Are you a slave to your emotions?
Good morning, everybody. It is the first Friday of Octagon two point o. So for you guys who have started this week, just got a grip to the week, awesome. Week one is all about just getting into the flow. Even if you did workout, two, just tracked your macros a few times, got familiar with the group, joined a WhatsApp group, joined a few calls, listened to a few seminars.
Speaker 1:You know, whatever it is this week you've done, give yourself a big pat on the back because starting and actually getting involved is the biggest. It's like halfway. You're 50% there. So, you know, being integrated into the community is is massive. The WhatsApp groups, you know, the Facebook, the turtle radio in the morning.
Speaker 1:There's loads of touch points and just just tapping in and out is fine for this week. We start ramping her up week after week. We start getting into the flow. We understand what we like, what we understand we don't like. We work on our habits.
Speaker 1:If you're reading tiny habits, you start thinking what's my anchor habits and you start working them out. This isn't gonna happen overnight. And there's an analogy I use all the time is like if it's like a farmer planting, you know, a seed today, and then tomorrow it turns up and goes, why hasn't my wheat grown? Where is my wheat? Why is it not fully grown?
Speaker 1:And the guy's like, you planted it yesterday, mate. What do think is gonna happen? He's like, well, I want it now. It's like, well, it doesn't that that's not how it works. It's never worked that way.
Speaker 1:You plant the seed, you know, you've all planted your seed by joining in. Right? There'll be turbulent weather. You'll have some rain. You'll have the the nutrients you look after, you know, there'll be all sorts of things going on, but the seeds being planted and with the right direction, with the right support, it will grow.
Speaker 1:You just gotta give it time and patience now and actually, you know, look after that seed you've you've planted, which is to look after this challenge as you've put your money in into it, make the most out of it. But don't don't think making the most out of the challenge is to do everything. That's the biggest mistake people make. They go, alright. I've spent this money and now must make the most out of it by doing everything.
Speaker 1:No. To make the most out of a challenge is what we get out of it as an actual impact on our life. And trying to do everything will not do that for you. It'll be too much for most of you. Some people can do it.
Speaker 1:For most of you, it's too much. And you'll actually get less out of the challenge by trying to do more. So I got a screensaver on my phone that says complete, commit to less, complete more. And it's the same with this challenge. If you commit to less, you'll complete more of the challenge and you'll get more out of it.
Speaker 1:So just to give you that kind of mindset for today, it's been the first week. Hope you've enjoyed. But last night, had an awesome seminar with Hugh Gilmore. Right? We talk we we we spoke about the, our emotions, emotional management essentially and, you know, what what are we ultimately responsible for?
Speaker 1:So are we responsible for, you know, the the the socioeconomic situation we're born into? You know, many cases, we're we're not really. You're born somewhere and that's like the draw. You know, you're not responsible really for things that happen to you all the time. Things that can happen to you.
Speaker 1:It can be an illness. It can be, you know, a job loss out of nowhere. There's loads of stuff outside your control. And in reality, the only thing we do have control over is our voluntary actions, which essentially is our response to whatever happens to us. And that's what he was trying to drill into us.
Speaker 1:And, you know, we got a lot of awesome questions, and I wanna thank Holly for bringing up a a great question, Tom McCrone Gillenness, because without people like Holly and other people in the community, you've got such a wide kind of, it's easy to think everybody's the same as you. That's the problem most people are in. A lot of these coaches online, these 25 year old, big white jacked men and they think well, if I'm like this, so I've all the words like this. Well no, that's not true is it? You know, we've got such a wide scope of differences in how we are.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of differences in how you know, some piece of, one piece of advice might work for one person, but they might not work for someone else. And his holy question was, well, how do we respond to chronic illnesses? It's not in my control. Sometimes it's fine. I can do stuff.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's not. And, you know, I can't do anything. And that's frustrating. You know, obviously, imagine think think about it for a second. You know, it's easy to say, well, just focus on the response to it, and that's ultimately where the power is.
Speaker 1:But there's a second part of that point and Holly commented in the box and the media realizes, is to understand that most things are outside of our control. That's the first thing for you to realize. Most things are outside your control. And if you try and control them, you're doing an impossible task. And when you do an impossible task, you are always in conflict with your own mind.
Speaker 1:And when you're always in conflict in your own mind, you cause anxiety, it can cause depression, it can cause adrenaline running all the time, it can cause all sorts of problems. So the first thing we need to do is is to let go of the fact that we can control things, most of the things we can't control, focus only what we can control. And when we focus on only what we can control, we end up realizing we have got more control and we actually feel better about things because we're like, you know what? I don't wanna control any of this stuff. So I'll do I'll focus what I can control.
Speaker 1:I'll respond in the way I want to, and let's see what life takes me. We've always had this and all these goals and this and that. I hardly set goals anymore. You see, I'm gonna respond. I'm gonna live one day at a time.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna I've got obviously projections I wanna go, directions I wanna go. But I go I go these directions I wanna go, and I'm gonna respond in the way I want to. I'm gonna understand the only thing in my control is I wake up every morning, I decide to to put myself in a good mood. I decide to make the most of the twenty four hours ahead of me, I decide to try my best that day no matter what, if my best is worse than yesterday, it's fine. I'm still doing what I can.
Speaker 1:Right? And I am gonna put faith in myself that if I do that, life's gonna turn out okay for me. And that's worked for me so far. And it'll work for all of you because all you can do is do your best. And that's where the control is.
Speaker 1:And if you think about it, how much like think about the melt, the anxiety melting away now. Oh, I don't have to try and control that, how that person thinks of me. I don't have to control my boss thinks of me. Don't have to control what if this thing happens to me, this illness happens to me or not. I don't to control if, you know, I catch COVID or not.
Speaker 1:You know, we can do things to mitigate the risk, of course, but there's risks always gonna be there. Right? And we can't just hide away and wither away. And I'm gonna throw another Jim Rohn quote to you now because he's a master of these quotes. And he says, if you think trying is risky, wait until you get the bill for not trying.
Speaker 1:And this is which is what he says about life. You know, you can try and mitigate everything, play it safe, be in control, but ultimately, that's the biggest risk you can play. What we should be doing is actually, let's take risks. Again, let's let's do these skillful frustrations. Let's push ourselves.
Speaker 1:Not too much, but let's go push more, more, more. And actually, if things come that we don't expect, we need to understand I can respond to this. That's where powers are. So this happens to me. I feel sad.
Speaker 1:I feel angry about it. However, I'm not gonna let that temporary feeling of anger or sadness or, you know, joy, whatever, to overtake my rational thinking and make a decision for me in a snap moment, I'm actually gonna respond. And this is exactly what the stoics talk about as well. So it all kind of links up. So the stoics speak about this.
Speaker 1:They talk about first impressions. So let me just tell you what Epictetus says. So the meaning of impressions here is the initial reaction. It's a sensory input, it's automatic and this is outside your control. And that's what Epictetus says, this is from 2,000 ago.
Speaker 1:Therefore the first and most important duty of the philosopher is to test impressions, choosing between them and only deploying those that have passed the test. You know how with money, an area where we believe our interest to be much at stake, we have developed the art of a saying and considerable ingenuity has gone into developing a way to test if coins and money are counterfeit involving our senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch. The essayer will let the which is like the pound, drop and listen intently to its ring. And he is not satisfied to listen just once. After repeated listenings, he practically acquires a musician's subtle for you English.
Speaker 1:It is a measure of the effort we are prepared to expend to guard against deception when accuracy is at its premium when talking about money. But when it comes to our poor mind, however, we can't be bothered. We are satisfied accepting any and all impressions because here the loss we suffer is not obvious. That's beautifully said two thousand years ago. You know, get given a £20 note.
Speaker 1:Is it real? Okay. Let me see it. Let me see it in the light. Let me check if that's real.
Speaker 1:Okay. Let's have a look. You know, we check people. Some of you are on dating profiles. You see a tin in the profile.
Speaker 1:You go, oh, is he real? Let me check his Instagram. Let me check this. What's the red flag markers? We do all this, like, investigation into this first impression.
Speaker 1:But then any thoughts we have, oh, we don't even do anything. We accept all of them. We accept them all, and that's a decision. That's the power your power is to act the decision. That's what your power is.
Speaker 1:You can decide not to take our first impression on and go, yeah. Okay. I agree with it. You can actually go, hold on a second. I'm feeling nervous right now because someone's over there, but am I just am I just nervous for no reason?
Speaker 1:Like, is there anything worrying you? No. That's not okay. Then this first impression is just a bit, you know, it's it's not serving me. You know, it could be this happens like, you know, public speaking is one of these big ones.
Speaker 1:It's like you go on and the first impression is everyone's looking at they're judging me, gonna feel bad about me, la la la. And actually, when you put out to the test, you go, no, most people are supportive. They're here to listen to me. They're gonna support me. I'm gonna do my best.
Speaker 1:That's all I can do. Actually, don't accept that everyone here is gonna mock and laugh at me. So you don't accept that first impression. And there's loads of these examples. So this is the way he was getting and I think we should all test this out this weekend and today and for life really is like, you get these automatic sensory inputs from the outside world of thoughts, automatic negative thoughts.
Speaker 1:It's up to us to put the checkpoint up and go, hold on, mate. Let me see where you really are. And then I'll accept you or I won't accept you. I'll discard you or I'll accept you. That's the power we have.
Speaker 1:And if we focus on our happy days, we're gonna be much happier people. Right? We're gonna walk around going, yeah, whatever. You know, in some cases, people talk about the stoics and they say they're unemotional. There's not that stoics are unemotional or stoicism in general isn't unemotional.
Speaker 1:Stoicism is all about accepting emotions as temporary things, and I'm wanting to understand that we have a choice to respond to them. That's all it's about. It's not about saying I'm not gonna feel sad. It's saying, I feel extremely sad right now, but you know what? You know what?
Speaker 1:This this this sadness is legit. Some someone's passed away. Someone's done something bad. I genuinely feel sad first, not ever, but it's not in my interest to lash out after the sadness. It's not for me to to be to to victimize myself.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm a victim and make it worse for other people. Like, I'm gonna accept this I'm accepting what's happened. I'm extremely sad. But the best thing to do now is for me to be strong for someone, be strong for my family, whatever. You know, you you end up doing something that's more beneficial to yourself than something that doesn't serve you at all.
Speaker 1:Because we often fall down these rabbit holes of, I'm a victim. Right? And again, this is a delicate topic because it's easy to say this from a position where you haven't had something extremely bad happen. And when something extremely bad happens, you can feel like it's like a victim that sings, why are things happening to me? But he was saying bad things happen to people all the time.
Speaker 1:Good things happen, and sometimes at random, most of the time at random. You know, we've all know stories of someone when we were in school and it was like that 14 year old kid that died of, you know, in my school some 16 year old kid died of cancer, you know, he was on my school bus. You have some people who, you know, crash and car crash and all all these horrible things are some rugby players, you know, peak of their career, going to attack and boom, paralyzed. You know, death, cancer, all these things are all around us and it's gonna it's potentially possible to any of us. Right?
Speaker 1:So if but by saying by taking things longer, why me? Why not you? You know, why not you? And actually understanding that. That's and it's a tough one to accept because it's accepting that it could potentially happen.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what he was saying. If we can accept these things can happen, right, we can accept that we can respond to them, and we don't have to be a victim to them. We can actually respond. And he was gonna go into these these topics more over the next few weeks. We're obviously not gonna flush it out in one session.
Speaker 1:And like he says, he's he's more than happy to take questions on his Instagram and discuss them further. And I think there's another important point he made is to how to differentiate between mental wellness, so mindset, and then actually mental health. So he says, if you're feeling really, really, really bad and depressed and anxious for like two weeks in a row, and it's it's it's intense. Right? And you've tried these things and you've tried to go for a walk and exercise whatever is still there.
Speaker 1:He says, it's time to go doctor. That's when it would be considered a mental health inquiry versus, you know, a mindset thing. So that's another thing to think about. But let's end it on a good note. You have completed your first week essentially.
Speaker 1:You've got boxing and yoga tomorrow. You've got the virtual run on Sunday. You've the mental health on Sunday as well with Ryan Williams, which is a big hitter. You've got another yoga session as well on Sunday in yoga with Arnie. So you got a packed weekend if you wanna use it for some wellness stuff, but pat yourself on the back.
Speaker 1:Make sure you write down your wins that you've had this week. It's important, reflective. You know, we do the 6PM weekly review chat, and that's kind of a verbal one of it, but it's always better to write things down. You've all done amazing. I've seen you all in the groups, and it's awesome to see the engagement, support, people coming back in, being reignited in the community and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:And the good news is as well, we've set up the Octagon two end of challenge event, which is April in Putney CrossFit Putney. On Saturday, the before that Sunday, we might be doing a live yoga and a boxing session in of the comments as well. So low key gathering. And then the Sunday will be like the event from two till six or two till seven ish. So it'll be a social thing.
Speaker 1:So you can meet in the morning as well for a run with Max early on in Richmond too. So, essentially, it's kind of a full weekend, but really the structured thing is that Sunday, two to the six, two to the seven, the rest of us kind of free room for you all to meet each other and have a good time. So, guys, we've a lot to look forward to, And we're one week down, nine weeks to go. And all we can do is make the most of each day, which you've done which you've all done. And a lot of you have made huge progress in one day, in two days, in three days.
Speaker 1:You're like, wow. Feel completely I feel you know, sometimes you could feel like a completely new person after a few days of, like, reading and mindset and putting the phone away, and it's amazing. So think about that now over the next nine weeks and use this weekend as a chance to test yourself, to be inquiring like a scientist. Don't be like, oh, I'm worried. I might go out and drink Or let's see then.
Speaker 1:Let me have a let me see, like, what's going on here. Let me see if I can do it. It's a little test for me. And if I go over, it's fine. But let let let's let's look at this like a scientist with with curiosity and interest.
Speaker 1:And that's when it's fun as opposed to like doom and gloom. Going into weekends shouldn't be doom and gloom, guys. I don't think you should all go, oh, I'm not going out for food with my friends. Oh, I'm so worried. You're going out for food with your friends.
Speaker 1:Come on, like enjoy yourself. But just try and use a bit of the rational brain and be like, yeah, well, it's up to me if I wanna make better choices. Of course, it's up to me and I can tell my friends about it. And I can cap my drinks and I can cap the total volume of food I eat, of course, like but I can still have the exact same enjoyment of seeing my friends. So don't make it stress you out about weekends.
Speaker 1:It's good to have friends, obviously. Good to have weekends and enjoy yourself. So use it as a way to explore. Be curious this weekend. But, again, focus on today first.
Speaker 1:What's your one big thing today? Get that done. Make sure you set yourself up nicely for the weekend. And, yeah, let me know how your weekend goes, and we'll be meal prepping this weekend as well. Johnny will be posting a recipe to do, and I'll be posting the photo of mine on Monday or Tuesday, which will look horrible, but no doubt, juicy macros.
Speaker 1:Guys, enjoy today. Enjoy your weekend. See you on Monday.
