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i tested positive for the coronavirus and that is why you didn't hear from me last week
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i said i was going to do this podcast every single monday we got off to a bit of a rocky start because during last week's podcast i
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actually had the virus and i didn't know and it turns out my pa had the virus my cameraman who's over
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there also had the virus my whole team around me tested positive for the virus at the same time and none of us knew
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and in terms of the experience that i had with the virus i had one or two tricky days there was
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one day in particular last week where i had mild flu symptoms and then i started to get this really
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bizarre muscular pain in my back and i remember it being three or four a.m in the morning and i'm lying in bed
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thinking how do i stop this pain in my back and i ordered um ibuprofen and i think like painkillers on
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delivery which were delivered to my door at 4am and that night i remember pulling my pillows off my bed and sleeping on the
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floor of my bedroom to try and straighten out my back weird symptoms to get i know um but that's the virus
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the symptoms are so unpredictable and crazy my assistant lost her taste and smell which is quite a popular one
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jack had a bunch of cold symptoms and things like that as well but thankfully we all recovered and that
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isn't always the case and a lot of people especially people that are a little bit more vulnerable and have pre-existing conditions aren't always
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that lucky but it made me reflect it made me reflect on the craziness of the world right now isn't it nuts isn't it absolutely bonkers what's happened over these last seven or eight
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months all of the lockdowns all of the restrictions the travel restrictions the the redundancies the the battles the
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political battles it's absolutely crazy it's been the most crazy seven months of my life without
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exception and hard times as much as they suck in the moment they teach us important lessons and there's some lessons which i've learned more starkly than others which i
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wanted to talk about today the things that i've been writing about here in my diary and i'm going to start
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there this week i'm going to share one of the key lessons that i've learnt with you so without further ado i'm stephen
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butler and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody is listening but if you are then please keep this to
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yourself okay so the first thing in my diary this week is just a lesson that i've learned because of this pandemic and because of all the
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restrictions and the lockdowns i've just written in my diary learn how to contrast in the right
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direction let me explain what i mean you know i had this moment this week where i started really thinking about
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all of the things that i miss and to be honest i keep slipping back into these thoughts you know in the uk and in the us at the
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moment what we're seeing is the government start to talk about further restrictions and returning to the lockdowns that we had
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in march and every time i hear these stories and i go on twitter and i see the headlines i start to reminisce
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over my old life you know and i miss going to the theater i miss how fun my weekends with my friends used to be i miss you know as a big manchester united fan i miss going to old trafford and watching my team play
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i miss new york city which is where i lived before all of this craziness happened and
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before they shut the borders and stopped me getting back in i miss speaking on stage i used to
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travel around the world speaking to thousands of people in every corner of the globe i miss being in the office
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with hundreds of our team members building the business together i miss my old life but i'm sure i'm sure that
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many of you listening to this have reminisced over your old life and the things that you miss in the last few weeks and months pretty
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you know unavoidably and typically when we do this in a more subconscious way without really thinking about it we arrive at a place of sadness a place of
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self-pity a place of grief at least i know i did you know and i almost honestly this is kind of embarrassing to admit you'll understand why i think this is embarrassing now that i say it i almost started feeling sorry for
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myself and this for the love of god is why you have to interrogate your own thinking and let me just interrogate exactly what
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i've just said to you about all of the things i miss and let me try and reframe all of those things through another perspective
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when this global pandemic happened i was a 27 year old guy who was able to go to the theater go to
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old trafford and watch my favorite team play whenever i wanted to i lived in a beautiful apartment in new york city
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eating at the best restaurants in the world traveling around the world in business class getting paid to speak to thousands of people on stage whilst running a
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global business that was full of my friends the thing that took me from that is a
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global pandemic which has killed over a million people and it's devastated people's livelihoods it
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stripped them of their generational family businesses and it's plunged them into desperation
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right now many people can't even pay the bills feed their kids many people can't even
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bear the thought of their future meanwhile all of my family are healthy i have work
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i have freedom i can feed myself right now there are more people than ever praying for the family praying for
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the health praying for the opportunities and praying for the life that i have right now and that you have
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right now and then and when you start to think about it like that it changes things and if you think about it like that you'll probably arrive at the conclusion that 2020
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shouldn't make you feel sorry for yourself it should make you feel so unbelievably grateful
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and this is the power of contrast when you contrast your life in the wrong direction you can make yourself
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miserable like i did you know i was on the verge of wallowing in self-pity because i couldn't go to
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the theater anymore because i couldn't go to old trafford and watch my because i didn't get on business class
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flights and get to fly to every corner of the world even [ __ ] privileged [ __ ] like me can make the mistake
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right so i can't imagine how easy it is to make this mistake for everybody else when you contrast your life
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up as i was doing to the life you had back in march to someone more fortunate than you to
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someone that's prettier than you on instagram or to someone that looks more successful than you from the outside you'll quickly
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arrive at a place of self-pity and ungratefulness which is the quickest way to unhappiness but if you contrast your life down to
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the billions and billions of people that would do anything to be in your shoes that would do anything to have the health of their sick parents back
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to have a warm home to have a fridge full of food to have a secure job then you'll arrive at gratitude and
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honestly gratitude in my life has been one of the best ways i've ever known to be happy the world we see
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and how we see it is a direct result of contrast and the contrast games that you play every day if you
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stroll through the corridor of a hospital and you peer into the the wards and you peer in and look at the different patients
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what you'll see is people sick and suffering and in some cases unfortunately dying and suddenly because of that contrast
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you'll feel so grateful for your good health and we i do this all the time you know i had this problem a couple years ago with one of my ears where i
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woke up one day and there was this faint ringing sound in my right ear and at first i thought it was nothing i thought
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it would pass but after two days my ear was still ringing i go on google i google it
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comes up as something called tinnitus or tinnitus right and it and i'm reading through these forums of people saying
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that they've had it for their entire lives it came out of nowhere and it ruined their lives
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it stopped them from sleeping it made them depressed it stopped them from focusing it fundamentally changed their lives and
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after 10 days of my ear just ringing non-stop faintly i came to terms with the fact
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that i was gonna have this for the rest of my life and i couldn't stop thinking about it because when your ears always ringing
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it's hard to ignore right and i couldn't sleep properly and i started to worry and in that moment after two weeks of one of my ears ringing i can't tell you how much i
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longed and wished for my normal hearing back for just normal ears for that ringing to
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cease and it made me feel so ungrateful that it took an element where my ear would just ring constantly for me to suddenly feel grateful for my eyesight my ears the fact that i can
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walk that i have ten fingers that i can think and that's the way that contrasts work you know the same applies for the
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technology in our lives those old nokia brick phones were the best thing ever in a world
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that didn't have the iphone in it and your life right now in the midst of the pandemic in what
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month are we in october is such an amazing privileged life in a world where you can't remember your old one the one you had back in march this year taught me that the grass will
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always look greener on the other side until you start watering the side that you're on right now and that's really all you can
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do contrasting up is just such a deadly sin that we all need to avoid especially in moments like this
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we all have to be aware conscious and mindful of how we're contrasting because the world is a crazy place and there's
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no guarantee that it's not going to get crazier right and if you continue to contrast up you'll contrast
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yourself into depression and despair and misery and self-pity like i nearly did like i nearly did when
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i started reflecting on my old life and telling myself all of all of the things that i missed not the things that i have
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having control of your contrast can fundamentally change the way you see the world and if it can change the way you
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see the world it can change how you feel and if it can change how you feel then it can change your life let's move on
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i have a secret to tell you and this is the second point in my diary this week it's a secret that i only found out
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and started to deeply understand recently when i say recently i mean the last 24 months it's a secret that i
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really started to understand honestly being completely honest with you when i got rich and when i got
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rich friends and those rich friends pulled back a certain curtain and allowed me to see
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behind it i'd always heard about this i'd always heard that there's another curtain i heard joe rogan did a
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a podcast with um kevin hart and on the podcast kevin hart talks about meeting jeff bezos and
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realizing that there's this other level there's this other curtain which some people have access to
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and the more wealthy that i got and the more you know wealthy people that started to to surround me i started to understand
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what kevin hart meant and i started to understand what that secret is here is the secret
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access to information and information itself that is the real privilege in this world that's the thing if your rich parent gives you money
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that's like them giving you a fish right but if they pull you into the family business and show you how it works
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they're giving you a fishing rod money is efficient life and information is a fishing rod and only one of those things
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will feed you for a lifetime and when you get to the level that i'm at now and you have access to a new level of information you're
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associating with a different level of person you realize how much you didn't know before and you didn't know
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because you don't know what you don't know it they are unknown unknowns and so back then i was kind of naive i
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just thought i knew everything and where i'm at now i started to wonder why no one told me this stuff the stuff i know now about wealth and finance and about how these systems work
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and you start to realize why the rich get richer and why the poor stay poor information and access to
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information obviously there's a ton of systemic issues which are controlling things but for me
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information and access to information is the single biggest one when i made my first million i started
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studying wealth right and i started studying investing in finance and i started to get really obsessed with how
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i could turn the money i had into a lot more money i started speaking to more millionaires
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and billionaires i started spending more time with billionaires and i got to see what i refer to to my close friends as
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money games the games that they play and how they double triple and quadruple their money just by having certain information and
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this is information that most of us don't have we aren't given we aren't let in we aren't allowed to see behind the curtain
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and these are games that i never knew when i was broke games they didn't teach you or me in school games that really rich
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people have no incentive to teach you because they're too busy playing them the people that sell money and those finance courses on
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instagram they aren't rich right they're selling new courses on instagram if they knew a better way to make money they wouldn't be
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spending their time selling you courses on instagram but there's another level there's another level of information
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which is what i think kevin hart was referring to when he spoke about being able to peer in behind the curtain and you know i'm gonna really
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disappoint you here after what was probably one of the biggest build ups that i've ever done on this podcast because i don't have enough
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time in the hour or so that we have on this podcast to teach you everything that i've come to learn
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and to be honest even if i did i don't think that's the most valuable thing that i could give you in
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this hour that we have together today just like money is a fish right me telling you today's information is also
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a bit of a fish because things change quite quickly in the world and even if i could tell you everything i knew now
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about money games it would at some point expire it would very quickly change i think the
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most valuable important fishing rod that i could give you in this hour is in fact a change of mindset
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i think if i can get you to realize that your monetary future value and how rich you'll be in
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your life is perhaps somewhat equal to the value of the information you have in your brain then maybe maybe just maybe you'll start
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to value information and learning and the pursuit of knowledge even more and in the world we live in we
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all have access to the to the same information pretty much but most of us still don't understand
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the true value of it one of the greatest privileges i think i could ever give to my future kids
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is to teach them the value of learning gaining experience acquiring information and
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self-education which is something we can all do now because we all have google right we all have the internet we all have social media we will have youtube
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you know you're doing it right now some of you that are watching this online i think we tend to over value short-term financial
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incentives and undervalue learning opportunities which will give us that long-term value advantage
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and all of the young people and even some of the slightly old people that i get a chance to mentor
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this is one of the key lessons i try and teach them is to be able to spot short-term value from long-term value
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you know and i'm going to go off peace just a little bit here and i'm going to tell you a bit of a personal story um that happened to me actually quite
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recently uh and this is the you know this podcast is the home of the truth so make sure you do keep this to yourself i
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had a a young person in their early 20s asked to come and work with me and when i say work with me
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i don't mean you know in the same building as me i mean with me and because of the lockdowns and the way the world is
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all of my sort of real close team are literally working with me in my home or in you know in a small um co-working
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space and this was a in my opinion a fairly unique opportunity right because we're gonna be
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sat together pretty much every day and they were so persistent that eventually i ended up offering them
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a job and i offered them a job on the same salary the same wage that they're earning right now in their current role
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and i offered them a guaranteed pay rise in 60 days time and they effectively turned the offer down because they wanted a little bit more money now and whatever i say from this point
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onwards is going to sound petty and biased and bitter i have no other way of saying it i'm just gonna be
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honest with you honestly from what i know about their situation and from what i know about where they
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wanted to go in their career and as impartially as i could possibly be that was a [ __ ] stupid decision just
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just purely based on the fact that if you sit next to me or someone that's fortunate enough to have the access to the
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level of information that i have access to someone that is willing to give you that information and information that's probably going to
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help you fulfill the goals that you have [ __ ] a 2k pay rise that information can
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quite literally make you a millionaire too and i've seen it make people millionaires you know much of the reason
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why i'm sat here as a millionaire is because i got to sit next to people who had gone on the journey that i
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wanted to go on and that's what i mean we tend to overvalue the short-term financial
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incentives and undervalue the learning opportunities which will give us long-term value knowing how to make spot
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the difference and knowing which is which will change your life and sometimes you have to play a long game you have to delay that
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gratification you have to hold off on that 2k pay rise because the situation you're in is giving you real long-term value your long-term
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future will be better if you make long-term decisions or your life will be slightly better in the
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short term if you make short-term decisions but then your long-term future is compromised and that's what delaying gratification is you have to learn to do
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that in your careers too i'm gonna close off this point by telling you the easiest simplest change that i've made in my
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life to radically radically increase the amount of information and the amount of good quality information that i'm
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exposed to one small change but before i tell you we're going to play a little game just imagine for a second that you could
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pick up an imaginary phone in front of you and you could just listen in to the world's smartest minds
00:17:23
the world's smartest minds in in fitness in business in finance spirituality and philosophy just imagine
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imagine if you could be a fly on the wall as they discuss ideas as they seek to understand the
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world and as they talk about what they know and as they play their money games and enrich themselves imagine how transformative
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that would be imagine how much that information would change your life it would change your health your happiness and probably your wealth
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and imagine if all of that that access to information was free it is free that's twitter that's social media that's youtube you can literally watch
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and listen to the smartest people in the world think discuss and ideate so that's big the question you have to be honest
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why the [ __ ] do you still follow jenny from 10 years ago who you do not give a f about as she publicly complains to some
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customer service rep on twitter about her t-mobile data plan being expensive and slow or
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kylie jenner as she publicly advertises the results of her plastic surgery and demolishes your self-esteem in the process all that
00:18:23
clown on facebook that tries to convince you that 5g internet the coronavirus and bill gates were all
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part of some illuminati conspiracy theory why are you choosing that information why are you allowing
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junk to seep into your mental diet where is that information going to take you information is the privilege and you have to be the gatekeeper and the unapologetic defender of the
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information that you consume i've said this before and in fact it's proven to be so important in my life
00:18:52
that i'm gonna keep saying it until i feel like you're listening to me who you follow online especially if you're
00:18:58
someone that spends hours of day on the internet and social media like i do is the single biggest influence on your life for the love of
00:19:06
god follow better and unfollow faster my trick which i'm going to give to you is i basically mute everyone 90 of the people on my instagram are muted probably near 95
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percent i just don't see their stuff i don't see their stories i don't see their posts because usually it's actually not that helpful to me
00:19:22
50 of the people on my twitter are muted and i'm muting people because just like you there are real world
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consequences of you know unfollowing friends and people and family and things like that so i just mute them
00:19:34
it's a nice middle ground where they don't know and they don't need to know right and if i start talking [ __ ] online i
00:19:40
give you permission to unfollow me to please subscribe to this podcast but i give you permission to unfollow me too
00:19:47
and this has changed my life honestly it's the simplest thing the simplest decision that has had the single biggest impact
00:19:53
on my life i'm definitely smarter happier and more professionally capable because of it
00:20:00
so if there is a small thing that you can do now to really change the most important influence on your life it's to
00:20:06
go through your social media timelines and every time you see someone who isn't contributing
00:20:11
towards the values or the information that you want to consume boom mew but and here comes a very
00:20:18
important caveat you have to be careful not to unfollow or mute people just because they disagree with your opinion
00:20:24
a few years ago if i saw someone in my timeline that overtly supported like a different political party
00:20:30
or had a completely opposing opinion to mine all just like strongly disagreed with issues that i really care about
00:20:36
i would just unfollow them boom bye felicia and i think i did that because i didn't want to feel the frustration that
00:20:41
i felt when i logged in and saw their posts and tweets and also i didn't want to keep biting and arguing
00:20:47
and debating with them online but when you think about that decision logically it's a pretty terrible
00:20:53
decision all i'm doing by doing that is narrowing my world view and i'm building reinforcing this echo
00:20:59
chamber around me which is full of people who believe everything i already believe
00:21:05
and the fundamental truth that we all have to have the intellectual strength to believe
00:21:10
is that often there really is no right or wrong everything is really just a bunch of perspectives that's what the world is
00:21:17
full of very very few things are a case of right or wrong we'll probably all agree that the sky is blue
00:21:23
but as it relates to the way the world should be run our political opinions how people should be treated there's typically quite a lot of
00:21:28
variants and those perspectives that perfectly agree with yours are actually the least valuable they're not going to challenge you or broaden your perspective or teach you anything
00:21:40
only the perspectives that differ from yours can do that whether they differ because they're you know a little bit more developed on your
00:21:46
opinions or because they disagree but it's not easy and i'd be lying to you if i pretend
00:21:51
that it was i've genuinely and i this is a weekly battle i've genuinely struggled to keep people on my social media timelines within my
00:21:58
social media bubble that say things i really disagree with and that support ideas that i despise
00:22:04
but i also think if i'm being completely honest with myself i'm better off because of it listen i'm
00:22:10
not i'm not going to let ryan on facebook tell me that 5g internet caused coronavirus but i am going to fill my social bubble
00:22:17
and my circle online with people who honestly disagree people who can respectfully
00:22:22
explain why they disagree and people who view the world differently to me you know i i hope this is the last time that i make this point on this podcast but it just keeps coming
00:22:33
to the front of my mind so if you've not cleansed your social media following please do it now i really really hope
00:22:39
this is the last time i feel like if i can convince you to do this now today this week
00:22:45
it will be for some of you the greatest thing i was ever able to do for you the greatest
00:22:50
gift i can give you for listening to this podcast also you know turn all the unifications
00:22:55
off all of them but we'll save that topic for another time okay so the third point in my diary is about changing the shape of your brain you can change the shape of your brain
00:23:07
what a load of nonsense over the over the last couple of years i've heard a lot of people people that i respect a
00:23:12
lot including tom bill you who came on this podcast tell me that you can quite literally change the
00:23:18
shape of your brain and at first i'll be honest i thought this was potentially some you know some of that self-development
00:23:24
fluff and nonsense that we read a lot about you know the hocus pocus nonsense [ __ ] um and i
00:23:30
thought to myself how could you possibly change the shape and composition of your brain without having some type of evasive
00:23:37
surgery but i hold my hands up it turns out i was wrong and i wasn't just a little bit wrong i was really really
00:23:42
really really wrong over the last few months as i've gone on the journey of writing my book which is coming out called happy sexy millionaire
00:23:48
the unexpected truth about fulfillment love and success which you can get right now on amazon i started to develop a bit of an
00:23:56
obsession with neuroscience and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go do too deep into the science because you don't necessarily
00:24:01
need to know that stuff but i'm to tell you about some of the things that i learned on that journey and particularly one thing that changed
00:24:08
my life and here it is our brains are malleable just like play-doh and our experiences
00:24:15
determine their shape this process is almost best compared to physical exercise where you know 30 reps today isn't going to
00:24:22
make you super muscular and big right but 30 reps every day for a year will and the same is true for your brain the
00:24:28
science says that whatever you focus your mind upon be anger or self-doubt or fear your brain will eventually
00:24:34
literally change in shape and i sound like i'm talking nonsense i can hear myself saying this it sounds like
00:24:39
some hocus-pocus magic but i promise you this is the truth and listen i'm if you know me you know
00:24:44
i'm just as immune to self-development nonsense and fluff as you are so i only share things with you that i think are
00:24:49
fundamentally true and that's supported by some kind of evidence let me give you an example if you're a compulsive
00:24:55
warrior the science shows that your brain will quite literally change to become a finely tuned anxiety and
00:25:01
worry machine you'll get your brain will become tuned for worry and i've looked through the research i've looked at before and
00:25:08
after pictures of brain scans of people who've overcome worry and addiction and negative thinking about themselves and other more
00:25:14
serious psychological conditions and honestly blew my socks off i've always believed that we are you know we are what we think
00:25:20
but the science shows us that we quite literally from a neurological perspective become what we think you know i read
00:25:26
this great piece online by this neurological expert called brian penny and he has this lab
00:25:31
where they've worked on being able to predict the age of your brain just by looking at it on brain scans
00:25:36
and your brain age is associated with increased mortality risk cognitive decline
00:25:41
increased risk of dementia and overall general poorer physical functioning they can
00:25:47
literally see how a life change that you make a decision you make in your life will change the shape of your brain over a
00:25:54
number of years they can see how a person that gives up x y or zed then has a completely different brain
00:26:00
just a few years later just like how if you stopped going to the gym or you started going to the gym you'd have a completely different body a
00:26:07
few years later and they've identified a number of methods just simple everyday choices and cognitive
00:26:13
tools that science suggests can positively change the shape of your brain i'm just going to tell you about
00:26:18
one of them today and it's the one that fascinated me the most it's called observation without
00:26:24
engagement this is basically what they call self-observation which is a pretty big part of meditation if you've
00:26:30
ever meditated you'll understand this and it really helps you do exactly that it involves like mindfully observing
00:26:36
your thoughts and your feelings and your bodily sensations the best example i can give you is you
00:26:42
know if i asked you to observe right now how how tense your body feels instantly you might you know take a step back and start focusing on your sore toe or the tightness in your chest or that
00:26:53
headache which you didn't notice before but you can only notice when you start to observe yourself if i ask you to observe your thoughts
00:26:59
and your feelings you can also do that too you might start to think about the things you're worrying about or that
00:27:04
particular unsolved situation in your life or about your family's health because of this virus the things that are going on
00:27:10
subconsciously which you didn't really notice about that big decision on your future which you're procrastinating making
00:27:16
the point is you can take an observer's perspective on your anxious thoughts on your feelings and on your bodily sensations
00:27:23
you don't have to try and live inside of the problem all the time you don't have to live inside of your feelings or your emotions
00:27:29
and when you do this don't try and engage you're not supposed to try and fix it just observe let me give you another metaphor
00:27:35
which i think explains this best it's called the clouds metaphor imagine your thoughts and feelings or bodily sensations
00:27:41
as just clouds that are floating through the sky and sometimes those clouds are dark sometimes they're angry sometimes it's you know raining
00:27:48
and sometimes they're light and sometimes they're calm and thin but you're not the clouds you're the
00:27:53
blue sky who just observes the clouds as they're passing without engaging in them you simply observe and you let them pass you by and
00:28:01
as the 20-something ceo of a big company who knows that every time i look at my emails and my whatsapp in the
00:28:07
morning there's gonna be a ton of unpredictable yet unfortunately inevitable [ __ ] not just small
00:28:13
[ __ ] severe [ __ ] i'm talking ruin your day [ __ ] [ __ ] that can rear its head from any corner or person
00:28:19
in a global business of 700 people as as that guy this mechanism has quite literally saved
00:28:25
me i really really believe that and from my conversations with dom who's my business partner who's been with me this whole time you know which i
00:28:32
had on this podcast in chapter 10 where he described that running the business made him an alcoholic made him anxious
00:28:38
and made him experience some pretty severe mental health problems i genuinely believe
00:28:44
that this this technique was the fundamental difference between me and him self-observation which is something that
00:28:50
for some reason i've always defaulted to we both had the same intense stressful experience over the last 10 years
00:28:56
but in his words i survived it and he nearly didn't he said right and this is a horrible
00:29:03
thing for me to talk about he said he considered jumping in front of a train and killing himself because things at one point were so
00:29:10
almost unbearable and the difference is here it's in your mind and the mechanisms you rely on to
00:29:16
deal with your portion of unpredictable life [ __ ] which is coming your way whether you like it or not i've said in this podcast before that i
00:29:22
viewed the hardest moments in my life as as really a video game i naturally and again i don't want to take too much credit for this because it's not something that i did consciously i naturally adopted this strange
00:29:33
video game mindset where i would almost see the situation i was in like a game of chess like i was removed
00:29:40
from it when things got really really hard i told myself without thinking about it that this was all just a game yeah like
00:29:46
a like a game of chess and i'm not the pieces on the chessboard because they can be killed i'm the
00:29:52
person responsible for moving the pieces and whatever happens i'll be fine just like you know like a game of call of duty i'm not the character in the screen running with the gun
00:30:02
the one at danger of standing on a land mine i'm the person holding the controller sat at home and even if i stand on a land mine or
00:30:09
two that's fine i can just restart and rejuvenate and you know go again and for me this perspective which is very similar to what i've described with this self-observation
00:30:19
was the most liberating thing in my whole career it allowed me to develop my own calm within any form of chaos and it
00:30:25
allowed me to think clearly without being clouded by emotion and if you're a ceo if you're running a business
00:30:30
that's so incredibly important and i genuinely also think that my business partner don was inside the game
00:30:37
he was the pawn on the chessboard he was the soldier running through the battlefield in the call of duty he was taking
00:30:42
the enemy fire so he internalized that pain he internalized the stress and he became the conflict
00:30:48
and honestly nobody can survive that nobody not even me but fortunately for whatever reason i
00:30:54
was removing myself and that helped self-observation isn't just handy for increasing your like self-awareness it genuinely provides you with a sense of detachment in the most challenging situations you'll find
00:31:05
yourself in instead of being controlled by the situation and the thoughts that come with the situation
00:31:10
and all of those feelings it gave you gives you this ability to hold out in front of you to observe it
00:31:16
and to let it come and to let it go without impacting you too much and the brain research they've done on
00:31:22
this topic completely supports this they've studied the part of your brain that becomes active
00:31:28
when you're drifting from thought to thought and overthinking and worrying and they've seen clearly how this can
00:31:33
have a detrimental impact on your personal well-being and over a number of years the shape of
00:31:39
your brain they've then also observed how that attachment which you can achieve from self-observation and that video game
00:31:45
mindset where you become the sky not the clouds can quiet that part of your brain
00:31:50
and there's one particular study that shows that people who meditate have reduced activity in that part of their brain versus
00:31:57
people that don't meditate and listen when we talk about meditation i was a bit of a skeptic on the whole topic meditation doesn't have to be sitting
00:32:04
with your legs crossed humming to yourself right it can literally just be taking a few minutes out to relax
00:32:09
and pause and for me meditation is usually in the form of a massage it's the time where
00:32:14
i can stop i can pause and i can detach and that for me is crucial crucial crucial for everybody no matter what walk of life you're in you have to find your paws
00:32:25
and listen this isn't going to stop you getting anxious or worried or stressed but learning the habit of self-observation
00:32:31
and that video game mindset and becoming the sky as i'll call it will allow your problems to come go and
00:32:37
limit the impact they have on you without having to always engage in them and therefore making them worse than they have to be
00:32:43
without making a mountain out of what could have just been a molehill for the next point in my diary i've just written less answers and more questions you know so much of the the
00:32:54
self-development career progression advice that i got when i was younger told me to speak up more
00:33:00
you know make sure i'm heard and to get my point across whenever i can and i'm telling you the older i've got and the further i've
00:33:06
traveled in the business world the more i've learned that that's really shitty advice in the real world it's
00:33:11
impressive to know an answer of course but it's also impressive to admit that you don't it's impressive to say and to have the
00:33:18
sense of yourself to say i don't know to say you're probably right to say that's not my area of expertise to say i don't know but i'm going to find out or just to remain silent the least
00:33:30
impressive thing you can do is speak for the sake of speaking we all know people like this and they typically do that because they are insecure
00:33:37
and because they think if they have nothing to say then they're not very valuable we all have this contribution reputation
00:33:42
let me call it a contribution score you won't know what your contribution score is but you'll probably know the score of the people around you the
00:33:49
people in your friendship groups and in your family you'll know that person within your friendship group or a colleague at work
00:33:55
that just seems to speak for the sake of speaking and most of the time when they add something to the
00:34:00
conversation people kind of like roll their eyes and you know and they think to themselves that was a really dumb thing to say
00:34:06
and it gets to the point that before they speak everyone in the room presumes it's going to be something dumb again or
00:34:12
weird or unhelpful or irrelevant i think you'll know that person and that is because their contribution
00:34:19
score is low that is what a contribution score is it really really matters because if you
00:34:24
constantly speak for the sake of speaking or you you know you speak when you're not informed on a topic
00:34:29
people will gradually stop listening to you they will receive your id ideas with a pre-conceived bias
00:34:37
that you're probably going to say something that doesn't matter and so your ideas suffer even if they're good because of that
00:34:43
preconceived bias and that preconceived opinion of what you have to say so even when you do have something valuable to add
00:34:49
everybody will disregard it they'll pre-devalue it before it's even come out of your mouth and that's because just like a credit
00:34:55
score we all have a contribution score and in that case it's because you've ruined yours by always feeling the need
00:35:01
to chime in even when you don't know what you're talking about even when you shouldn't if you don't know the answer to
00:35:07
something at least know the value of admitting that you don't or staying quiet as someone that's you
00:35:14
know had the pleasure and sometimes displeasure of working in boardrooms and in creative brainstorms and in intense investor meetings with
00:35:21
big personalities and sometimes competitive personalities for the last decade i've seen how someone you know can ruin their contribution
00:35:28
score by constantly feeling the need to say something or add something when they don't know the answer and when this isn't their field of
00:35:34
expertise and i've also seen the opposite i've seen people who will sit and listen humbly and just observe and
00:35:39
often learn and the people that walk out of the room with their respect and contribution score intact to always
00:35:45
those that are secure enough to admit that they don't know and to in many cases stay quiet and the ones that lose respect
00:35:52
are those that try and pretend they know something that isn't in their field of expertise or that they know something about
00:35:57
usually because they're insecure and this is why as a general rule for life it's always better to have more questions than you have answers and to
00:36:04
be able to admit when you don't have the answers your contribution score really really matters and i think you come to learn that the
00:36:09
further you go in your career it's the thing that for me made investors believe me you know this this notion i think they
00:36:16
have in their head which is when stephen speaks it's probably something informed and something worth listening to
00:36:22
it's the things that you know makes employees trust you as a ceo it's a thing that as a colleague earns
00:36:28
respect and ultimately if you have the humility to learn to listen in areas that are outside your expertise
00:36:35
it'll be the thing that expands your knowledge and again that that will change your life
00:36:40
and this brings me to the next point in my diary and i've written in my diary what are some of the most important questions
00:36:46
i ask myself regularly and i when i say this i mean in all areas of my life if it's more important to know the right
00:36:53
question to ask them to have the answer what are the questions that you should ask yourself every single day
00:36:59
and um the first one in my diary is which part of this situation can i control you know as a ceo but just as a human being that's living life like we all are there are so many times where i
00:37:11
encounter a situation of conflict or stress or chaos um and i'm desperate to fix it and i
00:37:16
start committing energy to trying to solve the problem usually and this is something that i've come to
00:37:22
learn there's really only like three or four things that i can control in this situation and if i know what those things are i
00:37:29
can invest my energy in those levers in pulling those levers and that gives me the best chance of
00:37:36
getting out of the situation it also is a great tool for liberating yourself from all of the stress
00:37:42
of worrying about things that are completely outside of your control and that you can do nothing about and i've done this over the last two
00:37:48
years in particular where i will hone in and i will sometimes even write in my diary the two or three things in the
00:37:54
situation i'm in now that i that i can control gives me that clarity it liberates me from stress and it focuses me
00:38:00
on the things that will actually help me get out of the situation i'm in and the second question which i
00:38:06
ask myself religiously at least once a day and is actually held as a permanent point on my to-do list
00:38:11
is what am i avoiding right now this is something that i i dare you to try and ask yourself every
00:38:17
day because for me understanding what i'm avoiding helps me overcome it and as near ielts said on
00:38:24
this podcast we are creatures that seek to avoid discomfort so there's nearly always a reason
00:38:30
why i'm procrastinating or avoiding something and if i can become conscious about that thing and the
00:38:35
psychological discomfort that's making me avoid it it helps me to overcome it and usually the things we
00:38:41
avoid are actually really really important and that's part of the reason they're causing us discomfort so that's a
00:38:47
question that i recommend everybody asks themselves every day make a list of the things you want to ask yourself the first is what part of this
00:38:52
situation can i control and the second is what am i avoiding the third is what would my idols think about
00:38:59
this decision and this is a question which i religiously ask myself when i'm facing a big life choice because i think we all
00:39:06
understand the values and the principles that our idols lived by we study you know we study their lives we
00:39:12
read their books their podcasts whatever we understand the way that they think but when we're in a situation when we're
00:39:18
facing a big decision sometimes we kind of relapse back to our own innate fear-driven
00:39:25
decision-making mechanisms and we lose sight of how our idols the people we want to be like
00:39:31
would make that decision so every time i make a big life decision i almost like interrogate
00:39:36
it against what i know that my idols would do because my idols are my idols because they have values that i admire and so if i can kind of sense check my own decision-making
00:39:48
against what i think they would do which is sometimes easier than knowing the right thing to do i tend to make a better decision
00:39:55
and the next question i religiously ask myself is what would future steve think of this decision and this question is super handy to ask
00:40:01
yourself whenever you can because future you is going to pay the price for the decisions you make today
00:40:07
so future you is quite a selfish person they want to be they want to have a six-pack they want to be super smart they want to be rich
00:40:13
and that is almost all of our north star our future self and so if you ask yourself genuinely ask
00:40:19
yourself the question what would future steve the happiest version the best version of me
00:40:24
think about this decision i'm about to make to eat this entire double pizza to myself
00:40:31
usually that allows you to see if this decision you're about to make is in line with your values
00:40:36
and the next question that i like to ask myself regularly is if i'm saying yes to this thing then
00:40:42
what am i saying no to i think it was steve jobs who once said that it's only by saying no to things
00:40:47
that you can concentrate on what's important in your life and i love this line because it really helped me to realize the potency of that
00:40:54
question be it in our relationships or our career or in our health or in our mental health um i think it's important and i think we
00:41:01
need to reflect on what we hold most dear now in this moment in order to live a life and to attain a future
00:41:08
that is in line with our values and we need to become aware of how a yes decision is going to prevent us from doing other things
00:41:14
that we also consider to be relatively important it's a question that appreciates that you can't do everything and be
00:41:20
everything and that life is about prioritization prioritizing the things that are most important and so before i say yes to
00:41:27
something i like to consider all of the things that i'm saying no to as a consequence
00:41:32
of that yes it helps me to make better decisions today and it's a sign a signal and a nod
00:41:39
to how much i respect the limited amount of time i have and the last question which i've written
00:41:46
in my diary that i ask myself religiously is a much more direct question which is
00:41:51
does this thing align with my values you know people often make decisions that don't align with their values i know that i do
00:41:57
it every day and there are tons of reasons people do this you know they uh they binge on alcohol
00:42:03
they they smoke 20 cigarettes a day they have big mac you can't have a big mac pizza
00:42:08
they have big mac burgers and domino's pizzas religiously even though they know that their future values of health and being
00:42:14
around to see their kids grow up and those kinds of things are in conflict with those short-term detrimental actions
00:42:21
and often we do this because we don't stop to ask ourselves this simple question and we don't really stop to think about this simple question which is how does this short-term decision
00:42:31
align with my long-term values next time you're doing something and it doesn't feel quite right and it
00:42:37
feels a little bit naughty ask yourself how it's serving what you value most in life and that
00:42:43
having you know the obsession i have now with continually cross-checking the decisions i'm about to make versus the person i want to be or the life i want to attain
00:42:54
has been transformative for me honestly it's really really changed my life and i'm going to throw in a bonus question i did say that was the last one
00:43:00
but i'm going to give you a bonus question which i've just i've just been thinking about it's a little bit cliche but i promise you it's
00:43:06
helped me overcome you know some of the most fearful moments of my life the question is what's the worst that
00:43:13
will happen if i attempt this and i remember being really really young 16 years old when someone first asked me to speak on stage
00:43:20
and then 17 and then 18 and then the stage is getting bigger and the audience is getting bigger i remember one day
00:43:25
speaking in barcelona in front of about 10 000 people and being stood backstage and starting to feel a little bit of that
00:43:31
anxiety which we all feel and i i for some reason just like the video game mindset which i've talked
00:43:36
about in this podcast i default to asking myself what is the worst thing that can happen
00:43:42
and i don't just ask myself that question in the cliche way that friend might turn to you and say i genuinely run through the process of
00:43:48
what you know what is the worst thing that can happen i could walk up on stage and as i'm walking on stage
00:43:54
i trip on the first step i fall i smash my face my trousers come down people see my
00:43:59
underwear and my you know my willy and i walk up on stage and then i deliver the worst speech in my life
00:44:05
and people start walking out and throwing stuff at me and i walk off stage and and to be honest it's nearly always the
00:44:12
case that the worst thing that can happen isn't actually as bad as you think we tend to you know before we
00:44:18
confront it and rationalize it that way and look at it in that way we tend to i guess think it's death i
00:44:23
think i think we think we're gonna die and everyone's gonna hate us and and then you ask yourself this sub question which is if the worst thing
00:44:29
that i think could happen happens what is the long-term impact of that on my life
00:44:35
and even if i fell on the step hit my you know hit my eye walked on stage with a bleeding eye and then did the worst speech of my life
00:44:41
it doesn't actually have any long-term impact on my life okay i wouldn't get booked to speak there again but the
00:44:47
the material long-term impact of my life is pretty much nil and so it doesn't make sense to be
00:44:54
fearful because the worst possible outcome has no long long-term impact on your life
00:44:59
and for me that's the question that i really hold dear and it's a question that i still turn to in moments of intense pressure and fear
00:45:06
um fear of failure and i think it's a question that can change your life if you're a very fearful person those
00:45:12
are my questions and i i am i think it's important to have questions and be armed with questions because as i
00:45:18
say in life it turns out that having the questions is much more important than having all the answers
00:45:23
okay so the last point in my diary this week is it's just a sentence and i'm going to read that sentence to you the thing that invalidates you when
00:45:30
you're younger will be the things you seek validation from when you're an adult and this is um this is something that it really took me
00:45:36
about 30 years the 28 years i've been alive to learn um when i was younger as a lot of you will know if you've listened to this
00:45:42
podcast before i came from a background in a family that didn't have a whole lot of
00:45:47
money right we were pretty much bankrupt for my whole um my whole childhood at least the last
00:45:52
part of my my my time living at home we lived in a house that was beat up um the window on the front of our house
00:45:59
was smashed for a good decade so you know you'd get the draught coming in from outside we live my back garden
00:46:04
the grass in the background is about six foot high and there are fridges and tv sets and all kinds of nonsense in
00:46:11
there in fact the back half of my house was actually knocked down because i think at one point my mom thought we had
00:46:16
the money to do a renovation but we didn't have the money so they just the builders just knocked the house down and just left it as a derelict
00:46:23
house so one of the the doors you know which used to go into one of the rooms was actually would just actually take
00:46:28
you outside and we just removed the handle so that no one could really break into our house the front of our house was the same we
00:46:34
had you know the grass was you know a good meter and a half high at times and it was fairly embarrassing um growing up as a
00:46:42
black kid in an all-white school who already felt a little bit different with my curly hair knowing that our
00:46:49
house also looked so marked you know remarkably different and that my life was remarkably different
00:46:54
from a financial perspective we didn't have um christmases and birthdays by the time i was about 10 10 11 years old because
00:47:00
of the financial situation we're in and i know that it created a real deep insecurity within me i remember
00:47:06
christmas days sat in my brother kevin's room on the floor as we joked about the things we were going to pretend we got for
00:47:12
christmas you know like and i have to make i have to to bring context to this right like i know now as
00:47:19
an adult that this was a terribly naive selfish immature way to think i know now that i should have been looking at all the things i did have which was a loving family two parents that were together and loved
00:47:30
me a roof over my head food on the table i know now that those were the important things but back then
00:47:35
when you're a young little kid who doesn't really understand the world you feel sorry for yourself you engage in self-pity and i did and i
00:47:42
would go to school embarrassed and i would go to school and lie about our financial situation and it
00:47:48
made me insecure it invalidated me you know it was one of the the biggest worries or you know
00:47:54
insecurities i had as a kid and so at 14 years old i started to really really value money money for me
00:48:01
just felt so important the lack of money we had in our life was the reason that i had so much shame it
00:48:06
was the reason that my mum and dad would scream at each other so much about our house and about our finances and
00:48:12
about christmas and about all of these other things and money was the problem so i grew up thinking
00:48:18
and pretty obsessed with attaining money or if i went to university at 18 years old dropped out started a business to try and make loads of money
00:48:24
and then when i finally got money set 21 22 years old i had a really unhealthy relationship
00:48:32
with it and i went to nightclubs and i spent i think one year like 50 60 000 pounds on champagne in a nightclub
00:48:39
at 22 23 years old just to try and impress people and then i went out to the countryside and bought
00:48:45
this seven bedroom mansion with a tennis court at the bottom of the garden and two living rooms and an outhouse and
00:48:50
big gates and a 100 meter driveway just to try and impress people and this is this is a force in our lives which will ruin our lives if we don't understand it and the thing
00:49:03
that i came to learn after literally like 25 years and after being a puppet you know the
00:49:08
puppet master being this thing that happened to me as a kid after being a puppet that didn't know why he was doing what he was doing but
00:49:14
was just buying these tables and nightclubs and buying material things and trying to show off to people
00:49:19
i came to learn that the thing that invalidated me when i was younger had become the thing that i sought
00:49:25
validation from as an adult and that will be true for you no matter what it is no matter if it's romantic affection no
00:49:32
matter if it's validation no matter if it's money no matter what it is the thing that invalidated you
00:49:37
when you were younger will be this the thing that you seek validation from as an adult and until
00:49:43
you understand what that thing is it risks being the number one thing that can ruin your life i've like gone
00:49:50
through every like corner of my childhood to try and understand the things that made me
00:49:56
feel invalid in order to understand some of the forces that are in play in my life right now as an adult and
00:50:02
honestly it has liberated me i wrote in my diary one day the reasons i'll go broke
00:50:08
and it was pretty much this it was because i was broke when i was a kid and because that
00:50:14
developed a really you know psychological issue with money where money for me became
00:50:20
a plaster it became the thing that would make me feel the opposite to whatever shame is
00:50:26
and i just think it's so important for everyone to to think about the things that happened when they were young
00:50:32
and to understand the forces that invalidated them because if you don't understand them and if you can't make them conscious and
00:50:37
hold them out in front of you and examine them they will control your life subconsciously somewhere
00:50:43
and honestly i've got to be honest do i think i'll ever really overcome this unhealthy relationship i
00:50:50
had with money i don't think i'll ever truly overcome it completely because it is so deeply hard-wired into
00:50:57
me at a time in my life when i was so impressionable and when every emotion just seemed to cut more and carve into me but that's not really my aim my aim
00:51:08
isn't to overcome it my aim is to become conscious of it and if i can become conscious of it it
00:51:13
has less impact over me and fortunately where i'm at in my life now i don't make those stupid dumb decisions all of the
00:51:19
time sometimes i make dumb decisions like i'm not gonna pretend i'm some [ __ ] like profit that you know lives their life
00:51:26
perfectly and always makes decisions that are in line with their values sometimes i do things to impress people
00:51:31
but it's like 99 less than i used to and that's because i'm holding out my sort of psychological relationship with money in front of me and i'm able to look at it and i'm able
00:51:42
to question myself and interrogate my decisions against this known flaw that i have in my psychology steve
00:51:47
why are you trying to buy a rolls royce you don't really like rolls royces you don't know anything about them because you think oh yeah
00:51:54
because you think it's going to impress somebody because you think somewhere deep inside
00:51:59
of you that child that had nothing will feel more fulfilled if he has that range rover or
00:52:05
that rolls royce or that mansion and whenever i go to make these big decisions now it's the first thing i think of so i
00:52:15
don't think i've overcome it but i've definitely been able to understand it and if you can understand
00:52:21
it if you can understand the thing that invalidated you and your kid that's as good as overcoming it and that
00:52:29
will help you stop seeking validation from it as an adult and that that will change your life
00:52:53
[Music] oh [Music] you