So, hey, guys. Are you frustrated with where you're at right now? Maybe stunted in your progress? Well, if you are, I wanna recommend a place for you to go called Growth Day. Growthday.com/ed.
It is the number one personal development app on the planet. It's got all kinds of high performance techniques in there, courses, accountability,
journaling, live speeches from some of the top influencers in the world, including me. It's an overall environment to change your life. Growthday.com/ed.
It's a much easier thing to start pointing that, ah, you know what? I keep doing that, and it doesn't pay me back. And I'm not getting my compounding asset on that decision or those people placing it. Eliminate those, and by sheer mathematics, we end up with more of what does feed us. I achieved all of the goals that I set in 2016,
became
the ideal version of myself. So I actually rather than guessed at what would happen,
I actually experienced it.
Can we get right into your brain, brother? Let's go. Let's go. So I think one of the cool things about personal development and the journey of self awareness and whatnot
is figuring out your identity. And so in preparing for this, I'm like, some of the things you say I've not heard ever said this way in
self help, personal development, self improvement. And you said
finding your identity, I'd like you to elaborate on this, is more like a process of elimination than it is discovery.
I've never heard that before.
Well,
we all wanna
figure out who we are. As Bob Dylan says, hey. Everyone's their own creation. Just create it. We all wanna know what that is.
The affirmative
way to go forward, how to play offense.
But I found that
that's hard, man.
That's hard. What's much easier?
And I think the reasonable first step to figuring out who we are is let's
define who we're not. Yeah. Let's pick out those people, places, things we do, habits we have that don't pay us back, that don't feed us tomorrow,
that that don't that don't give us green lights in the future, those investments that
don't have ROI,
those ones that we keep waking up tomorrow and a little bit of a debit. Damn it. I got a hangover.
I had the same amount of drinks at that bar as I have somewhere else, but I got a worse hangover. Well, maybe it was the conversation people were hanging out with. Eliminate those,
and by process of elimination, sheer mathematics, you end up with more room for the things that do feed you. So it's a much easier thing to start pointing at, ah, you know what? I keep doing that, and it doesn't pay me back. And I'm not getting my compounding asset on that decision or those people placing it. Eliminate those, and by sheer mathematics, we end up with more of what does feed us and pay us back, who we are. Yeah. And it's okay when you say that. I got interviewed yesterday. That's incredible.
I got interviewed yesterday. Got what are the steps to success? And I'm I said to him, in my life, it's been more eliminating the things that were harming my progress, and it was like uncovering this is the key. You know? It was more like Yeah. That hurt me. This took my energy away. This depleted me. That didn't serve me. Exactly what you just said. He used the term green lights, which, by the way,
that's the title of his book that came out a couple years ago. You should read it. But if you really wanna give your gifts, give yourself a gift, get the audio version
because you get to hear this voice of his, but, like, the impressions and the stories in the book are unbelievable. But because it's gonna lead to what you're doing on April 24, and it's also leads to just really the
really kind of in the foundation of some of your belief systems in your work. What is by definition a green light?
Being cool to your future self.
Making choices so that we can engineer green lights,
and then sometimes they're mystical. We love green lights. They're the left lane of life. Mhmm. A speed limit, window down,
feet top open, cruising. We got our direction and a full tank of gas. Let's roll. We love them. We're in the right line at the supermarket.
We're in the flow, as it's called. Lovely. Right? Things are working out when sometimes we're even conscious of it. We were just in line and on time.
Yes is the answer,
and we're choosing the right things.
Yeah.
But it's investments that we make, choices we make.
I noticed in in in writing the book that a lot of successes I had were
engineered
by habits and choices I made that had consistency.
That's what I call a science to satisfaction. I believe there is a science to satisfaction.
I noticed what I was eating, who I was hanging out with, when I was going to bed, and what I how I was approaching the day.
There were consistencies that led to times in my life where I had more joy and more success, was catching more green lights. Mhmm. I also noticed times where I was in a rut
Mhmm. Through my journals of, oh, you veered from these tried and true habits that you had that were leading to success and giving you more green lights. Oh, let's get back in our lane over here. And sure enough,
more success and green lights I started to create for myself. We
also get
those mystical
green lights where we're just
man, there's no reason, but there's a lot of rhyme. We met the right person,
and damn it, if we'd, you know, left five minutes later or or thirty seconds earlier, we might not have met them. They might not be married with the family we have now or might not have got that job
if we wouldn't have been just right there on that time crossing that person going through that door as they were coming out. So true. Those don't make any sense at the time.
But when you look back,
they connect the dots to right where we are.
And that gets into more of the art of living. So that's why I call it the science of satisfaction leads to the art of living. And what we're gonna do on twenty fourth is try and get under the hood to go from the approach
that I gave a lot of in green lights more into the process and tools
that
each of us can hopefully utilize
in our own lives,
particularly for you or anyone who's or anyone who's gonna tune in and say, oh, I recognize that. Yeah. Oh,
that's an aberration.
Uh, to engineer
more green lights. Find that science so we can get better at the art of living. Man, I cannot wait for this event. We're gonna talk a little bit about this in a minute, you guys. But just remember this. Emliving.com.
You just wanna participate. Trust me. Because you don't get you know, it's really rare. I'm so excited you've done done this and decided to step in even deeper than the book for this reason.
Personal development self help a lot of times is sort of loaded with a lot of theory. Yep. And I love theory, so I've lived off a lot of these theories. But there's something powerful when someone's applied something in their life that gives it credibility that otherwise might not have because you can back it with a story or a fact or an anecdote. And that this industry is sometimes
polluted to some extent with a lot of theoretical stuff that hasn't been proven in someone's real life, and you've done this in your real life. And one of the things you talk about with these green lights
or even just having something happen that you and I are both Christians, but we also believe in energy and vibration and frequency and all that stuff. And I think when you're in that flow, that green light mode, there's a vibration to you. There's an energy to you that these things are sort of drawn your way, and you are in that flow state. And there's something so profound you said in the book about the story where you're living with this producer,
and he basically you tell him, hey. I gotta get I gotta get an agent. I gotta get an agent. So you're kinda, like, chasing the green light. And he said, hey, man. You're not you need it. And you you paint this amazing distinction because I know it's been true in my life between need and want and why need is not a real good space to be in. So if you would if you tell them the story and then the lesson learned from it, it's awesome.
Yeah.
I get out
to Hollywood with a couple thousand bucks in my pocket. I got a movie out, Days Confused, which is really the only resume I have.
It's enough to get me in a few doors, but it's not enough to be a lead pipe cinch. Oh, you got a but I need an agent. I'm in Hollywood. I'm sleeping on this guy's couch, Don Phillips. The guy I met in a bar in Austin who gave me the chance to go audition for days and confused a year over a year earlier. I'm on his couch.
My money's now into the three digits. I'm below a thousand bucks. I'm starting to get a little, like, I've been there a few weeks. I'm like, hey. I need I
need need can you give me an agent meeting? And he snapped at me. I did.
You need it too much.
This this industry, Hollywood smells knee here one and done, buddy. What you need to do is get the hell out of here.
Go with your buddies and go ride motorcycles somewhere. Hell, pick Europe. I don't care. But go somewhere till you quit needing it so much because if Hollywood smells you needing it, you're you're done. You're never in.
And I did. I put on a backpack with my $800, and I went off with my two good buddies, Roy Cochran, Gauza, and we rode motorcycles to Europe. I came back.
I wasn't even thinking about an agent. I was what he called, now you're cool again. Now you're cool. And I was rolling along, and he's about a week later after I returned,
we're sitting there at dinner. He always made filet mignon and then had a scoop of Haagen Dazs ice cream
for for dessert. Oh, he's done he's since moved on. I love talking about him. And he goes, you're ready. And I go, for what?
And he goes, tomorrow morning, we got a meeting. William Morris.
You're gonna go down.
And I was like, oh, cool.
Now five weeks earlier, if he'd said that, I would've been like, okay. Good. Good, man. I got this. Okay. I need I would've gone into the meeting. They would've smelt my need. They would've felt my need. I'd have leaned outside of myself. I would've oversold myself and probably dorked out and used too many words and not have been myself and overleveraged myself, and they'd have been like, I'm not sure this guy's really you know, he's kinda wants it too needs it too much. And instead, I went in,
believed in myself, had a present about me,
you know, didn't oversell myself, but really let them know, no. I actually think you need me
as an agent.
And
that made me a more
valuable asset to them. I got an agent, and then I damn it. If I my first two auditions
in Hollywood
from that agent,
I got the job. Did she really? Yeah.
That's see, don't you think like, I think that's that's a Hollywood story, but it's not. Like, if you're having a hard time finding the relationship that you want, everybody's been on that date with that person that just seems to need it a little too much. Or the salesperson,
like, man, everything's good, your need to sell me is getting in the way of me buying it from you. We can smell the solicit.
Yes. And nobody likes the smell. We all love a good salesman,
but it's like the difference between a bullshit or a liar. A bullshit at least kinda winks at you while they're while they're telling the tale to let you know, hey. Just go with me. And there's something that
adorable about that. Right? Yes. Yes. You see someone that needs and this is this goes for my love story with my wife, Camilla.
Mhmm. When I met her, when I saw her move across the room that night,
I
I had just come to a place spiritually where I was like, you know what, Matthew?
Your dream is to be a father.
You may not
get married,
You may have kids. Now something about the that dream
and my relationship with God, there was a grace of God saying, that's okay if that happens. So for the first time in my life, I was like,
it's not ideal, but I will be okay with that spiritually.
And as soon as that happened, I went from this
looking for her at every damn red light in the produce section,
everybody I met. Maybe. Maybe. I was I was I was hunting. I was needing. I was looking for that mate. Was it near near as attractive? As soon as it came to me, like, you may not meet her. And can you be okay with that with yourself, Matthew, and and spiritually?
Mhmm.
And soon as I was okay with that, I I had a present. I was now able to receive
Yeah. Love from somebody. I was able to see somebody, and they let them see me. And that's when I'm that's when she showed up. That's when she came into my life. When I quit hunting.
When I quit rubbernecking at every red light. I'm looking like, maybe the girl next to me. Maybe that's her. Yep. You You know, I gotta tell you, it's one of those really invisible subtle things that most people don't have any appreciation for is what he's telling you right now, everybody. I'm telling you right now, that need thing is repelling.
There's some type of energy that just doesn't work. I'm curious about you, though, because
you're a pretty good looking man, number one, and you've had some notoriety. I don't know if you're aware of this or not, and a and a little bit of financial success in your life as well. And so it's interesting to me that you were looking like that when you have all the options in the world, number one.
But number two, that it seems to me, brother, that family, your marriage, and your children are such a giant priority from you. And this is something I wanted to ask you. It's really not a lot in the there's parts of this in the book, but there's something I wanted to know about you because a lot of times what we see in our life, we end up modeling.
So I'm reading about you, and I'm like, woah. This dude grew up in a I'm sure he was a loving fan, but is it interesting damn family you grew up in. Yeah. Am I right that your parents were married three times?
Married three times, divorced twice.
Did y'all just hear that right now? So it'd been pretty easy for you to kinda model. I assume that meant there was some chaos happening. Oh, hell yeah. Right?
So, like, share a little bit of that. And then are you, like, conscious of being the antithesis of that? And and because I think that's an important thing in life. Like Yeah. My dad was an alcoholic. My dad got sober. My dad was an alcoholic, though. And there's a lot of chaos in my life. And I remember when I started to have a family, like, want
peace in our home. I want we're gonna talk a little bit in a while about joy because I love that word you used, but I was conscious of sort of trying to create that which didn't exist in my home. Were you?
Good question. Because
I don't
ever remember consciously
thinking I want to push away
from that.
And and remind me to come back to this line because I wanna tell you a story about my mother and why my mother was such a good mother. K. She
had a stepmother
who was horrific.
Not one bit of good mother. My mom didn't know how to be a mom. All she did is goes, I want to be the opposite of that,
and she became a great mom. Now I didn't consciously ever think, oh, I don't wanna do it how mom and dad do. I did say,
I'm not looking for that many tidal waves. I'd like a little bit smoother running stream in my relationship. My mom, to this day, if you're having a civil, cool conversation where all voices are nice and low and everyone's kumbaya and getting along, Fifteen minutes of that, bore my mama. Mama will throw a wrench in the situation just to, hey. Hey. Hey. Spice it up. She's still that way, she's 91.
That
was her and my dad's relationship.
They were physical, divorced twice, married three times. What I took from that was, hey. Guess what? Love one, three to two.
Mhmm. That's what I got from it. And I took from it, I don't need to
get divorced and and and married twice for a loved one. I wanna get I'd to get married once, and let's just let's roll with that. And do my mom and dad
you know, I'm I'm much more
if I have to raise my voice, I immediately have a trigger that goes off my mind that says, MacConnie, what did you not handle for it to get to this point?
Now my mom and dad raised their voice a couple times a week,
and that was just part of the conversation. It was like the stereotype of Italians. It was always big in hands and big
and loud, and that's just how they communicated. And my mom to this day would say, no. That's what I needed to communicate.
There were no regrets. So I
we never had a question if we were loved. I never had a question if my mom loved my dad, my dad loved my mom. I did say, I'm not looking for that rocky of a road. Yeah. Yeah. I'd rather not.
Unfortunately, Camilla was someone who was not looking for that either. And little known fact,
Camilla's parents, my wife now, were married twice,
divorced three times. Come on, man.
They ended up on the divorce side.
What are the odds of that, though? Like,
couples usually don't get married more than one time. Then you then one marriage between the two of you, there's
There's
marriages
and
five divorces.
Same
married couple. That's bananas.
That is literally bananas.
What did you you wanted to say something about your mom being a good mom. You wanted to make sure you made a reference to that. Well, that was it. That she she learned you know, we again, process of elimination, what we started off talking about. Yeah. It's not it's not always what you go to
affirmatively and play offense. It's a lot of times what are we pushing against in defense to get our identity. My mom eliminated,
well,
I don't know how to be a mom, but I know I wanna be the opposite
of that lady who raised me is what she said, who was a non grata mom.
And so
to this day, my mom didn't know what to do. She just said I'm doing the opposite of what how her mom treated her, and that turned out to be being a great mom.
Do you think that you know, I I was reading your stuff, and I'm like because I talk a lot about happiness.
In fact, my podcast is out today is about happiness. This Harvard study, longest study in the history of mankind. Eighty five year study. They took a thousand
privileged kids from Harvard University, a thousand young boys same age from South Boston,
underprivileged families,
and they studied them for eighty five years. A fascinating study about who ended up happier and, you know, who lived longer and whose well-being and what made them happy. Actually, one of the kids in the study was JFK.
No joke. It's an amazing, amazing study. It's worth listening to. However, it's around happiness.
And you make this distinction.
This is why your work it's really unique. You make this distinction between joy
and happiness. Right. And and I have never heard this before in my life. To me, they've sort of been very similar things. But you correlate happiness almost to, like, we get happiness if we done something, whereas joy can be present in any talk about that for a second. This is awesome.
So happiness,
as most of us are
taught
or most of us see it, myself included,
is result oriented.
If then,
If I get this, then I will be
happy.
If
I reach this goal, then I will be
happy. It's almost like a ta da moment.
If I get enlightened in spirit, then I will be
damastha, whatever it is. And over
and over in my own life and from other mentors and wise men and women in the world, there's no ta da moment.
There's no hill that you get to the top of and you go,
ah, finally,
I did it. Because what do you see once you get to the top?
A thousand other hills or another
one that's taller that you're like, oh. So you immediately upgrade your iOS of happiness, and you project it into the future again for another hill to climb. So it's it's a moving target that you that you're constantly chasing. Now I'm all for the chase
and the setting of goals to go reach and the writing of headlines early to tell your story towards that. But
what I've noticed is joy
is more the verb.
Joy is the the the the the the doing of what we're fashioned to do
and enjoying the process of the doing.
And
if we can get out of our mind that
there is a finish line
and and just enjoy the race, chase ourselves in this race and go, the best we can do is get to the end of this life and say look back and go, well, I didn't make it to the top, but how many stairs did I ascend? Or how wide did my stairs reach? Or how deep did my roots grow?
Just
hally it up. Hopefully, we're in the we're in the black. Hopefully, we're in the asset. And if there's life after this, hopefully, the prime mover's going,
well done. But, I mean, that I think that's as good as it gets.
It's that it's that it's it's my problem with extra credit today.
4.2 GPAs and participation trophies.
No. 100, the top is as good as it gets. There's no such thing as a 110%.
Maybe we ought to bring back d's
in school. You know what I mean? It's like You're right. And, like, if we're gonna if we can make
a b plus
in this life, that's damn good.
Or if we can get but we're never gonna make we're never gonna get perfection. We're never gonna reach a 100. We're never gonna reach the top of that staircase,
and that is what we call happiness that we keep bumping forward. But if we can enjoy
the process along the way,
I find
that you don't
reach
lower levels than if you just chased happiness.
You actually reached the same levels or more,
and you had a pretty damn good time on the way.
So true. I gotta tell you, man. That is wisdom. I, uh,
I think I figured out a version of that, but I wasn't I'm 52 next month. I didn't
it took me till my forties.
And I'm like, wow. This finish line keeps freaking moving.
It keeps moving. Like, no. Once I've got this or once I got a jet or I'm living at the beach or I've got this award or this many people know me, and it kept moving.
And I'm like, this is insane.
When I and and to your point, when I started to give myself the gift of I thought, man, if I don't keep moving the finish line, I'm gonna lose my I'm gonna lose my drive. So this thing, even though it hasn't brought me a lot of bliss in my life,
it sure keeps me driven and hungry. Yeah. And if I let go of this finish line mentality,
if when I get their thing,
I'll lose my drive and ambition. And to your point, I couldn't have been more wrong because when I started to give myself the gift of joy in my home, in my life, in my emotions on a daily basis,
I actually found I had more energy
to pursue the achievements that I want in my life. And I wasn't so damn tired every time I finally got to one of these artificial finish lines.
Amen. And,
you know, I hear you on your forties.
Forties were a great customizing decade for me too where I actually learned to trust.
Hey, buddy. If you if if you quit pursuing that actual result,
you're not gonna lose your work ethic. You're not gonna lose your drive. You're not gonna lose your want to. It's just gonna be more natural through the day. It'll actually be more instinctual. And as you say, you don't reach it and go
You gotta get up there, and you're kinda going, oh, is this it? It's it's the old
who what's the best round of golf you play? Say you're 10 handicap, and you and you're and you're you're and you're five
over on 16 tee box.
You're shoot a better round if you don't look at the scorecard. It's so true.
Better round when you're walking off of 18
Yep. Heading towards the next tee box, and someone has to remind you, no, dude. Round's over. Yes. You know, I found it in my career.
When I started
I had a little six year run there and even with Dallas Buyers Club, I was not chasing result.
I was like, f the results, man. I'm my head's down in the process,
and let the results be. I got more results when I quit chasing the result. I didn't lose my drive. I worked as hard. I worked definitely worked smarter.
There's a great example in that Jared Leto who won
academy for best sporting actor in that. Guess when he and I met?
With?
Rap of shooting on the set the last day. That's a wrap.
We were he was the character. I was Ron. He was Rayon. We Yeah. When we we we said hello is Ron or Rayon when we met two weeks before we started filming. We filmed for five weeks. All of a sudden, they reeled rap that night, and he and I looked at the idea and said, okay. See you tomorrow. And the dude was like, no. No. No. That's a film rap. There is no tomorrow. Wow. And I stopped and looked over, and Jared stopped and looked at me, and I walked up, and I went,
McConaughey.
And he goes,
Jared, nice to meet you. Come on. Both just head down in the process.
So
not only so not only are you separating from what the outcome is, you separate from a lot of different things. That is bananas. You so you separate from outcome and kinda, like,
given a crap about what they think also. Like like,
that's a really hard thing for most people in our culture today where everything is supposed to be validated. Did this post get a like? Did it not get a like? Did it you know, this obsession
almost with what people are thinking about I actually think the result obsession is a what people think about me obsession. Like, I work with some PGA guys and their fear of missing a putt. And I'm like, you're not really afraid of missing the putt. You're even afraid of losing the tournament. You're actually afraid of what people are gonna think about the fact that you missed this putt that you're supposed to be making. This obsession with what are they gonna think,
I think also causes us to hyperfocus on the result because we want them to think good things about us.
We
society has us living in the third person.
We're all
running we're we're we're pulling Leon Letts in the Super Bowl. We're we're we're returning the kickoff for a touchdown, looking at the jumbotron
at the 50, wondering if we're gonna make it on sports center best place. And that's just when we get tackled from behind,
when we quit behaving and just doing
the behavior of the process and taking the action that we're doing. I look. When when I'm
doing it, and I think when most people are doing it and in the joy of the process and head down, it's a vacation
because
it's solely subjective.
It is I'm on an island.
It is literally a vacation
to have a singular obsession when you're doing that thing. Now I understand it's a privilege. I have a wife who when I go out to go out the door every day to work, she tells me, I got the kids. Don't look over your shoulder. Go kick ass.
That's a privilege. I get I I understand that. But when we're taking an action, we have to do it or to do it with pleasure and enjoy and stay in the present of the action. It's again, it's the
the joy is if you bump the finish line almost to an unreachable place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you bump it you know, Bo Jackson didn't just run across the goal line. He ran across the goal line and through the tunnel. Tunnel. And, I mean, snipers don't aim at the target. They aim on the other side.
Therefore, you never choke
Yeah. When you're on the goal line, so to speak, because you're like, no. The finish line's way down there. And all of a sudden, someone has to tell you, no. You crossed the goal line. You scored. You're like, oh, I did. I was gonna I thought we had to go another 40 Now
you're on to something right there, brother. That's that whole concept that when they wrapped shooting, you're like, we're wrapped? Right. I'm coming back tomorrow.
Yeah. Yeah. I gotta tell you. I think what it gives you maybe is freedom.
I think there's a free it's a freedom when you're totally immersed in a process and not so concerned about results or outcomes. It creates a freedom.
And then that science, you can actually navigate in an art form when you're in it. I think that allows the art to sort of take over the energy, the whatever it is when you're totally free. So I've been talking for a long time here on the show about the fact that I've been really working on my Spanish, and I just took a trip to Mexico
the last few weeks. I went on a speaking tour down there with John Maxwell, and I got a chance to really see whether or not I've improved. I gotta tell you, thanks to Babbel, my Spanish is pretty darn good. I was able to order in restaurants, communicate with people,
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for details. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp, and I'm grateful that it is. I gotta tell you, you know, I get asked all the time. What's the one thing that most of the guests that have been on this show have in common? I could tell you they're all from different backgrounds. Some of them are tall. Some of them are are short. Some of them are from The US. Some of them are from abroad, different ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, you name it. But I gotta tell you, most of them been to therapy, and I'm a big believer in therapy. I think that whether you've got some real trauma you gotta work through in your life or, you know, you just got a problem you wanna work on right now, maybe just wanna talk out loud about some issues you got or find a better quality of emotions.
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You were saying before we started though, it was four years ago that we did our show. Mhmm. And that at the time when we were doing the show,
there were a lot of theoretical things that you talked about on that show that you believed in that you were implementing into your life. And now you're like, now I have some data to really validate some of the stuff that I believe in. So what are some of those things that like you said on the show and you're like, and now I'm seeing in real life the results from those things. Yeah. You know, I think the most profound one was
really about sort of what I really discovered and talked a lot about in 2018,
we did the show was that life is about this pursuit of the ideal version of yourself. Mhmm. Right? And and this has been something you've talked about forever where it's it's this idea of,
you know, putting out into
the future
what you wanna become and then building a plan and strategy and put in all the energy and effort to go and achieve it. Right? And you will grow into that person over time. And so that pursuit,
we talked a lot about as being really important.
And
and I was talking a lot about it from the business lens and and doing it from a balanced perspective.
Yeah.
What happened for me in in that conversation is it led to what happens when you reach that person. Mhmm. And I made the comment of,
I think, like, when you eventually get to the ideal version of yourself
that you sort of settle in to sort of a rhythm
and you and your pursuit wouldn't quite be the same. And within four years,
I achieved
all of the goals that I set in 2016
and became
the ideal version of myself. So I actually rather than guessed at what would happen
to me when I finally reached the ideal version of myself,
I actually experienced it. And what was so profound for me is
since you grow into
your ideal self,
you're growing along the way and as you learn more and see you begin to see further,
so the ideal version of yourself
is
always off in the distance and it's not about
ever ending the game and that you're there. It's actually
the pleasure and the the actual joy that you get from living is in that pursuit.
The difference was is I learned to control that pursuit and grew in a systematic harmonious
way
and then grew beyond
what my ideal version at that time would become because
I grew into a completely different person by the time I got there. Do you guys all get it now?
See what I'm talking about? Took four minutes and there you get it. So his wife's my dude to talk to. He is
special.
The success that he's had in his life isn't by mistake.
And I'm not just talking about his financial or television success, I'm talking about kind of father he is, kind of friend he is, kind of husband he is. None of this is by mistake.
In my life, um, I have some really brilliant entrepreneur friends, and I have some really brilliant personal development friends.
I don't know anybody with the combination of both like you. I don't. One of the things I'm learning from you, I wanna go right to some of your stuff.
I'm a work lots of hours guy.
I'm a pound it. Let's go grind bingo.
And
you're like, hey, that's not exactly how it works bro.
Hey,
there's a there's a better way.
And so why don't you share with us the better way? What your theory about hours and time and and and also the value of a minute, the value of time. Yeah. It's it it it's funny because, you know, I'm you know, sometimes I'll, you know, I'll watch your stories and it's like, I don't feel like going today,
but I gotta get up and I gotta make it happen.
And I'm like, man, why you don't feel like why why are why are you putting yourself in a position where you don't feel like going today? You know what I mean? Like, that's It's fair.
You know, because, you know, I almost like to look at myself I've evolved into, like, a blend of
sad guru,
Ray Dalio, and and
who's the great the the good doctor
that's tapped into the quantum field are Dispenza. Dispenza. I I'm basically a combination of of Woah. All three of those. Woah. Dalio, Dispenza, and Sadguru.
Right. Like that. That's
the
best combo ever. Look. When I think about what's intersected through me, it's that analytical,
like, data driven side of Dalio. It's the tap into the quantum field of Dispenza,
and it's the, hey, the reality you experience today is based off of every action decision that you have made in the past that is the sad guru sort of karma concept. Right?
And to me,
you know, if you wanna have a truly rich fulfilling life,
you you have to find joy in every part of it. And in order to do that, you have got to to use your time with absolute intention.
And so for me, it's it's everybody knows that. Mhmm. It's the only resource you got. It's the only resource that's limited, man. You're you're locked up. And and for me Is that your impression of me? No. That was, like, a middle middle ground for me. You know what I'm saying? When but it's I was halfway in it. I was halfway in it. You know? I push you towards, like, a wrestler voice. You know what I mean?
But I'm
when I started tracking all of my time Mhmm. My life changed.
Right? Because it's like I I used to design what I called the rhythm of existence. Right? So I I built the rhythm of existence in 2015,
which was essentially the operating system for my life. And so it had all these these principles had all these things that I would do with my time, and then I would create a rhythm of the year, like when all the constants were and when the variables would happen. Your life flows around weekends,
holidays,
birthdays. It has this cadence that you can build
sort of your time around that you can get better and better at predicting how to use your time more efficiently. But boy, I started tracking all of it. I would just, you know, I plan a lot of it and then I would be highly adaptive and adjust it. But the thing that I started doing every day
is just tagging every hour and what did I do.
And I eventually found somebody in 2020
that heard me talk about it and came in and and wrote a script that went into my Google Calendar that pumped that thing out into a dashboard. And
now I could see
how I used my time on a weekly,
monthly,
yearly basis by hour
and by
percentage.
Mhmm. And so that that
began to create this really
interesting clarity
as it related to, like, the time matrix from a percentage standpoint. If you have
eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours in the year and you do something for three sixty five days a year for one hour,
it's 4% of your life. Right? If you,
you know, sleep seven hours, it's like, you know, 28%
of your life. You know, if you work a forty hour a week, it's it's 23% of your life. So I began to see the structure of this time
and
as you begin to understand and design it against how you wanna use it, you begin to question its efficacy.
How high of efficacy are you using with this actual time? And then when you decide to do something, you start thinking about it in second and third order consequences.
Right? Because we'll get excited about an idea that we wanna do
and we just think about the idea of this. We don't think about
the time, energy, and mental capacity that it'll take from, and then the long tail of that. Because once we commit to something, what happens?
We could be trapped by it. Right? And if it ends up taking way more time, like,
it could end up being detrimental
to your overall well-being and your balance in your in your mind. Right? So for me, as I
began to do all that and really look at the time matrix,
I began to put value on on every bit of that time. Yeah. And then I began to assess that time by how did it make me feel qualitatively.
Yep. And that then
began to make me continually adjust how I designed the time. Because what I realized is
what's happening, the world's changing, you're changing at all times. You're evolving, everything around you is evolving. So you can't just make one great schedule
and there you go, you did it. You have a perfect time time management skills. Like, you constantly
need to be adjusting how you use time and the value of that time and and
and how you see you should spend that on an ongoing basis or on an ad hoc basis, like and you have to continually design it better and better over time. And what I did
was grow the skill set Yeah. Of continually
optimizing time and assessing it and redesigning it that allowed me to get more and more efficient Yep. So I could go from,
you know, doing 250
episodes of television, doing, you know, 52 podcasts,
managing, you know you know, if I have core six companies that I have to be actively managing and decided to go along with all my other pursuits
and still do that with only 23%
of my time. You know what I'm saying? Like, that is in where you now have gotten so efficient Mhmm. That you choose efficiency
over anything else that You might giving them an example because I know it. Yeah. Like, for example, like, when I've come to you with different things like, hey, I got this TV show idea, like, well, much of your time is it gonna take? How does it make you feel? Yeah. What's it gonna cost you somewhere else? You know, the what percentage of it is for you? Even when we first started here, even this podcast, I'm like, it's this percentage of my time, it's this percentage of my income. However, it's a big percentage of joy for me. Yep. But in your case, if you don't mind and if you don't, it's okay. But like, even the way you shoot your show. Yeah. One of the things, when you hear this man talk,
he has as big a life as about anybody that I know. I mean, got a show where he shoots a bazillion episodes. He's in production side. He's on the talent side. He's got the dir dick machine. He's got his investments. He's got different business. He's got a core and he's got he's a very very active father, very very active husband.
He's got a public persona to keep up. He's got a social media. He's got a podcast, and that's just like some of it. Yet, I don't know anyone who navigates their life more
seamlessly and beautifully than you do. I I I don't.
But you'd make it it wouldn't seem that way. So give us a practical example for you, like, on the way that you scale time, like, for your show. What you did in the way that you shoot it and the the gaps in between shows. Is that too personal or No. No. No. You share that? Because this because I want people to think, okay, that sounds really good theoretically.
But, I'm trying to get my startup off the ground. My kids are in soccer. You know, I've got the the gym I gotta get to. So what does that look like practically? How do I actually begin to navigate it? Yeah. Look. I I think, you know, like,
it it's every bit of your life has the ability to be designed into time. You know what I mean? And, yes, things are gonna come at you that you need to change, and then and then
everything
you wanna drive to automation.
Right? Everything in my life, I try to drive to automation. And then when I feel friction,
I try I I go to optimize it. And when I feel friction, I apply a system or a solution,
and I just keep doing that over and over and over
to reduce all friction and drive everything to a much higher state of efficiency. Right? And the show itself is this
beautiful example of It is. I used to shoot 60
episodes a year and it would tear the soul out of me. It would tear the soul out of me. I wouldn't I didn't even wanna shoot the show anymore. I didn't wanna shoot the show anymore because it just took too much energy. It would be five weeks straight where I would shoot, like, four days a week and it would just, like I would be at the end of it, I would be so exhausted and be, like, I don't even, like, enjoy doing this. Like, I don't care what it pays me. It's, like, it's too much
of my energy and well-being.
Right? And and
so I began to just look at ways to make it more and more efficient and look at the things that bother me. Because we used to shoot
two a day and then we would, you know, shoot for an hour, do all these pickups in between, then I would stay for an hour and then do voice over on the stage for an hour and then we would break for an hour. Then I would do the whole thing again. I would get there at, like, 09:30, ten, and leave it, like, six. Mhmm. Right? And then that would be a five week stretch of, like, four days a week and just just terrorize me. Then I'd have to drive out to Glendale
to
get prepped for the shows and spend three or four hours going through all the shows.
And I just slowly kept looking at every possible thing that I could optimize. And it started first with how they built the shows and presented them to me. And I got to instead of driving out to
Glendale to look at them, hey, let's start doing it online and send them to me. And then it's like start
presenting to them to me in this structure. Mhmm. And then it got to the point where I stopped even talking to them. They just would send to me, I would review them and it went from three hours round trip to do it to fifteen minutes. This is Rob right here, you guys. This is the stuff. Yeah. And and and to
then actually shooting the show, then it was like, how can we make it more and more efficient? Alright. I'm not I'm just gonna to to fire off a lot more off the cuff stuff that you can edit in instead of doing the voice over. Mhmm. And then I took, you know, shooting the show for an hour,
hour plus, and then do an hour of voice over. I drove that all the way down to about thirty five minutes. Mhmm. Then I said, hey, how do we take if we can we take one clip out of every single one of these?
Because we're only we're shooting with six clips, but we're only editing four and five. And so we took a clip out of everything, drove the time down to twenty nine minutes. Right? And so then it became, okay, You shoot two a day. Let's shoot two a day before lunch.
Then it was like, okay. Let's shoot three a day before lunch. Then it was like, alright. Let's shoot six a day, three before lunch, three after. And then now
I could get six done in a day, and then I could spread out when I shoot to where I only shoot
a couple times a month. Mhmm. Then, boy, now I feel like it's back in my life, it's back in my rhythm, it's no longer taking energy,
it's much more efficient to get prepped for, it's easier to shoot, I the energy's not gone because I'd shoot it so quickly that it that it the energy's good, pop into the next one, but I just kept looking at way after all these different ways that I continued to optimize and optimize and then now going into next year I'm gonna start shooting 336.
Okay? And I'm gonna shoot eight a day and so I was like I don't want to
give up any more time. Where can I save time? We have fifteen minutes between the shows
to change wardrobe.
So if I eliminate
two wardrobe changes Mhmm. And
in between the shows and fifteen minutes at lunch, I get back that hour and now I can shoot
336
in the same forty two days, five hours a day
as I did to shoot the 252
with prep time the night before and drive time there and back, that is 4% of my life. See, you guys, this is
why I want him around me. Let me give you let me interrupt you. Okay? I wanna give you guys like the easy application for me.
This hyper obsession with optimization
of time in oneself.
When you're around somebody,
they become a friend of yours. Some of it rubs off on you. So I don't have the types of show that he has. I don't shoot 350
episodes. I don't have that. But it has caused me to begin to evaluate
where am I just pissing time away? Where is it causing me more stress? Stress? What are the different things I do? I'll give you one small thing that's a massive thing after I met you.
I started looking at just meetings that I take. And I'm like, why are all my meetings one hour long?
Why is it blocked from you think about all of you dudes. You're like, that's right. Why is it from four to 05:00? How do how do I know this thing's gonna last an hour? And because it lasts an hour, because we blocked an hour, we take up the hour.
But perhaps this is a twenty minute meeting.
Right? Perhaps this is a fourteen minute meeting.
Why is everything four to 04:30, 05:30 to six, five why are they all these round number blocks of time that we've all accepted need to be blocks of time? And because that's the block, that's how long the meeting takes. Right? You're nodding when I say this. So I've gotten with my team now and now they know. Let's find out how long this meeting is required to happen, the most efficient
time for the meeting. Not where I'm dismissive of people or don't give them the adequate amount of time or the emotional connection,
But you'll find everybody most meetings don't need to be an hour. They don't. They don't. They don't. They don't need to be a half an hour. Yeah. And so when I started to get those things done, I have a lot of fifteen minute meetings now.
And my whole life opened up because of it. And here's the other thing, I bring better energy to those meetings. So you're so right. Like, when you first start, I'm like, this is really good in theory, dude. Because you got this big old life. But for the beginner, they just gotta go. Yeah. But the truth is, when you're just going, I want you to speak to this. So let's let's now go the guy goes, that's great. I don't have 350 of anything. I don't have 64 of that. Yeah. I got a job. I've got a side hustle. I got a family. I'm trying to get this going so I'm throwing a bunch of time at it.
But my thing I want you to speak to is your lack of valuing
time
is impacting not only your fatigue, your energy, your performance,
but it's impacting every part of you because other people
don't value your time or you when you don't.
And when you begin to take control of your time, even as a beginner, my belief is other people value you more. Do you agree with that? Yeah. And and look, I think the other thing is you
you end up creating sort of your system that also allows you to be available
a lot more than you should be. Good point. You know what I mean? And then people rely on that availability to then have a more scattered erratic schedule that you've gotta be fit into and they pull the energy from you because you're you're essentially
operating that way
and that scatteredness becomes how the people operate around you. Right? Which Really good. Almost never allows you to get there. Right? And to me Oh, yeah. You're right. When you start thinking about your whole life,
forget about just time as
because time's just one sort of piece of what you need to have high energy and have a great life. And so it's if if you don't design time to meditate,
to free think, to get to the gym, to to do all these things that you know you need to do that make you the better version of you and make you feel more balanced in your mind that allows you to have better energy and more clarity at
at that meeting and you just continually
go from thing to thing to thing because, oh, I have to go from thing to thing to thing, then you are never gonna have
the time to do the things that you wanna do because you're do too busy doing the things you have to do on an ongoing basis as a way of life.
Man. You are the machine and you design the machine to go from thing to thing to thing to thing to you're exhausted,
then you complain, then you overcorrect
and try to get rid of all these things to get it back when in fact it is the way that you have built your system that has bound you to this this habitual way of not having time rather than designing your whole system around using time the right way. I think it's the most breakthrough stuff anyone's talking about right now,
particularly designed for this time. I really I I mean it. I I I think it speaks to everybody at every stage, no matter if they have a big huge life and all the things you have going or I have going or they're beginning to build their dream life. If you don't get intentional about this, that's the micro. But but let me say this to that. Yeah. Right? Everybody's got a big life. Mhmm. Because everybody I have the same
time, energy, and capacity as you. Yeah. Like, anyone listening to this, we all are in the same construct of time. Yeah. We all we all yes, our energy may vary, but we all have control to take care of ourselves,
to do more things that we to begin to evolve our life in a way to where we have higher energy,
but we all have a limit. A human physical and mental capacity, and if we go over it,
we collapse in. Gosh. Even me. Right? Like, I I have completely organized perfectly designed designed time, beautiful rhythm, clear vision and goals, and executing everything within this beautiful matrix. I'm highly optimized.
Why am I overwhelmed?
Why
am I overwhelmed? Because
I went past capacity.
Right? And that's sort of the second edge is understanding
your physical and mental capacity and being able to manage that inside
the way that you design your time.
Because when you become overwhelmed,
your decisions,
like like,
degenerate
and then you ultimately start over correcting. By the way, how brilliant you are about that? I make the worst decisions when I'm fatigued and typically what I'm doing when I'm fatigued is the over correction, then I'm like over scheduling. Then once my energy comes back, I look at a day or a week and I'm like, oh my gosh. What was I thinking when I agreed to all of this stuff?
And a lot of it isn't productive stuff. And then I don't have time for the things that would move the needle in my fitness, in my mental health, in my financial life. Yeah. And all of a sudden, lots of stuff is in a schedule that doesn't necessarily move the needle in my life in the areas that I want to move the needle to move to. Speaking of life and needle moving,
I don't know if you texted me this or you posted it, so it probably doesn't matter. But that's the micro stuff. The macro
is you're so obsessed with this that you look at like duration of time
on the planet. Mhmm. And it was something about you just realized you read something on your you're laughing but you did you text me this or did you post it? I just posted that I wanted to live one million hours. That's exactly right. Yeah. So you read something that convinced you that you're gonna that you could live to a particular age and you deduced how many hours there so I actually think this is brilliant. Yeah. Because this type of focus
causes us to live with intention and attention and the lack of I think all the time. Do you know when I pray at night? You're gonna laugh at this.
Never said this out loud, not even to my wife. I'm gonna tell you and about
70,000,000,000 people right now.
When I pray at night, one of my last prayers is that I'm gonna live to 128 years old. Okay?
And I really believe now, again, someone will listen to this in three years. Wow. It's so sad he passed away. But but but I I I have that prayer and that intention and I've repeated it over and over and over and over again because I believe if I don't pick a number, if I don't pick a time, if I don't set a goal, if I don't, then it'll I'll be up to the whims of whatever else comes my way.
And I really believe that you create a space when you set something like that that didn't exist before you did it, and then you find the behaviors, the people, the things, the thoughts, the technology, the nutrition to fill it up. What I didn't do was calculate the amount of hours that it gives me Yep. To then optimize that time. So speak to that whole thing. Yeah. And and look, I'm
you know, it makes it really makes me happy. That means we're gonna we're literally
we're gonna be friends deep into our hundreds. I love it. We're gonna be having these conversations about, well, what do you think? You're thinking you're going to one twenty eight? Think you're gonna I don't know. I'm pushing. I'm feeling pretty good right now.
But I think about it more from a this is what I'm big on. This is your existence.
Right? And and this is this is the framework of the your the spirit the human experience.
Right? You only
truly
can judge anything. Your energy, how well you're using time,
everything that's happened in your past, how you actually feel in the present moment. True. You can only do it in the present moment and you only experience it in your mind. Mhmm. Right? And then you have to make a decision of, like, I want to change,
um, all of these things, so am I I'm going to create a better future experience. That is the human experience and I realized that it that I wanted to make it last to 112.
I initially wanted to live to 104
and be shot in a rocket into space and explore the universe without the
light pollution from planet Earth for the last year before I died and then floated out into the cosmos. Now
that was before I had a wife and kids. And so it's like now the audacity of don't worry about me and then like I'm up there for like twenty four more years like
you know, so
that changed and then when I read the book Ikigai,
right, the Japanese long life and happiness book,
they talked about super centurions.
And I'm like, oh. Like that. Like that brand. I wanna be a super centurion. So then I made it at
then I made it that I would wanna live to a 112. And then as I started getting deeper into, okay, how many days is that? Alright. Okay. That's how many days I have. This is how many days that I've done so far. Then when I was going going through my time matrix and we're looking at all these different things where I spend time of like, wow. I spend
nearly
as much time
shooting a television show
as I will picking up my kids and taking them to school for the year. Right? And and to me,
as I just started looking at these hours and then where am I where am I losing a lot of time? On the couch watching Netflix. You know what I mean? It's it's me and the wife on there watching our favorite show, but boy, when you start looking at what that is, man, you're letting you're letting the hard eight to 9% go on the couch, you know what I mean? Like it's it's cold hard reality but as I looked at that,
you know, I'm I then was like, you know,
what is like,
what's a round number of time? And like, wow. 1,000,000 is one hundred and fourteen years and fifty four days. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna experience
a million hours on this Earth. Right? And so, of course, a lot of people push back on, like, oh, it's good. Yeah. You're like a vegetable. What are you gonna do? And and it's like like, I didn't even contemplate that. And and it's because
you live in two different mindsets. There's I live in a mindset that I just keep getting healthier and happier, more balanced,
lighter,
life is more effortless,
my system that is my entire body is more efficient.
And I can show you in blood work, I can show you in net worth, I can show you in time, and I can show you in qualitative data
that I have collected about how I feel about my life, work, and health that I am
in
healthier, better physical condition,
wealthier, more balanced,
and happier
in the data, which only proves to me there's no reason why you can't keep getting healthier, happier, and wealthier
for the for the remainder of your life. That's And then That's a I'll just fall right off a cliff. You
know what I mean? Whatever it ends up ending. But again, what's it go back to? I wanna live with with absolute intention
and I want to experience every moment
that I get into and feel the vividness and the richness and the beauty that is the human experience and life.