Brutally Honest Advice For Hard Days | Ep 905

The single greatest skill you can develop is the ability to stay in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. I've had some of the hardest days of my life this year, and so maybe you feel the same. and so in this video i want to share a four-par framework that has helped me move forward even when life sucks if you can be in a bad mood for no reason then you might as well be in a good mood for no reason too

And so one of the things that's been helpful for me is just actually recognizing the math of hard days. And so if you think about you having a hundred days, right, let's just say that, you know, last hundred days of your life. Well, the top 10% of those days, you're going to have 10 days.

that are smiley face days. And then you might have, you know, kind of the middle 80, that's going to be kind of neutral days, right? And then you're going to have your bottom 10% days. Now, this is just normal because of a... standard distribution of how days work. I think the most important skill that you could have is being able to reframe reality. And I say this because I had a very good friend of mine.

this year say something to me and it was it was really powerful and it's been top of mind since he said it and he said well i'll tell you what he actually said he said you're alex hermosi You can get away with whatever you want as long as you frame it right. And I really thought a lot about that. And I've brought that perspective.

to a lot of the conversations, a lot of difficult things I've had to go through this. It reminds me of a quote from Viktor Frankl, who wrote the book, A Man's Search for Meaning, which he wrote while he was in the concentration camps during the Holocaust, and he survived, or he wrote about that time period. And one of the things that he said,

is he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. And so if you think about that, the why is the reframe for dealing with the how. And so it's like, how can I frame this? this difficult thing right um this thing that i'm about to go through that i just went through how can i reframe that in what world would this be an amazing thing

Right. In what world where when I tell this story 40, 50 years from now, would I be like, this is a pivot point for me. I had to have this origin story in order to get to where I wanted to go or to become the type of person I wanted to be. And so.

These have been some of the mental reframes that I've used on some of the harder days that I've had. So this year I had a gigantic bill come out of nowhere. So it was a multi-eight figure bill. that was required to get paid in 72 hours in cash. And so I, you know, thankfully had that, you know, available to me, but...

I had obviously different plans for that money than dealing with this gigantic bill that I had to all of a sudden pay within 72 hours. And so... you know there's the basically the moment between when i got the news to me paying it to then kind of reflecting back because it almost felt so fast it was like

I've got, you know, I've got all these plans and then boom, this happens. And then 72 hours later, it's like, wow, okay, what am I going to do? What am I going to do kind of moving forward from this? And there's this great quote by Marcus Aurelius, which is,

What are you so afraid of losing when nothing in this world belongs to you? And I really thought a lot about that, which it's like, I can't take it with me in the end. And so being sad about losing something. that was never really mine anyways. Like, I'm gonna have to push all my chips to the middle of the board when the game's over, right? I'm gonna have to cash my chips and somebody else, you know, other people are gonna distribute my chips whatever way.

when I die. And so it's like, I'm really just a steward of these chips. I'm just renting these chips for a minute. And so like to be upset and to ruin the one thing that I'm only, that is finite, which is the present moment, for something that actually doesn't affect how I live. So this is the second piece. This is actually kind of a utilitarian perspective. It really helped me, which is...

By losing that money, I asked myself, what does this change about what I do? What does this change about my life? It doesn't change the food I eat. It doesn't change where I live. It doesn't change where I work. It doesn't change what I do. It actually changes nothing. And so all that changed was just like, in my mind, I had an expectation of the future that changed. That was it.

I said, okay, do I want to, because of this thing that exists in my mind, I am choosing to punish myself for not having seen this or not paying attention or whatever number of reasons I could blame myself for.

But at the end of the day, I was like, okay, so you just get to pick how long you want to beat yourself up for. I was like, huh? Well, what am I so afraid of losing if nothing in this world belongs to me? Nothing, this wasn't mine to begin with. And so that really kind of helped me, helped me.

that kind of negative thought pattern pretty quickly. And so I found it helpful when I'm in a bad season, like I am right now. To be fair, I don't try to like put big labels on things, but I guess I'm just giving myself a little bit of grace. But... to just focus on having a good day.

And so it's like, okay, even though this is a bad season, I'm going to have a good day in a bad season. It's kind of like a bite-sized victory. And if I start stringing enough of those good days in a row, I'm going to turn a bad season back into a good season. And it makes it feel a little less bad because I feel like...

making progress and so i heard this um this little bit by bill ackman who was like getting sued he was going through divorce he just lost four billion dollars in perishing square for his capital so he was like honestly all of this happened the same time

And he realized all these projects were these big, massive things, which is a lot of kind of the stuff I'm dealing with right now. They're not like, okay, I had a bad day. They're like things that just, they last and they prolong, right? And he said, you just got a little bit done every day. That's it.

He's like, you just got to make a little bit of progress every day and kind of like compounding and investing. It's like, you don't really, you don't see it in a day or two or a week or two. It's like, but you look at back at 30 days, you're like, all right, I moved the ball a little bit. Right. You look back at 90, you're like, all right, I made some progress. And it's just like. If you have big goals, you're also going to have equally large.

obstacles. And so you can't assume that, oh, my big goals are going to take many, many years and the obstacles that I have to maneuver around are going to happen overnight. Sometimes the obstacles that you have to maneuver around might take a year. or multiple years to get around and so you have to be able to manage your headspace and basically keep your internal combustion engine going during those harder times and so it's kind of like a monkey swinging from good moment to good moment

Because even going from bad season to good day, you can even have bad day and good moment. So I was trying to thought, okay, today was a shitty day. Fine. What good moments did I have? And by focusing on the moments, the thing is, is like when I look back on my life. you forget most of your life like if we're being real like you can't recall most of your life most people can't even recall what they ate like three days ago but you can't have the moments and to the moments when i think about

like at the end of my life looking backwards, those are the only things I'm really going to remember. And so I just want to make sure that I take those down. And so what feels like a bad season now, I can try and forget most of the bad stuff and just try and remember the good moments. And so in retrospect, I can have rose-colored glasses when it comes to this season. So...

it's like, all right, well, how do you, how do you have a good day? Right. And I think this is different for everyone, but I'll tell you what my little formula is for, for having a good day. So I actually have this written on my wall in my office, which maybe I'll be able to put a picture of somewhere. Um, but. Good day formula. For me, there's only three things. Number one is eat with people I like.

simple enough number two lift with people i like and the third is write something if i do those three things I had a pretty good day. Like I look back and I'm like, I earned my shower today. I feel good about this. And so maybe for you, your three things are going to be entirely different. Now I'll give you a little wrinkle on something that's been really valuable for me, like absurdly valuable.

the thing that i noticed that made these two things significantly better really all three of these things is not being in a rush like if i have to lift and it's like i only have 60 minutes to lift i don't like that some people are fine with it some people are like well this is how my life has to be that's fine i have come to a point in my life where i was like i have a lot of money and i have

the ability to not work anymore. And there are not a huge amount of things that bring me big joy. And so if these are the few things that bring me joy, which is eating. without a clock with people I like, lifting without a clock with people I like, and writing something for as long as I feel like.

then I should organize my day so that I don't have as like many, many hard stops. So that if I want to lift in the morning, I don't have something at nine. And if I do have something at nine, it's something that's movable, right? Like if I have to make this video.

it could be at nine but the team knows if i show up at 9 30 or 9 45 because i lifted longer that's fine it's all good and that has made the it has it has taken my good day formula and made it like my super good day formula and so sometimes it's like

What are the tiny nuances that actually make something different between good and great? And so I thought about the days that I had these three things happen, and then I had better days that had those three things happen. I was like, what was the difference? And the difference was that I didn't have to be somewhere else. And in trying not to have a rush, it means I have to give something else up, right? And so then the question is, is the thing that I'm giving up worth having a better day?

and so for me i was like yes i'm willing to give up some money or some upside in order to have consistently better days and that's a trade i'm willing to make at this point in my career

If you want to achieve a goal, you're either gonna have to accept boredom or pain. And the bigger the goal, the more of both you'll get. And when I started my gym, I actually lived with six other people in one house. So this is like off a beach town. And so think like sand everywhere, people everywhere, dirty dishes everywhere, like not enough room in refrigerator for food. Cooking was an absolute mess. There were...

almost all of them had dogs. So a couple had two dogs, another couple had one dog, another guy had a dog. So we had four different dogs in the house and they were like all marking territory. It was horrendous. And I was splitting one room with a guy with a bed, like two beds. My bed was on the floor. His bed was elevated because he could afford that at the time. And I would sleep with a fan on my face. I couldn't hear anything.

That was my secret. Like as the fan, like there's like the wind over, like that's all I could hear. The thing is, is like, I was doing that when I was making like 20 grand a month take home. And so like, there's always trade-offs, right? And the tradeoff for me of living in that condition was that I could invest in the dream and build the business that I had at the time. And now I could look back because I ended up losing everything.

um you know a few years later and so i try you know you get this negative cycle of like all that suffering was for nothing but it wasn't for nothing because i learned all these skills along the way And so you also can't operate from the perspective of like, I might lose it all in the future, which means everything I do today is not worth anything because like you're going to lose 100% of everything the moment you die.

Trying to say that you might lose something in the future as a reason not to do something is ridiculous. You're going to lose everything at some point. You cannot wish for both strong character and an easy life because the price of one is the other. And so when I think about pain, I think about what thing am I paying for right now? And is that thing something that I want? And if so, it reframes the pain as the price of the thing that I want.

And so what's very interesting, this is super interesting, is they've done research on this where they have somebody who like accepts like shocks, right? And then they can like opt out at any point. If you have the same man... who's getting shocked and then you tell that man in the other room every shock he takes his family doesn't have to take his threshold of pain like quadruples and so this may seem like some

quote, mindset, whatever. But the thing is, is like, the bigger your goals, the more pain you're going to endure, whether you want to or not, it's the price. And if you can endure four times more pain than someone else, I don't actually think that it feels four times more painful. I think it feels the same level of pain, but you have this padding that makes it feel worth it. Give a man a purpose and the ability to achieve it, and he will crawl over broken glass with a smile.

And that broken glass, like how can you have a smile during the pain? It's because of what the pain itself represents. Now I'm going to get a little bit of the behavior because I think it's valuable. So I talk a lot about reward and punishment, right? But those are kind of more colloquial terms. When it comes down to behavior, it's actually reinforcers. And so a reinforcer can be negative, meaning...

it can be something that's aversive. So for example, if I know that every time I hit my hand with a hammer, I'm going to grow muscle, then if that hitting my hand with a hammer or taking the shock from my family... means something positive, which is that I'm protecting my family, I'm helping my country, I'm doing something that I deem meaningful, the pain itself can become a positive reinforcer because you know you're making progress towards the thing you want. Now,

You might think of that and be like, well, I don't want to have the pain. The thing is, is that when you're going through it, if you have this frame, it isn't as painful. And so in a lot of ways, it's like we are our own sculpture that we're working on. And as we chisel away, we also get to reveal.

the type of person that we want to become, the traits and the behaviors and the belief sets that go with the man or woman that we're trying to grow into. And so I wrote this story, I want to say a year ago, maybe two years ago, that related this that I just want to share with you.

So imagine you're talking to the creator of the universe about the person that you want to become, right? And so you say, you know, I want to be courageous. And the creator replies, then I will give you monsters that terrify you. That way you can conquer them.

And you say, well, I want to be patient. And the creator replies, then I will make you work harder and longer and nothing will come easy to you. That way you can learn to wait. And so they are like, okay, well, I want to be wise. And so the creator says, then I will give you failures that will crush your spirit. That way you can learn the value of judgment. Then you say, that sounds like a hard life. Can you give me a good life? And the creator replies,

Just like we measure the quality of a blacksmith by the strength of his steel, I measure you by what you are at the end, not the fire and the hammer that it took to make you. A good life isn't an easy life. A good life makes you into a good person. And that, my child,

is a hard life and so it's about who we become doing the work more than the outcome from the work itself and i love this and this is a reframing of proverbs but um the work works on you more than you work on it right like in all labor there is profit Meaning we always benefit from work, even if the thing that we work on gets destroyed, even if you went bankrupt, even if that relationship didn't work out, even if that partnership falls apart. The work you did is eternal because it changes you.

And so for those of you who don't know, who are new to my channel, I lost everything five years into my entrepreneurial journey. And then I made a little bit more and then I lost it all again. But the thing is, is that I had this idea that... oh i have to start from scratch again but that's not true because you can only start from scratch once every time after that you start with an experience a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion and you transition

from the second to the first the moment you begin working because you're no longer somebody who has an opinion and the vast majority of people who are in the comments section right who are making the remarks who are in the sidelines are just people with opinions And as soon as you know what that truth is, because you've been there and you've actually done it and you have the scars to show for it, then their opinions matter significantly less.

And so I'll give you a different reframe that I've had for redefining pain as it relates to other people, which is you can summarize just about every hateful comment on the internet into one thing. he lives his life in a way that I would not prefer. That's it. Everything is, he lives his way, his life in a way that I would not prefer. To which I respond, yes, I do live my life in a way that most people would not prefer. And they live their life in a way that I would not prefer.

And that is why it is their life. And they can live their life the way that they want to live their wife, the way they prefer it. And I will live my life the way that I prefer it. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into tens. stages.

and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you've got customer success, you've got IT, you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free.

And you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages. Once you answer the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the... that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, R-O-A-D map, roadmap.

And so they make these things, they cast these stones at you as though it matters. And so my dad told me this when he was going through his divorce. He said he went through this divorce conference and the speaker on stage said to somebody in the audience, he said, hey, here's a ball. And he threw it to him. And he said, okay, throw it back to me. So he caught the ball. He said, now I want you to imagine that this ball is...

A steaming hot pile of shit. And he threw it to the person again. And the person caught it. He said, why would you catch it? And so the lesson of that is just because someone hurls shit at you doesn't mean you need to catch it. You don't need to choose to participate. And I thought that was a really interesting frame. It's like people can hurl whatever they want. It doesn't mean that they have justified a response or that you need to accept it. And that little reframe of...

Oh, I live my life in a way that other people would not prefer. Well, that makes sense. I'm not trying to live the same life as them. So, of course. And then they say, he made trade-offs that I would not make. And I say, of course. Of course I did. Why is this somehow an insult? And so the thing is, when I was making those trades in the earlier days, I didn't know when I would be successful or if I would be successful. The only thing that I knew for sure was that I wasn't going to stop.

And that was it, right? Like, I know I can just not stop. And that's something that I can commit to. And that's controllable. And so I think a lot of the big gift of hardship is that it doesn't define you, it reveals you.

the benefit is that you get to see who you really are and you make that decision yourself every day. And so I have this perspective on loyalty, which is that like, you cannot say that you are loyal until your loyalty is tested. You cannot say you're patient until your patience is tested. Otherwise, it's an opinion, not an experience. And so you can't say that you can handle hardship.

and that you're emotionally resilient until you've had something to be emotionally resilient about. And so the gift of the hard time is to give you proof of who you are so that the rest of your life, you get to know that you did that. And you get to tell that story and relive that story to yourself for the rest of your life. And to me, that gives the hardship memory dividends that pay.

forever until the day you die so i'll tell you a story when i was um when i uh so i went to a school in the sec um and you know some of the sec schools are renowned for hazing and aggressive stuff and so i i was you know going to join a fraternity and you know obviously they uh they you know build up how hard you know pledging is going to be and all this stuff right

And I called my dad to talk about it. And he just said, remember there is nothing that they can do to you that is harder than what you've already been through. And it was a great... reframe. Because I remember the times, you know, like when, you know, things would be quote hard during that season of pledging. And I would just think about the things that I had already survived, the things that I had already been through at that point.

And it made what they believed to be suffering appear childish. I was like, this is cute. But for the people who were present in the moment, rather than being able to relive through their memory dividends as... using it as a shield, right? For my emotional affect during the moment was like, all right, I have these eight weeks where I have to stand here before you apparently give me a stamp of approval. Fine. Then I will do that. I live my life in ways that you would not prefer.

And that, that carried me a pretty long way. And so let's say that you've used these tools to redefine pain, right? And you've realized that you are the outcome. The work you do is the only thing you control and the person you become.

becomes the evidence of the work that you voluntarily subjected yourself to. And not only does that pain or that difficulty or discomfort make you better, it's also what separates you from everyone else and and whenever i do go through those moments i do have these slight like crook of the smile you know the crook of my love that goes up because i'm reminded that everything that i'm willing to

tolerate and deal with is what everyone else who wants to do the same thing will be incapable of doing. And so if it's hard for me, it will be just as hard for somebody else. And I think for some reason that gives me some sadistic pleasure that I will be able to keep moving forward. And so that's kind of a perfect transition to number three, right? Which is... Endure what others.

And so all of this becomes your competitive advantage. And that competitive advantage compounds. The more memories you have of hardship that you've been through, the more it stacks, the more it becomes a trait, the more it becomes ingrained in your behavior, and the more it takes to share.

because you're like, well, this is my baseline. This isn't even close. It doesn't even register on my scale of something that's an inconvenience. We've all met that person where if a call gets moved or a dinner plate is late, it's like a nuclear bomb went off.

Right. It's like, well, what's the opposite of that? Like, what's the person who like, it doesn't matter if a nuclear bomb went off, but all you see is a straight line, completely undisturbed by the things that are going around them. And so like you can beat 99% of people without being smarter or luckier. because you can beat 99% of people without being smarter or luckier, but by being willing to endure pain and uncertainty for longer.

And so if it's hard for you, it's hard for everyone else. And most people avoid hard things, which is why you can beat most people by just trying and continuing to try. And the main thing is, is that I think most people...

Don't even know what trying feels like. And so Layla and I had been going through this season, so it hasn't just been me. And she had a mentor say something to her that she told me, and I really liked it. And so she said, hey, you know, we had this difficult situation and, you know, we're kind of relegated to, you know, this option or this option and neither of the options were particularly good. And she said to Layla, are you settling?

Or are you moving mountains? And I really like that because like, whenever I'm looking at these choices that I feel like sometimes feel bad, I'm like, is there another option? that I could see if I moved the fucking mountain. And that has just dramatically increased the willingness to work, to really try.

And so I keep thinking to myself like, okay, well, if I was going to get killed or Layla was going to get killed or people I cared about were going to die, if I didn't come up with another solution, or if I made the thing that I wanted to have happen, happen, what other things would I do? And usually it's a lot more. And so whatever way you have to unlock that level of trying, that level of effort, like most things are hilariously easy to do. It's just more easy. It's easier to just do nothing.

And so most people do nothing and get nothing and are dissatisfied because their expectations that they would get something for that nothing of work. Right. But like, what's crazy is that the highest levels of effort are so rare amongst people that.

you can unlock most things in the universe with it by just really trying like your life depends on it. Because it does. Hey guys, first off, I want to say thank you. There's one person who's been sharing this more than anyone, and that is... you the only reason this podcast continues to grow is because you guys are sharing it and uh my only ask

is that if this has provided value to you or you think it would provide value to somebody else more importantly if you could dm it to them if you could slack it to them if you could text them a screenshot or link to this podcast is the only way it grows and that's what fills the hole inside of my heart

the approval of others so that I can't go to sleep at night. And that's why I really do this. Anyways, enjoy the rest of the pod. And so like most of the time we know what we're supposed to do. We just have trouble doing it.

Like, you know what you need to do to get a six pack. You know what you need to do to build muscle. People already know this. You don't need to know anything about training to do that. You just stop eating crap, maybe eat some protein, right? and add more weight to the bar over an extended period of time. That's it. That's all it is. You know that already. And yet you haven't begun because you haven't really tried.

like it's hilarious to me it's it's it's apparently rarer to have a six-pack above age like 30 than it is to be a millionaire like think about how crazy it is And don't cite the sources. I heard that and I believe it. Because think about it. 9% of Americans have a net worth of a million dollars. Surprising, right? 9% of Americans certainly don't have a six-pack.

And so it's like, it's rarer to have a six pack than be a millionaire. And so I just, I think about that. It's like, we know what to do. It's just we're not willing to endure what it's required to get it. And we're not willing to reframe that pain as the price of the thing we want.

and to give our pain meaning. And so fortunately or unfortunately, you know, humans, we live in a competitive environment. We seek status because of, you know, evolutionary back, you know, backdrops, right? And so how do you beat other people, right? And I want to be clear.

i don't really think you need to beat anybody right if you just beat you every day you'll beat everybody by default and i think that you'll get to the end of the race and realize no one else is really racing anyways but the main main is that you need to get out of

I had actually a conversation with somebody on my team this morning. They're saying they want to do this training for the department that they're in. And they wanted to talk about running on clean energy versus dark energy. And I was like, what does that mean? He's like, you know, clean energy is like you're going towards something. Dark energy is like you're running away from something. And I thought, I think there's a really good and noble idea. The problem is...

no one's going to know what to do with that. Because what it really meant was, if you guys do your jobs using, quote, clean energy, or knowing when to use, quote, dark energy, you will be more effective. Okay, fine. Now we have conditions for behavior. And so I asked him, I said, if you want this training to be significantly more effective,

I need you to do two things. Number one is define what having clean energy looks like. How do I observe someone who has clean energy? What do they do? Do they talk differently? Do they ask different questions? They have different cadence, right? And to the same degree, what do I, how do I, you know, having dark energy, you ask more times.

You know, you push back more often. Like, let's define this in terms of behavior. And then what we'll probably find is that there's no such thing as clean or dark energy. There's only behaviors that under certain conditions increase the likelihood of a positive outcome or a desired outcome. And so then we have, okay.

In these conditions, do this. And in other conditions, do that. And so then we can get away from these amorphous terms. And the reason I'm bringing this up is that we have to define everything in terms of the actions that you're going to take. Sadness comes from a perceived lack of options.

which is why it feels like hopelessness. Anxiety comes from many options. Anxiety comes from many options, but a lack of priorities, which is why it feels like paralysis. So looking everywhere but moving nowhere. And so you solve sadness with knowledge and anxiety with the decision. And so the goal from here is to see the path that's available to you. And you have to do that by learning.

Once you have a path, if you have too many paths, then you have to start cutting paths off so you can say, this is where I'm going. And then I have no more anxiety around this. So if you don't know what to do, the answer is to learn. If you know what to do, the answer is to do it. And if you're already doing it, the answer is to never stop. And what I will reinforce here is that none of those three actions that I just defined...

have anything to do about how you feel today or in this moment. And so I want to be very clear. People think that I'm this unemotional or zero affect person. It's not true at all. Of course, I feel things. The difference is... So what? Like, I can feel terrible and still do the acts that increase the likelihood of success. And so it's not trying to negate the fact that you have emotions or that you have bad feelings. It's about continuing on the path one step in front of the other despite that.

And I think that the more you learn that your actions do not need to be equated to how you feel, the more these feelings can just be in the backdrop. And ultimately, they make you resilient. So let me show you what resilience looks like. So I give you a little picture here. So let me show you what resilience looks like. Which one's resilient? This one. Why? Because you return to baseline behavior faster.

Now toughness is a different thing, which is how much does it take before I have this decrease? And then there's a third vector, which I'll find the word for it. But when you do have the decrease, how low do you go? And so to me, the ideal scene is that.

And the thing is, is that all of these things are happening throughout this whole period. And the other people in your lives are doing this, right? Or they're just doing low and they just never recover, which we've all met those people. And so if you want to become resilient. What are the actions that you take? You say, okay, this occurred. How long will it take me for my behavior to return to baseline? And if my behavior never changes, did it bother me to begin with?

And maybe it might've bothered you, but it didn't matter because it never changed your behavior. And so one of the things that will set you apart is the ability to move forward despite how you feel, right? And so this is, you know, Layla's classic, her most known quote, which is a fuck your mood, follow the plan. And I would say like a lot of you guys don't know Layla that well. Layla is one of the most mentally resilient people that I've ever met. And.

She pulled herself out of a deeper hole than I ever did. She started from a poorer family. She had a worse home situation. She had a worse personal, she had, you know, she got arrested six times before she was 18 or 19. like she she has worked on her more than any person that i know not to say that it's not more than any person in existence of course i have no idea but of the people that i've met she has done the most active work and i've learned a lot from her

And so let's imagine we're going through this, right? So you've learned the greatest skill of reframing. You've redefined pain in a new way so it actually could be progress for you. We're willing to endure and take actions that other people aren't willing to take so that...

we realized that they were never in the race to begin with, and it's all about us anyways. And so what's the fourth thing, right? So the fourth is that you zoom out and you keep going, right? You will die. Months later, no one will care.

And so why care about what they think so much when they care so little about what you do? Like take the risk, right? Shake off the losses, shake them off, right? Because in the end, you live for the story only you can tell. to the only person who was there with you the entire time, which is you. And so you might as well make it epic because you're literally the story writer and the story listener, the story consumer.

Literally everyone else, like we die alone, we were born alone. We're born alone and we die alone. And so even if other people captured your entire life, they still don't know what was going on in your head. They don't know your intentions. They don't know what you were thinking through at every given moment. Only you do that. And so that's why...

Being able to, over time, in my opinion, be the judge-jury executioner of your own faith and your own judgment is one of the most valuable things you can do because you're the only person who can say, good job. Because you might win in some circumstances and not have tried. To me, that's a loss. Because you know you could have put more in.

You didn't empty the tank, right? You left some on the field. And to the other degree, the other extreme, if you follow a logical thought path and you did, you moved mountains to try and accomplish something. And if you actually had exhausted every possible path that you could think of, truly.

beyond costs that were not worth the price of whatever you were trying to get. You exhausted all of the paths that were worth it and you don't get it. Other people may have said that you lost, but you know that there's... There's nothing else you could have done. And so you can still say good job because of the effort that you chose to put in. And so I have a few frameworks for zooming out that I think may help you. So one of my favorites is the frame of the veteran, which is...

okay, something bad happens. If it happened a thousand times in a row, how would I feel about it the thousandth time? Well, I'd probably be like, well, this is just how things are. and it would no longer bother me and so if it no longer bothers me then then it means it's a choice for it to bother me now so i might as well choose not to have it bother me today the second frame is cosmic relevance right which is basically zooming out so far

that you realize that we're just a tiny little marble in a galaxy and you know humans have only been alive for this tiny sliver of time throughout the billions of years and the likelihood that your boss saying something mean or some person on the internet saying something snide or someone making a video just on you, right? Or some parents not approving of your current life path or somebody trying to discredit you for not being legit does not matter.

And so the third one, this is a really good one for gratitude. It's all considered the grandfather frame, which is basically you zoom all the way to the future. You're 85 years old. So you're an old man. right? You've been, you know, you're in pain, everything hurts, you don't have the energy you're used to, you're slashing over and you're, you know, you're counting down your days, right? And then you imagine yourself waking up in whatever age body you have right now.

And you turn to your, you know, your right or your left and you see your wife and you're like, man, she's so young. I couldn't, can't believe she's so young right now. Right. And you look out the window and you're like, oh man, this is before they developed this whole area. And we hold these sky, sky, you know, sky.

Sky rises. High rises? Oh, there's one. Skyscrapers. High rises. There we go. Before we had all these high rises. And then you like, you get out of bed and you're like, oh man, like, I'm not in pain, you know? And you wake up and you're like. You know, I don't feel like foggy. I feel like my memory's sharp. I'm like, I'm acute. I know what I'm going to do. And you're like, wow, this is amazing. And the thing is, is like nothing good has even happened yet.

Right. But the thing is, is because life just gets so much harder as you get older. You can imagine how like gratitude comes from imagining a terrible thing and then removing that thing that was terrible. That is gratitude. Like how do you operationalize gratitude? Imagine something terrible. And then.

remember that that terrible thing has not occurred that's gratitude like people are like oh man i'm so grateful for my health how do you get grateful for your health imagine that you have cancer and that you're about to die and then realize that you don't have cancer and you're like wow i'm grateful that i don't have cancer but you have to put that thing in there

You have to imagine that terrible thing. You have to go all the way there. And so I'll tell you something that happened recently. Layla had a doctor's appointment for something. I was corresponding with our EAs, and I said, you know, how's everything going? And my EA responded, she has cancer. And I was like, okay.

got it this is reality now and then i and obviously i'm texting back like you know what kind what's going on like do i need to be there you know what's up and then she was like oh my god i'm so sorry i meant the person who was the front desk the reason they messed something up was because she had cancer not layla and i was like

Got it. And so what ended up happening was that Layla ended up having, you know, something that she was dealing with and they figured out what it was. So it wasn't good news. But what had framed that bad news was that she was potentially on her deathbed. And so for me, I was just incredibly grateful that she didn't have cancer. And so it just gave me this really wonderful reframe by accident.

of like it could be worse and so like you're not dead and so if you're like the fact that you're alive is living proof that you can endure it And the day that something kills you, you won't have to anymore. And so your life every day exists as evidence that you can handle everything that has come your way. And I think that if you've ever had any need for evidence...

Let that be the greatest evidence of all. And so when I need advice, because I'll be real with you, like... Everybody here, everybody's listening to this, like being honest with, you know, honest is the right word, being vulnerable, right? You know, with other people is tough. And there's, I think there's some reasonable reasons why. One is like, you don't want to be a burden to somebody else, right?

Number two is like, you don't want to be that person who always just like emotionally dumps in others. Like that's not good. Right. And at the same time, like if you're going through hard stuff, especially if it's related to other people, people don't forget.

the hard thing that you're dealing with with somebody else. And so you might end up getting out of that and forgiving the person or whatever, but the person you tell will always remember it, right? And sometimes it's difficult. So like, let's say you have an issue with your spouse. Who do you tell, right?

Do you want to tell your homies? I don't know. That feels a little bit of a breach of kind of like the marital covenant. You're not going to tell your employees, right? You don't want to tell your family because then they're going to start, they're going to see your husband or your wife differently, right? So who do you tell?

Because you can tell a therapist, but maybe you don't want to do therapy because you don't like it, right? So who do you tell? Who do you get advice from? And so I'll give you who I think about this. And, you know, unfortunately, the more status you accrue... the more valuable dirt on you is. And so if you're going through a hard time, the more people will want to gain that information to use it to their own advantage. And so it actually makes it even lonelier. And so...

I use Solomon, right? The Solomon frame as my way of getting the therapy that I think is helpful. And so... The reason I call it Solomon is because there's a thing called the Solomon paradox, which is there's a human tendency to be better at offering wise advice to others than it is to apply that same wisdom to our own situation, our own lives.

And so they called the Solomon paradox because Solomon was this big wise guy, but he actually, his life was a bit of a mess. And so it's almost like Merlin could see the future for everyone except for himself. Right. And so. The way that I use this is, I think, I want to imagine talking to my 85-year-old incredibly wise self, or at least wiser than I am now. And I ask him what he thinks I should do.

And what's weird is it takes you out of your current frame and puts you in this other frame and you become more objective about your current situation. And so I actually had a little, you know, I had a conversation with a business owner who's out here. in Vegas at one of our advisory practice events. And she said, I've got all these businesses, not really sure what I should do, blah, blah, blah.

And so I, and she happened to have like a business academy as one of her businesses. And I said, let me reverse the tables on you. I said, let me pretend to be a business owner. And I'm going to say back to you everything you just said. What do you think you should do? She was like, well, yeah, I mean, it's obvious when you think about it like that. And I'm like, right.

It's obvious. And so it's only difficult for us because our judgment is clouded by our emotions because we have emotional context. We have emotional ties to the people or the situations or the investments. You can be like more logical decision making is a good thing. And so by pulling out and thinking about your 85 year old self, you're able to be less emotional about the current situation without sacrificing any kind of confidentiality because it's still you talking to you.

You don't have to waste any time giving context. Or, and let's be real, if you know how to persuade people, you can jade your data that you give to somebody else so that they give you the answer that you want. rather than giving them the whole picture, which you might be embarrassed to share. And so in my opinion, this framework of having these conversations, and to be fair, I don't do it all the time. I do it when I need it.

if I'm like, man, I got to work through this. I just have this little chat that I open up and I just start writing through like a DM to me in the future. And I literally just, you know, enter space, enter space. That includes me mocking my younger self, which I do frequently.

or at least my 85 year old self does such a dick anyways and so in my opinion it has been more helpful than therapy because you have all the context right and so this is how me make significantly better choices when i feel like i have emotionality that could be affecting me

And so to do a callback to the clean and dark energy thing, there's a lot of judgment online about how people choose to work. What fuels them? Which fundamentally, is it reward or punishment? Are they going away from an aversive stimulation towards a positive one? The answer, in my opinion, doesn't matter. And what I mean by that is...

I think the first rule of all entrepreneurship is use what you have, because that's not going to change. Today, you have what you have. And so those are the only resources you have available to you. And so you must become more resourceful. And that means that if you have shame and people tell you shame is bad, in what world could shame be good? If the shame you have creates this amazingly positive thing in your life.

Was it bad? If, you know, your dad not hugging you enough created the catalyst for you to go to the gym and live 20 years longer because you work out regularly, was it bad? do we need to label it at all? All we know is that it happened. And so what? And so the thing is, is that there are these actions that increase the likelihood that you get what you want.

whether you do them because you had some negative thing or because you're going towards some positive thing, I think for the vast majority of people is narrative. They create the story. Because if I said, hey, why did you do this thing? We are trained to give an answer. But that answer may have zero grounding in the truth. Not because you lie, but because you have no idea. Because most people don't know why they do what they do. They just do it and then they ascribe a reason afterwards.

And so we know that it's mostly BS and you're not going to have a double blind, you know, controlled placebo study on your life to be able to determine what the true root cause of, was this the dependent variable? If you're not going to be able to do that anyways, who?

Who cares? Use whatever you've got to get whatever you want. And so I'll give you a behavioral thing for this. It's like, you might be going through something difficult or a hard season or a bad day or a bad moment, right? And I've heard this saying, and it drives me absolutely bananas, which is that...

Bad things come in threes. Anyone heard this one, right? I so wholeheartedly disagree, but I will explain why I believe that saying is the saying. Bad things do not come in threes. Bad things occur. People do not know how to cope. They allow one bad thing to snowball into more bad things. And bad stuff sucks. And the only thing worse than letting one bad thing be a bad thing is to let one bad thing ruin many good things. And so...

If you think about a bad thing as a cancer, it's like, well, we want to isolate that cancer as fast as possible and not let that cancer of you losing your job affect your marriage and then let you affecting your marriage affect how you're a parent and let you know how you're a parent. you know, affect how you are going to pursue this new endeavor, right? And so people just basically give themselves an excuse for misbehaving.

I had a bad day, therefore I now have a legitimate excuse for being a bad husband or not being nice to my wife. They use it as an excuse to not exercise self-control. And that is when things snowball. And so this is why resilience is so important. Can something bad happen and I recover before I talk to somebody else?

When things get bad, it looks like this. Something bad happens, something else bad happens, something else bad happens, and it keeps going down until eventually everyone in your life that is good has removed themselves and then you slowly recover or you don't recover at all.

And you've seen these people. He lost his job. He gained weight. And man, he's just never been the same. Pull your head out of your ass. And so there's this Buddhist parable. I've been actually looking a lot more into Buddhism lately. Weirdly enough. And so the Buddha asked one of his students, if a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful? The student nods yes. And then the Buddha asks, if a person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful? The student...

Nods again. He's like, yeah, it is. Then Buddha explains, in life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional. And so a lot of suffering that we incur. like Mark Twain said earlier, like is optional. It mostly happens in our own mind to things that never actually occur in reality. And so a useful frame has been like, if it has not occurred yet, I will not worry about it.

Because the thing is, I used to really obsess about planning out contingencies. And I still sometimes have this tendency. But if you're like, I want to play out this, I want to play this out, I want to play this out, I want to play this out, all these different scenarios. In a negative frame, I'm not saying planning is bad, but I'm saying...

uh ruminating on negative you know potential futures uh can be negative by the time something like that happens number one it will not happen in the way that i imagined it almost never does number two i will have different resources available to me at that time

versus what i have today and so the path will become immediately obvious and apparent to me when that occurs and if we're really honest about it most serious thinking doesn't require that much time but worrying can take all day and all night

With all that being said, sometimes you have to give yourself a little bit of grace because in some seasons of life, maintaining is winning. Just not losing ground is the W. And so... You're not having a bad year. You had a few bad days that you're thinking about for the rest of the year. And so this has been something that I've been really visiting a lot, which is like, we think about our lives like this and say, this was bad.

All of this is bad. But the thing is, is that these types of labels only happen in the abstract when zoomed all the way out. And so the flip side is when we're making our judgments, we want to zoom in. Because when we look at this line, our days were like this. And so I might've had a bad moment or another bad moment. And so I can just say, I had these two bad moments, but I had plenty of good times. And so by percentage.

I had 85% good and I had 15% bad. So all in all, not a bad year. And the reason I think this is so important, I'll end how I started, which is the single greatest skill that you can develop. for whatever goal that you're trying to achieve in life is the ability to stay in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. I hope this helped.