What Does It Really Mean to Live an Extraordinary Life?

In this episode of Friday Feelings, we’re digging deep into what it means to live an extraordinary life.  It's not by chasing perfection or external validation, but by making intentional, emotionally intelligent choices every single day.

Jenelle sits down with leadership coach and business strategist David Bush for a powerful, honest conversation about the mindset shift from “good enough” to above and beyond. David shares his journey from aspiring pro athlete to transformational coach, and the principles he now teaches to help others unlock significance, not just success.

Together, they explore the difference between implanted, imprinted, and inspired beliefs, and how breaking free from old stories is the key to creating new truth trenches. You’ll learn how the words you speak reshape your brain, how failure is a necessary bridge to growth, and why small consistent actions, like drinking water in the morning, can change everything.

Whether you feel stuck in average or are climbing toward something more, this episode will inspire you to “drop the shovel,” challenge your limiting beliefs, and begin building a life that’s anything but ordinary.

🛠️ Key takeaways:

• How to identify when you’re living in “average mode”
• Why belief systems shape your ceiling and how to rewrite them
• The 5 actions that influence transformation (watching, reading, listening, writing, and talking)
• How to build your mindset and daily habits around the extraordinary

🎧 Listen now and take the first step toward the life you choose to live.

Resources:

• Connect with David! https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bush-4875248/
• https://www.bdr.ai/
• The Extraordinary Life Planner:
  • Free resource at theextraordinarylife.com.

Referenced Materials:

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (https://amzn.to/4jORtfG)
• Atomic Habits (https://amzn.to/42uGN00)

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Friday Feelings, where we turn emotions into power, vulnerability into strength, and remind you to feel everything, fear nothing, and transform your life. I'm Janelle Friday, your host, and today we are talking about the word extraordinary. How do you go above and beyond with emotional intelligence? And this is a really amazing topic to talk about because I think it's something that a lot of us strive for. We want to be extraordinary, we want to be remembered, we want to do great things. And I think oftentimes we relate that to the physical things that we do. But truthfully, under the banner of emotional intelligence, being extraordinary is a personal decision about the words that we use, about the choices that we make. And specifically in my life, I really struggle with one area of my life and this topic. So this the timing of today is off is awesome. I'm very excited to introduce my guest, uh, Mr. David Bush. David, thank you so much for your time and for being here with us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Janelle.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Yeah, absolutely. So, David, you and I met because we were both guest speakers in a recent H2H human-to-human connection summit, virtual summit, where we kind of had our topics that we talked about. Um, I really focused on connection, right? Human-to-human connection was the is the conference and the and the organization. But for me, connection is currency, meaning the human connection is what's going to drive business and help us work towards the outcomes and the revenue and all the positive things we want in business. It's not more strategy, it's understanding people and the human condition that happens in the workplace, right? So you, I would love for you to tell us a little bit about you, tell us about your talk in that summit and why the topic of extraordinary is something that you're excited to talk about with us today.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah, thanks again for having me and uh super excited to talk about this topic. I mean, this is one of those things where I heard somebody say one time that, you know, uh do what you love, love what you do, uh, you never work a day in your life. Uh you know, there's some maybe some debate on whether or not that that could actually be your reality or not. But, you know, if you could say, David, if you could talk about, you know, being extraordinary or living an extraordinary life and developing an extraordinary career or developing an extraordinary business, I'd say that is the thing that I love to do because it has done so well for me and I've seen it do so well for other people. So grew up, um, always thought I was going to play professional football, ended up uh kind of using the definition of extraordinary, which is to go above and beyond what's usual, regular, and customary. That's what Miriam Whipster's dictionary says about the about the definition. It's also defined as a second definition as exceptional to a very marked extent. And I wanted to live an extraordinary life. I wanted to have extraordinary success. And football was kind of like all the rage for me growing up. My grandfather played football, my dad played football, and I was one of the biggest grandkids that looked the most like my grandfather, um, who died at the LA Coliseum at an LA Rams football game of a heart attack when he was 47.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

So yeah, I was kind of the era parent. My grand, my grandmother, my mom, my you know, cousins, they you know, all kind of are like, hey, David's gonna be the next, you know, football star. So that kind of became a little bit of my identity, a little bit of my calling, and I was good at it. So it was just one of those things that I decided to pursue and uh got a football scholarship to go um play football, ended up going from college to arena football for four years. And uh then I suffered what I call uh career-ending lack of talent. And uh I met I met my I met my maximum performance level and I got into the world of business, and uh that's where I kind of shifted my focus from extraordinary success on the football field, which I, you know, had all the honors, I had all the accolades going up through high school and college and played in two arena football championships. My 10 seconds of fame is I was the football uh center for Kurt Warner, who's had a great NFL career, went into the Hall of Fame and actually got a movie made about him.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

And I'm in Yeah, I'm aware I'm I was a big fan of Kurt Warner.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Very nice. Yeah, so that's my 10 seconds of fame. But I shifted my focus into the business world and I took some of the same principles of going above and beyond what's usual, regular and customary into my um career. And then I had an epiphany that I wanted to go out there and help other people to design and live extraordinary lives and build extraordinary businesses. So in 2004, I started working with entrepreneurs and top sales executives who really had a passion for extraordinary success, both both definitions. So they wanted to have success and significance, they wanted to build a career and a business that was successful. So that's what I've been doing since 2004. And then I uh recently acquired BDR.ai, which is a technology platform that helps business owners and top sales executives to buy back their life by automating repetitive tasks. So that's a kind of uh life journey. Uh, been married for 26 years, got three beautiful kids, one ugly one. We don't talk about him much.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Sorry if you listen to this later.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

No, I'm kidding. We got three kids, and I got uh one son-in-law and one grandchild. So yeah, that's uh I live in Pella, Iowa, beautiful uh middle of uh the United States. We call it God's country because only God knows where it's at on a map. And uh yeah, that's uh that's what kind of keeps me busy. And I'm excited to share some of the principles that have been helpful for me to you know pursue both a successful and significant life and build a successful business.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

I love that. Well, and one thing I really want to highlight here is I I listened to your story. Um I talk a lot about this concept that we seek to reproduce that which we know to be normal. Something that my mom said to me a long time ago that stuck with me. Your normal was seeking excellence, right? Because you were raised that way. You were raised in that mentality, you had an example that you chased after. And I love that because it embedded and instilled within you very early on that that is we're shooting for extraordinary, that ordinary, normal, average is not acceptable. And I was raised under the same banner. I was a swimmer. I don't even know that we've talked about this. I was a swimmer and I was setting state records at the age of 11. Um, I was seeking the Olympics, I was on track for that, had a back injury right before my 16th birthday that basically quit that. But I was raised with like, if you don't get an A on your on your grades, right, that's not acceptable. And that's a really hard standard to live up to. But what it instilled within me was work ethic. My dad was a business owner, um, and the drive to always be extraordinary, go above and beyond. So I love that we're talking about this. But if you're a listener today and you're like, I don't have that, I wasn't raised like that. I got C's. I'm just an average person just trying to make my way through life. I want to highlight that the extraordinary, that really what we're talking about is it's an internal choice. The things we do in life as adults, whether you were raised to pursue being extraordinary or not, this is something, David, that you're choosing on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis. And so if if there's a listener today and this is not you, but you want it to be you, you want to be somebody that seeks to be extraordinary. I'm gonna ask you to remove the distractions and just tune in for the next 20 to 30 minutes because we're gonna get into it. Okay. So we understand the concept of what extraordinary means from a from a definition perspective. So thank you for that. So that now let's talk about um what's the difference in your opinion, David, from what you're how you've lived and your experiences between, well, I'm pretty good at that. I'm I'm a good person. I meet all my standards at work. I turn my stuff in on time. That's good. How do I take good to extraordinary? How do I quantify the difference between the two?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, well, I want to go back and speak to those people that may not think that they kind of were brought up with an idea that extraordinary was possible and recognize the fact that, you know, all of us have three different levels of beliefs, right? We have the belief system that was implanted in us at birth by the people that we were surrounded with and whether we were loved or whether we were cared for. And then there was, and then there's the imprinted belief system that is imprinted upon you as you grow up through your own experiences and relationships, right? People do what people do. And I don't think that it's um, you know, kind of some random association that you had this idea of pursuing excellence because you were probably surrounded at some level with other people that impacted you in that way, and they either implanted it or they imprinted it, or the third level belief. And this is where a lot of people fall short, and that's the inspired beliefs. And the inspired beliefs come through five different aspects, and some people get inspiration mixed up with motivation, but inspiration can come from what you see, right? So your experiences, your events, your sermons, your videos, your movies, that can make a difference in your inspired beliefs. You know, people do what people do. So if people all around you and what you're seeing is things that the people are not living an extraordinary life and achieving extraordinary success and significance, it's often because that's all you see. And if you change what you see, you often change what you believe. And the word believe or beliefs has the word lie right in the middle. And what I've come to learn is that many people are struggling with the lies that other people told them or the things that they told themselves. Mark Twain said, you know, it's not what we know that gets us into trouble, it's what we know for absolute certain that just isn't so. And I found that many people have believed things like they're not worthy or they don't deserve it, or they can't do it. And a lot of that comes from their implanted and imprinted beliefs. But if they'll spend time in inspiration, which is visual, like uh watching, listening, reading, writing, like journaling, and then talking about it, whether they're talking to themselves or talking to other people, just like you and I, this conversation of communication on a topic that's extraordinary is going to lead us to different belief systems than if we never had this conversation. So all five of those things can change your life and your opportunities dramatically if you'll allow them to. And if you'll spend time consistently doing them, you'll have a totally different outlook on what's possible and you know whether you're deserving or not, um, because it'll change you. So I just wanted to address that.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

So I'm sorry if I'm I'm so glad you did. Um, and and I want I want to key in on just one thing that you said that I've highlighted in many podcasts. So if you're a listener, you've heard me say this before. All of this requires action. If you think you can watch a movie and things are just gonna get better, I'm sorry, but you have to get out of your head, you've got to get out of what you're thinking, how you're feeling, and do physically do something, right? Because we get caught up in our minds and our minds can create reality based on the thoughts that we have. And so, you know, if you're like me and growing up, your internal subconscious messaging was, I don't matter, right? Because of my circumstances, I can continue sitting in that mindset saying, well, it's not my fault. Or I can make a choice to choose and think differently. And how you're going to rewrite that internal tape that's playing, that's telling you you're not good enough or telling you that you can't or that you're not worthy. There has to be action in order if you in order for things to change. So that's just a caveat. Okay, so we understand the difference here. We've we've kind of talked through that. So then how are you finding your choices every day? Are you getting up and make a decision, making a decision? Do you have a maybe a routine that you go through that keeps your mind on the path of extraordinary?

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah. Well, that goes to the next step or the next area that I find is a major critical success factor. So motivation and inspiration is the first step. The second step is the mindset, right? And Carol Dwick's book, Mindset, on shifting from a fixed mindset of my circumstances are fixed, my situation is fixed, who I am is fixed. I am who I am. I don't have the capacity to grow to a growth mindset that just is open and curious, is asking the question, how can I? Who else has done what I wanted to do, and how could I mimic their success? And when you start shifting from the fixed mindset, which is not easy, right? Because you have all these uh implanted and imprinted beliefs, and the inspired beliefs are oftentimes weaker than those previous experiences because you have these um, is Dr. Daniel Amen or Amen, I don't know how you pronounce his name, he has this whole thing about um ants, you know, the automatic negative thoughts. We're constantly plagued with automatic negative thoughts that just drift us down into the drama triangle, and we we can't stay there. So we have to decide, and you know, decide is to kill off. So decide IDE, herbicide, homicide, pesticide. It means to kill off, right? So when you make a decision and you decide to stop living an ordinary life or stop being ordinary in your relationships or in your health or in your finances and in your business or career, you kill off the option to not live an extraordinary life or to not have extraordinary, you you you make it a daily decision. And the more you decide to do it, right? First we uh make our habits and then our habits make us. And so if you spend time making those decisions that are to go above and beyond, which is usual, regular, and customary. So if I was to just take one aspect of life, like health, what did you do the last week or the last month or the last uh quarter? Did you eat more than you eat more calories than you burned? Did you drink, you know, not enough water? Did you not move enough? Like, could you just take what you have done in the last 30 days and say, in the next 30 days, I'm gonna go above and beyond what's usual, regular, and customary. And I'm gonna do that consistently for 30 days. And I'm gonna focus on how I can do it, who has done it? I'm gonna start thinking about watching, reading, listening, writing, and talking to people. And then what happens is that that mindset begins to shift, where that's a new kind of normal, you know. I love that phrase of like creating a new normal, because normal is normal, but you can always change normal by just changing the way you think about things.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Yeah, and and I'm gonna bring in some science into this conversation because it's part of what I love about what we're what we're talking about. So your brain, the way that your brain connects neurons, the way you learn things and build new bridges of awareness and learning in your brain, you've programmed your brain already. So the way you were raised, your brain and how it processes your own thoughts about yourself and other people, how it processes new information, is a set chemical makeup of everything that's firing in your brain, which means all those negative thoughts that you have are coming at you because there's a pre-programmed thing running in your brain that's always been there. Okay. If you want something different, if you want to silence the imposter syndrome, and and I still have imposter syndrome voice, I just I don't listen to it anymore. I tell it it's wrong because the things it tells me are lies. And I've identified that, right? But in order for us to truly change from within, we have to rewrite what's happening in our brain. So um I've I've mentioned this before. There's a study called TRTP that proves that the words you say change the gray matter in your brain. And the gray matter is what makes up how your brain chemically functions.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

So drastic change, if you were to, this is why I pitched something called the I am statement. Say things that are true about yourself that are not a label, meaning I'm not a dad, I'm not a spouse, I'm not a football player, I'm resilient, I'm I pursue and seek excellence in all that I do, right? Those kinds of statements. I have I have clients that start this and two weeks later, they're like, I'm a completely different person because they're speaking it out loud. And the science tells us that that is going to change the gray matter in your brain. So when we think about the mind-body connection, and this is something I really love to talk about because we don't talk about it enough. Your brain needs just as much work as your body. If you think about you want your body to be better from a physical perspective, you're going to feed it healthy foods, you're going to take your vitamins, you're going to exercise. But those exercises and different methods for your brain are just as important. And one of those exercises is to speak out loud those positive things, those things you're grateful for, saying please and thank you, telling the people that you love you love them, right? We have to start understanding that if we start to treat our brains with the same level of care that we treat our bodies, that that's how we're really going to create and affect lasting change.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

I love that. And I've heard the I've heard the term uh coach came from the the town coaches, K-O-C-S, and I believe it's a town in Hungary, and that was where the first stage coach was created. And so I've heard the analogy where if you think about an old-fashioned stagecoach and you've got this person that's uh a driver of the coach and you're a passenger in that coach, is that if you want to stay on a path of ordinary, not going to a place that you want to go, and you could think about those big wagon wheels going into those trenches or those ruts, is that if you want to have that wagon go in a different direction, you have to break it out of these wrong thinking ruts, and you have to build these new truth trenches. And that's oftentimes what a coach like you, Janelle, will actually do for a person is that you will help them to break that cycle of wrong thinking and staying in that ruts and build those new truth trenches, which the science backs up, the truth trenches, and they're they're available. You can do it at any time. You just have to decide to stop going in the direction that you're going and challenge your limiting beliefs and your self-doubt and concepts and concerns and all the fear factors of what happens if I change, is people not gonna like me, or am I gonna be different? Is it really possible? And you have to do it. And once you start doing it and you see the wagon going in a different direction towards the trajectory of where you want your life to go, oh, you you now have a new inspired belief. You're like, oh my gosh, I can change. Like your clients are experiencing, they're actually becoming awakened to the fact that they can do it. And then if you surround yourself with people that are doing it, you know, positive association, that's why a coach is so valuable. Because sometimes a coach is the only person that can help you to break through that. And then once you break through it, you start realizing, oh, there's other people out here or mastermind groups or um organizations, you know, Facebook groups or LinkedIn groups. So yeah, it's uh it's really powerful to get people to make that shift in a mindset.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

We were talking about this earlier, but why do you think so many people struggle with actually because look, you guys, in order to do this, it takes work. You have to do the work. And that's where I find a lot of people are not willing to do it because they think it takes too much time. They don't want to face difficult memories or the things that have ultimately led them to the mindset that they have. And so um, I start with people, and a lot of people drop off because they're they don't want to do the investment, the emotional investment it takes. So you would kind of give me a list of why people don't pull the trigger and really um seek after extraordinary.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Yeah. Well, I think that the the primary reason is that many people allow their implanted and imprinted beliefs to run their life and they don't choose to run it themselves. They haven't taken extreme responsibility. They're living in the drama triangle, they're blaming other people, they're blaming themselves, or they're protecting or pretending to be the hero and saving the world and helping everybody else but themselves. And they think that self-sacrifice is actually noble when self-sacrifice is not noble because now you're the hero that becomes the victim and then the villain of the story because you didn't do what was right for you. And so I think that a lot of it just comes back to people's own belief systems and what they're choosing to believe and what they've decided to do, right? Some people have put an end to the idea of living an extraordinary life and becoming an extraordinary leader or having an extraordinary relationship. They've given up hope on it because they're choosing that fixed belief system and they're not spending the time in the watching, reading, listening, writing, and talking about what it is that they want to do. And you know, I think that everybody has their own time, and most people will change when the pain of doing what they're doing becomes greater than doing something. Something different. And I know I I've been in that situation. So I'm not casting, you know, blame to every single person because I was one of them. I'm just not choosing to be one of them anymore. And that doesn't mean that I don't have bad days or bad weeks or bad months or bad quarters or years. I mean, I've, you know, the road to success and significance goes through the sewer. And sometimes you just preach.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

That's a mic job. So true. I I want to call that out because uh kind of right when I dug into all of this emotional intelligence growth for myself and was really working through the sewer of my of my life, right? There are moments you want to give up. There are days I couldn't get out of bed. Like if you think you're gonna start this journey and it's just gonna be, you know, birds chirping along like a Disney movie and flowers singing on the path as you go, like that's not reality.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Yeah, I like to say that you know, that uh living an extraordinary life is really about you know climbing this mountain. And not everybody reaches the top, but if everybody has a dream of reaching their peak, P-E-A-K, um, they can inspire others around them. So you don't know the success and the significance of your story. So, you know, by you going above and beyond what's usual, regular, and customary and feeling your way forward and never quitting and continuing the journey, um, you yourself might just be the story or the message that you know, people might look at it and go, What a mess she had, but she never stopped climbing. And that might be.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Well, and and I have a lot of people that say, I'm not resilient. I I'm just, I, you know, I just falter. And I'm like, you're alive. If you are still alive and breathing, you are a resilient human being, especially right now with all of the drama and the chaos that's happening in the United States that we're all surrounded by. I don't care who you voted for, all of us feel the angst that's happening right now and being in caught in the chaos. And so, look, this is an effort that you have to choose to make. And sometimes that choice, if you're stuck in fear, um, my my stuff, I was kind of a little bit of a bad influence on my stepkids. I have tap tattoos everywhere. And so my stepson, when he turned 18, he really wanted a tattoo. And at first he was like, I'm gonna get a uh a symbol of my uh astrological sign. And I was like, why? You don't follow astrology. He's like, I just think it looks cool. And I'm like, okay, let's step back for a sec. Decide on a tattoo. If you still want it in the same place or the same tattoo in a year, then great. But don't just pull the trigger for the sake of pulling the trigger. So it was like six months later, and he came to me, he's like, I decided on a tattoo. And it's a statement because we he and I had been talking about fear. The statement is everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear. And I thought that was so profound because he acknowledges that he fears moving forward. What if I fail? What if I make a mistake? What if they don't like me? What if that's not really what I want to do? And allowing fear to keep you fixated and rooted, unable to move forward, even if you do fail, right? I'm sure David, you you've got times in your life where when you're seeking extraordinary, it was the wrong decision, or that you know, collaboration didn't work out. You know, what can you what advice could you give to a listener who's like, well, I tried it and it didn't work?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yeah. Well, I think that you can fail two different ways, right? You can fail by not trying and you can fail by trying. What is your choice? You know, I'm I'm of the mindset that failure is a teacher. You know, many people go to school and spend lots of money to learn how to not fail, but they're not willing to pay the price of failure to achieve the success that they desire. And I have learned personally in my own personal experience and from the testimonials of others that I've worked with that failure is the bridge that moves you, like what your son or son-in-law, is that right or not? Steps. Step son. Um on the other side, everything's on the other side of fear. Yeah, because failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is the bridge that teaches you how to become successful. It's just most people, you know, take it as an identity and they go, I failed, I'm a failure. And they don't look at it as that was just a great lesson. So I love the four questions that you know kind of helps people to prevent um emotional mismanagement and falling prey into the negative. And it's what happened? What did I want to have happen? What's missing? And what's next? And if you ask those four questions every time you fail or every time you fall short, no matter what it is in life, whether it's, you know, you're trying to make some healthier choices or you're trying to improve your relationships or you're trying to get a better job or get a promotion or whatever, it's just what happened? What did I want to have happen? So don't put the story with it, just put the facts with it, and then ask the question what's missing? And then the other question that a lot of people don't ask is, what is it that I don't know that I don't know? And that's why working with a person like you, Janelle, can help awaken people to what it is that they don't know that they don't know. Because many people say, and I don't know if you've ever said this, I know I have, I know what I need to do. I just need to do it. Or I've tried that before and it didn't work. Okay. If you ask the question, what happened? What did you want to have happen? What was missing? Was it motivation? Was it mindset? Was it a skill set? Was it action? Was it support? Was it technology? Like what was it that was missing from this equation? Because if there's other people that have done what you want to do, you can do it too. You just have to replicate it.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Yeah. So um I want to maybe talk about as we get close to time here, how can you help someone recognize when they're operating in average mode? Right? If if there's a listener on the call today and they're like, I want that to be me, I want to seek extraordinary and do better, but I kind of just feel rooted where I'm at, what what tactical takeaway or advice can you give to a listener like that today?

SPEAKER_00 28:14

So I always look at your your calendar has to match your goals, your calendar has to match your desired outcomes. So if I was to go out there and do an investigation, so I played football and and they, you know, videotaped everything that we did at a high level, right? And so every every day we would typically have some time where we would watch film of what it is that we did and what it we didn't do, and we would make corrections that next day. So if I was to take a video camera and I was just to go back and look at the first quarter of this year, would I see evidence that match your desired outcome? Or would I see a lack of evidence? And it's it's simply up to you. If you have a desire of in your heart to be something, to do something, to have something, and your calendar doesn't match your goals, then that's where we can start. That's your current reality. You are where you are. So, what is it today that you can start doing that matches your motivation level? So a lot of times when we get frustrated, it's like here's our current reality, we're at a certain level on a scale of you know, zero to 10. If we're at a five in motivation, well, we have to have an action that matches that motivation. We can't have a 10 action that you know doesn't match with a five motivation. We have we either have to increase our motivation to do that action, or we have to decrease. And this is where a lot of people miss, they don't realize the simplicity and the complex benefits of doing things that are simple, like James Clear talks about, right? Just starting the Atomic Habits author says, just start with a habit that you know you can complete without fail, like something so simple, so easy that you wouldn't have to think twice about it, but that you know that it would move you in the right direction. Start there and be consistent with that habit for a week or 30 days and do habit stacking where you just start improving one step at a time. Um, and I'll just wrap up with this and say, um, Jim Roan, one of my favorite authors, uh, he says, you know, if you're in a pit, the first thing to do to get out of the pit is put down the shovel. Stop digging, you know, stop digging your your depth because that's what most people are doing, is that they're continuing to dig a dig a ditch rather than just dropping the shovel and then you know looking up to the sky and saying, what is it that I want to be doing have? And why is it important to me? And when could I realistically accomplish it based upon the success of other people and based on a reality that I know to be true? And then now start building the ladder and define who could help me to build the ladder, what are the steps that I could take to just get out of the pit. But yeah, drop the shovel, could be a mic drop or a hashtag or something.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Yeah, I love it. Um, and and I'll say too, this is something that I had to do for myself. And I I love the advice of starting with something small. Because here's the deal when you start with something small and you achieve it day in and day out, you're also telling your brain, yes, I can. I set my mind to do something and I'm doing it. So you're showing your brain, your subconscious, that you can. And for me, it was the first thing I do when I wake up is I drink a massive, like 20-ounce glass of water. It's the first thing I do, right? I I was I need to increase my water intake. And that was something that I was like, that's a really easy thing to do. I wake up, even if I'm doing stuff in the bathroom, I have a glass of water and I'm I'm downing it as quickly as I can. Um, and for some reason, that to me, it gets my brain, like I wake up faster by doing this because I've told myself that that glass of water is a kickstart jump to my day, right? Something so easy. And so I just want to say that um I talk a lot about habit building. I talk a lot about how little the the smallest things often result in the greatest impact. And that's what we're talking about. We this is not a we're gonna throw all of these things at the at the wall, kitchen sink out the window, right? Mud at the wall to see whatever sticks. No, this is a sit down with yourself and ask yourself, what do I need? What do I want to accomplish? Who do I want to be? Um, and then as you said, David, pick one thing that's gonna move you a step closer to that goal. And even if it's drinking a glass of water in the morning, pick one thing and start there and prove to yourself, yes, you can. You can do what you set your mind to do. And I'm I was trying to find this while you were talking, but uh, I saw this video that said, the magic that you're looking for in your life, in your career, in your pursuit of extraordinary is in the things that you spend your time not doing. And I thought that was really profound because for me, you know, this podcast, building lion heart, networking, it's like the sometimes we seek magic in other things or other people. And the truth is that it's all within us, it's the choices that we make that ultimately determine if we're gonna pursue a life of extraordinary.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Yeah, that's so if you look at the future, I mean the next day, the next week, the next month, do we see a change in trajectory based upon building those truth trenches and actions that would match the outcome of the direction that you'd like to be going in and the destination that you want to be arrive arriving in? And I love that you use the the hydration concept because you know most people think that they have a drinking problem. You know, I need to drink more water. I need to drink more water. When you just changed and you just changed your mindset and you said, I have a drinking solution. I I mean, we don't have drinking problems, we have drinking solutions. Um, and if you choose to think about I have a solution for every problem, I just have to focus on the solution and I have to go back to those five things. What are you watching? What are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you writing? And what who you or what are you talking about the most? Yeah. And if you take those five things and you start practicing them, any of them with any level of consistency, your trajectory will change. You're you'll go where your eyes and ears and mind are focusing. And uh yeah, you can totally drastically change, you know, your life, your career, your business, all those things together.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Yeah, I also heard uh, and we're gonna run this episode's gonna run long and I don't care. Um, I also heard this uh this saying the other day that for all the things that we think are important, for all the commitments that we make and promises that we try to keep, the only thing that really matters is the word we keep for ourselves. Meaning, if I make a commitment that, hey, every day I'm gonna drink this much water and I can't keep that commitment for myself to hold myself accountable for the for the things that I do for myself, it makes it that much more difficult to pursue something like this for somebody else or for your job or for a career that you think you want. You got to start with me, myself, and I. And a lot of times that's the biggest pressure point because as I've talked about self-awareness, understanding who are you, what are your motivators, what are your drivers. Like I identified for you at the beginning of the episode, you were raised in a mentality of pursuing extraordinary. And that's kind of your subconscious base operating system, right? There are so many people that don't even know what their base operating system is because we're not asking true deep dive introspective questions. And that's a whole nother episode. But if you're listening today and you resonate with what we're talking about, maybe something David has shared has struck you or you'd like to talk more with him. I don't know who wouldn't want to because I think he's amazing. Also, if you're familiar with all state commercials, he looks like Mr. Mayhem. So, you know, there's that thing. I'm I'm gonna put your face on one of those commercials, David. Um, how can people connect with you and and tell us a little bit about um what you're doing with BDRAI and how people can uh connect with you that way too?

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Yeah, you bet. But just as a uh a free resource to everybody, I have a passion project, which is um the extraordinary life.com. And you can go in there, you can download free a free extraordinary life planner that basically walks you through some of the six commitments that we talked about today. And that's just a free resource that people can take advantage of. I speak on this topic, it's something I'm very passionate about, and I've um had a lot of really good success stories. I share some of my own personal journey. So that's just a free resource to everybody. Uh BDR.ai is the business aspect of uh where I spend the majority of my time. And we help business owners and executive-level sales professionals to eliminate the repetitive task of you know business development. So BDR is business development representative.ai, so we're powered by AI, technology, sequences. So one of the things that I found is, you know, working with people is there's only one thing that people do predictably, and that is that they act unpredictable. So when you can take a balance of high-tech and high touch, where you can take um sequence sequences, automation, AI, and you can combine it high-tech with high touch, you can get extraordinary results in business. So working with a lot of business owners on strategy, a lot of times they fell short on execution because they didn't have the automation and the structure and the predictability of a technology that basically does what you tell it to do every day or every week, every month. So we partner up with business owners and executive ill of severe salespeople to identify their target audience. We help them to build um sales funnels and marketing sequences that help them to move people from wherever they are closer to wherever they are and what they want them to do with being attracted to their business and to their uh solutions and what they provide. And we provide digital tools as well as um automation with dialing and automation with sending emails and uh utilizing LinkedIn at a high level. So, yeah, if people have an interest in building a business, bdr.ai is a great partner to um help you to develop your business.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

And LinkedIn, people can connect with you on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Absolutely. Yep. Everything, uh everything that you want to take a look at or find for me is uh BDR.ai. Uh, you can also find a lot of the resources and information. If you're more interested in living an extraordinary life and going above and beyond what's usual, regular and customary, and you don't have any interest in a business aspect or sales, um, the extraordinary life.com also has a lot of information.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

I love that. Well, this has been an extraordinary conversation, David. Um, I really appreciate your articulation of things that sometimes it's hard to put to words, and I think you you do that very well. Um, I also appreciate your transparency and vulnerability today because we're talking about things that I think we need to talk about more often uh to encourage our neighbors and our friends and our colleagues and our families um to seek extraordinary, even if it's a moment-to-moment motion decision. Um, I am someone who I want to be better than I was yesterday. Uh, for me, that's the definition of extraordinary going above and beyond is continually getting up and thinking, okay, what can I do today that I can do better than I did yesterday, right? What conversation can I look back on and think, I probably could have handled that better or right? Um so from me to you as a listener, as we wrap today's episode, I'm gonna ask you to feel and be inspired to feel deeply. And if those feelings are negative, if the memories are negative, if you're down on yourself or too hard on yourself, to turn that into an opportunity to live a fearless and extraordinary life as authentically as you can and to give yourself grace on the days, the weeks, the months, or the years that are struggle. Um, I want to encourage you to keep leaning into your feelings, positive or negative, because as you face your feelings, as you identify your feelings, and as you work through the feelings that you struggle with, that's where real transformation starts within. So thank you again, David, for your time and for being here today. Um we will see you all next Friday.