Automatically transcribed, so expect the odd wrong name or word.
Hey legends, welcome to yet another week of the Virtus Performance Podcast. So today's episode is a little bit different, we are, Kaz is here with Donuts so hello Kaz. Hey. You guys look a bit nervous. Alright just take a donut, I've got to get out. I'm not actually doing an episode, I'm just doing the intro, you're going to be on it. Today's episode is a little bit different, so last, or a couple of weeks ago I featured on another podcast called The Conscious Podcast and to be honest I had a whole lot of fun. It was awesome sitting here being asked the questions rather than being on the other end of it.
It was nice to be able to kind of center in and have a real conversation about my whys and my hows and I guess my hopes and dreams and desires and all that big kind of exciting stuff. Yeah, today's episode is that episode because, well I'm lazy and didn't get a guest for this week, so I'm my guest. Really really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. So before we get into it if you have been enjoying the podcast please share, subscribe, do all that kind of stuff, throw it out to people you love. I
think it's Father's Day, oh no it's going to be Father's Day like a week ago, well if you didn't get your dad anything send him this podcast, or if you did, bonus gift, what a time to be alive. Yeah here we go, let's get stuck in. Hey conscious fam, welcome to the 24th episode of The Conscious Podcast. On this episode I caught up with my good friend Lachlan Wallace. Lachie is CEO and founder of the holistic excellence and wellness hub Virtus Performance, host of the Virtus Podcast, strength and conditioning coach and an all round top guy.
We speak about some juicy topics including the pursuit of excellence, living a purposeful life, why pain and struggle is important in our journey, widening your perspective, knowing your standards, learning from every person and situation, doing you and so much more. Plus some awesome tangible tips to optimize your life. I first met Lachie when I featured on the Virtus Podcast, episode 32 I think it was. Since that conversation I've always wanted to get Lachie on the podcast and I'm so glad I did. A very inspiring human doing a lot of good things. I really enjoyed this and I hope you do too.
Welcome to The Conscious Pod, my name is Carlos Cirillo and this is your place to cultivate wisdom, awareness, life insights to raise your being and become more conscious in your daily life. Lachie, how are you man? Mate, doing very, very well. Awesome. What have you been up to today? Coached a little bit this morning, had a sleep in, my weekly sleep in, it's the two hours of the week that I give to myself no matter what, so it was a very nice morning. So every Thursday is your scheduled sleep in? Scheduled sleep in, usually I
don't get to work until ten or eleven but one of the boys wanted to train so I got in at nine so it's a good morning. Nice, you didn't schedule that for a Sunday to be like the normal... Sunday's mostly a sleep in but every now and again work calls or KP, my partner calls and we do something cool on a Sunday. Sunday's for brunch. Sunday's definitely for brunch. Brunch and coffee, catching up with people. I've had more coffees this morning than you'd like to know I think. Two for me, that's all, just two. What are you most excited about in life right now?
What I'm most excited about, it's a tough question. This conversation would probably be number one, I think it's really easy to focus down the road but the things that are right in front of me, so this conversation, the afternoon I got ahead of me coaching football training tonight, whatever happens tomorrow, but on a deeper level I'm excited for connection and impact. Excited to connect with cool people and do cool shit with them. Awesome, and we actually met, what was it, a year ago? Just under a year ago? Yeah, I've been doing the podcast for about 65 weeks, so a year and a bit.
So I think you were 20 something, so maybe about nine months ago? Around there. So that was the first time we met through mutual amazing friend Ed. So on the Virtus Performance Podcast, and that was an awesome chat, there was three people in the podcast. It was an interesting dynamic, it was the only time I've done that. Ed contributed about 8% of the conversation, so he was mostly just us. He was there just to have a beer. Moral support. Yeah, just to make sure we didn't get off track with anything. Exactly. But yeah, that was the last time I seen you as well, because I've been up in Mildura.
And then coming down this weekend, I was like, definitely got to have a chat, we're at Hobber in Pran, and great location. So I know a little bit about you, and obviously listening to the podcast I know a lot of things about you, but for the listeners and for myself, can you give us a wrap up of your life from start to now? Woah. That's a big question. I actually did a little talk on last Friday for another business's staff retreat, and I was asked to tell my story, and I thought it was a very, it's a weird thing to be asked, right?
Like, I think we can very quickly just think we're just usual, just ordinary, and we don't really have a story, but I think the cool thing about this platform and about the podcast is I've learned that everyone has a story, and everyone has something to add. So the way I split it up for that conversation was I split it into kind of phases. I think we've all got, we go through phases and life is just like a book and we have chapters. Even though a chapter finishes, the characters still remain the same, we still have the same desires and hopes and dreams and stuff like that.
So I think, obviously growing up, I lived in a very privileged household, very supportive family, three sisters, mum and dad who are two of my most favorite people in the world, so they, I guess, who I am now is because of them, and that's a cool kind of way to look at it. They, I never really wanted for everything, but was always made to work for everything that I wanted and had, so they instilled that kind of work ethic in driving me pretty early on. So, you know, phase one was just growing up and starting to figure shit out.
Phase two, I guess, I kind of call it my athlete phase, or my athlete chapter, growing up, a footballer, running. Those two things kind of shaped my direction from there, managed to spend a few years playing some semi elite football in the VFL, prior to that was, you know, playing good local footy and doing some athletics and all those kind of things, so that kind of phase was kind of step two, and that phase obviously overlapped with the uni phase, getting stuck into exercise sport science, because like 99% of the people in that course, I like sport, and wanted to figure out what I was doing.
That phase was kind of an interesting one, there was a lot of, a lot of days not knowing what I was going to spend my life doing and a lot of days unsure as to what the next step was, but I think I learnt after that phase that patience was probably the only thing I really needed, because I think we've all got our own thing or our own bit of magic to kind of give to the world, so I think if, for the people that are struggling with what they want to do, you'll work through
it and you'll figure it out, and even when you think you've figured it out, you haven't really figured it out, you're just kind of at that next step. So that chapter kind of finished up and then kind of rolled into what I would now call maybe my, still figuring it out, but more figuring it out while running a business chapter, running Virtus Performance. One of the questions that you get asked a lot in life is like, what do you do? I hate that question, because you know, if you tell someone you're a personal trainer or
you're a coach or you're an accountant or you're a teacher, people have a preconceived idea of what a teacher is and what a teacher does, but if you get ten teachers in the room, they're ten individuals and they're ten different people and ten completely different stories and a bunch of experiences that they bring to the table, so when people ask me what I do now, my answer is I cultivate and empower excellence through teaching our students and mentoring our students and coaching our clients and through speaking things like this and like the gig I did
the other day and our podcast, I think it's just, we all, like I said, have that magic to offer, some people who are teachers do it in other ways, some people who are accountants do it by accounting and I think when we realise that our story is just as important as Brad Pitts or someone else who we all look up to, I can't believe I used Brad Pitt as the example of who I look up to, the Ray Dalios and the Alex Schaffans and those guys of the world, when we realise that, then we can
be, and to steal the line from Joe Rogan, we can be the hero of our own story and we start to give ourself the credit we deserve to a point. Funny you say that, I just sent that to a mate last night because he was like I need some motivation and I just sent him that YouTube video because it always gets me, because you're looking at Joe and you're like alright, I'm going to do it, I'm scared. And I think, the one thing I've learnt over my story is that I still have no idea what
I'm doing but everyone's like that and I think Joe's someone of his 1200 podcasts or whatever he's up to, I've listened to probably 800 of them, he's someone that I resonated with very early on because his beliefs matched up with mine but his belief in the fact that he doesn't really know what he's doing also matched up with mine and he's someone that we think, we look at and we all fall into that trap of looking at people that are successful and yes we're on audio so I did the quotation mark thingies, the bunny ears
but he's someone we look at as successful, he's got it all figured out but when you listen to him talk he's just having a crack and I think it's really important for us to do the same thing even if we don't have a podcast with 100 million downloads a month or whatever he's up to now. But it's an amazing YouTube video, everyone should check it out. They should. I'll leave that in the show notes as well. Good. But back to, I guess when you were saying when people say they're PTs, they're teachers and stuff like that, it's just a title, that doesn't explain who you are.
Yeah, 100%. I think people can fall behind that and when they do introduce themselves and they say, I am… It's a go-to, right? Yeah. And then like you said, it closes off a lot of things. So one of the questions I was actually going to add into my list of questions that I asked people on the podcast was going to be, who are you right now? Yeah, that's cool. What are you doing in life right now? Because you can see how people answer, you already answered it, so I'm not going to ask. Because you said… You've got a better answer now.
I empower people and stuff like that. So when people were asking me, what do you do or where are you at in life right now? Because even the question of your wrap-up, which was the phases, I like that, that's how I explain it as well for myself because we've all got our phases and chapters. Some people, I wouldn't say define themselves by those things that have happened, but they stay in those things. That's who I am. Like, you've been an elite sportsman, right? Like I've got to the cusp of my dream of playing the AFL,
didn't quite get there, was never good enough, but I think that whole, the glory days, you get people who are maybe around the soccer club or the footy club for me who just remember the glory days, and it's just like, I'm 26 years old at the moment, and if you're going to tell me my glory days are over, not a chance in the world, things are just going to get better. And even though I'm not playing that role anymore, I'm not playing that sport at that level. I'm still playing footy, still loving footy, but it's not the bane of my existence like it once was.
And I think, hopefully, we've got another 50, 60, 70, 80 years of doing cool shit to happen. If that's the highlight, then what's the point? And I think it's really easy for people to fall into that trap, but the highlight's going to be the next cool thing I do. And then we move on, and just because we may not have the same physical attributes we once had, what goes on up top is probably a little bit more important anyway. We evolve, we grow, we have new beliefs, we have new aspirations, and it just keeps growing. And I can definitely relate to that, because even at the soccer club, for instance, this is my last year.
Last year, I want to play for whatever reasons I've got. But people are like, "No, this is the time when you've got to be playing. I wish I could still be playing." It's like, man, if that's your dream, you do it. I have other things I want to do, and that's fine with me. I think it was Gary Vee saying the other night, he was talking to a 22-year-old, and he's like, "You're 22% through your life. It's not over. You just haven't figured it out yet." And no one, like you said, no one has. Look, I feel like I'm doing purposeful work that I'm very fulfilled doing, and I'm figuring it out.
I don't think I've actually got to the major thing yet, but it's coming. And I've got those visions of 10 years, of three years, of five years, but they could change. Yeah, 100%. It's all fluid, right? Yeah. And listening to podcasts this morning is the same thing. They're saying they can grow, and it's okay to do that. You don't have to say, "Okay, I'm 16 years old. I want to be a professional soccer player." Then you get to that. Then you might go, "That was cool. What's the next thing?" I think it's understanding that it's
a chapter, and not when it's over, it's over, and being okay with that, and being excited for the next step, for whatever that may be, whether it's business or family or anything like that. I think if you're unable to move forward and grow and evolve, transcend has become one of my favorite words. If you're unable to transcend who you were yesterday, then if you're not living, you're dying. If you're not growing, you're dying kind of thing. So being able to constantly be in the moment and happy with where you are, and I don't know if happy's the right word.
Happy's a weird word. I know what you're saying. It's a mixture between content but always growing. Correct. Correct. You're loving what you're doing, but with always working towards that next thing, because I think that's the spice of life, is when we're actually growing, challenging ourselves to embracing the suck and moving forward, because I'm sure we can all look back at the hard times and go, "Yeah, that was an awesome period of growth." What inspired you to start Virtus? What inspired me? I don't like being told what to do, so I was probably always going to do my own thing.
I think my old man running his own business, I saw how hard he worked and how much time he put into that and how he was able to raise a family that I'm sure he could be proud of, that I'm incredibly proud to be a part of, so that was definitely part of it. I guess growing up an athlete with running and footy and stuff, I was always trying to improve, so having the environment, cultivating an environment where that was our goal was just improvement and growth was something that I wanted. There was a big chunk of my life where I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
Like I said, I still don't really know, but at least I'm loving it every day. So I think it was just a mix of those things, a mix of fitness, health, performance, being big parts of my life, and then creating a ... I was probably always going to have a brick and mortar business, having somewhere that's actually a place, it's a destination that's different to everything else in the fitness industry. It's a real community. The inspiration was to have a place where people could go and connect and do cool shit, and that wasn't what I wrote down initially.
It's what it's evolved to being, and I think the connection is almost more important than the strength conditioning and the performance aspect of it, and that performance is not just for athletes, that's for life. I think what it initially wanted to be was we wanted to do fitness the right way. Going through those higher levels and doing a lot of internships around elite clubs and a couple of private facilities, you realize how backwards a lot of the fitness industry is, and I'm not the kind of person ... I try and make sure that if I complain about something, I try and do something to fix it.
So I thought if we can take this elite aspect of strength conditioning from, say, Collingwood Football Club that we spent a lot of time there, the education from Australian Catholic University when I went to uni, take the community of a football club and the, I guess, need for people to move and grow and connect and put it all in one place that can continuously evolve and improve, all those things were the inspiration to start it. And I think the meaning of Virtus is excellent, so that's something that we've been subconsciously chasing for most of my
life, and now I've got the word that's kind of the thing I come back to, which is, yeah, that's our why, is just to empower and cultivate and embrace that word. Yeah, and it looks like an awesome community. I've been to the facility, it's a wicked setup, but even just seeing it on Instagram, checking it out, listening to people that coach there and go there, it seems like a real family. It's a cool place, and it's awesome that it's almost transcended being mine now, and I'm really appreciative of that. I want it to be a
place where, if I didn't rock out for six months, for whatever reason, it'd still grow, the clients would still reach their goals, they'd hit their targets, they'd be able to improve, the staff would be able to do the same thing, just in different ways. The team and the community would be able to grow and foster its own growth, and it's cool seeing that now, right? I think life's about connection and relationships, and when I see on Instagram or I see videos or people chatting to me about them catching up with a couple of people from
the gym that had nothing to do with any of our staff, and a lot of the friendships that people are keeping now are external to the gym, but because of the gym, and it's just a gym, right? It's just four walls and a bunch of equipment, but seeing people connect and create what you'd hope would be lifelong relationships from it, that's almost the best part. Yeah, awesome. What's one profound realization you've had this year? One profound realization, I don't know if there's one, I think every new thing I kind of come across, new piece of information kind of just adds to my current understanding and experience of how the world works.
I think my biggest single realization, and I think I've been working on this realization for a couple of years, but it's just, it's not about me, and it's never been about me, but it's about how I can best serve the people around me and the environments that I'm in. I'm someone that doesn't slow down enough, so being able to go fast but then take a back seat for two hours this morning, or a day here and there, or go away, or something like that to allow the recharge and allow the batteries to fill up again, that's been a big realization for me, and the fact that you don't have to be the same person you were two years ago.
If for 10 years of my life my goal was to play football, and for six years of that playing VFL, I kind of got to live that dream, not quite at AFL level, but I played for the club I grew up following and was coached by some of my favorite players and was able to experience that, and I think the biggest realization, and it's probably only been the last couple of months, has just been that, cool, that was an amazing part of my life, but now we're at the next part of my life, and we don't have to be focused on that forever.
Like I said before, if I'm still worried about the glory days in 20, 30, 40 years, then I've done something wrong, and I can definitely relate to that, and like you said, it just keeps bringing up stuff for me as well, and I'm just like, it's that consciousness of knowing that it was in your life, it taught you what it was. I think someone was telling me about, like a different situation, but getting rid of things in your life, like clothes and stuff like that, it served its purpose, it taught you what it taught, and maybe it was taught you shouldn't have bought this.
Give it away, or throw it out, not throw out your memories of what you did, but that's what it was, and you learned from it, and now you're extending from those lessons to what purpose you wanna share. And I think if you can remove those memories, we can start creating new ones, and you know, you don't wanna be that guy that just is bitter and old, and just upset that everything's not the way it was anymore. - I agree. What are you most proud of in life? - I'm most proud of, I'm proud of the
environments I've created and cultivated, and that whole grass is greener, saying the grass isn't greener, the grass is greener where you water it, and I think I'm proud of the time and the effort and the commitment I've shown to people around me, places around me, and now I can kinda look back and, life isn't about things or places or material stuff, it's about the people you get to share it with, and even though I don't see a lot of people regularly anymore, some of the friendship groups I've been able to create, and the friendships and
the relationships I've been able to create, I'm so proud of those people, and it's that, you know, wonderful symbiotic relationship where they help me and I help them kinda try and look at friendship like a bit of a bank account, right, like two people opening an account together, it's their friendship, you know, for a period of time you're both probably chipping money in, and then for a period of time someone might need some help, so I might be going through some shit, and you know, I've gotta start taking some stuff out, taking some money out
and start spending it, even though while the other person's still putting it in, eventually, you know, there'll come the time where the shoe's on the other foot, and I'm able to put money in, and you know, that whole, when you, if you want momentum, I think if you add it to other people, it's the best way for you to get momentum, and I'm working on my spirituality, I'm not the most spiritual person in the world, but at the same time I'm incredibly spiritual in certain ways, I think I'm, when it comes to labeling things, I
struggle with being spiritual, when it comes to just realizing that the world is energy, and you put energy in, you'll get it back in some way, it won't be the way you think, and it won't be the way you expect, but you'll be able to get it away, so I'm most proud of Virtus, so I'm incredibly proud of that environment, but the friendships and the relationships that have come from that, proud of my ability to connect with people, and I think that comes from the way I was brought up, it obviously comes from my parents' values and comes from my values.
Nice. Yeah. What's the worst thing that has ever happened to you, and how is that the best thing that has ever happened to you? When you sent me this question, because most of the others were like, oh yeah, I've got like four or five answers to that, this one, this one's kind of tough, because I think, and I like the way you put it in fact that the worst things tend to be our biggest learning curse. Perspective. Yeah, and I very much buy into kind of the Buddhist philosophy that pain and suffering is an incredibly important part of life, and that's how we grow and how we learn, but then you think perspective, right?
The worst things that happen to me, and that worst thing, like it's really hard to put a label on the worst thing, I think the worst things are, and there's reasons for it, right? People passing away, and losing people, and losing that ability to have conversations that you'll never get that ability back. And then I look at, I've had a very privileged life, right, like all of growing up and things like that, never really wanted for anything, like I was made to work for things, but that was an incredibly important lesson that I was learning throughout that time.
I look at injuries with footy that maybe cost me my chance of playing AFL, or times where in business it was like, I don't know if we're going to be able to open the doors next month, but with work, I started with a business partner for the first 12 months, he moved on, I just bought a house, I've been lucky enough to have a partner, KP, for the last nine and a half years or so, we've been able to grow up and mature together, which has been super cool with having that support network, so you
say worst thing, and all of those things were difficult, but at the end of the day, they were just roadblocks or mountains to climb to figure out what was next, and when you think, perspective comes into it, I'm very fortunate to have some people in my life that bring that back to me straight away. One of the families at the gym at Virtus, one of the little boys has cerebral palsy, and I think of my worst thing and what he's going through on a day-to-day basis at the moment, it's not even in any way applicable
to say that my thing's the worst thing, so we've got one of our clients at the moment over in Kenya, at a children's orphanage, and she's sending us videos and photos back of the kids with massive smiles on their faces and stuff like that, and they don't have all the things that we have, and they don't have all the opportunities that we have, luckily there's some incredible people at Brook that go over there and give themselves to them, so the worst thing, they're just learning experiences and they're good, it's good, when bad things happen it's
good, because we learn from them, we grow from them, and I think we need to feel lost and overwhelmed and we need to struggle and we need to have pain, because then we can understand what it's like to be on the other end of it, and it's just a passing thing that's happening, and our ability to show gratitude for the things we do have and perspective for the things that we are lucky enough to not have to endure, I'm a big quote guy, I was saying before, quotes are the scaffolding of how I like to
live my life, like I've got all these quotes I like to come back to, one of my favourite Marcus Aurelius quotes is "if it's endureable then endure it", and that's it, yeah, bad shit's only bad if we look at it that way. It's a really good mindset and perspective on that, I like it. Yeah, and there's some days where the self-loathing comes in and you're kind of like, this is the worst, but daily gratitude has helped with that exponentially, perspective, and kind of having a look at, we live in such a privileged part of the
world, being in Australia, and bad things do happen to good people, and that's just the way life is, but how our mindset changes around those bad things completely determines how we look at life, and that's just something I'm working on, and we never get any of this stuff right, and it's easy when you're not going through really, really tough times, when it's all momentum and rising, and some days I'm far out, I don't know how I'm going to pay all these bills, little things add up, but at the end of the day when we're really honest with ourselves, things are never that bad.
It's a deep gratitude and a deep perspective on things, because like you said, bad things happen to everyone, good things happen to everyone, this is how you see every moment, your perspective on it is what you're going to get out of it. Everyone suffers, and I think if we can understand that everyone suffers, then we get that perspective straight away, and be a lot more empathetic and compassionate towards everyone, and then you can be there for other people. I know when I'm going through my hardest times that if I dive into helping the guys at the gym that seem to be not doing well, all the shit that I'm dealing with dissolves fairly quickly.
Nice. What's the best advice you've ever been given? This is the other question I struggled with. I think, I don't know, it really depends what you constituted as advice. I think- Can be a quote. See, that's what I was thinking, like we live in a time where information is everywhere, and yes, we've got to discern between the good shit and the mindless stuff, but we can learn off most of, obviously, recorded history. We can learn off pretty much anyone from the last 400 to 1,000 years. Some of the best, what I call, advice is just some of the books I've read.
The podcasts I've listened to, the people I've heard from, the TED Talks I listened to when I should be sleeping, little things like that, I've probably got a couple of little ones. I was listening to a TED Talk a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a little blog post on it with just be where your feet are. That's something that I can come back to when I'm worried about meeting over next week, or a bill I've got coming out in a month, or whatever. If I'm coaching, I'm coaching. If I'm doing a podcast, I'm present in that conversation.
That's not worried about where you're going to be. If I'm on my phone doing something and someone's sitting next to me waiting for me to respond to their question, I'm going to be like, "What the fuck am I doing? I've got to get that phone and put it away." It's just a presence thing. Another one, when I was going through one of the harder times at the gym, Greg, who's our physio, one of my mentors and good friends, he said to me, he just sent me a message. It was out of the blue, but he must have sent something, and he said, "Stop, take a breath and realize how far you've come."
That was really grounding, and it was a really cool ... I still remember where I was when he sent it. It was just a stop, and I was like, "Yeah, we're actually doing okay." I think all those little things are just bits of advice that help you move forward. I think it's really cool that we can share a quote or, yes, there's the motivational shit that ... Motivation, don't get me started, but it's just something that if we're looking for motivation, then we're looking for the wrong thing, I think. All the fancy motivational quotes need
to have substance behind it, but it's really cool how some of the conversations I've had, someone could say something off the cuff and it's like, "Yep, that's stuck with me." One of the quotes that we've got written on the gym at the wall is, "The standard you walk past is the standard you accept," and that's been something that's imprinted into my brain now. If I see something that I'm not okay with, subconsciously now my brain goes, "Fix it." If I walk past a bit of rubbish on the side of the road, I walk past it and then go, "I'll take three steps back.
Pick it up. Put it in the bin." It's just those little things, like you said before, those tangible, actionable bits of advice that you're able to do. If you're struggling, just stop smiling and face the sun. That's it. I like it, and there's some things in there that I'm picking up as well. It's the standard stuff, exactly like bringing it more home. You don't clean your room. You walk past it, and you walk out, and you go, "Hang on, I'd feel better about myself if I actually did that." Yeah. It's like, "Do your best to
make the bed in the morning," and I think this morning was the first morning I slept in for a week, did I make the bed, and maybe it wasn't as crisp as it should have been, right? That's standard and making sure we tick those boxes. One of the ... I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent here, but one of the guys I follow online, functional coach, Logan Galbridge from Juice Gym in the US, he's someone that resonate with on a lot of different things, and for me, it's excellence. For him, it's hold the standard, and I guess the way ...
I'm going to steal one of his little examples that he uses. For me, if you close your eyes and think of your favorite animal, picture every little detail of that animal, and then try and draw it, us, excellence, and that standard is that picture you've got in your head, and our current effort is your drawing, and there's going to be a gap, right? The more time you spend working on that effort and improving it and adding to it, and it's a time thing as well. It's time, and the more you chip into it, the better that drawing's going to get, and the closer that's going to get to that standard or that level of excellence.
I think if we can look at excellence or the standard as something that, to be honest, we're probably never going to get to, but the closer we get, the better we get at all different areas of our life, and it's important to try and put that mindset into not just work or not just sport, but your relationships and your health and your wealth and all of the different areas of your life, because then you're tipping into you, and us as individuals, we're the most important things in our life, because if we don't look after us,
we can't do all the other cool shit we want, so if we're able to tip in and do that and chase that excellence and chase that standard, then eventually we're going to get to a point where we're content, we're happy, whatever word you want to look at, but then we go through hard shit and it starts all over again, and that's the cool stuff, right? We just want to make sure we do cool shit along the way. It's all part of the journey. 100%. So what advice would you give your 16-year-old self? I think it's
hard to give your 16-year-old self advice, because 10 years on, you don't know what you don't know, and I think when you know better, you do better, so I would like to become a little bit more self-aware a little bit earlier, but whether I had the capacity to do so emotionally, I probably, maybe not. I would like to figure out what my purpose was or what my why was or think about that stuff a little earlier, but again, I probably wasn't at the stage in my life where I could have. I would have liked to
work harder with my football and things like that, but to be honest, the level that I worked at was pretty high, so whether or not there was more room to grow there, I guess I'll never know. I would have maybe liked to connect with a few more people, but I think it's just don't stress about the future and what you don't have now, because it doesn't matter. It's not important. Just be who you are, and I've always been good at being me and not needing to put on a facade or a mask or anything like
that for anyone else, but I think it's just nailing down be where you are and who you are and everything else will figure itself out. And how do you think people can become more fulfilled in life? It's a hard one, right? Everyone's on their own path, and everyone's on their own journey, and everyone's trying to figure out what they want, but a surface level answer would be read, watch, and listen. People that you look up to, people that you can learn from, and people that you can appreciate. And don't try and emulate anyone else. We are not all unique little snowflakes.
We're all humans. We're all pretty much the same, but that magic I spoke about before, that gift that we've all got to share to the world, everyone's a little bit different, and don't feel as though you can't. What was that thing you shared that I shared the other day? Do you remember? It was something along those lines. You could probably check, but I want to be one of the few. Yeah, and I think it's the kind of thing where we've all got that magic in us, and it's all about making sure that we, here we go, do the earth a favor, don't hide your magic.
And it's finding that, so people that are struggling to be fulfilled, keep searching for what your thing is, and your thing when you're 30 is going to be possibly different to when you're 40, or when you're 50, or when you're 60. And I think it's understanding that time goes by real quick. I'm only 26, but I like to think that I'm fairly aware that if you don't make things happen, life will just happen for you. And I think if we want to be fulfilled, and find our purpose, and find our why, and all that stuff's
kind of a bit of a flavor of the month at the moment, which is rightly so because it should be, it should be front of mind. People should be thinking about their purpose. People should be wanting to make an impact, and all those kind of things, but that comes from tipping in some effort, and tipping in some time to figure out what your desires are, what your big, hairy goals are, and what you actually want to spend your life doing. Because it's not an answer that's going to come to you straight away. It's an answer that you'll work on, and I'm still working on.
I still remember, I started a master's degree and got 10 months into it, and one night I was sitting there on a Monday, it was a Monday night, it was about 8.40, we finished at 9. I was up in the city, I was about to drive home for an hour and a bit, get up a coach at 6 a.m. the next morning, and I kind of said, "This isn't me. This is not what I want to be doing with my life." And I was like, "Why am I doing this course? I'm doing it because I didn't really have, not another option, but I didn't have a plan be or I didn't know what I wanted to do."
So I think being, and it sounds a little wishy-washy, but being true to what you want and who you are, and I think that comes with self-awareness. So that's a really long-winded way of saying learn more about yourself. I think we learn more about ourself by listening, watching, and reading what other people who have been through it, because every mistake you're going to make, someone's already made it, and it's not to say we're not all going to make mistakes, but if you can learn from someone else's mistake, it saves you the two or three or five years that it might take you to make it.
Mm-hmm. There's wisdom everywhere. Everyone's story. And that's the thing. You can learn something from every single person on this earth, and I find myself doing it as well, right? Context is a big part of it. People who have context are people that we listen to, but sometimes we just need to understand that we can learn something off everyone, right? Every single one of my clients I can learn something from, and I probably used to say it as a bit of an off-the-cuff thing, but we run a mentorship and internship program at Virtus, and it's growing and adapting from a coaching mentorship to a life mentorship.
It'll all be based around the coaching forever, but diving into some of that meaning stuff is really important for me, and at the start of it, since we started three years ago, I've always been like, "We'll learn more from you, more or just as much from you as you learn from us." And I probably used to just say it, but now I truly believe it because it's the way they might ask one question, or it's the way that we might be able to explain something, and then something flicks in our head, and we're kind of like, "Yeah, that's actually what I meant."
That's where I was headed, and I think having those people around us that we're trying to teach helps solidify what we believe and where we're headed, and you kind of get it from talking to some people that are parents that have young kids, and their kids say something and they're just like, it flaws them, it rocks them, and I think that's part of my life I'm really excited for. Not yet, 10 years or so, but having little versions of me, KP, to learn from is going to be fucking awesome down the track. Love that. One
thing in what you said before was, it reminded me of a quote that is, "The time's going to pass anyway," so when you said that you're either going to sit there and do nothing about it, or you're going to get out there, have a try, make mistakes, and figure it out along the way, the time's going to pass anyway, so you might as well figure it out and try and do things to find that thing. Well, that brings two quotes, right? Everyone's seen the Jim Carrey graduation speech that he does back at wherever he went
to school, and it was just like, you can fail at the things you don't love, so you may as well have a crack at the things you love, but on the way up here today, I was listening to a podcast, who was it, Lewis Howes and Jesse Itzler. Jesse Itzler has some really cool theories on time, like he just turned 50 and stuff like that, and one of the things that he said that kind of grabbed me was, if you have a kid now, in 10 years, they're going to be 10. You could start anything you wanted to do as a little hobby or side project and be pretty much an expert by the time your kid's 10.
If you want to start piano, if you jump into piano for a few hours a week every week until your kid's 10, you're going to be a fucking good piano player, right? Jiu jitsu, whatever, like writing, reading. And I thought that was a really cool thing that, yes, time is going to pass anyway, so we may as well be focusing on goals, and people go, "I don't want to have a three-year goal or a five-year goal or a 10-year goal," and that's okay, but in three years or five years or 10 years, maybe you'll look back and go, "Oh, I wish I really set a goal," or things like that.
It's like, do you want to be in the same position you are now? That's my biggest fear. In three years or in five, in 10 years? Yeah. I don't know about you, but I want to be growing and evolving and doing more, and it comes back to what contribution do I want to have, what fun do I want to have, and how do I want to be living my life? And it's like, if it's the same, look, I'm not saying I don't have a great life, I make the most of it, of everything that I've
got and the people in my life, but yeah, there's definitely not that I need more in terms of materialistic stuff, but it's like, you want to be doing it. You still want to grow, right? Yeah, and have more fulfillment, more experiences and memories. Like you can play a video game, right, but if you play the same level over and over again, you're going to get sick of it pretty quick. Like in Mario, you've got to get the mushroom to get bigger and jump on the pole, but I'm not saying go do mushrooms to get to the next level.
Hey, who knows? It's a metaphor. That might get you to the next level. Look, I don't recommend it. Oh, look, I'm not recommending it, not saying that I've done it to recommend, but you figured out the way you've got to figure it out. If this was the last time you've seen me and I asked you to teach me something tangible that I can use every day in my life to improve my life, what would you teach me? Give me some context. What holes do you feel is that you need to fill, because I guess this
is something that as a coach, I'm lucky enough to be able to, hopefully it's not the last time you see me, but I'm able to find little things that may help people improve consistently for the rest of their life. Give me some context. What areas of your life do you feel as though you need help with? Me personally right now is relaxing. I feel like I'm always on the go doing 100 things. Would be self-belief, especially having a lot of things on the go. You kind of stretch and you go, "Can I do all this?" There's still those little blocks there, and then I'd probably say, "How can I look after myself more?"
Cool. In terms of physically, eating wise, physical wise. 100%. One of the things we use at the gym, it's called the holistic wellness scale. It's a big thing, but it's something that you can check in on once a month or whatever and see how you're going. It's 10 areas of your life, so I'm probably going to miss one, but there's food nutrition, hydration, training and movement, sleep quality, sleep quantity, working and relaxation, stress, time management, and energy levels. I think that's 10. If it's not, I apologize. It's a nine point scale now. It's basically you
rate each one of those right now where you're at, be really open and honest, and you rate it out of 10, 10 being perfect, where you want to be, and you're never really going to reach perfect. It's like that drawing in your head before, but you want to get close to that, one being shit out, and you rate where you're at. For the ones that ... I'm a big believer that if you want to improve all areas of your life, focus on one at a time. Otherwise, you're just going to fall short in a bunch of different areas, but if you get one right, then you can move to the next one.
The ones that aren't quite where you want them to be, so you might have sleep at a three, and for you, it might be relaxation working in, and time management. We've got a bunch of different activities we do for those, but it'll be like, what are two action points you can take right now that will improve those two things between now and next time I see you? I might see that person the next day. What's something you can do over the next 24 hours? For each one, they're going to have something that they can do and make sure that it's measurable and make sure that we can understand what they actually need to do.
I think one of the biggest reasons why people don't achieve their goals is they don't set themselves up for success, and they don't actually know how to succeed. Well, they don't know what success is to them as well. Exactly, right, because success is one of those weird words that we chuck in quotation marks that everyone's got their own version. For example, if it's relaxation, it might be, I want you to meditate for 10 minutes each day, but usually I'll put it on them to think of something, and if they're really struggling, I'll give them something. Just meditate 10 minutes.
Download the Calm app, spend 80 bucks on it for the year, because when we've got a little skin in the game, we're a little bit more likely to actually do stuff like that. Get our money's worth. 100%, and I think there's an important psychology around putting money into something, which is why people commit to uni, right? Like, yeah, uni is expensive and things like that, but it makes you go for four years of your life, so it teaches you to show up consistently. So there's your one action point. Do that for the next 24 hours. So it's not about one big thing that's going to change your life.
It's about focusing on the little things. So be trialing different things as well. Yeah, trialing different things, but focus on one at a time, or two at a time, or three at a time. So for example, if yours is time management and meditation, it might be, okay, for the next week you're going to meditate once a day for 10 minutes, and if you fuck up, if you miss a day, it doesn't matter. Tomorrow you'd have another shot. We've got a saying at the gym, never miss a Monday. If you miss a Monday, bad luck, never miss a Tuesday.
Just rock up the next day. If you do seven of those in a row, cool, we're back to never miss a Monday, and that's okay. Life happens, and I think if you structure your life like, I have to do this this day, and then you don't hit it, and you're just like, oh, I'm just going to, it's like the diet thing, right? It's getting shitty. We go, oh, I may as well just load up today. Second one for time management would be, do you know how many hours there are in a week? Nope, 168. So there's 168 hours in a week, every week.
So people will go, I don't have enough time, or I can't fit it in, or whatever. Yes, I believe that's bullshit, and I believe that everyone has heaps of shit to do, but you look at the most successful people, again, I use that word, but you look at the people you look up to the most, they've all got 168 hours. They find a way to make it work, so you've got to find a way to make it work, and I tend to find, it tends to be priority-based. So we've got a little activity for the guys listening at home.
If you've got a piece of pen and a piece of pen, a piece of paper and a pen, write 168 hours down, and then put down all the shit that you spend your time doing. So you might go, sleep. I want to sleep eight hours a night, 40 hours. So you're down to 128. Work. I might sleep 40 hours. So you go drop it down, whatever 100, down to 88. Is that right? And you just, who knows, anyone's got a quick mass, and you basically put all the things down that you want to be doing, and you go from there, and you'll end up with somewhere between zero and 20 hours.
Some people have more, some people have less, left over, and you'll be like, what else are you doing? I'm like, that's all I do. Where are those extra 20 hours going? So you start to become a little bit more aware of your time and how you're spending your time. To be more purposeful and intentional. Exactly. Exactly, right? It doesn't mean you have to be busier. It just means that if you're, like for me, I try and structure my diary so that I'm tipping into my cup, as well as working out and working and doing all that stuff.
So if I've got an hour booked for reading, or if I've got an hour booked for, I call it Wallace time, I've got an hour booked for me, that hour gets done. We need, I think we need to be more protective of our time. I am starting to get better at it, I'm one that I find it hard to say no. But I think that if we are able to say no, then we can be more intentional with what we say yes to. And if you're, if that 168 hour, like it's called 168 hour rule, something we've used with my clients for the last five years.
If that's not working, go really micro and chop up your week into 15 minute blocks and start on a Monday morning. By like 10am on a Monday, you're probably going to be really annoyed at yourself because you're like I don't use my time as efficiently as I could. So I think one tangible thing is just, is an activity that shines light on what's going on in your life. I reckon that's a great tangible tool that anyone can use because I think it's something always in the back of everyone's mind is that how can I optimise my time and be more intentional to do, maybe they're doing what they're doing like we were saying before.
They're doing something but they're not fulfilled or happy. Maybe they need to, let's say, have a morning routine of 15 minutes of just meditating. Perfect. Tick that off and like, you know, I don't really have any non-negotiables in my life. Like I understand that life's fluid and things happen, but you need to have the things you can come back to when things aren't going well. So would you say that you've got your standards, the non-negotiables aren't those standards or it's just you hold those standards high, but you understand that, hey, I'm human. Look, I want to write my daily gratitude every day, right?
If I said it was a non-negotiable and I missed two days this week, I had 15 hours at work on a Monday and I just didn't have time to grab my diary and stop and sit and think for a second. I wasn't able to be present in writing that. If it was a non-negotiable for me, then I would feel real shit about myself, but if I was able to accept that I didn't do it, move on, Tuesday I said I'd be better and I fucked up on Tuesday, right, I didn't do it on Tuesday either. But yesterday and today knocked over my gratitude, I feel fine.
That's exactly it, I'm not kicking myself while I'm down because I missed something like that. I've got another tangible thing for you guys to do, it's called the life list. So write down all the shit you love to do, write down another list of all the stuff you're actually doing, do your best to make sure those lists are the same. The second one should be like the first one. Happiness is one of those things that everyone's chasing in their own different way, but if you can actually go these are the things that make me happy, these are the things that fill my cup, these are the things I love to do, then do them.
The rest of the stuff will figure it out and yes you've got to go to work and yes you've got to do this, but find a job that you like to do and then it fills your cup, even the days that are hard. Love it. What's most meaningful to you in life right now? People. People and my connections with those people. So I think I struggle, I'm a very extroverted person most of the time, but then there's like 30-40% of my life where I need to be by myself, I'll get home from work some days
and I'll be coaching all day and be super up and about and I'll get home and I can't talk, I just have no interest in talking and it annoys the hell out of KP and I just can't. So I think for me it's connection and people, but also understanding that some of that connection is with me and 30-40% of my life I need to be focusing on me and I need to be diving into me because that allows me to be my best self for those people around me. Like you said fill your cup, you can't pour into anyone else if you don't have any water.
There's gin in my cup. But I'm incredibly fortunate to have the people in my life that I do and that's what's most meaningful to me is all of those relationships and cultivating those relationships and reconnecting with people that I may have not given enough time or energy to. But with that comes needing to, what's the best word to say that doesn't sound like I'm being a dick, is time to kind of cut people off and not cut people off and be like fuck you I'm not talking to you anymore, but just be like you know
what, I think we've all had or got those people in our lives that we think we're going to get along really well with forever and we keep tipping into the relationship and then maybe they're not tipping them back and it's just you know they're those people that call us when they need something but not call us in the way they need something like knowing that they'd be there for you if you ask it. So I think it's like it's kind of threefold, tipping into the people that you love, tipping into me and then knowing when it's time to move on from certain relationships.
Yeah, yeah I agree. What impact do you want to have on people and the community and the world? What impact? That's a big word, impact. I want to help people to live their best life, live a life worth living and I think if I can do that and how I do that will probably change like right now it's you know through the podcast and through coaching and through teaching and things like that. Part of me wants to do it on a bigger and bigger scale, part of me wants to center in on a small scale
and really add value to a few people but I think if I continue to do things that I love to do, continue to fill my cup that'll give me the energy and purpose to make that bigger impact whatever that may be. So yeah, impact's a tough word but and for me it's building context for the people that I want to help because if I'm just talking about myself all day every day they're probably missing, so it's finding ways to add value to those guys. Impact on a big scale or impact on a little scale is just adding value, it's just finding ways to help people with whatever they need help with.
That's sometimes it's right person wrong wrong time so it's yeah it's hard because you know I think if I can keep on I guess working on my message and what my message is and growing that and adapting it and transcending the previous message with a better message then I'll be able to make an impact. I think it's being okay with the fact that it'll take time and that it will not will never be on the scale that I want it to be. What does it mean to be conscious what does it mean to be conscious
good question what's your definition of conscious self-awareness yeah conscious being awake yeah and I don't like to say a hashtag woke or woke af yeah super woke but super woke I'm not gonna steal that for the podcast but yeah I feel self-awareness yeah like I really like when you when you post up first like with a name I really like the name because being conscious for me is just understanding who you are what you are why you do the things you do and then understanding that that's part of it but then you've you've got to
try and understand how the rest of the world works being conscious is being receptive to change being able to deal with criticism and feedback and negative feedback because these are things that help us grow and learn we all get stuck into the stuck into conversations where we don't actually add any value and all we do is just say nice things and that we don't really believe and and and do things because we think other people want to do it and I think being conscious is wake up in the morning go on a bed at night
doing whatever the fuck you want to do in between yeah love it do you have any other anything else you want to leave with any everyone the listeners any tips any other messages you do you is a simple one don't try and be someone else because you know they're already doing it whatever that Dr Seuss quote quote is about no one will ever be you than you is a cool one and I think again one of the quotes on my walls on my wall on the walls of the gym is excellence not an act but
a habit habits for me if you don't own your habits and your habits will own you I just mix two quotes into one but it is now lucky yeah and yeah understand that you know you've just got to like it's all up to you you're in charge you are the driver of your life so if you want something do it if you don't want something remove it you know find those little habits that are going to help you get to where you want to get to and yeah just make and I think for me and
for a lot of people we get to where we want to get to by making the others around us better I guess that's that's what how I want to live my life I want to be making the people around me better because that just helps me improve yeah love that be a conscious creator we're always creating but be a conscious creator spot on where can people see more of your staff follow the podcast and listen to the podcast yes me talking shit yeah so my Instagram is just at the excellence coach Virtus performance on Instagram
Virtus podcast on Instagram all the links are pretty much on there all the links all the links are on there if you if you click on the link it's a link to another bunch of links so there's so many links same with us we have the link tree link tree is a dream but Virtus performance.com if anyone's around mornington stick your head in come hang out yeah I just we're just trying to do cool shit with cool people I think life's just a big big period of time where we do heaps cool shit and then
we die so you know I think if we if we can collaborate if anyone wants to collaborate anyone wants to have a conversation on the Virtus podcast anyone wants to train anyone wants to be better then then hit us up at Virtus yeah that's it love it man well thank you so much it's an absolute pleasure it has been amazing it's been too long one hundred percent but we'll definitely do it again soon can't wait to be back here and in among you'll still be far away but I'll come up again good from you excellent
all right man take care peace love your work thank you so much for taking the time to listen in on that conversation thank you for listening guys if you are if you enjoyed me being interviewed then you're a special special human looking forward to next week when I can get someone epic on this one rather than just me I'd like to thank all you guys for listening if you are enjoying the podcast please share subscribe do all that kind of stuff be amazing
