Ep 265: What to do when you don't feel like doing anything.

I almost didn't record this one. After six months of not being sick, I think I'm there. 

My voice is lower than usual and I've got that heavy-head thing going on. But it's week two of being back, and skipping week two wasn't something I was willing to do.

So I hit record.

Today I'm sharing the quotes and frameworks I actually lean on when I don't feel like doing anything. At risk of sounding like an overenthusiastic motivational speaker, I share some of the voices I come back to when things get hard or discouraging or heavy. Jocko Willink, Alex Hormozi, Seth Godin, Gary V, Steven Bartlett, and Will Guidara. I go through what they've each said, why it stuck with me, and how it all connects.

My son Miles also informed me that dad intros are out of style. So there's that.

Pursue Clarity, Paul

Transcript

Paul Daly  0:01  
Welcome to Episode 265, of clarity, compressed. My name is Paul J Daly. I will be your host. Today. I'm going to talk about what to do when you don't feel like doing anything, why you're so tired all the time, and the things I lean on to help get me through. But the good times are all this is clarity compressed. Okay, my son, my 19 year old son, miles, told me that dad intros are kind of out of style now. He was telling me that as I was trying to load that intro sequence into my rodecaster, because I only do an audio version of these podcasts right now, because the video version, too is a lot of production debt, like I have to record it, I have to produce it, I have to find something to do with it. And right now I don't have the ecosystem set up to do that well. And I know if I make that the requirement that I would not have recorded a podcast this week. I almost didn't record a podcast this week because I forgot, because I forgot, because I just started it up last week, and I am unwilling to not record one the second week after I said I'm going to start recording my podcast again, not going to do it. So it's kind of fun actually doing the audio version. I'm on camera so much that when you're on camera, you have to be in a different mind space. You have to be looking at the camera. You have to be aware and just go for it that way. You have to have the lighting and all that. And I kind of had have all that stuff set up at my desk anyway. But there's something nice about doing just the audio version. I can just, I don't know, something a little more relaxing about it. I feel like the conversation could easily come across as a little more natural, if you hear it in my voice. I've been kind of bragging on the fact that I haven't gotten sick in, like, the last six months. And we went through a winter upstate New York winter at that. My family's been sick. My wife, my kids, just about everybody in the more than cars headquarters, has been sick. And, I mean, I don't stay away from it. I'm not a germaphobe at all. Maybe that's why I don't get sick as much. You know, I travel a lot and have a lot of exposure, but either way, I haven't gotten sick. Then, like, three days ago, I was like, am I, am I having a little something? And then I was like, Nah, I always push through it, right? I'm just now, I don't feel that. I don't even let my mind feel it. I just keep it, kind of pretend I don't feel it. And then the next day, it felt a little different, but also not great. And then, you know, the congestion just dropped in yesterday, so my voice is a little lower, a little raspier, but am I gonna let that stop me? No, I am not. So today's, today's topic is, what's to you know, how you keep going when you don't feel like doing anything? And this is, actually isn't a topic that I came up with because I'm not feeling well. But I think just appropriately speaking, I'm not feeling well, so you kind of feel like doing a little bit less. And I've had so many times in my life as an entrepreneur, as a business person, as a father, as a husband, where it's just discouraging. Life gets discouraging. Things happen. You know Sam Altman. I'm not like a huge Sam Altman fan. He's the CEO of open, AI, chat, GPT. I'm not like the hugest fan of him. But he said something once that always stuck with me. He said, You one of the most things that most important things as a CEO or as an entrepreneur that you have to be able to do with a skill. Able to do with a skill is to basically just be in a position where bad things happen to you constantly, and you have to be able to live with that and keep moving forward. And I would say that's true, right? You're constantly getting bad news, disappointing news, discouraging news, numbers, people, products, environments, government regulation. Things happen all the time. And when you're doing something and when you're motivated to do something, bad things are going to happen. Things are going to happen that get in the way of you doing it, and it is very difficult sometimes not to get discouraged, which is why I try to constantly be proactive about building a hedge around my mindset, my mentality, because I need it a lot. Frankly, I need it a lot. I started something new this year, where every time a negative thought comes into my head, I immediately squash it, and it's so hard to do that in the beginning, and I start to realize how many negative thoughts i Let come into my head, but the second this negative thought comes into my head, I immediately force myself to think of something positive and to move through it. And you know what? I didn't expect this, but probably 60 days in, it's starting to feel kind of automatic, and sometimes these negative thoughts come in. I'm sure I'm not alone, where you wake up in the morning and the first thought that comes to your mind is negative, because you're dealing with some pressure. And, you know, I deal with this a lot, because there's just a lot of moving parts and a lot of hard things to deal with in business trying to grow business in a competitive landscape with technology changing, and your eyes open or you come. To awareness, out of sleep, and a heavy thing immediately comes to mind, and I forced myself and started to train myself. I mean, I don't have any specific training tips to give you, except for immediately, I counter the narrative with a positive statement, like with a no, this is gonna be a good day. I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna, like, do X, Y or Z. And really, I'm telling you not in a like, I'm a now a social media influencer, gonna tell you how to, like, lock your mindset in, but I'm telling you it's worked and it's made a difference for me. I also cultivate this stuff by reading and listening to people who helped me shape these things and help me move forward in this thinking. So I have, like, this little list, and I want to share some of to share some of those things today, and I want to talk about the ones that have helped me shape the mindset. The ones that have helped me have a little reminder to cling to when things are tough or things are discouraging because they're, you know, I think, I think Simon Sinek said this. He said, you know, two of the two most powerful words in the human language, English language, are me too, and that's understanding that someone else is going through it as well, or something, someone else has felt the same way as well. So today we're going to talk about some people, Jocko Willink, Alex hormozi, Seth, Godin, Gary V Stephen Bartlett, and there's one more will Gadara that I want to put in there as well. And yeah, so I'm just gonna go through and tell you a little bit about what they said, give you a quote, tell you my thoughts on it. So Jocko, willing. You might know him. He's been on this podcast before, actually, several episodes back, well more than several. And obviously I took a three year break. So more than three years ago, retired Navy Seal is wrote a bunch of books, New York Times, bestselling author. He's built quite an empire, kind of, bringing people along in practical leadership training, mindset training, and so one of the things he says, he says this word good, something doesn't happen. And his immediate he's trained his mind to say good, like, Oh, didn't go right, good. So here's the direct quote from him. I'm going to read it. He says, when things are going bad, there's going to be some good that comes from it. Didn't get the job. You wanted good. Go out, gain more experience. You get to get better. Didn't make the team good. More time and reason to get better. Got injured. Good. Now you're forced to look at things from a different perspective. The Mission failed, good. We can learn from this. Got beat, good. We learn more. The position isn't to be happy when things go wrong. It's to not be destroyed by it, to take ownership of it and to find a way forward. So when Jocko says that it's not like a toxic positivity, it's forcing yourself to say this went on the word good changes your mindset and forces you to look at some of the upside for the discourage, discouraging situation that just happened, and not be destroyed by it. It It is so easy for a bad thing to come into your mind, and then before you know it, that's all you're thinking of. You're obsessing over it, you're sad, you're downcast, you're replaying it in your mind, and it is just taking up all this space every second you give that life is a second further away you are from it getting better again. A lot of times this comes around things changing. And I always say, everything you have today is a result of something in your life changing. Every good thing you have today, everything that you love, came into your life because something changed. And a lot of times, things changed initially you thought it was for the worst. I'm gonna keep moving, because it's not a long show. Alex hormozi, you know, he built and lost businesses before building a portfolio worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He talks a lot about a lot about failure. If you don't know who he is, it's hormozy, H O R, M, O Z. I know most of my audience probably knows who he is. If you're not, he's got really big muscles, long hair. He wears like one of those nose breathing strips, you know, over his nose. So like a lot of people recognize him like that. And sometimes, you know, people that have that, like big macho persona, or seemingly a macho persona, are a little bit of a turn off to some people. But I found that, uh, hormones, he's very practical. He's very caring, actually, but he's very matter of fact and straightforward. Uh, here's a quote from him. Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of 10 years of uncertainty, rejection and suffering. It just comes down to wanting what you're after more than you hate all the things you have to do to get it. I can raise my hand and say that is so true, because everyone thinks they're going to get a thing without suffering. Are lying to themselves, and they are setting themselves up for disappointment. Everything in life that is worth it comes with suffering in front of it. Prove me wrong. Send me comments. Let me know what doesn't work that way, and we'll talk about it. He also said this one thing that really. Flipped me over when I

Paul Daly  10:00  
read it. He goes, you know, rich people and poor people, they have the same goals. I was like, What do you mean? He's like, Yeah. He's like, they both are like, I want to be rich. He said, But your goals don't make you special. What separates people is their obsession and commitment to the behaviors that track toward the goal. He said, the goal is just destination, the behavior is the vehicle, and most people want the destination without getting in the car. So it's not the obsession over the goal. People say, I want this. I want that. You hear it all the time, and then you do, you hear the same goals from rich people and poor people all the time. The difference is, are you dedicated to the behaviors? And so that's another thing that I think about. Again, back to the main point, what keeps me on track? What helps me feel get what helps me get moving and do things when I don't feel like doing it, or I've hit setback, or there's disappointment? What are the behaviors that are going to track toward the place where I want to be? And then I can focus on a behavior, one of the small behaviors recording this podcast today, one of the small behaviors that tracks me to getting to that place I want to be next one up. Seth Godin. He is one of my favorite communicators. He's been one of the most consistent, consistent voices in business and creativity for a long time. I got to meet him about a year and a half ago. It was awesome. I've always wanted to meet him. I quote him. I have pictures from his books hanging behind my desk, and here's one where he talks about anxiety. He says anxiety is practicing failure in advance. Anxiety is needless and imaginary. It is fear about fear. So basically, anxiety is fear that means nothing. The anxiety is not like fear has a purpose in the human existence. It causes us to avoid things. It keeps us safe, but fear about fear is what he's saying anxiety is, and it's like a step removed, and it's useless, and it's so hard. I struggle with anxiety from time to time. I know people that struggle with anxiety all the time, and I feel for them, and I want to find a way to help them with that, because anxiety is playing this tape of the future, a negative version of the future in your mind that hasn't happened yet and may not happen yet, and the tie back to hormozi probably won't happen or will happen a lot less if you commit yourselves to the behaviors. And so that fear about fear, anxiety, is practicing failure in advance. How about that? And then he goes on to say, hard work is about risk. It's about dealing with the things you'd rather not deal with. So I mean, hard work is about risk. I mean, you always say like starting something from nothing is about risk. We know that business growing, desiring to be something else, is always about risk, leaving the known for the unknown. But when he says, hard work is about risk, I guess that that is true, because hard work is believing there's something in the future that you're willing to put in the work now to get so that ties in with the anxiety, it ties in with the goals and the behaviors. Gary V you may you may know I've had, I have a long history with Gary. Got to work with him, personally for a number of years with his executive team. Really have a front row seat Gary Vaynerchuk, front row seat to a lot of what he's built over the years. He's big on taking responsibility for your own feelings. Here's a quote, I take responsibility. I audit how I got there. It wasn't the hotel's fault, it wasn't my team's fault. It was my fault. Accountability, refocus, realizing I have no alternatives, and then going all in on a new strategy, and because all you need is one new client, one new piece of content, one small win, and you're back on the train going the direction you want to be going. So again, all these things start to tie together, which is why I wanted to string them together. You realize that these people have these threads of mindset, accountability, fear and anxiety, behaviors over goals. Got a couple more than we're gonna wrap here. Steven Bartlett, one of my favorite podcast interviews, Diary of a CEO. I want to be, I want to be him in that podcast when I grow up. He's, he's his companies do billions in revenue. He had millions before he was 30. Lost it all. He rebuilt it. He said adversity is not a detour. It is part of the path. He wrote in his book Diary of a CEO, when you refuse to accept an uncomfortable truth, you're choosing to accept an uncomfortable future. The most successful people I've ever met, have a high tolerance for uncomfortable truth more than anyone else. They don't avoid hard conversations with themselves. They have it first. Then he talks about how, how you have to basically let things grow. He says you planted the seeds. So why do you keep digging? Them up to check on them. Have patience. Keep watering the seeds. So again, this is a little bit more about being able to tell yourself the truth. And so many times we tell ourselves the lies. That's what anxiety and fear and blame and lack of accountability and the narrative that runs when we something bad happens to us. Instead of saying, let me look at this from the other perspective, let me follow jocko's lead and say, good. It's been a lot of fun. My son Miles, who I mentioned the beginning of the show, he and I say that to one one another. Sometimes when something bad happens, we'll say to say, good, good. Now we have the opportunity to do this. I'm going to close here with Will God Erroll will wrote the New York Times bestseller unreasonable hospitality. Had a lot of time to read his stuff. Was able to sit and record a podcast with him. Was able to have him keynote at the ASOTU con, our big event that we're having last year. We're having it again this year, by the way. ASOTU con com, I usually don't promote that, but I'm gonna A S o, t, U, C, o n.com, and will spoke, and he talks a lot about hospitality and what it is to work hard towards something. And basically there's a premise in the book. He says that being worn out by work you choose is fundamentally different from being worn out by work that was done to you or put upon you, and the exhaustion itself, the exhaustion of doing the work that you chose to do is evidence of a life lived on your terms. And you know, I was, I could have tried to find the quote. I couldn't find it. He was on the podcast with somebody else, and they said, basically, what a blessing, what a blessing it is to be worn out by work that you decided to do. So whatever it is you're out there, whatever you're going through, I hope you can latch on to a little bit of this like I have for those moments when you don't feel like doing it and no, commit to the behaviors, commit to one another, and we're gonna do this thing, whether we are ready or not. You you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai