6 ephocs
I watched something on youtube recently from Jordan Peterson about reviewing your life in six epochs and using it to release the past and use the learnings for the future.
I found it quite interesting: https://thedeepdish.org/self-authoring-review-jordan-peterson/
Here is mine (I've removed some names and last names for sensitivity purposes). This is of-course v1 and I continually think of things each day to add.
I found a good way to prompt memories was to play music that was from that epoch...
1. Papua New Guinea and Manilla
What things I remember
● Spending time on the farm
● Always over fed
● No technology
● Absolute freedom
● Feeling less physically gifted than the others
● Nannies
● Swimming
● Dressing up and feeling free about it
● Sweet things
● Being naked all the time
● Presents
What major emotional things I remember
● Annihilating myself on the pushbike down the gravel
● Picking up the melted bar
● Feeling like I was black
● Feeling free
● No anxiety about anything
● Feeling lesser than the others * admiring their contentment
● Feeling like a king
● Expectations
How did they affect me
● Longterm feeling of connection to developing world
● An appreciation of non-technology based creativity
● A sense of belonging
● Built greed
● Discontentment
● A feeling developed that I was different to everyone
What I would have done differently or not
● Stayed more in touch and visited more often
● Forgiven Mikey
● Spent more time appreciating culture instead of consuming
How I learned for the next epoch
● I learned how to accept and make friends with any kind of person
● I learned to be myself and love that at all times
● To not show off
2. Primary school
What things I remember
● Ruchy
● Zest for life
● Waking up early
● Loving sport
● Excitement for little things - cheese tv, secret lollipops
● Changing houses a lot
● Changing nannies a lot
● Changing dogs a lot
● Dad never there
● Mum missed every birthday
● Friday night swimming
● Wests rugby
● My core friends justin, jack, clive and playing halo
● Choosing after school care - just loving playing
What major emotional things I remember
● Never being good enough at rugby for dad
● Getting caught for stealing
● First crush - Jacqui
● The difficulty of choosing the school to attend
How did they affect me
● A feeling developed of having to be the best at everything and showing off
What I would have done differently or not
● Kept friends that went to separate schools closer
● Stopped caring about winning and help others so that we could be the best as a group
How I learned for the next epoch
● Most friends don’t last forever
● You can’t win everything
3. High School
What things I remember
● Excitement of getting into wesley - but lewy got moved
● Meeting Wadey
● Owning rugby - but resting on laurels
● Consistent injuries
● Joining water polo and finding the friends I really gelled with
● Not being good enough at waterpolo for dad
● Politics in sports
● Being friends with all-but-four kids at school
● How private boys school makes you nervous with girls
● Rolling up my pants due to the heat
● Getting out of trouble
● Fighting other schools on the weekends
● 5ths cricket and 3rds bball - doing sport for fun
● Playing wow 24/7
● Being the best at computer games
● Having my own unit
● Nights with the guys when the parent are away and struggling to convince girls to come over
● Realising that I am not smart - I can just memorise and remember patterns, I am way more creative
● Realising the power of doing the subject you enjoy
● Finding Gym and my advancement in getting big compared to others
● Finding a role-model-and soon not-to-be - big middas
● Finding people on my level of crazy or different - stevo (maybe more)
What major emotional things I remember
● Never understanding why girls didnt like me - Full body transformation
● Hurting my back - taking me out of my cycle and using as an excuse for rugby
● Giving up on waterpolo because I didn’t like training
● Beginning to understand how people can let you down - Duncan kicking me in polo, Alex ditching me because of Bek
How did they affect me
● I built this absolute intensity and hatred/ resentment for everything that wasn’t on my team or the way I wanted it
● Intensity showed me how to get further with fitness and built work ethic I never had
● I grew my superiority complex
What I would have done differently or not
● Been less of a cunt to people close to me
● Not given up on waterpolo
● Started my back recovery early and finishing off y12 rugby properly
● Be more confident and comfortable inside
How I learned for the next epoch
● Looking good gets you far
● Being ‘friends’ with a lot of people gets you far
● Hard work gets you far
4. PT and Steel fixing
What things I remember
● Work hard so you never have to steel fix again
● I couldn’t accept people not trying hard
● I found it hard to sell something I didn’t really care about
● Friday night RE and rum draft
What major emotional things I remember
● Realisation of how much I hate old school macho shit
● How running a service based company is not the way to go
● Realising how much I can learn about a subject when I am truly into it - nutrition, lifting etc.
● That I didn’t even think twice about going to Europe - friends, family, anything
How did they affect me
● Beginning to see how full-time work is different from people at uni and the drifting it causes
● Created my complex of stagnation - do you know how hard it is to just sit there lifting steel
What I would have done differently or not
● Nothing actually - maybe that one time at steel fixing I would have actually punched Kevo
How I learned for the next epoch
● -
5. Europe and shoes
What things I remember
● Emily
● Meeting Charlsey and doing crazy gambling and clubbing
● Building the chelsea players houses in Ikea
● Realising how lucky I was to be at my age but living in the same house as 30 year olds
● Abercrombie and fitch - how much I hated that fakeness
● All girls and gay guys at shoe school - become best friends with girls only - realising that’s who i grewup with and looked after me and make me feel safe
● Being completely odd - but realising the potential of leveraging it
● The winter made me feel like I was on holidays
● Meeting my closest friends - shay, witty
● I was completely obsessed with training - and it got in the way of my enjoyment
● Falling in love with bek
● Convincing stores and shows to be the world’s first - Premierre classe tuelleries
● Why factories could never make what I dreamt of
● Living in Rimini on the beach in the 1 star and going to the beach gym and riding a bike to the factory
● Living in the kempinski in Geneva
● Being in Awe of Phillippe - but feeling like I wasn’t being brought on the journey
● Finding who I wanted to be my mentor in Xavier - but not getting support
● Hanging with Coco and Charles and seeing how guys like that love life
● Realising how much fashion is just absolute bullshit and everyone is fake
● How building meaningful relationships with people in business is good and bad - Grazia
● Moving to Italy to try and save the company
● Going to private showings with Dianne Von Furstenberg
● Burning down the factory
● Annihilating Philippe and recording it
● Having my first ever panic attack - montreux train station > milan
What major emotional things I remember
● Falling in and out with Bek
● Panic
● Feeling a major lack of business understanding
How did they affect me
● I still get anxiety
● I know what ‘the’ feeling is now, but still haven’t had it again
● It caused me to grow an obsession to build business understanding and processes - because no-one could ever understand the dreams I could invision except myself and I didn’t know how to help others help me execute them
What I would have done differently or not
● Not let hard work get in the way of creativity
● Understood the business model before diving in
● Worked for someone else properly first
● Been harsher in negotiation and decision making
● Kept in touch with the girls from the shoe school + philippe
How I learned for the next epoch
● I can convince people of anything/ to believe anything
● When I front a business people take notice quickly
● Home is where the heart is
● It doesn’t matter where you are or what you are doing it is who you are with that matters
● To be customer centric, not opinion centric
6. Little Tokyo Two
What things I remember
● The excitement of finding a building
● Negotiating the building cost down $600k and making promises to Michiko
● Gathering friends to build the business with and how much I loved that
● Building the whole building with chappo
● Evan not committing because damian gave him the handcuffs
● Having a unit next to the building so that I could work extra hours
● The energy I get from that kind of commitment
● The success of our opening party
● Signing our first tenants while winging everything at night based on customer tours - Urban Developer
● Not knowing our model but trying whatever we could to be cool/ add value - shucked oyster and martini nights
● Not seeing that we should have remained a creative hub and forcing other growth
● Getting our first 100 customers and doing 30k/mth > Breakeven
● Getting the email about RCL and using that to build out our future
● My struggle to hire operational people that could follow my intensity
● Firing my best friend - not knowing how to manage and coach people - having no tolerance for drugs
● Winning the capital in my flower pants and learning about the win while on the treadmill at gym
● Opening substation without doing any calculations to win that tender
● The first time I realised I could strategically analyse things way beyond anyone else - i.e how I could frame exactly what all competitors were coming to the table with, without actually knowing
● Having Florence - not knowing what I thought, committing for Erin, finding out how much I truly love Florence and having kids and how much she has taught me again about zest, relaxing, appreciating, emotion
● Seeing the future with the software and the Saas services BEYOND the space
● The difficulty of building out software the the costs associated
● Spending 20k/pm on marketing without actually knowing how marketing works or how to achieve it
● Getting too emotionally connected with staff and having them cheat us - Isaac
● Not being comfortable with stopping and making money - but continually innovating and pressing on for ‘the bigger dream’ sacrificing all business stability
● Understanding the importance of operations and structures and the fact that no-one else can work with the same intensity
● Never believing the hype - doing intense DD and testing before committing - Springfield
● Never put all your eggs in one basket - 240 queen
● How true leadership skills can get people to do things beyond what they believed possible - 4 day full business turnaround
● Taking 2 days off to talk with people about the picture and what was happening + what to expect - how powerful that was
● How being undercapitalised really does hurt growth and opportunity
● Giving away too much time and energy for free
● How important staff recruiting strategies and DD is
● How much I don’t care about what people say about me - or maybe how I can cop it without it really affecting me
● How much PR works for and against you - how PR and your last name can affect your family
● How different people deal with crisis - some hide, some cry, some reflect and move forward, some do it themselves and some need others
● How many people care about their ‘image’/’reputation’ over you - how tall poppy does exist and how there is no respect for leaving it all out there
● 10 highly skilled people can do the work of 100 normal people
● People in larger organisations can’t think or organise fast enough - Organising YBF for BM
● How small changes in peoples’ lives makes them resent you until they realise what you have to do - the Substation conversation
● Learning to read fast and learn fast is an extraordinarily important skill - for your future staff too
● Always pay your lawyers and accountants first
● Rylan + Ryan
What major emotional things I remember
● Bringing the team on the vision journey
● Finding out who has the metal to stay on through the tough stuff
● How rumours can affect people around you - Anthony, defamatory PR
● How my situation affected everyone around me rather than me
● How itchy I was to do something again
● How important it was to write and reflect
How did they affect me
● Found a lot of clarity about who I would and wouldn’t give time too in my life - both personally and who I would work with and target in business
● I’ve become extremely systematic and analytical
● I realise that I can see things that others can’t and it’s rare to have the ability to join high-level strategy/vision with execution
● I can’t sell things I don’t believe in or have buy-in with
● I have to think about my actions and how they affect my loved ones - because I am immune does not mean they are - Georgia’s comments about Fisherman’s Club
● I won’t give up my daily time with Florence
● I thrive with exercise and routine
What I would have done differently or not
● I would have done the same as Steve baxter and put Lt2 up for sale
● I would never put all my eggs in one basket
● I would have raised capital to expand our programs
● Innovation can kill
● Only build, imagine, hire and manage after you understand it first
● I would have sent a defamation letter after the first article
● I would have completed the liquidation end-to-end myself
How I learned for the next epoch
● There are strong pros and cons of big fish small pond
● Being systematic, data driven and experimental is the only way
● People who can see patterns are rare
● Blind optimism is a true thing
● Focus on core business elements only until they are a machine
● Collect money
● Take your money
● Do nothing for free
● Consider your partners before getting in bed - i.e government and how that will effect your position/ decisions moving forward
● Choose business with future scenarios and tailwinds
● Find the funding or buy-out and work backwards