JAMES SMITH | How To Design A Life You Love | Modern Wisdom Podcast 205

There's a life with more freedom for everyone if they choose to take it, but a lack of belief, a lack of motivation, a lack of confidence, a lack of self-worth are preventing people from doing that. If I could give people the tools to just start that journey of feeling like they have more of that, then they can start to break away from this blueprint because ultimately I think it's letting a lot of people down.

James Bloody Smith in the building. How are you doing, man?

I'm very well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me on. Uh, I think this has been quite long overdue.

Very, very, very long time coming, yes. So the internet, the internet is waiting on tenterhooks to hear what we've got to say today. So just to clarify, you're not a life coach, and you also didn't write a diet book.

(laughs)

So who, who are you then?

I'm still trying to figure that out myself, mate.

(laughs)

I'm still... I, like, I, I, I felt like I was, uh, uh, someone that didn't belong to the fitness industry, but I was in it, uh, and then I, I certainly don't want to belong to the life coach industry, but I still want to venture into it. I feel like I'm a, almost like a lost, a lost sheep amongst everyone else, like, uh, getting into fitness I had such passion for it, but I'm sure you'll appreciate this, I fucking hated most of the people that I was with, and what I didn't want to do was recreate any of their work in the slightest. And funnily enough, the name for that first book came, I was pissed with my publishers at Hawksmoor, and you go at Hawksmoor for, like, a nice lunch in London, it's, like, 5:30 PM, we're doing shots at the table still with the last people in the restaurant, and someone's like, "Well, what are we going to call it because it's not a diet book?" And I was, like, smashed, I was like, "That's what we're gonna call it." (laughs)

(laughs) Yeah, fucking, fucking great that, mate.

(laughs)

Uh, three more tequilas please.

Yeah, that was pretty much it, and it was kind of like a nuanced title because everyone in the fitness industry brings out their own like fucking diet book or their system or whatever it was, and I wanted people straight from the off to think, "Oh, not another flipping personal trainer releasing another stupid book about broccoli and, and burpees," and what pained me was there are people in the fitness industry that I raised my eyebrows when I read their books and I was like, "Their, their book's perfectly right, they did talk about the calorie deficit, they did talk about this," but then the book was fucking boring, and I was like – and I'm not gonna name any names – and I was like, "How can I do this? How can I kind of come in with enough anecdotes, information, and not try and talk about broccoli?"