Removing what we don't need in life can free up more time & space for those things that bring us value. In this podcast I talk about how the simple act of clearing my wardrobe has been a catalyst to mental clarity and a renewed vision.
Removing what we don't need in life can free up more time & space for those things that bring us value. In this podcast I talk about how the simple act of clearing my wardrobe has been a catalyst to mental clarity and a renewed vision.
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Hello, roadmen. Welcome back to the A1Show podcast. Thanks for joining me. I've got an action-packed show and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it. Today, I'm going to talk a little bit further about stoic philosophy reading I've been doing and how it has major applicability to cycling. I want to talk about my daily vlog and what the hell I'm doing that. I want to talk about the first Irish win of the season. Happens to come on tour to force world tour or win in the season. Yep, it's that lad from Carrick again, it's Sam Bennett. So without pushing it off, I'm going to dive right in. So the daily vlog, the daily vlog, the daily vlog. Anyone who's watching this on YouTube, it's a handy watch for you guys because it's probably the video above or below. If you're on the podcast, you're going to have to jump over to YouTube and check out A1Coulchen to find the daily vlog. The daily vlog is a big commitment. The daily vlog is an intrusion into my personal life. The daily vlog is, you know, putting my dogs and my girlfriend and my friends on video, which can sometimes be annoying. And those people aren't always in the mood to have a camera, a trust in their face. So why am I doing this? I'm not even massive on New Year resolutions. I think if you want to make a change, the changes need to be made in real time and not wait for, you know, an arbitrary column their date. But nevertheless, there is something about the the calendar gives us a fresh hope and a renewed enthusiasm. And yeah, I wanted to capitalize on that. And I know a lot of our clients make new year resolutions as well. So a bit of a show of solidarity with the guys and girls making new year resolutions. I'd said I'd jump in and make one myself. So my resolution was to learn videography and photography. And I've been always so bad at learning stuff in the abstract. So I said, this is my chance. I'm not going to learn in the abstract. I'm going to employ it. I have a vehicle through the A1 YouTube channel to apply it straight away. And that's what I'm going to do. And that's what I have done. I think I'm up to episode of log number 11 or so. I didn't start on January 4th because I wasn't back to work on January 4th. But I've been pretty much every day since I got back. So yeah, it's been interesting. It's been exciting. It's hopefully been informative and entertaining for you. If you haven't checked it out, go and check it out. Right. What I want to talk to you about is my journey to eliminate stuff from my life. It kind of rose out of my stoic reading that I've been going through a lot of reading Marcus Aurelius meditations. And the book by Ryan Holiday, his most recent one, stillness is the key. So, I want a journey to eliminate stuff this year. It's not a new year resolution, it's just something that I'm finding myself doing this year. So, I'm trying to eliminate things. Some people are put a tag as minimalism on this. Some people put a tag as sensualism on it. I don't think the tag is quite as important as the action. And I think sometimes when we get hung up in them isms, minimalism, essentialism, it actually loses a lot of meaning and then, you know, I was vegan for a little bit. And I know when I was vegan for a little bit, if you went to a barbecue, I wasn't vegan for moral reasons, I was vegan for performance reasons, I was trying to minimize inflammation, I was experimenting with it. But if I went to a friend's barbecue and he was cooking sausage and his burgers, I'd have a burger because I had no moral objection to eating meat. But you know, you get people thrust in the back of your face, oh, you can't be a vegan if you have a burger once every six months, you can be whatever you want to be. The strict definitions aren't necessary. So the same as we go through this, it's important to keep that in mind. What do you want to call it? Minimalism essential, what's that mouthful, isn't it? It's home twist or minimalism, essentialism or anything in between. So it's the idea of removing things that don't bring value to your life out of your life. So this is just getting rid of non-essential stuff from your life.
There's a couple of reasons why this is beneficial straight off the bat. It's very easy on your pocket. Like you're going to save money when you stop bringing stuff into your life that you don't need and question whether it's actually necessary. You're going to clarify what's actually important to you by removing this stuff. And you're going to allow more time to spend on pursuits that you enjoy, more time spend with friends, more time spending with family. So the whole doctrine kind of stems from an ancient economist. And a phrase known as conspicuous consumption. So conspicuous consumption, It's the spending of money on or acquiring luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power. So I would contend that the sort of modern version of that, our decisions are motivated by status and our decisions are motivated by improving our status. So we take a decision to buy a new bike based on if it's going to improve our status among our peers. Are people likely to think I'm doing well and work? Are people likely to think I'm successful? I have it together. If I can spend this money on a new bike, if I can spend this money on a new car, if I can live in this big fancy house, it's motivated by what other people think. But we can't control what other people think. We can't make people be impressed by our new house. We can't make people be impressed by our new car. It's up to them whether they're impressed or not. We'd be much better off taking that time and that energy that we're putting into trying to impress others and just trying to find out why we have peace and so it is that needs to impress people. And by working on that, it's a much shorter route to happiness. Great podcast. It's worth listening to. It's called minimalists. And they're kind of redefining what it is because when you think minimalist, you do have a preconception of some dude who has one cup one fork and he's pretty miserable because he doesn't own any clothes It doesn't have to be that as I said it can be many different varieties in between but how it's taken Shape for me so far this year. I've paired down my wardrobe completely So thrown out absolutely bags of clothes and I've kept two pairs of jeans I've kept one gray pair of jeans and I've kept one black pair of jeans and I've kept one pair of jeans shorts So, three pairs of items for wearing, and then I've kept about four T-shirts, and I've kept, I think, two hoodies. This is coming down from 40 or 50. Haven't gone through my cycling wardrobe yet. That's next. That's next to go. I've absolutely hundreds of cycling jerseys, hundreds of cycling bottoms. They're all gone in the bin. The reason why it was a little bit of experimental, my casual wardrobe, whether I was going to roll it out or whether I was even going to tell you guys about it, kind of depended on the success of it. But it's been brilliant for me. It's been absolutely brilliant. What I found is I almost have a mental clarity or more mental piece with it. I wake up in the morning and I don't have to worry about what I'm going to wear because I just don't have that many choices. I normally have one pair of jeans in the wash and one in the closet and I'm just on that route out of wash and don't worry I have plenty of socks and jocks I didn't show on them out so yeah personal hygiene is still important. So I one pair in the wash one pair on the go and this is a router that's kind of working for me super well so I just wake up in the morning and I don't have these choices and it's just when we're absolutely bombarded with choices we get decision fatigue and we've seen there's very famous examples of people who wear the same thing every day and they They just have four pairs of the same jeans, four pairs of the same t-shirt or four sets of the same t-shirt. Maybe I will go in that direction eventually, but from now I'm kind of enjoying the variety of having a couple of different t-shirts, a couple of different hoodies, a couple of pairs of jeans. As I say, it's fine then what works for you in this whole thing. And this sort of I'm calling it a journey towards essential living because was the 40 hoodies I had? Were they all essential? Absolutely not.
Where they're making me any happier, absolutely not. Actually quite the opposite because I'd have to draw through, you know, draw after draw to find my favorite hoodie. And I found my probably only wardest aim to hoodies all the time, the two I kept, so to rest they're gone. So it's that journey towards essential living. And that means you're starting to question stuff that you're bringing into your life. You know, do you need new cycling kit? Do you need a new bike? Do you need new wheels? If the answer is yes, there's absolutely no problem. It's essential. You're bringing it into your life. It's bringing you happiness. It's bringing you joy. It's essential. But if you're just getting it to consume because it's not necessary, I guarantee it'll be a fleeting happiness. And that fleeting happiness, once it dissipates, all it's gonna leave is a hole in your bank account and it's gonna sit in the closet, gather and dust. So, but you're starting to make those deliberate decisions. We take back control. It starts in the wardrobe, it extends to life. We take back control, we take back control of our choices. You know, so many of our choices are we don't make them deliberately, we make them on autopilot, we make them by a mission, by failure to make a choice. You know, think about the typical career trajectory that we take out from school. You get certain points in your leaving cert, so you go down at a certain track. You know, for me it was into law. Coming out the fire, saw it a law, you're expected to get a job. out the first time I started a job you're expected to find someone to settle down. After that you're expected to have kids, expected to have a family. And that's all fine if you're deliberately choosing that, that's the deliberate life you're making for yourself. But if you're not choosing that and you're letting someone else choose it for you, society's determined in the past that you're gone. And the problem is, it's, there's always happiness is always just down the line. Happiness is always, once I graduate I'll be happy. Once I meet someone that I love I'll be happy. Once I get that job, I'll be happy. Once I get promotion, I'll be happy. Happiness is like, it's a carrot on the end of a stick and you can never quite get that carrot because no matter where you get happiness is always down the line. So this idea of essentialism, it's taken back control of that and saying, you know what, I have everything right now I need to be happy. Happiness isn't a someday pursuit for me. Happiness is something that's attainable and achievable right now with the tools I have with the place I am in my life right now I don't need anything else to be happy I don't need anything else to validate me I don't need the new car so my neighbor I'll think I'm super successful right now I have all the tools at my disposal I need to be happy it's all good it was deep it's all good it was deep so who knew starting to throw out some of your stuff in the wardrobe was actually a journey towards you know taking back control your life and just stop being a passenger or a prisoner or ever way you want to phrase it in your journey through life. I heard it was a Joe Rogan podcast I was listening to and Joe Rogan had a great analogy. One of the best pieces of advice I heard, I know some people hate non Joe Rogan because he's become so popular in the last 12 months but Joe Rogan has some nuggets. One of the ones he was saying is you should live your life like you're the hero in your own movie. So starting right now, you're writing this movie, you're the director. This movie can go any direction you want. Start it, start writing this movie, start scripting the hero's journey. So right now, you're the hero. Where do you want to go? What's the hero? What adventures is the hero gonna have? What crazy exploits is the hero gonna live true. And at the end of your life, if you can look back on this movie and proudly say, you know, I was badass. That was some fucking enjoyable stuff. That was a great life. I made contribution. I had meaning. I had connections and I had fun along the way. You know, that's a movie you weren't watching. If you have a look when you get to the end of the road and you look at this movie and you're embarrassed and you're apologetic and you're like, that was a boring ass movie.
I sat at home the same thing for 30 years. no adventure outside of work, I know meaningful connections with family because it's destructive, it's stupid shit like social media. You know it's not gonna be a movie you're gonna enjoy, it's gonna be a box office flop. So start now, script them and create your box office sensation movie. I think there's a Helen Keller quote where she said, life is either a daring adventure or noting it all. And I think that's a great mantra to I know we're at the point in the new year, what are we, January 22 or 24 or something. And I think it's January 19 or 20. It's typically the day when most people break their new year resolutions. So we're just past that. But what an amazing mantra to take into the new year. Take into the real part of the new year because it's a bullshit part of the new year to be in and because everybody's like, yo, I'll never go to gym seven days a week and I'm gonna have a six pack by February. You know, those ambitions, they're trivial, they're transient. So now we can start getting into meaningful stuff from the people who actually are serious about making change, control their hands up and say, yeah, I'm gonna start making change now. So this is the championship quarter. It's where we're gonna make meaningful change. It's starting around now. It's not the early periods of January. Imagine you took that mantra and you lived on it for the rest of the year. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. What sort of mad stuff could you do? Like we're living in a true and unprecedented era with the internet, with the ability to work remotely, with the ability to just dream whatever you want into reality, any career you want into reality. You know, I have a talk show, I have a talk show on the radio and you're listening to it right now. How absolutely crazy is that? Like if I had a set to my career guidance counselor, yeah, my job is gonna be, I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna talk Torf to a load of lads on the internet and this is how I'm gonna make my money, I'm gonna squander away my law degree. he would have said, get the bow here and locked up. This is a ridiculous thing to do. But you know what, I love talking to her, I love talking cycling and I thank you for listening and making that possible. So here's a really cool exercise I want you to try. So if you're in the car, you have my permission to pause this and pull over, try and take out an old-scale pen and paper. They don't do this on your phone. I don't know, there's something cool and there's something nice about the tactile nature of pen and paper, writing something to smell of it or something or the way you can touch the paper. I don't know. I want you to write on one side of the page your Sunday list. So, Sunday you would, you know, I'm gonna try and run the stuff that would be just cool to do. Someday I would like to live on my own terms. So, get up whenever I want, got a bed whenever I want to not have anyone telling me where I have to be at what times all day. Someday I would like to live in your own. Someday I would like to own an RV and travel the world in a someday. I would like to lose 10 kilograms someday. I would like to do gravel races in Europe someday. I would like to have a deeper more meaningful connection with my partner someday I would like to listen to my dad's all stories. So these are a lot of some day things common, some of them I and some of them are just common things I hear people saying that some day they'd love to do. Now on the backside of that paper, let's get you out everything you've done today. So you got up, you had breakfast that probably wasn't too healthy for you, you jumped into the car, stuck in traffic, went to work, took shit orders from someone you didn't like listen to, scrolled mindlessly through social media, stuck in the car again, more traffic, frustration, got home, ate some bad food, told yourself you'd exercise but didn't watch some mindless Netflix went to bed again scrolling on your phone while half heartily engaged in conversation with your partner. So that's your Someday list versus your today list.
Now can you see the problem? The Someday list it's never going to happen. Our actions today aren't calibrated towards success. For us to hit that Someday list, we need to set up abdominal. This is what we try and do with our clients. We say, okay, your goal is, it's crossing the finish line at the end of the whole shoot. Your current fitness level is, we assess it from a test. And then we say, okay, so today's session, it's lined up. So all you got to do is do today's session, and that starts off a chain reaction. It starts off momentum that you complete today's session. That means you hit the weekly goal. It means means you'll hit the monthly goal means you'll hit the quarterly goal means you're going to achieve success eventually that's what we need to do in life that's what we need to do so are some day goals someday I want to you know what whatever on the one someday I want to live in Gerona so if that's your someday goal let's work it backwards let's build it backwards and go okay if that's my someday goal let's put a date on it so say at the end of the year okay so what are the roadblocks so we call an escape arrival framework so what we'd like to arrive at is Gerona. What I'd like to escape from is my current living situation. So now what are the KPIs along the way? Okay, I need to earn XML each month to make this happen. I need to get my partner on board so she's gonna have to leave her job to make this happen. I need to set up a life for myself over at our apartment house so then you break down each of them into steps and you make sure you build some of these necessary steps and action points into your daily routine because if you're not building this stuff into your daily routine, the someday is never going to happen. The someday isn't the someday list. It's a dream list. It's a wish list. It's stuff that you'll say to yourself, oh, if circumstances were better, I'd do this. But in all honesty, you won't. It's something you just write down and you think, just make yourself sleep a little bit easier at night. But if that's your reality, and it may not not for your reality, but if that is your reality, now is the wake up call. It was deep, it was heavy. And that's what I've got from the Stoic reading and I've taken, you know, I'm not sitting here saying to you guys that I'm the finished article that I have all this stuff right. It's a journey and it's lessons I'm learning as I go along and I'm making some right moves and I'm making some wrong moves. But hopefully I'm starting to get the tools to when I realize I'm making a wrong move to pause, reflect and adjust my direction and start calibrating actions towards my ultimate destinations. Some fascinating insights into Inroyn Hallley's book, still in this the key, well worth picking up, along with that minimalist podcast I recommend this. Because if you are watching on YouTube, just take one second, hit the like button and hit the subscribe button and drop me comments down below. Big goal this year is starting to grow out as YouTube channel and if you're over on the the podcast definitely jump across and check out the YouTube. And if you're on podcast, actually keep hitting them reviews because the reviews are brilliant on the podcast and I'm really enjoying reading them. So keep walking those in really appreciate it. Guys the world tour season has kicked off in earnest to our down under stage one began yesterday and well, there's a, there's the prelude to the, the crit that's on the day before is kind of the prelude to it, but I don't think it's classified. I don't think it's classified as a world tour event, but then anyway that was taken by Caleb Yoon as Bennett was caught in a crash in the final lap and he was kind of fired back and he didn't come up But I'm gonna say for dramatic purposes and because I'm massive Irish bias that Bennett won the opening one day the opening world tour race of the season So shop host Sam Bennett and Sam Bennett obviously a lot of pressure coming on his shoulders coming into the corner quick step and he won today's stage into a tundah, I'm going to say it was called. Bunch sprint in the end. Actually, Ladda used to race against a lot, Joey Roscoe.
He was riding for a hinkap, he was riding for a Stellus in the States, done battle against the lad many times. He's a good guy and a great boy grider, he was up the road for most of the day and a four-man break and then he attacked him and went solo and took a load of the KOM points where he was eventually real back in by a very organised and motivated quick step. As we'd expect there were dominant glasses and the wolf pack started really left off. Bennett, I'm sure he could have got extra cash somewhere else but a chose where his motivation is. Bennett has a few years now to win some of the biggest bike races in the world and really pull his stamp on history. And yeah he done it in style, didn't disappoint. Elio Koyza, piloted them really well in the close in kilometers and then we had it to finish line. Bennett fastest, Phillips and from UAE was second, Basca was toward Viviani, boxed in a little bit forward and Greipel, Evergreen Greipel in fifth place and it was interesting to see Darrel Impy earlier in the race and Darrel Impy was you know trying to defend his title. I'm just trying to pull up here as I'm talking the quote from San Benet Darrel Impy trying to defend this title and trying to take some bonus seconds both. Yeah, we have the Richie Port coming out this week and saying that he was going to melt quite a concerted effort this year for the Tour Down Under. So that is going to be super interesting to see how it kind of unfolds. But Bennett's after the race, he was quick to he prays on the kind of quickstep team. He said, I think it was definitely a job of the team. I think it's the reason why I won today. I'd be lying if I didn't feel the pressure come to the the iconic quick step to get the first win. The guys did an absolutely fantastic job. They kept me in position. Everyone who employed a superb role today and I can't thank them enough. Bennett is always very fast to tank his team and he's always very humble in defeat and victory. Big fan of Bennett here on the show. I was saying last week when I was in New York on the vlog that I'm going to get Chris Yoliansson most likely as a guest this week so I'm gonna touch base and I'm safe it works logistically for him he's at a training camp at the moment in Sicily so hopefully we can get him when internet connections work. Chris Yeol Jansen I'm gonna say one of the most Irish men in the peloton raced a lot at under edge here in Ireland so he's a cool lad he's an interesting guy and it's always great having guys with the Irish connection and a world tour pedigree. Guys I hope you've enjoyed the A1 show podcast. I hope you enjoyed watching on YouTube. Let us know how you're enjoying that because this is in new edition. It's been rolling along. I think what are we, we're into like 50 episodes deeper so on the podcast on traditional podcast platforms, but we're only episode two. We're actually putting the video up on YouTube. So definitely in its experimental stages. I love doing the podcast. It's my favorite medium. I get to waffle and I get to, you know, I get to really drive home a message. It's a why I'm still cycling when I talk some time to clarify it and I really boil it down to one question. It's how can I use cyclers to improve my health, my happiness and my longevity. And that's what I try and dig into in this podcast in depth and I give you the insights and I'm lucky enough that I have time in my hands that I can get through a lot of books and I can listen to a lot of podcasts out on the bike train and I try and distill that information and give it back to you guys the most important stuff that I'm finding that's having an impact on me and changing the way I live and shape in new directions for me. So I hope you've got benefit from it and I'm gonna chat to you in the next episode. Thanks for watching.
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