Ep.27 - Hard work, Smart work, Wise Work

Episode Transcript

Working smarter isn't the answer either

Is working smarter the best way to become your dream self - the version of you that has all the goals you want, the confidence, the money, the relationships, whatever? I bet you thought I was going to say working harder, but I think we're finally at a place in society where we know that working harder isn't a guarantee of success, whatever success looks like to you. Otherwise the cleaners and the builders and so on would be miles above the rest of us. But we all know that's not always the case.

What about working smarter? There's still a very deep belief in a lot of us that the biggest thing standing between where I am now and the person I want to be is just more intelligence, more knowledge, or a better strategy. But is that really the case?

I want to dig into that, because you may be stuck in the loop I was in - well, I just need more courses, I just need more information, I just need more strategy from someone who's already achieved the goal, and then I'll be fine. But if that were true, anyone who read 100 books would be successful in whatever area of life they wanted. And that isn't always the case. So what if there was something else - not hard work, not smart work, but something else that's the real difference between where you are now and where you want to be?

A man who inherited a million pounds

There's a story of a man who lost both his parents in a car accident at the same time. They were really wealthy, owners of some firm, with millions in their name. He wanted to make it by himself - he'd left his house when he was young and didn't want to take a penny from them. But of course, he inherited everything.

One day he wakes up and his bank account has a million pounds in it. Like any rational person, he thinks, I don't know what to do with this, I'm not used to it - I'll invest it. It's a safe option, the best way he knows to use the money effectively. So he does his research. He asks his late parents' friends where he should invest, and they give him a really good option - people who are supposedly the smartest in the industry. He thinks, I'll be completely fine here.

He invests all of it. Within three months he loses 25%, down from a million to 750,000. He's confused and annoyed. He thinks, maybe it was just a bad decision, maybe I didn't do enough research. So he does even more research, finds a place with a good track record, people he can trust, and invests everything he has left with them. Within six months he loses another 250,000. He's down by half now, and less than a year has passed.

He doesn't know what else to do. He's done all the smart things - found the right people, made smart moves with his money, hasn't been spending recklessly or buying random things. He's been very conservative, and he's still losing money. You could say it's the economy, whatever. But at this point he thinks something deeper is going on.

It's your relationship with the money

So he goes to a money coach, wanting to understand what's going on - am I trusting the wrong people, am I making bad investments? After a few months with this coach, he gets an answer he wasn't expecting. He thought the coach would tell him, make this trade on this day for this amount, but instead he's told something very different.

The reason he's losing money isn't because he's investing with the wrong people, or doing anything unsmart. It's his relationship with the money. All of this money is a reminder that he lost his parents, that they're not with him anymore. His subconscious mind wants to avoid that pain - why would he want a constant reminder that he is now alone? So his mind did what any logical mind would do: it wanted to get rid of the pain, and the best way it knew how was to get rid of the money.

When you think about it, it's incredible that the mind has so much power over not just our decisions but our reality - that it can affect things beyond our initial control. This story is from someone called Frederick Lehman. The first time I heard it I was a bit skeptical, but if you just take the moral of the story, it's powerful: what you consciously want may not be what you subconsciously need.

Consciously wanting something you're subconsciously blocking

There are people who do all the right things, all the smart things, and still aren't getting the results they're consciously looking for, because they're in complete internal misalignment with what they want. Imagine you want to make some money, buy that new car, that new house. So you do what you think is smart - take courses, find people who already have that amount of money to guide you and teach you. You apply everything, and yet in six months or six years nothing's changed. That alone would drive anyone crazy, or make them give up.

What do I mean by this? Your identity, your subconscious mind - the autonomous mind that controls your body without you needing to worry about it, that controls your heartbeat, how you digest, without you consciously thinking "heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat." Your body has an intelligence of its own that does that, and your identity is part of that. It's actions, behaviours, or patterns you've experienced so frequently that they've become embodied. Because it's in your body, you have no conscious control or even awareness of it - like forgetting your password but your fingers know exactly where to go on the keyboard. Or when you were learning to drive you had to consciously think about the windscreen, the steering wheel, ten and two - and a few months later you can have a conversation, even go on the phone, while driving. All of that because it's embodied. Your identity, the rules you play by in this world, is a function of that.

So when I say misalignment, imagine when you were growing up your parents used to say - through no fault of their own, it's just how they were brought up - "rich people are in their own world, they don't care about us." It's a very common belief. When you hear it that many times, especially at that age, you're a lot more impressionable, you take things in without much analytical filter.

So you grow up wanting to make money, wanting your own place, your own family, your own job, your own car - all these things. And you do what any smart person would do: read the books, take the courses, find someone to guide you who already has that money. But you also have a value: I am kind, I care about other people, I look after people, I talk to strangers on the train, I ask if someone's okay, I donate to charity.

Now you have two different beliefs operating in your personality: I am kind, and rich people aren't kind, they don't care about the rest of us. So what happens when you finally want to start making money? You're now in conflict. And those beliefs aren't always true - the fact that it's called a belief means it isn't true under all circumstances. If it were true in every case, it'd be a fact. But it's a belief, because there are people out there who are rich and also very kind. We just embodied that knowledge when we were younger and never consciously analysed whether it was true. We just took it as is.

Why discipline isn't the whole answer

You fall into the trap of thinking that to achieve your goals you just have to deal with surface-level things - how long you work, how hard you work, what knowledge and skills you have. That's it, that will be enough to make you your dream self. When you make that mistake, it's very easy to fall into frustration, because no matter how hard you try, no matter how many courses you take, you won't get there, because you're in constant misalignment with what you want. You want money, but you also have a value that says if I become rich I'll become mean or evil. If kindness is a very high value of yours, you won't let that happen, because the mind wants certainty - it wants to know I am safe. That's its job, and to be safe you have to be certain.

If you're uncertain about what's going to happen next, you're always going to be on high alert. Imagine going into the wilderness and being told there are bears and tigers around you - you'd be on edge every second. Now imagine walking around your house - you don't have that same alertness, because you feel safe. That's the mind's job. So if the consequence of you being safe is you not having the money you want, that's fine by the mind. It doesn't care about that. It cares that it's certain of who you are, because if it's certain, it's safe.

So what do you do? You can't change the mind's want to be certain - that's how we survive. What you can change is what you're certain about. Because there'll be someone else who, growing up, had the belief that having money means you can help people - maybe their parents were kind and generous with money. They grew up in alignment with their will to make money because they want to give back and they're kind. Same goal, two different people, very different paths. No matter what courses that other person takes, the person whose underlying belief is that money helps you give back is going to have an easier time making money - not because they're smarter or more talented, just more aligned.

Belief, not skill

That takes a lot of pressure off, because when we go through that cycle of learning more and more without getting what we want, our mind goes, I'm not good enough, I can't do it - all these other people can do it because they're lucky or smarter, I just can't. But when you truly know it's not a matter of skill, it's a matter of belief - not belief like "I know I can do it," belief as in identity, who you believe yourself to be - and you can change that.

You've changed that throughout your entire life. There are people who go through one experience - maybe a near-death experience, as an extreme example - and come out of it completely changed. Maybe they used to drink or smoke, and after that experience they no longer do. It wasn't a matter of finding the right course or being disciplined enough to wean off an addiction - they just turned up one day after that experience and decided, I am changing. It was a one-second decision, but they were aligned with it, so it was easy.

This is why I think discipline is great, it has its place, but I don't agree with the amount of weight we as a society put on it, because it's not always the quickest or best way. That's why I do what I do - I think there are better ways. If you deal with the deeper work - the beliefs, the conditioning, the patterns - you can literally wake up one day changed. Not that it'll happen in a week or a month, but it can happen like that. And you can be disciplined alongside that too.

But when you have a core belief that I am kind, and also that rich people aren't kind, everything you do to make money is going to feel like an uphill battle. That's when you burn out, that's when you feel useless or hopeless. And that's the majority of what we're taught - it's going to be difficult, it's going to be hard, it's going to be a lot of work. The truth is it doesn't have to be.

Wise work

So I don't believe in hard work, and I don't believe in smart work. I believe in wise work. Wise work doesn't mean you don't work hard or work smart - it means you prioritise what's more important. When you're truly aligned with something, you'll figure it out without any research. You'll come up with the strategy by some kind of inspiration, and you'll inherently have the motivation to achieve it without feeling burnt out or overextended, because you're just that aligned with it.

So if there's a part of your life where you feel like you're not getting the result you want, even though you're really trying, taking the courses, reading the books, working with guides and coaches, and you still can't do it - maybe it's time to step back and ask, what would I have to believe for me to have that? And by extension, look at the part of your life you're trying to work on and ask, what would someone have to believe for their life to turn out like mine has?

Because beliefs drive your decisions - reality is a function of your beliefs, or better, a function of your identity. You can even start by looking at someone else's life and asking what they'd have to believe about themselves and the world for their life to turn out the way it did. That's a really powerful exercise. It takes time, but it's powerful.

When you're truly aligned with things, they'll just start happening, because you're aligned with them. You don't have to try to be you, you are you - the same way that if you're not a smoker and never smoked, you don't have to try not to smoke, it's just who you are. If you're aligned with what you want, you'll find a way to get there without it even feeling like you're trying. That's the beauty of life. And that's why wise work will not only probably get you further in a shorter time, but it's also more fun.