Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Take The Hard Route - 118

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

Be conscious of all the micro decisions you make! Pretty soon those micro decisions turn into macro outcomes! Work hard and don’t settle for mediocre. If you want to be successful in the future, you have to do what is hard now, to live easy later!   “Take more control of your actions.” “What are you avoiding?” - Bedros Keuilian   Here’s what you’ll discover: 03:27 - Find a way to make it happen 13:28 - Why you should choose the hard route every day of your life 16:19 - Think about this the next time you look for entertainment   Follow me on Instagram: @bedroskeuilian   Buy Man Up and get Bedros’s High Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/ Go grab some icon meals with the code “MAN UP” https://iconmeals.com/   Make sure to review us on iTunes: http://bit.ly/theempireshow Youtube: https://youtu.be/ZRM99mAcM64 

So many people will always settle for the easier thing. Right? Every day you're given choices. Every day you're giving choices. And if you always choose easy, 10 years from now, you're going to have a hard life. But if you always choose hard, 10 years from now, you're going to have an easy life. Hey, listen, you could either choose the life you want 10 years from now, or you can settle for the life that you're going to have.

And so on this episode of The Empire Show, I want to talk to you about something that is really near and dear to me, and that is taking absolute ownership and control of everything in your life. And so let's get started here. Welcome to the Empire Show, Bedros Kulian here. We're going to kick us and take some serious names. Listen, people reach out to me and they go, hey, listen, I want to know how to make more money, how to live a better lifestyle, how to make bigger impact. And I go, well, what are you doing to lead yourself to that? And oftentimes they say, well, not much. And at least they tell me the truth.

But the reality is this. If you're one of those people who want to make more income, more impact, have more influence, have a better lifestyle, well, then guess what? You've got to be choosing the difficult things over the easy things in life. So I made a little list for you. We're going to go down this list. and I think you're going to get a lot of value from it. So pay attention, and this is something that someone would have told me, gosh, 15, 20 years ago, right?

Like, hey, if you want your life to be better 10 years from now, instead of just settling for mediocrity, settling for average, settling for whatever the universe is going to give you by virtue of inaction, then you got to do something about it. It's all choices that you make every single day, right? And so that's why I really titled this thing about it's all about making choices. You could either settle for the life you're going to have a decade from now, or the choices that you make will determine the life and the lifestyle that you have.

Simple as that, right? So I'm going to give you a little insight into a coaching client of mine. A particular coaching client sent me a text message and said, hey, listen, I'm actually traveling and I went to rent a car, and they said all they have is a Tesla. And so they rented me a Tesla for the day. I really enjoyed the car, but I realize, well, I'll never be able to afford that. Now, this coaching client of mine is someone who's very driven, is motivated, but oftentimes gets deflated quickly.

And this person got under my skin with this message. And I replied back to this person and I said, hey, why do you think you'll never have a $100,000 Tesla? It was like a really high-end Tesla. And the person said, well, you know, the type of business that I have, it won't make sense for me to buy a $100,000 Tesla. I said, well, you could always open up a second business, a third business, a fourth business, and buy a fleet of Teslas. And I replied back, and I sent a voice shot on my phone. I said, look, there's not a thing on this planet that I don't think I can't have. If Fit Body Boot Camp, this franchise doesn't make me the amount of money that I want to get what I want in life, I'll find another avenue.

I'll find another business. I'll sell more franchises. I'll do more coaching. I'll find a way to buy even more real estate than I have and make the cash flow of that get me what I want in life. And the response that I got back was, oh my gosh, I'm going to save that voice shot. because I said, look, there's no one or nothing that's going to come from the sky. God's not going to come down and go, hey, I'm going to bestow upon you some kind of magical power that's going to help you get the Tesla that you want.

Said, if you want that Tesla, and it's $100,000, and your business is doing a quarter million a year, and so financially it may not be justifiable to do this transaction for a Tesla. What if, just what if, you actually started doing a million dollars a year with your business? business instead of a quarter million. Then can you justify a $100,000 Tesla? And the answer was yes. So then I said, you just have to reverse engineer. How do you get to a million dollars? So if you have, let's say, a hundred clients and collectively they're bringing revenue in of a quarter million dollars for you, then you need 400 clients to be bringing in a million dollars in revenue. And if you're bringing in a million dollars in revenue, you'll be able to justify a hundred thousand

Tesla. So what do you have to get and what do you have to do to do to get those other 300 clients? And that was the aha moment for this person. See, oftentimes we think that someone else has control, that the coach might have control, that maybe the powers that be up above have the control. You have the ultimate control in getting what you want in life. And more people need to realize that. And I hope I can drive that home to you. So one thing I wrote here for you is, All right, so take more control of your choices, of your actions. Because the moment you start taking control of every little choice and action that you take, what you're doing is you are making the future predictable.

Think about that. If I just sit here and I just wait for things to happen, well, whatever fate or life throws at me is how my life is going to look in the next minute, in the next half hour, and the next hour, in the next day, in the next week, and the next month, and the next year. and you're going to go stack the years and there's a decade, a decade from now. It's like, well, I didn't do anything about it, right? Let me give you a great example. A great example of this is, let's say I want to get even leaner, right?

I want to get leaner. I want to get stronger. That means I've got to increase my protein, cut my carbs and fat, and maybe do a little bit more high-intensity interval training in addition to my meat-head weight training. Well, for that to happen, I need to go into that gym, six days a week. And I need to eat clean and either meal prep or order from my man Todd at Icon Meals, right? Which is what I do right now. Life is pretty busy for me, so I'm always eating

Todd's icon Meals. And if you go to iconmeals.com, you can actually use the code Man Up. And I don't make any money off this. Todd is a really good guy. Todd Abrams, an awesome dude. And I said, hey man, if you can send me a code, I'll pimp out your icon meals because it's pre-packaged, pre-frozen, like macro-specific food that gets delivered to me in the box and I could just microwave it and then peel the top off and eat it. I eat three of those a day and have my two protein shakes and I'm boom, good to go, right? So anyway, all this to tell you that every decision I make has to be towards my goal of getting leaner and stronger.

And so if the alarm goes off in the morning and I choose to hit the snooze button and therefore I don't have my protein shake with oatmeal in the morning because I'm in a rush to get to the gym, I've already taken away from my future body, from my future fitness, right? And so it's the small choices you make. And see, oftentimes in life, we go, oh man, you know, what is the one thing I need to do? What is the one thing I need to do to make more money, have a bigger impact, have a healthier life, have a better relationship? There is no one thing, dude. All of your life is a culmination of small micro choices and decisions that you made that's stacked up into how your body looks, how your mind operates, how your health is, how your finances are, how your relationship

is, that's it. There wasn't any one big thing you did. Certainly there's a big thing you can do to mess up your life. I get that. I get that. Like if you're in a great relationship or if you let's say you're in a good relationship and you decide that you're going to go to Las Vegas, snort some cocaine, get all fucked up on booze, and I don't know, have sex with 20 different hookers, well, you probably just messed up your good relationship. It probably doesn't have a chance to get great, does it? Right? So there is one thing you did.

But even then, if you break that down, wasn't that micro-decision? Someone offers you a little cocaine and you take it. Next thing you know, you're stawning a little more. Someone offers you drink and you drink it. Next thing you know, you're drinking 20 more. Someone says, hey, we should go to the strip club and you think that's a good decision when it's really not. And before you know it, maybe you're being propositioned. And you make that micro decision of saying yes.

And you make that micro decision of going to the ATM. You make that micro decision of doing the transaction. You make the micro decision of going upstairs to your room. You make the micro decision of taking your junk and putting inside her, right? Those are all micro decisions that led to a really bad decision, a really bad outcome. So think about this, man. And I know it's not something that necessarily is a problem. prettiest picture that I just drew, but the reality is every single macro decision you're making

is going to lead to a macro outcome. And so going back to my example, if I didn't hit the snooze button, I got up and had my oatmeal and protein, I go to the gym and I crush a badass workout, I come here to the HQ and I do my meetings and take my calls, but I skip a meal, right? I didn't need a meal. So now I'm not meeting my protein requirements, but I'm working out like a beast. If I do that two or three days in a row, I'm not taking enough calories, I'm not taking enough protein. Guess what? I'm breaking down muscle and fat, and therefore I'm not going to be lean, I'm just going to be skinny. I'm going to look like a marathon runner. I want to look like a sprinter, man, right? You catch you what I'm saying? So that one meal was a microdecision. And here's what happens with humans,

man. This is why we're so fucked up. We tend to lead with routine. And believe it or not, have a routine. The thing is, most people think all routines are good. Probably have a bad routine. I mean, how many people do you know, first thing they do is they wake up, they don't drink any water, they go right to the coffee maker and make coffee, and they go outside and they smoke a cigarette. Think about that first thing in the morning, I'm going to take this beautiful machine of mine called my body, and I'm not going to drink any water, even though I've been breathing all night and dehydrating myself. I didn't, you know, I didn't drink any water for six, seven, eight hours, and through the condensation effect, I've been dehydrating myself,

but I'm going to wake up and, well, have coffee and smoke a cigarette. Happens to millions of people across the country. Now, don't you think they know the smarter thing might be to have 20, 30 ounces of water and maybe not smoke that cigarette and just have a cup of coffee instead of a pot of coffee, but they fall into a bad routine? I share this with you because going back to the example I was giving you, if I skipped that one icon meal, guess what happens? I might skip another one tomorrow and another one tomorrow. Before you know it, I'm having not three meals a day and two shakes, but I'm having two meals

a day and two shakes. Well, guess what? I'm not meeting my macro needs, and therefore my body's not going to develop like I want. I may not have the energy to go through my workout. So now my workouts are suffering. You see all the micro decisions that are damaging your life. This is true for business, for your mindset, for your relationship with your wife, your spouse, your husband, your kids, your family. How often do you think about, oh man, I haven't talked to my friend for a long time, they're such a good friend, I should just text them and let them know I appreciate them and just give them some gratitude and love.

And then what happens? The day goes by and like, shit, you didn't. Well guess what? That was a micro decision that you made to do it, but then you didn't. And not doing it is going to cause a repercussion. if you continue to stay on that path and you avoid your friend and you neglect your friendship, over time they're reaching out, but you're not reaching out enough or as much, 10 years from now, you will have driven a wedge into your relationship with that friend, which kind of leads us to

the next point that I want to make, which is the people that you surround yourself with. Because if your friend is an asshole, if they're a crop duster, if they're a chicken and you're trying to become an eagle, you shouldn't be hanging out with that friend anyway. You catch what I'm saying? like you really shouldn't be hanging out with that person anyway. But on the flip side, if your friend is awesome, if they lift you up, they motivate you, they inspire you, they are, they drive you to change and grow, why aren't you sending them that, that gratitude text, that appreciation text? Why are you letting that micro-decision drive a wedge into your relationship 10 years from now?

Right? So just think about that, man. That's a big thing. And so, you know, where I talk about settling. So many people will always settle for the easier thing. Right? Every day, you're giving choices. Every day you're giving choices. And if you always choose easy, 10 years from now, you're going to have a hard life. But if you always choose hard, 10 years from now, you're going to have an easy life. And that's really the message I want to send here to you. Ten years from now, you'll either have settled for a shitty life, or you'll have chosen a life of greatness. You get to decide today how your life looks 10 years from now.

The question is, are you willing to make all the micro decisions that are hard and difficult and not popular? Because a popular decision might be, hey man, it's a Friday night. Let's go bowling, smoke some weed, get some drinks, stay out late. And on Saturday, let's go do something else, maybe some axe throwing. And then on Sunday, let's go to the beach, have a picnic, have a big fat barbecue, and then what happens? You wake up Monday, overwhelmed, anxious, stressed, you feel like you're behind the eight ball when you could have used all weekend to recover,

to move the ball forward, and to prepare for Monday. Instead, you did the popular thing, which was to go and get numb, whether it's entertainment or food or booze or drugs. Think about it. Now, I don't know if you know this or not, man, but I'm going to tell you something, and it's going to blow you away. I was in Rome last year, and in Rome, we took this, the Colosseum tour, right? And we had a private tour guide, and she's given us a tour and showing us where, you know, like, all right, now we're walking on, literally where the warriors would fight to death. And then she said, well, you know, sometimes to make the fights interesting, you see that trapdoor on the ground, and there's another trapdoor there,

and there's another one over there? Yeah. Well, sometimes they would open that trap door and they would put a bear into the ring with them, right? In the Coliseum. And now these two warriors have to fight off this bear and then go back to fighting each other again. It's like, wow, that's interesting. So why did they make the Coliseum? Was my question. Like, what is the Coliseum for? That sounds pretty brutal, man. That's pretty devastating. Why did they make that? It's like, oh, it was simple. They knew that if they made the Coliseum and they had everybody come to it and they entertained, the population through different shows, entertainment, battle, that the population wouldn't care to look into what the government was doing, what Caesar's government was doing.

And at that time, the government could pass more laws, can pass more rules, can begin to exploit and take advantage of the population. But the idea was to brainwash and mentally shackle the population, so they created the Coliseum as a form of entertainment. So think about this. The next time you're at a ballgame, the next time you're in a movie theater, the next time you're watching television and you're binge watching, what are you avoiding? What actions, what decisions, what choices are you avoiding by consuming bowling, football, soccer, baseball, basketball, basketball, a movie, Now, I'm not saying don't go out for entertainment and stuff, but do it deliberately.

Go entertain yourself deliberately, but have control. Like, hey, man, I'm still going to be asleep on a weekend by 10 p.m. I go to bed at 10 p.m. seven days a week. Are there some times where I can't because there's some cocktail party to go to or a meet and greet? Absolutely. But by and large, even on weekends, I will go to bed by 10 p.m., which means that I'm going to wake up around 5 a.m.

I'm not going to hit the snooze button when I do. I'm going to wake up and dominate my day. Now, on weekends, my day is a little slower, but I still wake up with a task list of things to do. Why? Because I know what I do today determines how I live a decade from now. And so the people that you surround yourself with, the thoughts that occupy your mind,

the choices that you make, the actions that you take, these are all micro decisions. It's like, oh, come on, man. So my friend's a pot head. Doesn't mean I'm a pot head. I'm just going to go with him to the bowling alley. Cool. All right, but guess what you just did?

You just made a micro decision to accept mediocrity. Because if your friend is living an average mediocre life, and you're like, man, but I want to be extraordinary and fly with the fucking eagles, but you're living like a chicken, how's that ever going to pan out for you? Yeah, but I didn't smoke weed. And I left at 9.30 and I was in bed by 10,

but you still chose to hang out with a pothead. You still chose to do something mindless and brainless. Right? And that leads to more micro-decision that are not in your favor. Now, by the way, I'm not like knocking weed. Listen, man, there's plenty of times, two, three, four times a week where right before bed, I'll go hit the hot tub. I might smoke a joint, relax myself, and go to bed. But it's a choice I'm making, a decision I'm making that's purposeful and designed to create

an outcome, right? Guess what? my mind racist sometimes. I sometimes worry. I get overwhelmed. And if you run a big business, you will too. It's normal. Some people go for booze. Some people like to numb themselves watching television. I don't want the booze. I want to keep my liver healthy. And quite honestly, every time I drink, my fingers get swollen. My cheeks get swollen. I don't like the look of booze on me. And well, there's not a lot of good shows to watch right now. So, guys, what I do. Chill in the hot tub, smoke a half a joint or a joint, I relax, and I go to bed.

Notice I don't smoke a joint and go to work and work ineffectively. I don't smoke a joint, go bowling, and risk people's lives while I'm on the road. And I share this with you because there's a time in place for everything, but there's no time in place to hang out with losers if you're trying to be a winner. And so the micro decisions that you're making today, the micro actions that you're taking today lead to the macro lifestyle that you're going to live a decade from now. And I'll finish off by saying one more thing. And that thing is this. I travel a lot. When I'm in airports, I always have the option of an escalator or those little escalator sidewalks. You've seen them where they move. Or I can walk. I always take the stairs or I walk along

the escalator sidewalk. Why? Because I choose to do the hard thing. I see what everyone else is doing around me and I do the opposite. See, my mentor, Jim Franco, has gotten me brainwashed 20 years ago to think that way. He said, just watch what everybody's doing and do the opposite. I do that in business. I do that in a lifestyle. And if everybody's cramming themselves on an elevator or going on an escalator and just standing there, I'm like, you know what, fuck this. I want my body to be resilient and functional for a hundred plus years. For that to happen, I need to move myself. I need to move my joints. I need to walk. Well, guess what, man? I'm going to start walking. I'm going to go up and down the stairs. And if I'm running late for a flight, I'm going to fucking jog. Because it's

easy to justify taking the tram or the escalator because you're running late. Move your body. And those micro decisions that I make every week at an airport lead me to a better outcome in life. Because if I choose the hard things to do at the airport, then I get more disciplined. And I can choose the hard things to do at work, at home, in my relationship, in my fitness, in my diet, in my mindset with my money. So last and final word for you here, man. 10 years from now, you could either settle for the life that you have because you just let micro-decisions of mediocrity lead you to a shit life, or 10 years from now you can choose the life you want.

But every moment of every day, as my friend Steve Eckhart says, every fucking minute of every minute you have a decision to make. And that micro-decision stacked on top of each other over data. days, weeks, months, and years, determine what your future looks like. Thank you so much for watching this episode or listening to this episode of The Empire Show. If you like this show and I know you did, do me a favor, take a screenshot, tag two friends, share it in your stories and tag me so that I can repost. See you later.