EP057 - Don't call it a comeback - Anthony Astbury

So welcome to the whole Man Academy podcast, episode 57. We're on our third episode of 2021. Thanks for all the messages about last week's pod with Jamie Tpenney Matthews. It was certainly an interesting one where we spoke not just about men's health and the body, but he had some rather funky stories that he dropped on us. So thanks for the messages for those. Also, before we start, if you haven't already, make sure you sign up to our Whole Man Academy E letter, which goes out every week to hundreds of guys now around the world. I think we've got 35 different countries that guys have signed up from. And generally we talk about health for men, fitness, mindset, purpose, fulfillment. And one of the big, big ones is taking action, because you can have all these great thoughts, but if you don't do anything with them, then you're wasting your time. But before we jump into this week's podcast, which is about, don't call it a comeback. A quick lesson I always kind of put across to people if we're doing coaching with or having a chat with, is don't be afraid to ask for help. Tap into your network for help. Tap into your network for advice. Tap into them for new connections. You'd be amazed how for all of us, we're linked on, well, linked on LinkedIn, linked to people on Instagram, maybe Facebook, Twitter. And sometimes people can get stuck with certain things in their life and you'd be surprised how, by the old X degrees of separation, you can find someone that can help you. And if they don't know how to help you, they'll probably know someone that can. So, yeah, make sure you don't be afraid to ask for help. And in fact, recently, always taking your own advice. What we wanted to do was take a breakdown of all the podcasts and look at all the golden nuggets that we've got in the ones from 2020. So I thought, well, I could spend 50 hours trying to go through them, but all you're going to get is my opinion on what the Golden Nuggets are going to get, a real broad range of opinions on it. So what could I do? Well, I actually sent an email to the hundreds of guys on the whole Man Academy email list, basically saying, you know, I don't often ask for help, but would you be able to, you know, let me know if you're up for just giving me a hand? And I think they had nine guys replied back in the first day saying, of course I will. Like, let me know what you want. Those guys will all be getting a free Wholeman Academy mug as well, which is worth millions of pounds, kind of, maybe. Or about a tenor. And what we asked them was that breakdown of the podcast. So I'll say thanks to James, David, Joe, Tim, Nathan, Graham, John, Fabio. We had a couple of Toms. Who else? Can't remember who else. But thanks to all those guys, and if you're either working on it or you've come back to me, I appreciate it. So, again, big reminder there. Don't be afraid to ask for help, either physically, mentally, from your connections or someone new. And if you get a no, just go and ask someone else. Anyway, let's launch into today's podcast. I called it. Don't call it a comeback, A, because I like that tune, but B, because it kind of sums up some of the story I'm going to speak about. And again, this all goes back to me asking for help on something. One of the guys who lives out in one of the other countries who remain nameless, but he is able to help me with a certain part of the whole man academy. And I just reached out to him and said, have you got any advice on this? What do you suggest I do? And whilst we were talking, he actually said to me, I'm having a pretty shit time at the moment. And it's one of those that I appreciate him even being honest, because it's so important to. If you're having a shit time and you want to talk to someone about it, to find someone who can actually listen. So after I'd reached out, I said to him, look, let's have a chat. Give me a shout, we'll jump on Zoom, the joys of Zoom, and we'll have a chat. Um, and what he really needed was someone not just to talk to, but someone to help him reframe things for him. I always say, you know, a problem shared is a problem halved, if that's right. But it is that, you know, having that issue, whatever it is, being able to talk to someone else about it can often just get it out of you, maybe release some pressure on your shoulders and actually, maybe you'll find some solutions to it. But let's go through a couple of things. For him, he'd had an unexpected relationship breakdown. Actually, he'd said his relationship was quite toxic as well, which I know can be real drain on you from past relationships I've had, where sometimes you spend more time fighting than you do anything else, and it just is a constant drain on your energy. So there's one of the things he had a relationship breakdown. What that led to was him kind of losing control of his mindset for a while and letting himself fall into the trap of doing the wrong things. And what that meant was it resulted in him working less or being less productive. So he's affects your finances, your finances are in trouble and what's happening there is your mindset is all wrong. This then leads on to your coping mechanisms. For him it was drinking, which I think is quite a common one. And he said, you know, drinking every day. Now that might not necessarily mean you're drinking loads and getting drunk, but we all know how the accumulative effect of drinking on the, on the body is going to be on your health and your mindset. Because you might feel a bit shit if you're drinking every day, you know you shouldn't be doing it. And each day that's something you turn to. And I've said that could be anything. It could be drinking, it could be eating too much, it could be being aggressive to people, it could be binge watching stuff and not, not, you know, not bothering to be productive. Could be smoking, taking drugs, porn, all the different things that maybe a guy is using as his coping mechanism, maybe to shut out what is going on and quite frankly is stopping him from going on his own hero's journey. Now you see how things can spiral out of control very quickly if they're left unchecked. That's one of the things I do worry at the moment for a lot of guys who are working from home. And as Andy Cohen Ray said at the moment, are you working from home or are you sleeping at work? Because you're not getting out, you're not going to the publisher, you know, you're not playing football, you're not playing golf, you're not doing all these things, you're not commuting and you know, that's one of those things. You end up at home on your own. And I just don't think it's a, I don't think long term it's going to be thought of as a good thing for people to. Working from home. Fine. If you have a split, maybe if you work from home two days a week and then you went back to the office or your workplace. But I think it's important. No, I don't think. I know it's important to have, you know, the communication between you and not be on a computer screen, but actually face to face. And also I think for all of us, a lot of Guys didn't expect to work from home, you know, that was forced upon them. So it's one of those things to be aware of, basically. So what it became within, as I said, it started to spiral out of control. But as I've said before, you can't control how. Can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it. And it's back to the old saying I've said on many a podcast, which is that your thoughts control your feelings. So for him, you had to start looking at what he was focusing on. He was focusing on the relationship breakdown being unproductive, that the money not coming in and that, how can I put it, that has a snowball effect. And that went on for weeks and months and of course can often lead to depression. And again, when you're facing isolation as well, it can be really difficult to snap out of it. But snap out of it he did. And what I call is that's where the, that's where his comeback started. You know, he picked himself up, he had one of those moments where he said, I can't carry on like this. And a lot of that comes from talking to other people and just having a second opinion of someone saying, look, you know, is this the way you want things to carry on? So he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and here's one of the great things he did, which I thought was a fantastic idea. He started a spreadsheet and he awarded himself points for achieving the important things during the day. Because otherwise it's quite easy to say, I'm going to do this, this and this. And then two days in our bollocks, I've forgotten it and it's all gone. And then a week later you feel bad about yourself for not achieving it. So he put on his spreadsheet all the different things that he was wanting to achieve that day. So one of them, which I think is massive, is meditation. And that for me is about, if I had to sum it up, it's about settling your mind, giving yourself the opportunity to settle your mind setting so it doesn't have to be that you're sitting for an hour cross legged, humming and with some bongs in the background. It could be you just spent five minutes a day, it's better than nothing, just sitting in silence or maybe having some music on and just allowing yourself to try and calm your mind if it's racing a lot, especially when you've got so much shit being thrown at you at the moment, as most of us have, we Locked down, you've got family in the uk. It's crap weather at the moment. Yesterday it rained all day. All these different things that are building up. The next thing he did sounds obvious, but he bought himself some exercise equipment. Now you don't need exercise equipment to do exercise, newsflash. But it is useful because I think for him, it invested in those things and it kind of, it made him get up and use them. So he had bought an exercise bike, he bought some Olympic barbells. Just be able to do the basic exercises, which, let's face it, no one's got an excuse not to. Unless you're, you know, physically unable to. You can find some time in the day and if you're not sure about how to do exercises, Christ, either ask me, ask one of the personal trainers and fitness guys we've had on the podcast, or to state the obvious, go on to YouTube. There's about 500 billion, you know, different videos you can have. So meditation and exercise were two of the, two of the huge ones for him that just got his morning going again. The other thing he did, apart from doing something active every day, is the mindset part. And this is where maybe people let themselves down on this. He forgave his partner. Now it doesn't matter what the partner had done, what they just said, etc, etc, you can stay pissed off with someone for as long as you want, but it's not helping anyone, especially you, you know, and I always use example, a few years ago I was coaching a lady who walked in and you could see she was pissed off, you could see her shoulders were hunched, she looked a bit angry, she looked a bit down. And I said, what's gone on? And she'd had an issue with her partner as well. And she said, this is what's happened. I'm really, really pissed off. And I said, okay, great. Just out of interest, how long have you scheduled being pissed off for? And she said, what do you mean? I said, well, I'm just asking because it's fine to be pissed off. That's perfectly natural situation and feeling reaction. But how long are you planning to be pissed off for? Are you going to do 20 minutes or are you going to do an hour? Or do you want to do a 24 hour stint? How's that going to work out for you? And she stopped and, you know, at least listened to me because I've broken her pattern and said, you know, it's up to you to decide how long you want to stay pissed off for. You know, once the Initial moment's gone. And she smiled and she laughed because she said, yeah, I realize it is. And suddenly, ah, you relax a bit because it's up to you how you feel. So this is exactly what he did. He understood that staying pissed off at his partner for an extended period of time is actually only going to harm him. It's not going to help anybody at all. You know, it doesn't mean you have to forget what they've done. But staying in that state isn't going to be, you know, isn't going to help you be very productive or happy. So he started to do all these things, the meditation, the exercise, the forgiveness as well. And guess what? He then started to find himself being more focused, doing better at work, you know, becoming more productive. That resulted in making more money, which was a problem because if you're not doing much work and you work for yourself, you're fucked basically, if you're not going to make any money. It put him in a better mood because he was actually moving the right direction. He started sleeping better. And I wrote this one down, which was that he was feeling less shit. And what I mean about that is actually you feel good about yourself. You know, once you've, you've got all those things working in the right, you know, moving the right direction, you've got some fitness going on, you've got your meditation, you've got your morning routine, your sleep is better, your work's getting better and you're not carrying around this anger of someone that's done something in the past which quite frankly, you know, you've got no control over. That's the thing that suddenly alleviates all that pressure and you can feel much better about yourself. And I've said this before, I can't remember what podcast who I heard this from, but the most important opinion is the one you have of yourself. So if you're trying to bring together all those things and create that morning routine as best you can, it hasn't got to be some dynamic morning routine, just do the basics, for Christ's sake. That's all we're asking. But he had changed his focus. You know, his focus. Instead of being pissed off and wallowing in self pity etc, etc. He'd got past that and he said, no, no, I'm focusing on me, my fitness, you know, being as healthy and as productive as I can and taking care of himself and what that done, his focus has moved. And there's the saying, energy flows where your focus goes, you know, if you want to concentrate on the shit that's going in your life, that's up to you, but that's not going to work out very well for you. If you have the ability to let that go and that's considered your mindset, then that's priceless. So in fact, we said, you know, imagine if you were trying to improve any area of your life, which is what he took care of, several areas of your life. That's where even going back to, you could reach out for help with people. That's the important one. Trying to do it all on your own is fine, but I'll give you a clue. It's much more fun with someone else. A bit like sex. So you really could take stock of where you are. So even if you're not in this situation, maybe you are trying to bring one level of your life up, take stock of the situation. Maybe you need to forgive someone who's pissed you off. And even as I was thinking about this earlier for the podcast, I realized that there's one or two people in my life who I felt like I was pissed off with. And then you go, how's that helping me? You know, why am I holding that negative energy? So who knows, maybe we could all find someone and that we could let. Let things go, you know, which could be priceless, to be honest. So, you know, for you and your mindset, you could even go back to. For the guys that subscribe to the E letter we send them what's a free download, the how to Do Life Better Exercise when they subscribe. That covers, you know, a lot of the different segments of a guy's life. And that can be really powerful. I know we've had a lot of success with the guys that have downloaded it and guess what, actually done something about it. You can't just sit there, download it and look at it and just go, yeah, I'll do it some other time. That's not the point. The point of it is to download it, work on it, spend some time and see what comes up. If you have subscribed and for some reason you didn't bother to look at it and you want it, just email me and I'll send it to you. And if you're a guy or a girl who's listening to this from either in the States or the UK or wherever in the world, because I realize, I think 15% of our listeners now rule from the States. So, good afternoon, good evening, good, good day, wherever you are. If you haven't got it, just go onto our website and subscribe and it will be able to download it straight away. And here's the cool thing. Send me, Send me how you get on. You know, send me what comes up. Let's see. It's so interesting to see some of the, some of the guys that send that they, they've got a certain segment of their life that they want to bring up a level, and it can be quite priceless because who knows where that's going to take you? You know, it might change your energy, it could change your productivity, your relationships, your mood. Who knows where it goes? So, again, don't call that a comeback for the guy. All he's actually done is refocused on what he should be focusing on instead of wallowing in that moment, which is fine to do for a little while, but it's not going to serve you for very long. Next week's pod, we'll be talking to a guy who began his career in the Royal Marines and then he was in the UK Special Forces, the Special Boat Service. He had a career of 10 years and he was all over the world, different operations and tasks. It'd be an interesting podcast for next week, so tune into that on Friday. And again, remember to subscribe to our E letter if you haven't already. And if you know of any other men who want to do life better, tell them about the whole Man Academy. The world needs strong men, not snowflakes. Enjoy.