https://www.listennotes.com/e/3be00f93ee5c494fbee34b1766811ef3

So if I had got clarity on my life vision prior to becoming a father, then I probably could have navigated things a little bit better. Or at least better prepared myself for taking the leap. You're destiny to the Circle C Project.

Welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live life. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big lore dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop, and big hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you.

Really want to be.

So now with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, and allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit.

Hey, welcome to episode 115 of the Triple C Project. Now, if you're a subscriber or someone who listens religiously to the show every week, you will have noticed that there wasn't an episode last week. If you are a binge listener who kind of comes to this every few weeks, you kind of binge on what you missed. This won't mean anything to you, but for you weekly listeners, yeah, there wasn't an episode. And why was that, really? It's just because I needed to conserve my energy, protect my energy, which is something that I encourage you to do and I encourage my clients to do. You see, you can keep pushing and pushing and pushing, but you have to recognize when sometimes you just need to take a step back, have a breath, have some space. And I've had a lot of projects on the go lately with the book and also a lot of things just with Life last week, I just, I just need a sneeze of space. So that's why there was no episode. But thank you for being here. So what's going on? What's been happening in, in the last couple of weeks? Well, I received the author proofs of the book, the Triple C Method, Triple C Project even, which was very exciting. If you've seen the real on LinkedIn or on Instagram, you, you know, it's kind of like Christmas. You receive this package in the mail and you rip the envelope open and lo and behold is the physical paperback copy of the book. So that's always a beautiful thing. I think I made an error. I made one error on the COVID I. I clicked the button for the matte rather than the glossy. So I've resubmitted to get Another copy with the glossy cover, which I think is going to look better and then it's done. I still need to finish creating the workbook that will go along with the book, but that will be done in time for release because it has to be. In other book news, you can now download a free chapter of the book. If you head to my website, Ironry, Spence.com or to any of my social media channels, you can click the link and get your free chapter. I know a couple of people that have done that already and have really enjoyed reading it. They found it quite insightful and found things in there that already they can apply to their own life. So it's going to be a real, really good insight into what's to come for, for those of you who are wondering, okay, well, what's the second book be about? How is it going to be different to the first? And what I can say is that if you, if you listen to this podcast and if you've read my first book, you're going to love the second book. That I can guarantee you. I can't guarantee much, but I could guarantee you that. Okay, what else is I going to say before we kick off? Yes. So one thing, I try to get better up. I might have said this before and it's kind of like a work in progress, but it's to keep asking for stuff, asking for stuff that I want, that I need. That's testimonials from clients, but also includes things like reviews for this podcast. So I am asking, imploring, asking, begging even you to leave a review of the podcast on whatever podcast platform you are listening to this show on or head to a link in the show notes or to ratethispodcast.com and drop a rating and a review for the Triple C project. Reviews are really helpful for lots of reason and really powerful and impactful. They help me know who's listening to the show, where you're listening, what you find insightful, what you like about the show, what you want more of, what you would like me to dive into. It helps people who are looking for shows. It helps them to know that actually, yeah, this is a show that is for me that I will like based upon the reviews and ratings that the show has gotten so far. And look, there's no this, this podcast is free to you. Like I put a lot of energy, time, money into, into producing it because I, I, I want, I want to help people. I want it to be something that people can access even if you don't go on to to to do coaching. You can still use what I share on this podcast, which are things from my own experience from coaching clients to go ahead and change your life in the way that you want to change it. So a review is if you get any value from the show, it's just a good way of, I guess, showing your appreciation for that. So here's an ask, and I am, and I'm going to start asking more because that's my challenge to myself, is to give a rating and review. And in your review, it doesn't have to be magnum opus, a sentence, a few lines, just say what you like about the show, reference a specific episode, an insight you took from an episode as well, if that's if that's applicable. And if there's anything that you would like me to dive deeper in or anything that you you feel would enhance your listening experience, I would love to hear it too. So I really, really appreciate that. And final point, in terms of just general feedback, I got my first text message recently, which was very exciting. So if you look at the show description, you'll see there's a link. Typically you can send a text to about anything really, so I can't reply back. It doesn't give me a reply number. But I will get it and I will read it and I will appreciate it. So in addition to reviewing anything else you want to share, feel free to send a text, particularly if there's anything that you don't like about the show. That's probably a good way of doing it rather than putting it the review, because I'll still get it anyway and it'll be useful for me to hear. Okay, that's enough of the preamble. Let's get to this week's show where I want to talk about consciously creating your vision, but I'm going to talk about it through a different type of lens, really. So as I record this on Thursday 12th September, it was my son's 9th birthday on the Monday. And that got me, as birthdays always do, sort of reminiscing back to nine years ago, when he was first born and where I was and what I was doing and how I felt. And I posted about this on on my social media channels as well. And I'm going to expand upon that a little bit in this in this episod. But this is also what also happened this week is that I delivered a webinar to a group of dads in law as well, which also enhanced my sort of look back at this period of being a Big law and becoming a father and the tensions that occurred within that. So I thought that what I would do this week is I'm not going to repeat the webinar I delivered for various reasons. What I am going to do is take the five agenda points that I share and apply them to my own experience back then, look at how things maybe could have been different. So the first thing I want to share is understanding challenges. So when I became a father, things changed, but they changed in ways that I hadn't fully expected. And it actually got me questioning, like how. How am I going to have the career that I thought I was going to have and at the same time be the kind of father that I want to be? And all I could see were obstacles, were challenges. And they're the usual challenges that you. You've probably been through yourself or you might think of the, the long working hours, the presenteeism, the high stress, which is some of the things that I. I could see were going to be significant challenges moving forward. And so they proved. So I knew what the challenges were and I knew that I resented the sacrifices that I would have to make that I had been making to that point, working weekends, working on holiday, you know, me being in the office till all hours. But I hadn't taken the time to really understand why those challenges were challenges for me. And I feel that if I had taken that next step, gone that lower level, deeper to understand the challenges, rather than just seeing them as challenges within that, I probably could have figured out a strategy, a plan to overcome or to navigate those challenges and also figure out the ones where they were unable to be navigated, and decide what I wanted to do, whether I still wanted to pursue the way that I was going or I wanted to change things completely, rather than having to wait five years before starting to make significant changes. So if you're in that place where you feel you are a little bit directionless, a little bit stuck, you're not quite sure what to do, you feel that there are significant challenges in the situation that you're in, then go a level deeper and start to understand what those challenges are. Why are they challenges for you? Because that may be different as to why they could be challenges for somebody else. Something like long working hours is a challenge, but a challenge for me may be different to you. For me, it just meant that I never felt that I could be around for bed and bath time, you know, I mean, it meant that I felt I was always having to be on and I couldn't be present if I was always thinking about work. So that's just one aspect. Is now looking back with hindsight, how I could have done that work to get deeper and understand the challenge rather than just identifying that there was a challenge in place. Second thing I would have done was is get clarity on my life vision. Now, I hadn't really thought much about my life vision. I don't think many of us do because it isn't something that we're really encouraged to do beyond the superficial or beyond the traditional. Climb the corporate ladder and get the house and the car and the family and the two holidays a year or whatever it is. That's kind of where I was. I was excited at being in Singapore. I saw that as my ticket to rising through the ranks and sort of having my own practice all the way up to partner. That's kind of all I really saw. I hadn't thought about the bigger picture of my life and how all of those parts would fit together. When I had a child, then it became a problem because I knew I wanted to be around as much as possible for my child. But I didn't know how I could do that in the career that I was in because I hadn't given it any thought. And if I'd given it thought before, thought to that vision before, when I kind of had the space to do that, then maybe I would have been pre armed with the tools and with the knowledge about what I was then going to do next, with maybe what I was going to ask for within the firm or what maybe where I was going to move to next if I felt that the firm wasn't going to be the right place for me to fulfill that vision that I had. But I didn't do any of that. So suddenly I had this new child. I was hit with all of these feelings that I wasn't expecting. I was questioning all of these aspects of my life. And so I didn't have a clear head to start to come up with this clear vision, this clear life vision. And this is. I mean, I talk about this, I feel ad nauseam. But that's because I don't feel it can be overstated. The importance of clarity as the first step in moving from survival to thrival or in living life lit getting clear on what it is that you want. Because if you don't know what you want, you can't communicate what you need. You can't speak to the right people, you can't make the right decisions. So if I had got clarity on my life vision prior to Becoming a father, then I probably could have navigated things a little bit better, or at least better prepared myself for taking the leap, built up a war chest, got certain things in place, made certain decisions. So wherever you are, if you haven't already, get clear on your life vision and get granular. Get right down to the detail of an ideal day or an ideal week and what those feelings are, what those themes are that come out of that next point. Be aligned in your decision making. So once you have a vision of the life that you want, then you can start to make decisions that support that vision. And again, that's what I didn't have. I was constantly wrestling with, do I take this call for this recruiter? Do I apply for that particular job? Do I go for this particular thing? Do I take on that particular assignment? There were so many options that I was wrestling with that I was spending energy on. But if I'd had a clear life vision, I wouldn't have needed to do that because it would be very easy to look at the opportunity or look at the situation, look at my core values and determine whether or not that opportunity or situation aligned with those values. And if it didn't, let it go. But instead, I wasted a lot of energy just angsting over. Over things. You know, I mean, I can think of one particular instance where I was sort of put forward to a firm, was looking for somebody, and a client put my name forward, and I ended up in conversations with this fir. And it would have been more of the same of what I was doing, in fact, if not busier than what I was doing. And it would have been. It would have involved sort of being split between two different Asian cities as well. But I wasn't happy where I was. And so I was looking at, through the lens of, well, a change has got to be better than where I am. But actually, it would have been terrible, you know, looking at it now with my values, it would have been terrible if I made that move. And it would have been very easy for me to not go through the motions, having the conversations and the interview and everything, if I had been clear what my vision was and recognize that this didn't fit into it. So again, when you have your life vision, when you've picked out those core themes and values that come from that vision, then you can become more aligned and more streamlined in your decision making. Building confidence. Another pillar of the triple C method. It's that believing that change is possible, even if that change is something that goes against the grain, is against the Norm, something that you maybe haven't. Haven't thought about before. And so for me, what that meant was recognizing that actually walking away from Big Law is perfectly fine. And there are a lot of skills that I have, a lot of things that I have to offer that are transferable and recognizing that I've overcome some pretty big obstacles before this point so I can use those skills, use that evidence to allow me to overcome challenges and obstacles that I see in front of me now and being confident that I could figure it out. But I didn't have that. In fact, I, I lacked confidence. My. I was literally over overwrought, overrun with, with limiting beliefs that Big Law was all that I could do and I just had to suck it up and keep at it, even though it was making me miserable and it was re. It was taking me away from the role of fatherhood that I foresee, my foresaw myself playing. So you got to get confident. This is why I am. I refer you to. I don't have the book in front of me, but my first book, I can't remember which chapter number, but about asking yourself, where's the evidence? Looking at? Okay, there's this big sort of challenge in front of me and I don't think I can do it. But why can't you do it? Where's the evidence that you can't do it? And actually looking back at past things you've overcome and recognizing there's likely greater evidence that you can do it than there is that you can't. Because you can apply your previous skills, the previous things that you've learned to the current situation. And in doing so and overcoming one obstacle that then builds confidence to overcome the next and the next and the next. So you see that these all lead on from each other, understanding the challenges, gaining like clarity on your life, vision aligned decision making, building confidence. And the final point will probably be no surprise, but it's taking action and take a courageous action because once you've built that belief, you still got to make the thing happen. You still got to step forward and try to create that vision that you had for yourself, that you have for yourself. Right? And I, I didn't, I was very passive, even though I was unhappy and I didn't see how it could work. I was kind of very passive. I didn't feel that I could take action. I was scared to take action because I knew, oh, I felt I was in quite a privileged position with a job that I had, the center that I had, the life I was living. And you just don't walk away from that. You just don't tear that down. And I didn't feel there was anyone I could really talk to about that for those reasons as well. Because all people could see was you're living in this tropical city state. You've got a condo with five pools, you travel for work, you go to these amazing places on holiday with your family, you get paid this amazing salary. They could see was that. And so how do you tell them that? Yeah, but it's all making me very, very miserable. How do you tell them that, yeah, I'm leaving. Don't. So I didn't take action. If recruiters called, I'd probably have a conversation, but I wasn't proactively out there looking, looking for new things to do, looking at how I could extricate myself for the situation. I wasn't researching, okay, well, what do I want to do instead? I wasn't applying to be on courses. I wasn't doing anything that would proactively take me out of the situation that I was in. And if I had, again, I probably could have got out sooner. Would I still have been doing the same thing now? Who knows? But whatever it was, I would have proactively made a decision to change rather than waiting for change to happen. And so this is, this is my, my, I guess, words of encouragement to you. My invitation to you is take that action. Even when you think it's, when you're fearful of taking it, take it. And if the action that you need to take just seems so big and overwhelming that it paralyzes you with fear, remember, you can always come back to courage stacking to the concept that I share in my first book. Use that courage stacking process of taking that bigger goal, that bigger situation, and breaking it down into small components as you need to, till you get to something that you feel that you could do relatively easily. And then stacking the next task on stop. On top of that, I keep going through the task, through the actions you need to take from the least scary building up so that by the time you'll get into the ones that seemed absolutely terrifying before you've built this wall of evidence that you can do scary things. And actually this isn't really that scary. So to recap the agenda and through the. The lens of my own experience, I. I wish that back then I had understood the challenges more rather than just identifying them. I wish that I'd gained clarity on my life vision or just actually created a life vision of my own. Would have been great. I wish that I had then made aligned decisions that kind of fit in with the vision that I created. I wish I built more confidence by looking back at things that I had done, obstacles I'd overcome and using that to allow me to face head on things that were in front of me now. And I wish I'd taken courageous action. I wish I'd be more bold in the action that I was taking rather than waiting for things to happen. So I hope you have found that helpful. Looking at, looking at life through my lens back then, being a new father in Big Law, I'm wondering how the hell I'm going to reconcile this career with fatherhood and looking back at some of the things that I wish that I had done. And if I had done them, things may have turned out differently. And again, this isn't a looking back with regret by any stretch of the imagination because if I hadn't been through the times that I went through, I wouldn't be here doing what I am right now. And I love what I'm doing right now, but I may have been able to short circuit it to sort of make things happen a little bit quicker and, and sort of bypassed significant parts of the angst that I encountered along the way. So I'm hoping that this episode gets you thinking and helps you to, to sort of do that right now. I'd love to to hear from you which one of those five agenda items in particular stood out to you or are you working through now? Maybe you're not working through any of them and maybe listen to this episode has got you thinking. Okay, I need to start. I'd love for you to tell me. You can shoot me a text by clicking the link in the show description or you can hit me up on email hey am ricepets.com or over on my socials on LinkedIn or on Instagram at iam underscore Ryan Spence and yeah, tell me, let me know. And I'm sure, as I said in the post today, that back then, if I know that coaching was something that was available to me, you know, then maybe that could have changed things for me. Back then coaching was something that the firms gave to or provided to people on the partnership track. So I thought that that's all that coaching was. I didn't know it could help regular people like me figure out my brain and where I wanted to go in life. And again, if I, if I did know that and I had hired and worked with a coach then, then maybe a lot of these five points I would have already been in a position to deal with once I became a father rather than many years later. So coaching could definitely help with that. And so if you listen to this episode has got you thinking, I could really use some support. This sounds great, but there's a lot of work there and I'm not sure I can do this on my own. Then I'd love to have a conversation with you. So head to iamrinespence.com apply there's a little video there tells you a little bit more about kind of what I do, what I can help you with, and you can apply for a strategy call where we can have a chat. I can share some tools and strategies with you, figure out where you're at, where you want to get to, and talk about how we get you there. So yeah, iamrispence.com apply and I look forward to speaking with you soon. That's it for me this week. Thanks again for being here as always. Really do appreciate it. Looking forward to reading all of your reviews of course. Until next week, have a fantastic week ahead and stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit.

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