November Freedom Fast Lane Platinum Hangout

Hey, everybody, this is Ryan Moran. Welcome to the November Freedom Fast Lane Platinum Hangout. And today, one of the things I want to be talking to you about is I want to be talking about success and growth. I read a book recently that really changed my paradigm as far as what it means to be successful and what it takes in order to be successful. And one thing that has really, by the way, that book is called the Slight Edge. Some of you have probably read it by Jeff Adams.

It touched on a concept that I had been kind of wrestling with for a little bit, and it was the difference between quantum leaps and just consistent steady growth. And basically the book argued that people who are really successful are successful as the result of taking seemingly invisible action on a regular basis and building that up over the long term until one day they get their break, if you will. Those little things that they've been doing culminate to the point where they reach critical mass. They reach their tipping point, and then you hit that point in which now it seems like they came out of nowhere and overnight they're a success. But that never happens. It doesn't happen. Yet. There is this perception in success circles, and especially among people that are really involved in the make money space or looking for financial freedom, is that there is one thing or there is one move or there is one strategy that results in a quantum leap from where you are to where you want to be, and then it happens quickly. But that isn't the case. There is no one strategy. There is no one aha thing. Now, there are plenty of strategies, and you probably know all of them already. If you've read any number of financial freedom books or books on success, you know that there's plenty of strategies out there to get from where you are to. To where you want to be. Sorry, I've got this itch right under my nose. So if I'm clawing in my face, that's why.

And any of those strategies work? Any of the strategies. Tangent time. One of my biggest pet peeves in the entire world is when people say, does this work? Does that diet work? Does that strategy work? How do I know that real estate investing really works? How do I know that Internet marketing really works? How do I know that stopping eating sugar works? It all works. Everything works. It's just a matter of do you follow the plan? And is it a fit for who you are and what your goals are? That's the only question. When people come to me and say, does such and such work? That just bothers the absolute heck of me. Because that implies that there is a leap. That implies that there is a jump in progress rather than steady growth. And the only true way to success is in patterns of steady growth. We can compare this to the stock market, where it's very rare that a stock just comes out of the gate and floors up to the top. Everybody would love that. If you had a magic ball that told you what that was going to be, that would be perfect, because we live in a world of quick fixes. But. But successful companies just grow steadily. They don't jump up to a new level. That very rarely happens. And it very rarely happens in life. Does it happen? Sure. And we often hear about them. So we have this perception that it happens regularly, but it doesn't.

It happens very rarely. Are you guys hearing my audio? Okay. Am I coming in? Okay.

Okay, cool.

So I bring this up, because this is a common misconception in our space, in our market, is that there are these jumps rather than this steady, consistent growth. But all that really exists is the steady growth, is the consistent patterns that take you from where you are now to where you ultimately want to be. And it's a trend. It is not an overnight thing. Now, we could talk about things like, there are strategies that work really well. For example, here's a quantum idea. If you have a product that converts really well and you can buy traffic to it or get all your buddies to promote it and it does really well, that's a quantum leap. But that quantum leap does not come until you have those relationships, that credibility, the ability to write, the type of copy and. And the content that backs up a really awesome product. Those are all things that come from consistent growth. So even those appearances of quantum leads don't come until there's been consistent growth. Laying the foundation for that. So what I want to do with our time today is I want to be going over three things that you can be doing on a regular basis that keep you continually growing. Because that's the only way to success, is to be continually growing. I like the Jim Rohn philosophy of the way that you earn more money is by becoming more valuable. Now, there are things you do. We could go on strike. You could wait for a raise. You could look for hacks. These are all ways. They're not very useful ways, though. There are strategies that people make. They're not very successful strategies. The one that works is to become more valuable and to consistently. Man, I need to buy a. Anybody have, like, an ebook that teaches me how to get my nose to stop itching, that would be good. The way that you become more valuable is by consistently growing. And that's how you increase your personal economy, as I call it. When your personal economy increases, you can demand more, more money from it and you're in control of that. I want to be going over three habits that you can get in the swing of doing on a regular basis. That I do that I practice and have had a big impact on me. The first one is consistently every day, reading something that feeds your mind. Every day. I have one mentor who suggests reading a book a day. I'm not there yet, but I read every day. It's usually before I go to bed because that's when I can carve out time for it to actually sit down and carve out a chunk of time in which I'm feeding my brain with something that is taking me to the place that I want to go. It may be a success book, it might be an investing book, it might be a marketing book, it might be a sales and persuasion book. Sometimes it's a health and wellness book, but something that feeds the goals that I have. I have fitness goals, I have financial goals, I have fun goals. The books that you're reading on a regular basis should serve that. One of the first questions I ask people when they're going through a difficult time is what are you reading? What are you consistently filling your brain with?

Audio works fine for this too. It goes for that as well. I had this moment where I was driving in my car recently and I was listening to a top hits station.

The lyrics and what's being fed through that channel was total garbage. Yet this is what we hear on a regular basis. No wonder people are unhappy, out of shape and broke because they're consistently feeding their brain with what the top 40 music is. I, I mean, that doesn't serve you. There has to be a. If you've got two cups, the cup of good, healthy food that goes into your brain has to outweigh the cup of junk. That the world is spinning at you on a constant basis from tabloids and radio, from junk television, from people who are telling you that you can't do it. That's all stuff that detracts from your mental energy. So that adds to your mental energy and increases your capacity for value is something that feeds you. It's taking lessons from people who have done it. It's learning from people who are at a different level than you. It's adapting their thoughts. It's being on calls like this. It's listening to people who are Feeding the goals that you have to take you there, rather than there's this conception that.

You can be the only one. I have friends who live in remote areas.

Who aren't surrounded by people. If they're not reading on a regular basis and surrounding themselves with the thought patterns that successful people have, they're going to be dragged down into the settings that they have. That's why it's a lot harder for somebody. Be someone to be successful in Alabama than it is in California. I know that's a stereotype. Forgive me. My point in bringing that up is. I mean, I'm talking about, like, my entrepreneur friends specifically, because those. There aren't as many groups of entrepreneurs in Alabama or North Dakota as there are in California. It'd be a lot easier and faster to walk into a place where there's a group of entrepreneurs and you can adapt their thought patterns and build that network. Which leads me into the second piece, the second habit, which is elevating your social status. I'm sorry? Elevating the group of friends that are around you.

Taking the group of friends that you hang out with and elevating the quality of people that you're hanging out with on a regular basis. You've probably heard the adage a thousand times that you're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. Or if you look at your phone and the five people that you called last or texted last, those are the people. You average them out, and that's pretty much your life. As far as fitness goes and financial goals go, you're pretty much the average of the people you spend the most time with because of the thought patterns that you pick up from them. If you're around a bunch of people who are overweight, you're more likely to eat cheese fries. If you're around a group of really, really healthy people, you're more likely to eat broccoli. You're more likely to go for that run because of what's normal. We all have a thermometer in our brain of what is acceptable and what's not acceptable. The thing that raises and lowers that thermometer is the expectations that we have on ourselves, and that is encouraged by the expectations that others have of us. The people that we surround ourselves with on a daily basis, change our internal thermometer as to what is acceptable for ourselves. So if you hang out with a bunch of people who earn $20,000 a year and you're earning 50, our brain only knows how to compare. So your thermometer May say, I'm doing pretty good. Whereas if you were making $50,000 and you're consistently hanging around with people who make $200,000 a year, all of a sudden.

That thermometer is adjusted and we say, hey, we need to kick on the heater here in order to get back up to what's acceptable, which, which is at a certain range comparatively to everyone else. Now, that can be a healthy thing if it pushes us towards the areas that we want to go. Where it can get unhealthy is if you are consistently comparing yourself to other people in order to get happiness, that's where it can be very dangerous.

I don't know if you guys can hear my dog, but.

There'S a result that happens when you're around people where your brain kicks in and says, either we got to turn on the heater or we got to cool things down. We got to bring things down to an acceptable level. And the way that you change that meter is by hanging out with people who are at that other level. Now, these are very similar, these first two. The hanging out with people and reading success books, they're very close. They're almost exactly the same. The hanging out with people in person is more effective because it's immersion. You get immersed in that person's thoughts, whereas reading, you're picking up on specific thoughts, you're picking up on specific thoughts that it's like doing isolation moves, it's like doing curls. You'll work your muscles faster, a specific muscle faster, but you won't work the overall body. Whereas hanging out with somebody is more like deadlifts. It's going to impact your whole body and it's going to work on you as a whole person is adapting the thoughts and philosophies of a person that you're with in person. So if you are in a place where it's hard for you to connect with entrepreneurs or successful people or people who are where you want to be fitness wise, relationally, whatever. If you're not hanging out with those people physically, then you need to up the amount of thought patterns that you pick up in print by reading audio, listening in your car, downloading podcasts. That's why I started the Freedom Fascinating podcast was so that we could have a consistent way to download the thought patterns of thought leaders on a regular basis. And it's been a great experience. And the growth that it's had has kind of. Has kind of reflected that. So reading, feeding your brain, elevating the social status of who you hang out with. Let me give you a couple ways that you can do that. First of all, wherever you are, there are probably meetups in your area for what your interests are, for what your goals are, whether it's fitness, financial, whatever. Meetup.com is a great resource for connecting with people who already have achieved what you want. And you can get plugged into those circles now. When you're around a group of people that are at that level, the temptation, at least among who I've been with, among the people that I have seen, is to ask the question, okay, what can I get out of this? That's the opposite question of what needs to be asked. It is the opposite question that really determines if you're successful and.

If you get the inroads to that networking group. The question you need to be asking is, what value can I contribute? What can I give to this community in order to benefit them? Because as a result, I will be more likely to be surrounded by those people on a consistent basis that will pull me towards where I want to be. People can smell this. If you have a taker mentality, you're a suck of energy. And the temptation is to go in and ask somebody, hey, can you give me this, this, and this? So we sometimes do it unnaturally, we do it unconsciously. A much more effective strategy is to say, hey, I really like what you're doing. Here's what I'm really good at. Is there any way that I could help you spread that message? Is there any way that I could help you achieve that goal? Because I would really like to benefit from learning from you as a result. I've offered to work for free for people before in order to pick up on their thought patterns. I've offered to. To do.

Just like volunteer work in their office in order to be around people that I knew would elevate my social game. And as a result.

It's an invaluable resource to be around people who have achieved what you want to achieve. I have a friend who talks about getting mentors and getting really, really successful mentors, and he says it's a process of persistently. Is that a word? Persistently. Consistently delivering for them so that they will invest in you.

And that's what it is, right? When you're hanging out with people who are at a different level, that's an investment that you're making into where you want to go.

So if you're not doing these two things.

There'S a reason why you're not getting the results that you want. Nobody has ever Achieved success as an island. Nobody has ever achieved success by not interacting with other people or learning from other people. You achieve success as a result of the community around you.

So you do that by adopting thought patterns from reading books.

And by elevating the quality of people that you hang out with. So look at the people you're hanging out with. That time, that time you spend with other people is an investment in some way. So every minute that you spend with that person, that detracts from your energy, that drains you, that's an investment. But it's an investment that is decreasing in value. Whereas if you're with people who uplift you, encourage you, and stretch you, that's an investment that has an upward trend. All the time that you spend is an investment in something. It's either fleeting and goes away or it's building something for the future. One of those two things. So invest that time wisely. Be very careful and selective over the people whose thoughts you let influence you. That's the first. And second thing, the third thing I'm going to show you.

Maybe.

There we go.

Aha. Third thing, at least that has helped me on a consistent basis, is I journal.

These are all journals, and they're all journals from this year. This was a gift. This is my adorable nephew.

I journal every day.

And there's a good reason.

First, because I'm the type of person, my brain is constantly going and I have to get my thoughts out. Or now when I'm writing, you'll see here, these are not.

These are not like, Dear Diary, today Susie held my hand. That's not what this is. So today I made a journal entry. It says 8020 at the top. I started making a list.

Of the activities in my businesses that are 80, 20. What are the 20% of activities that make up the biggest result? And I earmark this one by folding it over because I want to read this every day to remind myself, hey, these are the things you need to be focusing on. Because if you're focusing on anything that isn't this, you're wasting your time on 80% of things that don't produce the result that you want. So this is like my thoughts journal. So I write down my goals in here. I write down like, this is my one day. I was writing down my three year goals. And so I wrote them, wrote them down, year, marked it so I could come back to it. Now I started journaling when I was going through a really hard time. The girl I thought I was going to marry broke up with me. I Lost most of my income, and I was depressed. And I started journaling because I had these moments in which I felt really good. I had moments where, like, I wasn't sad about the girl, where I wasn't feeling bad about myself, where things were growing. And when I felt really good, I wrote down what I was thinking when I felt good. Because if I ever felt uncertain or if I ever felt unsure or if I ever felt confused, I'd pull out my trusty journal and be like, I don't know what I want to do with my life. Oh, well, guess what? I knew on this day. And I'd go back, and by reading the thought that I had back then, I could trigger it back in my own brain. I remember my first journal entry. I was struggling with purpose. What's my purpose? I don't feel purposeful. I don't believe that we have a purpose, but I think we can do purposeful things. I wasn't feeling purposeful in anything I was doing. I wrote down. I have it here somewhere. I wrote down.

That my purpose right now is to get up and start moving again.

Then I defined what that meant. That meant shoring up my income streams, building the relationships, because I.

Hadn'T done that in a while. It meant getting in shape and putting on weight. I was. I mean, you can see I'm a pretty thin guy, but I weighed 25 pounds less than I do now. And I.

Think it was like getting more out of the house. And I had this list of things that meant. Was what it meant to get back on my horse, start running again.

And anytime I needed to make a decision, I just pulled it out and said, okay, does this fall in line with my purposes right now? And that's how I made decisions for that, like, six months.

And that was kind of what started me journaling, was I started writing down goals and ideas and decisions that I was making, and I'd refer back to it. I read my journal more than I write in it. I read it to remind myself of thoughts. I write letters to myself, see if I can find one.

This is when I wrote about a year ago, and I copied. I keep one journal every year, one main journal. And this is one that I copied over from the last year because I wanted to keep reading it every day. And this is something I wrote on a trip. I wrote on a trip. I do my best thinking in airports and when I don't have access to Facebook and all kinds of things that can distract me. So I wrote this letter. It says, dear Ryan, today You are given the choice to be happy, to embrace opportunity, to show love, and to be thankful. Choose that today is unique from all other days, so pay attention and love every moment. And it goes on. But this was a thought that I had that I was like, I want to capture how I feel right now so that I can remind future Ryan that he has the option to be happy in this moment. And I read that every day. Now I'm a little bit overboard, so you don't need to get as crazy as I do.

This is the second journal that I keep. This is a small one. This is my daily goals journal. And every day I write down.

Something I'm thankful or three things I'm thankful for, the immediate goals that I have, and how I can do this. Now. I found this question to be very helpful. This question of how can I do this now?

I write down my goals and then I immediately ask myself the question, okay, what do I do about this now in order to keep me growing, what can I do about this today that will get the ball rolling and plant a seed for three months from now so that I can be in motion and growing towards this goal? I don't believe the idea of, how do I make this happen? If my goal is make a million dollars, it's not, how can I do this now? How do I go make a million dollars? What's going to be the fastest and most resistant free way for me to achieve this goal and what do I need to do about it today in order to get that in motion? That's been a great habit of seeing, These are my goals. What can I do about this today? And in order to bring that to life now, if you're new to journaling, I do this one also. This is a great way to get started, and it's called the Five Minute Journal. This is something that Tim Ferriss recommended. A friend of mine wrote this and his name is uj and the page looks like this. You can see I did my.

Entry this morning. It says, what three things are you thankful for? And then it asks you what three things would make today a great day. And then you have a daily affirmation, something that you state about yourself that you're growing into. And at the end of the day, you look back and say, what great things happened today? Which is an awesome exercise because every night I have to go back and retrace my day and remember three awesome things that happened that day. And that's a great frame for the day. What did happen today that was great and Going back and looking for them. You find them and then how could you have made today better? A great resource to get started in journaling. I recommend if there's something that you want to change specifically to start there, that can be.

The first thing that you're journaling about is that one thing that I really recommend, the purpose exercises. What is your purpose right now? So let's go over this to kind of tie all this together. By the way, if you've got any questions for me, you can type them in the chat box now. Now would be a good time to ask those.

To wrap up. I believe that there is no quantum leap unless there is a foundation built based on daily habits that you're doing, daily growth, that you are practicing constant movement towards the goals that you have. There's little things that you can be doing on a daily basis. It's kind of like your body.

Your body doesn't get in shape or out of shape in 24 hours. Your body gets in shape or out of shape as the result of very small decisions that you make on a daily, weekly, monthly, consistent basis, even hour by hour. The food that you eat and the things you do with your body, that's what it comes down to. There's all kinds of pills and tricks and hacks that people talk about, but it comes down to consistency. It comes down to what you eat and what you do with your body. Success is the same way. It comes down to what you're putting in your brain and what you're doing with that. That's what success comes down to.

It is a result of daily consistent habits that you're putting in in order to create an output. So the way that you do that three things that you can do in order to to get this going is one, the books that you're reading. What thoughts are you putting into your head that are making you grow? What thoughts are you picking up from other successful people that you wouldn't have had had you not been studying their thoughts and behaviors? Because certain behaviors produce certain results. And if you're not learning that from people that are already doing it or have done what you want, then you are not raising your thermometer. You are not giving your brain the food that it needs in order to grow. Second thing is to elevate the status of the people that you're hanging out with. Examine who the people you're hanging out with are, and are they stretching you or are they derailing you? Because they're doing one of the two things, and it's every person you hang out with is some sort of an investment. It's either in you or in them or or it's fleeting. So every place that you spend your time is an investment. So choose who you hang out with wisely. Nothing affects you more than the people that you hang out with. So choose very, very carefully who gets to have that influence on you. And the third thing that I recommend is journaling. I am a voracious journaler and I do it in order to put down the thoughts and clarities that I have so that I can remind myself at a future day how I can what I was learning and what I want to take away from that experience. So those are three habits that you can start practicing on a regular basis. By the way, I just put together the 10 days to success plan. It's inside of Freedom Fast Lane's members area and it goes through 10 steps. 10 steps that you do one per day that will get the seeds planted and get you growing in that direction. We talk about habits that you can get into that you'll get solidified in those 10 days. If you do them, you'll see some really, really cool things happen. There's one in particular that involves building your success network of reaching out to people that can help elevate your the people that you're hanging out with and making connections with them and getting the juices flowing of ideas and what you can be doing to grow. And after those 10 days, really, really cool things happen in people's lives. So you can get that@freedomfastlane.com it's a dollar when you try Freedom Fastlane Platinum. And of course it's available to everybody who is a Freedom Fast Lane Platinum member. And you can follow that 10 days to success plan. And really, really cool things happen when you start to do that. All right, everybody, thanks for coming to this month's hangout. I trust that it was helpful. Remember to post in the Facebook group about the books you're reading, the people you're hanging out with, and your journey along that 10 days to success plan. And I will see you guys inside the members area and on the next call. Take care, everybody.