27. Growth - The Certainty Of The Unknown

So here we are, we've got some dad jokes. I've got the website up. False dad today. Disclaimer. These are not my jokes. Which dad owns which jokes? I don't trust those trees, son. What? Why not? They seem kind of shady. This is unbelievable. D, do you want a box for your leftovers? No, but I'll. No, but I'll wrestle you for them. Oh, mate, I would tell a joke about pizza, but it's a little cheesy. That's enough. That's enough. Oh, stop the presses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first day of the rest of your life. I'm Richard Mercer, you're on mix 106.5 love song dedication. Okay, okay. Come on, get to work. There's 60 seconds we'll never get back, but it was worth it. Hope we're well guys. Hope we're having a fantastic week so far. Whatever week you're in, you might not listen to this until three months time down the track when this is posted. That's irrelevant. And irrespective of the fact that I hope you get some value out of it. Just like I'm getting value out of doing it right now. Value out of technology and how it's such a wonderful thing in sitting in a room by myself, talking to myself, looking at myself in the video that we posted on YouTube as well. Isn't it funny? It's so funny. But I'll tell you one thing. Those who have issues with confidence or with delivering messages, videos, I mean look, videos and everything doesn't have to be just business. If you have trouble with that, just own that realization that well, it is a truth, right? Absolute. You're sitting in a room somewhere talking to yourself like you're talking to this phone here or a piece of technology. It's not that bad. Like there's no one else here. I'm looking around. Those who are listening. I'm looking around in the room. It's just me. There's my magpie on the back. There's a couple of candles that are litten. I'll have to blow them out before I leave. But spirit animals on the back wall. He's just chilling out. Amazing little painted craft we got from the arts and craft store. Was it markets markets Manly a few weekends ago. Alright, growth, growth. Let's get down to business growth. Why growth is so, so important. It is a must in life. Now opinions like buttholes will say to be polite, everyone has one. And more often than not, those who connect and resonate with me know that the holistic approach or the viewpoint in which I stand on many things is one that has a delivery of you living your truth, being the best you can be, doing what you want. So it's okay if you don't want to grow in life, that's all. Right, look, I don't judge people for that. I don't judge people if they just want to be happy and settled. But what does that mean? And how long does that go for? And that's the funny thing that I keep butting my own head with thinking, okay, let's say that I reach a level of growth and I'm happy. How can you guarantee that you'll stay happy if you stay like that for the next 30 years? You haven't lived that yet. Then when those 30 years have passed, what happens if you look back and you're not happy? What happens if you look back and you just ask yourself that question? Geez, maybe I should have done, man, it's too late. What would you rather? Would you rather living in a state where there's periods of being uncomfortable, discomfort to stretch and grow and ultimately open the scope of your mind and your beliefs and the model in which you see your life like the way in which you see the world? Or. Or would you rather sit in that nice little comfy spot knowing that this is my little area, my little circle that I control, this is my life right now. And then in 30 years time, this will still be my life. But hey, whoa, it's 2050. What happened? Where's my hoverboard? Where are the flying cars at? Yes, why? Growth's a must. And there are many things, many things, especially with some of the posts I do that may hit a nerve, they may be sensitive subjects. But ask yourself the question of sensitivity and maybe either A, not agreeing or B, not being overly impressed or happy with your initial thoughts or feelings to anything that I say and go, why? Just go one layer deeper, man. Just peel it back just a little bit. So why. Why is what else said struck a chord with me? Why am I happy about that? You know, even good things, not necessarily bad, there's neither that or the other. Why is this affecting me? Why do I feel this way immediately? Why am I triggered? What's going on here? What's happening with my paradigm? The way I'm seeing the universe right now, which is being questioned, why does that trigger me? Why am I upset with that? That's why growth is a must for me. You don't know what you don't know. Cool. What does that mean? Who knows? But in retrospect, it's true that you don't know what the possibilities are of expanding your knowledge and understanding and learning what can be learned out there. That's the beauty of life, right? That's amazing. You know, it's at that level of people say uncertainty. It's, you know. But I want to talk about the different periods of my life where I wasn't sure about growth and myself. And they're hard. It's really hard. And I want to share with certain stages with you, like the periods of my life when I was not happy, when I was the least happiest in my life, who I was, as that young fat boy teenager went on for many years, I wasn't happy. But the reason why there was a turning point where there was a flick of a switch, where the gears changed, got into action, was I was no longer growing. It's like, I've had enough of this. There's been a period of this many years where I haven't grown, I haven't expanded who I was, I haven't become a better person within me. My standards, my truth, not yours, no one else's. It's got to be you. Do it for you, man. And when that happened, I took action. The greatest growth is always through pain. And change is a must. Change is life. Life is change. And again, high school, yeah, I was the king of the school in many ways, with jokes and tom foolery and other things and arm wrestling, but it ran its course. Thank God there's no year 13 or 14. I would have been done, man. And then the workforce and then, you know, I need to change. So I got into rugby league sport, challenged myself, rose up, then operation after operation after operation. Six years, wasn't happy anymore. 26 years of age, I needed change. I wasn't happy. I was going nowhere. I wasn't expanding, I wasn't making a career, making money. All these different checkpoints, external, not internal or not, was not moving me forward. A, at the rate which is varied, there's variables to the rate in which you grow and B, at the state from my life and what I was doing, my experiences, what I was having and who I was becoming. And then again with business, love, love being in gyms and the experience, the opportunity to help people and help shift people's lives and still love Raw Commando. And I look at this, I'm like, am I still having the impact I want, though? Like, when I became a father, my world changed. What else can I do? And this is no disrespect to people who own gyms. It's a phenomenal thing. Like I've loved. It's been nearly eight years now, been in this and was never going to be a businessman. And then here we are running businesses and here we are right now with this gym and the many gyms that I've either started or helped start and there was more that I wanted to add. There's more impact that I want to have in this world. Again, nothing gets people want to own gyms. It's not for me. Like I'm not going to be a 60 year old gym owner. I'm not going to be an owner of 10 or 20 gyms when I'm 60. It's just a different line of impact that I want to have in the world. And here we are RDM and the scope which RDM and the technology and the reach that we can have in the impact is huge. Like I see it personally as limitless. Will what I do and the impact I have on always be just rdm? Maybe, maybe not. But the vision creating impact change in the world like it's written. You can't see right now with the video but all on that wall. And what do you want? Why? How will this help? Why does that matter? Why does this matter? How can we do this? How? It's all there and this is where we're at. And the greatest periods of growth always experienced more often than not the greatest periods of pain which is hard but it doesn't mean you need to relive the same pain. You can learn from that and then move forward. Learn and move forward. Now it's really hard to grow. I want you to know that. I want you to know and understand and appreciate that people talk themselves down and they under promise and over deliver on themselves. Not necessarily projects or goals or tasks but on themselves. Failure porn. I failed this, I failed that. I'm no good at this, I'm no good at that. And I've just beat myself up about this. Oh but I'm going to come out the other end. It's like man did a competition on Sunday and it's like I can go talking to people saying I only train two days a week and I don't really do CrossFit anymore and yeah, I'm a bit over training but I have everything and with physical fitness and oh hey, but we came second so that's cool. Like man, that's so disrespectful to yourself. Don't do those sorts of things. And when you look at that, it's like, how about you over promise, then over deliver on that? Over promise. Because then you've got good pressure, Then you've got a period of growth and you've got a period of change in which you got to move, man. Deadlines are powerful. Bang, go. What are you going to do? Go and get after it. And it's funny because the periods of growth that I've had, people will gloss over them at times. Their own periods of growth don't do that. That's my point. Like own and accept that it's hard, it's hard work. But don't rest there, don't sit there, don't lay there and create stories in which. Yeah, it's so hard. But look, I've done this. It's like, it's hard. And that's why I'm doing it, because I'm going to be harder, I'm going to be stronger. Bang. The end. And when I look at my life, everything that I've gotten into, I've almost felt just not good enough. It's almost been like, it's just out of reach. When I was that child superstar coming through, scoring 50, 60 goals a year with soccer just crushing. It started soccer when I was three years of age, big boy. So by the time I was six, I was destroying everyone. Used to score 10 to 15 goals and they put me in goalie and give everyone else a go. Good times. The memories. Not that I had too many because obviously I was young, but yeah, became the fat boy and then wanted to get fit and healthy. It didn't happen overnight. I'd run around the track down at the park and I'd try and eat a bit healthier and almost felt like it was just a little bit out of reach. But you know what? Never give up. That's one thing I've always held true to myself. Never give up. Just try again, try again the next day, try again the next day. Became this fit man and did shot put since I was 10 years old. Never, never made regionals or any of that sort of stuff. And always I'd rock up and there'd be bigger kids around me, right? And they just crush it all the way through and then bust a mask. Got fit, got Strong. In year 12, Bang. Shot put nepean or district, whatever you call it. Regional, I think. State. I think I came second in the state. Anyway. I came second with shot put in New South Wales. Awesome. Great achievement. No technique. There's something that I always just Felt a little bit out of reach of. But I just kept having a crack and then all of a sudden I got this great experience to go and compete and do shot put and represent my high school, obviously. And that was good fun. Lo and behold, rugby league played hardly any of it. Played a bit in school with the boys and played one year in under 13 division four, which was probably laughable living on the bench. Big fat boy and we won the grand final. I couldn't believe that. I didn't even know if I played. I might have played five minutes. But when I broke out and started challenging myself for rugby league, I went from trialing for sea grade with St. Mary's team that won it the year before to making reserve grade team for the Penrith panthers in an 18 month turnaround. Now, it wasn't an 18 month success story. It was something that happened over a period of, well, when I got to that age, 10 years of trying to change my life and off the back of that all the time, coming through Sea Grade trialing, I had one hit up and four tackles. But Cass, Troy Castle, the coach at the time, gave me a run. He saw my work ethic, how hard I ripped in and gave me a shot. And I always felt like I was just not good enough. But don't give up. They'll just try again. I'm just, I don't know if I'm there or not. That level of uncertainty, you know, and I molded that over the years and I'll bring a point to all of this soon, but that uncertainty was always there. And then I made it onto, onto the bench and then I started playing some games from the squad to the bench to playing. Started front row, started getting some men in matches. All of a sudden I got a few trolls for other clubs. Next thing you know, I'm in Panthers Jersey flake and just, I didn't know crossovers and unders and all these different plays and the names, man, I just want to run the ball hard and tackle hard and be there for my team. We're a family, we're a unit. Simple. That was it. That was it. Ends made Jersey flag with the Panthers. I was like, I'm playing in a stadium. Look at this, I'm playing in a stadium now. And I just, you know, overwhelmed myself and always felt not good enough. Still perform though. And went from the bench to starting a few men in the matches. Next thing you know, playing reserve grade. Got hurt my first game. Excuse me. It's like, man, reserve grade, I'm playing against Men with beards and always not downplaying and not talking myself out of it, but just looking at it and going, I just don't know. I'm not sure. I'm uncertain. Now. Let's be clear right here, right now, that uncertainty is different to unknown. And I realize that now. There's a difference. Uncertainty doesn't exist. It's not even a word. Okay? There's the unknown and then there's certainty. Bang, the end. Because anytime when you take action, you will be certain on whether it worked or whether it didn't, whether it was the right thing for you right now, whether it wasn't, whether it was a win. And when I say wasn't a learning curve, whether it was a win or whether it was a learnings. Old Drew McKenna, latest coach in RDM. Wins and learnings. I love it. Even if it's not even a word. We'll use it. Wins and learnings. And that's what I slowly realized. And then I made reserve grade that I was with first grade squads. I don't even know if I belong here. Like, what's going on. All these little stories created my head. And then the uncertainty. I'm not sure that I can do it. I always feel like I'm just not sort of good enough. But just do the best you can now. What? You know, rip in, train hard, work hard. And when it came to installing swimming pools for my brothers, like, I end up becoming the head pool installer. And there's. It's not overly complex installing a swimming pool, but holding that volume of water and the pressure that comes with it, you better not miss one step because that will destroy everything. So I sort of wasn't sure. Just do what you can. Don't give up and just apply yourself and learn and go. Learn and go. Then from that, starting a gym. I didn't know anything about business. Just learn and go and just apply yourself. I always felt a little bit. The point is, guys, through everything, even starting rdm, being like an online coach, Open and close parentheses or speech bubbles. Comments. Sorry, online coach. What does that mean? I used to laugh at them. I never associate with that terminology. Always felt like just not sure, just don't know. I'm speaking, talking, doing a couple of public talks now. Awesome. Love it. It's great. The greatest periods of growth you will experience in your life come from that. That's the sweet spot, man. That is the sweet spot. You've got to be there. Don't live there. You can't, because you just don't know what to gauge off, right? Dip in and out. It's like you're in your own bubble. Lean out, lean into it. Bang. All right, how'd that go? Cool. Lean in and go. Lean in. Stand tall. Lean in, Stand tall and just have a crack. Like taking action off the back of that. It's been amazing. There's no uncertainty. There's either you take action and you're certain on whether that served you best or served you not as well. What have we learned? What's the best we can pull out of that? And then you just readjust, course, reset the sales and go again. And then there's the unknown. I don't know what's ahead of me. I'm not sure what's in front of me. Doesn't mean that doubt should exist in your life. You shouldn't be doubtful or worried or concerned or fear these things. Different story completely. When it comes to experiences that lay ahead that involve more than yourself and that involve health and wellbeing. Of course I have concerns over my daughter's health. I'm talking about you and growth and yourself. Your own personal growth and development. And I look back now, it's like every single stage of my life, even now, it feels like it's been 20 years. I've just been under the pump. I just sort of haven't really broken free, whatever that means of myself. And just that challenge. It's a challenge. It's a challenge. But then when I look back over my life, I'm like, man, I absolutely crushed some of those things that some people either, A, spend years trying to get and never get, or B, don't even have the balls to have a crack at. And when I look back on that, it's not about comparing other people. I look back on myself and I go, man, I did that. I still did it. Even though I thought I was uncertain, but really I was just unsure of the unknown and unaware of what's possible, I still went after it anyway. And that's what leadership is. That's what you need to do as a leader. That's what everyone should do because you're all leaders. There's a leader inside all of us. Don't sit back. Don't sit back on your hands. Don't rest on your laurels and go, ah, maybe it's not for me. Maybe another time. I'm doing what I love, but I still got to eat plenty of shit to get the job done. Let's be clear on that. There's a lot of jobs and Roles and tasks that I don't enjoy doing, but they forge me, they steel me, they get me hard, they get me hungrier, they get me more appreciative. They get me in a state of reflecting on what's been, reflecting on what's to come, planning for what's to come, and having gratitude for every single period, past, present, and the very near, present and future. And when you have that, when you adopt that, it becomes who you are. That's why I won't stop. That's why I want a billion people to know who I am. Because I know that the values and principles and beliefs I have in place on the world becoming a better place and the love for humanity and who we can be as leaders, as human beings, in evolution and becoming the best version we can be. The world needs to hear this. Doesn't matter who Alex Ranieri is. They need to hear this message. That's an outlandish, outrageous goal. But why wouldn't I have it? Who cares? I want to look back on my life. I can rest when I'm dead. Seriously, though, guys, I hope you've gotten something out of today's podcast episode. I'm not sure how long this has gone for. Hopefully it's not too long for you, but it is what it is. You know, what's time, anyway, when you're delivering a message that has real meaning and purpose? And the purpose and the message here is growth isn't easy and it's unseen, it's unknown. And I want you to think about your life at the moment and ask yourself. Question yourself. Peel the layers back, just one at a time. Don't have to go too deep and ask yourself, what am I copping out on? What am I doing in my life, in my world, at the moment, right now that I know I can do better? What is a period of my life where I've been happy? Where has there been a period of my life where I've been happy? Why did I have that happiness and what came about from that? Have I continued to grow from there? Is it really that bad? Leaning into some of the unknown, leaning into some of the tough periods in which you've got to have that level of courage, you know what's right for you doesn't mean you're fearless. You know what's right for you. And this time, instead of just swallowing that red pill, you took the blue pill and you went after it. You had a crack, you had a go. This is for reflection. Now, moving forward, ask yourself, what am I going to do about it. What can I do right now in my life to move forward one step, one step. Game of inches, centimeters, millimeters, if you need to, but in that direction that I want to go in. What can I do right now to challenge myself right now? Challenge myself, and we can all be better, we can all do more. And if you continue to grow and expand who you are, you continue to have a different scope on the world, you continue to see things in a different light, which really, it's a miracle we're all here, right? It's a miracle that we're here, right here, right now, sitting on infinity. One in 400 trillion, probably worse, really. When you think about sperm and how everything comes about and conception and whatnot. Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. So grab that with two. Grab the ball. Grab the ball by the horns, man. Grab it with two hands and get after it. Have a crack, move forward. You can do it. It's possible. You have that greatness inside you. You absolutely do know that I always believe in you and I believe you can turn it around now. You believe that and take action off the back of it. Don't just learn, don't study, don't overanalyze. Perfection doesn't exist. If everything is perfect, why are we here? Understand and know that the good and the bad is intertwined two sides of the same coin. And off the back of that, just go, what have you got to lose? What's it going to cost you if you don't do something that moves you out of the comfortable state that you're in? Which ultimately, when you look back, it's not really serving you that well and you're not really happy with where you're at. And from there you'll grow. You might not even realize at the time, I'll do another episode on this. The period of growth comes in the struggle, the discomfort, the pain. When you look at the results there, the rewards there, the realizations there, you've executed and that's the cream on top. The hard work's done, right? You're just experiencing that. It's like a delayed effect when you're watering the garden and the plants and the tree bears the fruit. And it's there for you to be had. Have an amazing day, night, weekend. Thank you. Much love to you Always for listening and tuning in. And if I don't see you, good. Good afternoon, good evening and good night. Take care. Be fabulous, be well and be your greatest version and some. Take care, guys. Cheers.