Speaker 1: 0:00

Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the further your lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name is Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 122 today, and we're getting once again deep and personal. I've had some frustration over the last couple of weeks and that's really the topic that I want to dive into. Well, there's a few subtopics that I want to get into, but firstly, if you are new here, you've never listened to the pop before. Hey, how you doing. Appreciate you being here Now.

Speaker 1: 0:31

I've been doing this for, you know, two and a half years, and if you enjoy this podcast, make sure you drop a comment down below. And if you do enjoy it, make sure you do subscribe wherever you're listening, whether it's on the YouTube or whether it's a vice-potify or Apple podcast, so that you do not miss the future episodes. We're going to dive straight into this, we're going to get into the grid of it all and I'm going to share with you what the topic is today. So let's dive in. So, as I was just saying, I've been getting super frustrated with a few things over the last, I guess, couple of weeks reading it, seeing it and probably hearing it Basically, I've been seeing a lot of people's rants, and here I am probably going to rant myself, but people's rants are bad excuses of why they are not where they thought they would be or where society is expecting them to be. Now, I was challenged with this in three different kind of ways. The first way was clearly I have some unresolved issues with this as well, because it's clearly triggering me. Secondly is there's that big question of why do we, like we in general, use society as a baseline, like as a way to indicate how we are performing, why, and that's what I want to discuss. And then the third point that we'll discuss today is you know, we can make excuses or we can make progress, and how do we do that? And or how do we manage that? And the answer to that is motivation. So these are the three areas of conversation that I want to have with you today.

Speaker 1: 2:07

So buckle up, because it is going to be pretty, pretty juicy, pretty deep and pretty. I'm going to be pretty candid. That's the way it will be. I'm always pretty frank here, but I do like to give that warning up front, because some people might not like my opinion, and you know as much. I do always say this, as much as I am sharing this to hopefully give you guys some insight, encourage you and help you work through things as well. You know further your lifestyle. I'm just as much talking to myself and I do apologize in advance if you can hear the choir of crickets in the background. I am filming this at nine o'clock in the evening and we've got the crickets out the back, just next to my window, joining us, so you are not hearing, but I can hear them very loud and clearly, so you're just going to have to enjoy their company as some background music.

Speaker 1: 2:55

So, all right, firstly, let's let's get into the first point, which was getting into a round. Maybe I've got some triggered issues, and as much as I become frustrated, I guess, by people creating excuses of why they're not meeting expectations that they think they should be hitting, based on seeing whatever else is achieving around them, I have to ask myself a simple question is why am I getting frustrated at this? Like, why am I getting frustrated at people that are, you know, complaining that they're not where they thought they would be, or they're not as far along as other people, or they're comparing themselves to other people and they're putting that out publicly. So why am I getting triggered by this? Now? Firstly, I probably think it's probably because I probably feel this way too. You know, having taken some time to actually reflect about this and I have put some notes down, so I will be referring to those I actually sat down in Bunnings today with a cup of coffee and extra hot, strong latte, and yeah, I actually scripted this out just because I wanted to jot down that was what was on my mind and you know. So, obviously, you know I have taken the time to really think about this.

Speaker 1: 4:07

So there's probably two points here. The first one is I have goals and I have an idea of what I want. So that's what it comes down to. The first point is I, too, have goals and I have an idea of what I want. And the second point is if I do not clearly define this as an isolated goal to my life, to my progress or to my journey, then it will always be diluted by what others are doing or what seems to be the norm or what people identify as success. Now, a little side note here of the point of identify as success.

Speaker 1: 4:43

Now, I me, right now, I'm assuming that, beyond what I currently do, I'm making the assumption that anyone that is beyond of where I am at this point in time, wherever it is, or whatever it is that I'm doing, or someone that is ahead of the pack in my peer group or you know, when I'm thinking about YouTube or my business or running or whatever, that that must be the success point because they're further along. But that's all my own projection. That's what I'm projecting and that's what I'm assuming. No one else is bluntly saying, going out there and saying, if you want to be successful, you have to hit this number. I'm just putting that in front of me because those people are ahead of me, therefore they must be more successful than me. But yeah, no one is actually coming out and saying no, this is what defines success.

Speaker 1: 5:25

We tend to do this. We tend to set what the bar is based on, what we see around us, based on the influence by the, the people, or the norm, or all the influencing or the marketing that goes around right. So now, unless someone is coming out there and saying this is what the baseline is for to be a successful runner or to be successful business owner, or to be a successful YouTuber or whatever. Well then, we don't really know what success is other than what we said it as in our own minds. Now I do digress on that, but I wanted to bring that point very clear because we all struggle with it. Well, I struggle with it. So the question then becomes what do I want, or what do you want, and nothing else should matter. To that point, right, you know, nothing else should really matter. If I want to run a 50 kilometer and I'll be training for my second one, a 50 kilometer ultra marathon if I want to do that in nine hours that's what I've done before, but let's say I want to do it again then so be it. Right. Even though the average might be seven hours for a 50 kilometer, then that does not make me successful, right? It's got nothing to do with my success. It doesn't make me even average. Either it just means that, or it doesn't make me above average, doesn't make me below average, it just means, out of all the people that are doing it, this is what the mean was like. That's the average, and then there's my result, whether it's better, worse or the same.

Speaker 1: 6:45

We need to separate ourselves. Talking to myself here, and if this is relevant to you. We need to separate ourselves from what we see the majority doing or what the norm is suggesting, or the highlight reels of what people are living and sharing. We need to identify that our idealization of success is all relevant to a point in time. So think about 10 years ago. Where were you? What were you doing? Where were you in life?

Speaker 1: 7:16

And for me, if I look back 10 years ago look, it's probably a bit more than 10 years ago I was finishing up uni. I wanted to get the uni degree and I wanted to graduate. I wanted to get a nice paying job, and then, after I did that, that was then all irrelevant. It did not apply anymore. It wasn't a goal, it wasn't anything that I was trying to achieve. Oh, I need to get into this, or I need to get that score, I need to get into this job, or I need to be working in this corporate place. After that, the next thing was something else to strive for. You know something else to chase for. Maybe it was for a house, or maybe it was for money or a status or a title, or whatever it may be. It's different for everyone. I'm completely generalizing right now.

Speaker 1: 7:56

So the question we then must further ask ourselves or I must ask myself is what do we want? Why do we want it? What will it do for us and does it really make a difference Right Now? These are some really deep questions. These are very simple questions that we can kind of brush up. Oh yeah, I just want more time, or I want more money, or I want to be able to do this, or I want to work less and earn more Right. But when we actually start to spend the time I'm not going to go through this in detail here, but I'm going to challenge you with it is when we actually break down and understand what do we want and then ask yourself why do we want that and what will that do for us? Because we start to then put what we think this will do for us, we start to think what we want, we start to think why we want it, and then the big question will be does it really make a difference, or what difference will it make to our lives? It's like when you go out to buy something you've been saving for a long time, you really, really want it. You get it, and then the hype's over and then it's like, okay, you've got it. Now what? What's the next thing? What are you saving for next?

Speaker 1: 9:04

It continues to go on, and I guess this all starts to now roll into the next point, or the second point that I wanted to discuss and you know this starts across over anyways which is why do we, in general terms, use society as a baseline to indicate how we are performing? Now I don't think anyone's going out there and they've got a checklist of like okay, this person on social media is doing X, y and Z. Am I matching that? No, that's not what we're doing, but we are seeking validation, unknowingly, by when we look around and see what other people are doing, and it really probably comes down to five different things. One, social comparison we naturally compare ourselves to other people, whether we think we're doing it or not. It just naturally happens, even worse so in the last, probably the last decade. The second point is norms and expectations. Society sets standards and expectations that influence our behavior, usually unstated as well, but we see it through all the influences, as I said before marketing campaigns and so on. It is everywhere. We are saturated by it.

Speaker 1: 10:09

Point number three is validation and belonging. Society provides validation to us and it gives us a sense of belonging, we gain acceptance and recognition. We feel for our want and our need for connection, and that's what we get from other people validating it for us. We get this sense of okay, we're part of something which kind of actually leads to the next point, which is cultural influence, and this one is how society shapes our values and beliefs. We think if we attach ourselves to a vessel of some sort, it will get us to where we need to be or where we think we want to be, and a lot of the time that comes through. You know where we've grown up. You know our backgrounds, our heritage, our parents. I'm not blaming anyone and what I'm saying is how we develop our, as we develop as kids, as children, as teenagers, as even young adults and even as adults. We're a part of something, we have an influence in our lives. Someone is influencing us or a group of people are influencing us, and that has a big, big impact to us.

Speaker 1: 11:09

And then the final point there is external validation, and a lot of this overlaps, but external validation where society offers rewards and recognition for the meeting of benchmarks, meaning you hit a certain level or you get to a certain point. You get a status, you get some power, you get money, you get fame, you get praise, you get promotions. You get, most of the time, material rewards. So the big question we have to ask ourselves is how do we remove ourselves from these constructs? Right? So there's no simple way of doing this, definitely something that I'm still struggling and working through. But we need to have this isolation of what we want and who we are as an individual, to make sure we don't get ourselves skewed up or diluted by how the world is operating or what we think the world wants us to be doing. So how can we reframe our mindsets to look beyond what is saturated everywhere we look? That's a tough one, I think.

Speaker 1: 12:06

There's a couple of points that I put together that I think we need to consider. I think the first one is we need to reflect on our values, aspirations and our goals. So, like again, what are you striving for? Like, what are you wanting and what are you thinking it is what you want? Right? I think there's two different things, because we have these ideas, we have these conceptions or these ideas of what we want, but then sometimes it's a lot more of the thought of it is cool, but then actually working for it it's not really what we want because it's hard work and we need to actually understand is like do these aspirations, do these values Actually not even values Do these aspirations and goals, do they align with our values? Now, if you don't know what your values are, that's even a bigger question. You need to actually break down and understand what it is that you value and it might be you know you personally, what you value in other people, how you, how you go about living life, what are your set of rules, what are your values in life? And I think the other thing we then need to consider is our broader aspirations and goals, because we tend to set ourselves to those short term things, and those short term things might be five years, because that's all we can project to. But what's our broader aspiration, like you think, 30 years from now?

Speaker 1: 13:20

The stuff that you're doing today, it may be completely irrelevant, irrelevant to what you're doing, then it's not irrelevant to getting you to where you want to be. But, like you know, I don't think about uni anymore, but it was, you know, a key stepping stone to enable me to get my job, to get my career, to meet the people that I did to then end up here eventually and then have the skills that I have to be able to do what I do. So I mean it all. It all comes full circle, but it becomes more irrelevant as we start to age and as we start to grow and find ourselves where we want to be. So the other thing we need to consider is we need to define success on our own terms, aligned with your values.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Now, this is also something which I know gets thrown around. Oh, you know you have to define success. Well, you do, but the question that I would get you to ask yourself is are you doing this for an intrinsic motivation or are you doing it for external validation? Now, intrinsic motivation is usually when a person is moved to act for the fun or the challenge entailed, rather than because of an external product or pressure or reward. Right, so you know, we're doing it because we enjoy it rather than we're doing it because we want the pot of the gold at the end.

Speaker 1: 14:38

Humor me with this next little, this next little thinking. Imagine if there wasn't a place to share ourselves as publicly as we can today Facebook, instagram, socials, youtube, anywhere. The question I would get you to ask yourself is how would your goals, how would your aspirations and how would your ambitions change? What would they look like Right Now? I know this is very hard to fathom, but have you actually ever considered what happens when we have no internal pressure of expectation from an external validation requirement, meaning that we're, whether we consciously know it or not, that we are to be validated by someone else we don't even talk to, or to be validated by someone that we've never even met or to, that will never really have a big part of our lives. Yet we tend to be influenced by these people on what should happen, how it should happen, what makes sense, how it should look, how it should feel, or what's a 10 out of 10, or what's a flop, based on society, norms, trends, you know, and the latest thing. So the question is who is defining these values? Who is defining it? And, ironically, as we dig deeper, we are. I am, I'm defining it for myself and you are for you, the people.

Speaker 1: 16:00

We think we are pushing an unstated expectation. Like the people, like, for instance, the people that we see up on, you know, the stands, the popular people, the celebrities, the people we are influenced by, are encouraged by. They're not pushing any unstated expectation. It's really our own frustration at ourselves for not hitting a target or for not being happy where we are or for a level of progress that we are at, and a lot of the time it's because we thought we could be there, we think we can be there and we're not there, or it hasn't turned out how we wanted. So, therefore, we put that success level as like. I want to be like that, because I know when I get to that level, clearly I must be more happy. Again, I'm probably talking from my own experience here, but that that's what tends to happen. So, further to this, how do we continue to counter it? How do we, how do we manage it? How do we tackle it? Well, I think Again, I don't like saying this stuff because it's it does come across as just are the same old cliche, but I say it because it works we need to firstly set meaningful goals that bring you actual fulfillment.

Speaker 1: 17:04

But Take that fluff away and actually ask you a question Well, to ensure what that? To ensure it, to know what we want, we actually need to know what fulfillment looks like Like. If we don't know what that fulfillment is, then how do we even know how to search for something that's going to help us fill it and help us attain it? So you need to define what that fulfillment looks like. I can't do that for you, and I think a way that we could possibly do it if you are struggling is, or the smart way that we could do it is and I know this is easier said than done but we can start to do a couple of these different things. We could limit our exposure to social media and focus on those real-life connections we can live authentically, embracing our unique qualities and sharing and being who we are, not who we think we should be, because someone else has suggested to be, or we're influenced or encouraged by someone else of their own doing, whether we know it or not.

Speaker 1: 17:59

And the third one it may actually mean seek professional help if needed, to Navigate through All these expectations of these unstated people or what they're doing or what we're seeing them do, and our own comparisons to them. It's okay to ask for help. I think, when we turn off the noise, that, being modern society, we can actually start to thrive in the silence of our own satisfaction. A deep point. But you know, if we love what we do. We can thrive with what we do, but as soon as we start to compare what we love To what other people are suggesting is better or is redefining what we should like, that's when we get confused. You remove all that from the element. We don't have anything else to compare to.

Speaker 1: 18:49

And I've got an example of this. Let's say you wanted to start making some, some pies, apple pies. I Remember the quote from chicken run. Anyway, that's why I'm giggling. If I said to you what, what's the first thing we do to make apple pie? It's, it's most likely that you're going to go to Google and you're gonna look up how to make apple pie. Now, in this moment, we are having an apple pie defined for us. If you Google it, if you look it up, it is going to be defined for you visually with text how to do it, what to do, what it should look like, how much ingredients you should be putting in it and even how it should taste. So the more we look, the more we'll find on the way people have defined it, their ideas, their, their experiences For you to try when making apple pie. Right then and there. Now you've got a baseline. Now You've got something to compare to now there's options to choose from.

Speaker 1: 19:43

But what if we have the inkling to make apple pie and we just made it? Like, when we have the inkling to make apple pie, that we just did it without having any prior knowledge, any influence, any expectation? We just do it based on our inkling of our mind. What would you define it as? What would be required, what would you think even needs to be required, even if you've never cooked before? Could we just try it without validating what it should actually be externally?

Speaker 1: 20:08

So I guess, if we did this, if we've never tasted another apple pie ever, we also don't know what it should look like, taste like or Be like. We've got an idea from our imagination, maybe, maybe we have seen something years ago, but we haven't necessarily been fully influenced or diluted or Structurally made aware of it. So when we make our own, we are trying it for the first time ever. So either we will like it or we will not, and but that will be our only baseline. And Then we will realize okay, if this was my baseline, I didn't like it because it needs to be sweeter, or maybe it needs more apple, or maybe the pastry is too thick, or Maybe I shouldn't have left it in too long because it's been burnt.

Speaker 1: 20:51

But now, when we do it again, we have a new baseline of expectations, only to be defined by what we have seen, tested and experienced in our own doing. No one else can dilute that. It makes it precious. Now, if we were only trying to do now, if we were only trying to do what someone else has maybe spent years perfecting, then our first likely will always never be the same, simply because we won't be able to be the same until we've done it. Enough of the equivalence of their Expectation or level, in this case their skill set. We might be able to jump a few hoops and get through a few little obstacles and get there a lot quicker. That's why we have, you know, master classes and things, because we can take someone's 10 years, 10 year experience and learn it in eight hours and all of a sudden We've a mini master of it.

Speaker 1: 21:39

But to bring it back to a more focused understanding, some questions that I think we can ask ourselves In regards to how we can challenge our reliance on society, norms and expectations. The first one is what truly matters to me in life? That is the first question. These are deep, like this, is you're gonna have to spend some time, you might have to come back, listen to this a few times, but when we start to ask you a question, what truly matters of me in life, we need to be asking ourselves Is it what people think of me, or is it what I think of me Like, what? Like? The next question but it continues on is what? What are we defining as success for ourselves? Like?

Speaker 1: 22:22

And a good way to look at this is Go back through through all your memories and experiences and can you identify a moment or an experience in your life where you have had immense joy or you had something where you just remember it so well that you love it so much, but it was not in any alignment or any influence to society norms. It was just you as yourself, and no one else told you to do this. It was an experience that you can really just truly understand that that was beautiful and innocent to its own experience. Right, that's probably something that you can help that fulfillment moment is helping to realize. Well, if you could have that for the rest of your life, is that defining success for you? Now? What that might mean? That might mean that you went fishing and you enjoyed it so much because there was just no other worry in the world, and maybe it's that feeling of not having to worry about anything else in the world.

Speaker 1: 23:20

Obviously, how do you create that lifestyle is the big question. Now you know what it is that you want. You want to be able to have that feeling. The other big question we can be asking yourself is how do I want to contribute to the world in a way that is meaningful to me? Right, what do you want to bring to the table to make a difference? And it might not be about impacting 10,000 people, it might just be about you just want to be, you just want to do your thing, you just want to chill and be comfortable with that. You don't have to meet all the demands and expectations and the pressures of everyone else. Now, this is an interesting thing to say, because here I am doing a podcast, talking to you and other people of what you should be doing, how to further your lifestyle. But the reality is I'm trying to further my own lifestyle. I'm trying to create the lifestyle that I want. I'm figuring that out, I'm learning it, I'm adjusting, I'm pivoting it. I'm making steps based on encouragement from other people, support, but also making my own moves. I don't like seeking help from other people because I want to figure it out for myself, but there is a time that we do need to get help, because it's like banging your head against a wall.

Speaker 1: 24:25

Now I digress, but the next thing to consider is if you left it all behind right now, will people you compare yourself to even know you are gone? Let me say that again. Let's say it all ends today. It's done and in your life. That's just the scenario. That's the way it is. Will the people that you compare yourself to, that you've put up on a pedestal that you're having defined success for you, will they even know you're gone? Probably not, because they're people that probably aren't even relevant to you. Now, there probably are people that have set these unstated expectations on you that you've set on yourself more so because you think, in order to be somewhere that is of worthy of succession, it has to be at the same level of them or higher.

Speaker 1: 25:14

Now, even if they do know that you are gone, that's OK. It doesn't mean that you weren't successful. If anything, it's even more important that those people do remember you, because if they remembered you, it means that you were doing something that is identifiable, meaning you've left a legacy, you've done something that is of worth, of value. I'm not saying that if you haven't done anything and no one remembers it, that you're not valuable or not worth anything. But what I'm saying is is like you don't need these people to give you the validation. You need to be happy with what you're doing, and there's always going to be people that remember who you are and what you've done.

Speaker 1: 25:52

But what I'm trying to really make the point of is like we put our projections of success based on what we see other people doing who, majority of the time, they don't even know they've got that influence over you. That's the truth. So these, these are some tough questions, right, but I think it's super important to chat about, because if you're not chatting about it with yourself, then who are you chatting it about with? Right, and we really need to get that pulse check of our mentality and reality around our tether to other people. And these unstated expectations and I guarantee you these are only coming from our own insecurities. I'm speaking to myself here we attach ourselves to other people or these ideas or these expectations which they've never defined, they've never set out and said you have to be doing this. Yet we want to attain those things, because that's where we think success is, that's where we think success should look like. Now, if you, if you don't feel any of this, that's great, that's so good. It means you've overcome this or you've never had to deal with this.

Speaker 1: 26:54

For me, this is something that I struggle with all the time, because I have to make sure that when I start to do the visualizing of where I want to be, is that my goal or is it a goal that has strung from seeing where someone else in my peer group is and that they're higher than me, right? So if I want to conquer that, they become irrelevant. They are irrelevant. Yes, they're a reference point, but for me, if I want to be 10 times bigger than them, it's got nothing to do with them. It's because I want to be 10 times bigger. But I need to understand what that 10 times means, right, because if I don't understand what that means, what am I doing it for? Why am I doing it? What does it actually get for me? You get there and you realize huh, all right, now what and we've spoken about this a few times of finding happiness. So it's a very, very important conversation to have with yourself.

Speaker 1: 27:45

Well, on a roll, we're going to get to part three of this conversation, and that is we can make excuses or we can make progress. So how do we manage this? And the answer is motivation. So I'm going to keep this short and sweet because I don't want us to lose all the other stuff. We've spoken, and we've spoken through a lot of stuff today, but keeping it frank is excuses hold us back from reaching our goals or reaching our potential. So if we challenge their relevance, if we challenge them and we break free of these excuses, we may actually thrive. And this is how we've done it.

Speaker 1: 28:19

I've broken this down really short and sweet. The first thing is identify the excuses, challenge their relevance, take responsibility of those excuses, reframe your mindset, set clear goals based on that reframing of your mindset. Now go, take consistent action, seek support and accountability and then evaluate and adjust, rinse and repeat. That's what you've got to do. That's how we do it. Now let me continue. So that's how we deal with excuses, ryan, but once we've, once we start to deal with those, there will be a void. There'll be something there that we need to fill, and that is something we should fill with motivation.

Speaker 1: 28:59

But how do we find motivation and how do we create motivation? Well, we've set some, you know, or identified some significant goals. We've just said that before. In doing so, we also want to then set some long term ideas in terms of what we envision as long term success. You need to set what that looks like. Where do you want to be in five, 10, 15 years? Or it might be three months, six months, one year, two years We'll talk about that shortly, in a second but you want to set what that kind of pathway looks like. So then you can start to set specific growth goals.

Speaker 1: 29:32

So, for instance, I've started to change the way I set my goals. I used to say I want to do this this year. I've started to say, well, I've actually want to do three things. I want to get from this to this, to this, whether I get it in this year or not. That's what I'm working toward. Before I can even get to that, I know I need to hit milestone number one. Milestone number one might have been $100,000 in my business. Milestone two might be $160,000 in a single year. Milestone three might be $250,000 in a single year. So it's not about hitting it this year, but it's building up each year to get towards that, so I can make that possible in a single year.

Speaker 1: 30:06

They're growth goals, but we also need to break down the journey into milestones, because if you don't change anything, if you don't set something to enable yourself to grow or push yourself well, then you won't actually grow. You can't expect to just do nothing and everything gets better. So break them down. We also need to create action plans for each milestone. I kind of just said that already. I jumped ahead. But as we do that, we need to monitor the progress, to make adjustments. When we see things visually, we can be inspired and be motivated, but it can, at the same time, cause us to feel disadvantaged or feel like we're slowing down because we're not seeing the results. We're not seeing the results we're expecting. But then it comes back to how we got an action plan, how we got realistic milestones, how we got the right expectation of our success, of where we want to be. Is it aligned to our values or is it aligned to someone else's? So therefore, we need to stay adaptable, we need to continue to change and be flexible in making those changes and keep the goal in mind.

Speaker 1: 31:10

For motivation. Refer back to what it is, that longer term. Why are you doing this? It might be for a year goal, but that year goal is that going to get you to your three year goal, or your five year goal or your 10 year goal? Right, you know? If you want to live somewhere, in a special place, what are you doing to help get yourself there? If you want to start a business, if you want to be a business owner in 10 years, 20 years, what are you doing today to be a business owner 20 years later? If you haven't done anything, how are you going to be a business owner? So you need to start thinking about those things and, along the way, do not forget to do this is celebrate achievements along the way. So, to cement the motivation in comparison to the whole area of success, we need to ask ourselves this, and I kind of already alluded to this was what do you want in the next 30 days, in the next three months, in the next six months, in the next one year, in the next two years, in the next five years? Right, once you know what those things are, they're the stepping points to that greater, long term success of where you want to be. Break those down of where you want to be.

Speaker 1: 32:12

And then the question you need to ask yourself is are you making excuses that hinder your progress? Are you going on side quests? Are you doing self sabotage? Are you doing things that are slowing you down? Or are you making excuses justifying why you haven't hit what you expected to hit or what you should have hit already Now? Are you doing the things that are enabling you to thrive or not? And you can ask yourself to clarify this is what are your specific motivations that currently feel you? Why are you doing what you do For me?

Speaker 1: 32:44

I'm doing this podcast because I want to grow and I want to help other people grow. I want people to go through the realization that I've had over the last, you know, two, three, four years of if I want something, no one else is going to do it for me. So I need to start working towards it, and I want to share people. I want to share with people that they can do that, too. That's what motivates me and fuels me even having this conversation with you right now. So then, what actions do you need to take to make it happen? Well, I need to release this podcast every week, don't I? But I'm just using that as an example. So what do you need to do to make it happen? And after you've asked those two questions, you ask yourself are you still motivated? Because when we start to go through it, we start to realize I don't want to do that. Clearly you're not motivated.

Speaker 1: 33:27

Then, if I want to run a 50K ultramarathon, it's going to take 21 weeks to train for it. You go through that process and you realize that's a lot of work. Am I still motivated? Yes, I still want to do it. You go do it over 20 weeks. There's going to be some ups and downs, but I know what I want. Therefore, this is what I have to do to get it Alright. So, to wrap this up, there's one more thing that I'll leave you with, which is we need to understand that these clearly. So once we start to understand these things clearly, you may actually start to reveal where your true intentions, where your mindset is and where your expectations lie, and you might even be able to put this into a bit of a Venn diagram. Now, this might be a bit of a butcher me trying to describe it, you know if you're just listening, but a Venn diagram. Basically, you know a couple of circles that overlap, but in this Venn diagram and I'll read it out to you because I've written this down already for those that need to visualize it Visualize three circles representing different aspects of your journey towards where you want to be.

Speaker 1: 34:31

One circle is your goals and timeframes. So this circle will represent your desired outcomes and your timeframes in which you want to achieve them. So it includes your goals that you have set for yourself in the next 30 days, three months, six months, one year, two years, five years. The next one is excuses and hindrances. This circle represents the potential problems, excuses or things that are going to Excuse me, the things that are going to hinder you, that may come up along the journey. It will involve identifying and acknowledging any of these excuses that may be holding you back from making progress towards your goals.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Now the third circle is your motivations and actions. So this circle represents your specific motivations and actions required to achieve your goals. It involves understanding what truly motivates you and the steps you need to take to make your goals a reality. Now put all that together. It's a lot, I know. Then you should have an overlap in the Venn diagram and this basically occurs when the circles intersect and it should reveal the connections and relationships between these aspects. So, for instance, you'll have clear intentions and mindsets that overlap between goals and timeframes, and motivations and actions. So these will represent the alignment of your intentions and your mindset with the goals you have set and the actions you are willing to take to achieve them. And then you have expectations and thriving, which is the overlap between the goals and timeframes and excuses and hindrances, which represents basically the intersection of your expectations for success and the potential obstacles of, or excuses I guess in this case that may actually arise along the way. That makes sense. So basically, it highlights the importance of overcoming these excuses and staying focused on thriving towards your goals. That's a lot.

Speaker 1: 36:30

You might need to replay this, you might need to go through and figure this out for yourself. The idea is that as you start to overlap and play these in hand in hand, some of these things will actually help motivate you, because you can realize no, I don't want to hit those problems. Therefore, I need to make sure I don't hit those problems. So if I don't hit those, it's going to help me be fueled, to be thriving and to be actually getting to where I want to be, and it helps you identify what are the things that you struggle with. But you can't figure those things out if you haven't done the stuff that we've just discussed. All above all this, which was, you know, identifying the excuses, acknowledging the excuses and, you know, working through those excuses. You've got to do all that first. All right, big episode, lots to take in.

Speaker 1: 37:14

Like this is a very passionate one for me because, as I said, I'm doing a lot of thinking, clarity, reflection for myself. I wanted to share this with you because I think it's relevant for everyone and like I've been really challenged in the last couple of weeks because I have big ambitions and I want to make sure those ambitions are mine and they're not to prove anything to anyone else, only to myself. And that's it. Obviously, I'm doing it because I want to be able to create something. But if you're doing something because you think it's what someone else wants you to do, but you've never had that conversation, you know you're projecting right, so make sure you know what it is you're doing, why you're doing it and the people that are coming along for the ride that you think you're doing it for. Make sure you know that they know that and that they agree with that.

Speaker 1: 38:04

Otherwise you know you're getting this false mentality of validation which doesn't even exist. So you know there's a lot of thinking to do there and as we start to strip away all this fluff and we start to, you know, thrive to where it is that we want to be, we can then go through that the process of the challenges, the obstacles. We've conviction, knowing why we're doing it and what it will lead to and what this means for us in the long run, because otherwise you're just doing it to please someone that has no idea that they even are put on this pedestal and they won't even have any care or thought if you don't do it. Or you do do it Right. A lot of the time again we set these projections, these expectations on ourselves through other people, back onto ourselves. So get rid of that and just start working on what you need to work on For what you need and what you want, based on what you perceive yourself, not what you perceive through someone else, as what's most important for you Be yourself, right.

Speaker 1: 39:04

The other thing is I will quickly just say. It's very easy to be able to have these conversations for other people like, talk about you should do this, you should do that, or you know you can do that. When you have a loved one that's in need or a loved one that's in struggling with something, we care for them. We say, maybe you should do this, this is what I recommend you doing. But when it comes to ourselves, we don't take the same advice. We should know this, but why don't we do it Right? So you spend some time, learn to love yourself, learn to look after yourself and start to make some of the tough decisions of what you're doing, and start to make some of the tough decisions of what you need to hear, as if you were you telling it to your friend or to a family member or a loved one.

Speaker 1: 39:53

All right, that's, that's episode 122. I think it was 122. A big one. Appreciate you listening. If this resonated with you, drop a comment or reach out or send me a message. Let's have a conversation. Let's continue the conversation. I'll really appreciate it. If you want to share this with someone that you think it would resonate with, I would encourage you to do that. I challenge you to do that. It really does help the podcast. I enjoyed this conversation and if you want to leave a voice memo, you can jump over to wwwspeakpipecom. Slash further your lifestyle and you can leave a voicemail over there. Otherwise, yeah, hit me up on socials or in whichever way makes sense for you. Appreciate you being here and you have a wonderful day. Cheers.