All Grind, No Play?

well welcome back to wabisaby my goodness jim you and i have been traveling well maybe we can't really stay the world any more because we live in the middle of the world so we're not traveling very far anymoreour flights are down down from like fifteen twenty hours twenty five hours to now down to like maybe couple of hours and that's a long flight

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah a totally totally so tell you've just been away and i've been away so tell yours and i'll tell my

yeah listen like i had a you know we had a what's called carnival week over here in portugal and we we decided to take the family we're trying to this is funny way so we were thinking like where in europe it's winter let's go skiing and and i got to say jim i don't know if you actually lokedinthe keating yet and you know kids don't ski yet one done it once and we looked at all the sky hills it is too overwhelming to make a decision there's like what you go france italy austria

yeah yeah

switzerland and i know people listening to like oh poor you but no i trust me there are so many options and ski hills that you just go this is too hard this is way too hard even decide and tat's why decided so we didn't go skiing we went the opposite way we went for the sun we went to the canary islands and tennereef to get a little bit more warm weather during our winter so that's where we decided to go what about you

no no no yeah yeah but you're you're right i'll come back to a second i was just going to say that you're right and for me it's got to the point where there are so many great spots that it's all recommendation so i actually said he where would you go where have you gone where could you recommend and you know my son was here a little while ago now in london he was with us for a short while he went over to france and he went skiing and he was brilliant and the photo i like oh my gosh how much snow is there so it

hm

it's exactly how he had to go about it as well was recommended i had a week or the best part of a week in paris with my lovely wife we celebrated our thirties winning anniversary it was scheduled for december yeah and been been unwell and we re scheduled it to just a couple of weeks ago so a week and a half ago so it was awesome it was great and it doesn't get old doesn't lawrence it doesn't get old how close it is because you just sound like

nice

i don't know like it's a real to go listen i'm just heading off to paris for a few days and ordinarily a few days would have been a day there sleep a day back there's three days gone four days gone and that's that's a that's a trip we're on the same time zones

absolutely especially when you're listening to like when you're listening to like kids in high school it's like what are you doing for the break and like oh i'm just going to switzerland oh i'm just going to south africa oh i'm just going to parents like it's like where am i right now

uh uh yeah yeah it's not it's not so i guess and that really got a think he wasn't about us flexing about how great are we and how great our holidays but the theme underneath that was about the importance of breaks and holidays and and how they are how important they are particularly if you are busy living a hectic life and how you make space for those how do you create for those so let's let's kick off kick off it

yeah yeah absolutely in this has never been about a flex for sure and it's about like i mean i'm gonna be honest with you you know canary islands it wasn't like it wasn't i'm not going back so it wasn't that exciting so for those people no offense that actually love the canary like i've been there not going back so there's playing more places that i'd love to go check out yeah i think there's there's a rhythm i definitely know being away with family is an important thing to me and you know moving

yeah yeah yeah

portugal sometimes you think like oh i'm or and this is where a lot of people kind of you think like oh you're in portugal think you are in holiday no like you got remember i live here and work here so it's not like it's a holiday i remember twenty someone years ago want to move to australia because oh aren't you so lucky you know you're you're in australia but i work it's not like i just like on the beach every day ah i can't be on the beach over day but it's not like i'm just chilling out like relaxing at a resort every single day and so i definitely needed it dot know but you but i definitely needed

yep yeah yeah yeah yeah

of reset and so you know let's go back to why we take holidays why we need take breaks i think you know we live in a society where everything is moving pretty fast pace is a lot of grind a lot of expectation of ourselves and a lot of achievement and we're always kind of push push push and one of he thing that i talked to my clients a lot about especially at the beginning of the year was to always kind of set themselves going all right one of the most important ways to plan out your year is that you need to plan out your rocks you know the rocks are things that the immovable object

yeah yep

is or times and dates or things that are important to you that are really like rigid they don't they don't change and you almost got to build your rest of the calendar year based on those rocks and boulders that you decide to set for yourself and so that could be like say your wedding anniversary it could be like if you celebrate your birthday for example but one of those rocks to me is is holidays you know and and you know people like oh yeah but i'll take holidays when i have a chance

yep

by the time you think you need a holiday you already at a burn out stage for most people and by the time you actually think about it and then got a plan for it it's already way too late and so i always say i put the rocks in place in a sense of at least as a temporary day because you'll be surprised even though we have fifty two weeks in a year it's amazing that you can fill up that fifty two weeks like just by thinking about a certain thing that goes up pretty fast so i always say just make a decision

yeah yeah yep yeah

and every three to four months and i don't know about your what are you thoughts about maybe three o four months at my recommendation you plan out of a week or two and you put them in blocks and you pick the dates i actually get people to pick the dates it's penciled in i mean i'm not asking you to commit to them but surprisingly they usually do and taking those dates but then and then decide on like what do you think you're going do on those dates like you know you're going to go to canada are you going to go here or just just imagine you don't have i said it's just an imagination is just putting it in the calendar so then all of a sudden you work everything in your life around those rocks for the years that i've done that i just feel i am way more productive and reset because i never allow myself to get into too much of a burnt out phase and i know my rhythm my rhythm is about three months where i sort of need some sort of break or reset other people might be different and and that's a lesson that i learned when we know when i and associated when i first started because my associate my principle actually forced me to take a holiday they didn't give me a choice but yeah so it was one of those things i ve land so that's how i do things and that's i think you know we'll tart with why that's how i kind of set the calendar what about you

yeah yeah yeah totally agree all agree and be saying and that's pretty much everything that you said i could actually have just said as well the importance of regular breaks now my default i almost had to do it as as a measure against me overworking because that's my default my default will be i just double down or just go hard and nd it was it was it was a blind spot that i had for a long time and

yep

didn't realize that my effectiveness and my efficiency and my capacity was decreasing over time even though i was showing up i wasn't effective wasn't as productive and and every time i go i would go and break back back in the days when i was was in practice i did exactly the same thing i would actually scheduled at the start of the year or just in the last couple of weeks of the year before we go here's how it has years planned out was always easier when there were kids because you go you've got school holidays you got this you've got that and you basically allocate those and for exactly the right reason for the same reason that you mentioned lawrence in first year when i first graduated i literally went seven days a week for the first two years of practice i was that busy and after about eighteen months i literally wanted to walk away from it it was just too intense and it actually fed into the part of me that just went

yeah m

okay you just keep going and going and going and i learned a very powerful lesson very alarmed that for me i had to re frame it and realize that it had to be in short spurts i had i'm happy to operate a really high level and an effective level that the sustainability part of it i just wasn't nurturing so consequently yeah after about it months wasn't burnt out and i was literally going to go this isn't how this should be yeah

well well let's go into that detail i think we should go into that detail which is like asking the question like why do we put ourselves in that position to not take these breaks all grind no play you know what's what puts us into that position what do you think

yeah well for me it's like always believed and i guess it was a badge of honor that was like listen i will outwork out hustle anybody and so that was my validation that was my reference that was my my stamp of a badge of honor as i said so i didn't know any different and modelled that behavior my mom and dad you know love them dearly they worked exceptionally hard and so that was the reference for how i things and bettina's mom and dad also were exceptionally hard working people so that was our default that was our normal that's what we knew

yeah i think a lot of its identity it's like we identify ourselves as grinders and hard workers so therefore hard workers don't we create a story in our heads like hard workers don't take breaks and we we appreciate the grind and we especially when we're younger i find and we kind of use as like like you said the bread badge of honor and then we just kind of you grow with it and so therefore we almost don't want to take any six days or we don't a type of people don't take six days at all we don't the type people don't take into breaks because that's like a sign

yeah yeah yep

weakness that we do and then i think the other side of things too is you know we create a story in our head that we're that important and meaning like everybody needs us you know whether be you know if you're doctor like all my patients need me to be there you know otherwise they wouldn't be able to get through whatever or if you're like you know accounting all my clients can you know function without me or you go can never take time off because it never it's never the right time because here's always something of importance

yeah yeah yeah

and i think that's the other side too we create the story in our head thinking that we're that important that we you know the world going to collapse especially your business world is going to collapse if you're not there and and that's a false story that we kind of create and so

yeah yeah and if you build say if you build a whole business around just you then naturally that's going to come to a head at some point where if it's just you and you don't have built systems that leverage your time effort energy and talent you're going to get to a capacity can strain that is you can only physically do what you can do and when you don't work you don't you if you're self employed for example you on't get paid and and i think that that's the true

yep

for a lot of people who are self employed who run businesses who basically rely on their own personal exertion as a means of generating income that's where you're not just you know like the the first thing i've never had holiday pay i've never had holiday but i been self employed from day one dot and so to me when i first started employing people like you get like seven and a half per cent holiday so you're going on holidays and you get a like put the and

no

was a really difficult thing to come to because for me it was like a i'm gonna have three weeks off and i'm goin associate gonna get any income in that time so you learn pretty quickly to associate time off as not getting paid and you then go either i've got to learn a way of optimizing that or i'm just going to keep repeating this habit and i'm gonna naturally draw away from holidays so i don't have

yeah yeah absolutely and that's the third thing that's fear is that fear of like if i go away the whole thing is going to collapse what i built up so far it's going to just collapse in the week i go on holiday or something you know forgetting that it took you you know several years to kind of get to that position and then you think that one week is going to be like the thing that's going to fall and everything is going to collapse the whole and the whole business going no like be on fire because you left and and that kind of leads to to the process of if you have that

yep yeah

ype of thinking you actually end up creating that scenario meaning like if you haven't like you already kind of alluded to it because if you are self employed and your you are on your own business you've actually because you're afraid that you think you're so important then you've actually created a situation where you are needed all the time which means that you almost handcuff yourself to the business and it can't function without you versus if you actually took the time to going okay how do i create a bus

yeah hm yeah

this where i can take four to six weeks off right and then all of a sudden now with that type of thinking you're building that business knowing that you're going to take six weeks off a year and then therefore you've got to work around it just like i said to you about planning your holidays ahead like you got to go these are the days i'm going no take and all a sudden everything kind of works around it like you figure a way out somehow and the same thing around the holiday part where they just feel like i can't take off i can't just

yeah yep

i can't just like you know people need me or i won't get paid right holiday pay i've never got holiday pay either and it's like you know how i think about is like okay if i just say let's just put a random figure i want to earn you know a hundred and fifty thousand dollars you got to think like i want to earn a hundred fifty thousand not in fifty two weeks right that's a bad math because then you you're never going to achieve it i want to go i want to fifty thousand dollars in forty six weeks okay so now then you go that's my target

yep yeah

now per week so that's how i'm going to figure it out because you already budged for the six weeks off and i think if you because now you pushed your goals up a bit in terms of what you need to achieve but you've already budgeted for that six weeks holiday

yeah yeah totally and i learned this lesson when i used to practice in country new south wales that was that practised in darwin originally when i first started but then we practiced in country new south wales and there are a lot of farming communities there and so fundamentally what they would have is that have one year that was an extraordinary year for crop and that may be followed by one or two or three year lean years for example and so consequently what they would do is to even smooth out their payment cycles one the year that they had a really huge crop they didn't go out there and over commit and over by they basically had things in the buffon as a reserve to smooth out the cycles because they knew that winter will come and i will come every year and they had to make allowances for that so fundamentally i learned good farm management i extended to good life and business management for a sustainable model and so that really shape how i started looking at things and effectively and you basically said because the linearity model was always like a red basically a paper time model and and that's a really important one if you actually want to have the freedom that you're talking about lawrence you got to be able to smash that time money relationship and look at ways of leveraging and doing what you just said is like how can i create a yearly income some people do it in one event some people will do it over a month and they earn their years basically income in a month and for the rest of the eleven months and that takes a little bigger than used to if that's not how your model of income is generated but there are people out there who may earn an income every two years every six months every three months but they've found ways of making that sustainable and having their braids along the way as well

you you got a budget for it and you got to have a long time praying and if you ve been business long enough you you have predictable trends right so if you're in like you know retail business for example like you got to know like you can't be having an average target monthly target of like say ten thousand dollars a month or something but knowing that christmas and maybe like you know christmas months are three times the amount coming in you know and you got to know like maybe february's are very terrible month so you you can't like you got to make sure you

yeah yeah

budget that for the trends especially when things are if your business is sicklical um in those type of trends like you know in the practice model for example in doctor's model you know april in australia is always a terrible month because typically you have three public holidays and you know you got you know the two easter easter easter monday easter friday and plus you got endsacday in there you know and it's not like it's not you know always tell people it's like you know people december such a slow month it's not like you didn't know that it's not like christmas lands on a different day every year i mean like like you just got a budget

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

for that you got a plan for if you know december is going to be traditionally in your practice or in your business december is a slow month then maybe ramp up some stuff going in september you know october november to make sure it buffers for that you know and i think that's such an important thing it's just about planning and but we eat these cycles and we never think about them for some reason

yeah yeah yeah and because they are fair based you're right you know you know it's very uncommon for having having someone who hasn't planned for that to suddenly plan here's here's the thing that i always used to find was a challenge because leading up to christmas interestingly particularly in country new south wales was exceptionally busy time it was our busiest time of the year because people would come out from regional towns they do all their central shopping in the major said and the lead up to christmas was insane

m

and then it would drop off over in january so but what's happening is you mentioned about self employed people particularly in australia you would have people who would have variable income going into christmas which traditionally was a high expense time then they have january you really quite and then you challenge that you need to plan for your holidays and you're like yeah man but my income's dried up so there was the fear around that and what was really helpful was acknowledging as you just said that they are going to be sick there are trends but then also in order for you to basically hit the ground running in march or june when things are a lot busier you have to build in measures so that you're on your a game when the game requirements come across you know he's no point actually exists

yeah perfect example so the perfect example will be i imagine i don't know if it's happening in your your neighborhood but you know here in portugal january men the amount of restaurants are just closed like just gone for a week or two they just like like i'm like what happened like they got a business no no they just taking their two weeks off because in a restaurant business in the middle of winter in our area it's like it's not the prime time like they know they need to be well rested prepared for july and august when it's terris

never yeah yeah

and people coming in like they're goin t be rammed and they go they got to take some time off and so they can't do a journey those times what everybody else is taking it because they're in the in that market where they're serving people who are on holidays so it's the same type of mentality like they have the planning you have the planning you've seen the trends you've got to work accordingly and that's how you plan for your holidays so jim i love to ask you like how do you know what do you think about yeah go ahead go ahead

yeah yeah yeh yeh i remember when when we first moved so i said it again so we just just had some technical issues and can repeat that way you just said i

i was just thinking about like asking the next question which is you know when you plan your holiday what do you do to plan your holiday and what are some of the things that you know you do how do you think about the process um you know because might be different for everybody else

yeah okay okay so it was a good rule of thumb that i learned along the way was if you live a relatively sedentary non challenging life and so if you're doing mainly administrative type work a lot of people are drawn to adventure based type holidays where they're scaling mountains there doing a wholot of things if you're running holiday if you're running a life that's really intense and hectic and busy and go go go and grind to counter that you quite often will feel gravitated towards holidays are a lot more resting so more beach based and stuff and at different times of my life i create i crave different things so the beach to me is like one of my favorite places in the world so i would always gravitate towards the beach but depending on how exhausted mentally tired i was i have a certain amount of time that i could do that for like i love the beach but being on there for two weeks straight after a while i get bored so i had to find adventures i had to find things that were important and interestingly when our kids were young when they were very young we tended to go to places that were more resort based more kids club things so that the kids had fun but and i had some time away and that was really helpful but as they got older we started incorporating the kids into particular adventures and say we would you like to go where would you like to do what would you like to see and you know the first time we went to america when with the kids it was awesome we actually had this basically opportunity was like bland camps i said what would you like to do and save my younger said i want to go to disney land great awesome bettina said i want to go and do a tour of the grand canyon and do a helicopter ride in the grand canyon and so we pencil that and i wanted to go to new york and so we did all of those so that everybody got a part of it and to this day atene still believes that the helicopter ride which was awesome by the way through the grand canon was the best part of that holiday and i agree but we've got to experience the things that we all wanted to have individually but also as a group to got to share what others want to do as well

yeah that's helcoteride in cana t's pretty beautiful i did that with my friend nick and it's it's special for sure i think based on what you said like basically if you kind of dissected really it's based on values and i think it's you know based on values and also what what's required what you what you having a self aware i think is two things self awareness of yourself what you need the most have an assessment of your personality and what you need to kind of unwind and what you need that break for having an intention around that and number two

yep yeah

it's the values and values meaning like and i think how i look at values is this is you got to know yourself well enough through the self evaluation that what are some of the things that makes you excited like what what makes you excited and what makes you happy and bring joy to your life and you you know i don't know about you i'm sure this is gonna be the same for you but what brings joy to my life is very very different what brings garen joy and what brings and christian and that

yeah yeah yeah

the hard part of our families is that you gotta have to figure out like some compromise that you know you know that's great what you did with the u s trip we did something very similar as every time we go away i tend to go okay what's one thing you would like to do on this trip you know wherever we're going that you'd like to do and we could try to make that you know make sure we try to take that off so that at least there was that one thing we all kind of each of us kind of felt that it was picked because of what we wanted to do and no questions asked and we've done that before and i think that's great because it just high lights at everybody

yeah yep

get something out of it and that's based on your you know personality like for me it's always about variety you know i love and food actually so i really love making sure at least you know have one or two really good food restaurants that i like and you know my kids and my wife they don't really like the food that i have but i always try to want to feel like i just need one to give me at least one i can't go it seven days without having one good meal um so i want to make sure and also variety meaning like i want to do something that

yeah yeah yeah yeah

ever done before go to a place they've never done before hence like i think that's important where some people don't need that they want they want the comfort of having the knowledge and the confidence that where they go and they know what they're gonna expect which means that they might go back to the same place same hotel same restaurants and that's if that's what you need to feel joy in your life then that's awesome and and that's i feel like we got to plan our breaks accordingly to those values

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah totally and it's actually a really interesting things that would happen because depending on how tired you are and depending how tired i was when i'd go on to break that first week was really just fatigue i was like i didn't realize how tired i was like the day before i'm gunning and firing the next day i can't kept my eyes open past eight o'clock it was just it was the permission to just let go to unwind and a really interesting thing would happen like for me i would love to spending time in the water in the beach you know i'd be there

m

and i'd be coming out on more wrinkly and after having spent way too long in the water but to me that was like a refuge i felt fantastic and it was one of the only places where i could actually surrender i really felt that there's two places interestingly for me that i get exceptionally present that is in the waves and injure because i can't think about anything else and i have to be present and so to me every holiday

m right

like you said was valued but so that was really important but a really interesting thing would happen is that after like the initial fatigue would go then i'd start it's almost like my brain was going okay you've been in survival mode for the last ex amount of time now that you've recharged opportunities and ideas start coming into you so i'd go for a run and i would come back i'd get up in the morning go for a run come back and be ten i got to the point where she was like oh my god here it comes again say thinking about this i had this idea that he's like okay here we go because i got to the point where i couldn't get the ideas out of my head fast enough so i have to start writing them down and that was what to me holidays created for me was recharging and an opportunity to go matter on myself rather than just being stuck in the day to day and as well as obviously connecting with time with family which sometimes in the early years of building a business i had less time there i wanted to with the

yeah i think that's a very important point i try to always challenge you know people especially clients to when they take their break doesn't have to be long it doesn't it's not the length of time that matters but i think it's about the change of scenery and you know for me i find again this is my value so i don't want to impose my values on anybody else but for me me going to a different place that inspires me or some place i've never been it creates a contrast in my life

yeah

thinking as well i think a lot of times one of the reasons why i feel like if you're an entrepreneur or if you're a business owner i think it's really important for you to take that time once in a while um purely because if you're in the same city in the same job in the same bed in the same kind of like routine which i highly recommend with routines but the problem with those routines though you do get into this ground hog day moment and that doesn't allow you to be creative

yeah

you have no perspective right so on one hand being disciplined and having systems and having a routine is such an important element to succeed in life it's really important to make sure you schedule a breaking those routine once in a while so that you can actually have the perspective that you need to gain new insight new perspective to create new ideas to challenge yourself to say ask yourself is the business model that i'm working with right now still current and active

yeah

and in line to what i want to achieve right and that's why i think a lot of us you know you know like you and i have moved countries in the last year because that breaking routine happened and it's like oh wait a second our train was moving one way and we realized we had to stop because it was an emergency and we had to come off the train and then you start to realize looking around and going actually do i still want to be on this train and do i still want to go in that direction right and then we just both of us decided to hop on another train right

yeah yeah yeah yeah

so and and that's sometimes you need that but if you don't take that break you're not going to know because you're so in the train and you're just in that fast pace and you never even look out the window to see if this is where i still want to go

yeah yeah beautiful beautiful beautifully put actually and you know last week while we're in paris here's the thing that that i took out of that we were in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and and what was amazing about that as well as obviously celebrated anniversary was walking around such beautiful monument some such beautiful buildings that it actually made me stop and go you know a lot of the times you get hung up on my own stuff and realizing how insignificant in the grand scheme of things quite often that is so when you look at things that have that have stood the test of time over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years and there's beauty and it elevates you but then also makes you realize well i need to elevate i need to the bigger i need to look at look at the art look at the inspiration that i can draw from those things that to me it just opens up like my brain my signapsas my connection s see links between things that i may not have seen before and and the same thing about routines like we had we had a deal but here and on to paris i'm having crosson there are a couple of bits that go off i'm just going to not that i go crazy with my diet but i'm not going to go to paris where some of the best food in the world will be and be that blow who who makes a big issue about it so i just surrendered to it at some incredible food more more cubs and pasters than i have for a lot i felt rubbish for it but i was okay with that because i came back this week and i'm back in my routine and i had to contrast and that was important for me mentally to just let that go

yep yeah i think so too like i think it's such an important thing and and it's funny i have the same kind of feeling when it comes to like these old places and that's why i think we love about europe because it's so old it's like centuries old you know like back to the twelve hundreds and i don't know if you have the same thing i have this weird thing so when we go up to like i don't know let's just say you know you were here in portugal and we were going up to the fort for example the castle and you know i would walk up these castle and you know it's been standing there since like the

yeah

you know the twelve fifties or something you know and and you look about and like man the world that they were living in when i'm in those places i have a tendency of just touching the walls like the bricks and like the wood do you okay exactly it's weird right i just do it because i'm like this has been here for like eight hundred years and i feel like even though thousands of millions of people have touched this ting but like i feel like i'm touching this and like i'm getting a sense of like

oh yeah i did say i did say i did say i did say yeah yeah

those people at that time and like it does it does two things like one like man what does it take to have lasted this long right to the test of time but to it's like well my life is so insignificant so all my problems no one's going to care no one's going to know who i am you know in fifty years let alone like you know four hundred years like it doesn't matter like all these big things i think of like such a big issue it's like like it's big to me right now but is it really that big like in thirty years time and and that

yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

sort of that presence of that contrast i think sometimes we need to kind of be it mean to humble i think it's humbling ourselves to recognize that our problems are not that big of a problem it might be bigger to us now

yeah yeah yeah totally totally great totally agree we do we do need that humbling to come on board yeah totally and you know in addition to the touching i always like if i see these worn cobblestones always what goes to my mind is who who has walked along here how many people have walked on what histories all those kind of things and that becomes an adventure as well and i do i do think that

yeah yes

that doesn't have to be on the other side of the world that can be fifty kilametrs away from from your home this week end but and i heading out to sea side place here just looking for some values for some events and we there's an adventure around that that's it's going to be a day over night stay those kind of things are break you out of the habit of being yourself which allows you to then come back to whatever you're doing with a sense of energy get vitality because you've had the contrast and you go yes i choose this again and i'm bringing a richard revitalize energized version myself back to take it on

well it's going to do two things right so like when you go and discover something it's got to goin to do one or two things and both of them actually be helpful one it's going to create enough contrast to going you know what proves that what i'm doing right now is what i want to do right because because for example they might just reinforce the fact that what i'm like for example the crusence i mean let's say crusence are amazing right french food amazing you know those deserts the pastry is amazing but you said it was amazing in the moment but i feel terrible when you need to

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

much of it and so the contrast there it's like yeah i love it but i also know that if i ate a diet of that every single day on my daily routine that would suck i don't want to feel like this all the time i feel like this for a couple of days it's fine but if i don't want to feel like this so it's like re enforcement of the things that what you do and what you eat and what you don't eat is like now this is why i do this so once in a while i can do that so it's either that or to you go i actually felt really good or i like really

yeah yeah yeah yeah

o that that part of the world or maybe i should change so it forces that it may force you to change instead of reenforced so either way it's a good thing because it makes you get better it makes you be a better person and makes you more aware of who you are what you like what you don't don't like and what you love what you distaste and really kind of create this contrast that allows you to become a human being let's face it at the end of your life you're going to be more refined because you took

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

chance is to help you try to find what's the best thing that brings you more joy into your world

totally totally and you was on to share a funny scenario because we we initially tried so i don't have dairy wet sugar as a normal part of my my diet but we went into a place and we'd say listen is there with this between wanted to order coffee and was like do you have almond and they're like no there was almost offense to the french it's like i'm offended that you would even consider putting almond milk in coffee so i was like no we have there's just one type of milk and that's all you got and you have a choice whether you want to be part of that or not but it was really really funny so that was that was the anecdote that we took out of that in there you get you get to choose you get to choose your own adventure and have a lot of fun along the way but that ah that has his and stitches when we we couldn't get anybody to agree and you think might being too high maintenance if i'm doing it there were some of it so that i take that as a god a moment and then i've gone no i actually don't feel great when i haven't that's the reason why but yeah that that was a funny experience

i just realized i was on mute sorry about that

okay go back let's let's just repeat that bit again so if you could just say at three to

oh that's funny sure no i just basically i was just trying to make a joke i was like you know like can you imagine like going to get a coffee and it's like yes i want that uncafinated organic you know plant based milk late please

that's exactly that's it we would always jbecauseita would have every variation that you could possibly have loves that loves the taste of it and the smell but couldn't tolerate aspects of it and she would get some really funny looks you know like what i didn't even know a thing i didn't know you could incorporate those kind of things but you learn that you realize what is a really important thing in one part of the world is a big deal and sometimes a really big deal that you didn't even realize you can then take that idea how many business ideas have started in your native country from someone who travelled and went what a great idea i should do that here and that's the other advantage right

yeah well i think that's you know that's exactly why you want to take breaks because you you start to discover different culture s you start to realize what's important to one culture isn't important to another like you i don't know about you in spain but i actually imagine you will be in spain very similar to that because you have that siesta that most people don't have and it's like for me as the tourist it's a freaking most annoying thing in the world that shops closed for three hours in the middle of the day you know just don't understand it but as the culture in spain that's part of what they do and remember

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

i feel like when i moved to portico like the pace here is definitely a lot more slower it's more more relaxed and they're more more family focused like they work long hours but it's like don't bolt us on weekends because that's family time and you know where as you know in australia like you know the culture underlying her as like i i wouldn't call anybody or dare to text anybody from a business perspective on the weekends here just because it's like you got to respect the family time because hey're not going to get back

yep yeah yeah yeah yep yep

you anyways and so like there's that there's there's just that cultural difference i'm not saying it right or wrong good or bad i'm just you know what i'm saying is that trying on a different culture in respecting it has a contrast that you kind of sometimes need to realize like may maybe i'm just working way too hard maybe i'm moving too fast maybe i can learn a little bit of just lowing down and appreciating the food i mean one of the things that contract i never thought of because don't drink anyways but you know some one told me in portugal like there are no bars here like not many bars there's not many pubs where

no yeah yeah yeah

in australia and england like it is everywhere right in europe there are not many pubs why because they don't drink socially just for drinking sake most of the time they drink with food and you know and with people and they drink with their dinner that's why their dinner you know when you go to a restaurant if you book like seven o'clock they expect you to be there until ten or eleven o'clock you know there's no like turnovers like you know like they do in most you know western kind of cultures like in australia or england like you know they want you to get out of there

yeah okay yeah

in an hour and a half so i can get another turn they you know they drink with the meals and they expect you to be there for several courses um and especially in southern europe and so i think i understand that culture is like maybe i can embrace a little bit of that maybe i can actually take on some of that too because my what would my life look like if i did some of those tings and that's the advantage here of travelling travelling and taking those breaks is be able to get that contrast you need to break away your current cycle

yep yeah yeah you're right you're right and i always it's funny you know because when you are in it and when you ve back from it you can see the magic and the beauty of it but a lot of the time there has to be a discipline and a routine about planning it in advance like you said very early on otherwise you don't get to do it even though you know that you benefit even though you know it's great for you even though and i always found this as well too not sure if that was used the version of me that came was so much more energized and inspired that we were general our revenues would basically increase significantly to counter whatever amount of time we had off anyway and interestingly the year that i did my coach training my creditation i was out of the office for six six weeks during my training and that was back in the day where we didn't have an associate either it was ten so i was like

m

we're out we shut for six weeks we had our holidays and we also went to america den the year and that was the year we had our biggest turn over up until that point that year and it really yeah like i could have been sucked into thinking okay you've been out of your office for six weeks because you've been doing this program but it wasn't really a holiday because it was like studying immersion doing all our work to get our ncruentation coaching

amazing

but we still took a break on top of that and yet that still ended up being the busiest year by revenue that we had up until that point in time and and it showed me the power of focus it showed me the power of of concentrated effort and basically say i'm going to be her for next three weeks i'm goin i'm goin to basically put all of myself into this and they're going to be away and there's something about immersing yourself rather than just coasting

yeah i think it is that you know planning and in positioning andndbudgeting for it accordingly and your body universe i think how you operate well well budget for the rest of it as long as they are important to you and i think the other thing too as well as we kind of talk about that which is i feel like you know we got to recognize sort of where does those breaks need to happen we already talked about from the timing perspective what kind of breaks are you going to need to need to have we talked about that

yeah

designing those breaks we kind of talked about that and i think one of the most important things is to recognize like you know you got to really start to start dreaming about it too i guess that's where i want to want to go with his is like you know there might be things that you might not be doing this year but you want to plan ahead in the future and where would i like to go what are some of the top places i've always wanted to visit and then start like really put that in your brain to really start to go i want to imagine on a bucket list that i would like to go to one of these places one day and then how do you but once as soon as you write it down or put it down somewhere you kind of make that happen because in your brain now it's it's in the process and i think that's really important ike i remember i've been thinking to myself for a long time that i love to live in europe at some point in my life here i am right so i mean i didn't know how i don't know when i just you don't just put in there and when i was in school in canada i wrote down this is funny like i don't know if i told you this but i wrote down and like you know when we do you do some dreaming

yep yeah yeah

and stuff with me my friend jamie an sed to right down at lunch time we just like do this master mind every week and we broke down like our dream practice in a dream life and i wrote down this is what i wrote on i worked three days a week i will see this amount of patients and i would be my practice will be right on the water in the ocean i was in canada there are no oceans like was in tranto at least i wasn't in vancouver i wasn't on the east coast there was no ocean but somehow you know two

yeah yeah yeah

years later i ended up in australia i just have no thoughts about going to australia at the time and you know like it's amazing i'm not saying just like wishin come i'm not saying this at all what i'm saying is like you got to put these seeds in your brain to go like what do i want and you and then start thinking about how can i achieve that like what do i need to do or what do i need to start doing to kind of make to even have a chance of wanting to go to these places you know and why is that such an important thing

yeah well yeah yeah yeah

me and then some budget accordingly and ceding the mind and i think that that's really powerful based on what you just said to

yeah by he really hit home to about actually taking steps to manifest those two to fulfill those visions and those dreams as well because my my son was on a plane flight from he was flying from australia to paris must have been a few weeks ago probably two months ago and on the plane there was a lady she would have been in the seventies and the hostess is just talking to her and she said oh after have you been to paris before she says know my ted and i always planned on going and then the hostess is looking around she said well ted never made it you know so she was going to apparently son was to round the whole cabin area was just in tears the crying about this woman who was doing this trip on herself by herself trip that her husband always wanted to before one reason other never did and

m m

i think for me holidays have taken a different meaning because before they are a break from my day to day which allowed me to go back and do that so they've taken a different meeting now for me because to me the breaks are linked about adventure and i want to see things i want to optimize the time i have available to get to see all the things that i've wanted to see and do and experience i think so for me there's an appreciation that's come through travel as well that that i just love i love who i am i love expanding my capacity my awareness around things i love learning new things so holidays have taken a little bit more of a different meaning for me now than than they did ten years ago

yeah you know you're right and i just want to address that because i think it's such an important thing to you know i hear some people i wish i could have done that you know i really wanted to do that and you know the question is when you know and we and you know and it's never the right time and i think this is what i want to lead into which i wanted to say before which is limiting beliefs like we create these limiting beliefs in our in our heads we can't do that because of x and

yeah yeah yeah

because you start the brain thinking of what you can't do versus going well how can what could i do what like what is possible for me to accomplish what would it take for me to go to paris what would it take for me to go to australia what would it take to go wherever i just find that that's a really important question asked versus about like oh i can never do that well never is a long time and i think everything is possible in you know one of those things is that it's funny because i lived in australia for twenty years and the amount of time that you know some of the friends i had in canada would say oh yeah i'm going to come and visit you twenty years gone by and no one came right so it's like u know and then i'm no longer there so like you're definitely not coming you know like my brother you know my brother never made it no offense to my brother i'm not asking him to come back but he never made to australia right i was there for twenty years my parents lived there for ten and you know he never made it and

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

well i could for obvious reasons it's far whatever it's far you know the teacher so it's hard to kind of come in certain time but the end of the day it's like you can go now but i'm not there so you know i can't show you around on have to do on your own and so like there's this but we have these limiting beliefs right like we can't do this because of act and so the challenge to your rallies that kind of think about like what are some of the limiting release we have in our mind of why we can't we talk about some of them like oh i can't do it because my practice needs me or can't do this because my business needs me

yeah yeah

you know the business can't run by itself and these are just limiting beliefs that we talk about can never take six weeks off i remember i have one of my clients you know who we both know like you know a few years ago he said like lent i really love to take ten weeks off to go travel around australia i'm like okay let's make that happen now he didn't tell me like i want to take it off like next week or next month no no we have like six months or more to plan to make sure they got okay let's let's figure this out like how do we logistically make the bus

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah m

um be in a position and then like two years later he goes i'm going to take six months off i'm like okay right so let's let's how to make this work how are we going to make sure that this because six six months is a bit different than ten weeks but like we can we done it once so we can figure this out like how do we do that and he did a great job like just got back from things that everything go to plan accordingly but certain things we expected and some things we didn't expect but the whole idea is like you got to put it out there and you got to take the action

nice yeah yeah yeah yeah

but what's the worst now it's like like nothing collapsed like sure since certain things didn't go as well but you know what you know you can rescue it back and that's the thing we hold ourselves back and the thing is the missed opportunity though the missed opportunity is you miss it and you regret it and that's the pain the pain for me is the regret

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah totally you know what it's stuff is going to happen for life think nothing is always going to go to plan it's like adapt to innovate overcome that and it really hit home for me because you know this was the first time i've actually been to paris and and what took me so long to get there was i always had this idea in my mind when i get to paris i built it up as he i wanted to be awesome in be great on whatever and it was my brother had been to paris several times and he's going you're gonna come you're gonna come yeah i will come when i could and i just waited too long and i deprive myself of the beauty of a wonderful city all the great things that i took out of it purely because i had an idea or a narrow around how it needed to be in order for me to do that and i kind of you know a lot of us kind of get in our own way sometimes and there's certain things that i don't but that one i have to take ownership on and so waited too long to get to that place because i wanted to be perfect in my mind and i'd go to other places i did all these other things i love adventure but i didn't do the one that i really wanted to do because i wanted it to be a certain way

yep you there i think we just cut out there for a second i think what i heard from you was like you know you missed out you kind of delayed this and it's funny when i first moved to australia

yeh yeh yeh

i see this that's what affect a lot of people i think because you're so used to this we never really travel in our home town or home country sometimes because because we know it's always there it's always that well we'll get to it at some point and when we're going to australia he first time twenty years ago and people oh you know where you from i'm like i'm from canada because oh i love canada because oh you've been because yeah i love vancouver and like the amount of people that have been to vancouver like you know because obviously it's closer

yeah yeah

it's like it's ridiculous i love the seeing there i love that and i got to say my whole was probably bout twenty eight time twenty years i've never been to vancouver my whole life it's like i lived in that country like i'll get to it some day and i've never been i've never been i was like and then remember that one of the first flights i went back to canada like i said to care like okay this is getting a little bit ridiculous where we're canadians and we've never been to where most auzeshabeen and lived in we have to stop over in vancouver to say t least we've been to vancouver

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

you know and it's funny that and if you had to guarantee this is the same thing for most people's life it's like you typically won't travel or see the things that you feel like you can just do it at any moment right and you go as far to the end of the world sometimes to go see something else but you don't and it's the same thing right for for me when i come over here and people find out where from australia it's like australia it's like wow like you came all the way from australike why would you leave that place when it goes you know because for them it's like

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

magical place i'm like for me was home for twenty years i mean beautiful look i love australia main beaches mazing people but it's like i've done it like you know i mean so it's like for them it's a dream for me it's like it's where i live and i'm sure australians who travel feel exactly the same thing the same thing for me as bein canadians ike everybody loves canada like a you know done it like i lived there for most of my life it's like it's that thing i think sometimes we always going after something that's different which is what we're talking about like you got to challenge yourself i mean people in paris they're probably going like why do you

yeah yeah yeah yeah

come to paris i like it's beautiful but it's like i live there

everybody was saying australia i want to get there i want to get there so like but you know so it's ou know sometimes it's a perception of the grass is always greener on the other side and sometimes it is and you don't know until you go and check it out so so lawrence i think that we've high lighted i guess the need for why breaks are important we've highlight the need for i guess what different types of holidays they are we've highlighted what qutufnstops people from doing that i though

yeah yes yeah so important

perhaps as we start closing out on our episode today we might talk about like three things specifically what our favorite holiday destination may have been well okay this is what our favorite deston is what's our biggest learning and and where's the next spot we want to go and visit so bout you start and i literally gave myself i gave myself like ten seconds he had start communicating it to you so so favorite fame

i was gonna ask the same question nice oh so unfair so unfair okay so first question favorite destination i've ever been to man that's a tough one okay faorite destination so far i've met so many to choose from but i would pick i really enjoyed my european trip i'm gonna i'm gonna be sorry i'm gonna make a your pan trip rather than like i'm going to pick a whole bunch of the just because i'll tell you why sorry i make this way short and i don't know his point but i took my kids about four years ago to europe and we did three days in every single city we went from engle

destination yep okay yep

to paris to nice to venice to florence and that took a whole entire month and we did three days in each city and was like two full days of each day and one day to travel two full days it was one o the most magical experience i really loved venice it was magical i felt something which is magical there some people hated love it but for me i love it i love just getting lost in the city in venice and traveling and this is one of those things is like i recognized that if you go to venice if you find something you really like like in a store go by it because our never gonna find that freaking store again like it's like because it's just like such a windy thing and you're gonna get lost and i love getting lost in venice i didn't you know really with no google maps and so i just love that place and that was that was for me what about you

yep nice i loved my favorite place interesting ly contrast was both f g and w new york they've been my i love paris don't get me wrong was it was also but for the contrast i love it i love the culture of f g and the experience and perhaps one time when we've got chance i've got to share some of the funniest learning or the best learning i had in my life in some of the trips hat i've had there so

m yep

in new york have been probably my favorite yeah okay biggest learning through travel

yeah okay just some memories of japan i was only there for two days but i loved it but s gone what was the second question big as leaning from travel for me how much i love traveling like i love i just love culture i love i just love the different cultures i love you know i love being on planes i love just being by myself and men whether we ravel myself or travlngwith family i just love being on planes i love trying out new foods new restaurants and it uses me up just like something different that i cannot do tomorrow

yep yep yeah yeah yeah yeah i'd probably exactly same so let's go where a hundred percent match on that one so question number three next next spot you want to visit okay

m well it's kind o unfair because already know what my next holiday are gonna be well i'm i'm going to be on a one of croatia was one i'm gonna be on a super yacht with a bunch of friends and that's gonna be one but one of the places i've always wanted to visit i haven't got a chance to yet maybe i'm waiting for the perfect movement i'm not sure iceland i've always want to go to iceland i always want to go to the north and see the northern lights i hate the cold but somehow something is drawing me to go to iceland it's been on my bucket list for years you know you know we you were mentioning about like

yeah okay okay yep yeah

regrets and so i don't know why it's just it's been always been so far and stuff but i'm a little closer i just got to convince the right people to want to go there with me

i like it i like it and if it wasn't for a competing another event i probably would have been joining you in care there lawrence but for me the place that i want to get to is prugi'venever been prog and i'm fascinated by the architecture and the history and it's always been a place that i've always wanted to visit just purely for the beauty of the place and one of the only places that was preserved during the world war and it was never bumped so always had a fascination about this

yes m oh wow did not know that

so many places in the world there so many beautiful but that's the one i've always wanted to visit i'm really curious about its history and its architecture

fantastic well guys i hope that you enjoy this episode and hope that you take the most important thing i would think jim and i would love for you to do right now is actually go plan like your next you know two or three holidays in the next twelve months and go where would they be what would it look like and when would you do it and put that on a calendar and and talk to you significant others and your family and say like you know can we make this happen what does that look like and just dream and see what that takes you i hope that you enjoy this podcast and share this with other people because i feel like you know the better more people are actually being a better ver and themselves i think the world needs that and the world would be much that much better and you know and if you're on youtube or if you're on facebook or wherever you're watching this and you get a chance so maybe comment on maybe what is your favorite holiday destination or maybe where you would like to go it will give us some ideas maybe for us to go to go travel there too so

yeah