Ben Nemtin On Burnout, Our Passions, What We Regret Most, & How To Stop Feeling Lost

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast

Episode Title: Ben Nemtin On Burnout, Our Passions, What We Regret Most, & How To Stop Feeling Lost
Release Date: May 29, 2025

Hosts: Lauryn Bosstick & Michael Bosstick
Guest: Ben Nemtin
Produced By: Dear Media

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast, hosts Lauryn and Michael Bosstick welcome Ben Nemtin, a bestselling author known for "What Do You Want to Do Before You Die" and "The Bucket List Journal." Ben shares his profound insights on overcoming burnout, pursuing authentic passions, minimizing regrets, and finding direction in life.

Finding Purpose by Building Towards It

Michael Bostick emphasizes that discovering one's purpose isn't about attaining a specific goal but about progressing towards activities that make one feel alive:

"Moving towards the things that make you feel more alive and starting to use that as your compass... leads you to happiness."
[01:05] Michael Bostick

Michael recounts his personal battle with depression during university, attributing his unhappiness to living a life not aligned with his authentic self. He acknowledges that pursuing dreams imposed by others—like excelling in rugby or achieving societal standards—led to his feelings of stagnation and depression.

The Impact of Living for Others

Lauren Everts draws a parallel to individuals pressured by parents to enter prestigious professions, who later find themselves miserable despite outward success:

"But why are you not happy? Why are you unhappy?"
[03:49] Michael Bostick

Michael adds that up to 76% of people express on their deathbed a regret of not living for themselves:

"The biggest regret we have is... I wish I would have lived for me, not the life others wanted for me."
[04:52] Michael Bostick

Creating and Pursuing a Bucket List

Ben delves into the origins of the Buried Life project, a journey initiated to tackle and fulfill their bucket lists while helping others do the same. Michael shares how a simple two-week road trip evolved into a decade-long adventure that resulted in creating a TV show and leading to their current endeavors.

Overcoming Fear and Taking Action

Michael Bostick outlines three primary barriers to achieving goals:

1. Lack of Deadlines: Dreams don't have inherent deadlines, making them easy to postpone. Creating accountability through sharing goals and having an accountability buddy can mitigate this.

2. Waiting to Feel Ready: Many wait for inspiration or the perfect moment, which often never comes. Taking small, actionable steps can generate the necessary momentum.

3. Fear of Judgment and Failure: These fears are natural but can be reframed as indicators of meaningful goals. Understanding that most people are not as focused on your actions as you fear helps in overcoming this barrier.

Michael advises viewing fears as "taxes" one must pay to achieve significant goals, reinforcing that vulnerability and action lead to personal growth:

"This fear of what other people think, it's actually what it really is, is you pretending that people are thinking about you when they're probably not."
[22:01] Michael Bostick

The Importance of Accountability

Ben highlights the effectiveness of the accountability system proposed by Michael. By sharing dreams and enlisting an accountability buddy, individuals are more likely to stay committed and take necessary actions to achieve their goals.

Personal Stories and Achievements

Throughout the episode, Michael shares remarkable experiences from his bucket list, including:

• Playing Basketball with President Obama: After persistent efforts, Michael finally meets Obama at the White House and shoots hoops with him, fulfilling a significant bucket list item.

  "Oh my God, we're shooting around with him for about 15 minutes."
  [46:32] Michael Bostick

• Having Beer with Prince Harry: Successfully arranging a meeting with Prince Harry, Michael and his team spend a relaxed evening having beer and dinner with the Duke of Sussex.

  "Very chill, very nice. Both those guys are... top shelf, gentlemen."
  [49:52] Michael Bostick

Insights on Happiness and Fulfillment

Lauren Everts and Michael Bostick discuss the evolving nature of happiness, emphasizing that it's tied to the journey towards one's potential rather than the attainment of specific goals. They reflect on personal accomplishments, noting that the process of striving brings more fulfillment than the endpoint.

"The definition of happiness is the feeling you have when you are moving toward your potential."
[01:05] Michael Bostick

Building a Bucket List Workshop

Ben shares actionable steps for listeners to create their own bucket list workshops:

1. Grab a Journal: Use a notebook to document your thoughts.
2. Stream of Consciousness Writing: Reflect on what your future self would be proud of in the next 3-5 years.
3. Identify Fun Activities: Consider what brings you joy and fulfillment.
4. Choose One Goal: Select a main objective to pursue.
5. Set 48-Hour Action Items: Define small, manageable tasks to kickstart action.
6. Share Your Goals: Discuss your aspirations with supportive friends or family.
7. Find an Accountability Buddy: Partner with someone to keep you on track.

Michael emphasizes turning goals into experiments to discover what genuinely energizes and fulfills you.

The Role of Purpose in Longevity and Resilience

Studies cited by Michael indicate that having a sense of purpose significantly contributes to longevity and resilience:

"You're two times more likely to live longer if you have a sense of purpose."
[67:57] Michael Bostick

He explains that purpose enhances mental health, reduces depression, and increases productivity, underscoring its critical role in a fulfilling life.

Relationship Insights

The hosts discuss the importance of personal growth and intentionality in relationships. Michael narrates his journey of personal development and how it led to a deeper, more meaningful relationship with Vanessa. Both partners embarked on individual growth paths, which ultimately strengthened their bond.

Conclusion and Takeaways

This episode offers profound insights into:

• Authenticity: Living a life aligned with one's true self is crucial for happiness and fulfillment.
• Action-Oriented Living: Taking small steps towards goals generates momentum and reduces procrastination.
• Overcoming Barriers: Recognizing and addressing fears and the need for accountability can lead to significant achievements.
• Purpose: A strong sense of purpose enhances overall well-being, resilience, and longevity.

Ben Nemtin encourages listeners to actively pursue their dreams, not just for personal satisfaction but also to make a meaningful impact on others' lives. By sharing dreams and creating supportive networks, individuals can overcome burnout and lead fulfilling lives.

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Notable Quotes:

• "The definition of happiness is the feeling you have when you're moving toward your potential."
  — Michael Bostick [01:05]

• "The biggest regret we have is... I wish I would have lived for me, not the life others wanted for me."
  — Michael Bostick [04:52]

• "This fear of what other people think, it's actually what it really is, is you pretending that people are thinking about you when they're probably not."
  — Michael Bostick [22:01]

• "You're two times more likely to live longer if you have a sense of purpose."
  — Michael Bostick [67:57]

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the essence of the episode, offering valuable insights for listeners seeking to overcome burnout, pursue authentic passions, and live a life free from regrets.

Transcript

[Lauren Everts]

The following podcast is a Dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.

[Michael Bostick]

Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur, a very smart cookie.

[Lauren Everts]

And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostick are bringing you along for the ride.

[Ben Nemton]

Get ready for some major realness.

[Lauren Everts]

Welcome to the Skinny Confidential.

[Michael Bostick]

Him and her.

[Lauren Everts]

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential him and her show. What if the secret to changing your life isn't about achieving more but about daring to dream in the first place? Today's guest is someone who's not just talking the talk. He's living the ultimate bucket list life. From playing basketball with Obama to having beer with Prince Harry, he's checked off dreams most of us wouldn't even dare to write down. Ben Nemton is the best selling author of what do you want to do before you die and the bucket list journal. This episode with Ben is all about unlocking possibility, beating burnout, and giving yourself permission to go after the life you actually want with that. Ben Nemton. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential him and her.

[Michael Bostick]

I think people have it wrong when they're trying to find their purpose. I think it's about building towards purpose. So moving towards the things that make you feel more alive and starting to use that as your compass and not using your head follow feelings. And ultimately that leads you to happiness. Because the definition of happiness is the feeling you have when you're moving toward your potential. So it's not actually about achieving the goal, it's about your pursuit and moving towards it. So you're not stagnant and just starting to take small steps of action.

[Ben Nemton]

So I've read this and you're the perfect person to ask. It's like depression is actually when you feel like you're regressing or standing still. Right?

[Michael Bostick]

Stagnation. Yeah. So humans are unhappy when we are stagnant. So movement makes us feel this sense of fulfillment. And I actually think, and I've heard this before from certain people and this is what I've experienced because I experienced depression. I went through quite a big depression when I was in my first year of university in Canada. And I felt, and looking back, it's quite clear, like I was not aligned with my authentic self and I wasn't moving towards that, that sort of. That true version of myself. I was living the dream, but it wasn't my dream. And so I was moving towards this dream that I thought I should live, but it actually wasn't what I wanted. And I think that is the thing that can get tricky is that we sometimes feel like we're living for other people, but we don't know it. And I think that's where unhappiness can stem from.

[Ben Nemton]

Who were you living for?

[Michael Bostick]

I was living for everyone around me. Like, people told me that I should do really well in school. People told me that I should be a star rugby player because rugby was the big sport where I grew up. People told me that I had to be popular and be like. Like, society had just kind of ingrained these things in me. And what I wasn't doing was I wasn't being creative and I wasn't hanging around with people. That really energized me. And it's not until I was intentional about surrounding myself with people that inspired me that I started to learn about the people that made me feel more alive, and then when I made the bucket list, the things that made me feel more alive. So if I look back, for me, these feelings of depression came from just not moving towards the life that I wanted, was moving towards the life that.

[Lauren Everts]

I thought is, like, a great example. The child that is pressured by the parents to be a doctor or lawyer, then they become the doctor or lawyer, and then they hate the profession. They're miserable. Even though on paper, everyone's like, hey, you're making a lot of money and you're a doctor and you're a lawyer, and what's the problem? Problem here?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, that's it exactly. Yeah, you should be happy. It makes sense. Like, everything adds up. But why? Why are you not happy? Why are you unhappy? Or. They love to play hockey. And then the parents are like, okay, go, go, go. They're pushed. They're pushed to this highest level, and then the joy comes. Falls out of. Of the actual act of doing it, and then they're. They feel this unhappiness.

[Ben Nemton]

I find this in real, real life too. Like, when even not with just parents, I have, like, friends that feel like they need to. Or this entrepreneur. That's such, like, a hot word right now. They feel like they need to be an entrepreneur, but at their core, they're just. They're not. And they don't want to be doing it, but they're just doing it because it looks good on Instagram or because it's a talking point at dinner or whatever it is. And what I've realized is, like, if you're just doing it because you think that's, like, the hot button word and it's cool to post or whatever, that's not fulfilling. Either. I feel like it also happens not just from parents.

[Michael Bostick]

Absolutely. Yeah. Honestly, this is, I think, the biggest challenge we have as human beings because if you look at the biggest regret that people have on their deathbed, 76% of people on their deathbed, their number one regret is, I wish I would have lived for me, not the life others wanted for me or the life that was expected of me. So this is the biggest problem we are facing as human beings because that's the number one regret we have. So how can you reverse engineer your life so you don't have that regret? Well, that means first stopping to think about and check in and figure out, like, what do I want? And the problem is, like, most people and me included, I have no idea. I didn't know what I wanted. And so what happened was this list became really a list of experiments that. That allowed me to try different things and start to understand what were these things that gave me energy, and then I followed that energy and that led me to LA from Victoria, where we made a TV show that led me to speaking where I'm. What I'm doing right now led me to the book. But all of these things were just following this momentum or this enthusiasm and this energy. And I think that's where purpose and fulfillment comes to, is the pursuit of that which. Which. Which always changes why. Which is why you're always changing your. Your goals. But, you know, I think sometimes we don't even know that we're living for other people.

[Lauren Everts]

Oh.

[Michael Bostick]

It'S very small. It's hard to.

[Ben Nemton]

You have to leave this in. The pregnant person has sushi rice on the head, which, by the way, you're not supposed to eat sushi when you're pregnant. But I have sushi on my head. Is it on?

[Lauren Everts]

It very much distracts me when you creep up like a leper in the corner. Please, please refrain from creeping up.

[Ben Nemton]

It's like if the leprechaun came out behind me.

[Lauren Everts]

I see you standing back there slowly creeping up.

[Michael Bostick]

All I can think about is like, you know, like, in Japan you can, like, eat sushi off, like, female naked bodies. Yeah. I just think somebody eating sushi off your forehead.

[Ben Nemton]

Taylor doesn't know about that. He's running to Japan. He's booking a ticket. I've seen you speak before, many times on Instagram. And I know that you mentioned it just now. You wrote. So explain it to the audience. You wrote a bucket list and then you went down the bucket list and did it.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So this short version of this, and I'LL try and keep this short. And you jump in and like, no.

[Ben Nemton]

No, no, don't keep it short. We're long form. Go for it.

[Michael Bostick]

Okay, so I'm in university. I'm putting all this pressure on myself to do well. I just made the under 19 national rugby team. And rugby and in the west coast of Canada is like football in the south, like big, big sport. And we're training for the World cup. And at the end of our high school season, I'd missed a game winning kick that we lost the championship. And so leading up to the World Cup, I was like, shit, like, what if I do that again at the World Cup? What if I blow this opportunity? And now you can like imagine, like this meant everything to me. This, this shot that I had to play at the World Cup. And and so I started getting anxiety and I started losing sleep and all of a sudden I couldn't go to school and I was stuck in my car, I couldn't go to class. I drove home, I dropped out. I couldn't go to rugby practice. Like, I was just. I'd never experienced these feelings before and they just started to spiral and spiral and this anxiety was just crippling and I wasn't able to do anything. And so I dropped out of school. I got dropped from the national rugby team and someone who had been a type, lots of friends, really social, all of a sudden I couldn't leave my house. So I would just go and my parents would push me out the door to do a 15 minute walk. And so these feelings lasted for a few months. And ultimately there were many things that contributed to me coming out of these feelings. Right. One was I finally talked with a therapist and I started to understand what was going on. But one of the big things that happened was I realized that some of my friends energized me and some took energy from me. And I thought, well, by necessity I need to be around people that inspire me to get me out of this slump. And there was one kid that was inspiring and he was a filmmaker that lived around the corner. And I thought, man, secretly I wanted to make a movie. And I'd never talked about it. And so I called this kid up out of the blue and we gathered two other friends and we started talking about making this film. We had no idea what it was going to be about, but we thought, let's just make a documentary this summer about something. And Johnny had been assigned a poem in English class called the Buried Life. And it was an old 150-year-old poem. And it talked about how the day to day buries what we really want to do. And we have these moments when we're inspired to go after those things, but life gets in the way, so we push them and we just never do these things. So our dreams kind of get buried and that's how we felt. And so we thought, well, let's make a list of all of our buried dreams that we've never tried to go after. And let's just go on a road trip for two weeks and let's go after these dreams and let's help other people achieve their dreams. Because like, we're not going to accomplish any of these things on our own. We're going to need the help of other people. So we'll just go on a two week road trip to tackle our bucket list and help other people. This is back in 2006, so it was like before social media. We, we're like beg, borrow, borrowing and stealing to get this thing off the ground. We make a website, we borrow an old rv, we buy a camera on ebay, we're fundraising in our hometown to save money so we can pay for gas. And we hit the road for this two week road trip. And as soon as we started to travel, it sort of gets in the local news and people start hearing about it. And then emails start to come in through our website and they're like, I saw your list, I can help you do that. You want to get up on a hot air balloon? My friend can help you out. You want to ride a bull? My uncle owns a bull ranch. And then people started sending us their dreams, asking for our help. And so we had, we did not expect this response. And so we thought, well, I guess we should keep doing this. We were having a lot of fun.

[Lauren Everts]

And pause for a second. Were those real dreams you had and like, what else was on that list?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, I mean, it was when we wrote the list, there was two rules. You had to pretend you had $100 million in your bank, and you had to pretend you could do anything. So it was everything from grow a mustache, plant a tree to make a TV show, go to space, play basketball with Obama. Well, this is before Obama, so that wasn't on the list yet. But that was one of them, you know, like pay off our parents mortgage to sit with Oprah, write a New York Times bestseller. Just the craziest, wildest dreams we could ever think of. We wrote them down and we thought, we're gonna go out and we're gonna try and do as many as we can in two weeks.

[Ben Nemton]

So what happened?

[Michael Bostick]

So it hit this chord. People really resonated with this idea. And we noticed people started to go after their dreams because we were going after ours and they were offering us help. And so we thought, well, let's just keep doing this. And so we went back to school, we fundraised throughout the school year. We saved up money, we got sponsors on board, we bought an old transit bus so that the next summer we could go for a longer tour. And so this two week road trip lasts like 10 years. We just keep doing it in the summers. And ultimately one of the dreams was to make a TV show. And so we took the footage we've been filming for the documentary, we edited a pilot, we drove down to LA and we ended up selling it to MTV three years later. And that's what's brought us down to la. And we did a show with the same idea of doing something on our list and helping someone else do something on theirs. And so it's sort of taken us on this wild adventure. But along the way, in reflection, as I look back, what it really was, when I wrote my list, it was the first time that I had declared or identified what I truly wanted. I just hadn't done that yet in my life. And it started this process of kind of living intentionally because we started to go after these things that we had written down and then we started to talk about it and then people started to help us. And that led us down this path of sort of living a life that was a little more authentic. And like, yeah, it started out as just kind of a laugh, but it actually led into sort of really like this journey of self discovery.

[Ben Nemton]

First of all, you have to tell us if you did the World Cup.

[Michael Bostick]

No, I never played in the World Cup.

[Ben Nemton]

You never did it?

[Michael Bostick]

No. But you know what's interesting, what I realized is that I didn't really love rugby that much. I was doing it because it was the cool thing to do.

[Ben Nemton]

What a great thing to realize though, and to be able to. Maybe the anxiety was coming all from that. I think so. I have heard though, rugby players have great asses.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, they do. I can't show it cause I'm sitting on it. But I don't have one anymore. Cause I don't play anymore.

[Lauren Everts]

But yeah, that's what our trainer was pulling up men's males rugby asses to show me. And she said, michael, you to get to this. And I was just sitting there looking at a lot of male asses and I was like, well, Michael, you.

[Ben Nemton]

You have a great rugby.

[Lauren Everts]

I don't know how we got here, but I was just. That's right.

[Ben Nemton]

What. What are things that you have personally checked off your own list based upon this whole concept? Some things that the audience would be.

[Michael Bostick]

Interested in hearing everything from. We survived on a deserted island without any training of survival skills. We just kind of got pushed off of a boat to swim to an island and had to fend for ourselves.

[Lauren Everts]

For how long?

[Michael Bostick]

It was about.

[Lauren Everts]

Because you said, like an hour. I'd be like, all right.

[Michael Bostick]

No, it was like three, four days.

[Ben Nemton]

That's a long time.

[Michael Bostick]

It was three, four days ago.

[Ben Nemton]

I wouldn't have survived.

[Michael Bostick]

We lived off coconuts. You can actually live off coconuts for a long time.

[Lauren Everts]

Yeah, that's.

[Ben Nemton]

Can you imagine complaints for me?

[Michael Bostick]

We had to. So, okay, we could. We. We said we. You could bring one thing, but it can't be fire or food.

[Ben Nemton]

Okay.

[Michael Bostick]

So I brought a headlamp so you could see at night. Johnny brought a pot so that we could boil and distill water, but we had to make fire.

[Ben Nemton]

Okay.

[Michael Bostick]

Dave brought a mask and snorkel because he thought he was going to spearfish fish, but he didn't.

[Ben Nemton]

That was an image that he had in his head from, like, Little Mermaid.

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly. And then Duncan brought a machete, which was key to open the coconuts.

[Ben Nemton]

Ah, the machete is the smart one, huh?

[Michael Bostick]

Very smart. Yeah, because that's what we lived off.

[Lauren Everts]

How about a rifle?

[Ben Nemton]

You can't bring a rifle.

[Lauren Everts]

Why not? You could shoot the coconuts over. You can shoot animals. I'm not worried about seeing the dirt. I'd blast away.

[Ben Nemton]

No, that's.

[Michael Bostick]

Sorry. You gotta bring a lot of ammo.

[Ben Nemton]

You can't bring it.

[Lauren Everts]

You can't bring the ammo with it.

[Michael Bostick]

Oh, you know what we did, though? Because it kind of got Lord of the Flies because we started to get a little squirrely after the third day, and we were just eating coconuts and we needed something, and we couldn't start fire with a stick. But what we realized is the top of the pot was glass, and we could use it as a magnifying glass. And we propped it up on sticks, and the husks of the coconut were really flammable, so we started a fire that way. And then one of the guys, Duncan, he went and killed a seabird, and we ate it. After we roasted on the fire. It was like the most primal thing I've ever done.

[Ben Nemton]

How did you know to get picked.

[Lauren Everts]

Up for an hour, kill the bird.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So we had. So this we did with. When we did the MTV show.

[Ben Nemton]

Okay.

[Michael Bostick]

So we had a rule with production where they would come in the morning, they'd film, and then they'd leave. We had walkies if there was an emergency during the night, and then we filmed the rest. Got it via flip cam.

[Ben Nemton]

And so you lasted three to four days.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah.

[Ben Nemton]

And what are other things that you did that were on this list?

[Michael Bostick]

I tried to. One of the list items was to ask out the girl, your dreams. So I tried to. This was. Keep in mind, this is back in the Transformers days when Megan Fox was like, the it girl. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna ask about Megan Fox. So it was the second Transformers movie, and it was the premiere. And so we knew she was gonna be there, so we snuck onto the red carpet. And so what I've learned is, like, if you wanna sneak in anywhere, one, if you wear all black with a walkie talkie and a clipboard, you can walk in the back of any venue, just sort of. And also, if there's a press, if it's a premiere or something, you know, if you're sneaky and you have a camera and a microphone, you can kind of get in a couple different places. And so I was able to get into the red carpet, and there's all these slots on the red carpet for the different outlets, like Access Hollywood right inside. And so we stepped into this slot, and luckily they didn't show up. So I was just waiting as Megan Fox was coming down the red carpet, and she got in front of me, and I started talking with her. And I didn't ask her out, and she got pulled off by her publicist before I could ask her out. So I failed at that. But the next time that my friend Duncan did it, he was like, okay, I'm gonna ask out Taylor Swift. And we're like, okay, how are we gonna ask out Taylor Swift? Well, we know she's gonna be at the CMT Awards. So we dress up Duncan like a fake country music star named Boone Macaw, all in white. And we get this white horse and chariot. And we tell our followers to meet us at the corner of where the CMT entrance was. And we gave them, like, shirts that say, I heart Boone. Fake covers of country music magazine with his face on it. And we say, when you see the white horse coming down, go nuts. And I'm walking, of course, with my black and the walkie talkie and the clipboard, I'm like his manager. And we we also had, like, fake, like, wigs and everything so no one could notice us. And we roll up to the front of the CMT's and the police open the barricade because they're like, this crowd's going nuts, and there's this horse and chariot. Like, clearly this is somebody. We go all the way up to the red carpet.

[Lauren Everts]

Great security.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. And they stop us at the red carpet because they recognize one of us. And so then we dress up Duncan in all in black with the clipboard. We're able to go up to the desk at the cmt, sort of like the backstage area, and sort of pretend that we were on Kid Rock's production crew. We get a pass, and he goes in and he walks right up to Taylor Swift, who's sitting in the front row during a TV break, passes her a note and says, hey, it took me a while to get here. I just wanted to give you this. And then the note was sort of an explanation of how he had gotten in and asking her out for a date. And she texted back and they went on two dates.

[Lauren Everts]

No way.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So it actually 50% success rate for that list item.

[Ben Nemton]

So she liked him. Kind of two dates.

[Michael Bostick]

Kind of. Yeah. Two dates. Not bad.

[Ben Nemton]

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have given a guy another date if I didn't like him.

[Michael Bostick]

You're right. There you go. Yeah. So that's sort of a success. We like. And then we would do these, like, so we would help other people with their dreams. And those became kind of like the most meaningful part of this, like, whole journey. Because we started to realize that, like, when you help someone do something that means so much to them, you immediately connect with them.

[Ben Nemton]

Well, it's what Oprah did.

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly.

[Ben Nemton]

Oprah helped Dr. Phil. She helped Dr. Oz. She helped a lot of people come up with her. And that's a different feeling. I think that's a different. It's almost a different added layer of purpose.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. I think it resonates in a different way. And you start to feel like. I mean, talk about fulfillment. You start to just. There's like a different vibration when you do that.

[Ben Nemton]

What's the common thing that you see on people's bucket list? Because you've seen so many people's, like, inner dreams, what's the thing that you see standing out the most?

[Michael Bostick]

If you really, like, boil it down, a lot of times it's sort of surface level things and achievements. But when you start to really get into deeper conversations with people and you start to look at it's consistent with the five regrets of the dying, basically. So the top five regrets of the dying are I wish I would have stayed in contact with friends. I wish I would have let myself be happy. I wish I would have worked less. I wish I would have lived. For me, there's one other one, but I can't remember. So a lot of times the goals are about telling people how they really feel. They're about relationships. Spending more time with the people that really mean like that are really important to them. And so that is what I think ultimately your list comes down to are those things that you end up not keeping top of mind. So you sort of push them, but you don't realize that actually that's going to be the thing you're going to regret at the end of your life. And so I think it's the smaller sort of goals that end up being the most meaningful when it comes to relationships and those types of things.

[Ben Nemton]

What are the people who are checking major accomplishments and moments off their list doing differently than people that aren't?

[Michael Bostick]

What people have wrong is that they're waiting to feel ready, right?

[Ben Nemton]

It's a forever student.

[Michael Bostick]

And you're going to be waiting your whole life, right? So you. You want to take action in the face of not being ready, in the face of fear, because at the very least, you're going to grow. So this fear that we have, there's two fears that stop us. The fear of what other people think or the fear of failure. And so if you really break down those two fears, the fear of what other people think, I mean, these are common fears. I actually look at these as, like, taxes that you have to pay to achieve anything that means something to you. And these fears are actually good. These are markers that this thing you're about to do is meaningful because you're gonna have to put yourself on the line. You're gonna have to be vulnerable. That's where that fear stems from. So this fear of what other people think, it's actually what it really is, is you pretending that people are thinking about you when they're probably not. Like, most people are not thinking about you as much as you think they are. They're busy worried about what other people are thinking about them. So usually this fear of what other people think is slightly made up. And the fear of failure, we all have this, this fear. But this, this fear, if you think about it this way, like, if I'm afraid to go after my goal or I'm waiting for the perfect time, unfortunately I failed because I did not achieve my goal. So at least when I try and I fail, what I learned from that outweighs any potential hit to my reputation. And so I think people that achieve big goals, they move in the face of that fear because they know that doesn't go away. And they know that it's just part and parcel with doing the thing and they become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Right. Like, if you think about your growth, right, There were these steps that you took where you actually probably didn't even know how you were gonna do it, but you were just like, we're just gonna, we're gonna do this.

[Lauren Everts]

But still like 75% of the time.

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly.

[Lauren Everts]

I'm not kidding.

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly. And that's such an important piece for people to know because they look up to you and they're like, oh, well, they figured it out. But if you think about, like when you went from like blog to podcast or for everything that you're building, you still have to continue to take those leaps and you have no idea. But people see you and they're like, no, they're better than me, they're smarter than me. They know how to do this.

[Lauren Everts]

If you follow that thread, to be honest, and I've said this so many times on the show, we were never qualified from a credentialed or learning standpoint to talk on a mic. I was never qualified to do anything in media. I didn't study it, ever, didn't read any books on it, didn't do anything on it. We were never qualified to do, to build product, business. Lauren and I both didn't study anything to do with that. But the common denominator is we started doing the things. And as you start doing the things, you have to figure out and listen, you have to read and you have to learn. And also the second part of that is both of us, fortunately, were never worried about the criticism or what people thought about it. My base, like my perspective on anything is, first, nobody's thinking about me. And second, when they do start thinking about me, they're gonna start thinking bad things about me. And that doesn't bother meaning, like, they're not mean about it, but they're just gonna be like, why is he doing that? Or how does that make sense? Or that was a mess. Like most people do that until you get to the end of something and it proves out anyway. But during the process, any process driven part, you're always gonna have the naysayers. You really don't get any credit until the thing.

[Ben Nemton]

It's funny when you say that we're not qualified because I'm so delusional that I tricked myself, that I am qualified. When you say that, I love.

[Lauren Everts]

That's the other thing.

[Ben Nemton]

And listen, you almost have to be delusional and have that bravado and confidence in yourself because no one's gonna do it for you and you really have to do it for yourself.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, it's both. In fact, it can be either. Or you can either not give a fuck and just do it and not care about what other people think, or you can have the self belief that you know you're gonna do it so you're gonna prove everyone that this is, you know, this is gonna work either way. You just have to do it and learn as you go.

[Lauren Everts]

I mean, I care very much what people think, while at the same time I also know I can do nothing to change the way they think during that product. Like, they're going like, if some, if you go and you launch any kind of endeavor, no matter what, you're going to get some critics and some naysayers and some people that say you're crazy. And I know personally I can't change that thought process. So it's a matter of just becoming peaceful and okay with the fact that you're going to have those people regardless. Does that make sense?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like a quiet confidence in yourself and what you're doing and not worrying about what other people think at the end of the day because it's inevitable that people are going to look like sometimes when it's just easier and it makes us feel a little bit better if we see someone doing something and we make up a story about why we're not doing that. Right. And so I think at the end of the day, it's best to just act and learn along the way. And that's how you ultimately build that confidence, is because the reason why you can continue to make these leaps is because you've proved to yourself that you've done it in the past in a different way. But you, you know, you've taken these jumps. So you, you know that. Okay, I know it's not going to be easy. Like, I know it's going to take a lot of work, but if I put in the work, I know that I can get there.

[Ben Nemton]

Everyone I know uses Nutrafol. I cannot tell you how many people have said that it really helps with hair thinning, shedding and hair issues. I know so many celebrity hairstylists who have talked about it. I've had friends, influencers, celebrities all say they love Nutrafol because it really has a proactive approach and targets the root causes. I've seen that my hair shedding issues have essentially gone away. So what I noticed is postpartum with my first baby is I would notice hair shedding on like the shower or my silk pillowcase. And now I don't get that at all. And I think I've just really strengthened my hair. And a big part of that is supplementation. I also like to do scalp massage. I am huge on micro needling for the scalp. I use a great hair oil and I don't wash my hair a lot and I went brunette. So the combination has just been great. You may have heard of Nutrafol's hair growth supplements and wondered do they actually work? And obviously that's a fair question. Many hair supplements over promise and under deliver. But Nutrafol is different. As the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand, it's trusted by over 1.5 million people and it's clinically tested to deliver real results in just three to six months. This summer, stop worrying about your hair and start making memories. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. When you go to nutrafool.com and enter promo code Skinnyhair, find out why Nutrafol is the best selling hair growth supplement [e-mail] spelled n u t r a f o l.com promo code skinny hair that's nutrafol.com promo code skinny Hair all.

[Lauren Everts]

Right everybody, listen up. Big news. Branch Basics, one of our all time favorite cleaning brands is now available at over 600 Target stores nationwide and on target.com that's right, you can now pick them up during your regular Target run. Lauren and I have been huge fans of Branch Basics. We've had the founder of Branch Basics on this podcast twice. We've been longtime partners and that is because it makes all the sense in the world to clean your house with better for you cleaning supplies. You no longer need to use 80 different products with all these harmful chemicals, hormone disruptors, fragrances, they're not necessary. They don't do the job better and they wreak havoc on our systems. Our loved one systems, our pet systems, all of us. This is why Lauren and I could not be bigger fans of Branch Basics. From countertops to bathrooms, even tough stains. Branch Basics all Purpose Cleaner from Bathroom Cleaner and their new stain remover Tackle It All. Plus they're gentle on sensitive skin and safe for babies and pets. This all started when their founders realized how much better they felt when they removed toxic products from their homes. We can attest to this as well. Ever since we made the switch to Branch Basics, we have not looked back and to me it just makes complete sense. Why would you use chemical cleaning supplies when you can use Branch Basics that does the same thing? Cleans just as effectively but without any harmful chemicals, hormone disruptors or artificial fragrances. So if you're tired of toxic chemicals lingering in your home, it's time to make the switch. You can grab Branch Basics products now at Target. Find their concentrate all purpose cleaner, bathroom cleaner and stain remover right on the shelves. Trust me, your home and your health will thank you. So shop branch basics in 600 plus target stores nationwide or target.com you can also use our code skinny15 to get 15% off at branchbasics.com skinny15 again skinny15 for 15 off at branchbasics.com Skinny15.

[Ben Nemton]

You know what I love for kids? I love to rebrand things. So I have candy water which is mango aminos, I have cookie water which is coconut electrolytes, and I have cookies for breakfast which is purely Elizabeth's granolas. If you have not tried their delicious granola with crunchy clusters, ancient grains and superfoods, you are missing out. First of all, you cannot sleep on their cookie granola. It is so good. My kids literally think they're eating like the biggest treat in the world. It's certified USDA organic, gluten free, vegan, non gmo, project verified. It just tastes like you're eating a chocolate chip cookie. They also have other flavors, of course, like chocolate, sea salt, blueberry, hemp, vanilla, almond butter, and of course their original ancient green granola, which I like to add raw honey to. My kids go crazy for this and I love it as a snack too. I keep it in the office. It's absolutely delicious. So if you're looking for a little rebrand for your kids and you want to give them something sweet that they'll think is a total treat, you have to try Purely Elizabeth. Visit purely Elizabeth.com use code skinny at checkout. You get 20% off purely Elizabeth. Taste the obsession. We have a friend shout out to Sean Adler. We have a friend that went to high school with us. I think he was working in banking and he came up with this idea called Nana hats. And essentially what it is is banana hats for bananas. Because if you don't have a banana hat, it's called a Nana Hat on top of your banana, it goes brown quicker. And when he brought up the idea, I'm sure. I'm just gonna speak on his behalf, people like, they were like little faces.

[Lauren Everts]

That you put on the top of his bananas. What are you doing?

[Ben Nemton]

I don't know if that's gonna work, whatever. But he ended up on Shark Tank.

[Lauren Everts]

And they invested in him.

[Ben Nemton]

And they invested in him. And by the way, those Neanderthals look her. Lt's mom had them. It's a great stocking stuffer. Everyone should buy it. If you can use it on the tip of your penis and hello, Sean. But Taylor does.

[Lauren Everts]

But imagine. Imagine the pitches and the conversations and the side eye rolls and the confusion when he was out there doing this and.

[Ben Nemton]

But it's actually a great idea. It preserves your bananas. Who doesn't want to preserve their bananas?

[Michael Bostick]

But you just. I think the important piece of this is that you have to know that no and failure is not part of the journey. It is the journey. It absolutely is. The process is getting through those. And you know, what we've learned is that you can get 1 no, 2 nos, 5 nos, 100 no's. Because sometimes you're actually just looking for one yes, right? And so you're not done until you get your yes. So the nos, you're just getting closer to the yes. The more no's you get.

[Ben Nemton]

If you're getting too many yeses, too, that's not. To me, it's not innovative enough. Like, I like the no's. I get off on the nose. I expect the nose. Sometimes it's a compass to tell you that you're onto something that maybe people aren't seeing.

[Lauren Everts]

So, Ben, when people come to you and they're asking you how they can get started, and we've kind of shared some things, but, like, what do you tell the majority of people that come to you? Say, hey, I'm stuck. I can't get started.

[Michael Bostick]

So if they have no idea what they want to do, or even if.

[Lauren Everts]

They have the idea and they just aren't doing it.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So let's just start from not having the idea, because some people don't have the idea. And then we can move from there. So the first thing is the reason why I like writing your goals down, writing your list, is because it first and foremost forces you to slow down, to think about what is important to you, and you're doing it by yourself. So you're really reflecting on what are these things that I truly want? And now when I've Done this with people. Like, I just did the list writing workshop yesterday in Nashville, and a question was like, what if I can't even think about one? Like, sometimes you can't think about anything that you want to do. And also that's totally normal. So my advice for if you feel totally stuck with even beginning is try not to think, but, like, listen to your body or think about or follow feelings. So what are you curious about? Right? Or what excites you when you think about it? So if you think about, like a trip that maybe you planned and it's in like three months, and just the thought of that trip, you just get excited thinking about it. We actually get more value, more happiness out of looking forward to a trip than we do a trip because we get that feeling of excitement. And then the trip sometimes doesn't, like, hit our expectations. But that's the excitement you're looking for when you're thinking about these things. And also take the pressure off this thing that you want to do, being your full purpose or solving this big problem for yourself. Think about your list as a list of experiments that you're just going to try to see if they bring you that sense of fulfillment or give you energy again. Following feelings make you feel more alive, make you feel more like yourself. So the, the mindset when you go into starting to think about writing your goals is okay, first, don't listen to your head as much. Follow feelings. Imagine you have all the money in the world. If you could do anything, what would you do? And that's a good place to start. So then you write your goals down. And what I would suggest is that I like a process when I'm doing things? So when I made the bucket list journal, it was, how can you reflect your holistic self when you're writing your list so you don't miss these things that you might regret at the end of your life. And so that is looking at the 10 life categories, and there's the 10 life categories are travel and adventure. You've got your relationship goals, professional goals. You've got financial goals, material goals, creative, mental health, physical health. And so the reason why I have these 10 categories, or I like to think about them, is, is it's, it's kind of nice to sort of spark some ideas of what these things might be like. If you think about relationships, you're like, okay, what are the relationships that are important to me that I want to invest in? Let's, let's write those down. And so what you're doing is you're sort of creating a map of like your whole, your true self through the list.

[Ben Nemton]

So let me ask you, Michael and Taylor, this. What is. What is one thing that's really important to you right now on your bucket list? And you go first.

[Michael Bostick]

Mine is make a movie.

[Ben Nemton]

Make a movie?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. Like finish the documentary that we started 20 years ago.

[Ben Nemton]

You'll check that. What's yours?

[Lauren Everts]

What's one thing?

[Ben Nemton]

Taylor. I gotta think of yours too.

[Lauren Everts]

On a pretty good track right now.

[Ben Nemton]

Taylor's is a gang bang, I think. No, it's not. Write a movie night. It's so fucking funny.

[Michael Bostick]

Or maybe it's a porno because it's a movie about a double blowjob.

[Ben Nemton]

The biggest thing I've ever heard. Or write a movie. I'm actually curious to know what's on your bucket list.

[Lauren Everts]

I think I'm gonna go for four kids. I think I'm gonna go for the fourth. As you're sitting there pregnant.

[Ben Nemton]

Oh my God. I feel like that's rejection onto me.

[Michael Bostick]

What about the. Is that after the two dogs?

[Lauren Everts]

No, the dogs aren't coming.

[Ben Nemton]

The dogs are coming. Are you kidding? I'm using that as a negotiation.

[Lauren Everts]

You know what though? I was thinking about?

[Ben Nemton]

His bucket list is for me to have another kid while I'm crowning. Unfair.

[Lauren Everts]

I know this sounds.

[Ben Nemton]

That should be like against the rules. Cause that's something I have to do to fulfill his bucket list. This is fucked up. He wants me to do something for him to check off his bucket list, you know?

[Michael Bostick]

Well, maybe that means you're his accountability buddy in this.

[Ben Nemton]

I'm gonna call it more than an accountability partner.

[Lauren Everts]

I mean, here's like. As I've listened to you talk and as I've about this more and more recently and as we've had different conversations this week, like I realized about myself a long time ago I'm a very goal oriented person. But the difficulty with me is that I will keep pushing the goalpost forward. And that was a problem in my life for a long time. But now I just realize that's always gonna happen. And I really actually just enjoy that process of going through that goal that. Does that make sense?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So that's super important. Cause remember how I said the definition of happiness is the feeling you have when you are moving toward your potential? But I didn't say the definition of happiness is a feeling you have when you reach your potential.

[Ben Nemton]

Yeah.

[Michael Bostick]

Because you don't reach your potential.

[Lauren Everts]

Yes.

[Michael Bostick]

So like how many.

[Ben Nemton]

It's moving.

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly. It keeps moving. And if you Think like reaching your goals does not make you happy.

[Lauren Everts]

Yeah, I mean, so to take it further, and I was thinking about what's my bucket list I've done.

[Ben Nemton]

It's going to turn into a counseling session.

[Lauren Everts]

I've done a lot of things that I would say were on the bucket list. And as I thought, as I get older in life, I'm like, I've done like, there's not like the thrills and all the things I've done. The hot air balloon, I've jumped out of a plane, I've been on great.

[Ben Nemton]

Trips with the 10 out of 10. The girl of his dreams, he asked me out. I said yes after 10 years.

[Lauren Everts]

But what I realized is like, I just, I like the feeling of moving, like there's. Okay. So what I would say is I've experienced success in my life material, financially, relationship wise. And I've always been disappointed with the end. Not that I'm not excited that I'm get to the end, but I've always looking back, it's the process, like you don't, you don't get to the end and like, ah, I made it and I'm done and I feel great now. As a matter of fact, a lot of times you get to the end and the exact opposite happens.

[Ben Nemton]

It's like getting to the moon as an astronaut. That's exactly what Ben's saying.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. Like, I mean, you know what a good example is the Olympics, right?

[Ben Nemton]

Yes.

[Michael Bostick]

And you think about that post Olympic depression you get, you spend four years like leading up to this moment and even when you win it, there's a crash afterwards because you don't have that purpose anymore. And it's that purpose of moving toward that moment that gives you that fulfillment. If you say I want to make a million dollars, you make it to a million dollars. Guess what? You want to make 2 million. Right. We need to be in action. We are not happy as human beings being stagnant. So as long as we are moving towards that potential. And that's why, as you said, as you get older, it's, it changes. And by the way, like me 10 years ago, I wanted the big accomplishments and I'm happy that I went and I did that. But the reason why you want to continue this practice is because you're changing. Therefore your list, your goals, your dreams will also change. And it's like now five kids, no four kids, no two dogs.

[Lauren Everts]

There's that famous. And I'm sure you've seen this, there's like that Reddit thread and I'M gonna butcher. But I think if you Google, like, Reddit founder sold company depressed. Like, I'm just giving the process.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lauren Everts]

There's this founder, and I can't remember off the top of my head who.

[Michael Bostick]

It was Serena. It's Serena's husband, isn't it? The founder of Reddit. Anyways, keep it going.

[Lauren Everts]

But he sold a company, made a shitload of money, had all the big achievements that everybody glamorizes and glorifies on paper. And at the end of it, he's like, I'm depressed and I'm not happy, and I don't know why. I've done all the things, I made all the money and I'm not happy.

[Michael Bostick]

Here's a great example, okay? Someone, they build a company, they sell it, and then they buy it back because they want to keep going. People retire, they can't. They don't have a sense of purpose. People, we put so much of our identity into our work. We reach the end, we drop off a cliff. We haven't spent any time focusing on purpose outside of work, and all of a sudden we fall off a cliff. We don't have that purpose. What do you do? Come out of retirement, you start working again. So, you know, this, I feel like, is this nugget that we forget about, which is, you know, the constant pursuit of moving towards our authentic self is really what it is like, our who? And this is the buried life. This is the same thing the fucking poem was talking about 175 years ago, which was not our true buried life, right? We were overwhelmed by the day to day, and we weren't living in that true original course, which is a line from the poem, tracking our true original course. So our job as human beings is to track our true original course, right? And whatever we can do to make that happen, whatever we can do to stay on course and not listen to other people, right? And not do what we think we should do, but actually stay tapped into who we are and what will make us happy. Because honestly, if we do what we love, what makes us most alive, then we unlock the gifts that only we have, and then we unlock our greatest impact. If you guys wouldn't have listened to that, you wouldn't be having the impact. You'd be an executive at some company, right? You might have started some company or worked somewhere else, but you, the reason you are making your impact is because you listen to that voice and most people don't.

[Ben Nemton]

It's funny because if you, if you, If I were to like, leave my kids with a line of advice. You just articulated it really well. I would tell them, and I wrote this down to track your original course.

[Lauren Everts]

It's like, why are so important? Why are so many successful people so unhappy? And this is likely one of the core reasons why, right? It's like you just, you're just on this hamster wheel of achievement without any kind of fulfillment whatsoever. And you're doing it for reasons that aren't even necessarily always for you.

[Ben Nemton]

You, you have worked with elite athletes and Fortune 500 leaders. What do they all have in common when it comes to burnout?

[Michael Bostick]

I mean, they're all pretty much burnt out. I mean, it's like the, it's be. It's like you said, Michael, like we were on this hamster wheel and we get caught up in this grind that is more, more, more, more, more. It doesn't matter what we achieved last year. We need to do better this year. And so we forget about. And we over index on that and we forget about these other aspects of our, of our life which ultimately enable, like, which bring this fulfillment, right? So it's a trap. And I get caught up in it all the time. All the time. Because we get validation for being successful. We get validation for the hard work that we put in. And it's not until our older years, like, if we talk to all these folks that are in their last leg of their life or on their deathbed, one of the top five regrets to dying is, I wish I would have stayed in contact with friends. Like, how messed up is that? That is such an easy problem to solve. That's a phone call. That's setting a trip. That is a top five regret. So telling people how we really feel, right? That's just having the courage to express what we want, like how we feel to people. All those are pretty heartbreaking feelings. But nothing is as heartbreaking as laying on your deathbed and feeling this regret of like, oh, damn, I didn't live. For me, I lived my entire life because I thought this was what I was supposed to do. But, but, but it was. It was not my life I was supposed to live.

[Ben Nemton]

How was playing ball with Obama?

[Michael Bostick]

That was a highlight.

[Ben Nemton]

Was it cool? Did you beat him?

[Michael Bostick]

Well, so are you allowed to beat him? You can't really beat him.

[Ben Nemton]

Why I would beat him. Why can't you beat him?

[Michael Bostick]

There's Secret Service there and they're sort of intimidating. But what. Here's what. Okay, so actually what we did was. We actually didn't. It's a Kind of a. So the context is the goal is to play basketball with Obama.

[Ben Nemton]

Okay.

[Michael Bostick]

We don't know anybody in Washington. We drive our purple bus. We had this purple bus to Washington, started asking people on the street if they had any connections to any politicians that could help us. We got nowhere. We. We. We emailed politicians, said, we're in D.C. we're trying to play basketball with the President. We get a few lower level officials to meet with us. We. We find that in those meetings, we can convince them to convince their boss to meet with us. So we meet with their boss. So we get all the way up. We're kind of lobbying in D.C. to try and play basketball. We get a meeting with the Secretary of Transportation of the United States. Okay. And he calls the White House while we're in the room, and he's like, hey, I want you to know, like, I'm meeting with the Buried life gentleman. Not sure how they got in my office, but I assure you they will cause no embarrassment to the President.

[Ben Nemton]

Oh.

[Michael Bostick]

And so we're like, oh, my God, we're in. We get an email from the White House less than an hour later, and it says, thank you for your inquiry. We have reviewed your request, and unfortunately, we cannot arrange a basketball game with the President. So we're like, okay, well, we've got our official no. But we weren't ready to give up because we still knew these secret basketball games happened in Washington with Obama and different politicians. And so we found a man that set up the games for Obama. It was his personal aide, a gentleman named Reggie Love. Yeah, he played basketball at Duke, so he was always on the court when Obama was playing. And we started sending him emails challenging him and the President to a basketball game. So we're like, you and the President versus us tonight, 7:30 at the YMCA. Be there. And then we'd show up at the YMCA in D.C. no President, we do it again. Dear Mr. Love, sorry that we missed yesterday. Same time tonight, be there, fail. Saturday, fail. One week straight we tried this until finally, like, we've even stood outside the White House holding signs. We've done everything we think of, and finally I get a block call. And it's the personality of the President calling me. And he's like, what's this I hear about you wanting to play basketball against the President? And I. And I was like, pull it together. And I told him why we were doing this and why it was important. He said, I like this. I really like this. I think I can make this happen. I just need to Call the press team. They sign off on this. We can do this. I'm sorry. I'm just, like, waiting for the block call to come in. Finally, block call comes in. I say, hello. He says, talk with the press team. It's not going to happen. And so now we're just, like, gutted. And he felt bad. He said, listen, how about this? If you have time tomorrow, swing by the White House. I'll give you a tour, right? So first of all, we're like, if we have time, yes, we have time. So we go to the White House. We rented suits from a high school prom rental store because we didn't know what to wear. And the personality. The president walks us around the West Wing. He shows us the Oval Office, shows us the back. There's a basketball court in the backyard. So perfect court, presidential seal on each hoop. And we're shooting around. And then all we hear is, hey, guys, heard you're in town. Thought the least I could do is shoot a basket with you. And Obama surprises us on the court. So that's how it happened. And it's pretty cool. Right away we forgot, like, he's such a cool guy that you immediately forget he's the president. And we're shooting around with him. We're trying to hit shots he's not hitting. Trash talking. So we didn't play an actual game, but we shot around with him for about 15 minutes.

[Ben Nemton]

I feel like you could check that off the list for sure.

[Michael Bostick]

I think so. Yeah. It was a.

[Ben Nemton]

That's a check.

[Michael Bostick]

It was a check.

[Ben Nemton]

How was the beer with Prince Harry?

[Michael Bostick]

That was a good one, too. That was actually very easy. Some of these things you just ask and they say yes.

[Ben Nemton]

So you. How did you ask Prince Harry himself?

[Lauren Everts]

He's like, man, I'm stressed. A lot going on in the press. I could use a beer right now.

[Michael Bostick]

We found the contact to his press office.

[Ben Nemton]

Okay.

[Michael Bostick]

We wrote a letter. We said, we're gonna be in London. At that point, we'd crossed off maybe like 80 or so of the hundred. We said, this is one of them. Is there any way that Prince Harry would. Would help us cross it off and have a beer with us? And they said yes. And we arrived. They arranged a private, like, down there's a bar with like a base sort of basement. It was like a downstairs area that we met him and we hung out and had a beer, and we ended up having dinner with him.

[Ben Nemton]

Is he cool?

[Michael Bostick]

Very cool.

[Lauren Everts]

Yeah, I've heard that about him.

[Michael Bostick]

Very chill, very nice. Both those guys are I would say top shelf, gentlemen.

[Ben Nemton]

And what did you learn from the Big O? When the Big O Interview.

[Lauren Everts]

Bomb with the Big O. Oprah.

[Ben Nemton]

Oh, Michael, keep up. Oh.

[Lauren Everts]

Oh, well. Christ.

[Ben Nemton]

He's the Big O, too. The Big O can mean a lot of things.

[Lauren Everts]

They're both pretty Big O.

[Michael Bostick]

There's a lot of Big Os.

[Ben Nemton]

There's a lot of Big O's.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah.

[Lauren Everts]

Maybe one day somebody referred to me as the Big B. The Big B.

[Michael Bostick]

The Big B with his banana hat. Big B, banana hat. The Big O was. She was. I mean, great. I mean, it was like a. It was so surreal that we were having an interview. We were being interviewed by. By Oprah, considering where this whole thing began, which was like this rickety old RV taking us around the interior of British Columbia in Canada. And to be sitting there sharing the journey was, like, just completely surreal. Completely.

[Ben Nemton]

Was she an incredible interviewer and everything that you wanted?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, yeah. She was a very good interviewer. She was very good. Yeah.

[Ben Nemton]

Okay.

[Michael Bostick]

Big O. I mean, she's the Big O. Or he's the Big O or Michael's the Big B. Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Nemton]

I would rather be referred to as the Big B.

[Lauren Everts]

You will refer to me as the Big B from now on and nothing else.

[Ben Nemton]

Whatever you want. Whatever. Whatever I got.

[Michael Bostick]

Who am I if I am I?

[Lauren Everts]

Yeah, well, no, you're the Big N. Because Big. Your last name's the N, right?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lauren Everts]

And you're the Big B, I guess, as well.

[Ben Nemton]

Because I don't want to be the Big B right now, Michael. Thank you.

[Lauren Everts]

Because you called.

[Ben Nemton]

I don't want to be the big Oprah's O.

[Lauren Everts]

The Big O. So she'd be the big Oprah's the.

[Ben Nemton]

Big W. Michael was told to compliment my outfit yesterday.

[Michael Bostick]

I think we're on a summit, guys.

[Ben Nemton]

It was silver. And he said, oh, Lauren. Like he was supposed to give me a compliment. And he said, oh, Lauren looks like a big, sparkly disco ball.

[Lauren Everts]

No, I didn't say ball. I said disco. Because she was wearing a flashy thing. Playback.

[Ben Nemton]

You said ball.

[Lauren Everts]

I did not say ball.

[Ben Nemton]

You said ball. Else you just added.

[Lauren Everts]

I did not say ball. I swear to God. Play back the tape. I said disco. Sparkly.

[Ben Nemton]

I said ball.

[Michael Bostick]

It seems like you're outvoted on this one. I'm gonna take the.

[Ben Nemton]

Take my big L's on this one.

[Lauren Everts]

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[Ben Nemton]

For 39.99 I personally spend 9 hours in my bed. I love getting into bed with my Kindle with my red light and relaxing. And that's why I take my sheets very very serious. Like I don't mess around. Bull and Branch sent me their sheets and that quiets all the noise. Basically it wraps you in softness that's so extraordinary. Your body and mind effortlessly drift to sleep. So they have these signature sheets. They are made with the finest 100% organic cotton, which I love organic cotton because you're breathing it in all night. They're buttery, they're breathable and they're softer with every wash. They even have a 30 night guarantee which is wild. That's how much they believe in their sheets. If you're looking for quality and you also just want to upgrade the way you sleep, I'm telling you, get some red light, get a chimes machine and get some bull and branch sheets. There's a waffle blanket that I actually like built upon with my guest room. So I did the whole bed up and then I put their waffle blanket on top and it adds a lot of texture. You can go on and check out all their different blankets, duvets, quilts, everything made with airy and breathable designs is available to you. Feel the difference in extraordinary nights sleep can make with bowl and branch. Get 15 off plus free shipping on your first set of [e-mail] skinny that's Bolenbranch B O L L A N D branch.com skinny and you save 15% exclusions apply. See site for details.

[Lauren Everts]

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[Ben Nemton]

How is my skin? You know what? This sunscreen, it's caffeinated, it's mineral, and it does not pile under makeup. I applied it today with a damp beauty blender before I got my glam done and it lays so nicely under like a foundation or a concealer. But here's the thing that I like the most about it. So when I'm off work and when I don't have to do podcasts or Instagrams or content or I just can just be comfortable, I can wear this caffeinated sunscreen and I still get a really nice tint and a protection. And it looks like my skin is all one even tone, which is nice without all the makeup. It's not like a foundation. It's. It's like the caffeine tightens your skin. It gives you a nice even tone and it just gives you a little bit of color. So what I like about this sunscreen is the versatility. So you can wear it when you're off and you're running around and you're running errands and wear it with nothing over it. Or you can wear it like I'm wearing today right now with foundation and concealer over it. So it works both ways. I will wear this when I'm going to the gym in the morning and just wear it throughout the day with nothing else or I will wear it with a full look. I created the sunscreen because I couldn't find a mineral based sunscreen with caffeine in it. Caffeine tightens the skin, it shrinks the pores and I just like how it lays on the skin. And I mixed it with a mineral sunscreen and then we made it SPF 40. So it's a real treat I think that you guys will absolutely love. Just comes out in a pump, fits in your handbag and it can go through the airport. You can shop [e-mail] and it's the caffeinated SPF. Also, if you're like me and you go through sunscreen Quickly you can subscribe, and the sunscreen will get delivered straight to your door. So you don't have to worry about it. That's shop. Skinnyconfidential.com you mentioned a list writing workshop and you also mentioned off air of giving our audience something tangible that they could apply from this episode. Can you give us some tips on how to do a list writing workshop at home?

[Michael Bostick]

Yes. Okay, so let's do some steps, quick steps. Okay, first, grab a piece of paper. No, don't grab a piece of paper. Grab a notebook. Because this is something you want to keep for a while. So that's why the bucket list journal is a journal. Grab a journal, grab a notebook, and start a fresh page. And just write down stream of consciousness. You know, picture yourself in five years. No, sorry. Picture yourself on your deathbed, okay, Looking back and just ask your future self, what will I be proud of? Like in the next three to five years? What will my future self be proud of me doing in the next three to five years? Okay. And then just think about stuff that you want to do for fun. And you know, you can look at the 10 categories of life if you need prompts, think about relationship goals, physical health goals. But just write down all the things that you might regret not doing if you don't do these things. But do it by yourself. And do this in a quiet space. So now you've written your list, now choose something that you want to pursue. One thing. If you have trouble deciding what that is, imagine that you have a magic lamp and a genie pops out. And genie's like, hey, I'm going to help you do something on your list. But there's a catch. By helping you achieve this goal, you can't do anything else you wrote down. So there's your most important list item. If you want to go after that one. You choose one thing. Next, write three things you can do in the next 48 hours. Three 48 hour action items. The simplest things, the easiest things that you can do. Because what we are trying to do is we're trying to create inspiration through action, right? So action compounds like interest. Just like small deposits into a compounding interest account, over time, it grows small actions over time, you see the results. So the easiest, smallest things. And sometimes we get stuck, we think like, oh, I gotta, I gotta make this huge leap towards this thing. No, when you go to the gym, you don't come out and you, you're not bigger. In fact, you feel worse because you're sore. But many times you go to the gym you start to get stronger. So just three 48 hour action items, that's your first step and commit to those things. Next thing, share this dream. Share it with people that you believe will support you. Okay? So share it with friends, share with family, ask for help. And what this is going to do is it's going to solve this issue that we have with our dreams, is that with dreams there's no deadlines. That's why we don't do them. So we need to create accountability. Writing your list creates accountability because you take a dream that doesn't exist, you make it real. Sharing your list creates accountability because then you feel accountable to the people you share with. So the more you share, the more accountability you feel, the more likely you are to move forward. The next thing you do after you share, you choose one person and you ask them if they can be your accountability buddy. Right? Just like you're his accountability buddy for the fourth child. And then, okay, so what's an accountability buddy?

[Lauren Everts]

I shared the dream with, Maybe it's his next wife.

[Michael Bostick]

So the accountability buddy is someone that either checks in on you or you send regular updates too. Okay? Because you're 77% more likely to achieve your goal if you have someone checking in with you down the line or you send regular updates to that person. That's when you train with someone for a marathon. You're more likely to go through with it because they're knocking at your door saying, let's go train. You're doing it because you feel accountable. Okay? So you've written your list, you've chosen the goal. You've written your three 48 hour action items, You've shared that goal with people in your community that support you. You've asked for help, you asked for advice. And then you've chosen one person to be your accountability buddy. And the accountability person or your accountability buddy is going to be that person that you're sending updates. Right? So let's just say this dream is to write a book. Like, okay, write a book. Where do I start? I have no idea. Okay, first thing I'm going to do in the next 48 hours, I'm going to ask friends if they know an author, to see if I can maybe get an introduction. I'm going to research what a book proposal looks like. I'm going to write the first page. Right? You can do that in the next two days. Right? And then you're going to start sharing this with people. Lauren, my dreams are to write a book. You've written a book. Anything you can do to help me. You know, my dream is. And so you start sharing it, and people will step up to help you. And then I'm like, okay, Michael, I would love you to be my accountability buddy on this. I am going to send you one chapter a month. Would you be okay if I did that? And would you be okay in reading that chapter and letting me know your thoughts? I guess a big ask, but that's what I'm gonna. That's what I'm gonna ask. And so you start to. Or maybe you have a writing partner that you say, michael, I know you're writing a book. I want to write a book. Once a week on Sunday afternoon, let's get together. Let's just spend dedicated time just to writing that book. That's what we're going to do. So you start to write it down, you start to share it, and you start to build that accountability. And you take those easy steps of action. And the more you do it, the more momentum and inspiration you feel. So this is why these steps are important. I'm gonna talk about the three barriers that stop us from achieving our goals. Number one, there's no deadlines for dreams, so we gotta create accountability. Number two, we're waiting to feel ready, or we're waiting to feel inspired. We're never ready. The inspiration doesn't hit. So we create our own inspiration through small steps of action. And three, fear. Fear stops us. That we talked about. So we have to then move through that fear and identify if this is a fear or if it's a risk.

[Ben Nemton]

It's funny because there's people that I know that want to execute on things so bad, and they don't. And they hit one of your points where they just stop. Like the fear stops them, or they're waiting for inspiration and that stops them. So it's interesting to hear those three steps. And I can literally put in buckets where, like, you can see where people are letting the certain steps stop them, which is interesting. And I think it's important when you're listening to this to be self aware of what. Which step stops you the most? You know what I mean? Like, which step for me, if you list all those to me, sometimes I try to wait to get inspired and I just need to do it. Because you're never going to be inspired 24, 7. We all know that. But you can kind of identify which one stops you.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. And so you think about waiting to feel inspired. So I think you're the architect of your own inspiration through action. And this Is what I mean about following your energy, right. Is you're taking action to see if this thing you're doing energizes you. And so, like, think about something that you've started where you're like, oh, I don't feel like doing it. And you just start and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, yeah, this is like working. Or I'm getting excited about this, or, you know, I'm starting to feel something. And that's a marker for you to keep doing. Pour gas on that flame, keep going. Even if you don't know where it's going, it's leading you somewhere that will be ultimately kind of like moving you forward towards your true self. And so the science of energy driven living is really interesting. Like, you know, you are seven times more likely to overcome a challenge if you come back to why am I doing this? Instead of how. So if you're rooted in your why, you're seven times more likely to overcome a challenge. You're two times more likely to live longer if you have a sense of purpose. Those with a sense of purpose bounce back from illness quicker. Those with a sense of purpose, they stick around in a job two to three times more. Right? You're 125% more productive when you're connected to purpose.

[Lauren Everts]

Yeah. There was that weird study that came out that showed women that have children older in life tend to outlive other women. And I imagine it's because of the purpose of having a child and wanting to make sure that that child is okay for a long period of time. Does that make sense?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, totally. So there's a. I actually talked with the researcher, and he's out of the University of Washington. He found that he studied women with a sense of purpose. And these were in senior living communities, women with a sense of purpose live past 85, four times more than those without a sense of purpose. Right. And so now this kind of comes full circle back to living with this intention of moving towards the thing that bring you a sense of purpose that is moving towards your potential or that sense of happiness that we talked about. And you're like, okay, wait a sec. This is like a big deal. This isn't just about me achieving my goals. This is about happiness. This is about longevity. This is about being resilient. This is about mental health. Those are the sense of purpose. They experience less depression. You overcome stress, you're more able to overcome stress with. With a sense of purpose. And so. And then we're like, okay, well, how do I Find purpose. You don't find purpose. You. You. You build it through following your energy.

[Ben Nemton]

Before you go, you have to tell us about your relationship because you are engaged. Correct. To V's honey, Vanessa, who has been on the show before and with all that you've seen, and I know she has her own, like, she's so dynamic and amazing. How do you guys think you attracted each other?

[Michael Bostick]

This is a great question.

[Ben Nemton]

Yeah, I know that there's, there's gotta be like for you guys. I know both of you have your own thing going on. You're entrepreneurs, but there was something that obviously drew you together. What did that look like?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, well, I feel like you had.

[Ben Nemton]

A bucket list for Vanessa is what I'm saying.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, V. Sunny was on my list.

[Ben Nemton]

You know what? Yeah. No, I feel like you wrote out a bucket list of what you wanted in a woman.

[Michael Bostick]

I did. Did you know that? I don't. Okay, so you.

[Ben Nemton]

I'm a clairvoyant.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. Or you read my Instagram.

[Ben Nemton]

No, I didn't.

[Michael Bostick]

I didn't post that. That's why I'm joking.

[Ben Nemton]

I didn't see that.

[Michael Bostick]

The big L. They'd call you the big L for a reason.

[Lauren Everts]

Yep.

[Ben Nemton]

Can we not refer to me as big anything right now? Not a big L, not a big B, not a dis.

[Lauren Everts]

Take it easy.

[Michael Bostick]

Big L. That's so big. Yeah. So you're. You're right. Okay. So I went. I was in a long term relationship seven years. If I look back in my life, I've been through a few. I would call them major lows. I would call them depressions. The first one I told you about was my. In university. That was the biggest. That was like the darkest and hardest. But I learned from that. And then now I see the signs coming earlier and I'm the type of person that's predisposed to these types of feelings. So I, I know myself better by going through these struggles to manage them. But I've been through a few and I realized when I go through these types of downs, a big area in my life is not aligned with. With myself. So one, I was building a production company with three guys that I started the Buried Life with. And I just, just. I didn't like the work that I was doing and I started to feel that feelings of depression. So I changed and I started speaking and then I got lit up in that. And I realized at one point that the relationship was not aligned with. With where. With what I wanted. And so out of that relationship, I was like, okay, what do I want? And that's when I started to think about, like the things that I wanted in a partner. And one was like, I wanted first and foremost. Like, everyone says this, but this is what I wanted. Like a best friend that I just had a lot of fun with that was we both loved the same things and I wanted someone on a, on the spiritual path and I wanted someone that had a lot of the same values. And so I listed out these, these things. And I used that as a filter when I started to date. And if people didn't sort of hit what I was looking for in the past, I would kind of do it for fun and continue this relationship, maybe to have a good time for a bit. I was very clear. I was like, no, this is like, I'm not looking for this. And you know, and I was very transparent with what I was looking for. And anyways, cut to. I met Vanessa and I was like, wow, this is like, I think there's something really here. And we went on three dates and they were great. And then it didn't work out and she got a boyfriend and I was like, wait, what? I thought this was like going someplace. And I. And it didn't feel 100% on, but I knew there was something there and I was really curious, like, what was it? It was 80% there. And I always wanted to talk with her and figure out what that last piece was. Anyways, I move on. A year and a half later, I'm still kind of thinking about her and I'm asking her friends when I see her, like, hey, what's going on with Vessel? And she's with this other guy. And I end up getting a message from her on Instagram about checking in and seeing if I wanted to catch up. And it turns out she's not in a relationship and we can reconnect and something's different. And here's what happened in that year and a half. This is literally at the same point, unbeknownst to one another, we both decided that we needed to do personal work to become the people we wanted to be, to be with the ultimate partner that we wanted to be with. So we both realized that there was real work that we needed to do. So I did Hoffman Process, which is an incredible week long personal development. I worked with like I did went like all in. I had an energy healer that I never even thought I would work with. I started, I found a new therapist and I really like focused on. And she did the same thing. She did ayahuasca. She Worked with multitude of different healers and therapists and she started to. So when we came back together, we both kind of different people or we were just like. We were a couple like layers deeper. And that's when we actually connected. It was an interesting journey that a lot of it was about timing, but a lot of it is about being intentional and doing the work and becoming the people that we knew we needed to be before we came together.

[Ben Nemton]

And now you have a baby on the way.

[Michael Bostick]

Now we got a baby on the way.

[Ben Nemton]

It's a pretty cool story. It sounds like you've checked a lot of your bucket list off. You guys go check out the bucket list journal. I'm assuming on Amazon.

[Michael Bostick]

Yep, bucket list journals on Amazon.

[Ben Nemton]

And then also, if you don't know V's, honey, you gotta go check her out. I love her Instagram. She has a lot of great holistic tips. And she has a brand called Supppies that you gave me these little. They're like little green holders for your supplements. It's genius for when you travel. They're so cute. I'm gonna use them in my cosmetic bag and in my purse. TakeYourSuppies.com. this is so cute, Ben. Where can everyone say hi to you? Follow you? Pimp yourself out.

[Michael Bostick]

I love posting the most on Instagram, so that's the best place. And of course my only fans page is pretty hot.

[Ben Nemton]

Your only fans page? That's on my bucket list. Do a pregnancy only fans.

[Lauren Everts]

Maybe that's my bucket list. Maybe that's my.

[Ben Nemton]

No one asked me. It's on my bucket list. I'm going to do a pregnancy only fans. I'm going to call it the Big.

[Michael Bostick]

L. There we go. The Big L. Now you're onto something.

[Ben Nemton]

Yeah, I know. Who knows? You never know with me. I keep watching.

[Lauren Everts]

In a few years you're going to come back and say this was your idea. That my.

[Ben Nemton]

Of course Taylor has some weird creepy name. Ben, thank you so much for coming on the show.

[Lauren Everts]

And maybe if anyone heard, they can help Taylor with his lifelong goal of getting that double blowjob.

[Ben Nemton]

Yeah, maybe a line out the door.

[Lauren Everts]

Well, you said you got to help others achieve their bucket list.

[Michael Bostick]

There you go. Yeah, put it in the comments.

[Lauren Everts]

I'm putting it out there.

[Michael Bostick]

Gotta put it out there.

[Ben Nemton]

Thank you so much for coming on the show, Ben.

[Michael Bostick]

Thank you.