June 17, 2024 • 26 mins
In this episode, Rob and I discuss what inspires us.
Join us as we explore the power of purpose, the impact of role models, and the role of curiosity in fueling our aspirations, and resilience in sustaining inspiration through life's challenges.
Tune in for heartfelt discussions, thought-provoking insights, and practical tips on how to uncover your own sources of inspiration and harness them to achieve your goals. By discovering what ignites the spark within us, we can illuminate our paths toward personal growth, meaningful connections, and a more inspired world.
www.mentalwealthpod.com
www.pedalmyway.com
DISCLAIMER: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not constitute legal, medical, or other forms of professional advice. The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment purposes only. The "Mental Wealth Podcast" and "Pedal My Way" names and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
Join us as we explore the power of purpose, the impact of role models, and the role of curiosity in fueling our aspirations, and resilience in sustaining inspiration through life's challenges.
Tune in for heartfelt discussions, thought-provoking insights, and practical tips on how to uncover your own sources of inspiration and harness them to achieve your goals. By discovering what ignites the spark within us, we can illuminate our paths toward personal growth, meaningful connections, and a more inspired world.
www.mentalwealthpod.com
www.pedalmyway.com
DISCLAIMER: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not constitute legal, medical, or other forms of professional advice. The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment purposes only. The "Mental Wealth Podcast" and "Pedal My Way" names and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello and welcome to the Pedal My Way podcast. Mccand
how are you.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
About you?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I'm fantastic, thank you. So what topic today? I think
the topic of inspiration has been coming up for me,
at least recently. I've been thinking about inspiration a lot.
What has inspires action, what has inspired me to make
changes in my day to day life. And I think
it's something that could help a lot of people is
to think about inspiration a lot more and what is
(00:32):
driving than to do certain things in their day to
day life and in the long term, what is their
overarching goal for themselves three months, six months, twelve months,
ten years down the life. So there are many ways
we could look at inspiration. I think one of the
first things I'd like to talk about is what inspired
us to be take the career.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Choices that we took.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Interesting for me, there are many steps to you know,
where you get get yourself into a career, there may
change that can take place.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
There are many sort of things that can happen to you.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
From graduating school to get into the career, realizing what
you're good at, what you like doing. Those two obviously
aren't always the same thing. They can't be always mutually exclusive.
You might like doing something that you're not good at
and vice versa. So I kind of like to ask you,
first of all, what is it that inspired you to
take the role that you have, the working role that
(01:26):
you have, and what led you to that position, and
what is something that you think Is there one event
that you can think of that really reinforced that this
was the right role for you.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, this is a very interesting conversation, Rob in terms
of the topic. I think it kind of jells in
with the others that we have discussed in terms of
your perceived value, your motivation, and those things. So this
kind of fills in the gap in terms of your inspiration,
what made you who you were kind of thing, And
for most people it is there professional life that defines
(02:01):
who they are. For me, at least, I consider myself
an engineer. I am engineered by training, and how I
got into engineering was because of my interest in anything technical.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I graduated as an electrical engineer.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
And I started off my career at one of the
I think, one of the largest communications companies in the
world as a wireless communications engineer, and then I switched
focus more into business and management, and now I'm kind
of managing software delivery projects and teams for clients worldwide.
What inspired me to be an engineer was, like I said,
(02:38):
my own technical inquisitiveness, curiosity taking apart stuff from a engage,
putting back you know, computers, electronics, whatever it was. Hopefully likeily,
I didn't break most of them. Some of them, yes,
And that was part of the learning process, and that
kind of made me go into this path in college
(02:58):
and slowly I shifted focus into more business related rather
than technical. It was my own curiosity into seeing what
else was there. There's nothing. I'm still considering myself as
an engineer. I'm still technical. I still think around in
my free time. So that's kind of what inspired me.
There was no one in particular, but rather what inspired
(03:21):
me was just the technology.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Part of it, right, figuring things out and helping communicate
the systems to people.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
It's more like, you know what, more from a solutions
point of the solutions to problems point of view, how
can I provide solutions technically if you may? So that's
kind of what led me to the path what I'm
doing now.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, is that.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
You've probably always wanted to do that, right, is there
was there any ever point.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Where there was no There was no plan B, at
least when I when I was what seventeen eighteen years
applying to colleges, I was just focused on engineering. I
did not say, hey, if einging doesn't work out, I
can do I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I'm just saying.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Biology or physics or something. I mean, I'm just good example.
So I didn't have a plan B. So I always
wanted to be an engineer. I became an engineer, and
now that I have the strong technical foundation, that gave
me the chance to try something non technical, which booked
out right. So I got lucky from that point of view.
But what about Europe? What made you who you are today?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So in terms of my career, so, I've always sort
of enjoyed be able to communicate with people and sort
of explained they will help explain things they're sort of
more sort of a complex topic and sort of distill
what those complex topics are and help people evaluate these
(04:48):
topics and sort of understand them in a different way.
I've always I always wanted to be a journal I'd
say always, probably from about nine or ten, from when
I knew what journalism was and what right and what
a writer was I wanted to be there. I wanted
to be able to sort of communicate ideas in a
different way and to sort of, like I said, connect
(05:10):
with people over ideas.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And I think that was an important inspiration for me.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And another part of it was when I was at school,
basically every teacher said, this is what you're good at,
This is the only thing you can do, This is
the thing that you should be doing. So languages, English, classes, community,
any sort of communications. I was very good at any
(05:36):
sort of scientific probably the opposite for you, right, it
was like science and maths. I was never going to
be an engineer. I was never going to be you know,
I was never going to be technically minded because it
just is not my It's not my thing. So everything
that happened to me led me towards wanting to be
(05:56):
a writer, wanting to be in communication.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Somehow. I've now I'm in digital marketing.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Now as a as a career, just because you know,
journalism has become very isolated. It's become you know, it's
it's less about communicating ideas and it's more about selling things, right,
It's more more about eyeballs on the page than it
is about understanding complex topics. You know that there is
(06:23):
no sort of there's no getting away from the commercial
aspect of journalism. And I think that that's that's an
interesting topic to get into maybe later on, but right
now I'm enjoying digital marketing again. It's part of the
process of communicating ideas. It's communicating topics to business owners.
(06:44):
I work with business I get to work with business
owners day to day and help them improve their day
to day lives as a business owner, to help them
improve their family's life. You know, if I if I
do my digital marketing work properly, you know they will
make more money. And that inspires me day to day. Basis,
when I open my laptop and I type away whatever
(07:04):
I'm doing, it, it's one of those things where I
keep at it because I know the other person at
the other end of the email or the other end
of the Skype call or whatever is someone that has
some hopes based on what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So I enjoy that aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And obviously it's a challenging aspect because you really you
want to do well for each business owner that you
work with, so that keeps you motivated, It keeps you
incentivized to make an impact and to help people. It's
all about helping people at.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
The end of the day. Right, nice, very nice.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
But when you said your teacher kind of inspired, can
you call it inspiration or did they identify a talent
to new and encouraged you.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Well, I think it's a bit of both. It's sort
of like it's what a teacher should be doing. Is
sort of say, really encouraging somebody that I think I
was about I would say eleven or twelve when this
particular teacher came to me and said this thing you
wrote is great. Should you should keep doing this and
you should write more. Until that, I never really thought
of like writing as a thing. I never thought of
(08:07):
it as like a certainly not a career. It just
became sort of it was just homework, right, Writing was
just homework. The teacher would say, assign a task and
then you do it. I never thought of that as
a as a prospect for me going forward, But after
that it sort of inspired me to want to keep
getting better at it. When you hear you're good at something,
(08:28):
I think something triggers in Certainly for me, it triggers
in my brain where I'm like Okay, well, this is
Doune talented at this, So maybe how talented could I be?
What people my you know, what are my peers doing
in this aspect? How can I be better than this
other person? Or how can I keep how can I
keep improving myself to be the best the best I
(08:50):
could be at this? And you know, it's not like
I've been. I'm not like a best selling writer or
anything like that. I'm not John la Carey or Stephen
King yet. Yeah, I'm still in my early forties. Most
good writers, you know, unless you're writing the next Harry
Potter or whatever, but unless you know, writing that kind
(09:12):
of stuff, you're not maybe not getting the career validation
that you might seek until your late fifties, early sixties
something like that.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So maybe I've got some time.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
We shall see, you know when maybe when I'm not
podcasting and not you know, trying to look at myself
on video and trying to make sure that maybe when
I'm sort of focusing on introspective things rather than the
outside things, I might be able to sort of put
my head down to some.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Do you have a side project going, like writing or
something like that.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I used to I used to have way back when
what two thousand, yeah, early two thousands, I had a
blog that I would keep up and in my personal
blog where I just write about my day to day life,
as you do when you're in your late teens or
early twenties, where it feels like every thing you do
is vitally important and everybody has to read this, right,
(10:04):
And that was nice, But it's just one of those
things where, well, you know what it's like. You have
a family, you have a job, you got these other things,
You've got competing interests, and you want to I get
to write on a day to day basis anyway with
what I do, So it's more commercial than it is personal.
But I enjoy the creative process that way. The creative
process is interesting to me, and the you know, the
(10:27):
origin of.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Ideas is interesting, very nice, nice, good good good transition there,
very nice.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
So that there are various elements that I think about
in terms of career. One of one of the inspirations.
Can we talk about inspirations in terms of excuse me,
in terms of your day to day life? So you
wake up, what inspires you to keep working as hard
(10:59):
as you do? Obviously you work out a lot do
you do today? Day to day job, you do all
the things that you're doing on a day to day
basis with your family, What keeps you going, what keeps
you inspired to make a difference?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I think I think talking about what inspires you? Right,
So what is inspiration? I think that's the thing we
need to define, at least personally to each of us.
For me, inspiration is something that is intrinsic. It's not
by any external influence. What I mean to say is
you do something because you're interested in it number one,
(11:36):
or you try to find a solution to a problem
for your satisfaction.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
It can be part of motivation, But inspiration I think
it kind of goes hand in hand in terms of
what inspires you to do something, What motivates you to
do something right, The inspiration comes from within.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
So in my day to day it's more on.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Problem solving because as as a train engineer, I'm always
trying to see the most efficient way to do something
or to solve a problem, even if in my it's
it's the simplest thing, right, So if something is not working,
for example, if the hinges making too much noise, I
mean I need to put some WT thirty or some
oil in it to make sure that's not you know,
it's not causing an annoyance or two bigger ones, like
(12:20):
somebody is having a crisis at work, how I can
help out kind of a thing. It can go from
you know, any any direction, with any kind of seriousness.
So so what inspires me is is just this what
helps my life easier at any particular time by solving
any issues I see that I think is the right
(12:41):
time to get involved, right if if I am not
the destined person for the particular problem, of course I'm
not going to I'm not going to get involved, but
I might talk to the people involved saying, hey, why
can't we try this kind of a thing. I don't
know if you call it as an inspiration, but I
am inspired to solve any issues that I come across.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Now.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
The priority, of course, is what I can control. Of
course I can solve those problems, at least most of them.
And if it's beyond my control, you know, I try
to reach out and see how I can help, you know,
So at least that's my definition of inspiration and how
I can kind of make myself better useful, if that
(13:26):
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, one hundred percent. I think you and I are
quite similar in that sense. When you talk about problem solving,
it's not necessarily for me. It's as you said, it's
not necessarily inspiration. It's almost like how my brain works.
It's almost like if I see a problem, I will
think about that constantly. I will try to figure out
why that is. What is going on for me, as
I was saying, in digital marketing, it's like, why is
(13:49):
this website? Why is this particular thing not working? What's
going on? Why are people clicking on this thing? So
I'll look at the design aspect, I'll look at various
web formats and things like that, look at competitives, and
I like, as you just talking about figuring things out
is a big inspiration for me. Figuring out that solution
because I think there's some sort of like dopamine or
(14:11):
adrenaline adrenaline rush you get from like finding that solution
triggers something in my brain for me, where it's that
that moment of it works, and also there's the process
of it is sort of adrenaline inducing for me. It's
like the process of figuring it out because you you know,
you're making connections in your brain that didn't previously exists.
(14:31):
When you're solving a problem, you're sort of connecting three
or four, well many different disparate concepts, right, You're sort
of like trying to think out, think of different ways
to solve the problem, ruling things out, and then once
you get there, you get that reward of pay. You know,
you were the one to fix this, You were the
one to make that change. And there is sort of
(14:52):
an ego element for me at least too. It's like
I want to be the one that the other is
doing that, right, I don't necessarily like need the clim
mightn't mean people to pat me on the back, just
in my own weird brain. I need to go like
I was the one that did this. I need to
be proud of myself from having done you know.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I think inspiration is also when people talk about inspiration
is more like creativity, what you know, like bigger than
yourself kind of a thing, right, inspired to become a musician,
for example, connecting a big symphony or you know, inventing
the next best thing for me, It's more on making
my life better, making my life easier.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It can.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
I think inspiration is what drives you it not necessarily
mean any any extravagant big goal. It's just what drives you.
At least for me, it's it's goes hand in hand
with motivation. What motivates you, Like inspiration motivates me not
having a trouble free life, motivates me to solve problems.
(15:57):
I might be wrong in the definition of things, but
this is how our so see it.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
No, I think I don't think you can be wrong
in that because I think everyone has their own definition
of what inspiration is and everyone has their own inspiration.
So that's what's a just interesting topic. Right It's like
it's helping understand us a little bit better and understanding
each other a little bit better. Is learning about what
made you the person that you are and what makes
(16:21):
you make those decisions on a day to day basis.
I think that's pretty interesting that you know, as you said,
like it's when you see someone that has a problem,
if you can be the person to help resolve that problem,
you are doing something that has a positive impact, and
then maybe you might inspire somebody.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Else to also make positive impact.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
So there's that element to it as well, right you
maybe you inspire others to make a difference, and you know,
we never really it's not like anyone comes to you
and say, hey, you really inspiring me today. Like it's
just that those kind of things are being a role model,
for example, for your son, and being for being raw
model metal for my nieces and nephews, just trying to
(17:04):
sort of present positive actions, positive behaviors, and you know,
try to sort of you know, I don't understand anything
any better than anybody else does, but I'm always going
to try to understand something. I'm always going to sort
of like try to explain something in my own way.
(17:25):
And I think there is sort of that element of
how can you help somebody moving forward? And that to
me is another element to the inspiration conversation, isn't it.
It's sort of like how can you You know, twenty
thirty years down the line, when you and I are
in our seventies and eighties, are your son is going
(17:46):
to be talking to someone and say like, hey, my
dad did this for me. I remember that day we
went for that bike ride and my dad fixed that tire,
and that inspired me to think about, like, how do
you fix the tire? How does this bike part work?
You know, I always think about that like, those moments
are sort of an indelible part of my brain now
when I was at school learning those things, that feeling
(18:07):
that you get from the teacher when they say, hey,
you did a good job here as a kid. It's
interesting that that is sort of such a crucial part
of what then inspires you later on thirty forty years
down the line. I always think that's a weird part
of our brains where it's like they don't really change
from being a kid.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
You still want to.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Please your teacher thirty years ago, right, You still want
to have that impact, But it's just a.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Part of.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Building your psyche as a kid and then becoming an
adult and trying to sort of like manovir way around
the world a little bit.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Actually, you bring up a good point. So every time
I do chows around the house, fixing small things, mending something,
I always have my son around, even though he does
not do anything, I at least want them to watch
what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
I'm not like fixer everything kind of a guy. I try.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I mostly get it done, but some of the times
I know my limitations. I hire external help to do
some things. So small things has helped him because now
I see him fixing his own stuff by himself without
coming to me, because a couple of weeks ago, I
saw a broken one of his devices yesterday or something.
(19:22):
I saw him using us, like what happened? He said, well,
the switch was broken, it was not working. I said,
how is it working? We'll open it up, and you
know this why was hanging out? I fixed it back
and I was like, wow, okay, you know, so I
was happy that something that I try to teach him
how to trickle down somehow. Yeah, so that's kind of
hopefully he carries it forward for his kids hopefully one day. Again,
(19:45):
there's not kind of any rocket science or you know,
needs deep understanding. It just common sense kind of you know,
one on one makes two kind of a thing. Yeah,
my son has ADD eleven, twelve years old, so you know,
installing those things now I think is important for as
he keeps getting older.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
One hundred percent. One hundred percent. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I think being self sufficient when learning that as a
kid is so important. I think giving your your your
son those tools is going to be so beneficial moving
forward because it's like like you said, he then just
decides for himself, and maybe there are other things that
he's going to resolve that he can then decide for himself.
You're giving him the tools, as you said, that's the
(20:25):
perfect way of putting it. You're giving you the tools,
not necessarily the.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Answer exactly exactly, Like, what is it teach someone to fish,
he feeds himple for life, or give somebody your fish
he just eats that one meal, right something like that.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I'm phrasing it all wrong. But but you know what, I.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, I completely like, I don't know the phrase, but
I know where you're dog.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It's like taking a horse to the pond to drink
or something like that. One of the other proverbs, yea
millions of them. Let's let's come up with all the
ones that we don't know. It's like, it's like, give
a man a fish or something, he eats that one time.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Teaching him to.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Fish will like give him enough knowledge to kind of
feed himself for the top of his life.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Something like that.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
We don't need to get into the four horses and
the fish is part of it. But I get, I
get exactly what you're talking about giving giving your your
son the resources that he needs. You don't necessarily need
do the fishing for him. He'll learn how to fish
and he'll be actually, actually they don't eat meat, but
you get them. What do you get the you can still,
(21:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
You can ask him give my tomato today, ask him,
you know, and then teaching him to plant the tomato,
you know, and then he can get it next to
your kind of a thing.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
So, yeah, you knows less to learn how to fish.
You just got to know how to pick the right tomato.
That's exactly a good point, that is true. Yeah, So
we've talked a little bit about what inspires us. Now
what about your closing thoughts about inspiration? Mcca, What do
you think that some of it all up what we've
discussed today.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
I think everybody has inspirations and everybody has motivation to
do things in their life. I don't think there's any
right or wrong way to do it. The outcome is
right or wrong in terms of obviously the situation you're in,
but you getting into solve a problem is never a
wrong attempt at something. That's That's what I have in
(22:25):
life in terms of you know, if you're doing something right,
go ahead, you know if you're if you if that
helps you sleep better, at night, or solves a problem
that's close to you, do it right nine tine percent
of the time, it's not. The problem gets solved if
you put your heart into it. But I also be
aware of who it's going to impact.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
You.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Solving a small problem that's only affecting you, you will
have complete control over that. But it it affects a
group of people at work or personal family members, you
need to put a little bit more thought into it
before you jump into it. That that's just my catch
all or rather lessons learned from my life. Again, we
are two random strangers on the internet. Is sharing their
(23:09):
personal life right, It's not going to be any rules
that that that we follow or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
No, you're You're absolutely right. It's for me obviously. It's
a very theoretical conversation about inspiration. It's it's just having
a chat about things that are important to us on
our day to day life.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
What what what makes us who we are?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
I think for me personally, what I need to do
more of is think about what what inspired me to
take the previous actions that I took, and whether those
are positive or negative inspirations and maybe to sort of
focus more on positive actions that I can take and
learn lessons from things that have benefited me in the past.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I like to think about. I'd like to.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Think more about the things that have positively inspired me
and people that have inspired me, like be more thankful
and be more present of the idea that I didn't
get here by myself. I wasn't just much in this
position because I gathered all these resources. I was given
resources by various people and luck and all that kind
(24:17):
of thing. So I think that's for me, is that
the big lesson here is to think more about, you know,
how do we impact others and how do we be
more thankful for people that have inspired us to do
different things? And that's something that I think about. I'm
going to try to think about more in my day
to day life. I've been very lucky, and I think
(24:42):
it's something that we think about.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
More and more.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Is I think about more and more is what actions
am I taking and how do I improve upon those actions?
And I think thinking about the reason behind those actions,
the inspiration or whatever you want to call that thing,
that driving force can have a great impact on controlling
how you react.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
To things and do things in the future.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
So, yeah, this has been a really interesting topic because
I like the idea of how do we improve upon ourselves?
And I think about that a lot. We talk about
self improvement on Telling my Way podcast quite a bit
physically and mentally. And I think thinking about inspiration is
something that is really integral to self improvement because it
really takes you on that path forward, right. Inspiration is
(25:31):
that thing that keeps pushing you to do a different
thing and to do things better. And yeah, I think
that's something that has been really beneficial for this conversation
and hopefully it helped others too. I hope we've been
able to talk cohesively and cogently about this topic. I
hope it's been interesting. I think I've certainly enjoyed it.
(25:52):
I hope you have, Tumor Kun and appreciate your time
and thanks.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Thanks for the time today, and it's great time to
you you too, Thank you for your time and the
jury recid Amon. Thanks
Hello and welcome to the Pedal My Way podcast. Mccand
how are you.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
About you?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I'm fantastic, thank you. So what topic today? I think
the topic of inspiration has been coming up for me,
at least recently. I've been thinking about inspiration a lot.
What has inspires action, what has inspired me to make
changes in my day to day life. And I think
it's something that could help a lot of people is
to think about inspiration a lot more and what is
(00:32):
driving than to do certain things in their day to
day life and in the long term, what is their
overarching goal for themselves three months, six months, twelve months,
ten years down the life. So there are many ways
we could look at inspiration. I think one of the
first things I'd like to talk about is what inspired
us to be take the career.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Choices that we took.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Interesting for me, there are many steps to you know,
where you get get yourself into a career, there may
change that can take place.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
There are many sort of things that can happen to you.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
From graduating school to get into the career, realizing what
you're good at, what you like doing. Those two obviously
aren't always the same thing. They can't be always mutually exclusive.
You might like doing something that you're not good at
and vice versa. So I kind of like to ask you,
first of all, what is it that inspired you to
take the role that you have, the working role that
(01:26):
you have, and what led you to that position, and
what is something that you think Is there one event
that you can think of that really reinforced that this
was the right role for you.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, this is a very interesting conversation, Rob in terms
of the topic. I think it kind of jells in
with the others that we have discussed in terms of
your perceived value, your motivation, and those things. So this
kind of fills in the gap in terms of your inspiration,
what made you who you were kind of thing, And
for most people it is there professional life that defines
(02:01):
who they are. For me, at least, I consider myself
an engineer. I am engineered by training, and how I
got into engineering was because of my interest in anything technical.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I graduated as an electrical engineer.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
And I started off my career at one of the
I think, one of the largest communications companies in the
world as a wireless communications engineer, and then I switched
focus more into business and management, and now I'm kind
of managing software delivery projects and teams for clients worldwide.
What inspired me to be an engineer was, like I said,
(02:38):
my own technical inquisitiveness, curiosity taking apart stuff from a engage,
putting back you know, computers, electronics, whatever it was. Hopefully likeily,
I didn't break most of them. Some of them, yes,
And that was part of the learning process, and that
kind of made me go into this path in college
(02:58):
and slowly I shifted focus into more business related rather
than technical. It was my own curiosity into seeing what
else was there. There's nothing. I'm still considering myself as
an engineer. I'm still technical. I still think around in
my free time. So that's kind of what inspired me.
There was no one in particular, but rather what inspired
(03:21):
me was just the technology.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Part of it, right, figuring things out and helping communicate
the systems to people.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
It's more like, you know what, more from a solutions
point of the solutions to problems point of view, how
can I provide solutions technically if you may? So that's
kind of what led me to the path what I'm
doing now.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, is that.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
You've probably always wanted to do that, right, is there
was there any ever point.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Where there was no There was no plan B, at
least when I when I was what seventeen eighteen years
applying to colleges, I was just focused on engineering. I
did not say, hey, if einging doesn't work out, I
can do I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I'm just saying.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Biology or physics or something. I mean, I'm just good example.
So I didn't have a plan B. So I always
wanted to be an engineer. I became an engineer, and
now that I have the strong technical foundation, that gave
me the chance to try something non technical, which booked
out right. So I got lucky from that point of view.
But what about Europe? What made you who you are today?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So in terms of my career, so, I've always sort
of enjoyed be able to communicate with people and sort
of explained they will help explain things they're sort of
more sort of a complex topic and sort of distill
what those complex topics are and help people evaluate these
(04:48):
topics and sort of understand them in a different way.
I've always I always wanted to be a journal I'd
say always, probably from about nine or ten, from when
I knew what journalism was and what right and what
a writer was I wanted to be there. I wanted
to be able to sort of communicate ideas in a
different way and to sort of, like I said, connect
(05:10):
with people over ideas.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And I think that was an important inspiration for me.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And another part of it was when I was at school,
basically every teacher said, this is what you're good at,
This is the only thing you can do, This is
the thing that you should be doing. So languages, English, classes, community,
any sort of communications. I was very good at any
(05:36):
sort of scientific probably the opposite for you, right, it
was like science and maths. I was never going to
be an engineer. I was never going to be you know,
I was never going to be technically minded because it
just is not my It's not my thing. So everything
that happened to me led me towards wanting to be
(05:56):
a writer, wanting to be in communication.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Somehow. I've now I'm in digital marketing.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Now as a as a career, just because you know,
journalism has become very isolated. It's become you know, it's
it's less about communicating ideas and it's more about selling things, right,
It's more more about eyeballs on the page than it
is about understanding complex topics. You know that there is
(06:23):
no sort of there's no getting away from the commercial
aspect of journalism. And I think that that's that's an
interesting topic to get into maybe later on, but right
now I'm enjoying digital marketing again. It's part of the
process of communicating ideas. It's communicating topics to business owners.
(06:44):
I work with business I get to work with business
owners day to day and help them improve their day
to day lives as a business owner, to help them
improve their family's life. You know, if I if I
do my digital marketing work properly, you know they will
make more money. And that inspires me day to day. Basis,
when I open my laptop and I type away whatever
(07:04):
I'm doing, it, it's one of those things where I
keep at it because I know the other person at
the other end of the email or the other end
of the Skype call or whatever is someone that has
some hopes based on what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So I enjoy that aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And obviously it's a challenging aspect because you really you
want to do well for each business owner that you
work with, so that keeps you motivated, It keeps you
incentivized to make an impact and to help people. It's
all about helping people at.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
The end of the day. Right, nice, very nice.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
But when you said your teacher kind of inspired, can
you call it inspiration or did they identify a talent
to new and encouraged you.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Well, I think it's a bit of both. It's sort
of like it's what a teacher should be doing. Is
sort of say, really encouraging somebody that I think I
was about I would say eleven or twelve when this
particular teacher came to me and said this thing you
wrote is great. Should you should keep doing this and
you should write more. Until that, I never really thought
of like writing as a thing. I never thought of
(08:07):
it as like a certainly not a career. It just
became sort of it was just homework, right, Writing was
just homework. The teacher would say, assign a task and
then you do it. I never thought of that as
a as a prospect for me going forward, But after
that it sort of inspired me to want to keep
getting better at it. When you hear you're good at something,
(08:28):
I think something triggers in Certainly for me, it triggers
in my brain where I'm like Okay, well, this is
Doune talented at this, So maybe how talented could I be?
What people my you know, what are my peers doing
in this aspect? How can I be better than this
other person? Or how can I keep how can I
keep improving myself to be the best the best I
(08:50):
could be at this? And you know, it's not like
I've been. I'm not like a best selling writer or
anything like that. I'm not John la Carey or Stephen
King yet. Yeah, I'm still in my early forties. Most
good writers, you know, unless you're writing the next Harry
Potter or whatever, but unless you know, writing that kind
(09:12):
of stuff, you're not maybe not getting the career validation
that you might seek until your late fifties, early sixties
something like that.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So maybe I've got some time.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
We shall see, you know when maybe when I'm not
podcasting and not you know, trying to look at myself
on video and trying to make sure that maybe when
I'm sort of focusing on introspective things rather than the
outside things, I might be able to sort of put
my head down to some.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Do you have a side project going, like writing or
something like that.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I used to I used to have way back when
what two thousand, yeah, early two thousands, I had a
blog that I would keep up and in my personal
blog where I just write about my day to day life,
as you do when you're in your late teens or
early twenties, where it feels like every thing you do
is vitally important and everybody has to read this, right,
(10:04):
And that was nice, But it's just one of those
things where, well, you know what it's like. You have
a family, you have a job, you got these other things,
You've got competing interests, and you want to I get
to write on a day to day basis anyway with
what I do, So it's more commercial than it is personal.
But I enjoy the creative process that way. The creative
process is interesting to me, and the you know, the
(10:27):
origin of.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Ideas is interesting, very nice, nice, good good good transition there,
very nice.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
So that there are various elements that I think about
in terms of career. One of one of the inspirations.
Can we talk about inspirations in terms of excuse me,
in terms of your day to day life? So you
wake up, what inspires you to keep working as hard
(10:59):
as you do? Obviously you work out a lot do
you do today? Day to day job, you do all
the things that you're doing on a day to day
basis with your family, What keeps you going, what keeps
you inspired to make a difference?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I think I think talking about what inspires you? Right,
So what is inspiration? I think that's the thing we
need to define, at least personally to each of us.
For me, inspiration is something that is intrinsic. It's not
by any external influence. What I mean to say is
you do something because you're interested in it number one,
(11:36):
or you try to find a solution to a problem
for your satisfaction.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
It can be part of motivation, But inspiration I think
it kind of goes hand in hand in terms of
what inspires you to do something, What motivates you to
do something right, The inspiration comes from within.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
So in my day to day it's more on.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Problem solving because as as a train engineer, I'm always
trying to see the most efficient way to do something
or to solve a problem, even if in my it's
it's the simplest thing, right, So if something is not working,
for example, if the hinges making too much noise, I
mean I need to put some WT thirty or some
oil in it to make sure that's not you know,
it's not causing an annoyance or two bigger ones, like
(12:20):
somebody is having a crisis at work, how I can
help out kind of a thing. It can go from
you know, any any direction, with any kind of seriousness.
So so what inspires me is is just this what
helps my life easier at any particular time by solving
any issues I see that I think is the right
(12:41):
time to get involved, right if if I am not
the destined person for the particular problem, of course I'm
not going to I'm not going to get involved, but
I might talk to the people involved saying, hey, why
can't we try this kind of a thing. I don't
know if you call it as an inspiration, but I
am inspired to solve any issues that I come across.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Now.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
The priority, of course, is what I can control. Of
course I can solve those problems, at least most of them.
And if it's beyond my control, you know, I try
to reach out and see how I can help, you know,
So at least that's my definition of inspiration and how
I can kind of make myself better useful, if that
(13:26):
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, one hundred percent. I think you and I are
quite similar in that sense. When you talk about problem solving,
it's not necessarily for me. It's as you said, it's
not necessarily inspiration. It's almost like how my brain works.
It's almost like if I see a problem, I will
think about that constantly. I will try to figure out
why that is. What is going on for me, as
I was saying, in digital marketing, it's like, why is
(13:49):
this website? Why is this particular thing not working? What's
going on? Why are people clicking on this thing? So
I'll look at the design aspect, I'll look at various
web formats and things like that, look at competitives, and
I like, as you just talking about figuring things out
is a big inspiration for me. Figuring out that solution
because I think there's some sort of like dopamine or
(14:11):
adrenaline adrenaline rush you get from like finding that solution
triggers something in my brain for me, where it's that
that moment of it works, and also there's the process
of it is sort of adrenaline inducing for me. It's
like the process of figuring it out because you you know,
you're making connections in your brain that didn't previously exists.
(14:31):
When you're solving a problem, you're sort of connecting three
or four, well many different disparate concepts, right, You're sort
of like trying to think out, think of different ways
to solve the problem, ruling things out, and then once
you get there, you get that reward of pay. You know,
you were the one to fix this, You were the
one to make that change. And there is sort of
(14:52):
an ego element for me at least too. It's like
I want to be the one that the other is
doing that, right, I don't necessarily like need the clim
mightn't mean people to pat me on the back, just
in my own weird brain. I need to go like
I was the one that did this. I need to
be proud of myself from having done you know.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I think inspiration is also when people talk about inspiration
is more like creativity, what you know, like bigger than
yourself kind of a thing, right, inspired to become a musician,
for example, connecting a big symphony or you know, inventing
the next best thing for me, It's more on making
my life better, making my life easier.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It can.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
I think inspiration is what drives you it not necessarily
mean any any extravagant big goal. It's just what drives you.
At least for me, it's it's goes hand in hand
with motivation. What motivates you, Like inspiration motivates me not
having a trouble free life, motivates me to solve problems.
(15:57):
I might be wrong in the definition of things, but
this is how our so see it.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
No, I think I don't think you can be wrong
in that because I think everyone has their own definition
of what inspiration is and everyone has their own inspiration.
So that's what's a just interesting topic. Right It's like
it's helping understand us a little bit better and understanding
each other a little bit better. Is learning about what
made you the person that you are and what makes
(16:21):
you make those decisions on a day to day basis.
I think that's pretty interesting that you know, as you said,
like it's when you see someone that has a problem,
if you can be the person to help resolve that problem,
you are doing something that has a positive impact, and
then maybe you might inspire somebody.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Else to also make positive impact.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
So there's that element to it as well, right you
maybe you inspire others to make a difference, and you know,
we never really it's not like anyone comes to you
and say, hey, you really inspiring me today. Like it's
just that those kind of things are being a role model,
for example, for your son, and being for being raw
model metal for my nieces and nephews, just trying to
(17:04):
sort of present positive actions, positive behaviors, and you know,
try to sort of you know, I don't understand anything
any better than anybody else does, but I'm always going
to try to understand something. I'm always going to sort
of like try to explain something in my own way.
(17:25):
And I think there is sort of that element of
how can you help somebody moving forward? And that to
me is another element to the inspiration conversation, isn't it.
It's sort of like how can you You know, twenty
thirty years down the line, when you and I are
in our seventies and eighties, are your son is going
(17:46):
to be talking to someone and say like, hey, my
dad did this for me. I remember that day we
went for that bike ride and my dad fixed that tire,
and that inspired me to think about, like, how do
you fix the tire? How does this bike part work?
You know, I always think about that like, those moments
are sort of an indelible part of my brain now
when I was at school learning those things, that feeling
(18:07):
that you get from the teacher when they say, hey,
you did a good job here as a kid. It's
interesting that that is sort of such a crucial part
of what then inspires you later on thirty forty years
down the line. I always think that's a weird part
of our brains where it's like they don't really change
from being a kid.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
You still want to.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Please your teacher thirty years ago, right, You still want
to have that impact, But it's just a.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Part of.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Building your psyche as a kid and then becoming an
adult and trying to sort of like manovir way around
the world a little bit.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Actually, you bring up a good point. So every time
I do chows around the house, fixing small things, mending something,
I always have my son around, even though he does
not do anything, I at least want them to watch
what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
I'm not like fixer everything kind of a guy. I try.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I mostly get it done, but some of the times
I know my limitations. I hire external help to do
some things. So small things has helped him because now
I see him fixing his own stuff by himself without
coming to me, because a couple of weeks ago, I
saw a broken one of his devices yesterday or something.
(19:22):
I saw him using us, like what happened? He said, well,
the switch was broken, it was not working. I said,
how is it working? We'll open it up, and you
know this why was hanging out? I fixed it back
and I was like, wow, okay, you know, so I
was happy that something that I try to teach him
how to trickle down somehow. Yeah, so that's kind of
hopefully he carries it forward for his kids hopefully one day. Again,
(19:45):
there's not kind of any rocket science or you know,
needs deep understanding. It just common sense kind of you know,
one on one makes two kind of a thing. Yeah,
my son has ADD eleven, twelve years old, so you know,
installing those things now I think is important for as
he keeps getting older.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
One hundred percent. One hundred percent. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I think being self sufficient when learning that as a
kid is so important. I think giving your your your
son those tools is going to be so beneficial moving
forward because it's like like you said, he then just
decides for himself, and maybe there are other things that
he's going to resolve that he can then decide for himself.
You're giving him the tools, as you said, that's the
(20:25):
perfect way of putting it. You're giving you the tools,
not necessarily the.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Answer exactly exactly, Like, what is it teach someone to fish,
he feeds himple for life, or give somebody your fish
he just eats that one meal, right something like that.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I'm phrasing it all wrong. But but you know what, I.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, I completely like, I don't know the phrase, but
I know where you're dog.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It's like taking a horse to the pond to drink
or something like that. One of the other proverbs, yea
millions of them. Let's let's come up with all the
ones that we don't know. It's like, it's like, give
a man a fish or something, he eats that one time.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Teaching him to.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Fish will like give him enough knowledge to kind of
feed himself for the top of his life.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Something like that.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
We don't need to get into the four horses and
the fish is part of it. But I get, I
get exactly what you're talking about giving giving your your
son the resources that he needs. You don't necessarily need
do the fishing for him. He'll learn how to fish
and he'll be actually, actually they don't eat meat, but
you get them. What do you get the you can still,
(21:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
You can ask him give my tomato today, ask him,
you know, and then teaching him to plant the tomato,
you know, and then he can get it next to
your kind of a thing.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
So, yeah, you knows less to learn how to fish.
You just got to know how to pick the right tomato.
That's exactly a good point, that is true. Yeah, So
we've talked a little bit about what inspires us. Now
what about your closing thoughts about inspiration? Mcca, What do
you think that some of it all up what we've
discussed today.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
I think everybody has inspirations and everybody has motivation to
do things in their life. I don't think there's any
right or wrong way to do it. The outcome is
right or wrong in terms of obviously the situation you're in,
but you getting into solve a problem is never a
wrong attempt at something. That's That's what I have in
(22:25):
life in terms of you know, if you're doing something right,
go ahead, you know if you're if you if that
helps you sleep better, at night, or solves a problem
that's close to you, do it right nine tine percent
of the time, it's not. The problem gets solved if
you put your heart into it. But I also be
aware of who it's going to impact.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
You.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Solving a small problem that's only affecting you, you will
have complete control over that. But it it affects a
group of people at work or personal family members, you
need to put a little bit more thought into it
before you jump into it. That that's just my catch
all or rather lessons learned from my life. Again, we
are two random strangers on the internet. Is sharing their
(23:09):
personal life right, It's not going to be any rules
that that that we follow or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
No, you're You're absolutely right. It's for me obviously. It's
a very theoretical conversation about inspiration. It's it's just having
a chat about things that are important to us on
our day to day life.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
What what what makes us who we are?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
I think for me personally, what I need to do
more of is think about what what inspired me to
take the previous actions that I took, and whether those
are positive or negative inspirations and maybe to sort of
focus more on positive actions that I can take and
learn lessons from things that have benefited me in the past.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I like to think about. I'd like to.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Think more about the things that have positively inspired me
and people that have inspired me, like be more thankful
and be more present of the idea that I didn't
get here by myself. I wasn't just much in this
position because I gathered all these resources. I was given
resources by various people and luck and all that kind
(24:17):
of thing. So I think that's for me, is that
the big lesson here is to think more about, you know,
how do we impact others and how do we be
more thankful for people that have inspired us to do
different things? And that's something that I think about. I'm
going to try to think about more in my day
to day life. I've been very lucky, and I think
(24:42):
it's something that we think about.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
More and more.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Is I think about more and more is what actions
am I taking and how do I improve upon those actions?
And I think thinking about the reason behind those actions,
the inspiration or whatever you want to call that thing,
that driving force can have a great impact on controlling
how you react.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
To things and do things in the future.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
So, yeah, this has been a really interesting topic because
I like the idea of how do we improve upon ourselves?
And I think about that a lot. We talk about
self improvement on Telling my Way podcast quite a bit
physically and mentally. And I think thinking about inspiration is
something that is really integral to self improvement because it
really takes you on that path forward, right. Inspiration is
(25:31):
that thing that keeps pushing you to do a different
thing and to do things better. And yeah, I think
that's something that has been really beneficial for this conversation
and hopefully it helped others too. I hope we've been
able to talk cohesively and cogently about this topic. I
hope it's been interesting. I think I've certainly enjoyed it.
(25:52):
I hope you have, Tumor Kun and appreciate your time
and thanks.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Thanks for the time today, and it's great time to
you you too, Thank you for your time and the
jury recid Amon. Thanks
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