TrueLife - Lewis Thompson-Milne - A Personal Trainer for Your Thoughts

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://linktr.ee/be.better.coachinghttps://bebetter.nz/A recovering workaholic, obsessive analyst, chronic overachiever and chaser of ‘success’, now reformed and actively living my best life by serving others and helping them to uncover theirs.The story of my life began with a journey of survival, I was born dead and ‘died’ a further two times within the following 12 hours. While a morbid topic, this set the scene for the majority of the rest of my young life.The child of two alcoholics each solo parenting me for a portion of my life but both deeply flawed in their own special ways. I am the son of an insanely over protective, outdated-in-his-beliefs yet loving and incredibly creative father, and of a vengeful, torn, broken, militarily strict and deeply scarred yet amazingly powerful mother that possessed incredible mental resolve.I have worked myself to the bone so often that I’ve had multiple complete burnouts throughout my corporate and work life.I have survived childhood abuse in almost all its forms. Violence, grief and terror all in almost equal mix.I have been flat broke and displaced (yes, that means homeless), without anywhere and anyone in the world multiple times.I have experienced the loss and death of people close to me more times than I care to count and I have moved homes, lives and communities over two dozen times in my life.I have been drastically overweight (162+kg, 357+lbs) and addicted.I have had failed relationships and broken, abandoned friendships.I have failed, and fallen and gotten it wrong in some of the most severely impactful moments of my life.So, why share all this? Because, I have an amazing life that I love and it’s important to me that you understand my perspective on life, living and the lessons that brings.I want you to really know the value and viewpoint I bring to the table and the insight I can leverage to assist you with building your goals, ambitions and dreams.And most importantly, I need you to know that I don’t give up, even if on occasion you unintentionally give up on yourself. Anyone can be the person they want to be, if they’re willing to work for it.I coach based on transparency, authenticity and vulnerability and combine these with clear and practical tools and systems to deliver life changing results to the people I work with. I honestly believe in serving you to the best of my ability, and part of that is being open about who I am, where I come from, what I’m about, and what I can bring to your personal journey or the leadership development of your business.I don’t just teach and coach my values, I live them. And I’d love to help you live yours too. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear, Fearist through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Awesome. Boom. There we go. Of course. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast.

I hope everybody is living the dream. And if you're not living the dream, if you find yourself on the bumpy road of life, just pause for a minute. Take a deep breath and realize that it's necessary. This little pothole, this bird singing, it's all necessary. We've got a great show for you today. I am here with the one and only Louis Thompson Milne, one of the top executive coaching voices in the world. He's been helping entrepreneurs find more time, more energy, and more clarity and more understanding of not only who they are, but where they fit in into the world in which they're emerging. He's been using deep

coaching, neuroscience, and behavioral analysis. And he's a pioneer in growth mindset innovation. Lewis, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? I'm so much better after that intro. Thank you. That was a good pick me up. Well, it's true. I got a huge respect for you. And I've seen and watched people with whom you've spoken to. And I'm just excited to have you here today. For those who may not know, we're doing like a live coaching session here. And I am an open book. I'm going to be as vulnerable as I can. And I'm really thankful that you've chosen to spend some time with me today in the audience. Thank you for that. I appreciate being here. Thank you so much. I mean, it's always fun to have a chat to someone I'd like to talk to. And you're certainly someone I'd love to

talk to. So it's good times. Fantastic. Where do we start at, my friend? Look, let's just hit it running, right? I'd love to hear if there's any questions about the process, the interaction, the concept of coaching and how this kind of works together. If you don't have any of that, I'm happy to jump straight in. Yeah, I think that there's, so where I am, I think that there is a idea that people don't need coaches. You know, and there's so many coaches out there. I think it's sort of, it's like a flooded market sometimes. I mean, why do I need a coach?

You know? And lately I've begun to understand that I think coaches have begun to take the way of the psychologist or the psychotherapist because I'm not sure that coaching is a word that describes what people do. It's almost like an experience viewer or something like that. I don't have the right word, but there is a preconceived notion that people don't need coaches. Why do people need coaches? Hmm. Okay.

So sorry, this is my soapbox and I'll die on it. So look, here is the answer. And this is my honest answer. I coached through honesty, right? Honestly, sorry, are we okay with profanity in the podcast? Of course. Okay, is that the audience? Okay, great.

I just want to moderate my internal expectations. Of course. Look, there is a diaspora of bullshit in the industry, right? Right. Now, no one needs a coach, which sounds weird as a high class executive coach or a high class entrepreneurial coach, but no one needs a coach. No one does, right? A coach in some way facilitates self-development, self-growth or self-evolution, right? It's a summary. Perfect, perfect kind of too long, don't read version. Can you do it on your own? Probably. Always.

I mean, I did. It'd be hypocritical of me to be like, no, you definitely only can do it with someone else. Of course you can do it on your own. However, it's like this. When you played in Little League or football or soccer or any of those sports when you were young, you could have picked all of that up from a book. But you didn't. You went to training and practice and someone guided you, mentored you and shaped you in the way to do that in a rapid fashion because they have more experience, they have a wider birth and they're in, as you say, an external audience, right? So I really like the almost the synonym that you use there or the label that you use there, like it's an external audience for benchmarking. The best way to describe

I guess some engagement or the way this works is I've had people describe me as sounding board external benchmarker I actually had someone who said that I lived rent-free in their head with a British accent right it just becomes this extent which which could which could not be more aligned with who I and how I just want to be a disembodied Patrick Stewart floating in someone's brain that is literally my life goal right so look it's no one needs truly needs a truly needs coach there are people who need therapy and that is a very real need because trauma exists life exists that's just the fact of it i actually strongly believe that almost everyone almost everyone ever could do with or need some form of therapy therapy is an amazing practice i i am conflictive

let's i'm using open hands but really more like this with a lot of coaches in that space a lot of coaches will sit on the fence of okay therapy is the thing that does this and i do this and I can kind of do it, so just pay me. And I consider that a scarcity mindset, right? I'm all about abundance. I have spent several, and I'm not embarrassed to say, several hundred thousand on therapy, right? My life has not been pretty.

I've spent several hundred thousand dollars on therapy. And I've done a lot of external self-growth, and I've worked with a lot of coaches, and I've worked with a lot of people across the spectrum, right? Everything from New Age, Rua, Crystal Wave, through to high-end neurological analysis, right? I've done everything in that spectrum. And therapy is 100% valid.

But this line in the middle is where you are currently. Trauma, life, rehabilitation sits in the therapy in the psychotherapy space. Understanding, optimization, working with and planning going forwards. How do we make it better from now on? Coaching. But again, that depends on the aspect of coaching. Right. This is the first point.

So I say going forwards, this is really like, Let's say you have an injury, and I assume the term physiotherapist translates well to anyone in sports background or a US audience. A physiotherapist is someone you go to and they say, okay, this is what's wrong, this is what's happened, this is how we rehabilitate it, and this is how you get stronger going forward. But if you have a structural bone issue or some kind of ongoing genetic disease or some kind of abnormality, you're going to specialists and surgeons and GPs and all these other things, right, that are going to remediate the root cause. while you work on rehabilitation and performance going forward. So they are two very specific sides of the same coin. Now, as to why it's such a very broad topic and a very broad name is because coach is marketable. It is that simple.

It's an unregulated industry. And I mean that in the worst and best way possible, right? I would never be one of these coaches that conflicts with therapy because therapy is a highly regulated, highly mandated, and highly rewarding, but also highly involved speciality. I have no space playing in that game. No coach has space playing that game unless they were a therapist, period. You can't compete with 5,000 plus clinical hours just to get a basic certification. You just cannot.

Coaching, however, is unregulated. So it's cool to put the word coach on it because someone thinks that they don't really understand it. And what I find in the vast majority of instances, there is life coaching. But outside that, you see people claiming to be LinkedIn coaches, sales coaches, DM game coaches or growth coaches or any of, well, I mean, growth mindset is one thing. But you see people in these very specific aspects. And what unfortunately that is, is trainers, sellers, consultants, sometimes mentors, legitimately mentors, but coaching is a skill set.

So unless you are employing that skill set, you're not a coach. You fall under a different banner. There's plenty of banners for those things, but they're not as marketable. No one's to be like, hey, pay me for my course, and I will train you on my course because I am a course trainer. That's not, that's not sexy. It doesn't sell. Whereas, hey, man, I'm a sales coach.

Oh, okay, yeah, I could do with sales coaching. But then you get in and they give you a bunch of checklists, a bunch of work items, tell you what the game is. Well, that's mentoring. They train you on their game that they tell you what it is. Well, that's training. a coach would sit in there and be like, what's stopping you figuring this out on your own? How do we get you to the point where you can iteratively and ongoingly do this by yourself?

Someone who invites you to confront the things that you can't get past and forces you to come up with your own solutions. Correct. But in addition, it's not just the ones you can't get past. Because often having that external audience calls out things you never even do there. Right. And this is where the catch-22 is. yes you can get there on your own you can totally get there on your own through attrition and quite frankly fucking it up and pivoting and fucking it up and pivot that's not it fuck it up pivot okay still not it um maybe i'll try this right it's trial and error where the benefit of a

coaches is that they can step in and go okay i hear these repeated patterns and you're here today i'll use things like i'm hearing you i'm seeing i see these patterns and i call out the patterns and often what happens is the person goes oh shit i hadn't connected to you i'm seeing i see these patterns and i call out the patterns and often what happens is the person goes, oh shit, I hadn't connected those dots. Right. Because the preconceptions and the way you've structured your own world excludes the ability to connect those two dots until some kind of external influence goes, but have you considered drawing a line here?

Right. People go, oh, yeah, maybe they are related. And that triggers a whole other wave of thinking or a whole other view of the world or their world, more specifically. It's like that part of the brain, like the reticular activating system. Like once you buy a brown shirt, you see that brown shirt everywhere. So once you see a pattern in your life, it becomes difficult to ignore. And I know so many people, myself included, that turn to distractions instead of seeing that pattern and moving on it, much easier to be distracted and then forget about that.

But even though you can't forget about it, you distract yourself sometimes from doing it. So, yeah, this is awesome. Further, the reticular activating system is designed specifically to support a hypothesis. Hmm. Right? So it's not so much that the reticular activating system can't or want. pick that up, it's that your brain is actively avoiding trying to counter its logic. Then what it will do is it will audit and filter all of the literally millions of terabytes

of information you're taking in every minute and take a very small piece of that in a way that's filtered based on your predisposition or your pre-framing or the way that you want to see things. Right. So you're actually always seeing the car that you're going to buy. You're always seeing the brown shirt. But your reticular activating system is going, don't care, don't care. care, don't care, love the brown shirt. Don't care, don't care, don't care. Whereas before,

it's going, who wants a brown shirt? Have you seen that blue one? Right? So its job is to enact your predisposition or your intended opinion. So it's quite interesting in the way it plays, because we can manipulate it. And that's where a lot of this lands, right? It's about really, you hear words in the self-development industry like intention and awareness. And look, No disrespect to new age coaches. There is a very strong industry in that space, and it helps people translate a lot of these concepts, but most of them in neurology.

Right? And intention and awareness is just you taking a thought process that you like and go, this is important to me. So your reticular activating system then goes, okay, cool, sweet, we'll look for that. It is literally that simple. It sounds complex, and it's great to add words and buzz and tension and manifestation,

and these are all marketable terms, but it is literally just going, I'm going to choose and be in control of what I think and what I want to do. And now my brain is going to follow suit or I will teach it to shut up. And then you have all the bolt on effects, right? Procrastination around that, fear around that, all of these other pre-existing conditions. I load that term, but existing mindframes or mindsets that kind of limit you or teach you coping mechanisms around that to not. to not rock the boat, right?

Because our brain wants stability at all times. Yeah, it's interesting to me. It's fascinating to me. Let's talk about all my problems. Okay, great. I love it. It's the best opening to us. Yeah, excuse me while I sip on coffee.

Yeah, let's both have a shot right here of coffee. I would love that. Yeah, cheers. It's, that's brilliant. Never have I really sat down with someone and they go, okay. Let's fix some shit. So look, I'll start with my typical pre-a-all, right? And it's very important as a preamble because it creates the same page.

I live on agreement. I dislike expectation. I think it's the crux and the problem behind every real relationship. So everything I do, I'll try and seek agreement as I go through. So in this instance, the space that we're in is completely judgment-free. And I need you to know that that's for me as well as yourself. Okay. Right. If I hear you judging yourself, I'm going to call it out.

Okay. And it's, it's not this smooth. It's basically stop being a fuckway, right? Like, it's a very different game. I love it. Okay. So the reason for that is that judgment is a needless and a wasted emotion. Right. Internal self-judgment, external self-judgment, it serves nothing. It's an outdated emotion set that we don't really need in this current day and age. It is a waste of time. I focus on honesty. I teach based on honesty. I coach based on honesty.

Those are two separate things. And I expect it from myself and from the client. Whatever you put out honesty-wise and vulnerability-wise is what you're going to get out of it. Right. Cool. Yeah. Excuse me. I keep looking to the side because I will be taking notes fairly sporadically because I am high-pay and notes make me happy.

But I do it purely to jog my recollection of facts and events as we do this. Fantastic. If you wonder what that is, that's what that's. Of course. Outside that, where do you? want to play today. You've given me, you've given me a list and look, full, full disclosure to everyone watching, you've been very open and very vulnerable with your list. I'm not going to call out the list. I'm not going to say anything. And I have actively chosen to not investigate.

Okay. Typically in an engagement, I would investigate to get to know someone. What I want here is to be able to achieve that kind of discussion with you and come to that realization together as we go. If I, if I know more, I pre-frain more and I don't want to do that, right? It's about listening and being objective. So where would you like to play today? What's really burning at you? I just want to start too with saying that I'm really thankful for this, number one. Number two, I am going to be, I want to be as open and vulnerable as possible because I want

people who are in my position to understand what I'm going through so that they can find some breadcrumbs and move through to. I see this as a way to maybe look like a total lunatic on stage and throw myself out there. And for everybody watching, you're welcome. I love you. Here we go. Where I want to play today is that I am stuck in some ways. And I am stuck in, I think, maybe a little bit of scarcity and a little bit of imposter

syndrome and a little bit of unknowingness. So uncertainty seems to be a cloud of unknowing over me. And it's paralyzing me at times. Okay. That's a great place to start. So there's multiple themes there. Okay. Right?

The first thing is. is describing yourself as a lunatic is probably not a strong step on the no self-judgment. Okay. We're just going to move past that. We don't have time. Look, the imposter syndrome and the uncertainty can often be hand in hand. Right? The imposter syndrome is actually relatively easy to deal with.

Again, trade secret, right? Everyone wants to sell you a course to deal with imposter syndrome. I'll sell you a course to deal with imposter syndrome. I can sum it up very, very carefully. You have never objectively looked at what you have produced in a way that is not pre-framed by the way you see it, i.e. judgment, noticing a thing. Secondly, you haven't taken time to celebrate your wins

as you've acquired and grown. Right? So what happens is we're often taught to be a martyr. We're often taught to be humble, to put our ego down, all these kinds of things, right? And some people embrace it, some people don't. But in some level, we're always taught to be. be modest. That is a high virtue by a lot of cultural and societal standards. And that's amazing. Don't get me wrong. But what that manifests as or what that lands as, really, is people never stopping

to celebrate wind in the internal grind for growth and the eternal grind for achievement. And it sounds tedious, but you should always celebrate your wins for one key reason that is not the one that most people think, which is if you don't, your brain never thinks you've done it even. So if you've sat there and you've achieved and you've achieved. Let's take abstract example A of guy or girl in corporate environment who's gone promotion, promotion, promotion, promotion, promotion. She just keeps smashing projects. She is delivering and over delivering on targets. But to her, she's never celebrated that. So she just keeps growing. When she looks back, all she can see is growth, right? There's no list of achievements behind her. Then she gets thrown into the deep end where she doesn't know anything.

And rather than looking back and seeing a big list of times where she achieved despite not knowing things, she has no frame of reference. She goes, well, I just got here. I must be lucky. Oh, I must have just figured something out. There's no way I can replicate that. Again, I have no evidence-based or experience-based to leverage. Right? And often, and when I say often, I'm being kind in 100% of scenarios, if you step it back, you can find places where you have encountered a thing. similar scenario or you have achieved despite these odds and because you've never celebrated them they've never landed they've never come out of i'm going to point to brain parts a lot in this i apologize but at the front is generally your prefrontal cortex your logical processing then you've got your monkey and reptilian brains way at the back that are kind of your deep storage think of it that way and they never kind of get pulled out of deep storage unless we pay very cognizant

or very high awareness to them and celebrate them and enjoy the milestones we never leverage that experience and we never really build a deep sense of confidence around. So an imposter syndrome, people think it is having a syndrome, when in actuality it more functions like an absence of evidence. So then the resolution is relatively simple, right? Find evidence, understand and break that evidence apart, see if it translates to where you're at now, and for everything else, fuck it, you survived last time, go ahead.

Right. right? I mean, there's a lot to be said for willful ignorance, but you can still pad that out quite heavily. So in this instance, you say imposter syndrome, so I'd like to know more. Where and how is this kind of showing up for you? I think it stems from an identity crisis. I was a UPS driver for 26 years. I took a pretty big stand. I thought for what I believed in and I was rewarded by being fired. At that point in time, I was proud of what I did. I'm proud of what I stood up for. But the separation and anxiety, not only from my job, from my income, from my identity as a provider, all these things seem to have gone away when I left that version of me there. Over the last six months, I feel as if part of me is dying and is dead.

And I have no desire to ever be that again. In fact, I feel sometimes ashamed to, you have to have to potentially crawl back to something like that. I feel like a new me is being born. So I feel like out of the shell of the chrysalis, the caterpillar is becoming the butterfly. That's the strength that I draw on there. Beautiful. However, there's a weird sort of sadness that comes with seeing part of me die. And it's, I can see the new growth, but part of me is dying and it's difficult to unfold that into who I am.

Even though I love who I'm becoming, it's hard to see part of me die at the same time. I feel like relationships are dying. Old people are dying. Part of me is dying, and I can feel it. It's visceral. Right. Okay. Strong set of word choices, which tells me, A, you've been exposed to death in your lifetime.

People don't often use that term so interchangeably if they haven't become more comfortable with it. Just a morbidity factor. But what I'm hearing is very all or nothing. What I hear is someone who, had a good career, irrespective of what that is. It doesn't matter what that was. You had a good career. You were doing well and you took a moral stand. I assume it's a moral standpoint at this. Absolutely. Great. And because of a problem on someone else's end, that resulted in you're not working there anymore. Now, we could go into why and how that exists and perhaps potential self-judgment,

should I, should-and-I, all these kinds of things. But you've described this as a dying of a ask you, right, which is a very, very strong internal metaphor. What it also means is that you're saying, okay, everything included in this bundle of existence is done. And out it goes with the bathwater, right? Yeah. Right. But we just talked about that.

All of your celebration, all of your milestones, all of your achievements, all of your achievements, all of your experience-based evidence, you kind of put in this little bucket. Out it goes, I'm not that person anymore. I am a type A hyper corporate achiever. That was what my identity was for a large portion of my life. And I now sit here teaching people not to do that or coaching people not to do that and coaching people to think differently and take time for wellness and all these kinds of things. I mean, it could not be more like, and look, the thing I get is, of course you would say that.

You're a coach. I'm like, no, I'm a coach because I couldn't say that before. And I need you to not say that. But this is the trick. Integration is about respecting and honoring all the stuff you had in that past life and leveraging what you can and should use because it didn't go away. You just need to take it back out of the box and getting rid of the banner or the role or the labeling of what that used to be. I've had a beautiful metaphor given to me by a client who describes the work we do together as like a new season. And the reason I like that, I like the idea of death and rebirth.

but a season is better because it implies an iterative series of change. It is growth. You have not shifted from that person. They have not died. You have grown from that person in addition to a new person. The metamorphosis is not the death of the caterpillar. The minimophysis is the growth of the caterpillar. You have put it firmly in the it's gone bucket. I'm hearing that in the narrative. What's actually happened is you have gone, okay, I'm done with that. I don't like the way that resolved.

I need to put that away. And therefore, I feel loss. Well, there is no loss. You've lost nothing. Nothing's gone. You have the experience. You have the relationships. You have everything there.

You've just applied it to a new field in a new way with a new mindset or a new outlook. You have grown. This is literally growth. It's childhood one-on-one. Right. You wouldn't expect a five-year-old to be like, done with toys. Get some other kid anymore and off they go to work, right? It just doesn't work that way. They need the teenage years, they still have maturity struggles, they totally get what it was like as young. Like, I've got a toddler. This is the same kid who goes, you remember three weeks ago when you didn't take me to the playground when you said you would? I'm like, whoa, okay, there is no letting go.

Right. It is a growth, it is an evolution and you're evolving. That doesn't mean you leave the other stuff. behind truly leave it behind so the other aspect of this is that when you are feeling the way you are where is the value in that for you where is the value in you putting in in a box and moving it away i think there's shame there okay i think the shame is easier to move the shame away yeah it's easier to i would say try to convert it into anger as fuel Good. And have you done that before in the past? A large history of it. Brilliant.

Yeah. You would say? Sorry, Karen. I would say that that has been the, I don't know if it's a misuse of fear or abandonment or whatever it is. But it seems that that can be a catalyst in order to move you in the right direction, even though it may be the wrong fuel. Okay. Beautifully put. So often, let's step it back. Okay.

You're familiar with a structure and a habit, right? Habit behavior. Yeah. The structure of habit and behavior, the way it works. Essentially, you have trigger or catalyst or some kind of driver response to that driver and trigger, and then you have a reward mechanism. Now, we believe this is purely about going to the gym, eating, right? Not watching as much Netflix as at night.

night. It's not. It is everything. Our thought processes, the way we react to a situation, our emotional, I don't like to use the term resonance, your emotional wavelength for your emotional response to stimulus are all habits. They're all behaviors. Our brain is uniquely engineered to go, if I've done it more than a couple of times, I'm building what they call a subroutine. I'm putting it in the back of my head and now it runs on autopilot. This is the way I'm going to react to this situation forever. Until we choose to arrest that momentum and intervene in it, right, which is what we don't do because we live reactively typically, or we don't have the awareness. Now, you say this is that it has happened in the past. It's very easy for me to then say,

okay, great, when you've had a negative stimulus, shame, fear, perhaps sadness, even anger in a different form, you've pivoted it to anger. That's used you as fuel to accomplish something, so you've then rewarded the brain by success in accomplishing things. Now our brain likes to survive. our brain hates change it hates risk change is risk therefore i hate it right it likes survival it likes homeostasis it's very very cheap it's very cheap it's very cheap with its energy right so even a toxic habit that it doesn't have to do anything for it's a better option than a habit it has to do something for that is far healthier for you because it is agnostic of good and bad it does not care. So you've created a repeated pattern of pivoting into anger and using that as fuel

to achieve. So every time you do that, your brain goes, yep, this was the right choice. I achieved more. Think of it like smoking, right? You've basically told your brain every time you're going to get this big dog meat you're going to achieve. So what do we do? And your brain goes, wow, that seems marginally upsetting. Fuck that man. Let's get really angry and then we can pull out the other side with productivity. Right. So you have a making A habit, and all of those is a habit. It's just like any other habit. You can re-engineer it.

You can never get rid of it. You can re-engineer it. You can alter the triggers. You can alter the cues. You can alter your response and then reward it. Now, why that's important is because you recognize there is shame. But having that shame means that you get angry, means that you achieve. So now when you have a need to achieve, what happens if you reverse engineer that?

What does your brain think? that if you reverse engineer, you have to ascribe a new meaning to shame? Yeah. And it means you need to be angry to achieve. And if you need to be angry to achieve, you need to feel shitty. Shame, shitty. So the more you try and achieve, the more your brain goes, I know how to do that. I'll make you really angry.

Wait, we need a stimulus to make us angry. How can I sit in shame? Sabotage myself. I sit welcome to the origin of self sabotage but it makes sense right yeah it does it's it's the world's most advanced dumb machine that ever existed honestly it really is because you have conditioned this response i'll make it very obvious because i'm aware i'm i'm trying to ignore the fact that we may or may not have several thousand people watching but i'm in a reverse engineer this to make it easy right I want to lose weight I need to curb my eating my habit at the end of the day is to sit down and watch

Netflix with my wife because I'm human and that's how life is it doesn't matter how wellness you are there's some good shit on Netflix or prime or whatever you have right I'm I'm brain I'm not brain loyal but I love sitting down with a good movie sure and when I sit down with a good movie I love a good snack right so my diet brain goes no snacks eat clean go and sit down and enjoy some quality time with the wife. Well, my quality time with the wife is to watch something. Should we watch a movie? Let's watch a movie. So then every fiber of my being goes, it's time to eat snacks now. How does it know it wants me to get snacks? When did I snack before? I emotionally ate. So I felt shitty. And then I would patch it with snacks and then I make myself feel better by watching something.

So reverse engineer again. I watch something. My body wants snacks. And it wants snacks by making me feel shitty. So I watch stuff and I immediately start feeling shitty. And then I immediately start feeling hungry. So how do you recondition that? Well, I realize there's a positive, a negative association there. How do I create a positive association with the time and the watching and re-engineering that habit and then catching the cue or the trigger before it happens? Because you effectively swap the reward and the trigger sometimes, right? That's what's happening in your instance. I need to get to, therefore I need to be. So now you seek out the trigger or you manufacture the trigger to get the reward.

I have a Pavlovian dog in my head. That's the worst part. That is the worst part. Everyone has a Pavlovian kennel, right? There's dogs left, right, and center are different aspects of our lives. And the problem is we keep pretending we don't. Oh, I'm better than that. No, you don't.

No, you don't. That's just literally conditioning, right? Everyone has conditioned. We've conditioned ourselves. We've conditioned out by our environment, by our society, by our loved ones, who always won the best for us, but don't necessarily understand. understand how that translate. Refer the risk discussion. Not to mention we're just conditioned through general programming, right? We self-condition through our own internal narrative,

right? Our own internal narrative drives the conditioning that we receive because it's all based on perception. I don't want to get too far down that rabbit hole, but it's about controlling and understanding that for objectively what it is rather than pre-framing the story before it is you described it as an identity crisis. I would say it's an identity metamorphosis. I like that. But any time there is a cognitive dissonance, right? I think therefore, but then I actually,

and now the two don't match you like this right now, right? So you need to bring the two in line. Where can we bring evidence from the previous you that's needed to patch the holes that you perceive or you believe you're currently missing in the current space? I think I can call upon my experience with relationships as a UPS driver And maybe that is the reason why I am good at what I'm doing now because I've spent all, maybe it was like a school. Maybe that was, those is what built me where I am today.

And if that, that fits into the idea of metamorphosis, which is much better than knocking heads and feeling shame, maybe there's some pride. That's a strong word. Maybe there is some reward that I can take a serious look and maybe forgive myself for feeling shame, which is a weird thing to say. you should forgive yourself for feeling shame. Then I start thinking, like, why am I shameful about something? Like, what you got to be ashamed about, man? That wasn't too bad, you know? And I do struggle with relationships.

And I think that I am acting out of conditioning in a lot of ways. I wish I was better. And sometimes I think part of myself sabotaging is creating these unrealistic expectations. And then that way when I know I'm not going to get close to them, I get distracted, and then I fail. And then there comes the shame and the anger, which allows me to move up a little bit further, create some new unrealistic expectations, but at least I'm moving forward. But it's destructive. It ruins my relationships. It ruins what I can be. And it takes away from my authentic, it takes away from what I can create. Okay. So with the value in that cycle. No, that's hugely introspect. Well done, right? Your unrealistic expectations as what I would call a vehicle for self-sabotage.

Yeah, yeah. Right. We've understood the, at a surface level, we would usually dig a bit deeper into it. We've understood at a surface level where that chain has come from in a habit context, right? Right. Why it's become a conditioned response. This is the vehicle with which you enact that. If I set an unrealistic expectation and I never achieve it, what do I, what am I rewarded with as a result of that? that's where I'm that's where I'm resulted with the shame and fear to get me to a little bit higher. But it also reinforces the negative thoughts I have about myself. Like, oh, yeah, you aren't good enough.

And it's this that there's that cycle again where, oh, now you're going to be down in the dumps, you know, because you weren't going to, because you didn't hit this unrealistic expectation. But, you know, maybe the step forward is a reasonable expectation. And that's part of the journey. So maybe each step forward gets you to the, the beach head. of unreasonable expectations or the goal that that makes sense. It does. Sorry, I'm mentally avoiding a bunch of the soapboxes I like to stand on. One second.

It takes a second to frame this. No, so, look, very succinctly put, and I hear you, and in a sense, you are very correct, right? the worst part about being a coach, slight derail, I'll bring it back, I promise. There's a call back in there. The worst part about being a coach is because suddenly you hear cliches

and they make so much more sense. And they are cliches I've heard my entire life over and over again. People who are wiser than me, more experienced and then they say it and you hear it and you read it and you see it on someone's great sunset selfie on Instagram because that changes lives. Sorry, my bias is showing.

But when you hear them with a different lens, they make a lot more sense. Here's one for you. Okay. The fun is in the journey, not the destination. Right? Sound simple. Everyone goes, eh, all right, cool. Yeah, I've heard that a million times.

Here is what I'll offer you to support that. Okay. Your unrealistic expectations are only on milestones. There are only our milestones or goals or whatever term we want to call this, right? I tend to call them milestones goals. I make a more loftier purpose, but milestones, goals, whatever interchangeable terms suits you here. However, every step in that process can be enjoyable, can be fulfilling, can be forward momentum. Remember how we spoke at the top of the call around celebrating the wins?

This comes in the steps, not the milestones. But we put it off. we'll put it off. I have a great friend and a client who launched a massive digital product on LinkedIn a few days ago, and it's going very, very well. Nice. But my coaching before that was about who cares. Who cares how well it goes?

You have put this together in a condensed timeframe in an extremely difficult environment with a cross-section of people. And if you know who this is, you'll know who this is. But you've done that in an extremely collaborative, highly ethical. or highly values driven way and delivered a product at a price point that is way above anywhere else in the market. But it came from a place of how do I deliver the most value to people. So then the act of simply launching it is the milestone you should celebrate, is the step you should celebrate. Its commercial success is irrelevant because the accomplishment was well

before any kind of perceived success or response. So if you put everything on this milestone or plateau type celebration point, but you've moved that too high. I need another thousand followers in a week or a piece of shit. Right? Then you're chasing, as you say, an unrealistic goal, whether it's set by you or set externally, but it's the wrong place to start in the first place. The first place you should start is, what steps have I taken? Was that more or less than I did before?

Was it more an integrity or less than integrity than I had before? Everything else is a byproduct. Literally everything else. I translated this in my own life, right? The time I celebrate with a client or any kind of, and I love the term prospecting, but with a prospect, just so everyone's on the same page. I celebrate when I propose. My wife and I high five, we might go out for dinner, we might do some kind of meaningless or meaningful celebration when I propose to a new client. I've had some time with them.

I've had a session very similar to this with them, and I've gone, hey, this is what it is. This is how we go. and this is what we do. Would you like to move ahead? Yes or not? And the reason for that is simple. I celebrate the confrontation of the fear of saying no or the fear and the anxiety of not landing a client. I celebrate moving through that with a proposal. I celebrate. The proposal usually signifies having delivered some value. I celebrate the fact that I got to deliver value and meet someone here. I got to build a connection with someone. So the celebration point for me is the accomplishment of the challenge. the accomplishment of moving past that challenge.

Everything after that is purely a byproduct. It is a lag indicator, not a lead indicator. Does money land in my bank? Do I sign more clients? Do I grow? Whatever, that's fine. That comes as a byproduct of positive forward action

that I am proud of each and every time. So I don't struggle with imposter syndrome. Every now and then a client that I thought had a high percentage of jumping on board says no for whatever reason, and they don't want to change their mind, and that's fine. and then I go, is it me? So then I do what I need to do,

which is sit down and go, where and how could I improve this process? Every time I feel that feeling, it tells me, okay, I feel on some level I can improve what I do. How do I do that? And then I'm back in my positive forward step. I don't beat myself up for things I fucked up because I fuck up a lot.

Right. It's just the way of it, right? My pitch, my intonation, my hand gestures. I'm a very handsy guy. Right. It lands for some people. It doesn't land for some. people. I use it as a neurolinguistic programming thing, by the way. You'll notice every time I

mention neuro stuff, I'm doing this, neuron signal. But I optimize, I change, I improve my game, because that is the part that I am deeply in control of. The reception of it, the perception of it I'm not in control of. The outcome of others I'm not in control of. It's stoicism 101. I am in control of myself and my response to a stimulant. And if I set unrealistic goals, then the problem is not the goals that I am sitting. It's the fact that I depend upon those goals of validation and work. When in reality, you're worthy now. Hmm.

Validation comes as a byproduct. Self-worth comes from action. Is it an integrity? Do I feel like shit? Do I not feel like shit? It's a very simple guidepost, right? This compass is not complex. You know when you've done something out of integrity for the sake of chasing something you shouldn't or shouldn't, right? And we're often driven by a financial metric. We're often driven by a societal acceptance metric because our brain thinks that's survival and it's like priority. I need likes. I need reactions. But that is purely survival. It's community acceptance. Don't for a second think that any form of social media is not purely built around psychology, right? But we can flagrate the two, right? They leverage our desperate need for community.

to get us engaged on the platform, we then think engagement on that platform defines our engagement in the community. So therefore it's societal acceptance and therefore my worth is higher because I'm in a group when it could not be further from the truth. You have that worth.

You have that merit. You have that validation. You take it with you wherever you go. It doesn't change unless you compromise it. The only reason you don't have what you want is because you want it. I mean, good, yep, well done. You nailed it.

I know it, I see it. And I know when I start wanting something super bad, I'm on the wrong path. It's really, really hard to see that. It's okay to want. Okay. It's okay to want. What you're doing there is you're going, you've done this three times in the call so far.

Go back and watch the recording. You've done it three times. No, no, I can't say that. Oh, I shouldn't do this. No, it's bad to do that. Do you hear what's happening? Internal dialogue. Bad me.

Yeah. Feel shame. It's your vehicle. Right? It's the ingrained habit you have. It's okay to want. It's how you get what you want that counts. I want to be big.

I want to serve tens of thousands of people. But I want it in the most anal retentive way, which is usually smaller audiences because I'm a deep introvert. I don't want to go out and talk to 2,000 people. I might at some point. I don't want to, but I still want to serve thousands, right? I'm allowed to want this contradictory lifestyle. I'm allowed to want and desire.

I want to have enough money to do all the things I want to do with my family. We do well. But I want more. So then how do I get more? But I don't beat myself up over wanting it, and I don't beat myself over whether I achieve it or not. Because if I don't achieve it, for me, a true abundance mindset and a true growth mindset is honestly to look at every situation as if i don't

have it what do i need to change to get it and there's no room in that equation i haven't allowed even allowed space to kick the shit out of myself and go ah you failed yep i failed awesome what do i learn how do i change and where do i go from there stopping every time you think you've failed or you're fucked up or you've wanted something you shouldn't want is purely scarcity it doesn't serve you it doesn't serve the situation. It doesn't change anything and it's firmly rooted in judgment. I told you we'd throw back to judgment. Yeah. It's self-judgment, right? So the only, and again, another cliche, great one, right? You only fail when you stop trying. Right. Could not be more true. Could not be more true. But until you really see the power of

just continually trying, and that doesn't mean grinding, yourself to achieve an un-getable goal, right? What that actually means is this isn't working, how do I need to change my perception, my direction? Because that's also part of growth. Am I doing this to fulfill a whole or am I doing this to achieve an outcome? And you're creating a shame cycle, right, to punish yourself and cajole yourself because you know that anger will drive you through to get to that point. So it's about instituting some healthier versions of doing that. And the first step of that is, what have I done? I coached with a lot of executives and a lot of people in high pressure roles.

Let's put it that way, right? They own businesses. They are in part of much, much larger corporations. And I tell them to get rid of to-do lists. Throw them out because they're a tool for shame. They're a tool for judgment. What I tell them to do is a to don't list. Here is the shit I'm not going to do today.

here are the things I need to be aware of that I need to avoid thinking or be aware of when I do think them today typically because high performers when they are aware of that stuff they can deal with the doing like doing is not a problem that's why you perform right you're capable of doing it and almost anyone is if you get rid of the procrastination the fear the bullshit and their judgment then they can naturally get shit done procrastination doesn't exist because you're driven internally right No one ever needs a strong prompt, a stick, and a taser to go and have sex with their partner. Right. You don't.

I mean, sometimes if it's been pretty dicey and you're like, well, maybe not tonight. But still, the majority of the time, you don't need to call an accountability coach and be like, hey, it's that time. Please, please hype me up to go have sex with my partner. You don't. You want to because you like the connection. So you get rid of these concepts, these constructs. and you focus on the forward action. You focus on the milestones you have achieved,

things you have done moving forwards. I would offer that a good technique or tool layer that would really assist with you is a daily reflective. Right? I have a simple tool that I've been working on and it's not anything magical. I do it in my notes on my phone.

And I've done it for the better part of about nine months now. There was my only New Year's resolution because I realized how failed New Year's resolutions were and I was like, I wonder if this will work. And every day I write three things that were positive decisions or choices I made that had a positive benefit to my life. Every day, that's it. That's my journaling.

It's as concise as it can get. It takes three minutes, tops. And every day I go, these three things were good decisions I made today. I don't talk about the bad things. I can sit down and do retrospectives and growth sessions and any kind of corporate nomenclature I want to chuck on that. But every day I go, these were three good decisions. And invariably, invariably, every single day. One of them is a wellness one.

One of them is giving or value or client growth. One of them is I've done something in my relationship or for my family or for myself. And that tells me every single day, those things are the highest parts of my priority list. So then it's easy when I hit the next day. Well, I have a big list of shit to do. What are the three I'm going to consider to be good decisions? All right. Well, how do I prioritize those?

And that reflective exercise with you, something similar. We can always talk about that offline. I'm more than happy to chat to you about that. But it's going to give you those, where are my positive steps forwards today? You need to start looking in your positive traction forwards, not in your aspirational lacking of bullshit. Because it is bullshit.

It's a made-up metric. Right? I could be like, man, why don't you have 60,000 followers? Why don't you have 60,000 audience or subs? You've got tens of thousands already. Just kick me in the ball, all right? Do you do have any understanding how many? any podcasts, don't get anything near that.

Do you grasp that? And I mean this very literally. Do you grasp that so many thousands of podcasts every year fade into non-existence because they can never get past 500 people? No. Why is mine not better? That's the problem. Why is it? Why is it not worse? Because I don't see. Why is it not? Okay. There's a vehicle. Right? So, but why is it not worse? Why is it not worse than it is? Because I'm it that way. Why is it not worse? Top three reasons. The top three reasons is not worse is because I genuinely want everyone listening to get out of it the love and respect that I put into it. The next reason is it's a part of me and I care about me and I want that to be reflected in there. And I think that that can be arrogant maybe. I'm not going to say I shouldn't do that. because I've already been down that pathway. I'm going to reframe that.

And another reason is that people enjoy authenticity and taking chances, and they enjoy seeing it in other people, and it inspires them. That was a beautiful answer. Thank you. It was a beautiful, I mean it, it's a beautiful answer. It should be acknowledged.

So those are the three big reasons why it's not worse. Why do those have to chance? change. Why aren't they good enough? Sorry, let me reframe that. Why do you feel they are not good enough? I feel I should be generating a lot more revenue and be able to replace the place I walked away from and give my family a better life by doing what I'm doing now and it's not translating. Okay. So what I'm hearing there is I have a modality, I have a purpose, I have a clear direction. It's actually obviously landing for people. Sorry, how long was your podcast? just be with me how long has your podcast been going all up i i include the episodes that you wish no one knew about five years five years five years great and you're at circa 30k at the moment right audience great so in five years you've grown to 30,000 yeah what numbers do you need to hit revenue targets

30 000 downloads per episode okay what is your current downloads per episode looking like maybe between two and 500. Okay. So you're looking at a 100x type. So what I hear there is the disparity is in your expectation of how to monetize.

Your audience is not slacking. Right? Your expectation is how you monetize or the gap there is how you monetize. You have an audience. And this is, sorry, this is where it's hard for me to draw the line between my mindset and business coaching because often they're so interrelated.

Right. Your perspective of the way you see things and the perspective of the way you structure things is based purely on the narrative inside your head. So if we rework the narrative in your head, it has exponential benefits to the business because you can suddenly see avenues you didn't see before. Right, right. So what it sounds to me is that you have something going on in the way you're doing this, right? I'm not going to assume something at this stage. And the way in which you choose to monetize that or you believe you should monetize that is not rewarding you in the way you think. think it should. That doesn't mean that the quality of what you're producing is in any way inferior. That doesn't mean the quality of your subscriber base is in any way inferior. It doesn't mean that

your growth is in any way inferior. Podcasts do not make it to five years unless they have an element of strong success in them. They do not. There's a great meme that is just called another white guy with a podcast and Google it and it is the funniest thing you have ever fucking seen on them. Every time I think a podcast, my friends send that to me and they're like, stop. right so because it's all hustle bro culture and they've all got podcasts right right but podcasts don't don't have a high rate of success there is an extremely again a low bar for entry and a lot of podcasts don't and a lot just kind of idle by it the very low numbers or a moderate number and they're okay with that because it's a drip feet of income

what i'm hearing from you is the scarcity focus on this has to deliver it now i need this money i need this money right so then there's definitely realm for us to discuss where and how you pull that income and buffer that income in the short term until you get to the point that you want to do it purely with this. Maybe there's alternative options. Maybe there's alternative ways to look at it, ways to monetize your audience or incentivize your audience that you're not already considering. And that's worth its very own discussion, right? But in that, you are using that as external bullshit metric. And it's not too bullshit because obviously you have a family and you need to provide and all these social and cultural

imperatives, right? I can talk to you about my journey in the very same space. Coaching. I went from Fortune 100 to not for profit because I felt like a piece of shit. Right. Back to Fortune 100 because I was like, yeah, no, I can deal with this. And after about two or three months and that, I was like, nope, assholes, I'm out. And now went back to not for profit. Right. And what I realized was I had a deep hole in me and it wasn't the industry that was going to fill it. But then I pivoted. to coaching, which I had ineffectually been doing for hundreds of people across my entire career. That's why I was successful in the leadership space.

I was coaching the shit out of my staff for decades, right? But that was a big pivot. There was imposter syndrome. There was elements coming up there, and I went, how do I replace a corporate salary? And the answer was, I reduced my lifestyle. I built a strong safety net. I invested an alternative means to buffer my income so that I didn't have as much pressure on my primary. and I had some very strong discussions with my wife.

Yes. Transparency and what that meant, right? And I don't want to discuss that on decor obviously with yourself, but that's a whole separate thing on that's on. And obviously they have to be on board and their support means everything to us, right? Irrespective of who or what your partner is, that is imperative.

Nothing works unless that does. So I had to put these things in place to mitigate that drive because I don't want to come from a place of scarcity. I can't come from a place of scarcity. If I sit on a coaching call like, are you sure you don't want to buy it? Are you sure? Are you sure? I think I can do it. I can drop 50 bucks off. 50 bucks. Do it. Can we start tomorrow? Should we start? Let's do it tomorrow. What are the objections I'm going to handle? I don't, I don't come from that place. I literally had a client conversation last night, late night, my time, circa 12 hours ago. And it didn't end up landing as a client relationship yet. Right. But I had a great conversation with her. It was amazing. We had a good connection. And I really delivered her some value. they could hopefully make a significant change in her career. Okay, cool. I got what I need out of that.

I got the dopamine head. I got to give back. I got to serve. I got to provide value. Yeah. What that means is, do I have more money? No.

So I'll find someone else. But if I came from scarcity, I would have been on the phone for another hour with her, handling her objections, coercing her. I can coerce the fuck out of people. Let's be very clear. I got very,

very good at manipulation in a corporate society and corporate scene. And I can do it now. Ethics stops me doing it now because that's not who I want to be. It's not the business I built. If I wanted money, I'd still be working on a Fortune 100. That's not to say I don't make money now, but it started slow. Right? I had to have that patience.

And I had to search for the alternatives to remove that scarcity drive. Because when you remove that scarcity drive, you show up better in authenticity in your first drive, your abundance drive, right? And it comes across. You think that sometimes the pressure is what allows you to see new scenarios unfold in front of you. You know, when I think about monetization, you don't think so? No. The adage pressure makes diamonds is neurologically and physiologically complete bullshit.

Now, let me preface this. Okay, please. I was corporate success driven for the entirety of my life. It was the pinnacle of where I wanted to be because of my childhood. And I did that through my ability to deal with crushing stress that other people could not. That was my pride. That was my identity. I was the matter.

I was the guy, right? I'm going to get it done. I'm going to crush this project. It doesn't matter if it takes 18 hour days for months on end. In fact, in one instance, I was literally sleeping on the couch and in an office for weeks on end. My wife just didn't see me, right? Now, I prided myself on that. in my now enlighten stage.

I just get sad at how much sleep I didn't get. But neurologically and physiologically, your brain and body are conditioned to tunnel vision. The natural stress response or hormonal response is to drop adrenaline and noraphenephyran and nor adrenaline, which is essentially just the brain versions of the exact same stuff, right? They just have different aims because it's easy to classify.

Now what happens when that kicks off is you either have your fight or flight. Your fight is your muscles get tense, you get tense. You get loaded. You have flight. They still get loaded. Just the blood differentiated, the blood positioning changes, right? If it's fight, it's more upper body.

It's more heart-centric. It's more cardiovascular. If it's flight, it's cardiovascular. Where they have you focus on flooding blood to the muscle that you're your lower body. In either case, in any instance, stress makes you tunnel vision neurologically. Now, there have been count. countless studies through Stanford, Yale, Harvard. MIT and Columbia have done a couple as well.

I haven't read those yet personally, so I can't talk to them. But certainly the first IVs have done study after study after study, showing the drop-off of IQ creativity and abstract focus, the second stress hits. The numbers are terrifying. Cirque 10 minutes under stress and your IQ drops by like 30%. It is terrifying. Right? But we think, okay, I'll just maintain chronic stress for

extended period of time because no one can outwork me and I'll get more done when in reality you're infinitely more productive by stepping back resting and recovering but it's abstract to the cultural drive that we've been taught it's counter to that how can I prove this go on a holiday and tell me you don't come back with a million solutions to the problems you have when you left right instantaneously the second you relax because we know the first part of a holiday is always obsess about the shit you're not doing, then you slowly get into it, right? It's this human nature.

By the time you get back, you're in the zone and you're like, oh, damn, here's all of the things I should do. You're in a creative space. I bet you have so many ideas. I have ideas for podcasts and changing brand and pivoting and all these kinds of great things because when you relax, creativity comes. Abstract thinking comes. The scope of your visibility, it's called, what is the term?

Excuse me for forgetting it, but essentially it's a rested aware. It's a wider awareness. It's a wide spectrum awareness. Andrew Huberman talks about it quite deeply in one of his stress-related podcasts, and he describes it as a... Stress is essentially looking through a very small keyhole or tunnel vision or whatever term, but rested awareness is more like an open awareness. Right? You can see all the other variables. My reticular activating system is looking for anything and everything.

It's not looking for a very specific subset. So to your point, do you think pressure opens up other words? pressure opens up other avenues no do you think pressure might find them yes as long as they conform to this very small tunnel right because that's just the way our brain works we're looking through this very small hole so if it's down here at all well i'm firing down that as fast as well i realize what that represented but we're firing down that highway as fast as humanly possible as hard as humanly possible so we'll probably notice that faster but we could have missed a thousand different solutions over here some over here there might even be a person who's

trying to give us the perfect solution the whole time and we're like no no I'm focused just shut up and let me do this right we shut ourselves off to any of the other opportunities possibilities and perspectives and honestly it doesn't matter how achieving a corporate person is if they are actually in a person sitting in the innovation space or the true problem solving space they will tell you that it comes from diversity of perspective because if you could solution it yourself you would have already right right so what you find in that tunnel is the shit that you probably forgot about or the thing that you thought might work and could work but you're like i could manipulate this enough to work so yes you'll find that but you have you've excluded a huge volume of other possibilities which

just sounds like career and financial suicide to be honest yeah that makes a lot of sense it the idea of tunnel vision and stress and fight and flight and flight flooding your body, flooding your body with the, you know, those two things regardless of what you do are bifurcating, right? There's only two things that are going to happen. You're going to win or you're going to lose. You're not being creative. You're not thinking about anything. And you can only look at it in a win or lose scenario. It fundamentally shapes your mindset in that context. And your way you can model reality. Or do I suck? Right. It's everything. Everything. And the worst part of that is statistic.

the vast majority, like 80 to 90% of people in employment in most Western societies, and definitely Eastern societies, they just don't report on it because they don't want to know. We live in a state of chronic stress, low-level persistent chronic stress, and it just varies in spikes. I can't tell you how many clients I've worked with where they're like, I'm not stressed. Okay, cool, man. Great story. No, no, no. So this is the thing.

It's so persistent. It's so gradual. It's so chronic that you don't. notice it. It is ignorance, not malice when they say that. Ignorance is a zero judgment term. It's simply the absence of knowing, right? I am ignorant to the concept that this is a thing. And I'm like, great, so you can make effective decisions. Oh, no, that's a struggle right now. Okay, but you definitely don't have brain fog, fatigue, tiredness, you don't stay awake at night. Oh, no, no, I definitely do those things. Okay, well, I've got some news. I'm sorry,

right? But when you start dialing that back, they start seeing the picture bigger. Think of it this way. We essentially take, I don't have a piece of paper to hand, but if you put a dot on a piece of paper and put it right in front of your face, that is being under chronic stress. Put a dot in the corner and then move that one back and you can suddenly see that, that's open awareness in a relaxed state of mind. Wellness is our natural way of being and we are the most productive at that point, which is why you'll find life coaches always wellness is hand in hand. Because to really succeed, even the Stoics said this thousands of years ago, Ryan Holiday bangs on about this in at least two of his books, right? Mental and physical sharpness are imperative. You have to be a well-rounded,

well-balanced individual to understand the perspective of everything and be truly productive. But we're so work ethic, work ethic, work ethic, and we've never been taught otherwise. It's a big part of my why to empower this knowledge with people because I only knew one way. And it kills, it literally kills in a lot of instances. right it's i i know parts of your own journey and it's a far far bigger driver than we want to admit so no i guess it's the short there was a very long way to say no that's a dumb idea pressure does not make diamonds in some ways i can see my journey's synonymous with that in some ways it's living under the pattern of chronic stress for so long and then

and in some level getting free of it and wanting and feeling that relief as as lacking. But really it's something that is freeing. It's liberating. I guess that's the Stockholm syndrome, maybe the same thing with stress, right? Like you've become so accustomed to it. You've turned this thing that was holding you down into something you put on a pedestal. Correct. Further, it becomes part of your identity. So what ends up happening is the identity crisis manifests in something simple like, well, I feel relaxed today. That's not who I am. Yeah. And you don't notice this at a conscious level, but you just feel off. I need to be motivated. I feel itchy. I have to go and do things because productivity is worthiness. Now, you cotton under something very interesting there because that's a much deeper discussion, right?

Hands up if you're a trauma kid, right? Trauma kids, if many people don't, I'm just like, well, you're probably not digging deep enough. But trauma and constant states of stress started a lot of childhood, a lot of formative times. But what ends up happening is you become addicted to the stress. And what happens is when you do that and you start dialing back on the stress and you get some breathing room and the pressure dies off, all of these alarm bells about value and I. identity and work ethic and all this isn't an integrity with you you've got a you're a hard worker go get that done and what it actually is is your brain shitting its pants why because it hates change it's actually addicted to the stress and it perceives calming down and healthy rest as a threat

and our brain is tricky it manifests thoughts urges things and we just go with the flow we're like okay bro and then we go and do that thing right i have a craving It's just thought. It's my decision to jump on that thought that means I go and have a snack. We assume it's telling us the truth at all times, and what it's doing is it's manipulating us at the highest order. So when it perceives calming down as a threat, it will tell you all kinds of things to justify putting you back in an old spiral.

Its job is to be in that homeostasis of what it knows. and you're risking survival by relaxing, by taking a day off, when in reality, that's the best thing for the brain and the best thing for the body, because we know better than the brain's base program. But it perceives it as this existential threat. I literally, I had to take three months off. I've had four burnouts, right? Which is not a humble brag. It is a deep source of shame that it took me four times to figure it out. My first burnout, I went blind.

Literally blind. I had a blow up with a senior manager at the time. It was a big rift. I went back to my desk, talked to my team, said, hey, I just need to chill out for a second. I was doing some work in one side, side of going blurry, and then I lost vision of both of them. And I had to have a friend take me to the doctor who literally put me in the corner. Thankfully, it was what we call an uncle in Indian society, a really old uncle, who sat down. He put some headphones on, and it was some totally chill music.

And he's like, you just need to breathe for 10. seconds, just chill out. After about 10 minutes of doing that, it came back on. But I thought, okay, I need to make the changes in my tips, techniques, tools, product efficiency, time management. I'll tweak all of that. It's not a problem. I'm going to optimize my way out of overwork. Yeah. Went back in. Same thing. Did it again. There was time differences, obviously. Optimized, change, tweaked again. Okay, maybe I need to work out more. So now I'm adding a lot more, I'm amping up my physical stresses thinking that's going to reduce my mental stresses, not knowing that all of my mental stresses were because I was thinking in the wrong way.

Same deal, just physiologically and mentally burnt out. And then the fourth one, I went, holy shit, it's me. There's only one common denominator there, and apparently I was very slow at learning my lesson. Right? And I had to confront that truth. Looks like everything I think is wrong. Like me, what do I do now? And that took like three months of every single day sitting there going,

okay, I'm going to go and do something relaxing, go and do something relaxing, but fighting the urge to go be productive. It happened yesterday. I was meant to have the afternoon off, and I just found all these little tasks that needed to be done, kept flooding into my brain. But I had to choose not to engage with them and pick the ones that I felt were not going to be high intensity for me. It's a constant struggle, because our brain is tricky like a motherfucker. It really is. So yes, dialing back, slowing down, changing the pace it's an abundance focus but it's a scary scary thing for the brain if you used to and conditioned into the habit set of producing that way because then it feels like you'll never produce right if i'm not kicking the shit out of myself how can i ever get anything

accomplished simple just fucking do it you have to build that evidence of doing it you have to give the brain just as much ammunition to go oh okay i can do this but to start with Let me use this as an example. Yeah. You can do something really, really well, right? You can brush your teeth, presumably, with your dominant hand. Yeah. And we start brushing our teeth with the other hand.

It feels weird. But because we can see it, we go, I'm doing something different. This is okay to take my time and figure out. But we never do that with our thoughts. We never do that with our habits. We never do that with our behaviors. And then we kick the shit out of ourselves constantly for not being able to do it perfectly immediately.

But it's as obvious as that you are brushing your teeth with the other. I'm right-handed, so obviously there's a change over there. But you're brushing your teeth with the other hand. So of course it feels alien. It's to be expected that it feels alien, that it feels weird, that it feels different. But you have to build the positive evidence that this is a workable solution by focusing on the forward momentum, by celebrating the milestones you do hit or celebrating the actions you do take, by affirming to your brain.

Yes, this works. is a better way to do it. There is an arm of this that goes into meditation and wellness and deep meditation. Joe Dispenser does a lot of work in this space with deep visualization and re-correction of that kind of stuff. That is a very different piece of talk, but it's about recognizing that I need to be patient. I need to take time. I need to have compassion for myself because I am literally brushing my teeth or tying shoes

with the other hand, right? Just in a mental context. We just assume perfection. That disparity, again, is an unrealistic expectation. And it's about going, no, I hear what you're doing. It's going to give you imposter syndrome. It's going to make you procrastinate. It's going to do all these things because it perceives it as a threat.

That's just your brain going, let's distract you and pull you back into autopilot because I know that I can get you to feel shitty and angry and productive that way. This is why awareness is key. That's why the two don't list exists. I'm not going to let that shit happen today. Where and how am I going to look for this kind of stuff? That's what I'm not going to let happen today. I'm not going to let myself feel shame over something stupid.

How does that land? There's a weird sort of clarity that comes in between action and thought for me. And it's like, you know, people that get molested often feel like part of them enjoyed the sensation of it. You don't know how to reconcile that. So too is the feeling when you've left everything behind and you feel great about it. But on some level, you stop providing for everyone. And you tell people, like in my relationships, I'm so glad that happened to me. And they look at you. And even people that I tell about in my podcast, like, yeah, I just left all that stuff. I'm so, fuck, it's so much better. They look at me like I'm a fucking alien. Like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about?

And it's that, you know, that that moment seems like an hour. And it's, I'm trying to integrate that moment as a turning point. Like, oh, shit. I can see both avid. I can see where I was and I can see where I'm going. And it's such a surreal moment for me. That's how that lands. Nice.

It's good. I would say, and that's a lot. it sounds like there's judgment and self-judgment, external and internal judgment. Disparity of not having X, Y, Z. In my lived experience, my response to that is, and, and you don't like what I'm doing. That's fine. You do you, boo. Right? I play a game called both things can be true.

And it sounds fun, but it is one of the most fundamentally, interesting games to play with people. Both things can be true. A liar's power. I can look at a, that's it. And it's living in the paradox. Both things can be true. I can have spent my entire life grinding and working my ass off.

And I can have privilege. And I have. I've been homeless twice. Everything I've had, I've had to work to the bone for. But I have privilege because someone else in my situation would have had a harder time. They wouldn't have had a loving partner. They wouldn't have had a supportive in-law family. I have privilege.

Both things can be true. I get to go out and party sometimes or go out with my friends sometimes while my wife, bless her, looks after my son. And she gets to go out. It's not an and or. She and she gets to go out. Both things can be true. We both get time.

Let's look at a deeper level. Traumatic events can happen. to us and I can pull lessons from them. Both things can be true. I can loathe myself and love myself. Both things can be true. Something deeply impactful can happen to my life and it breaks me. But there are elements of that that I can enjoy and see the light in. Both things can be true. And our problem is not that one or the other exists. It's that we believe only one or the other should exist. This is the repeated pattern of you putting your old self in a box.

It is or it isn't. And the answer is, as much as it sucks, we're all grey Jedi, right? I don't know if that deep cut lands for anyone, but we're all gray Jedi and both things can be true. To show I'm not talking shit, I grew up with a father who was unnecessarily he was old he was very old he died when i was 10 uh i was 10 he was 602 when he died everyone always thought he was my grandfather he was he was like you talk boomer he was like a round in world war two type authority level and and viewpoint right he was a chronic racist in the town of new or the new zealand it's in perspective for you in the country of new zealand that was prevalent in that

age group, especially for white people, right? Especially for white net, especially from that time. He was a chronic racist, chronic, right? Every time I swore, I got a beating, got the soap, got a stick, whatever it was, right? I got hit with belts, I got hit with sticks, all these kinds of things. He was a single father raising me on a government benefit, and he grew his own crops and vegetables and all kinds of stuff outside that to support us. He was a constant inventor, but he was the most loving person I've ever met in my life.

Both things can be true. What do I choose to take from either of those scenarios? I moved in with my mother. I met her when I was 10, by the way, after that. Moved in with her that very quickly derailed into abuse, alcoholism, a constant stream of boyfriends. There was an altercation at one point where I was a young teenager and I hospitalized the 42-year-old man. but her work ethic and her stubbornness and her pride taught me the skills to be immensely successful in my life. We at points we very clearly hated each other. There was deep, dark, darkness there. It was

terrible, but there was elements in there that I could take and learn from and admire because both things can be true. And it's not until we learn that both things can be true that we can then objectively step back into open awareness and go, but what do I want out of these? Right. Because there's lessons to not do things. There's lessons to do things. And when we put one over the other or we put one in a box and we ignore the other, we exclude. We tunnel vision to throw a call back in there, right? We're excluding lessons that we could learn from either side.

Where is my ownership in the stuff that went wrong? Where can I pull valuable life lessons I can pass on from what went right? both things can be true. And in what you just discussed, yes, you left a life behind. Yes, it hurts. But it's also better for you as a person, as a father,

as a partner, all these kinds of things. I can't tell you the amount of time since I've started my own coaching practice and I'm doing this, that my partner has gone, this is the best version of you we've ever had. Not once has she gone,

this is the least financially supported version of you that we've ever had. Right. I mean, bless you touch wood. Right. But, you know, I was earning very, very good money. Right. It'll be a while before I catch that money.

But anything up to that journey, like where I am now and above, is well and truly enough to support a household and help out. But she's never belabored the point on that. She's belabored you are a better person. I'm a better person with my relationships, with my friendships. My friendship game is on point. I used to just ignore people for months on end. And they'll be like, okay, that's cool, he's busy. Yeah.

Now they're checking in with me all the time and I check in with them. I have great friendships. I have great relationships and great connection. So both things can be true. But there was parts of that life that I've brought into this life. Hyper system focus, efficiency, all these kinds of things. Work and drive and ethic when I need it. And now I moderate it with the mindset of what I have now of control and balance.

Balance. I call it integration, but it's not necessarily balanced. But both things like that. can be true as such a powerful, powerful metaphor or a power, powerful exercise for a lot of people because they do exactly what you just described. I am, change, therefore I am no longer. No, you are, therefore you are growing from. This is across habits, thought processes, mindsets, behaviors, interactions, connections. Everything is a learning activity. Everything is an avenue for growth. If it goes wrong, you grow more. I actively seek to be proven wrong when I have discussions with

other coaches. I don't go in and talk to people I know that are going to prove me right. There's no growth in that. Success for me is total growth, continual growth, continual challenge. I married someone who calls me on my bullshit on a near daily basis for that reason. So take it as growth, take it as an avenue for learning. Both things can be true. I make the choice on what I do and don't take from that. Nothing is absolute in that context. That includes you. Your path you're on is different. Yes, but it's no less valid. Right. And the only thing that's missing from that is you don't yet have the knowledge, experience,

live experience, or skill set to fill whatever gap you have. Right. So then it's about identifying what that need is and filling it with one or all of these. Then you have that. And then because we're human, you find the next thing to kick the shit off the software. Right. Right. That's always a new thing.

Sure. Sure. Even with me, I'm like, have I given enough in that call? Have I done enough in that call? Should I have stayed another hour and talked more? right but then it's like okay cool where do i know when to stop how do i learn from that how do i optimize tighten it and bring my message earlier it's all growth when you realize it's all growth and it's never really all bad yeah it's always that grade you're right yeah it's

there seems to be an awareness for me between learning something and have something develop inside of you And I think that's a, it's a beautiful thing, too. It's funny, I'm staring at Ovid's metamorphosis right now. Like, there's no coincidence. You know, but, yeah, the idea that some things can only develop inside of you makes it easy for me to look back and understand not only it was all necessary. It was all necessary. And in the idea that it was all necessary,

comes surrender on some level. It speaks to the idea of both can be true. Look, I was going to maybe upset some of my more dedicated clients, but I'm an atheist, right? And that doesn't work for people. I totally respect my wife is Hindu, my son is Hindu, I'm an atheist. I go to every religious celebration I can with them because I just love a good party and some type of people, right?

It's so much energy, but until my introvert kicked in. But the kicker there is this is what people talk about when they talk about religious surrender and faith, right? Agnosticly, it is the act of relinquishing power. And we say, oh, purpose and fate, and it's all meant to happen. Well, the neurological answer is you wouldn't make the decisions that are pre-framed in the way you've made them based on the perspectives that you currently have if you didn't have that lived experience.

So irrespective of how you view that in a religious context, neurologically, you are where you are now because of everything that happened. And you can always find appreciation in that space. I like that. And that's translatable across any religion, type, sect, cult, social agenda, anything. You are where you are based on your lived experience, and you can find appreciation for that. If you look hard enough, you will always find somewhere to be appreciative because you're still alive. And it really is that simple sometimes.

that's i don't know if there becomes any better information than that right there that last landing blow of you know the appreciation i think it speaks volumes because this has been tremendous i i thoroughly respect the kindness and the veracity and the the level of honesty with what you bring to the conversation and i i appreciate no bullshit approach man i i think that that's one of the reasons why you're super successful and you're very caring and compassionate and been graceful with your time. Where can people find you? Let's say they listen to our conversation today and they're like, man, I want to talk more to Lewis. How do they find you and where are you at? We got coming up. I appreciate it. So a quick recap on it. So you can message me at coach at B-B-B-B-E-B-E-D-E-W-T-R.N-Z or N-Z,

I believe you guys pronounce it, because I'm in New Zealand. You can find the same website, but that's under construction at the moment. You can look me up on LinkedIn, Lewis-Thombson, and Milne or Be Better Coaching. What's coming up? That's a fun one. I'm actually working on an app. Nice. Yeah, I'm working on an app at the moment.

Mostly around building and ingrained, noticing a theme, habit and routine stack for people, wellness practices, stuff like that, but also mindset, healthier mindset practices. What I've seen in the routine and habit space is everyone goes, here's a checklist of doing these minor activities and they construct it. What I'm trying to do is create more of a mindset. guided and instructional way to get people thinking and structuring their mornings and evenings of it better, using their phone rather than just pretending it doesn't exist and hoping that my

habit will go away, but using their phone for a more constructive purpose, right? Wind them down for sleep routines, wind them down for better quality of life, doing retrospectives and reflective exercises. So that's in the works at the moment, so expect that to drop. But all of that will be on my LinkedIn page if you want to look at. Yeah, and I would recommend everybody do it. You've got some great content on there. You're a wealth of knowledge to talk to.

And there's a radical self-responsibility and a radical honest that comes from having a conversation with you. So I would welcome and invite everyone to look you up and check them out. And his clients do all the talking for them. I've got to do is look at the success that they've had and who they're pointing towards. So ladies and gentlemen, that's what we have today. Lewis, hang on one second. I want to talk to you briefly afterwards, but I'm going to hang up with the people here. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you have a tremendous day.

day, I hope you realize that everything was necessary and that you're moving towards a better, more authentic version of yourself if you're willing to take full responsibility for those actions. That's all we got for today. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha.