The Habit That Will Accelerate Your Next Breakthrough

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1:45This is the Ed Myron Show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So this week's topic is perfect timing. So many of you asked me to talk about this. So today's topic is getting to the next level in life. And so we're going to discuss all the things that come with getting to the next level because all of us want to in our lives. And we seek this next level because we believe our lives would be different. We can impact more people. We can make a difference. We would feel different if we get to that next level. And a lot of that is really, really true. But remember this, new levels, new devils. And so what comes with climbing in life, if we're going to be real, if I'm going to be honest with you, and I've had the blessing of 53 years of climbing quite a bit, is that new levels, new devils.

2:31There's new challenges that come with getting to every single new level in life, which is why most people stop trying to climb, stop trying to improve, stop trying to grow. They say they want to grow. They say they want to get to the next level, but they don't want it as bad as when they were at the bottom. And so we're going to discuss just the concepts today a little bit of getting there. And my main message to you today is I want to challenge you. For many of you listening to this, it's about to go into a new year or you're in a new year. And this shouldn't just be the same year over and over again.

2:58Life is not about the same year over and over again. I remember when Max was a little boy, we would go to this car wash on Sundays after church. And my son was a little boy and there was a man there every single Sunday. He was reading the newspaper. I mean, this guy was there when we would get there and he'd be there when we leave. And later on in the afternoon, I'd drive by the car wash. This guy seemed to still be there like reading the newspaper. It's kind of a grumpy guy. And, um, but one Sunday he showed some humanity. He never even looked up from the newspaper. Usually just grunting and grimy to people, you know, and he says to me, he goes, how old is your little boy?

3:34And I said, oh, he's six. And he said to me, he goes, well, enjoy the six-year-old because man, when they turn seven, that six-year-old's gone forever. and when he turns eight, the seven-year-old's gone forever. And any of you that are parents listening to this, you know that he's right. They change every year. It's a new little person running around. And I didn't mean to be rude to him, but reflexively, it just came out of me. I said, sir, when did that process stop for you? He said, excuse me? I put the paper down. I said, at what age did you stop doing that? Huh? I said, at what age did you stop replacing yourself with a brand new person every year.

4:13And he goes, he looked at me for a minute and he said, gosh, I don't, I don't know. And I said, you know, I'm younger than you. I'm in my thirties. But to me, that's the end of happiness. That if you're the same person every single year, you've already lived with that person for a year. You already know who they are. They've already had the same experiences, the same thoughts. It's like, why be alive if you're not going to grow and change? And I say, I said, that's kind of to me, sir, like the process of slowly dying and every single way you're either growing or you're dying. You all heard that before, but it's actually completely true.

4:47And I said, you ought to just look into that. And so oftentimes with my kids, I'm always telling them, now, by the way, your character, your values, those things don't change, but your experience, your thoughts, your mindset, your ability to make an impact and influence things in the world, your memories ought to be expanding and growing at any given time. You're constantly replacing yourself, by the way. That's nature. You're replacing your digestive tract. Your cells are replacing themselves. Even your skeleton replaces itself. Our lung tissue, we're always sort of, but that's nature, it happens automatically, but replacing our mind, renewing our mind, renewing our experiences, that takes work.

5:24That takes effort. I remember when I was turning 40 and we had a birthday dinner and my daughter, I just sort of started to get more prominent on social media, become a little bit more well-known. And my daughter said, so daddy, what's up with the midlife crisis? And I said, what, honey? She goes, yeah, dad, you know, social media, your beard, blah, blah, blah. Like you're, you know, you're obviously in a midlife crisis. I said, well, I am honey. And I was in a young life crisis and I'll be in an old man crisis someday too, an old life crisis. I'm in a crisis to replace myself every year. That doesn't mean, like I've said, the core things about me, but the things I say, the things I do, the things I experience, the things I feel, the things I influence, I'm in a crisis every year to replace myself because that keeps you alive.

6:12And I think so often in life, because we kind of have this idea that there's this, we get comfortable with where we are, but also we know at that new level, there's going to be a new devil and we don't want to fight any more devils. When we were younger or hungrier, and some of you are very young that are listening to this, but at some point in our life, we want it so bad. What we have to go through is secondary because we want to get where we're going. But then once we get a little bit more than we used to have, our desire to go through the pain and the discomfort and the growth isn't what it once was because what we have now isn't so terrible to us.

6:44So the first thing is the reason you need to be around people that are living life at a higher level than you and whatever that area is, faith or their fitness or their money or business or family is because then you're not comfortable. You can't be around someone worth 10 times more money than you if money's a priority to you and not be uncomfortable. But if the 10 people around you are worth the same or less, you become very comfortable. If in your fitness, you're a little bit out of shape right now and your five best friends are all very fit and eat clean and work out five, six days a week, you won't be comfortable.

7:15But if everyone around you looks like you, it creates comfort. So we have to change the people that are around us. And because, listen, to truly be alive is to experience life. The reason I bring up this man at the car wash and I bring up the midlife crisis, because I've talked about this on the show before, is this. Is that you're really never going to know yourself if you don't keep climbing. To become fully human is to experience life and have new experiences and new challenges. You were born to be challenged. You were born to compete. and you may not want to compete with other people. That's okay.

7:49By the way, I think you do more than you admit. But even if you don't, it's competing against your former self. It's competing against, it's what you're capable of in life. And to be fully human is to experience life. It's going to be harder than you think it's going to be. I was watching an interview of the founder of NVIDIA and they were asking him about, hey, if you knew what you knew now, what advice would you give yourself to start to build the company? And he says, I would have never done it. My advice would be don't do it. It's so darn hard. It's so difficult. And so listen, as hard as you think it's going to be, it's probably going to be harder to get to the next level or make your dream come true.

8:27As long as you think it's going to take, it may even take longer than you think. But there's power in the one decision that you make. And so many things in life were held back because of our, either our lack or desire or our fear to get to the next level. So here's a few things that are required. One is the decision. You're one decision away from changing your life. It's deciding I want to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive in my life. And if there's any part of your life right now that's not going the way that you want it to, I would submit to you, get a new challenge, get something you're after.

8:57Not that you have to go outside of yourself to be happy. You don't. It's all within you right now. But there is a part of you you've never met yet. And I think you'd like her or him if you just go meet them. But that person you don't know yet is on the other side of this difficult thing you don't want to do. I don't know why the world is structured the way it is that we have to go through things to learn things. But it is. And I'm done at 53 years old trying to debate whether that's true or not. But the shame of it would be that you get to the end of your life and you never knew you. You never knew who you could have been.

9:35You never fully got to meet yourself because you weren't willing to go through the difficult things to fight these new devils. And by the way, the more devils we fight in our life, the more we conclude there's a powerful God in our life that's more powerful than this devil that I'm fighting right now. So oddly, typically in most people's lives, the more they go to the next level, the more their faith grows. In my life, there's no way I am where I am right now based on me. I can just tell you that. the more that I've achieved, the more people I've helped, the more it's absolutely for sure that there's a powerful God guiding my life.

10:14Because I can tell you right now, I know how weak I am. I know how not so smart I am. I know all of my frailties. Well, I know a lot of them. But I do feel like I've gotten to know myself pretty well. And I feel like most people don't know themselves. They don't love themselves because they don't know themselves. They've actually never met themselves. They've met this version that's still 18 years old. You know, the old adage that most men die at 21, we just don't bury them until they're 70. It's really true. It's true for women. It's that's gender neutral. And so what happens is we just, we don't know ourselves because we are getting to be pushed to get to know ourselves.

10:53And so I don't want to get to the end of my life and neither do you have never met me. And so I want to challenge you to continue to climb. See, by the way, there's a few things you have to do to do that. And there's tons of things. They're in my books or on the other podcasts I've done, but I'll give you a few for right now. You're not going to get your goals. You're going to get your standards. You're going to have to change your standards. So goals are great. I want to weigh 185 pounds or 130 pounds, or I want to be this or that. I want a golf handicap of that. I want this much money saved.

11:21I want this relationship. That's all great. You should have goals, but goals without standards are empty. So what's the new standard that you would have to adapt? For example, let's just say that next year, one of your goals is fitness. Could one of the standards be that you drink a gallon of water a day? I have a standard of drinking a gallon of water a day. That standard could lead me. I have a standard of getting to the gym at 6 a.m., whatever it might be. I have a standard of 100 pushups a day. I don't know what it is, but I'm saying the standard is what delivers on the goal. Goals are empty, but standards are what we're always going to end inevitably in life.

11:55if I say this in the power of one more, you'll eventually get your standards. And so if you want to change your life, change your standards. That's one. And going along with that is habits and rituals. So here's a power question for you since you want to go to the next level. What's the one habit you need to establish that you don't have currently? You know what it is? You change that one habit. I call it an accelerator habit. What's that one habit, the catalyst habit that if you'd had this one habit, things would change. It would knock down 10 barriers if you had this one habit. You change, get the standards you want and the habit.

12:29And I'm telling you, you're a powerful force to get to that next level. And by the way, it could be a habit you need to get rid of. What's a habit you have that's holding you back from getting to where you want to go that you need to be replacing? And once you get that down, you've opened up a whole world of possibilities for the rest of your life for this year. But go into this new year, go into anything with the same standards that you haven't change the same habits, but a new vision and dream. That's cute. That's called a wish. So it's great to have this wish, but for it to become a dream and then to become a reality, you need to change the standard and have an accelerator habit.

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14:14We'll see you next time.

14:18And I believe having the associations of people around you could change it as well. Okay. And this is important because you don't like your, uh, you ever have this thing with your phone where it's listening to you? I was talking about something the other day, so much strawberries out of the blue. I haven't talked about strawberries in forever. And within like an hour, I'm getting stuff on my phone for strawberries. You know, we all now know our phones are listening to us, right? What we say, this thing's listening and then gives it back to us. Am I right? We all know that. Okay. The universe is listening to you.

14:54It's just like your phone. Now, you can call it the universe. You can call it the world. You can call it the Holy Spirit in my case. But it's listening to you. And it's giving back to you what you're saying. You need to change your language if you're going to change your life. You have to start to speak things into existence. This is a very real thing. See, a lot of times people say, oh, don't say universe. That's not a very Christian saying. I know exactly what I mean when I'm saying it. Okay? That does not mean the absence of the Holy Spirit. They're not even interchangeable to me. But I'm telling you, the world is listening.

15:26There's plenty of scriptures to validate this too for people of faith. The world is listening to what you're saying, just like your phone is, and is going to give it back to you. It becomes the algorithm of your life. And when you begin to change what you say, both inside and outside, not just your internal voice, but the external voice that you use. The world begins to conspire to validate what you're saying. I believe thoughts in many cases are prayers. And I also believe thoughts have a vibrational frequency to them as well. And you can draw it to you. Thoughts are like magnets. You will draw it to you, that which you truly feel to be true.

16:00And when you begin to speak something, it validates it. It's an accelerator on the thought. So change your language, change your habits, change your standards, change your life. That's where we're at. And you right now are fully capable of doing that in your life. You know, when I worked at my first job out of college after my baseball career failed, my real first job after that, I'd been a bus boy, I'd bagged groceries at a grocery store. I was an electrician's apprentice. I did these things all through college. But my first actual career out of college, my dad came home from his first AA meeting and said, I got you a job.

16:36And I showed up the next day. And the longs and the short of it was I worked at a boy's home, an orphanage for boys called McKinley Home for Boys in California. And it changed my life. And the reason that it changed my life was I was instantly introduced to needing to be my, I worked in cottage eight. My boys were all eight, nine, and 10 years old. I remember the first day I walked in there, I'll never forget it. I walked in there and these boys were all getting ready for school that day. And I was the new guy with the other counselor that was in there. I remember this. I have no background in psychology.

17:09I had no children of my own. And now my job is to basically be a father to these eight to 10 boys. And, um, right when I walked in, I remember all their eyes turned and looked at me. Who's the new guy. And we're saying, Hey guys, I'm Eddie. I'm here to be with you guys. I can't wait to get to know all of you better. And they all just kind of turned away. But I also remember every one of them looked me in the eye at first and they had these eyes. I think any child has gone through any neglect or difficulty in their life. We have different eyes. And those eyes basically say, please love me. Please care about me.

17:48Please make me feel safe with you. And although I couldn't express it at the time, I had this deep sense when I walked in there. that I was immensely qualified to help these boys because I have the same eyes. My boys were all wards of the court. Their parents were either dead, incarcerated, or had actually molested them. Their own parents. Those are who my boys were. They all lived in a house together. And I remember thinking, I'm qualified to help these boys. I didn't have the same dysfunction as them, but I know what it's like to grow up as a little boy with my dad being an alcoholic. I knew it was like to grow up with worry and fear and angst and instability at a minimum.

18:31Their situations were much worse than mine. But I remember believing I was qualified. And because I believed that, it was true. I actually also said it out loud over and over, I'm the perfect guy for these guys. I remember that first day I walked them all to school and some of them talked to me. One of them gave me a hug. One of the other little boys was holding my hand. I remember thinking, I'm home. This is what I want to do. And I did that for a very long time, even as my business career took off, I stayed at McKinley as long as I could. And I remember believing deeply and saying deeply that I was meant to be there.

19:05I was qualified to help him because you're most qualified in life to help the person you used to be, as I've said many times. But not only was I, I've been pretty good at this career I have here. I've been pretty good as an entrepreneur, but I was great at that. And the reason I was great at that is not only did I changed what I believed. I said it out loud over and over again. I told those boys I loved them. I cared about them. I believed in them. I spoke that into the world and the universe, the phone of life was listening, was listening. And those boys felt that. And the other thing I did is I had a, I knew at that time, I better change my own standards of the way that I'm conducting myself because these boys are looking up to me.

19:43So I changed my standards. And then my habit that I needed to change most in my life was the way that I spoke affection to people because I wasn't any good at it. And I decided that day that my new habit was I would speak how I felt. And now to this day, people say that's one of their favorite things about the podcast is how I'm so engaged with the audience or the person I'm interviewing. I'm so engaged with them and I speak words of praise to them because I'm feeling it. I learned that at McKinley Home for Boys. But one of the things I learned, the reason I tell you that story about McKinley is my boys were easily triggered.

20:16All of my boys were very easily triggered. Something would come up, they would explode or get sad immediately. And that's just like most adults. We have triggers in our life where if something happens, someone says something, it triggers us, right? You know, we feel dismissed and it triggers us. We lose our self-esteem. Or someone doesn't, they speak a certain way to us and we become angry. Or we begin to think negative thoughts about ourselves. And so what we do in our life is we focus on the external trigger that just happened, rather the internal wound that's causing that trigger to happen.

20:48See, it's not the external thing. We could focus all day on someone's behavior. I got overlooked for a promotion. Someone spoke to me a certain way. They cut me off in line. Whatever it might be, they were dismissive of me. They were rude to me. And then it's a trigger to us, right? And then we respond out loud and we're upset about the external person rather than contemplating, why does this bother me so much? Why is this bothering me? Why is this thing that they do bothers me so much? And to take a look at whatever that wound or that trauma is in our lives. And I remember with my boys very early on going, I'm only going to have these guys for a couple of years.

21:19I've got to rewire how they respond to external things. They've got to have more internal, beautiful experiences so that these things don't trigger them in life. And so for most of us, the reason we're not going to the next level is we have these triggers of external things that are affecting our behavior, affecting our emotions. And we keep trying to get the people, don't talk to me that way. Please make it easier. Do this, do that. I need things to fall into place rather than looking internally and say, what triggers do I need to build? Do I need to build so that when external things happen, I operate in a way that serves me.

21:53And those external triggers are started with your standards, your habits, and the way you speak. And then when you have those moments, validate them and take inventory of them in your life. They're like an emotional bank account that you can use during difficult times. Because I'm going to tell you, I said it earlier, it's going to be harder than you think to get to the next level. You're going to have to be more mentally tough than you realize. The people that win in life, they outwork everybody, but they are mentally tougher. And they're mentally tougher because they build a cocoon around themselves of the right triggers when things happen that I'm built for this.

22:27Someone said this to me. They dismissed me. I'm going to prove them wrong. Someone was this way and mistreated me. They're going to regret that someday when I go win rather than, yeah, that's just like how my dad talked to me. Or that's exactly why I was that way in school. And they keep going back to these same places. And what happens is they have the same emotional experience over and over and over again at 18, at 32, at 56. And they get out of life the same experiences basically they've had for the last 30 years. because they didn't consciously change their life and realize the world is listening just like the phone to what you're saying.

23:03God would love to hear your prayers for where you wanna go in your life. God would love to bless your life. But you've gotta be consciously talking to him about it, consciously talking to yourself about it, constantly changing the way you live your life and your standards and your habits and the way you speak. And when you do that, your life begins to transform. Most of us are being held back by some limiting belief.