The Nick Bare Podcast - 022: Embrace Simplicity and Uncomplicate Your Life

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Making an idea more complex is a fool's errand. Highly intellectual and creative individuals strive to simplify concepts. Not to be mistaken for "easier" - because there, we find convenience and convenience is a silent killer. In this episode, I provide valuable insights into the concept of simplicity and how you can simplify your life to take back your time and find success. Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Topics: 00:00 Intro 1:10 In-Focus capsules 3:23 Simple vs. easy 5:30 Being afraid of simple 7:00 Simplifying my eating disorder 11:47 Examples of simple vs. easy 18:55 Why we overcomplicate things 22:00 Simple is the highest form of intellect 26:30 Simple is a creative superpower 27:55 “You don’t want an easier life, you want a simpler one” 30:40 3 ways to simplify your life

You don't want an easier life. You want a simpler life. An easy life is it's cruise control. It's autopilot. When life gets easy, we stop growing, we stopped adapting, we stopped evolving. And we as human beings, we thrive in challenge. A lot of things that we experience and do or want to do is simple. And just because it is simple doesn't mean it is easy.

Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank you for tuning in and supporting the brand. Now, I have spent the last decade plus of my. my life building bare performance nutrition. And we create effective supplements that you can trust to support your wellness, endurance, and performance goals. We offer high quality, great tasting weight protein powders, effective pre-workouts, superfoods, sleep support, electrolytes, and much more. So if you want to support the content that we produce and the message that I am sharing

through my content and on this podcast, I would greatly appreciate it if you went to BPNSups.com. and you can use code Nick Bear 10 to save 10% off your next order. So thank you guys. I appreciate you. And let's dive into the show. Right now, I am riding high on InFocus. We recently launched InFocus in the capsule form.

Now, InFocus has been our notropic energy supplement for the last couple years. And the way we developed In Focus actually was myself, Preston, and Joe. when we were in our first warehouse at 2590 Oakmont Drive Suite 420, we wanted to create a supplement with our manufacturing partners that would essentially make us limitless. And we went through multiple rounds and iterations of formulas, which ended up being in focus. And for the last couple years, we've sold in focus as a powder, a flavored powder. But this past year, a few months,

ago, we made the decision to capsulate in focus and sell it in capsule form. And I actually think I enjoy the capsules more than the powder. I took three capsules, which is one serving of in focus. Like I said, it's our energy in nootropic supplement. It's going to increase energy. It's going to make you feel dialed in and just alive, like in focus. Took about an hour ago. slowly the effects started to build.

Then right before sitting down to record this episode, I crushed 250 grams of jasmine rice, eight ounces of grass-fed, grass-finished ground beef, some coconut aminos and primal kitchen's buffalo sauce. And the combination of in-focus, the beef, the rice, the sodium, I feel like a million bucks right now.

I feel great. So if you haven't tried in-focus yet, You're looking for a solid pick-me-up throughout the day or the morning to dial into a project, get some work done, be super productive. Go to BPNSups.com, try in-focus, whether it's the capsule or the powder. You are going to love it. But in today's episode, what I want to talk about is a difference between simple and easy. Those two words, they are not synonyms. and a lot of people, I used to do the same thing.

Use these two words, simple and easy, interchangeably. Here's a quote that I want to use to kind of kick off everything we're going to talk about. I'm going to talk about why simple and easy are not synonyms, why we shouldn't be afraid of simple, but why we should be afraid of easy. Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, and difficulty. I have never in my life envied a human being who has led an easy life. That is, Theodore Roosevelt. And what made me think about this is last week I was recording a podcast episode with

Badrus Kulian. Bejus Kulian came in and we sat down and we had about a two-hour conversation and I asked him the question, if you want to change the trajectory of your life in the story you tell yourself about your past, is it easy to just flip that switch? Can you change a trajectory of your life that easy? Just by flipping a switch. And he responded with easy, no, simple, yes.

And as soon as he said that, it made me think. You know, right now I'm reading a book. I'm reading multiple books. One of those, as I've talked about in the last couple episodes, is the courage to be disliked. And in the courage to be disliked, the introduction from the author kicks off with, the world is a simple place,

and life itself is too. We have made it a complicated place. None of us live in an objective world, but instead, in a subjective world that we have given meaning to. A lot of things that we experience and do or want to do is simple. And just because it is simple

doesn't mean it is easy. I actually used to be afraid of the word simple. I thought that by simplifying things or making things simple, it made me look uneducated. It made me look like I was avoiding the path of least resistance and we know that the stimulants of resistance

build strength through adaptations. So what I would do was I would overcomplicate everything and anything. I would over complicate one to make myself feel smarter, but also to make myself look smarter to people around me. And over time, I mean, it took years and years and years to realize this, that by avoiding simple, not avoiding easy, by avoiding simple, I was making things harder for myself. I was making things harder for other people.

I was an ineffective communicator. I was an ineffective leader. And by making things more simple, again, this does not mean easy. You become more effective at everything you do. For your personal life, for your family, for your team, organizations that you lead. And I have a little story to really like paint this picture. This is a personal story. When I was 14 years old, I had a severe eating disorder. I was starving myself. To this day, really can't tell you why or what caused this eating disorder.

The only thing I can really pinpoint it down to is that I wanted to have some sort of level of control in my life. I wanted to be able to control what I was putting in my body and the outcome that resulted from reduced caloric intake, starving myself. It took about a year for doctors to officially diagnose it. I knew this entire time that I was starving myself. And my parents started to get worried. So they would take me to the hospital, multiple doctors' appointments. I was in and out of the ER.

I was in and out of different testing at the Hershey Medical Facility. at one point they thought I had celiac's disease. At another point, they thought I got some virus in some bug or worm on a recent family vacation. The doctors, my family were trying to figure out why I was losing so much weight at a significant rate, why I was so fatigued. I was so tired. I had no energy. Performance was decreasing. I was in puberty.

I should have been thriving. like running up and down the streets and just, just pumping with the testosterone that my body was producing at this age. But I was starving myself and essentially killing myself. So that is the, I'm setting the conditions right now for where I was when I was 14 years old. Eventually the doctors identified that I had an eating disorder. And I've told this story before, but. My mom picked me up at school one day.

She's driving me to the Hershey Medical Center, which I think is just another routine test that we're going to do, whether they're taking blood, they're putting a scope down my throat to check my stomach and what's going on. And instead of pulling into the emergency center where we would typically pull into, we pulled into a separate facility, which is the outpatient clinic. And we pulled up this building, and there was a sign that read, eating disorder clinic.

And we walked up these set of stairs and a doctor sat me down and confronted me. He said, we know what you've been doing. We know you've been starving yourself. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when these doctors came together and came to this conclusion. And I started breaking down and crying. I was embarrassed. I was caught.

Everyone knew that I was starving myself. And I wasted my parents' time. I wasted these doctors' time for, for a year. year. People were worried about me. People invested a lot of emotional energy into these things that I was doing to myself. I was embarrassed the fact that I was caught. And I had no disease. I had no tapeworm or bug. Something didn't happen to me. I did this to myself. And here's what I'm going to bring this all together. The solution was to eat more food. That's all I had to do. to fix this problem.

Eat more food. Consume more calories. Put more substance in my mouth and chew it and digest it. And I would get better. I would feel better. Energy would come back. Weight would come back on. My performance would increase.

And as simple as that solution was, it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life. And it took months and years to get better. to rebuild healthy relationships with food again. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, mentally. But it was so simple. The solution was so simple. That's why I say that just because something is simple does not mean it is easy.

And what is simple for you and the perception of might be different to me and other people as well. Same with hard and easy. It's all, it's all relative. Now, easy always pertains to usage. It pertains to the lack of frustration, obstacles, additional work. Simplicity or simple always pertains to the inherent characteristics of the thing we're trying to use, not how these characteristics affect our usage. So what I would love for you do right now as you're thinking about these concepts that I'm putting out and applying it to your life

think of something that is simple but not easy I bet you there's a lot of things there's probably a lot of things that you and I are overcomplicating on our own things that are really should be

and can be simple we're overcomplicating and making it harder than it has to be because it feels too easy I'll give you some examples. There's some extremes in here. Leadville 100. 100 mile ultramarathon in the Rocky Mountains of Leadville, Colorado that I did in 2021.

This course, it's an out and back. You go 50 miles out, you go 50 miles back. The course is very well marked and identified. There are checkpoints that were mapped out. you know exactly where they're going to be. These checkpoints have nutrition and fuel and water and medics and your crew can move from checkpoint to checkpoint. All you have to do as the runner is go out 50 miles and back 50 miles.

Everything else is pretty well supported. Was it easy? Absolutely not. It was the hardest race. The hardest foot race I've ever done in my entire life. It crushed me. I felt it for for weeks afterwards. But the reality is, if I'm really honest with myself,

it's a simple course. It's out and back. But was it easy? Hell no. It was not easy. Another example is if we think of happiness and fulfillment and content, the feeling of experiencing this, like what do we actually need?

Not one. What do we actually need to be happy? We need food. We need shelter. We need social interactions or relationships. We need something to work towards. We need a mission, a purpose, a direction. And if we really do have those things, we should, in theory, be happy and fulfilled

and content. Well, then why is it so hard? for so many people to be happy, fulfilled, and content. Because it's based off the hierarchy of needs, not once, that we truly need to have to be happy, fulfilled, and content. It's simple. But it is so difficult and harder for so many people that a lot of people never achieve any of those feelings.

The last example I'll give, this is another endurance example. you know, I'm doing an endurance race in September. It is the last man standing ultra. This is a backyard race. So it is a 4.2 mile loop. It is every hour on the hour it restarts. If I go out for that first loop, that first 4.2 mile loop, and I finish those 4.2 miles in 40 minutes,

that means I have 20 minutes to rest until the next loop begins. every hour on the hour, everyone restarts. You keep going until you can't run any longer. You just stop, you quit, you give up, or you miss the time hack. You come in, you know, finishing a loop in, say, one hour and three minutes. Well, you miss the time limit, you're dropped. All you should do is finish 4.2 miles within the hour,

and then it restarts. Simple concept. very challenging, very hard. The best part about this race, you know, compared to, say, a Leadville 100, Leadville 100, you know it's 100 miles. You know you're going out 50 miles, going back 50 miles. Last man standing, you get to choose how hard it is. You can stop after four miles.

You can stop after 60 miles. you can stop after 100 miles or you can push your body to its physical limit and potential until you literally can't do it any longer. You get to choose how hard it is. So think about it. What are some things you're doing in your life that are relatively simple, that you may be overcomplicating, but not easy? Here's something to think about body composition goals, losing weight.

We know that you have to be consuming less calories than your body requires to maintain your current weight. So if you can consume 3,000 calories a day, and by consuming 3,000 calories a day every single day, you will maintain your current weight. Say you weigh 200 pounds and you consume 3,000 calories every day. If you maintain that caloric intake, your weight will have some small fluctuation. but on average, you will maintain 200 pounds for weeks and months and years. Things change, obviously, metabolism as you get older, energy expenditure, based off what you're eating, how much water you're holding at certain times of the day or certain times of the week.

There's outliers for example, but the concept of losing weight is very simple. If I want to lose weight and my baseline maintenance is 3,000 calories. Well, if I consume 2,500 calories a day, I will start losing weight because I'm in a Chloric deficit. The concept is it's extremely simple. It is thermodynamics. Eat less than you need to maintain your current weight and you will, in return, lose weight. Really, what should happen is anyone that wants to lose weight or should.

should lose weight, can lose weight. It's not that easy, though. So many people struggle. It is so hard for so many individuals to lose weight. Not just lose weight, but to lose weight and maintain that new weight. How many people do you see that? They're like yo-yo dieters. They diet down.

They lose a bunch of weight. They gain it all back, sometimes even more than they originally started at. And they'll diet down again, and they'll lose more weight. and only gain it all back, yo-yo dieting. Because the concept is simple, but it is not an easy journey. It is not an easy process for so many people, especially for those who lack discipline, who are self-powered.

So why do we complicate things? Life itself is simple, but we intentionally over-complicated. Why? One of those is the confidence we have in ourself to accomplish goals. Two, I think it's an insecurity. And three, Simple doesn't sell. You know, there's a lot of people online right now

who are preaching and promoting different diet strategies and techniques. Extremes. I mean, if you're new to fitness, you're new to nutrition, you're new to dieting to promote a healthy lifestyle, and you have no background or experience and you go on social media, say Instagram, for example, and you Google or you search diet advice,

you're going to be bombarded with the complexities of different information. Well, plant-based vegan is the way you need to eat. Carnivore is the way you need to eat. Low carb, high-carb, low-fat, high-fat, Mediterranean, paleo. There's a lot of science. There's a lot of research that is as shown what is a effective, sustainable, flexible diet that

promotes health span and lifespan. Simple concepts. Why is it overcomplicated? Because complicated typically sells. If people can find a niche and that niche makes a concept, comprehensive. complicated. Complicated to the extent that the consumer or who are they trying to sell to doesn't fully understand. There's a lot of buy-in. You can gain a lot of trust through that. So it's easy to build an audience, build a community, build a consumer base around complication

because if you complicate a concept or a topic and you make it so you hold the key to that complication. You hold the key to those theories and that plan and that protocol. You can sprinkle in some information to other people

but they'll never fully grasp the complication of it. People don't always want simple because simple, here, simple people think is a synonym or interchange for easy. If it's that simple

that seems too easy. Right? That's the response. Give me something really complicated. Give me something really robust. Ah, that seems like it's going to have greater effect. It's going to have greater results because it's more challenging. It's harder.

Don't fear simple. Simple is often the most effective. But like I said, just because it is simple does not mean it is easy. Albert Einstein talks about the five ascending levels of intellect. It starts with smart and then intelligent. and then brilliant, and then genius, and it ends with simple. The fact that simple is the highest level of intellect. It made me think back to a conversation that I've had with many different people

at many different times in my life. I have been, and sometimes still am one of these people, I am trying to simplify a lot, especially the way that I articulate words and sentences and messages. And I'll remember this story because for some reason It left a lasting impact on me That I'll never forget Because I thought I don't want to be

On the other end of this phone call And myself and some other members The BPN team We had a call with this one individual And after the call We were all mentally and emotionally exhausted And the only way to summarize What happened

Is that someone on our team said, that guy just said a thousand words without saying anything. And that really sunk in. How many times have we tried to get a message across or do something? And you either say a thousand words or take a thousand actions or create a thousand steps without creating or doing or saying nothing. It also made me think back to my first speaking event I ever did. This was in 2017, maybe 2018.

It was right when I got out of the Army. I was asked to come to a speaking event in Dallas, Texas. And I was asked to come talk about how I transitioned out of the military into civilian life, how I built my business, what I learned. And I thought, I've been telling this story forever. I don't have to do much prep. I really didn't even think about who I was talking to. or the intent of my speech, the goal of what I was going to say,

how it was going to impact the people in the audience, I was thinking, how am I going to tell my story as best as possible? I remember walking up on stage and seeing all the people out in the audience and instantly I thought to myself,

I should have prepped. All these people, their eyes are on me. I really have no clue what I'm going to talk about. I was going to just tell my story, but they don't care about my story. They don't know exactly who I am. They want to know how my story and the message that I have is going to positively impact them in their life. And I froze for a second. And I just started talking.

I just started spewing and rambling on from point A to point D to point B to point F to point C to point Z. like I was all over the place. It was such an, in my opinion, I overcomplicated everything that I was trying to get out. I said a thousand words without really saying anything. And after the speech was over, I walked off the stage. And again, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted,

thinking I should have prepped. I hope that someone took something from this conversation, this speech. and a few weeks later there ended up being this feedback card that all the speakers received and if people in the audience wanted to provide feedback and send it to the speaker they could

and I read one feedback card and it said great story but not relatable to anything that I'm experiencing or going through right now and that was like taking a dagger into my chest for something I was already embarrassed about

and spinning that dagger around thinking I need to do better. I need to be a more effective leader. I need to be a more effective communicator. I need to learn how to simplify my message. When you try to overcomplicate and you're not confident in what you're about to do, you'll start talking and moving in circles. If you're really clear and confident and you simplify the process in which you're

trying to set out to achieve, it's effective. There is this jazz great. His name is Charlie Mingus. He once said, making the simple, complicated is commonplace. We all do it. A lot of people do it. So if you are making simple complicated,

that's okay. But being aware of it is the first step. But the quote's not done. So he said, making the simple complicated is commonplace. making the complicated simple, that is creativity. Making the complicated simple is a superpower. It is effective, effective communication.

When I was in the Army, we used this acronym, K-I-S-S. I know it's used around the world for a lot of different things, not just the military, but it stands for Keep it Simple, Stupid. And it's just that straightforward. effective communication, effective leadership, an effective message or story is also often simple. Again, it's not easy, but keep it simple, stupid.

We all are going to try to overcomplicate anything and everything. And like Charlie Mingus said, that is commonplace. But our goal should be to be uncommon with creativity. You don't want an easier life. You want a simpler life. An easy life is it's cruise control. It's autopilot. A few months ago, you even go back a few years ago.

You know, when we were in the thick of building BPN, and this was before I stepped down from the CEO role, bootstrapping a brand, it's really hard. It's really hard. As I've talked extensively about it, lots of highs and lows and winds and losses and successes and failures in building a business.

And things get really complicated. The larger you build it, especially being naive and ignorant to how you build something from the ground up. When you have no other experienced team members, mentors, employees, it's really easy to complicate a business. and at one point

I hoped for and wished for easier I wanted building the business to be easier I thought I did at least when in reality what I learned over time I thought I wanted an easier life but that by no means is what I desire or what I want

I never do I never want an easy life because when life gets easy we stopped growing, we stopped adapting, we stopped evolving. And we as human beings, we thrive in challenge. We thrive in things that are hard. We need things that are hard on a regular basis to be healthy. I got to a point where I was taking on way too much, too much responsibility, too many duties. Oh, you can't do it, I'll take it.

Now, we can't afford to hire someone else. I'll take that on as well. I started overcomplicating operations and systems and creativity and the team and just, you know, it's really easy as you're building something to just overcomplicate. And when I at one point wished for easier, I really didn't know what I wanted because the truth is I didn't understand that simple was okay. Simple was effective. Simple was better.

I thought complicated was better. Okay, well, we know now we don't want to overcomplicate our life. We don't want to overcomplicate the things that we do because when we learn how to simplify the complicated, that is creativity. But now the question is, how do you simplify your life? And here's some things that I have learned that I want to share with you of ways that you can simplify your life to get your time back, to get your energy back. to build self-awareness and just have a new perspective on how to grow, how to adapt, how to evolve.

One, identify what is important, prioritize those things, and eliminate or minimize the rest. Say no to more. When I used to say yes to everything, and I used to promote and preach this, say yes to opportunities. Say yes to every single opportunity

because you don't know which opportunity is going to turn into a great opportunity. this all sounds great until you overextend yourself and you have no time left for yourself or your business or your family no time to be in your own thoughts say no to more every successful entrepreneur business owner athlete individual that i've come across one of the the biggest piece of advice that they've provided me is create boundaries say no to more. It's okay to decline, request, invitations, or anything else that you don't want to do that may overcomplicate your well-being. And then be in control of your time, your work,

your relationships, your energy, your actions. Because when you lose control, that is often the outcome of an over-complicated life. It's a lot easier to control a simple process, a simple life. I'm going to reinforce this again, not an easy life, a simple life as opposed to a complicated life. It's easier to be in control. And the last thing I want to leave you guys with, it's about convenience. Convenience is literally killing you. It's killing me.

It's killing everyone. Why? Because convenience is simple and easy. That's the conclusion I've come to through this thought process. simple is good, simple as effective. Convenience can be bad because it is simple and easy. Here's two examples I have. So throughout the pandemic, what ended up happening?

Well, business is shut down. Remote work increased. More people weren't leaving their home. It's pretty convenient to not have to leave a, say, 1,000 square foot apartment where you wake up, you eat, you poop, you work, you do everything. It's pretty convenient. And you know what you can also do? Here's the second example I have.

I can wake up in my house or say I live in an apartment. I can go into the kitchen and I can realize that there is no food. So what do I do? I get on DoorDash or instant. to cart. I have something delivered literally to my door. So now I have to take one step out of my apartment, the inconvenience of which that is, get my burrito or my jack in the box or whatever it is, bring it back into my apartment, eat that, go back to my computer and work. And an entire day, you might only log 200 steps from going from the bathroom to your desk, to your bed, to your

to the kitchen table. You're on social media more. You're having less social interactions and engagement. There's less stimulus to make you grow and adapt and evolve. I would be extremely weary of convenience. There's a time and place, obviously, for convenience. There's a time and place. But when it becomes commonplace, when it becomes the norm,

it ends up killing you because it is simple and easy. So to wrap up this episode, the key takeaways, simple and easy are not synonyms. They should and cannot be used interchangeably. We should maximize simple because it is effective. We should avoid easy because there is little growth and adaptation and evolution through the, those choices. So, simplify what you're doing. Always choose the hard and go one more.