The Art of Manliness - Stop Living on Autopilot and Take Responsibility for Your Life

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.420 Do you ever have moments of terrible realization where you recognize that you're living on autopilot?

00:00:16.280 Instead of feeling like you're in the driver's seat, you feel like life is happening to you.

00:00:19.900 You're just going through the motions, you've lost your spark, and the months and years slide by in

00:00:24.240 indistinct blur. My guest day has been there himself and has an action plan for how to find

00:00:28.900 your way out. His name is Antonio Neves. He's a writer, speaker, and success coach, as well as

00:00:33.020 the author of Stop Living on Autopilot, Take Responsibility for Your Life, and Rediscover

00:00:37.160 a Bolder, Happier You. At the start of our conversation, Antonio shares his own experience

00:00:41.700 with outwardly having a life that seemed happy and successful, while inwardly feeling totally

00:00:46.220 lost and stuck. We then turn to some great, incisive questions to ask yourself to assess

00:00:50.840 if you're coasting your life and become more accountable to the changes you need to make

00:00:54.220 to start intentionally steering your life again. We talk about what you're really missing when

00:00:58.520 you say you missed the good old days, how to ensure the best of your life is ahead of you

00:01:01.920 instead of behind you, and why you need to make a list of all your complaints. We then

00:01:05.480 discuss the importance of who you surround yourself with, why you need allies instead

00:01:09.020 of thieves in your circle, and the difference something called man mornings has made in

00:01:13.100 Antonio's life. And we enter conversation with the concrete steps you can start taking

00:01:16.820 today to shift out of autopilot, including Antonio's personal checklist of five things he

00:01:21.660 does every day to ensure it's a good one. After the show's over, check out our show notes

00:01:25.560 at aom.is slash autopilot. Antonio joins you now via clearcast.io.

00:01:39.380 Antonio Nez, welcome to the show.

00:01:41.440 Hey, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

00:01:43.680 So you got a new book out, Stop Living on Autopilot, Take Responsibility for Your Life,

00:01:48.020 and Rediscover a Bolder, Happier You. This book is sort of a culmination of experiences you've had 0.94

00:01:53.760 personally, as well as coaching and working with other people, executives and things like that.

00:01:58.560 And you start off the book talking about how 2016 was one of these pivotal years in your life and

00:02:05.000 career. And you describe how on the outside, everything looked like it was going great.

00:02:11.140 But in your personal life, your inner life, it was a wreck. What was going on there? And how were

00:02:15.920 you both a success and a wreck at the same time? Yeah, it's wild. Because if you looked at the

00:02:20.320 internet in 2016, if you did a Google search, you know, I was living my best life ever. I had

00:02:25.600 everything figured out. I was, you know, speaking on stages all across the globe at big companies

00:02:31.200 like Google on topic like leaderships, had a nice coaching business I was building, award-winning

00:02:36.400 journalist, married with a wife and newborn toddler twins. So I had the house with the white picket fence,

00:02:43.560 all of it. So on paper, everything looked great. But internally, it was wild because even though

00:02:49.960 everything on the external was good, internally, I was wilting. And funny enough, as I talked to men

00:02:56.920 and women across the country, I realized I wasn't the only one who on paper, everything looks good, 0.89

00:03:01.060 but internally something is off. I'd reached an interesting point in my early 40s that I kind

00:03:06.880 of felt like the best thing to happen to me was in my past as opposed to in front of me. And as I think

00:03:14.320 about it, I think one of the main things that happened was that the quote unquote manual that I had

00:03:18.500 received for life, the roadmap, that book came to an end. I reached a point in life when more was

00:03:24.380 expected of me than ever before as a husband, as a father, financially, et cetera. And I didn't know

00:03:29.820 what direction to go. I'm a kid from a small town in Michigan whose parents divorced when I was young

00:03:36.080 between my mom and dad or six different divorces, moved over 15 times before I graduated from high

00:03:41.680 school. So from a marriage perspective, I was trying to figure that out in real time. I wasn't raised

00:03:47.040 with a father on a regular basis. So being a new father, I didn't really know what that meant.

00:03:53.300 Funnily enough, the art of manliness, I was really trying to figure out what it meant to be

00:03:57.760 a man. And more than anything, I think what had happened was I'd lost intention. I was just going

00:04:05.700 through the flow. I was on cruise control. Life was happening to me as opposed to me intentionally

00:04:11.860 going after things. And that's what you mean by living on autopilot.

00:04:16.500 100%. That's like when you check off the boxes in life, right? All the boxes that society tells

00:04:20.840 you to check off. In many ways, it's like the American dream, right? Get your education, get a

00:04:25.760 home, get married, have kids. Okay. I checked all those boxes off and I'm still unhappy. Now what?

00:04:32.560 And yeah, so you can find yourself on living on autopilot. And I imagine you've worked with a lot

00:04:37.040 of people that have that same issue. They've checked all the boxes. They think, well, I've

00:04:41.420 done it. Why don't I feel better? Feel like I accomplished anything. People come up to me all

00:04:46.700 the time after talks and they'll say, I'm not as happy as I look on Facebook. I'm not as successful

00:04:52.360 as I look on LinkedIn. And it manifests itself in a unique way. The way it hit me in the face was

00:04:58.100 I became a secret cigarette smoker. Smoking is something that I despise, Brett, but I became a

00:05:05.020 secret cigarette smoker in alleys in Los Angeles and across the country when I was traveling.

00:05:10.800 And it took me wearing a bright green gardening glove, smoking cigarettes. And I wore this green

00:05:15.380 glove so my wife wouldn't smell the smoke when I came home because she didn't know I was smoking.

00:05:19.700 And one day I was smoking a cigarette in a Santa Monica street alley.

00:05:23.380 And what I perceived to be a homeless man asked me to borrow a cigarette. And dude looked like he

00:05:29.060 had seen much better days. So I gave him a couple of cigarettes. And as we were talking, like smokers

00:05:33.700 do, he said, yo, what's up with that green glove, man? And I was like, oh, my wife doesn't know

00:05:39.080 that I smoke. Brett, he looked at me like I committed a crime. He felt sorry for me. And he said some

00:05:46.500 words that I will never forget. He said, hey, man, you got to figure that out. Here I am,

00:05:53.380 quote unquote, successful guy on the internet doing good. Yet a homeless man in a street alley

00:05:57.680 is telling me I have to figure my out. I think a lot of people have these secret vices. They don't

00:06:03.220 tell people I may not be smoking, but it may be binge watching the Amazon Prime or Netflix series

00:06:08.180 nonstop to the point where it says, are you still watching? It may be scrolling through Instagram

00:06:12.820 where you reached a point where it says you are all caught up and maybe having that glass or two of

00:06:18.260 wine or those extra beers in the evening just to take the edge off, to take the attention off of the

00:06:23.360 things that you are not doing. All right. So this shook you up. This

00:06:27.660 started getting you to explore, like, how did you get to this point? And so we're going to talk about

00:06:32.120 how people get on autopilot, what questions they can ask themselves to figure out where they are in

00:06:37.920 their life and things they take for granted. But one thing that really struck out to me in your book

00:06:43.200 that you start off with is you sort of debunk this idea that you hear in self-improvement circles

00:06:48.880 that this mantra is like, life's short. Knowing that you're supposed to start taking action and

00:06:54.380 start living life like it's your last day on earth. But you argue that's actually a short-sighted

00:06:58.860 way to look at life. Why is it? How can that idea of living your life as life is short get you to

00:07:04.620 trouble? Well, it's funny enough, the person that got me to think about this was the comedian Chris

00:07:08.820 Rock. And I don't know him personally, but I remember seeing a comedy special of his and he was

00:07:13.400 talking about how people always say life is short. He says, but it's not the truth. He says, odds are

00:07:18.940 you are not going to get hit by a bus. You are going to live for like 50 more years and you're

00:07:26.320 going to have to live with the decisions that you have made. And I think people say life is short,

00:07:31.920 frankly, to give themselves an excuse. I know that very well. They say life is short, so they don't

00:07:37.800 have to take accountability. When you say life is short, sometimes it means like, you know what? Life is

00:07:42.640 short. Guess what? I'm going to have that extra beer. Guess what? Life is short. I'm going to eat

00:07:47.280 unhealthy. Guess what? Life is short. Why work out when I can do something else? So it gives us an

00:07:52.200 opportunity not to take accountability for ourselves. And also, you know, we always talk

00:07:56.460 about the decisions that we make in life, but I also am a firm believer that, you know, it's about

00:08:00.940 the decisions that we don't make as well. Not making a decision is making a decision.

00:08:06.440 And also something that hit home to me too, and you talk about throughout the book, is that

00:08:09.920 where you are today in your life, it didn't happen overnight, whether it's a place you want to be

00:08:15.460 or don't want to be. I mean, if you are overweight, that didn't happen overnight. It took maybe months,

00:08:21.740 years to get to that point. And to fix that problem, it's going to take, it's going to be a process too.

00:08:26.940 It's going to take a while. 100% because people like to say, oh, suddenly I got fired from my job.

00:08:31.820 And you did not suddenly get fired from your job. Some things happened that led to that.

00:08:36.000 Out of the blue, my relationship was in shambles. No, it wasn't out of the blue. It was a large 0.74

00:08:42.480 collection of days when you ignored having certain conversations with your spouse and doing certain

00:08:46.520 things that led to that. And one day everything was turned upside down. Like again, that's us

00:08:52.160 not taking accountabilities for our actions, our lack thereof. So yeah, you're spot on with that.

00:08:57.720 Yeah. You're just, you're, you're on autopilot. You're not even thinking about what's going on in

00:09:01.300 your life. All right. So another pivotal year you talk about in your, your story was 2004. You got

00:09:06.780 fired from what you thought at the time was your dream job. What happened there? And like,

00:09:11.300 what did that teach you about living on autopilot and change and growth?

00:09:16.160 Wow. Yeah. 2004. I mean, it seems like another lifetime ago. You know, I moved to New York city

00:09:20.500 in 2000 with less than a thousand dollars in my bank account with the goal of breaking into the

00:09:24.460 television industry. And two years later it happened. I was on live TV every single day

00:09:30.300 on children's television network, Nickelodeon co-hosting a show called you pick live. This

00:09:35.200 is a different Antonio with long dreadlocks and a whole other outlook on life. I was living my best 0.76

00:09:41.740 life. I was living the dream. I had quote unquote thought that I had made it, but after two years of

00:09:47.560 being on the show and interacting with big name celebrities on a daily basis, ended up becoming a

00:09:53.060 writer on the show and an associate producer, I ended up getting fired from this job. I can still

00:09:58.080 remember going into the executive producer's office there in times square and 1515 Broadway.

00:10:03.560 And essentially he said, where the show is going a different direction and you will no longer be

00:10:07.900 on camera, which means you're going to be fired from the show. And I frankly thought that my life was

00:10:15.160 over. I was more depressed than I ever been before in my life. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to

00:10:20.020 show you how dare you fire me from this job. And I remember moving to Los Angeles at the time,

00:10:27.180 thinking I was going to break into the television industry out here where I live now. And three

00:10:31.300 months later, I was smoking weed and drinking beer in a small closet in my apartment in Silver Lake,

00:10:37.860 Los Angeles, every single day down and out on my luck. Again, thinking that the best thing that ever

00:10:42.320 happened to me was in my past. But as I slowly bred, started to evaluate what was happening during my time

00:10:47.940 at Nickelodeon. First and foremost, I wouldn't recommend to anyone that their first gig in

00:10:53.300 television be on a national television show and millions of households nationwide. I mean,

00:10:58.280 there's a reason why local news reporters start in Iowa and small town New Mexico and not New York

00:11:03.000 City, because the stakes are so high. But even during that job at Nickelodeon, I was going through

00:11:09.700 the motions. I was on autopilot. I was coasting. I wasn't getting better. I wasn't studying. I wasn't

00:11:15.100 doing the things that they asked of me to develop, to get better, to become a better host, a better

00:11:19.420 writer, a better interviewer, you name it. And that led to me being in another deep, dark funk,

00:11:25.100 thinking the best thing to happen to me was over with. And I would never find my way to the

00:11:30.580 television industry again. When did you realize that you could do something else? That wasn't the

00:11:37.800 end of your life. What happened that you could start building up again?

00:11:42.060 First and foremost, I think whenever things I've gone through challenging times in my life,

00:11:47.640 the best thing that's ever happened was working with a community in some regard.

00:11:51.460 So I was fortunate enough even then and throughout my life to have amazing people in my life.

00:11:55.180 Those kind of people that hold you accountable, those kind of people that won't let you just sit

00:11:59.260 and wallow in misery and complain all day long. So I had those people in my life that basically said,

00:12:04.420 hey, you have to get back up. And so instead of sitting in my closet, smoking weed, drinking beer,

00:12:08.780 I started getting out and getting active in the Los Angeles community of writers,

00:12:14.200 of improvers, of comedians and actors, you name it. And that really gave me a new lease on life.

00:12:21.060 And I really realized how much I love telling stories and that I wanted to stay in the television

00:12:24.840 industry, but I wanted to do that in a different way. And funny enough, I would have never imagined

00:12:29.760 this. I ended up applying to go to grad school after being in LA for about a year. And I ended up back

00:12:35.120 in New York City at Columbia University to study journalism, where I realized I want to put my

00:12:39.700 energy and focus on telling stories that matter, as opposed to trying to make sure kids don't turn

00:12:45.520 the channel from Nickelodeon to the Disney channel, to the Cartoon Network.

00:12:50.400 And I think it's an interesting point here. So you had this moment in 2004 where you had lots of

00:12:53.980 success. You're at the apex and then it was all taken away from you. And as you said, you realized that

00:12:58.860 you were taking some things for granted. You're on autopilot and it was a process. It didn't happen

00:13:03.280 overnight. It might've felt like that. And then you started building yourself up slowly again.

00:13:07.860 But then in 2016, you had that same sort of experience, like my life's... And I think the

00:13:12.200 takeaway from there is I think a lot of times people think they're going to reach this point

00:13:16.000 where they've made it. And I've had that experience too. That's not the case. You've never really made

00:13:21.880 it. You might feel like you made it for a little bit, but then something happens that upturns

00:13:26.900 everything. You hit it spot on. I thought I had made it and I was done. And as you know,

00:13:32.280 this is an ongoing journey. And in life, it's interesting as a coach and the work that I do

00:13:37.080 in the personal development space, the word we hear all the time is commit. You have to commit,

00:13:42.120 commitment, et cetera. But what no one tells you very rarely is that you have to recommit

00:13:46.980 every single day. Once you land the job, the work isn't done. Once you land that amazing spouse or

00:13:55.980 partner, the work isn't done. Once you land and you have those amazing kids in your life,

00:13:59.700 the work isn't done. Every single day you wake up, you have to recommit to what's most important.

00:14:04.100 And that's where I fell off, where I wasn't recommitting every single day. I was coasting.

00:14:08.220 I was making a lot of assumptions and just letting things happen organically. And sometimes when

00:14:13.300 things happen organically, it can be good. Other times you can end up somewhere you do not want to

00:14:17.660 be. Another thing that happens besides coasting, people just stop doing the thing that got them

00:14:21.940 there in the first place. You see this like when people lose weight, right? Like, wow,

00:14:24.680 I've lost 10 pounds. I'll just go back to eating the way I was before. And then they gain weight.

00:14:29.240 And they're like, what the heck happened? No, it's like, you got to keep eating like the way

00:14:32.680 you did to lose that 10 pounds for basically the rest of your life. You want to keep it off.

00:14:37.040 Yeah. That's one of the questions I ask in the book as people think about where they are today

00:14:40.220 in life, if they do want to make a change is the question of that. Like, what have you stopped doing

00:14:45.220 that has gotten you to where you are today? And you can look at that in so many regards with your health

00:14:50.120 and fitness, as you just referenced, as you look at our relationships, as we look at our career,

00:14:54.840 you name it. There are things that I've always been blown away, by the way, as like as a coach,

00:14:58.780 who's worked with so many top executives, founders, et cetera. And I'm sure you've seen

00:15:03.280 this firsthand as well. These amazing men and women, they do this amazing work to get that title

00:15:08.540 of vice president or senior vice president or in CEO. But then once they get in that chair,

00:15:14.380 they get in that office, they stop doing the things that got them there. And then what happens?

00:15:20.020 The organization, that department gets in trouble. It's the same way when you think about sports,

00:15:24.180 we've all seen that football team kill it in the first half. They kill it. They're up 35 to nothing

00:15:31.080 at halftime. And then all of a sudden they come back from halftime and they start playing not to

00:15:35.600 lose. They stop doing all those things that got them to that 35 to zero lead. And guess what? You

00:15:41.880 know what happens? Fourth quarter, two minutes to go. They're only up by two points and the other team

00:15:47.000 has the ball and they may lose the game. So that's another great way to think about it as well.

00:15:51.780 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:15:55.500 And now back to the show. One of the things I love about your book is that you take readers

00:15:59.680 through these questions to analyze whether they're coasting in life and just living on autopilot. And

00:16:04.220 one of the most powerful questions I got from the book was this question of asking yourself,

00:16:10.540 basically looking at the past 30 days and you'd say, okay, based on my last 30 days of my life,

00:16:17.420 of my work, you'd ask, would my company hire me again? And you can do this with other parts of

00:16:23.900 your life. Based on the last 30 days of my relationship with my wife, would she want to

00:16:27.780 marry me again? What do you think is powerful about this question? Why look at the most recent 30 days

00:16:33.020 and not look at the past five years? I think five years is such a big, long runway that it's

00:16:39.980 just overwhelming. I find that when you look at something in 30 day spurts, it gives you an honest

00:16:45.500 assessment of where you are in life. It's like real raw data. It's not yesterday because if you worked

00:16:51.840 out yesterday, great. But if you didn't work out the 29 days prior to that, it gives you a good idea

00:16:57.260 of where you are. And I just think that seven days is too short. I like to think about it as wine.

00:17:02.920 I remember when I first learned about wine and I took a class and someone was explaining why you

00:17:06.800 smell the cork of wine before you drink it. And you smell it to make sure the bottle is still good

00:17:12.280 to drink and that the wine hasn't spoiled. And the last 30 days metric gives you an idea to see if

00:17:17.420 anything has spoiled in your life. And that question of when it relates to our work, like

00:17:21.640 if based on the last 30 days, if your boss, if your manager had to make a decision to rehire you,

00:17:28.400 would the answer immediately be yes? When I asked that question to people, whether I'm in a

00:17:33.900 boardroom, whether I'm at a conference or doing a Zoom presentation, most people start looking down

00:17:39.140 because they're like, no, based on how I showed up the last 30 days, no, they wouldn't hire me.

00:17:44.560 And then you can take this on a personal level as well. This is a real one that I hate asking

00:17:48.500 myself sometimes. And that is if you happen to be married or in a committed relationship.

00:17:52.560 Based on the last 30 days of your marriage or your relationship, if your partner had to make

00:17:58.120 a decision to recommit to you or not, would they immediately say yes? Or would they say,

00:18:02.360 you know what, maybe we should keep dating for a little bit longer before I commit to marrying you.

00:18:07.140 Brett, we can look at that as it relates to parenting. We can look at it as it relates to our

00:18:10.880 diet, health, personal finances, et cetera. But just briefly, as it relates to the career one,

00:18:16.600 to get a little bit deeper so people can know what I'm talking about. For those people who have jobs

00:18:20.520 right now, I want you just briefly to think about when you first were interviewing for the job that

00:18:24.860 you're in right now and how bad you wanted that job. Think about when you had the second job

00:18:28.900 interview. Think about when you were a finalist. Now think about the day you got the job and how

00:18:33.260 fired up you were. Think about how you showed up that first month, that first quarter, that first

00:18:38.840 year of the job. And then going back to what we talked about earlier is how much of that man or

00:18:43.720 woman still exists? Are you still doing those things that got you to where you are? The wild thing is 0.99

00:18:50.020 that today, technically we are smarter than we've ever been before in our life. We've had more

00:18:54.540 experiences, more data. So we should be killing it at marriage. We should be killing it at our jobs. 0.98

00:18:59.780 We should be killing it at parenting. However, we're not doing those things in 30 days. Man, 0.97

00:19:05.100 it is a great metric. And just briefly, I don't want anyone to beat themselves up if they're not

00:19:09.940 happy about their last 30 days in their marriage or their work. All this is, is data and information so

00:19:15.080 we can make a better decision today and a better decision tomorrow.

00:19:18.460 And then what you can ask yourself is, you know, once you've done this analysis and say,

00:19:22.600 maybe it's not where you want it to be, you can say, well, what can I do in the next 30 days

00:19:26.660 that I can change those answers? Right?

00:19:30.780 100%. I mean, as it relates to my marriage, I can tell you, as a guy prior to the pandemic,

00:19:34.900 I was on the road, sometimes five to 10,000 miles a month. Let me tell you, when I'm delivering a

00:19:39.840 workshop in India and she's with our toddler twins by herself for eight, nine days, odds are she may not

00:19:46.700 want to say I want to recommit to that dude. But there are key things that I can do when I'm home

00:19:51.000 and even when I'm on the road to ensure that we stay connected that I wasn't doing previously. So

00:19:55.900 it's all just awareness. Yeah. I love the 30 day timeframes. I think people can,

00:20:00.480 that's more manageable. It's like, I can do better in 30 days. And if you say, well, I got to do better

00:20:04.860 for five years or 10 years, like, oh man, I don't know if that's, that's too much. I'm not even going to

00:20:09.740 try, but 30 days that's doable. Absolutely. All right. So another question you have your

00:20:14.820 clients ask themselves to figure out if they're sort of slacking or just sort of going on autopilot

00:20:19.360 in life is, would you bet on you? What do you mean by that question? Why is that a powerful one to

00:20:24.840 figure out where you are in life? Betting on you. At first, I believe that to get others to bet on us,

00:20:30.640 we have to be willing to bet on ourselves. And that means kind of like doing the work when no one

00:20:34.980 is watching. I like to think about it like this. If you've ever found yourself at a casino or in Las

00:20:39.920 Vegas before, I like going to the sports book area. That's where you go and they're betting on

00:20:45.060 all the different sporting events. That can be horse races, boxing matches, football games,

00:20:49.600 baseball games, you name it. And they have this really big board up at the sports book area and

00:20:54.140 they have the things you can bet on. And next to them are the odds of who is going to win that game,

00:20:59.900 that match, et cetera. And the question I like to frame for people is if your name,

00:21:04.980 was up there on that big board, would the odds be in your favor or against you? And would you let

00:21:13.120 others bet on you? Would you let a family member bet their last dollars on you accomplishing what you

00:21:19.880 say is most important? Well, I think what people don't realize is that every single day people are

00:21:26.500 betting on us. Guess what? Our employer is betting on us doing the work that we said we would do when

00:21:32.060 they hired us. Guess what? Our spouse is betting on us being that amazing man, that husband, that

00:21:37.880 who they met, the promises we made to them. Our parents, excuse me, our kids are betting on us

00:21:43.500 as well. Society, the banks that gives us loans, et cetera. And I'm a firm believer that if you don't

00:21:49.340 think the odds are in your favor, all you got to do is think about those last 30 days. And if you do

00:21:53.740 want to know where your odds are or not, it is in the last 30 days and you can make some new decisions

00:21:58.700 moving forward. I mean, I just want to make sure that every single day I'd be willing to bet my

00:22:03.740 last dollar on myself. No, I think that, I mean, you literally don't have to bet, but it's a good

00:22:09.080 mental exercise to do. I've done this to Annie Duke. She's a psychologist and like she was a

00:22:14.660 professional poker player. One sort of heuristic she used to determine whether your opinion is good

00:22:20.280 or not is ask, okay, how much would you bet that your opinion is right? And by doing that, be like,

00:22:26.880 oh, well, probably not that much. So maybe I should reevaluate this opinion. I think you can

00:22:31.220 apply the same thing as, well, I'm going to, how much would someone bet on me, be willing to bet on

00:22:35.960 me to do this thing I said I would do? Well, if it's not much, then that means you got work you got

00:22:39.620 to do. 100%. I love that heuristic. That's something I'm going to have to use to ask myself. That's

00:22:44.680 brilliant.

00:22:45.200 So another thing that you talk about that puts people on autopilot or not something that puts

00:22:51.340 people on autopilot, but something you've noticed with your clients you've worked with that are on

00:22:56.480 autopilot and just kind of coasting through life is that they often talk about that they miss the good

00:23:00.700 old days. When people say that they miss the good old days, what do you think they really miss?

00:23:07.080 Well, I mean, we've all heard people say, oh, college, best years of my life. High school,

00:23:11.860 best years of my life. Oh, that old job was the best one.

00:23:15.200 People are saying a few things. I think a great way to think about this is I read an article in

00:23:18.880 the New York Times a few years back and two business owners were being interviewed and they

00:23:22.860 started their company in New York City in the 1990s. And as you probably know, the New York City

00:23:28.440 in the 1990s, it was a lot different than it is right now. A little bit more grimy, a little bit

00:23:33.840 more rough, et cetera. And at some point, one of the co-founders of this business said,

00:23:37.580 I really miss the old New York, reminiscing about what it was like in the 1990s.

00:23:43.260 But his co-founder corrected him. He said, you don't miss the old New York.

00:23:50.000 What you miss is the old you, who you were during that time, how you showed up in life during that

00:23:58.700 time, that optimism that had, that vigor that you had, that vigor you had, the positive attitude that

00:24:04.080 you had. You don't miss the old days. What you miss is the old you. And so that makes me think

00:24:09.980 about my early days in New York City, who I showed up as with less than a thousand dollars in my bank

00:24:14.480 account and how fired up I was, the intention that I had, the things I wanted to accomplish

00:24:19.140 versus that guy in 2016, two different people. One was coasting, one was leaning backwards and one was

00:24:26.680 leaning forward. I think another way to think about this is if you're missing those old days and

00:24:32.360 trying to figure out where you're going in life is ask yourself a fun question. And that's a question

00:24:37.320 of, that question is, if your life was a movie and the movie was, was halfway over, what would the

00:24:44.520 lead character start doing to turn things around? Odds are that person wouldn't be reminiscing about the

00:24:50.040 old days. That protagonist would be thinking about a new decision that they could make to make things

00:24:54.620 better in the future. Because for so many of us, we talk about the old days so much because atrophy

00:25:00.540 has set in, in our life, again, we're no longer living intentionally. We're just going with the

00:25:05.340 flow. And people get there so many times because so many of our responsibilities in life have

00:25:10.340 accumulated over the years that we feel really paralyzed. You look around your house, you look

00:25:15.740 around your garage and you have all this stuff and you're like, do I even really want all of this?

00:25:20.440 Yeah. It's that sort of gilded cage. It sort of captures you. So like, how do you, how do you

00:25:25.160 counter this? That's hard, right? It's like, you know, you can't just like quit your job and go off

00:25:29.920 and leave your family behind so you can go find yourself and rediscover that old you. So how are

00:25:35.820 you able to, you know, get that vitality and vigor back when you're, you know, you're 40 years old,

00:25:40.380 you've got a house, mortgage, bills, you got to pay health insurance. Is it possible to get that

00:25:45.780 spark again? It 100% is possible. The one thing this book is not is I'm not going to tell you to

00:25:51.460 go quit your job. I'm not going to tell you to leave your marriage. I'm not going to tell you to

00:25:55.780 go, you know, start a brand new company on your own. But one thing I do do in this book is I think

00:26:01.320 I keep it real with people in a raw way. A lot of personal development, self-help books don't.

00:26:06.140 And I think first, one thing we have to acknowledge, and this is hard for a lot of people to accept,

00:26:10.360 including myself, is that we have to know that our dreams, whatever they are, have

00:26:15.520 an expiration date if we don't act on them. I'm a firm believer that our tombstone can have three

00:26:21.060 dates, the date that we're born, the date that we give up and the date that we die. And for far

00:26:26.520 too many of us, that gap between the day that we give up, we start coasting, we live on autopilot

00:26:31.260 and the day that we die is far too long. And, you know, there's a lot of folks that have good

00:26:36.640 intentions that will tell us things like, oh, well, if things don't happen, they'll say, well, you know,

00:26:40.500 well, maybe it's not meant to be. And I always like to say, well, was it not meant to be,

00:26:44.780 or did you give up? And other people will say, y'all, you don't worry. You know, it's never too

00:26:49.280 late. And I, and I believe that, and it's never too late, but the longer you wait, the harder it

00:26:55.420 is going to get. So what I invite people to do to ensure that the best thing is ahead of them,

00:27:01.020 as opposed to behind them is first and foremost, to accept that. I truly believe Brett, that things

00:27:07.260 change when you wake up every single day and you say the best is ahead, not just mentally like,

00:27:13.320 the best is ahead, but then you actually work like the best is ahead as well. What do they say?

00:27:18.720 Pray like God exists, work as if he doesn't. So that's first and foremost. Second, something I

00:27:24.900 talk about in the book that, that people can do that is extremely intentional is doing things to

00:27:29.820 regularly find the edge in your life. When I talk about finding the edge is if you've ever been an

00:27:36.840 athlete before in your life, I don't care if it's football, baseball, volleyball, soccer,

00:27:40.900 we all can remember that feeling before the game or match would begin and you'd get that increased

00:27:47.080 heart rate or you'd get those butterflies in your stomach. That feeling right there is finding the

00:27:52.640 edge. It's the same thing. If you've ever been a performer before and you get on a stage for public

00:27:57.600 speaking, debate, open mic night, you name it. And your, your hands start trembling, your throat gets

00:28:02.700 a little bit dry. And even if you're about to ask someone out for a date, when you get that upper,

00:28:06.700 that sweaty upper lip, I invite people to think about the last 30 days of their life

00:28:11.580 and ask themselves in any shape or form, did they do anything that gave them an increased heart rate,

00:28:17.860 that gave them some butterflies in their stomach, that made their hands tremble a little bit,

00:28:21.840 that, that, that made them a little bit afraid. And again, odds are if we're not doing that in some

00:28:26.640 shape or form, we are not growing and we are not moving forward. We can do that at work. It can be

00:28:33.780 as simple as, are you taking action on your ideas anymore? Or are you allowing them to gather dust

00:28:39.200 in a notebook or a hard drive? It can be in our relationship. Are you willing to have that

00:28:44.860 conversation with your spouse, even though you're both tired and you're exhausted from taking care

00:28:48.860 of these kids, but will you have that 10 minute conversation before you go to bed? It can be that

00:28:54.360 project that you've been talking about for so long. I'm not going to say you have to finish it,

00:28:59.040 but can you devote just 15 minutes of your life to it? And lastly, it could be that email,

00:29:06.720 that email to a family member that needs to, that you need just to press send on to apologize or to

00:29:12.000 ask a question or to ask for support. At some point we stopped doing those things that make us a little

00:29:17.600 bit uncomfortable and that's when we can start stagnating. All right. So push yourself, feel

00:29:21.920 uncomfortable as much as you can. Another diagnostic you use, I thought was useful that can be help people

00:29:28.160 to shift out of autopilot is you ask your clients to say, make a list of the things you've been

00:29:33.660 complaining about over and over again for, you can, let's just say for the past 30 days,

00:29:37.540 staying there. What's useful about looking at, you know, objectively on paper, the things you've

00:29:42.180 been complaining about? Well, first and foremost, I believe that in terms of complaining, I think our

00:29:46.700 life in many ways is like a Hollywood casting department. It will cast in certain things, certain

00:29:52.040 experiences to help us learn a lesson and they will keep showing up over and over again until we are

00:29:57.800 actually winning to learn that lesson. In my experience, complaints really open up a window.

00:30:04.300 They truly can give us an insight into what we truly want in our life. And so for that person

00:30:10.660 listening, I would just ask them to think about for a moment, like what are the things that they

00:30:14.800 regularly complain about? Working with clients over the years, I can tell you three things people

00:30:19.800 tend to complain about a lot is money. People complain about their marriages and some people

00:30:24.960 complain about their health if they're out of shape. And the second question though, after you

00:30:29.160 identify those things you regularly complain about is what does complaining about this provide us with?

00:30:35.160 Because what we forget is complaining about something actually provides us with something.

00:30:40.380 When we complain about money, sometimes it gives us permission to feel sorry for ourself.

00:30:46.480 When we complain about something that's not going right in our marriage, we're giving ourselves

00:30:50.260 permission to be right and make someone else wrong. When we complain about our health and our well-being,

00:30:56.160 many times it can give us permission to stay lazy and not do anything to change things. What

00:31:02.060 complaining about things does on a regular basis, man, it stops us from taking accountability

00:31:08.720 for our experience. It allows us to continually to point the finger outward and to blame others.

00:31:16.040 But most importantly, all complaining does is leaves things exactly where they are.

00:31:24.300 One thing I've taken to doing, and I suggest that my clients do if they have someone in their life

00:31:28.240 who regularly complains, is to stop that by clearly asking them, okay, I hear you don't like X,

00:31:35.560 but what do you want? And they'll say, well, no, no, no, no, no, no. I hear you don't want X or you

00:31:40.940 don't want X, but what do you want? Nine times out of 10, in my experience, people don't want a

00:31:46.320 solution. They want a complaint. But when we stop them with that question, well, what do you want?

00:31:52.960 It kind of puts a taser to that complaining and can open up a brand new window if they're willing.

00:31:58.640 But there's work that happens once they're willing to answer that question of what do they want.

00:32:03.200 All right. So we've talked about a lot of great things so far that can help you get out of autopilot.

00:32:07.480 I think a lot of it's just these questions help you figure out if you're an autopilot in the first

00:32:11.740 place. And then once you see the areas of your life where you're sort of just coasting, those

00:32:17.100 questions can give you things you can start doing. So like that 30-day question, well, okay, I'm not

00:32:23.520 doing great in these past 30 days. So here's the things I can do for the next 30 days. Well,

00:32:27.620 then you have something there. You look at the complaints. You can see, well, here are my complaints.

00:32:31.620 What can I do about it? What do I want? It forces you. Just going through these questions gives you

00:32:36.700 things to start working on. Oh, the other thing we talked about is finding your edge,

00:32:40.320 like looking for ways you start feeling a little bit uncomfortable, pushing yourself outside of

00:32:43.560 your comfort zone. But another thing you talk about that can really supercharge all this stuff

00:32:48.720 is doing this with other people. It's not just a solo project. Why is having a team so important

00:32:56.080 helping you become the person you want to be? You know, if there's something that I lament

00:33:00.500 in my life is how much time I wasted by trying to figure out and do things on my own. That's a,

00:33:07.420 solve personal problems, challenges within my marriage, learning about new things as a parent,

00:33:12.120 starting my own business. The answers are out there, but for some reason, a lot of us like to

00:33:16.320 be stubborn and try to figure things out on our own. In my experience, no one who has accomplished

00:33:22.700 anything of significance did it alone. And it makes me think back when I was an undergrad at Western

00:33:29.260 Michigan University, I walked on the track and field team. And if you know anything about being

00:33:33.160 a walk on in collegiate athletics, you try out for the team, but you're not guaranteed a spot.

00:33:37.760 You don't have a scholarship. You can be cut anytime. And after two years of being on the team,

00:33:42.300 I was doing absolutely horrible. And the reason why I knew I was doing horrible is because one day

00:33:47.380 my head coach came up to me and said, you're doing absolutely horrible. I think the only thing I

00:33:52.440 placed first in those first two years on the team was in line at McDonald's after our track and

00:33:57.140 field meets. But Coach Shaw did something special that day. He pointed to two people on the track

00:34:02.800 and he says, both of these guys are all Americans. One of these guys would go on to compete in the

00:34:08.300 Olympics. Another one would go on to compete in multiple world championships. And then he pointed

00:34:12.580 to a whole bunch of other guys that were laying back laughing, having a good time on the high jump

00:34:16.440 mat. He says, we have all Americans on our team, yet you're spending all your time with these guys,

00:34:22.000 these guys laying back laughing on the high jump mat. Now to be clear, the guys on the high jump mat

00:34:26.380 weren't bad people. They weren't committing crimes, but they weren't all Americans. And Coach Shaw just 0.72

00:34:31.140 walked away on that. And what Coach Shaw did for me in that moment changed my life. He introduced me

00:34:36.280 to this concept of thieves and allies. See, in my book, thieves are individuals that don't encourage

00:34:42.960 you, that don't inspire you, that don't challenge you, that don't push you, that don't hold you

00:34:48.680 accountable to be the absolute best version of yourself. Thieves are those people you spend time with.

00:34:53.980 When you leave from spending time with them, you have less energy than when you arrived.

00:34:58.460 So my friend, John Gordon, the author calls energy vampires. Thieves are those people,

00:35:03.380 and we all know them, those folks that always got drama going on in their lives. You call them and

00:35:08.860 the first thing they say is, you're not going to believe what just happened to me. And you're like,

00:35:12.940 why are things always happening to you and no one else? But the cool thing as it relates to your

00:35:18.220 question is that we have time, we can also spend time with allies. Allies are people that do encourage

00:35:23.720 us, that do inspire us, that do challenge us, push us, and hold us accountable to be the best

00:35:29.220 versions of ourselves. These folks don't have drama going on in their lives. They have good things going

00:35:33.800 on in their lives. These folks don't take away your energy. They give you energy. And that was an early

00:35:39.700 moment in my life when I realized how critical it was who I surrounded myself with. For people who are

00:35:45.580 listening, a question I have for you, and that's one thing you notice in this book, Brit, I don't

00:35:49.720 necessarily tell you what to do, but I give you a lot of questions. The question I have for you is to

00:35:54.400 think about the five people you spend the most time with and ask yourself a simple question. Do they make

00:36:01.480 you better? Do the five people you spend the most time with, do they make you better or do they keep

00:36:08.380 you standing still where you are? And when I say the word thief, and we think it's people committing

00:36:13.600 crimes, being a thief could be spending time with a friend of yours, and you have a good hangout, and then

00:36:19.100 he's about to leave because there's a project he wants to work on at home, and you say, oh, come on, stay

00:36:24.300 for just one more beer. That simple action right there of saying, come on, stay for just one more beer

00:36:29.140 when you know he wants to go home and finish a project, in many ways, that's being a thief. So it's really

00:36:34.920 critical who we decide to spend our time with. By the way, just for an end note, I didn't become an

00:36:41.880 All-American or an Olympian, but I did go on to become an all-conference triple jumper, which was

00:36:47.260 cool because I ended up earning a partial scholarship, which meant my mom no longer had to pay for my

00:36:52.100 tuition on her credit card. So spending time with those allies didn't make a difference in my track

00:36:57.120 and field life, but also in my day-to-day today. And what you've continued this, you know, looking

00:37:02.040 for allies even in your life now, you've talked about in the book, you have this thing you call man

00:37:07.160 mornings. What are man mornings? Who are the guys that do this with you and what goes on there?

00:37:11.940 And what benefit has it given you? Yeah, for the past five, six years, I've done, we've done

00:37:16.400 something called man morning Thursday. Every week at 7 a.m., about five to seven guys, we get together

00:37:23.480 for an early morning walk or hike. And we made it intentional to do it at 7 a.m. We wanted it on the

00:37:30.340 calendar because we knew that the conversations that we had at 7 a.m. over coffee or tea were very

00:37:37.200 different than the conversations we had at 7 p.m. over a beer or a drink. None of those were bad

00:37:44.200 conversations in the evening, but they were just different. And these are men from all different

00:37:48.580 walks of life. Some were married and parents like I am. Others are single. Some have nine to five jobs.

00:37:54.740 Some are our business owners like myself. And over the course of sometimes just an hour,

00:37:59.400 we talk about everything from relationships to marriage to business to money, you name it.

00:38:06.960 And you realize first and foremost that you're not the only one going through something,

00:38:12.340 that someone else has been there, that people can give you some feedback. You can get some advice.

00:38:17.020 But what's amazing about man morning as well, about this intentional group of guys, is that

00:38:21.440 there are times I've go to this where I don't really say anything over the course of the hour,

00:38:26.380 but I still get so much value out of it. And another thing that I think we take for granted

00:38:32.680 is that our own personal breakthroughs can come when we help others. We think we have to,

00:38:39.680 it's all about us, but when we're helping others, we can have our own personal breakthroughs.

00:38:44.100 So I always encourage people to find a group. It can be co-ed. It can be a man morning like this.

00:38:50.360 It can be a virtual Zoom talk. It could be a group coaching program. It can be the strenuous life.

00:38:55.800 I mean, you name it. But I think we have to have something on the calendar. That's the key right

00:39:00.300 there. Have something on the calendar that you opt out of as opposed to opting in on every week.

00:39:08.260 I love it. So we've talked about a lot of stuff. As we're in this conversation,

00:39:12.320 what are some things like some concrete things that people can start doing today

00:39:15.520 to shift their life out of autopilot? What do you think will provide that most bang for their buck

00:39:20.720 to give them a taste of what this can do and keep them motivated to keep going?

00:39:25.860 Yeah, I'll share a few things. First and foremost, just to reiterate a point from earlier, don't do it

00:39:29.800 by yourself. Something I wish I would have hit on earlier in the book or more in the book is that

00:39:35.500 I work with a coach. I'm part of men's groups. I'm part of different groups. I'm always learning

00:39:41.440 online. So I invite you to not do it alone. To be more practical, for me, something I suggest,

00:39:48.780 I have a daily checklist. And I know if these things happen, odds are I'm going to have a good

00:39:53.600 day. I'm not going to say it's going to be a great day, but odds are it's going to be a good day.

00:39:57.020 And I invite you to identify what your checklist is from a good day that you know will make things

00:40:01.140 better. For me, I know that if I learn something every single day, that's going to be a game changer.

00:40:07.100 Learning something can be reading 10 pages of a book. It can be listening to an amazing

00:40:11.080 podcast like this. It could be consuming some content from an online course. So that's one key

00:40:16.700 thing. Ask yourself, are you learning something every single day? Second, just before we even got

00:40:22.140 on, I have to sweat. If I don't sweat every single day, the crazy in my brain doesn't go away. And I

00:40:28.500 find that people, when they sweat, even if it's something as simple as a 15 minute movement, it's a

00:40:34.320 game changer for them. Third, of course, these are things that people probably already know, but it's

00:40:38.800 great reminders. That's really critical what we put in our body. And I think a great question we

00:40:42.800 can ask ourselves as it relates to food is, is what I'm about to put in my body, is it going to fuel me

00:40:49.980 or is it going to deplete me? That's a question that that helps me make good decisions. Is this

00:40:55.300 what I'm about to put in my mouth going to fuel me or deplete me? And the two last things I think

00:41:01.660 from a daily basis checklist that I like to focus on is one, connection. Like I have to connect with

00:41:07.000 someone and I have to hear their voice on a daily basis, a friend, a family member. It could be a

00:41:12.360 five minute call. It doesn't need to be an hour, but it's a game changer. And the last one, and this

00:41:17.560 is my top of my five, is the meditation. Like 15 minutes to 20 minutes of meditation for me a day.

00:41:22.860 I try to do that twice a day. But if I get that in, it's a game changer. So just to repeat those,

00:41:28.220 learn something, sweat, watch what you eat, the meditation, and the connection. And then just to round

00:41:35.800 it out, I invite people to do two last things. One, to regularly finish something. I find that

00:41:41.900 we have so many projects that we're working on, but nothing's getting finished. I invite you to

00:41:45.420 look at your lay of the land of what's going on in your life and say, hey, what can I finish?

00:41:50.240 And as I mentioned about man warning, how we do that every single week, I invite you to look at

00:41:54.720 your calendar and say, what can I put on there? Like have something to look forward to. I find so many

00:41:59.820 people don't have anything to look forward to on a regular basis. And I'm not talking about just a

00:42:05.000 vacation to Tahiti or something like that. It could be a men's group. It could be a date night,

00:42:09.520 weekend outing, et cetera. And I list a whole bunch of those activities in the book.

00:42:15.020 Well, Antonio, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:42:18.220 and your work?

00:42:19.360 Yeah. Everything about Antonio Neves can be found at theantonioneves.com,

00:42:24.480 theantonioneves.com. And on social media, everything's at theantonioneves.

00:42:29.860 All right. Antonio Neves, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:42:32.700 Thank you for having me. It's an honor.

00:42:33.920 My guest today was Antonio Neves. He's the author of the book, Stop Living on Autopilot. It's

00:42:39.380 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work

00:42:43.080 at his website, theantonioneves.com. That's N-E-V-E-S.com. Also check out our show notes at 0.97

00:42:48.720 aom.is slash autopilot. We can find links to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic.

00:42:53.240 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

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00:43:35.940 for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you not only listen to the AOM

00:43:39.580 podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:43:49.780 Thank you for listening to the AOM podcast.

The Art of Manliness - January 18, 2021

Stop Living on Autopilot and Take Responsibility for Your Life

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