Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast.
Today's podcast title is five valuable life lessons I've learned in the last five years.
And this episode, this discussion was inspired and motivated by a recent podcast I was listening to.
This was a Craig Groeschel podcast.
And it was all about the most challenging lessons he learned in leadership in his multiple decades of leadership and being a pastor.
And I'm also going to reference one of his that he spoke about.
But as I was listening to him speak, I was on a run it was a five mile run and I was listening to this podcast and it really spoke to me.
And really connect with me.
And I started reflecting just back on how much I have grown as a leader over the years.
And the experiences and lessons that I've learned.
So I got back from the five mile run.
It's about two weeks ago.
And I just started jotting down some of the things that I've learned that I believe have been extremely valuable to me, to not just my professional life as the founder and CEO of BPN, but also applied to my personal life and being a husband, being a father and ultimately, leading myself as well.
So we'll start with number one.
We need purpose and meaning to truly be fulfilled.
I think we all know this, but oftentimes, glance over it because we get lost in the day-to-day.
And I once heard a fellow founder and entrepreneur describe the day-to-day of building a brand and building a business.
And they described it as blocking and tackling.
We have... this big vision for our life.
And we have these massive goals that we're trying to chase down and accomplish.
But life is complex and complicated.
And over days and weeks and months and years, we might work towards this objective, this vision and these goals.
Big picture, you know, perspective and approach.
But in the day-to-day it sometimes doesn't feel like we are making progress because we are literally blocking and tackling.
Obstacles pop up, problems arise, distractions are placed in front of us and we are in a defensive position battling fighting, blocking and tackling things as they pop up.
Get in front of us.
We're trying to get around them.
From the day to day, it's easy to glance over and miss purpose and meaning and fulfillment.
Because for many of us, some days feel like we're just trying to survive.
I saw this Instagram post the other day and it really connected with me, really spoke to me.
And it was this dad who has young kids and he was filming himself running in the dark in the rain.
And the caption summarized.
Can't remember exactly what it said, but summarized.
It said that For all you other parents out there with young kids who are getting five hours of sleep a night, I see you.
And don't try to compare your life to someone else's life who doesn't have as many responsibilities.
And that really just like hit home for me, spoke to me.
As a husband and father with two young kids.
I average six and a half hours of sleep a night, but there are nights where I'm not sleeping nearly enough for as much, but still waking up and getting after it day after day.
Because if it matters to you, you will make time.
And when you're in those moments, trying to survive day to day, getting a little bit of sleep, taking care of your kids, spending time with your family, show up to work, building your professional career.
It's challenging.
And it's really easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, the thing and things that really do matter, truly do matter.
And if we're not careful, we will get lost. in the day to day.
We will become distracted in the day to day.
We have to be rooted in a greater calling, a larger purpose and meaning in life to truly be fulfilled.
One of my favorite books, and I've shared this before, is Halftime by Bob Buford.
And it talks about how the first half of your life is focused on success.
And after many of us experience a halftime moment, we have this renewed mind and we realize that the second half of life is no longer focused on success, but it's focused on significance.
And I've also heard people describe the first half of your life as you are working to build and accumulate.
In the second half of your life you are working to give it all away to people you love, and friends and family and your kids.
That could be materialistic things.
It could be your money.
It could be your time, your energy, anything.
But in the book Halftime by Bob Buford he says that people are at their largest level, They're noblest and most virtuous when they are given over to a cause something larger than themselves.
We are at our best, our largest, our most noble, virtuous when we are working towards and for something larger than ourselves.
True purpose, true meaning.
I'm also a really big fan of Arthur C. Brooks.
He teaches a very popular class, I believe at Harvard on happiness.
And this class, it books out every year instantaneously.
And there is a wait list to get into this class of hundreds of people.
He is also an author.
He has multiple articles published on happiness and fulfillment.
And one of his books called From Strength to Strength is one of my favorites.
And it talks about life transitions and how to navigate and manage the many life transitions that we go through.
And he talks about happiness a lot.
And happiness is something that a lot of people want to learn about, want to experience, want to hear how to be happier.
This is one of the reasons his classes fill up so fast and there's a wait list from hundreds of other people.
Brooks says that happiness is not a feeling.
Happiness is a combination of three things. enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.
We need purpose.
We need meaning, not only to be fulfilled, but also to be happy.
And you need a portfolio, from what Arthur C. Brooks says, of four habits to experience happiness.
Your portfolio of four habits are faith, family, friends, and work.
Faith being a perspective, a piece on life much larger than you.
You need to get small in order to be happy.
You can't be God and never will be God.
You can't be the cause.
You can't be the purpose.
You can't be the meaning of not only your life, but everyone else's life.
That makes you selfish.
We have to get small in order to have a much larger cause that we are living for.
A purpose, a meaning, faith, family, friends, and work.
Those are the four habits within our portfolio that contribute to our happiness.
I'm going to keep leaning into some of Arthur C. Brooks' work here for a second.
He also talks about the difference between complex and complicated problems that we experience in our life.
And I share this because I hope this gives some perspective of why you may be struggling and why I have, in the past, struggled with feeling or experiencing fulfillment, contentment because my purpose and meaning in life wasn't secure.
It wasn't rooted.
It did not have an identity.
Brooke says that there's two types of problems that we experience in life complex and and complicated, and they're different.
Complex issues or problems cannot be solved or fixed with technology apps or quick fixes.
They can only be experienced, managed, and lived daily.
Complicated problems have technical solutions, whereas complex problems are relational, emotional and unpredictable.
Happiness and purpose are not puzzles to be solved, but rather ongoing, messy processes.
And true enjoyment requires a mix of pleasure, people, and memory.
And true satisfaction comes from the struggle toward a goal rather than just achieving it.
So that first valuable life lesson that I talked about, we need purpose and meaning to be fulfilled.
I think at this point we know what purpose and meaning is.
Purpose and meaning is something much larger than ourself.
It is, like Bob Buford said, a cause, something larger than ourselves, that we are living for, that we are serving, that we are glorifying.
We have to get small.
Faith is getting small to then have a purpose that is rooted in something larger.
So we've identified what purpose and meaning is, but what is fulfillment?
What does it mean to be truly fulfilled?
And to be fulfilled, we need satisfaction.
Like Arthur C. Brooks said, happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.
Well, what is satisfaction?
Satisfaction is the joy that you get from an accomplishment after struggle.
After struggle.
This is why it feels really good to set these really big, ambitious goals and then work towards them.
Whether that is, man, building the dream life that you want.
Maybe that's the house with a dog out front and the white picket fence and the family with two kids and there's like that tire swing in the backyard.
The ideal American dream.
Maybe that's what it looks like that you're working towards.
Maybe it is fitness goal.
Maybe you want to lose 30 pounds.
Maybe you want to run a sub three hour marathon.
Maybe you want to do your first Ironman or first 100 mile ultra marathon.
Maybe it's a job promotion that you want to achieve or a business you want to build.
The reason that it feels so good to work towards those things and then achieve it is because of the struggle.
Without the struggle, in just achievement, we actually can't experience satisfaction.
You need the struggle in between saying, I want to go pursue this and then achieving it.
In between, we need, we require the struggle to actually experience satisfaction.
But what happens when we actually achieve the thing is that we experience satisfaction and then satisfaction dissipates.
It's really hard to maintain satisfaction.
So we have to keep working on it and towards it.
And if we don't have purpose and we don't have any enjoyment but we just have satisfaction, you're going to end up on this continuous loop, this hamster wheel of That is being driven by dopamine, of needing to constantly achieve and achieve and achieve to actually feel anything.
You need purpose.
You need meaning.
But we also need struggle.
And we need goals.
We need to work towards something.
And we need joy.
Enjoyment.
Fulfillment.
One of my favorite books that I've ever read, and I've read it multiple times because I love it so much, and I've referenced it multiple times.
It's The Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long.
I referenced The Molecule of More in my book titled Go On More.
And it's all about dopamine and how dopamine controls everything in our life.
And in the book, there's two quotes I want to share.
The first, I arise in the morning, torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.
Dopamine desire is drives us towards wanting to experience something.
And it's oftentimes more.
While we want to be content.
When we are content and relaxing and comfortable, we then want to go, achieve and do more.
And when we go and achieve more and we're working and we struggle, we also want to be content.
I think this quarter here describes the way many of us feel on a daily basis.
We want to go out and gain and achieve and do, but simultaneously be content in the process.
And it's achievable, but it's also very challenging at the same time.
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.
And the second quote I want to share is From dopamine's point of view having things is uninteresting.
It's only getting things that matter.
If you live under a bridge, dopamine makes you want a tent.
If you live in a tent, dopamine makes you want a house.
If you live in the most expensive mansion in the world, dopamine makes you want a castle on the moon.
Dopamine has no standard for good and seeks no finish line.
The dopamine circuits in the brain can be stimulated only by the possibility of whatever is shiny and new, Nevermind how perfect things are at the moment.
The dopamine motto is more.
The molecule of more.
That is dopamine.
That is in our bodies.
That is in our brain.
It is driving us towards more and more and more and more.
And without purpose, without meaning, we will never be fulfilled because naturally we, The biology and chemistry of our bodies naturally wants more.
Naturally wants more.
So if we're not rooted in a purpose and a meaning much larger than ourselves, a cause much larger than ourselves, if we aren't willing to get small, we will get stuck in the driven disaster of living for dopamine, and that's a dangerous place to be.
We need purpose and meaning to be fulfilled, because if we don't have that, we're going to live chasing an endless pursuit of the next thing more more more, and it's never enough.
The next valuable life lesson is to know when to rise and when to dive.
Like I said, in the beginning of this episode, this inspired this entire episode.
As I was listening to a Craig Rochelle podcast.
He was talking about leadership, altitude and, And he posed the question what deserves altitude and what deserves attention?
And you have to know when to rise and when to dive.
In the last five years, five years ago, it was 2021.
My life looked significantly different.
Recently married, no kids yet.
BPN was much smaller.
In 2021, we maybe had around 10 employees if I had to guess and remember properly somewhere around that.
So running the business and the way that I had to lead was much different than than it is now.
I've learned a lot.
And I've learned a lot through failing, specifically in what I'm about to talk about right here.
Craig Groeschel says that, while it is natural to feel that you must be involved in everything, Staying too low for too long can cause you to lose perspective, while staying too high for too long can cause you to lose connection with your people.
So when you rise, you are working on big picture, visionary, strategy, objectives.
You are leading.
You're working on the business vision. or on the project, as opposed to in it.
That's rising.
It allows your subordinate leaders to lead and do their job.
It allows individuals and teams to have ownership over their work and their responsibilities because of trust, because of confidence and competency.
But when you have to dive, this is when you get into the weeds.
And, as Craig Urschel says, staying too low meaning diving in the weeds for too long can cause you to lose perspective.
Big picture.
And while staying too high for too long can cause you to lose connection with your people.
This is a really tough balance.
And it just takes time and experience and repetition of what I've learned over time.
As a leader, whether you're leading your family, your marriage, your children, a business, a small team, whatever it is.
Whenever you are leading people, the balance between knowing when to rise and when to dive is is absolutely essential and critical.
It will lead that unit to success, but it can also lead that unit to failure and create problems relationally trust issues, stepping on people's toes, not empowering people, not allowing people to take risks and try and fail and then learn from those failures.
This one, like I said it inspired this entire episode, because this was really hard for me early on as a leader.
And it took a lot of just exposure and repetition and making old mistakes.
Like there have been a lot of times where I have been too high for too long and I've lost connection with people.
And then I've gone too low for too long and I've stepped on people's toes and I've lost trust in people.
And I wasn't able to empower them and actually try and learn and fail.
And in staying too low for too long, I lost big picture perspective.
You know, when you're in the weeds on certain things, like you're head down, you're focused and I think like one way I'm thinking of it right now visually if you are the captain of a boat, a big boat with lots of people, you're steering the boat.
This is when you are rising high.
You're at the top of the boat, right?
You're at the top of the boat.
You're steering.
You're making sure the boat is on the right course, right?
You're making sure you don't run into some sort of obstacle in the water or other boats.
You're managing and monitoring the weather, all the things.
You're focused on big picture perspective.
If something happens down below in the bottom of the boat and you go and fix it, you then dive.
Well, you're not in... the captain's chair anymore.
You're not steering.
You're not watching out for obstacles in the water or the weather or the course, for example.
And if you do that and you go down below and you don't delegate other responsibilities and you lose that big picture perspective, you go off course, you crash.
There's a lot of things that can go wrong because you dove.
You were too low for too long.
You lose the ability to guide the unit, guide the ship, guide the people.
When you fly high, you fly high to focus on vision strategy, team development and long-term outcomes.
You step back to empower people.
Empowering people is one of the greatest things you can learn how to do.
I've learned that the hard way.
Because chances are.
If you are in a leadership role, if you are a manager, you're a director.
There's things you can do and you know how to do it.
You can run a business with a thousand people and you can jump into everyone's role and do all of those roles.
But what's going to happen is you're going to lose trust.
You're going to lose confidence because people don't feel empowered or trusted or competent.
Learning how to empower people with responsibility, truly trusting them, giving them the keys, giving them the reins to own something that goes a long way.
Empowerment, that's flying high.
When you dive deep and get the details.
You might have to do that from time to time when culture is drifting, as Craig Guchel says.
And sometimes a key leader needs support or to make major decisions.
And that's when they have to dive deep into the weeds, in the details.
You can also utilize strategic absence so that you don't become the bottleneck and allow space for your team to grow and take ownership.
This is something that I've incorporated the last couple of years, the last five or so years, that I have found extremely beneficial and useful.
There have been times where I have strategically stepped away in terms of not the business, but not going to certain meetings or involved in certain projects, and allowing teams and people to make decisions on their own, empowering them.
So that I don't become the bottleneck in certain decisions that have to be made, in certain plans that have to be established, in certain operational execution that needs done.
It allows space for your team to grow and for individuals to take ownership.
Some of, like I said, my greatest failures in building a business, being a founder, being a CEO, Being a leader, has been when I've stayed high for too long, I've lost connection with people, and when I've been too low for too long.
I step on people's toes, I don't empower them, and I lose big picture perspective.
If I look back over the last five years, 90 of my mistakes leadership mistakes have been in these two situations.
Too high for too long, too low for too long.
And I've learned that just because you can fix it, just because you can do it doesn't mean that you should.
You can.
Allow other people to learn, even if you can do it.
This is what builds a really strong culture.
And what is culture?
I think the term culture is thrown out a lot.
For me, culture is a shared set of beliefs, values, goals, and purpose.
And when people align with those things, They become a part of your culture.
And the way that you build a really strong culture is clearly identifying beliefs values goals, purpose.
And if everyone is aligned within a culture on those things, your culture is generally stronger, more unified.
One of the ways that you destroy culture when it comes to being a leader is stepping on people's toes, being in the details for too long, doing people's job that they can and should be doing, not trusting individuals, not trusting teams, not trusting people.
When people feel empowered, when people feel trusted, when people feel like they can own their role and they know what success looks like.
There is a measurement for success.
They can thrive.
And when individuals are thriving, when teams are thriving and culture is clearly defined man, Things are just humming along.
But when people aren't trusted or empowered and culture isn't strong and core values and beliefs and purpose and goals aren't clearly defined, that is walking aimlessly in the woods looking, hoping for the answer, hoping for a win.
When there is no vision, people perish.
You got to know when to rise and when to dive.
Selflessness is a keystone to life.
This is the third valuable life lesson.
Gandhi once said, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
You can either be selfless or selfish.
Selfish puts you in front of all others.
It is focused on yourself, serving yourself, glorifying yourself.
If you win, that's all that matters.
I've learned over these last five years that one, leadership is everything.
But in my case, to be a man, what's it look like to be a real man?
I heard Pastor Joby Martin talking about this before.
A true man is selfless, is a servant to others, lives to serve others, not himself or themself.
That's what selflessness is.
And why is it a keystone to life?
So little backstory here. we were in Pennsylvania two weeks ago for the Pittsburgh Marathon kickoff.
This year, we are the on-course nutrition sponsor for the Austin Marathon, which is in February.
And we've been a partner with the Austin Marathon the last couple of years now.
And we are also an on-course nutrition partner for the Pittsburgh Marathon in May, May 3rd.
So if you want to run a marathon this spring, you should definitely sign up for the Pittsburgh Marathon.
Our whole team's going to be there.
I'm going to be there.
We're going to be running it.
We're showing up in a huge way, really activating around the city in that race.
And it means a lot for me because I grew up in Pennsylvania Palmyra Pennsylvania, right next to Hershey Pennsylvania.
I went to school at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which is about an hour away from Pittsburgh.
And Pittsburgh just feels like home.
Pennsylvania is home.
And as soon as we flew into Pennsylvania two weeks ago, me and Steph, we met up with the BPN team.
I told Steph, man, this feels like home.
You know, Texas has been home since 2014, but coming back to PA, it just feels like home.
And while we were in Pittsburgh, we made a trip over to IUP, where I went to college.
And we were able to visit and tour the Army ROTC department there, which was surreal.
Because to be honest, nothing in that entire building changed.
It felt like I was back there.
2013, when I graduated, nothing changed.
Everything was exactly where it was.
It was wild to see and experience.
And the IUP Army ROTC logo was on the wall.
And part of the Pennsylvania logo is a keystone.
It's a keystone state.
And growing up, I didn't ever really put much thought behind the Keystone or what is a Keystone and the significance of the Keystone.
It was just like, we knew Pennsylvania was the Keystone state.
So I'm, you know, I was curious, like what is a Keystone exactly?
And a Keystone is a central principle or part of a policy or system, one which all else depends on.
A keystone is a central stone at the summit of an arch.
So if you look at an arch stone, arch the keystone is at the top of the arch and it locks everything together.
It is essential.
It holds everything together.
Everything depends on that one stone, the keystone.
Without it, everything else falls apart.
And I was also curious, you know, this is some additional knowledge.
Why is Pennsylvania's mark the Keystone?
And the answer is because it is the central location among the original 13 colonies.
And it had a crucial role in holding the new nation together.
And this perfectly illustrates Pennsylvania's essential role in maintaining the unity and stability of the early American Union, figuratively and also from a geographic perspective.
The keystone locks everything together.
All else depends on it.
Selflessness, being selfless is a keystone to life.
Living a life of meaning and purpose and fulfillment.
Helping other people, putting others before yourself, being selfless.
Without being selfless, you really, you fall apart.
Like Gandhi says, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
When you commit to this, You will be tested and you will be challenged.
And from my point of view, I try to be selfless in everything I do every day, but I'm not perfect.
And I mess up and I make mistakes.
And sometimes I act out of a selfish character or make decisions that are rooted in selfishness.
And it typically guides me in the wrong direction.
Doesn't always feel good, but selflessness always feels good. to serve others.
It is the keystone to life.
And when you eventually realize you can't do it all on your own and you surrender the ego that drives that thought process, you unlock exponential growth in all areas of your life.
That leads us to the fourth keystone valuable life lesson I've learned in the last five years, which is pride is the ultimate source of self-destruction.
Pride is ego.
And the opposite of pride is humility.
John R. W. Stott once said, I'm going to say this twice because I think this is really important.
And it's not just a quote.
It's not just this nice, fancy saying.
You should write this down somewhere and live by this.
Because we will all struggle with pride and ego at all different chapters and intersections of our life.
And it will destroy us.
And it does destroy us.
John R.W.
Stott said, pride is your greatest enemy.
Humility is your greatest friend.
Pride is your greatest enemy.
Humility is your greatest friend.
The opposite of pride is humility.
It is being humble.
Now there's a difference between being proud and having pride.
Proud is a feeling that describes a state of being, feeling satisfaction or honor from one's own or another's achievement, qualities or possessions.
You can feel proud.
It's a feeling.
You know, your, your son, makes the varsity baseball team.
You feel proud.
You know how much work went into that.
You get a job promotion.
You feel proud.
Your wife starts her own business and it launches and it's successful.
You're proud.
It's a feeling.
There's not much or nothing wrong with feeling proud about what you've done, what you've accomplished, what others have accomplished.
But pride is an identity.
It's an identity that describes an excessive sense of one's own importance or superiority, leading to arrogance and ego.
Pride is an identity.
When you're prideful, It is, I'm better than you.
I'm the best.
You are inferior to me.
Arrogance, ego.
I know everything.
Let me tell you what I know, what I've done.
Let me belittle you.
You know like we we go back to um Talking about the four habits you need in your portfolio to experience happiness.
Faith, family, friends, work.
Faith is you need to get small to be happy.
When you're prideful, you inflate yourself.
You are larger than than everyone else.
You're larger, you are smarter, you're better, you're wealthier, you're more important.
Pride is self-destruction.
You know what drives cancel culture?
Like social media and the negativity on social media and cancel culture, what drives it?
It's pride.
I'm above, I'm better than you.
Thus, I will make you feel little online.
All these arguments that happen online, all these ridiculous, immature battles that happen on social media and the internet and in the world.
They're driven by arrogance, ego and pride.
It's destructive.
Pride is your greatest enemy.
Humility is your greatest friend.
We were at the Pittsburgh Marathon, like I said two weeks ago, and a gentleman walked up to me after we did the shakeout run.
You could either run a 5K or a 10K, 3.1 miles or 6.2 miles at the Pittsburgh Marathon kickoff run.
And after we finished running, a gentleman came up to me and talked to me.
And he asked me, in the most honest and respectable way possible how do I give myself credit for what I deserve and what I have earned?
And I saw my younger self in this gentleman as he was asking me this question.
I'm working so hard and I don't give myself enough credit.
Like, how do I give myself credit for what I deserve and what I've earned?
And I answered with, you don't.
And I believe it was coming from a very vulnerable and humble place, actually.
But the question was driven by I should have an ego.
I should be a little arrogant.
I should be prideful in what I'm doing and what I've done.
So I answer with, you don't give yourself credit for what you deserve and what you've earned.
You just keep going.
Why do you want and need the credit?
Why do you require the validation?
Is it to feed your ego and your pride and your arrogance?
Yeah, give yourself a little pat on the back.
Be proud of what you've done and what you've earned and where you're at, but keep going.
Make yourself little, make yourself small, because the calls the purpose, the meaning, which is much larger.
Maybe that deserves praise, some of the credit.
Let's put the credit towards the meaning and the purpose and let's just keep working.
Let's just keep doing it.
Be proud, but eliminate the pride.
Pride is your greatest enemy.
Humility is your greatest friend.
In the fifth valuable life lesson I've learned in the last five years, The last one I'm going to discuss.
A hurried and or rushed life misses moments.
Man, I've messed this one up the most, probably out of all of them.
And it was a hard lesson to learn.
If someone was to ask me right now, what is the vision for your life?
What do you want it to look like?
What What is an ideal day look like for Nick Bear?
I would say a day where I'm not rushed and I'm not hurried.
My schedule is full and productive, but I'm not missing out on the moments.
I'm enjoying the process.
That's the vision for my life and my days.
But if I think back to how I used to live five years ago and before that, it was hurried.
It was rushed.
It was get one thing done and on to the next.
And I would skip out on conversations or these moments to connect with people or time with my family, because I had to keep working.
I had to keep driving forward.
I had to go, go, go more, more, more.
And I missed a lot of moments.
Moments that I can't get back. but I've learned from that.
I want a full life.
I want a busy life.
I want a productive life.
I don't want a hurried life and I don't want a rushed life.
One of my favorite books another one that I highly recommend by John Mark Comer, is called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
This is a book that you should read every single year, the beginning of every year, as just like a foundational principle in your life.
As a reminder slow down.
Work hard, but slow down.
In the book, John Mark Comer says, because what you give your attention to is the person you become.
Put another way, the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character.
In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to.
That bodes well for those apprentices of Jesus who give the bulk of their attention to him and to all that is good, beautiful and true in his world, but not for those who give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama, or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip and cultural drive.
But again, we become what we give our attention to for better or worse.
We're called to create margin in our life.
Margin is the space between our load and our limits.
This spoke to me a lot when I came across this.
How do we slow down in life?
Create margin.
Many of us live lives with little to no margin.
The space between our load and our limits.
We are limited. looking at our days in terms of 24 hours and we fill all 24 hours.
If 24 hours is the limit and you can control the load.
If you fill your, 24 hours being the limit, with a 24 hour load, you have no margin left over.
The margin is where you rest.
It's where you recover.
We have to control the rhythms of our life.
And it's easier said than done.
Because I'm not telling you I have this perfect.
I don't.
I'm still trying to figure this out.
The rhythms of our life, it's a principle that I know that is harder to apply than to conceptualize.
I'm just being honest there.
The rhythm of our life is the balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
The sympathetic nervous system is the fight or flight response.
The parasympathetic nervous system is the rest and digest state.
And you're in the parasympathetic, you're at ease, you're calm, you're resting, you're recovering.
One of the things I was just telling the BPN team here earlier this week.
As I said, when you leave work after the day, when you get home, You have to find a way to turn it off.
I don't want or expect you to be working 24-7.
I don't want or expect your mind to be thinking about BPN 24-7, because what ends up happening is that you don't actually rest and recover.
And if you don't rest and recover when you show up to work the next day, The hours and the work that you spend here are not productive.
They're not effective.
It's not your best work.
It's not helping us.
And I've seen it happen to so many people over the years where they don't find ways to turn it off.
And they feel they have to keep it on all the time.
And they naturally start hating their work and become resentful towards the workplace and the people and the organization and the system because they didn't instill a healthy rhythm of rest and digest and recovery.
That comes down to the margin.
We have to create boundaries and in place a margin, which is the space between our load in our limits.
And what I think is a really important topic to touch on when we talk about the hurried and the rushed.
I think many of us can relate to what it feels like to be living in a hurried and rushed season of life.
And it feels like you're missing out on a lot of moments.
You're there, but you're not there.
Sometimes you're in zombie mode because it's from one thing to the next, the next, the next, and there's no margin.
There's no margin between the load and the limit.
And you end up being on autopilot.
And I found myself here before, and this is why I share it, and I think it's really important.
I'm a fan of planning and being proactive and prepared.
And I'm a big fan of having rituals and habits.
I am.
I love my routines.
But a hard lesson I've learned over the last couple of years is that if you put your routines in front of your responsibilities, you're going to dishonor your responsibilities and in your priorities, in the people in your life.
So it has to be responsibilities over routines.
Because if you're like me, routines feel really good.
Routines are comfortable and they're familiar, and it allows us to get a lot done in a little amount of time.
Like for me my morning routine waking up at 430 am, red lighting for 15 minutes and going for a run and coming back and making breakfast and getting my Bible reading done and catching up on emails and work before the kids and the family wakes up.
That feels really good to me.
And sometimes I become so rigid and stuck to those routines that breaking those routines is actually harder for me than sticking to them.
It's not hard for me to stick to those routines.
The routine is comfort.
It is familiar.
It is predictable.
But when we become over-optimized and every part of our life has a routine and a ritual and a habit, I think that's actually a more dangerous place to be when we're over-optimized.
Routines don't actually limit us by themselves.
They limit us when they quietly turn into autopilot.
When we become zombies, we become autopiloted because our routines walk us through every part of our life.
That's when it's a problem.
That's when it limits us.
A few notes on routines.
I'm not saying routines are bad.
Routines can be great.
But if routines are placed over responsibilities and we find ourselves in autopilot, they can become bad.
And they can lead to a hurried and rushed life where we actually stop living life itself and we're living for the routine.
Routines can trade awareness for efficiency.
The brain loves routines because they save energy.
Once something becomes habitual, the train stops evaluating it.
Routines can create identity cages.
Over time, the routine becomes your self-concept.
And once identity locks in, change feels unsafe.
Routines are good servants.
I love this.
Routines are good servants, but terrible masters.
Structure is not the enemy, but unexamined structure is.
Routines should be tools for growth, rails for discipline, and containers for focus.
But when you don't regularly break them, they become cages, scripts, and spiritual sedation.
Spiritual sedation is what happens when your soul is awake enough to function, but not awake enough to feel, hear or change.
You're not dead.
You're just numb.
You're a zombie.
It's a scary place to be.
You know, one of the books I'm reading right now, I reference a lot of books in these podcasts.
I know I do.
I read a lot of books and I've read a lot of books over the years.
And sometimes you take a lot of weight from some and sometimes you don't, but I love reading.
I do.
And one of the books I'm reading right now is The Energy Bus by John Gordon.
And I'm enjoying it so far.
And in the book, they say, or he says, John says, They asked a bunch of 95 year olds.
I don't know where they found them.
Florida, I guess.
But anyways, they asked them if they could do it all over again and live their life again.
What would they do differently?
And the three things that almost all of these 95 year olds said were number one.
They would reflect more, enjoy more moments, more sunrises and sunsets, more moments of joy.
Number two, they would take more risks and chances.
Life is too short not to go for it.
And number three, they would have left a legacy, something they would live on after they die.
This is all to avoid a hurried and rushed life.
Because a hurried and rushed life misses moments.
And one of the ways you experience the moments is by creating that margin.
It is the space between our loads and our limits.
Those are five valuable life lessons that I've personally experienced and learned in the last five years.
And...
I hope it connects with you on some level and that you're able to experience these valuable life lessons as well.
So I appreciate you guys.
I love you.
As always, go one more.
