What To Do When You Don’t Know What To Do

Yo, what's up, fastlaners? Ryan here joined by little Ryan. This is actually the real Ryan. I like. This is from two years ago, three years ago now. Do I look the same?

This is actually a good gauge. This is like the fattest I ever was. I see my face fat coming back. I think it's time to go back on a cut. Keep you posted on that. Listen, I wanted to make a video for you today because a theme came up with some friends recently about the zone of genius and what that does in terms of your productivity as an entrepreneur. I was having a great conversation. I recorded it. It's on the YouTube channel. Hey, C Money. What's the video called where I'm sitting in the. Oh, it's called Empire mindset. It's called Thinking from an Empire Building mindset. It's on the YouTube channel. It's a comment conversation between me and my buddy Alex. And we're sitting in this place. This is really cool. Undisclosed location in Ukraine. And we were talking about how as entrepreneurs, our genius or our levels up, all those big meteoric steps up, they don't come sequentially. They don't come from like doing this right. They tend to come in chunks. So you have this rocket ship up and then you plateau for a while and then you rocket ship up and. And then he plateau for a while. And one of the things that I've gotten the trap of doing in my past and I've had to have mentors point this out to me, is that I stay too busy for that breakthrough to come out. And instead we do the patterns and the habits that got us where we are. And so in my life, I have had these periods where I have these rocket ship up and then I kind of burn out from trying to maintain it or defend it. And then I start to regress. And when I start to regress, I cut the things that aren't working, which gives me room. And I don't always know what's going to fill that space. And what happens then is I kind of come back to center. I start doing things that I enjoy, that make me feel good, that contribute to the world. And then I go, I come back up and then if I try to maintain it or fix it or hold on to it or get in my head about it, it starts to plateau and then I start to decline again. So what I've discovered is that when I'm in one of those places where I don't know what the next step is or I don't know what the next business is or if you are just starting out, a lot of times the temptation is like, give me the plan, give me the thing that I can do. And if you're in the spot where you're ready for that, that can be really helpful. And but for the person who's not or it's not with their unique skill set, the best thing I think you could do if you're a creative person is to clear room. You know, our breakthroughs rarely come from trying to figure it out and force it. They come from having the space for when that opportunity comes up, you having the energy, the time, the space, the excitement to seize that opportunity. And many times we get in the rut of maintaining whatever is going on rather than going all in on the thing that is our best opportunity or the thing that is going to give us the best movement upward. So like, for me right now where I am is I have got to have the room, I've got to have this space, I've got to have the time, the energy to be able to tackle that thing that is coming next. And I know it's going to come in the form of a fund for physical products brands. It's going to come from advising a few really great physical products brands. It's going to come from working with private equity groups. But I can't force that. I need to go be in the place where I have the energy and the momentum personally to be able to tackle that. So, like today, everything in me, I'm recording this on a Monday. Everything in me wants like wake up in the morning, practice my habits, like attack things, get a lot done and yet I don't have that one thing right now that is really going to move things forward. So I know I've got to create that room that got created that environment to be able to plant those new seeds. It's kind of like this. As the seasons go, there are periods in which things die off. There are periods in which you plant new seeds, there are times that you work like hell and there are times that you reap that harvest. I had my harvest and now things I have let die off. And I'm starting to get to the point where it's time to plant new seeds and I gotta have a lot of energy to go work like hell when summer comes around. So for me.

My habit, my practice is to say no to a lot of things to focus on my health and my sleep. Man, I have any idea how long I neglected my sleep while I was working like hell during summer so that I Could get to the harvest. And I had my harvest, and now I got to sleep a lot. And I've been sleeping a lot, in fact, like, biohacking my sleep, even, which just means, like, good sleep habits. But. And it's things like slowing down, building relationships, focusing on my health, my diet, my workouts, and giving myself the energy and the focus for when that thing. When that next seed sprouts, to be able to work like hell. And everything in me, as a entrepreneur who leans towards workaholism, thinks somewhere in my brain that I've just got to be working at everything all the time. And that's in complete violation of what needs to happen. That's a violation of the habit that needs to be practiced, which is clearing room for that next step. So if you feel overwhelmed, which is very common as an entrepreneur, you may not be doing the things that provide energy for you when or. And if that's the case, then you're definitely not doing the things that infuse your company with energy. We tend to hit plateaus, and if we're not careful, we will get stuck just maintaining that plateau. And the way that you get out of that is you set those things on autopilot so that you are clear to pursue the next breakthrough. That is your job as an entrepreneur, to be freed up enough to pursue the next breakthrough to. That's how you find it. It doesn't come when you're busy doing things that don't move the needle. It comes as the result of you being ready. And you can't be ready for things that you don't have time for, that you don't have energy for. So it's the hardest thing ever to cut things out. But if you ever listen to my first ever podcast, my five Steps to Freedom, I'll write a book about this at some point. But they are decide then cut out. Cut out is first you cut out, then you expand. That's like planting new seeds. You invest.

And then you give. Those are the five steps of freedom. Cut out comes before expand because you got to make a trade. You got to give something up. You got to cut something out. You got to create the room for the expansion.

You can't expand into something you have no room for. You have to create the room for it. So if you're at a plateau, sometimes the question is not what do I start doing? Or what do I add in? It's what do I stop doing? That's not getting me close to where I want to be. What do I need to cut out so that I create the room for the next thing. And that is what will set the stage for you to have your next breakthrough. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you thought in the comments. Talk to you soon.