EO Thought Leadership Forum - Episode 013

Hello everybody and welcome to the EO Thought Leadership Forum, episode number 13.

I can't believe it.

What?

I can't believe it, 13.

I can't believe we got here. My name is Joe Apfelbaum from EO Brooklyn.

And I'm James Ashcroft from EO South Florida.

We're really excited to be here and to talk to you. Today we decided not to make it about the standard writing stuff and mix it up a little bit.

Yeah, well, let's get— let's give them a little context, actually. You, uh, we both just logged on and we said let's not even talk, let's just go for it. So this is going to be completely spontaneous, which we usually just have a few minutes to chat about, you know, what we get the topic. But this is great because I saw your Facebook status this morning, um, and it said it's 4:45, I've, uh, solved the world's problems, I've run a marathon, I've written 3 books in the last 2 hours. And then so I used my math skills and figured out that you got up at 2:45 and still done 6 hours of sleep. So it begs the question, what is going on, Joe? This is incredible. So you're just breaking barriers here. 2:45. I mean, that's just— My first reaction was like, that's insanity. So tell us about getting up at 2:45 and what you're doing. There's got to be some learning here.

Okay. Okay. So hear me out. I don't get up at 2:45 every single morning and every single morning I'm not as motivated as I was this morning. Okay. So just, I'm putting that out there. When I'm motivated the way that I was motivated this morning, it's because I prepared the night before and I was super ready and super relentless to start writing the 3rd chapter of my book. And I've been wanting to write a book for a really long time, maybe 3 years or so. I actually, 3 years ago, I actually started, I wrote like a marketing book or whatever, but actually outsourced all the writing because I wasn't comfortable writing. I had this deep fear of writing. And it just came back like complete and total crap. So I had to practice through sending out a weekly email and through actually putting myself out there and writing and writing and writing and writing. And then I hired a writing coach about a year ago, and I've been using her every month, and she was reviewing my stuff and like, just like mulling over what does it take to write and what is a writer. And then the book that you recommended, On Writing by Stephen King, just was mind-blowing for me to actually take action. And the one thing that I took from that book that allowed me to take action and literally sit down and start executing is write 2,000 words a day with the door closed. I like highlighted that. Write 2,000 words a day. Like if you wanna be a writer, you need to write 2,000 words a day come hell or high water in the morning. That's the first thing you need to do. And I thought to myself, I'm not doing that. I'm just whining and complaining about not writing. And I'm a writer. I know how to write. People love my emails.

Maybe it was Stephen King. I can't remember where I read it. But there was just one line. It says, if you want to become a writer, write.

Right. I didn't hear him say that. But he said, you have to write. You have to write. And he's like, and when you come to writing, you need to come to it with anything but a lifestyle. of mind. You need to come with it angry. You need to come to it in any which way that you want to come to it, but don't come to it lightly because writing is not something that you do lightly. You need to bleed, bleed onto the page. And I was bleeding this morning, let me tell you. I got up, I was super motivated. The first thing that I do when I get up now is I journal. So I've been doing that. I bought a new journal for the last quarter of the year. I physically write in my journal. Cool, cool. That's mine.

Yep.

Okay, so I physically write in a journal. I bought it at Walmart for $5. It has an elastic band. I know exactly where I keep it. I keep it where I keep my phylacteries that I pray with every morning. I keep it in there. I pull them out, put them, pull it out, and I literally say, I'm going to write one page and the other page. I write the front of the page and then I turn the page and I finish the back of the page. And something else that I implemented, I learned at an EO event last week or 2 weeks ago, is starting to write with my left hand. So I spend the last 5 lines and I just write whatever comes to my right brain from my left hand. And I just write, and every single time I write, amazing things come out. That's like, I did that, I got that done. That's something that I want to do every day for the rest of my life. Every morning when I get up, and I get up on time, and I'm feeling healthy, I'm going to execute on that. That's probably the most important thing. And then once a month I review my journal. So—

Okay. Let's just, let me just give a shout out to this. So this is Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, the morning page journal. It's a supplement to her book, which feeds into a lot of what you're talking about, like getting up every day and breaking through the creativity gene that we have inside of us. Like, just get stuff out onto the page because that sets the momentum for the—

I can tell you that journaling is a life changer, and I've done it on and off for the past— since I read Hal Elrod's book, The Miracle Morning. And I, I can tell you that it's just a life changer. I need to do it every day. When I don't do it, I'm like off course. I kind of am talking to myself when I journal. I don't have to do anything. I just have to write whatever's on my mind, but it's like I'm becoming more aware and I'm having conversation about my thoughts. And then when I review it later, I can then highlight the things that I thought about. They say if you have an idea and you don't write it down, ideas are fleeting. They don't matter. And if you want to matter and you want to make a difference in this world, you got to write your things down. So That's number one. I got that out of the way. Second thing that I did was, now that I wrote down my journal, the most important thing for me for the next month is to write 2,000 words a day. I set myself a goal. My admin holds me accountable. I share it with her as soon as I'm done. And if I don't do it, I really feel bad when we go through our morning huddle with the done or not dones of all the things that I promised I would do the day before. So I have a list of done or not dones. That's one of them. I have to do it every day, write 2,000 words. So I successfully did it every single day for the past week or so.

Wow, 14,000 words. Impressive.

2,000 words a day. I got, I got into chapter 3 this morning. So I finished chapter 1. Today's the 7th day. And you know, when you hit the 7th day, God created the world in 6 days, and on the 7th day he rested. Today was my day of rest. Today was the day that I got to bask in the glory of the ability to literally write 2,000 words For 7 days consecutively, like, that's like just mind-blowing.

That's amazing.

When I went to sleep at quarter to 9 or so, when I laid my head on the pillow, I just couldn't sleep. I was so excited about waking up. And I woke up in the middle of the night. I remember waking up and it was like 1 AM or whatever. I was like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know that I'm gonna— I gotta sleep. I got another cycle. I gotta get another cycle. So I went back to sleep. As soon as I woke up at the end of the next cycle, I was like, I'm done. I'm done, baby. I'm ready. I'm ready to own this, baby. I was so excited. I jumped out of bed, I went downstairs, knocked a cup of water down, did my thing, you know, my ritual, washed my hands, said my dhany, showed gratitude, whatever, all the things that I do. And then all of a sudden, bam, I was off to the races.

Dude, you are motivated today.

I was so motivated. All of a sudden, I finished writing, I run up, I start waking up the kids, waking up everybody, trying to get the house in order. And then I throw— and then I say to myself, Let me look at the weather. I need to go for a run. I wrote on social media, I'm all motivated, blah, blah, blah. I need to go for a run. I already meditated, I already did all my stuff. It's 43 degrees outside. I'm not going for a run. 43 degrees? That's ridiculous. I don't want to get sick. You know, that's my thing. I don't want to get sick. All of a sudden I think to myself, I don't know, that's not what Tony Robbins does. So I got this article that I started reading about Tony Robbins' morning routine, and he writes that he gets up and he jumps right into freezing cold bath. Yeah, he is a plunge It's ridiculous. I was like, he does that to feel vitality with every fiber in his body, with every nerve in his body. He wants to activate himself. And I was like, damn, son, he does that every single morning and I can't go for a run at 43 degrees going up to 59? You got to be kidding me. You got to be nuts. Anyway, I said, I said, I'm getting on my gear. Before I get on my gear, I run downstairs. I'm like, I need to get motivated. How am I going to get motivated? I'm going to take a heaping teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a heaping teaspoon, put it into 8 ounces of water, freezing cold water, mix it up, and not think about this, not think about it. Just knock it down, baby. Just knock it down. As soon as that cayenne pepper— like, I didn't taste it because I threw a multivitamin in there. As soon as that cayenne pepper hit my stomach, I was like, ah! I was like, I'm going, baby. I put on my long pants. I put on my thing. My wife's like, what happened? You okay? Everything okay? I'm like, yeah, baby. I'm going for a run.

She's like, what?

When are you coming back? Half an hour. I'm like, she's like, okay, see you soon. And I was out of the house. I got my mat, my run going. I got my stuff happening, did my selfies. And I was just so motivated. I did a sub-9-minute mile, which I typically don't do on a regular basis, but I did a sub-9-minute mile. And then I did another additional 10-minute mile, so around a little over a 10-minute mile.

Very nice.

And I decided to do a video while I was doing it. I put up that video about failure, which was chapter 2, and I'm getting a lot of clarity about my life, and I'm just so excited. I'm so excited that I can do this and I can share it with friends like you.

Okay. So, all right, so I'm gonna bottle you up right now because you are on fire, you know. I want to clearly understand how you— so today is— seems like a special day as far as your energy.

Day 7, baby.

Okay. So, so you would— so, so for the folks watching this and they want to get what you call motivated, get to this point of like unbelievable energy where you bounce out of bed, you're fired up to do your journal, you're fired up to go for a run, share everything with the world, what is the secret sauce of what you did over the last 6 days? Is it just consistency? Is it goal setting?

What is it? It's 3 years of working on myself. It's 3 years of struggling with my weight. It's It's 3 years of struggling with my fears of not being able to write. It's 3 years with pushing my business to the next level, pushing my relationship with my wife, with my partner, with my loved ones, with myself, of reading dozens and dozens and dozens or starting dozens and dozens and dozens of books, but actually finishing a couple and pushing myself to finish a couple, with asking the 25 people that care a lot about me, what are the things that I can improve? And literally going through like, how do you notice me? What are the great things about me? What are the things you can't count on? me for? And like reading those things and taking them to heart and having your buddies give you— have the courage to come back at you and tell you the things that you need to hear, which normally people wouldn't go that deep. And so understanding that about yourself and realizing and being a lifelong learner and actually wanting to change, having the desire to want to do something great, having the desire to be amazing, that is a culmination of very small actions That I took over the past 3 years. So, it's not something that you can get all of a sudden. It's not a gift that suddenly, like, whoa, you wake up and you're a madman. No, it's not going to happen. You're not going to be able to have this level of energy right away. You need to start by making your bed, by starting little habits. You know, I started making my bed 6, 7 months ago, around Passover, April of 2015. And, you know, every single morning, automatically, I make my bed. I don't think about it. And when I see my bed made, I feel so good about it. When I come down to my basement and I see that it's somewhat organized, when I look at my list, when I, when I, when I look at Getting Things Done, and which is right over there, and I see all the markups and the highlights that I did, that I read the book 3 times and I read all the highlights and actually implemented the system in my life, and I have a weekly review that I review my 150 projects and my top 10, and I understand what done looks like for my projects, and I understand what the next actionable tasks to move the most important projects forward, and I understand why I'm doing my most important projects, and I have accountability, and I have all the things in my life that I need to have in order to be able to have the clarity to get progress, and then to see the progress gives me a tremendous amount of motivation. You know, when I got on the scale this morning, I saw a lower number that I posted on Facebook. I was even more psyched. You know what I did? I decided I'm gonna come down and play guitar, 'cause on my bucket list I have 10 songs that I wanna learn how to play, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I need to play guitar every single day. So I whipped out the guitar and I said, you know what, I'm going to hold myself accountable. I'm going to post it on Facebook and on Instagram to show the people that care about me, that know that I want to play guitar, that I'm actually playing guitar. I'm going to show the people that I'm actually laughing in the morning, that I actually watch a comedy routine for a few minutes every single morning. My goal is 10 minutes. I don't always do it for 10 minutes. But it's super important for me to laugh in the morning. Levity is one of my core values, and I know that I need to have that in my life in order for me to be myself. If you don't know what your core values are, ladies and gentlemen, you're missing out. You're missing out. You don't know what you value. How are you supposed to be motivated? How are you supposed to be excited? If you don't know what your strengths are, take a test, learn your strengths, go find StrengthsFinder 2.0.

I was going to say StrengthsFinder 2.0 is great. So my takeaway, Joe, from everything you've just said is the compound effect of taking small actions over period of time. Understanding yourself, having the self-awareness to start making changes, and the compound effect over time, you'll land in the spot that you are at today. Joe, this has been a great show, man.

I mean, you've been— Let me end with this. Let me end with this. What does James Altucher, one of your favorite authors, say about self-improvement? What's the one thing you should do every single day?

Improve yourself 1% a day.

1%. That's it. That's what I want to leave everyone else with. Thank you so much for joining us for the EO Thought Leadership Forum. This was motivating. James, are you motivated?

You're contagious, Joe. My day's pretty good.

Come on, bring it, show it. How do you do an Ironman? How do you finish an Ironman? Show me.

Compound effect. That's what it is. Start small and have a plan and stick to it.

Woo! Are you excited, James?

I am. Thanks, Joe.

See you, everybody.

All right, bye.