#116 Stoic philosophy, our own mortality, and the strategic use of swear words, with Jamie Keeling (part 1).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

0:05  
Welcome to the personal development mastery podcast. I'm Mikey Keramidas. And my mission is to inspire you to rise up, grow, stand out and take action towards the next level of your life. I interview leaders influencers, entrepreneurs, authors, exceptional people who can and will inspire you to improve your life, Jr for two episodes each week, and make sure you subscribe to the podcast to get the episodes as soon as they are released.

0:36  
In this episode, I am sharing a conversation I had for my previous podcast about a year and a half ago, I spoke with Jamie Keeling, an exceptional individual and the friend on a variety of topics from stoic philosophy to swearing to the entrepreneurial revolution. This conversation is epic, and even more so because it's over two hours. So this today is the first half of it.

1:04  
Another interesting observation about this conversation is that it was done in person and that gives a different dynamic, which sometimes I miss now that most podcast conversations are done online. I hope you find the conversation stimulating, useful and vivacious.

1:27  
Today I have the real pleasure to be speaking with an exceptional person, a successful entrepreneur, a business coaching consultant who specialises in taking business businesses from six to seven figures. He's also a fellow podcaster and a blogger, a family man and a father of six.

1:50  
And he has won gold medal in World Championship in Taekwondo a few years back.

1:59  
Also, he is very passionate about decoding the path to full life optimization. So Jamie Keeling, it's a real pleasure to have you to the show. Welcome, Aggie, it's an honour to be here. Mike, thank you very much. You know, I, I wanted to interview you for over a year now.

2:17  
Finally,

2:19  
we've been talking about doing this for a long time. And we say it's really great to finally have the opportunity to come down here and talk to you. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Jamie, I want to start with a little bit of an introduction show. Just briefly tell us some of your journey of growth into where you are right now. And some maybe some milestone moments you had along the way. Course. So for me, I've lived a fairly average life in a lot of ways. It will be easy for people to look from the outside in and say, oh, wow, you know, you've done this, you've done that. And you mentioned a few things at the start. They're like the podcast is listened to in over 33 countries over the world, winning the World Championship title in Taekwondo and multiple other titles, touring all over the UK and some of Europe with my band back in the day as well. I've done some great things. But it all really started for me, you know, and I say, I don't say this lightly, but I feel like I slept through pretty much the first 25 years of my life. Now I was playing in my band, or various bands from the age of about 12. So I started quite early on that. And that was a big passion of mine for many, many years. But I never managed we had some moderate success. Men never managed, though, to really get it off the ground to a point where we were making enough money to live off it. But things really changed for me in a significant way. When I was I was 26 years old. It was the summer of 2013. Now at the time, I was married,

3:53  
married to an American lady. I was working in the family business. And to all intents and purposes, life was good.

4:02  
But I was stale. And I knew what was stale. But I didn't really know why or what that meant or how to change it. And then everything changed for me in the summer of 2013 when in July, somebody posted a Bruce Lee video to my Facebook wall. And this for me is the first truly pivotal moment in my life. Because I'd always looked at martial arts and thought, you know what, that looks really cool. I bet I better be all right at that. And I'd always made excuses around how at the time I got the money.

4:39  
I probably wouldn't be good enough anyway. You know, stuff just gets in the way and you allow your mind to pull you back from the things that are drawing you to them sometimes. And that was me That was my life for the first 25 years.

4:53  
But in that moment, I don't know what it was. I don't know what was going through.

5:00  
Mind or what my environment was like at the time that made this light bulb Come on, but they posted that video and he was doing the one inch punch and lighting matchsticks on fire in midair with his nunchucks, which was actually done for an advert, actually. But I just watched it and I was like, I guess it sparked this interest of

5:23  
what what have I got? What's my potential? Really, you know, how much of how far have I gone? How much further Have I got left to go? And as I say, I don't know what it was about that day, that video, and I don't know who posted it. And to this day, every time I tell this story where I speak, I always think I should really go back on the timeline and look up Who the hell that was who posted that?

5:48  
But it made me a jolted me and I went out and I thought, right, I'm gonna start a martial art. I had no idea what I was going to do. I just knew that I wanted to be like Bruce Lee. Fuck it. I'm gonna I'm gonna just give it a go. And

6:01  
so I started researching different martial arts. I looked at Brazilian jujitsu. I looked at G kundo, which was the martial art that Bruce Lee put together Taekwondo karate, and various other other martial arts and eventually settled on Taekwondo just because it was, I looked at G kundo. But the schools I found were I don't know, I just didn't get the right feeling about I can't even explain it.

6:26  
But with the Taekwondo, something just felt right. And it was punching and kicking, and it looked cool. So yeah, I'm gonna go do that one.

6:34  
And I remember surfing the web looking for schools local to me, I live in quite a rural area. And

6:42  
don't ask me how, looking back now it's very easy to connect the dots and see why everything happened in the way that it did. But at the time, I came across this antiquated website when I say antiquated, like, it was basic HTML text list of all of these Taekwondo schools in the UK. And the nearest school I could find to me was in Moulton, it was about a 45 minute drive. So 45 minutes there, 45 minutes back, so a bit of a commitment in terms of time and travel. And I thought that that just feels like the right one. I'll go and give it a go. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. So I'll never forget the day that I phoned up my instructor, Martin Williams.

7:24  
And I said, Hey, I'd love to come and give some Taekwondo a try on your Sunday class with a brighter pop up this Sunday, said, Well, hey, but we'd love to have you of all means, Come on, give it a go. But don't come this Sunday. Cuz we're all at the World Championships. And at this point, I'm thinking, fuck that.

7:46  
And like this was kind of the first shift for me in my mind was that

7:51  
I was bullied at school and like, don't get me wrong. I wasn't I didn't have my face beaten and bloodied, every day, I wasn't getting pummelling into the ground and dragged across the pavement and all this stuff, it was quite relatively benign, but still relatively soul destroying of a pair. I got here a few times, and a lot of it was verbal abuse, and like people spitting in my face, and all that kind of stuff. So I'd had recurring nightmares for years in school, basically up to this point where I'd get jumped by a gang of my dudes and they'd beat me up and I wouldn't be able to screen them. We know voice in my mouth and my lungs, I wouldn't be able to fight back, my arms wouldn't work. And it was every time I had this nightmare, it was a terrifying experience. And so in that moment, he was like, oh, we're all at the World Championships. I'm thinking, Jesus. These are like some hardcore martial artists. They're like, beating the shit out of each other in the dojo. Yeah, like they're going off to these competitions all over the world, like, what the hell like Who the hell do I think I am getting involved with this stuff. And the only way I could reconcile it was basically to trick myself and lie to myself and say, right, okay, well, I'll just try it. And I can always not go again. But I'm not going to compete. I'm not going to spar in class.

9:11  
I'll just go and just try it. So I managed to kind of get around the fear of all of that competition stuff. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Because I went along, and I just took to it like a duck to water. I walked into that room and I saw how supportive all of the people were, and how much love and respect and how much gratitude and discipline the whole principle of this indomitable spirit and courtesy to the other people in the room, your colleagues, your friends, your family, and

9:47  
it was one of the big things that as I got into it, my parents in particular, and my friends, they didn't really understand. They didn't get why I wanted to go and be violent. They didn't get why I wanted to go and do that.

10:00  
thing where I was punching and kicking people in the face and getting plenty of that back.

10:05  
But it wasn't about that it wasn't about any of it had nothing to do with violence had nothing to do with fighting and punching and kicking. It was about the discipline, it was about the camaraderie It was about building a spirit in myself and building my own self respect and building my respect for others and the way I behave, and it gave me such strong principles to live my life by to the point where

10:30  
I, I have had a lot of success in martial arts. And part of the reason for that is

10:40  
I committed to making Taekwondo, a way of life. It wasn't just about the punching and kicking, it was about everything it was about the way I dealt with myself, it was about the way I showed up when it came to taking action on on my dreams and my goals, it was about how I showed up for my family and my friends. It was about my vision for the future, what I wanted for my kids and all of this stuff. And the other thing that gave me the success that I had was the work that I put in, like, I went to that first class. And as I said, I just took to it. And I came home that night. And bear in mind, like all of the people in that class. And this is something that people have to be really careful of, especially in the personal development world.

11:20  
Everybody, with the advent of social media, and all of these places, 2.2 billion monthly active users on Facebook alone, right, that's a quarter of the world's population.

11:32  
That's a lot of people who are all got this platform where they can show this you know, all the highlights and what you want them to see, you know how many times we've all seen on Facebook, that couple who are always posting a couple selfies where they're snug in and lovely memes and kisses and hearts to each other. And then the next minute, you know, they're broken up and like all of the shifts coming to the surface. You're like, Whoa, where did that come from? Because you're not seeing all of the stuff that's going on behind the scenes and it can be very easy for us to get demotivated and demoralised by seeing this apparent success that people push out into the world. But actually not appreciating that there's a whole bunch of shit that sits behind that, you know, that's just a small part of the story. And that was the case for me with Taekwondo whereby the people in my class they were looking at me coming once a week to just an hour on a Sunday. Obviously stepped up my training as I got more into it. But to start with it was just an hour a week. And they were like, are you built for this? You didn't you genetically built this? You're like a natural a Taekwondo? Do you just amazing, you're going to be one of the best black belts ever.

12:37  
But what they didn't see was after that first class, when I went home, I spent four hours in my living room, no word of a lie, going through all of the stuff that we've done in that class. And I was awful. I was crap. And I probably got it all wrong, because I couldn't remember it right. And my hands and hands and feet and arms and everything and going all over the place. And I must have looked like a drunk octopus. But

13:00  
the point is, I became so obsessed. My dedication was so strong, because I decided that actually this is a way I want to live my life. This is not just something I do on a Sunday afternoon. This is is pivotal for who I'm going to be and how I'm going to build myself moving forward. And every night I will be doing work on the Taekwondo. Even to the point where during the day, I would be every time I would go to the toilet, I would drop and do 10 Press ups. Every time I was standing, whether that was in a meeting or going through to see a member of staff or whatever it was I'd stand make sure that my feet were parallel in the parallel ready stance. Because that was a big thing that the instructor was always telling people. Your feet look like penguins feet, get them get them straight. Yeah. And

13:51  
like with anything if you

13:54  
a lot of people want to get to the more advanced stuff, right? The cool stuff in Taekwondo is the 360 spinning kicks, the 360 turning kicks, you know, back kicks, jumping flying kicks in all right? And yeah, it looks cool. And and it's good.

14:10  
But if you haven't got the basics, like I see tonnes of black belts, who they can do all the advanced stuff to a certain level. Yes, but the basics still aren't there. Because they don't value that core work because it's boring, right? It's not interesting to go over like doing your parallel already starts doing the walking stances and basic punches forwards and backwards basic blocks, you will want to do the cool stuff. But for me, I put so much effort early on into getting those fundamentals drilled down into my physiology, that everything else became so much easier and when it came to the more technical stuff I had such a solid base that that is like building foundations you build a house without foundations is going to be a tad rickety, especially if you build it on sand. But when you put solid

15:00  
Foundation's in the ground, everything else that gets built off of that is in turn equally as solid.

15:07  
And so putting that work in and getting to a point where my basics were just absolutely spot on, and it's like I even to this day value, how important working on the basics in anything in life is whether it's Taekwondo whether it's business, personal development, your relationships, I, the advanced stuff, the complicated stuff, the fancy stuff. Yeah, it looks nice and, and it's cool. But you need to make sure you're doing the groundwork as well. And that that never goes away. Like if you ever take focus on the basics, he's like what I've done that now I'm going to focus on this stuff, then that stuff is going to suffer and your progress is going to be stunted, because you're losing that solid foundation. And so for me very quickly, I got very good. And I wasn't sure whether like, should I grade and everyone was like, you fucking serious like you one of the best white belts we've seen? Yes, you should grade. And by the way, while you're at it, there's a competition down in Cardiff, get your ass signed up for it, because I think you'll do really well.

16:12  
And I'll never forget my current partner now Halina, and another guy who was younger than me, but very tall. So he's like, 6566, or something. We used to have only six, three, and only things. I'm small in comparison.

16:30  
We had some great time sparring together in class, but he was like, dude, you need to compete because you're good. And I was like, Fuck, I said, I wasn't gonna do this. And I signed up, I signed up for the competition. And I was just a yellow stripe at the time. So just the first advancement from white belt. And I went down to this competition in Cardiff. And I walked over to gold medals. And I was just like,

16:58  
wow, what just happened? Because I've always had a very high level of self belief. I've always been a very confident person.

17:07  
But I never believed

17:10  
I could do that. I no one anything in my life, I can use that you have to appreciate all the things I've been through and experiences in school. And I've done a bit of judo when I was 12. And that was terrible experience, because I ended up getting bullied there as well. And I just felt like, yeah, this is something I want to do, but I'm never going to get anywhere with it. And then to go down to his competition within two months of starting training, and walk away from that with two gold medals. That was pivotal note moment number two for me, because I was like, okay, so if I believed I couldn't do this. And I've just done it just walked away with two goals. not one, but two, for Christ's sake. What else? What else? What else? Am I holding myself back from with my limiting beliefs? What else can I do that I currently believe I can't. And so that was the moment that I decided I was going to find everything that was holding me but everything that I thought I couldn't do. And I was going to fucking do it anyway, I was just going to find a way because I started studying things like Malcolm Gladwell book.

18:14  
And there's another book by Matthew siadh, called bounce. And it talks about this principle of what what it takes to be great what it takes to be an elite in whatever it is that you do. And the more you study people who have achieved great things who would you would consider superhuman, in some respects in terms of their achievements, particularly in this in the sporting world. It's not because they are genetically predisposed. Now, yes, genetics plays a factor, you may be bigger and stronger and therefore able to lift more weight. If you're a man, then you have denser bone structure, bigger bones, you have bigger, stronger muscles, generally speaking, than women do. And so in lifting events, you're going to be able to lift more generally, since you haven't yet have a physical advantage.

19:02  
But at the end of the day, I came around to the way of thinking that Okay, listen, that person over there who's achieved that thing. They've got 10 fingers, 10 toes, two hands and feet, and ahead. Well, holy shit, I've got that stuff, too. So if they can do that, why can't I do it? Like, you've heard it before exists, success leaves clues. Anyone who achieved something, it's like, Okay, well, what did they do? How did they get from, where they were, where they started to where they are today. And when you look at that journey, it doesn't matter whether it's sports, peoples, actors, actors, actresses, entrepreneurs. There's a fuckload of work in between starting and where they are right now. There's not only a fuckload of work, there is a shit tonne of phase

19:54  
mistakes, things they did wrong things they didn't do well and that's a really

20:00  
important part of the journey, but I just resigned myself to the fact that, okay, if I want to do something, all I need to be prepared to do is a put in the work and be prepared to fail. I've got to be prepared to fail to learn from those failures and to go again. And to go again, you know, every time you step into the ring, you get knocked back, you get punched in the face go again, every time you get knocked to the ground, you pick yourself up and you go again, every time you get kicked in the stomach, you pick yourself up and you go again. That's that, ultimately, is how you become successful in anything you do in life. And I thought, right, so let's take it and let's prove it. I'm a big believer that if I'm going to read, if I read something, if I see something, if I have an idea, it's like my, well, let's go and test it. Because what works for me in the way it works for me isn't necessarily going to work for you in the same way. So, you know, this, I think this is a big point around particularly things like health and fitness and weight loss, and that kind of thing. Everybody is essentially the same, but is very different in terms of our physiology and our makeup. And so we have to find what works for us, like for some people, eating a high carb diet works. For me, eating a high fat, low carb diet works. Now, I'm not going to go out there and say, Okay, well, you should all go keto, like, get rid of all the carbs in your fridge, and just focus on eating eggs, and fat and all this kind of stuff. Because that isn't gonna work for everybody. But I've tried it and I've tested it, I've eaten loads of carbs, or you know, carb rich diet. And I know how I felt eating that diet. I've also tried protein, protein heavy. I've also tried fat, predominately fat diets. And for me, my energy levels, when I eat predominantly fat, are up here and they're consistent. I know that when I'm drinking my bulletproof coffee in the morning, and again, it's not for everybody, but for me works really well. Because if I have that coffee in the morning, I know I can go all day with a client, I don't have to stop. I don't have to stop for lunch, I don't have to stop for breaks, my energy is up here and it stays down. And I can serve that client all day long. I can get there at nine, I can finish at seven. And then I can go and get a bite to eat on the way home. And I'm cool. That works for me. I'm not saying that that's how you should live your life or how your listeners should live their life. But try it. That's what I'm saying it's time to experiment and see what works for themselves in terms of

22:32  
diet or sleep or optimising. But before we go there, I'm going to bring back the conversation to Taekwondo and the gold medal they got on the World Championship. What was very, I was very

22:49  
surprised when I heard you saying that this gold medal means nothing. So I want to

22:57  
to ask you about that. So not long after you started doing Taekwondo, you won the gold medal in a world championship. And

23:09  
most people would consider that to be maybe the apex of their achievements. So what what do you say that it means nothing?

23:18  
Great question. And I think this is again, a really important point for people to take away and consider. So I started Taekwondo in 2013, I became a champion within two months, and down at the wealth closed.

23:32  
From that point, I was hooked. I was competing, every competition I could get to I became English champion, Welsh champion, British champion. And then the World Championships was announced for 2016. Now this was the first World Championships after the one where I'd found out my instructor originally said, Hey, can I come along to class this weekend?

23:52  
Now, I remember thinking Christ, if you'd have said to me back then, that the next time This World Championships comes around, you're going to be competing, not only that, you're going to walk away with a fucking medal. I'd have just been like, You're crazy. So why have you been smoking?

24:09  
So I kind of, again, from taking this philosophy of just what do I think I can't do while I'm going to go and do that. My whole life became an experiment. No, I think I can't do it. Well prove it. Let's prove it. Maybe I can't do it, but that I'm going to try.

24:25  
And so I became obsessed with searching out peak performance. How do I get to peak performance? How do I realise my maximum potential in both my mind my cognitive function, my body, my physical ability, my relationships, every aspect of my life, became a peak performance hacker if you like, and

24:46  
the World Championships was like the ultimate test. And a year out from that. I remember sitting down I was like,

24:54  
I've got to do this. And I just decided that I was gonna walk away with the World Championship.

25:00  
Metal actually had the goal of walking away with three cars, hey, go big or go home, right? So I'm gonna answer all these events, I'm going to get golden patterns gonna get golden individual sparring and golden Taksim events. And I trained my ass off, like I was training in Taekwondo classes five, six times a week. In the evenings, I was training every morning as well. So I was getting up and doing either kettlebell workout or Bali bodyweight. callisthenics, go for runs, you know, whatever it was, I was kind of an in 2013, as well, I'd had a major shift mindset wise in terms of my business and where I was out with my family business. And at that point, I decided to retrain as a as a pts personal trainer.

25:46  
For two reasons. One, I wanted something to fall back on. And we'll talk a little bit about that shortly. But also, I recognise that in order to be the best fighter, I needed to

25:58  
work with somebody who knew what they were talking about when it came to health and fitness and diet. And I thought, right, I can either invest 1000s of pounds over the next 12 months in a PT. Or I could just qualify and learn it all and do it myself. So I thought, fuck it, I'll just do it myself. And it was a really interesting experience. But it gave me all the knowledge and tools I needed to curate my own training for the World Championship. So in short, I worked my ass off. And, you know, this was 2016. So in 2015, we had started with a business mentor, we, our business, our family business, was stagnated at around 2 million turnover. And we needed it to be more to feed us and to give us the lives that we wanted, we needed it to be more. And we started working with this business coach with the goal of doubling that revenue in 12 months. So that was from October 15, October 16. So while I was was the business, about the business, so the family business is called studio people still running today. My brother, my brother runs it today, with my mom and my dad, so they will sit on the board. And it's a very niche construction business. Okay, in fact, so we were designing and building and they still do creative environments for the media industry. So recording studios. I mean, we did studios for the libertines, we did studios for people, who I can't really mentioned the name of but we did a lot of commercial educational work as well. So it was a very interesting clients. It was very interesting work, but essentially construction. And as I say we'd kind of stagnated at 2 million turnover. And so in 2016, we were in the process of growing to four and a half million, which we did in that 12 months, which was just phenomenal. So you know, we're delivering 500 600 grands worth of work a month at this point. I'm training 12 times a week for the World Championships. I'm raising a young family. And I was also qualifying for my for my PT qualification, to the point where I actually went and did my my personal trainer level three assessment with all the coursework had to be in two weeks before the world championships. So it was like all of this stuff. And summer for that business was like super mad busy as well. So everything was coming to a head. And I shouldn't have been as prepared as I was. But I got to the World Championships I put all this work in, I'd got down to seven, seven kilos.

28:21  
So I was where I needed to be to be in the middle weights. And

28:28  
it was a really interesting day. Now, the reason I say it means nothing is because

28:35  
the events and accomplishments in the past. They don't define us. Like

28:43  
I am not a world champion.

28:46  
Now, people introduced me as one. I've won a world championship medal. Okay. But ultimately that medal means nothing. And it's just a talisman. It's just a reminder. And I'll tell you what, it's a reminder off because the real value is in who I had to become in the process. Who did I need to become in order to be in a position at that event where I could compete at that level? And so the chance of winning that medal? That is what's going to stay with me and has stayed with me and what I built on from that moment, since

29:21  
the medal means nothing. Like you hear people, especially in martial arts,

29:26  
where they say, Oh, yeah, you know, you tell them you do it like, Oh, yeah, I used to do karate, or I used to do this.

29:35  
Okay, but you're not doing it now. And I for me, I am trained really in the last 12 months. So for me to sit here, when I've trained winter, the German right kind of stuff. I'm trained to Taekwondo because I haven't had the time with the young family in the business and everything else. I've had to manage my priorities. And unfortunately, that's one of the things that had to take a backseat.

29:54  
So for me to sit here and say, I'm a world champion in Taekwondo. Well, I'm not

30:00  
Because if you put me in that position right now, I'm not going to fare very well, because I'm not conditioned, I haven't been training I haven't been putting the work in. I'm not a world champion that sits here today. But everything that I develop the the mindset, the personality, the the physicality, all of the things that I learned through putting in the work through exercising that discipline, in getting ready for that event, that's the stuff that stayed with me, the metal sits on my shelf, and one day will tend to rust in the ground, right? No one gives a shit about that.

30:33  
What really has made a difference to me and to my family, and to the people in my life and my business, like, the skills and the things that I've learned from that and who I became as a result has been transferable into every other aspects of my life. That's where the value is, the value is in the process. You know, it reminded me of that quote, by getting the German philosopher that said that what you get by achieving your goals is not as important as who you become Yes, by achieving the goals. And that's exactly what you're telling I agree completely, I understand what you mean. But people died out on it, you know, and I've run a marathon. So I'm a marathon runner, I've I won there. So I want that as like, Yeah, but that was 20 years ago. I, there's, that's living in the past the same way as someone who lives in the past around their mistakes, or things that they fucked up, or, you know, wish that they could go back and do this or do that. It's like, that's this. It's, it's a different side of it, but you're still living in the past. Yeah, that's great that you achieve that, but there's still work to do. You still have work to do. And if you're saying, I, I've achieved that, and like, I've kind of reached my Apex reached my Pinnacle, or what the fox left? Where do you go from there? It's like the the men who stood on the moon, I, they, most of them, if not all of them struggled massively with,

31:58  
with mental disorders, with depression with anxiety, and just a complete lack of direction in their lives. Because let's face it, when you stood on the fucking moon, and you've looked back at your home planet in space,

32:11  
where do you go from there?

32:13  
You know, so, yeah. to, to, to live in the past like that. I don't think it's healthy. Yeah, it's cool. I want a medal. I great. But all my medals are in boxes, part of that one, it sits on the, on the shelf in my office, and

32:30  
everything else is in a box, because it just doesn't mean a damn thing. You know, what have I got left? I don't want to be focused on what I achieved, I want to be I want to be focused on what have I got left to to achieve? What's next? Where am I going? What's the next big thing. And that kind of leads into another point around, you're never going to get there, right? We all have this idea, this ideal of who we would like to be the person, like, the character, the person at the light version of us, yeah, just the perfect version of ourselves. Like, here's a bombshell for you. Never gonna happen, like, whoever you are, wherever you are, the reality of the fact is, you are never going to get there. So don't don't disillusion yourself. And the reason for that is, the only thing that's guaranteed in this life is change. day to day things change, the earth changes, the environment changes you and I change everything day in day out changes is the only thing that's guaranteed one day, you will die.

33:28  
fact, it's all going to change. And because you're always changing, and everything that you do, your ideal version of yourself is always changing. So the ideal version of yourself that you've held yesterday, is not the ideal version of yourself that you held today. Because you've grown, you've evolved, you've moved forward or backwards. And so that's changed. And so you're never going to get to this one because it's now this one, and tomorrow will be a different one. And the next day, it'll be a different one. So this idea that you're going to get to a place, this idea that you're going to achieve success is absolute bollocks. Put quite bluntly, because it's never going to happen. And I think that's part of what people struggle with. When they start to accumulate some wealth. They start to get some options in their lives. And they look around them and they think, well, this stuff, I'm successful,

34:24  
but I don't feel successful.

34:26  
And that causes some big problems mentally, cognitively for them. But when you accept and appreciate that, as you never going to get there, it's never going to happen. You're never going to feel like you, you are that ideal. Like you've reached that point of success. It's always something that you're striving for. It's not about the destination. See, it's about the journey, and it's about the process. That's where the value is and that's what I'm saying about the world championships is it's like that achievement that moment in time. It's like an orgasm right? It's there for a second

35:00  
And then it's gone. Yeah, I where's the funny sex? It's the foreplay. It's the stuff leading up to it. It's the teasing. It's all of that cool stuff. The orgasm. Oh, me wrong. I love a good orgasm this as much as the next guy. Right? But it's the end. Yeah. And then you're looking forward to the next thing. And it's the same thing with winning a medal. Like, it's not about the medal. It's about the process. Everything's about the process. So quit. Like, yes, you have to have a destination in mind. You've got to have a vision, a mission? Yes, yeah, goal, something that you're working towards 100%, you've got to have direction in your life. And that's going to mean something to you. But you've got to know that you're never going to get there. And that's a bit of a head Fuck, because I will have got these goals that I want to achieve. But I'm never going to achieve a bro you will achieve goals. But there's always further to go.

35:56  
But it's about the process. Like happiness is not a destination. fulfilment is not a destination. It's about here. And now. How can you be fulfilled, happy and satisfied here in this moment, because the past doesn't exist, the future is never going to come. The only moment we've got is this one right now. And that sounds cliche as hell, but it's the truth I you can live in the past. But guess what, you can't change it, you can learn some stuff from it through self awareness and introspection. You can learn stuff from visualising the future and they can feed you now in terms of inspiration, motivation and and driving you forward is driving you towards something, but ain't never gonna happen. Like tomorrow never comes. It's only today. So we need to be aware of all this other stuff, but not too invested in it. And really focused and invested in right now. How can we live our best life right now? How can we be grateful for what we have here today? Because part of the problem with personal development and positive thinking is that when you're so focused and invested in where you want to be, all you're doing is creating this pain and this gap between where you are now on what you see as Tom, I really want that I wish so much I could be there. Don't do that to yourself. Yeah, have an idea of what you'd like to progress to. But you have to find

37:19  
the, you have to ground yourself in now. Like, I'm not where I ultimately want to. But I've got so much more that I want to achieve. But at the same time, if I died tomorrow, I'd be happy man. I don't need that. I want it. And right here right now I've got I've got everything I need. I've got food on the table, I've got a house to live in. I've got beautiful children, I've got a wonderful, I was lucky enough to meet my soulmate. You know, I've got my parents still both alive. I've got that the sun is shining, the sky is blue. I'm sat here with a phenomenal human being having a wonderful conversation that's going to potentially changed somebody's life somewhere fucking on what's not to love? You know? Yeah, could be, I wouldn't mind having a few four hours on the drive or Tesla and maybe an Aston Martin, also a bigger house in the countryside and more holidays in a year and all this stuff. But like, I don't need it. I don't need it. Because I've got everything I need right here and now. And I think when you exist and live in that space, it's so much easier to get to where you want to be because you're not living in scarcity you're not living in, I haven't got that. which is essentially when you're you're so invested and focused in what's over there. And what's in the future is that you're living in scarcity now. And that exudes from you, you put out that energy in the situation's you're into the people that you meet, and people pick up on that. And so you're less likely to get that buying an investment from them in the things that the ways that you want to progress and the things that you want to do. I think that's a really important point for people to just consider. Maybe you don't agree and that's that's cool. No one's right. No one's wrong. There's no such thing as right and wrong. I think there's that misconception that success is something that is clearly defined. And once we reach that we become successful are made, we made it and then we'll be happy and blissful From then on, which is really not like that at all. Because achievements is one thing. fulfilment is something completely different. And you can go from achievement to achievement to the next achievement, and never have having that fulfilment in your life, which is, as Tony Robbins says, the ultimate failure if you keep on achieving and you don't feel in any fulfilment. Absolutely.

39:42  
You mentioned something earlier, actually, many of the things that you were just saying reminded me of stoic philosophy, which I know that you are a fan of. Yes. So you mentioned earlier about dying and remembering your talk at the evolve net curve you said about the momentum.

40:00  
Morning concept in the Dallas man that reminds you of the fact that we are mortal and that we're about to die. So what are your thoughts on how has that changed your decisions in life?

40:15  
massively.

40:18  
The momento Mori.

40:20  
For those have not heard about it, I have a coin in my wallet, which I bought from the daily stoic. And I bought it at the end of 2017 2017, for me was a really, really difficult year, it was probably the most difficult and painful year of my life.

40:35  
The business that I was in with my family was very fraught, we'd grown massively through to the end of 2016.

40:43  
And we've made we've done four and a half million in sales. But we hadn't made any money. And we'd racked up a bunch of that and all of this other stuff, because we didn't grow sustainably, we didn't have the structure, we didn't have the systems in place to support a business at that level of revenue. And

41:05  
so in 2017, end of 2016, I was made MD of that company.

41:11  
And obviously working alongside the rest of the family, but I was given the title of MD. And my job was essentially to look at the previous year. And look at all the mistakes that we've made, and with the board, come up with and implement solutions that were going to make the business stronger, and give us the infrastructure, we needed to support that level of business moving forwards. And unfortunately, my idea of where I wanted to take the business, how I believed we should behave as owners, directors, leaders and mentors in that business was very different to the way the rest of my family felt the rest of the board felt. And so that led to a lot of disagreements, a lot of arguments. And this, this isn't just like, you can have some politics and some shit to deal with in business. Usually, when family were involved, there's so much more emotion involved, it's so much more personal. And for me that year was really, really tough. You know, I wasn't seeing my family, I was I was

42:14  
looking back, if I'm honest, I didn't know how bad it was, then I knew it was bad, and I struggled.

42:22  
But looking back now, being out of it for almost two years, I can see that that really massively affected me massively affected me. And at the end of that year,

42:34  
we've done what we set out to do, we put the systems in place, we've got the structure reorganise the business, and we've got the profitability back up, we were projecting a good five, 6 million in sales for the next 12 months. So we'd got the great result. But it was obvious at the end of that year that

42:53  
my my future, I had two choices, I could either stay in that business and accept the fact that my money wasn't really gonna change.

43:02  
I was always going to be the Son, and the minority shareholder, I was never going to have the level of control that I wanted. And so I was never going to be able to do business in the way that I felt I needed to do business in alignment with my values, not to say I'm right, and they're wrong, or vice versa, just that I needed to be in alignment with my values. Or I left the family business left everything that I built and worked for. And I stepped out into the world of business on my own, I start my own business. And I bought that coin at that time to help me through making those decisions. I'd recently discovered stoic philosophy. And I can remember it like I was yesterday I was stood outside my house in my back garden, it was Christmas time.

43:52  
And it was freezing cold. And just stood there turning the coin over my fingers. And this was a really difficult decision to make for me. Like I'd invested 11 years of my life in this business, I'd worked my way up from being a labourer on the shop floor to you know, through pretty much every department up to managing director there was no one in that business, who had as much knowledge in as many different areas as I did.

44:17  
And the team that I built, you know, I'd hired people I'd hired and coached people and, and mentored people and been there for them. And we'd had highs and lows and all of these experiences together. And the hardest thing for me in deciding to walk away from that was walking away from those relationships and walking away from the team that I had built and the people that I'd hired.

44:39  
But that coin helped give me some clarity, because it helped me think it helped me some great questions. And the great question it helped me asked in it again, ties into stoic philosophy. There's a story in stoicism, whereby it tells about I can't remember the names or any of the specifics but there was a king and one day this king over here is one of his

45:00  
servants, ambassadors, whatever it was talking to some of the other servants who are saying, Ah, this king, he's got an easy life, he just sits on his throne and orders people around, and he's got all this wealth and all this amazing food,

45:15  
Bali for him kind of thing. It's all right for him. And the king overheard this. And rather than berate him or behead him, or whatever it was in the moment, he The next day, called him to the throne, and he made him sit in the throne for the day.

45:33  
The twist here is that above that throne, he suspended a sword, tied by a hair, to the rafters above the Throne, yes. And he said to the servant, he said, you're going to sit there in that throne for the whole day, knowing that that sword could fall and kill you at any moment. And that will give you some idea of what it is like for me to sit in that throne. Now I can be attacked, my family could be kidnapped and murdered, there are so many things that could have happened, that this is not an easy life. And to appreciate that life could be taken from you right now, at any moment. And so for me, in standing outside of my house and turning that coin over my fingers, I asked myself the question, if I stay in this business, and in six months time, I get hit by a bus or something happens to me where I'm going to die. And I'm laying on my deathbed.

46:32  
I'm taking my last breaths, and I'm thinking about my life. And I consider this decision I make here today. If I stay in that business, how will I feel about that decision?

46:43  
And I couldn't bear it

46:45  
to be sat on my deathbed. And to know that I made the decision to stay, I would have regretted that so much I couldn't have.

46:54  
I just couldn't live with myself.

46:57  
And that was all the answer I needed. When I looked at what, you know, if when I die, if my life was taken from me right now. And I made that decision, how would I feel where I feel like I made the best decision for myself? Would I feel like I made the best decision for my family for that for that business, even for those people in that business? Because obviously,

47:18  
having a board of directors that isn't agreeing that isn't getting on. That's not healthy. That's not healthy for a business, if your leadership team is pulling in opposite directions, if they're arguing if there's infighting, how do you think that filters down to the rest of the team that in and of itself was weakening the business and I recognise that.

47:37  
So I knew in that moment that although it was a really difficult decision, and a really scary decision, I, I built our business from two to four and a half million, but the prospect of starting a business, like starting something from nothing. I never done that before. And so it was a big risk for me.

47:56  
But nonetheless, as big as the risk was as scary as that was, and as much as I hated the feeling of walking away, you know, that feeling of quitting failing.

48:06  
I knew that it was the right choice, because when I reflected from my deathbed wasn't on my deathbed. But that's a really powerful exercise to do. When I reflected from my deathbed, instantly the clarity came, I knew I had to do. So

48:19  
I use that whenever I have a big decision to make. And

48:24  
just try and take the emotion out of it and look at what would I feel, you know, do the armchair test when I'm at sat on my armchair, and I look back on this, this decision, how I feel about it, that that, for me is one of the most powerful perspective driving exercises I've ever done and continue to do. And that all comes from stoic philosophy. And I love the way that they think about the world. And the, I mean, some of the books that the daily stoic and some of Ryan holidays books, I just think are excellent, you know, the way that they talk about how the mind works, and how to think it's not

48:59  
that there's no blame. It's all taking personal responsibility for everything. And I love that because you know, what, if I own everything, if I'm responsible for everything in my life, I've got the power to change it all. salutely Absolutely. And it's funny how, after 2000 years, that philosophy is still as relevant as it has ever been. And you said about the deathbed and looking back and I just realised right now that Steve Jobs must have been a big fan of stories is because he said that death is the best advisor that because in the face of death, everything else collapses, the lack of the fear of failure or the fear of judgement. Everything else is non relevant. If you're faced with this show. It was his own

49:52  
counsellor in taking the big decisions in life, which, to me is that removes a lot of the bullshit In short,

50:00  
You know, we were talking about this before. But once again, the death exercise is really powerful. Yes, from personal perspective making your own decisions.

50:09  
But it's also really powerful when you're dealing with people. And we were talking before about kids, and I've got a lot of kids. And anyone who's got kids knows how fucking downright challenging they can be sometimes, right? Sometimes you do literally want to grab them around the neck and strangle the little fuckers. But you don't, obviously. But in those moments, here's what I do know, some of those moments like you're at the end of your tether, every parent's been there, you at the end of your tether, you're ready to just give up collapse, you feel like you can have a nervous breakdown. In those moments, I go to one place, and that is

50:46  
I'm gonna put my kids to bed tonight, and they're not gonna wake up tomorrow morning, they're gonna die and asleep or die or something will happen and they'll be gone.

50:57  
Every time I go there, I 100% feel that I would give anything and everything I have in my life, I would even give my own life in order to spend 10 seconds with them again, if that happened, at their worst, I would I would give everything to spend just a minute. When they're kicking, screaming, tantrums, beating each other up, I would give everything for that.

51:23  
And, again, when you invite that perspective into your life, you can deal with everything. Right? It doesn't matter what my kids do, or my kids certainly. And look, I'm not the perfect parent all the time, I'm really not. But when you have that perspective, and when you look at it through those eyes of like, Listen, my kids might not be here tomorrow, that really does help drive how you behave today and how you deal with them in the moment. Two very powerful change of perception. If you do it like that. It's hard, though, you know, to think those things too. I bet there'll be people listening to this. You've got kids who are like fuck like that. That's brutal. How can you think of your kids? Why would you even think that? Because it makes me a better parent, because it makes me a better person, because it means I can show up at a higher level for them in the moment. That's why I do it. It's like, I'm not wishing that on my kids Christ that would break my soul. Absolutely not anything with with death is that people think that by not talking about it, they somehow are immune.

52:24  
If we talk about it, then we bring it closer. Yeah, that works. Yeah. That's nothing like that at all. We must talk about it and realise that it's the same destination we all share. Yes, Coleman.

52:39  
JB, let me take the conversation a little bit different direction. And there is a topic that I know you're very passionate about. And that's the language we use. So the power of the language and how we can change it or tweak it or hack it, as you say, to have quicker results or maybe or better learning. And show I want your thoughts on the language and also your thoughts on using swearing and the profanity.

53:13  
Well, I'm dead against swearing, I never swear, I think it's an absolutely atrocious person. I'm not.

53:19  
You might have noticed I do sweat a little bit. And I think everybody should swear more. That's that's exactly what I'm asking you tell us your thoughts on language, how it affects us and how we can? And the very end, what is it that you want to achieve by firing? Sure. It was it's more than a matter of habit, isn't it? You use it.

53:43  
Sometimes, strategically, you were telling me to do your coaching and things like that? Yeah, it's

53:50  
sometimes I'll just kind of drop it in, I'm always very aware of when I swear. And I know I do it more than most and I'm more vocal with sentence enhancers and like to call them in public format than some other people are now, people like Gary Vee, get criticised for it. When I swear a lot. There are other people who are in the personal development coaching space who swear a lot others who don't swear at all, and there's different schools of thought around it. I've had lots of conversations about this, both with my partner and my best mate, Kevin and various other people. And there's lots of different schools of thought and the general school of thought is that it makes you you come across less professional, and it's gonna turn people off. And whereas I totally appreciate where that comes from, and I agree to a certain extent.

54:39  
It's, it's part of the human language. And I, I don't believe in censorship, okay. I don't believe in the censorship of ideas. I don't believe in censorship of language. And I think probably one of the best things we can talk about here is okay, well, how do you feel about your kids swearing them, but I don't want my kids swearing but my kids do swear. I know.

55:00  
Like Not, not my younger ones, and we don't let them swear, what I mean is, like, I've got some my kids are 124 811 and 14, right? So firstly, try keeping all those fuckers happy at the same time ain't gonna happen. But the older kids, they're swearing in school, I know they are. Because when I was that age, I was swearing in school, like they're exposed to that stuff. It's happening. What I want is not to stop them from swearing, I want them to understand how to use it and how to use it with effect.

55:34  
But also, to use it strategically, to make it have a point. But to make it for it to be an option. Like I don't have to swear to eloquently get my point across. It's a choice. Now, if you don't have the vocabulary, and swearing is the only way that you can express certain things and emotions. I think that's very different. That's very different from if you've read a lot of my blogs, Aggie, and yeah, there's some swearing in some of those. But for the most part, I can get my point across in a very eloquent way, without using a single swear word, I don't need to swear, it's a choice. I use it for effect. Because when you drop an F bomb, when you say a word that is more caustic, it sharpens the attention, it's going to grab people's minds. And so when you use that strategically, whether that's in a coaching conversation, whether it's in a social conversation, when you can use it strategically to add energy to the conversation to anchor a certain point. It's a great way to do that. And like you were saying, at the end of the day, swearing is just like, fuck is just another word in the English language. It's a great, very versatile verse, I was just gonna say that. That's a video that Kevin showed me that is like, all the different ways. Talk me. Fuck, that's amazing. Fuck you. Like there's so many different ways that you can use that word. And it can be used in so many positive ways, as well as so many negative ways. And it like it really depends on culture. I was listening to a story.

57:17  
The other day, I think it was on the Joe Rogan podcast and a guy talking about how he's from Minnesota. And one of the things that they do to greet each other as mates is they'll they'll flip the bird you know, the middle finger is a fucker. And as I know, he said how he was he did that to one of his friends he was going around to help with I think it was a renovation project in a different state. And the guy put them on the floor, you want to fucking fight me.

57:42  
And he's like proper offended he was he was ready to get get physical. And he's like, Whoa, No, dude, I come from Minnesota. That's the jet. And a lot of it's just that cultural difference of how you what you've been taught that means and how you've been taught to interpret that. I don't see though. There's lots of words, there's lots of phrases that you can use that people could choose to be offended to.

58:09  
people choose to be offended by swear words. Exactly. But where does that come from? It comes from the conditioning around what that means in a societal and cultural sense, right? So it's not that swearing is intrinsically bad, but you're battling with the perceptions of other people. Now, if I didn't care about how I connected with people, and building a business and building a brand, and all of that stuff, I might swear an awful lot more.

58:41  
And it is a consideration in business. When you're a thought leader when you're an influencer when you're building a brand. You've got to be strategic and think right. Okay, well in my industry.

58:51  
Yeah. How accepted is this. Now, like I said, I'm not a fan of censorship. I'm gonna swear regardless, I'll change how much I swear there are some shows I go on to do interviews with and it's it's a no swear zone, like they don't allow swearing on the show. And that's fine. I can do that. Like I said, I've got the option. Yeah, I can express my, my views and opinions very eloquently without using swear words. But it's a part of who I am. And I think it's okay to add some energy and add some shock sometimes by using those words. And it's real to me, I don't have to think about either I'm gonna I'm gonna put a fucking every other word here. It just kind of comes naturally. I don't feel like I swear too much, really, that it becomes counting afterwards and give you let me know.

59:37  
But but it's always in context. And I never do it in an offensive way. I'm never saying a fuck you your deck, you know, unless you want maybe a day. But in all seriousness, I wouldn't do that. I'm using it to you know, if you look at the way I use it in this conversation, you can see I'm using it to just add a bit of energy to add a bit of emphasis to help anchor a point that I'm trying to make

1:00:00  
And if swearing is, I feel a good way to do that. If in my experience that has worked, then I'm going to continue to do that. And I think coming back to your wider point, language is super, super important. The way we talk to ourselves like when someone says a swear word, what do you say to yourself about that? Ask yourself that. Why are you offended? What's the problem? Really? What you're offended because I used an F, A USC and a K, all in one word together. Why?

1:00:31  
Now, there's the argument that so I've spoken to other people about this. And I've said, well, it can make your content inaccessible to the younger generation. People may not want to listen to your content when they're around. They're young kids. Okay, valid point. Yes, totally agree with that, but your fucking headphones in.

1:00:52  
You know what I mean, though, like, in terms of been accessible to the younger generation, like I said, my eight year old and my 11 year old are around swearing in school.

1:01:02  
It's it's hard to pretend that if we avoid swearing, there is no swearing out there. It's gonna go away. But I again, I'd rather I know that my older kids listen to my podcast, the optimise me now podcast, right. I swear. I'm very real, very honest. And that's what the authenticity is about what that what that podcast is all about. I know, they listened to that. I know that they watch my content on YouTube and Facebook and my lives and like kind of stuff and the swearing in that stuff. Yeah. And I have a problem with it. Because I know they're around swearing. But I know they're around swearing that's not necessarily used in the right way. Because it's being used by 810 and 11 year olds, you know, so they're just chucking them in here. And they're they're using it to be offensive and derogatory in my doing all the stuff that we used to do with swear words when we were in school. Yeah, so look.

1:01:55  
So I love the fact that I listened to my content, because they're hearing how those words should be used. Because they're hearing me use it to the Home Use it as anchors, they hear me use it to affect a point that they're hearing me use it in context. And so I'm teaching them inadvertently, look, these words exist and built by by me not talking about it, that doesn't make them not exist, they're going to come across those words. And this comes, I think, from my childhood, whereby I lived a very sheltered life in a lot of ways when I was a child. I mean, we always did that in the country. So I wasn't mixing with all the town kids and going out playing at night, and all this kind of stuff. So in a lot of ways, I was very naive to, not not to necessarily swearing, but some of the slang swearing like mine Quran like classify as a kid, embarrassingly, and really know what that meant. And so people were using that at me. And I didn't know I couldn't, I didn't understand it. It just made me it disempower me, it decimated my confidence. And I'm like a fucking idiot, because I didn't understand like, just because you don't talk about that stuff, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because you don't focus on or talk about murder, rape, and pillaging The world doesn't mean isn't happening. So I feel it's better to get that stuff out into the open and to make it a conversation, a meaningful conversation that can educate and inspire and say, No, you don't have to just inspire people about a way to be inspirational, so comes from ways to not be like I look at the people in my life. And I'll say, right, actually, there's some really cool qualities i'd love. I'd love to emulate that. I want to be more like that. I want to bring more of that into my life equally. I look at those same people and other people and go,

1:03:43  
Jesus, I want to be like you. I that inspires me to go in the opposite way. Because I can see how that's negatively affecting not only you, but the people around you. So inspiration comes in both forms. But I think it's important that we're prepared to have all the conversations, swearing, not the bad stuff that goes on in the world, the good stuff, that positive language, but give,

1:04:06  
give them context, show them how those things should be used. And then they can make up their own minds about whether they use them or not. For me, I've I've spent so my history is I spent years playing in a rock band. Guess what? People in a rock band swear? Yeah, it's Sex, drugs and fucking rock and roll, man. Yeah. And then from there, I went into my family business, which is a construction business. Do you think builders swear?

1:04:32  
Right? Not just the builders on site, the guys in the in the office of the main contractor like that, that industry? people swear it's vulgar the stuff that people talk about the way that people express themselves? Yeah. And sometimes in that sense, because they don't have the vocabulary to express that feeling in a more eloquent way.

1:04:55  
And that's okay. My point is that my whole life

1:05:00  
My parents always swore as well. So I was always exposed to that. Like, I'm very desensitised to it, because I've always been around it. And I've always seen it as just another part of communication rather than never being exposed to it. And then all of a sudden in later life coming across people who swear in me Oh, oh my god, I can't believe you just said that to me. Like, so what? Yeah, and I think a lot of that comes down to exposure, how much has a given person been exposed to that kind of language, because it's been proven like, the more you're exposed to the word fuck that the more desensitised you become to it. And the more you use it, and the more that you are around people who use it, the more you understand, and the more that you know, how that word can be used, and how versatile it is, how many different applications it has in life. And, like I say, I can I can use the word fuck to amplify negative emotion to amplify positive to greet somebody. I mean, when I left, I dropped out of college and I went to work at Pizza Hut full time, the banter we used to have in the kitchens was insane. Like the way we used to greet each other when we were when we were teenagers. I decade as they go, like, but it depends how you say it. But that's my point. It's not about the words, we get so hung up on this bullshit. It is not even about that. It's about the intention behind it. Like if I'm walking up to people in the street and saying, you know, you're a fucking dick. Well, then I'm a deck, you know, but if if we're mates and that's just how we understand that we communicate and greet each other because really, it's just a bit of banter. We're just having a laugh. where's where's the heart? There's nothing wrong, there's no harm. It's it's

1:06:38  
the conditioning. And in some ways, the hypocrisy of the society that this is something that is bad. And yeah, it shouldn't be done, which, and and that's a great point, you say that all society thinks this is something that's bad. Well, tell me this. And your listeners listening now. Right? Think about it. What actually is good and bad. Dean, Dean Foxx, who was one of the other speakers last night, he did a really interesting exercise where he looked at he wrote success and failure top and bottom on the board, and then drew a line between them and said, Right, well, where where's the dividing line? Like, is it halfway? Is it closer to success? Like Where? Where? Where does it stop becoming success and start becoming failure? Yeah, well, the same applies here.

1:07:26  
What what is good and bad? Where does a good thing turn to a bad thing? what's right and what's wrong? Well, I'll tell you what those things all are. They're all the same thing. Good, bad, right and wrong. All they are is an experience. If you think in terms of chunks, you've got this level here of good bad, right? Wrong. If you trunk up from that, well, what are all of those things are all an experience all of them? What makes them good or bad? What makes them right or wrong? Is our perception of ships, our opinion, our social conditioning? That's it. There's no intrinsic right or wrong in this world? Now that's a headlock for some people. It's difficult for some people to grasp that concept. Yeah. Because you look at things like flying planes into the twin towers in America, right? For me, atrocious, atrocious, it's wrong. It's bad. But it's not intrinsically wrong or bad. Because ultimately, and I hate to break this to you, the universe does not give a fuck about planet Earth.

1:08:24  
Like, we are but a speck of dust. We're not even a speck of dust in the grand cosmos. No one in the grand scheme of the universe gives a shit whether the human race survives and prospers, or gets blown up by an asteroid. We care. Yeah, that's up to us. Yes. But ultimately, if the earth got destroyed tomorrow, what changes in the universe? Nothing, nothing. So this whole idea of the universe has got your back, like the universe doesn't give a shit the universe just is. It's just there. And we are so small and so insignificant, one of the

1:09:01  
one of the best things I ever did was get into astronomy. And I'll never forget, when I first got my telescope, I set it up in my parents backyard, very dark where they lived. And I was so so excited, because this thing's that GPS and like, you just align it and you can pointed all this cool stuff. And I remember lining it cuz you got appointed at three bright stars or three bright objects in the sky in different areas of the sky, appointed this first one, and just a star. So you when you look at a star through a telescope, it's still a point of light because there 1000s hundreds of 1000s of light years away.

1:09:38  
And then I rotated it around, and other stars that get that one. And I'd already kind of got it in focus. I pointed it at this star line up through the Finder scope. And when I looked through the eyepiece, it blew my mind, because when I looked through the eyepiece, I didn't see a star. I saw Saturn and not only that, I saw Saturn

1:10:00  
Get the bands as well, I saw the rings around, and I was like, Oh my god, like What the actual fuck, this is just crazy. And I was thinking about it. And I've actually written a blog about this.

1:10:15  
In that moment, I was touching that planet, I was energetically connected directly to that planet. And here's why

1:10:24  
the light photons that were created in the sun took hundreds of 1000s of years to move all the way through the sun to be ejected from the surface, that constant stream of photon energy was streamed out and hit Saturn, it's interacting with the matter in the planet and bouncing off the rings and bouncing off the ice and a rock and the clouds of gas. And then it bounced off that and came directly towards Earth and pass through our atmosphere and hit the glass of my telescope, and came directly through into my eye. And it's a constant stream of photons. It's like this laser beam, which is connecting me physically, energetically to that planet. And I was like, wow, because you don't get that from looking at a picture.

1:11:09  
And that experience for me know, when you start looking at nebulae, when you start looking at and looking at em 51, like the Whirlpool Galaxy, and how it's eating up this other guy's and you can see these spirals, and you're looking at this and you're thinking,

1:11:25  
that is a galaxy, with hundreds of billions of stars. How many planets, and that's one galaxy. If you take a five pence piece, and you hold it at arm's length, and look at the night sky. Behind that five pence piece is around 10,000 galaxies in the observable universe.

1:11:49  
Just think about that for a second. Even if you said each one of those galaxies had 100 billion stars

1:11:55  
10,000 of those fuckers behind one five pence piece, you extrapolate that across the whole of the nice sky around the whole earth. That is insane. And when you look at that, when when you connect with that, it's so humbling, because you look at the vastness of that, and you realise how small and insignificant all of your shit really is.

1:12:20  
And that's one of the one of the things I get from growing up in the mountains, is

1:12:27  
when you're up on a mountain, when you're up at the summit, down here, like I'm, I'm kind of I'm smaller than a lot of stuff. I'm way smaller than Colchester. I'm way smaller than London and England and all of this stuff.

1:12:43  
So all of my problems seem relatively large comparison. Again, this all comes back to perspective. When I'm off on a mountain Aggie, I can block whole swathes of the country out with my finger, with my fingernail, I can hold up my finger and I can block out a mountain

1:13:00  
relative to me, everything is smaller. All of my problems or my challenges, everything going on in the world is nothing.

1:13:09  
Because you're standing on the top and relative to you. It all just falls away. And that calmness, that serenity, that

1:13:17  
sense of it not being the be all and we've got, we're so self important, right as a race as human beings and as part of why we've been so successful. But we need to be very careful with that. Because we're not all that. We're not all that. And we're not that important. And it can be detrimental to us sometimes to

1:13:39  
have an inflated view of our problems and our challenges. And it's it's so rewarding to just take a step back from that and go You know what, there's there's 100 billion stars in that galaxy right there. There's stuff exploding, there's probably other life forms and other life. You just think about that you've got 10,000 galaxies with 100 billion stars in each behind a five pence piece. You're telling me that there is another life out there no chance in hell. You know, you look at things like the Drake Equation. If you've never heard of that, go and look it up. You can play with the numbers yourself. The odds are either there is other life 100% Yeah. And that is such a humbling thought when you can see the vastness of everything and see how small you are in relation to that. It just makes everything that you've seen saw as insurmountable Melton meltaway.

1:14:28  
This was the first part of the conversation with Jamie Keeling. The second half is on next episode number 117.

1:14:39  
Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and rate it on Apple podcasts. And also share this episode with someone who you think will benefit from it. If you want to find out more about what I do and gain access to exclusive content, join my facebook group but for development mastery. The link is

1:15:00  
The show notes or you can simply type beat.ny sluss PDM group

1:15:06  
and until next time, stand out. don't fit in

Transcribed by https://otter.ai