Self Confidence

Jonny & Yusef from PropaneFitness.com join me this week as we delve into the world of confidence. Expect to learn whether confidence is an innate talent or a skill that can be learned, what principles we have implemented to improve our confidence, what the term "self conscious" truly means, and why Jonny has been bullied into growing a top knot. - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Chris Williamson?

  Depth of aluminium.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Thickness?

• 0:09Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  I'm such a pedant when I'm talking to Chris.

• 0:16Chris Williamson?

  But I like you holding me to- Now, Chris, you've said that sentence, but what do you actually mean?

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Because he said the other day that someone was the pariah of-

• 0:22Chris Williamson?

  And I meant Paragon.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:25Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna use Paragon as well. He pulled me up about it.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  I wouldn't even anyone else say it.

• 0:30Chris Williamson?

  The thing is, he's brutal. Like, I'll write a piece of content and he goes through and there'll be one typo and he's like- He spots it straight away.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Throw it out.

• 0:40Chris Williamson?

  I sent that article for Muslim Fitness off to a couple of friends.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Muslim Fitness?

• 0:47Chris Williamson?

  Muslim Fitness, did you just call it?

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:49Chris Williamson?

  It was what it's called, isn't it?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Muslim Fitness.

• 0:51Chris Williamson?

  Oh, Muslim Fitness. Is there actually a- This tastes different to the other day.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Same one.

• 1:00Chris Williamson?

  Weird. Tastes like pear. It's not pear.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  There is a pear one.

• 1:05Chris Williamson?

  Apple.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. The pear one's lovely.

• 1:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very caffeinated though.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Heavily caffeinated.

• 1:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. You are, because of your severe and chronic- I feel like I'm trying to dock a spaceship.

• 1:22Chris Williamson?

  That's not, because we talked about docking last time and it went on for ages.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Love docking.

• 1:28Chris Williamson?

  So we've got a choice of what we're gonna talk about today. I think confidence. No, hold on, what were you saying? Chris said pariah.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  I meant Paragon.

• 1:38Chris Williamson?

  Right. I meant Paragon. Yeah, there you go, on the floor. Thank you. So, yet again, we're videoing and everything now is going on YouTube. People who are listening, you're gonna be able to subscribe on YouTube and I'm gonna be one of those people who says, "Don't forget to subscribe!"

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:53Chris Williamson?

  Soon. However, you've worn the same pants that you did for Life for Love Island.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  So, it looks as though we recorded all of these in the same position. We're even in the same position.

• 2:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  I think Johnny might be wearing some of the clothes.

• 2:09Chris Williamson?

  It's daylight now, though.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  It is, so.

• 2:11Chris Williamson?

  I'm actually wearing a different jeans t-shirt, I'm jumping. I've got pastel pair of shorts on as well.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:16Chris Williamson?

  All that we're doing, all that we're doing to the people that are just, people that are just listening now, are just getting these little tidbits of.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe I should go on YouTube.

• 2:25Chris Williamson?

  Open loop, open loop, open loop. Yeah, exactly. I want, I want to know what, just what shade of pastel are those shorts that Chris is?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have to go and subscribe and like all the videos.

• 2:36Chris Williamson?

  They are, they're a kind of lilac, yeah, but I mean, we don't wanna give too much away. No.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:40Chris Williamson?

  Um, cause I mean, it's, it's really quite difficult to tell whether they are in fact lilac. Yeah. It's really interesting. I also desperately need a haircut, but that's, uh, that's by the by. So. Cause when your hair grows, does it just grow? It's just gets larger, it doesn't get longer and it gets larger. Yeah. So it's like a private hedge. You know what I mean? Like you'd just be able to, if you had a. Cut with scissors? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. No, you can't use the. Yeah, yeah, you can. So you can shave it at the sides and the back. Hmm. But, um, it needs to be wet and then uniform, but like. I still think we need, you need something exciting to be doing. I might have an afro for eight years. Yeah, but that's not, you can't just ride off that. We haven't actually, can we introduce the fact that you're growing a topknot to the people of? Absolutely. Podcast world. Yeah. So. Podcast land.

• 3:23Chris Williamson?

  Podcast land. We, me and, me and, me and Yusuf decided that Johnny needed just a little bit more edge.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  So the, the, can you explain the theory behind this or the, the basis that this was coming from? Cause I think that's.

• 3:37Chris Williamson?

  I'll let you, I'll let you conceptualize.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  So, so I, right. To start with, I have a friend, cause I'm too close to the mic.

• 3:46Chris Williamson?

  You've leaned in, but it's, it's at the correct distance. I'll just keep her.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  I have two friends that I believe are equally attractive, but on different ends of the male autism spectrum. So Chris is.

• 4:00Chris Williamson?

  Autism?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Of, of the two ends of the attractiveness spectrum.

• 4:03Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Um, so Chris and David.

• 4:05Chris Williamson?

  Why did you say autism?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  It's just another spectrum, isn't it?

• 4:08Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I see. You're not saying Chris is autistic?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Actually, I think Chris and David are probably on the same end of the autism spectrum. I'll leave that up to you guys.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Anyway, both equally attractive, but Chris is very symmetrical, chiseled, muscular, that kind of sports gear look. And David is very gap year silk kimono lip ring, that kind of look. But so both of them, despite being on both ends of the fashion spectrum, both gave me a series of fashion pointers that aligned. And you think, well, if two people with good fashion sense, but on different ends, agree on that, then it must be quite a good piece of advice.

• 4:50Chris Williamson?

  Can you run us through the recommendations that were given to you?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  So burn the green high tops. I mean, for me, I'm a low hanging fruit for fashion advice. It was.

• 5:01Chris Williamson?

  There was so much to be made right so quickly.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's like easy picking, but burn the green high tops, get rid of all of your purple cardigans, all 15 of them.

• 5:12Chris Williamson?

  There's so much maroon on. There's just so much maroon in your wardrobe.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Stop wearing corduroy.

• 5:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Grow a beard, get a skin fade, get a nose stud or a nose ring and tattoo.

• 5:22Chris Williamson?

  Your pronunciation of corduroy is so precise.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Very Marks and Spencer, corduroy.

• 5:29Chris Williamson?

  Isn't that brilliant? Could you corduroy, corduroy? Corduroy, is that what it is?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 5:35Chris Williamson?

  I thought it was corduroy. I thought it was corduroy as well. But I think if we've got you.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  You're pronouncing it correctly.

• 5:39Chris Williamson?

  If we've got you on something, I'm going to be really satisfied after paragon pariah.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  You're just being racist just because I'm Arab. Anyway.

• 5:45Chris Williamson?

  Corduroy.

• 5:49Chris Williamson?

  Webber now.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Actually, in the Mike Isritel podcast, number 67.

• 5:57Chris Williamson?

  Propane Fitness.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  It was saying it was the. He was the founder of R P E and I was, I was very pirate about it. So anyway, Chris's observation and David of Johnny is that he's very Abercrombie, very Hollister, from top to bottom, very clean cut, square head, symmetrical haircut, just.

• 6:18Jonny?

  Jeans and jumper.

• 6:19Chris Williamson?

  Lot, lot of navy, lot of um thin knit, long sleeved tops.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Which is fine, but it's all together. It's too much because, because Johnny is clean shaven, square, ev- everything's too clean. And so you need one thing just to take the edge off or to provide some edge.

• 6:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Which in the unanimous case was a top knot.

• 6:40Jonny?

  So I don't think David advised on the top knot necessarily.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I think.

• 6:43Jonny?

  David agrees with the top knot.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Me and Chris were like.

• 6:45Chris Williamson?

  We were, we were idea gen. We did, we did the brand generation for it.

• 6:48Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 6:48Chris Williamson?

  And then I think David.

• 6:50Jonny?

  David.

• 6:51Chris Williamson?

  He came, he came in as a consultant, didn't he, in his elephant pants? And.

• 6:55Jonny?

  I think he said.

• 6:55Chris Williamson?

  Put down his ukulele.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  He's still annoyed at me for not explaining to you that, so Chris came round, David had a girl in his room and we heard guitar playing from the, through the room. The next morning, David was like, oh, Chris was there. And I was like, yeah, you heard, heard you playing guitar. And he's like, that wasn't me. I'm not a wanker. Oh God, text him now.

• 7:18Jonny?

  So who was it?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Cause it looks like he's just had this girl round, but oh yeah, I just impressed you with my guitar skills.

• 7:23Chris Williamson?

  I do my vibes, yeah.

• 7:25Jonny?

  So what, what was it?

• 7:25Chris Williamson?

  Listen, listen darling, darling, yeah. You want.

• 7:29Jonny?

  Straw, straw hat, flip flops.

• 7:31Chris Williamson?

  You wanna hear what, what they say?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  They made you, yeah.

• 7:34Chris Williamson?

  Honestly, man, yeah, no, no, listen, like, it's just straight from Thailand, yeah? You, you've never heard this vibe before.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Wonderwall man.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Yeah. So he was like vociferously like, tell Chris.

• 7:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he wanted to track back. So yeah, we wanted to get, what I like about the idea of you having a top knot is everything else is gonna stay the same. He's not gonna change his.

• 8:06Jonny?

  I'm totally open to an overhaul.

• 8:09Chris Williamson?

  Really?

• 8:09Jonny?

  Well.

• 8:10Chris Williamson?

  No you're not. You were, you were really, really reluctant to the top nut.

• 8:14Jonny?

  So the reason is, moral hazard.

• 8:16Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that this is a, do you think the top nut's a gateway drug?

• 8:19Jonny?

  Uh, so I feel, I feel like.

• 8:20Chris Williamson?

  You're gonna have to explain moral hazard.

• 8:22Jonny?

  Okay, so it's, it, you, you would experience absolutely no downside if it was terrible. Would it, you would, you, you.

• 8:30Chris Williamson?

  Upside of amusement, but.

• 8:31Jonny?

  You only have upside to gain. I have not only, not only the journey of growing hair long enough to put in a mini ponytail on top of my head. While, whilst simultaneously keeping the sides and back of my hair very short. If it looks shit by that, so there's the, there's the time in the middle where it's going to look shit regardless.

• 8:51Chris Williamson?

  You said that, but it's looking better.

• 8:52Jonny?

  If it looks shit at the end, then you two will find it hilarious, I imagine. And I'm like, fuck's sake. I'm gonna have to go to the hairdresser.

• 9:00Chris Williamson?

  I think you need enough faith in us as friends that we would tell you if it.

• 9:03Jonny?

  Well, so I'm.

• 9:04Chris Williamson?

  To that point.

• 9:04Jonny?

  Here we are.

• 9:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. How long's it been since you've had the top of your haircut?

• 9:08Jonny?

  Uh.

• 9:11Jonny?

  Twelve weeks.

• 9:12Chris Williamson?

  That's a long time.

• 9:13Jonny?

  I mean.

• 9:14Chris Williamson?

  You must have had it really short before, cause it doesn't look that much longer now.

• 9:17Jonny?

  It's just because it's like slick.

• 9:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So it's good.

• 9:20Jonny?

  It is long.

• 9:21Chris Williamson?

  I guess because when it's off to the side.

• 9:22Jonny?

  Like when I, when I wake up and the centre of my head is just

• 9:26Jonny?

  vertical block of hair, perfectly square.

• 9:28Chris Williamson?

  Like the top of SpongeBob's head.

• 9:30Jonny?

  Yeah. Which is, which is prohibitive, because I used to be able to wake up, not shower, leave the house, fine. Whereas now, I'm like, fucking hell, I look like, I look like fucking Hey Arnold. So I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have to do something. I have to.

• 9:44Chris Williamson?

  He was gonna wear a backwards hat.

• 9:45Jonny?

  I can't even like go like to the petrol station, like, you know, like you sometimes.

• 9:48Chris Williamson?

  I mean, what, in case people see you?

• 9:49Jonny?

  Well, just because people go like, what the fuck are you doing?

• 9:52Chris Williamson?

  Fucking.

• 9:53Jonny?

  There's a difference between being like careful about your image and li- like.

• 9:58Chris Williamson?

  Not wanting to scare the public.

• 9:59Jonny?

  I'll, I'll send you a photo.

• 10:00Chris Williamson?

  Okay, that sounds good.

• 10:01Jonny?

  Send you a photo. But yeah.

• 10:03Chris Williamson?

  So you've agreed to get the top nut?

• 10:05Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 10:05Chris Williamson?

  Which I think is.

• 10:06Jonny?

  If you, if you wanna take me shopping. I'll happily go.

• 10:09Chris Williamson?

  Fine, but what was the, what was the response? Cause your girlfriend is sort of. I'd, I'd class her as like, sort of a pretty straight up and down, kind of not super edgy girl.

• 10:22Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 10:22Chris Williamson?

  And.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  She's almost the female version of how Johnny dresses, but I think slightly more edgy.

• 10:28Jonny?

  She's a lot more into fashion than I am. Like, I don't really care.

• 10:31Chris Williamson?

  But still, like, you know, chartered accountant, like, you know, fairly, fairly sort of straight.

• 10:36Jonny?

  She's not just come back from, from Thailand.

• 10:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:38Jonny?

  So running like a yoga retreat or something. Yeah.

• 10:41Chris Williamson?

  And, and I think what you thought was gonna happen when me and you suggested that you get a topknot. Was that you were going to be.

• 10:49Jonny?

  Oh, and straight up my nose.

• 10:51Chris Williamson?

  You were going to end up with, um. With support for the counter case from your girlfriend.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  So you could then bring that back to us and be like, see.

• 11:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And what actually happened when you suggested getting a topknot to a girl that you thought was gonna say, unequivocally say no?

• 11:06Jonny?

  She said, I really like topknots. Why didn't you get a tattoo sleeve as well?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  So it was not only, yes, I agree, but go a step.

• 11:16Jonny?

  Go a bit further. Do you do something even more pimp?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  How shocked were you when that happened?

• 11:20Jonny?

  I think just disbelief. So, so the first thing I thought was, something's going on here. Like, they've spoken to her. Like, honestly, that's what I thought. I was like, there's a.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Chris and Youssef are front run back here.

• 11:32Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  To, yeah.

• 11:33Jonny?

  And so there was, there was a few lines of defence. So like, I asked a few other people and like, generally the response was like, yeah, man, go for it. I asked David, I pretty much expected him to say yes. My last line of defence was.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  A hairdresser.

• 11:44Jonny?

  Ask my hairdresser, who. Was like, initially he was like, he's joking. And then when I was like, no, no, I'm being serious. Two of my friends have suggested it. She then said, which two? Initially, she was like resisting, resisting. Which two of your friends? I was like. Business partner and I think he has to have my best interests at heart because if, if I do something really stupid.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  And then we look silly on video.

• 12:07Jonny?

  On the internet.

• 12:08Chris Williamson?

  Directly affects his revenue.

• 12:09Jonny?

  Yeah. And I said, the other, the other guy is called Chris Williamson. She started blushing. And they just immediately agreed.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  He said she opened it to the table in the room as well.

• 12:19Jonny?

  Yeah. So then, then like the rest of the hairdressers is like chipping in.

• 12:22Chris Williamson?

  Crowdsourced it though.

• 12:23Jonny?

  And then she was, everyone was getting excited about teaching me how to put my hair in a bobble and.

• 12:27Chris Williamson?

  Fine.

• 12:28Jonny?

  Becker's brother, interestingly, has had a top knot.

• 12:31Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 12:32Jonny?

  So I was speaking to him about it.

• 12:33Chris Williamson?

  What it's like.

• 12:34Jonny?

  He said.

• 12:34Chris Williamson?

  Life of the top knot.

• 12:35Jonny?

  He would have kept it. His girlfriend didn't like it. He said the worst thing about it is it's hard to fit all of your hair into the band, just grow it long bubble. You have to like clip, clip bits.

• 12:46Chris Williamson?

  Grow it longer.

• 12:47Jonny?

  But I mean, this is, you know, it's all part of the gym.

• 12:49Chris Williamson?

  Fine. So, um, are we going to talk about confidence today? Kind of carries on from that in a kind of a roundabout way, I suppose. I don't really, I don't really get, um. This is, I'm kind of handing the table over to you, you guys a little bit here, because I think.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  We want to talk with you on this, I think.

• 13:06Chris Williamson?

  Maybe. You've been pushing this topic for a little while and we've, we keep on missing it. Um.

• 13:11Jonny?

  I think it's what everybody would like to have. I think even people who are confident often don't think they're confident.

• 13:17Chris Williamson?

  The imposter syndrome.

• 13:18Jonny?

  Yeah. Cause I think for someone who is truly confident, that usually, well, if they come across confident, usually if they ask them that deep down there's a, there's an insecurity that they think is forefront of their personality, but everyone else just sees confidence.

• 13:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Well, I think it's the people who are

• 13:37Chris Williamson?

  wholly unconfident that have the most brash.

• 13:40Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 13:40Chris Williamson?

  Forthcoming.

• 13:42Jonny?

  Yeah. Like a, a compensatory.

• 13:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Jonny?

  Like I need to wear this front to appear confident.

• 13:48Chris Williamson?

  Interesting, because I got a miniature book from School of Life. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see that a lot of the time I quote stuff by Al Endobotten, who is the philosopher and the guy behind School of Life, unbelievable YouTube channel, you should check it out. Um. And I bought, uh, the smallest book that I think you could buy. It's seventy nine pages and type like font size twenty.

• 14:12Jonny?

  Is it like?

• 14:13Chris Williamson?

  It's just, it's small. It's just a very, very small, very thin book and it's called confidence. And it goes through a number of the elements he thinks in the modern world that contribute to somebody's confidence. And the number one, or what appears to be the prevailing element is that.

• 14:32Chris Williamson?

  People who are confident do not have, they don't hold themselves with too much dignity.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  So I saw his video on it last night, actually, after your recommendation. It was in my capture process. Life hacks one.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  And I watched it last night. And yeah, it talks about, I think, was it Erasmus or?

• 14:50Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  So, yeah, who says that we have to embrace our folly and our ridiculousness and realize that.

• 14:56Chris Williamson?

  In praise of folly is the, in praise of folly is the.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 15:00Chris Williamson?

  You're very good at that.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  We had embracing silliness.

• 15:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  So I think that he was saying like, we all, as soon as we recognize that and we stop holding ourselves to the standards of our strengths. And we realize that if you, if you're in a foreign country and you ask them for directions, thinking that you're gonna get shot down because they're like, oh, what a prick, silly tourist.

• 15:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And you just accept that that's the case anyway, then it's a pleasant surprise if you don't. It's quite stoic, which kind of makes sense. But I, I think if you focus your attention way too much on how silly and crap you are. As Brits, we're already very good at that, I think.

• 15:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  And so the tendency then is to become so self-deprecating.

• 15:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  That it almost becomes a reality or a truth. And we know that the, you know, to try and say this in the least esoteric terms of like, what you focus on becomes your reality, man. But like, the reticular activating system in your brain will seek patterns in the sense that even if you're listening right now, if you look around in your room for anything red, suddenly your brain tunes into all red items and tunes out everything else. And if you close your eyes and then say, right, tell me what things in your room were blue. You tuned out to them and you didn't notice them because they'd already, you were focusing on something else. And so.

• 16:21Chris Williamson?

  Is this like the?

• 16:22Jonny?

  So think of something you're grateful for, argument, you know, like, you know, like the gratitude journal is, if you are focusing on being grateful, then you can't be anxious or.

• 16:34Chris Williamson?

  I definitely do this. I'm aware this is a little bit of a departure, but the, I'm doing gratitude journal. I've only done it for the first time this year and the only way I've been able to do it is by buying one that only requires three minutes on a morning and three minutes at night.

• 16:49Jonny?

  You've bought the palm off of the five minute journal.

• 16:51Chris Williamson?

  I did. It's called the six minute diary.

• 16:53Jonny?

  It's unbelievable, isn't it?

• 16:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 16:54Jonny?

  Absolutely. How, how someone hasn't gone, cease and desist letter, like express.

• 16:59Chris Williamson?

  The five minute, five minute journals.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Actually, it's an extra minute long, so it's.

• 17:02Chris Williamson?

  Uh, we've called it a diary, not a journal.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Genius.

• 17:05Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, and doing that, man, like today in the gym is a perfect example. So in the gym today, I was talking to another one of the guys that trains. He said that he hadn't had a lot of sleep and he hadn't had a bunch of other stuff. That meant he wasn't too keen about or wasn't feeling very confident about how his session was going to go. What I said was, well, you can flip that on its head and you can think, right, I have the opportunity today to do a training session and test myself when I'm underprepared, when I'm underslept, when I'm under eaten. Okay, how do I perform?

• 17:35Jonny?

  So don't load yourself to the baseline of.

• 17:37Chris Williamson?

  Well, just turn the, turn the situation on its heading and say, okay, what I saw as a weakness is actually an opportunity.

• 17:44Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 17:44Chris Williamson?

  This isn't, this hasn't been optimal in terms of preparation. However, I can go into this and think, right, well, how can I use that to my advantage? Right, well, maybe if I've got a competition and I go in with a little bit of flu or I go in with the, whatever it is, I know that I can still work to a very high degree of capacity.

• 18:03Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Chris Williamson?

  That doesn't really tie back to the confidence thing too much, but it's.

• 18:06Jonny?

  I think, but I think that breeds confidence. Cause I think the more that you, the more that you show yourself that you're able to complete something in spite of not feeling like you want to.

• 18:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Jonny?

  The more you just settle into this.

• 18:18Chris Williamson?

  It becomes, I think.

• 18:19Jonny?

  Regardless.

• 18:20Chris Williamson?

  I think positivity and, you know, you can run to fucking burn. We can talk until you're blue in the face about the power of positivity and stuff like that.

• 18:28Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 18:28Chris Williamson?

  But the bottom line is that your thoughts end up becoming an echo chamber for more thoughts. As far as I'm concerned, and momentum's a really, really big deal. Like catastrophic thinking in the spiral down is often a lot easier than the journey up, so to speak, but you, the, the analogy would be you build bricks one on top of the other, right? So.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Like. I think we have to define it as well, because the the English language is quite clumsy with the word confidence in that.

• 18:54Jonny?

  What does confidence mean to you?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Because to say, I don't feel confident in my session is very different to someone being a confident person, which would be the lack of social anxiety in that case. And I think it there's multiple dimensions of it, similar to willpower or or discipline.

• 19:07Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  That Steve Pavlina came up with six subcategories of discipline. And they don't necessarily overlap and you could have very good training discipline. We know people that are really good at hitting the gym six times a week, but they completely lack discipline in another aspect of their personality, for example, so.

• 19:24Jonny?

  It's one of the things, it's one of the reasons why I think a lot of people judge like a an overweight person or someone who's like poorly dressed.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 19:32Jonny?

  And they they immediately have all sorts of assumptions on what a person's like, but that that the house might be really tidy, they might be really productive at work.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  There's research to show that people judge photos of obese people as having certain character traits.

• 19:45Jonny?

  Lazy, yeah, and yeah. So what does confidence mean to you? In the context that we're talking about here, what does confidence mean to you?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  In in the context that I that I wanted to pick your brains on, it's it's the the the social aspect of confidence, because I think you excel in this particularly. Maybe it's part of your constitution, maybe it's part of your job and you've had to maintain that. And as we talked about in Love Island as well, you were very much able to switch it on when you wanted to. I guess that's not really, that's kind of putting on a certain mask, but there was no holdback and being on TV, for example, is is the quickest way to reveal the cracks, I think, in someone's shyness.

• 20:23Jonny?

  Do you think it's the the this what, you know, Jordan Peterson talks when talks about mastery and saying that it's you do something and it turns out how you expect consistently, like when you when you can do that, then you you could say you've mastered something.

• 20:38Chris Williamson?

  It's the world, it's the world appearing the way that you planned it to be. Is it not something along those lines? It's mastery is a prediction of the world coming true. Yeah, it's it's your prediction of the world coming true.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Chaos is the opposite.

• 20:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:52Jonny?

  So like you think you'll get a promotion, you get a promotion.

• 20:55Chris Williamson?

  Getting promotion.

• 20:55Jonny?

  You think you'll end up in a relationship you want and get married and it all works out.

• 20:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Jonny?

  So I think.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  So that's estimation of ability in a certain.

• 21:02Jonny?

  Well, accurately, yeah, accurately predicting.

• 21:04Chris Williamson?

  Can you be confident without that occurring though? Because you could, there's people who are confident and then don't end up achieving and just have got blind confidence and.

• 21:12Jonny?

  So I think, yeah, I suppose, yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And then Trump, who maybe didn't have the, like, you might not have the technical competence. But as a result of your belief, you almost fudge people or fool people into. They'll fool the world into reacting a certain way because of the veneer that.

• 21:29Jonny?

  So it's self belief, isn't it, I suppose? Rather than related to an outcome, it's like, even if, because even if you think like, I'm. Class at football, like I'm terrible at football, but if I really believe, like, if I'm really confident, I'm class at football, it doesn't really matter what happens. Because I just continue being confident that I'm good at football.

• 21:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  So that's delusional.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  I I see, like, that's the definition of delusion, because it's it's a single belief that is held in the face of any evidence.

• 21:56Jonny?

  But is that not?

• 21:56Chris Williamson?

  To the contrary.

• 21:57Jonny?

  Can that still be confidence, though? I think is the question.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  I suppose it can, it is just delusional confidence, isn't it?

• 22:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  So I guess what JP said, like, the confidence that is grounded in reality versus.

• 22:08Chris Williamson?

  Listen to the sound of that.

• 22:09Jonny?

  So my my hips are really tight. I run watered today as well.

• 22:14Chris Williamson?

  Did you?

• 22:14Jonny?

  I just trained and.

• 22:15Chris Williamson?

  I know you did, I saw you. Um, so.

• 22:20Chris Williamson?

  So much pain.

• 22:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's interesting, I think.

• 22:26Chris Williamson?

  I think that you could look at confidence as, and first off, I I you guys seem to think that I'm some sort of paragon.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  A pariah of confidence.

• 22:34Jonny?

  I think you're a pariah.

• 22:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, am I? Am I? Okay, am I a bastion?

• 22:38Jonny?

  I think you're a. No, I know. I don't think you're anything.

• 22:41Chris Williamson?

  Never mind. Um, of of confidence, I, for me, I I really, really don't think that I am, and I think that. The um, the capacity for someone to. Play the game, so to speak, of. Being confident or being out, and I think that you can actually quite easily conflate confidence with, um.

• 23:06Chris Williamson?

  Being extroverted.

• 23:09Chris Williamson?

  Because you can play at being extroverted very briefly in short stints. We said this on the Love Island podcast. I'm on the front door of a nightclub and I can do a one rep max, 20 second max effort burst of. Yeah, mate, you're all right, mate. What's going on, mate? And then.

• 23:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly. It's interval training.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  And then over the years, you've increased your work capacity of that.

• 23:34Jonny?

  Progressive overload.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Latex.

• 23:35Jonny?

  Do like a hundred in a night, two hundred in a night, then maybe thirty second interactions.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  So is that, is that how you see it then? Because I honestly think you are the crouton of confidence.

• 23:45Jonny?

  Like soups and croutons.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So.

• 23:48Jonny?

  Is that?

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Just going to.

• 23:49Jonny?

  It's the sort of thing where I believe you that's the correct.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Actually, the etymology of crouton originally came from the 1700s where the monks were describing.

• 23:58Chris Williamson?

  This is exactly what we think all the time.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  It's an Edwardian term.

• 24:01Jonny?

  So when you, if you were to go tonight, if we were going to a, like a big event, there's going to be loads of people there.

• 24:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 24:09Jonny?

  Lots of networking. Let's say without alcohol, for the sake of it.

• 24:13Chris Williamson?

  Fine.

• 24:14Jonny?

  Lots of just speaking to people you've never met before.

• 24:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Jonny?

  Would, is, does the prospect of that make you feel anxious?

• 24:19Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 24:20Jonny?

  Not at all?

• 24:21Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 24:22Jonny?

  So I think that's, that is confidence in that setting, which I think is what.

• 24:26Chris Williamson?

  You can feel not, that, that's like saying, you go into a gym, are you weak? No, I'm not weak, therefore you are strong. That's not, that's not, that's not the case.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  So it's like situation specific, or even you go into a powerlifting meet in the North East compared to.

• 24:41Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, I mean more that what you're saying is that you are not something which isn't what we're talking about.

• 24:45Jonny?

  Like the.

• 24:45Chris Williamson?

  Therefore you are the thing we're talking about. Yeah, it's not.

• 24:48Jonny?

  Well, unless they're opposites.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  But confidence is the absence of anxiety in a certain situation.

• 24:52Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so in that case, to that degree, yeah. Um, one of the things that I wanted to try and get across, I was thinking about how to, how to explain this during the podcast and.

• 25:06Chris Williamson?

  Certainly up until probably about Love Island, maybe a little bit after that. My confidence was mostly born of my profession, being a club promoter, having to deal with people who are super, super high energy and you you kind of need to match that or else you get washed away. You need to make a name for yourself. With social media and stuff like that, people confront all the time, like can front as in fronting, not confront. So.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  So true, actually. You see people that that give it the big and talk, have have all the talk on written form, social media and you see them in person and.

• 25:39Chris Williamson?

  They can't even look in the eye. Yeah, that's what I love now. So I love challenging people like that. And I think, again, one of the main things, and I said it on Love Island, it was the, um, not on Love Island, I said it on the podcast about Love Island. It was one of my concluding thoughts was that speaking the truth for me sounds like a JBP sermon all over again, but speaking the truth for me was the one thing that liberated me from feeling, from any remaining feelings of unconfidence. And the fact of the matter is that if you tell the truth in any given situation with regards to confidence, you're kind of bulletproof from anyone calling you out or from you feeling silly about anything.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  This is the Mark Munson and Paul Moore approach of like, well, Mark Munson saying vulnerability is strength, because if you can be fully vulnerable, even telling a joke that might not be well received in a social situation is expressing your vulnerability because you're hanging yourself out to dry potentially.

• 26:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  And then other people are the ones that decide whether.

• 26:36Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. It's a very endearing quality as well. I think one of the, one of the main things that I wish that I'd known a little while ago, especially with regards to confidence, was that confidence and strength are not two of the same things. Like showing that you're this indomitable spirit who never gets swayed and never doubts himself and stuff like that. That's not necessarily confidence. Confidence is telling people exactly how you do feel about things. So over the last three years, I've made a, um, a conscious effort to try and be more forthcoming when I do have doubts about myself, specifically through social media. It's a platform that I've got where I can speak to more people more quickly than doing it to whoever's in the office at the time.

• 27:20Chris Williamson?

  But even with stuff like that, um, having, having the courage of your convictions, I guess, is one of the main things that has changed for me over the last three years. Previously, I was able to play the role of someone who was confident. Now, uh, you know. I genuinely do believe that I've got a level of confidence that I haven't ever had before in my life. And I do think that almost all of that is attributed to the fact that I just don't care about whether or not someone thinks what I say is silly. And that is purely due to the fact that I can tell the truth. Because when you start to make up lies and fibs, little white lies,

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Porkies.

• 28:01Chris Williamson?

  Little pork pies.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  What to try and polish the way that you.

• 28:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, because then what happens is the dynamic changes from someone not liking you to I should have constructed this situation in a different manner to make that person like me. And there's this wonderful sense of liberation when you just speak your own truth, whatever that may be, and put it out there. And then, okay, well, that guy didn't like me. Well, fine. Well, like, that's fine. That's me. It is me.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I think like, I mean, this, we'll have to maybe discuss this in more detail on the the single singleness podcast. And but I know a few people that got heavily into pick up artistry. They're really technical, like, oh, you've got to do this thing and then neg them and then alpha the thing. And then, and, and it's like, all it did was sort of two friends that were really into it. And they both became quite depressed and jaded with the whole thing. Because, as you said, it made them construct a persona that was attractive to women.

• 29:02Chris Williamson?

  It was veneer, wasn't it?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  For 24 hours. And then when they realized who they are, it created more of a divide. And it's like, oh shit, actually, like, who I really am is so different to what women would find attractive that I just feel even worse about myself. But yeah, we'll have to.

• 29:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think so. One of the first things that I think this should not read or hear or watch like confidence 101, because I don't, I don't understand the vast majority of the principles behind it.

• 29:30Jonny?

  But you need to have confidence that you have a good understanding of confidence.

• 29:35Chris Williamson?

  Fucking never ending, is it?

• 29:36Jonny?

  But you do, though, because you have, you have results to show that you're a confident person. Like, if you feel like a confident person and other people think that you're a confident person, chances are.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  So Darren Brown thinks he's like, confidence doesn't exist. He says, there is no such thing as a stable personality trait called confidence. Because if you put someone in a room on their own, they can't be confident or not confident.

• 29:57Chris Williamson?

  Did you not put your phone on silent before this podcast?

• 29:59Speaker 01

  He was confident that it wouldn't go off. So.

• 30:02Chris Williamson?

  Can you go turn it off, please?

• 30:03Jonny?

  I'm confident that I can.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  So do you think that, given what you said before about being able to put yourself up, out on the, out on the rail, I suppose. Is seeking advice from other people. Where, where does that fit in?

• 30:20Jonny?

  Can we, can we just stay on the truth thing for a second?

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:22Jonny?

  Or do you want to come back to the truth?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  No, go for it.

• 30:24Jonny?

  So, I know you don't like him, but Garrett J Y.

• 30:30Jonny?

  His fundamental number one principle is.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Very briefly tell us who Garrett J Y is.

• 30:33Jonny?

  He's a, he runs a, like a program that is pretty much geared at helping men who are successful in other areas of their life become four dimensional, as he calls it. So.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  So overweight businessmen who are divorced or failing marriages.

• 30:52Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  But are very rich, but maybe haven't got the other dimensions of their life.

• 30:56Jonny?

  Okay.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what does he say about truth?

• 30:58Jonny?

  So his, his core starting point is to stop lying and to start telling the truth about, like, the way that you feel, what you want, what's going on.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Why?

• 31:08Jonny?

  He feels that people experience a, an unpleasant reality and sedate away from what's actually happening.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 31:16Jonny?

  So rather than like, okay, I'm fat, my marriage is shit, I hate my kids, my job's just this place I go to to numb out, I take loads of drugs, I get drunk on the weekend. It's like just avoiding the pain rather than stepping into the pain.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Very American things, but how are you, sir? Fantastic.

• 31:32Jonny?

  Thank you very much, sir. Yes, ma'am.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:34Jonny?

  So, but what's something that he talks about? Cause I, I think the concept of telling the truth is quite a difficult one to get your head around.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Have you read Lying by Sam Harris?

• 31:43Jonny?

  No.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Add it to the list as well.

• 31:45Jonny?

  Man.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  That lying. Anyone, anyone who's listening, Lying by Sam Harris is a one hour read. It's the shortest book he's written and it is a conceptual, um.

• 31:56Chris Williamson?

  Uh conceptual justification for why you should never ever lie, ever.

• 32:01Jonny?

  Okay.

• 32:02Chris Williamson?

  In no situations. Now, there's a difference between lying through omission and lying through commission.

• 32:07Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:08Chris Williamson?

  He says that there are times where not telling the full story can be justified.

• 32:14Jonny?

  Right.

• 32:14Chris Williamson?

  Kids ask about Santa Claus at like two years old. If you lie to them outright, lie to them about it, then their trust in you is going to be um reduced.

• 32:24Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:25Chris Williamson?

  However, there's some tact that can be used.

• 32:28Jonny?

  So.

• 32:28Chris Williamson?

  But the the restriction of lying, including white lies, which are the worst ones as far as he's concerned, um.

• 32:36Chris Williamson?

  That read for anyone who needs something to get themselves stuck into, it's one hour, or you can audible it one hour and five minutes.

• 32:42Jonny?

  Been looking for my next.

• 32:43Chris Williamson?

  That's it, lying by, lying by.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. It is, but you keep.

• 32:47Jonny?

  Audio player.

• 32:48Chris Williamson?

  Straight in. Fire Yemen.

• 32:49Jonny?

  Um. Straight through the Jordan servers and.

• 32:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, and so Garrett White says.

• 32:55Jonny?

  Well, so that, so he he talks about being being totally honest with yourself and everyone in your community as a starting point before you. Because people try and sort of shoehorn personal development on top of something that like their life's just in a.

• 33:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, if if you were to look at sort of Maslow's hierarchy of needs or a hierarchy of confidence.

• 33:14Jonny?

  Mm.

• 33:15Chris Williamson?

  Before you can be um outgoing and extroverted, you need to first be secure within yourself.

• 33:23Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 33:24Chris Williamson?

  And this is, this is this really, really cool quote, and I can't remember where it's coming from, I will track it down.

• 33:31Chris Williamson?

  Well, I was reading an article a little while ago, and it was talking about people that say I am self-conscious. A lot of people that go into social situations, especially if you're introverted, can say I'm very self-conscious. But the terms wholly incorrect, they don't mean, when they say I feel self-conscious, they don't mean that. What they mean is I am conscious of other people being conscious of me.

• 33:55Jonny?

  Yeah. Hmm.

• 33:58Chris Williamson?

  Not conscious of yourself.

• 33:59Jonny?

  Or I'm worrying about other people's perception of me.

• 34:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. The the common advice to fix that is to focus your attention outwards and, you know, ask people how they're doing and ro- rather than like. Stay in this ruminative ball of like.

• 34:13Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. So I I think, you know, to.

• 34:18Chris Williamson?

  To try and have a few concrete takeaways, some of the things that I've done that helped me with increasing confidence, a little bit of stuff that actually crosses over with pick-up artistry. If there is anyone who's listening, I want, we want to do a couple of episodes that include pick-up artistry. I'd love to have a guest on who knows the stuff inside out. So RSD Max or anyone like that if you're listening, but or anyone else who's further down the tree. What's the guy who made the, wrote the game?

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Neil Strauss.

• 34:44Chris Williamson?

  Neil Strauss. Well, I'm Mark Manson. Fine. Get a lot of them. Yeah. Well, RSD Tyler was.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Be different styles of people as well.

• 34:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. So one of the things that they talk about is power stance, adopting a power stance when you go into a room. Have you heard about this?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I did a lecture on this last week to the World, the World Posture Association.

• 35:03Chris Williamson?

  You knew it was on power stances?

• 35:05Speaker 01

  It was, that included part. So it was saying that posture is regulated by, yeah, hormonal, cognitive, visual and vestibular control. But the power stance thing is supposed, so basically.

• 35:19Chris Williamson?

  Stand up straight with your shoulders, bro.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the, the original TED Talk and the study was based on the fact that they made people go into a sham interview, stand in a power stance for two minutes and then they measured their saliva, cortisol, testosterone ratio. And it was higher in those who'd stood in a power stance first. What they found later, they repeated the study and there was some statistical manipulation that went on in the first one. So there's actually no evidence of hormonal changes, but I don't think we're looking to elicit hormonal change with a power stance. We're looking to change the mental state. And we know that people's ability to believe their own thoughts, positive or negative about themselves, is worse when they're sat hunched over, looking, looking depressed. And when they're sat more upright,

• 36:03Speaker 01

  they have, they have more confidence in their thoughts.

• 36:06Chris Williamson?

  I'm a lion. I'm a warrior.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  I'm a lion. I, I can.

• 36:09Chris Williamson?

  Right. I see what you mean.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Because I curl 50 kilos.

• 36:13Chris Williamson?

  I'm a lion.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  I can fight a lion and yeah.

• 36:15Chris Williamson?

  I mean, the whole first chapter of 12 Rules for Life is a million miles away from this. A lobster.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So I think, so.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Hormones or not, it it does have an effect on your both the way that people perceive you. I mean, that's that's kind of a a self evident thing, but also the way that you process your own thoughts and how much you believe.

• 36:36Chris Williamson?

  So what what is that stance then?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Just upright, normal stance.

• 36:40Chris Williamson?

  Feet wide apart, hands on hips if you can, without looking like a superhero. Really, hands on hips? Well, I find I find it like, so when I was doing this.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  One one one foot up on it.

• 36:49Chris Williamson?

  Like Captain. Yeah, exactly.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:54Chris Williamson?

  Um, yeah, so definitely when I when I was um playing around with different tactics for improving my confidence in social situations, that was one of the things that I used to try and do. Um, and whether it works or not, it's on a hormonal level. I'm unsure, but it's just again about sort of this is me, here I am, I don't have really, I I don't have anything to worry about. I think one of the main things that you can take away from confidence is that the um desire for us all to hold on to our own dignity is one of the key elements of why people have a lack of confidence.

• 37:35Chris Williamson?

  And the problem is that we see everybody else's lives through and increasingly now with social media filtered highlight reel version. Yeah. Yet you see your own life from this.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  The negatives.

• 37:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but you see every you see all the blunders, right?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 37:52Chris Williamson?

  But in the confidence book, I think it might be Erasmus again as well, says something to the effect of.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Erasmus, Erasmus, can't remember.

• 38:01Chris Williamson?

  Erasmus, it's Erasmus, um from the highest to the lowest, we must remember even kings and princes shit.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 38:09Chris Williamson?

  And you think, well.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  The highlight reel thing is such a good point as well, because that's people like editing, like selectively editing and filtering.

• 38:16Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's the absolute best version, isn't it, of everything? Otherwise, why would it be on social media? It's the complete contrary to the truth as well. Like you're not speaking the truth forwards necessarily. Like you have the opportunity to lie at every point and this is where you end up with the people that who have the facade that runs away with them. You know, oh, hang on, like this character's got away from me so much now that the me who I am, I can't be anymore. You go, well, what does that mean? That means that the person who I was or who I really truly am isn't good enough. And now I've got to play it to this other person. You're thinking all the time, what would Love Island Chris say? What would confident Chris say?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Exhausting.

• 38:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, terrifying. So yeah, definitely.

• 38:59Chris Williamson?

  Definitely need to, need to remember that dignity and a, a, a strong grasp on it is not, is not something that you should be concerned about. Again, going back to the pick apart history thing, one of the, one of the stories that I've heard is if you're with a group of friends and then you go, right, I'm going to go and talk to that group of girls. And you get what's called KB'd, get knocked back.

• 39:22Chris Williamson?

  From a group, from a group of girls and you come back over and all of you mates are, oh mate, how sad's that? Well, hang on a second. Like.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  I was the only one that expressed my vulnerability by going over.

• 39:31Chris Williamson?

  None of you even had the fucking courage to go over there. So what does that say about you? Like who's got, who's got more confidence? The guy that comes back having been knocked back and has a laugh about it with their friends because

• 39:43Chris Williamson?

  we have to remember.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Do you think the friends are testing that person by, by being like, eh?

• 39:46Chris Williamson?

  I think it's a show, I think it's a show of vulnerability on their side. I think it's them going fucking hell. I can't believe he went over and talked to those girls. I wouldn't dare have had the confidence to go over and do it myself. I must, I must therefore cover my own tracks and pretend that I would have done.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 40:03Chris Williamson?

  And had success as well.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:06Chris Williamson?

  By drilling someone in.

• 40:07Jonny?

  But to have the confidence in the first place, to me, comes from a place of having past experience of doing something and it working out quite well.

• 40:16Chris Williamson?

  But again, that's confidence purely based on the results.

• 40:19Jonny?

  Experiences.

• 40:19Chris Williamson?

  No, based on the outcome, which is the wrong way to look at it. Because you could go up to a group of girls every day for the rest of your life.

• 40:26Jonny?

  Just get KB'd.

• 40:27Chris Williamson?

  And get KB'd all, all the time.

• 40:29Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 40:29Chris Williamson?

  And still have the confidence and that's confidence. It's confidence is.

• 40:33Jonny?

  Or is it?

• 40:33Chris Williamson?

  Confidence is the lack, it's the lack of attachment to the outcome of that situation.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  You're right, because that's even more confident. If you've been KB'd a hundred times and you still go and do it with no fear, then that's.

• 40:44Jonny?

  So how, how is that different to me thinking I'm good at football and being terrible?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  So I suppose the being K B for the hundred and once time, hundred and first is not, um. It can be independent of your belief about yourself. It could just be the.

• 40:57Jonny?

  I see.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Fear, but yeah.

• 40:59Jonny?

  So it's the it's the confidence to, I'm going to do this regardless of whether it works well or not.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  It's a hard one, isn't it? I, yeah.

• 41:05Jonny?

  It's I think it's hard to define is confidence, the is confidence actually in that scenario resilience to it goes badly. But that doesn't affect my ability to do it again.

• 41:15Chris Williamson?

  It's a lack of attachment to whether or not it goes well.

• 41:19Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 41:19Chris Williamson?

  That the what's the, is it the four? The four um precepts or the four um principles that.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  It's on the goal reason.

• 41:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And is one of them that um anyone's judgment of you is uh don't ever. Is it don't ever judge somebody on, have you got this in your Scone book?

• 41:43Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 41:43Chris Williamson?

  Right. Well, one of them, one of them is essentially.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  The four agreements.

• 41:46Chris Williamson?

  Yes, the four agreements, that's it. Um. One of them is essentially something along the lines of. You're getting it up.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:52Chris Williamson?

  Have you got it?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  I'm I'm gonna butcher it if I try and uh.

• 41:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, it's the third, it's the third one, I think.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally.

• 42:02Chris Williamson?

  That's it. That's the one. Don't take anything personally. Have you got an elaborate, have you got a um?

• 42:06Speaker 01

  A a summary of it.

• 42:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for the that second one.

• 42:10Jonny?

  There's a Winston Churchill quote, which is successes to move from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

• 42:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Jonny?

  Which I think is fantastic, which is cool. To me, that's what that is. It's like. I'm just going to follow with this, follow through with this approach.

• 42:23Chris Williamson?

  Well, the don't the the don't take anything personally when we're talking about the social situation is exactly correct there. So the um.

• 42:35Chris Williamson?

  An analogy would be, we keep on going back to to uh to relationships, which is the easiest one. But let's talk about, so you you're going into a friend, let's say, you wanna make friends, you're in a new city.

• 42:43Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:43Chris Williamson?

  You haven't ever been here before and you go up to a group of. S uh similar aged guys and you think, oh, these guys are dressed similar to me and at a similar age to me and maybe they've got similar interests. So you go up and you try and have a conversation with them. And they all sort of turn around and and look at you weirdly and don't really reply and mumble something and you have to shuffle off and it was all a bit awkward. But you don't know what's just happened. Those guys could have literally just come from a wake.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 43:09Chris Williamson?

  One of their dads could have just died. Someone could have just split up with them.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  You were the one that interpreted, like, oh, they didn't like me.

• 43:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. One of them's just found out that they've got a terminal illness or anything could have happened. And you could go back three weeks later.

• 43:26Chris Williamson?

  And that same group of people could be in a different mindset. Something else could have been, might not have happened. And.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  So that's like staying positive about a situation, like something that goes badly. And instead of thinking, oh, fucking hell, I'm a piece of shit, like I'm worthless. You think, you know what, actually, probably nothing to do with me. It's like taking anything and just thinking, it's fine anyway.

• 43:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, it is. And again, with that, the only armour that you have to wear in that situation is speaking the truth. Because if you do anything short of speaking truth, then you have, um.

• 44:07Chris Williamson?

  You've cultivated the character that you've put forward and you've preened it in a manner that became elective. And that decision, in which direction that you go, affected the outcome. And that gives you cause to think twice about stuff. Cause you're like, hang on, what if I'd said this instead of that? What if I'd said, if I hadn't said this?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Strategizing rather than just saying like, this is who I am. It's out of my control whether people respond negatively or positively to that.

• 44:38Chris Williamson?

  A hundred percent.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  And yeah, so I guess that, so I, I have quite a unorthodox view of. That, so I believe desire precedes the feeling, which precedes the thought.

• 44:51Chris Williamson?

  As well, no.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  As opposed to the typical paradigm, which is the other way around. So I, I think that, um. Your core desires, so the wanting of approval, control and safety, give rise to, so they're like the trunks of the tree, which is the analogy they use. Give rise to the emotions which stem from wanting approval, control or safety. And if those things are challenged. And then they create, they provide the soil for the thoughts to come out. I'm mixing analogies, but basically tree trunk desires, tree branches. Emotions, leaves or thoughts.

• 45:22Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  And so, for example, I used to be very nervous on camera. Because Johnny and I started Propane Fitness as a written blog. And we were just writing articles and then suddenly we were like.

• 45:35Chris Williamson?

  Safe behind a screen, right?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Safe behind a screen. We were just keyboard warriors that didn't lift and we were, you know. But then we were like, okay. You know, the first step is you put up a topless photo online. It's a little bit scary, especially when people are looking at it in the office and so on. Then it was like, right, we need to do podcasts and videos. First time I did a video, I remember being petrified, had to re-record twenty five times and. Any little stumble, I'd be like, oh no, I'm gonna edit it out and stuff or re-record. And over time, I think just from a purely evolutionary or physiological basis that you you apply repeated scary stimuli. You become less sensitive to them. And now, there's no fear to doing video, you know, that things like a live video where you see the. The little green light, you're like, right, fifteen thousand people, you're on. If you fuck up, like, that's it, you just have to roll with it.

• 46:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  And I remember that being really scary, but what's happened is. On a neurochemical basis, you're less reactive to that scary stimulus. And then as a result, your mind starts then justifying more positive thought patterns which are. You know what? It doesn't matter. It's natural. Everyone messes up. Everyone stumbles over things or. Whatever it is that your your mind, so it's not that you changed your thoughts and therefore you became less fearful. It's that you changed the feeling and then your thoughts about the subject changed as a result.

• 46:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so lovely, a lovely, lovely concept.

• 46:58Jonny?

  I remember feeling like you were saying, first few videos, like, oh my god, what if this goes wrong?

• 47:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 47:02Jonny?

  And now, if something goes wrong, my first thought usually is like.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  If anyone takes the piss, like you do, you do a live video.

• 47:09Chris Williamson?

  Good. Well, it's again with that, so this comes back to the thing about the vulnerability a little bit that I think a lot of the time confidence is confused with strength.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 47:19Chris Williamson?

  Or a lack of vulnerability, and that's totally not true. That vulnerability, and this is to anyone who wants to, um. Anyone who's struggling to make friends, one of the best things that you can do is show your vulnerabilities and not your strengths to people. Because vulnerabilities are so endearing and strengths just make you look like a, like a well to do twat, yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Well, that study that we, we talked about in the last one of the professor that gave a speech in a classroom of people. And they, they ran it twice, they split tested it. Only difference was at the start of one of them, the professor dropped the papers on the floor. Pick them up and people rated them liking the second professor much more than.

• 48:00Chris Williamson?

  Seems more honest.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:01Chris Williamson?

  The vulnerability is such a big deal and that's the same if something goes wrong, you know. Previously, when we were first doing these podcasts, I'm aware that this is only, you know, into the teens of the episodes now. But at the very, very start, I would be hyper, hyper concerned about whether or not something, something was a blunder or something messed up.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 48:19Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. But that's just as much a part of the character as anything else. Obviously, if it was five minutes of.

• 48:27Chris Williamson?

  That would be a little bit silly.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  But thi- this is your post hoc rationalization now.

• 48:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Whereas if you had a blunder in episode one, you'd be thinking, oh, but now like because the feelings changed. Your brain produces different thoughts about the subject. Maybe it rationalizes it as, oh, you know what, people are just listening in their car. They're not going to care about a couple of seconds of.

• 48:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Whatever. So I, I.

• 48:47Chris Williamson?

  But again, it just, it adds character. Do you know what I mean? It's, it all comes back to me. It all comes back to speaking the truth. That if you're perfectly happy with what it is that you're putting forward. The person, the truth that you're speaking and the person that you're being forward.

• 49:04Chris Williamson?

  So what? Like, it doesn't matter. But again, if you were, oh, well, I was trying to play the role of X, that made me blunder. Shit. Maybe if I'd tried to do the role of Y, that wouldn't have made me blunder, because there's, it becomes, it becomes discerning rather than just sort of like a, a, a straight line. There's a, there's a really-

• 49:22Speaker 01

  There's some protection from that as well, though. Like, oh, at least I wasn't showing the true me, and it was just the, the mask that got knocked down and that.

• 49:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but I mean, that's, that's such a false, it's such a false economy, that, like, the, the level of indestructableness that you have, or invincibility that you have, as a person, being truthfully and honestly yourself, and trying to be as close to virtuous as possible, is, it's unbeatable, absolutely unbeatable.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  It's counterintuitive, isn't it? But, yeah.

• 49:48Jonny?

  Do you think there's any scenarios, so something that, that Gar- Garrett uses as an example, when he decided, like, I'm just gonna be totally honest about everything. He's in the, he's buying something in a shop, standing at the till, and the lady goes, "How's your day, sir?" He goes, "Fucking shit!" Like, "Fucking terrible, I've had a shit day!" And like, he's just, just says exactly what's on his mind, and uses it, uses the, uh, he, he has this, the caveat, it's like, honesty is, is best used when it's relevant to a situation. Whereas, like, if you're walking along the street, you're like, "You're fucking fat."

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Was it?

• 50:20Jonny?

  "Are you a weirdo?"

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:22Jonny?

  Like, that, technically, you're telling the truth and you're being honest.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Real, raw, and relevant.

• 50:25Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:26Jonny?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:27Chris Williamson?

  So, there's a-

• 50:28Jonny?

  So, so is there, is there any situat-, like, what, I think what I'm trying to get across is, I think saying to someone who has no context, just tell the truth, that, there has to be a lens with which I was put through, otherwise it's like, you know, you're gonna end up having a much worse experience of life.

• 50:44Chris Williamson?

  I mean, you, you brushed on autism earlier on, I mean, that's what-

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:48Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, you are right. You, you need to curate whatever it is that you're doing. I think that you can curate your-

• 50:59Chris Williamson?

  You can create your projection whilst not editing your persona for people. So you can smoothen the delivery. Yeah. Yeah. Like, when I'm, the way that, the way that I talk to people on the front door of a nightclub.

• 51:10Chris Williamson?

  It's like, madam, you're a bit overweight, rather than... Yeah, you fucking faggot. Like, you've said about the, um, referentially looking back with this level of perspective on things that you can... Have you knocked something out? Nope. Should you like this all? My knee's going sore. Is it? I'm sort of confident, it's wrong. I know, I know, it's your toes going blue. Whatever. Blue toe? I've got, I've just got bad circulation. As long as you're confident, it'll be okay. It will be. Well then. It's a truthful thumb. Thumb? Toe.

• 51:45Chris Williamson?

  Foot thumb. Big toes and thumbs are very similar, aren't they? Foot thumb. And so you have both read or listened to His Dark Materials, haven't you? Mm-hmm. And there's this concept in that which keeps on coming up. Anyone who hasn't, it's a, a series of books by Philip Pullman. They butchered it when they tried to turn the first one into a film called Northern Lights. I don't even see that. I, I've watched half of it. It was terrible. Considering that I was a massive fan of the book. Hmm. Books, I think we all were. They just really, like, Disneyfied it. It was just shit. It was so shit, considering how brilliant that book series was. So anyway, it's a, it's a, um, fantasy novel series, three books long.

• 52:26Chris Williamson?

  And in it, this, this girl finds that she's able to do something naturally that is incredibly rare. Then, as she comes of age, in puberty, she finds that she loses the skill. And during this conversation with a, um, kind of like the, the head matron of this particular, uh, discipline.

• 52:49Chris Williamson?

  She talks about this journey through unconscious grace to conscious ungrace, to conscious grace. And this, a lot of the time, i- is what I feel like the journey through confidence can be like. That people may naturally have a particular capacity within a social situation.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 53:10Chris Williamson?

  Then a few situations will occur that make them think, holy fucking shit, there's a lot on the line here. People can think I'm silly and this, that and the other. They become conscious, they lose the the skill, they lose the talent. And then the woman says it in the book, she says, it will take you a lifetime to learn. But your depth of understanding will be infinitely greater than it ever was before.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 53:31Chris Williamson?

  And I think that that with regards to a lot of pursuits that are to do with social skill is exactly what happens. So for instance, I remember, this is not like that, but I remember when I was about five years old, running and somersaulting off a diving board. On holiday, because I had absolutely no concept of fear.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 53:49Chris Williamson?

  Then I remember being about ten or eleven, when I'd started swimming properly. And had clonked my head off the side of a swimming pool a few times and thought, fucking no way.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  From the diving board?

• 54:00Chris Williamson?

  Or, yeah, from whatever variety of of accidents at at swimming class, yeah, so painful. And I'm thinking, there's fucking no way you're gonna get me running, what if I slip, what if I do this, that and the other? And then you think, right, okay, I now need to retrain myself to have this conscious grace.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 54:17Chris Williamson?

  And it's the. Oh, no, no, no, no. It's that reflex from a little bit of trauma.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 54:25Chris Williamson?

  That can break down someone's natural capacity to do things.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Trading, like we talked about last time, exactly that.

• 54:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:32Chris Williamson?

  You, well, you said the best traders are often, the newest traders are often the best ones.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Happy-go-lucky attitude and they just, yeah.

• 54:38Chris Williamson?

  They trade as they feel, rather than obsessing over every minor.

• 54:42Jonny?

  So you're now trying to get back to the same state of mind you were in when you first started?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm in conscious ungrace right now and then, yeah, I, speaking of diving boards, um, I don't know if you ever jumped off like the the really high one.

• 54:54Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm. It's never a ball.

• 54:55Jonny?

  Probably it's just a platform.

• 54:57Chris Williamson?

  Oh, gosh.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Really, I remember like, it's like a proper slap in the ballsack, like if your feet are even slightly apart.

• 55:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  I think after that, it was like, you know.

• 55:05Chris Williamson?

  I did, I did.

• 55:06Jonny?

  At high speed.

• 55:06Chris Williamson?

  Take one hit in the nuts and. Yeah, yeah, I mean, if there's anything, they'll take the wind out of you.

• 55:12Jonny?

  Instant nausea, isn't it? It's weird.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  The slow.

• 55:15Jonny?

  How's that connected? How's that helpful? You get hit the buttocks, feel sick. Great.

• 55:19Chris Williamson?

  If you understand the physiological response of being kicked in the nuts, please tweet me so that we can understand it for the next one.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Might require multiple tweets, but please.

• 55:29Chris Williamson?

  It's fine, do it.

• 55:30Jonny?

  Do you not understand it?

• 55:31Speaker 01

  So the the there'll be a referred pain element, I think. Like, so for if you have air under the diaphragm or liver swelling, you can get shoulder tip pain because the same nerve that innervates the diaphragm also innervates the skin at the tip of the shoulder.

• 55:43Jonny?

  That's interesting. But why, why, do you two experience nausea? You get kicked in the balls?

• 55:48Chris Williamson?

  I haven't been kicked in the balls for ages.

• 55:50Jonny?

  When was the last time you got kicked in the nuts?

• 55:53Jonny?

  Be a long time. I have a, I have a memory of someone swimming beneath me and coming up like that. Head into balls and that was like, I just get out the fool.

• 56:05Chris Williamson?

  That's it?

• 56:05Jonny?

  And you're, and you're like.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  It's one of those moments you realise how hard someone's head is as well.

• 56:10Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Like, I headbutted someone the other day, actually, and, yeah.

• 56:13Jonny?

  In the what?

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Just in the head.

• 56:15Jonny?

  Oh, God. What was happening?

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Um, he was a bit drunk and didn't, like, didn't look where he was going. We ended up headbutting each other.

• 56:22Chris Williamson?

  Shaking hands.

• 56:22Jonny?

  You didn't just go.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Oh, mate. Oh, mate. Yeah.

• 56:27Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, is there, is there anything else?

• 56:31Jonny?

  I, yeah, so I think for me, there was a, there was a time in my life when I remember feeling very unconfident. And then a phase where I feel like I'm quite confident now. And I think for me, that's, so that's going from being chubby kid to being seen as the person who's like, oh, Johnny's massive, like, he goes to gym, all that sort of stuff. And so for me, I think strength training's always been something that's allowed me to build my confidence in like a very, like, contained way. Cause you have a series of experiences, which is like. I can't do that. Oh, I've done it. Oh, that didn't go very well, but I've succeeded anyway. And it just, it's just a series of.

• 57:09Chris Williamson?

  So that's, you've touched on two separate elements there. One of them is about your intrinsic successes, which are meaningful to you.

• 57:16Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Chris Williamson?

  The other one was to do with other people's perception of you.

• 57:20Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Chris Williamson?

  Now, if anyone is trying to rely, uh, get their confidence to rely on other people's perceptions of them.

• 57:26Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 57:26Chris Williamson?

  You're building a, a house on very, very shaky foundations.

• 57:29Jonny?

  I, I agree. I agree. But I think for a lot of people, so a lot of, a lot of people I know who I would consider to be confident, strength train.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  So that's a really interesting thing as well, because if somebody, I think the strength training is the initial precipitant to gaining confidence. But then it depends from that point, how much it hinges on that, by how much they invest their identity in that. Yeah. So you have like the, the powerlifter, um, who, you know, that, who like has all the, all the gear and, you know, really invest their, yeah, their identity in, you know, the bald beard, like

• 58:03Jonny?

  top knot.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Um, top, top knot, listening to metal, like, and really invest their identity as like the powerlifter. And then if they have an injury or whatever, and they can't do that thing.

• 58:12Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  It can go one of two ways. It can either be that they've, they've built up their confidence and it's ratcheted up and they've.

• 58:18Chris Williamson?

  Leveraged.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Lever, yeah. They've proved to themselves that they have competence to then expand to other things. Or they invested so heavily in that identity that, and I think it might have been Eric Helms actually, or some, someone said, uh, to hedge, it was Eric Helms, hedge your identity across multiple things so that, cause he was like, I'm not always going to be a bodybuilder.

• 58:39Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  And, you know, at some point I'm going to be old and fat. So if I.

• 58:43Chris Williamson?

  Need to add value in other areas as well.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Otherwise, if I just go balls in on that thing.

• 58:48Jonny?

  It's, it's like, I am Johnny and I powerlift versus I'm Johnny the powerlifter.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:52Jonny?

  Are two very different realities.

• 58:53Chris Williamson?

  That's why, that's why I like the idea of the top knot for you. Just hedges my personality. Well, no, it's yeah, kind of, but it's because it makes you more of an enigma. Is look at all of these things. So well, well written, well spoken, well educated, chartered accountant. But then also able to pick up three hundred and ten kilos. Fuck, he's got a top knot as well. Yeah. Creates this like, gee whiz. Oh, my God. Yeah.

• 59:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, just getting pedal dashed with. So this, I don't think we've actually even touched on this.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Another Don Miguel Ruiz thing. Don't allow people to put you in a box. Don't be categorizable.

• 59:26Chris Williamson?

  No, I think. Great in your own box. I think, I think being multifaceted. Uh, so some people are by their very nature are within a cookie cutter mold. Some people have to fall within that. Yeah. Um, I really want to do, uh, this is quite a, a nice and positive one for me because of my, uh, natural temperament. I, uh, wasn't that loud? Um, that was loud.

• 59:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Um, I've got a depressive personality sometimes, and one of the things that I really, really want to do a podcast on is, um, Why We're Fated to be Lonely, which is a, a YouTube video done by Alan DeBotton from School of Life. And as a part of that, one of the things he says is that the more subtle and, uh, the more subtle and, um, unique, or the more subtle and mindful your views are,

• 1:00:17Chris Williamson?

  the fewer people are going to be like you in society. And given the choice between honesty and acceptability, most of us understandably choose the latter. But again, with that, if you have this multifaceted, slightly contrary, slightly subtle, different worldview,

• 1:00:36Chris Williamson?

  presuming that it's not going to offend anyone or get you in jail, might be an idea to try and speak it forth because it'll open up some of the people's eyes.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  And especially with the internet, you will find people that resonate with you.

• 1:00:47Chris Williamson?

  You can't find people who love you, people who hate you, people who love you. Yeah, it polarizes opinion. Um, one of the things we haven't really touched on yet, I don't think at all in this. I think the podcast we start, I started doing Modern Wisdom post, in the post-JBP world. So Jordan Peterson, who has been a guiding force for me in understanding, um, myself, and I think you guys to a degree as well.

• 1:01:13Chris Williamson?

  One of the key, um, one of the key habits that he asks people to cultivate is to clean up their room. And what he says is that-

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Bloody hell, clean your room. I mean, people think these, these kids, they're 18 and, and they, they wanna go out and change the world. And they've got dirty socks on their room. How can you opine about the economic state of the world when you can't even clean your room?

• 1:01:35Chris Williamson?

  So what he says is, what he says is that, um, your bedroom is a domain of competence within everybody's capacity. So everyone can clean their room. Like unless you're one of the people, well, those people out of like hoarders, like you can clean your room.

• 1:01:51Jonny?

  You could have a disability.

• 1:01:52Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Thanks. Made me feel really, there's never a way to shake the confidence.

• 1:02:01Chris Williamson?

  Most people, a large majority of people can clean their room and-

• 1:02:07Jonny?

  Might be blind.

• 1:02:09Chris Williamson?

  Thanks, John.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Um, well, that's offensive to blind people who can't clean their room.

• 1:02:15Jonny?

  No, it's not.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Cause they're gonna say, well-

• 1:02:17Jonny?

  I just said for my to be, might be blind. I didn't say blind people can't clean their room.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Well, you implied that, and they're gonna say-

• 1:02:23Jonny?

  An implication's a very personal thing. Like what you've taken as my implication might not be what I imply.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  I'm responsible for what I say, that you understand.

• 1:02:30Jonny?

  I choose my words very carefully.

• 1:02:32Chris Williamson?

  Very, very, very precise.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  You saw that, was it you that sent me the W E P?

• 1:02:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Jonny?

  That was brilliant. So as you know, like I have mixed feelings about him, but things like that.

• 1:02:44Chris Williamson?

  Brilliant. I think what you, I think you had a few mixed feelings about Jordan Peterson before you read his book.

• 1:02:48Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Chris Williamson?

  The book, the book for me as well, it's been really, really difficult going. Anyway, so he, so he talks about, um, your, your bedroom is a domain of competence. And once you've mastered that, you can then look to explore, okay, so what else can I clean up? Maybe I can go kitchen. Maybe I can go into the living room. Maybe I can help someone else with their bedroom or their problems or whatever it might be. And it's starting in a domain that is a safe space, so to speak. It's something that you know that you can get mastery over pretty quickly. And you build the brick on top of that. And the powerlifting analogy that you use for yourself seems a little bit like that. It's a domain of competence that you are capable within. Now, obviously it's-

• 1:03:31Chris Williamson?

  By virtue of gravity, it can be quite hard.

• 1:03:34Jonny?

  Gets progressively harder as well.

• 1:03:35Chris Williamson?

  It really, that's the thing, it, you know, because you, you put more weight on, which to me seems. Cause you picked it up, you picked it up.

• 1:03:43Jonny?

  Yeah, we've already done it.

• 1:03:45Chris Williamson?

  It was hard, it was hard. And then you put more weight on and you picked it up again.

• 1:03:48Jonny?

  Sometimes you have to do it more than one time.

• 1:03:50Chris Williamson?

  That seems almost.

• 1:03:51Jonny?

  Pointless.

• 1:03:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, ridiculous. Cause you put it down in the same place.

• 1:03:54Jonny?

  Every single time and pick it up in exactly the same way.

• 1:03:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:57Jonny?

  Like, I think that, so that creates, certainly, you, you almost witness it, like, we see it with our clients, so you, they become different people.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  So much. And I don't think it's because of the muscle mass, it's because, as you said, they've proven to themselves that they can be competent in something and they extrapolate that to other.

• 1:04:12Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Challenges.

• 1:04:13Jonny?

  You go from like, I'm overweight, I don't like how I look, to like, oh my god.

• 1:04:17Chris Williamson?

  I have the capacity for change.

• 1:04:19Jonny?

  I've done this.

• 1:04:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Jonny?

  I look totally different. What else can I do?

• 1:04:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Jonny?

  So it's self-belief, I think, rather than.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Self-efficacy, isn't it?

• 1:04:25Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that is true.

• 1:04:27Jonny?

  Like, I've done what I said I would.

• 1:04:28Chris Williamson?

  Well, how does that, how does that manifest itself moving forward in confidence? Confidence is the meta-term.

• 1:04:33Jonny?

  I think it's just, it's just believing that you can go do something.

• 1:04:37Chris Williamson?

  And act to change successfully.

• 1:04:39Jonny?

  Yeah. And so that's the same as like, um, you go into a, a job interview and you think, I'm gonna do well here. Rather than, oh, I'm not worth the job. And someone who's like, got a gold medal at Worlds. Probably, probably has quite a lot of like, I'll be all right with that.

• 1:04:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Jonny?

  Versus someone who's like, never tested their physical abilities or pushed themselves outside their comfort zone.

• 1:05:04Chris Williamson?

  I'm sure that there, there, there must be people who are potentially not on the physical side, but cerebrally testing themselves very heavily.

• 1:05:11Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Chris Williamson?

  Someone who's studying for a crazy research degree or whatever it might be. And these people are overcoming obstacles in a similar manner.

• 1:05:21Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Well, so I was gonna say, there's a lot, there's a high suicide rate in Cambridge University, for example, of people who, like, and they tend to be the high, highest performers that are so hard on themselves for not living up to high expectations.

• 1:05:35Jonny?

  Up here.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I wonder what's going on there.

• 1:05:38Chris Williamson?

  I did a, I did an Instagram post that was, that concluded with something along the lines of the line between self-motivation and self-compassion is a lot wider than you think. And I think that a lot of the time, people can confuse being compassionate with themselves with not having drive to be better. So allowing yourself to, you've had confidence to go into a situation, that situation didn't turn out the way that you wanted. Okay, how should I then redisipline myself after this situation's occurred?

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. If I don't beat myself up, then how am I gonna?

• 1:06:11Chris Williamson?

  I'm not gonna learn. I'm gonna think that like this was an acceptable outcome despite the fact it wasn't the outcome that I wanted. And you go, well.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  They're mutually exclusive.

• 1:06:20Chris Williamson?

  The best way, the best way to do that, and one of the, um, one of the tactics that I've been using more recently for this has been, um,

• 1:06:31Chris Williamson?

  treat, uh, treat yourself as if you were a friend that you were responsible for helping. Again, another Jordan Peterson rule. And.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  You wouldn't lay into them all the time. You'd be like, look, here are your faults. He thought you can improve it rather than.

• 1:06:44Chris Williamson?

  Let's make a plan to.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Chris Williamson?

  Get better.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Rather than remind them every day, you're a dickhead, you're a dickhead.

• 1:06:51Chris Williamson?

  Like, what, a lot of the time I'll think, like, what, what would you say if one of your friends came to you with this particular problem? What would you say to them? And, you know, if you can, if one of your friends came up to you and you were like, you, what?

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  It just reminded me of in Life Hacks 103, give it a listen, great episode, uh, was when Johnny said, sometimes if you have multiple captures across different things, or you've captured, but then you forgot to review the capture, and then it's your brain's way of being like, ha, dickhead.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  You forgot to action this and now you, yeah.

• 1:07:20Jonny?

  I was listening to that, yeah.

• 1:07:21Chris Williamson?

  Now you're paying for them.

• 1:07:23Jonny?

  I had an experience of the day, and I remember your voice came into my head of, I made a reminder, which I use Siri, so I use like the.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Jonny?

  Yeah. Uh, remind me to, and it misinterpreted it. The reminder came up nine AM next morning, looked at it, I'm like.

• 1:07:37Chris Williamson?

  No idea what it is.

• 1:07:38Jonny?

  Your voice came in my head, I was like.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  I have to get stop of, what is that?

• 1:07:43Jonny?

  Yeah. And you just feel worse.

• 1:07:45Chris Williamson?

  Cause you remember, you know, there's something I had to remember. I set a reminder for it and I've got no idea what it is, cause Siri can't decipher my words.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Then you get a call two weeks later from your dentist being like, we're gonna have to discharge you from our clinic because you're not attending to something. You're like, ah, damn it, fuck.

• 1:08:01Jonny?

  So someone who has a really interesting perspective on like self-management, Jocko Willink.

• 1:08:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, okay, yeah.

• 1:08:08Jonny?

  He's just so far over on the like redlining end of the spectrum. Like his Instagram, every other post on Instagram is his watch at four AM, like four oh one, four AM, three fifty nine when he wakes up.

• 1:08:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Jonny?

  And then there's a photo of a pool of sweat where he's been entrained and he just puts the aftermath. And he had a video about like what to do when things aren't going well in your life. It's like, oh, you didn't get that job, your girlfriend broke up with you, like, good. Like, your business failed, good. You're fat and out of shape, good. He's like, reload, regroup.

• 1:08:41Chris Williamson?

  Oh, he's a fucking get after it.

• 1:08:43Jonny?

  Fucking. Well, he's a fucking Navy SEAL. So but part of me thinks like, if you just treat yourself like a drill sergeant the whole time, there's probably not even time to be like, I'm a piece, we- weak piece of shit, because you just always.

• 1:08:56Chris Williamson?

  Already been, you're, you're, you're, you're doing burpees in the.

• 1:08:59Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Chris Williamson?

  On time out of beach, don't you?

• 1:09:01Jonny?

  You just knock it all the time, be like, I've just got to fucking keep getting up.

• 1:09:04Chris Williamson?

  Get after it.

• 1:09:04Jonny?

  Like, what would Jocko do? What would Jocko?

• 1:09:06Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what space for like chatter? Do you know what it is? Gary, Gary Vee is a pussy version of Jocko Willink.

• 1:09:11Jonny?

  They're very similar, yeah, very similar.

• 1:09:13Chris Williamson?

  Have to subscribe to Jocko.

• 1:09:14Jonny?

  Except Gary's like, just post on Instagram, Gary Vaynerchuk. And Jocko Willink's like, fuck you, get, like, get to the gyms four AM. Don't, don't press snooze, get up, you bastard.

• 1:09:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Jonny?

  Yeah. I'd like, I wonder what would happen if they met.

• 1:09:29Chris Williamson?

  Gary Vaynerchuk.

• 1:09:29Jonny?

  They'd probably agree on a lot of things.

• 1:09:30Chris Williamson?

  I really, really hope Jocko Willink punches Gary Vaynerchuk in the face. He's just so irritating.

• 1:09:37Jonny?

  So if you listen to some of the experiences as a Navy SEAL that Jocko's had. You do think like, if you've been in those sorts of scenarios, anything else is just an absolute insignificance.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Like the Fight Club thing is, like, when you've been in a fight that morning, everything else, the rest of the day.

• 1:09:55Jonny?

  Has the noise turned on? Yeah, and like, I think there is no end to that.

• 1:09:58Chris Williamson?

  But this is one of the things, you, you can't expedite life experience.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:10:05Chris Williamson?

  To a degree, you can try and cram it in.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:10:09Chris Williamson?

  But there's a required time and attention that you need to go through.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  For something to really sink in.

• 1:10:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, a hundred percent because you need, it's not just the time that it takes. It's not just having the experience, it's then the reflective period of the experience, then the experience again with a new, a new set of eyes and new approach.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Do you think that is what explains the general increase in people's confidence with age? Like, do you think it's because there's time available for those experiences to be processed? Or do you think there's some kind of thing inherent to aging that causes it?

• 1:10:40Chris Williamson?

  No, I think it's that if you have a smaller sample size, something going incredibly well or incredibly badly is more of an outlier than if you then.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Okay, you've, you've got more, more of a bank of experiences.

• 1:10:52Chris Williamson?

  Oh, here we are again. I thought, I thought this was a hundred and five percent greatness. Actually, in ten years' time, I've realised that that wasn't even a fifty percent of greatness.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  So you're just much more, so I guess you become more cynical, but also more calm about things because it's just like, well.

• 1:11:06Chris Williamson?

  You're just more measured. The same. It's being measured.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Same, yeah.

• 1:11:09Chris Williamson?

  It's being measured about experiences and this is one of the things when, that's very liberating for me personally as a, you know, a single guy growing, getting older now as I'm thirty. You can walk into a club and, or walk into a bar or whatever it might be. And previously you walk up to a group of, like, I don't know, you're, you're early twenties guys. And previously there'd be this sort of chest up, dick measuring kind of, what do you, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? Like that kind of thing. And now.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  I'm interested in your, your progression of this.

• 1:11:44Chris Williamson?

  It's just, just now, you, you can kind of have a smug sense of satisfaction as you get older. It's the one thing, like time's the one thing that we don't get any of it back. It's also the one thing that's, you, you can't cheat it either way. You can't make yourself younger and you can't make yourself older. And it means that it's kind of. Nivea have those products. Well, I've been using Clarence for many years. Ole. Oil of ole. Ole.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Oil of Ule. So. You used to ever experience so that that situation, walking up to a group of guys. You said, so you wouldn't experience anxiety per se, but it was more of.

• 1:12:23Chris Williamson?

  I know massively massively.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Okay, and then and then the the um, I guess the compensation is is that.

• 1:12:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  But you used to be, I suppose.

• 1:12:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think I think definitely, I was an only grand, only child, which means that your socialization is very, very different to someone that's got siblings. Incredibly different. And I think definitely to a degree. It meant that I was probably slower to socialize and also saw it.

• 1:12:54Chris Williamson?

  Saw it more as an experiment and more as a list of inputs and outputs, something to be mindful of. Rather than a natural part of day to day discourse, because for me, growing up. I didn't have, I'd play a lot of sports and those would be my brothers and sisters, so to speak.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:13:12Chris Williamson?

  But the a lot of that stuff didn't come naturally to me, so I had to cultivate it, which actually allows.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Reveal how far on the spectrum we all are. Of like, I saw social interaction as a series of inputs and outputs.

• 1:13:24Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. Well, it is, it is like a, I can't, I can't make a pretense about the fact that it came naturally to me.

• 1:13:31Jonny?

  Do you think, do you think it's autistic to even think?

• 1:13:36Jonny?

  I want to get better at my ability to socialize.

• 1:13:39Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:13:40Jonny?

  You don't.

• 1:13:40Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:13:40Jonny?

  Do you think, so the thought I always have is like, I have this like stock guy in my head who's like, similar age to me. All they care about is like beer and the football match and like pop idol and all these sorts of things. I'm aware that pop idols, you see what I did. And and like, wouldn't, wouldn't even consider like getting an audible account or.

• 1:14:05Jonny?

  Do they, does it even cross their mind? Like, I'd like to improve my ability to socialise with other people.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  So that's the unconscious grace thing, that there's a natural, like, because I, because I, I think social intelligence is so independent of normal intelligence that you can have, and you, you have, you've met people that are like, you wouldn't class them as the brightest tool in the shed, but they're so

• 1:14:23Jonny?

  A great, incredibly engaging.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  And I guess if you, if you make them start, like, dissecting it, actually, it's probably gonna take things apart.

• 1:14:30Chris Williamson?

  Again, you have, you have people. You know, a good, a good example of this, we're talking about strength sports, Dmitri Klockov.

• 1:14:36Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:37Chris Williamson?

  Has a, a very unconventional style of lifting, his feet are too close together, sometimes one's in front of the other.

• 1:14:42Jonny?

  Got bowed legs, hasn't he?

• 1:14:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, he's just, he lifts, he lifts in.

• 1:14:45Jonny?

  Russian.

• 1:14:46Chris Williamson?

  He does lift.

• 1:14:46Jonny?

  Cheating.

• 1:14:47Chris Williamson?

  Um, he lifts in a style which a coach would come over and say, well, this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong. But naturally.

• 1:14:55Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:55Chris Williamson?

  He's very capable within the domain of competence.

• 1:14:57Jonny?

  How much you snatch?

• 1:14:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:59Jonny?

  I snatch more.

• 1:14:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, with one arm.

• 1:15:01Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, it's, it's just, some people have this natural ability, but you're right, like, some people, quite rightly so, don't want to cultivate.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Uh, well, they don't have to systematise it, it can just be.

• 1:15:14Chris Williamson?

  Well, no, they just don't want to. Maybe they're bad socially and they don't care. Or maybe they're bad socially and they have no desire to get better.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  So is that confidence?

• 1:15:22Jonny?

  So that, but, yeah.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Because then being bad socially, not caring.

• 1:15:24Jonny?

  Actually, is that, is that desirable?

• 1:15:26Chris Williamson?

  But again, I think confi-, I think confidence can be broken down to a lack of, a, a lack of attachment to the outcome of something. So if you are not bothered about whether or not it goes well or goes badly.

• 1:15:37Jonny?

  Can all be explained by.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I suppose actually the, the, the, I guess.

• 1:15:42Jonny?

  Bye, I will.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  The safety catch on that is that if, if you're bad socially, like, you're socially anxious, but you don't care about it, then you wouldn't be socially anxious. Because social anxiety.

• 1:15:53Jonny?

  That's the self-correcting mechanism.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um.

• 1:15:57Jonny?

  But maybe all you care about is like Warcraft. And like, when you're socially anxious, all you're thinking about is Warcraft. So you're like, I'm socially anxious, but I genuinely just want to go home and play.

• 1:16:08Chris Williamson?

  Can we do an episode on how to become more confident within Warcraft?

• 1:16:12Jonny?

  Within the Warcraft domain?

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Oh, that's Warhammer. Sorry, Warcraft is the, the digital.

• 1:16:15Chris Williamson?

  Online, MMORPG.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Okay. So one more question, which, so if you are seeking advice from people.

• 1:16:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  How does that fit in to your definitions of confidence?

• 1:16:30Jonny?

  Can you explain what you, I'm not really sure what you mean.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  So seeking advice, getting a coach.

• 1:16:34Jonny?

  No, I know what you mean by that.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  So how does that fit in with the sense of like, so if if self-efficacy and self-assuredness is all about being comfortable with your decisions and knowing that, how does then seeking advice from other people?

• 1:16:47Chris Williamson?

  But being being comfortable, what is going on here?

• 1:16:51Jonny?

  It's all about my trachanda.

• 1:16:53Chris Williamson?

  Isn't that your bursa?

• 1:16:54Jonny?

  But so what's the bursa is involved? Right, the bursa is involved, yeah. Which is either a sack of fluid or someone who manages the finances of a school.

• 1:17:03Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so I think I think that when you're talking about confidence, a an admission that you want to better yourself without feeling silly or concerned about the process that you're going to go through is absolutely a part of that.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Okay, because I suppose that even in seeking advice, there's a spectrum of like being an asshole and just asking for the sake of it, or going like going overboard, asking advice, but not actually taking any of it and just using it as a procrastination tool, or asking so that it confirms your existing view, which confirmation bias, or it's totally

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  and what's the word, unbiased, like asking for advice and then taking some of it.

• 1:17:47Chris Williamson?

  What's more liberating than you thinking to yourself, okay, I need to get better at X. I'm going to ask a question about it. What's more, what requires more confidence than that?

• 1:17:56Jonny?

  So I think that's the

• 1:17:57Chris Williamson?

  A level of vulnerability.

• 1:17:58Jonny?

  To sit with, just like backing yourself that if you're told to do something, like if you ask for advice and someone gives you advice and you trust that person, you're like,

• 1:18:08Chris Williamson?

  Go for it.

• 1:18:09Jonny?

  Okay, so you're like, I want fashion advice.

• 1:18:10Chris Williamson?

  That's confidence in them, right?

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  It's, I suppose it's accurately assessing your, so like, for example, we were like, okay, our fashion ability is quite low. We know someone who we can assess has a more complete understanding of that, outsource.

• 1:18:26Jonny?

  Yeah, so being objective with yourself as much as possible.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  I guess so, yeah.

• 1:18:30Jonny?

  Trying to say where am I weak, where am I strong?

• 1:18:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:32Jonny?

  Where can I be?

• 1:18:32Chris Williamson?

  Again, with that, that comes back to being able to be truthful, because one of the problems I had, I played a role for a very, very long time. The one that ended up manifesting itself on Love Island and oddly enough was highlighted to myself internally so starkly that it was what made me realise, right, you need to actually try and find out who the fuck you are. Because it's not that person you thought it might have been, but it's definitely, definitely fucking not. And three weeks with a hundred cameras on you has made it quite apparent.

• 1:19:04Chris Williamson?

  I think that I spent an awful lot of time pretending to be something that I wasn't. And that series of lying meant that I actually didn't know what I was good and what I wasn't good at. Like, how was I able to work out where, which elements of my life needed work? When everything was a lie, the lies and, and the, um, fronting and the facade and the veneer had become so much a part of me that I didn't know where I finished. I didn't know where I finished and, and, and it began.

• 1:19:34Jonny?

  So it's, it, because I mean, people, people are supposed to have different, you know, like you get, you go through a horrible traumatic experience or

• 1:19:41Chris Williamson?

  Protection.

• 1:19:41Jonny?

  Whatever, and suddenly you're forced to reveal the, the true you. And for you, that was Love Island. Well, but, but seriously though, like you're like, here I am in this world and I'm realising, like, holy shit, the person that I've been trying to like, put out to the world, I can't sustain.

• 1:19:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:59Jonny?

  So there has to be a gap between Love Island Chris and real Chris.

• 1:20:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Jonny?

  And other people like are in a plane crash or, you know, get marooned on an island and you went on a reality TV show.

• 1:20:10Chris Williamson?

  I went on an island.

• 1:20:11Jonny?

  It's all the same thing.

• 1:20:12Chris Williamson?

  I was on an, I was marooned on an island.

• 1:20:13Jonny?

  Is it actually just an island?

• 1:20:15Chris Williamson?

  It's Mallorca.

• 1:20:15Jonny?

  Alright.

• 1:20:16Chris Williamson?

  She's an island.

• 1:20:17Jonny?

  It's not his place to be marooned on. You weren't marooned.

• 1:20:20Chris Williamson?

  I wasn't marooned and you are not going to be marooned either anymore.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  No more maroons.

• 1:20:25Jonny?

  But only because he has confidence in you.

• 1:20:28Chris Williamson?

  He does.

• 1:20:29Jonny?

  And his ability to follow the advice.

• 1:20:31Chris Williamson?

  Right. Anything else? Any closing thoughts?

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  I think we covered some pretty good ground in that and that was a lovely run through of definitions, different domains of confidence and what you've done. Because I, I, I think I was excited to do this episode to see what your evolution has been and how you see the whole discipline of confidence. Being the person who I think is the, the most, at least the most confident person that I know personally. Like going to Iceland.

• 1:21:03Chris Williamson?

  Lodi accolade.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  Well, like, so we we went to Iceland together, the three of us. And I remember just. It was it was ridiculous, like, but I suppose like a a club is the. Is your.

• 1:21:16Chris Williamson?

  That's your thing.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  Stopping ground, isn't it?

• 1:21:18Chris Williamson?

  That's your jam. But it's the same if you were.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Like the guy that started on you, the several. Several women flocking flocking to you, like, it was all quite.

• 1:21:26Jonny?

  I started on you in Iceland.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  The, yeah.

• 1:21:28Chris Williamson?

  When he tried to get us off his table.

• 1:21:31Jonny?

  In Iceland?

• 1:21:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, when we were in that bar.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Not that it was like.

• 1:21:34Chris Williamson?

  And he was like, oh, I've bought I've bought this bottle, this single bottle.

• 1:21:37Jonny?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:39Chris Williamson?

  And the doorman, the doorman realised.

• 1:21:41Jonny?

  You're like, okay.

• 1:21:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that made me feel silly.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  I don't think it was, it was like. It was like, all right, then you you want to speak? I can't remember how.

• 1:21:51Jonny?

  What what's so funny about that, looking back, actually, was I felt a sense of total calm. Because I was just like, Chris has dealt with this.

• 1:21:58Chris Williamson?

  A million times.

• 1:21:58Jonny?

  Thousands of times.

• 1:21:59Chris Williamson?

  It's just, it was a pissed up twenty two year old who'd bought a single bottle of Smirnoff. And thought that that somehow gave him right to move me off his table.

• 1:22:08Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  He did physically try and push you off.

• 1:22:10Chris Williamson?

  And then the doorman, the doorman put his hand in the way, in between both of us, and said, basically, sort of wagged his finger at him. This is obviously a kid who goes to the club a fair bit and has misbehaved. So the doorman had done that. So I put my hand on his back and I said, you just listen to your dad, yeah?

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  That that was it.

• 1:22:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And, oh, no, you just listen to your boss and then.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Little naughty boy.

• 1:22:28Chris Williamson?

  And then just and then just waited there, finished my drink, put my drink back down on his table and then left.

• 1:22:33Jonny?

  Oh, yeah. It was it was just a feeling of like, I'm trying to think of an example. It's like being in a. Being in a plane crash, but, you know, the pilot's got us.

• 1:22:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 1:22:42Jonny?

  It's like, this is not, like, that that guy has no idea how many times Chris has dealt with people like him in situations like this. And then it all worked out fine.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  The fact that he's Icelandic made no difference.

• 1:22:52Chris Williamson?

  Exposure.

• 1:22:52Jonny?

  Just exposure, yeah.

• 1:22:53Chris Williamson?

  It's time of detention. Uh, right.

• 1:22:55Jonny?

  I my, I think I would like to part with.

• 1:22:58Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:22:58Jonny?

  Start with. Something like if you feel like you're lacking confidence, start with doing, trying to do something. Just yourself, like the make your bed example. And prove to yourself that you can achieve something. Prove to yourself that you can be consistent with something that you set yourself to do.

• 1:23:15Chris Williamson?

  I wonder if that ice cream fan's been picked up on then.

• 1:23:18Jonny?

  Mr. Whippy.

• 1:23:20Chris Williamson?

  I know, I agree, I agree.

• 1:23:21Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22Chris Williamson?

  Wholeheartedly. So find, find a domain of competence and start to push it a little bit.

• 1:23:28Jonny?

  And prove, prove to yourself that you can do something that you maybe don't, right now, don't feel like you can. And then over time, as a result of doing that, you become a different person and start to set the bar slightly higher and slightly higher. Until one day, you're doing things that like two years ago, you've never thought.

• 1:23:47Chris Williamson?

  Well, that breeds confidence.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  It's a good point to make it progressive as well, because I think if you suddenly hold yourself to standards that are way above your current level, like the, like the Cambridge suicides, like you're only going to fall short of it.

• 1:23:58Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  As opposed to, yeah.

• 1:23:59Jonny?

  Begin with your domain of competence. Build momentum in improving yourself.

• 1:24:03Chris Williamson?

  This is again, another, people just need to read my Instagram more. There's a, things become thoughts as opposed to thoughts become things. And it's if you spend the entire day, there's no difference between the girl who spends the entire day ruminating about going to the gym, obsessing, listening to a gym playlist to amp herself up and using up every ounce of willpower to get herself to the gym.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  The action precedes the thought.

• 1:24:22Chris Williamson?

  And the girl who just gets in the car and ends up at the gym. The only difference is one of them's used up a fuck ton of willpower and energy getting there.

• 1:24:30Jonny?

  There was something you said to me, this is not really related, I have an, I have an evernote, which is things I've learned from my friends, like lessons. It was something you said to me, it was in the same conversation where you initially said that to me.

• 1:24:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Jonny?

  Where it was something about my shoelaces.

• 1:24:45Jonny?

  And it was like, I was like, it's okay, because there's a process, because if I trip on my shoelaces, I know to tie them up. And you said like, yes, but if you act on the, like if you act on the react and the result rather than the.

• 1:24:58Chris Williamson?

  I can't remember, I don't remember that one. It's like when I quoted you, Corey Allen, and you had absolutely.

• 1:25:04Chris Williamson?

  Did I say that? I think I did.

• 1:25:05Jonny?

  But I remember you saying like, because at the time I was being really inconsistent with my training and you used that as an example, like there's no, like, you don't have to make fanfare about it, just.

• 1:25:14Chris Williamson?

  Just do it.

• 1:25:15Jonny?

  Again, you start doing something.

• 1:25:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, and the same thing. So I think you, you're totally right. To begin, I think confidence can be.

• 1:25:24Chris Williamson?

  Confidence needs to be a belief that your capacity is greater than what you think it is, or it's greater than what you believe it to be currently, that if you were presented with a challenge, that there is a fair chance that you may be able to overcome it.

• 1:25:40Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:40Chris Williamson?

  And if you don't, you will be okay.

• 1:25:43Jonny?

  Yeah, or you'll figure it out.

• 1:25:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:45Jonny?

  No matter what happens.

• 1:25:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So I'm going to go to the gym today. I'm going to try and PR. I'm going to pick up 315 kilos. I didn't pick up 315 kilos. Okay, what can we learn from that?

• 1:25:55Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:56Chris Williamson?

  So I think begin with the domain of competence. Fucking clean your room up. Like honestly, it's the the single biggest impact that I've been able to have is been making my bed every day. And this is a combination actually of the video of the naval officer that went viral online.

• 1:26:13Jonny?

  Talking about cleaning your bed.

• 1:26:13Chris Williamson?

  Goalcast. He just talked about making your bed. And that's like 50 million views. If you haven't seen it, search Goalcast. I think it'll come up.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  It's like first win of the day.

• 1:26:21Chris Williamson?

  On Facebook. Yeah, you've nailed it. You've already started the day well. Right, my bed's made. And then the the love, the nicest thing, the nicest footnote is he goes, and if your day has been completely shit and everything's gone wrong, you come home to a made bed.

• 1:26:35Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:36Chris Williamson?

  And you're like, do you know what it is? Yes, that is.

• 1:26:40Jonny?

  So I think for me, really, what I get out of morning routines, training in the morning, or anything like that, is a feeling of of confidence.

• 1:26:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:48Jonny?

  It's like I by nine AM, I've done everything I wanted to do. The chances of me having a good day, to me, just how I feel are higher.

• 1:26:56Chris Williamson?

  You're on a roll.

• 1:26:57Jonny?

  And even if it goes shit, you get to the end of the day and you're like, yeah, but I nailed I nailed this morning.

• 1:27:01Chris Williamson?

  I think for me, definitely as well, one of my keystone habits is getting up early and getting my morning routine right. Because the opposite is true as well. When you start this, yeah, when you start the day badly, you frame everything within, oh shit, well, if I hadn't got up late, if I hadn't done this, that and the other. Everything's jaded with this really, really bad view as opposed to. Doing it the other way, which is I'm gonna get after it. Oh, well, this didn't go as well as I thought, but I'm gonna fucking, I'm gonna have it like I'm gonna, I'm gonna get after this task. This situation isn't beyond my domain of competence, or even if it is, I'm still gonna be able to crush it. So.

• 1:27:38Jonny?

  Yeah, wa- waking up early, because even then, like, it gets to three in the afternoon and you're like, I feel a bit tired, I'm not gonna, oh no, hold on, like, today's going so well, it'd be a shame to ruin it. I'll just do it anyway. And it almost just keeps you in this little pathway until the end of the day, like, what a great day, I can, I can now, I can relax, I'm allowed to relax because.

• 1:27:56Chris Williamson?

  I, I deserve it.

• 1:27:56Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so.

• 1:27:58Jonny?

  Wake up.

• 1:27:58Chris Williamson?

  Domain, domain, domain competence, it's like a, get after it, get after it.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Instagram it.

• 1:28:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Instagram it.

• 1:28:05Jonny?

  Little digital watch.

• 1:28:05Chris Williamson?

  Sure. Um, so yeah, domain of competence, start with something that you know that you can conquer and then start to push that progressive overload.

• 1:28:13Jonny?

  Yep.

• 1:28:13Chris Williamson?

  Um, I think definitely being prepared to put yourself into situations that you wouldn't normally be in without any preconception of a, a desire or a requirement for success or a, a requirement for an outcome that you would derive a success within that, to believe it's successful, like just going on a night out and being in a social, yeah, situation is tick that one off the list, like, cool, okay, I've spent a bit of time and attention there. Like, I've spent, I've learned some things, how can I then, next time I go out, I'll try and do something else.

• 1:28:45Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Um, again, if you can systematize it as best as possible, if you need to cultivate a, um, a capacity within a social environment, get a couple of buddies or, um, go to a networking event or do whatever it is that you can do that routine, routineizes, systematizes, habituates the time and attention, because if you have to make that decision every single time, then you're gonna end up using a shitload of willpower to go, but if your friends have already organized, you've already organized to go out for some dinner this evening with my friends, I can't say no. And then you're there and then it rolls into drinks and before you know it, you're in a bar talking to some people that you've never met before.

• 1:29:21Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:22Chris Williamson?

  Sweet. Whereas if you've got to drag yourself out of, oh, well, I hadn't planned to go out and I've got to drag myself out of bed on my own and I've got to go and randomly talk to these people, like.

• 1:29:30Jonny?

  Create, creating like an architecture around your day and week that makes good decisions easy and bad decisions hard.

• 1:29:35Chris Williamson?

  Stack the deck in your favor.

• 1:29:36Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:37Chris Williamson?

  One hundred percent. Um, and then I, I genuinely think that the, the power stance thing's a big deal. Like, if you walk into a bar, like, it can be subtly, and I used to do it subtly, sort of go in and you'd stand feet apart, like. Shoulders back, chest forward. And if you do that for about thirty seconds, you do feel a little bit, I don't know whether it's placebo, but you just think, fucking hell, yeah, like, I don't have anything to be concerned about in this situation. I can, I can talk to people and, and they're gonna be responsive, responsive to me and they're gonna like me and even if they don't, then so what? Like, cause I'm happy with me and yeah, it's um.

• 1:30:12Jonny?

  I think in, I realise I'm extending this when we're trying to wrap up, but I think like in that example, feeling confident socially. For me, I've noticed there's a fluctuation in my confidence when, where I get my value from in my personality. Different aspects of my life, like if those are going well, I feel higher sense of self-worth.

• 1:30:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:31Jonny?

  More confidence. If like, business is crap, training's crap, I've had an argument with Becca.

• 1:30:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:37Jonny?

  Like, and you go out that night, I immediately feel totally different.

• 1:30:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:43Jonny?

  Because people are gonna inevitably go like, how's such and such.

• 1:30:46Chris Williamson?

  It's one of those, it's one of those things, right? Like you.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 1:30:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  Bloody great.

• 1:30:50Jonny?

  Other than like, I'm the fucking ultimate king, like.

• 1:30:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:53Jonny?

  Which is obviously how I feel every other day.

• 1:30:55Chris Williamson?

  The rest of the time, after a great smoothie.

• 1:30:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think, I think you're right. It's, it's difficult to have this indomitable spirit.

• 1:31:04Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:05Chris Williamson?

  Where nothing extrinsic will affect what's going on.

• 1:31:10Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Chris Williamson?

  Inside your mind. And I mean, that's the, you can meditate, sitting down in silence, right? Okay, now can you meditate standing up? Now can you meditate walking? Now can you, you know, you increase the level of difficulty.

• 1:31:22Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:22Chris Williamson?

  If you have the capacity to still be confident and still be outgoing and forthcoming and self-believing.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  Under greater and greater tensions.

• 1:31:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Chris Williamson?

  That would suggest your natural proclivity to the contrary. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's real, real true confidence. And I think that's, um, I mean, I'm not advising at all to try and make things in your life go really terribly badly, just to see if you can still remain confident in them. Like, don't crash your car and then say, well, I'll see if I can still talk to people on a night out. Yeah. That would be a bad idea.

• 1:31:57Jonny?

  Have you seen that, the video of the very British reaction to a car accident? The guy's car like goes on its side, like that's like merge lanes, car tips over. And you like, there's a guy rushes over, he's going, oh my God, he's like, okay, okay, that, I'm uninjured, I'm uninjured, let's, let's stay calm about this.

• 1:32:14Chris Williamson?

  No anger.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Is this the guy, is this the guy, is he at ninety degrees?

• 1:32:19Jonny?

  Just so relaxed. It's interesting because I, I forget sometimes that Yusef's done five hundred hours of meditation.

• 1:32:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  No, but I get really angry on the road, like if, if.

• 1:32:30Jonny?

  You do.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  As a cyclist, I've showered at so many people.

• 1:32:34Jonny?

  But that wasn't what I was gonna meet, that was what I was gonna say, it was, it's if something, it's in the context of like, in a little world of propane, like little tiny things go wrong all the time.

• 1:32:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:43Jonny?

  Yusef's ability to just.

• 1:32:46Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:32:47Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:47Chris Williamson?

  But again, look, so let's bring this back, we can talk very briefly, we can touch on confidence in a business perspective, a lot of people that are listening may have desires to run their own business or have their own projects on the side, and this can apply to within your family, your family is a project in and of itself, you've got a, a young child.

• 1:33:03Jonny?

  Careers count as well.

• 1:33:05Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely, um, remember how big of a catastrophe it was when something went wrong five years ago in your business?

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:33:13Chris Williamson?

  And then think about the same thing happening now, you just think.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Our first refund request.

• 1:33:17Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Like, but what, what we're talking about before, it's this ability to have perspective, it's the time and attention, it's that when your sample size is only one year long, the outliers that are at zero percent and a hundred percent are fucking mental, and then as the sample grows bigger and bigger, you actually realise that zero, zero and a hundred were below the interquartile range, they were like fucking forty nine and fifty one, and you think, hang on, look at how much more I can ride the waves, in fact, the book, the confidence book by School of Life, uh, which is actually twenty percent, this is not in any way affiliated, but it's, um, it's twenty percent off at the moment if you just buy.

• 1:33:55Jonny?

  Forward slash Chris.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  It just happens to be Chris twenty.

• 1:34:00Chris Williamson?

  The front, the front cover of the book is a.

• 1:34:03Jonny?

  Picnic.

• 1:34:04Chris Williamson?

  It's a, yeah, it's me going.

• 1:34:07Chris Williamson?

  Uh, it's a galleon ship on waves.

• 1:34:09Jonny?

  Right.

• 1:34:10Chris Williamson?

  And it's that exact thing, it's that the, um.

• 1:34:15Chris Williamson?

  Your capacity to ride the waves of life is very, uh, it's very relative. Like what may seem like a massive wave now is actually like, yeah.

• 1:34:27Jonny?

  So I think one of the qualities that I find most admirable and impressive in people is resilience to things.

• 1:34:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Jonny?

  Like something goes catastrophically wrong and someone's just like, oh, it's fine.

• 1:34:37Chris Williamson?

  Whatever.

• 1:34:37Jonny?

  And I think you, eh, eh, business is a good example because things can go like vitally, like the wrong way instantly.

• 1:34:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:47Jonny?

  And if you have enough experiences of that at a greater, greater magnitude at the time, I think you just become, there's a, there's a level where you just become.

• 1:34:55Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's domain, domain of competence again, right? That, that, that issue is within what you would consider to be, I've dealt with this.

• 1:35:03Jonny?

  Yeah, I can, I can, yeah.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Remember you saying Darren's like that?

• 1:35:06Chris Williamson?

  Uh, he's, he's just an absolute animal.

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  Just like.

• 1:35:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Yeah, he just takes it on the chin, but he's always, he's always been like that. He's always, always been like that. He's never had the new, the, the level of neuroticism that I have. Um, we're going to do one of the upcoming podcasts that we're going to do is going to be on, um, the truths about running your own business. And I think that a lot.

• 1:35:27Jonny?

  Oh, it's really exciting for that.

• 1:35:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that'll be awesome. So, you know, we've had, we had the conversation when you were going to leave, um.

• 1:35:33Jonny?

  Sat there.

• 1:35:34Chris Williamson?

  That chartered accountant company and you were sat down there. Um, so, yeah, I think definitely resilience is, is a big deal.

• 1:35:44Jonny?

  And I, I think having, I think if you are in a position where you're like, you hear the concept of fuck you money.

• 1:35:51Chris Williamson?

  We've got fuck you money.

• 1:35:52Jonny?

  Like if you, there's like, I think it's, I think maybe the gambler or something, film with Mark Wahlberg in.

• 1:35:56Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:35:57Jonny?

  And his mentors like, get fuck you money, like get a million quid in the bank and then you're untouchable. Like no one can make you do anything.

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, same way. It's the most, the most powerful anxiolytic is.

• 1:36:08Jonny?

  Just having fuck you money. Yeah. So like if you're financially secure and something bad happens in a business or a career. Cause really like business is, is a representation of like financial security. Yeah. So it's very like some bad habits, oh, oh, go on.

• 1:36:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you feel it.

• 1:36:24Jonny?

  Whereas Yusuf just stood there in his Captain Hook outfit at the, at the helm while like in a storm, he's just.

• 1:36:29Chris Williamson?

  Arrgh.

• 1:36:32Jonny?

  Did you see the film Everest?

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:36:35Jonny?

  So you know when the famous writer is getting picked up? In fact, this should be included in the show notes, this clip, because this is confidence. He's getting picked up from Everest in a helicopter by like a really like skilled pilot. And the helicopter's going like all over.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  It's at the very start, right?

• 1:36:53Jonny?

  No, it's after this guy's injured.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:36:55Jonny?

  And it flashes to the helicopter pilot's face and he's just, just no emotion.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  Is it, I swear it's at the start, I swear it's at the very, very beginning, it's the first, it's the first one, I think, yeah. And he's like going around and yeah, he's just completely stoic.

• 1:37:08Jonny?

  And he goes like, I'm gonna push off the edge and then we'll go into vertical dive and then we'll be fine, is that okay with you? The guy's like, good man.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  Thing is, like you'd be.

• 1:37:18Jonny?

  It's like that, it's like the bus driver in Iceland.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 1:37:22Jonny?

  Yeah, remember like, like we're gonna, and the guy's just like.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  So, so just to clarify for, to context, guys, we were in the, the biggest storm of the year in Iceland. And we happened to be out in the Blue Lagoon, just like playing around in the water. And but then like from, from below, from here below, it was nice and warm and lovely and then from up top.

• 1:37:39Jonny?

  That was the thing, I was, I was um dilated and vascular from the chest down.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  And then like.

• 1:37:45Jonny?

  Blue from the chest up. He's an avatar character.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Like naughty nips and like red face and everything.

• 1:37:51Jonny?

  And then when we were told, when we were told that the pool is closing in half an hour. And by the way, any buses that leave after half an hour will, you will have to stay here overnight.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 1:38:02Jonny?

  I remember seeing a, a visual, the strongest visual representation of your fear of wasting money. As me and Chris are sat in the pool and they go, right, guys, we're closing the saunas. And you're like, I've not been in the saunas, running in fly, in Chris's flowery shorts.

• 1:38:20Jonny?

  Over this bridge in a blizzard in Iceland.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  Calling all the thing.

• 1:38:24Jonny?

  Just to have a go in the sauna.

• 1:38:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:26Jonny?

  Couldn't that miss out?

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Most lukewarm little sauna as well.

• 1:38:28Jonny?

  Yeah, so like everyone's fucking like panicking.

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  Well, so we're driving back, we're, we're back on the bus.

• 1:38:33Jonny?

  So before then, we're getting on the bus and someone goes like, apparently they've closed the roads. The guy's like, close the roads, it's Iceland. You're like, you are a monster.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  Fucking great.

• 1:38:44Chris Williamson?

  Well, that was the thing. So we we got on the bus and we were sat at the back. I don't know why we chose to sit at the back.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:49Chris Williamson?

  We feel safer, doesn't it? Like naughty schoolboys. Yeah. So we were sat sat at the back of this bus and I've got I've still got the screenshot on my phone of the the weather app. Uh, where it said forty three miles an hour, forty three miles an hour winds. And they were going, they were completely adjacent to the path that we were travelling in. So this high sided seventy two person seated coach and this guy and I thought.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  He didn't compromise on speed at all.

• 1:39:12Chris Williamson?

  No, not at all. I mean, if anything, if anything, he he used it as a sail, didn't he? He used it to go quicker. Like. Angled himself into it. Into the corner, exactly, yeah. So, uh, and we were like, the bus was getting really buffeted and it's high side. We were shitting ourselves. Hmm. And I thought, right, well, my solution is if I go, if I walk to the front of this bus and I look at the bus driver and he's okay, I'm okay.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  You had like a smile on his face.

• 1:39:38Chris Williamson?

  Outsourcing, right? That's outsourcing to someone with a with a speciality. Man who said before. Man who looked like. Man who looked, yes, yes, yes. So walked down, walked down to the front of the bus, expecting to see at least a small amount of concern. You just wanna see like, as he was just sat there like this.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  He was in great spirits. I talked to him and he's like.

• 1:39:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Because we, everyone was getting off and they're like, thank you. He's like, he's okay, he's okay. He's Iceland, yeah. And the only, the only time of the trip that you looked more alarmed was when they, when you saw the price for the lamb broth.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  Oh. Seventeen pounds fifty for a, for a small cup of lamb broth.

• 1:40:17Chris Williamson?

  Always the the ready meal, buying that ready meal.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Oh, it was twenty quid, right, for a, a supermarket ready meal, twenty pounds.

• 1:40:22Chris Williamson?

  What about the Bloody Mary?

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Oh. Man, see, guys, I'm so triggered right now. We have to end the, end the podcast because I'm going to upset.

• 1:40:31Chris Williamson?

  Looking back, there are so many.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  So we, thi- this is one of the examples of everything just going fine for Chris. Like, we went to a tomato farm. Which was on affiliate commission from the, the coach, the coach.

• 1:40:43Jonny?

  Someone's dad's, someone's dad's greenhouse.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  And they do it, oh, we're just gonna stop off at the tomato farm. We recommend you buy a lovely tomato drink or beverage of some sort. So I, I got this weird, like, sweet Bloody Mary with lemon and ginger, but it was actually awful.

• 1:40:57Jonny?

  Bit of celery in it.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, really diluted. And then Chris got the nicest tomato soup ever for half the price. And I'm sat there drinking my, like, twelve pound horrible drink.

• 1:41:07Jonny?

  Well, I'm like, you and I brought insufficient clothing. Neither of us remembered our headphones. We sat together. Chris was three or four seats in front.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  Just Kenny.

• 1:41:15Jonny?

  Canada Goose, zipped all the way up, AirPods in, fast asleep. You know.

• 1:41:20Chris Williamson?

  Had a stonking hangover there.

• 1:41:22Jonny?

  And that was the morning where I was sleeping, sleeping, sleeping in the living room, woke up to watch you try and navigate the portable hob. And the first thing you said to me was.

• 1:41:35Jonny?

  I'm making myself an egg. Would you like an egg?

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  So it must have been the following morning that you're just working up to like, and if you get toe cancer. Metastasizes into.

• 1:41:48Jonny?

  To the shin, goes up to neck cancer, head cancer.

• 1:41:54Chris Williamson?

  And then you revising in the middle of Iceland.

• 1:41:56Jonny?

  I walked into his, into his room and he's sat on the bed just going. And I was like, what's wrong, man? He's like, I've just been up sold. What do you mean you've just been up sold? He was like, I tried to get Peas is. And they've sold me an annual membership. And I don't need an annual membership.

• 1:42:15Chris Williamson?

  That's a lack of confidence.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  Oh, it was just a.

• 1:42:18Jonny?

  The egg shower that you had to kneel in.

• 1:42:20Chris Williamson?

  The egg shower, it was very sulfur. Anyone who hasn't been to Iceland before, the water is incredibly sulfur.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  So smelly. Like, you, you think that the drains are coming back up the shower, but then they're like, no, no, this is Icelandic water. They, they put the word Icelandic in front of any product.

• 1:42:33Jonny?

  Icelandic butter.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Icelandic chocolate, like.

• 1:42:36Chris Williamson?

  Licorice. I mean, it's just normal.

• 1:42:38Jonny?

  Remember the waterfall? You remember how cold the waterfall?

• 1:42:40Chris Williamson?

  That was the coldest part of the trip. Gulphos.

• 1:42:42Jonny?

  Oh, yeah. And you, there's a photo of you with the Chinese lady?

• 1:42:45Chris Williamson?

  No, that was at the bit where they drowned people. That was where the parliament was. Like in like the sixteen hundreds. God, that was strange. Anyway, confidence. Hope everyone's enjoyed.

• 1:42:54Jonny?

  Go to Iceland.

• 1:42:55Chris Williamson?

  Go to Iceland if you do well.

• 1:42:57Jonny?

  Go to the penis museum.

• 1:42:58Chris Williamson?

  Go to the penis museum. Don't buy the Lambroth. Don't buy the Bloody Mary. Don't go during a storm.

• 1:43:03Jonny?

  Don't, don't think that like mine, oh, it's one degree. I've dealt with that before. I'll just go out wearing a shirt.

• 1:43:09Chris Williamson?

  That was what me and you did.

• 1:43:10Jonny?

  I, I honestly think I was close to.

• 1:43:12Chris Williamson?

  I'd never seen you so sad.

• 1:43:13Jonny?

  Some kind of shock. Yeah.

• 1:43:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:15Jonny?

  And of course, you, you were fine.

• 1:43:18Chris Williamson?

  I was fine. Yeah, I was. I was fine. Um, so for the first time, make sure that you subscribe YouTube. Press the like button, comment if you've got any comments, or catch us on Instagram, Twitter, all that other stuff. Okay, bye then.

• 1:43:32Jonny?

  Okay, bye then.

• 1:43:32Chris Williamson?

  Okay, bye then.