085 - Is Your Current Comfort More Important Than Becoming Financially Free?

If you aren’t happy with your financial situation but you’re also resistant to getting out of your comfort zone, chances are that you’re not gonna become financially secure anytime soon… if at all. 

We don’t want that for you, so we’re going to let you in on a little secret. 

Where you are now is the direct result of what you’ve been doing. 

Broke people who make changes, regardless of the discomfort, are the ones that become financially free. 

If you want that, you just have to break out of your comfort zones so you can start making progress towards your goals instead of dreaming about a day that will otherwise never come. 

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**DISCLAIMER**
Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Transcript

Welcome to roaming returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing so that you don't have to wait till retirement to live your passions. If you aren't happy with your financial situation, but you're also resistant to getting out of your comfort zone, chances are that you're not going to become financially secure anytime soon, if at all. We don't want that for you, so we're going to let you in on a little secret.
Where you are now is the direct result of what you've been doing. Broke people who make changes regardless of the discomfort are the ones that become financially free. If you want that, you just have to break out of your comfort zones so that you can start making progress towards your goals instead of just dreaming about a day that will otherwise never come.
Okay, so this week, if you recall from last week, at the end of the whoopsie days, we said this was going to be the comfort zone. I think this is super meaningful, not just in the investing realm, but in life as a whole. We'll try to reel it into the investing realm so it doesn't seem like it's an out-of-place video.
It's not out of place. Comfort zones are huge. Well, I'm just saying.
Most of the reasons people are not wealthy is because they kind of have a mental cap because of a comfort zone. There is totally a thing about economic, what do they call them, where you're in a specific economic class, you believe you're part of that and so it's really hard to go down or up. I don't know.
I just know I think that comfort zones are like humanity's greatest weakness. Facts. What is a comfort zone? We're going to get into all that.
Are they good or bad? How to expand them? Why do people tend to live there? You know. Okay, so what exactly is a comfort zone? Well, a comfort zone, according to Wikipedia and numerous other sources, if you just type in comfort zones on Google, it'll just shoot out a bunch of stuff. It's a familiar psychological state where people are at ease and they perceive that they are in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress.
Perceive being the key word here. So to sum it up in a nutshell, it's whenever you basically stay where you're at because you don't want to have to experience any anxiety or stress. So they're a warm fuzzy blanket on a cold rainy day with a cup of hot chocolate or booze or whatever you do.
Mine's probably num-nums and seltzer water. Yeah. People tend to stay in their comfort zones because it helps avoid the feeling of anxiety, stress, and uncertainty, which as a human, that kind of sucks whenever you don't know something for the most part.
And if you don't know something, you start to either feel anxious about it or to get stressed out about it. Like, I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. Well, and it's crazy too because like fear of the unknown is the hard one because it's like you don't even know what the heck you're feared of. And from like an evolutionary perspective, like anything outside of a familiar space can feel unpredictable and potentially threatening, which natural human tendency is to prioritize safety and avoid discomfort and avoid threats.
So like I think we're like evolutionary program to stay where everything's safe. But too far to one side causes its own problems, right? Well, yeah. It's too far to either side.
Like you can be a comfort zone junkie where you're just like, I'm not doing anything besides sitting in my safety bubble. And that's very detrimental to your growth. Or you can be a, let's just do everything possible under the sun, no matter how threatening it could be.
And that's, that could lead to bad results as well. It leads to early death for sure. Probably.
There are a few key reasons why people stay in their comfort zones. The first is the fear of the unknown. Stepping outside of one's comfort zone often means facing new challenges, situations, or people which can trigger fear and anxiety about potential negative outcomes.
Everybody can relate to that. Like meeting someone new for the first time or attempting a new project or anything that's new. Like I'm under the belief that news usually fun, but I could be wrong.
Well, so, and here's where it's so interesting. Cause like, I'm actually working through some of my childhood trauma crap right now. And I noticed that I have like a massive fear around new people.
And it's interesting. Cause like I have this like irrational fear that somebody's literally going to attack me, which doesn't even make any sense. Cause like I have tons of confidence in a lot of ways.
And it's just so weird. Like I'm fine with people, like people can be such pains in the ass as they can be full bull on like crazy, but like random strangers, for whatever reason, it's almost like, I don't know how to assess the threat because it's just such an unknown that I just, for whatever reason, get these flashes of like people running up and like freaking stabbing the shit out of me. It's bizarre.
Like really bizarre. Whereas I just don't like people new or old. I don't.
Yeah. But I like, I literally terrified of strangers. But I can actually go into environments and interact with people.
It's not like, I don't let that desire to like not be around people. Stop me. Like I put myself in uncomfortable positions pretty much daily.
Just so I'm not a lackadaisical prick. Well, the thing is like your, your belief in stuff gets etched the deeper and deeper, like the more and more you make it true or things happen to you that make it true. Like how often am I accosted on the streets? Like never.
How often am I? Somebody's hitting you up to buy weed. All the time. That's not anything else.
Because like when we walk, my eyes are like, I'm judging and like, uh. And he assesses threats. Analyzing my environment.
So I'm looking around, looking at people. Makes direct eye contact. Once they see eye contact, they're like, oh my God, this guy wants to talk to me.
So they'll start talking to me about anything. Whereas she looks straight at the ground. I literally am like, I walk up to people or I get near them and I like literally down like away.
She looks straight at the ground. And people don't communicate or whatever. I've realized like if you do that, people don't engage you, don't acknowledge you.
Although at the same time, if like an aggressor comes up, they see that as like a submissive behavior. So they will actually like see you as a weaker thing that they can easily take down. So I actually started consciously like domineering and doing like the head slightly tilted down.
I've read into body language a while back and like I started applying concepts of this and like people literally will cross the street to get away from me. It's kind of hilarious actually. And like the more I do that though, I'm like, okay, so what the hell is this fear about? It's just bizarre.
But that like, again, the fear of known, like of the unknown applies to many facets of everyday life. But like when we're like, we're like investing, like when it comes to like being scared of like trying like a, um, a bullet chair or closing the fund or buying a bond or something like that, it's stupid. Like there's no, no reason why something that tiny should be causing you.
Well, I would think the fear of the unknown more from a financial perspective here would be something like the world coming to an end or like the currency literally going belly up. Like my brother talks about that all the time where like they're so afraid. And that's a lot of some of the people are, excuse me, that is some of the people's mentality with the whole gold hoarding situation.
And some of the cryptocurrency realm is because they don't, they don't consider like American dollars or currency, a strong currency. That ties right into the second reason that people stay in their comfort zones, desire for stability, like familiar routines and environments provide a sense of control and stability, making people hesitant to disrupt that predictability. So like using dollars your whole life, that's a stable, stress-free thing to use.
It's something you've always known. Bitcoin is a bit different than using dollars. It's not stable.
It's very volatile. It's all over the place. I can see the hesitancy with it.
If it's something new and outside your comfort zone and you don't understand it, the hesitancy, it makes a lot of sense. Anybody can apply that to anything. So the second point, the desire for stability is if you're a control freak, like you're probably not going to be interested in the stock market.
Deep seated in your comfort zones because you're so worried about controlling every facet of your life. And that's like you can't thrive or succeed that way. Yeah.
But the thing is, if you actually sit back and you are one of those people. But it can feel like you're thriving and succeeding because you don't have any stress, but you're actually not thriving and succeeding. You're just status quo.
Actually, I find most people who have that like need for control, they actually feel more and more out of control because it's so hard to control the world that is constantly changing, evolving, moving. It actually causes more stress and like fear because it's like the opposite. I don't know.
It's interesting because I know a couple of people that are really fear based and it's like, wow, like. So you got the fear of the unknown. You have the desire for stability.
Those are two of them. The third one is self-doubt. And I know like 90% of the population suffers from this, like it's lack of confidence in one's ability to handle new situations can lead them to stay within the confines of their comfort zone where success feels more guaranteed.
Like there's a lot of people that fall into that third category because like a lot of people don't have what I have. I'm just like yellow. Who cares? Let's see what happens.
Well, I think you and I, I think the reason we get along so much and have more confidence I think than a lot of people we run into is just because part of my thought process is, okay, if I haven't have no experience in this, of course I'm going to have self-doubt and the only way to actually feel more comfortable and feel more confident is to actually try it. It's either to try it or like research it or we do a crap ton of reading. I read so much in a week.
I'm reading like six to seven books at a time. But I don't read books. Books are.
Yeah. I do the book thing. They make movies so I can watch the movie.
Yeah, so he does what he does. I do like the psychological components. I like to read about the psychology of humans.
I do a lot of finance and investing reading obviously, but mine's mainly articles or blog posts or websites and then I'll like, if it's something super awesome, I'll like look at the footnotes and I'll go to where they got the source from. But for the most part, educating yourself is the quickest way to actually build up your confidence. Yeah, because it actually brings the unknown into the more certainty realm or at least the understanding realm.
So if there's an area of your life where you're feeling, oh, that's icky, we'll start reading about it and like start educating yourself. And start watching other people do stuff with it because the more you see it, you're like actually in a safety zone because you're watching them do it, but you're watching them go through motions, which actually helps you. Fourth one is negative self-talk.
This is kind of, this kind of ties into self-doubt. Internal narratives that focus on potential failures or negative consequences can discourage people from taking risk and venturing outside their comfort zone. So like if you lack confidence in a situation, you begin to start talking yourself out of it.
Like I can't like investing, oh, investing, you can lose all your money. So you have the self-doubt because you're afraid of investing. Once you're afraid of something, you start talking yourself out of it.
And that's when negative self-talk comes into it. But it etches, it etches that belief and it etches that in as reality. And that's like one of the major disruptors is to literally just either ignore that self-talk or to like literally force consciously the opposite and be like, well, what am I actually afraid of? The part that I find humorous about the negative self-talk is like there are millions of people that succeed in like investing or writing or vlogging or photograph, photography, and people will still see that there's so many people that succeed at, but they'll be like, I can't, I can't do it.
So there's something wrong with it. It's not real. What I like.
So they'll actually talk themselves out of something that so many other people have already succeeded at so that it can be successful. It's just, you talk yourself out of it with negative self-doubt because you'd rather not venture outside your comfort zone and take risks. Well, and this is very, very, very parallel to like the money scripts, AKA beliefs, like all that's rooted in your beliefs.
Because if you see something that contradicts a belief you already have, you just automatically assume that there's either witchcraft or they have something that you're missing and it's not possible or like just something else is going on. Or like, you'll never get that because your economic situation or your parents or you have some skillset that's lacking or whatever, whatever. Like that's what happens with negative self-talk.
Like it's affirming those beliefs that are keeping you where you're at. So like those four, in my opinion, they're pretty easy to actually overcome the fear of the unknown, a desire for stability, self-doubt and negative self-talk. The fifth one is the one I think probably hangs up more people than any of the other four and that's past experiences.
Negative experiences in the past can actually create a fear of repeating those situations, leading to avoidance behaviors and staying within the familiar. Like once you've like say you've invested like 10 years ago and you lost like 20 grand, that pain from that experience will trump everything because you're like, oh my God, I lost money in the market before so I'm not going to invest. It's because there's a primal aspect of us that like when we get burned really hard, really intense amounts of pain, it etches a do not do that thing into our programming.
Like that's a really hard and fast habit, basically habit formation. Because like the thing about forming habits, they say it's like 21 times, but if it's a really significant incident that really messes you up, like burning yourself on a stove or when Tim peed on an electric fence and got super, super jacked. Funny story.
Didn't do that again. I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. And I had no like, my sister wasn't born until I was seven and a half, eight years old.
And I had no friends because we lived in the middle of nowhere. So like I would find fun shit to do outside. And I came across some, one of our neighbors had an electric fence to keep the cattle or the horses.
And I was like, I wonder what happened. So I peed on it and I shocked the crap out of my dick. So that past experience has led me to not pee on any electric fences.
But that's the thing. Like if you have something that burns you so hard, that automatically becomes a very deep entrenched habit. So like stock market loss is a huge one for people in the finance realm.
Huge, huge, huge. It's probably where they get the problem with cryptocurrency as well because like they probably did invest in crypto. But it was some point.
Towards the end of whenever they're like all, everyone else was already in it. Right before the winter happened. So they got into it at the top and like it went down.
They lost a shit ton of money and they're like, oh my God. And I will say guys, like we, when we moved my entire IRA retirement account over into the crypto thing, my portfolio went down like, I think it was 90%. It was like between 70 and 90%.
And I was like, well, I could have freaked out, pulled out, you know, had none of my money left. But I was like, I'm in this for the 30 year thing because I'm going to be penalized if I withdraw any of this money. So I was like, screw it.
Let's see what happened. I truly believe the digital currency is the future. So my point of view was literally just that.
As long as I actually emit 50% of my value in 30 years, because that's, it was an employer matching situation. I only really put 50% of that money in. So I was like, even if I'm there, I'm basically break even.
I was like, let's see what happens. Trust me, it was hard to stomach. I seen that number be down as low as it was.
But again, you only lose when you sell. You only lose when you sell, when you lock in the loss. That part is true.
Yeah. If you don't ever sell, you don't ever lose. And that's how rich people never lose money in the stock market because they never sell.
They never sell. In 10 year increments, the stock market always goes up. So basically, if you look at those five we just discussed, you see that evolution has created a species of sissies.
We're a bunch of sissies. Humans are sissies. It's sissy dance.
Like, oh my God. Oh, the unknown. Oh, past pain and trauma.
Oh, I can't do this. So basically, we focus on what's easiest to do. And what's easiest to do is just do nothing.
What makes us feel warm and fuzzy. Warm, fuzzy, easy, ostrich head in the sand. So I'm not saying that comfort zones are all bad.
No, they definitely have their time and place. And so I actually had to research this to find the pros of staying in a comfort zone. And I've actually found a Walden University paper that actually discussed the pros and cons of comfort zones.
With every habit from a human perspective, there's always benefits to it. But the key is balancing and not being on one extreme for your whole life. Right.
So one of the pros of staying in your comfort zone is you're drawing on experience. You're not actually expanding your experience at all. But you're drawing on your past experiences.
And when you choose to stay in your comfort zone, you are participating in activities that are familiar to you. You're performing tasks that you've completed repeatedly probably in the past and actually have a pretty decent track record of success. So this actually allows you to draw on experience you've gained from past performances in areas you've undoubtedly know very well.
I would think that that's actually ego boosting. If you invested in 2020, 2021, right after the virus that makes people sick happened and you rode that whole bull market up, you have a past experiences of having a good time in the market. You're probably more apt to keep investing in the stock market than had you invested, say, in 2019 or 2008 where you invested and then it went down and you're like, oh my god, shell shocked.
So the market's all on timing for your good and bad experiences. Absolutely. Everything's on timing.
And if you don't understand the whole picture of something and you get in at the wrong time or the wrong situation or there's a little nuance you don't know about, that's when you hit landmines and stuff. If you don't, I guess, have the stomach or the wherewithal or the willpower of what am I missing? I see other people having success. What the heck did I miss? That's basically how we've essentially become successful.
We refuse to accept that the stock market is bad inherently. We're like, what are we missing? What did we screw up on? Like, what do we need to combine? What do we need to figure out? For me personally, one of the biggest benefits of mistakes is their learning experiences and we'll get into that. This long bullet point listed crap I have to go over.
But your learning experiences in the stock market do suck because if you lose money, then you don't have any capital to actually try again. We've been through that quite a few times. So the second pro of staying in a comfort zone is you're actually more confident.
You can be more confident. Let me rephrase that. New experiences, they can cause pause and trepidation and fear and all that crap.
But if you keep in one's comfort zone, it probably will inspire confidence and it'll limit anxiety because you've succeeded in the past on a task and that'll promote self-assurance, addressing similar undertakings in the future. But where that's kind of flawed is that's basically taking for granted that everything that you've done up to this point will carry on from this point on. Yes.
That's failing to consider that the world isn't changing out from under you. So say you worked at a job and you made $1,000 every two weeks and you actually budgeted for your $1,000 and you're doing awesome with your budget. You always have like a couple hundred dollars left over at the end of the month that you can invest and you just keep doing that.
You're basically staying stuck in this current moment in time where you're making $1,000 and everything costs what it costs and that's not the truth. Yeah, inflation. The world is always in flux.
So like this is a very – like I understand having confidence from succeeding in things, that's good. But at the same time, like failing to look at things change. Reality, yeah.
Things change like all the time is going to set you up for a very bad experience which then will leave this confidence boosting moment in your life to be in one of those painful experiences that you're like, oh, my God. And that's what we talked about in a couple of the episodes where we covered crypto, we covered AI, we covered like technology advancements. If you are not paying attention, you're going to end up like the taxi drivers that got pushed out by Uber.
You're going to end up like – Taxi drivers that got pushed out by autonomous cabs. I was just going to say. I'm sorry.
You're going to be the taxi drivers that got pushed out by Uber and then you're going to – if you don't change, you're going to be the Uber drivers that got pushed out by self-driving cabs. Well, I was just going to say truck drivers with this whole like autonomous driving vehicles. Like if you literally just went to school for a crap ton of time or you've been a truck driver for the longest amount of time and think you're immune or you're stuck in this overconfidence because everything – everybody is always going to need truck drivers.
If they can do it faster, better, cheaper with like robots, you're going to be waking up one day and be like, what the hell happened? So the third pro is you minimize risk whenever you tackle familiar tasks in your comfort zone. You basically become innately or consciously. It could be consciously or unconsciously.
I don't know. You actually become aware of the risk and know how to avoid them and navigate them. Familiar activities tend to be less risky than the unknown ones.
That's true to again – so if the world was in a vacuum and nothing ever changed, this would be perfect. Your comfort zone would be perfect. Yeah, you'd be fine.
The world is not in a vacuum. There's nothing in your life that's in a vacuum. I can't even think of like – I'm trying to think of an example like I guess unless you live like in an assisted living facility or something where everything is the same every day or like a prison.
It's the same every day except in prison they probably try to shank you and that's probably bad. You can minimize risk but then that's again point two, that's assuming that the world is not changing. Yeah.
At some point, if you stay in a comfort zone doing the same thing over and over and over, that risk that you're minimizing and avoiding is actually going to actually come up and become a risk that you're failing to acknowledge and then you'll actually fail to address and then you'll lose or you'll fail. That happens a lot with health actually. People think they can keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over and then one day they're like, I have cancer.
It's like what did I miss? So that's the third pro of staying in your comfort zone. The fourth pro is – how do you say that word? Rejuvenating. Rejuvenating.
Yeah, I swear to God, I'm an English speaking American but there's some words like that I was going to say. I really sometimes think – After you've pushed yourself outside of your typical boundaries, returning to your comfort zone can help you invigorate – Oh, there's another big one. Reinvigorate.
And psychologically recuperate. Jesus, did I write this? You must have been in super brainiac mode because there's a lot of big words. It can help you reinvigorate and psychologically recuperate before returning to more anxiety inducing and uncertain situations.
Okay, basically what it's saying is if you do take a step outside of your comfort zone and you say, oh my God, this is scary. If you go back to what you know, it actually helps you stay calm, lower your stress because you're, oh, okay, I have no more anxiety because I'm back to what I know and what feels good. Yeah.
So it can be rejuvenating. Rejuvenating. But at the same time, I don't think that's a huge pro, but that's what they said.
Oh, so this is literally just from the study. I'm not so sure I'd put these on there myself. Okay, what's the last one, Tim? The fifth one is you expend less energy for routine tasks.
That is a factual statement. I will give him this one. I use that a lot because I am like, my personality type is I like to save energy and then I use it sparingly.
I don't know if he's a hard J. My dad's a hard J. If, say, we're going to go hiking, I won't do anything for like the day before. I'll just accumulate energy, energy, energy so we can go hiking for like 12 hours. He has to be able to keep up with me because I'm like an energy.
But if you're doing activities that are in your comfort zone, chances are you can complete it quickly and easily without too much forethought or planning. This ease actually frees up more time and mental energy for addressing challenging work if you so choose to. Honestly, that's actually how I was doing a lot of my learning when I was still working for dad like mowing and stuff was just because like the landscaping and the mowing just became such so repetitive because I've been doing it since I was like way younger.
It's been like 11, 12, 13 years at this point, maybe even more. No, it's got to be way more than that. It's like 20 or 30.
Yeah. Your dad's done his business for 30 years. I know, but I'm saying like recent patterns and stuff.
But it became so monotonous that I could literally learn audiobook stuff while I was mowing. It became a second, like second nature. Like she didn't even have to think about how to ride the big motor because it was like all like reflex, what was that called? Even different property, automatic reflexes.
Muscle reflex or whatever it is. Literally, same pattern. So this is actually true.
This is one reason that like comfort zones are nice because you can actually save up energy. But that can actually cause risk because if you're like, have you ever literally didn't remember driving home, but you weren't like drunk or screwed up or anything? You literally went into a habit. All the time.
Yeah, I know, right? I know, right? But that can be dangerous too if something happens. When I drove out to New Mexico, for example, I went out in July. I don't remember from Oklahoma to like most of New Mexico.
I don't remember any of it. I put an audio book on, like I had the headphones. I put an audio book on and I don't remember like a thousand miles of the trip.
I couldn't tell you what happened, if there was traffic, nothing. I'm like, holy crap, I'm like two hours from where I'm going. Holy shit.
Yeah, and that can be very scary sometimes. And honestly, if you've ever been to an amusement park and there's some like trains and like subway stations, they implemented this. This is part of one of the books about habit that I was reading.
But they do these hand signals now where they call it. They like one person sticks a hand up, another person sticks a hand up. And they do this thing where they do line of sight and they like do specific gestures and they call stuff out.
It's a way to keep people conscious to not like skip steps of like the safety protocols. And it can actually save people's lives. I don't know if you noticed that at Hershey Park when we were there, but like they literally implemented that because it's like an additional safety thing.
I remember everything about Hershey Park. Okay, I'm just saying like they've implemented things because there's something. You had garlic.
Repetitive tasks, it become mind numbing and you don't pay attention when something's out of the norm. You just like think and see like everything's fine. Okay, that's all the pros.
Pros do outweigh the cons. We'll see. According to Walden University, again, the cons of staying in your comfort zone.
The first one's holding you back. If you stay in a comfort zone too long, it makes you complacent. If you don't perform activities that somewhat scare or challenge you, you can miss out on growth opportunities.
In physics, Isaac Newton's first law of motion dictates that a body at rest will remain at rest unless other outside forces act on it. And a body in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by outside forces. So translate that to your comfort zones.
You can't make progress by keeping still. So if your goal is not to progress, you're fine. But if you want to.
This is basic science, man. Yeah, but if you want to actually have better finances, have wealth and you're not in a wealthy state now, like you have to step outside of your comfort zone. You have to change something.
You have to change something. Yeah, OK. And usually the thing that you feel the most comfortable in and fearful about changing is probably your biggest leverage point.
But complacency is like the downfall of humans, just so you know. A funny story. This is going to sound absolutely ridiculous.
For whatever reason, I'm so triggered by complacency. When I was working at the government, they would do Tide Friday every week and it was like the third or fourth week in. I literally had a panic attack.
I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
I can't. I can't. I was like, I can't buy.
I can't buy Thai food. I was like, this is too much repetitiveness of the same exact thing. And I am becoming I'm becoming reliant upon this.
I was like, this is bad. And my boss was just like, it's just fucking Thai food. And I was like, no, it's the freaking point.
It's the principle. I was like, this is screwing something up. And I freaked out.
And he was like, what is wrong with you? And I'm just like, I don't know how I process like I can't. And I know a lot of times that sabotages me. I really struggle with routines.
Anything too far out of the balance zone is not a good thing. Cool. Funny story.
Thai food. Thai food. Trigger.
Thai food's a trigger now. The second con is no risk, no reward. I mean, obviously, it's an overused catchphrase, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
But if you don't try something new, you won't succeed at anything. You are guaranteed the same thing if you don't try something different. Normally, big rewards come to those willing to take risks, even if they aren't large risks.
What's that about? We take crazy risks. All the time. OK, I don't think they're crazy.
Yeah, I don't either. They're calculated. Some of them are a little.
Boy, yeah, like if you don't attempt anything new, you're never going to get anything new. Well, it's the Einstein thing. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
That's the exact same concept. So that actually applies to like your physical being as well. If you don't try anything new, you're not going to learn any new skills, which is the third con.
If you only work on current strength, you neglect the chance to develop new skills. And taking on risk, you work on new skills and spend time improving relative weaknesses. Like I'm a firm believer that you should always strive to fix your weaknesses, even if it's a little minute task like not smoking a cigarette for a day or not drinking for a week.
Because anything, even if it's a small little goal like you have to improve on your weaknesses or you're just. I actually feel completely different about that. And let me explain.
You're never going to be strong and weak and like. I think we're all programmed to be strong in certain areas and weak in other areas. And I think if you use the Pareto principle, like if you spend 80% of your effort putting it into your weaknesses that you may not be destined to ever be good at, you're going to create suffering, pain, all sorts of crap and not get very much progress.
But if you funnel that energy into the stuff you're really good at, you can enhance and grow substantially in that area. So when I'm talking about change and learning new skills, it just means accelerating the areas that you're already kind of geared to being naturally. Yeah, I don't agree.
I don't agree with her at all on that. So those are two completely different opinions here. So it depends on.
So if Tim thinks weaknesses are bad, he's going to focus on those. I tend to put more energy into the things like I'm interested in because I get more bang for my buck. And then I find people who are good at the stuff that I suck at and I really have no interest in doing to cover my blind spots.
But it's like a workaround. She uses people I don't. I'd rather try to know as much as possible so I don't have to interact with people.
Who's trying to know more than me? Oh, it's always been me. Tim apparently can't keep up with my ridiculous, voracious reading. You have the physical stuff.
Oh, that too. You have the physical stuff. But like mentally, I'm always trying to learn everything. I mean, I like to learn a lot too, but it has to have practical application or I don't care. Okay, the fourth con is missing the opportunity to make your comfort zone bigger.
Now, this is a huge one. One of the most compelling reasons to push outside of your usual boundaries is to stretch your comfort zone. Like if you think your comfort zone is a circle and outside your circle, there's something that you're uncomfortable with.
If you can actually master this or become unafraid of this, you can expand your circle to include that. So you've actually expanded your comfort zone. You've pushed your horizons, you've expanded your ceilings, you've made yourself more flexible.
So when you take risks and embrace some discomfort and doubt and succeed, you not only improve your overall skill set, but you boost your confidence. By boosting your confidence, you've actually expanded your comfort zone. The more you try challenging activities, the more normal those tasks become.
Like when I first started riding a bike, I couldn't ride but like two miles. Now I can ride for like six or seven hours at a time. Well, and again, the whole finance thing, when we first started this podcast, I literally, like I knew stuff about investing, but I really didn't know about a lot of the finance concepts.
And I was like, oh shit, I better like get up to speed because we're going to be talking about this. And like, I literally just read like 16 books and I was like, holy crap. So I didn't even realize what I didn't know.
But like as I did that, it's again, new concepts, like different language in the beginning, but the more time. Like if you think about what I just said, I'm not saying comfort zones are bad, but if you do it right, you can actually make your comfort zone encompass more and more and more and more and more and more so that anytime you're outside your comfort zone, you're like, oh my God, I'm scared. You can go back into a larger pond of stuff that makes you feel secure and confident.
But the confidence I think is the key word here because if you're seeking fulfillment and happiness, the people who are the most confident tend to have the most happiness and fulfillment. So I think the key to that is pushing, you're broadening your horizons, pushing your comforts, doing some stuff. It doesn't mean you have to constantly be doing new things, but if you're one of those people that's always doing routines, just pick like one hour a week, do something different.
So safety and security actually come with some drawbacks. It appears like going over these things and you actually sit back and think about it. You're like, okay, that kind of makes sense.
There are some drawbacks to always being safe. To me personally, like part of being alive is you should grow and flourish and learn and expand everything and just always be pushing yourself to be the best that you can be. If you sit on your ass all the time, you're not pushing yourself to be the best you can be, you're pushing yourself to be early death.
We are both like freedom oriented. So like the opposite of that tends to be the safety. So like we tend to have very negative views of like safety for safety sake.
Because to me it's like a fallacy because you aren't really aware of what's going on around. You're closing yourself off. So all that bring, if you think about it, it brings up to the question of so how does one expand their comfort zone and then how, well actually it would be how does one know that it's time to consider expanding the comfort zone and then how would you expand it? I did those backwards, but if you find yourself agreeing with any of the following points, it might be time to consider expanding your comfort zone.
This is how I feel all the time. These points here, like if these points resonate with you, that means you're probably in a comfort zone type of situation and you'd have to break your routine. Break your routine.
Routine. Okay. You feel stuck or unfulfilled.
Feeling stagnant and frustrated can be signs you are feeling limited in your comfort zone. A lack of enthusiasm or excitement for daily activities signals you need to explore new opportunities and seek new experiences. I feel like that like literally every day.
Well, you're... I know. Time to expand. I know.
That's why I'm always like... The second one is you are bored with your routine. You may be bored by the monotony of your daily routines. If you find yourself going through the motions without a sense of purpose or passion, it may be time to introduce a variety and challenge into your life.
That's a you one. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim has a boredom issue. Always. Always.
The third one is if you are feeling... You are reflecting on regrets. This is like I've mentioned this before, like regrets is probably one of the worst words in the human language. Mischances and opportunities can be powerful source of motivation for change.
Use these reflections as inspiration to try something different. If you have regrets about anything, you've fucked up and you need to address that. But that doesn't mean you've failed if you do something different now to get rid of the regrets.
That is an opportunity. I did tell the story about my grandpa, right? Go ahead. Do it again.
My grandpa, he died last year. But like one of the things he told me when I was a teenager, you don't want to get to my age and have regrets. So live your life however you want, so that when you get to be my age, you have no regrets.
That means you've lived a good life. There's a book written by a chick, I think from Australia, the top five regrets of the dying. She worked with like a lot of people in hospice and she basically saw the same themes over and over and over again.
And I honestly believe that it is... That is a great book to read for you to basically remember to live. Remember, do things now to not have those regrets on your deathbed. Because the most five common ones, I mean, you could even just do a Google search.
And I did this after I read the books. I was like, oh, what are all people's regrets? And I was like, okay, I don't want to have any of these. So like, what can I do? What can I do now to make sure that I don't have that negative experience when I get closer to my deathbed? The fourth one is you desire personal growth.
You may be seeing, listening, or reading things that spark the desire to be and do better than you currently are. The chance to grow all comes down to personal choice, even when it starts with one simple act. So like, if you watch YouTube channels, or if you listen to podcasts, and something like sticks with you, and you're like, oh, that's pretty cool that they're doing that.
Or that's an interesting concept. You're actually telling yourself that you're kind of desiring personal growth by listening to these things that are outside of what you're currently doing. That's a big one for me, too.
So like, for example, when the first time like, we've told you the story about how we used to camp like in the back of a Cavalier. And it was fun. I loved it.
I would love to do it again. But then I got when we got back from a trip. I think it was the Smokies.
I don't remember. That was I started watching like van life, YouTube channels. And I was like, Oh, that's cool shit.
It wasn't that they were inspiring me. It was just something that I had in the back of my subconscious that like, caused me to say maybe I should look at van life. When I looked at van life.
I was like, Oh, so like, that was the thing you were being compels to and then it was like, okay, other people are doing this. This is possible. So then I use those other YouTube channels to like, learn like how the layouts of the vans and like the budgeting of the vans and how they were paying for everything and how to not make the mistakes that they're making.
And then that's what led to this. Because once I determined, oh, okay, they're they're funding their van lives, like in the most retarded way, generally, there's a better way to fund it. That's what led to the whole investing thing, which that's what we're doing now.
That is why we're doing what we do. I feel like I feel that everybody that wants to van life should have a better investment Van life, passions, hobbies, art, like any whatever, like even if it's like going to visit your family and spending more time doing like writing a book, whatever the heck your heart contends, but you're hung up because of finances or needing to work that job. That's sucking your time or whatever.
This literally gives you that freedom. That's if you actually boil it down to like, it's bones. The reason that most people are in a comfort zone is because they're just miserable with their working life.
But they don't know what to do. And that's where they go to work for 40 hours a week. They come home and they just sit like in their nice little cocoon of safety, watching football, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, whatever they may be doing.
Video games, YouTube, or not YouTube. Yeah, YouTube. I would call it junk media.
That's like junk media. You're literally just like numbing down to like, it's nuts and bolts, as they say, like you're numbing out because you're miserable with the life you currently have. Generally, living in your comfort zones means you're miserable and unhappy with your life.
The fifth point, you are longing for change. If you frequently daydream about a different lifestyle, career, or personal circumstance, it very well might be your subconscious telling you it's time for change and trying to nudge you to explore new possibilities. I know plenty of people that just daydream all the time.
It's like, well, then I'm always like, just fucking do it. Nike, bro. My mom's one of those.
Just Nike. Just do it. That's a great slogan for that.
Just do it, man. They don't, for whatever reason, like it's too hard or they're too scared. They don't have somebody with them.
But again, figure out what those things are. And that's why I personally think that it's the financial component that causes everybody fear. I really do too.
If you can actually get your investing straight, you're going to have less of a... Finance fear. Finance fear. We're like, oh my God, I don't have enough money to do that.
And you'll just be like, oh, I have like in February, I'll have this much in dividends paid out where I can actually take a trip or I can take an art class or I can take a cooking class or I can go here. Go visit the grandkids or go visit your freaking cousins. I'm pretty sure 95% of people's problems is their finance.
And that's why I personally spend so much time on all the stuff trying to teach people is because dude, it's not that complex to get an income stream from your investments that you can then use for whatever your heart's desire. Yeah. And one of my big, big, big ones with the whole extra money thing was the fact that it needed to be something that gave me more freedom.
And that's why I came up with the investment strategy that we have, which is the income investing. If you do the growth investing, at some point, you'll be able to sell your stuff for a profit and do the same things we're talking about. But if you have a consistent income stream, you can start- It makes it more real though.
You can start way sooner than if you have a growth thing where you have to sell. And if you tuned into our last couple episodes, knowing when to sell your growth stocks is super hard because you get greedy and you kind of get wrapped up in the fear of everything or the enthusiasm or the euphoria. And then you're like- Not me.
I sell way too early. Way too early. I'm like, I'm a trendsetter.
You guys would be selling 200% ago. You should have sold that shit. Yeah, for sure.
Well, yeah, that is a component that I'm gradually trying to learn the better time to sell because it is- Dividend investing is just so much easier. And you have so many more perks because you see your monthly results as opposed to you waiting and hoping your growth stock goes up. The reason the dividends is better, complete sidebar, is because you can go into the financials.
You can say, okay, this company had X amount of free cash to pay their dividend. They have this much less. That means they're not going to be able to pay their dividend.
If this trajectory continues, they're not going to be able to pay their dividend in like three quarters. So that's a sign. That's a red flag safety.
That's a sign to say, oh, maybe I should start taking profits in this particular investment. So it makes selling so much easier because everything is there for you to like because they have to pay out or because they're paying out. They don't have to.
But because they're paying out X percent of their money to their shareholders, it's always there. Yeah, it's a completely different strategy. And not many people really talk about dividends from the perspective that we do.
If you guys bounce around with other investing stuff, you'll see. This is tits. To me, it's the best investing because it actually allows you to live the life that you want to live far sooner.
Far sooner. That was my key. And with more clarity, like if you're like if you are a fear of the unknown, like if you're getting $1,500 or $2,000 a month and it's coming in month after month after month after month, it's going to set up a not a fear of the unknown.
It's going to set up a good comfort zone, right? It's like something you can expect from your portfolio. So it actually, in a way, could be considered a comfort zone. Point number six, sidebar over point number six.
You notice negative patterns when you find yourself caught in repetitive negative patterns or facing the same challenges without resolution. It could be a sign that your current approach or environment is limiting. Avoiding opportunities and challenges because of fear is a huge problem in this step.
So if you. I would say this again and again. If you feel fear and anxiety, that usually means something needs to change.
It is your body like awareness system telling you something needs to change. So like every at the end, let's say like the 30th of every month, you have like a pit in the bottom of your stomach because it's bill time. You're not actually trying to correct this.
The problem by making more money or cutting your budget down. So you actually have more than the month. You just have that pit in your stomach every 30th because you have to pay all the bills over and over and over.
So you have a repetitive negative pattern when it comes to spending money because at the end of the month, you're always like, oh my God, I have to pay all the bills or oh my God, I have to pay the mortgage on such and such day. So like that is like in finance. This is the easiest of all the ones I mentioned to see if you ever have a pit bottom of your stomach whenever you're paying something, then your financial situation is kind of effed up and you need to address it.
Yeah, it needs attention. It needs learning. It needs something for sure.
Now, this one, this one shocked me. Actually, the next one. Yeah, number seven.
You receive feedback from others. You can be receiving feedback from friends, family and colleagues who see your potential and are trying to encourage you to explore passions and try new things. There could be growing pains if you try, but there's also the chance for unforeseen joy and personal fulfillment.
Like other people could come up and say, hey, you're really good at dancing or cooking or drawing. I have found most people don't actually recognize their strengths or like the things that they're innately good at or they like brush them off or assume other people are good at them. I can't tell you how many of my friends I've literally been like, hey, I see you're really good at this.
I feel like you're wasting your life. There's so much opportunity for you. What are you doing? The only one that I could think of is your friends and your family saying, I have a deep voice.
It's good for like talking. For you. Yeah, I was like, I've never heard that.
I was like, what? Nobody's ever told you that. Tim's voice is mad sexy, guys. We had an idea of making just an app where Tim was just reading like really boring crap, like, I don't know, TV manuals or like whatever.
But or like maybe even romance novels since people get into the world. I'm saying if people actually take the time and expand their comfort zone a little bit to actually give you a feedback about what you are good at, that you should be listening consciously and subconsciously. Like, oh, OK, so honestly, if you ask people what your strongest qualities are, your strongest strengths or like what you what they think you'd be good at, they'll tell you.
Just ask them. I went both ways and I was like, OK, what what are the best qualities and what are the things you think I suck at? Because it's also good to know your weaknesses, too, because, again, if you're spending all of your time and the things you suck at, you just free up your time to go focus on the stuff you're good at. But not everybody's comfortable with like that.
But now I'm actually really good at this. If people ask me questions, I'm very honest. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. You want to talk to somebody who's going to be honest. You don't want to talk to somebody who's going to tell you what they think you want to be like.
What do you think of that? Like that looks like crap. I love it. I love it.
I absolutely I'm not one of those chicks that's like putting on a dress and I'm like, Tim, do I look fat in this dress? He'll be like, yes. Yeah, a little chunky. This last one is super huge.
Like, this is the way that the body tells you that the brain needs to start listening. If you feel excitement, if you feel at the same time excitement and anxiety. They're actually the same emotion.
I can speak. The prospect of stepping outside your comfort zone often comes with a mix of anxiety and excitement. If you feel a sense of nervous energy or butterflies in your stomachs when you consider a new opportunity, that is most often a net positive sign that you're ready for a change.
So think back when you were young and like the first time you asked a chick to a dance or something like that, you had all those butterflies in your stomach. You're like, you're like, oh, my God, I'm so nervous. But it was like an exciting nervous, fun, nervous.
If your body feels like that when you say you're thinking about a task or something that's new and your body tells you that that's your body saying, hey, you dumb fucking brain. It's so worth the leap. It is so worth the leap.
So that to me, this is probably that's probably the easiest one to identify the list. If your body's telling you, hey, you should be doing that and your brain refuses to listen. I feel like that every time I go cliff jumping, I'm just like.
Yeah. So those are like if you felt if any of those things resonate with you, any of those eight points, you could be at a tipping point. Your mind might be telling you to take the leap.
And I hope you guys are. If you're here, I really think you are. Take the leap and expand your comfort zone.
Yeah. And I think if you guys really have been listening to us this long, you guys are ready for change. Don't wait and let life pass you by.
Like going back to point number eight, this shit's hilarious. This is how much of a nerd I am. The first time I put like I think I put three thousand dollars into worthy.
I had butterflies. I was like, oh, my God, this is awesome. Three thousand dollars that like at the time it was six percent.
I was like, this is the best high a high yield savings account ever. I felt the same way when we just did. We talked about the  YieldMax experiment.
But like when I literally took that. She's like, oh, my God, I took that loan out. Like, you'll see it.
It's on YouTube. I literally recorded the whole thing. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so nervous.
I was like, this will be good for me. But now I like like we're not freaking all confident, all like whatever. No, absolutely not.
Like we sit over here and we're just like, well, like I'm confident when I recommend things to you people that watch and listen, because I've tested it. I've experimented. We've done it ourselves.
I've put it like like the like the YieldMax. I've done the  YieldMax now for almost two years and some of them. I've done the  YieldMax and the other ones.
It's like a year. So I've had the  YieldMax forever. I've tested them.
I've looked at like the probabilities of them going to zero versus what you're making in dividends. Like so when I when I actually suggest something to our listeners, I've tested it. I've tested it.
So I'm 100 like I'm 100 percent confident, but like more than 90 percent confident. It's something that will succeed for you. But we we don't want you guys to have the negative experiences that we do, because we know not everybody is built as crazy as we are.
And that's actually OK. That's absolutely fine. Like we are fully freaking embracing being the guinea pigs with everything, every way, shape and form.
And that was why we did that  YieldMax experiment was taking out. And I have another experiment we're doing right now. I took all my bullet shares and I put it into a treasury options writing thing that we're going to talk about that in the next episode.
But the whole point is I'm backtesting that. And if that works the same as bullet shares, then I'm going to say, fuck bullet shares, put it in this year's 12 percent. So like I'm I'm always tinkering.
Always, always guys to come up with the best way that you all can. And so you guys don't have to make these mistakes. And like we'll tell you when something doesn't work.
You see us completely putting our pitfalls out there all the time. But like it's so you guys don't make the mistakes that we do because we don't want you to lose your seed money because it sucks. We the next points that we're going to go over are probably the most important of all this babbling we've gone on.
This is if you want to expand your comfort zone. How do you do it? I've actually created a simplistic approach. Let's hear it.
Let's hear it. The first thing you should do is set manageable and attainable goals. This is key.
But you have to start by setting small, achievable goals that push the limits of your comfort zones without overwhelming you. So like a little goal, like if you're a smoker, don't smoke 10 cigarettes a day. Smoke six.
I have one. I have five or don't smoke at all for one day. Like small goals that you can attain that you can achieve.
Since I'm trying to be more disciplined and have like an actual morning routine, I literally have never had a morning routine in my life other than waking up and peeing and then like running to whatever the heck needs to be done. I am trying to take my supplements in the morning, brush my teeth. And I have a bunch of stuff stacked.
And I was like, OK, this is like way too many things. So now I'm just focusing on one thing at a time until I etch it in and then I'm going to habit stack it. But I'm like, it's been pretty cool.
Like I've been tracking it since like a couple of days before the beginning of the new year. It feels good. There's little itty bitty baby things.
I'm just like, oh, I get to put a checkmark. Another example would be like if you're not comfortable investing. So like step one would be just invest in, say, bullet shares.
Just put a little bit of money into a bullet share where it doesn't have a lot. I would say step one, open your account. Like that in itself is a lot of volatility where you're not going to lose a lot of money in principle, but you'll be gaining six percent per year in dividends.
That's a small and you'll get your feet wet, small and attainable goal. And each successful step will actually build confidence, prepare you for more significant challenges. And it'll also get your feet wet with the process of getting that actual dividend income on a monthly basis.
They do pay monthly, monthly, right? On a monthly basis. And then you'll be like, oh, OK, this process. And then you can start imagining and envisioning.
OK, I have I've had this like little thing. This is very safe, very like very doable. And then you can actually like vision scaling it in your brain and see what's possible.
And that's what boosts your confidence and gets you like because if you do step one, which is the small goals that will actually help you do step two, which is embrace discomfort gradually instead of making drastic changes, you're actually easing into discomfort by doing these small, attainable goals. And I will say one of the habit shifting books was talking about like if you think about doing something and they use like working out is one of the things if we're here for an hour seems overwhelming to you. What is 30 minutes feel like to you if that still feels overwhelming? What's 20 minutes? What's 15 minutes? What's three minutes? And if you drop it down to the point where you no longer feel that resistance, that is literally all you commit to is that three minute to get the pattern shift.
That is your first micro step. And then that you can build from that. So use that with finance.
The same thing. If you want to save up, I don't know, what's the normal goal? A million dollars, which is completely ludicrous if you use our strategy. So if you break that down to the 240, it should be a thousand dollar emergency fund.
Yeah. Okay. So you're a thousand dollar emergency fund.
You're not going to like freaking scramble, spaz yourself out and try to hit that thousand all in one big whoop. You're going to like fail. You're going to cry.
You're going to like not be able to celebrate your wins. You're going to have a freaking panic attack. All this crazy stuff.
Anxiety, self-doubt, yada yada. Five dollars. Put a freaking, make a jar or coloring freaking sheet and just like put five bucks.
If you really wanted to do it the simplest way is like if you pay with cash, just take the coins and keep them. Round up. Or keep your coins.
I keep our change and like you get like hundreds of dollars in change without even knowing about it. But you also some savings accounts will let you do like the account roll up. So every time you pay for something, say it's 60 cents, it rounds up that 40 and sticks it in an account.
I know Worthy does that. If you have a Worthy account and like you go to the grocery store and you spend 86.70, they'll actually round it up to 87. It'll take 30 cents and apply it to your next $10 Worthy bond.
And then they'll invest at 7% right now. So once that hits $10, you'll get another bond without even having to put any more money in. Automatic is a huge way to freaking.
So step two is embrace discomfort gradually. Yep. Gradually is way better than overnight.
Gradual exposure to new experiences helps your mind and body adjust, making it more likely for you to embrace challenges willingly. That's the key word there is willing. Like if you do it gradually, you should at some point become, I want to do this.
I want to do this. I want to do this. The problem.
It's because of those small wins and those small wins are what etch that in. The problem that this will happen, this will happen to a portion of the population. I'm included in this.
The trouble is that sometimes fear and excitement are practically the same feeling. So if you have an addictive personality, it's sometimes very hard to be gradual about anything because you can't differentiate that from fear and anxiety. Happiness and enthusiasm.
I am a binger. That is just part of my personality. I go in.
I go hard. I would prefer something that's like there's nothing gradual about what I do. Like I'm just like YOLO.
But we do understand the importance of it. And as I'm shifting some of these things over, I am doing gradual things with the things that are like outside of my comfort zone, like the first time I took a bike ride instead of going like three miles. I went like 60 and I was sore for like two weeks.
Oh my god, we went on a bike trip and it was like 25. Wasn't it like 25 miles one way and 25 miles back? And I was like so it's like 54. And I pulled like both my groin muscles.
I'm dying. And like we didn't catch the train. This whole thing.
We get back and some freaking assholes punched my back window out, stole my wallet that had like 16 credit cards in it. We'll never do that again. I keep my stuff separate now.
I only keep the bare minimum. So it was like a two hour car drive back with like the wind whipping and me trying to like cancel stuff. And I had like a government credit card on me too.
So it was like panicking about the whole work drama. I was just like, oh my god, what is happening? It was so random. And I had a roll of toilet paper that disappeared too.
So I'm guessing they took TP and my wallet. I was pissed. You never know a nature call.
Never know. But that was I was like literally hurting so bad. And then I was like, oh my god, we have to drive home with a window going.
Well, I have the phone. It was totally worth it. I enjoyed it.
But that's me. So embracing gradually is, I think it's a skill you actually have to learn. You do, you do.
That's the second one. The third one is you have to cultivate a growth mindset, a mindset. That one's huge.
We talk about the book by Carol Dweck all the time, Mindset. I highly, highly, highly recommend you read it. If you guys do not have an Amazon or an Audible account at this point, you literally if you sign up for the free trial, you can get two books for free.
Basically what she does, she identifies there's two mindsets. There's a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. If you have a fixed mindset, you're going to hinder yourself for the rest of your life.
Whereas a fixed mindset doesn't see opportunities as anything other than bad. It literally associates everything with bad failure. A growth mindset will see challenges and opportunities as learning and development.
And failures are part of the process. So you have to embrace the idea that your abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. That should be simple enough.
Anybody can work hard at something that they really want to do. And that's the thing. Everybody's skills.
You might have innate talents, but if you don't put the time in, you're never really going to develop a skill. And anybody can develop a skill through enough repetition. The mastery is like, what, the 10,000 hour mark? You don't need to do that crazy level if you're not wanting to do said thing.
But I mean, you can get pretty proficient with your finances. And that one misconception we talked about with finances and people who are good with their money, they put the time in. To be the devil's advocate, if I could for a moment, there's certain things that I can't I couldn't be a ballerina dancer.
No matter how much dedication or hard work I put into it, I'm not. This is where I was talking about the strengths and the weaknesses. I'm not able to twirl on my toes, regardless.
If you saw his feet, you'd know why. Regardless. It's just not going to happen.
So this goes back to the manageable and attainable goals. If you know yourself, you know there's certain things that you cannot do. I cannot ballerina dance.
I probably, I mean, I guess maybe roller skating, but I'm not really good at it. He sucks. He sucks really bad.
I'm assuming with enough hard work, I could maybe. You could, but do you want to, is the question. Are you wanting to put the work in? Do you really, really, really want that? If I can get like the padded suits, if I fall down, it doesn't hurt.
Because what hurts is when you fall on a hard ass floor. But I'm saying, do you crave it enough to put that effort in? No, but skiing, I do. So skiing, like skiing and roller skating to me are the same thing.
No, they're not really. But the skiing has similar to me because every time I'm skiing, I fall down. Like I do when I roller skating.
So there's a lot of similarities. Anyway. Anyway.
Point. Who wants to see Tim in a ballerina outfit? I don't. We should go find one at like the costume store.
So that point number four to make all this happen so you can expand your comfort zone is to challenge negative thoughts. You have to identify and challenge negative thoughts that keep you anchored within your comfort zone. Replace them with positive affirmations that encourage exploration, personal growth, and personal power.
So the thing with thoughts, even if you're not a woo-woo person and we are not really people, however, because we're all humans, I do not discount the potential for like thoughts to come in from external sources that can also be thoughts or repeat things from your childhood or things other people have said. And for whatever reason, if they affirm a belief or something you haven't fixed quite yet, they're going to have a repeat button in there. Just because you're hearing them doesn't mean that they're true, which means you have the full ability to basically tell that thought to take a hike and reprogram a different thought.
Like when I'm at the gym and doing other things that are really, really hard, I'd be like, this freaking sucks, but I got this. This freaking sucks, but I got this. And part of my brain is like, you can't do this or I need to stop or whatever.
I'm just like, no, no, I'm going. It's going. It's going to happen.
Yeah. That's how I feel about playing basketball with COVID. That's what I'm saying.
It's horrible, but I'm doing it. Yeah, exactly. I'm doing this.
Like bodies shape up or ship out like it's happening. The funny story, like I just literally this week I had COVID, so like don't tell anyone, but like I was at the gym. I was at the gym.
I play basketball two days this week with COVID just so I would have COVID for a less amount of time. So I'm out there like I could barely breathe. I'm sweating like buckets of water out and people are like, what's wrong with you? I'm like, oh, nothing, dude.
We're all good. So I'll be interested to see how many people come back to play basketball next week. Or are you literally just talking about being pissed off that people weren't telling you about having it? Yeah.
You were such a hypocrite sometimes. Oh my God. And step number five, learn from your failures.
Understand that failure is a natural part of growth. Instead of fearing failure, welcome it and view failure as a valuable learning lesson that propels you forward. Of course, you have to analyze what went wrong so that you can adjust your approach and try again with newfound knowledge.
So basically it's like the scientific process. You have a hypothesis. You experiment.
You test it. You analyze the results and then you adjust your hypothesis with the new data so that you can have a better success of the hypothesis being proven true. What I find so crazy about this one is there are so many people.
I know. I was just going to laugh about the hypothesis comment like five times in that sentence. But I think so many people get hung up on failures because they're over identifying as them being a failure instead of a failure being part of a process that is external to you.
Your behavior caused a failure in the experiment you were doing. If you take yourself out of that, like I can't even tell you how many people get so triggered when you say that you failed or this is what you're doing wrong or like they associate that and it's like oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not trying to trigger you.
Like that's just me and my colloquialism speaking. But it's like people get so freaked out when you're like okay, who did it? Because it's like when I ask who did it, I'm not looking to like punish the person. I'm trying to figure out who to go talk to to figure out what went into the situation to get the effect that happened because I'm trying to figure out what happened.
I don't care who actually did it. I just need to know who did it so I can go talk to them to get the data I need to make sure it doesn't happen again because I want a different result. The interesting part about... People get so... I'm maybe 70% of the time and I've only succeeded 30 or 40% of the time. I fail so much, but then what I do is I take my failures, I learn from them and I go back up to step one. I set manageable, attainable goals with the new data and then I basically embrace the discomfort gradually again and then I cultivate a growth mindset rather than focus on a fixed mindset saying, I failed this before, I'm not going to do it.
I say, well, I did, but I learned this and I'm going to try this and then I'm challenging the negative thoughts and then if I fail at the same thing, I just repeat steps one through five until I succeed. I'm reading some stuff about business right now and one of the big things I think that's the problem with our belief with failure is that we see the successes, but people don't talk about the process that got them there. They don't see the behind the scenes.
They don't see the hundreds of hours. They don't see the missteps. They don't see the backfalls.
They don't see the days that they're crying and curled up in the fetal position. We all go through that. I've never had that.
I mean, you might not have it. Okay, fine. But you have broken hips.
You do certain things. I'm a man. We don't curl up in the fetal position.
Shut the fuck up. Unless it's a sore throat. Then I'm like, oh my God, it's so sick.
I was just going to say he's a total bitch and completely unmarried. I'm so sick. I can't talk.
Don't let him freaking throw you off here. So like somebody – a couple of people have actually told me that I seem like I have my crap together. Dude, I'm like one of the most train wrecks when it comes to certain stuff, but I put in the effort.
I read. I take in so much data. I experiment with things.
Like it really is – the amount of effort and continuation to get back up every time you fail, like that's where your success lies in. It isn't these lottery ticket winnings. It is not the overnight successes.
It is literally the person that shows up every freaking day, puts in the time and then eventually they literally have the before and after. That's why like we do like every year we do the here's what happened this year. Here's what we thought was going to happen and then we also have that followed up by the here's the whoopsies because I have to learn like why did I – like I have to learn from the failure so that next year's whoopsies will be a whole – hopefully a whole different group of whoopsies, but they're still going to be there.
It doesn't – it always – I'm always going to fail. Because who wants to keep like – like if you literally have a bed of thorns right outside your door and you wonder why you keep getting foot infections, it's like what's happening that's causing the thing to happen? Like I don't know how people don't want to stop feeling pain and at least trying to figure out why the pain is happening to try to like do better next time or fix the problem or not have to waste their bandwidth on this stuff constantly and chronically. I just – I don't know.
So now I like – we discussed the mindset and we discussed like the process and we discussed what they are. What you have to remember now is if you're actually going to attempt to expand your comfort zone – To become awesome? You need to remember to take care of yourself because – That's huge. It's emotionally, mentally and physically exhausting some of the time.
So you have to have a balance between pushing yourself and taking care of yourself. In my opinion, it's important. You have to know when to rest.
It's super important to expand your comfort zones but at the same time, you have to remember not to push yourself so much that it negatively affects your health and your well-being. So while you're attempting to expand your comfort zones, you have to remember to get enough sleep, eat good meals, keep your body and mind fed, exercise to keep your body active, make time for rest breaks which is something that I'm – He's really good at this. I am not.
You have to rest like periodically like 20 minutes, half an hour, an hour a day so you can recharge your mind and soul. You have to set – They say you're supposed to take 10 minutes for every 50. So set realistic goals and remember that these will change over time so that their goals aren't set in stone.
They're going to – You should always be moving once you reach your goal because you should always be pushing your horizons a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Because once you actually start achieving your goals, you're going to feel so much fulfillment and happiness because the hardship is actually what gives you the fulfillment and most people don't realize that. If you do it yourself as opposed to somebody else doing it for you, it's so satisfying.
Get to know your limits. By this, I mean like we were just saying, I'm not a ballerina dancer but like say you're preparing to run a marathon but you haven't ran more than a few blocks in like the past few years. Well, obviously your body is going to be limited and you can't run a marathon at the beginning so you have to know your limits and actually set realistic goals.
Okay. I'm going to run half a mile. Then once you succeed at the half a mile, then it's okay now I'm going to run a mile.
I find that really hard if you've actually been in shape before because this is where I'm at right now. I used to freaking lift weights and do all sorts of crazy stuff and now it's like I feel like handicapped because I've been focusing on like reading and learning and all this other crap the last few years and I'm at the point now where it's like I just want to go hard. So every time I work out, I like can't walk for three days, trying to break it down into manageable steps where I don't hurt myself or overdo it and then get pissed off and then give up because it's like I'm not where I used to be.
That can be detrimental. So you should also have a journal so you can reflect daily and you can take stock of what you accomplished that day. You should dot it down like today I wanted to do this and here's what happened.
Journaling is one of the keystone habits for like habit shifting discipline like it's one of those ones that like domino effects to all different areas because awareness, just like budgeting, awareness via journaling can give you so much insight on stuff that's like not conscious to you. Like driving home and having no clue how you got there. We go on repeat because it's conserving resources but when you journal, you realize so much stuff and then you can make tweaks like it gives you your subjective blueprint or your like specific.
So on top of like getting enough sleep and exercise and then getting rest and everything, you should also remember to seek joy whenever it brings you joy. So you're going to endure a shit ton of trauma. So it's really important to like – for me, I love hiking and biking.
So anytime I do something that's traumatizing, I'll go for a ride or I'll take a hike or I'll go play basketball. Like they bring me joy. Take a hike.
So like that you have to remember to do that and the last one is you always – this is the one that people overlook the most and I have a – if I could put it in capital letters, always celebrate your achievements. And like breaking into tinier milestones, you keep getting those endorphins, those like dopamine hits from the tiny micro things. Like that's how you build last – like that's how you get to success in your career.
No, no. We're not saying like – say your objective is to lose weight. You don't celebrate your two-pound loss by eating a cake.
No. But you win. Make your celebrations make sense. It's like.. So say you love getting your nails done.
I'm not going to smoke a cigarette for a day and then you smoke like four packs after skipping a day. That's kind of defeating the purpose. So don't do that. Yeah. That's like undoing your actual results. But if you love getting your nails done and you're trying to lose weight and you like actually hit like your week – you stayed on target for that week, instead of waiting until you hit your huge goal of 30 pounds, whatever the heck ended up being like say your pound a week, get your nails done and then like set another thing because then you're affirming that new positive behavior with something you love and you're rewarding yourself.
I mean it could be tiny stuff. One of the things I didn't put into this list was meditate and I do believe like there's like a large portion of the population can benefit from meditation. Like if you are in a situation where you're getting a lot of trauma from trying to expand your comfort zones, it might help to meditate so that you can like slow your body down and you can center your mind.
So I would like to ask you what you consider meditation because this is one of the things I have had the biggest like resistance to is meditating and I think it was because of the lack of awareness or understanding. Understand this. Smash of what it actually is.
In this particular instance, let's say I was trying to expand my comfort zone to, I don't know, encompass like giving a speech. So if I've been working my way up to like giving a speech to a group of people, I would actually meditate to the point to like calm myself down. Like it's a calming mechanism where I can think about whatever calms me.
Like if it's waterfalls, if it's butterflies, whatever, but I also at the same time while meditating I'm doing a mental projection of here's what the room is going to look like. So it's like a two-parter thing for me. Like I have a relaxation side, but then I have like the goal I'm trying to achieve side that also helps me.
So that's not technically the definition of meditation. Well, that's how I meditate. That's why I asked.
But however you need to do it, like so what Tim is explaining is basically visualizing your end goal being worth the thing you're trying to accomplish and then actually practicing like stress relieving mechanism, which is the breathing, the calming of the emotions. It's going through like a process to basically get your hormones like wrapped in. Meditation in the traditional sense can definitely do that, but so can like just breathing exercises.
So if you can't quiet your thoughts, which is … Well, it's the perfect way to actually make sure that you're resting is to like take 20 minutes and just tune everything out and focus on whatever makes you calm and serene. I would call that a stress model. Well, the way my brain works is I'm not allowed to just be calm and serene.
Like if I'm tackling a problem, it's always going to be on my mind, so like I have to split it down the middle and like half of my brain is focused on fixing the problem and the other half is focused on calming down. I really have a hard time clearing my mind. So that's why meditation is very struggling.
But I like going on walks and there's like walking meditation or I just … sometimes if I'm stuck on something that's causing me stress, I like to learn. So I literally just flip to a different topic or something I enjoy or like a fiction book. So whatever it is to you, just make sure you do it.
You have to take care of yourself while doing … expanding your comfort zones, going to shock your world. So … It's huge, guys. It's going to be amazing. So I hope you do it because it's totally worth it. Like you become fearless and being fearless is awesome. Well, I don't know if fearless is the right thing.
Fearless is awesome. I don't care. Well, no, I think there's … Negative Nancy. It's not about being fearless. It's about learning to basically like embrace your fears or overcome your fears because it's like I can fully admit I'm terrified of water. I'm scared of spiders.
So we go see spiders all the time. And clowns. Clowns are the other … we should have had a clown in the background.
And clowns, I'm petrified of clowns too but I'm always like walking up to them. Like I … it's weird if you know the personality type. Like my personality type is not one to do these type of things.
But like if I'm scared of something, I just embrace it head on. Like clown? Okay, let's go to a circus. Spiders? Let's go to like a museum that has spiders.
Because you're trying to actually overcome the fear. And then like the deep water thing. Fear is illogical to me.
Yeah. So like we were down in Somersville Lake down in West Virginia for this one thing. And they have a bunch of different cliff jumping things.
There's like a 20-footer, a 40-footer, a 60-footer. There's like a 100-footer. And I jumped off one, jumped off the other.
And like I struggle with swimming because I had issues when I was a kid with my ears and stuff so my head fills up still. But like I'm handicapped. I like doggy paddle.
Like I'm terrible at swimming. Tim can just sit and float. I've never seen anybody in my entire life that literally can sit in an L position and just literally float.
I hate you so much. So I feel like I'm drowning. But I also freak out because I can't see what the hell's going on in the deep water.
So I can't like assess threat. So it's like a combo effect. So I'm like tweaked out.
So instead of just like swimming. And it's not because I'm fat. I can do it no matter what my weight is.
Yeah, when he was younger. But instead of just like swimming in the water or like learning to swim or whatever, I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to make up the ante. I'm going to like add even bigger fear.
So I ended up jumping off the 60-footer, which I don't know. I actually didn't enjoy, but I did it anyway. I overcame that fear.
And then like I literally was like, oh, my God, I can't swim. Like I hurt my foot when I landed like this thing. I just did the 40.
I was 60. I didn't have shoes on, so I couldn't do the 60. But 40 is no problem.
I just walked up and jumped off. Like, who cares? Like, if you die, you die. But I did figure out that I think if I just get better at swimming in general, figure out what the hell's going on with my ears.
Like, I'm going to overcome the water thing. The problem with swimming is you can only do it like outside. So that's the other problem I have.
And then my ears are my other big like Achilles heel. So that is the comfort zones. I hope that it helps.
What's next week? Bullet shares. Oh, bullet shares. I just wrote that up.
You'll see why when we do it. But you're going to want to tune in for that because it's a Segway. It's an alternative to the high interest savings account and the stock market.
And it pays way more than a high yield savings account outside of the stock market. So we're going to go into detail on that. And I know people like bullet shares.
They like the idea of having their money make six to seven percent with like minimal volatility. Minimal risk. Minimal risk.
So I did a deep dive into the bullet shares, what they are, how they work, why they're good, how I use them personally. I use them differently than other people. We have a completely different strategy than the bullet shares company who made these things.
And we think that our strategy is way cooler than what they're talking about. So tune in for next week's thing. Have a good week.