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26:42But again, what's it go back to? I want to live with absolute intention. And I want to experience every moment that I get into and feel the vividness and the richness and the beauty that is the human experience and life. You know, you don't want to be so future focused and trying to create a better future that you never feel the present, right? And so for me, I really began to understand what state my mind is at all times and how do I learn to control that and begin to put in systems and solutions that keep my mind in a balanced state is really one of the bigger things that I've learned to do over the last year or so.

27:29Share with us one of those systems. Well, you know, if you can imagine this, your mind is balanced in this way, right? It's past, present, and future, right? And so there's sort of five sections as I see it. And on one end, it's dwelling in the past. You ain't doing nothing. You want to sit and dwell about something you did? You ain't doing nothing. Then the next level up is rectify, right? You are problem solving, taking action, something that happened in the past. So now you're in the present past where, okay, I'm dealing with something that happened. Now I'm problem solving, taking action to make a better future, right?

28:08You sit right in the middle and you experience it or you go to the next level is creating, right? And so now you're in this future present, right? Where you're experiencing the present while creating the future. That's where you want to toggle, right? Because what goes beyond creating the future is wishing, right? Because if you're sitting there wishing the future was better and wishing like this will be like this or your dwelling, you're not moving, right? And so you want to be either experiencing the moment or handling something that happened in the past, present, or creating something in the future, present state and swing between that.

28:48And so if you can imagine that's your mind, what you think about on an ongoing basis is ranges between all of that. That's where the action lives. Now, it's the quality of your mind. And your mind's quality is either in a proactive state, a reactive state, an inactive state, or a magnetic state. state, right? And for me, when all aspects of my life are in order, meaning I'm eating super clean, everything, all my goals and visions and everything is running smooth. I'm spending very little time rectifying the past because I've designed my present future experience with such intention. I'm dealing with very little disruption that then I eventually go beyond just being proactive to this magnetic state.

29:37And I know you've experienced this before because this is when your everything is going at operating at such a level that answers start coming to you without you asking the questions. It is the law of attraction that's the unexplainable force that lives in the quantum field where your energy is at such a high level. You are so clear of not only being present and experiencing but creating your better future and you rise to this you vibrate to this level to where the answers show up and you never ask the questions right and for me i'm trying to master all aspects of my existence to where i basically sit in that state of toggling between future present and proactive and magnetic at all times oh my god it's a deep one it's a deep no okay that's an all-timer right i want everyone to go back the last five or six minutes there that's an all-timer um when we talk i always filter it through my life and my perspective i just realized something because i do know what that vibrational frequency feels like when i am getting answers to questions i haven't even asked it's not frequent enough and the reason it's not frequent enough is i'm depleting my energy reserves to not put myself in a state where I can have that type of energy and what I call vibrate at that frequency.

31:01And you're exactly right. And that's the other reason why rest, recovery, being present matters. I just really pulled something here. I just really did. But let me say this. Every single thing matters. Every thought, every action, every decision, every single thing that you do is interconnected to get you to that space. And for me, it's like, I think, oh, I'll have a glass of wine. I'll have a couple chips. It will pull away from that. I'll make one bad decision from eating bad that will then cause me to be short with my wife that leads to this entire, pulls me right out of the magnetic state.

31:45Right? Because it's like, even when you're there, it's really sensitive. And you could just get one thought that could rip you out of that. You could look at one text that could rip you out of that. Right? And so that requires really, really understanding every single bit of you and then giving value to everything you do rather than trying to like pocket your values. Oh, if I eat healthy. Oh, if I stay focused. Oh, if I clear out this stuff. Oh, if I rest or recover it versus like, no, it is all works together to make the best version of you. how committed are you how disciplined are you to live at the level that you know you have to live at at a consistent enough basis that it becomes to compound effortlessly and become a way of life rather than getting disciplined again that's really what it is you know well for me i burn myself out going from those states to the good state back to the bad state i'm still having wine with you at dinner tonight but um i know exactly what you're talking about and uh i everybody you know y 'all hear the show every single week it's pretty rare that i'm this quiet because i just i i really process a lot of information when you and i go like this yeah it's good for me i'm already thinking of stuff i'm going to say and i'm going to teach that i'm going to steal that i'm going to make mine.

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35:09Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Robin Sharma, welcome to the show. Real blessing, Ed. Nice to finally meet you. So let's talk a little bit for a few minutes here. There's all these things we can be doing to get to that everyday hero. First off, it's just embracing that you are one. I think it's fundamental to the whole philosophy of the book. Then there's some things, though, that are obstructions or obstacles to doing it, right?

35:39They can be tools or they can be obstacles. This may seem like a small thing to everybody, but the more I'm even reflecting, last night I wasn't doing a five-hour meditation. I was with my family, but I have to tell you I was on my phone too much last night. and it's sort of one of these things that I've really improved at in my life but to the point of being transparent that my wife said put your phone down your daughter just said something to you my daughter actually came in said something to me I heard none of it and walked out of the room and then there was a few minutes went by and she said do you realize what I so there's these things even at where you and I are where we give away this you know we've got this advice and we've made these breakthroughs there's parts of us we can go back to old patterns again and last night I fell back into one of those patterns.

36:24So there are these obstacles to our peace. There's these obstructions almost. They can be tools. They can be obstructions. You do talk a lot about the phone thing. Yes. You do, and you've talked about it in the past. You talk about it here. So what do you know about the most blissful and successful people as it relates to these obstacles, these smartphones, or anything else like that? Well, I mean, you're so honest to share what you share, and I would say the same thing. I make mistakes. constantly. That's good to know. Let me share that. I think it was... Don't you ever do an interview where you're like, man, I made it sound like I'm a lot better at this than I am.

37:02I know. I know. I walk away going, oh, I think it was Nelson Mandela said, if a saint is a sinner who keeps on trying, I guess I'm okay. That's awesome. I thought that was... That's awesome. That was Nelson Mandela here. you know so there's still there's still hope it gives us hope exactly there's still hope for us i would say an addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production wow when it comes to productivity in the everyday hair manifesto there is a revolutionary rule called the five great hours rule so you don't need to work for seven hours a day i do not subscribe to hustle and grind i don't work for more than a few hours a day i take uh i work four hours every week.

37:49I take four months plus off every single year. How I do it is in the book, including the weekly design system. When I work, I I'm away from distraction. There's a difference between real work and fake work. There's a difference between real work and fake work. May let us not confuse busy with productivity. Let us not confuse movement with impact. So I think that's really important. And we can get into the Menlo park and the type of total focus structures, but you talked about family yet and i believe the greatest gift we can give another human being is the gift of our presence and if you look at the greatest heroes and the greatest leaders they had an ability represent to be there and and the very fact you said it means you do practice it and i can tell everyone watching right now you have so much presence and i'm not talking about charisma which you have.

38:45I'm talking about you are here in a world where a lot of people are cyber zombies and, you know, just not present. So I think you can change the world and live a world-class life, or you can play with your phone all day. You can't do both. And we could get into the science of emotional residue every single time you check a notification, every single time you like something. Let's do both of those for a minute. Because by the way, I only have four or five, you know, I think everybody's got four or five significant gifts. Ironically, I consider one of mine, my ability to be present. Yes. And so when I almost violate that treaty with myself, that agreement with myself, it deeply hurts me when I do it because I don't do it very often.

39:27But when I do do it, it's pretty obvious, I think, because the contrast of the two. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, please. Sure. How about this? What if you don't, what if you build as part of your family culture, no devices at the dinner table. Yes. Great point. What if you have certain rooms like the family room, which is really a family room? Now that's good. Now that's unique. That one I've not heard. So what I did, what I, I was so bad that what I did start doing is I left my phone in the car the first hour before I came home. So I was at least engaged in presence immediately. But this idea that there are rooms where there are no smartphones is one of the most brilliant things anyone's ever said on the show.

40:06I mean, seriously, I'm going to do that. One thing I am, when I get a great idea, I'm very coachable and I'll implement it like a right immediate. Like I tell you that this evening, when I get back, I'm like this space right here, there's no phones in here. Here's another idea. Sure. Another idea is zero device day once a week. Do you do that? I do. I do. I do a number of days. And how do you do it? Your schedule. Yeah. You, your, your schedule doesn't lie. You can, people can say, this is important. That's important. You look at someone's schedule that shows their truest priorities. So when you schedule it, you make what habit researchers call a pre-commitment strategy.

40:42And by scheduling what I call a blueprint for a beautiful week, you can actually schedule. Saturday is my zero device day. You can do it two days a week. I would also, what I do when I mentor, you know, the CEOs and the Titans of industries and celebrity billionaires, I encourage them every two months to take a complete week off. I say, go ghost, go dark. So do I. If you look at the greatest Winston Churchill, how did he survive the pressures of World War II? He had checkers and chartwell. He had a retreat. I think we must leave our usual place and get away from the world. Andrew Wyeth, the great American artist.

41:25He had Chad's Ford, a farm in Pennsylvania, and he had Cushing, Maine, a little retreat where he would go to, to get away from the noise of the world. If you look at J.D. Salinger, one of my favorite books, Catcher on the Rye, after he was 37, checked out from the world. He worked in a little cottage every day in Cornish, New Hampshire. I think we must find time on a daily, if not weekly basis to get away from the noise so we can begin to hear the signal again. The signal. I love this. I have to tell you that I think one of the things that surprised me most when I started to coach some of the more successful people myself was the time they take away, the ones that have the right amount of bliss.

42:06It's where their creativity comes from. It's where they, what you're calling here, the signal when they're reconnecting with themselves or they're reconnecting with their spiritual lives. And I just bought an island in Maine and people go, why the heck But you buy an island in Maine. It wasn't that expensive. But one of the reasons I did it is that's almost like a territory of disconnection for me. And it's one of the reasons I did it. There's not great cell reception there, even if I wanted it. And it's an isolated place. And it's where I go to hear the signal, the way that you phrase it. This emotional residue thing, I'll just touch on that really quickly because I've not heard this before.

42:35I feel like we all have these friends who aren't on social media. Or we even have some older friends of ours who aren't even in the text game at all. there is a joy and a bliss that reminds you of a prior time in our culture that they have when I'm around them. A couple of my really, really great friends, there's a joy about them. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't be on social media or shouldn't have a phone. In fact, I'm suggesting you do both of those things. Having said that, there is some emotional deterioration, so to speak, that I agree with you on that happens when you're too engaged in them.

43:11So what were you going to say about that? That sounded like such an interesting point. Well, I'd say a few things. I think we're happiest when we're in flow state. And as you know so well, that is a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of University of Chicago. And it's based on a neurobiological mechanism called transient hypofrontality. the prefrontal cortex this is the seat of our reasoning it's also the seat of the monkey mind it's the seat of our inner critic it's when we start to slow down or close off the prefrontal cortex transient temporary prefrontal hypofrontality transient hypofrontality our prefrontal cortex begins to slow down and our brain waves can go from beta to alpha maybe even down, theta, and delta.

43:56And when we get away from our phones, when we practice what I call the three S's, stillness, silence, and solitude, our brain drops into flow. We not only feel bliss, there's not only a pharmacy of mastery that makes us feel good, but Ed, we begin to inhabit the secret universe known to the saints, sayers, greatest artists of all time. What I'm suggesting to you is Hedy Lamarr, Albert Einstein, Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger, the great business builders, not all of them, but many of them had one thing in common. They spent long periods of time alone, in quiet, often taking nature walks, working on finding the solutions to their biggest problems.

44:44So I think you can play with your phone all day or you can change the world. You can't get to do both. So transient hypofrontality gets you in a flow state. It doesn't happen if you're checking your phone 50 times a day. So those people you talk about, they are present because they're away from the distractions. I'd say the second thing, emotional residue, it's simply the phenomenon that every time you check your phone, you take some of your focus and you drop it on the notification you just looked at. And that's why at the end of the day, a lot of people can't focus. It's because they have dropped their focus on their phone.

45:16They've dropped their focus on the TV in the background. They've dropped their focus on chasing these shiny toys and these trivialities at the end of the quarter, the end of the year, the end of the career, the end of the lifetime amounted to nothing. And then the third thing to think about is cognitive bandwidth. Every morning you wake up with a full well of cognition. So I think it's really important where you give your attention to. Cognitive bandwidth is almost how I would describe you. You have a tremendous amount. I don't want to ask you about that. and we're having too much more time. I'm just really fascinated with you.

45:49All of our friends sort of told us both we should get together and do this today. And now that I'm with you, I want to do this again. I'm in the middle of going, I want like three or four hours of you and I just talking because I just think it's great for both of us and everyone gets to listen to it, right? I feel the same way too. I feel it's real, you know? It is real. But this cognitive bandwidth idea, I want to understand you a little bit. Let's just talk about you for a second. You're fascinating to me because you were an attorney. And don't be humble when you answer this question. please.

46:15You have a high IQ. Dad's a doctor. There's some good DNA in there for sure. But you have this amazing ability, Robin, for recall of quotes, of information, of facts, and a very diverse set of skills. That's what I love about the book, by the way. I want to say this about the book again, too. I don't want to say kitchen sink because that almost makes it seem unorganized. That's not what I mean. But there's a lot in here that is not just what you would think about, oh, be a hero. There's a ton in here from even all the cognitive stuff, the neuroplasticity stuff, the stuff on how the mind works.

46:50It's so, so good. But having said that, what about you? Have you always been this way? Or is it because you are practicing in so many of these strategies that you're sharing that you've increased your capacity for recall, for memorization of even information and actually owning it? This isn't just stuff you're quoting. You own this stuff. so I want to hear about I want to hear about you and I'm fascinated about you well when you have your show I'll come on I told you that before but tell us about you no humility I want to know well you know I would say don't filter it I would say I would say on honestly I would say I'm a very simple person I come from a town of about 2 ,000 people on the east coast of Canada And I didn't have a silver spoon in my mouth.

47:37And I don't think I have any real natural gifts. I've been at this field for 26 years. I live a very minimalist life. I said so. I have very few friends. I do very few things. I am not a maximalist. I don't chase every shiny toy that comes my way. We get major opportunities every day, 99 % of which I say no to. because I'm monomaniacally focused on the few things I want to build the rest of my life around. And I think if you build your life around just a few things, I think it was Confucius who said, person who chases two rabbits catches neither. And Peter Drucker said it really well. He said, there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

48:22And so I'm just, if there's one talent I have, it's I'm really clear on what I want my life to stand for. but I don't think I have any special gifts, but I call them the SOPs of AWC, the standard operating procedures of absolute world-class. And I share them in the book. The book is really a love letter to people's highest mastery and promise. And these rituals, like the 5am club and the 2020-20 formula, the two massage protocol, the second wind workout, the weekly design system, how I visualize, how I meditate, how I lean into fear each day, all of those things, they really do work. And so over the years, I used to be terrifically scared of public speaking, like terrifically scared of public speaking.

49:14Incredible. But thank you. But we have neuroplasticity. You know, our human gift is the gift of growth. I mean, the whole idea of heroism is ordinary people thrust into difficult circumstances and using the difficulty to triumph over tragedy. That's what makes us human. That's why I wrote the book. There are so many people saying, well, I can't have more money. I can't have more love. I can't have more health. I can't change the world. And here's the litany of reasons why. Well, if you recite your excuses long enough, you actually hypnotize yourself to believing them to be true. Very short intermission here, folks.

49:51I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Dr. Taryn Marie Stasekul, welcome to the show. Finally, it's great to have you here. Productive perseverance is a powerful, powerful concept, so I want you to share that with them. Thank you for that. So productive perseverance is the intelligent pursuit of a goal. And this is really important for us. Aw, thank you. This is really important for us because I think we've gotten a lot of different messages about this in our society, right?

50:28So a lot of people ask me, is resilience the same as grit? Yeah. Yeah? Angela Duckworth's concept of grit. Yeah. And it isn't, right? Grit is about putting our head down, right, and sort of throwing ourselves headlong into creating an outcome and just simply not giving up by dint of our own determination, right? Right. Productive perseverance is about the art and the science of the intelligent pursuit of a goal. It's knowing when to persist, even when we face challenges, when to be gritty and when in the face of diminishing returns and markers in our environment that we should pivot in a new direction or even, you know, fold up the tent and quit.

51:14Right. And something important to mention here about grit is that grit works really well, like putting our head down in environments that don't substantially change. So if you want to become a Navy SEAL, if you want to win the National Spelling Bee, if you want to graduate from the Naval Academy, right, it's really great to be gritty because you're going to follow sort of a formulaic series of tests and then come to your outcome at the end. But we also know a lot of companies that were super gritty and still failed. Sure. Right. I mean, even the, you know, examples that I think come to mind for everyone, Blockbuster and BlackBerry, like, right, like they were super gritty.

52:02They were in it for the long haul. It's just that like the environment moved and changed around them. And so, you know, the opposite side of this is looking at how our environment is shifting and changing around us. Right. What are the disruptors? What's the volatility? Right. That's occurring. and to be able to kind of balance our goals and our determination and our grittiness with what's happening externally and to continue to check in and be in this constant moment of balance. By the way, that's brilliant because there is this, I think we're in a culture that really emphasizes grit all the time.

52:39It's really the thing, hostile culture, grind culture, grit culture, which by the way, without, you're probably not going to become very successful. So it's super critical but i think often like i got i've had a chance to play a lot of golf or previously with wayne gretzky over the years he's definitely the different sports you can debate who the goat is in hockey there's really no debate it's really not it's really wayne and one of the things the only person we quote right right he's going to where the puck is going that's exactly right and that's that's the exact point you're making is that you can get so gritty there's a lot of gritty players but only one was great at skating to where the puck was going and that's because he was doing it in an intelligent way.

53:16He wasn't just grinding, just gritty. And you're a million percent right, as who I was thinking of initially and that exact quote. It's amazing that you read my mind on that. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded, so you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you, like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.

53:57When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at goodtoknowfacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit goodtoknowfacts.org. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest.

54:39I'm so grateful to share him with all of you today. So James Clear, welcome to the show, brother. I think it's important for people to understand this concept you teach that, you know, everyone's always talking about taking massive action. You take massive action towards what you want. You're like, yeah, you should do that. But your concept of getting 1 % better is much more believable for most people. And so just address that for a second. Why 1 % better every day? And how does a habit do that? Sure. So first of all, I think there's no reason that you can't be really ambitious, right? Like I consider myself to be a very ambitious person.

55:12I think it's just that you're oscillating or switching between these two modes. You know, like when you're in planning mode, when you're in strategy mode, sure, you can be very ambitious and be very aggressive and, you know, stretching yourself and reaching. But when it comes time to take action and execute, you have to scale it down to something that you can achieve that day. You know, like in one sense, the biggest unit of time you could ever do something is about a single day because then you got to go to sleep, you know, and then you have to wake up again and do it the next day. So unless you're playing, you know, at some point there's a limit, you can only stay up for 48 hours or 72 hours, like, you know, and then you break.

55:48So that's the largest possible unit that you could ever do a single thing in. And I think more realistically, most of the time, the truth is, you know, you got about an hour, maybe you got two hours to work on this and then you got to go move on to something else. So we don't have big chunks of time available to us. We need to scale things down into pieces that we can actually work on and execute. So the way that I think about it is when making plans, think big. When making progress, think small. And getting 1 % better each day is a way to encourage that. The story that I like to tell, and this is something that I kind of kick Atomic Habits off with, is the story of the British cycling team.

56:23And for many years, British cycling was very mediocre. They had never won a tour de France, which is the premier race in cycling. They had won a single gold medal over like a hundred year span. And they brought this new performance coach in named Dave Brailsford. And he had this concept that he called the aggregation of marginal gains, the aggregation of marginal gains. And the way that he described it was the 1 % improvement in nearly everything that we do related to cycling. So they started looking at a bunch of things you would expect a cycling team to focus on. Like they put slightly lighter tires on the bike or they designed like an ergonomic seat for the riders.

57:00They had the riders wear a little feedback sensor, a little chip to see how each individual responded to training. Then they would adjust the practice schedule. But then they started doing like these little 1 % changes, these small improvements that nobody else was really thinking about. Like they hired a surgeon to come in and teach the riders how to wash their hands to reduce the risk of catching a cold or getting the flu. They have this big trailer, like a semi-trailer that carries a lot of bikes in it to major events. And they painted the inside of that truck trailer white so that they could spot little bits of dirt and dust that might get in the gears and degrade the performance of the bikes.

57:34They have two different types of fabrics. They've got like indoor racing suits and outdoor racing suits. And they tested those fabrics in a wind tunnel. And they found out that the indoor fabric was lighter and more aerodynamic. So they asked all of their riders to wear that fabric. They even had all their different riders test, you know, like a bunch of like maybe a dozen different types of pillows. And then they see which one led to the best night's sleep for each person. And then once they figured that out, they brought that on the road with them to hotels for the Tour de France and so on. And, you know, Brailsford said something like, if we can actually do this, right, if we actually make all these 1 % improvements related to cycling, then I think we can win a Tour de France within five years.

58:12He ended up being wrong. They won the Tour de France in three years. And then they repeated again the fourth year with a different writer. And then after one year break, they won three more in a row. So after having never won for like 110 years, they win five of the next six. And I like to use that story as an introduction to this idea of getting a little bit better, making these 1 % improvements for a couple of reasons. The first is it shows you that excellence a lot of the time, maybe we can even say most of the time, is not actually about radical change. It's about a commitment to accruing small improvements day in and day out.

58:46Secondly, and I think this is also crucial, it encourages you to focus on trajectory rather than position. There's a lot of discussion about position in life. How much money is in the bank account? What is the number on the scale? What is the current stock price? What are the quarterly earnings? There's all this measurement around our current position. But what getting 1 % better each day encourages is to focus on your trajectory instead. Am I getting better? Is the arrow pointed up and to the right? Or have we flatlined? Am I getting 1 % better or 1 % worse? Because if you're on a good trajectory, all you need is time, right?

59:21If you have good habits, time becomes your ally. You just need to let time work for you. But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy. And every day that clicks by, you kind of dig the hole a little bit deeper. And so it's very much at the core. It's about encouraging you to focus on trajectory rather than position. How did you get to 37.78 times better? Like where'd that ratio number come from? Yeah, yeah. It's just math, right? So if you get 1 % better each day for a year, so 1.01 to the 365th power, then it gets 37 times better by the end of the year. If you get 1 % worse, 0.99 to the 365th power, then you drive yourself almost all the way down to zero.

59:59Now, look, real life is not exactly like a mathematical equation. Your habits are not exactly like this formula. But I do think that it highlights an important concept, which is the difference between making a choice that's 1 % better or 1 % worse on any given day is relatively insignificant. It's very easy to dismiss. And this is, I think, one of the things that makes it underappreciated or underestimated. You know, like, what is the difference between eating a burger and fries for lunch today or eating a salad or, you know, going to the gym for 30 minutes or not? Well, on any given day, not a whole lot.

1:00:36You know, your body looks the same in the mirror at the end of the night. Scale hasn't really changed. It's only two or five or 10 years later that you turn around. You're like, oh, you know, those daily choices really do add up. And I think you see this pattern again and again throughout life. Like take knowledge, for example, the person who always reads for an extra 10 minutes each day. Well, look, reading for 10 minutes a day does not make you a genius, right? It's very easy to dismiss. But the person who always does that over 5 or 10 or 20 years, yeah, really meaningful difference in wisdom and insight.

1:01:07Productivity is the same way. You know, like the person who gets one extra task done each day, doing one extra thing does not make you an all-star. But again, over 10 or 20 or 30-year career, that can be a really meaningful difference in output. it. So this pattern shows up again and again, what starts out small, relatively easy to dismiss compounds or turns into something much more significant over time. The biggest word, bro. I don't think most people take into account, you and I are both college baseball players, good ones, but neither one of us were, you know, surefire first round draft pick major league players.

1:01:37And I think most people don't take into account and they're like the compound effect. I don't think they understand it in money. I don't think they understand it in their bodies, both positive and negative. And I don't think they understand their identity or in just in habits, the compound effect in life of allowing small things to stack up over time has a multiplier effect. And one of the things that I feel like in your work, and by the way, your work is I'm all work. We're a few minutes in here and I'm like, this is so good. And the reason is, is one, I believe most people believe they can get 1 % better every day.

1:02:08I don't think most people believe that they can completely transform everything in one big leap. I think there's a multiplier though. Do you agree that between doing the right things 1 % or just better habitually every single day, not only are you actually making deposits of doing things correctly or better, but there's a part of your identity that starts to change over time about how you view yourself that I am that guy who doesn't eat the hamburger and fries when he can choose to eat the other one. And you stack those choices and behaviors up over time and you start sort of believing maybe you deserve something that you didn't deserve prior.

1:02:40Isn't there a factor of that, don't you think as well? This is a huge part of kind of my philosophy and book, this idea of what I call identity-based habits. But essentially, the concept is, and I think this is the real reason that habits matter. The surface level reason that habits matter is they help you be more productive, they help you make more money, they help you lose weight and get fit. And look, habits can do all those things. And that's great. But I think the deeper reason that they matter is that every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become. And so when you perform these small habits, when you take these little actions, you're casting votes for a certain aspect of your story or a certain element of your identity.

1:03:20In a sense, every time you perform a habit, that's how you embody that aspect of your identity. So when you make your bed in the morning, you embody the identity of someone who's clean and organized. Or if you write one sentence, you embody the identity of someone who is a writer. And this is why it can be valuable, you know, even to like do one pushup. It's like, no, that does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And eventually, as you build up evidence of that story, as you start to cast more votes for that identity, you have like actual proof to believe this.

1:03:56Right. This is I think is a little bit different than you'll often hear something like fake it till you make it. And I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake it till you make it. It's asking you to believe something positive about yourself, but it's asking you to believe something positive without having evidence for it. And we have a word for beliefs that don't have evidence. We call that delusion, right? Like at some point, your brain doesn't like this mismatch between what you say you are and what you're actually doing. And so my argument is to let the behavior lead the way to start by meditating for one minute or doing one pushup or writing one sentence and letting that be undeniable proof that in that moment, you were a meditator or an athlete or a writer or whatever it is.

1:04:38And ultimately, I think this is the real value that habits provide, which is they reinforce your desired identity. Boy, it's just so good, brother. So good. I don't know why I'm just meeting you now because our overall belief system about change is so very, very similar. And we're going to talk about how to actually begin to establish habits. But before we do that, I want to talk about the concept of establishing one because you said something about the one push-up reading or listening to something you're talking about about the guy who would go to the gym for just five minutes and work out and you said something about this casting the vote for who you want to be or who you're going to be that was powerful right but you're saying before a habit can be and I don't want to quote you incorrectly but I want you to elaborate on it because this is profound to me I mean it's obvious but if you if you don't step back and get away from it and look at it, you really don't realize the truth of it.

1:05:30Before a habit can be improved, it has to actually be established. And I think what happens is you tell me what you think. Beginning of the year, I'm going to lose 50 pounds. I'm going to do this. I'm going to eat five minutes. I'm going to starve myself to 500 calories. So it's not a 1 % improvement, or I want to get up earlier. I'm going to get up two hours earlier starting tomorrow instead of get up 15 minutes earlier, right? Get up a minute earlier. So talk about that from a, just the, the concept for everyone to just, they can take control of their life right now by just the establishment of a habit, right?

1:06:06Or, or right. Yeah, definitely. Right. I, um, so one of the concepts I talk about in the book is this, one of the strategies is this idea of what I call the two minute rule, where I encourage people to build a habit that takes two minutes or less to do. So you take whatever you're trying to do, read 30 books a year becomes read one page or do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat. And sometimes when I mentioned that idea, people resist a little bit because they're like, okay, buddy, you know, I know the real goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out. I know I'm actually trying to do the workout.

1:06:39So if this is some kind of mental trick, then like, why would I fall for it? Basically? Well, I tell the story of this guy, Mitch, that you mentioned this guy who I met, I talk about him in Atomic Habits. He went to the gym. He's lost over a hundred pounds, kept it off for more than a decade. And when he first started going to the gym, he wouldn't stay for five, longer than five minutes. He had this little rule. He had to leave after five minutes. So you get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, drive home. And it sounds ridiculous, right? It sounds silly.

1:07:08You're like, obviously he's not going to get the guy the results that he wants. But if you take a step back, you realize that he was mastering the art of showing up, right? He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week, even if it was only for five minutes. And this gets us to that deeper truth about habits that you just mentioned. This idea that a habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can optimize it and scale it up into something more. And, you know, I don't know why we do this. Like we get very all or nothing about our habits.

1:07:40We're like, we're so focused on finding the perfect business idea or the best workout program or the ideal diet plan. that we spend all our time theorizing and researching and looking for a better way. And instead, if we could just master the art of showing up, even if in the beginning, it was less than what you had hoped to do, you're establishing a foothold. You're building some small progress that you can advance off of. And it reminds me of Ed Lattimore has that great quote where he says, the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. And man, there are a lot of things in life that are like that.

1:08:14You know, like the hardest part is getting started. The hardest part is establishing the routine, even if it's a lower level baseline than what you ultimately hope to achieve. But the reality is, if you can't become the type of person who masters the art of showing up, even if it's just for five minutes, then it doesn't matter how good the plan is. It doesn't matter how great your theory is. And so I think the two minute rule pushes back on that perfectionist tendency a little bit and just encourages you to master the art of showing up. So good. I'm right. Just finished writing a book called One More.

1:08:43And I get asked that sometimes too. And one of the things that I wasn't thinking about it from this perspective when I wrote it, but you become the kind of person that says, look, I'm going to do it's my bench press. I'm going to do 10. You do one more. You do 11. I even say you're riding the treadmill for 45 minutes. You can build that habit of, OK, I'm going one more minute. I do 46. What's the difference in that minute? Well, you stack up that minute over a year. There's a difference, but also your identity begins to changes. And I'm not telling you to go from 45 minutes to three hours on a treadmill.

1:09:12So actually, as I was doing this, I wasn't thinking of it from this perspective. But now that I'm thinking about it, actually, our work is sort of converging, you know, almost in the exact same space. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow The Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Uncle G, Grant Cardone with me here today. You have this capacity and we're running. We don't have too much more time. We got as much time as you want. It's your podcast. Your capacity level is freakish.

1:09:42this guy okay so so not what your capacity level so how much you can get done in a given day yeah right so talk about that for a second do you think about that like consciously are you just do you just i walked in here today yes after being gone four or five days you know i didn't plan on the mandalay bay shooting right like you guys that are doing to-do list and time management you're trying the time management thing talk about that how you don't manage time you expand it yeah I don't manage time. I mean, I create time. What's that mean? It means I'm not managing ammo. I'm not managing money.

1:10:18Time is not some... It's all made up, man. Time is made up. The 24 hours is made up. Right. The 60-minute clock is made up. Yes. The sundial is made up. Like, you know, I don't have to go to sleep when the sun goes down. And I don't have to wake up when it comes up. So it's all made up. Like, I want the ability to operate when I want, how I want. You know, so I create time. I decide when Mandalay Bay shut down and there's a shooter and 59 people get killed and 527 people get hurt. and a hotel room with 5 ,700 rooms has to be searched, cleared, checked, double-time, FBI, ATF, Metro Police, 5 ,700 rooms, biggest hotel in America, and all the public spaces, and the casinos, and the jackpots, and the executive and employee lounges.

1:11:18People are like, how long do you think we're going to be down here? We're going to get out of here at 8.30. I just did the math. I did 5 ,700 rooms, three minutes each, 2 ,700 policemen. We're going to be here 12 hours. You knew it. Okay. So what am I going to do now? What am I going to do with the time I have? Right? You know what I did? I took a nap. Took a nap. It's 200 people in a cafeteria. The thing had calmed down. The shooter was down. He was dead. And the first thing my wife observed is you and Kevin Harrington. Kevin was down in the room with me. He's like, you and Kevin Harrington, the first two people sleeping.

1:11:50You told me that. Yeah, you're like, I need to get some sleep because I don't want to get some sleep. So the two executives go to sleep, get some rest because we know what? There's going to be another day. So I want to wake up the next day rested, ready to roll again. Yep. So it's not how do you manage time, but how do you maximize whatever time you have? And people often ask me, well, how much do you sleep? And I said, don't worry about it. Yeah. I worry about what I do the other 16 hours. I sleep eight hours a day. I know you do. You told me that before. You get a full six. I don't get a full eight, but I understand what you mean.

1:12:20I max out every single second of the day. And that's not some tagline either. You do really embody maxing out the call. Yeah, so when I came in here today, where I started, I did not know. I did not have a calendar. Katie keeps the calendar. I know you didn't even know a couple of meetings you had. Yeah, look, I wasn't even sure what day he was coming in here. So I'm like, yesterday, today, whenever. So when I came in today, literally, I didn't know about that meeting we had today. I know you didn't. Now you're not some other one with me. Some other one that we had. We had a guest in here today, an NFL guy.

1:12:51And anyway, so yeah, I just, I do whatever I have to do. Yeah, you do. You react well in the moment. You got your plan. You do, you write your goals down in the morning at night? Yeah. You do. But then you improvise all day. I like that. I write them down in the morning, I write them down at night, and I write them when I lose. What do you mean when you write them when you lose? Anytime I lose or I'm disappointed, I just go back to writing my goals, looking at my goals. Where am I going as opposed to what just happened? You really? Yeah. So anytime I fail. Yep. I lost this deal in Jacksonville.

1:13:16It was 1 ,000 units. And I missed the deal. And I was like, God damn, what did I do wrong? You know, I'm beating myself up about it. And I wanted this deal and I started, you know, hammering on my staff. Ryan Seck was in there. I'm like, what am I going to do? You know, you should have told me. And then I'm like, okay, wait a minute. Where are you going, dude? You went back to where you're going. Oh, I'm going to 40 ,000 units. Because that's rear view stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's already over. Gotcha. So I'm going to 40 ,000 units. So what does that thousand matter? Right, right. You know, but if you're not focused on the big thing, these little things get magnified.

1:13:43And then, by the way, I picked up the phone and called the guy and said, hey, if that deal falls out, I want it. You did something. You took action. Yeah. Yeah. So talk about this for a second real quick. So I heard you say one time, you said the big don't eat the small, the fast eat the slow. Yeah. What's that mean? Yeah. I think we're in a time where it's not about big. It's about fast. How fast can you go? What's an application of that? Like, you know, getting over stuff fast. You know, making calls fast. Getting to people fast. Yeah. You know, doing stuff fast, not having ideas and putting them down, executing them.

1:14:16So I get more done in shorter periods of time because I just do more. And the more I do, the more I have time to do. So speed, I don't think a lot. You know, I do a lot. I probably outdo. Gary Vaynerchuk said, man, who do you think over? Somebody asked, hey, who outworks who because we're supposedly both. I said, dude, I don't know how much he works. Yeah, right. But I tell you what, I work fast. Yeah, you do work fast. You do a lot of things at one time and one day. I've watched you do that. You also get to the point of what I would call winning. You get to the close. You get to the point where it's actually productive.

1:14:53In other words, you're not stupid busy. People get stupid busy with just doing a bunch of crap that's not productive. I even watch your face. Once you sort of identify what I'm doing right now is not real productive anymore, you kind of end it. Your faith that's what I'm doing. Well, you're very observant. I am, but even that's what I'm doing by disinterested. Once this thing's not productive, you're not interested in anything. You're on it. Let's be productive. Do you sense that about yourself, too? Yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. I think most of the time I feel bad about it, by the way, you know, because because every rude.

1:15:19Yeah. I hate small talk. You do. Yeah. I hate it. I hate it. You know, like I'm working on this big deal in Houston, Texas, and I think I might have to go on a hunting trip to get it. And you don't want to do that. I don't even know if I can. You just can't stomach the small talk stuff. I hate it. And I hate it. I hate thinking we're going to have to go to the duck blinds, drink the beer, hang out, listen to the stories. I mean, it drives me nuts. But will you do it if it's required to get the deal done? Oh, I don't know. Probably. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far.

1:15:52Be sure to follow The Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. he is one of the most giving and generous people with his time his information and his energy that i have ever met in my life and i i'm literally look at this i'm getting goosebumps because i've been really looking forward today so everybody this is jesse itzler jesse thanks for being here thank you so much man i appreciate it i want you to talk a little bit about just for you do you do you have this sense like i have this weird thing man like i'll wake up some mondays and i'll go how many more mondays do i get oh yeah do you ever do that i do with my kids my son's 17 i'm kind I only have so many more days with him.

1:16:31I do. So the challenge is, so many of us, myself included, we live in routine. And when you're in routine, the clock goes fast. I make sure that I create a certain amount of experiences, it's something I call Kevin's rule, every year. So Kevin is a police officer that I'm friends with from Suffolk County. Probably doesn't make an amazing living, but one of the happiest guys that I know. And I went to Mount Washington with, I took my son and his daughter, we slept out in the snow in this blizzard, like in this minus 40 sleeping bags all huddled up, looking at the snow coming down, we're outside, I'm like this is an amazing moment.

1:17:07I said, Kevin, how often do you do this? We're here with our kids, how often do you do this? He goes, well, every other month I take a trip that I wouldn't have done on a weekend that instead of watching a football game, I'll go fishing, I'll go to a museum, I'll do something. And I said, wow, like if I can't take one day every eight weeks, once every two months, to create an experience, then I'm out of whack. And if I do do that for the next 30 years, I will create 150 moments that I wouldn't have had. That's the power of doing things cumulatively. Wow. I just, one of the advantages of having money is you get to treat your friends and you get to treat people and that's the greatest gift and all that stuff.

1:17:53But you also meet some amazing people true the people you meet and I was in a meeting talking about something with an advisor And he said to me a really powerful question. He said if you could leave one of two things to your kids All this money or a wealth of experiences. What would you rather leave and I'm like Of course, I want to leave the experiences And so that's defined this chapter of my life. You talked about build your life resume. That's brilliant We focus on so much of our attention on the traditional resume. But we neglect these experiences. And the more you experience, the more you have to offer.

1:18:31Gosh. The more, right? I mean, the more empathy you have, the more you can offer to your kids, the more you can offer to your team, your employees. And so I have really made it in. And you have to work on this shit. As you get older, creating newness is hard. You got it. There's no newness unless you create it. You're in routine. You have to intentionally do it. You have to intentionally do it. So like I'm aware of that. You're talking about time, man. Time is running out. We're insignificant. There's 7 billion people, man. We're nothing. So I'm very aware of that. And I don't want to go through life being the 80 % version of me.

1:19:07I don't want to look back and be like 77 and be like, I always wish I, you know, we talked about going away maybe. I don't want to look back and like, I didn't do that. Yeah, me too. So I'm just in action mode. I'm almost operating like I'm manic because there's so much I want to do and I love life so much. I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss it because I'm, you know, I'm lazy. It's not the right time. I don't have enough experience and it has nothing to do with money. You got it. That's what I want them to hear. Not Washington. It costs$18 to park. Exactly. So I want everyone to hear that.

1:19:39So this weekend I put a post out. It's amazing. I put a post out this weekend. I said, hey, go do something new this weekend. Go to a new park. See a new beach. Go to a new coffee shop. Like just do something new. Have a new drink. Eat a new meal, right? Meet a new human. That's also where creativity comes from. That's where it all comes from. And ideas and, you know. What you just said earlier, man, I just, like, I get so fired up being around extraordinary people who get it because you said something earlier that was brilliant. You're like, I have this huge life. There's not, you don't have balance.

1:20:07What you are is present where you are. Like there's no way someone with all of this stuff in our lives, we can be perfectly balanced, nor can you. But these experiences don't require you to have money. And I recognize how hard it is for people to break the norm. Yes. But normal is completely broken. Look at normal. Everybody's, the majority of this country doesn't have savings. The majority, what, the divorce rate is 50, 40, 50 percent. Obesity is like a third of something. I don't even know the stats, but they're overwhelming. One out of three people have cancer and all this stuff. Let me share this story with you real quick, Ed.

1:20:42You remember Rick Barry who played in the NBA? Of course. So Rick Barry. Through the granny free throws. Yeah, Rick Barry shot 90 % from the free throw line. Okay? One year in 1978 in the season, he only missed 10 foul shots the whole season. Crazy. The league average is like 77%. I think LeBron is below 80 career. Michael Jordan maybe was 82. This guy was 90. Okay? And he shot every single one of those free throws underhand. He didn't care what anyone said. He didn't care if they laughed at him. He just kept fucking ringing up the points. Underhand. Boom, boom. I'm good. Like, didn't even hit the rim.

1:21:16Since he played in the league, there's been about 2 ,700 people drafted. How many of those people have tried to shoot the ball underhand? None. Zero. Because people don't want to do shit that looks funny or weird. And it's broken. The way you live is you rip it up. And you don't give a shit. And you're like, I'm so aware of my mortality. I hope everybody loves this. But if they don't, it's not, what, am I going to worry about it? Right. That's right. I'm going to go continue to do what I want to do to get the most out of this precious time. So good. You know? So talk about that because that's the other cool thing about being aware of mortality.

1:21:52Because you speak about this better than anyone I've ever heard in my life. Like a hundred years from now, none of these people you embarrass yourself in. Talk about that a little bit because this will give you, everyone right now, you're so consumed with what people are going to think. And just so you know, they may actually think it in the moment, but long term, they're not going to remember anything you did. Tell them about that. I love this. No, I mean, and look, I have my fears too. I want to be liked. I don't want people, you know. So do I. I mean, but yeah, I mean, one of the tricks that I do is like I walk around when I'm super scared.

1:22:22I'm against that wall of fear that I control. And it's stacked up. And I'm like, I'll say to myself, Jesse, nobody on this planet I'll look around is even going to be here in 100 years. No one's living to 160. So what do I care? And no one in China or Russia, they're not going to know that the speech wasn't great or this interview wasn't successful. And that helps me. Me too. Stephen Hawkins, one of the greatest minds of our time, predicted that just the way humanity is going, environment, nuclear weapons, all these factors, that in 500 years there would be no life on Earth. Then right before he died, we're talking about one of the greatest minds ever, he changed that prediction to 100 years.

1:23:05Let's just say for a second he's right. Well, let's just say there's a lot of crazy people out there, the environment, disease, you know, Ebola, whatever. Let's just say that was the case. Because we don't know. If you knew that that was going to happen, you're telling me you wouldn't take a chance or take the trip or visit your parents or do whatever or go through the wall, of course you would. And that's how I look at it. I look at it like, you know, and you know, there's three kinds of regrets. There's the regret regrets that you can change. I broke up with my girlfriend in high school. I wish I had her back.

1:23:40I can't change that. That's not the case. I'm just saying, right. There's there's that's one kind of regret. The other kind of regret is regrets that you can fix. I have a relationship with my dad. It went sideways. I can pick up the phone and be like, dad, I'm sorry, and fix that. And now there's no more regret. And then there's regrets that you can prevent. Okay. And those are the regrets like you always want to run a marathon. I'll do it next year I'll do it next year and you can prevent it because if it doesn't happen you could have prevented it So I look at those things too. I'm like am I gonna regret this in the future?

1:24:15I don't want future regrets and I want to fix the regrets that I have So let me get in front of it And these are all kind of strategies that I use that help me get over It just blows my mind how much I I I want everyone, I'm just mind blown because guys, no one talks about this. What we're talking about right now, you can go watch 3 ,000 podcasts, a million different speeches. No one talks about this because it's like a really vulnerable, almost odd thing to admit that we both think this way. But I just want to acknowledge something that you just said. I think about that all the time. I'm obsessed with that.

1:24:51I'm so grateful for meeting you because I know I'm not crazy. because no because I think sometimes to comfort myself from fears I'll think no one's gonna be here in a hundred years and you know what the earth could be by an asteroid tomorrow for all I know right like there's all these random events in life that I'm I'm holding on to something that doesn't even exist and I just think it's so important like the one thing that always gets me back to like ground zero is I get one shot at this life yeah I get one shot at it I want to love I want to like give I want to be loved I want to I want to you know I want to do good things you know and I have of course everybody goes off the wagon and this and that but I'm very aware of like this is it I remember I was saying to my wife um this race that I want to run called Badwater and she was saying to me like it's a it's a 135 mile run in Death Valley it's super it's like the hardest foot race and she's like you know why do you want to do that it's going to mess up your hips and then when you're 70 75 you're gonna have you can't do anything and I'm like I'm not playing for 75 I'm playing for right now yes you know and and are you gonna do it absolutely because if I don't it's a regret that I know I'll have see I I live my whole life you haven't heard me talk about this probably but like everyone want you to fast forward to 75 75 year old Jesse is like and then I'm gonna resent my wife I'm gonna be like you didn't let me do the race it's right I do that crazy regret future thing with death.

1:26:15So I have this image where I go to heaven and the Lord goes, hey, well done, good and faithful servant, right? Whatever someone's religious beliefs are. But then I have this picture where he goes, and you've heard me say this, and I run this picture constantly, man. It's like, it's one of my greatest shrinkers of time. He says, hey, let me introduce you to the man you were born to be. This is the destiny version. This is the ultimate version of you. This is the maxed out version of you. I want you to meet him. These are the experiences, the love, the memories, the moments, the contributions, the people, all the things that you could have done.

1:26:46This is what you were capable of? Meet him. To me, heaven, as I meet him, we're identical twins. Hell, as I meet him and we're complete, total strangers, right? And that's what that is, is it's future projecting the regret, which you just said. So not to put you on the spot, but I'm just going to put you on the spot for a second. So like our existence, humans, it's like a novel. We have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We We reflect on the beginning, right? So like tell stories about our childhood, like, oh yeah, you remember that? Marquee jet. We're reflecting. The middle is like where we live now.

1:27:17That's where all of our worry is. That's where we spend all of our time. We think we're never going to get out of this rut. We're stuck here, you know, and that's where we are. And then the end, we often ignore. And let me just put it in perspective. I'm sure most people listening have not picked out their graveyard plot yet, right? You probably haven't. No, right. So then you're not really taking it seriously. Have you? Yes, you have yeah I've addressed it. I've addressed the end of my life as part of my life Optimization system which we can talk about yes, but like that's an important piece Like my wife has to know where my passcodes are everyone thing has to be in order I want to know how I because like it's gonna happen.

1:27:59It could happen tomorrow You're not really dealing with it if you're ignoring it Ed like you're saying okay You said that to me. No, you understand what I'm saying? Yes. This shit is real, man. You never know when it's going to happen. If you're really serious about it, you have a plot. You have a plan. Your wife knows everything. Everything is taken care of. That's responsible. And that, when you do it, then you really say like, this shit is real. Yeah. It's real. And it creates urgency. Yeah, that's another level for me. So I talk about it all the time. And I'm not knocking you. I know that you're super real.

1:28:31Listen. I'm just saying like. Do you know how much I love that you say that to me? I love when someone pushes me to the next level, nudge me like, hey brother, if you're really serious, you do this. That's what we do when we coach our best friends. Like, hey, if you're really serious about sewing, if you're really serious about running this thing, here's what you'd be doing. So by the way - End of life is something we ignore. Yeah, the next time we talk, I will have had that done. By the way, that'll be done within a matter of probably days. Like that's just, I'm gonna take immediate action on that.

1:28:57Well, I'll tell you how this whole thing surfaced, if you have a second. I was driving with my son in the car, And this is like one of those moments. I hope I don't get emotional but I'm driving with them and my son he's in the back I'm in the minivan. I'm looking at him in the window and he says dad can I ask you a question? And I'm like sure He's like What's curse word? I'm like a curse word is a bad word. Those are words We don't use in the house. We keep driving goes can I ask you another question dad? I'm like sure he goes is shit had a curse word

1:29:30That's awesome. And I'm like, well, is it even a curse word? I don't even know anymore. So we keep driving. I'm like, yes. And I'm like, who called you a shithead? And he goes, my friends have been saying I'm a shithead. All this stuff. So we're driving. And he goes, can I ask you another question? And I go, sure. He goes, when I die, this is a seven-year-old kid at the time. When I die, what if I can't find you in heaven? Oh, my gosh. And that really hit me. because you know like the image of me not being here then my son waiting to come up and try to find me and then worrying that I'm not here and that really jump-started me thinking about how much I want to live how important what I eat is how important my relationships are how important my time is how important my kids are to me and how how real this window that we're talking about is I have a three bucket system and it will be too much to do in this particular, but let me give you to a 30 ,000 feet.

1:30:30I have, and anyone can do this. I have in a list, a list of electives. When you go to college, you have mandatory courses. Most of them you hate calculus, whatever. I don't want to take that enough. What about that? I want to learn how to make money. But then you have electives, the things you want to do. So I make a list and I love that. So I made a list of all the things I want to do in the year. I want to run a marathon. I'm doing a documentary I'm writing a book family trips all the stuff that I want to do okay, they go into an elective chart Then I have a list come back to it of what I call my sunshine electives Sunshines my sunshine's on my daily habits that is and I try to introduce one new habit a month That could be last month.

1:31:15It was drink 100 ounces of water this month is introducing a meditation practice Because at the end of the year, if you have 12 new winning habits, that's a hell of a year. Wow, totally true. That's a hell of a year. Most of us think back to like last two years, like what have you added that's new? Even myself, nothing. Yeah, if you're lucky, it's zero to one. Right. And when I tell people that, they're like, well, I could do three things. I'm going to read the newspaper every day. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to drink water. I'm like, start with one. Yeah. And then introduce the next one.

1:31:43So my daily habits, I have a list of them. And that could be like, I want to play with my kids for now. I want to read to my kids. I want to drink more water. And every night before I go to bed, I look at my list of sunshine and say, how do I want to put sunshine in my life the next day? I know it sounds corny, but that's what I do. And I'm like, okay, hour with my kids. And I make sure everything is scheduled the night before. It's like, we can't afford to wing it anymore. So every CEO, top CEOs have three assistants and they wake up and they come in the morning and their assistant hands them a schedule, says nine to 9.15 here, 9.15 to 9.30 here.

1:32:15We don't have three assistants. Most of us don't have three assistants, but we can't wing it the night before you have to have the day laid out So I sprinkle in my sunshines Into the day and then underneath that electives Sunshine my electives go on them on a year calendar. So I schedule the marathons that my years. It's already scheduled It's done. I know the races. I'm running the trips. I'm taking it's all in there All the stuff I want to do is written in because I'm not gonna waste away the thing I'm not gonna go through a year and not do the shit that I want to do then my life then my life plan My system would be out of whack But underneath the sun shines in the electives is this big ocean And that's all the stuff that takes away from the things I like to do I have to get my oil changed in my car twice a year I have to go to the doctor and get my colonoscopy at 50 and go get my dentist shit and all that stuff I have weddings all that is is the ocean that stuff takes away from this stuff So if you are fortunate enough to have someone that can help you with this, which I have assistance Then you can do it, but if not then you can assign it and delegate some of the stuff But if not this big ocean, which I went 48 years of my life doing myself What I do is I get it all on paper So I can so it's out of my head to free up energy and what that does is it gives me a snapshot of Basically, I have 15 things.

1:33:41I don't want to belabor the point But everything from pets to cars to this. And it's all an end of life. It's all laid out. Wow. And I have this amazingly efficient system. I could walk everyone through it, but I don't have the time to do it now. But I'm just saying I take it super seriously because you can't wing it. Yep. And they can find more of the detail because I know a little about the program. And I'm like, I want to. I didn't mean to get off track with it, but I think it's important. No, not at all. Like I want them to hear this because I think people think, well, I have habits and routines or I have a plan.

1:34:12Do you really? Because this is what one really looks like. This is what a high-level thinker does. This is what a high-level achiever does.

1:34:21This is The Ed Myron Show.