Speaker 1: I'll get a Tom Hope, You're terrific. Welcome to another
Speaker 1: installment of the You Project. So I've decided I'm going
Speaker 1: to do a little series. I'm gonna do a little
Speaker 1: series this week. So this will come out on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: So Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Don't ask me why I'm
Speaker 1: starting on a Tuesday, fuck it because I can. Because
Speaker 1: I can. And the idea excuse that noise in the
Speaker 1: background and moving shit on my desk. The idea for
Speaker 1: this short this is going to be somewhat reminiscent of
Speaker 1: my Life podcast episodes. If you remember, back in the day,
Speaker 1: I did two hundred episodes of Life, which were like
Speaker 1: these little ten minute installments, like little daily coaching sessions.
Speaker 1: So for this week it's going to kind of be
Speaker 1: a version of that. I've got a bunch of really
Speaker 1: good stuff lined up, some amazing guests coming, lots of
Speaker 1: great things. I've got a few interview this views this week,
Speaker 1: which will go live from kind of Sunday Monday onwards.
Speaker 1: After this stuff. But I thought we'd do something different,
Speaker 1: might work, might not, who knows. It's what you do?
Speaker 1: You ever go, don't you? So I want to share
Speaker 1: a different idea or construct or strategy or life improving
Speaker 1: kind of technique that might help you create some kind
Speaker 1: of internal or external positive shift, some kind of improvement, growth, development, evolution, understanding, insight, awareness,
Speaker 1: some form of improvement on planet you. And some of
Speaker 1: the things that I'm sharing, a lot of what I'm
Speaker 1: sharing has really been stuff that has just become evident
Speaker 1: to me through my own trials and tribulations, falling down
Speaker 1: and getting up for sixty odd years. So you know,
Speaker 1: in business, in life, with health, in relationships, with money,
Speaker 1: with you know, lifestyle, with trying to figure out who
Speaker 1: I am and who I want to be and how
Speaker 1: I want to be and how I might make that happen.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, from my experience working with thousands
Speaker 1: of people in a personal training capacity thousands of sessions.
Speaker 1: I've said this a bunch of times, but I did
Speaker 1: over fifty thousand sessions of personal training. Think about that.
Speaker 1: Fifty thousand sessions of personal training. That's a lot of conversations,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of interaction. That's a lot of different
Speaker 1: minds and a lot of different beliefs, and a lot
Speaker 1: of different bodies, a lot of different backgrounds, a lot
Speaker 1: of different expectations and a lot of different needs that
Speaker 1: I needed to navigate and negotiate and understand and have
Speaker 1: some kind of insight into in order for me to
Speaker 1: be able to help people create the outcome slash outcomes
Speaker 1: that they wanted to create with their body. And while
Speaker 1: mostly we know that mostly people go to the gym
Speaker 1: because they want to change something about their body, a
Speaker 1: physiological kind of shift, of course, we also know that,
Speaker 1: you know, even when we just talk about getting in
Speaker 1: shape physically, we know that it's not just about the body.
Speaker 1: As I've said many times quite often, it's almost like
Speaker 1: the body is the consequence. It's really a behavioral and
Speaker 1: practical and social and emotional and psychological process with a
Speaker 1: physical consequence. You know, it's about choice, it's about thinking, habits, behavior,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And so, you know what was really
Speaker 1: interesting for me as a young trainer, as a young
Speaker 1: gym instructor, as someone who kicked off their health career
Speaker 1: fitness career at eighteen with really no fucking idea. But
Speaker 1: as I was primarily at that stage anyway, an experiential learner,
Speaker 1: I was quite good at understanding people and reading people,
Speaker 1: and intuitively, while I didn't have great academic or theoretical knowledge.
Speaker 1: I was not bad at intuitively and instinctively being able
Speaker 1: to meet people where they are at. And you know,
Speaker 1: the common denominator, as I've said many times for people
Speaker 1: who go to a gym, is that they want to change.
Speaker 1: And so in a way, you're not just a gym
Speaker 1: instructor or a personal trainer, or an exercise physiologist or
Speaker 1: a gym manager or whatever I was at that stage
Speaker 1: of my journey, But you are an agent of change.
Speaker 1: You are a change management expert of sorts, or you
Speaker 1: become that over time because you start to realize that
Speaker 1: helping someone change their body, but also change their understanding
Speaker 1: and change their knowledge, and change their thinking, and change
Speaker 1: their habits and behaviors, and change their their day to
Speaker 1: day operating system, and to change the way that they
Speaker 1: think about food or relate to food, to change the
Speaker 1: relationship that they have with food and their body and
Speaker 1: with exercise, the way that they socialize, the way that
Speaker 1: they self regulate or don't self regulate. You realize that
Speaker 1: this is like a really multi dimensional, complicated, integrated process.
Speaker 1: It's not about one thing, It's about many things, and
Speaker 1: often it's about people's willingness to do the thing that
Speaker 1: they have been unwilling to do up until that point
Speaker 1: in time. What do I mean by that, Well, how
Speaker 1: many of us, how many of you listening? I know
Speaker 1: I have done this, But how many of us know
Speaker 1: what we should do, but don't do what we know
Speaker 1: to do because it's uncomfortable or because it's not convenient,
Speaker 1: or it's not quick, or it's not painless. And the
Speaker 1: answer is, obviously, many of us, or perhaps all of us,
Speaker 1: have done that at some stage. And so there's the
Speaker 1: thing that we're capable of doing. That's one. And two,
Speaker 1: there's the thing that we're actually doing with those capabilities
Speaker 1: or with that capacity or with that potential. And it's
Speaker 1: my experience that while a lot of people have most
Speaker 1: people I would say have a capacity for significant change, shift, growth, evolution, development, resilience, competence,
Speaker 1: you know, all of those things that there's also a
Speaker 1: large percentage of people who never really even open the
Speaker 1: door on that stuff because they're too lazy, they're too inconsistent,
Speaker 1: they're too fearful, or they're too unwilling to choose the
Speaker 1: right path, not the easy path. As pursuant to the title,
Speaker 1: of this episode, and that is, you know, there are
Speaker 1: the things that we need to do, and they're the
Speaker 1: things that we want to do. Are the things that
Speaker 1: need to be done to create the outcome we want
Speaker 1: to create with our body, with our brand, with our business,
Speaker 1: with our lifestyle, with our relationships, with our bank balance,
Speaker 1: with our academic journey, with our capacity to live our values,
Speaker 1: to walk our talk, to live that life of spirituality
Speaker 1: that's aligned with our values and beliefs. There's the path
Speaker 1: that we can choose that's somewhat easy and convenient and painless,
Speaker 1: but my experience and observation is that that doesn't get
Speaker 1: us where we really want to go or could go.
Speaker 1: And so you know, this willingness to be able to say,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take the right path, and by the
Speaker 1: right path, I mean the most effective, the most productive,
Speaker 1: the one which is the most likely to open the
Speaker 1: door wide on my capacity, on my potential, on my gifts,
Speaker 1: on my genetic potential, so that I can get close
Speaker 1: to or closer to the version of me that I
Speaker 1: want to be. Now, if you're listening to this and
Speaker 1: where you're at is already good, and you are with
Speaker 1: your body, with your health, with your habits, with your life,
Speaker 1: with your income, career, all the stuff that makes up
Speaker 1: your life. If for the most part, you are genuinely
Speaker 1: pretty happy and pretty fulfilled and kind of there in
Speaker 1: inverted commas there, then this probably ain't for you. But if,
Speaker 1: like many people, you have been the one day soon person,
Speaker 1: or the it's not the right time but it will
Speaker 1: be the right time soon person, or the I'll start
Speaker 1: Monday or I'll start January one person, then maybe this
Speaker 1: is for you. You know, for me, I have spent
Speaker 1: or I spent a lot of my early years trying
Speaker 1: to trying to get to the top of the mount
Speaker 1: without the climb, the metaphoric mountain without the climb, choosing convenience,
Speaker 1: choosing the quick fix, choosing instant gratification. And while all
Speaker 1: of these things are super attractive and sexy, they might
Speaker 1: be good for marketing. Convenience, instant gratification, quick fix, the hack,
Speaker 1: the this, the shortcut, the whatever it is. All of
Speaker 1: those things are better or worse. They're good marketing tools
Speaker 1: because they seem to sell stuff because people love that idea.
Speaker 1: But what they're not good for producing is long term
Speaker 1: change or long term success or growth within humans. And
Speaker 1: the irony is that, you know, the thing that we avoid,
Speaker 1: which is the right path, is the thing that helps
Speaker 1: us become that more evolved, more developed, more capable, more adaptable,
Speaker 1: more resilient, more skilled, more aware version of us. As
Speaker 1: most of you know, I've spent a lot of my
Speaker 1: life educating myself, and that is, you know, experientially and academically,
Speaker 1: I've been at the cold face of learning. I'm still there,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm still reading, I'm still listening, I'm still watching.
Speaker 1: I'm still formally studying and informally studying. I see myself
Speaker 1: as a perpetual student, and I'm well aware that the
Speaker 1: times where I have really learned and really evolved and
Speaker 1: really gone to another level in terms of my own development,
Speaker 1: my own understanding as a human using the limited ability
Speaker 1: and knowledge and potential that I have. But when I've
Speaker 1: really gone to another level, and I'm not saying this insincerely,
Speaker 1: but is when I've just leant into the starfy that
Speaker 1: terrified me, which is not to say that everything needs
Speaker 1: to terrify us, or perhaps lent into the stuff which
Speaker 1: was for me somewhat somewhere between uncertain, unfamiliar and uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and at the other end of the scale fucking terrifying.
Speaker 1: But somewhere in that mix there where you know. When
Speaker 1: I set up my first personal training business, which was
Speaker 1: in nine ninety thirty four years ago, there weren't any
Speaker 1: in Australia. I didn't know how to lease commercial premises.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to buy commercial gym equipment. I
Speaker 1: was twenty five when I was in the setting up process.
Speaker 1: I'd never owned a business. I'd never done a leadership course,
Speaker 1: a management course, a business course. I didn't have a degree.
Speaker 1: Nearly every adult, because I still felt like a child
Speaker 1: at the time, nearly every adult who gave me feedback
Speaker 1: told me it wasn't a good business model, it wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: I had a belief that it would work. I don't
Speaker 1: know that I had the optimal bitin business model at
Speaker 1: that stage. I probably well, I definitely didn't, But I
Speaker 1: had an inherent, intuitive, very strong belief that it would work.
Speaker 1: But what was required of me in that moment that
Speaker 1: like the easy path would have been to continue on
Speaker 1: working for someone else in someone else's gym, but one
Speaker 1: I fucking hated it. But with it, with that job
Speaker 1: came predictability, came, familiarity, came consistency of wage, came holiday pay,
Speaker 1: came sick pay, all of those very easy, convenient things.
Speaker 1: But what didn't come for me was growth. What didn't
Speaker 1: come for me, or not at the level that I
Speaker 1: wanted it was was that capacity for me to be
Speaker 1: able to climb some metaphoric ladder so that I could
Speaker 1: be in charge. That that wasn't really available to me
Speaker 1: beyond the point. And it's not that that model or
Speaker 1: that particular environment that I was in was bad. In fact,
Speaker 1: that business at that time and my boss at that time,
Speaker 1: they were both good. It was a good business. I
Speaker 1: liked the business, I liked my boss. But there was
Speaker 1: only so far I could go, and I'd gone that far.
Speaker 1: And what I couldn't do is I couldn't create new things.
Speaker 1: I couldn't come up with an idea and just act
Speaker 1: on it. Everything had to be run through my boss.
Speaker 1: And it didn't want to be anything too big or
Speaker 1: too different, because that would get quashed. And I understood
Speaker 1: it because, like a lot of my ideas and a
Speaker 1: lot of my thinking was very unconventional. The idea of
Speaker 1: building a stand alone, for want of a better term,
Speaker 1: a stand alone, public gym that was only open to
Speaker 1: the public if they were making appointments. There were no classes,
Speaker 1: there were no memberships, There was no group exercise, there
Speaker 1: was no pool, there was no circuit classes there. It
Speaker 1: was all appointment. It was more like a even though
Speaker 1: to walk in it looked like a gym, it looked
Speaker 1: like a private gymnasium, which it was. It operated more
Speaker 1: like a clinic. It operated more like a medical practice
Speaker 1: than a fitness center. And on a daily basis, I
Speaker 1: had people. By the way, there's no self pity in this.
Speaker 1: These people weren't trying to undermine me. These most of
Speaker 1: the people who gave me this kind of negative feedback
Speaker 1: or this feedbay feedback that was somewhat doubtful of what
Speaker 1: I was doing and how and its potential for success.
Speaker 1: I truly believe that most of those people believed that
Speaker 1: they were coming from a good place, and in essence
Speaker 1: they were. Turns out they were wrong, though, turns out
Speaker 1: they were totally wrong. Turns out I was totally right.
Speaker 1: Also turns out that I still didn't know a lot
Speaker 1: of shit. Also turns out that I fucked many things up.
Speaker 1: But what happened when I walked away from the easy path,
Speaker 1: which was option A the gym with the other guy,
Speaker 1: and I got paid reasonably well. But I chose for
Speaker 1: me based on my values, based on my personality, based
Speaker 1: on the kind of relationship I wanted to have with work,
Speaker 1: like I wanted to just create this thing which was
Speaker 1: basically a convergence of my passion, my curiosity and the
Speaker 1: potential for making money around that, and to design my
Speaker 1: own career and therefore, more broadly, to design my own
Speaker 1: life and lifestyle, which at that point in time was
Speaker 1: built around this new model, this new thing, this personal
Speaker 1: training center. Of course, they were going to happen anyway.
Speaker 1: Of course, at Craig Harper didn't invent personal training globally.
Speaker 1: I was definitely in the ground floor in Australia. But
Speaker 1: what that you know in setting up a business in learning?
Speaker 1: How to manage people in learning, how to be a
Speaker 1: leader in learning, how to hire and fight in learning,
Speaker 1: how to have grown up conversations with accountants and real
Speaker 1: estate people and business people, and to understand all the
Speaker 1: legalities around all the stuff that I needed to do
Speaker 1: and know and implement to be able to have, you know,
Speaker 1: hourly conversations with people who are older than me and
Speaker 1: in many ways more smarter than me, and definitely more
Speaker 1: business savvy than me. To be able to put myself
Speaker 1: in that situation and to be okay with looking silly,
Speaker 1: to be okay with getting things wrong, to be okay
Speaker 1: with apologizing when I needed to apologize. For me, it
Speaker 1: was this, you know, this opportunity to be able to
Speaker 1: lean into doing the right thing, not the easy thing,
Speaker 1: the inconvenient thing that just happened for me, to be
Speaker 1: the best thing, because sometimes the inconvenient thing is the
Speaker 1: best thing for you. Sometimes the thing that people think
Speaker 1: you shouldn't do is actually the thing that you should.
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, most of you know, my like
Speaker 1: swimming sports experience, where I was you know, humiliated and
Speaker 1: all this stuff, which was all again all my doing
Speaker 1: though self pity. But what I don't talk about much
Speaker 1: is subsequent to that. I went home that day after
Speaker 1: I had this horrible experience, self created experience, and I
Speaker 1: decided I was going to go for a run. I'd
Speaker 1: never been for a run. And even though we had
Speaker 1: compulsory cross country running at my school, that is, we
Speaker 1: we once a week on you know, for parts of
Speaker 1: the anyway, we had to because I went to a
Speaker 1: boys college and in year seven we did these very
Speaker 1: regular cross country runs. And because I was morbidly obese,
Speaker 1: because I was wildly unfit, because I was the furthest
Speaker 1: thing away from an athlete you could imagine. I walked.
Speaker 1: I didn't run because I couldn't run because I was
Speaker 1: thirty to thirty five kilos overweight, and I was wildly unfit.
Speaker 1: I had an aerobic conditioning, it would hurt because my
Speaker 1: body was so heavy to run and so on. So,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I'd never really been I've never really
Speaker 1: trained properly either. I've done bits and pieces of sport,
Speaker 1: but in terms of in terms of getting my body
Speaker 1: and going right, I'm now going to train this body.
Speaker 1: I Am now going to consciously and intelligently manipulate my
Speaker 1: physiology to create a different outcome so that I can look, feel, function,
Speaker 1: and be different on a biological and a functional level.
Speaker 1: I'd never done that. So I got home from the
Speaker 1: swimming sports and I I went I decided I was
Speaker 1: going to go for a run because I understood. I
Speaker 1: understood essentially that if I moved more, if I increased
Speaker 1: my energy expenditure, I'm sure I wouldn't even have known
Speaker 1: that term then. But if I knew that if I
Speaker 1: moved more and consumed less, that that would probably make
Speaker 1: me lose weight. I didn't really understand, you know, the
Speaker 1: science of energy, you know, input and output. I didn't
Speaker 1: really get that, but I kind of knew. So what
Speaker 1: I did was I literally said to myself, whatever I
Speaker 1: eat normally, I'm going to eat half that. So it's
Speaker 1: not like I started choosing better foods and different foods
Speaker 1: and I went to the bloody whole food section of
Speaker 1: the soupermarket and I started eating salads, salads and fucking
Speaker 1: almonds and you know, watermelon like a chat. I just
Speaker 1: had what? So if for breakfast I would have eight
Speaker 1: week bits, I would all of a sudden, I would
Speaker 1: have four. If I would eat two rolls for lunch,
Speaker 1: I would have one. If I would have, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: five hundred grams or four hundred grams of something for dinner,
Speaker 1: I would have two hundred grams. I didn't weigh it,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean. I literally harved everything.
Speaker 1: And some of the food I ate was healthy food
Speaker 1: because it was the seventies, and some of it wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly healthy food. But what I did was, I don't
Speaker 1: know what my calorie intake was, but let's say my
Speaker 1: calorie intake was it was probably somewhere around four thousand
Speaker 1: calories a day, I would estimate, well, I harved it
Speaker 1: to two. And I don't know what my energy expenditure was,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't much other than incidental activity, other than
Speaker 1: just ambulating my ninety odd kilo body around the planet
Speaker 1: and getting in and out of a chair and on
Speaker 1: and off a bus and walking to you know, school,
Speaker 1: and not that I walked to school because I caught
Speaker 1: a bus, but you know, walking from the bus to
Speaker 1: school and moving through the day and you know, all
Speaker 1: that kind of incidental and what we might even call
Speaker 1: as an adult occupational activity, all that stuff. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot. So then on top of my harved calories,
Speaker 1: I introduced, you know, running. Now, when I started running,
Speaker 1: I literally remember I remember the first time that I consciously, voluntarily,
Speaker 1: with nobody looking or coercing, I went for a run.
Speaker 1: I can't remember how far, but it kind of mean
Speaker 1: more than two hundred meters before I had to stop.
Speaker 1: And when I say running, yeah, jogging, And that is
Speaker 1: where I started. And honestly, I do remember vividly how
Speaker 1: painful it was for me to run. I do remember
Speaker 1: how uncomfortable it was. I do remember gasping for air.
Speaker 1: I do remember feeling like a whale fucking running around
Speaker 1: the streets of Latroe Valley, specifically moe at that time. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can laugh, Moey, And I remember how I just
Speaker 1: felt like I was in a body that didn't really
Speaker 1: belong to me, and I, you know, everything, all the
Speaker 1: emotional and mental and physical kind of discomfort you could feel.
Speaker 1: I felt it anyway. So I made my self go
Speaker 1: for a walk slash run, and I can't even remember
Speaker 1: how far, but I think it was probably somewhere in
Speaker 1: the four or five kilometer. You know. I was probably
Speaker 1: outside for thirty forty minutes, maybe a bit longer, mostly walking,
Speaker 1: some jogging, and over time, you know, I did less
Speaker 1: walking and more jogging, then eventually less and less walking,
Speaker 1: more and more jogging, and then eventually, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe six weeks, four weeks, six weeks in to
Speaker 1: the process, maybe eight weeks I was jogging. I was
Speaker 1: jogging very slowly. And I can tell you because you know,
Speaker 1: I'd halved my food and I'd probably doubled my energy
Speaker 1: expended to the weight started to fall off. And while
Speaker 1: it hurt and it was uncomfortable, and I was constantly
Speaker 1: fucking hungry at the start, and I obsessed about food,
Speaker 1: and I had had a really unhealthy relationship with food
Speaker 1: until that point in time, there was enough internal leverage,
Speaker 1: enough emotional and sociological because I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: fat in front of people, and psychological leverage. There was
Speaker 1: enough leverage. There was enough of a reason for me
Speaker 1: to override those cravings for me to override that obsession,
Speaker 1: for me to override that desire to sit on the
Speaker 1: fucking couch and do nothing, and to override that desire
Speaker 1: slash obsession that I had had with food to eat
Speaker 1: anything that just made me feel good. I was such
Speaker 1: a foodie. I was so obsessed with eating for pleasure.
Speaker 1: And this process was hard, This process was uncomfortable, but
Speaker 1: it was the right path for me. The easy path
Speaker 1: was sitting on my ass and eating junk. That was
Speaker 1: the easy path. And I'm not trying to sound like
Speaker 1: some big, noble, high performing, you know, dickhead, but it's
Speaker 1: everything that I've done in my life that's created a
Speaker 1: really good outcome or some significant form of growth or
Speaker 1: improvement or insight or learning. Even down to what I'm
Speaker 1: doing right now with my PhD, everything has had at
Speaker 1: times on that particular part of my journey, everything has
Speaker 1: had a significant component of disco. And for me that
Speaker 1: is and we don't need to live in perpetual pain
Speaker 1: or discomfort, of course, but for me that's where the
Speaker 1: growth has come. And for me, that uncertainty, that unfamiliarity,
Speaker 1: that discomfort, that's always for me been the path of growth,
Speaker 1: the path of understanding myself, the path of understanding how
Speaker 1: I could optimize and operationalize my potential. How I could
Speaker 1: stop letting my innate ability and my genetic potential and
Speaker 1: my largely unused IQ. How I could start to be
Speaker 1: more productive, How I could start to get more out
Speaker 1: of what I had to work with. Of course I
Speaker 1: couldn't have I couldn't wake up the next day and
Speaker 1: have a higher IQ or more hours in the day,
Speaker 1: or different genetics, or wake up with new skills. But
Speaker 1: what I could do every day is I could go, well,
Speaker 1: how do I optimize what I have? And the way
Speaker 1: that I optimized it was constantly doing the work and
Speaker 1: the way that you do it is the same. And
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that all days have got to be
Speaker 1: hard days or all ours have got to be hard hours.
Speaker 1: But it means that at some stage we need to
Speaker 1: I believe, we need to need to hit the pause
Speaker 1: button and put our life and put our behavior, and
Speaker 1: put our health habits, and put our career and put
Speaker 1: our behaviors around money and all of these things that
Speaker 1: comprise the totality of planet you, you know, thinking, habits,
Speaker 1: behavior's outcome. Put them up on the old metaphoric hoist
Speaker 1: in the metaphoric garage and walk around and kick the tires.
Speaker 1: What's work and what's not? What am I doing that's
Speaker 1: serving me? What am I doing that's a form of
Speaker 1: self sabotage. Am I taking the right path? Or am
Speaker 1: I taking the easy path?