Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Motivation Monday: Why the Law of Large Numbers > Luck

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter!

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, thinner,, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean sexy strong and healthy bodies they truly desire and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body then you want to read thinner leaner stronger today which you

can find on all major online retailers like audibleudible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audiobook 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audiobooks. I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to www.bitly.com slash free TLS book. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to thinner,

leaner, stronger for free. All righty. That is enough shameless plugging for now. At least let's get to the show. Why? Hello there. This is Mike Matthews and it is Monday. So of course, I'm back with another episode of the podcast. And this is a Motivation Monday episode as per tradition. And that means a quote. So let's start with a quote from Dr. Jerry Jampolsky. He said that integrity is when your thoughts, your words, and your actions are all in alignment. I like that. I think that's a good, simple definition of personal integrity. All right. So in today's episode, what I want to talk to you about is why the law of large numbers is better than luck. Now, the law of large numbers is a theorem that states that the

average of a large number of trials should be close to the expected value. And in case you're not familiar with the term expected value, it means more or less what you would guess. It is the return that you can expect for some kind of action. For example, if you were to take a 20-question multiple-choice test with four options, A, B, C, D as the answers, and if you were to guess A on all of them, you could expect to get 25% right. You could expect to get 5 out of 20 of those questions right. And mathematically speaking, the formula for expected value is very simple. It's simply the probability of an event multiplied by the amount of times that the event

happens. Now, this is why, for example, if a casino loses money on a single spin of a roulette wheel, they're not concerned. They can rest easy knowing that the law of large numbers guarantees them a profit over time because, of course, the game is rigged in such a way that they make a slight mathematical the course of hundreds of thousands of spins, the lopsided nature of that game will manifest and a profit will be realized. This, of course, is why casinos will do just about anything to keep you there in the pits hooting and hollering. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it

on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Now, this fundamental mathematical truth isn't just for casinos and insurance companies. It actually has a very profound relevance to all of our lives because success in any field or endeavor is, in my opinion, little more than a function of the law of large numbers. In other words, in the game of life, you're the house and all you have to do is keep spinning the ball. However you spin it doesn't matter whether you spin it fast, slow, clockwise, counterclockwise, it's all the same. The advantage is yours and every spin racks up a small profit in your favor, regardless of whether it pays out immediately or not.

And in my experience, one of the things that really sets successful people apart from unsuccessful people isn't luck or the brilliance of their ideas, the people they know, or anything other than the will to keep the wheel spinning. You see, these people treat their businesses and their work like a numbers game, and they focus on what they can control, which is, of course, their actions. So, you know, the secret to making a bunch of sales, engage a lot of prospects, right? That's one of those sales management cliches is work out exactly how many calls you have to make to get into conversation with how many prospects and how many prospects you have to engage in conversation to make a sale. And then you go, cool. On average, I know that I will get one sale per X number of calls. And if I look at my time, I think I can make Y number of calls per day and therefore expect Z sales per day from my current system. Now, of course, you can make

a better system by improving things about how you were calling, but you can know mathematically what to expect. And of course, good sales managers do that not only with individual salespeople, but also with their sales teams and are constantly watching those numbers and trying to improve them. I think this also applies to more creative type of endeavors like building an app or writing a book. Create a lot of versions. Start with a minimum viable product, which is a very important concept. If you don't know what that is, read the book Lean Startup right now and iterate. Add one feature at a time, fix one bug at a time, write one word at a time, one page at a time every day. And the quality of this work almost doesn't matter. If you are relentless enough, the total spins is ultimately what counts. Quality is of secondary

importance. Yes, you would rather have high quality spins, but you can make up for a lack of quality in quantity. And you can also rest easy knowing that your technique will inevitably improve with repetition, whether you like it or not. I mean, I've experienced that firsthand with my writing. I look back at stuff I've written just a year ago and I'd say a year ago is okay. I read it and I'm like, eh, I could do better now. It's okay. Stuff I've written two years ago, I almost hate. In some cases, I don't even know. I was like, I wrote this actually. Wow, that's really bad. And that's not because I have been consciously trying to become a better writer. I've just done a lot of writing and I've done

a lot of reading since then, which also improves your writing and voila, progress. you're writing and voila, progress. So remember that botched presentations, horrendous bug and awful prose, it may not seem like progress and it can be very frustrating, but those spins count. You've actually already profited from them. You may not realize it yet, but you have. Now, I like this framework because it also teaches us to focus on the process, not the goals or dreams which are necessary, but in the scheme of things, not nearly as important as the system for achieving those goals and dreams. I pity the people that I know who lack the energy drive and will to just spin the wheel every day, spin it with vigor. And instead, these people, they spend an inordinate amount of time meditating on and calibrating this one magical world that they hope will make all their dreams come true, that they're

going to hit the jackpot on their first spin. And then in the end, they curse the gods and kick the table over when it doesn't happen. I also like this metaphor because it helps me discount luck and windfalls. I sit down every day and do the work that I know I need to do to keep the ball moving. And I do that confident in the knowledge that over time, I'm going to win. How big I'm going to win? Not sure. And that's where luck, I think, comes into play truly. I know these days it seems to be kind of trendy in the entrepreneur space to overplay the factor of luck and say that luck is the primary factor that drives success. And I understand some successful people probably like that it makes them look humble.

Some successful people probably like that it makes them look humble. And in some cases, there's truth. If I look at my own story, I would say the best bit of luck that immediately comes to mind is probably the timing of when I published Bigger Leaner Stronger. Because that was the absolute right book at the right time. And it really kind of took off like a rocket. I think that it was a good book that also explains why. And it gave real information that actually works. And therefore people did it, got results, and then talked to others about it, which in the end, that's what you really need to sell a lot of books is word of mouth.

And only a good book gets enough word of mouth to drive it to the top of bestseller lists. But the timing was right for that book. The marketplace was ripe for it because there was really nothing else like it. Now, there is not only Bigger Than You're Stronger, which for example, has over 3,500 reviews with like a 4.7 star average on Amazon. So good luck trying to compete with it. There are also a lot of other knockoff type books that people have published, which I understand. I mean, people think that it's very easy to make a lot of money with books and it's very

not easy. And so they will publish me too kind of stuff and then wonder why they don't make very many sales. But my point is, if I were to try to publish Bigger, Leaner, Stronger now, even if it didn't exist, if I try to publish it into the current marketplace, which is glutted with similar books, it probably wouldn't do as well. I do think I could do a much better job than a lot of these other people that have written similar books, but still there's a lot more noise in the space than there was a few years ago. So anyway, my point here is that I reject

the idea that you can chalk most of an entrepreneur's success up to luck. In some cases, that's true for sure. Some people that produce, let's say an app that just goes absolutely ape shit and they're just like, well, fuck, I win, I guess. Yeah, that's pretty lucky. But in most cases, that's just not how it goes. And I know you can argue that there are two forms of luck, right? So you can have positive things happen to you, which I would say in my own personal story, I've had a lot of small positive things happen. I wouldn't necessarily say that those were due to luck, though. I mean, there was a lot of work that has been done to generate a lot of these positive small things to happen. But I can't think of any major defining like, oh, yeah, Tom Brady started

tweeting about my stuff. And that was the beginning. Nothing like that. But there's also the type of luck which manifests in not having bad things happen. And that is obviously harder to argue against. Yes, I have definitely then gotten lucky to some degree in that way and that I haven't had anything catastrophic occur that just wiped me out of existence. But I have had some pretty major problems along the way, some major hurdles that I had to overcome. And so I would say in some ways I probably got kind of unlucky actually. And so to wrap this episode up before it turns into one of my hallmark ramble fests, here's what I want to leave you with. Don't put too much stock in immediate,

tangible success or failure, because often these things feel kind of random and out of our control, even if they are directly caused by things that we have done in the past, whether good or bad. When it lands on your plate, it can often be quite mysterious and leave you wondering how the hell that possibly happened. And that's why I like to look more into the future than worry about the present. I like to play the long game and place my faith in what I can control and know that the law of large numbers says that if I continue to do the right things every day, it will pay out eventually. There are going to be good days or going to be bad days. Sometimes it feels like you're making progress. Sometimes it

doesn't feel like you're making progress. And all of that stuff is fine, but don't get lost in the subjective. Try to remain focused on the objective. Are you doing the right things every day? Do you have a system that is likely to produce the outcomes that you want? If you do, then you just work the system and pay attention to the trends over time more than the day-to-day fluctuations. To use a fitness analogy, it's like weight. If you are going to pay attention to your body weight, let's say you're cutting or bulking or even maintaining, if you really want to keep an eye on your body weight when you're maintaining, I don't recommend that you weigh yourself every day and fret over every bump and dip.

Instead, weigh yourself every day and then look at the average every five to seven days and watch how that average changes. That tells you what's really happening with your weight. So you can apply that to philosophy to life, where if you're doing the right things, then the day-to-day results or the day-to-day experience shouldn't concern you as much as the average experience over time. How are things changing over time? Are they getting better? Are they getting worse? Are you moving closer to your goals or not? And if you are on a deadline, is it on the timeline that you want or not? At least that's how I try to think about not just my work, but really most areas of my life.

And it has definitely helped me maintain emotional balance, I guess you could say, and help me cope with situations that other people might find tremendously stressful. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their

way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in, so instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my fitness book for women, thinner, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire.

And if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read thinner, leaner, stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audio books. I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog and so forth into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to www.bitly.com slash free TLS book. And that will take you to Audible. And then you

just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for free.