Revisiting the fundamentals
Good morning everyone. So we just had an amazing event at Forest this weekend. So for the people that came, magical. As always, we're improving our next events. There'll probably be another one next year.
Speaker 1:These events are for gold members just to clarify, but we're going to be doing a lot of meet and greet social events for silver members as well coming up before Christmas. Just a heads up on that because I think the magic of the community is actually eventually meeting these people that you've seen virtually for such a long time. It's a big part of feeling connected to the community but also connected to the world because a lot of us in today's world feel isolated, don't we? Like we work, we work, we've got no time for ourselves, our friends are going time for themselves and meet ups as you get older, become less frequent and you feel more lonely and stuff like that. It's always good to reconnect, especially in nature as well.
Speaker 1:I think that's a big thing, being in nature. But today I want to revisit a book, one of my favorites. It's short, sharp, effective, it's an introduction to stoicism. It's called The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. He's one of the authors that kind of reinvigorated stoicism in a modern way and the lessons from this book are timeless and we need to be reminded of them frequently actually.
Speaker 1:So the theme for the next few weeks in this podcast is really to look back at themes you've covered a turtle for a while with maybe new perspective, but to reinforce them and make sure you understand that it's the basics that matter. It's the thing in front of us that matters. We always wanna do the next big thing, shiny object syndrome is called or like new idea syndrome where we think it's gonna be new, gonna be big, it's gonna be better than before, but actually it's the basics all the time of the matter. So the first thing with the obstacles is the way it is really look at the obstacles in our life, whether that's fat loss, whether it's going for a promotion, whether it's finding a new job, whether it's whatever it is, is to look at the crisis objectively. So right now, he says, but this crisis in front of you, you're wasting it feeling sorry for yourself.
Speaker 1:Life speeds in the bold and favors the brave. So a lot of us are feeling sorry for ourselves about obstacles in our way. And this is look. That's a very generalized view of this. Some people's obstacles are very complicated.
Speaker 1:But to waste time feeling sorry for ourselves is doing the opposite of what we can be doing, which is going towards this obstacle and actually doing something about it. And he says the path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. Of course, it is. A lot of us say I want a easy life. No.
Speaker 1:You don't want a easy life. You want a life filled with challenges that make life an adventure, make you feel alive, which make you feel accomplished, which make you feel like you've achieved something, and you've done it with your own hard graft. You've done it from your own effort, your own wisdom from it. That's how you build your character. You don't build character playing an easy life.
Speaker 1:And Benjamin Franklin said, the things which hurt instruct. Right? There's a big truth to that. And we can be blindly led by these primal feelings or we can understand them and learn. And these primal feelings are the kind of animalistic, irrational, highly emotional responses we have.
Speaker 1:You know, they were there for a reason many, many years ago, but today's world don't really do us just they're not that they're always looking out for danger, always thinking it's life or death, but it's not most of the time today. And if you let these kind of, like, primal feelings become your compass, you're gonna feel out of control, you're gonna be triggering a stress response, everything's gonna be a panic emergency, and you will feel completely confused and chaotic in your life. So we don't wanna be led by your primal feelings, wanna understand them. Why do I feel anxiety walking into a big room of people? Right?
Speaker 1:We can explain that away. We can see that the anxiety is my mind going with a lot of people, lot of new people. Right? But then the next part is there's no danger here. Everyone's thinking about their own lives.
Speaker 1:Right? No one's looking at me, laughing at me. I'm just this is an automatic, and it's kind of a nice little friend, the anxiety is there, saying, look. A lot of new people. Wait.
Speaker 1:Wait. Wait. Wait. Watch out. And he's no.
Speaker 1:It's fine. I know this is a good big group of people. It's not a problem. It's not an emergency. Chill out.
Speaker 1:Right? And Explain that fear away and the anxiety away. You know, kind of don't let it actually lead your life, if that makes sense. Then he says a few more calls from a book I love. I guess it's on me then.
Speaker 1:I don't have the luxury of being shaken up about this or replaying close calls in my head. I'm too busy and have too many people counting on me. And this is true as well. You can replay things that have happened in the past and you can get anxiety from them. It can cause you to be living in the past.
Speaker 1:You're not looking at the president. You got you're rethinking things. How could I done that better all the time? Making things up in the head. Every time you replay what happened in the past, add another layer of story to it.
Speaker 1:We think our memories are like looking at a film, but it's not. Our memories are always patched from another every time we think about it. So my memory of something happened ten years ago has got every instance since then of me thinking about it, adding whatever I felt at that time to the story, and it's distorted. It's not the truth. It's not reality.
Speaker 1:And we could do this, and we can make things worse. We could make things better. But when this thing's outside your control, there is literally no point into Alan. You pop in your head. You go, fuck, hell, and you go, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay. That can't change it. It happened. It's not no one is as bad as I think. What what can I do right now?
Speaker 1:And you've gotta be very pragmatic about these things. Otherwise, it'll take your days away from you, and that's what a lot of people do. And then he says, we get a plan, then throw it away for a good old emotional freak out. Some of us almost crave sounding the alarm. It's easier.
Speaker 1:And that's bang on as well. People love to complain. And everyone mourns time to time. Everybody. Me, you, everyone mourns.
Speaker 1:Things we would get every and we just wanna get off our chest to the closest friends or people. We never mourn about it. But we often have a very distorted view on how much we do mourn about things. We think we don't mourn that much, but then we realize actually all we do is mourn. All we do to our friends is mourn about this, mourn about that.
Speaker 1:If you don't ask me how you're doing, if there's a chance for you to mourn and you think it makes you feel better for that once you're mourning, but you look real you look at the reality is you're probably mourning way too much. And the mourning itself is causing more problems because you keep bringing up problems that's most of the time minor, and you make it bigger in your head when you keep going on about it. And then someone else will have a different V1A and add to the fire, you stalk in the fire la la, and before you know you've got a tiny ember flame that's gone into a massive bonfire over something that you just wanted to carry off your chest. The good rule about mourning is mourn, give yourself a time to mourn with someone, you know, their time is you have to respect your friends and family's time as well. People the people that love you will listen to you when they be there.
Speaker 1:Everybody's got a limit on how much they can take mourning without seeing action. So if you're gonna keep mourning someone and not taking action on what you don't like or what's not right in your life, and every time you say to them you still not taking action, eventually you wind them up so much they will not wanna spend time with you. And then you'll mourn about that. Why do I see no one spend time with as well? No one's to help me.
Speaker 1:No one's to be my friend anymore. Yeah. Because all you've done is mourn and not take an action. So if you mourn, make it a rule that you take action on it, and you hold yourself accountable to that. Whoever you mourn into, you ask them to hold yourself accountable to.
Speaker 1:How many more times can I say mourn in one voice note asking me? Okay. Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus on the task at hand? Can you do that today?
Speaker 1:Can you actually go, do you know what? I didn't do well on my weekend, my macros, on my tracking, my calories, or any exercise last week. I haven't had the best start on Monday. Right? It's not gone to plan.
Speaker 1:I haven't tracked. Can you actually now go instead of panicking that all I do this all the time and I I hate myself, can you just go, can I just do it for today? Can I just do it for today? Can I just track for today? Can I just do our work today?
Speaker 1:Can I just go for a walk today? Today is the only time you can action. You can plan all you want in the future. You can make the best plans in the world. A lot of people are immaculate planners, but I get the I said earlier, one of the quotes where we throw a plan away from the emotional freak out, then we plan a gal doing next time, doing next time.
Speaker 1:You can only take action right now. You can plan for the future, which everybody should plan because it makes sense, but you still have to execute day to day for any plan to actually work. There's no point planning if you're not an action taker. You're just wasting your time. Some people find it enough to plan and then never go through with something.
Speaker 1:Be an action taker. That is far better a far better person to be an action taker than a planner if you had to pick. Rather take action, minimal planning, and be like, you know, plan plan everything when nothing happens. Well, you live in a fancy world. Right?
Speaker 1:He says, Marcus Freudius looked at roasted meat as a dead animal or vintage wine as old fermented grapes. He saw things how they are. And that's quite a cool way to look at stuff as well, I think. You know, you look at these some people look at this celeb like speaking to Jackie Gilbert who's one of our members, she got invited to the Queen's funeral. A huge achievement.
Speaker 1:It was a bad company. Booted Amazing. Booted off. Amazing bad company. High quality stuff.
Speaker 1:Right? And she went to the Queen's birthday last year. Queen had one of her bags, she got invited to the funeral and she realised, she said she saw these world leaders and saw they're just humans like me. They're just humans like me. And that's exactly true.
Speaker 1:When you look at things how you are, any person in this world, this leader, this celebrity, this so many got high in high esteem is just another human being like you. See things how you are. Like, because it look. This comparison world is really, really bad. Because that comparison world on Instagram is not how anything is.
Speaker 1:You see that classic photo of someone in Santorini, there's no people else, looks crystal clear amazing, you see the reality is this massive queues of people waiting for that photo, like chaotic, there's no tranquility there at all. There's nothing like this seems. Right? And he says you need to be objective. You need to look at things objectively, which means removing the you.
Speaker 1:So what happens when you give other people advice? Their problems are crystal clear. The solutions are obvious. Right? So can you do that to your own life?
Speaker 1:You say, I can't. I know. It's me. It's hard to do it. Why is it hard to do it?
Speaker 1:Because you think you're different to other human beings? You think the advice to you needs to be most special and doesn't it doesn't apply to you because you're different, or do you think, what is it? You see your friend and they come into you saying, my partner has just been doing this to me for months and months and months. And you go, look. The obvious answer here is he's not good for you.
Speaker 1:You're unhappy. Leave him. Leave him or her. And then when it comes to us, we're in that situation ourselves and it's very hard to see outside of us sometimes, but you'll be objective and your friend tells you, listen, you're in a really bad place right now. You're not you anymore.
Speaker 1:You've come to me for months, six months, seven months. You're not happy. Things are things really bad. I know, but it's I know I can't. No.
Speaker 1:Maybe I shouldn't do it. But then once they've left the scenario three months later, they go, fuck it. Why can I see it? You can see it if you remove the you. Same with everything.
Speaker 1:If you remove the you, the ego, your own tunnel vision on things, things are crystal clear. The you is the distortion. When you look up health and fitness, for example, you say, I don't know how I'm putting weight on. I don't eat that much. Remove the you, the ego, the self that is protecting the truth because if you remove our ego, I am.
Speaker 1:I am. I'm nibbling. I'm snacking. I'm eating. I'm emotional eating.
Speaker 1:I am eating a lot. I just don't want to accept it. Those chocolate bars stuff I eat when I'm when I'm watching TV, I'm not accepting them. I don't see them. And then you you you don't admit it to yourself because yourself doesn't wanna be put to blame at all.
Speaker 1:Yourself or the ego, whatever you wanna call it, doesn't like to be blamed, doesn't like criticism. It goes into defensive mode. You remove that defensive mode, and you can get really crystal clear vision. Same with feedback. Just going through feedback forms now.
Speaker 1:Don't take feedback personally. Right? You take feedback personally. Right? It's you can't see what they're trying to say.
Speaker 1:They're seeing things objectively. Right? Some people do come from a very subjective viewpoint where they're not the course of some people will not see things how they are as well in this the other way. But when you have feedback, you need to remove the you to really understand what people are saying. And some of this goes for conversations as well.
Speaker 1:You listen to someone without always trying to interpret what they're saying for your own personal experience? Can you just listen to them? It's a big one, you know. And I mean, this is what what this is probably the major part of being able to live day to day, make decisions, quick decisions, remove the emotional disturbance because the emotional disturbance come from the me reacting to something. And if I can see things clearly day to day and make decisions on objective viewpoints, I can get on myself quicker.
Speaker 1:I can keep a cool head. Remember that when it comes to health and fitness, the rule is if you're not losing weight over a long period of time, say you've been trying to lose weight for six weeks and you said I've been in a deficit for six weeks, I haven't lost weight. If you were to see this from a very subjective defensive viewpoint, you'd say, this definitely my calories are wrong. I've been in a deficit. Something's up.
Speaker 1:It must be my hormones. It must be something else that's wrong with me. But if you were to look at objectively and look at the data and as a scientist, you'd say by default this person has not been in a calorie deficit because there's been no weight lost. Right? So the calorie in of this equation isn't correct.
Speaker 1:The person's been eating more calories than they think. That is the obvious simple answer. You know what? You're not an abnormality to the human race or the laws of physics, all this stuff. Right?
Speaker 1:So we look at things objectively. The truth is hasn't been a calorie deficit created. So either the calories are not right or more often than not, the calorie intake is way too high. And because it's stuff like weekends creeping in, it's snacks and nibbles. It's not being honest with yourself when you're tracking.
Speaker 1:You have to be honest with yourself. Look at things objectively. Answer is simple. And then you get on with it. You crack on and go, right.
Speaker 1:Okay. Today, I will track 100% honestly, see what happens, and this is what will happen. You will realize how off you were with your tracking than before. That's exactly what happens. I've seen it so many times, and this is when the me, the defensiveness drops.
Speaker 1:And I'll never judge you. I'll no one turtle judges you if you say, do you know what? Put my hands up. I was lying to myself. And I'm not coming out and calling you liars.
Speaker 1:That's not what I'm doing. I say, you're a liar. You're a liar. You're an actress. I'm not saying that.
Speaker 1:I'm saying that we often get deceived by ourselves. We don't not do it purposely. We just need to think, okay. Maybe I have emotionally eaten, but I should track it. And we forget that we've eaten more.
Speaker 1:Like, what did we eat four days ago? It's hard to see. It's hard to tell. Right? So that's important.
Speaker 1:And a few more to finish off. Hopefully, this has given you a bit of a pump up for the day. He says the power of perspective can change how obstacles appear. So obviously something can look massive, massive, massive, right, like if, you know, those shadows being created from something tiny, but actually when you look at things crystal clear, the obstacle becomes nothing because you know you go straight through it. You know exactly what to do because you've been objective.
Speaker 1:There's a story about someone called Tommy John, k, baseball player I think it was, and he had this, he was injured, but he just wanted the slightest chance of having surgery that would get him back into the game. Okay? So there was a naught point one percent chance of the surgery working. Very new surgery, naught point one percent chance, but that's all he needed Tommy John. He just needed a tiny chance, and he went 100% in.
Speaker 1:So even if it's a 0.1% chance it's working, I'm gonna go in 100%, let's do it, let's do what I need to do to prepare. And that's exactly what he did. And now it's called a Tommy John surgery. Successful, they've developed it, it works okay. But he then got dropped.
Speaker 1:Right? And all he needed again was a naught point 1% chance to get back in the teams. He said, look. You're not good enough anymore. You dropped.
Speaker 1:And then the court and then he said, coach, what can I do? Said, look. You're dropped. And he said to the coach, is there even a tiny percent of chance that I can get back in the team? He said, there might be a tiny percent chance you get back in the team.
Speaker 1:And, again, that's all you needed when all our training in and he got back in the team. And he says in the book to see obstacles as challenges to make the best of them anyway there's also a choice on that. It is up to us. And he says, the end of the book, will I have a chance coach? Is there a no point 1% chance?
Speaker 1:Is there a 1%, 10% chance of me tracking on the turtle up and having success from it? There's a huge chance, huge percentage chance of that happening. Is there a chance that if you train three times a week that you become stronger, leaner, feel better? Of course. Is there a chance that if you just went running or just fast walking a few times a week you'd eventually be able to run more and more and more?
Speaker 1:Of course. Is there a chance that if you were able to just get one big thing done a day that would push momentum in your favour for the day and you'd get more momentum and you'd build and you do more tasks if you better by yourself, of course. You know, is there a chance, a tiny chance, if you just put yourself out a little bit more, join the Zoom, join the Turtle Radio, send an email asking for help to nutrition@turtlemath.com, anything reaching out to someone you find inspiring and asking for advice. Is there a chance they're applying that can maybe change the course of your life? Yes.
Speaker 1:It is. There's so many of these smaller and bigger chances. We just gotta do it and take a chance. So be like Tommy John. Even if it's a slim chance, we go for them.
Speaker 1:Right? And a lot of times these slim chances can become really high, easy to do tasks as long as you see the obstacles clearly. So on that note, today, don't see it as a Tuesday that I'm going to Monday and I feel terrible, see it as a day you can take action. I can train today, I can do my steps today, can track my macros today, I can stay on top of things today. I can do this as well as manage my life.
Speaker 1:I can do this without pity party. I can do this without mourning all day. I can do this by if I do mourn, I will take action and I'm accountable for that. And that's how I'm gonna live my life. I'm not gonna feel pity and sorry for myself.
Speaker 1:I am gonna do my best today. That's all you can do is that today, nothing else. And you start realizing this, and I heard even Dean Deke said to live one day at a time after a turkey retreat, and he's now said that and he said that. So Dean, if you listen. You know this is the truth.
Speaker 1:It's an ancient truth that we only have today to live to do action. And if we focus on that today now, we can be a success 100%, whatever we wanna do with our life. So get on with it. Have a good day, and I'll speak to you all tomorrow.
