Welcome to the Freedom Fridays project. This is episode number eight with me your host, Pete Clark, The Whispers Guy.
So this week, I feel like I've gone two steps forward. And I've no idea how many steps back. So I've categorised this week as an invisible progress week. So I think I've made progress, but I can't quite determine and articulate how where why or when.
So, a couple of things to share with you. The first is, I have been trying to progress, the balance for me between inner fulfilment and outer achievement. Now, that's a bit of an infinity loop, it continues going round and round in the infinity sign. And when we over index on fulfilment, we probably pull ourselves back to wanting to achieve more externally. And the more you over index on that, we feel we need to find some balance within. And so I've found myself trying to get a bit better at the signals, the early warning signs that will tell me I'm over fulfilling. I'm over indexing on the fulfilment side, I'm over indexing on the achievement side. And so part of the progress that I think I've made, I'm better at bearing witness to where my attention goes. Where my attention goes in who I am, what I'm striving to become and not necessarily striving to become something I'm not. What triggers, what thoughts, what patterns show up that take me off track, or on track. And I'm not documenting it, but certainly becoming much more aware of those triggers that build me up or pull me down.
And so the Friday this week was a really interesting Friday for me. And it was interesting, because it was a lazy start. And that's normally not like me, I'm normally up pretty early, and getting going doing something but it was a late night, the night before I was on a late call to the UK. So I deliberately planned a later start. And because I was later starting, I felt the pressure of trying to maximise the rest of my day. And that got on to an unproductive loop. And often when I'm working with people, I would ask them, usually money is an easy one to bring the example with if you are given $1,000, 1000 pounds, 1000 whatever currency, and you're asked to spend it, what would you do? And people articulate various bits and pieces, then when you change the question to you're given the same amount of money, $1,000, 1000 pounds, but you were asked to invest it? Would you do something different? Some people say I'll do exactly the same. And some people say, Oh, yeah, that's a different thing. So when you think about time, being a currency and probably our most important currency, do we spend it or do we invest it? Now what I found on that late Friday morning, was I was squandering it, not necessarily spending or investing it, I was just going to push some things out and procrastinating and so on. And I do wonder on reflection, if part of the reason was, I knew that my wife is going to be away for the weekend. So the kids would have been out I'd been on my own with dogs, I'd probably had plenty opportunity to pick up on some of the work elements, and maybe even some of the play elements that weren't in place. And yeah, I got to around about lunchtime have not really felt like I'd done anything of significance in of investment or spend. But what worked for me was I planned the afternoon. And I'm going to talk you through what I did. And this really worked for me in terms of the feeling of productivity and the feeling of the practical aspects of adding life to my years. And so I started from lunchtime, noon was about the time to early evening. I broke that down into very simply in two hours 12-1, 1-2, 2-3, you get the idea. And I indicated against each of the hour, what I was going to put my attention on. So on between one and two is going to be a focus on the book that I'm writing on between three and four. It would be some follow up calls or emails between five and six with some sort of exercise or swimming or a run or something. One of the hours I indicated was going to be for some space to allow that spontaneity, something happens, I can respond to it. I then took a bit of a rest, I don't think I meditated but I just kind of lased around for a little bit. But then I applied the the five second rule, which I got from our lady called Mel Robbins, many of you will have come across it where to overcome procrastination, the idea being that you just count down from five to one. And on the one, you take the action, or you get up off the chair, or whatever it is, so I actually used that. And when I was kind of / sort of ready 54321 I got up, and I started doing the things that I documented.
Throughout those individual hours I used the Pomodoro technique, which some of you may be familiar with, which is a time and a productivity technique where you allow yourself 25 minutes on task, with a five minute break afterwards, and another 25 minutes on task, followed by another five minutes, then another 25 minutes, if you can bear it followed by a 15 minute break that sort of way of working without distractions. So my phone was on aeroplane mode, the dogs had been out in the garden for the bathroom. And I used that technique to help me just power along through some of the things I felt like I wanted to get done. I didn't, at the end of it didn't feel like I've made much progress until I reflected back on that, I guess little plan that I'd come up with and recognised that I'd spent three hours - in fact, I'd invested, not squandered at all, three hours on the book that I've been writing. So that was a really big win for me in that I often procrastinate that task, and never find my way to getting anything done, let alone to a 25 minute section. So to reflect back on that was a big win. So if I come back to the Infinity loop question around fulfilment and achievement, whilst I reflect on it's probably more of a task based achievement based, win I felt fulfilled, that I kept my promise, I utilised and maximised as best I can. The Friday, certainly the afternoon, I'd applied some of the techniques that I'm aware of, and they seem to have worked. So that was a bit of a big win for me, in terms of that.
Something else that showed up that week was this interesting concept for me anyway, of striving to know myself more and know who I am, which is such a philosophical and unending, and possibly unanswerable question. In contrast to striving to become something I'm not. And so you know, at the extremes, we can probably distinguish, I'm not this, I'm not a smoker. I am this - I am a triathlete, for example, having done a few in the past, and holding on to that patch for dear life. And so this navigation of, you know, moving in momentum and doing things and reflecting on things to get clarity on who I am, particularly who I am at my best, whilst also leaving a bit of space, to be better at that to have to build strengths and build stronger strength around who I am, whilst moving away from trying to mask who I'm not. Whether it's a work persona or a personal persona, or
anything like that. And I found that it can it come from comforting that if I, you know, give myself a hard time, I'd probably say it's 51-49. As in, I'm becoming better at focusing on and diving into getting better at being who I am, rather than striving to be some things I'm not. Either from a novelty perspective, or a jealousy perspective, or for whatever perspective really. So that was, that was comforting that week, so again, progress, but probably invisible or intangible progress.
The final thing I'll share with you is, I started this a number of weeks ago, eight weeks ago now. This is my eighth episode. And the intention was to experiment until Easter, which is next week. And I'm actually going to continue. Not necessarily for you, if that's all right, but more because I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying the struggle a little bit. I'm enjoying the - how do I put focus on something to make a big change? How do I keep my promises? And as I've said a couple of times, it's bringing stuff up for me that I never, ever expected it to come to mind. And so I've enjoyed that reflection I've enjoyed that articulation of what's going on. I've enjoyed the achievement of the discipline of doing it. And it's still way out of my comfort zone. Believe it or not, I still struggle a little bit in preparation and pressing the record button and about to tell you what's going on. And if I can put all that aside a little bit like what's happening now I'm just in conversation with pretending there's someone in front of me. And again, it's probably more useful for me to articulate it than it might necessarily be to listen to, but I'm hopeful that if I continue, and it evolves in a way that I don't know yet, then that will add invisible value for people that may or may not realise they need to hear something. They need to hear the whisper.
So that's episode eight for you invisible progress, navigating this infinity loop between inner fulfilment and external achievement. And good news for me is I'm going to continue the experiment. Cheers. See you next week.
