The Bossticks - #72: Unleash The Power Within! - A Recap of a Tony Robbins Seminar, Taking Action, Fear, Focus, Fulfillment, and Taking Responsibility

Episode Date: July 25, 2017

On this Episode we recap our experience at Tony Robbin's (@tonyrobbins) Unleash The Power Within seminar. We dive into our biggest take aways from the event and discuss how we can apply these lessons to our lives and yours.  Some of the topics we tackle include: taking action, excuses, procrastination, our biggest fears, focus, fulfillment, astronaut syndrome, and taking responsibility for our emotions.  Connect with Tony Robbins Here Learn More About the UPW event Here Read Tony's Book Awaken The Giant Within  Big Thank you to Taylor Griggs (@sandandsequins) for setting us up with the event.  Connect with Lauryn Connect with Michael This Episode is brought to you by Canna-Pet Canna-Pet is an organic CBD supplement made from industrial hemp that is non-psychoactive, safe, legal and produced specifically for animals/pets. Canna-Pet is a holistic alternative to pharmaceuticals. It helps with things like arthritis, anxiety, inflammation, pain, allergies, seizures, vomiting, cancer and more. For healthy animals it can help with longevity like eating your vegetables. We use Canna-Pet with our chihuahua Pixy and it has helped her to recover from temporary paralysis and anxiety. We continue to use it to help with her arthritis and keep her calm.  USE PROMO CODE: PIXY at checkout for 50% off all purchases  

The following podcast is a Bostic media production. This episode is brought to you by Canapet. Okay, if you guys have listened to the last two episodes, you have heard about our Chihuahua, Pixie. She's 14 years old and she has major anxiety. It's really, really bad. She is, she does this, like, weird growl. You know what I'm talking about, Michael?

It's like kind of an undertone growl because she gets so jealous and her anxiety is so off the charts. So our neighbors who we used to live by watch Pixie and Boone when we're gone, and they have a new dog named Emma. And Pixie is so jealous. She's like, she's like a girl that just got out of a relationship and her ex-boyfriend has a new girlfriend. Like it's ridiculous. So we didn't know what to do. We were like, should we put her on doggy Xanax? What should we do? Should we take her to acupuncture? We tried a couple different things. And then one of our friends recommended at Canopet. So basically what Canopet is is it's an organic CBD supplement made from industrial hemp that's non-ps psychoactive, safe, legal, and produced specifically for animals.

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And for all this skinny confidential podcast listeners, the team at Canapet is giving 50% off when you use the promo code Pixie. That's P-I-X-Y, Pixie. So check out canopet.com and use promo code Pixie. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. I'm going to beans and lentils, so we can actually have a meal for once. Hi, guys.

We are back with the Skinny Confidential, him and her podcast. Back in action, ready to go in our prime states, primed up. We are primed up. I'm Lauren Everett, the creator of the Skinny Confidential, which is a blog, a brand, and a podcast, obviously. And I am Michael Bostic. I'm an entrepreneur, glorified mattress salesman, have a company called Jetbed, Internet Marketer,

trying to keep up with my beautiful wife on the other side of the table. Mala beadware. Malabedware. Just got some new Mala beads. Thank you for, who sent them again? Karo Mala. It's at C-A-R-O-M-A-L-A-S.

Thank you. What's her name? Is it Kara? I believe it's Kara. Kara, thank you for my Mala's. I feel good already wearing them. Lucky. Yeah, you look great.

Well, that's nothing new. I feel like the Mala is really like a good, theme for that we just got back from Tony Robbins. You're wearing your Mala. You did your oils last night. You're laying on your acupressure pillow. Fresh off the firebed, did the firewalk. Oh my God. Can we actually tell the real story I thought? Are you going to exaggerate? No, you know what? We'll get into that. But let's just say I actually didn't believe that it was real fire until I was on the fire. Then I found out that I was like, oh shit, I'm actually burning. We're going to tell the real story? But I was in my prime state. So everything's fine. I wouldn't have called that prime state. I was

jacked up. Okay. All right. So we have an episode that's going to break down the Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within Experience. For those of you who have not gone or have maybe gone and want to know the new version or want to go, we kind of want to break it down step by step, not preach at you, but just tell you what we experienced because I do feel like we learned a lot. And for those of you who don't know who Tony Robbins is, there's a machine now that we have. It's called Google. And if you haven't been living under a rock, you can use that to figure it out. But he's essentially, I don't want to, he doesn't call himself a guru or a self-help coach. He calls himself a strategist. And I'd say he's obviously at this point, probably one of the best in the biz. He's

helped people such as Oprah, Warren Buffett, he's helped a lot of big athletes. Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton. Steve Wynn. Steve Wynn. So the guy is a superstar in terms of coaching and And that's what I'd call him, a coach, right? He's strategist. Tell the audience, though, how much it is to work with him and what the wait list is like. Well, first of all, I have been charging way, way too little for my consulting business. Way too little. Michael, you're not Tony Robbins.

Apparently, because Jesus. So this guy, from what we heard, to get 12 hours with Uncle Tony. I can't when you call him Uncle Tony. I literally just can't. I want to stop the podcast. With Uncle T. is a million dollars, yes, one million dollars for 12 hours. That's almost $100,000 an hour, right? Think about that. And on top of that, it's a two-year wait list or maybe it's five years now. And then he takes a

percentage of the business moving forward. So it's pretty crazy. I've been charging way too little. I need to get up to that million dollar price point. And he only takes a part of the business, though, if your business grows, which he basically guarantees that it will. So Tony, if you're listening, call me. Yep, Tony, give me a call. Maybe give me a little price break. A little discount. Okay, Uncle T. A side note, me and Lauren, when we exercise, or Lauren and I, we run by his old house because he used to be a Delmar native out here. And so we run by the old Tony Robbins compound all the time. No, Michael. It's called the Delmar Castle. It's white and stucco and super chic at the top of Delmar, and we run by it. And he actually referenced the Delmar Castle multiple times while he was speaking

and the bears, which we like to go eat at after we run. Yeah, so basically me and Uncle Tony are like two peas in a pod. Well, you standing next to him was like twins. You were Danny DeVito and he was Arnold Schwarzenegger. So let's be real with that. Before we get started, though, I do want to say a huge thank you to the skinny confidential reader Taylor, who sent us to Tony Robbins and streamlined the whole experience. Her blog is called Sand and Sequins.

No one's paying you to say this. It's a very, very, very, very cute blog, and you guys should go check it out. And she's absolutely lovely. Such a bright light, radiated good energy. And I highly recommend you guys check her out, stalker. Connect with her if you're a blogger in San Diego. Collaborate with her. She's cool as fuck.

Yeah, we're super grateful because she set that whole thing up for us. I mean, we wouldn't have got to experience the event and gone there if she wouldn't have reached out and offered that. And it's crazy what you put out in the world. I think was it we were reading one of his books. she saw or how did that happen we watched him or listened to him on gary v because he was on gary v show and i think she saw that and she reached out and thought that we would like to go see him and by the way just another side note michael and i are constantly looking to improve ourselves and our business and refined business strategies so we definitely don't know it all um like we don't know a lot

in fact so to be able to experience something like this and bring it back and to showcase on the podcast is really special to us and something that will continue to do because the training never stops when you want an extraordinary life. Tony Robbins. That's true. And you know, when I heard him say that, that's kind of, you know, it really resonated with me because every, I think just to start this off, every stage in my life, no matter how much success or how much failure I've had, and every time you get to another level, I think for me, if I could point to one of the things that's kept me going and kept me moving forward is that I've constantly, no matter what looked to better myself. I've, you know, read or you're writing or you're working

on new business or you're working on a relationship. Like I think if you ever get to the point in your life, we're like, I'm good. I got this. I'm at the top. You better be ready to start fall into the bottom because as soon as you get comfortable and you get complacent, that's when things can go downhill pretty quick. And I found that to be true in my life. So every, you know, whenever I start to get to a point where I'm like, okay, I got this. I feel good. I start to feel comfortable. Start to feel like everything's going my way. What a bore. That's usually now with a little bit of experience, that's when I start to get a little bit worried, when things are going really well. And when he gets worried, oh my God, I had to hear every single second. I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried.

It's kind of like your back. No, because it's like it's almost, it's like calmest before the storm, you know what I mean? So you kind of breezed over that back comment. Michael had a back spasm while we were at Tony Robbins. And I just want to give a shout out to my acupuncturist who got him in on a Sunday at 630, Taylor Taylor. His name is Taylor, and he cupped Michael's back. And he cupped Michael's back. and gave him some acupacupressure points, and you feel a lot better. We got to have Taylor on the podcast because he's an interesting guy. But yeah, I feel a lot better, but I'm still pretty messed up. I think I just went too hard on the firewall.

Oh, my God. We'll get into that. Okay. So where do we start on this recap? This episode's going to be a lot about recapping the event. But also, you know, I'm not going to get into this thing, and I don't think Lauren is either talking and really regurgitating Tony's messages. I think what we're going to do is kind of talk about what the biggest takeaways for us were, right?

Lauren and I are two people that are constantly trying to improve ourselves, trying to figure out the next move, trying to figure out the next step on the ladder. Trying to be the best version of ourselves. Yeah. And I think that what this event was helpful for us because, you know, like I said earlier, as soon as you get comfortable, it's time to fire yourself back up and start innovating, making changes and get going again. So I think a lot of this episode is going to be centered around what we took away from the event. For anyone that hasn't done the event, I really do recommend it.

It's hard to put into words or explain it. But even just from a pure work ethic standpoint, just a pure production value standpoint, it's a fun event to go to. And I recommend everyone check it out. Okay. So also, if you can't check it out right now, you can also listen to his podcasts or read his books, too, just to kind of see a lot of the stuff that is in his books and on his podcast was at the event. so you don't feel like you need to miss out.

In particular, I like the book, Awaken the Giant. That's a good one. I just started it. Okay, so let's get into it. So a lot of people that are unfamiliar with Tony Robbins would have made him see him around, have seen some of his events, I've seen him on social, read some of his books. A lot of people think he's like a self-help coach or a guru. And that's really not what I take away from him when I read his books or when I, you know,

now that I've went to one of his seminars. For me, he's more of a strategist. He's a coach. I think where people run into a lot of trouble with him is they go to one of his events and they get fired up or they read one of his books and they get fired up and they miss one of the main points that he really preaches and talks about and that is massive action, taking massive action. You know, he will definitely, he'll go in and he'll give you the tools and help you pull the weeds out and figure out like what your internal struggles are, what your internal battles are.

And he'll prime you up to say, okay, like now that I know that stuff about me, now I got to go do something with it. I think what happens is people go to these events sometimes or they read the books and they forget the second part, which is, you know, in order to improve your life, in order to get the results from these seminars of books, you have to then go and take massive action. So for me, he's more of a strategist. He's more of like, okay, listen, here's the problems that are that are holding you back. And once we figure out what those problems are, it's going to enable you to get rid of them so that you can move forward and take action. I think, too, I'm just going to tell you a couple ways that, you know, I take action that really helps. And I think if you're out there listening and you're a

blogger or you want to start a business, action is definitely the first thing to do. So in the secret Facebook group, I see a lot of girls saying, I want to launch a blog, but I don't know or I can't think of a name. All of those are kind of excuses in my opinion to propelling you forward. So I think right now, if you're listening to the podcast, my advice, like Tony says, would be to focus and take action and execute on that action. So if that means sending an email out, finding someone to design your logo, even though you don't have the name. If you want to have a blog, I would reach out to a designer. That's what I did when I built the Skinny Confidential. So how I started that out was I always say this, you guys. I took a poster board from Rite Aid. Anyone can afford a poster board from Rite Aid.

I got different colored Sharpies. I wrote down the brand slogan that I wanted it to say. I wrote down the logo. I wrote down the feelings that I wanted to evoke in the reader. I wrote down who the reader was, that is taking action to putting something into place. So it starts that momentum. And Tony is all about momentum. Well, I think, you know, just talking about what you just, just jumping in on what you just discuss, I think a lot of people get really overwhelmed. And this has definitely been something that I've fallen victim to in the past. Not so much anymore, just maybe from experience, but in the past definitely, like, you think, okay, I don't have enough experience or I'm not an expert yet, or I need to read one more book or I need to go to one more

seminar. And the problem is, is that at some point, you become addicted to the training and the learning, and it distracts you from actually going out and doing. If you take this podcast, for example, and for those of you that have listened to this for a long time, and you go back to the early episodes, you can see it was very, very rough. It was very raw. The sound wasn't that great. Lorne and I were interrupting each other a lot. Our vocabulary wasn't the best. And not saying we're perfect now, but the point is, yeah, it wasn't great. But the point is, is we took action and started doing something. And as we progressed, you know, it's improved a little, I'd like to think.

It's not, I wouldn't say where it's anywhere near perfect, but it's improved a lot. You know, and I don't think that you can get these improvements and you can, and you can get down the road without starting somewhere. So I think it's important that when you, when you're starting out, you don't keep holding yourself back and procrastinating with bettering yourself and priming yourself up to get ready to take action. Like Lauren said, you know, something as simple as, going to write aid and writing your brand out and going to write aid and I don't know what else are you doing

there's a lot of readers there's a lot of things that I was doing to put my my goals in action and and we always talk about this there was systems so I found you know a graphic designer who was on Craigslist for $500 and asked him if I could pay him $100 a month for five months I found someone that could do WordPress I asked a friend to help with a logo you know I borrowed someone's camera to start. I used my godparents computer. Like, you really have to get resourceful. And I think the theme of Tony Robbins event too is being resourceful. Like, you find a way. If you want to make something happen, you will find a way to make it happen. And the more I listened to him, the more I realized that so many people have excuses. There were so many audience members that he called on. And there was so

many excuses. Some of these excuses were things that they didn't even have control over. I think one of the excuses was the woman said that her country was in disarray because of the government. That's something that she has no control over. That's in her way. So I think excuses too was kind of a theme there because it was like all these different people had all these different excuses for things that they couldn't control. And some things they could control, excuses are like assholes. Everyone has one. don't let an excuse get in the way of your dream. So as Michael said, like people say, I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm too this. I haven't had enough college. I mean, honestly, if I could go back and do it all over again, I don't even know if I would have gone to college.

You can do anything you want no matter what the age you are, no matter how old, no matter how young. Don't let excuses stand in your way. Well, here's an interesting thing, too, about excuses. And I think all of us fall a victim to him. But there's also things, that can be confusing excuses, right? Where you would think, okay, I have to get a little bit more experience, or I have to study a little bit more, or I have to learn a little bit more. All these things that's like, oh, that sounds reasonable. That sounds like a good idea.

But people start to forget one thing that these excuses, while they can be considered as like, you can't see me, but putting quotations, good excuses, there's still forms of procrastination, right? There's still things that are saying, like, okay, holding you back from actually taking action. So I think one of the biggest takeaways for me is like, okay, you're never going to be perfect. You're never going to know everything. You're never going to have all the experience. Nobody is.

Not me, not Lauren, not Tony, nobody. So you may as well start taking action and moving on something. If you want to start a blog, go ahead and start it. Even if you're so overwhelmed and you don't know where to start, pick one place, move in that direction. And if you feel's wrong, then move in another direction. You have to just get going. If you want to start a business, what is the very, and we've talked about this before, I've talked about this multiple times here.

What is the very first thing that you can do right now? Is that putting an idea on paper? Is that building a website? Is that creating an Instagram? Do something. Is that raising capital, depending on what stage you're at? Is that developing a product? Like, whatever it is, whatever the first step that you can do right now,

not something that you're overwhelming yourself thinking about sales or how you're going to reach readers or how you're going to get listeners or how you're going to build something down the line or is this going to look right? What can you do right now? because that first step leads to another step and another step, another step, and eventually you have momentum. And I think that's one of the biggest takeaways from me from this event. And there's actually this wheel that I want to share with you guys. It's called the driving force. And it's the science of momentum playing off what Michael said. Step number one is to put yourself in a

peak state. So that's your peak performance and you really want to be focused. This is Tony Robbins, not me talking by the way. Step two is find your passion. So those are the values that fuel you. You need to think about what you love, what you hate, what you're passionate about, what really drives you. Step three would be decide, commit, and resolve. And that's where you have to just pull the bandaid off, stop with the excuses, and really commit to what you're going to do. Step four would be take immediate, intelligent, consistent, and massive action. And this is the most important one in my opinion. Action is so important. You don't want something just written down in a binder. You want to be taking action. You want to get a plan. You want to send that email. You want to, you know, call that friend

that can design the logo. You want to take action. And the last step is be smart and be honest with yourself. So you want to have that strategy, check it, change it, evolve, re-engineer it, and reinforce it. Yeah. And, you know, speaking on taking action, I think one of the things that overwhelms people, you know, the more people I speak to, the more people I can solve with and the more people have my life. I think one of the biggest things that impedes action is looking at other people, looking at where they're at in life, looking at what they're doing and seeing their progress and thinking to yourself, wow, that's like, I'll never be able to do that. Let's take Tony Robbins, for example. If you go to this event and there's 14,000 screaming people and he's on stage with

the best production and DJ, well, by the way, that DJ needs a raise because he's his song choice at wrong point. DJ was great. And you see all these things and you're like, and say, want to be a coach. Say that's like, say you're a young guy, you want to be a coach, young girl want to be a coach. And you see this, you're like, holy shit, I'm never going to get there. Or you look at them and say, wow, one day, that's going to be me. But you have to remember that this is not where this guy started. This guy started, you know, very small, doing small seminars. Let's give background on him where he started. So he was a janitor. He came from a very broken family. His mother, I think, had four different husbands. So he had four different fathers. And they were very,

broke and I believe his mother abused him. Did he say that? Yep. And, um, you know, worked as a janitor. And from there, he just kind of had this epiphany that he was in control of his own life. And he basically created a strategic future by design, which I think is so important. If you're out there listening, you are in charge of creating your strategic future by design. If you listen to the podcast with my best friend, Steve Hulk, you will kind of see the breakdown there. And we'll have him on again, but basically you lay out how you want your future to look and you sort of work backwards and implement systems to get to where you want to be. So Tony did that and I believe he mentored under a coach from 17 to 21. I think the guy's name was Jim Rohn, but it's a little bit before my time,

but I think that's a guy's name. Okay. And then he started doing coaching on his own. He talked about actually when he was coaching in his home and then when he realized that he needed to move out of his home, and into a hotel space and from there, that momentum kind of spiraled. But, you know, he's been up and down and had all kinds of different failures. I think that if you want to play with the big boys in the business world, you are going to have a lot of failures and ups and downs. I mean, I know for me, there's a problem every single day. You're constantly putting out fires. Well, there's no such thing as undefeated in life. And if it was a thing, it would be a very boring life. Yeah, what a boring life. So yeah, Tony now is where he is because he, he,

he's had to evolve and he's had to experience those failures and go up and down. But at the same time, he has created his strategic future, which does not come without pain and failure. And there's, you know, speaking of his background, there's a story he told that I really, really like. And I think is important for people listening to this podcast to hear. And there's two, there's actually two stories. But the first is that if you live in the United States, you are in the 1% of the world. So there was all these protests a while back about like Wall Street and 1% and everyone was getting up in a rage and, you know, screaming and yelling and I get all that. But the point is, is that if you live in the United States, you are in the 1% of the world.

The average income level per week or maybe it's per day. I can't remember. I think it's per day. The average income per day in the world is $2.50 a day. A day. Crazy. And so, you know, he was saying like, listen, there's people that are constantly screaming and you. yelling about people being above them or below them or whatever it is, just remember that if

you're in the United States and you're listening to this podcast, you are in the 1% of the world. So you have opportunity. And then to follow that through, he started talking about people complaining about starting points and where they started and where other people started. And, you know, whenever you hear someone say, well, I would, I would be there, but I didn't start with that. Or I would be doing this, but I didn't have what they had. Or whatever that excuse is.

He used an example of a woman, an African-American woman who was born into a poor urban community. She was sexually assaulted multiple times by family members. I believe at one point she had a miscarriage. She really, you know, had 13 years old. She had all the chips stacked against her, a minority, you know, and I think in the 60s or 70s, which was a lot tougher back then. And really no education and no financial means to do anything. and that woman grew up to become Oprah.

So let's think that in Oprah. So his point I'm telling this story was that if you can look at the world and you can recognize opportunity and you can seize it and say, listen, I'm not going to make any excuses. I'm going to make the best of whatever situation I'm in and I'm going to move forward and take action. His point was that you can make anything happen.

And so if you're sitting in that boat right now where you're saying yourself, well, I can't do this because of or I can't do this because I don't have really think about those two examples. You're in a country that you're in the top 1% of the world. You have the internet now. You have the internet. If you're listening to this podcast, you have the internet. You're probably on your iPhone or your computer, which means you can read and learn about everything, anything. Just Google it. So the point is that there's opportunity. And once you kind of take control of yourself and you say, okay, I'm not going to be a victim anymore. I'm not going to

victimize myself. I'm not going to complain and cry about my circumstances. I'm going to recognize that I have a shit ton of opportunity in front of me. Then you have the ability to start taking control of your life and taking action. And I think for me, that message resonates so strongly because I'm always, you know, I'm trying to figure out the best way to formulate, like, why I don't like excuses or why I get so frustrated when people aren't taking action. And I think it's because I get really, like, down and disappointed when I see so much opportunity in front of people and I see these BS excuses that people make. I mean, you could come up with a million reasons to not do something. It's the people that can come up with the one reason to do something that usually end up making

success from their life. If you kind of don't know where to start, Tony had us answer three questions and maybe me and Michael can kind of go over what we responded. I haven't asked Michael if we can do this, but why the fuck not? So the first question he told us to ask ourselves was what does an extraordinary life entail. You want me to answer that? Yeah. Right on the air? Yeah. Do you know what's funny? If you had asked me this five years ago, my answer would be a lot different. How so? It would have been a lot more materialistic. Yuck, really? Yeah. And I admit that on the show. I'm not proud of it. It's just, you know, when I grew up in a way where I was like, okay, you got to do this. You get to this level. You can get this. And then you get this. You can do this. And I kind of looked at it as like stepping stones on the

ladder to success. You were missing the art of fulfillment. I was missing a lot of fulfillment. And it actually led to a couple years of being depressed, upset about it. I'm not going to cry about it, but it was definitely, once you realize like, wow, I'm looking at the wrong things in life, it was completely jarring for me. For me, now if you ask, what is the question? What's a fulfilling life? What does an extraordinary life entail? For me, it's being able to help my friends and family in whatever way possible, whether that's financially or emotionally or just being able to support them in any way without basically being able to remove the stress from their lives. It's being able to live comfortably, raise a family with you.

That would be nice if I can ever get one past the goalposts there. Being able to travel and see the world, I like to see different cultures and meet different people and see different things. And I like to build businesses now to not for the same reason. I like to build businesses now because I like the feeling of progress. I like the feeling of building things. It's not necessarily so much about the money now anymore, even though money does play a big part. You know, anybody that says money doesn't matter. Like, money is the currency of business. You need revenue to grow a business. You just, you just do. That's the currency of the world.

But it's, it's to build something more now. I like, I like this platform a lot because I feel like I can reach somebody. I can help people for people that are interested. No one can control it. Yeah. I like, I like that. Nobody can control it. But yeah, for me, it's like pretty simple now. It's like help my friends and family, help others, build some businesses and, you know, create a situation where you and I can have a family that we can provide for for years to come. It's pretty simple. Before I say mine, I wanted to just say that you talked about progress.

Tony was saying that to be truly happy in life, you want to always feel like you're making progress. So it's not about really arriving at the destination. It's the journey of progress. And when you don't feel like you're making progress, that's where you can kind of start to get anxiety or feel depressed. So if you're out there and you're listening and you're feeling, you know, depression or anxiety, maybe it's because of that. I don't know. You should think about it. Maybe write it down. What does an extraordinary life entail for me? So I wrote down three or four things. One of them was building my brand, not necessarily. other people's brand, my own brand. So I have the platform to do what I want, whether that involves charity of, you know, my choice of something that I want to give back to and, and kind of building the

brand for my community, you guys, and just, you know, having my own control over that, not having anyone else's hand in that. I also wrote down that I want to have the most communication and passion within my relationship. Hint, hint, hint. communication being a big word there. Yes, on your end. And I also, one of my big ones was releasing control. I have, you know, some problems sometimes with delegating. I think it's, it's so important when running a business to be able to delegate. And I'm really trying to get better at that. You know, and I think an extraordinary life also entails being the best I can be in every area. And that's a big part of the reason I liked Tony Robbins, because it's not just a,

about your business. It's not just about your relationship. It's not just about, you know, who you are as a person. It's about everything. And that's what I really liked about it. It was it's, it's kind of takes everything to keep that momentum going. Well, speaking of everything, for me, and this was like where the light switch went up. I think if I could say, the biggest takeaway from the whole event is this. I consider myself somebody who does a lot of soul searching, right? I try to read a lot. I try to figure out. things. I try to figure out ways to improve myself. And I went to this event and I said, wait a minute, you can keep trying to improve yourself over and over and over again. You can

keep doing that. But at some point, and I think, you know, to back up a little bit, you have to get yourself in a good space before you can do this next part. And I think I've done that. But at some point, after you've improved yourself, you have to take those improvements and apply them to your relationships. So for me, it's like, okay, I've worked on myself a lot. I think I'm in a pretty good headspace. Now, I think I'm pretty confident that I can be a good person to the those around me. And at this point now, I think it's more important instead of focusing so much on myself to focus on the relationships of those around me, whether it's my family or my friends or my business partners or listeners of the show or whatever it is. I think that once you've gotten yourself

to a point where you're like, okay, listen, you're in a good space, you're happy, things are flowing. You then have to use that energy to start applying ways to improve your relationships and help other people. And I think that, if I could say one takeaway that this event helped me with is that, okay, enough working on me, even though that's going to continue, be an ongoing thing in my life, it's time to start working on helping other people and helping my relationships. Enough about me. What do you think about me? Exactly. I just want to point out too, really quick before we get into question number two, that Tony Robbins said that there have been multiple highly famous actresses and actors who have called him and reached out to him in the

middle of the night after they've won Oscars. And they've said, I'm supposed to be so happy. and I'm not. And I think that's a really good example for the audience to take away that even, you know, when you reach these amazing goals that you've dreamt about, it sometimes isn't enough. So I think we should just touch on that for a second because it does have to do with living an extraordinary life. Are you like looking at me with your eyes piercing and daggers? I'm actually not.

I could tell the story. So as I mentioned earlier, when I first started out in my business career, you know, I measured success a lot of the time on material things, right? Like you make that extra dollar, you get to that next level, you buy that next thing. And in a certain period there, I got really into watches, right? Like really into them. And if you go back and if you look at any of my old pictures, you see I got really into watches for a long time. And I felt like there was a point in my life from like, if I could buy this one watch,

I will be so fulfilled, I'll be so happy, I'll have made it. Well, long story short, I got to that point. and I bought the watch. And as soon as I got it, the funny thing happened. I thought to myself, cool, that's great. But what about the next best watch? And so then I started looking again at the next one. And eventually I got to that one and then another one.

And what I realized over time was, holy shit, I keep getting to these levels and I'm not happy. I wasn't happy at all. As a matter of fact, it was making me unhappy. It was like every time I got to a new level, I found myself thinking to myself, wow, like, why aren't I, why aren't I happy? I'm getting success. I'm, my business is doing better.

And I just couldn't figure out why I wasn't happy. And it wasn't until about three years ago that I realized that you have to enjoy the ride in the process more than the destination. Because no matter what, whether you're an athlete or a business owner or blog, whatever it is, as soon as you get to that, to that finish line, there's always another finish line. there's always another level. There's always another place to go. So if you don't enjoy the process and you don't enjoy the ride, you're never going to be happy. And I've experienced that firsthand fully. And I think a big part of what ends up making people really happy. And we talked about this a lot is

contribution, right? Giving back to others, whether that's through charity or anything. It could be something that you're good at and you teach someone else how to do it. I think contribution really counteracts what you're saying and it's really, really important. I will say what Michael is talking about is called Astronaut syndrome. Steve actually taught me this. So astronaut syndrome is a lot of astronauts come back from outer space a little bit depressed or sometimes they have anxiety. And the reason for that is, is because when you've gone to the fucking moon, what more is there? Right? That's the way they look at it. Of course, there's a lot more. But, you know, sometimes when you get to a point of somewhere where you always dreamed of being, it can actually make you a little bit depressed. You know who just recently,

it's not that recent actually, but who did a podcast that I, that I listened to recently that resonated with me. So a lot of people listening may not like this, but it's true. I listen to Joe Rogan, not a lot, but I've been listening to him more frequently lately. And I listened to the episode with Dan Bolzerian, who if any of you guys don't know who that is, he's kind of a controversial figure. on Instagram. A lot of people... He loves to party. He loves threesomes.

He loves drugs. I'm not going to say all that, but he likes, he definitely lives a pretty crazy life. But anyway, he went on the podcast and he was basically talking about how he had a very difficult time being happy because once you've done so many crazy, extraordinary things, it's like you kind of become numb to everything else. And so he, you know, to humanize him a little bit, he came back around and said, listen, you have to enjoy the process. He's like, you have to enjoy the climb up the mountain

because being at the top of the mountain is not nearly as fulfilling as climbing up the mountain. And I've found that to be completely true because the problem is there's always another mountain in life. There's always another mountain, I promise you that. So if you're in a space right now, we say, oh, that's easy for him to say, or, you know, he has these, so he doesn't get it.

Trust me, no matter what level, I guarantee you can think back to a time in your life where whatever you have now was maybe only a dream at one point, right? And once you get it, you're like, okay well what's next and so if you don't figure a way to enjoy the process and be fulfilled along the way you're setting yourself up for a really difficult time in life i have to say is this tooting my own horn i love the process i'm fucking obsessed with it i love it i'm obsessed with every part of the process i love the creative process i get jealous when people are are branding

their own blog or their business because i love the process so much it just gets me off i think it's so important. And of course, I've had things where you're like, oh, if I could only get to that amount of followers on Instagram, like, you know, of course a lot of people have that on social media. That's definitely something that you have to be like, okay, wait, this isn't really relevant. But I definitely love the process. And I think if you're out there and you're just starting, you should fully embrace it and love it and enjoy it that you get to start from scratch and create something out of nowhere. Okay, next question. So the first question, was what does an extraordinary life entail? We answered that. The second question is, what's preventing

you from making that happen? So the question would be, what's preventing you from holding you back from that extraordinary life? For me, and I didn't really write this down, but I was thinking in my head, for me, what was holding me back was my views on what success meant, right? When you have warped views on things in life that are definitely not going to make you happy, it holds you back in the sense that the things you're going after are the wrong things. So while I was moving a million miles an hour in one direction, it was the wrong direction. So for me, that's what was holding me back because I was focused on the wrong things. As soon as I started focusing on like, okay, family, friends, fulfillment. Your wife. Your wife. My wife. Your chihuahuas. All those things. As soon as

started happening, things started coming together for me. It gave me a compass. I feel like before I was just slingshot it out of something in a random direction. And then I just kept running. in that direction. So now it's like I have I have my coordinates and I'm moving in the right direction and for me. By the way, if any ladies are listening and their husbands are the way Michael used to be, there is no giving advice or preaching. You just have to let the person figure it out on their own and lead by example. And I think leading by example is so key with anything. It's hard to, you know, preach or tell someone how they should be feeling or how they should do it or how they could do it, but just really lead by example.

So that's what I tried to do for you at that point in your life. That's the difficulty with this podcast is we can talk about all these things. But really for me, and this is true, for me, Lorne, nobody, my family, friends, Lauren, nobody was going to stop me back then. I had to figure all this stuff out for myself. And so, you know, it's like one of those things like it's easy to, it's easy to give advice. It's hard to take your own advice. But, you know, I feel bad for people that are going to find this out the hard way because

it's difficult. but at the same time the rewards are great. It's kind of like with skincare with you. For like five years, you had no interest in taking care of your skin. And every night I would go wash my makeup off. Well, I didn't know I could look better. Put my mandelic serum on. Put my iPads on.

You know, brush my eyebrows. Put some like chapstick on before I went to bed. Put it down on my neck, on my chest, on my hands. And finally, after leading my example, for five, six, seven years, you're taking care of of your skin and how do you feel about that Michael Bostic? Well, Lauren Everts, how do I look? You look glowy and dewy, but really, how do you feel about it? Because you look great and you've been doing it for the last couple months.

I feel good. Okay. It's not like a priority in my life, but I feel great. You know, I feel good. I feel like it is now. Okay. So what's preventing you from making that happen for me is that I want things perfect, how I want it.

I'm a control freak. It's obnoxious. I'm working on it. And I think time and energy are a big thing. I can feel fatigued and it exhausts me, but I think I love Tony Robbins saying of where focus goes, energy flows. And write that down if you're out there because I love this quote, where focus goes, energy flows. So I think that I really need to choose what I focus on and what deserves my energy and what doesn't. All right. Last question. This is a very vulnerable episode.

Wow, Michael. Well, you're wearing your mala beads. Maybe that's why. Maybe I'm, yeah. Okay. Number three, the two moments. stressful thoughts you have? For me, my two most stressful thoughts are probably, hmm, they're not, they're not the thoughts most people. I don't have a fear of, and I've written posts on this before. I don't really have a fear of like failure, right? Like, I think that's why you can put me on Instagram or you put me on this podcast or you can, I don't really fear how I look in front of people. How do you not have a fear of failure for anyone out there that does have a fear of Well, let me finish. I don't have a fear of failure in the traditional sense, right? Like, if you,

if you were to take everything away from me right now, let's say everything and I was at zero, me being the person that I am, could you imagine me just sitting around and be like, well, it's over. No, you'd get resourceful. Yeah, I'd get very resourceful. Who knows what I would do? It might get a little dark. But the point is, is I wouldn't just sit around feeling sorry for myself. So that, that kind of fear of failure doesn't bother me. And I think at this point, as a matter of fact, if you took everything away from me, I'd have a much better chance than if you took everything away for me 10 years ago, right? Like I built up some resources at this point.

So, but what are your two most stressful thoughts? So my most stressful thoughts are, I don't know how to even explain this. My more stressful thoughts are the fear of disappointing and letting those who I care about down, right? Like, I wouldn't want to do something. And this is why. You disappointed me when you didn't take the trash out today. I'm going to be real, real.

I did take the trash out today. No, you didn't. Go on. Okay. Well, then, you know what? I'm not scared of anything anymore. I'm just kidding. No, I don't, you know, I want to make sure that I am constantly progressing.

Progressing. Progressing and doing the best things to, I don't want to say impress, but to keep the respect of those, of the people close to me, right? Like, I don't ever want to compromise my integrity. I don't want to lose your respect. I don't lose my family. That kind of stuff scares me. But, you know, in terms of, I don't really have, like, the thing is,

Okay, let's talk about the firewall, for example. We did this, he gets all these people primed up to do this firework because they got to get over fear, right? It's like breaking the fear barrier. I think one of my issues is sometimes that not having a lot of fear gets me in trouble, right? Like you say something that's wrong or you. Well, what happened at the firewall, Michael? So I thought the firewalk, I'm getting into it. So he kept talking the whole firewall about how, hey, it's really hot, it's actual real fire.

And me, logically, myself was like, okay, there's no way this is actually that hot. There's no way there's actually people doing this. You thought it was fake fire. There's people out there. There's screaming. they're saying yes. I mean, I'm into it. Uncle Tony, I'm into it, but I'm not like one of those.

I'm not like screaming, yes. They're all primed up. They're screaming. They're jacked up. But in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, can't really be that bad because he wouldn't send all these people to do fire. And so I just kind of walked over. Like, I never hesitated to go over it, but I just kind of walked over like, oh, yeah,

right. It's not real. You were kind of whiny after. And then halfway through, I realized, holy shit, I'm standing on burning coals and I'm burning. And that sucked. Got a little couple burn blisters. He called the wambulence. Meanwhile, I was in the same amount of pain. It's not too painful. I mean, it's a burn. Like, it's good. I didn't, I didn't get burned, but like you're on hot coals. And Michael was crying and I told him to sack up and pull the sand out of his vagina. And then also I fear losing people close to me. Well, who doesn't? That scares, I mean, but that holds me, like that scares me more than, you know, losing like failing in business or failing and that scares me you might lose your wife after you didn't take out the trash for the 800th time this morning so what is you scared of my two most

stressful things were my business never being enough i always feel like i could be doing more that's a pressure that i need to stop putting on myself i put on myself from the moment i wake up to the moment i go to bed and you know probably the same fear of losing people um loss is you know something that everyone has to deal with, but it's still definitely a huge fear. So. That's it. That's all you're scared of, huh? Not scared of losing your husband.

I'm fearful that I might murder my husband if he doesn't take the trash out tomorrow. That's another thing. That's why I would never cheat on you because I really think you would murder me. Tell everyone what you would do if I cheated on you. What I would do? Yeah. You have a whole plan that you said that I've written down and recorded just, just in case. I would do or you would do? What you would do. I don't know what I would do. And I'm not going

to tell you on the air. I'm not going to tell anyone here. You told me you would buy a ticket to Japan. Not Japan. Where would you go? I go to better places than that. I mean, listen, not saying anything about Japan. You have to get real fucking creative because I know everything. I'd do some Jason born shit. You'd have like, you'd see like something like pop out or have like seven passports. Yeah. Well, be careful because I've literally copied your thumbprint with the scotch tape. So, okay, before we go though, I just really want to talk about a certain area. And if you guys like podcast, we learned so much more that we're happy to share if you like this. But before we go, I do want to talk about a big part of the event, which was mastering your business. And I want to talk

about what Tony Robbins calls the X factor. So the X factor in business is the ability to find a way to add intangible value, value that goes beyond what anybody can really measure. It's the ability to find a way to do more for your customers than absolutely anybody else and to consider. And to consistently maintain that standard. I am obsessed with the X factor. I don't know why. I just think it's just, it's amazing. Like I feel like there's so much charisma and strength and warmth behind that and I just love it. Well, to break an X factor down, it's basically a differentiation point, right? Whether you have a product or a service or it's yourself, what is the differentiation point? What is the unique property or unique ability that you bring to the equation or your product?

brings to the equation that nobody else brings. So what I want to leave you guys with, this is your homework from the skinny confidential him and her podcast. If you're out there and you're starting a business or you have a product or you want to start a blog, what is your X factor? What is something that you can bring to the table that no one else can bring? And going back six years ago when I launched my blog, what I wanted to bring to the table was everyone was talking about, you know, what shoes they were wearing or their lip gloss. or what brand their shirt was, and I wanted to bring taboo, real-deal subjects unapologetically, to the table and talk about them. So that's what I felt I brought to the table. That was my X-Factor.

I want you guys to all think about your X-Factor because everyone has one. So go home, write it down, look at it, don't take too long to launch it. And even if you already have a product, you can do this too. Find your X-Factor. We went through mine, we went through my goals, and it was extremely helpful. And for me, I got one more thing along. The last thing that I want to leave everybody with is not the X Factor stuff. It's more of a self-reflection thing, right? I'm getting very spiritual here. Trying to up the ante with those mollabees.

One of the biggest things in the conversation or in the seminar, not the conversation, but the seminar was a simple idea of taking accountability for everything in your life, right? Whether it's your feelings or your leadership skills, taking accountability. So let me give you an example. If you're somebody who finds yourself getting upset or angry at the littlest things, whether maybe your boyfriend says something and it annoys you and you go from zero to 60, ready to fight. Like if he doesn't take the trash out. Exactly. Or if you're a guy and you go from zero to 100, if your girlfriend's annoying you and you're just your first reactions to be annoyed, one of the biggest takeaways is that all these feelings, all these reactions is not a reflection of the other person,

but it's a reflection of yourself. And I've been studying a lot about this recently and for a while. And it's definitely something that's difficult to master. It's definitely something that's hard to get a grasp on. But when you understand the general concept, like, okay, listen, if Lauren says something and I find myself getting angry about it and my reaction is to be angry right away, it's really not about Lauren at that point.

It's about me. It's about the way I choose to react to something. If something happens and you decide, oh, I'm going to be so sad about that and I'm going to be depressed and I'm going to stay depressed. It's not the event, really. It's the way you've chosen to view the event. So if I could give any simple observation or advice, it would be to question your first instinct every time, right? Like you've got to trust your gut, but at the same time, you've got to look and say, should I really be angry here? Should I really be sad here? Should I really be this upset? Should I be this happy? And if you can constantly audit yourself,

I think you're going to set yourself up for a much better life. I think it's important to constantly try to improve yourself. And I think once you realize, okay, it's not always on the other person. It's me and I have to take accountability. It's when you can really start to find some answers. Where focus goes, energy flows. With that, we're going to wrap up this podcast. We will see you guys next week.

Make sure that if you rate and review the podcast, you email it to Ask Lauren at the skinny confidential.com. That's Ask Lauren, L-A-U-R-Y-N at the skinnyconfidential. And we will send you my five favorite secret beauty tips straight to your inbox. We love you guys. If you like this episode, please let us know. And maybe we'll do a part two. Maybe we'll even see if we can get Tony on the podcast.

We'll see. We appreciate you listening, subscribing and reviewing. And we'll see you next Tuesday. This episode was brought to you by Canapet, the all natural CBD pet supplement for pets. Canopet helps pets with arthritis, anxiety, and helps to promote longevity. If you miss the beginning of the episode, Canapet is offering all TST listeners 50% off when you use the promo code Pixie at checkout. That's Canopet.com promo code pixie.