Stop Chasing Other People's Dreams and Find Your Own Happiness w/ Ernest Wood

https://mindforcepodcast.buzzsprout.com

Chapters

• 0:23 Meet Your Host and Guest
• 2:12 Redefining Success Beyond Money
• 4:35 Happiness: Internal vs. External
• 10:52 The Power of Accountability
• 11:37 Breathing: The Gateway to Balance
• 19:15 Finding Your Personal Definition of Joy
• 27:34 Morning Routines and Non-Negotiables
• 38:36 Setting Boundaries for Better Balance
• 45:50 Bringing It All Together

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:23

Welcome everyone. I'm Nate Shearer, your host, and this is Mindforce, a podcast that's all about diving into love, life and learning. Here, your mind matters. Today, we'll be talking about happiness, accountability and balance. Let's start with a quick introduction. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you, what do you do and what brings you here today?

Speaker 2: 0:45

yourself. Who are you, what do you do and what brings you here today? My name is Ernest Wood and I coach men. I say now is like everybody has their own definition of happiness or legacy and I help men to find theirs, be able to look in the mirror and go, hey, I like that freaking guy. I think in our world that a lot of people we kind of lose ourself. We get wrapped up in trying to chase everybody else's dreams of what we should be doing. And yeah, that's where I got. I got into a spot where I didn't really like myself. I didn't like the guy I saw in the mirror.

Speaker 2: 1:18

I went on a long journey, took me a lot of work and a lot of, I'll say, falls on the face. I wrote a book it's called Asshole to Awesome A Journey to Joy and Happiness, and when I finally finished the book, I started chatting with other people and I was finding that a lot of people had that same issue. They just couldn't figure out how to get fixed. Like you know, we all read the self-help books and and we it's almost like going on a diet, right, so many people go on a diet, yet in two months there they weigh five pounds more than they were before they started the diet and, uh, I find that, like self-help was almost the same thing. So that's what I do now.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Okay, perfect. And just to set the scene, where in the world are you calling from? San Diego, california, nice, that's a good one. Right there, that's a new one. We've been all over the place, but San Diego, that's a new one. One question I got just right off the bat how do you define success? I feel like that's such an interesting thing. People want to get wrapped up in money and cars and all the things. Read through some stuff on your website about how you were chasing money. You know how did you used to define success and how do you currently define success?

Speaker 2: 2:33

That is a great question and I think many almost every man kind of goes through these different seasons, or pretty much everybody goes through different seasons. When we were young I used to know everything was just about money, like I just wanted as much money as I could so I could have the best car that I could possibly have, maybe take, you know, some vacations, play golf, anywhere. It was all like to me it was all just because that's kind of what I saw on movies or the internet or whatever right, and I always had the want to, you know, succeed. But it was then I got caught in the rat race, right, because you get, you find a job and it pays you the right amount of money, pays you just enough to keep you there while you do just enough to work to stay there, kind of deal.

Speaker 2: 3:24

And now, like after finally figuring out who I was, it's in like my definition of legacy success is just being it's finding that happiness and I find it it's like a freedom, because when you can actually enjoy what you're doing and you're giving back to people and maybe you can affect somebody's life a little in a positive way. That's my idea of success now, and doing an act of kindness every day. That's one of my big things that I always try to do. I'm not 100% on it, but that is my definition of success now, not 100% on it.

Speaker 1: 4:05

But that is my definition of success. Now, yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, we had a person on the show. She went over kindness, that was her whole thing and she said the same thing. I'm not perfect, you know. When I'm out in the car and someone cuts me off, I get frustrated, just like everyone else. But thinking about it and having that intentionality behind it to want to take care of others and open the door, and things like that, I think just thinking about it is a step in the right direction, even if you don't get to it every day, just thinking about it. Well, let's move into the warmup. First question I have for you what does happiness mean to you and how has your definition evolved over time? So I guess this is very similar to success, but do you have any differences on happiness?

Speaker 2: 4:42

No, it's pretty much the same. I mean happiness. Like I said before, I was always thought I'll be happy when I get more, I'll be happy when this happens or happy when that happens, but until you're happy with who you are and what you are inside, you're never going to ever, in my opinion, you're never going to truly be happy. You're always going to be chasing something that's not internal to you. Like I have a my little saying is you gotta be, you gotta learn to be happy with who you are without being satisfied where you're at? Because if you're, if you get the, the difference with that is's like if you get satisfied, you get stagnant, right, if we're not constantly growing, we're falling behind and that's just the way of the world. So yeah, finding that happiness, and I just think it's just an internal thing where you know you can look in the mirror and go, hey, I like that dude. He's doing what he can. He's not perfect, he knows he's not perfect, but he's a pretty freaking good dude and he's doing the best he can.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Yeah, I think I got to see if you can expand a little bit, because the first thing I thought of is goals right, you want to accomplish things, you want to set things down the road. So how do you distinguish between goals and that feeling of I'll be happy when you do want goals? Right, but how do you balance that?

Speaker 2: 6:14

I think this is one of the biggest things I ever learned was being like. Even on my book it's titled asshole, right. Awesome is the far away thing that I know. I'm never going to be like 100% awesome. It's kind of like my perfection, right. But if I'm always making small steps to be a little more awesome every day, then that's that goal thing. Right. I have a ton of goals and that's why I say never be satisfied Like you got to be again happy where you're at. That goal thing. Right, I have the ton of goals and that's why I say never be satisfied Like you. You gotta be again happy where you're at. Like you have to find that internal happiness because when you're happy and you know like the process that you're trying, you know where you're headed and you're enjoying that process, when bad crap comes up which is going to come up, we all know that there's never. You're, you're never going to go down a smooth, freaking road, right, but when you can enjoy the process and then when those little obstacles, or even big obstacles, obstacles come up, you just handle them, you just you move around them, you figure out a way to over around, even dig a tunnel to get underneath it Before, when I wasn't like myself.

Speaker 2: 7:31

Anytime an obstacle came up, I was a whiny little crybaby man. I would whine and bitch and moan, you know, at the job and anywhere. I figured in my childhood. You know we all have our stories. My childhood wasn't the easiest so I always figured man, I went through excuse my term, but I went through enough stuff. Man, like I don't need any more obstacles. But now that, like, I found that internal thing obstacles are fine, man, it's like obstacles are the way. I think there's even a book titled that. Right, there is by Ryan Holiday.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Yeah, he's awesome.

Speaker 2: 8:05

I've read a lot of his stuff, uh, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:08

So like now, I almost look forward to some of the obstacles because it I know I'm moving in the right direction yeah, I think there's like a difference between the emotion of happiness and like contentment or joy, or maybe using a synonym for the same word, because I think happiness is more of the emotion and people want to feel it all the time, but you're not going to feel it all the time. It's same with motivation you're not going to feel it all the time, but content or you know whatever word you'd like to put in there, and so I think a lot of times the emotion gets confused with the thing that should go on all the time. It's like I feel good all the time. We're not saying you're going to feel good all the time. Like you said, you know Newton's law or not? Newton? Who's the guy that messes things up all the time?

Speaker 2: 8:50

Murphy's law.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Murphy's law. There we go. Murphy is there to just mess stuff up, so we know stuff's going to get messed up, but if you're being content and enjoy, I feel like I prefer the term joy, because joy can't really be taken necessarily Like you're content, you're good with family, everything feels good. You're going to go through struggles but you can still have joy, Happiness. I feel like kind of comes and go. It feels like more like motivation to me, but that's a great reminder. Next question I had for you was on accountability. Trying to move through some of these pillars you got, Can you think of a moment when accountability played a major role in your personal growth?

Speaker 2: 9:28

man, accountability was a super hard one, because I was kind of that guy who, just, I love to blame everybody else for all my crap. You know, if the job wasn't going well, oh that dude screwed up more than I screwed up. You know, even when I was, you know, driving, I had horrible road rage and it was always well, it was that guy's fault or that girl's fault. You know, like they can't drive.

Speaker 2: 10:02

What I learned was just taking the only thing that you are in control of in your entire life is your thoughts and how you respond to stuff. And I took a hundred percent accountability in it. And now, like, when I make a mistake, I right away, I freaking, just apologize or whatever. If I there's somebody to apologize to and if I, just I just yeah, a hundred percent, like it, my, it's my reason, I, I'm the reason, I'm there, right. Even in a, even in a traffic jam, I try to say I'm the reason I'm there, right, it's, you know, like it's not everybody else's fault there and it's just. And when you can actually just take accountability for everything in your life, knowing that the only thing you can truly control is your thoughts and how you respond to something, it just makes it so much easier, man, and then you don't, you're not in that victim and that blame mentality.

Speaker 1: 10:59

Yeah, the victim mindset is is rough. One of my favorite guys, kerwin Ray Ray. He actually passed away, I think late last year, but uh, he said the sooner you take a hundred percent of the responsibilities for everything that's happened in your life is your fault, the better things will get. Everything. I mean you could try to go down the road of the family and whatnot. But all the choices you've made through, however many years of your life, those are all your fault, you know, regardless of the cards you were dealt. So so that's a. It's a really good one. And the last one I have in the warmup is what's one small habit that's changed the way you maintain balance in your life?

Speaker 2: 11:32

I want to say the small habit is I learned about breathing. Breathing to me is it goes with sleep, but breathing is my fundamental thing during the day. I 100% make sure that I nose breathe as much as humanly possible. There's a saying that you should breathe through your mouth as often as you eat through your nose Pretty much never, right? And if you look around our world today, man, they say like 60 to 70 percent of people mouth breathe in it. And when I learned to nose breathe exclusively, even during my workouts I like and I try to work out pretty hard I try to only nose breathe.

Speaker 2: 12:16

There's a story about the Spartans when they train their kids. You know, physically what they did was take a mouthful of water. They had to do their 10K run and come back with that same amount of water. They were not allowed to. You know, obviously, if you're holding water in your mouth, they're not breathing through it. I have found that it is huge. I mean, it helps with mental clarity and it really makes my days go a lot better because anytime I start getting stressed out, I do my mindful breathing. It brings down my anxiety levels and I actually cured my depression. Depression ran in my family forever. My uncle killed himself. My grandma basically slept on the couch and withered away. Until you know, my mom had issues with it, my brother had issues with it. I had days where I felt like this big, nasty black cloud was on my head, but since I've learned how to breathe, man, I haven't had one day of depression. I still feel like crap some days, but not depression.

Speaker 1: 13:22

Yeah, that's different, right? Yeah, I lost my grandma to mental health, so that's why one of the reasons I kicked off the show. But I wanted to ask what does that look like? Can you walk us through? Do you close your eyes? Are you sitting a certain way Like what does that? Do you know if someone has never done any deep breathing or anything like that? You know? Can you walk us through, kind of what those moments look like when someone sets like the easiest one that, like I do I don't even know.

Speaker 2: 13:47

Probably at least I try to do it at least once an hour or, yeah, about once an hour. This is besides meditation and the wim hof breathing. But you sit up like super tall, kind of like your superman pose, uh, chin down just a little bit a deep in through the nose and it's going to be about a six to seven second through the nose and you're down into the belly right, hold for like one second and then out through the nose and you do that and it's going to be out through the nose slightly longer than you did in through the nose. So like, say, if you do a six second in, do a seven second out Something you know really close you don't have to be put your timer on or anything but doing that you're connected to your parasympathetic nervous system and it's almost like flipping a switch, man, I mean, when you're getting worked up and you just do two of those little breaths. It's like I had to give you a story.

Speaker 2: 14:42

My grandson was having it like almost an anxiety attack. I mean, he couldn't catch his breath. He's just like shaking his stuff. And I talked to him and I'm like do the nose, let's go through the nose. And we worked, you know, a couple of times. We got him like five to six seconds and then all of a sudden, two breaths, he was done, he was breathing, he was cool, very able to go. Done, he was breathing, he was cool, very able to go. I'm telling you, man, and that's you know, they say the diaphragm is the least used muscle in the entire body because we all forget to, you know, use it while we're breathing. You see people breathing, there goes, you know, and there's, there's all kinds of bats like people over breathe nowadays. Over breathing doesn't allow for that carbon dioxide buildup which pushes the oxygen into the stream. That's one of the major bad things about mouth breathing also. But yeah, just that little reset man, six to seven seconds in, seven to eight out, with a one second hold only using the nose, using the diaphragm. It's beautiful.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Good stuff. Well, before we get into your three main pillars, I wanted to see if you had a question for me no, not yet, man.

Speaker 2: 15:50

I think you. You throw some great stuff right in the middle there. You add on some awesome things yeah, I got a curiosity.

Speaker 1: 15:58

It was born into me, so I gotta know a little bit more. So your first main pillar is happiness. How many people chase happiness but struggle to find it? What do you think are the key ingredients to lasting happiness, or joy, as I like to say?

Speaker 2: 16:12

And that's why I like to say that everybody has their own definition of it, because I agree with you. I'm going to just switch around real quick. But I use the same thing with nice and kindness, right, because to me I hate that word. Nice it's like if you look it up, it's something like ignorant person or whatever. Like that's a true definition or where it stemmed from. And if you watch how the world acts, right, the nice people usually get taken advantage of. They have no boundaries and kind, and. But if you're kind, you know your boundaries and you're also helping. And that's where, like, I use happiness and you can use joy or content in that same way. So maybe I might have to move it around from happiness because you know, like you started making my brain think about it, but, uh, I have to bring that question back around because I just oh you're good.

Speaker 1: 17:04

What do you think are the key ingredients to lasting happiness? You said you know it works. For a couple months, you know, and then you're back on the diet. You're five pounds up. What makes it stick?

Speaker 2: 17:15

What I found that made it stick was actually internalizing it, right? So many people and this was me is you're always chasing the definition of like somebody else's definition of it, right? You, like a lot of us, do. You know our neighbor got a new car, so if I get a new car I'm going to be happy too, right, and we're trying to always impress the person that. So rats man, like we, you see it all the time keeping up with the Joneses, right? But once you learn happiness and like you're happy with who you are, it just lasts like it's.

Speaker 2: 17:51

It's not something to that you have to chase like you're going to have. Because I always say this analogy it's like having you know your GPS on your phone If your current location isn't on, it's not going to take you to where you want to go. And that's where so many of us don't know where we're even starting from. And I think that's the hard spot with like self-improvement also right, because we just don't know where we're at. Like we have so many little triggers, little things that twist us up, little knots inside our backpack full of freaking rocks that we just keep adding to. And that's where that whole knowing who you are, knowing what makes you tick, knowing what causes your triggers, and get eliminating those and, uh, getting rid of some of those knots inside.

Speaker 2: 18:51

And breathing is gonna. You know, learning meditation, it helps get rid of those knots, man, letting that, I mean, most people can't sit in a room by their self for two minutes without having some kind of outside stimulation going on. Yeah, I got to grab that phone Right To me, man. I love like I could sit here in my little room and breathe for hours on it and it just it opens everything up. And then all of a sudden, when I'm done doing it, man, I feel like a freaking genius because my brain's working right. I'm like, oh crap, all this.

Speaker 1: 19:25

Yeah, so, yeah, do you have any exercises or anything for someone that they're not sure what their like focal point is in life? Is there a way to like work through it with words or identifying what's important to you?

Speaker 2: 19:40

what I always have people do is you're going to do it in about and it's going to take about three days. So one day you're going to do it in about and it's going to take about three days. So one day you're going to set your clock for five minutes and just brainstorm, like write happy in the middle or whatever your word is right, write it in the middle, and just continually write for five minutes whatever pops in your mind. I mean, even some of the crap might not even fit in there, right, but whatever fits. You know, like whatever you think, just write, write, write, write and at the end of it kind of see what comes up, and then kind of circle or put it into an order and then leave it alone. And then the next day you come back and you're going to do it again for five minutes, same word, just brainstorm as much crap. Some of that stuff's not going to be exactly the same and some of it's going to be different. And then the third day, same thing. Or the second day you're still going to find the little common themes, right. Third day you do the same thing. But now you look at all the things and a lot of times you're going to have this commonality and then you can grab those right and like, hey, maybe maybe you find gardening like every time you think of happiness, gardening pops up right. So now, now you start a little garden, you start something that that's going to trigger that, whatever that internal thing is.

Speaker 2: 21:01

Or maybe you figured out, when you put happiness maybe a bunch of triggers started popping up, like every time, like I've had a couple people do that is, they did this exercise, but what they found was all the crap that didn't make them happy. So what we did was they found all this crap that didn't make them happy and we just started like trying to eliminate them. Right, like you know, at the end of the day, they would sit on the couch and drink a beer, so, and they, so what we do, we got rid of the beer for you know, the one beer, and we had them do a walk or do some push-ups instead, and then all of a sudden, like how his mindset set mindset shifted was he wasn't looking at the stuff that didn't make him happy. Now he started looking at the stuff that didn't make him happy. Now he started looking at the stuff that made him happy, because so many people don't even ever take that time to think, hey, what actually makes me happier, makes me enjoy life? Right, we're always thinking about I got to do this or I can't do this, or right.

Speaker 2: 22:00

And then adding gratitude to it is three things every single morning, write something that you're grateful for. One about you, one about, like your spouse or, you know, a partner, whatever. And then one about the world. And that's proven, and I think it's four or five weeks. Just doing that every day increases your happiness. 25%, that's like. There's a proven study on that. Wow, you just take that to the bank, that's guaranteed 25%, that's like there's a proven study on that.

Speaker 1: 22:25

Wow, you just take that to the bank, that's guaranteed 25%. We like that, that's good stuff. It's pretty guaranteed.

Speaker 2: 22:31

You still got to work on your brain, though.

Speaker 1: 22:34

I love the actionable tips and tricks. I feel like a lot of self-help, it's like hypothetical and things like that. So I love the things. You just do it and it'll work out. We actually did one at work.

Speaker 1: 22:44

Our big boss, brigadier General Flowers, he lives in DC, he did a values exercise and it was pretty, pretty difficult.

Speaker 1: 22:54

It seemed like it was going to be very simple and very easy and it's funny, the simple things even turned out to be kind of difficult because it had a page full of words and you circled 15 words and you're like, okay, I really like these family friends, you know the things that jump out at.

Speaker 1: 23:12

You're like, okay, but then you had to go and make the 15 into 10. So then you're giving away five of those and then you start to feel a little weird and then you got to take the 10 down to five and so then you're reducing again and feeling like that feeling of you know, giving the ones away or you know the rack and stack of that priority in your head was kind of difficult. You're like, oh cool, the 15 was easy, but when you get down to five, like what actually are they? Are you able to, you know, give up some of these things, and that's where it was a little difficult to get down to five. I did it a couple of times just to see if it was kind of the same. But you know it lined up. I think three or four out of the five are all the same, so it's a good exercise.

Speaker 1: 23:44

It seems good on both sides. I like the idea of thinking the things that you don't need anymore, Because I feel like a lot of times those are just there by default. I feel like that person was probably grabbing the beer at night, you know, not thinking anything of it. Do I really need it? Probably not. You know, it's not helping one way or another, just one. It's not really doing much of anything, but I could be doing something more productive breathing, walking, doing something else. I think a lot of times we think we don't have enough time, we don't prioritize. Well, I know like I've needed to do things and I feel like I don't have time, but somehow everything seems to get done if I sit down and actually prioritize. So it's prioritizing, not the amount of time. I wanted to ask about difficult times, so I feel like it's pretty easy. You had mentioned the car or work's going well. You're making, you know, decent money. You know how do you get people through and cultivate that happiness during the difficult times.

Speaker 2: 24:39

Difficult. Like I said, man, difficult times are those things that I used to hate them. It was just like and I always blamed, I always blamed somebody else for my difficult times. And that I think it comes back to taking accountability, man, and knowing that you know that difficult time is probably there because something that you did in the past right, or or a skill that you haven't learned yet. And then when you take accountability or responsibility for everything that's in your life, it's easier to you know, not get upset by them. And then also knowing that we're not freaking perfect, man. You're not perfect, I'm not perfect. None of us are ever perfect, ever perfect. There's gonna be a bunch of crappy days.

Speaker 2: 25:26

Even you remember that guy. What was his name? Orton. He was a workout guy like fabulous shape, tokyo, yeah, yeah, like he did an interview and he's like probably one of the most in shape people in the world. And they were like okay, you do, you do. You know you're constantly exercising, so you must feel great every single day. And he was like, oh hell, no, he was like dude, 75 percent of the time. I don't feel like doing this crap Right, even that guy. And he's like one of the most positive people that I ever seen and he still said he didn't feel like working out 75% of the time.

Speaker 2: 26:03

The difference between succeeding and not succeeding is when you don't feel like doing it, you still push yourself to get the crap done. Like you said earlier, have your little priorities in check and check off those little. Whatever the priority is of that day, and some days you're going to feel fantastic and those things are just going to check off with ease. Other days, every single one of them, is going to be a grind. But it's all about like knowing your why, knowing where you're headed, what your big goal is, enjoying the process, knowing that if you just keep plugging away at the process, that you're going to get to where you want to go and that's, that's how I make it through those. Those crappy days. Believe me, I've been having a few of them myself lately and I've been like holy crap, man. I just go back to writing in my journal doing the process, doing the gratitude. You just gotta gotta, you gotta enjoy that process, man.

Speaker 1: 27:04

I think words are important too. I always try to draw on a piece of paper if I'm not feeling it. I try to write the word consistency over the word motivation, because consistency wins every time. Motivation, it comes and goes, but consistency. I work out from 6 to 7 every morning. I don't like getting up at 5. And you know getting some food in and doing all those things. But I know if I get to three or four o'clock in the afternoon after I'm done with work, I'm definitely not going to want to do it. So get it in early, not by choice, but just to have that consistency.

Speaker 1: 27:36

And another person I had on the show, joe Rodonis. He works for Tonal, the workout mirror. I love it. One of the things I love that he talks about is non-negotiable. That's like one of my favorite things that he says like it just helps solidify, even though it's just words. It's like words matter and words mean something. So non-negotiable, like I don't even have to think there's no thinking that thing is going to happen. And so he talks about like his workout routine is non-negotiable If he on monday, wednesday, friday, like it's going to happen monday, wednesday, friday, if he feels like it doesn't feel like it. But hearing like that mantra in the back of your head non-negotiable it's like I want to start to go down this path and have my mind start to work. But once I hear it non-negotiable, that's all it means. That's it like there's nothing to think about.

Speaker 2: 28:19

I'm going so yeah I was gonna say I just worked out with joe this morning. I don't know he's awesome, uh, but a good way of like just to go along. Exactly what you're saying. Non-negotiable is I set up my days or my morning is like a big old algorithm, right, if, if I do this and then I do this and the more things that you can set up like that, because discipline is almost like a little water bottle, right, you have this much during the day and if you spend it all in the morning trying to just get out of bed by the end of the day, you're going to have a really low level of discipline. Um, I think, did we lose you? Did I lose you? Were you back? There it goes.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Sorry about that, man, you're good, you're good. Hopefully I didn't cut you off. Next question Do you believe happiness is a choice or something that comes naturally?

Speaker 2: 29:15

No happiness is definitely a choice man. It does not come naturally. No-transcript. I think happiness is definitely something that you have to work at a little bit, but once you find it, it makes it a little easier. I don't know where I got cut off, because I just wanted to add to the algorithm thing Did you hear yeah?

Speaker 2: 29:40

absolutely, because the algorithm thing and like it gives me my best chance of having the best day possible. Like, my algorithm in the morning is if I wake up, I drink eight ounces of water with my pinch of Celtic sea salt and then I do my breathing. If I do my breathing, I do my workout and I just everything's piled like that Right. And what I have found is that helps with my happiness too, because when I just when I know what's coming and what's going and I don't have any stress in the morning, man, this thing is acting up. Is it mine or yours, you think?

Speaker 1: 30:16

I don't know. It seems fine and every time you seem to say algorithm it gets mad. It must be AI or something.

Speaker 2: 30:21

It must be, it's like oh hell.

Speaker 1: 30:23

no, did you make it all the way through? Huh, did you make it all the way through the algorithm?

Speaker 2: 30:28

or did it not?

Speaker 2: 30:28

record yeah, it got enough of it, you understand. I mean, we'll get the picture, but what I was trying to say is, if you have a good morning routine and a night routine, it gives you the best chance of having a good day, right? Because most people, a lot of people, wake up in the morning. They don't know what they're going to do, so they start running around and all of a sudden they find theirself going to work 10 to 15 minutes running behind and they get stuck in the traffic. But having that nice little morning routine of some breathing, some movement, some exercise, some stretching gets everything flowing. So I'll just leave it there with that, since I keep breaking up.

Speaker 1: 31:06

Yeah, I mean that's a really good reminder. I think it's the simple things we want it to be, these large things. And I know I'd heard to like put out my workout clothes the night before, and for the longest time I think I went years and I didn't do that. I just got moved to the UK. So I've been out here for about seven months and, like I said, been on that six to seven o'clock workout routine and, geez, putting out your clothes is so good. I should have done that such a long time ago.

Speaker 1: 31:30

I got my shoes out, I put everything out. It literally takes me a probably one, one whole minute to put my stuff out and it is so much easier to just pop out of bed and get to the clothes. They're all piled there, they're nice and ready to go, and like I don't think about it because I want to say, oh well, I'm cold, or I don't want to grab my shoes, or well, I don't know if I'm going to have socks or the socks I like or some crazy thing, because the mind is just so powerful, but when it's there, like that one minute just makes the whole morning so much better. So absolutely a great reminder. Your next pillar is accountability. So how do you think accountability contributes to personal and professional success?

Speaker 2: 32:11

Yeah, man, using that accountability you're just because everything that comes in your life is what you're bringing into it Again. I think that the only thing we have control of is our thoughts and our response, and once you're able to do that with life and work, now you're not going to be complaining about. You know Johnny over there at the water cooler, you know wasting time because you can't control what he's going to do. All you can control is your stuff, your thing. You can be the best employee, best version of yourself, and that's where that accountability comes in. It's just you can't control anybody else's stuff, man.

Speaker 1: 32:52

And how do you do that Like, how do you, how do people create a mindset where they're starting to embrace that responsibility rather than blame everywhere else? How does that shift? Like it sounds great. How does that shift occur?

Speaker 2: 33:05

It took a lot of freaking work, man, but, like again, I started it with breathing, like I could not get, I couldn't do it until, like, I finally learned how to control or slow down my brain. Right, because so many we live off our subconscious mind I think what's the numbers 80, 85 of the day is just controlled by our subconscious mind. We just do what we always have done. And that is the problem. Like we just always do what we've always done. And if, if, if, sometime in our life we became a whiner and we got rewarded for it somehow, you know, either by a little dopamine hit from us or somebody outside of you. So yeah, that guy's a dumbass. So now you feel like you felt validated for saying it right. So that's how that bad habit got created. And now to get the good habit it's kind of like what you said before you have to make it simple, you know, like by putting your clothes out. That's how you created the good habit, right, but getting rid of bad habits can be done the same way. It's like making them hard to get to. And and that's with that accountability. You want to make it simple at the beginning, definitely make it super simple, like every time there was a little thing. It's called like rocket ship I wish I could think of the lady's name.

Speaker 2: 34:27

But every single time that I came up with a thought that I wanted to do, like, say, workout, or if I wanted to go get water, and but I was sitting there doing something else I would. It's like you can't five, four, three, two, one and you have to go do it. Right, you don't like, you don't allow your brain to take over or the subconscious to take over and go nah, you don't need it right now. And I had to. So I was doing that with the good things, and then every time that I had a bad thing come up like, hey, go get some candy. I had to switch that right. I can't go five, four, three, two, one and go grab the candy. What I would do is switch it to, making it harder to do. So it was before I got the candy. I had to go do 50 pushups or whatever it was, and by the time I did my pushups I didn't want the candy.

Speaker 1: 35:19

I don't know, it's just angry. I don't know it's the weather it's a full moon or something.

Speaker 2: 35:23

Man, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 35:25

It's all good stuff so far. It'll just make editing a little bit more fun. Yeah, but we like challenges. Did you finish what you were saying? Sort of and you might have had a little F word in there too, but yeah, I'm just throwing you off here. The next question I had were we talked about practical things. I love the practical ideas and tips and tricks. So what are some practical ways to hold yourself accountable? Have you found like different apps, or what are some ways to actually hold yourself accountable?

Speaker 2: 35:55

So I do. I believe I'm a big guy believer in journaling. Every single day at the end of the night I go through and I have like a little checklist. Those are my, like my, algorithm, right, when I wake up, I have to, I have to check off those things and then also, like reflection, you, you have to look off those things and then, also, like reflection, you have to look back at the end of the day and go, hey, was I good at this part? Or you know, like, where did I? You have to know where you screwed up and where you were good at right. You celebrate the good ones and you kind of just give yourself a little hey, I got to get better on the bad ones.

Speaker 2: 36:28

I also use Heroic. It's an app that, uh, by Brian Johnson. It's pretty cool. It has all my little virtues on there. And then what I like to accomplish in the three different things that he uses, I use it. And if you don't, you know, just get a journal, get a book, it is super easy and just always be able to, you know, reflect and think about what you did better today than you did yesterday, because the whole goal is just getting 1% better every day and that might sound cliche, but if you do that enough and your, your target is that 1% better every day, you're going to be.

Speaker 1: 37:07

You're going to be a total different person at the end of a year and you'd be amazed at what you can accomplish I feel like the most cliche things in life seems to be the most true and accurate, because I feel like sometimes I'm a walking cliche, like I feel like it's true. One thing I love I didn't see it until I was older, but benjamin franklin had his journal published like in the museum or whatever it was, and in the beginning, or you know the very bottom, of his journal it said what good will I do today? And it had all the time slots for the day. And at the end it said what good did I do today? And so he would come back and reflect like, did I do good? Did I help someone? Did I do the thing I said I was going to do in the morning? And that was the first time I've seen like that far back where someone was not only doing the initial things. I feel like the front is easy, let's do these things this week, but then we never look back on Friday, like, did I even do the things that I was supposed to? Like bullet journaling you pass the things forward or things like that. But journaling, that's a super good reminder.

Speaker 1: 38:11

Your last pillar is balance. So work, relationships, personal well-being, often being pulled in all sorts of different directions. How do you define this balance? I kind of hate the word work-life balance. I don't think it's really a balance, but what are your thoughts on defining balance?

Speaker 2: 38:24

Can I go back to accountability real quick and I'll jump back Absolutely quick and I'll jump back. And a good thing about accountability is a lot of times we're in a position where we're at because we lack the discipline, right? So this is where getting a coach comes in. I've had to get coaches a lot and I always avoided coach. I hated my coaches. I was always the jerk at the end of the bench or on the court talking crap, and. But now I found that, like, coaches can hold you accountable until you get to a certain like best players and the best people in the world all have coaches to hold them accountable to getting to where they want to go. So I'm going to end that with the accountability.

Speaker 2: 39:07

Come back over to balance. I was all about like, when I first started doing this, it was all about balance. I was trying to preach balance, right, everybody gets locked up with balance because everybody automatically thinks it has to be like a perfect set of time, right, eight hours, yeah, it has to be eight hours of this, eight hours of that and eight hours of that where I'm not in balance. But it's like balance is for me. You have your little things in life, right, you have to have your physical health, your mental health, your relationships, spiritual, and you know your financial, and they all need some touching here and there. You know you have to pay attention to them. They don't have to be eight hours, eight hours, eight hours, but they all deserve their own time slot.

Speaker 2: 39:55

Right, and I'll give you an example. Is, you know, sometimes when you're starting a business, you're going to be working 12 to 13 hours out of that day and your family is not going to get that time that they deserve. They deserve, but if you communicate properly and you let and you let them in on the whole process and the journey that you're on and include them in it, now, now you've given them the respect that they deserve by including them and yeah, you know. And then you tell them hey look, I might only have 20 minutes for you today, but it's going to be the best minutes of the day. I'm not going to have my phone on, it's going to be off, it's just going to be about you and me for 20 minutes. And, if you think about it, that's probably better than a lot of freaking parents are doing with their children right now, because you see them at the restaurant and the little kids are sitting there choking on his food while his parents are watching freaking tiktok video. It's crazy man it is crazy.

Speaker 1: 40:56

Earlier you had mentioned kindness and what was the other one? Nice, nice. So in balance, I think this question's probably got to be asked. So you had said someone that doesn't set boundaries. So how can setting boundaries play a role in achieving this well-balanced life?

Speaker 2: 41:13

that is. I think that's the hardest thing for people. One of the guys I I'm coaching now he's an awesome like businessman, he's a fantastic, but he still has this little thing about setting boundaries where, like, some of the meetings will just run over Right. So now his whole time gets screwed up because he didn't set that boundary correctly. Another guy he'll set appointments, but if something pops up, even if it's not 100% important, he doesn't feel like he could tell somebody no. So the other stuff that actually was set up by appointment gets pushed off.

Speaker 2: 41:49

And it's all about sometimes you just got to say freaking no, man. And I do the same crap. There's plenty of times that I know that I have to get something done, but the wife will come in and go hey, you know, somebody in the family needs this and it's like dude, if I tell her no, I'm going to be in trouble. But sometimes I just got to say freaking no man. No, I got to do this. This is the most important thing that I have to do today. That is their life. I will help them when I get the opportunity and it's a it's a delicate, fine line, but it's one of those ones that you have to learn and that is definitely a learned skill of being able to say no, you know what? I'm not going to go out to have lunch today. I have other stuff. That's a bigger priority, like you said earlier.

Speaker 1: 42:41

Yeah, absolutely so, for practical strategies and things like that. What tips or tricks have you seen for this? Do you plan the week, do you do calendar reviews, or how have you found ways to block time and, you know, just kind of set some of those boundaries?

Speaker 2: 42:57

So my time blocking thing, what I found works very good for me I time block 28 minutes. So I try to do everything by like 28 minutes because I know at 28 minutes I can be 100% focused and do whatever I do. But I also know that I need some movement in my life, right, because a lot of us will get behind a computer and we'll sit there for eight hours straight and they say, you know, sitting is a new, like cigarette smoking, it's about that bad for your body. So I use 28 minute time things and I set out my priorities, whether the number one, two and three top things, and I aim to get those done. And then I have my kind of fluff I call it fluff that are the fillers throughout the day, always getting those Well, not always, because none of us are perfect and there are a bunch of days that I miss.

Speaker 2: 43:50

But at least start on it, right. It's like what's that whole thing? Uh, how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time, one freaking bite at a time. So you have your gigantic goal. You have your gigantic goal, you break it down from. You know, say it's a five-year thing. You break it down to the year. You break it down to the month, you break it down to the day, and then you break it for me. I break it down to the year. You break it down to the month, you break it down to the day, and then you break it For me. I break it down into 28-minute sessions and I find that works super, super good for me, because I can even take my 28-minute nap and I feel way energized.

Speaker 1: 44:23

Do you do family planning as well? That sounded like it was all personal stuff. Do you incorporate the other family members or do anything like that?

Speaker 2: 44:30

Oh, definitely, and you know, like. So that's like for the work day, right, 28 minute session, and then in the night I try to, I almost do the same little thing. If it's 20, you know it doesn't have to be 28 minutes with the kids or the wife, but I always try to set a part of the evening that's just going to be about there. Work, work, work. Shut the work off at like five, six o'clock, depending on the day, right, shut that off and then we eat. I get rid of my my phone. I go, plug my phone in a different place, I put it on, do not disturb, and that's that's how, yeah, I plan that stuff. Great question, because I didn't. I left that part out.

Speaker 1: 45:10

Well, yeah, you're good. I just need to do better family planning. So I'm trying to write down all the tips I can.

Speaker 2: 45:15

I'll tell you what. Figuring it like a cutoff time on the phone is huge. Man, put it in a different spot, put it someplace that you. It makes it a little more difficult to get to and you're going to all of a sudden go that just putting on, do not disturb, put on airplane mode, whatever it is. Find that time half hour, 45 minutes, and it's better for your sleep anyway, if you quit looking at it sometime before five, six, seven o'clock.

Speaker 1: 45:45

Definitely true. Well, ernest, let's bring it all together. That was a lot of golden nuggets, a lot of goodness there. What's your final takeaway in the pillars of happiness, accountability and balance?

Speaker 2: 45:58

I think they all go together in our life. If we can, we can figure out how to intertwine all those little things right. Your happiness to me, like being accountable made me a little more happy. Happiness To me like being accountable made me a little more happy. Being a little more happy gave me more balance in my life. So it's all about just integrating those things into your life and then, with balance, I'm going to go with those five things.

Speaker 2: 46:21

You've got to learn how to sleep, breathe, eat properly. Movement and eat, sleep, my freaking brain and hydration. You get those five things in there and that's going to give you the best opportunity to have balance, because you're going to feel better, You're going to feel more focused, You're going to have more energy, and when you feel better, then that's where the happiness comes in right. Physiology drives psychology, because when you feel like crap, you're usually not happy and all that stuff rolls down. So instead of rolling it down the hill, we can roll it up the hill and you keep feeling better. Take accountability, because you're the only person that has control of what you're thinking and how you respond to stuff.

Speaker 1: 47:07

Absolutely Well, Ernest. Thank you for coming out. I'd love your feedback. Share your questions or feedback on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube or Buzzsprout. Engage with us and we might hear your suggestion on an upcoming episode. If you want to come on the show, let me know that too. Share some goodness, help one another. I love you all. See ya, Bye-bye, Thank you.