EP060 - Six ways to do life better - Anthony Astbury

Okay, so this is the whole Man Academy podcast, episode 60. Before we start, remember to subscribe to our weekly E letter. It goes out on a Friday and often on a Tuesday as well. To hundreds of men around the world. What do we talk about? Performance, fitness, mindset, health, wellness, anything else in between you can think of for mental health. And also now we're up to podcast number 60. Thanks to all the people that have been on the pod so far. We've had performance coaches, DJs, doctors, sportsmen, special forces, entrepreneurs, bodybuilders, psychologists, Paralympic gold medalists, Mr. Danny Crates, guys from fashion, fitness, cooking, football. We've covered a lot of different topics. If there's someone you think would be great for the podcast, if there's a guy you think could really help us do life better, feel free to drop me a note. Anthonyolemanacademy.com and I will hit them up and try and get them on the pod. We've got a great list of guests coming up in the next couple of weeks. Some sportsman, some guys over from the States, and a bit of fitness for men especially. Now we're in mid Feb where most of us have managed to not quite do the yearly, what should we call it, the attempt at living a healthy lifestyle throughout the whole year. The New Year's resolutions, which usually have gone tits up by about mid January or certainly by February, if it hasn't for you, congratulations. But what we're here for today is to talk, just give you some tips on how to do life better. Some of it which I've stolen from some of the guys that have been on the podcast before. And importantly there, what we're actually working on is collating a lot of the golden Nuggets from the 59 podcast before this and bringing you a selection of some of the best golden nuggets which we can put into some kind of format that you can consume and hopefully put into practice. So how to do life better. I've picked six of the things which I think would be really useful and if you can apply one, one or all of them, that would be a good start. So let's jump into it. Number one is be around like minded people. I think for a lot of us in the last, in the last year, our world has got a little bit smaller. Maybe where we're not going out, we're not going working, the office, not going to meetings, list a whole load of other things we're not going to. But actually our reach hasn't, you know, our ability to reach people across the world hasn't changed. And we know the power of being around people that you know, have got a positive mindset and that's not saying that crap doesn't happen in life, but understanding that, you know, it's, it's, it's how you, how you adapt to it, how you process what's happened in the external internally. So how can you be around like minded people? I mean, to state the obvious, you can, there's the events that you can go to when they reopen again. But of course the online ones, there's Facebook groups now, whether you like Facebook or not, who knows, one by one day maybe it'll be replaced by something a little bit more fulfilling. But you've got your Facebook groups, you can go online, you can search, let's say on Instagram, search the hashtags that are interested in and you can find guys that are interested in the same things. You could join our whole Man Academy events which we'll talk about. A latest one is coming up actually. Well, I'll tell you now that's on Wednesday the 24th of this month at 7pm, I'll remind you at the end. But also there's always the online groups, there's the forums and that's the important thing is whatever you're interested in, if you want to go out and try and find those people, let's say you are a young entrepreneur or a guy who wants to change his career. The more you can get around the people that can help you give you new ideas, the better. You know, some of the, how could it be? Some of the best friends of mine are people that I've met at events. A great example. As many of you know, I've been through all the Tony Robbins training in Miami and back in London with thousands of people and a couple of the guys, John and Mark, who I met, it seems like years ago now, we met during the event and took a little while to sniff each other's butts and see what was up and see if she liked each other and with three very different people. But actually we've kind of complemented each other over the years with our, let's call it our mini mastermind, where every six weeks roughly we'll meet up and you know, you just have a good discussion about what's, you know, what's going on in your life, what's going well, what you could work more on and the important thing there is sometimes about your friends challenging you. Now when things are going well, often it's quite easy and you don't need to be challenged. But it's when you're trying new things and you're taking risks and you've got a friend who just giving you that little nudge in the right direction I think can be pretty priceless. So the other thing about let's say being around like minded people is actually when you're building your network one thing I've always known is you're being genuinely friendly to people. And I've added the word genuinely because there's a difference between being friendly just for the sake of it and actually being generally friendly. I'm one of those people that I'll enjoy chatting to anybody. You never know who you're going to meet. You never know who might have an impact on and that got me thinking. There was a book I read a long time ago called Never Eat Alone by Keith Farazi. I can't even, I don't know if I spelt that correctly or pronounced it correctly. Who cares? Let's just say that I have. But he lays out specific steps and the inner mindset that he uses to reach out and connect with colleagues, friends, associates and people that he's helped and who have helped him. And I'm very much I've been applying that for many years. A when I worked up in London in the city it was about making new contacts, having those new ideas and tapping into people's different networks. Had great a few examples recently where a couple of guys through the whole man academy I nearly said the word reached out again but I can't stand that term so emailed me crazy thinking and got in touch and we had a good chat and one of them has connected me with someone who hopefully is going to be on the podcast in a couple of weeks time which would be great. Another guy came up with some new ideas and I know he'd spoken about it on LinkedIn and that was the thing you just take some time to you know, a be nice to people and you never know what's going to come from it. So let's, let's just cover that one. Be around like minded people that might be online and or in your local area but you know, maybe it's time to upgrade your friends and sack some of your other friends or colleagues. Who knows. So number two is about being honest with yourself which isn't always easy. That could be in relationships. I mean how many people now are in relationships still because of lockdown? Imagine that. Imagine you're someone that was about to split up with their partner, which isn't always Easy to give you a clue, especially if you've got kids or you've got history together and, you know, it didn't quite happen because lockdown happened and it was very difficult. So being honest with yourself, we could cover things like relationship and also your health. You know, are you taking your health seriously? But let's talk about career. I think career has such a huge impact on your fulfillment because it's such a large part of your life. And if you're being honest with yourself, only you can know if you're working on the right thing at the moment or in the right job. I know plenty of guys who, the saying is, you know, spend years climbing up the ladder of success, but it's climbing up the wrong wall. And that's one of those things. The harder it is when you get higher up that ladder and further on in your career, it's. If it's not exactly what you wanted, then it could be a pretty painful end. When you get to that point, you think, is this it? And I know plenty of people that are stuck in their job. And sometimes that can be because the higher up, maybe if you did work in the city or you've got a good job where you earn lots of money, you get tied into the money and the lifestyle, and then the thought of leaving that, not just the status of the job and the money, can be quite hard, to be honest. And I found it difficult myself to start with when I first thought, oh, I'm going to leave and go into personal development, coaching. And you're used to a nice, easy, you know, fat salary that gets paid into your bank account each month. To suddenly have that and go out on your own is. It can be quite daunting. But if you don't do it, you're never going to know. And I think it's. How can I put it? If you're. If you're going to be honest with yourself, not just in your career, but just generally life, you know, only you can know if you're working hard on that one thing that you are, you know, you're focusing on. Only you can know if you're procrastinating about things or you're just being lazy. I mean, that could come with health, fitness, moving up the career ladder, whatever. And only you can know if you are unmotivated and how do you get motivated. And that's a. That's a podcast in itself, so we'll cover that one another time. But the important thing there is being honest with yourself. You know, don't. Don't pretend that things are going well if they aren't. And if changes need to be made, you must be honest with yourself and say, do you know what? I've got to kick myself up the ass or get someone else to kick me in the ass and get, you know, get myself in gear and start working on whatever it is that is going to move the needle and hopefully bring you a higher level of fulfillment. Now the important one there actually for me is number three is giving yourself time off. Now there's a difference between taking loads of time off and just being a slacker and actually saying, you know, you do need to build in some time to actually, I know, who knows whether you want to call it downtime. You can't be on all the time. And in fact, I might have mentioned this before, but when I've been to some of the personal development events, it was Tony Robbins years ago that always had everything about peak state. Now I agree that being in a peak state at the right time is perfect. That's ideal. But very quickly that can be exhausting because no one wants to be in a peak state all the time. Well, I don't think they are. When I'm relaxing at the weekend with the kids, I don't want to necessarily be in a peak state. I want to be pretty, just having fun with the kids. So I know that he changed it to being in a beautiful state so you could apply that to whatever state you think beautiful would be. But it was a really important one because you know, you need to be up, you need to be down at some times. So don't think that you need to be switched on in a peak state all the time. For me, looking after yourself is the number one priority. I've always been into health and fitness or certainly, you know, from my 20s upwards, but, but I don't think I realized and I don't think a lot of the people that I do coaching with realize that health really has to be your priority. For me, one of the big things is people say, well, how can I, you know what the simple things. And I say look at what you're consuming. Now the obvious thing for that would be food. What are you eating? Is if you can afford organic food, I would say do that. You know, that's one of the most important things. Even if you can't afford organic food, what else are you fueling self with? Is it real food or is it processed crap? All the nasties and the shit stuff that's in processed foods is long term, is not Going to do you any good. I don't think I need to tell you that one. So firstly it's about having a look at what you're eating, what you're consuming. The second one is obviously drinking. Listen, I like a beer and a glass of something fizzy as much as the next person. But you know, those, those years when I worked in the city, I realized I was drinking quite a bit. And it didn't necessarily mean that you were going out and getting drunk all the time, but if you added up all the beers at lunchtimes and the quick beers after work, etc. Etc. Plus the big nights out where you got home at 3 in the morning, couldn't remember what you'd done, when you add those up, you realize how much you're consuming alcohol wise and also the amount of sugar and all the money you spent, but that's another story. So you know, just be mindful of what you are drinking. And I try to think where we saw it in the last couple of days, but the huge increase in people that were or their increase in alcohol consumption during lockdown. So you know, if you're listening to this still during lockdown, one of the things I suggested was just say Monday to Thursday you're not having a drink and just save it for the weekend. If you can just pick something. So you're not saying you're not going to have it at all because let's be realistic, if you told me I wasn't going to have any drink, I'd probably fail in a couple of weeks. But you know, just trying to set some kind of, you know what, you know, maybe Friday and Saturday nights I'll have a drink, but the other ones I don't could, could drastically reduce your consumption and put some money back in your pocket. But also here's what else with consuming is, you know, what are you consuming on that on the tv? You know, what are you, what are you watching at the moment? It's easy to watch the fear porn that's on the mainstream media. All you're being told at the moment is death and death, death rates and vaccination rates and Christ, what any other rates they can put up there. One of the best you could do is just switch it off. I mean we spoke about this on various podcasts, even with, God, how many weeks ago was it? You know, several of the podcast guests have all said one of the big things for them is not watching the news, which I think is really powerful and that includes reading it. You know, you go into look at all the different front pages at the moment in their job is to create a headline that makes you read it and it's not a particularly fluffy or happy headline. So imagine going for a few weeks without consuming any of the mainstream media or any of the news. Might do some good. Also about what you're listening to. You know, if it's the radio, could you listen to podcasts instead? Something a little bit more uplifting instead of the doom laden fear mongering on the mainstream media, you might find that really helpful. The next one when you talk about consuming is the products that you're having now. We talked about organic food also all the products. If you went for a second into your bathroom and you open up the cabinet and you have a look at all the products, I would guess that a lot of people have, and then you look at the back of them and you realize all the crap that's in them and half of it you can't even pronounce because it finishes with X, a Y and a Z on it. So, you know, I didn't realize that for years I was applying anything that I thought was useful to my body, but I didn't actually care about what quality it was. And maybe I have learned over the years that the benefit of, you know, the products maybe that are organic or as naturally created as possible could be one of the biggest. One of the big plus points of listening to this podcast is just going into your bathroom, looking all the cans and pastes and tubes and gubbins of stuff, have a look at it and think, what is this shit that I'm putting on my body now? You know, you could say that your skin is your largest organ. You can put your own pun in there if you want to about what your largest organ is. But it's important to remember that, you know, you are absorbing everything that you put firstly in front of your eyes, in your mouth and then on your skin. Which sounds like a pretty good night out actually. But that's probably a different podcast. So, you know, for a lot of people, be careful with what you're consuming and who you're hanging around with, you know, who you're listening to. How can you give yourself time off? It's a good question. Because people, especially now they're at the work and the home life. There's those blurred lines which was spoken about and it was, what podcast episode was it? I can't remember about three ago with Andy Cohen Ray and he said, you know, are you working from home or are you sleeping at Work. And I had a good response to that on the whole Man Academy E letter list, because the guys there were like, shit, yeah, you know, I'm getting up, you know, grabbing a coffee, I don't know, switching on the telly, then I'm onto my laptop, sitting on that all day and it's not particularly doing much good when I switch that off. And then I have no break from home and work life. So work on that as best you can, but I just think you've got to, if you, if you have to schedule some time to relax. I found that I was working every day, especially once I left the city, and I was working on the whole Man Academy, working on coaching, and you realize that you don't have that time off. And I was working seven days a week. Now, it doesn't mean I was working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, but I was working every day and I realized how important it was, especially when you've got kids to say, right, you know what, on X day, let's say Saturday, I'm just not working and I'm just doing family stuff. And you know what, as soon as I started doing that, it felt really good and I felt my. I know a bit of pressure off your shoulders because you just gave your brain a break from thinking about work all day. Not that I don't think about the whole Academy all the time and how we can do life better, but if you, if you have to schedule some time in, put it in your diary, tell your family, you know, ensure that you've blocked that time away so you can actually get for me, get outside, get into nature, get away from screens. That's one of the big things. I'm lucky to live out in the countryside now, but it doesn't matter where you are. If you can just get outside, you know, no excuses that it's shite weather if it's raining. You know, there's no such thing as wrong weather, it's just the wrong clothing. So get away from screens, get outside, get into nature as best you can. So that covers, you know, giving yourself time off. Let's have a look at being relentless in the pursuit of greatness. Now, greatness for everybody is going to be different. I think that's an obvious one, and it depends on what age you are as well. But I read a great book a couple of years ago called do the Work by Stephen Pressfield, and it was really such a simple book, but it covered some of those, the stages where you're working on something and then you have a setback or then you lose motivation and then you have a setback and then you make progress and then you lose motivation and then you have another coffee. You can see where this is going. It's a never ending wheel of kind of, you know, one step forward, two steps back. And he wrote about resistance and finding a lot of resistance in all the different things you're doing. And I've written it down. It was something to do with resistance to change, to work, or to any act that rejects immediate gratification. You know, if it's hard, there's the old saying, if it was easy, everybody would do it. And the immediate gratification. Look at where we are now with, you know, if you want food, you click on your phone and they'll be there within half an hour. If you want to order pretty much anything in the world, you click on, you know, one of the online, I'm trying not to say Amazon. How can I do that? One of the online shopping things that are a bit like Amazon, but on Amazon, I said Amazon four times. Fuck. But you press a button and it's there and if it's not there within two or three days, we all get a bit, you know, oh my God, it's taken four days for delivery. That's outrageous. So in your pursuit of greatness, having the understanding that good things take time and there's going to be some levels of, levels of procrastination, there's going to be the ups, the downs. But for me it's all about taking constant action. Now again, it doesn't mean you have to work on it every day, but not having a, you know, a break and letting things stop, it's continually working on something as best you can. So you continue to make progress and that is being relentless in the pursuit of greatness. Because if you're going to stop, you know, everything stops. It's like running a, running a long race. You know, you can slow down and you'll still be making progress. So if you're working on something slow, you can slow down, that's fine. But keep working on it and keep making progress. Just keep going. And actually that's a great book. It's only small, but yeah, it's called do the Work by Steven Pressfield. He's written a couple of other really good books as well. But that was the one for me where I was reading it and nodding and just being like, yeah, you know, from some of the projects that I've been working on, you do find that, that your levels of motivation and your productivity go up and down. But reminding yourself to keep going, take constant action, is pretty priceless, to be honest. So keep going with that one. Number five is being selfish. I went to three or four years ago where the. The boxer, or X boxer, I should say now, Chris Eubank was speaking, and it was. It was a really powerful talk. And, you know, he's. He's certainly an interesting guy, but he was spoken. No, he was spoken. That's not even a word he was speaking. Or he'd spoken about being obsessed in going back to the pursuit of greatness. But for him, with the boxing, he was obsessed with everything about it. And I think if you're trying to work on something, if you're trying to become the. Call it the best version of yourself, at some point, you have to be selfish and say, do you know what? I'm trying to zone out of all the distractions around me, the social media, the people that are trying to take your time from you, it's okay to be selfish and say, do you know what? I'm working on myself, Be it your health, your fitness, your career, your relationship, whatever it is. And if you're not being obsessed or if you're not obsessed by it, then are you taking it seriously? I would say that I'm obsessed with the whole Man Academy. I talk about it all the time. I'm always working on it. I'm connecting with people through the whole Man Academy, thinking of better guests we can have for the podcast, and I know that that's moving the right direction. So for you, be okay with being a bit selfish and saying, do you know what? I'm working on this thing, and I'm putting 100% in, but remembering to take a little bit of a break in between. So I guess if I asked you this now, if I ask you this question, what are you working on? Can you answer that question? You know, even if you think about it, what am I working on? What's the big thing that you're working on? I would say for me, I'm building a tribe of a thousand men who want to live a life of adventure. That would do. I'm building a tribe of a thousand men who want to live a life of adventure. That is what I'm working on now. All the other parts around it are just kind of, you know, making that up. But that for me, would sum up very quickly what I'm doing now. Number six is get clear on what you want. Here's an interesting one. It's okay not to know what you want. I'm trying to remember which podcast it was I listened to where a guy said, you know, he, he knows people that are in their 40s and 50s that still don't know what they want. And that's okay. Some people maybe are never going to get there. But as I mentioned earlier, what you want at different times, your life will naturally change now, whatever age you are now, I'm going to guess you would be between 27 and 33, but on average that, I think 65% of the podcast listeners are between 23 and 44. So, you know, for you, I know. What stage are you at? Let's take me as the example. In my 20s, what was I interested in? Fun, money, women, gym, football and nights out. That's pretty much it. Not necessarily all in that order. That was my twenties, my thirties, I've written these down. Fun, money again, family. So that's changed just from women, the gym, adventure and fulfillment. And the adventure came from doing obstacle course racing around the, around the world. And suddenly I was interested in fulfillment. Whereas in my 20s, I don't think I ever really knew what that word meant. My, my fulfillment was just a big night out and a hangover and a bacon sandwich the next day. So 30s, fun, money, family, gym, adventure, fulfillment. 40s, where I am now, freedom is the new one. I didn't, I wasn't looking for freedom really in my 30s, or maybe not in my late 30s, I hadn't even thought about it. I was a cog in the machine. I was trading time for money. I turned up at work, I gave them 50 hours a week plus the commute. So let's, let's call it 70, maybe hours a week. And they gave me some paper which has got no value at all, but they call it money. You won't know what money is soon if you listen to this in a few years time because it will be digital. But I was trading time for money. And I had no real understanding of what fulfillment might be to me. But in my 40s, I'd learned I want freedom and impact and still fun. The common theme here is the fun. I've already got the family now, so that's ticked off. But in my 50s, in eight years time, who knows? A good quality of life I know will be the thing that I'll be looking for, whatever form that takes, who knows? But I know that will continue to be freedom, impact and fun. These days I've decided if I'm doing stuff, it's not fun, I won't do it. So for you, figure out what do you want and when you figured out what you want. And it doesn't have to be. You don't have to sit on top of a mountain and chant to figure it out. Most people kind of know what they want, but maybe they're not admitting it. But if you're not sure how to get it, once you know what you want, work backwards from there. You know, what are the steps going backwards, what things might you need to do, who might you need to speak to and when you know what you want, that gives you some freedom itself because clarity is powerful for me. Freedom. You want money in the bank. I want to work on something that interests me and I want time off when I want to. I don't want to ask people can I have some holiday please? I hated that when I worked in the city. Ridiculous that you're a grown man and you have to say can I have some time off please? And they say no and you say oh, okay. Thanks very much. Just a thought there. Maybe that, maybe that resonates with you. So anyway, let's sum it up. Let's look at the list. Be around like minded people, hopefully with a positive outlook. Give yourself time off. Schedule it in if you have to. Be honest with yourself about where you are. Be relentless in your pursuit of greatness, whatever greatness is to you. Be okay being selfish sometimes and get clear on what you want. And if you want a bit of help with getting clear on what you want, just give me a shout and we can try and sort you out. Lastly, again, I said at the start if you don't already. I know hundreds of guys do but subscribe to our weekly E letter. Hundreds of professional men around the world. On it we send out thought provoking content. All the invites go out. Anything to do with events at all. Please like and share this video if you can. And if you know of any other men who want to do life better, tell them about the whole man academy because I'll give you a clue. The world needs strong men. I'll catch you next week for podcast number what will we be 61.