Dhru Purohit Show - When to Set Goals (And When Not To), How to Be Kinder to Yourself, and The Power of Gratitude With Man Morning Group

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and AirDoctor. Today on the Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru welcomes his Man Morning group back on the podcast to talk about goal-setting, gratitude, and what’s possible when we surround ourselves with people who lift us up and help get us closer to achieving our goals and dreams. This time around, Antonio Neves, Mohit Jain, and Rikin Vasani join Dhru for an inspiring conversation.  Antonio Neves is an entrepreneur, award-winning journalist, and world-renowned speaker known for helping people get unstuck. He is the founder of the Man Morning newsletter. He’s also the bestselling author of Stop Living on Autopilot and host of The Antonio Neves Show podcast. Mohit Jain is an investor focused on high-end, residential real estate and development. He is also the cofounder of Immigranted, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide interest-free micro-loans to first- and second-generation immigrants for the purpose of higher education. And lastly, Rikin Vasani is an actor, both in the US and the UK, as well as a speaker and coach at 40+ companies and universities on the topics of mindfulness, effective communication, and emotional intelligence. In this episode we dive into: -How do you reset after falling off track? (3:18) -How goal-setting approaches have changed over the years (14:55) -The guys share something tough or challenging they accomplished (22:40) -Why people are bad at celebrating their small wins (30:14) -The goldilocks component of goal-setting (37:53) -How not accomplishing goals can make you a better person (42:01) -Why frustration is a good thing when it comes to goal-setting (50:45) -The guys share something that somebody did to support them (1:12:11) -Bad advice in the world of goal-setting (1:22:09) Also mentioned in this episode: -Sign up for the Man Morning newsletter here. For more on Antonio Neves, follow him on Instagram @theantonioneves and through his website, theantonioneves.com. Get his book, Stop Living on Autopilot, here.  For more on Mohit Jain, follow him on Instagram @onemohit For more on Rikin Vasani, follow him on Instagram @rikinvasani and check out his IMDB page, here. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to https://www.insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. AirDoctor is an affordable and efficient way to create clean air in your home. Right now, AirDoctor is offering my community $300 off of their air purifier. That's 50% off their normal price! Visit https://www.drhyman.com/filter to redeem this amazing offer today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If a goal is too easy, it's actually not motivating enough for you to get started. What is that Goldilocks goal that's both doable but is a stretch for you personally? Hi everyone, Drew Prode here with another fantastic episode for you all on the topic of goal setting. With the year winding down in 2023 coming up, a lot of us are thinking about goals. But when it comes to goals and setting goals and giving love and attention to the things that matter to you in your life, there's a lot of bad habits that are out there. And there's things that sometimes work and they don't work other times.

So today I have on a few of my friends, Antonio Mohit and Ricken, that are part of my men's group called Man Morning. And we're talking about our unique approach to goal setting. In particular, we start off the conversation by talking about what do you do when you have a goal, when you have a dream, when you have an intention and you fall off the wagon. Now, our advice might be contrary to a lot of advice that you've had out there. One of our big beliefs is that people are so freaking hard on themselves. And one of the reasons that we don't make progress on the things that we care about is that we are, not we, but often our ego is more committed to beating ourselves up than practicing some layer of forgiveness. And could forgiveness when it comes to some things that you've fallen off track for, some things that you want to make progress on but you haven't made progress on could forgiveness. Could forgiveness be a tool that could help you supercharge your goals, dreams, and intentions of life?

In today's conversation, we also talk about when to stick to your goals and when to quit. How do you know when to quit a goal that may no longer be serving you? We're also talking about the topic of gratitude. You know, I'm a big fan of gratitude, and I have an approach, three questions that I walk people through on today's podcast that I use before I set any kind of intention or goal. regardless of whether it's in January or whether it's at some random point in time of the year. And I believe when we tap into the power of gratitude, something magical happens. We talk about that on today's episode. I'm super thankful for my men's group and I'm excited to share more podcast conversations with them, with our audience.

And today we have Antonio Neves back on the podcast. He's an entrepreneur, award-winning journalist, and world-renowned speaker. He is also the founder of Man Morning newsletter that you can sign up for at manmourning.com. We also have my dear friend Mohit Jane, who's an investor focused on high-end residential real estate and development. He's also focused on nonprofit work. He has a great nonprofit called Immigranton. That's doing some incredible things that are out there. And we have Rickin Vassani, a recent addition to our men's group, but a guy that I've known for about 10 years who's a super sweet individual.

He's an actor, both here in the U.S. and the UK, as well as a speaker and coach to 40 plus companies and universities around the topic of mindfulness, effective communication and emotional intelligence. This is a great group of guys who have some very unique and nuanced thoughts about goal setting. And I'm excited to play host of the conversation. I think you're going to get a lot of value out of it. Stay tuned. All right, gentlemen, pleasure to have you guys back on the podcast, my man morning crew. Antonio, I'm going to start off with you.

Fantastic question. I think a lot of people deal with, which is when you fall off track for a goal that you're trying to make progress on in life or an intention that you said, what do you do from there? So when you fall off the wagon, when you fall off track, how do you go from there to still make progress towards the thing that you care about? Yeah, first, let's say I fall in a lot

and I got scrapes and bruises to prove it. But I think it gets back to the Y. You have to get really clear on exactly why are you pursuing X, Y, or Z goal. Like, when it comes from an internal perspective, am I doing this because it's important to me, something that I want to do, or am I doing it because other people are doing it?

Society is talking about this on a regular basis. If indeed something is important to me, let's just say health and wellness, staying in great shape. For me, it's really critical to connect to my why am I doing it. And I think one of the great things about being a parent and having kids, my wife and I have six-year-old twins from a health and wellness perspective, my why in many ways that gets me back on track are thinking about those kids and thinking about wanting to have longevity, wanting to be here for a long, fruitful life for them, to be a great influence on them. So it's easy to look at my phone, for example, on a regular basis and see that picture of those kids. and all those days where I don't want to work out, where I want to make an unhealthy food choice.

And I can reconnect to it like, no, I'm doing this for a reason. There is a purpose underneath it. One that's more specific to today, even from a business perspective and from a financial goal perspective, on my daily kind of planner to do list, things that I'm tackling, and I use this kind of customized Excel spreadsheet, is it says mom car. And right now I want to purchase a new vehicle for my mother. And I'm really excited to do that very soon for her. So when I'm going through my schedule, going through my days, where I'm putting my energy and my attention, when I see mom car, it kind of keeps me focused.

It keeps me locked in on doing what's most important. And I got to be clear when I see mom car, when I see pictures of my kids, that doesn't drain me like, oh, man, I got to do this. No, it actually, it fuels me, especially on those days when I'm depleted or maybe a little bit worn out or it's easy just to slack a bit. is mama getting a Bentley, Ferrari? Like how big we're going over here? Mama's probably getting a Kia or a Hyundai. Used or? Hey, man, y'all getting too personal.

You know what? It might be pre-owned, but I'll be happy. Dude, what I love about that, and I'll tee you up, Rick in here in a second. What I love about that is I actually find a lot of times in my own life, I'm more motivated by things to, like, I'm more motivated by knowing the fact that I could like hire one of friends than I am about me making a set amount of money. So finding that sort of leverage point for each person, we're all motivated by different things. Those tied deeply into our why for our goals. Ricken, what about you? When you fall on off track, you set an intention. I know you have a different

approach for goals, which we'll be talking about today. The no goals movement, that sounded really bad, but it's not having necessarily specific goals. I'll let you expand on that. But when you fall on off track when you even have like an intention, something where you want to progress on the life. What's your way for resetting from there? I'm glad you said intention because it's not that I'm anti-goals. I just think that's a really loaded word that has been that way for me for a long time. But when I fall off, it's definitely part what Antonio said, reconnecting to the why. But before I can even do that, I need to stop and just see why I fell off. And more often than not for me, it's because I put way too much pressure myself.

Probably because I lost a connection of the why and what initially excited me about this. And I just made it a goal or an end goal or a deadline in itself. And I started working kind of in robot mode towards it. And then I don't know why I'm doing it. I'm just pushing myself and I'm mostly just aware that I don't have it.

And I create this sense of kind of need within myself, this sense of lack. And so what I'll often do to start with is try to have some compassion for myself, which is really difficult in that moment. But the easiest way, it's difficult because in that moment, I'm thinking, why would I have compassion for myself? I didn't achieve it.

Or I'm way behind. And the easiest way for me is to remind myself that I don't need this thing that I set a goal for. I want it. I'm fine just as I am. I was fine. Before I had this thing, I'll be fine after. And I have different exercises I do to remove the need from it again to get back to that kind of neutral baseline. When I'm close to that place, it's a little bit.

are to be compassionate myself, to understand kind of what I might have done along the way to recreate this same pattern I always do of putting pressure myself. And then once I'm kind of back to neutral, then I do what Antonio talks about. I reconnect to the Y. And for me, the Y has to be kind of like you were saying with your mom, really emotional. It has to be like, what was initially inspiring me or exciting me about this thing? And if I can reconnect to that, let's say it's six months after I started. and I'm looking at those intentions or that initial excitement,

and does that still apply? But still applies, then I feel like if I spend a few days reconnecting that from this place of neutral, then I'm fired up again. However, if I've changed enough, if the situation has changed enough, then maybe I don't need to reconnected that as much. You mentioned some of those exercises.

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podcast community, a very special offer of 34% off your order. Just go to insidetrakor.com slash Drew. That's D-H-R-U to get your discount code and try it for yourself. That's inside. I-N-S-I-D-E tracker, T-R-A-C-K-E-R dot com slash D-H-R-U for 34% off until the end of November. Now let's get back to today's episode. I try to do this with everything in my life is start from a place of its whole it's complete. There's nothing that needs to be added. And from that place, like getting to a goal is really fun. It's like, you know, like toppings. It's just adding some sprinkles on top of a great ice cream. And so I do things to whatever it takes. The exercises are different each time to get myself to remember how great things are. So that often comes back to a daily practice of appreciating the three great things that happened yesterday. The three great things that happened yesterday that I couldn't even have predicted. that happened for me. Three things I like right now.

Three things that people have done for me. Reminding myself of how lucky I am. And also, I mean, gratitude is, again, a loaded word. But just reminding myself, there are things in my life right now I have that if I didn't have, I would really, really want. And I'm in a really strong place with that. I don't need anything to change. A really crazy exercise I do is I kind of do the zero-sum game.

I do it. What if this goal never worked out? out, what would be the pain of that? What would be the worst case scenario? Who would hate me? How would I feel about myself? And would I still be okay? And initially it's really painful, but over time, the answer is like, yeah, it's still be okay. And when I realized that, and it takes a little while, then the need is again, not completely gone, but it's strongly dissipated. And I'm back to the starting point again. I love it. Moheed, how about you? How do you reset when you've fallen off track? So I think for me, I ask myself a series of questions that go along the lines of, you know,

is what I'm doing aligned with the values of what this goal is, is the risk of this whole process of achieving this goal worth the end reward? I go through a series of questions in my hand to really figure out, you know, is this long-term goal that I want, you know, my intention, do I need to like dig into this deeper? do I need to pivot, do I need to like figure out a different way of approaching something. It's having that grit and that mindset to like figure out, you know, do I need to persevere from this and change course? And that's where I like really ask myself dig deep and go forward, figuring out the next steps. Yeah. Let's zoom out a little bit.

You know, a lot of people are still in this place where they are setting a goal like and use using New Year's as that opportunity to do that. You know, we are all part of a men's group. We're all friends as well. And I can just tell folks that are listening, that's not really our typical approach for the guys in the group. And a lot of successful people, people that have written bestselling books,

created multimillion dollar businesses, all sorts of different careers pursuits. So I'd love everybody to go around the table and talk a little bit about their goal-setting approach and how it might have changed over the years. Just kind of high level. Ricken, how about yourself? Sure.

So when I was younger and working in kind of management consulting, which was a lot more high-powered and going to a challenging university, even just before that, a challenging high school, goals ran my life. They were very clear. This had to be done no matter what. Here's a clear timeline. And if it doesn't happen, by then, the world explodes. So you can see how my approach now is very different from that.

And it's strictly through this. That didn't work. I'd often get what I wanted. And it felt gross. It felt, you know, there's rarely a happy ending to an unhappy journey. And it was this really unhappy journey. And then I was like, why do I not feel better now that I have the thing? And so...

Because often in like school, the subtext is once you have this goal, then like, that's it. You're done. Exactly. You're done. Right. And the fact is that it's always forward looking. So you're like, once I have that thing in the future, I'll be able to be able to okay, I'll be okay. Once you get to the thing that you've gotten, you're so trained to be

forward-looking that you can't even enjoy it. And that's what I got stuck in. And so I think what is shifted is I still have things I want, but I like the word intention more, because I feel like this is the thing that I realized around that time when I was really stressing myself out. Very often I'd make to do-lis set when it had to happen and then structure the whole thing out and just not have that much fun doing it. Every now and then I would set a to-do list and just forget about it or lose it, and then come back to it a few weeks later and realize almost everything on it had been completed. And I was like, that's really cool. That almost felt like the universe or whatever was helping me. It felt more magical. It felt like there were cooperative forces

helping me out. And that's kind of my approach now. What I'll do is I'll set pretty clear intentions about what I want, and they're usually based on knowing what I don't want. Kind of what's the opposite of that. Once I have that, I get really clear on why I want it, what feels good about it, the positive impact of what have my life. Again, starting from baseline that I'm already okay and this would just be a beautiful thing to have. And once I have that, I also try to get really clear on why I believe it could happen, like trusting that that outcome is realistic for me. After that, I do my best to get out of the way to not worry too much about the how. I know the why, but not the how. I try not to worry too much about the details

of how it's going to happen. What that does for me is allows me to stay open to opportunities coming my way, someone offering to help. because when I have a clear plan of how it's going to happen in a timeline, I get so rigid in my thinking, and I'm almost to have blinders on to all the opportunities around me. And I feel like I'm just not acting very lucky. And so it's like I set an intention. I kind of set this current off. And then my job each day is to plug myself back into the wall and be available to it.

And so that can be a variety of things that kind of prime me in each day. And so it's set an intention, know what I wanted to look like, feel really good about the why, can reconnect to that frequently. Feel very clear about I believe it can happen. And if I can't, then explore that, maybe with friends. And then each day not worry so much about how am I going to nail that today, but put myself in the best possible state to feel lucky, to feel open to it, to feel receptive to opportunities throughout the day.

Antonio? Yeah, well, first, I just want to acknowledge what Rickon said about how we're already whole. I think for so many people, so many of their goals and dreams have actually already come true. But we're just so busy getting on to the next thing that we don't give our self space to actually acknowledge those things. You made me think about early on, I think something that's really important when it comes to goal setting is writing these things down. And to your point, sometimes you can write these things down and when you forget them. I'll still never forget moving to New York City, you know, the traditional, you know, cliche story of moving there with less than

$1,000 in my bank account with goals of breaking into the television industry and writing down all these big goals that I want to do accomplish and then maybe forgetting about them, but then you find that old notebook from three years ago, five years ago, and you realize you've accomplished so many of those things, but very rarely did you press pause to acknowledge them, to bask in them, to give yourself a high five. Begin, again, because we're always on to the next thing. To your point about New Year's resolutions, I love the quote, the Spanish proverb, tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week. I think when we put those goals in front of us that are so future-oriented, the New Year's resolution, it gives us an

excuse in many ways not to focus on what can be done today. It's easier to say on a Friday when you gorge yourself on some food, you probably shouldn't eat that, you know what, I'll get started working out again or eating right on Monday. Again, tomorrow's off in the busiest day of the week. For me, I like to focus on those day-to-day activities. I used to be that big annual goal setter or that big monthly goal setter. Now I identify what those three or five behaviors are if I do them on a daily basis. will lead to big goals, whether it's personal goals, whether that's financial goals, whether those are health goals, et cetera. I find that if I focus on what I need to do today, the lead measure, as it's called, versus the lag measure, the end result, I have a lot more success and it takes pressure

off of me. There are three or five things I need to do today. And if I do those, odds are I'm going to accomplish those things. Yeah. What I love about that is that it has a few ideas baked into it. And one of the first things you said is the idea of not recognizing how much we have right now. we're so thinking about the thing that we don't have and that's the brain's negativity bias which often rules how we run life in many instances and that negativity bias pulls us away from all the great progress that we've made during this past year before we even look at the next year I mentioned you guys a little bit ahead of time but one of the things we do at man morning and our weekly hikes is we have a question of the day and there's a sort of gratitude

hack workshop that I put together, maybe about 12 years ago, 10 years ago, and I've been sharing it with my audience and walking them through how it exactly works. It's an opportunity for me to do a year-end review and recognize just how amazing and how challenging in a good way things have been this past year. And what I find is that as people approach often the New Year's resolution or just anything they want to make progress on in life, we are so hard on in ourselves because all we can look at because of the brain's negativity bias. There's a friend of mine, Dr. Rick Hansen, he says the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and it's like Teflon for positive experiences. We only stick and the negative experiences stick through. So we see the big thing

that we didn't make progress on this year, but we miss all the little things that are there. So what ends up happening is as we go into the new year or any other time that we're thinking about setting an intention, setting a goal, we're coming in with a deficit. We're already. We are have a story that's going on in our brain. And that story is, we're not enough, we'll never be good enough, we're not smart enough, we were passed off for opportunities because people didn't like us, whatever it might be. And you take that energy and now you try to set a goal or an intention, or just state out loud to a friend you want to make progress in a particular area of life. You're going to already come, you'll be coming from behind already. So one of the things that I've

put together is gratitude hack workshop. And I'd love to actually just take these three questions here as like a little intro place for us to start off in the podcast. And we'll use it for the month of December because this is often what we do on our man morning hikes. So we have three questions. And they all start off with no matter how big or small. So let's go in the first one. We'll go around the table and then we'll go to the next one and then we'll conclude with the third one. So no matter how big or small, we'll start off with you, Mohit. What's something tough or challenging that you accomplished or went through this month, the month of December? So this month. So this month, we've had this family kind of gathering because of the holidays and my in-laws are coming

into town. And I've had this conversation with my brother-in-law because we've had some personal challenges. And it was just something that I had to call attention to because I couldn't hold it any longer. And I had to make sure that, you know, we're speaking about this. I was being very upfront with him about my feelings about them visiting and how we're, you know, going to react in the holidays and come together as a family. And it was just a conversation that I've been putting off for a long time that I needed to get on with. It was a tough conversation to have.

And it was something that was very overdue. And I had to put my heart out a little bit to go a little deeper and make sure, you know, get a little uncomfortable because it's a delicate topic within the family. And I wanted to make sure we addressed it before he. came and visited. Yeah, I love it. I love it. You know, the beautiful thing about that is like from the outside, they can seem like

something small, but the smallest of things. But it was something big. It was big for you because in the inside it's big. Yeah. Antonio, what about you? What's something tough or challenging you made progress on or accomplished this month, the month of December? Being flexible.

I'm thinking actually specifically around Thanksgiving and what that can bring up for a lot of people. And typically, we host Thanksgiving at our whole. home. And already I'm feeling embarrassed to share this, but it's coming up for me. We host Thanksgiving at our home. And of course, over the month of November, so many different things broke in our household. And one of those things that broke was like our stove, right? And so, of course, you want to make a turkey for everybody and do your stuffing and all those kind of things. So I started feeling overwhelmed that how am I going to do this? I'm the one that cooks the Thanksgiving meal.

I need to find a stove a quick. Oh, of course. This is a real. This is a real. rare size stove. It's hard to find. It's not in stock, et cetera. And what was interesting was that I took some pressure off of myself saying, hey, you know what? This stove is not going to arrive in time. And we ended up using the other resources that we had available to us, one being the stove, one being my Trager grill, and I love to smoke meat. So I was able to use that. But also, interestingly enough, I realized for the first time in my existence on this planet that I don't like turkey and I don't like the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. You just realized that. This gave me that space to say, you know what, I don't want to cook a turkey. We're going to do, it's funny, a non-traditional,

by the way, whose tradition is anyways? That's another story. We're going to do a non-traditional Thanksgiving and I made ribs. I made some amazing chicken and some other dishes that otherwise never would have been made. And I actually had fun and enjoyment doing that. So I give myself, I acknowledge myself because I'm one of those dudes that can be stuck and locked in his ways. And it's hard for me to be flexible at times. And I rolled with the punches on that one and it ended up going extremely, extremely well. Love it. Ricken, anything come up for you?

Something tough or challenging that you made progress on were accomplished. Yeah, I mean, first, Turkey's disgusting. We always have a blend of like Indian food and maybe some chicken. But yeah, this is actually a big one. My family, we bought a house. And that is not something, a lot of people have done that. That's not something I've ever done before. And it looked very unrealistic from moment one.

It was one of the first homes we saw. There ended up being 10 offers on it. It was incredibly competitive. I didn't know what most of the words meant in an escrow. But I nodded and pretended I did a lot. I just trusted this outcome. There was a lot of pressure. like my wife's dream home. She like cried the first time we saw it. It was just this beautiful

street, beautiful neighborhood. I have a four-month-old son, and I could just see him growing up there, and I felt so fueled. And I pulled out every resource I had. I pulled out kind of all my kind of financial know-how and business know-how, but also just I wrote this letter to the buyers and sellers that was, I'm proud of, that it was emotionally fueled and very honest, but also optimistic. And then they were really interested in it. And I asked if we could, meat and the agent said we've never had a buyer and sell her meat at nine or ten years. I was like, can we? So we met them. And they like kind of embraced us and we all connected. And we were the fifth highest offer out of ten and somehow made this house happen in like a 14 day escrow. I had

never done an escrow before. So it almost killed me, but it happened. And we moved in there a little bit before Thanksgiving. But that's a huge thing. And I'm incredibly grateful for it because I didn't do it on my own. A bunch of people were there for me and helped me. I kind of led the whole process. But also I'm grateful that it took up every resource I had. I took up every day you wake up and you're like, what's going to

happen now? How is this going to go wrong today? I don't want to lose this. And I was able to get to the finish line. And I think because I tried my best to enjoy it each day when it happened, it was amazing and very, it felt really, really good. That's awesome, man. Congratulations. Thank you. You're the home purchase whisper where people are going to hire you to come help them purchase homes.

The agent we worked with is kind of like I've never seen anyone do that before. I work in real estate and I've never heard of anyone meeting the buyer on the site. He was a little nervous, but he's like, maybe. And then he was like, this was meant to be, I knew it. I was like, you didn't feel that way. Dude, that's great. It's also the power of like putting your intention on something. Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. I'll go myself, what's something tough or challenging that I accomplished in this month? And just before I jump in, usually the way that I do this at the end of the year, especially, but often my wife and I will do it a couple times a year because it takes a long time is I'll have my Google calendar in front of me because we all forget, like literally like two weeks ago, like I don't remember like what the hell is going on in my life, right? So I put everything in my calendar. So I have to use my calendar as an opportunity, especially if I'm going month by month to go

December, you know, November. I started at the beginning of the year. So January, where was I? What headspace was I in? What was I worried about? What was I thinking about? Like, oh my gosh, I was so focused on like I needed to build a new studio. And I was so focused on this little tiny thing that was taking my headspace.

The other interesting thing about that is that when you go back and you reflect on all the things that you were worried about before, like half the shit, you're just like, oh my gosh, why the hell was I worried about that? I did not need to worry about that. It did not need to occupy mental energy. So I go back on my Google calendar. I start with January. and I look at the month and I look I reflect and I'm like okay what was going on in my life during that time what was tough what was challenging and I see something that stood out to me and I kind of connect to the headspace that I was in at that time and I'm like wow that was a lot tougher

and I don't think I ever even celebrated it yeah I didn't talk about it I didn't celebrate it I didn't pat myself on the back I mean how many fucking people that are listening today have done something tough even today and they haven't patted themselves on the back, right? In fact, actually, I'm going to pause real quick for a second before we jump in and we go through these questions. Why do we think, from your own take, why do we think people are not good at celebrating their wins? Big wins are obviously easier, home purchase, a milestone birthday, somebody turns 40 or

whatever it might be. But the small wins. Why are we so bad at celebrating them? Antonio? I think it depends on different cultures and upbringing you have. As you were describing that, it made me think back to even my upbringing in the community that I was raising.

Some people, if something good happened to you, you got good news, it's kind of like that old Chris Rock joke. Like, oh, you think you special now. Now you can beat me up, right? You come home and you accomplish some amazing goal, but then you share this, you want to say it out loud, but people give you a hard time,

as if you're not being humble, you're not being, you know, humble enough in your accomplishment. So I think in many ways it's the tallest poppy syndrome, where if you grow a little bit tall, two good things are happening, people want to cut you down when you do that. So we want to resist that in many ways. So instead of celebrating something that went good, that felt good, instead of what will be quiet about it and keep moving forward.

So I think that can happen from a cultural perspective for a lot of people. Mohe, are you good at celebrating the small wins? I think I kind of take Antonio's approach there. like for me personally it's become more of a modest humble thing i don't celebrate the small wins as much as i probably should even with between you and your family you and your wife i will do it internally but it's not an external thing we're off like showing to other people or um externally with from without the family uh but yeah internally with us we'll do that but for sure when it comes to other people we're not posting about it as much we're not um kind of sharing it and and you know

I think there's also just we're inundated with so much content, so many things happening, and everyone's just kind of moved on to the next thing. Yeah, yeah. And I don't think necessarily everybody has to share externally. Some people might feel more comfortable with that. Some people are less comfortable. But even the fact that you guys do it internally, that's a huge dream. Rican, what about you and your wife and family?

Are you guys good at celebrating wins? How do you acknowledge each other? No, not good at it. Trained to be good at it. Talk about that. Especially as an actor, it's all small, made up winds in my head. Yeah. At times because there's long stretches where it seems like nothing's happening, but things are building.

I got to collect those winds or it just looks like a long stretch of the desert. So I have to come up with my own benchmarks and those little wins. But I think one of the reasons it stops me is cultural as well. And, you know, like in Buddhism and meditation, they say one of the hardest things to feel is sympathetic joy, joy for someone else's accomplishment. And I think that sometimes makes it scary for me. Because I have difficulty sometimes. If someone gets something I really want and I'm not a big fan of that person, it's hard for me to feel good about it. And so that's something I need to work on.

But because I do that, I assume sometimes others may do it for me and maybe they don't want to hear about these things. So when I do have my wins, I celebrate them each day on my own. I have a kind of a journaling practice. My wife and I celebrate each other like crazy. My four-month-old jumps up and down for me. He doesn't know what I'm saying. But then close friends, like even man mourning, like using that. an opportunity to share stuff that I wouldn't normally. And it takes effort for me to say it out

loud to someone because there's that voice in my head from being a little kid like, don't show off. Don't show off. Don't show off. Don't show up. Be humble. But I need it because of the Teflon brain. Otherwise, I'm only going to focus on what didn't happen. And sometimes it doesn't feel real until I say it to someone. So I rarely post about my wins, but I will very much share with the people I love. And their excitement and celebration helps to reinforce it for me. Drew, I got to add one of the most amazing things about the man morning community is how much we encourage and celebrate one another. Like when folks have different accomplishments, what I love is in our group text. Being in the right group text can straight up change your life for the better.

Like literally our group texts are so empowering. They're inspiring. They're funny at time. We got corny jokes here and there. But over the years that we've been in Man Morning, one thing I love is if someone launches a new effort or they have a certain amount of success or they have a birthday, etc., Sometimes the very first place, the acknowledgement of that shows up is in the text. Yo, let's give a shout out for Drew for launching his brand new newsletter.

Let's give Mo a shout out for doing X, Y, and Z. I mean, it happens so regularly. And it reminds me how much it doesn't happen otherwise because that tech will show up someone commending me for something awesome that happened. But I won't see any other communication, even though I may even share it publicly. Right. It's like sometimes we even, so I just love our man mourning community. and how we celebrate one another, man. And it feels good.

And I think a lot of times early on, a lot of us even gave stiff arms to it. Like, ah, no big deal. Like, no, man, basking that, feel that. You're worthy. We're all worthy of that praise. It just feels great to have that community that does that regularly and it is not abnormal.

And I think that takes some practice because I don't make generalization, but in general, I will. I see my female friends are a lot better at doing that for each other, just cheering each other on and being like, your win is awesome, and it's very vocal and verbal. And my dude friends are not like that.

They're like, cool. Or good job. And it's something that I think does take effort for men, especially. And it does feel different when someone is doing it for you versus you doing yourself. There's a feeling that comes, like someone's recognizing your work and your effort and everyone's coming together to praise you. That's a different feeling than you putting it yourself out there to other folks. Yeah, there's a... Sorry.

Go ahead, please. There's just a genuine, too. Like, it's genuine. Like, Mo, I'm not going to speak for you, but he's had some stuff going on internationally. And the stuff that you've been having them going on internationally, like, I'm, like, straight up genuinely excited for you. Like, it fires me up. Like, some groups I think are competitive. If somebody gets a win, they're doing this or that.

But at this group right here, like, I don't feel like there's competition, if anything, is just more so just inspiration amongst all of us. And I think what's nice about is that because it is so tough to celebrate your wins, but life really requires you to get good at it. If you want to, the more you want to do, the better you got to get at celebrating your wins. It requires both aspects. One, you have to have, you have to try to create the right group text

so that people, you have people that you can share it with, right? Even in a very simple term, do you have one friend where you go to them and you say, hey, this is something that I want to celebrate today, right? But also because we all are not, great at it. You also need that prompt from that friend saying, hey, you know, one of our go-to questions in Man Morning is, what's something you're celebrating this week? No matter how big or small, what's something you're celebrating this week? We also followed up with what's something

you're navigating this week. I mentioned on the last podcast, we took that from Summit series and their Junto groups that are there. So it's both of those. It's you prompting the group or sometimes the group will be Antonio sending out and saying, hey, did you see what such and such did? So it's having somebody to celebrate you, but also you prompting somebody to celebrate them. And it's the combination of those which are really good at having us practice at celebrating the little wins along the way. Because what I see often in life is, especially for people who are very ambitious, they'll set a really big pie in the sky goal. And I always get a little nervous when I see a really, really big pie in the sky goal, especially when somebody's like

just starting off down their journey in a particular area. because so much of the research on goal setting shows that there's this Goldilocks component to goal setting. If a goal is too easy, it's actually not motivating enough for you to get started. If a goal is way far out in the future, like, I'm going to be the richest person in the world, I'm going to do this, I'm going to be the biggest philanthropist that by the time I'm 80 years old, beautiful, it might be a beautiful goal, but it's so far in the future, there's nothing to tie you into that. So then the question becomes, what is that Goldilocks goal that's both doable but is a stretch for you personally that even in the pursuit of it, even if you don't accomplish it, is going to

make you a better person. By the way, that's going to be the next topic that we're going to get into. What's a goal in your life that you didn't achieve, but still the pursuit of it made you a better person? I'm going to ask each of you so you can think about that. Going back to this is that that Goldilocks, that middle place, something that's doable. It's a far stretch, but not too far of a stretch. And you can track and measure it along the way

and celebrate the little wins to see if you're actually heading in the right direction. It makes me think about something Jim Collins writes about one of his books and a lot of different organizations will have those big, hairy, audacious goals that we've read about for so long and we've heard about. And to your point, those are big sky kind of goals that can be overwhelming at times for some individuals. A mutual friend of ours drew Basam Tarazi. author, amazing strategist, adventurer, et cetera. He has this thing where he says, you know, do less than your, do less than you're capable

of, which a lot of people hear that like, what do you mean? Do less than you're capable of. So, of course, with the new year coming up, what most people are going to do is they're going to set that unrealistic goal of going to the gym seven days a week. And, you know, it's like, yo, slow down. You know, you're not going to the gym seven days a week. What if you give yourself an opportunity to say, I'm going to go three or four days a week? That thing, that right there is accomplishing.

Or even one day a week. Or one day a week. But going back to creating that momentum, you can accomplish that. But we kind of set ourselves up for failure when we set too big of goals that we know we're not going to be able to manage long term. And it's no wonder if you look at the gym on January 1st, as opposed to what it looks like on January 22nd, those are January 1st, just a club, people having a good time. January 22nd, like you got a lot of room. You got space to do what you need to do because folks have already burnt themselves out and they've given up on those goals.

Yeah. And I think anyone I've ever coached and myself, one of the tools I use with the gym to keep them in that state is if you're going to do 45 minutes in the gym, I'll encourage them to leave at minute 35 or 40 because they're like, wait, I could do more. I'm like, yeah, leave it for tomorrow. Spend the whole next day being like, I could have done more. I'm kind of excited to go back as opposed to so many people on January 1st. I'll be like, I'm going to do 45 minutes. Actually, today I'll do 50 or 55 and then they're burnt out and hate this thing that's coming. And so I love that idea with any goal, and it worse for me all the time, being like, stopping a little bit before.

I'm like, I could do a little more. And then I'm like pumped up because I want to add that on and keep pushing. So leaving that little extra space seems to help a lot. And I think for me, setting smaller goals on the way of this larger goal and trying to form a habit. So I put everything in the calendar. I live by it. And I try to do what I can daily. So, for instance, a few years ago, you know, I was feeling dehydrated.

So I was like, let me try to drink half my body weight. in ounces per day. So very specific goal. Had it on the calendar. And there was this book by James Clearer called Atomic Habits. And he says, you have to do four things to make, you know, your habits really stick. You got to make them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. So I try to keep water in front of me in my desk, filled, you know, sparkling water, put lemon in it, do whatever I could to make it easy and obvious that I'm going to have water wherever I can. If I go to a restaurant, first thing I order is water. Last thing I do before bed is have water.

So I tried to just like really have water throughout the day. I mean, it caused other issues with peeing a lot. That's a separate problem. But I was able to accomplish that because I made it habit and made it daily and regimented. And it became like second nature. I love it. Is there a goal that comes to mind? Something that you wanted to make progress on in life that didn't end up happening.

but the pursuit of it still left you off as a better person. And the reason I want to go into this topic is that I think sometimes there is also fear of setting a goal. You even see this sometimes with young kids, right, when they start to get like around five, six, seven, eight, that there's this fear of going to do something because maybe they're not good enough, right? And that can bring up a lot of different stuff that's there.

But older folks have that too. So there's something in your life that it didn't happen that comes to mind. Something you wanted to make progress on didn't happen, but yet the pursuit of it made you a better person and you still ended up finding your way. Anything that comes to mind for anybody? Yeah.

Okay. I would say going back to acting, it's something that I'm never going to get done. Everyone has a different milestone of what it looks like when it's done. But it's not a clear one for everyone. And so it's really easy sometimes to be like it hasn't had. happened. But there was a very clear time when I was younger where I had given kind of my alt-acting and then I stopped doing it for a while. I was like, maybe I'm done with this. And now I'm back in

it. But back then, I was like, you know what, it's not as exciting for me anymore. It doesn't seem like it's working out. I just feel like I'm hitting my head on the wall. I don't even love the art of it anymore. It's just about work. But then I look back and I was like, well, what did this give me? And I remember when I started pursuing it, I was like, I remember going to my first few classes because I, you know, studied in college. I did a course. I did a corporate job for about five years and then did it again here. And it was like the Olympics of acting. And I realized, man, I suck at listening. I'm not very emotionally attuned. I don't trust myself very much in creative scenarios. And so as a result of that beginning of starting acting again,

I started studying mindfulness. I've been meditating for like 12 years now. I started learning by emotional intelligence and now I teach it. I started becoming a lot more trusting of myself and my creative impulse is doing things like the artist way as a starting and then having far more artistic friends that kind of inspired me. And I realized the only thing that didn't happen was the end goal. Like I didn't get on this show that I wanted to be on, but everything I wanted by being an actor, a better listener, more compassionate, more present, all those things happen. And acting was a pathway for those underlying values to develop regardless of whether the goal happened. And so I was grateful for the time. I love it. Antonio.

Yeah, I'll say I was really hoping that my book stopped living in an autopilot would become a New York Times bestseller. Like those are my aspirations, those are my goals. That did not happen. I'm proud to say that that book has sold tens of thousands of copies has been translated in multiple languages. But along... Which still puts you in the 1% of authors. Right, in which I've had to remind myself of that. And thankfully, you know, I share that information with you and you remind me of that.

I forget, even though I didn't make this list, right, that is still an amazing accomplishment. to have your book published in multiple languages, etc. But what is created for me, even though it didn't reach that goal, is a commitment to doing the work and doing the art on a regular basis. You know, the message of that book, even though it didn't make a list, has reached so many different communities through my public speaking. It's reached so many different communities through the communities that I've created online. It's created a discipline in me of writing to write because I have to,

not because of the end outcome, the end goal of what's going to come from. when I realized this book wasn't going to make any type of list of a dear friend of mine. He said something I'll never forget. He says, what if I told you this isn't going to be the last book that you write? And before this book, I wrote three other books. What if I told you this wasn't going to be the last book you ever write? And there'd be more opportunities for that goal to happen if indeed you want that to happen. And even when he framed it like that, it took some pressure off of me to remind me that this isn't my only chance at something.

I'm at the point where now, even if I never make a list, I'm okay. I'm whole. I think about what Rick said earlier about how we're whole regardless. And it takes me back, I was giving a keynote many years ago in Atlanta at a university. And a student came up to me after the talk. And he said, hey, I noticed you have that blue checkmark on your social media that shows that you're verified. How do I do that? A really young impressionable kid. And I was about to tell them like, hey, I was a public figure.

I worked in TV for a long time, blah, blah, blah. But instead of doing all of that, I instead said, why do you want the blue checkmark? And he's like, well, to show that it's me. And I'm like, is there another you that I need to be aware of? And he was like, no. I was like, well, why do you really need that blue checkmark? And he paused and he said to show that I'm important, to show that I'm a value. And in that moment, I knew him because that was me.

And I said, you were verified the day that you were born, whether you have a blue checkmark, whether you make a list, whether you make a certain amount of money or not, you were verified the day that you are born. So for me, that's great to go back to that, that internal wholeness versus seeking out external platitudes or success. What a great reminder. I'll jump in with one myself and then Mo, we'll go to you if you have one. In the business that I had before this one, started a company called Clean with a gentleman name Alejandro Younger and also our third business partner, Albert. And it was a very fast-growing business.

And it was in the press a lot and a lot of people of notoriety were doing the protocol and the program. And it was really at this explosion of sort of the modern clean eating movement where people wouldn't just define how they eat based on are you vegetarian or are you this or you that. It was just like, no, like I take like a clean approach. I just want to focus on quality, right? And when I was in the business and doing my best to both keep up with the growth, I also had this vision of putting out content. In fact, I wanted to host a podcast.

And I made multiple attempts to kind of kickstart it, to start up the process. And I wasn't sure, do I start it to the business? Do I do it to myself? Do I do this? Do I do that? Ultimately, it didn't come off. it didn't end up happening. And in that process of it not happening,

my earliest sort of thought was, okay, I wasn't successful in this thing. When I looked back on it at that time, I realized, like, I actually needed to learn a parallel skill. And that parallel skill was I needed to learn how to be a better manager and delegator. And once I understood that,

and I developed those skills in my new business now, I was able to do all the things. I was still able to keep up with the growth, grow the business, take care of all the things that I need to do as a CEO, but also be able to do my own pet project on the side that brought me a lot of joy, which is interviewing people and having conversations. And you could look at that and you could say, oh, you weren't accomplishing that goal that was there. But sometimes we might be ready for a goal, but that goal may not necessarily be ready for us. There might be something else that we need to do, move forward on, make progress on, that allows us.

it to come and revisit us at another time in life? And so that was one of the things that came to mind for me. You preaching over there. We may have a goal, but that goal may not be ready for us. Let the church say amen. You took them to church right there. Okay, stand up. Let's clap, y'all. I think that that's what I was saying way at the beginning of this is that goal is sometimes you're not ready for the goal. The goal's not ready for you. I feel like so often when I'm rigid about what I want and how it has to look, I'm not ready for the goal. Maybe the goal is actually right there. It just doesn't look exactly the way I wanted to look.

And so I'm not in that state of being open and receptive. And definitely I'm much more open receptive to not controlling how things look. But very often I get this feeling that me and the goal are both kind of in the same sphere right now. I'm just not receptive of the way it wants to come into me. Totally. Well, you're too attached to one way that it has to happen. That's why I let go of the howls and the details and the timeline a lot more now. Yeah, and it can be frustrating at times because I want it now, but I keep reminding myself, I want it better.

I want it right. And that means I have to get into the right state or that goal needs a little more time for us to meet perfectly as opposed to right now and it's not the perfect match. Well, one thing that I want to share on that topic, because you used a very specific term, frustration. And I learned this through an acquaintance who's come on the podcast now a couple times, Dr. Andrew Huberman, one of the leaders in this space of science and evidence-based approaches to a whole bunch of areas, but one of them in particular we're linked to in the show notes, is the science of the science and evidence around goal setting. And one of the things that I got from that podcast that Andrew did, Dr. Heberman did, is on the topic of frustration. So the research, and he's linked to the papers inside of the podcast

there, the research around goal setting is that frustration is a good thing. frustration is a good thing because when we're frustrated it's because our mind is like okay there is an error i wanted x and i'm not getting x i'm getting y a b whatever i'm getting something else and in that opportunity of when your brain realizes that there's been an error your brain is most plastic when your brain understands that there's an error your brain is the most malleable plastic, right? We used to think our brains were fixed. There was all, there was that idea that even, you know, neurologist and neurosurgents would say it, you know, 10 years ago, oh, by the time that you're 25, you have the amount of brain cells you'll have for the rest and then it's all downhill.

We know that's not true. We know that the brain is plastic. It's constantly evolving. And yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks. So when you make an error, your brain is more plastic. It's more malleable, which means that errors in that little opportunity and window when you recognize them, they make you a better learner. When you're a better learner, you figure out how to navigate. So the other beautiful part about this question that we asked, and I'll come back to you, Mohan, in a second, which is, have you ever had a goal that you didn't make progress on? But the pursuit of it made you a better person regardless is that if it didn't work out, you were left with some frustration. Hey, my book isn't where I wanted to be. I'm not on that show that I wanted to be on.

and now your brain is like, well, how do I actually still get the thing that I want to get in the end? What is the end result that I'm really looking for? And maybe number one, I already got it or maybe two, it's actually just this parallel track that's one side step over. If you provide it good prompts. I think the people that get into trouble are the individuals that only see the end goal and use that error only as frustration and not as a learning opportunity and they get stuck. they get down on themselves and they spiral downward. So frustration can be a very positive thing. In fact,

it's one of the core reasons that we're open to learning. So don't shy away from it. Don't be scared. And really, it's not about not achieving your goals. It's about being kind and gentle when it doesn't work out and pivoting along the way and understanding that in the end,

this thing is not going to necessarily make you a ton happier. Mohe, anything come up for you when we were talking about something that you wanted to pursue in life, a small or a big goal that didn't end up happening, but you still were left off as a better person and human being in the pursuit of it. Yeah, so a smaller goal that I could think of is growing up, I was always playing sports, team sports, competitive sports.

It was something that just brought this like childlike mentality. I was super happy doing it. And post high school, all of that kind of stopped. And so one of my goals was, you know what, I really want to recreate that feeling of joy, teamwork, camaraderie in this kind of day and age, which, you know, I haven't been able to join a team sport. It's still on my to-do list and hopefully one day I'll get there. But what I've learned is let me try to recreate those moments with my friend groups,

with my kids even, and get them excited about playing together, just being together, and the joy of just having that experience together. So you mean like, how can I just recreate that camaraderie? It doesn't have to be through a sport. It doesn't have to be through a sport. Just another areas of life. But other areas of life. But even through sports, like there is something about, you know,

playing a game of basketball together with a group of friends and just getting out there sweating, like all the feelings that come out and teamwork that I just missed from my childhood. It's just, it was a part of my experience growing up. I played basketball, baseball, soccer, tennis, gymnastics, you name it, I did it. And that's something that, you know, I want to get back to and try to focus on. Love it. Drew, just going back real quick. Yeah, anybody who wants to chime about anything, please.

The frustration thing you were talking about, I do agree that it makes me more malleable if I have the right mindset about it. And I think you were touching upon it with compassion because you're saying frustration can be useful if there is an error. Very often, though, when I'm frustrated, it's not at that neutral. It's I am the error or the way they're doing it and not giving to me is the error. And then there's no problem solving for me. There's no malleability. I'm even more rigid. It has to be frustration with me being like, there is just an error.

and me being able to step back and look at that more, more neutrally. And then I think I get malleable. So I think that's probably why a lot of times frustration is not useful, because people, it's not, it's like, you know, the thought that anxiety and excitement are the same energy, just your perspective on them. Same thing with frustration. I think it can be incredibly useful and an energizing tool if that blame game is out of it. If that shaming and trying to figure out the why and whose fault it is out of that,

then I think frustration is yeah there's an error let's do this um but I just want to touch upon that because I feel like frustration overall helping you is is not necessarily true for me yeah you yeah you don't want to stay in frustration frustration as sort of an acute quick thing um versus a chronic thing some people are in chronic frustration and that's usually probably because the finger point either me or being hard on themselves old stuff right childhood stuff other things even then though there could be an opportunity if you're somebody that identifies that it's like hey if you're regularly frustrated just like if you regularly find yourself complaining about other people this is actually one of the best prompts that is time to get some support it's time to get some help

that could be with a friend group it could be seeking out a therapist that can help you look at some of that and realize like where is all this energy coming from is it coming from the fact that I grew up And I loved my mom so much, but I always saw the way that she handled herself, even when she did something great, was she would put herself down. And I thought, oh, well, I want to be like my mom. Yeah. This is not my exact story, but I've heard this story before for people. I want to be by like my mom, but my mom complains regularly. Not but, but I want to be like my mom.

Oh, my mom complains regularly. That's how she loves herself. That's how I'm going to love myself as well, too. That's an opportunity to really do an opportunity for the work. But I think your point is not but. And I think your point of what you said, Ricken, is super important because in general, I feel like this world would be a much better place if people just stop beating themselves up so much about a ton of shit that just does not fucking matter. I think we stop beating ourselves up and replace that and said with that question, you know, that gay and Katie Hendricks talk a lot about is that question, what can I learn from this? Like in many ways that frustration you're talking about Ricken, in many ways something doesn't go right.

It doesn't go as planned. We don't like something. most times our default response is, hmm, it's that, hmm, it stops, we're not breathing now, we're not in our body. But if we get to the place where we're with, what can I learn from this, that that sense of curiosity, that sense of wonder, that hmm, not hmm, but hmm, something opens up in that space. But so a few of us are willing to, willing to shift from hmm, to hmm. And that's where I think a lot of magic can happen, right?

And Drew, you mentioned something really important. we haven't talked a lot about as it relates to goals. That's the point where we need help. No one who has accomplished anything of significance, any type of goal, did it alone. And neither should we. So I think one part of goal setting that we don't talk about enough is who can help me do this? How can I seek out support? Is there a community?

Is there a group? Is there a fitness class I can join? Because maybe I'm not good at going to the gym by myself every single day. Far too often we're trying to accomplish big things. those big things we're trying to accomplish, accomplish them all by ourselves. How do I know? Because I'm great at it.

Thank goodness. I have like, again, this amazing man morning community, Drew, I blow Drew's phone up all the time and other friends in the community as well with questions because I know I'm not the first person to experience from a business perspective or a personal experience what I'm experiencing. So we'll put it out to the group and you'll get great insight, great feedback. And sometimes people will say I don't have the answer. but appoint you in the right direction.

Thank goodness to Drew. Drew, you know, he introduced me to an amazing, you know, marital counselor. I mean, things like that, if you're humble enough, that can change everything. And that's what Drew is incredible at. He apparently knows everyone and wants to help all of those people meet each other. So if anyone listening has any questions, I'll give you Drew's phone numbers. You know who is listening. Don't hit me up.

I got too many friends. I don't know if I have the capacity. I'm just totally kidding. No, I appreciate that, guys. Let's keep going about me. Mohit. I'm just kidding. Great, great hair.

It's just good. I like the face. You mentioned something. I got sidetrack, which is accountability. I want to go around the table real quick and ask everyone, are you good at asking for help when you're pursuing a goal or an intention in your life? If yes, what do you think are some of the things that made you good at that for the folks that are listening?

If no, what are some of the experiences that you had that? that made you be shy or scared or not the best of that. Rickin? I am getting better at it. I think when I think of accountability in terms of a group, it puts me back into putting pressure myself sometimes because I've shared this whole thing and then I'm already putting enough pressure myself.

I don't need like a bunch of other people also wondering about where I'm at in it and checking in. What about asking for help? So that's, yeah, that's where it's useful for me to use a group. if I'm stuck somewhere in it, if I've lost my source of inspiration in it. A big one is going back to the whole frustration thing and the rigidity of thinking is where am I being rigid in my thinking and unwilling to admit that I'm wrong. And so doing that with people that I love and trust is incredibly helpful.

And for me, that's less about accountability, but more, can you help me reconnect to my core, the version of me that you truly know and that I know about you? And that's one of the best things about being with someone that you love and trust. At a biophysical level, you just remember who you are. You get really comfortable. You get back into this groove. And you're like, oh, there I am. And I'm not there when I'm in my head, just spiraling.

And then I'm hanging with, like, my friend Alex or someone. And I'm like, oh, there it is. Just his presence can help with that. But also then him reminding me of why it's exciting or asking interesting questions for me is really, really useful. More so than someone being like, you said, you wanted me checking with you on. February, are you there yet? That for me, I'm already doing it myself. It doesn't help. You mentioned that you're getting better at it. What made you, what has helped you get better at asking for help from other people when you feel stuck? It's kind of what the same thing that shifted

my perspective from goals more to intentions was when I was younger, I didn't have as much trust. And I'm sure a lot of young people feel this way. It's like, I kind of make this happen on my own. That's the way, that's the badass way to do it. I did it all of my. own and pretty much anyone who is pretty much pretty successful I found after a while it's a lie if they say they did it all in their own like again going back to acting one and a million people make it occurred to me at some point I need a million people to help me if I'm gonna make this and I am terrible at asking three people to help me and so I started getting a lot better of that because there was no

other pathway I also started to look back at some of the major accomplishments of my life all the really big ones I would love to say I accomplished them, but I didn't. A series of miracles happened. A series of people came out of the blue and said, yes. A casual conversation about one topic turned into this and helped me. And allowed me to feel more trusting of all the kind of cooperative forces around me. It's just I wasn't seeing a friendly universe. I was seeing one that was against me and I needed a spiral for a barrel forward and kind of not share anything. There are still instances sometimes where I'll share something and it's not received in the right way or maybe just

isn't quite hit, and that's why I'm a little more protective of who I share it with, and it takes a while sometimes early on. But I think overall, even with strangers now, it's much easier for me to presume trust, because I just look at the facts. Strangers have helped me throughout this entire thing, and that's the only way I can continue to expand in what I want. Mo, you want to jump in? Are you good at asking for help? Are you bad? Are you in between? What's made you bad? What's made you good? I think I used to be really bad at it. I used to shy away and be scared. It almost feel like I'm a, not a burden, but it just felt like I don't want to impose my issues and problems on someone else and take away from their time. But the more I thought about it and I've grown is, you know, everyone has these great resources we can leverage.

They're going to hold you accountable. And I can really learn from everyone and put their perspective. The more you help others, they're going to want to help you back. One example, I can think of that we all did as an MMT group a couple years ago as we did this push-up challenge. We all checked in on an app. We showed pictures. We were motoring each other. It was just really encouraging to do that as a group.

And it was exciting to, like, contribute to that and feel, like, good together and feel healthy together doing something that we wanted to accomplish. So I am now more proactive about asking for help and support, whereas I used to shy away. And to piggyback on that, because you and I went to college together, and we went to the business program at Berkeley, which is very competitive. And one of the reasons he's reminding me as I think about it is, it was also just sharing anything where I needed help felt like weakness. It felt like I am being weak. I need to pretend I got this all figured out on my own. And I think as I've grown more confident, just become a grown man.

It's much more like, again, I'm whole. I'm good. I'm complete. And I think sometimes I feel the smartest and the most confident when I'm asking the dumbest questions. I don't know what you're talking about. I really need help with that. Versus when I was young, I would try to ask no questions or really smart questions

to hide the fact that I felt really dumb and weak. And so I think it was hiding this feeling of feeling really weak, and I didn't want to be vulnerable. Antonio? I 100% know that feeling of feeling weak and not wanting to ask questions specifically early on in life, early on in my career, because I'd feel vulnerable in that moment.

And I felt like people would judge me if I didn't know the answer this question. So instead, I was quiet. I wouldn't share certain things. And at the end of the day, that only hurt me. It only hurt my progress. It only hurt my growth. I think when you go through some experiences at some point, you do realize I need support.

And just being willing to acknowledge, I can't do this by myself. And if I do, it's going to be like trudging up the hill carrying a big sack of rocks. And that's going to be extremely challenging. And, you know, in this day and age, I think accountability gets a bad rap because of the way we use it. And I agree with you that that person that's like, yo, it's February 1st. What's the deal, son? Like, get out, get out my text, son. I want to get out my text.

I'll let you know, right? March 1st, you're not my friend. Right, leave me alone. But the cool thing about man mourning when it comes to accountability, and this is a differentiator between, I'll say, coaching and consulting, one thing we're great at is calling people up versus calling people out to be the best versions of ourselves. I think accountability, especially if you look at a lot of the TikToks and Instagram vibe these days, it's accountability. Be tough, do this. Don't complain, et cetera. That's calling people out. When you have the right people in your life, the right people who are taking a call.

coaching approach who are willing to ask questions, they're calling you up. They're encouraging. They're inspiring you and pushing you in many ways to be the best version of yourself. And I find that when I ask for that advice of when I'm asking you, you and I talk so much about parenting stuff. It calls me up. And guess what? Most times you'll follow up with me. You'll follow. Hey, how is that going? How can I be of help? And that's just such a game changer for me, personally for someone who struggled for a long time to ask for help. It's such a beautiful distinction because one of the questions that we'll often ask in Manmourning is, you know, what are you navigating?

And navigating is, you know, there's sometimes treacherous waters. And sometimes we can't see exactly. We don't even know why we're stuck. We don't even know that we are stuck, but we just kind of feel it a little bit. And I think that just talking it out and even just acknowledging like, okay, what am I navigating this week. Yeah, you know what? It's kind of nuts. I wanted to make progress on this thing and I just really haven't, but also my wife's grandfather is sick and she's been sick and then our kids are going through this and that and you connect on a human level where you get to see that,

man, if I was going through that same thing right now, I also wouldn't make progress on my fitness. I also wouldn't make progress on this area. So it's an opportunity to open up with somebody else about what are the things that are going on in life that even if you say you want to make progress in a goal are something that could temporarily take you away from that and for often good reasons. And Drew, to go back to you with the same question, because, I mean, have you found yourself getting better with that? Because I remember like 10 years ago when I would talk to you, as opposed to now, 10 years ago, you were just always the guy that I would go to and many people would go to share what was going on. You'd always have great guidance and perspective and new how to connect us with.

but I didn't get to hear a lot about what you were going through. And I feel like now I hear a lot more of that. And I don't know if it's just because our friendship is evolved or you've gotten better at that. I wonder what your journey is with that kind of stuff. I feel like I've been blessed on a family level because that support system for me was always my sisters. Okay. And we've always been like best friends.

Yeah. And so both my sisters, one older, one younger, they're kind of like my kind of core confidants. We talk like multiple times in the day. I'm very fortunate. We all work together as well too. We're all very close. We live in now the same geographic region after many years living kind of like one, one coast

or another. So I've always felt intrinsically like I had that through my family. And I didn't have a lot of needs. Where I would say I had my own shortcomings is that when it would come to business and stepping into this place of, you know, school, we've all shared it before, drives this mentality that it's you having to move things forward. In fact, things are changing a little bit. but in general, you're not really encouraged to really work on necessarily group projects

unless it's specifically designated. You're not really encouraged to come up with group answers to things. And if you look at the world of business and you look at real life, everything is group. Everything is team and everything is everybody collaborating together. And for the longest time, I had this idea that I felt like a little bit of a fraud in the world of business. my pursuit and business was never to make money or to grow a big business. Business was actually an excuse for me to spend time with my friends and family. I was like, wow, if I start a company and I become good as an entrepreneur,

that means I can just hang out with the people that I want to hang out with. Amazing. I'm going to get good at this thing and call myself an entrepreneur because I care about that. But the back end of that was I felt like a little bit of a fraud that when I would achieve success and build businesses up and I've built many, there would be part of me that felt like, oh, you're not a real entrepreneur. That just kind of like happened on accident. What that led to is that when I would have tasks or have an assignment or wanting to bring

on somebody to offload work for me, I feel a little bit through this complex of why can't you handle it? Right. Why can't you do it on your own? Are you not a real entrepreneur? Are you not a real thing? And it's like, dude, you're creating opportunity for other people. Literally hiring somebody else is creating an opportunity, hand it off to them.

You don't have to do it all. And obviously that all just came from like fear, ego and, you know, other things. And probably also hearing other examples. I feel like the barons of industry from the past and even some people now like to claim they did it all on their own. That's the kind of entrepreneur I am and leave out all the many, many people who helped them and didn't have the approach you have. But I love what you said about. It just happened by accident. Anytime success happens, it's by accident.

Yeah. Because that's my old mentality. I think for a lot of people that I have to do it on my own. And when it happens, so many people helped you or it happened out of your control that you're like, that must have been by accident. That wasn't me. That was a fluke. And over time, I've realized, yeah, it all happens by accident because you only are 50% of the equation. You bring your intention and the best version of yourself.

And then all these accidental forces come to help you. And I think that means you're doing it right. Yeah. That's perfect setup for this next question here on sort of our year and review setting us up for putting an intention on whatever we want to. So we asked the first question earlier. We said, what's something tougher challenging that you accomplished? I said the month of December, but let's zoom out on this next one because it goes right into this core point that Antonio got us started on, which is what something, no matter how big

or small, what something someone did to support you this year that really meant something to you. No matter how big or small, what something someone did for you this year to support you that really meant something. Antonio. It's hard to say someone. I have to say people. Go for it.

Because, hey, man, it's all about the man morning group. You know, you know what you guys did. I get emotionally even thinking about it. We, I don't think we've talked about this publicly. We were able to take all of us, this mangrove morning group, the vast majority of us, this amazing international trip together to Italy, right, with our families. And, man, I got to say at this stage of life, though, you know, we've been blessed, the family, I've worked hard, we've had some great journeys

and adventures. I didn't think at this stage of the game, I'd be taking, you know, international adventures with my family, staying in these amazing places, you know, working so hard with, you know, what we've done. And without this man morning group, that never would have happened. Like, it wouldn't have been on the calendar, it wouldn't have been on the outlook to say to think big enough, going back. We always talk to think about, we want to think big for ourselves, but sometimes you need people around you that are thinking bigger for you in many ways. That wasn't on my calendar, man, for us to take this amazing international adventure that was, as much as it was amazing with all of you individuals, man, it was such a game changer for my family, man.

It created this, look at these tears coming down. It created such a profound connection. It created this new neural pathway of what can be. And it wasn't just about the trip. And we could have went to Cleveland. No, I don't want to go to Cleveland. I love y'all, Cleveland. But it created something new. It like it opened. up something for me that previously didn't exist. It's like when they talk about, you know, breaking cycles, et cetera. It created something new for me. That man morning group did that. And that trip had so many ripple effects beyond just the trip. And I think back, we look at these photos often, you know, when I was six years old, I think the farthest I travel was probably

two hours away from my home state, right? So that was a game changer, man, that that's something profound. No, that was such a beautiful trip. And we were honored to be able to share it with you and your family. Yeah, man. That's great. Thank you for sharing that. Mo, anything for you that comes up? What's something someone did, no matter how big or small, to support you this year? Something that left, you know, an impact on you. I think I'll have to say my kids indirectly because there's just so much daily grind of a two-year-old and a five-year-old, and there's constant learnings every day that, and there's so much to look forward to. so much happens on a daily basis.

It's just like I can't even explain how much they mean to me and how much I'm learning from them as much as they learn from me. It's almost like we're both the teacher and the student in this example because there's so many lessons that I'm like putting myself out there and being vulnerable with them. And they're also teaching me how to be a better person, a better father, better parent. And also I have to let go at times and let them kind of

be able to do what they need to do. And I tend to have this, I want to control everything, kind of power. And I realize I need to let them go and have grit and be able to experience life and not do everything for them. So there's this constant battle and struggle and I'm still kind of evolving and dealing with it. But it's just something that I feel like it's going to be a lifelong journey until the kids are, who knows how old. That's beautiful. All right, Wrigan, you're up. What's something someone did for you to support you, no matter how big or small this year,

just something that comes to mind all on the topic of we don't accomplish things on our own and all on the topic of as we're reviewing the end of the year and getting up for next year, we are reminded that we have so much more support around us than most of us recognize. So anything come up for you? No, no one. I did it all in my own. It's a question I ask myself every day. At the beginning of meditation, I like ask five questions to myself.

But one of them is, what are three things that people did for me yesterday that they didn't have to? And this can be as simple as they picked up the phone. Because sometimes that's their job to pick up the phone. But they did. And it fills me with so much appreciation. And also reminds me of things I did for people. But the answer to that question is just my wife, Laura, over and over. In this past year, we had, after a challenging fertility struggle,

we had a son four months ago. But that made us, the struggle itself made us close, but then this past year just going through the whole pregnancy, being kind of quiet about it because we were nervous, having the kid going through those few months. She had every right to just make it about herself and to be like, I'm the mom, I'm stressed out, this is really hard, this whole process has been hard,

she gave the birth. And every single day, she's checking in on me, but not just checking in on me. She's doing my auditions with me. She is lifting me up when I'm low and actually listening to me. When I'm feeling great, she's humoring me because I can be a lot. And she's letting me go off on my rants and stories and jokes. And every single day when I ask this question, it's her.

And it doesn't feel like by default. It's just who she is. And it makes me emotional because she very much doesn't view me. And I don't view her this way as like a checklist, like the husband or the wife. It's like we're each other's everything and we are at our best when we are of service to each other and caring for each other. And she does so much stuff for me that I feel like is even beyond what I expected and I've never had in a relationship. And it's remarkable. And I know this is because it's coming from her heart that it still continues to feel special each time and makes me feel incredibly lucky.

So please sign me this clip so I can have her listen to this. I love it. Flip it out. Yeah. Be the husband of the year on social media. I'll chime in. And actually, I'm going to share something that I just shared right around Thanksgiving. I was kind of sending out some gratitude and things like that.

And I was messaging with a couple of the guys in the Man Morning group. So this is a little related to this. You know, Man Morning is something that started about seven years ago-ish, roughly, like 2015, somewhere around there. And it was a group of guys that all kind of had moved to, actually even maybe started a little bit before that, moved to L.A. the same time, kind of kept in touch, and we're like, hey, wouldn't it be great if we could meet up once a week and just talk about what's going on in life? And when we originally started it, didn't even really have a name. It just was a thing that we did. Let's get a hike together. In fact, some of the first ones we had, it was kind of mixed. It was some women, some men.

And then a group of guys just regularly showed up. And I don't remember who it was. It might have been our buddy Nerov, who's in Austin, Texas now. I was like, huh, this is like our man morning. He was going through the week and he was naming, oh, Sunday is my fun day to do this. This is my day to that. He's like, oh, Thursday is man morning Thursday, right? And then it was like, wow, this is a thing. Let's make it a thing. And the more that we talked about it,

and now Antonio running with it, man morning newsletter and everything like that, we'll link to it inside of the show notes, tell everybody how they could subscribe. It's anytime you talk about it, it's something that people say, I wish I had that. I wish my husband had that.

We hear a lot of that. And, wow, it's a really beautiful thing. Even if people do have a really good friend group, if more people had access to something like this, the world would be a better place. But even for our own group, that was really tight-knit, about during the pandemic, we had a few kind of core people ended up moving and things like that to create a better situation for their family. A few people moved to, you know, Florida, Texas, et cetera.

And our group lost a little momentum for a little while. You know, we had a lot of people that were busy, they were focused on stuff. L.A. in particular was really strict with a lot of the COVID situation that was happening. So it wasn't the easiest people had COVID in and now we weren't getting together. And then we ended up kind of bringing in some new blood into the group. And Rickin, you joined recently. Thank you for that. Yeah, they call me new blood.

Young blood. Young blood. Old heads. But there's one gentleman in particular, Mark Mayeujas, who joined in and also probably because of life stage that he's at. You know, Mark is in his mid-50s. He's quite established. you know, his kids are older, one's about to go into high school, the next one's going into college.

He also has a lot of free time. And in that free time, he was so gun-ho about getting us all together. He was the first person to respond and say, I'm there to show up this week. He was the first person to say, let's do a group dinner together after us not having done a dinner a little while. And it just sometimes takes one person and a little bit of momentum that that person brings to the table to create a little bit of new energy. And since that time period, I just feel like our entire group is, been on fire. So something as simple as that, you know, relationships for me bring me so much joy in life. In fact, everything I do, including becoming an entrepreneur, really has been the motivation for

relationship. How do I spend more time with the people in life that I care about? Because I feel like life is so short. Let me maximize it by spending my work time and my hobby time with people that I actually care about. So for somebody to actually go out of their way, trust inside of the group and put in some energy and reignite it, that was like a huge, such a small thing, but such a huge thing. And I did share that love with Mark, but we'll also clip this too and put it on social media as well. I mean, brother to him to be the new guy and be like, I'm going to be the engine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a tiny little bit of energy. All right, guys, on the topic of goal setting, we're going to go back to some of the core goal setting aspects here. Now that we've kind of gone through these

three questions here, what is some bad advice that you see? see out there in the world of goal setting. Is there anything that's out there that you'd like to either put an asterisk next to? We've already talked about a couple big ones, but you can elaborate on in your own way. Number one, people don't do it all by themselves, right? Which naturally means, you know, get support, find your group, find your community that can help you on your pursuit of whatever you want to achieve in life. Is there something else that's out there that you see in the zeitgeist? It's on social media. It's on the podcast. It's kind of like that quick, easy. thing for people to say, and it usually kicks into gear when January 1 comes around and people

like hyper-focus on that. Antonio, anything come to mind of something that you want to highlight that you think is not the best advice or maybe flat out bad advice when it comes to goal setting. I think this notion, this ongoing advice of more is better. It's always about more and more, more 10x this, make more money, get bigger muscles. All those things may be important for certain individuals. It's not necessarily bad advice for everyone by no means. One thing I don't think we talk about enough when it comes to goal setting is reducing what we need to remove from our lives.

As human beings, a lot of us have so many, you know, quote unquote, apps open in our life. Our lives can kind of be like a computer operating system. We have all these different apps open from a business perspective, from a personal perspective, et cetera. And what that leads to that this more and more and more is a slowing of our internal. processing speed, if you will, and that can lead to crashes. That can lead to, I think, what burning out looks like. So this whole notion of doing more and more and more, max it out, et cetera, I think I'd love to hear the message more of what can we subtract. Sometimes the more we subtract, actually the better our outcomes are going to be. I love it. I love it. One of my

favorite books on that topic is a book by a gentleman in the real estate game, Gary Keller, and the book is called The One Thing, or sorry, one thing. And it talks about the physics of dominoes in the opening of the book. And the idea is that a domino that's like a half inch tall has enough mass and inertia that when it falls over, it can knock over a domino that's about double its size. And even though that seems really small when you have dominoes that are like tiny, like starting off at a half inch, when you get to, I think, like 32 or 36 dominoes somewhere around there, like you're at the, you're like at the height of like the empire state building or

something crazy, right? Like when you double all that way. And the book makes the argument for that it asks this sort of question inside of the book. What should I give my love and attention to in this main category of life that I care about? Let's say relationship, business, personal fitness. What can I give my love and attention to? That's such by focusing on it or accomplishing it, it will make everything else in my life easier or unnecessary. And there's so much that we do that often is the culmination of having all the different goals in the basket, as Antonio was saying. But sometimes it's that one simple thing that if we did that, even if it's in an area of our life,

like a lot of times people listen to this podcast and they want to get better and improve their diet. They want to lose weight. Sometimes the best way for them to make steps in that direction is actually just improve their sleep. If they just focus on their sleep or if they're just focus on their sleep or if they're they don't have a best friend, they just found that best friend and they started going on a daily walk with them, that's going to more likely take them closer to their goals because they're

going to have more resilience that's there for them. Mohe, anything for you that comes up, any pieces of advice that are out there that you want to flag as potentially not being great advice or even being bad advice when it comes to goal setting. Yeah, this is more of a cultural thought, but this idea of instant gratification, I think, has become really popular with, you know, just like Netflix. You can get media on demand. Social media, you have instant subscribe to like all this content. You can order DoorDash or Uber and get food right away.

So there's this like instant gratification aspect. If you see people posting, you know, six-pack abs or a house or a car, whatever it is, you're not really seeing the hustle behind it, the steps that it took to get there. And you're just seeing this after effect. So I think there's got to be a little bit more emphasis. on what were people's journey to get to that level and not just be so influenced by just this last step. There's a lot of progress that had to be taken forward before that to get to where they are. And so I think that's where I would love to see more emphasis on. Makes me think about don't

compare like your day 15 to someone's day 787. We're in such different places and that comparison game is a dangerous one. Rickin, anything come up for you? Yeah, I got two. One is optimizing your goals. Like I see a lot of my friends and people I've coached, they want the perfect goal before they even start. Or there's so many things in front of them and they become paralyzed by that and they get lost in this paralysis by analysis where they're like, I need to know my perfect goal that's perfectly optimizing,

know which is the best of all my options before I even begin because otherwise I'll be using my resources inefficiently. I think that just sets you for failure. and it's a form of just, it's a way to push it off. I think it's easier sometimes. I think it's important to have clarity on what you want, but to understand that it doesn't always, it isn't always there from day one.

Sometimes you just have a good feeling about the direction you want to go in. And starting in that direction helps you to gain more clarity as you go along. And it's okay to go in that direction of just, I want to be more fit as opposed to I have to have this set. And this is the most important of all my goals of prioritizing. That's number one. Number two, is this idea that if you don't achieve your goals, and sometimes I see this on like harsher social

media accounts, is that you are the problem. You are the problem. I'll hear this sometimes. You didn't get it done. Here's the things you need to fix about you. I think it's true probably that you did some things or there are some actions you're taking that are misaligned. But I think these easy fix ones, and it's usually a guy with the six-pack abs, is pointing at you and yelling at you about why you're the problem and what's wrong with you. And then it's game over. And he's hiding all the things that are potentially he's not doing or that he may feel is wrong about him.

And so blaming the person as opposed to the actions they're taking when it comes to goals is a reason to blows the whole thing up because it makes it so personal. And I know some people that works for like, I don't know if you saw the Bulls documentary with Michael Jordan. And every five minutes, it'd be like, that's when I took it personal. and that would like fuel him forward.

That wouldn't work for me. That would make me miserable and make me terrible to be around. I think it's better to step back and look at it. You know, these are things that are happening. I don't need to take it personally that it's not working out. And I think it makes me more valuable. Michael Jordan just took this personally when you called it the Bulls documentary with Michael Jordan versus the Michael Jordan documentary that featured the Bulls.

He's like, I'm going to find that rickin. Come at me, bro. Well, I'll toss in one on my end, which kind of sets. it's up for the next conversation. I don't think we talk enough about the importance of positively tapping into fear to support our goals in the short term. You know, in the Buddhist tradition, there literally is a meditation. I remember learning it when I was younger.

Where they will have you meditate on things that you're fearful of. In particular, there's one, I forgot the Buddhist translation for it, but there's a death meditation. Yeah, I've done that. It's changed my life. And meditating on your death and you're impending, impending return to the earth as ashes, there's something, as morbid as it sounds, there's something really beautiful about that. When you realize how small life is, I don't even like to say short, because there's plenty of times where life feels long, but life is small. And when you forget how small life is, you lose perspective. So I'm a huge fan of how can I tap into some element of fear or morbidity around a particular thing that maybe I'm giving a disproportionate energy to and I've lost perspective on it.

So let's say I'm trying to put together a business deal or I'm trying to renegotiate my relationship with my business partner. and it's not going exactly the way I want to. It's not his fault or my fault, but we're kind of both just stuck into this thing, and I'm feeling like a little bit stressed at it. Even the idea of sitting down for a second, just kind of like closing my eyes and just thinking, like, what would it look like if I...

Actually, let me even take a step back. Let me take a step back for a better example. I have this reoccurring dream. I've shared this before at Man Morning. It happens like three to four times a year. And that reoccurring dream is that I'm back in high school and that I am in like, usually trigonometry or like calculus class. I hate, you know, math at that level.

And I'm stuck and I feel like, man, like if I could only leave school and do my thing, but not only that, I've been held back. Right. So all my friends that I know have moved on, they've all graduated. And I'm like an older version of me and I'm sitting in class and I'm like going through the hallway and like I'm there. But about midway through the dream or towards the end, I have this realization that like, oh, shit, I'm dreaming.

And I step into kind of lucid dreaming. I'm like, oh, wow, I'm dreaming, but I know that I'm dreaming. And like, I'm waking up instead of the dream. And I'm like, wait, I'm not in high school right now. Like, I finished high school. Like, where am I now? And in the dream, I start recognizing like, oh, I'm Drew now. Like, I've built a business.

I have a wife. I have this. I have this great relationship with my family. And I wake up, usually a few minutes. later after realizing that I'm dreaming. And I feel so fired up that day because I'm like, I feel so excited for the life that I have. And when I step into the power of death meditation, when I step into the power of even in college, I used to meditate on the idea of like, I was afraid, okay, what if I go down the entrepreneurial path? It doesn't work out. And I was

talking to a coach about at a time. It doesn't work out. And it was like, okay, and then what? And then I have to go, you know, moving with my parents. Okay. And then what? You're not successful. You don't make progress. And then what? Then I get kicked out of the house. Okay.

And then what? Ultimately it comes to it. And then I get die alone and I'm homeless or whatever. But actually like meditating on it and thinking about it and imagining yourself in all those steps. As crazy as it sounds, each one of those situations, you look at it and you're like, okay, I can handle this. Right?

It's not that bad. As crazy as that sounds, right? Easy for somebody for me to say who's not been in that situation. but you're meditating on it. You're like, first of all, I would never let it to get to that situation. But second of all, it's not that bad. So when you think about those things or in some instances, it is bad and I don't want that thing.

And that can be a motivating factor too. So my whole off this tangent, which had a lot of different thoughts and ideas, which are all meshed up together, I don't think that we use the power of fear enough and tap into it as a short-term motivator to get us back on track for the things that we care about in life. And I think it gives you so much clarity. Like I've done that death meditation. The first time I did it was life altering for me. And I do it a few times a year because you get that clarity about like, oh, I am so stressed about the wrong things.

These are things I would not care about at all if I were dead. But it also ties back to what I was saying earlier. You ask what are some of the exercises I used to remove need. And it's pretty much exactly what you said. It's I think of how bad this would go and kind of all the worst things that would happen, feel that fear, how bad it would. would be. When I was working a corporate job out of college for four or five years and I was terrified to leave, I finally sat down and I realized I am living my life to avoid an outcome. I'm moving basically running away from an outcome instead of moving towards what I want. And the reason

I'm doing that is there's this fear that I don't want to feel of what would happen if I quit and everything went to hell. So I felt that. I wrote that I was terrible thing to do and then I, for several days, meditated on it until it started to feel like you said, a little more neutral and it gave me this clarity. Once that kind of passed, I was able to move towards what I want. And I think that ties well to this whole goal setting topic. Sometimes you need to actually sit down and be like, what is the thing that I'm really scared to feel?

I can feel all those feelings, and that frees up my brain, my mind, my spirit, to then move towards what I want instead of constantly running away from this feeling. You know, I'd love to throw it to you guys next about this, but I want to clarify one thing I said. I was kind of talking about fear both as a positive, and a negative in kind of one example. And I think what would be helpful,

I'll just extrapolate a little bit off of what I said because 100% I agree with what you were saying, Rickin. And here's a practical example where I've used fear in a positive outcome of something that I just did not want to have happen. I was meditating on the idea when I first moved out to California in like 2012. And I was really focused on achieving

in my own life, my own goals, and getting situated, which, of course, I should have been at the time. But I went through this process where I was thinking about what really matters to me in life. And I did a little sort of fear meditation on the idea of, if you guys haven't seen it, there's this beautiful article. It wasn't written at this time, but later on I came and discovered it. It's called The End Tale. And it's by the website, Wait, But Why.

Right? And it basically shows you how much time in life do you have left? and it's written from the perspective of a young man who the guy Tim Urban, I think his name is, on Instagram and the blog, is like, how much time do you really have left with your parents? Right. So let's say that you live away from your parents. First of all, the vast majority of time that you have with your parents, if you want to spend time with them, happens before you move out of the house, right? Then in terms of actual time that you get with your parents, if you look at it and if you did a 90-year journey of a human being,

if we're so lucky to live that long or 80 years, you'll see that you're in the last entail of your time with your parents. And I feel like I have a really beautiful relationship with my parents. And I had to work hard for it to get to that place. But I had this recognition of, wow, what if I only had like, you know, 15 more summers with my parents? And that really just means a week that we have together. And that's when I got really clear, like, wow,

I actually really. really would love if my parents would move to Southern California and let me do what I need to do to support them in that process to move out here as long as they're okay and they're comfortable with it. So I used fear in that time of like, wow, what would my life look like if I didn't have that time and that quality time to have with them as a motivator to help me achieve in the goal? And I didn't force them. You know, it's something that they wanted to and it ultimately ended up happening. So that's a positive outcome of using fear of, yeah, I wouldn't want this outcome.

and there's other times where I've used it as a neutralizer, as you've mentioned, where I've gotten rid of fear that didn't need to be there in perspective. Antonio, what about you? What are your thoughts about fear and goal setting? I think something's really come up for me as you two were talking. One, I think the meditation on fear is beautiful. I think, unfortunately, something we don't do enough. And I think for folks listening, this could be a great exercise for folks.

If you happen to not be a meditative, that's not your jam. I think when these fears, when that angst, when anxiety, certain things show up. I think something we can do is write those things down. We need to get these things out of our head. A lot of people will call it our crazy. Those fears, once we get them on paper, something magical can happen to your point, Drew, and then what? And then what? We'll realize that in some shape or form we're going to be okay. Everything's going to work out. But unfortunately, the vast majority of us, we just keep those things bottled up in our head. We don't share them with other people. But once we create an outlet, a release for those, whether it's meditation, whether that's

therapy, whether that's writing, getting it on paper, it's kind of like a release valve, if you will. It's kind of like when you shake up a can of soda and you gently let the air out and I think that opens up something for us. Or if we don't do that, it's going to lead to some potentially some harsh outcomes or some decisions that we're going to have to make that we don't want to make. But because we're unwilling to make decisions or confront certain things, they're going to pop up for us regardless. Mo, anything for you that comes up on the topic? Yeah, I think fear for me, I would just use as a motivator to make sure what I do fear doesn't actually come true.

So, for example, I recently pivoted into more of a real estate development role, and it's my first time building something from the ground up. And I just had all these fears and doubts of like what all the worst things could happen in this scenario, and I made sure I showed up every day to make sure those things don't happen. So I'm really leveraging that fear in my mind to make sure that those worst outcomes are far, far away and learning the process, going through it day in and day out, and putting in the work and the intention to really as a motivator. And, you know, knocking wood so far, so good.

But still struggling, still going through it. And I'm leveraging that fear in that way. Yeah, I mentioned Andrew Huberman's podcast on this topic. One other takeaway from that episode was fear as a short-term motivator of what you don't want to have happen is the number one motivator for goals. It's the number one thing that moves the needle forward. Now, that can always be taken out of context. Like we talked about school and the fear of doing bad on a test, you don't get into the right grades, you don't get into right school, that sort of situation. But we can use it to our positive advantage when we have the right tools to help us

de-stress and instead say, wow, if I don't actually make progress on this, I might likely end up with the chronic disease or I might likely end up, Rick and you and I were talking about the importance of strength training and how there might be a period of time where we were more focused on it in life and now we're getting refocused on it. And I was telling you the motivation that I had was I had a friend of mine, Dr. Gabriel Lyon on this podcast and she was sharing how much tougher it is as we get into our 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, as we get older, how much tougher it is to maintain muscle mass if you don't have a strong practice that's there. And just hearing that and it was right around my 40th birthday and we were all about to go to Italy,

I was like, it just clicked. It clicked in a way that it hadn't clicked before. And I was like, oh, I don't want that. I've seen plenty of older folks who even might be semi-active, but they trip and fall and they break their hip. And that leads to a whole series of cascading events. So yeah, just a little thought on that topic. All right, gentlemen, as we wind down over here, anything else on the topic of goal setting,

anybody wants to get a chance to go into Antonio? Yeah, you mentioned something earlier about the exercise that you do where you'll go through each month and kind of analyze what happened during those months, the good, the bad, the ugly, if you will. I think in many ways, I'm curious your perspective on this. I think our calendar many ways daily, monthly, weekly, etc., reflects our goals. So I'm curious as you're putting together your weekly calendar, your daily calendar, or do you attach that to your goals and outcomes you want? I would do it typically on a quarterly level.

These are the things that I want to make progress on this quarter in different buckets and areas of life. I think that one thing that's important is there's all sorts of different types of people. There's been periods of time, just like everybody here, where I've been incredibly focused about writing every goal down on paper. And then I've done the opposite and I've done nothing. Now it's kind of a little bit of a hybrid that sometimes, like in my business, I write down very specific goals of places that I want to get to, maybe a net profit or Ibida that we want to get a

chance to hit. But I don't put that pressure on my team. This is just sort of like a goal, a forecast. Where do we want to go? Okay, great. What projects will take me in that direction? In that same way, I kind of do the same thing for my personal life. You know, what are the things that I want to make progress on this year? Okay, what aspects of my health? I mentioned strength training. Okay, great. I haven't been great at that in the past. What kind of support system that I do I need to create? What kind of plan? What kind of system? Who can I talk to that's actually made progress in this area that I can learn from? So I'll do it on like a quarterly basis. And then what I've learned from reading the book, the one thing, is that I do best and everybody's different.

I can only really have two kind of main priorities, like active goals that I'm working on. If I have more than that, if I have two main active ones, yes, of course I want to be a loving husband. Yes, I want to show up with my family. I want to do other things there. You know, those components will be at the top of my priority list, but there may not necessarily be a goal that I'm trying to hit inside of them. Or there might be. There was a period of time where I was moving my parents out here. Where's a period of time where I maybe am going through therapy with a family member. There might be a very specific goal. But I can only really have like one or two main things that I'm focused on. For me right now, it's actually my personal fitness and the podcast

actually. I really want to increase output. I want to have more fun conversations like this that are on there. And those two things are getting a lot of my love and attention right now. And then we didn't really get a chance to talk about this. But if I had a place in life where that goal no longer speaks to to me, I'm totally okay getting a chance to either quit or create a new version of this. I think that one people think one thing that people do is they hold on to goals that were the old version of themselves and they're scared to let it go yeah and speaking about books on this topic one of my favorite books on the topic of quitting goals is the dip by set goden it's a book about when to stick and it's a book about when to quit and the core essence is most of us would be better off

setting more goals in our life or intentions but quitting earlier when you're when we realize that we don't either have what it takes to fit this in as a priority right now, or it's not actually something that we care about right now at the moment. So that's what comes up for me. I'm not sure if that answers a question. It does. Thank you. Yeah.

I use my calendar in a really silly way to tie it to goals, and it's embarrassing to look at my calendar. No one can look at it. But I'm very emotion-driven, and I want to connect to the why is of why I want to do this thing. And so I'll often label things in my calendar however I want it to feel. So if I have to coach someone that I'm nervous to coach because he's pretty prestigious, I'll put in my calendar as kick it with Eric instead of coach Eric. Or if it's my mom and I'm nervous about something that's going to happen, I'll change it to from 4 to 7 on Saturday.

That calendar thing is make mom laugh. Or we just moved houses and I labeled the whole thing because I hate moving strength training. And so this is just a fun way to put things into my calendar and keep me aligned to how I want it to feel. That's great. For me, just real quick, the calendar I use on a daily basis, and it's the first thing I look at when I wake up, basically, and the last thing I look before I go to sleep. So I do have a reminder, a daily kind of calendar entry of whether it's water or just sleeping enough, just my core basic goals. Because I feel like there's so much content, text, emails, everything's being driven up. There's too much to remember.

I just need to see it every day and be bombarded with it to the point that, oh, yeah, I need to do that. and I'm going to get it done. So for me, it's bombardment. Put it in my face because I need to see it more often. This brings up a really great question as we conclude here. What are one or two non-negotiables for each of you, just on a weekly level, that you hit those for you, anything that you want to give love and attention to that week,

whether it's personal, business, family, whatever, fitness, you're just going to be that much more successful. So one or two things that are habits, calendar, events, whatever it might be, that if they happen and if they're on the calendar, you're going to be more successful overall. Antonio? If I don't sweat, I'm not a happy person. I'm not fun to be around. I'm not enjoyable. I don't feel good in my body. So sweating, working out with something that's critical for me pretty much on a, on an absolutely, on a daily basis. So number one, sweating. That's just critical. I know it benefits me in so many ways beyond just what it does

physically. Second, that family time. Like I love knowing that on my calendar. We have like, you know, family movie night or family game night a couple times a week. We have fun things like Meatball Monday and Waffle Wednesday and Pancake Sunday and having those things look forward to on the calendar. It creates this fun dynamic for the family. So that family time and getting the sweats in. Love it. Rickin? They're not on the calendar, but they're the kind of the cornerstones. One is just meditation at least. That one's for you. 30 minutes at some point in the first half of the day. Hopefully first thing in the morning, but with a newborn, it's nearly impossible. That is the cornerstone for everything else. If I do that, everything else kind of comes out of it.

And then the second thing is on the family line, just fun with family instead of a whole day of just talking about the baby or talking about all the things we need to do, making Laura laugh, making the baby laugh, laughing with her. Those two things, I mean, talking about death meditation. If I die, those are the two things I did. I think they would make me feel pretty fulfilled. Yeah. Mo, you kind of answered it a little bit with you talking about your calendar, but anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I guess the main. main thing for me is having community and adventure. So whether it's date nights with my wife or doing things with family on the weekends or even just our MMT crew Thursday mornings, I really thrive

and do best when I have that engagement with other people. And I really need that to like keep me sane and whole. And I think that was really challenging for a lot of people during COVID was they were kind of stuck and isolated and they didn't have that outlet. So for me personally, that is something I need on a daily basis. Yeah. For me, I would agree with what Mo had said. Relationships are the core driver for me. And even though I feel much better when I work out,

like I could go, the honest truth is I've gone and I can go a week without sort of heavier workouts or sweating or other stuff like that and still be pretty operational. I could do a lot without a lot of different things. But I really need and thrive off of meaningful conversations. with people. And when I have that on a weekly basis, I have enough perspective in all other areas of my life to show up the best that I need to. So I appreciate the fact that all the guys here and all the guys that aren't, you know, are part of this crew that we have that makes it a regular habit for ourselves of getting together every week and talking about what's going on in life

to help us all reset and give a little bit of perspective. Gentlemen, this has been fantastic. People want to keep a good thing. People want to keep touch with you. If you want to put out your social or anything else like that, Rickon, how can people follow you in your work? Google me, baby. It's just my name, Rick and Vasani on socials. And if it's entertainment related, you probably already know how to find me. So, yeah, just Google me. I'm going to toss in one more thing because I don't think we talked about the last question that we had on here. Where can people keep in touch with you? But also, if you can answer, what's something I did to support someone else?

Yeah. So we already talked about the first one. What's something tougher challenging I accomplished? We talked about the second one. What's something someone did for me, no matter how big or small? So what about this one? What's something I did for someone else, no matter how big or small, that left them with a little bit of an impact?

Well, since I'm looking at you showing up here, I'm really excited you're doing this. And I know this has been a long-term dream of yours. and yeah, to get to show up and have Laura watch the baby, even though it's her second week back from maternity, was a little bit. But I really wanted to do this, and I was excited to be here. And that's something I'm grateful I could do for and with you. Yeah, thank you, brother.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Mo. So something that my wife, Shafali, has mentioned, ever since she's kind of moved away from New York, is she wants to be more involved in Indian culture, specifically dancing because she grew up doing a traditional Indian dance. And so I've been trying to rack my brains to like really give her that experience because I know she misses a lot. It's

important to her. She wants to keep doing it. So we recently went to her Garba a couple months ago with the kids. Indian traditional dance. Indian traditional dance. And they just threw out Garba like everybody knows what he's talking about. I'm like nod of my head. Like what are he talking about? You don't know? And the kids saw mom dancing and that was just like an amazing experience. We got there emotions and on video and just to have more experiences like that to really connect back to culture and heritage and with the kids I think is going to be a beautiful thing. So that's something I'm trying to push more on next year is like really bring her feeling of, you know, connecting back to the culture and heritage with the kids in more alignment. Love it. Antonio.

Yeah, I mean, thanks. Something you mentioned with Mad Morning with communities, how many people when they read about it, whether it's in my book, they hear about it on your show is one, they want to know where they can find a community like this. You know, women say I want my boyfriend or my husband to experience this. And for me, part of that of creating the Manorning Newsletter was exactly that to create a place where growth-minded men who really want to wake up with a greater sense of purpose and community, they have somewhere they can tune in and they can get that. And so, of course, there are different things I do for the family, wife, etc.

But I want to create that outlet for men to tune into that. So the manmourning.com community is a big one. Love man. Yeah, please sign up. Get your husband to sign up. Get your boyfriend to sign up. Brother, whatever it might be. Cousin.

Cousin. Uncle. Uncle. Boss. Nephew. I think not only start it, but sign up, but start one. Yeah. There's also a guide on the website on how you can start your own little man morning group if you want to.

That's it. Which a bunch of people have done. Yeah. Gentlemen, I want to thank you guys all for hopping on the podcast. I'm excited to make this one. more of a regular thing and get a chance for the world to hear a little bit about some of the conversations we all have on our weekly meetup. Appreciate you all. Thank you. Thank you.