Training Wheels

Today I talk about a subject which is a chapter in the book (not yet released in Dec 2020, but soon to be back from the editors and available on Amazon)

Training wheels are all about our need for life long learning and some of the lessons I have learned recently trying to pivot into the digital space with my new book and podcasting.

Transcript

Podcast 11 December 2020 “Training Wheels” from the book How to become an good Hu(man) By Andrew, IAMSHOKUNIN Wilson 

Hello and welcome to the podcast series that accompanies the book “How to become a good human”. I’m Andrew Wilson a.k.a IAMSHOKUNIN and its my please to talk to you today.

Okay, so today I want to talk about training wheels. And it's very pertinent, because I am in effect a 50 year old man who after a successful career is back on the bicycle again. I have my training wheels on today, I'm feeling quite scared and uncertain about things. I’m feeling a bit confused, quite self conscious In fact, it's a complete nightmare. I'm trying today to do a podcast. The first podcast I've ever done and I'm doing it because I've tried video and I wanted to see whether you, as an audience, actually found the podcast, easier to consume. It doesn't make a great deal of difference to me I think I've more or less just got my head around talking to a camera and now I want to talk to a microphone. Either way, this is really just about me learning to communicate effectively with an audience, which is you. 

Now you might ask yourself, why am I feeling like I'm on training wheels, this isn't a particularly hard thing to do. But I'm a relatively  old person these days. It used to be that after you were 40 you were finished in a career, and people didn't want to give you jobs anymore. Well I'm 50 now, and we're in the midst of a digital revolution right now. We have really influential  people worldwide talking about handing over the reins to everything to 20 to 25 year olds, because they're the only people that really know how this digital world is going to work. 

So in some ways, I’m way over the hill, past it, I'm an old man. I should just retire quietly, but I've never done anything that anyone's told me to do in the past and I'm not about to start doing so now. So, I'm embracing the new digital wave. The new way of doing things, pivoting into digital is the new phrase everyone's using. As a result, I'm feeling like I'm trying to learn how to ride a bike again.

So what lessons are there in terms of training wheels, what have I learned in the last six to 12 months writing this book and trying to get it out to people. Trying to generate an audience and trying to engage with an audience. 

Well, the first thing I've learned is that you have to conquer your fear. You have no choice. There is no way forward unless you conquer your fear. That's not an easy thing to do, conquering your fear, and if you read the book you'll see just how hard that can be for people. Some people, it's a lifetime's mission. For others it's slightly easier, but we all have to do it and that's a big lesson that I'm learning at the moment. 

You also have to be prepared to learn from anyone, and be open and be humble enough to admit to yourself that you don't know things. I am finding that I really know so little about this social media, and this digital world. Nowadays I don't know how to market myself effectively much has changed in the way we do things. The reality is, it appears to me that social media is a bit like all of us are just shouting down the microphone, sending our messages out to the internet and hoping that something will happen. It’s a bit like a billboard, we put something up and hope someone sees it.  So, really I have to learn. I'm reading books about it, I'm talking to people about it. I'm doing what I'm told. But that's about all I can do. Because the reality is, I don't really understand it. 

So, you also have to be self reflective and that's a really important part of this whole learning journey and it's the way really that we learn to take the training wheels off. We do something. We take some time and think about it, we analyse what we did, what we did well and what we didn't do so well. We try and see if there's any lessons there for us. Taking time out to reflect on things is really important. I've had a few situations in the last few weeks where, you know, just wanted to give up. I couldn't see a way forward I couldn't see why I was doing this. I had real problems around self-belief whether or not anyone would be interested in listening. So you see, its an amazing thing isn't it - here’s someone that's written a book about how to think and how to behave and guess what ? I need the book as much as anyone else. So I guess that's where the book came from, because the reality is, I'm living that book on a daily basis going forward. 

You have to experiment and try things. That's another lesson today -  a trial in podcasting. I have no idea whether it's going to work. I'm using a programme called otter.ai online which is transcribing everything I'm talking about into English and putting it down in words. I find it absolutely astonishing that I can talk to a microphone and I'm getting a 99.9% accuracy rate of transcription. This means that I have everything I say written down. This is useful to me because I actually process things through writing I don't really process things through video. The other thing is that, when I sit down and start talking to microphones and videos and things, once I get into flow I, I can't remember what I said, the subconscious takes over. You start saying things and there's some real nuggets in there, afterwards when you go back and you think, Oh wow, gosh, did I say that? that's remarkable. And you store that away and you use that another time. So I'm using two different technologies today, to bring this podcast to you as part of my creative process. So, that's another lesson right there - to experiment. 

Okay. I've written down here that one of the other lessons is try to enjoy yourself. I am enjoying myself, but sometimes I catch myself, I think, what am I doing, why am I spending all this time doing this, is this effective? -  you know this self doubt creeps in. So, again you know you have fun. You have to experiment, you have to conquer all those fears that creep in. 

Another final and most important lesson I've learned is, try not to be so self critical. When I started this process I was looking online and I was looking at these fantastic videos these fantastic podcasts and I was thinking oh my god you know that's the standard I need to get to! So I had a few trial runs where I tried to be someone I wasn't and I tried to do things that I wasn't comfortable doing and then, you know, I tried to edit these things and make them look like they were a million dollars.  Well of course, you know, I can’t edit to that standard and I can't perform to that standard so all I can do is what I can do. The big lesson here is when it comes to trying to communicate effectively with people - you can only do that effectively if you're being yourself. 

You really can't be someone that you're not, and that's such a big lesson. It's such a big lesson in life, because so much of today's society is trying to persuade us to be something that we're not; trying to get us to buy things because we believe that we're something that we're not. They are saying: Let’s buy all the accoutrements that make me a certain sort of person and then let's try and behave like that certain person and let's try and find people that are like me and I think that's a lot to do with the confusion we are now suffering. It's about coherence, it's about being authentic and finding your true self that’s really what this book is about. Once you know yourself and you're comfortable with yourself and you've agreed with yourself the way that you're going to behave and think, I think, generally speaking, most people are much happier in life. I think if you're Happy and you know yourself, you’re going to be more successful in life at whatever you do. I'm not trying to push an agenda here which says that I'm going to make you a millionaire or, or you're going to have a big house or you're gonna have fancy cars or anything like that. I'm not sure that's really important. I think the most important thing is being happy. If you are happy, and you lead a happy life and a contented life, then I think you've been successful in life. I think if you pursue the goals that are presented to us in modern society, I think then that you will become unhappy. 

I had a fantastic piece of advice given to me a long time ago when i was starting off in my career, and someone said to me: “Just do what you do, well, and do what you want to do and the money will come.” Something like that anyway. So I found something I wanted to do; I wanted to help people, I wanted to become a management consultant. So I found out how to become a consultant and I joined a company, and I really enjoyed helping companies get better. As a result of that, I got paid well. Then I went out on my own and set up my own business, and did the same thing. But all the time I was doing this I was focused on doing what I enjoy, which was helping people and true to the word of that gentleman who told me that piece of advice 30 years ago, the money came in. But it wasn't the money that made me happy, It was being able to do what I wanted to do that made me happy and it still is. Now I'm not really a management consultant anymore I don't really have a consulting business, I have clients and occasionally they call me up and I can do some work for them. But now, my mission is to help other people, a different audience a younger audience. I've been helping older people for a long time, 30 years of my life I've been helping CEOs of corporations Directors, Managing Directors, Senior Vice Presidents. I've been helping all of these people to make their business better. 

Now i have realised with the conversations I have with my son as he starting off in his working life that actually there's more need for my help and advice, with young people. I'm able to give them the benefit of 30 years in business - everything that I know. 

Now, I'm not saying that I'm right, and there is this really funny story with my son when he first started off in his business. I rang him up one day and I said listen son I said, look, let me give you a bit of advice: ‘The only way you're going to get business is by ringing people up and talking to real people, you won't get any business using this social media nonsense, real people, real conversations. That's my advice, my fatherly advice.” So bless him, he listened to me, and the next morning he rings me up, and he says, “Well, I haven't had a chance to implement your advice yet, but last night I posted my availability on social media and I have three jobs, this morning.” So what did I say, I said, “Okay, please ignore everything I told you last night, (laughing) it is clearly wrong, and I'm clearly completely out of date.” And as a result, you know, he has been very successful, he understands his world, he understands social media, and he's much better at communicating in those mediums than I am. So there are things that I can give advice about and things that really in the modern world I know nothing about. 

So, what I'm trying to do with this book and with these podcasts and these vlogs is really just to share what I do now, and some of the experiences I've had, and hopefully they'll be helpful to you. I can't tell you everything and I can certainly wouldn't presume to tell you how to get on in the modern world because the modern world is very complex place. I have a feeling it's probably left me behind, even though, you know, I am a futurist, I'm very good at seeing what's coming around the corner, the day-to-day stuff of how to work though; difficult, very difficult. But at the same time, you know I'm finding elements of modern technology which I'm able to latch on to and find useful, and I'm able to help people with that. So there we are: “Training Wheels”. There's a journey for you in training wheels. I've got training wheels on, you've probably got training wheels on. I'm not sure we actually ever take our training wheels off In actual fact. However sometimes we get to take them off and then we get to pedal like hell, and have a free ride down the hill. And then we meet reality, have to relearn something or take a new direction and put the training wheels on again! 

So I guess the lesson here is that we never really stop learning - and that's a really important lesson. If you stop learning you get left behind and that is, as valid today, as it ever was. Anyway, listen, if you found this useful and you were interested and you want to drop me some comments, please drop me an email: IAMSHOKUNIN@gmail.com I'd be delighted to hear your comments and your views and hopefully if I get enough of them, you know, I'll be able to do some more podcasting, and maybe pick up on some of the questions and conversations that we're having and we can get some momentum with this. Okay, it's been nice talking to you. Take care. Bye. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai