161: 5 Valuable Life Lessons I've Learned In The Last 5 Years

0:05Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's podcast title is five valuable life lessons I've learned in the last five years. And this episode, this discussion was inspired and motivated by a recent podcast I was listening to. This was a Craig Groeschel podcast. And it was all about the most challenging lessons he learned in leadership, in his multiple decades of leadership and being a pastor. And I'm also going to reference one of his that he spoke about. but as I was listening to him speak, I was on a run, it was a five mile run and I was listening to this podcast and it really spoke to me and really connected with me.

1:04And I started reflecting just back on how much I have grown as a leader over the years and the experiences and lessons that I've learned. So I got back from the five mile run, it's about two weeks ago and I just started jotting down some of the things that I've learned and I believe have been extremely valuable to not just my professional life as the founder and CEO of BPN, but also applied to my personal life and being a husband, being a father, and ultimately leading myself as well. So we'll start with number one. We need purpose and meaning to truly be fulfilled. I think we all know this. but oftentimes glance over it because we get lost in the day-to-day.

1:59And I once heard a fellow founder and entrepreneur describe the day-to-day of building a brand and building a business. And they described it as blocking and tackling. We have this big vision for our life and we have these massive goals that we're trying to chase down and accomplish. But life is complex and complicated. And over days and weeks and months and years, we might work towards this objective, this vision and these goals. Big picture, perspective and approach. But in the day-to-day, it sometimes doesn't feel like we are making progress because we are literally blocking and tackling. obstacles pop up, problems arise, distractions are placed in front of us and we are in a defensive position, battling, fighting, blocking and tackling things as they pop up, get in front of us.

3:10We're trying to get around them. From the day to day, it's easy to glance over and miss purpose and meaning and fulfillment because for many of us, some days feel like we're just trying to survive. I saw this Instagram post the other day and it really connected with me, really spoke to me. And it was this dad who has young kids and he was filming himself running in the dark, in the rain. And the caption summarized, can't remember exactly what it said, but summarized, it said that for all you other parents out there with young kids who are getting five hours of sleep at night, I see you. And don't try to compare your life to someone else's life

4:08Nick Bare:who doesn't have as many responsibilities. And that really just like hit home for me, spoke to me. As a husband and father with two young kids, I average six and a half hours of sleep a night, but there are nights where I'm not sleeping nearly enough or as much, but still waking up and getting after it day after day because if it matters to you, you will make time. And when you're in those moments, trying to survive day to day, getting a little bit of sleep, taking care of your kids, spending time with your family, show up to work, building your professional career, it's challenging. And it's really easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, the thing and things that really do matter, truly do matter.

5:13Nick Bare:And if we're not careful, we will get lost in the day-to-day. We will become distracted in the day-to-day. We have to be rooted in a greater calling, a larger purpose and meaning in life to truly be fulfilled. One of my favorite books, and I've shared this before, is Halftime by Bob Buford. And it talks about how the first half of your life is focused on success. And after many of us experience a halftime moment, we have this renewed mind and we realize that the second half of life is no longer focused on success, but it's focused on significance. and I've also heard people describe the first half of your life as you are working to build and accumulate in the second half of your life you are working to give it all away to people you love and friends and family and your kids that could be materialistic things it could be your money it could be your time your energy anything but in the book halftime by Bob Buford, he says that people are at their largest, their noblest, and most virtuous when they are given over to a cause, something larger than themselves.

6:44Nick Bare:We are at our best, our largest, our most noble, virtuous, when we are working towards and for something larger than ourselves. True purpose, true meaning. I'm also a really big fan of Arthur C. Brooks. He teaches a very popular class, I believe at Harvard on happiness. And this class, it books out every year instantaneously. And there is a wait list to get into this class of hundreds of people. So he is also an author. He has multiple articles published on happiness and fulfillment. And one of his books called From Strength to Strength is one of my favorites. And it talks about life transitions and how to navigate and manage the many life transitions that we go through.

7:56and he talks about happiness a lot and happiness is something that a lot of people want to learn about, want to experience, want to hear how to be happier. This is one of the reasons his classes fill up so fast and there's a wait list from hundreds of other people. Brooks says that happiness is not a feeling. Happiness is a combination of three things. enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. We need purpose.

8:30Nick Bare:We need meaning, not only to be fulfilled, but also to be happy. And you need a portfolio, from what Arthur Seabrook says, of four habits to experience happiness. Your portfolio of four habits are faith, family, friends, and work. Faith being a perspective, a piece on life much larger than you. You need to get small in order to be happy. You can't be God and never will be God. You can't be the cause. You can't be the purpose. You can't be the meaning of not only your life, but everyone else's life. That makes you selfish. We have to get small in order to have a much larger cause that we are living for.

9:36A purpose, a meaning, faith, family, friends, and work. Those are the four habits within our portfolio that contribute to our happiness. I'm gonna keep leaning into some

9:56Nick Bare:of Arthur C. Brooks's work here for a second. He also talks about the difference between complex and complicated problems that we experience in our life. And I share this because I hope this gives some perspective of why you may be struggling and why I have in the past struggled with feeling or experiencing fulfillment, contentment, because my purpose and meaning in life wasn't secure. It wasn't rooted. It did not have an identity. Brooke says that there's two types of problems that we experience in life, complex and complicated. and they're different. Complex issues or problems cannot be solved or fixed with technology apps or quick fixes.

10:50They can only be experienced, managed and lived daily. Complicated problems have technical solutions whereas complex problems are relational, emotional and unpredictable. Happiness and purpose are not puzzles to be solved but rather ongoing messy processes. And true enjoyment requires a mix of pleasure, people, and memory. And true satisfaction comes from the struggle toward a goal rather than just achieving it. So that first valuable life lesson that I talked about, we need purpose and meaning to be fulfilled. I think at this point, we know what purpose and meaning is. Purpose and meaning is something much larger than ourself.

11:40Nick Bare:It is like Bob Buford said, a cause, something larger than ourselves that we are living for, that we are serving, that we are glorifying. We have to get small. Faith is getting small to then have a purpose that is rooted in something larger. So we've identified what purpose and meaning is, but what is fulfillment? What does it mean to be truly fulfilled? And to be fulfilled, we need satisfaction. Like Arthur C. Brooks said, happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. Well, what is satisfaction? Satisfaction is the joy that you get from an accomplishment after struggle, after struggle.

12:32Nick Bare:This is why it feels really good. to set these really big, ambitious goals and then work towards them. Whether that is, man, building the dream life that you want. Maybe that's the house with the dog out front and the white picket fence and the family with two kids and there's like that tire swing in the backyard. The ideal American dream. maybe that's what it looks like that you're working towards. Maybe it is a fitness goal. Maybe you want to lose 30 pounds. Maybe you want to run a sub three hour marathon. Maybe you want to do your first Ironman or first 100 mile ultra marathon. Maybe it's a job promotion that you want to achieve or a business you want to build.

13:27The reason that it feels so good to work towards those things and then achieve it is because of the struggle. without the struggle and just achievement, we actually can't experience satisfaction. You need the struggle in between saying, I want to go pursue this and then achieving it. In between, we need, we require the struggle to actually experience satisfaction. But what happens when we actually achieve the thing is that we experience satisfaction and then satisfaction dissipates. It's really hard to maintain satisfaction. So we have to keep working on it and towards it. And if we don't have purpose and we don't have any enjoyment, but we just have satisfaction, you're going to end up on this continuous loop, this hamster wheel that is being driven by dopamine of needing to constantly achieve and achieve and achieve to actually feel anything.

14:47Nick Bare:You need purpose. You need meaning, but we also need struggle and we need goals. We need to work towards something and we need joy. enjoyment, fulfillment. One of my favorite books that I've ever read and I've read it multiple times because I love it so much and I've referenced it multiple times. It's The Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long. I referenced The Molecule of More in my book titled Go on More. And it's all about dopamine and how dopamine controls everything in our life. And in the book, there's two quotes I want to share. The first, I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.

15:48Nick Bare:This makes it hard to plan the day. dopamine desire drives us towards wanting to experience something and it's oftentimes more while we want to be content when we are content and relaxing and comfortable we then want to go achieve and do more and when we go and achieve more and we're working and we struggle we also want to be content. I think this quote here describes the way many of us feel on a daily basis. We want to go out and gain and achieve and do, but simultaneously be content in the process. And it's achievable, but it's also very challenging at the same time. I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.

16:46This makes it hard to plan the day. And the second quote I want to share, from dopamine's point of view, having things is uninteresting. It's only getting things that matter. If you live under a bridge, dopamine makes you want a tent. If you live in a tent, dopamine makes you want a house. If you live in the most expensive mansion in the world, dopamine makes you want a castle on the moon. Dopamine has no standard for good and seeks no finish line. The dopamine circuits in the brain can be stimulated only by the possibility of whatever is shiny and new. Nevermind how perfect things are at the moment.

17:28The dopamine motto is more.

17:32Nick Bare:The molecule of more, that is dopamine. That is in our bodies. That is in our brain. It is driving us towards more and more and more and more. And without purpose, without meaning, we will never be fulfilled because naturally the biology and chemistry of our bodies naturally wants more. Naturally wants more. So if we're not rooted in a purpose and a meaning much larger than ourselves, a cause much larger than ourselves, if we aren't willing to get small, we will get stuck in the driven disaster of living for dopamine. And that's a dangerous place to be. We need purpose and meaning to be fulfilled because if we don't have that, we're going to live chasing an endless pursuit of the next thing.

18:47More, more, more.

18:50Nick Bare:And it's never enough. The next valuable life lesson is to know when to rise and when to dive. Like I said in the beginning of this episode, this inspired this entire episode. As I was listening to a Craig Rochelle podcast, he was talking about leadership altitude and he posed the question, what deserves altitude and what deserves attention? And you have to know when to rise and when to dive. In the last five years, five years ago, it was 2021. My life looked significantly different. Recently married, no kids yet. BPN was much smaller. In 2021, we maybe had 10, around 10 employees. If I had to guess and remember properly, somewhere around that.

20:01So running the business and the way that I had the lead

20:05Nick Bare:was much different than it is now. I've learned a lot. And I've learned a lot through failing, specifically in what I'm about to talk about right here. Craig Gruchel says that while it is natural to feel that you must be involved in everything, Staying too low for too long can cause you to lose perspective while staying too high for too long can cause you to lose connection with your people. So when you rise, you are working on big picture, visionary, strategy, objectives. You are leading. you're working on the business or on the project as opposed to in it. That's rising. It allows your subordinate leaders to lead and do their job.

21:07It allows individuals and teams to have ownership over their work and their responsibilities because of trust, because of confidence and competency. but when you have to dive, this is when you get into the weeds. And as Craig Urshel says, staying too low, meaning diving in the weeds for too long, can cause you to lose perspective, big picture. And while staying too high for too long, can cause you to lose connection with your people. This is a really tough balance. And it just takes time and experience repetition of what I've learned over time. As a leader, whether you're leading your family, your marriage, your children, a business, a small team, whatever it is, whenever you are leading people, the balance between knowing when to rise and when to dive is absolutely essential and critical.

22:17It will lead that unit to success, but it can also lead that unit to failure and create problems relationally, trust issues, stepping on people's toes, not empowering people, not allowing people to take risks and try and fail and then learn from those failures. this one like I said it inspired this entire episode because this was really hard for me early on as leader and it took a lot of just exposure and repetition and making all the mistakes like there have been a lot of times where I have been too high for too long and I've lost connection with people and I've gone too low for too long and I've stepped on people's toes and I've lost trust in people and I wasn't able to empower them and actually try and learn and fail.

23:15And in staying too low for too long, I lost big picture perspective. You know, when you're in the weeds on certain things, like your head down, you're focused. I think like one way I'm thinking of it right now,

23:31Nick Bare:visually, if you are the captain of a boat, a big boat with lots of people, you are steering the boat. This is when you are rising high. You're at the top of the boat, right? You're at the top of the boat, you're steering. You're making sure the boat is on the right course. You're making sure you don't run into some sort of obstacle in the water or other boats. You're managing and monitoring the weather, all of the things. You're focused on big picture perspective. If something happens down below in the bottom of the boat and you go and fix it, you then dive. Well, you're not in the captain's chair anymore.

24:19You're not steering. You're not watching out for obstacles in the water or the weather or the course, for example. And if you do that and you go down below and you don't delegate other responsibilities and you lose that big picture perspective, you go off course, you crash.

24:39Nick Bare:There's a lot of things that can go wrong because you dove, you were too low for too long. You lose the ability to guide the unit, guide the ship, guide the people. When you fly high, you fly high to focus on vision, strategy, team development, and long-term outcomes. You step back to empower people. Empowering people is one of the greatest things you can learn how to do. I've learned that the hard way

25:15Nick Bare:because chances are, if you're in a leadership role, if you are a manager, you're a director, there's things you can do and you know how to do it. You can run a business with a thousand people and you can jump into everyone's role and do all of those roles. But what's going to happen is you're going to lose trust. You're going to lose confidence because people don't feel empowered or trusted or competent. Learning how to empower people with responsibility, truly trusting them, giving them the keys, giving them the reins to own something, that goes a long way. empowerment. That's flying high. When you dive deep and get in the details, you might have to do that from time to time when culture is drifting, as Craig Gershel says.

26:05And sometimes a key leader needs support or to make major decisions. And that's when they have to dive deep into the weeds, in the details. You can also utilize strategic absence so that you You don't become the bottleneck and allow space for your team to grow and take ownership. This is something that I've incorporated the last couple of years, the last five or so years that I have found extremely beneficial and useful.

26:36Nick Bare:There have been times where I have strategically stepped away in terms of not the business, but not going to certain meetings or involved in certain projects and allowing teams and people to make decisions on their own, empowering them so that I don't become the bottleneck in certain decisions that have to be made, in certain plans that have to be established, in certain operational execution that needs done. It allows space for your team to grow and for individuals to take ownership. Some of, like I said, my greatest failures in building a business, being a founder, being a CEO, being a leader has been when I've stayed high for too long.

27:28I've lost connection with people. And when I've been too low for too long, I step on people's toes. I don't empower them. And I lose big picture perspective. If I look back over the last five years, 90 % of my mistakes, leadership mistakes have been in these two situations. Too high for too long, too low. for too long. And I've learned that just because you can fix it, just because you can do it,

27:58Nick Bare:doesn't mean that you should. You can. Allow other people to learn, even if you can do it.

28:11Nick Bare:This is what builds a really strong culture. And what is culture? I think the term culture is thrown out a lot. But for me, culture is a shared set of beliefs, values, goals, and purpose. And when people align with those things, they become a part of your culture. and the way that you build a really strong culture is clearly identifying beliefs, values, goals, purpose. And if everyone is aligned within a culture on those things, your culture is generally stronger, more unified. One of the ways that you destroy culture when it comes to being a leader

29:15Nick Bare:is stepping on people's toes, being in the details for too long, doing people's job that they can and should be doing, not trusting individuals, not trusting teams, not trusting people. When people feel empowered, when people feel trusted, when people feel like they can own their role and they know what success looks like, there is a measurement for success. They can thrive. And when individuals are thriving, when teams are thriving and culture is clearly defined, man, things are just humming along. But when people aren't trusted or empowered and culture isn't strong and core values and beliefs and purpose and goals aren't clearly defined, that is walking aimlessly in the woods, looking, hoping for the answer, hoping for a win.

30:27When there is no vision, people perish.

30:33Nick Bare:You got to know when to rise and when to dive. Selflessness is a keystone to life. This is the third valuable life lesson. Gandhi once said, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. You can either be selfless or selfish.

31:13Nick Bare:Selfish puts you in front of all others. It is focused on yourself, serving yourself, glorifying yourself. If you win, that's all that matters. I've learned over these last five years that one, leadership is everything.