Speaker 1: Good day, champions. Hope you're great, Welcome to another installment
Speaker 1: of your Favorites podcast. Is it, though, he says optimistically,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's hope it's in the top hundred.
Speaker 1: I hope you well. So we've all heard the saying
Speaker 1: go where you grow, Go where you grow. It's kind
Speaker 1: of cheesy, isn't it. I agree, it's totally cheesy. It's cheesy.
Speaker 1: I don't use it. Mah, maybe I use every now
Speaker 1: and then despite its cheesiness. But what I do love
Speaker 1: is I love the idea. I love the idea of putting.
Speaker 1: I'm going to personalize it and then you can personalize
Speaker 1: it to you if it's relevant. But I love the
Speaker 1: idea of putting myself in situations or circumstances or environments
Speaker 1: or challenges or roles that are going to help me
Speaker 1: get better, help me grow, help me evolve, help me learn,
Speaker 1: help me develop skill and confidence and competence, and help
Speaker 1: me become a better version of me. And again this
Speaker 1: comes back to the stepping away from the theory and
Speaker 1: stepping into the doing. Being proactive so that we can
Speaker 1: be productive, so that we can do things that are
Speaker 1: uncomfortable or unfamiliar or inconvenient or uncertain, because that's all
Speaker 1: of those uns the unfamiliarity, uncertainty, the uncomfortable stuff, the
Speaker 1: uncertain stuff, that's where we grow. That's often where we grow,
Speaker 1: and so that's where we need to go quite often.
Speaker 1: And growth can be like growth is a really individual
Speaker 1: thing for you. So you know the area of your
Speaker 1: development or your psychology or physiology, or skill or career
Speaker 1: or financial status or relationship status or communication skills or
Speaker 1: athletic ability or athletic prowess. Perhaps more accurately, it could
Speaker 1: be relevant to any of those things. And so growth
Speaker 1: or improvement or positive change all the same thing that's
Speaker 1: going to be represented differently to different people. So I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in becoming a world class podcaster, and I
Speaker 1: know that I can't become a world class podcast and
Speaker 1: maybe I am already who knows. I don't know. I'll
Speaker 1: let you be the judge. Maybe I'm shit, But anyway,
Speaker 1: I know that I can't become really good or better.
Speaker 1: I can't grow and learn and evolve. I can't develop
Speaker 1: the skill and the art and the science of podcasting
Speaker 1: to world class level without doing podcasts. I can simulate
Speaker 1: it all I want. I can talk to myself in
Speaker 1: the old bedroom sitting on the end of the bed,
Speaker 1: who does that and not you are But it's only
Speaker 1: when I step into the process, when I step into
Speaker 1: the doing, when I go where I grow, which is
Speaker 1: sitting there like I am right now in front of
Speaker 1: a microphone in a room by myself on a Saturday
Speaker 1: evening at six nine pm in Melbourne on the seventh
Speaker 1: of the sixth It's only when I do this, and
Speaker 1: I've done this a lot, and I try to be
Speaker 1: fully present. I try to share thoughts on ideas and
Speaker 1: stories which are relevant and potentially helpful and powerful for you.
Speaker 1: It's only when I keep showing up and keep doing
Speaker 1: it where I grow. I can't develop skill. I can't
Speaker 1: get better at this by not doing this. I can't
Speaker 1: build muscle by not doing strength training. I can't become
Speaker 1: more knowledgeable unless I am consciously and proactively putting myself
Speaker 1: in a situation where I'm learning. Now that could be
Speaker 1: incidental learning. I guess when I'm going through a process
Speaker 1: or an experience, or be something more formal like an
Speaker 1: academic process, whatever it is. But I can only learn
Speaker 1: when I put myself in situations and environments where learning
Speaker 1: is a possibility, and so learning could be growth. Becoming
Speaker 1: a better researcher could be growth for me, becoming a
Speaker 1: better communicator or writer or teacher, even like this is
Speaker 1: I love this idea. Becoming a better thinker For some people,
Speaker 1: that's growth. And I don't necessarily mean being smarter or
Speaker 1: knowing more stuff, but just being maybe more aware of
Speaker 1: our thoughts, you know, opening that metacognitive remember metacognition, thinking
Speaker 1: about thinking, Open that metacognitive door to start to think
Speaker 1: about is the way that I think helpful or hurtful?
Speaker 1: Is it empowering or disempowering? Is the stuff that typically
Speaker 1: goes on in that space between my ears? Is it
Speaker 1: making me more anxious or lets anxious? Is that making
Speaker 1: my life better or worse? Am I telling myself stories
Speaker 1: of doom and gloom or power and possibility? Like what
Speaker 1: is happening? And so so perhaps by putting my own
Speaker 1: you know, this is a special kind of self awareness,
Speaker 1: isn't it metacognition? Is by putting my own thoughts under
Speaker 1: the spotlight, maybe I can grow, Maybe I can develop
Speaker 1: new awareness and understanding, and I can start to think
Speaker 1: more effectively. I can start to think in a healthier way.
Speaker 1: So growth on an individual level, growth for you could
Speaker 1: be whatever the fuck you want it to be. It
Speaker 1: might be becoming a better leader. Well, how do you
Speaker 1: become a better leader? Well, I guess you can talk
Speaker 1: to other leaders. You can do some research. You can
Speaker 1: be around people who are doing leadership and see what
Speaker 1: they do. You can read about it, you can study it,
Speaker 1: you can research it, you can do it formally informally.
Speaker 1: They're all good things, I guess. I guess you can
Speaker 1: also try to get yourself in some kind of a
Speaker 1: position where you're leading a group of people. It might
Speaker 1: be I don't know, talking to some kids at a school,
Speaker 1: it might be it might be running a group at
Speaker 1: the local rotary club or whatever it is. But we
Speaker 1: can't get good at the thing that we're not doing,
Speaker 1: or at least we're not around. So I know that
Speaker 1: I've learned lots of stuff about leadership and communication and
Speaker 1: connection and building rapport with an audience and understanding the
Speaker 1: science of public speaking and professional and corporate speaking. I
Speaker 1: know that I've learned a lot by being around great
Speaker 1: speakers and being in that environment and being right in
Speaker 1: the fucking middle of it being at the coal face
Speaker 1: of professional development and professional speaking and that corporate culture.
Speaker 1: I've learned a lot being in and around it, But
Speaker 1: where I personally have learned the most is when I'm
Speaker 1: on stage. I learn the most when I'm on stage,
Speaker 1: not saying the other stuff is not good. It's all good,
Speaker 1: But I want to put myself in a situation where
Speaker 1: now I'm doing the thing, and hopefully I'm doing as
Speaker 1: good a job as I can, but I'm doing the
Speaker 1: thing that I want to be good at. So what
Speaker 1: is the thing that you want to be good at?
Speaker 1: What do you want to be better at? What do
Speaker 1: you want to become a world class at what? Or
Speaker 1: maybe it's not that, Maybe it's something way, way simpler
Speaker 1: and more manageable. But maybe it's just that you want
Speaker 1: to be better at saying no to people because you're
Speaker 1: an overwhelming fucking people pleaser. And while it's nice to
Speaker 1: be nice, you know, it's also fucking exhausting to be
Speaker 1: an emotional or social doormat for people because you're so
Speaker 1: worried that someone won't like you, or someone will get
Speaker 1: the wrong impression, or you don't want to be the
Speaker 1: reason that someone gets their nose out of joint that
Speaker 1: for the last twenty seven and a half years, you've
Speaker 1: been saying fucking yes to everyone about everything, and now
Speaker 1: you're fucked, you're tired, you're and you're compromised, and you're
Speaker 1: not living your best life. And in the middle of
Speaker 1: all of the people pleasing, in the middle of all
Speaker 1: of the bloody emotional doormatting, in the middle of all
Speaker 1: of that, guess what, you're not making people happier, or
Speaker 1: you're not keeping everyone in the world happy. Let's say
Speaker 1: that your job, my job, as best I understand anyway,
Speaker 1: your job is not to keep everyone happy, and sometimes
Speaker 1: in our endeavors, to keep everyone happy and nobody unhappy
Speaker 1: and nobody sad and nobody angry, and which is good
Speaker 1: luck with that, because that's fucking ridiculous. But is that
Speaker 1: all you do is you make yourself exhausted, You make
Speaker 1: yourself sad, you make yourself anxious, you make yourself an overthinker,
Speaker 1: you make yourself the person who can't fucking sleep at
Speaker 1: night and worries about everything at level fifteen because you
Speaker 1: so desperately want to keep everyone happy. And that arises
Speaker 1: out of low self esteem and fear and whole bunch
Speaker 1: of shit that we won't talk about today. But the
Speaker 1: only way that you can grow in this space is
Speaker 1: to go no, no, and you know what, just and
Speaker 1: when they go oh oh, you don't need to give
Speaker 1: them thirty two explanations because you're not six years old
Speaker 1: and they're not your dad or your mom like you're
Speaker 1: an adult. And do I want to, like people say
Speaker 1: to me all the time or not all the time,
Speaker 1: pretty regularly, hey, do you want to do? Whatever it is?
Speaker 1: And depending on the situation, I'm not always a selfish prick.
Speaker 1: If it's if it's going to help someone or you know,
Speaker 1: if it's it's doing a nice thing for someone, then
Speaker 1: more often than not I will do it. But if
Speaker 1: it's like, for example, a bunch of people who want
Speaker 1: to go and do something socially that I don't want
Speaker 1: to do, I have no interest in. If I'm there
Speaker 1: or not's really not going to make any difference. There's
Speaker 1: fifteen people going do I want to be number sixteen?
Speaker 1: Do I want to go bowling on a Friday night?
Speaker 1: And do I want to put on those stinky size
Speaker 1: eleven fucking shoes at nine thousand people? And do I
Speaker 1: want to no, I don't want to do that, and
Speaker 1: that's okay. So me saying thanks for the invite, they're
Speaker 1: not my thing though, that's not me saying, hey, you're
Speaker 1: a cunt. No, that's me saying that's me saying I
Speaker 1: don't want to go bowling, and it's all right that
Speaker 1: I don't go bowling. And by the way, if our
Speaker 1: friendship is contingent upon me doing what you want and
Speaker 1: me keeping you happy, then that ain't friendship. That's a
Speaker 1: fucking conditional, unhealthy relationship that we should talk about or
Speaker 1: I should get out of. So sometimes the thing that
Speaker 1: we need to do in this space of growing and
Speaker 1: learning and developing, and I'm assuming I'm making a big
Speaker 1: assumption here and for the twenty of you that just
Speaker 1: got offended because I said, count oh, I'm a bit sorry,
Speaker 1: sometimes the thing that we need to do is really
Speaker 1: not the thing that we're comfortable to do. But that's
Speaker 1: the whole point, isn't it. Like think about when do
Speaker 1: we grow, Well, quite often it's when we're in the
Speaker 1: middle of you know, that hard thing, that uncomfortable thing,
Speaker 1: that embarrassing thing, that thing that might we might call failure.
Speaker 1: So many times as a child or a teenager, I
Speaker 1: guess more accurately, but also as an adult, I've been embarrassed,
Speaker 1: I've been humiliated. I've done things well, I've done things terribly.
Speaker 1: I've been criticized, I've been all kinds of things, and
Speaker 1: I'm fine with that. And honestly, there's probably many times
Speaker 1: I deserve to be criticized, or there are many times
Speaker 1: when whatever I was doing I didn't do a good job,
Speaker 1: and I'm okay with that. I don't it's not my
Speaker 1: goal to do a bad job, but of course I
Speaker 1: need to be prepared for the fucking reality that sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm going to do a bad job. Sometimes I'm going
Speaker 1: to be shit sometimes, sometimes I'm going to get embarrassed.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm going to be the dumbest in the room,
Speaker 1: the least skilled in the room at whatever it is
Speaker 1: that we're doing right, And that is okay, that is okay.
Speaker 1: But how I get better in that room, how I grow,
Speaker 1: how I learn, how I evolve, is I be around
Speaker 1: people sometimes who are better than me. If I've got
Speaker 1: to be the smartest in the room, or the best
Speaker 1: in the room, or the most skilled in the room,
Speaker 1: or the funniest in the room, or the one in
Speaker 1: the best shape in that room. Then that's all about
Speaker 1: my insecurity and fear and giant ego. I'm not grown
Speaker 1: in that room. I'm not learning, I'm not developing. Why
Speaker 1: do I train with a guy who won multiple Mister
Speaker 1: Australias was a pro bodybuilder and it is bigger and
Speaker 1: better and stronger than me and has got better genetics
Speaker 1: than me, apart from the fact that we're friends, which
Speaker 1: is the main reason. But the other reason is because
Speaker 1: I like training with somebody who's going to drag me up,
Speaker 1: not down. I like training with somebody who's better than me.
Speaker 1: I like studying with someone who's got more knowledge than me.
Speaker 1: I like being in business with Melissa because Melissa's got
Speaker 1: skills and knowledge and insights that I don't have. And
Speaker 1: so it's being, you know, being around other people sometimes
Speaker 1: that keeps us hungry and keeps us driven, but also
Speaker 1: gives us the opportunity to be dragged up, almost like
Speaker 1: personal development osmosis, you know, and we know I've spoken
Speaker 1: many times about like what's the principle of strength training
Speaker 1: or resistance training? With the idea and this applies outside
Speaker 1: of the gym and in the gym, and not just
Speaker 1: to muscles, but also to minds, right, and emotions and brains.
Speaker 1: Is that we go to the gym and we do
Speaker 1: a hard thing. We lift something hard. We literally work
Speaker 1: against physical resistance that we call a weight. You know,
Speaker 1: we work against ten kilos and it's hard, fucking hard.
Speaker 1: That when we do it, and then a while later,
Speaker 1: a week or two, we might be doing eleven or
Speaker 1: twelve kilos and we're doing it easier than we did
Speaker 1: the ten, that the weight is actually heavier, but it
Speaker 1: feels less heavy because we've grown, we've evolved, we've gotten better,
Speaker 1: we've improved, We've built strength, we've built neural adaptation, our
Speaker 1: bodies working better. We're building understanding and efficiency. Right, we're
Speaker 1: getting better at something. We are putting ourselves in an
Speaker 1: environment and in a protocol and in a system where
Speaker 1: we can grow where we can. And when I say grow,
Speaker 1: I don't mean physically bigger. I mean grow, improve, learn, adapt, develop,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, whatever it is for you. It could
Speaker 1: be I could say go where you're going to improve,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't sound the same, does it. So growth? Development,
Speaker 1: skill learning, getting better, improving is a byproduct of working
Speaker 1: against resistance. And that resistance could be a barbell, it
Speaker 1: could be a fear, it could be an inherent, long
Speaker 1: held fear that fucking controls you, that hijacks your nervous
Speaker 1: system and your mind and sends you down an emotional
Speaker 1: and psychological fucking rabbit hole, and you need to you
Speaker 1: need to work against that at some stage perhaps that
Speaker 1: perhaps for you, it's not about learning new stuff or
Speaker 1: getting another this or getting another that. It's just about saying,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this thing that fucking terrifies me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to face this fear because I don't want
Speaker 1: I don't want to be controlled by fear. I don't
Speaker 1: want fear to manage me. I don't want fear to
Speaker 1: destroy my potential and possibilities and power. And so I'm
Speaker 1: that's the place I'm going to grow. I'm going to
Speaker 1: grow in the middle of fear. I'm going to grow
Speaker 1: in the middle of zero confidence. I'm going to grow
Speaker 1: in this place where I have no skill, no understanding,
Speaker 1: I'm going to grow. I'm going to walk into the
Speaker 1: gym my out of shape body, and I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: in my mind, I'm not going to fit in. But
Speaker 1: by the way they don't care. They're not looking at you,
Speaker 1: They're looking at themselves. But I'm going to go me
Speaker 1: and mine not very healthy, not very fit body. That's
Speaker 1: the starting point. That's where growth is going to happen.
Speaker 1: You might grow through out the other side of your
Speaker 1: shitty childhood. You might grow through revisiting that and unpacking
Speaker 1: some stuff. You might you might outgrow the bullying, you
Speaker 1: might own it up and step up. You might have
Speaker 1: some awareness. You might talk about shit that you needed
Speaker 1: to talk about, forgive someone. Maybe maybe not. But all
Speaker 1: of these things, all of these things are opportunities for
Speaker 1: us to grow. We have to create for the most part.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing, This is the this is
Speaker 1: perhaps the key for this little pep talk is not
Speaker 1: to just sit back and hope shit kind of eventuates.
Speaker 1: That means, oh, we might accidentally spontaneously get better because
Speaker 1: this thing happened. No, let's go seek out the thing
Speaker 1: that is the conduit to growth. What is the thing?
Speaker 1: What is the conversation? What is the skill? What is
Speaker 1: the environment? What is the challenge that I need to
Speaker 1: move towards for growth? Where will I grow? What? What
Speaker 1: is growth represented by? What's the mechanism what's the protocol,
Speaker 1: what's the recipe that I need to open the lid on,
Speaker 1: so to speak. So let's wrap it up. Let's wrap
Speaker 1: it up. Oh boy, my pumped for a Saturday night.
Speaker 1: So you're not going to accidentally get amazing. You're not
Speaker 1: going to accidentally wind up with lots of skill and
Speaker 1: lots of resilience and lots of anything. But what you
Speaker 1: might do is you might consciously and intentionally create some
Speaker 1: amazing outcomes, which are all different forms of growth and development,
Speaker 1: learning and evolution of you. And obviously there's you know,
Speaker 1: there are limits on what we can do. Of course,
Speaker 1: we can't all do everything. But I'm cheekily going to
Speaker 1: suggest that you haven't peaked yet. Maybe with some things
Speaker 1: in your life you have peaked. But maybe there are
Speaker 1: other areas of your life, Maybe there are other opportunities
Speaker 1: for growth. Maybe there are things that you need to
Speaker 1: own up to and step into that for you is
Speaker 1: going to be the catalyst for something fucking amazing. All
Speaker 1: of the stuff that I share with you is theory.
Speaker 1: Me sitting here just banging out a whole lot of
Speaker 1: words to you for twenty minutes. It's just theory I'm
Speaker 1: sharing ideas and information, hopefully a bit of inspiration and education,
Speaker 1: but ultimately everything comes back to you. If this is
Speaker 1: just another podcast that you listen to, but you've actually
Speaker 1: resonated with things that I've said, but this is just
Speaker 1: another pot, there's going to be no benefit other than
Speaker 1: maybe you enjoyed twenty minutes of whatever this is. And
Speaker 1: I want you to like what I share. I want
Speaker 1: you to like the podcast. I want you tell all
Speaker 1: your friends. I want you to like me because I'm
Speaker 1: wildly fucking insecure. But more than all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: I want you to be the person who operationalizes the theory.
Speaker 1: I want you to be the person that's ready to
Speaker 1: go where you grow