Welcome to the Freedom Fridays Project podcast. I'm Pete Clark, your host, the Whispers Guy. It appears that work expands to the time that we give it and I started to explore how I was investing my time and effort, particularly on Fridays. It's evolved to an exploration and experiment with time, energy, attention and identity, and a mindset shift from I have to, to I choose to. So if you're interested in exploring some changes to the way that you invest your time and energy, if you'd like some tips on the way as you make some changes, perhaps to your identity, if you would like the freedom of I choose to, away from I have to, then this is the podcast for you. So welcome to the Freedom Fridays Project podcast.
Welcome to the Freedom Fridays Podcast. This is episode number 40, 4-0, and last week, I spoke to a new colleague, Karen Gately, from the Corporate Dojo, and we got into all sorts of big topics, and I felt that I covered them thinly. And so I've chunked this podcast into three, so this is part two. If this is your first episode, then it could be worthwhile listening to the 20 minute episode one, which is the previous episode, but in this episode, we talk about the journey of self discovery and being okay with being less than perfect. Being okay with the parts of ourselves that perhaps we don't particularly like. We talk about the impact of words, others words on us, and why we're playing the game that we're playing. And I don't mean sports necessarily, I mean the game of life or the game of work or whatever game we're playing. Why are we playing it, are we playing it to win, or are we playing it to learn? So please enjoy part two of my conversation with Karen Gately.
I think there's a lot of people, I'm making the assumption because maybe this is who I'm surrounding myself with, who are willing to look, they're willing to discover, they're willing to look in the metaphorical mirror, even if it's from afar, or maybe even from the edge or maybe fully in, and let's say they come to the conclusion, I don't like betrayal, I'm embarrassed about embarrassment, whatever they think Oh, and you said, one of the things you've done is you've been able to respect it. How do you handle the other part of you, or the hubby, or the friend that says, Just choose? Because there's so much, just is a loaded word? It seems like it's obvious, right? Just choose, seems so simple, which might be a simple here to there. But you and I both know that work can take days, months, years, lifetimes, potentially. How did you navigate that? And have you got any kind of general counsel for others that are willing to look, might discover someone they don't like, and how you actually do respect that?
Yes I think this layer upon layer of answer to that question, right? Because I think the first one is that you do have to genuinely choose to back yourself. And again, this is way easier said than done, to actually go, Actually, you know what I am a good human, that's striving, I'm going to use my own judgment around when was I good enough? When was "I tried hard" a high enough standard to have achieved today. So when people are naive, in terms of how challenging it is to achieve these changes about ourselves, because that's ultimately what it is, is just this false perception that you can just go Voila, now I am different. It's easier by the way for people to stay on the course with you and be forgiving when you slip off the bicycle seat when they know you're desperately holding on to it and desperately wanting to be your best self. So I think when people have hollow promises, because they have hollow apologies and excuses every time they're not their best self, I think that's when it gets really tiresome for people. And that's where, quite legitimately, you can have people going, You know what, just either choose to be that or not, stop giving me your pretense. But if you are genuinely striving and genuinely self reflective and remorseful if you step across boundaries, then that's all you can expect of yourself. And what we can expect of other people is that they in turn are reasonable So, again, it takes a lot of managing your own thoughts and emotions and choosing to be your own person to keep people's views in their place, so that you're hearing them, you're taking them on board, they're adding value in terms of your insight and all those various perspectives, but they're not dominating how you think and feel about yourself and your own progress.
When you've done that exploration on yourself, have you come to any points where you've chosen for whatever reason to ignore or avoid any aspect of yourself that you didn't like?
That's an interesting question because my immediate response would be, it's more the case it has just taken a long time to resolve some parts, because I didn't fully understand some parts. Some parts, I thought it was just I needed an attitude adjustment, I needed to just choose to be more consistently happier. I didn't fully appreciate, again, that link with childhood trauma, and the adult that I then needed to be in my unconscious mind. And so discovering those links made me go, Aha, okay. Now I can see the next layer of what it takes to be able to regulate my own emotional conduct, for example, to choose my emotions, to choose my actions. So I don't think I've ever discovered anything and just gone too bad, too sad, for the rest of the world or myself. I'm really going to have to think about it because I'm sure there's something. I'm sure there's something where I'm like, oh for example, maybe I don't like the fact that from time to time, I can spend too much time on the couch. And there's probably an inner peace with that one where I've just gone, Oh whatever.
We're all guilty of that one. I think we're allowed that one.
But no, I think that as I was saying earlier, I do have a hardwired desire to be my best version of myself, I'm conscientious, I want to be a good person.
When were you first aware of that?
Well, if you listen to childhood stories, you would believe that it's from a very young age. So there's a very famous story of me walking down the street, holding one of my parents hands and someone was walking ahead of us and dropped some rubbish on the ground and I've pulled my hand out of my parents hand and chased after this rubbish, picked it up, tugged on the back of the person's jacket, looked up with my four year old eyes and said, Please don't litter my world. And apparently this guy's just gone, I will never litter again. So there was an ability and desire to speak up that I want things to be good, I want everyone to be responsible. And I started doing karate when I was, again, the stories vary depending on which parent you listen to, but between five and six. I started doing karate and then trained for a very long time. And obviously, at the heart of that is take responsibility for you. Turn up to training, make sure your gi is clean, don't leave your belt lying around on the floor. You don't swear in class, you don't muck up in class, you do as sensei says. So that environment is a very disciplined environment. Again it's hard for me to be able to exactly say to you, this is when I was first aware of it because I was so young, when starting to be in that kind of setting.
And what got you into karate at five or six, was that an internal thing was that a nudge from your parents?
My father was training and so I was aware of it through him, obviously he'd go off to the dojo to do classes on a very regular basis. And again, the story goes that I was super keen for about a year really just wanted to do it. And I always loved it, varying points in my teenage years where I was more dedicated than others in terms of having that full blown discipline. But I would say for the most part, I did it throughout those years and loved it, really loved it. And learning how to fight, it's an empowering thing to do, especially for a young woman as you can imagine to know that you can physically look after yourself.
Was that part of it?
Well, no, because I was so little. I really just wanted to learn how to fight. I just wanted to be a black belt for whatever reason that a five year old decides that that's an important thing to achieve. But then it just became a big part of who you are. It's not just a sport, it's you are a karateka, you are somebody who was on the journey to becoming a black belt, then you reach black belt, you realise actually, that's quite a junior level in actual ranks of the martial arts world, getting to Black Belt is just kind of...
So last year, right, so last year.
It's actually just the first step, there's as much to learn about becoming a first dan and a second dan, a third dan, etc, as there is leading up to black belts. So you realise that it is about self mastery, and it is about becoming your best self. And it becomes less about the actual technique and your ability to perform in a fight scenario, and far more about you and your evolution as a person. So doesn't always mean, I'd like to add, that every person that goes on that journey achieves it, so people can be rated or ranked in certain grades, but not really have taken the steps that the traditional martial arts are asking you to take in terms of who you are. So I do see a lot of flawed characters.
There's a couple of things I want to pick up on just on that Karen. One is, you said you loved it pretty much all the way through, when you didn't love it what got you still to do it?
The culture. So it was the dojo culture of what would my peers say, if I didn't turn up to training, if I miss one class, then I could expect to turn up to the dojo and hear, Where were you slacker? If I miss a week, it's like, What, have you like fallen off the bandwagon here, like what is happening. If you're two weeks they're actually like, Is she dead? Because you couldn't possibly miss training for that long and still be breathing, because we had a culture of if you were injured, you would turn up to training and sit and watch the class. The only time you didn't actually turn up in the dojo was if you had some virus that you could pass on to other people, obviously there's still degree of common sense. But you really did need to be sick, to not come to training or not turn up for a tournament or whatever it was. So there's that, there was just an expectation and there wasn't necessarily a punishment, per se, there are punishments in some senses. So if you were late to class, then you'd get knee jumps, and it was a really unpleasant start to your training session, if you behave badly, you might get sent home, you got the humiliation of that and having to come back, and so there were consequences. But a lot of the consequences were actually just from the people around you. And from that internal voice that went, Yes, you know that you don't really have an excuse, or a reason sorry, because there's a big difference between reasons and excuses. So you can't, as a martial artist, be comfortable inside and with yourself, knowing that you're accepting a whole bunch of excuses. That's not exactly blackbelt behavior.
You've reinforced something that I've heard from two or three of my guests. And when I when I started this way back early 21, starting ugly, with the premise I was taking Friday's off, not off life, but off necessarily feeling compelled to do corporate work, I might choose to do it, or I might choose to play golf, or I might choose to sit on the couch, or I might... and what at least half a dozen of my guests have explained is exactly as you've said, whilst, Yes you can choose Pete, the culture, the environment, sometimes those eyes on you means you have to, and there's a kind of nice toggling between, I have to, not for me because I love karate, but because my mates will give me shit. I have to do this. And there's an interesting balance there, isn't there?
Absolutely. Because again, what human beings see as those boundaries around what makes me have to. So some of us who are conscientious, for example, just the fact that I've got a boss, and the boss is expecting me to see me today. Unless I'm actually dying, then it's like, well, I have to, whereas other people will go, well, could I spin this story? Or could I take this angle? Could I convince them there's this other thing? So obviously, there is an internal moral compass around what's right or wrong. And that sense of obligation to community. I've got to do my part and live up to what the people in my community are expected to or have signed up to. So there's like this internal peer pressure, like this argument with yourself. And I know that there have been times in my life which is again so funny in terms of the way our minds work, but there's been times where I've been actually really quite frustrated by that. So the way it goes is, Why can't I, why can't I just like beige-out my existence? Why can't I expect less than myself? Why can't I just be oblivious and just kind of float through going, Whatever. Like, surely, if that's where I set my sights for myself, life would be more comfortable, wouldn't have to keep challenging myself to be better to do better, whatever the case may be. Now, as I said earlier, I had a little bit of this unrelenting standards thing that needed to be healed, right. So, again, it became easier to, in some moments accept a more reasonable standard for myself, once I was able to get on top of that.
Karen, what's your best answer to the question, what's the difference between a reason and an excuse?
Well, reason can be validated as having cause for consideration. So an excuse is something that just doesn't stack up as being something that we should be investing in. Whereas a reason, you can say, Okay, well, the reason I can't come to training is because my grandmother's leaving the country, so probably the last time I'm going to see her. You can morally, logically justify that having higher order priority than what I otherwise would have been invested in. Whereas an excuse is something to sidestep the commitment. It's sidestepping the accountability for the commitment that we've already made. So that's why excuses feel really uncomfortable to us, because we know they're not ethically sound and people on the receiving end of your excuses kind of feel the same way. It's like, that doesn't sound like it's...
Which part of ourselves do you think we're trying to protect when we use excuses?
Well, it can be all sorts of different things, right? So I might be someone like I am, a people pleaser, people pleasing comes often from a self sacrifice place, I want you to accept me, I want to feel safe in our relationship therefore, I don't want to let you down. But one day, there's a place where I really don't want to have to be committed to this particular thing that I've said I will. So I'll give you an excuse, hoping that you will buy it, because I actually want to step away from the accountability, but I don't want to let you down, that's why I'm offering up an excuse. But the challenge is, you know it's an excuse,I know it's an excuse and it ends up having the opposite effect. In that example it's, I don't want to let myself down or let other people down so I'll try and convince myself that there's reason where there isn't.
Which, interestingly, for me, ties into your journey around this unrelentingness. If you're unrelenting, you'd never let yourself down.
No, or you'll never do it with peace. Like I remember having days off, and being super anxious about the fact that I'm having a day off. I shouldn't, I should just work because if I work that I'll get on top of things, because it's a standard that I've got to maintain.
You mentioned earlier in your martial arts career, you went from it's something you did to who you were. I read recently with some of Ash Barty's success, the Australian tennis player, that the work that she's done with her psychologist is moving from tennis is something she does, it's not who she is. And she's working on being a good human or a better human, as much if not more than getting better at tennis. Can you talk about that shift either at the martial art stage or at any stage where you made a shift? When did it go from something you did to something you were?
Yes, I think the slight distinction there is that tennis is a paid profession. Now karate can be as well to be clear, but the reason that the martial arts becomes who you are, is because of what it's asking of you. So it's not the execution of the technique at optimal level that is the goal of martial arts. Whereas in tennis, arguably, the goal is to win the match. In martial arts, the goal is not just to win the fight. So in the martial arts, the goal is to become the wise old soul, and to have evolved as a human being through the combat art that is the martial arts and that's why there's a very big distinction between traditional martial arts and sports karate, sports karate is the equivalent of the tennis where it's an activity that we're engaging in, yes, we can pursue that activity to the highest of standards and be expert in its execution. So in her case, what I would imagine is that we have to separate ourselves out. So for example, in a very similar way to our work, people will see themselves as being what they are. So you meet somebody, Hi, how are you, what do you do? What do you do is a very quick question that we're actually asking. So it's a massive part of our identity. So you can see, when I was growing up in the martial arts, we were training on the dojo floor that in the same lineup could be the CEO of some big company, and the local gardening landscaping guy, and so it was a very equalising environment. And everyone was just a martial artist, a karateka in that space. We weren't the CEO, or we weren't the school teacher, we were just whatever belt we were wearing.
Which is another form of hierarchy, isn't it?
Yes, that's right. It's just a different structure around how we organise ourselves, as human beings. So I think that, for example, I'll work with a lot of executives who, if they're displaced for whatever reason, the business is bought out, they're no longer required, or the board have decided that their approach to leadership isn't quite what they're looking for at this point, whatever it is, right? That loss of job title, now leaves them feeling really bare and really exposed because it's who they were, it wasn't what they did. They didn't do the job of CEO, they were the CEO. So I think that's probably one of the big examples that I see all the time, is that we do need to, to thrive we need to be more than our job. We need to be ourselves the best version of ourselves, not the best version version of that vocation, or that job that we do.
It reminds me of a story I read years ago, Tim Gallwey, who you may know wrote all the Inner Game books, in one of his books, I think it's the Inner Game of Work, told a tale about a corporate event that he was coaching and facilitating at, and they had an annual tennis tournament. And it was such a prestigious tournament, everybody practiced and practiced and practiced and he one year completely turned it on its head. And how he did that was he had the loser go through to the next round. So you and I played together, you won, you're out. I go through the next round and the loser went through, and what he was trying to help them distinguish is, Why are you playing? Are you playing to win, and only win, or are you playing to learn, to enjoy, to experiment, to try something different?
I love it so much.
Often when we do that we lose, right? We try something, we try this difficult shot and it doesn't happen. Oh I'm just going to play safe and let them make mistakes. And he just found it fascinating how pissed off they were at that whole arrangement, because it's about winning, it's about the best person that should go through and just in turning it round, it was just so disruptive to their thinking
Well it's entirely an about face in terms of what it is, right? Because competition is, the nature of that is we need to win. But really what he's doing is creating a learning experience. And that was one of the things that early days in my phys ed career for that nanosecond that it was, there was something I was super conscious of and didn't like on any level is just the way there was a lot of, still in those days, a lot of elimination games. So you'd be saying to kids, okay, so when you're out, you're out, you sit down. So the kids that are sitting down and getting the least practice.
And they need it the most.
That's right. And so you've got the kids that are naturally have got hand eye coordination skills, or whatever it might be and they're the ones that have more game time or more play time. So it's like, how does this even remotely make sense? So again, it is all about, well, what is the point of this activity, and that's why in a school environment, the point of the activity should not be winning, should not be deciding who's best, the point of the activity should be the opportunity to engage in the activity and to be part of it. Obviously, develop further skills and capabilities, including our confidence, etc. So there's lots of examples where in life that we could be thinking more clearly about well, what are we actually incentivising here, what are we rewarding? What is the purpose of what we're doing and really rethink it?
I'm going to pause there again. And being willing to practice imperfection it probably wasn't an ideal spot to pause, but I couldn't find a more conducive or a more obvious place to pause so I've just paused it there because the next part of our conversation, we're going to talk about things that we do in our corporate roles in the roles that we play with clients. So that's the end of Episode Two. Please join us next week, when it will be a shorter one. And we will talk about things like deconstructing the badge of honour that we have around being time poor, giving jobs and tasks to those that are least capable in order to grow them. So that's what you've got coming up in episode three. But for now, that's the end of Episode 40. Thank you for listening. Please do what you can to subscribe or like us on all your usual podcast platforms. Cheers.
