A (0:00)

Foreign.

B (0:04)

Welcome to this episode of the Everyday Millionaire Mindset Matters podcast where I'm joined by my wife, Olympic mental performance coach Stephanie Hanlon. Francie in these episodes, Stephanie and I have a conversation about the different aspects of what we refer to as Mindset Matters because we believe that for those who are awake, we are living in and through the most impactful time in history. Your view of the world is the.

A (0:29)

Filter for how you will experience the.

B (0:32)

Evolution and changing dynamics of it. Our intention is to provide you with ideas, nutritious food for thought, and some tools that you can use to help you in being your greatest self and living your best life. Listen in.

A (0:47)

Enjoy. What if the goal you're struggling to reach isn't blocked by a ceiling, a limitation that you think you've hit, but rather buy a price that you're not willing to pay yet and you may not even be conscious of it? Here's the thing, outcomes aren't limited by ability. They're limited by what we're willing to tolerate. Things like discomfort, uncertainty, restraint, discipline. And today I want to talk about all those things. I want to walk you through the real costs of getting what you say you want. I'll start by giving you some context for these insights. Now, Stephanie is obviously not joining me for this episode. Well, because she's in Italy and we could not figure out a time and a way to get her and I to do a show. So she's in Italy, she's at the Olympics and I'm really excited for her, by the way. And she's working with a number of teams, including Great Britain, France, usa, others, I believe. Anyways, what's interesting about all of these teams is they are all possible gold medalists. Each of these teams of athletes have the potential to be medalists. Now, what's also interesting about this is these countries, these athletes, competitors, are also very good friends. They train together, they hang out together, they often spend social time together. But they're also warriors. They are competitors. So here's what I want to point out. I'll start there. Anyways, none of the athletes or Stephanie are waking up in the Olympic village this week being bitter about the hard work they had to put in to get there, the price they had to pay. None of them are surprised by the pressure they're feeling, or none of them are confused by their moments of self doubt or fear. They actually expect it. But why? Why do they expect it? Number one, they've trained for it. But why did they train for it? Here's the thing at that Level pressure isn't actually the problem. It's the proof. Reframe it. It's actually the proof that their years of training paid off. It's the proof that they paid the price, the cost of entry, to be an Olympian, to actually achieve mastery. I can share with you and tell you straight up, Stephanie, or none of her clients stumbled into this level of excellence. They earned it. They worked their fricking asses off for it, and they paid the price because excellence comes with a toll. And that's really what this episode is intended to be about. Now, the interesting thing about self mastery is that it comes with many benefits, not the least of which is ourselves, by design, by becoming the person we need to become to achieve the goal. But it also comes at a cost, and it demands payment in the form of discomfort, of being brutally honest with ourselves or others, of our own restraint and of our own discipline. And when we look at it that way, we start to realize that many people don't fail because they can't win or they don't have the skills. They actually fail because they aren't willing to pay the price. The cost of entry. We know, I mean, and, you know, everything worthwhile in our life has a cost of entry. And the cost I'm talking about, of course, is not money. And so in this episode, what I'm hoping to do and what I've tried to do is break down what I'll call the seven costs of entry to self mastery. As I said, self mastery comes at a cost. And, you know, it's interesting, because we find ourselves in a world that seemingly teaches us to avoid paying the price. It would indicate through social media that there's no price to pay. Go stand by your Lamborghini. You've got it handled. So we avoid discomfort by replacing it with distractions. We avoid embarrassment, but we still want relevance. We avoid uncertainty, but we complain about the status quo. And then ultimately, we avoid hard conversations, or what Stephanie and I have often referred to as courageous conversations. And then we wonder why we're being misunderstood. Now, all of this is to say, one day we wake up, or we look up and we wonder, why doesn't our life look the way I thought it would or the way I think it should? It may not be because you failed per se. It's more likely because you avoided the costs you avoided being decisive. You didn't have a clear vision. You never chose a direction. You never really accepted that the cost that you would have to pay would be higher than you hoped. Here's the truth, it's simple. But as we often say, it's not easy. Big, meaningful goals, outcomes don't belong to those who avoid discomfort. It belongs to those who really understand that it's part of the process. Everything meaning in life has a toll that we have to pay. A gate that we have to pass through, a bridge we have to cross, whatever analogy we want to give it. So the question isn't whether there's a cost. The question is, are you willing to pay it? And pay it willingly, intentionally, on purpose. So I broke it down into these seven costs of entry, and at the top of the list is, in fact, uncertainty. The cost of achieving our goals doesn't include a guarantee. And if you need a lot of certainty before you take action, you're going to trade your goals for the comfort that you would rather choose to live in. The reality is that growth happens by working in and through the uncertainty. Even when you maybe have a map of where you're going, but you just don't know the best path to follow. When perhaps the next step to take isn't certain and there isn't an instruction book, you hesitate. And to add to that the fact that the outcome isn't guaranteed, and then the next thing you know, you're left with the realization that success is proportionate to how much uncertainty you can actually tolerate. And that goes, really, for anybody. We've all heard the many stories or parables shared of people who quit just before the breakthrough, just before the finish line. And it wasn't because it wasn't possible. It was because the uncertainty and the anxiety became unbearable. The difference is that high performers don't eliminate uncertainty. They actually learn to observe it, embrace it, perhaps because they understand it. And when it feels unclear, they adjust. Perhaps they take smaller or more incremental steps, but they continue to take steps either way and keep moving forward until the clarity shows up and they can regain velocity. Okay, cost number two, imposter syndrome. Now, imposter syndrome. Stephanie and I have talked about hidden beliefs in the past many times, and this falls into those categories. And imposter syndrome is the cost of growth. Arguably, and maybe some would say, well, it's only philosophical, but arguably. If you've never actually felt like an imposter, you're likely not growing. You're just repeating what you've always done. Feel. Feeling like an imposter isn't proof that you're unqualified. It's actually evidence that whatever identity you currently have hasn't caught up with who you are becoming in Order to achieve your next goals. And every new level shows you the edge, if you will, of who you've been in the past or even who you are right now. And so your old confidence, it doesn't work. You've got no relatedness to it. It stops working. The old labels all of a sudden don't fit your past. Certainty just goes away. But that's not the entry actually to failure that some people feel. That's the entry to our expansion. So the real question isn't who am I to do this? Or am I being a fraud? The question is, am I willing to grow, to expand into being enough to pay the price of self mastery? High level performers or any performer who's getting on their podium didn't wait until they felt ready. They kept moving forward and forced their identity, if you will, leaned into who they needed to become to catch up to their actions. Class number three. This is in what I've been work I've been doing in the past and I guess more recently. The cost of personal or the cost of entry is loneliness. The cost of personal transformation, transformation that actually moves the needle is that when you change, your environment doesn't automatically change or come along with you. You outgrow old conversations, old coping strategies, and often old relationships. And those are costs that many just aren't willing to pay. They tell themselves they can't let go of those old relationships that they've now outgrown. And those old relationships can be actually the anchor to getting to achieve your future self. So as you go through these transition, it can be a very lonely time, confusing time. But the sense or even the reality of loneliness is most often just part of the transition. Some refer to it as an incubation, an incubation phase of how we evolve, how we're evolving. But many people get stuck feeling the need to fill the silence. They do it through scrolling or whatever numbing thing that they do, distracting instead of actually letting the solitude do its work. You've heard, I'm sure Stephanie and I often talk about journaling and meditation or going for walks by ourselves. Give ourselves time to think and to reflect. So that is the work of solitude. So if you're in a phase where fewer people understand you or you can't quite see the future, you don't need to rush it. Don't force the river. Take those incremental steps and live in. The question of who do I need to become to achieve the goal? What am I doing to make that happen? What is the transformation, the transition that I'm Taking self mastery ultimately comes with self awareness. Cost number four, embarrassment. The cost of progress is your willingness to fail, to actually look foolish or even a little dumb. Because if you're not, you're just never going to look brilliant. Every new skill starts really awkward. Every first draft is always going to be rough. Every new arena back to our athletes exposes you. The reality is most people don't fail. They self censor their willingness, or should I say their lack of willingness to risk embarrassment. It's not a price they're willing to pay. So they don't ask the dumb questions, they don't share the early versions of their ideas. They don't put it out there until it's perfect. And perfection is just fear in a better outfit, as the quote goes. And embarrassment is ultimately the tax we pay for moving forward. And if you're not willing to pay it, you won't move with any kind of velocity. You may not even move at all. Those who actually fear it stay stuck. So at the end of the day, we know progress can be noisy, it can be loud, it can stand out. And that leaves you the possibility of being the subject of that noise. And that's the price we have to pay. Number five, hard conversations, or what we often called courageous conversations. That's actually the cost of having meaningful relationships. You've heard the phrase that time heals wounds, but time doesn't always heal relationships, honesty does. Courageous conversations are uncomfortable, so it's easier to avoid them. And that might keep the peace in the moment, but it actually kills any real connection and it threatens integrity. Real relationships, whether they're personal or professional, require truth. And sometimes they may require repair. They definitely require accountability. So if we stay on top of the small honest conversations, that is a way to prevent the massive breakdowns that happen when real connections or real conversations are avoided, where people, or yourself included, are operating on top of something that is incomplete. Because without those courageous conversations, people, ourselves included, tend to operate on top of those incompletions, to grow bitterness and feel incomplete, left out. So the relationships you want, the trust, the depth, the respect, they're on the other side of those conversations, the ones that you've been avoiding. So discomfort is the price paid for depth and for honesty. So we want to pay it early. Become comfortable in the discomfort of having those conversations, learn how to have them, and then have them. Number six, criticism. And that can be, or some would argue is the cost of excellence. If you aim for excellence, you will be criticized. That's almost a guarantee. Mediocrity is invisible. Excellence attracts attention, and that's pretty straightforward. And with it will come judgment, and with that comes misunderstandings. It comes with opinions. But what I've learned, or what I believe is the we'll call it the key distinction is that criticism from the cheap seats isn't feedback. For those who aren't doing what you're doing, that isn't feedback. It's just noise. It's coaching from the bleachers. The hard part is to learn to extract what is actually noise from the true signals and then the signals from the unqualified criticism. We have to ask ourselves, what are we willing to take on? What's useful and what matters, what's true. And then we kick the rest of the bullshit to the curb. You know, in Australia, they call it tall Poppy syndrome. When you're standing out the tallest in the field, they want to cut you down to size. So top performers who earn the podium don't need universal approval. They stay true to their standards of performance, they develop the thicker skin, they stay true to their heart, they have an inspiring vision, and they keep going. And they create an environment that they can perform in where they surround themselves with the right people, people of like mind, a team of people who believe in them and understand what they're doing and what it takes to achieve what they've achieved. And that community supports their goals. Okay, number seven, boredom. We have to get to a point where we don't mind the grind. And this one will often surprise people, because what we start to realize is success is rarely glamorous. It's actually repetitive. It's the same routine, the same fundamentals, the same disciplines, the same habits. And it's got to be done and is done consistently. And that is ultimately the grind. So back to Stephanie and her athletes. What we see on television or at a competition is a result of the boring grind. The hard work, the four, six, eight hours a day of training, of the way and watching how they eat, dealing with the inevitable injuries, all while dealing with the rest of what life throws at them. Masters built their mastery on boring basics. They executed on those boring basics with just an uncommon, and we'll call it a rare commitment. In spite of a love for the journey and the goal, the boredom of the grind is what sets the high performers apart. Boredom is, in fact, a gatekeeper. It filters out those who are just dabbling from those who are actually driven or devoted, inspired even. So when others quit because it's no longer exciting, top performers keep showing up. So if you can embrace the grind, then you earn the outcome. Finally, I want to share some reflections. We know there is a cost of entry for everything meaningful in our life. And it's not because life is cruel, but because giving or receiving value requires a commitment of equal value. The people who live life by design don't resent the toll of working at self mastery. They just recognize it as a necessary part of growth. And and they don't spend time wondering what they're doing or wondering why they're what they're doing is hard. They check in. They ask themselves, is the journey worth the price that I'm having to pay? And if the answer is yes, they just keep paying it. And with that, I hope these seven costs of entry were helpful. Food for thought. Patrick out.