The Nick Bare Podcast - 104: 6 Things to Stop Doing To Take Back Control of Your Life

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

In this podcast episode, I discuss six key things to stop doing in order to regain and take control of your life. Drawing from my own personal experiences and mistakes, I'll emphasize the importance of stopping certain behaviors that hinder personal growth and control. The six things highlighted include not waiting for change, avoiding assumptions, setting anti-goals alongside goals, distinguishing between busyness and productivity, seeking validation from external sources, and not letting others set the conditions of your life. These insights aim to help the listeners lead a more directed, productive, and fulfilling life. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview 00:48 The Importance of Doing Less 02:33 Acknowledging Life Circumstances 04:30 Stop Waiting for Change 11:32 Living Life on Autopilot 17:10 Stop Making Assumptions 29:18 Stop Making Assumptions and Start Asking Questions 29:59 Set Anti-Goals Before Setting Goals 33:18 The Importance of Family Time 39:15 Stop Being Busy and Start Being Productive 48:39 Seek Internal Validation, Not External 54:07 Take Control: Set Your Own Conditions 59:20 Conclusion: Six Steps to Take Control of Your Life MENTIONS: Half Time by Bob Buford https://www.amazon.com/Halftime-Significance-Bob-P-Buford/dp/0310344441 Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/pages/bpn-membership?srsltid=AfmBOorlpjVeag2kkt3eZ5UpWcFA5Bb2v5V_93lmO47Vn_Y8DRdLwDLL FOLLOW: IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

I don't think that we should do things to prove other people wrong. For some, that works. Like, that can be your fuel. You're going to be successful because you want to prove all the haters wrong. You're going to make this much money. You're going to buy this house. You're going to drive this car. That drives a lot of people.

That does not drive me. The things that I want to do, the things that I want to accomplish, the objectives I want to pursue, it's not to prove others wrong. It's to prove to myself that I can to prove my. myself right. There's a will, there's a vision for it, and now I just have to apply the action to actually do it. Prove yourself right. If the purpose behind what you do is to prove other people wrong, it's to receive the validation from external sources, other people. You're living your life for others, for the acceptance, for the approval of others, not to help them, not to benefit them,

not to show gratitude or generosity. No, you're doing it for the acceptance to conform to society's norms, not based off what you believe in, what you want. Stop doing things for the validation of other people. What is going on, everyone? And welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is titled, Stop Doing These Six Things to Take Control of Your Life.

six things to stop doing to potentially transform your life so that you are in the driver's seat. You're no longer a passenger in a car that you were picked up by through an Uber app and you're just coasting to wherever that driver wants to take. You know you're in the driver seat now. You are in control. but to be in control you got to stop doing these things. I personally have made the mistake in the past where I thought in order to change my life to improve, get better, to take control, I had to add things on too. And I tried that before.

And I failed at it because I found that as I added more things onto my day, my routine, my schedule, there are more responsibilities. I had more obligations. It made it harder to get things done within that window of time. And the things that I actually wanted to work on, the things that I actually needed to work on, I couldn't dedicate or commit the energy, the effort that I wanted to because I was trying to do too much.

So I found that the solution, and I think we all know this, I always knew this, I just didn't take my own advice. What we have to do is do less. do more with less. Stop doing some things. I'm going to share six things that I think you could stop doing to take control of your life, six things that I have stopped doing that have changed my life. And a lot of these things that I share on the podcast, as you know and as I've talked about before,

the things that I'm sharing, the things that I'm talking about are things that I am personally going through, have experienced, am experiencing in real time, and I'm sharing, I'm documenting because the things that help me, I want to help you. The things that have benefited me, I want to benefit you. And the mistakes that I have made, I want you to avoid. Now, before I dive into any of these, I want to make it well known that I acknowledge, I truly acknowledge, there are life circumstances that prevent. us from making immediate changes right now. It could be financial constraints. It could be health constraints. You could just be in a situation in life where you can't make immediate change

right now. And I acknowledge that. But I also know that there are some people who position themselves as the victim when they are not the victim and blame why they haven't, why they can't, why they won't, why they shouldn't because they are positioning themselves as the victim in a circumstance or a situation where they're not the victim. So until you stop seeing yourself as the victim and playing that card to the world's problems, to your problems, to the problems of people around you, none of these six things that I'm about to talk about will make a difference. Again, I acknowledge that some people are in very unfortunate circumstances.

And I am sorry that you are in that circumstance or that situation. That might be very tragic and horrible. But for many of us, the situation we're in is not as bad as we think. And we're just positioning ourselves as a victim and not taking the responsible the accountability, the ownership to change our life, to control our life. So here's six things I've stopped doing that have made a significant impact on me personally. The first one is to stop waiting for change and start making it change. I was thinking about this on my run this past weekend.

I had a 14-mile run. I'm currently in week two of marathon prep for Grandma's Marathon, which is in late June 2025. This is going to be a long marathon prep because as you know, and I've shared, I'm going for a 230 marathon, being coached by Jeff Cunningham. So we're in week two of prep right now. This past weekend, my long run on Saturday was 14 miles, 14 easy miles. and I was thinking of this concept of stop waiting for change and start making change. And if we look at life like a river or the sky or the ocean, and say, for example, you are a canoe. And you get placed into a river and you don't have an oar, you don't have anything to guide your direction.

you get thrown into this river and you go with the flow. You are allowing the river to take you wherever it takes you. There are twists, there are turns, there are rapids, there are currents, there are obstacles, there's rocks and there's dams. You might hit a dam and you get stuck and you get stuck forever because you can't physically maneuver your way out. Or there's a fork in the river and you want to go left because going left takes you to the final destination, but the current takes you right, and you can't change direction. You can't do anything about it. It just takes you there.

Or if you think of the sky, like you throw a kite up in the air, that kite is going to go in whichever direction the wind is pulling it towards. And you can't do much about it. The kite is just going with a flow. Or a sailboat in the ocean. put a sailboat in the ocean you don't touch any of the controls you can't guide the ship

but you throw the sail up and wherever that wind is blowing it's going to take that sailboat if we just go with the flow and that life take us wherever we want whenever we want we're going to end up

wherever that river wherever that wind wherever that ocean takes us. We're not guiding the direction. We're not in control. We're not in the driver's seat. And if you're living life where you're just waiting for the change to happen

because you're going with the flow, you don't know where you're going to end up. That's a scary idea. That's a scary concept. You're just letting life take you wherever it takes you. in 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now, if you're 70, you're 80 years old, you're looking back at your life,

you're thinking, how did I get here? Well, you got there because you let life take you there. You didn't step in. You didn't guide the vessel. You didn't direct the ship. You didn't direct your life. You didn't start making change the necessary and required change

to guide and direct. your life to where you wanted it to go. So because you just went with the flow, you ended up at some random place in the middle of nowhere doing nothing. Reflecting back on the journey thinking, this isn't where I wanted to be. I thought that change would just happen

naturally in my favor on its own, but it doesn't work that way. We have to stop. We have to guide. We have to redirect and we have to make the change. change. I just finished reading this book called Half Time by Bob Buford. And I can't recommend this book enough. I mean, it came into my life at the perfect time. And it was dropped on my desk by one of BPN's newest employees, Taylor. She works in the warehouse. Her father.

gave her this book to give to me. She came to my office a week ago. She dropped off this book. It was a present from her father. And he said that because of the life experience that I recently went through, getting hit by that vehicle on my morning run, completely shifting my perspective, waking me up, slowing me down,

making me, forcing me to, to truly recognize what I have, what I should be grateful for, and what I was, unfortunately, neglecting and not realizing the magnitude of awesomeness that I just had in my life. So Taylor drops off this book. I started reading it that same day, and I read it straight through until I finished it.

Half-time by Bob Buford. And it talks all about how in life we have, not all of us, but sometimes a lot of us have the opportunity to have two chapters. And you can only live that second chapter if you go through a halftime experience. This halftime experience is self-awareness. It's questioning your drive, your motives, your incentives, your purpose, your why. and he talks about in this book how the first chapter of your life, typically when you're younger, obviously, is focused on success. It's setting yourself up personally, professionally, financially.

And then you go through a halftime experience where you have the opportunity to live a second chapter. And that second chapter is no longer focused on success, but it's focused on significance. from success to significance. And there's this quote in the book by Bob, and he says, for the second half of life to be better than the first, you must make the choice to step outside of the safety of living on autopilot. You must wrestle with who you are,

why you believe what you profess to believe about your life, and what you do to provide meaning and structure to your daily activity, and relationships. Two key takeaways there for me. You must make the choice. You have to start making the change. Intentionally, you have to consciously make the choice

to step outside of the safety of living on, and here's the second part that I want to take away from this, autopilot. Don't live your life on autopilot. If you're living your life on autopilot, And I've been there. I've been living on autopilot before. And you're doing things because you have previously done them out of inertia, out of momentum, out of habit, out of routine.

You can be doing things that are very uncomfortable. You can be doing things that are really hard, really challenging. But because it's routine, because it's habit, it is comfortable. It is easy. Living your life on autopilot, if I think of a vehicle, on autopilot. It has no thought process. It can't adapt.

You can't change speed. You can't change direction. There's no response. It's just locked in. It's plugged in. There's one direction. There's one speed. And it's waiting for change.

And that change could be something very abrupt that it hits. It could be an obstacle. it could be a wall, it could be anything. But the way to live life is to take that vehicle, take yourself off autopilot and make the changes required before you hit that wall, before you hit that obstacle.

Stop waiting for change, start making change. I'll never forget this lesson that someone told me once before. And they said, and I think this was in response to, I was, this was years ago, years and years and years ago. And I was probably complaining about something that I was going through or part of my life. And someone said, if you don't like what you're doing, change it.

And if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. See, like this lesson right here, this quote for me, it eliminates the ability to put blame or responsibility on anything or anyone else. and the responsibility gets placed back on yourself because if you don't like what you're doing, change it. Yeah, but my life circumstances and my financial security and my family and my job and this and that. Okay, well, if you can't change it because of something that's happening in your life, then change the way you think about it. Shift your perspective. Start making that change. because what good is it?

Who benefits from you complaining or hating something you're doing or the environment you're in or where you're living or the job you have or the things that you have to do? No one benefits from that energy. No one benefits from that pessimism. No one benefits yourself included from that attitude you have around the situation. So change what you think about it. Change your perspective. Find good in the bad.

Again, stop waiting for change to happen. Because it could be years and years and years. It could be decades. It could never happen. Change could never come if you're just waiting for it. So make the change right now. If there's something you know or you want to change, and I'm sure you have a list of things,

like write them down. What do you want to change in your life? What needs change for you to achieve the things you want to accomplish? What do you want to change to be happier? What do you want to change and be more fulfilled? What do you want to change to be more passionate? Do it right now. Make the change.

It's really hard. It's really uncomfortable. But if you want to, like Bob Buford says, if you want the second half of life to be better than the first, you must make the choice to step outside of the safety of living on autopilot. wrestle with who you are, why you believe what you profess to believe, and what you do to provide meaning and structure to your daily activities in relationships. Okay, the second thing to stop doing, and I used to be horrible at this, horrible.

And I still make the mistakes, but I've learned from many mistakes. The second thing to stop doing is stop making assumptions. What are assumptions? Assumptions are preconceived notions about someone or something formed without verification. So first off, how do we solve this? How do we fix assumptions right off the bat? We fix making assumptions. we find solutions to problems with making assumptions

by just more clear and open communication. It is the key. Clear and open communication is the key to overcoming the habit of making assumptions. And honestly, what I found is you will remove wrong, negative, incorrect assumptions by asking better questions, asking more questions, asking better questions. Be more clear, be more open. Practice candor.

Candor is a beautiful thing. And it goes both ways. Candor is not a monologue. Candor is a dialogue. Feedback is a dialogue. It is not one person talking to another person. It is a conversation. Ask better questions.

Seek clarification, receive verification, and openly express thoughts and intentions. Assumption. mistakes. I mean, just think of your life right now. I can think of my life right now where I'm actively making assumptions around someone, a type of person, another business, someone in my business, the current status of some of our product sales based all market trends, what people are working on here in the business, what people aren't working on. It's so easy to make assumptions.

You know, you see someone, for example, I'm sitting in my office. And my office here at BPNHQ has one wall of all windows and looks outside of the building. And the way that our business park is set up is that we are operating in, three different buildings right now based off of the growth of our brand the last couple years. So our operations team, our fulfillment systems, customer service, customer experience, they are all in one building. Across the business park is where the leadership team sits, warehousing, our gym, our content hub and studio.

and then in the front of the business park is where our entire brand team sits. So we're really spread out across this big business park. And what's awesome for training, for working out is there is this road that goes around the business park that is a perfect 800 meter route. So if you want to do a speed workout, if you want to add in some intervals as part of your workout or your high rocks training or your marathon prep, for example, we have a perfect 800 meter fairly flat track route that wraps around HQ. And sometimes throughout the day, if it's really nice out, people will do laps. They will walk around the business park and that 800 meter loop.

And as I'm sitting in my office, I'll look out sometimes. I'll see someone walking around. And I could easily, and I used to make the assumption that this person was slacking off. They were just going for a walk in the middle of the day. And I'd see them doing multiple loops and laps. And in my head, I'm thinking, this person doesn't realize I see them. They're just walking around. They're just escaping work right now.

They're slacking. What are we paying these people for? And then you have the conversations with these people, and you realize they're on a call, they are listening into a meeting, they are thinking creatively about a project they're working on right now, they had to just get out of the office for a little bit to think more deeply. They're working,

but the assumption made is that they were slacking off because I didn't ask the critical. questions. I didn't seek clarification. I had a preconceived notion formed without verification. And if you allow assumptions to build and build and build in your mind, they can turn into resentment. They can turn into disruption. They can be a distraction. You can form these negative thoughts around other people or other things because you never receive clarification or verification. Assumptions are made when you don't understand the how, the why, the what. People are doing things or you're assuming without context, without understanding the task,

the condition, the standard, or the timeline. They got an example here of how making assumptions. I mean, there's so many different ways that making assumptions can just erode your life. I mean, they, like, if you allow assumptions to start in your mind, they can amplify into this big festering problem that just occupy so much of your mind, so much your brain. And you could solve so many problems. You could create so much more mental capacity and bandwidth by just asking more questions, asking better questions to, receive clarification verification. The example I wrote down here is, you know, like right now I'm building out Bear Ranch.

Bear Ranch has been something I've wanted to build out for years now. I mean, I have literally walked dozens of ranches over the last five, six years in hopes of finding the perfect property to build out this ranch. It's always been a dream. And we finally found the perfect location. It's 240 acres. It's 20 minutes from my house. There is the home on there that we are currently remodeling.

We're building a barn gym. We're going to eventually have animals out there. We're hosting races there. The Go One More Ultramarathon that we're hosting in May will be hosted on Bear Ranch. So it's this project that I'm going to be building out over the next couple years on 240 acres of beautiful central Texas hill country land. It's filled with huge oak trees and pastures. It's had grass-fed cattle operations on that property for years before I occupied it. And I truly view this land as a place to gather and celebrate, bring people to.

together. I do feel like I've been called to find a piece of property and build it out, not just for my own use, to my family's use, but to bring people together. And for fellowship and mentorship and connecting on like a really intimate, deep, meaningful level, I feel called to this property to do this. And as I'm building on Bear Ranch, the first project that we're undertaking with our general contractor who were working with Billy Russo is one, we're remodeling the house that's on the property. And two, we're building out this beautiful barn gym. It is 2,400 square feet. It's 60 by 40. We've got to lay a concrete foundation. And then over the next couple months, we'll build out this barn gym

and we're going to take all the existing gym equipment that's in BPNHQ gym right now, move it over there because when we move into our new HQ in April, we're building out a new gym with new equipment, partnering with play. And when I first went to Billy, I sent him these images of my vision for what the barn would look like. I sent these images over a bunch of different pictures. I said, this is what I'm envisioning. This is what I wanted to look like.

let's build it. And he came back to me. We had a meeting and he had two pages worth of questions. Very in depth, very detailed. All these questions from how much do I want the foundation to extend past the entrance in the garage doors of the barn? What kind of wood? What color would?

What kind of bracket? what do I want the garage doors look like? Where do I envision putting equipment so we can move beams around? How high do I need the ceilings? Where do I want the lights positioned? All these different questions. Like I said, two pages of questions. And at first I was like, oh my gosh, man.

Like just take the vision of these photos that I sent over and just like, let's just build this. But you know what would have happened if I just would have said, go build this barn based off these images. When the barn was done, I probably would have looked at and said, well, why didn't we, why do we use this wood? Why didn't we use a different kind of wood? Why are the brackets this color, but the hardware on these doors is this color? Why aren't the lights 12 inches in diameter, but there are 10 inches in diameter? Well, it's because I assumed that someone would read my mind.

We assume in life that people are reading our minds. they are in our brains, and they can visualize exactly what we visualize. They know exactly what we want. They know exactly what we expect. Everything is aligned from intentions to perceptions, to opinions, to ideas, to wants, to needs, to all the things. People can't read our minds. People can't assume, or we can't assume that people know exactly. exactly what we want and what we need.

So the way that we get around this, the way that we solve assumption problems and mistakes is by asking more questions, more meaningful questions. We have to get better at asking questions and stop making assumptions that people can read our minds, that people know exactly what needs to be done, that people have the same values and intentions and ideas and opinions as us

because chances are they don't. And you stop making assumptions about how something's going to be done, about what someone's intentions are, about people, things, ideas in general, stop making assumptions and start asking more questions. It will significantly improve the meaning of our life and allow us to take more control of our life. Before we continue with this episode, I want to take a quick break to talk about BPN's new free membership program we just launched. And by signing up for our membership program, you unlock a massive amount of benefits.

And all you to do to sign up is opt into our SMS program. That's it. When you opt into our SMS program, you unlock 20% off subscriptions for life. There are subscriber-only free shipping windows and flash sales. You get access to exclusive apparel and hat drops. And all you have to do to get started is go to BPNSups.com, follow the neon green banners, opt in to SMS, and you are officially a BPN member. I think the best part about this membership program is the 20% off subscriptions for life.

because for a lot of people, myself included, these products work, our training works, our diet works when we are consistently good, as opposed to occasionally great. And by offering 20% off subscriptions for life for these great products to you guys, you can be more consistent, you can reach your goals, and truly achieve your full potential by maximizing consistency in your supplement routine, your training, and your diet. So head over to BPNSups.com to get started today and take advantage of this opportunity to become a BPN member. Number three, stop setting goals without setting the anti-goals.

So I recently had Saw Hill Bloom on the podcast. and that episode is actually coming out after this episode because we're releasing that episode closer to when his book launches and his new book is titled The Five Types of Wealth. And this whole concept actually is something that I've been practicing for quite some time now. But the way that Sahel explains it, I think puts like a really nice bow on top of it. And he calls them anti-goals. and anti-goals are these things that we aren't willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of our goals.

So say, for example, like, we sit down at a table and regardless of what else we have going in our life, our other responsibilities, our other obligations, we make this list of goals, the things that we want to accomplish. and you dream big. It's like I want my business to make X amount of money with X amount of profits. I want to run a 230 marathon. I want to complete my first Iron Man. I want to climb Mount Everest.

You just start making like this buck list items of goals that you want to accomplish. really big, ambitious, bold goals. But what typically happens that, and I've, trust me, I have made this mistake way too many times, set these big goals, and I go out and accomplish them. And those big goals, whether you want to recognize it or not, whether I've wanted to recognize it or not, they come with sacrifices and collateral damage.

And typically that collateral damage comes at the expense of, parts of your life that are really important and meaningful. Clear example. I've set really big fitness goals before. I've bid off more than I can chew in terms of stacking multiple fitness goals and business goals, personal and professional goals in a small amount of time. And I go and start pursuing these goals and I realize I bit off more than I can chew. and I am forced to sacrifice time, but specifically the quality of time with my wife,

with my kids, with my friends, on my business, and it has collateral damage. So before we go and set our goals, we can't set goals. We shouldn't stop. We shouldn't set goals before we set our anti-goy. goals. So stop setting goals without setting the anti goals first. The anti-goal is where you first establish, okay, what am I not willing to sacrifice? I am not willing to sacrifice, like, for me, like right now, I am not willing to sacrifice, one, like the time that I spend, consistent time that I spend with my family. But more importantly, like the energy that I have

the vitality that I have when I'm with my family. If my family gets the scraps at the end of the night where I'm dead tired, there's nothing left. My brain is mush. But they get two hours of me at the end of the night. But I'm just on autopilot in zombie mode. That's not the time that I want to give to my family. I want to give my family the best of me. So for me, I want to be with my family when they wake up.

That's why I wake up extra early to knock out my run. I'm done running before they are up. And I'm at home with my wife, with my kids to help with breakfast, to help them get ready for the day, to set the conditions so that everyone starts the day off on the right foot. That's a priority for me. I need to have that. I want to have that.

And I want to be home as much as possible in the evening after work is over to help with my kids down at night, to spend some quality time with my wife. I want to sit down at the dinner table and eat a meal together. And on the weekends, I want to spend as much time with them as possible. That is a huge focus of mine right now. I have two young kids. My daughter is almost two and a half years old. My son just turned five months old.

So now when I go to set my goals, I will set my goals based off of my anti-goals. Like right now is probably not the season of life for me to pursue an Ironman triathlon because I know how much time and energy goes into that training. There are certain business objectives that I'm going to chase down and pursue. But there's certain ones that I'm not going to that require excessive amounts of travel during the week or the weekends because I want to spend the mornings and the evenings with my family. I want to be there for dinner. I'm only going to go to a few business dinners a month because when I'm gone too much during

the week and the evenings, I know what kind of stress and pressure that puts on my wife with two young kids. So I'm going to set my goals after I set my anti-goals. Because in the pursuit of your goals, what aren't you willing to sacrifice? It's going to look different for everyone. You know, maybe for you, an anti-goal is that you are not willing to sacrifice your physical health and wellness. Like eating quality food, healthy quality food, and working out daily consistently. that's an anti-goal for you, meaning you are not willing to sacrifice that in pursuit of your goals.

I know a lot of entrepreneurs, I know a lot of professionals who will set this big goal professionally and they will be a hard charger to go after it. But in that pursuit, they're eating all their meals at fast food. They're picking up Mickey D's. They are skipping the gym. they're not working out, they're not sleeping. So yeah, they achieve this big professional ambitious goal, but in the pursuit because they didn't establish anti-goals.

They neglected their health, their physical fitness. You have to be honest with yourself when you're setting up your anti-goals. And this is honestly a mistake, again, that I made early on, is like I set up my anti-goals based off of what I thought I should say that I wasn't willing to sacrifice. But when it came down to it, like, what am I? What are you actually not willing to sacrifice? Be honest with yourself, really honest with yourself, brutally honest with yourself.

Use this goal to visualize what you want your life to look like and what you don't want it to look like. In the conversation with Sahil last week, he asked me this question, which is a common popular question, but maybe now with two younger kids, it cut a little bit deeper. He said, do you know who's going to remember how much you worked the most as you were building your business, as you're building your career? it's not your employees, it's not your team members, it's not your boss, it's your family. Your family is going to remember how much you worked and how much you were gone because you weren't with them. So first, set up your anti-goals and then set your goals. The fourth thing to stop doing is stop being busy.

There's a difference between being busy and being productive. Many of us know this. But it feels very rewarding when we fill our calendar. Now, when you're really busy from the outside looking in, it almost seems like you're really successful. I was listening this podcast last week. And they were talking about how, you know, when you go to a business dinner or happy hour or cocktail party that is networking focused of professionals in your space, in your industry,

someone will ask, hey, how you doing? And the other person responds with, oh, great, busy, really busy, but, you know, really good. It's good. And sometimes like that, that comment just throwing in, I'm busy is a way for someone to say, I'm successful. I'm doing well because I'm busy. Busy isn't the goal. Busy isn't the North Star.

Productive is. Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors when it comes to entrepreneurship and just being a very intentional, entrepreneur, author, leader. And I love Seth Goddard's blog on his website. It's very simple, it's very effective, it's very clear. It doesn't have any of the fluff for unnecessary stuff. It's very straight to the point. And he had this blog post on January 7th of 2025, so just a few days ago from this recording.

And it was titled, Business. and leverage. I'll read a few lines from this blog, not the whole thing, but as Seth says in this article, busy is a morally superior distraction. Busy gets us off the hook. Busy is a great place to hide.

I love that. Busy is a great place to hide. That's so true. So true. On the other hand, productive can be scary. When you're buying someone else's skill in time, you're making a different sort of commitment. Your job might not be to do your job. Your job might be to make the decisions and commitments needed to lead other people to do your job.

The calculation is simple. If the project is worth doing, what's the most direct, cheapest, and fastest way to get it done well? There's nothing wrong with hiring yourself to do things that. you enjoy. And it's imperative that you embrace leverage to get projects done. You produce work you're proud of. But my guess is that most of us settle for a pattern of leverage that we're used to, a pace that we've become accustomed to, a day filled with tasks we think we're good at. If you're serious about the project, it's time to give yourself a promotion and to hire yourself to do work that's yours and yours alone to contribute. It's also certain that there's

someone cheaper, faster, and yes, better at the work than you are. Busy is a morally superior distraction. Busy gets us off the hook. Busy is a great place to hide. I think sometimes we we keep ourselves busy. We fill our calendar with things because it allows us to hide from the things that we really should be working on and towards. Those things are probably more challenging. They're harder.

They're uncomfortable. And one of the ways that you stop being busy and you start becoming more productive, as Seth says here, is you start leveraging what you're, you're good at, what you should be doing, what you want to do, but then what you could delegate or hire someone else to do. I mean, that is truly, I guess I'll call it a skill that I've worked on for quite some time now for years. And it has opened up my schedule

significantly where I'm really not that busy. I am really focused on things that I'm working towards. I'm trying to work on and solve these bigger complex problems or ideas. And don't get me wrong, earlier on in the day when I first started BPN, I had to do everything and anything because I couldn't afford to hire anyone else to help me. I had to do everything. I was forced to. I had no other choice. But over the years, as I've built my business and hired more people, and I've, learned the power of delegation and handing off responsibility. And honestly, hiring people who are much better at parts of the business than I am or ever will be. So there's no reason that I should even be spending my time learning that part of the business because I'll never be as good as

some of our employees are what they do. And learning how to delegate and hire and outsource and empower others to help me build what we're building, it is opened up so much time for me to actually be productive with my time. And if there's a skill that I want to learn, if there's something that I want to do because I enjoy it, even though I might not be the best at it, it might take me longer than someone else can. Financially, it makes no sense, but I enjoy it. Well, that's still a win. for me personally because I get a lot of fulfillment out of it. But in the pursuit of trying to be busy because it makes you feel more successful or you think it's more impressive to other people around you, like, look at my calendar,

look how full it is. That is not the win. I actually, I heard this, I listened to Alex Formosie podcast a few weeks ago. and I have not been able to get this like story out of my head because it really just, it called to me. So he was, I think he was here in Austin, Texas actually, and he was looking at some either properties to invest in or he's working on a project with someone.

And he started sparking up a conversation with someone who was with him on this site. And this individual was trying to get out to come on his podcast. And all day, he's like, he's begging. He's pestering. He's asking, come on, man. Like, just give me 60 minutes.

Just give me 45 minutes. Just give me 30 minutes. Just give me 20 minutes. A quick episode. Just want you to come on the podcast. And Alex pulls out his phone. He pulls up his calendar. And he says, you see my calendar?

There's nothing on it today. And I want to keep it that way. And that was not by any means a way of, him saying, like, you don't deserve my time. But he was very productive or protective of his time. He was able to have a calendar that was empty because he didn't pursue busyness. His goal wasn't to fill his calendar from the time he woke up every morning to the time he went to sleep.

He's able to think on and work on these big initiatives and ideas and projects because he's not jumping from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. That openness, that lack of busyness allows him to be so productive and maximize the things that he's working on. And he understands how protecting that, how prioritizing that, how meaningful that is. So stop being busy. Because busy is not the answer. It is not the goal.

Number five. stop doing things for the validation from external sources being other people. I got a James Clear quote here that I thought was perfect. And James Clear says, most people don't want accurate information. They want validating information. Growth requires you to be open to unlearning ideas that previously served you. growth requires you to be open to unlearning ideas that previously served you. Stop doing things for the validation from external sources.

Stop doing things for the validation of other people. Stop doing things for other people. Stop doing things for other people. That sounds horrible, doesn't it? Stop doing things. You could like refine this. Stop doing things with a validation from external sources. Stop doing things for the validation of other people.

Stop doing things for other people. Stop doing things for people. Oh, that's brutal. That's rough, right? No. This is not mean stop doing acts of service for others. This doesn't mean stop showing gratitude to others. This doesn't mean stop helping others or impacting others.

stop doing things to please other people so that you feel better about yourself because you're doing it for the praise, the validation. External validation is an unhealthy dependency. And honestly, with the rise of social media, it is a crutch for people who depend on external validation for their identity. It's a vanity metric game. I think how pretty disgusting and sad it is that social media is used to validate how important we are based off of followers, off of likes, off of comments, off praises. And the opposite comes from haters and criticism and negative feedback. I think social media has created extremely unhealthy dependency on external validation. And a few years ago, I guess it was probably two years ago now, we launched this brand campaign called

Prove Yourself Right. The entire concept of prove yourself right was for this reason and this reason only. I don't think that we should do things to prove other people wrong. For some, that works. Like that can be your fuel. That can be your drive. Like you are, you're going to be successful because you want to prove all the haters wrong. You're going to make this much money.

You're going to buy this house. You're going to drive this car. You're going to wear this watch because you're going to prove all the people wrong that said you couldn't, you won, you shouldn't. That drives a lot of people. But I will tell you like, that does not drive me. the things that I want to do, the things that I want to accomplish, the objectives I want to pursue and chase down and mark off, it's not to prove others wrong. It's to prove to myself that I can,

that I would, that I will, to prove myself right. There's a will, there's a vision for it, and now I just have to apply the action to actually do it. Prove yourself right. I wrote down this quote that I am going to remember. I want you to remember. And it's that a chip on your shoulder can provide an edge, but it can't provide the purpose. If someone says you can't do something, it might give you a little bit of an edge. It might give you a little bit of a drive to say, okay, watch me. That might add a little fuel to the fire.

A chip on your shoulder can provide the edge, but it can't provide the purpose. purpose. If the purpose behind what you do is to prove other people wrong, it's to receive the validation from external sources, other people, you are living your life for others, for the acceptance, for the approval of others, not to help them, not to benefit them, not to show gratitude or generosity. No, you're doing it for the acceptance. to conform to society's norms, not based off what you believe in, what you want. Stop doing things for the validation of other people.

And the last thing to stop doing, to take control of your life, is to stop allowing others to set the conditions. And this is similar to the way we started this. Stop waiting for change, start making change. This one's a little different. So here's a story to paint a picture for what this means. Stop allowing others to set the conditions.

We are responsible for much of the direction and speed of our life. That is what we are in control of. The direction and the speed. Speed at which we operate, we move, we make changes. and we're directly responsible for the direction. A few years ago, we were living in a house that we're no longer living in. It was right before we moved to Nashville, and we were building a pool. And this pool project took 18 months, much longer than it should have or needed to.

We hired a pool builder who was a contractor, and I just assumed that they had everything in house. But what I came to learn much later than I wish I wouldn't have is that they had no one working in house for them. It was like a skeleton crew of a company and they would hire subcontractors for every part of the job. So the reason this pool project cook 18 months is because, well, first, this company that we hired would reach on to the subcontractor to do the first part of the job. And we were waiting on their timeline.

So if they had four other projects in the queue, they couldn't get started for three weeks. Nothing was getting done for three weeks. And then they go do their part of the job. And then once that was done, the company would go hire a new set of subcontractors to do the next part of the job. But they had eight pools in the queue and they couldn't start for another six weeks. So the pool would sit with no one working on it for six weeks. and then the next crew would come out and get started. And so on and so forth for 18 months until this pool was completed.

There were weeks, there were months, literally months, where no one was working on this pool project. Because we were allowing other people, this company, these subcontractors, to set the conditions for the speed at which we operated. And as long as you do this, you are not in control. You are not in the driver's seat. That is living your life as if you were an Uber passenger going on a roulette trip of not knowing where you're going, how you're getting there, at what speed.

You just hop into a random Uber. Say you're leaving a concert one night. You hop in a random Uber. It wasn't your Uber, just some random Uber of. of some other random person trying to get home from this concert. You just hop in. You don't know where you're going. You don't know how you're getting there.

You don't know how long it's going to take at what speed, at what direction, nothing. If you want to live your life like that, that's one option. It's a really dangerous way to live. Who knows we're going to end up? I mean, you could have hopped in an Uber in in Colorado. and ended up in California a few days later, for all you know. Or you can be the driver.

I want to be the driver. I want to set the conditions. I want to control the direction and the speed as much as possible. When you allow others to set the conditions, you can't do X until they do Y. It's going to take a long time.

And sometimes by the time you get there, the direction is so off course because you've had to make sacrifices along the way based off of changes in speed that it's so far off from what you expected or assumed it was going to be that it wasn't worth it. But if you're going to be the driver,

a driver requires direction, a driver requires competency and skills, a driver requires, requires tools and resources. A driver requires motivation to get from point A to point B. And a driver requires a timeline. Put yourself in the driver's seat. Control the speed and the direction.

And stop allowing others to set the conditions for what you achieve and accomplish and when. Those are the six things to stop doing right now to take control of your life starting today. Hope you guys enjoy this one, and we'll see you in the next episode.