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Sometimes, we're looking for newer books to try to solve our problems, how we're going to form habits, how we're going to create mastery, how we're going to communicate.
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One of the important things that I've discovered is that the older the sage, the quicker the solution, and so the further you go back in the great ancient texts, the more you're reaching the source materials.
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Everything that you read today is sourced in something else something older, necessarily something older.
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Day is sourcing something else, something older, necessarily something older.
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Current focus, where we could go back and read the source materials.
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That's where the true solutions are found, and it's easier to read that than to read these modern men that are trying to sound smart.
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Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back.
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This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast.
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I'm your host, john Gallagher.
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What a guest I've got for you today.
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Just had a little bit of conversation offline in terms of some of the fascinating things we're going to talk about with Rick Walker, the author of Nine Steps to Build a Life of Meaning.
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Now, that book has a generality in terms of there's been a lot of books written with steps to build a life of purpose and things like that, but when we get a chance to talk about how Rick has written this book and where he pulled the information from and life experiences, I know you're going to find value from this conversation A memoir on unlocking the mind, happiness and personal power.
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Ultimately and Rick's got a lot of experience to go by, as he'll tell us the story here he led an organization with over 400 employees by the age of 26.
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He has run a 200 or been the chair of a $250 million charitable foundation, and he's a host of a podcast that we'll get a chance to talk about here, recorded from his 13,000 square foot restored mansion that he used as his home office.
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If you're watching on YouTube, you can see some of this in the background, but he's based in Houston with his wife and three daughters, and I know we'll get a chance to talk a little bit about that and what it means to him as well.
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Rick Walker, I'll stop talking a whole lot.
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Welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast.
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How are you doing today?
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John, I am blessed today.
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I'm excited about our conversation.
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Yeah, let's get going right into it.
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I'm going to dive right into the book.
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You've got these nine steps in here and the first one.
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I had to go deep right off the bat.
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You said to choose one worthy enemy to be the first step in building a life of meaning.
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What in the world do you mean by choosing a worthy enemy?
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I think it's helpful to think about the audience for the book.
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The audience for the book is 25 to 45 year old young men that are in this meaning crisis that John Verbeke speaks about.
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These are men that often will leave a pursuit list life, a life that maybe they have, no, no even endeavors of love, and these are men that are sort of wondering where all the promises were, all the potentiality was that was promised them earlier on in their life went, and so these are men that do not have a positive vision.
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They've never been shown a future of something that they would want to have more than what they have now.
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So they stayed in this rut for a year or five years or 10 years, some of them for 20 years, and so we've got to figure out a way to get these men moving.
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So if you don't have a positive vision of what you want, you have to then look for a negative vision and all the scholastics, the academics, the pontificators they tell you to find.
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You know, set a mission, set a goal, set a vision of where you want to go and build your tactics and your objectives to achieve that.
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But these men don't know where they want.
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They don't know what they want out of life, and if you're like me, you've got to figure out how to move.
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And so what I tell them is that the purpose of the light is invade the darkness.
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The purpose of a good man is invade the evil that he sees around him.
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I ask these men to look inward and look at how their hearts respond to the manifest evil they see out among the world and most vulnerable around them.
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Sometimes it's the fentanyl in the public school system.
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Sometimes it is the sex trafficking website that doesn't respect minors.
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Sometimes it's the alcoholism that's been pervasive in their family for generations, leading their family to obesity and to just dysfunction.
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There's a manifest evil that we all see around us, and if the purpose of light is to be the darkness, darkness the purpose of a good man is to be the evil we see around him.
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We were built to accomplish and the defeat, or at least work towards the defeat, of a great evil around us.
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So this is why I say pick one, choose, choose one early worthy enemy.
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Choose one worthy enemy and go to battle against that enemy.
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It's something that breaks your heart, and that is the way that you move forward.
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It's what we do when there's not a positive vision of where we want to go, but we can find it in negative vision.
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That one thing that we demand not exist in our world.
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We go and fight against that.
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That's how we get the momentum to move forward into the second through nine steps.
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I love that and the things that went through my mind just as you explained it.
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Not even the same way in terms of how I read it, but as you explained it.
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Craig Rochelle is another individual.
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I follow his podcast.
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He talks about people will change for one of two reasons Out of inspiration to your point, they can see where they want to go and they move toward that point or out of desperation.
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Even that enemy that you're talking about is something that really is making you so angry that you're willing to do something about.
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It is what I hear inside of that.
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I would often say people will change when the discomfort of remaining the same is greater than the displeasure of the change itself, whether it's an exercise routine or whatever that is.
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But to your point, especially for those in that 25 to 45 range who really they've got more years to live than they can even understand what that looks like in the future.
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So you got to find that stake in the ground and there was a quote right off the bat.
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And look, folks, as I read through this book, what I was most fascinated with some of the quotes that are in there.
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You say the great paradox of judgment is that evil becomes fuel in the furnace of salvation.
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I just love that picture.
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If we can find something that really ticks us off and we're willing to do something about it, imagine what's possible if we're really moving and again then moving toward that second step and we'll get a chance to talk about.
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I don't know if we'll get a chance to talk about all nine steps, but I think it's fascinating.
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Let me ask you a little bit of a tactical question about the nine steps, but I think it's fascinating.
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Let me ask you a little bit of a tactical question about the nine steps.
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Do you see them as a cycle?
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I mean, do you go through this multiple times, or is it one of those things that each one of these steps, or do they go in order all the time as well?
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Yeah, I believe that if we do each step correctly, you only have to go through each of the steps once.
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But they do compound on one another.
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They're best taken in order, and the way that we work through these is also the way that we work through purpose.
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They're very similar.
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So, for instance, the way that we work through our enemies, we look for that thing that breaks our heart, we look for that why that drives the what in our lives.
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The same thing that we do on the other steps.
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We're looking for the deep down sense of purpose and we don't know what our purpose is.
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I guess an exercise is to go through that.
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So it's the development of the why.
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It's the same issue that Lewis wrote about 100 years ago that we're filled with the society of men without chests, where their guts are functioning, this animal spirit, this mind that's divine.
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We know what the divine is, but we never, ever put the two things together.
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And so we're living in a society of men without chests.
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And this is my effort to go forth and bring out the chests and the men in our society, and sometimes it takes a couple of tries in these steps.
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I like that Again because I think we may not get it perfect the first time, but when we do it right, especially and again, the power in when we do it right and the impact that we can have is really cool.
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And it takes effort, it takes discipline, but once you have that identified, once you have that enemy identified, that is there.
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It will motivate you to do different things.
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One of the crazy disciplines I read about you is that you wake up every day at 3.30 in the morning.
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Tell me about how this discipline got started.
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And, you know, talk to the 25 to 45 year old.
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Says man, I just like to sleep in in the morning.
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It's a lot easier to do that.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Well, you have to figure out what you want.
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Do you want to be comfortable or do you want to have purpose?
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Life is lived at the edge, just past comfort, and so what I realized was that I was very successful in my work a number of years ago and I thought that I was doing good waking up at 5 am in the morning, and I spoke to a buddy of mine.
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He had more money than I did, he looked better than I did, he's better dressed, comes from a better family, has a better Rolodex than I do, has a bigger business than I do, and I thought to myself there's people like this in my own industry that I'm competing against.
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And he was getting up at 4 am and I was getting five, so he was already ahead of me on everything else.
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Now he's ahead of me on the effort side, and so I started ticking my clock back 15 minutes every night until I got to a comfortable place.
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3.15 was a little bit too early, but 3.30 was the sweet spot for me, and I can talk about the process I went through to find that, and that's actually laid out in the book, the actual triggers that you put in place to be able to get there and accomplish that.
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But long story short, what I found was that I could do the most important things, the important things that no one else is doing the quiet time, the deep reading, the deep thinking.
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I could do that in the morning, before any digital devices were expected of me, before anyone else was even awake, before my kid's new dad was awake and every new kid.
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The kids never know that dad's not there.
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And when you take that and you compare it to the potential of working late where you're missing dinners, you're missing sports activities, of working late where you're missing dinners, you're missing sports activities.
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The early morning was the better option for me, and so that began a routine where I make sure that all the important things today, the most important things those are done first before any devices, before any work, before any emails, before any phone calls, and my kids never know that I'm on the way.
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And so this seemed to be a very, very strategic advantage that I was able to put in place a few years ago, and it's worked exceedingly well.
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Well, I can tell you that I won't be one.
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That's a 330, and that doesn't mean I won't ever be, but I am not today.
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I am very interested in those things that you did to put that process in place, to move from a 5 am to a 3.30 am, and what those triggers were to get started, so that we can teach the listeners as well how they might be able to do it.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So let's walk through that.
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So the first thing is that you don't want to have your phone in the room where you sleep.
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Right, if you could put that phone in another room.
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The way that I do it is, I don't have a charger in my my bedroom.
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I put the charger in my closet, which is two rooms away, and so I plug that phone in there at night and it stays there.
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And so the first couple nights you'll feel discomfortable.
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You're not able to roll over and pick up your phone and scroll whenever you wake up.
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But what that does?
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It trains your body to sleep.
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It trains your, trains you to fall into this deep sleep and the state of deep sleep without this stimulant that's right there next to your head.
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And so, with the phone in the other room, I set the alarm and the alarm goes off.
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I stand up out of bed, I walk through one of the rooms into another room and I grab my phone.
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One of the interesting things that I did is I put a motion detector light in my closet.
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So five seconds know, five seconds after my alarm goes off, I'm standing up, lights on in my closet and I'm hitting the turn the alarm off.
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I don't snooze.
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That's my only rule is I don't snooze, alarm's off.
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I'm standing up, I'm thinking well heck, in 30 seconds I got my clothes on.
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My clothes are already laid out there.
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I throw the clothes on and now I really want a latte, and the best place I can get a latte before Starbucks opens Starbucks opens at 5, it's about 3.40.
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Now is I got to go to my office and so I drive to the office and I get my favorite couch there where I like to drink my coffee, and already there on my couch are the books kind of a stack of books right next to my couch, and I got a couple of books on the couch and I just open up, enjoy my coffee and I'm reading generally the oldest books I can find and books about the oldest books I can find for the most part, and so from there it'll move into strategic planning, some thinking, some brainstorming, and I try not to touch any devices until around 8 or so in the morning and that helps push me along.
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But I've been more strategic, I've learned more, I've thought more, I've had quiet time by myself, I'm able to do all the really enriching things that build your soul, that build your mind before my competitors have gotten to work, and so this really has flipped advantage in my favor over time.
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And so what I like to say?
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There's only three things in life that count.
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I read probably a thousand books and spoke to a hundred of the most competent men alive.
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Many of you'll see them on my podcast and the three things that I figured out among all of those just sort of the selling all those principles down is that the three things that count in your life are your quiet time, how you respect your books and the quality of your dinner table, your dinner table, the quality of your books and your quiet time.
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And if I can do two of those things early in the morning instead of late at night, I can also do the third where I can be home for dinner.
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And so if you can get those three things in place in your life and you do those three well, you're going to have more than everything.
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You're going to have relevance, you're going to have meaning, you're going to have an enjoyable life.
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But you got to get those three things clicking in order to move forward.
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Yeah, that's worthy of Rewind folks just to listen through those three tips and very powerful in the kitchen table or the dinner table in terms of the conversation that goes on when you have children.
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Again, I mentioned at the start, you have three daughters finding that time, being able to be present with them.
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But getting those other two things your quiet time and your reading and what you choose, the quality of what you read into that For me.
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I'm diving into scripture on a daily basis as well and I've got another book that I'm reading that I try to get started Again, not 3.30.
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I'm going to keep thinking about this, how you've talked about it, because I appreciate what you're saying with regards to getting it done A before your competition is doing it.
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So that gives you an advantage right off the bat.
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But secondly, inside of that time where no one else in your family, they're not missing you at that point in time.
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So I'm sure that requires you to set your evening up pretty well as well, anything you do in the evening to get ready to be up at 3.30 and make sure you get enough sleep.
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Well, I like to be in bed by 10.
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The last week or so has been a little bit different, with the book launch, and so a couple of mornings I got up at 1.30 instead of 3.30.
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And so, needless to say, I didn't stay up.
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I had to take a nap in the middle of the daytime.
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I couldn't get up at 3.30 the next morning because I was so wasted, and so you know, you've got to be flexible with yourself, but you've got to have a standard routine.
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I mean, I think it's more about the improvement on what you do rather than the specific time, and so if you're someone that gets up at 8, maybe you get up at 7, right, you've got an extra hour.
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It's sort of a power hour, like many people would call it.
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If you could figure out a way just to improve that so that you're not subtracting from one of the other two things that are important, that's really how you push forward.
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And then, on the books, let me just make a comment about the books.
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Oftentimes we're looking through newer books to try to solve our problems how we're going to form habits, how we're going to create mastery, how we're going to communicate knowledge.
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One of the important things that I've discovered is that the older the sage, the quicker the solution.
00:15:10.523 --> 00:15:19.322
The older the sage, the quicker the solution, and so the further you go back in the great ancient texts, the more you're reaching the source materials.
00:15:19.322 --> 00:15:32.403
Everything that you read today is sourced in something else, something older, necessarily something older, and so if I'm going to read Shakespeare or a book about Shakespeare, I really should just go back and read Shakespeare.
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But if I'm going to read Shakespeare, I've got to realize what I'm reading is sort of a King James Version.
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Old Testament and New Testament.
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That's what I'm reading.
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So why don't I just go back to the Old Testament and New Testament and read that?
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And same thing with the Asian literature.
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Why don't I go back and just read the Tao Te Ching?
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Why am I going back and just reading the Bhagavad Gita?
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Why am I going back and reading Homer?
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The principles that we read in the current literature they're just distilled, they're covered with lenses, they're covered in the nuance of modernity that just distract us.
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We're so current, focused when we could go back and read the source materials.
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That's where the true solutions are found, and it's easier to read that than to read these modern men that are trying to sound smart.
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Hey Uncommon Leaders, hope you're enjoying the episode.
00:16:18.143 --> 00:16:18.605
So far.
00:16:18.605 --> 00:16:22.221
I believe in doing business with people you like and trust, and not just a company name.
00:16:22.221 --> 00:16:26.696
That's why a strong personal brand is essential, whether you're an entrepreneur or a leader within a company.
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Brand Builders Group, the folks who have been helping me refine my own personal brand are offering a free consultation call with one of their expert brand strategists.
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They'll help you identify your uniqueness, craft a compelling story and develop a step-by-step plan to elevate your impact.
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So head on over to coachjohngallaghercom slash BBG, as in Brand Builders Group, to schedule your free call and take the first step toward building a personal brand that gets you noticed for all the right reasons.
00:16:50.918 --> 00:16:54.225
That's coachjohngallaghercom slash BBG.
00:16:54.225 --> 00:16:58.058
Now let's get back to the episode Love that Inside of your book.
00:16:58.058 --> 00:17:04.865
Did you have a specific um, I'll say author in the past that influenced your writing?
00:17:04.865 --> 00:17:11.542
Again, I want to ask you about several of the individuals that you quoted inside the book, but is there a book that influences you more than another?
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Yeah, I mean, I think obviously the Judeo-Christian scriptures is most influential, probably on everyone, whether we're sent to it or not.
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If you've got to talk about sort of secular authors, I would say Dante has been very impactful, especially the Inferno.
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You can go back and look at Milton, Paradise Lost.
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You can look at the Dostoevsky Brothers, Kerr and Mazov, those sorts of books.
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They've been very impactful.
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And then there has been some modern books that have to do with technology and handling data in our current society.
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Things like Robert Allen's Getting Things Done, I think about Tiny Experiences, recently came out.
00:17:52.521 --> 00:17:54.511
Sweaty Startup by Nick Huber that just came out.
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There's some great books that have come out, but we want the breath and the depth of our reading to be older People that have been proven over by time, not people that are more recent and they've had very little proving, very little filtering, very little testing.
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Well, I'm going to ask you a question only based on my skill of being able to pronounce them, so there's some that I'll skip.
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Eugene Peterson, einstein, cs Lewis, isaac Newton, bruce Lee, da Vinci, van Gogh, plato Roosevelt, viktor Frankl all quotes nestled inside of your book.
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All fascinating quotes as well.
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If there was one of them, you could go back and have dinner with the traditional podcast question who would it be and why?
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Oh, I think Viktor Frankl, man's Search for Meaning.
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This is a brilliant man.
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Where he's sitting in the German concentration camps he could die at any moment.
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You know, they're calling people, we're looking for volunteers for different things.
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They're testing the health of these people and he knows that his friends are going to be, you know, sent to the gas chambers.
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But what he figured out in that depravity, in that situation, was that man can live for anything and live through anything, as long as he has one of two things.
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You only need one of these two things.
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Number one is a responsibility in the future.
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A responsibility in the future Number two is even though the person that you most love may be dead already maybe it's the wife of the concentration camp, they know she's already dead If there's a suspicion and a probability that there's a future love to have, or that there's someone to love in the future that you can take care of, you can live through almost anything.
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This is, and that's, the premise of Viktor Frankl's work.
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I mean that tells us a lot about who we are as men, that we are built for the future.
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Um, as as men, that we are built for the future, but we have to act in the present, and so, um, yeah, so, so, certainly, uh, viktor Frankl, but but any of those men are great, you know.
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You look at, look at Bruce Lee.
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I'll, I'll, I'll cite the quote that's used in uh uh, using his book, where he says uh, low aim is the only crime.
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I think is what he says Low aim is the only crime.
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I reverse that a little bit.
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I say that aiming low is the only sin that you've got to look up, and the only way to look up is to look back you've chosen the enemy.
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now go big, go big or go home Again.
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All these different things that you end up reading.
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They're the same things in terms of now we're coming from Bruce Lee in terms of do not set a low bar.
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That's very important.
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Pick a master, or one will be chosen for you.
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Love that and some of the titles.
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Trust and I'm sorry I'm reading my own writing here Revelation requires sacrifice.
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Trust, that revelation requires sacrifice.
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Tell me a little bit about that in terms of requiring sacrifice inside that space.
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What is there for you?
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Yeah.
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So the emphasis is on the trusting.
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Trusting that that mechanism, that great mechanism that you learn about, homer, with the Iphigenian sacrifice, trust that that is a proper framework of how reality works, that you never get anything without sacrifice.
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I've sacrificed my attention to everything else.
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I'm surrounded by windows right now, the Amazon driver, the yard crew, these guys are constructing something over here.
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I've got to sacrifice all of that so I can pay attention to you.
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I've already sacrificed my yesterdays for my today.
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You have to be willing to sacrifice your todays for your tomorrows.
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In fact, you'll never have a tomorrow unless you sacrifice today.
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And so we've got to realize that sacrifice is all around us, and the only way to get anything out of life is to give up something that's lesser.
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You must always give up the lesser for the good.
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You must always give up the good for the great.
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Love that.
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So much gold there inside of that space.
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I'll keep going, embrace the unknown, and I want you to.
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I want to park here for just a little bit.
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Joy requires pain.
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Talk to me there, cause again, that goes back to that change quote that I saw about people change when the discomfort of remaining the same status quo, where you are today, is greater than the pain.
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The change of the change itself.