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For me, I've relieved a lot of the pressure in my life so that I could make better decisions

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by zooming way out and thinking, 10,000 years from now, will this matter?

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And then if I can make the decision of, like, good or bad, based on my new concepts that I created,

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then I can live a life lot easier.

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The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast, the game,

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is my attempt at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to build a

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acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to

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bring your business and maybe someday soon partner with us to get $200 million in beyond.

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I hope you share and enjoy.

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When you're building a business or you're building your career, there are stressors that come

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into play, right? And how we manage the circumstances or the conditions that come to us

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is dictates how our life turns out. I like, everybody has bad stuff happen.

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And I say that as a pause because you probably believed and nodded your head like, yeah,

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everybody has bad stuff happen, but that's not true. Everyone has stuff happen. And then we choose

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to make it better good. And so I'll tell you a quick backstory and then I'll tell you how I deal

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with it. So imagine for a second, two children that are playing. And then one child tells the other

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child, your nose is really big or you're fat. And what's interesting is that the child who hears it

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is unaffected and the child who says it is unaffected. They're like, you're fat. And he's like,

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huh? Two people communicate. Parent comes in and overhears it. And she's like, oh my god,

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takes the child that that was called fat, comforts them, gives them the expectation that they

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should be upset. And then tells the other one that that was bad. And in a moment, there was

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something that is now traumatic that otherwise wouldn't have been because the adult tells both of

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those children that that was bad. And so when we're kids, we walk in the world with no meaning.

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All we do is we observe. And then we say, what does that mean? What does that mean? And then

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whatever the adults around us tell us and say, this means that we take is fat. And it's not true.

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It's their interpretation of the world and we inherit those. And then we spend the rest of our life

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trying to undo these and examine these beliefs that we have been told by people that we probably

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don't agree with. And so it's hard to track back every single thing you've ever been told means.

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But you can, just on an exception basis, when something bothers you, pull it out and look at and

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say, what happened and why is this bad? What if it were good? And what would it look like if it

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were good? And so the two tools that I use for this are time and volume. And so the volume example

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is thinking, okay, I'm in traffic. If this happened every day, would I be upset? If it happened

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every day, I'd probably expect it, which means that I would not be upset about it, because it's

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just how things always are. And so if every time every person got into a car, it always took 30 minutes

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to get somewhere, then that's just how driving a car is. And so then our expectation meets reality,

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or if you want to make it positive, you say, well, what if every time I got into a car normally

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would take an hour? And today it took 30. I'd be pretty excited about it. And so all we did is

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just change the volume on the circumstance to recalibrate the meaning that we're choosing to

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ascribe to it good or bad, right? And so I like to think of circumstances a lot like weather,

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which is like you've got sunny days and you've got rainy days. And the problem in my opinion is

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that people, any day that rains, they say is bad and any day that sunny, they say is good,

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when in reality it just is, it's just the weather. And you need both. And if it was only sunny every day,

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you wouldn't be happy about the sun because it's just how it always is. And so contrast is what

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creates the quote good and bad when reality, there's just a middle line and half of it's above and

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half of it's below. And so if we know that, then what we can do is artificially move the line in our

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minds by saying whatever this circumstance is, what would it look like if it were worse? And what

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would it look like if it were worse all the time? And then now how would I look at my current

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circumstance? And would it be better now as a result if it were always worse than it is today? And

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if so, then maybe today's a good thing, right? The second frame that I like to use is time,

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right? Which is if I go not just 100 years out, but 10,000 years out, how much is this going to

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matter? Right? And so a good example of that is like if you're looking at the reason something

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affects you is because you have deemed it meaningful. You've said it matters, right? And it's my

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world view that nothing matters with a capital M, like nothing matters in the universe, right? There's

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one little pebble into a big thing of sand inside of lots of things of sand, lots of things of sand,

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14 billion years, whatever, right? It doesn't matter. And the easiest story that I saw about this

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camera of the writer's name, but there's this statue of a head that's in the sands of Egypt,

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right? And it's bigger than this whole room. It's just the head. It's worn out. And then

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scripted along the forehead was it was that it was a tombstone. It says here lies crazy name,

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whatever. Here lies crazy name, who own everything that the eye could see, the immortal of so and so.

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And the only thing that was left was a worn out statue head that no one knew who he was. And it was

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5,000 years old. And so if that guy who ruled the known world to him, wealth probably mattered,

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right? But does it matter? No, probably not. And so for me, I've relieved a lot of the pressure

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of my life so that I could make better decisions by zooming way out and thinking 10,000 years from now,

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will this matter? And then if the answer is no, does it matter to me? And then if I can make the

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decision of like good or bad, based on my new context that I created, then I can live a life

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lot easier. And so for me, that helped me decrease anxiety and helped me decrease, you know, sadness

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around certain circumstances. And I'll give you the last example of this. So I'd a cat named Bill,

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chill Bill, for us to peace, homie, love the cat, really like the cat. And he died six some

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freak heart thing or something. So he died in like two years. And he was a cute little cat,

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really nice dude. Anyways, when he died, I was bumped. I was like this sucks. But then I thought to

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myself, what if cats only normally lived six months? How stoked would I be that he lived four times

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the normal length of a normal cat? I was like, I'd probably be really stuck. I'd be like, dude,

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he lived a long life. I can't believe we had him this long. And all of a sudden, my perspective

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around the death completely changed. And I was like, I was so grateful that I got to have him as long

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as I did. Most of the nation real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business

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and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50, $100,000 plus we would love to talk to you.

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And if you like that and would like to hear more about it, go to acquisition.com and you can

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plan anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there.

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When you play with time and you play with volume, how regular is this? Could it be worse? What if

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worse was normal and this is what today was? Well, then that's the example of the cat or the traffic.

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Like then all of a sudden, you can make your current context much easier to deal with or even

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positive, even though you thought of it as negative, because you described you different meaning to it.

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And then if we think about this on a very long time horizon, we think that none of it's really going

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to matter because in 500 million years, the sun is going to expand enough and engulf the earth.

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And so it won't matter. Like literally everything that you do here is going to get engulfed by the

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sun. And it'll only, quote, matter if we expand to the other, you know, universes. Now imagine that

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you invented something that changes humanity like the guy who found fire. Good dude. We appreciate him.

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But you know what? None of us knows name. Did it matter for us? Sure. Does it matter that that was

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his name and he was the guy? Probably not. When you look at your towns that you live in and you see

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like Henderson and Jacksonville, right? These guys were big deals and named cities after themselves.

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And we barely know them. And you probably have areas in your city that you would you would aspire to

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have a street named after you, right? Or an entire county named after you, Clark County, right?

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But no one knows who Clark, I don't know Clark is, right? I live here. And so I think a lot of times

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we inflate the micro importance of things when in reality they aren't important at all. And we just

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choose to make them meaningful. First off, we have to be aware of the levers of meaning that exist.

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And then once you're aware of them, you can start moving them in your favor and then looking at your

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current conditions through different lenses and say, what would this mean if it were amazing?

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What would the conditions have to be in order for this to be an awesome thing? And then all of a

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sudden you just exit the game of happy sad and get to be your own game maker. At least that's what I

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tried to do when I get upset. Look at it, pull it apart thing like, is this real? Is this true?

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And then go further. I get asked about mindset a lot on podcasts. They're like, you have a unique

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view of the world, Alex. And to me, it's weird because it's just how I see the world. And so I don't,

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to me, it doesn't feel unique. It feels like how it is to me in general. And so I have trouble

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sometimes articulating it because to me, I expect that everyone else is thinking that way when

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sometimes I was surprised that they weren't. And so the first time this came out was on the ice coffee

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hour podcast where they talked about just different views I had on things, which apparently were

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contrary and which I didn't know. And so it generated a lot of kind of press and media around it.

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And so my team said, hey, do you think you could make a video just specifically around meanings

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since you talk about it so much with us? And so this, although short, is my best attempt to give

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you three different scenarios that I use to create and destroy meaning in my own life that helped me

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decrease my stress, increase the decrease the emotional affect I have to circumstances so that I

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can make better decisions in my life. And so I think the reason that people struggle with this a lot

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is because they try to control the uncontrollable. They ascribe their feelings to things that they

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are reactive to, which means if this, so they create these equations for themselves, if this happens,

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I'll be angry. If this happens, I'll be upset. If this happens, I'll be stressed. And so their

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life is just a series of piano keys that are being played on their emotions and they have no control.

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Whereas if you can flip the script and make it so that you are the one who writes what that

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equation is, then you can change what the keys mean. So even though it's high on the keyboard over

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here, it turns out low over here when you hear it because you're the one who's setting what that

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key means rather than taking whatever the external circumstances. So if people treat, have to treat

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you a certain way for you to be happy, then it means that your happiness is in their hands.

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If you have to have a job raise or a amount of income every month that you have to make in order

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to be fulfilled, then you set up circumstances for yourself to not be fulfilled, right? And so

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we want to make, at least in my opinion, the feelings that we have, we want to derive them off

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of circumstances that we can control. And then what happens is then you create the shell around

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yourself, not realistically, but because internally is where your emotions are being generated.

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Now, is anyone doing this perfectly? No. But simply being aware of the fact that these piano

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keys are being played, but we're the ones who get to assign what the sound is internally gives you

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a lot more control over your own perception of life and the conditions that are presented to you.