Lewis Howes argues most days should start with enthusiasm and shares how he transitioned from truck driving to work that excited him. He recommends gradual shifts rather than sudden leaps, and emphasizes building a vision that actually excites you.
Now, you also mentioned something about vision. While we're on the subject, if your vision doesn't make you want to jump out of bed every morning, you need a new vision. Let's talk about that.
Yeah, I just feel like, you know, we are. We've been given this incredible life, right? We were born for whoever knows what the reason is. We really, at the end of the day, who knows why we're here? You know, maybe we think we know, but who really knows? And I feel like we've been given this world to explore and to learn and grow and connect and play and adventure. And it's our duty to fully show up in a passionate, excited way, joyful way, loving way in life. And if we're not excited about what we're doing every single day, then I feel like we need to figure it out and get excited. And there's going to be patches of sadness and depression and things are, you know, transition. I get it. But I think the majority of the times we should be waking up excited. If we're not excited, we should be getting clear on what we want to get excited about.
Love it. Love it, love it. So do you have advice for people who say, are waking up consistently day after day after day in a career or a job that doesn't inspire them, that makes them dread going to work? What should we do if we are in this situation?
You know, it's tough because I've never been in that situation except for a few months. I was a truck driver for three months when I was 22, in between college football and playing professional football. And I was just miserable. I was so miserable. It was six hours a day driving from Columbus, Ohio, to Cincinnati and back, driving car auto parts in the back of a huge truck. And I remember just being like, this cannot be the rest of my life. Like, I cannot just be driving a truck every single day. I don't care if you're an entrepreneur or you're working for a company. I think you just got to find something that you believe in that you're excited about. Whether you want to be a part of a team or you want to start your own thing. I think you just got to be focusing on closer and closer to doing things that excite you and that you enjoy. That may not mean when you're 22, you're going to have that luxury. You may need to put in the work and the time, working some jobs that you don't like to see that you actually don't like them. And then from that point, you get the experience and you move on closer and closer to something that you do enjoy and you do like or the teams that you do enjoy being a part of. I just feel like, again, we, you know, it's not worth wasting years and years of our life doing things we don't enjoy doing when we can do things that we do enjoy.
I like that. It's actually very practical advice. You didn't just tell someone, go ahead and quit. That might be impractical. We have jobs that we need to do. Exactly. For those of you who are in that situation, I recommend Cal Newport's book, so Good They Can't Ignore youe. It's about the fact that sometimes you do have to strive and do a job that doesn't excite you, but it's your stepping stone towards the next great thing in your life.
As you said, in my first, you know, my first couple years getting off the couch, I worked for mentors doing stuff that I didn't enjoy doing. I was on the phone doing sales and pr. I was doing, like, traveling and doing networking and events. I was doing a lot of the busy work. But those, one of them were one of the greatest moments because I was learning and growing in that process. And as long as I was learning and growing, even doing things I didn't enjoy and developing new skills, I felt like, okay, I'm doing something positive and it's for a bigger mission, right? So if you're growing in the job and you're learning and you're hustling, I still think that's great. And you should look at this as like, okay, here's a window of time where I'm going to give my best every single day towards this job. I may not love it right now, but the act of giving my best and hustling is going to prepare me for the next thing and it's going to show up in a bigger way.
