TRANSCRIPT

00:00 Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are. This is Chris. And well, we’re talking today about some interesting stuff from the week. 00:09 First me, let me just recommend a couple of great books. This one, Peter Fit Simmons wrote a book about the incredible life of Hubert Wilkins. 00:20 And if you’ve never heard of this guy, join me because I’d never heard of him either. But what an extraordinary Australian, what an extraordinary man. 00:30 The other book I’ve been reading is when McKinsey comes to town, I, I must admit, I I flew down to Melbourne this week, and I really was sad when the plane landed <laugh> because in the, the truth of the matter was I loved the book so much. 00:47 So I got halfway through it on two on on a, on a flight to Melbourne, and I got the other half on the way back. 00:57 So both of them are really would appear to me to be really worthwhile relaxation time, book reading. You may be really well aware that I don’t often read books. 01:11 I’ve I’ve written 35 books and I haven’t haven’t read one of my own books. I often make the quote that I haven’t learned anything from a book in my life, and that’s sort of sad in a way because most of what I’ve learned and what I share I’ve learnt through the school of hard knocks and I’ve learned from experience. 01:36 Experience is without any shadow of doubt, one of the stupidest ways to learn anything. You get humbled, you attract calamities and disasters, and those things are in themselves, teachers, and you learn from them. 01:52 But it’s a really sluggish and very expensive way to learn. It’s the old saying that if you, you burn $10 note, you’ll find out that $10 notes burn, but you’ll be $10 poor for learning it. 02:05 So we have the, we have the adage, or I do anyway in coaching, is to say, Well experience is a really, really clumsy way to learn. 02:17 So why not learn from mine today? I just want to talk about something that came up for me yesterday in, in the process of the day. 02:27 And it was listening to people who are looking forward to change which we all are. We always want things to be better. 02:36 We want things to improve. We want to make the world a better place. We want to perform better. We want to love better. 02:43 We want to be healthier. We, we want everything. We, we, we, we have our goals and we have our objectives. 02:52 But the one thing that I find most people create the life they love outside of work, but they very often create work they wanna run away from, get done and get away from. 03:08 And I think pardon me, I’ll just turn this thing off. I think it’s really important for us all to realize that when we develop a habit of running away from life, we, we, we develop a habit, never. 03:24 It’s like a perpetual motion machine, and we develop the habit of when I, the someday aisle, the, it’ll be great when, and and I. 03:37 So I think the health of goal setting or vision setting is that it gives you a target. The, but the i illness of it is a gives you a target and it doesn’t force you to say this, this, this is the best it’s gonna be. 03:57 Whenever I echo this in a workshop or give it share it with a group of people, it’s quite confronting for people to hear me say that this moment in time is the best moment you are ever gonna have in your life. 04:13 Now, for some people it isn’t. For some people, this moment in time is the worst moment they’re gonna have in life, or this moment in time can be infinitely improved. 04:26 But I think we really need to take stock of this mindset that says, when I, firstly, this moment in time can be celebrated. 04:36 It can be celebrated to the point where we say, I am so, so here. So in this moment in time that I can celebrate the power of now, that’s the <inaudible> book, The Power of Now. 04:52 And it’s basically saying that if we can’t cherish this moment in time, no matter how bad things are around us, no matter how traumatized things are around us, the ability to come back to this moment in time, say I’m blessed to be having it. 05:09 This skill, this ability to spin time, to spin events, to spin circumstances, to give you an act of celebration is how we deal with our ego. 05:23 Let me explain. When life is not safe, the ego steps in to make it safe. That’s its job. So anybody who is throwing the ego out on the world ultimately is saying, I’m not safe. 05:39 And that’s why when we go in nature, especially when we go in nature, when we feel safe, like we go into a forest retreat or we go and stay in a beautiful golf environment out in the forest, or we, we, we park our car in a nice caravan park. 05:56 But ultimately, if, if we feel safe and we are in nature, there is no need for the ego. And then we can kind, like, celebrate what life looks like when you don’t wanna run away from it. 06:11 But we go into an office and I don’t see too many people, I have probably 58 clients right now, and I think 50 of them are safe at work. 06:24 There’s eight of them who don’t feel safe. And to be safe at work is an extraordinary experience because firstly, you, you, you acknowledge the right of people above you to criticize. 06:39 You acknowledge the right of them to behave in any way that they deem to be ethical, which is a really big spectrum of behavior. 06:49 You give them the right to behave with ignorance or with strength or whatever they decide to assert on you Without feeling unsafe. 07:03 And if you start feeling unsafe at work, your ego will come up. And if your ego comes up at work, you’ll start working on low priorities, because that’s the ego. 07:15 It’s making life safe the way it does. So it works on low priorities in order to make you feel safe. 07:23 So let’s say for example, I had to walk out my balcony now and walk on a, a tight rope without a catch net from my apartment across the road, into the apartments across the road. 07:36 It’s a 20 meter full. If I slip, it’s not safe. So then I will say, Well, before I go out there, I want to read a book. 07:48 I want to go to the kitchen, have breakfast, I’ll want to go for a run. I’ll want to go to the beach. 07:53 I’ll want to, there’ll be a million things I’ll want to do that are safe in order not to put myself in an unsafe position. 08:02 And that’s the ego, the ego’s looking after me. And we don’t blame it for that because for me to walk on a tight rope from here to the buildings across the road would be certain death or at least certain cataclysm. 08:16 So we work, when we start to work with our ego, when we come to work and it doesn’t feel safe, we don’t have enough money in the bank, or we don’t, or our mortgage is too close to the bone or whatever it is, or our relationship at home is not great. 08:31 When we don’t feel safe, whether it’s emotionally safe, mentally safe, financially safe, spiritually safe, any of the areas of life, if we don’t feel safe, the ego comes up to protect us. 08:44 Now, it doesn’t make it safe. What it does, it gives us low priority tasks that make us feel good. So, and those low priority tasks might be even, even watching tv. 08:57 It’s certainly protecting us from the unsafe, isn’t it? When we work on low priorities, nature, which is us, we are nature. 09:09 We attract calamities, disasters and humbling circumstances to get us back into life, to get us back on priority, get us back on purpose. 09:21 What’s a calamity? A calamity can be anything that takes place that gives us stress or anxiety. So let’s label the first one, calamities as stress and anxiety. 09:36 And there are people who take medication for stress and anxiety, but leave the cause of that calamity in place, which is working on low priorities in their life. 09:47 Because other people say they should work on low priorities in their life. They work on low priorities because they think it’s a better option than being unsafe, which is working on high priorities. 10:00 So let’s go now to the second one. Calamities, disasters. So a disaster in our life is an unexpected shock, A disaster, the death of a friend going to the doctor and finding you’ve got cholesterol coming out your ears and therefore you need to go on cholesterol pills for the rest of your life. 10:22 Arthritis or <laugh> or some problem with your digestion. And, and suddenly there’s a disaster. And that disaster is a shock. 10:33 And the shock sends shockwaves through the body. And that’s not anxiety or stress. This shock into the body causes us to knee-jerk react or try to fight back or, or, or even sabotages us. 10:51 So disasters or the shock of disaster, it, it sets a memory in the body. And that disaster in, in a form of a memory is, is called chronic fatigue, or it’s called post-traumatic stress. 11:10 And it stays in the body. It stays in the body as a memory, and years later, we can still be responding to the memory that’s in the body. 11:20 So disasters are another way nature uses to punch us in the butt and say, get back on priority. Humbling circumstances typically are to do with relationships, family, friends, it’s interpersonal. 11:40 So humbling circumstances are usually interpersonal. It can be a demotion at work. It can be a boss at work telling you, you, you’re not good enough, or even getting the flags at work that things aren’t secure. 11:54 So those three things, calamities, disasters and humbling circumstances all have one route. They all have one route. And that is we are working on low priorities. 12:08 Now, there’s a lot of people who are doing really well, doing really, really well at working on low priorities, painting the fence, building a barbecue reading books doing really well at things that are a low priority. 12:24 And so it’s very important for us to make sure that we understand our values because our values determine that hierarchy of priorities. 12:35 And if we can understand what our top priorities and our least prior is, we can give attention to all of them as long as it’s a cascading experience of attention. 12:46 For example, putting the washing out on the clothesline is to me a really, really, really, really, really, really low priority. 12:58 And I could avoid it by putting the clothes in the clothes dryer, but then I would be burning carbon and then I would be contributing to the global crisis of temperature. 13:09 And I am an environmentalist at heart and I don’t want to do that. So I want to be responsible. I’m not so worried about the financial cost, I’m worried about the social cost. 13:19 And so my highest priority in the, in my life is social. You can, if you those who know me, know that everything I do in my work is to make the world a better place is to open hearts, to get people connecting with each other, to share love and not be bound up by traditional old systems of identification, such as married once in your life or, or one job, or listen to a person or not be able to say no. 13:50 And so my whole emphasis, my highest priority ever since a little kid has been the social good. Now, that’s not a religious thing, it just means communication, love, interaction, the ability for a person to turn up to have great kids, for the kids to get a great parent. 14:08 All of this is to me really important. So me hanging out the washing has very little to do with that if I take it at face value. 14:16 But if I can link not using the clothes dryer to going out in the, in the garden and hanging up the washing to my social value to my purpose, I will be really, really inspired by it. 14:29 The second part of it is health is really important to me. It’s a relatively high value to me. And so if I can somehow link putting the laundry out on the clothesline to being healthier, which I do cuz I do Tai chi and I stand there on my tiptoes and I do all sorts of exercises while I’m hanging out the laundry, it must look really funny to people. 14:53 So, and then I get fresh air. I’m out in the trees. I observe the nature I am, I I get inspired by the birds, which again reflects back on me when I usually come in and do a coaching session or a podcast or something like I’m doing now. 15:08 And so it, it gives me the opportunity to do more of what’s a high priority. So linking my low priorities to my high priorities is really important. 15:18 And I call that link it or sync it. So that’s enough for today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Don’t learn from experience is what I’m trying to say. 15:29 Rather take the experience of someone else. And that’s what I give, that’s what coaching is my experience to save you having to have yours, to keep you away from calamities, disasters, and humbling circumstances. 15:44 And through a change of mindset, be able to make the world at work safe so you don’t feel like continually you’re on red alert and need to run away from it. 15:54 This is Chris. You have a beautiful day. Bye for now.