Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I'm your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 224 today, and we're talking to this topic around the messy middle of progress. Now, this has probably been a common theme over the last probably six to eight weeks, over that kind of arc of content, even across my weekly videos on my business, talking about how I'm growing the business, what I'm doing in the business, the decisions I'm making in the business, but also in the Get Wide podcast as well. They all kind of overlap, and I do that on purpose, because I feel like there's a lot of misconception around how there's this separation between business and life and when really the parallels they collide, they overlap, and it's what you're applying in one area is going to be need to be applied the same way in a different area of your life, whether it's running, whether it's, you know, building a business, whether it's personal development, or whether it's just becoming a better version of yourself, or maybe you're just trying to further your lifestyle right Now. If you are new here, I appreciate you being here. If you enjoy this, please make sure you like subscribe. You can drop a comment down below as well, as we go through if you have any questions or you want to continue the conversation.

I'm kind of just going off the cuff today. I kind of just wanted to get into a bit of a conversation around the messy middle of progress. And you know, sometimes when you know I've experienced this is, you know, when patient feels like well patients, you're sitting around waiting and you just don't feel like the progress is happening and sometimes you start to doubt yourself. Sometimes you start to think, is this failure? Like, have I failed? And there's a whole bunch of different themes in this around you know when it's slow or when it's quiet and when we can't see the progress, like it's invisible. You know, we hear the things and people throw it around. I throw it around all the time saying such as you just got to trust the process. But what do we do when we don't see anything that's happening? So how do we validate that, like in terms of understanding that this is actually working, versus how do we understand, you know, when to jump off a sinking ship? So that's what we're talking about today.

If that sounds like something you're interested in, please get cozy, get comfortable and, of course, if you enjoy this episode, share it with someone else that you think needs to hear it. Let's roll the intro and let's get into it. All right? So I've put like six dot points down for myself just to kind of like go through them as a conversation with you. I've got a coffee here as well and I just kind of wanted to get into it and really bounce the ideas, rather than me telling you this is what to do, this is you know what I think you should do.

But kind of like even as if I'm getting asked the question myself how does it play out in my head? And the first thing, I really want to excuse you. I just excuse me. I just just went for a run and the cold air is is really getting me a bit croaky. So the first thing was what is the difference between nothing happening and slowed down foundations forming?

Now, this is something I have struggled with, geez, for the last five years and even now and it's look, it's going to be the topic for next week around, you know, are you happy versus satisfied? And I find myself that I am happy with a lot of things, and this is just an analogy of it. So like I find myself that I am happy with a lot of things, and this is just an analogy of it. So like I find myself that I'm happy with a lot of things but I'm still not satisfied. And sometimes what that means is like you've got everything going around, you going well, but it doesn't look like things are moving in the right direction, like it doesn't feel like it's getting better.

And I built this tool for my business which basically tracks where I've been in the same time of the year for the last five years. So it's comparing this July to last July, to the previous July, to the previous July to the previous July. And that helps me understand that as I've grown, obviously it's going to be really different, because when I first started I did not know what I know now. Therefore, it's going to be really small. Like you know, the bumps that I'm making, the dints that I'm making, the progress that I'm making, the revenue I'm making, the profit I'm making it's all going to be different. But as you go to the next level like year two gets a bit higher, year three, higher again, year four, higher again, year five we are smashing it. But in the moment you look at it and you think I'm not getting the results I want. The results I want are always more than what I'm getting, because I know that we're capable of achieving more because we've achieved this so far, and it can become a bit of a catch-22.

But my point here is is like sometimes, when you think nothing is happening, all you're doing is really really sowing the seeds and getting things ready for action and getting ready for things to move quickly and swiftly. Getting things ready for action and getting ready for things to move quickly and swiftly. A good example of this is when I moved into my warehouse and invested into the warehouse. I looked at it from the perspective of knowing that we're signing a lease here for three years. There's a high chance we'll be here for five years. So I know that I want to have the business in a certain position by the end of that. So, looking at it, it's like, well, if I know that and I know all the things that I want to be able to achieve, I want to be able to say yes to opportunities as easily as possible.

So you know, I invested in getting pallet racking. I invested in getting a walkie stacker, which is like a small walk, a forklift, and, um, I guess you could call it like a walk fork, anyway. And you know a lot of that is underutilized at this point in time. And some people said why have you spent so much money on this now when you don't even use it? And the reason why is because I know that there'll be a point in time where, if I have that, it puts me, you know, one month, two months ahead, instantly. Simply because if someone came to me and said hey, you know, can you take five pallets of stuff? And I would have to say I can't put them anyway, right. And then it means but you know, give me five weeks, or give me six weeks and I'll get some pallet rack and we'll get it all set up by that time. The deal's gone.

Now I have enough confidence and foresight to know that well, there will come a point in time where that will occur in the next five years. That will occur in the next five years and I need to be able to jump on that and I don't want to miss out on that deal. And it happened within. Happened within two weeks of moving, I'm not even kidding. Happened within two, three weeks, within. Moving into the warehouse, I had pallets starting to arrive and that was simply because I was able to say aren't working.

But if you're putting in the reps and building the foundations and getting the experience and getting the process right and putting in solidness that enables you to execute, to make decisions, to take action in the moment, then then you're winning right, and that's why a lot of time we don't see it till the end result. And it moves on to the second point, actually, which is a really good point. When we plant a seed, you don't dig it up the next day to check it right. We see the, you know, I guess, the fruits of the plant, you know after a long period of time. Or we don't see the oak tree for 15, 20 years, to the massive enormity that it becomes. So we have to look at it from that perspective. You're planting seeds at the moment, you're building something of a foundation and it's going to take time to get there.

Now I don't want to make this all about business. Business is the best analogy I can use, but it's the same for running, because that's what I've done personally, but it's the same as leveling up and furthering your own lifestyle and trying to build out the best version of yourself. If you want to further your lifestyle, you have to think about what is the seed you're planting today, that you're going to let grow and foster and be cultivated and watered and well-supported. I mean, I guess sometimes you do fertilize them, maybe sometimes you don't, but it's got to be well-groomed, right, and then it will start to grow, it will start to blossom, it will start to flourish and it will start to become bigger and better. And as you do more of it, you can't go down there and start digging and say, hey, you going all right down under there, it doesn't work.

So you have to look at it from that longevity standpoint. And that's why, when you start, things are crazy, things are hard. Things are tough because everything is new to you as you gain traction. Things are hard, things are tough because everything is new to you as you gain traction, when you can't see the progress, because you've, maybe you've planted the seed six months ago, nothing's happened, and you're thinking is the seed still there? Is it dead? Has it died? But maybe it takes one year for it to actually pop up.

And that's why the middle of the progress, of making progress, can sometimes get a little bit gnarly, because we start to doubt, we start to get concerned, we start to worry, we start to think what are other people thinking? I don't have results, I don't have anything to show, where's all my stuff? And we panic. And that's when people give up very easily. So my challenge to you is especially like this.

This applies really really well when it comes to weight loss as well, because at the start we don't really see much happening and then the last thing to go in weight loss is usually your belly fat. Right, that's the biggest part of it. You start to see it in your face, go around here in your chest. The belly takes forever. But there's a point in time where you're at the start, you're making progress, you know obviously you're feeling the pain, the suffering and you're not really seeing the results. But then all of a sudden, after six weeks, you start to notice things different. I think there's a saying where there's a period of time where you know you'll start to notice it, others will start to notice it, kind of thing Like so it takes X amount of time for you know you to notice it, it takes X amount of time for someone else to notice it and then la-da-da-da-da. So you've got to be willing to, you know, play it out. You've got to be willing to commit it out. You've got to be willing to actually show up consistently and see those results.

And this is where things get a little bit, a little bit problematic, right, because we live in such a highlight real society where society celebrates results and not the routes you plan. I've I've struggled with this. I've spoken about it openly here, I've spoken about it in my business vlogs as well, where I can get sometimes really caught up in the pressures of other people trying to backseat drive my business, saying that you shouldn't do this, it's not profitable or it's not good enough. And look, some of the things are true, it's not hugely profitable or it doesn't make sense for them. But when I look at it from a broader perspective, we have to look at things from if you're trying to plant a foundation, right, you don't just put three bricks down for a house, you're putting the 3000 bricks down for the house before you're moving it. Or you're putting in all the concrete slab before you start to build on top of it. You don't just put in, oh, let's just put sand and soil. You need to do the full works before you can reap the rewards of knowing it's going to last for the next 30, 40, 50 years. And I know that sounds like kind of like fluffy in terms of like oh yeah, yeah yeah, but that's the reality of it.

It applies to anything in life. Why do we go to learn education? Why do we go to university? Because we want to apply skills, we want to get experience right and that's a quick way to get some understanding, some knowledge to upskill before going out into the real world where we then have to go apply the experience. And, of course, then we learn new experience, which means we're able to go do something else and we can apply that. You know we've gone from education, then we've got to higher end education, which is tertiary, which is, you know, university. Then you apply it with your job. Next thing, you know you're able to start to build yourself into where you want to go in life, navigating to the direction you want to be. And we've applying all the wisdom, the knowledge, the understanding, the experience that you've taken over the years, that messy middle which feels like it's taken forever. But now things are just moving quickly. Things are happening because you were able to set roots.

Now, the challenge here is you've got to cut out the noise. That is the hardest thing to do cutting out the noise of other people trying to dictate and drive and tell you that you're not good enough or things aren't working out or because they're uncomfortable with it. You know they try to project that onto you. If you're comfortable and confident with what you want, right, yeah, you're going to have some doubts here and there, but don't let the doubt from other people be your doubt. Let the doubt that you have be a challenge for you to think, no, no, let's figure it out. So how do we measure belief when evidence is missing? This is a tough one, right, and it still comes back to what I kind of just said.

If you know what you want and I think one of the biggest questions is like yeah, but I don't know what I want, chris and it's like, well, if you don't know what you want, you need to figure that out. And I know it gets told by so many different people, so many different people, like all the. You know just the cliche of these big YouTubers, or cliche of celebrities, or cliche of you know business. You know top business leaders as well. Figure out what it is what you want. You know, if you're, if you're on a path of someone else's dream and purpose and plan and you're just happy to ride along, look, that's fine, that's okay.

But you have to understand what it is that you want. Do you want that? Are you happy to do that? Maybe you just want to be able to have a nice job where you can just do that nine to five which it's very hard to just get, a job which is nine to five, but you're just happy to go do your thing and then just come home and you know, play with your bonsai or something, and that is fine, right, hundreds, if not thousands, of people are doing that. So I'm not here to tell you have to be leveling up, you have to be doing these things.

But if you are wanting to see progress and you're stuck in this middle area of you're not really seeing things happening, but you're being told to trust the process, how do we validate that? How do we understand? Is it actually working? So you have to be then zooming out, and that's why, for me, it's like we're six months. The main time filming this is July 20th, so the time this comes out, it's probably in August. So we're in the middle of the year.

We've passed the middle of the year and you can look back and think where were you either a year ago or six months ago? And then you can start to think okay, what was I doing? What was I working towards? What did I want to achieve? Was I saving for something? Was I training for something? Was I working on something? Was I studying something? All these different things. So you need to start to think about well, okay, based on this, what is it that I'm has changed? What have I achieved? What has been working, what hasn't been working? And when you see the difference, you can start to then validate that, okay, those are things that maybe you didn't tangibly know at the moment, but when you zoom out, you think this is very, very, very obvious. Hence the evidence.

So that would be my point on that, and it kind of then confirms that progress. You know, progress isn't always measurable in the real time moment, but it doesn't mean that it's not there, right, sometimes the things we do today are going to enable us to be somewhere in three months time and we get the result in three months time, literally like planting a seed today. It's going to get you something down the road. So with that, with that in mind, look, keeping it short and sweet, there is a bit of a challenge I want to leave you all with. And people ask me and I spoke about this in my Get Wide podcast a couple of weeks back it's like how do you continuously make progress? How do you always have growth? And growth is subjective, my growth versus your growth.

What you want to achieve, what I want to achieve, it's personalized, right, it's individual. But can you be loyal to a path, even when you're not getting the applause? That's my challenge to you. It's like, if you're working towards something right, are you happy to proceed and be loyal to that path, dedicated, day in, day out, putting in the reps, even when there's no one here cheering for you? Maybe, look, maybe you'll have a loved one cheering for you, maybe it's you. But you have to be willing. You have to be willing to be your own. You know, cheerleader, you have to be willing to be the one that you're proving wrong. You have to be the one that you're proving right. You have to be the one that is going to back yourself right. Are you willing to do that If you are willing to do that, then the progress will come through.

And what progress looks like usually means you start. It gets annoying, frustrating. You figure out how to do it. You get better, becomes easier. Now you want more. You start again, but just at a new level. It gets annoying, gets frustrating. You figure out the friction points. Okay, this is good, this is easy. Now we know what to do. Now we want to move to the next thing.

So all the time, you're constantly going to be looking at the next best thing, and it's not about the best thing in terms of being better than other people, it's the next best version of yourself. That's all it is. And whether it's pride to make you feel good about yourself because you want to be confident and you know you're capable, or don't think you're capable enough, it's not about trying to seek validation from other people. It's about allowing yourself to be the best version of yourself by giving yourself the permission to go out there and kick butt right. That's all it is. So that's my challenge for you.

If you are feeling this way, let me know in the comments down below. More than happy to continue the conversation, and next week we're going to be back here and we're going to be chatting about. As I said earlier, we're going to be chatting about happy but not satisfied, and there's a great bunch of different things here that we can talk about. I have spoken about this before, but it's a topic that's dear to my heart. At the moment it's on my mind and I want to continue that conversation. So make sure you're back here next week 9am Sunday, and we'll get through that one as well. Appreciate you.