Ep 402 | 9 Things I Stopped Doing to Increase My Success

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. Keeping up with the theme, I think, from, uh, just yesterday's episode where I was talking about, you know, this helpful inefficiency, these places where being inefficient versus efficient actually benefits you. Keeping up with that theme, today I actually wanna talk around the things that I personally, the 9 things that I personally had to stop doing in order to increase my level of success, my success in business, in health, in life, all areas. Now, I am not where I ultimately want to be just yet. So, to be clear, I am very much a work in progress. However, over the past couple decades, I have really put a concerted effort into improving my game, just improving the level or increasing the level of success. So, that being said, there are a handful of things that I had to stop doing. Now, our tendency here at No Days Off and just in, you know, the world in general is to look at things we need to start doing or things that we're currently doing but could tweak. Today's a little bit different approach though. I want to talk about the things that I personally had to stop doing. Okay, so let's run through these 9 things and maybe it gets you thinking around maybe like things that you should stop doing, or maybe it prompts you to think about other things that don't show up on my list but are— but in fact show up on yours. So, In no exact order, right, I'm going to list these 9, but their order of importance I have not assessed, right? I think I'm treating all of these things fairly equally. Okay, number 1, in order to increase my success over the past couple decades, one thing I had to stop doing, I had to stop listening to my neighbor. I know that sounds funny, and I don't mean I did not literally stop listening to my neighbor. What I'm really saying here is we have a tendency, all of us, we have a tendency to listen to the either the loudest voice within our world or maybe a person that's of close proximity to us. However, we should really stop listening to that individual and instead start listening to those that are truly the experts. I'll give you an example, and this is why I say stop listening to your neighbor. For a lot of people, when they think about building wealth, what do they do? Well, they look around and they say, gosh, who's the wealthiest person I know? And maybe it's their neighbor, and their neighbor drives a nicer car, has a slightly bigger house. And so we default to thinking, well, maybe that's the guy, maybe that's the girl that can give me some guidance. And while I'm not anti-that per se— well, I kind of am, but it's not that there's not valuable information coming from them. Why listen to your neighbor when there are more books written about Warren Buffett than Alexander the Great? In other words, we can pick up a book, a podcast, every single day there is something that is published about the greatest investment mind of our time and maybe ever. If you're going to learn, stop listening to your neighbor and start listening to the expert. And this applies in all sorts of places. Don't listen to your neighbor about how to necessarily be healthy. Follow a guru, someone that is in fact a world-renowned expert. In business, same sort of thing. Yeah, it's great to converse with people doing like things, but you need to start listening to, in my opinion, stop listening to your peer or your neighbor and start listening to the people that have already done what it is you in fact aim to do. Number 1, stop listening to your neighbor. Number 2, for me over the past 20 years, stop sleeping in. Now, I've never really been one to sleep in. So, my definition of sleeping in might be a little bit different than yours. But stop sleeping in, for me, that meant get up earlier. There is a very special magical time before the rest of the world wakes up, where you are just highly productive in your personal world or even in business, whatever it may be. For me, when I started waking up at 5:00 AM or 5:15 or 5:30 and could get an hour and a half of whatever it is done, accomplished before the rest of the world wakes, I found it to propel my level of success. That power hour or so was just so significant. So, stop sleeping in. If you aspire to have great success, start getting up a little bit earlier than everybody else and watch, just watch what you can accomplish during that, those early moments. So, number 2, stop sleeping in. Number 3, for me, stop worrying. Stop worrying. That's a pretty direct, blunt statement. Here's the reality though. As I've matured, as I've gone through business, as I've gone through life, I've found that worrying is complete waste of time. I mean, it is just a complete waste. Why am I worrying? So many things in my life that seemed insurmountable or concerning in the moment, when you look back, you realize, Eh, it wasn't that big of a deal. That wasn't that bad. Why was I so worked up over that? So for me, over the past couple decades, I had to build this muscle to essentially stop worrying, like stop stressing about things. It's going to shake out one way or the other. And for me, that was very freeing in terms of just my mental capacity, my mindset. So, number 3, stop worrying. Number 4, big one, stop saying yes to things that you really don't want to do. Stop saying yes to things that you don't want to do. Now, this one kind of seems obvious, but the reality is, I'm going to guess, like me over the, you know, like me, you probably have had this struggle from time to time. Especially early in my career, where I would have a degree of FOMO. Or where I didn't necessarily have a degree of FOMO but didn't want to disappoint someone or something, I would say yes, but I would regret saying yes. And therefore, whatever, you know, when I would participate, my energy would not be where it needs to be, my, my activity, my engagement would not be where it needs to be, and I was resentful or, or bitter about spending time there. Stop it. I had to stop saying yes to the things I really didn't want to do which really means start saying no. I found that in my life and in my career, I had more success and I had greater happiness when I started getting more comfortable saying no to a variety of things. And over the course of time, that muscle is built and it gets easier and easier. So stop saying yes to things you don't want to do. Number 5, Stop telling yourself you can't. Stop saying you can't. Now, again, this hasn't been one that's significantly impacted me. I mean, very fortunately, I was raised with this can-do mindset. I credit my parents for that. I credit my upbringing. I think many of you listening can relate. But there are times, like, there's internal chatter when you say something to yourself like, Man, I don't know if I can do that. I can't, I can't commit to that. I don't know if I can make that happen. There's no value in saying I can't. Instead, start saying I can, or how can I make this work? Right? Stop with the I can't. I remember, I don't know, maybe 7 years ago when my younger kid was 5 years old, I remember her hearing someone in my family say, "I can't." And she had picked up in kindergarten, you know, the teacher had taught that day that you should never say, "I can't." And she, my 5-year-old, yells out, "Oh, that hurts my ears." I guess that was what they were teaching in school. Like, when you hear the word, "I can't," you're supposed to say, "It's hurting my ears." And I found it so kind of cute. It was funny, but it stuck with me. It stuck with me. Whenever someone says, "I can't," oh, That hurts my ears. I can't, I don't want to hear that. But you got to think about it yourself too. So stop telling yourself you can't because you can, or you should at least fight trying, right? You should try. You should go, go as hard as you can. Number 6, stop thinking you'll do it tomorrow. This is a big one for me. Over the past couple decades, There are many a time where I've said to myself, "Ah, I'll take care of that later." In other words, what am I talking about? Procrastination. Stop thinking you'll do it tomorrow. I'm not necessarily saying it doesn't ultimately get done tomorrow, but there are things that we all know we need to prioritize and we need to stop kicking them out further. Stop thinking you'll do it tomorrow, and I'm referring to those big items. Get them done today. Save the day, the week, the month, the year, and go make it happen. Stop thinking you'll do it tomorrow and let's go make it happen today. Number 7, stop the comparison to others and worrying about what others think. This again is me talking to myself. Stop the comparison to others and worrying about what others think. We've had many a conversation here at No Days Off around this. One of my favorite phrases is less window and more mirror. Less looking out the window at everybody else and more looking in the mirror and figuring out how I can be better today, how I can get better tomorrow. It's you versus you. The competition is you versus you, me versus me, right? And that is the comparison. Comparing me to who I was just yesterday, that's a fair comparison. I'm not worried about everybody else, or I need to stop worrying about everyone else. That is 7. Number 8, stop conforming. Say it all the time, if you want to have success in this life and in your business, I think you got to be perceived as different. I think you got to be perceived as weird. And why do I say that? Because if you want different results, you got to be doing different things. And by definition, if you're doing different things, then you're considered weird. I would say start being weird. Stop conforming. Stop doing what everybody else is doing if you want different results. And then lastly, number 9, this is one I'm still working pretty hard on. So stop ignoring your key relationships. What am I referring to there? My key business relationships, I don't necessarily ignore those, but my key personal relationships I have ignored. And I'm aiming right now to stop that. Why? Well, because of all of the research around happiness. We've covered some of it here at No Days Off, where those that are happiest in life, they're the ones that have the greatest social, the strongest social bond, social connection. And for me, I've, I've intentionally ignored certain social or key relationships, personal relationships, because I've been so focused on these other things. And I don't necessarily regret that at all, but my effort right now to live a happier, fuller life is to stop ignoring the most important relationships and start pouring more into them. So, those are my 9 things that I think have worked for me in terms of things I had to stop in order to propel my success. The focusing question for you today, which of these 9 might you be dealing with as well? And what action steps can you take to stop doing what I'm describing and start doing the opposite? 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 after it.