Guys, hi

Uhhhhhhhh. You know when there's a thing you know you have to do. This little voice nagging away at you. You ignore it, continue on with your life but it won't leave you alone. You know you have to do the thing or you will never feel at peace. The thing is scary and hard (obviously, otherwise you would have just done it). There's a point where you say either I live my life with this nagging voice which is a miserable way to live or I just do the bloody thing. And you realise, actually as painful as the thing is, it's ultimately less painful than living a life half lived (bit dramatic but you get me). so then you decide to do it. and finally stop just talking about doing it. and everyone says thank god she finally did that thing that she kept talking about doing but not actually doing.

Anyway great news. I just did my version of the thing. So that uhhhhh was an uhhhh of relief! Thank fucking god (I'm going to swear in this newsletter FYI as the book I'm talking about also contains swearing so you'll be reading f bombs either way).

I just realised that in the book the guy is dealing with the exact same nagging voice. His version of 'the thing' is joining the Navy SEALs. Mine is a little less extreme... making a TikTok video. But same idea. (Really? Making a TikTok was that scary? YES. It was.) I'll tell you about the guy / the book first then about my little thing.

This week I'm reading: Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

Chris Williamson (guy whose podcast I'm trying to emulate (in a way)) recently created lotssss of hype for an upcoming episode. When he finally announced the guest I had never seen the name before... David Goggins. I looked him up and recognised the book cover of his part memoir, part self-help guide 'Can't Hurt Me'. I thought I'd check it out and when I started reading about his story of growing up I was hooked. This was two days ago and I'm about halfway through but just thought I'd share something he wrote which I think is interesting....

First, context. I asked someone (Neil formerly known as chaotic_zingerbox) if they'd heard of him and they said oh yeah is he the running guy? And I wasn't up to the bit where he had started running... His Wikipedia bio says:

David Goggins is an American ultramarathon runner, ultra-distance cyclist, triathlete, public speaker, and author. He is a retired United States Navy SEAL and former United States Air Force Tactical Air Control Party member who served in the Iraq War.

So yes. Definitely a runner. I'm also not up to the bit when he fights in the Iraq War... so cool. Spoiler alert for me.

Anyway his childhood is extremely messed up. Oh wait I'm swearing today so, fucked up. Seriously fucked up. It sounds like his Dad used similar tactics to the story Susie (barista) told on her episode of my podcast, growing up with a mother who is trapped in a relationship with an abusive father. Controlled financially, emotionally manipulated etc. And abusive in David's case meaning David had to strip naked to then be belted as a small child type abuse. Fucked up awful stuff.

Here's the bit about his nagging voice... (obviously read his story yourself if you are interested... his story is amazing, and I don't mean to do it a disservice here, just trying to give a bit more context so we can all follow along... I also realise he has 6+ million social media followers so it's very possible that some of you already know all of this and it would be like me telling you the story of Jesus as if you had never heard of him before. If that's you, enjoy... I feel like in six months I'm definitely going to be like 'I can't believe I hadn't heard of David Goggins before Jan 2023'.) ANYWAY. Basically, he and his mum escape his abusive father, they are living in poverty in a small, rural town in Indiana, David is 'the only black kid' in his entire school, victim of constant harassment as a result of this, cheats his way through school (his radical honesty is v refreshing), he dreams of joining the Air Force Pararescue. He doesn't get through training camp. This reinforces the idea that he is a failure, as he's felt his whole life. He puts on weight, gets to nearly 300 pounds (135kg) and is working night shifts as a pest control guy when he decides to try and join the Navy SEALs. Everyone says no, until one guy gives him a chance. He has to get through training which sounds insanely brutal (also the man had to teach himself how to swim. Fun fact SEAL stands for Sea, Air and Land). For medical reasons he has to pull out of training twice having made it through the toughest week. Here is where that voice comes in:

Eventually he concludes:

And then, he does it.

Anyway, that was all just context.

Here is the passage I thought was interesting:

'You are stopping you'... that's a nice segue into my TikTok thing.

"Yeah, you're actively avoiding taking the required steps to be successful"

That's a message I got from a Cambridge friend in November last year. He wants to help me be successful... 'successful' here means, growing the podcast... TikTok is the quickest way to grow an audience. The numbers are crazy. (Pretty sure I've talked about this here before, but for example two recent podcast guests started TikTok accounts from scratch and within 10 videos both reached 1+ million views. Those numbers, that quickly just aren't possible on any other platforms.) So, it's at least worth me experimenting with TikTok (and hopefully worth the trade off of the CCP stealing all my data). I've known this for months. But I wasn't doing it. Mainly because I kept being talked out of it by these voices of self doubt. ANYWAY I finally started. I'm going to do a few more before I write to you again so don't mind me reporting back and holding myself accountable. Also it can be fun for us to figure out this mysterious algorithm and exactly what works to get a video watched by a million people. Right?

This week on the Growing Up with Delia Burgess podcast:​
​​Ep. 32 - Charlotte Scales: manifesting and panic attacks
​​​Charlotte Scales is a digital marketing specialist. She lives in London in the beautiful flat she manifested. ​​
​
​​Ep. 33 - Ben Ryan: an outsider in the corporate world, managing money and moving overseas
​​Ben Ryan works in Investment and Portfolio Management at MaxCap Group.

Hope you are all having a lovely start to the year.

xx Delia

​deliaburgess.blog​
​Listen to Growing Up with Delia Burgess on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts

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