The Nick Bare Podcast - 126: How Every Choice You Make is Predicting Your Success

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

In this episode, I'm covering the significance of daily choices and how they cumulatively shape our success. It emphasizes the power of consistency, self-awareness, and intentionality in achieving long-term goals. I'll also explore the challenges and strategies for maintaining discipline during disruptions, such as travel, and the importance of making proactive decisions that align with one's broader life objectives.CHAPTERS01:00 The Power of Significant Life Choices02:38 A Day in the Life: Travel and Podcast Recording05:17 The Life-Changing Decision of 201410:23 Defining Success and the Role of Consistency34:12 The Importance of Routine and Daily Choices37:22 Travel Observations and Healthy Choices55:59 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsPRE-ORDER MY UPCOMING BOOK HERE:https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFEhttps://bpn.team/memberIG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

All right, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is titled, How Every Choice You Make Predicts Your Success. And this topic came to me yesterday as I was traveling. I was traveling to Montana for a podcast with Andy Stumpf, The Cleared Hot Podcast. And what I want to share today is just some of the things that I was thinking about and why I believe I have achieved some of the things I have achieved in my

lifetime up until this point. I'll be 35 years old this summer. This August, I'll be 35. What's even crazy is my daughter is going to be three and my son is going to be one. But our life as a whole, where we end up, will we accomplish what we achieve, our life is the sum of a ton of different choices. Some of those choices are monumental. And they can literally shift the trajectory of our entire life. Like the day that I founded Go on More, or the day that I decided to train for my first Iron Man,

or the day, the moment I decided that I wanted to join the U.S. Army, those are some of those significant life decisions that have literally changed the course of my life forever. When I die one day, my life would have and will have looked significantly more different for better or worse if I would have made different decisions or made different choices along the way on some really big needle-moving significant times and places. But there are other choices we make every single day. They don't have the same significant impact.

But it's the consistency of those choices that end up mattering a lot. The consistency in which we make decisions and choices. So yesterday, I landed in Montana. and I called an Uber, got in the Uber, and I took that Uber to the Black Rifle Coffee Company Coffee Shop. Andy owns the Black Rifle Coffee Company Shop in Calispell, Montana. So I met him there before going to record the episode. And I'm making small talk with this Uber driver.

And he's asking what I'm doing, where I'm traveling in from. I explain, I'm coming in from Austin. It was a quick trip. It was a day trip. Literally, I flew in the morning and I flew back to Austin that same night. So my flight left yesterday morning out of Austin at 5 a.m. I went from Austin to Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City to Calis Bell. And then at 6 p.m. after we were done recording the episode, I flew from Callisbell to Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City back to Austin, landed at 12.30 a.m. and got back to my house at about 1.45 a.m. and fell right to sleep. It was a long travel day.

So I'm talking this Uber driver. I'm explaining I'm here for a few hours, literally, from Austin, Texas. Texas to record a podcast. And he goes, you're here just to record a podcast. You traveled all the way here for a few hours to record a podcast. He couldn't grasp just like what was going on in that moment. I'm like, yeah, it's, it's to have a conversation with this gentleman named Andy Stumpf, who was a former Navy SEAL, has his big podcast called Clear Hot Podcast. I'm in the process. I'm in the process of promoting my book titled Go on More that launches June 24th. I have this business, all these things. We're talking. And then he goes, what makes you so special and significant and unique to be doing a podcast with someone? And I thought it was a great question. Who am I to

spend the time, the money, the resources to travel a long way to have a conversation. conversation with someone and record it. And I answered, sir, in 2014, I picked up a camera and it changed my life forever. And from there, we started talking and discussing and diving a little bit deeper into what that means. But that was a decision that I made in 2014 that changed my life forever. Many of you guys know this story. And I'm not going to go deep into it. But in 2012, I started BPN out of my college apartment. And those first couple years were tough. I told my dad I was going to make a million dollars in 2012. And he said, Nick, if it was that easy, everyone would do it. And he proved me wrong where that year one, I did $20,000 in revenue. Year two, I did $20,000.

$10,000 in revenue, year three, I did $20,000 in revenue, far off, well far off from $1 million. And I had to learn the hard way that it wasn't going to be easy. And generating seven figures in revenue was going to be extremely challenging. Little did I know it was going to take five years until the brand crossed the seven figure revenue mark. But in 2014, after spending a year at Fort Benning, Georgia, in all of my training, and getting stationed at Fort Hood, I had $500 left to my name. And I spent that $500 on a camera because I realized with BPN I had the supply. I had the product, which at the time was just flight or pre-workout.

but there was no demand. It was my responsibility to generate and create the demand. I didn't have people that could help me. I didn't have money that I could put to work. I spent all my money on the inventory that I had. I had $500 left of my name. And I spent that money on a Canon T3I DSLR camera and a 50 millimeter lens.

And I started filming, documenting, editing, publishing, sharing everything on YouTube. And it didn't take off right away. It took years to pay off. I'm still in that payoff period. But that decision, that one decision, changed my life forever. I would not be sitting here right now recording this episode. I don't know if I'd be in Texas. Who knows if I'd be married to Steph?

Who knows if I would have two little kids? I mean, who knows what I would be doing if I didn't make that one choice, if I didn't decide to go all in. That is the power of the power and the responsibility of the choices we have. When I realized that, it put a whole lot into perspective. Take one step back, whatever you're doing right now, put down, take one step back, literally, physically take one step back and just look big picture at your life. Think about where you're at right now, what you're doing, where you were five, 10 years ago,

where you thought you'd be right now, and where you're heading in the future. The only thing that's going to get you to where you want to be is the responsibility of choice, decision, and awareness. There is so much power in our decisions, in our choices. And I think we go through life on autopilot because we become very distracted. We become very busy in that we're blocking and tackling and we're just reacting and making decisions on the fly that allow for and facilitate convenience in comfort and ease. But sometimes those decisions that we're making that facilitate that convenience and comfort and ease, they are leading us far away from where we wanted to be five years ago, looking 10, 15, 20 years in the future.

Every choice we make, every choice you make, every choice I make predicts our success. I think we need to define success in the context of this discussion, this podcast, this conversation. Success is not the collection of things or the sum of your money. If you open up your bank account right now and you look at the digits that are in there, that is not what I'm talking about. That is not the success that I'm mentioning here. Success in this context, is achieving the things you say you want. It is doing what you said you were going to do and then going and doing it.

And it's resisting the temptations that come and keep you from accomplishing those said things. That's the way we're describing success in this context. There's something you want to do, so then you go and do it. And if you do it, that is deemed, that is considered success. If you don't accomplish it through either failure, mistakes, misses, or you just give up or don't do it all together,

that is in this context considered unsuccessful. So how do we increase the likelihood and predict our chances of success while doing things we said we were going to do? and how do we increase the likelihood of those things? It's being very consistent to working really hard, and it's making the right choices. It's choosing the right path. I mean, that requires a lot of self-awareness. It requires a lot of position yourself in a proactive state

as opposed to a reactive state. It requires clarity and intention. and looking into the future. I mean, forward thinking and backwards planning. I talk about that frequently, and I have for a long time, because when you forward think and then backwards plan, you can make decisions that set you up for success and predict your future success because you're making choices.

You're choosing things that increase your success. into the future. Not what feels convenient, comfortable, and easy right now. So yesterday, as I was saying, I did podcast with Andy Stumpf. And it was a crazy day of travel. And I often don't try to condense and squeeze my travel days into an out and back in the same day. But there's a lot going on right now. You know, the business is in a really hyperactive growth phase, especially coming off of the Goin More Ultra a few weeks ago and the launch of GOMSport Plus. We have our annual summer sale coming up in a few weeks that we're preparing for heading to New York in less than two weeks to do a media tour.

for my book, Go on More. So I'll be on some podcast and some TV shows, and I'll be spending a few days in New York. I'll actually be speaking on June 24th at the Brandformance Summit, which is hosted by Google and YouTube. And I was asked by their team to come and speak to be one of keynote speakers

on behalf of a creator and a founder of a business, a brand that grew that business and achieved levels of success by documenting and sharing everything on YouTube, building a brand, building a community, showcasing products. I would have never been asked to come speak at the Brandformance Summit in 2025 if I didn't pick up that camera in 2014, 11 years after, I mean, if you would have told me in 2014 when I was picking up a camera, my first camera, and I was so nervous and awkward and shy and embarrassed about holding a camera and filming a camera and filming. me myself and talking to it when no one else was around. It was a very uncomfortable chapter

and season of my life. But if you would have told me back then that based off of the success of what I was about to do, that YouTube and Google executives were going to ask me to come speak at a summit in front of 400 plus middle market executives. from the fastest growing companies around the world, I always said, not a chance. Not a chance. When I picked up that camera for my first time, it wasn't this natural, organic, comfortable relationship

between myself and this piece of machinery and technology where I'm speaking into it. I'm talking to it like it is a person. When I speak into a camera now, I'm speaking into it as if there are hundreds of thousands of people on the other side of it. And I'm speaking to people. I talk to a piece of plastic with circuit boards and wires and memory cards and hardware and software like it is a real person. but in 2014 it wasn't like that at all. My relationship between creating and editing and documenting

was so awkward and uncomfortable. And I just think back to those early days and there was so much growth from those moments then to now. But that's because I was just very ruthlessly consistent learning how to refine my craft and my skill of documenting and storytelling. And during my conversation with Andy yesterday, one of the things we ended up talking about, it was probably a two and a half hour conversation. So it was a long conversation.

It was a great conversation. We, you know, I've done a lot of podcasts over the years. And some podcast you go into, and it is very, very black and white in terms of there is a interviewer and then there is an interviewee. Where there's a question asked and there's a response. And there's a question asked and there's a response. And it's kind of cold and it feels very transactional. I've been a part of, I've been the interviewee in many of those situations before.

And to be honest, those are the worst. They're not fun. They feel scripted. You know exactly where the conversation is going to go. That was the opposite of what the podcast and conversation was like with Andy Stumpf. He's a great podcast host. I won't even call him an interviewer because it just felt like a conversation. Maybe it was two and a half hours.

Maybe it wasn't. I really wasn't keeping track of time. But I believe based off of when we went in the studio and when I I left, it was roughly around that amount of time, but it felt like it was 45 minutes. We covered so many different topics, he's really good at what he does. And I have a lot of respect for people who are really good at what they do. Because I know in most cases, they weren't always that good. And it might feel and look like it is very easy and just comes natural to them.

But you know on the other side, there have been years of her. finding a craft and skill to get to that point. Andy is extremely good at what he does in terms of the podcast space. But we ended up talking about bucket list adventures. He asked me, do I have any bucket list adventures? And I went on to explain that I do, but I also don't, because I'm so hyper-focused on a few things right now that these bucket-list adventures that I will want to explore at some point in my life,

they're not a priority right now, so I don't spend mental energy exploring them at all. So he asked the question, are there mountains you want to climb, are there countries you want to visit? Are there these crazy adventures that you want to endure? I was like, yeah, I think so, but not enough to an extent.

extent that I spend a lot of mental energy or research on these things. Because I'm so focused on moving the needle in my life on a few select things right now. That is my business. That is my family. That is me showing up as a father and as a husband. There's my faith and taking care of my body. my health, my fitness, my diet, my nutrition, my recovery. But I did mention, I said, at some point, at some point, I would love to get into some backcountry hunting, kind of like Cam does, Cam Haynes. After having some conversations with Cam about hunting and his hunting experience, that seemed very interesting.

I could see myself at some point in my life really getting into hunting, especially like back country hunting experiences, like elk in the way that cam hunts. You're stalking these animals for sometimes days. And then when you finally take the life of that animal, you have to pack it out miles and miles and miles sometimes, which could take hours to get it back home, safely, take care of the meat, take care of the animal, and respect that entire process.

But I'm not exploring that right now. I'm not spending mental energy on it because I am not a dabbler. And I never have been a dabbler. I'm not a really good dabbler. I think some people can dabble in a whole lot of different things. And what I will say to this is to each their own. I'm not saying what I do is the right way. I'm just saying this is the way that I approach life and my priorities and my focus.

Maybe it works for you. Maybe you can relate to it. Maybe you don't relate to it at all. And that's okay. That's completely okay. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying what I do. I don't dabble.

I'm not a good dabbler because when I find something that I enjoy and I'm passionate about and I want to learn more about, I go all in. And when I go all in on something, whether that's a new passion or an old passion, the result and the consequence is that I have to, by default, spend less time on other things in my life. Because I'm not going to just tinker and I'm not just going to dabble. I'm going to go all in, all the way in. for better or worse. And me and Andy were talking about this for a little bit

and he felt the same way. He agreed. And Andy's reason was because you can't dabble in hunting, especially backcountry hunting. Because one of the biggest reasons he pointed out, it is irresponsible, inhumane, and unethical to the animals. If you're going out to kill an animal,

take the life of an animal, first off, you need to respect the process. Second off, you need to be skilled and proficient enough at your skill and craft to have an ethical, clean kill. You don't want to shoot that animal in a part of the body that's not going to be a clean, fast kill.

Because you're just doing more harm to that animal. You're making it suffered. The intent of hunting is not to make an animal suffer. It is to kill that animal. So you can harvest the meat and share it with your family and celebrate the life of the animal that you killed. That is a responsibility we have. The things we decide to pursue,

where we decide to spend our time, energy, and money, that choice requires commitment and an appropriate amount of time that can be dedicated to the craft and skill. That's the power of choice. That's the power of decision. I'm not just going to dip my toes into something and try it for a little bit irresponsibly. If I'm going to do something, and I think hunting is a, perfect parallel example because there's a responsibility to do it ethically and to honor the life of an animal that you were trying to take down. I'm not just going to dip my toes in there.

I'm going to go all in. You can only go all in on a select few things at your life in your life in a given time. So if you make this bucket list, and this bucket list is 100 items, again, to each their own, whatever works for you. But this is where I approach it or think about it. If I have a bucket list of 100 items, there's all of these other things that are going on in my life all the time outside of this bucket list. If I decide and I make the choice that I'm going to go pursue my bucket list over all other things, there's collateral damage and there's consequences to that. there are we sacrifices to other parts of my life, relationships, and people.

So maybe there's one, two, three bucket list items within a season or chapter of my life that I'm going after and planning for so that I'm not creating consequences and collateral damages to my other priorities in life. It's just one way to think about the power of choice where we spend our time, what we pursue and how those choices predict our success. Because if you say, all right, I want to set my family up for success for the foreseeable future. Say I have a wife, a few kids, a dog. A goal of mine is that I want to buy a house. I want financial freedom. I want my family to know they're taking care of

and that my kids can go to a good school when they graduate high school one day. And if they plan to go to college, I can help support them. So that's what success looks like. It's accomplishing those things, those commitments that I say I want to achieve. But in that process, in that pursuit,

there's this passion that sparks, these multiple passions, these bucket list items that you begin to pursue in the process. And your time, your money, your resources, your energy is redirected towards these bucket list passions. And you take your eye off the prize of what you're trying to achieve. True success, as you defined it, five, 10, 15 years later, you knocked out all these bucket list items,

but you didn't achieve the things you said you wanted to. You don't have financial security. You didn't save enough money to buy the house. You're not prepared to send your kids to school when they graduate. That is unsuccessful. And it's unsuccessful because of the choices you decided to make along the way. misguided, unfocused.

Success can be predicted, not just by the choices we make, but the consistency of the choices we make. I think one of the best things that Jeff Cunningham has ever said on this podcast or has ever told me, and Jeff has had a million amazing one-liners. Jeff is the king of one-liners. When he was on the podcast a few years ago and he said, it's better to be consistently good rather than occasionally great. I'm not sure if Jeff was the first person to ever say that,

and I'm sure it's been said before Jeff, but the way he was describing it and at a time around the context of marathon training, but it's so applicable to everything else we do, that clicked for me and not only me, but so many other people that listened to this podcast and the content and Jeff and myself, it's better to be consistently good rather than occasionally great.

Our success can be predicted by the consistently good decisions we make day in and day out. I want to take a quick break in this episode to talk to you guys about my newest book launching June 24th, 2025, and that is Go One More. and you can order this book. You can pre-order on your favorite sites such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, any major book retailers. And I would greatly appreciate if you guys pre-ordered it, but supported the book launch. Like I've said, it's June 24th, 2025. And this book is all about how Go One More, those three simple words have transformed and changed my life.

but more importantly, how those three words have evolved for me over time, where when I founded Go One More, it was built off the foundation and principles of just being an action. And what I've learned over time is that Go One More is an outcome. It's an outcome that we can experience and achieve by making very intentional decisions that are provided and guided through clarity. So in this book, I share lessons and stories about how Go On More has evolved for me and how I show up every day making intentional, life-changing choices that guide me to the outcome of Go On More. So I would greatly appreciate your guys support with this book launch through pre-orders

and then purchasing the week of launch. Go on More. It's coming soon. available in hardcover, paperback, and audiobook. So thank you guys. And back to the episode. There are the ones that I referenced earlier on were the choice that I made to pick up a camera and start documenting my life.

When I founded Gil One More, when I decided to train for my first Iron Man triathlon, there have been these decisions. that I've made and you will make as well along the way that truly do shift the course of your entire life forever. They are significant. They are life-defining. They are revolutionary. But that's not the every day. Every day we're not faced with these monumental decisions that are going to shift the trajectory of the outcomes of our life and success. But every day, we have to make a ton of decisions, a ton of choices.

It is an individual responsibility to take ownership of those decisions and be consistently good with each one of those decisions that gets us to where we want to be, to achieve the things we say we want to achieve, to win, to succeed. That's how we get there. You can spend a few days with someone. Just a few days.

And you can watch their habits. You can watch their routine. And I guarantee you will. I know I can predict how likely they are to achieve their commitments based off the way they make decisions in everyday life. Not these big needle moving decisions, but the small decisions in everyday life. Because the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

This is why I run six to seven days a week. When I wake up in the morning, and this is maybe why people cold plunge too, or have a morning routine, when I wake up in the morning, oftentimes the last thing I want to do is go for a run. My alarm clock goes off 4.30 a.m. I go out of bed. I go into the kitchen. I drink my G1M Sport Plus, my G1M Sport, I give Nico a bottle, I put my shoes on, I go log my run.

And I do that six to seven days a week. Because I know that that is a choice that I am responsible for. And the way that I do one thing is the way that I do everything. And if I start my day off with making a choice and a decision, that resists the temptation of falling into the habits of convenience, comfort, and ease. If I choose convenience, comfort, and ease, I will apply that same decision-making model to a lot of other things throughout my day, a lot of other things throughout my life. That's the main reason I run almost every morning.

because that first choice, that first decision sets a standard and it lays the foundation for everything I'm going to do after that. Meet someone who wakes up really early every single day and goes in trains or goes in works and logs the hours, logs the miles, does the things that they know they need to do, not necessarily the things they know they want to do to achieve success. Find people that do that, and you will be able to predict the likelihood of their success in the future. I promise you that. I promise you.

The people that I know that wake up early every single morning and they go and train, or they have a morning routine and they work and they put in true work, whether that's literal or figurative miles, they achieve the things they say they're going to achieve in all aspects and areas of their life. You can predict their success. I'm not saying you can predict their financial outcomes and what their bank accounts say

and how many commas are in there and what they drive and all of those things because that's not the context of success in this conversation and discussion. but I can promise you that they are going to do the things they say they are going to do consistently. I had some observations in the airport yesterday, and this is not meant to be judgmental. It is purely observational, and it sparked a thought. So I'm not judging, kind of judging. Not judging.

Assessing. Assessing and observing. judging would not be Christ-like. So I don't want to use the word judging. I'm not judging. My question is, how committed are you to making consistent choices every day, even when your routine might be slightly disrupted? I think this is when most people have a hard time sticking to consistent choices and decisions. and they fall victim to the temptations that come along when their regular routine is disrupted.

Travel is a clear example. See, I thrive in opportunities and moments when my regular routine is disrupted because that allows me to put a plan into action. Every single day when I'm in my regular routine and maintenance, there are a lot of decisions that I make that are not hard decisions, but they're almost autopilot decisions, and they're the right decisions because it works within my routine. It allows me to feel good, operate well, perform strong, sleep better, mentally I'm sharp, I'll get into some of these things. I'm just in autopilot when I'm in my regular routine. When my routine is just disrupted

like yesterday when I was traveling all day, I had fun with that. That's where I'm like, oh, okay, now I've got to make a plan and like, let's see how disrupted my routine can become and how resilient I am to adapting to a disruption in my routine.

I almost gamify it. But I'm walking in the airport yesterday during my layover in Salt Lake City and it was like eight, a.m. And I'm walking through the terminal and there's people drinking beers and having cocktails at 8 a.m. And I'm thinking, what, what are you doing? What do you do? I'm just thinking and trust me, I enjoy a good beer and a cocktail. But it's at night when my day's responsibilities are over. And these people didn't look like they were on their way to vacation. They looked like

they were on their way for work travel in a business meeting. And a cocktail and a beer at 8 a.m. Is that the decision you should be making that's going to increase your likelihood of success, of accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish? There's a time in place. There's a time in place to celebrate. there's a time in place to have some fun, let loose, make the convenient,

comfortable, easy choices. There's a time in place. I respect that and I understand that. But there's also not a time in place. And I'm speaking to those moments, those times and places when we have to be making the right choices to honor our commitments. to increase our likelihood of success. As I'm walking through the terminal,

there's all of these like convenience shops, like the Hudson News is, right? They're all over the place. And you walk in and there's bags of candy everywhere. And my first thought was, well, just because it's here doesn't mean people are buying it. But if it's still hanging in there,

it's being purchased. It's being consumed. People are buying it and eating it. and a lot of it. How awesome would it be? And there's this one, you know, occasionally in airports,

you'll find a gem. I think the Austin airport has some really good food options. The San Francisco airport, I was there a few years ago. I remember that having some really good food options. Actually, the Detroit airport, I want to say it's in,

like the Delta terminal, has this market called plum market that has really, really good options. You can get grilled chicken breast, grilled salmon. I don't know if I trust grilled salmon in an airport, but I bought it before and it was delicious. You can buy like salads and quinoa bowls and fruits and all this stuff in these plum markets. There are options there. But sometimes you walk through airports and you're thinking, holy smokes, like, what can I eat? I went into Hudson News yesterday looking for just a quick snack.

And the only thing that was available that I wanted to buy there was some cartons of pineapple. Just cut up pineapple. I was looking for some fruit. And it's sometimes really hard to find healthy food in an airport, which is typically why I will bring food with me. But I'm just walking through the airport yesterday, just looking at all the poor choices people are making. And you want to think that, well, this is just a rare occasion. This is the occasionally bad for most people. But I have to assume that that is the consistent choice that people are making every single day.

Now, you might be listening to this thinking, you're not the person who goes to the airport on a regular Tuesday and drinks a beer at 8 a.m. while you're working for your flight. or you're not grabbing a bag of Twizzlers, a bag of sour patch kids, and a chocolate bar at the Hudson News with a soda before getting on your flight. That might not be you. But if you audit your life,

there might be some choices you're making on a regular and consistent basis that is holding you back from achieving the things you say you want to achieve. you are holding yourself back. What can you change? What choices can you make differently that are going to predict a different likelihood of success? And what's holding you back? What decision and choice are you making consistently right now that is holding you back from the things that you want to achieve? Start by changing that.

They start right now by changing those things. That is an individual personal responsibility. And until you fix that, you're not going to be able to fix anything else. I was thinking about this yesterday when I was flying. And as I was on the plane, I'm thinking, if I was given a choice, another choice here, If I was given the choice, and I'm curious to your guys' thoughts, too. Obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably eat healthy and you train hard. You do two of those things, like me.

But what if someone told you you can only do one? You can either eat healthy or you can train hard. If you train hard, you can't eat healthy. And if you eat healthy, you can't train hard. Which one would you choose? I would choose to eat healthy because when I'm dialed in with my diet and I'm eating healthy and I'm making the right choices, every other part of my life improves and gets better. Outside of training as well, obviously training gets better, but my sleep is better,

my relationships are better, my mind is more clear, I have more focus, I have more energy, I have more fun. And you can't out-train a bad diet. Food, nutrition, has the ability to transform our life, short-term and in the long-term. That's the ability to save our life. And there are days, like yesterday, where I didn't get the opportunity to train at all, which is pretty rare. It's rare for me to take a full off day.

I'm either running or I'm lifting. sometimes not both in the same day, one or the other. But yesterday was one of those days because I woke up at three to be at the airport on time, a flight left at five, didn't get back to the house until 1.45 a.m. And it was two flights to get to Montana, got to Montana, full podcast day, went to the airport, two flights, home, no opportunity. to train, which crushed me. But my diet was dialed in,

as inconvenient as the day was in terms of travel. My diet was dialed. Here's the way that I approach it. Again, forward thinking, backwards planning. Forward thinking and backwards planning. I had a plan going into yesterday before I even arrive to the airport. So yesterday was Tuesday.

Monday night, I had a general overview plan for the way that I was going to eat the following day so I could make the right choices, set myself up for success, and allocate the time that was required to make sure I can get the foods that I wanted to get. So here's the way I approached yesterday's diet while traveling. In these circumstances, I eat when it's convenient and the food is available, not necessarily

when I'm hungry. So I woke up at 3 a.m. I was out of the door by 315. It was wake up, brush teeth, change, grab my stuff, go. So I prepared overnight oats the night before, knowing that the morning was going to be tight. So I did a half cup of old-fashioned oats. I did a scoop of our chocolate way protein, a scoop of our chocolate plant-based vegan protein. I mix those two together just because I like the consistency of both. The plant-based protein kind of thickens it up very nicely. I mixed it all together with some milk and then I topped it with blueberries and pumpkin seeds.

threw that in the fridge Monday night. So Tuesday morning, I had a spoon already laid out. I grabbed my bag, grabbed my overnight oats, grab my spoon, and hopped in the truck, drove to the airport. I didn't want to have to carry that food into the airport and eat when I was hungry. I was not hungry at 4 a.m. when I got to the airport. But, again, I take the approach of eat when convenient and food is available. not when you're hungry while traveling.

So I ate those overnight oats. I drank 20 ounces of water with my creatine, my electrolytes, took all my supplements, my strong multi, strong omega, and strong omega and strong joints, multi, omega, and joints. And then my greens and reds, So I consumed all that before going to the airport.

And then all my layover between Salt Lake City and, well, my layover in Salt Lake City before going to Montana, Calispell. I grabbed some pineapple at Hudson News. So I got some fruit and a coffee. And then my plan was, okay, I did some research. There's a Chipotle really close to the airport. I can stop there on my way to meet up. with Andy. So I had an Uber driver take me to Chipotle before going to meet Andy, got dropped off. I did a bowl that was white rice, black beans, one serving a chicken, one serving a steak,

pico de gallo. That's it. Simple. I didn't need to add on the guac, sour cream, cheese. I didn't need the tortilla, all that stuff. Just keep it simple. Rice, bean. meet some salsa. And then I did a podcast with Andy. When I was in the Uber going to meet up with Andy, I was already researching where I was going to get my dinner before going back to the airport. So I found this really cool, like organic natural grocery store

called Mountain Valley Foods in Calispell, which was absolutely amazing. So as soon as the podcast was over, I ubered to Mountain Dali Foods. I got organic chicken breast. I got a quinoa and kale salad. I had a Greek salad and I got dried mango. It was so good.

That food was really, really good. And I knew it was legit, legit. Because all of the organic dried fruits they had in the shelves didn't have, like, custom branding on it. It was packed up in Ziploc bags. And on it was written organic, dried fruits. mango. That's all that was in it. It was like some of the best dried mango I've ever had in my life. But I had a plan. I had a plan going into yesterday so that, I mean, I had to eat my dinner at like

4.30 p.m. I wasn't necessarily hungry at that time, but it's when it was most convenient. Food was available and I didn't want to have to eat while I was in the airport. that was my approach to eating yesterday while traveling because I made the choice, I made the decision that I wanted to stay on my diet. It required some planning. And I'm sure people were saying all this preparation, planning, and decision making sounds exhausting. Just live your life.

Maybe you're right. But if achieving the things that you say you want to achieve matters to you, if you want to honor your commitments, this is how you do it. It works. It's necessary to achieve our commitments. And more than anything else, it is self-awareness.

You don't have to always be on, but you have to be aware of the decisions you make and the opportunity cost that comes with the opposite decision. When I'm out to dinner, for example, And I've described this before. If it's not like a celebration dinner, it's just a regular business dinner. So many people fall in this habit if you travel a lot for work and you have to do a lot of business dinners, it's like you do all the appetizers.

And then you get the steak covered in the compound butter. And then you get the dessert and you have a few glasses of wine and a cocktail. And you're doing this three, four nights a week. and yeah, it's fun. It tastes really good. It's enjoyable. But after a year, you realize you gain 30 pounds. And it's, well, what did I change?

Did I gain 30 pounds? Well, it's the choices you made. So when I go to dinner, a work dinner, for example, it's not a big celebration. I forward-thinking backwards plan. And it takes seconds. I think really quickly, here's the menu. here's what sounds good. This burger sounds really good

with the truffle fries and the oily sauce. But here's this simply prepared chicken dish with rice and broccoli on the side, for example. I quickly think in the future, okay, I want to run tomorrow morning. I want this run to feel good. I have some meetings tomorrow morning. I want to be mentally and physically ready.

What decision that I'm going to make right now is going to set me up for success tomorrow morning for these things. It's not the burger, fries, and aoli sauce. It is the chicken, rice, and side of veggies. Boom. That's my choice. Forward think backwards plan. It takes literally seconds.

It's not this massive pros and cons list and plugging all these things into my fitness pal and tracking the macros. No, it's the awareness to consistently make the. right decisions when you know it's what you have to be doing. That's what I wanted to share today. There is so much power on this. And when you realize it and you harness it and you apply it, it will, yes, change your life, but it will increase your likelihood of success. We all want to succeed. We all want to accomplish the things that we say we want to accomplish and are going to accomplish.

That is honoring our commitments. But that comes down to the personal responsibility. Every choice we make, every choice you make, every choice I make predicts our success. That's the episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. See you guys in the next one. And as always, go on more.