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Authentic gay conversations on personal development, life coaching, and mental health. Join Keegan Hirst (founder of The Unapologetic Man and Gay Man's Coaching) a former professional rugby player, for weekly real talk about gay lifestyle, coming out, relationships, business, and authentic living. Deep, honest conversations that help gay men build confidence, find community, and create vibrant, unapologetic lives.
Welcome to the Unapologetic Man Podcast with me, Keegan Hirst. This is a podcast for men who've used achievement to earn their place, to feel accepted, and still feel disconnected from their own lives. And ask themselves, am I actually living my life for me? Because for a lot of us, there's always an element still missing. Maybe it's the body.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's the real connection. Maybe it's the relationship. Maybe it's just knowing who you are underneath the life that you've built. Each week, I'm gonna explore that and start challenging the things that have left you feeling trapped in your own life, identity, mindset, relationships, and the patterns that I see over and over coaching men just like you. If you've ever wondered whether you're performing rather than living or whether the life that you've built is actually yours, this is for you.
Speaker 1:Let's get into this week's episode.
Speaker 2:In this episode, I want to talk about achievement versus success because they are not the same thing. And we get taught that we should be chasing them both and yet they are not the same thing. They are not interchangeable. Although, I feel like people use the words interchangeably, but I would like to offer you a differentiation. I would like to offer you a way to discern which is which.
Speaker 2:Achievement is the things, the external tickable, visible things that we accomplish. It's things to do with status, it's things it's goals, it's milestones, it's things that we set to achieve, we go out and we get them. And we, especially as younger gay men, have to find our way to be accepted. We are told, sometimes directly, by parents, peers, other students, family members, friends, teachers, whoever, and sometimes indirectly by society, media, community, education. We are taught that we need to earn our acceptance.
Speaker 2:And there are lots of different ways that gay men can earn their acceptance. Sometimes it's through saying yes to everything. Sometimes it's seeming, you know, being the one to go to, the problem solver. And sometimes it's by being perfect, being the one who achieves things. The success on paper looks what we would call successful.
Speaker 2:Know, so they have a well paid job. They have a nice house. They look good. They wear nice clothes. They go to fancy places.
Speaker 2:On holidays, maybe they've ticked things off like, you know, marathons and high rocks or they've got awards or they they have things that contribute to their status, to their standing that they are told will make them admirable, desirable and with that, accepted. And so we spend a lot of our time focusing on that, focusing on those achievements. And if you are someone who has achieved something in your life, which I can guarantee if you're listening to this podcast, you have done, whether that was a new job, a marathon, a goal that you've reached, whatever, you set out to do something and you accomplished it. I bet you sat there and you went, Yeah. Good.
Speaker 2:What next? And any happiness that you thought was gonna come after that thing, you might have gone, this doesn't feel like I thought it was gonna do. You know? I've earned the paycheck. I have got the body.
Speaker 2:I have the partner. I have been on the holiday. I bought the house. I bought the car. You know, I My life is x.
Speaker 2:And yet, okay, next achievement. Next achievement. Next achievement. Success. How I define success and what I work with my guys to define success as is something that is internal.
Speaker 2:It's contentment. It's peace. It's a feeling of safety in who you are. It's being alright with the person that you see in the mirror. Being comfortable in your own skin.
Speaker 2:Nobody can see it. Nobody can award you it. Nobody can tell you that you have it. And nobody can tell you that you don't have it if you do. Because you know it's that thing that you can sit and you can go, I'm okay.
Speaker 2:I'm enough. I'm alright. I love myself. Not in an egotistical way, in a I love myself. I believe in myself.
Speaker 2:I am okay with everything as it is. In fact, if I didn't achieve another thing, I'd be okay. That is success. Success is something you inhabit. It's something you feel.
Speaker 2:Achievements are something that you can tick off. And a lot of people in their lives have a lot of achievement and not a lot of success. So are you someone who has a lot of achievement and not a lot of success? Do you have a list of things that you can say, Yep, accomplish these. When people say, you know, what do you do?
Speaker 2:You can reel off accomplishments, a list of them, of things that you've gained, done, conquered, achieved, won, bought, you know, you've ticked them all off, but do you feel content? Do you need those things to feel that you have any worth? Because if if that's the case, if you're listening to this and saying, I have got all the flash things, I have got a nice life, people would look at my life and go, He's got it. And you don't feel like that, then you have a lot of achievement and not have a lot of success. And I have felt that in my life.
Speaker 2:I actually said once to my therapist. I said to him, I'd been lurching from achievement to achievement and I'd gone through a stage where I felt a little bit lost. I felt a little bit stuck. I didn't know what to do and, you know, my therapist said, Why don't you You know, you've done this and you've done that. You know, why don't you set another goal?
Speaker 2:I said, Because as nice as that is to have direction to move me on to something else, I don't wanna get to the end of my life and just have a list of things that I've done and not be able to say I enjoyed the ride, I enjoyed my time, whether that was working towards something or not working towards something. If you need to be flogging yourself towards something to feel like you have purpose, that that isn't purpose. That's punishing yourself into into some kind of growth in that you hope, the feeling that you get when you achieve said goal is going to give you something. And I call this the jackpot problem. People, they look successful on the outside, they've hit the jackpot on a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:The boxers are mostly ticked. You know, the things that we are told are gonna bring us happiness when we're kids. Have a nice house. Have job that you enjoy or that you get well paid for. Have a partner.
Speaker 2:Have people around you. Have people that you can call friends. Speak to your family. Go on nice holidays. Have nice things.
Speaker 2:A lot of people have got that and yet they are still waiting to be happy. They think that when I have x, I'll be happy. Whatever x is. Car job, partner body, insert item here. That is the mechanism that they pin their future hopes on, their future feelings of comfort and connection is that is gonna come when I do x.
Speaker 2:When I am x. When I have x. And yet they get x and they feel identical. So what they do is they set another goal and they set another goal and they set another one and they call it ambition. They say I'm ambitious and I want to achieve and achieve and achieve.
Speaker 2:Don't get me wrong. You can be ambitious and and want more but be content with what you have. If you can sit and say, listen, if I never achieved anything else ever again, I'd be okay. I'd be fine. And that is genuinely true for you.
Speaker 2:That is success. You know? And then you can say, but that doesn't mean that I, you know, wouldn't do having a having a want and having a need are two different things. You know, you can want more things but do you which is fine. You're allowed to want things but do you need it?
Speaker 2:If you need those things because you don't feel connected and content right now and you think that and and that that need to feel those things is driving your desire to achieve these things, that is why you get into this loop of chasing goal after goal after goal. It compounds. Rather than resolving, rather than achieving the thing and getting a bit closer to success as I've defined it, what you find is the goals get bigger and bigger and bigger. The return gets less and less and less because every achievement raises the floor. When you raise the floor, you raise the things that you tell yourself that you need to be happy.
Speaker 2:And then if any of those are taken away, that's gonna impact on your ego and how you feel about it. The men who are best at achieving things in the world, who are constantly in this cycle of achieving and achieving and achieving, The more they do it, the less accomplished they actually feel and they just move on to the next thing, the further away they're actually getting from success because they're thinking that it lies in an exterior thing that they can achieve. Let me ask you something. Let me ask you how are you doing? How are things going?
Speaker 2:If I was to ask you how are things going and you were to answer with just got a promotion at work, we've just bought a new house, just got a new boyfriend, have just booked a new holiday to such and such a place, often people who are in this position of chasing achievements, when you ask them how they're doing or how things are going, the only vocabulary that they have to answer that question is a list of achievements. They can't tell you that they're feeling really content in their work, they're feeling really fulfilled in themselves. They're really enjoying being in nature at the time. They've you know, they're loving spending time in their own company and they've they're really into a particular hobby. You know, they will reel off things that they have done or that they are currently working towards and they are making headway in.
Speaker 2:Or if they'll say, oh, I'm not doing too good, it's probably to do with they've had a knockback on an achievement that they set out to do and, you know, they're struggling to fulfill that because again, they tie achievement to their worth, to getting things done. And that is the trap of the good answer. For the achiever, they think that that is the right answer. They think that's the good answer. They think that that is the proper answer.
Speaker 2:And something that I wanna get really clear on, really clear, because I would define myself as an ambitious person. This is not me saying that you should not be ambition. Because I'm not asking anybody to give anything up. I don't want you to give anything up. I don't want you to go live like a monk in Tibetan Foothills.
Speaker 2:I don't want you to not want material things. God knows. I like the things that I like. I like One of my things is that I love nice glassware. It's like a dare I say borderline obsession but I get a lot of joy from it.
Speaker 2:I get a lot of joy from being able to serve the right drink in the right glass and to go on nice holidays and to wear nice clothes. I love all that. I'm not saying don't do that. Don't want those things. Don't want for a better life than you've had.
Speaker 2:Don't want for a better standing. Don't want for a better position. Absolutely not. But know that going after these goals of jobs and marathons and status and relationships for how they look, know that they are not going to fulfill the role that you are assigning them the task of. They are not going to be the things that make you happy.
Speaker 2:That when you sit, when you are ill, as someone who's had a health scare and when I got my diagnosis for dilated cardiomyopathy, I thought I was going be dead soon. I didn't sit thinking, I need to go out and achieve more. I thought, do you know what? I want to feel great in my own skin. I want to have nice relationships.
Speaker 2:I want to feel content in my life. There's absolutely nothing wrong with having milestones and I think they're really important. I think they drive I have goals for this podcast, I have goals for my business, I have goals for, you know, things that I want to achieve, things that I want to do. Absolutely. But I know that they are not going to make me feel content and peaceful.
Speaker 2:I just know that they're gonna help drive me in a particular direction. They help me move towards they play a part in fulfilling my purpose of helping people, of helping people change their own lives, giving people the ability to do that. But right now, I can say that I feel very content in my own life and if things stayed exactly how they are for the rest of my life, I'll be absolutely fine with that. Absolutely fine with that because that is success. And right now, I'm feeling it.
Speaker 2:I've not felt it for a while before and I'll probably go through a patch where I don't feel it. Now, it's easy to lose sight of these things. I'm not a robot. I get things wrong as well. But it's important that this is not me saying, you know, give up your worldly wants and don't go after anything because, yes, happiness and contentment comes from simplicity but that doesn't mean that we can't have nice things.
Speaker 2:So what I ask you to do, I ask you to write two lists. Most people who listen to this podcast won't do this and that's why they'll stay exactly stuck. They'll stay in this loop and they'll keep achieving and they'll stay stuck. I want you to write down everything that you have achieved in the last ten years. Everything that you have achieved.
Speaker 2:The goals you've reached, the milestones you've gone past, the achievements, the accolades that you have garnered over the last decade. And then in the second list, want you to write everything that you have enjoyed, that you have loved doing or being a part of in the last ten years. And I want you to see what the overlap looks like because I can guarantee I can guarantee if any, it's gonna be minimal. If there's one or more, I'd be surprised. And then I want you to once you've completed that list, sit and have a think about what you are currently waiting on.
Speaker 2:What you are so what the goal that you are working towards now, whatever it is, new house, goal, whatever, I want you to write in one sentence what you genuinely believe is going to be different the day after you take it. Okay. You get visible abs. What is gonna be genuinely different on that day that you wake up and you can see the abs? The day that you get the pay rise and you see the money going to your bank account for the first time.
Speaker 2:What is gonna be genuinely different? Write it down. It's important that you write it down. Don't just think about the answer. Write it down.
Speaker 2:You will not like the answer. Just fair warning. And then I want you to start auditing your own language. This week or over the next couple of weeks when people ask you how things are or maybe how the summer has been, I want you to notice if you answer in achievements and how many achievements you reel off because that is the tell. And the first thing that I do whenever I work with anybody, it's not about rushing in and trying to fix anything.
Speaker 2:It's about doing an audit on things and getting really clear on what is going on. Auditing language, Taking a look at the things that you say that you default to. Don't try and fix it. Just notice when someone asks you how you are, what you've been up to, what's going on, if you go straight to achievements, goals, things that you're working on, things that you're working toward, Have a look. And then why don't you try seven days without having a goal?
Speaker 2:Go have something lined up. See what comes up for you in that gap where you have a week where you're not desperately trying to work towards something, moving the needle towards something. You know, just try and see if you can do that because maybe you sit and it feels really uncomfortable. Maybe it feels like wasted time. Maybe it feels like guilt.
Speaker 2:Maybe it feels like shame. Maybe it feels like you ought to be doing more. Maybe it feels like people are stealing in front of you and you are letting them get in front of you because you're in a race. See what comes up for you in that week where you don't set yourself a goal because that is information. That is gonna tell you, are you a person who is stuck in chasing achievement or are you a person who is successful right now?
Speaker 2:This is such an important concept when you are going through life to figure out where your attention should go, what are the things that you want to work on, what are the things that you want to spend time on and prioritise. If you can't differentiate between achievement and success, if you don't know where all your energy is going, you are going to fall into achievement trap over and over and over again and you will get to the end of your life and you will look back and you'll go, I achieved a load of stuff and I didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy. You look back and the enjoyment will come from small things that have been going on. Small things that you've passed up the opportunity to do because you were too busy chasing achievements.
Speaker 2:If you do not have eyes on this and scope over where your energy and your attention goes, other people will always steal it. Other people who want you to achieve, help them achieve their goals and do their things. So it's really important that you get clear on this. If you've listened to what I've just said and thought this is me. I'm constantly chasing achievements.
Speaker 2:Then I implore you to write down two lists tonight. Like I said, everything you've achieved versus everything you've actually enjoyed over the last ten years. I want you to name specifically when you reach your goal that you are working towards right now, what is gonna change the day that you tick it off. Look at auditing your own vocabulary. Have a look at yourself when people ask you what you're working towards if you list off achievements and see what it's like for you not to set a goal, not to work towards a goal for a week.
Speaker 2:See what comes up for you. What are those feelings? What are those thoughts? What's the internal dialogue? Do that and you'll get a clear understanding of whether you are someone who's stuck in chasing achievement or whether you are successful right now.
Speaker 2:Have a think about that over this next week. Action those.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of The Unapologetic Man. If this landed, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Follow the show so you don't miss what's next. And if you want to get in touch, you'll find my email address in the show notes below. For more on the coaching, the community, and everything else that we're building, head to gaymanscoaching.com, or you can find me, Keegan Hurst, on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Until next time, take your place.
Speaker 2:Don't earn it.