Speaker 1: Hello, t yp family. I hope you're good. I think
Speaker 1: this might be my first solo for the year. Now
Speaker 1: that could be good or bad depending on your predilection.
Speaker 1: Is that the word preference? Anyway? So I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about a thing that I call the
Speaker 1: U gap. And the U gap just means on planet
Speaker 1: Crag anyway. It means the space between the metaphoric or
Speaker 1: literal space in some senses, between where you are now
Speaker 1: listening to this and where you want to be. So,
Speaker 1: where am I, say, physically or mentally, or financially or professionally,
Speaker 1: or personally or sociologically, like, where am I in my
Speaker 1: life in that part of my life? How am I going,
Speaker 1: what's going great? What's not going great? What are my
Speaker 1: results telling me? All that? Where am I? And where
Speaker 1: do I want to be? Let's just round it up
Speaker 1: or down and let's just go a year. It could
Speaker 1: be three weeks, it could be three months, six months,
Speaker 1: could be ten years, right, but just a future version
Speaker 1: of you, and I think it's good to try to
Speaker 1: identify what is the gap between where I am and
Speaker 1: where I want to be, or who I am behaviorally
Speaker 1: or practically or financially, and who I want to be.
Speaker 1: We all have a gap so well. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've met anyone who doesn't. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: met anyone who has zero aspiration or ambition or intention
Speaker 1: or hope to be a slightly better version of themselves
Speaker 1: in some way at some point in the future. So
Speaker 1: I think we all have that gap. But it's trying
Speaker 1: to identify what that gap is, what that means to us,
Speaker 1: how important it is to us, and what's at the
Speaker 1: what's the underlying cause of the gap. What are we
Speaker 1: doing too much of or not enough of, or what
Speaker 1: are we not thinking about or not addressing, and what
Speaker 1: do we need to do? And like the tough thing
Speaker 1: about one of the many tough things about being a
Speaker 1: human is that we're emotional, and when it comes to us,
Speaker 1: we're often very unreasonable. We're often very hard on ourselves,
Speaker 1: or at other times the other end of the scale.
Speaker 1: We just want instant gratification and fun and easy and
Speaker 1: quick and painless, so we just hit up on all
Speaker 1: the fun stuff, the comfortable stuff. But there's always some
Speaker 1: kind of underlying reason or cause or mechanism that's keeping
Speaker 1: us behaviorally or psychologically or physiologically or financially trapped in
Speaker 1: a spot that we don't want to be, which is
Speaker 1: not say life is currently shit. It's not say that
Speaker 1: at all. It's just to say that many of us
Speaker 1: have wanted to be in inverted commas b in another
Speaker 1: place for a very long time, but we're not there
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you know, Like there was a time
Speaker 1: when I was working on the gym floor and then
Speaker 1: I realized I wanted to own a business. I want
Speaker 1: to work for me. So there's the oh, well, here
Speaker 1: I am working in this place for this much though,
Speaker 1: for this bloke, in these circumstances, in this culture, it's okay,
Speaker 1: but I don't love it. You know, it's a five
Speaker 1: out of ten. I don't love it. It's not My
Speaker 1: life is not horrible, but this is not where I
Speaker 1: want to be. So then I would and I did.
Speaker 1: In that moment, I'd go, well, this is my current status, situation, income, environment, circumstance,
Speaker 1: level of responsibility, level of power. I wasn't running the show.
Speaker 1: I couldn't run the show because it wasn't my business.
Speaker 1: And this is where I would like to be at
Speaker 1: some stage in the future. I don't necessarily think I
Speaker 1: timelined it to win it within a day or a
Speaker 1: month even, but just to recognize that this ain't it
Speaker 1: for me. This is okay, but this ain't it in
Speaker 1: inverted commas for me. And then what does it look like?
Speaker 1: You know? And you're always redefining and kind of realigning
Speaker 1: and thinking about what that means over time, and that
Speaker 1: you know that what it will look like, what will
Speaker 1: be the ideal situation, circumstance, scenario, income, culture, environment, task, role,
Speaker 1: job that will be different for you at different times,
Speaker 1: just as it has been for me. But right now
Speaker 1: I'm listening to this. You know, where are you at
Speaker 1: and where would you like to be? And what is
Speaker 1: that gap? And let's see if we can talk about
Speaker 1: bridging it. So what I've done, Groovers, is I have
Speaker 1: broken it down into kind of like the macro and
Speaker 1: the micro. There's the big rocks and the pebbles, and
Speaker 1: the big rocks of which I speak grasshoppers are ah
Speaker 1: for today anyway. They are these physical health, mental health,
Speaker 1: lifestyle habits, career financial stuff, relationships stuff, brain function and
Speaker 1: mental health stuff. And putting our current operating system under
Speaker 1: the spotlight as well, so we can take a look
Speaker 1: at all of these kind of individual kind of components
Speaker 1: of the US experience, and then maybe the the micro
Speaker 1: that sits underneath the macro of each of those headings.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to make this too long. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of, I guess, an introduction to this concept
Speaker 1: between bridging the gap, and obviously there are a lot
Speaker 1: of gaps for many of us. Some of them are
Speaker 1: really important. Some of them are like, yeah, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: like I wouldn't mind being a bit better at that,
Speaker 1: that would be nice. But if I don't get any
Speaker 1: better at playing my guitar, that's okay. Or if I
Speaker 1: don't lose three more kilos, that's okay. Or if my
Speaker 1: income stays at you know, whatever it is or whatever
Speaker 1: it is plus ten percent, I'm probably going to be okay.
Speaker 1: So it's not a big thing, but there will be
Speaker 1: big things like I cannot currently or I can't continue
Speaker 1: on my current workload, so the hours I work, the
Speaker 1: stress that it puts me under the level of sleep
Speaker 1: that I'm getting, like, it's just not working. So that's
Speaker 1: something that really needs to be addressed and immediately. So
Speaker 1: top of the list is physical health, and in that
Speaker 1: like no surprises here, I think When I think about
Speaker 1: my physical health, I think about the impact of food
Speaker 1: and everyone's physical health. Is how I frame it food?
Speaker 1: How much am I eating? Am I overeating? Am I
Speaker 1: under eating? And am I eating high quality food? Where
Speaker 1: do I get it from? Do I prepare it? Is
Speaker 1: it ultra processed? Is it somewhat wholesome and closer towards
Speaker 1: the organic end of the spectrum? How do I eat
Speaker 1: in terms of my relationship with food? What about social eating?
Speaker 1: What about compulsive eating? What about reactive eating? What about
Speaker 1: numbing out with food? What about all of those things?
Speaker 1: So I think it's just to be. And as most
Speaker 1: of you know, my biggest challenge for a lot of
Speaker 1: my life has been food in terms of me keeping
Speaker 1: my shit together, managing me, making good choices, and giving
Speaker 1: myself the best chance to live a long, healthy life.
Speaker 1: Food has been my number one priority because that was
Speaker 1: my biggest issue. That was my biggest kind of emotional, psychological,
Speaker 1: behavioral tipping point. So think about the things. If food
Speaker 1: is an issue for you, don't beat yourself out, don't
Speaker 1: jump up and down. As emotional as we all are,
Speaker 1: recognize the emotion around it, feel it. That's all cool.
Speaker 1: But then try to turn that volume down a little
Speaker 1: bit and start to be a bit strategic, just practically,
Speaker 1: what am I doing that doesn't work? What am I
Speaker 1: bullshitting myself about? What am I telling people that isn't true?
Speaker 1: What am I currently doing pretty regularly that is dumb
Speaker 1: as fuck? You know that this is You don't need
Speaker 1: to be super educated or highly intelligent. I know most
Speaker 1: of you are, But you don't need to be a
Speaker 1: genius to figure this stuff out. You don't need to
Speaker 1: be a genius to know that you are doing things
Speaker 1: which don't align with who and how you want to be.
Speaker 1: So food is a biggie under the banner of physical
Speaker 1: health exercise, of course, I don't really need to explain
Speaker 1: it to you. But more than how much do you exercise,
Speaker 1: or do you have the perfect program, or how hard
Speaker 1: or how easy, my kind of number one priority for
Speaker 1: people is that they exercise consistently. Most people that I
Speaker 1: have met over the years I'm talking about the totality
Speaker 1: of the people I meet in life are not consistent.
Speaker 1: And that's very reflective of the stats around exercise consistency
Speaker 1: generally speaking in the research. So we know that a
Speaker 1: lot of people start a lot of people stop. A
Speaker 1: lot of people do a whole thing for a while,
Speaker 1: they get results, then they stop, then they lose results,
Speaker 1: and then a whole bunch of stuff happens, and then
Speaker 1: we're getting to October November, it's getting warm in Australia anyway,
Speaker 1: and then people go, right, that's it, I'm back baby,
Speaker 1: And there's another cycle. It's hard to be consistent. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean it's hard for everyone all the time,
Speaker 1: but it means it's hard for a period of time
Speaker 1: until that exercise that works for you, until that exercise
Speaker 1: that produces the outcomes that you want becomes ingrained into
Speaker 1: who you are, Like, this is part of your operating system. Now,
Speaker 1: this is part of your hardwiring. This is you on default.
Speaker 1: This is normal mode you, NM you why sorry, n
Speaker 1: M why normal mode you? Because then once that exercise
Speaker 1: gets integrated into our subconscious and our day to day
Speaker 1: patterns and rules and rituals, and now this is just
Speaker 1: us doing us. This is not us trying to be
Speaker 1: spectacular or become an Olympian or being credible. This is
Speaker 1: us just trying to build an operating system around As
Speaker 1: I said, initially, food and exercise, which is going to
Speaker 1: work for us, And by work for us, I don't
Speaker 1: mean get us in the Olympic team or some kind
Speaker 1: of physiological specimen that's superhuman, but rather just a version
Speaker 1: of you that is consistently as healthy as you can be,
Speaker 1: optimizing your physical potential. Of course, under the banner of
Speaker 1: physical health is sleep and stress and relationships. Sleep and stress.
Speaker 1: You kind of get it. If we're under sleep, we're
Speaker 1: not recharging the batteries. And I actually just read an
Speaker 1: interesting paper talking about or abstract of a paper, I'll
Speaker 1: be more accurate about how you know, there's a thing
Speaker 1: that happens with sleep, and that is that over time.
Speaker 1: You know, people say I'm really good with five hours.
Speaker 1: What happens is when you under sleep. Now, virtually nobody,
Speaker 1: very very few people can be consistently physiologically healthy on
Speaker 1: five hours sleep. There may be a few unicorns out there.
Speaker 1: But what's happened with many people who go, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: great with five or six hours is that their body
Speaker 1: has adapted so that they feel good, so they have
Speaker 1: the perception of I'm okay, while below the surface physiologically
Speaker 1: things are not okay. So we don't even know sometimes
Speaker 1: because we can't pick up on the data on the
Speaker 1: biodata that our body is sending us so sleep, even
Speaker 1: if you think you're going okay sometimes with four or
Speaker 1: five six hours sleep, the research seems to suggest, and
Speaker 1: my observation and work with people seems to suggest that
Speaker 1: there are very few people who can consistently live on
Speaker 1: somewhere in the five to six hour range and be
Speaker 1: genuinely healthy optimal immune function, cellular energy, cellular health, cognitive
Speaker 1: function on very little sleep. And then the last one
Speaker 1: on the list here on the physical health as relationships
Speaker 1: and just because you know what's happening in your relationships
Speaker 1: more specifically you'll or close relationships, it impacts you. And
Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing because it's not something I
Speaker 1: used to think about a whole lot. I didn't really
Speaker 1: think about it, you know what. I didn't actually understand
Speaker 1: it as being such an important factor in physical health
Speaker 1: in mental health, because if your mental health is not great,
Speaker 1: your physical health it's not going to be great, and
Speaker 1: vice versa, like they're intertwined to think that, as I've
Speaker 1: said many times, to think that you know, psychological, emotional
Speaker 1: and physiological kind of states or outcomes are not intertwined
Speaker 1: with each other. Is ignorant. It's not science, And the
Speaker 1: only place that those three things exist in isolation. You know,
Speaker 1: emotional stuff, psychological stuff, cognitive stuff, physiological stuff. More broadly,
Speaker 1: the only place they operate in isolation is in research,
Speaker 1: as in science. But as a human being just fucking
Speaker 1: navigating life on the big spinning rock, navigating the blue. No,
Speaker 1: all that shit's intertwined. That if something bad happens, I worry,
Speaker 1: that affects my body, That affects my cognitive function, That
Speaker 1: affects my nervous system, my emotional state, my ability to
Speaker 1: think clearly, to communicate rationally. Everything is intertwined with everything
Speaker 1: with us humans. So having relationship problems and ranging from
Speaker 1: not great through to horribly horribly destructive and toxic, that
Speaker 1: has a big physical health, probably bigger than everything else
Speaker 1: in the short term, in the short term sleep maybe
Speaker 1: the exception. All right, mental health. So where am I
Speaker 1: with my mental health? If I could, you know, crag
Speaker 1: a fight and just go well, ken is I feel
Speaker 1: fucking great? Most of the time? I don't. I feel
Speaker 1: very stressed, very anxious. I don't feel saddy, make sad stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't feel depressed. I kind of process life pretty
Speaker 1: good and you know, overall, like not perfect, but overall
Speaker 1: actually genuinely pretty good. Well, that's amazing, and I think
Speaker 1: that's obviously possible. And I think for me, most of
Speaker 1: the time, not all the time, but most of the time,
Speaker 1: I'm near that end of the scale. I think if
Speaker 1: we averaged it out for me ten being at the
Speaker 1: end of the scale, I would think most of the
Speaker 1: time I'm a seven to nine, And there are times
Speaker 1: when I'm a one like you, or a three like you,
Speaker 1: or a five like you, and maybe now and then
Speaker 1: a ten like you for a minute. But just trying
Speaker 1: to understand, remember I metacognition, thinking about how I think
Speaker 1: and how I feel and who I am the way
Speaker 1: I am trying to understand your mental health from an
Speaker 1: anxiety point of view, from an overthinking point of view,
Speaker 1: from the decisions that you're making every day, from the
Speaker 1: reactions that you manifest to certain stimuli, like the way
Speaker 1: that you respond to stuff good and bad, or people
Speaker 1: good and bad, or situations and circumstances. Your ability that
Speaker 1: equanimity thing that we speak about, your ability to be
Speaker 1: the calm and the chaos. Can I be in the
Speaker 1: middle of a shit fest and not be in a
Speaker 1: shit state? How do I do that? And maybe that's
Speaker 1: something you want to or need to develop over time.
Speaker 1: How does the firefighter who's in the middle of complete
Speaker 1: chaos and turmoil and smoke and fire and panic and
Speaker 1: screaming people and uncertainty and danger, how does he or
Speaker 1: she run into that environment and be exactly the person
Speaker 1: that we need in that moment to be our best
Speaker 1: chance of saving lives. That's fucking amazing. I love that.
Speaker 1: So how do I become more of that? Do I
Speaker 1: process experiences? What is do I process things? Something happens.
Speaker 1: My go to is negative, this is bad, this is
Speaker 1: going to end badly. There's not good, blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, I'm an idiot, I fucked up. Whatever. So
Speaker 1: there's the thing that happens, and there's our response, and
Speaker 1: our response is based on our story that we tell
Speaker 1: ourselves about the thing. An event happens and ten people
Speaker 1: are there, so it happens to all ten. Nine people
Speaker 1: respond absolutely fine, no major drama, trauma, stress, anxiety, and
Speaker 1: one person in the middle of that interprets it differently,
Speaker 1: has a very negative reaction. This is not weakness or
Speaker 1: badness or you know, this is a human response. This
Speaker 1: is that person's response. So thinking about how do I
Speaker 1: change that? We can't. We can't fix that in this podcast.
Speaker 1: But I've I've thought about these things forever. When someone
Speaker 1: says something, why do I want to impress them? Or
Speaker 1: when someone's around me that I think is impressive, Why
Speaker 1: then do I try to boill? That's ego, that's insecurity,
Speaker 1: that's self doubt, that's fear, that's all my bullshit. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not me beating me up. This is me
Speaker 1: understanding me. This is me recognizing how I am and
Speaker 1: what I do and trying to park that in the
Speaker 1: logical space, turned down on the emotion, on all my bullshit,
Speaker 1: of which there is much, and then try and create
Speaker 1: some kind of approach to or method or system to
Speaker 1: do something about that. But to do something about that,
Speaker 1: I need to understand that. I need to understand me.
Speaker 1: I need to understand why I make the decisions I do,
Speaker 1: Why I process things the way I do, Why I
Speaker 1: react and respond the way I do, Why I over
Speaker 1: or underreact, Why I blame instead of thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm part of the problem. Why I do that? Why
Speaker 1: we do that. Next on my list is lifestyle, which
Speaker 1: is more practical, so it's kind of almost a big
Speaker 1: picture of how do I manage me in the middle
Speaker 1: of my life? I reckon one of the most important questions.
Speaker 1: It's very broad and it covers everything. But you know,
Speaker 1: often even when I could be talking to one hundred
Speaker 1: lawyers or one hundred blokes who work on a construction site,
Speaker 1: or one hundred nurses or a thousand doesn't matter. But
Speaker 1: even though I work in different professional environments with different
Speaker 1: kinds of people who do different kinds of jobs and
Speaker 1: different incomes under different circumstances, really I rarely go in
Speaker 1: there and talk about their job or work or productivity
Speaker 1: or you know, outcomes on a business level about how
Speaker 1: do you manage you? Like how do you manage you
Speaker 1: at work? And we can extrapolate this to at life.
Speaker 1: How do you manage you? How do you manage your
Speaker 1: mind and body and emotions and choices and actions and
Speaker 1: reactions and energy? How do you manage that stuff? Do
Speaker 1: you have a plan? Do you have a plan or
Speaker 1: you just get up today and kind of do what
Speaker 1: you did yesterday, even though yesterday was shit and the
Speaker 1: day before was pretty shit in the last hundred days
Speaker 1: have been somewhere between not awesome and kind of average.
Speaker 1: Maybe for some people. Again, that's not a criticism, that's
Speaker 1: just for some people their reality. Now, there's no magic fairy.
Speaker 1: No one's going to come in and magic up your life.
Speaker 1: Nobody's going to come and fix it for you. Nobody's
Speaker 1: going to come and solve it for you. Nobody's going
Speaker 1: to come and sprinkle happiness dust all over your s Gone.
Speaker 1: It ain't going to happen. So we acknowledge it, we
Speaker 1: realize it, we see it for what it is, and
Speaker 1: we try to practically address it. And I might say, okay,
Speaker 1: so how often do you drink booze? Someone says every night?
Speaker 1: I go cool, Well, that's something we can change, perhaps
Speaker 1: not easily. But do you think drinking alcohol every day
Speaker 1: is good for your mental and emotional and physical health?
Speaker 1: And they know the answer is no. Great, Well, now
Speaker 1: we're starting to understand maybe one part of what the
Speaker 1: problem might be. If we're talking on this macro level
Speaker 1: of your life, then we talk about maybe caffeine, and
Speaker 1: caffeine's fine but not for some people. Coffee or two
Speaker 1: a day's great, but not seven or eight for most people. Drugs, well,
Speaker 1: the odd voltaire and for your saren probably okay, the
Speaker 1: odd aspro or panandole or paracetamol probably fine, depending on
Speaker 1: the individual, of course, not recommending anything, but consistently using
Speaker 1: drugs that are mind altering or physiologically altering in not
Speaker 1: a good way. Well, that's problematic. And what about rest
Speaker 1: and what about relaxing, and what about recovering? How's what's
Speaker 1: your plan around that? How do you reset? How do
Speaker 1: you push the reset button? How do you come back
Speaker 1: to work all the kids or the whatever it is.
Speaker 1: What's your little kind of metaphoric retreat from the manic?
Speaker 1: What's your metaphoric retreat from the chaos and the busyness
Speaker 1: and the responsibilities and the demands. And I know some
Speaker 1: of you are going you don't understand my life, blah blah.
Speaker 1: I get it. I get it. I understand you are
Speaker 1: very busy. I understand. And it isn't a contest. But
Speaker 1: for the last six years I've been working a lot.
Speaker 1: I've been recording mostly seven podcasts a week. I've been
Speaker 1: doing a PhD. I've been navigating old age with my parents.
Speaker 1: I've been you know, I get it, it's and we
Speaker 1: can either say, yeah, I'm fucking busy, Shut up, you
Speaker 1: don't understand my life. Fuck off. We can go yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm fucking I'm busy. But is there something I can
Speaker 1: do out of the fourteen hundred and forty minutes a day?
Speaker 1: Is there ten minutes a day that I could do something?
Speaker 1: Is there something little? Maybe it's five minutes that might
Speaker 1: move the needle If I do that five minutes every
Speaker 1: day and build it in six or seven or eight
Speaker 1: or ten or who knows, maybe one day thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: So we're doing this thing for thirty minutes a day,
Speaker 1: that's so fucking great for us. But we're not doing
Speaker 1: it for fourteen one hundred and ten minutes. That's great,
Speaker 1: that's not a massive request. When we'd be brutally honest
Speaker 1: and we go, well, like if I said, even though
Speaker 1: I just told you how busy I am, do I
Speaker 1: waste time on the phone? Fucking yes? Is it good
Speaker 1: for me? No? Am I a dumbass? Yes? Will I
Speaker 1: do it today later? Yes? Right? But do I do
Speaker 1: it less than I used to? Yes? Am I working
Speaker 1: on it? Yes? Can I find thirty minutes? Twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: ten minutes a day if I had to, well, if
Speaker 1: I had to, I could, well, let's just pretend that
Speaker 1: you have to. So lifestyle is a big one. Now
Speaker 1: these ones are a little well, the next one's a
Speaker 1: little closer to the macro, but it's still massively important
Speaker 1: in terms of the quality of the results that we're
Speaker 1: producing now and will in the future, and in terms
Speaker 1: of bridging the gap, the U gap of which we
Speaker 1: speak grasshoppers. And that's just your current habits. Like you've
Speaker 1: got lots of habits around the way you communicate, the
Speaker 1: way you do your job, the way you drive to work,
Speaker 1: the way your little rules and rituals that you do
Speaker 1: every morning. You get up, you do this, then you
Speaker 1: do that, then you do that, then you check that,
Speaker 1: then you check that, then you do this, and then
Speaker 1: eventually you walk out the door and jump in the car,
Speaker 1: or you go to the office upstairs at home, or
Speaker 1: you whatever it is that you do. You have rules
Speaker 1: and rituals and habits and behaviors that are programmed into
Speaker 1: your hard drive. And that's not good or bad, that's
Speaker 1: just thing. So what is great for us to do
Speaker 1: is to put our habits, good and bad, under the
Speaker 1: spotlight what am I doing all the time that's for
Speaker 1: the most part good for me. I can recognize that
Speaker 1: I can go well. I walk ten thousand steps plus
Speaker 1: a day. I lift some weights every day. I try
Speaker 1: to be kind every day, and if I have the opportunity,
Speaker 1: I'm kind every day. I try to eat good food.
Speaker 1: I try to be productive, I try to be creative.
Speaker 1: I do all of these things, which are pretty hard
Speaker 1: whirled into who I am and how I am. I
Speaker 1: don't always produce good results, but I try very hard
Speaker 1: to do all of that, and truthfully, it's mostly just autopilots.
Speaker 1: So that's a habit. There's some shit that I do
Speaker 1: that's good. There's some shit that I do that's not good.
Speaker 1: So have a look at the way that you do
Speaker 1: things typically typically, and then think to yourself about whether
Speaker 1: or not the way that you do that typically or
Speaker 1: daily or routinely or habitually, whether or not that is
Speaker 1: working for you, whether or not that is working for you,
Speaker 1: whether or not that's a good thing. And we don't
Speaker 1: need to turn our life upside down in terms of
Speaker 1: habits and behaviors by the end of the week. But
Speaker 1: what we can do is recognize things and work on
Speaker 1: things one at a time. I think you'll know the
Speaker 1: story of a year and a half ago or so.
Speaker 1: I kind of realized how few steps I was taking
Speaker 1: because I do so much work where I am right now,
Speaker 1: which is in my office, which is in my studio,
Speaker 1: and I'd like, I live in this fucking chair. And
Speaker 1: sure I would pride myself that I would go to
Speaker 1: the gym and list shit every day, and that's good.
Speaker 1: But there was one thing that I wasn't doing enough,
Speaker 1: and that was just general movement. That was just incidental activity,
Speaker 1: occupation activity. Some jobs require you to move a lot,
Speaker 1: like I've got friends who are trades, lots of friends
Speaker 1: who are tradees, and they would probably do ten to
Speaker 1: twenty thousand steps a day without actually in inverted commas
Speaker 1: going for a walk, so to speak, whereas my occupational
Speaker 1: and incidental kind of step count is somewhere in there
Speaker 1: three to four. It's like very low. I actually have
Speaker 1: to consciously go for walk to get so I recognize
Speaker 1: that one little thing, Hey, Craig, walk more. I didn't
Speaker 1: change anything else. I I didn't change my food, didn't
Speaker 1: change my last oh my kind of my operating system.
Speaker 1: Other than that didn't change food. Everything stayed the same
Speaker 1: except that one thing, and that made a massive impact.
Speaker 1: We can move the needle. If you are currently you know,
Speaker 1: doing three thousand steps a day, just go all right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do one thousand more. I'm going to
Speaker 1: do four thousand, and then we'll see how long that takes.
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing that's going to take I don't know,
Speaker 1: somewhere in the ballpark of ten minutes, ten minutes, give
Speaker 1: or take. And then next week you might go, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm going to go from three to three
Speaker 1: to four to five. I'm going to do five great
Speaker 1: And these are just little things that are not hard,
Speaker 1: do not require money, do not require skills, do not
Speaker 1: require a PhD. Are they sexy? No? Is it quick? Well?
Speaker 1: Kind of, but in the context sometimes people would go no, right,
Speaker 1: And so much of the things that we need to
Speaker 1: do to bridge the U gap are that, you know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of Oh, you just got to batten down
Speaker 1: the hatches and do the thing when no one's looking,
Speaker 1: when it's not fun, quick, easy or painless. Got a
Speaker 1: few to go. I'm dragging my feet our career. What
Speaker 1: is my relationship with work? This is something I think
Speaker 1: about a lot. I think about like me. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a little bit of an
Speaker 1: insight into the Craig experience right now, so you all
Speaker 1: know that you don't all know. Some of you have
Speaker 1: been informed that I have this thing called U station
Speaker 1: shoe dysfunction, and I often have blocked the ears. So
Speaker 1: right now my right ear is really blocked. And I
Speaker 1: started and stopped this little extravaganza about three times before
Speaker 1: I just went fuck it. I'm just going to record,
Speaker 1: and if my ear blocks, it blocks, and so I
Speaker 1: don't need any sympathy. But it's actually hard for me
Speaker 1: to do this right now because my voices echoing in
Speaker 1: my head, which makes focus and concentration hard. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's just what's going on for me right now. Let's
Speaker 1: go back to career and the consequences of staying in
Speaker 1: a career. Perhaps that doesn't rock our boat or work
Speaker 1: for us emotionally or mentally or I'm not even talking
Speaker 1: about practically or financially, that's a big part of it.
Speaker 1: But here I'm talking about more what are the health
Speaker 1: consequences of my work. I talk to people very often
Speaker 1: whose biggest issue is not money. It is not the
Speaker 1: job itself. It's not the work itself. It's that their
Speaker 1: situation or environments or relationships or culture or experience at
Speaker 1: work is shit, or their experience personally of it. Not
Speaker 1: say everyone in the same place is feeling or experiencing
Speaker 1: the same thing, but these people, which is very normal,
Speaker 1: and you probably are that person at some stage. Like
Speaker 1: going to work is not a great thing, Like you
Speaker 1: don't get excited, you don't look forward to it, you
Speaker 1: don't love it. It's a thing you do because you
Speaker 1: feel you have to do it. And the truth is,
Speaker 1: for some of you, you do have to do it
Speaker 1: because you're financially have your hands tied, so you need
Speaker 1: to do it. And I totally understand that. So I'm
Speaker 1: always thinking about for myself and the people like coach,
Speaker 1: what are the health consequences of what you do of
Speaker 1: your job and how can I change that? And even
Speaker 1: though some people might be in a high paying, high flying,
Speaker 1: high respect, high social status job, fuck, how important is
Speaker 1: that social status job anyway? All that, all those boxes
Speaker 1: are ticked from the outside looking in, tickety boo, fucking
Speaker 1: well done, But from the inside out the experience is terrible. Emotionally, psychologically, physiologically,
Speaker 1: experientially it's shit. So yeah, I think career and financial
Speaker 1: staff in general. You know, financial security, your relationship with money,
Speaker 1: stress about money. All of these things can have absolute consequences,
Speaker 1: good or bad depending on your situation and what's going
Speaker 1: on right now for you. And then let's quickly go
Speaker 1: through the three in the bridging the gap saga, it's
Speaker 1: become a saga. Relationships are so our life is built
Speaker 1: largely around relationships, friendships, work people, family people, friends, peers,
Speaker 1: incidental people that we kind of nudge up alongside somewhat
Speaker 1: regularly that are just in our life, perhaps circumstantially that
Speaker 1: we didn't choose all okay, but we know that the
Speaker 1: quality of our relationships, as I think I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: like especially on a personal level, has a real impact
Speaker 1: and what's going on in those relationships, and especially that
Speaker 1: when there is emotional and psychological turmoil, even if everything
Speaker 1: else is going great in our life, if we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of psychological and emotional turmoil with someone that
Speaker 1: we love or care about very much, be that intimate relationship,
Speaker 1: a best friend or a family member, it's going to
Speaker 1: fuck you up, and it's going to fuck you up
Speaker 1: for a while, and so trying to for me, trying
Speaker 1: to build relationships as much as I can control, not
Speaker 1: the person, but control as much as I can or
Speaker 1: as much as I can contribute, is better way to
Speaker 1: say it. To a healthy relationship, Then that's what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do. Understanding that what I think often doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: Understanding how they think is extremely important. Understanding that their
Speaker 1: reality is not my reality. Understanding that the window through
Speaker 1: which they view, experience, digest, and understand the world is
Speaker 1: not the same as mine. So of course there'll be differences,
Speaker 1: and of course I need to navigate and negotiate those,
Speaker 1: and of course I need to I don't always do,
Speaker 1: but I try very much to operate primarily through love,
Speaker 1: through kindness, through compassion, through empathy, empathy, through awareness. Yeah, relationships, big, big,
Speaker 1: think about one relationship that you have that matters to you,
Speaker 1: that you would like to do better at. Doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you're all the problem, doesn't mean that at all, doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're none of the problem, doesn't mean that at all.
Speaker 1: My experience is that most of the time, not all.
Speaker 1: Most of the time it's a bit of a combination
Speaker 1: of both. People Sometimes it's one hundred zero, but not often.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do one more. So I've got to
Speaker 1: here brain function and brain health. And I probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have put this in twenty or thirty years ago because
Speaker 1: I didn't really get it. I got it theoretically, but
Speaker 1: I didn't get at it experientially, like I get it
Speaker 1: experientially even right now as I'm talking, because I have
Speaker 1: low level frustration right now. That's not me being weakal terrible,
Speaker 1: but I just like telling you. So you go, oh,
Speaker 1: he gets frustrated. Oh he has bad days. Oh he
Speaker 1: can't fucking hear out of his right ear. Oh that
Speaker 1: must be so imagine just put imagine cover your covering
Speaker 1: your ear with soundproof headphones and then taping it up
Speaker 1: with two feet of tape, and you can't hear anything. Well,
Speaker 1: that's my experience and some right now, and sometimes that's both.
Speaker 1: So my voice is an eleven out of ten in
Speaker 1: my head, and your voice talking to me is a
Speaker 1: one out of ten standing two feet from me. And
Speaker 1: so you know in the middle of that, that affects
Speaker 1: my brain function, affects cognition, affects my emotions, it affects
Speaker 1: mental acuity in my ability to execute things to do
Speaker 1: my job. So brain function, how well your brain works,
Speaker 1: Like I said, memory, creativity, focus, mental acuity, your ability
Speaker 1: to problem solve and talk to people and overcome conflict
Speaker 1: and problems and navigate life on an interpersonal level, linguistically, sociologically,
Speaker 1: practically with other humans. It's so important that your brain
Speaker 1: works well. If you're a leader, it's important that your
Speaker 1: brain works well, if you're a mom or a dad. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're in anyone right, there's no one for whom
Speaker 1: this is not important. And just think about those things
Speaker 1: which might impact your brain function or your brain health.
Speaker 1: You know what you put in your body, sleep boost,
Speaker 1: all the things we've spoken about, and how you might
Speaker 1: how you might improve your cognitive function or performance. So
Speaker 1: for me, choosing to do a PhD at fifty six,
Speaker 1: very atypical. I would say, I don't know how many
Speaker 1: first year PhDs in psychology start at fifty six, but
Speaker 1: I would think less than point one of one percent,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make me good or bad. It just makes
Speaker 1: me very atypical. And that makes me a little bit
Speaker 1: sad because I wish people would intentionally learn as they
Speaker 1: get older. I wish they would consciously study. If not,
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily mean in an academic environment, but do
Speaker 1: a project, write a book, do your own research, take
Speaker 1: up a language. Write with your opposite hand for a week,
Speaker 1: Like I know that sounds random, but I did it
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, and I still do it periodically now.
Speaker 1: Because I have two whiteboards in my office, I will
Speaker 1: often get up. I'm left handed, I'll get up and
Speaker 1: I'll write the alphabet in my right hand. And the
Speaker 1: way that I could do it a month ago, which
Speaker 1: looked like dogshit, now it almost looks like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: just my writing my good hand and my bad hand.
Speaker 1: For one of better terms, the gap is, you know,
Speaker 1: speaking of the U gap, the gap has drastically reduced.
Speaker 1: Like if one of my goals, for example, was how
Speaker 1: do I write with my left hand? And also what
Speaker 1: are the benefits? But how do I write with my
Speaker 1: right hand? We'll crag. You just write with your right hand.
Speaker 1: It would look fucking terrible, And then you do it
Speaker 1: again and again and the next day then it will look
Speaker 1: less terrible. Instead of being ten out of ten fucking horrible,
Speaker 1: it'll be a seven. Then eventually it'd be like neat
Speaker 1: writing so people won't people won't know. People wouldn't know
Speaker 1: because I've done the work to create the neurological gains
Speaker 1: between what I want to do and then what my
Speaker 1: body is capable of doing, down to the fine motor
Speaker 1: skills of holding the pen between my thumb and index
Speaker 1: finger and then producing that completely different look of writing
Speaker 1: the same guy at sixty two practicing something and literally
Speaker 1: creating new and different neural pathways in my brain to
Speaker 1: be able to operationalize this thing of writing with my
Speaker 1: wrong hand. Well, there are so many fucking things that
Speaker 1: you and I can do that are going to upgrade
Speaker 1: your brain, things that people do not think about. I
Speaker 1: might do a whole episode on that right team. I
Speaker 1: may abhored you, I apologize for my stumbles mumbles here
Speaker 1: and there, but I want you to listen to the
Speaker 1: whole podcast with your index finger shoved in your idea
Speaker 1: and you can empathize with me. See Team