2021-04-28_What_to_Do_When_Nothing_Is_Working_and_You_Feel_Like_the_Darkness_is_Closing_In
00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:03.520 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:07.960 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:11.600 | Today on the show, I would like to share with you what to do when nothing is going well.
00:00:29.760 | You may hear a little bit of strangeness, a little bit of nasal congestion in my voice.
00:00:34.920 | I will try to keep some sniffing and snorting off of the audio, but it's possible that a
00:00:39.680 | sniffer snort might pass through.
00:00:42.320 | I've got Kleenexes here on my desk.
00:00:44.640 | But I am not feeling very well right now.
00:00:46.880 | I'm physically not feeling very well at the moment, and the last couple of weeks have
00:00:51.000 | been really personally difficult for me.
00:00:53.640 | There's no catastrophe, no crisis, nothing that you need to send me any condolences about,
00:00:58.480 | just simply that it's just been difficult.
00:01:00.560 | And there have been a number of things.
00:01:02.240 | Well, it just it feels like everything is going wrong.
00:01:05.280 | It feels like there's this black cloud everywhere that is kind of affecting everything.
00:01:11.520 | Now obviously that's hyperbole, but that's just how it feels sometimes.
00:01:16.080 | I've been physically sick off and on over the last couple of weeks, allergies, sometimes
00:01:20.160 | something a little bit more.
00:01:21.720 | My wife has been a little bit sick.
00:01:24.040 | We wondered if it was COVID.
00:01:25.040 | I kind of hoped it was COVID so we could get it over.
00:01:26.960 | As far as I know, we haven't had COVID yet, but I don't know.
00:01:30.600 | We're going to go get a COVID test in a couple of days and see what that results have been.
00:01:35.120 | Nothing serious, no serious symptoms, just a little bit of sickness.
00:01:40.160 | Business I'm behind on most of my goals, behind on most of my business plans, not exactly
00:01:45.280 | sure how to press forward, a little bit overwhelmed on a lot of different fronts right now.
00:01:51.320 | And I think things are okay.
00:01:53.480 | My kids are fine.
00:01:55.440 | Most things are fine on that level, but when things aren't going well, it can feel pretty
00:02:00.000 | black.
00:02:01.160 | Everything can feel pretty dark.
00:02:03.000 | I tend to be a fairly emotional person, pretty in tune with my own emotions, pretty subject
00:02:09.760 | to them.
00:02:10.920 | And throughout my own short lifetime, I've had so many ups and downs that I've learned
00:02:17.120 | pretty well how to deal with it.
00:02:19.240 | And so what I want to do today is supplant some of the programming that was scheduled
00:02:24.400 | and just talk to you about some of the things that I personally do when things aren't going
00:02:29.520 | well.
00:02:30.600 | And I hope that these ideas may be useful to you because I've been here before.
00:02:36.920 | I know I'll be here again.
00:02:38.040 | It's a fairly regular occurrence in my lifetime.
00:02:39.800 | And I thought you might appreciate a few ideas that would be helpful.
00:02:45.280 | So I want to talk about your mind, your mental state.
00:02:48.320 | I want to talk about your body.
00:02:50.480 | I want to talk about kind of some of the things that I do when things aren't going very well
00:02:54.840 | in hopes that these tools will be helpful for you.
00:02:58.560 | The first thing I would comment on, if you're someone who regularly experiences down days,
00:03:03.600 | difficulties, times when you're just frustrated, when you're struggling, when things aren't
00:03:07.520 | working, when the blackness is closing in, first thing that I always think of is I've
00:03:12.960 | been here before.
00:03:15.240 | And as I get older, more and more, this is something that brings me a significant amount
00:03:19.600 | of comfort.
00:03:20.600 | And you've probably been here before.
00:03:23.560 | Now if you're listening to me and you're 16 years old and you're facing your first kind
00:03:26.600 | of minor life catastrophe where it feels like nothing is going well, even though it should
00:03:32.360 | be, then welcome.
00:03:34.220 | Welcome to the club.
00:03:35.220 | This is how it works for most of us.
00:03:36.640 | But for me, I've gained tremendous comfort in the fact that I have been here before.
00:03:41.520 | No matter what the problem is, at this point in time, I've experienced so many problems,
00:03:45.240 | so many trials, so many hardships, so many setbacks in my life that I am getting increasingly
00:03:50.600 | comfortable with those problems and those trials and those setbacks.
00:03:55.800 | I personally try not to talk much about them publicly just because I don't think anybody
00:03:59.600 | really cares.
00:04:00.840 | I don't care to hear much about any other people's problems and so I don't share many
00:04:04.480 | of my problems publicly.
00:04:06.760 | But I wanted to do it today just to tell you, if you think that this is some kind of strange
00:04:10.720 | thing, if you think that other people don't go through difficult times, you're wrong.
00:04:14.040 | We all do.
00:04:15.440 | And so I gain a tremendous amount of comfort of recognizing that I've been here before.
00:04:20.960 | And because I've been here before, I've developed some of the techniques and the tactics that
00:04:24.800 | I'm going to share with you in today's show that helped me to get through them, to help
00:04:29.080 | me to press forward.
00:04:30.880 | I think of myself kind of like Tom Brady in the sense that there's a big difference between
00:04:40.160 | a rookie for whom everything has always gone well versus a seasoned professional who has
00:04:47.080 | had to pull it out from deep, from the deep end, right?
00:04:52.280 | When you're way, way down in a game and yet you still stay focused and calm and you deliver
00:04:57.040 | under pressure.
00:04:58.160 | I am amazed at athletes who are skilled at that.
00:05:02.480 | Having never been a competitive athlete in that sense, I would be all nerves.
00:05:07.680 | You're down by 20 points at halftime and you're up against the team with the best defense
00:05:11.840 | in the world and yet the professionals so many times just come out and they keep pressing
00:05:17.120 | forward.
00:05:18.120 | They keep pressing forward, play by play, moment by moment, and they put points on the
00:05:24.400 | board and often they come out with a win.
00:05:27.200 | And so one of the things that I have learned in my life is to be more confident in myself.
00:05:33.080 | And the fact is that I have never not had periods of difficulty.
00:05:36.640 | I've never not felt under the weather.
00:05:38.600 | I've never not had personal difficulty.
00:05:41.000 | But what I have done is I have been able to continue pressing forward.
00:05:44.760 | And so I begin with trying to get my mindset right.
00:05:48.920 | I recognize I've been here before.
00:05:51.200 | I'll probably be here again.
00:05:53.280 | So let me just press forward right now.
00:05:56.440 | And then the next thing is this too shall pass.
00:05:59.760 | One of my personal mottos is this too shall pass.
00:06:03.280 | No matter what it is, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how bad it is, this too shall
00:06:08.440 | pass.
00:06:09.560 | And I comfort myself with those.
00:06:11.760 | When I'm experiencing the heights of euphoria, I try to remind myself this too shall pass.
00:06:16.500 | So enjoy it, but this too shall pass.
00:06:18.980 | Don't get hooked on it.
00:06:20.320 | And then when I'm in the pits of despair, then I just remind myself this too shall pass.
00:06:27.120 | And I know it's going to pass, especially because it's passed before.
00:06:29.960 | If it's your first time, I promise you, this too shall pass.
00:06:34.440 | I try to pay a lot of attention to my mindset and to some basic core principles that I firmly
00:06:40.960 | believe are true.
00:06:43.400 | And those principles and those mindsets help, especially during the difficult times.
00:06:50.220 | They help during normal times, but they help a lot more during difficult times because
00:06:55.700 | they give you something that you can think about.
00:06:58.200 | And so I have a set of them, many of them, that are very comforting to me when I face
00:07:07.720 | difficult times.
00:07:09.280 | From the big macro ideas based on my philosophical worldview to just the micro day-to-day experience.
00:07:17.640 | You know, a simple example.
00:07:18.640 | I'll give you a few examples of things that help me.
00:07:21.520 | Whenever I'm going through something tough, I always just recognize that I'm probably
00:07:25.760 | going to laugh about this later and I'm going to tell stories about this down the road.
00:07:30.000 | I've been over the years in so many uncomfortable situations, right?
00:07:33.320 | Traveling and everything is falling apart.
00:07:35.040 | It's been another issue.
00:07:37.400 | We had some house issues with no water and some other frustrating things, none of which
00:07:41.560 | are in isolation, all that big a deal.
00:07:44.320 | But when compounded over everything else, it's just frustrating to deal with that.
00:07:48.720 | And one of the things that I remind myself is I'm going to laugh about this later and
00:07:53.520 | this awful, difficult, terrible, hard experience is going to give me a fun story down the road.
00:07:59.960 | So if I'm going to tell a fun story about this down the road, then why don't I go ahead
00:08:03.720 | and embrace it right now and say, "This sucks, but that's all right.
00:08:07.560 | I'm going to tell a story about this down the road, so let me embrace the suck and press
00:08:11.600 | on through it."
00:08:13.280 | Maybe you're on a camping trip and your tent is pouring in ice cold rain and you're completely
00:08:18.360 | soaked, you're completely miserable, and there's nothing you can do about it except huddle
00:08:21.840 | up and just try to make it through the night.
00:08:23.760 | Well, that's a story that you're going to be telling for the next few decades.
00:08:29.240 | When I was younger, I heard my parents took my older siblings camping in some disastrous
00:08:34.980 | camping trip.
00:08:36.880 | And I heard about it my entire lifetime, about this one time at such and such a campground
00:08:41.560 | when it was just awful.
00:08:42.880 | It was a terrible experience and yet it gave a good fodder for a story.
00:08:46.280 | So something simple and silly like that, to me, helps to brighten my mood a little bit
00:08:50.200 | and say, "This really sucks and yet I'm going to laugh about this down the road.
00:08:54.120 | This is going to be the story that I tell about lying on the cold ground and just completely
00:08:58.440 | freezing and being totally miserable and hungry, blah, blah, blah.
00:09:02.120 | And that was when I hit my low and we're going to laugh about it down the road."
00:09:05.680 | And little silly things like that help me.
00:09:09.000 | I think on a more macro scale, when you look at life and you have a little bit of experience,
00:09:13.920 | you recognize that the times that you learn the most in your life are the trial times,
00:09:17.480 | the difficult times.
00:09:19.120 | And so with a little bit of age, you start to recognize that trials are actually extraordinarily
00:09:24.640 | valuable and I'm going to appreciate this trial when it's over.
00:09:28.240 | I'm going to appreciate this difficult thing when it's over.
00:09:33.040 | Sometimes it helps you to build empathy.
00:09:36.440 | I know that for me, my empathy over the years has grown as I have gone through difficult
00:09:42.160 | periods.
00:09:43.160 | I remember the first time that my back got messed up.
00:09:46.240 | I was always pretty healthy, always had a strong back.
00:09:48.680 | One time, I was in my mid-20s and I wasn't doing anything strenuous, but all of a sudden
00:09:53.600 | I did something to tweak my back.
00:09:55.960 | And for the first time in my life, I experienced severe back pain and was sitting down doing
00:10:02.640 | as little as possible for a couple of days until it recovered.
00:10:06.560 | And it was terrible.
00:10:07.680 | It was really tough.
00:10:09.500 | But since that day, I have always had more empathy for people with back pain and I've
00:10:15.360 | come to appreciate it.
00:10:17.080 | Even right now as I'm struggling to work in the face of dumb allergies and not feeling
00:10:22.120 | well, I appreciate the good health that I have most of the time.
00:10:26.760 | Whenever I'm sick, I recognize how much of my own personal ability and my own personal
00:10:30.900 | success is due to simply having won the genetic lottery of just having good health.
00:10:36.680 | And it builds my empathy and appreciation for the difficulties that so many other people
00:10:40.700 | face not having those things.
00:10:43.180 | And so it's fairly simple, but it's effective to recognize that when this trial is over,
00:10:49.240 | I'm going to really appreciate it.
00:10:52.640 | Those are just small practical things.
00:10:54.520 | But even if you go to its most fundamental foundation, for example, in my personal worldview,
00:11:00.600 | I personally believe that the universe, to use the parlance of the day, the universe
00:11:06.720 | is conspiring for my good.
00:11:08.240 | I don't like to use the word universe.
00:11:10.000 | I use God, but I believe that God is conspiring for my good and he has promised to work all
00:11:15.880 | things together in my life for good because I love him and I'm called according to his
00:11:22.880 | purpose.
00:11:24.200 | So one of the very useful things that I find so helpful in the Christian faith is simply
00:11:30.160 | the idea that you have an all-powerful, all-knowing God of the universe who controls all things
00:11:39.800 | and that God knows me.
00:11:42.600 | He knows my name and he is conspiring for my good.
00:11:47.680 | He is sovereignly arranging all of the circumstances in my life for my own good.
00:11:54.440 | And with his perfect middle knowledge, he has chosen the circumstances into which I
00:12:01.240 | am placed for my good.
00:12:06.000 | And so, whatever those circumstances look like, if on the outside they look like blessings
00:12:10.520 | and abundance or if they look like scarcity and deprivation, pain or joy, I can be confident
00:12:18.800 | that these are the circumstances that God has chosen for me and thus I can embrace them
00:12:24.120 | with a happy heart filled with joy.
00:12:26.920 | To me, that is one of the most powerful ideas in the history of the universe.
00:12:32.080 | If you genuinely believe that based upon good arguments, evidence, being persuaded of the
00:12:37.080 | truth of that statement, it gives you a foundation that you can press forward and face anything
00:12:42.880 | with.
00:12:45.240 | It's powerful.
00:12:46.840 | It's powerful.
00:12:50.240 | I find that just a place to rest and no matter how tragic or no matter how uncredible the
00:12:57.080 | circumstances are, I can simply rest and I can keep pressing forward seeking to honor
00:13:04.840 | God in my daily activities and in the way that I handle the circumstances that come
00:13:08.800 | at me.
00:13:10.720 | There are more useful little things that I tell myself.
00:13:13.840 | For example, most of my personal issues are usually short-lived, usually a few weeks maximum.
00:13:21.440 | I'll go through a few difficult weeks at a time, then I'll kind of be back on the upswing.
00:13:25.960 | And I often just remind myself, "Listen, Joshua, you don't have to get every day right.
00:13:32.880 | You really don't.
00:13:34.080 | You don't have to get every day right.
00:13:36.920 | You just need to get some or most days right, depending on what we're talking about with
00:13:40.960 | right.
00:13:42.360 | Everyone has a bad day.
00:13:43.800 | Everyone messes up.
00:13:45.160 | Everyone has times when they feel dark.
00:13:46.720 | They don't feel so effective.
00:13:48.400 | You don't have to get every day right.
00:13:50.520 | But if you can get most days right, you can have tremendous results.
00:13:55.560 | Every workout doesn't have to be the greatest workout.
00:13:58.240 | But if you can show up to the gym and most of your workouts are pretty decent, you can
00:14:01.800 | get tremendous results.
00:14:04.040 | Every investment doesn't have to be a complete winner.
00:14:08.620 | But if you can get most of your investments mostly right, things are going to work out
00:14:12.100 | pretty well for you.
00:14:13.940 | You don't have to get every day right.
00:14:16.340 | You just have to get most days right, and I can do that.
00:14:19.520 | Even if I get 20% or 30% or 40% of my days are just simply no good for whatever reason,
00:14:28.680 | that's okay.
00:14:29.680 | I can still experience tremendous success with the other 50% or 70% or 90%.
00:14:38.840 | Some of the world's greatest sports athletes, the world's greatest baseball players strike
00:14:44.620 | out all the time.
00:14:47.880 | The world's greatest businessmen go bankrupt regularly.
00:14:54.240 | And so reminding myself of those things and kind of taking the pressure off I've always
00:14:58.820 | found to be helpful.
00:15:00.920 | I do my best whenever possible to try to get my body right.
00:15:05.360 | I think that our body makes a big difference in obviously the way that we experience life.
00:15:12.560 | And my list is fairly simple.
00:15:14.280 | If everything is going poorly and I can only do one thing, I do my best to get my sleep
00:15:18.260 | on track.
00:15:19.260 | Make sure I go to bed on time, do my best to get a good night's sleep, wake up on time
00:15:23.640 | and get a good night's sleep.
00:15:25.000 | Because being well rested makes a tremendous difference in your ability to fight, to fight
00:15:30.480 | through.
00:15:31.480 | And so I work really hard to just get my sleep on time.
00:15:34.240 | And the big decision there is simply, for me anyway, some people struggle with insomnia,
00:15:38.600 | I don't generally.
00:15:40.120 | But the big difference there is just simply going to bed.
00:15:43.960 | Turning off the screens, turning off the input and going to bed on time.
00:15:48.240 | That's the secret.
00:15:49.440 | And if you just simply exercise the willpower to force yourself to go and lie down in bed,
00:15:54.520 | I think for most of us that works.
00:15:57.360 | The second thing I pay attention to is sunshine.
00:16:00.360 | If I don't feel well, I do my best to get some sunshine and try to get some vitamin
00:16:05.920 | D generation going, try to get a little sun on my face.
00:16:09.360 | Does wonders for your mood when you can face sunshine.
00:16:12.760 | So if you are facing something seasonal and it's gray and it's cloudy and whatnot, try
00:16:17.680 | to get some sunshine.
00:16:18.840 | That could mean an artificial lamp, it could mean a plane ticket to Mexico, but try to
00:16:23.520 | get some sunshine.
00:16:25.080 | The third thing that I think really makes a difference is movement.
00:16:28.800 | Trying to get some physical movement.
00:16:31.320 | And a lot of times when I'm not feeling well, nothing's working, I'm sitting just staring
00:16:35.600 | blankly at my computer, unable to produce anything useful, then going and getting some
00:16:40.320 | physical movement changes things for me.
00:16:43.480 | For some people that's a good hard workout, right?
00:16:45.640 | Go and take a spinning class.
00:16:46.640 | It's hard to come out of a good hard spinning class and really feel frustrated at anything,
00:16:51.600 | right?
00:16:52.600 | It's hard to go and do a hard CrossFit workout and come out in a bad mood.
00:16:56.880 | It's really hard.
00:16:58.360 | But at its very least, kind of low level, I just try to go for a walk.
00:17:02.200 | At the very least, what can I do?
00:17:03.640 | I can go for a walk.
00:17:05.240 | And so many times just sitting there metaphorically banging my head on the desk and walk outside,
00:17:13.400 | go for a 20 minute walk in the sunshine, come back and everything is better.
00:17:18.320 | And so if you're struggling for some reason, try to get movement if at all possible.
00:17:25.040 | And then the final piece I think is just simply to focus on your food and eat something that's
00:17:29.640 | going to make you feel good.
00:17:31.680 | Don't eat too much, eat lightly and eat something that you know is going to make you feel good.
00:17:36.640 | You know that if you eat a big heavy high calorie meal and drink four beers, you're
00:17:43.840 | going to feel awful and everything's going to get worse.
00:17:47.240 | So try to eat something that's going to make you feel good.
00:17:50.360 | That might mean some gastronomical delight, might mean a favorite food, but I think this
00:17:57.600 | means choosing something that's going to help you to feel better physically.
00:18:03.080 | And so if you're not feeling well, if you're struggling, if you're in a black place mentally,
00:18:07.840 | just repair yourself to those things.
00:18:10.040 | Sleep, sunshine, movement, food and water.
00:18:12.880 | I guess I should add as well, stay hydrated, drink water.
00:18:17.160 | One of the things that can often happen, people feeling tired a lot of times because they're
00:18:20.360 | dehydrated.
00:18:21.360 | Sometimes when you don't feel well, it's because you're dehydrated and so hydrate yourself
00:18:24.960 | well.
00:18:25.960 | Those are the things I do to get my body right.
00:18:28.480 | Get your mind right when possible.
00:18:30.600 | Things I find helpful when I'm in a black place and nothing's working.
00:18:34.680 | I think about my goals, I review my goals, I had to keep my goals on an app, my notes
00:18:39.200 | app.
00:18:40.200 | So I just pull it open and I take a look and I read through and I think about, I form some
00:18:44.320 | mental pictures of things that are exciting to me.
00:18:47.480 | I also personally record my goals, I record audio of them.
00:18:51.200 | I do the silly thing where I record myself speaking over a dramatic movie soundtrack
00:18:57.360 | and so I can put that on and listen to it for a few minutes.
00:19:01.000 | And so think about something that I'm excited about, sometimes will help me to focus me
00:19:04.760 | and kind of bring me out of it.
00:19:06.760 | To get my mind right, I try very hard to talk to people.
00:19:10.520 | I don't isolate.
00:19:11.520 | I think that one of the worst things that a lot of people can do is to isolate.
00:19:16.700 | There are times when isolation helps.
00:19:19.540 | For example, you may be an introvert who gains energy by being alone and you would know that
00:19:24.780 | about yourself.
00:19:26.140 | But don't cut yourself off from those that you care about and those who care about you.
00:19:31.180 | And so I just try not to isolate.
00:19:32.760 | I often, I almost never talk to anybody about my problems unless that person has a vested
00:19:37.800 | interest.
00:19:38.800 | Talk to a coach, to an advisor, to a consultant, to a therapist, somebody who can actually
00:19:43.720 | help you with something.
00:19:45.760 | So I don't talk about my problems with people who can't actually help me with them.
00:19:49.960 | But by not cutting myself off from people, it often helps me to feel better.
00:19:55.040 | And so a lot of times I'll just walk away from the thing that are causing me trouble
00:19:59.160 | and go do something.
00:20:00.160 | I have children, so hey, this isn't working.
00:20:02.800 | This day is shot.
00:20:03.800 | Nothing is working here.
00:20:05.160 | Everything is falling apart.
00:20:08.000 | I'm sitting here again banging my head against the desk and it's not working.
00:20:11.880 | So let's go do something fun.
00:20:13.340 | Let's go for a hike.
00:20:14.340 | Let's go out for ice cream.
00:20:16.280 | Let's go to the park and just do something with those that I care about.
00:20:21.000 | And the idea here is, as you'll see in a moment when I talk about kind of fallback plans,
00:20:26.560 | the idea is have something that you can fall back on when plan A isn't working.
00:20:33.920 | Actually, let me do it now.
00:20:34.920 | I'll switch up my order.
00:20:38.080 | If you're doing an activity and that activity isn't working for you, having a fallback plan
00:20:43.840 | that's still moving you forward in some way will be very helpful for you.
00:20:49.840 | Let's use a simple example.
00:20:52.120 | I go out and I try to use walking as my main form of cardio exercise, but I don't enjoy
00:20:57.920 | walking in the rain.
00:20:59.900 | And so if I want to go for a walk and I find that it's raining when I want to go for a
00:21:05.400 | walk, then I find myself frustrated because I can't get my walk in without going and walking
00:21:11.920 | in the rain, which isn't very fun.
00:21:13.640 | And many times in my life, I have just simply not exercised because it was raining.
00:21:20.000 | Well, that's dumb.
00:21:22.880 | That's really dumb.
00:21:24.480 | A better plan is to have a fallback, to say, "All right, if it's raining and I don't want
00:21:30.320 | to go and walk in the rain today, then what could I do instead of that?"
00:21:35.840 | So if I want to walk, could I drive to the mall and walk around the mall where it's air
00:21:41.380 | conditioned and there's no rain coming in?
00:21:43.960 | Could I go to Home Depot and walk around Home Depot and the aisles of Home Depot and get
00:21:48.960 | my steps in that way?
00:21:50.960 | Should I have a treadmill at my house that I can walk on the treadmill at my house or
00:21:55.320 | go to a gym and walk on a treadmill?
00:21:57.700 | Should I have some other piece of equipment, an indoor bicycle machine, a rowing machine,
00:22:02.920 | whatever it is that I want?
00:22:04.040 | Or should I go and just pay for a one-off class at the gym or a one-day pass at the
00:22:07.720 | gym to go and walk?
00:22:09.500 | Having some kind of backup plan so that the choice is not either go walk in the rain,
00:22:14.760 | which I don't want to do or do nothing, but rather, "Hey, it's raining.
00:22:18.080 | I'll quickly go to this backup plan," improves things.
00:22:22.560 | And so for me, I have developed over the years a few of those things that help me.
00:22:27.080 | So for example, if I'm struggling and I'm struggling to create something, I'm struggling
00:22:31.320 | with some business task and it's just not working and I'm frustrated and my brain isn't
00:22:35.680 | working and everything feels black and I just want to quit, then I try to have a backup
00:22:41.920 | activity that's going to still keep me going.
00:22:44.360 | So one of my primary ones is I'll go and read something.
00:22:49.320 | I'll say, "This isn't working," and ask myself, "Should I just power through?"
00:22:53.240 | Because there are times you just power through.
00:22:54.920 | But this isn't working.
00:22:55.920 | I'm not going to just sit here and try to force myself to do this.
00:22:58.900 | So let me go and sit down and read.
00:23:01.240 | And so I'll go read.
00:23:02.640 | But I'll try to read something that's going to help me.
00:23:04.640 | So I'll read a self-improvement book in a foreign language.
00:23:10.080 | Then I feel like I'm getting something, I'm learning something, and I'm helping myself
00:23:16.360 | study a foreign language.
00:23:17.360 | I'll read a business book, give me ideas that I can apply, and also do it in a foreign language.
00:23:23.400 | Or if that doesn't work, then I'll go ahead and say, "I don't want to study business.
00:23:26.400 | I'm done with business.
00:23:27.400 | I don't feel like doing anything."
00:23:28.400 | Well, I'll read a novel.
00:23:29.400 | But then, again, I'll try to read a novel in a foreign language, which is just as enjoyable,
00:23:33.840 | but now I'm making progress on one of my language goals instead of just reading and wasting
00:23:38.320 | time.
00:23:40.240 | Maybe for you, maybe you're a TV watcher, and your choice would be, "Well, I'm just
00:23:46.480 | going to read instead of watching TV because it can help me expand my vocabulary.
00:23:50.000 | It's going to be simpler.
00:23:51.000 | It's going to be easier for me to walk away in an hour instead of being sucked into four
00:23:54.600 | seasons of this particular drama."
00:23:56.920 | Or if you want to watch TV, great.
00:23:59.140 | But maybe I'll watch something useful.
00:24:02.160 | Try to watch a show that's going to make you smarter, inspire you.
00:24:05.800 | Might choose Shark Tank instead of whatever the latest drama is.
00:24:10.920 | Or if you're going to watch a drama, watch it in a foreign language.
00:24:14.200 | Or if you're going to go to YouTube, browse something educational instead of something
00:24:17.440 | that's just pure fluff, pure twaddle.
00:24:20.280 | And so for me, I can usually find something that has some redeeming value.
00:24:24.440 | And while I'm walking away from this frustration, I'm walking away from this thing that's just
00:24:30.400 | not working right now.
00:24:31.840 | I'm not just doing nothing.
00:24:33.640 | I'm getting something useful.
00:24:36.080 | And then you start to stack.
00:24:37.080 | I try to stack these things up.
00:24:38.720 | All right, this isn't working.
00:24:40.120 | I'm frustrated.
00:24:41.360 | So I'm going to grab an audio book, a novel in Spanish, and I'm going to go for a walk.
00:24:46.840 | I'm going to get sunshine.
00:24:47.840 | I'm going to get movement.
00:24:49.880 | I'm going to get fresh air.
00:24:50.880 | I'm going to hydrate myself while I go out.
00:24:53.160 | I'm going to listen to this nice novel in a foreign language that I'm studying.
00:24:57.120 | And now when I come back an hour later, things have brightened up a little bit and I can
00:25:01.080 | work at it again.
00:25:04.240 | Those are some just things that are often useful for me.
00:25:08.080 | And then when I get to the end of the day and I look at what I have done and what I
00:25:12.880 | haven't done, even if I spent the day reading, well, if I spent the day reading in a foreign
00:25:17.980 | language about something that was helpful, basically it's like, well, it's like being
00:25:22.720 | in college, right?
00:25:23.720 | I was studying something that was going to help my career and I was building my foreign
00:25:27.880 | language ability.
00:25:30.260 | Those things are helpful.
00:25:32.280 | When I'm in a difficult spot, I try to make sure that there's nothing going wrong except
00:25:38.420 | a little bit of time.
00:25:40.580 | So this is, depends on where you are, right?
00:25:43.600 | And what the particular crisis that you're facing is.
00:25:46.360 | A lot of times the crises that I undergo are just things that are frustrating to me.
00:25:51.280 | I can't get work done.
00:25:52.520 | All right.
00:25:53.520 | I'm in a bad mental state and trying to figure out how to get out of it.
00:25:58.720 | So if I can control the big things, then a little bit of time can just pass.
00:26:03.620 | So I don't want to spend a lot of money.
00:26:05.320 | I don't want to have anything out of control.
00:26:07.200 | A few days isn't going to hurt me.
00:26:08.760 | I know I'll feel better next week.
00:26:10.560 | I'll lose a week on my timelines, but that's okay.
00:26:14.500 | As long as I control the money, as long as I control my relationships, as long as I don't
00:26:18.640 | start speaking in an ugly way towards my wife or towards my children, I can have a bad workday.
00:26:25.360 | I can have a bad evening and it's okay as long as I don't do something that I'm going
00:26:30.040 | to regret.
00:26:31.040 | I'm not going to go out and go gambling.
00:26:32.040 | I'm not going to go out and go drinking.
00:26:33.480 | I'm not going to go and yell at somebody.
00:26:35.240 | I'm just going to control things and recognize that time will fix this problem because time
00:26:40.520 | fixes many problems.
00:26:43.880 | So control the things that you can control.
00:26:47.520 | Again, for me, that's money.
00:26:50.520 | Control the money.
00:26:51.800 | It's my words.
00:26:53.240 | Control my words.
00:26:54.240 | Don't say something I'm going to regret.
00:26:55.840 | Don't commit to something that I'm going to regret.
00:26:58.200 | Just let a few days go and then come back and start again.
00:27:04.680 | I do find that as I get older, it becomes easier because I'm less focused on the disaster
00:27:12.320 | that is today.
00:27:14.640 | If I were 22 years old working a job, you expect I can't have any bad days.
00:27:18.640 | You get a little older, you get a little money under your belt, your investments start making
00:27:22.800 | money for you, your business starts to work and you can press forward.
00:27:27.840 | One of the things that has often motivated me to try to do something, to build a business
00:27:32.920 | that has something that works without my presence has been that it gives you options.
00:27:38.600 | If you want to wake up richer tomorrow, whether you're going to have a good day or a bad
00:27:43.280 | day, then you got to build something that's going to just work.
00:27:47.200 | You got to build a book that's going to pay you royalties because someone buys it whether
00:27:51.080 | or not you're feeling good that day.
00:27:53.400 | You got to build a business where you have customers and staff who are going to come
00:27:56.680 | in and go to work whether or not you go to work in that particular day.
00:28:01.200 | More and more, the days that go by, you face a difficult day and it's not as bad as it
00:28:10.520 | was when you didn't have that business built.
00:28:12.680 | When you didn't have those employees working on things for you.
00:28:15.960 | And so this has often been one of my motivations for building a business rather than simply
00:28:20.040 | being dependent on my day-to-day work.
00:28:24.720 | Two more comments that I hope will be helpful.
00:28:29.040 | In order to deal with setbacks, I find it usually easiest to just change the timeline.
00:28:39.560 | I don't know who to give credit to, but somebody famous said, "There are no unreasonable goals,
00:28:44.440 | only unreasonable timelines or unreasonable deadlines."
00:28:48.400 | I think that's pretty true.
00:28:50.400 | There aren't really any unreasonable goals, only unreasonable timelines or deadlines.
00:28:57.200 | And since you're the one who makes up the deadline in the first place, makes up the
00:29:00.340 | timeline in the first place, you can just simply change it.
00:29:04.160 | Now obviously you should be careful about renegotiating your deals.
00:29:08.040 | Sometimes you buckle in, you pull an all-nighter and you get the work done on time because
00:29:10.840 | that's what you said you were going to do.
00:29:12.160 | No question.
00:29:13.640 | Sometimes you can just change it.
00:29:15.040 | You can just adjust it and say, "This isn't working for me.
00:29:17.440 | I'm not going to reach this, so let me just change it and add more time."
00:29:22.240 | And if the things that you're working on are things that are worthwhile, they're probably
00:29:26.520 | going to be worthwhile just as worthwhile a week late or a year late as they are a week
00:29:32.280 | early or a year early.
00:29:34.860 | If you're working to reach financial independence at 45 years old, but you get delayed by a
00:29:42.120 | series of failures in your life and you reach it at 47, you can either focus on the fact
00:29:47.880 | that you're a loser who missed your goal date by two years or on the fact that, "Hey, even
00:29:54.320 | though I faced all these problems and complications, I'm financially independent at 47.
00:29:58.800 | That's awesome.
00:29:59.800 | That's a lot earlier than a lot of people are financially independent."
00:30:03.200 | And almost anything worthwhile, almost anything that we care about functions the same way
00:30:07.360 | in life.
00:30:09.520 | Let's say you want to learn Spanish and you think it's going to take you 600 hours to
00:30:14.520 | learn Spanish.
00:30:15.520 | And you sit down and you say a goal and you say, "I'm going to learn Spanish this year
00:30:20.040 | because I'm going to put in 600 hours over the course of 300 days.
00:30:23.300 | This year I'm going to do it."
00:30:24.660 | And then something happens.
00:30:25.660 | Instead of doing two hours a day, you wind up doing 1.1 hours per day.
00:30:30.480 | Well, you're going to be off your timeline by ... Your timeline is basically going to
00:30:35.320 | double.
00:30:36.760 | But in the grand scheme of things, if you just keep pressing forward, you're still going
00:30:40.360 | to learn Spanish.
00:30:42.360 | You really are.
00:30:43.360 | It's just a matter of keep pressing forward little by little, day by day.
00:30:46.800 | You're still going to learn Spanish.
00:30:48.360 | And if two years from now you can speak Spanish fluently, you'll be in good shape.
00:30:53.640 | Doesn't matter whether you were a year late.
00:30:55.280 | That's all right.
00:30:56.280 | It's just part of the journey.
00:30:57.320 | Enjoy the process.
00:30:58.740 | Maybe your goal is to say, "I'm going to lose a pound a day."
00:31:01.800 | And then instead of doing that, you lose a quarter of a pound a day.
00:31:05.760 | That's okay.
00:31:06.760 | If you lose a quarter of a pound a day for long enough, you'll reach your goals.
00:31:10.920 | Just change the time and recognize that the forward progress is what's important, not
00:31:15.800 | this specific timeline.
00:31:18.360 | You've made up most of these timelines, most of these goals.
00:31:21.720 | And when they're helpful to you because they're inspiring, use them.
00:31:27.040 | But when they're not helpful to you because they cause you to feel overwhelmed and stressed,
00:31:31.840 | toss those suckers.
00:31:33.560 | You don't need them.
00:31:36.240 | Finally, when you go through difficult periods, dark periods of your life, ask yourself, "Why
00:31:44.520 | did that happen?
00:31:46.160 | What caused me to face that difficult period?"
00:31:52.240 | And you can analyze this at almost any level.
00:31:54.240 | Right now, I'm sniffing and snorting today because I have some kind of weird allergies
00:31:57.960 | to where I am right now.
00:31:58.960 | I don't know why I have them.
00:32:00.520 | I don't know what they are.
00:32:01.520 | I haven't been able to figure out what they are.
00:32:03.840 | But they have really messed up my work week because when I'm sniffing and snorting and
00:32:07.640 | I can't speak, I can't work effectively in creating audible content.
00:32:13.600 | When I'm sneezing 20 times in a row, I can't think very clearly to create something useful.
00:32:19.840 | And then I start to get behind.
00:32:20.840 | I start to not produce shows and it just starts to mess everything up.
00:32:25.280 | So what's my analysis of the problem?
00:32:27.080 | Well, this stinks.
00:32:30.320 | As I pause the show to sneeze eight times and then three more times, you just say, "All
00:32:39.640 | right, this stinks."
00:32:42.840 | And one more sneeze.
00:32:45.040 | This stinks.
00:32:46.400 | I don't like this.
00:32:47.920 | I don't like not being able to work.
00:32:51.320 | And what's a solution for me?
00:32:52.720 | In my case, I'm leaving.
00:32:54.200 | So maybe I need to go spend more time in the desert and not be in the jungle because there's
00:32:59.760 | some kind of weird pollen or something that's causing me to sneeze.
00:33:03.320 | Maybe I need to go and get some kind of allergy medication.
00:33:06.600 | Maybe I need to try to go through a series of blood tests and figure out what it is that
00:33:10.880 | is causing me a problem.
00:33:12.280 | Maybe I need to try an elimination diet.
00:33:14.080 | You just got to start working your way through the problems and do your best to systematically
00:33:20.040 | work on solutions.
00:33:21.240 | Try a solution.
00:33:22.240 | See if it works.
00:33:23.240 | Does it make things better?
00:33:24.240 | No, it didn't.
00:33:25.240 | All right, we'll toss that one.
00:33:26.320 | Try the next one.
00:33:27.400 | Try the next one.
00:33:28.400 | Try the next one and keep on going and don't stop until you find a solution that improves
00:33:32.580 | things for you.
00:33:34.020 | And just keep on going, systematically working your way through.
00:33:36.960 | Back to one of these useful mental principles, the principle of just pressing forward, of
00:33:41.400 | trying new things, of not ever allowing yourself to say, "Oh, I'm just a victim of the circumstances.
00:33:46.560 | No, I got to get on top of these circumstances and control the things that I can control
00:33:51.320 | so that I can eliminate this being sick thing," or whatever the issue is that you're facing.
00:33:58.000 | Maybe you face a thing in your business, right?
00:34:06.720 | We have this problem, an unhappy customer, or this thing happened.
00:34:09.280 | Okay, well, how can I change the systems in the business?
00:34:11.440 | Who can I hire?
00:34:12.660 | Who can help me achieve this certain thing?
00:34:14.400 | How can I move this forward?
00:34:16.180 | How can I stop doing this thing that I don't want to do?
00:34:20.040 | Just keep pressing forward and keep fixing things.
00:34:23.640 | Analyze things.
00:34:24.980 | Try to come up with creative solutions and then pick a solution if you like it.
00:34:30.560 | For me, again, one of my – I do this on my phone, but I have a note.
00:34:38.760 | It's called Journaling My Problems.
00:34:41.600 | I pick a problem.
00:34:42.600 | I write the problem and I say, "Here is the problem that I'm facing," and then I just
00:34:50.640 | start brainstorming solutions.
00:34:52.240 | Write a list of one to ten, make myself write ten solutions to it.
00:34:55.600 | Then I close the note, move on with my life, come back the next day, open it, look at it,
00:34:59.320 | see, and do I like any of those solutions?
00:35:01.160 | Do I think any of them might actually work?
00:35:02.680 | Do I want to implement any of them?
00:35:04.560 | Are any of them actually good or are they all junk?
00:35:06.720 | If they're all junk, I write the problem a different way.
00:35:09.000 | One to ten, brainstorm ten new solutions and just keep pressing on.
00:35:13.120 | You do that over time and you start to have fewer and fewer issues.
00:35:16.540 | You start to do better and better.
00:35:18.520 | You clean up a mess here.
00:35:19.800 | You clean up a mess there.
00:35:21.040 | Pretty soon, you cleaned up enough messes that the times of bleakness and blackness
00:35:25.640 | and difficulty, etc., are fewer and they're shorter and they're less often and that helps.
00:35:34.560 | Then you can just press forward.
00:35:37.560 | Those are some of the things that I do, that I am doing and I hope they're useful to you.
00:35:43.440 | I always feel a little silly doing these kinds of shows because to me, most of this stuff
00:35:47.360 | seems self-evident, but I've done this long enough to know that it's probably not self-evident
00:35:51.280 | to anybody.
00:35:52.280 | I hope that if you're one who faces some of the things that I face and emotional swings,
00:35:58.600 | etc., that some of these things can be useful to you.
00:36:03.280 | Thank you for listening to the show and I'll be back with you with more higher quality
00:36:08.120 | stuff as soon as I can.
00:36:09.840 | Thank you so much.