177: Why Commitment Is Your Most Valuable Skill | Shawn Johnson & Andrew East

31:36But I will say I'm in a season right now where I feel like the Lord put something on my heart for me in the future and I'm really excited about it. It's a spin studio, a worship-based spin studio, which I'm really excited about. And yeah, it's going to be awesome. But it kind of came to me a few months ago when I was kind of in a motherhood rut. I'm like, I'm bored. You know, like four and a two-year-old, like there's got to be something for me outside of this you know sometimes one doesn't feel like enough it just you feel guilty about it and I was just in prayer one day asking God like well what do you have for me you know that I love to be creative like just give me something and he gave me this awesome vision of the spin studio but in that I feel like he was telling me right now like focus on your kids like that's your one thing like be a mom and pour into your family serve your family and since I heard that it's like God knows me so well right he knows I need something like a little like low-hanging fruit in the future to get me through but instead of focusing on the studio now I'm focusing on being a mom and since I've made that just like that's my lane right now so much peace so much more clarity and I think there was something else in the book you guys said about um every yeah every choice I didn't have to make was like dropping a heavy bag I didn't realize I've been carrying and I felt that too it's like once I'm like okay no more pressure to figure it out right now my one thing is being a mom and just being there being in that so much peace so that really resonated with me I'm glad yeah that it's taken us a long time to figure that out too but yeah I feel like that's also the pressure of just social media and all the noise we hear so many people preach to us every single day that you should keep your options open yeah you should constantly be looking for the grass is greener the thing that's going to be better one foot in one foot out and you see these people navigating what looks to be a hundred different things on social media like flawlessly when embracing one thing that you love and just saying this is my thing for right now and being able to like tune everything out truly feels like freedom like it is the greatest feeling in the world to not have those distractions and when you can so easily say no to all of the extra distractions it makes life feel a lot more peaceful absolutely the word conviction comes to mind too where it's like uh like only stephanie can know is this the right thing is this the right thing for you to build the spin studio right now yeah or not and it's like maybe it is there's no right or wrong answer but it seems like you now you have a high amount of conviction that like you are right where you want to be with your family and i i look at the change in the two of you it's like yeah that doesn't happen without Stephanie's conviction and what she's doing and like showing up every day and focusing on that one thing so it's pretty exciting to think about but like yeah I I do think a lot of people get uh persuaded and like thrown off course because they're like oh well you know I'm doing the family thing and then someone's like well let me let me see if I can hire you or here's an opportunity and like that they they don't have enough conviction to just say no I'm planting my feet right here and and I don't know almost having uh the awareness or have thought through like okay I'm doing this for maybe it's a fixed amount of time or maybe it's so the kids are a certain age.

34:53But it's like, you got to be able to defend your choices and say, no, this is right where I need to be.

35:01Nick Bare:Steph's probably going to say, I've said this a million times on a podcast before, but it's actually very applicable to this. It's like the power of having a vision and values. And I read a book, I think two years ago. it's called beyond entrepreneurship 2.0 and chapter four is the vision chapter and it has three sections of the vision it's your core values your purpose and your goals your core values don't change more than once every 100 years yeah uh and then your goals are like 10 in a business case 10 to 15 year targets but the reason the core values are so important is because it makes saying yes and no to things very easy.

35:50Nick Bare:You guys talk about this in the book, the power and importance of values. And since we have laid out our family values, which are, I've done this, we've done it in the family and in the business, it's made what we say yes to a very easy yes, but also what we say no to a very simple no. There's no gray and it's made life simpler not necessarily easier but simpler and I think for the first time in over a decade I've actually experienced peace in this past year which has been I know it's like I haven't had this amount of lightness or just like shoulders coming down and she can probably attest to it in a long time but it's taken a long time to get here but it's like so values are not like these lofty terms that I used to think and someone's like write a business plan Google business values integrity honesty which is like part of the military army values but then like you actually get into the importance and granular level of true values and they're game changers what are your family values?

37:10Nick Bare:all rooted in Christ following christ uh i mean we were just looking you guys talk about how like january one you make like your your goal for the year we were we were just looking back at was it last year's uh no i think what i found 2023s they were silly 2023 like family goals and they were like so different than would they be right now yeah um but all of our values and purpose and mission is is now rooted and following Jesus Christ. And it has shaped the trajectory of our lives. And we, but me more specifically, don't walk around with like white knuckles and trying to just hold on to everything.

37:52Nick Bare:It's palms up. And I just had Pastor Noah Heron from Way Church in Nashville on the podcast. And he talked about the difference between a man-made mission and a God-given assignment. He said, when you're on a God-given assignment, it feels like you're running downhill. We're like, it's still hard, but it's a little bit easier. Things are just falling into place. And I feel like things are just falling into place in our life right now. It kind of comes through with how you're talking. I feel like just like even the presence of how you're communicating is different. And you're just like, you're more here.

38:32I'm born again, brother. What a time. I will say when we did like this intensive a few years ago. Is that after Drew or is that after Jet? Jet. Okay. So three years ago, four years ago and we defined our family values. It changed our whole household because like you said, everything became simpler when it came to does this align with how, like what we truly believe in or not and when we stick to that, it feels peaceful. I think people can get confused though as I did before we've done so many sit down sessions with counselors and workshops and online courses about this because for me, it was always confusing in business.

39:15People were like, oh, the most important thing you got to understand is like what your values are. What does your company stand for? And that's like, okay, sweet. People say that about family too. It's like, you got to come up with your family values. And I kind of thought it was this Googling process of what values should I choose? Like it's a kind of obligation of, oh yeah, these are, honesty is a good term. Yeah. I like that one. let me pick that one but I've since come to understand that the values are like what makes Nick Nick and Stephanie Stephanie and Sean Sean and Andrew Andrew and then as a family it's like what is our identity like what makes our culture different than anybody any other family it's like what makes an east and east and so our our values are faithfulness togetherness curiosity generous stewardship and playfulness.

40:05And it's like, now when I think about those five words, I'm like, that is, that's, those are descriptors of who we are. Like that's our operating system. It's not, it's yes, part aspirational of what we're striving to be because like we could always, you know, have a little more awareness that, that draws us closer to playfulness, you know? And, and like when we're being playful, it means that we're, we're not white knuckling things. we can always be a little more curious so it's something to strive for but it's also literally who God made us to be and like not everybody shares that people used to get so annoyed at me in the locker room because like Andrew's always messing around like I would do the work but I would be playful through it all and it's like not everyone's like that you don't need to be like that that's that's how I was made and you're different you know and it's kind of like this process of uncovering who God made you to be and it's really exciting it takes a while to build that awareness but once you do it's like oh sweet baby now i get it like yeah this is who i'm made to be that's gonna raise strong confident kids too i feel like confused parents will raise confused kids yeah so i think yeah because until you have kids like i don't know if we would have sat down and like had the conversation like what does our family stand for yeah yeah we serve others but let's go deeper with that like what does that mean who do we serve why do we serve them yeah And I think if you can lay that out so clearly, that brings so much clarity to your kids.

41:33And that's our why. Even the uniqueness in our household with our values and what makes our five unique has already rubbed off on our kids. That's awesome. So much so that we host, part of generous stewardship and togetherness, we host people at our house five times a week. Soon to be the bears. Yeah, you'll have to come over. Soon to be the bears. but so much so that now our kids, if someone's not at our house, they're like, well, who's coming? Amazing. Like, what can I get for them? And they're just so used to hosting and they love it so much that it's now become a gift that they cherish. Yeah.

42:09And if someone's not coming over, our kids will even start going through lists. And they're like, well, mom, call those people. Call the neighbors that we met yesterday. And it's really sweet to see how things that we value are now getting passed on. Yeah, that's a win. Yeah. that's awesome it's fun

42:26Nick Bare:yeah it's like in in Justin Early's book he talks about the difference between hosting and entertaining yeah huge and that like really resonated with us yeah we love hosting we love having people over in the past it's been we call it hosting but in the past I feel like it has been entertaining it's like clean the house table set yeah oh you'll see that's not us anymore oh yeah no we get it now and now we almost like it when we show up at places and it's not perfect yeah you know that's hosting that's opening your home and just letting people into your world yeah we do pasta night every Saturday and we do burger night or like grill out night every Sunday was it for Easter what was it it was a dinner y 'all did you were sitting on the ground what was that what was that for Christmas Andrea Christmas oh yeah the Bethlehem dinner the Bethlehem dinner that was amazing I can't take any credit but it was so cool I'm like we need to steal that so she recreated basically how they would have eaten dinner you know in Bethlehem and she did all these like baskets pretty much that she would line up and covered with a napkin and then all of everybody just eats with their hands.

43:32And it was all candle lit. And it was, our kids thought it was the most magical day. And it was like so simple.

43:39Nick Bare:I fit it right in. I always eat with my hands. I'm not joking. We were just at dinner the night and I got a steak and baked potato and they wrote my steak out. It was cooked or it was cut, you know, sliced. I didn't touch the whole baked potato the steak like I eat all my food you ate the baked potato just right there yeah I tore it in half and I ate it like a sandwich dude I get a steakhouse good baked potato yeah it's amazing oh yeah where are you from? Pennsylvania originally okay Central Pennsylvania I'm from Iowa I was like not many people love baked potato but I love a baked potato we had this place in Central Pennsylvania called Haas's okay have you guys ever been to a Haas's?

44:20Nick Bare:no it's like one of those spots where you get the salad bar, it's$9.99 and you can add a steak on for like$2.99. Add a steak on? Add a steak for$2. Oh yeah, but you had to get a salad bar to be able to get the$2.99 steak. This was like post-church Sunday lunch all the time. So you guys live obviously very structured lives. Yeah. And you talk a lot about in the book, Joy. My question is how do you make space for joy? and someone asked you this within the audience at one of your tour events how do you make space for joy I'd love for you guys to touch on that but even more specifically Sunday's Day of Delight I'm very curious about this day and how it's structured and how you guys live and pursue it yeah we kind of catch some slack every now and then you're so rigid and so structured there's no spontaneity and are you worried that you're losing the whimsy of life?

45:24And I used to be so unstructured and I realized that I was so irresponsible with my time when I didn't have it scheduled out and intentional. I'm on my phone, I'm scrolling through Netflix, I'm like, you know, just messing around. And you do enough of that, you look back on it and you're like, wow, I accomplished nothing. I did not get any closer to my goals. What did I just do with three months of my life? that's like when I got released from the chiefs for the first time that's what I sat on the couch for three months and I watched tv I was like a sad guy and then and then at some point I was like this is not the way to live and so now it is it is our goal to have as full a day as possible I want my schedule to be not busy not crazy um but full like I want from start to finish wake up it at 5 30 workout for an hour like that's on my my calendar date night on thursday night on our calendar it's like be intentional with how you're spending your time and for me putting it on our literal like phone calendar allows me to slowly progress through the day doing the things that i want to accomplish and we have daily rhythms weekly rhythms monthly rhythms and annual rhythms that have like slowly compounded into getting us closer to the life we want and um you can have spontaneous moments though with structure because like on our calendar every friday night we keep open for like a big family activity yeah we don't schedule what that is but we know each week it's like oh what are we gonna do we get so excited about this block of time that's been protected because we've actually structured it that way it's family time yeah yeah

47:07Nick Bare:What are some of the things you guys do? Like we'll go, right now the rodeo's in town in Nashville. And so we're so excited. We saw it today and we were so excited to take our kids to the rodeo. We're like, they're going to love it. But like we know that that was a protected, we know we're free on Friday, you know, for that. We'll stay at home and do nothing or have a movie night or go get ice cream. It's random, very random things, but you never know what it is. And so you can find spontaneity there. And even with date night, on our calendar, it just says date night. That's how we are too. And so there's spontaneous moments in that because we're like, what are we going to do for that?

47:43What do you want to do? We have the next five hours or four hours or whatever we've blocked off. So I don't think structure gets rid of it. I think structure actually protects it. I love that. The romance, I mean, again, back to marriage as an analogy, it's like date nights aren't, it's not on the calendar because it's like scheduled as romance time. But putting it on the calendar gives you the possibility of there being some romantic connection, you know, of whatever level. And so it's like, it's all about unlocking your calendar and giving space to give things a possibility to happen, whether that be a breakthrough in business, like, hey, I'm going to work, you know, these hours as I run my own business or, you know, let's give our family time to have fun moments together.

48:33So every night we do family dinner, like Sean said, every Friday night is family time, whatever happens. It's like, that's just, we're giving it space to have potential for all these magical moments that people think come from whimsy, but rather come from routine.

48:47Nick Bare:Yeah. What do you think some of the negatives of commitment are that no one talks about? Like some of the things I wrote down as I was reading the book was like, there is sacrifice and opportunity cost that comes with commitment. But like, I'd say even more specific to me, and I'm curious where you guys stand on this. If you aren't careful, commitment can create collateral damage to other parts of your life. So for me, for example, I've for years committed to these fitness press. And people praise me. Dude, you are so disciplined. You are so structured. You are so committed to everything you do.

49:34Nick Bare:and they see the early wake-ups and the nutrition dialed in and the training, but they don't see what it's doing to me and my relationship and my marriage and the family. So how do you navigate the collateral damage that can come with commitment if you aren't careful? There's sacrifice to every yes. And you have to figure out what those are and try to figure out what those are potentially before you make a commitment. A lot of that will kind of unfold after you commit to something. But I think that's kind of the progression of our book starts at values. So that if you can figure out on the front end what your priority list is, then by the time you're making a commitment and looking at what those sacrifices are, you could potentially forecast that is this commitment going to jeopardize my list of priorities?

50:29is this feeding the number one priority or the number 10 and if it is number 10 how can I protect one through nine and I do think within the the process of the book we tried to emphasize protecting your priorities and your values over everything and making sure your commitments align so I would say that would go into the chapter where we talk about like necessary endings or pruning where make sure your commitments align with everything else and if they're not those are ones that we look at and say is it worth what the sacrifices are and the collateral damage yeah and if it is great you know you're you're aligned with the values of what you're doing if it's not you should probably look at it and not reconsider but figure out either how to fix that or look at pruning it.

51:27I mean, there are a lot of good ways to live a good life. And I don't think everyone needs to be married and have kids and do all that. I think that's been so fruitful for us. But I understand that some people aren't tilted that way, which is great. What is important, and there's a saying that goes, everyone ends up somewhere in life. Some people end up there on purpose. And it's like, okay, so go through the core value thing, walk through your priorities. Maybe those change slowly over time. That's fine. But we also talk about this idea of mentorship and surrounding yourself with people who understand what your priorities are, what you're trying to build in your life.

52:04And they could say, hey, Nick, first of all, you're married. You know that. And you have kids. And we know that's a priority for you. And we're going to hold you accountable to that. It looks like you're training seven hours a day on your bike. and maybe you're only with your kids 20 minutes a day. It's like that might be worth reevaluating. You have outside perspective, kind of poking around, challenging you on a frequent basis. Mentorship for me has been massive and I have a men's group to me who always challenges me and it's like they kind of can slowly redirect as I'm airing. And that's huge.

52:39We've also, I would say, approaching things like that too, understanding that you can, I don't want to say change your priorities because like our priorities should be concrete, but we can go through phases of life where we say, this is actually worth the sacrifice for X period of time. Is that a month? Is that 10 years? Is that whatever it is? It could be like a sprint. For sure. Yeah. But you can also say, if you go to your values, just to give your example, right? If we're talking through that, if you go through your values and you say, my family is top priority, like God and family are my top priorities.

53:17So then I'm really interested in doing this. And that means my priority is my family. We should have a conversation with our family and say, is this commitment now worth every family's person's buy-in? And if it is -

53:32Nick Bare:I failed there many times. But we've gotten it right recently. Absolutely. But we've all taken on things where, and I think that's where you learn and that's where we have learned and we try to openly communicate this in the book is we have both taken on commitments that sacrificed priorities. And it wasn't until we were all the way in it that we were like this, something doesn't feel right. And I don't know what it is. And it takes a lot of self-reflecting and a lot of time to figure out, I think my scales got unbalanced and how can I protect it next time? Because I remember our first year of marriage, I went on tour, I was on the road for months.

54:09He was bouncing around the NFL. We were both just driving like full steam ahead our ambitions and our careers. and didn't realize until four months in, we're like, this doesn't feel right. We're newly married. We're not spending any time together. I can't support you. Like this is really difficult. And so I think by learning trial and error, you figure out the scales went a little too far on one side. How can I protect it next time?

54:34Nick Bare:Yeah. Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud. Yes. Is maybe my favorite book of all time. Yeah. That's probably your most recommended book. I hear you recommend it to people so much. I read that book when we were living in Nashville in 2023. And it was a very challenging time for our family, in business, with people. And I don't even remember how I came across the book. But I started reading. There's certain books I read where I'm like, I needed this right now in my life. And then I read Trust, Why I'm Next. I was like, this is exactly the book I needed next. so you talked about necessary endings and pruning like I know for a fact this is a hat tip to Dr.

55:24Henry Cloud

55:24Nick Bare:yeah I mean it makes me think of how I operate and I am terrible at saying no because I feel like oh man I love the opportunity I love the excitement I love the challenge I love like hey you want to run a marathon heck yeah I do yes I do but the best way that I found don't retrieve energy literally everything think the most effective way for me to say no though it's to say i'm sorry i can't i'm already committed to something you know man it's like back to the awareness and the conviction of that it's like for me as i hang up the cleats in this season from competition it's like man i'm committed to i got three kids age six four and two they are changing so much every day and i think that change will slowly plateau and i want to be as present as possible in these next four or five years and so I'm already I can't do the marathon I'm already committed to this in this phase and it's to me it like brings so much clarity and simplicity to to saying oh no like the the opportunity is exciting yes but um but I can say no to this because I know where my priorities lie yeah here's a quote that really resonated with me in the book it's uh on that note there's a difference between being in the pros and being a pro between occupying a roster spot and owning the responsibility that comes with it one is about presence the other is about posture mindset and daily habits i read that like three times in a row so spot on yeah i was in the pros i was not a professional football player you look at a guy like tom brady and they talk about their daily routine i just had the opportunity to hear drew breeze talk and he's like every aspect of his life life besides like so his priorities are dialed in and his schedule reflects that he's a man of faith he's a family man but then he was walking through his work schedule during the season and everything is oriented around football and i look at how i was i look at how i was and i was not that way i was just in the pros and it's such a different mindset and it's like uh i think you can apply that to the family life too.

57:36Are you just showing up? Are you just in survival mode? Are you just on the roster of your family or are you engaged with the thing? Are you orienting your life and your schedule around where you're at? I've tried not to be passive again ever since I learned that lesson. Is that a commitment issue

57:54Nick Bare:or is that a I just don't care or not? This is not my thing issue. I think it was a commitment issue where like I at some point was more committed to other things in life like oh my gosh I love making videos I was learning about how to edit and you know what cameras to use and digging into the I was so committed to YouTube in 2015 during my rookie year that like it came with the sacrifice of football commitment you know and I ultimately had to rebalance those scales through a painful process but uh yeah i mean and i didn't do it well i think it was i think it was both i think it was a commitment issue because the passion and the joy wasn't there you felt out of love of football you liked the idea of making it in the league for 15 years you had a dream of playing but there was a passion that had exited and I think in our chapter that fully inspired by Dr.

59:00Henry Cloud we had we wrote that after interviewing him

59:06I think it was after you started realizing that you were having a hard time committing to football and the scales were being tipped in a different direction you took a step back and you're like why am I doing this yeah you might have a more insight on that you in some ways I think it takes a lot of time to reflect on things like that. But as a viewer, you loved college football. You had a joy about you. And that light went away in the NFL. You became your overthinking. That's when your yips came out. That's when you started spreading yourself more thin and having plan Bs and not committing to it.

59:48And I think those types of signs are where you need to step back and say, why am I not committing to it? Am I just afraid of failure? Am I afraid of rejection? Do I still love this? If I do, I need to figure out how to commit to it fully. But if the joy and the full love of whatever that hobby is is gone, that's when you need to reflect and say, maybe it's my time to move on to something else.

1:00:12Nick Bare:I appreciate that. That was good. The amount of times I had conversations, I was like, we need to support psychiatrists. We need to dial in this routine, baby. what are you on fire for right now what's lighting you up we got chickens now

1:00:33do you eat the eggs we're about three weeks away from their eggs we had them since they were born

1:00:40Nick Bare:nice what about a highland cow are you guys going to get a highland cow don't say it Nick they have to get two they have to get two I learned that they they have to have a friend otherwise they're too lonely. Yes, we're getting this. And we're getting goats too. Nice. All of them. I'm just so excited about our kids right now. I just like, I feel like we're in that phase of life right now where I just want to be home with our kids. Your kids are at awesome ages. It's the best. I mean, ours are too. Yeah. But we're still a little in it and then we want to have a third. So we're going to go back in it.

1:01:16But yeah, I feel like y 'all are out of diapers. Are you? We're in the process. Okay. I can't believe what are we going to do when we're not buying a million diapers that is going to be a weird day it's coming not shortly for us okay really quickly I want to talk about Special Forces because this book was written a long time right before y 'all were on this show I love this show so much I loved it before y 'all were on it and I made him watch it with me and I was like he's a military guy he's not going to like this show you liked it

1:01:51Nick Bare:it's great and when I saw the all we're gonna be on it I'm like they're going to the end and you both did you made it to the last episode right interrogation you guys crushed it so if you had to add a section in this book about your time did anything perspectives on commitment change from your time on that show like oh that was so fun to watch you guys I love that show I think the coolest part about that show that you don't get from even watching it yeah is the four special forces guys that like lead it. They run the show. It is not a show. It is an experience that's filmed. So the cameras cannot intervene at any point.

1:02:36A lot of it is filmed by security footage and GoPros, but they are in full instructor mode. And they don't show the hard stuff, which is funny, which is frustrating. Bro, I got annihilated. oh my gosh I got crushed physically and mentally and emotionally yeah in all different ways and it was what 10 days? yeah ours was 10 yeah we did the last day again they don't show it it was 18 hours of interrogation gosh with a bag over your head no way with no brace but to answer your question I think if I was going to add a section to the book it was really fascinating because they try to make you quit, you know, and they're doing hard physical challenges.

1:03:23They're yelling at you. They're all up in your face. They're putting you in uncomfortable situations, whether that be, you know, in the tent with rats or the ridiculous bathroom situation was like. They don't show it. A tent with rats? Oh, they don't show it. They don't show it. Like that's where we slept. Like it's where we slept. Oh, like in the barracks. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay. No, that's, that's a crazy idea though. Yeah, I was like, that is next level torture. Okay. But it was like, if you just stayed and you didn't get if you didn't get swayed by those different distractions that they were throwing your way it's like they're not gonna they really don't kick you off the show like it's a you stay until you tap out everyone could win right everybody everybody could stay and they actually want you to like the four instructors try very hard to they exploit they figure out your weakness on day one they're very good at that and they exploit it as hard as possible individually for each person.

1:04:19But it's just to stay. I think the big thing that I noticed from day one, different amongst everybody, was the people who went into it saying, I'm here for 10 days. And the people who said, should I leave today or should I leave tomorrow? Or am I going to make it to day three? Or they just tormented themselves.

1:04:38Nick Bare:Yeah. Yeah. Having even the option to leave, we took away from ourselves. we just said we're here for 10 days baby yeah we'll see you on day 11 that's what got you there that mindset is so powerful I did this race in 2023 it was a last man standing race no no no and from the beginning there was this guy who there were rumors that he ran Moab 240 the year before and you can just tell he was a stud and I ran up to him early on in the race and you're trying to figure out who's going to go the furthest. I said, hey man, how far are you trying to go in this race? And he just looks at me very calmly and says, the whole way, brother.

1:05:23Nick Bare:I love that. And instantly I was like, I'm out. It crushed my confidence. The whole way. This dude is, he's going to die out here. So I got to 100 miles and I dropped down and he ended up winning it. 100 miles? Well, we just hosted a race, a last man standing race on our ranch in April. They went 306 miles. Insane. Over 73 hours. Straight? Yep. Every hour on the hour, 4.2 miles. It's like an EMOM. That would take me an hour. If you finish an hour or minute 48, you get 12 minutes of rest until the next loop. It's crazy. It would take me an hour to turn four and a half miles. I don't think I would make the cutoff.

1:06:06I got your next event to host. this is my favorite thing I ever did my favorite athletic competition oh yeah it was called the eternal run okay there was no starting line and no finish line they gave you a pace to run at based off of some benchmarks like you ran a mile and then they measured your heart rate and they like kind of understood your threshold so they gave you a pace per mile to run it was I think it was 40 or 50 of your mile time my mile time that I couldn't go slower than was like nine yeah 9.05 maybe. So like pretty reasonable. But then the race is on the Utah Salt Flats. And so you're just in this abyss.

1:06:44And you can run anywhere you want. There's no course. There's no path. It's just who can stay out there the longest and hold this pace. You don't get a watch. You don't get music. You don't get nothing. The only thing is they had every athlete had an IFB. and base camp would tell them when they started dropping under their pace and you had three warnings. You had a watch that told you your pace because you had to stay with your pace. Yeah. But it didn't track your time. It was locked on that screen. That's crazy. How far did you go? I ended up going 16 miles. But I was like, so we're on the salt flats and it's like a really soft, sandy, kind of like crunchy.

1:07:24You'd sink every step you took. Maybe like you'd sink an inch. and so it's like super energy consuming but having that mindset of like I'm not gonna quit until my muscles literally cramp like it's a dope way to approach life where it's almost the opposite of like the day traders of the stock market where they're riding every second that's a high, low, oh my gosh, we're up, we're down. I'm like, you're like so urgently attached to what's happening and it's like, okay, we're crushing it. Yeah, I'm riding that high or no we're crashing we're low it's like no I'm looking at the long game you zoom out and the trend is going to be up you know and it's like don't stop until you until the game is over or like I'm going the whole way or it's like it takes the edge off of some things and I think about that in our marriage it's like okay we just had another argument and am I going to be shook by that and say oh no is this the end or am I going to say oh no like I'm going to zoom out we're trending up like this ain't over until until we're both dropped on the ground, you know, so.

1:08:31That race was really fascinating because it was a sports psychology data research event. And the interesting part was since there was no course of any kind and there were no markers and there was no start line and there was no finish line and there was no way to measure what you were doing, he didn't know how many miles he was running. You could only know your pace and that was the only marker to know. a lot of the guys were trying to measure based off of like the sunrise and sunset how long it had been nobody's talking to you you can't listen to anything it's like how long can you just be in your mind it's horrible I think the the lady it was a lady who she was long an ultra runner ultra marathon runner I think she went like 12 hours yeah but it was it was mentally the craziest thing I've ever seen I believe it

1:09:22Nick Bare:I mean the race I did at Last Man Standing Race was of all the races and competitions I've done mentally the hardest, but it's the definition of commitment. Yeah. Because there is no finish line. That is, I can do that. But like the run that you did, like you have to go to a certain headspace and mindset of, I don't know when this is going to end. Say you do a marathon. Okay, I have 20 miles left. Yeah. I have 15 miles left. I have 10 miles left. it's like that provides some sense of peace and satisfaction okay I'm getting closer but in the race you did you don't have that that mentally is so challenging yeah it's a fun challenge though the whole way brother the whole way I'll never forget that I was like oh that hurts well guys I really appreciate it you guys come on the show super excited about your book as we've already shared we're very impressed and I think it's going to be a leadership piece like I said that influences behavioral change for all the right reasons well done and I feel like this is kingdom work you guys are doing because I feel like even though this wasn't a faith based book my mind kept going to it because it all ends with the Bible.

1:10:52The Bible is all about commitment and faithfulness and endurance and so much of that was in this book. So well done. Seriously, we're excited for you guys. Thank you. It was awesome.

1:11:03Nick Bare:Appreciate that. Until next time.