Making a good life a great life

There's a personal challenge that I've been obsessed with this year. It's the last 9% of personal growth. And I say it this way because I feel like, and I can see that I've got my life to like this really great place, and I feel very fortunate. My family's great, it's growing, gonna have 4 kids, first girl coming this summer. My work is very enjoyable and fulfilling. We have enough money to do the things we need to do. I'm in shape and healthy. There's a lot of great stuff happening in my life, and I feel like I'm like 90%. I'm at like 90%, not just in like what my situation is, but what I'm capable of doing. And that's a really great place to be, like, as a baseline. But I'm not quite satisfied yet. That's where like the last 9% comes in. I say like 90 to 99 because I don't, I don't believe in ultimate perfection. That's more of a faith thing, but I could talk about that in a different video if people like in the comments. But I do know that there's another level that I could go to if I just pushed a little bit harder, if I was a little more intentional. I know that I could go up a level in my work, in my relationships, in my health, and in my fitness. There was some inner stirring for me around the holidays and going into the new year about all of this. And through conversations with my wife, especially like our year in review, year in preview, we also talk about like what's our vision for the family, what's our vision for our life. And then talking with my business partner about all of these things as well, we have a really great relationship in that. It became clear to me that little extra pushing and work and content and relationships and fitness, the things that I really, really wanted, like big picture, like vivid vision, intention setting, like lifetime goal stuff, is really close. And that is really exciting. But just like an author would say that once you've written the manuscript, then like there's still like 70% of the work to do, there's still like getting over that final hurdle once you've done like so many good things is often the hardest one. There's a few ways that I'll explain this, and the first one is through my work. I have an audience. I have people who follow this YouTube channel. Obviously, we're getting close to 100,000 subscribers, might hit 100,000 subscribers by the time this video comes out. All the social media stuff, email newsletter, clients that I get to work with. I've had and am continuing to have a really great career, but I know that making these videos better and and making them as good as they can be, making my podcasts and my newsletters, like going up that little extra level, can often be as hard as doing all of the work that came up to this point. Like making a video the way that I feel it should be made is as difficult as just making the first 200, 250 videos, however many are on this channel at this point. Another example is say with fitness and nutrition, And this is probably the thing that, like, over my life I feel like I've nailed the most. I've always been in good shape. I've always enjoyed exercising. I like to work out in several different ways. Right now it's jiu-jitsu and CrossFit. But in order to get a little better, I have to train a little harder, and I have to work on technique more, and I have to, like, show up to that extra session. And the other part of it is more on the, like, health and nutrition side. I know I need to sleep more than I do. And I know that I could eat a little bit better than I do. I could cut out a lot more sugar. I've already talked about in other videos how I'm cutting out more and more alcohol. I don't really drink that much alcohol anymore, but I could drink almost no alcohol. And that would be, again, going through that like 90%. I drink less than 90% of people, but can I drink less than 99% of people? Can I have less sugar than 99% of people? People. Saying to train harder than 99% of people, that's just not a life situation that I'm in right now with the little kids. But you see where I'm going with this. Like, I have got myself to a point where I've done so many good things, lots of great things, and this challenge to get to 99%, I don't know if it's achievable, but I'm in a place and I have an energy around work and life and fitness and relationships and family where I just, I want to push. I want to push a little bit harder, at least for a few months. And I say that for a few months because little baby girl is going to be here in the summer. But this is something that for the next like 100 days, I'm really interested in seeing like, hey, how, how much further can I crank this up? How much more disciplined can I be in pursuit of things that are even better than they are right now? To see what that's like in life and work and family. Break. So it looks much warmer over here because the sun is no longer behind a cloud. And even though natural light is lovely, this is what happens when you use a lot of natural light in a video. Hey, real quick, I have a question for you as you're watching this about like getting that last 9% is if you're a dad watching this and this resonates with you and you're like, I'm trying to get that last 9%, or maybe you're trying to get to 90%, but you're trying to make life better for yourself and for your family, then I encourage you to to check out FatherFire. It's a free online community that you can join and be a part of dads having conversations like this or talking about like, hey, what books have you liked the most? What business advice do you have for this? What's a memorable thing that everyone should do with their kids? What do you do? Like, what are some date night ideas for my wife? Or even more deeply, how do I stay connected and in tune with my wife when kids are here? And They're gonna be here, so how do we keep our relationship strong? These are all conversations that are going on in FatherFire, so I encourage you to check out the link in the description below and join if that resonates with you. The other thing that I wanna tell you about is that FatherFire and thousands of other communities are hosted on Mighty Networks. Now, I love using Mighty Networks for my community. There are posting, there's chat, there's like obviously one-to-one messaging, but the thing that I love the most about Mighty Networks is that they have like icebreaker questions that come in whenever, whenever a new person joins. There's also this great like people magic feature. So like, you know, you fill out your bio and you're like, hey, these people in the community are near you. Maybe you could meet up with them if you want, or at least message them. Or it's like other people in the community are doing this type of work, or they have kids. And in our example, they have kids these ages. You'll probably have some overlapping connections with them. That's something that I love because what has been tough about community in the past is like just making those connections with people right away. And what Mighty Networks does, and through PeopleMagic, is that they kind of like make that happen, happen for you once you sign up. The other thing that I really love, and this is just like selfish for me as a like community leader, is that they have like auto-engagement turned on. So they learn about what your community, like what the big purpose is and what are some of the like key things that you're trying to learn. And they'll come up with like questions and polls that they can post for you, or they'll just like give you as examples like, hey, you could ask this question. Because one of the things that was toughest for me about leading communities in the past when I tried a couple of years ago is like, what am I going to post for people today? And Mighty Networks really helps with that. And so like the two things that people can often like community leaders can find challenging are connecting members in the community and coming up with consistent content for them. And that's something that Mighty Networks does extremely well. It's something that I love. It's my favorite feature of the tool. So if you want to check out Mighty Networks, there's a link in the description below. I know their founder, Gina Bianchini, really well, and Jane and Marnie and DJ. All the great people at Mighty Networks are there to help you out. I'm a happy customer and would be happy to tell you anything about Mighty, any questions that you have. So just drop them in the comments below. But now let's get back to the video. Here's the difference in how I thought about contentment and ambition before this past year. Throughout my entire, like, ambitious life, I'd say, like, since high school, since I was doing sports and then college and then career, I was always ambitious in the pursuit of feeling like I'm not doing enough. And the deep-rooted stuff there might be, probably is, that it didn't feel like I was good enough and I didn't feel like I was trying hard enough. And there's a lot to be said for the positive ramifications of that. When you're always pushing, you're going to go much further than you thought possible. And if I was to say to someone in their 20s, Hey, should I push really hard and think that it's never good enough, or should I just be more content? This is still so tough, but I would probably say that in your 20s it's better to default to ambition and hard-driving pursuit because of how far it will get you just through sheer will and determination to prove people wrong, to prove yourself wrong, to see how far you can go. But now that I'm 40— and it's not just because I'm 40, like, I was feeling this kind of in my, my mid-30s also— is when you do that for a really long time, we always feel like it could be better, I can go further, it like, it doesn't matter what other people are doing, I want to make this the absolute best that it could be. There is a compounding negative effect of that. You start to believe that it's never good enough and you're not going to be who you want to be. You're always moving the goalposts. Like, I got 10,000 subscribers, great. I made $100,000, great. Where does it stop? For me, knowing that I've got this, you know, life to like, let's say 90% now, there's a contentment there. I know, like, I could, I could do this for for the rest of my life. Now, this is, this is the change. Because of the contentment and happiness that I feel with life as it is now, I actually feel more of a motivation, more of a like, hey, how much better can we make this? How, how much further can I push this? I'm coming to that feeling of ambition and let's see what we can do here out of a place of contentment with where I'm at instead of like when I was 25 or 30, that feeling of ambition and how far can I push this was much more rooted in fear and maybe some anger and some like, I'll show them, you're gonna see what I can do. Like, there's still some of that that lingers, but I've been much better at being like, yeah, that part of Matt can just chill out now. I wanted to share this with you in case it resonated. I'm partially sharing this because I want to remind myself in another year or 10 of what I was thinking about at this time in my life. 40 years old, business like on the edge of taking off and about to have a fourth child. If I hope it resonates with you, I think that it will, especially like if you're a dad and this kind of feeling of I'm good, but I want it, I want it to be a little better. If it resonated with you, please join the Father Fire community because this is the kind of stuff that we talk about all the time. Like, how do we reach a level of contentment that, like, motivates us to more ambition but still grounded in the love, care, and support that we have in our families and in our work? There goes that natural light again. Thanks so much for watching this video. I don't really know where else to go from here, but I committed to myself that I would commit to putting these videos up, even if it's just me talking because when I started this channel, this is what I did. But now it's like, hey, I gotta get these thoughts out and I gotta share what I'm thinking about. One, I do believe it'll help some of you that are watching, and two, I'm gonna like watching it and coming back to it in a year or 5 or 10 to be like, ah, this is that moment. This is the moment right before everything took off. It's cool to see me at this moment seeing, just wondering about what's gonna happen. I hope good things are happening in your life. Comment, join the newsletter. If you're a dad, join the FatherFire community. We'll chat about this, and I hope to see you on the internet, maybe someday in person. Thanks for watching, bye.