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Closing Time with David Monsour
This podcast is only as good as my attention span. I don't want to mislead you into thinking there is an actual topic :)
Closing Time with David Monsour
Just Be Undeniable: The Truth About Discipline, Misogi, and Becoming Impossible to Ignore
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Most people wait until they feel ready. That’s the problem.
Stephen A. Childs has spent 20+ years coaching high performers—and he’s seen what actually works. In this episode, we break down why motivation is overrated, how discipline changes everything, and why you need to take on something with a real chance of failure if you want to grow.
We also dive into the concept of misogi—and why doing something extremely hard once a year might be the fastest way to change your life.
You can find me as David Monsour a.k.a. Disco Davo on most social media applications as well as my contact
davidmonsour.com.
Hey, welcome. I'm David. I'm here with Steven Childs. Steven has spent decades inside leadership at the highest level, and he's figured out what separates people who win from people who stall. And that's what we are going to talk about today. That sounds good to me. I'm excited. I'm excited. So I've I've done some cliff note reading of the book, and I was out I follow a good bit of what you've been posting, and I'm just so thrilled to have you here that you're spending the time, but also this is right up my alley. I'm just so excited for a lot of these concepts and things to talk about.
SPEAKER_03So but if you're not fired up yet, you will be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01I know before we started or turned the tape on, he was asking about my musical instruments in the room, and I told him about the guitar I bought 20 years ago and have not learned to play. And he said by the time we're done, that's gonna be my Musogee? Muskogee. Muskogee. I knew I'd mess it up. We're gonna dive into that. So well, tell me about the book. It's just what is just be undeniable. Yeah, just be undeniable. And is this your first book?
SPEAKER_03So yeah, first book. I've written a number of uh articles and you know, started out just kind of writing some articles for Forbes. And I was doing a keynote for a large company, and they were having their leadership, annual leadership event, and this was actually my keynote. It was just be undeniable. And it's basically a lot of the science, habits, and tools that I use in my executive coaching business. And I thought, man, I just need to kind of break that down so I can talk to 300 leaders at one time instead of one at a time and do it in a keynote. And so I went, it's about 350 people at this leadership event in Charleston, and the CEO came after the event and he said, You got to turn this into a book. I was like, Oh, that sounds like a good idea. Yeah. So took some of the tools that I use in there, one's time boxing that I that I use a lot with my clients, is where you pick one specific time, stick to that time, don't give it up unless you have to give it up. And so I put something on the calendar from 7 to 7:30 every morning, and I just wrote. So I tried to figure out how to take the sections of a keynote and then build it up and do the chapters of the book. And then probably within six months, I had something that was good enough to kind of start talking with the publisher about.
SPEAKER_01So I think you wrote in the book about who's the author. I guess they had a thing about it was Stephen King. I guess he his habit was he wanted to write every single day.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01No matter what. That was his daily habit. He had to write something. Still does it. Does he? Yeah. When's the last time he's had a book out? Is it so I yeah, it's not about the book. It's not about it's just writing. So he it's not, he's not writing a book when he's making that daily habit.
SPEAKER_03And actually, when you start, you kind of get yourself out of the mindset of you're gonna be writing a book. Right. You just need to write, right? And stick on you know what I did, I just stuck on the topics. So that way at least the writing that I was doing was generating more creativity and more thoughts and more research. And then you start to hone it, right? And then you're like, oh, I like that part. I don't like that part. I thought that was gonna be the core or the hook to this chapter, and now it's out altogether because I spent time doing this other work. So yeah, it's just about kind of getting in the habit of writing.
SPEAKER_01So I was I'm I'm trying to think of where it was referenced, but something was just talking about for a business person to write down at the end of their week everything that went right, everything that went wrong. Just the fact of journaling it and writing it out, I guess help you prepare for the next week or just help you kind of recognize. And I think you mentioned something in the book as well as well about physically writing. Got a whole chapter just on that. About physically writing? Yeah. So yeah. What does that do? I guess I've heard that before.
SPEAKER_03If you kind of look at the book, you'll see it's neuroscience based. So a lot of the stuff that I I teach, a lot of the coaching that I do is all kind of grounded in neuroscience. So I look at how does the science back up some of these leadership principles that have been in place for a long time. Brian Tracy, if you ever go just do a YouTube search or ask ChatGBT to give you some really good information on a guy named Brian Tracy. He did a lot in that space of writing down your goals. Now he didn't really tie neuroscience to it, although he did talk about it makes it sticky and those kind of things. It actually engages your subconscious. So I do this for a lot of different reasons, not just for like goals, writing down your goals or what you achieved, what you what you did really well the week, what you need to get done next week. But there's a really cool story that I have in here about a guy named Dr. Peter Atia. I don't know if you know Peter Atia. He's a swimmer athlete, probably doing some of the stuff that you used to do in your past. And he's also an MD, and he talks a lot about how to get rid of your inner critic. So this internal voice that sort of beats you up on a daily basis, I'm not good enough. I'm not, you know, it's amazing how many C-suite leaders that I deal with that have this internal critic that kind of beats them up. Wow. And one of the key ways to to soften that and change that inner critic voice is to journal. And when you sit and have conversations with C-suite executives about journaling, it sounds a little fluffy at first. And then once you introduce the neuroscience of right before you go to bed, what are the things that you really did well that day? And you got to look at this from a different perspective, not your internal perspective. So if you got some really good friends and David's my really good friend, what would David say that you do think really well? What would your kids say? What would your boss say that you did really well? And if you spend time writing that down, here's the things that I did today, and here's the things that I do really, really well, and here's the things I need to get done tomorrow. Now those things are in your head. So if you get up in the morning, here's the things I need to do today, here's the things that I did really well yesterday that I'm gonna do well today, and that whole journaling process is completely rewires your internal critic.
SPEAKER_01So our our sales manager, it's funny you said that, just it's weird how these things just come. I don't know if you pay attention to them or they just hit you at the right time or you're just ready for it. But our sales manager just sent a message out last week or maybe a couple weeks ago that saying, hey, why don't consider Sunday night where you write out your plan for the week? Like just take 20 minutes, just do anyway, write out what your goals are for the week, what your plan is, so that when you get up Monday morning, you are hitting it moving instead of not, you know, it wasn't like write a checklist. Right. It was more kind of what you're talking about. It's like, let's talk about the the things that you want to accomplish this week, so that when you wake up Monday morning, you're not just responding to emails and going all over the place. You are focused and going in towards a certain direction. Yeah, so imagine doing that every day. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And it takes what, 10 minutes? Yeah. So how is that the same or different than daily affirmations? So there's some classes that talk about that, writing 20 times. Yeah, it's very similar. People love hearing from me when I call, stuff like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's very similar, right? Because you're basically saying, here's the things that I'm good at. So you're building in the affirmations. Yeah. So you're basically creating a voice. And if you're doing it like again, what would David say, or what would my boss say? What would my wife say that I'm really good at? And you're writing those things down, it doesn't feel so weird that, hey, you know, what was it, Stuart Smiley? I'm really good, and people love me. So I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. Yeah, so it's not, it doesn't feel as weird like a Stuart Smiley, but it uh it does start to rewire your neural pathways in your brain. And it's it's it's really transformational.
SPEAKER_01Well, I need to hit it harder because I actually wrote one for uh the Tanya Jones group is a huge real estate group. They do a lot of good business and I like the way they do their business. And I've had a lot of success in the mortgage business. I'm a pretty confident person, but I'm still intimidated by somebody that does that much business and has never really given me an opportunity. So I wrote one that said, you know, the Tanya Jones group wants to hear from me. They need to do business with me because I provide this. And it was like a paragraph, and I need to get back to it. But I was rewriting or reading that every day for a little while just to set my confidence of they do because they do need to do business with me. They might have other relationships, but I think, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, this is kind of where again, I there's a lot of things I talk about in the book. But one of the tools that I talk a lot about is this aggregation of marginal gains, this one percent better every day, right? So early on in my coaching career, I got a lot of my clients to read Atomic Habits by James Clear before we even started, because it really is sort of foundational for it's a lot of really good tools for sort of learning how to establish and build habits, sort of the habit formation. And this idea of I wrote it down for a little bit versus I wrote it down every day for 90 days. Exactly. It's very different, yeah. And so when I talk about challenges, and we talked about your guitar, this idea if you do something every single day for 90 days, and I think 63 days, then there's some neuroscience that says you re rewire your neuropathways in about 63 days, and I always just tell people, just do it for 90 days.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I do these really big. So that event that I talked about in Charleston, I had everybody do a sticky note challenge where they wrote down something they've been wanting to do forever, and they just haven't done it on a sticky note, and they put it on a wall and just writing it down, basically is committing their mind to do it. And then I basically said, I'm gonna follow up with you. Turns out, still, no matter how many times I do this, and no matter what setting it is, NASA or this event or somewhere else, it's still only about 10% of the people that are gonna do it. And if but if they do it and if they make it past the 30 days and they go, I'm just gonna do it for 30 more days, and they make it past that and say, I'm just gonna do it for 30 more days, once they get to 90 days, these people have completely changed their lives just by do putting something on a sticky note.
SPEAKER_01I was just reading a book about a gentleman decided he did not want to watch TV for 90 days. And it was exactly the same thing. He's he said, that's all I want. I just want to I want to turn it off and shut it down and read books and do nothing. So for 90 days he did it. And once he got in 90 days, he was like, Well, that wasn't so bad. I'm already doing it, might as well go for six months. And then he did it for six months, and he was like, Well, I gotta do a year now, just to say I did a year. And then at that point when he was writing the book, he was three years in. He said he doesn't know that he'll ever go back to actually watching TV. I don't know what that meant because he he kind of hinted at he was an Eagles fan or something, so might go watch the news. I can't imagine, like I get maybe turning off the news and and and all those things, but but he could probably dramatically change the way his habits were around TV.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. How much time he was spending versus yeah, I'm gonna treat myself to a game, but I'm not gonna sit in front of the tube for this long period.
SPEAKER_01I'm amazed at how many people do sit and there are times Friday or Saturday night, definitely in football season is all day, but there are times when I just sit and veg out on some dumb TV shows. Yeah. But I I don't watch news or I don't I don't have the TV on just for the sake of having it on. But in conversations, I hear that a lot of people just are addicted to the news. They just have it on all the time, and that shocks me because what why would you want that on the TV all the time?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. People get it, that's again, it's a it's whatever your habits are, they're either, you know, I think I put this in the very, very, I think now I now in the new version of the book that's come out, I think it's chapter three. But it's either your habits are either helping you or hurting you. There's zero in between. And you've got to figure out what that is, right? But again, that 90-day time period. So if you took, again, there's another tool in there that's this uh hundred-hour rule, Jesse Eidsler, right? If you know Jesse, he he talks about like the big ass calendar and he does these really long runs, and he he was an entrepreneur that had a jet company early on, but he talks about this rule of a hundred. Just taking 17 minutes a day or 18 minutes a day every day for one year is a hundred hours of deliberate practice. There's a whole study that was done. So the neuroscience backs this up too. And if you do something 18 minutes a day, you're gonna be better than 90% of the people in that space. And again, not everybody plays guitar, so you'll be better than 90% of the people, but you'll be doing some.
SPEAKER_01I mean, apply that anywhere though.
SPEAKER_03Anywhere.
SPEAKER_01Apply that into being a real estate agent, a mortgage person, a a church leader, or whatever that is, you know, a kid in school, uh, you know. And somebody 18 minutes a day on your cello, you're gonna be better than and tell me you don't have 18 minutes, right?
SPEAKER_03So I know you have 18 minutes. Because right now I'm 33 days into my newest challenge, uh-huh, which is waking up at 5:30 every morning and working out, right? So, and it's the 5:30 that's the challenge, the working out, you know, I'm pretty comfortable doing. So is that weekends doing every day, weekends, vacations, whatever. Now my wife's killing me, Ubi's killing me because the dogs are on this schedule now, so they're waking up at 5.15 right before I even get up. But you know, it's you know, part of that is this confidence piece of owning your day.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So even if you got up at six and you did something from six to six twenty, and I always tell people, if you're gonna do 15 minutes, just do 30 minutes. So do something for 30 minutes, whether it's writing the book, which is what I did for 30 minutes, or workout, or play guitar. If it goes back to doing hard things, we'll talk about that. But doing hard things actually make you happy. Spending 30 minutes a day on something for 90 days is again life-changing in so many ways because then you just stack it. Wow. What am I gonna do next, 30? Like this.
SPEAKER_01I got stacking. I love that. I love that theory or whatever you would call it. Right. That's a good part of that book. So in the beginning of your book, I I I wrote this down because I wanted to ask, you said before you start, I think it was before you start building habits or disciplines, you had to build your identity. Yep. Does that so what does that mean to build your identity?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so you got to get your head in the game. So you got to get your mind right before you start kind of just start working on the tools. Even if you just before you pick a 90-day habit, before you start building doing the habit formation, there's again, you know, some of the concept I talked about of just getting this internal voice to where it's supporting you and figuring out if it's if you do have an internal voice that's kind of beating you up on a regular basis. Most people know. They're like, yeah, if you're gonna go into a meeting, what is your voice telling you before you go into that meeting? Hey, I'm nervous, I'm probably not gonna do well, I'm probably gonna screw this up, I'm hoping I don't get it wrong, I'm gonna disappoint my boss. If that's an internal voice in your head, the first thing you gotta do is figure out how to solve for that. And again, I've met executives that have been extraordinarily successful in Fortune 200 companies that they can't believe that they were sitting across from me talking about their successes because of how bad their internal voice is. And I go, what if that was very nice to you from now on? They're going, I just don't even know what I would do. I said, Well, that's what we're gonna do for the next 90 days is we're gonna change that first. Then you're gonna pick another habit, then you're gonna work on something that's gonna transform your life in a different way. But yeah, getting your head in the game, figuring out how to mentally prepare for success before you start working towards it.
SPEAKER_01All right, let me add another little angle in there because I know one of the chapters you talked about not delaying, like jumping on opportunities or starting things and not waiting. So this is part of starting, is going through this process. But if they're picking this, okay, I'm gonna do 100 days on the guitar and I want to sit and think and get my mind right, like what is that what does that look like? Because I don't want to sit and think for three weeks about getting ready to play the guitar. So, but you're telling me to get my mind right, get in the game. What does that look like? Is that yeah, journal it for a day, write it down? Is it a habit I need to create before I start my habit?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, depending on kind of where you are, where your headspace at is at in the first place.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right? So, you know, I do have a chapter about saying yes. You ever seen the movie Yes Man by Jim Carrey? Yeah. Kind of the idiotic way of just saying yes to everything because this uh this guy at a seminar kind of convinced him to take a covenant, yeah, you know, commit to a covenant. So it's very similar to that. And this idea of saying yes to things, you know, first is saying yes. You know, let's just use your guitar as an example. So if you're saying, hey, I do want to commit to the guitar, right? First, before you just go 90 days all in, why do you want to do that? So spend some time thinking about why is that the thing that you want to do? Yeah. Right. So there's uh uh a tool, it's another Japanese name of a tool called Ikigai. And it's I won't go into all the details of Ikigai, but if you just look it up goal setting, yes. Yeah, if you just look it up to try to figure out where you want to spend your time and how that's gonna value you, then so is it enough to do it just because it's hard?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like if that's the only reason I'd be the only one. Clearly, it would be great to be able to play the guitar and sit around a campfire and do all that.
SPEAKER_03But you have so many choices to spend your first 90 days on something.
SPEAKER_01I'm just checking this because my phone rang just to make sure it did not stop and it did not, so we're perfect. Yeah, so yeah, that I would be picking it because I've definitely got a 50% chance of failure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, I mean, the cool thing, and I'm not using your guitar because your son likes to play. Yeah, he likes to play piano and some other things, right? So see, that's my why. You just connected it. I did that on purpose. So again, so if you're sitting thinking about this for a little bit, and then you go, Well, well, how's this gonna benefit me? Right? Yeah, it's gonna be difficult. I've had it. So if I've had this for 25 years and now I'm gonna in 90 days be able to play some songs with my my son, then you're gonna go, holy cow, talk about transformational.
SPEAKER_01Well, you just earned every bit of money that I paid you to be here because like that connection right there is all the motivation I need. Because you're always looking ways to connect with your kids. So that's to get your head to first place, too.
SPEAKER_03It's not just I'm gonna go crush this guitar because I've had it for 25 years. It's um what's the point? What's some other points other than it's hard? Yeah. Right? Because maybe there's something else you want to do, maybe you want to cook. Maybe then you want to learn how to cook and become a really good cook. But uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01So let me ask you a question on that. Because this is this is something I struggle with all the time. You you have to talk about opportunity and jumping on opportunity. How do you know when something's an opportunity and when it's a distraction? You do not.
SPEAKER_03You don't. You don't. And I I'll tell you, I'll I'll give you an example. I got really good and probably too good in in the new version of my book that's coming out. I talk about strategic guesses, and you're not gonna know really what those strategic guesses are. And I'm just gonna give you a really quick example. So I had somebody that said, Hey, would you mind coming? I'd wrote some goals. Let me back up just a minute. So every year I do vision boards, and I do these vision boards, and now I got my kids involved, and they're they don't even live at the house anymore, but every year at Christmas time we get together, we have poster boards, and we start doing the vision boards, and we start talking about last year's vision boards. So a couple years ago I did a vision board and I wrote down, I want to speak at one of the top industry events for human resources, being a CHRO. And I said, I want to speak at this Sherm, Sherm event in California, and put it on the vision board. Turns out I already missed the date to sign up to to apply to speak at the event. And I said, Well, I'm leaving it on the vision board. It's on there, who knows, right? I I can't go against the science of putting stuff on vision boards. That's right. Let the universe take care of it. So I put it on there. I had somebody go, Would you mind speaking to this small event? And I was like, Yeah, what's and You know, now I kind of do from an opportunity standpoint, I go, is that really gonna be a good use of my time? And I go, I guarantee you somebody's gonna be very helped by this talk. So I said, Yeah, I'll do it. 30 people, I'll show up. So I show up, I do this talk for 30 people. Somebody in the audience says, Hey, look, I'm responsible for putting together this bigger conference, this Georgia-based conference. Would you be interested in going to this conference, which has about 300 people? I was like, okay, well, yeah, now that's that'll be pretty cool. I was kind of wanting to do this talk, this other talk, and I've already got the keynote, so let me just apply it to this event. So I go to that event. So I get to this event, and somebody in the audience goes, hey, I'm in charge of putting together speakers and this program for this event in California that has 26,000 people. Would you be interested in doing this talk at that event? I go, turns out it's on my vision board. I'd miss the date. And they go, Don't worry about the date. So we're gonna get you in, you're gonna be speaking at this event. And then I went and spoke at that event, and can't even tell you, even at that event in San Diego with 26,000 people at this event, the number of people I met, that then turned into more things and more things, and me speaking at NASA this past year and just whatever. It's it's unbelievable. All because I said yes to this small event that really didn't have a strategic value that I could see.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So you're not gonna, you're gonna, you're not always gonna know what those strategic yeses are. Sometimes you're just gonna have to go, what do I feel? Do I feel like this is gonna be something that's important? And there's gonna be times you're gonna turn stuff down that probably could have led to something really cool because you can't do everything. Right. But most of it ought to be fairly strategic. But don't discount the ones that you are just kind of pulling. I hope that I provide some value for you. I tend to still be open to, hey, I've got this group of people. Would you mind just speaking to this one person? I still do that. They're like, hey, would you just talk to this one person and meet them for coffee? And I'll go, I'll do that. Because you never know. Yeah, you don't. I don't want to fight the universal.
SPEAKER_01No, that's not like I've I've always wanted to be a public speaker, but you talk about the negative self-talk, like I am quick to go, you really have nothing to say. Like, I'm like, I don't even know what I would talk about. But I just love the idea of, you know, I don't know. I'm not gonna get into my negative self-talk because it's right on top of my head. I'm like, I'm I feel like I'm not an expert at anything.
SPEAKER_03But that goes back to getting your head in the game. Yeah. So how do you work on that first? But then then once you're coming up with your list for your vision board, all those things on your vision board get easier because you're solving for getting your head in the game first.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Instead of it's gonna be hard anyway. Whatever you're gonna do for that 90 days, if you pick something that's hard, it's gonna be hard. But it's even harder if your internal voice is fighting against you. So the goal is to solve some of those issues sooner than later. You don't have to just some can be congruent. You can say yes to other things while you're still solving for getting your head in the game. But that is like you want to win and you want to really kind of start checking things off a success list, then you want to spend some time with yourself. That's why.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Find your why before you go into your 90-day habit. I'm doing, I'm excited to start the guitar. I'm gonna start tonight. So I want to move into before, because we might stay on this topic for a while. Muskie. Muskogee. Muskogee. Um, so tell us what Muskogee is. This was my most fascinating chapter that what you wrote about, because it's something that I didn't know what I was talking about when I was trying to challenge my son, because we talk about, you know, I think every generation does this, where we talk about how easy the next generation has it. And oh, our kids are so soft. And I I don't necessarily agree with that, at least not in my house. I know that there are some things that he's very spoiled with. He doesn't do a whole lot of chores, and the kid can door dash once in a while, but there's also a lot of hard things that he does as well. But I worry about the world turning and our youth needing to stand up and be strong men, and so I've talked to him about choosing hard things on purpose, and that's what Muscogee is, correct?
SPEAKER_03Yes, so yeah, there's a chapter in my book, Do Hard Things and Be Happy. And you know, I think you're there's a lot of misconceptions, and don't get me wrong, because I love to sit on the beach and do nothing for on occasion, right? So there's a lot of beauty in that. That's hard sometimes, in that, especially if you go down the route that I've gone down, it's even harder and harder. But this idea of doing doing hard things, have a conversation with your son and say, What are you the most proud of? See what he tells you. I guarantee you it's not gonna be that I was you know playing this video game video game for five hours or I was sitting on the couch or I didn't do my chores or whatever. It's he did something, he did something hard and it you know built some confidence. So your brain actually, you're you're fighting your brain. Your brain's wired for comfort and it's wired for survival. And so for people who want to be successful, it's stepping out of a comfort zone and doing something hard starts to build resilience. And you got to do one little hard thing, another hard thing, and you got to keep doing these hard things. And the more you do it, it's like any muscle, it builds this resilient muscle. To your point, people need to be more resilient for themselves, yeah. Right? So you think the world is becoming an easier place to live? It's not becoming an easier place to live. So figuring out how to go do something hard, find your Muscogee. And the idea of that, the Muscogee is just doing one thing really hard every year. And so I I did a lot as it related to kind of sports activities. So I think when I was my late 40s, I started doing these Spartan races. And I had somebody go, Hey, you look like you're in shape. Why don't you go do these Spartan race with us? And I was like, Well, I I was in shape because I look good in shape, but cardio is not a whole different thing. You know that from all the stuff that you've done. So I started doing these Spartan races, and man, I started loving these Spartan races. After we got through with that one Spartan, I was like, I gotta do this again. Yeah. And I started doing really hard things. And then I would do a super Spartan, and then I would get other people to do the super Spartan with us. And the cool thing is, if you look at any pictures we take after doing something really hard, everybody's smiling. And the reason everybody's smiling is the endorphins and the dopamine and the serotonin that's kind of flowing in to the, but it doesn't have to be a Spartan race, it could be going back to school. I've done that twice in my late 40s and 50s and achieving that, or going, I've got a motorcycle ride that I'm gonna do in this year where I'm gonna riding halfway across country and back and camping in the middle of nowhere during that trip, sort of long way around if you know those things, but to do something hard. So it's the more you do it, the more you're gonna want to do it to begin with, but the more resilience you start to build. And you it's you you're more confident, you are happier, and it's very overlooked because people, for whatever reason, we need to be easier on kids, or we need to be easier on ourselves, and we need to be easier, and that's definitely trauma is thrown around a lot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, childhood trauma from yeah, our parents didn't pay us enough attention for us.
SPEAKER_03Well, you're not gonna have trauma childhood trauma from doing hard things. Exactly. So I'm sure trauma exists, and but you're not gonna have childhood trauma for doing hard things. And I just tell people, just pick something. Right. Pick something that's hard. Doing something for 90 days. Doing something for 90 days every single day is really hard. Yeah. One of the 90-day things that I did, the hardest 90-day challenge that I've done was zero sugar for 90 days. And that sounds like, okay, no problem. You just have bread and fruit and just any kind of anything that even turns into sugar. And again, I've been really hard on myself from uh broken bones. I've had 19 or so broken bones, five shoulder surgeries completely restructured. Wow. Restructure, wrist surgery. So waking up every morning was a little bit of a chore. When you take sugar out, this ability, there's a whole medical science on inflammation and how bad sugar is. I said, I'm just gonna try it. So I went cold turkey 90 days for no sugar, and that was so hard. But at the end of that 90 days, I was a different person. So is there an alcohol that doesn't have sugar in anything?
SPEAKER_01Because alcohol turns to sugar. Sorry, dude. So I did so I just did if you knew me, I am addicted to sugar adult or desserts. So for Lent, I didn't try to give up sugar because it to me that's just insane. But I gave up treats, sweets, desserts, like anything that was You carved out a piece of this. A huge piece. For me, a huge piece. Like I'm I wasn't not eating the spaghetti sauce because it didn't have sugar or bread, but anything that was considered a manufactured treat or sweet, or and and I did, I did feel a lot better. And I got to the end and I was like, man, I should take it a next step and like try to eliminate a lot more. And it was Easter, and I reverted back and ate a lot of sugar for the past week. And I felt horrible. Like my body has hurt worse now than it did before, and I wasn't even on no sugar. So I am going to try to push. I'm gonna try to do that as well, eliminate more sugar, but I do like to have a cold beer by the lake, so I don't know if this is the right time here for me to start again. See, I feel excuses coming in.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, it I hate it. So yeah, I mean, it does. I mean, even a lot of the foods that I really enjoyed, pastas and stuff like that. So I mean for that 90 days, but all my inflammation went away.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And I knew that doesn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that it was that was a game changer. And you know, afterwards, I was sort of like the guy you're talking about with the TV. Yeah, and I wasn't a big sugar guy, but I was a big bread and pasta guy. And so that I've pretty much cut out mostly. So my diet is very low sugar, very low carb, even today, because I went through that 90 day. Yeah, but I was telling her, I think my once I get through with this 530, I'll probably still wake up at 530 every day moving forward. But I think I'm gonna go back to the no sugar to own the inflammation piece back, right? Well, that was the hardest thing, and I was so proud to do 90 days.
SPEAKER_01That's huge. Yeah, because that's I I know how difficult that is. Because I know how difficult it was just to avoid desserts or treats, like just to remove that part was difficult because they're presented to you all the time. Yeah, like it ain't just about not having any sauce. It is everywhere you go.
SPEAKER_03I go to a lot of events, as you can imagine, and there's almost at least especially then, I just could not eat at those events. Yeah. Because everything was, hey, here's your bread and here's your, you know, some kind of something stuffed chicken and here's your dessert. I was like, I guess I'm bringing my stuff for 90 days.
SPEAKER_01So the the original, I don't know if original is the right word, the Muscogee was talking about water and cold water and the cleansing. Is that tied into ice baths in any way?
SPEAKER_03Because you're talking about the same concept of, you know, if you if you hear Joe Rogan talking about doing his ice baths, you know, doing the ice every morning.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And he does it every day. And he, you know, he he's a very healthy guy, so he does it something for the health. But he'll tell you that he's not doing it just for the health, he's doing it to prove that he owns the day.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So it is going back to doing something very hard, and it doesn't matter, especially if you don't like it, do it.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03And that's what's gonna kind of rewire your brain to go, okay, I can do anything. Yeah. Right?
SPEAKER_01This is gonna make a huge I heard a preacher talking about, he was calling out people that were fasting for religious beliefs or whatever, and they were doing these fasts of, oh, I'm gonna not eat bread on Fridays. And he was talking about how he's like, fasting is great if it is something that is extremely difficult for you. Like you can't just cut out Cokes and you really aren't addicted to Cokes. Like if you are not, if it is not something that's extremely difficult, then you are not proving to your mind that you control the body. Right. So he's like, if you're gonna fast for something, if you're truly gonna fast, you have to choose something that when it's over, you know. I can't believe I just didn't you own your body, you're you you have proven yourself. And I just love that. And that gave me, that's why, because of his message, that's why I chose the sweets, because I was like, that's gonna be difficult for me. Because I go, I mean, again, they're presented to me all the time, and I never say no.
SPEAKER_03So difficult's not impossible. No, not at all. Zero sugar is not impossible.
SPEAKER_01It's it's not, it is not, it it just requires a little more planning. No, a lot more planning, yeah, which is hard, right?
SPEAKER_03Which then at the end of the day, you're gonna go, I can't believe that I didn't. Right.
SPEAKER_01Because I'm honestly, I had no problem saying no. Like when there were desserts in the room, like the whole time. It never was like a struggle. I was never like uh I never snuck a bite. Like it was finite for me. I was not doing makeup sugar, though. Well, I mean, I still had uh cream in my coffee, and I still, so it wasn't like the addiction part was totally gone.
SPEAKER_02It wasn't like my body was deep. Right. You went enough deep to go I could make it.
SPEAKER_01But it was very difficult for not difficult, it was it was conscious and all day, every day for me to choose not to eat a piece of candy or you know, the cheesecake after a meal that's presented, or the shared dessert, or whatever that looked like. That was that part was difficult because a lot of times my snacks were treats, were sugars and cookies and all that. So it was difficult, but maybe it wasn't difficult enough. I don't know. I can tell you it wasn't difficult enough.
SPEAKER_03But the fact that you did it is uh is pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_01All right, so I got a question for you. Identify one area in your life where you have chosen comfort over growth.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I can I can tell you that a number of different things, right? If I if if you look back at my career, when I was 45 years old, I'm 57 now. So at 45 years old, I had a really good career going, right? And before I got into the executive coaching and the neuroscience of success and all of these interesting things, I was already successful, right? And that's a huge comfort problem for people who are hey, I've got a job, I've got a good job, I've got a car, right? I can go on vacation. That's success, right? That's already a success, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But if you want to change gears, then it becomes extremely hard. So going, you know, I had a the the a boss who came into my office, this was 11 years ago, and he said, Hey, I'm promoting you to this executive role. I need you to be the VP and the CHRO for Panasonic Automotive, and very proud of all the stuff that you've done before. I think you're doing gonna do a great job. And he came in and gave me that that uh promotion, and then he left and I was like, Man, this is cool, right? This is I'm you know, I feel very proud of myself. And he came back about four o'clock that afternoon. He goes, I got something to tell you. I was like, dang, man, already gonna get fired. I've had six hours in this job. He goes, I don't need you to be the VP of HR. I was like, Nah, I thought he just told me I needed to. He wanted me to be the VP of HR. He goes, I need you to be the VP of the company, and I need you to focus on HR. So you got some work to do. And I was like, dang. And I said, okay, what does this really mean? So I really started thinking about that. And I was a business person before I was an HR person. So I that's kind of the way I thought anyway. But over the years, I was probably not, I was thinking more about my function and not as much about running the business for every function and helping all the other executives run their business. So I reached out and so I was in a comfort zone. I chose comfort over what I should really be doing. If I really asked myself, hey, and I had a mentor ask me later, he goes, if your boss, this was about six months after I got this job, if he was to interview the best vice presidents and CHROs on the market and you, would you get the job? And I go, no. He said, So he's he's giving you a gift, right? He goes, What are you gonna do with it? I was like, dang, man, everybody's hitting me with these hard truths, right? Wow. So it was a couple of different times over a very short period of people going, You're in a comfort zone. You've chosen comfort because you had success. Is this what is this how you're gonna honor somebody that's you know given faith and putting you in this role? And I said, No, that's not what I'm gonna do. So from then on, that's when I went out and started talking to the best CHROs in the country, Microsoft and HP and IBM, you name it. I started talking to CEOs, some of the best CEOs. One is I was just texting with him yesterday, a guy named Jim Kavanaugh, he's a CEO of a company called WWT, who I really respect, that taught me a lot about company culture. And what do you expect out of your CHROs? Not just asking the CHROs, what are you doing? What are you doing that's different than others to get you to be, you know, a CHRO at a, you know, one of the top 20 companies in the world. I started asking the CEOs what you expect out of those CHROs. And then I put my own development plan together. Not one my boss gave me, not one that, because it was that kind of development plan wasn't going to come from my boss.
SPEAKER_01Not one chat GPT put together, correct?
SPEAKER_03No, it had to come from me and that work, right? And then I just basically everything I designed at that point was out of the comfort zone. So for so many years, and people go, hey man, that's really, you know, that's really lucky you get to speak at this thing in Paris. I go, lucky. You know how many places I went and spoke for free? Yeah. Hey, that's really cool that you get to guess luxury at Columbia. It's really lucky you get to do that. You go. Do you know how much work it took to build the knowledge to be able to be asked to go and guess luxury at Columbia? And it's, I mean, it's all these, you know, aggregation of marginal gains percent better.
SPEAKER_01That goes back to the athlete where they talk about how, wow, if it's you just run out on the field and throw touchdowns, aren't you great? Shooting you, man, you're so great. You're so lucky to be that talented. It was like, well, you didn't see me here at 11 o'clock last night shooting a thousand free throws.
SPEAKER_03And you didn't see all that work. Kobe Bryant's 4 30 in the morning workouts, and his even his team members would ask, What are you doing? Why are you in the gym at 4 30 in the morning? He goes, So I can have the most points at the end of the game. And he's like, This didn't come free. Yeah, but it's the mindset shift that changed, right? So and you know, those kind of wake-up moments still hit me from time to time where I go, Oh man, I should be doing something different.
SPEAKER_01Well, I love what you started with there, and I and anybody can use this. I mean, real estate agent, especially if you're in sales, but anybody was is if the best mortgage loan officers, if there were five of them lined up and the buyer was interviewing those five to see who, or those five real estate agents, or those five secretaries, or would they choose you? And if you can't answer yes, then maybe we need to step over the road.
SPEAKER_03It's highly likely you're not gonna answer yes. Yeah. But the other piece is when have you ever reached out to those five best real estate people in the world and say, what are you doing different? Yeah. And then the asking the question is one thing, because I asked the question.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But then I went and did all the stuff that they were telling me that I should be working on, right? And at the end of the day, my boss could post the job today, and there's still gonna be somebody that can do my job better than me. Yeah. So I can't stop, right? I gotta figure out how I keep honoring that original promotion that he gave me. And that's kind of this mentality of one percent.
SPEAKER_01That's really cool. All right, last question. How do you know when you're being undeniable? How do I know if I'm in that state, or how do I know that I'm I have read your book and I'm acting on it? How do I know I'm being undeniable?
SPEAKER_03So the cool thing is if you get the new version, there's some testimonials in there. And again, the testimonials are from people who are already successful, but they wouldn't consider themselves undeniable at the time. Right? Even C-suite executives that have put the testimonials in there. And part of it is yeah, you can be successful in different areas, but I'll give you my version of undeniable is when you're so proud of who you are as a person. Forget the job. Right. Right. So think about the more you do, that's difficult. So the stuff that I've done from a career standpoint to make me a better executive, I'm very, very proud of. A lot of those tools that I've used, actually I've used at my home, right? With my family, with my friends, to be a better dad, a better husband, a better friend. And when you start blending those really cool habit tools of active listening, using that to be a better listener for your kids, or doing some 90-day challenges that you know are with you and your wife. When you start blending the work stuff with the home stuff, man, that becomes just golden. And so many people learn so many of these business books or sales books or real estate books. Just think of the principles that are in those books that you could do with your own family. So I say undeniable is not just the fact that you can go crush your goals. How do you feel after you've done it? I love that. And it's it's again sort of this life-changing thing of getting your mind right and then sort of building these habits that are serving you. And you know whether your habits are serving you or not. Yeah. You know whether you're undeniable or something. If you stop and think about it, yeah. Yeah. And it's easy to say, oh, well, that, you know, I'm just gonna keep that one because I like it. Yeah. Imagine if you didn't. Right? Just imagine if you got rid of something that really wasn't serving you well just because you don't want to go through the pain of getting rid of it.
SPEAKER_01See, and I'm exploring a more godly, Christ-like life myself, and that hits home with some of the habits that I'm like, I'm just gonna hold on to that habit. I'm really trying hard over here. Right. And just the it just made me think it was like, well, what if you gave it up anyway?
SPEAKER_00What if you what if you went all in? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's all because comfort's really the comfort is sucking you in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03This is what I do. I do have a beer by the lake. I do like to do them. I love the sugar, right? So I'm just gonna do a little bit of the sugar. Yeah, but once you start putting your priorities together and go, how is this gonna benefit me differently? So, what is this gonna look like in 90 days? Yeah, well, but you feel the easy route. Yeah, you feel the difference between if you're undeniable. Again, I was successful, but I wasn't undeniably successful.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_03So what's changed for me in a 10-year period has been pretty dramatic career-wise and personally, and all 1% better. It's not these big, huge leaps, it's just doing something different every single day. I love it.
SPEAKER_01All right, so how do I feel like Oprah?
SPEAKER_03So, how do they find your book? So, actually, May 8th, if you go on to Amazon or Barnes and Noble on May 8th, this book relaunches. Uh, actually, on May 8th, we're gonna be doing uh a free Kindle version of the book. Oh, wow. So I hate to give away stuff for free, but you can get it for free. And you're gonna love the Kindle book version so much, you're gonna want to buy the normal version.
SPEAKER_01It's a great gift and Mother's Day, Father's Day right there. Graduation.
SPEAKER_03Graduation, somebody who just graduated, yeah, needs to build some habits that are gonna serve them starting a new job and changing basically so many different changes.
SPEAKER_01I've had a few people talk about how they're paying their kids to read. And what if that's what if your hundred dollar five, whatever you give your kid or friend for graduation, what if it's contingent upon them reading this book?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Hey, here's your 500 heart gift. You get it when you finish this book and tell me about it. Let me know how it goes. Yeah, that's awesome. So they can also you have a Facebook group that's you're posting in some of your daily habits just so to motivate and you know keep people on track of whatever theirs is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, just the undeniable uh Facebook page. If you join that, we've got right now we've got a 90-day habit challenge going. I think we're 33 days into it. I think I told you mine's 5.30. So if you join, you're gonna see my watch every morning at 5.30, getting moving. And again, 33 days in. I can already feel the endorphins kicking in. I'm proud of myself for getting up every day for 5.30. But yeah, join. There's people that are doing all kinds of things, learning to play the piano. I have uh I'm gonna start a band just through your group. My son-in-law is learning to play, he's in the Air Force, but and he's actually running a marathon too, so he's training for that. So he's doing two. Wow, and one of them's playing the piano, so uh he's been wanting to do that for a long time. So that's all you can do anything, just take it 90 days at a time.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Yes, sir. Good to see you.