You Are Only ONE Decision Away From Completely Changing Your Life!

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24:49Today, we're going to cut through all of the BS and get to two of the most fundamental things that I think you have to have in order to go achieve at the highest levels. You know, we talk oftentimes about strategies and tactics and mindset, and there's a million different things that we could talk about that contribute to winning in life. But at the highest levels, if you were to distill it down to two very simple things that I would wish for you that I see in the people I coach, like if I'm going to recruit somebody into my business, what are the things I look for in them? Is it background? Is it intellect?

25:21Is it people skills? Is it their ability to close? There's all these things. the things that I look for in people are hunger and focus. It's their ability to be super hungry for what they want, incredibly after it, and the ability to be laser focused. And I want you today to evaluate those two things in you. Let's start with hunger level. I mean, how bad do you want your goal right now? I think there's a lot of people in the world today because it's a really niche thing to talk about. I want this. This is my outcome. This is my goal. Like how bad do you one. Do you want as bad as breathing? Do you want it as bad as anything you've ever wanted in your life?

25:57And if you calibrate it at the highest enough levels, what I found is the people that are the hungriest, they find a way. When you know why you want something, when it's desperation, the power of being desperate is something that most people avoid. They think desperation is a weakness. And I'm here to tell you, desperation is one of the most powerful emotions you could possibly possess. Because when you're desperate, you find reserves and reservoirs of ideas, talents, and a strength that you don't know you have when you find yourself in a desperate situation. So ironically, the one thing most people avoid in their life, hunger, which is caused by being desperate.

26:34When you're starving, you become desperate. Think of somebody who's starving on the street. They've got to, how resourceful would you get if your children were literally starving and you had to feed them, right? So the number one thing we need more than anything to win is hunger, which comes from a state of desperation. Yet we're constantly trying to comfort ourselves in the real world to avoid the state of being desperate. And I'm telling you that I think you need to embrace desperation again in your life. Like, do you want it so bad that you're desperate for it? Let me give you an example. I can tell you that I think the times that you've achieved at the highest levels in your life, you might have been the most desperate.

27:14If you were sitting here and you're in a meeting right now and someone tapped you on the short God forbid this ever happened. They said, your child's been in an accident and they've been rushed to the hospital and it's grave. Instantly, you'd be desperate to get to your child, wouldn't you? Those of you that don't have children, if it was your parents, you'd be instantly desperate to get to them. And think about what happens when that desperation kicks in. all of the things we worry about, all of our fears, all of our concerns, all of the lack of resources we have immediately fade away because we must get to this child of ours, this loved one of ours.

27:49And so if you were in the middle of a conference and they said, here's another year, your child has been in a serious accident. It's grave. You need to get to them. Would you sit there and think for a minute? Well, I don't want to get up right now in the middle of their speech because what will everybody think about me? I mean, I don't want to make waves here. That would go away, wouldn't you get right the hell up and run out of the room? If when you got to the back of the room, there was a security guard that said, hold on a minute, stop. Nobody leaves this room. A very important person's up there speaking right now.

28:16Would you go, you're right. Sorry. I don't want to violate protocol. I don't want to go. I don't want to color outside the lines here. You're right. I'll go back to my seat. Would you do that? Of course not, because you're desperate. Whatever is required of you to get to this child, this loved one of yours, you would do. And when you went out to the parking lot and you got into your car and you realized, my gosh, I forgot my keys. I left them in the room. Would you go, well, it's just a sign. I mean, maybe I just don't have what it takes to get to my child. That silly, stupid story. You wouldn't do that at all, would you?

28:47You'd immediately respond. You'd get back up. You'd run in the room. You'd knock the security guard down. You'd go back. You'd get your keys. You'd run back out. When you turn the car on, it didn't start. The battery was dead. Would you go, yeah, that's just another sign. Maybe I'm just not cut out to to get to my destination to get to my child to get to this loved one of mine no because you're desperate to get there aren't you so you'd throw the keys away and you'd run if you had to go to the next stoplight and carjack a car you'd say listen drive me to the hospital i have to get to my child and the person said no would you stop at the first objection would you say well yeah i don't know exactly what word you say no you don't understand you're taking me there And if they hesitate, if you had to carjack the car, you'd carjack it, wouldn't you, when you got there?

29:32And when you got to the hospital, if they tried to stop you again and said, no, no, no, you got to sign in and fill out all this paperwork. You got to do it perfect. You say, no, that's my child. I've got to get to them. Wouldn't you? Whatever it took, you'd get to that loved one of yours. Nothing would stop you. All of the silly things that happen that we let slow us down is related to our lack of hunger and desperation And so i'm here to ask you how desperate are you for what you want? Like here's what I think. I think most people would just like their goals They'd like their outcome, but they're not hungry for them.

30:07They're not starving for it They're not desperate for it But when you start to feel that desperation, it's one of the most powerful emotions in the world because you become so resourceful. You become so determined and all the noise goes away. See, all of these objections, all of these fears, all of these old stories you tell yourself, all the excuses that you're making, and I love you, so I'm saying this to you, are all going back to a lack of real hunger, real desire, real desperation because real desperation is beautiful. The most alive you'll ever feel, ironically, is when you're the most desperate.

30:44You talk to people who are the closest to death in an accident, and they'll tell you, ironically, it was the most alive I've ever felt because you're so desperate to survive. You're so desperate to get through it. Yet in life, we try to avoid this all the time. And I'm here to tell you, embrace the desperation. Seek the desperation. So if you ask me, what do I look for in someone I'm coaching, in an athlete, in a business person, show me somebody hungry. I'll take hunger and desire over IQ, over knowledge, over skills every day of the week. Because I can teach you skills. I can teach you the lessons.

31:18I can teach you the words. But I can't give you heart. I can't give you hunger. I can't give you desire. I can't give you the courage to be desperate. Because desperate people look a little funny. Desperate people don't fit in. Desperate people stand out. You see someone desperate, you're like, whoa, what's going on with them? Desperate people get criticism. And most people would rather not stand out. They'd rather not leave the crowd. They'd rather not take the criticism. They'd rather not take the heat. So most people say, I'd love to be a millionaire. I'd love to win. I'd love my dream relationship.

31:52I'd love the best body I could have. I'd love to be happier. But I don't want to look bad doing it. I don't want to seem desperate. I don't want to seem different. I don't want to step out of the crowd. And as long as you're one of those people who won't step out, who won't look a little bit funny, who worries more about what other people think about them than truly winning, you're always going to be held back. The number one thing I want is hunger and desperation, man, every single time. So evaluate that right now. Listening to this audio or watching this video, what's your level of real hunger?

32:23What's your level of real desperation? How bad do you really want it? Or would you just like it? Do you need it like you need to breathe? Do you need it like you need to eat? Do you need it like you need to exist? Or do you just kind of want it? Because you show me two people. You show me one person who's desperate and hungry. You show me another one who'd like it or wants it. You show me one person who's willing to look bad and get uncomfortable and color outside the lines and do whatever they got to do to get to their destination, to get to their child, to get to their dream. And you show me another one who won't, I'll take this person every day of the week.

33:01Maybe they don't come from the perfect background. Maybe they don't have all the perfect words. Maybe they don't have all the right relationships, but they got the goodies, man. They got the one thing you got to have to win, which is hunger and desire and some heart. And I know you've heard these things before, but now I want you to be self-aware. Really, how hungry are you? What are you doing to feed your hunger? What are you doing to feed the fact that you feel like you're starving? Because the more you want something, the lack of it makes you more and more hungry. For example, if I were really hungry and I needed some food, It's one thing to want it.

33:33It's another thing. When that food's right in front of me and I'm not allowed to eat it, I become hungrier. So the closer you bring what you want to you increases its hunger level. The more repetitious it is, the more you think about it, the more you bring it into your thoughts over and over and over again, the hungrier you get. That's why repetitive thought about what you want is so critical. So evaluate that. Am I as hungry as I could be? Am I as starving as I could be? do I want it so bad I'm desperate for it? Do I want it like that person who has to get to their child or their loved one or would I just like it?

34:08Would I hope for it? Because as long as you're one of those people, see in a fight, you show me two people. This is why it's so hard to repeat as a champion in the fighting game. Because you show me someone who's up and coming, who's hungry for that title, who's never had it before, who can taste it, who knows if they win that belt, their whole life's going to change. They're going to be champion of the world. All the endorsements, all the money, all their family life, all their parents' lives are going to change. You show me somebody chasing that hungry for it against someone who's just trying to hold on to a title.

34:37And that's why most of the time the challenger beats the champ. It's hard to repeat as a champion because the hunger goes down just a little bit. The greatest athletes, the Cobys, the Bradys, the Jordans of sports have a way of feeding their hunger all the time and increasing it. What separates them isn't just their work ethic, isn't just their talent, although those things matter, isn't just they practice more. What separates them is they're just hungrier. They somehow find a way as they climb up the ranks and win championships to get even hungrier for more, where 99 % of the athletes lose just a little bit of their edge once they get that first championship, that first pro contract, that first big amount of money, that first world championship.

35:19They just lose their hunger a little bit. And then there's the elite. they get hungrier. It feeds the beast. For some of you, have you been hungrier in the past? Let's be honest. In the past, were you hungrier for that first promotion, hungrier for that first goal, hungrier for the first house, hungrier for the first relationship, hungrier for the first time you got fit? And have you lost a little of that hunger where you're just not quite as desperate as you used to be? And so it's feeding your desperation. And the way we do that is we feed it to ourselves over and over again because it becomes something we must have.

35:53We have to have it like we got to eat, like we got to breathe. Feed the hunger, feed the desperation, embrace it. Don't try to look so pretty because this desperate state eliminates all the things that hold you back. Your fears, your worries, what you don't know, what the obstacles are, signs, haters, lack of information, lack of blah, blah, blah. It all goes away when you're hungry. The second thing is focus. can you get laser focused. Human beings can get incredibly great at anything they put their minds to. Total immersion in any topic, most human beings can become great if they give themselves enough time.

36:31The truth is, most people overestimate what they can do in a month or a year, and they dramatically underestimate what they can do in five years or ten years. If you get total immersion in a business, total immersion in your body, total immersion in your faith. You totally get laser obsessed, focused at something. It's incredible how great human beings are at adapting and becoming great at it. Many, many years ago, I knew nothing about communicating on camera or starting a podcast. I'll tell you a funny story. When my podcast started, I was encouraged to do it by Tony Robbins. And when my podcast started, he said, hey, you got to order.

37:05People say, I know you're listening to the number one business podcast in the world that didn't even exist two years ago. Okay. I knew nothing about podcasting, nothing about how this worked. I did not even know what a podcast was. I want you to understand something. When I was first told to have a podcast, I did not know what one was. And so he says, you got to have one of these. I said, what are they? You know, where do you get the microphones? Where do you get the stuff you talked to before I had this stuff on camera? This is a true story. He goes, I don't know, figure it out. My team did it all for me.

37:35I'm like, okay. So I Google how to start a podcast. This is how I began what you're listening to right now. number one in the world right now, fastest growing show on earth. I Google how to start a podcast. And Tim Ferriss, who had a successful podcast, had done a podcast on how to start a podcast. And so I listened to his podcast. And at the end of it, there was notes. And he said, if you click on this link, it takes you to Amazon. There's a kit there with the microphones and the recording device and all the stuff you do to start a podcast. I thought, okay. So this started by me Googling how to start a podcast.

38:11Tim Ferriss had a kit. I listened to the show. I bought the kit. I got back and I said, Tony, I said, so now what do I do? He goes, I don't know. Set the mics up and just start talking about something. And I'm like, all right. So I do like a 30 minute audio. I set the mics up. I got all the equipment Tim Ferriss said you should have and I'm done. And I call him back and I said, Hey brother, I did the podcast. How do I get what I said out of the machine. And he goes, I don't know. Well, you got, it's on the chip. Take the chip. Now here's how stupid I am. I'm like, chips? I don't, there's no chips.

38:50He goes, yeah, there's a chip you put in the machine. I go, I, no one said anything about chips, man. I don't, you know, are these, what, do you eat these? Like, he goes, no dummy. There's a chip, like a micro something or other. He didn't know either. You put it in the machine. And I go, I didn't, I don't think I have one of those. So I look and there's no chip. So I literally talked for 30 minutes into a microphone that never even recorded anything. So then I go get the chip. I put the chip in the machine. I do the 30 minutes again. And then I call like, okay, it's on the chip. How do you get the chip into the universe where people hear what you're saying?

39:26Right? Like, I didn't know this big, he goes, he goes, I don't know. I think you stick it in your computer. So I'm on the phone. I stick the chip in my computer. This is the number one show in the world now. I stick the chip in the computer. I go, okay, it's in the computer. What button do I hit so people in the world can hear it out of my computer? I'm not kidding you. He goes, I have no idea, man. I don't know how this stuff works. So finally, I figure out, oh, you got to download the chip onto your computer. And then it goes to a thing called Libsyn. And I knew none of this stuff. The first podcast I did never got recorded.

39:58I Googled how to do it. the chip sat in my computer for two months because I couldn't figure out how to get it out of my computer into the internet. Okay. That's how my podcast started, but I become laser focused about podcasting. I'm like, Oh, then people said you should record it and put it on YouTube as well. So I've learned where do you get the cameras? How do they do it? How do they post it on YouTube? What do you type? I knew none of this stuff. My first Instagram video, literally true story. I do a 30 minute video. My son's kind of the guru. I do the one minute story rather. I posted, I got three views the next day and one like, and I call up, this is what I hear.

40:39I call up Tony and I go, Hey, no one listened to my Instagram video. He goes, well, you posted it at one o 'clock, man. You need to post around breakfast time. And this is what I hear him say. I don't know anything about this stuff. True story. Swear to you. He goes, you got a post around breakfast time and dummy, you got no hash browns in your post. And I'm like trying to not pretend I don't know anything. So I'm going, why do you, I got a post at breakfast time and why does there need to be hash browns? This makes no sense to me. So now I'm mad, but I pretend to know what he's saying. And I call my son and say, Hey, you said you knew about this stuff.

41:17You're 15 years old. you're internet savvy. Don't you know all the videos have to be posted at breakfast times and you got to have hash browns in the video. My son's like, dad, why would it matter what food is in your video? I don't know, but he's telling me it has to be breakfast time with hash browns. We went the whole day, my first post, lamenting the fact that I had no hash browns in my video. Turns out he was saying hashtags, but I didn't even know what a hashtag was two years ago. And so finally we figured out the hashtags, how to post, how to do a podcast, and it leads us to where you and I are here today.

42:00That's because I've been focused and obsessed in this field now for the better part of a year and a half to two years. So not only did I figure out how to get into the internet, not only did I figure out it doesn't matter what breakfast foods are in my posts, that it was hashtags. Not only did I understand what chips were, you don't even know what kind of chips I think he was talking after the hash browns. You don't even want to know. But suffice it to say, I figured out what type of chips. A year and a half later, for my podcast now, and I like him, to do more downloads than Tim Ferriss does.

42:28And he does a great podcast, but after learning about his kit and Googling how to do it, to think that it's come this far is mind-blowing because human beings that get obsessed and immersed in any topic can become great at it and so can you. So pick what you want and get laser focused. Begin to eliminate all the distractions. You are not hungry enough. You are not starving enough and you are not focused enough. I say this to you as a friend. What are the things that are stealing your focus? Who are the people that are stealing your focus? And begin to eliminate these distractions. Get laser focused and obsessed on what you want.

43:02Be starving and hungry to get it. Be desperate to get it. The combination of desperation and hunger with laser focus over an extended period of time is the formula to be great at something. And you can apply this formula. Get laser focused. Eliminate distractions. Eliminate the things that steal your laser focused on it, your research on it, your obsession on it. Begin to do these things and you will begin to change your entire life. Yes, I want your mindset better. Yeah, I want your identity higher. No question it's important to have great associations in your life. But dad got it. You've got to get hungry and you've got to get focused.

43:42And I know these sound like basic things, but go to any area of your life you want something right now. Pick the number one thing you want to change. Body, money, business, relationship, faith. I don't care what it is. Pick it right now. One to ten, how hungry are you? How desperate are you? One to ten, the most desperate and hungry you could be. Rank yourself. Number two, how laser crazy obsessed focused are you on what it is you want? One to 10. 10 being hyper psycho crazy obsessed focused. Nothing's in your way. And to the extent you can increase your desperation and hunger and your obsessive focus will be to the extent that you can flourish.

44:21because when those things convene and converge, all of a sudden, the collaborations, the people, the circumstances, the breakthroughs, the insights necessary begin to reveal themselves to you. And not only that, reveal themselves to you with momentum and speed at which you cannot believe. You can wake up a year and a half later, be number one in the world at something that you didn't even know existed before. I'm a testimony to that, and you can be as well. Your success is going to be predicated more than anything on your hunger and desperation level and your ability to get laser focus and eliminate the distractions in your life.

45:00This is what makes us great. I think of athletes that I know, I've watched them get obsessed and hungry early in their careers. And as they make a little bit of money, they start, you know, they're a rapper now. Now they're an actor. Now they're a producer. Now they're a business person. and their basketball or football or baseball or boxing or UFC career begins to suffer as their focus gets diminished, as their obsession gets diminished, as their immersion gets diminished. The great ones never lose that. They never lose the hunger. They only increase it over time. I always try to lay out for you what the solutions are, and then I like to give you a plan.

45:37I want to give you a four-step plan to both increase your hunger and increase your focus at the same time. So the first step is always to evaluate where you are currently. So give yourself an evaluation as I've asked you one to ten How would you rank your hunger and desire level? Are you all the way desperate? Are you the most desperate you possibly could be because again, I Promise you this is a healthy form of desperation Okay, so one to ten evaluate where you are and then also give yourself an evaluation of where you are in your laser Obsessive focused one being completely unfocused distracted constantly even forgetting what our goals are Five is we're on it from time to time.

46:14We keep some notes. We evaluate. Ten is just obsessed, crazy, nothing else matters, focused. If you're not at least at a level eight or nine, you're not optimizing your effectiveness level at both of those areas. Number two, you must become more intentional to change those things. So it's just starting out. Everything in life comes from intention. You must intend to increase these things. So I want you to become incredibly intentional at feeding your hunger level, bringing the goal closer to you, repeating it over and over makes you starving for it. And the more you can increase that state, the more you stay focused.

46:51Ironically, there's a connection between hunger and desperation and focus. They're related. So be intentional about them. The story I gave you about if God forbid a loved one or a child of yours was in an accident, can you imagine how focused you immediately become when something becomes that important to you, that desperate to you. What happens is everything else, all the distractions of what other people think about us, any other circumstances, what we don't know, what we don't have, anything scarce to us goes away because we're so desperate. It increases our focus. If you think about anything you've had that becomes desperate to you, if there was a burglar in your home, for example, and you were desperate, think about the millions of things you're no longer thinking about and how focused you are in on that one thing.

47:38We've all had that time when we're laying in bed at night and we think we hear a noise, right? You become so focused. You hear every little creak in the ceiling, don't you? Every little movement of the floor. You hear your sheets move. Oh my gosh, there it is again. You become hyper aware and hyper focused when you increase desperation. So become intentional is step two. Third, what is your plan? What is your strategy to increase your hunger level and to increase your focus level. So part of that plan might be I need to be around people more immediately who can hold me accountable and repeat back to me what I've told them my outcomes are.

48:15I need to put myself in situations where I'm accountable, where I'm a part of a group where I have to report my results to them. Perhaps it's going public, if it's your body, and going public with this is my intention the next 30 days, this is what I'm going to do, putting additional pressure on yourself. Perhaps it's shrinking the time frame down. The sooner we must do something, the more desperate it becomes. In other words, if something has to be done within 10 years, how desperate is that? But it has to become sooner and sooner and sooner. Or even if it just has to be a real date put on it, gives us some desperation knowing that date is coming sometime soon.

48:49So what is your plan and strategy to increase your desperation, Increase your hunger level. And then focus. What's your plan to increase focus? Oftentimes, that could be a plan to eliminate distractions. What's your strategy to eliminate distractions? It might be, I watch too much television at night and it distracts me from my goal. Perhaps you should remove that television from the room. That's a plan and a strategy to eliminate the distraction. Perhaps it's you're being on the internet too long or playing video games. Maybe you need to eliminate them. Perhaps in your nutrition, you're trying to get fit.

49:20the distraction are snacks that you have in your home or alcohol. Maybe they need to be removed from your home. What is your strategy and plan to eliminate distractions and increase focus? Because without the evaluation, without the intention, and without the plan and strategy, an actual plan to increase desperation, an actual plan and strategy, get creative, get resourceful. It's only with a plan that you can begin to make changes and a strategy. Otherwise, it's just a thought. And then fourth, what immediate massive action are you going to take right now? I'm talking about right when this audio or video ends, what's the immediate first massive action you're going to take towards that plan?

49:59The first step, the first, it's unplug the TV, it's remove the video game, it's throw out the junk food, it's remove a certain person from your life. I don't know what it is, but what is the immediate massive action? Because if we can evaluate where we are and get very clear because we can't know where we're going if we're not very clear about where we are. In other words, if life is like a GPS and we want to get to a particular destination, the only way we can get clear on getting there is to understand and evaluate and be specific about where we currently are. That way we can build the directions.

50:34There's no sense of direction, not just with where you're going, where are you? You must know both places. Evaluate what you want and be very honest and evaluate where you are. Now the directions can be drawn out. So we must evaluate number one. Number two, we must make it our intention to do so. We must get intentional, get specific. There's a power to intention. There's a power to pointing our mind, which is a weapon at these issues. Third is our strategy. What is the exact plan we're going to take? Without a strategy, you have no shot. You must have a strategy. The strategy doesn't have to be perfect.

51:10The strategy can evolve, but there must be a game plan. There must be something you're doing immediately to start towards this journey. It tells our mind we're making progress. It sends a message of, I'm serious about this. And then fourth, you must take immediate massive action. Knowledge is not power unless it's applied. And you haven't really made a decision and changed anything until you've taken an action. And if we delay the action to later, We can have all the evaluation, all the intention, and a great game plan. No action, no momentum, no progress. So what's the one step, the one action that you're going to take immediately towards increasing your focus and increasing your desperation level?

51:53What is the immediate action? Once you have those four things, we now have a recipe to change. And so today's message to you was to wake you up as a friend, as your brother, is to say, listen, if we're going to get this done, if you're going to make things great happen, you've got to get very clear on what you want, very clear. But we have got to get starving. We've got to get desperate. We've got to get hungry to perform at the elite level. And for some of you who are already performing pretty high, the reason these next goals are coming more and more slowly, the reason that progress is slower, the higher you climb is because you're less hungry, you're less desperate, and you've got more distractions.

52:31Some of you that are starting out in the very beginning of your journey towards chasing goals. I'm giving you the recipe. You must increase the hunger level, the desperation level, and you must get more focused. But for some of you who have already achieved that are listening to this, I'm telling you, I understand it. I relate to it. You're like that champion who's trying to repeat. And although you're not satisfied with where you are, and you have big goals and ambitions, you must get honest. Am I as starving and as desperate as I was in the very beginning of my career, in the very beginning of my business, in the very beginning of my journey in my faith, the very beginning in the journey of my fitness, whatever it is.

53:07Because I can promise you, if we drew a line back to where you made the most progress, you were the most desperate. And the goals start coming slower, don't they? As we become less and less desperate. You've got to feed that. And then the other thing is, there was a time in your life, if you were achieving at a high level, whether it was getting your master's degree or graduating college or passing an exam for your business or getting to your first big promotion. I can promise you if I went back and looked at you, you were laser focused and all the distractions went away. This is the same formula and the same recipe.

53:38Success leaves clues. I went through this string for a while where so many, what I'd call high performing, successful friends of mine would say, have you read Atomic Habits? You're at Atomic Habits. I'm talking about athletes, business people, entertainers. And I'm like, the heck is Atomic Habits? And I finally find out there's this guy, James Clear. Turns out he's written this book, like 5 million people have bought it. I'm so grateful to share him with all of you today. So James Clear, welcome to the show, brother. Hey, thanks for having me on. Great to talk to you. I think it's important for people to understand this concept you teach that, you know, everyone's talking about taking massive action.

54:13You take massive action towards what you want. You're 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. I 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.

54:51But 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 the, 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. So 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 got to go move on to something else.

55:23So 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, it's the story of the British cycling team. And 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.

55:58And 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. They 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.

56:32but 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. They have two different types of fabrics. They've got like indoor racing suits and outdoor racing suits.

57:03And 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, 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.

57:37He ended up being wrong. They won the Tour de France in three years. And then they repeated again the fourth year with a different rider. And then after a 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 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.

58:11Secondly, 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?

58:45If 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, 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.

59:23Now, you know, look, real life is not exactly like a mathematical equation, right? Your habits are not exactly like this, 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. Like it's very easy to dismiss. And this is, I think, one of the things that makes it underappreciated or underestimated. you're 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, you know, your body looks the same in the mirror at the end of the night scale hasn't really changed.

1:00:04It's only two or five or 10 years later that you turn around and 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 five or 10 or 20 years, yeah, really meaningful difference in wisdom and insight. Productivity is the same way, like the person who gets one extra task done each day.

1:00:36Doing 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. And I think most people don't take into account and they're like the compound effect.

1:01:06I 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, 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. I don't think most people believe that they can completely transform everything in one big leap.

1:01:37I 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. You stack those choices and behaviors up over time and you start believing maybe you deserve something that you didn't deserve prior. Isn'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 this i think this is the real reason that habits matter the 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.

1:02:35And 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. In 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.

1:03:11And 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, right? This is, I think it's 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.

1:03:45And so my argument is to let the behavior lead the way to start by meditating for one minute or doing one push up 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. And 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.

1:04:23But 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 just really don't realize the truth of it.

1:04:54Before 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?

1:05:30Or, 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.

1:06:03So 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.

1:06:33You'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.

1:07:04We'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.

1:07:38You 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 So good. I'm right. Just finished writing a book called one more.

1:08:08And 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, okay, 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 through 45 minutes, of three hours on a treadmill.

1:08:36So 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. 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. Said 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.

1:09:14Rinse. It's time to be great. When 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. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes.

1:09:55Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. my guest today he's been a friend of mine for almost 30 years i was thinking about as i was prepping for this i've known him for 30 years holy cow so tony robbins welcome back to the show brother good to see you man how does someone condition change so you use the word patterns earlier right yeah and in both of our work with different people they've got where they've got because they've developed these patterns and maybe they do read a book or they come to a one-day event or something like that. And there's change, but how do you condition change in somebody?

1:10:28Is that what you would call immersion over a three-day window? Or is it some habitual change when they get back that's task or routine oriented? Conditioning change is kind of the rub. I think it's like the next level of advice that's given to somebody that I don't see being discussed very often. I think it's a hard question. So I'm curious as to what your answer is about conditioning a change? Let me give you two quick answers to it. One is how I did originally, because I didn't know how, right? I started reading all these books. The first book I read when I was just 17 years old, my mom kicked my dad out.

1:11:02She chased me out with a knife. I knew she wouldn't kill me, but I wasn't going back in that house. And I was like, okay, I'm walking in the rain trying to figure out what to do. I stayed in the laundry room on the second night, first night on the hill and it rained. So the next night in the laundry room of a friend's and I had a small amount of money, like, I don't know, 19, 20 bucks. And I took the bus and I went to this bookstore I'd seen years ago before. And I got this book called The Magic of Believing by Claude M. Bristol. And in the book, it talked about conditioning your mind and that it talked about not affirmations.

1:11:31I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy. And your brain goes, BS, you're not happy. But incantations is when you speak it, you engage your body with such intensity. Now, today I understand when you want to change something, you change the body, you change your focus and you change your language. When you change all three of those things radically, somebody who's depressed uses their body a certain way. They talk with a certain tone of voice. They focus on what they can't control. They focus on things in the past they can't shift. They focus on what's missing. It's not hard to figure out what's going to happen.

1:12:02They use words like I tried, I can't, I don't know. There's what I call a triad. These three things are done a certain way when you're depressed. If you change that person's body radically, the tempo they speak, their voice, you change their focus to what they are in control of, you change their language, everything shifts. Well, when you do incantations, think of like affirmations only speaking aloud with total intensity over and over again with repetition, it's like conditioning your mind, your body and your emotions at once. So I was working in these two banks, mom kicked me out, and they were in San Marino, California, near Pasadena, California.

1:12:37And I worked there, I was still in high school, and I would take the buses there because I didn't have a car. My mom kept my car. It was a 1960 Volkswagen bug. And I got there and I cleaned the banks because it wasn't by the hour, it was by the result. So I cleaned two banks. I was really good at it. I did a really good job. And by finished by two in the morning, I get on the bus by three 30 in the morning, I'm home. I go to sleep, wake up on four hours sleep and go to school. It was pretty brutal. One night I come out of the bank, changed my entire life. I'm waiting for the bus, waiting for the bus, waiting for the bus.

1:13:0845 minutes, no bus. There's nobody around. It's three in the morning. I got to get home. What the hell am I going to do? I know I can call and do this. I'm a million miles away. So all of a sudden the guy comes creeping down the street and he rolls down his window and goes, Hey buddy. Cause I'm at the bus stop. He goes, didn't you see the paper? There's a bus strike. There's no way to get home. So what did I do? Part of it was initially anger with my mother kicking me out and I'll show her. But then I remember I read this book. So I was doing these things every day and every way I'm getting stronger and stronger every day and every way I'm getting stronger every day and every way I'm getting stronger and stronger every day and every way I'm getting stronger and stronger I did that for the first 20 minutes then happier and happier healthier I ran 13 and a half miles I never run two miles in my entire life it became the power that I still tap into this day I literally found a part of myself by demand by conditioning by the end of that like I was utterly certain what I can do.

1:14:04You know, when you see an athlete, a kicker, you know, on a football team, a basketball player about to a free throw and you think they're going to miss it. You can tell before they release the ball or kick the ball. You see, they're lacking certainty. When you look at somebody like Steph and he releases that ball and he turns and doesn't even look and it's already a swish. People go, Oh my God, he's a genius. No, he's being rewarded in public for what he's practiced a billion times in private. Steph told me he shoots. I've seen him 500 shots every single day of his entire adult life from the time he was a teenager, but just take his 15-year career.

1:14:40500 shots a day, it's 14 ,000 shots a month, 168 ,000 shots a year, 15-year career. That's 2.52 million shots he's taken to make 3 ,300 to be the greatest three-point shooter in history. That's conditioning, right? You do it. You do it. You do it. You do it. But there is a way to speed it up. When Stanford came to me and wanted to do that study on depression a couple of years ago during COVID, they wanted to see, they saw the results. They couldn't believe it, right? People that get depressed, they had two professors that had gone, no more clinical depression whatsoever. So they wanted to do the study.

1:15:13Most people, 60 % of the people that get treated with drugs or psychological treatment are still depressed. That's the meta studies. 40 % improve, average improvement, 50%. Their half is depressed. They did it with us. 100 % of the people after five days from Date with Destiny, not a single person. A year later, 11 months later, nobody did it. 17 % of people had suicidal ideation. None was suicidal ideation. How did that work? Well, we changed the perceptual filters, what people focused on, what the things meant to them, what they do. But we did it for five or six days and nights of total immersion.

1:15:49And since they followed me for three years biochemically, they were interested because they discovered this biochemistry that Tom Brady experiences, that the Tampa Bay hockey team that's won so many Stanley Cups, you know, the Lightning have done. They go into a state, if Tom Brady's down in the fourth quarter by 10 points and he's got two minutes, there's no way you're going to win the game. Something happens to him biochemically that happens to me every time I'm on stage because they measure me for three years. they call it the championship biochemistry my testosterone surges to a level that's insane but so does my audience they follow me so at that level anything you think about you remember that's why the retention is so high you remember where you were in 9 11 you don't remember where you were in 8 11 you don't remember those moments because there's not enough emotion there's so much emotion secondly normally there would be a huge amount of cortisol that's the stress hormone that gets in the way of your performance.

1:16:45For Tom, for Tampa, for me, my cortisol drops through the floor while my testosterone is rising. That puts you in this state of absolute push, certainty, and drive. It doesn't guarantee you're going to win, but it increases your chances about 100-fold. My audience, not only my live audience, my live audience when we went during COVID to digital, where I had people in 195 countries participating, like we're going to do, for example, for the three days, They went around, send people to 15 different countries, took their blood just like me, took their saliva, measured them. Every single one of them went through this exact same pattern.

1:17:20And that's why 11 months later, 72 % decrease. And I've never seen them again. 72 % decrease in negative emotions, 52 % increase in positive emotions. In business, it's all engagement. They measure engaged, disengaged, actively disengaged. Engage, you're really into it. Disengaged is like quiet quitting. you do the minimum, actively disengage your people that are angry and actually trying to screw you over in your own business. COVID's four years destroyed engagement more than any time in the history of the measurements at levels no one could even dream of. The one that grew the most was active disengagement, people actually angry trying to mess up the company.

1:17:59We did in six days, they're doing a one-year study. Most studies like this are a month to three months. Largest one they've ever done, 750 people, at the end of the six days of Date with Destiny, five and a half days, every single person was higher than they were before COVID, meaning their engagement was through the roof. But what's really cool is they're measuring it. The year ends this month, but I saw the six-month review. Every month, they increased their engagement and their effectiveness, and I never spoke to them. I never saw them again. Why? Because it's in their biochemistry. Why? because they have whole new filters in their brain.

1:18:33So you can do it through incantations, or you can do it through some form of immersion. Well, they took the best professor at Stanford, won all these awards, had him teach my exact content as a contrast group, word for word, but without the things I do to change biochemistry. And he's still got 300 % increases in retention that he's never seen before on the content. But mine was 3000%, right? And his were off after, I think it was eight weeks, and mine a year later was still producing the results. So there is a science to changing your conditioning. So you can do it rote by incantation, do it rote by having new rituals.

1:19:09There's so many ways you can do it. But the most powerful way I know of is total immersion, where we engage your biochemistry and your emotion. And what's so cool about it is time disappears. You know, when you ask people, what's a long time? Some people say a century, some people say two minutes, right? A long time is anytime you're not enjoying yourself. You know, a minute can feel like eternity if it's a horrible experience. But if you're having a great time, time disappears. And you know, even the events, we go 12 hours a day, literally around the world. When I'm doing my events here, like the last event I just did here, Date With Destiny, we had people in 195 countries.

1:19:44So it's every country in the world. We had like, we'd start here at 10 a.m. It's already midnight in Australia. They go from midnight to about one in the afternoon for six straight days in a row. And we lost 1 % of the people give you an idea it's that engaging right they're in a whole different time zone it doesn't matter they're in the zone and our biochemistry has changed and so that's why I love books but the reason I still do seminars is because there's nothing like an immersion experience like that now people can do it from anywhere on earth or they can come in person and do it too because now that COVID's over we do both yeah and that's by the way this event at jointony100.com I want you to go it's just that's because you have immersion over three days here's what I just want you all to do So I'll give you my simple language from that success, bliss, achievement, ecstasy is a biochemistry.

1:20:31It's a neurochemistry and a biochemistry. And so if you want to find those states of being, it's a biochemistry. And so just for a lot of you, something really simple to do when you're training physically, if you work out, you run, you walk. These are times where you should be anchoring your goals and your visions of your life when you're in that elevated state of neuro and biochemistry. It's just a much more powerful anchoring and conditioning for you to create a change in your life. And so elevated emotional or physical states and anchoring the things that you want in your life, your visions and your goals and your ambitions.

1:21:05Now you're anchoring the biochemistry and the neurochemistry. The likelihood of those things happening and repeating themselves becomes that much higher. This is important stuff for you guys. The gentleman that I have on the show today has written a brand new book that I love. It's called Uncommon Leadership, 11 Ways Great Leaders Lead. In fact, I love it so much, I wrote the foreword. So if you wonder whether I love this man, what he stands for and what he teaches, you need to look no further than his book because I'm right there with him. So Ben Newman, welcome to the program. Ed, my brother, you know how much you mean to me and the opportunity to be with you.

1:21:40And I'm so grateful for you writing the foreword and just couldn't be any more excited to be with you and your listeners. I want to ask you a question just to begin with on the leadership side, because we'll do leadership and performance today. you work with some of the top leaders in every single industry if you guys don't know he's the performance coach for Alabama their football program I read this is this right Ben 18 national championships is that right 18 national championships and and I've been there four years which is a long tenure for somebody with coach Saban so I feel blessed every time I'm in the building what have you learned from him I gave you a couple takeaways what separates him he's you know I've had Davo Sweeney on my show recently Urban Meyer's a dear friend so I'm not going to rank these guys, but he's in the conversation as the GOAT, if not the GOAT.

1:22:24What have you learned from him that maybe surprised you when you got up close and personal? Three words, be the example. And whether it's the game of football, whether somebody's leading in a boardroom, whether somebody's leading in a classroom, I believe that you have to be the example. And Coach Saban is knocking on the door of 70 years old, and I actually go to training camp here in two days my fourth training camp with the team and you will see him sprint in between drills really not like walk fast ed i'm talking sprint in between drills if your 70 year old head coach is sprinting in between drills what's the expectation of the player so he believes you have to be the example to lead the people that really for him he believes it's a blessing to have the opportunity to lead these young men yeah now that's incredible by the way maybe he should be sprinting in my business meetings.

1:23:20But the other thing you were sharing with me about him, obviously standards. I think people think they have high standards. Like I thought I trained really hard until I started training with world-class bodybuilders and athletes. And I'm like, okay, compared to what? And oftentimes I'll have business people say, Hey man, I work really hard. I usually say, Hey, come spend a couple of days with me. Let's see how hard you work. Right. But in his case, you were telling me something about, he said about, we were going to do this drill. We are going to practice this not until we get it right, but I even higher standard than that.

1:23:49You entrepreneurs, you business people, you athletes, listen to what he's going to tell you is Saban's standard that he's learned. Yeah. So the standard is if everybody were to come to practice with me next week or this week, you would hear him say, we don't do things until we get it right. We do things until we can't get it wrong. Gosh, it's mind blowing. And oftentimes his messages are so simple yet they're so profound and he's a master of saying something that applies to everyone you know a lot of times even me and I'll get a little long-winded right I like to talk yeah and he will say things that are simple yet it applies to the walk-on who may never see time on the field all the way to Bryce Young will be our new uh you know starting quarterback this year I mean, it's incredible the discipline that he has to understand how to communicate.

1:24:42How does he, and we won't talk about Saban the whole time, but you've seen his leaders. One of the things that leaders get, I call it like leadership fatigue. They're always trying to come up with new things all the time to say rather than, I think leadership's about finding new ways to say old things. And so how does he, that's standards nuts. Like the whole world has Alabama's target, right? The target is on Alabama's back from the entire world. what does he do that standard of we're going to do this until we can't get it wrong what does that look like is it intensity is it yelling is it do it again is it do it again is it encouragement is it all of the above does he push every emotional button how do you do that you know it really starts with off-season training right there's an expectation here's the way that we do our off-season training so if somebody goes off sides let's say we're in february and we're in our fourth quarter training that's conditioning right is everybody listening conditioning in february for football games that are going to be played in the fall and you just probably won a national championship in january and if somebody goes off sides ed he's the first one to blow the whistle hands on his knees saying whoa whoa whoa the way you do one thing is the way you do everything if you go off sides in this drill in february it's a 10-yard penalty in november and it might cost us the game.

1:25:59And so he's conditioning his athletes to not just physically perform, but to understand that you have to think about your actions. So he combines the mental and the physical to allow athletes to realize how much they really have deep down inside. So do you, by the way, I want to, and it segues perfectly. So the mental and the physical, I get asked often, you know, what are some of the keys to staying positive, optimistic, high energy for me. A lot of times it starts with my body and my routines. What I said about Ben in the foreword of his book is Ben is the example. He's incredibly ritualistic and disciplined in his approach, particularly in what he does sort of in the mornings too, and the longevity, like your streak of bananas.

1:26:43So give us some insights because you've been around the top guys. So you've sort of formatted, formulated sort of a routine that you do in the mornings that I'm sure some of this is adopted from people that you've known that are elite performers. Tell them a little bit about your routines and your disciplines and your consistency with them and why you are so consistent. Well, first off, let me share a compliment to you and something I'm very grateful for to you. And then I will get to the question. But I think the first thing is I have two coaches. I read books every single day. And I have mentors.

1:27:18That means I'm a really high maintenance guy. So I am far from figuring this out. And so I'm constantly trying to find what can my edge be? How can I get better? Whether I'm at Alabama, whether I'm working with a billion dollar construction company, I don't want to settle. I'm never finished. I always feel like we can give more. And during COVID, I was blessed that you and our dear friend, Andy Frisella, invited me to speak at an RTA event. And we get done with the RTA event. And the three of us had this question and answer that I will never forget. Awesome. And you said some things to me that shifted the belief that I had in myself, Ed.

1:27:57And I shared this with you privately, but I want to go public because I think it's important. I appreciate the kind things that you say, but I'm a big believer that you have to set yourself up for your environment. So whether it's consistency in when you wake up, what you eat, how you think, what you feed your mind. And this is what I call a never do it again list. So this never do it again list, if everybody looks down at number 11, okay, you can see Ed's name and number 11. And so after I completed the first part of 75 hard, I actually wrote a never do it again list. because I wanted to capture now that I understand this next level of my thinking, what are the things I can't go back to?

1:28:39And so I wanted to train my brain. If I found this next level, I better be conscious of the fact I can go back. It's way easier to go back than it is to create a new discipline. And so I wrote these words after you instilled belief in me. And I believe one of the greatest acts of leadership is a transfer of belief. And you changed how I feel and how I show up. So every day I say, never forget the belief Ed Milet shared with me, his words and statement shifted my belief. Ed, I read that every day. And so you're in my morning routine. I knew that and I'm honored. Thank you for telling everybody else, man.

1:29:19I appreciate that. And I know I share that with you, but I wanted to go public with that because I think sometimes people see somebody that performs like you or people will say, wow, you know, I perform at a high level. But this is what it's about. It's about surrounding yourself with people who push you and challenge you to say, no, no, no, you're not done. And so it's been environments. You know, it's working out. If we know that working out causes us to release our endorphins, to feel great about ourselves, to feel confident, why would you choose to not work out? So for me, that's been a big part of my morning routine, whether it be working out, putting my head in a book that means a great deal to you and I every single morning, you know, preparing our team who helps me get to the next level.

1:30:01I don't do this by myself. We have a great team. And so there's a very disciplined routine that I believe causes me to show up when you hear that ding, ding, ding for the day to start. And I'm ready to take it on mentally. If you bring me adversity, I'll run right at it. You bring bananas level energy to stuff you do. And I, I want people to get some insight. Is that something you have to work at? I mean, are you conscious like, okay, I'm about to do a show. I'm about to give a talk. I'm about, I'm bringing monster energy. Or is that something you're naturally just, that's just the way you're wired?

1:30:38Why do I ask? Before you answer, I want to tell everybody why I asked that. I don't think most people are conscious that you are always making people feel something one way or the other. And most people are completely oblivious to what they're making people feel. They're not only not self-aware, they're not even aware of what they're making other people feel, the energy that they put on. So is this just you or is this something you've worked on to build that is now you? Ed, this is me. In fact, I'll tell you a funny story. I've never told this story in an interview. And this may have to do with the fact that a buddy of mine is raising money for an illness that his daughter struggles from.

1:31:15So it's top of mind because it just happened. And he set me up with this interview in Chicago. I'm talking over 20 years ago. And I go to this interview and I get done. And his boss interviews me. And the feedback was, this guy was way too prepared. That was fake. There's no way anybody has this energy. And my buddy said to his boss, he's like, that's him. Like that, that's the way the dude was in high school. Like he's just wired that way. And the guy goes, no possible way. He put on a show for me. And, and so for me, it's one of those things, that's the way that I've always been. And I think a lot of it comes from my belief.

1:31:52And I had to go through a lot of pain and challenge in my life to understand this. We only get one day. I've got the day that's in front of me. So for me to waste it and look, my days aren't perfect. I have challenge. I screw up. I try to be the best husband I can be. I try to be the best father I can be. I try to be the best. It doesn't mean I'm perfect and I don't mess things up, but I've only got one shot every day and I'm going to bring my best. That's why I love you. I think that everyone listening to this, I want you to start to ask yourself, what do I make people feel when they're around me?

1:32:21Because Ben makes you a lot of things. One-on-one, I'll just tell you in a group, he brings great energy, brings belief. Ben has an ability to make people feel good about themselves, to have belief. this is something that all great people have. I'm just telling you. And you can have that when you're quiet. You can do it with a look. You can do it with a glance. You can do it with a text. You can do it with an email. You can do it with a video, spoken word. But you need to start to harness a little bit more the control and the awareness of what you're making other people feel when you're in business, sports, family, every aspect of your life.

1:32:54This is the Ed Myron Show.