Happy New Year Stompers. I'm thrilled to share that a brand new edition of my book, The Mind Manual, is out now. It's a reimagined, stripped-back version. Rather than a book you keep on your shelf, it's a pocket guide to mental fitness. It's easy to carry with you so you have it whenever you need. The link to buy the new edition of The Mind Manual is in the show notes or available at all good bookstores. Don't wait. A new life is waiting for you.
Hello everyone, welcome to part three of the stomp cards. I'm going to pick up a conversation where we left off. We're going to talk a little bit now about kind of mental wealth and do touched on a few of these parts of the purpose and so on earlier. But I know you're passionate about creating space. There's concept of creating space, which is really interesting. So would you explain to us a little bit of what does that mean? What are you talking about when we talk about space?
So Victor Frankel, the Holocaust survivor and psychologist, has this quote that
between stimulus and response is a space. And in that space is our power to choose our response. And it's a really interesting quote because in the world today, we live in a world with very little space. You have stimulus constantly from emails, work, notifications, social media, all of these things coming in, requests for your time.
And you are told that everything is urgent and that you have to reply to everything right away. And so the space in between the two is effectively non-existent. And unfortunately what that means is that you never have the time to slow down. Choose your response to actually gather yourself. A big part of mental wealth is creating that space, forcing that space, breathing it into your life. Because in doing so, you are able to
see the entire field in front of you. That's a positive in a lot of ways. A, it's a positive for your mental health. You're able to slow down a bit in your own life in a world that is forcing you to speed up constantly. You can slow down and you can breathe and you can experience the gratitude and the present moment, the fact that there's birds chirping and the air feels fresh.
And B, strategically, when you slow down, you're able to make better decisions. You focus on the things that really matter in your life. You don't default into the things that you think matter, you think about it. You take time. You actually lean into the things that drive the best results in your life. It's like watching Lionel Messi play soccer. He walks around the field for the entire match. People go nuts over this. He looks like he's doddling around.
And what you realize is it's actually strategy. He's conserving his energy for the moments that really matter. He's creating space. He's creating a map of the field. And then in the exact moment when it really matters, he shoots forward at the perfect angle into the right spot.
You've got to be taught any talks about this in interviews because people say, yeah, why do you do that? And he says, well, because when I slow down, the game slows down, too. And I can see the chess pieces where people are. So when I get the ball, I know exactly where everything is. I've not run around in a million different directions. I get the ball.
And I mean, obviously, if this is what we're lying on, that's arguably the goat, I guess. But it is really interesting, is that sometimes if you're running around, what's the saying? Less haste, more speed. Like, sometimes we're just shooting for this thing to the next, and we're doing lots of things, either not how we want to do them or doing the wrong things, because we're just reactionary, right?
Yeah, you slow down to speed up. It's like the paradox of speed. You think that in order to go fast, you need to be pushing, pushing, pushing faster and faster, but like a formula one car racing around a track, the thing that enables it to go so fast is that it has great brakes. It unlocks you. When you know that you can slow down, when you know that you have those brakes in your life, when you can create that space in your life, you feel unlocked to really push fast down the straightaways because you know that you have it in you to slow down when you're able to.
Finding rituals, creating rituals to actually create that space in your life is the call to action for everybody. It is making it a priority to get yourself those little amounts of space. And it doesn't have to be dramatic. I'm not telling you to go meditate for two hours a day. I don't do that. I can't meditate. I really struggle with it. But can you go for a five-minute walk in between meetings? Can you take a 15-minute walk after you eat lunch?
without your phone, without stimulus. Turn off those things. Don't listen to a podcast on 2X speed, no offense. You should listen to the Stompcast podcast, but not on that 15-minute walk. Can you journal for two or three minutes before you go to bed? Do these little things that create that space in your life and you experience an immediate benefit.
Do you think also that creating space links back to what we were saying earlier? Well we're right at the start really about thinking about what really matters because when we're just reacting all the time, reactions I guess by definition are you're kind of, something happens, you're automatically doing it as a reaction to it.
creating space to have that clarity also allows you to think between someone asking you to do something and saying yes, committing to something. I often reflect on the fact that the vast majority of people spend approximately 0% of their time thinking. They spend all of their time reacting to things.
And I have this ritual that I've adopted that I share in the book as one of the strategies for mental wealth that I call the Think Day, which is the idea that once a quarter you spend one day just thinking. And in the book, I have these question prompts that you can kind of use to guide the thinking during that day. Questions that you kind of ask yourself and think on and journal on.
But the point of the day is that you're not doing any work. You're not sitting there cranking through emails or processing things or working on big projects. You're just thinking. You're just zooming out and seeing the bigger picture. And if more people adopted that kind of practice to just insert windows where you can actually zoom out and think, you would find an immense benefit in your overall life, in your productivity, in your energy, in your performance. All of these things start to get better when you zoom out and give yourself that space to think.
I think it's something for me that's definitely helped. I do a similar thing. I sit down, for example, when I'm having, so every quarter I try and do it, where I sit down and really think about my life and what I'm doing. And I have this values list and things that I care about kind of list. And it's random. It's some of it's kind of big things. Some of it's little things that don't seem that big like riding my motorbike. But to me, I really like riding my motorbike so I can look at it and go
have I been doing that or not? And do I want to do more of that or with work? It's like I really wanted to do start my YouTube channel again, which I've done. Have I actually really, have I done that? Because otherwise time goes by. Like I actually can't believe we're recording this just before Christmas really, a couple of weeks away.
I cannot believe that the year has gone so quickly. Like, I guess almost what you're saying before. It just flies by and unless you're kind of conscious of it, unless you bring attention to it.
a year goes by. And that's quite a frightening thing. You hear the concept of how as you get older, time gets faster, isn't it? Because when you're on 33, that's one year of 33 years is a fractional amount compared to when you're five. And time goes really, really slow. So it goes faster and faster, doesn't it? Yeah. Time speeds up on you for sure. And when you have kids, it's the most terrifying thing because you remember it like yesterday when they were
you know, not walking. They were crawling. They were, for some parents, they remember like yesterday when their kids still wanted to tuck them into bed at night. And there's this idea that Sam Harris, the philosopher, had about this idea that there's a last time that you're going to do everything.
And that realization really makes you want to slow down because you recognize in those moments that there's a last time that your kids are going to want you to play in the backyard with them. There's a last time that you're going to go on a walk with your parents. The last time that you're going to get together with those old mates of yours for that annual trip, whatever those things are, it's slowing down and creating the space for them in your life on a daily basis.
In all the conversations that you've had over the last few years when you've talked about mental health, what do people say about that? I'm quite intrigued by it because mental health is something that is quite stigmatized. Do people talk about mental health being the absence of illness? Do they talk about positive feeling? What do people mean when they say they want good mental health? They want the clarity of mind. And I say that as a distinction from the health because they want the clarity to choose
their actions, their thoughts, their presence in any given moment. And I think most people have this sensation and myself included several years ago that a lot of your thoughts, presence, energy actions are being almost handed to you by someone else by the things that you're reading, the things that you're looking at, things you're consuming, the pute dog.
by the people around you, by the assumptions you have for your life, and having the clarity to actually choose those things to slow down and be able to, that seemed to be the common thread among all of them.
It's fascinating, isn't it? People want to have choice. They want to understand the way they think. They want to have control over what happens in their mind. A lot of the time, it's like, I don't wish to be happy every day. Because that would be strange. There's a lot of things that happen that need to have your action. But I don't want to feel stuck. And when you feel stuck, you feel like you don't have control of your mind and your thoughts. It's having the ability to go, OK, this is something I need to think about. But I don't want to ruminate about it for six months. And it's a real skill to build.
I want to talk about the financial side of things, because it is an important part of it. As we've established, it's not supposed to be the end goal, it's supposed to be the tool. I really like that idea. So, what can we do then to redress that balance? But still maintain the importance of like, we do need to think about financial security. We want to perhaps save money for our children, for the college education and so on. What are the things that you've learned around good financial wealth or health, even financial health?
There's a few things I'll say. The first one is the recognition that your expectations are your single greatest financial liability.
What I mean by that is if your expectations rise faster than your assets, you will never feel rich. You will constantly be chasing some more that's out in front of you. It's a mirage. As soon as you get close to it, it disappears and it's further off in the distance. That idea of enough, of understanding what your version is of the enough life, of really recognizing it, making it clear and vivid in your mind, what does that look like? What does having enough look like?
is so essential to a life of financial wealth and to a life of the five types of wealth. And it's not about that being Spartan. I'm not saying that your enough life should be giving up your worldly possessions and living in the Himalayas, you know, meditating for 12 hours a day. If you want to do that, by all means go do it. I won't be joining you.
I like having money. I like my coffee machine in the morning. I like my coffee machine. My version of my enough life has two houses because I want to be able to create experiences for people that I love and bring them together for those enjoyable moments that add a lot of value and joy to my life. But the point is that having it be a clear, vivid picture in your mind avoids the subconscious up leveling that most of us default into.
Because with financial wealth, it is the one that is most prone to you getting close to the thing and it just expands. There's this study that was done at Harvard Business School where a professor named Michael Norton went and asked a whole bunch of high net worth individuals. People worth anywhere from $10 million up through hundreds of millions of dollars how happy they were on a scale of 1 to 10. Then he asked them how much money would they need for it to be a 10.
And across the board, whether they were worth a million dollars or a hundred million, everyone said somewhere between two to three times as much as they currently have. So it didn't matter. I find it so hard, like, to understand that, like, if you had, like, a hundred and fifteen million quid, right? I can't understand this. That's a sit in the bank. They got a different... But if you were worth a hundred and fifteen million quid, how could you need more? And if you think of it, like, how could... I just don't understand how they can...
How do you get to a position? These are very smart women and men that have got to this position. How do they then think why need more? Does that make sense? I mean, I have a close friend who sold a company for over $100 million and after he sold this company, took a bunch of friends on this boat trip and he rented out this yacht.
And he was so proud to take all these friends and create this experience. And they came and they showed up and they were getting on the boat and everyone was so excited. He was so proud. And over to the next mooring, there was this way bigger yacht. And one of his friends was getting on and was like, wow, I wonder who boat that is.
And all of a sudden all of this joy and pride that my friend felt around being able to create this experience was lost. Because the comparison to the thing that was much bigger had deflated him. And the lesson that I say is there's always going to be a bigger boat.
There's always going to be someone that's making more, someone that's done more, someone that's achieved more. And so if you're measuring yourself that way, you make the 100 million great. But now all you know is that you are currently being compared to the people that made 200 or 300. And so you don't feel like you're enough. Because your measurement is wrong. The way that you're thinking about your life is just incorrect.
And so that recognition, that understanding that you need to clearly understand what enough looks like to you is important for building a life of financial wealth where you truly feel that gratitude from it. And if you're going to continue to journey and grow beyond that, it needs to be grounded in these other things. It needs to be grounded in purpose. It needs to be grounded in something bigger that you're trying to get better at the game. It can't be about, oh, I just want to make more money for the sake of it. Because that will lead you to a life of misery. And if you're fine with that,
then go for it. But that's not what most of us want. Is it generally true that the idea of more money, more problems? Do people that have more money have more stress about the money because their investments are bigger and the company's outgoings are bigger and all these kind of things? Like I just wonder like, is it part of it the stress that comes? Well if I had 300 million I wouldn't have to worry then.
I think that the problems change. When I was talking about ridiculous numbers, yeah. I know we're talking about like crazy, but we're deliberately being like, I interviewed and spoke to a different friend in the book who sold his company for $250 million and has had mental struggles post that happening. And a part of the reason is the problems change and the problems become more unrelatable to the people that you previously talked about your problems too.
Your friends, who you talked about your problems to when you were worth $100,000, you can't go to them and say, having these mental struggles after you made $200 million, they're going to think you're ridiculous. They don't understand it. You no longer, they're called like champagne problems, right? No one wants to hear those problems.
So I wouldn't say I fully full stop believe that it's more money, more problems, but the problems just change. They don't go away, the type of problems just change. You no longer have problems with basic needs, with necessities, with worrying about paying for your kid's education, those kind of things, but you have a whole new set of problems.
that arise. And most people that make a lot of money self-inflict a lot of problems. They take actions that contribute to more problems. They create complexity in their investments. You don't need to do that, right? Like you all of a sudden think that you need this like crazy fancy investment portfolio. You need to get all this real estate. You need to do all these things. No one's forcing you to do any of that. You don't. It's because there's a whole industry around high net worth wealth management.
So those people come to you and say, oh, you should really be optimizing this, this, and this, and investing in these things. And they sell you the fancy thing because they want a fee. And you don't need that, actually, in most cases. It creates complexity that may not be necessary. And so you start self-inflicting, right? Like we know.
money creates a lot of challenges with children. Giving your children large inheritances, giving your children enormous amounts of money, as allowances creates challenges. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So all of these things have a cost. Anything that you are making easy that is supposed to be hard,
has a cost on the other side. So if we scale it back to normal numbers, normal numbers, regular people, I guess, what is it that about having, you know, being in a good, like working your finances, what point do people feel that genuine? I know we talked about like the kind of $70,000 and things.
Is it when you don't have to like stress from the month to month? Is it when you kind of can see your money growing? When do people tend to go like, okay, actually, I feel quite good about it. I feel kind of quite comfortable about this. I've always said as a proxy, being able to
Reliably pay your bills, take two vacations a year, and have a little bit of money every month to invest, put away. You can do it a couple hundred pounds, even if it's a lot. Yeah, a little bit of money that you're putting into something that's going to compound, that's going to invest. You're able to spend some money on leisure expenses, like vacations or nights out, dinner, et cetera. At that point,
Most people achieve, they have surpassed those kind of early in life burdens and stresses. I spoke to a barber during all my research and we were having a conversation and I asked him about how he felt about money and what he was making. He was like, look, I can pay my bills and I take my two daughters on two vacations a year. I'm a rich man if you ask me.
I love that. And that mentality, like, you can't teach that in some ways, right? It's not that he doesn't have ambition. He actually really enjoys his work. He really likes cutting hair. He likes the confidence that he sees and the people that he's doing. But he has detached himself from the feeling that he just needs to be making more and more. And as a result, he has a whole lot of happiness because he recognizes that he has enough. He understands that he is living his enough life. Would he like to make a little bit more money, learn a few things here and there that would allow him to
you know, do a slightly nicer vacation or do a slightly different thing? Sure. And in the book, there are plenty of ways and strategies and things that you can think about doing to do that. But he is separated from needing that. And that's where, like, and I think the really key thing I wanted to pull out here, because, of course, you know, you have expertise in finance, there's plenty in the book there to talk about that. But that point of, like, I guess there is a, and I say this, knowing that this is going through really difficult times at the moment in the world economy and
in the UK here as well. So it's not to say that people have so much money, they need to stop worrying or wanting more. That's just not the reality of people's situations. But what is really interesting is that there is within subset of people that are actually doing quite well, they think they're not doing really well and therefore they're kind of unhappy about it. And I think that's something we don't recognise enough. And also for people that are going through a difficult time right now, it's even more like an alienating thing when you think like,
Oh, I know I'm not successful because I don't, you know, I've gone through financial struggles. And that point is separating your self worth from your finances. You know, and it's like, at that point, like what you said about the tool, it's a tool to do the things you want to. So let's get to that point, rather than thinking you need to be wealthy to be happy, like my wealthy, I mean, like my society's idea of wealth. Yeah, it's very well said. I mean, it's define your own scoreboard. Identify the things that you truly care about that really matter to you.
that will be your version of that dream life, those things that you care deeply about. And then measure yourself on that scoreboard. Not the one that you're handed by society, or by your family, or by culture, or whatever, the people around you. Measure yourself according to your definition of success. That is the only path to ever truly feeling successful.
It's been a wonderful conversation. We're going to do our health factor of the week now, but just to mention to people that if you want to get a copy of the book, we will be leaving a link in the show notes down below. It's a fantastic book and, you know, it takes a lot of work and the only way to go around and gain the knowledge that you've gained is by speaking to a hell of a lot of people and doing a lot of research. So you've condensed many years of that work into this book. So, you know, I really recommend, guys, I'm sure many of you click the link already to order the book. Do check it out.
Right, let's do our health factor the week. So, Sahil and I are both avid runners and we're also both over six foot tall. I'm just slightly taller than you though, I'll give it that. But then Dr. Rong and Chatterjee towers above both of us according to his podcast the other day. So, you know, he's even that step higher, a wonderful man. And actually, that should say as well, I'm sure many of you do listen to his podcast, but if you haven't, you must go and have a listen. It's really, really good.
Let's do the fact of the week, so we're both runners. But does your height impact how fast you can run? So it is, in fact, a myth that a taller person runs faster, how it can affect a person's running stride. This is because average person's running stride is about 1.5 times their height. I do wonder this. I'd be interested in looking into the
deep into the research because as you get taller often you do also get heavier and there's a detrimental impact if you look at like the fastest marathon runners they're generally slight and they're not necessarily really tall but like Samo Farah for example one of the most famous runners he's not a really tall man not so he's short but he's not a really tall man and he's slight so I want because often people say to me ah it's easy for you to run you know five minute 30 pace five minute pace you're so tall I'm like mmm
I don't know, my stride's decent, but I weigh like 15 stone. I don't know if that's fair. It is interesting. I think it's more about mechanical efficiency than anything else running. Like when I see incredible runners, they're so mechanically efficient with their stride. And being tall, it's harder to be mechanically efficient. It's like you're landing on different points. It's just like longer levers. So it's advantageous in many areas of life, but I'm not sure I'm running.
We'll have to think on that one. Thank you for joining me. When do you head back to the US? Tomorrow morning. Back tomorrow morning. Back to the family. You must miss the family. We've got to catch up on a week away. Well, thank you so much. Honestly, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've really enjoyed the conversation.
We'll come to the end of the podcast episode now, guys. So thank you so much for joining us. If you want to have a listen to my Doc Daleks' Diaries, there's a new episode every Thursday where I cover different topics that kind of delve into a topic itself in small bite-sized chunks. You can get that on Apple Podcasts if you subscribe. And also, if you've been listening to this and you want to have all three parts in one go, ad-free, you can also get that with the Apple Podcast subscription. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, have a wonderful day, take care and goodbye.