You need a cool head on weekends
Good morning. It is Friday, which means the weekend is looming. But again, we've today to focus on first of all, but again, the weekend is looming. It's the third weekend of the challenge. This is now where we're starting to maybe again, if we're going into each weekend with the curiosity angle, we're learning a lot.
Speaker 1:So what have we learned over the last two weekends and what was your plan this weekend? Let's plan. On Turtle Radio yesterday we spoke about, controlling the controlling the emotions and how when we when we get stressed what we do and a lot of members said when they do feel stressed they were ones who used to turn to comfort food and you know eat them whatever because it was it's it kind of is is nice and oxytocin released and all that stuff and Megan came on and explain that neuroscience background. So if you are feeling stressed and emotional and stuff as you begin, there are alternatives. You know, the low dough, the the lean cheese, the the recipes we've got, the Johnny's made about the protein carrot cake, all this stuff.
Speaker 1:There's options you can still have that satisfaction without the calories. Okay. The calories are not a requirement for you to fulfill the comfort eating side of things or to feel better after a stressful time. Know it makes sense, it's the flavor we understand, it's the eating, it's the simple stuff. We don't have to bring the calories into it.
Speaker 1:So if you are someone with stressed and emotions and they've got a better view and you just want to eat then now is the time to maybe take a step back and actually look at this as the main obstacle of your journey like this is the battle. How can you kind of change this and not make it a thing? How can you not make it a thing that's a detriment to your goal? That is the main thing we need to focus on. A lot of you will have this as the main problem and this is about self knowledge, curiosity, experiments.
Speaker 1:Know, people in marketing and in business and stuff like that, they do AB tests all the time. This word and that word, this color, that color and they see what test works and they go with it. It's the same with us, like how many tests can you do this challenge? How many experiments can you run-in yourself to figure out what works for you? So Lumi Clock works for me to wake up earlier, might not work for you.
Speaker 1:Jen said on turtle radio she got these like chocolate brownies from I think the protein queen is called and that satisfies her and that's what works for her. And Ali Finsham says what works for her is the the lean cheese and, the low dose stuff and having these the same foods, the pizzas, but the low calorie versions, that works for her and that's from experimentation. If you're not willing to experiment and risk failure, you're not gonna learn anything. You might go, don't know if it's gonna work for me, so I won't bother trying. That's not the attitude.
Speaker 1:How many experiments can we do? How many experiments have you got planned this weekend? Let's get going. And I wanna just resay a few quotes from the book, The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday, which is a really good book. It's like an introduction to stoicism essentially, but it's a way to frame these things.
Speaker 1:So we got the experiment framing. Now we've got the obstacles. We see obstacles. Most of us run away. We try and run around them.
Speaker 1:We hope they we wish they weren't there and then just stand in front of them do nothing but the obstacle is the way. So here's a few quotes from the book that I really like and yeah, they might resonate with you. Okay. So he says, but this crisis in front of you, you're wasting it feeling sorry for yourself. Life speeds on the bold bold and favors the brave.
Speaker 1:Fortune favors the brave classic saying thousands of years old, it makes sense, it works. The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. Most of us sit frozen before the many obstacles that lie ahead of us. Andy Grove, CEO of Intel said, bad companies are destroyed by crisis, good companies survive them, great companies are improved by them, and we can easily replace companies with people. You know, we often was speaking with Louise, me, Ryan and Louise went to a cafe yesterday and was the first time we've done that since everything's happened.
Speaker 1:Was really nice to see Louise out and looking physically a lot better. Again, a lot of mental struggle still happening. And we were explaining this to Louise like we were talking like imagine the person you're gonna be once you finally get out of this this kind of rut you're in. Imagine the superpowers you can have. You have survived, you know, near death experiences going through having a child and all the stuff that comes with that, all the mental struggles.
Speaker 1:Imagine that the type of person you are now gonna be by going through and overcoming those obstacles. And I remember Louise saying, you know what kind of person she would have been if it all went swimmingly well, but maybe she would have just been down that rabbit hole of posting those fashion style photos of her and the baby and all this stuff, and it would have gone down the wrong route, whether that would have been like making it all kind of a, you know, there's a lot of pressure on influencers to, you know, do specific photos and stuff. And she's realized, well, actually I have missed doing that in a good way, and I've now actually realized it's not all about that. Going through the tough times, and obviously, you wouldn't wish this to happen to you, but then when you do look at it and you overcome it, you're gonna go, that was a hell of a teacher. That period of my life was a hell of a teacher and actually made me a better person.
Speaker 1:I'm now even more empathetic. I'm even stronger. Those things that used to worry me before are not gonna worry me anymore. I'm not gonna give many f's to the small stuff. I'm only gonna focus on the main stuff, and I'm gonna focus on matters.
Speaker 1:It's good that Louise has this in her mind that she knows once she gets through this, she's gonna look back and go, wow. Wow. That that molded me. And hopefully, we all live until we're 80, 90, 100 years old. So we've got many, many years to go, we're not even halfway through.
Speaker 1:So these things can transform the majority of your life if you think about it. And that's how I want you to think about stuff. If you're going through some tough times, who will you becoming when you get through these tough times? You know, and there's Edith Eager says in her book, I think of the choice of the gift and she's like, look, someone suffering really bad and someone suffering is not as like in your perspective not as bad, doesn't we should never compare suffering. Suffering is suffering, going through tough times is going through tough times.
Speaker 1:Okay? There's no need and she comes from a psychology background, psychologist, there's no you should never compare like my suffering's worse than yours. It's all tough for everybody. It's all suffering we go through, the person we become from getting through them. It makes us who we are.
Speaker 1:It just does and I think it's it's hard to see that when you're going through it, but when you look back it's always the case. Now think of something tough you've been through and see how that changed you. Think about it right now. Something that happened a few years ago maybe now sticks still sticks in your mind like wow I went through I know I'm a stronger person, more independent person. Know?
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think one for me now. There's a few for me that stand out really. For me you know leaving leaving like when I was in Bristol, had I had a girl from the time I was with her through university and me ending that and leaving Bristol to move to London on my own, right, was a big struggle for me mentally because it was a big risk for me, know, going to London with no savings, with no, you know, no family wealth to just go to. Was like, you know, if it failed everything crumbled down and that was a massively stressful moment. I remember, you know, getting a lot of like general anxieties with the days making sure like because you know you're on probation and the job and you pass that and you know it's always hit and miss with startups.
Speaker 1:And then I went full time with rugby warfare whilst living in London and the bills and rent were high and my debt was soaring and I had loads of debt to pay off and I was literally living I don't know how I actually don't know how I got through that without crumbling. But I look back now and that's what that's taught me is and this happened many times since then as well but a smaller scale is like I can I could I go through all of those times because I wrote down exactly what was happening? I wrote down the big problem and sometimes I'd be in the Google Sheet and I'd be like, oh my god, the amount of money I gotta pay back is absolutely nuts. The money coming in is this, I need to make this amount of money with the business just so I can stay in London and pay my bills. This is all going for to pay off the debt and stuff from uni and just starting businesses and stuff.
Speaker 1:I remember breaking it down to small chunks and then actually having that one day at a time mindset being like what do I do today to lower this? What do I do today to help through? And what that taught me was no matter what was thrown at me, me putting into small chunks daily, but after looking at it all in in an analysis, breaking it down going this is what I gotta do and that's what I did. I I knew I know I knew what I had to do and I just executed on it. And I know that I could do that for anything now and I'll try my best and get through anything.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it might not work out. But when we come to more quotes from this book, it makes sense. So I read this book after going through this, and it just all clicked to me. I was like, oh, that's exactly how I felt. So things like the things which hurt instruct, that was said by Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 1:We can be blindly led by these primal feelings or we can understand them and learn. Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so. There's the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means. That's an important one. You can either be of a story and say you're a victim and this is bad, should never have happened, working on non facts, which is never good for the mind, or you can just work with the fact, which is what I learned to do back in those days.
Speaker 1:I learned to work with the fact and go from there and that skill has stayed with me since. And being able to do that in the middle of chaos, that is the one. So tranquil this is a quote from the book, this is what really stuck to me. Tranquil courage in the midst of turmoil, and danger. Right.
Speaker 1:So tranquil courage in the midst of turmoil and danger is what the English call having a cool head. Right? That cool head is essential. The cool head in Napoleon talks about in the wars he was in. Being able to see things clearly when everything around you is basically burning, that's a superpower.
Speaker 1:All you gotta do is the thing, the common sense thing when things go wrong. Right? When things are going wrong, you're feeling you're going out of control, the next move isn't something extravagant and huge and it's got to change everything on a whim. It's next move is just gonna be the most common sense move that's gonna get you one step closer. And that's essentially the superpower we all wanna achieve is when you when you feel the weekends are going crazy and it gets to Monday.
Speaker 1:It's not about doing two workouts a day, eating 500 calories, hating yourself and changing everything in one day is about, okay, what do I have to do today to start nudging back in the right way? Let me just get back to track and happy days and let let leave gold the day before. Okay. So the female quotes, nerve is a master of defiance and control. 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 too many people are counting on me. We get a plan then throw away for a good old emotional freak out. Some of us almost crave sounding the alarm because it's easier. Does that resonate with you?
Speaker 1:Is that you? I know a lot of people like this. Got a plan, doing the challenge, you know what you gotta do, you know you just gotta track your macros, gay steps, and drink water, you know that. Something hits, life hits you in the face. You're shocked by this, but you shouldn't be because life is gonna smack you in the face.
Speaker 1:You shouldn't be shocked by plans. You know, you want an x plan to happen. It doesn't go to plan. When is life fair? When have you when has when do you think that you guaranteed every plan you make to go go to go your way.
Speaker 1:Think about how silly that is to guarantee that you can try your best but to guarantee it and then it'll happen is silly. And then to freak out and just kind of be a victim, oh, this is there, I'm done, throwing it all away. Some people there is a weird sense of creative, there's a weird satisfaction to it because a lot of the times a lot of people bond through the negativity, negative spiral and so a lot of groups bond from negative coming together and hating on something. We see this with friendship groups, we see it with online forums, we see the trolling on, social media. It all happens really when a group of people have the same hate and negativity towards something and it's kind of intoxicating the people, they love it, they get a little buzz from it.
Speaker 1:Don't let that be you, okay. If you have a bit of an emotional freak out because you've not, the plan's not gone your way, don't let it go longer than that. Look at it with a cool calm head and go, okay, I see what's going on, this is what I'm gonna do next. Is me just going on and on moaning, messaging other people, it going on forever gonna help? No it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not gonna help anyone. It might make you feel temporarily better, but it's not actually gonna do anything for you. It's not. Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus on the task at hand?
Speaker 1:Real strength lies in control, the domestication of one's emotions not pretending they don't exist. Marcus Aurelius looked at roasted meat as a dead animal, a vintage wine, old fermented grapes, See things as they actually are. See them objectively which means removing the you, removing yourself, the ego. What happens when you give others a device? Their problems are crystal clear to us.
Speaker 1:The solutions are obvious. With other people we can be objective and that is the power we need to have ourselves. Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. This is the key skill of life. And use mentors in your own head.
Speaker 1:People you look up to what would they say? What would x person do? You know Epictetus the stoic teacher would say, what would Socrates do? Marcus realizes what would Epictetus do? You can keep going on this path.
Speaker 1:What would someone you really admire do? An answer in your head. The Greeks understood that we often choose the ominous explanation over the simple one to our detriment, build up things, there's, you know, say with the government now we think there's like some elaborate plan, you know, that maybe Boris has got some plan up his sleeve, but the simpler the simple explanation is he's just an idiot and has no clear well-to-depth. And I know it's quite sad that when you accept that, that's the truth. Pericles said not to ignore fear but to explain it away.
Speaker 1:The power of perspective can change how obstacles appear. Right action follows the right perspective. And there's a story about someone called Tommy John and there was a surgery now named after him called the Tommy John surgery. So what happened is he had a injury and they were said that there is a new surgery but it's a zero point one percent chance of it succeeding. But he said even the slightest chance, even zero point one percent chance, I'm gonna give that 0.1% chance 100% of my effort.
Speaker 1:So does that make sense to you? So he got dropped, asked if there was a chance. That's all he needed. The surgery succeeded. He asked the coach then, is there a chance for him to get back into the baseball team he's trying to get back into?
Speaker 1:He said, yeah. There might be. It's all he needed. Went went all went all in on training and got it. Got back in the team.
Speaker 1:See an obstacle as a challenge. Make the best of it anyway. That's the choice, and that's up to us. So the real thing is, will do you have a chance? Will I have a chance, coach?
Speaker 1:And always a chance, not a point 1% tiny chance. Your chances of succeed and a lifetime change are much higher than that but you have to put 100% effort into the chance. It's not gonna be you know all of you are not gonna succeed of course because it just doesn't happen straight away for some people. Sometimes it takes time, life gets in the way, really gets in the way and they take a backseat. For most of you, you would have seen the mental shifts by now, you'd have seen the mental changes and you'll see that it's not about the fat loss, it's mostly about the mindset.
Speaker 1:You come for fat loss, you stay for mindset and community, you stay for personal development, the fat loss will come. You have to be able to change your perspective on the obstacles, the weekend doesn't have to be this monster mountain, it doesn't have to be the snow down in your in front of you, like, am I gonna climb after with these weekends and impossible? Just look at the step ahead. It can be a little it can be a little storm to get over. You just gotta change your perspective on it.
Speaker 1:And that comes from understanding your understanding your weaknesses on weekends, understanding you know really seeing it with a cool head going what do I need to do? What do I really need to do? Let me take away objectively what would I tell my friend to do on weekends if they knew what my behaviour was? Well, you always go out and drink and you drink too much, okay. Then you always have a kebab and eat too much the next day, okay.
Speaker 1:So maybe I should not maybe I shouldn't have a kebab of the night and I should have food back home ready that I've bought meal prepped the day before. Yeah. Okay. Clear as day. That is the solution.
Speaker 1:You try that. Happy days. Make sure you don't spend money on delivery the next day. Don't overeat in the calories. You're still your Sunday isn't ruined.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you might feel hungover but your macros still hit, your water is there, you've got a lot of, you know, vitamins and minerals coming into your body and you feel great. So can you this weekend see obstacles as they are and not blow them up into massive monsters or have an emotional spin out and then make that into a huge thing when actually you can just see things as they are, have a cool head and do what you need to do. There's already a storm coming, don't let your emotions become stormy. We want to be that, what's it, the eye of the storm, the cool part, the tiny part, the storms around us but we can see clearly. And it's a shame it's the English that came up with that saying the cool head, which is a word of saying, but it's the English saying, and I love it actually.
Speaker 1:Can you have a cool head this weekend? That is what I'm asking of you. But today, we've gotta get through it today. First, one big thing, get that done. Make sure you prepare for the weekend.
Speaker 1:Really get your tasks ready, done out out of the way. If you've got loads of stuff that you need to get done, things in the back of your mind, get them done now. Don't mess about Pomodoro, twenty five minutes, get it done. Going to the weekend, feeling relaxed, enjoy yourself, back on it Monday, but also try not to be too reckless. Enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Cool head. See you Monday.
