Good team.
So no guest today, And I've been thinking about what I might do. Would I do a podcast? And I was leaning towards not, because I hate it when I feel like I've got to be creative or spontaneous or I've got to come up with something to me, it
doesn't feel authentic or organic. And I really only like doing solos when I've got something that I want to share or I think is front of mine for me, or I think is going to be potentially interesting or valuable, or maybe a bit who knows, insightful or inspirational whatever. So I'd kind of resigned myself to add no potty today.
Then I've just been sitting on mapooda in front of me and just culling some of the eighteen million word documents I have from the Second World War when I started accumulating stuff, and I came across.
I came across.
A not even a book, a collection of notes that are jotted down for myself from about five years ago that were going to be the beginnings of a book. So the way that my process works, So for those of you who want to write a book, definitely this is not the protocol, but this is often my protocol, I don't I often don't know exactly where it's going to go. I don't think I'm going to write a book it's going to be specifically about this only I'm going to go down this path. I'm going to tick
these boxes along the way. I'm going to cover these eight key areas, which probably how I should.
Do it, but I don't.
So the way that I do it is I just have an idea or a thought, and I think, oh, that's interesting, and I write down the idea or the thought. And sometimes that idea or thought or lesson or insight or even question would be a sentence. Sometimes it's a paragraph, sometimes it's two paragraphs. But I think I can use these, or I find these interesting. I find these worth considering and exploring and learning about. I have some experience in this, so this might help people, or I've had a lesson
in this space. Maybe this is of value or interest. And then I kind of figure out which bit will go where, and I switch them around and I go what flows into what if anything? Does this need to be a standalone message or story, and so on and so on. So I stumbled across a bunch of notes that I'd written and I hadn't looked at for years, and it's what is it, two hundred and fifty six words, So not a lot of words in the context of a book. It's eight pages. But I was reading through
those notes just now. I was figuring out, will I delete this file?
Will I keep it?
I got way too much shit as not just in my.
Life but on my anyway.
I was trying to figure out what I might do with this, so I was about to press delete. Then I started reading and I went, some of these things are actually worth pondering for me and maybe for you. So these are all random, maybe interconnected in a way, but there's no logical sequence. I'm literally I'm on page one,
line one. I want to share with you some of the notes that I've jotted down because I think some of these will be for you worth exploring, or there might be a self contained message within the brief kind of bit that I share. Either way, I think I think some of you will find this interesting and also to understand my process. Even if I'm coming up with a workshop and I want to call that workshop optimizing you, for example, I go, well, what does that mean? And
I go Wow, there's the mind stuff. There's the body stuff. There's social stuff. There's the money stuff, there's the living life stuff, there's the health stuff. You know, there's how do I optimize my brain stuff? How do I be a better human? What's a light better? All that stuff? And I come up with all these disparate but somewhat interconnected concepts or.
Themes, and then I get it all down. I'll write.
I might write one line, and then I'll come back to that line because I've written thirty other lines of thirty other topics. I might come back to it this afternoon and added another couple of lines. Then I'll go for a scroll, a bit of a verbal or a written meander through my own work, and go, I could add this to that. I know a story about that that would add on to this little bit of insight or this bit of science or this bit of information. I think they go well together. So that's how I
do it. Which, again, as I said, I'm not recommending you do it that way. This is just how my brain. My brain works, So I'm going to share some of my notes. So Note one is this, many times I thought my life needed to change, but what really needed to change was me in the middle of that life. And then amazingly, when I changed, so did my life. So from that, well, did my life really change? Well, the answer is, in many ways, no, my life was
the same. So I guess I'm talking here about life situation or the practicality of my external world, my life, my environment.
You know, where I work or where I.
Go to school, or where I drive each day, or what I wear each day or what bed I sleep in each night, and all that stuff is kind of a constant, or very often it's a constant. But what I've said in the last sentence there is, amazingly, when I changed, so did my life. What I maybe should have written is when I changed, then so did my life experience or the way that I experienced or perceived
or enjoyed or hated or processed life. And so I like this idea of considering the disparity or the divergence or the gap between my life situation, what's going on, where I were, how much money I have, my friends, my environment, my house, all the things that make up the external kind of practical, real world visible reality of my life, and then me in the middle of it, the perceiver of my life. So I'm going to share
that with you once again. Many times I thought my life needed to change, but what really needed to change was me in the middle of that life. And amazingly, when I changed, so did my life. And by that I mean life experience. Sometimes we think we're in a shit situation, but maybe it's maybe it is maybe it is that. Maybe it's just a situation, and maybe it's a one out of ten shit, but our thinking makes it a nine out of ten shit because you meet someone one day and then you're like, oh, well.
This is actually a fucking shit situation. Wow.
Their life is real, legit difficult. They have real, legit problems. And I realized that I was turning up the volume on my own problems. And so that is why I am always my biggest project, urgo the view project. That is why I'm always working on me to figure out what part of this bad experience in inverted commas am I creating? What part of this lack of joy or satisfaction or fulfillment or calm is because of me? Not
really because of my life. And we can't really be totally objective because we each look through the subjective window of our mind. Our understanding, our brain, our cognitive function,
our experience, is our truth, our beliefs. But when we can try to edge towards the more objective end of the scale, and we can start to see our own life or existence or practical real world three dimensional reality as others see our life or what they think is our life, sometimes we realize, well, my life is actually pretty good. My life is actually a seven or an eight. Are their problems? Yes, so their challenges are the things
I need to do and change. But like when I took a when I look at the totality of my existence and what I have, and the real threats and the real dangers and the real problems and the real catastrophes in my life, they are almost zero. My next note is this, Remember all disparate, all different, not necessarily related. No matter how much sense it doesn't make to you, remember that in their mind, it makes all the sense.
In their mind, it makes all the sense. Your job is not to agree or align with everyone, of course, but rather to understand an emotional, psychological, and philosophical or experiential reality different to yours. And we've spoken about this many times, trying to understand how other people are back to the notes.
This is the.
Starting point for a type of connect and understanding that can't happen when we exist in an echo chamber of thought, behavior, and ideology.
And this is a.
Hard thing to do, because we exist in our own echo chamber. We'd like to think we don't because we like to think we're open minded and we're objective in all of those things. And I like to think that too. But I'm only objective and open minded to the extent that I can be a regular human with preconceived ideas and notions or pre existing I should say, ideas and notions and beliefs and values and stories and history. So
I go through through that again. No matter how much sense puts teeth in harps, no matter how much sense it doesn't make to you, remember that in the middle of their mind, their reality, it makes all the sense. Your job is not to agree or to align with everybody, of course, but rather to understand an emotional, psychological, philosophical, and experiential reality different to yours. And when we understand people better again, we can build that connection and rapport
of which I always speak. This is the starting point for the type of connection and understanding that can't happen when we exist solely in an echo chamber of our own thought, belief, ideology, and even behaviors. I like that. That's old. But okay, here's my next one. If John says something, I think I've written something similar to this. If John says something and one person is amused, another curious, another inspired, and another offended from, where does the offense come?
Is it caused by what John said, caused in inverted commas by what John said, or is that offense a byproduct of that person's thinking brackets about what John said? And this is not an invite to rant about what is or isn't generally speaking offensive. We've got enough e co chambers, soapboxes, and finger pointers, but rather to intellectually consider how and why. In the above example, three people
are not offended and one is. So getting offended by a certain thing is not a consistent and predictable response to an individual stimuli across the board, but rather the outcome of an individual cognitive process of interpretation and decision
making and reality creating, making our own reality. If offense being offended is an individual response to any stimulus, word, behavior, attitude, belief, act, then anyone can deem literally anything and everything to be offensive because it's all about a personal response, reaction, or story. Case in point, my most popular book as fuck on the front cover. And at the same time, the biggest
criticism I get people giving me feedback is for saying fuck. Ironically, some people are fucked off by the use by the use of the word fuck. Here's my next one, my next note in my Little Body bundle of notes. You when a desirable and productive behavior, one that is aligned with your values and goals, becomes part of your normal operating system, something hardwired into your subconscious mind, a habit, then the need to get motivated get motivated becomes redundant.
I'll say that better.
When it's desirable and productive behavior, one that aligns with your values and goals becomes part of your normal operating system, that is, something hardwired into your subconscious mind, a habit, then the need to get motivated, inspired, excited, etc. Becomes redundant because now that thing that we know that we should do that's good for our body or brain, or relationships or financial health, or sleep productivity or sleep hygiene
or whatever. When that thing that we should do becomes hardwired into our subconscious hardwired into our daily kind of rituals and rules. In other words, it becomes a normal, like this is my normal. This is me just being me, This is me just doing me. This is not me doing something special or different or amazing because I'm trying to create an amazing outcome. No, this is just how
I live. Now, this is my new normal. Then when that turns from a sometimes when I'm inspired thing to an all the time ritual or habit or behavior, then now we don't need to keep constantly trying to find ways to get motivated get inspired. We just do the right thing on autopilot. Here's my next one. I think this is note five. Rather than perpetually choosing the path of comfort, train yourself to be comfortable, competent, effective, calm,
relaxed in the mayhem, madness inconvenience, and discomfort. In doing so, your ability to function optimally is not situation dependent, but rather you dependent.
Like it or not.
The shit storm comes for everyone, and how do we do that? How do we train ourselves in other words, to be the calm in the chaos, which is called in Eastern philosophy equanimity. You've heard me say that a thousand times. How do we do that well? We don't get good at performing under pressure or being the calm in the chaos by avoiding hard things. Now, obviously we
need to be careful about choosing the hard things. We need to choose something that's hard or difficult, or complicated or uncomfortable in a strategic and logical and intellectual way. We know it's going to be hard, we know it won't be fun initially, we know we won't love it, we won't enjoy it. But that's okay because we're doing it to create shift in our productivity and efficiency and outcomes. And we're also doing it to create shift in ourselves.
And that shift that I get in myself, for example, when I'm doing hard things, when I'm learning new things, when I'm stepping into unfamiliar, uncomfortable territory, is that I am now making me a better version of me, who can be more adaptable, who can be socially or behaviorally or cognitively more flexible, who can do what most people can't do when the shit hits the fan. So you will not accidentally become stronger or better, or more skilled,
or more effective or more resilient. That will not happen unless you put yourself in a situation or a challenge or an environment where this needs to come out of you. And it's doing the hard things like lifting the weights that build strength, that builds resilience, and that builds a kind of endurance that a lot of people don't have. Alrighty, I like this next one step away from the programming. This is metaphorically or intellectually or emotionally psychologically. Step away
from the programming, expectation and conformity for a minute. Find some clarity and space. Where does their thinking finish and your start? Where is the programming and where are you think about your thinking? Come to your own conclusions, discover your own truth, purpose, and path. Your potential is way bigger than just meeting the expectations of others, of fitting in,
of conforming the enormity of conformity I call it. You might do a big loop and discover that you're actually where you need to be, or you might find yourself
on a whole new, exciting trajectory. But this is the challenge, This is the ever present challenge of being aware of our programming, being aware of the pressure from others to do what the others think we should do and being brave enough to go, Yeah, look, thanks for your input, thanks for the pressure, thanks for telling me what you think my life or my behavior or my choices should be.
But hey, how about you live your life. I'll live my life.
You create your own version of normal, and you make your own decisions and choose your own path, and I'll be over here doing the same. But it is a challenge for us when, especially when we're people pleases, especially when we are often guilted into certain things because we want to be loyal and we want to belong and we want to be part of the gang. And while that's understandable, it's also quite often it can be I will say it not always is, but it can be.
It can be a handbreak to your potential. It can be a barrier to you finding what your purpose should be or could be. All right, here's my next one.
Yeah, I like this.
It's funny when I say I like something I wrote. I just like this concept. There's actual kindness, and then there's a gender and manipulation.
Wearing a smile, I'm going.
To say it again, there's actual kindness where people are genuinely kind and loving and compassionate and caring, and then there's a gender and manipulation wearing a smile. That is, sometimes people who are strategic, strategically nice because they have a strategy to extract something from you, to get something from you, to manipulate, coerce, control, or influence you in a way. In other words, it's not kindness or love
at all. It's just somebody trying to get you to be of value to them and to use you for something that sounds the negative.
It isn't.
It's just true.
You know this. I know this.
I've experienced it many times where people will treat me a certain way because I know they want something. And if I couldn't do the things for them that they think I can do, or they thought I was not going to be of any value to them, they wouldn't treat me the way they're currently treating me. There's I don't know why I wrote this, but I put a scripture in here which is from the New Testament Matthew seven to fifteen. Without getting all religious on you, but
this is just a nice scripture. It says, watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothings. But inwardly they are ferocious wolves. If you want to look that up, it's Matthew chapter seven, verse fifteen.
There we go.
It's the bit of religion for the day. So the next one is really short. I'll expand on it a bit, but stimulus response it you inevitable optional. You'll be navigating shit for a while yet. And this is a real hard thing to live because we often respond or react or behave before we really process or really think deeply or really just take a breath. So we do something smart, not something dumb. So there's always going to be, you know, something that happens big or small, good or bad, scene
or unseen or predicted or not. There's going to be something that happens to you because you inspire you around you, and our challenge is to respond hard. I agree it's hard, but our challenge is to respond in a way which is best for us but also hopefully for those around us, and to respond in a way which is consistent with who we want to be and how we want to be. This has been an ongoing challenge for me because my mind works quite quickly and my mouth works even more quickly.
Is that sometimes something will happen, and I will respond. I will respond in a way which is inappropriate or inconsistent with the kind of person that I want to be, And as it's coming out of my mouth, I know this is no shock to you, but I regret it, and I try and retract it. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes
I don't realize till later. So one of my challenges me personally, I don't know if this is you, but is between stimulus and response, just hanging out a bit, just before I react, before I escalate or elevate, before I do or say something that I shouldn't or don't want to, is to just pause for a moment, just to collect myself and consciously not respond in the way that I want to respond immediately. And that really makes a difference socially, It makes a difference emotionally.
It makes a difference in.
Leadership at work, at home, with all relationships. Is just before you just do that thing or say that thing, or respond in that way that you might regret, just put the old verbal brakes on it for a minute, shut the fuck up, and then once you've got yourself together, maybe then respond.
I like this one too. The next one is what if your best years are yet.
To come, I honestly think, and I'm sixty two, I don't think necessarily my best years are yet to come, but I think great things are yet to come. I
hope they are that haven't happened already. I think it's fully my intention at sixty two to keep learning, keep growing, keep evolving, keep adapting, keep developing new skills, keep growing my understanding and my compassion and my kindness, and to keep bringing things into the world that are worth listening to, or worth watching, or worth reading, or are of value real practical value to people in some way. So what if your best year is a yet to come? What
if your peak hasn't come and gone. What if you can be more successful, fulfilled, and empowered in the second half of your life, or maybe the last third of your life, or maybe the last two thirds of your life. What if thinking about age is more of a limitation than age itself. What if you could be physically, mentally, and emotionally better in inverted commas in your fifties, sixties, and seventies, depending on your starting point. Of course, some
people definitely can. I've got friends who are in their sixties now and fifties who are in better shape than when they are in their twenties and thirties. What if you went back to study thirty years after you finished school? What if you stopped living age appropriately? You know how, there's a way that we're expected to behave. What is age appropriate behavior? What is an age appropriate outfit.
For you to wear?
Clothes to wear? What is an age appropriate way for you to speak or live or socialized? Fuck?
Age appropriate?
How about maybe it turns out being age appropriate? But what if you just start living passionately and courageously and curiously and even inappropriately for your age. I've been inappropriate for decades.
You all know that.
Here's my next one. Live olive. Live to live is a present tense verb. It can't happen in the past or future, only in the continuum of now moments, now moments in which you and I exist. Your mind has a database of previous now moments that you call the past. You have a relationship in the present with those previous now moments. That relationship thinking, processing, interpreting, obsessing with your past.
That relationship with your.
Past determines the way in which your previous experiences impact your present. Mental emotional and physical states. So too, your mind has a capacity, maybe even a tendency, to obsess about theoretical yet to happen events and outcomes and problems that may or may not exist in the future, thereby creating real stress, mental and emotional in the now. So we are stressing about things that may happen in the future. That, by the way, most of things we worry about happening
in the future. There's a research done on this. It's something like ninety two percent don't happen. So we spend a lot of time worrying about things that might happen but don't don't eventuate, and then of the ones that do, I think it was eight percent. I think only about half of those eight percent, So four percent actually turn out to be something, you know, very difficult or traumatic
or something hard to deal with. So that doesn't mean bad things are not going to happen, of course, But the truth is that for many of us right now, maybe if you this is not the case, but right now is okay. Right now is somewhere between not bad
and really fucking good. So to acknowledge that there will be a future and things will happen, and to forward, plan and think about what we might do, be, create, change, acquire, learn you know, unlearn in the future is good, but obsessing about potential problems is not good because obsession and rumination just puts us in a place physiologically endocrime system, blood pressure, cardiovascular health, endocrime system, all of these things that puts us in a place in the now where
we are anxious now about a thing that might happen in the future, or stress now about something that isn't occurring and probably won. The challenge for us is to acknowledge the past without being held prisoner by the past totally acknowledge easier said than done, and there are lots of variables around this, and full respect to people who've been through traumatic things, but also we can go through trauma acknowledge what was, understand that it was fucking horrible, but also go then.
Is not now then?
Is not now, next week, next month, next year, is not now Right now, in this moment, in this present kind of reac that I inhabit, things are okay. So should we ruminate on the past, preferably not? Can we remember the past? Of course we're going to but really the only place that we're ever going to live is in this moment as you hear these words, because living, existing, behaving, loving, connecting,
laughing are all present tense verbs. This next one is very random and does not tie in at all with anything I've said, But that's the beauty of just looking through your notes. What is the type of physical workspace that works optimally for your cognitive function, for your creativity, focus, emotional state, and productivity. We often don't think about that.
I know for me, the environment, the physical space, the outlook through my windows, the furniture, the way that everything is set up has a big impact on, yes, my mindset and my productivity and efficiency.
But it also.
In the simplest of terms, when I'm working in my office, which I love, which is a very calm, familiar, pleasing space for me, I'm happier. I'm happier all things aside, and when I work in this space, when I sit in this chair that I'm now sitting in this room that I'm now in, with the multiple windows in front of me, looking at nature, looking at bamboo trees, looking at my garden, looking at all these cool things, seeing a few birds right now, sitting on a.
Branch of a tree out. So all of that stuff.
The type of physical space or environment that we work in that we live in makes quite an impact on our internal reality that sometimes we don't even recognize. I know, for example, if I sit in one of the rooms downstairs, I have a recording studio downstairs. If I try and do written work or creative work, I don't use that studio, by the way, anymore. I'm upstairs in my office, which has a studio setup. But I know that it's a nice room down there. But this one up here, it's different.
It's better. I'm better. I feel like I'm a bit smarter in this room. I feel like I'm more comfortable. I feel like I can focus better. In fact, I don't feel like it. I know all that, and so trying to understand where do I work best? What is great for my brain? What is great for my nervous system? What is great for my body? Where is that place? Alright, let's do one more. Haven't them read all the way
through this one? I probably should pre read it, but I like the first few lines this a little bit longer. What is a good life? We all want to live a good life. Nobody wants to live a bad life, of course, But what exactly does that mean? Is a good life different for different people or is it the same, or is it different for the same person over their lifetime?
Like twenty years ago, my version of a good life at that point on my journey, I can say with some confidence was slightly different to where I am now at sixty two. My version of a good life. Does a good situation, family, job, house, money, lifestyle, Does that necessarily equal a good life? And if not, why not? What are the symptoms of a good life? I don't know why I write that word, but I quite like it. What are the symptoms?
Like? What would we see? What would what would be.
Evident with somebody that's in the middle of a good life? Is it about the scene stuff or the unseen stuff? Is a good life about the internal, non physical world of thoughts and feelings and connection and creativity and purpose and inspiration? Or is a good life about what's being created and achieved and changed and conquered in that physical, three dimensional world, that external world that everyone can see? Or maybe and I think maybe.
This is it?
Maybe for me anyway, maybe it's a combination of both. Is it possible that our idea of.
A good life? What is a good life?
Doesn't live up to the reality of it when we get it or when we get what we thought was going to be a good life. And where does our idea, or our understanding, or our belief about or our concept of a good life come from? Did Mum and Dad give it to you?
Is it culture? Is it society? Is it media? Is it social media?
Or maybe your idea of a good life has come from something deeper, something more instinctive and intuitive and innate and internal. And I guess the interesting thing is, and I know this is very superficial, like we're not doing a deep dive into any of this today, but I encourage you. If I've said or spoken about one idea or concept that is meaningful for you, maybe you might
want to do a deep dive. Maybe you want to sit down with your own boring word document and write the question and answer the question and think about it deeply. Like nobody wants to live a bad life. If I walk into a room of one hundred or tw hundred people who put up Yann, who wants to live a bad life, Nobody, of course put up Yann. If you want to live a good life. Everybody cool? What does that mean? People go ah? Or most people won't be
able to describe that exactly. We just kind of, oh, you know, I guess having enough dough and not being sick, and maybe all of that's part of it. But is that all of it? Is that the totality of what you want in and for your life?
And I just why do.
I consciously ask these questions? Well, I truly believe that most of us are wasting some of our potential, if not a lot. I believe that we are consistently doing things habitually that don't work, that don't serve us. I think we live in thoughts and ideas and psychological patterns and even practical behaviors that are more destructive than productive. And I think in many ways we are living an
unconscious life, not a conscious life. And I very much believe that there is a positive correlation between living consciously and intentionally and creating the good life that we want, rather than I'm in some kind of emotional, cognitive, social, relational behavioral groundhog day where I kind of wake up most days of the year and I kind of do a version of what I always do, and by the way in the middle of that groundhog day. I'm not
particularly happy, I'm not particularly fulfilled. I'm not super healthy physically and mentally emotionally, I'm not making great progress. I'm not learning a lot. I'm not evolving. Now that may not be you, so forget this. But if that is you, or part of that is you, there's no self loathing, there's no hate, there's no judgment or criticism. Hopefully, there's just awareness. I know that my life will not accidentally
end up amazing. I know that I'm not going to wake up when I'm sixty five and go, fuck, how did I get here? This is incredible? Wow, all of these amazing good things have happened. I've really developed, I've you know, I know that that will not accidentally happen. I know that if I, for example, I want to be in physically similar shape too I am now in three years or even eight years, then I need to
be able to do what works. I need to be consciously and deliberately doing the things that will create that good life or that good health, or that good relationship, or that good bank balance, or those good outcomes that I want to create in my life.
So one is.
Identifying What does that even mean for you? I guess an analogous concept would be what is success for you? It's the same. Nobody wants to be a failure. Everyone wants to be in their own way, in their own world. Everyone wants to be successful, but we really struggle to create the thing that we can't define. I want to be successful?
What is that?
Not sure?
I want to be it?
Well, maybe you should get sure, Maybe you should think, maybe you should do a deep dive. What is it that I really want? What are my values? What is my purpose? What do I want to be doing with my days? Do I love my job? Do I hate my job? Could I change it? How could I change it? What about my health and wellness and fitness? What about that? Could I change my body? Or do I want to just keep talking about it like I have for the last twenty four years?
Do I want better healthy relationships? Cool?
How would that happen? What part of the solution could I be? And I guess this is the overarching theme for virtually everything I talk about. What is a good life? I think we'll leave it there. I know that was lumpy and bumpy. I know I made a few bloody mistakes here and there. I know it wasn't the slickest or the smoothest, but I hope there's some takeaways for you.