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i was failing that was the point for me where i was like i need to do things differently
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the hardest thing i've ever done it's james smith great talking personal trainer he's helping you get confident
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some see james's curse-filled rant says confrontational oh james got me a narcissist
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james good to see you again self-esteem and confidence is decaying when you're at that place of feeling
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that you don't have enough confidence it's actually a crossroads it's a left and a right action and inaction whatever
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you're not changing you're choosing dating is such a big topic because people either don't have the confidence
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required to meet someone or they might not have the confidence to leave someone we're allowed to be ignorant of these things and we're allowed to be wrong but
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it doesn't mean we shouldn't endeavor to get the best possible outcome what are you not confident about i constantly have these battles in my head why did i create this fast why did i
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have sweat patches from such a simple interaction of being uncomfortable i have the same insecurities the same
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fears feelings of inadequacies sometimes my biggest fear is losing is not the same as being defeated you have to be audacious you have to put your head above the power pit i'm sure i'm going to be absolutely slammed
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saying this so without further ado i'm stephen butler and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but
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if you are then please keep this yourself [Music] james good to see you again thank you
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very much for having me back it's uh it's i gotta say we don't have many guests back but um our conversation was
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so inspiring and surprising to me when i messaged you the other day and said if you're ever back in london i'd love to have you back on and then i
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learned you'd written a book about confidence why did you write a book about confidence
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well it's kind of interesting that through my entire career i've learned something personally and then
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i've you know taught other people kind of the processes so the first book not a diet book i went through years of fitness
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industry [ __ ] we spoke about before and kind of by the end of it through my own journeys i was like i could teach
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people about this and i didn't want to write a diet book system i was like let's you know break down everything put
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it into a book then the second book offer i was like i can't do another one if i'd written a second book about
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fitness it would have said a lot about the first you know when people do sequels things i'm like oh you must have done a great job
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and i kind of realized by accident that my work-life balance was pretty good and wrote the second book a lot of the
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things we spoke about in that last podcast were based off not a life coach now the kind of strange thing that i say to
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people is i'm not a very confident person i have the same insecurities the same fears the same feelings of inadequacies as the majority
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of people but i kind of have a set of values and a way that i see these problems where i can break them down and
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dismantle them and in the book in the first chapter i say a lot of people sit back and they think other people are confident as if it's a trait like height or
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people said it's a superpower but straight away i actually typed that in the first part of the book i was like confidence is a superpower but then
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superpowers aren't accomplishable by mortals it's almost something out of your reach
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and i'm a big believer that confidence can be within people's reach and even chatting to people in the same
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profession they have a problem or a fear of judgment of whatever it is and if i spend five minutes with that person i can motivate them to post on social media to
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prospect more with their business whatever it is and i've realized it's not something people are lacking it's
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more so the way they perceive and view their reality what are you not confident about people
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i think would be surprised to hear that you have insecurities and inadequacies and there's things you're not confident about everything body image which is why
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i ended up going down the first huge 10 years of my life with not a diet book i was overweight as a kid even now i constantly have these battles in my head through
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how should i look what should i be doing shall i be dieting and i think that's why a lot of people resonate with what i
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say because a lot of what i say to them is also for myself a lot of you know i say to people that i know this is how you're feeling so that's how i feel myself and
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it's it's an interesting one even with dating with professional life some of them i feel like i kind of got lucky i'm
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not a massive believer in luck i kind of tripped over some of the steps to becoming confident and
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even working in door-to-door sales where working for npower in gloucester knocking on hundreds of doors a day
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it allowed me to perceive issues in front of me as a numbers game and then at the average of knocking on 100 to
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make a sale suddenly things didn't seem so daunting and people go oh you need to be really confident to knock on doors
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for a living i was like well not so much if you appreciate there's a certain amount of times you need to do something
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before you experience success it's not so scary email marketing i knew email marketing would work i sent
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emails every day for 10 months no one bought in 10 months someone bought finally so it was an appreciation of the
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numbers social media four and a half years i posted near about every day before i made any money from it things aren't so much scary or to be feared
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it's how you look at those things in front of you that really kind of break down the fear because we're all
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capable of doing things but we like to almost push things further away than we can reach so that it gives us a reason
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not to do it one thing that really blew my mind is i had liver king on the podcast right
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this is a man for anybody that doesn't know him who is jacked he walks around with us with his
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top off um he's very you know direct and loud and apparently confident but at the very end of the conversation i asked him to tell me something he's never told anyone before
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and what he said blew my mind he said coming on this podcast today and speaking in front of people cripples me
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to the point that i can't sleep and then he tells me that between the age of 10 and 14 years old he was bullied
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horrifically beaten up every day had no friends and i i was trying to put the pieces together that um and you kind of allude to it at the start of your book when you start
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talking about the different types of confidence that he might be confident in some ways but the
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social confidence was literally knocked out of him at 10 years old so in social situations where there's a chance of
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rejection from the crowd which is what happened to him in school he is still crippled to this day it appears to me
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that there's a real variance in people's um social confidence which is originates
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from their like early self-story and really that early self story i'm trying to understand how much of that determines our confidence today because there's
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tricks and tips and the five second rule and all this stuff but if how do we really have to go back and fix that [ __ ]
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that happened to us at 10 years old on the playground no i don't think so and that's kind of the important thing i
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don't think it's like a trauma that we need to hold dearly to ourselves but like you say so for instance if you were
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to say james says 3000 people out there need you to perform a talk with no preparation i'd like cool but if you
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would say hey there's a girl at the bar and i need you to go approach her on a friday night and try and get a number
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that would be like that's that's scary to me so it's it's kind of like double standards like you say some situations
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everyone has a certain lacking type of confidence even the most confident of people and that could be because when i was 12 the
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first girl asked out said no it could be that or it could be because i've done more talks and i think that
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at the root core of everything is is a form of repetition and people that aren't confident to do things they need to find something they have the level of courage
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to do and get to that point and for instance that's something i don't need to work on and as i'm in a relationship
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i probably shouldn't be working on this either but if i i'm petrified of talking to a girl or or a guy from any women
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listening or either either for whoever's this thing maybe i don't have the courage to ask for the number but i might have the
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courage to go say hello or to compliment them or to you know do something chivalrous and if people can then do
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that then maybe from there they can move on and i think is one of those things where everyone has like a gaping hole in their
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confidence and for liver king it's an interesting one at first i was actually very anti-him because he is obnoxious he actually has a very similar approach to what i do like in your face this is what
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i believe in if you don't believe in it that's cool but i can sometimes look at him and
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appreciate that a lot of people are not being who they are they're being who they need to be and i feel i
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resonate with that side of him where as i'm sure you realize on social media i'm very much like listen mate you know do
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this calorie deficit you know [ __ ] off all of that but really i'm not like that i portray the person i need to be
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it's one of those things where a lot of the time people need to appreciate that maybe everyone around them is fearful of
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everything like you but they're more focused about being who they need to be not worrying about who they are
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in the the start of this book in chapter one you you investigate this idea of pain points as it relates to confidence
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what do you mean by pain points so we could look at this in the form of sales as well so i cannot sell to someone
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unless i understand their pain points and i use an analogy that probably is the one i've had most experience with
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with people in the gym they come they sit down hi james i want to get fitter i want to lose a bit of weight i want to
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tone up and i'm like that's not really what you want that's not a pain point that is a knee-jerk reaction to what you think i
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want to hear when you delve a bit deeper they go up my husband stop [ __ ] me you know every time i stand up in a meeting i've
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got to pull my top down over the layers of flap that i have i don't feel confident in areas of my life that i should because i'm so
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crippled by the confidence i have with my physique i'm not taken seriously the pain points
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are deep and people need to draw on those because the day that you're getting out of bed
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and you feel like [ __ ] and you're tired and you want to give up i want to be toned isn't going to do it
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the fact that your real pain point is that you're lonely and you're getting older and you're worrying about the fact
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you might not find a compatible companion ever that is a strong enough pain point for you to change
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being more toned isn't so interestingly for some you know i know people that are in that exact same situation
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and i've debated for many a year whether someone's you know the situation you described that i'm getting older i'm
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lonely i'm scared i'll be alone forever i know people in that exact exact same situation that are exhibiting the fear
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of the consequences of a life lifelong loneliness but they still don't do anything about
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it is there such thing as like wanting to want to be someone is it i'm not sure to answer your question but one of the things i would say to that person is
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you're in the and i'm only using this an example i think dating is an analogy i love to use i actually use it when i
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talk about business talks i say marketing is like dating you know and we won't get down that too much but you
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look at the person at the bar you you feel the fear rather than counting down from five five
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four three two one oh my god i've got the confidence let me go talk to them they could instead just for a flash of a
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moment just think to themselves i'm lonely i don't want to be lonely what out of these two things is more
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uncomfortable for me the idea of going another week another month being single or the idea of talking to a stranger and
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surely when you add and level those two things up the pain point of being lonely should be much worse than the pain point
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of talking to a stranger if you feel undervalued at work the idea of talking to your boss and expressing
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how you feel that's a pain point you're like you know that's going to make me feel uncomfortable but then the pain point of feeling undervalued and not being given the
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bonus you were promised a year ago you level them up and you're like there's always two directions in which you can go and
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you've tweeted and mentioned this before you say saying nothing is still saying something doing nothing is still doing something
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and they also say whatever you're not changing you're choosing and these are really important because
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that person and again same analogy whatever it is when you're at that place of feeling that you don't
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have enough confidence it's actually a crossroads it's a left and a right it's a dichotomy of action and
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inaction and if you are controlled by fear and you don't muster the courage to do what you need
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to do especially by using the pain points to motivate yourself you are choosing an action by doing nothing that
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is a choice and people just seem to think that you know not starting the passion project not posting or s expressing something on social media
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they seem to think if they do nothing that it's a void in our reality but it's not it's still a choice of an action i
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used to think of like people ask me about confidence a lot and it's taken me quite some time to develop my thoughts
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on it because you know when you i think level one of the confidence um [Music] self-help guru is like look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you love yourself like that's
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like step one and then eventually hopefully your thinking progresses when you find the holes in that thinking and
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then i arrived at the conclusion that confidence as we kind of like say it talk about it in culture i
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know there's multiple definitions and lots of nuance but confidence as we describe it in culture is really just um is based on the evidence you have in
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yourself like all beliefs are based on evidence-based subjective correct or incorrect evidence and therefore if it is evidence-based
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the only way to build your confidence is to go and get evidence um and i say this because there's a lot
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there's a narrative that you can just kind of like write down in your book or or look yourself in the mirror and say
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i'm gonna be confident i'm gonna be sexy i'm gonna be a millionaire which i don't think is
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factually supported by how other beliefs work so confidence so when i started writing
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the book i wasn't sat there like i know everything about confidence i was sat there going i couldn't answer if you were to say
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james what is confidence when i start writing it again i don't know so that's why i was so excited about writing it
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but one of the interesting kind of ways that i wrote about it in one of the points was if you imagine confidence on a spectrum with anxiety on one end and confidence on the other
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anxiety is predicting failure and confidence is predicting success and that is a really important thing to think about because our expectations massively influence the outcome of
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things and like you say there if people just go into a room and go i'm you know i'm amazing i'm whatever it's not really
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going to work even as one of your previous guests said about interrogative self-talk asking
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yourself questions is a more positive thing instead of saying i can do this podcast today and do well
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i asked myself can you do well on this podcast today me answer oh do you know what i did all right in the last one it
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got a lot of downloads so it is one of those things that is in so many different spectrums and it has so many
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different meanings but a lot of it points towards predicting success in things and even if you don't
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have the evidence to predict success we should be able to be wrong if there's something i want to
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accomplish i can't let my mind and my thoughts take over i must in some sense be
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overconfident and predict success but if i'm wrong that's fine but what i can't do is just set
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every single default to being this isn't going to work because if you don't think something's going to
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work you're already tripped at the first hurdle and there's a guy david robinson written a
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book called the expectation effect and in that book they got a group of people i can't remember how big their study was but they lied to them and said this group have got a gene
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that is going to hinder their turnover of oxygen and this group over here doesn't they got them to perform fitness
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tests and the people that were told they had this gene mutation performed a lot better the other people who didn't and
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even just being primed with a lie completely changed their output in a fitness test so
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schools don't teach confidence society doesn't really breed confidence because although on one hand confidence is essential for innovation if we don't have confident people you know elon musk
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he was confident enough to say that rocket we could land it back on earth and you would know you know you're crazy but
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society doesn't care if you're confident or not society doesn't care if you talk to that person or not society doesn't
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care if you get a pay rise no one in the world is going to come along and care about your levels of confidence it's
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something we need to do ourselves on in that example of them priming to you know there's being two groups and they tell
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one of them a lie and then the one that believes that they have a genetic advantage performed better right yeah so
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is is that not the case then for lying to yourself so fake it to you make it i don't particularly like that terminology in in the book i write about it because
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what's your what's your metric of success in that to fake it until you get recognition for something
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i think with that and with the book and with expectations you've got manifestation
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and the placebo effect and they're intertwined but they're both separate so manifestation i think is a very
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dangerous thing where people think i'm just going to think about success you know i'm going to meditate about success i'm going to get it
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but then things like the placebo effect is also a powerful thing sham surgeries that were performed on
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people they would be cut open they would do nothing they'd stitch them back up and up to 50 of people reported feeling
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better that's crazy when people take or 30 people that took the vaccine in the trials that were given the no vaccine felt ill afterwards because they thought they were going to feel ill
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i've seen as well i didn't put this on the book so i couldn't find the study the size of the pill you take as a painkiller even with placebos can impact
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the levels of pain that people you know report disappearing so although we can't say you know i just you know
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pretend you're going to be confident pretend all of this in the same sense we do need to instill a level of belief in
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ourselves that we are able to accomplish stuff and if we try and we falsify that optimism and it
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doesn't work out we create another building block to step on and behind everyone who's an expert in
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anything there is a level of mastery and failure is put in such a negative light
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in society but failure is the most cases the pathway to development so even if we do you know point the dial towards optimism if things don't go right that's fine
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we're allowed to be wrong we're allowed to make mistakes you're allowed to try that endeavor that you want and for it to all [ __ ] up i think that i was just
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thinking about that then the i guess the difference is with the placebo effect you don't know that it's a lie whereas
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if i look to myself in the mirror and said you are in fact jesus christ i would know that that was a lie and so
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placebo i guess you know the placebo effects stuff can work and even in that operation they didn't know they were being lied to in that in those two
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control groups where one of them believed they had a genetic advantage they thought it was true the problem is
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we can't actually lie to ourselves and the the example i always give sometimes when i speak about confidence on stage
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is like if i had your mom in a headlock and i was pointing a gun at her and i said you have to believe i'm jesus when she dies everything's on the line and
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all you could do is pretend you couldn't actually believe i was jesus if everything was on the line you could
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only and so that for me was the clearest evidence i needed that i can never really lie to myself about who i am it doesn't have to be a liars it could be even just a change in narrative
00:19:40
so i remember so many times throughout my life just before i was about to go on a date with a stranger which i found incredibly daunting it's one of the
00:19:46
reasons i drank on dates for the first 25 years of my life but that voice in your head you don't
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have to lie to yourself but the voice in your head goes what if this is the worst day i'll ever go on but all you need to do is change that to
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say what if this is the best day i'll ever go on that's all i'm saying and that is a change in expectations it's a
00:20:04
different change in thought it's a different perspective on your reality that's upcoming i don't think we should
00:20:10
ever lie to ourselves but we should at least turn the dial towards optimism because we are
00:20:16
inherently pessimistic with our with our biases audacity you talk about that being one of the most important things um
00:20:26
you describe it as being at the forefront of any of the successes you've experienced in your life what is audacity and how do you define that and
00:20:32
what role is it played for you i had a lot of opinions in the fitness industry but by airing them you open yourself up
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to a lot of criticism you open yourself up to hatred five years ago i don't think anyone bar
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a couple of my girlfriends hated me all right you know no one now there are thousands thousands of people
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because you have to be audacious you have to put your head above the power pit to really you know put yourself
00:20:57
forward even as we said before with this podcast you had to be audacious one day as
00:21:03
someone who'd never done a podcast to go we're going to do a podcast in here and you you had to sit there and believe for
00:21:08
a second we're going to make this the uk's leading podcast and in some respects behind anyone's level of success there was an audacious endeavor at the beginning
00:21:19
whether it was to do a podcast whether it was to start a business whatever it was and i think that
00:21:24
that's again something that's not fully bred into people you know or someone has an idea you know go put that idea out
00:21:31
there be audacious with it you know don't be afraid to be wrong don't be afraid of critics and ultimately for me
00:21:37
something that i kind of understood was there are going to be a lot of people that are never going to be interested in
00:21:43
what you're doing and they're never going to be interested in a book that i release or whatever i can't take their criticisms to heart
00:21:51
and fully understanding that there are people out there that are going to dislike me but i can't worry
00:21:57
too much about that because they're never going to benefit my net equation they're never going to come to a talk or buy a book or anything like that
00:22:03
so audaciousness is like a an essential element for progress in this but you need to be armed with
00:22:09
understanding that you're going to be haters that there are going to be people that are going to not like what you say or what you do and
00:22:16
there's quite literally no one out there that doesn't get criticized for something so audaciousness does have
00:22:21
that dark side to it but for people again being audacious with your endeavor what if it's the worst thing you ever do then again what if it's the best thing you ever do
00:22:32
since you came on this podcast last time i've been asking guests a similar question which which is about this in ingredients list of happiness have you
00:22:38
ever heard me say this to anybody i've heard you say it but okay just won't just ask that just in case
00:22:43
you had a premeditated response but the question i ask people is um if happiness was a list of ingredients
00:22:50
on a on a recipe um in different weights and quantities what is missing from your
00:22:55
list of ingredients that would make you perfectly happy oh john i haven't thought about this i haven't thought
00:23:01
about this at all i don't really look at my life and go what's missing and even some things i could say was oh you know
00:23:08
a permanent visa for australia but i quite like the fact it's not happened yet i'm looking forward to it
00:23:13
if it does come and even if i don't get residency in australia i kind of relish the challenge of what i would have to do
00:23:19
to then get it again so all of the things that are lacking from my life also seem like little challenges that
00:23:24
i'm excited for but honestly i know a lot of people have a facade for happiness i'm progressing in everything that i'm doing and as i said before even on the back burner i love jiu jitsu i'm
00:23:37
competing a bit at the moment i teach classes on a friday evening i have that and
00:23:44
so much of my values does revolve around my work the book doing well my professional life but then also at the
00:23:49
back burner i've always said this that i could just get a dog open a little jiu jitsu dojo with my
00:23:55
savings put it near the beach somewhere hopefully in australia and i could just teach people jiu jitsu for the rest of
00:24:00
my life and i look at that and i go on some days that's better than my existing life you know so it's one of
00:24:06
those things where i don't really dwell or use any mental or cognitive ability thinking about
00:24:11
what's missing i don't think that's a productive way to use cognitive effort i think i am i sometimes question the balance of things in my life and i
00:24:22
i sometimes i wonder whether it's society telling me that i that the balance is wrong or whether it's you know your girlfriend telling you the
00:24:28
balance is wrong it happens a lot um or whether it's you know something else but i think more in terms of the
00:24:35
balance of things so for example i might be going to the gym too much or i might be working too much or i might not be
00:24:41
working enough and those are the kind of things that i i think i spend some time thinking about
00:24:46
usually upon getting feedback i foolishly for a long time used to say that i was
00:24:52
fortunate that i'd never struggled with mental health problems and in some respects that's true because there is a
00:24:57
bit of a throw that dice with how you know our baselines of certain hormones or whatever in this trauma that can
00:25:03
occur in people's lives but a friend of mine who suffered with depression quite heavily he said to me
00:25:08
you are not aware of your habits that protect your mental health and you need to go away and think about the things
00:25:13
you're doing to actually you know uphold this because the way i see mental health now and this could be quite controversial is like a
00:25:20
table like the one in front of us with many legs and the legs can be completely subjective am i going outside enough are
00:25:26
my family relationships good enough how's my professional life how's my bank account whatever it is and you can kick away one of the legs
00:25:31
and you'll be okay but people if they don't realize that legs from the table are disappearing it only takes that one
00:25:37
final kick before it topples over for me being comfortable not working too hard not traveling too
00:25:43
much not stretching myself too thin is something that is really important to me and i haven't
00:25:49
drunk in probably about six weeks at the moment and as i'm getting older i'm really losing and diminishing my
00:25:55
relationship with alcohol because when i was younger my values for happiness didn't sit around productivity
00:26:00
i could play xbox all day but as i'm getting older my values are changing and productivity is so important to me the
00:26:06
drinking alcohol now inflicts that and even now i think to myself sometimes drinking makes me less happy because it negates my levels of productivity and it's only as i'm getting older that i'm
00:26:18
starting to realize how important that is to me and i think that when we're younger we don't quite see it that way we kind of
00:26:25
look to use alcohol and especially in the context of confidence people can buy bottled confidence and they buy it in the version of alcohol because it breaks down those social
00:26:39
struggles that they have it makes them feel more confident or more importantly it makes them care less and as long as
00:26:45
we have alcohol available to us people don't need to work on their inadequacies when it comes to social interactions or
00:26:51
having the confidence to do things when you talk about productivity in that context of you know you value it more
00:26:57
now than ever do you mean professional productivity in all sense whether it's having the energy on a sunday morning to
00:27:02
go you want to give me tennis you know i'm rubbish at tennis but i like you know you know when you throw a ball for
00:27:07
a dog how happy it is that's me chasing the tennis ball around the tennis court i'm awful but i enjoy just doing that or
00:27:13
productivity with work where so many times i'll be in the shower and i'll have an idea and the idea really excites
00:27:20
me and people around me know that when i do have an idea and i want to do it you have to leave me alone to kind of hash
00:27:25
it out especially if i have a video idea we could be going for breakfast if i have a video idea i'm almost like
00:27:31
i can't enjoy breakfast while i've got the idea in my head when i'm hungover or tired or you know
00:27:38
on the road with tours and book signings or whatever if i'm trying to burn the candle too much i lose that spark to be
00:27:43
able to have these creative ideas and four or five days into a stretch of not having anything creative come in i feel
00:27:49
the pressure i'm posted in a few days and to me that's important that i stay on top of those things and you know be
00:27:55
creative and come up with new ideas and i even have a set of standards it's pretty peculiar where
00:28:01
i do look through my comments sometimes although i know comments are the most poisonous place to go the weight of one
00:28:06
negative comment outweighs 100 positive but when someone says that's your best video yet i've accomplished something
00:28:13
that's what i want so when i do go these long periods of time without being productive in that sense
00:28:18
it starts to drain on me and i'm starting to think what am i doing that's making me happy that's taking
00:28:24
away happiness from other areas of my life professionally would you consider yourself a workaholic
00:28:30
no but that could be denial because i like working and it's it's a difficult one now where i do have to distinguish things where i can't watch a film on my own because i don't
00:28:42
see it as productive but if i watch a film with my girlfriend that's fine because i'm it's almost like a blocked
00:28:48
out on the calendar professional time but then at the same time i do like having down time to train jiu jitsu skateboard to
00:28:54
the beach have a dip i'm not like on my phone all the time i do like leaving my phone in my car when i do stuff
00:29:00
but i couldn't think of anything worse than retirement this is why i kind of feel everyone is
00:29:06
not brainwashed because i can't expect everyone to have the same values as me but when everyone's like oh you know buy
00:29:12
a house pay off the mortgage in 50 years you can retire with that and i'm sure that's great some people my dad loves being retired but me that's my idea of
00:29:19
hell to wake up with nothing to do or no problems to solve i think people underestimate the human beings for
00:29:25
thousands of years have been problem solvers with much worse problems than what we have today and the idea of just stopping that at a
00:29:32
point in time just drives me crazy but then i'm not sure if i'm just potentially
00:29:38
wired differently to other people and you talked about your girlfriend you've been in a relationship for how
00:29:43
long now over a year so did john i've always been very skeptical of talking about relationships on podcasts because by the time they go out i'm no longer in a relationship so
00:29:54
is is one of those things but yeah i'm incredibly happy and i think that there has to come a point where
00:30:01
i actually did a magic mushroom trip uh probably two years ago and about eight of us we sat by the beach um we just
00:30:08
thought [ __ ] out and what was crazy was if we went and got trolled on alcohol and you know were absolute
00:30:16
caused chaos that's legal but for eight of us to take some magic restrooms and sit and think about life and share what
00:30:22
we're experiencing people that was illegal and i had time to reflect on i do see different areas of my life like races and i like to be in competition with people that don't even know i'm in
00:30:33
competition with them for years i'd have a list of social media competitors that i'd never spoken to and i'd worked
00:30:39
tirelessly to beat them uh yeah and you know what there was an element of envy and
00:30:44
bitterness and that fueled me in some respects but i sat there on the beach and i thought
00:30:50
to myself what if you win the race of having the most money and the most notoriety and the most you know fame
00:30:56
but your friends that did the nine to five and work to retirement got the wife and the kids and the happy life and also
00:31:02
my mom and dad my family is very you know traditional i thought what really are they going to prefer me
00:31:07
coming home in a ferrari or me coming home with a family and that was a really big insight in my mind to
00:31:13
what's important to you that i impressed my family yes because i want them to think that their investment of you know even now 33 years is gonna pay off and i
00:31:20
want them to one day sit back and go we did a good job so it's very important that i please my parents and i thought
00:31:27
i've really got to make sure that i don't finish the race of life and have the money in the fame and realized that
00:31:32
i was in the wrong race and that was such a big epiphany for me and i realized at that point that i was
00:31:38
going to have to work harder in relationships how many relationships did you have give me a history of your sort of dating
00:31:44
track record someone just sighed in the background over there no i never really respected them or took
00:31:50
them seriously because i thought that my young 20s and even my mid-20s were more important to accomplish other things it was only as i got to my late 20s i realized hold on maybe these
00:32:00
values might be good for professional life but they won't be good further down the line in 10 years time
00:32:07
in bondi there's a lot of wealthy older men they've got the sports cars and the young girlfriends i don't
00:32:14
envy them at all i don't ever think oh i'd love to be 40 with a 25 year old girlfriend i don't ever think like that
00:32:20
but i think it's just been one of those things where carol dweck in her book mindset talks about a fixed mindset um and an open mindset and i appreciate
00:32:31
that for so many things you could come in today with so many problems of the business and my mindset is let's do this let's do
00:32:37
this we'll do this we'll turn this up we'll do better on this we'll be fine but with relationships i was very
00:32:43
fixed where if something went wrong i was like ah this this is your fault and we should
00:32:48
stop this right away and you can appreciate in some people's lives when things get tough they either take the option of developing and becoming better
00:32:55
or they blame other people and discontinue and i was fixed and i only kind of realized that when i was older
00:33:01
and the negatives in your 20s are [ __ ] a relationship aren't that severe if anything i was like oh i get to work more you know i have more time to myself how long was your longest relationship probably about a year okay so the the
00:33:13
current relationship is up there with your longest ever don't tell either but extra pressure on it but yeah it is and
00:33:18
i think that especially there's some crazy things going on in society where there are more women over 30 without children than under 30 and i think that
00:33:30
that's that's a statistic that chris williamson brought up on jordan peterson when they had a chat and i was like
00:33:35
we're all not appreciating family life like the generation before us and i don't think it's important that we take their values as our own but i think it's very easy like a kind
00:33:47
of rip in the sea to get taken out without realizing that there's so much in our lives that we can prioritize that
00:33:54
aren't the most important things and my friends have got married and had kids and families very early
00:33:59
there are some that feed the confirmation bias or don't get married right or you know but the majority of them are very happy and just before we
00:34:06
started talking um i was going to mention like the things called the inner citadel where if
00:34:11
you can imagine that someone uh for whatever reason is this in response to the question asked about
00:34:16
monogamy yeah okay so before we start recording i asked james if he believed in monogamy so imagine you've got
00:34:22
someone who injures his leg and they have to chop his leg off i might butcher this what i'm saying he then might
00:34:28
end up being angry at people that have two legs and make up his own reason actually do you know what two legs is wasteland you know you don't need that
00:34:34
you only need one leg and because something didn't work for him or his his surroundings didn't suit what
00:34:39
happened to him he decided to tear everyone else's down so when we talk about monogamy
00:34:44
where there are people that are in open relationships i often look at them and you know i was going to say without
00:34:49
causing a fence [ __ ] them who hurt you you know like at what point did is a societal structure being monogamous but it's because there's a huge benefit to doing that you're talking about
00:35:00
sacrifice you're talking about you know primitive urges or whatever it is but at the base of that you get to support a
00:35:05
family better so i believe monogamy is good for loads of reasons i do believe in it and
00:35:11
also my mom and dad are still together they're each other's first girlfriend and boyfriend but i do find that people that come along and try and tear down your beliefs
00:35:17
of monogamy they're the people that it didn't work for them so they want to burn the system
00:35:22
same in the dieting world where you've got plus size models promoting body positivity
00:35:28
i think there's some absolute credit to that i'm a personal trainer so i cross viewed that six-pack but i think to them
00:35:33
they got [ __ ] over so much in the pursuit of trying to get in shape that they decided to tear the system down for
00:35:39
everyone else you know because it didn't work for them they have to go around and influence the way you see it
00:35:45
so i think that's one of the kind of ways that i see things like monogamy i think for the majority of people it's
00:35:50
perfect but you're still going to get well i'm assuming here but going to get temptations and you know when we think
00:35:57
about the monogamy discussion i had this conversation with my friends the other day there is i'm going to stitch them all up i don't
00:36:02
care there's six of them and it's split down the middle whether they believe in monogamy or polygamy um
00:36:09
or whether they believe i wouldn't say polygamy is necessarily that some of their beliefs it's more like is one partner for life the right thing
00:36:15
is marriage the right thing or do you have like a child with somebody maybe and then the future you're probably gonna end up
00:36:22
with somebody else um the stats around around this are showing i believe that people are struggling to stay in marriages um as society develops
00:36:35
how how do we not like are you not scared that you'll lose the thing how do you not
00:36:42
lose the spark so remember we said about the expectation in fact if you go into a relationship expecting that you're gonna
00:36:49
cheat or you're gonna break up i don't think that sets a good foundation for it again i would like to go into a
00:36:55
relationship and potentially a marriage or whatever fully believing in it but being happy to be wrong and if i get divorced later on
00:37:02
in life as long as i tried my hardest and i committed i can take that i could take that as a loss or whatever it is
00:37:07
but somehow in this debate we've lost the ability to try your hardest at something and you know what
00:37:13
if 10 15 years down the line you do lose it be amicable about it don't destroy someone's life and make them feel like a piece of [ __ ] because you cheated cheat them or whatever instead just call a spade a spade and be like look
00:37:24
we might not be the same people we were when we met i think people should try the best and try and build a stable home to bring up
00:37:29
a child because that's what i've been exposed to and if it doesn't work it doesn't work i also don't think the people should force the marriage at the
00:37:35
point that it's broken because i think that two people under a house that resent each other trying to bring up a family it's probably better off just
00:37:42
having parents in two different households and get more gifts for christmas or whatever it is but do you
00:37:48
think cheating is a lack of discipline in some respect and you know what the majority of it yes because we do get
00:37:53
urges and i think you know we're we're [ __ ] we're monkeys in suits right we we are
00:37:59
chimps at the end of the day we are organized apes we have come from a lineage of [ __ ]
00:38:05
each other up for so long like you go back a hundred years a thousand years the wars that we've had all humans have
00:38:10
ever done is get territorial on bits of land and kill each other right savages you know you watch braveheart you're like wow
00:38:16
imagine being a imagine being a soldier back then or you watched 300 and you're like wow these guys were spearing each other been going for lunch
00:38:23
so you know we are forcing our dna and who we are into this kind of preset mold of
00:38:29
you know do you take you to be a lawful of course there's going to be a lot of people that don't sue that i think at
00:38:36
the moment as well there's so many options there's so much availability so many secret places to slide dm
00:38:42
linkedin private message or your house app that could be used like tinder whatever it is no idea you could do that one so how's that
00:38:48
neither did i yeah [ __ ] so like uh there's there's so many different places that avenues
00:38:54
people can go you know back in the day if you wanted to take someone for a date when you've got a wife you could be seen
00:38:59
out you could be seen you know talking to that person i think the repercussions of being a [ __ ] house are probably a lot
00:39:05
less severe now and i think that the way society is going is worrying it is definitely worrying that there are so many options and what was that website was it ashley madison it was a dating site for married people
00:39:18
all right so if you wanted to be like look we need to be hidden away at a bar and have millions of users so straight
00:39:24
away i think it was brought down by that hacking group anonymous or whatever i could have got that wrong but so there are so many people it could
00:39:32
also be other things like a lack of confidence in your partner it could be a lack of confidence in your relationship it could
00:39:37
be all these things but in my mind i think better that you you go for something that feels right if you're someone that sits here and goes i do not want to get married i'm not saying you know it's going to fit everyone but i
00:39:48
think if you're someone that importantly there are sacrifices and when i look to get married it's not just
00:39:53
about the relationship i have with that person it's about creating a stable platform to bring up children but again
00:39:58
we're almost bred in society like we can never be wrong ignorance is not a bad thing we are all ignorant to so much the
00:40:04
majority of people couldn't tell you anything really substantial about history you know we don't know that much
00:40:10
about so many things i don't know what the motorways are called in the north all of these things so we're allowed to
00:40:15
be ignorant of these things and we're allowed to be wrong but it doesn't mean we shouldn't endeavor to get the best possible outcome
00:40:20
i am i remember my girlfriend said to me one day in it you know when your girlfriend says something you kind of rubbish at the time you deny it and then
00:40:26
later you're thinking about it it's one of those things she said to me she was like do you actually want to be in a relationship or are you doing it because
00:40:32
you know it's the right thing to do it's a very important question and it's and it's funny because a lot of what you were saying was related to you
00:40:39
know you know you should it's the right thing to do etc but deep in your core you know you talked a little bit about
00:40:45
the fact that we're all monkeys and what would the monkey want to do would do you actually want to be if you
00:40:51
could have an alternative option would you choose the alternative option where you have the upsides of the relationship
00:40:56
and also the upsides of being single is that what you believe most most people would choose i could be
00:41:02
getting this wrong as well but there's something called the hot cold empathy gap i think that's what it's called where when we're angry it's very hard to
00:41:08
imagine being calm when we're hot it's very hard to imagine being cold when you're in one state of consciousness the
00:41:14
opposing state feels very hard to reconcile so when you're single and you're [ __ ]
00:41:20
strangers and you're feeling very numb afterwards and thinking why the [ __ ] did i do that post not clarity uh as a lot
00:41:26
of people call it you're thinking car what i do for a relationship what i would do to
00:41:31
[ __ ] someone and want them to stay you know but then when you're in a relationship you get the opposite when you're in a relationship you're thinking
00:41:37
oh it could be nice to sleep with a stranger or whatever it is i think that we're always they say grass
00:41:42
is greener is very you know cliche but we're always looking at that opposing sense of feelings how we're feeling now and almost curious about it but i think there are dangers of you
00:41:53
know say you do want to open your relationship you're opening the door to catastrophic things should they happen
00:41:59
and i think that there is definitely like a a hard hard wiring side of things where
00:42:05
you know if you want that sense of freedom on your side cool but they're going to probably need that sense of
00:42:10
freedom on theirs and yeah it might seem like a good idea now whilst you're in the position of only slept with one
00:42:16
person for five years but then when you experience the polar opposite realization and reality what if you
00:42:23
realize you made a grave error you can't undo seeing or knowing or experiencing that so
00:42:29
again i'm not i'm not they're like this guy's been in a relationship but yeah he's giving us all advice no i get it i
00:42:34
i think i've arrived at the same conclusion i read the game that pick up artists book and then i read his sequel to it where he realizes that like much
00:42:40
of what the way he'd chosen to live and live was wrong you know he becomes the best pickup artist in the world he then
00:42:46
tries polygamy and realizes polygamy is actually not the right approach and doesn't need to happiness and then
00:42:51
decides the monogamy um and generally when i think about all the things that are worth it in my life
00:42:56
they come at a a sacrifice there's something else i have to choose instead if i want a six-pack can't
00:43:03
choose waffles every day if i want waffles i don't get the six-pack and so the six-pack itself is in fact just a
00:43:09
story it's a story of sacrifice of discipline it's a story about who you are and that's why it's perceived to be
00:43:14
valuable i think for me a relationship is is valuable because it's a story of commitment and
00:43:20
all the other things you said no to to say yes to this that's part of what actually gives it its intrinsic value so
00:43:26
and the six-pack is valuable because it's hard to obtain that's why we give it value and the story around the same
00:43:32
yeah they're hard to obtain now they're they're difficult it requires work like a six-pack exactly and you've got the
00:43:37
temptations whether it's a chocolate cake or a single person or maybe not even single but
00:43:42
you need to really have like a clear set idea on on what you want and again to lean on your values and it's interesting
00:43:49
you say about the book the game you realized in the first the the call to action wasn't so much a system but a belief in a system
00:43:56
and there is every chance that the systems i've put in that book might not actually hold any weight but
00:44:02
if someone believes they will they could end up working a bit like the game you tell someone this is how it works they have full faith in it and
00:44:09
it's an interesting one that some people just need to know that it can happen and for instance
00:44:15
i talk about the link we spoke about confidence and anxiety confidence and inspiration also sit
00:44:21
on a parallel with each other because to get inspired by someone what we really do is getting confidence from
00:44:28
seeing it happen so you think about someone like joe rogan started off with being audacious
00:44:33
he then inspired us by allowing us to feel more confident about the chance that that could happen
00:44:39
and there are two trails that people go with this and this was really interesting when i wrote about it people see your
00:44:44
success this success the podcast they go two ways one they're bitter and they [ __ ] want to hate you for it or two
00:44:51
they're inspired and you without knowing it are projecting confidence into the lives of hundreds of thousands because
00:44:56
you're showing them it can be done i think it was nelson mandela that said no one believes it's possible until it's
00:45:02
done and a good friend of mine lucy lloyd she bought me a little card that had it on it and gave it to me
00:45:08
and i stuck out my window when i first got to sydney and it's so important that people do try
00:45:13
their hardest endeavors like relationships because without knowing it they're going to be friends even your group of six people in that group
00:45:19
that you're inspiring them without even knowing it and inspiration doesn't mean you have to be the best relationship in the world but you're showing people it
00:45:25
works so i think that the buck doesn't just stop at sacrifice it also my parents would
00:45:31
have inspired me my dad said the key to a happy marriage is accepting you're wrong even when you're right
00:45:38
you talk a lot about dating in them in the book at different times chapter six you talk about dating apps
00:45:44
again and your relationship with dating apps and how uh you've been you've had kind of like an
00:45:49
on off relationship with dating apps when i was thinking about writing my next book one of the topics i was going to write about was modern dating because
00:45:55
it appears to me that there's a generation that have kind of been caught in the technological transition almost
00:46:03
so what i mean it's it's really it's a very big topic and when i was writing the book i was thinking [ __ ] this isn't
00:46:08
the dating book mate there's gonna be a lot of married people reading this and i say to them two things i go one
00:46:14
there might be something in there that doesn't change your life but it could [ __ ] change someone else's right and even if you don't have many friends you
00:46:21
could instill that in your kids or whatever it is and dating is such a big topic because it is
00:46:26
actually an incredibly big pain point because people either don't have the confidence required to meet someone or
00:46:31
they might not have the confidence to leave someone and when i spoke about the sunk cost fallacy
00:46:36
people remaining invested in something purely based off their previous endeavor whether it's time energy resources
00:46:43
there are so many people out there that if you ask them why they're with their partner they give you the amount of time they've already invested i've been
00:46:48
within four years yeah do i throw it away so you're already giving people confidence to leave a relationship and
00:46:53
if you think you've got professional life home life and health there's three things a lot of advice we need to give people
00:46:59
is around dating and it's been maybe three years since i've touched alcohol on a date
00:47:05
because i realized how much alcohol skews the dating scene as well and even my girlfriend won't mind me saying this
00:47:11
but it got to the point where i would drink to kill nerves before a date and you might meet someone and straight away
00:47:18
look at my god this isn't going to work but then three drinks in you oh kind of all right and then before you know it
00:47:23
you shagged a stranger on a weeknight you're hungover at work and you put yourself off dating again because you know that when you first met them you
00:47:29
didn't want that and the next day you did and you you're painting dating in a negative light and
00:47:34
even how i met my girlfriend now i would say to people let's meet and do something whether it's
00:47:41
going for a swim in the sea going for a walk have you got a dog trying to get a coffee and i actually like the idea of
00:47:47
moving with someone the two places i find the most uh organic conversations are driving and
00:47:52
walking driving when you're not sat facing each other and it's not quite so interview-esque people really open up
00:47:58
and they're also in a place that's very relaxing for them and when you go for a walk and there's movement involved i feel it feels less interview-esque you
00:48:06
say to me like let's remove dating out the context i want you to sit with a stranger and drink alcohol with them with a small chance they'll be
00:48:11
compatible like no imagine you know that's ludicrous i don't want to do that but when you break
00:48:17
it down again like the fear and insecurities whatever okay if the date is too much what about getting an ice
00:48:22
cream at the beach okay that's something i can do and as long as you're not trying to lose weight
00:48:27
doing a swim on a monday an ice cream on a tuesday a coffee on a wednesday people will think you're a bit promiscuous but
00:48:33
you know i mean then you can get more dates in and again we're going back into my marketing analogy surely seeing five people in a week for
00:48:40
20 30 minutes each is going to be better for your general building of prospects than it would be getting smashed on a thursday
00:48:47
night and shagging a stranger you're never going to talk to again so even the way people perceive dating can be hugely
00:48:52
changed and you talk about dating ups there's one in london it's called thursday yeah i know yeah where was that
00:48:58
when i needed it because there is so much small talk on social media where oh yeah what you're doing this weekend i
00:49:05
like that idea but it's giving us one of many walls we can hide behind because dating is difficult
00:49:12
and it removes sorry i've got a boyfriend fake numbers which i must have given my number wrong uh people are hiding behind that and
00:49:22
confidence isn't like an award it's not like a trophy that i give you to go on your wall well i don't see about it you're confident it's more like fitness
00:49:28
where if you stop training it you'll lose it and you'll lose it a lot quicker than you probably would expect so
00:49:34
people don't realize that with so many things they're paying into this bit like fitness but like going to the gym or going for a run and when you
00:49:41
put up this massive stop like i'm going to use dating apps although some people do find love and
00:49:47
meet their forever person on there without realizing it they are reducing them their ability to train that area of
00:49:53
them a bit like when you maybe don't do work for a week you go back and sit in front of your laptop how does this work
00:49:58
again so there is a negative definitely that goes along with the positive like newton's laws where you've got all this convenience on one side you're definitely breeding weakness on the other what is it that you
00:50:11
when you know that someone isn't going to fulfill what they say they want to do what are the cues of that like i was
00:50:18
just thinking because i'm thinking about a particular friend who continually says says they want to go to the gym and they continually say they want to change
00:50:24
their life but there's just no um there's but there's been no change in like 10 years and as a friend i'm getting like exhausted by you know sometimes i'm like
00:50:35
i talk about a lot in the podcast with when i have psychologists and stuff on i'm like am i overstepping my mark for even wanting to
00:50:41
help them it's a difficult one i'm the same where i've actually found myself turning into an [ __ ] yeah i don't
00:50:47
want to be an [ __ ] with my friends because i feel like maybe there's that point i'll get to where i finally will
00:50:52
click and then i realize i'm actually ruining the relationship a little bit amen i'm like are my friends now
00:50:57
resenting me because i'm trying to help them and yeah it i had a bit of a not falling out
00:51:03
actually having a chat with a friend and he said to me oh it's all right for you and we were living together at the time
00:51:09
and i said well i didn't live with someone who had a [ __ ] million followers when i was starting my business
00:51:14
you know like and i said that to him and i said when i was starting out as a pt i didn't have any friends i could lean on
00:51:21
to do stuff and i was trying i said i'll do anything you want for you to start this business i'm here for you you can
00:51:27
have my instagram for a week and promote your business whatever it is like but then you say yeah the the talk and
00:51:32
the actions don't always add up and then you get to a point where you're like do i want what's best for them or do i preserve the relationship in that
00:51:38
situation what do you think the blocker is belief belief yeah i think they want it but they don't really think they can do it
00:51:43
confidence is that this similar yeah and they they portray confidence in some areas of their life tremendously
00:51:49
but i i think the main thing is belief i think they want to believe they can do it but they don't truly believe it and
00:51:56
unfortunately action must come first and you must actually prove to yourself that it can be done and that requires a lot
00:52:02
of work without any gratification people don't realize that you say about everyone knowing how to
00:52:08
lose weight on the outside it's almost like a macro cycle but really the micro cycle is the tiny habits in between so
00:52:14
someone can go i need to eat less and move more but like that's nuanced really we dive that down we go okay
00:52:19
let's go no food till 1 pm let's go you know two big meals maybe one snack whatever and then we go okay 10 000 steps a day although that does attribute to the macro the big thing that's
00:52:32
happening we still must give them the small steps whether it's with a business where you say like they you know their
00:52:37
big macro strategy is to post more on social media but the micro is one post every day answering someone's questions
00:52:44
doing this doing that i think that if people's first stepping stone to where they think they need to go is too big
00:52:49
they'll never take the step and what i do as a coach in many facets of my life is to make
00:52:54
that first stepping stone so small they have no other option to take it super interesting because what you said there
00:53:00
you know the start start of that was um about how you in essence people people want evidence in order to start but the truth is when you start you get the evidence
00:53:11
and i see that a lot in people you know people coming up to me saying i've got this business idea they'll come up to me in the gym all the time and say i've got
00:53:17
this business idea and then you'll hear the next thing they'll say is all the excuses that they've put in front of
00:53:23
them starting and i really mean that like it literally is like i've got this great idea i think it's going to change the world
00:53:29
but and then they explain all the things they're imperfect about timing or funding or i just need to wait for this
00:53:36
or this or whatever and really under underpinning all of that is a lack of belief and like you're
00:53:42
right like when i started i'm sure when you started um i didn't have evidence i didn't have sufficient evidence that i knew what i was doing but i gained the evidence which resulted in belief from
00:53:54
stumbling forward in a very messy way for some reason people a lot of people need the evidence first and we have this
00:54:01
as well with imposter syndrome and some people rebuke imposter syndrome but we need to realize that every single
00:54:06
person is going to feel like an imposter you get someone macho going no not me but we will and
00:54:12
i like to point out to people that you will at some point be an imposter objectively even being a parent for the
00:54:17
first time you have no previous experience bringing a child into the world so the beginning
00:54:22
you need to pretty much lie to yourself and go i'm a good parent and then after three months and your young baby your
00:54:28
child hasn't got any bruises on his head you're like well i've got evidence i'm a good charge you know he didn't fall over and hit his head on a table or whatever
00:54:34
and the same in any endeavor your first podcast you did on diary ceo you would have had to say
00:54:40
i'm a good podcaster with no evidence that you are but then a hundred episodes and you go [ __ ] i'm actually all right
00:54:45
you are very good by the way as a podcast i think i just acted like one but then again you're being the person you need to be yeah and that's a massive
00:54:52
part of confidence as well the the first thing that people need to have a real clear vision on is who they need to be
00:54:57
and that was the first thing that projected me from not being an inherently confident person
00:55:02
should have seen the sweat patches i had from the last episode you know and i'm not trying to masquerade that fact i'm not trying to hide it up or be you know
00:55:10
dishonest with people instead i have so many internal conversations with myself about who i need to be today because we do need to become a persona in certain situations like being a father for the
00:55:22
first time like doing your first business sales pitch like starting your first podcast or your first
00:55:27
first day as ceo when you get promoted from a business you might go from director to managing director there is an element of you having to be an
00:55:34
imposter but you have to take it upon yourself with beliefs that you can do it because you can't get the evidence that
00:55:40
you're good at it before you start if i spoke to your girlfriend and i asked her i said what does james need to
00:55:45
work on what would she say oh oh yeah nice pattern i uh patience interesting i have a very active mind and i'm actually in the process of
00:55:58
trying to arrange getting an adhd test as an adult because people i know that have been diagnosed in their older life
00:56:04
say it's really benefited them understanding how their mind works and sometimes i get so excited of doing things that will please me i have blinkers on to other people
00:56:16
whether other people want to relax right now or other people you know don't want to be in the room while i'm filming content or whatever it is and i feel
00:56:22
that sometimes i need to be more patient and go okay here's the idea write it down and do it tomorrow that's one of
00:56:29
the things that it's only after i've done it where i think i had no consideration for anyone else then because
00:56:35
i created a pain point in my head that i wanted to action that and i always break down our personalities and this could be a really
00:56:41
weird way to think of it like a tribe you know whether you've got lefties and you know people on the right whether
00:56:47
you've got aggressive people or calm people we're all part of an ecosystem that we need the audacious people that
00:56:53
you know are gonna be impatient and do things we need the critical thinkers and people that are more logistic with that
00:56:58
but if you look at the 16 personalities none of those personalities are confident confident isn't a personality trait you've got debater entrepreneur one of these things
00:57:09
so people need to appreciate that even though as an ecosystem we all need to be vastly different confidence doesn't sit
00:57:14
as a personality trait it sets it's almost like a set of values that each and every person can have because some
00:57:21
things that we have are predetermined like heights and yes height can be influenced by the amount of nutrition you get growing up or whatever
00:57:27
but ultimately it doesn't matter if you're introvert extrovert whether you're patient impatient
00:57:33
everyone really confidence is your almost set of beliefs you have surrounding something based on previous experiences i could get you the most least confident person ever so i'm shy timid sat here
00:57:45
i go what do you like at driving 93 of people say they're above average at driving which doesn't make sense as a
00:57:51
statistic human beings are massively capable of being over confidence machines most uh exoneration cases are
00:57:59
from faulty eyewitnesses so whenever anyone's exonerated i think maybe 70 the reasons why from 40 eyewitnesses if
00:58:06
i said was that guy wearing a red top you go yeah yeah it definitely was so we do have the ability to be overconfident
00:58:12
we're just not utilizing it in all the areas of our lives that we should that kind of brings you back to that point about um about evidence when you
00:58:19
said the thing about driving because if i've never crashed a car i would i think i've got evidence of um
00:58:26
being good at driving but then in other facets of my life i might not have that evidence yeah i think i'm really trying to understand that that point about
00:58:31
evidence is confidence just a a result of the evidence we do or subjective evidence whether correct or
00:58:38
incorrect that we've gained in different areas like i could be you know if i'd crashed my car every day
00:58:43
i could be really confident on stage and on podcasts and in dates and whatever if i've had loads of positive reinforcement
00:58:49
in terms of evidence there but really unconfident in cars so uh in part of the book i come up with my own kind of
00:58:55
theory with this and i say that we must take into account that the history of someone will have an
00:59:01
influence on how they perceive the world but that doesn't mean it's fixed so you might
00:59:06
have you know asked some people on a date and never got a successful wave face to face but
00:59:12
that doesn't mean you're doomed forever you know you might go oh you know my ability to talk to someone to get the
00:59:17
number it's just not that good or how many people have you asked that number are three it's not something fixed that we can never develop on the other side
00:59:24
of things where people will be overconfident in certain scenarios it's also the availability bias turns into this as
00:59:30
well where we make decisions based on the information that's available to us so i've had a fun deep dive with this where
00:59:38
people have a fear of flying much more people have a fear of flying than they do fear of driving but driving that same
00:59:44
distance as far as fatality is much more dangerous your chances of dying driving are tremendously higher shark attacks
00:59:50
again in australia everyone goes you go in the sea it's really dangerous i go mate you're like
00:59:56
so many times more likely to drown than you are to get bitten by a shark but no one's getting in the water being afraid of drowning and that is the biggest
01:00:01
cause of death i believe on bondi beach where i live so much of what we perceive the outside world to be is really created and
01:00:08
curated by what's available to us and our friendship circles are massively you know influenceable on that as well
01:00:14
even you having three out of six of your friends that don't believe in monogamy that's going to influence your availability bias of what you think
01:00:21
is capable in a relationship there's so much more to the topic of confidence than just your your history it's also
01:00:27
your current and who you're with i guess even that's that friendship circle all those you know that is a form
01:00:32
of evidence as well like if my friends are telling me that i am a a useless scumbag whether they're saying
01:00:38
it directly or just with a facial expression um that is adding somewhat to my self-story which is this formation of
01:00:44
evidence i have about myself and that could lead me to be pessimistic in my endeavors or optimistic are you saying
01:00:50
to like are you advising people to chop these people out of their circles the term i use is picking your passengers where if i said you got to drive eight hours tomorrow that's one
01:01:01
thing but if i say i'm putting someone in the car with you that's something completely different altogether and
01:01:07
for eight hours you would be so meticulous on who you go with i'm sure that if it was someone you didn't really get on with you'd be like can we not
01:01:13
just get him a driver and drive him up you know your space in your car is so you know private to you and important to you and
01:01:19
again even when you are traveling around or whatever it is having people with you that are going to drain you of energy becomes almost like
01:01:25
a cost and by going on your own or with someone better picked you're going to be able to improve your productivity your sense of
01:01:32
the way you see things so we do need to appreciate that people we surround ourselves with are either going to be a headwind or a wind in our sails they can
01:01:39
be the neutral lot but we must take note of that and i'm not saying that if anyone causes you any issues get rid of them but you need to weigh it up in the
01:01:45
long term because if you're with someone who's got a pessimistic outlook on life in the world and they're not going to
01:01:51
change irrespective of how much you help them they will hinder your net position so the values of how much your net
01:01:57
position is important to you and your family and people around you you might have to make the decision to
01:02:02
let that person go in the book you reference jordan peterson um you talk about this utility
01:02:08
deprivate utility of deprivation concept a word a phrase i've never heard before
01:02:14
um please explain it to me and why you felt it was contextually relevant to this topic i went down a rabbit hole and
01:02:21
jordan peterson you know i don't agree with everything he says that's that's the that's the term
01:02:26
disclaimer i do not agree yeah yeah but i do agree with the majority of things he says and masturbation is something
01:02:32
that we kind of just you know porn and only fans we're kind of like oh you know let people live but
01:02:38
you know there are some only fans models being murdered by their fans whereas some of us might think oh it's good for society we've got
01:02:44
porn where men can access more naked women in an hour than a man could ever access in a life
01:02:50
20 30 40 years ago that again newton's laws of opposites every action opposite reaction that's gonna be doing things to people and if i'm in a bar and i'm like you know i
01:03:02
really want to talk to that person again i'm using a data knowledge it could be anything if i go home and masturbate to some really hot people in porn
01:03:08
i'd be like oh no i'm just getting another beer with my mates you know so having that utility of deprivation and if you abstain from and i'm not saying
01:03:15
i'm not anti-porn or nofap or whatever they call it i'm just saying to people to consider the implications if you stop if you're
01:03:21
someone who's lonely and you're single could abstaining from masturbation improve your net position [ __ ]
01:03:27
probably because you're going to be in a position where you can't just get the gas out the release valve every now and then that suits your purpose because
01:03:35
even some people are getting desensitized to sexual intimacy because of the amount of time they're spending
01:03:40
much important that's not good for anyone imagine you get to 40 and the idea of actually [ __ ] someone doesn't seem as good as the idea of what's
01:03:47
important and this is something especially with young people they realize well the reality of having
01:03:52
sex when you're 16 and what you've watched on porn is vastly different so we cannot say that this is just a
01:03:58
net benefit or a net positive thing for people so the utility of deprivation is to appreciate that sacrificing some
01:04:03
things in your life has a positive effect to stop drinking for instance will have a net positive on other areas
01:04:10
of your life to stop eating junk food or at least reduce the amount or reduce your adiposity the amount of body fat
01:04:16
you have there is a utility to depriving yourself although porn is great fast food is great and all
01:04:22
of these things although that's great there is a utility and a benefit to depriving yourself of them have you deprived yourself of masturbation
01:04:28
masturbation in general i'm in a healthy relationship so i haven't really got the time to do it as
01:04:33
i did before the urges are there sometimes don't get me wrong because it's also a form of escapism you know
01:04:39
people might fantasize about sleeping with other people and i think that if any you haven't got the time to do it that's [ __ ] no but like
01:04:45
that is [ __ ] you're right that's my i'm kind of trying to fill the gap there with like some kind of defense you could probably do it now and i wouldn't know
01:04:51
it's like now you said not to make the table make a noise so it's one of those things where
01:04:57
you know i'm not saying make it illegal get rid of porn i'm not saying that i'm saying that we need to take note of the
01:05:03
the conveniences in our life and i completely get that i'm just asking from a personal perspective it's a thing that i've been thinking a lot about because
01:05:09
i'm in a relationship as well and um i do believe that my intimate relationship with my partner will not be
01:05:14
as good if i masturbate all the time i my desire won't be there so if i masturbated at 9 00 pm and then i got in
01:05:20
bed with my partner at 10 p.m i'm gonna want to sleep and especially if they if you've somehow
01:05:27
misinterpreted where you're at in the day and then an arm comes around and goes hey babe and you're like [ __ ] yeah so
01:05:34
there'll be a lot of female listeners that can't appreciate to the full extent what it's like to be a man once you've ejaculated
01:05:41
and they call it post that clarity and all these things i'm sure i'm going to be absolutely slammed for saying this but it is a change in
01:05:46
in psychology like instantly there's no other way that you can experience it again the hot cold empathy gap when you're horny you can't imagine not
01:05:52
having a sex drive and when you've not got a sex drive you can't imagine being horny but you know it's one of those things where we just
01:05:58
need to take it into consideration and for someone if i was to sit opposite someone today and go could your life be
01:06:04
better if you stopped drinking as much they say yeah you should probably [ __ ] not drink as much could your life be better and your day tonight be
01:06:09
better if you stop wanking to porn yeah well maybe stop wanking to porn or at least do it less i think my entire life
01:06:16
would be better if i stopped wanking to porn i do because i think i'd have a better relationship i genuinely do i
01:06:22
think you would look forward to the intimacy way more if you knew the only way that you were going to get it
01:06:28
was with your part i mean there's me saying masturbation is intimacy but you would look forward to
01:06:34
it a lot more um if you weren't getting the releasing the valve in your hotel room while you're in london promoting your book what did you have cameras
01:06:45
but you're right it is one of those things where it's a complex topic and i'm not coming in it from a position of
01:06:50
expertise when you said that i thought i've never heard it put so succinctly that there is a benefit to abstaining
01:06:56
from things that you like and liver king exact same philosophy he goes we don't eat the liver because we like
01:07:02
the toast we do it because it's good for us and he's like no one likes training but we do it because do i sound like him it's like he's like he's in the room
01:07:08
again yeah yeah so it's it's one of those things where we must appreciate some things you know pure net benefit aren't going
01:07:15
to benefit us in a long time now if you're in a relationship and you're masturbating i would say that maybe isn't as severe as being
01:07:22
single and masturbating because being in a relationship and say you masturbate here and there or you have a
01:07:27
long shower and enjoy yourself that's one thing but if you're single and doing it you're preventing yourself from going down the path of doing something you
01:07:33
need to do which is to you know be more proactive in meeting a suitable life partner and again someone
01:07:38
say i'm brainwashed or this guy's monogamy brainwashed or whatever at least if you're in a relationship you're
01:07:43
not hindering your potential quite to the extent of inaction on this side what is your goal
01:07:49
like what is your do you have a goal in terms of your life when you think about what you're trying to achieve right now
01:07:55
from being here from what you've done over the last month what is it what is it you're trying to do i was i got to shoreditch this morning
01:08:03
about quarter to seven couldn't get a coffee so i'm walking down the road to try and find something and
01:08:08
i ended up going down the road and a lady just said thank you and i said what for and she goes you changed my life and i
01:08:15
was like thank you i was talking to her and she started crying and i get very awkward i get awkward when someone gets
01:08:21
me like a birthday present when people are like oh get the cake out of [ __ ] sake i even at christmas it feels weird to be
01:08:28
given gifts i just feel very awkward and i feel like me just going thanks for that isn't
01:08:33
enough so now i find myself putting it on like guys you didn't have to that's fake i just it weirds me out so when
01:08:39
people compliment me in real life i get very awkward and my friends laugh about it they're like you know relax mate
01:08:45
she's just saying thank you and then she started crying and i was like what am i done and
01:08:50
to me this is a very very strange thing that a stranger would cry seeing me when i've never met them spoken to them on
01:08:56
the phone or messaged them so from that interaction it's apparent that there is a net positive effect for what
01:09:03
i'm doing and i do take pleasure in that even though i do find it incredibly awkward so for me that small interaction there
01:09:09
kind of pays into this pot that this little crusade i'm on of trying to eradicate [ __ ] and i'm definitely
01:09:15
roughing up some people on one side but on the other side i'm making people's lives better i think [ __ ] this that
01:09:21
makes me feel good that's a selfish endeavor i'm helping people because it makes me feel good but
01:09:26
i'd like to continue that and at the same time i live i live a great life you know it sounds really cliche people go
01:09:33
i have something that other people will never have and that's enough and that's how i feel all the time so
01:09:40
yeah it's a bit crazy what was the worst day of your life 13th of march 2017. i went to i was in sydney i'd been there and personal training in the uk
01:09:53
did well earned good money uh lived in my parents moved out moved back in for a bit
01:09:58
my mum and dad were heroes for me when i was doing the long hours and you have to do i remember someone saying as a
01:10:04
personal trainer get your first thousand hours under your belt because once you've done that everything else is easy i just focused on that
01:10:10
and it went really well my mom and dad helped me my mum would leave leftover food for breakfast so i'd literally be
01:10:15
eating like yorkshire pudding on roast potatoes at nine o'clock in the morning cold at the tupperware and then i'd come home from rugby at
01:10:20
like 9 30 in the evening my mom's like give me a washing you know you go to bed so then when i went to australia that's
01:10:27
what i wanted to do again just face-to-face personal training but i went into a gym with 32 other personal trainers during who's listening
01:10:34
somewhere here was the only person that introduced himself to me at 32 pts whether it was because he saw her
01:10:40
struggling or the fact that i was english he was just a nice guy and he was like hey mate i want to get a coffee
01:10:45
and i pissed off so many of the other personal trainers by prospecting so hard on my first day that one of the trainers
01:10:51
said he said if you talk to my client again i'll take your head off i was like wow this is a competitive gym
01:10:58
and for the first six weeks in that gym that i met during i was failing i was not creating a
01:11:04
client base i was doing 25 30 hours of pt a week in the uk i moved to paradise now
01:11:10
struggling to do six hours and this is a crazy thing now i'm in sydney and people go james i love your stuff i go well in
01:11:15
2016 no one loved it i couldn't even get people in for a free session i would say to people like hey mate can
01:11:20
i give you a couple tips with the exercise you do and they're like now and so i've gone from this stage in my life
01:11:26
where that was demoralizing because at least if someone told me to [ __ ] off when they're doing a pec fly
01:11:31
in my old gym i could go into the pt room and have banter with other pts we'd pick ourselves up and go oh don't talk
01:11:36
to him mr grumpy guards doesn't want any help even though he can't contract his chest or whatever but in this gym i kind
01:11:42
of had nowhere to go so on the 13th of march i sat in an area called australia square and my two housemates said how's it going and i was like no good
01:11:53
i was like i was thinking about the fact i might have to move back home to my parents and i've just moved into paradise
01:12:00
the week before i had to borrow about 500 pound off my dad to buy a sofa i still have that sofa now
01:12:05
and like being 27 at the time messaging my dad and asking him to paypal me 500 quid so i could buy a sofa and some of the ikea stuff i was like it doesn't feel good because i had everything i wanted in the uk i
01:12:17
was doing well i went to follow my dreams and then suddenly i was borrowing money from my dad at [ __ ]
01:12:22
at the age where i shouldn't have to and that was the point for me where i was like
01:12:28
i need to do things differently so there's a street called pit street i walked down it and there was an office works and went into office works i
01:12:34
bought a whiteboard and some markers and it was only 2pm in the afternoon i was like i'm done went home 3pm
01:12:41
3pm in australia it's 6am in the uk so i set up a tripod got my iphone i didn't have to edit didn't know how to record i had to do a speech for three minutes i
01:12:51
had about 3 000 followers live on facebook with the use of whiteboard the first one got maybe like
01:12:57
100 likes and i was like i've gone [ __ ] viral and i decided that i was gonna do my six
01:13:02
hours of pt try the best i could which wasn't even enough to survive at that point but then i was going to go home
01:13:08
and do everything i could to build an online on online following and to build an online business and that was in march by may i left the
01:13:15
gym still had to pay rent for a year but i had one remaining client he actually i made more money staying at
01:13:21
home than i did going to the gym and i had one client and she said to me she couldn't afford to go to a festival so i
01:13:27
said instead of paying me 120 which is like 65 pounds i said bring me a gift i like training you we have fun just bring
01:13:33
me a gift so she come in she's like i've got you a lululemon hoodie so sick cost less than the pt session
01:13:39
so i'd go in and skateboard in and i would literally just go in to train this client for free but she'll have a gift to me and all the other pts were like is
01:13:44
it your birthday i was like i don't charge money to my clients anymore i have an online business but if it wasn't
01:13:50
for that day where i literally i had the lump in my throat when i was messing my mates and i was like i'm not good at
01:13:56
work i'm failing a pt business which is the only reason i came to australia if it wasn't for that
01:14:02
i wouldn't i got the whiteboard i wouldn't have got the markers and i wouldn't have gone home and gone live on facebook which just so happened to be
01:14:08
the beginning of a compounding effect to build a following it was then 50 000 followers i bought a camera learned how to edit terribly my
01:14:15
first video that i ever filmed uh without a iphone was one that did an aloe vera i didn't know how to wet the camera didn't know how to edit properly i did one long piece that i put on
01:14:26
facebook i was like aloe vera in that [ __ ] sunburn were you drinking it for fat loss oh you're an idiot and
01:14:33
although that was kind of like not even that bad like no one died but in the same respect that all wins feel
01:14:38
the same all losses can feel the same so it's not competition if you sell a business for five million dollars and
01:14:45
someone else sells one for 500 million you don't get a different dopamine and serotonin you're not on an uber surcharge you're not waking up like oh
01:14:51
my god i feel amazing but the same with pain for me to struggle in my business which is very
01:14:56
important to me someone might go well yeah my dog died and i said well we're both [ __ ] sad this isn't a competition but to me that was really
01:15:03
one of the times i was like this is [ __ ] but i'm so grateful to the version of myself back then that took
01:15:09
action from that because one of my favorite quotes in that book was from uh one of the most famous martial artists of all time called hixton gracie and he goes losing is not the same as
01:15:19
being defeated and that was massive you said it on my podcast where he goes you can lose but
01:15:25
if you turn up and you go again you've not been defeated so if someone competes in jiu jitsu and they lose a match
01:15:31
that's cool but if you lose and you never compete again as far as i'm concerned you were defeated that day so
01:15:36
for me social strategy whatever it is if people can appreciate whether it's asking for a number ask him for a pay
01:15:42
rise start in a business losing is one thing being defeated is something completely different it's one
01:15:47
of the quotes you said in chapter three in the book is the key to confidence is being happy to lose i thought that was
01:15:52
really a really simple way of saying a lot people seem to correlate confidence with
01:15:57
success but that's completely wrong confidence is much more of a relationship to failure and
01:16:03
i stumbled across that by accident with the door knocking i was completely fine someone told me to [ __ ] off knocking on their door to sell empower i was like
01:16:10
cool one in 100 is a cell that's one of the 99. so you know it becomes that point on the pt
01:16:16
even on the floor trying to help the guy with these pec flights him telling me to [ __ ] off i was so fine with that because
01:16:21
i knew i'd have to talk to finite amount of people to get sale so when people can be truly happy with with losing not
01:16:27
being happy with being defeated very different then you build a sense of confidence and if we all imagine our friend that's got the most confidence in
01:16:33
the world they're just beaming with it all the time if something doesn't go right for them and they fail
01:16:39
how much does it affect them often not a lot because they're not caught up with failing they're caught up
01:16:46
with what or how many times they would have to fail to accomplish success but if i've got a self story based on this goes
01:16:52
back to one of the points i raised earlier based on the fact that when i was eight years old i did public speaking on
01:16:58
stage and it went so badly that when i got off stage all the kids on the playground abused me one of them threw
01:17:03
an apple at my head you know the girl that i was dating with my little playground relationship dumped me
01:17:09
when i when i grow up my self-story around the consequence of public speaking failure will be trauma-centric and so
01:17:19
for those individuals presumably confidence is much harder to attain in if confidence is evidence you've got a
01:17:26
pretty big mountain of evidence to overcome with positive evidence um in order to change your your belief and that's why i'm trying to understand the role of trauma in
01:17:37
in confidence and belief so what i would say to this is if we can try and develop a sense of gratitude
01:17:44
towards these inadequacies because those inadequacies even from eight years old public speaking show you the path to
01:17:50
progression without understanding and really dialing down to where you're inadequate you can't have a path and so
01:17:57
many people that are kind of lost in life they're like i don't know what i should do in my life cool well can you
01:18:02
identify something that you're insecure about and can you work on it again i'm insecure about how i look naked can you
01:18:07
work on it yeah then [ __ ] work on it because you know again i think it was simon sinek who sat
01:18:14
opposite you and he goes passion comes as a byproduct not reason to start something it's a reason you remain invested in something
01:18:20
and people need to appreciate that passion may not exist in their life right now and it might not exist for
01:18:25
another five years because you might do another career for two years and you [ __ ] hate it and then you do another for three and you'd love it three years
01:18:31
in you feel passionate about it so if you're five years away from truly feeling passionate about your work
01:18:36
what can you do today you can work on your inadequacies whatever it is and it doesn't have to be this huge mountain of
01:18:43
you know oh i'm gonna ask a supermodel in a day it doesn't have to be that you don't have to double your salary asking
01:18:48
for a pay rise you just need to do something that you could do to develop your inadequacies would that be your tip because there's going to be people
01:18:53
listening and i can almost sometimes when i'm recording this podcast the way that i decide what question to ask the guest is i just go down the lens i go
01:19:01
through the lens into the person that i know is listening and i know that there'll be a suzanne walking her
01:19:07
dog this morning who's got a confidence issue as it relates to just herself and her life generally
01:19:13
maybe she might characterize it as low self-esteem she struggles to take action against the things that she calls her
01:19:19
ambitions what is the the actionable place for su what's the if there was one actionable thing to take away from this what would that be where does what does suzanne do today i'll be taking this one
01:19:30
from tim ferriss i'll fully credit him fine we'll cut that out you can just own it steal it so there's a exercise online
01:19:36
which is very popular in asking 10 discount on a coffee and everyone's like really attacked this
01:19:43
because they think it's about the discount it's not it's about looking [ __ ] stupid so the next time you
01:19:48
order a cup of coffee you're to ask for a 10 discount not because you expect to get one but because it's a really [ __ ] uncomfortable situation
01:19:55
in many cases you're asking someone who can't give you a discount it's completely out of your control there are people around you and it it's just a
01:20:01
weird thing to ask so i wrote the chapter i'm in sydney and i thought i'm a [ __ ] hypocrite if
01:20:06
i don't do this so there's like a little cafe near where i work i was like i'm going to do it and there's no one there
01:20:12
so sweet no one's in the queue and as i get there it got to the point where i just didn't get served and then there's two people behind me i was like [ __ ]
01:20:18
don't do it and i was like well it's gonna feel very difficult right in the next chapters of the book feeling like a fraud
01:20:24
so i was like can i get a 10 discount on my coffee please and she just looked at me like
01:20:29
what and i was like i'm such an entitled little prick right now this is how i must see him and she was like what do you mean i was
01:20:35
like can i get a 10 discount and at this point i was like this is the most uncomfortable i've been i was like
01:20:41
i would rather go out 5 000 people in a crowd no nothing pre-organized i'd rather do that
01:20:47
than do this situation right now and she turned around behind and they had like a stamp card where you get your 10th coffee free and she was like but you buy
01:20:55
10 you can get 10 off and then i walked away i'm in from that and i realized why it was such a great
01:21:02
example because it's not about the discount it's about putting yourself in a situation that makes you feel very uncomfortable and
01:21:08
then when you leave you realize why did i create this fast why was i sweating why did i have adrenaline why
01:21:14
did i have sweat patches from such a simple interaction of being uncomfortable and i felt very accomplished and i
01:21:20
weren't like when i got back to writing i felt invigorated i'm never going to use that stamp card to me i'd rather not
01:21:26
worry about the card and pay for extra for the coffee but i was like wow i was like what else can i do and i only did
01:21:32
it as an exercise to help me with the book writing process and i was like wow i get it i get why people would tell
01:21:38
other people to do that because people seem to think people are paying a lot more attention to us than they actually are mark manson he said as his
01:21:46
favorite quote on your podcast people wouldn't care what other people thought of them so much if they realized how
01:21:51
seldom they do i had google seldom i didn't know what it meant and not yeah um and i was like [ __ ] that's a really
01:21:58
good point and there's been studies on this where people turn up to class late they think
01:22:04
everyone's looking at them they are students at the end if anyone came in late the proportions were much lower and
01:22:09
even people that wear t-shirts with embarrassing characters on it they think that half the people they
01:22:15
interacted with would remember and the percentages are much lower we seem to think that we're in the truman show in every single action we
01:22:21
take that the world cares about us but they don't they don't even notice we're there half the time the chances are the people i was petrified of behind me
01:22:28
didn't even listen or they were too busy they're on their phone checking tick tock the person behind probably just thought as a weirdo and never remembered
01:22:34
my face again maybe you inspired them maybe maybe they're going to go do it again so there are there are little
01:22:40
things like that or at least if you have something in front of you that is really petrifying you is there some way
01:22:47
you could break that down into an actionable step say you know if someone out there wants to
01:22:53
express their opinions on topic maybe they're a physio maybe they're a pt maybe they're an investment bank or a mortgage broker they're petrified of
01:22:59
putting their opinion out there because they're worried about what other mortgage brokers or pts are going to think they're worried about the people
01:23:04
that are never going to give them money that's the [ __ ] craziest thing pt's are petrified about what pt's think about how many [ __ ] pts sat in your
01:23:10
console how many oh yeah i'd like to use my pt could they post something because something is better than nothing is there they don't have to be controversial is there one step they can take and if people can identify that one
01:23:23
small step if it's too big break it down and i just don't understand why people can't set themselves that mental exercise i think the most amazing thing about the coffee example as well is the
01:23:34
fact that you actually got you found a path to getting ten percent and it's funny because so many times i
01:23:40
reflect on my own story just asking a question was actually the catalyst it was that was the inflection point in my
01:23:46
life where everything changed and people don't have the confidence to ask the question and it sounds like such
01:23:51
a trivial thing like when you was just asking for temperature on coffee but for me that was so profound that she she was like what what but then if she turns
01:23:58
around and actually opens the door to 10 off you think about that in your life generally you talk about it in the book
01:24:04
about asking for a pay rise or asking for a promotion or asking for whatever um i think if you zoom out on your life
01:24:11
and you are the type of person who develops the habit of asking your life will have a completely
01:24:16
different trajectory the further you zoom out because i can tell you that the pivotal moments in mind where i asked a
01:24:23
simple question and it seemingly changed everything or you know like you think about how things
01:24:28
compounded over time the compounding moments were these moments of asking for something which most people
01:24:35
would have you know you talk about personality types in here you say you know the need to achieve or the need to avoid failure
01:24:40
i think a lot of that is is kind of interlinked with what we're saying here because i've always had the
01:24:46
i feel like the need to achieve has outweighed my my need to avoid failure so i'm much more likely to ask for [ __ ]
01:24:53
from people especially when i started out just email a guy would you invest in my company the weird thing which i don't
01:24:59
think i ever talk about is the first email i sent became my first investor and i bet your
01:25:04
relationship with him saying no would have been fine i had nothing to lose i was shot lifting pizzas it was like
01:25:10
i was stealing pizzas to feed myself i'd also emailed this guy and asked him for 10 grand and he said yeah
01:25:16
it's crazy you say that the it's this point you have before about asking the question i was
01:25:21
visiting in split they have these in croatia they have these like waterfalls and you go out like minivans and you go
01:25:26
and explore them usually we did got weeks after we were like dying a little bit let's go to a waterfall do something wholesome there's a guy on a laptop at
01:25:33
the back of the minivan and i was like what are you doing and he was like i have an accountancy business in miami i was like okay but what are
01:25:40
you doing here he's like i'm working i was like what you're working on a laptop from miami right now
01:25:46
now and i was like being inquisitive and he goes can i recommend a book and he recommended the book four hour by week
01:25:53
and i got home and i read through it and there were some things that just didn't apply to me at all but then the one
01:25:58
sentence summarized exactly every single emotion i'd felt for the last year and it said the opposite of happiness is
01:26:04
boredom and within three weeks i flew to australia one way that was my inception moment a book recommendation from a
01:26:10
random guy in a minivan in croatia sent me to do what is arguably no it is the best single decision i made in my life
01:26:17
also and i do i look back now and i'm like whoa the universe the butterfly effect if
01:26:22
yeah i had picked a different seat on the minivan i don't know where i would be today
01:26:28
the opposite of happiness is boredom so sometimes when people experiencing almost like a bit of malaise or they're
01:26:34
not experiencing happiness and it's full emotion they think that and this is only one spectrum of it
01:26:41
they're not sure of the emotion they're experiencing and for me i realized although i was successful in the uk and pt and i was
01:26:47
bored i wondered what this weird emotion was why i wasn't feeling the same motivation to go to work i wasn't enjoying the same transactions and i realized that my growth had shunted without realizing
01:27:00
because i was comfortable i was earning good money i was you know everything was i was the highest paid pt in my gym it
01:27:05
was easy to just remain there were you lacking a sense of purpose probably looking back now but i was meaningful
01:27:12
purpose like you've got a purpose you know going to the gym a purpose but like meaningful purpose where it really has
01:27:18
uh intrinsic you know meaning to you you think it's a worthwhile endeavor the way i feel now i
01:27:24
didn't think was possible when i was younger so when i was 27 and made this decision i didn't know that i could have
01:27:30
purpose in that respect i was very happy just being a pt in the gym but i never realized i'd always up until this point
01:27:37
of i'd gone 26 out of 27 years never earning enough money to really get by you know i'd never really succeeded in business 27 this is the first time
01:27:48
i've actually accomplished anything all my jobs and relationships before i've just been failed at at 27 years old i'd done nothing remarkable with my life
01:27:55
whatsoever rugby career average grades average job performance is average at 27 i was
01:28:02
actually excelling in something for the first time in my life so being bored was a very strange emotion i couldn't decipher it's like what is this feeling
01:28:09
because i'd never succeeded at anything really i didn't think it was possible to be successful and board at the same time
01:28:15
and then flying to australia i was never bored again and i haven't been since i think a
01:28:20
lot of people are successful on board you know what i mean successful in the context of someone else of the social
01:28:27
definition of success right you're not truly successful i think if you're bored but you are in the eyes of maybe your
01:28:32
parents that wanted you to be a doctor and now look at you smashing it as a doctor but you you know but you're
01:28:39
you're bored another tough thing to take into account was the fact i was servicing about seven hours a day of pt which is like seven
01:28:46
one to one meetings and i mean it's quite hard because at least when we do a podcast now if it's two hours we
01:28:53
can go hard for these two hours because we know there are going to be millions of hours listening to you but for me
01:28:58
that one hour i spend with a client it's just one person yeah if we were to record this and only one person would listen to it you'd be like i'm not sure
01:29:04
this is really cost efficient so those seven hours a day although i had a purpose in those lives
01:29:10
it almost got to the point where i was like i could be helping more and that's why i enjoyed doing social media although i didn't pay off for the first
01:29:16
four years and that's the purpose piece though that's the that's it would be even more meaningful and worthwhile for
01:29:21
you to do to do more and people say this now they go would you pt someone for two thousand
01:29:27
pounds an hour like i was tempted but that one hour i could spend making one video that could i get that all the time people people say to me you should be like a life coach where you should um do
01:29:37
coaching sessions and i'm like yeah but i get to do coaching sessions on here by bringing on like you know people like you and simon
01:29:43
sinek and whoever i bring on this is the coaching session and millions can listen versus one on one and it almost seems
01:29:49
like a bit of a bit of a waste not no disrespect to my clients before they were the people that enabled me to sit
01:29:54
here right now and i'll be forever grateful for them but it did get to the point where i was like i almost take more happiness from
01:30:01
helping thousands than i would want and the financial implications are obviously very different but
01:30:06
it's amazing to see a video where so many people the video might take me 15 minutes to make an edit and put out i
01:30:12
still i'm i do my own editing it's probably the happiest moment of some of my days i love the creation phase
01:30:19
like i've had an idea it's been born i've recorded it run to my room i'm editing it getting all perfect then i
01:30:24
put it out and i check the next day and i'm like i can't comprehend the amount of people that might have benefited and
01:30:30
especially when something gets a lot of views and i'm sure let's say you put this podcast out i'm not sure i did this
01:30:36
the other day i was watching england play rugby i was in a stadium with 50 000 people and i was like there's a lot of people
01:30:43
here and if someone asked me to go into the middle and be like james here's a microphone chat [ __ ] i like that's a lot of people
01:30:50
my story reviews were a quarter of a million the same day and i was like how is this real how is this real and
01:30:55
when you think about the amount of people you can talk to i can't comprehend it what would you say to those people that
01:31:01
are currently bored in their lives sometimes my biggest fear is setting my sights on a mountain where i could reach the summit and i think some people haven't realized they've reached the summit and it's very
01:31:12
important that you get to that point and you set a new height to accomplish so again i always talk about jiu-jitsu but for me that is something that will never be finished i will never
01:31:24
conquer that and it doesn't have to be martial arts for people but there should be something that you move away from
01:31:29
your business because someone can take away your business someone can take away your social media someone can take away everything but they can't take away that
01:31:35
and having something where you know you'll never master it i think i know i've discovered that i'll never be bored
01:31:41
and i love that because if i break my leg tomorrow training i can teach and if i can't teach i can study and if i can study i can pass on the information to other people i feel like stagnation
01:31:52
is like my biggest fear and i think a lot of people just haven't realized that they're there so they just need to set their sights on something
01:31:59
anything no it's interesting it's interesting that i everything you've said resonates a lot there because i
01:32:04
realized at some point maybe when i completed the first set of goals i had at 18 that the only goals worth having
01:32:11
in this phase in the next chapter of my life were those that are incompletable so in like every facet of my life the
01:32:17
the best goals i have the most the most intrinsically fulfilling are those that i know i can't complete so i
01:32:22
posted on my instagram the other day about the gym every year i wanted to get a six-pack for summer that was the goal
01:32:27
you know it would maybe last four months and then i'd fail at some point my goal became consistency something that i
01:32:33
could never really complete it's something that i can you know achieve every day but a goal that can't be completed and it's the same with this
01:32:38
podcast the reason it's so enjoyable is because there is absolutely no end there's no conceivable end in sight it's
01:32:45
the journey itself and it's the it's the the process that i think is going to be rewarding and then i tried to change all
01:32:50
my businesses at one point when i started reading about simon sinek and infinite games and finite games so i said what would i have to do to create a
01:32:56
business from top to bottom that was designed to to not have these goals of like let's be
01:33:02
number one or let's make 100 million but was infinite and it completely changes everything and then it has a really
01:33:08
impact and strange impact on how you treat people as team members so you start designing the organization
01:33:14
to be sustainable in every way that is where i'm at in my life now it's trying to fill my life with these incompletable
01:33:19
goals because completed goals let me down you know i said about the ansi climax seeking inspiration from people that
01:33:25
have done it from our last conversation i didn't realize how much our conversation had impacted me until i got
01:33:31
home and i was like i'm not producing a good level podcast i was like i need to get proper
01:33:37
microphones i need to invest in better cameras i need to do a better job editing and then your social strategy as well
01:33:44
just every facet of it i was like i was inspired by you doing better than me and
01:33:49
that was something that i'd three months later i went [ __ ] sitting down with you i was like that really like rubbed
01:33:55
shoulders in a way that benefited me and i was like it's one of the first times i've really felt the impact of
01:34:01
what even just sitting and talking someone can do for your inhabits and i found it such a shame that some people
01:34:07
won't be inspired by other people's success i feel like it's a shame that so many people see success and see as a
01:34:13
reason to be bitter and yeah for me it was it was great i left feeling for a start i think you forced a lot of people that didn't like me to listen
01:34:26
they i know a lot of people would have gone why the [ __ ] yeah stephen sat down with him yeah yeah and they've gone pro listen to and i got a lot of people
01:34:32
messaging me going i thought you're a dick we have a closing tradition on this podcast as you know of your question funnily enough has been left by the
01:34:39
liver king oh snap i didn't think about that when you said he was the last one on i was like oh that's really cool i was like i kind of would have liked to have met him and just to
01:34:50
be in his aura not because i'm a fanboy but like i always look at him and i'm like i want to know how he smells
01:34:56
you know he smells bad but and i'm only saying that because he said it so he walked in and said by the way i smell
01:35:01
bad because i don't use any deodorant but um i don't actually usually tell people who's written the question but i'll make an exception today
01:35:07
um what is the hardest why am i nervous that's a question i feel like is you know when you're an interview like ready to get a job you're like the last question if you want to win
01:35:21
what is the hardest thing you've ever done in life your right of passage oh i gotta try and answer this that sounds like a [ __ ] right of passage hardest thing i've ever done
01:35:36
see all the things that come to mind like jokes i can make like putting up with durian's disorganization or something you know
01:35:42
but i've got to think about serious answer he talked a lot about this concept of
01:35:48
your rite of passage so his hardest moments in life he sees them all as a right of passage for getting somewhere else
01:35:55
the only real thing that i would say has been hard or even noteworthy would be the
01:36:00
ability to fall in love with repetition of dull tasks it sounds like a really weird thing to say it's the only really painful thing i've ever done in my life really where there are things you need to do every
01:36:11
day consistently for years without any form of you know instant gratification and
01:36:18
evidently not enough people have that ability and there have been so many days of not wanted to do anything
01:36:24
but you do it anyway and you kind of fall in love with these very small minute repetitions and it's
01:36:31
the only thing that i've ever really found hard in my life and it definitely sounds like i'm coming from a point of privilege i feel like i've done a
01:36:38
disservice you probably expected a lot more battle-hardened people i wish i could say it was a tour of afghanistan
01:36:43
or working in a award during kovid or you know saving someone's life but i probably haven't i've probably done liver king dirty a little bit there those small disciplines you're talking about though those small things where
01:36:56
you know we all have them every day it could be as small as just going going to the gym avoiding eating something that's
01:37:02
tempting whatever those small disciplines end up defining us over the long term as one of my favorite books
01:37:07
the slight edge um describes what is driving those small disciplines on a day-to-day basis why are you doing
01:37:13
those small those small repetitions if there is no instant gratification i think one thing it's difficult to credit
01:37:20
yourself with stuff but i've always been very good at seeing long-term benefit of short-term actions
01:37:25
and you know for me even little things i've got a strange insight in life where so many
01:37:31
people are focused on doing things now for a better life later on when i'm completely inverted i'm so focused on having a good life now for my my life
01:37:38
isn't that stressful everyone's like oh you should buy a house or buy 10 houses and for me i'm like it'd be good financially but it's stressful
01:37:45
and for me i know if i turn up into these little things every day that future life future relationships future family can
01:37:52
benefit from it something that my parents have definitely done my dad commuted into london for 50 years
01:37:58
the same business every day it's about an hour and 25 minutes from where we live there and back every day he never
01:38:04
pulled sick days he was never lazy my mum was also incredibly consistent with the upbringing of me and my sister and i
01:38:10
look back at the amount of sacrifice that they made short little things like putting up with my behavior or my dad
01:38:15
going to work on a train every day and i think he only really ever did these things
01:38:21
not for himself but for people that didn't exist yet almost like confidence is predicting success in the future we can create
01:38:27
success in the future by doing these small things so i think it's definitely stemmed from that where
01:38:32
it's not so much about me because i'm happy now but if i keep doing these things i can create happiness for people further down the line we talk about
01:38:38
privilege as well like we could talk about any form of privilege whether it's racial economic whatever
01:38:44
we need to take some ownership that the reason someone like me can take an experienced privilege now is the fact
01:38:51
that people before me were long-sighted with their goals and ambitions and the people before them were as well my parents made very smart decisions for
01:38:58
me to be able to be able to go to australia at 27. that was a privilege for some people they have family members
01:39:04
that rely on them they have professional if you're a police officer you work in a hospital you don't have
01:39:09
the luxury of just leaving your precinct to go on a jolly to the other side of the world as the pt i did
01:39:14
so yeah i think i do the small things now so that in the long term in the future
01:39:20
someone else can reap the benefits that i did of them i have to say well done and thank you for writing a book on this topic because it is a topic that so many
01:39:27
people i think i think i'm right in saying that confidence is the single biggest topic
01:39:33
that i'm peppered with in terms of questions people are trying to figure it out because it is this great inhibitor
01:39:39
of all they believe they can be it is a great inhibitor of so much happiness and health and fulfillment and all of those
01:39:45
things so when i it was also one of the things that i i did consider writing a book about one day but after reading your book
01:39:51
and and understanding how nuanced and truthful and honest and appreciative of both sides of the coin
01:39:58
it is i don't feel like i ever have to write a book of confidence again because i think you really covered it so well done thank you people are going to love
01:40:04
this book for sure thank you very much and you know that as well i think because i i'm you know i asked that first question at
01:40:09
the start about why you wrote about confidence assuming it was because of the because the fact you also get peppered in various ways even even as
01:40:16
you say with those pain points if they're not saying it directly at the heart of it they are trying to figure out how to
01:40:21
how to to achieve their goals ultimately by this word that they believe is is confidence so well done
01:40:27
thank you thanks for coming back here i love these conversations i do them over and over again just because half the time i'm doing it just to try and
01:40:32
develop my own thinking um and it's also a huge honor that you even listened to this podcast i find that really awesome
01:40:38
because you're incredibly smart person you're incredibly nice guy and um those are the kind of people that uh
01:40:45
i love um spending time with so thanks james hope to see you again soon if you'll ever come back on of course and i hope
01:40:51
this book tour goes incredibly well thank you very much i am so excited to announce our new sponsor for this podcast and that is
01:40:58
blue jeans by verizon for any of you that aren't already familiar with bluejeans they are a video conferencing
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and collaboration tool who offer an immersive communication experience that drives pretty unparalleled employee and
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customer engagement experiences me and all of my teams across all of my portfolio companies switched over to
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blue jeans a couple of months ago and we have not looked back the best thing for us has been the totally frictionless
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experience no glitching no sound issues no delays or any of those things that usually make virtual meetings really
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really frustrating we use blue jeans anywhere on any device at any time and it's perfect for my small businesses
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that just have 10 or 20 people to some of my bigger businesses that have hundreds of people i'm a big fan as you
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can probably tell so i've been quite excited for for some time to announce this partnership and in the coming weeks
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i'll explain the features and really why it's perfect for you if you haven't considered using or switching over to
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blue jeans yet but if you can't wait head over to bluejeans.com to learn more honestly it's been one of the real sort
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of game changers in my business quick one it's so crazy that in the last couple of months i've had so many people
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tag me on instagram even on telegram and in my twitter dms in a picture of them starting their heel
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journey and it's one of the most amazing things in my life that i get to do a podcast which of course needs money
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to to fuel and i have a sponsor like you who i genuinely believe is going to help
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every single person who starts their heel journey change their life because this podcast the
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central intention of this podcast is to help people live better lives and we get to sit here and i get to promote to you
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a product which has not only helped me change my life but it's going to help millions of people and is helping millions of people live a nutritionally
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complete life it's so it's such an incredible product and for me the reason why it's incredible is because it gives
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me my protein it gives me my vitamins minerals it's plant-based it's low in sugar gluten-free it does all of that in
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a small drink that tastes good there are other products there's foods there's the hot and savory collection many other things but for me this ready to drink is
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the absolute saviour of my diet throughout the week where i'm moving at such pace look i don't want to labor the point but
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if you haven't tried you'll give it a try and if you do tag me instagram wherever you try it
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