The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Maybe You Should Give Up: 7 Ways to Get Out of Your Own Way and Take Control of Your Life by Byron Morrison

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Maybe You Should Give Up: 7 Ways to Get Out of Your Own Way and Take Control of Your Life by Byron Morrison After years of being his own worst enemy, Byron Morrison knows exactly how frustrating the never-ending cycle of hard work, expectation, and minimal results can be. Maybe You Should Give Up is Morrison’s answer to the question: how can anyone achieve their dreams if hard work isn’t enough? It seems like every self-help book and personal development program is the same these days, preaching that if someone just does more and pushes harder, they can achieve the life of their dreams. This expectation doesn’t often work with long-term results, which leaves many people to face the unfortunate reality of never reaching their goals. Why? Because despite their good intentions, they get in their own way, sabotaging themselves and becoming the biggest stumbling block in the way of their success. Tired of going ‘round in circles, Byron Morrison realized he needed to do something different. He gave up—not on his goals and dreams, accepting a life of mediocrity lying on the couch—but on being controlled by fear. He gave up living in the past. He gave up comparing himself to others. He gave up on being so hard on himself. And he gave up putting off his happiness. And it worked. He was able to get out of his own way and finally take control of his life. Maybe You Should Give Up explains how to throw out the rule book, break the mold and do something different. Byron Morrison’s approach helps readers identify 7 areas of their life that cause them to get in their own way and keep them stuck in a self-destructive cycle; he models how to give up on what holds a person back—to finally take control of the life they want and deserve.

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Today, we have an amazing, prolific prolific author coach and gentleman on the show uh he's is byron morrison he's the author of the newest book coming out june 27th 2023 available over fine books are sold uh the book is entitled i love this title maybe you should just hold on i'm adding words here the title of the book in exact form is maybe you should just, uh, hold on. I'm adding words here. The title of the book in exact form is maybe you should give up seven ways to get out of your own way and take control of your life. And that sounds like a good thing to do taking control of your life because not having control of your life means you're out of control. And, uh, I've always found that's not fun. Uh, Byron Morrison is the author of multiple books.

He's also a mindset and performance coach who for close to a decade has worked with CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs in 15 different countries to help them take back control over their life and business. Welcome to the show, Byron. How are you? Hey, I'm really good. Thanks. I'm excited to be here today. Awesome sauce. Give us a.com or wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs to stalk you. Hey, I'm really good. Thanks. I'm excited to be here today. Awesome sauce. Give us a.coms or wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs to stalk you. Easiest place to find

me is byronmorrison.com. And I'm also active on everything from LinkedIn to Facebook, Instagram, just search for author Byron Morrison. There you go. And you've written a few books. Let's get a plug in for those. So maybe you should give up as my fourth book. I started my author journey about seven years ago. I wrote my first book called Become a Better You. And then over the last few years from working with CEOs and business leaders in 15 countries, I've written two follow-up books, one called The Effect of ceo there you go how to be uh how to become a better you uh i mean were you were you thinking maybe maybe the alternative of that how to become a worse you that could be a great follow-up book but when i was writing that book i just come off my own

journey of transformation like when i was younger i was overweight i pretty much did no exercise i really wasn't looking after myself and after my dad's cancer i went on this journey of transformation where i learned everything i could about nutrition and mindset and changing behaviors i lost over 50 pounds and i really just wanted to pass on what i learned that it worked for me, for other people, to help them actually take control of their lives. There you go. There you go. Now, the reason I brought that up is because you kind of have this reverse psychology play on the title of your new book, Maybe You Should Just Give Up.

Was there a reason you decided to put that spin on it? For me, the whole personal development and self-help world is all pushing this message of don't quit like never give up and all of this like thing and so many people i see and i put my hand up include myself in this are stuck in their life because they're just trying the same thing over and over again hoping for different results and after like working with people in so many different countries what i discovered is that for every single one of us, there's seven mental blocks that cause us to get in our own way and sabotage our success.

So the book itself, it starts with this negative title because it draws you in, but it's actually a book about positivity and empowerment. It's about helping you give up on everything that's holding you back and stopping you from living the life that you want. So it's not quite reverse psychology of trying to take it away from people and say like you maybe you should just give up you know just there's that one book that says uh learn to not give a f um and so you've outlined seven ways to

uh get out of your own way and take control so it's uh basically you should give up getting out of your own way i like that theme yeah it was like i think it's just counterintuitive because so many people have asked me like why have you called it that like i don't want to give up it's so like going against who i believe and that's the whole point because it's not getting people to throw out the rule book and being like you know what these are the things that are actually holding you back and the longer you keep holding on to them the more you're going to stay stuck yeah because a lot of motivational books and motivational themes out there are just like kind of raw raw and and they're of good quality i don't

mean to knock them but you know sometimes there are those blocks that you have or scotomas or or or different things that are holding you back and, and until you kind of clean the cobwebs out and do some, uh, do some work, uh, self-work, uh, the, you know, you can run all you want, but you're like, how come I never, I can never fulfill that. And you see a lot of people go back to, you know, they're constantly, you know, how many, how many times, I mean, I love Tony Robbins, but how many times do you have to go see the guy, uh, do the work, read the book, you know,. People are like, hey, you want to go to the Tommy Robinson? No, I read the book and I did the work, and now I'm perfect.

I don't know. Should I get a check for that? I don't know. Thanks. Tony sent me a check. Anyway, so Byron, let's tease out some of these seven ways and maybe touch on some. People need to order the book to find out more,

but give us a tease out, if you would, of some of these different things that people get in the way yeah so the first thing i find that causes a lot of people to get stuck is being highly reactive when life is constantly happening to them they're going around in this high stress state where they're controlled and driven by emotions and that stops them from really showing up so that and section number two which is fear are the two biggest things that i see stopping people from actually living the life they want because we all have that sabotaging voice where we have goals and dreams and we start to talk ourselves out of it it's like what if i try and i fail what if i'm not good enough what if i get

rejected for so many people that paralyzes them and it stops them from taking action so i found that those are the two big dominoes we need to knock over in order to actually get someone out of their own head so that they can start making progress. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's something that people don't spend a lot of time doing. I mean, they just, they just want to do the rah-rah and they're like, if I just think positive about everything, everything will be fine. And, and they don't realize that, you know, sometimes, you know, you went on this journey with your uh diet and uh and and and and eating right right and living right um and what i had to do when i went through that process and and kind of it was very cathartic moment for me where i'm like i'm tired of feeling like crap i'm tired of living like crap i'm tired

of eating crap and feeling awful all the time and so i had to go through this cathartic journey where i had to kind of do some house cleaning of these belief systems that i had that were that were basically holding me back you know like food is a reward or you know just uh buy the mountain dew and bring it home and and maybe you'll drink one can a day. You know, and different lies that I would tell myself and they would hold me back and keep me from really progressing. I was exactly the same. That's why if I go back over a decade,

I was in a situation where I knew what I needed to do to change my life, but I wasn't doing it. I was constantly sabotaging everything from relationships to my health and my professional success and looking back I was the biggest stumbling block in my own way and it was only when I really addressed that and I got to the core of why I was feeling and thinking the way that I did that was what allowed me to turn it around and that was very much going back to why I wrote the book in my mind I had the younger version of me like that 25 year old who was just falling short of his potential. And I was like, what did he need to hear?

And what was the guidance I could give to him that would allow him to actually move forward? What do you feel a lot of people, why are a lot of people like that? Do we get those rules from our parents or people who set examples in our lives? Maybe there are mentors that mean well, but sometimes we're misguided by adopting some of their belief systems. It's a wide variety of factors that influence our subconscious and our mold of the world from the way that we grow up, the experiences we go through, our environment and our events.

And essentially to anyone listening, the reason why you get stuck in your own head is your brain's been wired for quantity of life and what that means it's been programmed in a way that it wants to survive it doesn't want to thrive so that means it wants to keep the same type of relationships the same amount of weight on your body the same amount of wealth happiness and joy because it feels safe whereas your goals your dreams your aspirations all of that's new so it brings with it an inherent risk and this is why whenever you start to change it starts putting all these mental blocks in place because it wants you to trip up and stay where you are because even though you might be unhappy in the situation you're in your brain knows how it's going to play out so it wants to keep you here and this is why if you actually want to move forward you have to figure out how to get out of your own head because until

you change the way you think you're not going to be able to change your life yeah what what's an old um oh man who was it that had the phrase uh how a man thinketh his life goes or something like that or as a man thinketh i think wasn't it alan um but uh maybe it was napoleon hill or or one of those other gentlemen from those older books but basically your your thoughts determine your life, and they make all the difference. What are some other ways we could tease out the seven ways that you identified in your book? So one of my favorite sections in the book is all about looking at giving up on short-term thinking. Because I'd say that one of the biggest things that holds most of us back is we prioritize what we want in the moment at the expense of what we want most and this is how most people live their life they're always giving into comfort and pleasure and that in the now satisfaction

because they're not looking at the bigger picture of what it's actually causing them to give up on and that's why if you look at some of the most successful people of all time they're always thinking five steps ahead they're making decisions based on where they want to get to and that's why for me it's all about developing that awareness of while you're making the choices that you're making it's just you looking at the bigger picture and be like okay is this sacrifice that i'm going in for now worth what i'm going to give up on long term and if you can stop making those choices and be more intentional about what you're doing it's health is a really easy example to take like When you're in the moment, you want that burger or that cake, you go for it because it feels good.

But when you start making the choice of, okay, is this actually going to be worth it for my health or my weight loss or whatever you're focusing on, you can make decisions based on the future, not just the present. Yeah. And life, what's that old adage? A life that isn't planned, a life not planned is not worth living or less worth living. You know, we, we sometimes, like you say, we don't plan ahead or, you know, we, we set goals, but then we do things on a daily basis. You know, everyone does that thing at the beginning of the year that we recently crossed over with, where they do their New Year's resolutions, and they're like, oh, this year I'm going to quit drinking,

or this year I'm going to eat right, or this year I'm going to go start a business. And then you find, I think, I don't know what the stats are, but it's probably like 95% of people never follow through. And the next year they set the same goals, and the next year they don't follow through. And it's something that you know sitting down on life goals and maintaining those what what is the best way that you found to

get out of that cycle of living in the moment as opposed to um planning for the future so the big thing for me is the reason why most people don't achieve their goals is they focus too much on what they want and they don't figure out who they need to become in order to make it happen. And the reason why this is so important is every new level of success requires a new level of you, which is why your current habits, your behaviors, your way of doing things that got you to where you are isn't going to get you to the next level. And if anything, that's the exact reason why you're stuck.

And this is why beyond your vision and what you want, you need to figure out who it is you need to become. And anyone listening to this right now, like the way you can do that, it's like, close your eyes and really visualize the version of you who's achieved their goals. What do they look like? What did they do every single day that got them to where they are? That's going to allow you to reverse engineer it. So you can figure out, okay, these are the routines I need to develop this is how i need to start spending my time but then knowing that is not enough you then need to start pushing yourself to show up as that person in everything that you do so that's where the intention of pulling it into the moment is because anyone can take action on the days they feel motivated but discipline and willpower is not a strategy so it's in those situations where

let's say you need to go to the gym or you need to have a tough conversation or you need to start work on that project, you need to ask yourself, what would the person I want to become do right now? Would they make excuses? Would they put it off? Would they procrastinate? Or would they push themselves to face it even if they don't want to? Because when you stop bringing yourself into the moment and you focus on that future version of yourself and you push yourself to show up as them, that's how you build momentum and change your life.

Yeah. I like the idea of having a vision of who you are. And do we resist a lot of becoming someone new because there's a fear of the unknown, there's an insecurity, well, maybe it won't be as good as it is. There's some people that say that the word diet, you know, has the word die in it. And, uh, sometimes your body is like, Hey, are you trying to kill us? Uh, you're not feeding us. Uh, you know, there's maybe there's an internal fear system that we have that, like you mentioned, it, it tries to keep everything normalized as, as, okay, this is how Chris wants it. Uh, he wants us to eat a certain amount today of calories to maintain his overweightness and et cetera,

et cetera. It is emotion really what drives us to, to fall off of our goals. Yeah. A big part of it is because we normalize what we repeatedly do and we become comfortable. Whereas the changes and the growth that you want to go through, it's going to put you in a situation where you actually have to get uncomfortable.

And this is why you can often see these stories where people struggle for years to make changes in their life, but suddenly they have a near-death experience or something happens to someone who's close to them or they get a health diagnosis, and overnight they change their ways. The reason being is in the back of their mind, the pain of changing, the pain of not changing now outweighs the pain of the situation being is in the back of their mind the pain of changing the pain of not changing now outweighs the pain of the situation they're in whereas before the their pain perceived pain of maybe eating healthier or exercising or taking action on their goals they viewed in the back of their mind is too painful that was why they'd stop and start and never follow through and that's why for me it's all about tipping the scale in the other direction it's looking at what are you going

to miss out on by not going after that? Because when you can reframe that fear and suddenly it becomes scarier not to actually chase your goals and your dreams, then it becomes easier to follow through. I like that reframing of your fear and your emotions to where you, where you approach it from a different angle. You know, recently I've been doing longer and longer intermittent fasting. I've always intermittent fasted, but one of the problems I've been running into is insulin resistance. And I'm at my lowest weight that I've ever been since my thirties. And I've been hitting new records, but I kind of hit these plateaus and I have to kind of push

through with longer intermittent fasting. And you wrote about some of this probably talking in your book about getting healthy probably. I don't know if you did intermittent fasting to lose weight or if you just went to exercise. You're probably young enough where you can go through it. But at 55 right now, my body doesn't respond to exercise, at least not for all the crap I did to myself. And so it only responds to breaking through the insulin resistance of really longer intermittent fasting. And I've been pushing myself to 21, 20, 24 hours, uh, to do a full fast and it breaks through that insulin resistance. But, you know, it's uncomfortable sometimes when I first started trying to push through

that, that longer thing, it was uncomfortable and your body's going, Hey man, what's going on, man? What are you trying to do? Trying to kill us here. And, uh, but then you, you learn to get comfortable with it. You learn to realize, okay, you're going to be fine. You know, one of the most important things is I had somebody that came on the show is a massive author, uh, who wrote about intermittent fasting, uh, to lose weight and insulin and

insulin resistance. And he says, man, Chris, you're not going to die. You can live. Most people can live at least 30 to 60 days on the fat that they have. We're designed to do that biologically because of, you know, we used to do winter and stuff. And so having that, my mindset, you know, I'll still talk to people and they're like, you're going to die. You're going to die if you stop eating for 24 hours. No, you're not.

I mean, you need water. You need some nutrients and then, you know, salt minerals and vitamins and stuff, but you're not for 24 hours. No, you're not. I mean, you need water. You need some nutrients and then, you know, salt minerals and vitamins and stuff, but you're not going to die. You'll be fine. And I think a lot of, uh, sometimes our brain just reacts like you said, when it gets off of that, Hey,

who's throwing off the normalization and the comfort zone. We're really comfortable here. You've hit the nail on the head there as to why we become our own worst enemies, because we build up issues in our mind and blow them out of proportion. So we convince ourselves that they're a much bigger deal than they are, whether it's you with your intermittent fasting, whether it's someone listening to this who wants to put out a video to start growing a following or launch a business,

whatever it is, we have this mentality that if we fail, it's going to be a catastrophe or this whole thing's going to go wrong and that's why it's so important to just bring it into reality to really figure out like what are you actually afraid of here like is this just a truth or is it a mental story and like what else could be going on because when we start to break down those fears and we understand what we're afraid of it becomes so much easier to deal with and some of them that just become a little bit silly because it's just like you know what i'm being ridiculous yeah i wish i could think of it and i i can't remember if it's seneca or uh if it's marcus aurelius but lately i've studied a lot of i've been studying a lot of stoicism and there's a reference to stoicism i can't think it off the top of my head, but it basically alludes to, um, what we think that the fears and emotions that we have and the, those mindsets that we build,

like you mentioned that, that we think maybe or fear about something. A lot of it is, is unfounded and wasted time and wasted effort. Like recently, my dog came down with a giant, uh, uh, literally a baseball size, uh, cyst on the back of her leg. And it was, my dogs are Husky. So they have this giant fur base and it was literally positioned perfectly on her back leg where she has the longest fur and you would never notice it.

And it finally got into the size where one day I looked, I was watching her. I'm like, why is there a floppiness to that back leg? And sure enough, there was a giant cyst there. And I started having, you know, I've had a dog that's gone through cancer. And I was starting to really kind of freak out and go, oh, God, here we are again. And she was, you know, I like oh god we're gonna die of cancer you know you start thinking all these horrible things and i started thinking okay just calm down

you're you're blowing this out of proportion you're going into a lot of fear and emotion let's let's take a breath let's uh have the cancer examined or the cyst examined and sure enough it was a giant cyst that wasn't cancerous and had grown really out of control very fast. And we had it removed and she's fine. And I, you know, I sat down with my stoicism and went, okay, let's not imagine all sorts of crazy stuff. Let's not freak out and, you know, start imagining all the worst things that can possibly happen and get lost in the minutia of it all. And let's And let's take baby steps and go through it. And working through it really helped me, and taking the emotion out of it,

really helped me manage the situation, not let it get out of control. And I think that's a real big thing. Emotion seems to be a way, instead of processing logic and reason, that we get out of hand and our life gets out of control, I think. Yeah. Firstly, I'm really glad to hear that your dog's okay. As a dog dad, that's my biggest fear.

But that perfectly aligns with section four of the book. It's giving up on worrying about problems that haven't happened yet. Because we all have this tendency where we fixate on the future and then we convince ourselves of outcomes before they even go wrong but then the problem is often we end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy where then our actions our decisions what we focus on all comes into alignment and we make the problem happen or we put ourselves through

so much stress and then something doesn't even go on. Like one of my favorite quotes is if you stress about something before it happens, you essentially put yourself through it twice. And that's why it's all about bringing yourself back into the moment because you're never going to be in complete control of what's going on around you. But the one thing you can always control is how you respond to it. And it goes back to exactly what you said of focusing on the emotionals and understanding why you're feeling the way that you do.

And then putting your attention from the past or the future into the present and what action you need to take to actually turn it around yeah it's it's uh it's there's a quote here from uh what is it marcus forget everything else keep hold of this alone and remember uh earn or each one of us lives only now in this brief instance and the rest has been lived already and it's, um, or it's impossible to see. And so by focusing, you know, on being present, that was the other thing that I, uh, that I learned, uh, several years ago, I think 2017 was the issue of being present and focus on building the world that he needs to do today and not worrying about the past. You know, some people spend all day worrying about their past mistakes and their past things.

I think that some ways a lot of people, it interferes with their ability to plan for the future because they're so worried about fixing the past and you can't. It's over. It's done. You can't worry about that. You've got to move forward on the future. And then some people worry about things in the future. Like what if I get a business and it fails? I've heard that a lot. Well, I haven't started my company because I want to make sure it's perfect and it won't fail.

And it's like, it's never going to be perfect. Yeah. The interesting thing with perfectionism is most people put it up on a pedestal and they convince themselves it's a really good thing. They're like, I'm a perfectionist. I always get everything just right. Like they take pride in it. Whereas actually, if you break it down, perfectionism is fear because they're afraid of what if they put themselves out there and they're not good enough? What if they get judged or they get rejected?

So that's why they use perfectionism as a defense mechanism to avoid taking action. Whereas as you know, when you're building companies or you're trying to achieve big goals, a lot of the time you've got to get feedback. Like you've got to take action. You've got to figure out what worked, what didn't, and adapt it. So all perfectionism is doing is preventing you from reaching your goals.

So that doesn't mean start just settling for sloppy work. But it does mean you have to have the awareness of knowing when something is good enough and then just allowing yourself to go for it because if you keep trying just to get a few percent better all that's doing is forcing you to waste time and energy because it's probably not actually going to make a big difference and it's just so interesting how we get stuck in our head over that fear and how much it can hold us back and the anxiety is probably mixed in with that fear i think it's might be the same the way it works, but you know, we, we get, uh, we get anxious about, uh, oh, you know, what if it doesn't work? We start thinking about all the failures. I used to run a lot of scenarios through my mind as a strategist because I would want to try and plan for, for events. And I'd be like, okay, well, let's plan if this happens and this happens, this happens. And it ended up being a waste of time. Like I said, I just went through this with my dog where I just said, okay, we're not going to think about every possible scenario and craziness that's going to happen. I've been through a year and a half of hospice care with cancer dog and it wasn't fun for

anybody. But we got through it and we learned a lot. We saved a lot of other dogs from what we learned. And so there was a silver lining to it all. But like when you start a business and you go through change, you don't know what, what, uh, you know, that future is going to be. And, and you don't know what you're going to have to process. Like you said, you, it's a, it's a process where you're, you're kind of aligning. What's that old adage of, you know, when a ship goes from one point to another, it doesn't go in a straight, perfect line.

When you start a business, it doesn't go in a straight, perfect line. You've got to test. You've got to process. You've got to get feedback. A lot of my businesses I started, some we changed the name after a month. We're like, no, this name sucks. This is not something that's going to work for us. Let's throw out that name and start, and start a new name.

Sometimes we would start one way of a company we owned and, and go, yeah, this business model doesn't work. And you go this way. And so it's the constantly zigzagging that gets you to the destination of, of the ship analogy. And, and people don't realize you've, you've just got to start that journey. And it's kind of like, I always like the analogy of walking down a road or going through a forest. You go down a pathway and as you're going down that pathway, you have to start heading toward the direction you want to go.

And maybe you don't know exactly where you're going to land, but you have to start heading that way and going through the motions, going through the journey, if you will. It's all about the journey and not the destination was a hard thing for me to learn. And you're going to have forks in the road and you're going to have to make decisions and maybe you have to backtrack and go down the other fork in the road or maybe you have to find another fork in the road. And it's just like these million variations of combinations where one day you wake

up and you go, Hey man, what a glorious thing I built. Uh, you know, I remember when we first started the Chris Voss show, it was like, Oh God, what do we got to build here? And this seems like work and I don't really know where it needs to go and what I'm going to be wanting to talk about 10 years from now, but, uh, let's start and see what happens. And, you know, the zinging and zanging, and then you wake up one day, 13 years later, and you just go, wow, glad I started taking the steps on that journey. And the anxiety of, you know, where we go and stuff can really hold us back, I think. Yeah. I absolutely love what you just said. And I couldn't agree more. I find for so many people, the reason why they become unhappy and unfulfilled

is they keep putting their happiness somewhere off in the future. They say to themselves, once I achieve that or hit that goal or that milestone, then I'll be happy. But as cheesy as it sounds, happiness doesn't come from some achievement. Instead, it comes from the journey, and the journey takes place in the present. And that's why you just have to start realizing that you're never going to get to where you want to be. Like whatever you convince yourself you want right now, as soon as you get close, that goal line is going to continue moving. And that's why you just need to take that pressure off yourself to get it all figured out. Because life changes. What you want today might not be what you want a year from now

and that's okay but if you use that as a reason not to take action because you need to figure it all out all you're going to do is stay stuck whereas when you allow yourself to take steps and you make mistakes and you dive in that's really where you can start uncovering okay what's going to give you joy in your life and then you can double down on that or something you convince yourself you want right now you might try and be like, no, actually, I don't want that. But if you don't go for it, you're never going to know. So I think far too many people put so much pressure on themselves to have it all figured out. And it's just such an unrealistic expectation. Do you think that's why people fall into procrastination? Because I hear that a lot,

and you probably do consulting for businesses. I hear people say, well, I'm going to start my company when it's perfect or I've planned it perfectly or I've got the perfect mission statement written. And I'm like, I've had 27 companies. I've never written a mission statement in my life. I have a game plan in my head. And when you do enough companies, you can do it in your sleep. But I've never written a mission statement. And I know people that, you know, I'll be like, Hey, did you ever start that business

you were talking about three years ago? No, I was still planning on making sure it's perfect when it launches. And I'm like, you've never been in business before. Cause there is no perfect. And the same thing with life. You know, the hardest thing I had when I was young was he would say to me, it's about, it's not about the destination. It's about the journey.

And I'd be like, I hate you. I just want to punch you in the face every time you say that. And I was so goal oriented and I wasn't enjoying the journey and I wasn't happy. I was miserable. And I think my body's like, you know, you're miserable trying to get out of your comfort zone. We should just make you back your comfort zone. And it helps you procrastinate and not achieve your goals, I think.

Yeah, 100%. That's the problem with that future focus and where you're getting stuck in your own head because you just don't know. You can't predict what the future is going to bring. And that's why it's all about just allowing yourself to go out and experience life. Because I see this all the time in clients I work with where they've built these huge businesses. They've had incredible success, but they're miserable because I see this all the time in clients I work with where they've built these huge businesses, they've had incredible success, but they're miserable because they put all of their happiness in some future goal

that's just not real. And it's come at the expense of everything else, so they start resenting their success. And that's why, like you said, younger you wouldn't have listened to their advice. And it's just like sometimes people need to go through the trial and everything, all the challenges just to understand, you know what, this isn't the life I want to be living.

So it's just, it goes back to just having that compassion with yourself to be like, you know what, I'm doing what I can. I'm allowing myself to make progress and not being so hard on yourself. Because I think as high achievers, we're our own worst critic and we put so much pressure on ourselves to perform and deliver. And while that's a great driving force and motivator it's never going to lead to any happiness because if you're constantly beating yourself up over how you could have done a bit better or you haven't done enough yet you're always going to bring your self-worth into question and you're never going to feel like you're

enough and that's very much like going back to the core of the book like that's section number six it's like you've got on this journey of transformation and the sixth thing you need to give up on is being so hard on yourself. It's knowing when to cut yourself some slack, which you can see, do you know what? I've done my best. I've shown up and being at peace with that. That doesn't mean lower your standards

and goals and expectations, but it's taking that pressure off yourself, which is self-imposed. Yeah, enjoy the journey, man. Look around. I said this to my niece and nephew when they were graduating high school. I said, you know,

be a story collector. That's what we do on the Chris Voss show. We'd be a story collector. I learned that from Larry King, uh, this great CNN host, you know, collect stories,

be interested in people, find out what their life journeys was, what, what made them. And, you know, I, I used to have people that would come up to me when we had all of our companies and, and, uh them and you know i i used to have people that would come up

to me when we had all of our companies and and uh and you know my all my partners investors and they would be like hey chris it's great that you finally arrived you can you can just relax now and coast i'm like you can't coast and i always thought that i always thought the same thing too i was like i'll reach a certainty you'll make a few million dollars and, you know, you can just coast for the rest of your life. You can sit back and I don't know, drink a lattes all day. No, it becomes more challenging. It becomes more, you, you, the high wire goes up more.

So there, you know, you're, you're more looking down going, well, I can't, this, we can't stop this ride because there's a long way down and you have to learn, enjoy the journey. Cause I went to the same cathartic moment you talked about with you know you're you're miserable you achieve all your goals at least financially and you're freaking miserable and you know people around you're miserable because you're miserable usually or you've surrounded yourself with miserable people thinking that will improve your life and uh you know you gotta you gotta enjoy that journey and keep a healthy mindset a lot of that comes down to the reframing and perspective shift though because i'll speak to

people all the time who will tell me that once they get to that next level of success things will be easier they'll have more time they'll be able to take spend more time with their family like they'll have less problems whereas as you know every new level of success brings new problems and demands so if you're waiting for the perfect time it's never going to happen and this is why i find for so many of us we fall into the cycle where we say okay once i achieve that that's when i'll take some time off i'll spend more time with my family i'll focus on my health but that's what we said the time before and the time before that and it's just this never ending cycle. And it goes back to that whole point of being present in the moment. It's like, yes, have big goals and aspirations, but balance that with being in the moment

and enjoying life. Because if you don't, you're just going to wake up one day and life is going to pass you by and you're just going to realize that you didn't actually stop to enjoy it. Exactly. And for so many years building companies, I used fuel badly. So I would drink, you know, 10 Mountain Dews a day for caffeine and pump and sugar and lots of alcohol at night to keep working through the night and up late. I used, you know, food as a fuel.

And, you know, when I was younger, it seemed okay. But, you know, after a while it catches up to you. And so you're making these things and you're like, I'll lose weight. I'll go to the gym later. I'll do this later. I'll clean up my act and quit drinking all the Mountain Dews later. You know, I just, if I can just get this business and stuff done right now, I can coast. And you give me epiphany that people

really do think there's that leveling off that you finally hit a point where you can go, I don't have to do anything anymore. And you can't. I mean, billionaires, you know, we've had billionaires on the show. We just had one a couple of weeks ago. You know, the bigger the success gets, the more you have to maintain it, the more you have to keep growing it, the harder it is because it's so massive. And your organizations take on things and people put things off and they just go, oh, I'll start the business next month or next week. And I've had companies for 20 years and waking up and going, wow, I'm glad I started at day one. And we said, the hell with it. We're going to go for it. Because if we hadn't, we wouldn't be here 20 years later.

And you see the results of that. And you just pat yourself on the back. But you've got to make those choices and get out of your comfort zone right away. I actually did an Instagram post about this earlier today, where I was talking about the fact that the choices and decisions that you made three years ago are the reason why you're living the life that you're living today. And if you're not happy with your current situation, there's no point dwelling on that. No amount of going back and beating yourself up is going to change it. But also the choices and

actions you take today is going to determine your life three years from now. So you can make a decision to do things differently, regardless of what age you are, what you've been through or your failures and setbacks. You can make a decision right now that you know what, I'm going to show up differently. This is what I want. This is what I'm going to go for. And I'm going to put myself out there. There's no point dwelling on the past. Like all of that was a stepping stone that you needed to go through to get you to a point that you're at right now that's made you ready. But if you're just continuously delaying, it goes back to that realization of what are you going to regret down the line because after my dad's cancer like one of the big realizations i had in my own journey

and how much time i wasted was how much of my life i put off and now the one thing that terrifies me far more than failure and rejection or not getting it right is regret and just recognizing that you're going to regret the things you don't do far more than things that you do do and if you can use regret as a as a fear to drive you then it becomes so much easier to follow through was that a cathartic moment in your life when you when your father got cancer yeah it was such a like a life-changing thing like during his treatment he had most of his bowel surgically removed and he spent 25 days in icu uh most of life support and breathing through a tracheostomy and luckily he pulled through which is something i'm eternally grateful for but that was the wake-up call i realized i had to change and i wish i could sit

here and be like overnight everything was different but it's just i spent the next couple of years where, going back to what I said at the beginning, I knew what I needed to do, but I wasn't doing it. Like, even though I knew I had to make changes in my career, in my professional life, I still had all of these negative thoughts. I was still doubting myself. I was my own worst enemy. I was just sabotaging myself. And that's why such a big part of my message has been going to help people like that who know that they're capable of so much more than not anywhere close to their potential and

just getting them out of their own way yeah regrets a big thing uh you know i i meet these people they're kind of interesting and and they'll they'll talk on facebook and say you know i don't have any regrets like what kind of life did you lead? You know, some people have said, what would you go back and say to yourself at 16? I'd be like, go see a psychiatrist, man. I had high anxiety and childhood trauma and different things going on with my life. And yeah, I probably needed some mental help

for some of the stuff that I went through. But even then, you know, I mean, you can't live in those regrets. You can't focus on them and be like, whatever. You just need to look at them and go, hey, man, I need to learn to be a better person. But, you know, I started my weight loss journey and my health journey, I think in 2015, 2016. And it was a journey. And it's still a journey I'm on today where I'm having to learn new ways to fast, new ways to extend all that.

And I imagine I'll constantly be on. I'll be finding new ways to eat healthier and be better. You know, recently, a few weeks ago, I think it was about a month ago, I found this new local farm here in Utah that they sell. They used to sell the restaurants before COVID. And they used to sell this really fine, you know, beautiful lettuce and, and, uh, they make all these, all these, uh, other things and, and dressings and all this stuff. And they would sell it to restaurants because of COVID restaurants closed down.

Well, they just started, they opened a shop like literally three to four blocks from me and they sell some of the best salad making and vegetables and different things. And it's all that, it's all really great. Cause it's not the big commercial sort of aspects that you get when you go to the store. And so I started going there, and I'm eating better, and I'm enjoying salads and eating more vegetables than ever before. And so it's this constant journey.

You just never arrive, and you kind of constantly always have to be getting out of your comfort zone yeah and the fact that you've done that is just testament to like anyone listening to us like you can make changes regardless of what you've done in the past it's like you can make a decision to turn it around but you've just got to recognize that to change your life isn't going to be an overnight fix you're not just going to do something once and then all of a sudden everything's magically better like it really does come down to discipline and consistency and then but along the way also then going back to what i said of being kind to yourself because if you're putting your pressure on yourself to get everything perfect you're like

i can never slip up and i can never have that burger or take that night off whatever it is you're setting yourself up to fail and it's for me all about looking at the macro picture because if you're just pulled into the day-to-day and focused on what's going on right now you're just setting yourself up for a lifetime of just constantly feeling bad about the things you do whereas if you look at the course of a year and you can be consistent like 300 days of that like that's amazing where so many people would then be like oh oh, but I failed. I didn't get right this on Tuesday. I like ate a whole pizza. I'm like in disaster. It's just like, yeah, but like six months from now, you won't even remember that you did that.

And it's just like really just looking at that bigger picture and just not just living life on a micro level. It seems, you know, you bring up a good point. The term perfection, you know, people have this thing where they're like okay elon musk he must have had a perfect run we've had you know like i said billionaires and multimillionaire successful people on the show uh that have done really well and been successful and in talking about all their journeys you know they've gone through cathartic moments they've gone through massive failures you know i went through massive failures in 2008 of our companies that we built because of the the crisis of the uh the whole system going down or our mortgage company was our crown jewel and uh yeah mortgage company businesses

were wiped out wholesale during that time and ours was one of them uh and so i had to recreate and rebuild myself and become the thing and i used to have part of the perfectionism was that idea of you know the it's it's not about the journey it's about the destination and that was wrong you know there's no perfect ending there's no perfect arrival you're just constantly adjusting you know even like 14 years with this show or 13 years with this show we're constantly adjusting we made adjustments three years ago with covid to expand the series and bring on more authors that were just business and ceo related but authors talked about everything uh and it's been massive and it was something that i enjoy more than ever i hated that i hated what we're doing for 10 years and now

i love it uh it's one of the few things I love doing is our podcast. And I never thought we'd arrive at that point, but the zigging and zagging, the never achieving perfection and the constant drive to becoming better is really the juice. It's really that journey that the life is instead of, you know, yeah, I don't think you ever just arrive and you're just like,

okay, well we're done now. Let's just, I don't know, suck lattes all day long it's such an interesting thing because this goes back to like part of the reason why i wanted to put the book out there because i find so many people they have this vision for their life and they just don't want to change it because they're whether they've gone to get a job that's expected of them or they've gone down a path and then they just spend the rest of their life unhappy because Whereas if you look at the most successful people, they

give up all the time. They give up on strategies that don't work. They give up on ideas they don't want to pursue. They give up on caring what other people think because they know that actually giving up is the secret to success. And I love that you brought up Elon Musk because I actually talk about him in the introduction and I use PayPal as a perfect example like when PayPal first launched it was voted like the worst tech idea of the year like it was absolutely ridiculed because it was a security device software and it was a terrible concept so he realized it wasn't working they gave up on their initial pilot and they shifted to the like money platform it is today so But people only see the success.

They're like, oh, he's got it all figured out. Whereas he has failed publicly in spectacular fashion time and time again. But the reason why he's able to actually grow is because he doesn't care about failure. He just views as a stepping stone in the journey. Whereas people who don't succeed, they view failure as the end of the world. They convince themselves, oh, it's this terrible thing. I'm never going to recover from this. Whereas failure is just your opportunity to grow.

It's only a bad thing if you don't learn from it and you keep repeating it in the future. Yeah, and then repeating it just keeps you in the same place. I mean, there's a lot of people that keep doing the same thing over and over again. They never question it. They never go. You know, one of the things that I wrote about in my book, we used to take over companies and over again. They never question it. They never go, you know, one of the things that I wrote about my book, uh, when we used to take over companies and do loans, we used to run ads in the, um, in the paper back then is the old days, uh, brick and mortar. Uh, and we would run loan things and say, well, we loan businesses, businesses, the companies are

struggling. And it was brilliant because we would get people send us their PNLs everything, like their whole business models. And we're just like, wow, if I called you up and asked for this, I would never get it. And we could cherry pick businesses and go through them. And one of the things I found was extraordinary to me that most of the entrepreneurs that I met that were up against the wall and heading towards bankruptcy and that were in trouble, they had set out a model of what they wanted when they launched their business. And maybe it worked for a little while, maybe it worked for a couple of years, maybe it worked for a very short time, maybe it really didn't work at all, but they just had money to plow through it. I remember I met one guy, we had a mortgage company for 20 years we built with four thousand dollars and it was profitable in the first three months we did some other companies

that way too and built them into multi-million dollar companies and he had started his company with like two hundred thousand dollars of seed money i can't remember where he got it from maybe inheritance and he had failed it within six months and he'd he'd paid for like the top dollar office space class a office space meanwhile he was interviewing with me in class c office space um and uh you know he just blown through 200 grand and he just sat there in front of me going i don't understand how you took $4,000 and you built this massive company with hundreds of employees. And, and I took $200,000 and I'm broke and we're bankrupt. But one thing I found that was interesting was they were still running that same fricking model, just trying to force it to work. And I'm like, you haven't adjusted anything. And, uh, a lot of

times they would just say to me, they'd be like, well, you clearly see something successful here. And I'm like, well, you have more assets, you have cash. So we see that and we can also fold it into our companies. But I would be like, here's the first right of refusal. If you're not going to turn your company over to us now, here's the first right of refusal. We'll give you 10 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever. But here's the thing. Make sure you call us before you get close to the bankruptcy because if you call me a week before bankruptcy, I can't save you and I can't save this company. You've got to take my offer now.

And they would be like, no, I think I can make it work. And they would still keep ramming that model. And they would never adjust it. They'd never tweak it. They'd never do what we've talked about, the zigzag be like well we should do this we should do that and then they would always call me a week before bankruptcy or a couple days before bankruptcy hey we're about to file bankruptcy uh you want to buy us now no and i'm like you guys you guys kept running that same model yeah yeah pretty much and you're just like no this is it was crazy and people do that they

keep doing the there's an old adage i don't know who said it but people keep doing the same things over and over and they expect different results yeah is that all the definition of insanity yeah there you go there you go that's it the definition of sanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results and we do that and we think in our mind that somehow things are going to be different. Somehow if we just keep hammering away at something that somehow it'll work. Well, if you're not hammering the nail, the nail's never going to go into the peg. You know, if you're just banging stuff, you know, and well, let's sit this wall over here and see if this does anything, you know, it's got to, it's got to be thought through.

And so I like, I like how the, you have that forward vision of three years in the future and stuff anything more we want to tease out in the book before we go yeah so the big takeaway message of the book we've touched on in different ways today on the show but it's ultimately like i said there's seven different sections from fear to giving up short-term thinking and worrying about the future and it takes the reader on a journey finally to section number seven which is all about giving up putting off their happiness because we're all guilty of delaying the things that we want convincing ourselves it's not the right time we can't prioritize ourselves and that's why ultimately the book is about getting you out of your own head and pushing you to a point where you can

start actually living the life that you want. So, because at the end of the day, if you're not happy, what's the point. And it goes back to what we were talking about before of being intentional. And in the moment, it's about you becoming present in more moments, being there with the people you are and living the life that you want.

So that's essentially the whole purpose of the book. It's about giving up on everything that's stopping you from living the life that you want. So in the end, you can be happy. There you go. That's why I faked my death and ran away from the kids and families because I wanted to be happy and

I changed things. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that, people. That's a joke. Anyway, it's been wonderful you having the show and enlightening. So much stuff and great access to the book. Byron, give me your.coms, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Yes, you can find me at byronmorrison.com.

My new book, Maybe You Should Give Up, is available anywhere that you can order books, and you can also find me on pretty much any social media platform, from LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, just search for Author Byron Morrison. There you go. And the book comes out June 27th, 2023. Maybe you should give up seven ways to get out of your own way and take control of your life and do it now. Don't put the book off just like

we talked about. Don't wait till next week or the week before or week after or whenever. Order it now. You can pre-order it, and that way you have the book as soon as it comes out. And all that good stuff. And take control of your life now. Plan now. So a great discussion, Byron. Thank you very much for coming on the show with us today. Yeah, thanks for having me on.

This was a lot of fun. There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Remember, Curious Foss shows the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. So refer this to your family, friends, or relatives. Go subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter, the big LinkedIn group over there, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss.

And be sure to stay tuned for all the amazing authors we have coming up this week from Simon Schuster, Random House, Penguin, all that sort of great stuff. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out, man.