EP114 - SEPTEMBER UPDATE - ANTHONY ASTBURY | WHOLE MAN ACADEMY

Okay guys, before we kick off the podcast, just to use a reminder to sign up for a game changing weekly E letter that goes out to hundreds of men around the world, just go to www.wholemanacademy.com movement. Right, let's jump in.

Wholeman Academy because the world needs strong men. Wholeman Academy is changing the game for men around the world. It's for guys who want to live an epic life of fun and adventure. No matter what we believe deep all men want to go on their own hero's journey to becoming resilient, confident, fearless and fulfilled. Listening to be inspired by guys who don't settle for living a life of mediocrity. This is your call to action and call to adventure.

Are you ready? Okay guys, this is the Whole Man Academy podcast, episode 114. If you haven't already, go back and listen to 113 with Tim Hayes. Had a good few comments about that really interesting guy who had kind of gone through different transitions and and he's joined life, living his own version of an epic life, which is what we're all about. Finding what your epic life is and going after it. Like everything depends on it because it does. But in episode 114, it's just me today and we've got lots of stuff to get through. Also something at the very end, so stick around at the end for something special. We've got a little offer for guys that feel like they really want to take action. So we'll cover that at the end. But in between that we're talking about our E letter and a big event possibly happening role models. We'll cover the new King Cancel culture, some podcast guest information, a couple of questions from you guys. A really great book that I've been reading which could recommend and I think that should pretty much do us. So let's kick off with our latest E letter. Now I'll put the. I know plenty of you that listen to this will already subscribe to the letter, but I'll put the link in the show notes again, if you don't already, why not get involved? Hundreds of guys around the world across the world listen to it or I should say read it and enjoy it. And we put thought provoking content in there. But this week we talked about the Shemitah, the seventh year in a seven year cycle. And I won't go into it here because we talk about it in the letter and you can read all about it. There's but one of the big things was about how the seventh year, often a large event happens across the world, be it financial. So usually something, you know, like a stock market crash or something that involves money and affects basically everybody in one way or the other. And I've already had, we sent it out this morning, so I'm recording this on Wednesday. We already had a couple of good emails from guys who've read it and said really interesting, you know, give them something to think about and something to look out for. So who knows, maybe this weekend nothing will happen, maybe it'll be in the days or weeks to come. But it's certainly something that we want to provide some thought provoking content and give you guys something that maybe you've never heard of before or you haven't read in any other normal kind of publications that you read for men. But here's the important thing, even from the E letter was talking about preparation as well. So let's say you thought there was going to be a big financial event coming up. You know, maybe it is that you don't resign from that job that you're about to. You know, telling the boss to stick your job and walk out of there might not be the greatest idea just at the moment when the, you know, there could be some financial turmoil around. Also maybe it's something like you're about to make a big purchase like a new car or a house or something like that. I know these things, you know, houses aren't necessarily easy to slow the wheels in motion, but certainly things like cars and you know, big ticket things that you buy are able to, you know, be put on ice until you see whether things calm down or not. And as we mentioned in the letter, if you haven't realized already, the financial environment isn't exactly looking great anyway. When you look at inflation, when you look at job losses, when you look at companies that are trimming numbers, it might seem like a small percentage, but you've got a lot of these big companies that are freezing, hiring or reducing their workforce. That is of course going to have a knock on effect. And of course all those people that may be losing their jobs would usually be spending, you know, their hard earned money on, well, not just mortgages and things like that, but obviously the little luxuries in life, the coffees, the lunches, maybe upgrading cars and all those kind of things and holidays and maybe those things will be put on ice and you can imagine that will have an effect on the, on the economy as well. The other thing talking about, about money, I mean we, we spoke on the electric a little while ago and I mentioned it briefly today, do you understand what a bail in is? So people understand what a bailout is. And that was when, you know, banks, large institutions kind of basically say we're bankrupt or about to go under and the government give them a load of money to keep them afloat, your money, unfortunately. But a bail in is something completely different because that's when if a bank was in trouble, the bank would take all the money from people that had deposited the money in the bank and use that to keep them afloat again. It's your money and that's where it comes from. So it's something interesting to think about. I know I emailed a few guys who are in my, let's call it circle of trust recently to say, do not leave all your money in your bank account. It might sound ridiculous, but as who was the podcast guest? I think it was Paul Miners based out in Australia who said the term, you know, only leave in your bank account what you're prepared to lose, which might sound ridiculous, but if a bank suddenly went tits up for some reason and it could be a knock on effect, not necessarily of that bank, but it could be exposure to another financial institution or a financial event that they are, you know, exposed to. Look at issues with over in China at the moment with their housing and lots of kind of fake cities and non payments. But that can have that cascade effect which could end up with a bank or certain banks or all of the banks having let's say, some financial difficulty. And therefore they'd say, I'll tell you what we do. We keep all the money that you've given us. Thanks very much. Well, maybe let you have a little bit of it, but we'll keep all the rest to stay afloat, thank you very much. And then you really are up creek without a paddle because there's nothing much you can do about it. So have a little think about that one. Again, we always say it's about us notifying you of these possibilities because if we talk, we can talk about, you know, morning routines and mental health and what have you. But I'll give you a clue. If there's one thing that will affect your mental health, it'd be building up a nice nest egg of money having all whipped away from you. So that's Balin's investigating, if you can. The next thing I want to talk about was the landscape for men today. And you might have noticed in some of the podcasts I often start with this question now because I think it's really interesting, depending on where the Guys are in the well across the world to find out what the landscape is like for men. One of the common things, I mean, pretty much across the board, but definitely in Western, in the western world, let's call it, is the levels of testosterone for men dropping literally off a cliff. They look like the bitcoin chart at the moment, just going down, down, down. And that's one of the things we covered in our energy protocol course was about how to optimize your testosterone, basically. And we give various different supplements, different things you can do to really try and become, you know, as well use the word optimized as possible. And we've seen guys, I mean, we've had over 100 guys have worked through the course and some of the guys really found we've provided simple, effective ideas and tools for guys to help with their testosterone. So I'll put the link again in the show notes. Check that out if you haven't already, but I know plenty of you have. And again, that's like a six week course or it's a six part course. You can work on it as quickly or slowly as you want, but really trying to take your fitness, your mindset, your health, your morning routine, all these different things and optimize them as best as possible so you can turn up in your career, in your business, in your family as the best version of yourself. The other one was on supplements, what we didn't have in the course, but since then we developed a relationship with a company called Ape Nutrition. And I really like the guys there, the team really know how the world works. I think that's really important. And they came up with a great supplement for men which is works on hormone production and sexual health, improves those for men with testosterone. And it's called Optimized Male. So again, we'll put that in the show notes and we write about it in our e letter and have done as well because again, know supplements can't replace the foods that you should be eating, but they can certainly help to supplement kind of, you know, your diet and ultimately help you with, you know, with the way that your body is working and the way that you are feeling. Even more importantly, next one is cancel culture. So again, we talked about this on and off on the podcast and I've noticed in recent days, I mean, it just doesn't stop where you have certain people. If they don't like someone's views, then it can't just be, hey, I don't like their views, but they're, you know, entitled to them. It has if we don't like their views, we must try and shut their business down, shut their website down, shut their PayPal accounts down. That kind of thing we've seen happening. And one of the publications that I read has recently had its PayPal account shut because some people don't like what they say. Which I think is really interesting because I've learned, especially in the last few years, that there's so many people around you and there's always going to be that have got differing opinions to me, but I like to listen to those opinions and wonder if I'm going to learn something as opposed to saying, well, you can't just say those things. So let me know what you think. If you've seen Cancel Culture around or you've been affected by it, hit, hit, reply or email me, let me know what your thoughts are. Role Models for men so we're going to write an E letter about this in the coming weeks. I was letting all the funeral stuff die down in the UK because everybody goes a bit bonkers and he's too busy looking at screens to pay attention to anything else. But that seems to be just kind of dying off now, pardon the pun. Therefore, in the next few weeks we'll be looking at role models for men. And that's an interesting way, isn't it? Again, I'd love you if, if, if you got time to email me or comment under, if you're watching on YouTube and tell me 1, 2, 3, or a couple of role models you think that are good for men. You know, these days, the men in their 20s and 30s. I've got my own ideas for it, but I'm sure there'll be plenty of guys out there who I don't even know exist, I never even heard of. So I'd love to hear who you think could be a good role model. Now, talking about role models, it can't have escaped your attention that we have a new king, King Charles iii. I've heard other derogatory terms of King Charles iii, but let's stick with the official line of the third, with his funny sausage fingers that he has. But is he a good role model? We will be writing about that, but I thought it was interesting that, you know, through a special loophole, he doesn't have to pay inheritance tax, apparently, which was something that the royal family put in place a while ago. Isn't that interesting? So there's a good role model to start with, is a bit of tax avoidance is, is your first thing. Now, I don't agree with Paying most of the taxes, I think they're a complete scam. But when the. The man that's supposed to be kind of looked up to by everybody, you know, swerves his own tax, then questions I think should be asked. But his big job, I think, at the moment, apart from get some more funky suits, is to galvanize the country. I, in my years of, you know, paying attention to what's going on in the world, I don't think I've ever seen a time where people are seen more divided, which is really upsetting because, you know, I think the one thing that the we'll say the world or the country needs at the moment is a bit of unity. And there's so many people arguing about this, arguing about that, pitched against each other, be it politically, be it, you know, during lockdowns and all the COVID stuff that happened, some people are arguing left, right and center about what should be happening there. And it's a real shame because I think it saps people's energy. It certainly saps my energy if I ever waste my time looking at it. So, yeah, galvanizing country should be one of the things that the king should be looking to do. Whether he'll do that or just carry on pushing his favorite green agenda with the World Economic Forum is another matter. Anyway, we will cover that in e letter. Again, the link will be in the show notes if you don't receive it already. The next thing I want to talk about is the podcast. Yeah, we're up to 114 episodes. We've got some epic guests coming up. One of the interviews I have just arranged or agreed to is going to be in November. And I've been asked this question before. If there was one person or who's the one person you could have on your podcast, you know, in the world, who would it be? And this, I promise you, is the guy. So he will be on in November, so in a couple of. Couple of months to wait because he's so busy and he's traveling and doing stuff. But that will be one to make sure you catch. Also, this last weekend, it's funny because sometimes people come into my existence that, you know, I'd never heard of before, but I met a guy at the weekend who's got a really, really interesting story. And one of the big ones of that is that he went for over five years being completely barefoot, which is pretty impressive, to be honest. And I would say that, like most things in life, most people haven't got a clue what that entails and the benefits and, you know, the drawbacks and all the different things that go with it. They'll have an opinion, but I would say it's an uninformed opinion, a bit like a lot of things that are going on in the world at the moment. So I'm going to drag him on the podcast in the next couple of weeks a because he knows a lot about men and how our bodies are conditioned and how we can do things to optimize them with movement, strength, etc. But again, really interesting story because when you talk to people and say, oh, he didn't wear shoes for five years, some people have their tiny minds blown. They cannot comprehend how you could do that, especially through the winter, because your feet might get cold. Oh no. And stuff like that. So, yeah, we'll be getting him on in the next couple of weeks, so I'll let you know about that. But I always say if there is someone that you think would be great for the podcast, no snowflakes, someone that's really interesting, a guy who's maybe, you know, been through some turmoil and has come out really well the other side, or living his version of an epic life in this country, as in in the UK or abroad. Doesn't matter where it is. Let me know. Feel free to suggest, you know, send me their details and I'll have a look. And also, don't be upset if I decide they're not quite right for the pod. I have had that where you're like, yeah, it looks interesting but maybe not quite outright vibe. So yeah, feel free to recommend guests if you, if you know them. Next one was a question about morning routine. So, you know, we cover the morning routine in the energy protocol. I always say that the best morning routines are ones that are flexible. You know, you cannot, you've got to move. I'm sitting on my foot and it's gone numb. You cannot be too rigid in your morning routine. The only thing you want to be rigid about in the morning is if your partner's in bed with you. But that is another story. So for me at the moment, morning routine looks like this. At 5:45 my alarm goes off. But when you get used to waking up at the same time, which I try and do, I wake up naturally a few minutes before that, as opposed to having the cortisol raising of your alarm on that. Don't have an alarm that is really, you know, abrupt, if that makes sense. Try and have something that is gentle to start off with as opposed to kind of, you know, it Grab you by the lapels and shaking your wake. So 5:45 or just before I usually get out of bed. I've learned also to build in a little window of time, so it's not like every five minutes I'm doing this because you're guaranteed to fuck that up and fail. So it will be between 5, 45 and getting downstairs. I'll spend five to 10 minutes meditating and breathing. Usually the house is at the moment the nights are drawing in and the mornings are darker. So the house is pretty much just about dark, which is quite nice, actually. Just to sit quietly whilst the kids are still asleep. All you can hear is the ticking of a clock. Sitting down and actually doing meditation and breathing just for five minutes. I'm crap at meditating. We've had some epic guests on who talked about it, and I've gotten fits and starts at doing that with mixed success. But I'm getting better at it. And actually, as Tim Hayes said last week on the podcast, you know, you've got to look at this over the course of months, not a few days to say, oh, it's not working for me. Often with meditation, especially when guys start off, you'll end up just with other thoughts running through your mind. And it's not about trying to put all thoughts to the back of your mind, because as soon as you do that, you'll think, oh, I've done it, and therefore you spoilt it. So for me, I literally, like, visualize clouds going over the sky. So in a way, like, whilst I'm thinking about that, the rest of the internal chatter gets put away. So, yeah, meditation first and just gentle breathing. I then generally build in about half an hour where I'm doing either exercise and just some gentle stretching. You can call it yoga, Pilates. I don't care what you want to call it. It's my version of it where it will be body weight stuff, just to wake the body up. So you're not necessarily pushing the body too hard, but you're waking the body up, getting it moving in ways that it hasn't been for probably seven or eight hours whilst you've been asleep. I will have also put the kettle on and I will have made myself a warm water with apple cider vinegar. Again, we cover this in the Energy Protocol course about the options to have first thing in the morning. And I always say I don't like apple cider vinegar, but I know it's really beneficial to me, so I kind of literally, you know, suck it up, literally, and. And get on with it. Although there is some, I think waitrose, I think it is, but I might be wrong. Do an apple cider vinegar where it is slightly sweetened. So you're kind of cheating, but again, you're still getting some health benefit as opposed to nothing at all. The other thing I do before I sit at my desk is actually plan my day. So I always have, I've got it here, but a, a notepad which I carry around with me when I remember because of course through the day you'll be thinking, I must do this, this, this, and then it goes out your head. So I have that as a, as an idea capture system. Which comes back to the book Getting Things Done that we spoke about a long time ago on the podcast where you talk about doing a brain dump. And in fact I started working with a guy doing mentoring with him at the start of this week. We spent two hours together on, on the medium of zoom, magic of zoom. And one of the things we'd spoken about was in his business doing a brain dump. So if that sounds interesting to you, then feel free to ask me some more questions about it. So if you, if you break that down, that comes back to my move, Breathe, think and drink, which is the morning routine talk that I do to kind of, you know, corporate customers to help them transform their day. So we have the move with the exercise, the breathe, the breathing, think being planning your day and drink being kind of, you know, fueling your body with something nourishing before you hit coffee or something like that. So that is the morning routine currently and it has been massively subject to change whilst we were going through, whilst we have two kids, and then our first one didn't sleep much until he was one and then he was fine. Our other child, our other son basically has hardly had more than about five full night sleep in three years. And if there's one thing that's guaranteed to fuck up your morning routine is having a shite night's sleep the night before because you go to bed with these big intentions of, I'm going to get up, I'm going to do this, I'm going to exercise and blah, blah, blah. And then you get woken up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 times, and of course the next morning you wake up feeling like a zombie. So that should have been a challenging time, but even having the simplified morning routine helped me in those difficult times to go, okay, what have I got to do? I've got to move, breathe, think and drink. It's memorable. Achievable and flexible. So that's what we're looking for. Next one someone asked about now, this was a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't get to cover it on the podcast. And it's always a good question of, like, what's your biggest regret now? Probably some of my relationships I regret, but my biggest regret, I would say, is not learning how the world works sooner. So in my 20s and 30s, we've talked about phases of life, but in my 20s and 30s,. I would say I was too busy in to my mid-30s, you know, I was just interested in football, girls, money, gym. That's pretty much it. You know, a few other bits and family. But generally that's what my life revolved around was, you know, work and making money, dating, find, trying to find someone to spend the rest of your life with, going to the gym and trying to create a body that was, you know, strong. So I could cope with anything the world throws at me. But I can't say I did much delving deeply into how the world works. And I would use that as a. As health as well as your mindset. And actually, one of the big ones is financial system. I've worked in the financial, let's call it, you know, a cog in the wheel of the finance system for 20 years and probably didn't have a clue how it actually really worked on the grand scheme of things until I left. And now I look back and I'm like, wow, I was really blinkered and probably said some really stupid stuff because I didn't. I thought I understood how the world worked, but I didn't. And now I think I have a better handle on it. So there you go. Biggest regret, not learning how the world works sooner, especially the financial system. Um, but the other one was about, what's the hardest thing you've ever done? And you know what? I've really struggled this when I think probably for me, leaving the city was one of the hardest things that wasn't hard to do because it's not like. Because I loved it and I didn't want to leave. I was done with it and ready to leave. But it's very hard when, you know, you're staring at the abyss, as it were, and wondering what exactly you're going to do. So that was a really tough one. And the other part was, you know, since I left the city, we've had various challenges, like having a disastrous house renovation, having, say, a little one that hardly ever slept at night, which just, you know, slowly drips away your Mindset, So there's plenty of things that get thrown at you. But again, the biggest thing for me was about having a strong mindset, so that I would say whatever gets thrown at me, I will, you know, be able to take it and react to it as best I can. Now, we were talking about books a couple of podcasts ago, and again someone asked me and I thought I'd save it for this one. At the moment, I'm reading not fully, I'm dipping in and out because I like doing that. But a book called your body believes every word you say. It's by, and I can never pronounce it. Barbara Hoberman Levine if that's right, who cares? But I wanted to read you page 118. A couple of helpful reminders was about the words you say to yourself. So, for example, you know, if you say to someone, don't get stick, don't get sick, you're better off saying, stay. Well, if you say someone like, don't forget the milk, you're better off saying, bring home some milk. And it's all these little things that it's reframing what you're saying and think about the words you say to yourself. Now, classic one for me is I used to have a lot of lower back issues, which incidentally have cleared up since I started going wearing vibrant barefoot trainers or pretty much with zero heel on them. Interestingly enough, most of my back issues disappeared after that. But I always used to say this saying, which would be, oh, my back's killing me, my back's killing me. Now, saying that over and over and over again is literally like affirmations to let your body know that your back is slowly killing you, which is not a great thing to do. So it's interesting to think about your own internal dialogue, whether you say out loud or in your head, voices in your head, what are you saying to yourself? And what effect can that have on you? So I hear other people now because I've become mindful of it. I would hear other people using kind of negative language on themselves and they don't even realize they're doing it. And it's not up to me to keep pointing out because that might look like a right. But it's interesting to hear and think, well, I wonder how many years and how many thousands of times that person has told themselves or their children or partner or something, something that actually isn't kind of helping them in life. So really interesting book. Your body believes every word you say. Funny enough, the chapter straight after what I was Reading is all about how you talk to children and helping them with their self esteem. So again, it's, it's a fairly old book but you know, these things are, you find these days some of the older books are absolutely golden if you go back and spend your time reading them. So that was their helpful reminders. Now we'll be back with a podcast in two weeks time. But the one thing I wanted to leave you with is I know that for many people times are tough at the moment. I mean, hell, energy bills as much as anything else have gone absolutely bonkers. And we were like, well, what could we do to be, you know, to be helpful and provide some more value, you know, beyond the kind of free resources and the, and the paid things. So one of them is, you know, I do mentoring with guys and a select few people who, some live locally to me, some are abroad. But what we wanted to offer was for one guy, we would pretty much sponsor a free mentoring session. So if you're listening to this and you've managed to stay till the end, you know, if you email me with what your challenge is or what it is you want to move faster on and I look at the replies, I'll pick one which I think, you know, sounds like that that guy's really actually going to take action and I'll get back to you and we'll jump on Zoom for an hour, assuming you're not local to me. But jump on Zoom for an hour and I will do my best to work through, you know, whatever challenge you've got, whatever problem is going on and get it sorted for you or at least get you realigned and moving back in the right direction so you feel like you're making progress. So the best way to do that is just to email me. So it's AnthonyOleman Academy.com and depending on how many get, I will, I will do my best to respond to everybody so that they know what's happening. But, you know, maybe I'll pick another one next month and we'll give you a free moment of free mentoring session which usually would be, you know, quite a few hundred quid to help you move faster with something that you find challenging. That should be about it for today. We've covered lots of bits. Again, any questions? You know where I am and remember, the world needs strong men. Right, I'm out of here.

Thanks for listening. Remember to sign up to our game changing weekly E letter that's read by men around the world. Sign up at home. Omanacademy.com Movement until next time.