The One You Feed - Jeff Goins

Episode Date: August 26, 2015

This week we talk to Jeff Goins about The Art of WorkJeff Goins is a full-time writer who lives just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, son, and border collie. He has authored four books and frequently speaks on writing, creativity, and making a difference. His website, Goinswriter.com, has been visited by more than four million people from all over the world.His latest book is called The Art of WorkOur Sponsor this Week is Emeals.Try eMeals risk free for 14 days. Head to EMEALS.COM to sign up today—it only takes a few minutes to solve your dinnertime dilemma. Simply choose a food style and you’ll be ready to experience the power of planning with your 14-day free trial.With eMeals, you’ll never again have to ask yourself, “what’s for dinner.” That’s EMEALS.COM (Remember to tell them you heard about them from us when you check out.)In This Interview Jeff and I Discuss...The One You Feed parableThe fixed and growth mindsetsChoosing between being a victim and a victorThe secret to an extraordinary lifeFinding your callingHow for most people finding their calling is a roundabout processHow hidden in our obstacles and challenges often lie our purposeLearning to take the next stepUsing the surprises and setbacks we encounter for the goodWalking the path of your lifeThat difficulties are a prerequisite to a meaningful lifeHow mentors come in many forms and multiple peopleAccidental apprenticeshipsHow no one gets changed by an idea, it takes action along with the ideaNot dreaming but doingHow the work always comes before we feel readySee more show notes at our websiteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We can't always change that circumstance or the environment, but we can decide who we are and who we become in those moments. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, 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 reallynoreally.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 on this episode is Jeff Goines, the author of four books, including the national bestseller, The Art of Work. Jeff is also well known for his prolific blog and podcast in which he shares thoughts and ideas that will help you pursue work that matters, make a difference with your art, and discover your true voice.

And here's the interview with Jeff Goines. Hi, Jeff. Welcome to the show. Hey, Eric. Good to be with you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to get you on the show in your new book, which is called The Art of Work, A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do. I found an awful lot of similarities with some of the themes that come up on this show all the time. So I think it's going to be kind of right in the sweet spot for a lot of the things that we talk about. But I'd like to start off with the parable

of the two wolves. In that parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. 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, he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, 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, I love that parable and I love the focus of the show, which to me is really about mindset. It seems to me that the world that we live in is full of people that tend to embody one mindset over another. In fact, psychologist Carol Dweck talks about this in her book Mindset. She talks about the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. And the fixed mindset is sort of this idea that things are

the way they are and I am the way that I am and nothing's really going to change. You know, I'm in the situation that I'm in because I deserve it, because of karma, because this is my, you know, lot in life. And then the other mindset is we can change things and we can't necessarily change the circumstances around us, but we can change who we are in the less than ideal moments when life throws something, you know, hard at us or difficult. We can't always change that circumstance or the environment, but we can change. I believe this. We can decide who we are and who we become in those moments. Effectively, you know, which wolf you're going to feed. And for me, the way that tends to break down is when stuff that happens that's not according to the plan, who am I going to be?

Because at any given time, I can be the victim or, you know, not to, you know, sort of hype it up too much, or I can be the victor. I can be the person who tries to make the most of my circumstance and do something with it. And one of the ideas I kept running into when I was doing research for this book, just kind of interviewing hundreds of people who had found their calling and were doing the work that they were meant to do. had found their calling and were doing the work that they were meant to do. What I found was that these were not people who had perfect circumstances or great educations or any of that, but they all had this growth mindset. And so I write this in the book and I believe this with all my heart, that what makes a life extraordinary, whatever that might mean to you, successful, fulfilled, whatever it might mean,

but what makes that life extraordinary are not the chances that you get, but really what you do with them. And I think the secret to living that extraordinary life is to embody that growth mindset where you make the most of the opportunities that you're given, whatever they may look like. Yeah, I love that mindset. We had Carol on a few months ago, and she was really great. And that very simple flip of the mind is so powerful in the way we approach so many things. So your new book is called The Art of Work, and it's a proven path to discovering what you were meant to do. This is not a what color is your parachute type book, right, where you're asking a bunch of questions and you take a test and suddenly you find out you should be an accountant. So talk, you know, give me a brief overview of what the process of finding your calling looks like to you. Now, I know there's an entire book on it, but give me just sort of a high level how it's different than the way most of us think about it. Yeah. So the argument of the book

is that when you find your calling, when you discover your purpose in life, which I believe is a very subjective thing, it's not, uh, it's not an objective truth. Like here's what a successful life looks like because what success looks like for you may look very different, uh, to me. But I kind of begin with this premise that's, premise that 87% of the world's workers, this is based on a Gallup poll a few years ago, 87% of the world's workers are disengaged with their work. They're not happy with how they're spending most of their waking hours.

And that seems to me to be a problem. And so the book is full of these stories, some famous people, some people whose names you've never heard of before, all kind of a variety of different stories. Mother Teresa, Walt Disney, all these different people who all leave a mark on the world. They all do something significant and find great satisfaction in the work that they do. One of the common things that they all have with one another is that the way that they get to their life's work surprises them. It's not a perfectly planned out process and they get to that point and they go, oh, yep, this is – everything worked out the way that I thought it would. In many cases, as I was mentioning before, finding your life's work is the result of some wrench being thrown into your plan, something not going

according to plan, sometimes very tragic, sometimes just disappointing. But we all end up at some point in life, I believe, where we wake up and realize the life that we wanted for ourselves is not the life that we ended up living. And this is a book that asks the question, well, what do you do now? I don't think that you just ignore your circumstances. I think hidden in the obstacles, hidden in all of the pain and the sacrifice and the challenges that we all face is an opportunity to do something extraordinary with your life. And the art of work is – there's a reason that the subtitle isn't a proven plan. It's a reason that the subtitle isn't a proven plan. It's a path. And that path, I mean, don't think of it as some straight shot, nicely paved road to your life's purpose. It's not a straight path.

It is a, you know, rocky and windy path. I think of it like you're hiking out in the woods with your friends or family. You don't know what's going to, you know, come around that bend. You know, you can't, you can only see so far your job when you're on the path is just to take the next step and to hopefully travel it with, uh, you know, a few friends and fellow sojourners, uh, because that is, you know, that's the journey of life. Discovering your life's work is going to take your whole life. It is going to be full of surprises, but what makes the journey worthwhile is really what you do with all of those surprises and setbacks and who you bring along with you. I think there's an idea that is perpetuated in our

culture that you just, you should just know what you're going to do. Like certain people, they just know what they're meant to be and they go be that. And that's the way people who are, you know, extraordinarily successful or have a calling work as if they've known from the very beginning. And your book is very much about that's no, a lot of people don't know and that's fine. And as you, as you start walking down the path of life, you know, certain doors open, certain things happen, and being responsive to those and understanding who you are and reacting to those circumstances in a positive way allows you to find a path, a path, because it's not necessarily just one path. It could be multiple paths to the goal of where we're going. But I really like that what you're saying is if we pay attention to that and to our life, who we are and what life presents us, it helps us find our way. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I mean, and when

you think about walking on a path, um, you don't really know where it's going to end up. I mean, maybe if you have a map or something, you have an idea, but every, every path, every trail I've, I've ever followed has always taken me to places that I never expected. But when I end up where inevitably I'm supposed to end up, I realized, man, all of this journey was a necessary part of getting to this place, but it didn't happen the way I would have planned or even thought it should happen. One of the things in the book that I like a lot, and we talk about this a lot on the show, we say that we don't succeed in spite of our difficulties, but because of them. And in the book, you say that difficulties don't disqualify you from a

significant life. They are prerequisites. Yeah. Yeah. I think it really comes down to building resilience and realizing that all of the things that happen in your life can prepare you for what's to come. I love the idea that all the hardships, all the difficulties, all the failure can be a means of practice. These aren't things that need to shame us or disqualify us from living out our purpose. In many ways, they're forms of feedback. They're friends in disguise that help us understand what we're good at, what we're not good at, what we could get better at, what we actually enjoy doing and what, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing. And again, that was sort of surprising for me that all of these people that I interviewed and all these biographies

that I read, they were all full of failure, not just a little bit of failure, but seasons of failure, years of failure. And, you know, as, as, as you said, Eric, we have this weird relationship with failure where we think failure prevents us from success. What I think, and certainly what I learned is that failure leads to success. If you can learn from it, if you can pivot along the way, you can make different choices, learn from your failures, and then ultimately persevere. Yeah, I agree 100%.

You say that we were just talking about the path, that this is a path, not a plan, and you say that struggle is part of that path. Yeah, hardship, struggle, these things create character. We don't like them when they're happening to us, kind of like the annoying friend who always tells you the truth about yourself that you don't want to hear, but afterwards you go, oh yeah, yeah, that's true. I should listen to him. Yeah, in the same way, I think hardship, failure, obstacles, these things ultimately make us

better if we have that growth mindset. Yep. In the book, you talk about mentorship a little bit or the idea of mentorship. You end up calling it something else, accidental apprenticeship. But what I thought was really interesting about that was you said that you were talking about how it's often not one person that is our mentor. And I think maybe you and I have had a similar experience. I spent a number of years looking for the one person who was everything I wanted to be and could mentor me to be that in all aspects of my life. And I became very disillusioned by that for obvious reasons. It's very obvious to me now that you can have different people who are better in various aspects of their life mentor you in those areas. What do you mean by an accidental apprenticeship? One of the things that has always fascinated me is this idea of apprenticeship.

When I worked for a nonprofit for seven years, I was constantly doing things that I didn't want to do. Why? Because I didn't have any experience. I didn't have any expertise. So when my boss who believed in me and hired me when nobody else would as a college graduate with a Spanish degree, a year of touring with a band around the country under my belt, all of these kind of irrelevant experiences that did not look very impressive on a resume. But when my boss to be saw something in me and hired me and then constantly threw

stuff at me, I would say yes. I would go, okay, I'll do that. I don't know anything about marketing, but I'll try that. I don't know anything about, you know, spreadsheets, but I'll try that. All along the way, I was learning things, doing things that I didn't want to do, accumulating experiences that ultimately ended up being incredibly useful later in my life. And so when I was writing The Art of Work, I wanted to explore this idea, this ancient idea of apprenticeship, because I think that one of the things that's lacking in our culture now

is the concept of mastery, that you would spend a long time doing the same thing, doing things that you don't want to do over and over and over again, usually in the context of serving somebody else's dream. An apprentice in the medieval times, in the Middle Ages, they would work in the studio of a master craftsperson, a teacher. And they would basically work for room and board. And typically the length to the length of that stay would be about seven years. And then they'd spend another two to three years as a journeyman kind of going out and practicing on their own. And then ultimately, if they were good enough, they would become a master. When I was in my twenties, trying to find, you know, some person to mentor me,

to teach me, I could not find that one master. I couldn't find that one teacher. My boss was one of those people, but there were times when that was a frustrating relationship, of course. I had friends and next door neighbors and a lot of, especially men in my life who would influence me at just the right time, helped me learn something that was kind of the next step in my journey, but then they would leave. They'd move or I'd move and life would go on. And so when I started interviewing people and telling their stories, I found that that was the norm. You know, I kind of felt left out. I was like, I don't have some mentor that I get together with for coffee, you know, once a week and we talk about my life and we're going to be,

you know, friends for 50 years. That's not the way most relationships work. I wish it did, but our culture isn't, you know, set up that way. You can put somebody on a pedestal, but, you know, that's kind of unfair. It's unfair to you and it's unfair to them because ultimately that person isn't going to fulfill every need that you have. They're going to disappoint you if you, you know, follow in the footsteps of one single mentor. So when I started studying apprenticeship, which was something that always fascinated me, you know, I mean, this was the way for hundreds of years, especially during the middle ages and in Europe, at least, and still some in, you know, the developing world, there's still places that, you know, the developing world, there's still places that,

you know, practices, but for the most part, it's a dead art. But for hundreds of years, this was the way that you basically trained for a job. If you were good enough and connected with the right people, you would go work as an apprentice, as a student under a master craftsperson, as an apprentice, as a student under a master craftsperson, under an artisan or an artist, somebody who is a specialist in their trade. And that apprenticeship lasted seven years. And then typically you'd spend two to three years as a journeyman, which meant you had to go out and prove yourself. You had to go show that you spent your seven years well, and you proved yourself to the world ultimately by submitting a masterpiece to a guild.

And if they accepted it and they said you were good enough and your work was skilled enough, you would become a master and you could take on apprentices. And so I've always found that interesting. And I think that one of the things missing in our culture today is this concept of mastery, of spending years and years, really a decade, becoming great at what you do. Now you go to college, if you can afford it, and you study a bunch of different things for four years that are usually pretty irrelevant to your trade. Then you hopefully get a couple of internships where you snag donuts for somebody in an office somewhere for a couple of summers before you graduate.

And then you're thrown out into this world with basically a sense of entitlement that now it's time for you to start practicing your craft. And I think that's a problem. And so during my 20s, I was always looking for somebody to guide me, to help me find my way. for somebody to guide me, to help me find my way. What was interesting when I started doing research for the art of work, I started interviewing people and just looking at their lives and looking at my own life, I realized that really apprenticeship, even in the middle ages often, is not the result of one teacher picking a special person and teaching them what to do. It happens in community, even in, you know, kind of the, the old ages of, you know, uh, training as an artist or as an artisan,

a lot of times there'd be multiple apprentices in a studio, uh, with, you know, that master crafts person. And, um, they were learning together. Uh, of course we don't have any sort of formal way of doing that now. And this idea that you're going to go find one mentor and have coffee with them every week for the next 50 years is unlikely, if not, you know, completely improbable. But what is likely is that there are people around you right now that you can learn from if you're willing to be intentional about connecting with those people, finding ways to help them and learn from them and get in front of them. It's a very informal process. And I call it an accidental apprenticeship because a lot of times these people show up in your life and you don't even recognize them until they're gone. And the challenge is to not just sort of glide through life unintentionally, but to

begin to recognize the accidental apprenticeships in your life that have already happened where you connect the dots and you go, oh yeah, this thing led to this thing led to this thing. And that's what prepared me for what I'm doing now. And then ask yourself the question, who's in my life right now that I could be taking advantage of their knowledge, their experience that right now I'm not. And I think the people who truly master their craft to become great at what they do, know how to do this, they know how to find the right people to connect with, learn from them and ultimately get that advantage that's, you know, really helps their work stand out from everyone else's. so Okay, and back to the interview with Jeff Goins.

What I'd like to do now is have you read a section from your book. On the show, we talk a lot about thinking about things, knowing about things is not the same as doing them, that taking small steps is really important, getting started is important, and I really love the way you say this section in your book. Could you go ahead and... 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 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 iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Read that part for me. Sure. Nobody gets changed by an ideal.

Nothing gets shaken by a dream. And the world remains the same, regardless of how great your idea is. It's only when people take action that true transformation happens. Now don't get me wrong, dreams are powerful,. It feels like work, but is in fact destructive to the real work of realizing your dream. So what do you do? Stop talking and start doing. Don't dream of being a writer. Begin writing. Don't dream of being an activist. Go start something. Don't dream of being an entrepreneur. Launch something. I love that. Just getting started. And there's another part in your book where you describe

sort of what you just read there, that you and a group of friends would get together and you would talk about the things you were going to do. And you would, you would make these little plans. And one day somebody in the group suggested, what if we changed every time we said, what if to let's. So instead of, what if we actually posted something on the blog today to let's post something on the blog today. And you talk about what a fundamental shift that was for you. Yeah, that was actually my friend, Jonathan, who ended up starting a publishing company. And I was getting ready to go do a talk in front of a group of young entrepreneurial people who wanted to start these dreams. And I called him right before I was going to do this talk. And

I was like, dude, you've done this. I just talk about doing this. You know, especially at the time, I didn't have much experience with entrepreneurship. And I said, what have you learned? And he told me that story. He said, we used to sit around the table at night after our kids went to bed and we would dream about what if this happened, what if that happened? And nothing, whatever happened, we would just dream and dream and dream for months and years. And then one day someone said, what if we stopped saying what if and started saying, let's again, I think that goes back to mindset. Are you a victim? Are you the kind of person that life happens to you? Or are you the kind of person who, you know, I don't believe any of this, you know, silliness about you're completely in control of your destiny and you can, you know, create, you can manifest

your reality. I just, you know, sometimes tough stuff happens, right? But I do believe that you can let things happen to you and say, well, that's, that's the end of that. Or you can say, yeah, this, this thing happened to me and now I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to take these obstacles and turn them into opportunities. I'm going to take what life has thrown at me and try to make something beautiful and extraordinary with it. Yeah, I really, I love that. And one of the things that you then go on to talk about is that we often have to act even when we don't quite know where we're going or we're unprepared. You say that we think that passion comes first, that our desire is primary. But if we are truly called, the work always comes before we are ready. We will have to act in spite of feeling unprepared.

Yeah. I mean, if you think about a great story, I think it's Star Wars or Wizard of Oz or these epic stories that many of us grew up with. I think we all, when we watch those movies, there's something that happens at a psychological, maybe even spiritual level. There's something that connects with your heart that makes you feel like my life is like this too. It's perhaps a little bit egotistical, but I also think it's innate. It's the way we're made. We are built to believe that, um, when we watch a great story or read a great story, that life is like this, that we're learning some truth that we can hopefully apply to the story of our lives.

So when you look at those stories, uh, the adventure always comes to the hero or the heroine before they're ready. So, uh, you know, the Empire comes and basically kills Luke's family. And as a result of that, he has to go become a Jedi. He doesn't want to do that. The tornado whisks Dorothy away before she's going to follow the yellow brick road.

There are these things that happen that nobody wants to happen. And yet, ultimately, they lead to greater good. They lead to something powerful happening. If we're going to believe that we're living some sort of extraordinary story, and I hope we can believe that. I think in our hearts we want to believe that. Sometimes shame and failure and even sadly our parents can kind of beat that out of us figuratively and sometimes literally. And we have to sort of rescue the story of our life and believe that act in spite of not feeling ready, even when we feel

afraid, we are beginning to live this incredible story. And that's just not the way we live, though. I mean, we tend to treat our lives as plans, not stories. And we try to script everything out. And when something goes wrong, you know, we kind of throw up our, you know, our arms up in the air and try to get everything back into control. That's just not the way stories work. And I certainly don't think it's the way life works. Yeah. You, you talk about the fact that we have to, you've got a line here that I really like, which is that decisions reveal opportunity. Yeah. One of the things that I keep talking about in the book is because it's sort of the mantra of all these different stories is clarity comes with action. If you're reading a book that talks about discovering what you're meant to do, you want that, you know, take this quiz and it'll tell you what to do.

But I think that many of us, we're skeptical about that. I certainly am. And even if you tell me, Jeff, you're supposed to go be a plumber. I go, yeah, but and what about this and what if this? That, Jeff, you're supposed to go be a plumber. I go, yeah, but, and what about this? And what if this, that's not, that's not what we're wired to do. We're not wired to be told what to do. We're wired to discover things about ourselves as we take action. You know, discovery is sort of the result of dedication. It's taking a step, learning as you go. Imagine that you're on that path and you've got this lantern and you can only see so far

ahead of you before you have to take another step. I mean, you are stepping into the darkness, but with each step, the lantern reveals just the next decision that you need to make. I think there's this idea that finding your purpose is like you go up on a mountaintop and you consult maybe with a guru or a light beam comes down from heaven and tells you what you're supposed to do with your life and then you go do it. Well, you know, the argument of the art of work, which came out of all these stories that I studied and all these people that I interviewed and I look back at my own life and I realized, yeah, this is true for me too. I never knew exactly what to do, but I took the next step

and when I took that step, it either failed and I learned something from that or there was some confirmation. I realized, OK, this is the right direction and I'll take another step and another step and another step. As as somebody once asked Mother Teresa, hey, could you pray for clarity for me? She said, no, I'm not going to do that because I've never had clarity. I've only ever had trust. I think it's our job

when we're on our life's path, you know, we're on the path towards our life's work. It's not to wait for clarity to come. It's to act in spite of things being unclear, understanding that clarity comes with action and to trust the process as we go. And the way that we do that is by looking at other people, realizing that we're not traveling this journey alone, learning from mentors, learning from the stories of other people, which I capture in the book. We've got people from age 18 to 80. When you realize this isn't just a solitary journey and you can learn from other people's experiences, all of a sudden you don't feel quite so alone. And there's wisdom that comes from understanding how this works. But that wisdom doesn't mean that you're automatically going to feel super courageous.

You're still going to have to take that next step, and that's always scary, but that's part of the fun too. Yeah, I really love what you say there about clarity brings action. On the show, we often say that you can't think your way into right action. Sometimes you've got to act your way into right thinking. And it's a similar idea that the further we move down the path, the clearer the view gets. One of the things that you talk about is a lot of people, when we're discussing moving on to a different career or finding our calling, we talk a lot about making the leap. And you say that that can be a mistake. We should be, instead of saving all our energy for the leap, we should be building a bridge. What do you mean by that? I got to interview this family who moved their family to Burundi. It's a husband and wife,

Ben and Christy Carlson. And they moved to Burundi, which if you're not familiar with that country, it's the second poorest country in the world. It's in Africa. And they moved there to start a coffee company. And when I asked them, how did you get from this point to that point, from working for a nonprofit, this American family, to moving to the second poorest country in the world,

working with these farmers every day to try to increase their wages, get them fair compensation, and also get some great coffee into the world. And Christy told me, she goes, well, it was a leap. and also, you know, get some great coffee into the world. And Christie told me, she goes, well, it was a leap. And I said, well, I asked her, I said, what do you mean by that? How long did this leap take? And she said, well, it took about 10 years. And I thought that is a very slow motion leap. Um, I think that, that this idea of, of leaping into your dream is a myth. Um, It doesn't usually happen that way. It is a slow and steady process of slowly closing that gap between where you are and where you banker to becoming a park ranger as Jody Mayberry, another guy in the book whose story I tell. We look at these sometimes, you know, big transitions,

somebody going from working a desk job or, you know, sitting in a cubicle to living some adventure. And it always looks like that Jerry Maguire moment where you like throw the gauntlet down and say, who's with me? And even in that movie, what often is, is, is the result after that big, uh, moment is a lot of hard work to try to make it work. I think that the best transitions tend to be not giant leaps, but, uh, bridges that are built through a daily intentional practice that helps you get to where you want to go. And so what that looked like for me was publishing my words on a blog every single day for a year. And when I started doing that, things began to happen that I had dreamed of happening for basically seven years that never ended up happening. And what was I doing during those seven years? Well, I was sitting on the couch thinking about writing. I'd write once in a while, once a week maybe. When I started getting

disciplined about the work and sharing my work with people, these breaks that I... 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 signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I always longed for that. I thought we're the result of luck or something.

They started happening. or that I thought were the result of luck or something, they started happening. Within eight months of blogging, I had a book publisher contact me. Within really about 18 months, I had made enough money to replace my wife's income. She could stay home and raise our son. And by the end of that second year, I was quitting my job to start this business and become a full-time writer. And I look back and I go, yeah, there was seven years of failure and dreaming and wishing things would be a certain way. But things really started to change during those two years of practice. And I think that's what building a bridge looks like. It means getting up and using whatever time you have, whatever free time you have available, practicing in the margins of life to begin closing that gap.

life to begin closing that gap. And as my wife reminded me that the day my first book was published, she gave me this card that said, it was never a question of if, but a matter of when, when you do the work, when you discipline yourself to do a little bit of work, uh, every day, day in and day out, as often as you can, you create momentum that over time leads to, uh, all kinds of breakthrough and is very hard to stop. But that doesn't make for a great movie. So that's why we like to talk about the leap instead of building a bridge. Right. Yep. I agree. And my experience has been very much the same, which is that if you start, and I like what you say on the margins of life, you know, I love the phrase, start where you are, which is if all you can write is 15 minutes a day, start with that 15 minutes, but do it. And then things really start to happen.

And whether those things are always external or they're internal is not always known. known. But sometimes I think that the simple feeling of well-being that we get from doing the thing that we always say we want to do and actually doing it, that internal congruence is almost worth everything that happens in the external world because we stop feeling so bad about ourselves. I heard a great story that was told by Steven Pressfield. And I think he heard it from someone else. I think it was in one of his books. Um, he said, there's an old story about a new actor moving to Hollywood and running into Walter Matthau, um, at a party. And Walter says, Hey kid, how's, how's it going? He goes, ah, it's going okay. I'm just waiting for that big break. And Walter laughs and says, kid, it's not the big break. It's not the one

lucky break that you get. It's the 50 breaks. And there's this idea that like, well, I met this one person and everything happened. But man, when you get down to the nitty gritty details of a story of success, it's always this thing led to this thing, led to this thing, led to this thing. story of success. It's always this thing led to this thing led to this thing led to this thing. And the momentum behind that, I mean, the action behind all of that momentum is somebody taking small daily steps over time that again, lead to something so much bigger. Once all those things, you know, kind of run into each other. It's, it's like knocking down dominoes and yeah, you have to start where you are and you have to not despise small beginnings and you have to stop waiting for some perfect opportunity and begin with wherever you are using what you have.

Yep. I, I agree with all of that and I think that's just such great stuff. You say that every great endeavor begins with a smaller, less significant one. Yeah. I mean, there's this idea that's, um, uh, you know, if I just had all of the perfect equipment and all of the, the perfect, you know, opportunities and lived in the right city, then, then I would be ready. Uh, but the reality is most of us are looking at our lives, um, feeling gypped, you know, feeling like we missed out. We didn't get the, weren't born in the right decade.

We didn't get the right education. If we only had a little bit more money or if our, you know, feeling like we missed out. We didn't get the, we weren't born in the right decade. We didn't get the right education. If we only had a little bit more money or if our, you know, our company got this venture capitalist to back us, then we'd be okay. And that may be true, but that is not your say. You don't have any control over what could have been. We all have to take what we have and, uh, you have and do something significant with us. And if you spend your life wondering what could have been or what if I had this or that, you're going to waste your life. Yeah, we've had that come up with several guests. One of our guests was as a musician.

And from the get-go, this band worked so hard. And I said, what was it that drove you guys to work so hard? And he said, well, we realized we weren't the greatest singers. We realized we weren't the best-looking guys out there. We realized that we didn't know all the people. He's like, the only thing that we had any control over was how hard we worked. And that's just such a poignant way to think about. And it really takes that spend your effort on what you can control and actually makes it something meaningful.

I remember when I got started as a writer, I looked at people who they just got lucky, it seemed. They met the right person at the right time. And every time I hear some successful person do an interview and say, I just got lucky, it just makes me mad because there's nothing practical about that. Great. So I, I have to have a fairy godmother is what you're telling me. Like, and if I don't, I'm screwed. And I would look at people who, um, uh, got lucky. And, uh, and then I looked at people who were just really good. You know, it looked like they were more talented than everybody else. And sometimes they were lazy with their talent. And maybe none of those things are true. Maybe all of them are true. I didn't know. I just, I just, that's how I felt. And one day I just decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. I said, you know, you can't control how lucky someone else gets. You can't control how good somebody

else is, even if they're lazy. What you can control is you can keep working. You can persevere. You can work harder than everybody else. And so I would start telling myself, you can outwork the lazy and you can outlast the lucky. And that was a mantra that drove me and continues to drive me today. Well, I think that is an excellent point to wrap the show up. So Jeff, thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show. We will have links to your website, your Twitter, all that stuff on our show notes at one you feed.net. And I really appreciate you being on. Oh, totally my pleasure. Thanks for everything that you're doing, Eric. I love the show and I love all the guests that you've had on. I'm a big fan and glad to be a part of it.

Excellent. Take care. Thank you. You can learn more about Jeff Goins and this podcast at oneufi.net slash Goins. That's G-O-I-N-S.