't. It would have been real good though, like that promo that I showed you a gold Yeah, I might talk about that anyway. My long winded point was going to be the pie that I have has less calories than the chicken salad wrap that I buy sometimes. Yeah, so it's like, but it's yeah, I'm not on any level pretending this is a good idea anyone. I'm not suggesting it's healthy.
Let's be clear. What I'm saying is a little smidge of junk every now and then, as long as it's not, you know, it's the exception, not the rule. I don't think. In fact, I'm pretty sure it ain't a big issue. Now I need to announce one thing or Melissa and also that Denise Faness will punch me in the face, and that is that I'm terrible at promoting my shit. But anyway, doctor Denise and I are doing a program together. Everybody. Denise has been on the show many times. She's a geneticist,
she's an next size physiologist. She's a legit, straight up scientist and researcher. She's also a mum and a wife, and an entrepreneur and just a really really fucking good teacher. Like she has a way of teaching stuff that can be complicated and confusing and overwhelming that is relevant to all of us, but teach it in a way where like, oh that makes sense to me, and I think I do the same, or I try to do the same. Anyway, we're both doing a program on June thirteen, twelve, Sorry,
Friday night thirteen is the Saturday. Fourteen is Sunday. We're kicking off around six thirty or seven or something on the Friday. We're finishing about fourish on the Sunday. It's in Malula Bar. It's on the Sunshine Coast. If you're looking for a super duper cheap bargain, this is not it. It's not expensive, I don't think, but it's also not you know, your twenty nine dollars workshop lots and lots of content. We've only got fifty spaces. We're just starting small.
We want to see what happens and if you want to find out more about that. By the way, where it's at the mantra, like the event, which is great because it's fifty meters away from the water. So we're going to have breaks over the weekend, of course, and in those breaks you can there's there's a fair bit of free time. So I'm not a big fan of programs that start at seven am and finished seven pm
and you get bombarded with twelve hours of information. So there's lots of teaching and lots of information, but not to the point where it's cognitive overload anyway. Like I said, it's at the mantra, Denise and myself, it's all around. What's it around, It's around you, optimizing you. So we're looking at mind stuff, brain stuff, nutrition stuff. She's also
a nutritionist course. She is sleep cellular health, DNA, the role of DNA slash genetics in the way that you live and the way that you know everything from longevity to health span to day to day stuff. I'm going to be talking about optimization from a mind point of view. So not brain as much mind point of view, and also from a physiology point of view, how to be strong, how to be functional, and how to have a body
that is younger in inverted commas than your chronology. Ie, my body is sixty two years old on a calendar, and at the risk of sounding like a dickhead, I would suggest somewhere closer to forty years old operationally or functionally, or what we call bioage or physiological age or functional age. And that's not because I'm lucky or I have brilliant genetics. That's because I do the things that that result. We're going to be talking about all of that and more.
If you want to find out about it, go to my website, just the homepage. There's a big banner there. Click on that sales pitch over. You're welcome. Take a breath. Sorry about that, but a few of you might be interested. If I'll give you a discount, I'll give you ten percent off if you want to come so fight.
Thank you so much. I just want to say, for someone who's just come back from an event, a multi day event lot similar theme to that, but in something that interests me, there is something magical about being in the room, and I came back from the second of those events this year, and when I am gonna have that in my budget every year to be in the room for multi day events in things that interest me.
So when people when you're looking at the cost of something, it is I just think it's so beneficial because there's there's the relationships and the conversations and the energy and the be around people like you that make stuff happen that doesn't happen when you just do a course or see a doctor or listen to a podcast. So there's my take on that.
Wow. Thanks, I'll slip you some day later. But it is I mean, and I don't just mean for what we're doing, but if you go somewhere like you were at a speaker's event, right, and so you've got other people who do what you do, want to do what you do, and you support each other, you encourage each other, you're kind of there for a similar reason. And generally out of our stuff that like we've done everything from half day events to four day retreats and everything in between.
And invariably what happens, especially with things that go over a few days, is people make friends and they just you know, I know people who came to something one off ten years ago that I ran, and they've still got a circle of two or three or four friends from that day and they stay in touch, either in person or online. And yeah, so it's a range of reasons things like this. I mean, you'd be the judge
of mine. I'm not sure, but the things like this can be really in a legitimate, literal way performance enhancing, can enhance my performance. Speaking of such things, I wanted to chat to you about something today, and we're just going to circle around this everybody and talk about it because people get confused and the role that this particular
topic or this particular construct plays in performance. And as we said, human optimization puts simply you getting the most out of you, or you moving from where you are to where you want to be in terms of your goals and intentions and plans, and that is motivation. So some of you who followed me forever will be a bit sick of this, so maybe turn off, or maybe call it a refresher. We might open a few new doors.
But growing up I was always kind of taught and told and trained, especially when you're coming to things like self improvement, you know personal health, health, you know, self empowerment, all that that motivation is key. In other words, motivation with the number, because without motivation, you're not going to do the stuff for blah blah blah. Well I'm challenging that because because it's still possible to be proactive and productive and effective and to get shit done when you
don't feel motivated. So I'm defining for this chat. Motivation can be defined in a few ways. In an academic sense, generally, motivation is analogous to reason or driver. So what is your reason? What is your motivation for joining a Jim Craig, What is the reason? What is the driver? So we're not talking about it in that sense, although this kind
of bumps into it, But we're talking about motivation. When the average person is talking about their level of motivation or health, motivated or demotivated, they are They're talking about how they feel. They're talking about their emotions. They're talking about their level of focus. They're talking about how excited they are in the moment to do the thing that they are. I'm pumped, I'm motivated, I'm inspired, I'm excited. Now let me start with then I'll shut up TIF.
Let me start with motivation. That the emotional state or the psychological state or the heightened state of being motivated is great. It's great. And there are some days where I feel super motivated and pumped and excited. There are some day, you know, like I'm a nine out of ten, some days where I'm a seven, and some days when I'm a two, And that does make me good, bad, weird,
That makes me human. So the challenge for those of you who kind of understand what I just said and have some familiarity with what I just said, the challenge is not for us to be a nine or a seven or an eight every day, because we're just going to be what we're going to be. But it's for us to try to be proactive and productive and effective and to keep doing what we need to do. In Craig terms, when we can't be fucked. Oh I can't
be fucked today. I didn't sleep well, I'm tired, out of blue with my boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, I can't be cool. That's all normal. So the problem is that people get motivated, then they make decisions and take action and start to get results. Because they're motivated, they are in the zone. They went away for a weekend, they came back pumped up, and from the weekend until the Friday,
they're in the zone. And then Saturday comes and it's someone's birthday, so you go, oh, just whatever, I'll compromise a bit today. And then two weeks later they're not motivated. That feeling that they had has gone, and the behaviors are starting to fall away, the choices are now become irrelevant,
and now we're back to groundhog Day. So the question for this podcast is how do I stay productive and proactive and effective, in other words, doing the work that I need to do when I don't feel inspired or motivated. And so we're going to unpack that a little bit. Even when I'm working with elite athletes or anyone who just wants to get where they want to get with their body or their habits or their finances or their career or their study or their spiritual journey or whatever
it is, remember I'm not the answer. I'm just I'm kind of the coach on the support system. In a way, I say to them, I don't care how motivated you are. If you're motivated, great, If you're not motivated, also fine. I care what you do when you would have typically given up in the past, Like in the past. Let's say we're talking about losing weight. Well, and again, this ain't about losing weight. This is about a goal. But for so many people when it comes to some change
they want to make with their body. If I'm talking to someone tomorrow morning at the cafe about this, they say to me, how do I this? Or I want to do that? Or if they're being honest, most people have tried to do a version of that ten to fifty times already. So they've started and stopped, started and stopped, started and stopped. So we need to analyze the stopping bit. Why do you keep stopping? Because you've got a gym membership, you've got a program. You know that eating that stuff
over there is bad. You know that eating that stuff over there is better. It's not a knowledge issue. You don't have all the knowledge, but you have enough knowledge to move the needle and to create to create some real change. And I think so we'll launch into that from there. So what are your thoughts around this cookie?
But just been writing down a bunch of words and because I'm like, I'm thinking about the concept of what is motivation? What create motivation? The fact that it is a response usually usually to an external thing, idea or thought, or reaction to something. I wrote down the word momentum,
I wrote down environment, accountability, and process. So just kind of thinking like what are all of the components that come into it, and then how do we create a system that allows us to use motivation in a way that works for us, Like it's a tool I think for me? Yes, those two the concept that I said before of going well at least twice a year, I'm going to invest in industry events that are multi day.
That is purely the number one reason is the level of motivation that I have for a quite an extended period of time where I take action after that and I embed learnings and I build relationships and I uncover and discover and create opportunity is huge. So that's me going well two times a year. I'm going to have a big injection of motivation that's not going to last all year. It's going to be a temporary thing. And off the back of that, how do I get and
maintain momentum? What do I put in place to create accountability outside of just the response to the motivation, the feeling, and what environment do I need to create that makes all of that happen?
So clever I wrote all of that, I wrote system, So I'm writing that. I think this is going to be the title for the show. What's your post motivation strategy? Right? Put up your hands if you think you're going to be perpetually motivated and or inspired? No one, Right, put up your hand. If you'd like to be really consistent with the work that you need to do, everyone, right,
those things don't go together. So it's having that, you know, like, I know I'm gonna I know I'm going to be in motivational troughs and inspirational and focus and attitude and all of that. And because I'm not weak or broken, I'm humans. So what works? And so that which you're suggesting, like to build a system slash process, slash program whatever, that is essentially a protocol for accountability. What will keep me doing the thing that I need to do? What
will keep me accountable? What will make me It's like you and I were talking before we went live. I said, I hate it because I have to do ten thousand steps a day. Why do I have to? Because that's my rule, right, do I does the world end? If I don't, of course not. But I know that when for me, when I have clearly defined non negotiables that I do not I hope i'll do, or I want to do, or I intend to do, but I'll fucking
do every day. And people will go, oh, well, if you can't have one day off, there's something wrong with you. We did, and I get all of that right. If for some reason I literally could not humanly do them, I wouldn't do them and I wouldn't beat myself up. But if I can do it, I'll do it. And this is the difference between I want to do something and I want to create an outcome. And I am fully,
fucking totally committed to this behavior. And if it's fun or not done matter, if it's easy or not done, the matter convenient inconvenient doesn't matter, Fast or slow doesn't matter, because so many of us spend our lives almost changing, and then we wake up and we're fifty or whatever we are, and we go, oh, fuck, this was my plan. And of course you've heard me say, may I see the plan? And they've got no fucking plan. They've just got an idea. Of how they thought things would work out.
I'm not trying to be hateful or hurtful. Let's just be real and practical, right because most of us, most of the time, do not follow through over the long term. We make a decision, we take action, then we stop. That's why gyms can over sell memberships because they know they can have a capacity for maybe what you know, if people training regularly two hundred members, three hundred members, they can sell fifteen hundred memberships because they know most
people don't go after about four to six weeks. Some do, like you and I will wear that shit out right. We're terrible fucking members because we get every ounce out of our membership, right out of our huge two dollars a day that we pay right or whatever it is. But then you know, there are other people who have joined or started or done whatever this program or that gym, or who joined that group and then unjoined that group
and then made this commitment, then unmade the commitment. And so I think we have to be really practical about this. And so the truth is that I need to figure out a way where in the middle of discomfort or pain or inconvenience or shit, shit, thinking I am the guy, I am the girl, I'm the mom, the dad, I'm the fucking grandma, the granddad, whatever. That just has created a system or whatever we want to call it, that
works for me. And you said something before, something along the lines of finding out what works for us, and I'm like, yes, yes, that is the point, finding out what works for you, rather than old mates saying you should do this, you should do that. Here are eight exercises everyone should do. If anyone says anything like that, that is bullshit, because everyone doesn't have the same body, the same genetics, the same potential, the same time, the
same goals, the same injuries, the same medical conditions. To suggest that one hundred different people need the same program is a display of ignorance. And even when someone says to me, what should I do? I will go I don't know. And the reason I don't know is because I don't know anything about you. I need to know about you. And I've prescribed probably well definitely as much exercise as anyone in Australia, written programs, trained athletes, all the shit that I've done, and I was at the
cold face of that four forty years now. That doesn't mean I'm the best. It just means I've done it a lot, but there ain't many more people with more experience than me. And even with that, I just go, I don't know. I need to test you, I need to talk to you. I need to find out about your training background. I need to find out how you eat, why you eat, the way you eat. I want to learn a little bit about your genetic capacity. But as
much info as I can get. And then when I get all that info, then I make a pretty informed guess and I write a program, and then I give them the program and go, let's start here based on what I know, this is pretty suitable for you, But let's see what your body tells us. Right. So in this whole journey of changing stuff, it might be building a business, it might be It's like I know, with you, Tiff, you've got the attention span of a dog with three dicks.
So me saying, here's an academic journal. I want you to read this academic journal this morning, do not use chat GPT, And then I want you to write a kind of a five hundred word overview of what the papers about. Now I would never do that because one, you're not suited to that one. You're not an academic, doesn't mean you're dumb. You're definitely intelligent, right, But also, that's not a good way for you to learn. That's not a good way for you to absorb and remember information.
That's TIFF's worst learning model. So I know you, so I know you're an experiential learner. I know I can take you in the gym and go, here's how you do a really good deadlift, and you go, you do it, and you do it straight up because you're good at replicating things physically. And then I'll make a few tweaks.
I'll go try that, and you do that. I'll go one more tweak, you do that, and then in about eight minutes, with no theory, just practicality, you've learned how to do a deadlift, which will sometimes take people six months to learn. Right, So it's what's my learning style? Like what's the best food for me? You know all of this, and that, you know that speaks to this idea that there is no global kind of answer or no macro answer to these micro issues. Each person's a
micro you know what I mean. And then yeah, and then then in the middle of that, you go, all right, so now I've got a good program, and I've got a good diet, and I've got I know, I've got lots of resources like collegis wise and also practically, I've got a membership or I've got a financial coach, or I've got you know, a business coach or whatever it is. I've got all these things to help me get there. But I just always fucking lose momentum at week three
and then and then they go. So that's my reason. I go, well, is there a way that if you lost momentum at week three you could keep going anyway? It's like, oh, yeah, I go, so what's momentum? Oh it's like I was enjoying it. It was no, no, no, no, I go, So you not enjoying it now? Not really cool? You don't need to enjoy it. This is one of our self created barriers is we think that everything that's
worth doing has to be fun. No, it doesn't have to be fun like it doesn't you know, like working with elite athletes as you like getting into a boxing ring like you've done numerous times, or training an AFL player, or training someone to summitt Everest. Guess what this is going to suck a lot. So if you're dependent on the process of growth and evolution and achievement, if you're dependent on comfort, will fucking get another goal? Makes sense?
Is the is the prize and the process is shit. And I think that's the case in everything I've done, and it's the process in everything I love, like boxing. When I was training, walking away from training with a sense of an achievement was amazing. But turning up driving to training and turning up to training and starting training and being in the middle of training was awful, Like
I dreaded it awful most of the time. An hour's drive to the gym and I in the afternoon and I reckon every single afternoon I was like, I hate this. I wish I didn't have to go today. I'm really tired. And then every drive home I was like, this is that's the best thing ever. This is the like I just don't ever want to stop this.
And I would go, so, how long are you in the boxing for and you'd go, oh, an hour. I go, so how many hours a day you're not boxing? And twenty three? Shut the fuck up? Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, it looks like I also think it's really interesting that we revert straight to like we need to revert to self awareness and curiosity when when we're looking at how we behave with motivation or lack thereof, instead of self criticism and self you know, like we are critical about what we've done, and then we go straight into berating ourselves, which gives us no scope to learn. Yes, then we just asked someone else for the answer. Yes, just crazy.
Also, let's wrap some context around this. I don't want to make you or me sad, but one of our friends at the moment is really really really unwell. So that person doesn't have the option of not dealing with it. It's like, this is horrible, this is hard, This is all the things. I'm not doing it. Well, you're doing it, you know. It's like Johnny at the gym every day is hard, you know, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury,
all the other bits and pieces. Every workout's hard. Getting out of the car is hard, getting from the car into the gym, sitting on a bench then standing up from the bench is hard. You know. It's all he can't go, oh fuck this, I can't be bothered having a spinal cord injury today, I'll do it next week. It's like no, and so motivation doesn't come into it or because it's like, well, it does to an extent, but it's like, oh, I can't walk properly, so I even need to do it this way or not do
it at all. Well, he wants to train with us three days a week. So he comes in and he does it, and it's never fun or painless, and you go, oh, so if I shift my mind, because one of the problems is that you and I we ever get out of jail, card like I can go, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go I'm going to walk ten thousand steps to day, which obviously is a very easy commitment. I'm not trying to compare that, and I'm not comparing that to anything that's actually hard. But I
don't have to do it today. No one knows, no one cares. I can just not do it. Like the challenge is to do the thing that you need to do to reach your goal or change yourself when no one's looking, no one gives a fuck, no one's cheering, there are no accolades, and then do the thing and don't tell people, Well, don't, you know, don't outwardly go you know, if you tell people incidentally, It's like, I get asked a lot lately about how the fuck are
you so lean? I think it's just because I've just been for a year and a half, seven days a week just doing this walking, because my diets are same, my training's the same. I think that's moved the needle significantly. I've lost, you know, over ten kilos. I'm not suggesting that's good or bad, but it's like, oh, that's because
one day I realized how little I walked. I was averaging four to four and a half thousand steps a day for the last twelve months because I sit at my fucking computer so much, and sit in my car and fucking lie in my bed and sit in my leather chair over there and watch the news. And then you go, all right, well, what's the answer. Well, the answer is super super easy. But you know, it's like
move more, or it's not super simple. And some things are very simple conceptually but difficult to execute because of the effort required. Walking up a man, how fucking how complex is that?
Not?
Really just walk one foot after the other, takes some water with here on a sandwich. We're not talking about everest, but we're talking up you know, maybe about a five hour uphill walk and a three or four hour down depending on your fitness and capability, of course, but it's not complex or complicated or cognitively difficult. It's really fucking simple. But it hurts.
That's think also unpacked. As you said before, and you say this often, but I reckon we could unpack a bit about it, that idea of you don't have to you don't have to love it, you don't have to enjoy it. But I think that there's context around that. So I think there's a there's a we have choices, and we have ways to create behaviors or habits or relationships with the experience of something. And of course, if you excuse me, if you hate something, if you just
spies it, you're not going to continue to do it. So, like always say to people, you need to find your boxing ring. Not everybody's answer is in the boxing ring with a punch in the face. But if you can find your boxing ring, the thing that is worth hurting for, the thing that is worth going Oh, I don't want to do this, but for me, this version of I
don't want to do. This is my version, and I will and I can learn to love it, and I'll definitely learn I'll be able to stick with it enough to build a relationship with the outcome of it, with the endorphins at the end and the results that I get and the progress and the changes that I see eventually.
Mm hmm, one hundred percent and the You know, if there are two options that produce the same outcome and one's easier, I'm going to tell you choose the easier one because you get the same result. Like we're not choosing difficult for the sake of Life's got to be hard. But the truth is some things require hard along the way. So this is how I get a PhD. Or this
is how I declutter my house. I'm going to spend thirty minutes a day for the next fifty days just chucking shit out, going through cupboards, going to the op shop, dropping shit at the tip or whatever it is. And fifty days times you know, thirty minutes is fifteen hundred minutes. That's sucking a shitload of time or whatever it is. And we go, is that right, fifty days times thirty minutes. Yeah, And you just you know you do it and you're like, I don't enjoy this, That's okay, you don't need to.
It's like I used to often say to my clients at the gym. Remember, like we had my gym on the highway, ten thousand square feet that it was always full of people. And sometimes I would say to my clients or I would say to someone on the gym floor, why don't you just jump on the bike and do twenty minutes just warm up or whatever, doesn't have to be crazy, just warm up to I don't like the bike.
I don't like the bike. I'm like, well, then definitely get on the fucking bike, right, yes, So I don't care if you like it, you know, I'm we're talking about what's good for you. Yeah. Or do you say walk walk at five and a half k's walk for thirty minutes, but put it on a three degree incline? Ah, that hurts so much. I'm like, correct, off you go. Yeah, Like this kind of obsession we have with making everything or trying to find a way to not do the proper work.
And like, think about that. We know when you talk to doctor Cam all the time, that idea of everyone being so different like that same thing, like, okay, I hate running, but maybe running with a friend is your thing, or maybe running with some form of competition motor. So there is a version of something that will motivate you within the environment of that thing one hundred percent.
That is a very very good point. You know, my experience of going and walking on a treadwhill, which I agree everyone is pretty fucking boring, but I still use a treadmill a few days a week, depending on because like the other day, I was fucking pissing down and so I walked. I'm a member of two gyms, so I walked to I'll give them a shout out to trackside down the road from me, and I just walk there, which is maybe one k or something, and I go in. There's a bunch of treadies. I just get on the
end tready. I have my headphones on and I listen to something that usually I listen to something that's going to teach me or entertain me or just be music, like just transport me somewhere else emotionally, right, that thirty minutes goes quicker in inverted commas, nudge nudge, and also my enjoyment factor versus just walking with no stimulation. Now this is for me right, for a lot of people
hate headphones, totally understand. But it goes from a three or four where time seemingly fucking stands still, like, oh my god, that five minutes just took an hour, versus ah, my time's up. Oh that went quick because I'm not thinking about what I'm doing. I'm involved in this conversation, which to me is fascinating. And so there's that like time is. Obviously time is a constant, but as an experience, it's subjective, and so we have our own relationship. I'm digressing,
but I love this shit. This is interesting. We have our own relationship with time, and that bends depending on the level of enjoyment of what we're doing. You know, you go the dentist and he or she is going hard in the paint and you're getting smashed and poked and needles and proder and like fact that eight minutes just took an hour and a half or whatever it is, you know, versus something like the same with me watching not too long ago, I flew to Perth and I'm
like perse like the middle of the road. It's like it's not that long, but it's it's long enough, you know, it's four hours. I watched two movies and I went, oh, I'm here, I'm in Perth, and both movies were good. I'm like, gid y up. This is the way to go versus just looking at my well, I don't have a watch, but looking at my phone every seventeen minutes going ah, that's seventeen minutes more, you know. But again,
this is like understanding that you experience. How do you create your own version of reality, whether or not that's around perception of time, or how you optimize your physiology, or how you organize your social life, or how you build an operating system for life that works for you wouldn't work for your best friend. You know, that's where
you're starting. This is like an exercise in self awareness, self recognition, self regulation, self optimization, and at the end of the line is self actualization, which is where you like who you wanted to be.
Yeah, I was just thinking about when you first started training me, and it was for a show that didn't end up going ahead, But the outcome of that training was you rang me every day and just gave me
in the moment. This is your task today, and it was a range of things that were designed to just be out of my scope and uncomfortable, and running was something you made me start doing and I wasn't running then, and every run you gave me I run to the point I remember thinking, oh, running is just how willing you are to be how uncomfortable for how long? Because every ridiculous task you gave me, I annihilated it and
I couldn't believe it. And I thought to me, I recognized in that moment, if I wanted to for my age and capabilities and I chose to take this, I could be a really good runner and I could do something with this because I because I don't have a background in this. Yes, But as soon as that show was not on the table anymore, the motivation was gone. And I also went, well, that's interesting because I have no drive to want to do anything with that. I
definitely don't run that hard anymore. It was completely and it just went that is to me, that's interesting, So go well, there's a lot of things. Doesn't really matter what potential you have, you say it all the time, that matters what you do with it. And I just found that really interesting.
There's a couple of things out of that that came to mind. One is, everybody has self doubt and underestimates their ability. So when I go, and also in concert with this, you are a very good student if I
coach you the right way. So when I would go, I can't remember specifics back, I can't remember what I said to you seven years ago or whatever, but I would go, I want you to run five k's and you wouldn't go hack and five k's, ah, but you go, really, I go, I know you can do five case and then your belief would go from I'm not sure I could do five k's too, oh harpstold me I can. So I can, right, because I understood your athletic and genetic potential and I'd already trained you, so I wasn't
guessing or stabbing in the dark. Right, And then you'd go and run five k's because you knew now because I told you so. You didn't have more potential or you were a better runner. You just had a different mindset, and that was, oh, I can do this. So the self doubt was taken away or at least reduced. And the other thing is, and as you know this, and you know me. I don't. I don't do things for like bluff and bluster. It's like, like I just trained you and Brad before an hour ago. Obviously I'm not
telling you news but my our listeners. And so Brad's a second dan black belt in jiu jitsu. There's very few of those in Australia. It takes you ten to twelve years just to get a black belt. Most people never do. And then to become a second dan. You know, it's like he's he's an elite level athlete in his sport. And then you also, compared to the average person your age,
God bless everyone else, you're elite. And you also train people, and Brad owns a jiu jitsu academy and trains lots, so you both relatively evolved and elite in general terms. But also you know that when we go to the gym, we're not hanging out, we're not fucking round, we're not buddies. We're buddies of course, but I'm like, do this, do that? Do do ten of those at that weight and you go, You essentially go roger that and you go do it. And the same with Brad. Because one, I don't want
to have the coerce people to do anything. I'm not your fucking mum or dad. I'm not your cheer squad. I'm not trying to make you feel good. I'm trying to help you become a weapon. I'm trying to help you build resilience and strength and understanding and an understanding of what's possible for you. The best coaches make themselves redundant. The worst coaches want to build a client base that is dependent on them, right, that's about the coach, that's not about the athlete. So I want to fuck you
off as soon as possible. I mean, you know, it's different if you know we just trained together down the track for you know, because we're in each other's proximity or life, right, But that where you go into the gym and I say, what are you up to today? As in what muscle group do, because we're always doing strength or power or a bit of muscle endurance or whatever it is. And you go on training legs today and like you did yesterday, and I went go and
do the hack squat. I know you hate the hack squat. Everybody hates the hack squat. The hack squats, motherfucker. And I know you don't want to do it. I know you hate it, and in a nice way, I don't care care about you, care about the outcome, don't care if you enjoy the next ten minutes at all. And I go, all right, let's start on the hack squat. And you look at me for like a nano second and you know not to waste your energy by protesting
on any level. And then, like a fucking puppy with your tail between your legs, you kind of mope over, but you just go do it. And I remember you were on like your third set doing nearly spewing and you could barely get the weight back up, and I think you said something like you remember better than me, but you were like it was almost like you were
working at almost one hundred percent mm hm. And you looked at me in the mirror, and I looked at you and you went fuck harps, and I went, eh, eh, whatever, like because you were going to shit yourself or spew or rip something or whatever, and you didn't do any of it, Like you finished it, and you did it. But then when you've done it, you're like, yeah, fucking fist in the air. But in the middle of it, it's horrible.
Before you turning up today, I said, I was telling Brad and I said, you know, I love and hate doing legs with harps because of that, because of what you make me do with legs. No one likes legs, especially not when you've ripping out the hack squad. I wouldn't do that. I don't do the hack squad very rarely by myself and never to that potential ever. And also I love the fact that you that I will turn up and go it's legs today, and I know that I don't want to say it, but I do want to say it.
Yeah. And also I'll be What that teaches us is that in the right context, you can your performance can go up thirty percent. And in this case, it's like I'm standing by and I'm telling you what to do, or I'm encouraging you, or I'm telling it. And also at the same time, everyone when she does a good job, I go, that's fucking amazing. I go, that's great, that's a great set, well done, that's awesome. But it's not all flowery and bullshitty. And if I say it's awesome,
it's awesome, like I will compliment people. I will, I will encourage them and support them. But if they're doing a shit job, I'm not going to tell them they're doing a good job. Yeah, like this is the problem, and I'm not going to say, oh, you're doing a shit job. But I'm saying it's not my job to make people feel emotionally good for five minutes. My job is to help you become amazing over the next five, ten, fifteen,
twenty years by starting to understand own potential. You know, So, I just realized I've got another podcast in six minutes.
Yeah, we were supposed to.
That went quick, didn't it.
Yeah we must have been motivated.
Oh yeah, I'm so inspired, look at me. Well that was an abrupt inning. Sorry, everyone, I just realized I've got about five minutes and twenty seconds before I'm on with doctor Lillian. Good old doctor Lillian has good young doctor Lillian. I should say it hasn't been around for a hot minute. So we'll look forward to that and you can probably expect that to come up tomorrow if it's always good.
Thank you, Thanks Harps.
Yeah, Roger, that stand by and out in three two, one beep,