41. How Meditating for 10 Minutes Completely Changed The Course Of My Life & How You Can Too

This meditation burns. That I happened on Sunday has, like, fundamentally changed, like, the course of a lot of in my life. And I don't really know why I hadn't done it prior to that. And the thing that was most special about it was the. The visualization of the future wasn't just living and thinking about the present. I was like, where the fuck do I want to go and how am I going to get there? And it just all became so clear. Welcome back to another episode of the Benneberg show with your favorite MBA and high school dropout talking everything, crypto, business and growth. And today we have a personal growth episode on my life changing 10 minute meditation burgs. I came in as one person and left as a different person. And today I'm going to talk about what on earth happened, what I thought about, and the clarity that I got from this meditation. And I voiced, I think I call you Burgs. I sent you a voice message afterwards. I don't know what happened.

I got this VM and you're like, oh, man, I just had this meditation. Oh, man. It all made sense. It was just amazing. I left my phone in the car. Oh, my God. And I'm thinking, jesus Christ, mate. It's on like a Saturday or Sunday. Who is this guy? He's selling me the absolute world. Everything he does is the best. It's amazing. It's.

Oh.

Even during the week, you're like, oh, man, I got so sick. It's the sickest I've ever been. Every time you get sick, it's either the sickest you've ever been or something you've done. It's the best I've ever done. No one's ever done it this good. It's so good, mate. It is so good. Either that or you're just getting. You're. You're legitimately getting sicker and sicker each time you get sick. This one sounded pretty bad.

I genuinely think it was the sickest I've ever been. So do we want to wind back to like, oh, should we just start with the meditation? Let's go.

Let's go with the meditation.

Let's go drain in the beans. So, burgers. I wake up, I don't even know what day I was. I think it was a Saturday. So for context, fam, I was absolutely crook. As crook as a dog for three or four days last week. You know, got home, I was just being Sid. Sick of like lying in bed, watching just crap on tv. Get home, it's like Saturday. Sitting around Doing absolutely, like, nothing. That was a Sunday. It was a Sunday, so I'm doing absolutely nothing. It's nine o' clock in the morning. Just like, crap. I did nothing that last, you know, night before. I was like, right, fuck this, let me get up and do something. I'm ready for a walk. So go up to the gorge and for those people, you know, the known Launceston, you know, sort of like water, picturesque grass, mountains. It's really nice. Went out for a walk, got to there. I was like, you know what, I'm gonna leave my phone in the car. Don't really go for walks and leave my phone in the car. I usually listen to a podcast. I was like, you know what, I'm this, why don't you just go with it? You know, Berg's always been telling me, like, go for a walk without, you know, your phone right away, Right away.

That's, that's the life hack, mate. That's the real touching grass.

It is a game changer and I'm going to get into it. So I left my phone in the car, went for a walk and of course I got lost briefly because I didn't know what I was going. I didn't have Google Maps. This is the, this is the epitome of a tech founder that lives on his phone, doesn't take his phone and he's lost in, you know, classic Jay, classic. So found my way and went, just went for a walk. And, you know, I found myself like, I was pacing. Like, I was, I was nearly, I was really jogging how fast I was walking. Like, you know, I was, don't know why, I was just trying to go somewhere right in my mind. I was like, ben, it's a Sunday. Chill out. Like, let's just, let's just relax. I took it back, went from, you know, basically jogging to walking and just trying to take it all in. I was actually feeling really good. I was like, like, no podcast or noise, it's just nature. Like, I'm feeling good.

Bridge and got to go to a tree. And I was like, oh, that's a nice bit of grass in, you know, you know how the dogs, you know, they try and find like a little, like, spot to sit down. Like, I did that like a little like 360, trying to find a little bitch.

You sniff, sniff, and then you do a couple of rotations and then you're like, yeah, this is the spot. I'm sitting down here.

So take a, take a position up on the, up on the hill in the grass. I Was looking. I was like, fucking feeling pretty good. This is nice. I'm going to do a meditation and mate. Just close the eyes. And for context, I've been using the Calm app now for a little while. I have done meditation course in the past. Went to the Calm app because it's just sort of easier when you have someone like walking through it. But I just did it without that. Sat down, did like nine or 10 deep breaths. And I did this visualization exercise where I like was after a couple of minutes, like just breathing and sitting there and just taking it all in, I started visualizing where I wanted to be in five years time.

And.

And I just thought about like, I closed my eyes. I was like, just thinking really hard, like, where do I want to be in 5 years time? What do I look like? Like, where am I? Like, I visualize myself at a particular spot in time and what the perfect scenario would be like. And I was in. I was in America. Burks. I was in New York. I was in New York. Was buzzing. We had the collective shift. We had an office over there. We had a team. I was attending these masterminds. I was tending these events or speaking. I was doing all this stuff. It was like, it was America. America. America's. Like, I started getting real jittery. I was like, fuck, got to go. Like, I'm going to move to America. Like, it opened my eyes.

I was like, fuck.

I was like, okay, take a deep breath. Settle down, Ben. And then I went back to meditation and I thought about, okay, let's be more seriously, how do I get there? What are the steps? Let's not think about just the perfect, like, scenario at the end of the end of the rainbow. Let's think about how we actually get there. What's the journey? What's the next step? And I started going through like a step by step in my mind of like how I was going to get there. And it really like brought me back to, you know, really winning in Australia, owning the education research space in Australia, delivering more content and being more focused on what I need to deliver. Because I realized in this meditation was like, I was just doing way too much. I was trying to do everything. We're trying to do everything. I was like, we need to niche down. And I, we know what that niche is now. Like, we've been doing the strategy work for a long time, but it's like tripling down and doing exactly that thing. And the podcast, like just so much stuff was going through my mind, but it just became clear to Me of like, okay, where I want to be in the future is I want to continue to. Personal growth is such a massive part of my life. Like I want to be surrounded by smart people. I need to get out of Tasmania. That was another big thing. I was like I need to get the fuck out of there like ASAP and like move back to Melbourne and then I need to get to the US in some way, shape or form in the future just because there's so much more opportunity there. A lot of smart people, there's just a lot of this capitalism at core, there's just so much happening there in crypto that's the place to be but the steps to get there. And at the end of this meditation I just had so much clarity on what the fuck I actually need to do and what we need to do as a business. I nearly ran back to the car, got on a voice message of Bergs, so fired up and went back home and I just punch out a heap of work like I punch it like four hours of work. And I was never, you know, I've never been so clear about what I've needed to achieve and that is flow right through this week. And I guess the other things that have flowed through from that meditation was like this, this idea of clarity, efficiency and productivity. You know I tend to build myself up really and get really stressed and anxious about how much stuff I need to do because I try and pack, you know, a million things in, in the day that's never going to be possible. And Bergs and I have our, our strategy, you know, conversations around the business and I come to him and we, you know, we end up talking about how much things we have to do. But like these, these calls are so good because we really nailed down on the number one thing and you know that has helped me so much this week of really focusing down the number one thing and being productive and efficient. And I also had this like self awareness talk around meditation. That's the best thing about meditation is this self awareness piece about seeing the downsides or seeing what's going on in your life where you could improve. And one of those things was my phone consumption. So download this app. I spoke about last week on the POD around like my phone consumption. I was spending six and six and a half hours on my phone and and I picked up my phone 160 times in a day last week. 160. And I was like holy shit, 160 times. What the fuck? So this week I have halved that more Than that. I've picked up my phone on average 50 times. I've reduced my phone usage to around yesterday. I think it was around two, two and a half hours. Might even be. I might. It was. I think it was around two hours. I. I'm physically leaving my phone in a different place. I don't take it with me. I don't have it next to my bed. I don't have it with me at work. I don't have it when I go for walks anymore. I don't take it to the bathroom. And my clarity and like, anxiousness and stress has actually come down to the point where I'm like, so focused now niche down on what I know I need to do. And I'm not perfect by any stretch, but these meditation burns that I happened on Sunday has like, fundamentally changed, like, the course of a lot of in my life. And I don't really know why I hadn't done it prior to that. And. And the thing that was most special about it was the. The visualization of the future wasn't just living and thinking about the present. I was like, where the do I want to go and how am I going to get there? And it just all became so clear.

And this is what people that succeed do. They have a clear goal of where they want to get to, and that's what motivates them and inspires them. And just getting back to your phone, like, we have this kind of anxiousness that we need to be on our phone. What if someone needs me? What if I've missed something, I haven't been updated? And you train your brain in that way and then you realize that and you're like, okay, I'm going to put this phone away. But then, like, you put the phone away and you're constantly thinking about the phone. It actually gets worse when you try to break the habit. And for me, it gets worse for like, at least a week. But then after that, I realized, hey, nothing bad happened. No one needed me. If they need me, they're gonna call. And you start resetting those loops. And I think I showed you my phone usage where yours was like, you know, hours and hours, and you're trying to get it down. I think mine's down to like maybe an hour and a half a day on my phone. And I think it was something like half an hour worth of phone calls, 10 minutes of Twitter, like 15 minutes of playing my little pinball game. Like, you know, when I wanted to, like, disconnect from, like, work to, you know, going on with my life, and I'd even like to get it further down from there. But the huge point that I've kind of thought about is humans don't allow themselves to be bored anymore. Like, we always have to be doing something. We have to be productive. We have to be entertained. We have to be with our friends. We don't allow ourselves to be bored. We don't just go for a walk anymore. No, no, no, you can't go for a walk. You got to be pumped up on music. You got to go fast. You have to listen to a podcast. You have to extract every second of every day. And what happens is, if you do that, you're really depriving yourself of the opportunity to be alone with your thoughts. And honestly, man, when you're alone with your thoughts, they come to the surface. It's uncomfortable, and they come to the surface, but you can process them. You can understand yourself better, you can interact with them or just acknowledge them. And that is where the personal growth happens, because you start to understand who you really are and what you really want, and then you can make a plan and you have that vision of the future, and that's exactly what happened to you. I think people really need to do this a lot more.

And I totally agree. I feliz at home. Like, I, you know, we were all busy on our phones, and I actually didn't realize that that, that space of, like, not being on your phone and having that alone time, what comes up? So, for example, I was taking my gym. My phone to the gym each morning. And, you know, after a set, I crave dopamine. I crave a reward. So go to my phone. Look at Twitter. I've now started taking a notepad and pen to the gym and not taking my phone. Literally. I write down. No, literally legit. I write down my workout, but I take a pen with me because I have so much thoughts that come up. I wrote, like, two pages of stuff in my mind yesterday when I was at the gym. No bullshit. Like, and this alone time, this space in my. In my mind is so relieving. You sort of just. You look around and you sort of start taking everything in, and it's like a calmness that goes through your brain when you have this time. I've never experienced it before, mate.

This is the life hack. This is what I was going to say next. I've started doing that. So I think on the last pod, I was listening to David Goggins. He's like, I'm at the gym. See all this Music playing that pumps you up. Guess what? When the time's hard, you can't have no music. That's why I don't work out without it. So I thought, okay, man. So for, like, probably the last three or four weeks, I've been working out without music. And what has happened for me is I've worked out a lot faster and harder, and it's easier for me to actually work out because I'm not like, oh, what is this person saying? My mind is actually somewhere else rather than on the activity that I'm doing. So what I've done is all my workout, I've just written on chalk on the wall, and I just, you know, write whatever I'm doing. But then I had so many thoughts. I was walking inside to, like, write on my whiteboard, and then I'm like, stuff this. I just had a little book with me, and I was just writing in that. And then I'll write them on the whiteboard for later, and then I'll deliver them to you or whoever tomorrow. And it was just incredible. There was even like, okay, the men's tennis final was on. So I'm working out in my garage lifting weights, and I hear my wife scream. Like, oh. So I'll run inside. And then I realize it's a happy scream. I'm like, okay, you know, nothing bad. No one's hurt themselves. And she's like, oh, my God, it's championship point with, like, Djokovic. Oh, my God. And normally, I'd, like, walk in, sit down, watch it, all, that kind of stuff. I'll literally go, oh, that's great. Turn around. And just went back to my workout, and I didn't think anything of it. And then when I was sitting down after that set, I was like, holy shit. Like, I would never do that in my life. I would look for any distraction or whatever it may be to not have to work out. And now I'm like, no, this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm about. Until I'm done with this, this is my life. Half an hour later, I'm finished working out. I'm done, right? Let's get on with it, dude.

We are so, like. That is so similar to my experience, like, the analogy workout. I smashed through my workout this morning in half the time, I felt great. I probably went harder. And, you know, I don't need to go. I go back, and I'm not, like, needing to go on my phone. I left my phone in the hotel room, and I just went to the gym and just like smash out a set. And I didn't look at it until like, you know, I actually put it in a bag now and put it away from my desk. I don't need to look at it. The clarity you get and the mate, the, the. I was dreaming last night of like.

Tasks and strategy and things we need to with the business. I woke up with a page full of stuff I wrote down. And I think that's honestly maybe because of the phone and the dopamine and scrolling social media. Your brain is being compressed by all this artificial. When if you just leave it alone and you have this mental clarity, you're, you know, you have this time to think and articulate ideas and thoughts and patterns and their self awareness comes through. Like it's like this phone. If you think about, you know, just pressing down on you or your thoughts and your ambitions, that is what I've realized this phone does. And what I am worried about is me slipping back into it because it's so easy to slip back into bad habits. So fucking easy. But I found this is home that may be struggling with this. Really the thing that has helped me is physically put in a physical barrier. Literally put your phone in a bag away when you're lying in bed, put it on the desk or put in another room. Because if you have it next to you, it's like, it's like a drug. It's. It's addictive. You just see it and you want to pick it up. But if you put in physical barriers, it will help you so much. It's helped me so much.

I was watching TV and I just saw my left hand just looking for my phone and I'm like, what the fuck? Like I consciously don't even want to pick my phone up. And even sometimes like I'll be like zombie scrolling. I'll be on Twitter, I'll close Twitter, I'll go to my home screen and I'll go to apps and I'll press Twitter again. I'm like, why is this happening? Yes, Isn't that weird? I'm like, I don't want to do this. But then my brain made me do it.

I've done that before, man. When I'm scrolling Instagram, I leave Instagram and then I go back into Instagram. Like, what the was I just here?

Isn't that so weird? There's like a void, but your brain just wants that. Dopamine is like, give it to me. Keep pressing the button. Give me that dopamine. That is absolutely crazy. One thing I want to say on this as well is the life hack of going for a walk or a ride or a run with no tech, just you and your thoughts. And I listened to a pod ages ago, and a guy was saying he used to ride down by the ocean and he used to hate doing it. He'd absolutely flog it on his bike. And he'd ride for 40 minutes, and he'd be exhausted and he'd be pissed off. He'd be listening to music pumping in his ears to get him pumped up. And he thought, you know what? One day I'm just gonna ride a bit slower. I'm gonna go down the pier, I'm gonna ride usual route and then come back down. And he did it. And he just took in the sights, looked at the different people, looked at the ocean, felt the breeze, felt really awesome. You know what the end result was? It was 43 minutes. It was three minutes longer than him absolutely flogging it because he was enjoying himself and he was going. And it was like the experience was like a 10 out of 10 comp. 1 out of 10. And why is it that, like you were saying when you started walking, you start walking at a pace. And I did that as well, like, charging, man.

I was like. I didn't realize. I was like, where am I going? I'm gonna finish the walk in five minutes.

Yeah, I was almost walking at a. Just before you start jogging, and I'm like, why am I doing this? Like, where's the fire? I don't understand, but I think it's because, you know, when you're working and you're fast and you're in operations and you. And you're chopping around, and then you take that to the next activity you do, and I might know, and I just slow right down. And that's when you really get the benefits of going for a walk. Like, it's not about going the fastest and completing the task. It's about what it does for you mentally and relaxing you.

Yeah, spot on. The other thing I've implemented this week is self talk. And, you know, self talk. Not necessarily like. Not like affirmations, but literally talking to myself. Because I. In my head, I feel as though there's two sides of my brain. There's the one that's, you know, stressed out, need to do more, you know, maybe anxious, needs to just go, go, go, go, go. And the other side is the more balanced, natural, you know, approach where I use that side of my brain to talk. The other side of my brain and just go, man, it's okay. Relax. You're doing enough. Things are okay. We're gonna. We just relax. You know, let's just walk our own pace. Let's leave the phone behind. Let's go for a walk. Like, it's.

It's.

That's kind of weird saying that out loud, but I'm, like, having a conversation in my head with two different characters that's trying to. And it really does work. It really does allow me to, you know, reduce the stress or just relax sometimes. It doesn't always work, but I've. I've only started this week. And whenever I feel anxious or stressed or I know there's something big coming up or like, I need to go, go, go, go. I just have a conversation. It's like, it's okay. We're good. We're doing a lot. Like, look at everything we've done the last month. Look at the results. Like, it's okay. We're going to be all right. And that's massively helped.

It's like having an angel and devil on your shoulder. Right. But actually recognizing that and mediating your own thoughts is really, really advanced, man. That's incredible. I wish I could do that a lot more. Like, I. I recognize it and I do it, but then I'm like, what about this? What about that? It's like one of the consequences of being a deep thinker and thinking probably too much to the point where it affects you, where you're like, what about all these scenarios? But none of those have happened. What are you even doing? Like, just focus on today. Live in that daytight container and just be today. I can do it a lot of the time, but sometimes I just can't. And I find the times I can't do it is if I'm a little bit unwell or I haven't slept properly or I haven't been eating right or I haven't exercised, then that other side starts to take over. I think it's just that. That touch of, like, stress or anxiety where it just motivates you enough to do that, but you focus on it a bit too much.

Yeah.

And that side starts to win.

Yeah. And I, you know, don't get me wrong, there's definitely, like, peak stress points or peak, you know, thoughts that, you know, I. Or stress particularly, or whether there's something I can't control. I'm a control freak if there's things I can't control. I really struggle to tame my emotions around that. So this is just day to day, just sort of getting used to it and getting better at it. But anyway, long story short by long story short, I think what I'm really trying to get at is like have a sit down with yourself, don't take your phone, go to, go to a mountain, go to some grass and just think about where you want to be in 5, 10 years time. Like it's kind of a hard thing to do, but if you can sit there and just really think about where you want to be, take a, take a 30 second break and then go back in and think about what is the next thing you can do to try and achieve that five year goal, that 10 year goal, what's the next step? And visualize that and just fucking get after it like that. That's something that's really helped me.

Absolutely. And as a framework, the three key things you want to look at is where do you need to be in the world to do the activities you want to do and to win at those, what do you need to do? So what game are you in? What game are you playing? Is it, you know, work? Do you want to be in crypto? Do you want to be in AI? Do you want to be the best elite athlete at this obscure sport that's only in Romania or something? That's where you need to be. And then who you're with is the other choice. So what you do, where you do it and who you're with. So who you're with can either be your partner that you choose in life that supports you, or it could be the team that you're with. Because if you want to go fast, you go by yourself. But if you want to go far, you go together. So the team you have around you to help you achieve those goals, they're the top three things to focus on to succeed.

Brilliant. Amazing.

Cool.

Mate. Do you want to get into these podcasts and reading books?

Yes, please. Okay, so there was, there was a thing that Lex posted, Lex Friedman famous podcast about reading a book. Every week for the entire year. People are slamming him about it. I mean, it's great. Go read a book every year he can talk about on his podcast. It'll help him with his guests. He'll learn a lot from it. He's a very smart guy. And I got to thinking about it and we listened to like, how many times have you listened to a podcast? And then like you tell your mate or your boss, you're like, oh, listen to this podcast. And this happened and they talk about that and you get all pumped up, but then that's it. You don't really do anything about it. You kind of just talk about some of the lines you heard to kind of feel smart or feel inspired. And how many of those lessons have you actually implemented? Like, the majority of people would have read Atomic Habits, how many of them actually took the lessons in that book and created a habit? I know you have, and I have, and that's been life changing. And even people like Naval say you're best off just to read the top hundred books over and over again and deploy the lessons from them than reading millions and millions of books. So if you read fewer things, like let's say you spend 10 hours reading a book, spend 20 hours implementing it. This is my new thing where I read a lot, but I want to reread those books because if I read, let's say, one of Nassim Taleb's books like Skin in the Game or Antifragile or Black Swan, the lessons in there just so incredible, they're off the hook. Like, you literally read a page, have to put it down for half an hour, and think, if I went back and read that book again and again and again, how much would I learn? How would it change me? And how would I be able to deploy those lessons to just be more efficient and effective in everything I do in my life?

That's exactly right, mate. Like, I think it's. It's, you know, there's consuming and there's doing. And I think, you know, for a lot of people, like, including me, I can't consume.

That much in terms of the ratio to implementation. You know, if you keep listening to podcasts and read books, there's so many new ideas and so many new tactics and, you know, whatever else, like, it's. It's impossible to implement. So if you just keep consuming, consuming, consuming, it won't always, you know, equal, equal output, but I think it's just like trying something new, implementing it, giving it a go, and just, you know, improving 1% day over day, like atomic habits. What I took out of that was like, even. It's just one thing for me, what I learned about atopic habits is that, you know, for example, you humans crave a reward after doing a hard thing, you know, and you can, you can do that strategically, and you can also do it to your demise. And that's exactly what I just spoke about earlier in this podcast around, like, using my phone at the gym. I do a hard set, and then my brain wants a reward, so it goes on my phone you take that reward away, and all of a sudden, now I don't need a reward. I can just go without it. So, you know, trying to take those things, highlighting things down, writing down whatever to try and implement and just get those 1% improvements, this is it.

And once you've, you've read a decent amount, like, for me, it takes a while to click, but Atomic Habits clicked because of about 20 other things I've read or heard, and they're all saying the same things in a slightly different way. Dr. Phil would say, and he would say, if you want to change something, you need to work out what your currency is. And I didn't understand what he was saying. But when you look at Atomic Habits and understand the loops and dopamine loops and rewards and cues, then you get what he's saying, and it's just like you're connecting all those little dots and little quotes you've heard and things that you've read in books, you're like, holy, all of this makes sense now.

Yeah. One thing I do is I read with purpose. And I say that by, like, I will pick a book or a podcast around a topic that I'm currently struggling with. So rather than just going out and reading some random book that you've really got no interest in or that you're not really willing to focus on, find an area of your life or your business or your career or whatever that you're trying to work on that's relevant right now, and then read something around that particular topic because you'll be more motivated to go and implement it. For example, we wanted to really hone down on our finances in Q1 of this year. Really get to know our numbers and really just improve. Improve our overall, I guess, or for me, anyway, you know, financial literacy. So I went and read Profit first, the book, and I haven't finished all of it, but I've read half it. And I've already implemented, like, like, not even implemented. I feel as though I've, you know, 3 to 5x my understanding of where our numbers are at. And that's. That's helped me because I needed that, you know, but if I went and read a book on, I don't know, like, you know, legal or like, you know, whatever, hr, that's not really what I'm. But I don't care about that right now. Right. I might care about it down the line, so I'll go read about it. But if you, if you're consuming stuff that you can go and action or implement straight away, I think it makes it so much easier.

This is why I love doing my mba. Because what you would do is. Okay, let's say you're doing marketing and it was funny. Marketing was our, our first unit that we did, Josh and I and like gross marketing ads. We didn't really understand it was about strategy. And we get into it and it's a 12 week unit and throughout that you have to look at business cases, like Harvard business cases. You learn a lot of strategy, look at what other companies have done and you have to do assignments that are related to your business where you're currently working. So you're applying all of those learnings directly to your business. And that is just phenomenal. It's like reading those books or doing a course and applying it straight away. It is, it is the best feeling where you get to action the things that you're learning and it just deepens and strengthens your learning so much and you get so much reward out of doing it.

Yeah.

Unbelievable man.

Spot on. And Bergs reads more than me. Everyone listening like I'm trying to read more. And audible. One thing that has helped is like when I get a book is I've spoken about on the podcast before is get the Audible book and read the book at the same time. The consumption honestly is like game changing. You really do retain that information and then get a highlighter out. I've started highlighting those topics or points or, or just make notes as you're reading rather than just reading for the sake of reading. Like consume and then, then act on it to really help me.

I highlight and then I've got sticky notes in my books as well. Even when I was studying I'd get the PDFs and I'd highlight them and I had like a little pen and I could write on them as well on my screen. And now when I go back I can search those for like that business case I wanted to like. You know, I remember something about. It's awesome. Yeah. And in terms of reading, so I always have three types of books on the go. So I have a philosophy book, I'll have a science fiction book and I will have a non fiction book. So at the moment, and I do those for different reasons. Philosophy is kind of to expand my mind, get perspective and understand the world if I'm in that mood. The science fiction is just to relax and dream bigger and think about something I don't usually think about and just go on an adventure. And then the non fiction book is to learn something specific that I want to understand. So the ones I have on the go at the moment, reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius again and my God, the second read on that is incredible. I actually got onto chat GPT and I said pretend you're Marcus Aurelius and then started asking it questions and it was just phenomenal because it's, it's consumed Meditations and all of this kind of stuff that was really insightful and amazing. Reading Revelation Space, which is a big kind of space opera and the nonfiction one. At the moment I am still reading Antifragile, but I'm going to start the Psychology of Money because that's the challenge I have at the moment is how I'm currently thinking about money and I need to understand it more. And that book is going to help me.

Brilliant, dude. Okay, good stuff. So awesome takeaways there. Hopefully that's been helpful. If you are new to the podcast, every week on our personal growth episodes, Bergs and I give a bit of a personal wrap up of some that's been going in our lives, particularly around food. So we have a meal of the week. And also Bergs loves a meme. If you, if any of you people know Burgs or all of his mates, OG Bergs on his Facebook page was unbelievable. Like, if you followed Bergs on his Facebook page, like you just cop 20 to 20. This was your corporate life, mate. This is what you did in your corporate job. Sit there and repost 20 to 30 memes a day.

I miss that so much because what would happen is I would get tons of memes in WhatsApp. I still do. I get in WhatsApp and Signal and I had the Facebook app on my phone and when I was like waiting for an elevator or something like that, I take my phone out, post them on Facebook and everyone loved it. And I miss posting it a lot and I miss the reactions and making people happy. But at the same time I'm like, I don't want that Facebook app on my phone. I don't want to have to constantly go on it and manage it and do all this stuff. And my life's a lot better for it. But I miss it all the time. Like, it is. It is a hard decision to make, but my life is better for not doing that.

Yeah, I used to love it. Anyway, so Bergs will crack into Meme of the Week. Give us the listeners, mate. All right, what do we got?

Let's go. I was going to do the meal, but let's go, Meme. All right, here we go. So this one hit me in the feelings. This is adulting verb. And it's got a definition on the left. It's got a photo with daytime and there's old mate at his computer and he's just thinking about sleep. And then nighttime old mate sleeping in his bed and he's just thinking about work. And the subtext is to perpetually exist in the absurd. And mate, this got me so deep in the feelings where right now I'm knackered, I'm exhausted, I just want to sleep. I guarantee you, tonight I'll have the power of a thousand suns when I try to go to sleep and I'll be thinking about product and how do we get more customers and how do we drive revenue. And I won't be able to sleep. And it's just this stupid cycle. Do you have this? I'm not alone here, am I? Please tell me other people have this too.

Yeah, no, man. Like I. The one on the right, they're just lying in bed thinking of work. I get it in the mornings when I, like, I dream and then I have to get out of bed because I've just. There's so much in my head. It's like, it gets built up over the. Over the evening. And then as I wake up, I'm like. It's like 6am I can't go back to sleep because I'm just, like, exploding with ideas. So, no, I think you're spot on, mate.

All right. And here we go. This. This one had me stitches. So, staff, we need more help, please. Manager. It's okay. I just hired two people. Then the two people, they've literally got Beavis and Butthead with their shirts off with stylized as De Antwerp as ninja and Yolandi from De Antwerp. And it's just so funny. These guys just look crazy. And mate, this. This got me in the feels as well, because it connects like a rap group that I really like. I just watched Beavis and by hey, do the Universe. I love those guys. And everyone has been stitched up by their manager. When you've been shouting out for more help all of the time for over a year or two, and they're like, we finally hired someone and they're an absolute potato. And like, seriously, like, these are the people that show up to you weekly. Oh, my God, how are these people going to help me? Oh, just ridiculous. Not qualified for the job. These guys are rappers. They. They shouldn't be working at a crypto company. Like, complete stitch up. And then finally, I saw this on Hacker News, and this just had me absolutely in stitches. I posted this in Collective Shift, so hacker news, and I'm going to read this out. I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non existent, and everyone is so forgiving for underperformance. I can coast about four to eight weeks before a given job fires me. Can you imagine that having 10 jobs? And then he goes on to say, currently on a $1.5 million run rate for comp this year because he has so many jobs and the interviewing process is much faster today. Companies are desperate. It takes me two to three hours of time, total effort to land a job with thousands to choose from. Old mate is rocking. 10 jobs, sitting at home doing nothing on 1.5 million USD per year. Can you imagine, mate? Holy crap. Like, we are doing life completely wrong, mate. Like, could you imagine, like the package you'd get and the severance and all this sort of nonsense because you're an engineer and you do nothing. And they're so forgiving. You're just like, oh, I. I got Covid for two weeks. Oh, this happened. Oh, that. And you just put in the minimal effort, $1.5 million. And when you lose a job, you spend two to three hours, you get another one. That is insane.

I want to see who this guy is running. Running 10 jobs at once.

Oh, mate, sounds like an absolute lad. All right, let's go, mate. Meal of the week. Ben, you are up. It's not even a meal, mate. Describe to the podcast listeners what you have here on the screen.

Okay, so I made a roast chicken on the weekend and it was unbelievable. Unfortunately, I was going to take it before and after. I was going to take a before and after photo, but I forgot to take the after photo. So we just got the before photo. So what we're saying here is literally just a raw chicken. But it's about. It's about the journey, bugs. It's about the journey.

No, listen. Listen to you. You're like, I did something and it was unbelievable. This is you. Like, I read a book. Oh, it was amazing. It was unbelievable. My person on the planet that's read a book. I meditated. Oh, my God. It was the best meditation in the world. I got sick. It was the worst illness. Oh, I made a chicken. It was incredible. Like, absolutely everything you do is the best in the world.

I want a third party independent review on this chicken.

Mate. My brother gave it a 10 out of 10 as independent mate.

No, no, it's because you cooked and he's in the house and he's also your brother. I want blind taste tests by a Michelin star chef.

Like, this thing was succulent, it was juicy. I put like, but like the flavoring on the inside of the chicken. I was like every 10 minutes just spooning the chicken sock and the fat over the chicken in the oven. Like, this thing was succulent, it was juicy. We had like roast vegetables.

This thing was.

Mate, it was 10 out of 10. It was.

It looks seriously pumped. Did you brine this chicken beforehand or was just straight out of the.

Straight out of the bag, mate. And I just jammed it with a heap of like. We had oil, butter, parsley, coriander, garlic, like crushed up garlic, heated up the butter and then like poured it through the middle of the chicken. And then I also poured on the outside and with 250mils of chicken stock on the bottom of the pan with some onions. And then every 10 minutes made just spooning that over the chicken. It was. Was so juicy.

You can tell by the way it looks that it's going to be good, like unless you overcooked it, it's fine.

Look at that.

Look at how plump that breast is in those legs. It's incredible.

Yeah, mate. That's a Tassie chicken right there, mate.

Well done. There we go.

What do you got for me, mate?

Just a little bit of lazy barbecue, mate. So these are just some old school chicken skewers that you get from the local supermarket and a random salad. So let me take you through this, mate. Got the chicken skewers and I've got this little Weber. Go anywhere. It's a small little thing and I'm just in the backyard and it's a perfect way to disconnect after a day of dealing with your. I just go out in the backyard, fire up the charcoal and then just start cooking on it, right? And mate, this the old school taste of those skewers. Like, I don't know, man. When I was in like uni and we'd have barbecues, we'd always buy these. Drinking till he's extra dry. It just brought back all these memories. Really nice and charred. Delicious over the charcoal. And we've got a salad there and it's just one of those salad bags you get. But it was really good. It's got beetroot, feta, walnuts, spinach. Absolutely incredible. I'd give this like eight and a half out of 10, mate. It just made my day. Took about 10 minutes to prep the entire meal. Everyone had smiles on their dials afterwards and it was just the, the perfect meal for the end of a day.

Mate, can I say that that salad looks elite. Like it looks just so fresh and like you know, clean and just tasty.

Mate, it's literally like a three dollar bag from Woolworths. You open the bag, you throw in a bowl and you just add the ingredients and you stir it up. It's 30 seconds to make that. That is a life hack for everyone out there that doesn't want to eat vegetables or cook them. Just have a bag of salad, half a plate of salad, a little bit of protein, you don't get it in. Yeah. Oh mate, absolutely.

Nice work mate. So we'll wrap up with accountability of the week. We did a bit of a deeper update last week so we'll just do a quick update. Bergs any, any sort of progress on the dunking?

Mate, I'm doing well so I've been lifting like a mad dog and I think I'm hitting a plateau man. Like it's getting real hard to recover like the weights are getting heavy and I'm like this I'm working out in. So also when I was talking about working out before that was in that was 36 degrees that was like at about 6:30 or 7 at night and it was still 30, 30 something degrees outside. Plus in my garage it's even hotter so I've got to work something out there and I started this week doing the plyo training as well so I'm kind of transitioning away from super heavy weights. Not super heavy heavy for me heavy weights moving more in towards cardio plyo and stretching. So I've focused on the weights a lot because my body was just broken. It's what I need to feel well put together. I have zero back pain now I'm getting better sleep apart from when it's windy as all hell and that is what my body needed now. I have that foundation now I need to focus on the task specific things of dunking which will be plio and cardio and just playing some basketball as well. Yeah that's pretty much my update and focusing on recovery too. So because I'm doing a lot more I need to recover more so that'll be going to bed earlier, not playing Apex Legends at night and getting stressed out. Sorry Joe. It'll be going to bed like you know, I don't know like winding down about 8 o' clock reading for half an hour, an hour and then just passing out. That's my update on accountability.

Well you've been. You've been consistent on the gym, man. Like, you've been. You've been. Let me know those. It is hot. And when it's hot and you're bothering, you're sweaty and you're tired, you're like this. But you've been at it, man. So whatever, man.

And even like getting out and going for a walk or a ride, you get dehydrated so quickly. And when you get that, like, you just feel like crap. It's hard. Even though you have like, you know, hydrolyte or Powerade, it's hard to catch back up. You feel out of sorts, you don't sleep well. It actually feeds that anxiety loop and it's like, oh, man, it's. It's. Yeah, you just got to stay on top of it. But that's the thing. I'm like, no excuses. No matter what the temperature is, I'm getting out there and I'm doing it. It's like, like Goggin says, don't let that little inner win. You know, you just have to dominate and you have to do it. Yeah, you're going to be sore. Yeah, you're going to be tired, but so what? Just get towards your goal.

Well done. Well done. So on my side. So if you hadn't picked up. Bergs's goal is to. To dunk a basketball. That's why he's working out a lot of the moment. For me, it's been consistent on social media, so. Been consistent. I haven't done my YouTube video this week. I'm still trying to find the time because I'm trying to focus my attention at the moment. We've got a big launch coming up in a couple of weeks. There's a lot of work that needs to be done with, you know, there's a heap happening. So we're really excited about trying to keep my focus on that. But, man, it's crazy. I'm putting all this effort into like educational content on Twitter, which gets like 10 to 15 likes, maybe 20. And then I'll like. I'll tweak that. I'm thinking of moving to Melbourne. It gets 100 likes and 15,000 views. So I haven't figured out the Outgo, mate. The Outgo's all over the shop, still pushing on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's been good. We're ramping up the podcast on Ben and Bergs. Decoding cryptos back, doing three podcasts there a week. Yeah, there's a lot of content happening at the moment, but it's been Good, man. I've been consistent and we're getting some really good results.

You're getting good results in numbers, but a lot of inbound as well. Like people are reaching out to you, connecting you with people and recommending you as the guy in crypto. And you've never met them in your life.

Yeah, that's. It's incredible. It's incredible content. Can do.

And that's the other thing. Everyone posts like, you know, quotes or whatever it may be on Twitter, but people want to know about you. The things that have the highest engagement are things that you're doing in your life and decisions you're making or your analysis of the market and how you see things. I've noticed that a lot like the one. Yeah. Moving to Melbourne, I was like, everyone has an opinion, right? Yeah. It's so good. It's so good, man.

Okay, cool. We might wrap it up there. Unless you have a moment of the week. I think we'll probably wrap it up there.

We'll wrap it up there, man. We'll do moment.

Wrap it up there. Awesome episode. Hope you enjoyed it as always. If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you. You can tweet at us or DM us at Ben Simpsonau on Twitter or Babyback Berg. If you're interested in getting into crypto, if you want to learn, you want to get from 0 to 1, get over to Collective Shift and do a starter membership. It's going to cost you a dollar for seven days. There's a link in our description. Super easy, super fast and it costs you a dollar. If you don't like it, you can cancel. And if you're wanting to go the full length, if you really want to get involved, I'd highly recommend checking out the pro membership. You can get a discount in the link below. Collective Bergs and I both building Collective Shift, helping everyday people life you listeners out there to succeed in crypto. So get after it. And yeah, just thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We're super grateful about the growth of the pod. We doubled our listenership in December. Hopefully we can continue in January. We're super pumped and amped. We're doing it for you guys. So yeah, we'd love to hear from you and we'll see you next week.

Excellent. Thanks so much. Championship.