Chapter 3 - The Force That Shapes Your Life

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 we cover Chapter 3, The Force That Shapes Your Life, and how our decisions are matched with pleasure or pain. All right, let's get to it. All right, here we go.

Week 3 of Pivot Point, The Force That Shapes Your Life. What did you think about this chapter? I thought it was pretty motivating, pretty informative, all up until the last two pages, and then I was not excited at all. In fact, I stopped reading it, put it down, and then came back to it three or four days later, and then did the exercise, and then he raised everything off the exercise and did it again.

Oh, really? Why? Yeah. Well, what did you think first?

Really good chapter. I'm really interested to see where we're going from here, as far as applying this concept. It sounds super simple, you know, attach pain to something you don't want to do and pleasure to things you want to do. But in practice, I don't know how to do that, really.

So there were a lot of parts of this chapter that sort of really hit home. And yeah, this is the first one. I mean, the first two chapters were good, but this one made me really happy that we're doing this, because I think this is going to go places that are going to make a really big impact. Yeah.

And then looking back at the week before, I didn't do anything different. So it didn't really, I don't want to say it didn't help me, but it didn't really do anything for me. And then this week, I was reading this, really changed my outlook on how I'm looking at certain things. So I'm excited to talk about it.

So I want to ask you, I was thinking about it on my run today. I like that we were doing this one week at a time, instead of how you and I normally go through books, which is just burn through them as quickly as possible. Because what it does is it really opens your eyes to how little change is happening when you're not doing anything. Does that make sense?

I was thinking about it today, and I was like, what changes happened from week one to week two? And then from week two to week three, what changed? And then as I was reading through this chapter, I was like, oh man, here's some actual things I can apply that would have, I don't know. Am I making any sense?

Yeah, and I also compared it for myself to other books we've read, or ones that I've read. And we would have normally, I would have been much further ahead, maybe page 150 at this point. And I wouldn't have really thought about everything. And these, each week, I've been able to think about certain things.

And it's set up perfectly to do this, I think. You know, it gives us a base. Yeah, you would text me. What's that?

So you would text me on, it was like Monday or Tuesday, with a picture of this book. And you said that he's basically set this thing up like a magic show. And I think the impact of each of these reveals as we go through these chapters would be less if we were just burning through the pages. Oh, yeah.

But because we're pausing to take time and think about each chapter. You know, we had conversations last week that we wouldn't have had to have if we had read this. But I think those are valuable conversations to have as we try to work through these issues all on our own. Right.

And to be able to actually spend time on certain, like, if I read two or three pages and I want to stop and think about them, I can do that without thinking to myself, like, oh, I've got to get through the book. And rather than looking at the book as what's the completion, it's really here. It's just doing what we need to do. So, yeah, I didn't do anything different from last week.

Did you? You said you were going to be more positive. Ooh, buddy, let me tell you about how hard that is. As somebody who's naturally a cynic in pretty much every way imaginable, whose entire, whatever you want to call it, brand of humor is based on sarcasm.

This week was really hard. I was talking to my wife about it yesterday or the day before. There were several times during the week that I found myself, like, going down that road and being negative, talking negatively about a coworker. And I really had to, like, it was really hard for me to, like, pull myself back and try to flip that conversation into a, well, let's look at it from their point of view, you know, try to understand their perspective.

Because, man, you don't think about it when you're willing to, like, go in that territory. But when you're trying not to involve yourself in those kind of conversations, they are everywhere. Oh, yeah. Everybody does it.

Everybody does it. And I'm really good at it. So it's kind of hard to not be involved. Yeah.

So it was really hard. Like I said, there were several times this week where I caught myself, you know, kind of, I don't want to say bad-mouthed. Maybe it was bad-mouthing a coworker or in a conversation where we were complaining about a coworker and then, you know, consciously catching myself and trying to spin that conversation. And I wouldn't say I did a good job.

You know, it's week one. But I definitely did try. So did you catch yourself ever? So I've done this before, trying to be more cognizant of what I'm saying and being more positive to others.

Because then it would just come back to me. Did you ever find yourself, like, when you were sitting alone and you wanted to send a text message or some sort of, or like lean over and say something to somebody next to you like, hey, did you see what she said? And then you stopped yourself. Like, did you do that yet?

Because that's really bothered. Like, when you start catching yourself in that, that's when I knew I was like, oh, man, I'm really good at this. And I need to stop. Yeah.

Yeah. I had several moments this week. We had a little impromptu meeting with a few of us in the office. And it was a very frustrating conversation that was had, trying to work one individual through a problem.

And I really wanted to go immediately after that and just immediately, like, go right at that person. Like, how is he not getting this? Why are we still struggling? This is such a simple concept.

And I, it was really hard. I ended up just walking out of the office so that I didn't. I didn't know if I could stop myself otherwise. I guess that's a good tactic at a certain point, unless they start following you.

Yeah, exactly. So was there any, like, one line that hit you the most on this chapter three? What one thing stood out to you the most? Yeah, it was right at the beginning, man.

I actually was reading it, and I closed the chapter when I read it. And I stepped away for a day or so before I finished the rest of the chapter. I'll just read the first part of the paragraph because it's pretty short. He says, after all, what is procrastination?

It's when you know you should do something, but you still don't do it. Why not? The answer is simple. At some level, you believe that taking action in this moment would be more painful than just putting it off.

And it's such a simple idea. Like, it's, I mean, that's not complicated at all. But, man, did that hit home really hard. Because it's, that's, you know, we'll get into it later when we talk about the exercise for this chapter.

But that's the basis for most of my, most of my pain points. It's just me convincing myself that it's, it's much easier to wait. Right. Or the things that we've attached to, the reasons why we wait.

I mean, that's one thing he's talking about here. It's like basically saying, like, we've given, the reason why we don't act now is because we've associated some sort of pain with that action. And when you really sit down and think about it, those pains are just theoretical most of the time or some sort of short-term physical pain. Yeah.

They're, they're almost, they're negligible in the long run. Because when, in 10 years, when you look back on this moment, you won't remember the pain you felt in that workout. You'll remember the fact that you fit into a size 32. Right.

You know, like, that's what you'll remember. And it's, it is really hard in the moment to get yourself to see from that perspective. But it's something that I definitely want to work on. I definitely want to improve that area.

So I got a line that, it stood out to me. I'll just read it. Donald Trump and Mother Teresa are driven by this. I can't even finish it.

These Donald Trump references are killing me, but pretty funny. It was just written like 99. Oh, it was earlier than that, right? I don't even know.

Anyways, go on. No, that was it. It was 91, 91. Oh, man, it's a way back.

So, yeah, I just, as soon as he started doing that, I was like, oh, man. But nevertheless, you get to change that with anybody else's name that at the time was in the news or, quote, successful. And it would have been just fine. But I, so I read the whole chapter, like I said, up until the last two pages and did just fine.

I thought, okay, yeah, I can do this. I can start associating positive things. I can take the negative things and figure out why. I can do all that.

There was quite a long thing about, was it the California Raisins or something? There was a really long story in here that I thought was a little too long. But we're not doing a book review here, so it doesn't really matter. But anyways, so all I got for this is that stupid page 71 and 72.

And like I said, I did it twice. So why did you erase all your first answers? So I started out with thinking about more or less what I wanted to do. Like, oh, what do I see?

And you and I had been texting back and forth. And we also talked about it a little bit, I think, last week about what success was. And I gave you an answer of, like, successes, you know, me sitting at my house with my family and just hanging out or something similar to that, you know. I don't really need a dollar amount.

And your reply back was basically, hey, that's bullshit. Like, no, you can define it a little bit better than that. And so mine was more, it started, it looked like, and I did a study, or I don't know what you call it, I did a survey of myself, but it looked like my phone. So my phone right now, right now, I have four books on Hoopla, one magazine on RB Digital, one book on Overdrive, four holds at the library.

I have a physical book that I'm reading. All right, take that back, let me rephrase it. I have four physical books I'm reading right now, or at some point, like, in. And so it's just, like, scattered all around, and then there was no, like, focus to anything.

All 10 of those books on my phone, they're all self-help. So it's like I'm just, like, scattered around looking for some help of something. I don't know. So I refocused, because I had, like, my number three was, like, starting a business.

The other one was, like, Meditate Daily. Those were what my couple of them were, and I was able to change those and be a little bit more specific and say, hey, like, slow down. Stop trying to seek out things that you don't need to seek out. Like, I spend more time seeking than I do, I don't know, listening, if that makes sense.

It does, yep. So I kind of went through, and then I redid them. So I can just list them out. But I did, my first one is Live a Healthy Lifestyle, so that encompasses working out, eating healthy, and then meditating.

And then number two was being present. So I have a really tough time just being here, like, what's going on right here, rather than, like, planning for the future or planning for a business. Like I said, you and I know each other pretty well, and so we know, like, the whole joke was, like, hey, did you buy the URL yet? I finally, after years and years of buying them, I finally got rid of all but my last two.

So it's kind of, yeah. So my last two were writing a novel, and then also reducing, my fourth one would be reducing electronic usage, so cell phone and laptop. So let me go through the other stuff a little bit more, but what did you feel about it? I kind of went along right there.

No, you're good. Yeah. I was telling my wife and I had dinner the other night without the kids, and I was telling her about that success conversation that we had, because it was, I don't know, it was just funny. It was something that I would do if I was talking to somebody else, and it just so happened that you did it to me.

And so I was lucky enough to be able to call you on it, but I only have three that I was able to get, mostly because I was just, I just got to a point where I saw a pattern as I was answering the questions. Oh, yeah. They just ended up being the same answers over and over. And so my first one, because I was like, I don't know, I was looking for an easy kill, I guess.

I said I need to finish my bathroom. You know this, but in, what, March of 2016, 40 days before I was set to deploy for six months, I completely gutted my master bathroom. It was a terrible idea. I was just supposed to change a light fixture.

That was it. And ended up with it, taking it down to Bear Studs. So it's October of 2018 today, so we're a good 28 months, 29 months into that. And it's, I've got a shower, and that's it, a tile floor.

So that's the one I wrote down for that. Nice. And then the second one was finish school, but because it's kind of a weird time, I said the more immediate, more immediately to finish my Salesforce certificate. I had started that process.

I sunk, what, eight or ten hours so far into the studying. It's about 40 hours worth of material, and then, you know, you're on the job stuff. But that's sort of falling off on that. And then the third one I said was to be more helpful to my wife.

Oh, man. Just a more helpful person around the house. And at that point, after answering the questions for number one and then answering the questions for number three, I was like, anything else I list on this are going to, they're going to be the same answers. So I stopped.

Yeah, yeah. So you said more helpful, and I said, oh, man. That's basically where most of this came from was I wrote all those down. They were in my notebook.

They were sitting on the end table or whatever. And most recently, my wife and I had a conversation about, you know, helping out around the house and certain things that I was doing. And me, she's always known that I'm, what do you call it, I'm always looking at the future rather than, like, being right here. And so that's when I switched.

That's when I was able to, like, go back and look at my notebook and be like, oh, hey, all of these encompassed some theoretical business. And it helped out last night. My niece and nephew came and spent the night, and they're, I don't know, they're toddlers. They're young.

So watching them run around and then thinking back when my boys were that, and it's like, oh, man, you know, my oldest turns 12 this month and my youngest is nine. So those years are going away. So it's a lot easier to say, like, hey, or I shouldn't say a lot easier, but it's going to be very hard to focus on these four things. But these four things all revolve around those home stuff, you know, being at home, being here, being healthy enough to stick around, those kind of things.

So I get that. I kind of did the same thing. I didn't really pick that, but it was these four all go towards that. Yeah.

Yeah. So how do you want to do this? Do you want to go through your answers for one of them? And then I'll do one, and we can talk about yours and then mine.

Yeah. Yeah. So I started answering them, and then just like you, I have chicken scratch everywhere because I started answering them, and then I realized I was answering them out of order. And then, yeah, so I might be all over the place here, but I'm trying to read one of my answers, but.

I just have arrows pointing from one to the other because it's the exact same answer. Right. Yeah. So really, I can just go with a live a healthy lifestyle because it's something that I have zero excuse for, and I'm not even sure why I don't.

Like, really. So doing this, it was kind of, I'll go over the first question. It says, first, write down your four actions that you need to take, and that's what we're talking about, that you need to take, that you've been putting off. So these are one of those four actions.

And then the second part of this is, under each of these actions, write down the answer to the following questions. Why haven't I taken an action? In the past, what pain have I leaked to this action? So for me, why haven't I taken it?

Because I'm late. easy and that's basically it like just lazy i've linked uh being uncomfortable and not able to sustain it so it's one of those things for me i've i've sustained it for longer and longer periods as time goes on but i don't anymore so i know that when i start it i'm not going to continue so it's just one of those why start when you're not going to keep doing it and then uncomfortable is just that whole theory of being in the gym and everybody staring at you even though you know that after you become comfortable in the gym nobody cares what you're doing they have their own phones or workouts to complete so yeah yeah because you're not looking at them like you don't care what they're doing it's the same for them to you so and the lazy part is just really just like i said not an excuse as you know i get an hour out of my four-day work week i get an hour three of those days to work out at any point of those days and i don't work on mondays most mondays so i have an entire day to work out so and i have a wife that is willing to work out for two three hours at a time if i wanted to so it's i have zero excuse for it what you got so is it only because you is it only because you don't think you can sustain it is that why you don't start because you're confident that you're going to quit later yeah it's it's like uh it's like when i say it publicly like if you're like hey going to the gym like people will oh headed to the gym huh you know that whole and you're like yep and then when you don't go they're like oh that all over with because they know and it's just yeah that's when it's like oh man like they already know that i'm not going to continue this so here's something that helped me and we may have talked about this before but uh there are studies they've been studies that said that telling people that you're working out provides the same physiological response the same endorphin rush the same exact response as actually going to the gym and working out so knowing that when i started training for the half marathon other than you know our crew at work who had all agreed to do it together i didn't talk to anyone outside of work about it you know my wife knew but no one knew until probably late july early august i told no one um because i knew that telling people i was going to do it would give me that same response and i would be less likely to actually go and do it so that's a good way to yeah since i have nobody at work that i talk to anymore no that's a joke i do have people for the four people that listen to this i do have people at work i talk to yeah i don't know you could just disappear for an hour at a time and no one would really notice i mean they would notice when you came back all like sweaty in your face but yeah but it's true it's one of those uh uh because that is true like when we i was also supposed to run the same race and up until about a month and a half before until i finally uh accepted the fact that i was not going to do it i yeah it was one of those people would ask because you know everybody knew about it so family members oh hey so you're going to do that right uh and yeah it's just a lot easier to uh answer the questions that oh hey you look like you've lost weight have you been working out i'd rather answer those questions than uh oh you stopped doing that yeah it's a way easier question to answer definitely all right so i'll go ahead i'll go with my first one um because it's the least personal one i think um so i said i need to finish my bathroom uh the reason that i said the what is it the why haven't i taken action um i am overwhelmed by the amount of work and you know i i go in there every day to take a shower and i look at it and it's it does feel overwhelming um but that that's an excuse obviously because it's it's nothing i've never done before you know it's a little bit of drywall and some paint and then installing a new vanity and toilet like none of those things are new to me um but i've i've got it in my head that it's you know it's weeks and weeks of work uh i said that uh the pain that i linked to it was lost time um inconvenience and not having the shower available because once i start that work you know you're doing drywall you can't really take a shower oh yeah um the pleasure that i've had in in indulging in this negative pattern is literally just indulging in my laziness you know it's not it i was sitting there for a while trying to come up with like something good that i could write down and it's there's nothing i literally instead of doing that at night i just watch netflix and play video right right useless things completely useless things and uh what it's costing me i said it's costing me the joy of having a master bathroom that's functional um my wife won't admit it but i know it bothers her she's just too nice to say anything about it and it's wrong of me to take advantage of that uh and then they asked he asked how you feel about it and i said it makes me feel like a bad person obviously because i started this project she didn't ask for this right i did it without talking to her um you know when i she went to work one day i told her i was going to change the ceiling fan out and when she came home i had a friend over and we had gutted the bathroom so like i'm taking advantage of her kindness and her patience by not finishing it and that's not right at all it makes me makes me kind of a bad person i laughed just because it's one of the like it's like you said that you can take the answers to all these and you kind of there's i can take one of your answers and move it to what i already have like i already have that written on something else you know because it always is the same thing so him saying like hey just when you say you want to do it or you need to do it just do it like why wait and that's uh yeah it's going through this it was kind of nice to write stuff out like for me uh when he says uh what is it what will it cost you not to change now uh when i think about the living a healthy lifestyle i have so many people in my life that are older uh well older than 50 closer to 70 and they're able to work out three to six times a week and complete all kinds of tasks and so it's one of those like i have zero excuse and they are showing me that like you can you need to live healthier to live longer you know and to change the patterns that you have but uh and then he asked the last one is the final step is right on all the pleasures you receive by taking each of these actions right now and for me it's one of those for living healthy i feel better and like you said at the gym when you finally know that they're not watching you and you're going to the gym all the time that one question is nice always to hear is oh i see you're losing weight or hey have you been working out that's a couple questions that everybody loves to hear but mentally and physically you you feel better and it's one of the i don't understand why i say that a lot i don't understand why i do understand that uh that uncomfortable ability of starting goes away pretty quickly to feeling better mentally and physically yeah it definitely does so what is it what is it that's keeping you from starting right now like right so uh was it yesterday two days ago i signed up for an uh i'm going to regret this i know i will but i signed up for a uh 11 miler on december 29th in indiana so that's gonna be uh but it was one of those i needed to sign up for something and get it on the on the books pay for it it's 60 it was not exciting especially in the time where uh we're trying to budget as much as we can and we have our own goals in our family so but i needed to do it so i did it man i think it's i think it's a really good idea um because you know that's what my that's what my half marathon costs 60 dollars and you know if somebody ever listens to this who's doing pretty well it may not sound like a huge sum of money but to spend 60 dollars on something and then not do it for me and i know for you would be very difficult like oh yeah that was the thing that made me keep doing it was that i paid for it like i am going to do it because i paid for it even though it's only 60 dollars because i don't know there's just something attached to money for me that won't let me waste it like that so i think it's good and it's interesting that you because everybody does it but we attach that like so that's 60 dollars for me like you said it's a lot of money but then when you look at it and you put it in perspective of you know what i used to spend on starbucks or what i used to like it really isn't that much money it's just one of those when you look at it as like one drop you're like oh oh man i gotta do this like i don't want to throw that away like i can't throw that away yeah definitely so i would like to talk about so my third one was writing a novel so i've been focusing on like businesses and doing all different things and as you know i've done some writing uh multiple different types of books but anyways the reason why i wanted to talk about it was i did this whole exercise and i was like okay he's saying start now like at the end of the chapter he's like hey go do something for each one of these and then get you know get the ball rolling so i opened up a novel that i had already started writing i've never written non-fiction or sorry i've never written fiction i've written non-fiction and i was like okay i broke it down and i even text you uh like how many words you had to do a day for six months to for a hundred thousand words because that's an average novel uh i went and looked i was like okay it's gonna take me six months that's not bad uh i already had 3500 words written for this thing so just one of those like yeah stop stopping that's the chapter of my next book stop stopping yeah but i thought it was kind of interesting because i looking at it and knowing that that's something i've always wanted to do i've already started it it's just a matter of like getting over those fears of failure or vulnerability of saying like hey i wrote this and it being a hundred thousand words and taking me six months to do i guess i'm kind of getting into what i wrote down but that's what i wrote down for that one was like i was fearing the failure slash vulnerability of saying like hey i spent six months on this uh rather than just starting a twitter account a website of something stupid i have a business idea so it's because that's easy you know it's super easy we've done it so many times a lot of old urls yeah to prove it and and what's funny about all of these is each one of these uh each one my wife has told me at some point in time like hey you should pursue that and i didn't and i don't want to make this like hey my wife's always right episode but yeah this one she's pretty she's got it yeah yeah it's almost like we know us better than we know ourselves right yeah at least uh at least she has no problem calling me out when i when i stray from these so if i did tell her tomorrow that i'm working out and i did not she'd let me know yeah that's good so you shared that one that's uh i had one that sort of went away that i wasn't expecting as i was like writing down my answers to these questions i uh i was really surprised by what i ended up with on the page um because it sounds kind of like a superficial really easy thing um i said that i you know one of the four actions i need to take right now is to finish school i've got i think it's somewhere in the ballpark of 110 credit hours right now towards my bachelor's um yeah and for those of anyone who doesn't know it's only 120 for most bachelor's degrees so uh but more immediately i wrote down that i need to finish my salesforce cert um i've been talking for years about getting certs and we have a we have a co-worker that has several of them and he's been telling me for years that i need to get on it and get my certs because in in it uh certs are a big deal they're a huge negotiating tool when you go for salaries and they're also uh can be a major gatekeeper when you're applying for jobs and you know i've i've just never done it not to mention pursuing them you like learn stuff that's actually relevant to your job rather than a degree that most of the time is just a generalization yeah so as i was writing them out i writing out my answers as to like you know the pain that i've associated with it um i kind of came to a pretty big like realization for me uh and i got a lot of things that i crossed out as i was like trying to be more honest and more vulnerable uh but eventually i came to this answer and that i'm afraid to take the test i'm afraid to fail i'm afraid that people will see that i'm a fraud and i don't know as much as they think that i do and i've read a lot about imposter syndrome um it's super common in it career field maybe in others i don't know i only you know read about the one because that's the one i work in um but it's really common amongst it people especially because it's such a broad field and there's so much to know and most of the time you're solving problems you have to look up the answer so you don't know it off the top of your head so it's really common for people to have imposter syndrome where they don't believe that they know the answers and you know i've never really thought of myself and i've never really thought that i had that problem um because i just understand i thought that i understood that you couldn't know everything um but as i was writing out this stuff trying to figure out why i wouldn't go forward with this certification which by all accounts is not that difficult relatively speaking to other it certs i've gotten um i i sort of came to this realization and it was kind of a big deal for me um because it applies to all the other certs that i never went and got you know the ccna that i thought that i needed the networking certification for i shouldn't use super specific it stuff in this podcast but uh you know my the a very specific very valuable certification in my job that you know i'm with a few hours of studying i could probably pass the test just based on prior knowledge i never did and i think it's all because like i'm scared to fail like because i've never i can't say that i've never failed before but i can because and i think we've had this i know we've had this conversation before whenever it gets to a point where i look like i'm gonna fail uh i just quit yeah i think quitting is different than failing um because but in reality it's the same you know i get to a point where it looks like i'm not gonna be able to do it or it's gonna require more work than i'm willing to put in and instead of like persevering and pushing through i just give up and i'm able to laugh that off and turn into a joke versus failing and uh that's a major trend in my life that i would like to reverse that's a good one uh i almost made it a joke when i talked about uh andy on the office talks about how he doesn't quit or sorry he quits or he finishes things and he's walked two marathons to prove it but yeah it's a lot easier um having talked about doing two separate certifications and not going through with them either failing the one test and or just not being able to take the other and then just stopping pursuing it it's a big deal it's just like a work it really is just like all these but uh yeah i can totally see it uh and not to mention uh could you explain that syndrome you were talking about because i don't know what that is either if anybody else doesn't know what that is imposter syndrome yeah so imposter syndrome essentially is the idea that uh well here i'll just give you the wikipedia definition it'll be easier uh it's a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud uh and it's ironic uh my wife i recently started a new job and i've she's like super worried about it because it's totally different than anything she's ever done and uh i keep telling her i'm like ah this is just imposter syndrome you know what you're doing just just trust your instincts meanwhile i'm sitting here for the last probably five to seven years fully in the depths of imposter syndrome and not admit it to anyone so i think it's one of those things you can see on others so much easier than what you see on yourself like you're so much easier to look at somebody else and go man you're smart enough or you know you can definitely do this whereas if anybody asks me about any four of these my top four you I'm going to be like, oh, yeah, you could do that. And let me tell you how. I'd probably have written an outline for it.

Yeah. Yep. Oh, you want to run a marathon? I've got a training plan already saved.

I'll just forward you that. Also, there's a sweet watch you should buy and a couple other bands. Yeah. Because that's how I roll.

Yeah, definitely. So the last thing I wrote in our little common notebook here, or our notes for the episode, was basically, I looked at this, if I died today, what would I be least proud of? And so I don't know if you read that or not, or if you thought about that. Yeah, I saw it.

After you put it on there, I definitely thought about it. After I read it, or after I wrote it, I was like, oh, man, am I? And then I started second-guessing my second-guessing, and it just all came down to, like, hey, you just need to start doing the things and relaxing. So many, we talk about building businesses and building things.

It's just, for me, it's just like, hey, just chill. Like, relax. Do something to relax. But I don't know why I brought that up, because it has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

But I just read it, and for me, that's a big thing. It's just doing things right away. And that's what he's getting at. So I'm kind of excited for Chapter 4, when he talks about belief systems and the power to create and the power to destroy.

Because there's so many things I'd like to create. Yeah, definitely. So since you brought up what you wrote on the outline, the things that, if you died today, what would you be least proud of? And we had previously mentioned our conversation about success.

If you died today, would you consider your life a success? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, my life overall, yeah.

But would I consider myself a success? No, not at all. I don't think so. I don't think so.

No, because for me, and really thinking about what success is for me, is a much longer existence of, I'm trying to think of the word, but I don't want to say dynasty, but something bigger than, like, a dynasty is, like, a, that's way too big. I'm trying to think of, like, what, legacy? My legacy would die off quicker. Like an empire.

You want to build an empire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But really, I don't think, yeah, that would, it doesn't exist big enough. And that's what, whether it's wrong to look at it that way or whatever, but that's what I look at, is I'd like that to be much larger.

Larger of an impact. Maybe not as a fiscal, but a much larger impact. What about you? So, what do you think?

No. No, I don't think so at all. Yeah. Not I don't think so.

I know for a fact. I wouldn't consider my life a success. I mean, I think, you know, I've done a good job so far, relatively speaking, of, you know, providing for my family, taking care of my kids, raising them in a way that I think will, is the right way. But as far as, like, my personal success, I don't, I don't think I'm there.

I don't think I'm even close. Do you think anybody feels like they're successful? Like, at our age, you know? I don't know.

Maybe not. I'm sure everyone has some, I'm sure everyone has some, like, far out, like, goal of where they want to be. Because people who are, I think, for people who are successful right now, in the eyes of most people, you know, if you look at somebody like Elon Musk, or you look at a Bill Gates, or you look at, you know, somebody like that, everyone around them would look at them as successful, right? But in Bill Gates' mind, he's got something bigger.

You know, he sees something larger in his future because he's already achieved so much. Those people don't achieve what they achieve without having some bigger, grander vision in mind. And, you know, if he died today and there was some sort of afterlife and he's looking back on his existence, you know, I think he could probably say, yes, I was pretty successful, but I had X, Y, and Z goals that I wanted to achieve. So, no.

I guess the answer is no. I don't think anybody dying, you know, abruptly would say that they were successful. But, I don't know. So success is also very subjective.

I would consider Bill Gates a success. I would consider Elon Musk a success. But Elon Musk has a goal of, you know, eliminating gas-powered cars and making the entire world powered by the sun. So, if he died today, he did not even come close to succeeding in his goal.

So. I know I didn't. I know I'm not close. So.

I think looking at these areas, though, as you, like, go through them and read through them again, each one of them is a step towards that, you know. The ones you talk about and the four that I talk about, each one is like, hey, that leaves some sort of little bit of legacy, you know. Hey, he did this. Hey, he was able to complete this.

I always think about it because, like, I never knew my grandfather on my mother's side. I always think about, like, what did he do to, like, I don't want to say pass on to me, but what did he do that was that big enough in his kids or in his wife's mind that they would talk about it later on, you know. That's another reason why I continue to, it's not every day, but I started journaling. We talked about it week one.

I've been pretty good about doing it about three to four times a week. And I write in there, you know, certain things. Because to me, it's like, this is something that could be passed down to go, hey, not that I might give a shit what I did on November 3rd, 2018, but it's still something that they could read through and go, oh, okay. I kind of get a gist of how this dude was.

I don't know why. That seems important to me. But I think it sounds like something I would enjoy now for those people before me. Yeah.

So I guess that's what I kind of look at success is, like, using, that's the success of being able to pass on what I did every day and what I was thinking. But maybe it's fiscal, you know. There's not a time I drive by a Model X that I don't think, I'd love to have four of those. So, you know, like, just admitting that, yeah, maybe success is a very, very large dollar amount.

Yeah, maybe. I mean, but there are a lot of ways, like, and it comes from a, like, this was a quote that I read and then Macklemore did it in a song, but, like, he talks about in the one song, you die twice, once when they bury you in the grave, and the second time is the last time that somebody mentions your name, you know, Mother Teresa had no money when she died to bring it back to what Tony Robbins was talking about, and she was driven by the same passion, the same zeal that, and we'll use his example, Donald Trump was driven by, to make his money. Right. And she didn't have any of it.

But Mother Teresa is somebody that we're going to talk about for hundreds of years from now. So, success isn't always money, you know, and maybe success is an impact that you made on somebody's life that you don't even realize. Oh, yeah. I don't know.

I don't think I've done that yet. And it's, that weighs on me heavily, like, every day, is what am I going to be remembered for when I'm gone? Will the last time somebody says my name be at my funeral? Will it be spoken by my children?

Or will it be somebody in the community that I impacted their children's children's children? You know? I might not be at the guy at Namecheap. He'll go, holy cow, man, we've been able to go pay the bills for this long.

This dude just died. He's going to quit buying URLs. We're going to have to close up shop. Yeah.

This is when the dude doing the balance sheet for AWS says, I think we get something went wrong. Well, I think we can close it there. What do you think? Yeah, I don't have anything else.

You got anything else to you? No? I think it was a, I think it was a good chapter. And, you know, like I said, those first two chapters were good, but I really like that we're doing it myself and maybe it's just me trying to listen to myself, but talking in circles, you know, we wrote the four things down.

We do the exercise and this podcast will help me, but really keeping accountability of each one of these things and saying, hey, what am I doing to get those done? That's what I fear is that those drop off. But we got 22 more weeks of this, so I don't think it will. Yeah, I definitely know that during the week, like that was, that was one of my thoughts.

Every time I wanted to indulge in a negative conversation, I was like, I don't want to have to explain myself on the podcast for this. So, yeah. And I also thought about like, it doesn't have to be these four, you know, there could be other things that you said helping your wife around the house. Like that could be, there could be six or seven other subtasks of that, you know, like that bathroom seems to be a pretty big one.

So, you know what I mean? Like I look at a lot of people. Yeah, but they all boil down to the same, I'm associating all of them to the same pain point, every single one of them. So if I can just eliminate that idea from my, from my vocabulary, like then hopefully that'll solve a lot of problems.

Yep. I did it today, this evening with the dishes. We had more dishes than were in the dishwasher. And it was, it was one of those, like normally I would have just let it go till the morning.

And honestly, my wife would have just done them in the morning. I know that now, but I would have thought, I would have said in my head, like, hey, I'll do them in the morning, like I would unload and reload. And it was just like, I just did them. And so I need to do more small tasks like that too.

And look at them as like, okay, I associate the pain with standing here for 20 minutes, but the bigger pain is tomorrow if I have to touch them. Yeah. So it's just associating that. So now I just look at everything as a pain.

All right. So it looks like next week is chapter four, belief systems, the power to create and the power to destroy. Oh, this should be interesting. He starts off with a quote, under all that we think, lives all we believe, like the ultimate veil of our spirits, Antonio Machado.

So like I said, it's like a magic show. Yeah, probably every question we had will be answered next chapter, but it's good. I like it. All right, man.

I'll talk to you next week. Yeah. Sounds good. See ya.

Yeah. Bye. Bye. Thank you.