Ep 48. Ideas Worth Sharing - Dirty Chai with Chio

The Dirty Cat podcast focuses on holistic success and personal development. The host started the podcast to share information and prevent others from reinventing the wheel. One key idea is the power of asking high-quality questions that help solve problems and amplify important information. Low-quality questions add to the noise and hinder progress. It is important to be a solutionist thinker and avoid circular conversations. Another idea is to ask yourself what you are solving for when faced with new ideas or opportunities. Understanding your goals and values will guide your decisions and prevent you from being influenced by others. The host recommends reading books by authors like Dale Carnegie and James Clear, or signing up for Clear's newsletter, for valuable insights. Hello, hi, welcome to this week's installment of the Dirty Cat podcast with me your host the podcast where we focus on holistic professional and personal success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes or your failures and everything in between you it's about the mindset emotional regulation and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success today's installment is a conversation between you and me we've known each other for almost a year i cannot believe i have been producing a podcast for nearly a year it's quite an exciting milestone for me and i started the podcast because i realized that a lot of us were reinventing a wheel that had already been invented by somebody else if you think about it in terms of the feminist movement for example there's an um an essay from the 1970s titled i want a wife and i can assure you that nothing new in the discussion around feminism has been created since that essay was written the conversations we're still having all were being had at that time and that is what birthed that that essay and a lot of the human experience a lot of the lives that we are living are quite the same maybe technology has moved moved on maybe the way we can access information has moved on maybe even the way that we can access each other has evolved but the human experience has stayed fundamentally the same the functioning of the brain has remained fundamentally the same the things that make or break a person's success have remained the same that's why books written ages ago by people like dale carnegie and and and and the like are still adding value to society as we know it today books like the richest man in babylon books like think and grow rich books like how to win friends and influence people these books were written decades ago and yet when you read them now they stay ever relevant because those pathways in the human brain are pretty much what they are and a big part of creating the space was so we could put all this information in one place so that we save maybe one person maybe two maybe three the trouble of reinventing the wheel in the way that i've had to or the next person has had to because all of this information has had to be had won or hard found or found through experience and one of the most freeing realizations is that you do not always have to learn from experience sometimes you can learn from the experiences of others and so this particular installment is about ideas worth sharing and the very first of those ideas worth sharing is the power of asking high quality questions high quality questions are questions that help get to the root of the problem it helps dig deep to what's important and what to pay attention to a high quality question helps amplify the signal in the middle of the information noise on the other hand a low quality question adds to the noise around the problem a low quality question would be a question like why me why is adulting unfair why is life unfair or um why are some people wealthy and others not these are low quality questions oh i wish i could buy this but i don't know why it's not me a high quality question let's use that last one as an example a high quality question would be when you spot something that you would like to purchase but you do not have the money for it would be how can i find money to get this thing where can i go what can i do in order to make or get the money that will help me purchase this thing do i need to get another job do i need to get a part-time job do i need to do a piece job do i need to talk to somebody about this is there someone who could sponsor this purchase for me could i borrow the money if i borrowed the money what would that look like and how long would i need to repay it would that make sense in the grander scheme of things that is asking high quality questions because what it does is it clears the path for your brain to figure out how to resolve the issue that you have that you have identified for yourself and that sort of skill the idea of asking high quality questions or the power of asking high quality questions scales with you so there are some things like financial skills financial literacy in dealing with your own own money those that's one of the skills that i realized are fundamental to is fundamental to success and it's also one of the skills that i realized scales with you so if you handle a dollar poorly you're gonna handle a million dollars poorly there are no two ways about it if you ask low quality questions now and you don't change that you'll be asking low quality questions no matter the state of your life later if you're asking low quality questions now you're asking low quality questions as far as your relationship as far as your money as far as your friends as far as um your social things as far as your career this is a skill that is adaptable and that scales and that grows with you it's also a skill that does not that that keeps that that takes you to the bottom if if for lack of a better word so if you don't have the skill you will crawl all the way to the bottom asking yourself the low quality questions so one of the things you need to ask yourself is are you a solutionist thinker when a person is asking you questions are you trying to figure out how to resolve the question or you're trying to figure out how to circle the drain with this conversation you are are you are you a person with whom people have circular conversations about the same thing over and over again or are you a person with whom people progress the conversation on to the next stage and if you find that the types of conversation on reflection if you find that the types of conversations that you're having with the people around you tend to be repetitive and to talk about the same thing then i hate to break it to you but you are most likely not having a high quality question type of conversation you are most likely having a low quality question type of conversation this could be anything from relationships to career so pay attention to the type of questions that you're asking when you hear and i'm moving on to the next idea here when you hear of an exciting new idea and and we all know that one person who hears a new idea and is swept away by it every other week every other week we're trying something new if it's not crypto it's a new skincare routine if it's not that we are now what not every there's always that one person right ask yourself every time you're faced with a new habit a new way of doing things every time you're faced with an opportunity to evolve one of the high quality questions that you can ask yourself and see what i've done there we've gone from understanding that you need to ask high quality questions and now we are talking about one particular question as a separate item that question is what am i solving for before you are quick to jump onto the bandwagon of people doing this people doing keto people doing i don't know 75 hard people doing this people doing that before you are quick to jump onto that bandwagon ask yourself what am i solving for once you understand what you're solving for so if for me for example a long time what am i solving for was money right for a long time that's what that was my thing i needed to solve for money and then later on as i progressed down that path i realized that maybe i wasn't solving for money i was solving for happiness and maybe money would play a part in that and as i progressed i realized perhaps i was solving for fulfillment and happiness was a result of that fulfillment but all of those things continued to nudge me on the growth path to where i am now now i'm solving for yet other things but that idea that recurring question asking what are we solving for is what keeps you on track it what what keeps you it's what keeps you sifting for the right things for the things that have applicability for the things that have meaning for the things that can actually change your life for the better in a way that means something to you you've heard the adage that if you don't work on building your own dreams someone else will hire you to build their dreams the same thing applies to giving yourself direction in life to understanding what it is you're optimizing for if you don't know what it is that you're trying to optimize your life for you will get swept up by other people's ideas of what they're optimizing for purely because it looks appealing and it looks exciting and it looks good whereas it may have no true meaning or value for you whereas it may add nothing to your life so ask yourself before you pick up that diet before you pick out that clothing item before you spend that money before you go to an event that you don't want to go to before you run the comrades marathon ask yourself what am i optimizing for and does it matter to me does it speak to my values does it add to my life those are the types of high quality questions you should be asking but particularly what am i optimizing for the next question or the next thought flowing from what am i optimizing for by the way a lot of these thoughts even though i got them from different places some of them came from stephen furtick in his preaching some of them came from different podcasts i've listened to a lot of them came from books but i found that um james clear summarizes a lot of them in his newsletter or in his books or those things um i found james clear's content particularly helpful so either read the book or if you find you don't have time to read or it's not your thing maybe sign up for his newsletter which is exceptionally short but has a lot of value and it's called the three two one newsletter i think you can sign up for it on his um web page it's jamesclear.com now where were we so now we've gone from asking high quality questions to asking what am i optimizing for and then now ask yourself so now you know what you're optimizing for and now ask yourself can my current habits carry me to what i'm optimizing for i want to be a millionaire right take a look at what you've done for the past week does anything you've done in the past week say that you're going to be a millionaire if you do the same thing for the next three years does anything that you've done in the last week say that your diet will be on track you know in a year does anything you've done in the past week say you will be in a healthy relationship within the next few months does anything you've done in the last week move you towards the goal that you are optimizing for it's one thing to have a massive goal that you would like to reach for and a lot of us do but you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems your systems whether you formalize them or not are what you do on a daily basis so for example for a long time especially last year i was really good with my running i managed to run 5k's four or five times a week every week for a really long time i've recently started a new job when i say recently i mean about six weeks or so and that has completely derailed my workouts the one thing i know for sure because what i'm optimizing for right what i'm optimizing for is fitness because i like the idea of being a fit mom when i think of it i don't think as far as our first conversation on thinking empower asking empowering questions i don't think oh my god i'm never going to be able to exercise with this job oh why is this job like this why is it so demanding i know that working out is my responsibility i know that no matter what my job demands are if i don't figure out how to work out in a new way right in five months six months i will have lost all of my fitness because the habits that i have displayed in the last six weeks are not aligned with the goal that i'm optimizing for and i need to start asking myself and to start testing out different ways of working out different times of working out and possibly even a different location of working out in order to make room for this thing that i say matters to me in this new paradigm that is what i am asking or that i'm what i'm putting out there for you to do with the different life things as they come up if you can run through that problem solving formula you will be empowered you do not now place responsibility out there for someone else to come and save um save you for someone else to come and resolve for you for someone else to come and say oh look this is not working out for the goal that you made for yourself last year this is how i'm going to fix it for you they're not coming you are your own calvary you are the one who should be solving that leads us straight into the next thought the next thought is this sometimes habits are good for you but sometimes they outlive their season so you need to understand that evolving is important growing is important and with that comes sometimes an adaptation of the habits that have brought you to that particular place one of the popular things on instagram says uh the habits that helped you survive will not help you thrive it's the same thing same principle the idea for example when i could so when i was in my previous job and i could run before work that um that that that habit was perfect and was optimized perfectly for the type of life that i was living the age that my children were at their morning routine at that time now my children's routine is different they have grown and engage with me differently the amount of free time i have is different whereas it was okay for me to wake up at five at six a.m for example and go out for a run at that time now in order to get a decent workout in i need to wake up at five but it's also way too dark for me to be outside running which means i have to consider other ways of exercising besides running which means now i've started experimenting with weights at home i learned i figured out maybe i should join the gym it's me considering whether to join the gym near my office so that i can go to the gym after work and then drive home it's all of these things just because you've installed a habit and it has been good for you up to this point doesn't mean it is the only way that you can achieve the same result this is why it's important to ask yourself always what am i optimizing for i'm optimizing for fitness not for running which means if i can no longer run comfortably and it is affecting my ability to stay fit i must adapt and i must ask myself how else can i achieve the goal that's what it's for and when i ask myself how else can i achieve the goal that's asking a high quality question and when i look at the way that i am currently behaving while i try to resolve i can see whether my current habits are carrying me to what i'm optimizing for and that tells me immediately at a glance whether we are succeeding or we are failing and these are these these are the steps that i would like for you to hear me on and understand that just walking through those steps can actually change your life the more you do it and the more you optimize for the right things and ask yourself empowering questions in the in the right things in the different areas of your life the greater the cumulative effect the cumulative positive effect of you taking control and taking charge of your life then comes the real macquarie of the questions because a lot of us are really good at wrapping words around the things that we need to do and they're not doing them right they're not doing them there is an execution crisis in the world that we're living in today even obama said it if you want to distinguish yourself in your career if you want to excel do stuff do stuff deliver stuff finish stuff do things because a lot of people will talk from here to there about the thing that needs to be done and then not actually do the thing so ask yourself this do i need to spend more time searching for better information or do i need to spend more time acting on the information that i already have the truth is most of us already have enough information about the things that matter to us it's the doing that is a challenge so please stop talking about the doing and stopping there you have all the information that you need now do the thing do you need to spend more time collecting information about the thing or do you need to spend more time doing the thing critical question i'm not even sure i need to expand on that question it's um the whole premise of the book um the 12-week year the 12-week year is premised or is is written to address that the crisis of execution in the world today because we simply don't do half the things that we say if not 90 percent and just the ability to follow through on the things that you say you will do will distinguish you from 90 percent of the people in the world how crazy is that 90 percent of the people in the world so ask yourself should you be acting now and what that action looks like and remember to run through the process that we've talked about in this episode so far and then finally a lot of us are the bottleneck before the world is a bottleneck for us instead of acting on our ideas we convince ourselves of all the reasons why they might work they might not work we we overwhelm ourselves to paralysis with analysis oh my god that was not intentional but we overwhelm ourselves i might as well repeat it we overwhelm ourselves to paralysis with analysis that is what we do and a lot of that analysis includes negative self-perception or a bias towards a negative outcome because we are afraid and what that looks like in real life is you being in a room and understanding that a conversation is happening and not knowing whether to raise your hand or not and hesitating and then the opportunity passes what um sheryl sandberg likes to say is women and then as i've i've i've grown and and worked with more men and women realize that actually it's not a woman thing it's a people thing that people sometimes write themselves off before the thing they think will cause them to be written off has actually happened give the world a chance to say no to you damn it go outside and try stuff if if you want to write a book send a publisher your manuscript write two chapters and send them to somebody do something let the world tell you no because you know what in that instance you at least have a 50 50 chance that someone will say yes when you are self-vetoing or self-excluding it's actually a common term in the gambling industry self-exclusion when you are self-excluding you are not allowing the world an opportunity to see what could potentially be a great idea from you maybe they'll say no boohoo but maybe they'll say yes and that risk is worth it and so many of us are not taking that risk so many of us are keeping our hands down because we are afraid so many of us are not showing up in our fullest self because we're apologetic but let me put it to you as Steve Bartlett put it to me and to everybody else in his conversation with Mel Robbins the greatest risk is not taking a chance the greatest risk is not taking a chance the greatest risk that you'll ever face is the potential regret on your deathbed of the things that you could have done it's knowing that you had this gift inside of you that you could have let out but you didn't and understanding the inevitability of death understanding the inevitability of death and realizing you're out of time you wish you could run back in time and do this thing and just try it and just put your hand up that is the risk that you run when you keep your hands down that is the risk that you run when you let fear drive understand that fear can be in the car with you but fear must not drive and for that nugget I thank Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Big Magic I hope that these ideas simple as they may be have the same profound effect they had on me on you and if they do please share this podcast with someone please like share rate leave me a comment leave me a comment send me a dm I got a dm last week that said I know this is a lot to ask but could you just never stop doing the podcast I mean I can't say I'll never stop doing the podcast but messages like that really mean the absolute world to me and they're the reason that I am never too tired for the podcast they're the reason why I am here every single Tuesday whether it's morning or evening because it means something to me that someone out there didn't have to go through the unnecessary labor of reinventing a wheel that's already been invented and they can get onto the necessary labor of figuring themselves out and inventing themselves thank you so much for joining me on this week's installment and I'll catch you next week you