Brutally Honest Advice For Hard Days | Ep 905

0:00The single greatest skill you can develop is the ability to stay in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. I've had some of the hardest days of my life this year and so maybe you feel the same and so in this video I want to share a four-par framework that has helped me move forward even when life sucks.

0:19If you can be in a bad mood for no reason then you might as well be in a good mood for no reason too and so one of the things that's been helpful for me is just actually recognizing the math of hard days and so if you think about you having a hundred days right let's just say that, you know, last hundred days of your life. Well, the top 10 % of those days, you're going to have 10 days that are smiley face days. And then you might have, you know, kind of the middle 80, that's going to be kind of neutral days, right? And then you're going to have your bottom 10 % days. Now, this is just normal because of a standard distribution of how days work.

0:52I think the most important skill that you could have is being able to reframe reality. and i say this because i had a very good friend of mine um this year say something to me and it was it was really powerful and it's been top of mind since he said it and he said well i'll tell you what he actually said he said you're alex fucking hermosi you can get away with whatever you want as long as you frame it right and I really thought a lot about that and I've brought that perspective to a lot of the conversations a lot of difficult things I've had to go through through this it reminds me of a quote from Viktor Frankl who wrote the book a man's search for meaning which he wrote while he was in the concentration camps during the holocaust he survived and or he wrote about that time period and one of the things that he said is he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how And so if you think about that, the why is the reframe for dealing with the how.

1:53And so it's like, how can I frame this difficult thing, right? This thing that I'm about to go through that I just went through, how can I reframe that? In what world would this be an amazing thing, right? In what world where when I tell this story 40, 50 years from now, would I be like, this is a pivot point for me. I had to have this origin story in order to get to where I wanted to go or to become the type of person I wanted to be. And so these have been some of the mental reframes that I've used on some of the harder days that I've had. So this year I had a gigantic bill come out of nowhere.

2:24So it was a multi-eight figure bill that was required to get paid in 72 hours in cash. And so I, you know, thankfully had that, you know, available to me. but I had obviously different plans for that money than dealing with this gigantic bill that I had to all of a sudden pay within 72 hours. And so, you know, there's the, basically the moment between when I got the news to me paying it to then kind of reflecting back. Cause it almost felt so fast where it was like, I've got, you know, I've got all these plans and then boom, this happens. And then 72 hours later, it's like, wow, okay, what am I going to do?

3:02What am I going to do kind of moving forward from this. And there's this great quote by Marcus Aurelius, which is, what are you so afraid of losing when nothing in this world belongs to you? And I really thought a lot about that, which it's like, I can't take it with me in the end. And so being sad about losing something that was never really mine anyways, like I'm going to have to push all my chips to the middle of the board when the game's over, right? I'm going to have to cash my chips and somebody else, you know, other people are going to distribute my chips. whatever way, um, when I die. And so it's like, I'm really just a steward of these chips.

3:37I'm just renting these chips for a minute. And so like to be upset and to ruin the one thing that I'm only, that is, that is finite, which is the present moment, uh, for something that actually doesn't affect how I live. So this is the second piece. This is actually kind of a utilitarian perspective. It really helped me, which is by losing that money. I asked myself, what does this change about what I do? What does this change about my life? It doesn't change the food I eat. It doesn't change where I live. It doesn't change where I work. It doesn't change what I do. It actually changes nothing.

4:05And so all that changed was just like, in my mind, I had an expectation of the future that changed. That was it. And I said, okay, do I want to, because of this thing that existed in my mind, I am choosing to punish myself for not having seen this or not paying attention or whatever number of reasons I could blame myself for. But at the end of the day, I was like, okay, so you just get to pick how long you want to beat yourself up for. I was like, huh, well, what am I so afraid of losing if nothing in this world belongs to me? Nothing, this wasn't mine to begin with. And so that really kind of helped me, helped me quell that kind of negative thought pattern pretty quickly.

4:44And so I found it helpful when I'm in a bad season, uh, like I am right now, to be fair, I don't try to like put big labels on things, but I guess I'm just giving myself a little bit of grace. Um, but to just focus on having a good day. And so it's like, okay, even though this is a bad season, I'm going to have a good day in a bad season. It's kind of like a bite-sized victory. And if I start stringing enough of those good days in a row, I'm going to turn a bad season back into a good season. And it makes it feel a little less bad because I feel like I'm making progress. And so I heard this little bit by Bill Ackman who was like getting sued.

5:18He was going through a divorce. He just lost$4 billion in Perishing Square for his capital. So he was like, honestly, all of this happened at the same time. and he realized all these projects were these big massive things which is a lot of kind of the stuff I'm doing right now they're not like okay I had a bad day they're like things that just they last and they prolong right he said you just gotta you just gotta you just got a little bit done every day that's it he's like you just gotta make a little bit of progress every day and kind of like compounding and investing it's like you don't really you don't see it in a day or two or a week or two it's like but you look at back at 30 days you're like all right I moved the ball a little bit right you look back at 90 you're like all right I made some progress and it's just like if you have big goals, you're also going to have equally large obstacles.

5:59And so you can't assume that, oh, my big goals are going to take many, many years. And the obstacles that I have to maneuver around are going to happen overnight. Sometimes the obstacles that you have to maneuver around might take a year or multiple years to get around. And so you have to be able to manage your headspace and basically keep your internal combustion engine going during those harder times. And so it's kind of like a monkey swinging from good moment to good moment. Because even going from bad season to good day. You can even have bad day and good moment. So I was trying to thought, okay, today was a shitty day.

6:28Fine. What good moments did I have? And by focusing on the moments, the thing is, is like, when I look back on my life, you forget most of your life. Like if we're being real, like you can't recall most of your life. Most people can't even recall what they ate like three days ago, but you can't have the moments. And so the moments when I think about like at the end of my life, looking backwards, those are the only things I'm really going to remember. And so I just want to make sure that I take those down. And so what feels like a bad season now, I can try and forget most of the bad stuff and just try and remember the good moments.

6:59And so in retrospect, I can have rose-colored glasses when it comes to this season. So it's like, all right, well, how do you have a good day, right? And I think this is different for everyone, but I'll tell you what my little formula is for having a good day. So I actually have this written on my wall in my office, which maybe I'll be able to put a picture of somewhere. But good day formula.

7:27For me, there's only three things. Number one is eat with people I like. Simple enough. Number two, lift with people I like. And the third is right. something. If I do those three things, I had a pretty good day. Like I look back and I'm like, I earned my shower today. I feel good about this. And so maybe for you, your three things are going to be entirely different. Now I'll give you a little wrinkle on something that's been really valuable for me, like absurdly valuable. The thing that I noticed that made these two things significantly better, really all three of these things, is not being in a rush.

8:11Like if I have to lift and it's like, I only have 60 minutes to lift, I don't like that. Some people are fine with it. Some people are like, well, this is how my life has to be. That's fine. I have come to a point in my life where I was like, I have a lot of money and I have the ability to not work anymore. And there are not a huge amount of things that bring me big joy. And so if these are the few things that bring me joy, which is eating without a clock with people I like, lifting without a clock with people I like, and writing something for as long as I feel like, then I should organize my day so that I don't have as like many, many hard stops.

8:53So that if I want to lift in the morning, I don't have something at nine. And if I do have something at nine, it's something that's movable, right? Like if I have to make this video, it can be at nine, but the team knows if I show up at 930 or 945, because I've lifted longer, that's fine. It's all good. And that has made, it has taken my good day formula and made it like my super good day formula. And so sometimes it's like, what are the tiny nuances that actually make something different between good and great? And so I thought about, I was like the days that I had these three things happen. And then I had better days that had those three things happen.

9:26I was like, what was the difference? And the difference was that I didn't have to be somewhere else. And in trying not to have a rush, it means I have to give something else up, right? And so then the question is, is the thing that I'm giving up worth having a better day? And so for me, I was like, yes, I'm willing to give up some money or some upside in order to have consistently better days. And that's a trade I'm willing to make at this point in my career. If you want to achieve a goal, you're either going to have to accept boredom or pain. And the bigger the goal, the more of both you'll get.

10:02And when I started my gym, I actually lived with six other people in one house. So this is like off a beach town. And so think like sand everywhere, people everywhere, dirty dishes everywhere, like not enough room in refrigerator for food. Cooking was an absolute mess. There were almost all of them had dogs. So one had, so a couple had two dogs. Another couple had one dog another guy had a dog so we had four four different dogs in the house and they were like all marking territory it was horrendous and I was splitting one room with a guy with a bed like two beds my bed was on the floor his bed was you know elevated because he uh he could afford that at the time and I would sleep with a fan on my face I couldn't hear anything that was my secret like as the fan like there's like the wind over like that's all I could hear the thing is is like I was doing that when I was making like 20 grand a month take home and so like there's always trade-offs right and the trade-off for me of living in that condition was that I could invest in the dream and build the business that I had at the time and now I could look back because I ended up losing everything um you know a few years later and so I try you know you get this negative cycle of like all of that suffering was for nothing but it wasn't for nothing because I learned all these skills along the way.

11:24And so you also can't operate from the perspective of like, I might lose it all in the future, which means everything I do today is not worth anything because like, you're going to lose a hundred percent of everything the moment you die. So trying to say that you might lose something in the future is a reason not to do something is ridiculous. You're going to lose everything at some point. You cannot wish for both strong character and an easy life because the price of one is the other. And so when I think about pain, I think about what thing am I paying for right now? And is that thing something that I want?

11:53And if so, it reframes the pain as the price of the thing that I want. And so it's very interesting. This is super interesting. As they've done research on this, where they have somebody who like, accepts like shocks, right? And then they have, they can like opt out at any point. If you have the same man who's getting shocked, and then you tell that man in the other room, every shock he takes, his family doesn't have to take. His threshold of pain like quadruples. And so this may seem like some quote mindset, whatever. But the thing is, is like, the bigger your goals, the more pain you're going to endure, whether you want to or not, it's the price.

12:39And if you can endure four times more pain than someone else, I don't actually think that it feels four times more painful. I think it feels the same level of pain, but you have this padding that makes it feel worth it. Give a man a purpose and the ability to achieve it, and he will crawl over broken glass with a smile. And that broken glass, like how can you have a smile during the pain? It's because of what the pain itself represents. Now I'm going to get a little bit of the behavior because I think it's valuable. So I talk a lot about reward and punishment, right? But those are kind of more colloquial terms.

13:17When it comes down to behavior, it's actually reinforcers. And so a reinforcer can be negative, meaning it can be something that's aversive. So for example, if I know that every time I hit my hand with a hammer, I'm going to grow muscle, then if that hitting my hand with a hammer or taking the shock from my family means something positive, which is that I'm protecting my family, I'm helping my country, I'm doing something that I deem meaningful. The pain itself can become a positive reinforcer because you know you're making progress towards the thing you want. Now, you might think of that and be like, well, I don't want to have the pain.

13:54The thing is, is that when you're going through it, if you have this frame, it isn't as painful. And so in a lot of ways, it's like we are our own sculpture that we're working on. And as we chisel away, we also get to reveal the type of person that we want to become, the traits and the behaviors and the belief sets that go with the man or woman that we're trying to grow into. And so I wrote this story, I want to say a year ago, maybe two years ago, that related this that I just want to share with you. So imagine you're talking to the creator of the universe about the person that you want to become, right?

14:24And so you say, you know, I want to be courageous. And the creator replies, then I will give you monsters that terrify you. That way you can conquer them. And you say, well, I want to be patient. And the creator replies, then I will make you work harder and longer and nothing will come easy to you. That way you can learn to wait. And so they are like, okay, well, I want to be wise. And so the creator says, then I will give you failures that will crush your spirit. That way you can learn the value of judgment. Then you say, that sounds like a hard life. Can you give me a good life? And the creator replies, just like we measure the quality of a blacksmith by the strength of his steel, I measure you by what you are at the end, not the fire and the hammer that it took to make you.

15:08A good life isn't an easy life. a good life makes you into a good person. And that my child is a hard life. And so it's about who we become doing the work more than the outcome from the work itself. And I love this. And this is a reframing of Proverbs, but the work works on you more than you work on it, right? Like in all labor, there is profit. Meaning we always benefit from work, even if the thing that we work on gets destroyed, even if you went bankrupt, even if, you know, that relationship didn't work out, even if that partnership falls apart. The work you did is eternal because it changes you.

15:41And so for those you don't know who are new to my channel, I lost everything five years into my entrepreneurial journey. And then I made a little bit more and then I lost it all again. But the thing is, is that I had this idea that, oh, I have to start from scratch again. But that's not true because you can only start from scratch once. Every time after that, you start with an experience. A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion. And you transition from the second to the first, the moment you begin working, because you're no longer somebody who has an opinion. And the vast majority of people who are in the comments section, right, who are making the remarks, who are in the sidelines, are just people with opinions.

16:23And as soon as you know what that truth is, because you've been there, and you've actually done it, and you have the scars to show for it, then their opinions matter significantly less. And so I'll give you a different reframe that I've had for redefining pain as it relates to other people, which is you can summarize just about every hateful comment on the internet into one thing. He lives his life in a way that I would not prefer. That's it. Everything is, he lives his way, his life in a way that I would not prefer. To which I respond, yes. I do live my life in a way that most people would not prefer.

17:02And they live their life in a way that I would not prefer. And that is why it is their life. And they can live their life the way that they want to live their life, the way they prefer it. And I will live my life the way that I prefer it. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you've got customer success, you've got IT, you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance.

17:37And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages. Once you answer the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, R-O-A-D map, roadmap. And so they make these things, they cast these stones at you as though it matters.

18:16And so my dad told me this when he was going through his divorce. he said he went through this like divorce conference and the speaker on stage said to somebody in the audience, he said, Hey, here's a ball. And he threw it to him. And he said, okay, throw it back to me. So he caught the ball. He said, now I want you to imagine that this ball is a steaming hot pile of shit. And he threw it to the person again. And the person caught it. He said, why would you catch it? And so the lesson of that is just because someone hurls shit at you, doesn't mean you need to catch it. You don't need to choose to participate.

18:52And I thought that was a really interesting frame. It's like people can hurl whatever they want. It doesn't mean that they have justified a response or that you need to accept it. And that little reframe of, oh, I live my life in a way that other people would not prefer. Well, that makes sense. I'm not trying to live the same life as them. So of course. And then they say, he made trade-offs that I would not make. And I say, of course, of course I did. Why is this somehow an insult? And so the thing is, is like when I was making those trades in the earlier days, like I didn't, I didn't know when I would be successful or if I would be successful.

19:26The only thing that I knew for sure was that I wasn't going to stop. And that was it, right? Like I know I can just not stop. And that's something that I can commit to. And that's controllable. And so I think a lot of the big gift of hardship is that it doesn't define you, it reveals you. And so the benefit is that you get to see who you really are, and you make that decision yourself every day. And so I have this perspective on loyalty, which is that like, you cannot say that you are loyal until your loyalty is tested. You cannot say you're patient until your patience is tested. Otherwise, it's an opinion, not an experience.

20:05And so you can't say that you can handle hardship, and that you are emotionally resilient until you've had something to be emotionally resilient about. And so the gift of the hard time is to give you proof of who you are so that the rest of your life, you get to know that you did that. And you get to tell that story and relive that story to yourself for the rest of your life. And to me, that gives the hardship memory dividends that pay forever until the day you die. So I'll tell you a story. When I was, um, when I, uh, so I went to a school in the SEC, um, and you know, some of the SEC schools are renowned for hazing and aggressive stuff.

20:47And so I, I was, you know, going to join a fraternity and, you know, obviously they, uh, they, you know, build up how hard, you know, pledging is going to be and all this stuff. Right. And I called my dad to talk about it. And he just said, remember, there is nothing that they can do to you that is harder than what you've already been through. And it was a great reframe because I remember the times, you know, like when, you know, things would be quote hard during that season of pledging. And I would just think about the things that I had already survived, the things that I had already been through at that point.

21:24And it made what they believe to be suffering appear childish. I was like, this is cute. But for the people who were present in the moment, rather than being able to relive through their memory dividends, as using it as a shield, right, for my emotional affect during the moment, was like, all right, I have these eight weeks where I have to stand here before you apparently give me a stamp of approval. Fine, then I will do that. I live my life in ways that you would not prefer. And that carried me a pretty long way. And so let's say that you've used these tools to redefine pain, right? And you've realized that you are the outcome.

22:03The work you do is the only thing you control. And the person you become becomes the evidence of the work that you voluntarily subjected yourself to. And not only does that pain or that difficulty or discomfort make you better, it's also what separates you from everyone else. And whenever I do go through those moments, I do have these slight like crook of the smile, you know, the crook of my love that goes up because I'm reminded that everything that I'm willing to tolerate and deal with is what everyone else who wants to do the same thing will be incapable of doing. And so if it's hard for me, it will be just as hard for somebody else.

22:46And I think for some reason that gives me some sadistic pleasure that I will be able to, to keep moving forward. And so that's kind of a perfect transition to number three, right? Which is endure what others won't. and so all of this becomes your competitive advantage and that competitive advantage compounds the more memories you have of hardship that you've been through the more it stacks the more it becomes a trait the more it becomes in ingrained in your behavior and the more it takes to shake you because you're like well this is my baseline this isn't even close it's not even it doesn't even register on my scale of something that's an inconvenience we've all met that person where like if a call gets moved or a dinner plate is late, it's like a nuclear bomb went off, right?

23:40It's like, well, what's the opposite of that? Like what's the person who like, it doesn't matter if a nuclear bomb went off, but all you see is a straight line, completely undisturbed by the things that are going around them. And so like you can beat 99 % of people without being smarter or luckier, but by be willing, because you can beat 99 % of people without being smarter or luckier, but by being willing to endure pain and uncertainty for longer. And so if it's hard for you, it's hard for everyone else. And most people avoid hard things, which is why you can beat most people by just trying and continuing to try.

24:14And the main thing is, is that I think most people don't even know what trying feels like. And so Layla and I have been going through this season, so it hasn't just been me. And she had a mentor say something to her that she told me, and I really liked it. And so she said, hey, you know, we had this difficult situation and, you know, we're kind of relegated to, you know, this option or this option, and neither of the options were particularly good. And she said to Layla, are you settling or are you moving mountains? And I really liked that because like, whenever I'm looking at these choices that I feel like sometimes feel bad, I'm like, is there another option that I could see if I move the fucking mountain?

25:01And that has just dramatically increased the willingness to work, to really try. And so I keep thinking to myself like, okay, well, if I was going to get killed or Layla was going to get killed or people I cared about were going to die, if I didn't come up with another solution, or if I made the thing that I wanted to have happen, happen, what other things would I do? And usually it's a lot more. And so whatever way you have to unlock that level of trying, that level of effort, like most things are hilariously easy to do. It's just more easy. It's easier to just do nothing. And so most people do nothing and get nothing and are dissatisfied because their expectations that they would get something for that nothing of work.