Loading summary
Transcript10 lines
- [00:01]
A
Lifelock. How can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
- [00:05]
B
One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
- [00:08]
C
What do I do?
- [00:09]
A
My refund though. I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this.
- [00:12]
B
Lifelock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.
- [00:18]
A
I'm so relieved. No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.
- [00:21]
B
One in four was a fraud paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [00:30]
A
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 going on everybody? Welcome back to the show. Today it is just me, you and the mic. Well, we also have two other episodes dropping today. To be fair. One of them is an interview with an inspiring entrepreneur. The other one is a co hosted show with my producer Eric. You are more than welcome to check out any or all of the episodes episodes that we're dropping today. But this one is just me, you and the mic. And today I wanted to talk through just some life lessons that I've learned. Basically just trying to see how many impactful things can we pack into a single episode is really what the goal of this episode is. So let's go ahead and jump right in. Number one. So I just for some context here, I don't even know when I started this note, to be honest with you, because it doesn't tell me the date that I started, it just tells me the date of the last edit. But basically for the last few years, whenever I hear something I read something I think about something that I think is impactful or helpful, I just wrote it down on this thing. Well, now there's 73 life lessons in here. There's 19 book ideas, there's 10 business ideas, few keynote speeches, a list of random experiences that I've done, questions to ask myself frequently. Path to lasting change. There's a bunch of stuff in here that that I've written down over the years. So this is sort of just a few of the whatever we can get through on this episode. Number one, first thing I wrote down the quality of your habits determines the quality of your life. I believe this probably came from reading the book Atomic Habits just because it reframed the way that I think about habit stacking and habit building and that you can actually control the quality of the person that you become by focusing on building the correct habits in the meantime. So if you have not read the book Atomic Habits, I highly recommend picking up a copy. It is one of the best personal development self help books ever written and it has stayed on the New York Times bestseller list at the very tippy top of that for the past few years because of that one reason. But he also just breaks it down really well over there. So without delving too much further into that. Quality of your habits determines the quality of your life. So if you want to have some sort of an idea of who you're going to be in five years from now, then look at the quality of your habits today and ask yourself are that do the habits that I currently have produce the life that I want? And if the answer is no, then start asking yourself what are the habits of the people who have the life that I want? And how can I start stacking those habits over time to build the life that I ultimately want? So the quality of your habits determines the quality of your life. Number two, take radical responsibility. This one always makes.
- [03:17]
C
If you're an H vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [03:46]
A
It's onto my list somewhere because I think this is sort of where life begins. It's the moment where you realize that you can't control everything. So why not just focus on the things that you can control and that the truth doesn't matter in every occasion? Meaning that not everything that happens to me in my life is my fault. Some things happen that are completely out of thin air. You did not manufacture them. They are not a direct result of bad decisions that you made. You know, it's not a punishment from God or the universe. It just is. It just is. It's a thing that happened and it just is a thing that is. Like when I got cancer, it was not something that I was expecting. I don't think it was something that was a measurement of the habits or decisions that I had made in my life. It was. It Came at a time where I felt better about my physical health than I had felt in my entire life. And it was sort of a slap in the face to be like, up, black swan. There you go. Something you didn't prepare for, something you thought that you were actively preparing against, and now you have it. It's sometimes just things happen and they are what they are. Yet it does not mean that it is not my responsibility at that point to take those cards that were dealt to me and then figure out a path or a solution moving forward. The bottom line is if you never take responsibility, then you never take any control. The responsibility, like the control that you have over the outcomes in your life, is directly correlated to the amount of responsibility that you're willing to take. And that is true across multiple disciplines. Meaning that it's true in, in business, in entrepreneurship. The more responsibility, like, the more, the more people's paychecks that you're responsible for. It probably is in some version corre to the amount of money or value that you're going to create in the world. So if you have 10,000 people who are working for you, you're probably doing some epic things and you probably have a massive company. If you have two people that are working for you, then it's probably, you know, a smaller version of that. If you have no people that are working for you, then you're only responsible for your income. And the more responsibility that you take, meaning that the more problems that you take on that you get to solve, the more likely you are to be able to create the life that you really want. But like I said, ultimately though, it's really just the starting point to making your life better. It's the point you realize that life isn't going to just hand me everything that I want. I have to at some point decide that that's what I'm going to go get. And you can choose to take the powerless position of no responsibility, or you can choose to take the powerful responsibility, the powerful position of full responsibility. One of them feels better short term, works worse, works not as good long term or long term, and the other one's the opposite. And taking responsibility is the opposite. It's doesn't feel as good short term because there's been several situations where I did not want to take responsibility because I didn't view the situation as something that was actually within my direct control to have done something about. But it's, it feels so empowering, and I don't like that word a lot because it's overused. I think. But it is, it's empowering to take the responsibility because then you get to decide what to make of the situation that was presented to you rather than you just being like, I'm just, I'm just a victim of whatever life throws my way. So, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna change with the wind, whatever way wind blows. That's the way that I'm going. Whereas somebody who takes ultimate and radical responsibility for everything, they're the person that's going to actually see real change happen. And there's a great book on this too called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. I highly recommend picking up a copy of that book as well. Number three, I wrote down Delay gratification. This is one of the common denominators of the most successful people in the world. Don't believe me? There's an entire study and a book about it called the Marshmallow Test where they set up an experiment with a bunch of kids in a room. And there was a sort of moderator facilitator who had a conversation with each kid and they said, they put one marshmallow in front of them. They said, if you can wait until we get back. And they didn't tell them when they were going to be back. If you can wait till I come back, I'll give you two marshmallows so you can eat this one now as soon as I leave the room, or you can wait until I come back. And if you do wait till I come back, I'll give you a second marshmallow. Well, inevitably they tracked the success and the lives of all of those kids that were involved in that study throughout the rest of their lives. So it's a decades long study and they found without fail that the kids who were willing to delay the gratification and wait for the proctor to come back into the room and get the second marshmallow, they ended up having more successful and happier lives long term because they were willing to put off the gratification now in order to get a greater reward later. So delayed gratification is another one of these lessons that I wrote down. Number four, this is more of a question, would I be okay if my kids ended up like me? Same habits, same self talk. That's a big one. Same friendship. My contribution to society will be the behaviors I pass to my great great grandchildren. This I think about in terms of legacy because I think that a lot of people think of legacy in terms of money, in terms of what's the total amount of money that you're going to leave to your kids or to your grandkids. And the older I get, the more I start to realize that the biggest impact that you can have on culture, society, the world around you is not really the money that you pass on to future generations, but the behaviors that you pass on to future generations, the beliefs, the values that you pass on to future generations. That is going to be a much better return in terms of. In terms of their ability to go generate money, but also their ability to have an impact on the world around them. So it's a question that I've asked myself from time to time. Would I be okay if my kids ended up like me? And for that matter, would I be okay if everybody in the world operated the same way that I operate on? It's a good question to reflect on. Good question to ask yourself from time to time. My greatest contribution to society will be the behaviors that I pass to my great, great grandchildren. Next thing I wrote down here. Don't focus on the goal, focus on becoming the person who can reach the goal. This seems to be a recurring theme on the show recently for some of these solo episodes. So maybe that means somebody out there needs to listen to this, and maybe I'm talking to myself, maybe I need to listen to this more for some reason. But don't focus on the goal. Focus on becoming the person who can reach the goal. If you change yourself into somebody who is capable of achieving the big goals that you have, then that version of yourself is much likely to be able to achieve those goals. Cause it'll be easier for that person. Whereas if you set goals now that feel like they're totally impossible to reach, it's probably because they are impossible to reach. Because you're not capable of achieving those goals, it requires you to become a different version of yourself in order to be able to achieve those goals. And by the way, if the goals that you're setting do not require you to become a different person, then they're probably not big enough goals or you probably have already reached those goals. Like if you, if you're setting goals that are totally within the realm of reality for the version of the person that you are now, then why haven't you reached them already? You know, you. Your goals should stretch you, but your ability to reach those goals will only be affected by your ability to become the person who is capable of achieving those goals. So make your goals easier to achieve by first off focusing on becoming the person who's capable of achieving them. Next thing I wrote down it is impossible to know then what you know now because you would not have been ready to know it then. Ooh, this is a good one. This. The, the. The perfect siloed example of this is when I read a book and then a couple years later, I reread the same book. It's the same exact damn book. All the words are the same. But I'll underline new stuff that I didn't think about the first time, and then I'll look at other underlined things and notes in the margin and not be able to relate to the notes that I was taking at that time. So you, you sometimes wouldn't have been able to do anything different with the situation that you're maybe looking at with regret in the past because you were operating under the assumptions that you had at that time. So you can't beat yourself up over decisions that you made in that previous time period because you were operating with all the information that you had available to you. And even if somebody told you that same information that you thought that you needed to be able to write those wrongs, so to speak, or win instead of lose, or succeed instead of fail, even if you had access to that information, even if somebody shook you and looked you in the eyeball and told you that this is what you're doing wrong, you just might not have been in a position to be able to know it at that point, to really internalize it. And this happened to me recently where it's. It was like, advice that I was giving to people, like, seven years ago when I first started my podcast, and I've revisited it and been like, oh, that was actually really sound advice. It just took me seven years to fully internalize what I meant when I was even saying that or what that actually means. Because now I have this life circumstance or experience I can point to and draw from that says, oh, this is actually really useful now. So you, you know, don't, don't beat yourself up over something that happened in the past because it's impossible to know then what you know now. Even if you go back and, and, and know it from a knowledge perspective or from like a written word perspective, you might be able to quote, unquote, know it, but you may not have been ready to know it at that point to actually know it and internalize what it meant to you at that time. Next. People often enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. I think this is a JFK quote, actually, but I love this quote. People often enjoy the comfort of opinion without the Discomfort of thought. This is so true across all of society today. You are almost forced to have an opinion about everything. And it's so exhausting, man. Like the volume of. Of people that ask me what my thoughts. This particular situation that's unfolding or this current event that happened, or this political thing or this religious thing or something that has nothing to do with politics or religion. Something that's seemingly low stakes or whatever. It's just like everybody seemingly has to have an opinion about everything, yet nobody's actually forced to do the thinking that is required in order to come up with their own opinion. So this basically means that the majority of the opinions that people hold, if they haven't thought through what those opinions actually are, they're really not their opinions at all. They're just the opinions of other people that they like. And they. They outsource the thought part of the equation to somebody else that they trusted and then just went, I'm gonna go with that one. Yeah, that sounds like a good opinion to have. Then they like. Then they turn it into all of a sudden an opinion to. It's a hill to die on. Like, you got. You got too many hills you're willing to die on, man. Like, you should not have a thousand things that you're drawing a line in the sand. To be like this, you gotta be. You gotta be like this or do it like this, or think like this, or vote for this person or vote for this party. And if you don. Do these things and you're a bad person or then. Then I have, you know, I'll have nothing to do with you. It's wild to me to see how many lines people draw in the sand when the majority of them are lines that they didn't even draw themselves. They just accepted as being drawn because of some authority figure in their life told them that that's where they should draw the line. Therefore, that's where they draw the line. But they can't even articulate why they did it. So people often enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Next one. When my kids find out who I actually am, I want to be as close to the ideal of the hero that they thought I was. This rings true for me, having young kids, because when you have little kids, they. There's this. There's this veil, this separation between who your kids believe you are and who you actually are. Because they're not adults yet. They're kids. They have this idealistic version of you. You're sort of the hero in their eyes. And One day your kids are going to find out who you are. Not to be the Debbie Downer here, but it's going to happen at some point, knock on wood. As long as we're all here, you know, to be able. You know, if we're lucky enough to be able to live to that moment, then it will be a moment that happens for all of us. The day when your kids realize that you're just an. You're just a human, that you're just another person, that you're trying to figure things out, you're doing your best, and you're acting on information that you have and, you know, hoping for the best. And my thought is, when I want to put in the work now, so that when that day does come, inevitably, when my kids do realize the version of the person that I actually am, that the ideal version of the hero that they had in their mind is as close to that version as humanly possible. And that's a big motivation factor for me, a big driver for me these days. Next. A comfort zone is supposed to keep your life safe, but really, it just keeps it small. We have a tendency to get super comfortable hanging out in the comfort zone. We optimize our life to stay in the comfort zone. We. You know, I tried that one thing. I went to that one mixer that one time, and I. You know, I felt uncomfortable and out of place. So I don't want to. I don't want to do that anymore. Or my work became virtual. And then they demanded that I go back into the office. And the first few days back, I hated it. So I just quit that job because now I just want to go find something virtual because it was difficult to, you know, get back into the milieu of going to the office, whatever there. There's. There's so many things that we just accept as reality because it fits within our scope of what we define as comfortable, rather than going outside of that comfort zone and seeking more of what life has to offer. So you buy into the lie that your comfort zone is keeping you safe, when in reality, it's actually keeping you small. Next, and probably lastly, for this episode, if I change, the world will change. No one will change it for me, only. Your perception of the world is what creates your reality. You're the only one who can change it. We all experience life in different ways. Nobody actually experiences life in objective reality. Think about that for a second. Nobody. No matter how logical you think you are, no matter how objective you think you're being, no matter how many studies you read or what statistics you can point to. Nobody experiences the world as it is. We can only experience the world through our own eyes, and yes, physically, our own eyes. Meaning, like the things that we can see, but also all of the other senses, what we can see, taste, touch, feel, hear, etc. That's how we experience the world. So the perspective that you have, the context that you have, the way that you were raised, the geography that you were raised in, the culture that you were raised in, the religion you were raised in, the political structure that you were raised in, the part of the world that you were raised in, all of these things inform how you see the world. So an event can happen and two people can watch that event unfold and see two wildly different versions of reality in. In that event. So the only way to really change your world as you see it is to change you, is to change the way that you perceive the world to be. Which is why I find that empathy is such a useful practice because it allows me to, for a second, try my best to take off my glasses, my lenses through which I'm view doing the world, take somebody else's glasses, put them on and try to see the world through their glasses for a second to be like, okay, I disagree with your take, or I disagree with your opinion, but I can at least see where you ended up having that opinion. And that in and of itself has allowed me to be able to connect with a lot more people from different backgrounds, different cultures, different experiences, different perspectives. And again, doesn't mean that you have to agree with everybody, because that's impossible. You're never going to agree with everybody or, or that if you agree with everybody, that just means that you don't actually believe anything because ultimately you're gonna have to draw the line in the sand on a few things, like, there are hills that are worth dying on, but probably just fewer than most people think that there are. But you're not, you're probably not going to find those things unless you're willing to throw your glasses to the side for a half a second, put on somebody else's, and be like, okay, I can see where you're coming from on this. Not going to change my mind on this particular thing, because I believe that it's important. However, I can at least see where you're coming from and is half of the point of connecting with people, at least in my opinion. Man, like, you don't have to. We're not here to agree on everything. We're just here to treat each other with respect and try to focus on the things that we do have in common. And I found that to be a really useful practice. So hopefully something in this was helpful to you. I'd love to hear from you at Travis Chappell over on Instagram travis travischappel.com if you want to shoot me an email, be happy to talk further about any of these things, because I like talking about this stuff. So we'll probably do a couple of other episodes. Just going through some of these other life lessons that I've written down. I found these things to be wildly helpful for me. I'm curious to see how you find them. So thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.