you're, what is up guys, welcome to this episode of the live train perform podcast, I'm your host, Sean koba, this is going to be a short sharp episode because I've literally just rolled back in from a three week trip driving around Thailand and it is 5:00 on Sunday afternoon, I was thinking about not recording this podcast, however, I did say that I was going to release two episodes per week and I am a man of my word, so I'm going to stick with that, something is better than nothing and I need to roll out the door so I can get a heap of admin done, do my grocery shopping, go and get a haircut, do my laundry, prepare schedule, structure, my week ahead, touch base, my clients et cetera um but that's a good point, something is better than nothing and I have been away for three weeks driving around Thailand, I started off with a couple of days driving up to Bangkok for a rugby tournament, um my rugby team that I play for the puck out vagabonds ended up winning the southern region Thailand competition and being invited to the national sevens competition.

So I went up there for a rugby competition and unfortunately a couple of minutes, about five minutes into our very first game of the competition on saturday morning, it had been dumping down with rain and I end up tearing my hamstring which put me out for the rest of the tournament um which also affected the rest of my road trip now in saying that I didn't really only trained once during that time, but I did take a lot of steps. In fact, one week I took 100 and 10,000 steps close to 111,000 steps over the course of a week with one day up like 26,000 steps or something like that. So, um, that's a good point when things don't go your way. There's always something that you can do that is still going to move you in the right direction. It's not just about doing things that are going to move you in the right direction. It's also about minimizing the damage through not doing things that are going to sabotage you. And I've spoken about this numerous times about matching your expectation to your commitment levels, which I'm not going to go too deep into, but just understand that there's going to be certain times in your life where you're not going to be able to fucking be on the gain train and have everything dialed in and get the results that you want.

Sometimes it's about minimizing the damage and trying to reduce the amount of damage that you do through, you know, maybe getting eight hours sleep per night or minimizing how much you're drinking or Um, watching your diet as much as you can, or only allowing yourself to have treats and things like that. If you've taken 10,000 steps per day. It's all about these small things that you can throw into your day or um you know, these 1%ers that add up over time. Like if I'm Um only taking 5000 steps, then I'm not going to have an entree as well as a main meal as well as dessert as well as, you know, a couple of glasses of beer or whatever. Um it's all about minimizing that damage and choosing the lesser of the evils. Okay. Um that's not the point of this podcast. However, what I want to do is reflect on my three week trip. So um obviously there's a lot of people that can't travel at the moment and I normally travel overseas obviously with the pandemic this year I can't travel overseas.

So what I did do was bought myself a car so I could travel with in Thailand and um I'm quite lucky here that most ties aren't really taking the thing too seriously and that's because cases in Thailand are quite low and um have petered out over the last 3 to 4 months or so. Um you know, they're taking temperature checks and people wearing masks and things like that around, but for the most part on my three week trip, I wasn't even wearing a mask because in some of the mountainous regions of Thailand in the jungles and things like that away from like main cities, you know, people were just going about their daily business is like nothing really had changed other than, you know the big tourist hotspots that normally have a lot of tourism there that are driving the economy. Those places were shut down but things that weren't um tourism driven, it was almost business as usual which was kind of cool to see and also gave me a very unique experience because there's probably been a long time, at least a couple of decades since you can go to a lot of places in Thailand and not be absolutely surrounded by tourists.

And there was a few days where I went off the beaten path, I went to a place called pray and nan and there was probably three to four days where I could count on one hand how many foreigners I saw in that time and it was really cool to be exposed to that part of Thailand with no people around and just be able to see the locals going about their business and um it was, it was an amazing trip. Um I saw so many things I saw, I literally saw hundreds of temples. I saw some beautiful waterfalls. I saw Hellfire Pass, which was an amazing experience for me. I heard about Hellfire Pass when I was in the Australian army and if you've never been there before, it's a very fucking sobering place. So Hellfire Pass is a portion of the Death railway which is otherwise known as the thai burma railway and it was constructed by POWs and laborers um under Japanese rule during the Second World War to support the Japanese war effort And it was 400 and 15 km of a railway track that was built through the jungles and through the mountains from Thailand into Myanmar Um to provide support and resupply for the Japanese war effort.

And there was 200,000 people employed to or forced to work on this railway. And it's estimated that 100 to 110 1000 of those workers and POWs and laborers and things like that lost their lives due to the fucking appalling conditions. So I spent quite a bit of time in the interpretive center in Cantina Puree. Uh and it was an incredible experience again, very sobering. But I was just reading all of the stories, watching all of the videos and I actually got a little bit emotional watching it. There's a lot of um Australian POWs that were captured in Singapore that were put to work and um had marched to these um these camps to work on the railway and the whole place is actually funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs which is part of the Australian government. Um so they run the place they operate it um doesn't cost anything to go in there and it kind of made me proud to see that the Australian government was providing funding to look after such a big part of the Australian history, particularly the Australian military history.

So yeah, It was an amazing experience. Um three week road trip around Thailand I covered I think 5400 km in that time. Um I really enjoyed travel. Unfortunately obviously can't travel overseas at the moment but I can travel with in Thailand, so my travel was different but I'm still able to do that. So I'm very grateful to be able to do that and I'm lucky that things are under control here and I still have the opportunity to travel within the country. So um it really opens my eyes every single time I go traveling. I used to work for eight or 9 months every year and then close my Business down for 3-4 months and go traveling and you know, I always really appreciated the travel. Um and it gave me some of my best business ideas both personally and professionally in in terms of growth and development and that's a very important thing for me. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know that personal growth is A big part of the Swiss eight principles, which is something that I implement into my life on a daily basis.

Um it always gives me a solid appreciation of what I have at home as well though as much as travel is fucking amazing and I love doing it and it is a part of my soul, I don't think I'd be the same person if I wasn't able to travel. Um I also get the appreciation, it makes me grateful. It just reminds me of what I do I do have back home, you know, and that is having a structure that is having a schedule that is having my own routine, my own space, my own ability to, you know, set the conditions for the environment that I live in. Um and that's an important thing because whilst I was traveling and I did fucking enjoy it, had really good time. Um but over the last couple of days I'm like, all right, cool, I want to go home now, I want to sleep in my own bed, I want to have my own space around me. Um because, you know, whilst I was traveling, I mean if you're living on a fucking resort or something like that, that's a different type of traveling, that's a holiday and yes, I was on holidays, but you know, I was in a different place every day and that means making decisions, making decisions on where you're going to stay, what you're going to do, what you're going to eat, how much you're willing to pay.

Um you know, the things that you're going to do with the limited time etcetera. And I was tired. I was ready to come back to my own place, my own space, my own structure, my own routine. Um you know, so yes, I do appreciate that. I can get out and about and go and travel. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to do that and the thai government's done a reasonable job of keeping everything under control and you know, allowing people like me to have the opportunity to go and travel. But I also appreciate getting home and I'm grateful for having my own space and getting into that environment that I've set up for myself, because at the end of the day, you can only control what you can control and when there's things that are outside of your control, that brings stress, that brings anxiety and it also brings the unknown and that's a good point. You know, when you your home environment should be set up to allow you to relax. If we look at our home environment from an evolutionary perspective, it should be a safe space, okay if you're if your home environment stresses you out because you've got shipped all over the place, you've got fucking papers pulled up and you've got work stacked up everywhere, dishes stacked up, etcetera, that adds to your stress, okay, that is not a good place to be, you want your home environment to be stress free or stress free as possible.

And I felt this as soon as I walked into my place, my bed is always made, my place is always clean, always tidy up after myself and you know, it was a fucking amazing feeling to be able to walk back into basically this chaos that I've been living out of a bag over the last couple of weeks to walk back into my home environment and see everything as I left it, um knowing exactly where everything was and knowing what I had to do this afternoon to get myself set up for the week ahead. So um I didn't really have a theme for this episode other than to get some words out, reflect on my last couple of weeks of this road trip, and I guess the biggest takeaway from it is that your environment plays a massive part in how you live your life. Um Again, I've been living in a little bit of chaos and I've been super flexible over the last couple of weeks, but I also haven't trained, I haven't been sleeping as well as I normally do have been eating as well as I normally do, I've been drinking too much um you know, everything plays a part.

So I have been minimizing the damage as much as I can without being fucking stupid um and still enjoying my life, but I've also been looking forward to getting back to my own place and getting back into training and getting back into a solid sleep routine and getting back into um you know, doing some study and recording these episodes and um just being back into my own routine, my own life, my own safe space. So um if you want to know a little bit more about how much the environment impacts you, I do recommend going back and listening to episode 13 the effect of your environment, which goes into detail about um all of the events and circumstances that led up to my time in Afghanistan, along with all of the training that we under talk to get us to a place that we're happy and comfortable to be deploying to a war torn country. That's it for me today guys, hopefully enjoyed this reflections episode and it gets you thinking about reflecting on some areas of your own life, maybe over the last month or last couple of months, where you can start thinking about things that went well for you and things that didn't go well for you and how you can start changing your environment to create the best possible space for you to live in, to be the person that you want to be.

Stay tuned for thursday's episode of my five minute fitness tips. Any five star ratings and reviews, much appreciated guys, much love peace