Stop Wasting Your Life (Not Just Your Time)

What's the biggest mindset shift you've seen separating the people who actually break through from the ones who stay stuck?

You know, Tony Robbins is really good at saying, when people say, "How long does it take to quit smoking?" People say, "Oh, it took me 7 years to quit smoking." Did it really take 7 years or did it take 1 second? It took 7 years of thinking about quitting smoking and 1 second to go, "Enough. It's over." I'm done. There's a situation, there's a circumstance out of your control. You're in a job for 14 years, you know it's robbing your soul, and for the last 4, every morning you wake up and think to yourself, I'm done with this job, I hate it, but you still go. Two things could happen. One, you go to this job you hate and they fire you. You have no choice. Decisions have to be made, true? I have to make a I have to do something different. I just got fired. And sometimes we get that blessing, right, Amy, where you go, that's a sign from God, the universe. I'm going to try my own thing. Sometimes decisions, if you look at the biggest ones you make, you really didn't have control of it. You're in a relationship that you're not sure is good. And then you come home one day and the other person says it's over. You got to deal with it. This path will lead me to a life is not meant for me. I think the biggest regret in life, I think the worst thing that could happen to any of us is to get to the end of our life and realize we missed it. Sometimes that brain comes in and I'm like, at the end of my life, looking back, what would I say to myself? If you got to the end of your life and you realized you didn't make that decision, you didn't shift your mindset, you didn't say enough, you didn't decide to say no, or you didn't decide to say yes. And you missed it, and your maker played you a video of the person you could have been, what would be your number one wish? What would be your wish if you got to the end of your life and realized you played small and your maker said to you, all right, you got one wish, what would it be?

To go back and do it again.

To go back. And you know what I always say? Wish granted. Wish granted. We're here. Mm-hmm. Let's start today. If you were there, you'd say, please let me go back. Boom, we're here, we're back, let's go.

As a kid, I remember, I think I heard that in church. It's like, what are you doing when no one's watching? And it's so true. I mean, that follows you throughout your whole life. And it's, it's—

well, isn't that, isn't that really who we are?

Yes.

Right. If you think about it, you and I have talked about this. When people say their values or their character, let's use the word character. Character is really just who we are when no one's watching, right? If you're on social media and you're like, I love my wife, you're amazing. But then I'm looking at DMs on the side in my Instagram of other pretty girls, then I'm full of crap, right? Because nobody's watching. Right? If I say I love my partner, Tony Robbins, and behind his back I'm making side deals, then I'm really the side deal guy, or I'm really the guy that would be unfaithful. Like, we really are— our character is who we are when no one's watching.

Question 2: How do you know the difference between pushing through resistance and knowing it's time to pivot and start something new?

There is this fine balance of quitting too soon. Sometimes we don't realize the— we don't recognize the joy of the lessons we learn from it, from going deeper, even in something we don't like. How you do one thing is how you do everything. But what if you said instead of, I shouldn't be here, I'm supposed to be doing this, what if your brain said, oh, this is just part of the journey. I have to do this in order to get there. And if you think to yourself, I'm not here forever, but while I'm here, I'm gonna make everybody around me sick because I'm gonna love what I do, I'm gonna kick ass what I do, and when I'm at the peak of this, I'm going to bail and go do my own thing. If you're torturing yourself year after year of hating it, then just give yourself a deadline, right? I'm in this career that I don't like, or I'm in this relationship I don't like, and just say, hey, I'm going all in for 6 months. I'm going to make it look like I— like they're not going to recognize me at my job because I'm going to come in early. I'm going to light it up. But I'm only here for 6 months. And in that 6 months, I'm going to skip these 5 things. And I'm going to spend the time launching my coaching program or getting started with this new business or getting clients or getting my social media to go. And in 6 months from today, it's over. It's done. It's not a dabble. It's a commitment. Listen, I didn't quit. I started with cars. I didn't quit doing cars until my real estate business made me more than the car business did. Then I quit, got out of the painting. Then I started educating people on how to invest in property. Like I do, I didn't quit. I never quit investing, but I didn't, I didn't quit it being my full time. And I didn't go all in on teaching people until the teaching business made more than the real estate business.

Okay. Number 3, is there a simple way someone can honestly evaluate whether what they're doing is actually moving them forward or they're just, or just keeping them busy?

You have to measure. You have to keep score. Where was I 3 months ago? Where was I 3 weeks ago? And am I moving forward? Am I, am I making progress? Doesn't mean— not perfection, progress. You have to measure what actually moves the needle. Don't measure work. Measure productivity and moving towards the goal that you want. You might be great at creating your coaching curriculum. You might be great and go, I built the most beautiful thing and the most beautiful logo, and I have my 12-session coaching program. I went back and forth with Gigi or Chad or Claude. I dialed it in. It's freaking amazing. I am making progress. True. But when that's done, where is the part that you're holding back on? Letting people you know just start telling everybody that you are a coach now and you want to do it, start to put on your social media, You got to measure the uncomfortable because sometimes our brain just goes, well, I built the curriculum, I built the site, I did the thing, I did that thing, I know my ideal client, I'm going to do the thing. It's like, yeah, but did you put— did you reach out to anybody, make any calls, try to set an appointment to get your first— hold on a second, right? You have to measure those things. You got to know if you're winning or losing, and you got to measure the areas, especially the areas that you've been hesitant on. We're all uncomfortable when something is new. It's okay to be uncomfortable. Just do the stuff that you've been putting off.

Okay. Number 4, what are you watching people make way too complicated that if they just simplified it, it would completely change their results?

Our brains love to make things complicated. Looking at all of it is what freaks you out. Like if I, if I use, if I use AI as an example, Oh my God. If you go online for 5 minutes, click on one AI training, and then your algorithm knows that you clicked on one. Oh my goodness. You will get served a gazillion of them, and every one makes you feel like you're stupid, fallen behind, never going to catch up. I'm too old for this stuff. How does this work? I didn't grow up with technology, right? It's like, you, all you got to do is get a Mac Mini and use ClawBot. And then it does the thing and then you see all these breakdowns and you plug it into your workflow. It works like 6 people. You're not doing it. You're dumb. If you are, you're cool and you're like, ah, and you start thinking of all these things you got to do with AI and it becomes so overwhelming. Like anything in life, chunk it down one clear path, one step at a time, and then just overcome one constraint at a time. One constraint at a time. One problem. One thing you have to overcome at a time. So if you know, I want to get to, you know, it's kaizen. One step at a time. You know the end result, but you can't look at all of it at the same time. You know, it's why New Year's resolutions don't work. I'm going to stop drinking soda. I'm going to stop eating sugar. I'm going to eat 3 good meals a day. I'm going to increase my protein. I'm going to work out 5 days a week. You look at all of it, by week 2 you're like, I can't do all this shit. Give me a piece of bread and a soda, please. But what if you just said, January. January, I'm gonna walk every other day. That's it. February, I'm gonna walk every other day and I'm cutting out bread. March, no bread, no sugar, walk every day. April, weights 3 days a week. So one piece at a time, one constraint at a time.

Okay, what are the 2 or 3 things you would tell them to go all in right now?

We must truly identify the goal. If you said, hey, I want 90 days, I think most of our brains say, what do I need to do for the next 90 days? If I look what to do, because there's so much going on in our lives. So the thing I would do is pick one thing and then identify that goal. Down to the specifics. So before you write the how, you're gonna write 2 chapters. But more clarity, what, what 2 chapters are you gonna write? What is the outcome of those 2 chapters? How are people gonna feel after they read these 2 chapters? I want to be so proud of these chapters that they're the 2 best chapters I've ever written in my entire life. I'm just, you know, you hear me say that fuzzy targets don't get hit. I want to write 2 chapters. What does that mean? Is it the first 2, the The last two, the middle two, where are they gonna be in sequence? Then once you have this big goal that you stare at, the end in mind, then reverse engineer what you have to accomplish to make that happen. So I realized we did this unconsciously, is you gotta give somebody a reason why they need to learn it in the first place, deeper than just knowing it, or just deeper than just being better at business. Yeah. Number two, once you have an embrace a purpose, you need to overcome fear. Is there a fear of going live and somebody judging you? Is there a fear of screwing up? Oh my God, when I get my first client in the first coaching session, they think I'm stupid, they think I'm crazy. Fear. When it comes to AI, oh my God, what if AI gets all the codes and starts World War III? But when you have a deep enough purpose, we can transform form that fear, because you know where fear comes from? Just deciding what the meaning is. If AI is the thing that could take your job and end the world, do you really want to learn it? But what if you said, the humans, as humans, we've invented a lot, and I'm going to have faith it's going to go in the right direction. You know, they predict AI, especially when it comes to quantum AI, will cure cancer in the next 3 because it's like having a gazillion, a million doctors working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to solve it. We are gonna have so many medical breakthroughs. We are gonna cure my kids' allergies. All those things are coming. So I would just rather focus on AI can make me more human 'cause it could do the stuff I don't wanna do. Yeah. So I could spend more time with her and the kids. Mm-hmm. It's gonna help cure cancer. And I think we're smart enough as humans that we'll put boundaries on it. I don't know if that's going to come, but if I think about that, then I lose the fear and I want to move forward. True. I'm just going to think AI is going to shift my life and it's going to make everybody else better. Then the fear is gone. Then we get to the third part. When you have a deep enough purpose and you're not scared, and then you realize if I don't change, you know, that, that saying, if I'm not climbing, I'm sliding. Yep. If I don't change, there's no way I can be significant. There's no way I can impact other people's lives. There's no way I can turn this inner passion into something bigger. Change is scary, but I'm gonna model proven practices. I'm gonna take one step at a time. So if you think about that, my purpose is big enough, I shift the fear, and now I'm embracing change, turning resistance into momentum. You got to cut through the overwhelm and be able to see one straight line, one focus. If you're helping people find romance again, find intimacy, find themselves, get over an illness, whatever it is, you gotta have that one path with a one big outcome.