G.R.O.W. (4 Steps To Change Your Life) | Journey Principles Podcast 006

Welcome to the Journey Principles, where we.

Show you how to go from stuck to unstoppable with life strategies that work. Now, here's your host and creator of.

The Transform youm Framework, Stephen Scoggins.

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Journey Principles. I'm so glad you took the time to join us. We're excited about today's topic. We promised you guys last week that we were gonna do a deep dive. Actually, not last week, but the last podcast. We're gonna do a deep dive and into the grow process, which we've gotten some information on. I know Connor, my director of connections, is itching to kind of jump into the subject. This is by far his favorite subject. So without further ado, why is Grow so important to you and why do you like it so much? I'm just curious.

I like grow just because people always want to know, like, at a high level, what do I need to do to change my life? They have a goal in mind, and that goal could be anything from, you know, they're already in terrific shape shape, and they want to improve it, or it could be something where it's like a radical shift in every area of their life. But you have a starting point, which is where you are today, and you have where you want to go. And people always want to know, in the simplest form possible, how do I get from where I am today to where I want to go?

Which we help them with.

Right. But the difficult part in the personal development industry, I imagine, for people like you, is like, everyone always wants to know the one thing that's like, how do I get?

Or the three secrets too, or whatever.

There's a billion things. There's so many different elements of, like, steps of the process in order to get from point A to point Z. It's never a straight line.

Yeah.

So because people are always looking for that. One thing. My favorite piece of content that we teach is the grow process, because it is our best attempt at distilling all of the steps needed for me to go from point A to point C, any point A to any point Z in your life. How do you get to your desired outcome in four simple steps? And we've broken down literally all the steps you need to do in these four steps. Now, are there other things you need to do?

Of course. Well, yeah, it gives you. So what grow really does is it takes the overwhelming sense of, I gotta do all these things all at the same time. I don't know what steps to take. All this kind of stuff. It does all of that and it breaks it down into four components that are digestible and easy bite sized. Now, in our last podcast, we basically did like an overview to kind of give you like an overview of how the grow process works. We use an example of a young man, actually two young men, one using the grow process, one not using the grow process, and then what the different outcomes would be as part of that process. Now you've actually been doing grow since I've been teaching it to you for the last couple years. I'm very curious from your perspective. Now we'll dig into, I promise you guys, we'll go back over the acronym in just a second. But I think it's important that you guys actually hear a true life story of how this process actually works. How have you actually personally applied grow to your life and, and how has it benefited your life?

So for me, I used to spend all of my time in the last stage, or at least trying to spend all my time in the last stage of the process. So again, grow is gain perspective, recognize and remove roadblocks, organize a plan, and then work your plan.

That's right.

I'm impatient. No, never as quickly as possible. So I was always like, well, okay, what work do I need to do? What do I need to do? Really, what I did even before then, I guess I spent a good amount of time in O as well. Yeah, but, but I didn't do any of G and R, so I would say that's accurate. So basically I spent really all my time in O because I wanted to be spending all my time in W. I wanted to just be doing the work and getting there.

Yeah.

But what I was actually doing was nothing. I was thinking all day, walking around.

And walking around in circles.

Yeah, walking around in circles, thinking, like, thinking about what my goal was and being like, thinking of all the ideas and all the things, overwhelming myself with all the ways that I would get there. So, like, if I wanted to build a multimillion dollar business, it was so overwhelming to me to think about everything that was involved that I couldn't just sit and start building a website because that's such an insignificant small piece. In theory. In theory, I was like, oh my God, there's a billion things, so I need to think of everything first. So I just ended up wasting all my time thinking and staying stuck because I was so ready to just start doing stuff.

But I didn't want to start doing stuff until I knew everything that I needed to do. So I was trying to create a plan, but I didn't have any perspective on.

What'S in my way. What am I really going after?

Yeah. So basically I was just paralyzed. Yeah.

Yeah.

I was trying to skip steps. The first step in the grow process is gain perspective, and it requires you to ask a few very, very important questions.

And I got a bunch more we're not going to go over today, for sure.

It requires you to ask a series of questions about where are you right now? How did you get here? What circumstances are creating your ongoing results. So if there's a result that you're not happy with, that you want to.

Change, you're going to have to breathe soon, man.

Yeah, I'm fitting it in. In between. If there was a result that you want to change, you have to be able to identify what got you there.

Well, I want to stop for just a second because one of the things that I've actually been very encouraged in watching you apply the grow process to your own life. I think one other thing that was kind of in your way, when we're doing it off kilter, we're doing it backwards, or we got the stuff realigned. One of the things I used to watch you do on a regular basis, you were constantly comparing yourself to people that already put in the work.

Yeah.

You wanted to, you know, your Gary views, all these different people that, you know, you admire and respect in the entrepreneurship world, in the influencer world, you've already. You said multiple times, hey, I want to build a marketing company. I want to help influencers become influential, and all that kind of stuff, and all that was fantastic. But then you would get discouraged because you're having to start with building a website.

Yeah.

How do I get to here from where I'm at right now?

So the one caveat that I've seen you start to implement in your life that I would just mention at this stage in the game is despise not small beginnings. Despise not taking the first step. Take the first step, then the next step, and before long, you have traveled a million miles and you'll be walking in your destiny. It won't take long at all. Right.

Absolutely.

So the other thing is, when I look at gaining perspective, I also, like, sometimes I'll put gaining perspective and understanding. Right. Because when you. It's perspective, and understanding is a part of gaining perspective. Because as you gain perspective, you begin to understand at a deeper level. Right. What are your external needs? What are your internal needs? What are your philosophical needs? What are you really going after and why? I got a whole list of questions that I like to use here, and I'm going to go ahead and list them off one at a time that we actually use when we're actually doing a deep dive or walking someone through our immersion programs or our live events and stuff like that, where we actually basically take grow apart and show you how it actually overlays everything. I'm going to stick to G real fast, and first question I think everyone should ask is, where am I today?

Where am I today?

Yeah. So one of the dual things that we do is we take the eight pillars of life, which we've done a podcast and a YouTube thing on before. There's a whiteboard lesson on it and everything. And I like to use ranges of 1 to 10, and I like to get perspective on where am I at that pillar at this point in time in my life, at any point in time in my life.

So basically, for every single area of your life, and that's what we call the pillars, basically from your financial area, your financial life.

Yeah.

Your professional life, which is your actual career, not your money, your fitness, your health, your relationships, every single area you're ranking on a scale of 1 to 10, where am I at?

Where am I today?

Where am I at with my health? Where am I at with spirituality? You know, have I. If I'm a Christian, have I been to church? I personally have not. I've been and I shouldn't. So you're just giving yourself a ranking. Think. Think of this as taking inventory.

It's exactly what it is.

So that you can kind of see on paper in front of you, oh, here are my areas that need some work.

Exactly.

And here's where I'm good.

Well, and it also takes judgment and combination out of the picture, because now you're looking at raw data. You're looking at logic, Right. You're looking at impediments and stuff like that. The other thing that you're going to do when you do that first question is where I'm at today is you also want to go, well, how did I get here? Right. When I was using money like it wasn't a tool and using it more like it was just something I wanted to waste, Right. I got to that perspective. I got to that belief system. I got to that way of conducting my daily habits. Right. A specific way, right? So if you ask, where am I at today? And you ask the next question, how did I get here? Then a lot of times you can start to see some of those roadblocks start to kind of fester up, and you can start kind of seeing that stuff. Right. You're gaining perspective and understanding. The next one that I would say is where do I want to go? Right, so you can take the same. I do it this way. So I'll take the. I'll take the first one. Where am I at today? And then off to the side, I'll do another scale of 1 to 10 and I'll say, where do I want to be in the next 12 months?

And then you're comparing the two and.

Then I'm going to compare the two. And the reason I'm comparing the two is because there's going to be a disparity in most cases on two or three specific pillars. Okay. And because of that, now we have a focus. Alright. So when we're talking about gaining perspective, you can use the tools and resources that we can give you here. Journeyprinciples.com Resources. Resources. Excuse me, Resources. Connor's going to slap me if I don't put the slash in there.

In all seriousness. No, seriously, you can take that information and now you know what you're gaining perspective about. So I like to start with the things I'm not as strong in first, and then I like to work towards things I'm really strong in. Okay, so where am I today? How did I get here? Where do I want to go? So those are three, like pillar questions.

Those are the biggest ones.

Those are the biggest questions you need to answer. Okay. Now you can start to really do a deeper dive. Who was involved in how I got here? Right. What kind of influences, what kind of beliefs, what kind of training, what kind of school? Like, there's different ways to understand what made you. And one of my favorite, my favorite pieces of the content is actually the origin story, which we'll get into in a future podcast.

That's actually the next one.

Is it really awesome? That's my favorite one. All right, cool. I love the origin story. I won't go off on deep dive. I'll just stick to this, stick to my notes here because I love to teach that lesson. So by any stretch of the means, you want to make sure that when you're looking at gaining perspective, you move from, okay, I know where I am, I know where I want to go, I know how I got here. Now I need to talk about the parts and pieces that kind of go into that. So who was involved in how I got here upon what am I basing where I want to go and why I want to go there. You need to understand your motives behind what it is you want and why you want it. Okay, who can I trust to give me reliable results and accountability and mentorship and guides? Right. You want to know who can help you get to where you want to go? Who can teach me what I need to know to move forward? So in some cases you got a mentor that kind of pushes you and holds you accountable, and other times you got coaches that are there just to say, do one more rep. One more rep. Right? They're kind of in your ear. You've also got, what we refer to in our curriculum and content is called costars. These are people who are on similar journeys that you are and who can hold you accountable because you guys are on the same journey. So you guys will see if you're slipping a little bit. Okay. You know, and then the other thing, I think the most important thing, I think one of the ones that you've been most excited about historically, the ones that meant the most to you, was what I refer to as the questions of discernment. Now, the questions of discernment originally came from a guy by the name of Tom Patterson, but I learned it from a good friend of mine, Chris Accurdo, a long time ago. And there are four important questions that in the gaining perspective phase, are vital to understanding yourself at a deeper level and why you want stuff and what's at stake. And here they are. You want to actually take the time to list out what's going right in your life. A lot of times what I'll do, for those of you guys watching on YouTube, you'll see this. I'll draw a quadrant and just draw a box on the paper. Okay. So for you guys can see that on the thing. And then I'll put. Right.

He separated his piece of paper into four areas.

For those of you who can't listen, missing and confusing. Okay, I can't see. Yes. Yeah, so good point. So I'm going to show this to the camera. So I'll draw a piece of paper. I'll basically draw a giant T, breaking it up into four quadrants. In the top right corner, I'm going to write what's right. Okay. Those are things that I want to be thankful for. Things that are actually working right now.

In the upper left of your paper.

Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Left to those looking at the paper my way.

Right.

Left if I'm looking at the camera. But yes. Alright, the next one is gonna be what's missing. Okay. Now don't rush these four questions, okay? And the reason you don't Watch these four questions is because your destiny's hidden inside of them. Okay, so the next ones would be what's missing? Right. What's missing is. Is there a mentor missing? Is there a piece of education missing? Is there a resource missing?

Right.

You want to kind of do that.

So is this, like, what is missing for me to get from where I want to be to where I want to go?

The cool thing about this process is, is this specific set of questions just like, growfriend the grow process.

It's supposed to be vague.

It's designed to be vague because it's designed to overlay any area of your life at any given time in your life. Okay. Does that make sense?

You just want to do your best just off of these questions as they are right now, to answer them.

Exactly. And it's coming from your perspective. I advise going to a place that's quiet, that you can get a pen and a paper and just kind of be there with your own thoughts. Right. Don't do it in a busy shopping mall or while you're at work or something like that, because it's not going to get the best results. The next one is going to be what's confusing. Right. Most of the time, I see a lot of people, they're not taking action or getting traction because they're confused about something. And rather than searching out the information they need to make that problem go away, they just let it spin in their heads. You mentioned that for a number of years that you were just so focused on what? Or, I mean, how, how do I get there? How do I get there, how to get there?

I was just asking, like, what do I need to do? What do I need to do? What do I need to do? Constantly you kept telling me, take the first step. What's the first step? And I was like, yeah, but see, the truth is, I wasn't actually. I knew what I need to do next. I was focused on what I needed to do five steps from now.

Exactly.

Which is part of my problem, which.

Also says, he's a visionary, by the way.

I was. Didn't help because basically, like, I was just so concerned with. I was like, yeah, okay, I understand that today if I start working on this website, for example, it's gonna help me have a brand for my business and all that stuff. But I'm, like, worried. Well, I also don't have customers, so I have to figure that out. So I unloaded basically all the things that I knew I would have to solve to build a business, and I Looked at them all at once, like, oh, my God, I have all of this. And if you go back to our podcast on Overwhelm, when you try to do too many things at once, you get analysis paralysis.

That's right.

So most of you who feel like you're stuck and you can't take action. I used to think I was lazy. Laziness wasn't the problem. It was just that I didn't know what to do first. Fear.

Fear.

Yeah, fear. Exactly. I was just so. Fear. Afraid.

So how do you remove fear? You use knowledge in a process.

Yeah. And you take the first step, take action.

No matter how.

If you take one successful step, that will give you a level of confidence. You take another successful step, that gives you another level of confidence, and the process keeps going until our seats are traded.

I think the reason, a lot of people, or at least the excuse that I told myself for, why I would not just go ahead and take that first step. Cause it seems trivial enough. It seems like it's something that should have been like, come on, come on, stupid head.

Yeah, but we've all done it, so it's not as easy as.

That's what I was telling myself. I was like, come on, dude. Why can't you just get this and take this first step? I was so terrified that I was missing something and that it didn't matter if I took the first 10 steps correctly. Cause the 11th step, if I screwed it up, it was all gonna be for nothing. And I was so afraid of that work, that hard work being wasted on the first 10 steps that I didn't take any action until I had it all thought out my head.

And by that time, how many years had gone by?

It actually never happened. I never got to the point where I felt ready. I just.

I threw out the first interesting of the podcast.

Yeah. Here's what happened instead. I just got fed up and sick and tired of staying stuck.

Yeah.

I got tired of making no progress and just being a dreamer who had all these ideas. And three years had gone by from the idea that I had, and I stuck, still hadn't done anything. And I was like, something needs to change at this point. I don't care if I fail at this point, I'm just gonna take the first step and see where it gets me. And I was surprised. I shouldn't have been, but I was surprised to find.

Don't you hate when mentors are right?

Yeah. No. When I took those first few steps, I actually started to be more confident. And there's a Quote that I love that goes, as you go out on the way, the way appears. That's one of my favorite quotes.

Which is also another methodology called faith.

Yes. And you would always tell me faith. And I was like, shut up, dude. That's such a dumb answer.

I remember this one time we were getting ready to launch something with adjourning principles, and I drew on the board and you were like, well, what if this and what if that? How are we gonna do this and how are we gonna do that?

The answer is.

And I just made a giant circle and wrote the word faith or God, I can't remember which one was one of the two, but. And you were like. And then like three months later, he goes, darn it, you were right.

Yeah.

I was like, here's why that doesn't.

Make any logical sense.

The reason it doesn't make any logical sense is because you're leaving out the theory of focus momentum. Okay. With every step, you create focused momentum. Right. So sometimes you just have to take the needed steps to keep moving forward. And by doing that, you get focused momentum. And all of a sudden you're doing that not knowing the outcome directly from the start. Right. And when that thing happens, you've actually developed another level in my. What I return what. What I refer to in my terminology as faith. You now know that successful results have showed up so many times when you didn't know how they were going to show up, that all of a sudden you start to be. It's a lot easier to go, well, there's something that's going to show up, there's something that's going to show up, there's something that's going to show up kind of deal. So last question, by the way, of the questions of discernment was, what's wrong?

What's wrong?

Okay, now here's what I see happen. This is an interesting piece. I see a lot of people. They will fill up the bucket, what's wrong. Right. Because they've been telling them so. This is what's wrong with my life. This is my relationships. This is what's wrong with my financial picture. This is what's wrong. This is what's wrong. This is what's wrong. Almost every single time when you're working with one of our life mastery strategists and stuff like that, when you're working with our team, whether it be myself, Michael Connor, anybody else, one of the interesting things that you see very quickly is almost every single time, what's wrong can be rebucketed. Into something that's missing or confusing, which alone gives you more clarity.

That's awesome. That's powerful. All right.

Yeah. I was gonna say for the sake of time, we got a lot more to cover.

So. So. Okay, so that, that's, that's good enough.

For G. Yeah, for sure.

G is all about gaining perspective and asking yourself the questions that you have to answer of where you are today. What got you here? Where do you want to go? And then I think the fourth major bucket is really what can get me there. Those are really the four things that I think is. And you kind of. I like how you kind of take that fourth thing of what can get me there. And you almost sometimes seem to take it into R a little bit as a roadblock.

Well, because it's a bridge. Well, all right, so we already said that each one of these pieces of grow of the grow process shows to stand on one another. Right. Which means there's the connection. There's. At some point in time you're doing a jump from G to R. Well, that bridge. Right. Is going to be. Because when you're. As you're gaining.

How do I get there?

Exactly, exactly.

And then you really solidify it with the O, which is organize the plan. So let's dive into R for a second.

Yeah. I mean, so. Alright, so there's several things that can be potential roadblocks that maybe you're not addressing. Okay. The purpose of R is to do one thing first, recognize that they're there.

Okay.

You'd be surprised at how many times people don't know what's holding them back, is actually staring them in the face. And here's what I mean by that. We'll use that example. A few minutes ago, you wanted to go as fast as you. As far as you could. Okay. Well, when we started working together, you weren't consciously aware that you were consciously comparing yourself to people on a regular basis. Right.

Or that I was staying stuck in my head because of my impatience and my fear and lack of faith.

Right. Now, some of those things come from identity and self worth and all these different kinds of things. So there's lots of parts and pieces that you would dig into as part of this process. When we start to go recognize roadblocks and then remove them, this is another process that you're going to spend time intentionally looking at things in your life that are holding you back. That's all a roadblock is.

And I also like to separate that into two different areas. Because a roadblock could be something that you have in your life that's holding you back. Like a toxic relationship or something like that. It could be a physical thing that you have in your life or it could be something that you need to have that you don't have.

Yep.

So a roadblock could be a lack of the proper information, a lack of the right situation or environment.

You know, like, like if you lack of emotional intelligence.

Like.

Yeah.

So like if your problem that you'd like to solve is that you don't have enough money left at the end of every month, you're living paycheck to paycheck.

Yeah.

Okay. A roadblock could be your friends who are all, you know, being a bad influence on you. Getting to go out every Friday night, spend all your money.

That was me, by the way.

Or it could be a lack of the proper financial information. You don't know what you're doing. It could be a variety of things. R is where you recognize what is gonna stand between where I am today and what you defined in G. This is why it's important to start with G. Yeah. If you skip, if you just say where I want to go, which here's what I did. I just said, here's where I want to go, I'm gonna do it.

Yeah.

And I skipped everything else. I skipped all the other questions. I skipped the what's right, what's wrong, what's confusing, what's missing. To be honest, when I first heard those, I was like, those sound like.

Corny until you sit down with a pen and pad.

Yeah. I was like, what do I need to know? Like, what's confusing? Like, who cares? I just need it. I have a result. I want to get there.

Yeah.

You know, so that's how I was looking at it.

Well, let's break it down this way because. Alright. So recognizing roadblocks, it comes in three forms. Internal, external, philosophical. External could be the person you're talking about. You got a bunch of friends wanting to go out, you give in, you go out and blow all your money. Okay. Internal might be I got a self worth issue. Like I used to struggle with massive self worth issues. Not feeling valuable enough, not feeling significant.

What about lack of the right information? Is that internal?

Lack of the right information could be both. Right. So lack of the right information on the external side could be you not. Or it could be it's not available. Lack on the internal side is maybe you don't really want it. Like maybe you're not actually really wanting the information. In other words, I've seen people hold Themselves back because they know if they go get the information, they're going to have to take a step. Wow. Right. And that's a methodology of self sabotage. Okay. The philosophical side actually has to do with the transition of you. Right. So I've had to deal with a couple different things growing up. Specifically, self worth. I've had to deal with all kinds of things. Okay. So self worth, low self esteem, all of that's kind of tied together. And I had to finally be okay with becoming successful. Which you wouldn't think would be a problem. You would think, okay, I've been unsuccessful. I want to be successful. And then you become successful, and then you're like, crap, I don't want people to know I'm successful. Right. Which is weird.

So if you grow up in maybe a poverty area or something like that.

It'S gonna have its own challenges. Exactly.

Being successful. And you don't want to share that with people.

Exactly. And there's a few other things, so I'm gonna break this down really fast for the sake of time. Traumas. So if you went through a massive trauma, maybe abuse or something like that and stuff like that's gonna be important. Not everybody's gonna have that situation, but they're far more than there used to be, unfortunately. And that needs to be looked at. Okay. Triggers, avoidance, people pleasing, self sabotage, Victim thinking, vacillating, which is indecisive. That's something I used to struggle with big time. Which is kind of funny because you're like, you make decisions all the time kind of thing. Controlling, enabling. Okay. A sense of denial, a sense of unresolved conflict. These are all episodes or ideas, if you will, of things that could potentially be in your way. What's your attitude like? You know, are you falling prey to what we refer to as the seven enemies of identity, which we'll be doing in a later show? Right. What's standing in your way? Are there toxic relationships? Are there things like that that is actually holding you back? Those are all examples of potential roadblocks that if you don't know what to look for or why to look for it, you never look for it. And because of that, you never get to go forward because it changed you to the ground. When with a big ball and a chain and you feel like you're constantly dragging things around your door.

Don't overlook your roadblocks, guys. It's so important. Roadblocks are extremely, extremely important that people have a good understanding of what they are and how they're holding you back.

So Give me three examples of three roadblocks that you've had to face and overcome.

Ooh. Okay. I know the first one. First one that comes to my mind is this recent hurdle of the overwhelm thing. Because my biggest impediment for so long was just this. This. I thought I had a problem with just overthinking, and I did, but that was actually just a symptom. I thought that it was just the way that I was or that I was wired for it. I literally told myself all these things.

My grandfather would say, dig deeper.

Yeah, I literally believed that. Oh, man, I need to beat this, this, this. I guess it's just the way that I am, that I overthink things. And I wasn't able to be as effective as I wanted to be, and it was causing all kind of issues. I was really, really upset and almost depressed with myself because I was like, I can't do what I need to do to get the result that I want. What is wrong with me? There was nothing wrong with me. What the truth was that was that basically, I had heard for years that you need to get all of your tasks, all of your objectives, all of your priorities out of your head onto paper. And then once you have a big to do list.

Sorry, I'm smiling off camera.

You're supposed to organize your to dos and budget them into different levels of urgency and all this. Basically getting everything out of your head, creating an actual to do list so that you're not overwhelmed. I fought so hard on that because I was. When I grew up in school, I always got away with not doing that. So I never had to do my due diligence early on in school to get a result I wanted. I just kind of went after it, and I usually got an okay result until. Until life started getting harder.

Until life became life. Because high school life is very different than real life.

The biggest roadblock that I recently overcame was realizing that when I take a breath, I sit back and I actually take the time, which is. It sucks for me. It's not fun for me. I don't enjoy getting things out of my head. I enjoy the end result, but I just want to be doing stuff. But I took the time to do this, and I found I was way more free in my mind and my motivation.

You were twice as productive.

I was at least twice as productive, and my motivation increased. I thought I had a laziness problem. I was like, oh, wait, I didn't have a laziness problem. I had an overwhelm problem.

Yeah.

So I'd say that the roadblock was a combination of stubbornness because I just was like, I don't need to get everything out of my head. And if you don't change what you're doing, it's the definition of insanity. You can't keep doing what you've always done and expect different results. It's not going to happen. So eventually I just swallowed my pride and. And looked at myself in the mirror and said, dude, you gotta change something. Why don't you finally get everything out of your head?

I'm glad you're mentioning that particular one, because I bet you 80% of our audience is struggling with that one particular roadblock right now. Feeling overwhelmed and how they got there. Right. So take a moment and replay this podcast over and over again because that's an important piece of information that can help you actually in your gaining perspective phase. As you're setting up, recognizing your roadblocks, what are two other ones you got?

That's harder because that was the only that that one was so monumental that I'm not even really thinking about any other big things. So what comes to my mind in terms of roadblocks, I don't even know that's really the biggest thing. I can't personally think of any other recent ones.

So another one is what we refer to as doing the push ups.

Oh, okay.

So that was.

That was more of like a six to nine months ago thing. But.

But that's what I'm saying. We're using the concept.

So earlier this podcast, I talked about how I used to basically spin my wheels all day. I would have a million things that I knew that I wanted to do in order to build this business or improve my fitness or whatever. But I struggled to take the first step because I was so overwhelmed by all these things. So before I fix my overwhelm problem, my overwhelm problem.

Which was more recent, that was about like two, three weeks ago. Before that, though, I struggled for a long time with just the symptom of that, which was not taking action. So before I figured out that it was my overwhelm, I was at a point where, you know, I'm getting older now, you know, it's not cute anymore that I'm not able to be productive. It's, you know, life demands results. You have to be able to show up every day and consistently put in the work in order to get a result. If you want to live and if you want to eat and eat all that.

Yeah. If you want to do anything.

So I got to this point in my life and basically realized, okay, well, I don't know why I feel so overwhelmed all the time. I don't know why I don't feel the motivation to do what I need to do, but I have to just do it.

Yeah.

So the first hurdle that I really overcame was basically, in spite of not feeling like it, I started just doing it anyway.

Yeah.

And I. I noticed that immediately when I started doing it anyway. I actually. All that motivation that I thought that I wanted, that I needed in order to start, actually came as a result of me taking action. And then I did some research, which I talked about a couple podcasts ago, which was. Or it might have been the last one. No, it was a couple ago. Basically.

How do you keep that all organized?

I don't, clearly.

We're putting out so much content, I gave up trying to keep it organized.

A few podcasts ago, we talked about dopamine hits and how the way that the brain works with motivation.

It's getting off on a little tangent, but basically the way that the brain works with motivation is everyone always wants to feel like it before they start taking action.

That's right. And doesn't work that way.

That's scientifically how it works.

It's not how it works in the gym either.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter in your brain associated with the feelings of reward, motivation, all that kind of stuff. So in order for you to feel that motivation, you have to have dopamine present in your brain. Okay. And that's. I'm sure that there's a scientist out there that's like, not technically, but that's basically how it works. So you have to have this dopamine present. But dopamine is also a reward chemical. Dopamine only gets released when you're anticipating a reward or when you've just done something and you feel really, really got the reward.

Yeah.

So you can't actually anticipate a reward unless you know that you're taking steps to get there.

Yeah.

So therefore, if you've just been sitting on the couch for months and months and months, you might see a video of a dude with a six pack and be like, oh, I feel motivated. What you're actually feeling is not motivation, by the way. That's inspiration. It's different. You're inspired, you feel good, and you're.

Like, that's a whole separate podcast.

But then you wonder, well, why am I not actually, like, having to drive to get up in the morning and go to the gym? Yeah, because you're not supposed to feel it that way because for the last several months you've just been sitting on the couch eating lay's potato chips. If you want to change that, you're going to have to trick your brain into releasing some of that dopamine, which.

Is what our process does, and then.

You will feel motivated. So the secret that I learned was if instead of waiting for the motivation to appear in your brain of today, I feel like going to the gym, which is not going to happen. If you haven't been going to the gym, you're not going to all of a sudden feel like it. Very, very rarely.

Unless you get, like our buddy Casey Craigie says, nutrified.

Yeah, if you get neutried, it can't happen. But that's a whole different story. But yeah, but basically you're not going to just, you can't keep waiting to feel like doing it. But if you get yourself to say, you know what, all right, 7am I said, I go to the gym, I'm going to the gym no matter what. And you do the pushups and you do the push ups, which is what.

This whole push ups for us, all that means is take action.

Yeah.

You can't build a bigger chest without doing the push ups. We talked about that a couple of times in a podcast before. One more that I think that I'd like you to just hit on for three minutes is one of your favorites that I've, that you've even told me was how important it is to surround yourself with great people.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, okay, so this is actually a really, really big one.

That's why I said you got three minutes.

A lot of people underestimate, I could do it in way less than that. A lot of people underestimate the impact that the influences around them. And the top five to six people who you're surrounding yourself with on a day to day basis are impacting your future. Okay. If you're hanging out with deadbeats, you're very likely to become a deadbeat. Unfortunately, no matter how amazing you are, it's just very, very likely. If you're hanging out with super successful people and you are not super successful, you will be surprised at how quickly you either get kicked out of that group or you become successful because of your influence around you. I don't know what it is. I assume, assume it's something to do with like when we were cavemen, it was absolutely critical that basically we're liked by the tribe. Right. So I assume that biologically it's important to surround yourself with people who are doing the right things. I don't know. That's kind of. My guess is that it has something to do with that.

Well, we were built as people to be community animals. Okay, so, meaning, so I'm a person of faith. So I, you know, I'm, I've done my research and I've done a lot of a dot of research on nature, nurture, creation versus evolution, on and so on and so forth, but it doesn't, no matter which side of the fence you're on on that topic, for example, it does not matter. We are community beings. We like to be in community. It's also why during the taping of this, where the, the entire country, actually the entire world is facing the C19 virus, Coronavirus Corona Covid. Right. And people are having a really hard time being in isolation, either by themselves or just with them, family, because we are relational beings. Now, to piggyback off of what you're saying, you know, there's an old, there's an old saying, show me your five friends and I'll show you your future. Right. When I first met you as a young man, you were incredibly talented, incredibly gifted, but you were like a sniper rifle that, like somebody with shaky arms was like trying to aim.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Does that make sense?

No aim. Just no aim. I knew where I wanted to go.

I knew the target somewhere generally over there kind of thing, but I was all over the place. Right. You know, and when I first met you, a lot of people you were hanging out with at the time weren't trying to go there at all. They had zero interest in going that direction. If anything, they were trying to kind of stay status quo, you know. And I think that it's important to realize that, you know, those are three major roadblocks that may be standing in your way. Right. I hit a bunch of other ones, like summary level, kind of not taking it.

So my biggest three that we just went over are obviously minding your influences and the top five people you're spending time with also doing the push ups, which is just taking action. You're not gonna feel like it, guys action anyway. And the third one is if you feel overwhelmed or if you feel this is why a lot of you aren't taking action. It's why I wasn't, I just didn't realize it until earlier. You have to actually go through the steps to get all of your goals, all of everything on paper. Because if you don't do that you. You're going to feel overwhelmed. You're not going to feel like taking action at all.

Yeah.

By the way, also, quick shortcut to the push ups thing. Taking action. When I did solve the overwhelm problem, I actually did get a little boost of dopamine, I guess, because that technically is a step. Getting clear is a step. So basically, I guess if you are sitting on the couch eating lay's potato chips and you want to fix that, but you're not really wanting to go to an actual gym yet, maybe take 30 minutes and create a diet plan or create something.

Be one less bag of chips.

Exactly. Yeah.

Or seriously, I mean, sometimes. Sometimes the first step is just doing one less or one more thing that maybe is holding you back now. So we hit the roadblock hard. Pretty hard. So there's a lot of different ways a roadblock can come. If you haven't taken a chance to actually discover what those roadblocks are and you're really kind of unsure what to do, feel free to plug into us. We will be happy to take you through an actual process that actually helps you uncover and recognize your roadblocks, and so we can then remove those chokers. Okay. Step three in our process of the growth process, when we're talking about the deep dive, is organize a plan. Okay. Organizing a plan sometimes is scary, but it doesn't have to be, like, overly complicated or overly set in stone. Organizing a plan almost always has to have a level of flexibility and several other attributes. Okay. Some of the things that I like to have as being part of my plan is I like to have a defined, focused outcome on what I'm trying to achieve. And I would hit that from every single pillar. Okay. Maybe you're focused on your relational pillar right now, which is great, but clearly articulate where it is you want to go and why. Okay, take another look at your roadblocks and make sure that you've got a mechanism in place, whether it be a person, a place, a thing, a widget, or whatever that can help backfill for that particular roadblock. Okay. So take the time to look at them one more time and figure out, okay, how am I going to go over it, under it, through it, around it, whatever. But you want to make sure you do that. Make sure that your plan encompasses and utilizes all your gifts, your talents, and your skill set. Far too many times I see people do the front end work, right? And then they try to force fit themselves into a mold. You know, Connor is going to be a highly successful entrepreneur and it's my goal to help him make that happen and make that dream a reality. It's something he's called to. Right. Connor's also an amazing artist. The dude can sing and play piano like nobody's business.

I care about sing so much, but whatever.

He had an entire room singing with him. Whatever. He can say that all he wants to. I'm telling you, he's gifted in that area. The one thing Connor is not great with is the same thing that I typically struggle with now. He's better at it than I am, which is a certain level of details. If I put Conor in a spreadsheet or an editing document. You saw his face. Yeah, yeah. He just put his eyes. His hands over his eyes for you guys on the podcast.

But I say all that to say that you want to make sure that you're setting yourself up for success, and the only way you do that is you set yourself up for success by utilizing the stuff that you're good at.

Right.

Part of a roadblock is undercovering what the blind spot is and backfilling for it. Okay. So if we're going to backfill our roadblocks, we also need to be able to leverage our strengths. Okay. The next thing is identifying your mentors, your guides, and what we refer to, again as a costar and a co star is someone who is on your team, meaning they're on the same journey you are, they're heading the same direction, and you guys will bounce ideas off each other and even accountability. And, hey, man, can you hold me accountable? I can hold you accountable. Back and forth.

So you're going back to your roadblocks exactly. When creating your plan and basically going back to the G and the R in order to identify exactly things you're going to have to put in there.

Exactly. The final step in. Actually, there's two more steps. The next step in making sure you're organizing a quality plan.

And.

And this is something that I totally miss. It's totally a blind spot for me. When my first roadblock. Okay. And a buddy of mine actually showed me about this, I didn't actually have what I refer to and what we refer to as a replenishment or a rejuvenative plan. Okay. What I mean by that is changing your life is not always easy. It's always worth it, but it's not always easy. When you think about that, when you've been working at it, you're doing the push ups. At a certain point in time, you've been doing the pushups. So Long as your chest is burning. Right. So by definition, you're going to need to take a break from doing the push ups. Okay? Now there's a process in place as part of the GROW framework and the grow process that we do that makes that a reality. I had to consider what I needed to do, why I needed to do it, and where I needed to go to do it as part of a replenishment plan. Far too many people are working so hard at doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it over and over again that they begin to lose the effectiveness that they once had and the initiative, if you will, that they once had simply because they're tired.

So you have to build into your plan time for replenishment.

Exactly.

So that you don't get burnt out.

Exactly. And here are the things you need to do built into your replenishment plan. So inside of your organize a plan, there's a part of it that's built that's just called replenishment. Okay. There are three things you need to make sure you got under control there. Where do I go? What do I do? And who am I doing it with? Okay, where do I go? For me, for example, I love going to the mountains. Like, I can stare at a mountain and write a books, and write books all day long. I come back to Raleigh for some reason and I have a hard time getting back to my book to finish my book, even though my publisher's on my high knee about my deadline. I'm sorry, guys. Oopsie. All right, that being said, I'll go to the mountains. I like to actually be with a pen, a pad, or a computer when I can reflect and think and all that kind of stuff. So I'm at the mountains taking an action of basically reflection, if you will. Pen, pad, paper. And the third thing is, depending on what the replenishment program is looking like, I'll either be by myself, which I actually enjoy from time to time, or I'll be beside my beautiful wife. Okay? That's an element of creating a replenishment plan, which is part of your organizing a plan. Okay? Now the final thing is your measurement. How are you going to measure your success long term? Now, when you set up your measurement metrics, if you will, what you don't want to do is if you miss the mark, you don't want to basically discount yourself and all of a sudden think you're a failure and all that kind of stuff. No, you just take a note, okay, I missed the mark this time. Let me Start over, let me do it again. And then just keep building off of that. Okay, so hit those things, the highlights, one more time. When you go to organize a plan, define a clear objective, recognize and remove roadblocks, meaning you go back to your roadblock sheet and create a methodology to get around it, over it, through it, maximize your talents, identify and implement your guides and costars and what we refer to as mentors. And then make sure you've got a replenishment plan in place to build yourself along while you're tired. And then finally make sure you've got a way to measure success. That's perfect. There was a lot of that. The organizing a plan is the one that I've never done a great job of taking the time to actually explain how I build a plan. And one of the people that reached out to us on our social media channel said, well, I get organizing a plan, but how do you do that? So I figured it was in our best interest to actually explain how we can organize a plan.

I love it.

And the final one, as you can kind of imagine, is work the plan. It's doing the push ups. It's taking the time to take what you fear most and actually make your dreams bigger than your fears. Right. Because if you have a strong enough why, which is another reason we do grain perspective. You have strong enough reasons, then every time it gets hard, you'll push through. Right. One of the things I love about Rocky Balboa and Sylvester Stallone entirely. One of my most favorite things about that guy is all of his movies has one thing. Rocky always gets back up.

Yeah.

Right. And some of these things have, like, tried to take him out completely and fully. Right. But at the end of the day, Rocky always gets back up. And we want to help you do the same thing because you're amazing, you're worth it, and we want to help you win at your life.

That's it, man. That's. I think. I don't think we could have done a better deep dive on Grow.

Well, I know it was your favorite, so.

It is, it is. I just, I think that anybody who has been listening to a billion podcasts like I have and is looking for the one thing, I think that if you just start here, start on grow, don't skip steps. Please don't. Because I did that. And.

Yeah.

The other secret, the bonus secret we'll give you today for today's podcast is trust the process.

Yes.

Just trust the process.

If I had trusted the process, I would have been where I am today.

Four years ago, at least. Yeah, at least. All right, buddy, you want to close this out today?

I think we're good to go. I mean, if you want to see us next time. Next podcast is next Tuesday. It's going to be podcast episode six seven. We're going to talk about how your origin story, my favorite, can hold you back in life if you let it. I like how our favorites are back to back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So everything from overcoming your past and how to leverage, you know, maybe you don't have such a great past. How to turn that into a positive future. That's what we're talking about next time, guys.

That's cool.

Take care.

Yeah, that's right. If you got questions, I want to stop real fast. If you got Questions, questions@journeyprinciples.com if you want any of our free resources, that's journeyprinciples.com.

With lots of great free resources for you there to help you on your journey. They're totally free, no obligation whatsoever. We're here to help you. And say it again, guys.

Take care. This has been the Journey Principles podcast with Steven Scoggins and Connor Kraft. We'll see you next time, guys.

Alright, take care, guys.

Peace.

I'll see you in the next video. And please, if you don't mind and you enjoyed the Life Mastery content we're building, consider hitting the subscribe button and also hitting the bell so you'll be the first to get notified anytime we release new content.