This Journaling Exercise Changed My Life

What's a problem in your life that needs to be solved right now? And if you solve that problem, that one problem, it has exponential results. Welcome to the Dean Graziosi show. All success starts right here. How do we create a process in our life that's simple, impactful, effective moves? The needle gets the job done. That's what I obsess on. That's how I get to build new companies, partner with great people. I speak all around the world, write my books, do my journals, launch kbb, help people in every area I possibly can, speak at my high performance masterminds that some of you come to launch. Like, how do I get to do all that? Because I have simple, effective ways to move the needle in my life. And that's what I want to teach you. So you guys ready for some teaching? Whether you got your journal or not, if you don't have one, you should get one. But if not, I don't care if you use. Right now, I have a pad sitting here that I used this morning because my journal was in the other room. But I don't go anywhere without this. This is literally my life. Like, everything I've done for you in the last month is in this book. And every month I keep these books, I burn through one. I bet you every two months I burn through a journal. But I don't just journal in a way. If you guys have the journal, you went through outcome journaling, you know that training. But this one's going to go deeper. This is a completely different approach that I want to with you guys today. So there's three types of stuff. Are you ready for this? I've got your journal. It's time to start writing. There's a difference between being busy and being productive. We all know that. You're like, oh, that's brilliant, Dean. But you know that already. But a lot of times I do it. I don't know about you. I still slip back into being doing busy work and I feel like I had an accomplishing day. And then I look, I'm like, no, you just found a way to keep your brain busy. But did you actually move the needle in your life? Did you move towards a bigger future? Did you grow? Did you become a better version of you today than yesterday? And I really need to measure that. But again, if it's a complicated app like write in what I ate for lunch and how many calories it was, you don't do it. So here's what I so I'm going to give it to you the way I do it. There's three types of things that I write down in my journal and kind of three types of things that we do on a regular basis. Right? So there are things in your life and this is what you need to write down. And some of you can text it in here, which I love. When you guys do that or not text it. There's things that you must do, right? So let's label it 1 through 3. There's things you must do. So what are some things you must do? You might want to do them, but they're a must. Like at 3 o', clock, at 2:40, the days I have my kids, I must. It's just a part of my life. I ain't missing it until they tell me I can't do it anymore. At 2:40 I must go pick up my kids from school. Yes, I could send my assistant. Yes, my wife can go. Yes, their mom can go. But for me that's a must. I must go there, right? There's other stuff. I must go, I must go. If you saw that other training I had to get. Oh, I cut myself shaven today. But the other one, I had like 3 pre cancers. I had to get burned off. There's must things of like going to a doctor and making sure you're maintaining yourself. There's must. I don't mean it in a bad way. There's good must and bad must. Picking up my kids, a must. I love going to the gym in the morning. I don't know if I always love it, but I must go to the gym every morning because it puts my head in the right space. So there's must do stuff. So you kind of just got to label that. And always, always, always question must do stuff. Like I must go hang out with my friends on Thursday night because it's how we all bond. Well, maybe that's what you must do in your 20s and your 30s. I don't know. Every time I go there, we don't talk about anything positive. We talk about what's wrong with the country, the world, the president, my family, my friends. I end up talking shit about my boyfriend or my girlfriend. Like I don't know if that's a must anymore. So I would question all the musts. But if you must do Monday morning meetings with the team, that's a must. But again, this is all stuff. I write everything in my journal. I'm going to try to tie this all together, right? When you get the journal, you get that 20 minute training. I give you the tactical this I'm giving you the heart behind the simplicity of why this has moved the needle so much in my life. Right. So what are some of the musts you do? They're just on the calendar no matter what. And I would really analyze. Are they a must? Can you delete them? Are they a must? And if they are, can you make them better? Like, if you're going to do a Monday morning meeting, can you show up and actually move the needle in your life? Like, this is all going to come down to what the journal says is what are the most important needle movers in your life? Because we get stuck in minutiae. We get stuck in the hypnotic rhythm, Dale Carnegie used to call it. We get stuck in the hypnotic rhythm of a day. We get stuck in the hypnotic rhythm of a. Of a weekly routine, of a monthly routine. And you don't realize. It's like, wow, I've been doing the same workout. Oh, I've been getting the same coffee. Oh, I've been handling the meetings the same way. Oh, I've been picking my kids up and I'm kind of not in the best mood in the same way. It's like, screw that. Time to shake this shit up. Like, how do I improve picking my kids up? Like, some days I'll have a crazy day. I'll pick my kids up. Like, yeah, I'm just waiting in this line. I'm like, no, I'm going to park. And when they come out, they're going to see my big smile. I don't care what I feel like I'm shaking this up today. I must pick them up because I want to, but I'm going to do it different. Like, I'll show up sometimes. We have weekly meetings for the teams and it's very. This is what we did this week. This is what we accomplished. We took what we measure. We look at our scorecard and they do that. And some days I'll just come in like, yo, what's up, everybody? I want to tell you about this story with my kid. And I'll just shake it up. And I watch their faces. It just shuck up. If we're going to do a must, shake it up and then really analyze those musts, right? Okay, second part. So there's stuff you must do and then there's busy work. Okay? Now this stuff gets written in here. I don't want to like, just totally dog it be calling it busy work. Like, you shouldn't do it. But this is stuff that's habit driven. I want you to Identify things that are habit driven. This is busy work, but this is stuff. If you're currently working in a job, there's busy stuff you do all day and you have to. That's how you get a paycheck. That's how you help the company grow. That's how you do what you do. If you own your own company, there's stuff that's busy work. I did busy work all morning. Legit. I was on the phone closing a partnership deal for an hour, talking about the contract, talking about each person's roles and responsibilities, all that kind of stuff. That's kind of busy work to me. I kind of hate it, but I have to do it. But once again, you got to analyze the busy work. The repetitive stuff that you have to do, not the stuff you must do. That's different. The busy work you have to analyze, is it busy work that actually keeps the company stable or keeps your job or keeps your family or keeps that stable, but doesn't really move the needle in your life? And then there's some busy work that, come on, it's time to let it go, Stop doing it, literally. Find a different way. Hire a virtual assistant in the Philippines for $5 an hour. Hire an intern, a college intern at 15 bucks an hour and get them to pick up your dry cleaning and run the errands and go to Home Depot and build the signs or help you, your graphics. Go to fiverr.com, go to 99designs and get your logos done. Stop going online and playing with your logos for, you know, 10 hours. And in between that, you're stopping by to see what the Kardashians did. I'm not knocking the Kardashians, and most of you don't watch, but some of us know more about the Kardashians than we know about how to move the needle forward in our life. About marketing, right? Don't go online and say, I want to look at all these other sites and how they're doing it. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, my God, Bruce Jenner did that. Like, maybe that's not topic. I don't watch the news, so maybe that's not hot in the news anymore. But I'm sharing this stuff because. I watch so many people get sucked into busy work. That's not a needle mover. And the reason I'm sharing this and how I. I hope you're loving this because I'm just sharing it real and raw. This little journal changes my life because I write it all down. I write down what I must do. I write down my busy work. And in no form, I'm just telling you mine. Mine is sloppy. Like this is just what I write every single day of my life. Everything goes in here. And the busy work in here, the must do stuff. And when I get the chance every two weeks and we'll get to it, to kind of bring all of it forward on the sheet that in my journal, it's three columns, it's the needle movers. And most important, it's the what do I need to do today, this week and this month? And then what should I stop doing? When I kind of take all my notes from like a week or two and I bring them for them and kind of condense them, I get to go. Why would I think I must do that? I must not do that anymore. Or that busy work. Yeah, that's the foundation of my company. I don't love it and someday I want someone to do it for me. But right now I got to do it. That's busy work that must be done. Let's just call it busy work. It's effective work. I don't want busy to have a negative connotation on some of it. But maybe it's effective work. Don't love it, Got to do it. Let me find a way to like it. Let me find a way to like it. But then there's also busy work that you're like, I don't need to do that anymore. That busy work doesn't do anything for me. God, the universe, my next level, next version of me, my evolution, my growth, making 2020 the best year of my life. Like that busy work doesn't do crap for me. It's got to go. Alright, you feeling it now? The first was what must do stuff. Second is busy work kind of habits. You got to watch those habits. There's good habits that keep your company growing. There's busy work that doesn't do crap for anybody. Not your company, not your business, not the job you're in, not your career, none of it. Doesn't get your first mastermind, workshop, book, whatever it is you want out of life to the next level just doesn't do it. And the third. And I'm going to tie this all together, guys. I'm going to tie this all together. The third is the most important part. That's the needle movers. That is the things that you can work on, that are sometimes scary, that actually move the needle in your life. That's how your career leapfrogs. That's how you get the business off the ground. That's how you take the business that's doing okay and you scale it to another level. And this is the part that really. That really. And I'm going to jump ahead here. This is the part that has changed my life. And this is a part why journaling, whether mine, a pad, a white pad like this, anybody's. I'm just. This is talking about just getting it done today. That's where I know that I pass people I work with. Everybody says, how do you stay ahead? How are you always cutting edge? How have you been relevant in social media and TV and in this space for 21 years? How have you been an entrepreneur? Might you read the Underdog Advantage? I go more personal here on failure stories and success stories. I share stuff in here I've never shared anywhere in the world. How do you do all that? How do you do all that is because I really work and obsess on the needle movers in my life. So this is an important part. What is a needle mover to me? It's working on your business, not in it. It's looking at it from up here and seeing where it could go. Right? So I want to tell you what I journaled about this morning in a needle mover. I'm going to talk about a lot. I want you to. And write this down right now. I want you to schedule time like you're scheduling a dentist appointment, like you're scheduling time with your kids, time with your spouse, like you're scheduling something so important. I want you to schedule time every week and eventually every day that you are going to do whatever it takes to get in flow state. And you're going to spend time in your journal working and thinking through needle movers, even if some of the ideas are the dumbest ideas in the world. I've had such dumb ideas when I was in flow state. I've also had dumb ideas that changed the world and changed my life. They don't happen when you're doing busy work. They don't happen when you're doing the stuff you must do. They don't happen when you're running late. They don't happen when you're stressed. Why do you think you get the best ideas in the world when you're in the shower or you wake up in the middle and go, oh my God, I solved that problem. Right? Think about that. That's a flow state without you putting yourself in it because your brain's not thinking of the 500 million things that are on your phone and in your life. Being a business owner or somebody wanting to start a business or being a parent, being a husband, being a wife, being a relative, a friend. Like all this stuff's going on. It's hard to get the big breakthroughs unless you schedule it. And I do. And when I schedule it, I sit down with this and I say, what are the things that really move the needle? If there's a problem going on in my company or in my life, I write it in my journal. Guys, I hope you're getting the simplicity of this. And I really, I promise I'll wrap it all together. I'm just looking here to make sure. If you guys are liking this so far, give me a thumbs up. I've never taught this on the depth I'm going into my personal life on how I handle things doesn't mean you have to do it like me. But I've left, I've loved. This has changed my life and this is the first time I'm sharing it. It might even be a little clunky because my deepest parts of me and secrets. But if you don't schedule time, get yourself in a place to think about the things that can move the needle in your life or solve the problems in your life or fuel the opportunity, then you will continue to be busy. You will continue to do the busy work and the needed work. And then you can just use a planner and just plan your day like just plan your day. 2 o', clock, I'll do this. 4 o', clock, I'll do THIS. 5 o', clock, I'll do This. 6 o', clock, I'll jump on the call. 7 o', clock, I'll pick up the kids. 8 o', clock, I'll do dinner. 9 o', clock, I'll take the shower, go to bed, get up. I'll meditate in the morning. By 10 o', clock, I'll go to the gym, I'll do this. Planning doesn't move the needle in your life. Being in flow state and thinking how you could solve a problem or fuel an opportunity does. What in your life right now needs to be solved? What needs to be solved? Answer me one of these things and if you want to share it with everybody, let us know. What's a problem in your life that needs to be solved right now? And if you solve that problem, that one problem, it has exponential results, right? I shared this with so many of you that going back on a personal note, when I was going through a divorce, I worried so much Because I'm a child of nine divorces or eight divorces. Nine. Between my mom and my dad. Right. They four and five marriages. Right. So I feared divorce at the highest level possible. Feared it, like, for my children. Because I remember what happened with me and I didn't like, I didn't like, never feeling confident, never feeling secure. Different houses, moved 20 times. Like, I'm the man I am because of it. But I just didn't want that for my kids. If you've been through divorce, you know, some of the things, if it didn't go right and your parents didn't handle it the way you thought they should, kind of sucks, right? I appreciate. I'm going to look at all these. Thank you guys so much. I'm going to see. I just don't want to get sidetracked here. But it made me so fearful and I started thinking of all these things. What if we don't get along? What if my ex bad mouths me? What if the kids are fractured? What if the kids. Like, I had a hundred things that were bugging me and I literally sat in flow state night after night trying to think, how do I solve this problem? How do I solve this problem? And I'm like, what could be the one problem in my journal? What could be the one problem, pen in hand, that could solve many? What thing could I solve to solve many? And it seems really dumb, but in this flow state, in this needle moving state, I wrote on my journal. And I have the journal because I keep every one of them. I wrote, become dear friends with my ex. And I put, not BS friends, not superficial. Let her be heard. I be heard. Create a friendship. We lost. I mean, it's all personal stuff, but we lived in separate bedrooms for two years before we finally decided to quit. And I'm not an advocate of divorce, but that was right for us. And I wrote down, I am going to become real. And that was. I wrote it down. It was in my journal. And then I just started writing down all the things when I was in this flow state. Not in work, not in busy work, not in must. Stuff. Like, I set time aside and I started thinking, oh, my God, I could listen more. Oh, my God, I could write her a declaration of 10 things I will never do. I will never talk bad about her in front of anybody. Never once, not in front of God, the universe, anybody. No matter what you do to me, I will never say a bad word about you. I will never disagree with you on how we're going to handle the kids. I will never disparage you. I'll always make sure I'm there for you. When I meet somebody, I'll make it very important that we are all family, we're all friends, and there's not going to be this separation. And I wrote down 10 declarations. I thought of that in this flow state. And I sent her the 10 declarations. And then I stopped talking about it. After I wrote down, I just started being it. I started listening more, I started to be more attentive. And when I met someone, first thing I said is, I hope it's okay that I don't hate my ex. I'll never say a bad word about her. And she's the mother of my children and I want someone who loves my kids. And I wrote down all this stuff and that merger, like all of that happened in here during flow state. Not when I was stressed out worrying about my kids, not when I was stressed out if lawyers got involved, not when I was stressed out if people would judge me, not when I was stressed out thinking about my childhood, when I was in flow state, not listening to the voice that said, this is going to go bad. This is going to be like every other divorce that goes sideways and cost millions and ruin your kids. When I listened to this voice, the one I was talking about in the middle, it said, no, you could do this different than everybody else. You could work on one thing, one problem that solves a lot. So you guys wrote down. You guys wrote down some of the big problems you might be facing. Write it in your journal, write it on a piece of paper right now, and dedicate time this week to coming up with solutions for that. Listen, my daughter in school has a little. Had a little tiff going on, little disagreement with a friend of hers, Dear friend, she's 13. Things happen. They didn't see it. And my daughter was ready just to, like, I just don't want to deal with it, right? So the mom reached out and was talking to my ex and they were going back and forth with all these things. And I just got on the phone, I said, guys, I don't mean to cut to the chase, but here's what I'd like you to do. Don't solve this for them. Put them in a room, let them meet at Starbucks and write down how do we solve it? And let them come up with three or four things to solve. And when they pick the one thing that can solve all problems, then let them write down three or four action steps they can do to get this out of the way, oh, my God. The mom was like, why didn't I think of that? My ex was like, that was brilliant. They put them together. That's working. Like, only because of this process of solving big problems, journaling, working on needle movers. This is the way. Like, again, I've never taught this before. This is part of me. I'm just. You're trying to get. You're getting a peek on how I move the needle in my life. Because so many people focus on all the minutiae, all the little stuff. They stress about the things that go wrong without a solution. They worry about what other people think. All these little things, each little one of those things eats up all your time. And at the end of the day, you never thought about one thing. You didn't give the right energy to the one thing that could actually solve the problem. So write down right now the problem and dedicate a week to focus on this. Now, here's another thing I focus on all the time is what opportunities do I have in my life? What's a big opportunity? That's scary. One of the big opportunities, if you're part of the KBB movement or anything that I do, you get my books or any. Just part of inner circle or just here today learning about this journal, whatever you're here today for, I want you to think about something. There's big opportunities, and sometimes they seem so big, you go, oh, I don't know if I could do that. You know, right now, you know what my big goal is, along with Tony, is to solve a broken education system, make such a big noise in the self education space that colleges don't go out of business. I don't want that. I want them to go, we better step up. We better evolve with the times. We better not be the same as we were in 1940. We better stop raising our costs so much that it's outpacing income. It's rising eight times faster than income. You got college debt at $1.5 trillion, yet 100 colleges have over a billion dollars in their savings account. How the hell is that? Like you got a billion dollars in your savings account and you raised rates eight times faster than. It's all screwed up. I'm not saying teachers are screwed up, saying the system's screwed up. So it's a pretty big opportunity to solve the education problem. If we could solve it, we will be. And I know we're going to be the people who make self education the new norm. And someday, I hope in 25 years, college has Stepped up. And it's either college or what Tony and Dean help with. And it doesn't even have to be Tony and Dean. It's KBB, it's mastermind.com, it's all those things, right? That's a big opportunity. When I'm busy, when I'm in flow state or not flow state, when I'm busy and doing busy work and running my company and meeting with my accountants and closing deals, if I try to think I'm going to solve the education problem, like, oh, just shut up, Dean. Like my own inner voice. Just shut up. That's too big. You're not going to do that. But when I write down, how do I solve in my journal, how do I solve with the KBB family and everything I do, how do we make self education a new norm? And I dedicate the time, I schedule it, I shut everything else off and I go, what are some things we can do? I'm telling you within 10 minutes. And you know this, you've been there in that state where just the ideas keep flowing. And as the ideas come in, I just write them all down. And then I look at it and go, oh, that was kind of dumb. That'll never happen. Like, ooh, that one. That one. Wow, that one's solid. And then I'll spend time the next time I'm scheduled to get in this needle moving flow, working on your business, whatever the hell you want to call it, the next time I do that, I'll go deep on that. So what I'm trying to, what I'm trying to give you guys is this not structured tactical template which most people need. Trying to give you the philosophy of simplifying your actions, of doing the things that move your life towards where you want to go and away from where you don't want to be anymore. And if you're currently using a planner or an app or no system at all and you're not going as fast as you want, then I'm going to encourage you to watch this video five times and really try to, because this isn't hard. I just carry this wherever I go. And I write down stuff I must do, stuff that is a habit needs to get done this day. And I write down the ideas and thoughts and dreams. We need to spend more time envisioning where you want to be in a year from now and what that looks like. And just write it down. Because the more you write it down, there's a statistic that I don't know, but when you write Something down, you're exponentially more likely to accomplish it rather than just thinking about it or even typing it. Typing it doesn't resonate with your soul or your brain or your thoughts or your subconscious. Like writing down, I wrote dream, vision, write, flow, clarity, good or dumb idea. It needs to come out of you and go on paper, right? We need to stop working in your job, you need to stop working in your business. And you need to extract yourself and look down upon it and work on it. And that's what this does. And then this is the thing. Then in my journal, every two weeks, every two weeks, every 14 days, whether you use a page a day, I use a lot more pages than one a day. But every 14 pages, I have because I've been doing this on a yellow pad forever. So I'm just going to show you on this because I'm not ready to go to the whiteboard, but let me just show you this. I create columns, and I've been doing this before. I did journaling. I did this in a yellow pad today, this week and this month, okay. And then not to do. So this is something I've been doing literally for over 25 years. And I used to do it on a yellow pad until the yellow pad, like the front cover would get so beat up it would fall off and I'd lose stuff. So that's when I went to journaling. But what I would do is I would take a couple of days, a week's worth of my notes, the must dos, the habit stuff, the busy work and the needle movers, the ideas, the big problem that needs to be solved, the opportunity. Do you want to fuel? I would take all that and I kind of throw away the stuff that didn't mesh, and I would bring it forward and I'd say, you know, today I need to get these things done. This week, I need to get these things done this month I need to get these things done. And then what I would do is I'll just tell you my. I made this easy. I said, put a check next to needle movers and put an X next to needle movers and a check next to the most important. So I'd write down, today, I want to close contract. I want to go live in DIC and teach journaling. I want to do this, I want to do that. I write all these things down. They're in my journal, right? And I'd say, oh, closing that deal. That's got to happen before Thanksgiving. To me, I'd put like three stars next to it. Go live on DIC and rock their world. Three stars. I'm definitely doing it today and I'm definitely doing my best to rock your world. And I'm definitely doing my best to be completely transparent. Like, here's how I know how to I hope to positively affect you is I just want to be the realest raw version of me, tell you my goods, my bads, and what's allowed me to get here. Here's what I ask you to do. You ready for this? Look in my eyes. Take what serves you from today and use it and throw the rest away. If you didn't like because I rambled too much and told you the story about my daughter or told you the story about my son, I'm sorry, that's how you get to know me. If you were here, I'd want to get to know you. If you didn't like that, throw it away. Next time you watch the video, fast forward but find the parts today that you went, oh shit, I need to do that and make it stick. Take what serves you. Throw the rest away. I hope you enjoyed seeing behind the curtain of one of our inner circle trainings where each month we teach next level mindset, marketing and momentum. The three M's that I believe are the difference between wanting more and actually achieving more. If you'd like to be a part of our inner circle, we created a really special opportunity. Opportunity in these unprecedented times. Well, they're unprecedented times. So we created an unprecedented opportunity. And right now you can go to deansnextlevel.com that's deansnextlevel.com watch a quick video and see how you could be part of the inner circle for less than about a movie and dinner a month and gain those next level capabilities to thrive in these uncertain times. What's up? What's up? Hey, before you go, you need to watch these next few videos. They're absolute game changers. Hurry up and click right over here and watch them and I'll see you there.