Hello, welcome to the Freedom Fridays Project with me your host Pete Clark, The Whispers Guy.
If this is your first time listening, this is my weekly experimentation with time and focus. I originally set out to make Fridays my own. And it's evolved into conceptually moving from I have to do this - I have to work, into I choose to. And this is my weekly exploration with time and focus. Welcome to Episode 15 - quite incredibly!
Now, this week has I've described this week as being an invisible week. The reason I feel like it's been invisible, it feels - I just can't believe where the time has gone. Obviously, it's gone no faster or slower than normal. It's my perception. But it feels like I literally, at the end of the last recording a week ago, pressed pause and pressed, you know, publish, and then went on a time travelling expedition catapulted a week ahead and here I am recording the next one. It just seems to have gone so quickly. And I know a lot of people, you know, talk about how I can't believe we're now in May, and you know, what's happened to the year. It does feel like it's been a little bit of an invisible week. We all know the feeling, you know, you get caught up in the busi-ness of life, as opposed to the business of life. And that can be a blessing and a curse. But I can't quite believe it's been, for me, such a short period of perceived time between recording the last podcast and recording this one.
So anyway, a couple of things to share with you this week. And they're all interestingly tied together to that concept with time just flying by. I wonder how often we say to ourselves and to people oh the day ran away with me. The week got away from me. Tragically, the life got away from me, which is partly the reason for all of this stuff. And the first thing I came across was this little phrase, the inspiration is free but application costs. And how I've interpreted that is there are literally probably billions now - little tips, tools, articles, podcasts, tic tocs, YouTube videos, gold cast videos where you can for free (apart from the time you spend, listening and watching to them) be inspired, be motivated, become hopeful be optimistic, you can get the feeling pretty rapidly and pretty much for minimal effort. But I love the last part of it 'application costs'. And what I've observed is the difference between you know, the good and the great. And the average in the exception or whatever the delta is, it's the willingness to invest time, effort and attention on the application. It's the willingness to practice something that's a little bit uncomfortable. It's the willingness to find ways to experiment on the edge with things that are new or different or counterintuitive to how you would operate. And I wonder often how much people are willing to pay in their time, in their effort, in their attention to make the changes that they say they want. And I'm in that space with this Freedom Fridays Podcast, Episode 15. I didn't even think I would get past two or three. And here I am thinking, you know, is there another way? Is there a better way? Is there more I can do? Is there something different I can do? And linked to something I'll share later is in mentioning to people that I've got a podcast, 'oh what's it about' is usually the question and explain 'Freedom Fridays project moving from I have to, to I choose to'. And maybe 50%, at least that the people I've talked to have said, 'Oh, I do something like that. And I've been doing it for 18 years' or you know, 'We called it Friday My Day'. And so it's really inspired me to think about would it be helpful? Would I enjoy it first and foremost? Would it be beneficial? Would it perhaps provide insight for you, the listener, if I interviewed some of those people? And the normal people like you and I you know, not necessarily global superstars. And that's what I see a lot of the podcasts, it's it's high profile, people being interviewed about their tips, their tools, the strategies to excel on, on the Olympic field, or in Hollywood, or you know, at the highest level of sport or business. And whilst that's great and I really enjoy some of those. Sometimes it feels a little bit too far. It feels like, that's not me, I'll never achieve that. Despite some of the, you know, the commentary being pretty simple and easy to apply. I wonder if the opposite could be true. Your neighbour is making a big change. And I wonder if we could learn from her, or them in some way. So that's, that's my intention, because inspiration is free, application costs. And I wonder what other people have done to pay or invest in making the change from to. What that's cost them. So that's the coming future episodes.
The second thing I'll share with you is, I've been working on using a visual of the infinity symbol. You know the infinity symbol - it's like, the figure eight, flat in a different orientation, you know, landscape, not portrait, and the arrows go all the way around to its, you know, hence the Infinity. Nothing ever end, there's an infinity to it. And I've been thinking about that as a visual for a couple of things. One of which is some of the competing, but potentially interdependent qualities, and things that we face. The one I've been working on, and it's particularly relevant to me right now doing all this stuff, is this interdependence between inner fulfilment and external achievement. So the inner fulfilment being meaning, purpose, contribution, and external achievement being simply, you know, running a small business, paying the mortgage, achieving tasks. And whilst it might seem counterintuitive, sometimes they can be at odds. And I know so many people that have invested so much time, effort and attention in the external achievement, whether it be a revenue number, whether it be a fitness goal, whether it be the accumulation of toys, and wealth. Whatever that means it's the external representation of achievement, at the cost of their inner fulfilment. So they achieve it, and it leaves them feeling a little bit empty. Or the other side where that there are obviously, I know, and you would know people that are fulfilled, from an inner perspective, they got meaning they've got purpose. And yet, in some senses don't feel like they're achieving much on an external perspective. And that external perspective, could be an impact on society, it could be an impact on the homeless that perhaps they're working with. And so I've observed this dilemma of, you know, we work too much on the external, and we lose the internal. And the opposite being true. If we work too much on the internal, we lose the external. And I've been wondering how best to navigate those two potentially competing, but interdependent concepts. And it's interesting how, again, even just the awareness of it makes me much more conscious of when I'm over indexing. I, you know, I could spend all day meditating and, you know, getting close to my inner core and working out my purpose, and why am I here? And I wouldn't then be able to then take the kids to sport. And I could spend all day, you know, working on the business working on achieving stuff, and at the cost of it not being aligned to what's what's important for me. So that infinity loop of inner fulfilment and outer achievement, is there a way to navigate both? And it's something I've come across recently is not necessarily a problem to solve, but a paradox to manage. You probably will never. And if you do, it'll be moment, and momentarily, where you achieve balance in those two spaces. And it's always hence the infinity loop and navigation of each side of the equation. So I thought that was interesting. And then kind of picking up on that. I was listening to a podcast and I thought it was really a neat thing to do. It's obviously a very subjective, but if you subscribe to the view that we become like our environment, or partly, our nature is often nurtured and the nurture part we're influenced by our surroundings. We're influenced by the people that we surround yourself with. And I got this little really quick, almost like an internal audit. A guy suggested, think of the four or five people you surround yourself with, think of what's important to you. And for him, what was important for him was healthy, wealthy, and wisdom. And score them on a scale of one to five, one, they're really not healthy or five, they are super focused on being their best health itself. And I don't know what the number would be but can imagine, you know, rating three of my friends, on those three important things for him health, wealth and wisdom. And I doubt if we'd score 15. Because I certainly wouldn't. I wonder what the number would be, you know, with nine, you know, 3,3,3, or 3 out of 5 on health 3 out of 5 on wealth, 3 out of 5 on wisdom? Would that be enough of a conducive environment for me to benefit and build upon? Or would it have to be 12, or would have to be 14 and a half to be nudging at least one of the concepts on five, for me to benefit. And I read recently that, that some of the best times to make those changes are what are known as fresh starts. And then you hear this a lot you hear people, particularly those that are not from a health perspective, you know, it's a new year's resolution, it's a new month, well, I'm going to start from the beginning of summer, well, I'm going to do on Monday, I'm going to do it post my holiday, you know, after the break, when I come back. There are those moments, labelled fresh starts, when the timing of making the change seems more conducive to it happening. And that for me is the part of the inspiration part. At the beginning of the year, the first of the month, you know, post my birthday, you know, when the kids have left, when I get the new job. Those moments become a catalyst for inspiration, hope, optimism that we can begin a new and develop into something bigger, better, faster, stronger. Of course, the application cost is the thing that will gain momentum. So I thought that was a really interesting little internal audit on on your surroundings in terms of think about what's important to you. Think about the two or three, four or five people that you spend most of your time with, rate them on a scale of one to five is pretty easy. And if they're not coming up to the number that you expect you to be at and perhaps want to be influenced by, maybe there's a choice you have to make about some of the amount of time that you spend with them.
So that's it for this week. The first thing was inspriation is free and application costs us. The second thing was the concept of this infinity loop balancing or navigating inner fulfilment and external achievement. And the third thing was this kind of internal environmental audit around the things that are important to you. On this particular occasion it was healthy, wealthy, and wisdom. And to come, I'm going to commit to speaking to some of those ordinary people like you and I, who are doing extraordinary things and see if they can provide some insight about what it's taken for them to move from I have to, to I choose to.
See you next week.
