Ep. 116-Matthew Turner: Escape The Hustle & Find Yourself!

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence.

Each episode we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed LMFT 🎗️, marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser. All right, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. And it's been a while since we recorded any new episodes. The beautiful thing about doing a podcast is that you can do a, what they call front loading and get a bunch of interviews and then slowly release them. Over a period of time. But in— we're now in the middle of May, and well, the second week of May. And so this is my first live interview back. And today we have an author who just released a new book that is called Beyond the Pale. And it is not only about life lessons and business lessons, but today's guest, um, really tackles into entrepreneurship, investors, thought leaders, giving unique insight on mindset, flow, which is one of the things I love, especially from the world of sports psychology, personal development, and gaining a reputation for crafting compelling stories using other people's lives. So Matthew Turner's hanging out all the way from Yorkshire, England. So thanks for hanging out today.

Jason Wasser, thank you for having me.

My absolute pleasure. So I don't even know where to start because there's so much cool stuff happening with you. First of all, like author, mindset, personal development. What first started getting you into all of this stuff? Like what was going on in life where you kind of had this aha epiphany of like, there's something more out there, there's something that I need to tack in, tackle or tap into for myself.

Yeah, of course. So it's amazing to think— I forget whether it's 8 or 9 years around about this time when I left my job to start working for myself. That was kind of a transition. I've been writing up until then, but I left my job because I wasn't a great employee. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be able to kind of do things my way. My educational background has always been in marketing. So I figured I'd get into some form of marketing consultancy, but I didn't really know what it was at the time. But I also wanted to finally finish and publish my first book, which way back then was called Beyond Parallel, similar in name to my, to my current one, but very much different. And I took the leap. In hindsight, I should have probably have taken more time. I should have probably kept a job, done things on the side, but I threw myself in headfirst because, you know, I was a little bit younger, and I thought, why the heck not? And what I realized very quickly was just the fear of it all— not having that someone to tell you what to do, not having that place to go, that job, that security, that safety net. So I decided to write this book called Successful Mistake, which was my first nonfiction book. Like I said, at this point I was getting ready to publish my first novel. I already had my sort of second novel, the idea, well, I'm truly planting it in my brain, but I had this idea, I always wanted to do some kind of nonfiction book. And "The Success Mistake" was it, because I figured it would be a fantastic way for me to learn from other people. So I just interviewed dozens and dozens of entrepreneurs, business owners, coaches, authors, thought leaders, speakers, just anyone who I came across who inspired me, in some way or another. And I was like, can I interview you? Can I talk to you about your biggest failure, a mistake that you made, and how you turn it into success? And that led to 163 interviews in some form or another. Around about 100 of them were like face-to-face like this, and then there was probably 50 or 60 which were kind of over email or through some sort of written form. And I just learned a ton, not just about failure and mistakes, but just how people further down the road than me had an outlook on life, how they approached adversity, how they approached and defined things like success and happiness and purpose, how they basically lived their day, their habits, their routines, their rituals. So I suppose I just incrementally got pushed further and further into the rabbit hole that is personal development, right? And it started to introduce me to the idea of mindset. A word I'd always known of, but I never really understood. I figured I did, but the more layers I peeled away, I realized I knew nothing. So it was probably after I'd finished writing The Successful Mistake when I was really kind of tying it all up, editing, you know, trying to sit back and reflect on what I'd actually learned, you know, what I was going to do next. But I started to realize my sort of personal relationship with life and living and business and relationships and just everything.

Yeah.

So I started to read more, dive further into it, and yeah, it's a rabbit hole. One thing led me to another, to another, to another, to another. And that was probably around about 4 or 5 years ago now. And yeah, it's just been a whirlwind since. Right.

I'm finding that a lot with people who maybe weren't raised with this mindset. And I just literally got off a conversation with someone on Instagram about how we're raised and what we're taught in society, whether it's in schooling, whether it's with our family, cultural stuff. Um, and we were talking about it in the context of relationships for young professionals and how there are people out there who don't even realize that they have this mentality of entitlement, that they're waiting for someone else to solve a problem for them, or that the problem is an answer that can be solved by something outside of you. Now, that's different than having resources, getting mentors, right? But, but that if I attach myself to a specific school of thought, or if I just hang out with this community, or if I just live in this place or get this type of job, my life will be better. But I think what you're leading to, what I'm probably going to assume you figured out, is that it's the inside out.

Absolutely. I mean, at this period of time, I kind of assumed I was a pretty well-rounded individual, as much as a person can be. I didn't suffer any kind of major trauma or anything growing up. I obviously had my trials and tribulations, as everyone does, but nothing too extreme. And I had parents who stayed together. They were good parents. I am very fortunate to live in England, so brought up in a first world, very developed country where even if you're on the sort of breadline, you're still pretty good compared to many people out there in the world. So I assumed I had it pretty well together. Yeah, I was okay. But yeah, the more I sort of dove in, I realized, yeah, entitlement and privilege is a, is an important word there. But I was very entitled, I was very privileged, and I did have a pretty fixed outlook, pretty fixed mindset. When I dove into mindset, I I was like, I'm pretty growth-oriented, I'm pretty sure. But when I was honest, when I was reading and going deeper, I was like, I mean, I'm growth in certain areas and in certain situations, but my default setting is probably rather fixed. And I started to compare myself, like who I was then to how I was brought up. And it was not that anyone or any one thing did a poor job. It wasn't down to my parents or school or society or anything like that. But as a general rule, we are, I think, as you're touching upon here, brought up to I suppose wait for permission, assume that you're either good at something or not, but you've got to stand in line, you've got to work your way up to the ladder, and that there's a set of rules to abide by to kind of get to where you want to go. You go to school and then you go to university and then you get a good job and you do this and then you can get a nice car and a nice house and it will lead you further and further towards happiness and success and a fulfilling life.

The rewards. Exactly. Yeah.

And I began to question more and more. It's like, well, actually, what are the words of my life? Like, what does success look like for me? And that was one of the biggest, probably the biggest takeaway I took from writing The Success Mistake and interviewing everyone I did. I realized that those people further ahead from me, they'd taken the time to stand back, step, just have a moment and start to define what success meant to them. And I realized I had no definition of success other than the one given to me, right?

And, and I see this left and right as a therapist, and especially when I'm working with young professionals, the nuance of buying into someone else's definition, cultural definition, pop culture's definition, right? Uh, when it comes to relationships, if people are looking to The Bachelor or Bachelorette, if they're looking for for business that everything has to be like the Shark Tank, right? Or the Profit, or whatever it may be, right? It's, I mean, those are great, right? The Shark Tank and Profit are great shows. Definitely way better than The Bachelor and Bachelorette. But, but at least there's a little bit more reality when it comes to those reality shows. But I think that the unpackaging and deciding for yourself and going back to this conversation I just had with this person was that they asked a question and they said, how do I know if I'm in this relationship or I'm trying to get into a relationship that it's going to get me where I want to go, or the lifestyle is going to be okay, versus, you know, are they cheap? Are they frugal? And I'm like, well, do you have those answers for yourself? Are you expecting something outside of you again to answer this problem for you versus what are the work— what is your definition of financial success? What is your financial definition of financial stability? What is your— what will make you content? What are you trying to compete with? Who are you trying to compete with? Why are you making the choices you've already made? Whose information, whose data are you internalizing versus you proactively deciding what you want to be? So as you were working with these entrepreneurs and business professionals and thought leaders and interviewing them, what were some of the common themes that you find? Because my first guess is knowing, having, you know, this type of interview process in my conversations with people on my podcast. A lot of fear has probably come up as a main theme. So in addition to that, and I'm assuming that might be one of the themes you found, what else has been there?

Yeah. So obviously the first big takeaway, because the book was a book about failure and how to turn it into success, it was something I already kind of knew going into it. I at least hypothesized that everyone had some pretty big failure. But I began to realize just how big some of those failures were, not just in terms of getting into huge debt. There were certainly those stories, but just the self-sabotage, the unhappiness, the internal struggles. So failure can wear many hats, but failure was always present in some form, which was an obvious takeaway from a book about success, mistake, failure, and the relationship of those. Another big takeaway was this stepping back and defining success on their terms, taking the time to actually rationalize it to them. And often it was failure that led to that. They needed to fail. They needed to go through the various stages that come on the back of it. That was what the whole book was about. It went through these 7 stages and then on the back of it, you know, it led to an understanding and appreciation of success and fulfillment and what is actually going to fuel you going forward. But one of the other key aspects was their relationship with hustle, the hustle culture. And it's very strange, like it came up again and again and again. I'd speak to people and they'd often be telling me about a period in life, whether it was a year ago, 5 years ago, 20 years ago, when they were struggling. Because again, they were sharing stories of failure and how they turned things around. And during those periods of failure, they had a very I suppose media-driven— you mentioned things like Shark Tank— outlook on business and entrepreneurship and just success as a whole. They often went through this when they were maybe working for someone else, maybe before they were business owners, and they felt like they just had to work hard. They were constantly comparing themselves to everyone else. They felt like they had to look a certain way, be a certain way, act a certain way, speak a certain way. They had to be a very specific type of person in order to be successful. So it led them into this hustle culture mentality of work, work, work, grind, grind, grind. You know, just work your 20s away because it'll, it'll breed success and it means you can relax in your 40s and your 50s and your 60s. And obviously as you get older, you realize it doesn't work like that. But it's incredible how many of these people, successful people, inspiring people, went through similar journeys, just putting themselves to the brink of disease and ruin, and on the financial side or the relationship side. But they were just caught in the hustle. And it gave me an entire new outlook of like what hustle actually is. It's not just the 70-hour work weeks. And we can dive deeper into definition of hustle if you want, um, on the back of this. But it gave me a complete new insight into like what it is and what we presume it is and how it goes much deeper. They also showed me what life looks like on the other end, how they would then give me a peek into the life they're living today. And it wasn't always full of roses. Sometimes they weren't that far removed from their mistakes. Some people were many years and they were much further along, but they always had a better understanding and appreciation of what success meant, i.e., the destination ahead of them, the journey they were on. And they were almost always working less. It wasn't to say they weren't working hard. It wasn't to say that they no longer had a good work ethic. If anything, they had a great work ethic than ever, but they were very particular about what they said yes to. Yeah. They were very particular about the energy that they put into any one project, be it at home, at work, somewhere in between. And they were very smart about it and they were very appreciative of their time. Very appreciative of that life.

One of my mentors calls that the doorman principle. That, right, when you go out to a new restaurant or a nightclub or a lounge or whatever, and there's the, the doorman there, and they know kind of like there's a pre-qualification of who they're going to let in, not who they're not going to let in. And, um, you know, the rule is like if they slip past the doorman, there's probably going to be some chaos. And when using this, this rule or this guideline in our own lives, um, through the lens of, okay, so what are the qualifications for something to be a part of my life or for me to be involved, whether it's personal, professional relationships, financial, food, friends, whatever, that it's a pre-qualification up front in order to make these decisions proactively versus having to make them reactively. And once we are in a reactive place, we're already in a physiological fight or flight. So we're not in our brain that's rational, we're in our survival instinct brain, right? So I know that this idea, which is capitalizing on values, values-based decision-making of here's a set of lens that I'm using in order to make these decisions up front. So when you're talking about how I'm going to create this business or how I'm going to create this relationship, it doesn't have to be I have to grind through it in order to— right? It doesn't mean everybody has to say yes because I need to make a bare minimum amount of money. It's I'm going to make it a lot easier for myself exactly like you're saying, because I know exactly who I'm saying yes to or exactly what I'm saying yes to and exactly what I'm saying no to. And because of that, I'm going to capitalize on my strengths. Because of that, I'm going to capitalize on my energy and my inertia and my well-being. And that sounds very much in sync with what you're saying.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's a bit of a chicken and eggs kind of scenario because it's very difficult to have that unless you know what you're striving towards. So that's where the whole idea of the definition of success comes in. It's difficult to come up with those qualifiers until you know what you're pursuing, you know what purpose means to you. But at the same time, it's very difficult to, um, give yourself the freedom and the time and the energy to figure out what that means unless you start saying no, unless you step away from the hustle. There's a couple of people who I interviewed for the most recent book, Beyond Pale. One was AJ Leon, an incredible person who I've known for a few years now. And while interviewing him for the book, he talked about this notion of going an inch deep and going a mile deep. He says he personally couldn't fathom trying to serve thousands or millions or billions of people, because he only— doing what he does the way he does it, he would only ever be able to go an inch deep. He likes to focus on less people so he can go a mile deep with them. And it's a philosophy, I think, which is perfectly aligned with what we're talking about here. It's knowing what a mile deep looks like for you. It's about going deep. It's about becoming that master. It's about giving yourself and those you're serving the time, the attention, the deserves to truly cause an impact. The other thing that came up when I interviewed another friend of mine, Joel Schrodiner, who came later in the book, and we were talking about the relationship between mind, body, and spirit. And the conversation just naturally went to this. Once you, once you align those things, you can start to really hone in and figure out what your hell yeses are. She actually used a different word to hell. I'll keep it PG for this thing. But she was like, all about—

It's so great that you're saying that. I'm literally co-hosting. I have a second podcast with a professional matchmaker on young professional relationships. And I have a huge thing anytime I'm doing a workshop, and I got this from someone, Rich Litvin, who's actually a coach. He's actually from the UK originally. He's in LA now. But he's all about hell yes or hell no. There's no hell maybe. Exactly.

That's exactly what she was basically saying. And her story, as she was sharing in the book, was like, she was that person in the hostel. She was saying yes out of fear of saying no. And you mentioned fear earlier, and I think we often say yes because we're fearful of what no might mean, but we don't actually take a step back and are fearful about actually what saying yes means. We're just fearful of that no. But once you free yourself up and you, and like the Doorman analysis that you sort of touched on there, and you start coming up with those qualifiers, you're able to give yourself the time always to go that mile deep. You can just hone in and just focus on those hell yes. And everything else is a no. If it's a maybe, it's a no. And you can just start to gravitate more and more towards those hell yes and go deeper and deeper and deeper. But it's so difficult to do that. If you're caught up in the hustle and grind. I mean, how can you possibly commit yourself or even open your eyes enough to figure out what a hell yes is if you're working 13, 14 hours a day?

Yeah.

If you're doing 70-hour weeks, if you're spinning 7, 8 plates at once, it's impossible. You're just going to, like you say, be reactive. And it's just the reactive brain is going, okay, well, I'm fearful to say no, so I'm just going to say yes and I'll figure it out later.. And I think people treat their 20s like that and then it bleeds into their 30s and they bleed into the 40s and before they know it, they're just like, what the hell is my life? I'm burnt out. I'm unhappy. I'm self-sabotaging. And these were kind of the common stories which I heard. So yeah, big takeaways were just failure is present. Hustle and fear is a big part of those and it stops you from defining what success means. But once you actually escape those, you can define it on your terms, figure out, oh hell yes. And yeah, I suppose hire that doorman.

Yeah, the survival instinct of that, of that brain, right? That's the reptilian brain. The fight or flight is really all about survival. So especially when people are trying to create something in that entrepreneurial space, it usually does revolve around them producing something. And there's a— and I always like having this conversation with people that there's a difference between being entrepreneurial and being an entrepreneur, right? Being entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial is creating something, but being a true entrepreneur is eventually creating something that doesn't revolve around you being the person providing that service. And those are two stages of that. And then the other point that you're tying, uh, tapping into about how do you sift and sort through knowing what the hell yes is and what the hell no is, is that now at 42 years old and being in private practice, right, graduating in let's say 2005 from graduate school to where I am now in my practice, to see it now from the vantage point of being patient, that the things that I let in earlier on into my business, into my practice, into my relationships, into my social life, into my body, into my spirituality, had to be sifted and sorted through so I can learn, oh, that doesn't work for me. And that's okay. But then not go there again, not do that again. But that then becomes a hell no. But I'm wondering how many people out there, especially as young professionals, emerging professionals, are A, not being patient, and two, or B, um, they're afraid of being— the word I guess I'm looking for is either snobbish or a dick, or, um, you think you're better than me because you're saying no. But I think that is what discernment is.

Yeah. Well, perfect example is one of the people who did an endorsement for Beyond the Pale. And because the book launched last week on Amazon, I've gone around people and asked, can you leave a review? And he came back today after having a week off and he says, although I know how important reviews are because he's a fellow author himself, he's like, I'm going to have to say no because I don't believe the endorsements that go on the front of the book on the back cover should then be duplicate a review. It should be one or the other. And my initial thing was like, oh God, like, can't you just do me a favor? Like, what the hell is that about? That's just kind of like the initial reaction, which I think is human. And then after a few seconds, when I sat there, I was like going, yeah, go you actually. Like, you've got principles. Like, it's a hell yeah. He's got rules and principles for his life. He's like, this is what I say yes to. This is what I say no to. I've got reasons for it. And I've got a great deal of admiration for that. Yeah, you know, whether it— whether it aligns with my principle or rule is irrelevant. It's like, there is a guy who knows what a yes is and what a no is, and he wasn't being a dick. He wasn't being— if anything, he has been a huge support of my writing my book in my career in recent years. And I've got so much gratitude for him, and even more so now because he could have just have just ghosted me, said, you know, not replied. But it was like, I'm going to say no. But the reason is because it's not a hell yeah. And I think it's really important. And that's kind of like what I aspire to be. And it's like you say, gravitating away from that fear of being arrogant, being— but I think that in part comes with age. You become more comfortable with yourself. You become more comfortable with like what a yes looks like, what a no looks like, it doesn't have to be something you sit on and wait for. It doesn't have to be something that matures and you don't have until you're in your 40s or your 50s. It's just getting clear on what a yes means to you. It gets— it's getting clear on what success means to you. It's getting clear on what value time and energy has on you. And you can do that in your teens, you can do that in your 20s, you can do that in your 30s. There's not a time limit on that. But yeah, most people, especially when they're young professionals, especially when they're, they're still very much climbing the ladder, earning their stripes. I think they ask it, and I'm not going to take it personally.

I'm just going to have full gratitude when they do have that time for me. And, and I do want to challenge people out there to, to have a big ask. And I, and I do challenge my questions of, you're coming to me for this mountain that you've created as a challenge or a problem that you're coming to me for, What would be the bigger thing that if that was solved, you would next want to accomplish that would you never even thought to look at? Let's go solve that because that's probably what we need to be focusing on except for this little thing in front of us. And I see that tremendously in the entrepreneurship space too, that they, they create big problems for small goals. And I'd rather have big problems with big goals than big problems with small goals.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. I couldn't agree more. It's scary putting yourself out there, impostor syndrome, the insecurity. I think everyone has it to an extent. It's a human trait. And absolutely, I've had it and still have it for sure. But like you say, when the expectation is that they'll probably say no, or the reality is that you probably won't even get a reply. But there's always that possibility that they'll say yes, and that will challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and go. That's how we grow. That's how we grow. And sometimes you need to get that no 99 times and then you get that yes. Well, that yes can levitate you to the next level and then to the next level. And you mentioned earlier the notion of patience. I think that's part of it, just being patient enough to go through the process, to keep putting yourself out there. And well, as, as a creative, as someone who writes, and I think anyone in the creative space goes through this time to go again, whether they're a writer or an artist or a musician or something else, it's a literal part of the process because you're creating something, and then when it's complete, you need to put it out there, and it's in of itself terrifying, but it's also the point of doing it in the first place. Yeah.

Well, when did you start defining yourself as a writer? Because I find— and I have— and I've really been delving into this binary switch that gets flipped in someone, right? And I usually use the example of someone who goes from someone who's working out to a fitness per— right there, there's like these little things like, when does someone become a bodybuilder, right? When does someone become a whatever that, that like, or when does someone say, well, I'm learning how to play an instrument versus I'm a musician, right? That, that what's like, I'm always trying to figure out, and I've been really struggling with this or wrestling with this, not really struggling, but wrestling with this concept. Because I see myself as someone, I started playing violin when I was 3 years old. But I wouldn't have called myself a violinist. As a 3-year-old, I'm like, I was a kid whose parents maybe play violin, but then I picked up, you know, then in middle school, I was in band, and I I picked up another instrument, and then I picked up another instrument, and then I learned how to play guitar. So I'm like, I wonder what point I became a musician versus a guy that just plays these different instruments. So for you, when, when did that aha go on where it's like the difference between I'm writing and I'm a writer?

It's a good question, really good question. I mean, to begin with, I think it's an internal thing. It's something you've got to decide. Like, for— as a writer, there's two different aspects to it. There's a— you can call yourself a writer, which is the craft of writing, and then there's being an author. You can't really be an author until you publish something. So there's quite a— there's quite a defined line there in the world of writing, which it maybe isn't as defined if you're a musician, for instance, or if you're an artist. Yes. You know, painter. But in writing, there's certainly, you know, a somewhat defined line between being a writer and an author. Become an author when you publish something, but it doesn't have to be a book, right? It could be an author when you publish some kind of paper or a short story or an essay. Yeah, exactly. And it comes down to like how you define it. A big aha moment for me— so to kind of give you a bit of an insight, I got into writing when I was around about 21. I turned to writing as a form of therapy. Really, uh, after a pretty rough breakup, which was 2006. So we're going back about 15 years. And just the way my brain works, I struggled with just journaling. It became a story. So I had this idea for a story. So that in the end became Beyond Parallel. But I didn't publish Beyond Parallel until I think it was 2013. And I didn't finish it until like 2012. So I worked on it for a sort of 6-7 year period, and I'd work on it, leave it, go back to it, leave it. And during that period, I was writing, and I wasn't a writer. I would maybe dream of being a writer, dream of finishing it and giving it to an agent and becoming a publisher and someone just doing it for me, you know, about entitlement we talked about earlier. It was a dream, but it was never close to being a reality. So during that period, I was very much writing. When I left my job to finish that, that was basically me committing to the fact that I am now a writer. This is now part of my job. And one of the real big aha moments that cemented that, I read early in this process, probably around about 2012, Stephen Pressfield's book Turning Pro. In a nutshell, that's really what that entire book is about, just this notion of you deciding when you're a pro. Yeah. And I think this is true whether you're a writer, whether you're some other kind of creative, whether you're a podcaster, a musician. It's you deciding, I'm a pro now. Now that doesn't mean other people see you as a pro. That doesn't mean, like, I could just say I'm a footballer. You know, it doesn't mean that I'm good at football. So there's one thing saying it and there's another walking the walk. But to have that commitment, it's you deciding, like, I am a writer, like, I am committed to this. And after the fact, it's all about going a mile deep. It's all about practice, repetition, until you become a master. There's no guarantee that committing yourself to that is going to lead you to becoming a best-selling renowned author, just in the same way as committing yourself to being a footballer doesn't mean you become a I'm a Premier League standard footballer. It just doesn't work like that. But you saying, I am now an art writer, you saying, I am now a musician, and making that commitment to practice, rinse, repeat, going all in, committing yourself to going a mile deep, whatever that looks like to you and those that you serve, and just going at it every single day. I am a writer today. I am gonna be a writer today. I am gonna be a writer. I'm not just going to write. I'm not just gonna fill my day with writing, but I am going I want to be a writer. And as the days and the weeks and the months progress, you gain that experience, you gain that body of work, you start to stack those hours on top of each other. And then as you're able to look back over a 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, 10-year period, you can like, wow, look how far I've come. And yet today I am an actual published author. Today, like, people are willing to pay me to do this craft because I took that leap and said, I am a writer and I'm going to commit to this. For me, that's the line. It starts within. It's, it's on you. You can't wait for someone else to say you're a writer. You can't wait for someone else to say you're a musician. You can't wait for someone to say you're a podcaster. You've got to say, I'm ready to take this step now, and it's going to be ugly. And there's a difference between being a great writer and a really bad writer. But in the beginning, you've got to have the guts to just be a writer, even if it means being a bad one, and going through the process until you get to great.

Well, I think this whole process is ballsy. And I was this incredibly shy kid and naturally an introvert. And even as a performing, so to speak, like I didn't— I shied away from it. I would never do public speaking as a kid. In fact, one of One of my teachers from elementary school, I just found out lives in the same building as my sister. So I'm like, oh my God, I would love to get her on my podcast to be like, what was Jason like in elementary school? Even though like, I was a good kid and whatever, but I just never had the self-belief. I wasn't an academic. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't one of those bad kids who got in trouble. I just didn't have a buy-in to it. And I definitely didn't have a buy-in to myself, even though I love sports and I had friends and all that stuff. But there was this idea of me seizing something like you're kind of way, and that's kind of what you're kind of describing, that we have to have the balls, you know, to seize like if this is what we want to be, we have to find some level of belief and surround ourselves with people who are going to uplift us. And what you were saying reminded me of this quote, which I'll probably screw up, but it's something along the lines of A goal without action steps is just a dream.

Yeah.

Right? So when you're talking about—

And that's what my book was for that 6, 7-year period. It was a dream because it was a goal of mine, but there was no real steps, at least no steps that I was committing to.

Right.

And then once I committed to some action steps and made it into a real goal, it became reality.

So where does accountability come in? Because that's one of my, my, my favorite parts of this process. And I'm a big fan of the Dream Team, which was the original name that they had for the NBA basketball when they started letting the NBA basketball players play, right, for the Olympics. That was called the Dream Team. And I love that term because it's— we have to have that, those people around us that believe— they're not going to do the work for us, but they're going to kick our butts. But we have to be willing to be held accountable. Where has that fallen into your process?

Oh, it's so important. I mean, again, I think a part of it comes within. You've got to push yourself to be accountable to yourself. And I think everyone's a bit different. Some people are more internally driven, some people need that external drive. So what accountability looks like for you is going to look different to me, looking different to everyone else. But accountability is always important. And if there's one thing which I've maybe been lacking over the last year or so in particular has been a degree of accountability, because I've had accountability in the past and I've been part of communities. So yeah, having that external factor has always played a big part on me, but it begins within and it's me setting some standards. So a good idea is like, I've got, I've slipped into bad habits with my morning routine. Routine over the last year due to one thing or another, lockdown being a big part of it. To an extent, I've given myself a bit of a break because we're just in surreal times. And I know that if I was to say to you, you're going to be my accountability partner now and you're going to like send me a message or call me every single day to make sure I'm up at a certain time, that would work to an extent for like a few days. A week, but I'm never going to stay properly accountable until it means something to me, right? So for me, that's where accountability begins. It's having like an internal need, like I want to do this and I am going to first and foremost keep myself accountable. I might need some extra help, like an alarm clock for instance, and by putting my journal downstairs you know, but it's got to start with me. And then the external accountability just reinforces that on those days when you're just feeling lazy or you're just feeling a little off the path. So for me— yeah, exactly. So for me, if all I have is external accountability, it's, it's going to die away. The way I see it is that it needs to have that internal one too.

Yeah.

And then the external stuff reinforces, if that makes sense.

For sure. And, and I had this conversation with a client the other day. We were talking about health and weight loss, and, and, and the aha that I tried to share with them is the what you want has to be way bigger than the what you don't want. And you can't make the goal that's going to be sustainable based on what you don't want because you're always going to be looking back and that's going to be always dragging with you. So there has to be a new way of looking at everything. So if someone's out there and like, well, I want to lose weight, and you're just tracking your goal based on your weight, that may not be a big enough goal. Because it's like, well, I don't want to be that weight anymore. Okay, so what's the outcome of that? What's bigger than that, right? Is it, I want to be able to run a mile, or, you know, or a couple kilometers without, you know, losing my breath, I want to be able to— right, there has to be something that's bigger, and then make that goal that you thought was a goal part of that measurement along the way into something bigger.

It's, I mean, it's, it's so important. Yeah, because accountability, I think we can use it as an excuse. We've talked earlier about this idea of waiting for some permission, you know, society's version of success. And I think we can use accountability like that. And it, and it's something that can very much get us caught up in the hustle and the grind. And you use their fitness and, you know, the look of your body as a part of that. Let's face it, we live in a point in time where I think we're probably more body and health conscious than ever before because it's just so prominent. Like, you can pick up your phone and scroll through Instagram and you're just seeing all these beautiful people who look better than you. So you're envious and you're wanting that. So you're like, okay, I want that because they have it. I'm wanting it because it's there and I feel like I need to be that. So you, you search for accountability maybe by hiring a personal trainer and stuff. And it can work, and they can maybe give you the body that you thought you wanted all along. But then you might get it, and then you get back to the same weight 6 months later, and you go through that yo-yo. And that's how I think where people get through with diets. They're looking for that external accountability. So I'll do— join this diet, I'll join this fad, and you end up yo-yoing because there's nothing internal that's making you going, that's what I want. Like, like you, like you say, you've got an idea of what you don't want to look like. I don't want to be fat. And there's this very vague thing that doesn't really matter to you. I want to look like them because they're beautiful and everyone seems to look like them, and that just seems like the obvious solution. Earlier talked about success, you know, society's version of success. You don't take the time to actually like, what does health look like for me? You know, do I need a six-pack or am I just wanting to look slim? Do I want to have a bit of definition? Do I not really bother? Is it more just about how I feel in my clothes? I want to feel fit. I want to be capable of running 10 miles, 20 miles, 30 miles. And once you take that def— once you get that and you hone in on it and it becomes an internal drive and you're holding yourself accountable, then that personal trainer can help you get there. But along the way, you'll probably find, and it will develop into a passion. Rather than this just obligation. And I think whenever we look purely for external accountability, it just becomes an obligation. It just becomes a part of hustle. It's just a job. But if it starts with internal motivation, like a desire, a purpose, then that external accountability can just reinforce it, keep us on the right track when we're going to drift off, but it becomes a passion along the way.

Yeah.

It becomes something that you are willing to sacrifice for. You're willing to do those early starts, those long runs, those heavy duties. You enjoy it. Even though you might not enjoy the fact of the matter of killing yourself in the gym, you love how it feels afterwards.

Yeah. Well, it's the authenticity of it is the way I'm hearing and internalizing it, that it has to become authentically you not something on top of you. It's not, it's not that. It's like someone who only thinks of pizza, as we're talking about health and wellness, right? But it's the only metaphor I can come up with right now. They're like, no, a pizza will only be good if there's a certain topping on it. No, no, like, you have to like pizza, right? In order for the topping on top to— the topping on top should be an enhancement to what's already good, right? Pizza's great, right? But it's even better with, right? So, right, health and wellness, my mindset, my relationships, my money mindset, whatever, my career needs to be amazing. I need to be authentically aligned with it. And anything on top of that is even better. It's not that I'm going to, right, if I'm in that career, my problems will get solved. Or if I'm dating this person, or I'm living in this place, or I'm driving, my problems will get solved. And I the authenticity of through and through. And I think that's what sets us apart, or that will set a person apart from being consistent, from being— I heard this in Esther Hicks from the law of attraction world. I heard her once say in one of the workshops I was at, she goes, stop aiming for happy, because happiness is an emotion no different than anger or frustration or disappointment. It's a fleeting— it's the result of experience. Right? Aim for content. Aim— because content is a consistency that it's bringing you to a place where you're— there's an awareness that you know that there's effort, you know that it's— there's an aha-ness to it, but you know that it doesn't have to be this external factor that's reliant on something being there or not being there in order for you to feel it.

Absolutely. I think one of the biggest myths out there is the pursuit of happiness. Because it would be impossible. Another person who appears in Beyond the Pale, Kamal Ravikant, talked about it, you know, spend so much time wanting to be happy, you know, just this whole idea of pursuit of happiness. But it, like, it'd be exhausting if you were happy all the time, you know. It's, it's not possible. But you can have— I suppose the idea is you have a life that has happy moments, you build a life which is going to have happiness part of it. And hopefully the happiness outweighs the sadness. And you, you will say that about all positive emotions. You want a life where the positive emotions outweigh the negative emotions, but it's never like— you can't build a life free of negative emotions or negativity because it just doesn't—

it just doesn't exist, right?

You can't just live a life of pure happiness. And just being content, having an idea of like, okay, what is the life that I want? It doesn't need to be this unrealistic, you know, Disney movie. It just needs to be real. It just needs to be, as you've said, authentic, meaningful, and purposeful. Yes, exactly. And then if you do that, a byproduct is going to inevitably be happiness. It's going to be moments of glee and joy and pride. You will still have sadness and insecurity and self-doubt, But if you commit yourself to just being authentic, to be pure, to be living a meaningful life, doing something that means something to you with purpose where you go a mile deep, then a byproduct of that life is going to have more positive moments than negative moments. And really, when it all comes down to it, that's all any of us can really aspire to.

Yeah, and you're reminding me of, uh, Buddhism 101, which is that we have to accept the fact that there is suffering and challenges in this world. And if we try to repel that versus embracing it, we're not going to get the deep, meaningful, purposeful lessons, because these things do need to happen. You know, I joke I'm a marriage and family therapist who's divorced, and I'm a way better human being and an exponentially better therapist because of it. So if I am A, embarrassed of it, or B, don't leverage the life experiences and own that this is, you know, I had stuff in my life that allowed that, you know, that I engaged in that level of not showing up as best as I can. And if I use that as a, you know, for dishonor or or that I'm not worthy, or that I am embarrassed about it, that I can't grow from there, versus using it as a jumping— as a, right, what do they call, like a jumping board to get me higher and to go higher and deeper. And, and it's something that I feel allows my authenticity in a way. It's not like I'm wearing, oh, I'm a badge of honor, like I'm divorced, but it's like, this is what I've learned.

And now it's part of your journey.

Yeah.

And yeah, like Absolutely. You know, the good, the bad, it forms us. Um, yeah, it's, it can be tricky at times because you wonder what if. And you know, we're all just really fragile bodies of meat, you know, with this, with this really intelligent brain that is in this like weird in-between place where it's more intelligent than our sort of body of meat is probably. You know, worthy of, yet it's not nearly intelligent enough to kind of figure out all these questions that we have and where our mind wanders to. So our brain, and we probably will be like this throughout human history, but it's evolved to a point where it's just this like awkward in-between teenager. It's too smart for its own good, but not nearly smart enough to have it figured out.

Right. Well, that's what I'm saying about America today, that we're in a really awful and awkward puberty stage. We're right, come here, because you're right, you're, you're, you're in London, right, in England. So like, you guys have been around a lot longer than we have, and you know, and you guys are still going through some stuff also. But, um, it's funny how we expect after 200 and something years that we have it all figured out, and the, and the entitlement and egotism that we carry here. Not that there's not great things about America, and there is tremendous great things, but we're going through a really awkward, smelly, puberty, voice-cracking, pimply stage right now. And we have to look at it in context of a much bigger picture of there's something a lot bigger going on. And I loved how you just explained it so playfully beautiful, right? The awkwardness of our humanity, the awkwardness of personal growth. It is sometimes. It's uncomfortable. And I think, I wonder if maybe we can substitute uncomfortability with awkwardness sometimes.

Yeah, it's not just America. I think it's humanity.

Right, right. But our own personal development.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. On a personal level.

Yeah. And I think it gives us a little bit more of a playful strategicness instead of like, oh God, it's so uncomfortable. What would it be like if we're like, I'm I'm going through an awkward place right now in my career. I'm going through an awkward place in this relationship. I'm going with an awkward place in relationship to my financial strategy, right? Instead of like, it's uncomfortable. I wonder if that gives us a little bit more playful maneuverability with that.

Yeah. I think we're just, we are, we're so hard on ourselves. When you take a step back and think about how long it takes for evolution to take place, you know, as a, as a body of meat, we haven't evolved all that much over the last, you know, 50,000, 60,000 years. You know, evolution takes a very long period. And you go back a few hundred years, civilization as a whole evolved at a quicker pace, but not much quicker.

Right.

You know, like people's lives 100 years prior, were basically the same, and they knew about the people who were coming 100 years after them would be living a very similar life. And then a couple of years ago, like a flip, exponential, things started getting quicker. And I was speaking to this, just someone a couple of weeks ago, and it's just getting more and more intense. Like, go back to my grandfather's point, like he probably lived, although life was happening at a much faster pace. His life and his father's life, and then my father and his son's life, they were all similar-ish. Like, there was differences, but the kind of dynamic of what it was to be a man, um, you know, the kind of work that they did, it would— similar, it was in the ballpark. My life now, as someone in his mid-30s, compared to my dad's life is just so different. And my son Adam is 8, so by the time he gets to my age, the life he will lead is just unfathomable. We are just at a ridiculous point in human history where things are changing at a ridiculously fast pace. Like, it is insane. And I don't think we give ourselves credit because we are just these humans who are on the surface in terms of mind and body and spirit the same as 30,000 years ago. Sure, pretty much, right?

And our bandwidth hasn't changed much either in our—

yeah, yeah, yet society, like what is thrown at us on a daily basis, what we have access to, it is unconscionable. Like, it's just, it's insane. It's, it's very difficult to comprehend. It's overwhelming is what it is. So yeah, we, uh, I think we expect ourselves to leave these really happy lives, and we're expected to be perfect all the time, to have a perfect body. And I, I'm in it all the time too, constantly give myself a hard time. And we need to stop it. We need to remind ourselves more often to just take a step back and go, you know what, I'm just a human, regardless of how old I am, regardless of my race, my ethnicity, my country of origin, whatever else. I'm just a human, and Life is hard at the best of times, and we live at a time where there's a great deal of opportunity, but the shadow to that is a great deal of overwhelm. And it's understandable that I have no fucking clue what is going on and what to do most of the time. And if anyone who says or makes out that they do, they are, they are lying. Like, how could, how could any human possibly grasp the world that we live in today.

Yes, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's that bandwidth thing, I think. And I think that goes back to the yeses and nos, having a clear, uh, what gets onto your plate.

Absolutely. It's simplifying things, right? It's having that domain. So you're like, okay, I can't have the answer to everything, so what do I have the answer to? What are those qualifiers going to be? What am I going to commit to? What is going to be a hell yes? And then just being okay with that. Yeah, being okay with being awkward, be okay with saying no, be okay with not having all the answers, and just committing yourself to being the master of what you are a master of, and having a bit of patience and faith that it'll lead you to, you know, I think, I think the way you phrased it was perfect, a life of content. If we can have that, that's good enough.

Yeah, I heard, um, a bunch of episodes ago I had Dr. Scott Stanley, who is a professor of marriage and family therapy at the University of Denver, but he's also most well known for an article called Sliding Versus Deciding, which is how people in, um, long-term relationships make decisions that eventually lead them to unhealthy patterns, that they're too invested too much in a relationship by obligation versus proactivity. And he talked about the idea of how when someone makes a decision, that commitment means that it's to the exclusion of everything else, that you're deciding, I'm not, I'm not deciding these other things. And it has to be proactive. It's not just about, I'm here, this is what I'm resigning myself to, but it has to be, I'm willingly excluding other variables, willingly and proactively. To have a commitment. So obviously, that applies to every aspect of life, especially a meaningful life. We don't— and again, talking about bandwidth, like, we have to decide what we want to watch, what we don't want to watch, how much— like, I don't really watch live TV. And people are like, well, have you— how do you not know what's going on in the news? I'm like, if I need to know, I'll find out somehow, because it'll come up either with one of my clients, or it'll pop up on my whatever, or someone will mention it to me. And I need to, and I know there's certain things are relevant, like I need to know what's going on with like, you know, all the Bitcoins and the cryptocurrencies right now, because that's just something I'm interested in. But we only have so much bandwidth, especially when it comes to the self-care and, you know, the work-life balance, which I know is something you're passionate about, is like there probably isn't a thing of work-life balance.

No, it's for me, whole life balance. And I think the way you Describe it very perfectly because whenever you commit to something, you're basically making an active decision to not commit to other things. So it's not trying to have this work life and this business life and this side hustle life, this love life. It's just deciding what's meaningful to you. It's deciding like, I am going to fill my life with this. I'm not going to try and bucket them and try and keep them separate. Is trying to just build a situation where they can coexist and they can overlap and interweave and integrate, you know, and just create these lovely swirls and patterns. It's like if you put a bunch of colors in a bucket and then swirl it around, it's— you're not going to be able to separate them. They're just going to intermingle and form beautiful patterns. And that's, and that's art. And I think that's how we create whole life balance, just deciding what colors we're going to put in our bucket and allowing them to interweave and intermingle and not trying to separate them, not trying to decompartmentalize them, not creating that constant stress where we have to be this person in this aspect of life and this other person in this other aspect. It's stressful, it's overwhelming. The point of what we were talking about earlier is to just try and simplify because that allows you to just be, that allows you to fulfill your potential. And you've got to understand what a hell yes you looks like. I certainly haven't got it all figured out, but I'm much closer, and I know I'm much closer because me a few years ago would have been all about Bitcoin and all these other things because I would have been fearful of missing out, right? I would have been on Clubhouse, I'd have been on TikTok, not because I felt like I would have found any success there, but I was like, what if I do? I haven't touched Clubhouse, I haven't touched TikTok, I haven't touched cryptocurrencies yet, even though I feel like it's interesting. I'm like, I don't have the motivation to properly learn about this. And I've met some people who get it and have tried to explain it to me, and I'm like, I know I can grasp it, but it'll take some conscious effort, and I don't want to say yes to that right now. In a year, 2 years, 5 years, I know there's going to be a point in my life where I'm going to be at a stage of investment, and I will commit to that. But right now is not now.

Yeah. And I love that because it's such simplicity, right? And, and I'm a big fan of simplicity over complexity. And I know that with anything that I'm not knowledgeable enough, I want to go to the person who, who has— who probably is the most knowledgeable. And now with technology, it's, it's a lot simpler. To get in front of those people. That, right, whether, whether we're going to access them one-on-one, or we can watch their YouTube videos, or their TED Talks, or their podcasts, or, or whatever it may be, that, that, that accessibility to anybody in that world to give you at least a bare minimum, right? You may want that 1-inch knowledge just to make the decision whether or not you want to go further in that.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And people might say to me, oh, but you're missing out by not being in BotCon. But you could say that about everything.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I know that there's going to be a point in my life, just using investment, that I will kind of go into like investment chapter. I'll have done enough, I'll have kind of got my ducks in a row, and it'll be like, yeah, this is the time. And I'll be able to give myself the attention it deserves, do it properly, rather than now just half-ass it, go an inch deep and probably be one of the people that loses rather than wins, because that is usually how it is. The people who commit themselves, especially to something like investment, win. Everyone else tends to lose. And the ones who win, win because they know there's always going to be a lot of people who just come in hoping, right, right, it's gonna be an overnight—

going back to the lack of patience. Yeah, there's always going to be something new. Like you said, right? Like you said, like, if we're expanding this exponential. So, I remember it was, had to be around 2000. I was working with elementary, middle school kids doing programming and whatever. And I remember at this snack bar, and I, you know, we rotate around, the adults were like rotating to volunteer at the snack bar, and the kids like, I want this, and I want the right. And the assistant was like, God, like, instant gratification. Or I was like, what was it? I go, oh, gosh, like instant gratification, you know. And the gimme gimme gimme now now now. This was around the time when like Harry Potter first came out. So like just giving the context of like timeframe, right? So, and the person who was with me goes, no, no, no, instant gratification isn't fast enough anymore.

It's not now.

Right? And now that was around 2000. And now we're 2000, right? We're 2021. Right? There's no instant messenger anymore. Because they can't even use that word, right? It's— if, um, during, uh, Elon Musk on SNL, on Saturday Night Live the other night, right, uh, what would the app that, that everybody was trading Dogecoin on went down and people were losing their crap. I know, and right, I couldn't trade, I couldn't do this. But you know, there's money that probably saved people from losing or buying, right? Either way, like the Robinhood app went down for like 15 minutes. So the people people are like, the instant gratification grab thankfully was blocked, but it was a technology snafu, not a mindset decision to like, okay, what's the long term? What's the patience? What's the—

it's deciding what's right for you at this moment in time. And I always struggled with it. I was constantly, you know, chasing those shiny objects and had a fear of missing out, you know, FOMO. And These days I'm like, I might miss out, you know, maybe I should be doing that, but I'm committed to doing this. I don't feel ready. I don't feel like I've got the time to kind of give it— the motivation to learn isn't there. So I'm just going to say no. I still have a pension and stuff, so I'm like giving it to someone else to do that for me. And who knows what the future— I am almost certain there'll be a point in time when I will be ready for that, whether it's 40-year-old me or 45-year-old or 50-year-old. And it's like, I'll figure it out when I figure it out. Right now, this is where I'm at. This is what my focus is. And I'm gonna try and say yes to the things I say yes to, do my best to say no to everything else, and just live life.

Yeah, because I couldn't imagine the 36, 37-year-old me saying that. And that's why my life was chaos a bunch of years ago. And I couldn't even imagine being in investments. I couldn't imagine having the simplicity of my private practice of more likely turning down a client than saying yes to a client. I couldn't imagine that because it was that other side of the coin of like, I need to make sure I get a bare minimum income versus who do I want to work with? What am I an expert at? What's that, that mile deep that I'm going? What am I putting out there as a mind-body integrative wellness expert that does stuff that's out of the box? On top of my mainstream clinical training. So I only want people that align with that and don't want people that don't want that, because I can't hold you with one arm tied— I can't help you, excuse me, with one arm tied behind my back. So I want people out there to, to realize that you're— we're going through developmental stages of life, and it doesn't stop in your teenage years, right? There is a developmental stage of your 20s and your 30s and your 40s.

And you mentioned there sort of 36 37. That's kind of about where I'm at now.

Yeah.

And 32, 33-year-old me was in that point. So it's not an age thing. Someone could be listening to this at 50, now is the time, right? Someone could be listening this at the age of 19, now is the time. The sooner you take that step back and go, okay, I'm going to commit myself to figure it— and it won't just happen overnight. You're not just going to wake up tomorrow and go, okay, I'm going to figure out my hell yeah is. I'm gonna figure out what success means to me, and then it's it. That's why the time is now, because it takes time to get there. Be it weeks, months, years. And we've come back to this a few times— patience. It's just having the patience to be like, this journey will play out. The sooner I start it, the better. Ideal, I'd have started it a long, long time ago, but I can't, so I'll start it now. And it'll get easier. It'll get easier to say no. It'll get easier to let go. It'll get easier to let in. And then when you get, you know, 5 years down below and you compare, like, wow, I've come a pretty long way. Let's keep going. Love it.

Yep, spot on. So everybody who's been listening to this today, so for sure, make sure you connect. Follow Matt on— Matthew on Instagram. Instagram. It's turndog.co, T-U-R-N-D-O-G.co. And please, please check out his book Beyond the Pale, a fable about escaping the hustle and finding yourself. You've heard so much deep, connective, authentic conversation today, stuff that you guys know that I love talking about and having people on who have that same thinking that we're all just trying to get. We're trying to clear through the clutter. We're trying to clear through the chaos, and simplicity always wins. So, Matthew, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Pleasure, Jason. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast.

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