Welcome to Pivot Point. I'm Nathan. And I'm Chris. The podcast where two friends work their way through Tony Robbins' self-help book, Awaken the Giant Within, where every week we talk about how we intend to create lasting change, working our way through the book one chapter a week.
We are using this journey as our pivot point to take immediate control of our mental, emotional, physical, and financial destinies. This week, in Chapter 2, we cover decisions, how they are the key of all life's success, and how they empower you to achieve your goals. Let's get to it. All right, so Chapter 2, decisions, the pathway to power.
I went a different way. I have zero notes, and you went the other way, it sounds like. Yeah, definitely. I wrote a lot more notes for this chapter than the last one.
There were a lot of things in this chapter that really kind of hit home big time. I think I actually have more notes about the podcast itself and how we did it than I do about the content of this book. So I'm excited to change how we do this, but we've got to keep going, I guess. That's how we'll get better.
So what's your first note? What do you got? What's important to me right now and what's important to me in the long term? It's the first question I wrote down, and I actually wrote some things down.
And I guess I sort of, I was trying to do it like in the moment, you know, and just kind of like pour out right onto the page. But I ended up sort of analyzing a little bit as I was writing. And my right nows, I wrote as things that will lead into the things that, the things I focus on right now will make me the person I want to be in 10 years, is the idea that I was going with. So I'll just read what I wrote.
The first one I wrote was Maximize Family Time. The second one I wrote was Develop My Interpersonal Skills. Essentially become better at networking or better at developing those kind of relationships. Make time for my wife.
Don't tell her she's third on this list. Make time for my hobbies. And then I actually went back and I crossed out my hobbies after I read several more pages of the chapter because I needed to make a decision. I don't have time for 100 hobbies.
I don't have time to pick up new hobbies. I need to make a decision. And so I crossed it out and I wrote Woodworking. It's the one that I enjoy the most and it's the one that I am going to make a decision today to move forward with and not be distracted by others.
So I think that was a good time to bring up the fact that nobody knows who we are except us. That's a good point. That was a comment that I got from somebody that said, hey, I like it. You obviously need to work on your conversational, but nobody knows who you are.
So with that, you said work on networking, family. I'm going to give a little intro. I guess I could go first if you're not ready. Yeah, go ahead.
So I was hoping you would just take it because I wasn't sure what to say myself. So I am married. I have two kids. They're both 9 and 12.
Pretty avid baseball, traveling baseball fans. So we spend a lot of time doing that during the summer and also practicing in the fall. So when I discuss time management, which comes up here, that's pretty much what I do. So when you were talking about spending more time with family, that hit pretty hard when I was doing this as well.
So I work full-time for the military and in IT specifically, but I don't know what else to say. So I guess more will come later as we start to talk more. But I figured we owe everybody at least some sort of intro. Probably a good idea.
Yeah. I'm Nathan. I'm 29. I have a wife of 10 years this year and two kids.
They are 6 and 4, a girl and a boy. I also do IT full-time in the civilian world. And then I'm also a member of the military part-time, a weekend soldier, if you will. And my kids are not in traveling baseball yet, so I don't have quite as many commitments as you do.
But I have family that live a couple hours each way. And so trying to make time to let the kids spend time with those are what consumes most of our weekends. Yeah, I guess that's it for now. Yeah, pretty easy intro.
I just, it was the We Don't Know You and the pauses were the two big things that people said we need to work on. So I've been trying to fill pauses with just jumping in and talking already. And we're only five minutes in. We'll just start trying to cut each other off.
If we could do anything, it would be teach people how to not listen to others. So anyways, you were talking about how things you wanted to do now also prepare you for the future. I'm assuming you're going off of what he wants to do for the next 10 years in your life. Yeah, so the other part of that question was, what's important to me right now and what's important to me in the long term?
And in the long term, my top one is giving back of my time and efforts. And then my second goal is teaching, mentoring, and leading. I think if I can focus on those five right now things, the things that are important to me right now, that'll set me up really well in the long term to do those things that I want to do as I get older. Oh, yeah.
So I didn't take any notes because last time I literally would read a paragraph and then I would write down a note. Or he'd ask a question and I'd write down a note. And it got really weird because I decided I didn't want to, I don't know what you call it. I wasn't absorbing any material.
I was just answering questions that he had and then giving the best answer that I could. Almost like I was going through an online course. Yeah, like a workbook rather than trying to teach myself something. So I went the opposite and didn't take any notes.
And actually, I deleted things. Meaning, we had talked about Salesforce and all the things that they have to offer. For veterans, I completely went through and withdrew from everything that I had on there. So I figured out I'm really good at making decisions.
It's just that follow-up. So I try to focus more on that. I have the decisions already made. I just need to continue with the ones that I should.
Yeah. That's interesting. This is skipping ahead quite a bit in my notes. But you talked about, you just mentioned being really good at the decisions and not the follow-through.
And if you don't want to talk about this, we don't have to. We can just cut this right out. But I assume you know where I'm going. On page 39, he talks about people going sober.
Oh. Like how that's a decision that people make. Go ahead, sorry. And so I actually wrote down a couple of questions for you about that because that was a decision that you made.
I was deployed when you started that journey. And you texted me and said, hey, I started a blog. I started running today and I'm not going to drink again. And that was it.
That was the last time you took a drink. That was a decision that you made in a moment. I'm sure there were a lot of things leading up to it. But the decision was made in a moment.
And you never looked back. Right? Yep. 435 days today.
Did you say 435? Yeah, 435. Amazing. So was it an easy decision?
No, no. Well, so it's one of those decisions I think that when you make it, it's like, oh, this is the time to make that decision. So I also thought about it when I was reading this because I thought, how did I do that so easily? But it wasn't easy, if you kind of get what I'm talking about.
So it was an easy one to go. Yep, I'm done. And then stop drinking. But then on day 7, day 14, day 30, day 412, you don't stop thinking about it.
So when I read that, I often thought, or I thought, not often, but if that was the way that people feel when they're an entrepreneur, like if they were like, hey, I'm doing this today. But those second-guessing, they don't turn around. Whereas this is one of the points in my life I haven't turned around. You know what I mean?
Yeah. I'm sure that they have the exact same, I mean, obviously not the exact same thoughts, but very similar thoughts, just exactly like anything else when you make a decision. I mean, our listeners don't know this, but I switched jobs a month ago. I left a very secure, very comfortable government job to go work in the civilian world at a place with a lot of opportunities.
But what it brought was a ton of uncertainty. And there have been plenty of moments since I left where I thought, did I make the right decision? Should I go back? And I'm sure you had those thoughts.
Is it worth it? You know, should I keep doing this? Can I take another drink and still control myself? Do I really need to do this?
Those kind of statements. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. You said a couple more.
A couple more what? Questions? Questions, yeah. Yeah.
So this is going to get kind of like, this is not me trying to go right at you, because there are probably plenty of decisions in my life that you could go the same way. But because I mentioned it exactly, I wrote this down. Why, with the evidence of your own decision-making power, do you struggle to apply that knowledge to other areas of your life? So it's kind of weird you say that.
It's like all this I thought about a lot, because that's where I thought I can make decisions pretty easily. I just always turn around, and I don't know why. I think one of the reasons for sobriety, that decision, was a lot easier to say, I'm on this path and I'm going, because it has a, I don't know, it wasn't just my decision. Like, it was my decision to do it, but it was something that my wife and I had talked about, like, the night before I did it.
So it was one of those, like, we discussed and we talked for, I mean, it was literally, like, a two-minute conversation. But, and then I decided, like, that's what I have to do, and then that was it. So it is kind of weird to see, like, that was so easy, to make that pretty large decision. But yet on other things that are fairly easy, like, hey, should I start listing those online for sale, or should I go speak publicly somewhere?
Or should I run a half marathon? Or should I, yeah. Yeah, I figured that was going to come in sometime. I figured it was going to make its way in.
Speaking of decisions. Yeah. Yeah, so I know I asked you the question, like, directly about your sobriety, but, you know, it also applies to me, because, you know, we were sitting around talking in, I think it was probably April, and I said, you know, we should all run a 10K together at the end of the summer. I think that would be a good goal, because I had just, it was probably May, because I had just run a 5K, and I was looking for something to accomplish, and you said, we should do the half marathon.
And in 60 seconds, I was on the page, registered, and had a receipt. I was done. The decision was made. And I stuck with it for the entire summer, and congratulations to me on Saturday, two days ago.
Yeah, well done. I completed my first half marathon. I also was there. You were there?
And saying hi. But I was thinking, the same questions that I asked you, I was thinking to myself, why was it that something like a half marathon that took a lot of training, like, this was not something that, like, just happened. I had to put in a ton of effort to get to this point. Why was it so easy for me to make that decision and stick with it, but the decision to, you know, continue making the toys that I had, albeit a small success selling, but very positive feedback from the people that bought them, why is it so difficult for me to continue, like, pushing into that?
But running a half marathon. What you're talking about are the wooden toys, Montessori-style wooden toys that you listed on Etsy, right? Yeah, correct. So a couple different styles of toys you listed on Etsy, sold, what, four?
Yeah, three or four. I had a repeat buyer. With no effort, basically. She emailed me, and yeah, no advertising, no effort, they just, people found them and bought them, were very happy with them when they got them.
I bought one, it was awesome. My kids still do too. So why is it so hard for me to look at that and make a decision to say, I'm going to pour five hours a week into this, which is nothing. As far as the commitment goes, five hours a week is nothing.
I watch that many episodes of The Office every week. That's one thing that won't go away, so don't take those away. Right. But at the beginning of the summer, I committed to at least five hours a week, and most weeks it was way more than five hours, of running on hard pavement, in the sun, in the heat, and I did it every single week.
Right. I don't have an answer. So if you think about it, like, so if you take my decision to go sober, and your decision to run a half marathon, and you really look at everything that we did up to this point. So we both succeeded at that decision, right?
And then we decided to do it. We took smaller steps. Mine was day by day. Yours is, hey, I'm going to do a mile.
I'm going to do two. I'm going to do three. I mean, early on, we were running sprints together, so there were certain things that you had to do to get ready for it. And then, like you said, you spent the hours just exponentially, got more and more time.
You analyzed everything. That's one thing I don't think you mentioned in your intro, but a little bit of analytic. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit of numbers, guys.
Sitting through and looking at your splits and everything. And then during the first, I want to say it was like 50-some days, for me, I was doing a daily blog reflecting on the day. I also was running. It was near this time, so I was getting ready for the 10K last year.
So for the same event that you ran the half marathon in this year. So it is kind of interesting that we were both able to gradually work into it. It was organic. There was nothing pushed.
We talked about it a lot, like both of them, when they first started and then as it went through. So I guess now that you say that, I'm looking at my notes, and he talks about the four key factors for, I don't even remember what he calls them, but I wrote them down. And it's funny that you say that, because as you were listing out those steps that we did, his four steps are decide what you want, take action, notice what's working or not, change your approach until you achieve what you want. I know that sounds, as when I wrote it down, I was like, yeah, this is the simplest steps to success I've ever heard.
But that's exactly what both of us did. Because when I started, I was following a Nike Plus or Nike Run Club plan that I hated. I hated doing all the stuff in it. It didn't work.
And so I found something different that I moderately enjoyed. And that worked. And then I analyzed it, and I got rid of the things that didn't work. And that all happened organically.
I don't know how to make that happen on purpose. Right. Do you know what I mean? So when you started talking about that, and then you said that I was thinking about me not doing it.
So there's a good example of having a structured. So I did the Nike Run app. I was also planning on the half marathon. I got up to about a month and a half ago.
And this was another thing I thought about while I was reading this. And it's awesome that we were able to get to it this way. But so about a month and a half ago, I started working with the military because they found out I was taking a medication, and now they know I have asthma. And so that's working on going in through medical reviews and whatever it might be.
It doesn't matter. But at that point in my head, I was like, oh, I have asthma. I shouldn't be running. So I could tell my runs were getting harder and harder to do.
And then I knew the PT test was coming up, so then that was getting harder and harder to do. Nothing had changed. Zero. Two weeks before that, I was running five, six miles easy.
And then something mentally clicked. So I don't know if that's something that's able for us to analyze or figure out. But that one thing in my head, it didn't even say I couldn't do it. It wasn't even a part of it.
It just instantly affected it. And when I was watching you guys run in, it clicked in my head. I was like, oh, my gosh, that's what stopped it all. It was just something small.
maybe that happens maybe that's why you see youtube channels that stopped in 2017 that have 200 000 subscribers you know there was one comment that clicked in their head and then it was it i don't know you got any experiences like that that you could think of yeah mile 10.5 on saturday yeah because of because i got sick a couple weeks before the run i lost about two weeks of training three weeks before the run and so in my plan the furthest distance i'd ever run was 10 and a half miles and i i don't know maybe physically i did hit my limit but at mile 10.5 i i realized that this is the furthest i'd ever gone and i don't know if it was mental or if it was physical i i honestly couldn't tell you but i know i hit a wall like i've never hit before in my life and it took every single ounce of willpower it was literally just me running not to be embarrassed because i saw older older women running past me i i had to keep going but it was i think it was a mental thing because i made it obviously i don't know man did you make it close to your goal or did you or did that hit you hard enough that it affected the goal i ended up 10 minutes shy the goal was a 10 minute mile two hours in 10 minute total time or a little over two hours in 10 minutes and i finished at 218 so i guess i was about seven minutes shy of my goal um so so short of the 20 minutes after you finished the race and uh you and i were looking through your splits and you showed me that when did you think about that again when did i think about missing my goal yeah no no not necessarily missing the goal but like that 10 mile mark oh i told my wife about it later um because that was i i it was so yeah i was telling her about it because it was it was literally the most bizarre thing my immediate my legs felt like lead weights and it was exactly a 10 and a half miles and there's no other explanation for it i i was cruising up until that point right on pace at my 10 minute mile just a little bit under and and then it was over at that point i don't have any other explanation except i mentally was too weak to to do what i needed to do i don't know so what's crazy those you really aren't so that's what i mean like if you really think about it like you still finished it right like if you just like walked off the road at that point then yeah you're mentally too weak but it's no different than like me sitting somewhere at a bar and everybody running around with beer and me going oh man i really want one of those right now but then saying like no why would i throw all this why would i throw those for me you know those days or for you those 10 miles why would you throw that away uh thinking about it on other goals that i've had and then i've just like just stopped i didn't uh i don't know he said like burn those bridges behind me that i needed to burn uh he uses the i think it's napoleon or whoever it is that burns the ships oh yeah is that in this book i don't know i'm reading it so they go back and forth yeah well he does talk about it's basically for an invasion that they they there was an invasion that happened and then the ships behind them they burned the ships so that the men knew that there was no turning back and so uh that's it's interesting to see the correlation to that and then not having the ability to do it on other goals yeah i would really like to know and maybe we'll get into it later in the book i would really like to know what it is what it was about that one goal that that i stuck with because there are so many in my life like yeah that i don't i absolutely do not and we i think you and i both did a really good job at the beginning of this year we read uh jonakop's book finish and i think we both did really good jobs about setting uh achievable goals that was a big portion of that book was was not setting goals that are out of this world and i don't know about you but i've hit almost all of them this year um i'm i'm a little shy on the weightlifting um but that sort of took a that sort of took a hit when i decided to do a marathon through in the middle of the year um but i hit every other goal and they were they were achievable they weren't outlandish um right but i hit all i hit all of mine or at least i'm on track as well so um the working out one is the one that's gotten hit in the last like two months but like his thing is and everybody else's thing is just continue to do it whatever like but i also think we didn't set those in january necessarily we set those a year ago today i think it was very it wasn't at the beginning of the year i think we said we would start them at the beginning of the year but we started much earlier yeah i think you're probably right it was probably close to this time it was yeah but so go ahead no i didn't have anything to say i was just filling that that void because we can't have okay okay i've got a couple other quotes that i wrote down that i thought were really interesting um things that are probably gonna end up on sticky notes on my monitor um decisions not conditions determine your destiny and not deciding how to live is making a decision to be directed by your environment and that one i didn't like because that one really hit me kind of kind of right in the gut um not deciding how to live is making a decision to be directed by your environment oh man he spends a lot of time talking about that about how by not making it by not making a decision to choose your destiny or follow your path or become your best self whatever you know phrase you want to use you're allowing yourself to be led by the environment around you and be a be a be a what am i trying to think a product of your environment that's what i'm trying to say i've been that a lot somebody else make those decisions yeah yeah i mean i i yeah without uh without trying to like spoil my you know make it look like i've made a ton of progress just with the book i was that for a long time at my job you know i was i love my job i loved all the people there um but i was stagnating pretty heavily um there were not a lot of opportunities to grow and i was allowing myself to be led by that environment because as you know in that environment it's it's a it's kind of a place of stagnation um you get into a position and that position is yours forever and you just sort of you just sort of exist there and there's not a lot of growth among a lot of people there are a few rising stars you know there's a few people that really succeed but they end up leaving eventually right or getting pretty beat up and they have to uh make their own aspirations outside and then just build it from there yeah that's that's the other one just getting beat to death on the inside from the the red tape and the nonsense right um he talks about i've got there was a lot of stuff in here that i was just like oh man i could put exactly i could put faces to the quotes because of all the stuff i was yeah on page 35 it's in bold he says if you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in your life you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors or attitudes or quality of life that's far below what you deserve and i made a note and i said uh think of all the most successful people in your life the ones everyone perceives as arrogant or self-righteous those people set a standard of what they will accept from other people and they took nothing less and i don't know about you i'm picturing good i have a couple of people in my head um one of them that we used to work for uh it's kind of important at our base for a little while and he was a person that took nothing less than the standard that he had set and a lot of people didn't like him for it a lot of people really hated him for it and ended up driving him out because of it but thinking about that quote he had a standard of what was good enough and he never accepted anything less than that and people thought it was pride people thought it was arrogance you can call it whatever you want but the reality is he was doing those things himself and he said if you're not going to at least meet me where i'm at i'm not gonna you're not gonna be involved in my business it's an impressive stance to take because it's gonna alienate he actually said that verbally a couple times he probably did uh yeah pretty sure he did but it's a brave that's a brave stance to take because you're going to alienate a ton of people a lot yeah you're not gonna make friends that way that's for sure but you will you will be successful one way or another so dave ramsey talks about this i don't know if it's in his books i listened to a speech of his uh a year or so ago but he talks about how growing his smaller business uh when it was when it was less than let's say 50 people it was uh easier and then after as time goes on he's not able to accept those things that he did accept at 30 or 40 because the i don't know the people that weren't right for the decisions or weren't right for their positions got there and so uh got to that level i guess or were in the equation and even though they might have started with him he was not able to sustain with them and so he talks about dropping people off and basically firing people and how hard it is but he was at a level and wanted to be at a level that he couldn't sustain if that was going to continue to have those people with him it's a pretty interesting thing because it's hard it's really hard because some people are going to be your friends right yeah and so i think that it's like how many activities uh we'll go back to the sobriety because it's super easy for me to talk about but like how many activities and things that i do that solely involved alcohol you know how many things did you did you do that didn't involve running you know like yeah now they involved them so or for me don't involve them so it's kind of those decisions we made and we're able to continue with them i guess it's the choice of making the next one and what i struggled with on this and i wrote this down before before i even started reading but i wrote down i don't know how to act on ideas uh so such as like when to write uh is it i can read my own writing on that next one but uh so i just want to talk about like so that like we're i can make the decisions or you and i we've done this before before this podcast we said hey we're going to do this idea and we thought like hey buying the url pushing out you know a little bit of content starting this you know whatever social media accounts all those different things those were the decisions he talks about acting right away we acted right away um we've both done it you did it with your wooden monastery toys what happened after that because it's uh to me i don't know i can't figure that out like what ideas to run with all of them probably like i i don't know we both had and we can talk about you had you ran a successful kickstarter on a book that you wrote a kickstarter that got funded and i don't know what kind of feedback you got from that if you got any from the people that funded it but either way it was it was a successfully funded kickstarter and it was that's a project that you have dropped completely right oh it's gone yeah i don't even know the url anymore i don't think it's out so exactly like crazy how that was just dropped like uh yeah and in fact before it was actually fully funded and done i or no sorry it was fully funded and completely uh like ready for me to get money like i was just waiting for the money i actually got uh my wife and i got into an argument because i was actually so down on it like i was like oh it's dumb nobody wants it like i mean the book was written so it was already like literally everything i needed to do was done but she because she was building it up she was like hey you know you should continue to do this you know work on volume two while you're waiting on the money and do this and then i was like oh it's dumb like i don't i don't want to do it nobody wants to buy it it all just happened because of one guy and that's a whole different story but yeah it was one of those like i was killing it before it actually was alive i guess you could say yeah yeah definitely i mean it's exactly how i did my running i killed it before it was even done like oh i'll never be able to do that and then it wasn't even like an outside i read some of his stuff and i think about like he talks about like well if people don't agree with you or somebody's making fun of you or whatever it had nothing to do with any of that that's like a barrier that i don't i actually don't care about so i try to figure out what barrier is there yeah because i read through my entire journal or not journal but my like idea book the last couple days because i've been thinking like okay if it's hard for me to make a decision on an idea like find one and run like run and never turn around like make those videos make those podcasts make whatever it is like just do that like i wanted to come today and talk about how i had bought a url and that's it like that's that was going to be how i was going to relate this entire thing i didn't i don't know what to do and you could possibly go to one where you've already had success where you already had people buy it i didn't think about it till you said it actually i think i have like i take that back i did talk about writing uh with my wife today because i said something to her about if i wrote a book and it was a new york times bestseller like what do you think the subject would have been and after a ridiculous answer she finally answered with i don't know self-help because you read those all the time so i guess i got that going for me and then she also gave me some advice that i should stop reading the book and just do something because that's what they all say and it was kind of interesting because that's exactly what this chapter talked about because focus on stuff things that mean to you and then just do them so pretty exciting i think you're right but i think you and i are the same in that if we have a framework to work within we are much more successful i mean you and i have spent i don't even know how many hours hundreds probably defining redefining changing you know uh tuning processes at work to get them to be foolproof and perfect processes but that's what we are both really good at honestly and so i think when we have that when someone can just hand us a process it's much easier for us to find success it's the same thing with my running i i had a plan that i followed and all i had to do was check off a box that i did a thing and i succeeded so i'm hoping that this book over the next you know 24 chapters will lay out a really good process for me to follow i don't know what i'm a check i already got a little bit of that because on my uh jumping back to last week but uh when he said like list out all the things you will no longer tolerate or accept and then you you ran out the stuff you aspire to become on my aspire to become i really liked it when he started talking about him speaking and like how he was speaking and getting that experience much quicker than anybody else and he says his organization but uh i assume he means like the speaking uh organization that he was a part of or some sort of brokerage but when he talks about speaking and teaching those are two things that i wrote down and uh this past week i signed up to well you know what starbase is but it's a kids program at the base or at our air national base and uh it's a dod i don't know can you define it a little better than that or is that about it it's a dod it's a dod funded stem program for local schools they busk it in uh for a five-day curriculum where they teach them about rockets and math and some science stuff and uh robotics and then they get a little certificate at the end and then they go back to school uh it's a really cool program that the kids really love and it's focuses heavily on the inner city schools at least in port wean it does so they get an opportunity to be exposed to things that they wouldn't normally be exposed to yeah so i was able to speak there uh they offer like ability for people at our base to go speak at their graduation i spoke at one last year and they sent out today or this past week anybody wants to come speak do it again or or for the first time sign up blah blah and as soon as i saw it i signed up for two dates because i was like you know i did one last year i'll do two now and then now i you know read a little bit more of this and it's like i need to find more places to do that like to get out there and just talk because literally everything that star basic uh represents are all things that i could nerd out on and speak for hours so right it's it's kind of like instead of trying to find that business opportunity i feel like i should start doing more of that and so when you said like you cross out hobbies and just wrote woodworking that's basically what i did this week with everything i just crossed it all out and was like hey i'm not going to get a salesforce certificate i'm not like it's not that i can't it's just or won't spend the time it's just not what i want to do like i'm not going to start a website or maybe i will but it's not this week like that's not what i'm going to do so i guess most of my decisions were things to not do then to actually start but i feel like that frees up more mental space and like uh we can go hours of discussion about talking about being here now like a ramdas discussion but yeah i think that that's more what i'm looking for is to just relax and instead of seeking out a business just wait wait for that structure like you talked about to come to me yeah i agree well i've got a couple more things more than i have a push the talk button than i ever did last week right so i'm not sure what the heck's going on that's gotta be a mental thing uh i have a couple more things in my notes if we want to talk about them and then uh yeah and then if we can probably wrap up after that i don't know um something i really liked uh he says the three decisions that control your destiny were one what you focus on two uh what things mean to you and three what to do to create the results you desire um those are they sound easy but they're actually pretty difficult at least for me is what to focus on because sometimes i can be like a little bit of a squirrel on that that stuff you know this week i'm in photography this week i'm in videography i'm gonna get into next week next week i'm gonna buy a drone because i definitely need to be able to do that and i'm gonna get a competitive kite flying so well they better be high quality yeah obviously with the double strings you know you know me uh yeah i saw a kite today that was a sun kite you were like i should have one of those actually my my son did so that's cool yeah and then uh the number two one what do things mean to you i think that's a thing that i would like to work on over the next couple of weeks is being able to make that snap decision in my mind on what things mean to me um in my new in my new role i have a lot of i have a lot more work than i ever expected i was gonna have um which is great because i'm really busy but uh i would like to be able to make snap decisions on what things mean to me and outside of work as well you know personal things that come up being able to and as callous as it sounds being able to dismiss things that don't mean anything you know if an event comes up and it's like oh it'd be really nice if you could be there but it's not it's not furthering our personal goal it's not developing a personal relationship that i want to make become better and it's not uh providing me time spent with my family i would like to be able to make the snap decision and have the boldness to tell people know instead of kind of waffling and saying oh well we'll see if we can make it you know that kind of that kind of thing oh man i just jumps right to the i put two tabs uh on this week's content this week's chapter and one of them was on a section that's what he says on the other hand people who fail usually make decisions slowly and change their minds quickly always bouncing back and forth just aside so i literally like i thought man i need to put that on the wall or something because we'll do it at home i'll do it with my wife i'll do it with my kids they're like hey can we go outside later and i'm always like i will see like that just means that i don't want to make the decision now because what if i feel like being a lazy ass leader you know like i don't want to go outside it's like i need to make that decision now like yep and it it just has to happen like and i hope when my wife listens to this that she's like she's gonna call me out on it because she's pretty good at that like she's she'll keep me humble that's how you say that yeah but well am i final oh you got a note oh go ahead okay we had the silence and now we'll just talk over each other so that's cool yeah that's good yeah i can't wait to hear the notes for next week's episode uh nyagra syndrome uh this is something that i have definitely oh my gosh right yeah this is this is definitely that page because i didn't want to talk about it this is definitely something that's gonna get printed and put somewhere i don't know where yet uh i'll just read the quote out of the book as a result they feel out of control they remain in this unconscious state until one day the sound of raging waters awakens them and they discover that they're five feet from niagara falls in a boat with no oars at this point they say oh shoot i i've been in that boat a lot this quote i don't like i don't like the idea of niagara syndrome i don't want to think about it um but the reality is i this is me to a t and i don't want to be that i don't want to be that person um so i'm definitely don't you have it in your like in professional so i thought about this the other day uh when i read that and i read like the wishy-washy stuff like how many times professionally because we worked uh right next to each other for those that don't know like we literally sat like six feet from each other for i don't know like a year and a half let's say total yeah and then other than that it was virtually that close um on different projects or what it might be but professionally we're not that way no not at all so why is it that when i go to work because i thought of this at work the other day when i was talking to one of the guys and i said nope we're gonna do it this way and we're gonna see how it works uh two weeks from now and then we'll i'll make a note and then we'll talk about it then and it was like boom done and then it was over and i thought holy shit i don't do this ever never like i was like hey i'm gonna work out tomorrow not tomorrow today i'm gonna work out and then two weeks from now i'll reassess my bench press and then uh be done that's it yeah i've never done that never not once so why what is it that separates our professional lives from our personal lives is it lack of stakes like do we not care do we have do we not care about our professional lives and that's why we're able to do that or is it the opposite do we care i think it's the opposite because you're expected to produce that way so there are way too many people that are super happy with watching football on sundays netflix on saturday through sunday every night for multiple hours a night so when you or i told people like hey we're gonna read one or two books a month i think yours was two mine was one there's people that haven't read books for 10 12 years so yeah that's a like we i don't know where i was going with that but like they're it's just easier it's easier to go like no that's what i'm going to do and then we do it i lost my complete train of thought on that i don't know i guess i i really don't i really don't know i don't understand it at all because i'm the exact same i was the same you know when we work together that's how that's exactly how we ran things you know we would come up with the process we're gonna do this process for two weeks we will reassess if it doesn't work we'll move forward you know we fail fast fail forward get to 90 percent launch that was the whole mentality i'm the same way in my new job you know i've only been there a month so i spent a lot of time observing now that i've been there for about a month i started to implement little changes i don't want to i don't want to shake things up too much right away but but i i didn't ask for anybody's permission at all i saw an improvement that could be made i made it all on my own and i sent emails out not asking people to comply but explaining to them how to comply with the new process and i would never act that way in my personal life ever and i don't understand why why do i feel so adamant i guess powerful i guess is the word and i'm not i for those that don't know i'm i'm not anybody at work i'm just another person like a lowly worker i have no authority at all but i i do feel like an authority in the decisions that i make because i know they're right but i can't bring that back home with me and that frustrates me to no end and that puts me in a continual loop of i am scared to make a decision because it might be the wrong decision i think i know that professional decisions will only impact me at work and personal decisions will impact everything and so i get scared to make those choices but that could also be me like overanalyzing and trying to come up with like a really smart sounding answer i don't know well they have a they have effect of what and how like everything's done so when you were doing like the montessori's uh tool or toys kids toys um and when i was writing the book that i did for the kickstarter thing that took time away from your kids and you talked about it at the beginning like you want to spend more time with them so i think there's that fear like oh if i do this then i absolutely can't have a family but there's been countless amount of entrepreneurs have been like hey we don't you know if you're doing that then you're doing it the wrong way or the wrong reasons so but that's because the time that that's fake too because the time that i spent working on those toys was netflix time it wasn't kid time like i worked on that stuff after kids went to bed so like but that's an excuse i would use for sure i would definitely say that but looking back and like analyzing it from a distance i know that i didn't work on that stuff until after dinner and you know at that point in our lives i would i was i would get home from work we would eat dinner the kids would go straight to bed because we're eating so late but so i wasn't losing anything about what we're doing right now yeah exactly we intentionally set this up so that it was either post bedtime or just uh just before so it's like just before my kid's bedtime so i just told him goodnight walk in here and i missed 30 minutes yeah and i'm sure at one point we have used that as an excuse to not do this oh yeah i do it all the time for writing you know okay i'm not gonna write because i i don't have the time yeah well in reality that time is just about watching season two of the detectorist and you're not right you should not uh which was just released so yeah i'm gonna have to close this up pretty soon check out ozark a lot of stuff coming out right now yeah so i think uh i think my last note is a good way to close out uh possibly let me know but here he says make one or two decisions that you've been putting off one easy decision and one that's a bit more difficult show yourself what you can do right now stop make at least one clear-cut decision that you've been putting off take the first action towards fulfilling it and stick to it by doing this you'll be building that muscle and he talks about flexing while we're uh making constant decisions so i wrote down on my book i put a post-it note on the front of it and i put i choose now to dot dot and then i did one two and three uh i wrote at the top be healthy so there's something that's overarching it's kind of undefinable but uh i need to start working out more on a regular basis and eating correctly and then also for my mind i put in meditate but my main focus for this decision right now will be to work out i uh i didn't write an easy one um i couldn't think of an easy one to make yeah i suppose working out kind of a cop out because it's already my goal anyway so i was hoping you didn't call me out on that but uh i would i would say that like choosing to meditate should be an easy one because it's 15 minutes of my day that i can definitely afford to lose um so maybe i'll just say that and then next week if i haven't meditated six times or seven it'll be six times by the time we talk then call me out um but my heart my my decision and i did it on page 36 when he said stop you know he said before you turn the page make a decision i said i'm going to exude positivity i will suppress my sarcasm quote it could be worse we'll be replaced with a sincere quote on the bright side and that's that's something i've wanted to do for a long time um yeah we have a mutual friend uh who is that person um right you probably know who i'm talking about yeah and since i spent started spending time with him a couple of years ago i've always wanted to be that person and there's no reason not to be my sarcasm my my like uh angle you know me choosing to highlight the negative negative stuff it's not helping anybody it's certainly not helping me so so that's my decision i'm going to be positive that's a good one that's a good one because negativity just breeds and it festers on itself with other people i've thought often yeah how you're about to say something like oh did you hear what she said and then you just like delete it in a little chat because you're like i don't i don't want to that's gonna make my day worse right make their day worse it's not helping anybody this doesn't like you might get like a little internal laugh because you think you're you know you're somehow above the fray because of it but it's not you're just you're just digging down in the muck like everybody else at that point so so that's the decision i made and i'm i hope to stick to it that's my that's my decision for this chapter so that's a good one so i won't i won't use my be healthy because it's already a goal it's already there that i wanted to do so i'll choose one because i said on my aspire to become my number one on there was a relationship builder and that's because i don't know what happened or how it happened or it seems like a slow creep but i used to be somebody that would like go to a party and like want to learn everybody's name want to know everybody there and it just slowly got to the point where it's like i use that negative negative talk that you're talking about and i'll say stuff like i don't need any more friends like jokingly yeah but my number one thing was relationship builder so my intent this week is to have more meaningful conversations with people not necessarily uh just hey hello whatever i mean you know we interact at my god i interact with a lot of people on a day-to-day basis so uh building those relationships is would help me out in the near near far and then also help them out in the future definitely yeah i'm the same way i interact with probably i what i don't know about 40 or 50 people a day and so i'm in the same boat as you are me spreading my negative attitude is just it's exponential compared to anybody else you know so and it's crazy too like i i get we're kind of we're kind of in and out here but like how like when you see somebody with that attitude oh you're so easy to be like dude hey he is always a bitch yeah like it's not true like there's also times where like we're doing it too and it's uh or he is a bitch i don't know yeah i'm gonna discriminate there's a lot of great opportunity over here equal opportunity negativity yeah definitely so we got our challenges we got chapter three which is i do not know yet oh chapter three the force that shapes your life so that should be pretty interesting i'm pretty excited i thought when we started this it would be difficult to maintain a weekly discussion on it maybe but i think it's pretty healthy and i think we're actually getting better at it yeah i think so too i was i was in the same boat i thought i was worried that we were gonna talk enough but i mean we're about to hit an hour just on this 20 page chapter so we're we're actually gonna have to try to start trimming things down a little bit maybe i don't know we'll see yeah all right well thanks everybody for listening i guess we'll see you later bye thanks for joining us don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on itunes if you would like to join in on the conversation on twitter be sure to follow at pivoting podcast have a great week you