WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.320 The single greatest skill you can develop is the ability to stay in a great mood 2 00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:08.640 in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. I've had some of the hardest days of my life 3 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:13.120 this year, and so maybe you feel the same. And so in this video, I want to share a four-part 4 00:00:13.120 --> 00:00:15.920 framework that has helped me move forward even when life sucks. 5 00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:23.360 If you can be in a bad mood for no reason, then you might as well be in a good mood for no 6 00:00:23.360 --> 00:00:28.000 reason too. And so one of the things that's been helpful for me is just actually recognizing 7 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:33.280 the math of hard days. And so if you think about you having 100 days, right, let's just say that 8 00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:38.240 you know, the last 100 days of your life. Well, the top 10% of those days, you're going to have 10 9 00:00:38.240 --> 00:00:43.040 days that are small face days. And then you might have, you know, kind of the middle 80, 10 00:00:43.040 --> 00:00:47.280 that's going to be kind of neutral days, right? And then you're going to have your bottom 10% days. 11 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:52.880 Now, this is just normal because of a standard distribution of how days work. I think the most 12 00:00:52.880 --> 00:01:00.800 important skill that you could have is being able to reframe reality. And I say this because I 13 00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:06.320 had a very good friend of mine this year, say something to me, and it was, it was really powerful, 14 00:01:06.320 --> 00:01:12.080 and it's been top of mine since he said it. And he said, well, I'll tell you what he actually said. 15 00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:20.080 He said, you're Alex fucking Hermosey. You can get away with whatever you want as long as you 16 00:01:20.080 --> 00:01:28.720 frame a right. And I really thought a lot about that. And I've brought that perspective to a lot 17 00:01:28.720 --> 00:01:31.600 of the conversations, a lot of difficult things that I've had to go through this. It reminds me of a 18 00:01:31.600 --> 00:01:35.840 quote from Victor Franco who wrote the book of Man's Search for Meeting, which he wrote while he was in 19 00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:40.800 the concentration camps during the Holocaust. He survived. And he wrote about that time period. 20 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:48.160 And one of the things that he said is he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. And so 21 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:54.560 if you think about that, the why is the reframe for dealing with the how. And so it's like how can I 22 00:01:54.560 --> 00:02:00.160 frame this this difficult thing, right? This thing that I'm about to go through that I just went 23 00:02:00.160 --> 00:02:04.000 through. How can I reframe that? And what world would this be an amazing thing, right? In what 24 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:08.400 world were when I tell this story 40, 50 years from now, and I'd be like, this is a pivot point for 25 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:12.640 me. I had to have this origin story in order to get to I wanted to go to become the type person I 26 00:02:12.800 --> 00:02:19.200 wanted to be. And so these have been some of the mental reframes that I've used on some of the 27 00:02:19.200 --> 00:02:25.440 harder days that I've had. So this year, I had a gigantic bill come out of nowhere. So there's a 28 00:02:25.440 --> 00:02:34.320 multi eight figure bill that was required to get paid in 72 hours in cash. And so I, you know, 29 00:02:34.320 --> 00:02:41.440 thankfully had that, you know, available to me. But I had obviously different plans for that money. 30 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:47.120 They're dealing with this gigantic bill that I had to all of a sudden pay within 72 hours. And so 31 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:52.800 you know, there's the basically the moment between when I got the news to me paying it to then kind 32 00:02:52.800 --> 00:02:57.120 of reflecting back because it almost felt so fast or was like, I've got, you know, I've got all 33 00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:01.520 these plans and then boom, this happens. And then 72 hours later, it's like, wow, okay, what am I 34 00:03:01.520 --> 00:03:08.160 going to do? What am I going to do kind of moving forward from this? And there's this great 35 00:03:08.160 --> 00:03:12.960 quote by Marcus Aurelius, which is, what are you so afraid of losing when nothing in this world 36 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:18.480 belongs to you? And I really thought a lot about that, which it's like, I can't take it with me 37 00:03:18.480 --> 00:03:24.400 in the end. And so being sad about losing something that I, that was never really mine anyways, like, 38 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:28.400 I'm going to have to push all my chips to the middle of the board when, when the game's over, right? 39 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:30.880 I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to cash my chips and somebody else, you know, other people 40 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:36.480 are going to distribute my chips, whatever way, when I die. And so it's like, I'm really just a 41 00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:40.640 steward of these chips. I'm just renting these chips for a minute. And so like to be upset and to 42 00:03:40.640 --> 00:03:45.120 ruin the one thing that I'm only, that is, that is finite, which is the present moment, for something 43 00:03:45.120 --> 00:03:48.320 that actually doesn't affect high lives. So this is the second piece. This is actually a kind of 44 00:03:48.320 --> 00:03:53.520 a utilitarian perspective that really helped me, which is by losing that money, I asked myself, 45 00:03:54.480 --> 00:04:00.000 what does this change about what I do? What does this change about my life? It doesn't change 46 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:03.200 the food I eat, it doesn't change where I live, it doesn't change where I work, it doesn't change 47 00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:08.480 what I do, it actually changes nothing. And so all that change was just like, in my mind, 48 00:04:08.480 --> 00:04:15.680 I had an expectation of the future that changed. That was it. And I said, okay, do I want to, 49 00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:20.800 because of this thing that existed in my mind, I am choosing to punish myself for not having seen 50 00:04:20.800 --> 00:04:26.720 this or not paying attention or whatever number of reasons I could blame myself for. But at the end 51 00:04:26.720 --> 00:04:29.280 of the day, I was like, okay, so you just get to pick how long you want to be yourself up for. 52 00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:36.480 It was like, huh, well, what am I so afraid of losing if nothing in this world belongs to me, 53 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:40.560 nothing, this wasn't mine to begin with. And so that really kind of helped me, helped me 54 00:04:41.440 --> 00:04:47.120 quell that kind of negative thought pattern pretty quickly. And so I found it helpful when I'm 55 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:51.680 in a bad season, like I am right now, to be fair, I don't try to like put big labels on things, 56 00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:58.240 but I guess I'm just giving myself a little bit of grace. But to just focus on having a good day, 57 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:02.240 and so it's like, okay, even though this is a bad season, I'm going to have a good day in a bad 58 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:06.880 season. It's kind of like a bite-sized victory. And if I start stringing enough of those good days 59 00:05:06.880 --> 00:05:11.440 in a row, I'm going to turn a bad season back into a good season. And it makes it feel a little less 60 00:05:11.440 --> 00:05:17.680 bad, because I feel like I'm making progress. And so I heard this, this little bit by Bill Ackman 61 00:05:17.680 --> 00:05:22.320 who was like getting sued, he was going through divorce, he just lost $4 billion in perishing square 62 00:05:22.320 --> 00:05:26.880 for his capital. So he was like, honestly, all of this happened at the same time. And he realized 63 00:05:26.960 --> 00:05:29.920 all these projects were these big massive things, which is a lot of kind of the stuff I'm doing with 64 00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:33.760 right now. They're not like, okay, I had a bad day. They're like things that just they last and they 65 00:05:33.760 --> 00:05:39.200 prolong, right? He said, you just got to, you just got to, you just got a little bit done every day. 66 00:05:39.200 --> 00:05:42.560 That's it. He's like, you just got to make a little bit of progress every day. And kind of like 67 00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:46.160 compounding and investing, it's like, you don't really, you don't see it in a day or two or a week or two. 68 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:49.840 It's like, but you look at back at 30 days, you're like, all right, I move the ball a little bit, 69 00:05:49.840 --> 00:05:54.560 right? You look back at 90, you're like, all right, I made some progress. And it's just like, 70 00:05:54.560 --> 00:06:00.640 if you have big goals, you're also going to have equally large obstacles. And so you can't assume 71 00:06:00.640 --> 00:06:03.840 that, oh, my big goals are going to take many, many years. And then the obstacles that I have to 72 00:06:03.840 --> 00:06:08.000 maneuver around are going to happen overnight. Sometimes the obstacles they have to move it, 73 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:12.160 maneuver around might take a year or multiple years to get around. And so you have to be able to 74 00:06:12.160 --> 00:06:16.160 manage your headspace and basically keep your internal combustion engine going during those 75 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:20.000 harder times. And so it's kind of like a monkey swinging from good, good moment to good moment. 76 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:25.440 Because even going from bad season to good day, you can even have bad day and good moment. 77 00:06:26.080 --> 00:06:31.280 So I was trying to thought, okay, today was a shitty day. Fine. What good moments do I have? 78 00:06:31.280 --> 00:06:35.520 And by focusing on the moments, the thing is is like, when I look back on my life, you forget 79 00:06:35.520 --> 00:06:39.200 most of your life, like if we're being real, like you can't recall most of your life. Most people 80 00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:44.240 can't even recall what they ate like three days ago. But you can't have the moments. And so the 81 00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:48.640 moments when I think about, like at the end of my life looking backwards, those are the only things 82 00:06:48.640 --> 00:06:53.600 I'm really going to remember. And so I just want to make sure that I take those down. And so what 83 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:58.720 feels like a bad season now, I can try and forget most of the bad stuff and just try and remember 84 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:04.240 the good moments. And so in retrospect, I can, I can have rose, rose colored glasses when it comes to 85 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:09.840 this, this season. So it's like, all right, well, how do you, how do you have a good day, right? 86 00:07:09.840 --> 00:07:13.200 And I think this is different for everyone. But I'll tell you what my little formula is for, 87 00:07:13.200 --> 00:07:18.000 for having a good day. So I actually have this ridden on my wall in my office, which maybe I'll be 88 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:30.480 able to put a picture somewhere. But good day formula. For me, there's only three things. Number one 89 00:07:30.480 --> 00:07:44.640 is eat with people I like. Simple enough. Number two, lift with people I like. And the third 90 00:07:45.360 --> 00:07:52.000 is write something. If I do those three things, I had a pretty good day. Like I look back and I'm 91 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:57.040 like, I earned my shower today. I feel good about this. And so maybe for you, your three things 92 00:07:57.040 --> 00:08:00.080 are going to be entirely different. Now, I'll give you a little wrinkle on something that's been 93 00:08:00.080 --> 00:08:04.960 really valuable for me, like absurdly valuable. The thing that I noticed that made these two 94 00:08:04.960 --> 00:08:09.600 things significantly better, really all three of these things is not being in a rush. 95 00:08:09.840 --> 00:08:16.080 Like if I have to lift and it's like, I only have 60 minutes to lift, I don't like that. Some 96 00:08:16.080 --> 00:08:19.120 people are fine with it. So we were like, well, this is how my life has to be. That's fine. 97 00:08:20.640 --> 00:08:26.640 I have come to a point in my life where I was like, I have a lot of money. And I have 98 00:08:27.520 --> 00:08:33.520 the ability to not work anymore. And there are not a huge amount of things that bring me big joy. 99 00:08:34.240 --> 00:08:41.520 And so if these are the few things that bring me joy, which is eating without a clock, with people 100 00:08:41.520 --> 00:08:47.920 I like, lifting without a clock, with people I like, and writing something for as long as I feel 101 00:08:47.920 --> 00:08:54.400 like, then I should organize my day so that I don't have as like many, many hard stops. So that 102 00:08:54.400 --> 00:08:58.320 if I want to lift in the morning, I don't have something at nine. And if I do have something 103 00:08:58.320 --> 00:09:03.360 at nine, it's something that's movable, right? Like if I have to make this video, it could be at nine, 104 00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:07.120 but the team knows if I show up at nine thirty or nine forty five because I've lifted longer, 105 00:09:07.120 --> 00:09:13.920 that's fine. That's all good. And that has made it has taken my good day formula and made it like 106 00:09:13.920 --> 00:09:18.880 my super good day formula. And so sometimes it's like, where are the tiny nuances that actually 107 00:09:18.880 --> 00:09:22.880 make something different between good and great? And so I thought about like the days that I had 108 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:27.040 these three things happen. And then I had better days that has those three things happen. I was 109 00:09:27.040 --> 00:09:29.760 like, what was the difference? And the difference was that I didn't have to be somewhere else. 110 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:38.960 And in trying not to have a rush, it means I have to give something else up, right? And so then the 111 00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:43.920 question is, is the thing that I'm giving up worth having a better day? And so for me, I was like, 112 00:09:43.920 --> 00:09:49.120 yes, I'm willing to give up some money or some upside in order to have consistently better days. 113 00:09:50.560 --> 00:09:55.360 And that's a trade I'm willing to make at this point in my career. If you want to achieve a goal, 114 00:09:55.360 --> 00:10:00.480 you're either going to have to accept a boredom or pain. And the bigger the goal, the more of both 115 00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:07.440 you'll get. And when I started my gym, I actually lived with six other people in one house. 116 00:10:08.400 --> 00:10:14.560 So this is like off of beach town. And so think like sand everywhere, people everywhere, dirty 117 00:10:14.560 --> 00:10:20.080 dishes everywhere, like not enough room and refrigerator for food, cooking was an absolute mess. 118 00:10:21.040 --> 00:10:27.680 There were almost all of them had dogs. So one had, so a couple had two dogs, another couple had one 119 00:10:27.680 --> 00:10:33.280 dog, another guy had a dog. So we had four, four different dogs in the house. And they were like all 120 00:10:33.280 --> 00:10:41.280 marking territory. It was horrendous. And I was splitting one room with a guy with a bed like 121 00:10:41.280 --> 00:10:46.720 two beds. My bed was on the floor. His bed was elevated because he could afford that at the time. 122 00:10:46.800 --> 00:10:51.600 And I would sleep with a fan on my face. I couldn't hear anything. That was my secret like, 123 00:10:51.600 --> 00:10:55.360 is the fan like, there's like the wind over like it's all I could hear. The thing is is like 124 00:10:56.720 --> 00:11:02.960 I was doing that when I was making like 20 grand of take home. And so like there's always trade-offs. 125 00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:08.080 Right. And the trade-off for me of living in that condition was that I could invest in the dream 126 00:11:08.080 --> 00:11:13.360 and build the business that I had at the time. And now I could look back because I ended up losing 127 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:18.320 everything, you know, a few years later. And so you know, you get this negative cycle of like all 128 00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:23.200 of that suffering was for nothing. But it wasn't for nothing because I learned all these skills along 129 00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:28.480 the way. And so you also can't operate from the perspective of like, I might lose it all in the 130 00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:32.240 future which means everything they do today is not worth anything because like you're going to lose 131 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:36.960 100% of everything the moment you die. So trying to say that you might lose something in the 132 00:11:36.960 --> 00:11:41.360 future is a reason not to do something is ridiculous. You're going to lose everything at some point. 133 00:11:41.360 --> 00:11:46.000 You cannot wish for both strong character in an easy life because the price of one is the other. 134 00:11:46.800 --> 00:11:50.800 And so when I think about pain, I think about what thing am I paying for right now? 135 00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:58.720 And is that thing something that I want? And if so, it reframes the pain as the price of the thing 136 00:11:58.720 --> 00:12:03.920 that I want. And so it was very interesting. This is super interesting. It's they've done research 137 00:12:03.920 --> 00:12:09.200 on this where they have somebody who like accepts like shocks, right? And then they have to they 138 00:12:09.200 --> 00:12:16.800 can like opt out at any point. If you have the same man who's getting shocked and then you tell 139 00:12:16.800 --> 00:12:23.040 that man in the other room, every shock he takes his family doesn't have to take his threshold of 140 00:12:23.040 --> 00:12:32.880 pain like quadruples. And so this may seem like some quote mindset, whatever. But the thing is it's like 141 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:38.560 the bigger your goals, the more pain you're going to endure whether you want to or not. It's the 142 00:12:38.560 --> 00:12:44.160 price. And if you can endure four times more pain than someone else, I don't actually think that it 143 00:12:44.160 --> 00:12:49.600 feels four times more painful. I think it feels the same level of pain, but you have this padding 144 00:12:49.600 --> 00:12:54.400 that makes it feel worth it. Give him in a purpose and the ability to achieve it and he will crawl 145 00:12:54.400 --> 00:13:02.720 over broken glass with a smile. And that broken glass like how can you have a smile during the pain? 146 00:13:02.720 --> 00:13:07.040 It's because of what the pain itself represents. Now I'm going to get I'm going to get a little 147 00:13:07.040 --> 00:13:13.840 bit into behavior because I think it's it's valuable. So if so so we talk I talk a lot about 148 00:13:13.840 --> 00:13:18.480 reward and punishment, right? But those are kind of more colloquial terms. When it comes down to 149 00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:25.280 behavior, it's actually reinforcers. And so a reinforcer can be negative meaning it can be something 150 00:13:25.280 --> 00:13:32.000 that's aversive. So for example, if I know that every time I hit my hand with a hammer, I'm going 151 00:13:32.160 --> 00:13:37.840 to grow muscle, then if that hitting my hand with a hammer or taking the shock from my family 152 00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:42.720 means something positive, which is that I'm protecting my family, I'm helping my country, I'm 153 00:13:42.720 --> 00:13:47.920 doing something that I de-meaningful. The pain itself can become a positive reinforcer because 154 00:13:47.920 --> 00:13:53.040 you know you're making progress towards the thing you want. Now you might think of that and be like, 155 00:13:53.040 --> 00:13:56.160 well, I don't want to have the pain. The thing is that when you're going through it, if you have 156 00:13:56.160 --> 00:14:01.120 this frame, it isn't as painful. And so in a lot of ways, it's like we are our own sculpture that 157 00:14:01.120 --> 00:14:06.480 we are working on. And as we chisel away, we also get to reveal the type of person that we want 158 00:14:06.480 --> 00:14:11.200 to become, the traits and the behaviors and the belief sets that go with the man or woman that we're 159 00:14:11.200 --> 00:14:16.400 trying to try to grow into. And so I wrote this story, I want to say a year ago, maybe two years ago, 160 00:14:17.200 --> 00:14:21.520 that related this that I just want to share with you. So imagine you're talking to the creator of 161 00:14:21.520 --> 00:14:25.680 the universe about the person that you want to become, right? And so you say, you know, I want to 162 00:14:25.760 --> 00:14:32.240 be courageous. And the creator replies, then I will give you monsters that terrify you. That way you 163 00:14:32.240 --> 00:14:37.200 can conquer them. And you say, well, I want to be patient. And the creator replies, then I will make 164 00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:41.760 you work harder and longer. And nothing will come easy to you. That way you can learn to wait. 165 00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:48.000 And see they are like, okay, well, I want to be wise. And something creator says, then I will give 166 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:53.360 you failures that will crush your spirit. That way you can learn the value of judgment. And you say, 167 00:14:54.320 --> 00:14:58.720 that sounds like a hard life. Can you give me a good life? And the creator replies, 168 00:14:59.920 --> 00:15:04.400 just like we measured the quality of a blacksmith by the strength of his steel, I measure you by 169 00:15:04.400 --> 00:15:09.520 what you are at the end, not the fire and the hammer that it took to make you. A good life isn't an 170 00:15:09.520 --> 00:15:14.640 easy life. A good life makes you into a good person. And that my child is a hard life. And so it's 171 00:15:14.640 --> 00:15:19.200 about who we become doing the work more than the outcome from the work itself. And I love this, 172 00:15:19.200 --> 00:15:23.840 and this is a reframing of proverbs. But the work works on you more than you work on that, 173 00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:30.400 right? I get all labor there as profit, meaning we always benefit from work, even if the thing 174 00:15:30.400 --> 00:15:35.600 that we work on gets destroyed, even if you went bankrupt, even if that relationship didn't work 175 00:15:35.600 --> 00:15:40.720 out, even if that partnership falls apart, the work you did is eternal because it changes you. 176 00:15:41.280 --> 00:15:46.160 And so for those of you who don't know who are new to my channel, I lost everything five years 177 00:15:46.160 --> 00:15:50.240 into my entrepreneurial journey. And then I made a little bit more and then I lost it all again. 178 00:15:51.040 --> 00:15:56.160 But the thing is is that I had this idea that, oh, I have to start from scratch again. 179 00:15:56.720 --> 00:16:01.680 But that's not true because you can only start from scratch once. Every time after that you start 180 00:16:01.680 --> 00:16:07.280 with an experience. A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion. And you 181 00:16:07.280 --> 00:16:13.600 transition from the second to the first, the moment you begin working because you're no longer 182 00:16:13.600 --> 00:16:18.160 somebody who has an opinion and the vast majority of people who are in the comments section, 183 00:16:18.160 --> 00:16:22.640 right, who are making the remarks, who are in the sidelines are just people with opinions. 184 00:16:23.680 --> 00:16:29.120 And as soon as you know what that truth is because you've been there and you've actually done it 185 00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:34.960 and you have the scars to show for it, then their opinions matter significantly less. 186 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:41.600 And so I'll give you a different reframe that I've had for redefining pain as it relates to other 187 00:16:41.600 --> 00:16:48.960 people, which is you can summarize just about every hateful comment on the internet into one thing. 188 00:16:50.240 --> 00:16:55.440 He lives his life in a way that I would not prefer. That's it. Everything is, he lives his way, 189 00:16:55.440 --> 00:17:00.720 his life in a way that I would not prefer. To which I respond, yes, I do live my life in a way 190 00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:05.200 that most people don't prefer. And they live their life in a way that I would not prefer. And that 191 00:17:05.200 --> 00:17:08.800 is why it is their life and they can live their life the way that they want to live their life, 192 00:17:08.800 --> 00:17:11.920 the way they prefer it. And I will live my life the way that I prefer it. 193 00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:19.440 Real quick guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. 194 00:17:20.080 --> 00:17:26.000 Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's 195 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:31.520 breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got 196 00:17:31.520 --> 00:17:35.120 marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you got customer success, you've got IT, 197 00:17:35.120 --> 00:17:39.200 you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerged 198 00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:43.760 at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get 199 00:17:43.760 --> 00:17:48.800 it personalized to you since about 30-ish pages for each of the stages. Once you answer the questions, 200 00:17:48.800 --> 00:17:54.240 it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours 201 00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:57.920 of stuff but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, 202 00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:02.640 which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com 203 00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:12.480 forward slash roadmap, ROAD map, roadmap. And so they make these things, they cast these stones at you 204 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:19.520 as though it matters. And so my dad told me this when he was going through his divorce. 205 00:18:20.720 --> 00:18:24.080 He said he went through this divorce conference and the speaker on stage said 206 00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:29.440 to somebody in the audience, he said, hey, here's a ball and he threw it to him. And he said, 207 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:33.680 okay, throw it back to me. So he cut the ball. He said, now I want you to imagine that this ball 208 00:18:34.320 --> 00:18:40.480 is a steaming hot pile of shit. And he threw it to the person again and the person caught it. 209 00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:46.080 He said, why would you catch it? And so the lesson of that is just because someone 210 00:18:46.080 --> 00:18:51.280 hurls shit at you doesn't mean you need to catch it. You don't need to choose to participate. 211 00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:56.160 And I thought that was a really interesting frame. It's like people can hurl whatever they want. 212 00:18:56.720 --> 00:19:01.120 It doesn't mean that they have justified a response or that you need to accept it. And that little 213 00:19:01.120 --> 00:19:05.360 reframe of, oh, I live my life in a way that other people not prefer. Well, that makes sense. 214 00:19:05.360 --> 00:19:10.640 I'm not trying to live the same life as them. So of course. And then they say he made trade-offs 215 00:19:10.640 --> 00:19:16.400 that I would not make. And I say, of course, of course I did. Why is this somehow an insult? And so 216 00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:22.880 the thing is is like when I was making those trades in the earlier days, like I didn't know when I 217 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:29.040 would be successful or if I would be successful. The only thing that I knew for sure was that I wasn't 218 00:19:29.040 --> 00:19:35.680 going to stop. And that was it, right? Like I know I can just not stop. And that's something that I 219 00:19:35.680 --> 00:19:40.800 can commit to. And that's controllable. And so I think a lot of the big gift of hardship is that 220 00:19:40.800 --> 00:19:49.120 it doesn't define you. It reveals you. And so the benefit is that you get to see who you really are 221 00:19:49.120 --> 00:19:54.640 and you make that decision yourself every day. And so I have this perspective on loyalty, 222 00:19:54.640 --> 00:19:58.160 which is that like you cannot say that you are loyal until your loyalty is tested. 223 00:19:59.760 --> 00:20:04.000 You cannot say you're patient until your patience is tested. Otherwise, it's an opinion, 224 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:10.720 non-experience. And so you can't say that you, you can handle hardship and that you are 225 00:20:10.720 --> 00:20:15.360 emotionally resilient until you've had something to be emotionally resilient about. And so the gift 226 00:20:15.360 --> 00:20:20.080 of the hard time is to give you proof of who you are so that the rest of your life, you get to 227 00:20:20.080 --> 00:20:26.160 know that you did that. And you get to tell that story and relive that story to yourself 228 00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:32.800 for the rest of your life. And to me, that gives the hardship, memory dividends, that pay 229 00:20:33.840 --> 00:20:40.000 forever until the day you die. So I'll tell you a story. When I was, when I, so I went to a school in 230 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:48.640 the SEC and some of the SEC schools are renowned for hazing and aggressive stuff. And so I was going 231 00:20:48.640 --> 00:20:55.600 to join a fraternity. And obviously they build up how hard pledging is going to be and all this 232 00:20:55.600 --> 00:21:04.080 stuff. And I called my dad to talk about it. And he just said, remember, there is nothing that 233 00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:10.560 they can do to you that is harder than what you've already been through. And it was a great 234 00:21:11.200 --> 00:21:17.440 reframe because I remember the times, you know, like when things would be, quote, hard during that 235 00:21:17.440 --> 00:21:21.680 that season of pledging. And I would just think about the things that I had already survived, 236 00:21:21.680 --> 00:21:27.280 the things that I had already been through at that point. And it made what they believed to be 237 00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:34.800 suffering a pure childish. I was like, this is cute. But for the people who were present in the 238 00:21:34.800 --> 00:21:40.960 moment, rather than being able to relive through their memory dividends as using it as a shield, 239 00:21:40.960 --> 00:21:45.680 right, for my emotional affect during the moment, was like, all right, I have these eight weeks 240 00:21:45.680 --> 00:21:50.800 where I have to stay in here before you apparently give me a stay-up approval. Fine. Then I will do 241 00:21:50.800 --> 00:21:56.160 that. I live my life in ways that you would not prefer. And that, that carried me a pretty long 242 00:21:56.640 --> 00:22:01.520 way. And so let's say that you've used these tools to redefine pain, right? And you've realized that 243 00:22:01.520 --> 00:22:06.400 you are the outcome. The work you do is the only thing you control and the person you become 244 00:22:07.280 --> 00:22:10.880 becomes the evidence of the work that you voluntarily 245 00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:17.120 subjected yourself to. And not only does that pain, or that difficulty, you're just comfort, 246 00:22:17.920 --> 00:22:24.480 make you better, it's also what separates you from everyone else. And whenever I do go through 247 00:22:24.480 --> 00:22:29.760 those moments, I do have these slight like crook of the smile. I'm a crook of my life that goes up 248 00:22:29.760 --> 00:22:37.440 because I'm reminded that everything that I'm willing to tolerate and deal with is what everyone 249 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:42.960 else who wants to do the same thing will be incapable of doing. And so if it's hard for me, 250 00:22:43.600 --> 00:22:48.560 it will be just as hard for somebody else. And I think for some reason that gives me some 251 00:22:48.560 --> 00:22:55.440 sadistic pleasure that I will be able to to keep moving forward. And so that's kind of a perfect 252 00:22:55.440 --> 00:23:05.520 transition to number three, right, which is endure what others 253 00:23:11.120 --> 00:23:15.760 and so all of this becomes your competitive advantage and that competitive advantage compounds. 254 00:23:15.840 --> 00:23:20.320 The more memories you have of hardship that you've been through, the more it stacks, the more it 255 00:23:20.320 --> 00:23:25.840 becomes a trait, the more it becomes ingrained in your behavior. And the more it takes to shake you 256 00:23:25.840 --> 00:23:30.480 because you're like, well, this is my baseline. This isn't even close. It doesn't even register on 257 00:23:30.480 --> 00:23:35.600 my scale of something that's in inconvenience. We've all met that person where like if a call gets 258 00:23:35.600 --> 00:23:40.800 moved or a dinner plate is late, it's like a nuclear bomb went off. It's like, well, what's the 259 00:23:40.800 --> 00:23:44.480 opposite of that? Like what's the person who like, it doesn't matter if a nuclear bomb went off, 260 00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:49.440 all you see is a straight line completely undisturbed by the things that are going around them. 261 00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:54.720 And so like you can beat 99% of people without being smarter or luckier, but by be willing, 262 00:23:54.720 --> 00:24:01.280 by because you can beat 99% of people without being smarter or luckier, but by being willing to 263 00:24:01.280 --> 00:24:07.040 under pain and uncertainty for longer. And so if it's hard for you, it's hard for everyone else. 264 00:24:07.040 --> 00:24:12.880 And most people avoid hard things, which is why you can beat most people by just trying 265 00:24:12.880 --> 00:24:19.440 and continuing to try. And the main thing is that I think most people don't even know what trying 266 00:24:19.440 --> 00:24:24.320 feels like. And so Leila and I had been going through this season, so it hasn't just been me. 267 00:24:24.320 --> 00:24:29.600 And she had a mentor say something to her that she told me and I really liked it. 268 00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:36.880 And so she said, hey, we had this difficult situation and we're kind of relegated to this option 269 00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:43.360 or this option and neither of the options were particularly good. And she said to Leila, 270 00:24:43.360 --> 00:24:50.400 are you settling or are you moving mountains? And I really like that because like 271 00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:56.160 whenever I'm looking at these choices that I feel like sometimes feel bad, I'm like, 272 00:24:57.440 --> 00:25:03.760 is there another option that I could see if I move the fucking mountain? And that has just 273 00:25:03.760 --> 00:25:13.040 dramatically increased the willingness to work, to really try. And so I keep thinking to myself like, 274 00:25:13.040 --> 00:25:18.400 okay, well, if I was going to get killed or Leila was going to get killed or people I cared about 275 00:25:18.400 --> 00:25:22.480 were going to die if I didn't come up with another solution. Or if I made the thing that I wanted 276 00:25:22.480 --> 00:25:30.160 to happen happen, what other things would I do? And usually it's a lot more. And so whatever way 277 00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:35.840 you have to unlock that level of trying, that level of effort, like most things are hilariously 278 00:25:35.840 --> 00:25:41.840 easy to do. It's just more easy. It's easier to just do nothing. And so most people do nothing and 279 00:25:41.840 --> 00:25:45.840 get nothing and are dissatisfied because their expectations that they would get something for 280 00:25:45.840 --> 00:25:52.960 that nothing of work. But what's crazy is that the highest levels of effort are so rare amongst 281 00:25:52.960 --> 00:25:59.600 people that you can unlock most things in the universe with it by just really trying like your life 282 00:25:59.600 --> 00:26:06.000 depends on it. Because it does. Hey guys, first off, I want to say thank you. There's one person 283 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:10.640 who has been sharing this more than anyone. And that is you. The only reason this podcast continues 284 00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:15.840 to grow is because you guys are sharing it. And my only ask is that if this has provided value to you 285 00:26:15.840 --> 00:26:19.920 or you think it would provide value to somebody else or importantly, if you could DM it to them, 286 00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:24.480 if you could slack it to them, if you could text them, a screenshot or a link to this podcast is 287 00:26:24.480 --> 00:26:29.680 the only way it grows. And that's what fills the hole inside of my heart for the approval of others 288 00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:34.880 so that I can go to sleep at night. And that's why I really do this. Anyways, it drows the pot. 289 00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:41.760 And so like most of the time we know what we're supposed to do, we just have trouble doing it. 290 00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:48.320 Like you know what you need to do to get a six pack. You know what you need to do to build muscle. 291 00:26:48.320 --> 00:26:52.400 People already know this. Like you don't need to know anything about training to do that. You're just 292 00:26:52.960 --> 00:26:58.080 stop eating crap, maybe eat some protein, right, and add more weight to the bar over an extended 293 00:26:58.080 --> 00:27:05.840 period of time. That's it. That's all it is. You know that already. And yet you haven't begun 294 00:27:07.840 --> 00:27:14.880 because you haven't really tried. Like it's hilarious to me. It's apparently rarer 295 00:27:14.880 --> 00:27:20.880 to have a six pack above age like 30 than it is to be a millionaire. They think about crazy it is. 296 00:27:21.840 --> 00:27:25.280 And don't cite the sources I have. I'm like I heard that and I believe it. 297 00:27:26.560 --> 00:27:30.960 But because like think about it's whatever 9% of Americans have a net worth of a million dollars 298 00:27:30.960 --> 00:27:36.560 surprising, right? 9% of Americans certainly don't have a six pack. And so it's like it's 299 00:27:37.600 --> 00:27:46.000 rarer to have a six pack and be a millionaire. And so I think about that. It's like we know what to do. 300 00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:51.280 It's just we're not willing to endure what it's required to get it. And we're not willing to 301 00:27:51.280 --> 00:27:56.720 reframe that pain is the price of the thing we want and to give our pain meaning. And so fortunately 302 00:27:56.720 --> 00:28:01.680 or unfortunately, you know humans, we live in a competitive environment. We seek status because of 303 00:28:01.680 --> 00:28:07.520 you know evolutionary back, you know, back, back drops, right? And so how do you beat other people, 304 00:28:07.520 --> 00:28:11.360 right? And I want to be clear. I don't really think you need to beat anybody, right? If you just 305 00:28:11.360 --> 00:28:15.120 beat you every day, you'll beat everybody to buy the fault. And I think that you'll get to the end 306 00:28:15.120 --> 00:28:20.400 of the race and realize no one else is really racing anyways. But the main main is that 307 00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:26.960 you need to get out of I had to actually conversation with somebody on my team this morning. 308 00:28:26.960 --> 00:28:31.200 They're saying they want to do this training for the department that they're in and they wanted 309 00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:35.520 to talk about running on clean energy versus dark energy. And I was like, what does that mean? 310 00:28:36.160 --> 00:28:40.000 He's like, you know, you know, clean energy is like you're going towards something. Dark energy 311 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:45.440 is like you're running away from something. And I thought, I think there's a really good and noble 312 00:28:45.440 --> 00:28:53.120 idea. The problem is no one's going to know what to do with that. Because what it really meant was 313 00:28:53.120 --> 00:28:58.400 if you guys do your jobs using, quote, clean energy or knowing when to use, quote, dark energy, 314 00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:05.040 you will be more effective. Okay, fine. Now we have conditions for behavior. And so I asked him, 315 00:29:05.040 --> 00:29:09.520 I said, if you want this train to be significant, more effective, then you do two things. Number one 316 00:29:09.520 --> 00:29:13.760 is define what having clean energy looks like. How do I observe someone who has clean energy? 317 00:29:13.760 --> 00:29:16.400 What do they do? Do they talk differently? Do they ask different questions? They have different 318 00:29:16.400 --> 00:29:20.480 cadence, right? And to the same degree, what do I, how do I, you know, having dark energy? 319 00:29:20.480 --> 00:29:25.840 Then you ask more times, you know, you push back more often, like let's define this in terms of 320 00:29:25.840 --> 00:29:29.520 behavior. And then what we'll probably find is that there's no such thing as cleaner dark energy. 321 00:29:29.520 --> 00:29:33.200 There's only behaviors that under certain conditions increase the likelihood of a positive outcome 322 00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:39.360 or a desired outcome. And so then we have, okay, in these conditions, do this. And in other 323 00:29:39.360 --> 00:29:43.280 conditions, do that. And so that we can get away from these amorphous terms. And the reason I'm 324 00:29:43.280 --> 00:29:47.600 bringing this up is that we have to define everything in terms of actions that you're going to take. 325 00:29:48.560 --> 00:29:53.600 Sadness comes from a perceived lack of options, which is why it feels like hopelessness. 326 00:29:54.320 --> 00:30:00.000 Anxiety comes from many options. Anxiety comes from many options, but a lack of priorities, 327 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:05.840 which is why it feels like paralysis. So looking everywhere, but moving nowhere. And so you 328 00:30:05.840 --> 00:30:13.920 solve sadness with knowledge and anxiety with the decision. And so the goal from here is to see the 329 00:30:13.920 --> 00:30:21.840 path that's available to you. And you have to do that by learning. Once you have a path, if you 330 00:30:21.840 --> 00:30:28.320 have too many paths, then you have to start cutting paths off. So you can say, this is where I'm going. 331 00:30:28.400 --> 00:30:33.360 And then I have no more anxiety around this. So if you don't know what to do, the answer is 332 00:30:33.360 --> 00:30:38.800 to learn. If you know what to do, the answer is to do it. And if you're already doing it, the 333 00:30:38.800 --> 00:30:45.520 answer is to never stop. And what I will reinforce here is that none of those three actions that I 334 00:30:45.520 --> 00:30:51.360 just defined have anything to do about how you feel today or in this moment. And so I want to be 335 00:30:51.360 --> 00:30:57.680 very clear. People think that I'm this unemotional or or zero-affect person. It's not true at all. 336 00:30:57.680 --> 00:31:07.920 Of course, I feel things. The difference is so what? Like I can feel terrible and still do the 337 00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:13.600 acts that increase the likelihood of success. And so it's not trying to negate the fact that you 338 00:31:13.600 --> 00:31:19.440 have emotions or that you have bad feelings. It's about continuing on the path one step in front 339 00:31:19.440 --> 00:31:25.760 of the other despite that. And I think that the more you learn that your actions do not need to be 340 00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:32.240 equated to how you feel, the more these feelings can just be in the backdrop. And ultimately they 341 00:31:32.240 --> 00:31:37.200 make you resilient. So let me show you what resilience looks like. I give you a little picture here. 342 00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:38.800 So let me show you what resilience looks like. 343 00:31:47.760 --> 00:31:48.800 Which one's resilient? 344 00:31:49.520 --> 00:31:57.040 This one. Why? Because you return to baseline behavior faster. 345 00:32:01.280 --> 00:32:07.120 Now toughness is a different thing, which is how much does it take before I have this decrease? 346 00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:14.960 And then there's a third vector, which I'll find the word for it. But when you do have the 347 00:32:15.040 --> 00:32:26.400 decrease, how low do you go? And so to me, the ideal scene is that. And the thing is is that all 348 00:32:26.400 --> 00:32:30.480 of these things are happening throughout this whole period. And the other people in your lives 349 00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:35.040 are doing this, right? Or they're just doing low and they just never recover, which we've all 350 00:32:35.040 --> 00:32:40.160 met those people. And so if you want to become resilient, what are the actions that you take? 351 00:32:40.800 --> 00:32:46.240 You say, okay, this occurred. How long will it take me for my behavior to return to baseline? 352 00:32:48.480 --> 00:32:51.920 And if my behavior never changes, did it bother me to begin with? 353 00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:58.880 And maybe it might have bothered you, but it didn't matter because it never changed your behavior. 354 00:32:59.760 --> 00:33:03.760 And so one of the things that will set you apart is the ability to move forward despite how you 355 00:33:03.760 --> 00:33:09.120 feel, right? And so this is, you know, Layla's classic, her most known quote, which is a 356 00:33:09.120 --> 00:33:13.200 fucking mood follow the plan. And I would say like a lot of you guys don't know Layla that well. 357 00:33:14.480 --> 00:33:21.360 Layla is one of the most mentally resilient people that I've ever met. And she pulled herself out 358 00:33:21.360 --> 00:33:27.920 of a deeper hole than I ever did. She started from a poor family. She had a worse home situation. 359 00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:33.280 She had a worse person. She had, you know, she got arrested six times before she was 18 or 19. 360 00:33:33.840 --> 00:33:38.800 Like she, she has worked on her more than any person that I know, not to say that it's not more 361 00:33:38.800 --> 00:33:42.240 than any personal existence. Of course, I have no idea. But if the people that I've met, 362 00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:45.920 she has done the most active work. And I've learned a lot from her. 363 00:33:46.800 --> 00:33:50.240 And so let's imagine we're going through this, right? So you've learned the greatest skill 364 00:33:50.240 --> 00:33:54.720 of reframing. You've redefined pain in a new way so that actually could be progress for you. 365 00:33:54.720 --> 00:34:00.240 We're willing to endure and take actions that other people aren't willing to take so that we 366 00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:04.480 realized that they were never in the race to begin with. And it's all about us anyways. And so what's 367 00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:08.480 the, what's the, what's the fourth thing, right? So the fourth is that you zoom out and you keep 368 00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:16.000 going, right? You will die months later. No one will care. And so why care about what they think so 369 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:22.800 much when they care so little about what you do? Like take the risk, right? Shake off the losses. 370 00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:28.000 Shake them off. Right? Because in the end, you live for the story only you can tell 371 00:34:28.720 --> 00:34:34.080 to the only person who was there with you the entire time, which is you. And so you might as well 372 00:34:34.080 --> 00:34:38.480 make it epic because you're the, you're literally the story writer and the story listener, 373 00:34:38.480 --> 00:34:44.160 the story consumer. Literally everyone else on it like we, we, we die alone. We, we, we were born 374 00:34:44.160 --> 00:34:50.880 alone. We're born alone and we die alone. And so even if other people captured your entire life, 375 00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:55.600 they still don't know what was going on in your head. They don't know your intentions. 376 00:34:55.600 --> 00:35:00.400 They don't know what you were thinking through every given moment. Only you do that. And so that's 377 00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:07.040 why being able to over time, in my opinion, be the, the judge jury execution of your own faith 378 00:35:07.040 --> 00:35:11.680 and your own judgment is one of the most valuable things you could do because you're the only person 379 00:35:11.680 --> 00:35:17.920 who can say, good job because you might win in some circumstances and not have tried to me. 380 00:35:17.920 --> 00:35:22.480 That's a loss because you know you could have let you could have put more in. You could have, 381 00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:26.000 you didn't, you didn't empty the tank, right? You left some on the field and to the other degree, 382 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:31.280 the other extreme, if you follow a logical thought path and you did, you moved mountains to try 383 00:35:31.280 --> 00:35:35.520 and accomplish something. And if you actually had exhausted every possible path that you could think of, 384 00:35:35.520 --> 00:35:42.080 truly beyond cost that were not worth the price of whatever you were trying to get, 385 00:35:42.080 --> 00:35:46.560 you exhausted all of the paths that were worth it and you don't get it. Other people may have said 386 00:35:46.560 --> 00:35:52.560 that you lost, but you know that there's, there's nothing else you could have done. And so you can 387 00:35:52.560 --> 00:35:57.920 still say, good job because of the effort that you chose to put in. And so I have a few frameworks 388 00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:03.600 for zooming out that I think may help you. So one of my favorites is the frame of the veteran, 389 00:36:03.600 --> 00:36:08.320 which is, okay, something bad happens. If it happened a thousand times in a row, 390 00:36:09.120 --> 00:36:12.960 how would I feel about it the thousandth time? Well, I'd probably be like, well, that's just how things 391 00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:17.760 are and it would no longer bother me. And so if it no longer bothers me then, then it means it's a 392 00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:20.960 choice for it to bother me now. So might as well choose not to have it bother me today. 393 00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:29.520 The second frame is cosmic relevance, right? Which is basically zooming out so far that you realize that 394 00:36:29.520 --> 00:36:33.520 we're just a tiny little marble in a galaxy and you know humans have only been alive for this 395 00:36:33.520 --> 00:36:37.760 tiny sliver of time throughout the billions of years. And the likelihood that your boss saying 396 00:36:37.760 --> 00:36:42.560 something mean or some person on the internet saying something snide or someone making a video 397 00:36:42.560 --> 00:36:48.240 just hating on you, right? Or some parents not approving of your current life path. 398 00:36:49.920 --> 00:36:59.520 Or somebody trying to discredit you for not being legit does not matter. And so the third one, 399 00:36:59.520 --> 00:37:05.600 this is a really good one for gratitude is all considered the grandfather frame, which is basically 400 00:37:06.560 --> 00:37:12.080 you zoom all the way to the to the future. You're 85 years old. So you're old man, right? And you've 401 00:37:12.080 --> 00:37:16.720 been, you know, your pain, everything hurts. You don't have the energy used to, you're slashing over. 402 00:37:16.720 --> 00:37:23.120 And you're, you know, you're counting down your days, right? And then you imagine yourself waking up 403 00:37:23.120 --> 00:37:27.440 in whatever age body you have right now. And you turn to your, you know, you're right to your left 404 00:37:27.440 --> 00:37:31.120 and you see your wife and you're like, man, she's so young. I couldn't, can't believe she's so young 405 00:37:31.200 --> 00:37:35.200 right now, right? You look out the window and you're like, oh, man, this is before they 406 00:37:35.200 --> 00:37:39.840 debelt this whole area and we hold these sky sky, you know, sky, sky rises, sky rises, 407 00:37:39.840 --> 00:37:43.840 how does sky, skyscrapers, high rises, there we go, for eight, all these high rises. 408 00:37:45.200 --> 00:37:50.080 And then you like, you get out of bed and you're like, oh, man, like, I'm not in pain, you know, 409 00:37:50.080 --> 00:37:54.560 and you wake up and you're like, you know, I don't feel like foggy. I feel like my memory sharp. 410 00:37:54.560 --> 00:37:58.800 I'm like, I'm acute. I know what I'm going to do. And you're like, wow, this is amazing. 411 00:37:58.800 --> 00:38:02.560 And the thing is, there's like nothing good has even happened yet, right? But the thing is 412 00:38:02.560 --> 00:38:07.120 is because life just gets so much harder as you get older. You can imagine how, like, gratitude comes 413 00:38:07.120 --> 00:38:12.240 from imagining a terrible thing and then removing that thing that was terrible. That is gratitude. 414 00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:16.640 Like, how do you operation like gratitude? Imagine something terrible. And then remember that 415 00:38:16.640 --> 00:38:21.040 that terrible thing has not occurred. That's gratitude. Like, we were like, oh, man, I'm so 416 00:38:21.040 --> 00:38:23.600 grateful for my health. How do you get grateful for your health? Imagine that you have cancer and 417 00:38:23.600 --> 00:38:26.240 then you're about to die and then realize that you don't have cancer and then you're like, wow, 418 00:38:26.240 --> 00:38:30.160 I'm grateful that I'm of cancer. But you have to put that thing in there. You have to imagine 419 00:38:30.160 --> 00:38:35.760 that terrible thing. You have to go all the way there. And so I'll tell you something that happened 420 00:38:35.760 --> 00:38:43.040 recently. Laila had a doctor's appointment for something and I was, I was corresponding with 421 00:38:43.040 --> 00:38:50.160 our EAs and I said, you know, how's everything going? And my EA responded. She has cancer. 422 00:38:51.040 --> 00:38:59.040 And I was like, okay, got it. This is reality now. And then I obviously, I'm texting back like, 423 00:38:59.040 --> 00:39:03.200 you know, what kind? What's going on? Like, do I need to be there? You know, what's up? And then 424 00:39:03.200 --> 00:39:08.080 she was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I meant the person who was the front desk, the reason they 425 00:39:08.080 --> 00:39:18.000 messed something up was because she had cancer, not Laila. And I was like, got it. And so what ended 426 00:39:18.080 --> 00:39:22.160 up happening was that Laila ended up having, you know, something that she was dealing with and they 427 00:39:22.160 --> 00:39:28.320 figured out what it was. So it wasn't good news. But what had framed that bad news was that she was 428 00:39:28.320 --> 00:39:33.680 potentially on her deathbed. And so for me, I was just incredibly grateful that she didn't have 429 00:39:33.680 --> 00:39:39.520 cancer. And so it just gave me this really wonderful, for him, by accident of like, it could be worse. 430 00:39:39.920 --> 00:39:49.520 And so like, you're not dead. And so if you're like, the fact that you're alive is living proof 431 00:39:49.520 --> 00:39:56.560 that you can endure it. And the day that something kills you, you won't have to anymore. And so your 432 00:39:56.560 --> 00:40:03.360 life every day exists as evidence that you can handle everything that has come your way. And I 433 00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:08.320 think that if you've ever had any need for evidence, let that be the greatest evidence of all. 434 00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:15.040 And so when I need advice, because I'll be real with you, like everybody here, you know, 435 00:40:15.040 --> 00:40:19.120 everybody's listening to this, like being honest with, you know, honest as they were being vulnerable, 436 00:40:19.120 --> 00:40:24.160 right? You know, with other people is tough. And there's, I think there's some reasonable reasons 437 00:40:24.160 --> 00:40:28.000 why one is like, you don't want to be a burden to somebody else, right? Number two is like, 438 00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:31.600 you don't want to be that person who is just like emotionally dumps and others like that's not good, 439 00:40:31.600 --> 00:40:36.560 right? And at the same time, like if you're going through hard stuff, especially if it's related 440 00:40:36.560 --> 00:40:40.800 to other people, people don't forget the hard thing that you're dealing with with somebody else. 441 00:40:40.800 --> 00:40:43.440 And so you might end up getting out of that and forgiving the person or whatever, 442 00:40:43.440 --> 00:40:47.280 but the person you tell will always remember, right? Then sometimes it's difficult to like, 443 00:40:47.280 --> 00:40:52.880 let's say you have an issue with your spouse, who do you tell? Right? Do you want to tell your homies? 444 00:40:52.880 --> 00:40:57.920 I don't know, that feels a little bit of a breach of kind of like the marital covenant. 445 00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:00.720 You're not going to tell your employees, right? You don't want to tell your family, 446 00:41:00.720 --> 00:41:04.560 because then they're going to start, they're going to see your husband or your wife differently, 447 00:41:04.560 --> 00:41:08.080 right? So who do you tell? Because you can tell therapists, but maybe you don't want to do 448 00:41:08.080 --> 00:41:12.000 therapy because you don't like it, right? So who do you tell? Who do you get advice from? 449 00:41:12.720 --> 00:41:19.120 And so I'll give you who I think about this. And unfortunately, the more status you accrue, 450 00:41:19.840 --> 00:41:25.120 the more valuable dirt on you is. And so if you're going through a hard time, 451 00:41:25.120 --> 00:41:30.240 the more people will want to gain that information to use it to their own advantage. 452 00:41:31.200 --> 00:41:39.280 And so it actually makes it even lonelier. And so I use Solomon, right? 453 00:41:39.280 --> 00:41:46.480 of Solomon frame, as my way of getting the therapy that I think is helpful. 454 00:41:47.520 --> 00:41:51.120 And so the reason I call it Solomon is because there's thing called the Solomon Paradox, 455 00:41:51.120 --> 00:41:56.240 which is there's a human tendency to be better at offering wise advice to others. 456 00:41:56.240 --> 00:42:00.720 Then it is applied, then it is to apply that same wisdom to our own situation or own lives. 457 00:42:01.840 --> 00:42:04.960 And so they called the Solomon Paradox because Solomon was this big wise guy, 458 00:42:04.960 --> 00:42:08.400 but he actually, his life was a bit of a mess. And so it's almost like 459 00:42:09.520 --> 00:42:13.520 Merlin could see the future for everyone except for himself, right? And so 460 00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:20.080 the way that I use this is I think I want to imagine talking to my 85-year-old, 461 00:42:20.080 --> 00:42:27.040 incredibly wise self or at least wiser than I am now. And I ask him what he thinks I should do. 462 00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:31.840 And what's weird is it takes you out of your current frame and puts you in this other frame, 463 00:42:31.840 --> 00:42:38.000 and you become more objective about your current situation. And so I actually had a little, 464 00:42:38.880 --> 00:42:44.640 you know, I had a conversation with a business owner who is out here in Vegas at one of our 465 00:42:45.600 --> 00:42:53.440 advisory practice events. And she said, I've got all these businesses. It's not really 466 00:42:53.440 --> 00:42:58.240 sure what I should do. And so she happened to have like a business academy as one of her businesses. 467 00:42:58.800 --> 00:43:03.120 And I said, let me reverse the tables on you. I said, let me pretend to be a business owner. 468 00:43:03.120 --> 00:43:06.560 And I'm going to say back to you everything you just said. What do you think you should do? She's 469 00:43:06.560 --> 00:43:09.600 like, well, yeah, I mean, it's obvious when you think about it like that. And I'm like, right, 470 00:43:09.600 --> 00:43:14.560 it's obvious. And so it's only difficult for us because our judgment is clouded by our emotions 471 00:43:14.560 --> 00:43:19.920 because we have emotional context. We have emotional ties to the people or the situations or 472 00:43:19.920 --> 00:43:26.720 the investments, but you can be like more logical decision making is a good thing. And so by pulling out 473 00:43:26.720 --> 00:43:31.520 and thinking about your 85 year old self, you're able to be less emotional about the current situation 474 00:43:31.520 --> 00:43:36.560 without sacrificing any kind of confidentiality because it's still you talking to you. You don't have 475 00:43:36.560 --> 00:43:42.000 to waste any time giving context or and let's be real. If you know how to persuade people, 476 00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:48.640 you can jade your data that you give to somebody else so that they give you the answer that you want 477 00:43:49.440 --> 00:43:53.600 rather than getting them the whole picture, which you might be embarrassed to share. And so in my 478 00:43:53.600 --> 00:43:57.440 opinion, this framework of having these conversations and to be fair, I don't do it all the time. 479 00:43:57.440 --> 00:44:01.200 I do what I need it. If I'm like, man, I got to work through this. I just have this little chat 480 00:44:01.200 --> 00:44:06.160 that I open up and I just start writing through like a DM to me in the future. And I literally just 481 00:44:06.560 --> 00:44:12.640 enter space, enter space. That includes me mocking my younger self, which I do frequently, 482 00:44:12.640 --> 00:44:18.000 or at least my 85 year old self does such a dick. Anyways. And so in my opinion, it has been more 483 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:22.320 helpful than therapy because you have all the context, right? And so this is how it makes 484 00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:27.120 significantly better choices when I feel like I have emotionality that could be affecting me. 485 00:44:27.120 --> 00:44:34.560 And so to do a call back to the clean and dark energy thing, there's a lot of judgment online 486 00:44:35.440 --> 00:44:42.160 about how people choose to work. What fuels them? Which fundamentally, is it reward or punishment? 487 00:44:42.160 --> 00:44:46.560 Are they are they going away from a diverse stimulus towards a positive one? 488 00:44:47.920 --> 00:44:54.720 The answer in my opinion doesn't matter. And what I mean by that is I think the first rule 489 00:44:54.720 --> 00:45:00.720 of entrepreneurship is use what you have because that's not going to change. Today you have what 490 00:45:00.720 --> 00:45:04.880 you have. And so there's the only resources you have available to you. And so you must become more 491 00:45:04.880 --> 00:45:12.960 resourceful. And that means that if you have shame and people tell you shame is bad, in what world 492 00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:19.600 could shame be good? If the shame you have creates this amazingly positive thing in your life, 493 00:45:20.160 --> 00:45:25.840 was it bad? If you know, your dad not hugging you enough, 494 00:45:26.800 --> 00:45:31.840 created the catalyst for you to go to the gym and live 20 years longer because you work out regularly, 495 00:45:31.840 --> 00:45:42.160 was it bad? Do we need to label it at all? All we know is that it happened. And so what? 496 00:45:43.360 --> 00:45:47.360 And so the thing is that there are these actions that increase the likelihood that you get what you want. 497 00:45:48.080 --> 00:45:52.560 Whether you do them because you had some negative thing or because you're going towards 498 00:45:52.560 --> 00:45:57.600 some positive thing, I think for the vast majority of people is narrative. They only they create 499 00:45:57.600 --> 00:46:04.160 the story because if I told if I said, hey, why did you do this thing? We are trained to give an answer. 500 00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:09.200 But that answer may have zero grounding in the truth, not because you live, but because you have no 501 00:46:09.200 --> 00:46:13.360 idea because most people don't know why they do what they do. They just do it and then they 502 00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:19.040 ascribe a reason afterwards. And so we know that it's mostly BS and you're not going to have a 503 00:46:19.040 --> 00:46:23.840 double-blind, you know, controlled placebo study on your life to be able to determine what the 504 00:46:23.840 --> 00:46:28.400 true root cause of was this the dependent variable? If you're not going to be able to do that anyways, 505 00:46:29.040 --> 00:46:36.240 who cares? Use whatever you've got to get whatever you want. That's all I'll give you a behavioral 506 00:46:36.240 --> 00:46:40.160 thing for this is like you might be going through something difficult or hard season or bad day or 507 00:46:40.160 --> 00:46:44.800 bad moment, right? And I've heard this saying and it drives me absolutely bananas, which is that bad 508 00:46:44.880 --> 00:46:50.880 things come in threes. Anyone heard this? Right? I so hardly disagree, but I will explain why I believe 509 00:46:50.880 --> 00:46:56.480 that saying is the same. Bad things do not come in threes. Bad things occur. People do not know how to 510 00:46:56.480 --> 00:47:02.160 cope. They allow one bad thing to snowball into more bad things. And bad stuff sucks. And the only 511 00:47:02.160 --> 00:47:08.160 thing worse than letting one bad thing be a bad thing is to let one bad thing ruin many good things. 512 00:47:08.160 --> 00:47:12.560 And so if you think about a bad thing as a cancer, it's like, well, we want to isolate that 513 00:47:12.560 --> 00:47:17.200 cancer as fast as possible and not let that cancer of you losing your job affect your marriage. 514 00:47:17.200 --> 00:47:21.360 And then let you affect your marriage affect how you're a parent and let you know how you're a 515 00:47:21.360 --> 00:47:29.120 parent affect affect how you are going to pursue this new endeavor, right? And so people just 516 00:47:29.120 --> 00:47:36.080 basically give themselves an excuse for misbehaving. I had a bad day. Therefore, I now have a 517 00:47:36.080 --> 00:47:39.840 legitimate excuse for being a bad husband or not being nice to my wife. They use it as an 518 00:47:39.840 --> 00:47:46.240 excuse to not exercise self control. And that is when things snowball. And so this is why 519 00:47:46.240 --> 00:47:51.520 resilience is so important. Can something bad happen? And I recover before I talk to somebody else. 520 00:47:52.560 --> 00:47:57.600 When things get bad, it looks like this. Something bad happens. Something else bad happens. 521 00:47:57.600 --> 00:48:02.480 Something else bad happens and it keeps going down until eventually everyone in your life that 522 00:48:02.480 --> 00:48:07.280 is good has removed themselves and then you slowly recover or you don't recover at all. And you've 523 00:48:07.280 --> 00:48:12.000 seen these people. He lost his job. He gained weight and man, he's just never been the same. 524 00:48:12.000 --> 00:48:18.320 Pull your head out of your ass. And so there's this Buddhist parable. I've been actually looking 525 00:48:18.320 --> 00:48:22.720 a lot more into Buddhism lately, weirdly enough. And so the Buddha asked one of his students, 526 00:48:22.720 --> 00:48:28.320 if a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful? The student nods yes. And then the Buddha asks, 527 00:48:28.960 --> 00:48:33.360 if a person struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful? The student nods again. He's 528 00:48:33.360 --> 00:48:38.320 like, yeah, it is. Then Buddha explains in life, we cannot always control the first arrow. 529 00:48:38.320 --> 00:48:43.040 However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional. 530 00:48:43.760 --> 00:48:50.160 And so a lot of suffering that we incur, like Mark Twain, right, said earlier, like, is optional. 531 00:48:50.160 --> 00:48:55.200 It mostly happens in our own mind to things that never actually occur in reality. And so a useful 532 00:48:55.200 --> 00:48:58.800 frame has been like, if it has not occurred yet, I will not worry about it. Because the thing is, 533 00:48:59.120 --> 00:49:03.840 I used to really obsess about planning out contingencies. And I still sometimes have this tendency. 534 00:49:04.400 --> 00:49:06.960 But if you're like, I'm going to play out this. I'm going to play this out. I'll play this out. I'll 535 00:49:06.960 --> 00:49:09.840 play this out. We're all these different, all these different scenarios in a negative frame. I'm 536 00:49:09.840 --> 00:49:15.680 not saying planning's bad. But I'm saying, ruminating on negative, you know, potential futures can be 537 00:49:15.680 --> 00:49:20.720 negative. By the time something like that happens, number one, it will not happen in the way that I 538 00:49:20.720 --> 00:49:25.280 imagined. It almost never does. Number two, I will have different resources available to me at that 539 00:49:25.280 --> 00:49:30.240 time versus what I have today. And so the path will become immediately obvious and apparent to 540 00:49:30.240 --> 00:49:34.880 me when that occurs. And if we're really honest about it, most serious thinking doesn't require 541 00:49:34.880 --> 00:49:41.600 that much time. But worrying can take all day and all night. With all that being said, sometimes 542 00:49:41.600 --> 00:49:46.800 you have to give yourself a little bit of grace. Because in some seasons of life, maintaining is 543 00:49:46.800 --> 00:49:57.120 winning. Just not losing ground is the W. And so you're not having a bad year. You had a few bad 544 00:49:57.120 --> 00:50:02.160 days that you're thinking about for the rest of the year. And so this has been something that I've 545 00:50:02.160 --> 00:50:06.720 been really visiting a lot, which is like, we tried it. We think about our, you know, our lives like 546 00:50:06.720 --> 00:50:12.640 this and say, this was bad, right? All of this was bad. But the thing is is that these types of labels 547 00:50:12.640 --> 00:50:17.120 only happen in the abstract when zoomed all the way out. And so the flip side is when we're making 548 00:50:17.120 --> 00:50:22.880 our judgments, we want to zoom in. Because when we look at this line, our days were like this. 549 00:50:24.800 --> 00:50:30.080 And so I might have had a bad moment or another bad moment. And so I can just say, I had these two 550 00:50:30.080 --> 00:50:38.240 bad moments, but I had plenty of good times. And so by percentage, I had 85% good. And I had 15% 551 00:50:38.320 --> 00:50:43.760 bad. So all in all, not a bad year. And the reason I think this is so important, or any time I 552 00:50:43.760 --> 00:50:50.320 started, which is the single greatest skill that you can develop for whatever goal that you're 553 00:50:50.320 --> 00:50:56.080 trying to achieve in life is the ability to stay in a great mood in the absence of things to 554 00:50:56.080 --> 00:51:02.400 be in a great mood about. I hope this helped.