EP126 - LIFE LESSONS FOR MEN - ANTHONY ASTBURY | WHOLE MAN ACADEMY

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This is the Whole Man Academy podcast, episode 126. Your guest today is. Well, actually, it was going to be Frank Rich. And who is Frank? Well, he's based out in the States, and I'm sure you'll have listened to the previous podcast we did with Chris Wilson, who was part of the critical bench massive YouTube channel with a million kind of subscribers and what have you. And he'd introduced me to Frank, and this guy seemed like a real super interesting chap to, to get on the pod. But just as we sat down to record things, as life throws curveballs at you, we had a bit of a tech issue and Frank wasn't able to make it. So I was like, okay, well, anyway, we'll. We'll put him back by a week or two. I've also got a couple of good guys coming up who talk quite candidly about how to recover naturally from certain issues and some other great guests. So don't worry, we've got those coming up. But today I wanted to talk about two things. One was a while ago I was interviewed about offering a couple of life lessons for men. And actually, when I wrote them out, I. I think I wrote out about 10 and selected a couple. So I wanted to kind of drop a few of those in for you today and see which ones you could apply to your life right now. And the other thing is, we've been working on an idea for the whole Man Academy, and this has been something that I wanted to do for, I'd probably say years actually. But, you know, with everything else that goes on in life, including having kids and, you know, doing podcasts and coaching and everything else that goes with it, staying fit and healthy and sometimes doing nothing, it kind of has come to the bubble, to the surface now, to attempt to launch a whole Man Academy membership. So what is that going to look like? Well, what we've actually done, this is crazy thinking, but instead of just saying, hey, I've designed a membership and, you know, do you want to be part of it and be part of the. You Know, whole man kind of crew or movement. We thought we'd actually go and speak to a load of guys, you know, kind of, let's call it middle aged guys, guys in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and ask them what they would want out of a Whole man membership. And very much part of that would be, you know, building a strong network, learning from other guys, you know, supporting each other, accountability, making sure you're focused and making sure you know what you're going after in life. So we'll talk about that a little bit more. But if you're listening to this fairly soon after it come out, I'm still looking to speak to maybe another five or ten guys, if possible. You know, even if you're not on our whole man academy or whole man journal list, I will put the link in the show notes. And if you're able to, I'd love to jump on a 5, 10, 15 minute call on Zoom or even just, you know, on the old blower to talk to you about what you would like in a membership kind of platform for men. And that's why it's important, because there's no point in just launching something we want something that's going to be effective and is going to communicate to everybody that, you know, you want to have a better life and you want to kind of, you know, push forward with whatever you might find struggling with, challenging, whatever you want to call it. So yeah, on the, on, on that note, I'll put the link in the show notes. So do that first and, you know, pause the podcast if you haven't already, click that book in a little time to talk to me. And also, if you want to bring to that call any challenge or something you have, I'll happily either help you with it or suggest a resource or someone that might be able to help you with it. So let's jump into the life lessons. The first one was about pursuing your passion, you know, finding your passion, like making it happen. But I think the important one there is sometimes people think that they should just, you know, pursue your passion and fuck everything else off. And I'm like, no, I think now if I had my time again and I was working in the city, I would keep my job. Unless you hate it, you know, unless you're like, I'm suicide and I've got to get out of here. Unless you hate it. I would do it as a side hustle and, you know, kind of create your. If you're looking to monetize it, create your minimum viable product, the mvp I Heard that term earlier, just dropped my memory. And I think that's really important because especially if you've got mouths to feed, you know, you've got other people depending on you. It's easy in your 20s if you can still live on a mate sofa and spunkle your money on, you know, your, your latest kind of idea. And if it goes tits up, doesn't matter. But, you know, if you've got to go home to your partner and say, hey, I've just lost all our savings and my little idea, you're going to have some issues. So, yeah, I mean, I think pursuing your passion is important, even if it's not monetized. It's that thing at the weekend to do. Because I recall getting very bored of city life when I was working, you know, as a broker, and that's when I found obstacle course racing and I found that I became very passionate about that. I loved it. And it, you know, kind of. It sounds corny, but made me feel alive. So for you, sometimes in life, especially as guys get, you know, maybe in their, you know, late 30s, 40s, 50s, you become busy with work and maybe you kind of forget what fun is and what you do for your passion. So just a little idea for you there is kind of, you know, sniff out what, what floats your boat and go and do a little bit more of it. And you know, what, if you happen to make some money out of it as well, everybody's happy, proper cash back. The number two was live with intent. And what does that mean? Well, like living your life with purpose and intention. I think the important thing there is, you know, you've got to take ownership of yourself and your actions because it's very easy to play the blame game these days of, oh, I'm not where I want to be because of this, this, this, blah, blah, blah. But ultimately, you know, it comes down to you to take action on it. And if you are striving for a better version of yourself, for want of a better phrase, then, you know, you've got to live with intent and make sure you're making things happen. And that might mean you getting up early to work on something, you know, do courses, better yourself in some way, but. And stay up late, whatever that is. You know, living life with purpose and intention can be really, really, I think, important for a guy, for longevity as well. So live life with intent is number two. Number three is be courageous. I mean, I see a lot of cowardly men in the world. I also see a lot of brave men, mostly cowardly men are in the government, unfortunately, calling the shots. But it's more about courage to take risks and make mistakes. I think when, when I think back to some of the guys I've worked with and, and I get it, they were so comfortable in their, in their kind of career and their guaranteed salary each month that they didn't want to take risks or make mistakes, even if they weren't particularly, what would you call it? Weren't particularly happy in what they were doing. Unfulfilled. It'd be like, well, I'm never going to make as much money and what if I leave and it doesn't work out? And you're like, yeah, that's fair enough. It's not for everybody. But I think you need to have the courage to, you know, take risks, make mistakes and try and try something new. And don't be afraid to challenge yourself. I mean, that's, I think, where you grow as a person. If you're just doing the same old shit week after week, you're not going to challenge yourself and you're not going to grow. And you know, when I left the city, it was, it was scary. And I had people saying to me, you're making a big mistake. And I remember thinking, do you know what? In fact, I talked about this the other day, let's say at the time when I was thinking of leaving or one of the times, let's say he was on a basic salary and then you got bonuses. But you know what, you could have doubled that basic salary and I still wouldn't have wanted to stay because ultimately, for those 200 hours a month that you're at a desk, you're not happy. So yes, I might have driven a more expensive car and bought a bigger house and had a flash of watch and gone to, you know, gone to Miami and a few more times and out at expensive restaurants. But hell, those 10 hours a day, if you're there looking, you know, doing clock watching and thinking I'm living for the weekend and you're on the old hamster wheel of to go nowhere, then that should be your wake up call. So being courageous in, you know, making mistakes, taking risks, I think is really important. Calculated risks, perhaps. That's another podcast. The other one was embracing failure. And you know, I've plenty of times I have. And a lot of the guys who you might have listened to on the podcast have failed in certain things. And, you know, I hear it a lot. But it is a great learning experience. I mean, often, you know, when things go really well you don't really learn maybe that much. But when things go belly up, that is when you kind of, you know, get pushed out your comfort zone and have to actually kind of do something. So don't be afraid to fail and, you know, look at it as an opportunity to grow and become stronger, like mentally, maybe even physically. I mean, good. One of that is some of the races, the obstacle course races I used to do, you know, I wasn't winning all the races and each time you might do some kind of obstacle or, I don't know, some of your kick would break or you'd eat the wrong stuff or your prep would be bad or something. But all those little things made you better and also meant this is the important thing there. You could help others with your knowledge and your experience. So embracing failure is another one taking time to reflect. I mean, Neil Kramer, if you haven't listened to the podcast 118, I would say it might be it's the second most listened to we've ever had, but it is the one that's created the most comments. And every single one of them was like, fucking hell, this was great. I need to listen to this again, or, you know, I need to hear from him again. And just got people thinking and talking a little bit more to each other and to themselves about, you know, reflecting on life. And Neil Kramer speaks a lot about contemplation, which I think in today's busy, challenging, demanding, hectic world, especially with social media and scrolling and attention spans, it's probably the hardest time to just sit and, you know, contemplate. Contemplate life, Contemplate what's going on, what you're doing, where you are, who you are. Um, so that's an interesting one, is making time to reflect, slash, contemplate. I think for that also that will help you gain some clarity maybe on what you want out of life. The next one was nurture relationships and, and kind of this kind of segues back into our idea of the whole Man Academy membership because relationships, you know, form so much of your life because I think for a lot of us, we've talked before about the lone wolf mentality. Sounds cool and edgy, but actually, um, even for me, I really miss working with a big group of guys and having that kind of camaraderie. But just because you work with a lot of guys, it doesn't necessarily mean that they've got the same kind of, again, don't like the term, but can do attitude. I was talking to someone earlier who said, you know, it's really important to get around guys that want you to do well as well as they want to do well. And like for me, I look around at people and I'm like, how can I help you? How do I know someone that can help you and how can we kind of grow together? So I think nurturing relationships is great. Be that joining some kind of local, you know, club membership networking thing or whatever we come up with, with the whole Matt Academy that can allow you to offer support and guidance to others. And you might think I haven't got anything to be supportive of and I can't guide people. I bet you can if you wrote a list of the things you're good at and knowledgeable about and also allowing others to help you because we know how crap guys are at asking for help. Next one, I can't remember what number are now, who cares? But next one, we've only got a couple more. Was invest in yourself. Now that always sounds obvious but you know, I remember back when I'd never taken courses or anything like that, I was always kind of very, I don't know, gripped onto my money when I was working in City for most of the time and then as soon as I started spending money on courses and books and you know, personal development, wow. I was like, why didn't I do this sooner? And of course it hasn't got to be thousands of pounds. I've done it where I've spent, you know, five quid on a book which has been fantastic and I've spent five grand on a, on a, on a trip to Miami to see Tony Robbins or something. Completely different budget, completely different outcomes but ultimately each of them helped me grow. And of course if you start somewhere and say, do you know what? I'm going to spend five pounds a month. I know you can't get fuck off of five pounds these days, but you can still get some great books, but you can buy audio books or what have you and you could even invest, you know, five pound pounds a month at the end of the year would mean that you've not spent that much money. But you could have read, you know, let's say 12 awesome books and if you're not sure which ones to read, just email me and I'll give you some ideas depending on what you're trying to achieve the next one. So that was investing yourself and again, you know, that's an important one I think no matter what age or stage of life you're at, you know, if you keep on learning, it's, it's been shown that your cognitive ability or your cognitive decline will be less. I believe it is, you know, if you continue to learn, especially if you're interested in it. And the next one was choose your path. So what I mean by that is there's a lot of guys who aren't where they want to be in life. And it's not that you can just, like, wave a magic wand and suddenly everything's gonna happen that you want in life. But I remember sitting down with Andy Murphy, who. I can't remember what podcast it was about, podcast 30 or something, you know, two years ago, and he'd originally got me thinking about what my life would be like if I, you know, what. What I'd like my life to be like. And his podcast was Mindset by Design. But he was very much about life by design. And choosing your own path, I think means. And again, it sounds too obvious, but sitting down with a pen and paper, if you want to, or even just contemplating it and be like, you know what? Wherever I am in life, where do I want to go? You know, what do I want? Where do I want to be? Who do I want to become? Who do I want to marry? How much money do I want to have? How many kids do I want to have? Where do I live? What do I want to drive? All these different things? Because I think you'd be amazed how much of your life is dictated by, or your decisions are dictated by what you watch in the media, what films you watch, what adverts you see. And I've been studying a little bit more about that, which we'll go back into in the whole man academy or the whole man Journal, because I think so much of what we think we want is what people tell us we want because they want to sell it to us. So that's an interesting one to go down. So, yeah, that's. That's the last one is choose your path. And I think that's so important. Again, going back to guys I know who have chosen a path, enjoyed it, and then at one point just thought, you know what? This isn't for me anymore. And they find it very hard when they're stuck to kind of move out and go and do something else. But it's certainly something to consider. So apart from that, yes, we've got some great podcast guests coming up. I mean, Chris Wilson last week has already sent me an email and introduced me to about three or four other guys or is in the process of. And again, I always say if there's someone that you hear or know or think of who would be great on the podcast that's living their own version of an epic life and could pass on golden nuggets to all the other guys that listen across the world. Then feel free to send me an email and or connect with me on, you know, LinkedIn, social media, whatever you want and maybe we'll get them on the podcast because you know, I've got a list of people but there's obviously thousands of other great men out there who guys could take real value from. Apart from that. Yep. To state the obvious, if you haven't already, sign up to the Whole Man Journal. It is insights to maximize your mindset, body and performance. I know most of you do, but if not, jump on that and we'll be releasing the details on there of the Whole man membership once we kind of, I know, what's the word? Get a concrete idea of what we want to help the guys with, you know, what we want to offer and also kind of, you know, the finer details of it. So that should cover everything for now. And in theory I'll be sitting down with Frank Rich in the next couple of days so that will be released in, in a couple of weeks time. But of course I'll let you know all about that closer to the date. Right. That should do nothing else I think. Again, any questions on anything I've said, please contact me. Just email me if you want to. Anthony Holman Academy Also if you're on YouTube, please like this video that really helps us get the algorithms reflecting out to more men. So just by doing that you are hopefully helping more men. And the last thing is always to remember the world needs strong men. Right, I'm out here.

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