START DOING THIS To Avoid Burnout & Stop Feeling STUCK! | Benjamin Hardy & Lewis Howes

A big part of burnout is a recognition that maybe what you're doing isn't taking you towards your future self. And maybe you need to sit back down in your journal and reevaluate your future self. Who do you really want to be? And how do you start making small, simple investments in your future self so that your future self keeps getting bigger.

And so that you start moving towards that future self? I think another great way to avoid burnout is simply, I think you gotta have a dream. The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes. In the last couple years, there's been a lot of trauma in the world. not only from the pandemic, but also just the side effects of the pandemic that so many people have had loss in their life, loss of their health, friends, family members, loss of their careers, loss in relationships, loss financially. There's been like multiple layers of trauma for a lot of people in the last couple of years. How can we look at the trauma and learn how we can gain from it? When it seems like it's so overwhelming for people not even just high up high achievers but just people in general Is there a way to gain from trauma?

Yeah, absolutely yeah, there's a certainly actually the only way to get out of a trauma is if you actually do believe it was a gain oh, if.

The event yeah loss is actually in.

Your favor yeah, so like what a trauma is is yous had an event and The event, in this case, you're measuring the event against what you wish it was. So something happened, you feel like it was a bad experience, you wish it hadn't happened, and because the event happened, you feel like you're worse off. And you feel like you have long-term disability for some reason or another. So when you're living that way, then your experience is happening to you. And what post-traumatic growth basically is, is you have an experience, but rather than the event happening to you, you actually happen to the experience. so you say this is what happened, but I'm like basically trauma is when something bad happens and from a gap perspective you're wishing it hadn't happened. And so you devalue the experience and you don't want to think about it and you say this event made my life worse. But when you actually happen to your experiences then you say yeah this was rough, this was painful, but how can I actually learn from this? What can I get out of this? And so you know that you've had post-traumatic growth because on the other side of the experience, you actually believe you were better off. You are actually grateful that the event happened and you have higher sense of meaning, purpose and learning. So you've inflated the value of the experience rather than devalued it. And so even though something rough could have happened and left pretty scarred, you do genuinely believe on the other side of it, I am better off. You're better off. I have gained and I'm now more capable than my former self was.

Is there situations in life where you're just like, no, there is no way to have post-traumatic gain from a scenario of trauma where it's like, this is so bad, how could this actually help me? In the rest of my life.

I think that that's the initial response to a lot of experiences. Like as an example, like my in-laws had an experience where, you know, I won't go into all the details, but basically they were they own an apartment complex and like the government came in and shut it down and like they just they felt like there was absolutely nothing that they could gain from it. Zero they could gain from it.

We had this apartment complex. This was our whole livelihood. We had this business and now the money's not coming in and we're screwed.

Yeah, and like, I think that people have different experiences. Some way worse than that, you know, you lose a loved one or something. I think the initial response is, there's absolutely nothing I can get out of this. And, you know, it would have been better if it hadn't happened. But I think that if you approach every experience as learning, right? And if you take your experiences and value them and increase the value of them and know that your experiences are kind of like clay, like you can form them, you can shape them, you can do whatever you want with them. I don't have access to your experience. You don't have access to my experience. You'll never know what I'm experiencing in this conversation. And so I get to do whatever I want with my experiences. I can make them more valuable. I can learn more from them. I can increase the value of them. And I can be better off because of my experiences. And I can be grateful for my experiences or I can be worse off because of my experiences and let my experiences be the driver of my life rather than me being the driver of my own experience. And so I don't think that there's any experience you can have that you can't be better off without if you choose to contextualize them in a way that benefits you and makes you better.

Gotcha. Post-traumatic growth. Is there a process after you go through this traumatic experience and how to reflect and think about this?

Yeah. Yeah. So in psychology, they call it deliberate rumination. Okay. I think that the first thing you want to do is certainly Know that you're the one who controls your experience. You're the one who gets to decide what it means. You're the one who gets, you know, first off, you're the only one who has access to it. And so you get to choose your experience. Yeah, like you can't, you don't get my past.

Right.

You know? And so I think recognizing, like part of a positive psychology or healthy psychology is you've got to have a positive past, which obviously you're the one who chooses what your past means. And also you want a compelling and exciting future. And usually those two things go together. But I think the first thing is recognizing like you get to decide what your past means. You get to decide what this experience means and you get to decide how much value you give to the experience. And so like in really simple terms, you know, you certainly don't want to avoid it. You want to think about it like just as an example and it could be something that happened 10 years ago or 20 years ago. Like so, like my parents got divorced when I was 11 and you know, there was a lot of trauma for sure. My dad became a drug addict and things like that. and I can go back even 20 years later and I can go back and think about those experiences and I can get more gains from those experiences. I can think about and learn more and more from my past. And so one aspect of it is simply just thinking about the experience. You could write about it and think about what are all the ways that I've grown because of the experience. How has that experience increased maybe my empathy towards other people or shaped what I do? One example is me. I don't think I would have gotten I wouldn't become a psychologist had it been for my experiences. I wouldn't have been able to, you know, I probably wouldn't have learned how to write and learned all the things I did without that experience. And so I can choose to say that experience led to a lot of benefits for me and I'm really glad it happened. Gratitude helps as well, like when you're thinking about an experience to actually choose to be grateful for the experience and then just listing what, what from this experience do I not want? You know, that's, that's just as much gains as well. Like what what about that experience do I want to avoid so that I don't have to deal with that ever again? And also, what about that experience can I use to help other people or to improve my life? And so, you know, I can go back to an experience over and over and over again and keep increasing the value of that experience and getting increasing learning from it. And you can do it in simple bullet points. Just what are the things that I learned that now I no longer want to deal with or avoid because of that? What are the things that I'm now better at because of, you know, how did they shape my goals? Sure, sure. So it's just a simple process of writing things down and then being grateful that the event happened and saying because it's happened, I'm now more capable than my former self.

Right, right. And it seems like there's three, I guess, scenarios in life. There's our former self, our current self and our future self. The former is the thing that we ruminate and reflect on a lot. And the current is where we're at right now and then the future is where we want to be. Is there other states or those are the three main states?

Those are, I mean, obviously, So Daniel Gilbert is a Harvard psychologist who spent an enormous amount of time studying, I guess you would call it these three stages. And one of his famous quotes, he gave a TED talk called the Psychology of youf Future Self. He spent a lot of time studying.

Helping people recognize that they're not the.

Person they were in the past. They're not the past. Oh no, no. I mean, you're not even actually the same person you were a week ago. Like you've had experiences slightly that have slightly altered your goals, your aspirations, you know, even potentially your habits. And so there's actually a million versions of your former self. But yeah, you're not your former self. You have different goals, you're in a different situation. And so you actually see the world differently than your former self and you approach things slightly different than your former self. And part of, I guess, the gain mindset is that you measure yourself against your former self and recognize how far along you are. And so even if, for example, one aspect of your life went downhill, like maybe In the pandemic, your business actually went down a little bit. If you're measuring yourself and saying, well, I actually went backwards, then you're in the gap. But if you're like, well, yeah, maybe my money is not as far, but I actually know more than my former self. And I now can think things through differently. So you actually are ahead of your former self. And then future self is obviously just specifically who you want to be in the future. And fixed mindset, like Carol Dweck's fixed mindset, is people who are overly defiant about their current self. They're like, this is who I am. This is who I'm always going to be. Their identity is very rooted in their present or their past, whereas growth mindset, their identity is more rooted in their future. They have a more flexible identity. They're not as caught up in who they are today. They don't worry if people, you know, they don't need to have all the answers right now. Like, I don't. They don't have to have that perfect website or they don't have to have the big business. It's like, you know what? My current self isn't the be all end all. My future self is going to be a lot further along, so. I'm going to be a lot more compassionate towards my current self. I know my current self is very temporary. So it's okay if whatever I'm trying to do, it's not working perfectly. I'll figure out my future self's a.

Lot further along than me. They're a lot further developed than me. And what is the science of the future self planning and visualizing? How do we think about our future selves to get from where we are to where we want to be in a healthy way?

Yeah. One thing that's really funny about that is that basically all the research on that subject shows that as a rule, human beings are not very equipped, you know, whether it be evolution or whatnot, to think about where they want to be, let's just call it 10, 20 years from now, and then properly plan and set plans for that. People are really good at like planning a week in advance, maybe a month in advance, but like a lot of people, they don't really set their future self up for success. They, you know, they're not very good at planning retirement, setting up systems for retirement, planning for their future self's health. And so, like, what they say the first aspect is, and the same area in your brain that allows you to have empathy for other people actually allows you to have empathy towards your future self. So the first step in kind of thinking about your future self is thinking they are a different person than you. Like, Lewis in the future is not Lewis right now. He's a different person. Yeah, Lewis in five or 10 years from now is gonna have different goals. You're gonna be in a different situation. you're gonna actually care about different things. And so the first aspect is having empathy towards your future self and recognizing they're a different person. They're gonna be in a different situation. They're not you. They may have different values. And so you're, you know, that's, that's, I think, a healthy aspect of having a growth mindset. Um, like other researchers have found that people with a fixed mindset, they actually think that their future self is basically the same person they are today. And so they don't have a lot of imagination towards their future self. They don't, think that their future self could be dramatically different or be in a totally different situation, you know, have great money or great relationships or things like that. And so I think the first step is just recognizing that your future self is a different person even if you don't try. Like it's kind of like that idea that like change is inevitable, growth is optional. So your future self is a different person than just beginning to think who do I want that person to be? Getting more and more specific. And then obviously there are strategies of bringing your future self to you because it's actually easier to bring your future.

Self to you than going to your future self.

How do you bring your future self to you? I mean, one simple step is just actually thinking about where you want your future self to be and then writing a letter from your future self to you.

Give me an example. So, if I'm gonna write this letter, what does that look like? A letter from your future self. From two years, you know, I'm 38 years old. So, 40-year-old Louis speaking to my 38-year-old self. How would this look?

Yeah, and one reason why this is interesting, so there's a concept in psychology called the return home or the return trip effect and basically it's the idea that whenever you go somewhere, coming home is actually a faster trip. So, like if I flew here from Florida. -Why is it feel that way? -Because home is a lot bigger concept than wherever the destination is. -Okay. But anyways, bringing your future self to you, you just obviously imagine and think about who do you want your future self to be? Get as specific as possible. Maybe think, you know, three core areas of your life. You know, could be finances, could be relationships, could be spirituality. But just put yourself in the situation.

Of your future self. So you're writing this from your future self. From your two years older self to your current self. Yeah. And saying what? Okay, two years ago person.

Well, you're bringing them to you. So they're talking to you. They're talking to you. They're not talking to two years ago person, they're actually talking to you.

And just. Oh, right. So they're in the future.

Yeah. You're speaking from the future to your past self. Yeah, so this is part about how, this is part of how you create more vividness of your future self, but it's also how you create an emotional connection to your future self because you actually want to have a relationship with your future self and actually get to the point where you have a friendship with your future self. It's kind of like that idea that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Well, one of those five people should probably be your future self. That's good. But also, what's hilarious is there's actually research that shows that people who do not have empathy or connection to their future self are more likely to... Well, the most basic thing is if you are not connected to your future self, you're going to make very bad short-term decisions. financially, health-wise, they say the research basically shows the less connected you are to your future self, the more the present you seek present dopamine. So that would be like a destructive dopamine. The present becomes very powerful and you make short-term costs rather than short-term investments towards your future self. So like anything and everything you do is either an investment towards your future self or it's a cost to your future self. Anytime you invest towards your future self, your future self actually gets a little bit bigger. It's just like you invest in anything. And anytime your future gets bigger, your present actually gets better.

That's interesting. It's kind of like my sister trains for like Ironman's and marathons and she'll do this training throughout the week and she's like my future self is thanking me for the work I'm putting in now, these long-term goals that I'm committing to and staying consistent with. My health is thanking me in the future now.

Yeah, when you're making short-term investments, you're making and you actually emotionally love what you invest yourself in. you love what you invest in. So it's like, basic, like, you know, as far as writing that letter, you know, certainly you'd want to provide the context. So like, you know, and you're talking as your future self, you know, like, this is where I'm at, this is where my life's at, this is what I've done in the last two years. And, you know, this is what I.

Would say to you right now.

Like, Here's what you need to do to get here or- yeah, you could, you know, here's what you should look out for, here's, you know, here's where.

You should put your focus.

You know, like, right. Stop. But you can do this a million times. It's not like it has to be perfect once. It's like drafting anything. You can try again next week and adjust it. You know, I think that that's part of having a flexible identity and a flexible mindset is, like, right now, your current self is temporary. And so in a week from now, your current self will be a little further along. Your current self will know, you know, your future self, even in a week from now, will know more than you know. And so, yeah, you can write the letter however you want, but write it from the perspective of your future self, and that's kind of you bringing the future to you and just you know, say whatever you want to say happened and occurred, but speak from your future self.

How important is the idea of identity for ourselves in order to become happier, more confident, and more successful?

So identity is basically what you're most committed to. So it's what you're most committed to in terms of your beliefs, in terms of your values, and in terms of how you define yourself. and basically your view of your future self has a big impact on your identity because however you see your future and wherever you see yourself going has a big impact on how you see yourself now. And so your identity is very much what you're 100% committed to right now and your identity drives your behavior. And so like whatever behaviors you're doing is because that's how you identify. And I guess part of a lot of this future self research and just strategy is to get yourself more connected identity wise to your future self so that you're being and acting more as your future self rather than your former self. Yes. The identity is the driver of behavior. And identity is 100% what you're committed to. And so if you want to commit to something different, you know, that'll change your identity. Once you get 100% committed to something else, like whether it's, you know, at some point or another, my identity, I committed 100% to the idea that my future self was a writer. And so once you commit 100% to something, then you begin to identify with that and your behavior then follows that 100% commitment.

So how do we shape our identity to be the optimal for us to have the greatest future self?

You just need to think about who you want your future self to be, you know, and also you want to have a flexible identity.

You don't want to be- Now what's a fixed identity do to people?

It's over, it's just essentially a fixed mindset. It's saying, this is who I am, this is who I'm always going to.

Be, these are my characteristics.

This is right, this is wrong. Yeah. So Adam Grant wrote a book called Think Again. And Think Again is all about recognizing that you can change your mind. Part of that's not overly attaching your current identity to your former beliefs or to your former goals. Even your former self may have had goals that right now are irrelevant to you. Or even they had strategies. They did things that maybe even brought you to here, but maybe that's irrelevant to you right now because now you know more than your former self and so now you can visualize a different future self and now you need to figure out new steps. It's kind of like what got you here won't get you there. so I think it, I think being flexible and just thinking like where do I want to be? It could be five, ten years, could be two years, getting specific, choosing the right metrics. Like one of the things that Seth Godin said that I really like is he says you see whatever it is you're measuring. So like you're probably measuring different metrics or forms of success or goals than your former self was and thinking what's, what are the things I want to be measuring? What are the things I want to be seeing? What are the things I want to be focusing on right now? And It kind of shapes your selective attention, it shapes what you see. So just choosing based on where I'm at right now, based on what I value, based on where I would like to be, who do I want my future self to be? Get very specific about three or so areas and then begin to craft your identity around that.

Right, right. Yeah, that's powerful. I mean, I identify, 'cause there's so many identities that we can have in our life, right?

There's so many, When we do all.

Have a lot of identities. Right, we have lots of identities. You know, I'm a man, I'm from Ohio, I live in Los Angeles, I like the Cleveland Browns, I like the Houston Texans, it's like all these different identities of likes and interests and associations and I don't smoke, I don't drink.

Like these identities that I've defined myself in. Or just big aspects of your current identity. Right, right.

How you currently define yourself. What are these, Aspects of my identity doing for me and how should we know if certain identities are hurting us from accomplishing our goals or feeling happier in life?

I mean, it's a really good question. I think that it's hard to really, it's hard to really like, I don't really grab all of those parts and say like, which parts of these are hurting me? I think asking yourself, who do you want to be? Who's your future self is always like the first place to start. And then from there you can say, okay, if this is who I want to be in three years from now, what about my current self can come forward and what about my current self can't come forward? And there's things you do need to let go of. It goes back to what got you here won't get you there. And so, how do we know what.

Got us here won't get us there? How do we know what those things are?

Well, the goal always shapes the strategy. So, you know, for example, like I do write books. And so I know that for me, my future self, I want my future self to keep writing books. And so there are certain things that got me here that I'll continue to do, but if I want to maybe write better books or write different types of books, there's certain things I've got to leave behind. Certain things that maybe, you know, like again, your identity is what you're 100% committed to. and what you're 100% committed to reflects your current results. And so if I want better results, the results maybe of my future self who's, you know, maybe written better books or influence, then I do have to genuinely say there's things that I'm doing right now, part of my identity, how I see myself, maybe even part of my process that is keeping me where I'm at. And so, yeah, that's I think where you really get clear on the goal and then you start to think, okay, how do I get up there? That's where you start investing in more education, maybe investing in, you know, doing a lot of deliberate practice. Yeah, and doing a lot of deliberate practice where you, you know, like I'm just as an example back to my books, like I know I'm gonna write more and more books and so that's my deliberate practice. And so like, and I'm okay that my current self isn't there yet. I'm okay that my current self is a work in progress. I'm not a finished product and so I'm okay that I'm not there yet. but I do see where I want to go and I know that there's things I need to adjust in my process if I want to get there. And so it's not like you can get all the answers immediately. You're not going to immediately be able to say, you know, here's the three areas of my identity that I got to toss out. But like in psychology, they view it as either you've got approach motivation or avoid. Approach is where you focus on what you want rather than focusing on what you don't want. Avoid is where you focus on what you don't want. And so if you just focus on like, this is what I want, so who do you need to become to create that? Yeah. And then you start to invest in it. Like that goes back to investing in your future self. There's a lot of research that shows whatever you invest money in, you become more committed to some cost bias, endowment effect. Like you have ownership over what you invest in. And so if you start, if you have any goal, any desire, it could be to get in a relationship. It could be me to be a better father, you know, or whatnot. Like you see yourself in whatever vividness you decide to create there, whatever specific outcomes or experiences, and then you start to invest in that, start to learn in that, start to practice in that, and be very flexible with your current self and that you're not there yet, and get genuine feedback. Yeah, exactly. Get feedback along the way. But the more invested you are, and it's good to have deadlines. It is good on any goal. Even me wanting to spend more time with my kids, giving yourself a deadline so that there's some form of forcing function, and then just measuring the gain, honestly, going back to the gain. Whatever progress you make, don't compare yourself with your ideal all the time, but actually say, this was my goal, whatever it was, to become a better writer or to be a better father or to be in a relationship. How am I doing now compared to where I was three months ago? Right. And actually documenting the learning, document the differences, see your current self as different from your former self three months ago.

So what is the problem most people have? They see the gap of where they wanna be and they see what's in the gap and they think about how to get there, what's the problem with just seeing that and not seeing the gain that you've already accomplished since yesterday or last month or last year or last decade? And how do you measure and manage both where you are to where you want to be and where you've been and really using that as a springboard to the next step? Yeah.

So when you're in the gap, and again, this idea originally came from Dan Sullivan, he's, you know, the co-founder of Strategic Coach, it's a coaching company that's been around for like 40 years. I read his little version of the Gap in the Game three years ago, fell in love with the idea and started writing articles about it and then was excited enough to turn into a book. But the gap is where you're measuring yourself against your ideal wherever you want to be. And so like I have different ideals than I did three weeks ago. You know, like because I've learned things that I didn't know three weeks ago, maybe something really cool happened or I certainly have different ideals than I did five years ago. My ideal maybe five years ago was that I want to be a published author. Yes. But your ideals always keep growing and changing. They're kind of like the horizon in the desert. You're never gonna get to the horizon and it keeps moving. But if you're constantly measuring yourself against that ideal, then you're always feeling like a failure. Because you're never actually there. You're never there. It's always moving. Yeah, so measure and so from that standpoint, it really doesn't matter what you've accomplished. Like everything you've done or everything that anyone's done, anyone listening to this, It doesn't matter what you've done if you're always measuring yourself against the moving target. In psychology they call that the hedonic treadmill. It just keeps you feeling like you need more and more and more in order to feel successful. But it's an insatiable need. You don't actually need anything. And so, yeah, and by the way, the gap happens in small ways. Like for example, my wife makes dinner for our kids and they come down and they're like, oh, it's not what we wanted. Like that's measuring what's on the table against what is the ideal in their head.

The expectation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so whatever, so you're always devaluing anything when you're measuring it against your ideal. You know, and if you, me, for an example, as a parent, if I'm watching my son play tennis and then the only thing I see is the shots he's missing, and then I go up and I say, you know, dude, look what you, you should have been doing this and this and this and this. Then I'm always moving the target of success for him. And so now I'm teaching him to measure himself against my ideals, which are always changing, or against you know, versus saying, you know, how are you doing compared to what you were doing three weeks ago? What have you learned? How are you better than you were three months, you know, a month ago? You know, and so the gain is obviously where you actually appreciate your progress. You recognize that you are further than your former self. Like in measurement terms, like what do they call it? Well, you're always measuring yourself against a reference point. So like in, we're always trained to measure ourselves against reference points.

Right.

Why does it seem to be most of us, Reference ourselves against other people.

We're trained to.

We're trained to compare ourselves against others.

Yeah.

Why? Well, it starts with the public education system, right?

Like, who's got the top grades?

Who's number one in the school? We're all, the reference point in school is test averages or whatnot, like general averages. You got an A, she's got a B. So you're given a reference point by the education system. It wasn't created by you and you're measured on it against other people. So you're competing against other people, right? and so like you start with external reference points that you're measuring yourself against, then you've got social media where it's all of these, you know, people with six-pack abs and all these things and like telling you what success is. And so we're trained by society to have external reference points and always be measuring ourselves against either externals, ideals, other people and never measuring ourselves against an internal reference point, which is me versus me three weeks ago, me versus me four years ago. And so I think a huge beginning point to being in the gain or actually even getting to know yourself is stop measuring yourself against ideals, start deciding your own internal reference points. You know, how do I define success? What matters to me? How am I doing on that definition of success versus my former self? And starting to just measure Benjamin Hardy or whoever's listening, like just measure yourself against where you were before. That's the only accurate measurement because that's the only thing that had a decent starting point. Like if I tried to measure myself against you, what would the measurement be? Would I try to measure you, you know, me versus you on like a podcast? I don't have a podcast, you know? So immediately I'm a failure, right? I could probably try to find ways to measure myself against you so that I feel like I'm beating you, but like we both have different goals, we have both different starting points. And so like the only thing that I can accurately measure myself against that makes any sense is my former self. And so if you start just measuring yourself in that way, then you can see your progress you increase the value of your past, you increase the value of your present, and then from there you can have more of an intrinsic motivation to say, what are the targets I actually want to set? And who cares what anyone else is doing? And also, who cares what anyone else does to evaluate my progress? Because the only person whose opinion of my progress that matters is me. Your opinion of my progress doesn't really matter. Like, the only person who's value, you know, of my progress that matters is me. And I get to decide that. But if I'm in the gap, I've devalued all my progress because I'm saying, why am I not there? So it's pretty destructive.

Yeah, it is. So always be looking at the gain in order to find kind of peace towards your goals of accomplishing your goals where you are to where you want to be. Don't compare to other people is what I'm hearing you say. Compare to where you've been and how far you've come. What if someone can look at their past and say, well, I haven't really done much. and they're not proud of the gain because they're like, well, I'm still stuck.

Well, you still have to find the gain. You still have to create the gain.

You have to find the meaning.

Yeah. Yeah, but you still can create gains. I mean, there's a lot of people who maybe aren't who can look at their past, maybe say 10 years has passed by. And, you know, I really haven't done that much with my life. But that's, again, devaluing your own past, devaluing your own experience. Certainly, if you look back and and again, you probably feel like a failure because for some reason or another, you're still comparing yourself with maybe where you thought you should be or where society thought you should be or where your parents thought you should be or where you're. And so the only reason again, you feel like you aren't doing well is because you're in the gap and you're saying, this is what I should have done or where I could have been. And so the first step of getting out of that is just actually increasing the value of your past and saying, here are the things I have gained. You know, I mean, for example, my own younger brother, like, he's had a lot of challenges. You know, he went through a lot of challenge and trauma growing up. and you can feel like a failure if you keep measuring yourself against other people. But the truth is you can train yourself to choose gains. I mean he actually, and again it's up to him, my brother, to decide what his gains are. Not me. But if he chooses to look at the gains and say, he does have an amazing daughter. He's had a lot of great experiences. He has learned a lot through ups and downs. Once you actually increase the value of your past and actually start to love yourself and say, you know, I have gained, I have learned. I am further than my former self and because of that I'm going to move forward. Like that's a great starting point for any form of progress rather than I'm a loser, look at my past 10 years, look at where... That's a really bad starting point for any form of progress. It's much better to start wherever you are, any form of progress you want to make, start in the gain and say, this is where I actually have made progress. This is where... Because that puts you in a position of confidence, it puts you in a position of gratitude. It also puts you in a healthy place where you're not trying to compete against anyone else. You're just like, this is my starting point. I do have some momentum from my past. And so from there, I'm gonna move forward feeling like I have made progress and I can own that. Whereas if you're always starting from the vantage point of I'm not where I should be or I'm not where I could be or, you know, the last year was a... Then you're trying to like fix something that's not really broken.

Right, right. You've got another concept about who, not how. I think a lot of people are thinking when they have a big goal, that they've never accomplished something before, they think, how am I going to do this?

And then.

They get emotionally paralyzed because they're like, I don't know the steps how to do this. Even if I see that someone else did it and here was their steps, how am I going to do this? Why should we be thinking who, not how, when it comes to accomplishing big goals?

Such a cool question. I honestly was not trained in who, not how. So this is another Dan Sullivan concept which we wrote together and wrote who, Not How. But who, Not How is a totally different way of looking at life. It's a totally different way of looking at people and it's a totally different way of looking at achievement. When you're a how thinker, You think about a goal, you know, I want to start a business or anything, I want to clean my house. And the first question you say is how do I do that? And so you immediately put all the pressure on yourself to figure out the problem and to execute the problem. I want a new website. Okay, how do I do that? I want to do this and people are trained in how and a lot of that also has to do with the education system because we're not trained to collaborate, we're actually trained to compete against each other. you know, if you try to get answers from your friend on the test in school, that's called cheating, right? And so who, not how, is a view of collaborating with everyone around you and finding the right who. So if it's like, I want to, you know, build a website. Rather than the first question coming out of your mind, rather than the first thought being, how do I do that? The first immediate thought is, who can do that for me? or who can help me do that? And basically the premise of who Not How is you want to view other people as investments, not costs. So if I want to free up my time, if I want to free up 10 hours a week, which I think everyone should do, get someone to handle your logistics. Even my wife, she homeschools all of our kids and I finally got her to think who Not How and we actually got someone to help our little twins in the morning so that she could focus on the other kids. You know, it's like get a who to help you and that who is not a cost. It doesn't, you know, even if it's 10, $15 an hour, you know, hire that person to do your website or hire that person to ghost write your book. Like it's not a cost, it's actually an investment in your future self and it's an investment in your current self because when you, when you make that investment, you've now freed yourself up to do what you want to do. You've also invested in the result. Um, and so who not how is a result oriented approach to life. where you say, what is the result I want and who can make it happen? And the more you start investing in who's, the faster you're gonna get results. Even if it's learning. The more who's you have around you, the more invested and committed you are to what you're trying to accomplish. So it's like, if I wanna run an Ironman, why would I try to figure out how to do that? Why don't I just get who's? Why don't I invest in a trainer? That increases my commitment. It also immediately gives me education. So yeah, who not how solves a lot of problems. It gets you to where you want to go a lot faster.

How do we find the who's though? When you really think like, oh, you know, a lot of times people don't know how to find the who. Very specific people they're looking for. Sometimes very technical people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they're like, well, I can't afford the who.

Yeah. So that's again thinking in terms of cost.

Not investment.

Yeah, if you make an investment in a who, and it could be small investments in who's in the beginning, When you make the investment, first off you become more committed. Second off, it creates an environment or context where now you've got to actually find a way to generate the results so that you can. So it actually, it's actually a fast way to increase your ability to earn. It's an investment mindset. But back to the idea of how do you find the who? Again, that's a how question. Who can find the who?

Who can find the who?

Yeah, and so like I have-- who.

Can you hire or who can you help you? That's why I asked you before the-- Our interview, I was like, looking for a ghost rider. Who do you know?

Yeah. So you need a who to find your who. I have an assistant who whenever I want to hire someone, if I want to grow a YouTube channel, who is the person to help me do that? Obviously there's lots of who's. There could be mentors, but there also could be someone who manages your channel. The first thing to do when you find a who, and this is the first aspect of leadership, is you have to clarify the what and the why. What is the goal? What's the result? Why does it matter so much? And what are the specific success criteria? So, this is a concept that Dan has called an impact filter. It's a one-page document. We actually put it in the who, Not How, if anyone wants to just look up impact filter. But basically the impact filter is a one-sheet that Dan made that helps you clarify the what, the why, and the specific success criteria. So, for example, if you want to hire a ghostwriter to write your books. What you would say is like, what's the objective? I want to hire someone who writes a book and I want. And then it's like, what's the actual goal? One to two books per year. And you'd have to define it very clearly. Let's just say it's one book a year. I want one excellent book written every single year, published every year in my voice. It's powerful, it's profound. So you get really clear on the outcome. Why is this so important? you know, because we want to help other people become great. And like you just write down all of the why, you know, what's, why is it so important? What's the best case result when it's done? And then what's the worst case result if you don't take action? And then this is where it gets really important is what are the specific success criteria? So what has to be true in order for this to be successful? This is just laying out the vision so that you use that to find the right who. And so like in this case it could be, well, it only is going to cost Lewis 10 hours a week. Like, you know, like you've got to be really good at headlines, you know, like, you know, you have to be self starter. Like you have to just lay out what must be true and then you use that filter to find the right who, you know, and for me, I just, I use that whenever I want to hire someone or find someone, whenever I have a goal, I just lay out what has to be true and then I have my assistant in this case go out and use that. to find the right who. The vision is actually what attracts the who. They're like, yeah, I can do that. I'm a writer, I want to do that kind of work. Yeah, I can do those things. If you lay out success and make it very specific, and so I have someone go out and find the who, but they use my vision and my success criteria to go find what I'm looking for.

Do you think that holds people back from a lot of the things they want, is the who, not the how?

Totally. I mean, I'll use myself as an example. I wanted to start a YouTube channel for five years. You didn't do it for years. So how leads to procrastination because there's so many aspects of it that you either don't want to do or you don't know how to do. I don't know how to film videos. I don't know how to edit videos.

I don't know YouTube.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's so much complexity and so because I've put all the pressure on myself to do the house, rather than just getting a who to start the process and get the ball rolling, you know, how leads to procrastination because you've put all the weight on yourself. Whereas if you just clarify the goal and immediately invest in a who and then you've offloaded the how to them, given them the responsibility for that, you've become a leader, then you can just do the parts that you want to do, you know, get that video editor, but you have to view them as an investment, not a cost, you know, this is an investment in future me. This is an investment in my goals. It's also an investment currently because now I can actually focus on the parts where I want to focus. And so yeah, the more you try to do how, the smaller your vision of your future self will be. The more you apply who's, and this could also be with mentors, like, you know, there are certain people who can immediately open up a door for you. Like who's the right who who can connect me with that person or who's the who can get me that opportunity. And so how very much shrinks people's vision of their future self. Whereas if you start playing the who game, not only can you get other people on board with your vision and to handle the parts of it that you don't want to do and also that they'll do it enormously better than you.

One of the things that holds people.

Back from who is that they don't trust other people. A lot of entrepreneurs think, They can't do it as good as me or.

They can't do it as fast.

Pure ego. You have to trust other people, you have to clarify the vision and you've got to trust that not only can they do it better than you, they want to do it, they love to do it, that's what they want to do, they're the ones who have opted to do it. And so trusting other people, getting out of their way, that's why it's called who not how. You don't tell them how to do it, you don't micromanage, you've clarified the vision and you come the other way. That's one of the reasons actually I like writing books with Dan, is I'm the who in this case for writing the books. He had a vision, he wanted to turn his concepts into major books. And I was like, I would love to do that. And he literally doesn't-- I write whatever books I want in the case of our collaboration with Dan. He doesn't tell me what books to write because he's like, I could never advise you on that because you're the one who does that. I don't do that. And so I wouldn't even try to advise you on that.

I coach entrepreneurs. And you write books.

Yeah, so I wrote whatever book I wanted. That's a Benjamin Hardy book, even though it's got both of our names on it. There's no way he would have even ever been able to imagine that book because he let the who do it. And if he had tried to tell me how to do it, I wouldn't have done it because I want freedom. And so does he. And so you have to trust your who's and give them the freedom to do it how they would do it. And it will most certainly be different than how you would do it. And that's actually a good thing. And you shouldn't even be thinking about the how. You know, it's like you shouldn't tell the mechanic how to fix your car. You know what I mean? And so apply that to all areas of your life. But if it's like, I want to, make a million dollars or whatever. Well, who can help me do that? Who can teach me how to do that? Or who can immediately open up the doors rather than how do I do it?

And what about, you wrote a book called Willpower Doesn't Work. Why doesn't it work? And what does work if willpower isn't the efficient way?

Yeah, so willpower is, one way of looking at willpower is willpower is trying to do the how.

Willpower is you trying to do the how.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of reasons why willpower doesn't work. I wrote that book originally thinking about it in terms of addiction. Willpower is trying to white-knuckle, try to muster up the strength, trying to force yourself to do it. Willpower is one of the most terrible ways to try to overcome an addiction. It actually compounds the problem because at the end of the day you have to finally realize, I need help. I can't do this by myself.

You have no energy, you're exhausted, you're drained, and you just need that thing to get back to.

Yeah. Well, when it comes to addiction, usually it's realizing that you need other people to help you, you know, like in the AA world, surrender to God, you know, but also like you need to change your environment. So like that book was really about how environment trumps willpower. Like there's a quote from Marshall Goldsmith, he's a performance coach, and he said, if you do not create and control your environment, your environment creates and controls you. And so like willpower is trying to beat a bad environment. rather than just changing your environment, eliminating all of the bad options, but also your environment does shape you. So like as an example, you know, it kind of goes back to the idea you're the byproduct of the five people you spend the most time with, but if you're in a bad situation, it doesn't matter how much willpower you muster, you're not gonna be able to do that much. Like take my three kids, for example, who we adopted. We adopted three kids from the foster system. They came from a broken home, poverty, All of the willpower in the world by those kids wouldn't have been able to do much in that small situation. But if you immediately change their situation, all of a sudden now they've got infinitely different options, potential. And so all of the willpower in the world 100 years ago wouldn't have been able to get a person from Florida to California in five hours, but we now live in a situation that enables us to do it. And so that book's a lot about creating the context, creating a better situation, you know.

Creating a better environment than trying to have willpower.

Yeah, rather than me trying to, you know, stop looking at my phone, it's like leave it on airplane mode, leave it in a different room, like create the context so that I can be who I want to be, be my future self. And so, and one other aspect of willpower, like an aspect of willpower is called decision fatigue. And like decision fatigue is the idea that the more options you're trying to weigh, the more your willpower gets fried.

Right.

And so not only do you want to create an environment where you can, you know, not necessarily need to control all of your behavior, but you're being who you want to be, but you also want to make decisions. Like the opposite of decision fatigue is decision cut off alternative options. So like, you know, decision fatigue means you still haven't made the choice. It's like you're 98% committed. So like there's a great quote from Clayton Christensen. He said 100% commitment is a lot easier than 98% commitment. because if you're only 98% committed, that means you're still kind of, you're not actually there. And that goes back to identity, that your identity is what you're 100% committed to. And so if you're only like 98% committed, then you're kind of torn between options. You're just, you're overthinking it and you haven't quite made the decision, you haven't committed to something. And so you're just, you're not really going anywhere. And so a big aspect of killing willpower and making it irrelevant is just actually making a decision and learning how to commit to that decision. And then obviously creating the environment and the context that supports that decision. learning how to identify with your future self so that you no longer see yourself as that smoker or you know, like you start to, you know, because your identity and your behavior go hand in hand, but part of willpower is that you still identify as someone maybe who has those bad habits even though you want this. And so your identity and your behavior are all trying to conflict. Yes. Yeah, so willpower is really a bad angle. Yeah. It's the opposite of intrinsic motivation.

Mm-. What about the feeling of burnout. How do people accomplish their goals if they just feel burned out? Is that also with decision fatigue, feeling burnt out? How do they get back to a place of clarity and focus so they can really just be their best self in a day-to-day process and becoming their future best self? Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of reasons why people burn out. One of them might be that they actually, maybe it's decision fatigue. Maybe they're still not really doing what they want to do.

Yeah.

And so they're not really excited about what they're doing. They're not really moving towards their desired future self. They're just expending a lot of energy on things that they don't really value. Like if you're moving towards your desired future self and you're investing in your future self and you're working on projects that you love, like you're being pulled towards your future self. Like pull motivation is a lot more exciting than push motivation. Push motivation is like, I really don't want to do this. Like let's go to work for five hours. Yeah. And so if you're a big part of burnout is a recognition that maybe what you're doing isn't taking you towards your future self and maybe you need to sit back down in your journal and reevaluate your future self. Who do you really want to be? And how do you start making small, simple investments in your future self so that your future self keeps getting bigger and so that you start moving towards that future self? I think another, you know, great way to, you know, avoid burnout is simply just taking time to sit and measure your gains. Like sometimes burnout happens because you know, you're so busy trying to get somewhere that you forgot that, like, you know, how much progress have you made? Like, let's take a second to like be grateful. Let's take a second to like evaluate your progress and to appreciate your gains for a minute. Appreciate how great your life is. Who not how's another great antidote to burn out because maybe you're burned out because you're doing a lot of how that you don't want to do. And so maybe you need a who to like, what are the, if you've got five things that you do on a regular basis, which two of them are sucking all your energy and how can you just get who's to do that or get rid of them and you just focus more and more on the one or two things that bring you energy. And so I think that connecting with your future self, continually measuring the gain, applying more and more who not how so that you actually are generating results with less effort but doing what you want. And sometimes you just might need a break. And sometimes you actually need a break from your future self. Sometimes you just- From striving so much. Yeah, well, or you're, yeah. Sometimes you just do need some active recovery. like, I do like the concept of, you know, Stephen Kotler on active recovery and flow State, like, embedding active recovery in your life. Like, maybe you actually do need more play. Maybe you do need, like, active recovery is the idea of what's a. What's an outside work activity that gives you flow? What's an outside activity that you enjoy that gives you engagement that is kind of healing and restorative? The gain is very restorative. You know, like, it's like, here I am versus where. Where I was before, but. what are some flow activities that you can do that bring you joy outside of work? And how can you spend more time doing those? Because whatever you, it's that, you know, other idea of how you do anything is how you do everything. And so, like, if you're creating flow outside of work, and there's a lot of research in occupational psychology, there's a concept called psychological Detachment from work. We, we live in a world where our work is always pinging us, dinging us, you know, texts and emails. And so psychological detachment from work means you cut off work mentally, physically, and you fully engage out of work and inside.

Play activities and family activities.

Yeah, yeah. And I think you can create a life and an environment where you're recovering enormously and you're doing activities outside of work that are restorative. They give you flow and then you can transfer that to having flow in your work. I think one other thing that leads people to burnout though is spending a lot of energy and not actually feeling like they're making progress. so like I have a lot of energy when I achieve a goal, right? Achieving goals gives you energy. It's exciting and so if you actually give yourself deadlines and if you actually create a result and you actually watch yourself succeed and you just build some confidence because you just measured yourself against where you were before you achieved the goal rather than against your ideal, you're seeing yourself move forward and that gives you excitement. Like success creates confidence, success creates motivation and so watching yourself get small wins and watching yourself get big wins gives you energy.

Right, right. What's the one thing that holds you back from where you are to where you want to be?

I go in the gap a lot. Yeah, I go in the gap a lot. Where I think about all the areas of my life that I wish I was where I was at. Currently, you wish you were-- yeah, yeah. I can measure myself against my own ideal. And then maybe it starts to feel like that's no longer possible or that I made a mistake and now that door is closed.

I should have started five years ago. My YouTube channel, it's already too late or something.

Yeah, or just any other dream that current Benjamin Hardy is coming up with versus, you know, and so then I start to be in the gap and not feel great about my life and then I start missing all the greatness around me, all of the just beautiful things in my life. And so, yeah, I think-- so it's.

Getting back to the gain, what you've gained in the last month, in the last year, in the last five years.

Yeah, looking at your life, looking at all the gains, looking at the amazing people in your life, being genuinely humbled. You know, I have six beautiful kids, you know, like, you know, actually giving them the love that they deserve and actually loving them and just being blown away by my life. Yeah, I think that the thing that holds a lot of people back is just that they don't love their life. They're still trying to get there rather than being here. Love where they're at. Well, yeah, and appreciate where you're at and value where you're at. Doesn't mean you can't keep going. It doesn't mean you can't, you know, I have goals. I have a future self that excites me and that I'm investing in every single day. But if you feel like you need that thing in order to make you feel happy or make you feel worthy, then that's the gap. You know, you feel like there's something missing. So I think whenever I, whenever I slip into that and I think I need to be somewhere else or have achieved something, and I start to feel dark and feel like I'm, you know, feel like everything's going the wrong way, then I've, you know, devalued everything around me. I've put myself in a weak position. and from there you can't really move forward. And so, regularly reminding myself of my gains, being in a state of gratitude, not only does it empower you, but it helps you see everything in your life more clearly. And then from there you're in a more powerful position to move forward. But I think that recognizing you don't need anything. I don't need that next achievement. I can want it, but I don't need it. I'm great where I'm at. My life's great. I'm very happy, I'm very blessed, I'm very lucky, and I have amazing things. I don't need anything else. That's kind of bringing back to your own internal referencing system. And once you get close to that, then nothing can really hold you back.

I love this stuff, man. You've talked about this this 100% rule. Can you tell me what that is and how it can help us accomplish our goals? Is this the 100%, 98%? Is that what you're just talking about?

A little bit, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, it goes back to identity and commitment. Like 100% commitment is much easier than 98% commitment. Because if you're 98% committed, then you haven't connected your identity to your future self. You haven't connected your identity to where you want to go. You're still in decision fatigue. You're still in paralysis by analysis. And so 100% really is a lot easier. It's a lot easier when you just say, this is who I am, this is who I'm gonna be. You're no longer hiding from your future self, you're no longer hiding other people from it. It's like, this is what I'm gonna do, this is what I'm... I think the two hardest things in life for people are, what do I commit myself to? What do I want? And then how do I get myself committed to it? Like, you need to know what to commit to and you need to know that you can already have it. You know, you can commit 100% to it. Yeah. And so, yeah, once you get 100% committed, you've made the decision. You start investing in that future self. You're no longer hiding it. You start to, you know, like, you know, you start to develop the narrative of your future self. There's a great quote from Michael Jordan. He said, Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again. You know, so it's like it's getting to that point of decision and action. There's another great quote. This is actually my favorite quote, Louis. It comes from Robert Brault. He said, We're kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.

Say it again.

I'll say it again. It takes a second. We're kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal. Ooh, interesting. So it's not the obstacles between you and your goal that's stopping you. You can go through those obstacles. You can learn through those obstacles. Your future self's capable. Your future self figured that stuff out a long time ago. It's that you keep investing in lesser goals. It's because you keep... and it's because there's a clear path.

Safer, smaller goals.

Yeah, and that's the 98% commitment. You're still actually entertaining those lesser goals. You're still saying yes to situations, opportunities, people that your future self would have said no to. If you're still saying yes to things your future self would say no to, then you're still saying yes to lesser goals. And so part of getting 100% committed is actually finally saying, and being able to discern, you know, I'm not going to invest in that anymore. Like that's a lesser goal. That's something that former Ben may have been interested in or would have even aspired to, but it no longer fits or it's a distraction. And so, you know, getting better done committing to those lesser goals and actually recognizing when you are spending time on things because you're not going through the obstacles and just not investing and committing 100% in the future self that you want. Right.

So interesting you say that because Sometimes I look back 10 years ago and I say, wow, so many things that I did for whatever, $500 or $1,000 that $100,000 I say no to now.

Yeah.

But the same things. And I'm like, gosh, it's crazy to think that at one point the person I was-- that was your former self, man.

Would have, you know, been like, this.

Is insane, 100,000 clams for this thing. And now I'm just like, nah, it doesn't fit where I'm at right now. The time isn't meaningful or it doesn't work for my situation. It's cool to see the gain.

That's massive.

You know, of how far you've gone if you're willing to reflect back all those years. But I think sometimes we don't look deep enough into that.

Well, in life, in the moment, it could be punching you in the face. You've got that deadline or you've got that goal or something might be falling apart and stressing you out. And so you're like, I'm dealing with this problem and you forget that actually, like you just said no to that $150,000 opportunity that your former self would have spent you know, and so it is nice to regularly reflect on that and to, and to, you know, it's not always about, like, patting yourself on the back, although that is a much better way of living than, you know, you know, being a drill sergeant on yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and also a lot of your former, a lot of your lesser goals are the thing. They were maybe the number one goal for your former self. You know, like, that might have been the thing that got you here, but it's not gonna get you there. And so, like, you got, you know, what you want now and what you know now, you know differently than your former self. And also maybe you have different goals. And so you can say no to a lot more things than your former self could have said no to. That's actually how you advance. Is that you're now saying no to things your former self was saying yes to. Your former self was saying yes to $150 to do that opportunity.

Right, right, right.

But you now say no to that. And so it's like, well, what is your future self say yes to? What is your future self? What do you want to commit to 100%? Yeah, there's there's a really humbling quote. It's from the book the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and they basically say that you can know what you're committed.

To by the results you're currently getting. Like- Right. That's what you value, the results you're currently getting.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like you're not committed to what you want, you're committed to what you have. If you were committed to something else, you'd have something else. And so like that's where you have to say like, okay, this is what I'm committed to, like whether it's my weight, whether it's my income, whether it's I'm committed to this because I keep doing it.

Based on results, this is what I'm committed to.

Yeah, whatever results you're currently getting, that's your commitment. And that's your identity right now. And so a big part of, well, what is the goal? What do I actually want? Who is my future self? What are all of the lesser goals that I keep distracting myself with because I don't want to go through the obstacles or because I don't want to commit to my future self? And then the more you start saying no to those lesser goals, then you're actually making investments in your future self. You're actually saying I'm gonna say no to that now because my future self would. I'm gonna say no to that opportunity, that relationship or that bad habit. And that literally goes straight back to the more connected emotionally you are to your future self and the more committed you become to your future self, the more you make high quality decisions in the present that are investments towards that future self.

Absolutely. I love this man. This is good stuff. benjaminhardy.com, you're all over social media as well. Where do you hang out the most? which social media platform these days?

I think really Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or are you? I mostly just starting on YouTube, so I've got it's mostly just YouTube and then I'm in the books so that's.

Kind of where I'm at man.

What's your YouTube? I think it's Benjamin Hardy on YouTube.

Yeah, Dr. Benjamin Hardy or just Benjamin Hardy. Okay, cool.

Make sure to link that up here. Go subscribe. He's finally getting into YouTube. So I've been doing it for a year. I've been doing it for a year. My current stuff's a lot further than my former self, man. I'm in the game.

I've been doing it for a year.

But you thought about it for five years. Yeah, I got 40,000 subs, but my future self has a lot more, man. That's great. But I'm in the game. You know, I'm not measuring myself against.

Anyone else, just my former self.

That's good. Making progress, man. You're measuring yourself from where you were a year ago.

Yeah, not a bad job. And I'll apply who Not How to make 10x progress. That's good. Right. Who Not How, I like that a lot. The book's called the Gap and the Gain. It's all about the high achiever's guide to happiness, confidence, and success. So if that's something you want, make sure you pick up a copy of the Gap and the Gain. Some great strategies in here. Check you out on YouTube and benjaminhardy.com to check out more of your books and all of your work. A couple final questions for you. This one's called the Three Truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away from here. You get to live as long as you want to live, but eventually it's your last day. And you have accomplished all the things in the game that you want to accomplish for your future self. You become those things.

Sure, sure.

But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you or it goes somewhere else. But all of your books and content and YouTube videos that you've been building for years, they're gone. And you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons that you would share with the rest of the world. And this is all we would have to kind of remember your work by are these three lessons of life. What would you say are those three truths for you?

One is definitely that the view you have of your future is the thing driving your present. That's the direct driver of your present. Whatever view you hold of your future self. In psychology they call that prospection. So like literally whatever view of your future self is the thing driving your present. Like if you believe in a God, like that's gonna obviously impact your future self. You know? And so yeah, your future, you know, whatever view you have of your own future and whatever committed view you have of your future is the driver of your present. And a connected concept with that is that the bigger your future, the better your present.

Ooh.

You know, so like that's the only, you know, like having a bigger future, whatever that is for yourself, it could involve, you know, achieving a goal or it could be your views of the afterlife. But the bigger the future, the better the present. And your present is being driven by your future. So that's one. I do like the quote for me that no other success can compensate for failure in the home. For me, my family is probably a much higher value than anything I achieve. I just love investing in my family.

Invest in your family?

Oh yeah, invest in my kids. And you love what you invest in. I mean, that's a big part of that one, is you love whatever you invest yourself in. And whatever you invest yourself in, you're committed to. And so, and whatever you invest in is a big view of your future self. Whatever you keep investing in, it's because you have some future self in that area and whatever you invest in it becomes bigger. Even bad habits, like those become bigger too. And so, certainly those are the things I want to invest myself in. So I guess the third one, I'll just make it simple, is the third one is, you know, you love whatever you invest yourself in, whatever you invest and you become committed to, and whatever you invest in compounds and becomes bigger. Right. And so you have to decide what do I want to invest in because whatever I invest in, I become hyper committed to and whatever I'm committed to is my identity which is shaping my behavior. And obviously the more you invest in, the bigger your future self becomes in that area for better or for worse. Right. And so yeah, the more investments you make in your future self and the one you want, the more committed you get to that future self and the bigger it gets, the better your present gets and then your present becomes beyond the dreams of your former self regularly. Right.

It's beautiful. Well, I want to acknowledge you, Ben, for constantly creating this work and being invested in your future and your current self and in your family. I think the fact that you mentioned family and investing in the home for high achievers, sometimes they miss out on the thing that they're creating right now as well and investing in the people in your life who are in your home for their future as well. So I really admire your and acknowledge you for showing up in a way where you can have it all. You can be healthy, you can have great relationships in your family and also work towards your goals and your future accomplishments. And it's really cool that you're doing that and serving the world in a great way with your writing and now as a YouTube star.

Being in the game. Just being in the game, man. I'm very grateful and I do like making investments. you know, and even just like two days ago, I just decided I would cuddle with my, you know, 10 year old or 12 year old daughter now and just help her to sleep. And like, that's a small investment in your future self and in her future self. Right. And so you, you got to choose what you're going to invest yourself in, but you can invest in other people. And that's, that's key as well.

That's great, man. Final question. What's your definition of greatness for now?

Just to keep in keeping with this conversation, I think that Greatness is being true to who you want your future self to be. Not chasing lesser goals, uncommittable goals, but just being... I think that that's a good definition of success from your greatness is that you're actually being true to the future self you want to be. It doesn't mean you have to be there yet. You don't need to go in the gap. My current self is not the be all end all. I'm gonna get there, but that I'm investing in my future self and I'm being more true to the future self I want to be. than to someone else. And then also just staying in the game, measuring myself only against my former self, not against you, not against anyone else. Staying in the game, recognizing and appreciating my own progress while being continuously more true, committed and investing in the future self that I most believe in, the future self that I most want. I think that's pretty close for me. Love it. Dr. Ben Hardy, thanks man.

Appreciate it. No worries, bro. Good stuff, yeah. If you enjoyed that interview, then I know you'll love what we have coming up.

Right now.

Was there ever a moment where you didn't unconditionally love yourself? And if so, and if so, when did that shift where you stopped that and you started saying, okay, I appreciate myself because of my contribution and my service and who I am. What was that shift? I don't think it was ever I just didn't love myself.

There were times obviously be angry with yourself or frustrated with yourself or thinking, you know, I'm not doing enough. I mean, I can remember my birthdays, to be honest with you, probably up to my 40th birthday, including my 40th birthday. You know, you have a birthday with a zero on it once you're over past 30, you know, 35, sometimes five years on it as well. People look at their life differently culturally, and I'm, and I used to think it was bull, but sure enough, I would do it. I remember turning 40, and I was really, really unhappy. I was like, Jesus, I've not done enough. I've not helped enough people. I know tens of millions of people at that point already done all over the earth in 100 plus countries at that point. but it was still kind of stuck in my head. So I would earn the love by over-delivering, change somebody's life. I don't get it because somebody says, oh, I love you, Tony. I mean, I appreciate that. Or, oh, you're the greatest. It's got to be my standard. My standard's higher than their standard for me. So when I get up and someone's going to kill themself and they're suicidal and boom, turn around and they're no longer not going to kill themselves, but they're transformed. Their life is there. That's when I go, okay. Now we've hit the center of what I'm made for. Now I deserve to feel this euphoric feeling within myself and appreciation. Even then I still know it's God coming through me. I don't have a delusion, it's just me. But I think sometime after 40 I finally saw the stupidity of it. I accumulated enough that I looked at life with fresh eyes. And I can say by the time I turned 60 a year ago, I noticed it was interesting because my birthday I didn't have an ounce of it. I was just like, you know, how could I at this stage of my life when I've had the privilege of serving so many humans in so many contexts From turning around, you know, guys are going to kill themselves with PTSD to helping kids turn around to getting kids off cocaine or adults to, you know, helping people build multi-billion dollar businesses from nothing. And when I lived this long, I can't go by without hearing half a dozen stories a day or a dozen stories a day from people telling me how something I did changed their life. So it's not that I'm so smart now, it's just I've stacked it. By the way, though, stacking is the way you can do things. most of us stack the negative. If you are really angry, it's not usually because it's just the moment, it's that it happened again. You know, it's like if you've ever lost it or overreacted to your kid or to a friend or a business or even within yourself, it's because it happened again. We hit this one, two, three, many point and then our nervous system overreacts. But what I've learned is you can stack the good. And, but for example, if you're, if you go into a state of really strong anger for more than five minutes, your immune system is suppressed, between an hour and a half to two hours. That's a physiological fact. But no one had done any study. I started stacking good, like, okay, let me stack a dozen great memories, feel them, see them, experience them. And I felt this biochemical change that didn't just last a half hour, an hour, or 10 minutes. It went on for a day or two. And so I think I've learned to stack the good. So just having the experience is not enough. You got to stack the good to be able to appreciate it. But I think just come back to the main point here from my perspective, which could be completely, it's just my perspective. So I want to point that out. I think the more you find unconditional love for others, the easier it is to find in yourself. And I think the focus is serving and loving, and that's what will get you to the point where you start doing it. But if you want to speed it up, stack all the good you've done, you'll feel great about yourself.

I already know all the comments that are coming through. Thousands of comments tell me, but what about my family that's toxic? What about my partner who's toxic? And how do I love someone unconditionally when they I don't respect me, I can't trust them. What about situations like that?

All those reactions are natural human reactions from ego. Because it's all about you, me, me, me, what I'm not getting, what I'm not doing, and that's why you're in pain. And so I'm not telling you like I haven't done this shit. I've done it too in the past, but it's an old pattern I don't really do anymore. And it used to affect me. Now, not a dominant one, I wouldn't have become who I become. Early in my life, I developed this belief that life is calling not to give me something, life is calling for me to deliver things, for me to bring something to life. And I felt the joy that came from not getting but giving, and I got hooked on that core pattern and then the pattern of learning so I'd have something to give, which I know one thing I respect about you, Louis, is that you have that same pattern in you. You're always trying to learn more because underneath it all, you also want to give it. You want it for you, but you want to share it, right? And so those patterns help me not be in what they're not giving me. And all this language, language, today people don't understand the power of their language, like toxic. What the hell are you talking about? You've been reading too much social media and thinking about yourself or somebody raised you to constantly judge everybody else. We live in a culture now where people, you know, you're evil, or you're like me. That's basically how it is, right? The whole world, everybody else is immoral unless they do what you do, think what you think, experience what you think. I mean, being a liberal, I was a liberal, right? Being a liberal growing up, man, I would fight for your ability to say and believe whatever you want different than me. Today, now everybody wants everybody to think the same thing, otherwise they're evil or otherwise they could hurt me. Whatever happens sticks and stones will break your bones, words will never hurt me. We have this whole thing that words are evil, words are action, it's bull, and all it does is make you incredibly weak as a human being, and you're more than that. We all are more than that. But you know what? Like a kid that's never broken their bones, deathly afraid of breaking the bone. But if you're a kid and you're rough and tumble, you broke multiple bones and they heal, you don't have any fear of it. There's so many kids that have been raised to be safe and secure every moment, anything that's insecure or unsafe they don't want to be a part of, including language. And what it does is make you incredibly weak and fearful. And that's why there's so many people that are abundant that are angry all the time. Because they're angry because they're not growing. So don't get me wrong. I know some people are not a good influence. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying you're more than somebody's influence unless you obsess about it every moment and make them wrong so you can make yourself feel superior morally, psychologically or spiritually. That's bullshit. Stop the pattern. We've all done it. Catch yourself. Because if you want joy, happiness and freedom in an extraordinary life, you will not come from blame. Never. There's no pride that comes from blame. I don't mean fake pride where you make up to feel good. I'm talking about real pride. Pride is something you earn. Like people tell me, oh, I have no self-esteem because my parents used to say this or they'd say that. I'd say, that's such bullsh*t. I'm not saying it's bullsh*t they didn't say that. I said it's bullsh*t. That's why you don't have self-esteem. Self-esteem does not come from what people say about you. Self-esteem comes from what you experience about yourself. See, someone can tell your whole life you're a piece of crap and a part of you can go, you,'re full of it, I'm going to show you. Lots of people have done that. They never bought it. Or someone tells you, you're beautiful your whole life. You go, I'm not really beautiful. So what people tell you doesn't matter at all. It's what you stack. It's what you assemble. It's what you create. It's the habit of what you put in your head. And today I don't blame you because we've got a whole culture that's always blaming blaming somebody else for something in their life. But blame is not a strategy for pride. That's why you listen to these blaming people. They're all angry all the time. Listen, if I wanted to blame, I grew up in an environment, I didn't even share it to my mom past, and even then I didn't share. I grew up in a pretty rough environment. My mom was a beautiful soul, but when she drank alcohol and she mixed it with prescription drugs, it was a different creature. And it was a violent creature. and I have a younger brother five years younger and a younger sister seven years younger. And my mom would get nuts and I didn't want them to get hurt. So I was 5'1 in high school. She grabbed me by the hair and smashed me against the wall till I bled. Now I never shared this and I'm not denigrating her in any way. I only shared it like four or five years after she died because I was talking to a group of kids in New York City, all without fathers, 80% African-American, about 20% Hispanic out of their group roughly, No white kids, and I'm talking about your biography is not your destiny. And it doesn't matter what you've been through, what you decide now is what's going to control your life, what you decide each day going forward is going to decide your life. And I look at them seeing me, I can read their minds. This big, tall, white, rich guy is going to tell me biography doesn't matter. So I said, you, let me tell you my story. And I told them the whole story way more than I'm telling you. And every one of them was crying their eyes out when they were done. I said, Look where I am right now. because I wouldn't assemble the story that my past equals my future. The past only equals your future if you live there. If you're using a rear view mirror to guide yourself, you're gonna crash. So what you've been through is horrific. What you've been through is unjust. I'm on your side. But if you hang on to it, you have no future and you have no one to blame but yourself. And these kids, to their credit, man, they just responded to the challenge because they first cried their eyes out hearing all the stories. My mom would think I was lying and I wasn't lying. I put liquid soap down my throat till I threw up. And I wasn't lying. So it's not the physical abuse, it's the fact that this is the person you love most that's trying to hurt you, that messes with your head. So I could have been messed up for life, but I didn't. Because something inside me says, I'm responsible for this life. And part of that is because I started reading when I was 13, 14, biographies of people, the greatest people in history, and reading their lives and finding out, guess what?

What?

Their lives were far from perfect. Some of them had worse lives than I had. But when you have no reference and all you just go online, you talk to other people, making everybody else toxic and I'm like this and they didn't do that, then you get to have the sh*t life just like those other people. Why are they online so much? Because they don't have a life, right? Don't be one of those. Free yourself from the chains of your past. I'm not saying your past doesn't matter, but listen, My mother, I tell people this all the time, and it's the truth. If my mother had been the mother I wanted to be, the mother she should have been, I would not be the man I'm proud to be today. Because I had to become a practical psychologist way before any schooling, figure out when she's gonna go in the mood, how do I change her state, how do I protect her from the kids, what are we, I mean, it was felt life and death, and it was to some extent. So I developed skills at such a young age that when I learned things, I just added to my skills. But I had a core sense of certainty that I could turn anybody around because it started with my mother. And thank God for her. And she encouraged me in so many ways. She did so many great things. And she loved me, even though it didn't look like it at times. So, but if your parents, if the people around you said all the things you thought they should have, if they had just not been toxic, If they'd encouraged you, you wouldn't have any muscle. And right now you don't have any muscle 'cause you're using that as an excuse if you're thinking that. And I'm not attacking you brothers and sisters, I'm calling to you 'cause I know you're more. Otherwise I'd just keep my mouth shut. You've been hypnotized by a culture of weakness. Now having said that, I'll say one last thing. I know you've got other questions, but it's so important what you've asked. Yes, there are people that you don't want to hang out with that will not serve you. But then move on. Don't sit there and talk about it constantly. Don't waste your time. And you say, but what if it's family, Tony? Mine was family too. And you learn to grow. You go, there in my life, someone can get your goat, if someone can piss you off, if someone can make you feel less than, that's God coming to you saying, grow. You need some spiritual growth. There's got to be some change in your perception, your belief, your emotions. your spiritual look of life. So that can't happen anymore. And when it happens, like at 61, I've been through so many of those things and I like do things in mass. I took on big challenges so I'd have to grow more. But then life throws them at you too. When they come, you just go, okay, it's going to have me until I grow. What needs a shift in me so that no longer has an impact. But you know, Jim Rohn used to say, my original teacher, he used to say, Tony, what happens if I've got A cup of coffee here, and he'd say, what if your worst enemy drops sugar in your coffee? What's gonna happen? And I go, well, you don't have sweet coffee. And he goes, what if your best friend, your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your loved one drops one drop of strychnine? I said, you,'d be dead. He goes, that's right. Life is both sugar and strychnine, so watch your coffee. His whole thing was stand guard at the door of your brain. But some people take it and go, oh my God, you can kill me. It was a metaphor. These people are not so toxic. They're toxic because you give them energy. So if your mom's crazy and constantly criticizing you and it drives you nuts, just go, that's my mom. That's her way of showing love. And I find a new perspective and no matter what she does, just stay in a beautiful state and love on her and think, boy, think of all that she cares and feels for, all that she's frustrated in life or all that she's going through that's made her this way. Thank God I don't have to go through this.

I can love her.

It's like your growth is the only limit to your happiness. If you're not happy, you're not growing in some area. And usually it's a place where you're blaming, you're pointing the finger. I don't care if it's government, don't get me wrong, people can be unfair, unjust, that's for sure happens. But you can't control that. You can't make it not happen. What you have to do is become stronger than any of it so you're free. Freedom comes from growth. Freedom does not come from control. Because control is an illusion. You can't control everybody. No matter how hard you try, you can't control what they think or feel. and not everybody's gonna be fair and just. And you, my dear friends, and I have not always been fair and just. Whether we admit it or not, it's just the nature of being a being, a human being. But we can make the largest pattern fair and just and loving and powerful and serving and growing until it becomes the dominant thing inside you. And then you experience life as being great, not your great. Life's great because you're living a great path.

It seems like what I'm seeing and hearing from a lot of people that this past year everything has fallen apart for them. Their health, their relationships, their finances, their mission or purpose, and their spiritual awareness. Every area of life has been in breakdown mode for some people. Not everyone, some people have had incredible lives and have stepped up to the occasion and broken through on all these things. But I'm seeing a pattern of a lot of people breaking down in many areas. Hypothetical scenario, let's say you could only focus on one thing to get you started. You only had the time and energy to focus on one of these areas, your health, your relationships are all breaking down, your finances are failing everywhere, where should people lean into first to kind of create that foundation so that everything else can start to rise as well?

I think before you answer what to do, you're gonna answer why you're there. It is not because of the pandemic. I remember when 9/11 happened and people tell, oh my God, my life was destroyed because of 9/11. And there were people in the same building who turned their life around, grew spiritually, closer to their family, made their businesses larger, and the same building burned down. I know in my case, 9/11 comes, if you can imagine, I'm fortunate to have now more than 80 companies and all these different industries, and obviously, I've done pretty darn well by most people's standards of business and life. But my core mission is what I do for a living. It's why I'm here talking to you right now. It's getting people to be free and alive and have the level that they deserve to have. I know they desire, but I also believe they deserve to have, but to deserve to have it, you got to do certain things, right? And so you're not in the place of being overweight because you lost your job. So stop the bullsh*t blame. Blame is not a strategy for a meaningful life. Blame is not a strategy for greatness. So you've got to resolve that number one. And then your question was, what's the one thing to focus on if you.

Can only focus on one?

I think it's smart to focus on one thing primarily. Focus on too many can be overwhelming. Other people, it's good to focus on multiple things. It depends on your personality. So I wouldn't presuppose. But then the answer would be whichever thing you're most desirous of changing. Whatever thing is giving you the most pain. So if it's your relationship, I go full force on that. Now, in the world we're in today, you don't usually have the privilege of going, okay, I want to work on just being happy. Well, I can train you to be happy while hell's breaking loose. You can sit in this chair and be totally euphoric. But if you do that in a Western culture, people come and take your furniture, right? So you probably have to work on both your business or financial side and some personal side. I would be working on both. And to me, the way to attack that, if you're not sure which areas to start with the body, and I know you can relate to this, Louis, because you and I both share this in common. It's like I always teach physiology first, as you well know. If you change the body, you'll change the emotions. If you change the you'll change your decisions, you'll change the quality of your life. Because the quality of life is your emotions. It's not what you get, you have a billion dollars and commit suicide. People have done it, right? You can have beautiful relationships and commit suicide. You can have people loving you and be sad all the time. Our pattern of emotion is our home. And you have to upgrade your home.

You have to train it.

And one way to train it is the emotion comes from the way you move, the way you breathe, the way you speak. So if I said to your listeners, there's a depressed person behind the curtain over here and I'll give $100,000 to their favorite charity if they had to describe their body, their posture, and they're depressed, you tell me. I'll just use you as the example.

What does that person look like? They're slouched down. They're looking down at their feet. They're not looking upward. Their shoulders are over.

Are they breathing full or shallow, do you think? They're shallow. Are they talking fast or slow?

They're talking, if they're depressed, they're probably talking fast because they're not calm.

Well, no, that's usually stressed. Depressed is different than stressed.

They're probably talking low volume, slower than.

And all those physical characteristics change your biochemistry towards this feeling of being depressed. And in a depressed state, you won't do anything. When I used to be depressed, I don't get it anymore. I just took it out of my life. I even took the language of it out of my life. because the words you create create a biochemical response. But when I did that decades ago, because I was like having those thoughts like, is there a reason to still be here? That kind of crazy in your head, I got out of it by using anger originally. I'd much like sometimes if somebody's really sad or depressed, I'll make them angry and people like, what's he doing? He's making them angry. Because angry is much more resourceful than depressed. From anger, I can get you to laughter, I can get you to taking action. So, and then gradually I got where I didn't need anger. It was about growth. It was about contribution, it was about meaning. So there's like stages to go through. But to answer your question, they should work on both their business side of their life and personal, one of each. And in order for either one of those to work, you need to be in a strong emotional state. And if you start with your body, like, you know, I start every morning in my cold water, start every morning with my workout, I start every morning, you're feeding my mind, right? So there's certain things you got to do physically so you're strong enough to remember the truth. Because remember, fear is physical. You feel in your throat or your gut. So is courage. Courage doesn't mean you're not afraid, it just means you're strong enough you push through in spite of the fear, right? And courage feels different in the body. So when you go lift or you go for a sprint or a strong run or you jump in that freezing water, when you push your mind to go beyond what's comfortable, you feel a strength inside you and that strength will help you to change your body, your emotions, your relationships, whatever. But then the other thing I have to say is model someone who's successful. Don't just do this by trial and error. Find somebody who has what you want, ideally maybe more than one person, two or three, and see what are they doing different than you in their relationship? What do they believe different than you about relationship? If it's their body, what are they doing? They're not lucky. They're doing things differently. You might be slightly biochemically different, but there's patterns there that you can see. And so instead of learning by trial and error, which can take decades you may never learn, Jim Rohn taught me success leaves clues, man. find someone who's got what you want, study what they do, every aspect of it, and then add yourself to it. And that's the pathway to speed of transformation. So now, like, you know, I've done it. I'm not the only person. There's so many companies that went from worse off than they'd ever been in their history to the best off because they found a way to pivot. But that required a psychological piece of not blame. So maybe it's time for you to think for yourself and model what works instead of just what you're told. That's something to consider for yourself.

What else should we be thinking about in setting ourselves up to win with our big goals? And how should we set these goals? You mentioned you shouldn't think about the SMART goals. What should we be thinking about on how to set our goals and dreams for our life?

Yeah, so goals are tricky. I would say that there's nothing inherently wrong with the SMART goals technique, et cetera. There is definitely a lot wrong with the visioning of, oh, this is what I, let me sit here and make a vision board and a mood board about my five-year plan, my best piece of advice is let's just start with tomorrow. Let's just start with tomorrow as opposed to, oh, what do I want to do in five years and my vision board and my mood board and all that stuff? How would the person you want to become... Again, it's about living according to your values and nobody can tell you what your values are. How would the person you want to become spend their time? And by blocking out that time to say, you know what? Yes, I have a dream that someday I'll write a novel. I have a dream that I'll get my PhD. I'll get a dream, a dream that I'll have a successful business. Okay, but how much time are you going to invest in that? And knowing that constraint of the same 24 hours with everything else that you want to do and that you dream of forces you to prioritize. And that is essential, you know, consistency over intensity. That is essential to getting to that long-term goal is to work on it day or over day after day after day. Relentless forward momentum. This is how we accomplish these big goals, not just dreaming about them. The only metric of success from now on for you should be one thing. Did I do what I said I would do without distraction? That's it. That's all you got to do. It's not about finishing anything. It's not about finishing anything. Because when you say to yourself in your calendar, I am going to sit at my desk, and work on my book, as you said, Louis, right? For 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever it is you say you want to do. I don't care how long you work on it, whatever you said you're going to do. That technique has been shown, this is called making an implementation intention, which is just a fancy way psychologists call planning out what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. That technique has been shown to be more effective. Here's the kicker, the people who do that actually finish more, they actually get more done than the people who use the to-do list technique.

It's kind of like saying, okay, I'm not going to go run for an hour today, but I'm going to put my shoes on and I'm going to go outside and I'm going to start the run for two minutes. And I'm just going to do that every day. But by saying, okay, I'm going to schedule this for 10 minutes or whatever, then you typically want to do more because you're already in the flow.

Right.

It's a little bit more than tiny steps. It's actually saying for that period of time, So I respect the, you know, just get started technique, very nice. But it's the don't stop technique.

Got it.

More than just get started.

So don't get discouraged. Go for 30 minutes. Go for the time you scheduled in your calendar.

Right, don't say, oh, I'm gonna run a 730 or whatever. Say, I am going to walk for 30 minutes and I'm not gonna do anything else that might take me away from working on this thing for 30 minutes in my life. I'm going to be with my child without distraction for one hour. That's all I'm going to do. I am going to check email and do nothing but flush through my email inbox for 15 minutes without doing anything else. I am going to read a book and nothing else for 20 minutes. That is all you need to do to measure yourself. Don't worry about will I finish the book, will I get to inbox zero, will I have a beautiful relationship with my child, Will I ever be in good physical fitness? Don't worry about the end goals. Worry about, did you put in the time to work on the task you wanted to work on without distraction? That's your only metric of success.

And what happens to our self-confidence or the belief in ourself when we constantly let ourselves down with this process of not doing what we say we want to do?

Right.

So if you run your life on a to-do list and you don't finish what you said you're going to do, which barely anybody with a to-do list actually, you know, who runs a life with a to-do list actually does, you're reinforcing a negative self-image of another day went by and here I go, I didn't do what I said I was gonna do. Look, I still got all these things that I didn't get to, what a loser. As opposed to when you measure yourself based on this only metric of did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction, you.

Are a winner with every time box. Just being your word. Yeah, it doesn't matter the results you get. It's just that I was my word today. I was my word. And what I said I was going to do, I did it. And that builds it better. That's exactly right. Self-image and self-confidence with self, right?

Bingo. So being indistRactable, first and foremost, is about personal integrity. It's about being as honest with yourself as you are with other people, right? We all know that we wouldn't want to be a liar. Being called a liar is one of the worst insults anybody could say to you, right? You wouldn't want to lie to your friends, to your family, to your coworkers. and yet we lie to ourselves every day, right? Oh, I'm definitely gonna go work out. No, you didn't. I'm definitely gonna eat right. Nah, I'm definitely gonna be fully present with the people I love. Not really. We lie to ourselves and that takes a huge psychic toll on our self-image and we don't even realize it until it's too late. And that's when people start concocting all these ridiculous ideas, oh, I have a short attention span or I'm bad with time management or hey, you know what, I probably need some kind of diagnosis. It's all ridiculous. For the vast majority of people, there's nothing wrong with them. They just reinforce this crappy self-image of someone who's incapable when they are perfectly capable if they had the right techniques.

How much does self-confidence or believing in yourself matter in terms of accomplishing the goals we set out for ourselves? Is it if we have a low self-esteem and low self-confidence, Do you believe that we can still accomplish the goals and dreams that we have? Or do we really need to start building confidence and belief in our actions and in who we are with those actions in order to accomplish those goals? Yeah.

So this is where the psychology of agency comes into play that believing that you can do something is incredibly empowering. The question, of course, is, well, how do I get that belief? And what where most people go wrong is that they have these big, hairy goals, right? We've all heard about, oh, you have to have a specific, measurable, actionable, you know, the SMART goals and all that stuff. and it turns out that the literature around, this is another one of these areas that we've seen, you know, the pop psychology is so off base, right? You know, one of the most popular things that you hear these days around goals is that you have to have visioning. Let's all sit down and make a five-year plan and a visioning board, right? So that we can envision what we want. And it turns out that studies show that people who do this are shooting themselves in the foot.

Wow.

That we know that studies find that thinking to yourself, oh, you know, I want that beach body is pretty much the worst thing you can do if you really do want that beach body.

Really? What should you do instead?

Here's the difference. There's a good visioning and bad visioning. Bad visioning is envision your, you know, this bull, excuse me, that comes from this idea of the secret, right? The law of attraction that, you know, envision yourself wealthy, envision yourself being in love, envisioning yourself being in good physical shape. terrible. Don't do that. The good kind of visioning is not visioning the outcome because what's happening when you envision the outcome is that you are satiating that desire by imagining it. You are satiating it. It feels like you already got it. Instead, the good kind of visioning is to envision what you will do when something gets in the way of the actions you have to take to get that goal.

So, when you're distracted, what are you going to do? What are you going to do, exactly?

So, instead of thinking, oh my God, I'm going to look so good with a six-pack, instead think about, what am I going to do next time I go up with my friends and they offer me a piece of chocolate cake?

Because that's the right kind of vision. Because envisioning this incredible result in a year or 10 years is nice in theory, but it's going to be extremely hard to get there with a big goal that you might have, a big dream, launching anything, a book, the physical body, the relationship, It's not just gonna happen instantly without effort and work. So that what I'm hearing you say is to focus on, that's gonna take a lot of work and time, energy. So every time I'm pulled away from that, envisioning how you're actually gonna show up for yourself to support yourself in getting there.

That's right.

That's right. And so that's why reimagining these internal triggers is so important as we talked about earlier. What is the dialogue? What techniques will I have? What arrows will I have in my quiver ready to go when I am tempted with procrastination and distraction? What will I do in those times?

Is there good research on, what did you call this? Revisioning or what would you call this?

Yeah, there is. There's actually an article on my blog. I can give you a link in the show notes where I talk about the difference between good visioning and bad visioning. Very, very important because if there's one mantra I live by and is kind of the foundation of my life now since writing this book, and I didn't used to be this way, by the way, I'm 42 years old. I used to be clinically obese. Today I'm in the best shape of my life. I actually have a six pack for the first time ever. And I'm not saying this to brag. I'm saying this because what I've learned is that consistency is more important than intensity. Consistency over intensity in every area of your life. You want good relationships, you have to be consistently present with the people you love. You want to be great at your job, You have to consistently do the hard work that other people don't want to do. You want to have a, you know, be in good physical shape. You have to consistently show up and do the workouts. It's not about the intensity. It's not about, oh, it's New Year's. I'm going to make a resolution for five days and then quit. It's about consistent action. And that only comes not, here's a really important point. It's not about knowing what to do. You know, we become so obsessed with, oh, what's the right workout? What's the right diet? What's the right way? This, that, you know, I better go get a book to tell me what to do. Like, let me go listen to some guru to give me all the answers, we basically all know what to do, right? And if you don't know what to do, Google it for God's sakes. All the answers are right there, right? We basically know what to do. What we don't know how to do is how do we stop getting in our own way? The real problem is not that we don't know what to do, it's that we don't know how to stop getting distracted.

So how do we get out of our own way?

Yeah, so we went through one and a half of the strategies. Number one is mastering the internal triggers. Number two is making time for traction, which we talked about a little a little bit in terms of why making a schedule is so very important. It turns out the vast majority of people don't keep any sort of a calendar. Two-thirds of people don't keep a calendar. Even those who do keep a calendar typically don't do it properly. And the proper way to do it is by using what's called a time box calendar. And I show you how to do that. This technique has been around for ages. It's been around for decades. It's actually one of the most studied techniques out there. very, very well researched technique of planning your day. It's called making implementation intention. But we can go beyond that too, where what I advise in the book, and this hasn't been published elsewhere, is this process of what I call schedule syncing, which is very, very important.

So.

Making time for traction is all about deciding how you want to spend your time. But to do that, the question is, well, how do I do that? How do I decide how I'm going to spend my time? And this is where a lot of people get stuck with the time boxing technique. We've all heard it, but this is why people don't do it. They don't understand that what is the first step? How do I really get started in time boxing? The first step is to start with our values. Turning our values into time. What are values? Values are attributes of the person you want to become. Let me say that again. What are values? Values are attributes of the person you want to become. What we're going to do is we're going to ask ourselves, how would the person I want to become spend their time? And we're going to ask ourselves this in three life domains, these three life domains of you, you're at the center of these three life domains, then your relationships, then your work. Most people do it in the wrong order, right? They start with their work and then only then they give whatever scraps of time are remaining to their friends, their family, and to themselves. No, we want to start with you. So we ask ourselves, how would the person I want to become spend their time investing in themselves. Now, it is not up to me or anyone else to impose their values onto you. You have to ask this of yourself. How would the person I want to become spend their time investing in themselves? So how much time would they invest in physical fitness? If that's important to you, I'm not saying it should be, but if it's important to you, is that time to go to the gym, to go on a run, to go on a walk, whatever it might be, proper nutrition, rest, oh my God, How many of us know we have to get quality sleep? Everybody knows this. I don't need to tell you that. You've read tons of literature that says sleep is important. How many of us have a bedtime?

Right?

How many of us actually have our calendar scheduled?

Yeah, scheduled.

Yes.

Very few people do, right? We have to have that time scheduled because you know what you're gonna do if you don't. You know, check Facebook for another five minutes. You'll watch another thing on Netflix.

Right.

You've got to have that time scheduled. Now again, if you say, you know, the way I invest in myself is I play video games for four hours a day, I got no problem with that. I'm not one of these chicken little tech critics that's gonna say, oh no, you know, watching football is okay, but playing video games is bad. No, ridiculous. Anything you want to do with your time is fine as long as you decide in advance. So if you say, I want time to play video games, great. but put it on your schedule. Don't do it according to the tech company's schedule, do it according to your values and your schedule. So that's the you domain. Next comes the relationship domain. And this is a really important one. Part of the reason we have a loneliness epidemic in this country, and we know that the researchers tell us that loneliness is as detrimental to our health as smoking and obesity.

Wow.

It is a real crisis right now. The reason this is happening, this is not happening because of social media. Social media is the symptom to this disease, which is that the proportion of time spent in planned social engagements in this country has been in a precipitous decline. Okay? So if you read Robert Putnam back in the 1990s, he wrote this book called Bowling Alone, right? Way back before Facebook and, you know, social media. And he documented this trend, this 50-year trend now, of people spending less time in scheduled engagements with their friends. So he called it bowling alone because bowling used to be, you know, a big social activity. You'd go to the bowling league and you'd see your friends and you'd get together every Thursday night with your buddies and that doesn't happen like it used to, right? The secularization of the United States. Not that I'm, you know, I'm a pretty secular person. I'm not saying people should go to church or synagogue or whatever. I'm just saying that those regular pillars of social engagement in our life for more and more people don't exist, right? So the lack of those scheduled times for our relationships takes a deep psychological toll. So you have to ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend time with the people they love? Okay, not giving them whatever scraps of time are left over between everything else, but actually booking that time, right? How many times do we, oh, we should get coffee someday. Yeah, okay, right. that's code for never, right? So having that time with your children, your family, your parents, your siblings, your best friends, having that time on your schedule, I know many of us are at home right now during COVID got it. Maybe one of the silver linings is that people now are more proactive about scheduling those Zoom calls. I think I hope those will continue, right? I mean, I'm spending much more time over Zoom with my parents than I was before COVID so scheduling that time with your spouse, very, very important. Having that time on your calendar to say, okay, this is our time together, whether it's a regular date day, a walk time, whatever it might be, having that time scheduled and sacred for the people you love. And then finally, the last domain is the work domain. And when it comes to work, we have to realize there are two types of work. There's what we call reactive work, and reflective work. Reactive work is a part of everybody's job. It's the phone calls, the meetings, the Slack channels. It's reacting to whatever's happening in your work environment. And that's part of the job, I get it. Some jobs, few jobs are 100% reactive. If you work in a restaurant, if you work in a call center, your job is to show up. You're not a schedule maker, you're a schedule taker.

Right?

You take whatever schedule is given to you, you show up, you do whatever needs to get done. It's all reactive, okay? Or almost all reactive. Other jobs are almost all reflective. So if you're a software engineer, a marketing executive, a salesperson, you're not a schedule taker, you're a schedule maker. You have to sit down and say, wait a minute, how will I plan my day? How should I spend my time? And you have a tough job because your most important job is to figure out how to spend your time. What most people do is they take the easy default. The easy default is, I'll just take whatever comes to me. They think they're working in a reactive job, but really they're working in a reflective job. And those are the kind of people who suck at their jobs. Why? If you want a competitive advantage, if you want to be better than everyone else in your field, let me give you a little secret that no one else is doing. Think. Think. Make time to actually sit and think in your day. You know why? Because nobody else is doing it. I promise you.

They're reacting. Exactly.

They're constantly reacting. But look, to plan, to strategize, to think ahead, you have to sit down without distraction and make some time to be with yourself in your own head. to figure out what to do next. You have to prioritize. That takes time to think without distraction. I implore everyone, if your job requires some level of reflection, which almost everyone's job does, give yourself that 30 minutes, 45 minutes, heck an hour a day to work without distraction and put it on your calendar and keep it sacred. Okay, so now we have these three life domains. We have our time box calendar. The final step is to do what we call a schedule sync. And this is what's been missing, I think, from everyone else who's been taught, who's, you know, espouses this technique of time boxing, and it's been around again for decades and decades, is, well, what happens when in reality I have a boss and a spouse and I have kids and I have other people who demand my time, that schedule gets blown to bits. And the reason it gets blown to bits is because we don't do what's called a schedule sync. Here's what a schedule sync looks like. Let me destroy yet another piece of bad productivity advice, which is we've all heard that if you want to stay focused, if you want to be productive, the best thing you can do is learn how to say no. Haven't we all heard this advice? Learn how to say no to people. What kind of stupid advice is that, Louis? You're gonna look at your boss, the guy who pays or the guy or gal who pays your bills, and you're gonna tell them, you know what boss?

No.

Are you serious? Who would give that kind of advice? If you've actually had a job, you know you can't tell your boss no, you'll get fired. So instead of telling your boss no, what you're gonna do instead is to say, hey boss, look, Can we sit down once a week, Monday morning, it's going to take 15 minutes max, and you're going to show them your schedule. Now that you've made a time box schedule, you're going to show them. You have a physical artifact you can share with them. And you say, hey boss, here's my schedule for the week. Here's all the stuff I'm doing per the priorities at work. Here's how I'm spending my time during the workday. Now you see this other list here. I wrote down on this other list here on this piece of paper all the stuff I couldn't fit into my schedule for the week, can you help me reprioritize? That's your boss's number one job, okay? A boss's job, number one, is to prioritize.

Yeah.

What's the most important thing right now that you need me to do? Exactly.

And can you have someone else support.

With these other tasks? Can we delegate to some other things if you want me to do this right now? Absolutely.

So if you say, look, if there's something on this list that's not in my calendar, no problem. What should I swap out?

Right.

Help me understand how to prioritize. Exactly. Schedule syncing, right. Doing that synchronization so that, exactly. So that, and let me tell you, your boss will worship the ground you walk on. I've started two startups. Most bosses have no idea how their employees are spending their time.

Zero idea.

We are hiring more and more people and, you know, luckily we're pretty good at it because we use Slack and monday.com, so we have projects that are managed and, you know, project managers and all that, but I'm not looking in those things. So I have no idea actually what's being done unless I ask my project manager or my COO and say, are people even working today? I don't even know, you know? So it's luckily we have some of those tools. But if you were if you were like, hey, this is my calendar for the week, the things that I'm planning to create this week.

Time boxed.

Yeah.

And you were like, hey, what can we eliminate or how can I delegate this? then I'm sure it would make that person pretty excited.

Right, or reprioritize, or here's the thing, the boss is thinking, what the heck are people doing all day? Why aren't things happening faster? Employees are thinking, oh my god, doesn't.

My boss know how much is on my plate right now?

Right.

I'm overwhelmed, I'm overworked.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly, and this, of course, because there's no visibility into our schedules. And I'm telling you, it's 10 minutes a week. 15 minutes max. If you sit down and say, here's my schedule, here's how I plan to spend my time, help me reprioritize. If you do this, your boss will say, actually, you know what? That one thing, you really don't need to be at that meeting, but that other thing is super important. Can we swap that out? This is how we get on the same page. This is how we synchronize our schedules. We can do this with our boss. We can do this with our spouses. Let me tell you, my wife and I used to get in so many fights because of household responsibilities. because of misunderstandings of, oh, I thought.

You were gonna do this and I.

Thought you were gonna do that. Now we sit down, and now we involve my daughter too. We do it every week, the three of us sit down together and we synchronize our schedules miraculous. It's clarity. It's clarity that's made our life.

Yeah, it's clarity. You have hunger for that business. You have hunger to be in great shape. If you have a romantic, passionate love and relationship for 15 years, it gets your focus, it gets your attention.

You don't ignore it. So the one thing that I've seen.

Is if you think of all the habits someone can have is someone who's successful in every way or in a lot of ways.