Speaker 1: A good team. I hope you're bloody terrific. Welcome to
Speaker 1: another installing the You project. And when I say that
Speaker 1: you project, I'm going to put a little asterisk next
Speaker 1: to that and say kinder kinder. The reason I say
Speaker 1: kinder is because the brilliant, handsome, devastatingly talented Andrew May
Speaker 1: of the Performance Intelligence podcast he and I got together
Speaker 1: last week. We did a chat. We had a chat.
Speaker 1: Officially it was me on his show, but because I'm
Speaker 1: wildly lazy, I went, fucking he fuck, what if we
Speaker 1: do what us podcast is call a co share and
Speaker 1: we will share that conversation here at camp typ So
Speaker 1: that's what we're doing. So Andrew and I had Mazie,
Speaker 1: as his friends call him, Mazie and I had a
Speaker 1: good chat about the concept of well, we spoke about
Speaker 1: success broadly, but we spoke about fame. We spoke about
Speaker 1: people's desire for attention and to be famous and be
Speaker 1: seen and be wanted and all of those things, and
Speaker 1: the idea of becoming an overnight success, which really, you know,
Speaker 1: there's so many moving past that, so many variables about that.
Speaker 1: And I think the title of his show was something
Speaker 1: like becoming an overnight success in twenty years or something
Speaker 1: something like that. But anyway, we had a really good
Speaker 1: chat and I thought I would share that chat with
Speaker 1: you today. So hope you're good. Hope you're enjoying the
Speaker 1: start of your week if you're listening to this on
Speaker 1: the day that it is released, which is a Monday,
Speaker 1: which is August eighteen, the first August eighteen, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five we've ever had. So if it is that day
Speaker 1: for you, it might be the day you do something special.
Speaker 1: You've had lots of Mondays, but you've never had this one,
Speaker 1: as Craig Harp says, or whatever day it is, enjoy
Speaker 1: I hope you get something out of it. And love
Speaker 1: your collective guts is love jumbo.
Speaker 2: In our modern landscape, we celebrate when somebody goes viral,
Speaker 2: but what happens when you do and nothing changes?
Speaker 1: Today?
Speaker 2: I with Craig Harper, effectingly known as Harps, one of
Speaker 2: Australia's leading performance coaches and host of the You Project podcast.
Speaker 2: Harps is over forty years of experience working across elite sport, media,
Speaker 2: health and professional development. Now, most overnight successes are the
Speaker 2: final scene of a long unseen grind but the public
Speaker 2: only sees the climax and not the climb. I've got
Speaker 2: a question for you, Craig Harper in welcoming you back
Speaker 2: to the podcast for multiple times, what are your thoughts
Speaker 2: on an overnight success?
Speaker 1: Hi, mate, good to be back. You sound very very
Speaker 1: professional straight out of the gate. I better try to
Speaker 1: live up to that. I can do.
Speaker 2: Get a harps, mate, how you're going like, yeah, let's
Speaker 2: talk about the weather.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what you were like before you press the go.
Speaker 1: But then all of a sudden, I've got summer radio.
Speaker 2: He's put on podcast voice. He's not saying fuck who.
Speaker 1: He's gone from moccasins and bloody army shorts to three
Speaker 1: piece suit. Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, it
Speaker 1: depends on how you define success. And you know, we
Speaker 1: know people blow up for somebody who does a video,
Speaker 1: they blow up, they go viral. I don't know why
Speaker 1: this person comes to mind. I don't even know if
Speaker 1: you remember this, but you know Huck Tour girl, you
Speaker 1: know that girl that I do remember her? Yes? Ah,
Speaker 1: you gotta give him that huck top on that NNE. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: So we won't talk about the origin story of what
Speaker 1: she was talking about but you know, she did a grab.
Speaker 1: Somebody asked her a question and the answer to that
Speaker 1: and that subsequent little kind of exchange was videoed when
Speaker 1: nuts and so she Depending on what your KPIs are
Speaker 1: for success, you will say she was an overnight success.
Speaker 1: She went from from zero to hero in some ways,
Speaker 1: and from making no dough to making lots of dough.
Speaker 1: But I think there was maybe a subsequent, almost as
Speaker 1: rapid decline. I'm not sure. So for me, success is
Speaker 1: really how someone is over the long term, and it
Speaker 1: may or may not have to do with anything commercial.
Speaker 2: I've got another one for you. Do you remember Corey Worthington.
Speaker 1: I was at that kind of party, kid or something
Speaker 1: that not.
Speaker 2: Twenty sixteen, Layla McKinnon on The Current Affair did an interview.
Speaker 2: He had those yellow sunglasses. I can still remember Laylah saying,
Speaker 2: take those sunglasses off. And he's saying, why why should.
Speaker 1: I take a few glasses and apologize to us. I'll say, sorry,
Speaker 1: but I'm not taking all my glasses. Why not because
Speaker 1: they're famous?
Speaker 2: Because your glasses are famous. So he was a household
Speaker 2: name for a couple of weeks. His parents went away.
Speaker 2: He had a party. He had his fifteen minutes of fame.
Speaker 2: Here is massive. I've done a Google search. He's not
Speaker 2: doing a hell of a lot. I mean that with respect,
Speaker 2: but you know you look at that. That had millions,
Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of clicks and downloads. So it was
Speaker 2: just about going viral like that would set you up
Speaker 2: for success. But it's not well in some cases maybe,
Speaker 2: But I look at you. You did a post yesterday.
Speaker 2: It was perfect timing for this mate. The post was
Speaker 2: called don't waste your potential. You said forty years ago.
Speaker 2: Forty years harps. Geez, you're looking fresh. Look at him,
Speaker 2: wiz Yeah, no, look at me.
Speaker 1: I was only six.
Speaker 2: I started in grade so that's all right. Forty years
Speaker 2: ago in brackets. In grade two I started a thing
Speaker 2: called personal training. People said it wouldn't last, nobody would pay.
Speaker 2: At best, it was a fat Four years later I
Speaker 2: set up something called a personal training center. Than were
Speaker 2: any in Australia. I was told I wasn't prepared for business.
Speaker 2: I wasn't that I was naive. I was that I
Speaker 2: would go broke. I didn't, it would fail, didn't have
Speaker 2: a quarter of a century. I set up four centers
Speaker 2: work with thousands of clients, employed hundreds of pets, trained
Speaker 2: professional sporting teams, multiple Olympians, and found my way into
Speaker 2: the worlds of media, academia, corporate high performance, and personal development.
Speaker 2: I am grateful I did the work and grateful I
Speaker 2: didn't listen to those who predicted my demise. We end
Speaker 2: the podcast here, couldn't.
Speaker 1: We forty years? Yeah? You coming out of a night success.
Speaker 2: Thank you, great mate, thank you, Thanks poor boys girls,
Speaker 2: shortest podcast amazing harps have ever done.
Speaker 1: I think well for me anyway. I can't speak on
Speaker 1: behalf anyone else, but because I'm not like I reckon,
Speaker 1: you'll argue this, but I would say that you are
Speaker 1: more innately talented and probably intelligent than me. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I have no talent or no intellect, but because
Speaker 1: I've always been like at school, I didn't have great genes.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a great academic, I wasn't sporting. I was
Speaker 1: morbidly obese, and you know, until I lost a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of weight, I was in many ways. I was
Speaker 1: very media okah, and if not aiming for mediocre, but
Speaker 1: I was kind of fascinated with human behavior and initially
Speaker 1: my own ability and my own potential and my own possibilities.
Speaker 1: And I ended up losing a bunch of weight and
Speaker 1: going from a terrible athlete to not a bad athlete,
Speaker 1: not a great athlete, but not a bad athlete, you know,
Speaker 1: playing reasonable footy and doing like things that I could
Speaker 1: never have done, and building a body that was, you know,
Speaker 1: a way better version of the previous version, and going
Speaker 1: okay at a few things. And I kind of realized
Speaker 1: that for me, my mediocrity was almost my motivation, because
Speaker 1: I knew that if I was ever going to do
Speaker 1: any good, it was only going to just be work
Speaker 1: and focus and commitment and discipline and fucking courage and
Speaker 1: self control because I was not you know, I went
Speaker 1: to school with lots of gifted kids creatively gifted, musically, gifted, athletically,
Speaker 1: gifted in intellectually, academically. I was in none of those groups.
Speaker 1: So for me, that's always been ironically a source of inspiration.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of Angela Duckworth's theory of grit as you're
Speaker 2: talking about that, and she talks about grit eickalls passion
Speaker 2: plus hard work determination. So you find something you enjoy,
Speaker 2: your passionate about and then do the bloody work. What
Speaker 2: I've seen. The research shows this as well with a
Speaker 2: lot of high performers. Initially, so the super talented kid,
Speaker 2: the young boy or girl who's just been blessed with
Speaker 2: God's gift or whatever denomination's gift, and they get by
Speaker 2: without doing much work, and they get external feedback, Hey,
Speaker 2: you're really good at tennis, at violin, English, at debating,
Speaker 2: and you've done no work. So what does that reinforce?
Speaker 2: I'm really good and I've done no work. Everyone's telling
Speaker 2: me I'm really good, So I don't do work, and
Speaker 2: then eventually some kids like Harps and I'm going to
Speaker 2: come back. I argue, not that you were less talented.
Speaker 2: It you're a renovator's dream and perhaps whatever the role
Speaker 2: modeling environment, because.
Speaker 1: You're just can you use that for the title Harps
Speaker 1: in brackets the renovators.
Speaker 2: Dream done, got it chaped. But that conditioning at a
Speaker 2: young age, it's luck. You really do play the luck lottery,
Speaker 2: and you often take the piss out of yourself. The
Speaker 2: fat kid from the rabin who's done good, but you
Speaker 2: had the call there. You just needed to get the
Speaker 2: self worth, the self effictcausey exercise. So I wouldn't argue
Speaker 2: that I'm any more or less talented. You just didn't
Speaker 2: get off to a good start. And I find that
Speaker 2: with a lot of people, as you do in the
Speaker 2: parallel lives we have of coaching and podcasting and speaking
Speaker 2: and writing and working with higher performers. Environment is massive
Speaker 2: where you come from, but it doesn't have to shape
Speaker 2: and dictate the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: One hundred. That's a fucking great Sorry for all the
Speaker 1: swearing Andrews listeners, I'm very sweary. One of the questions
Speaker 1: that I'm sure you've been asked, I've been asked, I
Speaker 1: don't know many, more than hundreds of times, maybe thousands,
Speaker 1: but is you know, what about when I lose motivation
Speaker 1: or how do I stay motivated? Or how do I
Speaker 1: get motivated? Or how do I And I said, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the right question. Like you're operating on
Speaker 1: the assumption that motivation is the key to transformation, and
Speaker 1: if that were the case, well, I definitely wouldn't have
Speaker 1: done anything because I am just because I'm not motivated,
Speaker 1: you know, And with motivated, I'm talking about when most
Speaker 1: people talk about motivation, they talk about the state they're
Speaker 1: in excitement, enthusiasm, how they're feeling. Right. I listen to
Speaker 1: Anna and Craig talk and I was so motivated. Right
Speaker 1: what happened? They had a state change, now motivated, So
Speaker 1: I went for a run, got up next morning, was
Speaker 1: a motivated, didn't go for a run. So there's this
Speaker 1: correlation between you know, or assumed correlation, if not causation
Speaker 1: between I am motivated, therefore you know that means I'm
Speaker 1: going to produce good outcomes and when I'm not motivated,
Speaker 1: I won't and I reckon. The key question with all
Speaker 1: this kind of messiness around this is two key things. One,
Speaker 1: how productive and proactive and effective can you be when
Speaker 1: you can't be fucked that very human state of oh,
Speaker 1: can't be fucked cool? Now's the time. Now's the time
Speaker 1: right now, when you don't want it, when you don't
Speaker 1: feel like it, when your foots a little bit sore,
Speaker 1: when you're a bit tired, when you could absolutely rationalize it.
Speaker 1: This might I'm not saying it always is. There's a
Speaker 1: time to chill out too, but sometimes that's the time
Speaker 1: literally to go do the thing that you need to
Speaker 1: do but you don't want to do. The second question
Speaker 1: is around your capacity to do stuff. And this is
Speaker 1: almost the inverse of fifteen Minutes of Fame Corey Worthington,
Speaker 1: et l. But is your capacity to be able to
Speaker 1: do the things necessary when no one's looked, no one's cheering,
Speaker 1: no one's clapping you on, no one's affirming you, no
Speaker 1: one's telling you're a great bloke or slapping your back.
Speaker 1: In fact, no one gives a shit. Show me what
Speaker 1: you can do, then, because I think that's over the
Speaker 1: long term. If we're talking about success being not a
Speaker 1: flash in the pan thing, but rather a reflection of
Speaker 1: how we live and our life and lifestyle and relationships
Speaker 1: and internal and external reality, then I think we're looking
Speaker 1: at a long term thing. I think it's your capacity
Speaker 1: just to keep doing the things that work, whether or
Speaker 1: not it's fun or not.
Speaker 2: I'm nodding profusely. People watching this on YouTube will see
Speaker 2: and ladies and gents, I love wining the big fella
Speaker 2: up because we can riff and rant and you make
Speaker 2: me think of frameworks and maybe some dormant models that
Speaker 2: have been sitting there. As you said that totally aligned.
Speaker 2: Harp's totally aligned. I look at motivation is more external
Speaker 2: extrinsic exogynist.
Speaker 1: So it's all that.
Speaker 2: So sometimes people say, oh, I need you harps, I'll
Speaker 2: listen to the you project, I'll go to your personal
Speaker 2: training studio because you can motivate me. So it's requiring
Speaker 2: someone else to do it for you. Now, motivation can
Speaker 2: get your started. It's like a jumpstart of the car.
Speaker 2: But then you've got to fix the engine so you
Speaker 2: can start it yourself. I'm going to get a bit
Speaker 2: playful on words, but the origin of the word inspiration
Speaker 2: the Latin word inspirare, which means to breathe life into.
Speaker 2: So I'm much more aligned to find what inspires you,
Speaker 2: what's internalized, and then if you can link that back
Speaker 2: to purpose, that's rocket feel. So I'm not discounting sometimes
Speaker 2: you do need a friendly kick in the proverbials to
Speaker 2: get you going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. I love it. My simple similar
Speaker 1: analogy is or metaphor is you know, it's a spark
Speaker 1: that lights the fire, but you're the actual feel that
Speaker 1: keeps the fire burning. Right, So I think, firstly, I'm
Speaker 1: not anti motivation. I love motivation, you know, I think
Speaker 1: for many of us it's you know, it's the starting
Speaker 1: point and it's the thing that creates momentum, which is beautiful,
Speaker 1: but I think we don't want to be dependent on it,
Speaker 1: just like we don't want to be dependent on praise
Speaker 1: or reinforcement or accolades or attention. Like I think it's
Speaker 1: almost like the currency in twenty twenty five is attention.
Speaker 1: That's what everybody wants. They want attention, you know, on
Speaker 1: social media, on Instagram, on Facebook, on whatever, on TikTok.
Speaker 1: It's like, give me attention, give me attention, give me attention,
Speaker 1: because then I can leverage that attention to something else
Speaker 1: that I want. You know. And while I understand that,
Speaker 1: I think some of the greatest growth and resilience and
Speaker 1: transformation and breakdowns and breakthroughs happen in the darkness. I'm
Speaker 1: just holding the pause.
Speaker 2: If I could cut out the studio lights and it
Speaker 2: would have been a dramatic effect, wouldn't it for our
Speaker 2: visual watches. Yeah, And this is the mistake a lot
Speaker 2: of people make, especially I think the younger generation now.
Speaker 2: And I'm not beating up on Jen hy gen Z millennials,
Speaker 2: all the young troops coming through, but it is different
Speaker 2: to when you and I grew up, because there was
Speaker 2: no Internet to rocket you to fame. But then ask
Speaker 2: that question. So you get all the downloads, but is
Speaker 2: it actually making a difference for you? Now, Yes, some
Speaker 2: people can accelerate a business that can say, grow a book,
Speaker 2: grow a podcast quickly. But any athlete I sit down
Speaker 2: with Harps, any coach, I sit down with any entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: any high performer, any leader of defense who really wants
Speaker 2: to go to the next level. I'm talking about world class.
Speaker 2: It's a decade unless you're a ridiculous rock star and
Speaker 2: you find you're in a current that just propels you
Speaker 2: like nothing else, and then you see whether people are
Speaker 2: really cut out for it. What you mean a decade?
Speaker 2: I thought if I did some coaching with you and
Speaker 2: did a bit of a mental ioways upgrade, I could
Speaker 2: do this shit in twelve months. No, you like, you're good,
Speaker 2: but to be great, or to be world class, it
Speaker 2: takes you a long time. And I've got an example
Speaker 2: for you, mate, because I know how in tune you
Speaker 2: are with popular culture. So you listen to Sabrina Carpenter,
Speaker 2: don't throw me under.
Speaker 1: The bus like that after you pump up my ties.
Speaker 1: I do not, so clearly I'm not up on pop culture.
Speaker 2: You know her most popular song from twenty twenty four, Espresso, Right,
Speaker 2: she's had millions of downloads.
Speaker 1: Ah ah, yeah.
Speaker 2: That's all I listened to. So when you do the
Speaker 2: research for that. Before Espresso came out, she had five albums.
Speaker 2: A couple of first ones were virtual, non existent. She
Speaker 2: signed an agreement with Disney. She was in the TV
Speaker 2: show Girl Meets World back in two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 2: and she was doing acting and singing before that. So
Speaker 2: she's been fifteen plus years and then suddenly she rockets.
Speaker 2: I only know of it because I've got a seventy
Speaker 2: year old daughter. I mean, her and her friends were
Speaker 2: talking about Sabrina Carpenter. I thought i'd google it and
Speaker 2: I did, and they were talking. I said, oh, I
Speaker 2: love espress it. But what I really like is how
Speaker 2: she's grown from her Disney person a Girl Meets World.
Speaker 2: And one of Mikla's friends looked at me and she
Speaker 2: just looked looked at me, really impressed, and she said
Speaker 2: to Micala, I wish my dad was that girl.
Speaker 1: Michale said, no, you don't, No, you don't. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that. I have a really, I think nice story
Speaker 1: around that. So I had a guy called Jim Murphy
Speaker 1: on my show. He's not this similar to you, Like,
Speaker 1: he's a high performance guy, got masters, works with teams
Speaker 1: and athletes. He's from the States. He wrote a book.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, I think it's called In Her
Speaker 1: Excellence The blah blah, but something like that in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. I think that's the Anyway, his story is.
Speaker 1: His story is that you've got to get him on,
Speaker 1: Like get him on, you will love him. I mean so,
Speaker 1: But here's his story. So he wrote this book sixteen
Speaker 1: years ago and it did okay, but no one knows
Speaker 1: who he is. Right, And he was a budding, fledgling
Speaker 1: baseball player, got signed to a major baseball league club,
Speaker 1: didn't had a few issues, didn't really go anywhere, ended
Speaker 1: up going back to school, did all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: so it was doing okay but not great. So he
Speaker 1: wrote this book and the book is good, but no
Speaker 1: one knows who is. He doesn't have a brand, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a profile. I don't know how many books
Speaker 1: he sells. But you know it's not a it's not
Speaker 1: a breakthrough, groundbreaking, world changing book. Anyway. Sixteen years later,
Speaker 1: earlier this year, I'm trying to remember. I keep learning,
Speaker 1: you know when you learn like five new things a day.
Speaker 1: And anyway, there was an NFL player during a game.
Speaker 1: He's one of the best players in the NFL. I
Speaker 1: think he's a running back. Anyway, during the game, this
Speaker 1: is this year, sixteen years later after Jim wrote the book.
Speaker 1: He's sitting on the sidelines. You know how the offensive
Speaker 1: team goes on, then they come off, and then the
Speaker 1: defense goes on. So every time he would be back
Speaker 1: on the sidelines, he would be reading this book, this
Speaker 1: sixteen year old book that this dude wrote. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the commentator is like, I've never ever
Speaker 1: seen an NFL player reading a book during the game.
Speaker 1: And they zoomed in and there's bits highlighted and he's
Speaker 1: it's like these are his anyways, So this dude almost
Speaker 1: overnight becomes the biggest selling author on the planet.
Speaker 2: What a great story, A lote moment.
Speaker 1: So sixteen years old, the book is all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: He's on every major network. He's doing interviews, he's doing
Speaker 1: speaking gigs all around the world. He's talking a little
Speaker 1: Fatty Harps in Australia, like he's gone from and it
Speaker 1: took sixteen years, and it was because one moment in time,
Speaker 1: like there was a guy reading that book, like he
Speaker 1: does work with good athletes, so he's you know, I'd
Speaker 1: say he's probably at the level you and Irad or
Speaker 1: you know, but it's not like his Oprah or maybe
Speaker 1: maybe he's not quite or wasn't quite at the level.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It doesn't matter, but yeah, and what's
Speaker 1: beautiful is he's a great guy. He is a great guy,
Speaker 1: and he is so grounded and he is so not
Speaker 1: a fathead. He is so humble, so self aware, and
Speaker 1: I loved him. I'm like, I'm so glad you are
Speaker 1: the way that you are because when I read your story,
Speaker 1: when I looked at some of the TV footage and
Speaker 1: you think, I hope this good is this guy's as
Speaker 1: good as he seems, and he was even better and yeah,
Speaker 1: just a gentleman and like he is going to ride
Speaker 1: that wave now. But like I've never met him in person,
Speaker 1: but great story.
Speaker 2: Right place, right message, right time, right Blake, grounded and
Speaker 2: he'll just accelerate. Oh definitely, I'll get his details because
Speaker 2: that sounds a phenomenal story and good story. Totally backs up.
Speaker 2: This doesn't it that. Yes, you may become viral, which
Speaker 2: is a new term, but viral does not equal long
Speaker 2: term success or sustained performance. Got to ask you, do
Speaker 2: you have a definition of success? All right, then I've
Speaker 2: got a question for you. You know what I love
Speaker 2: when we do podcast and even you sent this through
Speaker 2: to me? Who's interviewing who?
Speaker 1: Mate? I said, I don't really know.
Speaker 2: I do you want to do a podcast?
Speaker 1: I go, yeah, sure when? And you're like tomorrow? I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: who's interviewing who? Like? I don't care? Well? It mixes, right,
Speaker 1: it mixes. Look, success for me is not a thing,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a few things. And I think, like,
Speaker 1: this is a really interesting conversation because and this is
Speaker 1: true for many things, like success for me will not
Speaker 1: be success for someone else. I might say, Andrew, when
Speaker 1: it comes to personal health, what is success for you?
Speaker 1: And you go ABC? And I go, all right, tell
Speaker 1: me what success is now from a career point of view,
Speaker 1: and that's something else? And I go, now, tell me
Speaker 1: about your relationships? What how did you How do you
Speaker 1: know if that is a successful party or exist or
Speaker 1: it's where you would like it to be, And so
Speaker 1: I think success is not for me. It's not a
Speaker 1: global thing. It's a bunch of things, because my life
Speaker 1: is not a single thing. It's a composite of things.
Speaker 1: And also I think for the individual, what we deem
Speaker 1: to be success or our version or our I guess
Speaker 1: description of success will vary over time. So if you
Speaker 1: had have said to me, you know, Harps, what are
Speaker 1: you When I was thirty and I owned three gyms,
Speaker 1: and I had one hundred staff, and I owned two
Speaker 1: other businesses, and all this stuff was going on, and
Speaker 1: I was in the gym and I was like the
Speaker 1: captain of the ship, and it was high energy and
Speaker 1: it was all bloody, you know, dumbbells and giggles and
Speaker 1: photos of the old Harps. You're well, I was jacked
Speaker 1: and full of ego and bullshit, and you know, for
Speaker 1: a while there, I mean, it was just amazing. It
Speaker 1: was beautiful, there was great energy. But then there came
Speaker 1: a time when I'm like, yeah, no, that's enough. Yeah
Speaker 1: it doesn't. This ain't what I want to do anymore.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's bad, it's not that we're doing
Speaker 1: anything wrong. I've just this doesn't meet the need in
Speaker 1: me that it once did. I still want to work
Speaker 1: with people and help people and be of service and value.
Speaker 1: But me, you know, setting the bike seat for dinner,
Speaker 1: and you know, counting reps for Barry, and you know,
Speaker 1: fucking spotting John on the squat bar. It's not my
Speaker 1: thing anymore.
Speaker 2: You know, we have a lot of fitness traders and
Speaker 2: personal traders.
Speaker 1: Listen to this.
Speaker 2: There's a little bit more than that. So I interrupted you.
Speaker 2: So definition of success has changed for you?
Speaker 1: It's ev Yeah, I think it's fluid. It's fluid. It's
Speaker 1: like for somebody like I realized when I was in
Speaker 1: my twenties that I don't want to be I don't
Speaker 1: want a job. I don't want to work for someone.
Speaker 1: I don't want to clock in at that time clock
Speaker 1: out at that time. Not because that is bad, but
Speaker 1: because it didn't work for me. I didn't find a
Speaker 1: lot of joy in that or fulfillment in that, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't grow in that. And I wanted to do
Speaker 1: something where and I'm sure there were some employee employer
Speaker 1: situations where I really could have grown, but not that
Speaker 1: I had experienced personally. And so you know, for me
Speaker 1: that success is about, you know, getting better in a way.
Speaker 1: It's about learning and growing and evolving, and you know,
Speaker 1: waking up at sixty one and going, hey, I'm not shit,
Speaker 1: I'm not falling apart. My brain works. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't be objective, but as objective as I can be.
Speaker 1: I think my brain is better than it was when
Speaker 1: I was forty or thirty. I think I'm you know,
Speaker 1: there's obviously deterioration, which is inevitable physiological deterioration. But I'm
Speaker 1: still pretty fit and pretty strong and pretty healthy. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful for all of that. So just trying
Speaker 1: to work well, you know, can I double click on
Speaker 1: that and that I want to talk about success? And
Speaker 1: then you said you've got a question. I actually think
Speaker 1: that the way that we think about age is really unhealthy,
Speaker 1: really unhealthy. I believe that we you know, your mind
Speaker 1: has a massive impact on your physiology. You know, if
Speaker 1: you think something bad's gonna happen but it's not gonna happen,
Speaker 1: you think you're in danger, then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: your bodi's change, sympathetic nervous system ENDO, crime's system, all
Speaker 1: that stuff, blood pressure, adrenaline, cortisol, respiration, everything's through the roof,
Speaker 1: like just a thought can have a negative physiological consequence.
Speaker 1: And when your story is, oh, this is my age,
Speaker 1: so therefore my options are now this when that's not
Speaker 1: actually true. Of course, there's an inevitability about physiological aging,
Speaker 1: of course, but the variability is how we age and
Speaker 1: the rate at how we age, and also your honor.
Speaker 1: While I'm pleading my case, the fifty year old who's
Speaker 1: never really trained, who starts to train is going to
Speaker 1: get better. They're not just going to kind of maintain.
Speaker 1: They're gonna get better. And you think about how many
Speaker 1: people consciously train their body, quite a few. How many
Speaker 1: people consciously and I mean intentionally structured, reasoned application train
Speaker 1: their brain almost none? Almost none. And your brain is
Speaker 1: exactly like the rest of your body in that it
Speaker 1: will deteriorate if you're not doing something to stop it
Speaker 1: from deteriorating. And so for me, part of my reason
Speaker 1: for doing a PhD is that is, like, oh, I
Speaker 1: know so much stuff, not because I'm brilliant, not because
Speaker 1: I'm smarter than anyone, but just because I've been through
Speaker 1: this multi year process where oh I went into an
Speaker 1: environment where I was totally inept. I'm not even being
Speaker 1: metaphoric when I say I was literally the dumbest one
Speaker 1: in the room. I couldn't speak the language, I didn't
Speaker 1: understand the culture. I would read academic papers, I would
Speaker 1: have to reread one page for an hour to understand
Speaker 1: what the paper was saying. I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: write at a PhD level. And that's among all the
Speaker 1: other things I've been doing over the last five years.
Speaker 1: And it's just because you know, I'm so excited about
Speaker 1: and this is not bullshit for a podcast. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited about what I can do, not what people think
Speaker 1: of me, not how much money I can earn, but
Speaker 1: just what I can do. Because I think our limitation
Speaker 1: is not our potential or our capacity nearly as much
Speaker 1: as it is our thinking about our potential. Like we
Speaker 1: have age related thinking, and then we have people going, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know what your age. Your shut the fuck up
Speaker 1: at your age, Like stop it. I mean, my training
Speaker 1: partner just turned sixty. He looks like a fucking freak.
Speaker 1: And his you know, he rides an hour and a
Speaker 1: half two hours a day on his bike. He still works,
Speaker 1: he still does stuff, he trains, he's learning all the time.
Speaker 1: He's always researching. He's always doing stuff. He's got three kids,
Speaker 1: he's got a wife. It's not like he's self centered.
Speaker 1: He's not. And he inspires me. He's you know, and
Speaker 1: he's a year and a half younger than me.
Speaker 2: Your body language, everything ramped up your volume. We've we've
Speaker 2: hit a hot button.
Speaker 1: My question to you is, I just want to circle
Speaker 1: back to one thing we spoke about, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes of fame. Fame, everyone wants to be literally. I
Speaker 1: did a talk at a school a few months ago,
Speaker 1: which I don't do many schools, but it was year tens,
Speaker 1: private college, of course it was, and we spoke about
Speaker 1: you know, the why and what and how of goals
Speaker 1: and stuff, very basic, and I just said, who wants
Speaker 1: to go? Why don't you five, five of you tell
Speaker 1: me what your goals are? I said, I need five hands.
Speaker 1: Five hands went up. Two of the five. You know what?
Speaker 1: The goal was? To be famous? That's their goal. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not judging that. I'm just curious about that.
Speaker 2: Also in that generation to be YouTubers Instagram.
Speaker 1: Yeah why And they're like what, I go, why so
Speaker 1: you want to be famous? Why? Neither of them could
Speaker 1: tell me. I think people confuse fame or even popularity
Speaker 1: with love. Like I've got a reasonably high profile. I'm
Speaker 1: definitely not famous, but you know in Melbourne, I'm moderately
Speaker 1: well known. But I don't confuse that at all with
Speaker 1: friendships or real connection or love or you know. It's
Speaker 1: like I reckon, if you have five people in your
Speaker 1: life who love you unconditionally, you're doing great. So what
Speaker 1: do you think about fame? What's the drive? Why do
Speaker 1: people want that?
Speaker 2: I'm going to try and tap this into my definition
Speaker 2: of success and try and wrap two open loops up together.
Speaker 2: So this is either going to go ah, our audience
Speaker 2: will go that makes sense, or they go he totally
Speaker 2: stuffs that on our bold symbol. I've dropped to sitter.
Speaker 2: I think there's two definitions, or two origins of success.
Speaker 2: One is external and that it can be aligned to
Speaker 2: your performance based identity. I perform Therefore I am now
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with that. You and I have worked
Speaker 2: with hundreds collectively of athletes, thousands of people, tens of
Speaker 2: thousands who have been driven by a performance based identity,
Speaker 2: and that is external and extremes.
Speaker 1: You can get.
Speaker 2: Rewarded with money and fame and cash and accolades and
Speaker 2: love and relationships and all that stuff, and there's nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with that. But where I spend a lot of
Speaker 2: my time and I know you do, is then try
Speaker 2: to stitch that together with more internal intrinsic, inspirational, and
Speaker 2: that's a purpose based identity, and that's who I am
Speaker 2: in this world and how I contribute. And for a
Speaker 2: lot of people that go our purpose, mate, I'm too busy, tired, distracted,
Speaker 2: I can't go there.
Speaker 1: Well, just look at meaning. What gives you meaning?
Speaker 2: So I think they are the two definitions. And this
Speaker 2: is not new because you look at the literature. You've
Speaker 2: got you'd ammonia and heat ammonia. The you'd ammonia aligned
Speaker 2: to the Greek word or philosophy of being connected. It's
Speaker 2: more than you and headimonia is all about just you
Speaker 2: and power and kudos and everything else. So to me,
Speaker 2: I think there's a beautiful diagram like a ven diagram,
Speaker 2: and you can have them both intersecting. So do I
Speaker 2: want to build a business and make money and have
Speaker 2: a nice house and a car and have some experiences?
Speaker 2: Abs A frequently harps absolutely, But is that the only goal? No,
Speaker 2: because the first forty years of my life, I was
Speaker 2: so performance based, and then you know, my story went
Speaker 2: through a marriage breakdown, living in a big house, big cars,
Speaker 2: water views, two kids, and I was miserable because there's
Speaker 2: nothing for me. So to me, it's the stitching together
Speaker 2: of the two. Now, if you do that, it's sustainable.
Speaker 2: If you do that, it can be really impactful because
Speaker 2: then you're living on your terms, your purpose. So then
Speaker 2: what is fame. Fame could be the barista in a
Speaker 2: small country town it makes frickin awesome coffee that keeps
Speaker 2: everyone awake, but more so connected first thing of a morning.
Speaker 2: Or fame may be getting millions of record styles and downloads.
Speaker 2: But to me, it's stitching the two together. So I
Speaker 2: think you can have external success, but you've got to
Speaker 2: be grounded in a set of values, and the purpose
Speaker 2: is bigger than you. It's future focused, and it excites
Speaker 2: the living daylights out of here. I've just gone pretty
Speaker 2: deep and broad with you. So to me, it's those
Speaker 2: two definitions of all identities, the purpose based identity and
Speaker 2: the performance based identity. And I find I'm sure for
Speaker 2: your audience and my audience, a lot of them will
Speaker 2: understand the performance based identity, because that's what the that's
Speaker 2: the school board that we're measured on. We're measured on this.
Speaker 2: You make the team where you don't you score the
Speaker 2: points or you don't you get the girl or the guy,
Speaker 2: or you don't you get the metrics at work or
Speaker 2: you don't.
Speaker 1: So life is very.
Speaker 2: Much performance based, and I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: you've got to adapt to that and work with that.
Speaker 2: Why we have so many people although who earns so
Speaker 2: much money. I've worked with a couple of billionaires and
Speaker 2: no miserable bastards because they develop nothing about the heart
Speaker 2: or about the connection of the purpose. I'll draw a breath.
Speaker 2: There's a very long answer to a simple question.
Speaker 1: No, No, I like it. I like it. I think identity
Speaker 1: is a really interesting door to open because we often
Speaker 1: attach our beliefs or our talent or our capacity to
Speaker 1: win or whatever it is. You know. It's like obviously
Speaker 1: religion's a big one, but you know, when you believe something,
Speaker 1: or you think you believe something, or you do believe something,
Speaker 1: or you think you know something, you think you're right
Speaker 1: about something, you think you have the answer, you have
Speaker 1: insight that other people don't have, and that becomes intertwined
Speaker 1: with if not truly representative of your identity, then you
Speaker 1: make yourself pretty much unteachable unless somebody is echoing your
Speaker 1: same thoughts, right, And this is a you know, of course,
Speaker 1: confirmation bias and the famous old echo chamber, and you
Speaker 1: know we that it is two things are I think
Speaker 1: true in most people. At the same time we say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to be a better version of me. I'm
Speaker 1: open minded, I love learning. Da da da da da.
Speaker 1: But at the same time we are pretty much fucking
Speaker 1: rock solid unteachable on certain things because we think that
Speaker 1: we absolutely know when we don't know. We don't have knowledge.
Speaker 1: We have belief. We have faith, and faith and belief
Speaker 1: are good things. But it's like I've probably said this
Speaker 1: to you at some stage and maybe listeners, but I
Speaker 1: grew up and it's not about religion. It's about thinking.
Speaker 1: It's about metacognition. It's about understanding why you think the
Speaker 1: way you think, and understanding why you have such a
Speaker 1: fear based emotional attachment to an idea or a construct
Speaker 1: or an ideology because you are the ideology and if
Speaker 1: someone attacks the ideology or thought or the belief, then
Speaker 1: you feel attacked. Now, when you are intertwined with something
Speaker 1: else that isn't you, especially if we're talking about a
Speaker 1: theoretical construct, it's it's very, very hard to truly be
Speaker 1: objective and awhere and conscious because you are always looking
Speaker 1: at life through the window of or the filter of
Speaker 1: I am a Vegan, I am a Catholic, I am
Speaker 1: a whatever. It is not the being a vegan or
Speaker 1: a Catholic about, of course, but it's hello to all
Speaker 1: of that vegan Catholic podcast. But it's no. But do
Speaker 1: I have self limiting beliefs? Yes? Do I Look, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the point. This is I'm saying this for
Speaker 1: me too. I'm saying there was a I was also.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but I went
Speaker 1: through a phase where I went to a fundamental born
Speaker 1: again Christian tambourine banging, rafter swinging.
Speaker 2: Church for years years just on that people. People can
Speaker 2: go back in our backlog on the Performance Intelligence podcast,
Speaker 2: not the most recent one, I think the one before that,
Speaker 2: episode number one hundred and two.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the title.
Speaker 2: I think it's the best title we've ever done in
Speaker 2: a podcast. It was Jesus Joe's Hands.
Speaker 1: And Jeers that's right, that's right, remember conversation. But there
Speaker 1: were times when if you tried to even talk to
Speaker 1: me about something that was an alternate theology or theory,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have listened to you, right, And that is
Speaker 1: all about me. That is all about and I understand that.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying don't believe, don't think. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that. I'm saying, if we truly want to be
Speaker 1: teachable and cognitively and emotionally and even spiritually malleable, like
Speaker 1: that is where we are open to learn. We are
Speaker 1: okay with being wrong. We are okay with not knowing.
Speaker 1: Here's an idea. When someone asks you something and you
Speaker 1: don't know, go I don't know the end. Not Ah,
Speaker 1: It's like there's so much shit of all there is
Speaker 1: to know. If all there is to know is an ocean,
Speaker 1: I'm a drop of water in that ocean.
Speaker 2: When you do that, not even I find I wouldn't
Speaker 2: have done that in my early career because I thought
Speaker 2: I've got to be this omniscient, omnipotent person pretending it's bullshit.
Speaker 2: It's a facade when you say to somehow, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I had an athlete last week and a coach actually
Speaker 2: talking to both of them. They asked me something. I said, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's a really good question. I'm not sure. Can you
Speaker 2: give me a bit of time to go and check
Speaker 2: on that and I'll come bat you. The athletic left
Speaker 2: and I was with the coach just having a coffee.
Speaker 2: He said, that was really refreshing. I said, what I said?
Speaker 2: When you just said I'm going to go and check that,
Speaker 2: I said, well, I didn't know. I wasn't going to
Speaker 2: make it up. We're talking about something pretty serious to
Speaker 2: this athlete. I said, it's totally totally negligent of me
Speaker 2: to make that up if I don't know that comes
Speaker 2: with age. And just to wrap out on success, because
Speaker 2: I want to talk a little bit about hard work,
Speaker 2: which is non sexy and boring, and as you said,
Speaker 2: done in the shadows. What if we got our listeners
Speaker 2: and our viewers, so our collective audience to just sit
Speaker 2: down and write down what is success for you? Grab
Speaker 2: a beverage of your choice, and just sit down for
Speaker 2: ten or fifteen minutes with no distraction and just ask
Speaker 2: that question. What is success or a statement? Success for
Speaker 2: me is dot dot dot?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: I gave you that definition with two nice circles crossed
Speaker 2: over purpose based identity, performance based identity, but made. It's
Speaker 2: taken me lots of highs and lows and stuff ups
Speaker 2: and fuck ups to actually put that together. And a
Speaker 2: simple one for me is making sure I'm making a
Speaker 2: contribution to the outside world, connecting with my loved ones
Speaker 2: and from a personal point of view, engaged and feeling
Speaker 2: like I'm being deuced. So it doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: high level, high science, high tech. What is it that
Speaker 2: defines or delineates success for you? And you know what, harps,
Speaker 2: You've been on this planet just a little bit longer
Speaker 2: than me, mate. But the more I deal with people,
Speaker 2: the more I just realize we've got to help people
Speaker 2: with a framework because we don't get this manual on
Speaker 2: how we work, and we're fricking complicated and complex, and
Speaker 2: we're becoming more so with tech and AI and there's
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of stuff on that as well.
Speaker 1: AI.
Speaker 2: Yes it's helping you be more productive, but it's killing
Speaker 2: your brain if you don't work it. But we really
Speaker 2: do just need to sometimes come back to fundamentals and
Speaker 2: go what is it like, what is going to make
Speaker 2: me happy or fulfilled? And what is success to me?
Speaker 2: And then reverse engineer it, set your life up for
Speaker 2: it rather than just getting into this slipstream before you
Speaker 2: realize you wake up ten, twenty thirty, forty fifty years
Speaker 2: later living someone else's life and go, shit, what was that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I think that's a great question to ask,
Speaker 1: and I think another question to ask, so one from Andrew,
Speaker 1: one from Harps. My question is what are your values?
Speaker 1: And is your life a reflection of those values? So
Speaker 1: for me, values are just the things that matter to
Speaker 1: you most, and you can't get it wrong because they're
Speaker 1: your values. But so I would say for me, things
Speaker 1: like you know, physical mental, emotional health, that's a value,
Speaker 1: looking after people that I love, my parents, being elderly
Speaker 1: right now, that's probably my number one value at the moment.
Speaker 1: Having a purpose bigger than me, and being of service,
Speaker 1: which Andrews spoke about, that's a value for me. So
Speaker 1: I think, you know, and it sounds cheesy and cliche
Speaker 1: and we can all go, oh, yeah, of course it is,
Speaker 1: because you're on a fucking podcast. I get that too.
Speaker 1: I get that too. And have I ever been a selfish,
Speaker 1: self centered, thoughtless, lacking empathy. Have I ever Yes, sure have,
Speaker 1: Sure have? Do I ever do that? Now? Sure?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 1: I try not to. I try to be more aware.
Speaker 1: I am one of the most flawed people I know,
Speaker 1: but I'm okay to say that, and I'm a work
Speaker 1: in progress. But what having clarity about our values does.
Speaker 1: It helps us make decisions as we navigate life. Where
Speaker 1: we go, Oh, here's an opportunity, or here's a decision
Speaker 1: I've got to make, or here's a situation I've got
Speaker 1: to deal with. Well, these are my values, so it's clear.
Speaker 1: It's clear what I need to do or not do.
Speaker 1: It's not easy because sometimes some of those opportunities are
Speaker 1: financially rewarding, but they don't align with my values. And
Speaker 1: I think we've spoken about this, but I've had a
Speaker 1: number of probably five or six or seven really good
Speaker 1: commercial opportunities on my show that I couldn't take. They
Speaker 1: were financially good opportunities, but they didn't They just didn't
Speaker 1: align with what I think and what I believe, and
Speaker 1: I definitely couldn't sell that stuff. So I went, I
Speaker 1: would love your dough, but I can't sell your stuff.
Speaker 1: And so was it easy? No? Was it clear? Though?
Speaker 2: Absolutely it's now a perfect segaway. We're going to take
Speaker 2: an AD and we'll be back to the program shortly.
Speaker 2: This program with Craig Harper is sponsored by hard Rock
Speaker 2: Correct Ol dysfunction Treatment. You're having problem getting.
Speaker 1: Well? That I would certainly sponsor that.
Speaker 2: I I want you then going, Hey, shiny head, didn't
Speaker 2: tell me he's now bringing ads in. You were thinking
Speaker 2: this guy's gone next level? Hey bringing it an AD?
Speaker 2: Not talking about hard rock? Well close enough, hard.
Speaker 1: Rock hard something. And yes, it's.
Speaker 2: Well, that's where we were going, wasn't that. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: See what you do to me.
Speaker 2: You make me feel intelligent and playful and silly all
Speaker 2: at once. Harps, you're an influence on all sides of
Speaker 2: my spectrums.
Speaker 1: Don't blame me for your bad behavior. You take responsibility.
Speaker 2: We've both gone a little bit red, or I would
Speaker 2: take a breath. Rip Van Winkle a fictational character from
Speaker 2: a short story by a dude named Washington Irving published
Speaker 2: back in the eighteen hundred. Somewhere you know the Rip
Speaker 2: van Winkle story is an easy going dude. This is
Speaker 2: I actually dug this up because I've been saying for
Speaker 2: a long time. Rip Van Winkle. It takes fifteen twenty
Speaker 2: years to become an overnight success. But I'd never looked
Speaker 2: at the origin story. Do you know the origin story?
Speaker 1: Tell me that, Like, I know of the story, but
Speaker 1: I really don't know the story story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I thought, in preparation for chatting to you,
Speaker 2: I'm going to use Rip van Winkle. I better actually
Speaker 2: find out about the old Vans to himself. So this
Speaker 2: is what the information says. Rip is an easy going
Speaker 2: man who wanted to escape his nagging wife. Please, any
Speaker 2: of our audience, do not shoot the messenger. This is
Speaker 2: what I was saying. By wandering into the mountains, he
Speaker 2: had some mysterious liquor given to him by strange men.
Speaker 2: He fell asleep, and he woke up twenty years later.
Speaker 2: When he returned to his village, everything had changed, including
Speaker 2: the fact the American Revolution had taken place and people
Speaker 2: barely recognized him. He felt fus and out of time. However,
Speaker 2: the overnight success part of this relates to a metaphor
Speaker 2: used to highlight the illusion that someone becomes successful out
Speaker 2: of nowhere, or the public perception of a sudden transformation
Speaker 2: without acknowledging the long passage of time. And the changes
Speaker 2: that happened quietly in the background. So Rip comes back
Speaker 2: and it's changed massively because he's been asleep so he
Speaker 2: didn't actually see the subtle changes. And it's also the
Speaker 2: idea of waking up one day to discover the world.
Speaker 2: Finally sees your success, Rip and be involved in a
Speaker 2: fair bit of planning in the town in the early days,
Speaker 2: even though the process had been happening the whole time.
Speaker 2: So the Rip van Winkle effect LinkedIn to Craig Harper.
Speaker 2: Just give our audience who don't know you, just a
Speaker 2: bit of a highlight of some of the successes and
Speaker 2: stuff ups you've had. How many podcasts, how many businesses?
Speaker 2: Really point because because someone you've got one of the
Speaker 2: most downloaded podcasts in Australia. Awesome success, great speaking business.
Speaker 2: But give us the reality.
Speaker 1: So I get about between six and eight million views
Speaker 1: every thirty days on my Instagram, so that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I've written seven books. I've worked on in Telli. I
Speaker 1: worked on Channel ten on a show called The Dave
Speaker 1: and Kimshow Morning Show for three years. I did a
Speaker 1: weekly spot on there. I worked in commercial radio, set
Speaker 1: up the first personal training centers in Australia. As you
Speaker 1: alluded to wrote the first course. I didn't go to
Speaker 1: UNI til I was thirty six for the first time.
Speaker 1: So there's some encouragement for you old and want to
Speaker 1: be students. Spoken all over the world, spoken in about
Speaker 1: thirty countries. Yeah, and like just a lot of fun stuff.
Speaker 1: And for me, I feel like my biggest achievement in
Speaker 1: this kind of workspace is creating a model of work
Speaker 1: that doesn't feel like work, like I genuinely just love
Speaker 1: the stuff that I do. And the other day I
Speaker 1: went into State and I got stopped twice, once at
Speaker 1: Brisbane and once here in and both people said essentially, harps,
Speaker 1: follow you stuff, love you stuff. You're great, so appreciate you.
Speaker 1: I know you don't know me, but you've had an
Speaker 1: impact in my life and thanks. And one of them
Speaker 1: was a dude, the other one was lady. And he goes,
Speaker 1: can I give you a hug? I'm like, fuck, bring
Speaker 1: it in, bro, you know. So I'm at the airport,
Speaker 1: I'm hugging a dude. I got. I didn't cry, but
Speaker 1: I was about fucking two nine to oh seconds away
Speaker 1: from crying. And I got on the plane and I thought,
Speaker 1: this is why I love my life, Like he was
Speaker 1: this dude to struggle with addiction and all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and he's just in a really good place. And clearly
Speaker 1: I didn't do the work. He did the work, clearly,
Speaker 1: but just being a little part of that journey for me,
Speaker 1: you know that that stuff is, you know, that's always
Speaker 1: for me, like way more meaningful than, you know than
Speaker 1: any kind of financial reward or commercial success. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so lots of stuff, lots of years.
Speaker 2: And then if you were a record, that's your top
Speaker 2: hits at the A side, flip the record over, what's
Speaker 2: the B side? What are some of the stuff ups
Speaker 2: and the setbacks? How many different podcasts did you have
Speaker 2: until you got you projects?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I had three shows that didn't work. Even
Speaker 1: the first two hundred shows of the U Project, I
Speaker 1: was losing money. Oh yeah. I mean my theory is
Speaker 1: you can't become a black belt without being a white belt, right.
Speaker 1: You can't get good at what you won't do. You
Speaker 1: can't master what you avoid. So everything that I started
Speaker 1: initially I was either absolutely fucking terrible or very mediocre.
Speaker 1: But how do you get good? Will you get good
Speaker 1: by keep showing up? You know, keeping showing up. So
Speaker 1: I remember my first speaking gig. I was twenty six.
Speaker 1: It was in a timber yard. It was to thirty
Speaker 1: employees in their lunch room. The guy that I owned
Speaker 1: the timberyard was one of my pt clients. I was terrible.
Speaker 1: I was absolutely shitting myself. I couldn't string four words together.
Speaker 1: They hated me, they hated it. They couldn't get out
Speaker 1: of there quick enough. But I had this weird sense
Speaker 1: of Okay, I've done one. That's the worst I'm going
Speaker 1: to be. And that was the worst I ever was, right,
Speaker 1: and and then there was still a lot of stuff up.
Speaker 1: Like you have to be. If your compass is set
Speaker 1: on comfort and instant gratification and certainty and familiarity, that's
Speaker 1: the best possible way to not develop, to not grow,
Speaker 1: to not learn, to not build understanding, awareness and resilience.
Speaker 1: So I've made way more fuck ups than I've had successes.
Speaker 1: But when you you know, as we do, we reframe
Speaker 1: shit and you go, yeah, but what did you learn? Well?
Speaker 1: I actually learned a bunch of stuff, Like I learned
Speaker 1: setting up harpers. Right. There were no personal training centers.
Speaker 1: There wasn't even a course or an accreditation. There was
Speaker 1: an insurance like nobody I'm setting up this thing. I
Speaker 1: don't even have a single person in a country of whatever.
Speaker 1: It was then twenty million that I can ask for
Speaker 1: advice because no one's done it. And I'm twenty five
Speaker 1: or twenty six at the time. I'm not a businessman.
Speaker 1: I don't have a degree. I don't understand leadership. I
Speaker 1: don't understand dealing with counsels and lawyers, and I don't
Speaker 1: you know, like it was just dive in the deep end.
Speaker 1: He actually can't swim, but hopefully he won't drown, and
Speaker 1: I so nearly drowned a hundred times. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what makes you.
Speaker 2: And any person who's had success over a sustained period
Speaker 2: of time is going to say the same thing. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just rocket ship taking off. It's set back cardship,
Speaker 2: motivation fuel, but was sort of come back to hopefully
Speaker 2: a link to where we were before, knowing what's important
Speaker 2: for you, being values aligned, it's going to be the
Speaker 2: rocket fuel that keeps you going. Because if it's just
Speaker 2: all for the clickbait, Hey I've got this many likes,
Speaker 2: what makes me feel good? That stuff's going to run
Speaker 2: out very very quickly. Isn't it as a fuel source?
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think you need to be, you know,
Speaker 1: intrinsically motivated and really that. Like I was an only child,
Speaker 1: I was insecure. I had I don't know if actually
Speaker 1: had a bigger ego, but I was very insecure. I
Speaker 1: was very fearful, and I was probably sociologically kind of
Speaker 1: needy because I didn't have brothers and sisters. And my
Speaker 1: mum and dad were amazing still are amazing people, but
Speaker 1: ironically we were never super close. It was like growing
Speaker 1: up in my house was like living with an auntie
Speaker 1: and uncle that were great, right, It wasn't. There wasn't
Speaker 1: this super close, emotional, warm, fuzzy connection. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: was a pretty insecure and I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: I probably still got bullshit going on, but up until
Speaker 1: I was thirty, I was really like psychologically and emotionally
Speaker 1: dealing with stuff on a daily basis while role playing
Speaker 1: you know, the cool, confident guy to the world.
Speaker 2: I genuinely mean what I'm about to say. I am
Speaker 2: glad you pushed through. I really am, because you're you're
Speaker 2: been a mentor and inspiration to me. You think I
Speaker 2: was going to take the piece. Then I really remember
Speaker 2: what I'm about to say.
Speaker 1: I was hoping you are to get serious. Why don't
Speaker 1: you get serious? I don't know where to Let's let's
Speaker 1: do the one I generally mean. I'm about to say
Speaker 1: you're an absolute tool Harps and we love. That's better.
Speaker 2: Isn't it funny that I'm more comfortable with that. I've
Speaker 2: had this chat before and I didn't do that purposely.
Speaker 2: But let me let me say you have been a
Speaker 2: real mentor of mine. And the mentor doesn't have to
Speaker 2: be someone live. You can get a mentor through a
Speaker 2: podcast or through a book. But the origin I came
Speaker 2: up to you, I was twenty five, full head of hair, fitness, confidence,
Speaker 2: you know the story, and said, oh you're Craig harper
Speaker 2: manre may and from Hobart. Can I have a chat?
Speaker 1: Said?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, have a lunch, come walk with me. So
Speaker 2: you you opened up then. I don't know how many
Speaker 2: thousands of people you've opened up to your studio. I've
Speaker 2: heard a similar story from a whole bunch of people.
Speaker 2: You're very giving. I'm really grateful that you pushed through
Speaker 2: because you've done the hard work, You've the rip Van
Speaker 2: Winkle time to too and a bit more and then
Speaker 2: you have the compound interest. But I want to talk
Speaker 2: about one topic before we wrap up, and that's the
Speaker 2: notion of when do you know enough is enough?
Speaker 1: And I walk away.
Speaker 2: Because more discretionary effort, more time invested in this, it's
Speaker 2: actually not going to help. So will There's glory in persistence.
Speaker 2: There's also wisdom in pivoting and knowing the difference around
Speaker 2: what separates obsession from evolution is really really important. I
Speaker 2: have an example personally for me. It was running. I
Speaker 2: stopped running at twenty eight. I had two goals, break
Speaker 2: the four minute mile and to go to the Olympics,
Speaker 2: and I did neither. Could have I run faster?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I reckon.
Speaker 2: I could have got my fifteen hundred time down maybe
Speaker 2: another four or five seconds would have taken a couple
Speaker 2: of years. Did I have the heart, share, passion, commitment,
Speaker 2: disciplined to do that?
Speaker 1: God?
Speaker 2: Now, I had just run out of energy. So the
Speaker 2: best thing for me at that stage was actually the stop.
Speaker 2: And this is interesting Harps as far as having a
Speaker 2: career and a life outside of just being a runner.
Speaker 2: Mental toughness is misconstrued as just being about resilience and
Speaker 2: grips and hardiness and all those construct William Wallace.
Speaker 1: But they won't take our freedom.
Speaker 2: He charged or she charged through fiery furnace and save
Speaker 2: the people and the children. But mental toughness. The other
Speaker 2: side of mental toughness is knowing when to give up,
Speaker 2: because that frees you up to go into other areas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would reframe it. I wouldn't say giving up.
Speaker 1: I think I know what you're saying, but I would
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, doesn't have the same kind of feel
Speaker 1: for me anymore. It's not that important anymore. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter to me enough. It did matter a lot once,
Speaker 1: it doesn't now. When I do a cost benefit analysis
Speaker 1: on how much I need to invest in this to
Speaker 1: potentially maybe move the needle a little bit, and what
Speaker 1: the outcome or the benefit might be, it's really not
Speaker 1: worth it. Like I walked away from personal training and
Speaker 1: I was pretty good at it, and I could charge
Speaker 1: stupid money, but it's not It had its I think
Speaker 1: things have a use by date, mate. I feel like
Speaker 1: they have a psychological and emotional used by date for us.
Speaker 1: Where I go that used to blow my socks off,
Speaker 1: it doesn't anymore. That doesn't mean everything's got to blow
Speaker 1: my socks off that I do. But if I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, what's going to keep me in the game
Speaker 1: and excited and a bit focused and all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: then you know it's got to be something that I
Speaker 1: really want to be pursuing. But the other side of that,
Speaker 1: of course, is you know, well, what are the things
Speaker 1: that I need to do to, for example, be a
Speaker 1: good so to look after my Well, that's just not
Speaker 1: about me. That's not about what I want. That's about
Speaker 1: what I need to do to meet my mum and
Speaker 1: dad's needs. Right. But I think if we're talking more
Speaker 1: from a career point of view or a trying to
Speaker 1: become an Olympic runner point of view, or I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we have this innate knowledge and
Speaker 1: wisdom that we go no, mate, that's you're probably not
Speaker 1: going to run sub four minutes, or you might, but
Speaker 1: it could take you five years, and whether or not
Speaker 1: that is the best investment of five years, you probably
Speaker 1: know it's not.
Speaker 2: And do you have that grit duckworth definition perseverance and
Speaker 2: passion And I found I had neither. I think that's
Speaker 2: a good filter to run like if you really want
Speaker 2: to go hard and keep going, are you passionate about it?
Speaker 2: Do you think you can continue to persevere? So rather
Speaker 2: than giving up. I like that that correction on the words.
Speaker 2: It's more around a pivot or an evolution to what's next.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean like if I said to you, I
Speaker 1: actually don't know what the answers got to be. I
Speaker 1: think I do. Somebody asked me this years ago, and
Speaker 1: I answered straight away, and they're like, really, I go absolutely,
Speaker 1: And they said, okay, so tonight you can talk to
Speaker 1: one hundred people and you're going to get paid twenty grand,
Speaker 1: or over the road at Rod Laver Arena, you can
Speaker 1: talk to ten thousand people for free. What do you choose?
Speaker 1: I go, Rod Laver Arena. I go, but I want
Speaker 1: three or four hours with them, not a I don't
Speaker 1: want to do a keynote because and even let's say,
Speaker 1: and by the way, there's zero chance Craig, that following
Speaker 1: that three or four hours with those ten thousand people,
Speaker 1: that there's any commercial benefit for you, right, I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: I don't want anything, just time with those people me
Speaker 1: now where I am and back then, That's what I
Speaker 1: would choose because that's just the for me. That's the
Speaker 1: currency that matters. And I know that sounds cheesy, but
Speaker 1: and yes, you've got to pay the bills, and you've
Speaker 1: got to feed the kids, and you've got to pay
Speaker 1: for school fees, and you've got to put gas in
Speaker 1: the car, and I get it, and of course those
Speaker 1: things matter. And of course I am privileged. I realize
Speaker 1: I'm privileged and lucky or blessed or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it, that I'm in a position where it's
Speaker 1: not weak to weak desperate kind of finances, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's how much I love this. And when
Speaker 1: I met you all those years ago, and again this
Speaker 1: sounds like bullshit, but I realized really early that if
Speaker 1: I was selfish, one, I wasn't a great person to
Speaker 1: be around. Two, I didn't like me. And the best
Speaker 1: version of me is the version of me that wants
Speaker 1: you to be great for no reason other than I
Speaker 1: want you to be great. I want you to succeed.
Speaker 1: Even if I fail, I want you to succeed. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's a thing, there's a term, here's a
Speaker 1: term for you. You've taught me, what t you taught
Speaker 1: me inspirare today I wrote it down. I'm teaching you one.
Speaker 1: It's called sharden freuder. Have you heard that?
Speaker 2: The opposite that would be mitfreuder.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 2: Shaden Freuder is pleasure through other people's misery. Yes, mitfreuder
Speaker 2: is pleasure through other people's success. You're a mittwell not
Speaker 2: a shark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's me. Wow, you taught me something. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so for me, that like when I am I'm involved
Speaker 1: in someone's growth or success or happiness. And again this
Speaker 1: sounds selfish, It's like it gives me an experience that
Speaker 1: I can't through doing anything for myself. I can't have that.
Speaker 1: There's nothing I can get that gives me that feeling
Speaker 1: of helping you become amazing, or helping you on your
Speaker 1: supporting you or encouraging you or seeing you do great.
Speaker 1: And I think that like coming full circle and being
Speaker 1: a bit weird and deep. Fuck it, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I got asked on a podcast whose was it? The
Speaker 1: other day? They said, if you if there was if
Speaker 1: everything you've ever said, or ever written, or all the
Speaker 1: stuff that you've put out into the world was deleted,
Speaker 1: and you could leave us with one message, what would
Speaker 1: that message be out of everything and not leaning back
Speaker 1: into anything. I just said, love matters most. And you know,
Speaker 1: I sat with a friend of mine six months ago
Speaker 1: who was essentially my second mum. I loved her very
Speaker 1: very much. She was at death's door. I sat with
Speaker 1: her in hospital and I held her hand for an
Speaker 1: hour and a half and we just spoke. There was
Speaker 1: no one else in the room, and she died about
Speaker 1: forty eight hours later, and I was sitting with her
Speaker 1: and I just, I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 1: your beliefs are these days. I don't even know what
Speaker 1: mine are. But I'm like, all the rest is bullshit, Craig,
Speaker 1: All the rest is just stories that you tell yourself.
Speaker 1: And it's not all bullshit, of course, But in that moment,
Speaker 1: I went, all I want to do is be here
Speaker 1: and love her, and like, it was the most painful
Speaker 1: and beautiful hour and a half maybe of my life, right,
Speaker 1: And you like, I invest so much emotional and psychological
Speaker 1: energy into stuff that really it's you know, I know
Speaker 1: it's all context dependent, but yeah, I think if we,
Speaker 1: if we could, and I know this isn't the way
Speaker 1: the world works, but imagine if we, for the most part,
Speaker 1: really try to operate from a place of love, and
Speaker 1: I mean real love. I don't mean conditional love. I
Speaker 1: don't mean strategic love, because conditional and strategic love are
Speaker 1: not love. But just where you go. Fuck, I'm happy
Speaker 1: for you. Fuck, I love you. I want you to
Speaker 1: do well. You know for me. That's it. That's it,
Speaker 1: that's that's maybe. That's my answer to what is success.
Speaker 2: We could riff for hours, and we do. I'm going
Speaker 2: to start to close this broad ranging discussion. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate you. I really appreciate your message and
Speaker 2: the learnings I have had and continue to have from you.
Speaker 2: And I appreciate the relationship and the connection we have.
Speaker 2: And I even reflect on today it is the five
Speaker 2: deeds of dodgeball, dodge, duck, dive, dip, and dodge. We
Speaker 2: have talked about everything today, from meta cognition and transcendence
Speaker 2: right through to erect old dysfunction ads. I'm still cracking
Speaker 2: up about the look on your face thing, shiny heads
Speaker 2: putting at it. He didn't even tell me, oh idiot.
Speaker 2: And the worst part is some people will go the
Speaker 2: ED stuff was the best. Well, it's range. David Epstein, Right,
Speaker 2: you need range, but I genuinely mean that I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate what I learn from you and what you
Speaker 2: give to the world, and I appreciate our friendship and
Speaker 2: the love that you bring to everything you do. So
Speaker 2: those those three words, those very simple words, which is
Speaker 2: really deep and complicated to get so simple. You're on
Speaker 2: brand mate, Thanks mate, I.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you, love you, care about you, happy that you're
Speaker 1: killing it, and that you're doing stuff that's impacting people
Speaker 1: in a great way. So go you. Hey listeners, you
Speaker 1: didn't expect this love festige your fucking hell. You probably
Speaker 1: need to go take a shower after this.
Speaker 2: If we're in the airport, we'd be hugging and having
Speaker 2: a bit of a moment.
Speaker 1: We definitely would know. Mate, you're great, love you, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: And overnight success doesn't happen, right. You can have a meme,
Speaker 2: or you can become a meme, you can have a
Speaker 2: viral hit, But the fundamental message to finishes twofold love
Speaker 2: and connection. That's a little bonus that's come out of this.
Speaker 2: But to be successful, you've got to do the hard yards.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean it has to be really difficult, but
Speaker 2: you've just got to be patient, have a long range
Speaker 2: view and enjoy it along the way.
Speaker 1: What he said, love your brother so you might