Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] The only way to success.
[00:00:07] Do you want to know the truth or do you want to live in a fantasy about what it takes to be successful in anything? Would you rather know the truth or do you want to have ideas in your head that aren't real?
[00:00:18] We have to sort of have the honest conversation with ourselves about this because there's lots of false information around. And if we are living our life on the basis of fraudulent ideas, we will be very upset. And like building your house on the sand versus on rock. Right.
[00:00:44] So many people are under the impression that they have to get everything just right, feel good, do everything just right before they can take any action, and only after everything's taken care of, then they'll get success. This is awful idea. Also, some people think they can just imagine what they want and it will just come to them without doing any work.
[00:01:06] Which is. I wrote a book about this, why the law of attraction doesn't work for most people. And one of the reasons is that people often can't visualize what they want and feel good anyway. And the second thing is they don't do anything.
[00:01:20] And any law of attraction teachers, if you actually look at their life, you will see that they took action every day because we're living in the world and you can't help it.
[00:01:32] So are you ready to understand the only real practical way to achieve success in what you want?
[00:01:41] All right, hopefully you said yes. If you don't want to hear about it, you can just stop listening to this and do something else. So here's what it comes down to.
[00:01:52] The only way we get good at something is through doing the best we can in the moment, with the time we have, and then learning from our experience. So in other words, we have to take action and then learn from the result.
[00:02:19] This applies to anything.
[00:02:21] So, for example, let's say you're learning how to play the piano.
[00:02:25] You start by putting your fingers on the keys. You might have a piano teacher who says, okay, put that, your thumb on this one and your finger on that one and just hit them at the same time. All right? You go, okay. Boom.
[00:02:37] Okay. No, no, that wasn't quite right. Do it again. Right. So you get feedback and you do it again. Let's do a scale. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. No, no, you missed that one here. Not your fingers in the place. And then you do it again, and then you do it again, and then you do it again, and then you do it again. The people who are experts in something have done whatever they're doing hundreds of thousands of times, right? Anyone who is a master, they have done something, got feedback, refined it a little bit, done something again, got feedback, refined it a little bit.
[00:03:13] And this has gone on and on and on and on and on. Like figure skaters, the Olympic figure skaters, the ones who do the beautiful dance, figure skating, great magical dancing type skating, doing these huge flips and jumping around in the air, just so graceful, right?
[00:03:32] They've fallen on their bum, on their ass thousands and thousands of times. They've fallen over on the ice, on the hard ice, and then they've got back up, and then they did it again, and they fell over, and they did it again. They fell over, they did it again thousands of times.
[00:03:53] People who get good at writing emails, they wrote an email, they sent the email, they got feedback, wrote another email, they sent an email.
[00:04:00] This is basically how it works. The iPhone came out. It was. It was better than anything else at the time, but it had all kinds of problems.
[00:04:10] Then they made it better second time round, and they made it better third time round, fourth time, fifth time, fifth time, you know, and now it's become this highly addictive thing that everyone has because it's gone through so many iterations.
[00:04:25] There is a Japanese word for this, kaizen, Kaizen, which means gradual incremental improvements.
[00:04:36] And kaizen is basically what we're talking about here. It's the secret to success.
[00:04:41] You do something, you learn from it, and you do it just a little bit better, 1% better, half percent better, and then you do it again and make it slightly better, do it again and make it slightly better.
[00:04:53] Kaizen is the secret to everything.
[00:04:59] And most people just don't do kaizen. They either refuse to take action, or they refuse to get feedback and learn from the feedback, and they refuse to try and make it any better next time, but they're just totally stuck. So if you understand this, this word, kaizen, gradual incremental improvements. It's actually very relaxing because it just means you need to be tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, little bit better each time. And you also feel more relaxed about doing things because you realize the only way to get what you want is by doing it. Learning, doing it, learning, improving. And just keep at it like that.
[00:05:41] Kaizen. Write that down. K A I, Z E N. Kaizen.
[00:05:48] Do you know how AI is trained?
[00:05:51] It's a classic example of kaizen at work.
[00:05:55] And often it goes through trillion trillion iterations. A trillion trillion. That's more than all the stars in the known universe, right?
[00:06:07] So for the model to actually end up working.
[00:06:11] It has a trillion, trillion iterations, right? It's kaizen at the extreme level.
[00:06:22] I'll give you a real simple understanding. AI is based on weights.
[00:06:26] And what are these weights?
[00:06:30] So imagine you're teaching a child to recognize dogs in pictures, right? You think, that's a dog, that's a cat, right? The child needs to figure out which clues matter most, that something is a dog, rather than a table or a cat or a giraffe.
[00:06:49] So weights are like important scores to the child, assigned to different cues, right?
[00:06:55] So does it have fur? Might be 80% important. Does it have four legs? That's maybe 70% important. Does it have a collar? Maybe that's 10% important.
[00:07:07] So the numbers, the weights tell the AI which features to pay attention to and how much weight should they give to each feature.
[00:07:15] So how iteration works is that they get the weight, then they get this enormous amount of training data. And AI is all about guessing the next word right, or guessing the next pixel.
[00:07:28] So how iteration works is the first guess in the child analogy is that the child sees a picture and guesses, dog, but it's actually a cat because it's got four legs, right? Think, oh.
[00:07:41] And then you say, no, no, that's not right. And the child adjusts there, thinking, hmm, maybe pointy ears aren't as important as I thought. And this is all happening in the back of their mind. The next guess, they see another picture and guess again, and you tell them if they're right or wrong.
[00:07:58] And if you repeat this enough times, each time that they're wrong, they adjust the importance of the scores, the weight slightly until they now have got the feedback and the insights. They need to know the difference between a cat and a dog and a donkey and a moose, right? And a chair and a table.
[00:08:20] So we're actually doing this all the time. That's how we learn anything through iteration.
[00:08:27] Like, think about cooking.
[00:08:29] If you're good at cooking, maybe you screwed up a bunch of times, you put way too much salt in. Or you didn't put any salt in, you put way too much spices in. Or do you know, you learn, don't do this, do this. This is roughly the right amount of this. This is the right amount of that.
[00:08:44] You put it on too long, didn't leave it in long enough.
[00:08:49] All these things happen over time through iteration.
[00:08:56] So that is basically the only way we achieve success. And perfectionism and fear are so toxic and also laziness because it's not just perfectionism, it's fear. Of failure, fear of success, fear of this, and also just, frankly being lazy. We can't be bothered to do the iteration.
[00:09:18] If we have perfectionism, fear, or laziness, we won't be able to do something which then gives us feedback, which then would allow us to learn and make it better.
[00:09:36] So what is the only way to win, the only way to success?
[00:09:42] Learning, taking action, putting it out there, then getting feedback, learning from the feedback, and then making it a little bit better.
[00:09:59] What normally happens is we either refuse to share anything out of perfectionism, which then makes it impossible to get feedback, or we get feedback and we don't improve anything.
[00:10:17] So, for example, if you're learning how to play an instrument, you can play the instrument at the level that you're at and not actually improve, or you can push yourself to try things slightly differently and make it a bit better. That's why we need coaches and teachers and people helping us. Otherwise, we're stuck in a limited place.
[00:10:45] Does that make sense? Like, I have a piano teacher who, frankly, I haven't been talking to enough because I'm so busy, but I want to learn how to play Claire de Lune, right? What a beautiful song. If you know what I'm talking about, you can listen to it on somewhere. Claire de Lune, just gorgeous piece. Now, it's way beyond my skill set, but I thought, let me have a crack at it, and I'm gonna figure out how to play it, and it's gonna be iteration after iteration, doing it piece by piece.
[00:11:19] But that's how anything works, right? So you have to ask the question, are you willing to, first of all, learn what to do and then secondly, do the thing as best you can.
[00:11:31] Thirdly, put it out there, actually share it, because if it's just in your head, it doesn't count. It has to go out.
[00:11:40] And then are you willing to receive feedback?
[00:11:46] So you look at the numbers, you look at the comments, you get feedback. Or you can just look at what you've done, and then are you willing to make slight improvements based on what you've got feedback about?
[00:12:05] And then are you willing to do it again without getting disheartened that that's literally the process?
[00:12:14] This is exactly what, for example, Facebook, they brought out a product, it was pretty good.
[00:12:20] Nothing like what we have now. And then they got feedback, and then they changed it. Then they got more feedback and they changed it. More feedback, changed it, More feedback, changed it.
[00:12:31] And now it's this billion, billion, massive, huge company that's taken over the world, right? All these massive businesses because of this process.
[00:12:45] So it's the same for spiritual practice, it's the same for writing books, podcasts, coaching, marketing, meditation, piano, everything, right? This is only one thing. That's just how it works. It's how children learn. It's how AI learns. There aren't any exceptions to this.
[00:13:03] So we can either come to terms with that and get on board with it and use that, or we can argue with this and stay stuck.
[00:13:18] So now you know. Now you know what the deal is, right? You have heard this and you can't unhear it. Now you understand exactly what's going on. You. So you can look at your life. Where are you at right now?
[00:13:33] Are you in a situation where you are learning, applying, putting it out there, getting feedback, upgrading, and doing it again and again and again? Or are you stuck in not doing anything?
[00:13:48] Because if you are, then now you know how to get out of it. How you get out of it is that you learn a bit more, take action, get feedback and keep refining. This is why we need coaches, we need training, we need ways of learning how to improve what we're doing.
[00:14:05] Because even if you do something and you get feedback, if you don't understand what the feedback means, and if you don't understand how to improve it, then it's not very useful, right? So now you understand the means to get there. The second thing is, how do you actually use the feedback and how do you actually improve what you're doing?
[00:14:32] So in a marketing sense, for example, if you send out messages and you get loads of unsubscribes, then you can think, well, what is the reason for that? Did they not like it? Or that? Do I have the wrong people on the list? You have to think, what does that mean? You know, that's why it's useful to talk to people who know what they're doing.
[00:14:50] Or if you put a bunch of meditations out there and it turns out that one of them has 10 times more listens than any of the other ones, then you can think, well, why is that?
[00:15:04] What can I learn from this?
[00:15:08] I have literally hundreds of thousands of reviews for my meditations and common feedback, which I've learned from is the music is too loud.
[00:15:24] Because, you know, everyone's different, right? Some people, they can't handle too much music. They can't hear what I'm saying easily for some reason, because it's too loud for them. Other people, they think it's fine. So I've learned to put the music lower because otherwise I Get these complaints.
[00:15:42] I had an interesting comment recently. I'll just read it to you.
[00:15:46] So here's a. Here's a few meditations, right?
[00:15:51] First one, five stars. Really good meditation. Thank you for this. Right? Not really feedback. It's just saying that she likes it. Okay, great.
[00:15:58] Next one. This felt so peaceful, light and healing. Thank you. Okay, great. So that's working out. Next one. Help me slowly move into my day. Thank you.
[00:16:10] Now, here's the one I was going to read you.
[00:16:15] So much was nice, but I couldn't get through it because I was distracted every time he said a word ending in ing, being willing, softening the extra syllable made it impossible to drop in. I realize I am extra sensitive and it's probably just me, but if it's possible in the future to watch pronunciation, it will help those of us with these peculiarities last for the whole session.
[00:16:55] This first time I've ever received this. So if I say, imagine you're being in a state of peace, she would rather I said, imagine you're being in a state of peace. Imagine you're living.
[00:17:08] And cut the end. Right?
[00:17:12] Being, living.
[00:17:15] She doesn't like that.
[00:17:16] Living, being.
[00:17:19] That's just like when. I don't know how you're saying it.
[00:17:23] Breathing.
[00:17:26] No one else has ever mentioned this. Right? Now maybe you're going to notice it. I never noticed it. I didn't know that was even happening.
[00:17:33] Didn't notice it was even happening.
[00:17:36] Happening.
[00:17:37] Right? So these sorts of things, this is what I'm talking about. With iteration, I can try to get rid of that extra syllable. I'm not sure it's necessary because no one else has ever said this, but why not? Right? Because she's obviously a little bit disturbed.
[00:17:52] So there's all kinds of stuff like this, right? And it can potentially throw us off into more perfectionism if we can let it get the better. Oh, I can't. I can't do any more meditations. Even though I've got 75,000 five star reviews and millions of plays, I should stop because my syllables, being, speaking, listening, have an extra syllable at the end. So therefore I should just cancel it and never do any more. Like, I don't want that to get the better of me. So you have to take the feedback with a pinch of salt. Right?
[00:18:27] But we do need to take the iteration, the feedback seriously, otherwise we won't improve and we're never going to get anywhere if we don't publish things.
[00:18:42] And we also have to keep in mind that whenever we do something new, there's a certain momentum that has to be built up so that you might not even get much feedback for quite some time. Because unless enough people see something or unless you do it long enough, you don't know what you're doing. And in, in any sort of research, you need a minimum of 100 people to get any kind of relevant information. So unless you have a sample size of 100, minimum, absolute minimum, you can't really make any clear decisions because it could be idiosyncrasies. The idiosyncrasies sort of get ironed out with larger sample sizes. So if you, if you did something where 10,000 people saw it, you're going to get much better feedback than if you send it to three of your friends.
[00:19:36] So I don't want to get too technical about this, but the point is, learn, do something, publish it, get feedback, take it with a pinch of salt, but also be willing to adjust. Then you adjust. Then you do it again. Then you adjust, you do it again.
[00:19:53] Iteration is the only way you get better.
[00:19:59] Learn and improve.
[00:20:01] Act, learn, improve, act, learn, improve, act, learn. Improve on every area for the rest of your life.
[00:20:12] That's what it comes down to. That's what it comes down to. Whether it's meditation or sharing a work or writing a book or having a conversation or doing a group or whatever it is, right?
[00:20:22] There's always room for little upgrades. And the good news is that you can get 1% better or even half a percent better, and that ends up totally changing your life.
[00:20:34] Does that make sense? You don't have to become 10 times better right away. You don't even have to become twice as good. You just get slightly tiny, tiny, tiny amount better and that's enough.
[00:20:46] I'd love to hear your comments about this. What did you learn? Have you been doing this? Or have you been holding back?
[00:20:53] Have you done this in some areas of your life already and got better at it? Think about it, like, whether it's food, relationships, you know, whatever, there's all these different types of life. I'm sure you've done this in some area already and now you're better at that thing.
[00:21:07] And what would happen if you did the same process to the things that you're stuck on?
[00:21:13] How would that improve your life?
[00:21:15] Thanks for listening, sending you so much love, and look forward to hearing your feedback on this session. What did you learn? Let me know.
