Live With Intention & Level Up: 6 Core Values To Guide You In Life, Business, Relationships, & Parenthood

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23:28Michael Bosstick:We have an incredible offer for this audience. TSC Him and Her Show listeners can claim an exclusive three-month free trial with no credit card required at www.ynab.com slash skinny. That's Y-N-A-B.com slash skinny. The fourth value that I think is so important for parents of young children, parents of children in general, parents in general, people in general, adults, is implementing hard work slash discipline. I wrote it down as hard work and discipline. I know it's kind of like two things, but it's really one value, which is discipline and the discipline to work hard. And this is why it matters.

24:09Michael Bosstick:Nothing in life is free. It's really hard. Competition is high. Nobody's going to hand us anything. This goes back to a little bit of personal accountability. And more importantly, nobody's going to do the work for you. So for me, it is so important to instill the value of hard work from the beginning. That could be chores around the house. That could be working out in the gym. That could be being disciplined in the morning and getting up early. That could be working extra hard on that project. That could be working hard in a sport. I don't care what it is for our kids. I don't care if they want to be A students or stellar athletes, or they want to go and invent a rocket ship, or they want to go and be the next tech, whatever, or if they just want to be the most incredible stay at home mom or, you know, parent, whatever it may be like, whatever you do, the only thing I care about is that you work hard and have discipline and hold yourself accountable to that hard work.

24:58Michael Bosstick:I was fortunate enough to grow up with a father who was very entrepreneurial and pushed me really hard. I was fortunate enough to have resources, but from a very early age, he had me working hard, doing chores, getting jobs, going out, doing labor, doing things that would push that muscle, putting me in sports, making me get in the gym, doing the things to hold myself accountable. And what I realized as I've gotten older is we get this question all the time, where does confidence come from? And you've had people like Ed Mylett say confidence comes from the promises you keep to yourself and confidence comes from here and there.

25:31confidence comes from doing hard things failing over and over continuing to do those hard things

25:38Michael Bosstick:over and over and eventually squeaking out a little bit of a win or a little bit of a progress it comes from pushing yourself a little bit further out of your comfort zone every single day every single week and getting a little bit further and all of a sudden what you realize as a person is you're capable and you can work through things and people respect that and people look at you as somebody that has discipline and somebody that works hard. And next thing you know, you're confident and you're asking for that promotion or you're asking that girl or guy out on the date, or you're putting your hand up to start that business, or you're putting yourself in a position where you're public speaking or whatever it may be.

26:15Michael Bosstick:And it all stems from hard work and discipline. And here's the thing. This should be the bar to entry. there you know when me as an employer as somebody that works a lot of people if i get into some kind of performance review with someone or if someone's applying for a job and the thing they're leading with is i'm a hard worker it's like yeah no shit like that's like what are you going to lead with like i don't work hard or i'm kind of like a medium worker like that what do we talk about like the bar is like everyone should show up to the table and anything they do like i said whether you're a stay-at-home mom or you're an athlete or you're a coach or you're working in a company or you're starting a company, the bar, just the entry is that, yes, you're a hard worker and you're going to put in the hours and you're going to put in the discipline.

27:00Michael Bosstick:And for me, this is a no-brainer because there's always someone below trying to come up and take your spot. They want to take your job. They want to be the next best podcast. They want to be the next best, whatever, competition is high. And there are people that are working hard every single day to replace you, to take over you. And so again, from a just self-preservation perspective, hard work is so important because it's the bar that keeps you there. And I don't know anybody that has ever just landed in a bucket of success or a bucket of money or had a huge win that just sat around and said, yeah, that's just kind of like nothing.

27:38Michael Bosstick:I didn't do anything. I wasn't working at all. And it just kind of happened for me. Sure. There's people that get lucky in the short run. There's people that have, you know, they shoot to the moon, they go viral or they have a good idea and it lasts real quick, or they cut some corner and they did something easily and money pours in. But I almost guarantee you for, you know, doing this for close to two decades now and getting a little bit older, it is always short lived and it is always a severe drop. So for me, it's like every day I want to work hard at something. I want to work hard in the gym.

28:05Michael Bosstick:I want to do the hard thing first. I want to, I want to try to eat well and be disciplined. I want want to show up to my job and do that right. I want to go above and beyond. I was sitting talking to a very prominent person the other day, and I'm tempted to say the name, but it was a kind of a private conversation. I will say she is somebody who's on reality television that has two extremely successful daughters for a very long time. That's all I'll say. And I was in this meeting with her. And what she said was, as it related to her children, she said, if they ever got booked for a job and the job was from 9 PM to 11 PM, she would say, you show up at 8.30 PM and you leave at 11.30 PM and you shake every hand and you sign everything and you do everything.

28:52Michael Bosstick:And you're always the hardest perk in the room. And what's interesting about this person in particular is her children have had career success and longevity for three to four decades now. And they don't need to work anymore. They could sit back and eat bonbons and have all the materials, but they still do it. And what I've seen is you've now have people that are well-rounded, confident, well-respected hard workers. So you have to teach this to your children. You have to not be willing to step in when things get hard for them and do their work for them. You have to let them fail. You have to hold them to account.

29:27Michael Bosstick:They need to show up. They need to be on time. They got to, if they're in a sport, if there's for man or woman, they need to show up to that practice. They need to be the hardest working player out there or one of them. And us as parents, it's our responsibility to instill that. And I know it can be hard and you don't want to ever see them suffer and you want to make it easy. But as they get older in life, this is where they're going to be confident. This is where we're going to feel capable. This is where, you know, they're going to be their own person and stand on their own two feet. And this is where they're going to have an advantage over many people as sad as it is to say.

29:57Michael Bosstick:And again, like maybe people don't like me hearing this. There are so many fucking soft people out there now. I can't believe it. I get resumes all the time and I can't believe how many people who are in a position to do well don't want to take that extra step or put in that extra leap or put in that extra work. And I think it was that Kim Kardashian got in trouble for saying like, you have to work your ass off. The reason she got mad is because the people that don't want to work and don't want to face reality are mad that she said it. But the fact is like everybody out there that's actually working hard and getting shit done, they're like, yeah, like No shit, no shit you have to work hard.

30:29Michael Bosstick:It is the low bar. That is where you start from and the rest comes from there. Most importantly, it's where you develop self-assurance, self-confidence, and it's where you have an advantage over many people these days who want to sit back and think it's going to be easy. Newsflash, it's not. The fifth value that Lauren and I talk about all the time, and this might be at the top of Lauren's list if you were to ask her. I put it as number five on my list, but again, all of these are kind of interchangeable. All of them are important, is resourcefulness. Lauren says this all the time. If she can instill one value in our children, it's resourcefulness.

31:01Michael Bosstick:I have a few others as well, and so does she, but resourcefulness is definitely on my list of top six, both for kids and for adults. And here's why. You have to be able to go and figure out life. It's messy. It's not clean. There's curveballs. There's that old saying, you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, and you're going to get hit in the nose a lot by life. There's going to be things that fall in your lap. There's going to be tragedies. There's going to be lost jobs. There's going to be lost businesses. There's going to be, I hope not, but there could be lost friends and family members.

31:36Michael Bosstick:And you have to be an individual that is resourceful, somebody who's going to figure it out. And here's what we do as parents with our kids. And this is for the parents out there. And maybe some will write in and agree or disagree, but you got to let them struggle a little bit. You got to not give them the answer. You can see like, you know, I've been reading with my kids lately and we're going through the alphabet and I could see they look to me when they're unsure and they want me to give them the answer and I don't, I let them struggle through it and I let them kind of figure it out. Maybe you kind of give them some hints along the way and some ways that they can, but you have to let them figure it out.

32:06Michael Bosstick:Because again, if you are somebody who's stepping in every time later in life, they're going to be looking for you to step in. There is nothing sadder to me than kids that come from immense privilege who have no idea how to live in the real world when they get there. There's nothing worse than a kid who's got a participation trophy who doesn't get invited to participate later because that's not how the world works. There's nothing worse than a young kid getting into the job market thinking that they're ripe for promotion every two months when they're not and don't have the experience. And the reason it's sad is because what you can see is there was a failure from the parent down to the kid where we've coddled these people so much that by the time they get into the real world and the real world doesn't coddle them, they're lost and they don't know what to do.

32:58Michael Bosstick:Imagine going through your entire life of 20 years knowing that mommy and daddy are always going to backstop you. They're always going to pay your bills. They're always going to step in. They're always going to make you feel better when you get sad. They're always going to yell at the bully. They're going to yell at the teacher. And then all of a sudden, one day, it doesn't matter what mommy and daddy say. They can't help you any longer. They can't tell your boss to give you that promotion. They can't tell your boss to give you more money. They can't do anything to stop you from getting fired.

33:24Michael Bosstick:They can't do anything to convince your landlord to lower the rent. Maybe they get to a point where they can't continue to fund your lifestyle. If you are raised as someone who's not resourceful and not somebody who can figure it out, then it's a bigger tragedy because all of a sudden you're just like dropped into the deep end of the pool, but you've never been taught how to swim. And so it's really easy. And again, I'm not passing judgment. I just am talking facts of how this can happen. It's really easy as a parent to step in and make your kid's life comfortable. It would be so easy for Lauren and I to jump in in the future and give our kids a bunch of money or to give them that next job recommendation or to introduce them.

34:04Michael Bosstick:And I promise there's like, I know there's so many parents that want to do that. You've worked your whole life and you want to provide these resources that maybe you never had. But what I say to them, and I've said this to my own parents and I've said this to Lauren and I, it's like, give your children the opportunity you had, the opportunity to struggle, the opportunity to figure it out, the opportunity to go things the hard way. And more importantly, instill the trust and belief in them that they are able to figure it out on their own. Because what we're signaling to a lot of these kids when we're doing things for them is that we as parents don't actually believe that they're capable or that they can figure it out or that they're smart enough to get it done.

34:44Michael Bosstick:We're signaling that like, you will never be able to do this without me. And the intention is good. What is that old saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's very true here. I think it's one of the hardest things you start to figure out as a parent is you can't do everything for your kids. You got to create the framework for them to figure it out. I would challenge young parents or mature parents to start thinking about it from that context. I'm sure as my kids get older and older and as more struggles start to face them, that it's going to be extremely challenging for both Lauren and Farai.

35:16Michael Bosstick:It's like everybody wants to be able to step in. Parents out there know you love your kids more than anything in the world. You want to be able to do anything for them, but sometimes doing the hard thing and letting them know that you have faith that they'll figure it out is important. Now, if you're somebody who's an adult and maybe you didn't have that kind of upbringing and you're sitting there and you're feeling lost, you're like, I don't know what the fuck to do. That's something that we now have to start working on. We got to, again, go back to the idea that nobody's going to do it for you.

35:43Michael Bosstick:You're going to have to figure it out. One no doesn't mean a hundred no's. As an entrepreneur, I have to figure things out all the time. I think it's great that I'm in this moment in time where Dear Media is doing well, and we've built this business. I joke all the time that the wheels have not fallen off yet, because any entrepreneur that tells you that they have it all figured out and that it's just gravy all the time is lying. There's moving targets, there's markets that change, there's things that change, there's tragedies that can happen. So you're navigating it. But as somebody who's running a business or if you're aspiring to do one for yourself, the whole idea is like, I am confident in my ability to figure it out if something goes wrong.

36:24Michael Bosstick:And I'll just share a little bit behind the scenes here. When I started this company, It was pre-COVID. COVID hit. Running a media company after that was interesting. Then there was a period of civil unrest, cancel culture, and a million different things as a media executive that you step in one pothole and another one goes off. There was a thousand things. I'm sure I was canceled 80 times during that period of time. Then there's the market downturn. For entrepreneurs out there, capital markets dry up, job markets get tight. There's the work from home and the this and that. You're navigating all these things.

36:55Michael Bosstick:Anybody that said they had it figured out during and their time didn't. But if you're a resourceful person, you roll with the punches, you start to figure it out. And so it's really important to do that. Also, we live in a time now where we have technology and different kinds of healthcare. Say, God forbid, something happens to you from a health perspective, you want to be a resourceful person. You want to start pulling the resources, figuring out, do I talk to this doctor? Do I not? Do I go here? Do I go there? You want to start figuring out. If you lose your job, you don't want to just sit there on your ass and say, well, my life's over.

37:23Michael Bosstick:You got to start figuring out how you're going to replace that income. What are you going to do? Once again, from the perspective that nobody's going to do it for you. So for me, it's very important from a confidence perspective, from a, hey, I believe in you as children perspective to develop the value of resourcefulness for my kids and for our family. And as an adult, to continue to try to work on it myself, to always look at different options, to not hear no every time there's a no, but see that there's a yes somewhere else. And to have the ability to pivot with life and roll with the punches.

37:55Michael Bosstick:So again, resourcefulness is extremely high up there on the values that we want to instill. Taylor Farms. Okay. Sweet kale, Caesar, avocado ranch, Mediterranean crunch. Taylor Farms chopped salad kits come in so many different flavors. If you want super fresh, crisp, delicious chopped salad kits, they have you covered. There's no chopping. There's no slicing. There's no leaving half a cabbage in your fridge. I've done that so many times. And then you're like, oh, it's also just a lot on your arm to have to chop all those fresh greens. And Taylor Farms has you covered. Some ideas. You could do a salad at work with some chicken.

38:39You could do a salad at work with some steak. Maybe throw some sweet potatoes on there. I personally like to use the chopped salad kits for my meat bowls. I mix it all up together. I make a burger bowl. I do a fiesta bowl. Sometimes I just do like raw cheese and honey and do venison meat on top. And then I'll add like the Mediterranean crunch. You can do whatever your heart desires and it gives you volume, which is great because you're eating tons of nutrients and minerals with their chopped salad kit. And then you have that volume in the salad. I love it. And I love to do it after I work out my meat bowl.

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40:55Michael Bosstick:Quick break to talk about Caraway. We are so focused as a population on making sure that we're putting the healthiest ingredients in our bodies, eating naturally, making sure our kids don't have seed oils and all of these things that are wreaking havoc on our systems. But what if we're cooking in materials that are also wreaking havoc on our systems? Lauren and I recently had the founder of Caraway on this podcast to talk about how important clean cookware is. This is why Lauren and I are such big fans of Caraway's nonstick products and why we prefer them out of all of the other competitors out there.

41:24Michael Bosstick:There was some recent viral content going around about these plastic cutting boards that are putting microplastics into our bodies. What we love is that with Caraway, you don't have to worry about that. They have these wood cutting boards and also they don't have these Teflon cooking pans and skillets. They have nothing but ceramic products. So when Lauren and I started to get serious about our health, one of the first things we did was switch all of our toxic chemical materials out of the house and bring in cooking utensils and supplies that got rid of all of these toxic chemicals. Some of those chemicals include PFAS, PFOAs, PTFEs, lead, cadium, and other harmful chemicals.

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42:32How is my skin? You know what? This sunscreen, it's caffeinated, it's mineral, and it does not pile under makeup. I applied it today with a damp beauty blender before I got my glam done and it lays so nicely under like a foundation or a concealer. But here's the thing that I like the most about it. So when I'm off work and when I don't have to do podcasts or Instagrams or content, or I just can just be comfortable, I can wear this caffeinated sunscreen and I still get a really nice tint and a protection. And it looks like my skin is all one even tone, which is nice without all the makeup. It's not like a foundation.

43:20It's like The caffeine tightens your skin. It gives you a nice even tone and it just gives you a little bit of color. So what I like about this sunscreen is the versatility. So you can wear it when you're off and you're running around and you're running errands and wear it with nothing over it. Or you can wear it like I'm wearing today right now with foundation and concealer over it. So it works both ways. I will wear this when I'm going to the gym in the morning and just wear it throughout the day with nothing else or I will wear it with a full look. I created this sunscreen because I couldn't find a mineral-based sunscreen with caffeine in it.

43:56Caffeine tightens the skin, it shrinks the pores, and I just like how it lays on the skin. And I mixed it with a mineral sunscreen and then we made it SPF 40. So it's a real treat. I think that you guys will absolutely love it. It just comes out in a pump, fits in your handbag, and it can go through the airport. You can shop this at shopskinnyconfidential.com and it's the caffeinated SPF. Also, if you're like me and you go through sunscreen quickly, you can subscribe and the sunscreen will get delivered straight to your door so you don't have to worry about it. That's shopskinnyconfidential.com.

44:34Michael Bosstick:Last one that I think is important for everyone is the value of independence. and first let me caveat by saying you cannot get through life by yourself on your own without help without friends without partners it's it's not possible or maybe it is but it's a very lonely life and you're missing out on a lot of the joys of life by going that way what i say and what i mean when I say independence is the ability to be okay on your own in those periods of solitude or those periods of aloneness. The ability to independently, critically think on your own. One of the big themes of this podcast is that, right?

45:21Michael Bosstick:We have lots of different people and perspectives on this show. I cannot tell you how many times on this show we have gotten pushback for having a certain guest or a certain thought process, or because we didn't put up some stupid square on Instagram or some blue picture or whatever the hell everyone's doing. And it's because we live in a moment where everybody wants you to do what everybody else is doing. And if you're not doing it, you get ostracized and alienated. And from a survival perspective, we evolved in a way where people want to be part of the herd. They want to be part of the tribe.

45:51Michael Bosstick:They don't want to stand out. And for me, it's so important for my children to have the value of being independent, being able to think on their own, being able to gather different perspectives and different opinions, even if they disagree with it or it's counter to their own, so that they can figure out their own thought and how they really feel and how they really think. Also, this is where good ideas come from, right? Being able to digest everything that's going on in the zeitgeist and say, okay, I see that and I see all these perspectives, but this is the lane I'm going to follow. Again, also being independent, being able to sit in your own or on your own with your own thoughts, you're going to develop that confidence muscle.

46:28Michael Bosstick:Being able to be not in a room with 18 different people to stimulate yourselves all the time. Maybe you can think, and you can read, and you can journal, and you can be okay during that. If you're in a relationship and it's not going the way you want it to be, but you're scared to leave it because you don't want to be alone. Again, having a sense of independence, knowing that I love to be with this person, but if they're not going to value and respect me the way that they should, then I'm also okay being without this person. And what I tell Lauren, and we say this to each other all the time, we love being together.

46:57Michael Bosstick:We want to be in a married relationship together. We can't imagine not being with each other. All that being said, we would both be okay without each other. It wouldn't be fun. It would be very painful, but we could figure out life. This is what we want for our children as well. We don't want them to be beholden to one individual. We don't want them to be held hostage to being part of the group. We don't want them to feel the social pressures of having to do what everyone else does just because everybody else is doing it. We want them to have independent, rational thought. And we want them to have self-respect so that they can know that they add to the relationship or the company or the friendship or the organization, but also they would be just fine without it.

47:41Michael Bosstick:So you realize over time that this is a muscle that you also have to continue to flex. You have to start to maybe do some things on your own. I think if you're a parent out there, go let the kid go off and think on their own and be on their own. Challenge their ideas. Ask them, are you thinking this way just because your friends are thinking this way? Are you doing this because you actually think this way? If you constantly find yourself on the majority all the time thinking the same way, if you find yourself agreeing or consuming content because of one certain thought process and you just find yourself nodding all the time and alienating a whole other perspective or not listening to that perspective, You're probably missing out on a lot of life.

48:18Michael Bosstick:You're probably also missing out on big ideas. Imagine if I ran a company and I found 20 people in the company that agreed with me all the time and 20 people that disagreed with me. So I only listened to the 20 people that agreed with me. A logical, rational operator would say, what is the thing that I'm missing from these other 20 people that disagree? You have to be willing to look in that direction. I won't go on a political tangent here because I've done enough of that, but I think we're in the state that we're in as a country, largely because people have stopped listening to each other, largely because people have actually stopped thinking.

48:51When I was a kid, the conservative

48:54Michael Bosstick:right was conservative, suppressing a lot of speech, really pro-vaccination and pro-less medical freedoms. And the left was really open to different lifestyles, open to free speech, and a little bit more open medically. Somehow that's completely flip-flopped, but people that haven't been paying attention are still just left and right. And it's likely because there's been no critical thought process to say, wait a minute, do I actually believe or think about all these things? Again, I won't go on too big of a political tangent, but it just gives you pause to start to think like, why do I actually believe what I believe?

49:26Michael Bosstick:And am I actually being an independent person? My biggest thing that I want in life is autonomy and independence. I value it over money. I value it funny enough over time. Everyone says time's the biggest thing. Nope. Independence and autonomy. Being able to do what you want, how you want, when you want, think how you want is to me more important than time. I would rather live a shorter, more compressed life independently, free of thought without having to worry about what everyone else is doing than to have all this time on earth. So again, being independent, being an independent thinker, having independent critical thought, being confident, being alone, having the ability to know that you bring great things to the relationship, but also being okay and not be in the relationship is so important.

50:10Michael Bosstick:And it's something that we are going to try to instill in our children and help them with and reinforce. And as adults, I think it's something that we should all think about as well as like, am I being an independent person? Am I being a kind person? Am I being resourceful? Am I being disciplined? Do I have integrity of hard work? All of these things are so important. And so that's my closing of the episode to recap real quickly one more time. in order. I've gone kindness, integrity. I've gone personal accountability. We've gone hard work and discipline, resourcefulness and independence. These are things that I hope my children will have in their own life.

50:48Michael Bosstick:Maybe one day they will listen to this and they will take the lesson to heart. Hopefully I can live up to these values myself as a parent and instill them as well. And even for the adults out there, for people that don't have kids, for people that are just living and listening or viewing this podcast, maybe a check in with yourself to say, hey, where do I land on these values? Do I like these values? If I do, how am I measuring up to these values? Again, all free to do. All could be implemented. Even if you're not living up to them, you can start. Maybe you've been living out of integrity. Well, let's try to correct that and figure out there.

51:21Michael Bosstick:Maybe you haven't been so resourceful. Well, let's figure out how to become more resourceful. Maybe you haven't been working hard or being disciplined. Let's start that tomorrow. So with that, we'll see you next time. Hope you like this episode. Carson, Let's take us out.