 All right, it is Monday, everybody. Come on in, I hope everyone is doing well. And I hope everyone is alive out there. Tali, where have you been? We didn't see you all week. The Gabriel win, how you doing? Hippie the Hills, welcome. All right, everyone is coming in, this is great. If you are joining me on YouTube or Periscope, leave me a comment, that's how I know that you guys are watching as I'm re-streaming this and I only know if you guys pop up in the comment section there. So, and also, if you're watching an archive of this or a replay, leave me a comment. Press the like, subscribe. All right, Tali, you were busy? Okay, well, I'll give you that. I hope you got everything done that you needed to get done. It's good to see you back. It was odd last week to turn this on and not to see your name. But we've all noticed, which means you were sorely missed and we certainly had brought that up that you were suspect in disappearance. So, all right, well, you are Adventure X. Diana, how are you doing? How was Utah? I hope you are Montana, I hope you're doing well. All right, guys, so today is Monday, which means we had dropped the Charles Dewhigg episode. Now, Charles has been on the show three times. His books are fantastic. I always enjoy talking to Charles. He's very rational. His books are well thought out and extremely helpful. And I found the power of habit to be not only informative, but it also changed the way I viewed routine, which is a little bit about his interview was about, but we've interviewed him about routine habit before. The show was mostly an opportunity for Charles to come back on, visit us, say hello, and then promote his new podcast, which is called How To, where they bring in expert guests to answer audience questions and put together a show of how to for the audience with the best that he can find experts in that field. Some of the topics was how to avoid or how to deal with a shark attack, talking with strangers. There was a bunch. I can't, in fact, I can't remember them all. However, in doing research for the episode, I checked out a show, I really enjoyed it. The episodes are short. They're like a half an hour long with expert guests in the field. And there's usually some sort of, I would say parallels to social commentary with some of the storylines and episode questions. So that's fun too. So they make it topical, which I enjoy because it gives you something to reflect upon. And why I like doing this show is to make it topical because I think we all need to detach and look at situations objectively and triangulate through different perspectives what is going on because I know for myself, which I would imagine also for a lot of you, it's a crazy time every day we wake up. Something else is going on. And fresh perspectives and detached perspectives, detached from our own perspectives certainly helps make things easier for us. Knowing that different people from different backgrounds, from different fields of study are all looking at the same event, but yet have different perspectives, different opinions, different thoughts on the situation and how to maneuver through it. And it gives us an opportunity of choice rather than being stuck to our same thought processes that would usually lead to the same decisions and how to maneuver through the topical item, whatever's going on in the world, which in a lot of cases, we end up sort of with the same kind of results. So with these different perspectives, these different thoughts, it gives us an opportunity to have some choice. And Charles is definitely one of the voices that I look to. I like his Twitter feed is really good, his books are great, and he's rational. One of the biggest takeaways from the power of habit, one of his, I find one of his best books, is the idea that human beings use routine to build our environment in which we live in. And if you get depressed, if you get upset, if you're having a hard time with life, you have to change your environment. It's a simple feat, for instance. I don't know if any of you ever had goldfish growing up. Well, when a goldfish gets sick, the first thing that you do is to change its water, to change its environment. For human beings, that idea, not only is it refreshing, it gives you an opportunity to start over, but it also gives you the freedom to try new things. And I don't think we truly understand how much of the environment we live in is our subconscious sequence of going in from one routine into the next. And what we have done for ourselves is build an environment in which we live in that has been created through these routines. And you either have routine or you don't have routine. The routines that you don't have are routines that you're unconscious of. And whether or not they're productive or not is up to you to figure out. And I love that idea. It is that idea that allowed me to start thinking about how my mornings would go and what would make them productive. And then I had to look at the rest of my day. Was I being productive enough that when I went to bed at night, when I laid my head down, could I feel satisfied about the day that I had? Did I win the day, so to speak? And I find that idea, like if you find yourself with insomnia or trouble sleeping, your mind's racing at night, you're staring at the ceiling, then that is your brain's way of telling you that something's wrong, that you left points on the field, so to speak. You are not fulfilled. There's something left that you didn't do. And once I observed my routines and made sure that they were productive and that I was contributing to the world rather than seeing the world as a consumer, by the end of the day, I felt that I had won or that I was satisfied in the work that I had put in to where not only was I fulfilled, I was also excited about what the next day would bring. So you get two in one. If you're fulfilled and satisfied about how you handled your time in that day, that allows you to go to sleep easier. And when you're excited to go to sleep because you're excited to see what tomorrow brings, then another dose of allowing yourself to relax, to get to sleep. I learned that quite early. In fact, that was a game changer for myself. So with that, now upon thinking about these routines, think about the expectations that you hold for yourself and make sure that you steadily increase them as you get more and more comfortable with the efforts that you're putting in on a daily basis. You know, I think a lot of what our woes in this country socially and economically and, but especially upon dealing with each other is this idea of, I don't, I would say this. I just don't think we do a very good job of encouraging people to set high expectations and reach for them, go for them. Now there's a problem with that in that if you make expectations too large, if you hold too high regard for your actions in which you're always going to come up short, in which you're always going to come up empty short of your goal, then it's easy to beat yourself up. It's easy to just feel frustrated. However, if the goals and Charles Duhigg put this together for the power of habit, I believe, which is if the goals are small enough and obtainable enough, but just outside your reach or what you can expect from yourself, then it becomes fun in chasing them. And there's an attitude that goes with that that you might very well come up short. And if you do, if you do come up short, then it's okay. What are you going to do tomorrow that is going to help you reach that goal? How can you change the way you looked at it to get more excited? And if you compare yourself from the day before, was there any ground made? Did you see any progress at all? And if the progress is there, but yet it's subtle, at least you're moving towards that goal. Low expectations, low expectations where people do not expect much from you. Therefore, you don't put in much work. Well, then you can't expect society as a whole to strive for something better when individually you're not being held to any standards. And that's on you. Those expectations that you put on yourself will soon transition to the expectations that you put on other people. And this is why people who demand a lot from themselves seem uptight. Why? Because they demand a lot from others. Because they demand a lot from themselves. And if you can't get down with that, if you can't live up to others' expectations, you have a choice in the matter. You can either A, start doing the work to start reaching your expectations to yourself and striving for better ones, or you ought out of the program. You don't demand that people drop their expectations. You raise yours. And this is important because if you, if we individually start lowering our expectations for ourselves, then we start lowering our expectations of others. And now we have a widespread problem socially of lower expectations, whereas for people start dropping their own expectations for themselves because life then just doesn't become, it's not that difficult. There's nothing to strive for. We've easily matched what people expect of us. Have you ever met a student? Have you known anybody or maybe yourself who realized you were a little bit smarter than the class that you were in? And so you realize you can, you can ace all the tests. So how much work do you put in? You don't, you don't put in any work. In fact, when you find yourself in that position, not only do you start slacking off, you tend to get bored. You start looking for other ways to stimulate your mind and yourself to, because it's not thought provoking enough. It's not aspiring. This is why this idea of a culture of beauty is versus a culture of ugliness. You see, a culture of beauty demands us to make things better, to find a way to make things aesthetically pleasing. When you are faced with beauty, it has a natural tendency to force you to confront your weaknesses, to confront where you are ashamed, to confront your ugliness. That's the power of beauty. And upon facing your own ugliness, you have a choice. Do you work to get better? Or do you get angry at the beauty that you're seeing and want to tear it down? You see, people of low expectations see that beauty and they want to destroy it. That doesn't help society. A society that has nothing to strive for, a society that holds no standards in expectations allows its society to fall apart. We have to be striving for something. And if we're not striving for beauty, then what is it? And I'm sorry, beauty is one of the most powerful traits that we face. It stirs up so much emotion in ourselves to be inspired, to aspire to something. But most of all, as I mentioned, the emotions that it stirs up in us to challenge ourselves, to either rise into that beauty, to strive as hard as we might, to acquire it, to be a part of it, to push it forward or to destroy it. And I think that is the difference between when you're held to high expectations, you always look for those opportunities to surpass the expectations, to make things beautiful, to strive in a direction that where you've never been. If you are insecure about yourself and the place in the world and you see beauty, it's easy to hold hostility towards it. Christina says, story of my life, high expectations on myself. And I look uptight because I expect others to care as highly as I do. Isn't that the truth? I didn't hold high expectations for myself until I got involved in self-development, until I realized that it was on myself to strive in order to raise others around me to strive, to be better. When you have a whole society, just think about that. What does a society, and as a thought experiment, it doesn't take very much to realize what a society looks like when its members strive for excellence. When a society's individuals strive to high expectations, to something that is larger than themselves, to hold themselves to a standard, a standard of high value, to a standard that they know that emotionally, with emotional responses, they're going to come up short, but yet with a importance to strive to be better. And when you do come up short, to be honest with yourself, to realize that you have failed in that moment, and then to figure out how can I do it better. And compare that to a society whose individuals are not striving, who are not inspired, who have nothing to aspire to. If you look, just do the thought experiment, what society do you think is going to do better? What society is going to be more cohesive? What society is stronger? The one of low expectations that everyone can meet easily so that no one will come up short or a society where everyone strives to inspire and to aspire to something that is difficult, where we help each other? Yet, you all know the answer to this question, and yet here we are in a society that is having trouble grasping with the idea that we should be striving to be high value. We should be striving to be something that is not easily obtainable and quite frankly, if you do it correctly, is unattainable. It is the desire to be at your best. And when you're looking to be your best, you're shooting up, but let's say this is it, and you come up short. How long will it be before generations are actually able to reach the, what you've found is unattainable? Look at society as a whole, as we look at the last few generations that have been able to be better and better than the last. I think this is the first generation, gen millennials were the first generation who have done worse than their parents. And Spark Assas puts, that sounds like the public school system, continually lowering the bar. And guess what Spark Assas, don't you think that continually lowering the bar has a direct effect in a generation as a whole, not being able to beat out their parents on well-being, wealth, and what they were able to achieve? I mean, it's common sense, but as we know, what common sense gets you around here in, common sense gets us in trouble around here. Common sense gets you yelled at, gets you canceled, gets you on the bad list. I don't understand how that happens. I'm involved in self-development because I wanted to self-actualize. I wanted to become, I wanted to operate to the best of my abilities because I wanted to see what that looked like. And at 46 years old, it is obvious that I am on the slow road down the hill on the other side, but yet mentally and physically, there is a lot of, and emotionally for that sake, is a lot of room to grow, to get better every day, to be able to maneuver through this world, to build a life worth fighting for, and to drag those around you, kicking and screaming to a better world, to a better life through your actions. That is the debt that we all owe to society. Your favorite blockhead, how you doing buddy? It's good to see you today. And so, that is on every one of us. So when you're thinking about your routines, when you're listening to this week's episode with Charles Duhigg, and we're talking about those routines, and we're talking about holding yourself to a standard, and you're looking or you're thinking about your routines and you're worrying about where your motivation is coming from. Your motivation comes from the routines of what you've been able to achieve and then trying to beat it, getting excited. If you're not excited to wake up, then you should be planning a life worth fighting for, something that is exciting, something that motivates you. Your motivation is on you, and don't outthink your motivation. Motivation's easy. There is a story that you tell yourself about why you're doing things. And if you, and that story should invigorate you. So, that is my point on expectations. So, I would say, as an individual, you should respect the idea of what high expectations, reasonable, but high, something that you aspire to, does for yourself and the world around you. Because everyone is looking to you to lead. You know this idea where you begin to learn that no one gives a crap of what you're doing? No one is, everyone's too worried about their own lives to get involved with yours or what you're doing. What we've seen do have fallen into a place where people don't have enough motivation and inspiration to stick to their own lives and make something of them. So now they're getting involved in others. Well, if they're going to get involved in yours, make sure that it is something that tells them to get moving. Make sure that your life gives off the impression and sends off, puts them in an emotional state to try harder, to aspire. Remember, when confronted with beauty, when you face beauty, you are confronted with your own inadequacies and ugliness. You have an opportunity at that moment to make a change or destroy what you're seeing. You know, that's why I love Western civilization. That's why I love the art and music of Western civilization. Because it had inspired to be something more than just musical notes. It was created to lift us up to force us in a position to look at things and an inspiring and an aspiring model to strive for excellence. All right, guys, that's enough rambling from me today. Thank you all for tuning in. If you haven't checked it out yet, listen to the Charles Dew Higg episode. It is great. Here's a bunch of stuff that is in it. We talk about why routines are so important, spark interest in conversations instead of small talk. The idea of consuming entertainment and how to do that in a way that allows you to take something worthy from it. And then how to find great experts and seeking advice and why your mindsets are so important. It's a great episode. Charles been on three times. Free candy says, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Speaking to me today, be inspiring about us. Well, thank you, free candy. Sometimes I'm up here and I'm rambling. I'm like, does anyone listening to what I have to say today? However, you guys gave me plenty of hearts. So I'm guessing the message had gotten through. So thank you guys for tuning in. I will be back tomorrow, 8 30 a.m. And I will see you guys then. If you enjoy what I had to say, you are interested in setting up higher expectations for yourself and striving to reach those goals and to inspire those around you. And you want some help with that? Just DM me X Factor and check out and we'll give you some information about our year long mentorship program where we are going to help you forge your X Factor and hold you to high standards where you are going to self actualize the life worth fighting for for yourself. So guys, have a wonderful Monday. I will see you tomorrow. Thank you all for tuning in and enjoy the week.