The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Become Obsessed With Reaching Your Goals | Nick Bare

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

In this solo episode, Nick dives deep into what it means to truly be obsessed with reaching your goals. Often times, society places a negative connotation on the word “obsessed,” and it is labeled as unhealthy. While this can be true, in reality, the only way you will reach ambitious goals in to be obsessed with them. They must occupy your thoughts and you should make most decisions in your life with them in mind.  Healthy obsession is momentum and passion at work. More Resources: BPN website: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media! Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast Twitter: @BarePerformPod

In this episode of the Bear Performance Podcast, there's got to be something in your life right now that you are actively trying to achieve. If there's not, you should probably reevaluate what you're prioritizing your time on. Your time, your money, your energy, your resources. Where are you dedicating those hours, those dollars, that mental bandwidth too? If there's no goal or objective, you're kind of just floating. Welcome back to another powerful episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition. Every week we bring you insightful stories, knowledge, and inspiration to help you reach your full potential in life, fitness, and business.

If you enjoy the message we're promoting in this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review. on the platform you're listening to. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes that embody the Go One More Mindset. What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today is a solo episode with just me. And we are talking about obsession. For the longest time, for almost my entire life, through different phases and chapters,

I have been told, you are obsessed. You are obsessed with fitness. You are obsessed with your business. You are obsessed with achievement. You are obsessed with something. And for the longest time, I thought it was a bad thing. I thought I was doing something wrong. I thought I was to blame.

I thought that I was selfish. Right? A lot of people wanted me to feel bad for being obsessed with the things that I wanted to do or accomplish in my life. And I'm here to tell you that being obsessed is not a bad thing. It can. It can turn into something bad. I'm going to talk about that. But I truly believe you have to become obsessed with your goals, your objectives, your ambitions, whatever it is you want to do. Maybe you're obsessed with building your passion and turning it. into a business. Maybe you're obsessed with getting that next job promotion. Maybe you're obsessed

with being an amazing father or husband or wife or mother. Maybe you're obsessed with a fitness goal that you want to accomplish. Maybe you're obsessed with losing weight and transforming your life. Maybe you're obsessed. Maybe you should be. And if you're not, is it the reason that you're not achieving something? You should be obsessed with your goals. Because if you're not and you're waiting for it to happen on its own, the truth is, the answer is it's probably not going to happen. You're just wishing.

And as long as you just wish for something and you wish and you wish and you sit there and you think about it and you're waiting for it to fall into your lap, the truth is it's probably not going to. to happen unless you win the lottery and everything changes for you. But those chances are pretty slim. I'm telling you right now. How do you increase your chances of winning? However you define that, however you define success in your mind. And I'm sure if you're listening or watching this episode, you've heard this phrase before. You define what success means to you. It doesn't have to mean living in a mansion or making a million dollars

or having the dream life, the white picket fence and the dog out front. You have this big oak tree and you're dropping the kids off at school. Success might mean that to you, but it might not, right? You have to decide and choose what does that look like. What does a win look like for you?

And there are different chapters of life. What you're shooting for and trying to achieve right now might be completely different in six months a year, two years, five years, ten years, it probably will change and it probably should change. But while you're working towards that current goal, you have to become obsessed with it. Now, what is this obsession? It's commitment, its intentions, it's strategic, it is planned, it is, it is sought out and worked for and towards.

what is it not it's not this control it's not this action and movement without intention or strategy and you can look at this a million different ways and there's going to be people listening to this podcast and they hear the word obsession and it instantly is a trigger

right it used to trigger me people used to tell me why are you so obsessed with like running this certain marathon time Why are you so obsessed with building this business? Why are you so obsessed with this and that and everything? And like I said in the beginning, it made me feel bad.

It made me feel like I was a bad person. And then I realized that they're not me. They don't have the vision, the passion, the thought of what I'm trying to achieve in that moment. And when you say you're obsessed with something, there will be pushed back. right now. And I'm sure some of you guys listen to this, you're in this, this chapter, you're in this part of your life where you're so invested, personally, financially,

mentally, emotionally, definitely emotionally, when you're invested in something, you become obsessed with it. It's just natural. And it sometimes scares other people. Why? Because they see an obsession as an absolute. you're either in or you're out. It's all of this and nothing of that. And it can scare people because what others viewing your passion see, they see holes. They're looking for holes in what you're trying to achieve.

They're not looking at it as in terms of opportunities of improvement. So that's the first thing I wanted to put out there is, I truly believe in order to accomplish your goals, whatever that is, you know, the sum of the decisions you make over the course of your lifetime, starting right now, previously and historically, all the choices and decisions you made have landed you where you're sitting right now. The job that you have, your state of health, where you're living, the food you're consuming, The people you surround yourself with doesn't happen by chance. It happens by choice. Right? Where you,

I mean, I do this on a pretty regular and frequent basis, especially when I'm running. When I am running and I reach these moments of solitude, as I'll talk about here in a little bit, as we get deeper into this, I will take inventory and stock of my life where I'm at right now. And I sometimes reflect,

I reflect on the past. of things that have happened by choice, things that have happened to me, not by choice, but how I have responded to in every single one of those things. Every day. Every day we have to make choices.

And those choices have consequences, good or bad. And they land you to where you're at right now. And the thing that you can do is you can take control of your life. you can take control of those decisions and you get to choose the trajectory of where you end up. Sometimes you choose things that land you in certain spots. And like I said, sometimes it's a choice based off of a reaction of what is happening to you.

You have that responsibility to yourself. Now, with that being said, obsession can be unhealthy and it can be healthy. And I was recently reading this book that I just wrapped up. It's called No Rules Rule. It's from the founder and CEO of Netflix. And the book talks a lot about business and culture and building and establishing culture in business. And Netflix is studied based off of their culture that they've grown, established, and adopted. And with that, they've attracted some.

top tier talent. They have talent density within their organization. That is one thing I strive for with BPN. And in this book, the last chapter, they talk about the difference between control and context. And in this book, it is described in a way of building culture and business and hiring people. But as I was reading this chapter, I was thinking how it is directly applied to

an obsession. And after this podcast, I think you can form your own opinion on the importance of obsession and whether it's healthy or unhealthy. You know, I do believe that in life, we have to go through sprints sometimes. And these sprints don't always

incorporate and involve balance. and I think this is one of the pushbacks with obsession is that when you become obsessed with reaching a certain goal or doing a certain thing, whether that takes a short amount of time or a long period of time through that process and these sprints, there may be a period of unhealthy things that you have to do. You have to sleep less. You have to work more. You have to sacrifice leisure time.

and luxuries. There are sprints in life. And I talk to my wife, Steph, about this all the time. Sometimes I know I'm going through a sprint where it's just what I have to do to get from point A to point B. But from getting, you know, from doing what I have to do to get from point A to point B, it sets us up, it sets me up, it sets a business up, it sets my family up, or follow on success.

and I know I'm willing and able to go through these sprints where I have to sacrifice in the now to have the freedoms in the future and I know that. I know sometimes I have to sacrifice certain things to get to the other side. But when you get to the other side, you've won that certain thing.

You've achieved this next level of growth. It can be life-changing. Literally, when you're in the driver's seat, you are in control. Now, when we talk about control versus context, an unhealthy versus healthy obsessions, when I think of what an unhealthy obsession is, I think of an eating disorder.

It is control and rigidity, having a super rigid schedule and acts and actions of things, you feel you have to do that aren't necessarily intentional or strategic, but they are just set in stone. If I look back at when I personally had my eating disorder when I was about 14 years old, which was very severe, that was an obsession that was in a sense of controlling. To this day, when I look back and I had this conversation with people, I look back at when I had this eating disorder, middle school, 14, 15 years old. To this day, I can. I look back at when I had this eating disorder,

middle school, 14, 15 years old. To this day, I can't tell you why that happened, why it started, why I began exercising an unhealthy level, why I started to starve myself, why I pulled back calories and nutrition and I wanted to lose weight. To this day, I can't tell you why I started doing that. But at its foundational core, I truly believe it's because I found control. I found satisfaction in being able to control certain factors in my life for no real intention or strategy or purpose that had depth, but for intention and strategy and purpose

that was shallow, no substance. when I think of unhealthy obsessions, that's what it looks like. It is a control, a controlling manner, movement, action, thought process that is done just to do it. That's an unhealthy obsession. A healthy obsession facilitates, it promotes flexibility. if I want to lose 20 pounds, if I want to lose weight, if I want to get in better shape, I'm going to become obsessed with reaching that goal, but obsessed in a way that provides and allows flexibility.

Not necessarily balance, but flexibility. Here's an example of that. Say I'm overweight and I want to lose 20 pounds. And I know what I have to do to get there. I establish a plan. I build this plan. I follow this plan. I'm going to eat these foods.

I'm going to consume this many calories. I'm going to work out this many times a week. I'm going to do this style of training. I'm going to stick to this plan. And I know if I stick to this plan, I will lose the weight in this amount of time. However, sometimes during this journey, during this process, because I'm going to lose this weight in a healthy way at a healthy rate. I'm going to try to lose, let's say, a pound a week.

That's four pounds a month. In order to reach my goal, it's going to take five months to lose 20 pounds. And in order to do this at a healthy rate in a healthy way, in a healthy, obsessed way, there are going to be things that pop up along the way that distract me or opportunities that pop up. hey my friends want to go grab tacos at this taco joint that isn't necessarily the healthiest. But I'm going to do this because I want to. I want to engage with people. I want to have fun.

It might take me off course a little bit, but I'm flexible enough to get back on track the next day. I am disciplined and motivated and willing and able that next day to get back on track. To me, that's a healthy obsession. you have flexibility in the plan, in the protocols, in the journey, because you look at it as this long-term objective goal and obsession. However, when there is too much rigidity, it is too controlling. To me, that's what an unhealthy obsession looks like. But I believe, and I've applied this to my life for the last 10 plus years, I know that if there's

something I want to do, like I've said in the beginning, it is not going to happen on its own. If I want to build my business to a certain level and build this amazing team and take care of that team, just by showing up every day and hoping that someone's going to implement a plan and hire the right people and build these systems and SOPs and products and, you know, that's just going to happen on its own. You get the business to a certain point. And at that point, It's like a snowball kind of just builds momentum and boom, takes off. I know that's not the way it works. I know that I have to continuously wake up, show up, and choose to grow.

I'm obsessed with that. I am. I am obsessed with that goal, that mission, and that process. I love it. That's what I was born for. I truly believe that. And I know that when I'm in the driver's seat, I'm in control, I need to stay. I need to steer the trajectory of that ship, of that vessel, which is me and my projects forward.

And I have to be obsessed with that. I mean, we can look back at this marathon prep we just went through. When I started the marathon prep for the Buffalo New York Marathon, I set the goal that I wanted to run a sub-250 marathon. And I believe we had about 16 weeks to do this. and I became obsessed with running a sub 250 marathon. Obsessed. When I woke up, I thought about it.

When I went to bed, I thought about it. During the day when I was eating my meals, I thought about it when I was training. Yeah, I thought about it. Every workout, the ones that I hit, the ones that I missed a little bit, where I was right on pace, where I was right above pace, I thought about how that was going to impact race.

day in Buffalo, New York when I was going to be tested. And I also realized that I was in control of that ship, of my body, of me to get to that goal. So I did everything I could to control the controllables. There was flexibility. And I went to dinner with friends. I spent time with my wife, who went and did things. We were getting ready for this baby that was getting here. I was building the business.

I focused on my priorities. in life. But I was obsessed through this whole process in the background of all the other things I was working on. In the background, this obsession always lived where come race day, come May 29th, 2022, I'm going to show up, I'm going to tow that line and I'm going to run a sub 250 marathon. There's no doubt. There's no question about it because I'm going to put in the work to do it.

And guess what? We showed up. We executed. We ran a 240. Marathon because for the 16 weeks leading up to that moment, I obsessed on it. It's the same thing of BPN. When I started my company in 2012 and everyone was telling me it was going to fail and they doubted me, I became obsessed with making it happen.

And what do you do through that obsession? You force yourself to learn. You force yourself to surround yourself with people who are smarter and better than you. and I do that till this day because I want to get better. I want to improve. I want to see the people around me win and improve. I'm obsessed with that.

Obsession. Again, it's going to be viewed as this horrible, unhealthy thing that you apply to your life, but you need to flip the way you think about it. Flip the way you obsession. If it's done in a controlling way, yeah, maybe you need to reevaluate the way you are approaching your priorities in life. But if it's done in a flexible sense, lean into that.

Lean in to that obsession because what that obsession is, that's momentum. That's passion. That's fuel. Use that as fuel. Let it fuel the sum of the decisions you make every single day that lead to a result. Now I was running this morning And I was thinking about this In terms of solitude

And I throw around the word solitude a lot When it comes to running And I wanted to paint it in a different picture Than I think I've painted it in in the past And now this marathon's over And I have more energy on a daily basis The only way to describe it is You go through a marathon build or prep

or a chapter in life. Say you just had a baby that was born that I'm about to go through it, you know, as well. You had a newborn that you welcome into your home. And maybe for months, maybe years, you go through this sprint where you're exhausted all the time. And maybe as that child gets older and you're sleeping a little bit better,

you start thinking a little bit clearer. Things aren't as fuzzy anymore. There's just clarity. to life and the things that you're thinking about. That's me right now coming off of this big marathon prep and build where you go into this build and you're logging a lot of volume and miles and intensities ramping up. And you get fatigued, you get tired, it wears on you.

And with that comes this fuzziness in your life. But once the marathon's over and you start recovering and go back to your normal training, the only way to describe it is this cliqueless. clarity just like opens up. You have vitality, you have energy that's almost like injected back into your veins. And you can feel it going from your hands up into your heart down to your legs. Like clarity and vitality, energy. New perspective.

It's the only way to describe coming off of a big sprint. And I felt that many times in my life. And that's what this morning run solitude has been for me recently. is this new clarity in why I search for this solitude. And what the solitude allows me to do is reflect on my necessary level of accountability that I need to have. And I think that accountability is one of the most powerful and important characteristics that you can personally have internally.

accountability holds you to a certain standard that you're going to do and achieve. Not necessarily for yourself to do certain things, but to show up for the people around you in a larger perspective and sense. And let's not get responsibility confused with accountability. Now, responsibility, it's the ability to respond to situations and events in our lives as well as to perform or complete assigned tasks. If you work for a business, if you're on a team, you are given responsibilities.

You are responsible for, you know, let's look at BPN, for example, my VP of marketing tray. He has duties and responsibilities that are specifically assigned to oversee, manage, and plan for performance performance marketing tactics paid advertising email strategy involving acquiring new customers

retention for our current customers building subscription models out those are his duties and responsibilities now accountability is the recognition and acknowledgement of our responsibilities and being answerable for the outcomes of our actions, decisions, and mistakes. You are accountable for the outcome of those responsibilities. It's a lot heavier. Now, let's look at it in terms of this past marathon prep. I was responsible in any given week or Monday and Tuesday were anywhere from like a 9 to 11 mile easy run.

I was responsible to wake up that morning, throw on my running shoes, go out the door and run those miles below my max aerobic heart rate. It was disciplined responsibility. On Wednesday, I knew I was showing up on either the track or to do a tempo workout at a faster pace split and hold those splits for the recommended and planned paces. I knew what my job was that day.

Thursday, Friday, again, I had some easy, slower, lower heart rate, base building runs, and then Saturday we either had a long run or a marathon-paced workout. My responsibility for that given day and week was set in place. I had to show up disciplined and hit that workout as it was written down on the schedule. Now, just because I show up every day and every week and I'm responsible, for that workout. Doesn't necessarily mean when I get the race day, I'm going to run that race and hit my goal.

Just because you show up and do the assigned responsibility and task, check off the sheet, move down the sheet, check, check, check. There's still a moment in time when you show up to tow that race, you're on the starting line, and you might not know if you're going to do it or not. you are accountable for the outcome. Now, I will say one of my biggest pet peeves in terms of accountability is when people don't take accountability serious.

And here's the only way I can describe it. Being a business owner, being an entrepreneur, being a leader, I've been in situations where something doesn't go as plan, something goes wrong, a department or area of the business. in life, you can apply this to anything. There are times when things didn't go as planned. Sometimes they didn't go as planned for reasons that are outside of your control. But guess what?

You're still accountable. You're still accountable for the outcomes. But here's my pet peeve is when something doesn't go as planned and the outcome is suboptimal, it is below the standard, it is a fail, it is a miss. and the person that was in charge that knew and knows they didn't show up every single day and meet their duties and responsibilities day in, day out. Maybe four weeks ago, they just didn't show up and do any work.

Maybe three weeks ago they had a day where they weren't really feeling it, so they kind of just went through the motions, didn't really put an effort out. Maybe two weeks ago, something that happened in their family, and they couldn't focus on work. So they passed it off to someone who couldn't do the job. Maybe a week ago, they forgot to do a big part of the project. And then it comes the day where it's finally time to be tested.

And the result comes out below standard, fail, miss. And the person that is supposed to be accountable says, raise their hand, and they view it as another check off the block. I know this didn't work out as plan. Don't worry. I take full responsibility and I'm accountable for the result.

Yeah, I know. You don't have to tell me. I know I'm holding you accountable. Just because you say I take full accountability, that doesn't make it any better or any easier. It's not, you know, as me as the business owner

as a leader of the organization, I don't just say, oh, okay, because you say I take full accountability, it is okay. 100% pass. Please try again next time.

We'll be better then. No, it's, yeah, I understand. I'm holding you accountable. You don't have to tell me, you don't have to give me permission to say, you are accountable.

there's a difference between responsibility and accountability. And when you're obsessed with achieving something, this is where the context really becomes important. Because when you're obsessed with achieving something, if you keep showing up every day and not achieving or meeting your responsibilities, there's going to be a day when you have to hold yourself accountable for the fail or the success.

for the win or the loss. And one of the things that I learned early on when I was in the Army as a platoon leader is, you know, I graduated college, went to Fort Benning, Georgia for a year. Then I arrived to Fort Hood, Texas as an infantry platoon leader. And one of the first things I was told for my boss is I am going to hold you accountable for the wins and the losses and the successes and failures of your organization, of your platoon. If your platoon fails gunnery, if your platoon fails to clean up the motor pole, if your platoon fails a certain section of training, if your platoon fails the PT test, it is not

Sergeant Smith or Private Jones fault. It's yours, Lieutenant. You are the one that's accountable. You failed your team, you failed your platoon, you failed this company, you failed this battalion, you are accountable. Now I can't go back and say, guys, what the hell? Why'd you fail? Now, that comes down to me. Right? Taking accountability of, this goes back to what I think about when I run, this solitude that I search forward and I mean that's why I run now. I want this solitude. When I was running this morning, it was an 8.5 mile run and I went through some trails as the sun was rising. It was beautiful. I was in these trails and it was high. It was probably 85 degrees. I'm dripping sweat everywhere.

Sun's rising through the trees and the bushes. In these trails, there's a bunch of big oak trees and there's deer everywhere on this trail. It's absolutely amazing. At one point in my life, I mean, I want to have a two-mile trail system on my property, when I have enough property to do a two, four, six, eight, ten-mile run every morning. Same scenery. It's beautiful. But that's solitude for me now, like this morning.

What it provides me is this moment of reflection to take, full responsibility of my daily actions, but to reflect on my accountability, being accountable for the outcomes and the results that these daily habits are going to ultimately lead to. What if I done in the last 30 to 90 days that I have succeeded at, that I have failed at? what wins and losses occurred that have led to where I'm at right now. When I finish this run up and I go into my house,

I eat breakfast, I shower, I get in the truck, I drive to work, and I go to meet the team, are they operating in a way that I would be satisfied and happy with? And if they're not, that comes down to me. That's my fault.

Did I develop them properly? Did I lead them properly? Did I put systems, infrastructures in place that facilitated growth? Did I hire the right people? I'm responsible for a lot of those things. Look at this business as your life. Are you surrounding yourself with people on a daily basis that are leading you to where you want to be? You control the outcome.

You control the result of what you do and what you don't do. That's accountability. If you get to a point in your life that you're not happy with, that you're not satisfied with, that you're disappointed in, there's no one else to blame. You can't look to the left and right of you or behind you in front of you, to your peers and mentors. You can't blame them.

You can't blame anyone else but yourself. I think it's the power and accountability. Because when you hold yourself accountable, you make responsible choices to be responsible to do the things you need to do that lead to the outcome and result that you want to achieve. That's being obsessed. That's constantly taking inventory and stock of your life and being obsessed with what you're doing,

the decisions you're making, and what you're choosing to do day in and day out that lead you to this result. That's obsession. And the truth is you're not going to get there without a plan. And this plan needs to be a realistic plan. What holds people back through planning

our constraints. And what I want to talk about, this is something I shared with my team earlier today, is the triple constraints of project management. Look at your goal, look at your objective, look at this journey that you're working towards. It doesn't matter what it is. There's got to be something in your life right now

that you are actively trying to achieve. If there's not, you should probably reevaluate what you're prioritizing your time on. Your time, your money, your energy, your resources. Where are you dedicating those hours, those dollars, that mental bandwidth too? If there's no goal or objective,

you're kind of just floating. Like, if we are on water and the difference between driving a boat and floating on a raft driving the boat would be you're going after these objectives with a plan floating in the raft you're on a little noodle in the Pacific Ocean

that's floating you're kind of just existing you better get on a ship pretty quick or a shark's going to come up and bite your ass and pull you to the bottom of the ocean that's the reality of it the triple constraints of project management

or the triple constraints of your life as a whole are time, scope, and cost. Now, time is what is the schedule that you're laying out? What are the deadlines for phases? What does the final deliverable or completion look like? Now, this can be flexible, but taking it in a pretty simple form, the constraints of this last race that I prepped for, for example. I knew I had about 16 weeks. And within each one of those weeks, I had certain training milestones that I had to hit.

And I knew that Jeff was going to program an 18-mile workout, 220-mile workouts, and a 22-mile workout. And that 22-mile workout was going to be three weeks before that marathon. I knew that was the time. That was the schedule. That was the timeline. But what are the constraints? Well, are you going to run out of time?

Are you going to lose certain workouts because something pops up with life, with work, with family? There are always these three constraints in a project, a goal, an objective. Time is one of those. Time is that one thing.

It is the most valuable asset in this world. You're not getting any more of it. You know from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep, from the time you're born to the time you die, how much time you're going to get in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year. You can't buy more of it. It doesn't matter how much money you have. You're not buying any more time.

And it's up to you to use that time wisely. And I recommend you do. The second constraint is scope. What are the functions? What are the features? What are the deliverables? Now, for me, the scope of work for this last marathon build was to get my anaerobic threshold to a certain point where I could hold about a 625 minute per mile pace for 26.2 miles. When I started that prep, I was not in sub-250 marathon shape.

But by the end of the prep, I was. That was the scope of work. That's how much, I knew how much mileage I had to log every week. I knew how many big workouts I had to hit along the way. I knew at what paces I had to do those workouts at. I knew how I had to fuel in order to do those workouts. The scope was large. time is one constraint

scope is another constraint cost is a third constraint now within cost you can look at this in terms of a monetary cost like what is it going to cost you in dollars to achieve a certain thing

or what are you sacrificing that is also a cost opportunity cost you know as I'm as I'm trying to go after a business goal. If you're trying to go after a business goal, you're trying to build a business,

you're trying to get a promotion at work. There's a cost associated with that. And you probably know what you need to do to get that promotion, to build that business, to get hired at your dream organization. There's a cost associated with that. If you don't do what's required to get there,

it's probably not going to happen. But there's also a sacrifice sometimes in order to get there. I know if I'm going after a big sprint in business, there's a goal that we need to hit in the next 90 days. And I become obsessed with making that happen. The cost associated with that, the opportunity cost is that I'm sacrificing possibly time away from my friends, my family, my sleep, my balance,

lifestyle, my fitness. There's a cost associated. There are also fixed and variable cost. Sometimes you have this realistic expectation and plan going into a new goal. That is a fixed cost. I know it's going to cost me this much money to launch this new project. At one week, four weeks, eight weeks, and 12 weeks, I have these installment costs that I have to pay for.

But guess what happens? Projects aren't always perfect, and there are these variable costs that pop up. Mile two, oh, you get this extra invoice for something you needed to build out. Week nine, you added another invoice that popped up.

Like things change. There is variable, there are variables that pop up here and there throughout this process, throughout this journey. Time, scope and cost are the triple constraints of going after a big, hairy, ambitious goal. And they have to be considered in the planning process.

The last thing I really want to talk about in terms of becoming obsessed with something, it's the active versus passive approach. And I think this is the big separator for a lot of things, a lot of people, a lot of perspectives and a lot of efforts. There's an active versus passive effort. And I kind of talked about this earlier on, but I truly believe, and here's an example of how I lied to myself early on in business.

When I started BPN, people told me, you know, it takes about three years for business to really get off the ground and start up. Give yourself three years to kind of let this just blossom on its own. And I bawled into that. I truly believe, you know what? Yeah, I heard about this thing. People say it takes three years to get a business off the ground.

So start this business 2012. By 2015, we'll probably have some things figured out. If I just ride the wave, just start it and ride the wave. And magically in three years, in 36 months, boom. on my doorstep, I have this package from UPS that says, like, you can now enter chapter two. Now, it really doesn't work like that. I lied to myself for those first three years. I didn't hold myself responsible or accountable to where I was going to be 36 months later.

I truly thought, and I bought into and believed, this three-year bullshit. And that same model, I think, is applied to a lot of ways people, view their life. Oh, I'm going to go to college. Four-year program, and when I get out of this four-year program, I'm going to have a six-figure paying job. Why? Well, because I got this piece of paper that says I can.

What did you do in college? Do you have any internships? Did you go study abroad? Do you work for any companies? How did you prioritize and maximize your time there? Oh, no, I pretty much partied the entire time. But I spent four years there, so that means I need a job and I need six figures.

Yeah, no. That's a passive way to kind of earn that degree and think you deserve this big salary paid position. But no, you didn't really perform in an active way while you're there. What would be an active way in your four years of college? You've got internships. You worked under mentors,

You went out and gained experience in the world so that when you graduated college and you come knocking on BPN's door saying, I'm looking for a new position, just finished college. Oh yeah, what did you do there? You rattle off all the experience you have. You actively spent those four years doing some pretty cool stuff. Yeah. I care about the experience. I want you for the experience. It's not just that paper.

Active versus passive. It's not going to fall in your lap. I mean, that's the thing that makes obsession so pivotal, so powerful. When you become obsessed with achieving something, you act in an active way. You can't be obsessed with something and passively hope for it. That's like saying you want to become a professional baseball player when you're in high school. And you make, you know, say you make the JV team, then, you eventually wake your mate, wake your mate, make your way to varsity.

And you're on the varsity team. You go to practice, but you know, you don't do any extra strength training sessions. You're not doing any extra batting cage work. You're not working on your agility and speed movements. You just kind of do the bare minimum. You're passively hoping and dreaming. You know, you lay in bed at night thinking, and I hope one day I'm playing for the Atlanta Braves.

I hope because I'm obsessed with you becoming a baseball player, professional baseball player. Yeah, but just because you dream about it and hope for it and you passively think it's going to happen doesn't mean it is. The guy who leaves baseball practice in high school goes to batting cage with his friend, spends an hour there, then goes to the weight room, is focused on his nutrition, his recovery,

he's getting stronger, he's getting faster, constantly looking for places to improve and get better, that is actively becoming obsessed with your goal. And get so where that person might end up if their talent and their hard work meet at the right place and lead them to the pros, that's the guy who's getting drafted because he actively became obsessed with his goal. That's a difference. Are you passively obsessed with something, hoping it's going to land in your lap? Or are you actively going out and making it happen?

That is where obsession makes or breaks you. That's the power of becoming obsessed. It's being flexible. It's having an active approach and perspective. It's having a plan that considers the constraints of time, scope, and cost when you bring all this together and you are all in on that goal, it doesn't mean you're going to make it happen. It doesn't.

After all this is said and done, you might get put on the chopping block and you're finally tested and guess what? You might not have achieved success, however you define that. But you can look back at all the things you did, the work you put in, the obsession you maintain through that process. And you can honestly look yourself in a mirror, hold yourself accountable to what you did or did not achieve and know you put everything into it.

Success is not guaranteed. The wins are not guaranteed. But you are responsible and accountable for increasing your chances as much as possible. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. Please leave a rating and review on the platform you are listening to if you enjoyed it. It helps us to grow and reach more people with the intent of changing lives through the Go One More mindset.

If you are ready to take your health and performance to the next level, head over to BPNSups.com to take the first step.