Notes for An Awesome Life with John Spence

Influences: You Become What You Focus On

• Notes for An Awesome Life with John Spence • Episode 6

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John and Josh explore how our areas of daily focus shape our future and how small, deliberate choices can compound into a massive change of course towards a life of success and joy. John shares personal stories, practical tools, and a two-list homework exercise to align your time, relationships, and self-talk with your values.

  • Email us: awesomelifenotes@gmail.com
  • Learn more about John: JohnSpence.com
  • Familiar Wilsons Media: FamiliarWilsonsMedia.com

About John Spence: John is a globally recognized business thought leader, former owner/CEO of five companies, and advisor/coach to organizations from startups to the Fortune 10. He’s lectured at more than 90 universities and was named by the American Management Association as one of “America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch.”

About the show: Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence focuses on personal growth, happiness, clarity, and the everyday habits that compound into an AWESOME life.

Credits: Hosts John Spence and Josh Wilson • Produced by Josh Wilson for Familiar Wilsons Media • Special thanks: Amanda Wilson (writing and production), and Domingo Jimenez (writing and marketing).

SPEAKER_01:

This is a familiar Wilsons Media Production. John Spence is recognized as one of the foremost business thought leaders in the world, a global top 100 business thinker and advisor to companies from startups to the Fortune 10. But it didn't start that way. In college, John hit rock bottom, kicked out of one university and rejected by another. That's when he made a decision to change his attitude and take a systematic approach to building the life he wanted. Through hard work and relentless learning, he went on to create a life full of meaning, joy, and connection. I'm Josh Wilson, and this is Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence. We invite you to join us in conversation as John shares with us the lessons, habits, and tools that he used and that you can use to build an awesome life. John, it is pretending like it's fall here in Gainesville. What do you think about all that?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my gosh, yeah. In the 60s, uh, when I walked my dogs this morning at sunrise, it was beautiful. Actually, pulled a jacket out for the first time this year, you know, because for us it's clut at 60, it's close to frozen tundra. Uh opened all the windows in the house, thinking about building a fire tonight? Not sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Love that. Well, listen, both you and I are from Miami, so this is this is actual the set of of the movie Frozen for us. But that's not why we're here. We're here to talk uh to each other and hopefully give folks um some insights in having a better, more awesome life. I met you, the first time I met you, you came and you gave a presentation. And the presentation was called The Most Important Thing That I've Learned. Now, oddly enough, we have not let off in our first few episodes with the most important thing that you've learned. Um, but let's get to that. I want to talk about that. What is the most important thing that you've learned?

SPEAKER_00:

You become what you focus on, unlike the people you choose to spend time with. Whatever you're reading, studying, learning, uh, whatever you fill your brain with, and whoever you choose to spend your time with uh direct will directly determine your life a decade from now.

SPEAKER_01:

So let's dig into this though, because obviously this was one of those insights that you had that you put into your um Strategies for a Successful Life workbook here. When did this reality hit home for you?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh well, it was a it was a combination of two things. It hit home for me when I went to the community college, which I happen to be wearing a shirt form right now, the Santa Fe Saints, uh, when my professor told me to start study groups and to start reading. Uh and then I realized, but when I looked back at the University of Miami, where I failed out, you know, I had a 1.6 GPA, my friends had a 1.2, a 1.0, you know, we were all failing. Misery loves company. So I realized back then that I had a whole group of people that were focused on exactly the wrong things to be successful in college. Uh and it was when I came up here, Gainesville, where we both live now, uh, that I realized uh through one of my college professors, uh Roger Strickland, that I had to surround myself with bright, sharp, smart, values-driven people that wanted to have fun, but also wanted to get straight A's. Uh, and we needed to focus on the right things. And don't get me wrong, I didn't, it isn't like I stopped having fun. Sure. I still went out, you know, my my phrase was beer taste better with a 4.0. So still had fun, but I made sure it was in within the guardrails of my vision of graduating from college with a 4.0. Not the GPA is everything that was just a reflection of doing a good job.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. And by the way, my phrase at that time would have been I have a 2.9, let's go have some wine. But I think yours looks better on a shirt. Um, but okay, so growing up, okay, because you talk about identifying those people who were the most influential on you. It takes a lot of introspection to recognize that you've had people who have had tremendously wonderful impact on you, and then people who have had negative impact on you. If you, John Spence, were to look back at the beginning of your life, your formative years, what who were your your primary influencers?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I as we mentioned, I went to a top prep school. So most of the folks there were pretty bright. It was it was my friends. My now, here's an interesting sub thing. My best friend in high school, his father was the headmaster of our uh of our school.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So I couldn't get too far off track because I was hanging out at their house. I mean, I made it all the way through under uh undergrad school, rather, uh pre-K through graduation without a single detention. I never got in trouble once. And I surrounded myself, you know, I tried to keep away from the super egotistical athletes. Um, and I was a pretty good athlete. And uh I just hung out with the people that were nice and balanced and did get good grades. Same thing in college when I played rugby. And I look back now, we'll use my rugby team as a one of them is a nuclear submarine uh commander, one is a full board colonel in the Air Force, the other one runs a multi-billion dollar company, one of them is a pediatric brain surgeon. Oh uh, there's me who's trying to keep up with that. But I look around and, you know, in college, we we probably from the outside looked like a bunch of hooligans, but all of us were carrying a 4.0 and setting the curve in all our classes while still having fun, playing rugby, doing all that stuff. So I look back and go, I wonder what it was about that sport that attracted a group of people like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, was it the sport, or was it that you just identified the certain people in that sport that you knew would be good influences, or or you just attracted each other because you had similar goals?

SPEAKER_00:

In rugby, there's called an A side and a B side, sort of a uh, you know, a first team and a second team. The A-side guys were all like that. Um and I was on the A side, and you look around, I have my rugby uh reunion coming up in January. Still stay in touch with a bunch of guys. And uh so the top players were also the ones that were the most disciplined and focused. Sure. Uh the B players, not so much. Kind of like that in life.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, okay, so let's let's dig a little bit into more who influenced you, especially early on. We can't talk about this subject. I can't talk about this subject without talking about uh parental influence. Yeah. My story is, and as we get to know each other better, I'm sure that this will come up more because my relationship with my dad, I was raised by a single father, greatly influenced me in a negative way. It was not, it was not a good relationship, it was not a good situation. But you can't choose your parents. What about the influence of your parents on your early life?

SPEAKER_00:

My mom was just sort of middle of the road. She had she acted much more like a friend than a mother. She wanted to go fishing, do stuff together, everything. She, it's interesting. My I've I've mentioned my family was very wealthy, but they were not very social. I can't remember a single time we had people over to the house growing up. Oh, wow. Uh yeah. Uh no parties, no dinner parties, no guests. Uh so my mom had a pretty close-knit group of friends that were the mothers of the other kids in our school. And other than that, she hung out with me and my friends, which was odd, but all my friends loved her. They called her her name was Mary Joe. They all called her Mama Joe. Um, and my father was uh, like yours, extremely distant, did not have a good relationship. And this goes to something, and this is a really important point to make for the listeners. I always say, rate the people around you on a scale of one to ten. Yeah. Ten is they're awesome for me. They support my values, they help me, they're good people, they're values-based. I mean, this is someone I should spend time with. You know, five mediocre, blah, blah, and they go all the way down to one or two, which is this person's a really bad influence on my life. A lot of people have ones and twos that have the same last name as them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, or they sign their paycheck. And people tell me, you don't understand, I have no choice. No, you do. You do. Um, I chose not to be around my dad, and I got a tremendous amount of flack from people around me. You have to go home for Thanksgiving. You have to go home for Christmas. No, I don't. It's a catastrophe. It's depressing. There's no happiness in Thanksgiving or Christmas. And I've met other people who continue uh to just go back and beat their head against the wall, spending time with people who are truly making a huge negative impact in their life because they feel like I have to.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh and all of that, and this is hard for some people to believe, you always have a choice. I mean, you walk away, there's divorce, there's other things. Uh and uh one of my friends said, sometimes you have to prune the friendship tree.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Family is different, though, for me, because you know, we talked earlier about values, and two of my values are family and health, including emotional health. And so those two things, you know, it is really a difficult consideration when you have to decide, you know, do I want to keep that connection or do I want to take care of my health? Um, am I being selfish? Um, am I giving this person enough of a chance? I mean, it is a real struggle. I hear what you're saying. I do. It is, I want to acknowledge, and I I know from personal experience, it is a real struggle.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but you make you said something really important there. Have I given this person a chance? And, you know, I in my classes, I tell people, you know, if you've got someone that's a six or something like that, if they're moving up the scale, you know, and they're and they're like, you know, I'm sure that when I was, you know, in business and younger, I wasn't a 10 for other people. I was still learning, I was still growing, I was immature, but they they decided to help me along. Uh, so if there's someone I believe in your circle that maybe's a six, but they're moving towards seven or eight, and you see them making changes uh in a way that, you know, and again, this is somewhat selfish. You're deciding, you know, who do I want in my circle?

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Are they living up to my expectations? You know, as I just said, mine, that is uh that's a choice. Does it sound selfish? The we've talked about this, the single most limited thing you have in your life, the most scarce, the most valuable is time. And you choose how to spend that time. So I there are people in my life that were not super highly rated and they've moved up the chain. There are also people that were there and dropped down the chain quickly.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And I went this, and which is fine. This person went in a different direction. They've changed their values, they've changed their direction, our values have diverged. Uh, and that's okay. They're leading their life the way they want to. It just doesn't happen to be someone that I want to invest my life in.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. And I I did I went to a a lecture um this past week, and the guy was talking about this idea that relationships do naturally change, and sometimes people who have been a tailwind for you can turn into a headwind. And that's just that's uh the nature of life.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, that's the way it goes. I mean, I had some very, very close friends that um, by no fault of their own per se, uh, we just don't get along anymore. They're focused on things. Uh I mean, I've got one friend that I grew up with that when he came to visit me after I'd become, you know, CEO, all he wanted to do was play golf, softball, drink, and watch sports. Uh and for him, that was a great life. He's like, I golf three times a week. I'm in a softball league. I go out every night, I watch, you know, watch sports on ESPN and slam some beers with my friends. And he was happy as could be. Congratulations. I'm super happy for you. However, that's not how I want to spend my time, so it's probably not gonna work for us to spend time together.

SPEAKER_01:

People change, and we change, and that's uh it's really okay. And I think that people need to hear that it's really, really okay. That's just the nature of life. Listen, I used to have hair. Things change. It's okay. Uh, let's talk a little bit about one of the influencers we've not necessarily talked about yet. Uh I went through and I made a list of folks that that influenced me, my wife, my adult children, my um non-adult children, so the people that I grew up with, my dad, as I mentioned. What I did not list that I know that that you list on yours is myself. Now I want you to unpack that and help me understand that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's my belief that you should be your own best friend, that you should support yourself, help yourself, use positive self-talk, all those sort of things. And this came from teaching this class one day, and I had not at that up to that point, I said, Who are the people you spend the most time with? And someone in my class who I knew uh wrote himself as the last one and put a zero.

SPEAKER_01:

So honest, though, you're in a good place if you can recognize that, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, he's in prison now. Well, so he's not in such a good place anymore. But but agreed he was self-aware enough to know I'm destroying my own life, I'm doing things that are gonna get me in trouble. Um, he was unable to pull back from that, even though he recognized he was gonna be his own demise.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh so what I tell people is if you're below a seven, you need to work on getting taking better care of yourself. And you know, it's it's interesting, and you said the word earlier, selfish. You know, people, you know, taking time out for myself or you know, taking a quiet walk or doing something like that or going to get a massage, whatever it might be, people, I feel bad, I'm being so selfish. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else. Right. And both your mental health and your physical health. So, you know, I when people have uh, well, some people say, you know, uh like one of my values is contribution. And I do it because it feels good. Well, it happens to be a very selfish way to be unselfish. Yeah, you're focused on doing something that makes you happier, gives you joy, uh, connection. And sometimes this is all about me. No, at the end of the day, you're helping a lot of people, it just happens to feel good for you, too.

SPEAKER_01:

It's so funny that you should say that because that's that is a hang-up I had to get past, and it was a result of my um my upbringing was very was the brand of religion that was very guilt and shame laden. And so therefore, everything had to be a sacrifice, or it didn't count, right? Uh-huh. And until I realized if we didn't have it evolutionarily built into us to feel good when we did good, no one would do good. This is a good thing that we want to feel good when we do good.

SPEAKER_00:

Agreed. Like I said, it's the most unselfish way to be highly selfish, and it's it's good for everybody. Everybody wins in a situation like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Other ways that we can be our own best friend. I want to dig into this a little bit more because I don't think that people understand this enough.

SPEAKER_00:

So there I mentioned one of them already, and I've got two here. Um, one is self-talk. Some people have very negative self-talk. They call them, I mean, the way I see it is some people talk to themselves in a way they would never let anybody else talk to them. Sure. Sure. They say, you know, why am I so stupid? Why am I so fat? Well, how come I can never do this? I'll never be able to do that. Um, and it's, you know, and I catch people sometimes when I'm talking to them, say that out loud. I'm thinking, wow, if you're gonna say that out loud to other people, I don't know what's going on in your head. So the ability to catch that and find a way to say, you know, I'll never get this done too. It's challenging, but I'll figure it out. You know, I'm so fat, you know. No, you're heavy now, but you're gonna be healthy later. This is an opportunity, it's a chance to improve your health. I mean, I'm a classic, classic example of that. I just hit my goal weight uh that I've had for several years, and so I'm 120 pounds down from my heaviest. Congratulations. Thank you. But when I hit that, A, I knew that my value of health was totally violated. Yeah, uh, but then I looked at it and as soon as I started to make progress, it wasn't like I won't be able to lose 100 pounds, it was like just another day. If I just go another day and healthy, if you know, and that it got momentum. But a lot of people in that situation might tell each other, this is, you know, you're never gonna do this, you don't have enough discipline, things like that. The other thing is um your uh explanatory style. And people have an explanatory style, um, either positive or optimistic or pessimistic. So when when someone with a negative or pessimistic uh explanatory style, um something bad happens to them, they explained it to themselves in negative way. This is bad, it's gonna affect everything negatively, it's gonna last a long time, and it's my fault. Right. Uh on the other side, there's a growth mentality where someone says, This is bad, but it's not gonna affect that much of my life that bad. It's not gonna last that long. I'll yeah, I'll get through this. And this stuff over here is my responsibility. I did that. I but all this other stuff over here, that had nothing to do with me. So they go from this is horrific to this is an opportunity. And just that that, you know, I don't think that's being Pollyanna either. I've I've learned in my life, and I try to help other people understand that everything is an opportunity. Um, an opportunity to learn, grow, improve, uh, learn how to have a better attitude. So it's uh, but that's a hard, sometimes a hard uh concept for people to grasp.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I don't think that people really believe that what you focus on is as important as it is, because if you focus on the positive, you or even if you focus on the positively realistic, you're gonna tend to see things to confirm that bias, right? And then as you're saying, the opposite, if you focus on the negative, then your your brain and your mind is looking for things to prove that that's right.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's called your reticular activating system.

SPEAKER_01:

That's exactly what I meant to say. Reticulated Python, whatever.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, my my thing was that if you just if you go to the car dealer and you look right at your side, you're gonna buy a red Corvette, but you're you're just gonna wait a little bit. As you drive home, the God has populated the earth with red Corvettes. They're everywhere. They're in there, you know. They were there before, but it wasn't until you started thinking about them that all of a sudden they were everywhere. Uh, it's the same thing with your beliefs, with your thoughts. If you, like you just said, Josh, if if you have positive beliefs and you believe that things are gonna work out okay, then you you are searching for things that will support that belief. And the reverse is if you believe it's a catastrophe, you will see it only as a catastrophe.

SPEAKER_01:

So talk a little bit more about the importance of identifying those things that you focus on.

SPEAKER_00:

Obviously, in my opinion, it should be something that aligns with your values, something you're interested and passionate about. You know, if you if you refuse not refuse, if you fail to invest the time to focus on something, I think that uh that means you're that puts up a red flag that maybe that's not that important to you. So a lot of it is is having um I'm trying to think the discipline to uh focus on the things you know are good for you. Like I don't watch that much news. It's not gonna make me happy, it's gonna give me stress. I'm gonna be upset and you know, not angry, but uh perturbed. Uh so I just say, okay, let's put up Roblox, won't watch that. And now one of the other things is what you focus on can also be it's kind of who you spend your time with too. That's books. That's you know, YouTube videos. That's you know, there's it it doesn't just have to be someone who's alive that you hang out with. If you're hanging out with great authors or you're watching amazing, you know, uh YouTube videos where you're learning or listening to podcasts, one would hope, like this one, uh, then you are actually surrounding yourself with great people and focusing on the right things. I mean, I I think it's amazing that some of the smartest people on the face of the earth wrote down their best ideas in a book. And for the large part, you can get a lot of them for free. So that's like getting a top mentor from the whole world by just buying their book or listening to it.

SPEAKER_01:

It does take so much discipline though, because we are so inundated with external stimuli.

SPEAKER_00:

I I'm gonna tell you something that's interesting is people go, you know. I I if for those watching the video, I've got a couple hundred books behind me. I've got a couple thousand in my office that I've read. People go, wow, you must be really disciplined. I'm like, no, I love to read. And I think I've mentioned it before, but it's a difference between super high achievers and high achievers. High achievers are where people go, I have to read. Someone uh at a difference, I get to read. Like I have to practice. I get to practice, I have to go to the gym, I get to go to the gym. It's uh it makes it from something that's uh unpleasant to something you're excited about.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so let's talk about that process for someone who recognizes the importance of it. But they need to get from here. Oh God, I don't like this, to here. I really love doing this. And I actually think that you can get there, you know, especially if you see the benefit of it. But how do you get from here to there?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, I have a phrase that I love make it easy to win. Create very small goals. Uh, you know, for example, I'll I'll use this when I I used to do powerlifting. Um, I kept a gym bag at my house, in my car, at the gym. So I I couldn't use the excuse, can't go to the gym day because they didn't bring my stuff. Make it easy to win. I have three sets of stuff. I'll always be able to go. Um, make it easy to win. Start with the exercises you really like. Get a weightlifting partner who'll push you, or a gym partner. Um, and then just set small steps. You know, if you say, I'm gonna go like me, I'm gonna lose 120 pounds in the next month. No, I'll do it over the next three or four years and we'll go, we'll do it healthily, and it'll it'll change. It'll be okay eventually. So you can get from here to there. You just have to make it easy to win. Set yourself up for success.

SPEAKER_01:

And then how do you view or how do you approach times where where you fail? Where you fail in this endeavor to get from here to there, whatever we're talking about, it doesn't come as easy as you had hoped. It doesn't necessarily meet your immediate expectations, but you still recognize the value in it. What keeps you going?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you you that last point is you still value uh recognize the value in it. So step one for me is if you fail, are you do you want to get back and try again? Do you recognize the value? If you don't, then you're not gonna do it anyways. Sure, of course. Um I we kind of talked at this at the beginning. This is part of life. You know, I I used to draw a line across the board when I was teaching classes on this stuff, and I said, this is the line of happiness. No one lives above this line all the time. You know, you're below it, you spike above it, then you spike way below. You know, you have a happy day, and then I, you know, I said when my mom died, I cried till snot ran out of my nose. So part of it is understanding that it this is part of life. Um, and then the the other thing is saying, all right, let me back up then and figure out where I failed. What did I do? You know, did I I I'm just gonna use diet because it's on my mind right now, but did I put cookies in the house? You know, and if they're there, I'm gonna eat them. Trust me, I know. Two o'clock in the morning, my butt's up eating up cookies. So I failed because I didn't, I did not make it easy for me to win. I made it hard for me to win. So, you know, that is back up and say what went wrong, what up went off the rails, how do I, how do I bounce back from this and fix it next time so I don't fail at that. Now I'm gonna fail at something else a little bit later on, but at least I've got through that hurdle and figured out how not to mess that specific part of it up.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so at the end of every uh episode, we want John to give us a little bit of homework. And folks, I'm gonna do it too. So I'm with you. John, what is our homework for today?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say, uh, well, this is what I do in the workbook. So this is what we'll do is I'd like everyone to list the five areas where they spend the most time focusing on right now. Uh, is it, you know, work, is it school, is it your family, is it Facebook, you know, is it uh, you know, gaming? I don't know. Just have to be brutally honest with yourself and say this is real really where I'm investing my time, then rate it on a scale of one to ten. Ten, this is awesome for me. It's exactly where I should be spending my most precious resource, down to one of doom scrolling is not helping my life. Uh, and then the same thing with the people around you. List out the people you choose to spend time with. And I'm not talking about the person that works in the office next to you. You're forced to spend time with them. I'm talking about the people you give your time to. Look at them and rate them on a scale of one to ten. Ten, this person's awesome for me, all the down way down to one, which is this person is actively making my life worse. This this person creates pain and sorrow and anxiety and stress. And then any place you drop below a seven on either one of those lists, back up and say, Oh, what do I need to do to get it up to eight, nine, or ten?

SPEAKER_01:

I'll start as soon as we uh we get off of this call. I'm gonna make my list. And John, you're probably gonna be around 7.58, I think, but you're climbing. So good job.

SPEAKER_00:

I wish I could say the same about you. So you're up in the same range. We have a lot of fun. I love our ability to poke a little fun at each other.

SPEAKER_01:

I was gonna say, you just caught the dynamic here. I'm like the volleyball player setting it up, and he just spikes it right back in my face.

SPEAKER_00:

So there we go.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, just don't mistake my head for the volleyball.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a low bar, though.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a very low bar. All right, John, until next time. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Folks, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line, ask us questions, tell us how you're doing on the journey by emailing awesomelife notes at gmail.com. That's awesome life notes at gmail.com. To find out more about John Spence, you can go to johnspence.com. This has been a Familiar Wilsons Media production. You can find out more about the other podcasts we offer at FamiliarWilsonsmedia.com. Or maybe you want to start a podcast. Let me know. Special thanks for this episode, of course, goes to Amanda Wilson and Domingo Jimenez. And until next week, folks, you got your homework. Now go out there and live an awesome life.