 Success is the freedom to do what you want when you want with who you want I know there's a lot of people that listen to this and you stop short just a little bit short of your goals before you actually get them 10 years 10 years from today You will have a life that you absolutely love like the perfect life how to break free from What a normal life is the normal life that you have and freedom is interesting and the reason why is because I don't think that people prioritize their freedom as much as they need to right people will prioritize making money But they won't prioritize their freedom and do you want to know a little secret? If you want to make more money If you want to make more money the thing that you actually want is not the money the money is actually not your main goal You think that it's your main goal Sure You know the money can buy you the house that you want it can buy the car that you want the Trips around the world it can buy you pretty much anything that you want a lot of times it can buy you those things But you're not actually trying to accumulate Assets or things that are expenses what you're actually trying to do is you're wanting the thing that you think that money will give you Right and what is that? freedom Freedom is what we're all searching for right and Success means something different to every single person But for me when someone says like like first off if you're wanting to be successful Successful is just a very relative term. So you've got to define what success means to you Maybe to you success means making ten million dollars. Maybe success means to you having an incredible family Maybe success means to you that you can you know own a t-rex Skeleton and put inside your house. I don't know what the hell success means to you But it's different for everybody success to me though and when I usually say this people like oof Yeah, actually that is my definition of success as well Success is the freedom to do what you want when you want with who you want That's it Success is the freedom to do what you want when you want with who you want sure you want money But what you actually want is the freedom To be able to take that weekend trip with your friends and not have to worry about you know paying rent What you want you sure you want to make money But what you really want is the the freedom of the from the burden of worrying about not being able to pay your bills You want the freedom to walk into a place not have to care about the tag and what it says and just be able to buy Something that you want what you're actually searching for I don't think anybody really knows this most of the time Is when you want to make money what you want is freedom you want freedom away from To be able to get whatever you want you want freedom to do whatever you want you want freedom to be able to travel when you want You want freedom to hang out with who you want and you also want freedom from the mental burden That not having enough money or possibly running out of money gives you but Do you want to know a secret about freedom? I'm gonna tell you something that I've never heard anybody talk about before your freedom comes from your discipline Right now you might be thinking about this and when you think of the connotation of discipline when you think about it Usually discipline is like a bad word like to be disciplined as a child means that you did something wrong So to discipline yourself Seems like it's got a bad connotation Most people would think that the opposite of freedom would be disciplined because if you're like I'm free I don't need discipline discipline when when I think of the word of what most people think of Discipline itself. It seems restrictive, right? It seems like you're stuck in some sort of way But freedom the freedom that you want is inside of the discipline and the structure that you don't currently have in your life Right now, you're gonna sit there and be like that doesn't sound right at all like freedom seems like there'd be no discipline Freedom seems like there'd be no structure and I get it But there's a couple different ways where this works, right? When you have discipline and when you have structure in your life, it creates freedom later on down the road So we're gonna talk about a couple different aspects of freedom We're gonna talk about a couple different aspects of discipline and also a couple different aspects of just structure itself When you have discipline in your life When you have structure in your life, it creates freedom later on down the road, right? The freedom once again to do what you want when you want with who you want Discipline and structure also create freedom in the moment. You haven't be like, I don't know how that works. Well, let me explain that, okay? So first off, we're talking about the future, right? When you're talking about the future that you want, in order to get that future, I'm promising you this, unless you happen to hit the lottery, in order, if you want to have the freedom to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, there's gonna have to be structure, and there's gonna have to be discipline, unless, once again, you happen to hit the lottery. If you hit the lottery, then that's just a fluke, you ended up hitting the lottery, but that's like a one in 22 million chance to hit the lottery anyways, right? In order to create the freedom that you want, you're gonna need discipline in your life, and you're gonna need structure. So you're gonna need that, and not automatically, for a lot of people, I already know how you're feeling, it feels restrictive, but I'm gonna tell you why it's not, okay? Most people, when you think of freedom, though, you're thinking, well, my freedom that I want is just the freedom to just hang out and just be able to sit on the couch and eat what I want. I promise you, in the grand scheme of your life and the potential that you have, that's not actually what you're searching for. You're searching for much, much more than that, much, much more of a beautiful thing. But if you can wake up, and you can have no schedule, that's freedom, but you can't wake up right now, most likely, and just have nothing that you need to do, because your life might not be at the point where you can do nothing, because it's a pretty good chance that if you were at that point where you could just do whatever the hell you want, you probably wouldn't be listening to me, right? And to wake up and have no schedule, there's freedom in that, but that can also really stress people out. There's a reason why people who retire end up going back and working again within 90 days is because most people, like the inherent feeling in a human is to be productive, to have progress in your life. As Tony Robbins says, progress equals happiness. So to think that you would just wake up and just lollygag all day long and that would bring you happiness is probably not going to happen, right? You feel like you should be doing more, right? You're searching for what you should do to fill that time, knowing that there's more for you. But when you have structure and you have discipline, there's the freedom inside of that structure. So most people think, I want the freedom to just wake up and if I didn't have anything to do today, oh my gosh, I would feel so free. Promise you this, after a while, it gets really boring and you're not going to want to do that. But when you wake up and you've got a plan in place, like today, I was back to back to back to back to back on calls, on recording, on planning podcast episodes and getting all of this stuff done. I've been back to back. I've already had, you know, what do we have? We're at two o'clock, I've already had four phone calls and we've recorded three podcast episodes, right? So there's, but the beautiful thing about it is in that structure, in the discipline of getting those things done, there's a whole lot of freedom. I woke up and I had a team call at 7 a.m. for me, right? I had a team call with my team. You might be like, oh man, wake up and be on a call at 7 a.m., that feels restrictive. But for me, when I wake up on a call and I'm running a team call with my entire team there, there's so much freedom in that for me because I can move and shift and do what I want and show up as the version of me. Why? Because I'm not stressing about what I need to do because I've got it in the schedule, right? Then I woke up, then after that I had another meeting. I'm in the middle of writing a book. So we have book pitches next month. Next week, excuse me, where I'm meeting with seven different publishers next week. So I was on the call for an hour with my book agent. And in that time of going over everything, for me there was a lot of freedom because I was able to figure out how I want to pitch it, how I want to talk about it, what I'm going to say to these people, how I'm going to come up with a marketing plan. And for me, there's freedom in that because I can come up with whatever it is that I want to. So there's actual freedom inside of my structure. Then sitting here, recording these podcast episodes and I usually record three to four episodes at one time. So we just sit here and we just batch them and get them all done. There's freedom. I know what I'm going to say to you guys. I have bullet points, but at the same time, there's also a lot of stuff that comes out on me that just isn't on there. There's freedom in that. And so, and I had this conversation with one of my sales reps and he was like, he's a very much like his personality is an innovator. He loves to innovate, do things differently. And I said, what you have to realize is within the structure of doing the same things and having some phone calls that are very similar. Is there so much freedom in it? The problem is, here it is, you're not searching for the freedom. You're searching for the restrictiveness in it, right? Of waking up and having to do what feels like the same thing. But I was like, every person that you talk to is different. And if you search for the difference in each person and the difference in this conversation, created this conversation, you'll find it. In the innovator inside of you, that innovator that's inside of you is going to come alive because each person's different inside of that structure that you have inside of the discipline is the freedom, right? Now, he's locked in, he's been doing this for a while. He agrees and what's cool about it is when he is disciplined and structured from Monday to Friday, Saturday and Sunday, he's free. He makes great money. He can do whatever he wants and he has fun in those times. And to be able to make good money Monday through Friday, affords him to be able to do whatever the hell he wants to on the weekends and that in itself is freedom, right? And people, so that's the freedom in the moment, right? Now let's talk about the freedom that the future can bring you from having discipline and having structure, right? So people underestimate, severely underestimate what locking down for a couple of years can do for your future, right? As Tony Robbins says, one of my favorite quotes because the longer I run my business and the older I get, the more it gets true. People overestimate what they can do in a year but they underestimate what they can do in a decade. And I will even take that and say, they underestimate what they can do in five years. So people think that, oh, I'm gonna start this business that's gonna be a massive success. I'm gonna sell millions of t-shirts or I'm gonna sell millions of records. I'm gonna sell millions of these things. I'm gonna make so much money and then within three months they're barely making any money and they might even be losing money and they're like, I don't know if this is for me. You're most likely, if you're 99% of business owners, you're not gonna see much success in the first three months. But if you keep going and going and going and you have the discipline to actually force yourself to show up every single day and you have the structure of knowing what it is that you're going to be doing every single day and what is it you need to do because you've actually come up with a plan to execute on that plan and you do it and you do it and you do it for long enough, a couple years, guess what? You're gonna have a completely different life. I can't tell you how many people I've seen, their lives changed, they started a business today and then three years down the road their life is in a completely different place. Why? Because success takes time. And once that time has passed and they've been working and they've been disciplined, they've been waking up early, they've been putting structure inside of their life. They've been acting like they don't just work for themselves, but they've been acting like a business person and that they have an actual business, that business actually starts to pay them like a business because they're not treating it like a hobby anymore. Right? If you treat your business like a hobby, you're gonna get paid like a hobby. If you treat your business like a business, you're eventually going to get paid like a business, right? So when I say freedom comes from the structure in the discipline, one thing, like a perfect example for someone who's a business owner or a solo entrepreneur, solopreneur, one thing that I always say to them is like, when you wake up in the morning, force yourself to have a morning routine. Force yourself to go through the morning routine and then when you're done with that morning routine, what do I want you to force yourself to do? Take a shower, get dressed as if you're going to go to work, like if you're gonna go to work, like if you had a nine to five job, you're gonna take a shower, hopefully you're gonna take a shower, you're gonna take a shower, you're gonna get dressed, you're gonna make yourself presentable to go out into the real world. Don't just walk around your house in your underwear, your robe and try to work because mentally that's not the same. The structure and the discipline of waking up and making yourself shower and making yourself go through your morning routine and going through your morning routine and then shower and then getting dressed makes you have the freedom later on down the road to create the life that you want, right? I also say to people like have working hours. If you're an entrepreneur and you're working from home, you have to have working hours because when you work from home, a lot of times people will try to impede on that working from home and your mom will call you and be like, honey, I need you to go pick up some laundry for me. And you're like, oh God, I love my mom and I know she can't go get it right now. All right, I'll go get it. And so your mom wouldn't call you if you worked a nine to five and ask you to go pick up a freaking laundry, right? She'd be like, hey, can you pick up after work? Yeah, of course you can't. So you have to have working hours. And what happens is by having those working hours, you're creating structure. And if you have the discipline to actually make sure that you have those things done and you get the things done the way that you're supposed to, you're creating discipline, you're creating structure and in turn creating more freedom in your life down the road. And so there's freedom inside of the structure that you currently have. And you can always find it if you're searching for it and you can have fun with it if you're searching for it. And on the other side of that, if you really locked down for a couple of years, if you know what it is that you wanna do, you know exactly what it is that the life that you want, then you're like, you know what? I'm gonna put some structure in my life. I'm gonna actually start to plan out my day every single day. I'm gonna have the discipline to wake up every single day, to go through my morning routine, to shower, to get dressed as if I'm leaving to go to work, to maybe go to a coffee shop and work there so that I feel like there's a difference between working at my house and working at a different place. And that's more where my office is to the coffee shop. Whatever it is for you, of having the structure and the discipline in place and having the discipline to make sure that you do those things and to do it day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out for years, locking down for a couple of years once again is severely underestimated for the future that it could create for you. Severely underestimated. And here's the thing that I always say to people, everybody wants to make lots of money. Cool, it'd be great to make $100,000, $200,000 in your business, $500,000 a million. And are some of you going to do that? Absolutely, right? But if you're working at nine to five right now and you're getting paid $80,000 a year at your nine to five and you leave that nine to five to go do the one thing it is that you're truly passionate about, whatever that thing it is that you're passionate about and you put work into it, you put work into it, day in, day out, day in, day out, I guarantee you you can eventually get yourself to $80,000 a year doing that thing that you're passionate about. How much more freedom does that create for you when you've built your own business paying you the same that you were making before? And here's what's beautiful. If you really put a lot of effort into it what you're going to find out is that eventually you're going to build it to make you way more money than what you did in the past. Freedom is what you're searching for and freedom comes from your discipline and it comes from structure. Habits are very important. I'll say this before I talk about habits. They're important, but they're not the most important thing. People don't talk enough about the standards that people hold themselves to. And if you can understand this and you can hold yourself accountable to the level that you really want to hold yourself accountable and the level that you need to be at in order to create the life that you want you will create that life. Habits are important, but habits are the children of standards. Standards are way more important. And so if you can learn to hold yourself to a higher standard then you'll have to force yourself to grow. And if you grow, you'll create an amazing life. And in this episode, I'm going to give you tips on exactly how to do so. But first off, let's get really clear on what a standard is because sometimes people like to ask that. Standards in the simplest form, the way I like to explain them are what you deem acceptable and fully unacceptable in your life. And these are levels that you will not let yourself drop below. At all, ever. You won't let yourself drop below the standard. And your standards are attached to your identity and what you think about yourself, right? So, you know, when you look at your body there's a pretty good chance that for most people listening your body has been very similar for the past two, three, four, five, 10 years for some of you even longer, right? That's because that's the standard that you're holding yourself to. You won't let yourself go any lower. But you're probably also not going any further in getting any better in a lot of cases. You might be in some cases but this is the reason why people can lose a bunch of weight and then they can go right back to gaining all of the weight back. Just standards that they have. If you look at your bank account you probably have around the same amount that you have for years, right? Tends to be very common. If you're used to seeing $5,000 in your bank account you've probably had around $5,000 in your bank account for years and years. Why? Because it's simply just a standard. And if some big bill comes in and you have to pay that bill and let's say your bank account goes from 5,000 to 4,000 well the standard is that you're used to seeing 5,000. So that's when you'll buckle up. You won't go out to each. You won't see your friends. You won't go to the movies. You won't spend any extra money until you feel safe and at that same place that you're normally at, right? So your life, where it currently is is because of your standards. How you look, how your body looks, where your business is at, where your bank account is at, where your friendships are at, where your friendships are at, where your relationships are at, where your marriage is at, where your relationship with your kids is at. The cleanliness of your house, everything comes down to the standards that you hold yourself to. And a standard is something that you will not drop below. But the thing about that is that's basically like the ground floor, which means that there's always levels above it. And those levels above it, in order for you to go from ground floor to the next floor, you're gonna have to raise your standards in some way. So I'll give you a quick example. If we're talking about not falling below any standards, let's go really drastic. I'm assuming that most people listening to this podcast right now, you're probably not gonna get done listening to this podcast and then go shoot up some Black Tar Heroin, right? Why? I would assume that for most people listening to a motivational podcast and a mindset podcast and trying to improve yourself and get into personal development and growth, you're probably not shooting up Black Tar Heroin on the weekends, right? The reason why is because that's probably below your standards. Now, what's the difference between that and the people out there that are listening that you don't shoot Black Tar Heroin, but you tend to stop really short of your goals before you ever hit them, right? I know there's a lot of people that listen to this and you stop short just a little bit short of your goals before you actually get there. That means that it's a standard for you to not hit your goals. What if your standard was, hey, I'm not going to ever stop until I hit my goal, right? Or giving up short on yourself, giving up just a little bit too early. How common, it's so common for me when I work with people to hear how many people get really excited about something some goals, some New Year's resolution and then they give up in the middle of it and they're done with it, right? How about this? Is it your standard to wake up the very first time your alarm goes off or do you hit snooze three times before waking up? See, that's a standard. Do you have the standard of when my alarm goes off, my ass gets out of my bed and I do not go back in. That is a standard, right? People love to focus on habits and like I said, those are important but your habits are just the offspring of your standards. So if you have a habit of waking up and having a morning routine, it's because your standards are I will wake up at six a.m. or five a.m. I will get out of my bed the first time the alarm goes off and I will not let myself go back to sleep. That is a standard and the habit of the morning routine is an offspring of that standard, right? It makes sense. I don't know why nobody talks about this because your standards are actually more important than your habits. Your standards create your habits. So I'll give you a couple of examples. People want to wake up and have a morning routine like we're talking about. They want that to be a habit of theirs but they don't have the standard of waking up when the alarm goes off. They don't have the standard of going to bed early. They don't have the standard of doing what they say they're going to do. They don't have the standard of prioritizing their sleep. They don't have the standard of making sure everything in the morning is ready for the morning before they go to bed. There are standards that assist in making sure that those habits are executed correctly. And so what are your standards and where do you need to improve them, right? You won't go and shoot heroin but you will struggle getting yourself out of bed in the morning. Why? Standards. It's all standards, right? You have to, and here's the interesting thing and this is gonna sound very drastic to most of you but when you get it, you'll get it. As drastic as it seems of like I would never shoot heroin, right? Like if you think that to yourself like I would never shoot heroin. The mental, the same mental disgust that you have towards shooting heroin you should have towards sleeping in. That's a standard and that's what I'm talking about. Now you might be sitting there going, well that's pretty damn drastic Rob. Shooting heroin, sleeping in, those are not the same thing. I know they're not the same thing but can you make them the mental equivalent where it's like I do not sleep in? There is no way on God's green earth that I freaking sleep in at any point in time. I get up when my alarm goes off because that's what I'm supposed to do. The same way that there's no way on God's green earth that I'm gonna take heroin and shoot it into my arms, right? The same way there needs to be a rock bottom for you, right? Shooting heroin would be rock bottom. Not actually waking up and having your morning routine and the habits and executing the way that you want to should be a rock bottom for you. So let's give another example. Look at your body. Is your body right now your dream body? Or could it be better? Well, it is what it is because of your standards, right? What about the food that you eat? Do you eat fast food? Do you eat greasy food? Wings? Pizza? All of that is a standard that you're sticking to. Do you eat food that's, you know, if you were to be taking your food out, right? And you drop your food in the parking lot and it falls in the concrete. Are you gonna pick it up and eat it after it falls in the parking lot that everyone's been walking over and cars been going and birds have been on, right? Probably not. Why? Because eating food off of a parking lot is probably below your standards. But eating McDonald's when you know that you should isn't below your standards, right? You see how these correlate? The same way that you wouldn't eat food off the floor should be, there's no way, I'm gonna eat some freaking McDonald's. There's no way I'm gonna eat this greasy food because I know what I do. It's number one, it's gonna make me fatter. Number two, it's gonna make me tired. Number three, I'm not gonna feel good. Number four, I'm probably gonna fart a lot, right? My wife isn't gonna love that. There's standards that you have to hold yourself to so that eating McDonald's needs to be the mental equivalent of eating food off of the ground. Right? Look at your body again. How often do you work out? How many times a week do you work out per week? What's your personal standard? What is it? I know people that work out twice a day. I also know people who haven't worked out in 10 years. What's the difference? Standards. The standards that someone's gonna hold themselves to and the level that they will not drop below. If you wanna know how to change your body, what do you need to change? Your standards. Change your workout standards. Change your lifestyle standards. Change your mental standards. How hard you go to the gym because you could show up at the gym and you could walk in the treadmill at slow pace for an hour if you want to or you can go in there and have that mental standard of like, I'm gonna work my ass off. I'm not gonna leave until I burn 500 calories according to my Apple Watch. Whatever it is. You live and die by your standards, right? They make the life that you have. Currently, they have all of your standards, accumulative effect of your standards and your past standards and your current standards have given you the life that you currently have. That's the truth. But those standards are not going to get you the life that you want. So the only difference between you now in this moment listening to those podcasts or watching this podcast, the only difference between you now and you in 10 years and having the perfect life and the perfect body and all the money in your bank account and the love and the happiness and the success and the traveling, whatever it is that you want, the only difference between you now and that version of you is that the two versions have two different levels of standards. There's you now and there's a perfect you. And the you that's the perfect you has fully maxed out their true potential and not wasted their true potential and they have fully decided to step into having the highest standards that they possibly can. And this is everything in your life. You have standards for every single thing that you do in your life. All of your goals. Do you come up short to your goals? Do you give up too often? Or do you not stop until the goal is hit no matter how long it takes, right? Come up short, give up. Don't quit no matter what. What's the difference? The standards, right? What about the relationships that you have? Do you cheat on your significant other? Or do you have a date night every single week, right? Do you turn off your phone at 7 p.m. So it's just enough time for the two of you to hang out. The difference is standards. Cheating on somebody is one standard and you were like, well, I'm okay with doing that. That thing, cheating on somebody. Or I will turn off my phone at 7 p.m. every single day so that I can have some time with my significant other that's uninterrupted. And you know what? I'm also gonna take her on a date every single week. Difference between the two of those? They're vastly different. The standards that I'm willing to hold myself to. Standards that you're willing to hold yourself to, right? What about your family? Do you have a standard of, you know, hey, I do work so hard that I usually miss dinner with my wife and kids? Or do you have the standard of I disconnect at 6 p.m. no matter what so that I can be a fully present parent because being a present parent matters more than all of the money that I can make. What's the difference? Standards, your body, do you work out every single day? Do you follow a healthy lifestyle? Do you eat a lot of fast food? Do you skip workouts often? What's the difference between those two scenarios? Standards, what about your bank account? Right, you have a lot of standards for how much that you make, how much you save, how much you spend. If you're a saver, that's a standard. If you're someone who spends a lot of money and you're not really good at saving money, that's a standard. All of these things can be changed at any point in time. Look at your work, look at your career, look at your business. All of that is a standard. If you have a business and you have people that work for you in your business and you feel like they're lazy, that's a standard because you don't hold them to a high enough standard. Then usually that means that you're not holding yourself to a high enough standard. If you want people who work really hard, you better be the one that's working really hard first. People follow leaders. Are you a good leader? What about your personal growth? Are you reading often? Are you skipping it? Are you telling yourself that you're growing when in reality you're not? What is it? All of them have to do with standards. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. There's no way that you're slipping on standards in your relationship and cheating, but you happen to be having this business as crushing it. No, if you're slipping in one area of your life, I guarantee you we can identify all of the different areas of your life where you happen to be cheating and having low standards. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. You live and die by your standards. They make the life that you have. They will create the life that you want. So the only difference once again between you, now and you in 10 years, and the perfect life that you want is a standard that you hold yourself to. So take a quick look around your life and start thinking to yourself, what are the standards that I typically hold myself to? What are the standards that are great standards? What are the standards that I need to keep? Okay, I'm really good at going to the gym. Let's say you're good at going to the gym. Ah, I'm not the best at eating healthy though. And I know that if I really want to get the body that I want, well, I'm probably gonna have to start eating better. Okay, so now I've noticed where I do well. I've also noticed some place where I need my standards to be better. So what about you? What are places where your standards are good and you would like to keep those? What are the places in your life where standards are not where they should be and you want to improve those? Maybe you have the standard of, oh man, my relationship with my wife, it's doing great. We're doing good, but you know what? I'm missing my morning routine almost every single morning. You want to miss my morning routine? It stresses me out a little bit because I feel like I could have done better. I feel like it was something that I needed. You know what? I'm gonna have to go ahead and figure out how to make my morning routine be better. How to make sure that I show up. And if I'm missing my morning routine, there's, once again, when you do one thing is where you do everything. There's probably other places that I could make my relationship better with my wife where I could make my relationship better with my kids, where I could show up as a better leader in my business. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So there's always going to be other places. So take a look around you and start seeing where you have good standards and where you have standards that need to be improved. And if you look at yourself in 10 years and the perfect life that you could have because it is out there for everybody, and you look at that life, ask yourself what type of standards would that person hold themselves to, right? And realize that when you truly level up all of your standards, you're pulling your true potential out of yourself and your habits will be created from that. And for me personally, the way I see everything is I see life as this big game. I feel like it's a game. I'm just playing this game. In every game, there's just a new level, right? There's just new levels that you get to and with the new levels, there's always new challenges. And I see everything as life as just a test to see how I'm going to show up as if God or the universe or whatever it is that you believe in is watching me at all points in time. And if I have low standards, and let's say God's watching down on me, the universe is looking at me, and I have low standards as to sleeping in, not holding myself to a high standard, not showing up in my relationships, all of this stuff, I'm gonna stay where I am. Why would anybody reward me with anything great for not doing anything great, right? It's like you don't play, could you imagine how boring the video game would be if you didn't have to accomplish anything but you were just rewarded with gold coins for just kind of doing nothing and meandering all over the place? No, you've got to accomplish something, right? But if I hold myself to a high standard, huh, that's interesting because the universe tends to reward me every single time I hold myself to a high standard. If I push myself without anybody else needing to push me, if I treat people the way that people should be treated, if I show up for people the way that I should show up for people, if I work harder than anybody else, if I mentally take care of myself and build myself up, it's like the universe just gives me gifts. It's like the gold coins just start falling from the sky, right? But it all comes down to the standards of what I deem acceptable and what standards I'm going to hold myself to. So if you're out there and you don't have the life you want currently, like you could have a great life and most people listening probably have a great life, right? It's good, but you know that there's more inside of you. That more inside of you is going to take a shift in your standards. Not shift in your standards is going to change your habits and the change of your habits and your actions is what's going to change your life. It's a top-down effect, standards to habits to actions. That's what you need to focus on. So as you're looking at your life, ask yourself once again, this life I have right now, the standards that I'm holding myself to, where do I need to hold myself to a higher standard and how should I pay attention to myself at a deep level and become very self-aware if my standards happen to dip so that I can make sure I pull myself back up and not allow myself to dip below? Because the only difference between you and the life that you want is the standards that you hold yourself to. It seems obvious that every single person should want to build a life that they love, right? So many people should, every single person, not even so many, every single person should be building a life that they absolutely love they don't want to try to escape from. But if that's the case, why do so many people not love their lives? Because if I look around in the people that I've coached, the people that I've talked to, it seems like most people are slightly content with their life and sometimes maybe even a little bit agitated with their lives. And then some people kind of hate their lives, but very rarely do I meet someone who's like absolutely in love with every aspect of their life. And so I want to ask you before we dive in, do you love your life? Do you love every single aspect of your life or are there certain pieces of your life or many pieces of your life? We're like, yeah, I don't really like that. I don't really like that job that I have, that person to my life. I don't like any of that because for me personally, I think that I should be and I think that you should be building a life that I'm in love with in every single aspect. I think you should be building a life that you're in love with in every single aspect. And there shouldn't be any pieces of your life to be honest with you that you don't love. And I don't know about you but I want to be working towards building a life that I love every single day. Now, are there pieces that I still want to change around a little bit? Absolutely, but over the past 14 years, I feel like I've been pulling out the weeds, the things that I don't want in my life and replanting flowers in places of all of those weeds. So if your life was a garden and you're looking at it, would you see more flowers in your life or would you see more weeds in your life? And if you see more weeds, what are you gonna do to go through and actually start to pull them? Because there's nobody else that can pull those weeds whether that's the job that you have, the family, the people that you surround yourself with, the person that you're in a relationship with, all of those things can either be flowers or weeds and you need to go through and take an actual assessment and figure out exactly what it is that you want in your life and how you need to get each of those things as well. And I'm gonna say something I think that that might kind of surprise a lot of people. Built, like waking up one day and having a life that you want and love is not going to happen. A life that you actually love is built. It's something that you have to put a lot of intention into. It's built intentionally and it's built meticulously, like going through every single aspect of every single day and going, do I wanna keep this here? Or do I wanna get rid of it? A perfect life is built. It's not like you just wake up one day and go, oh, holy shit, this is perfect. I'm so glad that I somehow just absolutely landed somehow on this perfect life. No, you have to plan it. You have to plan it, you have to check it, you have to check it every single week, check it every single day and you have to execute on everything that you want in your life. Everything in your life, though, is changeable. That's what's beautiful. Because one of the things that really holds people back from building the life that they love is that they feel like they're stuck in the life that they have. And if you feel like you're stuck in your current life, then mentally, it's gonna seem really hard for you to build a life that you love. It's gonna seem like it's near impossible. It's gonna seem like, well, I guess I'm just not gonna get it this life. I guess I'm not gonna get it this round. And you've heard me talk about a friend of mine who was the number 30 employee in Facebook and he was fired from Facebook a year before they went public and he missed out on about $180 million because of the fact that he was fired. And he started to go into a depression. And when he noticed he was going into a depression, he was there for a while, he started sitting around and going, man, I don't like being depressed anymore. I'm gonna figure out a way to be happy. And so what he did was he made a happiness list. Every single thing that makes him happy, it could have been music, it could have been walking his dog, it could be certain food, it could be certain people, it could be conversations, it could be a movie. He made a massive list of every single thing that makes him happy. And what he did was every single morning he would look at that list and then he would look at the things that he had to do today and he would say, how can I bring as many of these things from this list into my day? And the quote that I love that he told me was that I will not leave my depression or my happiness left up to chance. I'm gonna be in control of it. Now, when you hear that and you start thinking of your own life, are you leaving your own life up to chance or are you actually being extremely intentional about every single thing that you need? What would it look like if you were to sit down and make a massive list of every single thing that you love, every single thing that makes you happy, every single thing that makes you feel better, whether that is music, whether that is playing with a puppy, whether that is just a certain food, certain restaurant, certain friends, certain cocktail that you like, whatever it is, a movie that you wanna watch, listening to certain music, going out and seeing a band play, what is it that just makes you feel more alive? What is it that would seem like a piece of a life that you love? If you were to build a life that you love, what is a essential piece that you would wanna make sure that you have? And you go through every single aspect of your life and you actually start to plan it. So let's do it together. If you have a pen and paper, this would be a really good time to pull it out. Let's go through as many aspects of your life as we possibly can, right? So let's bring the first thing in. Let's just go hard from the very beginning. Your significant other, right? Is this someone that you actually do love or is this someone that you feel like maybe you're just making sure that you're not lonely anymore? Be honest with yourself. It's okay, you're the only one that's here that's talking to me and listening to this, right? So be honest with yourself. Are there, maybe you do love them, but maybe there's certain aspects of them in certain aspects of your relationship that you wanna change, okay? So what we wanna do, we take a list and we make a list of everything that we love and then we make a list of needs to change, right? Maybe the person needs to change. It needs to be a completely different person or maybe you and that person need to change a little bit in the way you show up to the relationship. Maybe say, okay, yeah, I do love this person, but to be honest with you, our communication sucks. And what happens, well, I'll do something, she'll do something and we don't say anything because our communication sucks and it builds up and it builds up and it builds up and then what happens, it just explodes and it explodes because none of us are willing to actually have a conversation in the time that we're supposed to have a conversation. So, okay, what do I love about this person? What are the certain aspects? I love their adventure. I love how they're so goofy, I love these things. Okay, I wanna deepen these things that I love and if I have a needs to change list, I need to bring this up with them and actually start to figure out what we need to do together to change it, perfect. Now we've at least got a little bit of a plan, don't we? Now we can start to build a relationship that we love. Great, let's go into our friendships. Let's look at all of our friends. Who do you love? Who are the people that are there for you? What do you love about them? What are the ways that you wanna show up to that relationship with them even deeper? Let's go deeper into it, okay. Now, let's go into the needs to change list. Well, you know, there is this one friend that's always negative. I can try to change them, but I probably can't, so maybe what happens is I spend less time with them. Okay, so you go through each person and you think about the relationship that you have with them and you start thinking to yourself, is this somebody that's going to be playing an integral part of my life 10 years from now and where I wanna be 10 years from now or is this someone who's actually kind of pulling me back into being my old self that I'm trying to grow away from? Is there certain aspects of this person or this relationship with them that I wanna change or maybe just change it completely and spend less time with them and start spending time with maybe a new acquaintance that will pull me into the person that I want to be, right? Something to think about. All right, let's keep going. What about your family? Your relationship with your parents, relationship, obviously you can't change your parents, you can't change your brother and sister, you can't change any of those people. What do you love about them? How can you deepen the certain aspects that you love about them so that you spend more time in that aspect that you love with them? And then on the other side, what are the things that you don't love that you do want to change? Oh yeah, well I feel like this person I feel like my dad's really surface level and he doesn't really go deep with me and he's not really an emotional guy and doesn't really open himself up. Is there a way to crack him open and maybe start to have some real, actual legitimate conversations so I can feel like I know this person, right? You can go through every single relationship and start to ask yourself, what is it that I love about it? What is it that needs to change, okay? All right, let's go to the next aspect. What about your job or your career? Okay, what is it about your job or your career? Do you love your job or is it just something that you're doing to make money? Right, I understand that you can't just quit today a job that you hate, but it's kind of ridiculous to just think that you're gonna be there forever, isn't it? Like why would you just automatically go, yeah well I hate my job but it's the way that I pay the bills, right? Okay, I understand that but can you make a transition plan and say okay, I can't leave today but I could come up with a way to be gone and to be doing something different in 365 days. Okay, that makes me feel good. Okay, so let's come up with a need to change. What is it that I would like my job to look like? What is it that I would like my career to look like? Maybe I do like where I am but maybe I don't like the position that I'm in. I wanna actually get a promotion. Okay, what do I need to do to change that? What do I need to do to get a promotion next 365 days? And you start coming up with an actual plan to get you to where you wanna go and your career and your job as well. Perfect, let's keep going. Let's say that you have a business, okay. What do you love about your business? You know, what do you hate about your business? What are the things that you wanna change about your business, think about that. What about the people that you work with? Your employees, you know are these employees that you just hired because you needed to put somebody in place with these people who you actually really want to see them grow and you wanna spend more time with them? You know, you start to think about that and you go, yeah, maybe I do have these people on my team that I'm not really 100% in love with. They're not really the best person, but I hired them a couple of years ago and when you look at it, you're like, actually, this person could be producing way more if I had a better person in that position. Hmm, maybe I should let this person go. Maybe I should, you know, maybe I'm holding them back by keeping, you know, holding them back from a life they could have by keeping them in this position. Maybe I need to let them go, right? So think about that. What about the house that you have? Are you in love with your house? Maybe you are, okay? Are there certain aspects of your house that you wanna change? Oh, yeah, there are certain aspects of the house that I wanna change. It's always too dirty. Oh, okay, well, that's something that we can work on. All right, so what do I need to do to change it to make sure the house isn't as dirty as it is? Maybe you don't love your house. What is the house that you love? You know, how much would it cost to buy that house? Maybe you don't have the money for it right now. What do you need to do in order to figure out how to get that money? And what you do is you start going through every single aspect of your life and you make a plan. You just figure out what needs to be done. What about the car you drive? Do you love the car you drive? Do you hate the car you drive? What do you need to do to figure out what is the car that you want? Okay, figure out what it is, how much does it cost you? Go test drive that freaking thing so it gets you more excited about it. And then you're more likely to work to try to get that thing. Okay, great, that's the car that I want. I know what it is. I know how much it's gonna cost me. I know exactly how much monthly payment's gonna be if I were to put down X amount of dollars. Okay, what do I need to do to get that money to drive that car? You know, it's not about just acquiring but it's also thinking, you know, maybe I feel better about myself when I'm driving this and I show up better to where I'm going. Your car's a part of it. What about your clothes? Is there clothes that you don't like? Maybe it's like, ah, shit, I've been wearing clothes for the past 10 years. I haven't bought clothes in a really long time. Okay, well, style's changed in the past 10 years. Maybe you don't look as good as you thought you used to back in the day and you're like, I need to change this. All right, well, let me change exactly the clothes that I'm wearing. What is it that you, how much does that cost? Maybe you wanna hire somebody to teach you what to wear and they go out and they go shopping with you and for you and help you build an actual wardrobe where you don't look like a shmo, right? I don't know what it is, but figure out what it is that you want. What about your mindset? What are different aspects of your mindset that you don't like, ah, man, you know what? I talk negatively way too much to myself. I need to stop talking negatively to myself. How come I come up with a plan to not talk as negative to myself, right? What do I love about the way that I talk to myself? Well, I build myself up. I'm a positive person. I'm more optimistic, whatever it is. Figure out what you love about the way that you talk to yourself, the way that your mindset is and then figure out what you need to change. What do you love? What do you need to change? What about your morning routine? What's your morning routine look like, right? There's so many aspects of your life, every single aspect of your life. You just go through with a fine tooth comb and you figure out what you like, what you don't like and how can you make sure that you're building a life of just the things that you want? You think about every single thing that you do on a daily basis from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. How can I make sure that every single thing that I do is something that I love? You think about every single action that you take from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. How can I make sure that every single action that I take is something that I absolutely love? Think about every single person that you come in contact with, every person that you talk to, every person who's face you see, every person who calls you, every person who emails you, every person who text messages you. How can you make sure that every single person that you come in contact with is not somebody that brings you down, not somebody that's negative, but somebody who you absolutely love that wants the best for you and empowers you to be better? perfect. What about every thought that you think from the moment you wake up to the moment you get better? What it requires is absolute full awareness. And I know that some people listen to this. It's going to go in one ear and out the other. And you're not going to make a plan. And you're just going to go, ah, yeah, well, this is a great episode on to the next one instead of actually taking a plan and figure out what it is. Realize that you can go through every single aspect of your day and start to make changes in everything that you do. Start to make change in every single thing that you have. And realize that your life is not going to change right away. It takes time to change the person that you're with. It takes time to change the place that you live. It takes time to change the career that you have, the job that you have, the employees that you have, whatever it is, it takes time for change to happen. But what if I told you that in 10 years, 10 years from today, you will have a life that you absolutely love, like the perfect life? Would that excite you? If you're like 10 years from today, I'm going to have the perfect life. Would that excite you? Hell yeah, it would. Well, it's absolutely possible, but it requires you to step up to figure out what you love, what you don't love and start to work past it. What's crazy about is that some people, like if you really think about it, some people are more intentional about putting hard work into their jobs and many people hate those jobs. So some people are putting hard work and showing up and getting shit done in a job that they absolutely hate, but they're not even doing that for their own freaking life. It blows my mind that some people take their jobs more serious than they take their life. Right? So imagine if you and I are creating a business. We're going to go in as business partners. What are we going to do? We're going to create a business plan first. We're not just going to go, hey, we're just going to sell this product and see what happens. No, we're going to come up with a business plan and figure out exactly, okay, what's the marketing look like? What's the sales look like? What's the shipping look like? What's the this look like in the pictures and photography and all of that stuff? We're going to have a business plan. Right? Do you even have a life plan? Think about that for a second. That's the first thing. Now, if we're business partners, we're going to at least have quarterly reviews, aren't we? If you work for a business, you guys have quarterly reviews in what you do. So do you have quarterly reviews in your life? No. Well, what are you doing? Why don't you try to figure out a way to start coming up with quarterly reviews? See if you're on track to hitting your goals, the same way that if you're on a sales team, you're going to have quarterly reviews. What else are you going to have? Weekly meetings. See how today, how this week went. You're going to look back and look forward. See what you're working for. See what's going on. And then what are you going to do sometimes? My team and I have a morning huddle every single morning. Every morning I talk to my team. Do you even have a morning huddle with yourself? Or you just kind of see in what happens. If you're not fully satisfied with your life, it might be because you've just not been intentional. You haven't been having quarterly meetings. You have no plan. You have no quarterly meetings. You have no weekly meetings. You have no morning huddles. Of course, you're not where you want to be because you might not even know where you want to be at this point. And it's some, it's just, it's just so crazy that some people take their job that they hate more serious than the life that they have in the life they're trying to build. So what would happen if you took your life as serious and planned out your life as serious and as intricately as you do your business or the company that you work for? Where would your life be in a year, five years, 10 years down the road if you took your life that seriously? And it's simple. It's not hard. But it takes time. You have to plan it out. Figure out what you want. Make a plan. You have to work for it. You're gonna have to review it often. And then you're gonna have to adjust. Things are not gonna work out exactly the way that you want. It's gonna take some time. But isn't it worth it? If this is your life? Shouldn't you be taking this more serious than anything else that exists? Because this is your life. This isn't anybody else's life. And the more that you take this seriously, the more it affects every single person you come in contact with. So if you want to build a life that you want, it doesn't you don't just wake up and it's given to you. It's something that's planned meticulously, it's reviewed often, and it's going to require you to execute every single day. But if you take the time you put in the work, I promise you, you're gonna wake up one day and go, holy crap, I love my life. And that's all that really matters.