How to Design Your Ultimate Monday's

There's always going to feel like there's people that need something from you. There's a ball being dropped, there's someone judging you. And 99% of that shit is made the F up. And even we make it up in our head.

That is not made up, man. It is about choosing to let that be okay.

Yes.

Because a happy person and a happy entrepreneur and a happy family member is going to literally be of the best service to whomever they're working with or working for. And we're back with another episode of He Said, she Said.

We had the best Monday ever today.

We had an incredible Monday. I think the morning was, like, one of the best mornings I've had in a really long time, which I have to say is pretty rare for me on a Monday. And that's what we want to talk with you about today, is how did this happen on this Monday compared to other Mondays?

Well, today was a taste of what I think true wealth is. I've always said, you know, the best thing money can buy is choice. And the way this Monday played out, the first half of this Monday, this is just pure bliss and pure choice. I mean, we're in the town that we want to be in. That's choice. We had the amount of time that we wanted in the morning to, you know, extend our walk. That's choice. We got to bump into people that we absolutely love bumping into. That's choice. Right. The choice. Be in the same neighborhood or proximity as them. And I just believe that when you do the right things, one of the best measurements of is this working for me or not? Is how your Monday morning starts? Do you love your Monday mornings or do you hate them?

Okay, this is interesting because for me, two things really played out to making this one of the best mornings that I've had in a long time. And I think that the first one is that we worked really, really hard to get back to Newport Beach, California.

Yep.

Being here more than we were.

Yep.

And to a lot of people, that probably seemed crazy, like, you already have a place there. You know, why do you need to be there more? What's going on? Like, why did you need to sell this house in Arizona? Like, all of these different things potentially, and your family's. But for us, our souls are so happy here. Like, waking up by the ocean, going and walking by the ocean every single day and every single evening. And then the other one for me is if you guys have been listening to my podcast at all, I've been talking a lot about getting really intentional with Mondays and having them be admin and creativity days, because typically Mondays I have so much to catch up on that if I have a ton of meetings or I have a full calendar, then what happens is I end up feeling so freaking anxious from the get go, knowing that I'm not going to be able to get the things done that I need to get done anyway. And I start my week feeling completely behind. So I've now been trying for about two months to try to get Mondays and Tuesdays to be lighter. And I think today was the first day that I felt it really payoff mixed with all of the hard work to get us set up here more frequently.

Well, I'm so I'm going to say that this blissful Monday morning that we had the work for it or the foundation for it started in September. Right. So. And, and you know, at the time that we, we're recording, this is what, mid March, but it started in September. And what I mean by that is we're driving home from the lake house up in Wisconsin, and you said to me, almost like one of these great ultimatums, one of the many that you've given me in life, you said to me, you said, hey, I think the Arizona experiment is over. I've given it three years. I just don't want to be there. I don't care what it takes. But I want to view my home base as being Newport. And that ultimatum that sticking your stake in the ground and standing up for what you wanted, instead of just going along with going back and forth and back and forth between the two homes, I think that is what set into play. The dominoes tipping that sometimes take longer than people want that all of a sudden manifested into this perfect Monday morning.

Yeah, I think that it is months and months, sometimes years, of setting up your life and getting intentional. So how much are you setting up your life and getting intentional with what you want? And I think it's discouraging to people because they don't realize that it can take a year, sometimes more, sometimes it's much quick.

Yep.

But certain things are going to take.

A very long time for you to get right.

Like me getting Mondays or Tuesdays for creativity, like two days, I wanted. I'm still working on just one day, you guys, but it has been taking a ton of work and also making sure on that day, even if it's.

Clear that I stick to doing what.

I wanted to do on that day. And so this is the training that I'm in right now. And it's Pretty intense.

I'm not going to lie, trying to.

Make myself do this. But I want it so bad that I have it written on my calendar every Monday to like, make this happen. This is a creative admin day to get ahead on things. So hopefully in the next month, maybe I'll start to get ahead on things. I'll keep you posted.

Well, listen, you said it takes good old fashioned time, right? So I said the seeds of this were planted in September. But then it takes two other things that kind of speed up that time, and that is really bold moves, being willing to make them. I think most people aren't willing to make them, to be honest. Most people aren't willing to stick their stake in the ground like you do. Most people will need to be like, all right, great, we'll sell this house and buy a different one over here. And like, most people just go along with good enough. So making really good, really bold moves that can speed it up and then having really tough boundaries. For example, you were talking about Trent this morning and how he has his version of protected time like we do now.

Trent Shelton.

Trent Shelton.

He just released a book called Protect your Peace.

Yeah, Shout out to Protect yout Peace. Like, great book. You're talking about how he won't take a single appointment, he won't do anything before noon, and a lot of people give him flack for it. Yes, normal human beings would say, come on, that's a little extreme. Except he knows what makes him happy and he knows what chips away at his happiness. And for me, it's the same thing. Our protected time till 10am you're not getting meetings in there. You're not getting everything else. Because I know that filling our cups first absolutely makes or breaks the rest of your day and allows for like the space that we had this morning. Now, is it always easy enforcing that? No. Like, listen, I have a whole east coast team. So when I say I don't want to start till 10, that means it's one freaking o' clock their time. And they're a really high performing team. Like the best of the best already built a massive company and sold it. So my fears around protecting my protected time are like, oh gosh, it's so late in their day. Oh gosh, they're gonna think I'm a flake. Oh gosh, they're gonna think that I'm lazy. Oh gosh, they're gonna think I'm not taking this serious. But what's more important to me than just caving in to those made up Fears is having blissful mornings like we had. Cause then I kicked ass the rest of the day. And you gotta ask yourself, would you rather have, would you rather have a version of yourself that absolutely kicks ass for your team from a certain period on or would you rather have a resentful, burnt out, kind of complainy, 80% version of yourself? I'd rather my team, my whole team, be their kick ass versions of themselves. For me, within a smaller container, I.

Would argue that you are so much better taking time for yourself. Today I almost skipped the gym because we had some construction people coming back to the house and you were so wonderful to stay here because I stayed, I think the week prior, husband of the week instruction people. And I almost skipped it because I was like, you know what, I have so much to do. I want to start getting back to all of these emails which nobody was waiting by their computer, waiting for this email. I had.

We make up that they are, yes.

I wanted to get them done today, but I just felt this urgent need to make sure that they knew that.

I was working on them right away.

And I'm like, they're not sitting here waiting by this email, waiting for this. And I thought one of my biggest goals is to make sure I maintain muscle and that I work out minimum twice a week, lifting weights, if not three. But I've been struggling to get that in and I've been irritable, I've been irritated because I'm like, you know, I'm in my 40s now. I don't want to get to that place where all of a sudden I've lost a ton of muscle. Like my fitness has gone way downhill because my business will suffer.

Well, let's expand how it'll suffer if self esteem is not where it needs to be, if, if health is not where it needs to be, if happiness and energy is not where it needs to be, then I don't care. If you add three hours to your workday, your workday is still going to produce shit. Your workday. An expanded workday of someone who is not firing on all cylinders from happiness to effectiveness. An expanded workday of that person. A tiny workday of someone who knows how to surgically kick ass. I'll take that person all day long.

And I just want to share. Like, it's not like I don't feel insane urgency. It's not like I don't feel like I am dropping balls. I think everybody feels this way. So if you're like, yeah, well maybe they don't have this or they don't have that. We have our version of it. And yes, maybe we don't have children, but what we've done is filled that.

Version with other things and other expectations.

So we have all of these things and we have family who relies on us.

Well, I'll tell you what, a lot of them, we may not have children, right? But I had 61 people that I texted back and forth with today. An average exchange of, you know, four to five back and forths. So that's 240 to 300 text messages on a normal workday for me. So everyone's got their thing and you can't make excuses. No. Do you text 300 times a day? Like, and that's upholding your boundaries? Probably not, right? Probably not. So there's always going to feel like there's people that need something from you, there's a ball being dropped, there's someone judging you, and 99% of that shit is made the F up. And even we make it up in our head.

That is not made up, man. It is about choosing to let that be okay.

Yes.

Because a happy person and a happy entrepreneur and a happy family member is going to literally be of the best service to whomever they're working with or working for.

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I've got proof that this works. So last week I ran the first meeting of the year for our elite Mastermind, right? And 75% of the room returned, 25% was brand new. The very opening exercise I did was I took these six or seven different segments of life, like your spirituality, your health, your family, your relationships, your personal finances, your business, et cetera, Right? Yeah. And everybody had to go through and they had to rate about 7 or 8 different subcategories within each of those categories. Right Now I started even though there's maybe 40 to 50 different things that they had to rate on there, I started with two of them. I said I want you to go answer These two, I am happy and they're not. Yes or no, you have to rank it 1 through 10. You can't choose 7, I am happy. They had to rate that. And then the other one was, I feel fulfilled on a day to day basis. And then I said, I just want you to do those two. Ignore all the other ones first. And then I went around the room and I made everyone answer out loud. What'd you rate that? Would you rate that? What'd you rate that? Almost all the people returning were like nines and tens, eight, nines, tens. Almost all the new people were like fives, six. And some of them said, I didn't realize how out of control my life actually was till I did the same. Some said, I didn't realize how unhappy I was until I had to put it down on paper. And what's my point? Last year, the whole crew that returned, we've already been working on this for two, three years together. Some that have been there for four years, the new people, we haven't worked on this together yet. So this is all to say, this is a needle that you can move your happiness, your energy, your boundaries, how you operate. These are all things that you can exercise if you choose to. And the proof, the empirical data is there. This can be achieved if you choose to, like, stand up for it the way you did starting, you know, your first building block back in September. Hey, Chris. Arizona experiment is over for me. You know what I mean? So I implore everyone listening, figure out what you want. How do you make, how do you create your most elegant Monday mornings ever and work backwards from there? Where do you want them to be? Who do you want them to be with? How much time do you need? What, what do you want to be doing? Work backwards from there and design the freaking Monday mornings you want. Because if you can design your Monday mornings, you can design the rest of your week. And if you can design the rest of your week, you can design happy months. And if you can design happy months, you can live a happy life. And that's really all that we want for ourselves, and that's really all that we want for you. And by the way, if you want to work on that as a group with me guiding it, this is one of the many exercises that we do when we get together for the roundtable and we've got two, maybe three, I think three seats left for the roundtable. All you have to do right now is stop this episode. Go to ChrisHarter Me Roundtable. It's 48 hours in Scottsdale, Arizona the first week of April. It'll change your business life, which then changes your personal life. And those two things together have to thrive hand in hand. We work on it as a group, you and 14 other entrepreneurs getting input from the 14 other talented entrepreneurs, with me guiding the whole thing and giving my input as well. So seriously, hit stop right now. Thanks for listening. We love you, we appreciate you. But hit stop. Go to Chrisharder Meroundtable again, that's Chrisharder Me Roundtable. Grab one of those last spots and I will see you in April. Sam.