How To Beat Procrastination & Rewire Your Brain For Success w/Rory Vaden EP 1144

This is episode number 1144 with New York Times bestselling author Rory Vaden.

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

And each week we bring you an.

Inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Alexander Graham Bell said, the only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action. And Napoleon Hill said, don't wait. The time will never be just right. My guest today is my good friend Rory Vaden. He's a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Brand Builders Group, which is one of the leading personal brand strategy firms that focuses on helping people become the type of person that everyone wants to be in business with. This is the third part of our series together that excited to share with you. Every time I connect with Rory, I learn something new. He gives me great strategy and insights and helped me build my brand on my business. And he's my go-to guy that I lean on for strategy on my personal brand. And in this episode, we discuss the mindset shifts and practices to stop procrastinating, how to rewire your brain to become an ultra performer in your life. Why focusing on too many things is sabotaging you. Yes, I know you've got a lot of passions. Sometimes it might be sabotaging you. Why having Integrity matters not only for yourself, but also your business and life and so much if you're enjoying this, make sure to text a few friends or post this over on social media and spread the message of greatness to more people. That's what this is all about, inspiring others to be great as well.

And if this is your first time.

Here, click the Subscribe button right now over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a review at the end of the part you enjoyed the most. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Rory Vaden.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guest today. Rory Vaden is in the house. My man, excited about this. We are talking about the science of success and how to really achieve anything that you can imagine in your life. Your biggest goals, your biggest dreams. But a lot of people have dreams, they have big goals, but most people never accomplish them. Why is that?

So the number one enemy, I think, that is working against people that they don't even realize is procrastination.

Okay. Why do we procrastinate?

So there's a number of reasons. There's a number of reasons why we procrastinate. The number one reason, according to psychologists, why we procrastinate is because of self-criticism. Really? It's thinking that I won't be good enough, that I'm not, you know, I'm not smart enough, I'm not capable, so why should I even bother? Like, this isn't gonna work out for me. And there's a lot of extraordinary pressure with that. But there's three types of procrastination. Yep. and most of us are aware only of the first type. So classic procrastination is consciously delaying what we know we should be doing. So I have some bills on the counter, I know I should pay them, but I'm tired and I'm exhausted. So rather than paying the bills, I'm gonna Netflix and chill and not pay my bills. So that's the first type of procrastination.

Okay, the second type. Which is classic procrastination. Classic procrastination.

Yeah. The second one is actually one I identified in my own life back when we were doing the research for this, which is funny because when Take the Stairs came out, suddenly I'm supposed to be like one of the world's experts or whatever on procrastination and here I struggle with procrastination in my own life. So rather than calling myself a procrastinator, I invented this new term which I really love because not only does it more aptly describe what I struggle with, It also sounds very like academic and sophisticated. And so the term that we coined is creative avoidance.

Okay.

And creative avoidance is different. And this is something that people do as an art form. Creative avoidance is subconsciously creating things for yourself to do so that you can do those things as a means of feeling productive. But really it's a giant scheme for avoiding doing the things you know you should be doing even when you don't feel like doing them.

For example, for you, what's a creative avoidance?

I mean, email is probably the ultimate perpetrator of creative avoidance, right?

Is this like, I know I need to do this other thing, I need to work on my book, I know I need to create this process for my business or I need to, Sales.

Calls, you've got to deal with a negative customer service issue, you have to confront and underperforming an employee. I mean, there's, I know I got.

To go to the dentist and clean my teeth.

Yeah.

The things that you know you need to do but you want to avoid because it's painful or it's frustrating or it's going to take energy and time.

Energy, yeah. And we blow it out and we make it way worse in our mind than it actually is. But you know, you can, it's wild how we do this. And this is where some of the neuroscience comes in because, you know, your brain is actually working against you here in that, if you look at a brain like under brain scan, The brain loves to complete things. There's a hit of dopamine, which is the chemical that's released into your body, which makes you feel pleasure when you complete things. So when you check things off, like you delete an email or you, by the way, you know this is you struggle with this. If you've ever completed something that wasn't on your to-do list and then you add it to the to-do list just so you can cross it off. Why? Because the brain releases and says, oh, I feel good. I'm accomplishing things. But really what we're doing is we're allowing ourselves to engage in the trivial. In the absence of clear intention, we become strangely loyal and addicted to meaningly acts of trivia because the brain is rewarding that behavior. People are literally addicted to email or cleaning out their texts or their DMs or social media. They're addicted to it the way you would be addicted to a substance. It's like you're tied to this chemical reaction. But ultra performers, you know, the people we study, these people we profile, these top one percenters, they do things differently and they have realized that success and greatness is not related to the volume of tasks that you complete, but simply the significance of them. And ultra performers are able to get themselves to do the things they know they should be doing even when they.

Don'T feel... How do they get themselves to do that?

So there's seven things and we can rip through them. But the metaphor here is take the stairs. Okay, so the title of the book comes from take the stairs. which is a metaphor for we live in an escalator mentality world. It's easier to gravitate towards the path of least resistance, towards what is convenient, towards what is comfortable. This is an escalator and yet the truth of success in any endeavor, any industry, like when you all the people that you've interviewed here, it's always the same story. It's that they were able to get themselves to do things they know they should be doing even when they don't feel like doing them. i.e. take the stairs. So, what we're trying to do is take the stairs. It's discipline. Discipline is the antidote to procrastination. And there are seven key strategies that we can talk through, but understanding that the enemy is procrastination and these three types, which we haven't covered the third one yet, but Procrastination is always there. And in fact, so the third type of procrastination is called priority dilution. And this is fascinating to study. Priority dilution is the chronic overachievers form of procrastination. What's different about it is unlike the first two, so classic procrastination and creative avoidance, You know, priority dilution is not about being lazy or disengaged or distracted, but it is the same net result of the first two, which is that you leave the office or you end your day with your most significant priorities incomplete, not because you're lazy, but because you allowed your attention to shift to less significant, but perhaps more urgent tasks. Charles Hummel once wrote an essay called the Tyranny of the Urgent, I believe it was in 1969. and he's talking about how we are victims to the tyranny of the urgent. And the more successful you become, the more you become a leader, the higher you accelerate in an organization, your enterprise grows as an entrepreneur. You've got more and more people vying for your attention. The bigger your personal brand grows, you've got more and more opportunities, more distractions, more things coming at you, and your priorities, if left unchecked, naturally dilute. Right.

So you gotta, yeah, okay. So priority, dilution.

Yeah, so that's the third type of procrastination. So, you know, the question is, all right, if procrastination is problem, what's the solution? And I really believe the solution can be boiled down to one word. And it's a word that nobody likes. It's discipline. And it's not hard work. There's a difference, there's a distinction. Discipline is doing the things you know you should be doing even when you don't feel like doing them. If you can develop the ability to do that, then you literally have unlocked the ability to do anything in life which unlocks the ability to achieve virtually anything.

Yeah, and I think Greg McKeown was talking about the effortless pursuit of accomplishing. How can we, what's the, there's like the path of resistance that will get you there, but when you know you need to take the hard path, How can you make it feel effortless? How can you play games with yourself when you got to do chores? How can you sing a song when you're mopping the floor? Whatever it is, how can you make it feel effortless? So it's not like this is exhausting and draining and, oh, I got to do this in order to get somewhere in 10 years. It's how can I reframe my mind around the activity to support me in having energy in the thing I don't want to do.

So let's talk about it.

Not be drained by the thing that I don't want to do.

Yes. So that is the first principle actually. called the Paradox Principle of Sacrifice. So now you mentioned Greg NcKeown. His, you know, Essentialism was his big, like, breakout book. And the whole message of that book is the disciplined pursuit of less.

Really? Not trying to do everything.

No, yeah, just the pursuit of less. That's what Essentialism, that's how he describes it, the discipline.

Being disciplined by focusing on less things.

On less things that are more significant, right? But you bring up the conversation of going, okay, well, you know, people here take the stairs and it's like, well, I don't want to take the stairs. You know, it's like, I don't want the hard work and you have to reframe it. So here's the paradox principle. In fact, I'm going to tell you a story. So in Colorado, where I grew up, we are world famous for the Rocky Mountains. Yes. Okay, so to the western part of the state, we have the Great Rocky Mountains. What a lot of people don't realize about Colorado is that as a state it's divided almost exactly in half. And to the eastern part of the state are the Great Kansas Plains. So it's really flat. Because of that unique topographical landscape, Colorado is one of the only places in the world that has both buffalo and cows in very close proximity to each other.

Interesting.

Have I ever told you this? I don't think I've ever shared this with you. Okay. What happens, there's a fascinating lesson to learn about greatness and achievement and success from studying the way that these two creatures respond to storms. So when a storm comes, storms almost always start in the west and they like brew in the west and then they roll out towards the east. And what cows do is very natural. Cows can sense that a storm is coming from this direction. And so a cow will turn east to run away from the storm. Now the only problem with that is.

If-- It's gonna catch up with him.

It catches up with him, right? So the storm catches them and without knowing any better, the cows continue to try to outrun the storm. And they actually run with the storm.

And they get trapped by the fence and then they're stuck there.

They're doing-- they're making it worse because they're trying to outrun the storm, which is stupid. But here's the thing, humans do the exact same thing all the time. We are constantly trying to avoid these inevitable challenges that come along with the difficult circumstances that our very own choices have led us to be in. I can speak from personal experience here. There was a time in my life where I was 45 pounds overweight. People who are unhealthy are always making rationalizations for why it doesn't matter, nothing works, I've already tried it. It's not that big of a deal. It's fine. I've also been, there was a time in my life where I was over $50,000 in personal debt. People who are in debt constantly trying to find ways around paying their bills and, you know, paying off the minimums.

And spending money on other things.

Yeah, they keep spending. People who are struggling in their marriage are often avoiding the difficult but meaningful conversations that need to be had if there's any hope of reconciling that relationship. And the key insight that the ultra performers have had that most of us have not is ultra performers have realized problems that are procrastinated on are only amplified. Problems procrastinated on are amplified. So waiting always makes it worse. Now here's what Buffalo do. This is very unique for the animal kingdom. So Buffalo wait for the storm. to cross, like right over the crest of the mountain top. And as the storm rolls over the ridge, buffalo turn and they charge directly into the storm.

That's crazy.

So they run at the storm and by running at the storm, they run straight through it, which actually minimizes the amount of pain and time and frustration they experience. from that storm. It's such a great metaphor for all of us because all of us are dealing with different storms in life. You know, we have relationship struggles and health battles and we're trying to launch a business and we got young babies and you know, all these different, you know, COVID and we all have challenges. We don't get a choice about whether or not we have storms. The only choice that we have is how we respond. to those storms.

Yes.

And more specifically, when we respond to those storms. So the natural human default is to run away from the storm. But what we miss is that it actually makes it worse. So this brings us to the paradox principle of sacrifice, which simply stated is this: Easy short-term choices lead to difficult long-term consequences.

Yes.

Meanwhile, difficult short-term choices lead to easy long-term consequences.

I've got a perfect example I'm living right now from a long-term consequence. 20 years ago, I had surgery, I had eight teeth removed because I needed braces. So, I put that off for a number of years without doing that. But then I finally got my wisdom teeth removed and then four more teeth. So it's wisdom and then four. And I was delaying and delay, delay, but I was having like pain, right? Finally get the teeth removed and I'm supposed to do, let it heal for a couple months and then go get braces on.

Okay.

And I'm thinking, this is so painful. I don't wanna have two, three more years of braces now and deal with more pain. And I said, you know what? I'll just live my life like this with four gaps. I can still chew everything. It doesn't look too bad. let me just live my life like this.

Okay.

And for 20 years, I had problems, little problems that continue to stack up. I had digestive problems because my back teeth weren't fully touching, so they weren't actually chewing the food properly. I finally started chipping my teeth in the front that I had to fix a couple times because it was only the front two teeth that were actually chomping and connecting. And I realized, wow, this is gonna. impact my overall health, not just my teeth in my mouth, but my entire lifestyle if I don't solve this pain now. So at 36, I said, okay, I'm getting braces and making, you know, retainer braces, and it's more painful now, but I'm also glad that I'm taking the actions now and not waiting 5, 10, 20 years when it's my teeth are falling out or something. So, I'm taking the disciplined pursuit of the pain now for greater health for the rest of my life.

Yeah, and that's the switch. And right, problems procrastinated on are always amplified. Now, here's the shift, and this is really important. We think of it as a sacrifice. I'm enduring pain. But the truth is we always experience pain. We're all trying to go through life trying to dodge pain. It's impossible. It's inevitable. We always experience pain. The only choice we have is whether or not we pay that price now, today, or we pay it later with interest. Procrastination and indulgence are really nothing more than creditors that charge you interest, which means When you make the sacrifice, just as the buffalo charging the storm, it's not a sacrifice. You're just, it's a short-term down payment on a rich future blessing. It's just harder now, but it's easier in the long term. See, people misunderstand take the stairs. They think it's like, oh, just do the hard thing, make your life as hard as possible. No, it's the freaking opposite. Take the stairs is a methodology for giving you the easiest life, the best life, the most rewarding life, like the easiest life. But it is predicated upon an unpopular truth, which is that the shortest, most guaranteed path to the easy life is to do the hardest parts of things as soon as possible. Yeah. So as to avoid the interest that will come with it if you wait. Yeah.

What is There's like this quote about entrepreneurship or something like, you know, those, I'm going to butcher this, but be willing to do the things today.

It's like a meme online. Do what others want. Do what others can't.

Yeah, later.

Yeah.

Yeah. Do the things that others aren't willing to do now so you can have what others won't have later. For the rest of your life.

Yeah. Dave Ramsey says, Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else. Exactly. Teaching people to get out of debt.

It's like if you don't pay the today, you'll be paying the price forever later.

Right, so it's like, it's not, is life gonna be hard? Life is hard either way. It's, do you want it to be a little bit hard now or a lot bit hard later?

Exactly.

So that's the reframe. And this is, what was really fun about the Take the Stairs book was realizing, oh, ultra performers don't like discipline any more than I do.

I like to sleep in.

Yes, but they have learned to train their brain to think differently about it. and you have to train the brain to process choices differently. And once you do, discipline isn't as hard as we think once we know how to think about it the right way. And this is a great example. When you make the calculation, most people just go, oh, that's hard. I'm not gonna do it. Well, an ultra performer goes, well, that's hard, but if I don't do it, it's gonna be harder later, so I'll do it now. And that opens the gate. So that's the first, we call it the Paradox Principle. and sacrifice.

And that's sacrifice. What's the second?

Yeah, so the second one is the buy-in principle of commitment. And this is really interesting. So whenever we're forced to make a choice, a decision about something that is hard, there's two types of energy that are expended in our decision making. We have a visual for this that's called the commitment continuum. And so basically, you know, the first type of energy is the one that we all think of. It's the physical energy required to execute the decision. For example, you know, let's just take an easy one like New Year's resolution, I'm gonna lose weight. Right? When the time comes to go to the gym, the thought process for most of us sounds like this. We say, do I feel like working out right now? And what's the answer to that question? No. No, never. I don't feel like working out now or ever. And for many people, most people, that's the end of the conversation. The human brain is not designed for success. The human brain is designed for survival. Survival is about conserving energy. Success is the opposite. Success is about expending energy, doing things that are uncomfortable. So it doesn't mean if you do this, if you struggle with procrastination, if you've made bad choices, it doesn't mean you're doomed for failure. It actually means you have a perfectly functioning, healthy, normal human brain. But success is not normal. Success is not average. Success is not what most people experience. If you are trying to experience success, you need to rewire literally the neural pathways in your brain. It is a neurological rewiring that you're doing to yourself. It's like you're reprogramming your own computer.

Right, right.

And part of that is knowing that we learned from the ultra performers, there's another type of energy expended in our decision making, which isn't physical energy, it's emotional energy. And what we learned is that there's emotional energy expended in simply making decisions. And in fact, very often the emotional energy of making the decision is much greater than the physical energy of executing the decision. And if you think about the gym example, it's not getting ourselves onto the treadmill once we're at the gym, that's the hard part. It's when we're sitting on the couch.

Deciding whether or not-- To go to the gym.

To go to the gym. Yeah. But once you get there, the physical energy is there. It's the emotional energy that is clouding the decision It is making it feel worse than it actually is.

Is that why it's important to, when you make the commitment to schedule the commitments in?

Yeah, I mean that helps. Every little thing helps. So here's the strategy to follow through on commitments that you make that become difficult, which happens.

Yes.

Okay? So in the commitment continuum, you make this decision, emotional energy is expended, and then it becomes difficult. And you've got two choices. You can move forward with what you said you wanted to do, or you can turn back towards the way you've always done things.

So I'm gonna go to the gym five days a week for the year. That's my commitment. Oh, for the whole year.

Yeah. That's what someone might say.

News resolution, I'm gonna go to the gym five days a week for the year.

Yeah, so yes. So it could be that, it could be, I'm gonna double our growth. I'm gonna triple our growth. Here's what happens in the moment when it becomes difficult. Most people, okay, the attitude that most of us have is like, is this possible? Did I make the right decision? Can I do this? And the key is to instead ask the question how. Not is it possible? Can it be possible? Do I feel like doing it? Okay, most of it it's should. It's should versus how. Most people say, should I do this? Should I follow through? Should I make a different commitment? And you end up becoming what I like to call a should head, right? Don't be a should head because should gravitates you back towards the neutral, towards the safe. The mindset of the ultra performer is one degree different and their attitude says, well, I'm in this for good. I already committed to this and so the question is how? How will I pull this off?

How will I execute this commitment?

How will I hit that target? How will I meet this deadline? How will I get out of debt? How will I lose that weight? How will I save this marriage? How? And so you have to intentionally create the question how, okay? So that you don't inadvertently create the question should. Because should I or can I or is it possible pulls it back towards the negative or towards the neutral and here's the thing about the brain and just science in general. Neutral isn't good enough. Neutral is negative. Neutral is absent the positive charge. Neutral is negative. So it doesn't mean you have to be like over the top crazy like, you know, banging on your chest doing affirmations like all the time. Like you can do those things. It just means you have to at least be on one degree to the side of I'm not allowing myself to question if I'm going to keep the commitment. I'm dedicating 100% of my energy into asking how am I going to keep this commitment?

Sure.

It's not should I stay married? It's how can I fix this? How can I stay married? How can I resolve this?

Right.

That one degree of of separation in the brain over the course of time creates a trajectory of two completely different outcomes for the same person.

Got it. Okay. So that's about the question how around the commitment.

Contextually ask the question how.

Okay. And what would be the next step then?

Yeah.

So focus.

Is one of them. You know, as we just kind of breeze through some of these, focus is the idea that focus is power.

How does someone stay focused when life happens? When you go through someone dies in the family, when the pandemic hits, when you go bankrupt, whatever. Someone breaks up with you, you lose your job. How do you stay focused under extreme emotional breakdown?

Well, you can't allow your ability to stay focused to be dependent on your circumstances. because there's always circumstances.

Always.

Always. There's always something going on in your life that's creating challenge and difficulty and pressure.

So it's almost like certain things need to be non-negotiables.

Yeah, you decide. So here's what you do is you decide. You have to decide each and every day consciously, intentionally, deliberately. I know we did another episode on multiplying time in the Focus Funnel.

Yes.

That is kind of a framework that's from the Procrastinate on Purpose, my second book, about how to figure out what to focus on. But at the end of the day, you just have to decide what you are willing to and wanting to go after and realizing that until you accomplish those things, everything else in your life is a distraction. Everything else is a distraction. But focus is power. And when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results.

Right.

Most people are getting diluted results in their life not because they're not smart enough or not good enough, it's because they're distracted. They are allowing their time, attention, and resources to fragment, to dissipate, to disintegrate, to spread. And what you need is focused energy to create a breakthrough.

And this is the example of Shehanne Wall, right?

Yeah, we talk about that with personal brands.

What is Who is Shehan?

Oh, where's the Shehan wall?

I always love this concept though.

So Shehan's wall is a... Before you.

Go into that, because a lot of people, especially in the entrepreneurs that are following or listening and watching, the people that are building personal brands, they have lots of things they want to do at once. I've got this passion and these passions and I want to try this thing and I want to build four different companies at once. And they say, which one do I choose? So when someone's got a lot of passions, they want to do it all at the same time, how can this example support them? Well, is your question, how do they.

Know which one to choose? Or, I got set up for that.

Why do they need to choose one?

Yes. Why do they need to choose one? Okay. So Sheehan's wall is an illustration. We named it after Peter Sheehan, who is a colleague of mine. He's a speaker, a really brilliant guy. He's the first person that I kind of heard the concept for, and we've adapted a little bit, but it really came from him. So we named it after him. which is that in personal branding, you've got two groups of people. There are those who are unknown and there are those who are known. Yes. And there's this huge invisible wall that you have to break through. And what most of us do is we're trying to break through the wall. And so we're trying to emulate, you know, these people over here and, like, going, oh, I want to have, I want to talk about all these different topics and have all these different business models and be on all these different social media platforms, and I have to do all these different jobs, and they're bouncing off. the wall. They complain about noise, but they actually are the noise. They are part of the noise because they're doing a lot of different things. And when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. The way to break through the wall, and this is kind of what— To.

Build audience attention, credibility, results, all those things.

Yes. And that's personal branding, what we just happen to do. But she hands wall applies beyond that. But in personal branding, we would say, We help clients figure out what's the one thing that they could be known for. Find their uniqueness is the term that we would use. And the way you break through the wall is by becoming the world's leading authority on one thing.

Not 10 things.

Not 10 things. One thing.

One thing first. And then when you break through.

Then you can expand into other things.

Yes.

So, I mean, if you look at my personal brand as an example, okay, so we're talking about take the stairs. I broke through the wall and take the the stairs. That book, you know, when we launched it, you know, AJ and I created this plan and our whole team, we worked together, we launched this book, we hit number two on the New York Times. I was 29 years old. That was part of how we broke through all. That's how I met you. That was how I got the first time on the podcast was years ago at this point. And then now, you know, we've been able to expand into some other things. Influence really is what we study. But money is the same way. So, The Sheehans wall applies to money. You've heard people say multiple revenue streams.

Yes.

Multiple revenue streams is horrible advice. It is horrible advice for a beginner.

For a beginner, yes.

You do not want multiple revenue streams. When you're beginning, you need one revenue stream that is really good.

Focus the tension.

That is how it works. And if you look at almost every billionaire, they didn't do it by having a lot of different things.

At first.

At first. They made their first million on one thing. They dominated one thing and they blew through the wall and then they got a little bit of money and then they invested it and then it grew.

And then they diversified into different assets.

And then it grew into other things.

Yes.

But you don't need multiple streams of revenue. All that's doing is diluting your focus, which is going to dilute your results. You're going to bounce off the wall financially. It's the same thing.

This is something when we, you know, when I got into teaching LinkedIn in 2007, 8 and 9.

Yes, you're a great example of this.

I remember.

At that time, I was researching and reading a lot of blogs and following people on social media who called themselves social media experts, teaching all social media. And I was like, I'm, I know a lot about these things, but I'm not the expert on all social media. But I don't know. I was like, and very competitive and ego driven at the time. I was like, I will out beat anyone I'm teaching.

I will crush you.

LinkedIn. No one can out teach LinkedIn like me. That was my mindset because I was just so much time and energy on it and I was getting results for people. And I just said, I'm going to create, I created a book that helped with credibility. I was doing workshops and events for about a year and selling the book. And then when I found kind of like my breakthrough thing, which was creating a course and using webinars as the engine to sell and build audience and then teach and then sell, I just said, I'm gonna sell this one course over and over until it doesn't sell anymore. I'm tired. You want to do something else. And for the next year and a half, I sold a thousand dollar course every single week. And I said, how can I master being a better teacher of this on the webinar presentation? How can I learn webinars better to draw audience? How can I gain credibility to get leads? and I just sold that same thing over and over for about a year and a half.

And that... And you did that one thing.

One thing every week. Every week. And that helped me break through the wall of being known as the LinkedIn guy that everyone came to for advice, speaking, opportunities, articles, whatever it may be. Then after about a year and a half of doing that, I said, okay, people are now coming to me and asking me, can you teach me about Facebook? Can you teach me about email marketing? Can you teach me about webinars? How have you done this so much to get these big results selling this program? Then I had the credibility. I broke through the wall on LinkedIn teaching. Open up a little funnel where, okay, I can teach this if I want to and this, but you have to also be aware of not diluting your efforts once you break through, because then opportunities come in and you can say yes to everything and be back to kind of like Square One at a different level.

Yeah, there's really a series of walls. Yes. And they get, they're bigger and bigger ponds. It's like you're a big, you wanna be a big fish in a small pond and then you go to a bigger pond and then you gotta crank for that one. That's true. Yeah. And each one doesn't matter, focus. I mean, Bruce Lee said this great, he said, I fear not the man who has a thousand kicks.

I fear the man who has one.

Kick that he's practiced a thousand times. Yes. Yeah, all right. Like, so that's what we're talking about here. And this is a massive problem. The personal brands that we work with, This is one of the number one things that we're helping them with is going like, if you want to get to the next stage, you don't have, if you don't have a team of a thousand employees, you can't do everything that Dave Ramsey does or Gary Vaynerchuk does. You got six people, you need to dominate the thing and crush it, which is what you guys have done a very disciplined job of going all in on the podcast in recent years. and it's growing exponentially. And you guys, I mean, look, you're one of the top podcasters in the world.

Yeah.

And you're, you're, you're because you're focusing it. But you've said no to a lot of other things.

A lot of money making opportunities. And that's the thing that's hard and scary for people that it's like, well, I could make money here and I can do this cool thing here, but how much time and energy will that thing take away from the main thing, which could multiply and expand and be 10 times more revenue or opportunities? if you actually just focused on it. And so for years, we did everything. We tried to build multiple different programs and courses and events and things, and we realized, okay, what are the things that are supporting us and what are the things that we could do but we shouldn't be doing because it's taking too much time and energy away from the main thing.

Bingo.

And the more clarity and focus you can have on that main thing and be committed to that sacrifice, the better results you'll get.

Absolutely.

So what's the next step?

All right, so the fourth of the seven here, I know we're breezing through them, but is the creation principle of integrity.

What does integrity mean in your mind?

Well, so to me, integrity is simply the congruence between your words and your actions. But people underestimate the importance and the value of the spoken word as it is connected to creating the life that they want. All of creation follows a very simple pattern. All of creation. You think it, you speak it, you act, and if you have integrity, it happens. You think it, you speak it, you act, it happens. You think it, you speak it, you act, it happens. Everything from this table to this building is somebody had an idea, they thought it, then they spoke it, they wrote it out, they told somebody, they created a plan, then they acted, they built it, and then it was real and somebody sold it, right? Like, you think it, you speak it, you act, it happens.

And if you got integrity throughout the.

Entire process, it's going to accelerate it. It's going to be more likely to come true. And if you don't have integrity, it's not going to come true because The words are the first manifestation of our ideas into reality. You know, people have different religious beliefs, but if you look at ancient Scripture, just the Bible strictly from the purpose of how does it say that God created the world? It says He spoke the world into existence. And then it says, that we were created in his image, which if that's true, that means we have the same power. Now, whatever your religious beliefs are, are what they are, but it's kind of irrefutable to say, look, as I say something, if people know that I am someone who does what I say I'm gonna do, it's easier for them to rally behind me. It's easier for them to support me. Like, if I say, let's meet up for lunch tomorrow at 11 and you trust me, you're gonna be there. But if I say, yeah, we should meet for lunch tomorrow at 11, you're like, he's not gonna be there. Or he'll be there 11:30. My integrity affects my integrity and my track record of the alignment between my words and actions actually shapes the way the world externally responds to me and everything that I do. As I am known for integrity, people put a lot of stock and weight and trust into what I say. and they align around it.

Yes.

As there is a breakdown or a breach of my integrity, then people don't put much stock in weight and trust and they don't align around it. But if Oprah says she wants to do something, the whole world will jump to align around it. She has that trust, that stock.

How does someone learn the art of being 100% in integrity when we are flawed, broken human beings that will probably in some way, shape or form, always be a little bit out of integrity on being exactly on time or there's breakdowns or traffic, you know, it's how do we learn the art of being the best level of integrity we can be?

It's mostly just a constant pursuit of that alignment and it is intentionally creating a future for yourself. So this is also the way that you talk about yourself. So look, let's just say if a student says, let's say a kid has a teacher that says, you know what? Oh, that answer was stupid. I can't believe you said that. And the kid hears it as, I'm stupid. And then they start repeating to themselves, I'm stupid. So you think it and now you're thinking, I'm stupid. And then you speak it. You start telling people, yeah, I'm stupid. I'm not good at school. I don't like school, school is dumb, school is a waste of time. So now you're speaking it. If that happens, then when it comes time to study for the test, which is the action, do you think somebody who says that all the time is going to study for the test?

No, because I'm stupid, why should I even try?

It's not relevant to me. I'm stupid. This is not for me. And so if they don't study for the test, they don't take the action, then when the test comes, what result do you think they're going to get? A good score? a bad score. They're going to get a bad score. It happens. You think it, you speak it, you act, it happens. Now here's the part that sucks. That happens once you get that bad score. Now it reinforces your pre-existing story. See, I am in effect stupid. And what we do is we organize the brain, organizes itself and life and processes the world around it to prove itself right.

Of course.

And it orients, it's the reticular activating system. It actually notices, pays special attention to things that reinforce beliefs it already has. Which goes to say this, what you believe isn't necessarily what is truth. We believe what we hear most often. And we have a lot more control over that than people realize. Whatever you tell yourself most often is what becomes true. and you have to rewrite your own stories about yourself, lest you are guaranteed to live into the stories that you tell yourself about yourself. Yes. And some people, Louis, this is heartbreaking because one of the things that we have noticed is that some of you, some of you, Would never allow a stranger to talk about your kids or your spouse or your family or you the way that you allow yourself to talk about you.

It's crazy.

And it's heartbreaking and you are creating your own future through the spoken word and then the alignment. So, you know, to your other question, our goal is just to as much as possible be aligning our words and our actions. So, and it's like, okay, if I'm late, fine. Tell me, Louis, I'm running five minutes late. And then try to be there, you know, four minutes late, not seven, right? So, it's just a constant alignment. It's a muscle that you can build. It can be as small as saying, I'm going to pick up a piece, I'm going to pick up that piece of trash and then you pick it up. You have added weight to your integrity. Yes. Reinforced it. It's being your word. And your brain wants to reinforce it, which is what you got to be careful of, you just got to be intentional of that your brain is going to reinforce whatever you tell it. The brain is happy to do whatever you tell it to do. You have to tell it to do the right things.

And so once we are in alignment with our integrity, with our thoughts, our words and our actions, what's the next thing?

Yeah, so the fifth one is the harvest principle of schedule. And so this is a lot.

So the harvest or hardest?

Harvest.

Harvest.

Harvest principle of schedule.

What's that mean?

Yeah, so when people think of time, you know, the most common thing they hear of is the concept they hear the most is balance. I think balance is a horrible metaphor for how we spend our time because Balance by definition means equal force in opposite directions. So for these to be balanced, they would be equal force in opposite directions. That metaphor applied to our life and specifically our time suggests pretty directly that in order to achieve happiness or whatever, that we would spend equal time on different activities. Well, it's not only a discordant metaphor, It's virtually an impossible pursuit. I mean, if you sleep eight hours a day and you work eight hours a day, then the only way you could ever achieve balance is to do one other activity and it would have to be that one activity eight hours a day. It just doesn't make sense. It's impractical. The other thing is the truth about achieving results is that, first of all, it doesn't take the same amount of time to achieve great results in different areas of our life. You don't have to work out. Good news. You don't have to work out eight hours every day to be really healthy. Now, if you want to be the rock, you probably got to work out four hours every day. But if you just want to be healthy, you might work out 30 minutes a day and be in the top 10% of health in America. Eat well. Eat well, exercise. Every day, that's good news. You also don't have to spend eight hours every day with your spouse to have a deep relationship.

No.

In many cases, you- 8 hours a.

Day with your spouse over 10 years, you might ruin the relationship.

It's more about dedicated, a focused relationship, talking about things that are really deep and personal and intimate. Intimacy is allowing yourself to be seen, to be known. That is powerful. You don't have to make cold calls 8 hours a day to be a great salesperson. If most salespeople made one hour of legitimate outbound prospecting activity, their pipeline would be so full in six months that they would have enough warm relationship, but they don't. They do creative avoidance and they spend an entire career doing everything they can do to dodge making a sales call and they just procrastination is a creditor that charges them interest and they never get ahead, it just gets worse because they're not confronting the thing. So what's the harvest principle of schedule? It's this concept that great results are not achieved through balance. Great results are achieved through short seasons of intensive imbalance, like a harvest. A farmer, when the harvest season comes, clearly I'm an indoor type, but people who farm, I hear, when the harvest comes, they will work 18 hours a day. They have to work 16-18 hours during the harvest because the harvest is when the harvest is. It's a season and during that season, if they want to maximize the results, they have to imbalance everything else for a short season. Now, that shouldn't be their lifestyle the whole year. That would be unhealthy.

They'll be burnt out.

They'd be burnt out. But again, it's focus. The way you create breakthroughs Here's a great example for me when I was 45 pounds overweight. Working out five minutes a day when I'm 45 pounds overweight, it's not gonna do it sweetheart. What I did is I said, I'm never gonna drink soda again. I'm never gonna eat fast food again. I am never going to eat sugar again. And I'm gonna work out every single day until I I get to where I want to be. And it is this short-term imbalance, a harvest season, where I go, for this moment in my life, I'm super focused on this. And that's how you create a breakthrough. And then once you create that breakthrough, it's much easier to maintain that level of performance. So the way we think of it is you actually allocate the minimum amount of energy Expend the minimum amount of energy maintaining everything else and dedicate 100% of the excess energy in one direction to create an explosion, to create the power, the focus, the breakthrough. Launching a book is a season. And this is true about authors. We have book launch season. Athletes have seasons. Accountants have tax season. Retailers have retail season. Seasons are a much more accurate reflection of our lives and how they work and how you actually create results. You speak my language with sports.

There's a preseason, there's a season, there's the playoff season, and then there's the postseason. Postseason. You got to recover from that time. But the preseason, the training camp, you're going hard. You know, the season, you've got weeks and moments, you've got the game day, but you build up to it and you go a lot harder. at the beginning and then the end, yeah, and the post season, you've got all your attention on giving your best for those last couple weeks and then, okay, it's time to recover, regroup, re-visualize what you want and move from there. What are the last two steps? Because I think this is a lot for people to take on.

Yeah, this is a ton. I mean, it's a lot. We're covering a lot of ground here.

You've got this entire process with lots of examples and exercises on how people can implement this in your book, Take the Stairs, the seven steps to achieving success. But what would you say are the last two? And I want people to get this book and go through it as well so they can have all of it. But what are the last two?

Thank you. Yeah. So real quick. So the perspective principle of faith is number six.

Yes.

Which is my favorite of the seven because it is. The other six are all strategies to achieve. The perspective principle of faith is all about how to ultra performers respond to failure. The short of it is just this: that faith is choosing to believe that what is happening now is somehow for a greater good later on.

So hard for people to think that way.

Hard.

I believe that's the only way you can think in order to not go crazy on some level, because there's so much pain, there's so much unfairness in the world for a lot of people. There's so many things that you wish didn't happen to you, friends, family, loved ones that happen. And they're going to continue to happen. And we can either live in pain and suffering and frustration and resentment and anger of the world or whatever unfairness has happened. Or we can choose to have faith that this is happening for a greater cause, a greater reason, and I don't know what it's gonna be. Maybe I'll know in a year, maybe it takes 20 years, maybe I'll never know, and someone else will know. But you've got to learn that principle.

You have to make that choice. It's the hardest of the seven choices, but it is most significant in the long term. I actually once heard someone describe heaven as a bunch of people walking around going, oh, now I see why that happened.

Right.

Now I see why that happened. One little shortcut on this, because pain is real and we live in a broken world and it's painful. When you're experiencing pain, the healthiest and I think like the only way to respond to it is to choose to believe that the pain you're going through is preparing you to become the person you one day need to be for somebody else.

Oh man.

Otherwise, I run out of endurance. Otherwise, I give up. My discipline is gone, right?

Otherwise, you'll go into addiction or drinking or binge eating or binge watching and you'll just say, what's the point?

We could do a whole another conversation on this at some point.

What's the point? Why do I even show up? This is unfair. This happened. I lost my child. I got injured. Why is this happening?

In the moment, it is unfair.

Yes.

But through perspective, it's the perspective principle of faith, our ability to have peace is directly proportionate to the term of our perspective. If I'm focused here and now, it's unfair, it's angering, it's enough to break you. If I zoom back and I go, oh, maybe I'm being prepared to help this person, or maybe that's going to lead to this, maybe that flat tire that I got that really made me mad prevented me from a fatal car accident down the road. If I don't have in the moment, all I see is the flat tire and I'm, I'm. pissed. But if I said, if I had the perspective going, oh, it saved me from a fatal car accident, I would look at the same incident in a completely different way. And we don't have that gift of foresight, but we do have the gift of choice. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

It's strong.

It's not easy.

That's a tough one. This is hard. That's a tough one.

That's a tough one.

And the last step would be. Last one is the pendulum principle of action. The pendulum principle of action. Okay. I'm not going to tell you the whole story, but here, here's what I will tell you with, and this is a a good thing to leave you with is that, you know, all of these are difficult decisions. They're difficult choices. It's a decision to take the stairs in every area of life, in every way. It's the truth of greatness. It's the truth of every success story. Success is never an accident. It is, but it is deciding every day to keep going. It's something that we call the rent axiom. which is that success is never owned. Success is only rented and the rent is due every day. And the rent is paid through the small, seemingly insignificant, trivial choices that we make each and every day. And success is simply the trajectory of those choices compounded over time in your life. But to become, you know, a multimillionaire is not some big extravagant event that happens overnight, it is small decisions made repeatedly in a decision and a commitment to make them each and every day.

What's the Muhammad Ali quote about service? Is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth or something like that?

I don't know. I don't think I've heard that one.

That sounds like a good one. Something like service is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.

I like that.

Something out of the house here on Earth.

Something like that.

And I think if you can take action and be in service with your action to whatever your gift is, whatever your truth is in that season of life. And you can be of greater good through your actions some way, somehow, then that's going to even multiply what's coming for you in the future.

Absolutely. And one thing that is huge of this is we have seen and we have some data that proves that the more accountability you have in your life, around these principles, the more likely you are to succeed. And it just makes sense. You are who your friends are. But we don't live in a take the stairs world. We live in an escalator world. Most of the world is looking for shortcuts and quick fixes. You have to surround yourself with take the stairs people, people doing the things that other people aren't willing to do.

Growth-minded people and you need accountability. It's hard to Stay focused, to commit, to be in integrity, to manage your schedule, to make sacrifices, and to choose faith. Choose faith in a time of pain. We're all gonna have it. And to take consistent action. This is one of the reasons why we created Greatness Coaching. Some of you guys may have heard about this. If you haven't applied for Greatness Coaching, go to lewishouse.com/coaching right now. Check it out. It's a year-long accountability program that supports you in your goals getting clarity, having a community of high achievers surrounding you with support, and having a monthly game plan that you can focus on and take action on to build momentum month after month, year after year. Check it out, lewishouse.com/coaching and apply if you feel like it's right for you. You can read all about it there, see testimonials and all that stuff. Again, lewishouse.com/coaching for greatness coaching for a year. of accountability. Rory, this is amazing. Take the stairs. This is all about the science of success. We just scratched the surface on these things. They can learn more by getting your book, following you on social media, Rory Vaden everywhere online. And I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure, brother. Much love. Appreciate it.

Always. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, make sure to spread the message of greatness to a friend. text a few friends right now or post us on social media. Tag me and Rory Vaden as well so we know who is listening and what you got out of this. And if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button right now over on Apple Podcast so you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest from the School of Greatness Show. And I want to leave you with this quote from Karen Lamb who said, A year from now, you may wish you had started today. I want you to think about the things you could do right now on a daily basis that your future self will thank you for. What is that thing you've got to do consistently that will take time to get results? But in six months, a year, two years, five years, you'll be thanking your older self for constantly showing up for your future self. What is that thing? Really think about that for yourself and start implementing that on a daily basis. Your future self will constantly be thanking you for showing up for yourself today. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

Thank you.