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Travis
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's up, party people? Welcome back to the show. Today it is just me, you and the mic man. I gotta get out of that habit. It's not just today. Basically we released three episodes today. Um, but on this one, it's just me, you and the mic and we're continuing along my notes section of all the life lessons that I've learned. These are just random stuff that's hit me. It's from books that I've read, it's from podcasts listened to. And whenever something strikes me as interesting, unique and helpful, useful for my life, I put it into this long notes section of a bunch of the things that I've learned recently. So we'll pick up right where we left off in the last one with this one Done is better than perfect. And I actually thought about making this a, like a merch line or something like that. Because when, when we first posted this, my producer, actually Eric, had the good idea of doing this. He's put done is better than perfect. He spelled perfect with two T's and then, and then the red underline. Cause you misspelled something was on there. And it was sort of like my ocd, even in seeing that post was like, ooh, I don't like that because it has two T's and I want to correct it and I want to. I want to just put the 1T on there and make it perfect. But if you fall into the trap of having everything be perfect all the time, then you're never going to do anything. Getting something done is better than having it be perfect most of the time. Because through that process, you'll probably find a lot more things along the way to perfect it. And then the only way to really start the process of perfecting it is to get it done to begin with. So you know, the first. Getting the first manuscript of your book done, great. Is it going to be perfect? Absolutely not. You're probably going to edit it another 10 times. Okay, first version of your, your product, first version of your software, the first version of your podcast. Getting it done is better than having it be perfect, and it allows you, again, a little bit of freedom to understand, especially if it's something you've never done before. You know, I, I deal with this all the time in the podcasting space. Being a podcast coach, we help a lot of people get podcasts off the ground. And this is one thing that prevents a lot of people from, from, from doing it at all. Because they want it to be perfect. They want it to be the most accurate representation of who they are, and they want it to be awesome thing. And it's like, okay, that's great, and we can get there eventually, but, like, right now it's not going to be that way because probably you probably suck. And that's okay. In fact, it's expected because you've never done this thing before, so why would you expect to be amazing at it when you've never tried it, you've never done it? So you have to be willing to take the first step and then accept the responsibility to say, okay, now where can we go from here? But if you'd never take the first step, then you're never going to be on the path to perfecting it. And then this, this idea of perfection can actually just become procrastination in disguise because you just, you, you, you. You have something to say when people check in on you, right? Like, oh, did you get that thing done? Did you write that book? Did you do that podcast? Did you do that? You start that business, you build that product, you go like, oh, well, yeah, we're, we're, we're close. We're close. You know, it's just that, you know, we had a couple things, you know, we, we wanted to tweak that here a little bit. And then, like, we, we recorded that episode, but it just didn't come out the way I wanted it to, so we actually just scrapped it. And then, you know, it's just like, you, you, you're just delaying, delaying, delaying, delaying. You're never going to get the result that you really want because you' putting out an imperfect product into the world when the reality is, even if you got it down to where you viewed it as being perfect, it's not going to be because the only way that you can perfect it, especially if we're talking about product or software or something like that. The only way to perfect it is by getting into the hands of people so they can tell you how to perfect it. So if you are just sitting there like this master architect trying to design everything perfectly and then you launch it, then what's going to happen? You're going to get users that are coming into the platform, you're going to get people to test out the product, and then you're going to be so dug into your stance on why it's perfect that you're going to ignore the valuable feedback of the people that are helping you to perfect the thing anyway. So just get it done. Done is better than perfect. Next, take extra time to take in the good and link those neural pathways to negative emotions or events.
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Travis
this came directly from a book that I read called Hardwiring Happiness. The blanking on the author's name, but it was a He's a neuroscientist that talks about the what's actually happening brain when you're happy and how to hardwire more happiness in your life. And this was probably my biggest takeaway from that book because I I did not allow myself to do this when I felt feelings of happiness. So happiness is sort of an elusive goal anyway. I think it's, I think it's probably more effective to to pursue meaning or fulfillment or mattering or something like that. And I think happiness is sort of a byproduct of some of those things. I think if you only pursue happiness, then you might actually just never hit it. However, it's still useful to think about it in this regard because it gives you a little bit more control over, over how much time you spend in this happy or, or peaceful emotional state. Because basically what happens. And I am no neuroscientist, okay? So please, please defer to your local neuroscientist or neuroscience textbook to get the real definition of what's happening here. But as my layman brain understands this, the best way that I can explain it is like you have pathways in your brain where you are most comfortable. So if you are constantly anxious, or you're constantly depressed, or you're constantly sad, or you're constantly happy, it means that these neurons have created paths in your brain to reach that end emotional state more often than not, due to the fact that it's become a habitual practice for you to get there. So forging new neural pathways is a little bit more difficult. Although, you know, neuroplasticity states that we can, we can alter the, the actual physical structure of our brains, but it's still more difficult to create new neural pathways. And so what happens is the more intense that you can feel that emotional state, the more pronounced those pathways become, and the easier it will be to push your, yourself into these desired emotional states. So if you imagine, you know, hacking your way through a, you know, forest for the first time, you know, like the, a pioneer that is literally just going across the United States a couple hundred years ago, and they have to literally forge new paths because there is no path, there is no road. That's difficult for them to do. They got the machete in hand and they're just chopping through brush, and they're, and they, and they're, they're chopping through trees and they got a market to be like, okay, if somebody comes behind me, this is the path that you're going to want to take. But then what happens is after the hundredth traveler comes along that path or the thousandth traveler comes along that path, now it's a path. Now there's no brush in the way. It's been, it's been completely removed from that path, and it becomes way, way, way, way, way, way easier to follow that path because it's clear that this is the path that you're going down. And this is sort of a similar thing that's happening in your brain is that when, when you are, when you are first forging this neural pathway, it's going to feel a little bit more. Allow yourself to engage in that. The wider, the easier the, the, the, the fewer obstacles are in your path to actually pursuing that end goal of that positive Emotional state. So the main takeaway for me from that book was basically any time where I found myself in a moment of happiness, in a moment of bliss, in a moment of peace, in a moment of fulfillment, rather than just sitting there and, and then allowing myself to move on to the laundry list of things that I have to do for the day. And I would, I would just close my eyes and I would allow that feeling to be as intense as I possibly could feel it. And I would, I would try to remember everything about that moment and try to, you know, feel the happiness and try to picture the event that I'm drawing this feeling from and feel it as intensely as I could possibly feel it. And what that does is it sort of makes the path a little bit wider, makes the path a little bit more clear. It clears away some of the brush so that the next time I really want to get into that emotional state, I can pick, picture that exact thing that triggered me to go down that path, and then I can allow that to become my emotional state. So what this gets really interesting. There's another great book called the Tools. It's written by a psychologist who sort of got famous because he, Jonah Hill did a documentary about him on Netflix because he was Jonah Hill's psychologist or therapist. And he, he was talking about using this as a way to reframe negative event and basically take, take these positive events that allow you to feel this like, feeling of bliss or happiness and, and then link those things to events that make you feel bad, things that, things that historically have put you in a state of depression or anxiety or, you know, things that we would link as, as, quote, unquote, negative emotions. I think potentially labeling, labeling things as negative or positive emotions probably not a great thing ultimately, just because I think human beings were meant to experience everything. You're not supposed to be happy a hundred percent of the time or else you wouldn't even know what happiness was. So I think we're supposed to experience the gamut of human emotions. However, if you tend to find yourself being, you know, depressed and anxious and worried and fearful all the time, obviously not a really good place to be. So what his suggestion was was basically to take these events that are, that were awesome, where you felt this big, you know, overwhelming emotion of gratitude, of happiness, of joy, whatever it is, that if you can picture that event as, as holistically as you can. And then when you are feeling something bad, because whatever you, you, you, you know, your ex, your ex got together with this other person and now every time you See that person, it's a trigger that puts you in a negative emotional state because you're thinking about your. Your ex being with that person, and you don't like that at all. Well, how can you, when you see that person, how can you start overlaying that negative experience with some of the positive experiences that you feel and allowing yourself to just part ways with that immediate need to go down these paths of depression? The bummer part is that it takes a lot of work because our brains are sort of hardwired to be attracted to negativity. That's why, like, 80% of news headlines are negative in their connotation, because they know that it gets more clicks. Because we are engineered to. To fear lost more than we are to pursue reward. You know, for fear is always a more powerful motivate, motivator than reward is. So we're. Because we have this sort of, like, negativity bias in our brains, it's a little bit more difficult to. To. It's easier for those neural pathways to be forged, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. It's easier to just be in this. This constant state of. Of depression or anxiety or fear, because that's sort of what we're hardwired to do. So in order to combat that, you have to do a lot more work of trying that. That's why I think a gratitude, a daily gratitude practice is really important. Even if it's just three minutes, four minutes at the beginning of your day, just to write down some things that you're grateful for. And not just write them down and check it off your list and move on to the next thing, but write it down and genuinely try to feel the gratitude in that moment. Whether it's something this awesome thing that just happened in your life, something you've been working toward, that you accomplished, and this feels great. You can feel great gratitude for that. Or it's something that's just constant, that you take for granted, like the fact that you can see or that you can hear, or the fact that you can walk, or the fact that you woke up and you're in your 30s instead of waking up and you're 98 or whatever it is like you, there's always something to be grateful for. So if you can write those down and get into the habit of just practicing that gratitude, that'll make it easier for you to find the path to becoming more grateful. It'll make it easier for you to find the path of becoming happier. It'll make it easier for you to find peace. Because you're training your brain that these are the places that we really want to go and we don't want to be going to these other places. So try to remove some of the negative inputs in your life as much as you can. And then whenever you feel something that is just overwhelming joy, overwhelming positivity, overwhelming happiness or, or peace or something like that, then don't, don't just allow that to, to go away. Don't take it for granted and then immediately think, okay, well, well that was cool. But I got, you know, I got these 12 or on my list today, so whatever, you know, I gotta, I gotta start getting to work on these. Take a few extra seconds, take an extra minute, just close your eyes and feel as much as you can, that positive energy taking over your brain and start forging those neural pathways to allow yourself to end up in those, those more desired states more often. And the, the ability to, the ability to be, you know, happy or grateful in the absence of things to be happy or grateful about it is it superpower. So don't take that for granted. Do your best to insert some sort of daily practice that allows you to forge those neural pathways in a positive direction. That's probably one of the biggest things that I've done for my overall like personal happiness over the last few years now. Next, let's see. External events are not the problem, it's your perception of them. So this sort of goes directly in line with the ones that we're with the thing that we're just talking about. And this is a tenet of stoicism that I, that I hold onto a lot, which is to say that of
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Travis
Learn more@schwab.com trading events are neither negative or positive. Only our perception of them makes them one way or the other. It's difficult to internalize this one, especially when it relates to events that are really just intrinsically negative like this. I know I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot here by saying the exact opposite of what I just said. But it's hard, you know, when you have some sort of like a life circumstance, for instance, that came out of nowhere. It's nobody's fault. It's just a thing that happened and it's a thing that is. Those are the ones that are difficult to be like. How can I possibly picture anything good from this event? What are you talking about? This was, this was, by all means, and the only definition, this was a bad thing. How can I possibly look at that? You have to do your best to pull yourself up out of your body, be as third party objective as you possibly can, and look for the things that were good about the situation and try to glob onto those things rather than the negative things. Your ability to control your reaction to events will directly correlate to your ability to be happy in life. I think this just happened to me this past weekend, man. I was playing pickup basketball at the gym. And if you ever play pickup, you know that things can get real chippy real quick. We have a bunch of grown men in the gym playing pickup. And this happened this past weekend. And this guy, for whatever reason, he, he must have, he must have been having a bad day. I actually said that to him. It's like, you must be having a bad day or something like that. And he must have been having a bad day or, or he's just this type of a person. But he was getting irritated with me, frankly, just because I, I'm. I was bigger than he was. And the, the matchups in the game didn't match up correctly. So I was posting him up, he was getting frustrated. He was fouling the crap out of me and holding onto me and grabbing my arm. And so I was getting frustrated. And then I said, I said something when I made it, I, I made a shot. He fouled me while I was making it. And I didn't call the foul, but I said, and one afterwards. And he just like looks at me as I was running down, goes, you suck. And he said it sort of under his breath. And so I stopped for a second. I turned around, I was like, what was that? What'd you say? And he was like, I said, you suck. And then in that moment, I had a lot of emotions running through my mind, a lot of things that I wanted to say, things that I wanted to do to that individual. But I had to just sit back and allow myself to digest what just happened and then build a plan that was going to allow me to have some peace after that game was done. Now I could have said something snarky back. I could have tried to fight this dude. None of those things would have been helpful or beneficial for either one of us. So I just decided to smile and laugh about it. And that's all I did was just, I laughed and was just like, okay, man, whatever you say. And then I said that to him. When we went back down, I was just. I said something about, man, he must be having a bad day or something. And then he said something again under his breath. And then it was in his head the rest of the game. That. That's sort of. Sort of. My point is like, I ended up having a great game and our team ended up winning a lot of games in a row. And then this guy who is a good basketball, by the way, is one of the, one of the guys that's, that's good when he shows up. I was playing defense on defense on him and it was clearly in his head because I basically let him shoot at the three point line probably three, four times in a row. He missed all of them. And like I said, he's a good player. He should have made one or two of those. And I knew that I was taking a massive risk leaving him open, but he must have been in his head too much because of what he was talking about to where he missed all of those shots. And it made me look even better. But I just, I didn't say anything. I let the game talk for me. And then he was clearly so bothered about it that he ended up leaving after that game anyway. And it was just like a clear example to me. It was just like, man, you know, events are just events. We have the ability to choose our reaction to those events. You do not have to just react to anything that happens. All do your best your dead level best. We talked about this in previous episode. To manage your reactions. If you, if you can, if you can take five minutes before you react to something or take, take 24 hours before you react to something, five minutes in this sort of, like this sort of, you know, emotional situation that I just described where there's real potential for like a fist fight breaking out with a bunch of male egos. Or it's, or it's. You got an email from a vendor or a client, or from a team member, an employee or a manager or something like that that you did not like. And you type out, you know, I'm a big fan of typing out the response. Type out the response. Get everything you say, just do not send it. Okay? Type it out in a notes document, don't even type it out in your email sender just to make sure that you don't accidentally hit the send button. I've done that several times where I type out a response in my notes section. I wait 24 hours and then I go to copy and paste and put that into my email sender and I look at it and I go, that's not helpful. That's not going to get the result that I want to get. I might feel better about it. I might even be right in the situation. It might feel good to say something snarky or shitty to the other person and it might, and I might feel completely justified in my ability to do that. However, if the result is what matters, then, and I know that this response is not conducive to that end result, then I'm going to take a beat and I'm going to ask myself what can I adjust here so that I can make sure that something positive comes from this interaction and that, you know, you can sort of be, be the, be the grown up in the situation as much as you can, but you know, don't allow yourself just to react immediately. Try to take a step back, look at it from a third party perspective. Try to be as objective as you possibly can, give a little bit if you can, and then you don't. Does doesn't mean you have to let people walk all over you. That's not what I'm suggesting. What not what I am suggesting. It's just that most of the time you'll find that in retaliation you're actually doing more to hurt yourself than you are to, to hurt the person that you think you're, you're hurting in the scenario. So yeah, take, take extra time, you know, to, before you start throwing out judgments or, or before you start reacting to situations. External events are not the problem. It's your perception of them that's the problem. Well, that it for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace.
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Host: Travis Chappell
Release Date: July 12, 2026
In this solo episode, Travis Chappell focuses on powerful mindsets for achieving personal and financial growth, specifically by letting go of perfectionism, practicing gratitude, reshaping neural pathways toward happiness, and reframing negative events. Drawing on personal experiences, coaching insight, and books like Hardwiring Happiness and The Tools, Travis delivers practical and motivational advice for anyone struggling with procrastination, negative thinking, or the inertia of perfectionism.
(Start - 04:45)
“If you fall into the trap of having everything be perfect all the time, then you’re never going to do anything… Getting something done is better than having it be perfect most of the time.”
— Travis (01:15)
(05:42 - 15:34)
“Rather than just sitting there and allowing myself to move on to the laundry list of things that I have to do for the day… I would just close my eyes and allow that feeling to be as intense as I possibly could feel it.”
— Travis (07:21)
“If you can write those down and get into the habit of just practicing that gratitude, that’ll make it easier for you to find the path to becoming more grateful. It'll make it easier for you to find the path of becoming happier.”
— Travis (12:20)
(16:01 - End)
“Your ability to control your reaction to events will directly correlate to your ability to be happy in life.”
— Travis (16:34)
“In retaliation you’re actually doing more to hurt yourself than you are to hurt the person that you think you’re hurting.”
— Travis (20:42)
On Perfectionism:
“Done is better than perfect.”
— Travis (01:00, recurring theme)
On Emotional Rewiring:
“The ability to be happy or grateful in the absence of things to be happy or grateful about is a superpower. So don’t take that for granted.”
— Travis (14:59)
On Responding to Events:
“Try to take a step back, look at it from a third party perspective. Try to be as objective as you possibly can, give a little bit if you can…”
— Travis (20:15)
Useful for: Anyone struggling with procrastination, perfectionism, negative thought loops, or emotional triggers, or anyone looking for actionable, mindset-focused financial and personal growth advice.