Speaker 1: I get a champs. It's Harps, it's Kelly, it's Kelly Smith,
Speaker 1: it's Craig Harper, it's you project. It's a Sunday, it's
Speaker 1: one o five in the PM. I'd be doing it
Speaker 1: one o five in the am. That'd be that'd be unusual.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful day in Melbourne. It's a beautiful day, Kelly,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's a stunning day. I've been down the beach already,
Speaker 2: had a bit of a wonder and it's just lovely.
Speaker 2: There's a really nice vibe outside.
Speaker 1: How far do you live from the beach? Like to
Speaker 1: walk five minutes? Two hours?
Speaker 2: Five minute walk to the beach, very lucky.
Speaker 1: I'm the same. I'm probably about an eight minute walk.
Speaker 1: And it's just something therapeutic for a boy who grew
Speaker 1: up in the wilderness. I love. I love the ocean,
Speaker 1: and I love the forests and trees and farms and shit.
Speaker 1: And I don't know about where did you grow up?
Speaker 2: So I was split between so broadmeadows, which is you know,
Speaker 2: there's not a beach inside, and then grandparents lived down
Speaker 2: the coast groad Ocean road, and so that has just
Speaker 2: given me this wonderful love of the beach. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: my dad lived over this side and I moved over here.
Speaker 1: So when I was a kid, I detested the city
Speaker 1: because I never lived in the city at all, anywhere
Speaker 1: near the city till I was probably nineteen, because I
Speaker 1: moved from Latro Valley, which is you know, it's not bush,
Speaker 1: but it's a country. You know, there are towns there.
Speaker 1: I moved from there to a place called Bundary Bumbry,
Speaker 1: which is south of Perth on the Wa coast, and
Speaker 1: that was pretty small townsville. But then I started living
Speaker 1: in Melbourne when I was about nineteen. But when I
Speaker 1: was a kid and I used to come up to
Speaker 1: the city from the bush, it used to stink to me,
Speaker 1: like I used to think the whole place smelt like
Speaker 1: the cars smelt, the city smelt every and I just
Speaker 1: thought it was disgusting and chaotic, and I couldn't It's
Speaker 1: funny now I live in the middle of suburbia, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't understand why people would choose to live in
Speaker 1: a city.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting one. I quite like a lot of
Speaker 2: city scapes. I like cities at night. I like the
Speaker 2: buzz of an early morning in the city when everyone's
Speaker 2: getting their coffee and it's just waking up. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the city can be quite overwhelming. I was in there
Speaker 2: yesterday with my niece who's thirteen, and she said, I
Speaker 2: just don't like being around all these people, and I thought, yep,
Speaker 2: I totally get that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've had friends of mine that
Speaker 1: have stayed at my beach house, which is very very
Speaker 1: very very quiet, Like there's no it's like it's like
Speaker 1: the bush meets the coast and there's no street lights,
Speaker 1: there's no foot foot paths, there's no gutters. The road's
Speaker 1: pretty shitty, it's kind of bitumen, kind of dirt. It's
Speaker 1: not amazing. But for me it's perfect because it's like
Speaker 1: it's the opposite of where I live, right, and it's
Speaker 1: just at night there's no noise, Like there's absolutely no noise,
Speaker 1: and especially if you go there through winter because there's
Speaker 1: very very few people live there. Like it's a small place.
Speaker 1: I won't say where it is, it doesn't matter, but
Speaker 1: it's not it's not one of those big fancy it's
Speaker 1: not Portsy, let's say that, right, God bless Portsy. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but I've had a few friends go down there and
Speaker 1: they almost go nuts after two days because they just
Speaker 1: can't stand the silence and the solitude and the internet
Speaker 1: connection shit and the phone connection shit, and so they
Speaker 1: can't use their computer, they can't use their phone, and
Speaker 1: they've almost got to come back. Some I mean, some
Speaker 1: people just love it, right, but some people were so
Speaker 1: programmed to noise and busyness and mayhem and distraction, and yeah,
Speaker 1: to have real solitude, I think for some people is
Speaker 1: a bit of a challenge.
Speaker 2: I think so, I think it can be quite scary
Speaker 2: and very unknown. But that very much leads into the
Speaker 2: question that I had for you today. I'm quite interested
Speaker 2: at the moment. I listened to a podcast a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago where they were talking about kind of slowing
Speaker 2: down to speed up your thought processes, your productivity, your creativity,
Speaker 2: and it got me thinking how when I was younger,
Speaker 2: for instance, I would I would always be creating something,
Speaker 2: I'd be drawing, i'd be writing, and quite often i'd
Speaker 2: be daydreaming. So just all of these thoughts going around
Speaker 2: my head. And even now I think people might go, oh,
Speaker 2: I had a thought in the shower that I want
Speaker 2: to share. You know, I've had this thought where my
Speaker 2: mind was just allowed to run free. And it's like, well,
Speaker 2: with everything that we're feeding our brains at the moment,
Speaker 2: you know, we're all we're online in some way. It's
Speaker 2: very hard to switch off because it's giving you that
Speaker 2: hit every time you get a like or a comment
Speaker 2: or there's something new. What's what's in it when you
Speaker 2: just kind of switch off, Like if you go to
Speaker 2: a place where there's no internet connection, there's no phone,
Speaker 2: it's just radio silence. What's the benefit and how important
Speaker 2: is it? And really how much should we do it?
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when as you were asking this, by the way,
Speaker 1: everyone we don't we don't set up these questions, so
Speaker 1: I don't know what questions are coming. Kelly's going to
Speaker 1: ask me a bunch of stuff today, so I don't
Speaker 1: get sent through a list of questions. So this is
Speaker 1: all very freestyle and organic. But as you were asking that,
Speaker 1: I was thinking the inference is almost like not from you,
Speaker 1: but in general, like it depends on the context. But
Speaker 1: how are you busy? Like we wear the busy badge,
Speaker 1: Oh mate, so busy, so busy. And then when when
Speaker 1: I think about a busy mind, I think you can
Speaker 1: have busy good and busy bad. You know, to me,
Speaker 1: busy bad is overthinking, Busy bad is anxiety, Busy bad
Speaker 1: is ruminating. Busy bad bad is fear based. It's unproductive,
Speaker 1: it's destructive, it's distracting. And then busy productive could be
Speaker 1: I'm in flow, I'm in flow, I'm in a flow state,
Speaker 1: I'm writing this song, I'm writing this story, and I
Speaker 1: just you know, you've sat down where like you're you're
Speaker 1: a writer, you sit down and sometimes you write when
Speaker 1: you're in flow. When you're in that space, your mind's busy,
Speaker 1: but in a healthy way. It's creating, it's producing, it's inventing,
Speaker 1: you know, and the stuff comes out of you in
Speaker 1: an hour that would take somebody else twenty four hours
Speaker 1: or forty eight hours, or that'd never be able to
Speaker 1: do it. And so for me, there are times when
Speaker 1: I'm in a busy good place or a busy bad place,
Speaker 1: productive or unproductive, creative or destructive, anxious or calm. Like
Speaker 1: I can be busy in my mind but still quite calm.
Speaker 1: So I think it depends on the output of the busyness,
Speaker 1: which sounds weird, but then it's almost like, you know,
Speaker 1: people say things a lot like, oh, you know, when
Speaker 1: I have the best ideas and they go when I'm
Speaker 1: in the shower and I go, or they go, I
Speaker 1: have the best ideas when I'm running, I go, Guess
Speaker 1: what you're not doing. When you're running, You're not fucking
Speaker 1: staring at your phone and scrolling on social media. You're
Speaker 1: not distracted. Guess what you're doing when you're in the shower.
Speaker 1: You're not looking at your phone. You're not You've just
Speaker 1: got space and you've just got time. So I would
Speaker 1: think there's an obvious correlation between getting away from distractions,
Speaker 1: and I think that and this is I'm actually saying
Speaker 1: this to myself as much as any listener, because I
Speaker 1: can absolutely fall down the old rabbit hole and look
Speaker 1: up an hour later and I've just been looking at
Speaker 1: bullshit which has had my total attention for zero gain
Speaker 1: other than maybe a little bit of enjoyment, maybe depending
Speaker 1: on what I'm looking at. And I think there's probably
Speaker 1: a time where you can do that, But I think
Speaker 1: you need to do that consciously rather than unconsciously, and
Speaker 1: intentionally rather than unintentionally, so that you say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get you know, lots like I get to
Speaker 1: the cafe at ten past six, and I often what
Speaker 1: say to myself, all right, I'm going to fuck around
Speaker 1: till six thirty, So six point thirty is my fuck
Speaker 1: around time. Twenty minutes. Look at bullshit, look at videos,
Speaker 1: good dumb shit. Let's see what bloody you know Snoop
Speaker 1: Dog's up to. Let's see what he is up to.
Speaker 1: Let's see let's see, you know, a motorbike with a
Speaker 1: thousand horsepower. Let's fucking look at that. Let's look at
Speaker 1: some blokes fighting in a car park. Let's do that
Speaker 1: and then and then maybe try and do something productive.
Speaker 1: But I am getting better and better at that where
Speaker 1: I'm aware of what we're talking about. So but I
Speaker 1: think consciously having time to disconnect from you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: then this is no revelation. I feel like this has
Speaker 1: been said a thousand times, but intentionally and practically and
Speaker 1: consciously doing it. We say I'm not going to look
Speaker 1: at my phone before this time, or I'm going to
Speaker 1: get up and I'm going to, like I do you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to use my phone. But then between seven
Speaker 1: and nine pm, I'm not going to touch social media.
Speaker 1: Look at social seven am and nine am. I should say,
Speaker 1: so two hours where I'm play the day, I'm doing work,
Speaker 1: I'm responding to emails, or I'm walking at the beach
Speaker 1: and I'm looking at the ocean, or I'm ringing my mum,
Speaker 1: or I'm cleaning the house or whatever it is. But
Speaker 1: just where you recognizing the things that for you can
Speaker 1: over time become anchors to your progress, and then dealing
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point and a nice way to
Speaker 2: frame it, isn't it. The anchors to your progress. I'm
Speaker 2: also thinking that you have a very different algorithm to me.
Speaker 2: I never get blokes fighting in car parks.
Speaker 1: I get heaps of that stuff. I get heaps of that.
Speaker 1: I get all kinds of I get lots of bodybuilding
Speaker 1: and weightlifting stuff and blokes fighting and car parks and motorbikes.
Speaker 1: And then of course I get every fucking pseudo scientist
Speaker 1: in the world and their theory on everything. It's a
Speaker 1: very eclectic. Somebody said to me the other day day, Ah,
Speaker 1: who just put out a new album? Is it Taylor Swift?
Speaker 1: Is it's coming up? I think, yeah, right, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: has your social media been inundated with Taylor Swift new album?
Speaker 1: I go I didn't know she had a new album.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to go hard no. And they're like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? And I said, I have no
Speaker 1: knowledge of what you're talking about there, like but it's
Speaker 1: all over the place. It's just the only thing on
Speaker 1: my phone. And I went, well, that's a reflection of
Speaker 1: what you look at, and what do I look at?
Speaker 1: Because yeah, you just told me about this thing, which
Speaker 1: is fine, but it's yeah, I think, And that's the
Speaker 1: you know, that's the the intention behind social media platforms
Speaker 1: is they want to engage you. They want to addict you,
Speaker 1: they want to get you plugged in that I want
Speaker 1: you to unplug of course, because the more time you
Speaker 1: spend on their platform, the more commercially viable that is
Speaker 1: for them. And so why would they want you to
Speaker 1: go away? So of course, you know, and this is
Speaker 1: and this is no revelation. They know what you like
Speaker 1: to look at, so they give you what you like
Speaker 1: to look at, and they know you vote this way,
Speaker 1: so they give you stuff that reverberates beautifully in your
Speaker 1: echo chamber and you know, strokes your cognitive bias, you know,
Speaker 1: and so you go, oh, yeah, look we are all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go us. You know, it's it's super smart. It's super
Speaker 1: fucking potentially destructive, but it's very smart. I mean they're
Speaker 1: trying to sell something. Everyone's trying to sell something.
Speaker 2: It's super smart and borderline, well not even borderline, but
Speaker 2: super scary. So I was talking to some friends about
Speaker 2: this last night and I said, I was at the
Speaker 2: hairdressers and you know, flicking through TikTok and I started
Speaker 2: at one point which was just you know, where can
Speaker 2: I go for a walk in a certain location. And
Speaker 2: then suddenly, within you know, half an hour, it had
Speaker 2: led me down this rabbit hole based on what had
Speaker 2: my attention for you know, more than thirty seconds or
Speaker 2: a minute. And I was all the way down this
Speaker 2: other pathway of something that I did find it quite interesting,
Speaker 2: but I certainly didn't search for it. And I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this has figured out what I like
Speaker 2: within thirty minutes and incredibly smart. Absolutely, but you know,
Speaker 2: John Connor and the terminators are going to be coming
Speaker 2: quite soon. I'm pretty sure of that. It's it's a
Speaker 2: bit scary, yeah.
Speaker 1: Very I was at the gym. I stayed with the Crab,
Speaker 1: my training partner, and Johnny, the much loved Johnny who
Speaker 1: you know, both of them, and we're having a conversation
Speaker 1: about nicotine. So nicotine patches that some people use, Now
Speaker 1: there's not a suggestion or a recommendation anyone, and Nicorette
Speaker 1: or similar gum and knowing that or on the assumption
Speaker 1: that nicotine can be a cognitive enhancer anyway, we're talking
Speaker 1: about you know that people start stuff that. The conversation
Speaker 1: was that, yeah, well I get it, but they're also
Speaker 1: you know, it's a sympathetic nervous system stimulant, and it
Speaker 1: might do something for a little while, but you keep
Speaker 1: doing it, then it doesn't do anything. Then you've got
Speaker 1: to take four miligrams, not two. Then you've got to
Speaker 1: take eight, not four. Then and so on and so
Speaker 1: and then eventually you're taking a fucking million miligrams to
Speaker 1: get the same response as you did originally with two milligrams,
Speaker 1: because you've shut down your receptors and fucking you fuck
Speaker 1: fuck right, all this shit that no one's interested in
Speaker 1: accept me in these two dummies anyway. So I go,
Speaker 1: let's ask chat Chipette about like, what's the how quickly
Speaker 1: does this do ourselves? Kind of our receptors, I should say,
Speaker 1: get desensitized and how before it starts to downregulate and
Speaker 1: we don't get the same response, And so I open
Speaker 1: up chat GPT and press the talk like I talked
Speaker 1: to it a lot, and it goes, hey, Craig, sounds
Speaker 1: like you guys are talking about nicotine. Yeah, what would
Speaker 1: you like to know? I'm like, oh my god, just
Speaker 1: sitting in the gym, it knew what we were talking
Speaker 1: about before I asked it a question. I'm like, that
Speaker 1: shit is listening to me. That shit is and that's anyway,
Speaker 1: all right, let's it's it's scary, but it's it's where
Speaker 1: we're going. And I think this is my last bit
Speaker 1: before you asked me another question. I think people are
Speaker 1: quite rightly, ah, curious and a bit fearful and a
Speaker 1: bit kind of hesitant. I understand all of that. I
Speaker 1: think we need to think about if we are going
Speaker 1: to use AI, and we all are, even if we
Speaker 1: don't want to. It's like everyone who goes fuck it,
Speaker 1: I'm never using it. I don't think you understand what's coming.
Speaker 1: It's going to be pretty much impossible to do life
Speaker 1: without using some kind of AI in some capacity unless
Speaker 1: you live on an island by yourself. But I think
Speaker 1: it's trying to figure out how do I use this thing?
Speaker 1: How do I use this thing in a way where
Speaker 1: it's not controlling me, I'm controlling it. It's a helpful
Speaker 1: and practical resource, you know. I think, like a lot
Speaker 1: of things in life, how we use it is the issue,
Speaker 1: not what we use. You know. It's like, nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with booze. I don't drink booze, but there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with booze if you have a little bit now and then.
Speaker 1: For most people anyway, unless you're an alcoholic, then it's
Speaker 1: probably you know, wise to not drink at all for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons. But for most people, bit of booze fine.
Speaker 1: For most people. Bit of junk food fine, junk food
Speaker 1: all the time, not fine. Booze all the time not fine.
Speaker 1: Being totally obsessed with and distracted by food or booze
Speaker 1: or gambling or even money, right, it just tends to
Speaker 1: be destructive down the track. So I think it depends
Speaker 1: on this as a weird term, but it's about the
Speaker 1: kind of relationship we have with whatever the thing is,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's a resource to kind of manipulate
Speaker 1: and optimize in terms of what's going to work best
Speaker 1: for you. But it is that And David Gillespie has
Speaker 1: spoken many times about this the problem or the challenge
Speaker 1: with these things where we we press the button and
Speaker 1: we get this dopamine response, like, ah, I eat food,
Speaker 1: I feel fucking great. I drink a bit of booze.
Speaker 1: I have a cigarette, I get twenty seven extra likes
Speaker 1: on the post that I put up. I get a
Speaker 1: dopamine response. And dopamine is a very addictive chemical, you know,
Speaker 1: and so we get addicted to the dopamine that's produced
Speaker 1: by the thing that we use or do, and that
Speaker 1: is when it starts to get like real chemically addictive
Speaker 1: where we need to go hang on, I need to
Speaker 1: I almost need to do a detox. And it's like
Speaker 1: there's I've seen I was going to say countless, not countless,
Speaker 1: but probably ten to fifteen videos where parents are taking
Speaker 1: away their screens from their kid because their kids be
Speaker 1: coming out of control, whether or not it's a phone
Speaker 1: or an iPad or similar or whatever, and they're just going, Okay,
Speaker 1: you can't have it for twelve hours and the absolute
Speaker 1: tantrums and craziness, and it's just analogous to a drug
Speaker 1: addict who can't get access to drugs, like they totally
Speaker 1: lose their shit, and you go, wow, we need to
Speaker 1: think about what this is and we need to get
Speaker 1: ahead of it because it can only control us if
Speaker 1: we let it control us. So there's that You're still
Speaker 1: the boss of you. You still make the decisions, you
Speaker 1: still choose what you do and don't do. But eventually
Speaker 1: it does it or it can get to a point
Speaker 1: where that control tends to slip if we're not really
Speaker 1: aware and really diligent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it almost seems too that it's a certain amount
Speaker 2: of laziness that's slipping in with this as well, and
Speaker 2: that you can just ask something like chat GPT or
Speaker 2: whatever version it is that you use, what's the answer
Speaker 2: to this instead of you know, having that thought process
Speaker 2: for yourself or even having that conversation with someone else.
Speaker 2: And so it makes me think, well, is this actually
Speaker 2: an opportunity to be pushing out more creative projects, more
Speaker 2: kind of more ideas because so many people are now
Speaker 2: relying on the AI and they're just leaning into that
Speaker 2: and they might change something here and there and make
Speaker 2: it their own. Sure, if that's how they want to work,
Speaker 2: you know, go for it. But for those of us
Speaker 2: who do chase that bit of creativity is it almost
Speaker 2: feels like an opportunity to be putting new things out there.
Speaker 2: And from what I was listening to the other day,
Speaker 2: apparently patents, so the amount of patents that are being
Speaker 2: filed at the moment, then the numbers are down and
Speaker 2: the quality of the ideas are not as good as
Speaker 2: they have been like previous years, because so many people
Speaker 2: are reliant on AI for all of their new thoughts,
Speaker 2: their new ideas, their answers. So it almost seems to
Speaker 2: be a kind of a flip side of yeah, you
Speaker 2: can lean into that and yeah, you'll get a quick
Speaker 2: answer and you might get something, you know, quite decent
Speaker 2: out of it. But will that ever compete with you know, Look,
Speaker 2: you go into an art gallery, for instance, and you've
Speaker 2: got all of this beautiful historical art from across the centuries.
Speaker 2: What will we have from now, you know, into the future.
Speaker 2: Will it all be digital? Will it all be AI generated?
Speaker 2: Where's that? Yeah? I think it's it's presenting an opportunity
Speaker 2: for people to be genuinely creative and productive rather than
Speaker 2: just leaning into the easy version.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I agree, and it's almost like outsourcing
Speaker 1: your thinking. Yes, you know, I don't need to think.
Speaker 1: I don't need to solve this problem. But I'll give
Speaker 1: you an example of how I think is a smart
Speaker 1: way to use AI. So I went for walk this morning,
Speaker 1: and I go early, as you know, and it's very quiet,
Speaker 1: so I can walk around suburbia and with my headphones
Speaker 1: on and have a very clear conversation with anyone because
Speaker 1: there's no traffic. So I how to chat with AI.
Speaker 1: And I do this quite regularly where it's actually really good,
Speaker 1: where I'll say and I won't say what it is
Speaker 1: because it's a work in progress. And I said, look,
Speaker 1: I've got an idea, like I. I just talked to
Speaker 1: it first ages I go hey, and it goes, hey, Craig,
Speaker 1: what's up? I go, I want to ask you some stuff? Sure,
Speaker 1: shoot right. It loooks like that. Sometimes it calls me Harps,
Speaker 1: which is hilarious. And I said, so, I've got an
Speaker 1: idea which is kind of the intersection of a commercial
Speaker 1: opportunity and an opportunity to help people to do some good,
Speaker 1: to do some development, for me to input into the
Speaker 1: lives of others, lives of others, and maybe also create
Speaker 1: something that makes few bucks. So I want to run
Speaker 1: this by you. Yeah, and it's like, yeah, great, I'm
Speaker 1: keen to hear. So I tell it the idea. What
Speaker 1: are the pros and cons of this idea? Don't tell
Speaker 1: me what I want to hear. Don't try and make
Speaker 1: me feel good. If you think this is crap, say
Speaker 1: I think it's crap. Now, obviously it's thinking, but not
Speaker 1: in a way that we think, not in a way
Speaker 1: that we really under So I guess we could say
Speaker 1: tech technically it doesn't think, but it is a kind
Speaker 1: of intelligence that is super high level. It's not human intelligence,
Speaker 1: but it's a it has got access to you know, everything.
Speaker 1: So then it goes basically, all right, let's start with
Speaker 1: the pros. Let's start with what I like about it,
Speaker 1: and then i'll get halfway through, I'll go hang on,
Speaker 1: hang on, stop and I'll go sure, and then I'll
Speaker 1: go unpack that a bit more. You know. So we
Speaker 1: just spent me and it like we like now we're friends, right,
Speaker 1: But I'm asking it good questions. But it's all based
Speaker 1: around my ideas. It's all based around my thinking. It's like, sure,
Speaker 1: I want to do be create, change this and I
Speaker 1: can use this tool to help me do the thing
Speaker 1: that I thought of that I'm creating. It's not knocking
Speaker 1: on my door saying this is what I think you
Speaker 1: should do today. And then we went through, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the practical challenges. Then it went through some
Speaker 1: of the potential what I would call side effects, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're going to take a drug or a supplement,
Speaker 1: you know, whether potential risks or downsides, And then through
Speaker 1: to what would be like a good place to start, like,
Speaker 1: is there any way that I can open the door
Speaker 1: on this cread some momentum without without over committing or
Speaker 1: risking too much. And it's like great question, and then
Speaker 1: it stuck right. I don't know how long I spoke,
Speaker 1: but probably quarter of an hour, and it was it
Speaker 1: was like having a really productive, interesting conversation with the
Speaker 1: smartest person I know. Now for me, that's a way
Speaker 1: to use AI. So I came home. I read. Also
Speaker 1: when we're talking, it's writing, so I can go back
Speaker 1: and look at what it's what the text as well,
Speaker 1: and then I can say, based on our conversation this
Speaker 1: morning at six point fifteen, I want you to create
Speaker 1: a plan. I want you to create a three month plan, timeline, structure,
Speaker 1: process or to do list yep, and it cranks it
Speaker 1: out in thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So for me, that's an opportune kind of use of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. What interests me about that? And you know,
Speaker 2: I'd use it for very similar things. At the moment,
Speaker 2: I'm using it for my training plans. You know, I
Speaker 2: plug in, you know what I've been doing, how I've
Speaker 2: been doing it, and then I say, can you tweak
Speaker 2: this so that I can progress? And it does, and
Speaker 2: it's great. How much of it? Considering it's it's your
Speaker 2: thought process, it's your input into this very high level intelligence,
Speaker 2: And this could be a very moral question, how much
Speaker 2: of it are you comfortable in claiming as your own?
Speaker 2: Out of that?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a good question, and I don't really
Speaker 1: I mean, put it this way. I would never do
Speaker 1: that with something i'm writing, like my PhD on whatever
Speaker 1: there's I'll explain to you how I use it in
Speaker 1: my PhD in a moment. But the originating ideas and
Speaker 1: thoughts are mine, Yeah, and the concept is mine. I'm
Speaker 1: using something to work through, just like I would say
Speaker 1: to you, Kelly, I've got an idea of something. Can
Speaker 1: we meet at twelve o'clock. I want to bounce some
Speaker 1: stuff off you to one o'clock and we would do
Speaker 1: that and I would come out with more clarity. But
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's Kelly's project. I'm saying, you know
Speaker 1: she was, She's supported, just like I would do that
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, right, but but no, there's I understand
Speaker 1: where you're going. But I think more and more we're
Speaker 1: going to realize just like using a computer or using Google,
Speaker 1: or using a phone, or using a you know, a
Speaker 1: spray painter, if you're a painter, is you know, these
Speaker 1: are all resources that make our job or our work
Speaker 1: more efficient or more effective, you know, or quicker and
Speaker 1: sometimes better quality. So if though I've got to do
Speaker 1: a paper for year ten whatever, and I type in
Speaker 1: the topic and then chat GPT spits out the paper,
Speaker 1: then I put my name at the top, well you
Speaker 1: know that's no good. Yeah, And that's they're really struggling
Speaker 1: at the moment in academia with trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how the fuck to use because to tell kids not
Speaker 1: to use it good luck, it's like saying don't breathe,
Speaker 1: you want you not to breathe over the weekend because
Speaker 1: it is so sophisticated and there are so many different
Speaker 1: kinds of AI available that they just need to rather
Speaker 1: than say don't use it, they need to figure out
Speaker 1: how it can be integrated, because done the right way,
Speaker 1: it just you know, there are some things that as
Speaker 1: a student, or as an academic or as somebody who's
Speaker 1: like a lifelong learner, doesn't have to be an academic
Speaker 1: kind of environment. There are really intelligent ways to use
Speaker 1: this stuff where you're not really cheating, You're just you're
Speaker 1: just you like, could you organize all of my references? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: Well it just does it. It just does it in
Speaker 1: this format, you know. And some might go, no, you
Speaker 1: should do it that way, you should sit there for
Speaker 1: two hours, and it's like, yeah, but I'm not, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like this is not the best use of my
Speaker 1: skill or time. You know. So that's that's happening a lot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think it's it's going to be a
Speaker 1: constant work in progress figuring it out.
Speaker 2: That just reminded me how much I used to really
Speaker 2: hate doing references on my essays.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, take that by a million. But yeah, So
Speaker 1: the last one I'll say is so about you know,
Speaker 1: how I use AI is for my PhD, and everyone does,
Speaker 1: by the way, pretty much like, firstly, all of my
Speaker 1: research is original research. So I've done it. I've got
Speaker 1: the ethical approval, I've got the venue, I've got the people,
Speaker 1: I've run the studies, I've analyzed the data. I've written,
Speaker 1: so all of this is organic, and all of this
Speaker 1: is from my brain, with support, of course, from my crew,
Speaker 1: you know, my senior supervisor, my second supervisor, and with
Speaker 1: reviews to the panel where you go and stand in
Speaker 1: front of the board. Not so this is this ongoing,
Speaker 1: but there are things where you could put I can
Speaker 1: write a paragraph and I can put that paragraph into
Speaker 1: probably Claude, which is a more academic AI, and say,
Speaker 1: don't change this in any way, but could you make
Speaker 1: it read more smoothly or could you? And sometimes it'll
Speaker 1: send back something and I go, not, mine's better, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? But it's not rewriting my paper,
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, it's not making any decisions, it's
Speaker 1: not changing anything. It's not you know, I'm not going, oh,
Speaker 1: I want you to write a thousand words on this,
Speaker 1: and then I just cut and paste it into my thesis.
Speaker 1: Like that's not happening, but that is a risk that
Speaker 1: universities need to navigate moving forwards. Is how they're going to,
Speaker 1: you know, stop people from doing a four or five
Speaker 1: year PhD in six months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely scary. I mean even now, I just think
Speaker 2: I'm very relieved that I didn't have a mobile phone
Speaker 2: when I was in high school because of access to
Speaker 2: socials and the pressure that would have existed and obviously
Speaker 2: does exist for kids. Now, I feel very relieved that
Speaker 2: I skip that. So to think that in this current
Speaker 2: situation where there's so much access and what it can
Speaker 2: lead to, what it can potentially change, and I guess influence,
Speaker 2: And that's the big thing around all of it, right,
Speaker 2: is the influences. It's quite scary, and I am very
Speaker 2: grateful that I didn't grow up with it because I
Speaker 2: don't think I would have that passion to be creative
Speaker 2: that I do have if I was reliant on a machine.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, well, I think I think less is more
Speaker 1: in that sense. I think you know that when you
Speaker 1: don't have all that external input and you do need
Speaker 1: to solve problems and you do need like when you
Speaker 1: think problem solving is actually a creative process, Yep, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an intellectual process, but it's also a creative process.
Speaker 1: It's probably one of the few places where intellect and
Speaker 1: creativity really kind of converge because you're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to do something, and that is of course,
Speaker 1: that's about the logical rational prefrontal cortex part of the
Speaker 1: brain that's you know, very solution focused. But then you're
Speaker 1: trying to actually think outside the box to fix this problem,
Speaker 1: which is also a creative thing. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that that, you know, we need to recognize where it
Speaker 1: needs to stop and start. And I was, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I won't go into that. I was going to open
Speaker 1: another door and talk for another five minutes. All right,
Speaker 1: ask me a question or two. What have you got
Speaker 1: on your list?
Speaker 2: What have I got on my list? So I was
Speaker 2: having a look at some of the whiteboards that you
Speaker 2: put up and look, my personal favorite, and I actually
Speaker 2: swiped it from you, like literally, you gave it to
Speaker 2: me on a piece of paper is if your action
Speaker 2: can't outlast your motivation, your goal will never be your reality.
Speaker 2: And this, I think is such a good reminder that
Speaker 2: you need to keep working. And it's also something that
Speaker 2: based on what we've just been discussing. I don't think
Speaker 2: that AI or socials or you know, the Internet in
Speaker 2: any capacity can give you any form of motivation. Like
Speaker 2: you might see, you might see something that you relate to,
Speaker 2: But I kind of feel like this comes down to
Speaker 2: what you've got within yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, actually spoke about this in a little bit
Speaker 1: of detail on today's episode. But let's revisit it because
Speaker 1: it's always relevant, right, and so just say it once more.
Speaker 1: I think I remember it, but just say it once more.
Speaker 2: If your action can't outlast your motivation, your goal will
Speaker 2: never be your reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we know that that, you know, the choice
Speaker 1: as we make and the things that we do create outcomes.
Speaker 1: So action equals an outcome could be a good outcome.
Speaker 1: If you do something dumb, you'll create a shit outcome.
Speaker 1: If you do something smart, you might create a good outcome.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, oh, taking action automatically equals winning. No,
Speaker 1: not at all, because we're always taking actions. It's about
Speaker 1: the quality of the actions. But there's also there's been
Speaker 1: you know, a really up until recently and probably still
Speaker 1: you know, there's a big kind of collective thought bubble
Speaker 1: that motivation is key, which is why we have motivational
Speaker 1: books and motivational seminars and motivational speakers and motivational gurus.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, here's the problem though, if we're
Speaker 1: talking about motivation in the sense that most people understand it,
Speaker 1: which is that feeling, which is that state, which is
Speaker 1: that excitement, that energy, that focus, you know, that inspiration
Speaker 1: that well, that doesn't last, you know it, It doesn't
Speaker 1: for most people. It's not a twenty four hour days,
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty five days of the year thing.
Speaker 1: In fact, not for anyone I've ever met. And I
Speaker 1: think the human condition is that typically if we're talking
Speaker 1: about motivation as that as that kind of emotion and
Speaker 1: psychological state that comes and goes because we're human, not
Speaker 1: bad or flawed or broken. But if we are dependent
Speaker 1: on that, if that's the fuel that keeps our fire burning,
Speaker 1: and the fire goes out when we don't have motivation,
Speaker 1: then the fire is going to go out all the time.
Speaker 1: And of course, I mean our action is going to stop.
Speaker 1: And if our action stops, so the challenge is not
Speaker 1: to stay motivated. The challenge is to optimize the motivation
Speaker 1: when it's there. That's number one. So when I'm motivated,
Speaker 1: when i'm inspired, you fuck jump on that like milk it,
Speaker 1: you know, ride that, ride that emotional wave all the
Speaker 1: way to the fucking beach. At milk it, you're in
Speaker 1: the zone, be productive, go nuts, do your best. And
Speaker 1: then the day that you get up where you can't
Speaker 1: be fucked and you don't feel it and you're not
Speaker 1: inspired and you're not motivated, like really, as a coach,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm I'm most interested in that day. I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in the day before, because the day before,
Speaker 1: anyone who's inspired is going to be a winner for
Speaker 1: a day. You know, they're going to do all the shit.
Speaker 1: They're going to go for the run, they're going to
Speaker 1: eat clean, they're going to read the book, they're going
Speaker 1: to write the things, they're going to do the things
Speaker 1: because they're fucking pumped and I'm in the zone. Cool.
Speaker 1: What about Wednesday when you feel like dog shit and
Speaker 1: your back hurtz and someone called you a dickhead and
Speaker 1: you're a little bit sady macsadstera and all those things
Speaker 1: are okay? But you know, so number two, number one
Speaker 1: is you know, when you're motivated, milk at number two
Speaker 1: is how productive and effective and proactive can you be
Speaker 1: when you're not motivated? In other words, what can you
Speaker 1: do when you don't feel like it when most people
Speaker 1: would give up? Can you step up? Can you can
Speaker 1: you override the lack of whatever it is that we
Speaker 1: tend to depend on. And I think we need to
Speaker 1: anticipate the fact that the human experience is one of psychological, emotional, behavioral, practical,
Speaker 1: physical peaks and troughs. And what we want to do,
Speaker 1: which is hard, but is in the middle of those
Speaker 1: invariable peaks and troughs, to try to find some level
Speaker 1: of consistency, knowing that will be more and less productive
Speaker 1: on different days. But what we don't want to do
Speaker 1: is we don't want to stick our head up, stick
Speaker 1: our head up two months later and go, oh shit,
Speaker 1: I haven't done anything for two months because you know,
Speaker 1: it's winter and I hate winter, and I don't you
Speaker 1: know whatever it is right, And so that is the
Speaker 1: that is the challenge. And even when you know, when
Speaker 1: I do a gig, I'll often say, at the end
Speaker 1: of the speaking gig, who enjoyed that? Most people put
Speaker 1: up their hand thankfully, and I go, put up your
Speaker 1: hand if you're a little bit more motivated or inspired
Speaker 1: than you were an hour ago or three hours ago,
Speaker 1: whatever it was. And generally, maybe just because they're being nice,
Speaker 1: but generally, all the hands go up and I go,
Speaker 1: that's great. Here's what I'm going to tell you. That
Speaker 1: feeling that you've got now, that's going to go. That's
Speaker 1: going to pass. So I can almost guarantee you this
Speaker 1: time tomorrow you will not feel what you're currently feeling.
Speaker 1: You'll probably not feel the same level of focus and
Speaker 1: clarity and excitement and inspiration and motivation. Because you're human.
Speaker 1: So what matters is not what we just listen to
Speaker 1: for an hour or two. But what matters is what
Speaker 1: happens next with you and your choices and behaviors and
Speaker 1: your ability to keep doing the things that most people
Speaker 1: fucking stop doing. Right now, that's the human challenge I
Speaker 1: can and I'll by the way, there's no ego in this,
Speaker 1: because I'm as big a fuck up as anyone. Right.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how much I don't enjoy most
Speaker 1: of what I do for my PhD. Now, I'm not complaining,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying, oh poor me, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that at all. I'm not saying, oh god, the hardship.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that virtually everyone
Speaker 1: who does a PhD, especially when it's research based, it's science,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's reasonably hard. No one's virtually no
Speaker 1: one's saying to you, oh, I really enjoyed it, because
Speaker 1: it fucking sucks. So it's like, how much suck can
Speaker 1: you take? How much hardship can you do to achieve
Speaker 1: the thing that you want to achieve? You know, and
Speaker 1: some people won't and that's okay, and some people will
Speaker 1: and well done them. And you know, hopefully I get there.
Speaker 1: That's my goal. But that doesn't make me better than anyone.
Speaker 1: It just means I didn't stop. You know, are there
Speaker 1: are a lot way more smart people than me. You know,
Speaker 1: they are so many people that I talk to that
Speaker 1: I actually I'll sit with people and think you in
Speaker 1: some ways, you're definitely more gifted, better genetics, you know,
Speaker 1: more sporting, more creative. Well there's more intellect, perhaps you know,
Speaker 1: higher IQ. But you keep fucking giving up, like you
Speaker 1: keep stopping, like that's your your issue is not that
Speaker 1: you're not talented. It's not that you're not brilliant. It's
Speaker 1: not that you don't have a good brain. It's not
Speaker 1: that you can't do it. It's that you are so
Speaker 1: fucking addicted to comfort and convenience and certainty that you
Speaker 1: keep fucking stopping because you don't like any kind of pain.
Speaker 1: That's the problem, you know. And so this, all of
Speaker 1: this goes into and I'll shut up after. This is
Speaker 1: the ultimate with this is can I turn these sometimes
Speaker 1: when I'm motivated behaviors into all the time when I'm
Speaker 1: not motivated, habits that just become my operational default setting.
Speaker 1: This is what I do. This is not what I
Speaker 1: do when I'm pumped or excited or motivated. This is
Speaker 1: what I do. So and there's no get out of
Speaker 1: jail card, there's you know. It's like I don't drink beer.
Speaker 1: I don't drink booze. And none of these are about
Speaker 1: look at follow me. This is just me giving examples.
Speaker 1: So when someone says, do you want some booze? I
Speaker 1: got no? Thank you? And why I don't drink oh okay,
Speaker 1: and do you want a bit of cake? Thank you?
Speaker 1: But no, I'm not saying people shouldn't drink booze or
Speaker 1: eat cake, but for me the X fat kid with
Speaker 1: for decades are fucking eating disorder, right, me eating cake,
Speaker 1: me eating shit, me making bad choices doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting anyone be a version of me or
Speaker 1: do what I do. But when you one hundred percent go,
Speaker 1: I don't do that anymore, Like not, I'm going to try.
Speaker 1: I'll see how I go. I'll roll the dice or
Speaker 1: I fell off the fucking wagon that doesn't exist, right,
Speaker 1: all bullshit? Then you go cool, like if you want
Speaker 1: to be a fucking weapon, then do hard things and
Speaker 1: don't give yourself an opportunity to do the things that
Speaker 1: don't work for you. But what I just said, people go, oh,
Speaker 1: you're You're fucking so harsh. At course it's easy to
Speaker 1: call me harsh because that gives people a reason to
Speaker 1: not do it. Or maybe I'm just honest, and maybe
Speaker 1: what I'm suggesting all be it uncomfortable might be for
Speaker 1: some people the best way to go.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely what you just said. Then about it's very
Speaker 2: comfortable and that's what keeps people there. Like they might
Speaker 2: be gifted, they might have the capability of being incredibly great,
Speaker 2: but their comfort zone contains them. That is so true.
Speaker 2: I've been in that many many times, and it's interesting.
Speaker 2: The other day I got called boring because I didn't
Speaker 2: want to eat a certain food, and I thought, well,
Speaker 2: you go for it, do what you want. I personally
Speaker 2: I'm living, eating and doing things a certain way at
Speaker 2: the moment. It doesn't include that. No shade on you.
Speaker 2: But if that makes me boring, then I'll be boring,
Speaker 2: so be it. But yeah, and how much do you
Speaker 2: think along with this that because the motivation goes obviously routine.
Speaker 2: So once you've decided this is what I'm going to do, Like,
Speaker 2: for instance, yours at the moment is around getting over
Speaker 2: the ten thousand steps every day, this has just become
Speaker 2: something that you do almost without thinking. I get up
Speaker 2: quite early every morning, go to the gym before work.
Speaker 2: I know that it makes me feel better. My brain's
Speaker 2: in a better place when I get into the office.
Speaker 2: It's just what I do. How much does having that
Speaker 2: solid routine keep not so much keep the motivation, but
Speaker 2: it keeps that fire going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well for me, it's like when when that kind
Speaker 1: of switch flicks like for real, not like temporarily, not
Speaker 1: like I'm in the zone right, but then the beauty
Speaker 1: of being fully committed to something is you don't have
Speaker 1: to think about will I do it or when I
Speaker 1: do it, because you're doing it, Like that's just how
Speaker 1: I think I go with, Like not doing it isn't
Speaker 1: an option. If, for example, I was badly you know, injured,
Speaker 1: or I was sick, or I couldn't do it physically,
Speaker 1: then that's different. But if I can do it, I'm
Speaker 1: doing it right, so I never have to think, oh,
Speaker 1: will I won't tie, So there's never an internal struggle.
Speaker 1: The only thing for me is when will I do it?
Speaker 1: Like what's my day look like? You know, so I've
Speaker 1: done I could look right now, but I think i've
Speaker 1: So it's one fifty I've done about nine thousand steps,
Speaker 1: and that's because I've got this with you. And then
Speaker 1: I've got to write a paper all afternoon, I've got
Speaker 1: to work, and I don't want to be trying to
Speaker 1: get in another eight thousand steps at seven o'clock at night.
Speaker 1: But I'll still go, I'm going to go for another
Speaker 1: walk and I'll probably end up doing twelve to fifteen
Speaker 1: today something in that range. And that's fine. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, this is a really silly analogy but I
Speaker 1: thought about this a while ago. I've shared it once before,
Speaker 1: and I think I think about how amazing mums are, right,
Speaker 1: dad's too, but mums, Yeah, let's be honest better. So
Speaker 1: let's be honest with some things, definitely with a lot
Speaker 1: of things. And I think, you know, how do I
Speaker 1: say this? Right? I this, I'm going to throw myself
Speaker 1: under the bus and make myself look like a bad person.
Speaker 1: But understandably, I'm not a dad, I'm not a granddad.
Speaker 1: I've never changed a nappy in my life, right, I
Speaker 1: can't say it's something that I miss. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've never had it. So but I don't lie awake
Speaker 1: at night going, oh, I wish I could clean up
Speaker 1: all of that shit, you know, I don't think. But
Speaker 1: I look at how mums just do that, right because
Speaker 1: they love their kid and they don't you know, all
Speaker 1: the all of the things. Now, I can imagine that's
Speaker 1: not a particularly glamorous or highly desirable task, but we go, well,
Speaker 1: I love this kid, this is my kid. This is
Speaker 1: just a thing that I do. It's not I don't
Speaker 1: go ah, fuck, I don't know, ah, you know, do
Speaker 1: I have to? You know, it's like there are things
Speaker 1: that humans do just with not even thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Unpleasant things, things that aren't convenient or nice or fun
Speaker 1: or smell good. Right, But there's nothing in a mum
Speaker 1: going ah, fuck it, look after yourself. I'm not doing that,
Speaker 1: or I'll do it, or I'll do it tomorrow, or
Speaker 1: i'll you know, And I just think when we have that,
Speaker 1: like if we can transfer that kind of thinking. The
Speaker 1: problem is with a lot of things that we perhaps
Speaker 1: I say, perhaps should do as individuals. And when I
Speaker 1: say should, I mean things that align with our values,
Speaker 1: things that we say are supportive of our values or
Speaker 1: our goals or our plans or our faith or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. When we make those behaviors non negotiable, like
Speaker 1: this is what I do. Then I don't need to
Speaker 1: get inspired or motivated or pumped or focused or disciplined,
Speaker 1: because this is just me on autopilot. This is what
Speaker 1: I do, like me going to the gym, me not
Speaker 1: drinking booze, me not eating cake, me walking every day,
Speaker 1: my you know, me doing the things that the that
Speaker 1: have over time, by the way, by the way, at
Speaker 1: one stage it did take willpower, disciplines, self control, because
Speaker 1: we don't just go from one to the other end
Speaker 1: of day. But over time, with courage and a bit
Speaker 1: of discipline and a bit of structure and a bit
Speaker 1: of accountability and a bit of process and a bit
Speaker 1: of fucking support and all of those things, we turn
Speaker 1: them into non negotiables. We turn them into something that's
Speaker 1: hardwided into our hard wide, into our normal operating system.
Speaker 1: And so now the things that I used to find
Speaker 1: hard are not hard at all. Requires zero discipline, self control,
Speaker 1: or mental toughness, no resilience, just oh, I just do this.
Speaker 1: But when your story is ah, this is hard, I'm
Speaker 1: doing a hard thing, it's not fair.
Speaker 3: I'm doing hard. They're not doing the hard thing I'm doing.
Speaker 3: Look at me, everyone, I'm doing a hard thing. Oh
Speaker 3: and then I'm posting about everything on fucking Instagram, so
Speaker 3: everyone will tell me how amazing I am and fuck
Speaker 3: all that, Like, really, that is you being weak and
Speaker 3: looking for attention.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm all for support, yeap, come going hard in
Speaker 1: the paint today. But you know what I'm going to say.
Speaker 1: Support is good, But when you are somewhat dependent, and
Speaker 1: you're a fucking grown man or woman, and you are
Speaker 1: dependent on telling people you're amazing because you didn't eat shit.
Speaker 1: That's a fucking problem. Like what, you don't need more accolades,
Speaker 1: you need more resilience. Don't seek more attention for your
Speaker 1: fucking healthy breakfast. Do a deep dive on why you
Speaker 1: think like that. That's the problem. The problem is you're
Speaker 1: thinking about that shit now again, self awareness, not self loathing.
Speaker 1: I still do stuff which is embarrassing, but I own up.
Speaker 1: You know where I'm looking for someone, Craig Harper, and
Speaker 1: I'm still wanting someone's approval. I still want someone to
Speaker 1: tell me I look good. I still want someone to go, fuck,
Speaker 1: how big is that motorbike? I still want someone to go, oh,
Speaker 1: you're almost doctor Harper? Of course, but you know, and
Speaker 1: none of those things are terrible. But you just need
Speaker 1: to be careful of what your motives are and what
Speaker 1: your reasons are for doing certain things.
Speaker 2: Yes, and whether or not No, that was good. I
Speaker 2: applaud that. I think the light and the dark that
Speaker 2: came through then was probably what a lot of people
Speaker 2: need to hear. And people that listen to this probably
Speaker 2: need to hear that, right because they're listening for a reason,
Speaker 2: and I'm asking those questions for a reason. I love
Speaker 2: hearing that, it's a solid reminder, and it is that
Speaker 2: reminder of it's a nice to have versus a reliance
Speaker 2: on it, like when you become reliant on somebody going
Speaker 2: you're so good for doing that, I'm so impressed. I
Speaker 2: wish I could blah blah blah. But we all have
Speaker 2: that kind of Oh that was nice to hear that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's you know, it might give me a little bit
Speaker 2: of a pep in my step. But relying on that,
Speaker 2: I feel, is incredibly dangerous because the next comment you
Speaker 2: might get is, who the hell do you think you
Speaker 2: think you're good for doing that? Do you come on?
Speaker 2: Pull your head out. So there's that, as I just said,
Speaker 2: like the light and the dark around all of it.
Speaker 1: One hundred And also think about this, cal what if
Speaker 1: what if you people are constantly telling you're amazing and
Speaker 1: terrific and wow, well done you for doing stuff that's,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, is not that spectacular? You know, Like
Speaker 1: you've met Johnny in the gym. I talk too much
Speaker 1: about him, but he is spectacular. Absolutely, every day of
Speaker 1: his life is harder than my hardest day I've ever had.
Speaker 1: Right now, He's a fucking hero, right But here's the
Speaker 1: problem is when you become dependent on accolades and you know,
Speaker 1: thumbs up and you're amazing. When it goes, you're fucked
Speaker 1: because you have a new addiction. And the addiction is
Speaker 1: I need attention, I need approval. I need accolades. When
Speaker 1: I do something good, I need at least thirteen people
Speaker 1: to tell me how good I am, because otherwise I
Speaker 1: crack the fucking sads. And by the way, I'm forty six, Like,
Speaker 1: at some stage we've got to go. I'm the problem.
Speaker 1: My thinking is the problem. Now. I know that this
Speaker 1: is some people have probably already turned off, and some
Speaker 1: people might unsubscribe. That's cool, knock your socks off. But
Speaker 1: I this is what I think. I truly love people,
Speaker 1: and I don't think love is telling someone something that
Speaker 1: they want to hear to make them feel good for
Speaker 1: three minutes. I think that's weakness. I think, by the way,
Speaker 1: if I think somebody genuinely deserves something, I'm in I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's fucking amazing. If I think they've done a good job,
Speaker 1: I'm the first to go. I think you've done a
Speaker 1: good job, well done, congratulations. But somebody doing something that
Speaker 1: isn't amazing, and then we all gather around and go,
Speaker 1: you're amazing. Right. I know that feels good in the moment,
Speaker 1: but it's not helpful over the long term. I always
Speaker 1: say to you, say to my clients. I still say
Speaker 1: to the people I work with, I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: making you feel good for three to ten minutes. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in the quality of your life, your experiences, and
Speaker 1: your results over the next one, two, five, ten years.
Speaker 1: Like I'm a coach, I'm not a fucking cheer squad.
Speaker 1: I want to help you be the most powerful resource
Speaker 1: in your own life, Craig Harper, is not the answer.
Speaker 1: Me telling you you're amazing is not the answer. You
Speaker 1: starting to fucking have this revelation about your own capacity
Speaker 1: and ability and talent and potential. That is power. That
Speaker 1: is what you need. You don't need me rubbing you
Speaker 1: on the back all the time. If you do great,
Speaker 1: I'll say, you do great. If I think you've been
Speaker 1: a dickhead, I'll go, you're being a dickhead. Love you,
Speaker 1: but you're being a dickhead. Am I ever a dickhead
Speaker 1: all the time? Do I make dumb decisions? Yes? Am
Speaker 1: I a big fucking baby? Yes? Like we have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge this. Otherwise we just go through life like it's
Speaker 1: a fucking Disney movie. And whenever we get any feed
Speaker 1: I mean actual feedback, you know. And that's another thing.
Speaker 1: People go, I want feedback, and then you give them feedback.
Speaker 1: They don't like it because they don't actually want feedback.
Speaker 1: They want praise. Oh you don't want feedback. No, I
Speaker 1: just want you to tell me I'm fucking awesome. Well
Speaker 1: that's not feedback.
Speaker 2: Yep. The other day my wife said something to me
Speaker 2: and I said, I don't want to hear that because
Speaker 2: I think I'm perfect, and she said, I know you do,
Speaker 2: and that's exactly why I'm telling you. And it led
Speaker 2: to you know, it was a good, open, frank conversation
Speaker 2: of something that I needed to do in order to improve.
Speaker 2: And you're right that, but that is absolute love because
Speaker 2: it wasn't coming from any bad place. It was coming
Speaker 2: from a place of I know that you want to
Speaker 2: hear this, because I know that she knows that I
Speaker 2: do do a lot of work on myself, and so
Speaker 2: she was able to give that genuine feedback and it
Speaker 2: was appreciated and I've thought about it, learnt from it
Speaker 2: and that's what I'll you know, I can take that
Speaker 2: moving forward. So absolute love right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing, and good on you for understanding that, and
Speaker 1: you know, not sticking your bottom lip out and throwing
Speaker 1: your glomsh in the shagpile as Mary says, right, oh
Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, well you probably got over it. But
Speaker 1: I mean, like, even with you, I'm going to make you.
Speaker 1: I might, I might not maybe make you feel uncomfortable
Speaker 1: for a little bit. But I think about the girl
Speaker 1: that I met, the lad, the woman that I met,
Speaker 1: I should say, at the gym, you, I don't know
Speaker 1: how many years ago, who pretty much looked at her
Speaker 1: feet and wouldn't look me in the eye and would
Speaker 1: be you know, maybe a hello, a goodbye, even though
Speaker 1: this was the woman that listened to my fucking show
Speaker 1: right and knew who I was, and I would, I suppose,
Speaker 1: in a way respected me for what I did, right,
Speaker 1: but just very you know, shy and all of that,
Speaker 1: which is cool. But what I've seen over the last
Speaker 1: few years with you is this, for somebody who is
Speaker 1: you would call yourself an introvert, I guess yep, yep,
Speaker 1: So somebody who's an introvert, all this this stuff doesn't
Speaker 1: come naturally or easily. Even though I actually think you
Speaker 1: are have a gift for communication. That's a side issue
Speaker 1: or a side fact. But like, I know that doing
Speaker 1: something like this probably gives you equal parts excitement and terror,
Speaker 1: you know, where you know, you're like, oh, I'm doing
Speaker 1: a podcast with It's fucking hell, I'm doing a podcast
Speaker 1: with Harps right, And but here's the thing. You even
Speaker 1: the messages that you sent to me, where they used
Speaker 1: to be very short and let's be honest, boring, Ah,
Speaker 1: not really, but now they're like a bit cheeky. Now
Speaker 1: they're a little bit like, hey, what are you doing
Speaker 1: your big No, they're not really, but they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're getting there. It's like it's it's a bit fun,
Speaker 1: it's a bit and I'm like, wow, look at this,
Speaker 1: because I know this is you developing, and and you
Speaker 1: know it's you always have the ability, and you're still
Speaker 1: very much a work in progress, as is everyone including me.
Speaker 1: But your development for communication, you know, to build connection
Speaker 1: and rapport and to do shit that scares you and
Speaker 1: to put yourself in situations that are not super comfortable
Speaker 1: for you. And and then in the middle of all of
Speaker 1: these things that you are doing, you are simultaneously impacting
Speaker 1: the world around you in a positive way and also
Speaker 1: changing yourself, Like this is personal development is really about
Speaker 1: changing you. It's about how do I, how do I
Speaker 1: become a better version of me? And what does that
Speaker 1: look like? And so for me to talk to you
Speaker 1: on a you know, like this on a Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have picked it in a million years, five
Speaker 1: years ago, or whenever it was I met you, and
Speaker 1: neither would you.
Speaker 2: No, not at all, not at all. And it's it's wonderful,
Speaker 2: it really is, like it's it's giving me so much.
Speaker 2: And so probably the last question I had for you,
Speaker 2: it was your whiteboard post about the hill and how
Speaker 2: the hill doesn't change, it's just you and you know,
Speaker 2: the more you tackle it, the easier it becomes. So
Speaker 2: my ending question for you is, aside from your PhD,
Speaker 2: because we know that that has been your focus and
Speaker 2: it's you're almost at the peak, what's your next hill?
Speaker 2: And it got me thinking about, well, currently what is mine?
Speaker 2: And mine is public speaking, and so what I'm doing
Speaker 2: now is that every opportunity I get, I'm just saying
Speaker 2: yes without thinking yes, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: And I had to present to the leadership team at
Speaker 2: work the other week and it was a wonderful opportunity
Speaker 2: and I was just sweating. I sat there and presenting
Speaker 2: this thing that I like, I knew the content because
Speaker 2: I'd written it, but I'm talking and suddenly my voice
Speaker 2: is cracking and I'm like lah, And I just thought,
Speaker 2: has someone tipped a bucket of water down my back?
Speaker 2: Because I could just feel all of this sweat coming
Speaker 2: And it reminded me of the last conversation we had
Speaker 2: where you said that you presented in.
Speaker 1: The light blues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like that. And I left the presentation
Speaker 2: and I mentioned to my manager and she goes, presented
Speaker 2: really well, came across really confidently. I said, I was
Speaker 2: sweating so much, like I felt so uncomfortable, and she
Speaker 2: just said, well, you wore the wrong clothes on the
Speaker 2: wrong day. Is it as simple as that I wore
Speaker 2: the wrong clothes on the wrong day. But yeah, that's
Speaker 2: my hill at the moment is in person presentations to people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's great. I think for me this is weird.
Speaker 1: But I'm you know that my kind of echo chamber
Speaker 1: that I live in with research and psychology and academia
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah blah blah. It's all very very
Speaker 1: about the mind and logic and the brain and reasoning
Speaker 1: and processing and data analysis and objective this and that.
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in all of the wisdom that lives
Speaker 1: outside the mind. I'm really interested in what is the knowledge,
Speaker 1: what is the wisdom? What are the insights that exist
Speaker 1: away from the brain, the prefrontal cortex? What is that?
Speaker 1: You know? And that and I don't know what that
Speaker 1: I mean. I guess if I had to describe it,
Speaker 1: it would just be more in that kind of a
Speaker 1: what's the word metaphysical or spiritual? You know, without becoming
Speaker 1: a weirdo, right, but just going is there something in that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: And because the problem, the problem with being all about logic,
Speaker 1: and this sounds counterintuitive, encounter productive or not counterproductive, but
Speaker 1: counter to some things I say is right, Even logic,
Speaker 1: the idea of logic is a flawed idea because when
Speaker 1: I say that's illogical, or I say that doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, through my window of understanding, that's illogical, through
Speaker 1: my window of understanding, that doesn't make sense. Through my
Speaker 1: window of understanding, that's unscientific or that's not possible. Right,
Speaker 1: But there were so many things have been I would
Speaker 1: say millions of things over humanity's timeline, the evolution of humans,
Speaker 1: right where there are things that would have been completely inconceivable,
Speaker 1: like flying in a fucking metal tube across the sky
Speaker 1: with I was looking yesterday an A three point eighty
Speaker 1: can have eight hundred humans in it, right, It's this
Speaker 1: two story plane, eight hundred people and all their shit,
Speaker 1: all their luggage, and then the plane ways, whatever the
Speaker 1: fuck it ways, and it's in the air. It's in
Speaker 1: like for ninety nine point nine percent of humanity's existence
Speaker 1: that would have been seen as witchcraft or evil or
Speaker 1: impossible or illogical. Right, And then you go, well, like,
Speaker 1: I've had experiences in my life which to me and
Speaker 1: I'm not very woo woo but just logically make no sense.
Speaker 1: But they happened, right, So I have personal evidence because
Speaker 1: it happened to me, and I wasn't high, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't drunk, and I'm not a generally an hysterical person,
Speaker 1: and so trying to you know, the mind is great,
Speaker 1: but the mind is limited of all there is to know.
Speaker 1: None of us are ever going to know one per
Speaker 1: cent of what there is to know. And I think
Speaker 1: that while the mind is brilliant and it's you know,
Speaker 1: as you hear me say, it's UHQ, it's your operational epicenter.
Speaker 1: It's where we tell stories and interpret data and process
Speaker 1: the world around us, all of that is true, But
Speaker 1: then it's still just me looking at the world through
Speaker 1: my window. Like I'm interested in all the other stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the wisdom and the insight and the genius,
Speaker 1: uh and the truth that lives beyond what we think,
Speaker 1: because what we think is literally a code for how
Speaker 1: we see the world. You know. That's why I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: with understanding how you think, because you think all the time.
Speaker 1: I think all the time, but there's virtually no overlap
Speaker 1: because I don't live in your thoughts or values or
Speaker 1: beliefs or mind or stories, and you don't live in mind.
Speaker 1: So we're both thinking, but there's total divergence, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So for me, I don't think I answered your question,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I'm I'm fascinated with what there is beyond
Speaker 1: And this sounds unscientific, but fuck it beyond science because
Speaker 1: we think that and this is going to sound very
Speaker 1: weird for a PhD student doing science. We think that
Speaker 1: science is the start and finish of what there is
Speaker 1: to know. But it's only science can only operate within
Speaker 1: our own capacity to reason and understand, you know, And
Speaker 1: as we evolve, and as we as a species and
Speaker 1: individuals evolve, things change, and what we used to think
Speaker 1: was impossible, we know is not only you know, not impossible.
Speaker 1: It's an everyday occurrence now, Like there was a time
Speaker 1: when the idea of talking to a human on the
Speaker 1: other side of the world right like you, you're down
Speaker 1: the road at the moment. We're doing this on zoom,
Speaker 1: of course, but you could right now be in New York.
Speaker 1: It would be the same. It would be that, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd be looking at you on the other side of
Speaker 1: the world. I'd be seeing your face, you'd be seeing
Speaker 1: my face. We'd be in the middle of a conversation.
Speaker 1: Yet where thousands of thousands of kilometers apart. Well, any
Speaker 1: other time in history that would have been absolute witchery
Speaker 1: or absolute bullshit or impossibility or so you go. Well,
Speaker 1: that's always been about these stories about what's possible, and
Speaker 1: so right now I think I think the courageous and
Speaker 1: the humble approach to take is, look, this is what
Speaker 1: I currently think, but I've been wrong a lot, so
Speaker 1: I'm open to learn, you know. And the problem one
Speaker 1: of the problems with beliefs and knowing and logic is
Speaker 1: that we strongly identify with a certain way of thinking
Speaker 1: or believing or knowing. And when your identity is intertwined
Speaker 1: with knowing something, then you become unteachable. No one can
Speaker 1: teach you because you already know.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I know my religion is the right religion, So fuck
Speaker 1: the other four thousand they're all wrong. I'm right. And
Speaker 1: this is and again that's just a very small example.
Speaker 1: It's not about religion, it's about thinking. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do a big exploration beyond the mind.
Speaker 2: I love that for you, I really do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've got so many stories that could that
Speaker 1: I don't just and I don't look for shit. I'm
Speaker 1: not like walking around looking for signs and shit. I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm so like, give me a motorbike, give me, give
Speaker 1: me some Netflix, give me some dumbbells. Like I'm so
Speaker 1: fucking normal, regular, down to earth. I'm not out there
Speaker 1: looking for the woo woo. But the Woo woo finds
Speaker 1: me oh a lot, a lot. I go, yeah, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what is this about? And I go, oh, you know, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I feel like we need to delve into
Speaker 2: this one in another episode.
Speaker 1: Just what's that you do? I've spoken about it a
Speaker 1: couple of times. I've opened the door a little bit,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there have been times when I've known something
Speaker 1: way before and there's no way I could possibly know.
Speaker 1: And it's like I have had a very clear message
Speaker 1: to do or not do something, and the thing that
Speaker 1: I did or didn't do basically saved me from a
Speaker 1: bad thing. Yeah, and like unequivocally clear, like not no
Speaker 1: mystery around it, you know. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that. Where yeah, where does that come from? And
Speaker 1: it's like it's not like I've had thirty of those
Speaker 1: happen and twenty nine didn't. Like it's it's it's like,
Speaker 1: when that happens to me, I know somethings I just
Speaker 1: need to then pay attention. Yeah yeah, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: one off air, okay, And everyone's like, no, that's not fair.
Speaker 1: I just you know, you've got to I don't know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think I don't know next time when the
Speaker 1: student's ready, the teacher will appear. We'll see cal it's
Speaker 1: been good, it's been great. Thanks for hanging out with me.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Happy Sunday.
Speaker 1: Happy Sunday. See ya, see ya,