Insights from the First Episodes, Reflecting on the Real One Percenter Journey

Hey, everybody and welcome to how to be a real 1%er. This is a podcast where we discuss keys to achieving your greatest potential in life while also remaining authentic to who you really are and being genuinely happy within yourself in the process. Today we've got quite a special episode. We've had some amazing guests through the first episodes of this podcast and they've shared some really powerful insights. So today we're going to take a few of the real key moments of some of these early podcasts, and we're going to explore them more deeply. My desire for you, if you're watching this podcast, is not just to hear other people's insights that make you feel good for a moment or two, but rather to be able to apply something in your own life towards your own real 1% journey and living your greatest life. So we're going to start with our first snippet from our first guest, Matt Cross and he shared a really powerful insight that we're going to take a listen to now and then we'll come back and explore a bit more deeply in just a moment.

"I had to move away from identifying as what I was doing for my job, and ultimately it's a tricky one because a lot of people see me in that role and a lot of people don't see me. There's only, you know, you can count on two hands people who know me in-depth away from my roles, so for me that's been the biggest—well, one of the biggest learnings from the work that you and I have done to be able to get into that kind of 1% mindset and get away from identifying as, for me, a race caller. And going on the other hand and actually just identifying as Matt Cross."

Wow, we really appreciate you sharing that because that's just such an important thing. You know, a lot of people look at people in your position, what you've got, particularly at such a young age. And I know that's been something people talk to you about, which is completely awesome. But I think people don't realise sometimes the pressure that comes with it or from that young age.

I think WOW is the word for that. Like what a way to start the podcast and an insight. You know, when we go to a party or we're meeting somebody new, what's the first question that they ask us or we asked them, right? It's not "What are your interests" or "What do you do across your life?" It's "What do you do?" What do you do? And we all know what that means. What do you do for your job? What do you do for your living? And we've been conditioned that we are what we do and it was really interesting. I hope you go back and watch that episode of Matt, if you haven't seen it because we really delve deeply. But for today we want to explore that, because what does that do to us and how does that stop us potentially from living our greatest life?

Matt shared a story on that podcast, so for those of you that may not know Matt, he's a highly successful race caller, horse racing caller in New Zealand. He's on the TV, he calls a lot of the races and achieved an amazing dream at a very, very young age to be a lead race caller in New Zealand where we live. He shared just prior to that comment, he was talking about one of the insights that he got from our work. And it was when he contacted me, he had just gone through Cup Week. Cup Week is the biggest week of horse racing in Christchurch, New Zealand, really one of the biggest ones in the country. And Matt in his role was the centre of attention for that—the race caller, the TV presenter for that, doing a lot of the presenting.

We had a talk after that because when he contacted me he just said, "Look, I'm really feeling flat" and when we delved into it, it was like he had this cup where he was at the pinnacle of what he was doing and all eyes were on him. He was on this real high. And of course, when that got over, he got on this low. I work with a lot of highly successful people and performers, and this is a common thing that they experience—once that show is over, once they're presenting or where they're the centre of attention is over, the opposite happens and they go to a real crash because it goes from all to nothing, and it's what's left.

Whether we're in the public eye or whether we're just identified as our job or our business, it has a real detrimental impact in that we can go in those highs and those lows. Matt's insight was incredible. Just saying, you know, how do you move away from that? Because I remember when Matt contacted, he was like "I just went from this extreme high to this extreme low" and he knew that that didn't feel good. So that's what led to the discussion: "Is that you? Is that your identity on that screen or is that just something that you're doing, and once you're done doing that, you're doing something else?" That led to the conversation between Matt Cross, the race caller and Matt Cross, the human being.

I think there's something we could all really benefit from: separating the roles from who we are. I work with so many people, whether it be performers or business owners or people that are in their jobs or even families that identify by that role that they do. But that's not who you are. That's not who we are. We're the person doing it and there's so much more to us than that scenario or what it is that we're doing in this case for a living. And once we have that, we can just enjoy what we're doing when we're doing it and then when it's time to move away from that, we can enjoy the next thing that we're doing. I think that was one of the most powerful things I took out of Matt's episode was moving from Matt, this young man who had achieved something extraordinary in his life at a very young age, to Cross the human being that was able to enjoy that and then move on from there.

I know in my own experience, it's a really powerful thing that happened for me some years ago. I was really struggling. I was in a place where the business that I was in was facing some challenges. It got to the point where my mind triggered, "it could fail," right? And I just remember being consumed by this, like, I couldn't fail because what did that mean about me? I'm just so thankful that I've got work that I can apply mindset techniques and questions I can ask myself to get out of these states.

It was a powerful one. I've remembered to this day. It was a long time ago when I did it. But I remember it because I was looking at reframing what we're doing, and what I was believing was that if this doesn't work out, I'm this big failure. And I remember as I reframed it, I just remember as I looked at it differently, the epiphany came to me. It's just a business. I hope I can describe this well, but it was just something on the outside of me. It was just something I was doing. It didn't define me. It was just one of the many things I was doing or have done in my lifetime. But my mind was consumed that I was this big failure.

In my work with hundreds of thousands of people, very successful people and people that are struggling to get success have come with that story. And it really holds us all back. I just remember when I got "it's just a business, it's something I'm doing. Whether it's successful or whether it isn't, that isn't anything to do with me." I think that it's just so important, and understanding that is quite key even for performance and what we're doing.

If you think about being consumed by what we do, we're not at our best. We don't achieve our best business results or perform the best in our performance role or be the best parent or wife, husband, partner or whatever the case that we're trying to be. We don't do our best job when we're consumed with things like "I might fail" or the up and down. "I don't feel like anything now. My worth is tied up in that, and now I don't feel worthy." We don't do our best when we're in that scenario. So we want to perform at our best, and identifying with the roles that we're in does not allow us to do that.

The distinction, and what I was really just so inspired by in Matt's podcast episode, is that distinction. Just separating from that and like, "Hey, ups happen and downs happen, but we're the person experiencing it. We're not the person that's identified with it."

This is quite important for me in my work. I do a lot of performance coaching, helping people to achieve their best, whether it be athletes or business owners or people in job roles or people in firms, across a lot of areas. A little while ago I actually dropped the word "goals" from the work that I did, and this was something that for a long time, for decades in my work, we worked on goals and it was important. I've dropped that terminology now because I realised that it's still very much about being clear about what we want. But I don't use the word goals because I discovered that when we set a goal, we don't realise it, but two things happen: we create something that we want to achieve, and we create the possibility of succeeding or failing.

My practical experience over working with so many people over the years is that we get more consumed with the success or failing than the achievement of the thing that we want. If we set goals just because there's something that we want, not because it defines who we are as a success or failure—the way that life works is sometimes we achieve what we set out to achieve and sometimes we don't. That's not called failure. That's called life. And on the path of great success, sometimes we fail and sometimes we succeed. It's the combination of all of those that lead to the greater success.

Michael Jordan, one of the most famous basketball players in history, when he was asked about why he was so successful, talked about all the shots that he missed. 3,000 shots that he missed and 26 game-winning shots that he missed. And he talked about all these failures that he had in his life and concluded it by saying "I failed over and over again. That's why I succeed." So failures aren't failures. They're just part of the journey. Sometimes things don't work out, and sometimes they do. And sometimes we get the highs of what we do, the recognition and everything we look for, and sometimes we don't in those quiet moments.

That's why I've changed the word "goals." I've just asked the question and said, "What do you really want to achieve?" To make it about just what you want to achieve so that you can bring fulfilment to your life. There's going to be ups and downs on that journey. Just create that. But I really highly recommend not putting your value or your worth on the achievement or not having achievement of those things. So I was really super inspired by that. What a kick off to the podcast. So that was our first one with Matt Cross and that real gem about being yourself, not being the identity of what you do.

OK, so the next snippet, another really powerful episode of how to be a Real 1 percenter was with Sean Stockman, extremely successful property developer in the Christchurch, New Zealand area. He really just started out again with the boom. So we'll take a listen to what he said in the beginning. I had a lot of questions about this one. So we're going to delve deep into what was behind the statement and what did we do to help Sean achieve the kind of results that he did. So let's take a listen to this snippet.

"Well, what's something that you would share? You know, what's an insight or what part of the work has meant something to you and that you might be able to share with people that could make a difference for them?"

"I think it would have to be the work on the mind. And previous to working with you, I'd have to say I didn't do a lot of work on the mind. I did some work but not a lot of work and I didn't really understand a lot of how the mind actually worked and how the past influenced your mind and influenced your thinking. And it was when you and I, you may recall, you will recall that I initially came to you because I had an issue with alcohol and I woke up one morning and I realised—you know, this is 17 years of this going on with interims in the middle—and at the time I was working with another agency and it wasn't working. I wasn't dealing with it and I got referred to you and I came to you and within three or four months, we've nailed that issue."

Let's unpack that a bit. I've had a lot of questions since then about how do you nail an issue like a long-term problem with drinking? How do you nail an issue in three to four months? Like people just say, "That doesn't sound right to me." So it was a powerful thing and I was very appreciative to Sean firstly for having the courage to share the truth of that so that we could explore that.

So the question is, how did we do it? And the short answer is that if you have a problem, something that you're struggling with, would it be just a problem behaviour, it might even go into addiction or whatever the case might be, is to understand that we often put the focus on what's the thing that I'm doing. Am I drinking? Am I doing drugs? Or is it food? Or is it relationships? Or is it social media? What am I addicted to or what do I have a problem with? And we focus on that. We focus on what's the thing that I'm doing. But that's not the place where we get the real change.

How we got such a quick result and a long-term result with Sean and how he got that was we put the focus on why. Why are you doing it? What's the underlying reasons? I think this is a very important thing to illustrate when we're talking about problem behaviours that we're trying to stop, because I know from personal experience how difficult that can be to try to stop them because they just have such a pull.

So what we looked at first and foremost was what's underneath that. What are the pains, what are the stresses that are underneath that that's causing that? And that's where we went. Sean's an amazing man. He's also a public figure that people might know. He's a really awesome guy, but he's also somebody who was really willing to go in and say, "Let's find what the stresses are and deal with them." So we discussed some of them in the podcast episode. If you haven't had a chance to see it, please do go back and watch that episode with Sean Stockman.

But what we'll talk about now, again, because I'd love for you to be able to utilise this if you have some problem behaviour in your life, it's really about uncovering what's underneath it. In my own story, which you may or may not know, I became drug addicted at an early age. I started using drugs at 13 and became addicted slowly thereafter, all the way through to my mid-20s.

When I look back on that, I didn't know it then as I was doing that, but when I was able to come out of it and look back, what I can see was I grew up in this family that was very academic in nature. My dad was a university professor/lecturer, however you want to say that. And I had an older brother who was a superstar. I came behind that and really just smashed all those expectations or whatever the case might be. He was very much a guy that did great in school and was the top student in his class all the way through.

In those years, which I think is wonderful now, but in those years, it was not so wonderful for me. I came behind that and, you know, early on, without realising it, decided "I can't really beat that. I can't outdo that. And what am I going to do?" So I started doing a whole bunch of other things that weren't the value of my family. I would hear things, which I now know were loving and trying to help, but at the time didn't feel that way. "Why can't you be more like your brother?" And "You're not living up to your potential." And this kind of thing. I didn't know any of this, but it just really hurt.

Throughout the years of growing up with that, when someone gave me a drug to try when I was 13, I just remember feeling no pain for a period of time. I didn't have the words to say it then, but looking back, I now know that's what occurred. I felt good for a moment and it was the first time I felt good for a very long time. So I just went back and then I went back, and that became an addiction.

When I came out of that, which is a long time ago now, I really had to look at what was the pain that I was covering up. What were the stresses? What wasn't I happy with? Problem behaviours and addictions are temporary escapes. That's what they are. They're a temporary escape from some sort of struggle that we're having, usually ongoing. And we just feel good for a minute. So we want to go back and feel good for a minute, and we want to go back and feel good for a minute.

I had to realise that what I was trying to feel good from was a low self-worth that I had taken on. The inferiority complex that I had taken on, and the feeling like my parents didn't love me, which again wasn't true, but I believed it. And that's what the pain was about. So I was masking that with the drugs that I was using.

When I came out of that, I really had to go deep inside because it had been going on for a long time. I had to go deep inside and say, "Well, what's actually going on?" What helped me to know and come out of those addictive behaviours was understanding, coming to terms with those stories and having to undo them and see that they were never true in the first place. And it was when I was able to do that, I was able to come out of the addictions.

When Sean was able to look at this problem drinking that he had over that period of time, that long period of time, he was just able to understand the ongoing repetitive stresses that were happening in his mind. We took a look at those. He was able to face them in a way where he just talked about it again, was able to dissolve them and just realise, "Hey, I'm living in something I don't need to live into." And once he got out of that, he was able to just drop the behaviour because he no longer needed the pattern of that relief. Because the thing he was trying to seek relief from, he realised wasn't really there in the first place.

So that's how we did it. And then from there, once we clear that, it's just about looking forward in life and saying, "Hey, what do I really want? What's going to inspire me every day? So I don't need to have behaviours that take me out of that."

So that again was an extremely powerful episode. I was really thankful to Sean for being so honest about it. And if you haven't seen that episode, please go back and watch it. And if you have a problem behaviour in your life that you can't shake, my encouragement would be to start looking at what's underneath that. What's those patterned beliefs that are underneath it that I could look at? And if I could understand what they are and I can do something about them, then I can be free and I won't need that temporary escape from those. I can just feel happy with myself.

OK, so we have one more really awesome clip to look at and to deconstruct a bit, unpack and see what was in it. So this was from an episode with Kevin Riddle and he offered something really powerful, an opportunity and insight that will allow us to delve into something that can be really life-changing for us when we get a chance to see it. So let's have a look at this two-minute clip first and then we'll come back and we'll unpack this powerful conversation from Kevin.

"In fact, it was behind my story, you know, and it's probably appropriate to go back to then. Look, I think it was around six or seven, a really tiny event happened, you know, from an adult perspective. But as a kid—my mum and dad's separated when I was pretty young and back in the 70s, that was still pretty weird. And so at school, I think I'm pretty sure even in a little tiny school in Diamond Harbour, we were, I think, probably the only family where mum was the only parent. So there was this element of being different. Not that I remember too much of my under-5 life next sort of thing. But Mum said that I was this kid that was really easy, really joyful, happy and all that sort of stuff and said that I was a really good boy.

So that tied in beautifully. One morning I went up—back in those walls back then—and I was to get out of bed and I went up and sneaked out to play with some toys. And I thought, oh, it's getting to the time everyone was gonna wake up. So I sneaked back downstairs with this toy to play with in my bed and I dropped it down the stairs. Of course, it went crashing down the stairs and I had suddenly, and I don't have any idea why, but had the sudden feeling of 'Ohh my goodness. I'm just waking everybody up and I'm gonna get into heaps of trouble.'

Of course, I didn't. Mum came out and I remember sitting on the stairs and I was bawling my eyes out, but in my mind and the visual thing that I had, I was suddenly this bad boy."

"You had decided."

"I had decided it, and so man, I just had no idea that then for, you know, up until we met five years ago, that my whole life was defined by that."

That last statement there, "My whole life was impacted by that." Like I got a lot of feedback on this one too. People saying, "What's that about?" I've got some eye rolls on this one. And "What do you mean? That one moment in time, dropping some toy down the stairs has impacted Kevin's life." People are like, "Where did that come about from?"

Kevin has done some amazing work to get to this understanding, and it really does work that way. If we ask questions—because Kevin's not the only one that this has happened to, this is a part of how life works—and it's worth us asking, how did I get this identity that I think that I am?

If we look carefully, we'll see that we have patterns. If we ask questions like, "Why do I always react to things, certain things in the same or similar way? Why do certain things push my buttons? Why do the same things always push my buttons? Why do I get angry at the same things? Or why is it always the same pattern of when I stop doing something or I don't believe in that I can do that or it might be too hard? Why does the same narrative keep happening in my mind?"

Kevin gave us an extremely important insight into how that works. The answer to that question is precisely as Kevin said: Something happens in our early childhood that may not even be something significant. There are beliefs out there about trauma and how we respond to that. But for me, and what I've discovered is, it's a perceived trauma. So something that most people or many people might say is nothing, like dropping a toy down the stairs, fearing something that didn't actually come into play.

But in order to prevent that—the key thing to it is it's a moment of real perceived trauma to us. "I'm going to get in trouble" and we don't want to be in trouble. We don't want to feel those feelings like we had felt, or in this case, like Kevin had felt in that moment. So we create this whole story: "Oh, I must have gone from a good boy to a bad boy. I better make sure I'm good." So from then on, we'll make sure we do everything well and we'll please people. "I'll make sure that they're happy with me, so I avoid trouble. Or so I'm loved or whatever the case might be. So I don't have to experience this moment."

What happens after that period of time is we gain evidence for the story that we've created. So if someone said something to Kevin afterwards, "Hey, you didn't do that right," he would think, "Because I'm a bad boy," and he would just gather evidence in his mind and before he knew it, whatever happened, he created an identity for himself.

One of the ways—because sometimes people say to me, "Well, this didn't happen to me. I grew up in a great place, great childhood and I never had anything." So I might cut through to that because we all have a story and it's so freeing when we can understand what it is, understand how it happened, and begin to break free from it.

I think if you watch Kevin's episode, you could just see the impact that has when we begin to really identify and break through that story. But the way that I suggest people to look at it is I ask everyone this, and so far in all the years and decades I've done my work, no one has been able to say no to this question if they answer yes to the first one, which is: "Have you been or are you in a romantic or special relationship?" Everyone, well, many people that I talk to, most everyone, if not everyone, says yes.

And then I asked them this question: "Have you ever in that relationship acted like a five-year-old?" And no one has ever said no. People tend to laugh, and the laughter is one of recognition that yes, that's where it happens. Probably other places too, but we can really see it in that special relationship.

And then I'll ask people to think about why. This is the person that you're committed to building a life with, a relationship with. Do you desire to treat that person like throwing a tantrum? Or withdrawing from them or saying angry things to them? "Well, no, I don't." "Both said. No, I don't do that." Well, where did it come from? And the answer to that is patterning.

We can often become the most defensive with that person that we love or we're in a relationship with because we're close to them and they can push our buttons more than anyone else. Not that they can do it, but they do push our buttons more because we feel vulnerable to them. So when they say something hurtful, we can lash out, or we can withdraw, but those patterns are already there. And if we take an honest look at it, we will see that we've behaved that way in previous relationships or in previous circumstances.

So this goes to show us that we have certain patterning. And something that Kevin has given us an opportunity through his really great sharing is how does that work? And it works, not that it's anyone's fault. We just go through something and we create a whole persona to try to protect ourselves from some sort of pain. And that persona can often backfire on us.

Like instead of being this good boy that his mother always said, he decided, "Well, I better remember I'm a bad one and then maybe I can fix everything for everyone." Like he talked about in there, "I could be responsible. And then nobody will ever find out that I'm a bad boy. I'll be good." And you know, 20-30 years later, we're still doing the same patterning.

So I've worked with so many people over the years, done my own self-inquiry, and discovered these things, that this is where these patterns are. And we sometimes know because we feel like we just can't break free from something and we know that we're not being our genuine selves, but we can't quite figure out why or how. And Kevin just did such an amazing job of explaining how that happens. It's a moment in time.

If I go back to mine, I was five years old. And I had a moment where one of my parents had said for me to do something, and I went and I did it and it just happened that there was miscommunication. I didn't know any of this at the time, but the other parent didn't get that communication. I got in trouble for doing what I did, and I just remember, and it was big trouble—it felt like to me. And again, it was just a misunderstanding. But to me, it just felt like, "Hey, this is really unfair. Like this is just not fair. I did what I was asked to do. I was again a good boy. And I'm getting in trouble for it."

I just remember how angry I became and how fearful I got. I created the story that it was just unfair. So if you forward that decades forward into my life, I could still see the patterning actually today that will come up. I'm just aware of it now of how unfair things are. That's the way that I painted the picture of the world—it was unfair and I was just a victim to it, being treated unfairly, and I acted accordingly.

When I was a kid, I started throwing tantrums all of a sudden, and that lasted into adulthood as well. Until I understood what had actually happened, I remember I turned into a very angry protester. I used to organise protests against things that I believed against. But I was very angry. There's one thing to stand up for what you believe, and there's another to do that from an angry perspective. And I was really angry. And now I understand this because I had a story of unfairness that was running my life. It was a very miserable place to be. I wasn't a happy person.

These stories get created in these moments of time, and it's really important if we want to be our best selves. This podcast is all about being the greatest possibilities of our life, being happy, being genuine and achieving all the things that we can that make our lives the most fulfilling. These are the stories that get in the way of that.

They just become this endless pattern, this circle or this trap as I call it, of trying to prove something and then coming back and then we have to prove it again and then coming back. It's a very exhausting, tiresome place to be. And if we could just uncover that story like Kevin did some really amazing work, but if we can uncover that story again and apply some questioning processes to it so it loses its grip on who we are, we start to come in, as Kevin said in that podcast, start to come into who we genuinely are. It's often just a very different version, but a truer version and one that's so much more joyful and fulfilling.

So these stories have impacts. They have impacts on our productivity at work, like Kevin talked about. They have major impacts in our relationships. They have impacts on what we believe we can do in life. And it all comes from this moment in time where we make something up.

I'm not suggesting that real things don't happen to people. Sometimes these circumstances are significant things that happen. But I had one woman not too long ago, and she came and was quite victimised by something that happened to her. And it was something. Well, I said, "You know what, I really understand why you feel that way." But, 30-something years had gone by and I said, "When was the last time that this thing happened to you?" And she said something like "30-35 years or so." I said, "But it's happening for you still every day. The last time this has happened in reality was then."

She got it. She said, "I see what you're saying." I said, "So what's being carried forward? The situation isn't happening. What's being carried forward?" And she said, "It's the story of it. It's the picture of it." And that's what we started to deal with. And she had had a very, very difficult time in life and started to become free from it.

So this was a very powerful episode with Kevin. I wanted to take the opportunity to delve a bit more into understanding because we simply don't know that this occurred. I didn't know that I created a story until it was presented to me. And I got it. I did the work and I got it. And saw just how impactful that story was, just how angry I was.

Decades later after that had happened, how it impacted what I believed I could do or not do, how it impacted how I treated the people that I loved in a way that I didn't want to. And when I woke up to that story, it made sense of everything. And then I started to understand that it never happened the way that I thought it did, or at least what I projected onto it wasn't what happened. It was what my mind did.

As we unravelled that, as I unravelled that, the truer version of me came to the surface. And it's one that I can say is much more peaceful. I still have moments, but it's much more fulfilling, with much more enjoyment of life not having to live out of some motive to prove some story wrong.

So if you would like to utilise this—and again in this podcast, I want to take it a bit deeper so that you could live your best life—if you want to look at it, I would suggest that you look at your pattern. What are the patterns? When do I get upset when I become a five-year-old with my partner? What is that about? What's happening for me? What did she or he say that then triggered that for me and what did I believe? What got me reacting that way? This is where you start to look at your patterning.

And if you're courageous enough and honest enough to look at it, you'll see that that pattern has been there for quite a long time. It's not the end of it. It's the start of it to find that patterning. But once you do, you can start to unravel it. Keep watching the podcast. We can do it in some of those ways, or if you find a way to unravel it, you can unravel that and start getting more of your true self.

So what an amazing first few podcasts. I'm so thankful to my guests for coming on and sharing, having the courage to share their stories. So we've had three amazing ones today concluding with Kevin and stories. I hope that you will take a lot out of it and please make sure if you haven't done so, if you haven't seen these podcasts, if you just go to our website, expand-consulting.com/podcast, you'll get all the podcasts that we've shot today. Please go and have a look at these episodes. There's just so much gold and things to take from them.

If you have an interest to be on your real 1% journey, that's the one with the most joy in your life, the most authenticity, the most happiness and achieving the most that you can. I hope that you go back and have a look, and thank you for watching. I will look forward to seeing you on the next podcast of how to be a Real 1%er.