Podcast Announcer (5:09)

It'S time to take your seat at the table. Find out how with vulcitembegwayo as we discuss ideas that matter, a catalyst for bold action.

Vusi (5:26)

Hello family. Hello, family. Welcome to another episode of the VT podcast. And here we talk about ideas that matter. This is such an interesting episode, and I love the video we've just opened up with. Now, I'd love to say your name, my brother, but I think, you know, it comes from a good place when I say it's far better not to attempt to say a name I'd say incorrectly than to dishonor you by saying your name incorrectly. But merci beaucoup, as you would say in Cameroon for that fantastic, fantastic question. And it just inspired so many thoughts around what I wanted to share this particular week. So I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about continuous learning.

Listener 1 (6:07)

Right.

Vusi (6:07)

I see it often in the comments section for a lot of the stuff that we post in a number of the DMs that come through. It's a subtle theme that you guys just don't either explicitly ask the question or often don't understand that that is actually the underlying tenet of the question that you're asking in the first place. The value of. Of continuous growth and continuous learning. Now, the question you've asked it, sir, is you've said, you know, I've made tough choices, and now I've got to deal with the fact that I have to go back From Egypt back to Cameroon and find myself in an environment where people are going to say, we told you so, right? Listen, Thirst. Everything in life has a cost. Everything. There is a cost to staying where you are. And there is a cost for daring to go somewhere else and do something different. The cost to staying where you are is you will always be where you are. And you will always be who you've always been. Now, for some people, that's what they want. You often hear them in conversation say things like, I've been like this since day one. I'm gonna keep it 100, whatever the case might be, which is just the biggest load of nonsense. This idea that you must stay today the way you were 10 years ago. Nothing is today the way it was 10 years ago. Your toenails aren't today what they were 10 years ago. They're growing as we speak. And you clip the part that grows and keep the part that's new. Your hair isn't today what it was 10 years ago. Your bank account isn't today what it was 10 years ago. Why must your life be today what it was 10 years ago? I have never understood that some people's obsession with staying where they are. I've never understood it. I've never understood it. Everything in your life is changing. The car you drive is changing, probably the place you live in is changing. The programs you watch on the TV are changing. That's if you have the TV and you're not streaming the. Your bank account's changing. The currency you're using is changing. Why must your life stay the same? So there is a cost to staying where you are. And the cost to staying where you are is you will never discover who you could have been. For some people, that's fine. For me, and I suspect for you, sir, it isn't. We want to discover who we might have been, and we're willing to pay the cost. The cost for going on the path as you have done to discover who you are called to be is you have to be willing who you used to be, willing to leave behind who you used to be. Now, that's hard. And that's why when you go back, people are going to be like, well, why did you live in the first place? You should have just stuck here, right? Because what they're saying is, but this is certain. It's known. Sure, it's certain and it's known. And the future is uncertain, but life's uncertain, right? And so there is actually a cost to be bad for having the courage of Our dreams. And that's really what you are talking about, the cost of the courage to dream. That's really what you're talking about. What is the cost that. That you will pay for having the courage to dream? Now, notice, anybody can dream, but most people stop at the dreaming because what's the cost to dream? Zero. Where does the cost start? When you start pursuing that dream, when you start going after it, when you begin to take action, that's where you begin to bear the cost. We did an episode years ago, maybe two years ago, and in the episode I spoke about a growth mindset. And so your question was, how do I bear the cost for making courageous decisions? How do I bear the cost for taking action?

Listener 1 (10:20)

Right.

Vusi (10:22)

There is now scientific evidence that proves that the brain is. There is scientific evidence that proves this concept around brain plasticity. The idea actually is that the brain can be changed and the associations that the brain makes when it receives particular stimuli can be manipulated and changed. This is groundbreaking stuff. Groundbreaking stuff. I'll tell you why. Because we all kind of come from the world where you were just taught, you think the way you think you are, the way you are, and that's never going to change. There is now scientific evidence that proves that that's not true. You can change the way you think, you can change the way you perceive reality, and therefore change the way you act. It's called brain plasticity. There's tons of great research out there that you can go and read, watch a lot of it even on YouTube that just explains this concept of brain plasticity. One of the videos of mine that went most viral was when I spoke about how I define intelligence. And I said my definition of intelligence is around how elastic your brain is. The idea that you can absorb new information and interrogate using new forms of data, right, against a new framework without getting stuck in the past. That, for me, is what's intelligent. Because as human beings, that's what makes us adapt. And we recognize that the human beings are the most intelligent of specie because we are the most adept of specie. You just know this. Like if you left your country and went to live in a place where there's snow, what's the first thing you're going to do? Adapt. Adapt what you wear, adapt what time you go out, adapt what you eat, adapt what you drink. That's what the human body and the human being will do. That's what makes us smart. So this concept of brain plasticity really focuses on two major centers of work. The first major center of work is continuous learning. That's what you were talking about when you said, I wasn't told that I have to pursue my ACCA or my cfa. Right. And somebody who's involved in a very technical subject of study and finance. I completely get what you're talking about. Like, it's really, really difficult pursuing these qualifications. But continuous learning is everything. Continuous learning. See, there are some people who, or for whom, rather, success is the certificate that hangs on the wall. And so they didn't acquire the knowledge and learning and information so that they might have it. They acquired it so that they might get the certificate and hang it on the wall. So when people come into their home or their office or their bedroom, they look at that certificate and go, oh, wow, you have a bachelor's in. Then there are some people for whom success isn't the certificate, it's the certificate they are pursuing continuous learning. The recognition that no matter how many qualifications or certificates I have, you could have more degrees than a thermometer and still want to learn more. Right? So there is continuous learning. And the thing about continuous learning is you must embrace. And this was the podcast we did, the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. If you haven't read the podcast, right, I highly recommend that you go in and find it and go through it. Growth mindset versus fixed mindset. These mindsets are everything and understanding them changes everything. So if you want to pursue a space of continuous learning and growth, if you want to pursue a growth mindset, if you recognize that there is a cost to be paid for staying where you are, and you would far rather pay the cost for going where you want to go, then brain plasticity is your friend. What are the three components of brain plasticity? It's new experiences, learning and challenges. Let's talk first about new experiences. See, insofar as it comes to your brain plasticity, you must recognize that your environment actually matters. I have a quote of mine, again, one of those that's often been taken and also gone viral. I can't remember where I was speaking, but it was at a conference and I said was at a conference, actually to young people. And I said to them, if you don't change your environment, your environment is going to change you. But let's be clear. If you exist in an environment where your full self can't be, either you're going to change your full self or you're going to change the environment. Tons of scientific work being done around this. The most famous was a number of professors who took a jar and put Inside this jar, I think it was fleas or something like this that were like jumping at a very high jump rate. Then what they did is they put them inside the jar and they placed a cap on the jar. As these insects were jumping, they started hitting the cap on the jar. So you know what they did? They adjusted the jump so. So that they wouldn't hit the cap but just get near enough and then go down again. So what did they do? They removed the cap and the insects in the jar still kept jumping just to that level. They had adjusted themselves to the environment. You'd be fascinated how many people watching this are smarter than they have become now, are more ambitious than they are today, and were built for more than they have become. They just adjusted themselves to their environment. It's the tell you a true story. When I was growing up in my street, while I was growing up, there was this. There was this young lady, I won't mention her name just for purpose of respecting her family, but she was probably about 10 years, maybe about 7 years my senior. And I vividly remember the whole township I come from just having such a fascination with her athletic talent. She was phenomenal. Like they would have, they would have, you know those school racing competitions where it's like an inter house or something? Yeah, they would have that. She'd run faster than the boys high school level, she would decimate the boys. 100 meters, 200 meters, 400 meters. She was unbelievably quick. But the environment we came from didn't nurture her talent. You know what happened as she got older? Unbelievably quick as she got older, her life kind of really went nowhere. She had her first child in her early teens. By the time she was in her 30s, I think she had four or five children, all from different men. And that's what her life became. Now, far be it for me to cast aspersions or judgment, we're all dealing with something and dealing with some demon. So this is not a judgmental statement, but it is simply a statement to say that you can have all of the talent and your environment will suppress it. And so the most courageous thing is what you've done is you recognized that if you are to pursue your goals and fully flex at the seams of your talent, you are going to have to leave your environment, my friend. Game changer. So the first thing is chasing new experiences and that's just what you've just done. Now the second is learning the three components of learning. Knowledge seeking, unlearning, relearning knowledge seeking. The idea that I'm constantly going to be looking for new information and that some of that new information will contradict the information I have. That forces me to unlearn the information that I have and relearn the new information. That relearning process around assimilation, right? So I get new information. It only really becomes valuable once I assimilate that information into my daily life and I start using it. And so you can't do that unless you're willing to let go of what you know. This is why I have a fundamental problem with people who think what they know is all there is to know.

Listener 2 (18:21)

Right?

Vusi (18:22)

So knowledge seeking, unlearning, relearning. And then the third is challenges. And challenges is just around a simple thing, actually do the hard things. I love watching the critique online and the jokes people make online about, you know, my dad's a billionaire and he still hasn't woken up at four in the morning to take a cold shower or whatever the case might be. Of course, what people do is they take a concept like the morning cold shower and they reduce it so that they can make a joke out of it. So those people who actually do do it, I'm not one of them, by the way, but so that the people who do it look like idiots. Now, to be clear, the reason, bar the biological physiological reasons, which are contentious at best, and there are academics arguing about those, and I'm no Andrew Huberman, so don't come to me for that. But the reason people, the cold shower for a lot of people is because it just, it's the mental barrier of starting my day doing the hard thing. And it sets up my mind to, to gear up for doing hard things. Right. If you're constantly seeking the path of least resistance, typically you end up where most people have gone because the path of least resistance is the path taken by others. So this thing about doing the hard things is about training your brain to embrace difficulty and embrace challenge. My. I have a friend of mine, let me say differently. This young man that I mentor, he's a bodybuilder, unbelievably talented, six foot two. Last I chatted to him, he was 138 kilograms. And you know, I've seen him go to competition at like 118kg, 115kg, and he'd be like 3% body fat. Unbelievable athlete, this young man. And a number of times I've trained with him and the weights he moves, it's just like, I was like, dude, you know, to Move that amount of weight you need, you need the kind of torque that you could move the core of the earth, basically. But he can move those weights because of how. Of how much power he has in his body and of how trained his muscles are now. Could he do lighter weights? Yes. What would happen? His muscles will stop developing. Think about what I just said. I'm not saying that he would stop training. I'm simply saying that if he did lighter weights, his muscles will stop developing. So if you follow that argument intuitively, it means the bigger he gets, the stronger he gets, the heavier the weights he must lift. The bigger your goals, the bigger your dreams, the bigger your aspirations, the heavier the challenge. And I used to genuinely think there's like a level of success I'm going to reach, it becomes easier. Every single level of success I reached, it became harder because I trained my success muscle. And so to keep my success muscle tough, what's life going to do? Keep throwing harder things at me. So what you've done, I have news for you, is not the end is the beginning. You've done the first step, which is the hard thing. Now you've got to do other hard things, my friend, and you've got to keep that muscle trained. Do the hard things. Three things I want you to remember from this. Just remember these three things. First, create new experiences. The only way you can do that is to recognize your environment matters, that if you don't change your environment, your environment will change you. Second, learning. Seek new knowledge. Unlearn what you thought you knew. Learn what you need to know. And third, do hard things. The harder the things you do, the stronger you will become. And you'll be fascinated, fascinated at how it's only a question of time between now and a near time in future that people in your life will look at you and not even recognize you. I'll close with this. I had a meeting over the past weekend with somebody. We hadn't seen each other in, I think about five or six years. And they were talking to me about how different I am. Like, wow, when did. And they kept saying, who is this new vosi? What they were actually saying to me is, because remember, people, people, people frame you in their minds for the stage you were at when they met you. It's so good. People frame you in their minds for the stage you were at when they met you. If I met you when you were poor, I frame you in my mind as a poor person, just to be clear. Like, you could have been wealthy. I meet you when you're poor and you're wealthy again just because I met you when you were poor. In my mind you are the poor person. If I met you when you were in your partying stage, in my mind you're a party animal. Do you get it? People, people frame you in their minds for the stage you were at when they met you. The greatest compliment somebody can ever pay you is when they meet you after a long time and they go who is this new you? Because what that says is that you have had the courage to pay the cost for pursuing your dreams and I wish that for you as you enjoyed this episode. Alright family, that's our podcast for this week. Leave us a comment. Send us those voice notes. We'd love to chat in future on 278-150-5057 667 that's 278-150-57667. We look forward to hearing from you.

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