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Hello and welcome to the Gay Man's Coaching podcast. The podcast for gay men who want to perform better in their life, their careers, their relationships, their mindset  and everywhere.  I'm your host Keegan Hurst  and I'm looking forward to chatting to you today. And I want to talk about rest and I want to talk about optimization because optimization is brilliant until it becomes the thing you do to feel worthy.  And then rest feels

00:28
like it's unearned, stillness feels like failure.  And  in this episode I want to draw the line between building a life  and running away from  yourself, you know the distractions that we have.  Just the one announcement, uh today we have one spot left for the retreat, a  glitch then, uh one...

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retreat spot left in August in Cornwall it's gonna be amazing we've got a great crew going, relaxation, yoga, breath work, good food, out in nature, beautiful part of the world, spend time with 20 other men who are doing on a similar journey to yourself it is exceptional it's three nights  and I'm super excited I can't wait  to get down there and go that is coming up in August which is next month now which is wild.

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We're already into the second half of the year. So that's why I wanted to talk about  resting, you know, and optimization because listen, I track my macros, I train, I  love a system. So this is not an anti optimization run. I absolutely believe in it. We should be systemizing things. I would be the biggest hypocrite alive if I was anti systemization, optimization, and things like that. But

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This is about the moment where optimisation stops  serving your life and starts taking away from it, starts eating into it. It's the moment that rest starts to feel like cheating. So here's the good version, right? Optimisation  can be a service to the life that you actually want, right? We need to have standards. We need to have minimum standards when things are going wrong. We need to set our standards.

02:23
when we want to achieve something, the  quality of your life that you have is directly linked to the level of the standards that you live by. So that is really important to remember. So if you want a better  quality of life, career, relationship, then you need to increase your standards. That is a universal rule. The systems that you have are gonna help you function in a busy life, a fast life that we all...

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that we all have and that we all live in.  It's important to have systems to fall back on because in times of high stress, in times of um difficulty, in times when things go wrong, you will always fall to your level of the systems rather than rise to the level of the challenge. Also something that is really important to remember.  And optimization helps us get better at the things that matter. It's genuinely valuable.

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You know, if there are things that can be improved that are going to allow us to achieve the things that we want to achieve,  we should do that. Of course we should. We should keep that in there.  But the flip side of that  is when your output is totally attached  to your self-worth and you are only as good as your last productive day, then a day off feels like falling behind. And that means that you're not optimizing to live better anymore.

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you're optimizing to keep proving that you are enough. And that is what we need to get the balance of.  And this is where so many people struggle with rest because it feels like  you should be doing something because you've fallen into the optimization trap. It feels like you're being lazy. It feels like you're falling behind  because you're constantly bombarded by how optimal everybody else is and how they're progressing and how they're sharing their highlights.

04:21
You also forget to realize that rest is part of the journey. It's not a nice to have. It's a need to have. If you think about, know, you were doing a cross country journey in a car, you factor in that you are going to stop and refuel. You factor in that you are going to stop for a rest because it's part of the journey. It allows you to get,  do the next leg of the journey. But we, we often forget that.

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Um, and I've seen a lot of, I don't know what your social media pages are like, but it's funny, you know, cause we see, cause people follow trends. feel like the, the, the people actually creating and being original seems to have disappeared. Um, and so people just jump on bandwagons and at one bit it was optimization for everything, right? It was, you know, those ridiculous morning routines that people would have where they get up at 5 a.m. and they'd

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They do read X amount of pages of this and a cold plunge and all that. And don't get me wrong, I've fallen into that trap as well.  It's planning everything to the nth degree. And again, I've fallen into that trap as well. And I feel like I would be being disingenuous if I said that I hadn't done that.  But I have done that. then once you've done something, you can then reflect on it and go, did that work? Was it the best thing?

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you know, did it allow me to achieve what I wanted to achieve? And also did I feel good doing it? Because that is really important. It's not just about the achievement, it's about the feeling of achieving it. Because if you achieve something but it felt crap, you're gonna go, that wasn't a nice experience, it wasn't worth doing, you're not gonna do it again. Right, it's,  you know, we've gone through that phase of how can you optimize absolutely every area of your life.

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But then you're not living anymore. You just feel like a robot.  And then people try to out optimize rest because if I'm efficient with my energy and I'm efficient with my food and when I eat it, I can minimize rest and then I can always be on, always be on.  And then that feeds into what I spoke about earlier about  if you're not being productive, then you're not worth anything. You're not valuable. And that is a problem for everybody, but that is particularly pernicious for gay men because

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We often grow up feeling less than feeling the need to prove ourselves, feeling the need to earn  love, respect, acceptance, appreciation, whatever those words are. Um, you know, we, a lot of us carry the overachiever armor, you know, the body and the achievements as currency.  Um, often a lot of us have the sense that we have to be  exceptional to be acceptable.  Um, and it's really important to understand where that.

07:16
drive is coming from originally I spoke about this in an episode a couple of weeks ago about healing versus building  but we also need to look at if we are actively feeding into that by trying to optimize everything  and  it doesn't have to be achievement at all costs you know we can achieve a little bit of a slower rate but enjoy the journey I think that that's something that's kind of lost its focus

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or lost its appreciation over the last few years with social media is that the means to the end,  the means is worth it.  The end justifies the means, that is the phrase that I'm looking for. The end justifies the means. So if we run ourselves into the ground and we just optimize, optimize, optimize, don't rest, get everything done, we achieve the thing, it's worth it. But it's not. Because if you look at...

08:11
When we achieve things,  how often do we sit there and go, yeah, this is an amazing thing that I've done. You don't do that. You often sit there and go, yeah, well, I said I was going to do it. So I did it. And you diminish your own successes.  Again, something I've been guilty of.  And you diminish your own successes. You don't appreciate it. So then it's what's next. So you've run yourself into the ground. You've over-optimized. You've done everything that you could do. And then you achieve the thing and then you don't appreciate it. And then, so you get stuck in this cycle and then it's

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I'll be happy when I've achieved the thing, done the thing, bought the thing, have the relationship, have the job, whatever it might be.  And you end up in this  cycle of just  productivity for the sake of productivity, rather than resting, reflecting, and enjoying it. Ask yourself  why you are really optimizing. And if the only answer is, because if I stop, you know, I'll have to feel something.

09:10
I'll have to sit with something that isn't building that's running away.  Rest is not the reward that you earn after you've done enough output. It is part of the system. It is part of the journey. It is part of the process and the rest when we rest that is where growth actually happens. When we  there's a famous quote I don't know who the guy is. He says we don't learn from experiences we learn from reflecting.

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experiences and that happens when we rest. Anyone who  you guys who train or go to the gym you know that you do not get stronger in the gym session you get stronger when you recover so that is  and it's the same for every other part of your life every  every bit of progress that you've made mentally emotionally relationally spiritually that progress has been made when you've stopped

10:09
doing the thing and you've reflected on it and you integrate into part of your being and who you are. Your worth is not a performance review. And I know it's such a cliche saying but you are a human being not a human doing.  So yes, optimize parts of your life. Optimize certain things that are gonna help you. Systemize, optimize, whatever word you wanna use. That is important.

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But when it starts eating into your  self-worth and how you see yourself and your ability to rest, you've over done it. And this is the thing with life, right? It's so easy for the pendulum to swing from one way to the other. We can go from the unorganized person who doesn't focus on anything or have any systems. That is not gonna lead to an enjoyable life. It's not gonna lead to the things that we want. The other  end of that spectrum, the other...

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side of that pendulum swing is the over-optimized life where everything has to be productive, everything has to have a value, if it doesn't it goes  and we have no time for rest. That also isn't an enjoyable way to live, you don't appreciate the successes that you have  and you will you'll feel crap about it. So optimize your life to a point, don't optimize your worth.

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Build something because you want the life on the other side of it, not because you are scared of who you are the minute that you stop being productive, the minute you stop doing or optimizing. And let yourself rest, for God's sake, let yourself rest. You do not have to earn the right to rest, you do not have to earn the right to exist. And  I spoke about this a few weeks ago when we talking about healing versus building.

12:01
Building done right includes knowing when to stop, knowing when to pause, and knowing when to go again. And that for me is why it's so important for me to have a support network and coaches and things like that, because sometimes I can't see that. And having someone on the outside looking in really does help me with that. So I hope this has been useful. Let me know if you are, if you feel, you a person who over-optimizes? Are you a person who's scared of resting? If so, share.

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let me know whether that's in the feed, that's on socials. I'm always interested to know how these episodes go down. If you have enjoyed it, please share it, please talk about it. Obviously I want to help as many people as I can with these podcasts. So guys, thank you for listening. I'll be back next week and remember, don't eat and drink and behave at the expense of how you want to look and feel and I'll see you soon.