all right welcome back to the auto studios inside my canoe head i am your host dr d today we are going to talk about building that life you want how do i go from here to there all on my own without needing external help it's how the successful people are successful they realize they look around no one's coming to hell it's up to you so sit back grab yourself your favorite beverage let's get at her all right thanks for joining us again we love your feedback continue to drop it to us at www.insidemycanoehead.ca you can send the show a text you can drop us a support and if you really love what we do here at inside my canoe head feel free to drop me a love and a hot coffee with all of that right now life is in chaos we see what's happening in the middle east we see what's happening in ukraine potential conflict in the pacific region life is very very difficult and it often will seem to you in times like this that it's difficult to achieve what you want that the idea of sitting down and writing a strategy and thinking about future goals and what you can become seems a little bit ridiculous when the world is perpetually on fire whether it's political disasters economic disasters natural disasters cultural disasters it doesn't matter it seems like we all live in this time and space we're under a continuous non-stop pressure of things that are going pear-shaped the shizzy seems to be hitting the fizzy every freaking day so what can you do about it what control do you have well we often talk about the stoics here ryan holiday's book the daily stoic if you don't have it it's a fantastic read i read it every day when i write my journal and basically they remind us that we live in an environment that we can't control right when you sit back and think about it you have very little control around the world around you right an exceptionally little amount of influence you have on what is going on in the world around you however what you have absolute choice over is how you are going to choose to react to the events that are beyond your control what do you do when bad days happen what do you choose to do when somebody does something what do you choose to do when certain decisions are made by politicians especially the ones you didn't vote for right in a democracy and i live in a democracy here in canada i get a say but i don't get the final say so if my person doesn't win the election and my party doesn't get into power it's not like my government's a failure it's what the collective society wants so as they enact policies that i totally disagree with what am i to do well i can pound around the streets like a petulant toddler carrying signs and whining about the world around me or i can sit back and say hey this is happening it's beyond my control what does it mean for me and what strategies might be available to me to work my way around it right how do i find success well that all begins my friends with you defining success and it starts with a little bit of self-love and a little bit of acknowledgement that life sometimes will throw you a right cross upside the head as mike tyson said we all have a plan until we get punched in the face the reality is i don't care if you get punched in the face i don't care why you are where you are right now i don't care how you got there i don't care whose fault it is let's blame if it makes you feel better blame 50 people for all the things that they did to put you where you are today that's perfectly within your choice what we're going to do is talk about how do we get from a to b right first of all we have to accept that we're a day and this is not about beating yourself up this is not about calling yourself a failure this is about looking that incredible person in the mirror and saying i am where i am because of a whole series of events but everything that happens past this point it will be my fault that's why when we talk about preparedness and risk and resilience in the roadmap to resilience that five-part series that we have up on our sub stack our youtube channel and on the podcast the first thing that people need to do to adopt a prepared life is to accept responsibility for their outcomes right if i succeed or if i fail it will be my fault right everything that happens in my life is my fault it's not somebody else's fault i don't fail to achieve my goals because somebody else did something that's just a scapegoat the first part of getting yourself in order and moving forward is accepting that i don't care what happens to this point but from this point forward absolutely everything that happens will be my fault and that's exactly the way i want it gary v famously says the same thing i'm starting a business i have a business called preparedness labs incorporated it's a canadian research and education firm in risk resilience and preparedness if it succeeds to get to a seven-figure company that will be my fault if it never gets past a twenty thousand dollar company that will be my fault right you see that the difference there like i'm not going to blame market forces i'm not going to blame political decisions i'm not going to blame bad partnerships you can go on with a plethora of excuses people want to come up with my success or failure is up to me so if my company succeeds it's because of me if my company fails it's because of me if i get fit it's because of me if i stay fat and obese it's because of me right it's all about assuming i'm here it doesn't matter why i got here but i'm deciding i want to go forward so have your pity party have your 24-hour woe is me and then look at that incredible person in the mirror and say okay i love you it doesn't matter why we got here but here we are now let's figure out where we want to go from here and we talked about a lot of writings and if you follow me on sub stack and a number of the podcast episodes before we've talked about building a life strategy and a life strategy is somewhere around strategic thinking and strategic planning are two distinctly different things strategic thinking is the idea of where do you want to be visioning what does your world look like so if i was to say to you if you could write the script realistically where would you want to be in 24 months i like two years because sometimes one year transformation is pretty tough to do especially if there's an education piece in there etc so if i was to ask you where do you want to be in 24 months irrespective of everything that's going on if you had to write the script where would you be and think about it through the lens of your personal relationships think about your personal health which is your physical and your mental health think about it through your financial health where your finances are now and where you'd like them to be in 24 hours think about your professional life whatever it is you do for a living whether it's a barista or a lawyer and everybody in between where do you want your professional life to be in two years and your last part is your community service right where do you want your community service and the relationship with the broader community in which you choose to live because i'm assuming you live in a place that you could move if you wanted to right so you look at it through those five areas we're going to tackle each one in a piece but if you think about where do you want to be and saying and i'll give myself i'm on this journey right now so throughout this uh conversation today i'll use me so a couple of months ago i did this and i started this process in 24 months from when i started i want to weigh 180 pounds right i weighed well over 240 i now weigh 240 25 i'm on that road journey towards 180 i'm not there yet and i'm not it's not a race to the bottom but i've got a clear goal of for my physical fitness what i want to be able to do the tasks i want to be able to execute because if it's measurable there's a likelihood to do it for example in two years you would like to be able to run a half marathon in under an hour okay you want to run 21 kilometers in under two hours right you want to run a half marathon in under two hours that's your goal that's a realistic goal you measure whatever and then you sit down and you say okay i'm here at a and this is where i want to be at b what are the things that i need to do along this road going from a to b or b to a what do i have to do to make that successful right so you're taking from your strategic idea where you want to be to where you actually are to where your goal is if you think about it as a road map right you take a vacation you go on a road trip there's a whole bunch of stops along the way places where you have to make a decision am i turning left or am i turning right this is the type of thing so when you think about your physical fitness and your mental health we always say in physical fitness there are three things that you need to worry about your sleep your diet and exercise and all three are within your control what you as my old sergeant major used to say you are what you eat which means what are you stuffing into your pie hall because that's perfectly voluntary i believe you do not live in a place where people force feed you your exercise the human body was designed to operate in nature and really an anthropological writer put it this way that the human animal is designed to walk long distances periodically carry heavy things and be able to sprint short distances so if you just think of it that way whatever workout program you want to join whatever gym you want to join whatever non-monetary body weight program you want to follow the essence is as a human animal you're designed to sprint periodically carry heavy items if necessary and be able to walk long distances that's what you're designed to do set up your exercise program to do that and sleep well sleep comes when you drink less coffee in the afternoon but the idea is you're supposed to get seven or eight hours of sleep and what sleep actually is is when you're laying horizontal or near horizontal that's when your body repairs that's when your body does all the work to repair the damaged muscles to rebuild the muscles that you strength train with they're repaired in the evening not during the day your body's busy doing other things so the idea being is just using that physical fitness as an example i'm here like at a and i want to go here in b this is how i get from one to the other the reason it's important when we think about strategic thinking is do you have an intent as to where you're headed to go or do you just randomly run through life and figure out what you want think about the pandemic think about people during the pandemic who had a strategic pivot plan for their finances they got fired and what did they do they had their 24 hour pity party and then they got their arches up and they went after it they said okay i'm gonna go find work over here or i'm gonna go do this how many people did you know that when the pandemic started they simply sat on their couch and waited for normalcy to return they were actively doing absolutely nothing to try to improve their situation other than sitting on the couch and just trying to make it through the whole idea of moving your life forward through a strategic plan is everybody who's successful has one right so if you want if you are in university right now you want to be a doctor right you can't sit at home you actually have to do something and you say okay i have to get into an appropriate undergrad program to get a certain amount of training that they're looking for in north america you have to take the mcat test i then have to research what they're looking for in the interview process like you have to do that work if you want to be a doctor so why would your life be any different why would you consider all of the things that are available to you out there the myriad of things that you could become in the world the people who get there are not the people who have advantages or privileges that's just an excuse by people who don't do the work people who are successful are people who lay out their roadmap now some people come from some pretty challenging socioeconomic areas that just might mean their roadmap is a year or two longer than everybody else's but they still have a roadmap they still have the ability to succeed right so if i wanted at age 54 to become a pilot i know it's my job to go figure out how to do that it's my job to figure out the steps necessary look at the budget figure out how to earn the extra money to pay for that and make it happen right that's not somebody else's job to do it not somebody else's job to pay my bills for me so it's my responsibility or are you simply just getting up every day and winging it because a lot of people just get up every day winging through it if they're not working they're doing nothing productive they're just sitting around doing whatever and if they work they work and then they come home and what and four years go by and where are they they're in the exact same place they were four years later four years earlier and they haven't advanced any the people who are successful in life and it doesn't matter the field are the people who say i want to be here in 24 months this is the things that i need to do to get there now let's figure out how i'm going to do them in one order right so people sit down and make a plan they build their relationships they build their community service they build their professional life they take care of their physical mental and financial health they take responsibility for all of that because they know it's their job to be successful it's not somebody else's job to do it for them there's an old adage in emergency management field that talks to that nobody's coming to help right it doesn't mean that the professionals in disaster response are not going to do their best to help you it's because you are but a fly on the wall of hundreds of thousands of people i live in a city of 1.1 million right the odds of somebody coming to help me if it's a system-wide city-wide incident is fractional to nil right it's like mel robbins theory the let them theory is based upon the idea of just let people be who they are and don't let them influence right so you've heard people walk around and say things like you know mark made me mad or i've been pissed off all day because of what judy did right it's just a way to blame somebody else for your lack of ability to manage an event or to manage your emotions right i get this argument with people all the time somebody else can't make you mad yes people do dumb stuff i do too right we all make dumb errors all the time right and you get an emotional response and emotional responses are good they're proper they're wonderful we love them 10 seconds later if you're still angry that's not the person's fault that's yours you've decided that because of their actions you've decided that you're going to get angry and you're going to stay angry right so now you're putting yourself and all the people around you through all kinds of bs because of that right how many people burned up a couple of days since they've been cheesed off right well you know what shy you have the right to do that i'm absolutely not arguing you have the right to do that but in reality it's not somebody else's fault but you right so the idea that no one's coming to help means if you want to be successful if you want to achieve a certain goal and it could be a goal in a sport it could be a goal in your professional life in relationships in your family in your physical health it doesn't matter across that spectrum we talked about earlier if you want to achieve something you have to do it and it's very keen it's very much tied to the resilient risk and resilience conversation and the preparedness conversation is that if you want to adopt a prepared life and decide that you're going to be ready to take care of you and your family and all those for whom you're responsible if disaster strikes then you have to do it like nobody's going to come and wait you on the head with a little bit of holy water and tell you you're now a prepared individual right you have to go out there and do the research you have to go out there and figure out where the data is you have to figure out what it is you need to do etc that takes cognitive effort and focus right that's your strategic planning when you take the strategic idea that came up in your thinking the future goal the future direction those type of things strategic planning is how do i translate that strategic goal into specific actions along the way and you lay out a roadmap i've shown this in a previous video that i did a couple of years ago where i've created a whiteboard when i did this a to b thing or b to a depending on how you're looking at this i listed in those five areas i talked about exactly where i am today i'm a whiteboard guy i like the visual learning and then over here i put exactly where i want to be and then i figure out all the way points that happen out in the middle so all of a sudden now i was tracking about 45 things in a little journal like this is not complicated i just have a cool little journal here and i just track it in there where am i right now and i come back and visit it once every 30 days and say am i on track am i headed towards it because i guarantee you right if you want to achieve a goal you better have a plan because luck is not going to get you there if for example you're living in a economically struggling position right now you have but two choices there are only two choices and in most cases a lot of things are binary you either have to earn more money or you have to spend less money those are really the only two choices i can't tell you which one is correct for you i don't know the details of your situation but when i look at my balance in my life i know that i can't live on more than 80 percent of my income because there has to be some fudge factor there for when bad days happen and stuff goes haywire now emergency fund planning all of that great financial advice i'm not a financial advisor right But I know in the financial world, it's my responsibility to pay for my retirement. It's not somebody else's job to pay my bills when I retire. That's mine. It's my responsibility to pay my bills today.
That's not somebody else's job. That's mine. And if I'm currently not earning enough income to both pay for today and save for retirement, I have got two choices. I can either cut, and a lot of people can't cut much.
Let's be fair. Prices are ridiculously high right now. So then you have to look, how do I make more money? How do I earn more money?
Now, there's two ways it's getting a raise. It's convincing your employer that you're worth more. And the other way is simply figuring out if I want to, like, say, for example, I make $40,000 a year in my current job, and I want to make $50,000. Well, your employer's probably not going to give you a $10,000 a year raise, a 20% raise.
So you're going to look around and go, you know what? I'm out, right? I'm going to go figure out which job pays $50,000. I'm going to figure out what is the training required for that job that I don't currently have, figure out the most economical way and methodology to get that training.
I'm going to get that training, and then I'm going to apply for the job, right? That's somebody with a plan that realizes economic times are tough now. I need to make more money. And they don't whine and complain about not having money.
They figure out, OK, how do I go get more money? And this is not quick. It's not overnight. It's how do I earn more?
And so the theory keeps coming back to where you are now and where do you want to be in 24 months? Only you can answer that. And there's no wrong answer, right? I had this great conversation with a friend of mine in Toronto, and he had said, he remembers in his, you know, I'll joke with him.
He's a little bit older than me. He remembers in his younger age where the profession of waiter was an actual profession. You know, we often think that it's just a temporary job for young people to pay through university, but being a waiter or being a barista in some parts of the world are an actual profession, right? So they earn a profession and they earn well.
And as they get a greater, greater skill set, they move farther out the food chain to more specially high-end restaurants. So when you go to a high-end restaurant that costs you, you know, three, 400 bucks for dinner, the waiter in these other places there is somebody with 20 years of waitstaff experience and you're, not only is the food of great quality, but the service is exceptional quality because you're dealing with a veteran server, somebody who's made this their career, right? There's absolutely nothing wrong with having, I had a great conversation and I learned so much from this young lady. She was a barista at Starbucks and she wanted to be a painter.
Her real passion was being a painter and selling her paintings. And she was very good. I'm not, I'm not an architect, but to my eye, it looked very, very good. And I think it was beautiful work.
What's wrong with that life? Absolutely nothing wrong with that life. She's not failing. She's not coming up short.
She's not lacking ambition. This is what she wants to do is her life. What she realized is it was probably going to take her eight to 10 years to get any level of exposure on her art to where she could live off her art. So while she was doing that, she became a barista at Starbucks and became very good at her craft to make her a definite asset to her employer and an asset to the clients who would continually come back when she was working.
And she got some tips, sure. But the point was, is she knew that what she really wanted to do was to be an artist and live off the sale of her artwork, but it was going to take eight to 10 years. So in the interim, she funded it. She's not a failure.
She had a longitudinal plan as exactly where she was going, right? Didn't need help. It wasn't somebody else's responsibility to pay her more money per hour because cost, you know, cost of living is expensive. She knew the world as it was presented in front of her, not whether she agreed with it, but this was the world in which she lives.
So how was she going to be successful doing what she loved in the world as it is, where it is and learning to navigate it? And I think that's the last thing that I want to mention today is the biggest hurdle that people have in looking at creating great lives for themselves is that they look at the world they're in and they start complaining about it's not the way I want it to be. It's the normative versus positive scientific environment. Do you live in a world where you accept the world as it is?
Nobody asks whether you agree with it. We say this all the time on the podcast. Actually, nobody cares whether you agree with the way the world is. It is what it is.
Do you figure out how to best navigate the world as it's presented to you? Or do you consistently and regularly complain about the fact that the world is not organized, structured the way you want? And more than likely, you're probably going to use that as an excuse while you're not successful. Framing it, framing your life in the world as is, where is gives you a distinct advantage, right?
You might not like the political leaders. You may not like the economic system you live within. You might not like the social structures, but I am A and I want to go to B and here's the environment I live in. Understanding the environment, everything around it.
This is the plan that is, I'm going to follow this, likely to get me where I want to go. Now, that's a definition of a successful individual. Somebody who has laid out a plan based upon the world they actually live in, not the one they want to live in. Now, advocate for changes if you want.
Absolutely. No question about that at all. But to be successful does not, if you think it needs significant change for you to be successful, then the change is not the problem you are, right? Learn to adapt to where you live or change where you live to a place that works better, right?
There's a recent article talking about why the world needs more Dubai's. And it was talking about how Dubai is this wonderful utopia place. I haven't been there since 2007. I'm going next year.
I'm looking very much forward to it. The idea behind Dubai is 75% of the people there are expats from around the world. Only 25% of the population is actual Emiratis. And everybody comes there because they're all after growth, creating wealth, creating a great future for them and their families.
The only thing that's there is hardworking, driven people. If you're not a hardworking, driven people after success, or you've already made success and you're enjoying retirement, you don't have a place. They don't. The people who complain about and look for government benefits and all this, like those people don't exist there because the society is not structured that way.
Now, that's a bit of a utopian statement. I haven't been there in 20 years, so maybe it's different than what people tell me. But the point is, is that that's not the real world. The real world where we live, like I live in North America, does not look like Dubai.
And can we replicate that? But that's a different podcast altogether. The point is this, my friends, and I'll end on this note. It's very, very simple for you to complain about the world around you.
It's just as simple for you to decide to change how you live in that world. The choice between those two will determine what your future looks like. The choice is yours. Choose wisely.
Thanks again for joining us here at Inside Mike Newhead. Drop over, drop all of your comments over at www.insidemikenewhead. Down in the show notes are all the details. And drop a comment, like, and subscribe.
Take care. Stay safe.