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All right, let's get into it.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the show.
I'm here.
Quick solo introduction, if you tuned in last week.
You know that Ben and I are in the midst of a two-part conversation reviewing our five factors.
We look back on the year and we're talking about the things we changed, the things we added, the things that evolved and the reasons why, across our training, our mindset practices, our nutrition, our sleep habits and our attempts at connection.
Last week, Ben and I tackled training and nutrition.
This time around, we have sleeping and thinking and connecting.
And again, if you listened last week, you know that this was a slightly unplanned two-part episode.
And so this episode, we're just jumping right into the middle.
So apologies for any abrupt starts.
But if you haven't listened to last week, I hope you do.
You don't need to, to listen to this one, but they do work nicely in tandem.
All right.
Without any further ado, let's go.
We went through training and eating.
Let's keep on rolling.
Let's talk about sleep.
Do you still sleep?
This one's, yeah, small changes, but I've definitely, where were we last year?
Yeah, let's do that.
Yeah.
So last year we talked about you're trying to extend your sleep opportunity, which is I love that phrase from seven to nine hours.
Yeah.
Check in with us about that.
Oh, cool.
Which means family bedtime started around 745.
Yep.
And I think those were the two big things.
And you also mentioned, and similar to your training first thing in the morning because you wanted more sleep.
I think you changed your coaching schedule last year so that you weren't coaching first thing in the morning.
That's cool to hear.
Catch us up.
I definitely have a nine-hour sleeping window.
Yeah.
That's cool to hear as I was trying to do that then because we have it now.
And it sounds like that's a huge amount of time.
It's not that big.
It's nine to six.
So if we start bedtime routines in the winter, in the summer, it stays light till nine o'clock.
So it's a little bit more challenging.
But in the winter, we do our start our bedtime wind down routine, 7.45.
So we're in bed, try to be in bed somewhere between 8.30 and 9.00.
So if you're in bed, lights out by nine, that's 10, 11, 12, three hours plus till six.
That's nine hour sleep window.
So that's what we have.
Really consistently.
It's awesome that I have the benefit of a wife that is super on board with this and kids that are on board with it.
Yeah.
I was going to say it's a whole family affair, which is really how I think you make that work.
The kids are like, Bodie is the one like, can we go to, can we snuggle me now?
Like, which is also awesome.
I have a 13 year old boy that's still like, I still snuggle with at night.
It's amazing.
That's awesome.
But that's a big one.
Other small ones.
Is I don't wake up with an alarm anymore.
That's really cool.
And then I've explored more like the weighted blanket stage.
Oh yeah.
Yep.
That's I've toyed with that a little bit on and off.
I go between, I've definitely have a love hate relationship with it.
One night I sleep amazing.
And next time I'm like, so stinking hot.
It's I hate it.
Yeah.
And earplugs.
Yeah.
Oh, you started with earplugs.
Interesting.
Yeah, not consistent.
I don't go to bed with them, but if Heather's snoring or something like that.
Yep.
You've got them next to you if you need them.
I've got them next to me.
Yeah.
Instead of that thing of where you're just awake and fighting it and you're like I just go for it quickly now.
Yeah.
How about you?
Where are you with the sleep?
I haven't made too many changes.
Our boys are still young enough that every once in a while they'll still walk in at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock.
And so that I look forward to.
I mean I don't really look forward to it, because it means they're old enough that they don't wake up and think that they need me.
But at the same time it'll be nice to be able to get through more nights than not without having to walk somebody back to a bed.
So still struggling with that or not struggling.
So still dealing with that.
How frequent is that?
Well, between the two of them, it's probably 50% to 60% of the nights that one of them will show up.
Oh, yeah, that's a lot.
Yeah.
And do they go right back to bed?
Most of the time we can get right back to sleep.
Either I go in there, I bring them back to their bed, or sometimes they just end up crashing in mine if I don't wake up enough to shoo them off.
So we deal with it and it's fine.
I forgot about that.
Right.
So we're still in that phase.
But the other things that I talked about last year and these are longstanding things for me, but I'm still really bullish on both of them
The first is that no phone's in the bedroom for me.
I don't tell Michelle what to do.
She's a grownup.
But for me, they stay downstairs.
And the few times that I don't do that, I'm actually kind of glad because I remember how easy it is to stay up 30 minutes later than you want and wake up and immediately pick the thing up.
And so, on the rare occasion that it's next to me in bed, I'm like oh yeah, this is why I keep this thing out of here.
You can't beat it.
Right?
You can't willpower it away.
You have to get the environment it away.
That's a rule for me.
And then the other one and I talked about this last year which is, I really like, the sleep hack of having a really good book that you read in bed.
And for me, that's always fiction.
I don't want to try solving problems with nonfiction and think about...
Betterment and self-help as I'm trying to fall asleep.
So I will always try to have a really good book of fiction that I'm in the midst of reading, because that acts as a bit of a gravitational pull.
So instead of hey, maybe I'll just watch one episode on Netflix or whatever, I was like no, I've got something good upstairs.
I'll just go start reading it.
And that tends to get me in bed earlier, which tends to get the light out and me asleep faster.
So I did want to just give some book recommendations because...
I love that.
I never know what to read.
And I just sort of by trial and error find some good books and some books that I don't like.
So I've got five.
Here are the five.
Cool.
Sort of my favorite fiction books, which is number one.
And this isn't really in any order.
This is just what came to mind.
One called Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.
The next one, which maybe is my favorite of the year, is called Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
Andy Weir wrote The Martian, which was the movie that Matt Damon starred in.
And Project Hail Mary is a movie that's coming out, I think, next summer that I'm really excited about.
But that was probably the best book that I read last year or this year.
Number three is a book called The Future by Naomi Alderman.
Number four is by Haruki Murakami called IQ84.
And then the last one is that I think you'll like.
Ben is called Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.
I've read it.
You've read it?
Yes.
It's so good.
It's about the 300 Spartans and all that.
I think it's amazing.
So that last one's sort of like historical fiction.
The way that book starts off, the first few chapters, it's like, what?
Yes.
You realize...
The brutality of what humanity, like the normalness of it and where we are now.
Oh my.
Yeah.
Incredible.
Yeah.
And then I will also admit I mentioned this, I think, with one of our conversations with Jameson.
I also read through all the Harry Potter books, which I feel like most people.
If they're into that, they've already read them.
I never did, but we had them in the house.
So I was like, I'm just going to read all these.
And they were great.
Make it highway.
By the way, Project Hail Mary, The Future, IQ84.
IQ84 and then Gates and Fire of Red.
Have you read Pressfield's Man at Arms?
No.
It's his most recent.
You would also really like that.
It's called Man at Arms.
I think it was his most recent historical novel, historical fiction novel.
And then I think, on top of that, this isn't sleep, but I always think about sleep as kind of more broadly.
It's more like a rest category for me.
And so two things that I try to do every day is the first is at least the first 30 minutes of my day no inputs, no screens.
If I can pull it off, no conversation, really just like me and a cup of coffee and I can sit quietly and just see what's going on in my head.
And then I think that's probably it actually.
Yeah, that was probably it.
But it's sort of similar.
What I thought about when I was thinking about that is it's sort of similar to what I brought up with the interrelation of the other things.
Because if I want my first 30 minutes to be quiet, and quiet solo, it means i've got to get up 30 minutes, at least 30 minutes, before the rest of the house, which means i need to go to bed earlier than i probably would otherwise, which means and this is one of the other thing i think, this is what i was in the back of my head, what i was thinking this is the other thing that i also try to do every night, which is after 8 pm, no screens, the reason being, if i spend 30 minutes on instagram at 8 15, then that's when I start getting ready for bed and getting upstairs and reading a little bit and getting to sleep.
And so all of these things are sort of causal links in a chain, with the goal being like.
I really want those first 30 minutes to be quiet and before anybody else wakes up,
So all of these things have to be in place for me to be able to do that.
Yeah, that's great.
Winning the morning starts the night before.
Yeah, exactly.
It's huge, huge.
Where then you go, like okay, and I think it's When you start to line up what needs to happen for you to because you go okay, if I'm going to win the morning, first thing you need is wake up with vitality and energy.
So you got to get enough sleep.
So what does that start with?
Okay, if I'm going to get enough sleep, that means I need to be lights out by this time.
What do I need to be in order to be lights out by this time?
That's why we go all the way back to 745s.
Which then goes all the way back to dinner, which then goes all the way back to like when are we starting to?
It's amazing.
And then when do I get home from work or when do I stop working?
It actually starts at like, for a lot of like, it's kind of starts at like noontime for us.
Like Heather starts dinner at noon.
Because she coaches in the afternoon.
She picks up the kids.
Because once she picks up the kids, again, like it's kind of over.
Yeah.
So like it all happens between like noon and 2.30.
Yep.
If we're set up then, then it's like it's wild how intentional you have to be.
It's so interesting, because I still want to do it, because I think it'd be an interesting conversation.
But we put out a Daily Chase essay.
I think the title was something like Make Health Your Organizing Principle.
Yeah.
And the idea being is like how do you not reverse engineer a day, a week, a year, a month, a life, from like okay, I got to get this stuff done at work?
I got to accomplish these things.
I want to make X amount, but instead organize it and reverse engineer it from like all of these markers of health that we talk about all the time.
And what you just described is like how do you actually organize your life or how do you make health?
The organizing principle is you say okay, all of these things are non-negotiable sleep, i train, i eat a certain amount, i food prep, i get some quiet time, i do some deep work, like all of these things.
When you really recognize okay, if that really is what it looks like to be healthy, you need to first lay those stakes in the ground and say everything else fits in between these things.
And then when you recognize oh, it's all of these things you recognize, and all of these things are related and interrelated, you realize I can't do this by accident.
And I think this is the thing that we're really getting at without saying it, which is to really be healthy and happy and to live a life with your heart on fire.
It's not going to happen by accident, because there are too many little things that need to be lined up and too many things that you need to say no to or you need to organize in such a way that it doesn't get in the way of these things, that you can't accident your way into it.
You can't wake up in the morning and say gosh, I hope I can do all the things, because there are too many things.
And you'll get to the end of the day and you won't have done any of them, because none of them feel urgent.
Almost none of them will anybody else show up and say, hey, Ben, did you get your training in today?
Because it doesn't matter to anybody else.
Your boss doesn't care if you food prep and you slept nine hours.
Your friends don't care if you need to prioritize sleep instead of going out with them till 10 o'clock 1030, 11 o'clock, right.
So it's like recognizing how high a priority you need to make these things is the thing I think we are saying without saying.
I was hanging out with Dr Rich this past weekend at a friend's house and the conversation revolved around how countercultural you have to be to be healthy today.
Rewind 150, 200 years ago, nope, not the case.
You did not have to be countercultural to be healthy.
It just happened by default.
You were going to eat nutritious foods and not too much.
That was by default because there wasn't an alternative.
You were going to move and lift things most of the day because, in some form or fashion, your career probably revolved around some sort of manual labor.
You were going to be surrounded by people in your tribe.
It was just going to happen.
You were going to sleep because there wasn't electricity when it got dark, and you would wake when it got light.
It's like this is just 200 years ago.
I'm not saying like Paleolithic times.
Now you have to be not only what you're saying incredibly intentional.
You have to be counter cultural.
You have to go against what everyone else is doing in order to have health.
Be your first principle, which dot dot dot.
I think everyone kind of like understand that's what we're saying.
We're saying health should be the first principle.
And I'm also saying not optimize, not forego all else, not make sure that you have your blue light glasses on and you've cold plunged and you've sauna and you've red light therapy and you're Thera gunning in between and you're you know, I like that you're turning all these into verbs.
Voodoo flossing.
Yeah.
Right.
And that you you can't live.
What I'm saying is just have it there, like just the same way you would not get to be a millionaire without lots of intention that you got to work at it.
It doesn't happen by default.
It's the same thing here.
You don't just become healthy by default.
If you're listening to the episode that Rich talked about, he has this really cool kind of like little framework, which is the words we've used drift.
You just kind of like, you just get, you jump on the river and you just drift down.
Drift leads to dysfunction.
Like if you are just drifting, your body is going to atrophy.
Your body is going to tend towards dysfunction.
So you're going to drift, not be intentional, not take action, not be counterculture.
You're drifting along with everybody else, which leads to dysfunction.
Dysfunction is what leads to disease, which leads to decrepitude and death.
So that's what we need to kind of like, whoa, okay.
We need to swim upstream against the current.
At least like swim to the edge of the river and hold on to something.
But way better, and that's like just do the bare minimum.
Don't drift down like everybody else.
Don't go out until two in the morning.
Don't get the wings and the pitcher of beer.
At least have a salad and walk and get seven hours of sleep.
To be... healthy to have vitality and energy and not get a chronic disease.
Because again, this is where it's going.
The estimates are now 70 to 80.
When we first started this, it was 60 to 70%.
Now it's 70 to 80% of people are currently living with at least one chronic disease.
So it is, it is the default, the default path.
So we have to be so crazy intentional with this stuff.
And that's why we...
Talk about it multiple times a week.
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And what's really interesting, what you were talking about like there's no need for the over-optimization right.
That's right.
All of the things you listed out.
And that's true for lots of reasons.
But one of the reasons if folks haven't realized this already is like our days are filled with the basics.
They're filled with the boring basics that we talk about all the time.
Training, eating well, sleeping enough.
If you do those things, you actually don't really have time to do the things that are nice but not particularly necessary.
Right?
Yeah.
If you focus on the essentials, the five factors, then the non-essentials, by virtue of that, crowd themselves out.
Here's my new framework for this.
And maybe I'm pulling back the curtain and letting people into this a little bit, but you asked me to do a walking wisdom.
Yes.
Yes.
Hasn't come out yet.
Yeah.
So during that, I'm going to give a little prelude to that, if that's okay.
Yeah, go.
Because I didn't have this in the beginning.
I started walking and this came to me during the walk, while I was monologuing to you.
Yep.
What you're saying is so spot on.
What we need is the essentials, which is the five factors.
Of the five factors, we only need the essentials inside of each of those.
Yes.
What we need is to nail the 20%.
You're going to get 80% of your returns from nailing the 20%.
And here's the way I think about this is if you nail 20 of training and you nail 20 of eating and you nail 20 of sleeping and you nail 20 of connecting and you nail 20 of thinking, 20 times 5, that's 100.
You are there.
That is the totality.
When you try to go too far into training and that becomes 30 40 50 80, that's By definition, you are not getting.
You're dipping into too much effort for the return.
Pareto principle, right?
80% of the efforts from 20% of the returns.
You spend two law of diminishing returns.
You are spending too much effort to get out the return from that.
You're not in your sweet spot.
The best way to do this is just to get the call it what you want the minimal, viable product, the essentials, the biggest bang for your buck.
As much as you can before returns start to diminish.
But across the five, that to me is like the secret sauce, is we need that.
Because at that point you're getting exponential gains.
You're putting 20 in but getting 80 gains out of it.
This is Dan Sullivan's 10X is usually in 2X.
The entirety of the whole premise of how do you get 10X returns is just keep pushing harder and harder and harder into your 20 sweet spot.
Yep.
That's it.
Where you get 20% of your returns and it keeps on getting redefined, right?
Because now you've found a new 20% where you can lean into.
Because that 20% becomes 100% of what you do and you find the 20% of that.
Yeah.
And that's the whole thing.
It's not going to the rabbit holes of now.
I'm going to make sure I read light therapy and I'm going to ionize my air before I sleep, and every single biohack available.
And I'm going to get NAD plus injections and I'm going to do the next stem cell thing.
And just can you nail those essentials?
Yeah.
And one of the things I think about, and we released the Chase Tracker app this year for the Chase Club members.
And one of the things I talk about when I'm talking about that is These you know, and it's what we're talking about here, which is like all these key actions that we want to do, not every day, but most days.
One of the effects of doing that and being consistent with that is similar to what EC always talks about when she talks about 800 grams of fruits and vegetables.
Part of that is all the micronutrients.
Part of that is that it's a low caloric load.
But part of that is that it displaces calories that you might eat elsewhere.
So if you're filling up on carrots and bananas and apples and peaches, the chances are you're not going to be hungry for the potato chips and the popcorn and whatever else you might grab at the end of the day, because you've basically displaced all those calories by filling up on crunchy water, for lack of a better way to put it.
Yeah.
And so when we're doing these things, when we're in everything that we're talking about here, what we're also doing is we're displacing time energy effort, money sometimes at doing things that don't actually matter.
And so when you fill your days with the things that do matter these big tentpole activities You get to the end of the day like I don't have time for red light therapy.
I don't have time for over optimization, because I got to get eight hours of sleep and now it's time to go to bed.
Right.
And so it's really easy to think like try to find these shiny objects of like oh, I'm going to try that now.
I'm going to try that now and let those things crowd out the important things.
Let those things crowd out the essential things.
But we always want to go backwards.
We want to go like, what are the first principles?
What are the primary things we need to be doing?
And then if there are other things in there, if you want to get in the sauna, you want to do whatever, great.
But you got to fit those into the slivers of time you have after you've eaten, after you've trained, after you've make sure you slept enough, et cetera.
Yeah.
I think that's so spot on.
So the first principles you just said, laying those out, train five or six days a week.
We have a destination for training.
So we can actually say like, when we say that, what do we mean by that?
Right.
Five, three, one.
Five days a week of intentional intensity.
Three days a week of strength training.
One day, zone two, long and slow.
Balance across strength, conditioning, mobility.
So train five days a week.
Eat real food.
Sleep eight hours.
Think like a warrior.
Connect with yourself, others, and nature.
If you can nail those... The simplicity is so unsexy.
But if you could nail those, then actually what I would say is don't then fill the time in with sauna or red light therapy.
Then yeah, work on your business, then go, work on that side hustle, then go.
And yeah, do something else with your time.
Do something else like learn how to shoot a bow and arrow, like i like that yes.
Find a hobby.
Find a hot, like that's a great point.
Go watch a sunset like i don't know, like do something else like it's read fiction.
Yep right it's, that's what it's like.
Get out after you that.
Don't go and work farther and farther, farther down.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Because we're not going to nail those.
That is too big of a challenge in and of itself.
If we are able to, awesome, move outside the health bucket.
Great point.
Love that.
All right, let's keep on rolling.
Think.
Last year, you talked about changing your journal practice.
Hmm.
I think that was very work focused, if I remember correctly.
New format, you said, oh, this is what it was.
It was write three wins from yesterday and then write three most important things to do today.
And let's stick with that.
Let's see if anything else has changed for you as it relates to.
You know, often we think about when we talk about thinking, we end up talking about journaling, but maybe that's not everything.
So start there.
Yeah.
I think journaling, it's tough, right?
Because what is the actual, like you can, if you're a construction worker, right?
I would want to be a framer because at the end of the day, you look back and you go wow, look at what I made.
Yes.
There it is.
That's hard to do with a think one because you don't get to go like, there it is.
Look at that.
Which is why we kind of go to journaling because at least you can then say, look at that.
It's a physical thing.
There's an action that took place.
So maybe staying with the journaling a little bit, the small changes I've made this year is I've really liked this practice is what I do now every Sunday is I list out all of the things by category of things.
What's kind of bouncing around in my head to do's like what are the projects, what are the things?
So i'll go personal right and personal will be you know what.
I'll actually do it right because i got it hold on a second.
Okay personal, get glasses right.
But it's like oh, it's yeah, It's been over 10 years since I've had my skin checked, like for moles or anything like that.
Dermatology thing?
Dermatology.
That's a word.
Thank you.
I need to get a real ID.
Yeah.
Right?
I need to reach out to Chase Bank that wanted me to do a speaking engagement.
Cool.
I want to buy a new journal because the year is ending.
I got to get a new journal.
I write my 2026 goals.
I need to get more firewood.
It's make sure Bodie's ready for spring soccer.
It's like things like that.
Get the stuff out of your head.
Out of my head.
And I do that for both of my businesses as well.
And I do it with one of the things I want to communicate to Cole, who's the president of Comp Train.
So I have four categories every single week.
So it's getting this clutter of all these things that kind of bounce in and bounce out.
And at the end of next week.
I'll just carry over The ones that are still there outstanding and add to the new ones.
Yep.
That's been super, super helpful for me.
I really have enjoyed that practice.
Yeah.
It reminds me of two things.
One is Mark England, who always talks about anything in your head goes fast.
And once you write it down, things slow down.
And so I think there's something there.
We had that thing which was we did a whole episode on it, which was a problem.
Written down is half solved.
Oh yeah, Kidland's Law.
Yep, Kidland's Law.
Thank you, yes.
And then the other thing I think is just David Allen who wrote Getting Things Done.
He said, and I'm probably paraphrasing but like our head is good for having ideas, not holding ideas right.
So we go through the day with all of these like just silly to do, get glasses, get fire, and we just hold them in the back of our head Because we're like well, we can't forget that.
We gotta, it's gotta be there.
And then we just walk around juggling these 600 random thoughts.
But like, as soon as you get them out on paper, your brain's like, okay, I don't have to remember.
I don't have to keep holding onto that because I've got it on a piece of paper somewhere and I know it'll get done now, or at least it's closer to get done now.
So I just think it's really important.
And it seems like, oh, not a big deal.
It's just a to-do list.
But like, just getting those things out of your head is such a useful way to not carry around 300 pounds of daily minutia.
Yep.
I think of it as there's like switching costs, right?
Like every time you like have a thought, you're like, wait a minute, what was that other one?
And then it's like that idea of that.
It's like, I don't need to, like I've outsourced this.
I've documented, it's there.
So as things come up, I'll add them to that list.
I have this, this is my journal.
So I'm in it every day.
I go, okay, here they are.
And it's been a super helpful practice.
This is a shortcut to that.
Love that.
Other ones that may be getting outside a journal.
I would like to take credit for this, but I probably don't deserve it.
It's probably more just the cyclicality of to where I am in my life and business.
I feel much calmer this year than I did last year.
Yeah, I can see that.
And I've always been a person of calm and low stress.
Yeah.
But there are certain ones that have popped up recently.
So even this past week, I was building a new website.
Mm-hmm.
I can't believe you said, you should have said, what?
You were what?
That's so not me.
I know when you say that, you mean you're talking to somebody else who's building the website.
You would think so, Patrick.
But with the tools that are out there now, I'm actually literally trying to build my own website.
Oh, good for you.
And it's not going well.
To the point where I spent about five days, maybe a week, working on this, over the course of I'm saying cumulatively, but over the course of six weeks.
I probably put a week's worth of work into this.
A couple days ago.
I'm trying to edit it and it's really hard for me to figure out where I am on this page.
So all of a sudden, I think I'm at the bottom of the page, and it says...
This is the way I remember it.
It's probably wrong, but it's like a pop-up is up.
Do you want to move on or stay?
And I click move on.
Move on.
Because it seems like that's, I don't want to stay here.
I want to move on.
I deleted the website.
Oh my God.
So it was gone.
And I had done like spacing and fonts and all this.
I did everything except for the imagery.
It was gone.
And I was kind of happy with myself because, like I get the immediate kind of thing of like frustration yeah, but really i mean really quickly, it went to like okay, let's go.
I mean it was within like a handful of seconds yeah six, ten seconds, and it was like i didn't harbor anything after that.
I was telling the story to my daughter just last night, who's 10 or 11, and heather's overhearing it, and she goes she's from the other room.
She goes that's not normal.
I, That's not.
No one actually acts like that.
Just kind of setting the so that's.
I feel like I don't know if it's a all the work that we do having these conversations, but the level of the term would be like emotional maturity, where you have ownership over your emotions.
And again, maybe this is because, and this is why I don't want to take all the credit for it.
I'm just in a really good place in my life.
My family's amazing.
My businesses are now successful.
I enjoy what I do every day.
It's so much easier to have that than when kids are going through a really challenging time.
Your business is going to go bankrupt.
You and your wife are having issues.
Yeah.
It's a success cycle or the sewer cycle.
So maybe it's easier for me to kind of go, oh, well, there goes the website.
Maybe I'll be able to plug away and make this thing better.
I don't think I made it better the second time, by the way.
That's a different conversation.
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It reminds me of a story you told me.
I don't think we did this while we were recording.
I think you were just telling me.
And I don't want to say who it is because I don't want to blow up their spot.
But you were telling me about somebody who we both know, who was going to their kid's college soccer game or something.
And it was like a road trip.
It was like six hours away and fill in the gaps if I'm not getting this correctly, but it was like okay, he went off, he started on his road trip and four hours in he realized that he had the wrong weekend entirely.
And he was going four or six hours in the wrong direction for no reason whatsoever.
And he was telling you.
There was a period of my life where that would have really set me off, that I would have exploded.
I would have exploded at my wife because it was her fault.
She was the one who told me it was this weekend.
It's not this weekend.
But instead, he took a deep breath, he turned the car around, and he started driving home.
And he was telling you, I think similar to what you just said, which is like I can't believe that I'm at a place in my life where I didn't explode.
But even more than that, even better than that, I was fine.
And that really is, we're not taking any credit for that, but that's part of...
The purpose of these conversations is to get yourself to a place where things happen.
You have that moment and that moment isn't automatically one direction or the other.
You can take the breath and you can say, well, I could blow up right now.
I could throw the laptop across the room, but I don't feel the need to do that.
And now I can move on from it.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah.
That's exactly it.
And I just think it's such a more productive way to go through life.
Yeah.
Where you have a internal locus center of control, like a center of gravity, a homeostasis.
It takes a lot for that to get knocked off, right?
If it doesn't take a lot.
You are essentially at the whim, at the mercy of external events and external people where they can kind of like you're a leaf blowing in the wind, as opposed to like an oak tree that just stays strong, stays sturdy, regardless of what's happening around it.
So yeah, that was the story.
It's a good friend.
And I was just, That was just so great.
That was a phenomenal thing to hear.
Because you can call it where it's self-soothing, right?
It's like, I don't want to feel this way.
I can get myself back to feeling okay.
It's returning to center.
It's emotional maturity.
It's like...
There's a lot of, it's mental toughness.
There's a lot of different resiliency.
There's a lot of different words that you can use to say what that is.
And I think that in terms of the think, it's think like a warrior.
Warriors, if something doesn't go right, they don't throw down their sword.
They don't throw down their shield and go, woe is me wise.
They go like, all right, bring it on.
All right, this is the next thing I'm facing.
Let's go.
We've only got about 10 more minutes before we have to bounce.
We could clearly talk about this even longer.
I want to do one quick thing before we get into the Connect Bucket, and that is to offer if we've got any good books that we've read this year.
I know I mentioned some fiction.
I've got some nonfiction ones that I thought were really good.
Let's do that real quick.
Let's go through if you've got any, and I'll give mine, and then we can wrap this up with a quick recap of whatever we've done well or poorly in the Connect Bucket.
But let me give some nonfiction books that I've read this year, that I recommend, that I thought were really good.
And then you'll give yours and we can move on.
So a couple books that I recommend.
One is called The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life by Boyd Vardy.
Really, really good book.
Probably one of the top two or three books I read this year.
Wow.
I also stumbled into- It's called The Lion's Tracker.
Lion Tracker's Guide to Life.
Really good.
Cool.
I stumbled into, and I've mentioned him a few times, Anthony DeMello wrote a book called Awareness.
I've mentioned that once or twice.
So Awareness and another book he wrote called Rediscovering Life.
Both of those are like, great like keep it by the bedside table or by wherever you sit in the morning with some coffee and just read some pages of it.
Really, really good.
Really valuable, I think.
And then another book, that a couple of books that I've actually mentioned in various episodes here The Pathless Path by Paul Mallard and The Art of Focus by Dan Coe.
Both of those are also very good.
So those are just some of the books that I read, nonfiction books.
I actually also want to add to that.
We had Robert Glazer on The Compass Within.
That was actually really useful.
Like, of all the books maybe that I've read, that was the one that most clearly connected to things that we talked about here on the show.
For me,
Like I went after that episode and after reading the book, I went back through and, sort of like, started with core values or key pillars, which is how I think of them, sort of from scratch.
I was like, all right, I have these.
But based on everything we talked to Robert about, based on his six questions, based on his parameters of like good versus not so good, I sort of went back to the drawing board and reworked my core values, which was really really valuable.
So I also add that if folks haven't listened to that episode with Robert Glazer or read the book Compass Within, also really recommend that.
Cool.
This was a big year of me rereading books, which I enjoy doing.
No man ever steps in the same river twice.
Many of them were business oriented.
We went through a challenging time and I'm now the CEO of the company again.
So it's a lot about how to learn about how to do this thing called business.
I thought I learned this already once.
Yeah, no, definitely not.
Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, Jim Collins.
They rewrote his kind of original book.
I had read Good to Great read, Built to Last, Beyond Entrepreneurship, and I read his new version, which is Beyond Entrepreneurship 20.
Phenomenal, especially one chapter when they talk about kind of vision.
I think it's phenomenal.
Reread Insanely Simple, one of my favorite business books.
That's one about Apple, right?
Yeah.
10X is easier than 2X.
I referenced that in this conversation.
And I reread- And that's by Benjamin Hardy and- Dan Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan.
Thank you.
And then Principles by Ray Dalio.
Oh, yeah.
We talked about that years ago.
Yep.
The other kind of thing I've thought a lot about is sort of this perspective in terms of thinking.
Here's like I have, I think once somebody, I was thinking about if somebody was to get introduced to this, this conversation, this new perspective on how to do this from the think category perspective.
Where would I have them?
I think if they read these three books, it would really help shape things up a lot, which is I've already mentioned one of them, which is Same As Ever.
Morgan Housel.
Morgan Housel.
Morgan Housel.
Sorry.
Yep.
Yep.
4,000 Weeks.
Yep.
And Sapiens.
Great books.
Yeah.
It's like those what those three books do, especially kind of like those three in sort of like overlapping each other.
Yep.
A lot of it is like really kind of like zoom out.
You see like a lot of perspective between those.
And each one takes from a different vantage point.
Totally.
Yeah.
And I really like the kind of intersection between those three.
Yep.
Yeah, I love the idea of batching books that aren't about the same thing, but when you read them back-to-back they create sparks or connections that you wouldn't find or you wouldn't see if you'd read them three years apart.
Those three books.
That's right.
I think about that a lot with 4,000 Weeks and Essentialism.
If you put those books together-
Again, they're about the same general worldview, but when you start looking at them from those two slightly different perspectives, it's like a one plus one equals four, type of thing.
Love it.
Yeah.
Okay, last one.
Save best for last.
We always do this.
The poor connect bucket consistently gets last.
Let's talk about connection a little bit.
I don't know.
Let me see what we had last year.
You had some work things.
You stopped working.
Oh, I remember this.
I think this was cool.
You stopped working at the office at the end of the hall so that basically you were just sort of like visible more.
Still doing that.
I love this.
You said yes to the kids more.
You know, they want to play soccer.
They want to jump on the trampoline.
I would try to say yes.
Sunday run day was a family affair.
And then I think you jumped back into coaching a little bit more.
But catch us up.
Let's do a quick catch up on where you're at with Connect Bucket.
So one of my goals for this year was to deepen my friendships.
I realized that that was a big hole in my game.
Yeah.
I remember talking about that.
Yeah.
And I'm happy to say like this year has been crazy.
I've been very intentional.
Good.
I think you have to be as an adult, particularly as an adult male.
Yep.
You have to be, if you want meaningful friendships, you have to, it's not going to just happen.
You have to like really.
Similar to what we talked about before.
Work at it.
Like it's just not going to happen.
Especially when you get to the point where we are, where it's kids and work and life and all the other things.
Yeah.
So I give myself like an A minus on this this year.
That's awesome.
You guys have done a really great job.
To where made a, it sounds like so like third grade, but made a new friend.
Actually, it's Dr. Rich.
Dr. Rich is on the show.
Hung out with him this past.
So again, hung out with him this past weekend.
We now train together probably every other week or so.
Great.
I see him and talk to him a lot.
It's been awesome.
Yep.
So that also Marcus, I see and talk to Marcus all the time.
Marcus came to Croatia with us.
Oh, cool.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
He's going to go and we're going to hike the Grand Canyon together.
Nice.
He's here at the gym.
We try, we schedule it every week.
Probably happens realistically every other week, but yeah.
Hugely intentional.
He came down to Cape, spent time with us on the Cape.
So the guy friendship thing has really moved forward.
Did a guy's trip to Mount Washington.
Just four of us going up there by ourselves and hiking and camping overnight.
Nobody else, no phones, all that stuff.
So that's probably been my biggest thing.
I also mentioned I train with Heather now.
So I train with her most days.
I've just started in before, but I'm leading both teams and trying to do it very intentionally being out there in front.
And then a small one is this doesn't seem to fit into this category until I'll explain a little bit.
I started doing the laundry for the family.
Good for you.
So I do it every day.
Yep.
Cause man, there's always more things to fold or wash.
It's endless.
And if you don't do it every day, oh my gosh, it becomes daunting.
But what I realized is connection also has to do with leadership.
And what I saw was an opportunity for me to take something off of the plates of my partner that could free her up, to have a little more bandwidth, a little more space.
A little more space to fill in the blank.
But I don't want to say like I do the laundry now and our relationship is better.
But I don't want to not say that either.
It's not because like, oh my, there's like some nuancy stuff to this, right?
That you can't draw the perfect connections.
It doesn't go dot to dot.
But it's a thing where I felt like I could do a little bit of grunt work to lighten lighten the load on the team.
And when that happens, connections get stronger, because if people are less stressed, they're more free to be joyful.
Yes.
Take that.
I'm just going to add one thing because we do have to wrap.
And I mentioned this last year, but it's something I've continued to do and I really recommend it.
I call it my check-in questions.
So in the morning I ask myself two questions and I'll write these answers out, similar to what you do.
But the questions are, What's one thing I'm focused on right now?
Or what's the one thing I'm focused on today?
And what's one thing I'm grateful for?
So those are my two morning questions.
I sort of try to start the day with those.
And then the end of the day is what's one thing that I want to remember about today?
And I stole that from you.
And then the last thing is what's one thing that knocked me off center today and why?
Love that.
That's the connecting.
It's cool because mine were about connecting with others.
Yours was about connecting with yourself.
Connecting with self.
Yes.
Yep.
So I really recommend those questions for folks.
If you don't have a sort of a morning or an evening journal practice, those four questions work really really well for me.
All right.
Anything you want to say before we wrap this up?
Looking back on this last year, as it relates to the five factors?
No, I think it's a cool practice.
I like this and I hope that we do it again next year because it'll bring me kind of like I said about the business it'll give me a chance to reflect and learn, which is really the idea behind this.
Yes.
Instead of just kind of like always a wheel in motion, you kind of look back and go oh, look at the path I've carved and maybe I could learn something from a couple of those.
And I like mostly what we focused on today was things that we tweaked or changed or evolved that worked really well, right.
Like I think it's easy to look back, especially across these five factors, and think about the two weeks that we just didn't get to the gym, right.
It's really easy to beat ourselves up for...
I was supposed to track my macros over the summer and I just like I fell off.
I think it's really useful to look back with some realism and say, I did this really well.
I'm really glad I did this.
I learned a lot from doing that.
I tried doing it this way.
That didn't work.
Here's why it didn't work.
Here's what I'm going to try again.
And I'm not using this as an excuse to beat ourselves up over the things that we didn't do as well as we say we should have been able to do them.
No such thing as perfect, man.
Just keep chasing.
All right.
Good place to end.
Thanks, buddy.
Thank you so very much for tuning into the show this week.
Two quick things before we go.
The first.
If you want even more from this episode, I do recommend you check out the full listener guide, where we break down all the big ideas.
We ask reflection questions.
We give you steps to put these ideas into action.
The link is in the show notes.
And the second thing, While you're there, check out the Chase Club.
It's our premium membership, where we include bonus content, ad-free episodes and the brand new Chase Tracker app.
Check it all out at chasingexcellence.email.
