The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Sahil Bloom On How To Show Up As Your Best Self & Get What You Want Most Out Of Life
Episode Date: January 15, 2024#647: Sahil Bloom is an inspirational writer and content creator, captivating millions of people every week through his social insights and bi-weekly newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle. He shares a c...ommitment to arm his followers with the tools, ideas, and frameworks that are battle-tested to help others live a high-performing, healthy, and wealthy life. Today, we sit down with Sahil to discuss all things high performers need in their lives to show up every day as their best selves. We cover everything from finding your identity and escaping the victim mindset to taking action in your relationships and health to remain happy and successful. To connect with Sahil Bloom click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To subscribe to our YouTube Page click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential. This episode is brought to you by Tecovas Tecovas are handmade from the most premium leathers. Visit tecovas.com and point your toes west. This episode is brought to you by Heineken  100% taste. 0% alcohol. Click HERE to purchase. Must be 21+ to buy. This episode is brought to you by Hinge Hinge is the dating app designed to be deleted. Download Hinge today & find someone worth deleting the app for. This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat-only therapy sessions. So you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy & you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/skinny. This episode is brought to you by Kroma Use code SKINNY at kromawellness.com to get 15% off + free shipping on a 5 day reset This episode is brought to you by Nerdwallet NerdWallet lets you compare top travel credit cards side-by-side to maximize your spending, some even offering 10X points on your spending. Visit nerdwallet.com to learn more. Produced by Dear Media
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The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.
Fantastic.
And he's a serial entrepreneur.
A very smart cookie.
And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride.
Get ready for some major realness.
Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.
Aha!
Treat your body like a house that you're going to have to live in for the next 70 years of your life.
That means make sure your foundation is in really good working order at all times.
Make sure your roof is in good working order.
It means making the minor repairs to things along the way before they become big, big issues. It means making the daily, weekly, and monthly investments in your house that are going to make sure that things are
really, really strong and that your house is there for you for the next 70 years of your life.
So for me, it all comes down to that.
Hello, everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome back to the Him and Her Show. Today,
we have an incredible episode for you, per with our friend, Sawhill Bloom.
We got turned on to Sawhill earlier last year and just fell in love with his stuff.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with Sawhill, but for those that aren't, Sawhill is an inspirational
writer and content creator, captivating millions of people every week through his social insights
and bi-weekly newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle.
He shares a commitment to arm his followers with the tools, ideas, and frameworks that
are battle-tested to help others live a high-performing, healthy, and
wealthy life. Today, we sit down with Sahil to discuss all things high performers need in their
lives to show up every day as their best selves. We cover everything from finding your identity
and escaping the victim mindset, to taking action in your relationships and health to remain happy
and successful. For the parents out there, we talk about how important it is to spend time with your children, what it's like balancing work
and family, finding your identity and what you really want out of life, how to ask better
questions, which are going to set your life up for more success and how to water your current
relationships, both friendships, intimate relationships, any relationships you may have
and replacing bad habits with good ones. This episode is for
anyone that wants to perform better, feel better, just work better in the new year.
And it's a really inspirational podcast with Sahil. He was very easy to talk to and we got along.
So with that, Sahil, welcome to the Him and Her Show.
This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her.
We got introduced in a few different ways.
One, we're in this group together, these creators,
but the actual way that I got introduced to you
was a piece of content you put out.
And I'm not really like,
I'm not surfing the web all the time.
I try not to, I try to look here and there,
but it was a piece of content
around spending time with your children
when they're young
in the limited amount of time you have to do so. We have a almost four-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old, and that one
hit me in the stomach. I mean, one, you did it. The content was great, but just the message.
And I don't even know if Lauren has seen it, but maybe we could start there just talking about time
and children and how you even came to that thought. So I have an 18-month-old. So I'm a
little earlier on. That's my first son. And I write and think a lot about these things. And since he was born, more so than ever before. Just like how short life is, how you don't have a ton of time left with your parents, how the window of time you have with your kids is so short. And that one idea for me is there is a 10-year window when you are your child's most important
person in the entire world.
Or it's going to start crying.
And after that 10 years, they have other most important people.
They have best friends.
They have girlfriends, boyfriends.
They have partners, spouses.
And you will never get that 10-year period back.
And yet it also happens to be the time when we
as adults are supposed to be hustling as hard as we possibly can to achieve all of these goals in
our life. When we're traveling the most, we're working the most, we're going crazy for whatever
our ambitions are. And it's such a shame because so many people miss those moments with their kids
that they are never going to get back. That like when you're 80 years old, you would give
anything to be back
in that moment when they're young and when you have them. And so my whole call to action is,
it's a time to think about that, to realize how precious that 10-year period is.
It doesn't mean giving up those ambitions, giving up all of your goals, your personal dreams,
but it does mean realizing that there's a trade-off, realizing there's a balance,
and something that you need to think about on a daily basis.
This is a thought that I think about every single day.
I don't think I've ever contextualized it on the podcast.
I don't know how to have a balance with this because I'll give you an example.
Today, my daughter's home from school.
She's sick, and she wants to play, but it's in the middle
of the workday. And I also have to go record two podcasts and I have, you know, 20,000 things to do,
but she wants to play. And so like, and normally she would have been at school. Yeah. What's the
answer to that? I mean, like, like it's, it's such a hard thing. You, you put, you put it all
aside and you focus on the child? I mean,
I guess you take it moment by moment, but it's really, really hard because it happens
every single day and you're trying to work every single day and the child wants your attention.
I can't give you the answer to it because I think it's a really challenging problem. I'll tell you
exactly how I wrestle with it personally, which I think can help a lot of people, which is there's
two sides to it. One side is it is the most
important thing in the world is spending time with your kids, being present, giving them your energy.
The other side is it's really important for your kids to learn the value of hard work and the
principles and values that you hold really close. And them seeing you work hard on things you really
care about is incredible. Like that is them. When you show up and do
these things, even when you're tired, when you get your workout in when you're tired,
those lessons are going to be held with them for the rest of their life. I learned those lessons
from watching my dad and seeing the way that he worked on things that he cared about.
So the balance is you want both of those. When you're with them, you really want to be with them.
But when you're not with them, they should be included in the why, as I say it, of why are you going and working hard on these things? Because what happens
is kids, if you're just not there and you don't explain to them why you're not there, what you're
doing, why you care about it, they fill it with the worst. They'll fill it in their minds with like,
oh, they just don't care about me. They don't want to be here. But if you explain to them what you're
working on, why you care about it, why you're traveling, why you're doing these
things, now they understand and they're along for the journey with you. They feel like they're a
part of it. They're part of the mission. Like mom and dad are working on this thing. This is why
they're doing it. And that's a beautiful thing because then as they get older, it's like you're
all along for the ride together. You're in this together. They're part of the mission. So for me, that is the real key is include your kids in the why of why you're working
hard.
And by the way, you guys are doing something that you're deeply inspired by, like your
work.
You're really excited about it.
You're skipping to work every day.
The vast majority of people do not have that.
For most people, a job is a job.
They're trying to earn money to provide for their family.
Their purpose is not their job. They earn money to provide for their family you're like their purpose is not their job they're trying to provide for their family you can include your kids in that why too you can explain to your kids that you're having to
go to work or work two jobs or whatever the thing is because your why is that you're providing for
the people that you love and that you're going to do that so after i watch that piece of content and
our kids a little bit older than yours
and you'll see as soon as they start talking
and asking questions,
it's a whole different dynamic.
And many of the parents that have older children
are nodding their head.
But what we do now for anyone that's listening
and maybe you can even think about this,
every time we go somewhere,
we always say like,
we're going to do this because of X, Y, and Z.
And what's most important,
we tell her that we always will come
back every single time when we're done. And when we get back, we say we were working so that we
can have a nice house and you can wear nice clothes and you can get that bluey toy that
magically shows up every time we get back from Amazon or whatever. And so I think now she's
starting to understand. She said to Lauren that she's like, oh, mom, you work so hard. But she's
like, it's a different context. I'm like, why are you leaving me? Yeah. Yeah. And they,
they get it right. Like they're slowly starting to build this pattern of understanding why mom
and dad are working hard or why their dad, whatever it is. I go and get my kids too young
to explain those things to him. Right. I get him a stuffed animal from everywhere that I travel.
So like I'm in Austin this week. I don't know what your guy's thing would be. I don't know,
like a snake or an armadillo or whatever. Like I'll go get him something. And so then like, as he gets a little bit older, he's going to have, get him a cicada. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what your guy's thing would be. I don't know, like a snake or an armadillo or whatever. I'll go get him something. And so then as he gets a little bit older, he's going to
have- Get him a cicada.
Yeah. Yeah. Get him a cicada. I don't know. That sounds kind of creepy. We don't like bugs in our
house. I hate bugs. This is one of my things. It's including him in the journey in this tiny way.
My dad used to travel a ton for work and he would always come back with some little trinket.
And the traditional wisdom is like, oh, we're going to have a bunch of shit in our house. I don't want all this shit lying around.
But that shit actually mattered to me, right? I knew that my dad was thinking about me when he
was on this trip, that he brought me something back from the place that then he could explain
to me like, oh, I was in Lisbon and here's what Lisbon history, whatever. You can be included in
the journey. It was your dad at an international spa. What the hell was that? Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. Okay.
So I know we just jumped into it.
Going back with you, what I find interesting about your story is if you were to look at
what you're doing now, it makes sense if you know your story, but I think also in some
ways has not been a clear line.
And I relate to this because I think I always tell people, if you look at what I do now,
running this company and sitting on this mic, there's no fucking way 10 years ago that I'm doing any of this. And
I would have looked at you strange if you asked me if I would be. When you were in college and
you were in basically almost professional athletics, would it be pro athlete? I guess
like pretty much. Not yet, but yeah, it was close.
Close, baseball. And you start thinking about graduating, what you're going to do next.
What I resonated with is like, it felt like you didn't really have a direction of which way you wanted to go.
And I feel like so many people struggle with that where Lauren was super lucky and she found
her passion early on. And I always felt so confused, like, what do I do? And people say,
chase your passion. I'm like, well, what the fuck is that? How did you start to figure out
what you actually wanted to do in life? It took me a hell of a long time.
All of this is about identity, right? Like people think they
want money, fame, success, wealth. What they really want is a clear sense of their identity.
You want to know where you fit into the world, what your purpose is, how other people should
look at you, how you should think about yourself. And the really challenging thing when you're
growing up is most people tie their identity to like one thing. So for me, it was sports. It was baseball. You might have a different thing, right? You might be the cheerleader in high school
and you think of yourself as the cheerleader. Well, eventually an identity gets taken away
from you at some point. And sports is really tough.
Sports is really tough. And the number of guys that deal with terrible depression post-athletics
or the number of people who were like, I identified as the popular kid in high school,
and now I'm no longer that. I have to enter the real world. When your identity gets ripped away and you don't have anything underlying it, it's really challenging. And you fill it with all of those things I mentioned. Like you go fill it with trying to make a bunch of money or you fill it with trying to have a lot of sex and meet a lot of different people. And none of that fills the void that is actually a search for identity and who you are. So my journey was long and winding because I
didn't know who I was. Post-baseball, it got taken away from me. I got hurt and I didn't know who I
was. And so I went and chased the money game. I went and got a job that was high paying,
working in finance. I was at a private equity fund, making more and more money every year.
And people are patting you on the back. You sound impressive. And I was miserable. I was like, if you saw me then, super overweight, terrible skin, drinking all the time, not present with
my wife or with my family, like friendships were atrophying. All of these other areas of my life
were being sacrificed for this chase for money that I thought was going to fill my identity cup.
And it only changed for me when I sort of hit rock bottom around that moment of
realization of how short life is. And I had, it was a single conversation with a close friend of
mine who asked me how life was going. And I said, you know, it's great. It's fine. I'm doing well.
I'm getting promoted, whatever. But I don't see my parents very often, really close with my mom
and dad. I was living in California. They were on the East Coast. And he said, well, how old's your dad? And I said,
65. He's like, how often do you see him? I said, once a year. And he looked me square in the face
and he said, okay, so you're going to see him 15 more times before he dies.
And I remember it was like getting hit with a sack of bricks. It's like math that you've never
thought about, but it's just true. It's like math that you've never wanted to do, but it's math that you
actually do need to do. That night, I went back home and I passed out, woke up the next morning,
and I told my wife I wanted to quit my job. I wanted to move back to the East Coast to be
closer to family. And that was the turning point of my entire life where I just sort of ripped the bandaid off. And in a 45-day period, went from feeling like I had this cup filled by trying to
make money to I have to go search and figure out who I actually am and what I'm actually energized
by. I would love for you to talk about that process because I don't want to go from what
you just told me to how successful you are now. I want to talk about the in-between.
When you first get to the East Coast, how do you start to sort of reinvent your identity?
It was kind of beginning with the end in mind.
I had the great fortune of having some incredible mentors in my life.
People that had a vested interest in seeing me when it meant nothing to them,
like it was never going to be any gain for them, which is an amazing thing to have in your life.
And what I went around and started trying to do was just figure out how to ask better questions
about what this all looked like. Everyone wants to search for answers, right? You're like,
oh, give me the answer. I want the one-click easy cheat code to six-pack abs or getting rich.
And that's the content that people go and try to sell. The reality is it's all really hard.
And it's all about asking better questions. Everything good in life comes from asking
better questions, not from trying to chase whatever answer. And so for me, the question
that really clicked was, what does my ideal life look like at age 80? And sit down and actually sketch that out. A mentor
encouraged me to do that, and I did it. And for me, what that looked like was sitting on a porch
with my wife by my side, kids hanging out with us, grandkids playing around in the yard, and a whole
bunch of friends coming over to have dinner with us. And what does that actually mean in terms of
who you are today? What do you need to do today
to have that be the future state of your life? Well, it actually has nothing to do really with
money, right? There's no yachts. I'm not on a private jet. I'm not doing all sorts of fancy
things like what I was on the previous path around. It all has to do with the people that
are actually around me, right, and the loving relationships that I'm creating. It means
if you want to have a loving wife by your side when you're 80, you better be a damn supportive and loving husband every single
day today. Same thing with friends. Same thing with being a supportive parent if you want your
kids to want to spend time with you. So I really started focusing on that and figuring out how can
I build a life that's actually grounded around being present and having more flexibility to
focus on those things that actually matter to me in the present. What are some things that you do on a day-to-day basis
that you think water your relationship with your wife? A lot. So, I mean, number one is we take a
daily walk together every single day without fail. I mean, when I'm home without fail, it's like,
you know, I kind of have like a list of daily non-negotiables and that is the most important one from a relationship standpoint. Because it's the
only time, like we have a young kid, the chaos of life, you guys know this, it's just craziness
constantly. And so having 30 minutes that's like protected time when you can talk to the person
about things is really, really important. And it's like a, it's a way for you to actually feel
gratitude around the present. It's very easy, especially for ambitious people, to lose sight of all gratitude. Everyone talks
about gratitude journals and doing this and doing that. And for the most part, it all sounds good,
and then you're not actually feeling any gratitude in the present. The only thing I've ever found
that works for gratitude is like zooming out from
where you are and thinking about how much your younger self would be blown away by where you
are today. That's the only thing I've ever found that works. You tell yourself you have a ton of
gratitude, but I think with ambitious people in particular, you never want to feel like I made it.
And so you're always looking for the next hill to climb. And that can be challenging because you sit there and instead of taking inventory of the
accomplishments you have, I just actually, it's funny, I was journaling yesterday and
I looked back, I was like, I wanted to see exactly what I keep these journals.
Were you journaling about me?
I did journal about you.
Was I in the line?
You were always in there.
I just drew a picture of your tits.
That's good, man.
Physical attraction needs to stay there. No, i went back i was like i want to
see what i was thinking seven years ago and i keep these journals and they're small they're
like just like bullet points but i just went back and i was like this is where i was seven years
ago and i did it as a gratitude exercise to see some of the way like i was like seven years ago
no children you know like not living here in worse shape business in a different place like
value i like you more now than I did seven years ago.
And so I did that because I was sitting there and I was getting anxious and I was like,
oh, trying to do the gratitude practice. I'm like, why is that not working? And it's because
you're just like to sit there like, I'm grateful because it's hard. I think you have to compare to
your maybe your future self. Yeah. And especially in relationships,
the way I always say it is falling in love is really easy, but growing in
love is really, really hard. And the falling is the thing we all focus on. That's like the sexy
Instagram moments on the beautiful vacations before you have kids and all the amazing stuff
that happens in your life. But the reality of life and the reality of relationships is that
the growing is what matters. That's like the crawling through the mud and coming out on the other side. And we know this scientifically, shared struggle
releases oxytocin in your brain, which creates feelings of love and connection, scientifically
proven. And that only comes from being willing to share the struggle with the person and to grow
through that struggle, to have a growth mindset around your relationship. And very few people ever think about that or focus on it. They're only focused on the falling. So as soon
as the falling goes away, as soon as you're not feeling that honeymoon phase, you're not feeling
the same level of lust or physical attraction for the person, all of a sudden you're lost and you're
like, oh, need the novelty of sex with some new person. And so like all my younger guy friends
that I have that are
constantly chasing that high, it's never going to work. Until you grow up to the point where you
realize that that is not real, there's no texture to that, you're never going to have a fulfilling
relationship. The difficulty for, and I could say this and you will relate to this, for a lot of
young men that become middle-aged men that don't realize that lesson earlier is that becomes a pretty dark life at some point. A really dark life. Yeah. You have,
because you're chasing that fulfillment, but all of a sudden you're like the 45 year old guy at
the music festival singing and you're like, Oh, it's not the best look. Yeah. And a lot of
successful guys, I mean, this is a knock on guys I'll probably get hated for. A lot of successful
guys were like super nerdy and not
attractive when they were younger and they have their big exit. They sell their company for X
million dollars and all of a sudden they're hot for the first time in their life. And they're
not used to that. Like they're not used to the fact that they're now attractive to the opposite
sex because of their power, their money, other things about, you know, their confidence because
now they've made it and they go crazy. You're And they go crazy. I think it's the reason that so many men that were with an amazing supportive
wife during their making it years get a divorce after they've made it and they have the exit.
All of a sudden, they are hot. They have attractive people coming towards them.
And they just lose their minds because for the first time in their life, they're attractive.
It's like getting dropped at the top of a mountain and you didn't acclimate on the way up and all of a sudden you pass out like what happens if only when they were
younger they would be hotter and richer than this would never this would never happen we're just
more comfortable with themselves i mean i can empathize i can empathize with that. I actually can get almost on board with the fact that it must be hard
that you weren't looked at by women as a man, and then you make money and you have a success,
and there's a line of women out the door. Of course. And I think to what we were talking
about earlier, the reverse of that is if maybe you were young and athletic and handsome and
successful and popular and all
of a sudden you get later in life you don't have those things same thing like i don't know if one
is better than the other right they're both tough and i think the biggest thing is just being aware
of those things and listening to more of these conversations because yeah i will say that in
my younger days if you would have met, you definitely would not have wanted to spend as much time with me. And what kind of got me out of that was getting, you know, thinking you make
it. And then all of a sudden realizing you did it and kind of crashing and burning a little bit and
having to reassess life when you decided to kind of go and change careers and kind of get, and get
out of finance and take hold of your life in a different way. What were some of the things you
started personally doing that you weren't doing before? One of them you said maybe you were drinking less
alcohol. What else did that look like? Yeah. I mean, it was a whole set of habit changes.
So yeah, I stopped drinking. I dramatically reduced how much I drink. I still drink now
and then, but it's only when I feel like it materially enhances my level of connection
with a person. And it's not just like on a Tuesday
night by myself sitting at home. That was a big one. I started religiously getting back into my
fitness habit that I had had most of my life because of baseball that I just didn't sleep
enough. I started sleeping more. I started doing my cold plunge in my sauna every single day.
Just mentally, that is a huge, huge part of me feeling sharp on a daily basis,
doing the cold plunge daily basis, doing the cold
plunge every morning, doing the sauna at night, and having that quiet, peace time to reflect.
All of those things, I mean, I'm a big believer that working out will change your life,
working out broadly defined, all of this stuff as part of taking care of your physical health,
because the ripple effects that that has into every other area of life are
very real. Whenever a young person comes to me and they're not happy with their standing in life,
the first thing I tell them is to wake up at five in the morning and go work out.
And if you can do that for two straight weeks, you will start to change your life because all
of a sudden, if you can do that, it's really hard. You start self-identifying as a winner
and you felt like a loser before. You weren't happy with where you were in life. You go do that for two weeks, and you're going to start thinking of
yourself as a winner. And when you start thinking of yourself as a winner, you start actually making
changes that confirm that. You all of a sudden start believing in yourself. So you go find
evidence that proves that belief to be correct. It's like pure confirmation bias at work. When I moved to Austin, I wanted to get myself a pair of black cowboy
boots. I had a whole vision. I wanted to wear my jeans and I wanted to stuff them in my black
knee-high cowboy boots. But I wanted a very specific one. I wanted a pair that was super
comfortable that I could wear during the day
or I could wear into the evening. And my stylist, who's a friend of mine, Emily,
introduced me to Ticova's. The one that I got are called the Abbey. They're so cute.
They're true to size. I got the color Midnight. And they're black. They're chic. They make your
leg look so flattered. and they go up right underneath
your knee. And I tuck my jeans into my cowboy boots, and I wear this look all the time. They're
so cute. Tocova is all about comfort, style, and service. They're very, very innovative,
and they're all handmade from the most premium leather. Tocova is Western to their core,
and they believe in Western for all. You can get custom fitted for a new pair of boots, too.
You can even get their custom leather stamping or branding.
Michael did this.
It's so cute.
And you can also go into the store, which is so fun.
They'll even shine your boots.
And while you're getting your boots shined, you can have a drink.
Even the hard stuff, okay?
How fun.
If you can't make it into store, TECOVA delivers the most premium quality and most comfortable Western goods right to your door. Visit Toccovas.com. That's T-E-C-O-V-A-S.com
and point your toes west. Visit Toccovas.com. That's T-E-C-O-V-A-S.com and point your toes west.
You know what I love, Michael? What do you love, Lauren? A crisp Heineken Zero Zero. It's an alcohol-free option
to the original Heineken that you love. If you're somebody that's looking to cut alcohol or cut back
on alcohol, but you still want to enjoy that fine Heineken beer taste, Heineken Zero Zero is the
choice for you. It's absolutely incredible. And like we said, it's made with 0% alcohol,
so you can enjoy that Heineken taste, but without the alcohol effect on your body.
It has 100% taste, like Michael said, but 0.0% alcohol.
I'm obsessed with stocking these in the fridge so I can have them whenever I want.
Like you could have them after a workout.
You could have them on a Friday night birthday party so you can wake up and do a run the
next morning.
You could even have them if you're giving up alcohol for dry January.
I think this is such an amazing option.
It's crisp. It's full. It's delicious. even have them if you're giving up alcohol for dry January. I think this is such an amazing option.
It's crisp. It's full. It's delicious. It tastes just like the world-famous Heineken quality.
You really can't go wrong. One of the hardest things about giving up alcohol is missing out on the beautiful taste that a Heineken provides. Nothing worse than cooking an amazing meal and
not being able to enjoy a Heineken. Well, now you can and you don't have to worry about the
effect of alcohol. I'm actually going to have a sip right now, Michael. Cheers.
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Las Vegas, and she told me that she met her husband on Hinge. Then my producer Carson also told me he
met his girlfriend on Hinge. And then the other day I heard another story about a couple meeting
on Hinge. Hinge is where it's at if you're single. Hinge is the dating app designed to be deleted. Why? Hinge
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What I've realized, and it seems like you sort of are on the same vibe, is that
when you have a bad habit, you can't just take it away.
You have to replace the bad habit with something else. So like I'll give an example.
When I lived in LA, I would have a glass of wine, sometimes just a glass at night.
And then when I moved to Austin, I've replaced that with a really great magnesium water.
I know that sounds weird,
but it's like that's how I nightcap my night,
and it's just a little switch,
and it could be anything.
I used to wake up.
I used to look at my phone probably like five years ago.
Now I wake up, and I meditate.
It's replacing what you're doing that's bad
with something else.
I think where people get in trouble
is when you just try to take the bad
habit away and there's nothing to replace it with good. You almost have to crowd it out.
Yeah, we're ritualistic creatures, right? Like humans throughout their entire history have loved
rituals. And that's exactly what you're getting at. It's like you create a new ritual that you
enjoy, hopefully, or something that gives you a little bit of a dopamine hit or some sort of
energy because it becomes much easier than to crowd out whatever the bad thing was
that was negatively impacting your life. And the reality is like these habits, no one day of doing
these things matters. It's like if you skip it, whatever, like you can convince yourself to the
end of time that it doesn't matter if you do that. But over a course of 10 years, those habits show up
on your face. I mean, I went to my 10-year college reunion a few weeks ago, and it blew me away
seeing all these people because we're all 32 years old, but some people looked 50 and some people
looked 30. And it's because the way they treated themselves over that 10-year period on a daily
basis shows up on your face
after 10 years. It just does. You can see whether someone treated their body well,
whether they were eating the right things, whether they were sleeping, whether they were
taking care of themselves. And that all plays out in how you operate in life. If you're not
taking care of yourself, how can you take care of your partner? How can you take care of your kids?
How can you take care of your job? It's like one tiny thing that impacts everything else in your entire life. This is where it becomes hard though
because you're trying to do 600 things at once and you have the kids who want to play. It becomes a
real balancing act. You have to get very creative with time. How are some ways that you get creative
with time? Figure out the minimum viable version of what you need to do. So give examples.
On a daily basis. So I used to think I needed to work out for an hour in order for it to be worth
it, quote unquote. And I learned in the first three months that my son was around that I could
actually get a great workout in 15 minutes if I had to. And my wife learned the same thing.
She used to come to the gym with me for an hour. And you can't do that at some point. You literally cannot do that. There's just not enough hours in the day. And so I would say with every habit or everything that you want to I'm going to go for a 30 minute walk with my wife. Sleeping six hours was my version. People will get mad at that,
but like six hours, I know I'll be okay. I can't do it for probably like two weeks in a row,
but for a few days, I'll be fine. Making sure that I actually eat whole unprocessed foods
on a daily basis is a big one for me. So just figuring out those really low
intensity versions of it that are low friction that you know you can just execute on even when
shit hits the fan is the best thing. You know what else I feel, and maybe you've experienced
this in your life, and Michael Easter just came on the show, who's the guy? And so he was just
talking about this study in his book where basically when humans are
trying to figure out how to solve a problem, we always think you have to add something
to solve it.
And in a lot of cases, it's taking things away.
And I think about this in my own life and with having children, I know there are things
that I can do as an entrepreneur that would, quote unquote, put more money in my pocket.
I could go do more speaking events.
I could go do coaching. I could go take, I could do do more speaking events. I could go do coaching. I could
go take, I could do more of these shows. I could work longer hours. Like all of these things would
quote unquote make me more successful as a businessman from a financial perspective.
But at the same time, I'm weighing against what we talked about earlier. It's like,
what sacrifices does that mean? I'm taking from my children or time from my wife or time for myself
or time out of the gym.
And I think we have a really difficult time saying no to things that we think other people
or that we think are important from a societal perspective. Let's just say that I could go and
make a few more million dollars a year by doing those things. A lot of people would be like,
well, you're crazy not to do that because they put such an emphasis on the financial success.
And my younger me would have done that too. Now I'm like, well, yes, I can have a few
more million dollars in the bank, but to your point, I will never get that amount of time back
with my daughter or my son. And so to me, as soon as I look at it that way, I'm like, now I'm
eliminating things. Yeah. The way I would say it is everyone wants you to focus on not leaving money on the table. But the way you're thinking about it, which is correct, is where am I leaving my peace of mind on the table? Where am I leaving my relationships on the table? Where am I leaving just focus on the money because it's like, it's the easiest scoreboard, right?
It's like, yeah, it's easy.
People will pat you on the back for it.
It's a clear number.
You know exactly what it is.
And so people chase that,
but they're leaving all these other things
on the table along the way
that in the end are much more important.
No one cares about those extra million dollars
30, 40 years from now.
What's it going to matter?
100%.
And we moved from LA to
Austin. And I always have all my LA and New York friends saying, oh, Austin's slower. And you could
do this in New York or do this in LA. And I'm like, I'm very well aware. If you drop an individual
like myself in any of those cities, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to wake up, to your
point, at five. I'm going to work all day. I'm going to miss. I'm probably not going to go to
the gym. I'm just going to work all day, get sucked into the rhythm of the city and quote unquote, will be more successful financially.
But my children may not be as happy. My wife won't be as happy. I won't be as healthy. So I
know the sacrifice I'm making by being in a quote unquote slower place, but it's an intentional
decision because I realized that if I stay on some of those paths, I may be more successful
from a business standpoint, but I might be emptier from a personal standpoint. I would also guess that, and this is a paradox, but by slowing down, you actually allow
yourself to speed up. Can you go off on that? Yeah, I can go off on that all day because this
is what allowed me to... It's what you did. Today, I make five times as much money as I was making at
my lucrative finance job and I I work one-fifth as
much. And it sounds ridiculous to say, but it's just true. And it's because I slowed down and
then figured out how to speed up. It's like Lionel Messi, watch him playing soccer. He walks all
around the field and people go crazy. They're like, why is this guy walking all over the field?
Well, it's actually strategy. He's examining the entire field. He's creating this unbelievable map of
everything out there. And then when he sprints, it's 110% in the perfect, perfect way, perfect
angle to open up the field and score, pass, whatever. And that is how you need to pursue
things that you're doing in life. It needs to be like you're surveying the whole field. You're
figuring out where is my one unit of input going to generate 100x output.
Most people operate in this fixed one-to-one world. That's what I was doing. I was working
finance. I was working 100-hour weeks, and it was fixed one-to-one everything. If I wanted to make
more money, I was just going to have to work another 100-hour week versus now where when I
work on something, I might work for an hour, but I know that that hour is going to generate 100x
output and put us onto a completely
different plane with what we're doing. I'm obsessed with this conversation because
one of the things that I've realized since I moved out here is I have space and thinking time.
So I'm just thinking and thinking. And it's exactly like that soccer player. It gives me
the ability and the clarity to be outside of all the noise and all the cortisol and to just
be with my thoughts so I can be like, where am I most effective? And I spend half my day thinking.
I walk. I meditate. I sit with myself. I write. It's a lot of not working, but it is kind of
working in a different way. Yeah. I mean, when you think about how few
people actually just sit with their thoughts on a daily basis, not even meditating, just sit around
and think or walk and think. And then you go talk to the most successful business people in history.
Think about John D. Rockefeller, go way back. He used to walk around his garden doing absolutely
nothing every single day without fail. For hours, he would go walk back. He used to walk around his garden doing absolutely nothing every single
day without fail. For hours, he would go walk around. He was running the largest company in
the world at any point in time in history. And he wasn't listening to podcasts. There was no
podcast. He wasn't listening to an audio book on 2x speed or doing whatever. He was walking around
and thinking. And that allows you to then go and deploy your energy where you need to.
I mean, now today, Bill Gates is famous for doing this thing once a year called a
think week where he literally goes off the grid, like goes to this tiny shitty cabin.
He's, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars.
He goes to this tiny shitty cabin with a bunch of reading and a bunch of thinking that he's
planning to do on the biggest picture things that Microsoft needed to do to like create
the future they wanted to create.
We all need to do something similar to that. I can't take a week, probably. We have young kids.
You're probably not going to take a week and just disappear. But can you take a day
once a month? Or can you take a day once a quarter and do that? Probably.
I've found that people are uncomfortable to sit with their thoughts. But what I've found is if you can get through the uncomfortable part,
you start to crave it.
It starts to become an essential in the day.
It's like for me, if I don't have time to think,
especially in the morning, like watch out.
I need space.
And Michael's going to say like, you say it like I'm being soft,
but it's not that I'm being soft it's like I have
to like no I don't say that like sift
through my thoughts of how I want the day to go
and like it's an important time
for me to be reflective and it's
something that I crave now no I
say she's being soft because yesterday we woke up and our
dog threw up on our bed and I freaked out
like the dog threw up on the bed and then she like
went in a tailspin because she got woken up roughly
that does suck I do hate that yeah I hear you on that he woke me up and ripped me out of bed
well not physically but I was like yo there's throw up all over no she got mad because I said
there's throw up and then I just couldn't deal with it I left the room and left the dog well
that sounds reasonable he runs in he announces that there's throw up everywhere wakes me up out
of bed and then leaves the dog who's by
the way eating his throw up in the bed with me listen i had a moment of weakness the kids were
going nuts and i made a critical husband mistake which i'm sure you've made i do not wake your
wife up she was sleeping nope you don't do it i had a momentary reaction where i announced
don't do it mistake and then i realized that i was going to be stuck cleaning and then i
exited stage i like how you started this by way, by saying that she was soft about something.
And now you've walked it way, way back to like, I made the mistake.
So this is smart.
This is why your marriage is working.
Yeah, so it's really just, I've realized in everything in my life, it's all my fault.
But you know, it is sitting.
Do not wake up a sleeping wife.
Don't do it.
Especially with young kids.
I made eight mistakes in a row.
Yeah.
Literally, just let the wife sleep.
Okay.
But the point you made though on like getting comfortable pushing through the discomfort
of sitting with your thoughts is important because people, the reason people get really
uncomfortable with that is they don't want to think that they are wrong about anything
in their world, right? Like we have an incredible ability
to mindlessly just believe
that we are right about everything.
Like an ostrich puts its head into the sand
to avoid danger.
Like when there's danger around an ostrich,
like sticks its head into the sand
and it looks hilarious and sits there
so that it can avoid danger in a hilarious way.
Humans do that.
Like you at this point in time
are burying your head in the sand about
something in your life, I don't know what it is, that you are terribly wrong about, but you're
unwilling to confront being wrong about. Because we all want to be right. And we care more about
being right than finding the truth about most things. And that is easily the most dangerous
thing, dangerous path you can go down. Because if you want to be right in your relationship more than you want to get to the truth and
actually solve the problem, it's going to fail.
Same thing in business.
If you want to be right more than you want to get the right answer, then you're going
to fail.
None of it's going to work.
Unfortunately, I think we're seeing this also manifest in politics, not to take a full right
term, but I think that when you dig in real hard on something
and then whatever you're digging in on proves to be either counter or wrong or false,
it's really hard to step back and say, you know what, in that moment of time,
based on the information I had, I was wrong. I think that that is so cool. I think it's so cool
to take such a hard stance and then realize that you were wrong and actually
take time to say, you know what? I didn't have all the facts. I'm wrong. How often do people do
that? To your point, how many people do that? But how cool is that though? When I hear someone do
that, it's like, you know what? I thought this way and now maybe I've evolved. And you know what?
I have the ability to be able to change my mind and not have such a stance
yeah i think like again we're not perfect we make mistakes all the time we make mistakes on this show
but what i always tell the audience is that we're going to have all sorts of different perspectives
on this show all the time and once in a while if not all the time you're going to hear something
that either makes you uncomfortable or that you disagree with. As an individual, I personally need that because if I start to sit,
it would be very easy for me to pick a quote unquote side and just have all of those same
kind of people on the show all the time and just reinforce my personal belief system and make
myself feel good. But I feel it's really difficult to grow as an individual if you do that, right?
Because then you're just sitting there patting yourself on the back all the time saying, I'm right, good for me.
Yeah. I mean, it's an embarrassing way to live. You get one life. And I mean, we, like with
politics in particular, we labeled people who changed their mind in the face of new information
as flip-floppers. It was a negative term. And the reality is like, those are the people I actually
want in office. I want someone who can get new information and change their mind on a subject because
that's fundamental to human growth is like you should get new information.
It changes the way that you thought about it and then you change.
And we started, you know, we started saying that those were bad politicians if they were
that way.
We also just hate when someone doesn't have an opinion on something which is the worst thing
for society like i i get asked about things all the time that i just say like i am not educated
enough on the topic to have an opinion on it and people go ballistic people want you to have a
fucking opinion sometimes i just don't have an opinion on it i don't know enough i don't have
an opinion on most things actually like i don't know much about that many things in the world
so why do i need to have an opinion on it and why do you need me to tell you my opinion on it,
by the way? Why do you care what my opinion is? Because I think it's a control thing
where maybe people feel like because they're following you that you have to give them an
opinion because they're owed an opinion. But what I've realized
is my policy is I'm not giving an opinion on things that I don't, like you said, have enough
knowledge on to give an educated, eloquent opinion on. And I'm just not. And if that doesn't work for
someone, they should unfollow me. Or speaking of having an opinion, and I'm sure you've dealt with
this, when you have any kind of platform
that starts to gain any kind of reach or notoriety and anything that someone in the world feels is
important to them personally is going on and they hit you with messages like, you have a
responsibility because you have this platform to say something. And I was like, no, well,
because there's a platform that has a sizable reach, the real responsibility is actually taking a second to actually understand what you're talking about with the best data possible and accurate
information. And I think that's where so many, I guess, creators and people that are building
platforms online run into trouble, in my opinion. And I'm looking at this from a different
perspective. I'm not looking at it as a perspective of just me with the show, but as somebody who now has this company that represents many other mouthpieces in the industry,
it's like what I always try to tell people is like, you have to be very thoughtful with the
information you put out and make sure that what you put out is really what you want to stand
behind. Because if you just rattle off what everybody on the internet deems to be important
in the moment, it's really, you're really just a mouthpiece for someone else. Does that make sense?
Yeah. And we also live in a world where it's very unclear what the facts are.
If you're reading a bunch of news media articles as your basis for whatever your opinion is,
well, they might change their headline from one day to the next on what the thing was.
There might be one day, it's considered completely ludicrous to say that COVID came from a lab leak
in China. And a year later, the CDC says like, oh yeah, that actually is probably what happened
when you were a lunatic for saying that a year ago. And so data changes, evidence changes,
information changes on a daily basis. And if you are someone that says,
I'm actually going to wait and I'm going to learn more about this, I'm going to educate myself,
people yell at you when the reality is they should be supporting you for doing that and they should be understanding that that is actually the appropriate response to these things.
They also don't want you to say what your opinion is. They want you to echo their opinion. And the
second you give your opinion and it's not what they wanted you to say, they're going to tear you down just as much. Or if you
say it slightly wrong from what they wanted you to say. Human beings used to think there was a guy
with a beard in the sky throwing lightning bolts down at them. There's still some people that do
believe that probably. Yeah. And among other things, there's a person that lives under the
earth. And listen, people, I just think, in our going back to the topic of sitting with yourself and your thoughts, I think
people sometimes, and myself at times too, we feel uncomfortable when we're not quote unquote busy.
We don't have something going on. We feel like we're not accomplishing something if we're sitting
and we're not working on something or we're not and we're not working on something or we're not out doing something or socializing, whatever it is. And what I've found as I get
older in life is that some of the most productive things that I can do as a human, as a father,
as a husband is to sit and think for a long period of time so that when I actually go and do something,
it has real impact as opposed to just a bunch of busy shit.
Are you going to start meditating after the two podcasts we've had today?
We've had now two amazing men come on and talk about meditation.
I think that you've been manipulated.
No, no.
I know that I'm lacking on the meditation.
I don't meditate.
Okay.
Okay.
I've never been.
I would do what I call walking meditation.
Okay.
Go off about that.
Yeah.
I mean, I, so I've never been able to get myself to sit still and meditate. It stresses me out. It actually creates more stress
and anxiety in my life than the piece that it would create. And I've tried, like I've done 30
days. I've done five minutes a day. I've tried to do 10 minutes. I've done everything and I'm never
able to stick with it because I need to be moving. Like, I don't know if it's ADD, ADHD, something
that I have naturally. I just need to be moving. For me, it's meditative to go walk with no phone, nothing on me. I carry around this
little notebook with me everywhere I go so that I can jot down thoughts. I was going to ask you
about that. That's how I think about and perceive the world is just walking around. No headphones
in. I'm not listening to podcasts, no audio books. I call them tech-free walks. And that is meditation
for me. So I also think just like expanding your definition
of what meditation is in your life is an important thing.
It's the same reason that like people don't start journaling
because they think that journaling means
you need to sit down for 30 minutes
and write down all of your deepest, darkest thoughts.
Well, no, journaling can be like writing down one bullet
of what you were grateful for that day.
That's journaling.
So by expanding the definition of these things, I think you can actually find something that
works for you.
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I have been a reader and consumer of NerdWallet for many years. They have
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Over the years, I've also, as I've evolved in business, used NerdWallet as a resource to figure
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When I was a kid, and I'm not this, not woe is me, I had a great childhood, but I was in trouble all the time. And when I say trouble all the time, I was the kid,
when I got out of school, my mom got given a book about this thick, and it was just a bunch
of detentions. I had so many, every day all the kids would go home, I would have to stay in
detention. I had so many that there was not enough days in the week. So I had to stay for lunch detention. And they had so many of those
that I had to come to school on Saturdays for four hours and sit. So I spent from like sixth grade
all the way until like I got into high school, all that time just sitting and sitting and sitting.
And so I don't like to sit still for a long time. It's probably some trigger for some trauma that I
got to work through. Probably meditation would cure it. But to me, to your point, I have to be kind of like moving.
I like to think when I'm walking. I like to read. I like to write things down,
but I don't like to just like sit for so long. Walking meditation tip, go take towns in the
stroller and get outside. I think that's a great tip. That stuff I do. Like the other day I was
in the house and I'm going to go and I'll take a walk, but I don't just like, I'm not sitting
there and like going into Zen. By the way, what a horrible education
system we have in a world where a kid that clearly will learn better moving, being energized,
et cetera, is forced to like sit and try to learn. There was actually a study. I think the guy's name
was Dr. Chuck Hillman, who did a study where they had kids take a few tests on like math and reading comprehension
and writing both after sitting for 30 minutes or after like walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes.
And the kids all across the board performed better after moving around and moving their bodies.
And yet we have this education system where kids are forced to sit and then punished
for being fidgety by being forced to sit more. And the reality is
like, if you just had that kid get up and you allowed them to like walk around and learn or
like fidget with themselves and not be punished for that, they would learn and actually embrace
the learning way more than they're actually able to. 100%. Lauren, we've known each other since
we were 12 years old, like a long time. We were together that whole time. Yeah. But I met my wife
when I was 16. She was 14. Yeah. She was 14. was 14 he was 16 he was the older guy you can attest to this though i used
to show up to the class and the teacher would be so mad that he had preemptively set my seat outside
of the classroom so i would sit outside the door and look in and try to hear what he was saying
and then there was another teacher that put my desk against his personal desk. And I'm like, well, one, the rebel in me was just like, well, now this is what I'm
going to go even the other way. But two, to your point, I think about that now as an adult and I'm
like, from an educational standpoint, if I learned that, and my parents, it's not their fault, but
if I learned that that was taking place for a child of mine, I'd be like, well, this is the
wrong education system for them. I wouldn't knock the teachers. I would just be like, well, this isn't going to work. We're out.
Totally agree.
How did you get to be so thoughtful? I don't know. You just seem like you really think about things
and you're really good at articulating it. Is this something that you've sort of refined or
is it just something natural in you? It's probably a bit of both. I
spend a lot of time thinking. I'm like you. If you were to look at my workday, you would say that I
don't work a lot because I'm not sitting at my desk a whole lot. I have maybe two blocks of two
hours a day where I'm really at my desk doing something. And the rest is like walking around,
I'll play with my son, I'll work out. long runs are super meditative and a lot of good thinking time. I just spend a lot of time thinking about human struggle and like struggles that I am personally facing and how I'm wrestling with them. And I actually don't, I don't think of it as being in my own head a lot. Like I have friends who I think of, like I used to think of as head cases. They're always in their own head and they're getting in
their own way. I just really like wrestling with problems and thinking about what questions am I
asking? How can I better experience this? Because that's what I write about. My whole goal with all
of the content I create, any of the talks I go give, any of that stuff is to help people ask
slightly better questions.
I said it at the beginning. The best things in life don't come from having better answers.
It's from asking better questions. And I cannot give you the answers for your life to anyone
because everyone's life is different. Their whole map of reality is very different than mine,
but I know I can help them ask better questions. And if I wrestle with these things enough,
I know that I can pass that along. And that's really what I'm trying to get at with it. What are some questions
that people are asking themselves that you think could be better? And how can they ask those
questions differently? Or even some structures to questions. Yeah. I mean, I think a big one
with relationships that I've been preaching recently is, are you actually fulfilled or are you just
less lonely? And I have so many friends and so many people in my life who have stuck in a
relationship that I believe is much more driven by the fact that it reduced their loneliness
versus creating fulfillment
in their life. And this is an important question because reducing loneliness is just removing a
negative from your life. It's not creating a positive. In a real lasting relationship,
it has to create that positive. It actually has to fill your cup. It can't just reduce the bad
that was in there. That is one I think that is a huge unlock for people to just spend
more time sitting with it. To your point, sit with that question. If you're in a relationship
that you're not sure about, sit with that question and you'll have some revelation about what's there.
Yeah, because a lot of people are settling because it's what they're supposed to do and
society tells you what you're supposed to do. Personally, I would rather be dead single than
be with someone that I was
settling for. And maybe other people are different. Maybe other people are more into like the optics
of it. But like that's a really good question to ask yourself if you're in a relationship.
Are you lonely? What are some problems that you see across the board? Like what are some problems
you said you love to explore problems and struggles? What are some problems? You said you love to explore problems and struggles.
What are some things that you see that you're experiencing with, but you also see from your
audience? Movement versus progress is a huge one. It goes to a lot of the themes of what we were
talking about before, but people confuse movement with progress in every area of life. There's this
desire. We live in a society and in a culture that prides
you on movement and pats you on the back from movement. So like being busy, you go to a cocktail
party anywhere in the world and mostly in the US, it's really bad. And someone asks you how you're
doing. I guarantee like 95% of people are going to respond with some variation of I'm good,
comma, busy.
And everyone's supposed to be like, oh, yeah, that's a flex, right?
You're like flexing on being busy.
And it's just it's mostly bullshit, right?
Like being busy is actually not a good.
I shouldn't take pride in being busy.
I should take pride in having unbelievable output per unit of input.
And then I can decide, like, if I want to do 100 units of input
and become a billionaire, great. Or if I want to do one unit and just have tons of time with my
kid during these years, that's great too. And the difference is it's just you have to separate
movement from progress. You have to think about avoid becoming a rocking horse that just goes
back and forth and sits around and doesn't actually go anywhere and focus much more on progress versus movement.
For someone that's listening to you or us even together,
and they're saying easy for you guys to say,
you are well off with your finances, you're in the relationship,
you're in the marriage, you got the kids, easy for you to say,
but my life is X or Y or Z.
How would you coach those people to stop thinking
that way and put themselves into a growth mindset instead? I mean, the first piece is that's just
like a victim mentality. Yes, absolutely. We're in great places in life, but that didn't happen
by accident. There were sets of inputs and things that you did along the way that you should be
inspired by actually. You should learn from and feel like, okay, what can I do today?
What is like a single action that I can do today
that will leave me slightly better off tomorrow?
If I were to repeat the day that I'm having today
for the next 100 days,
is my life gonna be better or worse
on the end of that time period?
And no matter where you are in life,
the inspiring thing to know is
you are like one good action
away from being in a better spot.
It doesn't matter how dark it is, wherever you are, one good action puts you in a slightly
better place.
And if you believe fundamentally that you are meant for more, whatever more it is, if
you're meant for more money, more fame, more success, more love, more trust, whatever the
thing is,
if you believe that, then you can go and create the conditions that allow you to get there into
that world. If someone's unhappy in any area in their life, their job, their relationship,
whatever it is, what can they do tomorrow to make a little bit of a change? Stop fearing.
I think most people build up the pain that they will feel from leaving that situation
beyond what it will actually be.
I had terrible fear about leaving my lucrative finance job.
I literally thought like not going to be able to pay the bills.
You know, my wife's going to be upset. My family's not going to love me because I'm not in the prestigious job anymore. Friends
are going to think I went off the rails. I created all of this unbelievable stuff in my mind.
And the reality is you always build up fear to be bigger than it actually is. There's like that
quote, like most, it's imagined versus reality. So I would say in general, life is really freaking
short. You get one shot at it. So staying in a relationship that's not fulfilling because you're
afraid of what the lack of a relationship looks like, staying in a job that you absolutely hate
if you don't need it is much, much better. Just leaving that thing is much better than staying in it for
longer than you need to. I stayed in my job probably, realistically, I probably stayed in
my job for like three or four years longer than I should have if I had removed the fear.
Can you leave our audience with a habit? You're around a lot of successful people.
You are very successful yourself. A habit that has maybe
changed your life. And it could be a couple of habits or it could be one that you just always do.
This is probably the best advice, maybe the best advice I've ever received. I was talking to
an 80-year-old man, family friend, and I asked him what advice he would give to his 30-year-old
self when I was turning 30. And he said, treat your body like a house that you're going to have to live in for the next
70 years of your life. And it just stuck with me because it's so true. You don't think of that,
but that means make sure your foundation is in really good working order at all times.
Make sure your roof is in good working order. It means making the minor repairs to things along the way before they
become big, big issues. It means making the daily, weekly, and monthly investments in your house
that are going to make sure that things are really, really strong and that your house is
there for you for the next 70 years of your life. So for me, it all comes down to that.
And the actual tactical advice around that is wake up early and work out. Because there's no such thing as a loser who wakes up at five I like what you're doing. So you have a book. Yeah. It's a little black book.
And a little black book.
It's kind of like what a what a madam would have if she had like a book full of hookers.
Why do you go that way?
Because it reminds me of Heidi Fleck.
You don't know what's in here.
No one ever knows.
But his is like yours.
Yours is like notes.
Yeah.
No, I mean, the way I remember things is by writing them down.
I can't do the like typing. You know, people have mean, the way I remember things is by writing them down. I can't do the
like typing, you know, people have Notion, all these fancy things. I can't, I don't remember
anything if I type it, but writing it, if I write it once, I'll remember it forever.
And so I carry around, it's a pocket notebook that it's Moleskine is the company that I use.
Although I probably need to start a company that makes these because I've sold a bunch now
and I love them, but I just literally like I carry it around with me. It fits in your back pocket.
And anytime someone says something interesting or I have an interesting thought I just jot it down and then I come back to it sometimes later sometimes I look at it
sometimes I don't but I carry it around with me everywhere I go okay so when you start your own
company here's what you have to do put a spiral on it because it's annoying how it closes you
know what I mean it's pretty good it opens pretty pretty good. It opens pretty good. Okay, but also, I'm seeing you carry
your pen around
and we need something
to put the pen
on the thing.
I like the little,
it's got the little strap.
You just hook it on.
Yeah, but can we get
like a little thing
on the side
when you create yours?
That'd be fancy.
You know what I mean?
I gotcha.
Yeah, maybe the pen
doesn't like poke our asshole
like when it's in there.
You know what I mean?
It fits right on the little journal. A good one that fits in. one that fits in come in and knock a multi-billion dollar notebook yeah
no we can go do it we should all go work on it together we could sell a lot of these companies
should get their shit together they've only sold like a billion notebooks yeah i'm just disrupting
the other one which i do use this for is the other like habit that i think everyone would benefit
from it relates to journaling i was never able to get myself to journal.
I started doing something.
I call it the one, one, one method, which is every single night before you go to bed,
sit down with a piece of paper and write down one win from the day, one point of tension
or anxiety or stress.
Give an example.
You know, I didn't feel like I was present with my son today or that work thing thing didn't go well today, or the dog threw up in bed and I yelled at Lauren,
I wasn't supposed to do that. Something like that. And then one point of gratitude,
something tiny that you felt grateful for during the day. It doesn't have to be the massive things,
but something tiny like, oh, you know, we had my favorite dinner and it was really good.
Whatever the tiny thing is. I don't think that's going to be his. He had chips for dinner. Well, whatever it is, whatever you felt grateful for,
because if you do, I mean, it takes two minutes and you immediately like you feel good about the
win and you register some win that you had during the day. You get off your mind the crappy thing
that's been bugging you. That's going to bug you. But for me, like I won't be able to sleep. I'll
be thinking about it. Just like throw it down on paper. It's gone. It's out of your mind.
And then you feel grateful for some small thing that you otherwise would have just let
blow by that you never would have thought about. And it creates a journaling habit
that actually moves you forward without taking a bunch of time.
I also think, like you said, it's not overwhelming. The book that you have in
your hand is just something small. You can just jot down a word or two. It doesn't have to be so overwhelming. Thank you so much for coming on.
Where can everyone find you? Subscribe to your newsletter. All the things. Pimp yourself out.
It's all at my website, sahilbloom.com. Fortunate thing about having a weird name is that I'm at
Sahil Bloom on every major platform. Easy to get my name. I would love to connect and meet more of
these people. Thank you for doing this, man. Appreciate it. Thank you.