[00:01] DANIEL SIH: Hey there, Spacemakers. I'm Daniel Sih, here with my good friend and co-host, Matt Bain. Welcome to the fourth season of The Spacemakers, a podcast to help you live an intentional, meaningful life.

 

NARRATOR: This is The Spacemakers.

 

DANIEL SIH: This season, we go deeper, challenging our constant self-improvement culture and what it's doing to us. [00:24] It's a pod course designed to help you step off the busy treadmill, let go of the constant need for more and make space for a life that is truly enough.

Big thanks to our long-time sponsor, Bulk Nutrients, providing high-quality supplements at affordable prices. If you're a new customer, you can enjoy 5% off your first order at bulknutrients.com.au/spacemakers.

 

NARRATOR: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

 

DANIEL SIH: Hello everyone, welcome back to the Spacemakers podcast. [00:57] We are up to season four, episode three, where we are helping you to make space for a life that is enough. Now I'm going to start this episode with something I've never done, which is to share a somewhat inappropriate joke, one that hopefully won't get me cancelled, but here we go. How do you know if someone is a vegan who does CrossFit? Don't worry, they will tell you. Boom, boom. [01:19] Now, you've probably heard this joke. It is inappropriate, and I apologize in advance if we've lost half the audience. We do love you, vegans and CrossFitters who listen to the Spacemakers podcast. But today, we are going to talk about the vegan CrossFit paradox, something we have named that is probably inappropriate. But we want to tackle a really important topic about what it looks like to be enough, and that's around health, around what it looks like to care about your health, to invest in your health and yet not be one of those annoying people who actually talk about health so much that it becomes unhelpful and how to actually invest in your health without it somehow hooking you and being part of your identity. It's a really important topic and one that Matt and I are super excited to explain and explore today. So welcome. I'm here with Matt Bain, my good friend, co-host, who is probably a closet crossfitter and maybe vegan. Welcome, Matt.

[02:13] MATT BAIN: Thanks, Dan. I feel I need to, in the interest of, you know, vulnerability and transparency and keeping you honest, I've got to let everyone at home know that is definitely not the first time you've shared an inappropriate joke. It's just the first time you've shared one on our podcast, but that's definitely not your first inappropriate joke.

 

DANIEL SIH: No, no, of course not. No, in fact, I'm hoping we could make it a regular recurrence.

 

[02:33] MATT BAIN: My favourite variant on that is like how do you know if someone's a vegan, CrossFitter and a pilot? You put those three together and that's like the Holy Trinity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: But look, seriously, we came up with this obviously, the vegan CrossFit paradox. We want to talk about health and the importance of health because there is a dark side to health actually and there's a few dark sides to health, you know, where health stops becoming healthy when either you become so obsessed or interested or vocal about your health that, you know, [03:02] you become annoying. And we all know people in that kind of camp. Yeah, it's like preoccupied. Preoccupied. It becomes kind of the center of what they do. [03:08] And it hooks kind of with their identity, which is where it becomes a problem. Or you have the vast majority of us who actually want to deep down be vegan CrossFitters. We actually want to eat well. We want to exercise well. I mean, these are great things, right? [03:21] We want to do things that are good for us. And yet we somehow fail to reach our standards or the things we're trying to reach. And that kind of makes us unhealthy as well.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: So we want to talk about how much is enough when it comes to health. [03:34] How do you invest in things that are good for you without them somehow hooking you in and becoming unhealthy? We want to talk about some of the dark side of the health and wellbeing industry, intentional and unintentional kind of dark sides of that industry. And we want to give people some practical, hopefully helpful ways that they can invest in their health, invest in how they eat, invest in their wellbeing in a way that is life-giving and healthy while maybe avoiding some of the negative effects of overemphasizing health.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, sounds good. [04:08] Do we need to give some kind of proviso here? I mean, it might surprise people, but we're actually not health experts.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, we probably better do that medical thing that this is generalized advice and basically don't listen to anything we say. This is for entertainment purposes only.

 

MATT BAIN: That's right. [04:24] We enjoy good health. We're big fans of good health, but- Probably unfair to say. Yeah. Misleading to say we're health experts.

 

[04:30] DANIEL SIH: That is absolutely true. So, look, if you're new to the Spacemakers podcast and this is the first time you've listened, well, firstly, you've probably turned off and you won't listen again because we started with a bad joke.

 

MATT BAIN: Come on, all our carnivore friends are still listening, that's for sure.

 

DANIEL SIH: That's true. We've just, yeah, we've just biased the audience. [04:47] But, so the Spacemakers is a podcast to help you make space for an intentional and meaningful life. We run what we call pod courses, which are kind of 10 episode series around particular topics related to making space. We've tackled topics like how to make space to focus your mind, how to make space to navigate the midlife slump, how to make space to get unstuck. But today we're talking about how to make space for a life that is enough. Do you want to maybe frame the challenge that we're trying to tackle at a bigger picture level of enoughness?

 

[05:22] MATT BAIN: Yep. So we assume that like a fair majority of our audience is in the kind of same context or space as us. And that is you are not short of options and opportunities and all of a positive nature. And there are plenty of avenues that you could take in order to kind of be better, to better yourself. And whilst we're fans of self-improvement and we're fans of, I guess, like self-help and personal development, the risk is that what starts off as a blessing can become a curse because there are so much, so many different paths and avenues you could take in order to kind of be better, to be more, to improve, that again, what should have been life-giving and affirming turns out to be crushing, soul-crushing.

 

[06:06] DANIEL SIH: And we're hearing this, aren't we, that so many people are exhausted by this kind of drive to do more, be more, self-optimize, add more to their life. And, you know, last week we even talked about the irony that being a self-help podcast, we're part of that.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: But you add it all together and it can be exhausting.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, that's right. [06:23] Because, again, like we're assuming that most people who are listening –you know, like in a similar position to ourselves.

 

DANIEL SIH: Absolutely.

 

MATT BAIN: We actually have like the time and the resources to dedicate to something like self-help.

 

DANIEL SIH: Exactly. [06:35] It is certainly a privileged conversation. I recognize that. So the title of this overarching podcast is this self-help is killing me. How do I make space for enough? And we want to particularly focus on that in the realm of health. [06:48] That's what we're going to talk about today.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah. Can't wait. So Dan, I think it makes sense if we start with, I know this sounds a little bit melodramatic, but bear with us, the dark side of the health industry. Because again, we're both on the same page. [07:06] Everyone knows that health is a good thing, but it does like the industry that's kind of built up around it. That has a dark side, right? And there's two parts of that. There's the kind of blatant consumerism that's built into that. And then the accidental health consumerism. [07:19] So do you want to talk about the first one first?

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, sounds good. Look, and I think people understand that there is like a dark side or a consumptive side to, you know, health. Anyone who opens their Instagram and sees the algorithm will know that. Look, I had a conversation with one of my friends, Megzi Waters, who's a WAFL commentator. [07:36] She's an Indigenous commentator. We do work together fairly regularly, kind of taking groups out into the bush and having conversations. I do strengths work and she does breath work. It's a good experience. And I was hiking with a group from Queensland about a month ago and we were just chatting and I was asking her about this topic because we were talking [07:56] preparing for this idea of health and wellbeing and enoughness. And because she's been in the health and wellness industry for years, I just asked her whether or not she sees the challenges of the health industry and people feeling like they're not enough and they have to be more and do more. And if there's an exhaustion that comes around that. And she said, oh, totally. You know, from her perspective, she said, I remember I grew up, you know, like looking at Dolly magazines and I know Cleo maybe. [08:22] And girls at her age, she said, were just soaked in these images of beautiful women and what they should look like and how they should act. And obviously since that time of, you know, Dolly magazines, that industry has just exploded. And every time you open up your Instagram account or TikTok, you just see image after image after image that makes you feel bad about your body that says you're not enough. You need to look better. [08:45] You need to be more beautiful. You need to have a better waistline. You need to have better skin and better hair and better lashes and all that kind of stuff, you know. And eventually it becomes exhausting. And so she agreed that there is definitely this unhealthy industry that kind of makes us [09:01] feel like we're not enough that essentially preys on young women and makes you feel miserable in order to buy products. But I think the thing that stood out to me from that conversation was she runs a gym and she, Megzi has, you know, just so many kind of really healthy women who invest a lot in their health and some of them are, you know, truly beautiful and actually do look very much like an Instagram model and um and she said what's interesting is you either have kind of one camp where you've got women who uh just can't ever live up to you know the influences and and there's a hard reality in that that you're never enough but even if you can live up to them even if you happen to have this kind of you know all the right genes and you exercise and you have the right products and you look beautiful she said actually when i have conversations with some of my clients deep down they're miserable because they are either just miserable in themselves. They don't think they look beautiful, even though they look gorgeous on the outside. [10:03] So, you know, their internal reality still feels miserable, like they're not enough, even though they're kind of winning on the outside. And the other thing that was interesting is that they're terrified that, or that they're fearful that they're going to lose it because we all will. At some point we all get old and and we don't look like Instagram models. And so I suppose that really spoke to me to this problem, that somehow if we hook our identity and our self-worth and value with our health and fitness, it can be an issue. [10:39] And that is obviously fuelled by this kind of algorithmic online health industry that makes money out of making you miserable. Anyway, that's the story I had with Megzi. Thank you for sharing that, Megzi. It was super helpful. [10:50] But yeah, what are your perspectives, Matt?

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, that's all good and useful. I think probably where I'm coming from, because I'm not on Instagram, for example.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, you're not an Instagram influencer yet, right? There's still hope.

 

[11:05] MATT BAIN: Not even LinkedIn. Yeah, much to your disgust. Yeah, so where I kind of sit is probably more in the overall longevity space. And what I've found is that, again, predominantly because of the internet, I suppose, and the reach of the internet and social media, and because more and more, I suppose, like credible, legit scientists and researchers like the Hubermans, for example, they've kind of seemingly pivoted and focused on longevity. [11:33] There's now a whole boom industry that is trying to sell you the latest kind of product or program around longevity. So it's not so much... contrary to your example, it's not so much like beauty and fear-based fear.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah it's not the skin, the lashes, the kind of the appearance on the outside.

 

MATT BAIN: It's not so much the appearance. [11:53] It's more life extension.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, so you want to live well. Yeah. And you want to live longer. But there's still an industry around it.

 

[12:00] MATT BAIN: Yeah, a whole cottage industry that has boomed around that. And again, because they know that to some degree that's still fear-driven. People who take the time to investigate it will spend the money on it.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah. So ironically, the problem's the same, right, with different kind of avenues or different kind of pull points. [12:17] On the one hand, you've just got the blatant, we'll call it blatant, the blatant consumptive health industry where there are algorithms that every time you put in, hey, I'm interested in a skin product, you'll be kind of bombarded by product after product and story after story and reel after reel.

 

MATT BAIN: That's one of your searches?

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. Look at my skin. [12:34] How good is it, hey? But do  you know what I mean? Like you'll get just so much stuff about how you're not enough, how you need to look better, how you need to buy this product and this eyelash curler and this blah, blah, blah, blah to become –enough, right? We know this. [12:51] And as much as we all understand how advertising works, we are absolutely susceptible. We're absolutely susceptible to it, which is why it's a multi-billion dollar industry. And the sad thing is it's essentially an industry that is designed to make you feel miserable about yourself, that you're not enough and you need to do more and therefore you have to either look right. Or in your case, you talked about maybe not look right, but... do the healthy things so that you have longevity.

 

[13:19] MATT BAIN: Yeah, that's right. So like miserable and or scared or fearful.

 

DANIEL SIH: Fearful, yeah.

 

 MATT BAIN: Anxious.

 

DANIEL SIH: But it's just consumerism from a health perspective, right?

 

[13:26] MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah. And then so that's the kind of like you said, I think like blatant or kind of like explicit side of things.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah. And so what do we swim in though, right?

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, it is, it is. [13:33] But what also kind of gets me at least is the almost like the accidental side of things as well, right? And so this just kind of comes with having a smartwatch that's a fitness tracker, right? So good thing, again, really useful for helping optimise your health. But out of the box, most of them like come with like this built-in nudge factor. I'm not sure if you've ever experienced this. [13:53] Maybe you've been too busy like Googling.

 

DANIEL SIH: Have you seen my watch? It's like from the 1990s, but anyway.

 

MATT BAIN: You've got to stop spending a lot of money on eyelashes, man.

 

DANIEL SIH: And skincare.

 

[14:01] MATT BAIN: And skincare, yeah, yeah. Redirect some of that. Yeah, so every like, if I'm like dormant, unless I turn it off, again, because out of the box, I'm pretty sure it's like default is set on. If I'm just sitting here talking to you for like longer than an hour, this thing will buzz or it'll give off an audible alert with a prompt saying, hey, you need to move. So I'm getting like, again, prompted by this thing when I could be like mid conversation with you. [14:24] So part of me now is all, part of my brain is now opened up to listen. I just need to start moving more frequently. What if I'm not moving enough? I've got to somehow like pre-empt this watch before I get the automated alert, like that kind of thing, you know? Or it's the sleep tracker that you wake up to and it's just so easy. [14:39] First thing in the morning, check your sleep score. And so if I read that I've got a bad sleep score, again, I can get a little bit anxious. Oh, man, my day is going to be ruined. What am I going to do? I've disliked other chances of getting Alzheimer's and dementia because my sleep quality is so poor. [14:52] Man. So you start to stress about it. Or it's like literally, okay, so you run a fair bit, right? So you run a little bit and maybe you're on Strava. And I'm sure all the platforms have some kind of equivalent feature where if you do the most amount of running in a particular area or route, then you become a local legend. [15:06] Awesome. So it'll let you know, let everyone else know you're the local legend. That's rad. But of course, you've got this title, which means now you've got it to lose as well. So there's a bit more incipient pressure. [15:16] Okay, if I don't maintain this thing, I'm going to lose, dear God, my local legend status on Strava, someone else is going to get that crown. So all these things, again, you know, I'm sure they start off with the world's best intentions, but they can add to this almost implicit just low-grade anxiety and stress and fear about health, which also plays with your attention.

 

DANIEL SIH: So, again, these are not designed to actually make you miserable. They're designed to be helpful tools like Strava tracking and, you know, smartwatches. [15:45] But at the same time, what you're saying, there's an accidental –unhelpful health effect.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, unintended.

 

DANIEL SIH: Unintended, yeah. And even we talked about the Huberman effect. [15:55] We've got like the vegan CrossFit paradox, the Huberman effect. We're making up all these great names in this pod season. But we've got the Huberman effect we talked about I think last week or the first week where, again, someone like Andrew Huberman who provides all these fantastic science-based protocols or even ourselves. We made fun of ourselves in the Spacemakers. We provide essentially protocols based on science and best made up stuff.

[16:17] MATT BAIN: Yeah, because we're health experts like we've already said.

 

DANIEL SIH: But you add all these things up and in and of themselves, each protocol, for example, is helpful. But it's that low-grade anxiety of being in a consumer culture where you self-define your worth by what you do, what you have, what you experience. And when you kind of take... a protocol and put it into that overarching cultural matrix it makes you feel miserable  and this is what we're talking about in this whole pod course season this kind of exhaustion that people are feeling that there is always more that they have to do there's always more that they have to be that they'll never live up to xyz whether it be longevity or beautiful skin. [17:01] And so how do we actually care for our health and happiness? How do we maintain fitness and eat well and do what's good for our bodies without this constant, like you said, low-grade anxiety, self-loathing or hatred that kind of comes with that? That's a really important topic.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, that's it. So to your point. [17:22] Any of these protocols in isolation, great.

 

DANIEL SIH: Especially ours.

 

MATT BAIN: Especially ours. All put together, sheer volume and quantity, overwhelming. It's a really good example of, again, infinite ways to optimise. [17:37] Infinite ways to optimise, foisted upon finite creatures who only have X amount of time, money, and attention.

 

DANIEL SIH: All right. So, Matt, look, we've talked about humorously the vegan CrossFit paradox. And a paradox is something where there's kind of two equal and opposite ends. [17:54] And, you know, we think that there's kind of two equal and opposite issues when it comes to health and enoughness. Do you want to explain the paradox?

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, sure, sure. So let's start with –the end of not making the cut. [18:08] So not living up to your self-imposed standards around health and fitness. Easy for me to talk on this one, you know, because I can fall back on personal... personal experience. So what happens if, again, you've seen, you've been exposed to all these great kind of options and pathways for further optimizing and improving, being more when it comes to health and fitness, and you fail. And the cruel part is that you've actually tried hard. [18:35] So you've given your particular circumstances and context, you've given it everything, and yet you still don't make the cut. It's so easy to forget that, A, the cut, the kind of definition of enough, that ceiling is so high, so high, you could keep on going and going and going and never actually reach it. So in terms of like what is enough, again, your perspective is skewed. And secondly, you won't kind of blame the impossibility of that high ceiling. [18:59] You'll force all the responsibility for failure on yourself. So you can go super dark, super negative, and just like knee-jerk the complete opposite way. It's a bit like the famous example, not that I could again ever personally relate to this, but when you try to quit smoking and then you just have one cigarette and you're so disappointed on yourself, with yourself after abstaining for a long time, you think, you know, forget about it. [19:22] I'm just going to now smoke the whole pack. So you can knee jerk the other way because you failed.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, I once heard someone say, and I think it's related to health particularly, that, you know, if you end up with a flat tire, it's a bad idea to slash the other three. And I think it happens so much when you set a high standard, you know, I'm not going to eat this donut. I'm not going to do this. [19:40] I'm going to do the exercise this time or I'm going to up in the morning and blah, blah, blah. So you set the high standard and then you try to reach it. You put effort in. And then, look, you eat the donut, right? And so I like the analogy that, okay, so sure, you've got a flat tire. [19:56] But then what we do, and I think it's because of the emotional nature and the connection with identity, we then go slash the other three. Oh, well, then I'm just going to stop exercising. I'm going to eat ice cream and I'm just going to lie on the couch and watch TV. That's kind of what you mean by smoking the packet versus just having one cigarette, right?

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah. [20:13] So you kind of use it as an excuse to kind of go back to easier but self-destructive behaviours.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, yeah.

 

MATT BAIN: Because of one minor setback.

 

DANIEL SIH: And I think somehow it's because you realise, well, actually I'm not going to make the cut. I'm not going to become a vegan CrossFitter. [20:25] I'm not going to become an Instagram model. I'm not going to become the thing I want to become.

 

MATT BAIN: I'm not going to have perfect eyelashes.

 

DANIEL SIH: Or perfect skin like me. And then therefore blah, blah, blah. [20:34] So I think that's one end of the paradox and that makes us feel miserable, right, when we link who we are and our self-worth with whether we do the thing. And we're going to talk a lot about that in a broader sense beyond health next week. But I think in the health realm, it's really clear that a lot of us just struggle so much with trying to be healthy, aiming to be healthy, putting so much effort into trying to do the thing and then being miserable or anxious or unhappy because we can't reach it. And That sucks.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, that sucks. [21:05] But it sucks like the other way as well. So the other end of that paradox spectrum, as you were talking about, is if you actually make the cut. So again, maybe because of genetics and time and whatever or maybe you realise there was a standard or a goal that you were going for that wasn't quite that, you know, that kind of endless ceiling, you make it. And so like say, for example, you know, you had a goal of getting down to 8% body fat. It takes a lot of work from what I've heard and a lot of dedication. [21:31] The risk is like once you've hit that and you know that you've hit that, like you start to, you know, strut around the world viewing people through a primary perspective of that guy's like 22% body fat, clearly. Yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: He's a 9%.

 

MATT BAIN: He's a 9%. Yeah, like what's he doing with his life? [21:46] You know what I mean? He's wasting all that talent, you know. He's just carrying around all this – or, you know, the person who kind of cracks a personal PB when it comes to your bench press. And next thing you know, you're kind of gauging every single other person who crosses your path. I wonder what he could bench press. [21:58] I'm pretty sure he couldn't lift what I lift.

 

DANIEL SIH: So there's a judgmentalism, right, and an annoyingness or, you know, like the –Let's use judgmentalism, I suppose, the sense where, well, because you set a standard and you happen to reach it, well, then because your identity and self-worth is linked to that standard, well, what tends to happen is you then look at others who can't do what you did and therefore they're fat or they're ugly or they're blah, blah, blah, because... They're lazy or they didn't do the thing or they, you know, you see it in kind of wealthy circles as well. You know, you didn't make the money because blah, blah, blah. [22:30] But I think it's that same thing. When you reach the standard, you become judgmental or maybe you become, yeah, I suppose annoying or you put your standards onto others and then somehow critique yourself as being better.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, superior. It's really interesting.

 

DANIEL SIH: Which is the heartbeat of that joke, I suppose, essentially.

 

[22:45] MATT BAIN: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a fusion there of, again, health and fitness and morality. So somehow health and fitness now has a moral value. So you can feel morally superior over other people when you've attained it and they haven't.

 

[22:58] DANIEL SIH: Yeah. And the irony, I think, of that paradox is even if you do reach it, at the same time, and this is where I think Meg's story kind of is helpful, I think it's neither one or the other. It's often I'll judge people because I'm like this, and I've certainly been in that situation. But then you can have this self-loathing at the same time where it's like, well, or fear or anxiety because, well, A, I know I'm going to lose it. [23:20] Because if your worth is based on hitting that 9% fat level.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: you know that one day you're probably going to lose it. You can't maintain it and you'll hit 10% again, especially as you get older, it gets harder to maintain. So within that, you've got judgment and you also have fear.

 

[23:35] MATT BAIN: Yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: And that's a really interesting combination.

 

MATT BAIN: It is. It is. It makes you think of, have you seen Dodgeball?

 

[23:42] DANIEL SIH: I have seen Dodgeball.

 

MATT BAIN: Ben Stiller's character in Dodgeball, fantastic example.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah. I was thinking of Ben Stiller with I'm really, really attractive. I'm a really, really good-looking guy. [23:52] So what happens if you're a really, really good-looking guy? Well, then maybe you get the combo. But anyway, life can be learned from Ben Stiller.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, so you've got the potential judgmentalism. You've got the potential, again, fear about having to maintain that. [24:06] What happens if I don't? And sometimes the don't is inevitable. And then you've also got like this possibility of like – and this is a value judgment –effectively just becoming selfish. So you're reaching and then maintaining a particular level of health and fitness can become so all consuming and so time consuming and so attention and resource consuming that you may end up neglecting other real responsibilities that you have in your life. [24:30] And so the kind of classic example of this is usually like, again, relying on kind of generalizations and cliches, like a kind of middle-aged dude who is trying to hold down a job, a partner, kids, like trying to be a good father and a good dad, but then decide, you know what, I think I have this call to become, you know, like the equivalent of some kind of, you know, I need to do this Navy SEAL cyborg ultra marathon two a day exercise training program to actually like reach my full potential, you know, and then his kids and his partner just don't see him anymore because he's like literally spending three hours a day exercising and training.

 

DANIEL SIH: So there's a cost, I suppose, in anything you choose. So look, all of that goes to say that we see it as a paradox. You kind of want to avoid falling into too far on one end or the other end. [25:20] It can be unhelpful to link your self-worth and to hate yourself and slash your tires because you can't reach your health and fitness goals, even though it's a good thing to get fit. And at the same time, you need to be careful about the problem of actually reaching your goals and therefore judging people or being selfish or having fear and that kind of leading to an unhealthiness as well. So how, I suppose, do we navigate the in-between? How do we hold the tension between shooting for high goals but not linking our self-worth to them? [25:56] You and I want to talk about some strategies next.

 

MATT BAIN: So Dan, as is our want, we're going to have a moment of silence now. So this is a great opportunity to stop and reflect, particularly around where you may be when it comes to that paradox, whether you've made the cut or whether you haven't. And also, again, if you are someone who has paid good money for one of those ultra marathon, cyborg, Navy, SEAL training plans, now's a great time to think about whether you can get a refund on that bad boy as well. Okay. [26:30] So let's take a moment.

 

MATT BAIN: All right, hopefully that was useful. Now, Dan, we've got three different suggestions that we want to present to people that will hopefully help kind of like shape their application around health and fitness. So the first one, and I reckon like personally, this is probably the most important. Take the time to consider like where your identity is based or what your identity is based on, particularly in relation to fitness. [27:26] So is your primary pillar of how you view yourself, is that too tied up to and attached with your health and fitness? And I think for a lot of us this is probably going to depend on age and stage, so like life context. So again, I'd like to go back to that tried and true example. If you're a family kind of person, so you've got dependents to look after, maybe as we've discussed in the past, you've got ageing, parents or in-laws as well. [27:53] You're trying to hold down a job. It may just not be a great time to base your identity on physical performance, if you like, you know. So it may just not be a great time to have to devote too much time and headspace to getting ultra, ultra fit. Maybe for you, you can get by like, you know, with a run every couple of days and a weekly game of pickleball or something like that, you know.

 

DANIEL SIH: Don't make fun of my pickleball, man.

 

MATT BAIN: [28:13] No. It's a real thing.

 

DANIEL SIH: Someone mentioned that I play water basketball and it's all gone downhill from there.

 

MATT BAIN: It's like this decade's cycling, you know. It's crazy. [28:24] Anyway, so just be really conscious. Be explicit. Be honest with yourself. Be rigorous about how much of my worth, how much of my identity, how much of my kind of self-esteem is is placed on health and fitness. [28:37] Because again, where you're at, it may be too much. Does that make sense?

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, but I mean, it's super hard to do, right? I mean, it's super hard to work out. Well, and it's never binary. [28:45] It's not like all my identities in this or none of my identities in this. You could find your identity in your family and your work and how much money you have and what your body looks like. But what we're saying is the more you connect your self-worth and your identity with some type of physical metric, the more you're likely to fall onto either side of the paradox. You don't achieve it, so you're miserable about yourself because, oh, I ate the donut, therefore I'm a shitty person. [29:13] Do you know what I mean? Like there's a connection between who I am, my being with my doing, that makes you miserable, so you slash the tires. Or the other kind of converse is that, well, my identity is based on whether I did the thing and therefore I've become judgmental, I'm a better person or I'm a miserable person based on the fact that I'm –hitting this metric, neither of them are helpful. What's important is to somehow do the thing without your self-worth, your being, being connected directly with that thing.

 

[29:43] MATT BAIN: Yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: And that's hard to do, super hard to do in life, right?

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: And there's different varying kind of degrees of it if we're honest because everyone has some degree of physicality connected with their self-worth. It's just about the level of that connection I think that can be unhelpful.

 

[29:57] MATT BAIN: Sure, yeah. So maybe when it comes to answering that question –because again, maybe it is difficult to answer. I reckon if you looked at things like how much money am I spending on it? How much time am I spending on it? [30:08] My calendar and my diary. And how much, this is the hardest one to measure, how much headspace and attention am I spending?

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, where do you give your loves and longings? What's the functional kind of master of your heart, a Tim Keller line? You know, what do you dream about? [30:20] And- How bad do you feel if you reach or don't reach the thing?

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: I think that's the key. We're going to talk more about that really difficult concept around being and doing and identity and value. [30:34] We're going to talk about that next episode as a whole because it's such a big, important topic when it comes to knowing if you're enough and how to be enough and how to actually let go of this constant churn for more. But yeah, it's something worth considering.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah. Yeah, it is. Look, and maybe particularly for that last measure, the almost like purely kind of subjective one, that could be really difficult to answer. [30:54] But often a quick like go-to, a hack if you like, is find someone in your life who really knows you and how you're spending your time and what's going on in your mental private world and who loves you. Ask them what they think about how much, I suppose, like attention and importance you'll put on your health and fitness. Because they'll tell you.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, nice. [31:11] I like it. All right. So you've mentioned three. There's three applications.  So one is to consider-

 

MATT BAIN: I said there were three coming, but to be fair, we've only covered one so far.

 

[31:18] DANIEL SIH: So what's the second one?

 

MATT BAIN: The second one is stop measuring everything. Stop measuring everything. So whilst there's a place, an important place for probably like tracking some, I suppose, like metrics, fitness and health-related metrics in your life, and maybe that's your 10,000 steps a day. Maybe that's am I eating clean like 80% of the time? [31:37] How many drinks, alcoholic drinks am I having per day? Whatever you're kind of really assuming that you've got some, few important metrics are. Of course, I track those because they are important. But if you're tracking everything, And if it's more to the point, if it's become really, really, really important to you to track everything, so you're getting a little bit preoccupied and obsessed by it, you're constantly like checking in with your tracking devices, you know, you're going through the spreadsheet, just let that go for a while and see what happens. [32:04] Because to your prior point, a pretty good indicator of whether you're too subjectively hooked into something is what happens when I try to put some distance between me and that? What happens when I stop doing that? How much pain do I feel?

 

DANIEL SIH: At some point, we're going to talk about attachments, which is a kind of Zen Buddhist or kind of Eastern philosophical term. You might use idols or worship in kind of Western Christian context. [32:29] But essentially, the way you tell whether something is an attachment is you separate yourself from it and see how you feel.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: And so, you know, that's what we're talking about, right? Separate yourself, and if it’s fine and it’s like well that’s not really a big deal, and I don’t mind that I lost my Strava account or I don’t mind that I didn’t kind of track this or I didn’t know what sleep metrics I had well then it’s fine right, it’s probably not an attachment, it’s probably just a healthy measure that can guide your behaviour.  But if you start dreaming about it, feeling worried about it, it's almost like this kind of addictive impulse. Well, then potentially it's an attachment and that attachment is linked with your self-worth. [33:07] We'll talk more about that in a future episode.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like probably like the easiest kind of, what's the best word? Like the kind of like canary in the coal mine. Is that if you think that you have to do a workout again because you've accidentally forgot to track it the first time, that's probably a red flag.

 

[33:24] DANIEL SIH: I'm pretty into this. I don't track anything, right? But I like the idea of having to sleep again because I didn't sleep well. Sorry, everyone. SIH: I can't do clients today. [33:31] I've got to catch up on my sleep. All right. So that's the second one. Stop measuring everything. Look, the third one I'll talk about, which is, you know, we've talked about process, not outcome, which is actually, interestingly, a way of measuring. [33:42] I think if you do measure, it can be really helpful to have the right measures. And I think helpful measures are increasingly what we would call process measures, not outcome measures, or in business and leadership terms, lead measures versus lag measures. And so, you know, I was at the gym just the other day, just to say that so it looks, you know, like I’m good.

 

MATT BAIN: It was obvious, but sure. 

 

DANIEL SIH: Because really I'm better than you and I'm sure I have like, you know, only 9% fat. [34:09] But no.

 

MATT BAIN: And that's all in your eyelashes.

 

DANIEL SIH: My eye lashes. At the gym, they had these cards and it's basically like, what's your goal? [34:19] And you write it down, you write your name, you fold it up and you put it into this kind of box and then they pull them out in three months and you kind of get to see if you did the thing, right? And I think that's like in principle, that's a great idea. But I was actually, but we're able to see what other people have written down and there's a board and everything else. And what was interesting is I looked at what almost everyone wrote on their thing and their sheets were almost all outcome measures. [34:43] You know, I want to lose this much weight. I want to lift this much. You know, I want to weight, you know, bench press this much. You know, I want to kind of get to this percent body fat, et cetera, et cetera. So they're all kind of... [34:55] they're end measures, meaning if you get on the scale, you either get there or you don't. That's why it's called a lag measure, but it's not an indicator of progress. And I think the problem with those kind of outcome measures or lag indicators is that they can make you feel miserable because most of us don't achieve that weight gain, that weight loss or that muscle gain or that kind of particular rep, um, and even if you get 90% there because you didn't reach it, you still feel miserable because you didn't reach the thing because that's what you were shooting for. Does that make sense?

 

[35:29] MATT BAIN: Yeah.

 

DANIEL SIH: And I'm not saying I'm better than others, but what I actually wrote down, it's very, very true, is I just said I never want to miss a workout. I want to turn up four days a week to the gym and do something. And that's all I ever measure. I actually don't even know how much I lift, but I've done this for four years now. [35:46] I do four or five sessions at the gym every week, all I want to do is not miss the workout. And if that means I turn up, walk on the treadmill at a low speed for 10 minutes and then decide I'm too stuffed, I'm going home, then I get to tick it because I'm trying to measure the process and fall in love with the process of turning up, not so much the outcome of what happens. And interestingly, when I was measuring how much I was lifting and when I was measuring how much I was running, well, I would always feel miserable and actually often I didn't actually make that much progress because I'd injure myself trying to just get to that next level and then I'd be back a step, etc. But now that I only measure turning up, I'm probably healthier and stronger than I've ever been. [36:28] I actually don't know how much I lift, but I'm sure it's probably more than it was when I was trying to lift something heavy. So I think there's something about measuring your process and falling in love with the process that is actually a bit healthier and maybe can separate you from that identity piece a little bit more because it's about the enjoyment of it rather than the outcome or benefit. That's how I found it anyway.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, look, I mean, it sounds less sexy. It sounds like less inspirational.

 

[36:53] DANIEL SIH: You're saying I'm less sexy, Matt.

 

MATT BAIN: Your approach, for what it's worth. But I do remember like the dark days of you measuring all that stuff and having like the blood restricted flow.

 

DANIEL SIH: I must admit I still like my blood restricted training cuffs.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, putting one around your neck was a bad idea. [37:06] You know what I mean? That was just weird. Yeah, but it does sound serious. It sounds like a bit more of a mature, measured, sustainable approach.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, yeah. [37:15] And look, it can still hook you. You know, you can still kind of overly measure things, but I think it reduces some of the risks.

 

MATT BAIN: One more thing, Dan, I reckon it's worth bringing up when it comes to this overall topic of optimising to a positive degree our health and longevity is that so much I think of kind of the health and wellness industry is peddled on this idea of if you do X, Y, and Z, if you buy X, Y, and Z, if you do X, Y, and Z program, you will have control. [37:47] It's never like that explicit, but the implicit message is you will have control of your health and your longevity and your lifespan. And again, it's just worth reiterating that there are so many things beyond our control that are gonna influence our health and our lifespan, whether that's genetics, whether that's poor decisions that my past self made that will end up catching up to me in the future or whether that's like drunk drivers and you just being incredibly unlucky on the route that you took to work that day.

 

DANIEL SIH: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, the stat that I think is most interesting is 100% of us will die. I mean, the reality is we're all going to get unwell, right? [38:27] You might get lucky and live long and then get unwell slowly or you might get hit by a drunk driver. But the reality is at some point you lose your health. And so, yeah, at some point we have to accept that control is an illusion. And actually a lot of what we're talking about in this entire season, this entire podcast is –giving up the illusion of control, being willing to let go of that need to kind of control your activities and your behavior and to be defined by that and therefore to simply be enough.

 

[38:59] MATT BAIN: Yeah, face up, as we talked about last episode, facing up to the fact that we're mortal.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah. So with that in mind, why don't we get practical because we love to leave listeners with a really practical and hopefully small but specific takeaway because, again, you can have all this theory and all these ideas, but we want to teach you to walk away with some small practices. And as we ramp up in this podcast season, we're going to get very specific on practices like thankfulness and letting go of attachments and things, looking for chorus moments. We're going to spend a bit more time on the practical nature of it. [39:32] But we wanted to frame the problems in the earlier season episodes. But let's go through the AWARE framework, which is our framework for applying, I suppose, the lack of giving up of control. And we'll finish with the gratitude scan.

 

MATT BAIN: So the AWARE framework is our acrostic for this season. [39:58] Unlike last season, this isn't meant to be done, if you like, sequentially. So it's not a kind of, it's not a step-by-step process. It's more what, one, two, three, four, it's five principles that it's worth kind of being really mindful of and paying attention to when it comes to this idea of defining enough. So A is for appreciation. So again, like just recognizing and being grateful for the good things that are already going on in your life. [40:22] W is watch for Kairos. So Kairos moments. So not just regular time, but significant moments of time where perhaps again, life is trying to tell you something or make you kind of take notice of something.

 

DANIEL SIH: We're going to have a whole episode on Kairos moments.

 

MATT BAIN: Whole episode. [40:37] The second A is for acceptance. So being able to work out, having the humility and the realism of working out the stuff that you simply cannot alter, the stuff that is to some degree inevitable and beyond your control and accepting that well. And then tied to that, R is for relinquish. So what are those unhealthy attachments that you need to let go of for, again, your health that, you know, if you try to grasp and cling to will be more than enough, too much. [41:05] And lastly, E for enoughness. So, again, just being able to work out and define – this is probably like the big idea of the entire season –When is enough? What is enough?

 

DANIEL SIH: Nice. [41:14] So look, we thought for this episode, we'd pick an activity based on the A or appreciation. And I suppose appreciation, thankfulness, and gratitude, they're just synonymous words. And look, I am a huge, huge believer in the importance of practicing thankfulness and gratitude or appreciation. I think that... practicing intentionally, intentionally looking for what is right in yourself and others, looking for what you can appreciate in your life without adding more is one of the kind of counter practices that help with this exhaustion of this self-help and wellbeing culture we're in. [41:53] If you can practice looking at what is right about yourself and others and be thankful for what you have, it's just incredibly life-giving and helpful and something that we can practice and reframe. But in terms of health and this particular topic, we want to encourage our listeners to do what we call a gratitude scan. And so a gratitude scan is a simple activity. You simply start by paying attention to your body, your physical self. [42:21] And by that, I don't mean standing in front of a mirror. Don't stand in front of a mirror, right? But what I want you to do is simply just pay attention to how you feel, to your body, to actually give appreciation and thanks to who you are and what you have. And so what I mean by that is... just pause and pay attention to your breath, you know, to breathe in and out and to realize how amazing and miraculous it is that you can breathe in oxygen and just have life. [42:54] Like it's actually pretty incredible and you can, you can ignore that. Pay attention to your heartbeat, you know, put your hand over your heart and just reflect on your heart. And actually, you know, if you're a praying person, give thanks. If you're a thankfulness person, just appreciate the fact that your heart is beating constantly, pumping oxygen across the body. [43:14] I mean, I had a heart scare about... Four months ago, my cardiologist thought there might be something seriously wrong with my heart. In the end, it ended up being a dodgy scan. But for about four months, I thought actually I might not have that long to live. Now I feel my heartbeat and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so grateful that I have energy, that I'm not short of breath. [43:35] That my heart works, and yet it's always done the same thing. I just haven't paid attention to it. So gratitude scanning is about paying attention to the parts of our bodies and who we are, not to add more, but just to be thankful for what we have. I'll read these things out. I'm thankful for my eyes and the gift that I can see colours. [43:55] I'm thankful for my ears and the wonder of sound. I'm thankful for my taste buds and in particular sweetness of donuts. I'm thankful for my legs. They  get to carry me where I need to go. I'm mobile. [44:08] I'm thankful for my fingers and thumbs that I can move things and create and write. I'm thankful for my arms that I get to hug my kids, my spouse. You know, I'm thankful for, I don't know, my toes. Just think about what you have. And that can be a really beautiful way to get past, you know, maybe you don't have the BMI you want. [44:30] Maybe you don't have the skin or the eyes or the hair or the weight that you're looking for. But there's stuff that's working. And it's a miracle that you get to live for this moment. And that's what a gratitude scan is, to say, yep, for this moment, I'm grateful. I'm thankful for my health. [44:50] I'm thankful for what I have. I'm thankful that I can even think these thoughts and know my name. I've been in palliative care. One day you might lose that. And to simply say, I'm enough. [45:01] Yeah, so that's the activity. Pause and have a gratitude scan.

 

MATT BAIN: I'm thankful for your eyelashes.

 

DANIEL SIH: I don't even know where to go with that, Matt. So hopefully this has been a helpful episode. [45:18] We've talked about health. We've talked about identity. We've talked about when you win and when you don't. Look, I suppose our hope is that you don't walk away feeling miserable about yourself, but you can be thankful for who you are and find a way to actually chase big things, be healthy, care for your body, care for your health without it actually becoming unhealthy. And hopefully through that, you'll make space for a life that is enough. [45:43] So next week, Matt, we are going to talk about identity in a deeper way. I think we've titled this next episode, the pressure to be better. I do what I don't want to do. It's going to be deep. Hopefully really valuable. [45:57] It's been one of the hardest episodes you and I have had to prepare for. But I'm looking forward to it and I think it will make a difference to people.

 

MATT BAIN: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too.

 

DANIEL SIH: Yeah, excellent. So look, if you've loved this episode or if you found it helpful or even if you haven't, write a good review and just lie. [46:10] But I'd love you to leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. It really helps us. Tell your friends about this if you know any vegan CrossFitters just so that we can share the joke too. But until next time, what's the line, Matt?

 

MATT BAIN: Maintain space.

 

[46:26] DANIEL SIH: Maintain space.

 

NARRATOR: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

 

DANIEL SIH: Big thanks to our long-time sponsor, Bulk Nutrients, providing high-quality supplements at affordable prices. If you're a new customer, you can enjoy 5% off your first order at bulknutrients.com.au/spacemakers.

 

NARRATOR: If you feel busy, overloaded and struggling to keep up, the Spacemakers Dojo is here to help. [46:53] This online community is for busy professionals like you, dedicated to making space together. Dive into the dojo to regain control of your time and make space in a supportive, accountable community. Visit spacemakers.au/dojo to find out more.