S3E18 · Jess Ryan: Sunshine in Human Form

Alrighty, beautiful people. Here we are back on the Virtus Performance Podcast with a familiar face, Jessica Ryan. Hello. Welcome back. Thanks. Back to the podcast, back to Virtus. It's bloody good to have you. It's really, yeah, it's really good to be here. How long's it been since you flew the coop, so to speak? Since you left us? Since you left me high and dry? High and dry. When was it? I don't remember. Maybe, we're doing pre-COVID. Yeah, it was just before COVID, I think. 2019? That's crazy. It's 2022. It's almost the end of 2022. Yeah, that's wild.

Just a last little opportunity to reflect a little bit, chat about what you've been doing in the past couple of years. And for those that don't know Jess, give us an insight into who is Jess Ryan. Intro. Big question to start. I used to coach here. Which we love. Which we love and have been coaching for maybe the last decade across a whole bunch of different places. And I'm now studying osteo and working on my own business and trying to train and be a good human and have a social life and sleep and... All of the things all at once.

All of the things all at once and managing. Managing. We'd love to be thriving. Maybe a mixture of both. I reckon you're thriving pretty well. So, first question for you before we kind of get stuck into what you've been doing and kind of what your rules for life and all the principles that allow you to be such a wonderful human. What gets you out of bed in the morning? Lots of things. I think I get really excited because we get to be here. And it sounds big and woo woo and everything but being able to be alive and be a human and live in this day and age is something to be really grateful for.

And even on the days where you're frustrated or having a hard day or whatever it's still you get to have this experience and we get to have this experience and I think that's really cool. Have you always had that mindset of just like gratitude for being able to exist? Absolutely not. Talk me through that. Talk me through what maybe the past version of Jess had or the mindset you had and then kind of the transition into how you view life now. We're going deep real fast. We're going deep real quick yeah. We love that. So, I think I only started to realize there was a different way of viewing the world.

Maybe I want to say close to seven years now when I got introduced to the world of personal development and taking responsibility for yourself. Which is a big can of worms but I'm really grateful I opened the can because prior to that I didn't even know what gratitude was and I was definitely one of those people who walked around at a victim to life because I just didn't know any different, didn't know any better and was very angry at the world and angry at my situation like an angsty teenager who was very like this is

so hard and had a really troubling time throughout my teenage years and struggled with a lot of mental health problems and everything and just couldn't see a way out. So, then as I started to grow and grow and get older and get into it's actually how I got into fitness because I found the gym and just felt better going to the gym and that was kind of like my escape away from all of the hard things that I was going through at the time and then it was kind of like my happy place and the

home away from home which we've definitely spoken about before and having the importance of having that third home if it's not like home work gym. Do you like what Jess is saying? We do have an earlier version of the podcast with Jess talking about all of this stuff maybe with a few years less experience so jump on. It's wonderful but let's keep going down this path because I like it. Yeah and then I've lost my toilet floor now. It's all right sorry to interrupt. Yeah it's your fault. This is Lachie's first time in opening a kombucha.

Yeah it turns out kombucha fizzes up like soft drink so if you're watching the video, sucker. Yeah and then I don't know I just got coaching from previous coaches that I've had in the past who helped me open up my view of the world and way of thinking and kind of helped me realize that I can take responsibility for the way I let things impact me and how I see things and how I have experiences and with a lot of repetitive work in that area. It's almost like you've got to learn these lessons over and over and over again which is really annoying.

Yeah and you think you've nailed it and then another situation's gonna hit you in the face and you're like oh thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to put this in practice right now. Thank you almighty universe for throwing this shit at me. So I guess like obviously the answer is that it's a journey and that it's you know up and down and you're iterating and reiterating like the person you are and what you're learning and who you want to be but was there a moment whether it be getting into fitness or a moment chatting to a coach where you had like a crystallizing thought of like these things can be different.

I can be different. There is space for me to grow here. I don't remember a specific moment. I think it happened over time. I remember being in a period of life where I wasn't doing very well in uni. I didn't really have much drive. Nothing was really happening for me. I was partying a lot, drinking a lot and when I say a lot it was like five days a week. Just not really having a purpose and not having meaningful connections and I was in a relationship that I wasn't happy in and I was just across

every single area of my life settling for less than what I deserved but at that time I had such low self-worth that I didn't know that I was settling for less which then now in hindsight makes a lot of sense because I'm quite woo woo now and I definitely believe that you attract where you're at like you attract what you are being and because I had such a low sense of self-worth the scenarios that were presenting across all areas of my life were reflecting that back to me so it's kind of like okay well if

you want things to be different you need to raise this level of self-worth and self-responsibility and everything to then attract better across all areas which yeah I that would have been through a period of I want to say like two years so if people try and throw a quick fix improve your self-worth in one week it's probably not going to happen yes took me a lot of time but I feel like I don't nail it all the time there's definitely things that I question myself on now but I definitely have a improved level of respect

for myself and that shows up in my daily behavior and how I speak to myself now what was some of the actions that allowed you to build that into your daily behavior and actions and I guess thoughts for me that I think you hit the low hanging fruit the lowest hanging fruit for me and in my opinion for a lot of people is training consistency because the gym can you just have so many metaphors for life and so many life skills that you can learn through fitness that you can then apply in other areas and

it's not to say that every skill you build needs to be transferable but the gym is a very easy and simple place to build discipline consistency grit resilience connection you know all of these things that can help you in uni business career relationships like who you know who doesn't want to work with employ date be friends with someone with those qualities the gym is easy the gym is way easier to build those skills than like with other people you know I mean it gives you a foundation it gives you a framework to explore each of

those capacities yeah and I think it it's one of those things like the gym and like like development in life but development and growth in the gym it's not linear and it's not always consistent and it is a lifelong endeavor and I think you know we all get to a point when we realize that I think as former athletes maybe still attempting to hang on to that mantle a little bit but as athletes or as people or you know someone that might have done a challenge or done a you know a comp prep or done

something to work towards a particular point in time or an event and then you get to after the event you're like oh I still got to keep doing it yeah you kind of realize that you know like all personal development you can have ebbs and flows or development full stop can be business relationships as you mentioned but if we spread it out and go all right I'm not playing a finite game here I'm playing an infinite game how can I create frameworks that allow me to continue to level up to you know to try try

something to iterate it to fail to reiterate and just repeat yeah and that that kind of ends up being your pathway to a higher self yeah would it just trains it trains a growth mindset which we've had discussions about this in the past the world would be a better place in my opinion if more people had a growth mindset because in the gym you learned that if you show up consistently on the days that you don't feel like showing up you then still make progress against let's say 90% of the population who when it's hard

they stop yes so if you can learn that oh okay it's hard and I'm just going to show up anyway and I'm going to be there I'm going to tick the box for this session and I feel better because I'm proud of myself for going and I've had some cool connections or a couple of laughs and yeah I haven't had to hit a pp this morning but I haven't had the best session ever but rocked up and you know we can all I think everyone can zoom out for a second and go you can ask

yourself the question am I a better person when I train and train consistently yes am I a better person person when maybe I journal or read or meditate or you know talk to people or try and help others and the answer to all of them for all of us um if you disagree you're wrong is yes yes yes yes yes and when we realize that we realize that life is just a is just a consistent stream of of challenge of stimulus response and adaptation then like sweet let's get to it and have fun along the

way and do it with people we love any spaces we love and then we're rolling yeah yeah definitely I had a thing uh it's like an agreement with myself where if I if I had a exam that day or if I had a really important meeting or a difficult conversation that I needed to have at work or whatever it was I would purposely go and train in the morning first or I'd it was either training or if I didn't have time to train I would have a cold shower because whatever I did that morning needed

to be harder in my mind than what was potentially coming that day which then made the the difficult conversation or the exam whatever it was easier because I had just deadlifted the crap out of it this morning you know and it had already given me that sense of confidence of I can take on this day now yeah 100 and you don't need to have you know a morning routine of 17 different things it can just be like one thing that gets you get you moving that gets your feet on the ground that gets you out

the door and I think that because you've already won like you know the the win the morning win the day kind of mantra or quote is is a bit like come on shut up but also it's like if you get started well and you start with a little bit of momentum then you know we all know that when we have days where we're in flow and everything's everything's rolling that we've had a ripper start and we just kind of you know ride the way from there yeah what are the I guess what are the things

that if you would look back at you know say 16 year old Jess and say in 16 year old Jess came to you now and said Jess I want to be part of kindling I want I want some coaching what would be your starting point and what would be the things that you would want to teach her because obviously you're not going to be able to teach her everything all at once even though you'd want to and that those lessons are going to be a journey for 16 year old Jess but what how would you

approach that conversation and what would your what was your you know first couple of months of your program look like with her would it definitely depend on the person and what they're looking to get out of it I know 16 year old Jess I well if yeah if it was me at the time I had a lot of confidence issues body confidence issues mental health problems and as we're saying before low self-worth so I think uh all of that would potentially be too hard to talk about to start especially at the uh in the headspace

I was at the time of 16 I probably wouldn't have been open to me going to a coach where I wanted to lose weight and look skinny or look a certain way if they started talking to me about my mindset I would just come on I'm not here for a psych session older future Jess like back off that's an old Jess so initially I would actually you know talk about goals and what do you want to achieve and uh how do you want to feel or what do you want to do and then throughout the

coaching period of three to four months bit by bit just plant the seed of hey like have you thought about viewing it like this or I would start to direct my previous self towards training for performance and how you can feel when you know how good you can feel when you show up consistently and do what you say you're going to do and see progress in the gym and how you can get the body composition changes that you're looking for without it needing to be about a body which isn't saying uh I've noticed in the

fitness industry I don't know if you have as well there's this thing going around at the moment where people are kind of shamed if they're saying they want to change their body composition because it's 2022 now and you should be talking about how you know how I just want to be here to feel better and feel good and stuff which is great and also just say that you want to look yeah you want to look a bit more lean you want to look more toned as well it's okay to have both of those goals it's

the absolutism of the fitness pendulum I think it's like it shifts from one side of the other it's like we you know and I know there's different elements of the industry and we're definitely shielded in what we do here and what you do and you know we kind of only pay attention to people that we give a shit about that we actually want to hear from but you can kind of see it the industry went through that like big fitness modeling like lean stage and it's kind of shifted back now to just like just be

happy and healthy in your own skin but then you're right there's we we bastardize the people with views on the other end or that are slightly across the um the the pendulum swing to us yeah and you know at the end of the day and this is kind of the you know been in the industry a while now um jaded view a little bit it's just like fucking none of it matters as long as you're enjoying yourself yeah you're actually making progress towards the goals that you've set whatever they are yeah um and you're doing

it in a way that makes your world and the world you know the world that you influence around you a better place yeah exactly but at the same time you know there are and this is the thing i've i've kind of realized or am continuing to realize is that there are a thousand different roads lead to rome and you know we as fitness professionals and you could probably i reckon you could probably i can't speak for other businesses or sorry other industries but i reckon every industry would be like this you just think that your

way is the best way so you know fitness we we bitch and moan and complain and argue against about the nuances of you know sets and reps and programming styles and and um you know do we do hit do we do you know heavy do we do power powerlifting do we do bodybuilding you know at the end of the day none of it matters as long as you're doing a program you like you're doing with people you want to be around and you're doing in a way that is progressive and developmental in nature then we're

rolling like yeah if you want to do f45 go to f45 if you want to do kindling go to kindling um go to king put that on t-shirt um all come to vertice either one but at the end of the day it's like as long as you're actively engaged and enjoying what you do brilliant that's what we're here for well it's like it doesn't it matters and it doesn't and commit to something just commit to something it doesn't matter what it is but learn the skill of commitment because if you try this one thing for

two weeks and then you know oh bodyfit didn't work for me so now i'm gonna go to f45 and then i'm not gonna fully commit to that either so that now doesn't work for me so now i'm gonna do kayaks pilates or whatever it is and it's like the thing isn't the problem it's your lack of commitment that is the problem so just pick something and stick to it for at least three months every day or not every day it can be at least four times a week let's say because yeah you can do it

on two times a week and also the general person who is working nine to five yes you can do something for yourself that is active and it doesn't have to be just get home cooked dinner sit in front of the tv for six hours repeat yeah there is that's not fulfilling there is so much space for growth and fulfillment in our lives that you know if i love this 168 hour rule something we've used for years it's just yeah there are 168 hours in a week once you take away eight hours eight hours a night

for sleeping which quick mass 56 you got 112 hours to do whatever you want to do yeah and you know a lot of us have pretty um pre-written commitments like you know sport or um or work or chores or you know you're probably going to make your bed every now and again and do your washing etc so you build those in most of us end up with 20 30 40 hours a week left over that we currently burn because we either don't have a clear view of what we want or where we're headed um or

we haven't actually taken the step um like the duality of like you know action is the only thing that gets you progress and also you need to plan for where you're where you're headed they're both really important but at the end of the day you know you can't have one without the other if we're looking at fulfillment and growth and accomplishment and all of those big words that ultimately can be um can be the meaning of life yeah and it's also like change your routine around where you're at in other areas of life like fitness

doesn't need to be the one and only thing that is your number one priority like you know we just ran into kp before who has two little kids like she was just saying that she had what three hours of sleep last night or something yeah okay maybe she's not going to go do a massive gym session today when i shouldn't have rolled back over and went to sleep when i shouldn't have um but like that's you know it's like okay what can she at any point today i have like five minutes where she has a

coffee to herself or like something that's gonna you know like because when you're a parent gosh i don't know how parents do it and i think i'm gonna really struggle when i become a parent so hats off to you guys yeah i think everyone's like you know we're not alone in our struggle as parents but then as humans like you know nothing grinds monkey is more there's things that grow up my gears more but one of the things that annoys me about parents where they're like you know you don't know what tired is until you're

a parent or you like we don't own fatigue because where we have kids to look after like everyone it's all relative everyone has experienced all of these these things and everyone struggles and it's like part of the human condition is that we are not alone in our struggle and i think it really helps to understand that and to know that and to go okay well that's okay what's the best we can do with what we've got and then you know know that there is a a large portion of your life it's going to be different

to everyone based on their responsibilities things there's a large portion of your life that is up for up for grabs in terms of designing it how you want living it how you want executing the things you want to execute on but until you can have that active uh developmental focus i don't think you're going to make the life you want to live a reality until you actually take the time to do that yeah and this is coming back to the conversation we were having before about my previous way of viewing the world compared to how

i view it now when i was younger i was very argumentative for every limitation that i had like every single person on the planet has hundreds of reasons why they can't do abcd like here's all the reasons why i can't do this the weather this person said this the traffic the like you think about all the reasons that are against you from making any progress in any area of your life you could any normal human could rattle off at least 50 and it's like okay the more you want to continue to argue for why you

can't do this can't do this can't do this you will never progress which is fine but you are choosing that so if you want to progress then you need to stop choosing to argue for all of the reasons why you can't and then you need to start to be like okay well what can i do and let's start to make some helpful forward progress in this area versus me putting energy into arguing for my limitations yeah i think it's a it's a brilliant point you're making it's almost like that's the turning point for most for

me certainly for most people who are on and you know everyone is in some way shape or form on this personal development journey is when you realize that all right there's an infinite amount of things that are outside of my control and there are a handful of things that are inside of my control there's what you do what you decide to think about who you spend your time with what you consume and that's pretty much it um and if you go okay well the infinite amount of things the weather you know what dan andrews is

ruining today you know what what's happening in the world like what my football team's doing all of these different things can't do anything about it it's outside my circle of influence so it's like all right well these five things are within my locus of control so let's focus on those five things who am i spending my time with you know what media or what food or or what am i consuming like am i getting up early in training or am i going to to train after work or am i sitting down and watching netflix and

when you start to go okay well let's start making these decisions towards the person you want to be and don't have to make all of them like there's going to be times when you go you know what i can't be fucking going to the gym i want to go sit in the couch and and zone out and watch some netflix brilliant yeah and you go through stages of that being okay but i think i don't know for me the change came or the changes came because it's always never happens at once when you start to

just bring intention into everything you do yeah and it's also like own it fully own it if you're having a day i spent i spent three hours yesterday watching gilmore girls on the couch and there is great there is no part of me that feels guilty about that because i chose to do that i i was like you know what i've got three hours i feel like not being productive right now because a lot of the rest of my week is me being on productive coaching people like training people in leadership studying for uni all

of that yesterday my brain was pretty fried and i made the conscious decision to sit on the couch and watch three hours of gilmore girls and loved it yeah and it's almost like that productivity mindset or productivity that growth in productivity that everyone's trying to get yeah it kind of takes i look at it kind of now where my priorities have shifted and it's not all about growing and hustling and developing things i'm doing it in different ways with the girls now where i'm challenged in so many different ways but it's not about you know

more bigger you know whatever that that productivity side of life it's just an element of it and that you know i'm kind of probably more of like not in a completely hedonistic way where i'm just enjoying things for the sake of enjoying them but i'm probably more just like well i want to spend as much time with the girls as possible i want to experience this part of life as intimately as i can over the next few years until you know they're telling me that they hate me and you know sneaking out at night and

doing all that kind of stuff it's like i want to maximize this time so the the desire to be productive isn't really there and you know like like you mentioned before like kp and i are going through a season in our lives where you know we're way down the list in terms of our priorities like the girls obviously come first you know we need to get to work we need to keep them alive we need to do all these different things um so you know shifting to we maybe haven't been watching gilmore girls we're shifting

to a couple hours on the couch at night just to like zonk out and enjoy that space and intentionally enjoying that space it's so important so important to our mental health and um and so important to our the way we live our whole life if we didn't do that and you know we're in a really fortunate position we've got heaps of help and you know we're in we're intimately involved in many communities around here and um and you know like lucy goes into common folk and it's like she owns a place which is brilliant but

it also allows us some space to go we can take a breath because she's comfortable in this space and um and i look at that now and go well you know no no wonder so many people are struggling and unfulfilled because they put so much pressure on themselves to be understanding how life works and to be completely on top of the job that they want or the you know their training or their you know whatever it is that you need to study um and i think just kind of finding that duality of like be kind

to yourself give yourself space give yourself what you need but then also on the flip side is like stop being a pussy start training do the things you said you would do because that's going to make you better it's it's you know like i mentioned before about the fitness pendulum it's kind of a similar thing it's like you can have times where you're goggins to shoot out of life and just go you know shut the fuck up and do the work but there's other times where you're like you know what we need space for just

being yeah relaxation breathing not doing anything yeah otherwise you know if you if you do too much of the one thing it's toxic in anything so too much hustle culture is toxic is toxic too much rest and doing nothing is toxic it's like find the balance that works for you and everyone's going to be very different with that but if you don't know it's kind of like if you can expand your ability for hustle and then you can also expand your ability for rest and zen you then have capacity to swing between the two but

if you've never done any sort of hustle before then when it comes to a period of life where you've got assignments due or you know you've got a whole bunch of business things that like you need to meet deadlines on you don't have capacity because you've never worked that muscle before to then get it done and that's going to be detrimental to you and what you're trying to do versus if you've never meditated before or you've never done breath work or you've never had rest where you're sitting by yourself with your thoughts and or like

reading a book you don't know how to sit there and be that's a problem so you need to swing between the two and develop both two things that underpin that one is self-awareness to know what you need that you don't have and then the second part of it is the capacity to then do it take action and actually actively go all right here is what i need and and you mentioned before about choice that taking action or or sitting back and relaxing and shifting between the two like that is a choice and it's almost like

the way i look at training and way i look at life is just about building capacity it's like you know compound interest for whatever you're doing whether it be saving money whether it be connecting with good people whether it be you know training and building physical and emotional capacity in the gym it all comes over a long period of time compound interest like it allows you to to build momentum like a snowball rolling down a hill yeah to then be able to make a big impact when you crush the town at the bottom analogies and

things but then it's also it's also a little bit about learning to be okay with taking imperfect action and not fully being across from my early on but this is like a violently an imperfect plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan implemented next week i always love that because it was like throw shit at a wall take action and then you can always fix it and you know iterate things as you go yeah but if you never take action then you're never going to move yeah yeah it's like you just need to

learn the skill of learning how to prioritize it's like move the needle over here then there's a fire over here so you've got to go quickly put the fire out and put pause over here but if you can you know push and pull the levers that you need to push and pull at different parts of your life or different areas and stages of your life that's going to help you massively because if you're then giving an effort over here and something over here is kind of falling short it's like sometimes you can just make the

call of is it okay then i'm dropping the ball over here for a little bit most of the time potentially it maybe is yeah so like there are different periods of my life especially at the moment uh my social life is taking a bit of a hit because my priorities are like finish uni degree make sure my business is going okay uh like i have other priorities at the moment but i know that uni's done in six weeks time and my social life can then pick up again how do you identify what priorities are most

important or how do you like create a hierarchy in terms of like what you need to be spending your time on because like we mentioned there's a finite amount of time in the week and you have a finite amount of energy that you can you know distribute between your things how do you you know because if you could do it all at 100 you would life just doesn't work like that so how do you identify which thing is most important in that particular time that's a good question thanks thanks thanks for pumping up my questions

smarter than you look uh significantly for me my health and well-being always needs to be number one and it's not in like it is in a selfish way but in my opinion it's a good thing uh because if i'm not taking care of myself i can't show up in any area of my life as the person i want to show up as or as the person that people want to be around so uh my health and well-being needs to be number one if i and that's just based on self-awareness i've gone through periods where i

haven't made myself a priority and my training falls by the wayside and my nutrition turns to shit and i'm not sleeping and who i am when i am missing all of those behaviors that make me me personally feel good i just don't do anything well like i i'm snappier and grumpier and less patient and so my health and well-being always needs to be number one is just through major trial and lots of error yeah that's it i look at like my last 12 months and footy's been a priority but the girls have been a priority

at the top but then built rebuilding vertice post post all the covered stuff or regrowing vertice back to where we needed to be and all of these things have been priorities for me and i've noticed that there are moments where i'm like i don't like who i am and at these particular times because i'm not training enough or i'm not eating well enough i'm not sleeping well enough and there are things parts of that that are outside of my control and i kind of looked at this year as like i was just going to like

survive till the end of footy season because you know there's 15 20 hours a week committed to that yeah and what that allows has allowed me to do post football seasons go all right those 15 20 hours they're now like wallace time like training getting in here like eating good food you know spending time taking a breath and catching up with people for coffee and doing things that i know make me a better version of me like i mentioned before i know i'm better when i train consistently yeah and i know i'm better when i

eat good food i know i'm better when i hydrate and you know like just little things that are almost like the domino effects for everything else like you know buying some supplements to go you know what if i'm committing to taking these supplements every day things that i know will make me perform and be better then it's everything else gets better and it's almost like as individuals we need to understand what are our what's our big domino that allows all the other dominoes fold or little domino the little one would make all the big ones

fall so what's the little domino that like when you knock that over you know that everything else is going to go and i know for me it's training it's like if i have a session it doesn't have to be the biggest session in the world i don't have to hit pbs i don't have to you know do anything silly but if i just get moving and have a some sort of structured session five or six times a week i am so much better at everything else yeah and when we understand that it's we're rolling so

health and fitness for you is your is your little domino that's definitely number one and then it'll depend on where i'm at in the year for like what i'm trying to push uh like uni there's a certain four month period where then my structure is kind of determined for me uh so i'll just plan out i live by my google calendar anyone who knows me knows that i live by it uh but you know we work in block mode so each four weeks for me is different and i know that it's basically like a four

month intensive where i'm learning 12 weeks of content in three then have exams so i will plan my life around what i'm expecting my workload to be in that time and the units that i know will require more for me energetically i will try and do the best to not launch a new program in exam week and you don't always nail it right absolutely not no way yeah but um but then in those times i think at this point anyway absolutely don't nail it but i am way better now than what i have been previously

in asking for help and asking for what i need and re uh reaching out to people closest to me if it's you know my uni teachers saying hey i need help i'm so overwhelmed this week and they'll sit down and be like yeah you're doing a lot like you know there was there's one unit where and i wouldn't recommend this to any other university students but there was one unit this year where i just didn't submit an entire assignment because i had so much work to do outside of uni and i could step back and

look at in the macro the grand scheme of things can i pass this unit without dedicating two full days of my time to this essay that in the macro yeah it doesn't really matter like students go through exams and and you know we go through job interviews or we go through portions of our job and like you know it's it's a bit cliche but it's like if it's not going to matter in six months then why are we letting it get to us now exactly yeah and i think it's just our lack of control around

certain things but that self-awareness that you've built into your existence over the last seven years yeah is phenomenal because it allows you to go okay well i know i you know like maybe me not training for a couple of months because i know like football is needs we need to get to the end of football season or it might be you going you know what i'm gonna launch this program because i know i can deal with it even though it's not ideal i think that's almost the lesson of this this part of our chat for

people is that you're not at the finish line you haven't nailed down all of these things you're on a journey through self-development that seven eight years in the making you know plus the you know 20 other years of figuring shit out you know of how to be a human it's a lifelong endeavor it's an infinite game there's no finish line i always love the idea of a horizon where it's like you know we we're looking out at where we want to be and who we want to be and everything we do takes us closer to

that horizon but we're never going to reach it it's not it's it's a you know there is no finish line there are just checkpoints and you know victories and failures along the way and you know the more the more walking we can do towards that horizon the better our life is because we get to experience and we get to live it and we you know as you said at the start you get to wake up tomorrow morning and go what do i get to do today yeah yeah beautiful place to be yeah i think it's

just keeping that in check of what as well of you can be striving for things and working towards things or whatever and it's like and who are you being as you're doing that and how much fun are you having along the way because uh hustle cultures doesn't always breed a lot of fun but then it's also like we're humans a part of life maybe the meaning of life is joy so it's like is what you're doing bringing you joy and if it's not what are you doing yeah that is in essence what the meaning of

life is i think and i and yeah i kind of look at the meaning of life question which you know we could spend four hours talking about it let's open up a little bit of that whiskey and see what happens but like for me there is no meaning of life like our our existence is so insignificant on the grand scheme of things if we're going real macro humans humans as a species completely meaningless however in that nothingness and and meaningless you get to create your own meaning like we're here for you know a period of

time what happened before who knows what happens after who knows let's let's decide what's important to us let's get clear on our values let's get clear on our mission let's get clear on the pillars of our existence and the principles that allow us to live our best life and then just like balls to the wall have a crack at it and and have fun and know that everything's gonna fuck up at some point and things aren't going to be perfect but if you have a lot of fun and you do it with people you love

along the way then like that's a life worth living and that's the meaning of life for me so being joyful and finding things you enjoy um that's yeah do that and we're cruising yeah and it also doesn't matter what it is if you're super passionate about painting go paint like paint more just find things that fill you up and do them more and you know leaning back on what you said before do it for a period of time that means that you have to commit and you have to have to be a part of it

because like i've always loved the the idea of like if you want to be a painter what have you got to do paint all right if you want to you know learn how to take photos and edit videos what are you going to do you've got to take photos in their videos like the um like ten thousand hour rule um you know that is a bastardized summary of um a lot of under ericson's work um book called peak it's phenomenal um but it's a great like tool to kind of look at and go all right

well i don't have to spend ten thousand hours to be an expert at something but you've got to spend the first hour and you've got to spend the second hour and that's going to turn into 10 which is going to turn into 100 which is going to turn into a thousand and if you really want to be good at something you have to do it yeah i think i was chatting to beck the other day and it was like if you want to be good at something it doesn't matter what it is like hypothetically you

want to be good at podcast editing if you do 30 minutes a day for a month you'll be better than 80 90 of people uh at that particular thing probably more yeah um and i think we kind of we're not very good at sucking at things as humans like our ego and this is something that you know having this chat with beck the other day i was kind of looking at and going oh man i need to start fucking up more or start doing things that i'm not good at more because i'm not good at

them which will allow me to you know it's that like catch-22 it's like that'll allow me to be better at it like you need to suck at things yeah and we we intentionally don't um sign up for events or we don't you know start new hobbies or we don't you know try different parts of our business or our life because we're not very good at it yeah but to become good at it we've actually got to do the thing yeah the sucking part is a part of success it's like everyone needs to go through it

you know people see at the moment for me it's tiktok i've just decided to hire someone to do our tiktok for us i'm going through the suck period at the moment and it is really challenging and it was interesting because yeah i put this on social media uh the other day but if you don't follow jess on social media her rants are phenomenal i basically have been yeah working on getting better at tiktok and i'm 30 so we're learning tiktok and it is challenging because the whole last decade of coaching i've learned about the human

body i've learned about coaching and human behavior and mindset and everything and i feel like yes i can absolutely be better as a coach but i feel like i know how to coach when it comes to marketing and social media and clipping videos and then putting text on the videos and it is for me very challenging and not something that comes easy and it takes me like two hours to put up a 15 second video whereas someone who is skilled in the area would be better and then the videos that i'm putting out aren't even

that valuable because i don't know how to get what i'm trying to say in this 15 second valuable video that's going to be helpful for people um and anyway one of my housemates uh shout out to sam he's very good at tiktok and knows what he's doing and he has been sitting down trying to help me saying hey jess yeah this is what you didn't do well in the video this is what you need and it's kind of like oh sam i know my video sucks and you're just telling me my video sucks but he's

doing it in a way of trying to help me in pointing out these are where you're missing the mark which is hard to take but also i'm very aware yeah of course i don't of course i'm not good at it yet like i've just started out doing it um that that is feedback and and quality feedback and yes it's it's the like deliberate practice loop it's like be shit at something get help from someone external to to your biases and your understanding to tell you why you're shit at something yeah reiterate it get better at

it still have things to improve and then it's just this beautiful loop that just keeps going up and up and up until you get to a point where you're like i'm competent and and i'm able to do it and i'm able to do it well and i think yeah we don't allow ourselves enough enough reps in whatever we're doing and the gym's a perfect example is like you know for years i'll be like nah i don't um weight lift because you know i suck at power cleans and i don't want to you know pardon me

i can get those improvements through doing different things throws and jumps and um and um different lifts but it's like well if i actually wanted to be better at weightlifting all i would have to do would be spend time weightlifting yeah drill it again and again and again and learn what you're doing wrong and and find different ways to teach yourself and to get other people to teach you um what are some of the ways that you in the past have sucked at something and then go on here's how i need to get better i

would purposely sign up for something that's going to force me to commit to it positive pressure is a beautiful thing yeah 100 if there's anything that i've really like ollie lifting is a thing for me so i've signed up to a weightlifting class awesome there was a period of time where i just was noticing that i was really not disciplined or committed so i signed up to a powerlifting competition because that would force me to learn discipline and commitment that memory came up the other day did it back in the day uh yeah 100 or

like sign up sign up to a half marathon because you someone who signs up to a half marathon generally if it's your first one you can't run a half marathon yet train for a marathon you just run it not everyone can just run it yeah it's like commit to the thing before you're ready to do it and then bit by bit just show up and then learn suck at it keep trying keep trying and don't let the fact that you suck at it deter you um you know maybe unless you've been trying something for 10

years then maybe get a coach or do something else but yeah like those self-limiting beliefs are so prevalent in everything we do like um i don't know if you're following ned brockman at the moment running across australia but in a nutshell this this maniac and you know this is going to be something that i think everyone will talk about for a long time once he finishes in a couple of days but he's running from perth to bondi he's like 44 days in or something and you know he does a daily update where he talks about

his his day and and the the theme that i'm you know reading this every day it's just like we as humans tap into such a small part of our capacity of what we're actually able to to do and we are so much more resilient and so there's so much more growth than we realize that all it takes is some nutcase running from one side of the country to the other or you know someone you know doing a world world trip in in a certain amount of days or or you know doing something stupid it might

be signing up to a marathon and when you've never ran before and going oh i've got 12 weeks to figure this out i wouldn't recommend that but you know 90 95 of the population maybe not but a fair chunk of the population would be able to do that if they just stripped away those those self-limiting beliefs and went you know what i'm gonna have a crack i'm gonna fail i'm gonna suck at it but it's gonna teach me a whole heap about who i am and what i can actually achieve and it's gonna you know

at the end of the day it's gonna give me a sense of achievement regardless of whether i make the thing or not yeah and i think that's almost it's almost the most important part of of growing up it's like going i'm allowed to fail failure is a brilliant thing failure is all failure is is a feedback mechanism of either what doesn't work or what what needs to be tweaked and then we get to we get to continue to level up yeah and it's also like i would rather fail i would rather give something my drink

today i'd rather give something my best effort and fail miserably than be sitting on the couch not trying pulling down other people who are trying and failing it's like just go for it worst worst case scenario you'll fail then what people might say some things and then you'll move on but yeah in in a week it won't matter yeah like you know like think of the things that we all see like games of football and and things like that like you know sure we pay attention to the game of football that happened on the week

like on the weekends for the week but then the next weekend happens and there's new games of football and the longest period that's going to be is going to be a six-month period between the end of the year and the start of the next year i think you know if something that big that affects so many people has a finite lifespan for how long people will think about that failure then imagine like you know again we're super insignificant imagine how insignificant your failure is not only to yourself because in six months it won't matter but

to the whole world yeah um and there's so much growth in that yeah definitely what are you excited for i'm excited i'm excited for what's to come over the next 12 months i feel like i'm in a big growth phase at the moment and it's it's really exciting expansion goodness yeah expansion goodness uh i'm nearly finished uni which i'm stoked about and excited to progress in that and then got some travel coming up and i kind of wait for that and where are you going back to the states who are you going to see going

to deuce jim beautiful part of the world we love it uh yeah it's exciting so internship round two over there which will be great and just can't wait uh very excited for the growth that that's going to bring it'll be very challenging but um give us a quick um insight into your first internship there and what that period of your life taught you what you experience it was so much more challenging than what i thought it would be uh so i went over to do a five-week internship uh this year this year in january and

didn't know anyone i was on the other side of the world doing training that i wasn't really used to it was very hard and uh just needed needed to figure it out which was really why i wanted to go anyway to put myself in a very uncomfortable position and back myself in that i had the resilience and grit to be able to deal with it which i did and luckily made some friends and it ended up being okay but there was a lot of tears also shed on that trip whilst i was uh somewhat living

my dream because i've been wanting to go over there for such a long time and also deal with how challenging i found it too and just grew so much as a person because over there they they are very into negative feedback so uh you know getting analyzed when you're coaching a session for everything that you're doing is it's it's really hard to put yourself out there when there is a very high chance of failure in public like in front of other people viewing your failure and you feeling it as well and then being told just

reminded hey i know you know you suck but here's why you sucked and it sounds really brutal it wasn't that brutal like they do it in a really cool way uh but the whole purpose is is to have you be in a position that's just outside of your edge so it's very uncomfortable but not too far that you're gonna fail miserably it's like they want you to just push past that bit and then they'll help you get up but it it makes you better so i have voluntarily signed up for round two of that which

i think will be more of a challenge next time i go back but i'm trying to now prepare myself physically and mentally and emotionally as best as i can over the upcoming months so that i have more of a capacity as a human to deal with it round two and potentially push further edges whilst i'm over there brilliant brilliant it's such a like a nudge to just stretch goals for everyone it's like do the thing that scares you because you'll you'll level up you'll adapt and you'll be better off for it and then you know

take a moment go back and do another one yeah it's exciting yeah and i think it's cool because the environment that they've created is a safe environment to fail so i know that if i fail over there at whatever i'm trying to really go for um it'll be a you know conversation of okay here's everything that went wrong but then it'll also be a conversation of multiple people getting around me being like here's how to get better do this next time and have another go tomorrow it's like you're not kicked out of the program if

you fail just keep showing up yeah it's like okay yep did this and then if you show up again tomorrow after the failure it's kind of like everyone's they're giving you a high five uh which is cool yeah it's exciting that's awesome how can people follow you follow your journey follow kindling do good things with you give yourself a plug probably socials socials coach jess ryan on instagram uh or kindling club on instagram that i need to build i need to get a someone who's good with graphic design to help me just get canva mate

i know another skill i haven't fully developed yet in canva but yeah coach jess ryan or kindling club would be the two best ways i'm pretty active on instagram uh for the moment and then rants maybe wait till i get better on tiktok or watch the journey of me failing my way forward on tiktok fail forward perfect perfect summary of the podcast any more for any more no i'm happy love your work keep doing good things have a good day