Micro-Agency: The Only Freedom You Actually Have

You aren’t as in control as you think you are.

We talk about "five-year plans" and "major life chapters," but those are just stories we tell after the fact. The reality of your life is much smaller. It is a relentless series of 10-second intervals—and your only real power exists in the tiny gap between what happens to you and what you do next.

In this episode of The Long Game, we explore the concept of Micro-Agency. Most people spend their lives as "biological reflexes"—flinching when they’re hit, retreating when they’re scared, and letting their environment dictate their identity. They aren’t living a life; they are a collection of unexamined habits disguised as an adult.

Today, we learn how to "Win the 10-Second War" and take back the wheel.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The 10-Second War: Why the first ten seconds of any conflict or setback is where your future is won or lost.
• The "Puppet of the Prompt": How to stop letting emails, comments, and external chaos pull your strings.
• Frankl’s Space: Why the ultimate human freedom isn't political—it’s the psychological ability to choose your attitude in any circumstance.
• The OODA Loop for Life: A tactical framework (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) to move from "Flinching" to "Strategizing."
• The Authenticity Trap: Why "just being me" is often just an excuse for a lack of emotional discipline.
• Characterizing the Chaos: Why an event has no inherent meaning until you—the Lead Writer—decide what happens in the next sentence.

An event is just data. A layoff, a breakup, or a windfall only becomes a "story" based on your next move. Stop being the audience of your own life and start exercising the only freedom you actually have.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Your life isn't a series of years or even chapters. Those are just stories we tell after the fact. Your life is actually a series of ten second intervals and your only real power is the agency you exercise inside of them. We like to view our lives as a grand narrative ultimately. We talk about chapters, we talk about seasons and five-year plans, I'm sure many of many have done those, but the truth is actually much smaller than that, I think, when you zoom out of it all. So think about it. The moment the email hits your inbox, the moment your partner says one thing that always gets under your skin, the moment the deal falls through or the car engine makes that sound you just can't afford. An event has no inherent meaning ultimately. A layoff isn't a tragedy and a windfall isn't a victory. Not yet at least. They're just fleeting moments waiting for you to characterize them with your next move. You see, in those ten seconds you have a choice. You can be a biological reflex or you can be a leader. Most spend their entire lives just reacting, flinching when they're hit, swelling when they are praised, and retreating when they're scared. They aren't living a life, they're just a collection of habits disguised as an adult, driven by a series of motions, rarely ever discussed internally to truly identify what they're trying to tell you. But there is a space between what happens to you and what you do next, and in that space, that tiny little ten-second gap is the only real freedom that I think you'll ever have. That's microagency. And it's the only way really that I think you're going to win in life, especially when we think about the long game. And today is all about winning the 10-second war and learning how to characterize the chaos before it characterizes us. So you see, we've spent the last two weeks, and I've really enjoyed this by the way, as I develop these episodes and I developed the plans for these and kind of think out my ideas and talk through them, is to kind of create these episodes almost in little chunks. So if you think of we did one a couple of episodes back where we did two episodes back to back, they kind of simultaneously integrated. And the last two episodes have really looked at the external and internal. We talked about the high price of a wasted winter and the ultimatum of growth. But those episodes were about the structure of change. Today's about the execution of change. And like I said, I'd love this idea with this concept of building these episodes in two or three episode chunks that all interlink with each other to build together. If you're enjoying them, hit us up on Instagram, send some messages into the podcast. Again, if you enjoy them, fantastic, let us know. If you don't, equally let us know. It's always good to hear you back, like we got when we did the QA sessions, and I've got a few more that we'll be doing later down the line. So let's come back to this. So today's about the execution of change story, as I said. So we've talked internal, we've talked external. Now let's talk about execution. And I think you have honestly, you can have the best philosophy in the world, but if you lose the 10-second war, as we're calling it today, every time your ego gets bruised, your philosophy doesn't really matter. So you can essentially say, you know, I'm the kind of person who does X, Y, or Z, right? And you build this ideology of who you are as a human being, and you can have all the best intention of who that person is. But the problem is that if every time that something happens and you have a almost a micro moment of when how you react to something, then the philosophy completely goes out the window, and actually you just become a reaction to the emotions at hand. Something I've learned over my decade and 10 years of working in uh business coaching and running a business was how do I respond to certain situations, certain challenges, especially when it comes to how do I particularly respond to setbacks or praise. I was talking about this to one of my one of a coaching clients yesterday, actually, about this was sometimes to just sit there and take stock about what's going on and what's actually happening to you in that in that moment. It was phrased to me once as real time, real response, real events. And again, exactly the same. I've been through many a moment in my life. You've all been through many moments in your life, and how you react in those moments is really the biggest determinant of how you're going to move through those things because they set the tone for everything after that. So when you end up in those conversations, think about your personal life, think about potential disagreements, think about the potential arguments that you've had, whether it's work, personal, with a spouse, whatever. The reality of it is that most of the time, if you're to take in a 10 to 15 second pause or a space or an intentional silence to just really think about what you'd just been said and what had been told and what happened in your life and what that person was really trying to ask you, you're probably gonna have a lot more productive conversations. Problem is, is that most of us don't. Most of us just sit there and react. Most of us sit there and just say the first thing that comes into our brains, which usually isn't the first the thing that you really want to be talking about. So today we're gonna look at what Victor Frankel said, and he called the last of human human freedoms, which is essentially the ability to choose your attitude in any given circumstances, as I've just discussed there. We'll look a little bit at something called the order loop, which is a military strategy for making decisions under fire. But the reality of that is that it can be used in personal development, it can be used in your personal life, and we'll break that down. And then last of all, we're going to talk about why an event, no matter how bad it looks, is actually just a blank page waiting for you to write the next sentence. Because events ultimately have no inherent meaning, they're characterized only by your reaction and your next action. You're the lead writer, so start acting like it is the reality of it. And again, the moment my life changed was the moment that I suddenly started taking ownership of that and became the writer of my own book. As I've said a few times, is you get to write the next chapter, and the one after that, you get to write how the story ends ultimately. There'll be a series of moments in there that you don't get control over, but you do certainly get to control how they progress and move forward. So the reality of that is you get to become the lead writer of your own book. So you see the the reality of all this is is there's something called the gap. And again, I think I've definitely spoken about this, is most people let it close to zero, and something happens and they immediately react, right? So again, I talked about the idea that as soon as someone says something, as soon as someone criticizes you, praises you, there's an immediate knee-jerk reaction, right? Now, bear in mind that is your brain, and again, it's always going to be like that. There's going to be the the immediate response to it. Your brain is a fantastic tool, and ultimately it's a defense mechanism, by the way, right? At the very heart of it, it's a defense mechanism and it will protect you, and it'll also give you the most quickest reaction to respond to something that it thinks is the best way forward. So the problem with that is there's no real actual thought, there's no values, there's no strategy, and it's essentially just to flinch. And then when you flinch, you're giving your power to whatever or whoever just hit you, and you are letting the environment dictate your identity in that moment. So I want to talk about how we stretch that gap out today, how we find the sovereignty in the second before we actually speak, before we send the text, before we quit. So let's look at the 10-second one, the physical sensation of taking back the wheel, if you want to put it that way, right? And we're going to transition now a little bit into that idea that I spoke about earlier, which is Victor Frankel's, which is the last of human freedoms, right? So Victor Frankel talks about this idea of the last of human freedoms, right? And we can talk a little bit about, let's think about this. So we think about our freedom often, especially in 2026, is a lot of a political state. We think that our freedom comes from politics and we come from whether we vote left or right or centre or you know, far left and far right. And again, please, we're not getting into discussions around politics today. I promise you that much. What it is though is there's been a big narrative that our identities are within the political landscape and how we think and how we feel and how we must react to certain things, I think, has become how most people view freedom based on the political state. The reality is, I think, it's actually a psychological one. As Victor Frankel explains, the last of human freedoms is a psychological one. So I I would determine it this it's your it's your essentially your freedom to choose, right? So how do I want to choose to react to a political situation? So let's use that as the example. How do I choose to react to a moment that happens inside of a sports game of my favourite team? How do I choose to react to the bad news that I just received that a family member was ill or something went wrong in their lives? Every time I have a choice of how I want to react, of what goes on in my life, and you do too, by the way. And a lot of us, I believe, will allow our agency to be overtaken by how others want us to act in those moments. And again, I talk about you, you can talk a little bit about political landscapes, you can talk about friendship groups or groups that you're a part of. And the groups you're a part of essentially determine how you want to choose to move forward with that. But my challenge to you on that is I think is that you're giving up ultimate agency because you're determined by a set of values and standards that perhaps don't always align. You might align to some of them, but you don't align to all of them. But you choose to use all those values and standards to determine how you want to choose to move forward in that in that scenario. I think it's other this, you also have a choice to decide, or an ability to decide, sorry, what happens next, how you want to react, how you want to move forward, how you want to make your next move. That is again is one of the biggest freedoms that you have is you get to decide. Again, I'm not talking about sometimes when you think about work or you might, you know, that certain policies or things that are needed from you, that's a little bit different. But everywhere in your personal life, you do have a choice to decide. Now, again, some people listening back might listen back and go, Well, I've got you know, Luke, it's nice for you, or insert the blank, or all these whoever it is. My situation is this. I'd always argue that you always had a choice at the start of this. At some point, if you go back far enough, you had a choice to decide, and then you also had a choice to decide what the next move was. Again, I think I said this on some of my earlier podcasts where I talked about this idea of going into debt, and when people go into debt, usually it stems from the first bad decision compounded by a second bad decision, compounded by a third bad decision, by a fourth and a fifth and a sixth. Where if actually if you went all the way back and you even if you intervened at the second or third bad decision, it wouldn't be such a bad you wouldn't be in a bad spot right now. And that is again a big, big part to what you see in life, and a lot of our narratives can be controlled by that as well. Reality is, I think, you also have the freedom in life to do what you want. You unless you unless you're in a state or a country that has a dictatorship in and you cannot talk and you cannot do this. For most of us in the Western world, we live in a democracy. You have the freedom to do pretty much anything you want in life. You want to go grow a business, you can do it, right? It's hard, but you can go and do it. You want to go and get a new job, it might be difficult, you can go and do it. You want to save money and invest and go buy a house, you can do it. Again, all of these things are often determined by how hard it is. But the reality is we all have a freedom in life to be able to do all of these things. We live in a democracy, we live in a Western world in which we do have that. Again, the Western world sometimes is given a bad name, sometimes, by the people inside of it who don't have any ideas of what goes on around the world and give a give a wholehearted opinion on what goes on around the world and think that this is the worst time that we've ever lived in. I'd be reality is if you go back in centuries, you look at Genghis Khan's period, you look at Germany back when Nazi, you look at the Soviet Union, you look at Mussolini, I mean you go back in all these times, and again, this world wasn't so kind. And again, we live in a very, very, very, very good time in the world, again, characterized by moments, and again, these I'm not saying they're good or I'm not saying sorry they're not bad, but the reality is when you zoom out a little bit, you we actually live in a pretty damn good space right now, and that's really it. You think about that 10-second wall that we talk about, it's an internal flare-up, right? Again, I talked a little bit about emotions and how we rarely ever understand them. See, that's what the internal flare-up is. It's it's anger, it's fear, it's ego that happens when something goes wrong. And if you act during that flare-up, nine times out of ten, you're probably gonna lose. Because again, I I I think the best example is always gonna be when you have a personal relationship with someone and how you want to choose to react and how you want to choose to respond. When you choose to respond on emotion and on ego, again, very rarely does it ever work out. If you take 10-15 seconds to sit and think about what you actually want to say and what your point is and what that person actually asked you, and how you get that across, again, you're gonna be in a much better spot. I think I'm I'm a testament. My life is that I see many, many people who I'm look up to and uh be around as successful and get the most out of life, is those who can can do that. Because the reality is one is a flinch biologic against or essentially biological, and the other one is a is a move, it's a strategic play, it's a it's a it's a way to philosophy that you actually lean into and actually live by your philosophy, not just be led by emotions and be led by biological reactions. You see, an event is just data, right? An event is just data, and a layoff is just a change in employment status, and a breakup is just a change in your social status. It only becomes a tragedy if you stop writing there. So we talked about this idea about you being a lead writer of your book, right? It only becomes a tragic story if you stop writing it there. I lost my job, right? My partner broke up with me, um, my partner cheated on me. I was fired and someone else got the job in in front of me. I lost my house. All of these things are tragedies in the very small sentence that they're placed in. But if your next action is to actually build, then that event becomes the origin story. Anyone who's watched, I think it's the Marvel movies, if I'm right in saying, I'm sure it's the Marvel movies, they have a couple of these origin stories, and I think again, you watch that, a lot of them are beset by tragedy at the very very start of them. So the first 10-15 minutes are beset by some form of tragic story where something bad happened to someone, a kidnapping, a murder, and um someone gets injected with some chemical because they're in some facility. I I don't know, right? I'm not a big movie buff, but the reality is that all of them are characterized. If you watch these stories, are characterized by bad moments that are the antithesis and the thing that moves them forward for the next one hour of the film, the next hour and 15 minutes, that at the end it always ends up in a good way, right? It always ends up the hero saves the day, right? And that the story actually arcs around to be successful. Again, left at the first 15 minutes, all of these origin stories are pure tragedy and will never, ever, ever kind of get anywhere further than that. And that's the same with your life as well as I think it's my life. It's these events are just all data, and again, at the start of them, it's gonna look bad. The reality is how you choose to react on it. And I mean the reality of all of that is you don't get to choose the plot twist. Like again, family members may get ill, things do happen, but you actually have 100% authority over the characterization and the direction that it moves in thereafter. So again, I'm not sitting there saying that bad things aren't gonna happen, but how you choose to react and move forward from them, you do have a choice over. I have a choice. Anyone listening to this has a choice, and again, the next move is up to you at that point. You see, we think a bad thing happened, and I think I would reframe that as non-event, an event sorry happened, but we choose to characterize it as a bad thing instead of a starting line. You see, a bad second isn't a bad minute, a bad minute isn't a bad hour, a bad hour isn't a bad week, a day, a bad day isn't a bad week, a bad week isn't a bad month, and a bad month isn't a bad year, and so on. You choose what happens next in every time you might have a bad moment at work where there is something go, you know, someone says something that you disagree with. That doesn't mean that when you walk out the door, you go and take that out on your assistant or someone else who works into the bit who works in the business. And because someone of your friends says something that you didn't agree with, doesn't mean that you go and take it out on the bartender when you go and get your next drink. I used to teach my team this the whole time, right? When I used to help try and help them understand why certain people act in a certain way. Now, when you work in customer service, right, and client experiences I much prefer to call it, with this happens often, right? So we I worked in a coffee shop, had a team of 14, 15 staff, and we were very, very busy, right? And the amount of times that we had to deal with people who disagreed or argued with us or treat us badly or anything like that, right, was probably more than more than you would imagine, right? That these things take place. And the way that I used to talk to my team, because they used to get quite heartfelt about it and they didn't quite understand it, is very simple. I used to tell them, but you don't realise what that person's gone on in life. And the problem is that they are making a decision and probably can't you can't decide on how to react in those moments, so they keep passing it off until it's someone that they can do. So I use the example of a family, let's say a dad or a mum or whatever, right, on a morning. That that person comes around and you get, you know, you might forget the syrup in their drink, right? And it's not a major issue. Like forgetting a syrup in a drink isn't a bad thing, or you give them, you know, I don't know, you give them two shots of coffee instead of three. Like it's not the worst thing in the world. Like, there are so many worst things happening in the world. But the problem that you have with that moment is this is the problem in those moments is it's how they choose to react. Now, that person woke up at 5 a.m. this morning because they have two kids and one of them was ill, so they're lacking sleep. And then, let's say it's a dad, right? Then the dad was asked to take the bins out and he never did last night. And his wife turns around and says, You know, honey, why didn't you take the bins out last night? This is the fifth time I've had to ask you in the last two months, and it's getting annoying. And then he goes to work and he gets cut off in traffic, and then by the time that he has got to go and get his coffee, you forget to put sauce on his sandwich, or you forget to put an extra shot of coffee in his thing. You are the worst thing. And in that moment, they cannot argue with their kids, they cannot argue with their wife, they cannot get a rebuttal in the car because there's no one to vent to. So the next version of that person is you that they get to do that, right? And I used to teach my team so often that you also have a decision to make in that moment. Do you decide to say that that person is such a bad human being and a bad person because of how they've treat you, or do you choose to make a decision and think, how do you understand what that person may or may not have gone through because you don't know, right? And I could be making that story up, by the way. There could just be a bit of a you know what, right? But the reality is that we don't know and we can only hypothesize. But the thing that I would always lean back on is I'd go, how do I want to choose to react in this moment? Do I choose to make that moment that happened in my life, that how you treat me, carry on for the next 10 hours of the day? Or do I leave it at that? And the next person who walks through that door, I put the biggest smile on my face, I am the happiest I can be, and make that person's day even better. I choose to live in a world in the for in the latter, sorry, not the former. Anytime I do anything, I will never choose to judge that or at least try not to. Again, I'm a human being, these things do happen at times. Again, not perfect, but in the 95% of the time, I choose to act in the way that says I don't understand, I don't always know what's going on, and and I can't possibly, and I'd rather choose to live in a world where I go, that's your person's that's your idea of how you want to react. That's I'm not gonna let it impact my life. So I said this earlier on, I talked about the order loop, which is essentially a military strategy, right? And it stands for this observe, orient, decide, act. Now, in a military strategy, this works very, very well, right? And it also works very well in your personal life. So if you think about this, most people do get stuck in the observe. So I I rephrase this as this is happening to me, and never move anywhere close to act. So in military, they're fantastic at going from observe, orient, decide, act, and taking swift action and over a period of time learning the patterns of behavior and the situations for them to get to that next step, right? So the next time it happens, the next time it happens, they act even swifter and quicker. And they also do it in a much more functional way. Problem is, is with ourselves as normal human beings, I would say, is we live in the world of this is happening to me, not this has happened because of X, Y, or Z, and here's how I can move past it. So, what does it mean realistically in an actual functional moving forward, right? You know, because I'm sure someone's out there going, ah, it sounds fantastic, but the reality is what does it actually all mean? So let's break it down. So observe, right? Nice and simple. What's actually happening? So the facts, what am I seeing, what am I hearing, what am I feeling? Bigger picture, what's actually changing around me, right? So it's it's a moment, it's a thing, it's identifying what's going on in those times. Orient is what does it actually mean? Now I'm gonna talk about this in the next episode, right? About beliefs and belief systems. What does it actually mean is often quite filtered as well through your belief systems, your past experiences, your identity, and your emotional state. I think your emotional state's a big one. I talk a lot about the emotional state, especially when it comes to writing and written messages. But any time that you experience something, if you are happy and you're in a good mood, you will perceive bad things much more positively. And if you're in a bad mood, you'll receive positive things in a much more negative attitude. It's just psychological, the data stands up to all of it. How much we can live in a more positive mindset also will determine a lot of the success that you have in life and how you keep moving forward with a smile on your face. Number three is decide, right? So, how do you adjust? How do you decide the next path, and how do you change? Or invest in what happens next. And then finally you've got act, which is execution. Now, here's the biggest problem here is most delay at this point, most fall off and actually can't execute. Again, most people have great ideas and and are usually pretty good at seeing what's actually happening and hearing and and what they're feeling around them or what's changing. Most are pretty good at seeing what does it mean. Now, again, that I think there is a little bit where again utopian world might live in there in that scenario. But again, people's belief systems doesn't mean that your beliefs are right and mine are wrong. It doesn't mean mine are right and yours are wrong. What it means is we all have our personal perception of these. And usually, quite often, we're pretty good in the end if we take some time to think about it to decide what the next path is and what we have to change. But the problem is that most people can't act, most people can't execute. And what I mean by that is that they get bogged down in emotional states to keep them moving forward in these in these regards. So, in that sense, there is also I think a big part to them, maybe talking about that in the future in that area. But again, the idea of the order loop is a very functional topic for you to be able to move forward. I think one of the really good things to do though, right, is and again, I've been through this process identifying what your signature reaction is. So is it usually defensiveness? Is it withdrawal? Is it blame? And then try and consciously overwrite that chord. Now you're gonna have to have some honest conversations with yourself, some honest ex moments where you are, am I being defensive? Am I withdrawing? Am I placing blame where actually I need to take ownership? Where actually I need to be forthright with what happens, and actually I need to come forward with what I actually think or see. And you've got to start to overwrite that code. Because I don't think I don't think if you're master microagency, you become essentially a puppet of the prompt, right? So Naval and talks about this contract of desire. And you can essentially think about how we what we don't have ultimately dictates our current peace. So we look at what we don't have, which dictates everything around us. I don't have money, so therefore my life is bad. I don't have the nice house, so therefore I can't do this. I don't have you know the physique, so therefore I can't do this. I don't have that skill set, so I can't do this. Everything is dictated, right, to for most of us, in terms of how that seems. So you're a puppet of the prompt in that regard. But if you flip the narrative on it, right, and if you go, well, I don't have that, but how do I get it? And I think most of times is that is that is where we need to live. 95% of the world lives in a world where we sit there and say we're dictated on what we don't have, versus the 5% who are the most successful are the ones who sit there and say, I don't have this, but how do I get it? Not I don't have it, so I can't get it. It's the I don't have it, but how do I get it? How do I start to create a pathway for that? Again, you go back to that loop that we talked about, right? Most people are good at going, well, here's what's actually happening, right? I don't have a very good job, I don't get paid enough, and I'm not very happy with it, right? The orient is what does it actually mean? Well, it means that actually I probably haven't committed as much in my life, and maybe I haven't done the right steps to get myself educated and build the skills to get to that point. Okay, what do I need to do? Well, actually, I need to go and do an online learning course, which it means I'm gonna have to do three hours Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I'm gonna have to take some educational classes, I'm gonna have to be in rooms of people that I don't I become the amateur in and I'm the novice in, and I don't really know what they're talking about at first, and I'll be very, very uncomfortable. Problem is, is most people don't execute on that part because again, fear gets in the way, being scared gets in the way. Again, yeah, just the big one is the fear of actually feeling like I can do this thing, right? And and being the novice and being the idiot in the room, I think is the probably the best way to describe it. Most of us don't want to be that person, and it takes a humble human being to be able to put themselves in that in that in that seat. You see, you're actually really a thermometer, right? And you're just reflecting the temperature of the room. If the room is angry, you're angry. If the market is down, you hope it's down, and if you lose the ability to set the climate, and in the long game, if you can't set the climate, you can't survive the seasons, right? Again, I've been again, I can I mean, most of us have been in that scenario. How many times have we reacted poorly in scenarios? Now, here's where I think the actual the power comes from. Like we can all react poorly, we can all do it again, myself included. I think I still will to this day, and I will do for many, many years of my life. There's always going to be times when I sit there and I react poorly to certain situations and certain moments that happen. I'm not perfect, never attest to be, but I'll always try and get better. And and again, I think I don't remember I talked about last week, but I know probably about 10 days ago, something like that happened to me, right? Where I generally sat back and I was like, Oh, Luke, how like how did you front up to that and how did you handle the situation? And and you that that wasn't like you, and you've done, you know, you wouldn't typically handle a situation like that, but for whatever reason you did, right? Again, I think we all do it. I think the true power is how do you take back the wheel and how do you get to that stage where you catch yourself in more often than not, you catch yourself in those moments rather than actually reacting to it. You see, I think there's a bit of a victim victimhood kind of idea again that goes along the world, and I mean that, don't take that personally if you think I'm talking to you about that, because most of us think what we're just being honest about our feelings, our emotions, when what we're actually doing is surrendering, surrendering our agency to those emotions. And once you surrender yourself to your emotions, now I'm not saying that emotions are a bad thing, but they're a defense mechanism, they're a tool. Your brain's always trying to protect you. The problem is with that, is right, is that being protected isn't always the best way to move forward. We protect society, right? So think about this. When social when social reforms came in, right, the whole idea was to give 5% of people who genuinely couldn't work, who genuinely couldn't earn a living wage, who genuinely were dis disadvantaged, right? So whether it was through disabilities or X, Y, and Z, when social reforms came in, it was meant for 5% of the world, right? And it was it was utilized, by the way, in the most best way possible. Now the problem with that is now is that it's used by the majority of society, right? Because we've given surrendered all of our agency to our emotions, which is essentially basically left to a society that now doesn't have any power to create itself, to go and change its own life. We blame everything on the state and we blame everything on everyone around us rather than actually taking sincere ownership of what did you do? What decisions did you make to get to that point? Again, am I right? I don't know, is the honest answer. Is my experience of the world where I've seen good people grow and develop, then absolutely, based on the same principles that I'm talking about today. Problem is, is again, we surrender to our emotions and this defence mechanism in our head that says poor me or that it's all happened to me because of because of this and because of that. When the reality is, is actually if you take ownership over it, you're probably going to get a better result. There's a emotion, remember, a guy in our college, a guy called Dan Matison, right? If he's listening to this, Dan, I think I've seen him on um socials actually recently. He did his does his own podcast. That guy was he'll openly tell you, right, his school and college. I think he tells the most amazing story about how in school his tutor told him busy, he was like, you know, you want to be this and you know you'll never get to it. And even first year of college, he failed the first year of college, right? And I think that was when the tutor said that you know you won't amount to anything. The guy went back, and the guy's now like a radiologist, he's a doctor. I mean, like he's just doing the most incredible things, and like again, attitude-wise, doesn't instead of deciding that you know my tutor said this, and you know, I couldn't get through this course because of ex because of this reason or whatever, right? The guy took extreme ownership of that and changed his life, and you see the success that he has now, and again, I dropped dinner. We lost contact a long, long time ago, me and Dan. No, no like ill feeling or anything like that, just genuinely did his life his lives kind of drift apart. And but yeah, I come come across his path on social media the other the other week and seen what he was up to, and just a gen, again, just incredible and humble human being, and just very smart and intelligent, and just got a drive and a commitment that I think probably most people don't have to this day because they do surrender to their emotions and their feelings. And again, if there's one human being, I won't tell that man's personal story, but if there's one human being who could have surrendered to his emotions and things that happened around him, right? He's someone who absolutely could. So, Dan, if you're listening, proud of your buddy. Great to see the success. And I think if more people take back their own agency on those things, then absolutely you can have success, and anyone can. Again, I'm product of that as well. I think and I think most of us could be in those shoes. So I think I'm being just being me again and go to go back on the other side, and I always probably sound like I'm beating on people, and I don't intend it to sound like that. Again, I just see it as a how do we get better in the world, right? Is often just an excuse for a lack of emotional discipline, right? You see, action is more authentic than reaction because action requires your values, and you build on those values, right? Then you can have an authentic reaction to it. Mine are, again, I can talk to my personal experiences. If people around me who again will very clearly identify, I will stop for a good 10 to 15 seconds when being asked a serious question that I don't just want to have an immediate reaction to because I want to understand what you're asking of me and I want to understand what I'm trying to get across before I go ahead and talk about it. You'll probably hear it in this podcast, right? There's times when I will slow down and almost like create silences and pauses, is because I'm thinking, right? And again, you have to get comfortable sometimes with that. That's an that's a very awkward thing to be in. You sat in a room. I'm sat in a room on my own right now, and to sit in those silences is is can be pretty, pretty awkward over a period of time. It gets more comfortable, obviously, but at first it is very, very awkward in those. But the reality is that all of this is your life becomes the average of your unexamined reactions. You wake up ten years later and wondering ultimately how you how we got here. You see, this week I want you to I mean yeah, to wrap all this up. I want you to look at something. We mentioned it a little bit earlier called the flinch, right? The biological reflex in you. And when that moment of friction hits in your life, I want you to count to ten. Okay? Genuinely count to ten. The other way to do it, by the way, is sit in a group of friends and family and just sit in absolute silence and listen of how you would have responded to a question that gets answered, but don't actually answer it. And just sit and study for 10 seconds. So if you do that and you count to 10, feel the reaction, but don't give it the microphone. You kind of ask yourself this what would the version of me I'm building do right now? Then do that. How would I want to respond? Not what does the first version of this look like? What do I actually want to? It's a great premise, it's it's like writing a book. I was taught this once, which was when writing a book, there is the version there's the version of you that talks to it and writes the book, then the second version of it before it goes to print is the version that you actually want it to say, which is usually called for the visceral reaction of I'm gonna write a book and this is what I want to talk about to the educators. I've thought about this. Does this really align with what I'm trying to say, or have it just gone gone off in different directions? Do I does it uphold my standards and my values? And I think it's the same as the same as this. As I mentioned, your life is a series of moments, stop being the audience. You are the lead writer. Win the 10 seconds every d every day, and the years will take care of themselves if you look back at it. I'll see you all on the next one.