Speaker 1: I'll get at Welcome to another installing the new project.
Speaker 1: It's me. I hope you're great. Hope you're great. Now,
Speaker 1: before we kick off, I wanted to tell you we're
Speaker 1: doing a We're doing a thing called the typ seven
Speaker 1: day Kickstart. It's free. It starts on our next Friday.
Speaker 1: I'm recording this Sunday night, which I think is tenth, eleventh, twelfth, fourteenth,
Speaker 1: all enter this month. I should off top of my head,
Speaker 1: but I don't. For fourteenth it's a week of me coaching, coercing, educating,
Speaker 1: probably being a little bit silly. Any of you who
Speaker 1: feel like you need a little bit of momentum, need
Speaker 1: a little bit of a kick in the but Tom,
Speaker 1: I need a little bit of support to get the
Speaker 1: wheels turning, to get the wheels of change turning, to
Speaker 1: start to get a little bit of focus, to start
Speaker 1: to perhaps step into some kind of process structure, accountability.
Speaker 1: There's no hooks or catches, there's no on sell upsell,
Speaker 1: you don't pay anything. The way that it works is
Speaker 1: every day I'm going to put a video. Starting on
Speaker 1: Friday Friday, I'm going to put a video which is
Speaker 1: going to be fatty Harp sitting in his computer like
Speaker 1: right now, talking into the camera and the microphone, setting
Speaker 1: a range of different kind of tasks or goals or
Speaker 1: challenges for the day. There'll be different levels, so some
Speaker 1: of them might be physical, some of them might be
Speaker 1: more cerebral, cognitive, psychological, but there'll be there'll be something
Speaker 1: pretty much that everyone can do and it's not really
Speaker 1: somebody asked me today about it and they're like, how
Speaker 1: much can you change in seven days? Well, that's a
Speaker 1: good question, and there's I actually wouldn't mind doing an
Speaker 1: episode about that because the answer is you can change
Speaker 1: a lot in seven days. But there's a few variables
Speaker 1: around that, but it's not so much. Or we're going
Speaker 1: to get in shape, or we're going to completely you know,
Speaker 1: drop ten kilos, or we're going to reinvent our mind,
Speaker 1: or we're going to change all of our nasty habits
Speaker 1: or destructive habits, or we're going to overcome that thing
Speaker 1: that we haven't mean able to overcome for ten years.
Speaker 1: It's really about can you just do something for seven
Speaker 1: days and do it? Can you commit to something and
Speaker 1: just show up every day, whether it's fun or not fun,
Speaker 1: whether it's painful or painless, whether it's sexy or not sexy.
Speaker 1: Can you just go I'm going to do this thing
Speaker 1: and then every day turn up, watch the video, figure
Speaker 1: out which one of the challenges or tasks you're going
Speaker 1: to do, and then go away and do that. So
Speaker 1: for me, I'm way more interested in your a bity
Speaker 1: to just stick something out for seven days, even if
Speaker 1: you get to the point where you're like, fuck it,
Speaker 1: I'm not loving this or you've lost motivational focus, because
Speaker 1: this is kind of a metaphor for life. You know,
Speaker 1: if you can't do seven days, by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to jump in, good, If you don't,
Speaker 1: also good. But for those of you who do want
Speaker 1: to jump in, it's really your first goal. Your main
Speaker 1: goal is about just completing the seven days, because what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do is we're trying to create a
Speaker 1: little bit of psychological and emotional shift so that we
Speaker 1: just do something that maybe sucks a little bit and
Speaker 1: we don't throw in the towel anyway. I'm rambling. So
Speaker 1: if you want to get involved, go to the you
Speaker 1: Project Facebook page, you Project podcast facebook page and you'll
Speaker 1: see a little ad for it. Yesterday's podcast, which came out.
Speaker 1: What's Today's podcast? I record it yesterday, so Sunday's podcast.
Speaker 1: Just go below the promo for Sunday's podcast and right,
Speaker 1: I'm in, Right, I'm in, and then we'll know you're in.
Speaker 1: We're all going to start this Friday. Yes, we're starting Friday.
Speaker 1: Why are we starting Friday? Because fuck it, No one
Speaker 1: starts on Friday. Everyone starts on Monday. Monday's bullshit. Fuck it.
Speaker 1: We're starting Friday. Anyway, that's there. If you want to
Speaker 1: get involved, all right, Today, I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about something that I've been thinking about for quite
Speaker 1: a while and I've been talking about for quite a
Speaker 1: while with clients, but I really haven't opened the door
Speaker 1: wide on the podcast, and that is to talk about
Speaker 1: ambition and whether or not ambition. And you think about
Speaker 1: the way that we operate. And I'm speaking generally and broadly,
Speaker 1: but in our culture very much, we are encouraged to
Speaker 1: be ambitious, be all you can be. You know, hustle, grind,
Speaker 1: make lots of dough, build a brand, build a business,
Speaker 1: build a career, do all that stuff. Get ripped, get jacked.
Speaker 1: I don't mean ripped as in off your head on drugs,
Speaker 1: I mean, lean and fit, get strong, you know, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. And of course there's nothing inherently wrong with that,
Speaker 1: but I think sometimes a good thing to do is
Speaker 1: to consider whether or not having that default setting of
Speaker 1: being ambitious and continually striving and wanting to grow and
Speaker 1: to push and hustle and keep climbing and keep climbing
Speaker 1: and keep climbing climbing. I wonder if that's always a
Speaker 1: good idea. I wonder if I wonder if for some
Speaker 1: people that's a good idea, but for some people it's not.
Speaker 1: And maybe for some people that hustle and the grind
Speaker 1: and the being wildly ambitious and driven and focused, maybe
Speaker 1: that's great for a period of time, and then maybe
Speaker 1: it's not. You know, there was a time in my
Speaker 1: life where I would say I was very ambitious and
Speaker 1: I built, you know, multiple businesses and did lots of
Speaker 1: cool things and made a few bucks and employed lots
Speaker 1: of people. And I don't think it was bad. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was bad. There were lots of boxes
Speaker 1: that got ticked. I helped people, I successfully launched multiple
Speaker 1: independent businesses, my career blossomed, my bank balance when okay,
Speaker 1: all of those things right, but there was for me
Speaker 1: a period of time where that worked, and then emotionally,
Speaker 1: psychologically and even dick practically experientially, for me, it didn't.
Speaker 1: I got to the point where, even though I was
Speaker 1: ticking all the success and ambition boxes and from the
Speaker 1: outside looking in, this is really important, from the outside
Speaker 1: looking in, it looked like I was doing great. And again,
Speaker 1: this is just my personal experience and my personal story.
Speaker 1: It won't be for everyone. But I kind of got
Speaker 1: to the point where I thought, I don't know that
Speaker 1: opening another gym and another business a different business, and
Speaker 1: writing another book necessarily or working on another media outlet
Speaker 1: not bad. But I don't know that that will necessarily
Speaker 1: equal more happiness, more contentment, more joy, more fulfillment. I
Speaker 1: don't know, this is what I was thinking. I don't
Speaker 1: know that there's a direct correlation between more achievement, more ambition,
Speaker 1: more success, and more joy. I don't know if all
Speaker 1: the boxes that I'm ticking in my external world are
Speaker 1: really ticking any or many boxes in my internal world.
Speaker 1: And I don't know for you either. So I think
Speaker 1: you know, things happen in our life, and there are
Speaker 1: times when something will work, and it could be a diet.
Speaker 1: It could be a relationship, it could be a job,
Speaker 1: it could be a certain operating system around something. A
Speaker 1: certain lifestyle will work, and then it won't because you've
Speaker 1: evolved or you've changed. You're different now, and so you
Speaker 1: need to employ some different kind of protocol or create
Speaker 1: a new operating system, or change your lifestyle, or change
Speaker 1: your career, or change the way that you do certain
Speaker 1: things because you're now different. And that's not good or bad.
Speaker 1: That's human. But as an observer of other people and
Speaker 1: a coach of other people and working with lots of
Speaker 1: people over the years, I'm pretty confident that being ambitious
Speaker 1: isn't always a great idea. I'm pretty confident that ticking
Speaker 1: all the boxes and even earning more and more money
Speaker 1: and building a bigger and better brand. While I don't
Speaker 1: think it's in and of itself a bad thing, of course,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that it always equals joy or
Speaker 1: happiness or contentment for the person in the middle of it. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm being presumptuous here because I'm assuming that the person
Speaker 1: in the middle of it doesn't want to have sleepless
Speaker 1: nights and doesn't want to be a chronic overthinker, or worrier,
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be anxious. And because we know that
Speaker 1: those things can coexist, we know that that external practical
Speaker 1: reality of success can coexist with an internal reality of mayhem,
Speaker 1: of psychological and emotional mayhem, mayhem and even devastation. We
Speaker 1: know that from the outside looking in someone's life as
Speaker 1: as an as an appearance or as a representation, somebody's
Speaker 1: life could appear to be bloody awesome on an external level,
Speaker 1: but we know that on an internal level, their life experience,
Speaker 1: that is how they experience life in the middle of
Speaker 1: all the stuff that we see, could be somewhere between
Speaker 1: average down to horrible and depressing and self destructive. So
Speaker 1: as I've gotten older, and again this is just me,
Speaker 1: but I'm less ambitious. I want to do things, I
Speaker 1: want to change things, and I have goals, but I
Speaker 1: for me, I'm I'm more about building I guess different,
Speaker 1: a different kind of bank balance. And yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: nath maybe and it sounds I don't know, cliche. And
Speaker 1: of course I'm not allergic to making money, and of
Speaker 1: course I need to make money. I have people that
Speaker 1: work for me, and I've got bills to pay, just
Speaker 1: like all of you. But it's not my it's not
Speaker 1: my overarching goal. I'm well aware that I can make
Speaker 1: and there's been times in my life where I've made
Speaker 1: lots of money, way more money than I needed. I've
Speaker 1: made way more money than I needed. But I can
Speaker 1: absolutely say that those in those times, I wasn't exponentially
Speaker 1: happier than when I made less money. Again, this is
Speaker 1: just my experience. And so when I got clarity about
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do, which was I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be an entrepreneur. I didn't want to have fifty businesses,
Speaker 1: I didn't want hundreds of people working for me, And
Speaker 1: this is just my revelation and my journey. And I
Speaker 1: figured out that, you know, what I wanted to do
Speaker 1: is essentially what I do now. I wanted to speak,
Speaker 1: I wanted to mentor, I wanted to coach people. I
Speaker 1: at the most wanted to have one or two employees.
Speaker 1: I wanted to write books. I wanted to be a
Speaker 1: lifelong student, which I am. I wanted to put myself
Speaker 1: in the middle of an ongoing learning and teaching journey.
Speaker 1: And I did that, and for me, that's been for me,
Speaker 1: that's been almost like the toning down of the ambition
Speaker 1: and the leaning into kind of that inner voice rather
Speaker 1: than that external kind of cultural voice where we're taught
Speaker 1: that success is about what people can see. Success is
Speaker 1: about what you know, what you have, and what you earn,
Speaker 1: and what you own, and what you drive, and where
Speaker 1: you live, and what you look like and what people
Speaker 1: think of you. And it's fair to say that we
Speaker 1: have something of a societal and cultural obsession. Well in
Speaker 1: Australia where I am anyway, we have something of a
Speaker 1: cultural success obsession, I should say with success, and that
Speaker 1: is generally focused on the stuff that I just mentioned.
Speaker 1: It's about it's about wealth and status, and it's about
Speaker 1: this constant growth, and it's about career and it's about
Speaker 1: ticking boxes. But I think it's good to pull back
Speaker 1: the curtain behind that when we look past the success
Speaker 1: and we look at the person behind it to see
Speaker 1: how they're traveling. And I think it's the same with
Speaker 1: us to be able to do something of a psychological
Speaker 1: and emotional and perhaps depending on your belief system, spiritual
Speaker 1: self audit where I'm like, well, in one way, my
Speaker 1: ambissi is producing results and my energy and my inspiration
Speaker 1: and my drive and my motivation, and I'm doing all
Speaker 1: of these things that are on a level good, But
Speaker 1: does that equate to the existence, the internal and external
Speaker 1: existence that I want to inhabit. I know for many
Speaker 1: people that I work with, the cost of ambition is anxiety,
Speaker 1: is stress, is burnout, is lack of satisfaction is the
Speaker 1: never enough mindset for some people, you know, no matter
Speaker 1: where they are, what they have, what they've achieved, what
Speaker 1: they're doing, it's never enough. It's not wherever they are,
Speaker 1: either literally or financially, or physiologically or professionally in their
Speaker 1: career or their business. Wherever they are, there's no contentment.
Speaker 1: And I don't know we've spoken about this before, but
Speaker 1: that relationship between contentment and ambition, it's an interesting one.
Speaker 1: I don't know too many ambitious people who are particularly
Speaker 1: content and I can't tell you whether or not I
Speaker 1: think they can coexist, but in certain circumstances, and I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, like, there can be not only
Speaker 1: an emotional and a mental cost, there can be there
Speaker 1: can be a relationship cost where and I've seen many
Speaker 1: times I've seen relationships destroyed and families destroyed. And you know,
Speaker 1: best friends who go into business together and that doesn't
Speaker 1: work out well. I've had I've had relationships myself professional
Speaker 1: personal relationships that became professional relationships that didn't end in devastation,
Speaker 1: but didn't end great. If I'm going to be honest,
Speaker 1: and so I don't know that that's always a great idea.
Speaker 1: And I think also, you know, there's this there's this
Speaker 1: concept called the you know, the identity trap, and that
Speaker 1: is like when all of our sense of self and
Speaker 1: who we are and self worth is tied into being
Speaker 1: that high achiever, like the box ticker, the super ambitious.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm always on the journey, I'm always climbing
Speaker 1: the mountain. What happens when the goals are met? What
Speaker 1: happens when we get there? And what happens if our
Speaker 1: identity is really tied in strongly with our ambition and
Speaker 1: our sense of achievement or our ability to achieve. What
Speaker 1: happens to our identity and our sense of self if
Speaker 1: all of a sudden that stuff's not there? What if
Speaker 1: we're not achieving and doing and creating the way that
Speaker 1: we were, who are we? Then? And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes, look it's a bit of a dance.
Speaker 1: I think I was going to say, sometimes the more
Speaker 1: we chase it through external achievements, the more elusive it becomes.
Speaker 1: And I do think that, But I also think that
Speaker 1: we can do both, Like we can we can build
Speaker 1: this business and brand and bank balance and image and
Speaker 1: body and relays. We can do all that. But I
Speaker 1: think the pendulum needs to swing. I think that there
Speaker 1: needs to be for most of us to be truly
Speaker 1: happy over the long term. I feel like there needs
Speaker 1: to be real attention paid to the stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: come under the banner of ambition and striving and the
Speaker 1: typical kind of definition of success, Like what if what
Speaker 1: if you just what if you're not making lots of dough?
Speaker 1: What if lots of people are not following you on
Speaker 1: social media? What if you're not crushing it and grinding
Speaker 1: and hustling. But what if you're just really fucking content?
Speaker 1: What if you've got just good friends, And what if
Speaker 1: you've got safety? And what if you've got clean sheets?
Speaker 1: And what if you've got cold water and a hot shower,
Speaker 1: and you know, what if you're you know, what if
Speaker 1: you just live in a place that's like do we
Speaker 1: have to be driven? And does that drive? Does the
Speaker 1: person who's driven end up ahead psychologically or emotionally, or
Speaker 1: financially or practically, do they end up ahead of the
Speaker 1: person who's just not that I don't know. I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I'm not giving you direction today. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to give you direction anyway, and I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: tell you what to do and what not to do.
Speaker 1: But I'm just I just think that there's a real
Speaker 1: case for an unambitious life. I'm trying to be more
Speaker 1: of this. Like I think there's you know that, like
Speaker 1: there's freedom in needing less. It's psychological and emotional freedom
Speaker 1: in wanting less. And I think when we're all about
Speaker 1: getting more and doing more and having more and being more,
Speaker 1: when we're only about that, we're always projecting into the future,
Speaker 1: and we're never in the now. We're never in the moment.
Speaker 1: We're never in the present. Because right now, I just
Speaker 1: have what I have. Right now, I just have mentally, emotionally, socially, relationally, financially,
Speaker 1: profession I just have what I have. And the only
Speaker 1: moment I can ever really live is in the present. Obviously,
Speaker 1: when next Wednesday comes, as you've heard me say before,
Speaker 1: but I won't be living in the future. Next Wednesday,
Speaker 1: I'll be living in just another installment of right now,
Speaker 1: because right now, this moment, what I call this moment,
Speaker 1: the never endingness of this moment, it's the only place
Speaker 1: we can live. I think there's a real beauty to
Speaker 1: finding joy in the ordinary, not the extraordinary, finding finding
Speaker 1: joy and meaning in daily rituals, in nature, in quiet,
Speaker 1: in simple pleasures, in putting your feet in the grass.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to sound like Deepak Chopra or
Speaker 1: bloody air cart toole, which I realize I am, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like sometimes for me anyway, I
Speaker 1: go I have this weird ritual that I do. I
Speaker 1: go sit in my front yard. I have a couple
Speaker 1: of big comfy chairs, and I pull the chair up
Speaker 1: in front of a tree, and I kind of sit
Speaker 1: with shitty posture. I slide down in the chair and
Speaker 1: I put my feet on the tree. I put my
Speaker 1: bare feet on the tree. I put my bare feet
Speaker 1: on the tree. I put all my shit down from home,
Speaker 1: and I put my phone down, I put my whatever
Speaker 1: I've got down, and I just kind of do my
Speaker 1: own little version of a Craig meditation, which is not
Speaker 1: really There's no mantra, there's no focusing on a particular thing.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm trying to not focus, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's something that for me in that extremely unambitious moment
Speaker 1: of just being still and just putting my feet on
Speaker 1: that tree and just feeling nature literally between my toes.
Speaker 1: For me, there's something for the guy who spent so
Speaker 1: much of his life being ambitious and striving and having
Speaker 1: to write another bloody book or having to open another
Speaker 1: business or make more money, or be more popular or
Speaker 1: be more seen or you know, all that. Not that
Speaker 1: it's all ego driven, but a bit of it was
Speaker 1: insecurity driven, ego driven, love me, please, love me, look
Speaker 1: at me, want me, approve of me? All that shit
Speaker 1: for me anyway. But what if, like what if success
Speaker 1: isn't about more? What if success is about enough? And
Speaker 1: what if what if in a piece, what if that
Speaker 1: inner calm is a bigger achievement than any professional milestone.
Speaker 1: What if creating that internal wealth Some might call it
Speaker 1: spiritual wealth, but let's just call it in could be psychological, emotional, spiritual,
Speaker 1: whatever all that stuff means to you. But what if
Speaker 1: being rich internally is a better achievement for us? As
Speaker 1: humans than anything we might create build grow in our
Speaker 1: external world. Or maybe it doesn't need to be one
Speaker 1: or the other. Maybe it can be maybe as we
Speaker 1: maybe as we build the whatever it is that we're
Speaker 1: building in that three dimensional space, maybe we're also building
Speaker 1: something spectacular in that place that nobody ever sees or
Speaker 1: experiences except that. So I won't bang on for too long,
Speaker 1: because even I get sick of me. But a couple
Speaker 1: of I don't know, reflections or thought. For you, Am
Speaker 1: I chasing something because I truly want that something? Or
Speaker 1: am I chasing that something because I think I'm supposed to?
Speaker 1: And that for me was really powerful because I was
Speaker 1: And I don't blame anyone for this. In fact, nobody's
Speaker 1: at fault except me, and even me. I'm not throwing
Speaker 1: me under the bus. It's just it's a result of
Speaker 1: my programming and the people that I've been around, and
Speaker 1: my conditioning, so my you know, obviously, you know that
Speaker 1: whoever we spend a lot of time with, eventually they're
Speaker 1: thinking becomes our thinking. Maybe not in totality, but certainly
Speaker 1: there's a percentage. Certainly there's an influence. And I was
Speaker 1: around people who thought a lot about building and striving
Speaker 1: and Craig, if you've got one gym that's working, you
Speaker 1: should have too, because that's growth. If two are working,
Speaker 1: you should have three, and so on and again, it's
Speaker 1: not bad, it's not bad. But I was more inhabiting
Speaker 1: that paradigm because I thought that's how it worked, and
Speaker 1: I was meant to do it the way that it worked.
Speaker 1: But when I started to think for myself, I had
Speaker 1: a different awareness. I had a new awareness, a new awakening.
Speaker 1: Think about this. Think about when in your life have
Speaker 1: you felt the most content, whenever you felt the most piece,
Speaker 1: whenever you felt the most joy, was it tied to
Speaker 1: an external achievement maybe it was, or did it come
Speaker 1: from somewhere or something else? And would what would your
Speaker 1: life look like if you stopped trying to prove anything
Speaker 1: to anyone, If you stopped trying to prove anything to anyone,
Speaker 1: including yourself, what would that look like? And I won't
Speaker 1: bore you with all the different theologies and philosophies and
Speaker 1: religions that talk about, you know, just being, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably not the worst idea to open the door
Speaker 1: on some of those ancient philosophies and spiritual traditions that
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, being present, and I don't think
Speaker 1: that being ambitious and being present need to operate in
Speaker 1: isolation in a person's life. I think we can have
Speaker 1: periods where we're driven and working and ambitious, but also
Speaker 1: periods where we're not doing that, where the striving has
Speaker 1: been put on a shelf for a period of time,
Speaker 1: whether that's an hour or two, or whether that's a
Speaker 1: week or two. But I think, I think maybe the
Speaker 1: question for today is not what do I want to achieve,
Speaker 1: but how do I want to feel? Not what do
Speaker 1: I want to achieve? But how do I want to feel?
Speaker 1: And maybe a life well lived is less about climbing
Speaker 1: and more about grounding. I don't know just where I'm at.
Speaker 1: I thought i'd share that with you. I think I'm
Speaker 1: becoming less ambitious. Still want to do stuff. I'm not
Speaker 1: without ambition, but I'm definitely I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is a good thing, but I feel personally it is.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's great for business, but personally.
Speaker 1: You know, here's another thing. I wasn't going to say this,
Speaker 1: but quite often the less I strive and the less
Speaker 1: ambitious I am, by the way, the more work I get.
Speaker 1: And as I'm kind of heading into this stage of
Speaker 1: my journey where I'm still going to keep working for
Speaker 1: as long as i can because I love to work,
Speaker 1: and it's not really worked for me. But as I'm
Speaker 1: entering this phase where I'm less ambitious and I'm less
Speaker 1: focused on and growing you know, brand and bums on seats,
Speaker 1: and still want to do all that, but it's not
Speaker 1: it doesn't hold the same fascination or excitement for me.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, I'm recording this Sunday. Last week I had seven,
Speaker 1: seven speaking gigs from seven different organizations booked. Now, in
Speaker 1: a typical week, I might get one or two, and
Speaker 1: I probably do around one hundred a year, But to
Speaker 1: get seven gigs booked in a week, it's quite weird,
Speaker 1: quite fascinating, and it's funny. I'm like trying less, but
Speaker 1: things are happening more so, maybe the secret to success
Speaker 1: is not to chase sixcess. Yeah so yeah,