Speaker 1: 0:00

Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Furrier Lifestyle podcast Conversations on Lifestyle Passions and Hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 123 today.

Speaker 1: 0:14

And today we're actually we're diving into an interesting topic. We're gonna explore the different facets of ourself, and what I mean by this is a lot of the time when we go through the process of, I guess, trying to go on the journey of self discovery, we there's a lot of things that we probably skip over, jump over and forget to really address. Or maybe there's things that you've been feeling and you didn't realize that's what it was. Well, hopefully, in this episode, that's what we can kind of cover and give you a bit more understanding on Now. It's kind of like going through different aspects of what personal growth could look like and should look like, but at the same time, there's different elements to it as we develop ourselves. I hope that makes sense. Hopefully, hopefully, as we progress through this, it will make a lot more sense. So buckle up and let's dive in Now. I do apologize in the background if you can hear some crickets. I've got a choir of crickets out the back. I am filming this at around eight o'clock and I'm recording this at eight o'clock and during this current season. We're about to go into spring, we're about to finish winter and the crickets are just crazy. As soon as it hits like eight o'clock they go wild. Anyway, if they're not distracting you, they're definitely here distracting me and I've started the episodes over the last couple of weeks exactly the same as this because they are. They're really ear piercing. Anyway, I digress Now. I did wanna set a little bit of context before we dive into this.

Speaker 1: 1:47

So back in around 2016 to 2018, so 2016, 2017 and 2018, I was blogging daily. So every day I would get up before work, on a train, commute and I would blog. Sometimes it would be scheduled or sometimes it wouldn't. Most of the time it wasn't. What I enjoyed doing was kind of sharing something of a motivational piece that would inspire others to aspire further, which kind of eventually led to this whole podcast in the long run, I guess.

Speaker 1: 2:17

Not knowing at the time, but what I do like to do is I like to return to this content every so often and have a browse through and see if there's anything there that I think can be used as a fresh way to come back at or maybe to revisit or to resurrect and kinda also see what jumps out at me, what resonates with me where I am currently in life, and this one did. I found this one the other day and I wanted to play it back, and there'll be a couple of episodes coming up where I'll continue to do this, just because trying to just spice things up a little bit and get some fresh content. So that's where this has come from today and it's something that I know. I did the research and I looked it up. Oh jeep, it says yeah, probably four or five years ago, and that's the context of this episode. So, but what I have done is I've taken this blog and kinda really trimmed it down into short and sharp kinda points to help make it a little bit more digestible for you, so there's not so much you know, so much going into your head and you're able to kinda digest it in smaller parts. Now there are eight selves that we're gonna go through today and each one, as I just said, I'm gonna break it down into some dot points. But I've kinda broken each one into two components. So the first component is basically giving you. What does it mean? What are we talking about? And then I'll try and give you some relevant examples that might be a bit more, yeah, relevant to everyday life, and that way, hopefully, you'll be able to take away more of the philosophical, but also take away the relevancy of it, of where you are or how you're going in your own journey of self discovery or furthering your lifestyle. So that's what we're doing.

Speaker 1: 3:52

So let's dive into number one. And the first one is self-taught. Now, I mean, this does come across as self-explanatory, but you know I'm going to. I've written in these notes that I will break down and read out the different aspects that I believe these are suggesting to be. And the first one, as I said, self-taught. So it's when we embrace the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom from diverse sources, where we learn from life's experiences and extract valuable lessons from them, and where we foster a mindset of continuous learning and growth. So that's really, by definition, what it means. But if we actually start to play it in a bit more, I guess, if you will layman's terms, or relevancy to life, you know, it would be like exploring new hobbies or exploring new interests in your free time, could also mean learning a new skill through online tutorials or reading books or, you know, watching YouTube channels or trying to gain more information or more information for a new skill. Or it might even mean like seeking out documentaries, podcasts, such as this one, to expand your knowledge on various subject points and topics. So that's self-taught right, and a lot of the time, if something becomes relevant as it pops in my head, I will talk about it, but A lot of the time we in this day and age bit of event, I find a lot of people don't want to do the self-taught process.

Speaker 1: 5:15

They don't want to spend the time to learn. Everyone wants everyone to tell them how to do it. Now, ironically, if you actually go, look for it, you will find something that will tell you for you, tell you all about on how to do it and how you can actually grow. But most people don't want to do that. They want people to then tell them where do I go to find it, what I need to do, and almost it's like they want the person to do the work for them.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Going for that self-taught process, you actually learn so much about what it is you're trying to achieve, like the skill or the new knowledge or whatever it is that you're trying to acquire. You should learn a lot about yourself as well, and you pick up some different skills and stuff, and I think a lot of these will start to overlap as we as we go through them. So I just find it funny in this day and age it's actually there is so much opportunity, is so easy to get into something, and when I say easy, I mean it in in the sense that there's so many things out there that enable us to get, get out and do what we want to do, what we want to pursue. You know, it was only literally when I finished high school, which was around 2010. You know we didn't have laptops and iPads in high school. That's just the norm. Everyone does their exams on laptops, everyone does their exams on computers. That's all normal now, and Going about learning how to code or learning how to do anything when we have chat, gbt, we have AI at the, at our fingertips, it's it's crazy of the ability that we can go out and actually self teach ourselves, yet we still lack the ability to go do it.

Speaker 1: 6:47

Number two is self aware, and this means to engage in introspection to big word, to understand your thoughts, emotions and behaviors. It also might mean to cultivate mindfulness, or to stay present and aware of our inner state, and also to develop a deeper understanding of our strengths, our weaknesses and our values. Big point on values. So how this might apply in a bit more relevant situation is taking a moment each day to kind of pulse check in with, to kind of pulse check in with your emotions and to reflect on how you're feeling. It might also be to take the time to notice, potentially, any patterns in your behavior or reactions to certain situations. This is really important.

Speaker 1: 7:30

And then the other one could be, you know, maybe paying attention to your body signals for rest, exercise and nourishment. I think you know the first way we could probably strip this back is, you know, becoming conscious of our body, and we tend to neglect the signals, we tend to neglect the things that are probably giving us inklings to say, hey, something's not right here. It might be a gut feeling, it might be, you know, you're just not feeling it and you're not vibing. Are you becoming restless? And these are all little tells that help us say, hey, something's not right. And at the same time, we might need to force ourselves, whether it's doing some journaling or writing down or just taking a pulse, as it said, of how your days been, and it's okay to have a poopy day or crap day, but it's also very important of how you kind of Not interpret that but manage that and work through that. So being self aware is what we've got.

Speaker 1: 8:24

Issues will go to an issues. Everyone has their Big baggage in our own sense and I'm not here to everyone for to open up and start talking about their baggage by omens, but we do need to be self aware of it and because sometimes a lot of the stuff that goes on is in our head and we don't necessarily, we can't necessarily, comprehend that the things that going on in our head isn't going on in their heads. So what you might be thinking might not even be relevant or Going on. What's in their head. A lot of the time when we walk around thinking about what is that person think of me? That's all your thoughts. That's not anyone else is thinking about you. Know what cares about you. You're not walking around thinking about all these people. You're thinking about what these people are thinking about you and they're probably thinking all what's this guy thinking about me? But you're not thinking about them. You're thinking about you, thinking about them thinking about you like it's just, it's just ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 9:12

So we do need to build some level of self awareness to help us continue to grow and to Build that relationship with ourself. Right, take a moment, suss out how you do, what's going on. You know what are you struggling with. Being self aware of, you know the vulnerabilities that we need to go through, the insecurities that we need to address. These are all the important parts of the puzzle. I'm not saying it's easy either. It does get easier. The more you do it and you become more comfortable doing it, it better. It's a work in progress, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: 9:43

Number three the self. Number three is self drive. So this is to cultivate motivation and determination from within, set meaningful goals and a lot that you know align with your passions or values, and develop discipline or and perseverance to overcome obstacles and stay focused. Now, this one, you know it's. It's a lot of the stuff we talk about on this podcast, especially setting goals and being motivated and chasing progress and being successful, and you know all that. But to help bring it down a level to a level of relevance, setting personal goals Such as completing a workout routine or reading a certain number of books in a month like this. This is how simple it can be. It doesn't have to be like I wanna, you know, be the next Elon Musk, right? It's just setting these smaller personal goals for self growth, but being able to find that growth for self driven Application right. So setting those personal goals.

Speaker 1: 10:35

Another way could be finding ways to motivate yourself during challenging tasks or projects. You know there are things that we love to do and the things that we think we love to do, and then the things that we hate to do, like we struggle to do. So finding ways that you can work yourself through to be motivated to get the job done is very important to. And then the probably the final point that I'll say is seeking out opportunities for personal growth or advancement in your career. Now there's this we have to make sure we we, we separate the I guess the thin line between what we want versus what we think we want and what we think we want usually come up with a good way to do that we want and what we think we want usually comes from the stemming of other people projecting suggestions to us, because we're influenced, we're encouraged, we're motivated by what they're doing, we're inspired by what they're doing and we want what they have. Sometimes this is consciously or subconsciously.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Now we I just did a bit episode on this and 122. Where we did talk about some of those things that we spoke about. You know insecurities and projections and you know other people's expectations, which aren't even stated, and most of the time they're your expectations being projected through them onto you. I'd agree. So we do need to make sure that we have to be, you know, where we're being self driven based on what we want, not by what we think we want from other people and in the unsaid expectations we put on ourselves. So Because when we can, when we can find what we're motivated for, when we can find what we want, I Believe that self-drive becomes a little bit more Easy to access.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Now I'll be frank here. So, like for me, building my business, I know in order to grow I need to list more items that will sell. Now, at the moment, I've got a really good selfie rate. Like I'm pretty happy with it. I'm hitting my targets each week. If I want to grow that level, I need to be doing more of what works. But to do more of what works, it tags more effort. So at the moment I'm happy to get to what I'm currently doing, take that off for the day, but then to do more. I'm tired, I'm exhausted and I haven't been able to conquer that and get over that hump. So to find that motivation, I need to find what's going to trigger to do it. Is it because I just want more money? Is it because I want Something beyond more money? Is it what, what, what is driving me right? And at the moment I'm not motivated to do it. I'm happy to do what I'm currently happy to get and that's so far of what I'm happy to do. So getting through that it's something that I have to work through. At the moment I'm happy with what I'm doing, but at the same time I'm not because I want more. So it's then finding what's going to motivate me or push me or drive me To get to that more. I hope that makes it.

Speaker 1: 13:16

The next one is self-worth. Now, this one is very important. So this this is referring to this one's referring to like recognizing and embracing your inherent value and your uniqueness. It will also mean to practice self-acceptance and self-compassion, but also to detach your self-worth from the external validation and comparison of other people. That's some deep stuff. So To to bring this back to a normal relevancy of an everyday Joe or, in this case, layman's terms.

Speaker 1: 13:52

We want to be practicing self-compassion when making mistakes or facing setbacks. You will have mistakes, you make boo-boos where it might feel like a failure. That's probably the better way to put it and that's okay. So you need to work through that. You need to give yourself, you need to love yourself enough to be able to work through that, like how, if your friend or family member was Going through a hard time, you would comfort them, you would give them the support you would tell them it's going to be okay. I'm not saying, go tell yourself that, yeah, you go do something stupid and it's going to be okay, but when you stuff up, love yourself right. That's what I'm saying. You also need to remind yourself of your strengths and your positive qualities, what you are capable of doing. If you've done something before, you know you can do it again, even if it does seem like a crazy hard thing to do. You got it. You got to Boost yourself, you got it, you know. Back yourself right. And the other one is then setting healthy boundaries, and so setting healthy boundaries in relationships and standing up for your needs and values.

Speaker 1: 14:53

This is this is probably something that I've struggled with a lot is, you know, worrying about? Well, if I, you know, maybe scared to speak up about my boundaries because it might push someone away, or something like that, which, which can be a bit scary, because most of the time, most people are independent and Smart enough to realize that, you know, okay, it's just, we're just having a mature conversation. But, you know, I've been that type of person that's always wanted to please people and not offend other people. Even I mean, we're entitled to opinions. I mean, if I have an opinion and you don't like it, that that's not. I didn't do anything wrong. It's got nothing to do with me, just like I might not agree with your opinion. But if you're getting annoyed by my opinion, you know that's. That's something you've got to deal with, not with what you have to deal with me, right? So it's. It works both ways. Me, if I'm Worried that someone else is gonna think differently of me, that's an insecurity on my side, it's. It's got nothing wrong with them, right? You know I'm not sharing my opinion to offend, I'm not sharing my. You know, putting up my boundaries to offend, I'm putting my boundaries, of what makes me feel okay and comfortable, of who I am right. So this works for everyone.

Speaker 1: 16:05

But it's something that you really need to to work on is making sure we have that self-worth for ourselves. So a bit of a sticky one that can be hard to to to, I guess Untangle. But as we get older, I found for me personally, my my experience is these things become easier to kind of identify when we pull ourselves out of our boxes we live in, whether it's in our corporate job or working nine to five or Family issues, drama, and you know some of the different lifestyle choices we've made. Next one is self-realization. So this would mean to explore your passions, to explore your interests and to explore your talents. It would mean to align your actions and choices to your authentic self and to strive for personal fulfillment and find a sense of purpose. Again, you know, saying all these things, I always feel like they do come across a bit wishy-washy. But what is this actually mean in layman's terms? So this would mean to explore different career paths or explore different opportunities of hobbies, to find what actually really excites you, what actually brings that fulfillment for you. Only you can decide that and find that and discover that it would also mean to reflect on your values and aligning your actions with what matters the most to you.

Speaker 1: 17:27

How many times have you gone to do something based on what someone else has said to do? Did you even challenge it against your own set of rules or values or what you want? Is this gonna get me to where I wanna be in two years time, vibe-iest time? That's a good question to ask yourself, engaging in self-reflection and journaling to gain insights into your aspirations and dreams. You know this one I probably do when I'm running, to be honest, and that's why I think it's super important to talk about, you know, finding time where you can kinda have that moment where it's like if you got into a fridge and you needed to move all the food around to make sure it's in a place where you can see it, understand it, know what's in there, take inventory. That's kinda like what you gotta do in your head with self-reflection and journaling. You don't have to do journaling, but with self-reflection. So I do that while running to kinda figure out what's the next move. What am I working on, what am I focusing on? It helps catalog everything. It just works for me. Everyone does it different.

Speaker 1: 18:20

Next one is self-trust. So this one is to honor your intuition and your inner wisdom, those inklings that we were talking about a little bit earlier, to make decisions based on your self-confidence and you know from being self-reliant. And the other one is to learn from your past experiences and build trust in your own judgment, listening to your intuition. We're making decisions even when they go against popular opinions. We're starting to cross over some of the stuff I've already spoken about. But when you have those inklings, when things don't feel right, you need to speak up, and a lot of the time we think they're not gonna be popular, but there's probably other people that are feeling the same way, but they're too scared Same boat as you to say anything about it. So we need to trust our guts, speak up, get yourself in a room where you can be quiet, but when it comes right to speak up, be confident and speak with confidence, reflecting on the past experiences where your instincts guided you correctly. So you know when we look back.

Speaker 1: 19:21

If you've got a decision to make opportunities come your way and you don't know what to do, look back of when something of similar circumstances have occurred. What did you do in that moment. Did it work out? Was there any lessons from that? And you know, take time to reflect on that before you jump in on a big decision. You know you need to and you know, if you've been given an opportunity and they say we need a decision from you, understand how long of a decision time you have so you can go do this process of you know reflecting inwards.

Speaker 1: 19:54

The next part of this would be to also seek advice and opinions from others, but ultimately, trusting yourself to make the best choices of your life. You know we need to be responsible and accountable for our lives. We can go ask other people. We can get people to tell us what we want them to tell us or what we want to hear, or you can have friends that will be candid and be very frank with you. We need it all right, but at the end of the day, you make the decision. Even if you went to someone and they said, oh yeah, I would do this, you can't blame it on them. You made the decision. You need to take accountability over. You need to take responsibility for it. Therefore, you need to live with that choice and, if you don't like it, change it. It's that simple.

Speaker 1: 20:34

The next one is self-hate oh jeepers. So this one is like talking about when we acknowledge and address feelings of self-hate and self-criticism. I'm not saying you need to hate yourself. I'm saying we need to have the conversation about it, understanding the roots of self-hate and you know what are the past experiences or the societal pressures that are driving this but also to understand or, I guess, practice self-compassion and self-forgiveness to promote healing and growth. Now, this one might be a little bit complex, but practicing self-compassion or self-forgiveness when you make mistakes or when you feel inadequate is absolutely key.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Kind of what I said before is like you know how you would treat your loved ones. You need to be doing that to yourself, right? That's weird, it's hard. I know it's hard because I struggle with it too, but when we do it and we have the tough conversation with ourselves, we can break through some of the fluff, challenging our negative self-talk and replacing it with positive affirmations. When I'm running, if I'm trying to get through a demon of a run, like a dark place where you just feel like you can't do it, you're not good enough, you got to work through it, you got to fight back, you got to push through with the positive stuff. It's the same with life. You know life's going to give you some big bumps and some big challenges has already all right, so you need to continue to work through and understand how you're going to figure that out, how you're going to navigate those challenges.

Speaker 1: 22:03

Another relevant point to this is focusing on self-care activities that promote self-love and wellbeing. This one I struggle with, and I mean this year. I set a goal to you know I've set it over the last few years of to play six video games because it works out to be doing. I can't remember the total hours, but it works out that it's going to give me a bit of downtime each week to chill out, zone out and get away from me Just trying to hustle all the time. It's hard, but we do. We need to go through the self-care activities and Help ourself grow and, you know, running as an escape for me. But there is other things that I need to do too, to just, you know, switch off, and playing video games is one way I do that.

Speaker 1: 22:40

So I, you know, think about how you can manage that, because if you don't, you can get frustrated yourself because you'll sit there trying to progress, make progression, do something or feel good about yourself, but you're not doing anything to make yourself feel good about yourself. You're doing things that you're struggling with or getting challenged by or getting frustrated by. Therefore, you start to push yourself down because you're not seeing the results you want. You probably just need to take a break, that's all it is. And then the final one probably the most important, to be honest is self-love, and self-love, you know, kind of the opposite of what we just said, right, I mean, sorry, it is exactly what we just said, but opposite in the terms of we were talking about self-hate, but in this case, you want to prioritize self-care and self-nerd during activities. You want to set healthy boundaries to protect your well-being and mental space and also to celebrate your strengths, accomplishments and your progress on your journey. So how is how can I explain this in a bit more relevant terms Engaging in activities that bring you joy, make you feel good, such as taking walks in nature or spending time with loved ones.

Speaker 1: 23:43

For me, running video games, spending time with Carla and doing things that I like to do, these are all things that we need to do that bring you joy. It's the little things in life usually, like. I love just hanging out with my chicken. Daisy used to have four chickens but three have passed away. So you know, of reason I've just been feel a bit. Whatever, you know, just go out, have a chat with her and we hang out and you know it's just, it's calming, it's relaxing, practicing self-care rituals by taking relaxing bars or treating yourself to something cute enjoy.

Speaker 1: 24:16

I think these are super important. I mean, some people can call them corny, but little routines and little things that just keep you sane. For me, like nacho night on Tuesday nights is family night, nacho night, we we have nachos, we watch a show. It's a way to kind of just know that that's what I'm doing. That's what I'm doing to switch off, we're gonna have fun, we're gonna enjoy this moment. And there's other little routines and systems like that I have in place to make sure that I've got some level of excitement to look forward to Each and every week or certain days and things like that. It helps just keep me grounded and rooted, I guess.

Speaker 1: 24:48

And the other one is celebrating your achievements, big or small, and acknowledging your efforts in progress. This one, look, I like to say I do it a lot. I probably don't do it enough. I Do in theory, because I see my progress. I do everything visually, like I track everything. But I think what we need to learn to do is do it in a way which is how do we, how do we say this? That is like very evident. It has to be tangible, make it tangible and Acknowledge it. So don't just say I, you've done well this week, keep going right. No, be proud of what you've done, reward yourself, treat yourself and find ways to Continuously give you that positive reinforcement that what you've done is great. But if you want more, you have to do more. If you want the same, you're gonna have to keep doing the same. And if you don't want it and you want to do less, have that conversation with yourself as well. But then make sure it aligns to where you want to be, what you're doing, what you're focusing on and those big broader achievements, and then you can celebrate those milestones along the way. And when Things don't necessarily go as planned, when you get yourself out of that situation, give yourself a win, celebrate. You know that you've got through it, it's okay. Take a moment to breathe, reward yourself and then get back on that horse and charge on that's. That's essentially it.

Speaker 1: 26:07

So some really deep conversations. I'm enjoying these type of conversations. Of recent cuz I've a last four, five weeks I've had some big challenges of myself Just trying to work through my own little you know issues and things like that and having some really good conversations with friends and and whatnot, and you know that's important. You know, to have conversations with other people, that you can feel safe To have those conversations. But then me having these conversations with you also, as I've been saying over the last few weeks I mean I've been saying it for more than a few weeks is, you know, a lot of the time. These conversations that I'm having here on the podcast. I'm talking to myself just as much as I'm talking to anyone that's listening.

Speaker 1: 26:43

As I can't tell you how to do More than what I've already done because I haven't done it. I can tell you how I got to hear and share the continued experience of how I'm furthering my lifestyle. I don't want this to be about me, but I think a lot of the time is there's experiences there which of what I've done and that's going to be super relevant for you, and what you want to do and where you're going. We're all dealing with crap. We're all at different parts in our lives. Sometimes we just, you know we might start late, we might be a late bloomer. Settle down, you're able to do and actually focus on you now. Well, maybe you're younger and you know you're ready to just hit the ground running and you want to soak it all in. That two works right. Whether you're older or younger, it doesn't really matter. I'm trying to just share how I'm feathering my lifestyle and I really want to help you do yours as well, like further your life too. So that's really the intent here. I'll leave it there. Come back next week We'll do it all again.

Speaker 1: 27:40

But if you want to continue the conversation, chuck a comment down. If you are watching or listening on the YouTube, you can leave a comment. Or, you know, get connected, reach out on the socials. If you are listening here on Spotify, apple podcast, all those great places. If you can leave a review, if you can share it, all those things really do help the podcast. If you do want to continue the conversation in a, you know, vocal way, I do have something called speak pipe, comm slash, feather your lifestyle, where you can jump over there and leave a voice memo and I can actually integrate that into the podcast, if you, if you will.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Yeah, I'm excited. I've got some big ambitions for this, this, this second half of this, of 2023, and at the time of this, you know, I've been thinking about a lot of those things. So I've found some new motivations, or some different motivations that I didn't have at the start of the year, because Stake-in-sense's have changed or I've had some clarity on some different things that I want. So that really does help, but it also means I have to continue to. You know, drive the ship and you know take it to where it needs to go. So Set sail into the sunset and it's not as simple as just setting sail into the sunset, but you know, take control and actually drive myself to where I want to be, and Hopefully you can learn something from me and drive yourself to where you want to be as well. Really do appreciate you being here. Do you have a wonderful day? Cheers.