15 Success Habits to Mastering Anything in Life | Ed Mylett

Key Takeaway

Pick one goal and make it measurable today: replace “get healthier” or “grow my business” with a concrete target, then choose one catalyst step you can complete immediately. For example, put a one-liter water bottle beside your bed and drink it upon waking, or write only the chapter titles for the book you want to create. Identify the distraction most likely to derail you, measure progress weekly, and repeat long enough for the initially awkward work to become natural.

Episode Overview

Ed Mylett explains how mastery develops through awkward, mechanical, and natural stages—and why repetition, feedback, and patience through invisible progress are essential. He then presents a seven-part approach for turning goals into habits, covering specificity, catalyst steps, distraction removal, modeling successful people, measurement, and sustainable celebration. In a later conversation, John Gordon shares practices for positivity, leadership, gratitude, faith, and resilient culture-building.

Full Transcript

Transcript of 15 Success Habits to Mastering Anything in Life | Ed Mylett from The Ed Mylett Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

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Hey everyone, welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. Welcome back everybody. I love doing the Max Out Program 2.0 and today I can't wait to share with you what I call the three steps of mastery. See there's three stages that you have to go through in order to master something in life and oftentimes we quit in the first stage because we don't realize it's just a natural progression to getting good at something.

And so in any pursuit you have, if you want to start a new business, a new career, you want to learn to swim, like right now I've picked up the hobby of riding horses. It's a unique thing to do at 50 years old and so I'm addicted to it but so it's kind of a new pursuit of mine. So whether you started a new business or you're in the middle of a business you've got or you've got people in your business who are newer or you're trying something new, it's very easy to beat ourselves up or really not understand that there are three stages of mastery and it's just mandatory.

You're going to go through them. You can't cheat the system. And so in the three stages of mastery, let me tell you what they are and then I'll break them down for you. There's the awkward stage at anything you begin to do. The awkward stage. And if you do enough repetitions, you can move to what I call the mechanical stage. And then for the mechanical stage, eventually you move to what I call the natural stage. Everybody looks at you and goes, oh man, you're incredible, you're a natural.

Like whatever you do for a living right now, if you've been doing it for a long time, the first day on your job, I guarantee you, you were awkward. I guarantee you, everything about it was awkward. Where to go, the people's names, what to call things, where to, all of it was completely awkward, wasn't it? Even a lot of people, their first night at their job, they'll have a nightmare that night. I remember my first job was, I was a bus boy at the whole enchilada restaurant and I didn't know my bang job at the whole enchilada was really simple.

I cleaned up your table and I brought you your chips and salsa. That's really the whole job. And for some reason at 17 years old, it freaked me out because I had to walk up to people's tables and say hello and I'm a super introvert. And I remember going home that first night, I go, I can't do this. It's just too much. It's too much for me. Chips and salsa, cleaning up their table. It just overwhelmed me, which is pretty hilarious. And I had a nightmare that night, like a nightmare of the job.

Like everyone wanted new chips. We need more salsa. We need more chips. And you're like, I gotta, you gotta clean up our table. You live. And I have this horrible nightmare of this very pretty simple job that I had. And so what I was, I was in the awkward stage of that job. If you'd have come back about six weeks later, I'd bust a bunch of tables. Now I know where the salsa is. I know where to go in the back and get the chips. I know where they warmed them.

I kind of got my little, how are you guys this evening? I'm Eddie. You know, I got my little wrap down. It was mechanical. I knew the mechanics of it, but still I was slower than most. I couldn't carry the drinks and the chips on the plate the right way. But you know what I mean? Like, it was mechanical. I knew the mechanics. I knew where to clock in and we came back a year later, man. I was natural. I'm flipping chips. I'm spinning them on my head.

The difference, you know what I mean? Like the salsa. Hey, good morning. Good to see you. Good evening. Hey, Mr. Jones. Welcome back. I'd seen all the, I was natural. So you walked in there. It's like, this guy's a natural busboy. Well, the truth is that's true in everything. Right now, I started to learn to ride horses, right? First day out there. You don't think about these things. I'm like, what type of horse is it? I didn't even know the breed. I didn't even know there were, what do you call a female horse?

What's a bridle? What's a halter? How do you put a saddle on them? What side do you get on the horse? The left or the right? How do you get off? The reins. Are you riding Western or English? I'm like, I have no idea. I guess Western. I was totally awkward. And people that are horse people, they're just like, it's all natural to them, right? They get on the horse. They ride. They saddle it up. How do you back it up? How do you stop it?

Like, it's crazy, right? But now I've been doing it for like, I don't know, six months. I've ridden quite a bit and now I'm kind of mechanical. I know how to put the bridle on, I know how to walk it with the halter. I know how to put the bridle on the horse. I know how to put the saddle on. I know where to get on. I know how to ride. And I'm pretty good. But if you watch me and you were really experienced in riding horses, you go, he kind of gets it.

He's mechanical. The mechanical stage is like this. You ever go to like a wedding or you're at a club or something and the person's got the dance moves down, but they kind of dance to the lyrics and not the beat. You know what I mean? Like, you're like, the guy's got the moves, but it's just, there's something, he's got the mechanics, but I think he's dancing to the words and not the beat. You know what I mean? That's the mechanical stage. But eventually you see somebody, they're like, oh, they got the rhythm and the beat.

That's the natural stage. So the question is, how do you move from awkward to mechanical? You ready? Repetitions and awareness. So no matter what you do, you got to do more and more reps at it. More and more experience and as you're getting that experience, being aware of the things that worked and didn't, getting coaching, getting feedback, course correcting and improving. Success is not complicated. So no matter what it is you're doing, if you're an athlete and you're listening and you've had to switch positions, you were on the offensive side, now you're on the defensive side.

It's not that playing defense isn't for you, it's that you better do a lot of reps. You better have a lot of awareness. You better watch a lot of film. You better do a course correction. So you do it through repetitions, awkward, enough reps and awareness and course corrections, you'll move to mechanical. And then from the mechanical phase, it's the same process. More and more and more repetitions, more and more course correction and awareness until you become natural. And in business, all the money is made at the natural phase.

Oftentimes in business, the money is predicated upon your ability to get natural and your ability to train other people at their jobs or crafts to become natural as well. What's most incredible to me, if I can be candid with you, is there's an art and a science to being successful at anything. And most people love the art, the mindset, the thinking, the thought processes. They love the art form of it. What do I need to think? What do I need to vision? What do I need to dream?

Subconscious mind, meditation, blah, blah, blah. Most people don't have a tolerance for the science part. The science part's real simple. It's math. You got to do more reps. If you're in business, you got to do more calls, more emails, more appointments, more meetings, more setbacks. You got to do the reps to move out of that awkward stage. The awareness, the course correction, now you're mechanical. You want to get from mechanical, if you're in business, you want to get great at business, you want to become the best ever, more reps.

More course correction, more awareness, you become natural. You pick up golf. You want to play a great golf game? You better get out on the driving range and hit a bunch of balls and you better have someone videoing you and you better get course correction and have awareness. If you do enough reps, hit enough balls with enough correction, with enough awareness, you'll become mechanical. When you start playing golf, it's real simple. How do you hold the club? Your baseball grip, overlap grip, what's the grip, right?

How long should your clubs be? Where's your backswing? What's a swing plane? How do you come through the ball? What's your right hand do? Your left hand, your low? There's a lot to it. You watch someone start to play golf, it's crazy to watch, isn't it? But if they do enough reps, they do enough learning, they get enough coaching and correction, they can become mechanical. Then you watch people play mechanical golf. They got a good golf swing, but it's, then eventually they become natural and they play their game.

If you're going to play the game, you have to have a tolerance for the repetitions. So one of the reasons that we don't do the reps as we stop is because we don't give ourselves credit for what I call invisible progress. Invisible progress means this, there's such a thing as what I call compound pounding. Compound pounding means basically this, that as you're hitting an object over and over again and you compound the hitting of that object, over time you break it down, right? But most of that progress is invisible.

We don't see it. So as we're in the awkward stage and we're doing the reps, we're making progress but it's usually not visible to us. Or if we're in the mechanical stage, we're doing the reps, the compound pounding of doing it over and over again is happening, but we can't see the progress. So what most people do is they quit before they get natural at anything because there doesn't appear to be physical visible progress. Most of us want to see progress to believe it's happening. But the truth is in life, in most things, even in a loving relationship, a lot of the progress is happening invisibly, certainly true in business.

So let me give you the best example of it. I wrote about this in my first book but a long time ago I was invited to a birthday party for a young person and I didn't really want to go to it because they were so young and my kids were grown. But I went to the birthday party because it was a friend of mine and they had a piñata for the birthday boy. And so if you all know what a piñata is, it's very interesting but like basically kids hitting the piñata with a bat, right?

And it reminded me of business so much because you get there, what do they do? They blindfold this poor little kid and then spin him around and hand him a bat like a weapon, right? So the kid spun around, he has no idea where he's going, he's just kind of flailing away, can't even find the piñata. That's how most people that start out in business feel by the way. They're just flailing away. They don't even know where the target is, they're just swinging, right? Just like this little guy.

And I'm watching him going. There's an analogy here for sure. So finally, there's a course correction and an awareness and the dad points the little guy at the piñata even though the blindfold is still on. So he still can't see it but now he's at least pointed in the right direction. That's what that awkward phase is like. And now he's wailing on the piñata, hitting it and hitting it. He's getting more and more tired. This piñata is not breaking, right? So finally, he goes, I quit.

Why? There was no visible progress. So then what they do, they take the blindfold off and he goes and plays on the swing set. They grab the next little kid, it was a little girl. Same thing. They blindfold her. She's like a new person in business. She's flailing away, not even hitting the piñata, she doesn't even know where the target is, right? Finally, she gets course correction, makes an adjustment, some awareness and she's wailing on this piñata. No candy comes out. There's no progress. So she quits.

You can picture it. You've seen this before. Next little guy gets up. He hits it five, six, ten times. He quits. Next person gets up. She quits. After about seven kids have hit in this piñata, the only person left is the little young little four-year-old little boy. And everyone's quit because there was no progress. But what was happening was all the reps were happening, even though there was no visible progress. So all the reps were happening. So this little four-year-old gets up, they put the blindfold on him, spin him around and he takes one swing.

Bam! Hits the piñata. All the candy comes out and all the kids come running from the swing set back and everyone's celebrating and getting all the candy. Let me ask you a question. Who broke the piñata? Was it the final blow by the four-year-old, the one shot? Or was it the cumulative blows that everybody took hitting the piñata along the way that ended up eventually breaking it down? We all know the answer. It was the cumulative blows to that piñata, the cumulative repetitions that were breaking it down over and over even though you couldn't visibly see the progress.

And see, in life, most people will quit in their pursuit of their dream before the candy comes out because they don't see visible progress. Even though the whole time compound pounding is happening as you're moving from the awkward stage, you're doing the reps, you're course correcting, you're aware, now you're in the mechanical stage and you're course correcting and you're aware and you keep hitting the piñata and doing the reps of your life, of your dream. And then the natural stage. Most people will quit on their dream before the candy comes out even though progress is being made.

Most people quit one blow away from getting all the candy in life. My recommendation to you is, life is a lot like that piñata. You're making more progress than you think you are. Keep hitting the piñata of your life and know that as you do this, you're moving from stage to stage to stage and if you do it long enough, the metaphorical candy of whatever that candy is for you, the money, the success, the award, the recognition, the acknowledgement, the emotion, the relationship, the candy eventually comes out.

The question is, will you keep hitting the piñata of your life, doing the reps until the candy's there and will you be there to collect the candy and celebrate? From now on, whatever you're doing, go, this is okay. It's where I'm supposed to be. I've only done 10 of these. Of course, I'm still awkward or I've only done 45 of these. Hey Ed, how many does it take? It's different for different people. The question is, do you have the determination, the relentlessness, the resiliency to stay long enough to move through all three stages until you get paid?

The question just becomes this, are you determined enough to do the reps? Are you determined enough to do the course correction and have the awareness to move through the different stages? My wish for you is that you become natural as soon as possible. The sooner you do the reps, the sooner you do the course corrections, the sooner you have the self-awareness, the sooner you become natural and we're off to the races and having blissful success in our life. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far.

Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. We have all the links in our show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So I'm excited for today because I'm going to cover a topic a lot of you have asked us to cover. cover on the show, basically what we're going to go through today is how your habits deliver on your goals. So essentially it's got a little bit to do with goal setting, but delivered by the habits that we create.

I'm going to give you seven steps to making your goals a reality by delivering with them on habits that serve you. And that is one of the things that you've got to evaluate first before we get into the seven steps is, it's great to have goals and outcomes in our life, but if we don't develop habits that serve us and we don't have the ability to create new habits, we're probably going to produce the same exact results over and over again. You know, about 90% of our choices and thoughts every day are identical, and so that's why as a consequence we produce the same external results.

In life, it's much more important to be focused on what's going on inside of us as opposed to what's going on outside of us, because everything once it leaves us is outside of our control. We can control the things that are inside of us, which are our habits. And the reason habits matter so deeply, I like James Clear's work on this and other people's, including mine in my book, The Power of One More, I have a whole chapter in there of how to develop healthy habits that serve you.

But one of the reasons habits matter is not just our day-to-day life, but under pressure in life, under stress, we always respond reflexively. And so it's our reflex to respond habitually. So there's a lot of autopilot in life, that's true, it's why sometimes you can be driving and not even be thinking, and just you kind of just pull right off the freeway, go to your house, take the left, take the right, you remember how you got home sometimes, because you're on autopilot, you're on habit mode.

But under stress and pressure, we respond to these habits that are ours. And so how do we develop these new habits that serve us as opposed to the ones that don't? You show me your habits, and I'm probably going to show you your life, I'm going to show you the difference that separates people is what they do habitually. And so we're going to talk about how to shift that a little bit. So one thing a habit has to have to exist is conditioning, meaning you've got to be able to do it over and over and over again, so that it can replace something that was there before.

And so for me, when I look at an athlete, for example, that's very, very successful, if I deduce what their habits are, and I develop the same habits, I've got a higher likelihood of producing the same results as that athlete, if I behave in a certain way. In other words, there's a consequence for choices in behavior, and when we choose the right behavior over and over again, success is really not that difficult, it's a collection of habits. And so if you wonder whether or not, you know, you can be successful or achieve your goals, that's really not the question.

The question is whether you'll invest the time to get serious about changing the habits that would deliver on those goals. Goals without an attached habit are really useless, right? But actually having great habits with no goal is also useless. You'll just be going through the motions without producing a result. This episode is sponsored by Rowe. A lot of people assume GLP-1's cost a fortune, and that assumption keeps them from even looking into treatment. But the reality is, GLP-1 medications may be more affordable and accessible than people realize.

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Number one thing with your goals, write this down, specificity. You've got to get more specific with what exactly it is that you want. Imagine if you were going to invest in a company, and they put their annual report out, and they go, yeah, we want to be profitable, or we made some money. Would you invest in that company? You would want to know specifically exactly what was the top-line revenue, what was the bottom-line revenue, what are your expenses, what's your forecast, specifically that you believe the dollar amount you're going to hit the street.

You would never invest in a company that did not give you specific markers for what they've done and could not tell you specifically what they want to get done and what their goals and outcomes are. Yet most human beings are wandering generalities about what they want. I want to be more fit. I want to be happy. I want to be wealthy. I want to make a lot of money. What does that mean? You wouldn't invest in a company that didn't have those types of specifics, yet every single day we're walking around wondering whether success will invest in us.

Success is not going to invest in you if you're general. By the way, your mind cannot go to work, your brain cannot go to work on processing a nonspecific general result. It doesn't know how to do it. It's got to be specific. I want 10 of those. I want to weigh 125 or 186. I want 12% body fat or whatever it might be. I want $100,000 in income. I'm going to have five meetings. These are specific things, then you can build a habit backwards from them.

I'm talking about even the people that I coach that pay me a significant amount of money. When we first encounter, I was working with a brand new person just the other day and he said, I just want a win. I just want to win. I said, okay, what's that win look like? He goes, I want F you money. I said, okay, cool. I love that. I have a passion for it. What's F you money? He didn't have an answer. That's why he doesn't have F you money.

He doesn't have it. The reason he doesn't have it is he has never gotten specific about what that looks like. There's a power to getting specific. Right when you begin to get specific, your brain wants to develop habits to deliver on that outcome if you repeat it over and over again. Why? Because your brain is constantly trying to conserve energy. It's always trying to create a habit so that it doesn't have to think so that under pressure, it'll just be reflexive. Okay? So your brain wants to form a habit to serve your specific outcome.

But when that outcome is nonspecific and general, it'll always revert back on producing the nothingness that that goal is delivered by the habits you already have. So specificity is critical. But what I'm saying to you is when you review your goals, whether that be for the year, the month, or the day, I want to have a good day. What does that mean clearly? The more clear, the more specific you are, the higher probability is that you'll deliver on it and that you will begin to create the habits that support it and reinforce it on a regular basis.

Because remember, habits need conditioning. You developed this habit you have because you conditioned it over and over again. And the only way that it's going to get replaced with a better one is by conditioning it over and over again. And the only way you're going to condition it is if it's specific. If it's specific. Okay? So please, today I want to have a, I want to make 10 contacts, then it's 10. Or if I'm going to sit on, I'm making it up, you're going to do curls in the gym, right?

I want to do 10 curls at 30 pound dumbbells, whatever they might be specific. And we're gonna talk about this later, measurable and tangible. Okay? And so whatever that is, you got to have an exact amount you want so that we can produce an exact habit. Then the reticular activating system in your brain knows how important this is to you and will begin to find the resources, the people, places, and the things that have always been around you, but that you've been oblivious to before to deliver on it.

In the power of one more in my book, I talk about the matrix. I call the reticular activating system, the RAS in your brain is the matrix because it's sort of what reveals to you what's important and can actually slow things down when you're an athlete or create the habits that you need to deliver on it. So this part of our brain is really critically important to program it. It can't program on a nonspecific general thing. And I'm going to tell you, 99% of people, even the people who are one-on-one coached by me, aren't specific and it's the major part of my work with them.

Even athletes go, I want to win the fight. Specifically how? Specifically when? I want to have a good game tonight. Specifically what does that mean? Three for four? Two hits? You want to shoot 68? Exactly what does it look like so that we can build the habits to back that up? And it might not even be that they want to score a number. It might be that I want to hit 10 crisp golf shots right on the button. Ten of them today. Right? Great. Or I want to only have 25 putts.

Great. These are specific things that we begin to adjust. You'd be amazed at how much your brain wants to reserve energy. It doesn't want to think. It wants to build a habit so it doesn't have to think anymore and expend energy on it. So that's the good news. So specificity. Number two. What's the catalyst step? Just write down catalyst step. See I think that at everything, James Clear has this thing where he talks about the two minute rule. The two minute idea where if you could just get something done for two minutes it's the beginning of a habit that can give you the catalyst to success.

I call mine a catalyst step. Meaning if you can just do one thing, often times there's one move that if you make it, it can handle seven other things. So ask yourself, what's the catalyst step I could take today? So like there's this notion when you go to the gym, some people say showing up is half the battle. No, it's not. It's not. It's not half the battle. However, it is part of the battle. And so it can be considered a catalyst step just getting to the gym.

That's not half the battle. It's not even 20% of the battle. But it is part of the battle. So perhaps a catalyst step is getting to the gym. Maybe a catalyst step is in your business life that you're going to pick the phone up five times in a given day or type seven emails. But it's some catalyst. You do something that's a catalyst to create change. John Maxwell talks in his book about the law of the catalyst that is a person in an organization. They're a catalyst for change.

So ask yourself, have you got a specific goal of I want to make $100,000 this year or I want to weigh 180 pounds or whatever it might be? Ask yourself the next question. Am I specific enough? And what's the catalyst habit that I would need? What's the catalyst habit? For example, for me, my energy was very, very low years ago. And I decided the catalyst habit that I could control was drinking a gallon of water a day. That was my outcome. Follow me. My outcome was one gallon of water a day.

Okay. However, that was a habit that was difficult to create. So I said to myself, what's the catalyst step that could get me in the door? And that was this. What's the catalyst step? I left a one liter bottle of water next to my bed, just a liter for when I woke up in the morning and my catalyst habit was when I woke up, I drank that liter of water before I did anything else. That was a catalyst step to get me towards my outcome that was specific, which was drinking a gallon for the day, which was to live on my overall goal, which was to feel more energy and health and vitality in my life.

So that's an example of a catalyst step. What is a catalyst that you could do to get you into the game, to get you moving? Much like James Clear's two minute idea. Okay. These are huge things because you can start going step by step. It might be just getting to the gym. It might be ordering that microphone for the podcast. You're going to start just ordering the microphone, right? That's a catalyst step. Why does that matter? Because deliberation is delay. Strategy is oftentimes like strategic procrastination in the sense that what you're doing is you're going into all this planning phase, but really it's, it's mocking.

You need more planning. You need more time. You need more strategy. That's all an excuse not to take action. And what I'm saying to you is I cannot teach you how to drive a parked car. The most important thing you can do is to just get going. You've got to write an entire book. Maybe the catalyst step is you're going to write the first sentence of the book. I had a friend of mine when I was struggling writing The Power of One More, I just couldn't get decided on what I wanted the book to be about exactly.

He said, forget writing the book. He said, write out what you want the chapters to be first. You don't have to even have a title of the book yet. What would the chapters be? And so I wrote the chapters out, just the titles of the chapters, not what was in the chapters, not what I was going to say about them, not the content, not the quotes, not the title of the book, not even the flow of the chapters. Just what would the chapters be? And what that did is it was a catalyst step to get me out of delay, to get me out of procrastination, to get me away from deliberating about it or strategizing about it or planning about it.

It got me in motion. And then I wrote those chapters out. I went, no, that wouldn't be the order. I'll flip this. And then the next morning I'll go, no, that wouldn't be a chapter that could fit in that one, but I'm going to make this a chapter. And then all of a sudden I started recording audios that would start in the book. But the catalyst habit that moved me was the idea of writing the chapters out. The catalyst habit of drinking the gallon a day was to get the one liter of water by my bed, right?

And to stop deliberating, stop delaying, stop strategy sessions that end up being procrastination sessions. Okay. So huge, huge deal. Third, this is a big one. Identify the biggest obstacle or distraction to you getting the goal done. What will likely be the biggest obstacle or distraction? Because really oftentimes in life, it's not about just adding a new habit for a goal. It's about eliminating one that's obstructing our outcome. So part of what we've already created is a catalyst habit. So it's creating a new habit. The third thing then is identify what the obstacle is or the biggest distraction.

So could that distraction be Netflix? Could it be your phone? Could it be a particular room you're in, right? Could it be a person? Could it be a thought? Right? Could it be something else you're doing that's no longer important to you, that's taking up the time that is required to do this new thing you want to do. But if you don't identify what's obstructing you, what the distraction is, oftentimes you will revert back. But you're a pretty powerful person immediately when you've got specificity to your outcomes.

Right? That's a big deal. You've developed a catalyst stepper habit and now you've removed and identified the biggest obstacle or distraction? That's a huge thing. And maybe the biggest obstacle or distraction is your lack of self-confidence and you need to immerse yourself in personal development as you get going. But to some extent, if you can, like for me, I know for the most part, my distraction is getting into doing things that I call in the small. I get into the small things. I get into the weeds too much.

Instead of staying in the big and creating the big things and doing the big things that move things. I would say also that prior to the change I've made recently with, I've had some health challenges so I've gotten off of social media. One of the best things I've done in a long time for my physical and mental health. But also it's eliminated a huge distraction. You can't even begin to imagine how much time you have when you're not in a stupid phone looking at stuff that doesn't mean anything.

It's really incredible. Or it doesn't even make you feel good anyway. So that phone was maybe it's the news. Right? Maybe it's your obsessing over the news. It could be a TV show you're too caught up in. If you wonder whether or not you can build a new habit or not. Or you can become obsessed with something. Think about the last time you fell in love with some TV show on Netflix or Amazon and you streamed 18 of them in a row. So you're pretty good at staying focused, aren't you?

Right? You got pretty specific with what you wanted to do. But what that stuff can become is becomes the obstacle or distraction and not the thing that leads to our success. And so identify that. Number four. Success leaves footprints. Listen. There's a pathway already there. There's no hacks or shortcuts to success. But there kind of are. I was getting a new phone yesterday and the young man that worked in that store is 20 years old and he's got a baby. I got to know him pretty well as we were sitting there.

It ended up being a few hours of getting a new phone. And I just loved him. And he had so many questions for me. You know, about success in life. And he just wants to be somebody so badly. Like he's got a fire burning in him. That I didn't see with other people that worked in there. But I did see in him. You know what I mean? That special one. He's got a fire. He wants to be somebody. He wants his life to be awesome. He wants to compete.

He wants to be successful. He wants to be wealthy. Like many of you do. And he said, is there any tips, Mr. Milet, or hacks, or shortcuts? I said, you know what? There's no shortcuts to success. And I said, well, there actually is. Success leaves footprints. He goes, what do you mean? I said, well, the quickest way is to find somebody who's already done what you want to do and get as close to them as you can. If getting as close to them as you can is reading their book, then you're closer than when you didn't read the book.

If it's listening to their podcast, listen to their podcast. And maybe you're closer to them there. Not just me. Anybody. I'm not necessarily saying that with me. Or I said, as a young person, see if you can't go to an event or a seminar they have. And best, go to work for them. If you can go to work. He goes, I don't know what industry I want to get into. What do you think? And I named a few different industries. And I said, like he said, well, maybe I'll get into real estate.

I said, well, if it were me and I was going to get into real estate, I'd find out who the top broker in this town is or in this area is. And I would go to work for them. And I'd work for as little as I have to work for to pay my bills, to get up close and to learn. And I told him, I said, there's this great Chinese proverb. And I said, the proverb goes like this. If you want to know the road ahead, ask those coming back because they've got footprints they've left.

And so success leaves clues, but it leaves footprints, the exact steps. So, you know, I've been trying to take my health and my morning routine to the next level. And I used to do a whole bunch of different stuff, tons of different supplements. And then I found all in one in a drink with IM8. IM8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine. Finally, once and for all 16 supplements replaced 90 ingredients across nine major organ systems in one drink. You can have all these supplements for $2 and 61 cents a day.

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Take. So go find somebody who has taken those steps and learn from them and duplicate it and make it your own. Don't copy them, model them. There's a difference when you copy someone and you become like a knockoff version of them and it almost looks like you're doing an impression of another person. I've watched a lot of people do that. That comes across inauthentic, not very congruent, not real because we're all unique human beings or their own talents and nuances and idiosyncrasies. And so when you just verbatim copy somebody, it's just a weaker knockoff version.

But modeling somebody is slightly different. That's learning from them and then making it your own to fit your personality, your intensity level, your talents and giftedness. So model someone who's left the footprints and that's much faster way to get to your goals and the thing that you should be modeling in them are their habits or is their habits? What are their day to day habits they have that have delivered on the results they've gotten? Because oftentimes we're not sure what the habit is we need to form, but somebody else does know.

And so whether that's reading their book, listening to their podcast, going to their event, if they have one or going to work for them. And for the record, I'm not talking about me. I mean, I wouldn't be the person to teach you real estate. I'm just giving you an example. So whatever that industry is, find the best person in it and get as much information from them as you possibly can. With the advent of social media, that is one of the great gifts that you could follow somebody who's in a particular industry or craft you want.

And people are pretty free with giving away information now for free on their podcast, on their social media. So you can begin to learn from them. Number five, depth perception. I think most people don't realize that they're much closer to their dream and their goal than they realize. And so most people don't have a lack of vision or a goal. What they have is a depth perception problem. They think they're further away than they are from the goal because they think it's so far away. And by the way, it could be years away, but you think it's really far away because you think it's so far away.

You behave like it. You've created thoughts, patterns and belief systems that will always keep it there that far away because you think it's so far away. And it's a lie. The truth of the matter is you're probably one decision away, one mentor away, one new habit away, one new strategy away, one new catalyst habit away from completely changing your life. And so there's a depth perception issue for most people, which is they believe these things they want in their life are further. That doesn't mean it doesn't take a long time.

Doesn't mean you don't need aggressive patience where you're aggressive, but patient. It does mean though you should be in a hurry. Not enough people are in a hurry. I mean, a lot of people, they're too casual. They walk too slow. They talk too slow. They don't really believe anything's coming around the corner that's going to change their life. So as a consequence, they don't look for it. But what if you lived in anticipation that you're going to meet that next person or that next account or that one client that's going to give you tons of referrals or that one idea or that one thought or that one mentor or that one relationship or that one emotion, that one strategy, what if you lived in anticipation of that, that your depth perception change?

You said, I'm one away on the power of one more away. Then your reticular activating system goes to work on finding it because you believe it's true and it's important to you if you're oblivious to it and you think it's not going to happen forever. Those very things, people, places, thoughts, et cetera, could present themselves to you and you will not see them. I always give this analogy, which I know you've heard before, but if you ever buy a new car, it becomes important to your RAS.

I bought a Tesla once and I remember everywhere on the road, I could see Tesla's after I bought it. I mean, I'm driving my family crazy. There's another one. There's a red one. There's a white one. Other side of the freeway, three lanes over. There goes another, right? You've all had that happen. Why? Because they became important to me because I owned one. All of a sudden my RAS reveals to me even things out of the corner of my eye over here. Those things were always there.

Those Tesla's were always there. Why didn't I see them before? Because I didn't have them as important to me and I didn't expect to. So if your depth perception is that it's years and years away, these Tesla's of your life, you will miss. And these Tesla's come in the forms of the one idea, the one person, the one client, the one relationship, the one thought, the one emotion. You miss them. They were delivered to you. You didn't hear them. You didn't see them or you didn't feel them because they weren't important to you and you didn't believe strongly.

Your RAS is a prover. It's going to prove you right. It's going to find the things. It's almost like you have a belief system. It's like the top of a table. What the RAS is trying to do, the RAS is trying to find references to prove you right, to put legs under it until it's stable. And then once it's stable, that's why, like if you're debating politics with somebody or something like that, they had an opinion and then their brain went to find the references to prove them right.

And now they're like an immovable object and you shouldn't even be talking to them. You know what I'm talking about, right? So their RAS reinforced it and then their algorithm reinforces it. And then all their friends reinforce, they got all these legs under the table. They're an immovable object because their RAS is going to prove them right. So if you strongly believe your goals and dreams and vision are right around the corner that you're the power of one more away than your RAS goes to find those Teslas.

But if you believe it's far away, it doesn't see them even when they present themselves to you. And that's why some people become mega successful and other people don't. It's not about talent. It's almost never about talent. It has a lot to do with our mindset, our mental programming, our vision, and our goals and our habits. One of the things that deliver on a goal is the habit of accurate depth perception, accurately using your RAS to find things. And that just makes your goals important to you.

See, go all the way back to number one. If I have non-specific goals, I want to get in shape. I want to be wealthy. What's my RAS going to find to process that? Nothing. But if it's, I'm going to weigh 180 pounds and I'm going to be whatever shredded all of a sudden your RAS listens to the article on the new protein that's out or sees the new workout or introduces you to a trainer or a workout person or a book on something. They were always there, but now you're seeing them because they're important to you.

Okay. And of course, maybe it creates new associations for you, make new friends that are in that space and you're elevated because of that. So depth perception matters. The RAS matters. Here's the last thing I'll tell you on that. I don't know. I actually know exactly what the data is on this, but there's a bunch of data that suggests that anything a human being gets focused on for a year, they become in the top 5% in the world at that craft. Isn't that fascinating? The power of a human being who becomes obsessively focused over a year or two ends up being in the top 5% of whatever that is that they choose to get obsessed with.

You could have never, ever, like I'll give an example. I never had ridden a horse in my life till about once when I was a little boy, but I knew nothing about horses a year or two ago, like literally nothing, maybe three years ago. And then I started riding. I didn't know the difference between a bridle and a halter. I didn't know how to lunge a horse. I didn't know what posting was. I didn't know about hooves. I didn't know about, you know, the veterinary things, the chiropractic stuff with horses.

I didn't understand the reigning aspects, using your legs as pressure, all these different things. But I became pretty obsessed with horses and riding horses. And although I'm not a great rider, I'm probably in the top 5%. Why? Because 90% of people don't know anything, right? So I've eliminated them right off the top. And then just the fact that, you know, I've gotten okay at riding there. I'm not ever going to be a roper or a jockey or any of those other kinds of things. Those are the top one or 2%.

I'm not going to get to that. But you know what? If I were 18 years old or 15 years old, maybe I could have got to the top one or 2%, but you can get to the top five at about anything with obsessive focus. I mean, if you know nothing right now, nothing at all about playing chess, never played in your life, but you came obsessed with playing chess, the rules of the game. You played it over and over again. You came, you read the books, you studied the pros.

You may never be the grand champion, but you can get better than 95% of the people at it. And so don't underestimate total immersion in something and how great you could get at whatever it is, fitness, exercise, reading, podcasting, writing a book, starting a business, getting into any industry. I believe you could get into any industry as long as it takes advantage of some of your talents and giftedness. And if you become obsessed in that industry, you get the right mentor. You get specific on your goals.

You eliminate the distractions. You have the catalyst habits in your life. You have the right depth perception. I believe you can get to the top 5% of that industry. Let me say that to you again. You could choose any new career. This is my opinion with rare exception, as long as you have some giftedness towards that craft or proclivity for it and start from scratch. And in a year or two, if you're obsessed with learning and growing and trying and doing all the things we're talking about here, I believe you can get to the top 5% of that industry.

I believe the data suggests this. It may take a year or two, but you start to eliminate all the unfocused people. First off you eliminate all the people not in that industry, then all the people who quit, then all the people who can't deal with a failure, then this, then that. And you start getting pretty darn good. I think you get to the top 5% and then from there it's a dog fight to who the best in the world is at anything that requires hard work, refining of the game, good fortune, blessing, momentum, but top 5% you can get there.

And I think you ought to walk in with that type of confidence. I'm going to get into real estate. You know what? In a year or two, I think I can get to the top 5%. I'm going to get into finance. I'm going to get into writing books, whatever it might be. I think you get to the top 5% if you do these things. I can't promise you that, but the data suggests just about anything. Something as goofy as riding horses part time, you get to the top 5%.

You eliminate all the people who don't do it, who aren't even trying, who've quit and you slowly move your way up the ranks. Number six, where performance is measured, performance improves. Now that you've got your goals and you've got some of these habits that you're reinforcing, okay, you have to measure it. You have to measure your performance or that of other people. But let's just take you. You got to measure regularly. If you're changing that way, we got to weigh in regularly. You do your body fat regularly.

You got to diagnose your workouts. Are you getting stronger? Are you getting weaker? body parts are getting better. If you're starting to write a book, you've got to measure the progress of writing the book. If you should be having written 30% of the book by now, it needs to be measured over that period of time. If you're going to make $100,000 this year, you should be at XYZ through the year. If you're going to save a million dollars in your lifetime, you're measuring the amount of savings you have.

If you're not measuring a performance regularly, it will not improve. But when you do measure something regularly, typically it improves. Go back to investing in that company. You want that company to be reporting to you if you've invested in it over time of how they're doing. Because if they don't, it's unlikely they're going to improve. Human beings, when they are measured, they improve. So whether you lead people or are leading yourself, one of the greatest gifts you could give yourself is by challenging yourself to have your performance measured.

The numbers matter. The leader's board matter. The scoreboard matters. You've got to have the courage to look at the scoreboard of your life. Look at the scoreboard of your weight loss. Look at the scoreboard of your new business. Look at the scoreboard of your wealth. The scoreboard of your relationship. Where it's measured, it improves. When you hide from measuring it, it's not going to improve. So you've got to measure it. And lastly, seven, you have to have an appropriate celebration and recognition when you do achieve a goal along the way.

See, listen, your brain needs to be rewarded appropriately when you achieve something. So if you, a lot of people, I did this when I was young, I would just achieve and go, okay, on to the next one, on to the next one. That's a formula for burnout because your brain eventually goes, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm not getting anything out of it. I'm getting no dopamine out of this. If I don't get any dopamine, I don't want to do it again. So you've got to give yourself appropriate celebrations and recognition.

If you're leading other people, appropriate celebration, appropriate recognition for their achievements. And I'll talk about appropriate lastly in a minute. But what has to happen is your brain has to say, I got a reward. I got my dopamine hit. The good news is all the data tells us that we get more dopamine as we approach the finish line towards a goal as we actually get when we get there. So just the pursuit of greatness can give you the dopamine that you're looking for. But when you get there, for most people, it falls off the charts.

It's like a crash. It wasn't what I thought it would be. I'm on to the next one. I'll celebrate the next time. And you're training yourself to not really want to keep doing it over and over again. So you got to have appropriate celebration and you got to do recognition of yourself. Now, on the other side of that, I've seen people with completely over the top celebration. They hit their best month ever in sales and they go to vacation for two weeks just when they've got momentum going.

That's insane to me. You just created momentum. What you're doing is destroying your success, sabotaging it. So when you get back, you're back to ground zero again. So most people's problem is not that they don't appropriately celebrate a little bit. It's that they overly celebrate. They celebrate too much. They flinch. They recognize because as they approach their finish line, they didn't set up a new goal and a new outcome that stretches them out even further. This is a major mistake. I got there and I just didn't know.

As you're approaching the finish line, get there. Don't move it. Don't move the finish line because if you move the finish line, you never get there. You never get the dopamine. But when you, the celebration, get there, celebrate and move it forward. What's the next thing? What's the next number? Where are we going next? And again, it's got to be specific. We got to eliminate distractions. We need a catalyst habit. We need these other things. But please appropriately celebrate. The 20% of you won't celebrate at all and you're eventually going to burn out and train yourself not to go for it.

The other ones over celebrate. They take too much time in between, right? They sabotage the very results they got. Usually most winners, real achievers don't celebrate enough and people that are always going to struggle in their life. Man, I remember this just coming up in business. I like you. So you just had your best month ever and you took four days off or you just had your best quarter ever and you stopped doing all the things that created that quarter. Like you think you're done. Like you think it's all going to work out now that you're over the hump, that you don't have to work like that anymore.

Successful people do what they did to get there and more the next time. Unsuccessful people stop doing what it required for them to get there in the first place and they do less. I never understood that. Let me say that to you again. I want you to evaluate. You just hit your sales goal. You just hit your financial goal. What did you do to get there? And what you did to get there, do it again and more to produce the higher result. It's going to require more.

But what most people think is they think, oh, I got there. I don't have to do that anymore. I've got momentum in a different position now. Things are okay. I'm past the scary phase. I don't think so. You got to do more than what it required. And that's why you'll see great athletes. I think of like the Kobe Bryant's and their work ethic of the 3 a.m. workout. Everybody on the team went to practice. He'd do that 3 a.m. workout, then go to the team practice, then come back after lunch, then again.

And that's after winning championships. That's after the titles. That's after the recognition. And that's why he was Kobe Bryant and other very talented players, names we don't remember. They won a championship or they got to the NBA, but for some reason they overly celebrated and they didn't re-up their game. Here's what the great ones know. That the habits that got me there will keep me here and I'll have to create new habits and better habits to get me to the next level. The people that lose abandon the very habits that got them there in the first place.

Is that crazy? Think about that again. If habits are what are delivering on it, you finally got your habits right. You finally produced the results and you stop the habit. You somehow think that it's just going to keep going. This is the delusion that's happening to people. And this is why most people are successful for a while and then they're not. And the reason they're not long-term is they stop doing what got them there. Really successful people say, these are the habits that got me here.

What's the new, even better improved habit that would get me higher and better? And so that's how you got to look at it. Upgrading your habits to get to the next level. Not stop doing the things that got you there. And then the last thing I just want to kind of give you the, maybe the warning of someone who's a little bit further down the road. Something that happens to us insidiously when we achieve or when we get better. Ironically, getting better can actually cause us to be very hard on ourselves.

Most people will never tell you this. Because what happens is when you grow and get better as a person, you begin to look back at the former version of yourself and judge it and judge them and decisions or choices you made. Because now you've acquired more wisdom and information and maturity, maybe experience. We have a tendency to judge other people or judge ourselves unfavorably. When in fact us three or four or five years ago didn't have this level of experience. Didn't have that level of wisdom.

Didn't have the information or the maturity. So to judge yourself for lack of success in the past or failures in the past isn't fair to you because you didn't have all that wisdom. You didn't have the information. You hadn't been down the road. And also to judge other people who have not acquired your level of wisdom yet or information or experience isn't a healthy thing either. Because someday if they go down the road you've gone down, they'll acquire that as well. So just be guarded against judgment of your former self or judgment of other people so that you can keep that mindset.

I've been saying this lately so much. There's this great Gandhi quote that says I will not allow you to walk through my mind with your dirty feet. And one of the things that have the dirtiest feet in life is judgment and assessment of ourselves or other people. It's one of the worst things you can do for your mindset. And so sometimes when we begin to achieve, we become more judgmental of other people because they're not where we are or friends of ours that haven't come along the same journey or we become judgmental of our former self.

And none of that judgment is healthy nor justified and does not serve you. And so make sure you protect yourself from judgment as well. Before we start the interview with my next guest, just want to remind you all that you can subscribe to the show on YouTube or follow the show on Apple or Spotify. We have all the links in our show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. Welcome back to Max Outt, everybody. My guest today is a very unique man.

He has an ability to communicate on a multitude of topics that I think are relevant for this time with most of you and what you're going through in your lives. And so he's an expert on leadership. I find his conversations about faith fascinating, belief being positive. I find his conversations about leadership the best I've heard. So he's really an expert and I think in multiple areas, but has just a very unique gift to communicate his thoughts. And so today's going to be remarkable for all of you already know that in advance.

So John Gordon, welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having me. I think the world of you, I love your work and I just think you're amazing. Brother, I got to say one thing I didn't say in the intro just because we'll talk about it later. This man's author, I think it's 23 books. It's probably more than that now. And they're so good. I think, you know, I was telling you as we were starting that I'm very familiar with your work. I've read a lot of your books.

I love the Energy Bus, The Garden I Love, your new book, Relationship Grit. We can cover all of this stuff. But what fascinated me about you, when I was doing research, is you're this super positive dude. People think I am too. And privately, people that know me very well know that doesn't come natural to me. I'm sort of a natural, I don't know if it's a natural, but like I could very easily gravitate to be a very pessimistic person. I have to work on being positive.

It's sort of a muscle I built. And I've heard you said the same about you. Is that really true? A guy writes all this stuff about being positive? It is true. It's ironic that I do this work, because I am not naturally positive. I grew up in Long Island, New York, in a Jewish-Italian family, a lot of food, a lot of guilt, a lot of wine, a lot of whining. And so my mom was Jewish. Dad was an Italian, New York City police officer, undercover narcotics.

And so he was a badass and a loving guy, but just probably one of the most negative people on the planet. You get up in the morning, hey, good morning, daddy, and say, what's so good about it? And his son turns out to be you. Yes. So growing up in that family, you grow up with more of a negative mindset and not a lot of positivity. So I think naturally, I just naturally have always gone towards the negative. And I've had to work really hard at being positive.

But it's actually led me to do this work because I want to be more positive. My wife threatened to leave me years ago. I was 31 years old. Life was falling apart. And she said, if you don't change, we're over. I am sick of this. I'm not going to deal with your negativity anymore. You're ruining our marriage. You're ruining our life. That's it. And so she gave me that ultimatum. She brought the hammer down. And that really began the journey of saying, OK, I got to work at changing this.

That's bizarre. It's amazing to me because it's really what you're known for. Kind of I am, too. I think it gives people hope because I'd go to events, even personal development events. Everyone's jumping up and down. And I'm like, this is just not me. And over time, I built, I think a lot of people that listen to Personal Moment are like, I don't know if I'm like all these people. Maybe they're just different than me. We're not different than you. We've built some skills up. We've had some breakthroughs in our thinking for both you and I.

Our faith is central in that. Is there something specific you started to do? Like, could you, like, I read about the, there's these five D's you teach. It's sort of interconnected to this. Give us some, some tactical, some granular stuff maybe on this topic. Well, what happened to me years ago is I actually started to take a walk of gratitude. So every day I would take a thank you walk. I read that, yeah, I read that you can't be stressed and thankful at the same time.

So right after my wife almost left me, I started taking these walks every day. It was like a 10 minute walk, then a 20 minute walk, and ultimately an hour walk. And so I would just say what I'm thankful for. And when you're doing that, you're flooding your brain with these emotions and this positive energy that uplifts you rather than the stress hormones that solely drain you. So it's your brain and your body that you're doing this with. And over time, right, you create a fertile mind that's ready for great things to happen.

Do it one day. It's not going to do a whole lot, but do it for a week, right? Think about your mind like a garden. And so you do it for a week. You weed the negative, you feed the positive. A month. The garden starts to look pretty good. Do it for a year. Wow. It starts to look amazing. And now for me, it's been over 15 years that I've been doing this. And so gratitude has been the number one thing. Now those walks turned into walks of prayer.

They turned the walks of faith where I started to just pray, surrender, trust. It's on those walks. The ideas for these books came to me and through me, I started to write these books, right? So it really changed my life. Just taking that time every day for those walks. Now, I also believe you got to feed the positive on a daily basis. And the best advice I've ever heard is from Dr. James Gills, the only person on the planet to complete six double Ironman triathlons. That's a double Ironman, which means you do an Ironman, a day later do another one.

And the last time he did, he was 59 years old. So he was asked how he did it. He said this, I've learned to talk to myself instead of listen to myself. He said, if I listen, you know, I hear all the fear, all the negativity, all the doubt, all the reasons why I can't finish this race. But if I talk to myself, I could feed myself with the words and the encouragement that I need to keep on moving forward. Now he would memorize and recite scripture.

That's what fueled him. But I tell people all the time, like, you're not a believer. You can still share encouraging words for yourself and to yourself that allows you to move forward instead of listening to all the negative thoughts. And you know, and I know those negative thoughts are lies, right? They would, they're not something we would choose for ourselves. Negative thoughts do not come from you. When I work with professional athletes, I ask them all the time, hey, do negative thoughts come from you? And they say, yeah, yeah.

I said, really? Who would ever choose to have a negative thought? Do you ever choose a negative thought? And they go, no, I wouldn't. And so if you wouldn't choose it, where's it coming from? And so then you can teach them that's coming from consciousness. It comes from a spiritual place. It's a spiritual battle. And those thoughts, just like when we're dreaming or having a nightmare, we're not choosing those thoughts. When you're driving your car and a thought pops in your head, you didn't choose that thought.

But when those negative thoughts come in, you do not have to listen to them. Don't believe the lies. What you want to do is speak truth to the lies. And that's what I've done over the years. That, like, literally, that truth changed my life. Speaking truth, not listening to the negative thoughts, not allowing those thoughts to condemn me, to hold me back, not allowing those thoughts. thoughts to keep me from being who God has called me to be. And in doing that, you walk in that truth, you walk in that power, and that changes everything.

Boy, that's so, I want to unpack that. That was, that's one of those things, sometimes on the show, I've had this tendency of, okay, go rewind, like go listen to that again. Like, that's a double listener, one. A couple things you said there, I just want to kind of confirm and tell you that, one, I've always said, you know, you don't have to believe everything you think. You know, everything you're thinking is true. The second thing is, when you're on these walks and you're beginning to take control of what you're looking for, it's part of your brain is, and I know you know this, but I'm just sharing this with the audience, called the reticular activating system, which is, it's the filter of your life.

It's what you see things through. So if you were growing up in a pessimistic environment where the negatives are, you've been programmed to see, hear, feel, think things that are negative. When you begin to take control of these thoughts, these words you say, you're literally reprogramming the filter for your life. It's a very real thing. It's changing the matrix of your life. And God gave you that reticular activating system, so it's connected to your spirituality. The third thing I just wanna tell you, brother, it's so awesome, is talk.

One thing I've never shared on the show, but I talk to myself. I mean, like, out loud, like a crazy person. When you were a little boy or a little girl, most of you, you talked to yourself a lot. Like, if I walked in your bedroom and you were alone, you know this, you're all nodding. You were talking to yourself. There's power in that. Children understand that. There's a spiritual connection to the spoken word. It's a prayer. To this day, I still do it. I gotta tell you this really quick, and I'll go to my next question, but it just happened.

And I do this a lot. I mean, like, like a little boy, I talk to myself still, like a crazy person. I'll even interview myself. I know that sounds nuts, but it's, I take control of my words. I'm at a gas station about three weeks ago. I'm pumping gas, and I went into my little thing where I'm talking to me. There's this guy that pulls up in a car, and he's staring at me. I'm not paying any attention. I'm still talking to myself. And the guy that walks by me looks at me and goes, Ed?

I'm in the middle of talking to myself. Literally, like a delusional person. He's thinking, and it was a good friend of mine from college. We hadn't seen each other in 25 years. He's like, I'm so proud of what you're doing. How you doing, brother? I'm like, this dude just literally caught me with the proverbial pants down of talking to myself, but I don't give a crap. It works. And so I want to acknowledge what John said there. What, you've written so many books on so many things, but I guess I want to ask you, in that, the thinking realm, but as it connects to leadership, you mentioned a minute ago, John speaks to all kinds, you know, Dabo Sweeney, Clemson football, who I think, you know, he and Saban arguably are the two greatest, you know, Urban Meyer, my good friend, if he's listening to this, you're there too, Urban, but you're not active.

So Dabo Sweeney is arguably the greatest college football coach in the world, one of the two. You work with the Niners. You've worked with all kinds of different professional sports teams. What is something about a guy like Dabo Sweeney or these elite coaches, what do they do in their environment that's different that you see as a leader? It's the way they build their culture and it's the way that they lead. I mean, you cannot separate the leader from the culture. It's the leader that drives the culture.

So who stirs the pot determines what is in the pot and it's the love that he puts into it. It's the energy, it's the passion, it's the drive, it's the quest for excellence that leads that program and that creates success. Like Dabo is incredible, one of the greatest leaders I've ever been around, not just a football coach, but a leader and he leads with such optimism and belief and faith. When he got that job, he literally brought in two signs to his meeting. One was believe and the other one was I can't with the T crossed out.

He knew that Clemson always had talent, but they didn't have belief and so he was able to instill that belief in his program and after every practice, he gives a speech to his team. It's like a brainwashing session where every day he's like, we're the best, we're gonna do this and he's always instilling belief in his team. So leadership is a transfer of belief and so every day he's transferring his belief to his team and then you can see how they start to believe over time.

It's incredible. Now he also leads with love and accountability. Like that's essential. The greatest leaders lead with both love and accountability. The combination of the two. Too much accountability, not enough love. You're always driving, you're always pushing and a lot of leaders do that and eventually you will burn your team out and they will tune you out and so you have to make sure that you are leading with love first. They have to know you care about them, you're encouraging them, you believe in them, you're supporting them but then you hold them accountable to the standards, to the culture, to the quality of what you expect this program to be and this culture to be about.

And so it's the combination of the two. Again, too much love, you're a wonderful family, everyone gets along but you're not allowing them or causing them to be great. You're actually holding them back if you have too much love, not enough accountability. Because if you really love someone, you won't let them settle for anything but their best. So great coaches are always relentlessly focusing on the culture with their principles, their standards and they're constantly loving their players, investing in them and also holding them accountable to what they expect and the standards of the program.

Do you think in his case that, and in other leaders cases, he's bold about his faith with, I assume his team too because he does this publicly and I wonder if you just speak to that for a minute. I'm a real believer that people wanna know what you stand for and they don't even have to necessarily agree with what you stand for but they want you to be a definable person because I think it creates trust that they at least know who you are. Am I right?

Outside looking, it looks to me like he's bold about his faith with his team and they know what he stands for. He's very bold and they do know what he stands for and he does lead with his faith. And a lot of guys on the team aren't believers and that's okay with him. He's not here to convince anyone. He just lives his faith and they feel his faith. And so a lot of guys actually come to faith by being part of that program but he's not driving that in any inappropriate way but he does lead with faith and it is contagious and they know what he stands for.

I mean, he is very clear what he stands for and everyone thinks, okay, he's this positive guy and he's has fun all the time. No, there is a drive towards excellence with him and if you are not giving your best, he will call you out. I've been in meetings, I've been at practices where man, you wouldn't think that was very positive based on that practice but he is driving that person and that player and that team to be great. So he's got the combination. Oh, and also he's really big on relationships.

Like he says, hey, we have a process. Like Saban, Nick Saban, he has a process. Alabama is all about the process. Dabble's like, we have relationships that drive the process. We are relationships first and then that drives our process to be successful. So good, so good. I love the insight about special leaders and I know everyone, he's being humble but he's worked with that program for quite a long time. John has. So obviously, Coach Sweeney has a level of trust and belief in you that he's transferred as well.

You gotta tell him this because it's one of the best things I've ever heard in my life. I know it's not yours but in terms of being a leader, developing leaders, the carrot, egg, coffee bean. You got it, Thomas. Guys, get ready. Man, I just love this story. Damon West and I met through Dabbo Sweeney. Damon had just spoken to the team and I show up and Dabbo Sweeney said to me, hey, we just had this guy, Damon West, speak and he talked about the carrot, the egg and the coffee bean and Dabbo literally starts to reenact Damon's talk for me like in his office, it's hilarious.

And he starts going through it and as he starts teaching me the carrot, the egg and the coffee bean, I'm like, man, that is an incredible story. And so we decided to write a book based on that. I called up Damon, I said, hey, this needs to be a book. I had a vision for it immediately because Dabbo was telling me about it and it's really simple. When you put a carrot into boiling hot water, what happens to the carrot? It gets softened, it gets weakened by its environment.

You put an egg into boiling hot water, what happens to the egg? It gets hardened, right? And so we can be like the carrot when we are dealing with hot water, difficult situations, tough circumstances like we're dealing with right now. We can crumble from the inside out. We can allow the fear, the anxiety, the stress to get the best of us or we can become hardened, bitter, angry, frustrated, where we just don't care anymore. And a lot of people right now are just saying, I don't care, where they're just angry.

So we can be like both. We don't wanna be like either though. What we wanna be like is the coffee bean. You put that coffee bean into boiling hot water, what happens? It transforms the water into coffee. It transforms the environment. It's not impacted by its environment. Instead, it transforms its environment. And that is our opportunity, that is our power, that is our charge every day. As positive leaders, as positive teammates, we can impact the environments we're in. We don't have to be the victim of our circumstance.

I know you teach a lot about this and I love the way you teach it. We can actually transform our situation, transform our environment. And in doing so, that's how we're gonna impact the world. Pessimists don't change the world. Naysayers say you can't do it. Complainers complain about problems but don't solve them. We know that throughout history. It's the positive leaders, the believers, the dreamers, the doers who have the greatest impact. And it's all about being a coffee bean. Be like the coffee bean. I wish I knew that story when my kids were younger because I'd have told them it over and over and over again.

I'd have said, be like the coffee bean. I'd have said that a thousand times to my kids. It's so good. When I heard it, man, it wasn't from a, gotta give Damon all the credit. He heard it from a guy named Mr. Jackson in prison. That's a whole other story of Mr. Jackson who told him this story. That's how he survived prison. Gets out in seven years, was a 65 year sentence. He had gotten addicted to meth and was burglarizing homes. Then he gets out in seven years and said, I just wanna be useful.

God calls him to go to speak to these teams. Dabo gives him a shot. He's the only coach who gave him a shot when he asked like hundreds of coaches. Dabo gave him a shot and now he's impacting Alabama, Georgia, all these teams. It's been pretty cool. And then I've been able to share this story and this message with a lot of teams. I was with Jay Glazer last night. We were talking about his impact with the veterans coming back from the war and the depression they deal with and think about that.

When you're dealing with all this adversity, all these challenges, this simple analogy can help you overcome. Like you said, with kids, man, kids need this message now more than ever. Yeah, the other thing you teach is a word for the year. Tell them about this. What I love about John, guys, is a lot of people that talk on leadership or being positive, it's just statements. You have actionable things people can do. So tell them about that for a second. Yeah, because it's all about the action, right?

Words without action lead to nothing, right? So we make it, I don't think that was very profound, but I think it's true, right? So if you don't have action, you can't get things done. So yeah, this one word, again, good friends of mine, Dan and Jimmy, they've been doing it for over 20 years now. They told me about how every year they pick a word for the year. So we wrote a book called One Word That Will Change Your Life and we've been working with all these things.

Every year, Dabo picks his word, Sean McVeigh picks his word. I worked with the Dodgers, they picked their word. It's really cool when a team does it. And that word is meant to fuel you for the year. It gives you meaning and mission, passion and purpose. So in January, great time to do it. You pick your word for the year that you're gonna focus on. And that word becomes like a rallying cry. It becomes something that you could focus on and Zoom focus on to win each day.

So words for me have been like serve and rise and surrender. I'll never forget the word surrender. It was a tough year, but that word came up for me and God always gives me a word. I always say, pray on your word, say I'm open. And that word will come. I've had atheist friends say they were just open and said, okay, I'm open. And the word just came. And the more you're open, the word will come for you that is meant for you. And then that word will shape you and mold you to be who you're meant to be that year.

My word was heart this year. And I gotta tell you with everything happening, I went back to that word in terms of, I wanna lead with heart, wanna love with all my heart. I wanna speak from the heart, right? And I feel like I've been more powerful than ever than in just focusing on that and really coming from the heart instead of just going through the motions, instead of being tired and allowing the circumstances to drain you, right? Just come with that heart. And it's been an incredible year in terms of all the adversity we're facing, but the heart has taken me through it.

How have you done with that? I'm just curious. I mean, everybody, just so you know, I mean, John has businesses, but he's a speaker, right? And so- Right, oh yeah, I mean- This has been a difficult time. I mean, this is not like, you know, mamsy-pamsy fluffy stuff we're talking about here. John's had to apply these things. I'm just curious, if you had a bunch of down days, what do you do when you have them? And what's it been like for you? Man, Ed, that's such a great question because when it first hit, I have to admit, I had a down couple of days.

I was like, what is going on? My world was shook because, you know, I don't have a financial company like you have in terms of that background. I really have put everything into my writing and speaking. I sold my businesses to focus 100% on this. So we were doing a lot of consulting and training and speaking, and everything just sort of dried up. And so I was talking to a Navy SEAL named Chad Wright, former Navy SEAL. I don't know if you know Chad, but we were talking- I know who he is.

And he said, you know, a lot of guys don't make it through Hell Week, and they don't make it through Hell Week to be a Navy SEAL because they're longing for it to be over. They're dreaming for it to end. He said, the ones who make it just want to make it to breakfast. And when he told me that, I knew I had the recipe for winning during this time. It was to win today, to not worry about tomorrow, but just win today. So I woke up every day just saying, okay, I'm gonna stay positive.

I'm gonna try to encourage other people, and I'm gonna get better every day. And I'm gonna reach out to clients, and whoever reaches out to me, I'm gonna help them. And I had so many people reach out. I reached out to various clients. I spoke to the Timberwolves and various teams and coaches and Fortune 500 companies and had these incredible conversations with the leaders. It's amazing how many things came my way as a result of that attitude. I had an incredible year financially. I have to admit, I don't wanna, cause I know a lot of people haven't, so I don't wanna brag about it.

I wanna brag on God, cause I really believe that my faith grew so much during that time because I was humbled because I had nowhere to go but to pray. And I really said, God, I trust in you. Whatever your plan is, I trust, I'm gonna serve. And I went back to my rookie mindset when I first started doing this. Years ago, when I went on a book tour to 28 cities where five people showed up and 10 people showed up and 20 people showed up, the most people we had were 100 people in Des Moines, Iowa.

They thought Jeff Gordon was coming. That's why they showed up. And that's not a joke. That is a true story. And- Wow. Wow. Wow. They think they're getting a NASCAR driver and you show up. I love it. Yeah, and I came home and it wasn't a great tour. And it was my beginning, right? Energy Bus had just come out. Took five years for the Energy Bus to be a bestseller. Now it's- Did it really? Yeah, now it's sold over 2 million copies, but five years back then.

And I remember that time. So I went back to that time and I just said, show up, be a coffee bean, make a difference. And it was amazing, all the events that happened, all the virtual keynotes, all the clients that I helped, all the free stuff I did. I did a ton. of free stuff to serve, and then to see that come back tenfold. See, people always think, right, you have to go out there with the idea of, okay, how much money can I make? And yes, we're here to make money, because you have to make profit to be able to have an existing business, to have a growing business, to help others, right?

But I have found that if you love serving care, if you truly love, serve, and care, your business will exponentially grow. And I was returned to that rookie mindset where that was my focus. A lot of trust, a lot of prayer. And my faith grew so deep during that time where I truly relied on God for what was going on, and it's amazing what happened. So I'm gonna write about more about it, because there's so much more to share. I don't wanna share it, because of what people are going through, but there's so many more things that happened where I just saw it wasn't me.

I just saw that it was an incredible miracle of all the things that happened. Yeah, we both have that. Thank you for sharing that. We both have that in common, where we're both very aware of how average ordinary we are, and how great God has been to both of us. We're gonna get to your faith in a minute, but before that, Nurse, David Nurse, has been on my show, our mutual friend. I wanna go back to that beginning, because you touched on the topic. He's like, you gotta ask him about being an international speaker in the very beginning, because this is awesome for people that are startup entrepreneurs, or that wanna change their identity, or change their life.

This is just awesome, right? Remember, context, guys. Spoken in front of millions of people, sought after by professional sports teams in all different sports. 23 some odd books. Millions of books sold. Made tons of money doing this. Impacted all these people. He was an international speaker. I was cracking up when I heard this. Yeah, so we went from all these cities, 28 cities, and so Daniel Decker, who I'm sure you know Daniel, Daniel basically was calling all these different cities and radio stations. Hey, John Gordon's coming.

Yeah, he's internationally known. He's internationally known. I had one friend in London, and the energy bus had become a huge hit in South Korea. Not North Korea, but South Korea was like this big hit. Not in the US, but for some reason in South Korea it became a hit, so we were saying internationally known. My publisher was calling me the David Hasselhoff of Korea, because no one was reading my book in the US, but I was huge in South Korea. Oh, hadn't you only been out of the country like on a one-week vacation or something like that?

No, yeah, I never even went to South Korea. I can't explain why it took off, but so we were saying internationally known, and everywhere I went, they would interview me. Hey, John Gordon's here. He's internationally known, and so that was the beginning tour that we went on, and you look back on that, you're right, and it's like, hey, you gotta believe it. I'm not a big believer in fake it till you make it. I'm a big believer in believe it because you belong. Believe it because what you believe determines what you create, and so I was believing it.

Yeah, I think I just, I'm not kidding you. I may have torn an ab right there. At least I pulled it for sure. Laughing. I don't believe in fake it till you make it either, but what I do believe in is creating a frame for yourself that's new, a new frame that you live in, a new character that you're going to be, and as long as you're authentic and have those standards and there's congruency, guess what? He's become an international speaker. He's become an internationally well-known author, so it's very, very true.

Well, we've been kind of building up to this, and it's one of the things I've been fascinated to ask you personally, too, so as I understand the story, you've said openly, hey, I wasn't that great of a husband for many, many years, or at least for a few years, I guess, and your wife gives you this ultimatum, but we wouldn't be doing a John Gordon interview if we weren't talking about faith and how that's impacted your life and changed your life, so how did you come to your faith, and in general, to begin with, what does it mean to you?

Yeah, it's everything to me, and while I work with all these companies and sports teams, and I'm not always actively talking about my faith at events and things like that, it is what drives me, and it's the cornerstone of my life. It's my foundation, because for years, I didn't have faith, and for years, I struggled with fear and anxiety and stress, and I tried all these things, and I practiced Buddhism, and I did meditation, and I was really big into Buddhism and New Age philosophy and Deepak Chopra and did all of that years ago.

My wife and I were really into that, and it helped me along the way. It was part of my spiritual journey, so I never poo-poo it. I believe everyone is on a journey, and it was a big part of who I was and helped me become who I was meant to be, but there came a point where I couldn't deal with the pain and the burden and the wounds that I had felt of the past and the anxiety and all the things that were holding me back from being who I was meant to be, and then Daniel Decker gave me a sermon from Erwin McManus that really spoke to me.

I know you had Erwin on your podcast, and Erwin, didn't even know him, but his message, the way he spoke about Jesus really spoke to me, and for the first time, I heard the voice of Jesus. For the first time, it spoke to my heart. Now, I had always grown up, again, Jewish. Mom is Jewish, and Jesus was Jewish, but he was a prophet. He was a great teacher. He wasn't a savior, but when I heard Erwin's message, and I remember saying to God, God, if there is something to this Jesus, I'm open.

I'm open. Just show me the signs, and then everywhere I went, I started seeing signs. I would meditate and see a glowing cross, and it was unbelievable. I can't explain it. I would see a glowing cross, and I'm driving down to Orlando, and as I'm driving, looking to the left, I heard this audible, it said, look, and I turned to the right, and there's a huge sign that said, Jesus is the answer. Crazy, so I come back. I go to see this Buddhist energy healer. I was having problems with my stomach, and this guy was great, Don Van Vliet, and I go see Don, and I tell Don about these signs.

He's like, oh, yeah. He goes, well, I'm a Buddhist. I'm trying to attain enlightenment on my own. I want to see if I can do it by myself. He said, but with Jesus, all you do is believe and receive. You see, he takes your heavy vibrational energy. He takes your soul pain. He goes, Christians call it sin. He goes, you can't connect to a perfect, harmonious, energetic God if you have heavy vibrational energy. I rode the energy bus. I always saw the world in terms of energy.

That's what spoke to me. I said, can I take someone else's soul pain? He said, can you handle your own? I walked out of there believing in a God that would want to take my burden, my pain, and he said, Christianity's like spiritual cheating, which is funny, spiritual cheating. He said, all you do is believe and receive. So I walked out of there saying, okay, I'm gonna believe, and it's so crazy. I started to believe, and then I started to receive, and I didn't have all the answers, but I just said, God, strengthen my faith, and God brought one teacher, one person, one book after another in my life, and I gotta tell you, it changed my heart.

It changed my soul, changed me as a husband, changed me as a man. I started writing books after that. The energy bus came after that, and I've written all these books literally in less than four weeks, about three and a half weeks each book takes to write, and I gotta give all credit to God. I'm not the author, just the pen, and these ideas come to me, like literally downloads, and then I just start writing them, and the fact that they've sold four and a half million copies, I gotta give all glory to Him in doing that, and I know that I am nothing without my faith, without my relationship, and it's in that surrender, in that trust, in that prayer of use me for your purpose.

Guide me towards my purpose. That's when God started to use me to do this work. So to try to do it on my own, I just can't go in that direction because I know it's not me, and when I wrote The Garden, God revealed the five Ds to me of what everyone's going through right now with fear and anxiety. I wrote this during December 25th to January 8th. I finished it January 8th, not knowing a pandemic was coming, and yet this book talks about, it's a spiritual fable about overcoming fear, stress, and anxiety of what everyone's going through.

Doubt, discouragement, distortion, lies, right? Fear is a liar, negative thoughts, distractions, and division, more division than ever. Write about these five Ds, and that's what's playing out right now, and then he gave me the blueprint on how to overcome. So it just shows you, it's like one example of just the ideas and how they come. I write these books, and then they come out, and I know that's what I'm here to do, and I'm so honored, again, to be on your show and be able to share that, because I think the world of you.

So many beautiful things you said there, so much. It's interesting that we're very similar, that I also, I think sometimes people think, well, if you're a Christian, you don't really believe in energy transfer, or there can't be an energy field. I actually happen to believe there is a field. I just happen to believe that it was created by a power bigger than that, my Lord and Savior, right? So I plug into energy all the time. I believe in vibrational frequency. I know about that. When I'm around high-energy people, I feel it.

When I'm around low-energy people, I don't. So I believe all of that. Just in my own life, I'm aware of my own limitations, and there's just no way a guy, as average and ordinary as me, would have had the abundance that I've had in my life. It was just left up to me. And the more I find that I surrender all the pressure, the greatest thing about faith, oftentimes, is it takes the pressure off me. It's not all up to me. My great partner is my Lord.

That's my partner. That's who's got my back more than any human being, and I've got human beings that do as well. So there's so many things you said in there. Amazing that you write these books in three or four weeks, and triple, quadruple amazing that you write The Garden right before this pandemic's coming with the five Ds. You said there was a blueprint. I'm just curious if you'd share with us another element of the blueprint to overcome the five Ds. Yeah, I'd love to. And first, I just wanna share that when I called Erwin McManus when I was coming to faith, and I started to ask him questions, because I heard his sermon.

I reached out to him. He actually shared my letter on his podcast sermon, which he was doing way back when. We're talking over 15 years now probably. And we had this great conversation. I said, but what about all the hypocrites? What about all the Christians and the church and all that they do and the Catholic church? And he said, John, don't let Christians keep you from Christ. Wow. And he said, just start learning about Jesus. And the more I learned about Jesus and just went right to his message and who he was, I saw a guy who taught about love and forgiveness and oneness.

And I realized how it all actually connects with energy. Like, everything is connected. You talked about the energy field. Oh, it's a field. We are living in a big, giant, energetic, magnetic field. And yet there's the soul, which is eternal. We're living in a temporary space-time reality. So I can combine science. I've done all the research. I've studied all the physics and the quantum physics. I'm into all of that. And I see how it all connects. One day, I'm gonna write a book called Einstein, Jesus, and the Energy of Everything.

Oh, I would love it. Because it's really, I see how it all connects. I'll write the foreword. That's my jam right there, brother. I would love that. That would be epic. But the five Ds for what we're going through right now is instead of doubt, the answer is trust. And it's just radical trust, surrender and trust to the creator. I think a lot of times people try to be perfect like God because they don't trust in God. And there's so much fear because they don't have trust.

And right now, the enemy is lying to us with so much fear. Why? Because if we don't trust in God, we will believe in the fear and the lies. So the goal is to actually get us to doubt and not trust. Because once you doubt, you're now off balance. You lose your foundation, you don't have the trust, and you start to believe the lies of the enemy. And you can see how people are believing the lies that the worst is ahead, that our future is hopeless, that you're not gonna make it through this.

And we have so many people that are literally giving up. And so it's the doubt that leads to the distortion, and the distortion leads to the doubt. So they play into each other. And the distortion of the lies and the fear that creates the doubt, and it also creates the discouragement. So negative thoughts create discouragement. Why? Because spiritually, right? Spiritual, we're dealing with these negative forces. The enemy knows that he can't beat you himself. So what does he do? He gets you to be yourself. We don't give up because it's hard.

We give up because we get discouraged. So the answer there is what you do every day. It's what I'm all about. It's encouragement, right? The word encourage means to put courage into. So we need to put courage into others. We need to put courage into ourselves. We need to speak to ourselves like Dr. James Gills did with words of encouragement, to keep going, to keep moving forward. And I know that's what you do with, and for so many people. So encouragement is everything. True, and Kathy said, how do you know if a man or woman needs encouragement?

If they're breathing, right? And then Zig Ziglar, right? One of the guys who was the pioneer in our field, Zig was told, hey, motivation doesn't last. And he would say, neither does bathing. It's why you have to do it every day. That's right. So encouragement is everything. And then the real key here is distractions. That's the fourth D, distractions. So we have doubt as the first D. We have distortion as the second D. We have discouragement as the third D. The fourth D is distractions. Distraction's the enemy of greatness.

And so you have to understand that all the distractions with the social media, with the negative news, it's all political fighting. It's all distractions keeping us from being who we're meant to be and being who we're meant to be for each other. And so what did Jesus talk about? Love. Love your neighbor. Love one another. It's not, let's just love. Let's focus on that. Everything else is a distraction. We are meant to love and invest and focus on relationships. And if we did that, that's how we build greatness.

Working with great teams like I do, that's what I do. I help them communicate, connect, commit, and care. Four Cs, communicate, connect, commit, and care. So we overcome the five Ds with the four Cs. Communicate, connect, commit, and care. To build greater commitment, you have to have great connection. And if you invest in the relationship, you will build great commitment to build a great team. And we need to be one team as a society right now. And clearly we're not. And that's why we're having so many problems.

And then that fifth D of division, that's what happens. When you distract, you distort, you create doubt. What happens is you now have division or there's divide. And so the enemy wants to divide you, keep you separate. And right now there's a lot of division amongst ourselves, but there's personal division where we actually feel separate from ourselves and I believe from our creator. The word anxious literally means divided and it's Greek root word. Think about that. It means divided when you're anxious. So think about, you feel anxious.

You really feel divided. You feel separate from others. You feel separate personally from yourself and you feel separate spiritually from God. And so the answer there is unity. That's where I came to believe again in Jesus, because I saw what he came to do was to unite man, right, back to the Father, to the Creator, to create oneness, the oneness. So there was separation in the garden, and what happened in the garden gets reconciled on the cross, where now there's a oneness that happens. And so that's where my faith was.

Again, I come to faith, this book comes to me, and then I see how the five, these are playing out, but then I also see the answer on what we need to do to keep moving forward. And again, if you're not a believer, okay, then just focus on unity with yourself. If it's through meditation, through yoga, through your relationships and love for others, then just focus on the unity and the division, and the anxiousness will go away. Wow, wow. This is why I do the show.

You know, I just hope everybody's sharing this. You know, what a shame it would be to just keep this show to yourself today. Always say to people that aren't believers too, worst case, what if you just lived a little bit more like Jesus, right? Like just start there. It's not gonna hurt, right? And you might be surprised that the Holy Spirit starts showing up. ♪♪

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