Order of Man - JON ACUFF ｜ Ditch Regret and Tap Into Potential

00:00:00.000 Regret is often used to self-sabotage and retreat into sorrow and victimization, but it doesn't have to be that way.

00:00:08.280 In fact, regret can be leveraged as a powerful tool to accomplish your most challenging objectives moving forward.

00:00:14.880 Unfortunately, too many men wallow in regret and defeat instead of learning how to tap into their massive and almost unlimited potential.

00:00:22.540 Today, I'm joined by three-peat guests, John Acuff, to talk about regret, potential, goal planning, and success.

00:00:30.240 We discuss pursuing small versus large goals, the power of becoming what John calls a quote-unquote handlemaker,

00:00:37.660 using discernment with regards to the self-development information we consume,

00:00:42.380 the proper response to the quote-unquote must-be-nice type crowd,

00:00:46.440 why you should avoid calling your problems your problems, and so much more.

00:00:50.700 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart your own path.

00:00:56.800 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:01:01.220 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.

00:01:06.300 This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.

00:01:10.540 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:15.780 Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler.

00:01:18.380 I'm your host and the founder of the Order of Men podcast and movement.

00:01:22.260 Welcome here today. We are on a mission to reclaim and restore masculinity,

00:01:27.660 and I do that by bringing incredible men on the podcast to discuss everything from entrepreneurship

00:01:34.380 to athleticism to finances to fitness to goal planning like we're talking about today with John Acuff,

00:01:41.620 to mindset, to psychology, to psychedelics. You name it, we're talking about it.

00:01:47.320 If it can help you be a better man, I'm all about it. So, I'm glad you're tuning in.

00:01:52.400 We've got a very, very powerful conversation with a good friend of mine and three-peat guest,

00:01:56.400 John Acuff. We're going to get into that in just a minute.

00:01:59.020 Before I do, I want to mention that I've got some, not new friends, but I've got some new sponsors.

00:02:06.080 I've known these guys for quite some time. It's Montana Knife Company.

00:02:09.500 And guys, if you're looking for a knife this hunt season, as it starts to turn into fall,

00:02:14.580 look no further than Montana Knife. I've got, I think I did a tally the other day. I've got 11 of

00:02:20.440 their knives, 11. And I can tell you that these are the best knives out there. They're American made

00:02:27.340 in Montana. And I love what the guys are doing. I'm all about supporting small businesses. I'm all

00:02:33.940 about supporting friends. I'm all about supporting American made, and I'm all about supporting high

00:02:39.140 quality products. And I've taken these knives on every one of my hunts for probably now the last

00:02:44.780 three years. I'm looking at a goat head that I butchered and broke down in Hawaii several months

00:02:51.160 ago out in the living room. I've got a sheep out there. I've got a deer out there. I've got a moose

00:02:56.380 coming. And all of these were broken down with Montana Knife Company knives. So, go check them out

00:03:01.700 at MontanaKnifeCompany.com and see what these guys are up to. All right. With that said, let me

00:03:08.280 introduce you to my guest. His name is John Acuff. He is a New York Times bestselling author of 10

00:03:13.700 books, I believe, maybe nine, nine or 10 books. Either way, it's a lot, including his latest book,

00:03:19.420 All It Takes is a Goal. He's been published in more than 20 different languages, and his work has been

00:03:25.160 acclaimed by readers around the world, including myself for what that's worth. As a public speaker,

00:03:30.840 he's met thousands of people and presented at some of the largest organizations in the world,

00:03:35.940 including FedEx and Nissan and Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Chick-fil-A, and Nokia, just to name a few.

00:03:43.660 And in the process, he's helped some of the biggest brands tell their story, including Home Depot,

00:03:49.220 Bose, and Staples. So, I'm doing a lot of name dropping here, but you can see that this is a highly,

00:03:53.920 highly qualified individual. But more importantly than that, for me anyways, is that John has been a huge

00:03:59.920 personal inspiration, especially in the early years of launching Order of Man. I'm honored to

00:04:05.960 call him a guest and also a friend. Enjoy this one, guys. John, what's up, man? So good to see you.

00:04:12.600 It's been, what, almost seven years? Six years. Yeah. Well, time is different with COVID. There's

00:04:18.420 like pre-COVID and post-COVID, and I remember talking to you before. So, you were before. That's

00:04:23.580 what I think. I didn't. And you know, the interesting thing about COVID is I didn't skip a

00:04:28.000 beat with COVID. I'm like, nah, I'm not doing this. I did 10 days into COVID. I'm like, no,

00:04:31.460 I get it. I know what we're doing here. And I just kept rolling. And a lot of what we do is virtual

00:04:35.520 anyway. So, fortunately, I was ahead of the times, I guess. Yeah. My stuff was, I turned into virtual

00:04:40.820 events. So, I just had to kind of pivot pretty quickly to be like, all right, let's figure out

00:04:44.320 a studio. Let's, you know, what is this? Because a lot of events were like, I had the best year coming

00:04:48.780 up. And then it was like, and I went on pause and I had to do that, pivot to virtual. So, yeah,

00:04:54.300 I'm looking at, we were just talking before we started. I can't wait to hang out with you in

00:04:57.620 Salt Lake if I get out there again. Yeah, man. Let me know. So, our live events,

00:05:01.680 do you enjoy that the most? Do you enjoy doing things live? I love it. I love it. Yeah. I feel

00:05:07.200 like I get to sit in 50 of the best classrooms in the world every year and I get to learn and then

00:05:11.680 bring that forward. So, like when I go speak to Range Rover, I go, oh my gosh, they're doing this.

00:05:16.520 And then I get to bring it to the next client and the next client. And so, it becomes this

00:05:19.300 rolling education for me. And so, I feel real fortunate that that's part of my career.

00:05:24.300 Is that, so is that, like, how long have you been doing that? Because you, I know you've been in

00:05:29.120 the game for a long time and obviously you've been doing public speaking and writing books. I mean,

00:05:32.820 I had you on almost seven years ago. And even before that, you were writing books with the Ramsey

00:05:38.120 team. But I'm really curious about your path with the corporate route because you talk about a company

00:05:45.000 like Range Rover, for example. I mean, these are big organizations you're working with.

00:05:48.860 Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, the fortunate thing for me was I had big brand experience when I was in marketing.

00:05:56.720 So, I was a journalism major, started working in advertising and then really started focusing

00:06:02.360 on corporate. So, I worked in-house at like Home Depot and Bose and Staples. So, I had this really

00:06:07.960 fun experience of going, oh, here's how big brands function. Here's the dynamics. And then I started my

00:06:13.980 own business about 10 years. And that's when corporate really started to grow for me where I

00:06:18.160 said, okay, I want to, that's what I want to lean to. I'm going to write. I try to write books that

00:06:23.360 can live in a corporate event space, but also an individual reader. So, somebody, you know,

00:06:30.060 whether you're a dude that just wants to read a book that challenges you about your mindset

00:06:33.720 or goals, you can read it. If you're an event planner that's like, we want our sales team to crush

00:06:39.380 this year, you feel good about bringing the content in there too. So, I consider those kind of my two

00:06:43.820 audiences. But at the end of the day, I really believe that like people are people are people.

00:06:48.480 And if I can speak to the heart of an issue, there's like, I can talk to Range Rover one day

00:06:53.400 and the National Propane Gas Alliance the next day. And the next day can be a men's conference

00:06:57.680 and the next day. And so, like, if I can find that commonality, there's really not a limit to

00:07:02.420 where I get to go. I love the way you write. I remember early on in my career, specifically with

00:07:08.300 what we're doing here in Order of Man, which is 2015. That was probably about the time that you

00:07:12.560 came out with... Was it do-over about that time? 2015, 2016?

00:07:17.040 Yeah. Do-over would have been there. Yeah. And finish came out, I think, in 16. So,

00:07:20.880 do-over and finish were kind of like back-to-back almost.

00:07:25.180 There is one video. I mean, the fact that I can remember it six years later,

00:07:28.260 that really resonated with me. You talked about the different stages of life. You did a video and

00:07:32.120 you talked about different stages of life. Do you remember that?

00:07:34.320 Yeah. Yeah. So, it was about editing and when you're guiding and you're just trying to figure

00:07:39.120 it out. Yeah. So, what I love to... My favorite thing to do from a content perspective is take

00:07:43.960 really complex kind of tangled things and put some order to them and go,

00:07:50.240 hey, here's a way to think about it. Here's a framework. I sometimes say my job's on my handle

00:07:55.040 maker. We have enough ideas. We have more than enough ideas. We don't have handles on them to pick

00:07:59.300 them up and take them into our own lives. And so, I try to say, how can I put a handle on this idea?

00:08:04.140 So, how can I take the phases of life and go, okay, this is what editing looks like. This is

00:08:08.960 what mastery looks like. This is what guiding looks like. And that's what I was trying to do

00:08:12.960 in that video. I think that's powerful because... And I wholeheartedly agree with you about no new

00:08:18.520 information. I mean, there's really new ways to present old information and some is going to

00:08:24.100 resonate more than others. It might be you. It might be Peterson. It might be Jocko. It might be any

00:08:27.440 number of guys that we've had on the podcast or haven't had on the podcast. And I think the thing

00:08:32.800 that I've found is... And I tell the guys as we present information to them, this is not new

00:08:37.500 information I'm presenting to these guys. It's information that we can consume. It's consumable.

00:08:42.180 Yeah. Yeah.

00:08:42.880 And it's only consumable to a certain amount of people. Other people are like, nah, I don't like

00:08:46.060 that guy. And they're more than vocal about telling me that.

00:08:49.940 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But my thing there is that you're 100% right. I've been listening to a lot

00:08:55.860 of the classics from the 50s and the 40s on motivation, on goals. And you can hear current

00:09:02.580 people riffing on those. They might not even know. It's just in the ether. But that stuff where I go,

00:09:08.900 oh, Earl Nightingale. I was listening to an Earl Nightingale audio the other day. And he said,

00:09:14.240 call your problems projects. And I was like, come on, dude. Because I don't like when people go,

00:09:20.120 call your problems opportunities. That gap is really far for me mentally. And it feels a little

00:09:25.760 Pollyanna. But dude, calling a problem a project, I can get on board with that. And then I can go,

00:09:30.500 okay, dude, I can crush a project. What does that look like? But that was an audio from the 40s.

00:09:35.440 And then... So I 100% agree with that. And then as far as some people are going to like it and some

00:09:41.040 aren't, I think that's often the sign of you figured out your audience.

00:09:45.920 Like it's... There's a like... My stuff, I love goal nerds. If you came to me and were like,

00:09:52.660 I hate goals. I think goals are dumb. I don't want to do goals. Tell me why I should do goals. 0.99

00:09:56.220 I'd be like, look, we're not... We're a long way from each other. So I'm going to go over here and

00:10:00.320 help these people that are already... They're already doing goals. I don't need to talk you into a goal.

00:10:05.080 So that's where when I get to talk to an audience like real estate agents or insurance folks or

00:10:09.780 like folks that are hustling, they're like, we dare you to keep up with us. I don't have to

00:10:14.000 try to convince them like, hey, if you hustle a little, if you're intentional about what time

00:10:17.840 you go to bed, like they're already doing that. They're like, give us something else. Let's go.

00:10:22.640 Those are my people. And that's where I really get to have fun with people.

00:10:26.520 I'm glad we're talking about that. Because when I knew we were going to have a conversation like,

00:10:29.880 oh, here we go. Another goal book, more goal information. And I don't think that's the void.

00:10:37.720 You know, there's so much information out there, like we've already been talking about.

00:10:41.080 So what is it about the systems that you've identified or the handle that you're making

00:10:44.920 that makes this a better handle or something that's easier to consume or easier to apply

00:10:51.760 in a man's life? Yeah. So I would say the first thing, like chapter two, if you read chapter two

00:10:57.100 and actually do the exercise, like it will wildly change your outlook. And so in chapter two,

00:11:01.980 I talk about what I call a best moments list. And so a best moments list is exactly what it sounds like.

00:11:07.720 You take a piece of paper, you write best moments, and you write down the best moments

00:11:11.780 you've experienced over the last five, 10, 20 years. And why that's powerful is it's the opposite

00:11:17.320 of everything our culture teaches us. Our culture is addicted to sadness and addicted to trauma.

00:11:22.800 So every counseling experience I've ever had, we spend the first 10 sessions going over the worst

00:11:27.880 things that's ever happened to me. Every couple, small group I've been in, where we tell our stories

00:11:32.340 as a couple, it ends up being a cry festival. Here's the worst things that have happened.

00:11:36.100 I was in a men's group. We drew trauma eggs, a big egg of all the traumatic things that have

00:11:42.280 happened to us. I never once had somebody go, let's explore the things that have given you the

00:11:46.820 deepest joy and deepest satisfaction as a man over the last 10 years. Like let's highlight those as if

00:11:52.500 you can't learn from joy. Like right now for every 100 scientific papers written on sadness,

00:11:58.020 there's only one written on joy, a hundred on sadness, one on joy. So you do this best moments list

00:12:03.880 and it turns on so many things in you. Number one, you experience gratitude. Everybody always goes,

00:12:09.140 oh, you got to be grateful. Yeah. Greed. How do I do that? Well, when you write down the things that

00:12:13.740 you've experienced joy with in the last 10 years, 20 years, 15 years, you automatically go, wow,

00:12:18.340 I'm grateful for things I'd forgotten about. Number two, it teaches you self-awareness.

00:12:21.980 No man gets to change his life without self-awareness. The man who gets fired for anger issues

00:12:27.140 thought he was passionate. He goes, I, what? I had no idea. Like, no, you didn't have self-awareness,

00:12:31.760 how you were really coming across. It teaches you self-awareness. And it also flips the switch

00:12:37.340 where when you create this list, you automatically go, I want more of that. Instead of trying to go

00:12:42.860 figure out a life vision for the next 20 years, which a lot of men have a hard time with.

00:12:48.800 It's like, imagine 20 years, what you'll be doing from now. Like it's this blank piece of paper.

00:12:53.200 It's overwhelming. You go, what are the things that light you up? And then how do you add more of those

00:12:57.360 into your tomorrow and then your next month and your next year? And it becomes this really fun

00:13:02.120 life plan. So for me, that was one of the biggest differences in this approach is that it goes

00:13:07.580 here. Instead of saying, you have to know exactly where you're headed a year from now. A friend of

00:13:12.460 mine spent six months trying to figure out his why. Didn't change anything. Didn't do anything

00:13:16.980 different. Was like, as soon as I know my why, man, I'm going to really get into gear. It says,

00:13:21.660 hey, no, let's understand. Like, cause we always go, don't look in the rear view mirror. You're not

00:13:26.200 going that way. Don't learn from what I'm good at and what lights me up and what gives me fuel and

00:13:31.860 passion. And it really becomes this life plan. That's so easy to do and so instructive. And it's

00:13:37.740 based on you, not this fictional version of you that you think should exist. Man, I have so much,

00:13:44.040 so much to go, to go off of this. Number one is the vision thing. It's interesting when I hear people

00:13:49.500 say, well, here's the thing. People ask me, Hey, what's your vision for order, man? I'm five

00:13:53.540 years. I'm like, bro, I don't even know what I'm going to have for dinner tonight. I do not know

00:13:57.600 what I'm going to have. I got to make a list here after I'm done to feed my kids. Yeah. Let alone

00:14:02.380 what I'm going to be doing in five. I know the direction. I know the heading, but I don't know

00:14:06.160 exactly what that looks like. The other thing is self-awareness. I think this is huge because I

00:14:10.520 thought I was self-aware. I've been in this business for eight years now and I was doing financial

00:14:14.580 planning before I went through a divorce in the past year. And when she told me she wanted to

00:14:20.580 divorce, bro, I was, I was shocked, completely shocked. I'm like, wait, wait, what? I was

00:14:29.140 speechless because I thought that things were okay. I knew there was some struggles and some,

00:14:34.020 some pain points and things we needed to work on, but I was completely shocked. And it showed me that

00:14:38.900 I was just not aware of what in the hell was happening in my life. Yeah. And I, I think

00:14:44.440 there's a lot of men that are in that spot. And so there's, I always say like self-awareness is a

00:14:49.720 superpower. Like it is, it is like the, the man who's out of shape, whose doctor says you need to

00:14:55.440 lose 50 pounds is often shocked because they haven't been self-aware about the choices they're

00:14:59.460 making. And so it's this really, I like, I like to have kind of sloped on ramps to challenging

00:15:07.520 things. So it's challenging to go figure out your next five years. Like I don't like that, that,

00:15:12.580 that cripples me. It's overwhelming. It's a nice on ramp where I go, okay, I've made this list.

00:15:18.080 Here's the things. And then what happens is you like, there's these categories, there's four

00:15:22.600 categories that jump out of the list that you automatically go, wow, there's accomplishments,

00:15:27.060 there's experiences, there's relationships, and there's objects. Everything you put on that list

00:15:32.120 will fit in one of those four things. And here's the difference. If you go on a hike, you live in

00:15:37.000 Utah, there's lots of hiking. If you go on a hike in Utah and you love that, that was an experience.

00:15:41.940 If you go on a hike with a friend who's going through a divorce, you have a friend that's going

00:15:46.140 to come to you and say, Hey man, I'm in a similar situation. I need some feedback. You go on that hike

00:15:50.020 with that friend. That's a relationship moment. You hike it faster than you've ever hiked it.

00:15:54.740 That's an accomplishment moment. You pick up a rock or a pine cone from the top to remind yourself

00:15:59.720 you can do hard things. That's an object. So the first thing is you create the list and then you

00:16:04.800 categorize it and you talk about a eureka moment. All of a sudden you go, 80% of my items were

00:16:11.420 relationship. That's what matters to me. And I haven't been pouring into people. No wonder I feel

00:16:16.940 like I'm stuck. No, like I'm built for relationship. I haven't been spending time on it. Or you go,

00:16:21.540 accomplishments are what I care about the most, but in my family, success was seen as bad or like

00:16:27.440 it was greedy and I've been pulling back and I've been self-sabotaging. Oh, no wonder.

00:16:31.880 So it just becomes this really clear picture of who you are and who you were designed to be.

00:16:37.780 That's really fun to live out of that to me. Cause I think you're right. Like you hear like,

00:16:42.840 Oh, there's another book about goals. I'm sure you weren't like, Oh, finally,

00:16:46.400 I hadn't heard anybody talk about goals. Like, no, I just liked you. I like what he has to share.

00:16:53.660 I don't know about this book, but I know I like John. So let's figure out what this is about.

00:16:57.840 You're my version of that is when people go, I don't like the word goals. And I go, what,

00:17:01.660 what do you like? Instead they go intentions. Okay. That's just like, or they go, I don't like

00:17:06.860 goals. I like habits. I go cool. And then they describe like, I don't care what word you use.

00:17:11.520 If your life is changing and growing in the way you want it to change. I really like it's vocabulary.

00:17:15.640 So, but for me, the best moments list is I think the difference maker in the way I'm talking about

00:17:21.660 this topic. Yeah, that makes sense. So if I'm understanding you correctly with those four

00:17:26.180 categories, so we have accomplishments, experiences, relationships, and objects. You're saying that

00:17:31.060 each individual is built to navigate just naturally towards one, maybe over the others. I'm sure we like

00:17:37.500 all things. I like experiences. I just got back from Scotland and Springdale and Southern Utah.

00:17:44.800 And I also like things. I like to buy technology. I like my cell phone. But you're saying we

00:17:49.520 naturally gravitate towards one over the other? Yeah. So I've had hundreds of people do this list.

00:17:54.800 Like, so what's fun for me now as an author is because I have an audience, I can test the ideas

00:17:59.560 before they ever hit a book. Like if I didn't have an audience, what happens as an author is you have

00:18:04.520 an idea in your head in your office and you go, I hope this is helpful. And you put it out. And

00:18:08.620 then you find out in the market, like, it wasn't helpful. So now what I like to do is I'll have

00:18:13.440 hundreds of people, real people go through it and test it and put holes in it. So that by the time

00:18:17.720 it hits a book, I don't have to guess if it's helpful. I already know this is helpful. So what

00:18:22.780 happened when people went through their own best moments list, one, I would say, hey, do 30,

00:18:27.380 like just do 30. And they would end up doing 300. Like they would get on a roll and go,

00:18:31.440 I noticed for today. I noticed like you talk about gratefulness. Like I noticed this one.

00:18:35.980 I noticed that one. The second thing, would they be surprised? And they'd go, oh, wow,

00:18:40.820 I have 60% in this one category that I've been neglecting. Like a lot of times, especially for men,

00:18:48.540 when you find something you enjoy, it's like a reunion and you forgot, like somebody will go,

00:18:54.020 I forgot how much I love mentoring. Like I didn't do it for five years. And I don't remember the moment I

00:18:59.220 stopped. Like it just sort of stopped. And then I started doing it again and it was a reunion.

00:19:03.820 So what I mean by the categories is you'll have one that's more dominant than the other three.

00:19:09.900 There was nobody in the research that had exactly the same number across all of them,

00:19:15.480 but there's usually one that really matters and one that doesn't matter. And you go, oh,

00:19:20.380 so like if objects don't matter to you, if you've been trying to motivate yourself about like,

00:19:25.320 I'm going to have a mountain house and that's going to make me work harder. And you're not able

00:19:29.120 to get fired up about working harder with the vision of the mountain house. It's because that's

00:19:33.740 an object and you don't care about the mountain house. Where if you say, I'm a relationship person

00:19:38.320 and I want to be able to ball out with my kids. Like my thing is, I want to be able to take my kids

00:19:43.740 to Disney. That's a relationship moment that motivates me to put in the extra hours to sell more,

00:19:48.600 whatever. Okay. I can get fired up by that. So it fits what you care about to how you actually work,

00:19:54.080 which makes life so much easier. How do you, how do you manage all of the information that's out

00:20:01.400 there? Cause you have some new concepts, some new ideas. We're talking about some night right now

00:20:05.040 with these four categories and the guys that are listening probably have listened to or read

00:20:09.460 two dozen different books on goal setting, goal planning. And there's some good information out

00:20:15.580 there, including what's in your book and the information that you share. Like how do you

00:20:19.000 personally decipher? Okay. I'm only going to implement what John has to say. Yeah. Or,

00:20:24.360 you know, here's a tidbit from Nightingale that I really enjoy or wherever they're getting their

00:20:30.560 information. I just think it becomes so overwhelming. And I think a lot of men, myself included, have a

00:20:34.720 hard time implementing any of it because they're inundated with so much of it. Yeah. I feel the same

00:20:41.020 way. I mean, one is I give myself permission to not be a perfectionist when it comes to the

00:20:45.940 information. I'm not going to do anybody's book perfectly. If I get, my rule is if I get one

00:20:50.600 life-changing idea out of a book, it was worth the $20. So like, if I go like Steven Pressfield,

00:20:56.280 War of Art, a book we both love. When he says, you know, anytime you go closer to something that

00:21:01.700 matters, more fear pops up. If you're doing things that don't matter, fear never bothers you.

00:21:05.780 Now that flipped in my mind. Fear is not a reason to stop. It's usually a flare that I'm going in the

00:21:11.060 right direction. Oh, okay. I'm like, so that was a game. Like I read that book 15 years ago. I still

00:21:17.080 think about that. So I didn't, I wouldn't say to you, I implemented everything he said,

00:21:21.460 but I would say this idea was really worth it to me. I think about, there's this woman, 0.69

00:21:26.480 Colleen Berry, who told me she, she did a library card MBA. She started reading a bunch of books and

00:21:32.720 got a library card MBA. So I kind of think of that same model of, I read a bunch, but I'm never going

00:21:38.500 to go a hundred for a hundred because that person has a different life. The prop, my, my problem is

00:21:44.060 when a dude who doesn't have a life shape like me, I try to implement his advice. So a silly example 0.57

00:21:49.820 of that would be like drinking water. I was drinking a gallon of water a day. Cause a dude is like, 0.91

00:21:53.520 you got to drink it every day. Like was really hardcore about it. And I realized he weighs 250

00:21:57.420 pounds. He's a bodybuilder. There's a chance our bodies have different water needs than him. I'm 150

00:22:03.560 pounds. I don't need the exact, like that would be like, if he said, you got to wear a size 40

00:22:08.040 pant because that's what real men do. And I'd be like, I know it's weird, but I got to do it.

00:22:12.640 This guy said it. So I would just release every man from, from that's listening to this from the

00:22:18.500 pressure of thinking you're going to a hundred percent implement a book. And I would instead say,

00:22:23.600 read it like an a la carte menu where you pick out an idea and go, this idea fits my life.

00:22:28.940 This fits my season. I talked to a dude just the other day who was like, man, I feel so much pressure

00:22:33.400 because this guy, this influencer was telling me you should start every day with 90 minutes of

00:22:37.880 reading. And I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old. And if I walk down at 545, when

00:22:42.920 they got up and go, Hey, I'll see you guys in 90 minutes. I got to go read. I got to go read

00:22:48.120 Socrates. Like that's not going to work. So I think that like men have to take ideas from books 0.97

00:22:54.760 and then test them in their life. And if they work, add another idea. And if it works, add another idea.

00:23:00.420 If it doesn't work for your life, don't do those ideas. But I don't try to implement a hundred

00:23:05.360 percent of any book because it's just not how my life works.

00:23:10.060 Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, look, I think we need to exercise some discernment here. And I think

00:23:14.560 that's what you're talking about here is realizing that the principle is more important than the

00:23:20.900 specific application. I think about Jocko all the time with regards to, you know, discipline is freedom

00:23:26.260 and extreme ownership. And you got to wake up at 420. Bro, I love you, Jocko. I'm not waking up

00:23:31.720 at 420. I'm not doing that. No, I'll wake up at 620. I'll wake up two hours later and I'll get all

00:23:37.660 the things I need to get done. I'll go exercise. I'll plan my day out. I'll spend some time with

00:23:41.640 the kids and I'll get, get after it. But if we believe that we need to wake up at 420 or 430 or

00:23:48.200 five o'clock or whatever your thing is, and that doesn't work for your scenario, you're going to burn

00:23:52.320 out. And David Goggins doesn't have two teenage daughters named Ellie McCray. Like he doesn't

00:23:57.760 like yesterday. So we're recording this on a Thursday on Tuesday afternoon. My oldest daughter

00:24:03.240 who's going back to college in a week said, Hey, can we play pickleball sometime soon before I leave?

00:24:08.600 And so I play, I said, sure. Tomorrow morning, 8am. There's people that would say like, no,

00:24:12.740 you got it. These are your peak hours. You got to block up like, no. Like when she said, Hey,

00:24:17.560 I'd like to hang out with you. When a teenager says that to you as a dad, you're like, let me

00:24:21.820 clear the schedule. I played pickleball yesterday at 8am on a weekday. I took July off. I was two

00:24:29.740 days back into the office after a month off of work. Normally that would have been like, it's go

00:24:34.500 time. I got to go. And she was like, Hey, can we play pickleball? I was like, yeah, I'd love to do

00:24:37.960 that. I figured out how to make that happen. So yeah, I don't, I mean, I feel overwhelmed with the

00:24:42.200 amount of information out there, but the thing I, the thing I'd say is like, look for information

00:24:47.520 that's practically true, not just technically true. And the difference is when somebody says

00:24:52.900 you should spend the first three hours of every day doing this program, that might be technically

00:25:00.100 true. Like, yeah, you'd get further ahead if you spent three hours every day, but that might not

00:25:03.980 be practically true for your life. Your life is different right now. And so like, I try to find

00:25:08.760 people that I go, I can take that. That's interesting. This is helpful. Like I'm not Kobe. Like when

00:25:14.520 somebody goes, here's the exact pro, like I'm not Kobe Bryant. We had like, I'm not like

00:25:19.060 we have different lives. So I, for me, I'm always trying to go, okay, where is this practically

00:25:24.200 fit the life I'm trying to build? And then the other problem is like, you don't know that person's

00:25:29.960 whole life. Like, so when a 24 year old who's single without kids goes, here's how to live

00:25:34.920 life. And I'm a 47 year old with two teenage daughters and a wife and other commitments.

00:25:39.540 Like we have different life experiences. So I should only take the pieces that fit my life.

00:25:45.520 Yeah. That makes sense. I, you know, one thing that I, that I often consider too, is like,

00:25:50.760 there's a lot of wisdom as we get older. I don't know how old you are, John, you've got a little

00:25:54.000 bit more gray hair than me. I'm, I will be catching up a little more. You're being, you're

00:25:58.800 being super generous right now. They aren't going to be on YouTube. So it's the majority dude. Like I,

00:26:05.900 yeah, I've crossed, I've crossed over. I've crossed. Go ahead. How old are you?

00:26:11.020 I'm 47, 47. All right. So you're five years older than me. Not, not a lot older than me.

00:26:15.340 So five years older than me, you know, and it's like, we get some wisdom as, as we get some gray

00:26:20.240 hair and we, we, we get, you know, four decades under our belt. Uh, and sometimes I'm tempted to

00:26:26.620 say, well, you know, that's nice for you to say, cause you're 60 or 70 years old, but my situation,

00:26:33.080 but these are things I wish I would have learned when I was 20 or 30. And I think if I would have

00:26:37.100 applied them more effectively in my life, I would have had a more balanced life. And I think results

00:26:41.960 would have been more favorable, even if I didn't wait until I was 42 to be able to implement some

00:26:47.360 of these things. Yeah. I think about that too. And that's why I think what you do and what I do are

00:26:52.740 similar in that we do it with a sense of urgency. I don't want somebody to need to be 47 to figure

00:26:57.960 these things out. Like if something took me five years and I can work really hard and put it into

00:27:03.100 a book and it saves you two years or it saves you 18 months, like, or you put it into a podcast and

00:27:08.740 you go, Hey, you might not have access to this person, but because I have a podcast, I have access.

00:27:13.360 And if I can extract those ideas and share them with you now, and you could be 27 and you don't

00:27:17.840 have to pay the same 10 year token I paid. Amazing. Like, that's why, like, that's why, again,

00:27:25.180 the majority of podcasts don't last. But part of why yours lasts is you have a sense of urgency of,

00:27:31.420 I want to help other men. And there were things that took me a long time to learn.

00:27:34.880 I don't want them to have to wait. I don't want them to have to pay the same costs.

00:27:38.160 How can I frame this in a way that they get it? It's consumable. And they, you know,

00:27:42.760 it actually changes their life right now, not 10 years from now.

00:27:46.500 Well, I mean, I've even thought about that. I mentioned my divorce earlier. I've thought about that

00:27:50.120 with that. Does that disqualify me? No, it actually qualifies me because I'm like, guys,

00:27:54.120 don't do all the shit I did over the past two or three years, because here's the result. 0.97

00:27:59.100 And I really, really do not want you to experience that because I did. 0.99

00:28:03.400 Yeah. And it gives you, it gives you a whole audience that you have empathy for that

00:28:07.940 were an idea before now. Now there, now there's somebody you, like you have a 3d empathy for those

00:28:14.560 people because you've gone through something that prior to that was only an idea. It was at best

00:28:20.500 level of theory. And now you've experienced that in a different way that you're going to be able to

00:28:25.060 share about that, be vulnerable about that, lock arms with other dudes about that. Yeah. You're at

00:28:30.540 the start of that. Like you're, you're a year into a long ability to share and help other people with

00:28:36.680 that particular topic. I am careful. I'm curious on this. I am careful about saying audience. I mean,

00:28:42.640 that's true. We have an audience. We have a followership, a listenership, whatever you want to call

00:28:47.220 it. I am cautious about that because I think it dehumanizes who we're talking with the way I choose

00:28:53.700 to look at it. And we're just debating semantics now, but the way I choose to look at it is I've

00:28:59.060 got a hundred thousand individual conversations that I can have with guys. Right. And so I'm really

00:29:04.720 trying to connect with one man individually because of the messages that we receive. And I know you do as

00:29:10.280 well. The messages that we receive of hope and optimism or, Hey, I was in the pit of despair and I

00:29:15.480 listened to this and I'm trying to have individual conversations in mass.

00:29:20.820 Yeah. See, for me, my version of that is because of the nature of my job, I get to be around real

00:29:26.860 people 50, 60 times a year when I'm at an event and somebody says, Hey, here's this thing I was

00:29:31.880 challenged about. Here's this. So that helps me stay grounded to there's real people involved.

00:29:38.020 Yeah. And the best part, like somebody asked me that the other day, like, what's the best part of

00:29:42.220 writing books? I think the thing I didn't understand until I did it was that my favorite

00:29:47.000 thing is when I get a foreign edition in the mail. So somebody will mail me the, you know, the, the,

00:29:54.040 the, you know, the publisher in Romania will mail me a Romanian version of my book. And some man in

00:30:00.980 Romania that I might never meet in a country I've never visited, who's got similar challenges is being

00:30:06.840 encouraged by that. So that makes it an individual too, where you go, Oh, wow, this is,

00:30:10.720 yeah, you're right. It helps it kind of keep to a one-to-one basis, not just one to many.

00:30:17.640 All right, man, I'm going to hit the pause button real quick on the conversation. I just want to

00:30:21.760 take a step away from this because very briefly, I want to tell you, thank you for your continued

00:30:26.700 support in this battle to reclaim masculinity. Uh, one platform that is growing faster than just about

00:30:33.620 any other platform out there for us right now is YouTube. And again, I want to thank you for tuning

00:30:38.360 into what we're doing and more importantly, applying the information that my guests and I share.

00:30:43.340 If you want to consume this content in not just audio and your earbuds, but to see my face as well.

00:30:49.140 And my guests face, uh, I would encourage you to follow and subscribe on YouTube. Despite their best

00:30:56.760 efforts, we are picking up traction. I think we're at 309,000 subscribers and I need your help in

00:31:02.780 continuing, if I can say that word there, uh, and broadening this mission on every single platform

00:31:09.300 that we can. And YouTube is a great place to do that. And if you'd like to watch our interviews

00:31:13.440 on video, I'd also encourage you to check out rumble for the same conversation. If you'd rather

00:31:18.320 watch from a provider that doesn't hate our guts and hate masculinity, either way, check out the video

00:31:23.940 podcast as a slap in the face to YouTube and check out rumble as well at order of man.

00:31:30.940 All right, guys, that's what I've got for you. That's my ask today. Let's get back to the

00:31:34.600 conversation with John. So we've, we've talked about so many different things and some are in

00:31:40.260 the book and some are not in the book. Uh, I want to get back to the book because you had mentioned

00:31:45.640 about, and I'm paraphrasing here, but easing into goals, not going after the entire goal all at once.

00:31:52.200 And in the chapter of the zones or the section, the zones, you talk about easy goals, hard goals,

00:31:58.380 and then you even have a section for middle goals. And I'd love you to, to riff on that a

00:32:02.960 little bit, talk a little bit about why an easy goal versus a hard goal. Maybe some are going to

00:32:08.520 motivate different people over others and what that actually looks like.

00:32:13.360 So here's, here's how I think about it. If you think about goals, like a ladder,

00:32:16.980 imagine you have a ladder and it's 12 feet high and there's only two rungs like, and there's a bottom

00:32:21.560 rung and there's a top rung. And you say to somebody, you have to, you have to get to the top.

00:32:25.760 And they sit there and go, okay, I've got to jump as high as I can. 12 feet high. That's two feet

00:32:32.200 higher than a basketball rim. I have to grab it and try to pull myself up. That's what we do when

00:32:37.260 we go. I've never run. I don't have any plans. I'm just going to do the Ironman. I'm signing up

00:32:42.760 for the Ironman. I'm signing up for a full marathon. Cause I read somewhere you got to go big or go,

00:32:47.040 go home. Like, ah, if your dream doesn't scare you, it's not big enough versus going, Hey,

00:32:52.040 here's a ladder. It has 50 rungs and I need you to get to the top of it. You'd climb to the top of

00:32:57.560 them and be like, what? That was, that was easy. They were six inches apart. So what I suggest is,

00:33:02.320 okay, there's easy goals, middle goals, guaranteed goals. A guaranteed goal is a big goal. It's a,

00:33:08.160 it is the signup for the marathon. Like it is sell a million books. It is have a successful podcast,

00:33:13.320 whatever. You should have that. That's very motivational, but then you should be really

00:33:17.100 deliberate about having some easy goals that are going to help you climb to the top of that.

00:33:21.360 So you actually do it. Um, I, you know, my big thing is I want you to actually accomplish the

00:33:27.380 goal. I have failed at my job as a writer, a speaker, if I get you really motivated, but you

00:33:33.440 don't accomplish the thing. Like speaking changed for me when it became, it stopped being a performance

00:33:38.660 and turned into a work of service. Like if you accomplished it, then I've, then I'd know I've done

00:33:43.940 my job. So in order to do that, I teach things like, okay, say you want to write a book. A lot

00:33:49.560 of men want to write a book. It's a very, it's one of the most common goals in America. 83% of

00:33:53.100 Americans, according to the New York times, want to write a book. So imagine if your only goal was

00:33:58.440 I want to write a book. That's a top wrong goal. And imagine if that was my goal. So like today I

00:34:04.200 wrote 500 words on a new book I'm working on. If I only had one finish line, I'm a failure for a

00:34:09.440 solid year. Every day I don't finish the book, I'm a failure. But imagine if I have a year's worth of

00:34:14.940 finish lines and it's today's finish line is 500 words. Tomorrow's is call the publisher. The day

00:34:20.940 after that is come up with a subtitle. I get to finish and I get a new rung every single day until

00:34:26.440 I look up and all of a sudden I'm at the top of that ladder. And so that's what I encourage people

00:34:31.440 to do when it comes to their goals. That's what I mean by an easy goal is you'll actually do it.

00:34:35.720 You'll actually stay with it. You'll actually finish it. And so you can still have the big,

00:34:41.020 wild, audacious, I want to have a $10 million business. Like you should have that. Like dream

00:34:45.640 big, but don't think that you don't need steps in between there that are going to get you there.

00:34:51.800 And that's where I think sometimes people get stuck is they only have that very first step.

00:34:55.460 I'm going to try it. And that very last step of it's going to be amazing. And they die in the middle.

00:35:00.000 Uh, you and I are very much in alignment. The, the nomenclature I use is tactics. So you have this

00:35:06.860 goal that you want to accomplish, let's say in 12 weeks, cause that's how I work. I work in

00:35:10.700 quarterly segments. And then what I do is I break it down into daily tactics. So if I want to lose

00:35:16.300 30 pounds this quarter, uh, then every day I'm going to spend at least one hour in the gym,

00:35:22.400 number one, and I'm going to cut out processed sugars every day for the next 90 days. And I know that

00:35:27.140 inevitably I don't even need to worry about the result at that point. Like it's done guaranteed.

00:35:32.260 It's guaranteed guaranteed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I do worry though sometimes, and tell me what you

00:35:37.880 think about this, that cut, for example, cutting out processed sugar. Uh, you know, it's not that big

00:35:44.240 a deal. It's not going to make a big difference if I just cut it out. If, if I don't stick to that

00:35:49.860 today and because we're working on these micro goals or, or tactics, which is the word I use,

00:35:56.000 uh, then the problem is we don't do it because it seems like it's so small that it doesn't matter.

00:36:03.120 Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Totally. It seems insignificant. And then over a 90 day period,

00:36:08.300 it's very significant, but in the moment, but in the moment it feels like what's the big deal.

00:36:13.660 It's insignificant. Um, yeah. So for me that, you know, in a situation like that, um, I, I have to

00:36:21.840 have soundtracks. So I wrote this book about mindset called soundtracks, which are, you know,

00:36:26.600 the repetitive thoughts we listen to. So I need, I need a really strong mindset in order to push

00:36:32.480 through the moments where I feel like that. And here, the problem, in my opinion, that you're

00:36:36.860 describing is people lose motivation in the middle of goals. That's just the reality. They think they're

00:36:42.320 not going to, they think as soon as I find the right goal or my true North or whatever, then I'll be

00:36:46.760 motivated all 90 days. No. Like when we, we tested, when people quit their goals in a 30 day goal and

00:36:52.180 the greatest drop-off we saw was day two, day two. And it's because motivation is the first thing to

00:36:57.940 leave. Motivation gets flighty when real work shows up on day one, your goal is just a dream. It's a

00:37:02.560 wish day two, it turns into work and they don't feel motivated. So I have to do a lot of different

00:37:07.320 things. I need a lot of tactics to actually push through those days where I feel like it's

00:37:11.740 insignificant. I don't want to do it. So like a soundtrack that I use all the time is I'll feel

00:37:15.960 awesome after. I'll feel awesome after. When I get up in the morning and I don't want to run

00:37:20.440 and it's like the joke I always do is like in Nashville, the spring is too rainy to run.

00:37:25.260 The summer's too hot. The fall is too dark. The winter's too cold. There's never a good day to

00:37:29.220 run. And so I don't focus on the before, I focus on the after. I go, I'll feel awesome after.

00:37:34.580 That shower is going to feel amazing. Like walking down the hill when I'm done is going to feel

00:37:38.540 amazing. Coming in the door is going to feel amazing. The endorphins are going to feel amazing.

00:37:41.740 I'll feel awesome after. So I'll tell myself a hundred times, oh yeah, I'll feel awesome after.

00:37:45.800 I won't even think about the beginning because the beginning sucks. Like the cold hits your face, 0.98

00:37:49.820 sweaty if it's summer, whatever. I'm focusing on the after and I'm telling myself, oh, I'm going to

00:37:54.480 feel awesome after. I'll feel awesome after. So I do so many different things. If I have a 90 day goal

00:38:00.400 to get me to the end of that 90, I don't leave myself unguarded. I don't go, I hope this works.

00:38:07.440 Like I know myself enough at 47 to be like, I need a lot of tactics, dude. I need as many,

00:38:13.900 like I'm not holding my breath from day one to 90, hoping it works. I'm going, okay,

00:38:19.780 what are the visual tactics? What are the audio tactics? Like I listened to, you said an hour a

00:38:25.240 day in the gym, like I listened to positive content so much because I'm a pessimist at heart.

00:38:31.220 I'm cynical. I'm sarcastic. I'm super jaded, but I've done the ROI on positivity versus negativity

00:38:37.900 and positivity pays off so much more. So I have to work really hard at that. I can't just hope I'll

00:38:43.280 be positive. So it's kind of like if somebody said that to me about, well, I lose motivation.

00:38:48.760 It'd be like, if you said you didn't eat for three days in a row. And then you're like,

00:38:52.460 it's so weird that I'm hungry. I'd be like, no, it's not. You didn't eat. Like if you didn't feed

00:38:56.720 yourself positivity and motivation all day and worse, you fed yourself social media and negativity

00:39:03.240 and trolls, whatever, no wonder you're having a hard time with the goal. So like, that's where

00:39:08.000 if somebody said that to me and they were willing to take some feedback, that's what I would say is

00:39:12.280 like, well, let's get you more tools. Let's get you more tactics. Like you don't, you don't have,

00:39:16.780 like you should, when somebody's like, oh, that's a crutch. I'm like, yeah, I'm not like you live in

00:39:22.420 Utah. I love to ski in Salt Lake. Like every time I see somebody get taken down the mountain and

00:39:26.780 they're in that like little like sled and they're all right. Like that's how I'm trying to do that to

00:39:31.140 myself. I need that many tools. Like I want it to be like, I'm riding down the mountain.

00:39:34.980 So I'm not going to wait to hope in the middle of the goal. I stay strong. I'm going to totally

00:39:40.560 prepare like overwhelming action, overwhelming motivation so that it is a guarantee.

00:39:46.580 Well, I see this in the hunting world. You know, I'm a relatively new hunter. I've been hunting for

00:39:50.980 about seven ish years, seven, eight years or so now. And I've, I've actually had people, I'll post a

00:39:56.500 picture of an animal I've shot or, you know, a hunt I've been on and people like, well, you know,

00:40:00.380 it's easy when you have a rifle. I'm like, yeah, of course it is. Cause I don't want to go hunting

00:40:05.100 at with a, with a, with a, uh, like a, what do you call that? I can't even think of what it's

00:40:10.480 called. Like a slingshot or throwing a rock. Yeah. A rock is really hard. Like I'm glad we

00:40:16.420 invented those. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, look, it would be cool. And maybe at one point, like when I have 20

00:40:22.200 years under my belt, I might be able to do something like that. But for now, yeah, I'll take the compound

00:40:26.340 bow over the rock. Of course. So for me, the vert, the thing that people say to me that I

00:40:31.700 always kind of push back on is really go must be nice, must be nice. And I always want to be like,

00:40:35.400 it is. And I'm trying to teach you how to do it. Like if you say it must be nice. If I say

00:40:40.760 this happened and they go, Oh, it must be nice. I say it is really nice. That's why I shared it.

00:40:45.480 I would love you to experience that niceness too. Can I, can I show you how I did it? And if they go,

00:40:49.820 no, then fine. Don't like, you're not my people. But if I say like books aren't impossible,

00:40:55.740 like I like that, I'll turn in my 10th book in a couple of weeks. I really love writing books and

00:41:01.660 I figured it out. It's really hard for me. It's not like it's easy. It's really still challenging,

00:41:05.840 but I figured out how to do it. And if, if you want to figure out how to do it too, cool, here's,

00:41:10.580 here's the steps. Like this is the work. But if you don't want to, like, if you don't want to do

00:41:14.620 that, that's fine. Don't, don't, but just don't criticize me that it must be nice to have a book come

00:41:19.240 out because, well, it is nice. It is nice. And I've worked my tail off and make it happen.

00:41:23.800 Yeah. I'd love that to happen for you too. Let's figure that out together. But if you don't want

00:41:27.220 the advice, then, then don't waste your time. Like I always tell people, happy, busy people don't

00:41:32.400 have time for hate. Like happy, busy people don't have time to hate on others. Like I don't have time

00:41:37.480 for trolling right now. Cause I, I'm writing books and I'm, you know, playing pickleball with my kids who

00:41:43.140 want to be around me. Like that's a huge win as a dad, like that your kid, like talk about a goal,

00:41:48.440 like that your kid texts you and goes, Hey, can we spend more time together? Like I'm having too

00:41:52.140 much fun to worry about criticism. Well, I I've even had people say, if I delete somebody or block

00:41:57.260 somebody or whatever, it might be on social media. Like, Oh, well you don't see conflicting voices.

00:42:00.740 I'm like, no, I do. I just don't see assholes. Like I would never invite a dickhead into my aunt, 0.99

00:42:05.380 my house and say, Oh, it's for, you know, diversity of thought. I'm like, no, I'm not interested in that 0.98

00:42:11.020 diversity. I'm not interested in that. So no, that person is not coming into my house. And certainly 0.70

00:42:15.680 I'm not going to let them into my life, let alone social media. No, one thing my mom, my, uh, my,

00:42:20.700 my wife always says that she says criticism that costs nothing is worth nothing. So when somebody

00:42:26.620 writes something mean to you in a comment that costs them 30 seconds, it's worth 30 seconds.

00:42:30.900 That's it. When a friend who loves you pulls you aside and says, Hey, there's this thing I see in

00:42:35.160 your life. I think you need to change it. That took bravery. That took courage. That took awkwardness.

00:42:39.600 That's worth a lot. So like, I don't make a lot of time for criticism that costs nothing. Like

00:42:44.820 that's, I'm not like the idea of like diversity of thought, like, no, I'm good. I'm good. Like

00:42:50.320 I get a lot of that in my real relationships. Like I get a lot of that, like where people who think

00:42:55.620 different than me vote different for me, whatever. I get a lot of that in real life. I'm not looking

00:42:59.980 for extra of that from strangers on the internet. Like that's no, I'm good. I'm good.

00:43:05.420 Yeah. One of the things you talked about with the soundtracks is you said, I'm just

00:43:09.800 going through my notes here. You said, I'll feel awesome after one thing that I use is

00:43:14.620 it counts more if it's, if it's not enjoyable, like, and I don't, I don't know if that's always

00:43:20.520 the most helpful, but it counts more if it's, if, if it's hard.

00:43:24.380 Well, my version of that is the Hills pay the bills. Like when I have a Hill that I have to run,

00:43:29.180 the Hills are my friends. I change it to that. Cause I'm like, that Hill is eliminating competition.

00:43:34.260 That Hill is preparing me for the next Hill. So this hard thing, like Hills pay the bills,

00:43:39.480 Hills pay the bills. Like I'm not like, if I run the same Hill in North Carolina again and again,

00:43:43.780 and again, it prepares me for a half marathon in Nashville. Then I remember like, oh, that Hill

00:43:47.760 was my friend. Like it was hard. And then I think of that, like, I think it's Alistair Humphreys wrote

00:43:52.300 a book about micro adventures and he calls it type two fun. There's type one, which is like easy and

00:43:57.580 casual. And he's like, type two is where it's at, where it's grueling. You're sleeping in a tent,

00:44:02.380 like it's rainy. You're doing the, you're on a hunt that's challenging, whatever it's type two

00:44:07.320 fun. And he's like, type one fun is, is great. Don't get me wrong. But type two is where you're

00:44:11.560 like, Ooh, that had a level of satisfaction to it. Like I, this is such a silly example, 0.94

00:44:16.720 but I remember the first time I ever played ultimate Frisbee, I had never played and thought

00:44:20.980 I've been around Frisbees. How like I've seen dogs catch them. How hard could this be? Dude,

00:44:26.100 you don't stop running. Like you run a hundred yards and then somebody drops a Frisbee. You run a hundred

00:44:31.080 yards in the back. I threw up the first time I played, like I was a mess. And I remember that

00:44:35.840 feeling of driving away with my roommate and I was exhausted, but elated. So I love that feeling

00:44:41.900 where I find something where I'm exhausted, but elated, where I know like I emptied out my ability,

00:44:47.660 man, that was worth it. Like, man, that, that was worth it.

00:44:51.780 I like that. I like that concept of the Hills pay the bills. Cause I've even thought about it with my

00:44:56.580 little mantra of, you know, it counts more if it's hard. If, if I really buy into that,

00:45:02.040 literally buy into that, I will do hard things that don't actually move the needle just because

00:45:07.260 they're hard. So I want to be very cautious on the verbiage I'm using and the scripts that I'm

00:45:12.760 living my life by, because I'm not interested in making things harder than they need to be,

00:45:17.260 except for in training or this type two fun you're talking about.

00:45:20.720 Yeah. You're not doing it for inefficiency. It would be harder for you to write me a letter

00:45:25.500 to get the information for your podcast. That would be technically harder, but it's a lot easier

00:45:30.520 if you email me and that's fine that that's easy. So yeah, you're always kind of, I think that's

00:45:35.440 important that you're always balancing the things you're saying to yourself, the ways you're living

00:45:38.900 and who you're letting speak into that. Like what, you know, who are you surround, obviously who are

00:45:43.480 you surrounding yourself with? What are their soundtracks? The more I'm deliberate about, that was a big

00:45:49.020 lesson for me in the last five years is how powerful my thoughts are and how, how I can change them

00:45:53.580 and what happens when I actually change them. One thing you talk in the book about, and I'm very

00:45:59.580 curious about the subject. I think a lot of guys will be as well, is this concept of a scorecard

00:46:03.460 and making sure that you're keeping score, making sure that you're tracking. Um, because I think it's

00:46:09.880 easy to deceive ourselves. I think, I think the greatest risk in, in goal setting that is,

00:46:15.600 is to believe that we're further down the path or we're doing more than we actually are.

00:46:20.600 That's been my experience personally anyways, and experience with the thousands of guys that

00:46:25.220 we've worked with. Yeah. Um, so a big thing for me is unless you're keeping score, you have no idea

00:46:32.100 you have no, like the, the phrase I like to use is that data kills denial, which prevents disaster

00:46:38.480 data kills denial, which prevents disaster. So data is just trying to tell you the truth.

00:46:44.380 Like, here's what's happening. Here's how many hours you put into that project. Here's how many

00:46:48.620 follow-ups you did. Here's how many cold calls you did. Here's how many times you ran. So like,

00:46:53.100 I'll show you, I mean, if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm holding up a picture.

00:46:56.200 This is my scorecard says August actions on it. And I'm scoring myself on six or seven different

00:47:02.420 items I'm trying to track. And some are physical, some are intellectual, some are relationship,

00:47:07.020 some are my work. So for me, what I like about a scorecard is it tells you the truth when fear tries

00:47:13.520 to lie to you? Cause on the flip side, fear will go, you're, you're not really doing that much.

00:47:18.220 Like you're not really working that hard. One of the things I like to think about is the only

00:47:21.680 solution I found to imposter syndrome is results. Like results are the only thing in my life that

00:47:27.760 have killed imposter syndrome. What I mean by that is if imposter syndrome tries to tell me that I'm not

00:47:33.580 a real writer, I go, Oh, that's, that's weird. Cause I, there's nine books on the shelf. This one

00:47:38.660 is translated in German. Like, I feel like you might have bad information. Like I'm actually,

00:47:43.640 I've written a lot of books. So for me, that's what a result can be. It can be a finished book,

00:47:49.260 but it can also be a daily checklist where you go, I did the thing today. Like I put in the effort,

00:47:54.280 I'm getting the thing, like it was worth it. Um, you know, one of the silly goals I did was to

00:47:59.840 encourage, I wanted to encourage one person every day for 30 days in a row, a different person.

00:48:04.500 And so I kept a list of that. I kept their names. I checked it off. Like,

00:48:09.000 and I saw amazing results. Like there wasn't a single person who responded to me. It was like,

00:48:13.720 I wish you hadn't have told me that today. This was such a bad time for you to encourage me.

00:48:17.500 Most of them said the reverse. They said, you have no idea how much I needed that today.

00:48:21.020 You had no, and it was a 30 second text message. But again, instead of taking this fuzzy thing,

00:48:26.800 like I want to be a better friend, that's a fuzzy vague thing. You can't operate against.

00:48:31.480 There's no tactics. I said, okay, I'm going to try to like encourage 30 people, 30 friends,

00:48:38.680 and I'm going to make a list and I'm going to have a checkbox. I'm going to send a text message

00:48:42.480 every morning. That's what it's going to be. Like I could track that and I could say, wow,

00:48:46.480 I encouraged 27 people this month out of 30. That's pretty good. Maybe I can get to 28 next

00:48:52.160 month. Maybe like the thing you have to remember is you'd never run a marathon. If you didn't know

00:48:57.360 the finish line, that would be the worst. The other thing is like, if a friend, if you got into

00:49:03.080 a car with somebody and they're like, hey, we're going to go on vacation. And you're like, where?

00:49:07.000 And they're like, the beach. You'd be like, well, which beach? And if they were like,

00:49:10.700 no, just don't worry about it. Just the beach. You'd be like, no, like where are we going? How are

00:49:14.500 we getting there? You'd want to know the score. Am I making progress? Your brain is desperate to know

00:49:19.740 if you're making progress. And that's where I feel like we don't talk about enough. Comparison to me is

00:49:24.900 your brain just looking at somebody else's scorecard because you're not giving your brain one.

00:49:29.320 Your brain wants to know, how are we doing? Are we the type of men we want to be? Are our families

00:49:33.080 the type of families we want to have? Are our career? Whatever. How are we doing? And if you

00:49:37.360 don't have a scorecard that matters to you, you'll start to compare other people's scorecard to your

00:49:42.800 life. And that's where like, oh, there's so much unhappiness in that. Or you'll judge your life based

00:49:49.700 on the wrong things. The world will give you a scorecard unless you build your own.

00:49:54.280 It'll give you one and go, here's the things that are important. And then dude, that's when you wake

00:49:58.300 up at 50 and go, wow, I chased a lot of things that did not matter. And I didn't know they didn't

00:50:03.700 matter because I didn't have my own scorecard. And so for me, that's where I could maybe work 80

00:50:11.300 hours a week and do 100 hours a week, whatever it is. But that's not my scorecard. My scorecard

00:50:18.020 involves my family, involves my health. I need to make time for a bunch of different things.

00:50:22.580 And I can have a healthy scorecard because it's the John Acuff scorecard.

00:50:27.260 The last thing I'll say, speaking of scorecards, I read 100 books one year and I would post about

00:50:32.700 them. And there were people that were like, that book doesn't count. Like a Batman graphic novel

00:50:37.640 doesn't count or audio books don't count or whatever. And I would go, that's weird because

00:50:41.360 I thought this was the John Acuff personal reading challenge. And I'm John Acuff. So if there's

00:50:46.520 somebody who can decide what, I feel like it's me. I had my scorecard. If I want to listen to an

00:50:51.600 audio book, that counts. Like if you don't, if you want to have your scorecard be different,

00:50:56.220 go for it. This is mine. And so I think that's where it's important for men to have that established

00:51:01.340 because other people will vocally try to give you one unless you have your own.

00:51:06.600 Yeah. I think that's, we fall into the trap of, I don't know, what do you think about sharing goals?

00:51:11.500 You know, if you start to share goals, people start to, like you're saying,

00:51:14.460 quantify them, qualify them, tell them you're doing good. That's actually a trap.

00:51:18.060 Is I share some, not all. I share some, not all. What was your, you did a podcast on that,

00:51:23.900 right? What was your, what was your, like your key thought there?

00:51:27.160 Well, I think the most important thing, and you kind of qualified this a little bit earlier.

00:51:31.600 I think it's important to share your goals with people who care about you and are going to be

00:51:36.440 honest with you, but people who don't know you or people who aren't going to be honest with you.

00:51:41.060 Why, why are you sharing your goal? The trap, I think one of the traps

00:51:45.060 is I could post on Facebook today. Like I go on right after this call and say,

00:51:49.320 Hey, I'm going to run a marathon and I'll have a hundred people plus write a comment and say,

00:51:54.020 you're awesome. You're amazing. Way to go. I'm like, well, hold on. I haven't done anything yet.

00:51:59.720 All I did was post a few characters on a computer. I haven't actually done anything yet.

00:52:04.440 And the risk in that is getting accolades for actually no work whatsoever.

00:52:09.000 Dude, you are a hundred percent right. Derek Seavers talked about this. He referenced a study

00:52:14.300 from the 1930s by a guy named Kurt Lewin, where when that happens, your body releases dopamine,

00:52:20.580 the pre-congratulations, and it's enough that you get satisfied and don't actually do the activity.

00:52:25.660 So the same thing works with books. So if you go to a dinner party and you tell somebody,

00:52:29.740 I'm writing a book, they go, you're so brave. You must be so disciplined. You're amazing.

00:52:33.520 You haven't written a single page yet. You're already getting congratulations. Your body goes,

00:52:38.560 Hey, that's enough. That's enough dopamine. Thanks. You don't even, I am amazing. You don't

00:52:43.080 write it. So yeah, I think that's the other thing is that like, don't share, like if a goal is

00:52:48.900 challenging to you, share it with people you trust, not with everybody. Because if you share it

00:52:54.360 publicly and people criticize you, now you've added criticism to an already difficult challenge.

00:52:59.060 I don't need extra reasons to not do the goal. So if I have a, like some goal that I'm like,

00:53:04.460 I might share it after and go, Hey, here's something I worked on. Cause it might inspire

00:53:07.960 somebody else. But if I'm already struggling with it, I'm not going to share it broadly.

00:53:12.020 I'm going to share it with my running group. I'm going to share it with, you know,

00:53:15.860 some accountability partners. I'm going to share it with a group of men I trust,

00:53:19.520 not with everybody. Like, cause the, cause it's, it's too valuable and too special and too fragile.

00:53:25.600 Like, that's the other thing. I don't, I don't share everything with people until it's got enough

00:53:30.580 strength to stand up on its own. If it's a fragile goal, I'm not sending it out to the

00:53:35.400 wilds of the internet. Like, no, I want that thing to be like, Oh, you don't think I can do this?

00:53:40.660 Here's the first 30 days. I'm like, I'm already in motion. Like that thing has some muscles now

00:53:44.980 and might be able to stand up to the internet. I'm not sending fragile goals out into the internet.

00:53:49.600 Yeah. I just, I just pulled this up. Um, because I think this is right in line with what we're

00:53:54.680 talking about. It's, uh, well, this is the King, King James version of Matthew seven,

00:54:00.080 six. It says, give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine,

00:54:04.460 lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you. It's like, why would I take

00:54:10.120 something that's valuable to me and cast it before give something that's so important to me and cast 0.81

00:54:15.800 it before somebody who wants to treat it like complete garbage. And is never going to buy your thing

00:54:22.060 or support your thing. Like, that's not like, that's not the person. Like it kind of be like,

00:54:27.300 if somebody was complaining about a meal, they didn't eat, like you didn't come to my restaurant.

00:54:32.760 Like what? Like, no, like, you know who a chef shouldn't care about the person who's never been

00:54:37.440 to their restaurant. They should care about the person that's like, I'm a big fan of Italian.

00:54:41.680 I've had your Italian. Here's what I think. Like that's completely different. But I think that,

00:54:45.960 I think we have to remember the internet is still pretty new and we're still figuring it out.

00:54:49.660 Like it's a toddler still, like a hundred years from now, people are going to study the time we

00:54:53.820 live in right now and be like, man, that was crazy when they first got the internet.

00:54:58.140 We're the first ones. That must've been hard. They didn't know about like all the damage. Like

00:55:02.980 there's also not going to be a study in a hundred years from now that says it was good for our

00:55:06.880 self-esteem. Like there's just not going to be one where like doctors are like, yeah,

00:55:11.400 strangers hating on other people ended up being really healthy. It turns out it was like,

00:55:16.340 that was good. Like, no. And so that's where like finding your people, finding your tribe as it were,

00:55:22.040 and like leaning into that, that matters. The general doesn't matter.

00:55:27.540 Well, John, I want to be respectful of your time. I know you're busy right now with a new book

00:55:30.680 and the launch and the tour that you're doing with All It Takes is a Goal. Let the guys know where to

00:55:35.840 connect with you, how to pick up a copy of the book and where to go from here.

00:55:39.220 Yeah. So you can find me at johnacob.com, just J-O-N-A-C-U-F-F.com. I've got a podcast called

00:55:46.560 All It Takes is a Goal where I interview people about their goals. If you listen to one episode,

00:55:51.040 Greg Sankey, the SEC commissioner, and I mean, football, not finances. He was amazing on that.

00:55:57.040 To hear him talk about leading this billion dollar organization and how he approaches goals

00:56:02.480 and runs marathons and read books was really inspiring to me as a man. You can get the book

00:56:07.180 anywhere books are sold and I read the audio book. If you're an audio person, I read the audio book.

00:56:11.160 We put 10 bonus stories in it. Super fun. So yeah, you can check that out anywhere books are.

00:56:16.420 Awesome. Thanks, John. I appreciate you.

00:56:18.140 Yeah, thanks, Terry. This was fun.

00:56:18.920 I know it's been years since we've connected, but you're an integral part of the work that we're

00:56:22.860 doing, whether you know it or not, especially in the early years. So really appreciate you coming

00:56:27.100 on, tuning in and having a conversation with us. Thank you.

00:56:30.740 Yeah, it was a blast, man. Thanks.

00:56:33.280 Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with the one and only John Acuff.

00:56:36.980 I hope you enjoyed it. Again, his book is called all it takes is a goal. Three Pete guest and good

00:56:42.860 friend looking forward to making sure that I connect with him very soon as he heads to

00:56:47.520 Northern Utah and we can get together face to face. But guys, if you're not familiar with his work,

00:56:52.840 please go check out what he's doing. Tag John tag myself, go pick up a pre-order copy of his book.

00:56:59.640 All it takes is a goal. Also make sure if you want to watch this video on YouTube,

00:57:03.620 we're upping production quality with our camera and everything that we're doing. So you can check

00:57:07.940 that out on YouTube. And again, just want to tell you, I appreciate the support. Go check out my

00:57:12.880 friends over at Montana knife company and let's keep the ball rolling to reclaim and restore

00:57:17.360 masculinity. Appreciate you guys. I'll be back tomorrow for our ask me anything until then go

00:57:22.840 out there, take action and become a man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order

00:57:28.080 of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.

00:57:33.240 We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - August 15, 2023

JON ACUFF ｜ Ditch Regret and Tap Into Potential

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript