Speaker 1: I get a team. It's HARP. So I hope you're terrific.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another installment of the new project. And by
Speaker 1: that I mean kind of. So I did a chat
Speaker 1: the other day, or I had a chat the other day.
Speaker 1: Do you do a chat? And I think you have
Speaker 1: a chat harps. I had a chat the other day
Speaker 1: with very brilliant Andrew May from the very brilliant Performance
Speaker 1: Intelligence podcast. I really liked it. But I'm only me
Speaker 1: and my experience is subjective. You might hate it, but
Speaker 1: I think it was good. He got really good feedback
Speaker 1: from it. And we're doing what the kids call a
Speaker 1: co share here on typ is sometimes I'm on someone's
Speaker 1: show or they're on my show and we both have
Speaker 1: a podcast, and both both podcasts rate reasonably well, and
Speaker 1: so we decide to do a co share if we
Speaker 1: like the quality of what we put out. This is
Speaker 1: such an occasion. Andrew and I have been friends forever,
Speaker 1: and we kind of cross paths a lot. We're speaking
Speaker 1: and lots of other work. But anyway, so this is
Speaker 1: great chat. I think I hope you enjoy it. I
Speaker 1: love catching up with you, I love your show, I
Speaker 1: love everything about you. So it's good to get together,
Speaker 1: and we should probably get together in three D one
Speaker 1: day and see what that's like. But for now we'll
Speaker 1: deal with the virtual kind of version.
Speaker 2: Mutual admiration society. We were chatting earlier this week about
Speaker 2: this topic and we both lit up. Would be remiss
Speaker 2: of us as middle aged male podcast hosts sitting here
Speaker 2: think we had our shit together all the time. Why
Speaker 2: don't you lead? And I got an example as.
Speaker 1: Well, well, yeah, I wish, I wish I was middle aged,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think if I lived to one
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety four on middle age, run.
Speaker 2: Run with it. Because look I hear' I'll from this.
Speaker 2: I look at you. Your podcast is out of this world.
Speaker 2: You have middians downloads, you run courses and you put
Speaker 2: a notice and it fills up straight away. You've written books,
Speaker 2: You've done TV, You've been strength and conditioning coage for
Speaker 2: some very high profile teams. You train big names, like
Speaker 2: if you look at that extrinsic or that external measure
Speaker 2: of success, you're killing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Do you know what I was really
Speaker 1: fascinated with this sense I was a kid. I didn't know,
Speaker 1: you know, the performance capacity gap. As Andrew said everyone,
Speaker 1: it's really like what you're currently doing, what's your current output?
Speaker 1: What are your outcomes? Like, where are you at with
Speaker 1: pick a variable in your life, whether it not it's
Speaker 1: how fit or strong, or what you're doing with your
Speaker 1: dough or your relationships or how your business is going,
Speaker 1: and it can be any component of the human experience,
Speaker 1: And then what is your potential? I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the few times that I advise people for comparison.
Speaker 1: It's like, we're not comparing Andrew with Craig or vice versa,
Speaker 1: or you with anyone else. But what we're we're comparing
Speaker 1: is current you with potential you or possible you, Like
Speaker 1: what is possible for me? And I think everyone thinks
Speaker 1: about that at some stage. And so my genesis story
Speaker 1: with this is I won't bang on about it too
Speaker 1: long because I've done it too many times. But when
Speaker 1: I was the fat fourteen year old and I was,
Speaker 1: you know, morbally, I be fat, aest kid in my school,
Speaker 1: and then over a course of not that many months,
Speaker 1: four or five, I totally transformed my body, more motivated
Speaker 1: by what I didn't want to be than what I
Speaker 1: was hoping to be. I just didn't want to be
Speaker 1: pick last anymore. I just didn't want to be socially invisible.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be made fun of. All those
Speaker 1: things which were a compelling force for me. But when
Speaker 1: I lost weight and I got quite fit and quite
Speaker 1: strong and quite healthy, and you know, with what I
Speaker 1: had to work with my genetics, I would say I
Speaker 1: started to get somewhere in the ballpark of optimizing close
Speaker 1: to what I had. But the biggest thing for me
Speaker 1: was this kind of new awareness or understanding of my capacity, like, oh,
Speaker 1: even though I'm not super small, or I don't have brilliant,
Speaker 1: amazing genetics, or I'm not a great athlete, or I'm whatever,
Speaker 1: I don't have a I'm not a creative genius, or
Speaker 1: all of these things that I can recognize without beating
Speaker 1: myself up. But just go, well, Craig, you don't have
Speaker 1: awesome genetics, But what can you do with those genetics?
Speaker 1: What can you do with that mind that you have?
Speaker 1: Maybe you're clever in a different way. Maybe your brilliance,
Speaker 1: if you have it, doesn't exist in the classroom, you know,
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff about what can I do
Speaker 1: versus what am I doing? And so the biggest light
Speaker 1: bulb or revelation. For me in the changing my body
Speaker 1: process wasn't even about my body. It was about getting
Speaker 1: a glimpse into my own potential and my own possibilities
Speaker 1: and for this conversation, my own capacity.
Speaker 2: That's young to have that awareness, because a lot of
Speaker 2: people that you and I would work with don't have
Speaker 2: that awareness. In the fifty sixties and even.
Speaker 1: Beyond, well, I didn't think of it in the you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't you were quoting performance, but I mean, if
Speaker 1: I was craigifying, I'd go, fuck, how did I do that? Well?
Speaker 1: If I can do this, then what else can I do?
Speaker 1: And there was no ego in that. There was just
Speaker 1: excitement and awareness and I guess a new level of
Speaker 1: understanding about how I'd thought for fourteen years and how
Speaker 1: I was starting to think about myself and my possibilities now.
Speaker 1: And so I went, well, I can I can't have
Speaker 1: better genetics than Andrew, but I can outtrain Andrew. I
Speaker 1: can eat better than Andrew. I can sleep better, I
Speaker 1: can try harder, I can put up with more pain.
Speaker 1: All of those things I can just choose. I can
Speaker 1: recover better, I can learn more, I can educate myself.
Speaker 1: I can build a relationship with food that I didn't
Speaker 1: have before, because my relationship with food was horrendous, my
Speaker 1: relationship with my own kind of emotions like that, there
Speaker 1: was no bigger hater of me than me. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: that actually doesn't work well, Like there was so much
Speaker 1: self loathing and self doubt and self sabotage. I'm like,
Speaker 1: why am I doing that? And then I'm not a
Speaker 1: redundant question, why am I doing that? No? Actually, why
Speaker 1: am I doing that? What is that about? And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, better questions can lead to much greater self
Speaker 1: awareness and better choices and better behaviors and better outcomes. So,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the day, I didn't articulate it
Speaker 1: like this, and I didn't even know there was a
Speaker 1: thing called the performance capacity gap. And I couldn't really
Speaker 1: explain to you what success was or what potential was.
Speaker 1: But I just knew that the biggest variable. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what a variable was, but I knew that the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that was going to make a difference in
Speaker 1: my life was actually me, not any external kind of force.
Speaker 2: You know, do you think it's hard to go back
Speaker 2: when you were fourteen? But if you can try and
Speaker 2: transport back to the feelings you had, the emotions you had,
Speaker 2: the thoughts you had. Do you think because you went
Speaker 2: through that hardship and it would have been tough. And
Speaker 2: I've heard you talk about this a lot on the podcast,
Speaker 2: that you just had pain, you were just sick of
Speaker 2: that and went, fucker, I'm going to tap into something
Speaker 2: to prove everyone wrong. Or was it to prove yourself right?
Speaker 2: Or was there some different motivation.
Speaker 1: I was probably motivated more through insecurity and fear. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to prove anyone wrong. Really, I just once
Speaker 1: I did that, I kind of it was almost like
Speaker 1: this constant question, even probably till now. But like when
Speaker 1: I set up Austray's first personal training center, most and
Speaker 1: this is you know, people go, oh everyone hated on MYA.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that, It was just that nobody really thought
Speaker 1: that was a thing. I mean, we're talking nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six when I first started thinking of this forty years ago,
Speaker 1: and I didn't open it until nineteen and ninety, so
Speaker 1: it took four years to go from concept to reality.
Speaker 1: But you know all of that where I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I actually think I could do this. I think and
Speaker 1: of course someone would have done it if I didn't
Speaker 1: do it, So there's there's no kind of boasting in this,
Speaker 1: but trying to understand, well, what can I do if
Speaker 1: I can get out of my own way, and even
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work, that's okay. I'm going to learn,
Speaker 1: I'm going to grow, I'm going to evolve. I put
Speaker 1: up a post the other day about my first corporate
Speaker 1: speaking gig in Inverted Commas. I also happened to be
Speaker 1: twenty six, which was when I opened my first center,
Speaker 1: and I was fucking terrible. I spoke to twenty guys
Speaker 1: at a timber yard. I spoke in the lunch room.
Speaker 1: I spoke for half an hour. I got paid fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: I prepared for three weeks, and I crashed and burned horribly.
Speaker 1: I was so bad, and they couldn't get out of
Speaker 1: there quick enough. They only stayed there because the boss
Speaker 1: was there and they felt compelled.
Speaker 2: Right, But can I say, as a fellow speaker, for
Speaker 2: your first gig, to be in a timberyard with a
Speaker 2: bunch of blokes name Louis Moose, Kanker, Bifo and Smash,
Speaker 2: They'll think, and who's this young punk buff idiot. That's
Speaker 2: a tough introduction. Good introduction, but a tough one.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, Like, and I know this sounds cliche,
Speaker 1: but when we get past the cheese and the self
Speaker 1: help and the fluff and the motivation, and of course
Speaker 1: there's good and bad pain. But like for me, that
Speaker 1: was a good pain. That was that was good discomfort,
Speaker 1: that was good. I learned a bunch even in that
Speaker 1: about what to do, what not to do. You know,
Speaker 1: how much stories do I share? And how much information?
Speaker 1: And how do I build rapport and connection? And what
Speaker 1: language should have I used? And what did you know?
Speaker 1: Like that gives you a chance to figure out what
Speaker 1: went okay, what went terrible, and what I would never
Speaker 1: do again. But you can't get good at what you're
Speaker 1: not doing. But the problem is that people want to
Speaker 1: be excellent without the pain. People want to be at
Speaker 1: the top of the mountain without fucking climbing the mountain. Right,
Speaker 1: So dude, of course you'll get the i'ming the mountain
Speaker 1: sucks literally and metaphorically. But how do you build exit, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're not super talented like me, how do you
Speaker 1: get good? How do you become exceptional and not just
Speaker 1: for the sake of being that will. But how you
Speaker 1: become exceptional is by doing what most people won't do.
Speaker 1: So your behavior is exceptional. Like what will most people do?
Speaker 1: I tell you what. They will not work as hard
Speaker 1: as I worked, or for as long as I work.
Speaker 1: They will not deal with They will not deal with
Speaker 1: the discomfort that I dealed with. Some will, and some
Speaker 1: will do it better, but the majority won't. And I
Speaker 1: hate to say this, but I'm seeing this more and
Speaker 1: more in twenty twenty six, where if I said to
Speaker 1: an audience of two hundred people, put up your hand
Speaker 1: if you want to be more resilient, everyone puts up
Speaker 1: their hand, and then you go, who's going to do
Speaker 1: the work to create that? Fucking nobody? Everyone dives under
Speaker 1: their seat, And that's because.
Speaker 2: Give me an app Isn't there something you can download?
Speaker 1: Their appeal is they're a powder? Is there? You know?
Speaker 1: And that's not everyone, of course, But I think it's
Speaker 1: so important that we are prepared to and it doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be an hourly practice, but go you know what.
Speaker 1: And the metaphor, of course, or the analogy is in
Speaker 1: the gym, how do you get strong? You work against resistance,
Speaker 1: and we've spoken about this. You do hardship, and the
Speaker 1: byproduct is you get strong. Literally, how do you build
Speaker 1: muscular endurance and aerobic durance? You do hardshit. How do
Speaker 1: you build capacity do hardshit? How do you build resilience?
Speaker 1: You do hardshit? You know, And so it's not like
Speaker 1: this is a no cost situation. So that whole thing
Speaker 1: is spilled over into the rest of my life, mate,
Speaker 1: and I get more excited about other people's potential than
Speaker 1: mine these days.
Speaker 2: But you're living it yourself through helping others. That's called
Speaker 2: being on purpose. You find purpose, you find something bigger
Speaker 2: than you were excites to living daylights out of here,
Speaker 2: and it's future focused. So I can totally see you're
Speaker 2: on purpose. And you explain that story. It helps me
Speaker 2: understand a bit more because I've listened to your podcast
Speaker 2: a bunch of times, lots and lots of times. And
Speaker 2: when I hear you say I was a fact kid
Speaker 2: from Mawha, I'm not really great. I used to sometimes
Speaker 2: think I was Harps just downloading that because he's always
Speaker 2: been this naturally gifted dude. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: You probably had some other people say this as well,
Speaker 2: but that hardship in you forged a hardiness to quote
Speaker 2: out mate Paul Taylor, and then you had the physical
Speaker 2: and psychological resources to tap into it. This is hard
Speaker 2: as a parent, and any parent or people who are
Speaker 2: involved with kids and extended capacity will know this. What
Speaker 2: do you want your kids? You want them to be
Speaker 2: loved and to be in a good environment and to
Speaker 2: feel good. What's the worst thing you can do for
Speaker 2: your kids? Everything? Because they become precocious of lass holes,
Speaker 2: And it's hard as a parent, mate, because you want
Speaker 2: to give the kids everything, but we know when you do,
Speaker 2: you're actually doing them a disservice. So I think a
Speaker 2: big thing about this performance and capacity gap is just
Speaker 2: having a bit of drive and like you had it
Speaker 2: as a young kid. So for me, my story as
Speaker 2: a middle distance run I was good, not great, So
Speaker 2: a bit of a shift on your story, but a
Speaker 2: similar theme meaning I won multiple state championships, I went
Speaker 2: down to Tasmania the Institute of Sport, I did my
Speaker 2: best races in low keymates, So if I'm looking out
Speaker 2: of one hundred, do you give a mark on this?
Speaker 2: Do you give when you're talking to people? I give
Speaker 2: him a mark out of one hundred or ten as
Speaker 2: an example. Have you ever worked on that?
Speaker 1: It depends what we're doing, but I do have ways
Speaker 1: of quantifying things with people around different processes.
Speaker 2: But yes, so let's see if we look at your
Speaker 2: performance potential, if it was one hundred. As a runner,
Speaker 2: I probably hit sixty five or seventy. So I didn't
Speaker 2: close that delta. Got to a good level, not great,
Speaker 2: But when I was honest with myself, I liked running,
Speaker 2: but I love fitness and I love making a difference
Speaker 2: in other people's lives. And at twenty seven, I just went, look,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do this for another couple of
Speaker 2: years and try and get to that next level because
Speaker 2: I was just I just wasn't really passionate about it.
Speaker 2: But what I was passionate about. I'd seen you speak
Speaker 2: at Farlax, I'd seen Matt Church, I'd seen the great
Speaker 2: man Doug Maloof and a bunch of other speed Because
Speaker 2: I went, I want to do that. So I shifted
Speaker 2: and went right, let's say if there's a score out
Speaker 2: of one hundred. As a speaker, you mentioned that presentation
Speaker 2: of the Timberyard, my first big presentation at FILEX was
Speaker 2: fucking woeful. It was ego driven, which was masking insecurity.
Speaker 2: I reckon. I had three hundred and fifty to four
Speaker 2: hundred people in the room and I was speaking about periodization.
Speaker 2: I made it really detailed, lots of slides, tried to
Speaker 2: show how much I knew, and literally half the audience
Speaker 2: left in the first fifteen minutes. I reckon. By the
Speaker 2: end of the hour, I had twenty percent of the audience.
Speaker 2: I was mortified. But the gap that I had mate
Speaker 2: between that performance and also that capacity was I'd seen you,
Speaker 2: Matt Dargan, others, and I did that presentation and I sucked.
Speaker 2: And there were one of two things I could have done,
Speaker 2: stick my head in the sand and go fuck it,
Speaker 2: I'm never presenting on the public platform again. Or the
Speaker 2: other one was I'm going to drill down and get
Speaker 2: good at this, and I chose the latter. And it's
Speaker 2: an evolution still to this day. I'm always learning. You
Speaker 2: don't arrive around the formans. I think, if you do,
Speaker 2: you stop. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that story. It's so true, And it's like
Speaker 1: all of this is just anecdotal. Everyone. These are my experiences, right,
Speaker 1: I don't have data on this, But I would think
Speaker 1: that seventy or eighty percent of the population really underestimate
Speaker 1: their capacity, their potential, their possibilities. They don't understand what
Speaker 1: they can do. I think so many people are limited
Speaker 1: by fear of a myriad of things. You know. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: embrace failure, Well, do embrace failure? Because what's failure? Well,
Speaker 1: it's an outcome? Okay? Is it the outcome? You want
Speaker 1: to know? It's not? Did you learn anything? Like if
Speaker 1: you turn down the emotion and get a bit of
Speaker 1: a break between the failure in inverted commas and then
Speaker 1: the processing, It's like, I actually learned quite a few things,
Speaker 1: and you know, to go from where I was to
Speaker 1: where I am now working with you know, bigger teams
Speaker 1: and companies, and I've spoken all over the world. I've
Speaker 1: probably spoken in twenty countries and all of that. That's great.
Speaker 1: But to be able to stand on a stage and
Speaker 1: be competent, and to be doing a really good job
Speaker 1: and building rapport and connection and trust in the moment
Speaker 1: and know how to engage, and know how to tell
Speaker 1: stories and know how to read the room. And of
Speaker 1: course I don't always create outcomes, but that's been a
Speaker 1: forty year process or a thirty five year process. It's like,
Speaker 1: how do you become a black belt? Well, you get
Speaker 1: kicked in the dick a thousand times over ten years,
Speaker 1: right metaphorically, and you put up with the pain, and
Speaker 1: you be consistent, and you persevere, and you choose, you
Speaker 1: choose the hard thing, and you keep going back. And
Speaker 1: in the middle of all of that discomfort and joy
Speaker 1: and fun and evolution, you become a different version of you.
Speaker 1: You can't at twenty five go oh fuck, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be different by next Wednesday. No, you're not. You
Speaker 1: might be doing different things, but you're not going to
Speaker 1: be different by next Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Instagram tells me you can. You're on Instagram, and that
Speaker 2: sets up a lot of people. I'm sounding like I'm
Speaker 2: old with that younger generation, so that borderline gen why
Speaker 2: the millennials. It's really dangerous. I see some of the
Speaker 2: posts what people do around getting success, and I don't
Speaker 2: comment because you just leave it. But it's erroneous. It's
Speaker 2: total bullshit. Like you just mentioned forty years, and I
Speaker 2: think that's one of the things we've lost. Mate, that
Speaker 2: hard work takes time, decades and helps to choose something
Speaker 2: you like. If you look at that grit with Angela Duckworth,
Speaker 2: it's passion plus perseverance. So you love helping people the
Speaker 2: you project this is your third or fourth iteration. You've
Speaker 2: got to be bloody persistent and persevere after a few knockbacks.
Speaker 2: And I think that's I think that's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons why people get nowhere near that potential capacity, because
Speaker 2: they get one or two knocks. I'll stop. I'm just
Speaker 2: going to coast it thirty percent.
Speaker 1: It's very you know, when we're talking about ourselves, it's
Speaker 1: very hard to be objective because you're analyzing yourself, which
Speaker 1: is subjective analysis, right, So I can't be totally objective
Speaker 1: about me because I'm me. So you start with that knowledge,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like the beginning of awareness. Self awareness
Speaker 1: is to recognize your own lack of self awareness. It's
Speaker 1: like this mind fuck, right, but you go, oh, it's
Speaker 1: like when somebody hears their voice on audio for the
Speaker 1: first time, or sees themselves on TV or video camera,
Speaker 1: or you know. I worked on Channel ten for three
Speaker 1: years once a week in the morning's quarter of a
Speaker 1: million people around Australia every week. Well, Craig Harper is
Speaker 1: with us this morning to get us off the weight loss.
Speaker 1: Mary go around once and for all. Good morning, Crazy,
Speaker 1: Good morning Craik All. Well, hopefully, because a lot of
Speaker 1: us spend our life getting on and off that weight loss.
Speaker 1: Mary go round, So perhaps this will be the end
Speaker 1: of the road for a few people, of which you are.
Speaker 1: I don't think that you're really in die need of
Speaker 1: a body renovation, but maybe a little little weeny bit
Speaker 1: of toning up. When I got back to my office
Speaker 1: after day one, I watched myself. I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm a fucking idiot, Like I hate did what I saw.
Speaker 1: But they loved it. They're like, no, that was good.
Speaker 1: You were good. And I'm like, wow, if they think
Speaker 1: that's good, giddy up, because I know that that's not
Speaker 1: me at ten, that's me at three or four. And
Speaker 1: there was an ego in that. There was just I
Speaker 1: knew what I could do and over time, and I
Speaker 1: was never a megastar or anything, but I ended up
Speaker 1: doing a pretty good job. But being committed to being
Speaker 1: okay with not being the best and not necessarily being
Speaker 1: the best anyway, and being okay with embarrassment or failure
Speaker 1: while genuinely striving to do the absolute best that I could,
Speaker 1: knowing that sometimes I will fuck it up and that's okay.
Speaker 1: And it's that willingness I think to be okay with
Speaker 1: fucking up as long as you're trying, because fucking up
Speaker 1: is learning, fucking up his self awareness, it's understanding, it's
Speaker 1: in sight, but also being able to which is rare
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, be okay with wrong, just wrong right.
Speaker 1: And it's like, oh, I thought this, I even argued this,
Speaker 1: I even got all emotional. I even pointed things. I
Speaker 1: even guess what I was one hundred percent wrong. Now
Speaker 1: you know that that's one of the other things, too,
Speaker 1: is our need to be right is a is part
Speaker 1: of that gap. You know, when you have to be
Speaker 1: right all the time, that's an inhibitor on your potential
Speaker 1: because if people aren't echoing your thoughts and your ideas.
Speaker 1: I mentioned this actually on a podcast this morning, but
Speaker 1: new audience, I'll say it again. But I thought so
Speaker 1: two things over the last two days. It was essentially
Speaker 1: the same comment. Somebody got on their high horse on
Speaker 1: Facebook and they gave this rant about whoever it is
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. But this isn't this person. And
Speaker 1: at the end they said, if you disagree with me,
Speaker 1: please unfriend me. And two different people did that about
Speaker 1: two different topics, and I was thinking, how much self
Speaker 1: awareness you lack that you are saying this is how
Speaker 1: it is according to me. If you don't agree with me,
Speaker 1: then go away, right, because I am right and you
Speaker 1: are wrong. Also, I want to live in an echo chamber.
Speaker 1: I only want people following me who agree with me
Speaker 1: or think like, wow, if you really want to limit yourself,
Speaker 1: do that be that you and I might be diametrically
Speaker 1: opposed on an idea or a construct or, a theory
Speaker 1: or a belief. Right, I couldn't give a fuck. I
Speaker 1: like you. We don't have to align on things to
Speaker 1: be friends. I don't want to live in an echo
Speaker 1: chamber with Andrew. I don't want that. I want you
Speaker 1: to challenge me. I want me to challenge you, and
Speaker 1: then you'll go, okay, you know, let's unpack that. Because
Speaker 1: there's every chance, Andrew, because I get twenty three things
Speaker 1: wrong every day, this could be one of them. This
Speaker 1: need to be right is a fucking It's like a
Speaker 1: hamdb on your potential.
Speaker 2: It's horrible. I think a lot of it is insecurity
Speaker 2: mass but healthy conflict or some people don't like the
Speaker 2: word conflict, robust dialogue. It's a central tenant of a
Speaker 2: high performing team. You need to I was in New
Speaker 2: Zealand with an exec team last week. Won't say the
Speaker 2: name of the team, but we're talking about this is
Speaker 2: a high functioning team. They paid zero's lots and lots
Speaker 2: of money, and some of them, even at that stage
Speaker 2: of their career, find it difficult to lean in and
Speaker 2: have the conversation if they don't want it doesn't create
Speaker 2: corridor conversations. We all know this, but I think that's foundation.
Speaker 2: But any team that I'm involved in, sporting team or
Speaker 2: corporate team or consulting, you want to be able to
Speaker 2: have that robust dialogue and actually to get deferring opinion.
Speaker 2: If you had to rank yourself at the moment on
Speaker 2: your potential and where you are, what school would you
Speaker 2: give yourself? And I know that's a bit of our
Speaker 2: old question. Yeah, look it depends on what area.
Speaker 1: You know. If we're ranking me and my potential on
Speaker 1: flexibility versus my current actual flexibility, I'd give me two.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about physical, not cognitive, but show.
Speaker 2: Career, you project impact you're having.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, I would say a seven. Honestly, I think
Speaker 1: I think I could do quite a bit better. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a ten. I think being a
Speaker 1: ten would depress me, I think. But I don't think
Speaker 1: I'll ever be a ten anyway. But if we're basing
Speaker 1: it on what's possible for me, I think I've had
Speaker 1: moments where I would say this for me, this experience,
Speaker 1: or this process or this presentation was about as close
Speaker 1: as I'll ever get to a ten. A couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I did a just a Me workshop craigharp
Speaker 1: Alive they're called at Deacon in Melbourne, and I had
Speaker 1: six hundred and seventy people and it was three hours
Speaker 1: of magic. And this sounds weird, but it's almost like
Speaker 1: the magic happened despite me, not because of me. It
Speaker 1: was like I was in flow, I was in this
Speaker 1: state and it was almost like it wasn't but I
Speaker 1: was hovering above me watching me do this, build this
Speaker 1: kind of or help create this special moment. And I
Speaker 1: walked away from that and I'm like, oh, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just a conduit to God for God or something. But
Speaker 1: it was awesome right, and then probably two gigs after
Speaker 1: that I fucked up or hated myself. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but there are moments. There are, But I think the
Speaker 1: human experience is you do great, and you do shit,
Speaker 1: and you do a bit better. You learn its peaks
Speaker 1: and troughs of performance and emotion and experience. And I
Speaker 1: think the thing for people to think about with this
Speaker 1: gap that we're talking about, Andrew, is where am I now?
Speaker 1: With you know, whatever the relative variable or measurement is
Speaker 1: for you in relation to whatever component of your existence?
Speaker 1: Where am I now? And where do you want to be?
Speaker 1: So to get clarity around that, but then too, so, okay,
Speaker 1: this is where I want to be. My next question
Speaker 1: would be why do you want to be there now?
Speaker 1: If I'm thirty percent body fat, sorry to use a
Speaker 1: physiological variable, but and I want to be ten percent
Speaker 1: body fat? Or if you said that to me, I'd
Speaker 1: go cool, why And if you said to me anything
Speaker 1: like oh I want better self esteem or you know,
Speaker 1: any of these emotional or psychological variables which we attached
Speaker 1: to this physical outcome, I'd say maybe maybe maybe you
Speaker 1: be in ten percent body fat might make you a
Speaker 1: neurotic wido I've seen it. It might make you less
Speaker 1: happy because now you're stressed about gaining weight, and now
Speaker 1: you weigh everything that you put in your mouth and
Speaker 1: you track it, and you're antisocial because you can't eat that.
Speaker 1: And now you've created a bunch of other issues because
Speaker 1: you achieved this outcome that you perhaps erroneously thought would
Speaker 1: make you better. And sometimes it does, by the way,
Speaker 1: you know. But I would say the people that I
Speaker 1: coach and have coached over the years, I would say
Speaker 1: a disproportionate number compared to the general population of those
Speaker 1: success successful, high profile people are more miserable, more medicated,
Speaker 1: you know, sleep, anxiety, depression. And I'm not saying that's causal.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, but there's definitely a correlation there. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying being successful makes you miserable. I think the belief
Speaker 1: that I can fix my inner world by doing stuff
Speaker 1: in my outer world is something which is another podcast
Speaker 1: in its own kind of right, but that you know,
Speaker 1: understanding back to this kind of thing, where am I?
Speaker 1: Where do I want to be? Cool? So you figure
Speaker 1: out where you want to be. Now, let's try to
Speaker 1: turn down the emotion. As long as you have clarity
Speaker 1: and certainty about where you want to be and what
Speaker 1: you want your level of performance to be. Then let's
Speaker 1: create a strategy. Let's create a non negotiable timeline accountability process.
Speaker 1: Let's think of this as you're building a house, or
Speaker 1: you're building a brand or a business. But what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're building a better version of you. The
Speaker 1: idea of non negotiables. We talk what are you non
Speaker 1: negotiables around this and that, but they're not really non
Speaker 1: negotiable because people just stop them and start them when
Speaker 1: they want. Well, that's not non negotiable. That's optional. So
Speaker 1: when someone says to me, how do you go out
Speaker 1: all the time and never drink beer? I go because
Speaker 1: I never drink beer. So it's not that doesn't require discipline,
Speaker 1: self control, willpower, or motivation, because that's not something I
Speaker 1: do ever. And I'm not saying anyone should be following me.
Speaker 1: I'm saying I have very clear boundaries and rules and
Speaker 1: non negotiables about what works for me to be somewhere
Speaker 1: close to my version of optimal, and I don't do
Speaker 1: that periodically like this is this is how I live now.
Speaker 1: For some people, some people will go, oh, fuck, you're
Speaker 1: a hard ass or you're this or that's full on
Speaker 1: or ah, but you've got to have a life. And
Speaker 1: I go, okay, it is sure, sure, Sure, I go
Speaker 1: guess what the outcomes for me are good. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying be me. I'm not saying do what I do
Speaker 1: like you do you. But most people that I talk
Speaker 1: to that are doing their version of our whatevs. They
Speaker 1: are not happy, they are not healthy, they are not
Speaker 1: where they want to be. If I ask two hundred
Speaker 1: people in a room, put up your hand, if right
Speaker 1: now you're really struggling with something, every hand goes up. Now. Again,
Speaker 1: that's part of the human experience, but it's like if
Speaker 1: you really I mean not conceptually or not hypothetically, but
Speaker 1: if you actually want to move the needle. At some
Speaker 1: stage we need to step away from all the not
Speaker 1: as in let them go, but the theory of the
Speaker 1: podcast and the theory of the book, and the theory of this,
Speaker 1: and that we need to be We need to be
Speaker 1: the procademic. We need to be putting this shit into practice,
Speaker 1: because transformation lives in the doing, not the knowing, not
Speaker 1: the understanding, not the planning, not the talking, not the theorizing.
Speaker 1: Nobody learns to play the piano by reading books on
Speaker 1: playing the fucking piano. Just over there, just how do
Speaker 1: you become a black belt? You become a white belt
Speaker 1: and you get smashed for ten years and then that's
Speaker 1: where you end up.
Speaker 2: We could go down so many rabbit holes. We always
Speaker 2: do when when we converse.
Speaker 1: Can I share a couple of other constructs which I
Speaker 1: think are really while people are thinking about this, you
Speaker 1: interrupt me at any time. But so the performance capacity gap,
Speaker 1: as I said to you, like the stuff around thissel
Speaker 1: is the psychology of it is spoken in great to
Speaker 1: detail in many kind of ways in the research.
Speaker 2: But you're reading my mind. I was going to say,
Speaker 2: can you tell me what do you think causes it all?
Speaker 2: What are some of the scientific frameworks?
Speaker 1: Well, there's let me mention a few others because they
Speaker 1: all correlate intention behavior gap? Right, intention, what's your intention? Yeah? Cool? Great?
Speaker 1: What are you actually doing? Knowledge? Action gap? What do
Speaker 1: you know? Amazing? What are you doing with that knowledge
Speaker 1: to move the needle? To create change, to learn, to grow,
Speaker 1: to evolve? Confidence competence like Okay, On the other end
Speaker 1: of the scale, we'll have people who are overly confident,
Speaker 1: but they're not actually doing anything, they're not actually you know.
Speaker 1: And there's a mix of course and then perception and reality.
Speaker 1: How do I see the world, How is the world?
Speaker 1: What do I think of my potential? What is my potential?
Speaker 1: How do I think others see me? This is my PhD,
Speaker 1: But how do others actually see me? Because it ain't
Speaker 1: the same ergo back to the audio thing where we
Speaker 1: hear our voice and go, I don't sound like that,
Speaker 1: and everyone in the room goes, you sound exactly like that,
Speaker 1: because we never experience us from any other perspective other
Speaker 1: than our own. And the last one is the effort
Speaker 1: outcome gap. So what is the effort required versus what
Speaker 1: is the effort that I'm actually making?
Speaker 2: Deep It's one of those. I'll add two. And this
Speaker 2: comes more from thinking about this a lot lately. A
Speaker 2: new pupil of title. Earlier in the week. You've done
Speaker 2: this up on this. Work with athletes, work with performing artists,
Speaker 2: work with musicians, work with corporates, and they've got so
Speaker 2: much potential, but they get nowhere near it. And I
Speaker 2: think a couple of other things that come into it
Speaker 2: is psychological skills. If you want your body to be
Speaker 2: fit fast, flexible and strong. If you want to look
Speaker 2: like Harps when you're what are you now? Forty five
Speaker 2: mid forties mate?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, my T shirts and forty five, bro.
Speaker 2: You got to do reps and sets. If you want
Speaker 2: your brain to be fit, fast, flexible and strong, you've
Speaker 2: got to do reps in sets. So practicing emotional regulation
Speaker 2: and while it can be a big kids, hey go
Speaker 2: do mindfulness, but doing ten minutes a day of mindfulness
Speaker 2: as a research from John cabots In because he was
Speaker 2: very good market and got all the money. But I
Speaker 2: think if you take any of those skills, mindfulness, breath work,
Speaker 2: just self awareness, if you do ten minutes a day,
Speaker 2: five or six days a week, you do that for
Speaker 2: six weeks, you're going to have a dramatic shift in
Speaker 2: your ability to regulate emotions. And we say this here.
Speaker 2: We all have emotions. But when you get had by
Speaker 2: your emotions, fuck you, Harps and fuck your horse. Whereas
Speaker 2: if you know how to ride that spike in cortisol
Speaker 2: and stress and adrenaline, and we talk about this regular
Speaker 2: you and idea a migtal hijack and you can settle down.
Speaker 2: You might just say fuck you, but it's under your breath.
Speaker 2: I think the second subset of skills on this and
Speaker 2: again you'll be going because you've done this, mate for
Speaker 2: forty plus years, is managing state. So when you're stepping
Speaker 2: into a performance moment. That was one of the things
Speaker 2: going back to running. I didn't know how to make
Speaker 2: nerves work for me. I didnt a low keymate, but
Speaker 2: a big keymate. My nerves got the better of me.
Speaker 2: So when you step up to do a presentation or
Speaker 2: the interview, or go on a date or just talk
Speaker 2: in a team meeting, knowing how to be in that
Speaker 2: sweet spot, so to be alert but not arouse, and
Speaker 2: to have your emotions working for you. So I think
Speaker 2: those two things and that's pretty low lying fruit to
Speaker 2: get some psychological skills. It's going to take a couple
Speaker 2: of months, but manage your state and actually give activities
Speaker 2: that are important. I call these a performance mind. The
Speaker 2: attention they deserve not just in the our meeting presentation
Speaker 2: turning up, but the preparation for it. Who's in the room,
Speaker 2: what does success look like? How am I going to
Speaker 2: show up? And what prep do I need to do?
Speaker 2: So I think those two are big ones that people
Speaker 2: can implement to train your psychological skills, know how to
Speaker 2: manage your state, and then when you have opportunities, you've
Speaker 2: got more likelihood to step into it emostiontly, physically, psychologically,
Speaker 2: every other alley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm thinking about So there's you know, there's the
Speaker 1: whole kind of self reflection, self awareness. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like that, just trying to and again it's hard, but
Speaker 1: like this little process of just being still. And I
Speaker 1: ask myself all the time, what is it like being
Speaker 1: around me? Not because I want people to love me
Speaker 1: or because I'm insecure, but because me understanding the Craig
Speaker 1: experience for or my audience, be at one or a thousand,
Speaker 1: me having an insight into that allows me to be
Speaker 1: better for them as well as theory of mind. Understanding
Speaker 1: their process is their thing. What's Andrew's version of reality
Speaker 1: in this moment. As I've said to you before, we're
Speaker 1: in the same chat at the same time, on the
Speaker 1: same podcast, but we're having different experiences. It matters that
Speaker 1: I understand your experience, not because I need to agree
Speaker 1: or align, but if I understand you, then I can
Speaker 1: work with you better, I can solve problems with you better.
Speaker 1: I can self regulate better, I can resolve conflict, I
Speaker 1: can lead, or I can be led. All of those
Speaker 1: things is just this understanding yourself and more specifically, I
Speaker 1: don't want to open this door, but fuck it. Understanding
Speaker 1: your mind. That is maybe beyond food and survival and shelter.
Speaker 1: That is maybe the biggest challenge of all time to
Speaker 1: understand your mind, because your mind is essentially UHQ. It's
Speaker 1: your operational headquarters. It's where everything you know. It's where
Speaker 1: all the decisions are made, actions are initiated, data interpreted,
Speaker 1: stories told. It's that you know, that space where you
Speaker 1: know there's the thing that's happening, and then there's our
Speaker 1: story about the thing that's happening, and then you think
Speaker 1: about it. And we've covered this, but I think it's
Speaker 1: worth opening the door again. If you think something bad
Speaker 1: is happening, but something bad is not happening, your body
Speaker 1: will respond as though something bad's happening. And now you're
Speaker 1: in a stress state, and now you can't fucking breathe,
Speaker 1: and now you've got anxiety, and now your heart rates
Speaker 1: through the roof and your sympathetic nervous systems go on nuts,
Speaker 1: and you're producing quartersole and adrenaline and you're in this
Speaker 1: space where you're like and it's completely self created, but
Speaker 1: we don't know.
Speaker 2: Have you heard Jackie Lauder, who you introduced me, so
Speaker 2: thank you. Jack's doing it to work with our business.
Speaker 2: Have you heard Jack talk about the different brain zones?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No, make sure you get to listen to this. Jack
Speaker 2: are giving you a good plug. So Jake talks about
Speaker 2: different brains and so zone one is the back part
Speaker 2: of the primitive brain and that's that fight or flight
Speaker 2: response and being in zone one, Jack say says, is
Speaker 2: not bad because there's time. So if you're talking about football,
Speaker 2: when you're on the defensive line, you want to be
Speaker 2: in zone one when you're defending because you want to
Speaker 2: narrow your focus. It's short, sharp and you're they're defending,
Speaker 2: and it's that myopic view. But when you're in a
Speaker 2: relationship or running a business or catching up with friends,
Speaker 2: we want to get into zone three, which is our
Speaker 2: smart brain. So you front part of that cerebral cortex.
Speaker 2: And what Jack does is she teaches people how to
Speaker 2: shift between zone one and zone three and zone two.
Speaker 2: That's coming in through the Olympic system, so that happens
Speaker 2: in like point zero two of a NATO second happens automatically,
Speaker 2: but you can really learn to shift between zone one
Speaker 2: and three and some of the executive groups. I've seen
Speaker 2: Jack do this with It's really clever, and you know
Speaker 2: she's an intelligent, intelligent person, but she breaks it down
Speaker 2: and you hear them go, oh, I'm in zone one.
Speaker 2: Now I'm having a zone one thought time. That back
Speaker 2: in with what you said, Understanding your brain and how
Speaker 2: it works. I think it's a huge part of this.
Speaker 2: It's a huge part of performance because we've got this circuitry.
Speaker 2: We're not given the manual and we just try and
Speaker 2: go on default or through experience. If you've got some
Speaker 2: good role models, maybe from a sporting background or performing arts,
Speaker 2: you might learn some of this. I find that again
Speaker 2: an equals one. But if someone's had a bit of
Speaker 2: a performance background, they tend to take that into their
Speaker 2: next career. But if you haven't had that opportunity, that mentorship,
Speaker 2: that guidance, you could be fifty like an execu I
Speaker 2: had a few weeks ago, lovely lady I won't mention
Speaker 2: the name. We had a very personal, private conversation. She
Speaker 2: opened up and she'd learned some stuff about what we're
Speaker 2: doing on nervous system and brains. You said, Andrew, I
Speaker 2: cannot believe I haven't learned this, and I'm fifty. And
Speaker 2: she was quite regretful and remorseful of like, why haven't
Speaker 2: I done this? I'd learned all these mathematical formulas at school.
Speaker 2: Fill up a tank volume, micals four thirds bi aqube,
Speaker 2: but I finished that formula and year twelve. And I
Speaker 2: said to her, look, I get the emotion, thank you
Speaker 2: for sharing, but how cool You've now got this for
Speaker 2: your next fifty years and you can take this to
Speaker 2: your kids and then grandkids and everyone else. So rather
Speaker 2: than being pissed off, process it. You're learning this now,
Speaker 2: pay it forward. But it was just an interesting reflection,
Speaker 2: and I did have that thought, Yeah, God, what would
Speaker 2: have been different if you'd learned some of those skills
Speaker 2: to get closer to her potential gap ten, fifteen, twenty
Speaker 2: years earlier.
Speaker 1: That's that self understanding. That's that like you call me
Speaker 1: Socrates before we started tongue in cheek because you said
Speaker 1: I look like an old stoic quill.
Speaker 2: People who aren't watching this on our YouTube channel, harps
Speaker 2: has got the trimmed beid looking very very sophisticated intelligence.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say old. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting about Socrate is is he was the dude who
Speaker 1: said the beginning of wisdom is to know thyself me
Speaker 1: understanding me. You know that metacognitive process of thinking about
Speaker 1: my thinking? Why do I think the way that you know?
Speaker 1: Why do I like? Where did my beliefs come from?
Speaker 1: Did I even choose my beliefs or did I inherit
Speaker 1: them through social osmosis? Are my beliefs Dad's beliefs? Like?
Speaker 1: Did dad believe it? So I believe it? And did
Speaker 1: you know? Or I was raised in this environment, around
Speaker 1: these people or as exposed to these ideas? What if
Speaker 1: I was exposed to those ideas? Or what if I
Speaker 1: grew up in a synagogue not a church, Or what
Speaker 1: if I grew up an atheist? Or what if I
Speaker 1: grew up in this country not that Like the same
Speaker 1: person with the same genetics, what if all of my
Speaker 1: experiences have been different to now, who would I be
Speaker 1: and how would I be? And what would I think?
Speaker 1: And understanding that you have become what you have become,
Speaker 1: largely unconsciously and largely unintentionally, And then to go, m
Speaker 1: What to do with that? What to do with that?
Speaker 1: You know what? How do I get my self limiting
Speaker 1: beliefs out of the way? How do I get my
Speaker 1: need for belonging out of the way? How do I
Speaker 1: get my I don't want to disappoint my parents out
Speaker 1: of the way? How do I get the guilt out
Speaker 1: of the way? Because all of that shit, understandable as
Speaker 1: it is, that's a handbreak to your potential. That's getting
Speaker 1: in the way. Doesn't mean you've got to be disrespectful
Speaker 1: or disloyal to people, But for God's sake, understand yourself
Speaker 1: and think for yourself about yourself, and stop trying to
Speaker 1: keep everyone in the world in your group happy because
Speaker 1: all you won, you won't keep them happy. Two you
Speaker 1: will exhaust yourself, and three you will waste your potential.
Speaker 2: So, before I paraphrase some of the collective themes we've
Speaker 2: been talking about, why there is this performance and capacity gap,
Speaker 2: I've just got to go make it. Christmas time, I
Speaker 2: grew a bid and Sophia, who's our second younger, so
Speaker 2: she's fine. We're in Fiji and I thought I'm doing
Speaker 2: a good job, and she swam up to me in
Speaker 2: the pool and she went, Daddy, how do you get
Speaker 2: the little bits there? And they're gray and not the
Speaker 2: other bits. I'm like, oh, Daddy's got to get some
Speaker 2: hair dye which I couldn't find at Freji or the
Speaker 2: bids coming off. It's just gorgeous. How do you get
Speaker 2: those little bits there? Gray? Thank you, Saphia. All right,
Speaker 2: let me summarize. There's a lot of cognitive frameworks meta cognition,
Speaker 2: which you're talking about. So if we're talking about how
Speaker 2: to help people close there's gap between performance and their
Speaker 2: actual capacity, I think one is listening to a conversation,
Speaker 2: reflecting on a conversation like this and would be just
Speaker 2: locking in. And I asked you an open ended question,
Speaker 2: and correctly you said, well, depends whatever. And I said,
Speaker 2: let's look at the you project. So let's get our
Speaker 2: audience to think and reflect.
Speaker 1: Harps.
Speaker 2: Pick an area in your life right now, physical fitness, career,
Speaker 2: relationship where what would optimal look like? Let's go give
Speaker 2: it a score of one hundred. Where are you at?
Speaker 2: So then you've got that gap between your absolute potential
Speaker 2: and where you are now. Now we've spoken about what
Speaker 2: are some of the reasons you very cerebral smarty pants.
Speaker 2: When are you getting your PhD? It's not far away.
Speaker 1: I'm in a like I'm submitting very soon, like in
Speaker 1: the next four to eight weeks. But I've written a
Speaker 1: bunch of papers, as you do when you do a
Speaker 1: research PhD, and they're all off at journals being considered
Speaker 1: and pondered, and I'm writing my thesis. So all the
Speaker 1: work has been done. But it's anyway. I don't want
Speaker 1: to bore you, but you know, the problem is you
Speaker 1: send off you've written an article on or you've written
Speaker 1: a paper on your research, you send it off. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you don't hear depending on the journal, you don't hear
Speaker 1: anything one way or the other for four or five months,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, so there's stuff that's out of
Speaker 1: your control in the timeline. But yeah, I would hopefully
Speaker 1: next time we have a chat on your show anyway,
Speaker 1: that might be done and dusted. So that would be nice.
Speaker 2: But I think I can't wait to call you doctor Harper.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, let's not worry about that. But for me,
Speaker 1: even talking about you know, the performance potential blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah or performance capacity, you know, that for
Speaker 1: me was something that I had to even going into
Speaker 1: high level academia. Not being a high level academic. Okay,
Speaker 1: I actually don't belong in this room. One could be
Speaker 1: everyone's granddad, you know, sitting at Monash in my cubicle,
Speaker 1: just doing my thing, trying to figure out what everything like.
Speaker 1: It's a new culture, it's a new language they are,
Speaker 1: and new people there is. There's just this this whole
Speaker 1: kind of dimensional that you step into where you're unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: you're incompetent, are you nervous? And you go, okay, this
Speaker 1: is fucking horrible, But I'm glad I'm here, you know.
Speaker 1: And six years six years dude, obviously I switched from
Speaker 1: full time to part time because of my relatively hectic schedule.
Speaker 1: But but you're like, oh, I'm different now. I'm still
Speaker 1: me at my call, but I know different things, I
Speaker 1: can do different things. My understanding has grown, my capacity
Speaker 1: has grown. I think my ability to have this conversation
Speaker 1: with you is better than it was six years ago.
Speaker 1: And I think even in that you're in your fifties,
Speaker 1: I think, but you know me at sixty two, it's like,
Speaker 1: are you lower? What are you forty eight or something?
Speaker 2: Early fifties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just think practically and realistically. Like even one
Speaker 1: of the questions that I ask is, well, not to
Speaker 1: impress anyone or not to I don't know for any
Speaker 1: outward appearance, but it's like, well, how highly functioning can
Speaker 1: I be at my age? Like? Can my brain work
Speaker 1: better than when I was thirty two? Can I still
Speaker 1: do chin ups? Can I go run ten K's? Can
Speaker 1: I solve problems? Can I be creative? Can I learn
Speaker 1: new things? Can I adapt? I think these are great
Speaker 1: questions for anyone at any age, and the answer to
Speaker 1: all of those questions for most of us is yes.
Speaker 1: So rather than you know, I think before retirements, people
Speaker 1: almost retire horrible.
Speaker 2: It's a shit worth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they retire their potential, they retire their brain, they
Speaker 1: retire their capacity for learning. And I know that's probably
Speaker 1: not most of your listeners, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: do it. It's like, oh, it's almost like they put
Speaker 1: the queue in the rack. I'm like, Bro, you don't know,
Speaker 1: or Borsophine, you do not know how much cool shit
Speaker 1: you could do that apart from all the great stuff,
Speaker 1: you're going to be so much more fulfilled and excited
Speaker 1: rather than just sliding towards the finish line with a
Speaker 1: fucking pie in your hand.
Speaker 2: Brosophene. That's been a big takeout of this one today, Harps,
Speaker 2: We've got to you know, You've I don't want to
Speaker 2: say it, but you know I've googled Marcus a realistic
Speaker 2: and a few quotes on the Stoics. Here's a really
Speaker 2: good one. Now, these dudes were around thousands of years ago,
Speaker 2: so Marcus or really on control. You have power over
Speaker 2: your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will
Speaker 2: find strength. So he was saying, before we had neuroscience
Speaker 2: PhDs and pulling all this physical psychological stuff together. It's crazy,
Speaker 2: is that you look back at some of those quotes.
Speaker 2: I'll pick one or two other ones. On perspective, waste
Speaker 2: no time arguing about what a good man or woman
Speaker 2: should be b one, It's all about being present. Crazy
Speaker 2: on adversity. Choose not to be harmed and you won't
Speaker 2: feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been. So
Speaker 2: he's talking about self efficacy and self awareness and self
Speaker 2: control thousands of years ago. So if we stitch all
Speaker 2: this stuff together in the modern era and try and
Speaker 2: give it a Stoic frame, a multitude of reasons why
Speaker 2: there's a gap between someone's performance and between their capacity.
Speaker 2: I mentioned psychological skills. I spoke about state management. You've
Speaker 2: spoken about self esteem, self efficacy, self talk, meta cognition.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of psychological cognitive ones, a few
Speaker 2: physical ones that can get in the way because we're
Speaker 2: not ahead, and the stick. So we summarize there's a
Speaker 2: multitude of reasons, modeling, role, modeling, environment, so many reasons
Speaker 2: why there's a gap for people well.
Speaker 1: I think also everything from simple things like anxiety, like
Speaker 1: lack of focus, pro preparation, fatigue, zero motivation, distractions, environmental
Speaker 1: stress or is lack of belief. It's like there is
Speaker 1: a myriad of things, but they affect all of us.
Speaker 1: You know, I have I still lack confidence with lots
Speaker 1: of things. Over the last six years, I've had to
Speaker 1: do four academic milestones where I, the professional speaker, go
Speaker 1: and stand in front of four super duper academics who
Speaker 1: make me look like a plant intellectually, and nobody in
Speaker 1: the room would think this guy is a professional speaker.
Speaker 1: Like I was so nervous. I was so shit because
Speaker 1: you know what, in that environment, how well you speak
Speaker 1: or how funny you are or how many stories you have.
Speaker 1: Nobody cares. And by the way, none of the people
Speaker 1: that are assessing you right now, Craig to get your
Speaker 1: mid canned review or your final review. They don't know you.
Speaker 1: They don't care about you. You're number three, zero, five,
Speaker 1: seven one. That's you. You're You're the candidate in front
Speaker 1: of and terrified. I was talking to four people. I
Speaker 1: was terrified. You put me in front of four thousand.
Speaker 1: I'm excited. It's context dependent. But over the course of
Speaker 1: those four which was over you know, a bunch of years,
Speaker 1: I got slightly better. But it's back to that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think being scared and being inefficient and ineffective
Speaker 1: is okay as long as we're recognizing what we need
Speaker 1: to work on over time and we're actually stepping into it.
Speaker 1: I want to say one interesting thing while you're talking
Speaker 1: about the Stoics, and here's an interesting thing that people
Speaker 1: wouldn't think of. Firstly, the word mind. The word mind
Speaker 1: is only about four or five hundred years old, as
Speaker 1: that English word mind. Also, psychology as a field of
Speaker 1: research or as a science is only about one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years old, Like the psychology of this or that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's where three hundred thousand years old as
Speaker 1: a as Homo sapiens allegedly. I think they're saying it's
Speaker 1: more now. But you know, for the whole time that
Speaker 1: we've been around as a species, psychology hasn't been a thing.
Speaker 1: But human behavior has been analyzed in a myriad of
Speaker 1: ways over millennia. And you know, I'm sure there were
Speaker 1: lots of people before the stoics, but they were essentially
Speaker 1: talking about what we're talking about two and a half thousand,
Speaker 1: three thousand, five thousand years ago. None of this is new.
Speaker 1: None of this is new.
Speaker 2: It's not new, but we're not putting it together. And
Speaker 2: I know you love your science. So I did a
Speaker 2: bit of research, so I've got to use this quote.
Speaker 2: Batal Sheddon's going to say, why do we do the
Speaker 2: research with harps? It's a good one. So research for
Speaker 2: the Corporate Executive Board found a high perform individuals typically
Speaker 2: have three things working together. Number one is aspiration, the
Speaker 2: motivation to step up and take on greater responsibility. Number two, ability,
Speaker 2: the capability to deal with complexity and challenges. As we've
Speaker 2: spoken about today, that is improved with training and number
Speaker 2: three engagement staying committed long enough to grow forty years
Speaker 2: in business. You might just do all right, young fella.
Speaker 2: And here's the interesting part of the research found less
Speaker 2: than half of the high capability employees feel fully engaged,
Speaker 2: which means a lot of capable people never actually convert
Speaker 2: that into consistent performance. So one thing it also showed
Speaker 2: is that capability isn't just about talent. Research showed that
Speaker 2: high potential performers typically have those three things working together.
Speaker 2: I found that really interesting, so aspirational, so you're looking
Speaker 2: at something you wanted to move towards. So that would
Speaker 2: be linking to a lot of the research around purpose ability,
Speaker 2: which is dealing with complexity and challenge is not just easiness.
Speaker 2: And that engagement or that passion pace low.
Speaker 1: Itte love it. Yeah. I've got one question which I
Speaker 1: want to share with everybody that they can use, and
Speaker 1: the question is when you get up every morning and
Speaker 1: you have your coffee or your tea, and you have
Speaker 1: your little moment where one or two minutes I ask
Speaker 1: myself this question every day and this is true or
Speaker 1: a version of this, and the question is in terms
Speaker 1: of what I want to do, be, create and change
Speaker 1: today or maybe need to do in terms of what
Speaker 1: I need to do, be, create, or change today? Where
Speaker 1: should my attention be? What needs to have my attention?
Speaker 1: What needs to have my focus? Because we weigh so
Speaker 1: much cognitive, emotional, physical energy on shit that doesn't serve us.
Speaker 1: So even that awareness around how much of my focus,
Speaker 1: concentration energy am I wasting every day on bullshit that
Speaker 1: actually brings me down, not up?
Speaker 2: What do I need to do, need be and create today?
Speaker 2: What a great frame for every single day. It really
Speaker 2: pulls in a lot of that line on this present
Speaker 2: focus intentional control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, if you want to simplify it in terms
Speaker 1: of who I want to be and how I want
Speaker 1: to be? Where should my attention be today?
Speaker 2: This is a big topic, big topic, isn't it?
Speaker 1: And oh that's why I said you and I could
Speaker 1: do three days of this, but you and I could
Speaker 1: run a series of workshops on navigating all this stuff
Speaker 1: around self awareness, self regulation right through to self actualization.
Speaker 1: You know, some topics are relevant to forty percent of
Speaker 1: the audience. This is everyone, This is one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of the audience.
Speaker 2: And everyone's going to be in different pathways, different awareness skills,
Speaker 2: knowledge and when you're feeling stressed in life. Shit, it's hard,
Speaker 2: isn't it. Like when you've nailing stuff at work, you're
Speaker 2: getting feedback from people around you. You've got that multiplower effect.
Speaker 2: But that's life, and I think that's why you've got
Speaker 2: to play the long game, Like I look at that
Speaker 2: research engagement staying committed long enough to grow. So I
Speaker 2: really think as we sum up the gap, it's not
Speaker 2: going to happen overnight. Like you said, you don't do
Speaker 2: this my Wednesday. You've got to be patient on this,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, you've got to be hasty
Speaker 2: enough to get some change that you're getting some feedback
Speaker 2: that it's working, so you keep going. It's that dance
Speaker 2: between the two yes.
Speaker 1: And self awareness not self loathing. Don't beat yourself up.
Speaker 1: You're okay if you're listening to this, And I would
Speaker 1: be wildly astounded if you don't have a lot more
Speaker 1: potential and a lot more capacity than you're currently using
Speaker 1: or stepping into or even understand at this point in time.
Speaker 1: So it's good news. It's good news, but we've got
Speaker 1: to do the work.
Speaker 2: I've only got one more question. I've been holding this.
Speaker 2: You said, you're a seven out of ten?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Is that where you want to be?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty happy being a seven. Like I said across
Speaker 1: the board, I would say seven. I think there are
Speaker 1: times when I have moments of ten, I approach ten
Speaker 1: ten out of ten at something could be Andrew being
Speaker 1: six out of ten, because I'm just talking about what
Speaker 1: is my capacity? You know, my training partner is multiple
Speaker 1: time mister Australia former IFBB pro da da da da.
Speaker 1: Me training at ten out of ten? Is him training
Speaker 1: at five? You know? Me deavlifting a certain weight as
Speaker 1: him warming up, but me lifting deadlifting a certain weight
Speaker 1: as somebody else killing themselves. So it's it's it's all
Speaker 1: relative to us. And I think that if we, like
Speaker 1: I said at the start, like comparison is good if
Speaker 1: it's you comparing you to you over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just curious because if you at seven,
Speaker 2: he's getting to an eight going to make you any happier,
Speaker 2: any different?
Speaker 1: This is now, this is another conversation that is such
Speaker 1: a fucking smart question because here's the thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: what is the correlation between optimizing oneself? Which I think
Speaker 1: is a good idea depending but it's but yeah, what's
Speaker 1: the Can I be the guy who doesn't have much?
Speaker 1: Can I be the guy who doesn't do much, but
Speaker 1: also be the guy who's not anxious, the guy who's calm,
Speaker 1: the guy who's content, you know. And I think, like
Speaker 1: my mum and dad are really quite unwell at the moment.
Speaker 1: They're both eighty six and without giving away too much
Speaker 1: details like when I sit with them or a be
Speaker 1: with them, and it's like, you know, without being too cheesy,
Speaker 1: all that matters is them, All that matters is love.
Speaker 1: All that matters is that they are okay, you know.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean we're not going to have the
Speaker 1: human journey with goals and experiences and peaks and troughs.
Speaker 1: But like sometimes like I'm in the middle of this
Speaker 1: process at the moment, throwing out basically every eighty percent
Speaker 1: of everything I have in this house because I do
Speaker 1: not need it. I'm giving away really good things. But
Speaker 1: it's a really good thing that I don't use or needs,
Speaker 1: I'm giving it someone who does use it or need it.
Speaker 1: And it's so fucking liberating. It's like that attachment. There's
Speaker 1: an other one we could do, attachment theory.
Speaker 2: I think we've got two or three parties.
Speaker 1: We're ready, We're set for years.
Speaker 2: Thank you for planning the seed, and thank you for
Speaker 2: your time. It's got me thinking more. I often get
Speaker 2: off a conversation, and a podcast with you is ever
Speaker 2: relaxed conversation that you press record. And I know I'm
Speaker 2: going to be reflecting about this a lot over the
Speaker 2: next few weeks.
Speaker 1: Well, mate, you're a good man. You're doing good things,
Speaker 1: and I know your audience love you and I appreciate you,
Speaker 1: and thanks for the opportunity to speak to your folks.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 2: Thank you, O wise one, and keep the beard. It
Speaker 2: suit you.
Speaker 1: I'll do my best.