The One You Feed - Jake Ducey

Episode Date: March 31, 2015

This week we talk to Jake Ducey about our purposeWhen Jake Ducey decided to quit and leave behind a college basketball scholarship and business school at 19, he had no idea that he would slowly become a leading voice for his generation. It was only three years ago that Jake sat in Economics 101, totally discontent with the state of his life, the direction his generation was heading, and the poverty of the world. After nearly dying in a car accident while drunk, he decided to take the last of his savings, drop out of school and travel the world.It wasn’t until Jake fell off a cliff in Indonesia and his life was saved by locals, that he realized all he was looking for was within him. As a result, he came back and wrote a book about his journey—Into the Wind: My Six-Month Journey Wandering the World for Life’s Purpose—which made the Amazon best-selling list, received acclaim from Jack Canfield and is now being turned into a film script for a major motion picture. He even built an orphanage in Guatemala with part of the proceeds from his book.If you ask Jake today if he ever thought any of this was possible, he would’ve laughed—but now at 22, he has already written another book, The Purpose Principles: How to Draw More Meaning Into Your Life.  In This Interview Jake and I Discuss... See details on our website Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:Dan HarrisMaria PopovaTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I believe it's not about the skill you have, it's about the will you have. garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast.

Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Jake Ducey. Jake was a 19-year-old college dropout when he independently released his first book entitled Into the Wind about quitting college basketball to backpack the world. Jake's second book is called The Purpose Principles and is available now. And before we start the interview, here's a quick message from Eric. On the show, we often say you can't think your way into right action. You have to act your way into right thinking. If you're having trouble with that, trouble getting started, trouble doing behaviors consistently, send me an email, eric at oneufeed.net, and let's talk about the one-on-one work I'm doing. Here's the interview. Hi, Jake. Welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to get you on. I know that you were on Rich Roll's podcast, and he emailed me and recommended you, so I'm excited to do this interview and see how it turns out. We'll start like we always do with the parable, which goes like this. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says, In life, there are two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he says, but grandfather, which one wins?

And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, well, to me, I think it means it covers two primary things that I think of. And, you know, number one is when you spoke of fear, I don't believe that fear is something that we transcend necessarily. I think it's more along the lines to me of what like Nelson Mandela said, which was that courage isn't the absence of fear. It's the ability to take action in spite of it, to conquer it through that. And so I look at it that way, like which one am I feeding in terms of am I feeding the fear of am I qualified enough? Am I old enough? I'm 23. Am I this? Am I that? Or am I ready right now to take the action that the fear can create me

or the fear can destroy me? And the second thing that I really do when I think of that is about the way that this other wolf can destroy us is when I think in terms of every author I know is addicted to their Amazon rankings. And I think whether it's being an author or whatever it is, it's really easy for us to get caught up in the rankings, in the status, in the paycheck. And I think after we are making a living and have a lot of our basic needs met, I think

a lot more of the fulfillment and this wolf that you're speaking of, which can empower us, can come when we do look at these ways that we can step out of our personal concerns to share a smile, to make someone's life better, to express ourselves creatively and not getting so caught up in what we get from a goal, what we get from a dream, the results, the rankings, the paychecks, because that is a never-ending cycle that really can destroy us as individuals if we're not looking for these places that will ultimately fulfill us on a deeper level, which I believe is these traits you spoke of in courage and bravery and kindness and love and compassion.

Yeah, I mean, there's so much in what you said there. I think that looking for validation from the external world is, I think, A, it's something that is wired into us, and we're always going to want and need it to some degree. So I think to try and sort of be like, I never care what anybody thinks is sort of silly. But that point about like, you know, I can look at that like with, you know, with the podcast numbers. And, you know, if I just hit 5,000, well, you hit 5,000, then what do you want? You want 6,000? I mean, it never, I mean, that there's no end to that.

And I'm always interested in the idea of like sort of comparing ourselves to other people, because I think there can be some use when it's a motivating thing. But so often, it's like wherever you are, you can look at somebody who you perceive to be better than you and somebody that you perceive to be worse than you. But just like you were saying, you're not there's no connection to those people in that case. And I think it's that connection that is the at least at the heart of a lot of the good things in life. that is the, at least at the heart of a lot of the good things in life. Yeah. Yeah. I really, I really think that, you know, we can, we can be motivating ourselves also out of a, out of a few different ways. You know, we can motivate ourselves out of,

for instance, as an author looking at the, at the Amazon rankings and thinking that person is ahead of me and how angry that makes me to motivate me or great for them and use that as fuel for me to better myself. I think also if we look at the happiness index of America, over the last 50, 60 years, American income, the average American income has increased, but the happiness has stayed the same. It's consistently increased. So I think really what I was trying to get at with my second point is it's awesome to have something you want, whether it's the home you want or the lover you want or the

car you want, whether it's the home you want or the lover you want or the car you want. But I think it's so important for us to, as you said, recognize that a lot of our deepest fulfillments come from more acts of care and more actions of connection to those around us. It's easy to be so lost in the pursuit of once I get this that we can neglect the things that often mean the most to us, the love of our friends and family, those around us, passions and things outside of just what we can accumulate. Exactly. So maybe you could just give a brief overview of your latest book. I know you've written two now, so maybe you could just give us a quick minute about the newest one. Yeah, well, it's the book that I always wanted to write.

I was always fascinated with what's the common thread between some of the greatest achievers or difference makers. As a 19-year-old, I didn't think that they were some rare breed of humans that were superior than everyone else. They're just naturally, they're just smarter and better. And I wanted to know, are people that I admire scared? Are they fearful? Have they failed? So the purpose principles, it highlights the stories of some of today's biggest influencers in the world and oftentimes shares their failures. And it identifies common 15 common characteristics, principles that these individuals all have. And the reason that I wrote that is because I think, you know, if we have a dream to make a difference or just to get in better shape,

you know, to lose 10 pounds or gain 10 pounds of muscle or to start a million dollar business or to start a nonprofit that feeds homeless youth in your community, I think it's really easy for us to get caught up in like, oh, well, I'm not those people that do that, which the media shows often success stories. And I think we can psych ourselves out. I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm not qualified.

Well, I'm scared. So maybe I need a little bit more time to prepare. scared. So maybe I need a little bit more time to prepare. And so I turned the book into showing what individuals from across the board, from musicians to humanitarians to entertainers, what have they gone through in order to get their point? Because I think we can recognize ourselves and other people's stories. Absolutely. You have a statement that you said that purpose is the best form of activism. So you are an activist, a political activist in certain different ways. But I'm curious, what do you mean by that statement that purpose is the best form of activism? You know, if we look around from economic to environmental, there's a lot of areas that we, for future generations, there's a lot of areas that we, for future generations, there's a

lot of areas that really need to improve. We're destroying the environment. We're getting in greater debt. There's, you know, there's less opportunities for young people. And I believe purpose is the greatest form of activism because when we're centered in who we are, then that reflects things like what we buy and what we do with our time. And so I believe that if we're centered in our values, there'll be a lot of changes. I don't think in terms of environmental destruction from mega corporations and human rights violations, slave labor. I don't think we need to do away with companies like Nike or, you know, companies that are taking advantage of people across the board.

But I think that if all of us were like, hey, for instance, I really like you, Nike, and I really want to keep buying your stuff, but it's super hard when we're destroying the planet and the lives of countless people in order to produce these shoes. We'll use your product if we make this a little bit better. Or on a total another scale, everything has a purpose. Like the sun's purpose is to shine, give heat, give life to things so things can grow. Everything has a purpose. And I think when we can recognize our purpose, whether our purpose is to raise the best children ever or if it's to be the person with the most valuable energy in the office space or whether it's to stop and share a smile with the cashier, make someone's day in little ways like that. I think when we're centered in our purpose, whether it's to be a light or whether it's to help feed young people or to stop pipelines

across the world or get young people eating healthier food, whatever our purpose is, that's the greatest form of activism when we're actively creating solutions with our purpose. One of the things that I've been talking about on the show a little bit, and I'd be interested in your perspective on, is I talk a lot about this idea of we have a circle of, it's an idea from Stephen Covey, but we have a circle of concern, all the things in the world that we might care about. And then we have a circle of influence, which is the area that we can actually make some impact in. And my general thought and sort of what Covey was saying and my experience bears out that if we spend our time in that circle of influence, that circle of influence tends to grow if we spend all our time in the circle of concern of things that we're worried about but we can't do anything about that that tends to lessen and so but sometimes i worry is that putting that your your head in the sand type mentality and i'm curious how that concept relates to what you're talking about because i think it i think it's very much a similar thing i think it it really correlates. And the first

example that just came to my head while I was thinking of what you were saying was that, for instance, granted there are other things that people want to improve in the world today. Martin Luther King felt his purpose was equal rights. He didn't start on national stages with a global influence to create change in the world. He started in his local community and they had an organization, a legal nonprofit. And he started in his community and things kept building. I think everything starts at ground zero. I highlight the story of a nine-year-old in my book, The Purpose Principles named Gabe Egglinger. And I talk about how you're never too young or too old to make a difference. Gabe was an example of so young. He's nine and in third grade, and he's raised like 30,000 books

and built libraries and helps kids across the world that have never read a book, could never afford a book. And so that started on a local level by doing a little book drive for a couple hundred books at his elementary school. I think no matter what it is, whether it's a non-profit endeavor, which was an organization, you know, Martin Luther King's was an organization, or whether it was on a different spectrum, like Gabe wanting to help people learn how to read or whether you want to start a podcast, your circle of influence is always small. And if you're consistent with it, which is a principle in the new book, Consistency, you can create a larger field of influence. So that's what I thought of when you shared that with me. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's that the other sort of corollary of that is if I,

it seems to me that when I spend all my time noticing everything that's wrong in the world, then that drains all my energy. And I don't, I'm not able to focus my energy on a thing that I can make better. You know, like your, your example, I mean, Martin Luther King, you know, he had his cause, his thing, and that's where he spent his energy and time instead of spending all of his time just worrying about everything out in the world that he wasn't going to be able to do anything about. He started small and built from there. Yeah, yeah, no, that's to me what, why purpose is the greatest form of, of activism. You know, we can really, uh, bewilder ourselves and, and drive ourselves mad either trying to figure out why something is happening. Why do I keep failing here with this business or with these, uh, people I find

attractive or why are we never able to, to get this off the ground? Why does this keep happening to me? Or going, you could go on for weeks on end naming every single thing that's wrong with the world, and you still wouldn't be done. And so I think there's just a certain place where we can step into our purpose and start from to be that light and feed that wolf that represents kindness and represents sharing our gifts with the world and represents these characteristics that we believe can create significant change. And we're seeing creating change from having the courage to face fears that Martin Luther King and many other individuals show, or whether it's just facing the fear of improving on your health. There's these common threads that are happening. And I think that when we can approach them on local levels, whether it's a

community cause or whether it's a small thing like starting to get in shape, approaching them on small levels and looking for what we can do. Instead of what's the worst that could happen, ask ourselves what's the best that could happen. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really?

That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts. I know you probably work with a lot of youth and, and youth are often trying to find their purpose. Although I don't think that goes away for a lot of people. It, it tends to last throughout life. What is your thoughts on how people can start to find what that purpose is, what their thing is, their special thing that reflects their gifts? I think at a certain point, it's really something that finds us. And I think so often we live in a culture that idolizes grandos things. So we think, well, my purpose must be that I need to write a book, or my purpose must be I need to create this business, or we begin to fret when we can't think of some grandos or clear thing about what our purpose is. I think at the end of the day,

we're really in a world that's in need of more acts of care and more acts of connection. And, you know, your purpose may be to stay exactly at the job you're at for the next three years, five years, rest of your life. And it may be being that person who is consistently there to share a smile, to connect with others. I think that when we can recognize really the value we can bring to others, to the world through our presence, I think we start to branch out, face some fears, get in some uncomfortable places where on the weekends, maybe you start doing music or painting or helping out at a local charity or gardening or you start long distance running or whatever it is. I think that it's not, I don't think life is as clear cut and

dry as our minds would like it to be. And I think we can find most of the happiness and fulfillment that we're looking for by little things like, um, maybe your purpose is to be in the best, in the best shape you can be in. Because when you're like that, you're giving your ultimate presence to your loved ones, to your work, and you're performing at a, at a higher level. Um, I think maybe our purpose is just to, is, is not necessarily how many hours we put in on developing a craft, which I think can be a part of it. Maybe our purpose is just about the energy we put out, the positive influence we put

around to our circle of influence, like you said, and just really being that person who can be a light in a world today where 73% of Americans reported this fall in the Gallup polls that they were actively disengaged from their jobs. They weren't happy at their jobs and it was translating into their personal lives. You know, there's a, there's a lot of us that feel overstressed, overstressed, overwhelmed, anxiety about the economy or about the environment. We can be positive influences in the world. And I think we can drive a lot of our meaning from that. Like Mother Teresa, like wasn't like a, she wasn't like some like paint master genius. She was just this lady that she, her passion was, was to connect with

people and was to show people that they mattered. And, and she found a lot of meaning in that. So I think that it doesn't need to be something so grand. But I think at the same time, there are questions we can ask ourselves like, what makes me feel like myself? And what would have to happen a year from now for me to look back and say it was my most successful, my most fulfilling year yet? There are goals we can set and things we can work on. But I think it's important to not neglect the daily interactions and experiences that we're having each and every day with all the people we're coming across and the ability that we have in order to contribute to people's lives just in really seemingly small ways. What I found interesting about your story was one of the things was you

went on the road and you traveled all around the world for a while. And you had some experiences there. But at a certain point, as you were doing that travel, you you were hit with the realization that the work that mattered to you, the things that mattered to you were back here, back in the US. And I thought that was really interesting that you went from what a lot of people would think is, oh, if I could just travel all the time, that would be everything. And I found it interesting that you did do that. And in the midst of that, decided that you wanted to contribute something right now to the place that you lived. Yeah, no, the joke was definitely on me. I wanted to travel because I was very cynical. I didn't feel I had a place. I didn't like what I was doing. I wasn't sure if the world was falling apart. I was like, I need to get out

and travel. Maybe I'll never come back and blah, blah, blah. And like you said, I realized that I was so far away from everything that mattered to me. And that, you know, maybe traveling can be great, but I think it can also be a fool's paradise. Like I didn't even know, I realized I didn't know why I was traveling. I was just kind of moving to the next place and the next place. Besides seeing cool things, I didn't really have anything to wake up to. And so that's what made me want to come back and start writing and see if I could be someone who could hopefully uplift others and things like that. In your book, in one of the chapters, one of the subheadings is overcoming situations through powerful motives. Can you explain what that is?

Well, I was 19 when I came back and decided I wanted to write a book. And that doesn't go over that well. When you're 19 and you fail junior English class in high school, I was never a writer. I did poor on my SATs. But I felt that my story would inspire people. I wanted to use the money in order to build an orphanage in Guatemala where I had started traveled. I had these reasons that were motivating me, like, here's why I want to write this. Like, um, I think this would be, you know, one, I think this would be a cool, a cool job, a cool opportunity. I thought it could positively influence people. And I knew I wanted to use a little pieces of the, of the money in, in order to help specific people out. And I believe it's not about the skill you have. It's about the will you have. And I think at the end of the day, motivation, it's inspiration

in spirit. Inspiration means in spirit. And that means like connected to us in alignment, you know, that there's these motives, there's these inspirations behind it. And when we're connected with that, we can find the drive in order to learn what we need. For me, I had to teach myself how to write. And I taught myself how to write. I wrote this book out. I was so excited. I'm like, this is going to get published. And I couldn't get a publisher. Everyone said no. They're like, you're 19. You don't even have a website. Who are you? Go to school and come back when you sell 20,000 copies. And so I had to self-publish my book. And it was really scary because I didn't know if this was going to suck and this was just going to fail and like everything was just going to be done and I'd have no money and have to either just like go to it, go back to a junior college and start working to cover the tuition. I had no idea. And I drew on my inspiration and I filled my car up with books

and I traveled around and lugged it and spoke anywhere I could, sometimes to zero people, sometimes on the weekend, I'd make like a 500 bucks speaking to a youth group. And I was kind of just going basically just off the books I was selling each day and at one or two very small speaking fees a month. And I kept selling the books door to door, closing the doors in my face. I learned my own PR. And in a few months, we sold over 10,000 books. And my first book, Into the Wind, made it to the top 300 on Amazon

and Penguin Random House picked me up. And you know, I was, I had the opportunity to give that Ted Youth talk. So it was all prompted out of, I had a powerful motive and like things are, are flying now. Like, uh, um, I'm really able to, um, I'm working on my third book right now and, and, uh, I have been able to create something that really means a lot to me out of knowing why I was doing it. Because I think it's easy to give up if you don't know why you're doing it. If you're not doing it for your wife or your children or because you know it's going to increase the quality of your life or whatever it is, like just some motive is there's so much opportunity to draw inspiration and to draw an energy that is normally not available. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason bobblehead. It's called really no, really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So another part in your book, you've got a chapter called Write It Down, Make It Happen. And I'm interested in what the 30 things exercise is. Yeah, well, I was 20 years old, and this was three years ago, and it was before my first book, Into the Wind, came out. I was listening to Jack Canfield,

the creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, one of his audio books. In the audio book, he says, write down your top 101 goals, the 30 things you want to do, 30 things you want to be, 30 things you want to have. Write them down. And I was like, I don't know if I believe this whole writing your goals down thing. And I was like, all right, I'll write it down. Number nine was to be endorsed by and become friends with Jack Canfield. And I wrote it down on a piece of paper. I'm like, I'll just play the game. And time went on. About a few months later, a friend called me and was like, hey, I just want to let you know that Jack's Canfield is going to be emceeing an event in Los Angeles. I was living down in San Diego.

I bought the ticket, dressed up nice, and headed up there, signed a book to Jack, and went up to the event. There were two things I immediately realized. and there were two things I immediately realized. One was that I was not dressed up wearing a corduroy suit and like a wrinkled blue shirt and whatever else I was wearing. It was a fine dining charity event and the second thing I realized was that it was going to be pretty difficult to meet Jack when there was 500 people there and all these

people trying to take pictures with them. And I wanted to, you know, build a relationship, have a few seconds to give my book, create rapport, build a connection. So I found my seat on, here I am at the top level of this ballroom. There's all these tables of five or six, Jack's emceeing it down at the center. And all these people sitting in their seats. And hours are going by. There's all these lines to take pictures with Jack. And I'm starting to get worried.

Like, man, this doesn't look that possible. And finally, here's Jack. He says, I'm going to head down to my seat. We're going to be eating dinner in the next 30, 45 minutes. So enjoy. And I am feeling this feeling like, okay, here I am. Now I have to go. And here I am. I start heading down the stairs and walking over towards this table and I'm starting to get close. And this person stands up as Jack's coming to his seat and kind of grabs his attention. I'm like, oh man, like I thought

that was my chance. And I kind of standing there awkwardly seeing if he'll come back to his table and he finally decides to come back. So it's like my 10 seconds of courage. And like, I go up, even though I'm really anxious, I'm like, hi Jack, my name's Jake Ducey. I wrote this book and you inspired it. And so hi. And he And he's like, how did I inspire it? I said, well, in your book, you say, when someone says no, you say next. And every publisher kept denying me and I kept saying next.

And I got this book out anyways and you say S-W-S-W-S-W. Some will say yes, some will say no. So what? Someone is waiting. And he starts smiling. He's like, you got to meet my wife. And he takes my book and he's like, this is cool.

And I'm talking to his wife and I'm getting really excited. And we're chit-chatting and 10, 15 minutes go by and the waiter comes over to put the food down. Here's the waiter putting the food down at this table of five. And I'm like, oh, I thought I missed my chance. And I'm like, man, I'm like wrapping up the conversation because I didn't get off my questions quick enough. And I didn't want to be, I don't want to be rude while they're about to eat dinner. And I kind of turn away and Jack says, are you going to eat that? I'm like and he points to his left and I don't realize because I'm so excited that out of this fully packed like 500 person event there's no

empty seats the person that Jack's left just left before dinner for the rest of the night and he's asking me if I wanted to sit there the waiter didn't know so the waiter still came and put the food there and I sat down ate dinner with them them, and spent the rest of the night chatting with them at the table and getting to know them. Jack ended up writing an endorsement for my first book, Into the Wind, called Into the Wind is One Wonderful Chicken Soup for the Soul Story. He wrote the foreword to my new book, The Purpose Principles. and he was actually the inspiration in order for me to write it. So there's this crazy thing that I just was like, wow, I am a believer in writing it down and making it happen.

That we don't need to know all the how. That if we can set some goals and when the opportunities present themselves, take action and see where they unfold. And that was a perfect example. How did I know? How did I get the inclination out of this whole event to go at the time the waiter was behind the scenes going to go to Jack's table? It was this incredible experience. So I write in the book about this story, and I share the exercise, writing down 30 things you want to be, 30 things you want to do, 30 things you want to have.

Hard exercise. It's really hard to think of that many things, but it really is a great opportunity to bring awareness to our feelings and our true desires and the motives in our life. Yeah, that's a great story. So one of your chapters is called consistency, which is a, I'm a, I'm a big believer in the value of that. And you've got a couple different sections in here. So I'll let you pick which you want to talk about that. But there's a couple that sort of caught my eye. The success doesn't happen overnight, the proficiency threshold or the rule of five. Yeah, well, they all tie in together. You know, I think, uh, our culture work, we're kind of conditioned to think that success is an overnight thing when it's, it's often, uh, and, and up a lot of the

nights in a row thing. And so I think that most of the results come from consistency. And so whomever it is, it's, it's time and time again that your podcast, I'm sure you experience a consistency because you probably weren't the number one podcast. You didn't have as many people, lives that you're touching from this the first day you ever did it. There is a consistency. there is a consistency. So I think it's like this, I call it the proficiency threshold. When we're doing something consistently enough, when I start writing enough, I started to develop a level of proficiency where I could pump out more content and I was getting comfortable creating content. I started to get into the flow is something people call it a lot. And oftentimes, I think that can be developed with the rule of five, which is the third thing you shared. And the rule of five is five things

that you do every single day to move you closer to your goal or your purpose or your health, whatever it may be, whether it's a business goal or it's a wellness goal or a service goal, five things every day. So like even if you're

out and about and you have another job or maybe you're a mother or whatever you may be, five things to do every day. We don't need to do a million things in one day and burn ourselves out or not have time the other four days. We do five inspired actions every day for 365 days. I'm not a mathematician, but that's a lot of inspired actions every single day to move us closer to our goal. So I call it the rule of five. And so that can be anything. Like today on my rule of five, as a writer, I'm partially producing content. I worked on a new blog. I sent out two or three big emails that I'd been neglecting to send out that were important for me to do. I'm working on a new book. So I'm editing my table of contents,

specific tasks that I'm doing because we can look at our to-do list and there can be 30 things on it. Chances are we're not going to get 30 things done. And chances are that that can stress us out or we can look at all of them and not get any of them done. So the rule of five to me is about taking on a few projects, a few tasks, whether it's five minute things like sending an email or making a phone call, or whether it's 35 minutes of studying something that we're working on, or whether it's two hours of writing, or for you recording a podcast, like five things that you do, or whether it's going to the gym, whatever it is, five things every day to move closer, whether it's going to the gym, whatever it is, five things every day to move closer,

we're going to get results if we're consistent with that. For seven days, that's 35 actions. So we can take it one day at a time, whether than trying to get everything done in two months or in one month. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing what a series of consistent small steps will do. Yeah. Individually, it's like, well, that's not going to do anything. But to your point, if you just keep stacking them on top of each other, you look back a little bit later and go, wow, I've really done something here. Yeah, and I think I've noticed that a lot. And it's always daunting for me to start. Like this new book that I'm working on is really daunting. Cause I, I, I'm just like,

when it's, when there's only four pages in your word document and you're at like a thousand words and you have to write 65,000, that's not something that's done in one day. You know, it's something that's over a period of time. And it, and I think that's the beauty. A lot of happiness comes from progress. Like it's not that you gain 10 pounds of muscle or lose 10 pounds in one day. It's a consistent progress. And I think a lot of fulfillment can come from that process. Learning to love showing up every day in little or small ways for a few hours or for 10 hours. Showing up can create a lot of fulfillment and a lot of contentment within ourselves. I think that is a great way to wrap up and end.

So Jake, I want to say thanks so much for taking the time to come on. It's been a fun conversation. Eric, thank you for having me very much. I appreciate it. We'll be in touch and let me know when your book that you're working on now, which I'm sure you will eventually get done, is ready. I'd love to see it. Cool, man.

That sounds great. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great afternoon or I guess nighttime in the chilly weather. Yep. All right. Thanks. Take care. Okay, bye.

If you like what you're hearing week to week on the show, but are having trouble putting the ideas into practice, send an email to eric at oneufeed.net, and we can discuss how I'm helping others make real changes in their lives. you can learn more about Jake Ducey and this podcast at one you feed.net slash Jake