Stop Living on Autopilot and Take Responsibility for Your Life
Episode Stats
Summary
Antonio Neves is a writer, speaker, and success coach, as well as the author of Stop Living on Autopilot: Take Responsibility for Your Life and Rediscover a Bolder, Happier You. In this episode, he shares his own experience with outwardly having a life that seemed happy and successful, while inwardly feeling totally lost and stuck. We then turn to some great, incisive questions to ask yourself to assess if you re coasting your life and become more accountable to the changes you need to make to start steering your life again.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Do you ever have moments of terrible realization where you recognize that you're living on autopilot?
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Instead of feeling like you're in the driver's seat, you feel like life is happening to you.
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You're just going through the motions, you've lost your spark, and the months and years slide by in
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indistinct blur. My guest day has been there himself and has an action plan for how to find
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your way out. His name is Antonio Neves. He's a writer, speaker, and success coach, as well as
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the author of Stop Living on Autopilot, Take Responsibility for Your Life, and Rediscover
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a Bolder, Happier You. At the start of our conversation, Antonio shares his own experience
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with outwardly having a life that seemed happy and successful, while inwardly feeling totally
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lost and stuck. We then turn to some great, incisive questions to ask yourself to assess
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if you're coasting your life and become more accountable to the changes you need to make
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to start intentionally steering your life again. We talk about what you're really missing when
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you say you missed the good old days, how to ensure the best of your life is ahead of you
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instead of behind you, and why you need to make a list of all your complaints. We then
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discuss the importance of who you surround yourself with, why you need allies instead
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of thieves in your circle, and the difference something called man mornings has made in
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Antonio's life. And we enter conversation with the concrete steps you can start taking
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today to shift out of autopilot, including Antonio's personal checklist of five things he
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does every day to ensure it's a good one. After the show's over, check out our show notes
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at aom.is slash autopilot. Antonio joins you now via clearcast.io.
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Hey, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.
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So you got a new book out, Stop Living on Autopilot, Take Responsibility for Your Life,
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and Rediscover a Bolder, Happier You. This book is sort of a culmination of experiences you've had
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personally, as well as coaching and working with other people, executives and things like that.
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And you start off the book talking about how 2016 was one of these pivotal years in your life and
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career. And you describe how on the outside, everything looked like it was going great.
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But in your personal life, your inner life, it was a wreck. What was going on there? And how were
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you both a success and a wreck at the same time? Yeah, it's wild. Because if you looked at the
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internet in 2016, if you did a Google search, you know, I was living my best life ever. I had
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everything figured out. I was, you know, speaking on stages all across the globe at big companies
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like Google on topic like leaderships, had a nice coaching business I was building, award-winning
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journalist, married with a wife and newborn toddler twins. So I had the house with the white picket fence,
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all of it. So on paper, everything looked great. But internally, it was wild because even though
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everything on the external was good, internally, I was wilting. And funny enough, as I talked to men
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and women across the country, I realized I wasn't the only one who on paper, everything looks good,
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but internally something is off. I'd reached an interesting point in my early 40s that I kind
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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
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about it, I think one of the main things that happened was that the quote unquote manual that I had
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received for life, the roadmap, that book came to an end. I reached a point in life when more was
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expected of me than ever before as a husband, as a father, financially, et cetera. And I didn't know
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what direction to go. I'm a kid from a small town in Michigan whose parents divorced when I was young
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between my mom and dad or six different divorces, moved over 15 times before I graduated from high
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school. So from a marriage perspective, I was trying to figure that out in real time. I wasn't raised
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with a father on a regular basis. So being a new father, I didn't really know what that meant.
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Funnily enough, the art of manliness, I was really trying to figure out what it meant to be
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a man. And more than anything, I think what had happened was I'd lost intention. I was just going
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through the flow. I was on cruise control. Life was happening to me as opposed to me intentionally
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going after things. And that's what you mean by living on autopilot.
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100%. That's like when you check off the boxes in life, right? All the boxes that society tells
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you to check off. In many ways, it's like the American dream, right? Get your education, get a
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home, get married, have kids. Okay. I checked all those boxes off and I'm still unhappy. Now what?
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And yeah, so you can find yourself on living on autopilot. And I imagine you've worked with a lot
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of people that have that same issue. They've checked all the boxes. They think, well, I've
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done it. Why don't I feel better? Feel like I accomplished anything. People come up to me all
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the time after talks and they'll say, I'm not as happy as I look on Facebook. I'm not as successful
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as I look on LinkedIn. And it manifests itself in a unique way. The way it hit me in the face was
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I became a secret cigarette smoker. Smoking is something that I despise, Brett, but I became a
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secret cigarette smoker in alleys in Los Angeles and across the country when I was traveling.
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And it took me wearing a bright green gardening glove, smoking cigarettes. And I wore this green
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glove so my wife wouldn't smell the smoke when I came home because she didn't know I was smoking.
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And one day I was smoking a cigarette in a Santa Monica street alley.
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And what I perceived to be a homeless man asked me to borrow a cigarette. And dude looked like he
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had seen much better days. So I gave him a couple of cigarettes. And as we were talking, like smokers
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do, he said, yo, what's up with that green glove, man? And I was like, oh, my wife doesn't know
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that I smoke. Brett, he looked at me like I committed a crime. He felt sorry for me. And he said some
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words that I will never forget. He said, hey, man, you got to figure that out. Here I am,
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quote unquote, successful guy on the internet doing good. Yet a homeless man in a street alley
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is telling me I have to figure my out. I think a lot of people have these secret vices. They don't
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tell people I may not be smoking, but it may be binge watching the Amazon Prime or Netflix series
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nonstop to the point where it says, are you still watching? It may be scrolling through Instagram
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where you reached a point where it says you are all caught up and maybe having that glass or two of
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wine or those extra beers in the evening just to take the edge off, to take the attention off of the
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things that you are not doing. All right. So this shook you up. This
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started getting you to explore, like, how did you get to this point? And so we're going to talk about
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how people get on autopilot, what questions they can ask themselves to figure out where they are in
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their life and things they take for granted. But one thing that really struck out to me in your book
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that you start off with is you sort of debunk this idea that you hear in self-improvement circles
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that this mantra is like, life's short. Knowing that you're supposed to start taking action and
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start living life like it's your last day on earth. But you argue that's actually a short-sighted
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way to look at life. Why is it? How can that idea of living your life as life is short get you to
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trouble? Well, it's funny enough, the person that got me to think about this was the comedian Chris
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Rock. And I don't know him personally, but I remember seeing a comedy special of his and he was
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talking about how people always say life is short. He says, but it's not the truth. He says, odds are
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you are not going to get hit by a bus. You are going to live for like 50 more years and you're
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going to have to live with the decisions that you have made. And I think people say life is short,
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frankly, to give themselves an excuse. I know that very well. They say life is short, so they don't
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have to take accountability. When you say life is short, sometimes it means like, you know what? Life is
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short. Guess what? I'm going to have that extra beer. Guess what? Life is short. I'm going to eat
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unhealthy. Guess what? Life is short. Why work out when I can do something else? So it gives us an
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opportunity not to take accountability for ourselves. And also, you know, we always talk
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about the decisions that we make in life, but I also am a firm believer that, you know, it's about
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the decisions that we don't make as well. Not making a decision is making a decision.
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And also something that hit home to me too, and you talk about throughout the book, is that
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where you are today in your life, it didn't happen overnight, whether it's a place you want to be
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or don't want to be. I mean, if you are overweight, that didn't happen overnight. It took maybe months,
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years to get to that point. And to fix that problem, it's going to take, it's going to be a process too.
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It's going to take a while. 100% because people like to say, oh, suddenly I got fired from my job.
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And you did not suddenly get fired from your job. Some things happened that led to that.
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Out of the blue, my relationship was in shambles. No, it wasn't out of the blue. It was a large
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collection of days when you ignored having certain conversations with your spouse and doing certain
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things that led to that. And one day everything was turned upside down. Like again, that's us
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not taking accountabilities for our actions, our lack thereof. So yeah, you're spot on with that.
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Yeah. You're just, you're, you're on autopilot. You're not even thinking about what's going on in
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your life. All right. So another pivotal year you talk about in your, your story was 2004. You got
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fired from what you thought at the time was your dream job. What happened there? And like,
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what did that teach you about living on autopilot and change and growth?
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Wow. Yeah. 2004. I mean, it seems like another lifetime ago. You know, I moved to New York city
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in 2000 with less than a thousand dollars in my bank account with the goal of breaking into the
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television industry. And two years later it happened. I was on live TV every single day
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on children's television network, Nickelodeon co-hosting a show called you pick live. This
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is a different Antonio with long dreadlocks and a whole other outlook on life. I was living my best
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life. I was living the dream. I had quote unquote thought that I had made it, but after two years of
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being on the show and interacting with big name celebrities on a daily basis, ended up becoming a
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writer on the show and an associate producer, I ended up getting fired from this job. I can still
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remember going into the executive producer's office there in times square and 1515 Broadway.
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And essentially he said, where the show is going a different direction and you will no longer be
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on camera, which means you're going to be fired from the show. And I frankly thought that my life was
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over. I was more depressed than I ever been before in my life. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to
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show you how dare you fire me from this job. And I remember moving to Los Angeles at the time,
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thinking I was going to break into the television industry out here where I live now. And three
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months later, I was smoking weed and drinking beer in a small closet in my apartment in Silver Lake,
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Los Angeles, every single day down and out on my luck. Again, thinking that the best thing that ever
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happened to me was in my past. But as I slowly bred, started to evaluate what was happening during my time
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at Nickelodeon. First and foremost, I wouldn't recommend to anyone that their first gig in
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television be on a national television show and millions of households nationwide. I mean,
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there's a reason why local news reporters start in Iowa and small town New Mexico and not New York
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City, because the stakes are so high. But even during that job at Nickelodeon, I was going through
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the motions. I was on autopilot. I was coasting. I wasn't getting better. I wasn't studying. I wasn't
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doing the things that they asked of me to develop, to get better, to become a better host, a better
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writer, a better interviewer, you name it. And that led to me being in another deep, dark funk,
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thinking the best thing to happen to me was over with. And I would never find my way to the
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television industry again. When did you realize that you could do something else? That wasn't the
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end of your life. What happened that you could start building up again?
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First and foremost, I think whenever things I've gone through challenging times in my life,
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the best thing that's ever happened was working with a community in some regard.
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So I was fortunate enough even then and throughout my life to have amazing people in my life.
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Those kind of people that hold you accountable, those kind of people that won't let you just sit
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and wallow in misery and complain all day long. So I had those people in my life that basically said,
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hey, you have to get back up. And so instead of sitting in my closet, smoking weed, drinking beer,
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I started getting out and getting active in the Los Angeles community of writers,
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of improvers, of comedians and actors, you name it. And that really gave me a new lease on life.
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And I really realized how much I love telling stories and that I wanted to stay in the television
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industry, but I wanted to do that in a different way. And funny enough, I would have never imagined
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this. I ended up applying to go to grad school after being in LA for about a year. And I ended up back
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in New York City at Columbia University to study journalism, where I realized I want to put my
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energy and focus on telling stories that matter, as opposed to trying to make sure kids don't turn
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the channel from Nickelodeon to the Disney channel, to the Cartoon Network.
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And I think it's an interesting point here. So you had this moment in 2004 where you had lots of
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success. You're at the apex and then it was all taken away from you. And as you said, you realized that
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you were taking some things for granted. You're on autopilot and it was a process. It didn't happen
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overnight. It might've felt like that. And then you started building yourself up slowly again.
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But then in 2016, you had that same sort of experience, like my life's... And I think the
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takeaway from there is I think a lot of times people think they're going to reach this point
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where they've made it. And I've had that experience too. That's not the case. You've never really made
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it. You might feel like you made it for a little bit, but then something happens that upturns
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everything. You hit it spot on. I thought I had made it and I was done. And as you know,
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this is an ongoing journey. And in life, it's interesting as a coach and the work that I do
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in the personal development space, the word we hear all the time is commit. You have to commit,
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commitment, et cetera. But what no one tells you very rarely is that you have to recommit
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every single day. Once you land the job, the work isn't done. Once you land that amazing spouse or
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partner, the work isn't done. Once you land and you have those amazing kids in your life,
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the work isn't done. Every single day you wake up, you have to recommit to what's most important.
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And that's where I fell off, where I wasn't recommitting every single day. I was coasting.
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I was making a lot of assumptions and just letting things happen organically. And sometimes when
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things happen organically, it can be good. Other times you can end up somewhere you do not want to
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be. Another thing that happens besides coasting, people just stop doing the thing that got them
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there in the first place. You see this like when people lose weight, right? Like, wow,
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I've lost 10 pounds. I'll just go back to eating the way I was before. And then they gain weight.
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And they're like, what the heck happened? No, it's like, you got to keep eating like the way
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you did to lose that 10 pounds for basically the rest of your life. You want to keep it off.
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Yeah. That's one of the questions I ask in the book as people think about where they are today
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in life, if they do want to make a change is the question of that. Like, what have you stopped doing
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that has gotten you to where you are today? And you can look at that in so many regards with your health
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and fitness, as you just referenced, as you look at our relationships, as we look at our career,
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you name it. There are things that I've always been blown away, by the way, as like as a coach,
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who's worked with so many top executives, founders, et cetera. And I'm sure you've seen
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this firsthand as well. These amazing men and women, they do this amazing work to get that title
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of vice president or senior vice president or in CEO. But then once they get in that chair,
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they get in that office, they stop doing the things that got them there. And then what happens?
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The organization, that department gets in trouble. It's the same way when you think about sports,
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we've all seen that football team kill it in the first half. They kill it. They're up 35 to nothing
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at halftime. And then all of a sudden they come back from halftime and they start playing not to
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lose. They stop doing all those things that got them to that 35 to zero lead. And guess what? You
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know what happens? Fourth quarter, two minutes to go. They're only up by two points and the other team
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has the ball and they may lose the game. So that's another great way to think about it as well.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. One of the things I love about your book is that you take readers
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through these questions to analyze whether they're coasting in life and just living on autopilot. And
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one of the most powerful questions I got from the book was this question of asking yourself,
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basically looking at the past 30 days and you'd say, okay, based on my last 30 days of my life,
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of my work, you'd ask, would my company hire me again? And you can do this with other parts of
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your life. Based on the last 30 days of my relationship with my wife, would she want to
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marry me again? What do you think is powerful about this question? Why look at the most recent 30 days
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and not look at the past five years? I think five years is such a big, long runway that it's
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just overwhelming. I find that when you look at something in 30 day spurts, it gives you an honest
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assessment of where you are in life. It's like real raw data. It's not yesterday because if you worked
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out yesterday, great. But if you didn't work out the 29 days prior to that, it gives you a good idea
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of where you are. And I just think that seven days is too short. I like to think about it as wine.
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I remember when I first learned about wine and I took a class and someone was explaining why you
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smell the cork of wine before you drink it. And you smell it to make sure the bottle is still good
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to drink and that the wine hasn't spoiled. And the last 30 days metric gives you an idea to see if
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anything has spoiled in your life. And that question of when it relates to our work, like
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if based on the last 30 days, if your boss, if your manager had to make a decision to rehire you,
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would the answer immediately be yes? When I asked that question to people, whether I'm in a
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boardroom, whether I'm at a conference or doing a Zoom presentation, most people start looking down
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because they're like, no, based on how I showed up the last 30 days, no, they wouldn't hire me.
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And then you can take this on a personal level as well. This is a real one that I hate asking
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myself sometimes. And that is if you happen to be married or in a committed relationship.
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Based on the last 30 days of your marriage or your relationship, if your partner had to make
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a decision to recommit to you or not, would they immediately say yes? Or would they say,
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you know what, maybe we should keep dating for a little bit longer before I commit to marrying you.
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Brett, we can look at that as it relates to parenting. We can look at it as it relates to our
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diet, health, personal finances, et cetera. But just briefly, as it relates to the career one,
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to get a little bit deeper so people can know what I'm talking about. For those people who have jobs
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right now, I want you just briefly to think about when you first were interviewing for the job that
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you're in right now and how bad you wanted that job. Think about when you had the second job
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interview. Think about when you were a finalist. Now think about the day you got the job and how
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fired up you were. Think about how you showed up that first month, that first quarter, that first
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year of the job. And then going back to what we talked about earlier is how much of that man or
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woman still exists? Are you still doing those things that got you to where you are? The wild thing is
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that today, technically we are smarter than we've ever been before in our life. We've had more
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experiences, more data. So we should be killing it at marriage. We should be killing it at our jobs.
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We should be killing it at parenting. However, we're not doing those things in 30 days. Man,
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it is a great metric. And just briefly, I don't want anyone to beat themselves up if they're not
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happy about their last 30 days in their marriage or their work. All this is, is data and information so
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we can make a better decision today and a better decision tomorrow.
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And then what you can ask yourself is, you know, once you've done this analysis and say,
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maybe it's not where you want it to be, you can say, well, what can I do in the next 30 days
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100%. I mean, as it relates to my marriage, I can tell you, as a guy prior to the pandemic,
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I was on the road, sometimes five to 10,000 miles a month. Let me tell you, when I'm delivering a
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workshop in India and she's with our toddler twins by herself for eight, nine days, odds are she may not
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want to say I want to recommit to that dude. But there are key things that I can do when I'm home
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and even when I'm on the road to ensure that we stay connected that I wasn't doing previously. So
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it's all just awareness. Yeah. I love the 30 day timeframes. I think people can,
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that's more manageable. It's like, I can do better in 30 days. And if you say, well, I got to do better
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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
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try, but 30 days that's doable. Absolutely. All right. So another question you have your
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clients ask themselves to figure out if they're sort of slacking or just sort of going on autopilot
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in life is, would you bet on you? What do you mean by that question? Why is that a powerful one to
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figure out where you are in life? Betting on you. At first, I believe that to get others to bet on us,
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we have to be willing to bet on ourselves. And that means kind of like doing the work when no one
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is watching. I like to think about it like this. If you've ever found yourself at a casino or in Las
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Vegas before, I like going to the sports book area. That's where you go and they're betting on
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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
00:22:45.200
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
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
00:42:19.360
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.
00:42:33.920
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
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
00:43:04.120
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00:43:08.040
over the years about pretty much anything you could think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free
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00:43:35.940
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00:43:39.580
podcast, but put what you've heard into action.