Changing The Mind
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast where we forget about yesterday. We don't worry about tomorrow. It's what are we going to do today? This all matters because you've only ever had or will ever have the fantastic twenty four hours a day you're about to embark on. Hopefully this episode is going to give you some daily dose of wisdom that you can take action on today to improve your life.
Speaker 1:Remember, all it takes is one day at a time. Good morning, everyone. We're back again with a voice note. So if you're listening, thank you. Hopefully, they're useful for you.
Speaker 1:But I'll talk a bit about the basics of macros and diets and how they work this week, but I wanna switch gears today to to basically like a philosophical or mindset type of voice note. Now don't run away. Right? I know none of us in today's world talk much about philosophy, which is like how to live. Because most people don't wanna talk deeper than any surface level gossip nonsense.
Speaker 1:Right? That's a sad reality the world we live in. But the ancient Greeks and the Romans and all those people had ample time they spent a lot of time discussing the same problems we have today right. So one of the things that the ancient stoic said, in specific Marcus Aurelius, he said that people still confuse pleasure with happiness and often find difficult to imagine a different perspective on life. So if you think pleasure equals happiness you're always going to chase those pleasures which is like drinking out all the time, always having to do something and then unless you're not doing something you don't feel happy and fulfilled.
Speaker 1:It's a big problem and actually leads, actually what happens is you think that for example you feel if you don't feel happy with yourself Monday the Thursday in your own body, like I feel terrible, not healthy, I'm eating like shit and not training, doing exercise. Guess the weekend, your friends don't go for a drink, you both just get blowtor, get smashed. You know, you forget what's there for work on Sunday and you try and convince yourself that that's what you love doing. But actually you want to be fulfilled every day of the week. You don't want just be waiting for a Friday night or a Saturday night, right?
Speaker 1:We want to have balance in that regard. Remember, chasing pleasure is not gonna bring you happiness, and chasing happiness in itself is not gonna bring you happiness. Happiness is a side effect. And, actually, you can't even be happy unless you're healthy. Honestly, if you were ill right now, you're gonna be happy.
Speaker 1:All you wish for if you were ill or injured is to not be injured or not be ill. When you have a blocked nose, what do wish for the most? Just to have an unblocked nose. When you go like if you feel like terrible on yourself, all you want to do is feel better, feel fitter. So the basis like if we can focus on health first, the byproduct of health is going to be happiness, well there's a bigger chance of that happening than thinking that the pleasurable things in life we chase is going to bring us happiness.
Speaker 1:That's not true. Right, that's not true. And basically as well like so self control is one of the virtues of the ancient world like having self control and what Socrates said is you might have heard his name ancient philosopher. He said that those who practice self control actually obtain more pleasure from things like food and drink than those who indulge in them to excess. And what he said was hunger is the greatest relish.
Speaker 1:So what he means by that is like if we can have self control and not go to excess because what happens when we eat something in excess we actually hate it. There's actually a phenomenon that happens if you eat something too much in one going younger you actually hate it for the rest of your life. Think about overeat, think about maybe some people who got this wine thing where they maybe it's 17 at a bottle of wine and now they can't stand the smell of it and they will never drink it for the rest of their life. Things that got to happen. So going over things can cause like lifelong behaviors right so if we have self control we actually enjoy the things more.
Speaker 1:Always ask am I being moderate right now? Is what I'm doing right now being is it in moderation? Because, moderation is one of the main lessons of Buddhism, Stoicism, other ancient philosophical schools. There's a reason for it. That's the way to live a fulfilled, calm, tranquil life is moderation but it's a skill right it's not something that just happens like you can't just be moderate, can't just expect to be moderate right now with everything you've got to work at every day right so that's what we got to do.
Speaker 1:So yeah hopefully that is kind of drilling right. Another thing that is important to know is that Marcus Aurelius basically he thought of hardships in his life as being prescribed a painful remedy so he thought that him going through tough times, challenges, obstacles was actually a medicine in a way, but it was the one that was horrible to taste. It's like I didn't want to taste it, but it made me better. And that's how you should see everything in a fitness challenge. It's like, do I want to be waking up early and get my steps and are going to the gym?
Speaker 1:No. But is this gonna make me better? Yes. That's literally life. So if you were expecting every part of the journey to be favorable and you're gonna love it, that's not the thing.
Speaker 1:It's easy to train when you're motivated, but it's when you're demotivated it matters. Now motivation, Motivate so we think we have to wait to get motivated, then motivation equals action and then we get results. But the thing is we can't wait to get motivation because motivation is a feeling and we can't control when we get motivated. Well, you can a bit, but you can't you just can't wait for it to come. What you can do is if you do action, so there's a two minute rule going for a walk for two minutes.
Speaker 1:If you say I don't want to train, but just go and train for two minutes. If you do action first, and you start making progress, so you do action, which is go for a walk, go to the gym, just start cooking. Right? That two minute of action equals a bit of progress. Better progress equals more motivation.
Speaker 1:More motivation loops back into more action. Does that make sense? So you can you can hack that, loop by going in on the action point as opposed to waiting for the motivation point because can hack into it. So make sure you remember that because it's important because you're not gonna be motivated every day. You can't be motivated every day.
Speaker 1:You can't. It's impossible. But you can have commitment to the plan. You can say to yourself, look, I'm gonna be my identity is a healthy person. My identity is a fit person.
Speaker 1:My identity is I'm putting my health first because that's my focus. And you can you can literally like hardwire hardwire your actions or, results to your questions and say, I don't wanna do this. What would a healthy person do? They would go. Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm going. And then there's no there's no there's no there's no ifs or buts about it. Right? That's what you do. So it's important to do that.
Speaker 1:And another thing as well is, like, just because you were so you were so, like, in a certain way in your past doesn't mean there has to be a future. Because if you can't if you think your past determines your future, then basically nobody can change. That's what Freud, this psychologist thought and he had this thing about everything in your childhood equals how you are today. Whilst there's things in your childhood that impact you today, the most important thing is the meaning you give those things in childhood because some people have got a different meaning to their childhood and they can change the meaning and then they can change the actions. You can change right now.
Speaker 1:That's the truth and the thing is it takes courage to change and it's easier to sit still. As humans, we've got something called loss aversion. We would rather we we find loss twice as painful, twice as more twice as like more powerful as the game. So loss hurts us more than any gain we make. So and then when we talk about change, we're like, oh, this is is is is gonna be risky.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it'll be worth it, and you think about the losses more than the gains you can make, which is life changing stuff. Right? So you can change, and it's the meaning you give to your past that's important. So don't think that your past equals your future strict. Right?
Speaker 1:It's not true. Because there was a study on on these on these twins, and there was these two twins, and their mother was like an alcoholic drug taking drugs, just like complete mess basically, and didn't support them or whatever. One of the twins ended up being a drug addict himself. The other twin went on to be super successful, career, happy, fulfilled life. And they asked them the same question.
Speaker 1:How is it that you are how you are today? They asked them the two of the twins a question. And they both replied, well, what do you expect? My mother was a was it was like a drug dealer, a druggie. Right?
Speaker 1:The exact same answer. So if they both had the exact same answer, how did they have two opposite outcomes? Well, one of them saw, well, she was a druggie. Therefore, that means I'm gonna be a druggie because I've been born in drugs around me. The other one just saw it as, well, she's a druggie and alcoholic, therefore I definitely don't wanna be like that, so I'm gonna go the opposite way.
Speaker 1:Right? So that's this we've all got this choice. What we put meaning to is what matters, not the actual thing. And a lot of people will might be disagreeing with it, but it's true. You can change.
Speaker 1:So if you think, I've always been someone that can't lose weight. I've always been someone whose cravings take control of them all time. I've always had someone who's had no control. Well, don't have to be like that. You don't.
Speaker 1:You can change. Right? You're not a tree. That's the famous Jim Rohn quote. You can change.
Speaker 1:You're not a tree. You're not stuck in one place. You're a human being. You can dictate the direction of your life if you wanted to. If you really wanted to you can do it.
Speaker 1:Just don't be worried, it takes courage, it does, it's a risk, it's a step but trust me it's worth it. But all of you doing this plan is worth it. Some of you who are feeling overwhelmed or whatever look, there's something called skillful frustrations. Most things we do to start with are frustrating because they're new to us. Remember the first time you drove a car in your first driving lesson?
Speaker 1:Did you nearly die? Yes or no? Yes. You probably nearly crashed the car. Frustrating.
Speaker 1:Now you can drive without even thinking. Right? So that's true there. When it comes to own health and fitness with the system in place, macros, training, we can it's gonna be the same for us. We can still do it.
Speaker 1:It might start off slow and difficult, but it can become a second nature. And I love this, we had a Q and A with this, with Donald Robertson, one of these like psychotherapist, stoicism experts and he had a guest on who was a classicist Leila and she said in Latin habit means habito or habitus and in Latin habitus means I live. So habit means I live, it's literally me, my living being is my habits right. So if you want to change who your living being is you have to actually change your habits because your habits are who you are, right? So that's something you need to start thinking about now, like what are my habits?
Speaker 1:Like start listing down like habits you have. Like so I wake up, I wake up, I go up my room, I go for a walk. So like, let me go through mine quick, so you see, I wake up, I go to the coffee shop to get a coffee, I go for a walk in the morning, drink it back and back, have a coffee, start writing. And then I start reading or vice versa, do whichever ones, go ideas first. Right?
Speaker 1:Then I have a shower, then I do emails, and then after emails, typically go to the gym, and I do gym. After the gym, I come back, and I go through my to do list I made. And I can evolve. That's my heart. That's like how I run my day.
Speaker 1:Right? But you need to start thinking of yours and be like, right. What is like a habit I do that's not the person I want to be? And you need to break that habit. And a great book to read is Atomic Habits and it's like must read.
Speaker 1:Then it's like, well, I what habits do I need to do to become a healthy person? Well, you need a habit of you walking for sure. You need a habit like, look, when you brush your teeth, that's a habit every morning, every night. Sometimes you don't wanna brush your teeth in the night, do you? Because you wanna go to sleep.
Speaker 1:But you do it anyway. That's level we need to get to with our own health. It needs to be deeply ingrained into our being. And that's hopefully what you're all going to get over the next few months with us, so happy days. But hope something from that, this voice mail today resonated.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, this, you know, you're doing great. You're on a plan. You're trying to improve yourself. Awesome. This is what it takes.
Speaker 1:It takes these steps. You've got a team around you that's wanting to help as a passion. So happy days, really. To finish off, just to remind you, you know, all it takes is that you do this. It is one day at a time approach.
Speaker 1:It's the only way we live anyway. We live one day at a time. You can't live two days at once. So you can only do what you can do today. You can only do your best today.
Speaker 1:Sometimes your best today is not as good as other days because you're not feeling it. That's fine. But do make sure you remind, am I doing my best today? Am I making the most of this day that I'm lucky to live? Am I making the most of this day I'm lucky to walk and move?
Speaker 1:Because one day I probably won't be able to walk as smoothly blah blah blah blah blah. So you need to make the most of today. So Wednesday, it's a beautiful day, make the most of it, get your one big thing done and see what you can achieve in one day. And, yeah, enjoy yourself, and I'll see you tomorrow. And that's it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the one day at a time podcast with your host, Golf Leer. Hopefully, you understood something I said. I hope that some wisdom kind of distilled through into your mind, and I want you to now action it today. I don't want you to think about tomorrow. I don't want you to think about yesterday.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to think about leaving a review on this podcast. I don't want you to think about going to another website. What I want you to do is as soon as this podcast ends, you will take action and make the most of today. Ground yourself today. Follow the one day at a time philosophy and your life will change.
