The Mindset Mentor - Ep 31 - Success Made Simple: The One Thing w/ Jay Papasan

Episode Date: October 30, 2015

In this episode Rob interviews Jay Papasan, author of the best selling book "The One Thing" Jay speaks in depth about the six lies we tell ourselves that keep us from being successful. He also tells us why the happiest people in the world are always the ones who know their "one thing" and follow it with all their hearts. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Psst, hey, do you want a free motivational e-book called Hack Your Goals, a Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Success? Go to mwfmotivation.com and download it for free like hundreds of other people already have. Okay, now I'll get you back to the podcast. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, which I am proud to say has been rated the number one podcast in iTunes new and noteworthy in six different categories, including self-help and business, and is a

podcast designed to help you grow into the best version of yourself in 10 to 20 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we'll take a life topic, break it down, discuss it, and leave you with thoughts to impact your life and mind. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome to the episode, everybody. Before we dive into the episode, I just wanted to talk really quickly about Jay Papasan in this episode that you're about to listen to. There is so much good stuff in here and I am so excited to bring you this episode because this book, The One Thing, which is the best-selling book for the past couple years, it's incredible and

was my favorite book that I've read so far this year out of the 30 to 35 that I've read. He talks about the six lies that we tell ourselves on the journey to success and how to concentrate on the one thing, the one reason why you were put on this planet and the one thing that you're here to do. And if you have not yet read this book or you want to get it in the audio format, if you go to mwfbook.com, it will actually give you a free 30-day trial to audible.com. And with that trial, you can actually get a free book. So if you want to get the one thing in the audio format, this would be an incredible time to do so.

So once again, if you want to do that, mwfbook.com. But without further ado, Jay Papasan. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial, and I am very excited for today's episode. And the reason why is because I have Jay Papazanon, who is the co-author of the number one book that I've read this year out of about 35 books, and it's the book called The One Thing. And Jay, you could correct me if I'm wrong, but. And it's the book called The One Thing. And Jay, you could correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's over 150 appearances on bestselling lists. It keeps going up. Our publisher recently let us know that it's made over 200 appearances. Now it's been translated into 24 languages. So I hope that number keeps changing in a positive

direction. Yeah, it's for me absolutely life-changing. I can't be more excited to have you on the podcast. And like I said, it's the number one book that I read this year. And one of the things that I love about the book is I read a lot of books and there's a lot of fluff in a lot of books. But there's two things that I love about your book. Number one, there's not a lot of fluff, which is amazing because I don't have to skip anything. But number two, there's a lot of... Being a visual person, there's anything. But number two, there's a lot of, being a visual person, there's a lot of underlining, there's a lot of diagrams. And the whole purpose of the book, I guess you could say, is kind of with the quotes. I think

it's an old Chinese proverb, if you chase two rabbits, you'll catch neither. So before we dive into everything, could you give us an idea of where the book idea came from, the process of writing it, and then just the impact that you've seen so far with the book since you released it? Absolutely. And thank you so much for the kind words. I love, I mean, as an author, we spent five years, I mean, I call it my cave, researching and writing this book. It was definitely a labor of love for us. And I will never get tired of hearing people say that the book has helped them in some way. So I will also give credit to our publisher

because when we turned in the manuscript, this book would have been 440 pages long. And he's such a great, great guy. He only does one book a year, right? And so he puts all of his eggs in one basket, which is perfect for our book. And he said, guys, love the book. This is so deep. It's so in-depth. You know your topic. But you realize when someone buys a book called The One Thing, they don't expect a doorstop. And he made us laugh. And he goes, let's go back through it one more time and ask the question for the book. If we can only say one thing, what's it going to be? And if we can only say two things, in that process, we cut the book by almost 40%. So it's like 220 pages now. But that last effort from him, he was willing to be patient and make it as good as it could be. So, all right. So where did the

book come from? The book actually came, gosh, it's now been almost eight years since that original conversation. Gary and I were working on some training materials for salespeople. And we had created a plan for a real estate agent to do 36 transactions in their first year in real estate. And now that feels like aiming low, but back then it was a big deal. And I remember Gary saying, I really like it. The content's great. I'm going to take it home for the weekend. And I'd just like to maybe write an introduction that's a little bit more inspirational. And he came back the following Monday with a 10-page essay called The Power of One. And I've been in the book business for almost 20 years now. And I remember when I read that essay, I was like, well, this is it. This is his

thesis. This is what makes Gary one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. He built this little tiny real estate company in Austin that's now number one in the world. And he's done it because he's better able to identify the priority and stick to it than almost anybody else in the world. That's his superpower. hour. And I, when we sat down and I was like, this is a book guys. And we all agreed. And that was kind of the, the Genesis. It was one of those things that if a publisher had come to visit that little real estate company then, and made a bet on Gary, if they'd observed him, like I had for like three years, they'd have been like, this is what you need to write about. So it was kind of an accident, but it just showed up and we were like, wow. I think the last of your questions was like, what's been the impact? Personally and professionally, it's been one of the most satisfying journeys I've been on because I think you alluded to this. Gary and I share a real bias in business books.

I love it if you can change someone's paradigm, how they sue the world. But if you really want to make a difference, you have to change people's behavior. And to do that, you have to keep it simple and it has to be action oriented. And I really feel like we're seeing that from a publishing standpoint. The book, you know, it was the best selling business book not called Lean In in the first year. Like, can't avoid that. Lean In was just a monolith, right, in publishing. But I was proud to come in second to such a great book.

And then our sales, like most books, started to drop off. And then almost a year and six months into it, something happened. And the sales had been going up for the last 14 months, month over month, just continually. been going up for the last 14 months, month over month, just continually. And I believe, and this is just from word of mouth, I go out and I give speeches, that people are so busy today, they buy books and it might take them six months to actually get around to reading it. That's when the word of mouth finally started kicking in and people were like you, like, wow, this is kind of a good book. I did this because of it. And then they hand it to someone. And it's that I did this that I keep hearing that makes people want to go read it.

Oh, so-and-so in my office lost 66 pounds. I had to read it after that. That's what I think has been the big aha for me. That's awesome. So you feel that it's the reading it plus the results. And then once people saw other people's results, they're like, where did you lose all this weight from? And then they said, oh, yeah, it's this one book that I read. And then it just started growing naturally from there, you think? Yeah, I think to me,

I mean, everybody wants to write a book that kind of has that grassroots kind of feel to it. And it's one of those intangible things that's very hard to manufacture. But I think that when people are changing their patterns of behavior, right, they're changing the way they eat, the way they work, whether they're successful or not, that's kind of remarkable. Because I've heard of people saying, oh, so-and-so is doing this. And I'll be like, well, are they succeeding? And they'll be like, no, but it got my attention. So it's not even the results.

It's the change in behavior that seems to be getting people's attention that whatever people are walking away from this book, it's enough for them to implement something different in their lives. And that to me, you know, I want the results too, but that's like the next domino. And I'm like, I've got my hands in the victory V above my head. Like, yay, that's a big accomplishment for the goals of the book if we can help people make a change for the better. Absolutely. And you mentioned domino.

And in the book, there's actually a diagram you speak about is the domino effect. And I guess the whole book is kind of what is the one domino that will start the chain reaction that will just pretty much change your life? And there's one key question. Could you give us the key question and dive into, it's multiple parts of the question and how you came about developing that question? Yeah. The heart of the book is what we call the focusing question. And it's, what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything will be easier or unnecessary? And essentially, you're looking for the biggest lever that you can

currently pull in your immediate environment, right? It's not about what you could do or would do or should do. It's what can you do right now. It's one thing. And so it's either you're going to do it or you're not. There's no place to hide. There's no alternative action. And it's the most leveraged thing that you can do. In terms of Pareto's principle, it's the thing that will get you the most results. And in our experience, coaching and training people, when people ask that question and then act on it, they start to see a big change in their results. And all the other things that were on their list will either get done naturally or they just lose importance and

fall off your list, which is my favorite part when my list gets shorter and I'm not doing those things. And so it came out, the origin of that is coaching and consulting. Gary would coach our top franchisees and agents and business people. And I don't know if you've got a coach or not, Rob, I do. But the nature of the weekly call is at the end of the call, you have to make an agreement, a commitment to do something before the next call. And it would be like, so, you know, Rob, you know, what are the four things you're going to get done between now and next week, you know, to move this podcast to the next level and you'll list them out. And Gary was observing that people were doing some of the things, but they would

rarely do the most important thing. And it was really out of frustration that he started shortening it. You know, if you only do two things, and then it's finally like, well, heck, if you can only get one thing done between now and next Friday, what's it going to be? And that was when the magic started happening. You know, he's like, there's no place to hide. Either they did it or they didn't do it. And so most people would just do it just so they wouldn't get called out. And then all the other stuff was getting done anyway. And so that's why we kind of made it the basis for this, either consulting with yourself or with other people.

Absolutely. And I know you covered the six lies that are pretty much between you and success and that you just covered a little bit of the first one, which I absolutely love because as a visual person, I am a little bit of a first one, which I absolutely love because as a visual person, I am a little bit of a to-do list person. I have to put the do list together. But the very first, you said there's six lies. The first lie is that everything matters equally. And, you know, with a long to-do list, most people just want to kind of check off lists. They feel like they're doing something, but in reality, they're just, you know, doing laundry. They're just doing the

dishes, the small things. So could you dive in a little bit of how everything doesn't actually matter equally and, you know, what we can learn from that? Yeah, yeah. The lies, we almost always want to work on the mental game first. And so the lies are usually the things that the kind of mental things that get between you and success in this case. So everything doesn't matter equally. I don't think people actually articulate it that way. They just act that way. If your to-do list is too long, if your calendar is overbooked and you're feeling that kind of super stressed with all the opportunities and really kind of obligations that we face day to day, just trying to get everything done, you end up, I don't know what I do.

I try to shorten my list. I'll do all the things I can do quickly just so my list is more manageable instead of maybe doing the most important thing. Right. So you don't have that paralysis by analysis going on. Yeah. You said it. You're just checking stuff off. And it's the difference between having a lot of activity during your day and a lot of productivity.

Because by default, and this is what we say, turn your to-do list into a success list. Apply Pareto's principle. If I can only get one thing done today, and it would move the needle, right? Use the focusing question if you really want to go all the way there. What would it be? And you put the number one by that. And then if I got that done by 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock and I could do something else, what would that second thing be that would be the second most important thing? And the reality

is of all the things that you could do, there's only a handful that you really should do that day. And your list goes from 50 things to five things. Yeah. And I love it. You actually say going small is a phrase that you use in the book, where you ignore the things that you could do and actually do the things that you should do. It's counterintuitive. People think that if you really want to go big with your life, you need to go big with everything. Let's do lots of stuff. But if you study success in people who have really been extraordinary in what they do, they're actually doing fewer things for more results. And ironically, instead of doing a lot of things with side effects, right? Because you try to do everything, you're just going to stress yourself out and break down. But if you

narrow your focus, one, you'll do the things that you do at a much higher level. And it just actually will remove so much stress for your life. I found this to be psychically, you know, that mental thing that really, really helped me. Yeah. And you mentioned focus, which is, I mean, the perfect segue to the second line, which is multitasking, because most people feel like, you know, I feel like when you listen to people, they're, they're so proud to be such a great multitasker. And, you know, they feel like they get so much done. But actually, it's actually counterintuitive, I guess you'd say, because we hear about how people are such great multitaskers. But I think in the book, you said,

you usually lose about 20 to 25% of your time if you multitask. So if you're working a five-day week, you're actually only getting four days of productivity in, is that correct? That's right. I mean, it's crazy how people are monkeying with their perception of their abilities when they're multitasking. But there's just study after study. And if people want to look it up, don't search for multitasking. Search for switch tasking because what's actually happening in your minds is that you're bouncing between two things. So you decide to switch and that's instantaneous. It's like the dog and up. Squirrel, your attention goes really quickly. But mentally, your mind has to adjust to the rules of the new game. So if you're five paragraphs into this

really important sales memo and the kids are fighting over a transformer in the doorway and now you have to focus on that, the rules of those two things are very different. And if you've ever had that moment where you're really focused on something and someone comes into the room and starts talking to you and you can hear that they're saying words and you know that they're directed at you but you have no idea what they're saying. And you're like, I'm sorry, what did you just say? That's what they call this shift between the rules. And you lose time and you're not even aware of it. And that's where that statistic comes from. Modern workers who have emails and phone calls all day long, and I can't even imagine, they did this before people had two screens with Twitter up on one.

They're losing 28% of their average day to this switching time cost. So that's time. If you think of time as the most valuable resource you have to spend, right? We don't get any more of it. It's not renewable. It's the thing that we all have in common is time to spend each day. We get 24 hours. It's your most precious resource and you are wasting it. It makes you dumber. There have been IQ tests that will show that people who are stoned will, on average, score six IQ points higher than people who are multitasking. I could go study after study after study. But the one, I always come back to stress, because for entrepreneurs

and business people, working moms or even stay-at-home moms, the big killer is going to be stress. And loose ends, they actually show up because the longer you switch to a secondary task from your primary work, the longer you're switched, the less likely you are to ever get back to it. And so, you know, all those things that are left half done during the day that then become messes for you to clean up tomorrow, in addition to the work that you're going to do tomorrow, loose ends stress me out. And so if nothing else, I think what we would say, bottom line, it's a crazy world. Don't try to stop multitasking altogether. I get it. But when you know that you're doing the number one, number two, or number

three thing on your list, don't multitask then. Because those are the loose ends that will cost you the most. Yeah, absolutely. That's really good. So the second lie was multitasking. And then the third one, which I love because I love habits. I love talking about habits. And it's interesting because you guys actually take it a step further. And I'm going to give this quote before I say this, but it says, people don't decide their futures. They decide their habits and their habits decide their futures, which is a quote that's inside of your book, which it's incredible because everybody wants to be in control of their future, but then they don't pay attention to the little habits that they don't even realize are creating

their futures. That quote is one of my favorites. And I think it's probably the most Instagrammed quote other than the one you did earlier. If you chase two rabbits, you will catch only one. Those are probably the two most tweeted Instagram quotes in the book. Really? But it's fundamental. I think that I heard Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, talking about this on another podcast today, that goals are great, but it's the systems that drive the habits and the results in life. And Gary has said this as much.

He goes, I only choose goals so that they dictate the level of activities I have to do every day to achieve them. That's the only purpose for goals. It's true. And that ties into habits. So if I'm going to be, you know, a $500,000 a year salesperson, then what is the one thing that I need to absolutely do habitually so that that becomes a foregone conclusion. Right. And for habitually, you say that, which is actually something different. I've always heard 21 days, but you guys actually say 66 days to create or to get rid of a habit, correct? Yes. And it was confounding because there are like 20 books out there that will quote

21 days to form a habit. Oh, that's all I've ever heard. that will quote 21 days to form a habit. Oh, that's all I've ever heard. Yeah, and as near as we can tell, I think it came from like a telecom study at AT&T. I might be misremembering the details, but we did find something that suggested that people fell into a pattern after 21 days. And everybody was citing that same thing

or citing the books that had cited that without going to the original. But we could find no modern research that supported it. But there was a group out of Australia. And just to quickly paraphrase what you've already presented, they gave a bunch of graduate students the opportunity to form any health habit they want, from quitting smoking to drinking eight glasses of water a day. And then they followed them for a year and just asked two questions.

Did you do it? Yes or no? And how hard was it? And they found that people got on average 95% through the effort required to do an activity daily at 66 days. And so that became the moment where they said it was habitual. And that's the newest science that we could find, and it had been duplicated. So we felt like, well, that's a more reliable number. And it's scary. People set out to do New Year's resolutions, and they'll think they'll have a habit before the end of the month. And it takes three times that long on average. Yeah.

And the one thing that I love is that you say it's not about changing everything. It's about changing one habit for 66 days and then layering another habit after that to start making the big changes. You have to start with the one and then you have to start with the second one and keep going on and layering it on from the first one until you need to start. You have all of your habits perfectly in place. I think that I heard you in another podcast say that that's the one thing you noticed about Gary was that he had all of these incredible habits and he didn't make all of the changes at once. He just started with one and then started with another one and then went with another one. And over the years developed these habits to make him, you know, have a massive business. The effort it takes to take on a new behavior is vastly different than it takes to maintain that. So it still takes a

little bit of energy to maintain a habit. You know, like if you've had a really good like workout habit and you go on vacation, two weeks later, you might have to start all the way over and go through all that effort again with none of the novelty of starting. And that's tough. But the reality is if you can establish a habit, once it's established, and I always caution people, the 66 days is a good number and that it's a lot longer than the other one. They just need to pay attention. When does it get easy? When does it get automatic? That's when you stop focusing on it and move to the next one. And the way I illustrate that is like today, Rob, what's the average

temperature in America? Who cares? Yeah, I was going to say I have no idea. It's a lot colder in Austin today than it has been, that's for sure. Yeah, but it doesn't matter, right? Because average, it's useful in terms of kind of guessing where things might be. But for Austin, it matters how cold is it outside right now. And so everybody's going to be different based on who they are and what they're trying to tackle. We looked at the research and some habits were formed in as little as 18 days and some took 254 days. Wow. So pay attention when it gets easy. Like if you're trying to get up early in the morning, when you start waking up before the alarm clock,

pat yourself on the back and say, okay, what's my next priority? What's the next thing that I could focus on to make my life keep moving forward and getting better? That's great. That's great stuff. And the willpower was the next one. And this is something that I think probably one of the things that I took the biggest from the actual book itself was that you speak about willpower as it's kind of like your cell phone's battery. When you wake up in the morning, if you charge overnight, it's at 100%, but it's going to die throughout the day. And the willpower you say is going to be the strongest in the morning. And it says your brain is 1 50th of your body mass, but consumes 1 5th of the energy. And for me, I know that by the time five or six o'clock hits, I'm super tired and I don't want to get anything done. So I have had to wake up earlier

after reading your book to say, you know, this is what I need to prioritize and I need to put the time into my most important thing before I start work and get everything done. So what's the reason, is that the main reason why you wanted to have it say do your one thing in the morning or the other reasons why you wanted to have somebody do their one thing in the morning? If you study the wealthy, there was a guy who wrote a book called Rich Habits. And he was a CPA, I think in DC, and he surveyed every year all of his clients. And he noticed that high net worth individuals, millionaires, got up on average three hours before they had to go to work. And I look around the office and you know I get up at you know between 5 10 and 5 30 and I also know people who show up at work and you know their hair's still wet because they just

got out of the shower right and they're eating breakfast at their desk and the reality is in the morning not only do we have more willpower and that's just a fact not only sleep but a lot of it's nutritional right it's about the glucose in your bloodstream that's available for your mind to use as energy to focus. And you have to renew it during the day. So you have to eat healthy, have a good breakfast, have snacks, have a good lunch. And that's one way to maintain it. But you're consistently going to have it in the morning.

And I also find that that's when time is easiest to control. So if you look at successful people, I mean, that's why I think like so many people ask people, what's your morning ritual? Because really successful people have a program. They launch their days with purpose. And I always tell people to go there. I had one cheeky salesperson I was teaching at a conference go, well, shouldn't I make my sales calls in the afternoon when they don't have any willpower?

Smart. That's smart. But the thing is, you don't know if they're automatic decision making. When they have no willpower, what if their default answer is no? Yeah. That would be probably everybody's default answer if you're getting a sales call. I think so too. It's dinner time. I'm hanging up. And so I think that you have to do what you need to do when you have the willpower to do it on the worst possible days. So if you're having to go out and run and it's icy and cold, that's when you need your willpower, not on the average day. So that's how you make it habitual. So I aim everybody towards the mornings. I interviewed Gretchen Rubin two weeks ago, and she's the woman who wrote The

Happiness Project, and most recently, Better Than Before. And that book on page 81, I can't believe I can still remember it, had the best tip for this. If people struggle to get up early in the morning, like they know that they probably should, they've heard enough people talk about it, the best possible time to do it is coming up in just about a week. When we switch from daylight savings and we fall back, instead of sleeping in for an hour, just keep getting up at the same time and you've just bought yourself an hour in the morning without losing any sleep. So true. Now, here's something that's interesting. And this is one of the questions that I definitely wanted to ask you because it says in the book, time blocking, it says from 8 a.m. to noon,

try to do your one thing in that area. And you probably get asked this question a lot. What do you recommend? Obviously, you said waking up early. What do you recommend for people who can't get four hours before they go to work or they don't have the 8 a.m. to noon open? You know, I think you pick as big a window

as you think you can consistently get and then make that a habit and then start adding on to it. I think that, you know, even if you could carve out 30 minutes, let's just say that this is, we're talking about your professional one thing, right? The core of your job, but you've got so many fires to put out every day, you're not getting it consistently done, then make a stand around something simple for 30 minutes or an hour, something that you really think you can achieve and do that until it's a habit. And then say, and now I'm going to go for 90. And what you'll find is that the results from even that initial short burst that's done consistently should create

either enough validity in the activity for you to start offloading the other stuff or get permission from your boss to offload that stuff to buy more and more time to do it. I say, you know, think big, start small, right? And so go ahead and just carve out that first step. There's a guy named BJ Fogg, and he didn't make it into the final manuscript, but he got 10,000 people to start flossing their teeth by saying, after you brush your teeth, floss one tooth. And when he asked about that, like, why one tooth, right? You have to floss all of them. He's like, I wanted them to have victory, even if they didn't want to do the whole thing. So they could say, I did it and keep building momentum. So even one tooth, because over time they're going to do them all. Yeah. And that's better than not doing anything. And that feels like progress and it feels positive momentum and

build on that. So that's what I usually tell people like executive assistants have the hardest job. You know, their whole job is to handle the 80% for someone else. And so they don't feel like they have a lot of control of their time, but we coached a young lady into editing a New York Times bestselling book as an EA by starting with an hour and then building up over time so that she had more and more time to devote to that book project. That's great. Yeah, I love that because some people will look at it and say, four hours, that's a long time. I don't have that much time. I have kids. I got to get them ready, all of those things. But it's more than anything else that I'm getting from you is just starting the habit, no matter how small the habit is, because once you start doing it, it gets easier

to make... If you see that 30 minutes is causing a big change in your life already, well, then you're going to be more excited to go for 60 minutes, for 90 minutes, and then wake up earlier and go for two or three hours to really start making changes in your life. That's right. And that's the path. I mean, the subtitle of the book is about extraordinary results. And so I think the people, the Tiger Woods of golf or the Justin Roses of golf or whoever it is, the symphony masters, they're practicing their craft for four hours a day or more. So the top, we wanted to model the best. The reality is we may not all get to jump right into that. And so if you have to build up to it, I'm okay with that too.

But one hour a day is probably a recipe for being in the top 75th or 80th percentile because I guarantee you most people just don't do it every day, period. Absolutely. And I'm going to skip the second two lies. And the reason why is because I feel like people need to buy the book and actually read it. And I don't want to give everything away. And there's also the main reason why I started this podcast was because I noticed a lot of people in the world just kind of getting by and they didn't know their passion. They didn't have, or if they knew their passion, they didn't follow their passion. And it was driving me crazy to see these people

that I know have so much potential, but just aren't really going for it. And one thing that you say in the book is you talk about happiness and the way happiness is found through your purpose. And what it says is that securing money or something, you know, a car, whatever it might be, can spike your happiness for a little while, but eventually goes back down and we quickly become accustomed to whatever we acquire. But happiness happens on the way to fulfillment. Can you speak a little bit about that? Well, it was a real surprise when we dug into this. I think that it was a premise that Gary had from the beginning, that your big why, your personal one thing, that purpose, that mission is the engine that can drive everything.

But how that works was something that we got to discover. And the big thing was – because we're very goal-oriented people – is we learned that you have to think really, really big. And you look at people who are extraordinary, and a lot of times they do. They want to change the world. And picking a goal that you actually can't achieve can make you happier than one that you achieve quickly. And the way I would kind of explain it is,

you know, if you're watching a football game and the guy runs 100 yards and, you know, makes a touchdown, what does he do then? He spikes the football and he runs to the sidelines. And you're like, now what? And in life, you see people achieve a goal and then kind of go through a mini crisis. Like, well, what do I do now? I just built the company.

I IPO'd it. And now I don't have a job. And they go through something that's not as pleasant, even though they've had amazing success. Statistically, people would have more success making progress, getting to the 10 yard line and then to the 15 and the 20. All of those little victories actually add up to a lot more than the touchdown. And so we just tell people, pick something really big for your life. You don't have to know exactly what it is. Some people, you know, like, I'm going to be an astronaut and I'm going to Mars. Got it. Awesome.

You're one of the handful that is that specific. Most of us might have a notion like, you know what, I'd really like to maybe work at NASA or in something in the field of space travel, right? I know what direction I need to be heading. And that alone eliminates all the other choices. It gives you amazing clarity so that you can more easily find your priority. And if you're working on your priorities, we believe you'll be as productive as you can be. And so that's kind of the formula is pick a direction. If you know the destination, God bless you. It took me decades to kind of figure that out.

But I kind of figured where I needed to be moving to really be my happiest self. And once you get really clear, just shoot for the moon. Gotcha. Now, you bring up an interesting point because I feel like a lot of people, I feel like some people know what their purpose is. They know what their passion is. But I feel like a lot of people, it's up in the air So you say like, if you kind of know the direction to go to, like, maybe you want to work for NASA, maybe you want to do something in that area. What, what tips do you give people though, that, that are just kind of, they're, they're sitting there and they're just like, you know what I've, all I did was I went to school exactly like I was told

to. I studied, I graduated. Now I have this job. I don't really like my job, and I don't really have any passions or hobbies or anything like that. What tips would you give them to find out what their purpose or their passion might be if they're not quite sure? Yeah, I mean, sadly, you've described a lot of people. And the way you described it is they were doing all the things they were told to do. Right. described it is they were doing all the things they were told to do. And one of the central ideas that we got real clear about is we have extraordinary success in the subtitle of our book. And we were like, well, how do we define success? And we got real simple. Success is getting what you want. And the challenge that's inherent in that is that you have to know what you want.

And that's a surprising challenge for a lot of want. And that's a, that's a, it's a surprising challenge for a lot of people. And I look back at my younger self and I realized how unclear I was for so long. And I'm like, wow, I can't believe how clueless I was. So it's not, it's definitely universal. A lot of us face it. You know, one of the exercises that we ask people to do is, you know, like if you're not in like in a classroom or a workshop, right? Just go find some quiet time. Journaling can be good for this or just even a session. And what are the activities that you would do whether you got paid or not? And start thinking about those things. And then what are the things that you're most passionate about? What are the causes, right? And you list those out.

And then you can look at those lists. And a lot of times, people's first instincts, like, you know, I love working with people. I love helping people. I like negotiating. I like writing. I like this. I mean, these are all things that I really like. When I get to do that all day, I'm a very happy person when I go home. And then I'm really passionate about space or science or green rocks, whatever that is, cat videos. I think what you can start to do there is you've just listed a bunch of clues. And those are clues that could lead you to the direction, right? You know, what if your mission, you know, was to really focus on doing this for this

reason? to really focus on doing this for this reason. And, you know, Gary's really, if you really underline all of his success, he fundamentally has always been driven to teach in one form or another, whether it was as a coach or an author, he loves helping people through the act of teaching. And he's doing that on the path to becoming in this spiritual journey that he writes about in the book, his best possible self. He's got this idea of that's how he will spiritually fulfill his life is to reach for his best in that endeavor. It's very simple, but it's actually led him to build this amazing company. If you look at the company, the heart of the company is teaching.

That's what actually makes it great. Yeah, that's true. I don't know what stories have been told. The one thing I hear about Keller Williams is that the bold training is just, it's coming from a Cutco person, it's like Cutco training for realtors is what I've heard from everybody. It's just incredible in that the people who are Keller Williams realtors really know what they're doing and really know how to sell. Well, we were recognized this year by Training Magazine as the number one training company in the world in all industries. Wow. And I'm like, wow, exactly. And I was like, well, there it is.

There's how this guy who got a real estate degree at Baylor but really wanted to go teach for free, that's how that shows up when you aim that at real estate and you have some ambition behind it. So true. So it could be anything, underwater basket weaving for cats, but be exceptional at it and maybe something really magical will happen. Absolutely. And it's like the metaphor where it says, if you're driving a car at night, you don't need to see the destination. You just need to have your headlights on and be able to see a few feet in front of you. And eventually you will get to that destination. You know, that's actually a quote that was my writing professor, E.L. D'Oroctoro. There's a poor paraphrase of something he told our class

because he was talking about writing a novel and people were like, I don't know how it ends. And that was a metaphor he used. And that stuck me forever. It's so true. And that's the idea of a direction, right? You kind of have your roadmap. You don't have to be able to see all the details. Just start walking down that path and see what shows up. I was reading about a guy, and I can't think of his name, that's one of the people who turned Reebok into a national brand. And it all started for him with trying to earn $6.99 to get his own pair of Chuck Taylors. And that simple thing, he really liked cool shoes when he was a little kid growing up in Brooklyn. And then he became a runner. And then this shoe thing keeps showing up. And then he becomes this internationally known kind of shoe Uber CEO that's led all of

these companies now. And you're like, wow, it all started with that shoe. The clues were there, and he had to look backwards. And I was like, well, of course I was on this path. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to pay attention to your time, obviously, but I think that goes perfectly where you said it took you decades to figure out what it was. And I love that I've heard you speak on other podcasts and say that you were for 20 years, I think you're around 30 years old, when you realized you were backing into becoming a writer, but you just weren't committing becoming a writer. And you were getting the degrees, you were working for the companies, but you never just made the full commitment. Right. And now that you have, you have found

your passion, you've seen the success from it as well. So could you give us a quick, you know, rundown of exactly how that happened and, you know, where you've, where you started from? I think you went to the University of Memphis. And the reason I remember that is because that's where my dad went to school as well, to where you are now and kind of how that came about. Oh, yeah. It's one of those stories where I just shake my head, but it's just true. I started trying to write a novel when I was 12 years old on my mom's electric typewriter. I tried to rip off The Hobbit. And I wrote short stories in high school and got a writing degree in college in Memphis

and then went and was kind of like a translator, right? Which is still words overseas before I went to NYU and got a master's in writing. And then I worked in publishing and I did all these side jobs in bookstores and it was just written everywhere. And I would say things like, I'm going to be an editor and I love working in books. But what was really under it all, and it was probably fear as much as anything. Absolutely.

I wasn't articulating it. And I remember we are here in austin i was working as a newsletter writer for my future co-author um and i remember my wife wanted me to go meet uh someone she said it was a writer and we were going to go have dinner and i sat down with the guy and i had already been published at that point just magazine stories and. And I'm like, so, hey, I hear you're a writer. You know, where have you been published? Well, he's never been published. Oh, cool. Well, you know, do you work somewhere where you write? Like, no, it doesn't do that. And like his job had nothing to do with writing. He just wrote in his free time, but he told the world he was a writer. And I remember being really confused about that and not knowing what to make of it. And we were riding home and Wendy's like, you know,

you're not what your title says you are. Your identity can be something very different. And she's like, you're a writer, right? That's why I wanted you to meet him because he's a writer. It doesn't matter if you've been published or not. It's just who you are. And that was just clarifying. I was like finally you know I took my spouse to finally show me what was right in front of my nose like oh that's it that is truly why I've been down this path I just hadn't articulated it but by articulating it within like a year I was writing books with Gary Wow it's funny the clarity that you get from just figuring it out and I think more

than anything else like you said overcoming the fear of this is who I am. This is what I was here for. And then it seems like the world just kind of conspires to, you know, make you a writer like it did. Yeah. And I think there's this weird, I've never articulated this. I think there's this weird fear of lost opportunity. If I say I'm a writer, does that mean I can't be all those other things I think I might want to do? And I think that keeps some people from making that commitment. And the reality is that if you become that thing at a really high level, a lot of those other doors might actually open up to you. Like Gary, his famous story is that he wasn't going to college. He was going to be a rock star.

story is that he wasn't going to college. He was going to be a rock star. And after a summer of being a failed band member, he finally admitted defeat to his parents and said, well, I don't think I'm that good as a musician. And they said, well, good, because we actually enrolled you in Baylor without permission. And so he went to Baylor. I can't even imagine my co-author, as focused as he is, being that unfocused. But then you fast forward 20 years and he's got a rock band that plays at all of our events. And even though it's his band and his company, you know, kind of like the Bill Gates of the world, those, you know, baby boomers, they actually cover a lot of awesome songs. He's actually really talented and they get to play to a crowd of like 15,000 people. Who gets to do that?

So like he did this, his one thing. And as a result of it, some of the things he thought he might want to do actually do happen. And it's counterintuitive that way. Yeah, it's such a crazy story. It still worked out for him, which is the awesome thing. It does more often than not, I think is my point, is that people might be surprised how often it works out. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I really appreciate your time. This was awesome. And I love that I was finally able to cover this book because it's been nagging me for the past four or five months that I read it. I was like, man, I need to do an episode on this, but I was so glad I was able to actually get a hold of you. So let me ask you this. How can people get a hold

of you and then also learn more about the book and go out and get it? I think they can just visit theonething.com and it's the number one thing.com. I've got links to my social media on there and I try to be fairly accessible and everything about the book and all the other things that we're doing are all on that one site. So that's a nice, simple, easy solution, theonething.com. Great. I really appreciate your time. And I'm going to leave the listeners with a quote that really stood out to me from your book. And it says, go live your life, live it fully without fear, live it with purpose, give it your all and never give up. So Jay, I really appreciate your time and I hope you have a great day. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate everything you

said about the book. I love it. Thanks. And so that is it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you like what you hear, please share with a friend, spread the love if you think it's something they could benefit from. If you want the show notes from today, you can get it at mwfmotivation.com, which is also where you can download our free ebook, which is called Hack Your Goals, the Step-by-Step Process to Achieving Success. And if you want to keep in touch with us, you can follow us on Facebook or Instagram. Both of those are at MWF Motivation. And if you like what we have, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher,

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