Ep 341 | Matthew Dicks' 3 Truths

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today is going to be the last day that we dig into the Matthew Dix interview that I did just a few days ago, an episode we did last Monday. That if you haven't listened to it yet, make sure you go back and listen to the whole thing. It is the first time we've ever done a long— first time we've done an interview, let alone a long-form interview. And I spent an hour with, with an amazing author, an amazing storyteller, and we learned so much from him. In the past couple days, we've been going through some of those lessons, and there's so many more than what I've covered. Go back and listen. I think you'll pick out some of your own. Today though, I want to talk about that last question that I asked Matthew that day. And the question was actually something I borrowed from Lewis Howes, who many of you may know is, is a great entrepreneur and, and podcaster himself, and someone that I really, really look up to, specifically to his ability to facilitate interviews. And Lewis asked this great question of many of his guests. He calls it, he calls it his 3 truths. And in summary, I won't give you the whole question because it's kind of long, a long setup, but he basically says, imagine that all of the content, and I'm asking this of Matthew, right? Imagine all of your content, all of your books, all of your interviews, every blog you've written, anything you've ever put out to the world dies with you, you know, the day you leave this earth, except 3 lessons. We'll call it the 3 truths. I asked Matthew, what would be those 3 lessons or those 3 truths that you'd want this world to be left with? I think he gave a really great answer. I wanna run through these 3. Number 1, he said, the first one is that the bravest people in the world are the ones who are willing to be themselves, even when the world is rejecting who they are. What Matthew said was, it's essentially the idea that nonconformity is something that all of us probably have inside of us. But few of us rarely, really rarely exhibit in the world because we are constantly being pressured by the world to fit into a box that probably doesn't quite fit us. And that people, people should be inspired by the weirdos, the weirdos who are choosing to be themselves when the rest of us just think we're, you know, we may be weirdos. So he says, look for the weirdos and be inspired by the things they do. When they have the full knowledge that no one really wants them to be doing those things that they do. That would be his first lesson. Look for the weirdos. The bravest people in the world are the ones who are willing to be themselves. I'd like— I like this a ton. I like, I like the three, all three that he shared, but this one hit me because so many people talk about being different. So many people talk about being weird. I mean, the reality is, when I talk about the No Days Off movement, I say one of the keys to being successful is to get weird. Because if you want different results than everybody else around you, you got to do things different than everybody else around you, which by definition would mean that you're weird. And we talk about it, and we talk about it, and we talk about it. Matthew's point was, well, who actually does it? Like, so many talk, but who takes action? It's the bravest people in the world that are the ones who are willing to be themselves. It's really, really good. The second, the second one that he shared was that no one is paying attention to what you're doing to the, to the degree that you believe them to be paying attention to you. The sooner you could stop caring what other people think about you, the happier, the more productive, the more successful you're going to be. So his second thing was that no one really cares to the extent that you do. Nobody really cares to the extent that you do. No one is paying attention to what you do to the degree that you believe them to be paying attention to you. And the sooner you could stop caring, the better off you're going to be. He described this— it was kind of funny because he described it as a double-edged sword. Because he genuinely doesn't care what other people think. And he thinks there are times that, hey, maybe that bites him in the butt. Place— times when he walks into places and he doesn't care what anybody thinks about him, and he's tragically underdressed, is what he said. And that may not be helpful to him in the moment, but he doesn't care. He actually went further to say, sometimes when you walk in in jeans and a shirt and everybody else is wearing a tuxedo, Everyone's actually looking at you saying, man, that must be the guy. That must be the one who made it. But in general, you know what he was saying? He thinks in general, the less you care about what other people think of you, the better off you're going to be. He said that when he says that statement or makes that statement, actually what he said to me was, I think that people— this is his quote— he says, I think that people nod like you're nodding right now as they say that. 'cause when he was saying it, I was nodding. And he said he doesn't think that people actually believe it though. He says he thinks that they say that it sounds right, but they never really act as if it's true. And I think if you can find the capacity and the wisdom to believe it's true, you're gonna be a happier person. So lesson number 2 that he would put out to the world, stop caring, stop caring. And it's really hard in today's environment, given social media and all of society's pressures. He knows it's tricky, but he also knows that for him it's made for a much happier, healthier life. The last one that he shared, number 3, the third lesson, the third truth that he'd want to leave with the world if all of his content was erased, disappeared. His third piece was you should be optimistic at all times. He says he teaches it to his 5th grade students. He says there's optimists and there's pessimists, and anyone who calls himself a realist, they're just a pessimist in disguise. So there's no realists. What he points out to his kids, his students, is that we should choose optimism. If there's an event coming up and it's going to be good or bad, certain people, a certain amount of people are going to assume it's going to be bad. And they'll live the week— let's say the events at the end of the week— they'll live the week feeling like the moment that is coming is going to be bad, and it's going to make them, or put them, in a rather negative mindset. You're going to be worried about what's to come if you choose a pessimistic state of mind. He believes that's a waste of time. He said if you choose to be an optimist, then you get to live a blissful week. Right, he was actually talking about the election. He said, hey, if you choose to be pessimistic about the other candidate for 5 months and then they get elected, you've just robbed yourself of 5 months. Choose to be an optimist. I think he goes further to say, you know, we've survived nuclear weapons and the water, the world is not underwater yet. We're gonna be okay. Assume the best things are gonna happen. Just assume that things are going to turn out fine, and if it doesn't, deal with it at that moment, the moment it doesn't turn out fine. Don't deal with it prior to that moment. You're just wasting time. You're going to make yourself suffer more than you need to. And people do a lot of that. People do a lot of that. I asked him if he thought it was just a choice, like you just choose to be an optimist, or is there more to it than that? And he said, you know, I actually thought he was going to tell me it was a choice to be optimistic. And he said he doesn't think it's actually a choice. He says there's moments when I could find myself dipping into pessimism and starting to think it's not going to turn out well. Then he says to himself, actually, you know what, historically, see, things seem to work out okay. Things tend to work out okay. We did win World War II, was his quote. We haven't destroyed ourselves just yet. So there's a lot of great things that are happening right now. And then he ended up talking about, you know, 2020 and how we all thought the world was going to be over in terms of how we operated. And just 4 years later, that's not the case. So choose to be an optimist. I love these 3 lessons. I think there's something we could all learn from them. I think there's something we could take from all 3 of them. So the focusing question for you today, which of these lessons, if not all three, did you find relevant to your world? And how could you take action in applying what we learned from Matthew Dixon, his three truths, his three lessons today? That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get in.