Speaker 1: 0:00

Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your 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 177 today, and we're talking about a little topic, or it's actually a question that came through. This is a question that actually came through anonymously as well. I mean, I've got a series of questions that were dropped to me. I don't know if they've all come from the same person or whether or not they've come from multiple people, but some of these I got over a long period of time and I realized I never really got to them in detail. So I've now taken these questions and figured no, I think these are a great conversation to have and I've tried to take them and answer them off the cuff. That's what I'm doing now. I haven't really dwelled into it too much. I haven't written any notes. We're doing this really kind of. It's almost like a live episode in the sense of me answering it, like I've just been asked here in the conversation and the topic is all around. You know, a change of thought. But the question itself that came to me was what is a belief or opinion you held strongly in the past but have since changed your mind about, and what prompted that change. This is a deep question and I really want to dive into it, right, because I think there's a lot of stuff we can talk about around personal growth. You know the evolving of our perspectives or my perspectives in that sense and you know the experiences that lead to change. Now, some of this will probably overlap to a lot of the stuff you've heard in the past if you're here as a long-term listener. But if you're new here, hey, how you doing. I appreciate you stopping by and maybe this will be something that you've never heard before and it'll be super relevant to you. And if you enjoy this episode, whether you're here for the first time or the 100th time, please share it with someone, send it out to someone, because it really does help the channel grow, and leave a like or drop a comment or all those great things. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to dive into it, we're going to roll the intro and get cracking. Let's do it.

Speaker 1: 1:59

So what is a belief or opinion you held strongly in the past but have since changed your mind about, and what prompted that change. This is wild, right. I mean, if I pull across a whole bunch of different things and I mean, if I look back through life I think going through high school I was homeschooled for a period of time as well we zoom way, way back, right. I mean, I've always had a direction of life, kind of like idealized, of how I wanted it to be based on, you know, whether it's through parents and influence of other people around me. I grew up in a Christian family. I was a youth leader for a good 10 years actually 12 years. I played drums at my church all these different things and that set a very straight path for me in terms of what I wanted, where I was going and what I expected.

Speaker 1: 2:51

That, aside from a religion standpoint or a belief standpoint, I was studious by nature. I was an individual that I was happy to be by myself. I was kind of like I wasn't a big social butterfly. I had a few friends but not a lot of friends, and I was happy to do things by myself. I was kind of like I wasn't a big social butterfly. I had a few friends but not a lot of friends, and I was happy to do things by myself. But as I got into high school, I started to realize well, you know, I wanted to be this, I wanted to have that. You know, I think a lot of people go through this process at my age. Sorry, when I say my age, people that are probably in their thirties now would have went through this same perspective. Maybe not, maybe not, but when I was in high school, I wanted to get out of high school, go to uni, go to uni.

Speaker 1: 3:29

After that, I wanted to get a well-paying job, work my butt off, try and get a house, try and get as much money as possible as early as possible and retire as early as possible. What does that mean? I think we all just want to not have to do the grind. The reality is you have to do the grind If you want that. That's what you have to do, especially in today's age, like if you want to have a house. The average house price in Melbourne, I think, is like $750,000 for a standard house and land package. Now, obviously, you don't have to stay in Melbourne. You can go wherever you want. You can travel around the world for all I care and pick any place that you want to live.

Speaker 1: 4:02

So you know, I was kind of boxed into that perspective I digress. So I had a very linear path in terms of what I thought, what I wanted, but on the side, I always had these ideas around oh what if I could try this? I want to work for myself. I was seeing people creating blogs. I was seeing people creating YouTubes. I was seeing people being successful by doing their own thing. Now we're going back a good 15 years of when I started to see this kind of stuff. This is when Facebook started to come out. I mean, facebook had been out for a bit but starting to take the rise. Instagram was starting to take the rise. All these platforms were really still in the early days, but they opened up so many opportunities, of the possibilities of what we could do or what we could be. So there's that side Now, as I started to progress. Yeah, I worked in consulting. I wanted to be.

Speaker 1: 4:51

I remember being really inspired and influenced by, you know, one of the managing partners above me. I was fortunate enough to work for someone who I think it was one of the youngest folks to go from analyst or graduate to a managing partner which is basically an MD managing director, and they did that in 10 years I think it was 10 years, 10 and a half years, which is really it's not very common. And, to give some perspective, they would have been earning a good quarter of a million dollars $300,000 within 10 years of working there, with equity and all those different options. Probably today that's probably closer to probably $450,000, I would think, based on the increase of salary and CPI and things like that. So you know, I was inspired by that because I think, like this guy the energy he has, the abilities that he has, the skills that he has and I was very fortunate to work for them. So I had that work ethic where I wanted to be like them, work really hard, get up the ladder and I did. I buried myself in work, but I always still had those little inklings of things that I wanted to do.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Now, while all this was happening, I had a strong passion of learning about, you know again, trying to get into these little inklings of ideas of you know, building a business for myself, of you know how to make some more money or how to, you know, have that passive income, and I thought about a lot of different things and it wasn't until later that I started to understand a bit better around how I manage my money and really diving into that. Now I read a lot of books not a lot of books. I read a number of books going from that period, whether it was Rich Dad, poor Dad it was probably one of the classic ones and Barefoot Investor, and that gave me a perspective on money. But I didn't really comprehend it because I didn't really have money. But the money that I did have, I was always attached to it, and when you become attached to money, it's not a good thing.

Speaker 1: 6:40

I'm a big saver by norm, by nature. That's who I am, and I struggled to take risk and I think I spoke about this a little bit last week as well, or the week before, and I always struggled with that. But when I think about that and I then look to where I am now, there's this big gap. You know, like I'm 33 now I've been doing this for four years. You know, out on myself, out doing this by myself, building a business, having the podcast, leaving the nine to five, and I think back. Why didn't I do this earlier, like, why didn't I back myself earlier? Why didn't I take the time to take more risks earlier?

Speaker 1: 7:18

And I think that's what my perspective has changed now is. In the past I always thought you got to. You know, do the education, get a job, get married, get a house and everything's airy-fairy. And obviously that changes my perspective. Now, when I chat to people, I've got some good friends, some people that they're good friends, but I also like to try and speak into their lives because they're a bit younger than me, so I have obviously learned a little bit more than them in that same sense.

Speaker 1: 7:46

But helping them understand that you don't have to do what everyone tells you to do, you don't have to follow the norms. You don't have to follow what society does. You don't have to follow that linear rat race. You do not need to do the things that I think everyone thinks we need to do. Now, don't get me wrong. There's a lot of pleasure and a lot of enjoyment doing some of those things.

Speaker 1: 8:12

But I think it takes us a long period of time to realize maybe this isn't what we want. So it's a bit of a catch-22, because to realize it's not what you want, you got to do it. But then you'd think, oh well, I should have done the other thing first. So you think, oh, I wish I could have started doing the other thing earlier, but you didn't know that. So I think when we reflect on this, there's been a lot of things that have kind of influenced myself in that game change. You know how I operated. I know how I operated. I expected that I was going to be able to build something on the side while working a nine to five and be able to leave the nine to five and then just make it happen and, you know, live the life that I wanted.

Speaker 1: 8:47

But the reality is you need to understand where your willpower comes from, where your motivation comes from and what is you know, what is your driver, what is your purpose, what are you working towards Now? At the time I was working towards of earning money so I could buy investment properties, so I could kind of live passively off this income. But you start to realize that the work that you're doing isn't really going back to your meaningful purpose and it doesn't go back into your passion. It doesn't go back into what you want. If you can find what your passion is, what your purpose is, as early as possible, the other stuff doesn't matter. Money becomes irrelevant.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Now I can say that easier now because I've spent more money into my business, like in trying to make it work, in learning, growing, risking, getting through hurdles, because I'm passionate about it and I believe that's where I want to be going and that's I feel like it's purposeful work, because it's going to create something that I want, whereas, you know, when I was working full time, I wasn't putting my money into action that was going to have a purposeful, meaning result, meaning it was just sitting there to save. And yet you would work, you'd get nice little paycheck, you feel good for a week, you go, maybe buy something, maybe you don't buy something, and then you go back to the grind and nothing changes. So you need to find what that fulfillment piece is, and for me, the fulfillment piece is being able to identify who I am, what I want, my purpose is it fulfilling? And my passion. Now I speak about this all the time, and it's the Further your Lifestyle podcast for a reason because if you're not doing something that is furthering your life, that's where you're going to get stuck.

Speaker 1: 10:32

And this is where my mindset change came from. Is I always had the ideas about, you know, doing the complete opposite of what I was doing. But that's scary, because what if I fail, right. But when I changed the mindset and you realize, well, at the end of the day, when you go into work, into the workforce, like you leave high school or you leave university, you know nothing. You're literally starting from zero. You have some level of a resume you maybe have some You're literally starting from zero. You have some level of a resume, you maybe have some work experience and you're able to say this is who I am, this is what I can do, this is what I've done. Therefore, will you take me on a journey to build me into a career or take me as a job? You know, take me for your job. We start from zero. You do that and you do whatever you do. The reality is, let's say, you do that for seven years and you realize it's not what you want and you want to go try something else, but it's scary because you might not earn as much money. The only difference is that you likely have more overheads or more responsibilities or a bigger fear because of comfort.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Comfort, when we become comfortable. That's really what's slowing us down. That's our biggest problem is because we get cozy, we get comfortable, we see what we like and it makes our life easier and when you can get comfortable with always being uncomfortable. That's when we thrive. If you reflect and refer to, maybe some of the greats who didn't go to university didn't have an amazing upbringing as a child, maybe had to live off the streets or had to be street smart or had to learn how to hustle early or fight for themselves or defend for themselves. Because of whatever upbringing they had, these are the people that have amazing negotiating skills. They have ways of knowing how to survive. They're able to work through chaotic times. They're able to work through chaos. They're able to work through obstacles. They're able to work through challenges because they didn't have a choice other than to do that when they were a kid or when they were growing up. They had to figure it out. It's either you know that'll die Not necessarily die, but you get my point Whereas I think majority of us, we grow up comfortable, which is I'm not saying I'm just, you know, not happy to be comfortable, but we grow up in a protected, well-established, comfortable environment.

Speaker 1: 12:54

You know, people love us, people looking after us. We don't have to fend for ourselves, we don't have to go figure it out. Problems are solved for us and, as great as that is. It means we do lack the ability to go out on a limb, to reach out, take risk, embrace, challenge. We tend to hide in our shells, hide in our comfort and to crawl back. So I think, looking at all that now, I've kind of like gone through a whole big. Looking at all that now I've gone through a whole big. This is who I am.

Speaker 1: 13:25

Now that I'm going through the process of building something of my own and realizing that it does take a lot of work, I'm realizing that I have to change a lot of my own perspectives. Why am I so stuck to my money? Why am I not wanting to let it go? Why am I so materialistic with certain things and other things I don't care about? You know, building that self-awareness journey, I think really what I'm trying to say is, the earlier you can figure out who you are, what you're about, what you want, your purpose, what fulfills you, where you want to be going, who you are. Being self-aware, you know the type of person you are, what makesills you, where you want to be going, who you are being self-aware, the type of person you are, what makes you thrive, what makes you feel uncomfortable. How do you then manage that discomfort, the sooner and quicker you will be able to thrive as an individual. And that's still a big journey for myself. But to think where I am now, I'm More from an achievement perspective, from a milestone perspective.

Speaker 1: 14:26

I'm not talking about numbers or status quo or compared to what assets I have or value of money or anything like that. That's irrelevant. I think it comes down to the happiness point. If you're happy, then that's all that matters matters. There's people that are living in tiny homes on 30 acres of land and they're living their best life. They're happy. They don't have things holding them back. They don't have things holding them down. They're doing what they want to be doing. They're living the life they want to be living. Now some people get thrown into that life because that's all they can afford, but it is their way of living.

Speaker 1: 15:04

So my point is I think it's very important that we are open to change, open to learning from new experiences and having conversations with people. Just hearing what they've done, how they did it, why they did it. I guess it's taking their word against yours whether it's true or not. But we don't know it all. I don't know it all. I don't have to figure it all out? Clearly not.

Speaker 1: 15:28

I'm 32 years old, have a long way to go, but during the last you know 15 years, what I've experienced in terms of becoming myself, a better version of myself, figuring that out, that's my journey. It's not yours, but it helps me realize that not everything you think you know when you are 22, 25, even 30, that's not everything. We don't know. What we don't know, we have to be willing to continue to push the boulder up the hill and get it over so we can reveal of what's down there. Right, it's like looking over a fence and seeing is the grass greener over there or not? But a lot of the time you get over the fence and the grass isn't greener. But in this case, I think what we need to be willing to do is be willing to jump the fence, see what's over there, see, is there an opportunity? Is this going to help me grow? And that's why it's really important to understand where you want to be going, what drives you, what helps you tick, what's your purpose, what fulfills you, what makes you want to get up in the morning, because then, when you do jump the fence, you're able to say no, this isn't what I want, so you go to the next one. When you know what you want, you're able to work towards it.

Speaker 1: 16:41

When you don't know, you're kind of just trying lots of different things, and that's the catch-22. In order to find out what you like, you've got to try lots of different things. You have to go through that experience, you have to figure it out, and there's no quick way of doing that other than being curious, being willing to learn, read, consume in terms of information or reading books or learning from other people. Maybe it's taking a course or going to a conference and just putting yourself in a new situation or a new position where you're going to learn. Get yourself uncomfortable, because when we spread our wings, we can fly literally right. That's the whole point of it, right? Obviously, we're not going to go fly, but when we loosen the balance that we put on ourselves, when we get ourselves out of our boxes and start to see what else is out there, a whole new world is upon us. But we don't know that until we've given it a go. We don't know how it's going to work until you've given it a go, and if you enjoyed it, well then do more of it. Right? That's really what it is. Now I will say you know this is not easy, right? I get that. It is very frustrating when you're trying to figure things out, trying to make things happen, and you're not getting the progress that you want to see. But if you're passionate about it, if you're happy about it and if it's what you want, you've got to find a way to make it happen.

Speaker 1: 18:09

I always think when people start something, they take on an idea that is projected from someone else and they think that's what they want. They think it's going to get them the fulfillment that they're experiencing by watching someone else do something. But then they realize it's not so. Then they lose interest in it, they lose motivation, they get in a lull because all of a sudden they're not getting the same satisfaction or gratification that they were seeing from someone else getting that satisfaction and gratification. So they think what's wrong? So then they doubt themselves. But the reality is that was never your idea in the first place. So you need to make sure you're doing what you want to do Build your life, build your business, build your sports career, build your journey right. Whatever it is, there's always going to be people that are doing similar things. There's always going to be people doing things that aren't really relevant for you.

Speaker 1: 19:03

You focus on. You focus on your journey, focus on what you want and as you progress through that, you're able to start to identify yeah, I want more of this or I don't want a lot of that. And when you then start to weigh out, how long is this going to take me to get there? Yeah, it's hard to digest, but it's not really that bad because you're enjoying the journey. If you're working a nine to five, you're getting paid. That numbs it a little bit in terms of you feeling frustrated or angry or annoyed or not getting what you want or not being able to get out of a rat race, but you get the money and it's like, oh, it's not too bad. So you continue on and you continue and you continue and you continue, but you're not making any change, whereas when you're doing something on your own, you're having to make continuous changes. You're having to thrive, you're having to adjust, you're having to adapt, because you're literally trying to make something happen. The only thing you've got to do when you work for someone else is follow instructions.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Now, this is not a podcast about don't go work for someone else or don't do the nine to five or whatever. What I'm saying is I've now learned that when you do take control, when you do put things into your own hands and you're willing to give things a go, things will happen. But you have to be willing to take on the sacrifices, the consequences, the hard work and the things that come with that. That's really all I'm saying. And by changing that mindset and realizing that a lot of the things that I thought I needed to do are not really the things I needed to do, I was able to break free and be able to have a lot more freedom of my mind, a lot more freedom of my money and a lot more freedom of my life. When you do that, that's when you make a huge difference in your own life and that's how you will be able to hopefully further your lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 20:53

So if there's anything that I want you to take away from this is a couple of things. Number one is that normal question, cliche question that you hear all the time, but after giving you the context, maybe it will resonate with you in a different way. You know, if money wasn't an issue and you could wake up and do whatever you wanted to do, what would you do every day for the rest of your life? What would it look like? What does that look like Now? The more I think about it.

Speaker 1: 21:22

I've been thinking about this over the last couple of weeks actually. And you know, if I won $10 million tomorrow, what would I do? Would I stop working? Probably not. I probably wouldn't. I would probably invest it into building the business. I would invest it into creating the dream that I have. There would be some things that I would do to maybe take some of the load off and I can make this more of a hobby rather than a business to you know, make huge money out of. When I reflect on that, yeah, I'm building this business and yeah, I'm not making huge money, but I love it so much because I can see what I'm creating and I'm seeing what I'm creating as opportunities for other people and in the ecosystem space that I'm in. When you think about that environment, when you think about what you're able to create the opportunities for yourself, for other people the money's irrelevant, but the money is rewarding. Don't get me wrong. That's what I thought about.

Speaker 1: 22:21

If money was an issue, what would I do? I would probably continue to build the same thing. I might be able to slow down a little bit, I might be able to bring in more help, I might not have to do as many things myself because I have that bit more of a opportunity or leverage or unfair advantage, but I would probably continue to build out and make my dream just become quicker. And that's what I wanted to ask you Like, if money was an issue, what would you do every day for the rest of your life? Right, if you did not have to pursue the money? And if you can answer that question, I think then you've got it figured out right. You know what you want, you know what you're going to be working towards.

Speaker 1: 23:01

But if you don't know what you want, then you need to figure out how to change your perspective of what that looks like. How do you change your mind to get you to understand what it is you want? What do you need to do to make that happen? And it might mean you know spicing things up a bit. It might mean chatting to someone, it might mean, you know scratching a niche that you had five years ago about an idea, I don't know. But you need to figure that out, because if you can't answer that then it's very hard to be able to get you closer to where you want to be, and I think that's where it comes from. It comes down to our belief, because if we're stuck like this and for those that are listening, I've got a box, I've closed over my eyes and I'm looking in a narrow view If you're in a narrow view, you don't know where you're going it makes it very hard to be able to change your perspective because you think you know everything. I'm not saying that in a rude way. I'm saying it because you don't know any different. Therefore, you do. That's what you do. When we know something different, when we experience something different, when we see something different, when we understand something differently, we can think, huh, never looked at it from that perspective.

Speaker 1: 24:06

So my challenge to you is read some books, you know. Jump onto self-help and read some books that are curious to the things that you're trying to unlock. If it's about how you manage money, get into that, you know. If you're trying to work out how to be better with people, you know, look up books that are you know how to win friends and influence people right. Find the content, find the information that is going to help you. Question these things, challenge these things, because if you don't do self discovery, no one else is going to do it for you. Maybe you need to do some career coaching. Maybe you need to get some counseling, maybe you need to, you know, have someone help you understand something differently, right, and sometimes it means we might have to pay for those kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 24:48

I'm not here to sell you anything, I'm just, you know, I'm just saying that as a perspective because I did some. I know I did some coaching. A business coaching before helped me deal with some of my ideas around money and how do I level up and a lot of the stuff I had the answers for they were just helping me navigate to that position, and that's what I would challenge you is if you don't like what you're doing, then figure out how to change it. If you don't know how to change it, figure out what it is that you want. That will help you then change it. If you don't know what you want, you have to figure out what you want, right, that is really what you need to do.

Speaker 1: 25:27

So, anyway, we've kind of moved away from the main topic of what is the belief or opinion you held so strongly in the past that since changed your mind. And what prompted that change and it really is is, if you want something, if you want the lifestyle that you envision, dream, you're the one that has to change it. And to get to that you have to do a lot of heavy work on yourself and removing all the baggage and all the things that hold you back and all the things that you thought you knew. There's so many things I don't know. We don't know what we don't know, but when you do start to un-tap that, it unleashes huge opportunities of then taking things to another level, to another understanding and to a new world of opportunity.

Speaker 1: 26:09

I'm going to leave it there before. I just keep going around in circles. Great question, whoever sent it to me? Thank you so much. I'd love to hear your perspective. If you have a perspective on this, or some thoughts or some comments or maybe a question, let's continue the conversation. Yeah, get in touch, leave a comment down below. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it, subscribe, like all those great things on all the platforms, whether you're listening or watching, and we're back here next week doing it all again. Appreciate you, cheers.