Welcome And The Five-Year Question

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 270 today, and last week we we spoke about how building repetition and being repetitive can help us have long-term success. And the week before that, I think we we spoke about a mid-year check-in. I kind of wanted to combine the two episodes and kind of think about well, let's ask the question to ourselves. Let's be really raw and be honest with ourselves of five years ago, what did you think today would look like in terms of where you wanted to be? And it's a it's a tough conversation to have with ourselves. And I think it's a really important one. Because if you look back five years ago, who did you think you'd be today? What did you think you'd be doing in this current time? What do you think you would have achieved? What goals did you imagine that you would have conquered by now? And for perhaps more importantly, or how close or how many or how sorry, how close or how far away are you actually to where you wanted to be? Because I think it's really important that we we will do this, right? Because it gives us a reality check. It gives us a really good pulse check and sense of understanding of say, okay, well, maybe we're not where we thought we are, but are we actually happy where we are? Or have we gone a completely different direction and why? And is that okay? And are we okay about that? Because sometimes we can lose vision of where we want to be because we get sidetracked or things change in our lives, and and that's okay. But we have all these ideas, we imagine progress, we imagine success, we imagine milestones. Sometimes it's all just a nice little idea. But life has a funny way of giving us lessons and that we've never planned for and taking us in a new direction. So that's what I want to talk about today. Well, I'll do a little bit more context setting after we roll the intro. But if this sounds like something that you're interested in, please stick around, hit the like button, hit subscribe if you want more of these kind of episodes. You can share this with someone as well. But let's just dive in.

Two Ways We Look Back

So I think we often look back in one or two ways over life, right? Wow, I've come a long way. That was great. Look how far I would come. I never imagined being here. And then there's the other one is I thought I would have been further ahead. Or we compare ourselves to others and think that we should have been further ahead or further than them. I think I think both perspectives miss the real question that we should be asking ourselves of what has the last five years actually taught us, or what has the past actually taught us, or in the time that we're thinking about, what have we actually learned? And I because hindsight isn't necessarily valuable on its own. Great. Hindsight's great in the sense that, okay, yeah, we shouldn't have done that, but we can't change that now. But we can change the future in terms of what we're going to progress towards, but it's not going to be able to recreate what's already happened, right? It's only it only becomes valuable when it changes how you move forward. Basically, that's that's the way it is, right? So there's a couple of points I kind of wanted to go through today, and I've written some notes

Timeframes And Building Consistent Habits

here on the side. I think it's five areas of conversation. And the first one is we constantly overestimate what we can do in a year. And we also underestimate what we can do in five. But there's actually, I can't remember who it was. I think it's Grant Kendo. Kidone, Kondone, whatever his name is. He does the book about 10x. We a lot of the time, and even Bill Gates talks about this, where a lot of the time we and even Alex Homozy, we we set crazy goals within one year. Yet if you set the same goal within 10 years, we could probably actually even do more. And I think that's because we we get ourselves too fixated on seeing what the world can create through viral moments, through overnight success, which we spoke about last week. And but that's why it's really important that we build up some foundational routines, consistency, repetitiveness, because that's how we get the results. Now, but if you think about it, five years ago, some habits that we do did not exist. Some friendships that we had do no longer exist. And we've got new friendships, maybe. Some of the opportunities weren't visible or viable at the time. And some struggles we had that we have now may not have even occurred, or vice versa, right? So, I mean, it's a it's a it's a it's a point in time, it's a season in time. So regardless, life will continuously unfold and there will always be other things and other circumstances. So progress doesn't feel dramatic while you're living it, right? But you look back and you think, wow, or crap. That's really the two, the two outcomes that's gonna be. So I think we need to be we need to be kind to ourselves and just remember we we have an opportunity from hindsight to actually move forward in a direction that is going to make us happy in another five

Be Kind To Your Past Self

years. Point number two to this is your young self didn't know what they didn't know. We don't know what we don't know. All right, it's when I first started my business, there was a lot of things I didn't know. A lot of things came natural to me, but there was still a lot of things that I didn't know. Even when I first started running, and I've spoken about this before. I literally asked the question, I was like, oh, can I run two, five kilometers in one day? Of course again. People are running 10k, people are running 40 kilometers in a day. I've I mean I've done ultra marathons in a day, but back then I don't know what I don't know. So that version of me back then, which is probably now closer to 10, 12 years ago, lacked today's experience, lacked all the mistakes I had made and the knowledge I had gained, right? And it hadn't learned today's lessons that I have. So we shouldn't judge our past self. We shouldn't even judge other people that are on a start of a journey compared to us as well, because they do have an incomplete picture, right? They made plans with information they had, or you made plans with the information you had at the time, or you did, or you took action, or you were curious about the information that you had. So you got to be kind to yourself again. Point number three is time doesn't create wisdom, reflection does, right? When we reflect on what has worked, what hasn't worked, what went well, what didn't go well, that's when we can actually really take tangible outcome actions, right? So what worked, what didn't, what patterns kept repeating? Were they good patterns? Were they bad patterns? And what assumptions turned out to be wrong, and what assumptions turned out to be right. Experience is expensive. It's a cost of having to sometimes go a different direction for a period and then come back, or go a completely different way because we realize this is the better way and not go the direction we thought was going to be the best way. The point is we don't want to waste the lesson. It costs time. So if you've spent five years and you're not where you want to be, do not waste that time. Use it as a lesson to now pivot or step up to that next thing.

Reflection Beats Time And Regret

Now, a little controversial topic. Regret can be useful if it creates the momentum and the motivation for you to move forward. Maybe you're behind on where you thought you would be. Maybe you've drifted. Maybe you've spent too long waiting. Okay, I've been there, I get it. So the value of hindsight isn't to punish yourself, obviously, it's to give yourself that clearer path forward. If you do not tag action, that's on you. That is 100% on you. And that's why I mean originally I left my nine to five to pursue my own business to start this podcast, was because I knew if I don't do this when I get to 40, I'm going to regret it. And because I'm still young, I've still got the ability. If things didn't work out, I can go get another job. And that's why I really, really also get very, very laugh about when other people tell me, why would you do that? Why would you ruin such a good opportunity of a job and all these different things? And it's because it's a different perspective, it's a different want and need and a different motivation and a different lifestyle that I'm looking for. And why that offends or makes other people uncomfortable surprises me. Maybe it's because they would never do it. And that's okay. It's not for everyone. And I don't have the same lifestyle as them. They don't have the same lifestyle as me. Just the way I try to build my business and live my life the way that suits me because it's my lifestyle. And I try to further it the best possible way, which is why I have the podcast to help others. Is there a is there a different way you can live your life? Is there a better way you can live your life? I'm not saying yours is wrong. I'm just giving people the opportunity to learn, to have understanding, to maybe learn from my lessons or maybe apply some of the perspectives that I have. Just like people share their wisdom to me, I learn from their lessons, and I've been able to grow and use that to my advantage. I think I think that makes complete sense,

Future Self Prompts And Next Steps

right? And point number five is imagine talking to your future self. So think five years from now, who you're talking to, who is that person, what will that version of you wish you had started today? If you want to be somewhere when it's 2030, we're in 2026 at the moment, four years away, what is that going to look like? What do you need to be doing? How are you going to get there? I'm already thinking about that. I think about that for my business all the time, that longer-term vision, the things that need to happen. I've been thinking about that since year two, year three, of where that want where I want that to be. And what risks will they have wished you had taken? There's been some tough risks that I took in the last 24, 36 months. And geez, they were scary. But they have built such a resilience and given me such understanding and such lessons that I can be a little bit more comfortable, a bit more confident when I take more risks, when I do other things, when I take new actions, when I plan a new strategy, it gives me that confidence. And five years from now, that person, me, is gonna want me to have to have done that because we're gonna be at a new point where we're gonna be going for a bigger thing and trying to try something else, right? That's that's the reality of growth, right? If you're not getting uncomfortable, you're not growing, it's that simple. What conversation does that person wish you would have had or be having? What habit do you think they would have wanted you to be doing? A big one for me is in five years from now, I don't want to be the health that I'm in at the moment. I want to be healthier. So what do I need to do to get that consistency for the next five years? So a couple of questions we'll we'll quickly ask ourselves before we finish up. Number one is five years ago, what did you expect life to look like today? We had that at the top, you may not have answered it. Answer it now. What surprised you the most? What lesson keeps repeating itself? What would you make sorry, what would make the next five years meaningful? And the last question I'll ask you is what action can you take now that your future self will thank you for?

Final Questions And Closing

Look, I I five years ago, sure, I knew I wanted to have a podcast. I didn't know where it was wanted to be, where where it was going to be. I probably wanted it to be further along, but I'm actually happy where it is. At the same time, there's a lot of other things which have absolutely blown me out of the water in terms of sure, my business. I I knew I wanted to have my business, I knew I wanted to have a team, I wanted to have my own business, I didn't know what it was going to look like. And here we are. And for me, that's it, it's crazy. But one thing remains true, right? Time is going to repass, is going to pass regardless, whether you're happy with the result or you're not. So the question is whether you're going to use the lessons, the information, the experience, what you know now from the last five years to really shape up and make your next five years the best possible. And we don't have to do this at a five-year scale. You can do it at a six-month scale, a one-year scale. We talked about this in our mid-year reflection for uh for 2026. We've spoken about this in last week's episode about being repetitive. This is how we bring it all together. Really appreciate you being here. If you want to leave any comments or continue the conversation, jump down below. Otherwise, I'll see you next week and we'll do it all again. Ciao.