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A force inside and out, Range Rover Sport was created with a choice of powerful engines, including a plug in hybrid with an estimated range of 53 miles. Build your Range Rover Sport at range rover.com ussport Foreign this is the Ed Milet Show. Hey everyone. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Let me tell you one thing I've noticed about all the max out performers that I've interviewed on my program and that I've known throughout my life for the last 30 years, really in business, sports, entertainment, politics, you name it. The elite performers look at time and use time completely differently than the people who perform at an average level. And so I want to talk to you about some tips and strategies today to begin to think about time and utilize time differently. So let's start out. The first thing I want to tell you about people who win, who max out, they are in a much bigger hurry than the people who are average. And I'm not kidding you when I say this, they're in a bigger hurry to get to their destination, to get to their outcome. Their pace is faster, they walk faster, they talk faster, and their expectation when they're going to arrive at their destination is sooner. This may seem like a very small, subtle thing, but I want you to evaluate how big of a hurry are you in? Because there's something to be said about how close you think you are to a goal, how fast you will run to get to the finish line. Let me give you an example of that. If you and I started out right now and we had a 26 mile marathon to run, right in our minds, it was 26 miles. We were going to Race each other. We would pace ourselves at a certain speed in order to maintain that speed because of the duration of the run. So if it was a marathon, we'd jog, wouldn't we? Pretty slowly. You certainly wouldn't sprint 26 miles. And so because the destination, because the finish line is so far away, our pace or our hurry is limited based on how far away we think we are or when we'll arrive there. But if you and I were to run a hundred yard dash, would the pace be the same because the finish line is so much closer? We'd run full speed from the minute we took off, wouldn't we? Because of the proximity of how close the finish line is, the people that win in life don't necessarily have more vision than you see. It's not a lack of vision always that means that you are going to lose. It's a lack of a type of vision or which is depth perception. You think you're further away from the outcome and so you pace yourself like it. And you jog all the time throughout your life. The people that win may have a bigger vision, but they have accurate depth perception. They understand how close their goals are, how close their outcome is, and they're constantly in a sprint to get there throughout their day. That means, consequently they get started earlier and they finish later. They get up earlier throughout the day, they're in a bigger hurry to get to the places they need to be because the finish line in their mind is so much closer. I cannot emphasize this enough to you is just the pace and the way time shrinks for elite performers compared to the average. I'm telling you, the average performer can say the same things, read the same books, have the same schedule. Yet the person who is in a bigger hurry throughout the day ends up winning the day, winning the week, winning the month, winning the year, and winning the life. And so please evaluate your pace. You should be in a so much bigger hurry than everybody around you. You almost have people telling you to slow down a little bit. So that's number one, is you've got to be in a bigger hurry. The second thing is the way we begin our day. I'm going to tell you right now, either you're going to control your time or your time's going to control you. Either you are going to dictate the terms of your life or you're going to be somebody who reacts and responds. Because throughout their life. This device right here can both speed up time in your life or it can slow it down. It's not always a speed tool. So one of the tips that I've covered before, but not enough people implement that I promise you, is a quality of max out performers that relates to their time is they control it. They do not react and respond. They dictate the terms of their life most of the time. And that means this. When you wake up in the morning, the greatest thing you could do for yourself is not touch or look at this device for 30 minutes to an hour after awakening. So that when you wake up, you take control of your time. You control the time, you control the beginning of the day. You get clear, you meditate, you pray, you stretch, you think, you go through a gratitude exercise. You control the first 30 minutes of your day. It sets a tone that I'm in charge of my time, not what enters this. If the first thing you do is grab this, this now dictates the term of your day. This controls my day. What hits this, what email, what text, what call hits this, what Instagram post hit this. This controls me, it controls my time. But if you can stay away from it for the first 30 minutes to an hour, you send a message to your brain, to yourself, that you control time, that this day is on your terms. And again, you stack up a day, a week, a month, a year, five years of a lifetime of you controlling and dictating the terms of your life for just the first 30 minutes to an hour every day. It will revolutionize your life. It'll be very difficult to do for the first 30 days, but after 30 days, you'll never have the desire to do it again. You'll completely flip your life around. I'm not suggesting that all max out performers dictate every turn. Of course I respond, of course I react throughout my day. It's not the syntax or context of my day. I control my day. There are things throughout every day where we react and respond. There are conversations where someone says something to us. We clearly react and respond. But I'm the assessor of my life, not the assessee. I assess my life. I dictate the terms of my life. I'm not being assessed and I'm not being dictated to by other people all the time in my life. That's a huge separator and how people look at time for max out performers. The third thing is this. Why is a day only 24 hours? I mean, if the average people in the world or the majority of people in the world have a 24 hour day, why does that have to apply to you? Many years ago, I discovered. Have you ever had a day where in four or five hours you got more in the first four or five hours done or accomplished in your day than you had in a normal day? You ever have a four or five hour window, a six hour window like that? You go, I've got so much done in these six hours, you. It's more than I get done in an average day. And what I found out was max out elite performers, people that perform at the highest level, they get more done in a six hour window than most people get done in a day. And here's why. Most people measure a day by 24 hours. So I started to think I was young in business. I was in my early 20s. And one of the things that was held against me by other people is you're too young to win. You don't have enough experience, you just haven't had enough days of experience of your life, enough days in business to win. I thought, well, well, how can I fix that? And here's how you can fix that. And I've adopted this now for almost 30 years. I want the average people I compete against to think they have a 24 hour day. My days are six days long. So I want to teach you the concept of running mini days. My day, my first day is from 6am to noon every day. That's a full day for me. So I try to get done a full day's work from 6am to noon. But because I no longer have a 24 hour day in my life, I have a six hour day. And so a day to me is that measure of time. It altered the complete direction of my life. It transformed who I am. So now from 6am to noon is a day that's my first day every single week, 6am to noon, Monday morning. And what happens in that 6am to noon? I see there's a mental thing we have. I have a whole day to get all these things done. And, and so we stack and dictate and schedule our day over that 24 hour window of time. You'd be surprised if you shrunk the day to six hours. You can get the same things done in those six hours you used to get done in 24. From noon to 6pm is my second day. And in that second day I fill that up with a full day's worth of fun, memories, meetings, phone calls, you name it, meetings with my relationships in my life. That six hour day, I pack out another day. From noon to 6pm I fill that day up and my third day is 6pm to midnight. And in that 6pm to midnight, same thing. My relationships, my meetings, my phone calls, my emails, the work I do is a third day. And so what happened was when I was in my early 20s, I went from having three days in the same window of time when the average person had one. And I started to accomplish triple what the average person was accomplishing. Now once again you stack up three days and 24 hours over a week, a month, a year. In just one year I end up with over a thousand days and I'm competing against people only have 365. Think about the mind blowing difference could be in your life if you ran many days the rest of your life. I'm telling you right now that my days are six hours long. You'll be the amount of work you could get done, the amount of compounding that will take place in your life. So that's going to blow your mind when you start looking at your schedule. Day one is 6am to noon. Day two is noon to 6pm Day three is 6pm to midnight. Your whole existence is going to change and it'll be kind of fun in the beginning you'll mess it up, but you stack up a week or two and you do that for a month. Imagine that in one month getting 90 days. Think about what would happen in your life if in a month you had 90 days and the rest of the world the average in your life. Imagine that for a second the rest of the world only had 30. And you stack that up over a year or three years. How different would your life be? And I'm telling you, I'm an example of how different your life would be. I'm an example of what that productivity and compounding in your life can look like. More fun, more memories, more meetings, more encounters, more relationships, more experiences, more money, more achievement, more joy, more bliss, more. I'm creating opportunities constantly. So what I do is I shrink the finish line. So there's sprints all the time. And so because I only have a six hour day, I'm going to hurry throughout that day. I'm not jogging, I'm not walking, I'm in a big hurry. And you're going to be amazed at the transformation of your life. I may never give you a bigger gift than the concept of six hour days. I think I'm one of the only people you'll ever hear explain this to you. But I can tell you I started to study these successful mentors. My gosh, they get so much done before 9 o' clock in the morning, my gosh, by 1 o' clock they've accomplished so much and the average person is just stretching, getting out of bed, done their first appointment or two, especially you entrepreneurs out there, how critical this is. Because when you're an employee, at least as an employee, to some extent, they control your time. They dictate you need to be here at 9am you can't leave until 5pm and so although that's a nuisance, it helps you be more productive because they're paying you, they tell you when to be there. But what happens for most entrepreneurs, they don't realize when you become an entrepreneur, you've taken on three jobs, four jobs. It requires more time, but people start to relax. Ah, my time's mine, my time's free. I love the freedom of being an entrepreneur. There's the greatest fallacy in the world is that you are free as an entrepreneur. And as a matter of fact, you have more responsibility, more obligations, more accountability when you're an entrepreneur, because there's no guaranteed money coming in. The biggest mistake, the biggest misnomer, the worst thinking you could have as an entrepreneur is that somehow you're free because you don't have a job. Just because you call yourself an entrepreneur, if you are one, doesn't make you free. In fact, it makes you less free. And so what will make you free is really being free, really getting financially independent, really having enough money that you would never need to work again, really having enough money that if you didn't want to take a meeting, you didn't have to. So stop deluding yourself into this false sense of freedom because you call yourself an entrepreneur. It's hilarious. And it's why you're losing. You have this fallacy, this relaxed state of freedom where you're going to get around to doing things and you get to go to the gym anytime you want to, and you're wearing your sweats at 10:30 in the morning, right? You wouldn't do that if you work for someone else. You don't do that when you work for you. And so the greatest thing I can give you is the gift of many days. The next thing I want to share with you is that there needs to be an alarm clock where performance is measured, performance improves secondarily. The more you can shrink the time frame where you measure performance, the better chance you can have to alter that performance and improve it. So what do most people do? They measure their performance. The average people in the world measure their performance at the end of every year, New Year's Eve Right. They take an account about, here's my life, here's what I accomplished, here's what I didn't get done. And once a year, they take a look at themselves, they make an adjustment and their performance improves. They measure their performance, they measure the results, and then they make an adjustment. So they adjust about once a year. Pretty good performers shrink the time frame at the end of every month. Most companies kind of do an inventory. Most people do an inventory, they look at their books, they look at the profit and loss, they look at their schedule and they make an adjustment. After they measure that performance at the end of the month, really good people kind of get together on a Sunday night. If they're pretty good performers, once a week they measure their performance, they make adjustments and they move on weekly. And then there's really top level performers and they do at the end of every day, don't they? The end of every day. They sit back, they look at their calendar, they look at the results, and they measure the performance daily. Well, who do you think is going to do better? The person who measures it once a year, once a month, once a week, or once a day. We all know the better adjustments, they've shrunk the time frames down. They adjust, they get better, they improve daily. And then there's the max out 1% of 1% performers. And they have a clock that goes off every hour, every hour in their head. Alarm goes off in my mind. It's sort of weird, but it works. I'm addicted to it now. About every hour, the top of Every hour at 11am it's funny, my mind just knows. What did I do to move closer to my goals? What did I do to move closer to my outcomes? Have I achieved the things on my to do list today? Have I achieved my biggest and baddest outcomes of the day? And every hour, did I move closer? Did I move closer? What adjustments do I need to make? What do I need to celebrate? What tweaks, what's been accomplished so far? An hourly alarm clock goes off in your head. If you can get to the point where you just begin to practice it. And maybe for now, you program this thing to go off every hour just to remind you, what did you get accomplished? Maybe when that hour goes off, you know what flashes on the screen? Your outcomes and your goals. Hourly, the alarm goes off. Hourly, the alarm goes off. It'll begin to train you to begin to measure the time frame of your performance every hour. Now, let me ask you a question. There's a group of people that measure their performance, their race, their marathon is once a year. Then there's those that do it once a month that make adjustments and measure where they are and increase effort. Then those that do it monthly, weekly, daily, hourly. I can tell you that I run many days and I measure my performance hourly. It will transform your life. You will become more productive in your family, in your personal relationships, in your faith, in your business, in your fitness, in your nutrition, in your money, in every area. If just something goes off every, by the way, it's a five second just reminder, am I move closer to my outcome if I move closer to my to do list today, what adjustments do I need to make? You'll be reminded at that time of someone you forgot to call, an email you didn't return, a meeting you haven't asked for yet, but something you're supposed to eat, hydrate whatever it is, if you can begin to have that alarm, just go, it's just five seconds, it's just every hour, it's just five seconds. And I'll tell you, it happens to me constantly now. And I know that one of the reasons my life has improved is because I've shrunk the timeframes down of where I measure my results right. Where I recalibrate, where I course correct, where I make an adjustment, where I realize I'm behind or I've made a mistake and I improve a performance. And so, so far, can you imagine if you started just being a bigger hurry and you had perception correct about how close you really are to your goal. The difference in winning and losing is this much. It's like a veil. And when you remove that veil, you say, my gosh, I'm so much closer. I promise you, one of the things that you suffer from isn't just like a lack of vision and clarity. I wish you more clarity and more specificity in your vision and I wish you more proximity that you knew how much closer you were to achievement than you think you are. In fact, it's the fact that you think you're so far away from achieving these things that's causing them to constantly stay that far away from you. Because you're not running fast enough towards them, you're not measuring them fast enough. You're killing your goals and your dreams by thinking they're so far away it kills everything. If you knew how close you really were, you run so much faster. So if you altered that, if you altered the first 30 minutes to an hour of your day and you just stopped letting yourself be a reactor, but you took control and became a dictator of your time. If you manipulated and bended time like I have to where a day is six hours. Let the rest of the world think a day is 24 hours. By the way, someone just made that crap up a long time ago. An hour of measurement. 24 hours is a day, 365 is a year. Someone just made that up and everybody's bought into it. Well, guess what? I've made mine up. My days are six hours long. I've just manipulated and changed time. It's a figment of our imagination is how time works. And what if an alarm could go off every hour in that mind of yours, in that heart of yours? Just checking. Just a wake up call. Just a wake up. Just an alarm. Hey, am I closer to my goals? Am I closer to my outcome? What adjustments do I make? What course corrections? What was achieved? What am I grateful for? It's a 5 to 10 second reminder and you're back off to the races again. If the earth spins around once, we call that a day. If the moon goes around us once we call that a month. If we go around the sun once, we call that a year. It's just stuff people made up, right? And so time is a figment of our imagination. And if you'd use your imagination, imagine what you could accomplish if you shrunk the time frames down. The last thing I want to tell you about time is that the best people I know have a focus on the future and use their time in the present. They focus on the future and use their time in the present. Too many of you are focused in the past and are thinking all the time about the future, dreaming and aren't taking advantage of the present. The present is a gift and we need to treat it as such. The past is literally gone forever. And in many cases it's a figment and a manipulation of our imagination. The future is grand and powerful and we need to be focused there and thinking about it and dreaming about it because we are pulled towards it. But the best people can simultaneously be dreaming and optimistic about the future and take massive action. Right now most of the max out achievers I know in my life spend almost 0% of their time on the past. And I'm talking about people who have pretty darn good past in some cases as well. It is wasted time. You are wasting time. You're stealing and robbing your future and your present by focusing any of your attention or thoughts on the past. The past, if it's negative and wasn't Positive for you is a place you should avoid forever. It's not coming back. It doesn't exist anymore. All we really, truly have is this moment right now and our dreams about the future. If the past was wonderful and you were a high school quarterback, or had a business victory, or got a college degree or. Or had an achievement there, those things aren't your present and aren't your future. And dwelling on them and focusing on what you've done previously is not going to produce for you a future. Here's the truth. Your past does not equal your future. What will equal your future is what you do in the present. And so I want to encourage you to take these tips I've shared with you today. And I want you to know if you would make a couple of these changes, I can assure you your future is closer to you than you think it is. If you'll take massive action right now in the present. I have a really good friend here today, one of the most downloaded shows we've ever done before, because he'll surprise you. You know him from television. He's an incredible television personality with ridiculousness and a million other projects that he's done. But I don't know him from that. I know him from his brilliance as an entrepreneur and as a human optimizer of himself, of time and everything connected to him. And he's a very, very good friend of mine and I love my conversations with him. He's one of my favorite people I've ever met in my life to talk with, if not my favorite. And I thought today I'd just let you sit in on one with us. We're going to talk today with the great Rob Dyrdek. Welcome to the show, brother. Speaking of life and needle moving, I don't know if you texted me this or you posted it, so it probably doesn't matter, but that's the micro stuff. The macro is. You're so obsessed with this that you look at like duration of time on the planet and it was something about. You just realized you read something on your. You're laughing, but you. Did you text me this or did you post it?
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B
I just posted that I wanted to live 1 million hours.
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A
That's exactly right. So you read something that convinced you that you're going to. That you could live to a particular age and you deduced how many hours there. So I actually think this is brilliant because this type of focus causes us to live with intention and attention and the lack of, I think all the time. Do you know when I pray at night you're going to laugh at this. Never said this out loud, not even to my wife. I'm going to tell you and about 70 billion people right now, when I pray at night, one of my last prayers is that I'm going to live to 128 years old. Okay. And I really believe now again, someone will listen to this in three years. Wow, it's so sad he passed away. But, but, but I. Prayer and that intention. And I've repeated it over and over and over and over again because I believe if I don't pick a number, if I don't pick a time, if I don't set a goal, if I don't, then it. I'll be up to the whims of whatever else comes my way. And I really believe that you create a space when you set something like that that didn't exist before you did it. And then you find the behaviors, the people, the things, the thoughts, the technology, the nutrition to fill it up. What I didn't do was calculate the amount of hours that it gives me to then optimize that time. So speak to that whole thing.
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B
Yeah. And look, I'm, you know, it makes, it really makes me happy. That means we're gonna, we're literally, we're gonna be friends deep into our hundreds.
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A
I love it.
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B
We're gonna be having these conversations about, well, what do you think? You're thinking you're going to 128. You think you're good? I don't know, I'm push. I'm feeling pretty good right now. But I think about it more from a. This is what I'm big on. This is your existence. Right. And this is, this is the framework of the human experience. Right. You only truly can judge anything, your energy, how well you're using time, everything that's happened in your past, how you actually feel in the present moment. You can only do it in the present moment and you only experience it in your mind. Right. And then you have to make a decision of like, I want to change all of these things. So I'm going to create a better future experience that is the human experience. And I realized that it, that I wanted to make it last to 112. I initially wanted to live to 104 and be shot in a rocket into space and explore the universe without the light pollution from planet Earth for the last year before I died and then floated out into the cosmos. Now that was before I had a wife and kids. And so it's like now the audacity of don't worry about me. And then, like, I'm up there for, like, 24 more years. Like, so that changed. And then when I read the book Ikigai, right, The Japanese long life and happiness book, they talked about super centurions, and I'm like, oh, like that brand. I want to be a super centurion. So then I made it at. Then I made it that I would want to live to 112. And then as I started getting deeper into, okay, how many days is that? All right. Okay. That's how many days I have. This is how many days that I've done so far. Then when I was going. Going through my time matrix and we're looking at all these different things where I spend time of, like, wow, I spend as much time shooting a television show as I will picking up my kids and taking them to school for the year, right? And to me, as I just started looking at these hours and then where am I losing a lot of time? On the couch watching Netflix. You know what I mean? It's me and the wife on there watching our favorite show. But, boy, when you start looking at what that is, man, you're letting the hard 8 to 9% go on the couch. You know what I mean? It's cold, hard reality. But as I looked at that, you know, I'm. I then was like, you know, what is. Like, what's a round number of time? And like, wow, 1 million hours is 114 years and 54 days. I'm gonna. I'm gonna experience a million hours on this earth, right? And so, of course, a lot of people push back on, like, oh, it's good. Yeah, you're like a vegetable. What are you gonna do? And it's like. Like, I didn't even contemplate that. And it's because you live in two different mindsets. I live in a mindset that I just keep getting healthier and happier, more balanced, lighter. Life is more effortless. My system, that is my entire body, is more efficient. And I can show you in blood work, I can show you in net worth. I can show you in time. And I can show you in qualitative data that I have collected about how I feel about my life, work, and health, that I am in healthier, better physical condition, wealthier, more balanced and happier in the data, which only proves to me there's no reason why you can't keep getting healthier, happier, and wealthier for the. For the remainder of your life. And then I'll just fall right off A cliff, you know what I mean? Whatever, it ends up ending. But again, what's it go back to? I want to live with absolute intention and I want to experience every moment that I get into in feel. The vividness and the richness and the beauty that is the human experience and life. You know, you don't want to be so future focused and trying to create a better future that you never feel the present, right? And so for me, I'm. I really began to understand what state my mind is at all the time, at all times, and how do I learn to control that and begin to put in systems and solutions that keep my mind in a balanced state is really one of the bigger things that I've learned to do over the last year or so.
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A
Share. That's one of those systems.
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B
Well, you know, if you can imagine this, your, your mind is, is balanced in this way, right? You, it's past, present and future, right? And so there's sort of five sections as I see it, and on one end it's dwelling in the past. You ain't doing nothing. You want to sit and dwell about something you did, you ain't doing nothing, Then the next level up is rectify, right? You are problem solving, taking action, something that happened in the past. So now you're in the present past where okay, I'm dealing with something that happened. Now I'm problem solving, taking action to make a better future, right? You sit right in the middle and you experience it or you go to the next level is creating, right? And so now you're in this future present, right? Where you're experiencing the present while creating the future. That's, that's where you want to toggle, right? Because what goes beyond creating the future is wishing, right? Because then if you're sitting there wishing the future was better and wishing like, like this will be like this, or you're dwelling, you're not moving, right? And so you want to be either experiencing the moment or handling something that happened in the past. Present or creating something in the future, present state and swing between that, right? And so if you can imagine that's your mind, what you, what you think about on an ongoing basis is ranges between all of that. That's where the action now, it's the quality of your mind. And your mind's quality is either in a proactive state, a reactive state, an inactive state, or a magnetic state, right? And for me, when I, when all aspects of my life are in order, meaning I'm eating super clean everything, all my goals and visions and everything is running smooth. I'm. I'm spending very little time rectifying the past because I've designed my present future experience with such intention. I'm dealing with very little disruption that then I eventually go beyond just being proactive to this magnetic state. And I know you've experienced this before because this is when your. Everything is going operating at such a level that answers start coming to you without you asking the questions. It is the law of attraction that that's the unexplainable force that lives in the quantum field where your energy is at such a high level. You are so clear of not only being present and experiencing, but creating your future. And you rise to this, you vibrate to this level to where the answers show up and you never ask the questions, right? And for me, I am trying to master all aspects of my existence to where I basically sit in that state of toggling between future, present and proactive and magnetic at all times.
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A
Oh, my God.
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B
It's a deep one. It's a deep one.
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A
No. Okay, that's an all timer right there. I want everyone to go back the last five or six minutes there. That's an all timer. When we talk, I always filter it through my life and my perspective. I just realized something because I do know what that vibrational frequency feels like when I am getting answers to questions I haven't even asked. It's not frequent enough. And the reason it's not frequent enough is I'm depleting my energy reserves to not put myself in a state where I can have that type of energy and what I call vibrate at that frequency. And you're exactly right. And that's the other reason why rest, recovery, being present matters. I just really pulled something here. I just really did.
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B
But let me say this. Every single thing matters. Every thought, every action, every decision, every single thing that you do is interconnected to get you to that space. And for me, it's like, I think, oh, I'll have a glass of wine, I'll have a couple chips. It will pull away from that. I'll make one bad decision from eating bad. That will then cause me to be short with my wife. That leads to this entire. Pulls me right out of the magnetic state, right? Because it's like even when you're there, it's really sensitive. And you could just get one thought that could rip you out of that. You could look at one text, it could rip you out of that, right? It's like. And so that requires really, really understanding every single bit of you and then giving value to everything you do rather than trying to, like, pocket your values. Oh, if I eat healthy. Oh, if I stay focused. Oh, if I clear out this stuff. Oh, if I rest or recovery versus, like, no, it is all works together to make the best version of you. How committed are you? How disciplined are you to live at the level that you know you have to live at at a consistent enough basis that it becomes to compound effortlessly and become a way of life rather than getting disciplined again? That's really what it is, you know?
- [32:59]
A
Well, for me, I burn myself out going from those states to the good state back to the bad state. I'm still having wine with you at dinner tonight, but I know exactly what you're talking about and I everybody, you know, y' all hear the show every single week. It's pretty rare that I'm this quiet because I just, I really process a lot of information when you and I go like this. Yeah, it's good for me. I'm already thinking of stuff I'm going to say and I'm going to teach that. I'm going to steal that I'm going to make mine. Did you know that driving high is considered driving under the influence? That's right. Driving under the influence of marijuana is against the law in every state. Even in states where marijuana is legal, that means driving high could get you a dui. And if you think law enforcement officers can't tell when you're driving high, you're wrong. Your friends can tell, your co workers can tell. Even your parents can tell. Everyone can tell. So what makes you think that law enforcement officers don't know when you're driving high? Driving under the influence of marijuana can slow your response time and change how you perceive time and speed. So even if you think you're fine to drive when you're high, you're not. Because the bottom line is if you feel different, you drive different. And driving high is driving under the influence. So remember, drive high. Get a dui. Paid for by nhtsa. People ask me all the time about owning a business. What are some of the critical things people. People matter. Things don't. And I got to be honest with you. Every team that wins has great players. Right now, you may have just realized your business needs to hire someone like yesterday. How can you find an amazing candidate really fast? Easy. You just need. Indeed. When it comes to hiring, indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job. Posts seen on other job sites. Indeed sponsored jobs posts help you stand out and hire fast with sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you reach people that you want to reach faster. You only pay for results so there's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show. Get a 75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@indeed.com mylet just go to indeed.com mylet right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest, Robin Sharma. Welcome to the show.
- [35:27]
C
Real blessing, Ed. Nice. Nice to finally meet you.
- [35:29]
A
So let's talk about for a few minutes here. There's all these things we can be doing to get to that everyday hero. First off, it's just embracing that you are one I think is fundamental to the whole philosophy of the book. Then there's some things, though, that are obstructions or obstacles to doing it right. They can be tools or they can be obstacles. This may seem like a small thing to everybody, but the more I'm even reflecting, last night I wasn't doing a five hour meditation. I was with my family. But I have to tell you, I was on my phone too much last night. And it's sort of one of these things that I've really improved at in my life. But to the point I'm being transparent that my wife said, put your phone down. Your daughter just said something to you? My daughter actually came in, said something to me. I heard none of it and walked out of the room. And then there was a few minutes went by and she said, do you realize what I. So there's these things even at where you and I are, where we give away this, you know, we've got this advice and we've made these breakthroughs. There's parts of us we can go back to old patterns again. And last night I fell back into one of those patterns. So there are these obstacles to our piece. There's these obstructions almost. They can be tools, they could be obstruct. You do talk a lot about the phone thing. Yes, you do. And you've talked about it in the past. You talk about it here. So what do you know about the most blissful and successful people as it relates to these, these obstacles, these smartphones or anything else like that.
- [36:50]
C
Well, I mean, you're so honest to share what you share. And I would say the same thing. I make mistakes constantly.
- [36:58]
A
That's good to know.
- [37:02]
C
I think it was.
- [37:03]
A
Don't you ever do an interview? You're like, man, I made it sound like I'm a lot better at this than I am.
- [37:07]
C
I. I know.
- [37:09]
D
I walk away.
- [37:12]
C
I think it was Nelson Mandela said, if a saint is a sinner who.
- [37:18]
D
Keeps on trying, I guess I'm okay.
- [37:21]
A
I thought that was awesome.
- [37:24]
C
That was Nelson Mandela here.
- [37:27]
A
There's still hope for us. It gives us hope. Exactly.
- [37:30]
C
There's still hope for us. I love it. I would say an addiction, a distraction, is the death of your creative production when it comes to productivity. In the everyday hair manifesto, there is a revolutionary rule called the five great hours rule. So you don't need to work for seven hours a day. I do not subscribe to Hustle and Grind. I don't work for more than a few hours a day. I work four hours every week. I take four months plus off every single year. How I do it is in the book, including the weekly design system. When I work, I'm away from distraction. There's a difference between real work and fake.
- [38:06]
A
That's right.
- [38:07]
C
There's a difference between real work and fake work. Let us not confuse busy with productivity. Let us not confuse movement with impact. So I think that's really important. And we can get into the Menlo park and the tight bulb total focus structures. But you talked about family act. And I believe the greatest gift we can give another human being is the gift of our presence. And if you look at the greatest heroes and the greatest leaders, they had an ability to be there. And the very fact you said it means you do practice it. And I can tell everyone watching right now, you have so much presence. And I'm not talking about charisma, which you have. I'm talking about you are here in a world where a lot of people are cyber zombies and, you know, just not present. So I think you can change the world and live a world class life, or you can play with your phone all day. You can't do both. And we could get into the science of emotional residue every single time you check a notification, every single time you like something.
- [39:13]
A
Let's do both of those for a minute. Because by the way, I only have four or five. You know, I think everybody's got four or five significant gifts. Ironically, I consider one of mine my ability to be present.
- [39:24]
C
Yes.
- [39:24]
A
And so when I almost violate that treaty with myself, that agreement with myself. It deeply hurts me when I do it because I don't do it very often. But when I do do it, it's pretty obvious, I think, because the contrast of the two.
- [39:35]
C
Can I ask you a question?
- [39:36]
A
Yeah, please. Sure.
- [39:40]
C
How about this? What if you don't? What if you build as part of your family culture, no devices at the dinner table.
- [39:47]
A
Yes, great point.
- [39:48]
C
What if you have certain rooms, like the family room?
- [39:50]
D
Really?
- [39:51]
C
A family room?
- [39:52]
A
Now that's good. Now that's unique. That one I've not heard. So what I do, I was so bad that what I did start doing is I left my phone in the car the first hour before I came home. So I was at least engaged in presence immediately. But this idea that there are rooms where there are no smartphones is one of the most brilliant things anyone's ever said on the show. I mean, seriously, I'm going to do that one thing. I am. When I get a great idea, I'm very coachable and I'll implement it like immediately. I tell you that this evening when I get back, I'm like this space right here. There's no phones in here. Here's where we gather. Sure.
- [40:23]
C
Another idea. A zero device day once a week.
- [40:26]
A
Do you do that?
- [40:27]
C
I do. I do a number of days. And how do you do it? Your schedule? Your schedule doesn't lie. People can say this is important, that's important. You look at someone's schedule that shows their truest priorities. So when you schedule it, you make what habit researchers call a pre commitment strategy. And by scheduling, what I call a, a blueprint for a beautiful week, you can actually schedule. Saturday is my zero device day. You can do it two days a week. I would also what I do when I mentor CEOs and the Titans of industries and celebrity billionaires, I encourage them every two months to take a complete week off. I say go ghost, go dark.
- [41:14]
A
So do I.
- [41:15]
C
If you look at the greatest Winston Churchill, how did he survive the pressures of World War II? He had checkers and Chartwell. He had a retreat. I think we must leave our usual place and get away from the world. Andrew Wyeth, the great American artist, he had Chadds Ford, a farm in Pennsylvania. And he had Cushing, Maine, a little retreat where he would go to to get away from the noise of the world. If you look at J.D. salinger, one of my favorite books, Catcher in the Rye, after he was 37, checked out from the world, he worked in a little cottage every day in Cornish, New Hampshire. I think we must find time on a daily, if not weekly basis to get away from the noise so we can begin to hear the signal again.
- [41:59]
A
The signal. I love this. I have to tell you that I think one of the things that surprised me most when I started to coach some of the more successful people myself was the time they take away the ones that had the right amount of bliss. It's where their creativity comes from. It's where they. What you're calling here, the signal, when they're reconnecting with themselves or they're reconnecting with their spiritual lives. And I just bought an island in Maine and people go, why the heck did you buy an island in Maine? It wasn't that expensive. But one of the reasons I did it is that's almost like a territory of disconnection for me. And it's one of the reasons I did. There's not great cell reception there, even if I wanted it. And it's an isolated place and it's where I go to hear the signal. The way that you phrase it, this emotional residue thing, I'll just touch on that really quickly because I've not heard this before. I feel like we all have these friends who aren't on social media, or we even have some older friends of ours who aren't even in the text game at all. There is a joy and a bliss that reminds you of a prior time in our culture that they have. When I'm around them, a couple of my really, really great friends. There's a joy about them. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't be on social media or shouldn't have a phone. In fact, I'm suggesting you do both of those things. Having said that, there is some emotional deterioration, so to speak, that I agree with you on, that happens when you're too engaged in them. So what were you going to say about that? It sounded like such an interesting point.
- [43:19]
C
Well, I'd say a few things. I think we're happiest when we're in flow state. And as you know so well, that is a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly of University of Chicago, and it's based on a neurobiological mechanism called transient hypofrontality. The prefrontal cortex. This is the seat of our reasoning. It's also the seat of the monkey mind. It's the seat of our inner critic. It's when we start to slow down or close off the prefrontal cortex. Transient, temporary prefrontal Hypofrontality, transient hypofrontality. Our prefrontal cortex begins to slow down and our brain waves can go from beta to alpha, maybe even down theta and delta. And when we get away from our phones, when we practice what I call the three S's, stillness, silence, and solitude, our brain drops into flow. We not only feel bliss, there's not only a pharmacy of mastery that makes us feel good, but ed, we begin to inhabit the secret universe known to the saints Sayers, greatest artists of all time. What I'm suggesting to you is you. If Hedy Lamarr, Albert Einstein, Shakespeare, J.D. salinger, the great business builders, not all of them, but many of them, had one thing in common. They spent long periods of time alone in quiet, often taking nature walks, working on their biggest problem, on finding the solutions to their biggest problems. So I think you can play with your phone all day or you can change the world. You can't do to get to do both. So transient hypofrontality gets you in a flow state. Doesn't happen if you're checking your phone 50 times a day. So those people you talk about, they are. They are present because they're away from the distractions. I'd say the second thing, emotional residue. It's simply the phenomenon that every time you check your phone, you take some of your focus and you drop it on the notification you just looked at. And that's why at the end of the day, a lot of people can't focus. It's because they have dropped their focus on their phone. They've dropped their focus on the TV in the background. They've dropped their focus on chasing these shiny toys and these trivialities. At the end of the quarter, the end of the year, the end of the career, the end of the lifetime amounted to nothing. And then the third thing to think about is cognitive bandwidth. Every morning you wake up with a full well of cognition. So I think it's really important. Where you give your attention to cognitive.
- [45:46]
A
Bandwidth is almost how I would describe you. You have a tremendous amount of it. I want to ask you about that. We're not having too much more time. I'm just really fascinated with you. So all of our friends sort of told us both, we should get together and do this today. And now that I'm with you, I want to do this again. I'm in the middle of going, I want like three or four hours of you and I just talking because I just think it's great for both of us and everyone gets to Listen to it, right?
- [46:06]
C
I feel the same way, too. I feel it's real.
- [46:10]
A
You know, it is real. But this cognitive bandwidth idea, I want to understand you a little bit. Let's just talk about you for a second. You're fascinating to me because you were an attorney. And don't be humble when you answer this question, please. You have a high iq. You know, Dad's a doctor. There's some good DNA in there, for sure. But you have this amazing ability, Robin, for recall of quotes, of information, of facts, and a very diverse set of skills. That's what I love about the book, by the way. I want to say this about the book again, too. I don't want to say kitchen sink because that almost makes it seem unorganized. That's not what I mean. But there's a lot in here that is not just what you would think about. Oh, be a hero. There's a ton in here from even all the cognitive stuff, the neuroplasticity stuff, the stuff on how the mind works. It's so, so good. But having said that, what about you? Have you always been this way? Or is it because you are practicing in so many of these strategies that you're sharing that you've increased your capacity for recall, for memorization of even information and actually owning it? This isn't just stuff you're quoting. You own this stuff.
- [47:13]
C
So I want to hear about you.
- [47:15]
E
And I'm fascinated about you.
- [47:18]
A
When you have your show, I'll come you that before. But tell us about your no humility. I want to know.
- [47:25]
C
Well, you know, I would say don't filter it. I would say, Honestly, I would say I'm a very simple person. I come from a town of about 2,000 people on the east coast of Canada. I didn't have a silver spoon in my mouth, and I don't think I have any real natural gifts. I've been at this field for 26 years. I live a very minimal, minimalist life. I sense that I have very few friends, I do very few things. I am not a maximalist. I don't chase every shiny toy that comes my way. We get major opportunities every day, 99% of which I say no to because I'm monomaniacally focused on the few things I want to build the rest of my life around. And I think if you build your life around just a few things, I think it was Confucius who said, person who chases two rabbits catches neither. And Peter Drucker said it really well. He said, there's nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. And so I'm just. If there's one talent I have is I'm really clear on what I want my life to stand for. But I don't think I have any special gifts. But I call them the SOPs of AWC, the standard operating procedures of absolute world class. And I share them in the book. The book is really a love letter to people's highest mastery and promise. And these rituals, like the 5am Club and the 202020 formula, the two massage protocol, the second wind workout, the weekly design system, how I visualize, how I meditate, how I lean into fear each day, all of those things, they really do work. And so over the years, I used to be terrifically scared of public speaking. Like, terrifically scared of public speaking. You're incredible at it, but thank you. But we have neuroplasticity. Our human gift is the gift of growth. The whole idea of heroism is ordinary people thrust into difficult circumstances and using the difficulty to triumph over tragedy. That's what makes us human. That's why I wrote the book. There are so many people saying, well, I can't have more money, I can't have more love, I can't have more health, I can't change the world. And here's the litany of reasons why. Well, if you. If you recite your excuses long enough, you actually hypnotize yourself to believing them to be true.
- [49:55]
A
Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest, Dr. Taryn Marie Staskel. Welcome to the show, finally. It's great to have you here. Productive perseverance is a powerful, powerful concept. So I want you to share that with them.
- [50:16]
F
Thank you for that. So productive perseverance is the intelligent pursuit of a goal. And this is really important for us. Aw, thank you. This is really important for us because I think we've gotten a lot of different messages about this in our society. Right. So a lot of people ask me, is resilience the same as grit?
- [50:37]
A
Yeah.
- [50:38]
F
Yeah. Angela Duckworth's concept of grit, and it isn't. Right. Grit is about putting our head down. Right. And sort of throwing ourselves headlong into creating an outcome and just simply not giving up by dint of our own determination.
- [50:55]
A
Right.
- [50:58]
F
Productive perseverance is about the art and the science of the intelligent pursuit of A goal. It's knowing when to persist, even when we face challenges, when to be gritty, and when in the face of diminishing returns and markers in our environment, that we should pivot in a new direction or even, you know, fold up the tent and quit. Right. And something important to mention here about grit is that grit works really well, like putting our head down in environments that don't substantially change. So if you want to become a Navy seal, if you want to win the national spelling bee, if you want to graduate from the Naval Academy. Right. It's really great to be gritty because you're going to follow sort of a formulaic series of tests and then come to your outcome at the end. But we also know a lot of companies that were super gritty and still failed.
- [51:59]
A
Sure, right.
- [52:00]
F
I mean, even the examples that I think come to mind for everyone, Blockbuster and BlackBerry.
- [52:06]
A
Right.
- [52:06]
F
They were super gritty. They were in it for the long haul. It's just that the environment moved and changed around them. And so the opposite side of this is looking at how our environment is shifting and changing around us. Right. What are the disruptors? What's the volatility. Right. That's occurring and to be able to kind of balance our goals and our determination and our grittiness with what's happening externally and to continue to check in and be in this constant moment of balance.
- [52:38]
A
By the way, that's brilliant because there is this. I think we're in a culture that really emphasizes grit all the time. It's really the thing. Hustle culture, grind culture, grit culture, which, by the way, without. You're probably not going to become very successful. So it's super critical. But I think often, like I got. I've had a chance to play a lot of golf or previously with Wayne Gretzky over the years. He's definitely the different sports. You can debate who the goat is. In hockey, there's really no debate.
- [53:01]
F
There's really not.
- [53:02]
A
It's really Wayne and one of the.
- [53:04]
F
He's the only person we quote right state to where the puck is going.
- [53:07]
A
That's exactly right. And that's the exact point you're making, is that you can get so gritty. There's a lot of gritty players, but only one was great at skating to where the puck was going. And that's because he was doing it in an intelligent way. He wasn't just grinding, just gritty. And you're a million percent right as who I was thinking of initially. And that exact quote, it's amazing that you read my mind on that. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. I gotta tell you, I'm glad that they do because, you know, people ask me all the time, what do most of the guests on your show have in common? Because there's all these different industries and stories. I'd say the one thing most of them have been to therapy and I've been to therapy. I think it's a great thing whether you've had a lot of trauma in your life and it's extreme and you need to work through it or maybe it's not so severe, but you just need clarity, somebody to talk to. Get a plan in place. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. It's convenient too. You can just join a session with the therapist with a click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with better help our listeners get 10 off their first month at betterhelp.com edshow that's better h E-L-P.com ed show it's hard to get all the stuff you need for your body in one place. So you're taking a million different pills or 16 different drinks. It's very difficult and I gotta be honest with you guys, I found the easiest way to do it. Right now I'm all over im8. It's a daily, all in one wellness drink that helps give my body the support it needs without juggling a bunch of different supplements. The drink is loaded with 92 nutrient rich ingredients, vitamins, minerals, aptogens, CoQ10 MSM pre probiotics. It's designed to help you get good from the inside out. Feel your best every day with IMA. Go to im8health.com ed and use code ed for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10 off your order. That's I am number 8H-E-A-L-T H.com/ed code ed for a free welcome kit. Five free travel satchels plus 10 off your order imaidhealth.com ed code ed these statements and products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. I'm so grateful to share him with all of you today. So, James Clear, welcome to the show, brother. I think it's important for people to understand this concept. You teach that, you know, everyone's always talking about taking massive action. You take massive action towards what you want. You're like, yeah, you should do that. But your concept of getting 1% better is much more believable for most people. And so just address that for a second. Why? Why 1% better every day? And how does a habit do that?
- [56:11]
D
Sure. So, first of all, I think there's no reason that you can't be really ambitious, Right? Like, I consider myself to be very ambitious person. I think it's just that you're oscillating or switching between these two modes. You know, like when you're in planning mode, when you're in strategy mode, sure, you can be very ambitious and be very aggressive and, you know, stretching yourself and reaching. But when it comes time to take action and execute, you have to scale it down to something that you can achieve that day. You know, like the. In one sense, the biggest unit of time you could ever do something is about a single day, because then you got to go to sleep, you know, and then you have to wake up again and do it the next day. So unless you're playing, you know, at some point there's a limit. You can only stay up for 48 hours or 72 hours, like, you know, and then you break. So that's the largest possible unit that you could ever do a single thing in. And I think more realistically, most of the time, the truth is, you know, you got about an hour, maybe you got two hours to work on this, and then you got to go move on to something else. So we don't have big chunks of chunks of time available to us. We need to scale things down into pieces that we can actually work on and execute. So the way that I think about it is when making plans, think big. When making progress, think small. And getting 1% better each day is a way to encourage that. The story that I like to tell, and this is something that I kind of kick atomic habits off with, the story of the British cycling team. And, you know, for many years, British cycling was very mediocre. They had never won a Tour de France. Which is the premier race in cycling. They had won a single gold medal over like a hundred year span. And they brought this new performance coach in named Dave Brailsford. And he had this concept that he called the aggregation of marginal gains. The aggregation of marginal gains, and the way that he described it was the 1% improvement in nearly everything that we do related to cycling. So they started looking at a bunch of things you would expect a cycling team to focus on. Like, they put slightly lighter tires on the bike, or they designed, like an ergonomic seat for the riders. They had the riders wear a little feedback sensor, little chip to see how each individual responded to training. Then they would adjust the practice schedule. But then they started doing, like these little 1% changes, these small improvements that nobody else was really thinking about. Like, they hired a surgeon to come in and teach the riders how to wash their hands to reduce the risk of catching a cold or getting the flu. They have this big trailer, like a semi trailer that carries a lot of bikes in it to major events. And they painted the inside of that truck trailer white so that they could spot little bits of dirt and dust that might get in the gears and degrade the performance of the bikes. They have two different types of fabrics. They've got like, indoor racing suits and outdoor racing suits. And they tested those fabrics in a wind tunnel, and they found out that the indoor fabric was lighter and more aerodynamic. So they asked all of their riders to wear that fabric. They even had all their different riders test, you know, like, a bunch of, like, maybe a dozen different types of pillows. And then they see which one led to the best night's sleep for each person. And then once they figured that out, they brought that on the road with them to hotels for the Tour de France, so on. And, you know, Brailsford said something like, we can actually do this right? If we actually make all these 1% improvements related to cycling, then I think we can win a Tour de France within five years. He ended up being wrong. Uh, they won the Tour de France in three years, and then they repeated again the fourth year with a different rider. And then after one year break, they won three more in a row. So after having never won for like 110 years, you know, they win five of the next six. And I like to use that story as an introduction to this idea of getting a little bit better, making these 1% improvements, for a couple of reasons. The first is it shows you that excellence, a lot of the time, maybe we can even say most of the time is not Actually about radical change. It's about a commitment to accruing small improvements day in and day out. Secondly, and I think this is also crucial, it encourages you to focus on trajectory rather than position. There's a lot of discussion about position in life. How much money is in the bank account? What is the number on the scale? What is the current stock price? What are the quarterly earnings? There's all this measurement around our current position. But what getting 1% better each day encourages is to focus on your trajectory instead. Am I getting better? Is the arrow pointed up and to the right or have we flatlined? Am I getting 1% better or 1% worse? Because if you're on a good trajectory, trajectory, all you need is time, right? If you have good habits, time becomes your ally. You just need to let time work for you. But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy. And every day that clicks by, you kind of dig the hole a little bit deeper. And so it's very much at the core. It's about encouraging you to focus on trajectory rather than position.
- [60:41]
A
How did you get to 37.78 times better? Where'd that ratio number come from?
- [60:46]
D
Yeah, yeah, it's just math, right? So if you get 1% better each day for a year, so 1.01 to the 365th power power, then it gets 37 times better by the end of the year. If you get 1% worse, 0.99 to the 365th power, then you drive yourself almost all the way down to zero. Now, look, real life is not exactly like a mathematical equation. Your habits are not exactly like this formula. But I do think that it highlights an important concept, which is the difference between making a choice that's 1% better or 1% worse on any given day. Day is relatively insignificant. It's very easy to dismiss. And this is, I think, one of the things that makes it underappreciated or underestimated. You know, like, what is the difference between eating a burger and fries for lunch today? Or eating a salad or, you know, going to the gym for 30 minutes or not? Well, on any given day, not a whole lot. You know, your body looks the same in the mirror at the end of the night. Scale hasn't really changed. It's only two or five or ten years later that you turn around. You're like, oh, you know, those daily choices really do add up. And I think you see this pattern again and again throughout life. Like, take knowledge, for example. The person who always reads for an extra 10 minutes each day. Well look, reading for 10 minutes a day does not make you a genius.
- [62:05]
A
Right?
- [62:05]
D
It's very easy to dismiss. But the person who always does that over five or 10 or 20 years, yeah, really meaningful difference in wisdom and insight. Productivity is the same way. Like the person who gets one extra task done each day, doing one extra thing does not make you an all star. But again, over a 10 or 20 or 30 year career, that can be a really meaningful difference in output. So this pattern shows up again and again. What starts out small, relatively easy to dismiss, compounds, or turns into something much more significant over time.
- [62:34]
A
The biggest word, bro. I don't think most people take into account. You and I are both college baseball players, good ones, but neither one of us were, you know, surefire first round draft pick, major league players. And I think most people don't take into account in their life the compound effect. I don't think they understand it in money. I don't think they understand it in their bodies, both positive and negative. And I don't think they understand their identity or in just in habits. The compound effect in life of allowing small things to stack up over time has a multiplier effect. And one of the things that I feel like in your work and by the way your work is I'm all we're, we're a few minutes in here and I'm like this is so good. And the reason is one, I believe most people believe they can get 1% better every day. I don't think most people believe that they can completely transform everything in one big leap. I think there's a multiplier though. Do you agree that between doing the right things 1% or just better habitually every single day, not only are you actually making deposits of doing things correctly or better, but there's a part of your identity that starts to change over time about how you view yourself, that I am that guy who doesn't eat the hamburger in front of you when he can choose to eat the other one. And you stack those choices and behaviors up over time and you start sort of believing maybe you deserve something that you didn't deserve prior. Doesn't there a factor of that? Don't you think as well?
- [63:48]
D
This is a huge part of kind of my philosophy and book, this idea of what I call identity based habits. But essentially the concept is, and this, I think this is the real reason that habits matter. The surface level reason the habits matter is they help you be more productive, they help you make more money, they help you lose weight and get fit and look, habits can do all those things, and that's great, but I think the deeper reason that they matter is that every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become. And so when you perform these small habits, when you take these little actions, you're casting votes for a certain aspect of your story or a certain element of your identity. In a sense, every time you perform a habit, that's how you, like, embody that aspect of your identity. So, you know, when you make your bed in the morning, you embody the identity of someone who's clean and organized, or if you write one sentence, you embody the identity of someone who is a writer. And this is why it can be valuable, you know, even to, like, do one pushup. It's like, no, that does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for, I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And eventually, as you build up evidence of that story, as you start to cast more votes for that identity, you have, like, actual proof to believe this, right? This is. I think this is a little bit different than you'll often hear something like, fake it till you make it. And I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake it till you make it. It's asking you to believe something positive about yourself, but it's asking you to believe something positive without having evidence for it. And we have a word for beliefs that don't have evidence. We call that delusion.
- [65:22]
A
Right?
- [65:22]
D
Like, at some point, your brain doesn't like this mismatch between what you say you are and what you're actually doing. And so my argument is to let the behavior lead the way. To start by meditating for one minute or doing one pushup or writing one sentence and letting that be undeniable proof that in that moment, you were a meditator or an athlete or a writer or whatever it is. And ultimately, I think this is the real value that habits provide, which is they reinforce your desired identity.
- [65:50]
A
Boy, it's just so good, brother. So good. I don't know why I'm just meeting you now. Because our overall belief system about change is so very, very similar. And we're going to talk a bit about how to actually begin to establish habits. But before we do that, I want to talk about the concept of establishing one, because you said something about the one pushup reading or listening to something you were talking about, about the guy who would go to the gym for just five minutes and work out, and you said something about this Casting the vote for who you want to be or who you're going to be. That was powerful. Powerful. Right, but you're saying before a habit can be, and I don't want to quote you incorrectly, but I want you to elaborate on it because this is profound to me. I mean, it's obvious. But if you don't step back and get away from it and look at it, you just really don't realize the truth of it. Before a habit can be improved, it has to actually be established. And I think what happens is. You tell me what you think. Beginning of the year, I'm going to lose £50, I'm going to do this, I'm going to eat, then I'm going to starve myself to 500 calories. So it's not a 1% improvement or I want to get up earlier, I'm going to get up two hours earlier starting tomorrow instead of get up 15 minutes earlier. Right, get up a minute earlier. So talk about that for a minute. Just the concept for everyone to just, they can take control of their life right now by just the establishment of a habit. Right? Or right?
- [67:14]
D
Yeah, definitely. Right. So one of the concepts I talk about in the book is this. One of the strategies is this idea of what I call the two minute rule, where I encourage people to build a habit that takes two minutes or less to do. So you take whatever you're trying to do, read 30 books a year becomes read one page or do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat. And sometimes when I mention that idea, people resist a little bit because they're like, okay, buddy, you know, I know the real goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out. I know I'm actually trying to do the workout. So if this is some kind of mental trick, then like, why would I fall for it? Basically, well, I tell the story of this guy Mitch that you mentioned, this guy who I talk about him in Atomic Habits. He went to the gym, he's lost over a hundred pounds, kept it off for more than a decade. And when he first started going to the gym, he wouldn't stay for longer than five minutes. He had this little rule. He had to leave after five minutes. So he'd get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, drive home. And it sounds ridiculous, right? It sounds silly. You're like, obviously he's not going to get the guy the results that he wants once, but if you take a step back, you realize that he was Mastering the art of showing up.
- [68:23]
A
Right.
- [68:23]
D
He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week, even if it was only for five minutes. And this gets us to that deeper truth about habits that you just mentioned. This idea that a habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can optimize it and scale it up into something more. And, you know, I don't know why we do this. Like, we get very all or nothing about our habits. We're like, we're so focused on finding the perfect business idea or the best workout program or the ideal diet plan that we spend all our time theorizing and researching and looking for a better way. And instead, if we could just master the art of showing up. Even if in the beginning it was less than what you had hoped to do, you're establishing a foothold, you're building some small progress that you can advance off of. And it reminds me of Ed Lattimore has that great quote where he says, the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. And man, there are a lot of things in life that are like that, you know, like the. The hardest part is getting started. The hardest part is establishing the routine, even if it's a lower level baseline than what you ultimately hope to achieve. But the reality is, if you can't become the type of person who masters the art of showing up, even if it's just for five minutes, then it doesn't matter how good the plan is, it doesn't matter how great your theory is. And so I think the two minute rule pushes back on that perfectionist tendency a little bit and just encourages you to master that. The art of showing up.
- [69:47]
A
So good I'm right. I just finished writing a book called One More, and I get asked that sometimes too. And one of the things that I wasn't thinking about it from this perspective when I wrote it, but you can become the kind of person that says, look, I'm going to do. It's my bench press. I'm going to do 10, you do one more, you do 11. I even say if you're riding the treadmill for 45 minutes, you can build that habit of, okay, I'm going one more minute, I do 46. What's the difference in that minute? Well, you stack up that minute over a year. There's a difference. But also your identity begins to change. And I'm not telling, you go from 45 minutes to three hours on a treadmill. So the print actually As I was doing this, I wasn't thinking of it from this perspective, but now that I'm thinking about it, actually our work is sort of converging, you know, almost in the exact same space. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest, Uncle G. Grant Cardone. With me here today, you have this capacity and we're running. We don't have too much more time.
- [70:43]
E
We got as much time as you want. It's your podcast.
- [70:45]
A
Your capacity level is freakish. Okay, so your capacity level, so how much you can get done in a given day. Right. So talk about that for a second. Do you think about that like consciously or you just. Do you just.
- [70:59]
E
I walked in here today.
- [71:00]
A
Yes.
- [71:01]
E
After being gone four or five days. You know, I didn't plan on the Mandalay, but shooting.
- [71:06]
A
Right.
- [71:07]
E
Like you guys that are doing to do list and time management, you're trying the time management thing.
- [71:11]
A
Talk about that. How you don't manage time, you expand it.
- [71:13]
E
Yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't manage time. I mean, I create time.
- [71:17]
A
What's that mean?
- [71:18]
E
It means. It means I'm not managing ammo. I'm not managing money. Time is not. Time is not some. It's all made up, man. Time is made up.
- [71:32]
G
20.
- [71:32]
E
The 24 hours is made up.
- [71:34]
A
Right? Right.
- [71:36]
E
The 60 minute clock is made up. Okay. The sundial is made up. Like, like, you know, I don't have to go to sleep when the sun goes down.
- [71:44]
A
Right.
- [71:45]
E
And I don't have to wake up when it comes up.
- [71:46]
A
Right.
- [71:47]
E
So it's all made up. Like, like, like I want the ability to operate when I want how I want, you know, so. So I create time. I decide when Mandalay Bay shut down and there's a shooter and 59 people get killed, and 527 people get hurt. And a hotel room with 5,700 rooms has to be searched, cleared, checked double time. FBI, ATF, Metro Police. 5,700 rooms. Biggest hotel in America. And all the public spaces and the casinos and the jackpots and executive and employee lounges. People are like, how long you think we're gonna be down here? We're gonna get out of here at 8:30. I just did the math. I did. 5700 rooms, three minutes each, 2700 policemen. We're gonna be here 12 hours.
- [72:34]
A
You knew it.
- [72:35]
E
Okay, so what am I gonna do now? What am I gonna do with the time I have?
- [72:41]
A
Yeah, right.
- [72:41]
G
You know what I did?
- [72:42]
E
I took a nap.
- [72:43]
A
Took a nap.
- [72:44]
E
It's 200 people in a cafeteria. The thing had calmed down. The shooter was down. He was. And the first thing my wife observed is you and Kevin Harrington. Kevin was down in the room with me. He's like, you and Kevin Harrington are the first two people sleeping.
- [72:56]
A
You told me that. You're like, I need to get some sleep, because I know.
- [72:59]
E
So the two executives go to sleep, get some rest, because we know what. There's going to be another day. So I want to wake up the next day, rested, ready to roll again. So it's not, how do you manage time? But how do you maximize whatever time you have? And. And people often ask me, well, how much do you sleep? And I said, don't worry about it. Yeah, I worry about what I do the other 16 hours. I sleep eight hours a day.
- [73:22]
A
I know you do. You told me that before. You get a full. I don't get full 8, but I see what you mean. I max out every single second of the day. And that's not some tagline, either. You do really embody maxing out the call.
- [73:34]
E
Yeah. So when I came in here today, where I started, I did not know. I did not have a calendar. Katie keeps the calendar.
- [73:39]
A
I know. You didn't even know a couple of meetings you had.
- [73:41]
E
Yeah, look, I. You know, I wasn't even sure what day he was coming, so. So, like I said, yesterday, today, whenever he's. So when I came in today, literally, I didn't know about that meeting we had today.
- [73:51]
A
I know you didn't. So she's not some other one with me, Some other one that we had.
- [73:54]
E
We had a guest in here today. NFL guy. And anyway, so, yeah, I just. I do whatever I have to do.
- [74:00]
A
Yeah, you do. You react well in the moment. You got your plan. You do. You write your goals down in the morning. At night. Yeah, you do. But then you improvise.
- [74:06]
E
I like that. I write them down in the morning, I write them down at night, and I write them when I lose.
- [74:10]
A
What do you mean by you write them when you lose?
- [74:11]
E
Anytime I lose or I'm disappointed, I just go back to writing my goals, looking at my goals. Where am I going as opposed to what just happened?
- [74:18]
A
You. Really?
- [74:18]
E
Yeah. So anytime I fail.
- [74:20]
A
Yep.
- [74:21]
E
I lost this deal in Jacksonville. It was a thousand units, and I missed the deal. And I was like, God damn, what did I do wrong? You know, I'm beating myself up about it, and I wanted this deal, and I started, you know, hammering on my staff. Ryan, set goes in there. I'm like, you know, you should have told me. And then I'm like, okay, wait a minute. Where are you going, dude?
- [74:37]
A
You went back to where you're going.
- [74:39]
E
Oh, I'm going to 40,000 units.
- [74:40]
A
Because that's rear view stuff.
- [74:41]
E
Yeah, exactly. It's already over.
- [74:42]
A
Got you.
- [74:43]
E
So I'm going to 40,000 units. So what does a thousand matter?
- [74:46]
A
Right, right. You know, but if you're not focused on the big thing.
- [74:49]
E
And then, by the way, I picked up the phone and called the guy and said, hey, if that deal falls out, I want it.
- [74:53]
A
You did something. You took action.
- [74:55]
E
Yeah.
- [74:55]
A
Yeah. So talk about this for a second real quick. So I heard you say one time, you said, the big don't eat the small. The fast eat the slow. What's that mean?
- [75:03]
E
Yeah, I think we're in a time where it's not about big, it's about fast. How fast can you.
- [75:07]
A
What's an application of that?
- [75:10]
E
Like, you know, getting over stuff fast. You know, making calls fast, getting two people fast. You know, doing stuff fast, not having ideas and putting them down. Get it? Executing. So. So I get more done in shorter periods of time because I just do more.
- [75:26]
A
Yeah.
- [75:26]
E
And the more I do, the more. The more I have time to do. So speed. I don't think a lot. You know, I do a lot. I probably outdo. Gary Vaynerchuk said, man, who. Who you think over? Somebody asked, hey, who outworks who? Because we're supposedly both. I said, dude, I don't.
- [75:44]
G
I don't.
- [75:44]
E
I don't know how much he works.
- [75:45]
A
Yeah, right, right.
- [75:46]
E
But I tell you what. But I work fast.
- [75:48]
A
Yeah, you do work fast. You do a lot of things at one time in one day. I've watched you do that. You also get to the point of what I would call, like, winning. You get to the close. You get to the point where it's actually productive. In other words, you're not stupid. Busy. People get stupid busy. They're just doing a bunch of crap that's not productive. I even watch your face. Once you sort of identify what I'm doing right now is not real productive anymore, you kind of end it. Your faith.
- [76:11]
E
You're very observant.
- [76:12]
A
I am, but I. But I. Even if that's what I mean by disinterested once, this thing's not productive, you're not interested in anything you're on to. Let's be productive. Do you sense that about yourself, too? Yeah.
- [76:20]
E
Oh, totally.
- [76:21]
A
Yeah.
- [76:21]
E
I think most of the time I feel bad about it, by the way, you know, because. Because, yeah. I hate small talk.
- [76:27]
A
You do? Yeah.
- [76:28]
E
Hate it.
- [76:29]
A
I know you do.
- [76:30]
E
You know, like, I'm working on this big deal in Houston, Texas, and I think I might have to go on a hunting trip to get it.
- [76:35]
A
And you don't want to do that, dude.
- [76:36]
E
I don't even know if I can.
- [76:37]
A
You just can't stomach the small talk stuff.
- [76:39]
E
I hate it, man. I hate. I hate thinking we're gonna have to go to the duck blinds, drink the beer, hang out, listen to the stories. I mean, it drives me nuts.
- [76:50]
A
But will you do it if it's required to get the deal done?
- [76:53]
E
I don't know. Probably.
- [76:55]
A
Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest guest. He is one of the most giving and generous people with his time, his information, and his energy that I have ever met in my life. And I. I'm literally. Look at this. I'm getting goosebumps because I've been really looking forward today. So. Everybody, this is Jesse Itzler. Jesse, thanks for being here.
- [77:19]
G
Oh, thank you so much, man. I appreciate it.
- [77:21]
A
I want you to talk a little bit about just for you. Do you. Do you have this sense, like, I have this weird thing, man. Like, I'll wake up some Mondays and I'll go, how many more Mondays do I get?
- [77:31]
G
Oh, yeah.
- [77:31]
A
Do you ever do that? I do with my kids. My kid. My son's 17. I'm kind of like, I only have so many more days.
- [77:37]
G
I do. So, you know, the challenge is so many of us, myself included, we live in routine. And when you're in routine, clock goes fast. I make sure that I create a certain amount of experiences. It's something I call Kevin's rule every year. So Kevin is a police officer that I'm friends with and from Suffolk County. Probably doesn't make an amazing living, but one of the happiest guys that I know. And I went to Mount Washington. I took my son and his daughter. We slept out in the snow in this blizzard, like in these minus 40 sleeping bags, all huddled up looking at the snow coming down. We're outside. I'm like, this is an amazing moment. I said, kevin, how often do you do this? We're here with our kids. How often do this? He goes, well, every other month, I take a trip that I wouldn't have done on a weekend, that instead of watching a football game, I'll go fishing, I'll go to a museum. I'll do something. And I said, wow. Like, if I can't take one day every eight weeks, once every two months.
- [78:34]
A
Yes.
- [78:35]
G
To create an experience, then I'm out of whack. And if I do do that for the next 30 years, I will create 150 moments that I wouldn't have had. That's the power of doing things cumulatively.
- [78:50]
A
Wow.
- [78:50]
G
I just. One of the advantages of having money is, you know, you get to treat your friends and you get to treat people, and that's the greatest gift and all that stuff. But you also meet some amazing people.
- [79:02]
A
True.
- [79:02]
G
The people you meet. And I was in a meeting, talking about something with an advisor, and he said to me a really powerful question. He said, if you could leave one of two things to your kids, all this money or a 1 wealth of experiences, what would you rather leave? And I'm like, of course I want to leave the experience. And so that's defined this chapter of my life. You talked about Build your life resume.
- [79:26]
A
Boy, that's brilliant.
- [79:27]
G
We focus on so much of our attention on the traditional resume.
- [79:30]
A
Yep.
- [79:31]
G
But we neglect these experiences. And the more you experience, the more you have to offer. Gosh, the more. Right. I mean, the more effort, empathy you have, the more you can offer to your kids, the more you can offer to your team, your employees. And so I have really made it. And you have to work on this shit as you get older. Creating newness is hard.
- [79:53]
A
You got it.
- [79:54]
G
There's no newness unless you create it. You're in routine.
- [79:56]
A
Yep. You have to intentionally.
- [79:58]
G
You have to intentionally do it. So, like, I'm aware of that. You're talking about time, and time is running out. We're insignificant. There's 7 billion people, man. We're nothing.
- [80:08]
A
Yes.
- [80:09]
G
So I'm very aware of that. And I don't want to go through life being the 80% version of me. I don't want to look back and be like, 77 and be like, I always wish I. You know, we talked about going away. Maybe. You know what?
- [80:21]
A
I don't want to look back.
- [80:21]
G
And, like, I didn't do that.
- [80:22]
A
Yeah, me too.
- [80:23]
G
So I'm just in action mode. I'm almost operating like I'm manic because there's so much I want to do. And I love life so much. I. I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss it because I'm lazy. It's not the right time. I don't have enough experience and has nothing to do with money.
- [80:39]
A
You got it? That's what I want them to hear.
- [80:41]
G
Washington, it cost $18 to park.
- [80:43]
A
Exactly. So I want everyone to hear that. So this weekend, I put a post. That's amazing. I put a post out this week, and I said, hey, go do something new this weekend. Go to a new park. See a new beach. Go to a new coffee shop. Like, just do something new. Have a new drink. Eat a new meal. Right? Meet a new human.
- [80:59]
G
That's also where creativity comes from. That's where it all comes from.
- [81:02]
A
You know, what you just said earlier, man, I just, like. I get so fired up being around extraordinary people who get it because you said something earlier was brilliant. You're like, I have this huge life. There's not. You don't have balance. What you are is present where you are. Like, there's no way, someone. With all of this stuff in our lives, we can be perfectly balanced. Nor can you. But these experiences don't require you to have money.
- [81:23]
G
And. And I recognize how hard it is for people to break the norm. Yes, but normal is completely broken. Look at normal. Everybody's. The majority of this country doesn't have savings. The majority, what, the divorce rate is 50, 40, 50%? Obesity is like a third of something. I don't even know the stats, but they're overwhelming. One out of three people have cancer and all. All this stuff. Let me share this story with you real quick. Ed, you remember Rick Barry who played in the NBA?
- [81:50]
A
Of course. So Rick Barry, free throw.
- [81:52]
G
Rick Barry shot 90% from the free throw line, okay? One year in 1978. In the season, he only missed 10 foul shots the whole season.
- [82:01]
A
Crazy.
- [82:01]
G
The league average is like 77%. I think LeBron is below 80. Career Michael Jordan maybe was 82. This guy was 90. Okay? And he shot every single one of those free throws underhand. He didn't care what anyone said. He didn't care if they laughed at him. He just kept fucking ringing up the points underhand.
- [82:19]
A
Boom, boom. I'm good.
- [82:21]
G
Like, didn't even hit the rim. Since he played in the league, there's been about 2700 people drafted. How many of those people have tried to shoot the ball underhand?
- [82:30]
E
None.
- [82:30]
A
Zero.
- [82:31]
G
Because people don't want to do shit that looks funny or weird. And it's broken. The way you live is you rip it off up and you don't give a shit. And you're like, I'm so aware of my mortality. I hope everybody loves this, but if they don't, it's not. What am I going to worry about it? I'm going to go continue to do what I want to do to get the most out of this precious time.
- [82:54]
A
So good. You know, so talk about that. Because that's the other cool thing about being aware of mortality. Because you speak about this better than anyone I've ever heard in my life. Like a hundred years from now, none of these people. You embarrass yourself and talk about that a little bit, because this will give you everyone right now. You're so consumed with what people are going to think. And just so you know, they may actually think it in the moment, but long term, they're not going to remember anything. You did Tell them about that. I love this.
- [83:17]
G
No, I mean. And look, I have my fears, too. I want to be liked. I don't want people. You know, so do. I mean. But yeah, I mean, one of the tricks that I do is, like, I walk around when I'm super scared, or I'm against that wall of fear that I control, and it's stacked up, and I'm like. I'll say to myself, jesse, nobody on this planet. I'll look around is even going to be here in 100 years. No one's living to 160, so what do I care? And no one in China or Russia, they're not going to know that the speech wasn't great or this interview wasn't successful. And that helps me. Stephen Hawkins, one of the greatest minds of our time, predicted that just the way the way humanity is going, environment, nuclear weapons, all these Factors, that in 500 years, there would be no life on Earth. Then right before he died, we're talking about one of the greatest minds ever. He changed that prediction to 100 years. Let's just say for a second he's right. Let's just say there's a lot of crazy people out there. The environment, disease, Ebola, whatever. Let's just say that was the case because we don't know if you knew that that was gonna happen.
- [84:27]
A
Yeah.
- [84:28]
G
You're telling me you wouldn't take a chance or take the trip or visit your parents or do whatever or go through the wall? Of course you would.
- [84:35]
A
Yeah.
- [84:35]
G
And that's how I look at it.
- [84:37]
A
Yeah.
- [84:37]
G
I look at it like, you know, and, you know there's three kinds of regrets. There's the regrets that you can change. I broke up with my girlfriend in high school. I wish I had her back. I can't change that. That. That's not the case. I'm just saying, right? There's. There's. That's one kind of regret. The other kind of regret is regrets that you can fix. I have a relationship with my dad. It went sideways. I can pick up the phone and be like, dad, I'm sorry, and fix that. And now there's no more regret. And then there's regrets that you can prevent. Okay? And those are the regrets, like, you always wanted to run a marathon. I'll do it next year. I'll do it next year.
- [85:13]
A
Year.
- [85:13]
G
And you can prevent it, because if it doesn't happen, you could have prevented it. So I look at those things too. I'm like, am I going to regret this in the future? I don't want future regrets, and I want to fix the regrets that I have. So let me get in front of it. And these are all kind of strategies that I use that help me get over.
- [85:31]
A
It just blows my mind how much I want everyone. I'm just mind blown. Because, guys, like, no one talks about this. What we're talking about right now. You can go watch 3,000 podcasts, a million different speeches. No one talks about this because it's, like a really vulnerable, almost odd thing to admit that we both think this way, but I just want to acknowledge something that you just said. Like, I think about that all the time. I'm obsessed with that. I'm so grateful for meeting you because I know I'm not crazy.
- [86:01]
G
Because.
- [86:01]
A
No, because I think sometimes, to comfort myself from fears, I'll think, no one's gonna be here in 100 years. And you know what? The Earth could get by an asteroid tomorrow, for all I know, right? Like, there's all these random events in life that I'm holding on to, something that doesn't even exist, and I just.
- [86:15]
G
Think it's so important. Like, the one thing that always gets me back to, like, ground zero is I get one shot at this life. I get one shot at it. I want to love. I want to, like, give. I want to be loved.
- [86:29]
A
I want.
- [86:31]
G
I want to do good things. And of course, everybody goes off the wagon and this and that, but I'm very aware of this is it. I remember I was saying to my wife, this race that I want to run called Badwater, and she was saying to me, it's a 135 mile run in Death Valley. It's like the hardest foot race. And she's like, why do you want to do that? It's going to mess up your hips. And then when you're 70, 70, 75, you're gonna have. You can't do anything. And I'm like, I'm not playing for 75, I'm playing for right now, you know?
- [87:02]
C
And.
- [87:02]
A
And are you gonna do it?
- [87:04]
G
Absolutely. Because if I don't, it's a regret that I know I'll have.
- [87:07]
A
See, I live my whole life. You haven't heard me talk about this, probably, but like, everyone want you to.
- [87:11]
G
Fast forward to 75. 75 year old Jesse is like, then I'm gonna resent my wife. You didn't let me do the race.
- [87:17]
A
That's right. I do that crazy regret future thing with death. So I have this image where I go to heaven and the Lord goes, hey, well done, good and faithful servant. Right, Whatever someone's religious beliefs are. But then I have this picture where he goes, and you've heard me say this. And I run this picture constantly, man it like it's one of my greatest shrinkers of time. He says, hey, I'm gonna let me introduce you to the man you were born to be. This is the destiny version. This is the ultimate version of. This is the maxed out version of you. I want you to meet him. These are the experiences, the love, the memories, the moments, the contributions, the people, all the things that you could have done. This is what you were capable of. Meet him. To me, heaven is, I meet him. We're identical twins. Hell is, I meet him and we're complete total strangers. Right. And that's what that is, is it's future projecting. The regret. What you just said.
- [88:05]
G
So, not to put you on the spot.
- [88:06]
A
Yes.
- [88:06]
G
But I'm just going to put you on the spot for a second. So, like our existence, humans, like a novel, we have a beginning, a middle and an end.
- [88:15]
A
Yes.
- [88:15]
G
We reflect on the beginning.
- [88:17]
A
Right.
- [88:17]
G
So like tell stories about our childhood. Like, oh, yeah, you remember that marquee jet we're reflecting?
- [88:21]
A
Yep.
- [88:22]
G
The middle is like where we live now. That's where all of our worry is. That's where we spend all of our time. We think we're never going to get out of this rut. We're stuck here, you know, and that's where we are. And then the end we often ignore. And let me just put it in perspective. I'm sure most people listening have not picked out their graveyard plot yet. Right. You probably haven't.
- [88:43]
A
No.
- [88:44]
G
Right. So then you're not really taking it seriously, have you? Yes, you have. Yeah, I've addressed it. I've addressed the end of my life as part of my life optimization system, which we can talk about. Yes, but, like, that's an important piece. Like, my wife has to know where my passcodes are. Everything has to be in order. I want to know how I become. Because, like, it's going to happen. It could happen tomorrow. You're not really dealing with it if you're ignoring it, Ed. Like, you're saying, I'm glad you said that to me. No, you understand what I'm saying? This shit is real, man. You never know when it's going to happen if you're really serious about it. You have a plot, you have a plan, your wife knows everything. Everything is taken care of that's responsible. And that when you do it, then you really say, like, this shit is real. It's real and it creates urgency.
- [89:32]
A
Yeah, that's another level for me. So I talk about it all the time. I'm not knocking you.
- [89:35]
G
I know, Listen. I'm just saying, like, do you know.
- [89:39]
A
How much I love that you say that to me? I love when someone pushes me to the next level. Nudge me. Like, hey, brother, if you're really serious, you do this. That's what we do when we coach our best friends. Like, hey, if you're really serious about sewing or do. If you're really serious about running this thing, here's what you'd be doing.
- [89:54]
G
So, by the way, life is something we ignore.
- [89:56]
A
Yeah. The next time we talk, I will have had that done. By the way. That'll be done within a matter of probably days. Like, that's just. I'm gonna take immediate action on that.
- [90:04]
G
Well, I'll tell you how this. This whole thing surfaced. We have a second.
- [90:07]
A
Yes.
- [90:07]
G
I was driving with my son in the car, and this is like, one of those moments. I hope I don't get emotional, but I'm driving with them and my son, he's in the back. I'm in the minivan, I'm looking at him in the window, and he says, dad, can I ask you a question? And I'm like, sure. He's like, what's a curse word? I'm like, oh, a curse word is a bad word. Those are words we don't use in the house. We keep driving. He goes, can I ask you another question, dad? I'm like, sure. He goes, is shithead a curse word? And I'm like, well, that's awesome. Is it even a curse word?
- [90:41]
A
I don't even know anymore.
- [90:42]
G
So we keep driving. I'm like, yes. And I'm like, who called you a shithead? And he goes, my friends have been saying I'm a shit, all this stuff. So we're driving and he goes, can I ask you another question? And I go, sure. He goes, when I die, this is seven year old kid at the time when I die, what if I can't find you in heaven? And that really hit me because, you know, like the image of me not being here, then my son waiting to come up and try to find me and then worrying that I'm not here. And that really jump started me thinking about how much I want to live, how important what I eat is, how important my relationships are, how important my time is, how important my kids are to me, and how important how real this window that we're talking about is. I have a three bucket system. And it will be too much to do in this particular. But let me give you two at 30,000ft I have, and anyone can do this. I have in a list, a list of electives. When you go to college, you have mandatory courses, most of them you hate calculus, whatever, I don't want to take that, whatever that. I want to learn how to make money. Right, but then you have electives, the things you want to do. So I make a list and I love that. So I made a list of all the things I want to do in the year. I want to run a marathon, I'm doing a documentary, I'm writing a book, family trips, all this stuff that I want to do, okay. They go into an elective chart. Then I have a list, we'll come back to it, of what I call my sunshine electives. Sunshine. My sunshines are my daily habits, that is. And I try to introduce one new habit a month that could be. Last month it was drink 100 ounces of water. This month is introducing a meditation practice. Because at the end of the year, if you have 12 new winning habits, habits, that's a hell of a year.
- [92:31]
A
Wow. Totally true.
- [92:32]
G
That's a hell of a year. Most of us think back to like last two years. Like, what have you added that's new? Even myself, nothing.
- [92:37]
A
Yeah, if you're lucky, it's zero to one, right?
- [92:39]
G
So. And when I tell people that they're like, well, I could only do three things. I'm going to read the newspaper every day, I'm going to meditate, I'M going to drink water. I'm like, start with one.
- [92:46]
A
Yeah.
- [92:47]
G
And then introduce the next one. So my daily habits, I have a list of them. And that could be like, I want to play with my kids for an hour. I want to read to my kids. I want to drink more water. And every night before I go to bed, I look at my list of sunshine. Say, how do I put sunshine in my life the next day? I know it sounds corny, but that's what I do. And I'm like, okay. Hour with my kids. And I make sure everything is scheduled the night before. It's like, we can't afford to wing it anymore.
- [93:12]
A
Yeah.
- [93:12]
G
So every CEO, top CEOs have three assistants. And they wake up and they come in the morning and their assistant hands them a schedule. Says 9 to 9:15 here, 9:15 to 9:30 here. We don't have three assistants. Most of us don't have three assistants. But we can't wing it the night before. You have to have the day laid out. So I sprinkle in my sunshines into the day, and then underneath that, electives, sunshine. My electives go on a year calendar, so I schedule them the marathons. But my year, it's already scheduled. It's done. I know the races I'm running, the trips I'm taking, it's all in there. All the stuff I want to do is written in because I'm not going to waste away the thing. I'm not going to go through a year and not do the shit that I want to do. Then my life, then my life plan, my system would be out of whack. But underneath the sunshines and the electives is this big ocean. And that's all the stuff that takes away from the things I like to do. I have to get my oil changed in my car twice a year. I have to go to the doctor and get my colonoscopy at 50 and go get my dentist shit and all that stuff. I have weddings. All that is is the ocean. That stuff takes away from this stuff. So if you are fortunate enough to have someone that can help you with this, which I have assistance, then you can do it. But if not, then you can assign it and delegate some of the stuff. But if not this big ocean, which I went 48 years of my life doing myself, what I do is I get it all on paper so I can. So it's out of my head to free up energy. And what that does is it gives me a snapshot of. Basically, I have 15 things I don't want to belabor the point but everything from pets to cars to this and it's all an end of life. It's all laid out.
- [94:56]
A
Wow.
- [94:56]
G
And I have this amazingly efficient system. I could walk everyone through it but I don't really have the time to do it now. But I'm just saying I think take it super seriously because you can't wing it.
- [95:07]
A
Yep. And they can find more of the detail because I know a little about the program and I'm like I want to.
- [95:11]
G
I didn't mean to get off track with it but I think it's important.
- [95:14]
A
Like I want them to hear this because I think people think well I have habits and routines or I have a plan. Do you really? Because this is what one really looks like. This is what a high level thinker does. This is what a high level achiever does. This is the Ed Mylett show.