Phoenix Collective

Oh, that's strange.

What?

It pulled up YouTube.

That is kind of weird. We okay. I was gonna say, have we checked our volume? But I just noticed it's going. We're live.

We are live indeed. Don't even do it over there. I we're live and we're doing our thing.

Oh boy.

We'll edit this part. Where's, uh, let's put it on Instagram.

There I am.

Oh no, we're not doing you again, Wombat. Whatever it does, it does its thing. It's got me in some death leap over there. I don't have yours down on this.

That's okay.

Is that okay? Because it's the Man Church one. All streaming there. Good, good to go. Frame rates are down low. Like, I've had trouble today with my— we need to get a new thing. Hey, how are you today? And welcome to the Phoenix Collective. And Melissa and I are going to be talking about motivation versus discipline.

How to win on the boring days.

On the boring days.

You know, the days that you get up that aren't like catastrophic or anything, or they're not over the moon great, but they're just like Those days, they're just those days. Yeah.

So we run the Phoenix Collective, and the Phoenix Collective is a performance, uh, platform. It's based around the fact that we've both overcome a range of trauma in our lives, and we've, we've used life to push us forward in a positive direction. And we've taken those skills— it cost us about $300,000 and about 15 years to learn— and we put it all into this course. And once every 6 weeks or so, we do a live And we try and give away a bunch of the stuff that we've learned over time. Take some questions and just have a conversation with some people to see how we can help them. So again, we're gonna be talking about motivation versus win, how to win on boring days.

Motivation versus discipline.

So, you know, it's easy to make a plan when you're feeling good. It's easy when everything's come together for you to get up and go and get it happening. So, what about the days where nothing is particularly happening for you? What about the days when life isn't necessarily going well for you? What do you do on those days? How do you move ahead? How do you move from, I'll do it later, to, you know, I just need to do it because I know that things consistently build?

And we're not going to tell you to get up earlier. Can we just start there?

Yeah, please.

You don't have to get up earlier.

Neither of us want to do that.

We're not going to tell you to try harder or to become a completely different person by Friday.

Yeah, no.

That's not what we're doing.

Because that doesn't work.

We are known as the 1% people, like in the Phoenix Collective. We help people change their lives incrementally, um, and it's every day and it's 1%. If I can move the ball 1% this month, what does that look like for me 12 months from now? So that's, that's how we do things. We're talking about a small action, a clear starting point, um, and the way to return to that starting point if you get interrupted. So you'll need something to write on today. Yeah, just get a bit of paper and scribble or, you know, use your phone or whatever. Um, but by the end of our little chat, you should have a plan you can try tomorrow. Um, one little thing.

Yeah, that you just had a couple of people on who are used to us turning up on Fridays for our Finally Friday conversation about life, love, and creativity. Well, this is different. This is the Phoenix Collective.

This is the Tuesday Talk.

And this is the Tuesday Talk. And we'll be doing these going forward. About how you can re-engineer and rewire your life to make a difference. So the first thing I want to communicate to you is that motivation is emotional, discipline is decisional. Motivation says, I feel like doing this. Discipline says, I've decided this matters. What I've agreed to do is this. And it gets about doing it. Now, that doesn't mean that your feelings are irrelevant. It means that enthusiasm isn't the only reason you take action. I do not want to go to the gym this afternoon.

But you've decided—

But I've decided—

—that your health is important to you.

It is. And I had to move some meetings around. I normally go to the gym in the morning. I don't necessarily like going in the afternoon. But my decision, I had to move it because I had a whole bunch of work I needed to get done. And I'm now in the afternoon, not the best time that I'm feeling the most energy. But my decision before I did anything was that I was going to go to the gym. And I'm going to get off this call, off my rusty dusty, and I'm going to go to the gym.

So think about something that you normally do without needing to feel inspired. You do it because you know it needs to be done, like feeding your dog or getting your kids to school or wherever they need to be or putting the trash bins out. Now, I'm sure that none of you guys— That takes a lot of motivation. I'm sure none of you guys stand in the kitchen and sort of, Wait to discover your passion for trash.

Take the trash out. Trash day, Tuesday.

But you know it needs doing. There's a place for it in your week. Ours is Thursday morning. We take— we put the bins out because that's when—

When she says in our week, she kind of means her week.

I, I'm the one who remembers the bins usually.

I'd love to do the bins if I could remember the bins. And that's the other thing about even with motivation. Why the gym goes in my diary is because I want to do it. Why the bins aren't in my diary is because I don't want to do it.

You don't care.

I don't care about the bins. The bins are It's not important to me.

So, but what we're trying to do today is bring some of that everyday practicality to something that you're wanting to change or start or be better at in your life.

That's right.

So if you say something like, I'd love to be a writer, well, we're going to help you move from, I'd love to maybe one day be a writer, to, I'm going to have a document sitting on my desk in the morning after breakfast, and every morning I'm going to spend time on it. Um, one is something you care about and the other is a plan that tells you what to do. What do I do now?

Yeah. And so the plans are very, very important and the plans are undergirding of what the thing is. So again, using the writing as an example, I'm going to finish this book. Well, that's great and that's fantastic, but it doesn't tell me what you're gonna do tomorrow. What tells you tomorrow is if your diary reflects the fact that you've already made the decision to get up and write first thing, or to get up or stay up late and write for an hour then. Because I'm going to write one or two hours every morning, or I'm going to write one or two hours before I go to bed, sounds very specific. And when you attach a time to it, there's a decision that comes. Because when you come to nine p.m. or 6 AM, your decision is, I'm only going to stay true to my goal or I'm not. And if I'm not going to, then there's also that other conscious thing of, I'm quitting, I'm not going to achieve it, I'm going to let myself down. And then it moves from emotion and motivation into decision and action. And I think you've got to take it out of your head and out of that feeling realm into a— or out of the heart and out of the feeling realm into the head of It's in my calendar, so I'm going to do it. And if you don't make time for it, um, you just— it's just not going to happen for you.

You guys know that I'm a painter. We talk about this a lot, painters do, about being a motivation, uh, inspired painter or a disciplined painter. I, I have the discipline to show up in the studio even if I don't feel like painting today.

And it doesn't have to be big, does it?

No, you can go in there and just prep canvases or, you know, do whatever, but you're showing up.

Or do editing for 15 minutes because you've run It's 11 o'clock at night, you're absolutely tired, and it's like, but I told myself I would do something every day.

Correct. And the, the best way to start or to get that 1% is to build a minimum standard that fits a real day.

That's good.

And so what's the minimum thing that I can do today, um, on a day that I'm not feeling inspired to paint or I'm not feeling inspired to write?

Yeah.

Or whatever your thing is. I'm not feeling inspired to go to the gym. My bare minimum, what is it? 15 minutes of stretching might be your bare minimum. And so, set that, that bare minimum. And it needs to be a useful action toward your end goal. So, 5 minutes sketching in my sketchbook or 20 minutes working on one paragraph in your novel.

Yep.

It moves the ball toward the end goal. It's a useful, you know, action that you can take.

And I think that decision about what that is should happen before you start. You shouldn't sit down and say, well, I'm going to just, I'm gonna do 4 hours today. Well, if you don't have 4 hours, if you've gotta go to work in like an hour and a half, well then that's a silly goal. But if you decide what counts before you start, so as Melissa said, if it's like I've got enough time to prep one canvas, how long does that take?

Um, 10 minutes.

Okay, so that's 10 minutes. I've got enough time to, um, read. I've got enough time today to read what I was going to work on tomorrow, so it's in my head when I'm wandering around work all day. So that would count. That would be a 5-minute or a 10-minute exercise. Decide what counts before you start, because some of you will agree to 5 minutes, do 5 minutes, and then you tell yourself it wasn't enough. That's a really bad arrangement. Yeah, because you're not going to win. If you tell yourself you've only got 10 minutes to stretch and you do 10 minutes, then you've had a win.

Right. And you need to count that as a win. You've done a useful action toward your end goal.

That's it. Useful action towards your end goal. You need to write that down. That was very good. Useful action towards your end goal. So like, I've got one thing with people who want to start working out. Is just set your first thing of going to the gym. Even if you turn up in the foyer for a week and sit there and drink coffee, you've turned up. I went to the gym yesterday. I had a rough day. Went there in the afternoon and did not feel like working out. In fact, I probably shouldn't have worked out. I was too worn out, and I ended up hurting myself a little bit. But I pulled back. So my hour workout ended up being about 25 minutes. But you know what? I went to the gym. My goal was not going to the gym for an hour. My goal was going to the gym to work out. Now, did I do the workout that I, I wanted to do? I did the workout I needed to do. And sometimes when it comes to achieving your long-term goals, you've got life limitations and you need to be prepared to be flexible enough for those things.

I agree. I agree. So, so number one was Pick your minimum standard that fits a real day. I think a big time, a big thing for me would be number 2, which is tie it to an action in your day that normally exists.

Yeah.

And so, if you're trying to work a new habit into your life, tie it to an action that normally happens. For example, if it was, if we're going to use your writing example, John, Um, if he gets up, he has breakfast every day. So if his goal was to work on his novel for 30 minutes every day, um, then why not slot that 30 minutes in right after breakfast? Because, you know, breakfast is gonna happen.

I do.

Um, and so, uh, last month, I don't know if you guys, any of you made it to our talk last month, we talked about rhythm.

Um, why don't we mention that? Like, this, this is coming to you because it's part of the Phoenix Collective, and the Phoenix Collective is a personal mentoring program for people who want to achieve a lot in life, but our background has been dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. And in my case, being trafficked as a kid. In Melissa's case, you know, a range of things that, you know, it's up to her if she wants to talk about. But that's where we come from. And we've spent a whole bunch of time with, with, with people helping them do what they do, know what they need to know. In order to live a full and fulfilled life.

Yeah. So Phoenix Collective. Phoenix Collective. It's, it's what we do. It's why we do what we do. So, uh, tie a minimum useful standard, one action. Yep. Tie it to something that's already happening every day. Um, helps you. We— so last month we talked about rhythm. If you want to go back and check that, uh, replay, that's available.

Go to drjohnoking.com. Have a look at Phoenix Collective and all those, all those courses are available for you to help you as best we can.

So, um, your minimum, an important thing to consider, your minimum that you can do on a day when you're not feeling motivated, if it's 20 minutes writing or whatever that is, it may not be enough to get you to your end goal. Like, there are going to be days where you feel really motivated and you write for 3 or 4 hours. And, um, and you know that those bigger blocks of time are what, um, need to happen for you to finish your novel. Um, but your minimum useful action can happen on the days where you don't feel motivated.

Absolutely it can.

And so just understand to yourself that we— and we talked about this last month— if you get some small wins for yourself, You start to know that you can trust yourself to reach that bigger goal. You can trust yourself to take the actions.

Well, there's, you know, ancient Chinese philosopher, like the journey of 1,000 miles starts with the first step. Like anything starts with a single action. Anything starts with whatever that first action is. You wanna get fit, buy yourself a pair of sand shoes, turn up at the gym and have coffee. All of that's going towards something and gonna get there for you.

Yes.

So, but what happens if you miss? What happens if you bugger it up?

Yeah, you don't do even your minimum. You just don't do anything.

There's a concept in mindfulness about begin again. And when you're sitting there and you're trying to be mindful and your mind has got monkey mind and it's running all over the platform, um, and you catch yourself— a lot of people when they're sitting there going, okay, meditating, being mindful, being mindful, and then they think themselves about the fact that they Forgot to pick the kids up and they're standing outside, or—

Or the bins. That's me.

That's her. I never worry about them. One of the things I don't— but you find yourself running off. People, when their mind runs off like that, they often get really condemned by it. So, and that's not a helpful feeling. The fact that you've recognized your mind running off is actually a really positive thing, and you can just stop and begin again. And it's exactly the same with any discipline in life. If you've missed the gym, we'll just begin again. If you've spent the last 2 years not painting or not writing because life beats you up, just begin again. Yeah. Well, how do I overcome that? How do I get those years back? You don't. But what you've got is 2 years of possibility and opportunity.

This is all you need if you're a, a drawer or a painter. Pen, piece of paper. Start right now, today, where you're at.

This is what you need, a clean slate. Yes. And that is what every day gives you. You don't waste your time on could have been, should have been, would have been, would have been. They're all just crap. Why don't I have a 5-year goal? Well, good luck, mate. Like, I've got a 5-minute goal and it's just like getting through this to do the next thing that's on my calendar. And both of those are okay.

One thing that really happens, really helps me when I happen to, you know, stuff it up and I need to begin again, is to tie your story to yourself.

Very good.

About missing, about messing up, to the action. Don't tie it to your personality, to yourself. Don't say, oh, I suck. See, I can't keep a promise to myself. I always mess it up. Don't say things like that. Say, Oh, I noticed that I opened my emails before I sat down to write.

Very good.

So tomorrow I need to leave the emails and sit down and do my writing for 20 minutes. So you tie it to the action.

So which sounds better? I'm a fat loser. I didn't go to the gym. I'm a fat loser. Or, huh, life got the best of me. I missed my opportunity to go to the gym today. I'm going to go tomorrow. Or, huh, life got the best of me. I didn't get up in time for the gym this morning. I'm gonna go down there and drink coffee in the foyer tomorrow.

Right.

Or today. And what Melissa's talking about is that your words frame your world. And if you are continually selling yourself you're a fat loser, you're incompetent, you're not an artist, I never get to write, I never get to paint, then you will never get get to write, and you will never get to paint, and you will never get to live in that house, and you will never get to marry that person, and you will never get to have that career. You never will, because you've told yourself you never will. As opposed to, I just get to begin again. Yeah, wherever I'm up to is exactly where you're up to, where you're supposed to be, and your whole future is in front of you. And—

What if you catch yourself halfway through the day and you're like, I didn't do my writing this morning? What do you do?

What do I do? Yeah, I immediately go to my diary and I find 20 minutes. Or if I'm sitting in my shed between appointments, and I've done this, I've been sitting between appointments, Zoom calls say, and I would just pull up my manuscript. And pulling up my manuscript might— all I might be able to do is read it for 20 minutes and put it in my head and put it in my soul. And then I'm starting to think about what's important to Yeah, I do that with painting too.

If I, if I miss my time, I, um, you, you're always mulling over in, in your mind, like, what, uh, what's the next painting I wanna work on? What's a new thing I wanna try? You're always mulling something over. And so, um, I give myself 5 minutes of mulling, you know, or whatever.

The other thing I'll find for Melissa, if I know she hasn't painted for a couple of days and she like, You know, the world is gone, her life is over, she's forgotten how to paint. I'll play a game. Like, I remember one time I got a piece of paper, drew 3 lines on it, and said, make it, make, make something out of it. And she turns it into this like incredible chicken or something weird, you know.

We do.

But that was like a 5 or 10 minute exercise at the end of dinner after talking about how busy the work is and how she was talking about, and soulfully but honestly talking about lamenting the fact she hadn't got the cat to paint. So we did something weird. We've had days where we've taken off around the neighborhood for 20 minutes driving, and she's had to do mobile painting exercises. We're pulling up at places for 2 minutes. You know, I've gone to places and she's gone to a museum and wanted to sit there, and I've sat in the foyer reading a book that I'm reading for writing research, or just working on my manuscript on my laptop. All of that's accessible. You don't have to be in your studio doing your thing. If your mindset is to engage in your craft, and move your life forward, then you will find a way. And I think that's really what we're talking about with discipline and motivation.

Yeah, it's giving yourself permission to find a way, just to find a way. Pick a thing, whatever your thing is, and say, this is really important to me, I'm going to give it a minimum of X amount of time a day.

And then I think you should look at what are your repeated misses. If you are repeatedly trying to go to the gym in the morning and you don't, Well, then you probably need to bloody well do it in the afternoon.

Yeah, pick a different time.

Pick a different time.

You're allowed to find a different way to do it. Yeah. You know, and that's, um, I think that's really— it should be sustainable. It should fit into your life, whatever your thing is.

We own every type of paint in the world.

We do. We have an abundance of art materials.

We have the best set of colored pencils that's ever been made because when she first wanted, she said, I'm going to draw with colored pencils. Then she said something about, I'm going to paint with goulash, but it wasn't goulash. It was something else, wasn't it?

Wash.

Wash. So how the hell are you gonna do that with a beef stroganoff? And then she was declarative and we've got one of— and it's fantastic. On my side, I've got every single bit of technology from a laptop to an iPad to a reMarkable to pen and paper. I've got so many bloody journals.

Because journals with all kinds of different covers.

I gotta write in a leather-bound journal today. Oh shit, I need to spend $400 on this remarkable— oh crap, they've brought it. And you know, so whatever, man, it don't matter.

So you do give yourself permission to, and to be honest with yourself about the repeated misses. Yeah. If you, if you're not keeping your, your goals that you set or your promises to yourself, What are the things that are repeatedly getting in the way? That's good. And you're allowed to change your plan. It's okay.

So when you do change your plan, write down what worked and write down what didn't work. All right. I'm refracting on my week. How many times did I go to the gym today? Well, this week. Well, I went twice. How many was I supposed to? 4 times. What worked on the days I went and what worked on the days I didn't? Well, on the days I worked, I had sleep. Why did you have sleep? Well, I went to bed early. Why did you go to bed early? Because I wasn't in the middle of the 6 seasons of like how, how Methany ties her shoes while stoned in the trailer park. So, okay, I didn't do that. Garage Wars. I didn't watch Storage Wars. Season 12. So I went to bed. So, okay, well then maybe the issue is not— just go to bloody bed if that's what worked for you. So break down what worked for you and what didn't work for you and then just start to apply those wins. Start to apply, stack, stack the wins. If you stack the wins, then it becomes easier to win. If you get caught in this vacuum of just dig it, the best thing if you're digging yourself a hole, Throw the shovel over the top. Best way to stop. So, so, for those at home, um, a good, a good exercise for homework.

We, we have a commitment sentence.

Oh, we have a commitment sentence. Then we've got our homework. And if you want to get a copy of the homework, put your email in the, in the chat, or visit drjohnaking.com, or message one of the two of us and reach out to us somehow.

If you're on Instagram, you'll find us. Yeah, get us. And, um, we, we made a little worksheet for this, um, so we can And help you navigate to that worksheet. So your sentence revolves around everything we've discussed today. So for example, for John's sentence about his writing, it would be the time of day he's going to do it. So after breakfast, I will sit at my desk and write.

Write.

For 20 minutes.

Yes.

So that would be your sentence. So after blank, whatever happens in your day, after breakfast or after lunch, I will go for a bit.

Or after I pick the kids up, after I drop the kids off, after I get home from work.

So what is your—

After I take the bins out.

What is your commitment to yourself, um, that you're going to try? And we want you to try it for a week. So it needs to be something that fits into your day.

Obtainable.

Yeah. Don't—

Measurable.

Like some big hour commitment to something, do 5 minutes.

And don't— listen, with the hour thing, I know you probably want to get there, but you haven't done that for the last 2 years. So like, don't kid yourself. Yeah, like seriously, make obtainable, winnable goals so you can start to feel like, man, I've got success in this area.

So every day for 7 days, you're gonna test this agreement. You're gonna say— so if mine was, um, after breakfast I will stretch for 15 minutes, Every day.

Be miraculous.

It would be. I believe in you. I did. I did like four days last week, so that was pretty good. You should tell me so I can celebrate.

More is more than zero.

So, and you can.

Yes, it is, my dear. Yes, it is.

Self extra like credit and say, I will make it easier to start by. Blank. So I will make it easier to start by rolling my yoga mat out before I go to bed at night. That way I will— so I'll make it easier to start by opening my manuscript and having it ready for after breakfast.

I'll make it easy to start by clearing off my desk before I leave the office.

There you go. See, so that's extra credit. But so every day for 7 days, what is one minimum action that you can take towards a goal? That you have in your life. Very good. Very good.

Better to give them. That's enough homework for them.

Yeah. Discipline wins over motivation every time.

Every time.

Every time. All right. It's really great to see all you guys. Thank you for joining on Instagram. We had a ton of people join on there and on X as well.

Thank you. Yeah. And, uh, so finally Friday, we start around 4-ish because we're artists and like Sometimes we don't. So, and we, we've got some great friends coming on this week. Um, we've got Nikki's coming in from England. She runs a bookstore over there. Tremendous person. She's phenomenal. She's a bunch of fun. And we've got a guy who's a musician and a producer from Nashville coming on for Finally Friday. And we just talk about love, life, being creative. What is the thing that motivates your creative engine? And, uh, just basically encouraging each other to get out there and have a go and, and do something different, something fulfilling. So that's Finally Friday. That's streaming on a whole bunch of services. And if you're interested in the Phoenix Collective, if you're at a stage in your life where you're wanting to change the trajectory of your life, we've got just so many resources available to people that we love to give away and help. So connect with us, drjohnaking.com. Follow us on the different platforms. We've got a whole 2-year-long program at like $97. I do private mentoring for people at a whole range of different levels in life, helping them to get to where their next goals are. So we would love to help you, love to connect with you.

Reach out and connect to us. He is drjohnaking.com.

On most places.

Yep. I'm melryanking.com. So Come and find us. We'd love to help.

Love you. All right. Cheerio, you lot. Great to connect. Bye-bye.