Say hello via text message and join in the conversation!
Life's crossroads can be perplexing, especially when pitted against the allure of quick success, burnout and creative blocks, versus lasting impact.
A disclaimer right from the start; this isn’t a photography-specific conversation. But I do hope it is inspiring and educational - it’s certainly a discussion that I think can be applied to almost every human on the planet, whether you’re a creative or not.
Mikele Kuhar is a men's clarity coach and business mentor, and I have worked one-on-one with him for a while. During this conversation, we embark on a profound exploration as we unravel the threads of personal growth and resilience in the face of burnout and other challenges we all face in the work and personal life arenas. We talked about a few 'turning points' that reshaped Mikele's understanding of purpose and success beyond the glare of financial metrics, as well as the intricate dance of managing expectations, balancing career ambitions with personal life, and the emotional rollercoaster that comes with the curated reality of social media.
We also traverse Mikele's own transformative journey from an aspiring entrepreneur to a beacon of guidance for men navigating the often stormy seas of life and work. We discuss how his coaching venture, 'The Broject,' evolved from a men's accessories line into a vital platform for authentic conversations about self-care, community support, and the quest for happiness.
Finally, we strip away the layers of societal norms to examine the deeper aspects of emotional wellbeing. From the power of language in shaping our emotional experiences to the art of mindful photography, we touch upon various facets of living a life aligned with one's true desires. Whether you find yourself in the hustle of city life or the serene backdrop of Bali, this episode is an invitation to redefine success.
For this episode, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas - that you so much for listening and supporting The MOOD Podcast. It is such a privilege to make these episodes and if even a small piece of them resonate just with 1% of your soul, I am the luckiest man alive.
For all of you out there who might be having a tough Christmas, a lonely time, or just a difficult few days and weeks, I want to say I send you my heartfelt wishes - I’ve had my own share of difficult festive periods and my heart goes out to you. I sincerely hope this
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can also watch this episode on my YouTube channel (link below) where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as my social media, so make sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok or check out my website for my complete portfolio of work.
yoreh.
www.yoreh.co
discount code: moodpdcst.23
My FREE eBook:
www.form.jotform.com/240303428580046
My FREE Lighting Tutorial:
www.mattjacobphotography.com/free-tutorial-sign-up
YouTube:
www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay
Website:
www.mattjacobphotography.com
Socials:
IG @mattyj_ay | X @mattyj_ay | YouTube @mattyj_ay | TikTok @mattyj_ay
Say hello via text message and join in the conversation!
Life's crossroads can be perplexing, especially when pitted against the allure of quick success, burnout and creative blocks, versus lasting impact.
A disclaimer right from the start; this isn’t a photography-specific conversation. But I do hope it is inspiring and educational - it’s certainly a discussion that I think can be applied to almost every human on the planet, whether you’re a creative or not.
Mikele Kuhar is a men's clarity coach and business mentor, and I have worked one-on-one with him for a while. During this conversation, we embark on a profound exploration as we unravel the threads of personal growth and resilience in the face of burnout and other challenges we all face in the work and personal life arenas. We talked about a few 'turning points' that reshaped Mikele's understanding of purpose and success beyond the glare of financial metrics, as well as the intricate dance of managing expectations, balancing career ambitions with personal life, and the emotional rollercoaster that comes with the curated reality of social media.
We also traverse Mikele's own transformative journey from an aspiring entrepreneur to a beacon of guidance for men navigating the often stormy seas of life and work. We discuss how his coaching venture, 'The Broject,' evolved from a men's accessories line into a vital platform for authentic conversations about self-care, community support, and the quest for happiness.
Finally, we strip away the layers of societal norms to examine the deeper aspects of emotional wellbeing. From the power of language in shaping our emotional experiences to the art of mindful photography, we touch upon various facets of living a life aligned with one's true desires. Whether you find yourself in the hustle of city life or the serene backdrop of Bali, this episode is an invitation to redefine success.
For this episode, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas - that you so much for listening and supporting The MOOD Podcast. It is such a privilege to make these episodes and if even a small piece of them resonate just with 1% of your soul, I am the luckiest man alive.
For all of you out there who might be having a tough Christmas, a lonely time, or just a difficult few days and weeks, I want to say I send you my heartfelt wishes - I’ve had my own share of difficult festive periods and my heart goes out to you. I sincerely hope this
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can also watch this episode on my YouTube channel (link below) where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as my social media, so make sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok or check out my website for my complete portfolio of work.
yoreh.
www.yoreh.co
discount code: moodpdcst.23
My FREE eBook:
www.form.jotform.com/240303428580046
My FREE Lighting Tutorial:
www.mattjacobphotography.com/free-tutorial-sign-up
YouTube:
www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay
Website:
www.mattjacobphotography.com
Socials:
IG @mattyj_ay | X @mattyj_ay | YouTube @mattyj_ay | TikTok @mattyj_ay
I'm a men's clarity coach and business mentor. Why men?
Speaker 2:How can creatives or entrepreneurs both? How can they avoid burnout?
Speaker 1:It's one of the key pillars I teach it is all this stress.
Speaker 2:Is self-care, personal development, a selfish practice?
Speaker 1:You'll never buy yourself. You're always with yourself.
Speaker 2:What is one thing you regret not saying to somebody, and why didn't you say the first thing, that comes up for me is like someone, that that person's gone because I didn't say it.
Speaker 1:Getting paid $1,000 a month to have percentage shares in a company. We're all promised we're going to be millionaires in 24 months. I had close to like I wouldn't say mental breakdown. I don't think you find happiness. I think you create happiness.
Speaker 2:Thank you from the bottom of my heart for changing my life. Today I bring you Mikkel Kuhar. Mikkel is a men's coach, business mentor and founder of the Project, a program designed to gain clarity across major pillars of your life, from mindset and purpose to finance and life goals. And a disclaimer right from the start this is not a photography specific conversation, but I do hope it's inspiring and educational. It's certainly a discussion that I think can be applied to almost every human on the planet, whether you're a creative or not. Mikkel and I have worked together before and I felt it important to share some of his knowledge, at least some of the more general principles and tools that might help you get through certain seasons of your life, whether it be starting out with your business or photography, going through difficult life changing moments, pitching for jobs or avoiding burnout and staying motivated. Mikkel is committed to reaching the hearts and minds of as many around the globe as possible. The path of not knowing what to do in life is all too familiar, especially for many of us who take the plunge into our own vocation, business or hobby turned full-time passion. Mikkel is here to make sense of the cloudy world of purpose, passion and living out our dreams, and he helped me to do just that, and so I'm here to hopefully provide a glimmer of insight into these methods and practices through my conversation with him. And lastly but not leastly, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and supporting the Mood Podcast and my channel. It's such a privilege to make these episodes and even if a small piece of them resonate just with one percent of your soul. I'm the luckiest man alive. For all of you out there who might be having a tough Christmas, a lonely time or just a difficult few days and weeks, I want to say I send you my heartfelt wishes. I've had my own share of difficult festive periods and my heart goes out to you. I sincerely hope this episode might bring you some comfort in those difficult times. And now here is Miquel Cooke Christmas episode. I guess this is I don't really know where to begin with you, because we go back, I guess not that long, but this is the first time we've met in person, so maybe we can just start with, I guess, who you are without putting too many labels on it, kind of what you do but, more importantly, why you do it.
Speaker 1:I feel like the who you are question is one that can go very deep and different avenues and things like that. I just want to take it there. But I'm a men's clarity coach and business mentor. I equip men with the intellectual, mental and emotional tools to navigate areas of life. Outside of that, I'm a 35-year-old man from Australia, ex-bathroom renovator, ex-tyla, a multifaceted entrepreneur that has tried almost every business model along my path to where I am now and now a dog dad of anywhere from six to 12 dogs fluctuating in the house. And yeah, I think that's it. Why men? Why men?
Speaker 1:For me, when I went through some really tough times in my life, I had a circle of friends around me that like, okay, you've got the boys that will, like you go through a breakup or you're struggling with something. It's like come on, mate, come on, let's get out. And it's like that is that supports on some level. But for me it was more so like I was called forward. I wasn't called out, and what I mean by that is I had friends around me when I started showing up a certain way, whether that's drinking all the time, going out, skipping work, letting people down, rocking up late to event, not going to important events, like whatever it is. Friends were called me forward, meaning taking me aside and be like, hey bro, you're better than this and we're not sure why you're showing up the way you are right now and we can kind of see it from you and we feel like there's so much more you have to give in whatever area. That is like put your area that you're not living up to in life right now. My friends were a place of reflection and somewhere for me to confide and that's why I created the project.
Speaker 1:What the project started out as? A videography podcast, actually a men's accessories. The project is my coaching business, so it started out as a men's accessories business. Did it? I didn't know that? Yes, the projectco. I wanted to be a millionaire through drop shipping, essentially Okay.
Speaker 1:It then found its way into a podcast, and then it found its way into which was only different business models, same packaging. Essentially, I had people in my corner throughout them and I wanted to create that for other people. What was the podcast about? The project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you said that was after your drop shipping company. You went full time into podcasting, or no?
Speaker 1:I just enjoyed interviewing people and having that level of conversations which I had in a small social circle of my friends, and I found I would be on construction sites 40, 50, 60 hours a week and I would listen to 30, 40 hours of podcasts. So for me I was like I wanted to start immersing myself in different conversations and different narratives. Compared to the 50 year old bricklayer On site, that's like, oh, I hope I can work on the weekend so I don't have to deal with the kids. And I'm on a construction site for eight years watching my life go down the path that all of theirs had.
Speaker 1:It's gone a bit of a tangent now, but I felt like listening to the narratives and stories and opinions they had on the world. I was like I was very quiet on construction sites and then they'd see me on podcasts or they see me online and Instagram. They're like, wow, that's not you. And I'm like, no, no, it's just not me on site because I don't align with anything you guys talk about. So I would kind of just keep my own opinion to myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Was that a you know? Would you advise people doing that now, like rewinding back to then and fast forwarding to where you are now? Is the opinion thing always a challenge where you kind of have to restrict yourself from having an opinion, or how do you deal with it, or how do you deal with that in a professional sense, not sharing conflicting opinions to people you work with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, I don't know. I just got to a space like not everyone is going to agree with you and I also, like, don't have much investment. To some of the it might sound really rude now, but there was just a lot of people on construction sites. You see them once a month, two times a month when you cross on sites and it's like if they're sitting down at lunch and talking shit about whatever it is. It's like I just don't have the space or energy for this. I don't need to convince anyone of my thought or my narrative or my viewpoint. I can open up the conversation but, as you'd know, and a lot of people know, that some people just aren't open for those kind of conversations at certain points in their life. So it's kind of like I just kind of shrugged my shoulders at it and just kind of kept focused on like what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so after construction sites, podcasting, dropshipping, then came videography. There are a few more. Come on, tell us, because we've all been there in some way or another.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so look the first one. When I was in construction I was mainly a Tyler and my dad was using these tiling tools. He had a fabricator makeup pretty much pulled to level on the wall so you can tile off a level surface, and found a website online where I could find manufacturers in China. Got in contact with a guy called Boris in China which turned out to not steal all my money and sent over some prototypes. Had CAD designs made up. He sent over the tools, sold 60 to 70 of the 300 to 400 I ordered and the rest just took up space in Mum and Dad's shed.
Speaker 1:I think they're still there or they got sent out to scrap metal. Didn't really work out. That then went into network marketing, which a lot of people have like a very like network marketing pyramid scheme people scamming your money yeah, I get that. But it opened up my world to personal development. It was like one of the things they said everyone needs to do on the company is get to the events, learn from the mentors, immerse yourself in the books, which was amazing.
Speaker 1:But there is also a space in that world where it's like you can be manipulated in a way to think this business model is for everyone. It's just you that needs to be fixed Like you need a different mindset and then you'll be successful at this business model where the reality is it's just not for everyone. So went from that email marketing done. Email marketing done. Dropshipping done. Motivational speaking at high schools for kids on emotional intelligence that was about the time of my podcast and then just started to lead me down the route of facilitating and working with men throughout. So there are a few. There's eight in total. I think I've missed a couple right now that like they're not coming to me, but it's interesting like you describing them now, because I obviously know about this, having known you for a while.
Speaker 2:But now it's kind of a bit more clear as to what you do now, packaging everything you did before really, maybe bar construction, maybe build your own studio you do your work, but all of what you've just described the network marketing, email marketing, motivational speaking, podcasting, all of that stuff, those skills that you learn along the way I would say that you've packaged into who you are now as a men's coach right, and how you put that out there. Would that be?
Speaker 1:correct. Yeah, 100%. And like I was getting to your partner feed just before this, it's so important to be able to follow your highest excitement, and I don't mean that in like a theoretical of like, if you just enjoy watching Netflix, like I'm not saying like, follow that, I'm like something that's of purpose and value to the world that potentially can be exchanged for an income money where a lot of people listen to this podcast. They're creatives videographers, photographer, graphic designers, whatever that is and the reason they're down that is because they followed that point of excitement or creativity at some point and for me, a big part of why those businesses didn't get to where I wanted them to was because money was the end goal. Like I picked up a camera for the first time when I was doing videography because I wanted to be famous on YouTube. This was like just when Logan Paul was doing vlogs, to like wind back the clock and people might not even know 2014, 15.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was like, wow, cool, like, okay, I'm interesting, now pick a camera. And I'm like, what the fuck am I going to talk about? So, yeah, like, and the thing with that was that was when a friend asked me a super important question which was like, okay, it's cool, you're doing this videography thing now, but like, like, what is it about videography that excites you? And at that point I wasn't, I wasn't sure, I was at a bit of a crossroads and this is where, like me, chasing the money and the dollar with so many different business models, met me with this when I came to Bali and I got offered an opportunity. It was get paid, it was a two day shoot on a boat with models and photographers and like creative community, it was essentially just like a boat party, right For a day or two days. Yeah, photographers love those, yeah. And I just got to Bali. So I'm like, wow, amazing network event. There's going to be girls around, there's guys I can network with, there's business owners, blah, blah, blah, all of it.
Speaker 1:The exact same day, I went and recorded a podcast with someone I met in Ubud and they offered me to come do a charity shoot for Montekunung, which is up north here in Bali, where they create sustainability in villages and communities, to actually not just hand out money to them but create infrastructure so they can have jobs and all this kind of thing. And that's when that question really landed. For me it's like, okay, you do videography, but why, like what is it about the other if you do? And I was like, oh, but I just got to Bali and this, this pays, like it's going to be, like it's going to pay me like 1500 bucks. Like models, yeah, like community net, like like this is this could set me up for everything, or go to a charity shoot, which it's a six hour hike in the driest part of Bali for free, and put the video together.
Speaker 1:And when she asked me this, the question, the answer just became so clear. It was like I want to have the boat. So I went on the boat and for me, yeah, it was just like that's that was my highest excitement then to create impact, purpose, charity, contribution, all that through that. So that's honestly why I feel like the first business models failed because there was so much attachment and held on to the outcome. It was like, whatever happens, I didn't make money this week, I didn't, and I had a lot of friends judging me for not going out of the normal narrative of going into a job and a career and that, and I would get so frustrated and like no, no, I need to make this work now. And the definitive marker for success was this needs to make money and this needs to make this much by this time, or it's just like there's no other reason I'm doing it. So when she gets hard, it's like I just throw in the towel, pick a different business model, like that was the cycle of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that kind of worked for you, right? I mean what you do now. Why do you feel like that is? I mean, knowing you as I do, you're the most maybe happy and comfortable and successful you've ever been. Is that just putting words into your mouth, or would that be?
Speaker 1:correct. Yeah, I would say in the last few years, especially the last 36, 24 months, ebbs and flows out of that state. If you would ask me, on a Monday it might be a little bit different, and then Thursday it's like, yeah, ecstatic.
Speaker 2:I think that's the life of a business owner though, yeah, but yeah, very much so, but that depends on how you define and qualify success. How do you do that? Or does that word not even enter your vocabulary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't. I never really look at myself as like lining up the markers of am I successful, because I feel like it's like ever changing. And, like you said before, everything I'd done in those, in those arenas, gave me the skill sets. But when I found the thing I really wanted to do, it was like oh, I know how to do lead generation. Oh, like I know how to do sales, I know how to do content, I know how to tell a story, like all copywriting, like all the things network, it all came together.
Speaker 1:On the success standpoint, it's not even really a conversation I have. Hey, like I'm so okay. The biggest thing that I struggle with is not being able to disassociate my business success with my identity as a person. So like, if business is doing well, if I'm getting good results in the things I wanna do, then I'm like, oh, I am good, I am of my high valley, I am of more worth. Yet, as we know, in business some months don't look like that. And the thing I struggle with is not being able to disassociate from the fact, like you know, I've been like really fucking showing up for the family, I've been showing up for friends, I've been getting my exercise, my meditation, all my nutrition. I've been crushing all of that. But if the business isn't ticking, it's like oh no, I'm not doing well this month. That would be. It wouldn't be like is this successful or not? It would be more so the conversation of like am I good enough right now or will this thing work? I guess.
Speaker 2:So what drives you.
Speaker 1:I think it's the thing that's always driven me, just like there's an understanding that I have more potential and I have so much more inside. And the thought of I wouldn't say the driver is the thought of like regret looking back, but I just know there's so much more to be doing, have in all aspects, like self relationships, business impact, income, all of it, yeah, so that that, honestly, would be the key driver for me. Ever since I was in school, man, I always thought I was going to be different, like I on, and I feel like it's like I understand I'm not the main character of the world, like I get that, and I feel like a lot of people had this conversation. Yeah, a lot of people just don't act on it and on what that? That yearning desire for more, and sometimes it gets, it gets confused in, like cars and houses and agreed, women and money, all that kind of stuff. But it's just there's more of McKell.
Speaker 1:And it's such a hard thing to quantify because when I was on construction site, it's like I didn't hate my job, didn't love it, but if you were to ask me like okay out of 10, where would you rate your life right now? I I probably would have told you a seven, eight. It's pretty content complacent even. Yet when I left that and started doing a job that actually gave me purpose, gave me impact, gave me a much greater source of income than construction sites did, I would then look back through the lens. It's like. It's like a shift in paradigm, right. It's like looking back at McKell on construction sites and being like yo, he was living like a three out of 10, like a two out of 10 life. Yet at the time, like when we talk about success, I would determine myself on like being pretty successful. But it's like, as we shift and flow and find ourself in new seasons of life, we can look back and be like, oh shit, I was actually playing down there.
Speaker 2:So isn't that just perception? Isn't that just the perception of your own environment at that time? And what gets you out of that? I don't want to say bubble, but that that like a perception of where you are as a person in life, the season in life, because it's easy to get closed in and bogged down with that right. How do people kind of get out of that? It's easy to say, well, education and travel and this kind of stuff, but when you're, when you're in it and you don't know, you mark yourself a seven or eight out of 10, then what do I need to improve?
Speaker 2:and find, yeah, how do people recognize that? Or is it not important?
Speaker 1:100% is perception because, like, we don't know what we don't know and our awareness expands.
Speaker 2:How do people get out of their own perception? Essentially Because perceptions of life. Everyone has their own perception of life and their own situation within that life, right? So for me anyway, there's always a yearning desire to like, okay, don't get, don't soak yourself in this perception, don't sit in it. There is other things about life that you don't know. What you don't know, or there's other people that may inspire you to just kind of break out of your little bubble or your little perception.
Speaker 2:Or I'm very fortunate I get to travel with my job. That really helps me because it clicks. Okay, yeah, forget this rest of the world that's going on and other forms of life that I don't know about. That kind of grounds me. I don't know whether that's an important thing to be aware of or not, because sometimes envy can creep in. I look at friends maybe not friends, but anyone who is the construction worker, who seems to be just super happy. I don't know whether that's just who they are as people or that if you start introducing them to other perceptions and other forms of living life, that might help them in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to be very. I'm not sitting here and saying working in construction is a bad thing Absolutely not. People can be completely just in love with working their job. That's cool, but for me that just wasn't it. How do you break out of that current perception? Your perception will always be your perception.
Speaker 1:You might not even know when it shifts, but it's like new inputs, new conversations, new podcasts, new books. Like an old mentor of mine always said. You know like if you don't feel like you have people in your circle that you can have these kinds of conversations with and expand your awareness and knowledge, tap into books. Books is like having conversations with people that are just more experienced down the field. You're listening to new experiences. Like how many times do we know people in our life that go overseas travel for six months or a year and come back and they feel like they don't fit? Now everyone's like, oh, you've changed. But we, of course, have fucking changed. Like my awareness of the world just grew a lot. Like you don't understand what is reality for your world and the world are two completely different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And yet short, cool quote sounds great, throw it up on Instagram. But like until you actually embody and experience that, then things really shift for you. And then you ask. The quality of questions you ask yourself are different. It's like not, how do I make more money to make pay rent this week or buy the new watch? It's like, well, what can I actually do that I enjoy making money and how can I be more fulfilled from that? Or how can I? The kids I just saw overseas in Bali, like how can I raise awareness to bring more money? So like there's just so many different avenues that can go down. So the perception is just new inputs, internal or external.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's overwhelming and this is why we need people like you. We started working together earlier this year and I've told you this before. But you changed my life. You changed my wife's life, changed our life together. But if I didn't know, for some reason I clicked on your post and then we started talking and the rest is history. But I can't lie, and I know other people feel like this, especially with a digital world, a information heavy, saturated world, throwing social media, throwing sensationalism, throwing clickbait, throwing everything that people have in their faces every day.
Speaker 2:Now take a small slice of that and just go into, let's say, mental health. Well, just health generally. I mean, fuck me, it's A overwhelming B confusing. So I know we haven't mentioned photography yet, but I talked to a lot of photographers in my circle and they either don't prioritize their health which is obviously everyone's choice, but they ended up burning out or they end up not knowing how to manage themselves with that, with jobs, with purpose, with fulfillment, with mental health, physical health but on the flip side, they just don't know where to start. They're not aware of it. For a start, they're not aware of their own health. They're also not aware that there is help and information out there that they can go and explore. But when they do, the people that are me included and Fee my wife included we try and educate ourselves with some kind of health thing every day, whether it's a podcast book, talking to someone, whatever it is, because it's just interesting to us. I understand some people is not that interesting.
Speaker 2:My point is where do people start with something like this? Because it is for me anyway, and I know a lot of people it's highly confusing because a lot of information contradicts another person's information, so getting clarity on that is very difficult. But even just the amount of information that you can get out there on any subject, not just health, you can go and find out about anything you want. It's a luxury, it's a privilege, but it's also like fuck, it's just too much. Can you? Where do people start? Essentially, where can people start?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is a fucking lot. You try to find nutritional advice online and someone will tell you spinach kills you. And then someone else will tell you red meat kills you. And then someone else tells you that don't drink filtered water because the plastics from the bottle will also get you. It's like to what point? And that can lead down the path of food anxiety and stuff. It's like I don't want to eat anything because everything's bad for me.
Speaker 1:It's one of the key pillars I teach man, which is experiential learning Learn, understand the concept and apply it to your life. I can't sit here and tell you meditation's going to change your life. I can't sit here and tell you ultra running is going to change your life. Yoga is going to change your life. Breath work, weightlifting, whatever I can try to. But it's similar to when you first start learning to drive a car. If someone tells you OK, so what we're going to do is you're going to put it in the top left, put it in first gear and you slowly bring off the clutch. And as you bring off the clutch, you're going to put it at. I could explain that for a week. And you get in the car and you, bunny, hop down the road and stall it, or you get in the car, you put it in the first and you feel it for yourself. It's like what we call these as modalities or practices breath work, meditation, yoga, all these things. They're some of the more Eastern ones. But if you fucking hate running and that's like you've agreed, you've created that as a belief for your try it for a week.
Speaker 1:Try running every single day. There might be some gold in there for you. Or you might hate it. Pick something else. If you're really asking where people should start, I should say start with the path of least resistance. If you like exercise, find something. Commit to it. Do that. I'm not saying you have to go on a yoga mat an hour every single day. Get outside and do that. If you love TV, find things around topics that you want to consume YouTube, tv, netflix, whatever that is. It doesn't have to be this overly complex. I need to find my purpose, know my identity and understand all my childhood traumas in a week. It's like the stuff's forever evolving and the work is.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry to say, there is no finish line with this kind of work, which can be the most frustrating thing, so it's like, yeah, it's fine that thing that you enjoy right now and then see what is in there for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Problem is often the path of least resistance is not the best, but best in terms of maybe not the most healthy path.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd say.
Speaker 2:Right. So you've taught me this, that there has to be some resistance for you to grow so kind of lean into that resistance, whatever it might be, but I guess the least resistance. I mean, I'm a TV lover We've had this conversation, yeah but I love documentaries and movies. I generally don't watch reality TV or something like that, because I found a way to both enjoy TV but also maybe learn something or appreciate the art form or something like that.
Speaker 1:OK, let me reframe this, then, because it's very important as I'm speaking. I know what I'm speaking about, but it's like something needs to challenge you at some point. Like you said, it's path of least resistance Ice cream, netflix every night let's go. What's in here? For me, no, it's something that has to challenge you because, with that controlled stress application, you start to find out things about yourself that you maybe were not aware of until you're put in a stressful place. People who play like I played competitive basketball my whole life, like I found out very much my teammates and myself who shows up in the last 20 seconds of a game. Who fakes an injury.
Speaker 1:who really wants to show up and stand up Like the exact same in a work environment or when you're running a business. You, relationships and businesses are the two Like. If you really want to develop yourself and understand yourself and bring awareness to your cycles and patterns and mental health, get into a long-term monogamous relationship and start your own business and all the things you think you are, you'll find out if that's really true because it'll be reflected back to you where you need to show up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so everyone, I know that.
Speaker 1:Go on out, grab Tinder now and just dive head in first in.
Speaker 2:I want to just I've got this book in front of me. It's my kind of Miquel Black Book, but we'll get to some of this in a minute. I want to just talk a little bit about general kind of principles for, let's, photographers, videographers, but creatives, because most of the people watching this will want to know, ok, how can I better myself as a creative, how can I better my business? And I think immediately about traveling. A lot of my photography friends, a lot of people watching this, a lot of people that comment on some of my posts, are travel photographers, or they travel with brands, clients that need a job doing and somewhere else that isn't either where the photographer lives, right? So how? Two questions I'll ask you the first question in the most generic, crudest sense how can creatives or entrepreneurs, both, how can they avoid burnout?
Speaker 1:I honestly feel it on a creative aspect, being in that world very deeply for like maybe three years back when I did pick up a camera. It comes back to what I was saying before is disassociating yourself from the work. Like you as a human, your value and worth and success as you are in a human has so many different facets than your creativity and your work. It's just one aspect and I feel like we put so much pressure on ourselves to master and succeed in that area and that stress can lead to burnout. But it's interesting you ask this because I was in a startup company working in 60s, like sometimes we're at 2 am, we're fishing and edit, we're doing revisions, revisions because something needs to launch and it was in videography. That was the exact space it was in and I got burnt out from it and, just speaking from experience, I was so busy creating for everyone else consistently so often that I lost the passion and zest I had for videography.
Speaker 1:I would say and I didn't do this, but I would say the thing that led me down that path was not having my own thing, like I let my podcast slip away because I focused on their podcast. I wasn't creating any content around the shit. That genuinely lit me up because I was so immersed in creating content for them and I feel like that flow state which a lot of people listening would get into, like I used to work in construction get home from work 8 am on site, gym after work, get home 6 pm, eat dinner and edit to 1 am and I'd just be in there Like and we're talking like when I first started, like YouTube tutorials, trying to do just a couple cuts, like an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:And then it was just like I'd disappear for three hours mentally, emotionally, like, and I'd just be in the edit. And then I come out and I'm like dumb, like amazing. And I lost that when I started doing edits for everyone else because it was like revision, do this change? This skin doesn't look right, like the skin thing was always happening. So it became this monotonous, mundane task of a job and work and I didn't have that creative expression outside of it. So I ended up just like I literally got to a point where I just didn't want to pick up a camera anymore.
Speaker 1:My fiance is an amazing photographer. We used to shoot each other every now and then and I just didn't want to pick up a camera anymore. I was like I don't know if it's like a nervous system response, I was just like yeah, and literally that was. I stepped away from that company. It could be like three years now and I still have a bit of resistance around it. So my thing, my outlet, my creative outlet, was creating programs, courses, coaching, and that was the thing I started to lean into. So the burnout one is like I don't feel like it's a tick the box, that's the answer for everyone, but I feel like, if you do have that creative expression, especially as a creative, to make time and space for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talked exactly about that with our last guest, pandu. Leaving one self space, turn to time and actual space to do your own stuff. And when you're a photographer, videographer, any type of content creator or creative, you end up taking jobs because you have to often pay the bills. And then you kind of get into that oh okay, People are actually wanting me and then all right, so I'll take all the jobs I can get. I don't know when this is going to, how long this is going to last, for right, so I'm going to take all the jobs.
Speaker 2:Before you know it, I'm a year in, haven't had a break, haven't done my own work, my own passion projects, and you start to get down, you start to become unhealthy because you're always on the go and, like you said, you don't have that. You don't enjoy the process anymore because it's not for you. So I think you know what you've been saying for the last 20 minutes. A lot of it is about enjoying the process. Interesting to, when I asked you what drove you, you didn't.
Speaker 2:I was expecting you to say helping people, right, but actually it's about the fulfillment of the process that you enjoy. You enjoy the most. Finding something that you just want to get out of bed for every day Motivates you, and I know you love helping people, obviously. But I think, certainly for the burnout thing, I don't know. I don't know if it's that easy to disassociate essentially money with doing what you want to do, right, because that's basically what you're saying is like there's got to be a point where you don't take jobs because you're just going to end up chasing the buck all the time.
Speaker 2:And that's why a lot of the people I know who are busy with photography, they're chasing the paycheck Right, you're wrongly, or whatever the intent is. I can't blame them for that at all, but I don't know how these guys can disassociate enjoyment of the process with getting paid.
Speaker 1:The disassociation I'm also speaking to is like when you deliver a project for a client and they go back and forth and it's like not good enough or this isn't done or like you need to be quicker. It's like we can identify ourselves with how good we are as a person with our work and sometimes you're just not that happy with how our projects turned out and we can take that and attach that to ourselves. But also what you said yeah, I get it. It's really hard. Like starting any business is super. I think in Australia 70% of small businesses fail in the first three to five years or something crazy like that. I'm sure it's close to that as a universal figure.
Speaker 1:It's tough and it's also understanding that the season of business you're in might not be the one you want to be Like. You might want to have all that. We probably want to have all that free time to do your passion projects and have time for the family or relationships or health and all that. But there's also an understanding when you own a business that there will be seasons and there will be ebbs of flows where sometimes it's going to be an ADR week and you can fight against that and like bitch and complain and say, no, I don't have time for my own passion project right now.
Speaker 1:I'm a kill. What are you on about? Like it's like I get that, like I've had businesses, like I completely understand that. But it's also like when you can get to a place of accepting like hey, like this next four months is going to be a shit show and I'm going to be like very overwhelmed with the amount of work I got, coming up Like when there's an acceptance to that, like it's like okay, on the end of this four months, then I can do something for that, because I get like sometimes when you can hear things like this, you're like you don't understand this just so much.
Speaker 1:going on. It's like, yeah, I get that, but it's like, know that the thing? Like a friend said to me this once, like when I came over here and got into business and the startup company and all that I was complaining to him like how are we doing 60 hour weeks, man? Like like okay, full transparency, getting paid $1,000 a month to have percentage shares in a company where we're all promised we're going to be millionaires in 24 months. That was the frame I was in. So it's like, whatever needs to be done, everything else falls aside. And I had like close to like not I wouldn't say mental breakdown, but like the stress levels I was experiencing were like I've never been there before in my life. Well, I had to go away for a few days and just like completely decompress. It affected every aspect of my life my health, my relationship, everything. So I know how stressful that can be. And, yes, you can live for $1,000 a month in Bali. Sure, can you live the best life? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is one thing I think is difficult to realise when you're working so hard. Let's say you are photographer. Well, you want to keep coming back to that because this photography podcast, but if you're a photographer that's fortunately busy, no-transcript it's difficult to realize the impact and the effects. Everything you talk about is as a wholesome person. You don't necessarily prioritize any facet of your life. Everything is intertwined together Personal life, relationships, finance, career, business, whatever it is. They all work with each other.
Speaker 2:Whereas I think it's really easy for us to go well, my focus for the next six months is just work when everything else falls by the wayside, it's really difficult to kind of tug yourself back in and understand that if you are going to prioritize work for the next six months, you've got jobs and you're accepting jobs back to back jobs just know that it's likely going to impact your relationship, or it's likely going to impact your health, or it's likely going to impact your finance in a good way, probably. But then maybe you've got other stresses that come with that. So I think that's a pitfall that a lot of people, including myself, fall into. Again, I guess that comes back to awareness or education. It's difficult when you're in that frame of mind.
Speaker 1:Well, what's the pitfall you're referring to?
Speaker 2:Like when you forget about a lot of other things that are in your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I think a big thing with that is managing expectations, like internal and external expectations. You have a partner like, hey, babe, the next three months we've got all this going on. So the date nights we do every week, maybe we'll just when we can, we'll make it work. Because if we can manage the expectations externally because it's a lot, a lot of the times it's the unspoken things that create a lot of stress and tension, especially friendships, things like that Someone's got a birthday dinner coming up it's just like expressing all of that. You're like, okay, this is where I stand, this is where they stand, that's clear. But then they also have the expectation on ourself.
Speaker 1:It's like, look, we only have so many hours and so much capacity every single day and we were speaking about this with you before. It's like you've taken on this new project, we've get the studio, the cafe, getting everything set up, but then you had all the other things you were still trying to do. It's like, yeah, okay, but like seasons again, it's like this is a growing phase or a building phase, and when you're in a growing and building phase, sometimes the other things need to just get pushed aside and that's okay. And that's okay for a couple of months, but then also having the awareness, as you go through, to know, like awareness is essentially just being able to understand the difference between your thoughts and the actual reality of what's going on and your perception of them. And, as you go through, being knowing when to push and when to pull, and be able to manage not only your nervous system, your mental state, your emotional state keeping your cup full in the things you enjoy doing but to have this expectation that we need to.
Speaker 1:We have 10 boxes we're taking every single day, and then we put four more on and we have 14. It's like, oh, why aren't we doing the 14 now? It's like, well, cause you already had 10. There needs to be some kind of give and take, and the reason I keep saying seasons is just because it's come up so much with clients where, like, there's this, this expectation that everything should be where I want it right now. But you haven't moved through these phases yet and I feel like that's very reassuring to people, being like, when you understand what season you're in, it's like, oh, I just got through a breakup, I'm in a healing phase right now.
Speaker 1:I'm not in a building phase, I'm not trying to build a relationship, because this is the thing I need to do right now and when you can, and this is what I speak about seeing things clear of what they are like. You just start a business and you're looking at people online earning a hundred K a year in creative and you've just got your first couple clients. It's like, yes, but like you're not. You're not in that optimizing phase of the business. Yeah, You're just in a lead generation like kind of figuring yourself out phase.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I think a lot of it in my experience with myself and with others. Again, I was having the same. The guy we had on the last, the last guest. He said exactly what I experienced. He feels every day he's running out of time.
Speaker 2:So there's this there's finality to life, which is a fact and I want to live forever and that uncertainty of how long we're going to be healthy enough to do what we want to do. So for me certainly I mean, I'm older than you, but it's certainly when I hit 40 years, like fuck, it really, really affected me. No other birthday has ever affected me. It's like it's just another year. Suddenly, this number, which is just an arbitrary number, comes in, comes into my life and like fuck it, I'm actually halfway through an average lifespan. I need to do more. I don't want to be regretting anything. I don't want to think, oh, I should have made more time for this, which I know is a fallacy, but it can't help run through a lot of people's minds.
Speaker 2:So do you? What is your advice to people? Certainly creative. I know a lot of people feel like I've got so many ideas. I don't have enough time to implement them all. I've got to do client work. I want to do my own stuff and I want to build that and I want to do that. Entrepreneurs are saying, right, all these ideas, I want to do this. They're really probably doing anything really well because you're just doing that and doing that and I've got to do this. Running out of time, fuck weekends, fuck social events, fuck health sometimes, just do it, do it, do it, do it. How do we get? I'm asking you as a really big question how do we?
Speaker 2:Some little tip bits, I guess, to get us away from that thought process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a couple of things on this One. It's like mistaken movement for progress. If I'm busy doing a thousand things every single week, I'm productive, I'm good. It's like so many people will start their week or start the business or not have clarity on the direction they want to go there, but not only clarity on the direction you want to go there, like why do you want to go there?
Speaker 1:We take these inputs from the world of what I was chatting with a client yesterday and he started an econ business, right, he's like has the expectation in 10 weeks he wants to be making 10K a month. Yeah, he's a plumber. I'm like how long did it take you to earn 10K a month as a plumber in your apprenticeship? He's like three and a half years. Why is the expectation? 10 weeks in econ? Because you saw some kid online telling you he'd done it and he's telling you an econ course. Yeah, Really, it's like it comes back to that expectation with movement and progress. It's like you can have giant expectations yourself. Cool, that's a good driver. Goals, yes, but what's the clear game plan to get there? Someone wants to earn 100K a year. Okay. What do you earn right now? 2k a month, Okay. Well, first of all, how are we going to get to 3K and then from there so you can be busy doing all these different things, but if they're not the things aligned with what you need to do, then you're going to be chasing your tail for the full year. You can find, you can hire a mentor, you can read books, you can. They're like we're overwhelmed with information out there, right? So it's like picking an avenue and going with that, whether that's working with someone, whether that's just damning someone who you see has got success in the space you want to work in.
Speaker 1:Like I done that with a guy who had about 2.5 million followers and I was like, hey, I have, I literally done this. When I picked up, I'd probably six weeks into YouTube tutorials editing. I messaged him. I'm like, okay, I'm going to get a job in the next two months and I'm ready to fly to America and work with you and shadow with you, for I've got enough money for three months. Anything you need, I'll get the coffees, I'll shoot da-da-da. And he hit me back and they didn't have a space for me then. But it's like that is the extent I was willing to go to get next to someone and in the, in the proximity of someone who was successful in the space I wanted to get to. So, whether you read a book, podcast, invest all your money to go work with someone, whatever that looks like. So it's mistaken movement progress, getting really clear on the direction you want to go and moving, not planning and planning and planning and stouting and planning. And the second part.
Speaker 2:Sorry, before you go on, who was that that you wanted to go and shout out?
Speaker 1:Liv Rich media. Liv Rich. He's to shoot like a lot of promo stuff back in the day. I'm not really sure what he's up to these days.
Speaker 2:Sorry to interrupt the second thing.
Speaker 1:No, no, I think I've had too much coffee today, so I feel like I'm I feel like I've forgotten the second thing already. Fuck.
Speaker 2:I knew I should have interrupted him, sorry. No, no the the nah, nah, what was it again? Yeah, I feel like I want to do that with you. I'd love to come, and not necessarily on a, on a professional sense, more like a. I'd love to just like soak up your energy, certainly in the morning. It's like I want to see your routine.
Speaker 1:I want to you know what I mean it's busy with dog.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I I feel like that's so important for a lot of people is set yourself up for the day that any kind of routine, um, we can maybe discuss the importance of a routine. I know your hero, Alex or Mosie, I think I. I I talked to you about this. He released this video and was like, basically, fuck routines, yeah Right. But essentially, like, for me it's important, and I think that comes back to what we're saying. I like, if it works for you or you feel like it's it's good for you, do it Right. Um, what is your routine? What is your? Your, maybe your morning routine?
Speaker 1:You're about to be so underwhelmed right now. Um, before we go to that, the point before um, you're asking around when people like you know that need to be busy, busy, busy, not enough time. Yeah, don't mistake movement for progress. And the other one was um. In life, you just you choose your regrets. So, like the, the analogy you used before was like when you've hit 40 and it's like hold, this stuff I should have, could have, would have done.
Speaker 1:It's like, no matter what you do from here, you will have regrets on things you didn't have to. So when you make a decision moving forward, it's like hey, if you start that business, know that you'll probably regret leaving the safety, security and comfort of that job. No, if you don't start the business, you will regret not taking a risk on yourself. If you start the business and you lose a hundred K and or 20 K or someone screws you over, you will regret doing that deal. So it's like, no matter what you do in life, you're not going to get out of it without regrets. So if you have that clarity around and this is the movement of progress thing if you have clarity around yourself and a deep understanding of what truly lights you up and what you truly want in the world, not what you're convinced you want online, because our reality is made up on the sum total, about inputs.
Speaker 1:Someone isn't born a Manchester United supporter. The family usually is, or they go for the opposing team because they're. They want to rebel against the family. So it's understanding that, like the things you want in life, start to question if it's really what you want or if that's because everyone around you wants that that's. Yeah, that was that other point. So it's those two key things. You will have regrets and just make sure you're making the moves you need to.
Speaker 2:The second point is fascinating because, especially in today's world let's call it a social media driven world right, we are so influenced, that's where the job title came from. Influence, right, we're so influenced by what we see yes, people we speak to. Yes, books we read. Yes, tv, yes, media, mainstream media, of course, all of that. There's commentary, there's opinions, there's censorship, all of that, but there's nothing seems to hit like social media does with individuals.
Speaker 2:And speaking from a photography aspect I think we've talked about this before, but it's I fortunately, have gotten over this and never really suffered from it that much. But I know a lot of guys who do go and for some reason, a lot of females there's this something that goes on there go into social media, see something, it's envy, and then it leads quickly to some kind of level of depression or some kind of regret or some kind of unreal desires, because they look at other people and you see the best part of someone's life. Or, in my case, I see an incredible photo and I go, fuck, why are they better than me? That kind of thing, and that's that, if channeled correctly in my experience, my opinion can really be a great driver and it can be a real source of inspiration, but I fear that the majority of times at least, to envy, right. So how and you touch upon that in your second point how can we detach from that?
Speaker 2:It's not click of a button, I imagine not being on your device. That much helps, but it's an addictive thing. It's proven to be a dopamine delivery system. Any advice there for people to? We're all human.
Speaker 1:I have a really funny face of advice for that. Actually, when I first started coming over here to Bali, I would go to all these spots that people would shoot amazing photos. And then I got there and when you look behind the lens, there's like 30 other people standing there like impatiently, sweating, waiting, frustrated getting their shot. And anytime you see content like that online, zoom out and picture yourself watching the people film it and you'll see how ridiculous some of it is Like TikTok dances, for example, in popular areas. But that photo that you see it's like that the influencer took a whatever. If you actually know that spot or if you can zoom out and see what's going on behind the scenes to make that happen, it detaches yourself from the thing that's actually happening. You can see it's a fabricated, orchestrated event with the other stuff, with the money and the lifestyle and all that.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest things that helped me is, like all these accounts online, everyone, including myself, full transparency is looking to enroll you in their belief or perception of the world or sell you a product or a service.
Speaker 1:I'm doing it from a place of like. If you truly align with my shit and you feel like we're a good fit cool, let's go, let's work. Or there's the other side of it, where people are very deceitful in what is the truth and the reality they're showing you to enroll you in their belief around the world. You can even tie this back to religion and everything, or politics. Or they're trying to sell you in a product or a service. When you can look at it, this is like looking at it through more of a marketing lens, but when you can look at it through the lens of they're just trying to convince you of something, then you can understand oh, this, like sometime now, not all the time, this isn't the truth of what's really happening in that person. Like this isn't just a regular Monday for them. This is orchestrated and positioned in a way to touch on points for you to follow or elicit an emotional response. That is something that's really helped me. And then also just the zooming out and envisioning that what's actually going on?
Speaker 2:behind the camera. Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Hey guys, before I let you continue with the video, just indulge me for a few minutes. I want to briefly talk about my new brand, yore. Founded with my business partner and photographic artist, finn Mattson, we're proud to bring you a new artisanal jewelry and specialty coffee brand Yep. What on earth do they have to do with each other, or anything at all? Well, they're both our passions. They've always been another artistic outlet for me, now for over a decade. So, for those that know me, coffee has been my other obsession since I was young and as a result of it, I'm a qualified SCA coffee specialist. So when I met Finn some of you might have seen my podcast with him when we barely knew each other Our love for art and jewelry had a home, and that home is here house of Yore.
Speaker 2:Yore is, amongst others, an artisan jewelry label, and it's all about the art of intent for everything that we do. Our intention with Yore was to add a touch of celestial elegance and artistic expression to our visual narratives. Every jewelry piece is a statement, a reflection of your unique story and purpose. It's not just about jewelry, it's a wearable piece of art that speaks volumes. Picture this Silver or gold are dawned with an actual piece of lunar meteorite that's right Straight from our moon, making every piece as unique as the moments that we usually capture through our lenses. From limited edition lunar jewelry pieces to finely crafted 925 sterling, silver and gold rings, pendants and chains there's something for all of you in our unique designs.
Speaker 2:We're also committed to the environment as much as possible. Our coffee is direct trade, organically produced and locally farmed, minimizing impact on the environment as much as possible. Our jewelry packaging is all sustainable and recycled other than the moonrock, of course Probably eco-friendly in both packaging and jewelry production. You can feel good about looking good At the top of it off. We offer free worldwide shipping, ensuring that a piece of lunar beauty can grace your collection no matter where life takes you.
Speaker 2:And if you ever find yourself here in Bali, please come and visit us. Our cafe and community driven art house is a haven for creatives just like you. So before we head back into the video, please just take a moment to explore Yore's collection and, as a special treat for you, my one foot audience Yore is offering an exclusive discount. Head over to our website and use the code below for a 10% discount off your jewelry purchase. The link and details are in the description. Anyway, thanks so much for listening and I'll let you get back to the video. Now Tell us about your routine, the routine yeah, underwhelming.
Speaker 1:We wake up in the morning around 6, 5.45, 6. I did try recently, saw some things online about just getting straight into work and experiencing a flow. So I was getting up at 4am, going into a separate room and, as I drink my morning water and coffee, I explain what morning water is in a sec. I just work for an hour and a half. I struggled with that, I tried it for a week and I was like, nah, not my thing. So now it's just wake up in the morning. We have in the house right now we have 12 dogs. My fiancee I have a dog rescuer here in Bali. She's incredible.
Speaker 2:Her Instagram is skinsbroom S-K-I-N-S-B-U-E-M From the little plug, from the little plug, from the little plug.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we have six dogs. We fluctuate. Right now we have 10. So that's what the house looks like. So the first thing I do in the morning is open the damn bedroom door so they can all run outside on the grass and do what they need to do. We have a morning water every single day. It is pink Himalayan salt lime.
Speaker 1:It's potassium cyclotrite magnesium, it is creatine, glutamine and vitamin D, K2 and beach oils and that's our morning water. So we drink about 800 ml of that as soon as we get up warm water as well, and then we'll have a coffee. And it's interesting, man, because like I always in the last literally the last six months, I've started to dissolve this. I always had this morning stress, like feeling like I need, like it's like, okay, it's almost eight, like I need to get up on the computer, I need to work, like come on, let's go. And this has just been an internal process for me. It's like where does all this stress come from? Like why do I need to be up there at eight? And I had this belief that I have a creative window from eight to 10. If I don't hit it, then I'm useless for the rest of the day and I would then play that out and it'd be like 10, I'm kind of need another coffee now. So what I've been doing is just allowing myself to. I'll start when I get up there, which has been working for me, has been working heaps better because I'm actually present. I enjoy the morning.
Speaker 1:Now I choose to get to have the water and then have a coffee with Selena and we sit there for 45 minutes to an hour and have water and coffee every single morning and it is the one thing I feel like that keeps our relationship so good. We like she's got so many things she's managing consistently with the dog rescues and everything, and then I've got my own things with the business as well. So that, and then I saw our personal things like to just be able to sit and talk over a cup of coffee. I love coffee. I have a mocha pot tattoo, so like did you enjoy the coffee today? I did. Okay, that was really good, Pass the test. It did. That's me Like water coffee. We run the dogs anywhere from two to three rounds, so it's about four Ks. So we'll run or walk the dogs and then we come back in and get stuck into work.
Speaker 1:And then so when is gym day? It's in the evening. Oh, it's right now. It's, it's there's no stringent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of like in the middle of the day or at the end of the day, journal meditation and then journaling has taken a bit of backseat for me right now. Selena, I literally had the conversation yesterday that we're going to start meditating in the morning again, because for me it's been, it's been a practice I've I've put on the back burner and I'll do throughout the day when I'm just in my office, when I want to take a journey, or meditation, meditation, meditation when I want to take a break from calls, got it.
Speaker 1:So whenever I go through like periods of being very overwhelmed with things, journaling has just been something that I think science has even shown that just getting information out of your head like transferring it on to paper has been beneficial for me and like, to the extent of just taking myself out for dinner and grabbing a beer, grabbing dinner and sitting there and just writing whatever comes up and comes through has been really beneficial for me. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, you talked about morning water and coffee. I'm obviously coffee obsessed, Um yeah. Check out House of Ure if you're in Bali, but the the whole that part of my daily routine. We do exactly the same thing as with. We don't have such a filled water experience. I think we need to, yeah, we need to find a place we can get all this stuff from.
Speaker 2:But yeah sitting down with each other. We actually kind of write things down, a little bit chat to each other. I just enjoy coffee and let the dogs run around. It's that's like my favorite part of the day.
Speaker 1:What's that? By a long way, it's like why do we live in Bali? Like, why do we choose? Why did we move here? Like, for me I don't know about you, I'd love to hear from you. For me, it was like freedom, and I didn't realize the levels of freedom I get coming over here. Sure, it's a lot cheaper to live and you can still live a healthy lifestyle, but like my freedom of thinking, like I wasn't like kept in this box of how to think and who to vote for and all this kind of stuff For you. Like, why did you move here?
Speaker 2:Very similar. But I think when we moved from the UK to Hong Kong, that was one of the big drivers initially, and then we got our fix of like oh yeah, there is. You know, we can choose our own path much easier, even though we could have done in the UK. But again, like you said, you're just kind of dictated to and there's this structure to your life where you most people just kind of move through one step to the next step and that's just. That's just the way it is, that's just life.
Speaker 1:Yeah isn't.
Speaker 2:But yeah, definitely here we wanted to, I guess, find something a little bit more. I want to say spiritual, but I don't really mean that. Freedom of thinking definitely came into it. Freedom of movement we never really want to be stuck in one place all the time, and Indonesia was certainly, for my photography was a good place to just almost like a European type of thing where an hour's flight away is paradise. So we and cheap and all of that stuff comes into it. But actually we're talking about this earlier. The last kind of six months here have been stressful in ways we didn't think it would be mainly with the noise and the busyness. We moved to an area that was quiet. When we moved Deliberately, we didn't want to be in the hustle and bustle, and now it's just crept. The hustle and bustle just crept closer and closer to where we live and now it's just becoming a bit of an issue. So we wanted to move here really, for freedom definitely came into it, but peace essentially.
Speaker 2:We came from Hong Kong where we had, we lived in the countryside, we had great space for Hong Kong, but it was still a city, it was still identified as city and you go into the city and it's just, it's like New York, it's just fucking yeah, pollution, noise, busyness, which a lot of people love. We've never been that type of people. So when the opportunity came up to move, we barely was at the top of the list because we kind of knew it. We knew it was peaceful, we knew there was something there we wanted to explore in a kind of spiritual sense and it was cheap, great for photography, all of that kind of combined.
Speaker 2:But freedom is an interesting point for you to bring up, because I wanted to ask you what your goal is. If you know, we've been through purpose modules before and I don't know whether I I don't know whether I continue to believe in the concept of purpose. It's really really helped me being able to sit and define and almost come up with a purpose, but realize it was always inside. Why should purpose be a thing, and are our goals important to set amongst that kind of purpose identification?
Speaker 1:Purpose is the, the comfort. Purpose is the compass to really find fulfillment in the things we love doing in life. If you have no and it can be a very confusing subject for a lot of people I understand that. But it's like some days you will wake up, you will tick off your to-do list and your head will hit the pillow at the end of the day and you'll be like, wow, I just feel great today, Like it was like a really fulfilling day. Look at those days. Why? What were the actions? What were the things you've done to or experienced to have yourself in that place of feeling fulfilled and complete at the end of the day?
Speaker 1:Normally it will be because in some aspect of your day you've really aligned yourself with your soul's desires. We go through the purpose module. It's like once you can look back on your life through a lens of all the things you are naturally pulled to in life, your purpose is normally found in things that people don't have to remind you of. That you naturally just wake up and do every single day. You are genuinely just pulled towards as a very broad idea of what purpose is. The problem is the judgment around what it should be. This purpose conversation has been so extrapolated to like it needs to be, like curing cancer or housing a thousand kids in Africa.
Speaker 1:No it doesn't. There are people living out their purpose and you're not even aware they're doing it. There's a guy and I'm a big basketball guy Jimmy Hyrola, on YouTube. He literally will just break down statistics and data from past basketball games and players and create YouTube content around that. I don't know the guy, but he genuinely loves basketball, he genuinely loves statistics and data and he's monetized that into something that aligns with his soul's desires.
Speaker 1:You can look at this through the lens of so many people. If you are clear on your purpose, you will have a clearer guide on how to get to the things that really genuinely fulfill you in life. I feel like people get to an age of 35, 40, 50. The reason people blow out into these midlife crisis is because they've been head down working in what they should be doing and they've assigned to the idea of how life should be when it goes against everything they really want to do. There's this amazing amount of and especially with men, there's this amazing amount of suppression and repression of what they truly want to do in life. Then it manifests its way and buying the convertible car or breaking up with the wife or whatever the fuck you fill in the experience or thing. If you have no awareness around the things that genuinely light you up in life and you don't include them in your life, there will be a back end to this. Whether you want to ignore it or not, it will show up. That voice, that internal voice that you hear when you're slaving away in an office cubicle and you fucking hate doing that. That voice just gets louder and louder. It can turn itself into so many different things in life. So your purpose? It can literally be as small as walking dogs. You can just love dogs. Okay, volunteer once a week or create a business around it.
Speaker 1:It's so important for people when they go through certain processes will give you a really nicely articulated paragraph or sentence that my purpose is to live with the highest alignment, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:But it's not really anything. When you do one that is actually tangible, then it's like okay, now I can apply this to my life and actually get fulfillment from it instead of trying to just live from a value all the time. So it's just important for people to have awareness around that, because why do you get out of bed in the morning? Why does everyone get out of bed in the morning? When you can answer that question, then you can start moving into the direction of like how can I, if I get out of bed in the morning, every single morning, because I want to have a bigger impact in the world, okay, cool. Well, like, how can you start moving in that direction? That's kind of off the line of purpose a little bit, but it's just important for people to know so that you can experience the fulfillment you want in life, because if it's not aligned with you and you keep doing it, you're not going to be fulfilled by it.
Speaker 2:How do people know when they should get help?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good, I feel like because the help, like when people should get help, because there's a few different like reasons why people will reach out to therapists, psychologists, mentors, coaches, and they can be at any different level, whether it's like completely struggling down and out or like, hey, things are going well. I just want them to be a lot better. I feel like people should always reach out when they feel like there's more potential they're not reaching and that could be. I feel completely bogged down and anchored down and I don't know and I procrastinate. I don't know where to start. I'm lost, I'm confused. Yeah, reach out, but also reach out with the intention of I'm going to see what's here for me and, if it doesn't feel like it's in alignment, not saying yes to it.
Speaker 1:I feel like a lot of people might like go to their first session with a psychologist and like you don't have to continually go back to that person if it doesn't feel. Or they jump on a call with a coach and they might want to like sign up to a program. It's like if it doesn't feel right for you, like speak to a few people, you know if you're going to get your roof renovated, you don't go with the first quote. You go and get a few quotes or not. I don't want to minimize our self and mental health to renovating a roof, but that's just it Like have some conversations with different people in different spaces and see what really aligns and resonates for you when people should get help. What's like it's. It's just so dependent on where you're at. I feel like if you want to do, be and have more or get out of this rut, you should always have that conversation, Whether you're ready to make that decision or ready to invest, or the time, energy and money, whatever that is. That's going to be dependent on the person. But if you feel like your mental and emotional health is affecting you, showing up in your relationship, your physical health, your work, your job, then that is definitely an indicator and a clue to reach out to someone.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't have to be an expert in the space. It can be a friend, it can be a group of friends. It can be just asking a quality question of what is your experience been of me the last few months? Because for me I've been in a really bad place. What changes have you seen in me? Big reflection in friends, and it's really important to set the frame in things like this. Hey, you're someone I really truly value as a friend and I feel like I've been struggling the last few months. Do you have a few minutes, or can we put a few minutes aside? I just really want to just unpack this and have a conversation with you around this that sets the frame and tonality for something completely different. For, like, hey, I've been struggling lately. The person's like, oh yeah, but you know we all struggle. Like, come on, let's go. Like, if you can set the frame and set the intention in a conversation like that, it'll really open up a lot more space.
Speaker 1:And why I share this is sometimes the thought of reaching out to someone an expert or a professional or whatever can be fucking daunting. Yep Means you're admitting that you've got a problem. Yeah, it's like no, no, no, I don't need to reach out to anyone. That means I'm broken and wrong and shit needs to be fixed. You don't have to start there. You can start by just having a conversation with someone. And if you don't feel like you have, I feel like the next question you're going to have is like, if you don't feel like you have those, those people in those circles, like, actively seek them out. If you don't have them, well, I can't magically make them appear for you and that might sound kind of harsh, but like, like I said, conversations, books, books is your gateway to a different type of conversation with someone who's more experienced in that space. Or actively seek out people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm journal diary. Yeah, if there's not, I know that's helped me a lot. But I mean I feel that there is a, there is a, there is a point. I just I just worry. I mean the statistics say I'm all, I say all I read. I read one of a few weeks ago, uk specific.
Speaker 2:I don't know about the globe, but every 90 minutes in the UK someone commit suicide. 75% of them are men and there's been a lot of conversation as to why and this is very applicable to you because you're you're a men's coach I think of those people, because I've been there myself that that are either too proud, you know why are men not talk, not as talkative or not as open or not willing to go and talk to other people as, say, maybe women are. That the evidence supports that. My anecdotal experience supports that as well. Why do you think that is? Because that is that first step to talk to someone. I totally agree with you.
Speaker 2:I went through three psychologists before I found you. They were expensive and they just I didn't feel there was any connection. It was a transaction. It was just a transactional nature. It was you got an hour, that's it off, you go, and I know that was very similar with you, but you were always there and there was a program, the structure and there was. There was much more support, it was felt it was a lot more integrated and involved.
Speaker 2:But that first step of of me sitting on the side of my bed bawling my eyes out almost on a daily basis, I was able to recognize that fuck this, what the fuck is going on, like this, uncontrollable, I don't know what's going on. Very fortunate to have an amazing wife you also saw. You're not right. You need to get help going out.
Speaker 2:It took me a long time but I feel for those, those men, especially who, who don't want to admit that don't know where to go, stiff up a lip, which is prolific in the West, especially in the UK, it's fine, just get on with it. Parent, parental, peer pressure, especially generational pressure. You know I have a conversation with my mom. She doesn't identify with mental health really and when she says she does, she really doesn't and I can't blame her for that. I think it's fortunate is becoming more of a public awareness and educational thing these days. Still a long way to go. But my question is why? Why do men have that problem with that first step. There is a clear issue there with men taking that first step to go and get help.
Speaker 1:And my belief around this is that they've never learnt that it's safe to have those conversations. Many men have been in experiences where they feel an emotional state and you know we can wind it back to, you know, just the man up conversation and you never get to complete that cycle of that emotion. So you suppress and repress and you might be in friendship groups the same thing and it gets deflected, it gets turned into humor. Humor is a lot of the time a deflection for a conversation that's wanting to be had. You may have heard the saying the truth is always set in jest. You know, oh, she'd date me, but I'm not six foot. You know it's like no, you genuinely think that. So maybe that's just my thing, because we spoke about this earlier, where I did ask a girl out when I was in primary high school. She said I was too short, but I'm still holding on to that you mentioned it twice today, by the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:I know they were necessary in the conversation on the talking point. It's just like, yeah, back to men not feeling safe to have that conversation because they haven't had the community, they haven't had the network, they haven't had that level of conversation they've been exposed to before. So when it comes time to do that, they someone might be a safer place and they just verbally vomit everything on them because they're like, oh, finally I can do everything. Okay, Now what? And not having the tools?
Speaker 1:not having the tools to understand when it is actually your thoughts, like your beliefs, or if you've grabbed onto someone else's or you've made it mean something. Having the tools, like I shared before, how to set the frame in a conversation Like this is something that's really important to me. It's really hot on my heart right now. It's been really weighing me down. I'd like to have a conversation and we do around it compared to like I'm sad, and then a guy comes from a logical place of, like how can we fix and solve? Where women are very much more nurturing and process orientated, men are just like we want a solution, we want a logical end goal. That's a great point. Not black and white, like, not everyone's like that. So when a friend presents you a problem, the other guy is just going to be looking at a solution. Well, like why are you sad? What do you do? That's like what makes you happy? Okay, do that. Yeah, where? Sometimes that's not the solution we need, sometimes just the process of being heard and understood? Yeah, and I feel like that's very much the reason why, like, men suppress and relate.
Speaker 1:The analogy I use is you envision a swimming pool and you put a beach ball on the top of it and you press that emotion or that feeling down. You're going to press it so far that eventually that beach ball is going to fire in a different area. What does that look like? Sex, porn, drugs, alcohol, youtube, video games, food, like whatever that is. I do all of those things.
Speaker 1:This is a really interesting thing for people to understand as well that all these coping and distractions or numbing devices are just the wrapping to an internal experience that you might have the exact same experience but different wrapping. One person might be completely like a full-blown alcoholic, where someone else might be completely addicted to sugar, but the internal feeling is the fact that they're really overwhelmed and stress and that is their way to soothe themselves. It can be and it can be so many different internal complexes, yet the wrapping paper of it sometimes we can just demonize and somewhere just say, oh no, that's okay, that isn't a big deal, when it can be the exact same thing. It's just what behavior have we learnt to manage and repress this emotion? Now, I'm not saying guys should all cry together and hug and all of this, but there needs to be the tools given to men just to be able to have a conversation, just to be able to explain, like for guys, explaining an emotion can be like explaining a color sometimes.
Speaker 1:Like how do you explain the color blue to someone? I?
Speaker 2:don't know.
Speaker 1:So it's like if they can have the tools and they can have the resources to be able to just initiate a conversation like that, I bet they'll have a lot of friends that really will have that conversation with them and through that, that is the process of just understanding each other on a different level. And then you find out most of your friends have this thought and understanding as well. When you find out that it's like Ben isn't just the super happy guy on yachts and house parties on his Instagram is actually so much more debt to him and you experience the exact same thing, then you're like oh, like, I'm not alone in this and that is a very comforting thing to learn about other people in yourself as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel being alone, especially this time of year, slightly different to loneliness, but I guess they're conflated a lot of time. An antidote to that can be not just having a safe space to talk but having another party be able to at least provide some empathy or understanding. Is that certainly what I was craving was an element of understanding from someone that makes you feel less alone, right, makes you feel a little bit more connected with society, connected with people. I hate to throw another just kind of general question on you, but we talked about purpose, fulfillment, all of kind of what we talk about and definitely don't want to surmise kind of what you do as a profession just with one thing, but all of what we do when we wake up in the morning, what we do with our lives, how we spend that time that we have, essentially is to get towards the goal of happiness, right.
Speaker 2:So I feel like sometimes people find it difficult to define what happiness means for them and therefore everything else that underlines that is lost, essentially because there's no kind of higher, not goal, but everything like purpose and fulfillment and creativity and what you like to do in the mornings, your routine, your habits, the people you hang around with the books you read everything kind of. All of that fills into this huge goal of I just I want to be happy in life, right? Am I correct in having that very generic assumption? And if so, how do people identify, I guess, what happiness means to them?
Speaker 1:A couple of things in that I don't think you find happiness, I think you create happiness. Like happiness is a byproduct of doing things that generate happiness. So I think that's just be happy and also the goal to be happy. I don't think that should be the goal because it's like it's a fleeting emotion and feeling that you're never going to hold on to for a long period of time. So, like, if the goal is to wake up and be happy, yeah, we can. We can toxic positively our way into I'm grateful that I dropped the coffee on my foot, so now I get to wear a different parachute is like you can rinse and repeat that to yourself. But I don't think happiness should be the goal. Like it it comes to a point of like being able to enjoy all aspects of life and I know that can sound really fucking difficult but to enjoy the resistance and frustration and work it takes to build a business or get to that next level in your goal, to enjoy that challenge, be like oh, what is this asking of me more? Now?
Speaker 1:The happiness thing is it's forever moving and changing and ebbing and flowing, like one of the things I've learned through sitting a few of the personal retreats now, which is 100 hours of silent meditation, no talking, a very, very restricted diet, mainly vegan, based, about 800 calories a day. You eat for 10 days with no eye contact, no communication, nothing like you get to sit and be with yourself in every imaginable scenario in life, which includes experiencing every sensation or emotion coming through you, and what you learn in this practice is to stay is what they know as a quantum, is non reactive to things coming through, and if you can get yourself to a place of being present with where you're at. Like Eckhart told the book the Power of Now, like anxiety lives in the preconceived notion that something negative is going to happen in the future. Like that's, it's when you future pace things you're concerned about what's going to happen and then when you look in the past, your perception of those events being negative can also create that negative interpretation for you. So the way to dissolve these, these emotions and feelings, is to be able to bring yourself back to the present.
Speaker 1:If we, if we have a line across the page and one end is past and one end is future and the middle is the presence right now, well, the only reason you have looked at past events and thought that was a bad experience in your life is just because you're not aware of the positive effect. Yeah, you have to, like, go through a relationship and then, five years later, you're like I'm so glad I met that person because they, like they rears. They either showed me what I don't like in a person or they showed me a lot about myself, or that business opportunity or like whatever the hell that was, and it's like okay, well, when it all went sour, it was the worst thing that's ever happened, but yet, three years down the line, it's a positive experience. So what is? It was a positive or negative. It's like it's neither, it's neutral. You have to label it. So, when we can look at that as ourself right now, the experience of you being like lonely in three years from now might be the exact thing you needed to create space and time and understanding and compassion for yourself, to understand yourself on a deeper layer, to work through the things that eventually set you up for something in three years. So you're being lonely right now, positive or negative, like and this is the thing about happiness and stuff as well these are all good emotions, but how you interpret them can define your sense of self and reality. And this is like this can sound a bit broad and maybe confluted, but when, like, the ego wants to attach itself to one emotion and label it good or bad, positive or negative and a mentor taught me this once, literally when I was going through a breakup I was on construction sites every single day by myself, on a like a remote house, just me doing that one.
Speaker 1:And I said I just feel so alone Every day I'm out here, I'm just so fucking alone. I was drinking like five, six coffees a day just trying to get, because I'm a subcontractor, right, so I get paid per meter I do, and I didn't want to do anything. So I'm on site eight hours a day, not getting paid much. So I'm just so alone. And he just hit me with like you'll never buy yourself, you're always with yourself. And when that landed I was like fuck, I just really don't like the company I'm keeping Now.
Speaker 1:I'm so like, I'm so caught up in judging myself and beating myself up for all the things that I should have, could have, would have done when I was able to reframe. I'm never by myself, I'm with myself. When I started showing up differently and that's what I mean, like the actions created the happiness. I didn't just become happy, I'd done things that made me happy. So the conversation around like is the goal to attain happiness? I don't think so, but it's also important. Okay, mikkel doesn't think that, but, like, I think the biggest thing I can leave you with, or someone listening to this with that, is to understand that don't get so caught up with what you deem to be a negative experience right now, because there's a high chance that there is guaranteed a chance that somewhere along the line, that will be beneficial to you in whatever context that is.
Speaker 2:So do you think a lot of the problem is how we label things, because you say the word loneliness and immediately people I mean we've all been lonely, everyone has been lonely at some point in their lives, I'm sure of it and you feel like you're suffering, right, it's a suffering emotion that we label as negative. It's very difficult, when you're in that space and going through that, to start thinking about oh, maybe this eventually is good for me and maybe I can learn something about myself, be with myself and not be by myself. You know, it's just difficult.
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously it's easy to say yeah, it's super difficult. I'm not going to like paint it like no. No, be thankful for feeling shit. Like you feel shit, like the avoidance of feeling shit isn't going to be the thing that helps you get through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the problem really is not problem, but the difficulty we find ourselves in is mainly due to the language we use. I mean, define happiness. It's like defining success, or it's like it's just a word. What that means is anyone's guess. Essentially, every different culture has their probably their own definition of if happiness even exists let alone their definition of it Right.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a really tough lesson to learn, because, as humans, we always feel like we're chasing something. What is that? Well, it's more money, okay, but why? Why do you want more money? Oh, because it would make me happy. Why would it make you happy? What does that mean, is it? Yeah, it just goes on and on and on, and you end up reaching 16, and you're like where the fuck did my life go? And were they happy in any of it?
Speaker 1:What does that?
Speaker 2:mean. So it's just another maybe I'm just speaking from personal experience it's just another thing that makes all of this quite confusing at times. Right and this is where you step in is to provide just a bit of clarity, like, push all this shit aside, try not to worry about it, try not to label it. I guess, easier said than done. What about you? I mean I don't really want to ask this question now, but this is a question from our previous guest, and this question was are you happy with your life right now? And maybe that is a valid question to ask with the context of happiness in there. I'll pass it to you Are you happy with your life right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, very much so, man, when we spoke before about when I used to be on construction sites and all that kind of thing, like it's for me so much of it is perspective and the person I've had to become to get out of these places and spaces. It's so easy to look in the future and be like, you know, when you talk about you see someone take a photo and it's like, oh, I want to be at that skill set, I want to be at that level. But literally just in the last two months I felt so much acceptiveness and being grounded in what I've done and who I've become. And that is the after effect of doing the things I said I was going to do. And I feel like the thing that gives me happiness is one of the things we very much speak about inside the programs is like honouring our word, and honouring my word on every aspect allows myself to experience and be in that space. So the long-winded answer to that would be yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm happy for you yeah, if I said the words and we're going to get to the project in a minute, because I do want to talk about that Something. I definitely haven't invented this, but I like to use this phrase Trying to introduce it to people and people out. There is mindful photography and it sounds a little bit tacky and a little bit trendy because meditation and journaling, podcasting it can be demonised a little bit, it can be part of a trend, but there is this source of benefit to all of these things. If you just see through all the shit that gets put out and this mindful photography thing, I would touch upon photography very, very shortly right now. But if I said to you mindful photography, what comes into your mind when I say those two words?
Speaker 1:To me it would be like presence and connection with the subject you're shooting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think what I'm trying to get across is that photography and creativity doesn't always have to just be a very introspective practice. I mean, some people work with teams, but often photographers especially it's kind of an individual pursuit. If you do jobs, you often have a team or helpers, but that person there aren't two people pressing that shot, it's just a person has a creative vision. What's really helped me and this actually has nothing to do with meditation, but mindfulness, with what you're doing at any point of the day, especially with an output like photography it's really, really benefited me and I just wanted to throw that out there. It's just you were talking about being present. Again, easier said than done, be in the moment, all these kind of little catchphrases, but it's really difficult to be able to step back and be aware of, okay, shit, this is what's going on right now and it's trying not to label it good or bad, but it just is what it is Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that is the work that is forever going on, going, never ending. Like. If you want to like I was I posted this on my Instagram, I don't know, a few months ago I was on a run and it was called a download or whatever, but it's like. It's literally like all personal development, all therapy, psychology, coaching all of that is boiled down to like one framework which is like input input being external event happening in life, or input being a thought, feeling or emotion that comes up and then story the story we give that, whatever that is, and then that becomes a belief. And then, from that belief, we take our identity. Input drive it in the car with your parents. Daughter singing in the backseat, mum yells at her saying you're a terrible singer, don't stop singing. Input story I'm not good at singing. Belief I'm a bad singer. Identity I'm someone who doesn't sing.
Speaker 1:Like that is where it can start. So do we just blame our parents? Essentially, yeah, it's the easiest and best way to do it, because there's no responsibility in anything that don't blame your parents on, especially on Christmas. Yeah, and then input like sensation, emotion, feeling can come up and then, if you actually like, can zoom out and that's a really good perspective thing, like to disassociate yourself from how you're currently feeling or the story you're telling yourself and zoom out and look at that. Then you can start to interpret what's actually happening. And this is hard, like because we get so caught up in our cycles, patterns, routines all the time like I'm not everything I'm saying today. I don't walk off this podcast and float down the stairs into my perfect abyss of life Like I struggle and like forever trying to overcome my internal thoughts, beliefs and internal critic as well.
Speaker 2:And even the most enlightened Buddhists suffer in some respect. No one's free of suffering, I think.
Speaker 1:No well, like the Buddha himself said, life is suffering you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Is, we'll come to the end, I promise. Is self-care, personal development, a selfish practice? Is it a selfish practice? I? A lot of what we try to work on with ourselves can be, in my opinion, considered just for ourselves, right? Without remembering that actually saying no to a party that we don't want to go to because I won't enjoy it and if I don't enjoy it, it takes away the time from what maybe I can do that will better me and therefore, down the road, maybe help my relationships or help me be a better person and give back. Do you know kind of know what I'm saying there? I have conversations with people all the time. One of my friends sat downstairs had this conversation with him yesterday. Feeling guilt of spending more time on yourself is normal or is apparent in many people, right? So it's difficult to spend two, three, four hours, sometimes all day, working on yourself, whatever that might be, even a meditation retreat, 10 hours every day for 10 days fuck everyone else, right? Does that ever enter your mind and, if so, how do?
Speaker 1:we get past that. I think the most important thing is to find him what being selfish is Like. If we start with that, the association I would have with being selfish would be putting my priorities above others. I don't know what the Oxford dictionary is of that.
Speaker 1:Being selfish can be seen as a very broad like a bad thing to do. But the example you've just given is like okay, you can be selfish and not communicate any of that, like just ghost people on text, not show up to birthdays, do all of that. Or you can take ownership and responsibility in that and be like hey, like this week or this month, like I'm not going to be coming to any social events because I've got some stuff I'm building or things I'm working on. Like two exact same situations. But if it's communicated and the frame is set in a certain way, one's okay and one's not. Yet it's the same action. So I feel like it.
Speaker 1:Yet like doing your own personal work and stuff is selfish, but like what's the intention on the back end of that? Like it's you're looking to better yourself so you can be a better person in the world, for the things that truly excite you and light you up. Like no one should have the right to strip that away from you unless you have responsibilities in the world where you need to show up for certain things a relationship, a family, things like that. You have responsibilities in life. But like I wouldn't label being selfish as bad because there's so many nuances that need to come into play to see the actual situation of it.
Speaker 2:But again it can be confusing because sometimes one feels like they should do certain things to make either other people feel happy or to make themselves feel like, oh you know, I should really go to that social event because it would be good for me, kind of thing. Without, again it's that clarity to an awareness of what is best for me right now and therefore the extended circle in which I'm in and potentially, if you want to take it further, humanity in general.
Speaker 1:The should is just such a difficult one. Man Like we should. There's so many things we should be doing.
Speaker 2:But, then you can't always go with your heart, your head. Some of kind of has to come into it as well. I guess my point is it you know, just go on the project and get some clarity, tell us about everything we talked about for the last couple of hours really is wrapped up, and you know we'll just touch the surface.
Speaker 2:And I know you know most of these answers you've given are so impossible to relate to specific individual humans and the nuances that are wrapped up in everyone's life and issues, but you found a way to package all that up successfully. I might add into what you call the project. You want to share a little bit about what that is, how people can get involved if they feel like it might help them for sure.
Speaker 1:The project is look. The simplest way I can explain it is you want to build your life and if you were to envision building a house, you know you put the frames up. If you give the carpenter a paintbrush and he goes to build those frames, no matter how badly he wants to build that life, he's not going to get very far. So it's just equipping men with the correct tools they need to build the life they want to build as a very high level. How we do that awareness, understanding who we truly are on the deepest of levels, getting clarity around that direction and then moving. We can't make decisions from a place if we don't have clarity around who we are and what we truly want. Otherwise we're a mistake. Moving for progress, we're just filling, we're ticking the boxes and moving through life, and then we get to 50 and we're like what the fuck happened? The next part is integration, action and integration. It's great. Awareness is the first step for everything. Amazing, yes, Now what? So we move into things known as which you would have experienced experiential learning. Now you know these things about life, how you apply them in life, and once you apply them, what is the result of that? Because the idea of something can be very different than actually doing it. So we apply that. We get direct results and that's how we get the.
Speaker 1:You know you should be eating healthy. You know you should be saving 10% of your money and investing it in the SMP. We know everything we should be doing but you don't understand it because you haven't had the experience of it yet. We know we want to start a business, but when you start a business and you realize how fucking hard it is, oh, you'd understand when you look at that person who is absolutely crushing it in business, what they've had to be through now in every asset relationships, health, finance, all of it. And then the last part is relationships, and that's not relationships with others, that's also the relationship with ourselves. We do things like shadow work, cognitive behavioral therapy. We work through all of these.
Speaker 1:So by the end of the program, not only do you have the tools for that period of life, but then for life as well. There should be reference points that people check in for the rest of their life, that help them throughout every situation, Down and out, getting back on top On top, want to get to the next level. It's for all areas of that. So that's very the high level of what I do. I guess this is where I say if people want to reach out to me, do it. They can find me on Instagram. Yeah, Instagram, m-i-k-e-l-e dot k. That's essentially my main channel on there. Recently, I start dropping two emails, one to two emails a week going in depth on.
Speaker 1:I get to go a bit deeper and unpack my usually caffeinated thoughts and concepts and teachings that I've either applied in my life or worked with clients as well. Completely free email I drop every single week. You can find all my content on there.
Speaker 2:On an entrepreneurial level. What is the future look like for you, or what do you want the future to look like for you, or does that not enter? I mean, you must have some kind of plans. I mean, my immediate thought with you in your amazing program is that there is capacity. Right, there's only one, miquel, there's only a certain number of hours in the day. Does that enter your plans as to expand in some way or another?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but probably not down the avenue. You'd think I had this conversation two days ago with Selena. I'm not sure if you've heard of Parkinson's Law. No, Parkinson's Law is the belief that work will fill the time allowed for it. So you have an assignment due in a month. You will cram the two days before because you allowed the space for it. You have a job where you work 40 hours a week and the manager's only given you a few tasks. You will spread those tasks. If you have a deadline. They need to be finished today. You will have them done. So work will always expand to the time allotted to it.
Speaker 1:I had this conversation with Selena a couple of days, where I spent yesterday, Monday, yeah, putting this together where I want to build my business out. So I'm working 25 hours a week and increasing the income from it. So, no, I don't want a team of 12 or 15. I don't want that. I want to create systems and structures and a platform and way to deliver content to people and my clients. Where my life I spend 25 hours a week working, and this isn't saying like I'm halfway to retirement. It's like no, no, how can I structure my 40 hour week and put it into a 25?. And now the fact I only have five hours a day, five days a week. I need to be very efficient and impactful with my time because I've only got five hours. And being very strict on that, Because the belief that we should work 40 hours a week, five days a week, is just a narrative we've brought into. So I'm like, how can I construct things to be different? So it was retirement, right? Yeah, I mean the Japanese language, the word retirement doesn't exist.
Speaker 2:So it's yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there's all social constructs. I talk about this with people all the time. The belief systems that we have are just based off made up constructs that someone made up 50, 100, 200 years ago and beyond right.
Speaker 2:Yes, that doesn't mean we can't rip it apart or change it or adapt it to what we want. Yeah, well, good luck. It's been an absolute honor to have you on the show. It's been a thank you for making the journey all the way up here. It's been a while in the making. I really appreciate your time and look forward to working with you until whatever right, it's an ongoing process, but thank you from the bottom of my heart for changing my life and, yeah, I'll always be appreciative of it. So thank you for coming on today. Merry Christmas, and we're going to end with kind of a little tradition, a little lucky dip with these conversation cards. So, yeah, pick away. And this will be the final question of the show Are there any prizes in here?
Speaker 1:Like it's like an Oprah special. I'm going to check on the last seat and have someone.
Speaker 2:Okay, what is one thing you regret not saying to somebody, and why didn't you say it?
Speaker 1:So I'm going to regret not saying to somebody and why didn't I say it? So the first thing that comes up for me is like someone, that that person's gone because it's like I didn't say it. And now, oh right, and then and then the other thing that comes up for me is like um, they might be listening to this. Um. The one thing I regret not saying to somebody is someone I was in a previous business with Um that I feel like they emotionally manipulated me in a way to get what they wanted for the business and didn't put my needs and values at the highest point. And in reflection and time, pulling myself away from that environment, I've very much seen how fucked up it was, um, and why I didn't say it, because I was so enrolled and convinced that the narrative and box they put me in was true about myself and it took me getting out of there over a long period of time to be reminded that that isn't me and I'm so much better than the box I was put in.
Speaker 2:Why did you believe that box that you were put in? It's because the externalities, because telling the environment that was created around it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2:Wow. Thank you again. Um, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. I hope people get some real value from this conversation and, if they did, I highly encourage them to reach out to you. We'll obviously list um your links, as well as Selena's on the. We'd love to have on the show at some point, um, and never met her, but she's definitely an incredible human. And, um, yeah, I wish you all the best and all the success and happiness, or whatever you may define that as, in the future. Awesome, thank you so much. Appreciate it, bro, cheers. Thank you.