Podcast: The You Project
Throwback to a podcast I did with Craig Harper a while ago. I've been interviewed by a bunch of interesting people over the years and Craig is definitely one that sticks out to me! His energy and excitement brings out the best in a lot of people he interviews and there's something about that that I love when being on the other end of the mic.
This podcast actually helped develop a key thought within me that I didn’t know how to verbalise or explain at the time. You can skip to the 55 minute mark to hear the process of this but the basis of my thought was a notion I would love every single person on the planet to understand. As someone who’s been through something significant and life-changing, I understand the fragility of life, I know how precious each moment/day/week etc is because you never know when your last one will be.
I said I would love everyone to approach life with this in mind in a positive way. Not to be fatalistic about it but to acknowledge that you should be doing everything in your power to live the best life possible for you and your circumstances. I go on to say that I would love to have the impression on everyone I come across that will give them this thought but I just don’t know how to verbalise or demonstrate it effectively.
As I stumbled through this assertion, Craig interjects and says it simply “You can’t”. And he’s absolutely right! He goes on to say that you could talk to a group of 1000 people and at the end, if you’re doing everything well, maybe 5 people will go home and change the way they approach this thought. But the other 995 of them will walk away saying it was nice and inspirational, but then family, work and life all get in the way and they forget.
It’s a sobering realisation but one I see eye to eye on. You can’t realistically expect every single person to be as invested in the things you’ve learned as you are. And upon reflection I tried to swap positions and ask how I would react if I was a random person coming across this young guy with a story of my experience. This is where my ‘advice to a younger me’ thought came from.
I always say that I would love to sit a younger me down and share the lessons and experiences I’ve been through. It would be a great opportunity to help someone but even a younger me probably wouldn’t 100% take on board everything I’d say. A younger me would appreciate the heads up and the effort of someone sharing this advice. A younger me would hopefully have enough self awareness to make a change or two in mindset or approach. But a younger me wouldn’t truly understand the gravity of what time travelling Brett was saying until he experienced these setbacks for himself.
Experience is by far, the greatest teacher of all and at this point all I hope to do is give someone a reference point so when they go through their own ‘shark attack’ they’ll have the belief and confidence that they can look back to their own experiences, along with experiences of others and use them to work their way through it, to show resilience and to become a better person because of it.