This transcript has been edited for clarity and checked against the available source transcript and recording. Filler, false starts, and obvious transcription errors have been corrected without changing the speaker’s meaning.
Intro#
James: Hello and welcome to Graduate Theory. We’re all about providing resources and lessons for graduates so they can have a successful and fulfilling career. On today’s episode, I speak to someone who is a really funny guy and has a lot of experience speaking to people who operate at a very high level.
In this episode, you’re going to hear me laugh quite a lot, but you’re also going to hear some great insights. We speak about so many things, from imposter syndrome and how we deal with situations where we feel like we don’t deserve to be there, to how we deal with emotions.
How can we deal with unpleasant things that happen in the office? How can we deal with roadblocks that might be keeping us down? How can we deal with situations that seem to keep reappearing in our lives? Today’s episode is a little bit spiritual in some ways, and it is certainly one that I really enjoyed recording.
I feel it has so many deep lessons if we can truly receive what is in this episode. Thanks so much for tuning in today, and I hope you enjoy it.
Hello and welcome to Graduate Theory. Today’s guest is a sales coach turned behavioural psychologist. He coaches people on how to sell, how to speak and how to ask better questions. He’s written books such as Don’t Be a Dick and More Sales, More Profit. Please welcome to the show today the mindset master, Darren Fleming.
Darren: G’day, James. How are you doing?
James: Welcome to the show, Darren. It’s fantastic to have you here, mate. You’re someone who’s had a fantastic career, gone to many different places and explored many different avenues. We can delve into the details of where you’ve been and where you’ve gone, but I want to start by asking you this:
Did Darren expect to be a performance coach?#
James: Did you expect to be where you are when you first started university?
Darren: Did I expect to be here? No. Did I want to be? Absolutely. I work with the C-suite. I coach them. Before COVID, I trained salespeople right around the world. Then COVID happened. Did I expect to be here? I hoped like hell I would, but I certainly wanted to be.
James: Tell us a bit about your career story in general. You’re a coach, and you just mentioned coaching the C-suite and doing things like sales and mindset. Where did your career start?
Darren: I left school way back in 1992. I reckon that was before you were born.
The prime minister at the time was Paul Keating, and he said, “This is the recession we had to have.” I entered the employment market in 1993. Unemployment was in the double digits, interest rates were about 10 per cent and the economy was in a bad way. Somehow, I got a job in one of Sydney’s top law firms.
They were paying me to go to uni. They paid my uni fees, I was assisting barristers in court and they were flying me around the country. Life was really good. Then one of my mentors outside the law firm said to me, “Darren, just remember: no one ever calls their lawyer and says, ‘Hey, I’ve had a great day. Can I tell you all about it?’”
I stopped studying, so they sacked me. The only job I could get was selling vacuum cleaners door to door. I’m not going to say that job sucked, because that would be a terrible pun, but it was not a lot of fun. I did that for 12 months, then graduated and did two years of telemarketing, followed by three years of telephone debt collecting. I have had all of the good jobs.
Along the way, I was a rep for multinational companies, with multimillion-dollar budgets, reporting to the overseas sales office. I was working at a company in Melbourne called Alfa Laval. The CEO’s job was to turn the company around: either start making money or wind the company up and send the money back to Kolding in Denmark.
He’d been there for 12 months or so and brought everyone in for a conversation about what had happened. He’d got rid of underperforming people and products, and somehow I was still there. He stood at the front of the room and started droning on about what he planned to do for the next five years.
I looked at him and thought, “You are awesome at what you do, but you suck at selling it to me.” As a mature-age student, I went back to uni, got myself a degree in psychology and combined it with what I knew about thinking, speaking and selling. Hopefully, when the borders open again, I’ll get to travel the world again and teach clever people how to communicate, how to sell and how to sort their mindset out.
I left school in 1992 and it’s 2021, so that’s almost 30 years. You’ll be this age one day too.
James: You’re spot on there, and I think it’s fantastic. It’s fascinating to see how your career has transitioned over time. You’ve been able to go really deep into multiple areas, and they’re all intertwined to create this really awesome value.
Darren: There’s a great Steve Jobs commencement speech. I think he gave it in 2005. Have you seen it?
James: I think I’ve seen snippets of it.
Darren: I think it was for Harvard, Yale or one of them. He talks about how he dropped out of school and went off and did dumb things. Thirty years later, when he produced the first computer, it had beautiful graphics in it, which literally changed the world of computing because you could now do world-changing things on the computer. That happened because he went to a calligraphy class at Reed College after he dropped out of his degree, and it stuck with him.
My journey has been everywhere. I didn’t think selling vacuum cleaners door to door, telemarketing or telephone debt collecting would become one of the mainstays and strengths of my practice. But it has, because I’ve been there and done it. It gives me street cred. I draw on what I learnt in those times and share it with my clients for a fair commercial exchange.
James: I think that is really cool. It’s great to hear that you started at a law firm, went to selling vacuum cleaners and got to where you are today. There’s a very stark difference, and it definitely opens your eyes to what you can achieve.
Darren: I went from getting respect at one of Sydney’s top law firms—a boutique but very well-placed firm—to selling vacuum cleaners. It doesn’t exist anymore. That was humbling, I think they call it in retrospect. I don’t think it was at the time.
James: A lot of what you do now is solo or self-employed. What was the shift like from being employed and working in sales, with the board meetings and things like that, to going out on your own, finding your own clients and managing your own business? What led you to decide to do that?
Darren: What was it like? Long. What was it like? Hard. It’s character-building. I always wanted to do what I do now, but the reality is that when you graduate from high school at 18 or 19, no one wants to employ an 18- or 19-year-old to teach them the lessons of life. No one wants that shit. Even when you graduate from uni at 22 or 23, you know squat. You’ve got a piece of paper. Whoop-de-do. Give me 20 years in the workplace, then I’ll listen to you.
I went out on my own in June 2011, but I’d had my practice for a number of years before that. I would work at my day job during the day. My last job was at the Australian Bureau of Statistics. I used to count the number of people who went to libraries, art galleries and museums. Don’t fall asleep. It was a lot more exciting than it sounds because we had to count archives as well. Bugger me, that was a boring job, but it was a great place for a divorce.
I worked full-time and worked on my practice at night. Then I went from full-time down to, I think, about 92 per cent FTE. My wife and I both worked long days. Under the guise of having one day a week off, we would look after the children because, back in the day, we were paying more for childcare than for our mortgage. We’d bought a house in the suburbs, and childcare was $1,200 a fortnight or a month for two kids. I think it was a fortnight—a stupid amount of money.
We worked really long days. I would run AdWords, people would send me enquiries and I’d talk to them. On Monday, I’d go to work at the ABS and have to write an article on something like the number of people using libraries across regional Victoria. Blow-your-brains-out boring.
At four o’clock, I would leave. I was on the bottom rung. I’d go to the airport, get on a plane and fly to Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or wherever, and stay in a really swish hotel. I was even allowed to have room service or breakfast in the restaurant. I thought, “Holy moly, where am I?”
I would spend the next day with the CEO of some company, telling him what I knew. He—or she—would make plenty of notes and say, “Darren, I’ll do this, I’ll do this and I’ll do this.” Then I’d get back on a plane, fly to Adelaide, and go to work at the Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday morning. They’d say, “Now, Darren, in this article about people visiting the library, you’ve got your commas in the wrong spot.” That was my life for about 18 months.
James: Wow.
Darren: How does this do your head in? Talk about imposter syndrome. At work, you’re being treated like a numpty, someone who doesn’t know squat: “You put the comma in the wrong spot. You don’t know how to analyse numbers.” I probably didn’t really care. Back in the day, I think I was on $70,000 a year when I left there.
Then I would go on a plane, stay in a hotel and have a CEO listen to me. I’d sit there thinking, “Holy moly, what if I don’t know what I’m doing? Oh, shit.”
What I’ve found over the last 10 or 12 years—however long I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing—is that everybody feels and thinks that. Outside of physics, chemistry and biology, everything is made up. Literally everything is made up.
Why do we drive on the left-hand side of the road? Someone in the past decided we would. Why do we have a prime minister, not a president? A bunch of old white men sat around and decided. It’s all made up. It’s all bullshit. The laws that govern our country are made up. There’s no divine thing coming down. They’re all made up.
You go somewhere and think, “I don’t know what to do.” The reality is that you don’t realise everyone else is thinking that too. I do a lot of public-speaking and presentation-skills training, from frontline staff right up to the executive team.
I know, because I have one-on-one conversations with them, that they’re all sitting around the table thinking, “I wish I was as good as that person. I like the way she speaks. Man, she’s awesome when she stands up and speaks. I wish I could be as good as that.”
Every person is saying that about everybody else, while we’re sitting there thinking, “Oh my goodness, I’m no good.” Everyone wants to be as good as you, but because you’re on the inside looking out, you don’t see that. Sometimes we’re too close to ourselves to see how good—or not—we are.
That’s why we have people who are absolutely useless—you may see some of them in our federal parliament—who think they know what they’re doing, and other people who are incredibly amazing at what they do, scientists for argument’s sake, holding back and saying, “I’m not quite sure.” You’re not always in the best position to judge what you need to do or how good you are.
James: I think that’s very true. Someone described that as the spotlight effect: you think everyone’s watching what you’re doing all the time and paying all this attention to you. Everyone thinks that, so everyone is out there thinking everyone is paying attention to them. In reality, no one is really thinking about what you’re doing.
Darren: I’ve got four teenage kids, and they think everyone’s watching them: “I can’t wear that to school because everyone will see it.” Everyone thinks the world revolves around them, but it doesn’t. I’m still going to have on my tombstone, “Who will the world revolve around now?”
James: That’s hilarious. Public speaking has been a cornerstone of a lot of your life. You’ve been involved in it to some degree for a long time. When did you start, and how has it shaped your career and allowed you to get where you are today?
Darren: In 1992, when I was in year 12, I was going to John Therry Catholic High School in Campbelltown, Sydney. It used to be out in the boondocks; now it’s almost in the city. My maths teacher was also the religion coordinator. He said, “Darren, at the end-of-school-year Mass, you will be doing a reading.”
I said, “No, I’m not, Mr Price. I’m not doing it.”
He said, “Yes, you are.”
I ended up doing it. It was probably only 200 words or something I had to read out, but I was shitting myself about it. I walked up on stage and put it down on the altar. I kid you not, you could just about hear the bones in my legs shaking. I was that nervous. I was holding on to the altar, the lectern or whatever they call it in church, and I mumbled out what I was reading.
I got to the end and said, “Please stand.” Three hundred people stood up, and I thought, “Oh my God. They’re listening to me.”
At school, I was the punching bag. I didn’t have many friends and wasn’t one of the cool kids. I went through the responsory: I would say something and they would chant back. I might have been on stage for three or four minutes, but by the end, I knew where I wanted to spend my life. I wanted to spend my life on the stage. I was shit-scared of speaking, but I knew the person on the stage had the power.
How has that changed my life? I was the kid at school who didn’t have many friends or much confidence, but I set about learning public speaking. One of the greatest things you can do is learn to speak in public, because you can have the greatest ideas, but if you can’t share them, they’re going nowhere. Look at that nutcase Barnaby Joyce: not a thing between the ears, but he’s got the platform to speak, and now he’s the current acting prime minister. God help us all.
James: That’s hilarious. You coach people in public speaking, and it’s definitely intertwined with what you do. What common tips do you give, and what common mistakes do you see that people can fix by doing X, Y and Z?
Darren: A common tip is to have fun. It’s a lot of fun being at the front of the room. You may not think that, but it actually is.
A second common tip, which I’ve been giving out a lot more of late, is that I believe everything in life is happening perfectly right now for you to progress to the next game in life. I don’t know what video games are like these days, but when I was a kid, I used to plug in a cassette. You wouldn’t even know what a cassette is, would you? Bloody hell.
You’d get your computer, which was just a keypad, and plug it into your TV. You’d play the game and go through it. I remember one we had that involved hunting of some sort. You had to dodge the spears. This was the 1980s, when the natives threw them at you—imagine the sort of shit I had to grow up with. You’d run forwards and all these spears kept coming at you.
If you got past that level, you went to the next level and ran up the side of a pyramid while they rolled boulders down. You had to go left and right. If you died in that second level, you went back to the start of that level. You didn’t have to go back through the spears; you only had to go through the boulders. You’d get through the boulders, then you had the snakes. That’s the way it was. I assume games are still the same these days.
That’s the way I reckon life is. You get to a level, and at that level you need to overcome certain problems. The universe goes, “Okay, James, you want to get to the next level? Awesome. You have to be able to conquer these issues.” Everything happens for you in life.
For the person listening to this podcast—or quadcast, or whatever you young people call it—shit is happening in your life. It might be public speaking. It might be the crap of divorce or a relationship breakdown. Who knows what terrible stuff? Your car was stolen. Your partner cheated on you. This is shit you have to move through to get to the next stage of life. If you don’t move through it, it will continue to turn up time and time again.
We see this with people’s patterns. Have you ever noticed someone who constantly has financial problems? There’s just enough money to get to the end of the month, and if something else happens, you’re buggered. You can save for six months, then something suddenly goes wrong and the cost to fix it happens to be the same amount of money you’ve saved. There it goes. Why? Because there’s some shit you’ve got to work through around your money.
How does this relate to public speaking and presentation skills? When these events happen to us, we have an energetic rush. It might be fear, anger or excitement. We need to experience that energy. Letting it out is not the goal; experiencing it is. The way we experience it is simply to feel it.
Imagine you have to stand up and do some public speaking. Someone is speaking, you’re going up next, and you’re standing to the side thinking, “Oh my God, this is so scary.” Experience that energy. Don’t try to push it down. Don’t suppress it by thinking, “I’ll picture them naked,” or, “I’ll push it down and get through.” Don’t express it by saying, “I’m no good at public speaking. Please bear with me.” Just experience that energy.
Once you’ve experienced it, the computer game goes tick: you can move to the next level. This is actually one of the secrets to life. Man, I wish I’d known this 25 years ago. Every feeling you have is there to help you move to the next level, and you must experience that energy and let it go.
That applies even to things you like. You have a loved one. She’s beautiful. He’s beautiful. You have to let that energy go. Just experience it. When they’re not there and you don’t feel it, that’s fine. When they come back and you feel it again, experience it.
If you hold on to it, by the time you get to my age, James, you turn around and look at the way love was. Today, when you meet someone and you’ve known them for two years, there’s lots of drinking, sex and partying. You get to my age, and you might just want to watch the 7.30 News and go to bed at eight o’clock on an awesome night. Then you look back and think, “It was a lot more fun back then. Love is different. Maybe I don’t love her anymore. We’ve grown apart,” and you end up leaving.
Don’t do that. Over 20 years, your love is going to change. It has to change. We all see those sad, pathetic individuals who are my age and still go to nightclubs until two or three in the morning every Friday and Saturday night, trying to pick up young girls. Why? Because they haven’t let go of that part of life.
Let that energy go, and you’ll see the energy you have in a relationship when you’re my age. You think it’s good now? When you’ve been with someone you love for that length of time, oh my goodness, it’s just amazing. But you can’t see what’s coming if you’re holding on to what was. Let go of what is today so you can get what is happening tomorrow.
James: That was a great point about the patterns that can run our decisions and relationships. Maybe at work we’re running into the same kind of situation, where we nearly get something but talk ourselves out of it, or whatever it might be.
I think your technique of letting go is really cool because, as you said, it’s fundamental to breaking through barriers that can arise in many different areas of life.
Darren: In one of the earlier jobs I had, I was at a law firm for 18 months. I was at another company called All Merchandise, selling furniture and hardware. That was a really good job. I was there for about 18 months or two years. Then there was telemarketing. All these jobs lasted around 18 months or two years.
I was talking to one of my mentors and said, “I keep picking dickheads to work for. After 18 months, I just can’t stand them.”
He was wise, so he stroked his beard and said, “Darren, what’s the commonality between all of those jobs?”
I said, “They’re here, they’re in this industry and that industry.”
He said, “You’re the only commonality between each job. Something’s going wrong at each job, and it’s a similar sort of thing. It’s you.”
When you realise that, you think, “That means I’m actually in control of fixing it.”
James: I think that’s really cool. I’ve heard a similar analogy where someone says, “I’ve been in five accidents this year. Everyone on the road is such a terrible driver.” But who is the terrible driver if you’re getting into that many accidents? It’s similar to what you were just saying about the commonality.
In terms of the letting-go stuff and realising you have that barrier, what steps did you take once you realised, “I’ve had these different bosses and I get annoyed by all of them. Somehow the problem is something to do with me”? Did you ever work through that?
Darren: Yes, I worked through it. I have a beautiful coach out of Sydney named Lorna Patten. I only started working with her about four years ago. Basically, she beat it into me with brutal honesty: “No, Darren, you’re the problem.”
I’d say, “My ex-wife’s doing this and the kids are doing that.”
She’d say, “No, Darren, you’re the problem.”
I’d say, “But don’t you see? At work, these people—”
“No, Darren, you’re the problem.”
Throughout this 12-month coaching program, she built into me that I was the cause of everything. When you accept that, it’s a beautiful thing, because it means that if I’m causing all this shit, I can change it.
If you go back in the world of psychology to Freud’s days in late-1800s Vienna, Freud was the father of modern psychology. He basically had an aetiological view of personality and what’s going on today. His theory was that you are the person you are today because of what happened yesterday. The way you carry on today is because you didn’t get a hug when you were five years old: sit down, tell me all about it and let’s work through it.
At the same time, Adler had a teleological view of life, looking into the future. He said you’re acting the way you are today so you can be the person you want to be in the future. I don’t know whether Freud’s aetiological view or Adler’s teleological view is correct, but I reckon Adler has a great position: it gives you control. If you look at Freud, you’re a victim. If you look at Adler, you’re in control. I reckon that’s a wonderful way to view it.
James: I definitely think you can’t really solve a problem until you take responsibility. Once you take responsibility, you can change things.
If the things that happen aren’t your fault and are external, they’ll just continue to happen. Until you accept responsibility for those things, it’s difficult to be the one who decides to change them, because what’s happening is, by definition, outside your control.
When you take responsibility, it’s now in your control and you can work through those things. I think that’s a great way to look at it.
Darren: When you outsource control to other people, do you know what other people have planned for you? Not much. They don’t care about you. We humans have such a weird-arse relationship with control.
We try to control what we shouldn’t, and then we take responsibility for things we don’t control. Have you ever been fishing, James? Have you caught a fish?
James: I’m not a fisherman, usually.
Darren: I believe you have caught a fish. Say what happened. You got in the boat, went out, the person threw the pick over, and you put the hook on the rope, wire, string or whatever it’s called—twine, the line. You put the worm on it and threw it over. Then the fish bit, you reeled it in and said, “Hey, I caught a fish.”
To me, the defining factor was whether or not the fish bit the hook. If the fish didn’t bite the hook, you wouldn’t have caught a fish. True? That’s you trying to take credit for something you have no control over. You didn’t determine whether or not the fish bit the hook. It’s its own sentient being; it will decide whether or not it wants to bite.
How does this apply in the real world, particularly for salespeople or people managers? We try to control things we don’t have the right to control.
We, as salespeople, say, “I sold that to the customer. How can I get them to buy more?” You didn’t sell it to the customer. The customer bought it. “No, Darren, you don’t get it. I stalked him on LinkedIn for six weeks. Then I approached him. I spent three months trying to get in through the door.
“I sent him gifts. I followed him on LinkedIn and blah, blah, blah. I put a proposal forward and they looked at it. We negotiated terms and created conditions. They signed it. I sold it to them.” Yes, all of that happened, but it was the customer who decided to buy, not the salesperson who sold. This matters because we try to control things we can’t. We can’t control other people.
When we say, “How can I get them to buy more from me?”, we’re asking the wrong question. You’re better off asking, “How can I be worth buying more from?” Can you see how different that is?
James: Yes, definitely. There’s something similar in a book called Atomic Habits. James Clear distinguishes between a goal and a process. Let’s say you’re in sales and your goal is, “I want to sell $100,000 of this item this year.” As you were saying, that’s like wanting the fish to get on your hook a certain number of times. You can’t control that.
What you can control in the fishing example is putting your line in the water a certain number of times and doing it as well as you can. The fish will decide whether to bite the hook. In the sales example, the process might be, “I’m going to call 15 to 20 people every day.” That’s a goal you have direct control over.
Darren: That’s true, but as someone who has spent a lot of time telemarketing, I know that straight numbers don’t work. In my last year of psychology, I had a job with My Cleaning Services selling carpet cleaning. You’d call people in the neighbourhood: “Hello, Mr Jones. We’re in the area. Do you want to buy some carpet cleaning?” “No.” Bang.
In a three-hour shift, four sales was average. I would get one, maybe two. Not good if you’re in sales and need to make a budget. One Monday, I got to work and the boss came up to me. He said, “Darren, your figures have been terrible. If you can’t get them up to where they should be by the end of the week, we’ll have to let you go.”
I was at uni, my wife-to-be was at uni and we had no money. I remember what that was like. I smiled and dialled. Over the three-hour shift, I got one sale. I came back on Tuesday, smiled and dialled for a three-hour shift, and got two sales. At least the numbers were heading in the right direction.
I was only working three days, or three shifts, a week. Before the last session, I thought, “I’m going in with nothing to lose, because this is my last shift.” I decided to apply one of the techniques I’d learnt in a rapport-building course. It was about being welcoming to the person on the other end of the line, so I was worth talking to.
I simply matched their voice. I’d smile and dial, the phone would be picked up and a little old lady would say, “Oh, hello.” I instantly dropped my energy: “Hello, Mrs Smith. It’s Darren from My Cleaning Services,” and so on. I found that people bought because I was worth talking to. I met them where they were.
If I called Mr Jones and he answered, “Hello?”, I’d say, “Hello, Mr Jones. Darren from My Cleaning Services here,” and move down to his level. In that last shift, I got nine sales—more in one shift than I should have got in the whole week. I was allowed to come back the next week, when I got 12 and 13.
I went from being the guy who was about to be sacked to the guy being held up as an example: “Be like him.” Why? Because I changed what I was offering. Simply hitting the numbers isn’t going to work. Instead of asking, “How can I get them to buy more carpet cleaning?”, ask, “How can I be worth buying carpet cleaning from?”
We try to take credit for things we don’t control: “I caught a fish.” We try to control things we have no right to control: “You buy more.” Third, we don’t control things we should. How long do you brush your teeth for? Do you brush for two minutes because that’s what the Australian Dental Association says we should do? Do you brush until the electric toothbrush vibrates and says you’ve done it for long enough, or do you brush until your teeth are clean? Do you see the difference? We’re outsourcing how long we brush our teeth.
What time do you leave for work? You’re working from home, but ordinarily, do you leave at 7.30 or 7.45, whatever it happens to be, or when the alarm on your phone says, “Leave for work”? When you leave based on the alarm, you’re outsourcing control of your morning. Ordinarily, you’d do all your tasks, make your lunch, get dressed and all that jazz, keeping an eye on the clock so you leave on time. The other way is to keep working until you’re told to go. We need to take control of everything in our life; otherwise, we’re outsourcing it all.
James: I think that’s really cool. It goes back to what you said earlier about taking control of everything. That can be difficult, but there are all these little things. Taking control of as much as you can brings a lot of the power back to you. It means that, in the areas you want to improve, you can now go and do it.
Darren: One of the programs I run with my clients is Radical Responsibility: how do you remove the blockages that prevent performance? Every trainer in the market—James Clear, what’s he about?
He’s about habit stacking. You want to get fit? Every time you go to the toilet, flush, wash your hands, go outside and do two push-ups. If you’re down there doing two, you can probably do three, four or five. Go to the toilet five times a day and you’ve done 15 or 20. Or BJ Fogg: he’s all about the smallest discernible part. You want to go to the gym tomorrow morning?
Why don’t you put out your gym clothes before you go to bed, so there’s less friction? What all these trainers and everybody else do, and what all the training is about, is this: you’ve got a hill in front of you that you have to get over, so let’s scaffold you to get over it. We’ll put all these systems in place so you can get over your hill.
We do this in business: you’ve got to put in your weekly report. We monitor people and have people managing those people, making sure they’re doing the things that support their job. You have to do all these tasks before you actually start doing your job.
You’re exhausted before you even get to work because of the process. Instead of scaffolding you over the hill, why don’t you just get rid of the hill? The hill isn’t there. You don’t need all that scaffolding shit. Why do we need all this scaffolding? Why do we need BJ Fogg’s smallest discernible parts? Because we have an internal resistance. How is that resistance felt? You want to go to the gym, but it’s been a long day. You feel that internal resistance: “I couldn’t be bothered.
“I can’t be stuffed. I’ll go tomorrow.” You have this feeling that you don’t really want to. If everything in life is perfect and happens for a reason, you’re experiencing this for a reason. An energy comes up in you, and you can experience that energy of, “I can’t be arsed.” You’ll feel it, then you’ll find it much easier to go because the energy inside you that was stopping you is gone.
Does that make sense?
James: It definitely does. There are some things, whether it’s getting a new guest for the podcast, editing these afterwards, reading a book every day or meditating. Meditation is a big one: it sounds amazing and you can do it for a week or two, then it slowly dies off. You get that exact feeling: “I should meditate right now,” but you never do it. If you can get over that resistance, it’s really big.
Darren: Steven Pressfield, in his book The War of Art, talks about what he calls the resistance. It’s that feeling inside you of, “I’m not good enough”: imposter syndrome, or the feeling that you’re not going to go through with this. He talks about how amateurs let the resistance control them, whereas professionals control the resistance and are disciplined. That’s true. I love the book and think it’s awesome, but he doesn’t tell us how to move from being an amateur to being a professional. You do that by letting the energy go.
James: I’m curious about letting go. Maybe you have an example of when you’ve done that, or an actual process for it, because it’s hard to describe. Feeling the energy and letting it go is quite an abstract concept. Once you’re doing it regularly, I guess you know what it’s like. Is there a technique you can put to that?
Darren: Yes, there is. This is so simple. It is as simple as breathing air, but we make it difficult. It requires us to do the opposite of what we normally do.
Normally, you have an energy come up. For argument’s sake, you have to edit these videos. That energy comes up and you think, “Fuck, this is really hard work”—except, of course, for this one, because you’re interviewing me.
Or you’re at work and have to do your monthly report. You think, “That report.” Bosses know this and chase you every month for your figures. You have that job that sits in your in-tray. They used to be physical in-trays, not inboxes: a physical in-tray, and everything goes on top of it. You get to that job and push it to the bottom of the queue because every time you reach it, you get that energetic rush.
We do one of several things with that energetic rush. You avoid it: “I’m going to do the job later. I’m going to morning tea.” You suppress it: “God, I hate that. I’m just going to do it and I’m not going to enjoy it.” Or you express it: “Why do I bloody well have to do this monthly report? It’s garbage.” All that does is let off steam so you can suppress it. Or, as we mentioned earlier, you possess it: you feel something so good that you want to hold on to it.
For example, something comes into your in-tray and you think, “I love doing this. I’m going to jump onto it.” We express that energy. That’s what we normally do, but it is doing something. I want you to do nothing.
Tomorrow, that thing comes onto your desk: you have to edit this webinar. You have a feeling about it. Instead of suppressing, expressing, possessing or avoiding it, just experience that feeling. Sit there. What does it feel like? Is it a weight in your stomach pushing down? Is it a sensation welling up inside you? Do you feel it in your left ear or your right ear? Do you feel it in the centre line of your big toe? Where is this energy? It’s inside you. Pay attention to it.
If you read any of the Buddha’s work—as though he wrote a couple of books and has a podcast you can tune into—he talks about sanskaras, which are blockages in our system that come up as sensations. All they want is to be felt. When you feel and experience them, they’re released. They’re gone, off in the wind. But when you push them down, avoid, suppress, express or hold on to them, they aren’t released and can’t be replaced with something different.
When that energy comes up for something you don’t want to do, simply experience it. Is it burning? Is it running, moving or spinning? Experience it for as long as it wants to be experienced. It will eventually subside.
One of the immutable laws of the universe is impermanence. The Buddhist term for it is anicca. Everything rises and falls. There was a time before your birth when you did not exist. You’re on this planet for a period of time, then you’ll leave and won’t exist anymore. The same is true of the building you’re in, the computer we’re using, the country and the landmass we’re on. It rises and falls.
Just experience that energy and it will dissipate. When it does, you’ll be in a clearer position to determine whether you actually want to edit, go to the gym or do whatever else. If you have to do it by a deadline, it won’t be a chore. It will just be something you do. It is so simple, but we make it difficult.
James: I think that’s very powerful. In certain areas of my life, I have that resistance to things, while in other areas I don’t. That’s where I have something I really want to do and have that desire. Letting go of a good or bad sensation and being present is life-changing.
Darren: If you get electrocuted, it’s not the current or voltage that kills you. It’s your resistance to it. It’s the same with everything in life: your resistance kills you. Stop resisting.
That doesn’t mean you become a walkover and let everyone put stuff on your desk. It means you don’t resist the energy associated with it. When someone puts some shit on your desk, your guru has turned up as that shit. You’re learning a lesson from it. It has triggered something within you. Let it go and get through it. Let the energy go.
James: I think that’s key. Let the energy go and then decide what to do, rather than reacting. Instead of something being put on your desk and immediately getting angry or frustrated, sit with it for a bit and let it go. Then you’re in a better place to decide what to do.
Darren: It’s important to do it in the moment. The best time is while you’re having a conversation. You’re in a meeting, your boss is ragging on you or there’s some stress. You can feel the energy coming up and flowing, and you let it go. Experience it while you’re having the conversation.
What you’ll find is that there’s James back here, seeing the world going on and also noticing the experience. When you can picture James back here experiencing what’s going on and interacting with the world, you’re present to the present moment, which is what all the gurus teach. It gets rid of the sanskaras, which means you’ll get through that level in the video game and can progress to the next one. How many levels are there per video game? Who knows? It depends on how good you were in your previous one and this one.
James: I think that’s a great mental model. If bad things are happening—maybe in relationships, or you’re losing lots of money—it’s a great lens through which to view them. You realise this isn’t the end of the world. It’s another challenge you’re going to overcome, and then you’ll continue. It’s almost a time to upgrade.
You said at the start that you lost your job and then started your company on your own. Those were difficult times. I’ve heard it described as being like a catapult: the time when it goes down can be what pulls you back and lets you launch further.
James: Combined with these letting-go techniques, doing things from a place of calmness rather than reacting with frustration and anger can help you make better decisions. I think it’s fundamental.
Darren: People are protesting around the country about lockdowns. All they’ve got is this energy running through them, and they think, “I’ve got to go and expend this energy. I’ve got to protest because the voice in my head is telling me I’m right.” That voice in your head is not you. Don’t listen to it.
If they sat down for five minutes and experienced that energy, they wouldn’t want to go off and protest. Do they think Dan Andrews is going to say, “The protests are on. We’d better pull the plug on these lockdowns. We were wrong. Three hundred people are protesting, so we must be wrong”?
Even in Western Australia, where Premier McGowan closed the border and they hadn’t had any COVID, they had anti-lockdown protesters. Why? I’ve got no idea. As he said, “Grow a brain.” This energy is running through them, they feel they have to do something with it and they don’t know they can sit there and experience it.
If you experience it, it will dissipate. You won’t feel it’s necessary to go and do something stupid, like protest. Then you’ll be able to put that energy and focus into something you want to do to move to the next level of the video game that is life. You can achieve an investment property or invest in shares, write a poem or do whatever is more productive for you as an individual and, therefore, probably society at large.
James: I definitely agree. I also wanted to ask about something you teach in your Mindset Mastery course, and I’m sure in everything you teach: self-doubt. We touched on imposter syndrome and the thoughts that can come into your head.
Let’s say a role opens at work and it’s a promotion. You think about applying, but talk yourself out of going for it. You can talk yourself out of seeking opportunities or doing something, even though you could or should do it. What tips would you give someone thinking through those things?
Darren: That voice in your head is not you. Don’t listen to it.
What do I mean by saying the voice in your head isn’t you? It’s an evolutionary throwback from when we were amoebas—not you and me personally, but other people. Look at plants. Life started on this planet about 1.2 or 1.3 billion years ago. Plants were the first form of life, and everything in the world and universe is measured in energy.
How do plants get their energy? They stand in the sun: photosynthesis, light, happy days. They don’t have to do anything to get it. Somehow—I wasn’t there at the time, so I don’t know exactly—single-celled organisms turned up. They had to get energy and develop a way to remember. An amoeba would go off and eat something, subsume it into itself, then die or get sick. If it got sick, it had to remember not to eat that, and to eat the life-affirming thing over here rather than the life-denying thing over there. How did it do that?
It’s assumed this is where the ego comes from. The voice inside your head tells you to do things it knows will be safe. It is a trouble-predicting machine. It will find anything that could go wrong and tell you as though it will go wrong.
That’s why, when a job comes up that you’d be perfect for, it screams at you. You may not get it, so you’re safer where you are. Don’t listen to it. That voice doesn’t have your best interests at heart.
Have you ever been sitting on the couch, watching TV and enjoying a show, when these things called ads come on every seven and a half minutes and annoy the shit out of you? You’re sitting there in the evening without a want in the world. Everything’s happy. You’re holding hands with your loved one. You’ve had a good meal, the kitchen’s clean and life is sweet.
Then there’s an ad for ice cream. You hadn’t thought about it, but now you think, “That’d be nice. There’s ice cream in the fridge. I wouldn’t mind some. I’m trying to lose weight, but it’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” You argue with yourself for 20 minutes about whether to have ice cream you weren’t even thinking about. Then you come up with excuses: “I’ve been working hard. We’re in lockdown. I’ve done all this exercise during the week. Fuck it, I’m going to do it.”
When the next ads come on, you get the ice cream. Because you’re hardcore, you sprinkle Milo on top. You sit down on the couch and start eating it, and it tastes beautiful. You get to the end, recline the chair, reach down and put the bowl on the floor.
About a minute later, that voice says, “Why did you eat that ice cream? You’re trying to lose weight. What about all that exercise you did during the week?” It starts ragging on you for doing what it wanted you to do. All it wants is your attention, because that way it feels in control. Don’t listen to it. Most of the time, it doesn’t have anything useful for you.
What’s the obvious question? How do you not listen to it when it’s so present? Good question. I’m glad you asked. What do you reckon the answer is?
James: One answer might come from what you said earlier about building scaffolding to get over the mountain. It feels like a similar situation: instead of trying to avoid these thoughts in your head, why can’t we get rid of them so they’re not there in the first place? I don’t know if that applies.
Darren: I don’t think you’ll ever get rid of them. If you spend two or three lifetimes meditating, you might. There’s only one technique, my friend: let the energy behind them go.
There are three things: the body, the mind and our awareness of the two. Our awareness goes to the mind, to the voice. It goes to the voice when it feels the emotions and feelings—the sensations that are always in our body.
You and I are made of atoms, and atoms are made of quarks. Quantum physics tells us it’s just a little electrical impulse going backwards and forwards. It isn’t even solid. Doesn’t that do your head in? Everything in the world is made of particles and waves at the same time, yet it’s solid.
There are always sensations in your body, but we have a concept in psychology called habituation. You’ve been sitting down for the last half-hour or hour, and you couldn’t feel the chair until I brought it up. That sensation was always there. You can’t feel your feet in your shoes when you’re walking around until you pay attention to them. We block all these signals out.
When you hear the voice saying, “Eat the ice cream,” sense in your body where the energy is. Experience it and let it go. If you do that, the voice will stop talking about ice cream. Or, if it does keep talking, you won’t have the energy behind it to get you out of the seat and invest in a diabetic coma. Does that make sense?
James: It definitely does. You listen to the voice and hear what it has to say, but take away the charge that can be there.
Darren: Surrender to the energy. You’re at work and a promotion comes up. You think, “It’s another $15,000 a year. How cool is that? I’ll get a bit of travel when the borders open. It’s an exciting job. I’ll be able to use my degree. Happy days. I’m not going to be able to do it. They’ll choose someone else.”
Search your body for that energy and experience it. It may get more intense, or it may not. You might feel it as heat, tingling, a sinking feeling or euphoria. Whatever you feel is right for you. You’re in your body; I’m not. Once the energy has passed, you’ll be much clearer and able to see your next best step.
Without all those emotions running, you may determine that it isn’t worth your time to apply. If you want the job, I’ve always thought you should never apply for a job you’re qualified for—you’ll only be bored. Let them determine whether you’re qualified.
James: That’s a great way to look at it. Putting yourself out there is certainly great. These tips are fundamental. These days, everyone can have all the knowledge they need to do a job, but what’s becoming more important is how you deal with your emotions in situations and remove resistance to certain things. I totally agree.
My last question, Darren, is for our audience of graduates. What’s one piece of advice you would give someone graduating from university this year?
Darren: Get vaccinated. As silly as that sounds, it’s actually a lot deeper. Since World War II, driven largely by the US, we’ve had the power of the individual: “My rights. I can do this. I’m going to be the top,” and so on. COVID and climate change are existential crises that affect the whole world.
I can put on a mask, get vaccinated and go all hippie and not drive anything, but I’m not going to stop COVID or climate change by myself. We need to work together as a society. People say, “Lockdowns are bad. It’s not affecting me. My business has gone down the toilet. You’ve got to change.” They’re missing the tectonic shift happening in society. We’re moving from an individualistic society back to a collectivist society, where we rely on each other.
There’s a traditional Ethiopian saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” That’s where we are now. The mask and vaccination are metaphors for what we need to do. This is about coming together.
The knowledge you have is great. It’s common, but it’s great. The experience you have from the life that brought you here today is uncommon and needs to be shared, as does your knowledge. Get vaccinated, if for no other reason than that we all need to get there.
James: I think that’s a fantastic note to finish on. Get vaccinated, everyone. Thanks so much for your time today, Darren. There were fantastic lessons in there.
Darren: Thanks so much. Cheers, buddy.
James: Thanks so much for tuning in to today’s episode with Darren. As I’m sure you’ve worked out by now, he is a wealth of knowledge, and it was fantastic recording this episode with him.
If you’d like to connect with Darren further, you can do so via the links in the show notes or his website, darrenfleming.com. If you’re listening on a podcast platform with a comment or review system, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave us a review or comment. These reviews go a long way towards helping the podcast reach more listeners and share this knowledge with more people.
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