Join us as Friska discusses the importance of change in everyone’s lives, how to implement long-lasting change to be successful, and more. With hosts, wealth manager Lee Michael Murphy and career advisor Sergio Patterson, tune in to this week’s episode of The Free Retiree Show.
What You’ll Learn:
- The importance of change
- How to implement long-lasting change to be successful
- Advice to people stuck in bad habits and routines
Lee Michael Murphy: [00:00:00] Welcome into the Free Retiree Show. I’m your host wealth manager, Lee Michael Murphy. And I’m alongside my friend and pal career mentor interview coach. Sergio Patterson for today’s episode. We’re going to be discussing one of the most important factors that determines your ability to be successful in your personal life, in your career and in your finances. Your ability to implement successful long lasting change. right ladies and gentlemen change, whether it’s you want to lose weight, you want to stop texting and driving. You want to stop procrastinating on your work projects or start saving more and spending less money when you’re going out and investing more. Change is tough.
So, Serge, I mean, how long am I have I been talking about trying to drop the lbs that I’ve had for, I don’t know, many years,
Sergio Patterson: Probably about 12 years, I dunno, 15 [00:01:00] years.
Lee Michael Murphy: 12 or 15? I don’t think it’s been that long. I was going to go for
Sergio Patterson: How old are we all doing?
Lee Michael Murphy: Jesus. I don’t think
Sergio Patterson: Okay. Okay. 10 years, 10 years at least.
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah. I, it’s been probably 10 years. Man, like as much as I bitch and moan about it, I can’t do it because it’s like us as humans, we have this we’re stuck in our ways. Right. Serge. I mean, you and your personal life.
So how have you been trying to change some things? what’s, what have you been struggling with?
Sergio Patterson: I think I’m really happy with firstly coming on, but I think change is. Right. now in this world is easy to talk about doing something it’s harder to do something.
Lee Michael Murphy: all talk.
Sergio Patterson: we’re all talk. We have all these different to-do lists and all these things we want to accomplish new year’s resolutions, but it’s difficult to maintain.
Like I can do something good for like a couple of weeks and then it falls off because I get too busy or whatever. so I’m excited to learn more about this. I think we all need
Lee Michael Murphy: absolutely. So we’re going to touch on the personal side, the career side, finance side. so for today we had the honor of having Friska [00:02:00] Wirya join us on the show and she is a change management consultant from Sydney, Australia. She’s headed up organizational change at new crest mining, one of the largest gold mining companies in the world.
She’s helped lead them in digital transformation. And she’s also lived global change for multimillion dollar companies and projects implementing change around technology structure processes, people impacting over 23,000 employees across seven continents at Worley. She’s built the change practice for digital consulting at Fujitsu, a top global 500 company.
And she’s also presented at the women’s leadership summit in Melbourne. So this is awesome. Where are you at? Thank you for coming on. We are blessed to have you, how do you do.
Friska Wirya: I’m good. Thanks for having me.
Lee Michael Murphy: It is an honor, like your accolades and awards and what you’re known for. I was like, man, this would be amazing. We got her on because change. I mean,
this is, we’re all about on this podcast, trying to get people to really change [00:03:00] areas of their lives. So they get more success, but change sounds so easy, but at the end of the day, it’s so damn hard.
So give us some insight into that.
Friska Wirya: Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, if it was easy, everybody else will be doing it. And like, like Serge pointed out earlier, starting somethings five. Very good with my 81 days, two days, then you fall off the wagon, start learning a foreign language after a week, people get bored of it. So the hardest part is not just the execution and it’s actually the sustaining.
And this is what I’ve found in my work as a change management consultant to some very large organizations. So it’s maintaining that momentum and that energy is critical. and, and a few of the strategies that I’ve used is to, find a buddy. Like changing with someone else that’s going through that same journey makes it easier.
Like this is why people have personal trainers. This is why people have study buddies. Like you’re held accountable to someone else and you’re more likely to get off your butt and actually execute it. if you have a [00:04:00] certain weakness, for something, for example, let’s use the diet,an allergy. Chocolate.
Don’t buy it, make it hard for you to get that thing. Like you literally have to drive in your car. You have to get your ass to Costco
Sergio Patterson: you’re like speaking writes ‘
Lee Michael Murphy: he like, they ain’t going to stop me to get barricade the safe way I’ll still get around it.
Sergio Patterson: That’s his calling.
Friska Wirya: Yeah, you have, and then you have to, Create rewards, like what are the rewards that will incentivize you to keep adopting this new behavior? Is it a massage? Is that you saving up for a holiday? Is it something you have to have that carrot in front of you? Because of. People in very conservative, command and control organizations.
They use the stick to get people to start to change, and the stick may be effective to get people to start doing it, but to enable them to continue doing it, you need the carrot. So you need the balance of the carrot and stick for sure.
Lee Michael Murphy: So it was the stick the thing that [00:05:00] you get beat with is that the analogy.
Friska Wirya: Yeah. The
sticky is some it’s something.
Lee Michael Murphy: be good stick.
Friska Wirya: It’s something feed driven, like, like for example, if you don’t do a, you’re not going to make your bonus for this quarter, right? That’s a stick. The carrot will be, if you do a, you gotta be recognized on the chairman’s list or whatever, you can have $5,000 towards attending a conference of your choice.
So good cop, bad cop. You need both, right.
Sergio Patterson: Yeah, it’s big and sales organizations across. I’ve been in silicone valley for awhile. And like, they have that carrot dangling, right? If you do X, you can get what you want, but if you don’t do it, Y it could impact your performance or whatever it might be. So that makes a ton of sense. I wasn’t thinking of it in a workplace, but.
That makes a ton of sense. I think it goes across life and work.
Lee Michael Murphy: So like for you. I mean, you’ve been at some of the greatest companies in the world and, in this culture of Silicon valley, it’s like, oh, I want to get to that next level. I want to get promoted. and you got all these [00:06:00] performance reviews and, honestly, there’s a lot of, in those a lot of deficiencies come out.
What do you think is the more, some of the key things that people are lacking in that are keeping them from advancing in their career?
Sergio Patterson: That’s a good question. I think what I’ve seen And I’ve been a part of this. I’ve had this mistake in my careers. I think it comes down a lot to self promotion, and being willing to promote yourself and stand out, and Silicon valley, it’s important to build relationships, network all of the things.
And if you do. If you don’t like, make sure your manager or your manager’s manager knows all the great work you’re doing, they don’t have the time to figure that out. Like you have to, because no one’s going to do it for you. and that’s something I’ve struggled with because I’m not that extroverted.
I’m not that person who wants to show off. so I’ve seen that in my own performance views I’ve seen in others that you have to be your own advocate. Yeah.
Lee Michael Murphy: is there a way to go about it differently? Is it, there’s something that’s [00:07:00] holding you back from doing what you should do to be seen like.
to, to Friska’s point earlier, I think there’s consequences. Right. and I’ve seen it. I’ve gotten better at it over time. the carrot, I think people are dangling is the better you do on your performance review, the higher bonus you’re going to get the more money you’re going to make.
an overall it’s just the better position you’re going to put yourself.
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah. So that’s kind of what I’ve noticed Friska is, in the Silicon valley culture. more talk about like, oh, I’m gonna get this money. I’m gonna get this bonus. But then through the process, they have to do X, Y, and Z. A lot of times people don’t deliver because they can’t change their performance, their habits.
So what advice would you have for people that, maybe they’re thinking like, well, I get to change my performance at work, but I haven’t been able to do it. Like how can they get to that next level and change their habits that have been holding them?
for me, it’s to be really clear on what exactly it is that, that they want to change. And what most importantly, what are they going to replace it with? It’s like when we think of [00:08:00] smokers, right? Trying to give up cigarettes. Cold Turkey rarely works. A lot of people have to wean themselves off. They have the nicotine patch, they have gum, they have choppy chops.
Friska Wirya: So, you used to do a, what are you going to replace it with? What is the B? So have that backup in place. Otherwise without a plan. You’ll go back to your old habits. and that really is the essence, like have a plan. People who write things down are 83% more likely to achieve them. So document explicitly, what is the behavior that you’re going to do?
When are you going to do it? How do you know that it had worked? How are you going to document the results and slowly but surely, you’ll start to embed that into your routine.
and your point, Sergio about, performance reviews and people struggle to get to that next level, because they’re not their biggest cheerleaders.
Friska Wirya: It’s like, guys, there is no point doing good work. If no one knows about it, it’s like you’re shouting into the [00:09:00] void. like doing good work is only one side of the coin. The second part is making sure that, this is known throughout the organization and it was the same when I first started my business, like I had a good reputation.
I had all these blue chip companies and I thought, oh, as soon as I update my LinkedIn profile, clients are going to come no way, no fricking way. I had to I’m naturally introverted by nature. And I had to take everything that was out of my head and start sharing the world. You know, and after 12 months of consistently posting on LinkedIn, I’ve achieved 400% growth.
I’ve got clients from all around the world. I landed my first client because he saw one of my LinkedIn videos. I get speaking gigs from Salesforce, from Microsoft, and it’s all because I started to put myself out there and you have to do the same thing, regardless, whether you’re in an organization or whether you’re running your own business.
Sergio Patterson: Yeah, I was going to say Lee, we’ve talked about it [00:10:00] before, but, we’re all salespeople at the end of the day, whether we like it or not like whatever industry you’re in, whatever you’re doing, like you have to be willing to sell, right. You have to like get peoples to buy in to who you are and sell it all.
So I agree in your LinkedIn is awesome. I’m looking at it right now as we’re recording this episode, but, you’ve got a good following and you, I think you have really good content as Well, So congrats on.
Friska Wirya: and remember. Everybody started with zero frickin followers, everybody. Right? So we have 24 hours in the day. We at time is a bright equalizer. So it’s up to us how we want to use that time. So it’s never too late to start something. and the reason why my following has grown so exponentially is that the content I put out there is good and it gets reshared.
It gets talked about, et cetera. So, start taking the first step.
Sergio Patterson: sounds like you utilized, sorry, I cut you off lead, but it sounds like you utilize this change management process with your LinkedIn content. Meaning [00:11:00] like at some point you had
zero followers, but then at one point you, you were intentional and you’re like, I’m going to make A change and post every day or whatever it Aa hundred percent. I focused on what the outcome that I wanted to achieve was, and that was to generate leads, close clients, et cetera. Then I identified, what are the behaviors I need to do? To reach that and it meant setting up,setting aside half of Sunday to plan my content for the week, research, the events that I wanted to speak at, write different articles, find a VA, et cetera, things like that.
Friska Wirya: I explicitly wrote down the behaviors I needed to do, then I made sure I did them. I diarize them like that is my mantra, diarized, diarize. If it’s in my diary, I’ll do it. and most importantly, I track my performance. Like there’s nothing more demotivating, for example, going to the gym, right. You exercise so hard for an hour.
You jump on the scale. Hasn’t budged. So I made sure to not measure after a day or three [00:12:00] days or. After a month after three months,after six months and then after a year, and I could see the improvement in performance,
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah, that seems like it. Your ability to stick with a habit is like the biggest factor. If you’re going to actually make that change. I think for a lot of us, we have all these lofty ideas of a, Hey, I want to achieve this and you might hit it hard for one day or maybe two days. And then, day three a week goes by and it’s like, oh yeah.
And then a month. And you’re like, oh yeah, I remember I was going to do that. So like how long do you have to do something before it actually becomes ingrained? Like it’s part of you, it’s part of your DNA. Like this whole thing, like know Serge is bringing up that you have a wonderful LinkedIn and you’ve curated this content, but you weren’t always that way.
Like when did it, how long did you have to do this? So it actually [00:13:00] became part of you and you know that like, yeah, I’m going to do this, as scheduled and no excuse.
so let me tell you first how it started, right. I like to write, I’ve been writing for nearly a decade. I’ve been published in a lot of journals and articles, et cetera. And that was my way of, not just a creative outlet, but showcasing my expertise and. I never used to be that active on LinkedIn. I would publish an article maybe once a month.
Friska Wirya: You can track back. And then a friend who I really respected, I was talking to him as I was walking down, Collins street in Melbourne. And I was whingeing that I wasn’t getting the traction that I wanted on the platform. And this guy had crazy amount of followers and engagement, and he said, look, you’re a change manager.
You help people change. You need to drink your medicine and you need to change true. And he sent me all these stats about the format and the types of content that people were consuming. And I wasn’t hitting the mark. I was writing [00:14:00] articles and there were well, very well-written articles, but not a lot of reach, not a lot of engagement.
And he said, look, just trust me, just do this for two months, just once a week. That’s all I ask. Don’t have to do it every day. And if you get nothing after two months, I’ll shut up and I’ll never bother you again. So six weeks later, I landed my first big client from that content. So it was that result that I was looking for that made me keep going.
Right. So that’s what kept me going. And then, and then. Was all in after that I fully committed.
Lee Michael Murphy: So for like the average person, like how long does it take to generally develop a habit?
Friska Wirya: Well, we’ve, I’m sure you’ve all heard the cliche that it takes 21 days to form a habit.
Lee Michael Murphy: I’ve heard that’s like some truths, then some people say
Friska Wirya: Yeah, I really, I really think that it depends on how committed you are. I really think that’s the key. for me, if I decide to do something, then I [00:15:00] bloody do it, So yeah, in that example, it was,it was two months and this is what you should tell yourself when you’re trying to embed a new
behavior as well, like set yourself a window or some sort of trial period, like for example, you want to turn up, you want to try Pilates, right? To see if that’s more effective than high intensity training. You can’t drink. You can’t do that after weight. Like you need at least two, three months to see the results.
So give yourself a trial period, document your wins, visualize your progress, and that will drum up the momentum that you need to sustain this new behavior.
I was thinking part of the problem is that I think we’re in a society where it’s a instant gratification.
Sergio Patterson: Right. we want it in one day
Friska Wirya: Yeah.
Sergio Patterson: and people just don’t have the attention span or the commitment, like you said, right? Like, do you see that with some of your clients, they want it right away versus playing the long game.
Friska Wirya: Oh, definitely. I mean, when I’m on broad, when I’m brought on board, it’s [00:16:00] usually some sort of significant transformation. Maybe they embedding AI or automation. And it’s quite a big step from the way the business is doing things today to the way that they want to do it in the future. A lot of, change management, especially.
It’s quite challenging because you’re changing the way people think the way people behave. Sometimes they’ve been doing the same thing for decades and resistance is not going to be, can be overcome overnight. Right. Just because I have one meeting with a person doesn’t mean they’re all in that set, ready to do away with the past.
So like anything it takes time and it’s really not a race, it’s really not a sprint. And, The equivalent of doing a new behavior today and then expecting it to get results tomorrow. It’s like a bowl and it’s smashed on the floor. You’ve super glued it back together.
And when you use it immediately to serve yourself hot soup, it’s not going to something to last. It really does take time to [00:17:00] reprogram your mindset and to accept that this is the way things are going to roll. Now, this is the way that you’re going to behave from today, right? This is why alcoholics anonymous has 12 steps, right?
This is why people go through coaching programs. There’s no such thing as an overnight success and people who tell you otherwise a lie. You know what I mean? Look at Canva, I’m sure you guys, in the states I’ve heard of Canva or
billion dollar company unicorn. Yeah.
Sergio Patterson: that’s
Friska Wirya: they, that’s like a 12 year evolution.
It’s only now people like, wow. Wow. But it wasn’t always like that. And I was reading an article today about Fred Chavista he’s he was actually someone I interviewed on my LinkedIn show and he’s on the Australian financial review, young, rich list. So he’s worth about 340 million dollars or something, but you know, people just see all this success, but they don’t appreciate what it took to get there.
He used to rent out the spare room of his share house for extra money. He would steal toilet paper from hotel [00:18:00] lobbies for crying out loud. he, he didn’t get to where he was overnight. And then the sooner that people realize there’s like anything worth having in life takes commitment, dedication, persistence, and an almost feverish passion from us.
the better.
Lee Michael Murphy: I love that. That’s fantastic. So like with these companies that bring you in, I’m sure they want you to make miracles immediate. Right there probably like Prisca. We need you to like our corporate structure are our people, like it’s in disarray, like fix it now. And you’re saying like, How long does that take if you’re taking like an organization, like maybe a, let’s say a company that’s maybe got 500 employees, not a massive company, but what time does that take to implement these changes across an organization?
Friska Wirya: So it depends on the change. If it’s a culture change, obviously that’s going to take years. but if it’s implementing a new system, et cetera, and embedding that [00:19:00] into be a year, at least six months, and really how fast you get there depends how much the companies wants to invest in it. And I’m, I don’t mean throwing money at it.
I mean, people look to their direct supervisor or manager for. A gauge of some sort again, like so many change initiatives are dead in the corporate graveyard. So they look to their leaders to kind of, to understand how important is this, how likely is this to stick? Should I prioritize this? Are you going to back me on this?
And so if the leaders of the organization aren’t fully on board and doing their job to manage resistance, because me as the change program, So my job to manage the resistance. It’s the leader’s job. I can help you, equip you with strategies, tell you who you need to talk to give you some tips, et cetera, but it’s the leader’s role to manage resistance.
I just create the conditions for adoption to thrive.
Sergio Patterson: And that’s the hardest part.
That’s [00:20:00] people don’t want to change. Like I’ve seen people in roles for many years. And like, if someone comes in telling them to do something different, they don’t want to change.
Friska Wirya: Yeah, well, it often they’re scared, right? They’re scared. They’re scared of the Five P’s they’re scared of losing something. Am I going to lose my power? Am I going to lose my position? Am I going to lose my pay? Am I going to lose my protection? And lastly, am I going to lose my prestige? So if you can allay their fears over those five PS, they’ll more likely to speak to you and engage with you.
Sergio Patterson: The five PS. I like that. did you, so do you engage more with leadership or the employees or is it a
Friska Wirya: I engage more with senior leaders. Yeah,
Sergio Patterson: Okay, so you kind of equip them and they cascade out to the employee is like, this is what’s happening.
Friska Wirya: correct. I mean like any transformation it has to start at the top. It has to be backed up the top. I mean, the best way to change someone’s behavior is to change your own behavior and people will see that [00:21:00] in what, oh, actually the CRC respect and they will start to follow that at the end of the day, the leaders of the role models in the organization and people take their cues from them.
Sergio Patterson: You mentioned earlier, something about the consequence aspect. So when someone doesn’t do something the way they’re supposed to do. Something would happen, whether it’s a performance review impact or whatever, how effective do you think those policies are? In reality? When we start thinking about the employee morale and all the things like that, go into the workplace, like how effective do you think those policies are like in your mind?
I think when they’re enforced, they’re effective, what’s most frustrating to me is it’s not the fact that there’s consequences for not adopting. they on are consequences for not adopting it at some cases. Like I remember in previous organizations, I highlighted to the leadership team, like, this person, that person, they’re feeling this way, what should we do about it?
they’re resistant. I need you to do this,this and this. [00:22:00] And they proceeded to sit on my hands and not doing it. And so that undermines any credibility about the change and how serious the organization is to making it stick. So toxic people are a classic example when a company is trying to change its culture, but they don’t remove the people who are, for example, Northern bullies or quite aggressive.
Friska Wirya: Like it doesn’t work. So actually consequences are not a bad thing, but they are very rarely, enforced, which is the big challenge.
Sergio Patterson: You need to go into a bunch of Silicon valley companies, lots of bullies all over the place. Just all it’s rampant.
Not, not at my company now, not at my company, but,
Lee Michael Murphy: Of course now I’m curious that
Sergio Patterson: but,it’s not as Siri on a serious note. Like I think that’s a big part of change. Management is culture.
And toxicity, like, I don’t know, Lee, I don’t know this.
We want to get on this topic, but
Lee Michael Murphy: agree.
Sergio Patterson: I’m just curious, like, have you had that experience where you’ve had to change? I’m [00:23:00] sure. Like culture, right? Like really toxic environments. Like, can you talk to us a little bit about that?
I have, and the challenge, with culture change initiatives, which we talked about earlier is the expectation for overnight. culture change initiatives. They not only do they take effort, they take a lot of money. Right. get doing leadership. Off-sites, clarifying what behaviors you want in the new culture.
setting aside time, like taking time away from BAU stuff to focus on culture. And because unfortunately, executives are very much still remunerated on short-term targets. Right? What are our quarterly earnings? Yeah. So culture initiatives are often fallen by the wayside because they do take time, right?
Friska Wirya: There are no shortcuts with culture and a lot of organizations aren’t willing to make, the hard decisions. There are a lot of substandard leaders, managers, there’s a lot of dead wood, floating around. And unless you suck the poison out, you are not going to get the culture that you want.
Lee Michael Murphy: That’s great. [00:24:00] So firstly, going back to what we were talking about, like, people trying to change, so you were really big about saying you have to have a plan. You have. Write it down. You have to look at it, you have to measure your results. What if you’ve,
you’ve done that part where you write down your goals, you’ve been trying to measure it, but you still feel like, time has gone by and you’re not satisfied with the change.
You,you’re you really care about it. you’re dressing you think in the best way, but the results still aren’t there. What would you suggest to do at that point?
find a professional, or make the change, incremental so that you don’t feel it. So for example, You’re saving up for something. You’ve got a $10,000 goal, download one of those apps that automatically every time you pay something, say it’s $5 26, and the, and it’s ratcheted up to $6.
Friska Wirya: That gap is automatically siphoned off to that savings account. So that way you don’t feel the pain it’s just done for you. If you’re [00:25:00] not strong enough, did it take the decision out of your hands? Right. And we see this all the time. In relationship breakups, by the way, many of my girlfriends have been like, I’m not strong enough.
Can you remove him from my Facebook, remove him from my instar, honestly, and I’ll do it. I’m lucky I get rid of this dickhead, take the emotional sting out of it. Right? Take the decision out of your hands. That way, it’s done for you.
Lee Michael Murphy: That’s genius. I mean, being in the financial arena, one of the biggest things that I see between success and failure is instant gratification. Can you delay that? Generally, the people that suffer on their finances, they want instant gratification. They’re like, I want to buy a new car. I want to go buy, Trips and, food and go out and win.
And I want it now. Right. And even though they don’t have a lot of money, they’re still like I got to spend, spend, spend,spend, because they need that. Whereas the people that achieve success, you say, you know what, I’m going [00:26:00] to, I’m going to save and I’m just going to keep doing it. I don’t need to take that trip.
I don’t need to go. I can do it sparingly and I’m going to save for that rainy day so I can get something that’s going to put me forward in my life. But to your point, a lot of those people that have achieved it, they’ve made it automatic. they just say, Hey, from my retirement account, it happens
Friska Wirya: yep. It’s like brushing your teeth. You don’t even think about it.
Lee Michael Murphy: thing into my savings account. It happens every month and investing into, my investment accounts. It happens every month and they don’t have to think about it. They took away the decision. Cause if it was left in their hands, like all of us, most of us wouldn’t.
Friska Wirya: Yeah. All right. It is the same reason why bloody Zuckerberg was the same thing every day. So, cause it doesn’t have to think about it. Right. It frees up his intellectual capacity spoil for other things. Right. Same outfit jeans. T-shirt jeans. T-shirt so yeah. Make the decision automatic and I totally agree with your point about.
Delayed gratification. you always need to have be [00:27:00] thinking about that bigger term, that long-term goal. I adopt the same thing. Like I’ll rarely contrary to popular belief, I’m not a shopaholic. I rarely actually buy things full whack. Like why should I, when six months later it will be half the price and I never need anything that urgently.
Lee Michael Murphy: Yeah. So like one thing that, I think a lot of us struggle with, and I’ve mentioned in the beginning, Trying to exercise, trying to lose weight. I feel like all of us are kind of on that same thing, especially as we get older, like it gets harder and you’re like, ah, I gotta lose those pounds.
I gotta tighten up. So funny story for me, like, for people that don’t know, I coach a girl’s soccer team and I told them like, I think it was like two months ago. I was like, coach is, he’s gonna, he’s gonna lose 10 pounds. And they’re like, oh sure. Coach Lee. Sure. And then. three weeks later, four weeks later they’re come in, Hey, how’s that weight?
Lee Michael Murphy: How’s that weight going coach and they’re doing it. And then they just know they’re like, he looks fatter. I’m just going to add is gonna rub it in. And so like, that, people that struggle with that basic stuff like working out,trying to lose weight, which is [00:28:00] absolutely important, right?
We’re all focused on our career and stuff, but if our health isn’t there. You know what you got, right? Like you gotta focus on your health. So people making those changes. Do you have any like, good advice to change Change our lazy
Friska Wirya: again, it’s all about incremental and find the tools to help you. Have you guys heard of couch to 5k?
Sergio Patterson: I have not, no
Friska Wirya: Okay. It’s actually a viral app.
Sergio Patterson: couched. What is it?
Friska Wirya: couch to 5k. So it’s an app literally to help couch potatoes. One message is five kilometers.
Sergio Patterson: Lee,
downloadit’s like a, it’s like a P it’s like a PT and you’ll pop it.
Friska Wirya: And you guys have heard, I’m sure you guys have heard of Duolingo as well. Right? The foreign language. Let’s see. What do these two apps have in common when it comes to behavior? They’re generous with their tummy tickles, right? They constantly reward you with positive quotes with motivation. They remind you of your progress.
They make it easy for you to adopt. So we should adopt these [00:29:00] same principles when we’re trying to change our own behavior. Right. Start small. just that, like, there was a book published by, I can’t remember the lady’s name. Some lady in Australia. very poor background, very obese, like, biggest loser or base I’m talking about, no access to gym equipment, right?
Rural town. All she started doing was, a lap around her living room. Just two minutes, then three minutes, then four minutes. What long story short. She’s now running marathon. Right. So if she can do it, you can do it too. The whole point is to just keep at it, right? Small incremental changes, and then, make sure you dot the long, longer term outlook, like expecting to lose five kilos in a week is completely unrealistic.
So make sure you have realistic goals because otherwise, if your goal is too aggressive and you don’t meet them, you’re going to be disheartened. And you’ve got to drown your sorrows in a pint of.
Lee Michael Murphy: That’s where I always find myself.
Friska Wirya: Am I right? Or [00:30:00] am I right?
Lee Michael Murphy: Ah, yeah, you’re right. You’re
Sergio Patterson: looking right. at them,
Lee Michael Murphy: He’s just staring right through me. There’s times that I’ve fallen asleep with the spoon in my mouth and the sticky forearm, because I got the Ben and Jerry’s all over my face. yeah, no, I got you where you, so we’re at.
Sergio Patterson: with you on that. it’s that habit. I think it’s like one day at a time. Right. we’re all trying to do it. it’s interesting. Like the, I used to eat a ton of candy and over, and I never thought I could stop eating candy. But to your 0.1 day at.
a time, I was just like, all right, I need to stop this.
Friska Wirya: Yeah.
Sergio Patterson: now I haven’t had candy in like a year and I don’t even want it. And now everything’s way too. So like, I think like for me, what’s worked is like that literally one day at a time. And then over time it just becomes a habit. I’m not like this with everything, but I like that’s one example for me, that’s work.
So I’m with you a
Friska Wirya: Yeah. And sometimes people need to be removed from their natural surroundings. This is why people go on [00:31:00] retreats. Right that they’re away from their homes and overseas somewhere, they get a reboot, they get exercise, new eating habits. They learn about wellness and nutrition, et cetera. And then they come back and hopefully they would have been given some tips and tricks to embed this, to assimilate this big back in their normal life.
Right. we’ve seen this happen with biggest loser contestants. Most of them regained that weight within 18 months. And it’s because they haven’t embedded the new behaviors or know what to do when they get back home.
Lee Michael Murphy: Absolutely. So, Friska? How can people reach out to you if they want to learn more about what you do and they need they’ve hit that roadblock. They need that next push. Like how can I reach out?
Friska Wirya: so, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, just type a Friska Wirya. And my website is freshbyfriska.com.
Lee Michael Murphy: Awesome.
Sergio Patterson: Audience. I promise this is not a LinkedIn paid endorsement. We, frisk. I work at LinkedIn and I feel like everyone
Friska Wirya: do you, I didn’t know that.
Sergio Patterson: Yeah. Everyone we interview like, [00:32:00] cause it out as some sort of success story or some how powerful the network is. I’m happy to hear it, but. This is not paid by LinkedIn.
Friska Wirya: Yeah. and it’s not about the platform. The network before,obviously a lot of people are on the platform right now because many, areas were in lockdown. But before I used to go to face-to-face events all the time, like unit one person could change your life and could have what you’re looking for.
So I never say no to an opportunity to meet new people.
Lee Michael Murphy: Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting. You love having you on our show. You’ve been listening to the free retiree show so long for now.