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Well y'all, here goes nothing. Just sitting here under a blanket in a hotel room in Williamsburg, Virginia. Let's do this.
Welcome to Chasing the Awesome Life, your weekly guide to making life a little bit more awesome. Because we all have goals and dreams, but yet the struggle is oh so real. So take a little time to equip yourself with the tools and the inspiration to be just a little bit more awesome in every aspect of your life.
There's no topic I won't cover in this podcast. From kids to college to the joys and the struggles, it's all awesome if you choose to chase it. So get ready to take some notes and take a little more awesome action. This is Chasing the Awesome Life. I hope you all can hear me well.
Again, my name is Nick DiStefano. I am your host of Chasing the Awesome Life podcast, your weekly guide to living life just a little bit more awesomely, if awesomely is a word.
Again, these podcasts, I need you all to understand for me, are completely raw, unedited, one take, one shot. There's no editing going on. This is literally me pressing record on an iPhone with the wonderful app and magic of Anchor and my iPhone.
regular standard issued Apple iPhone headphones plugged into my phone recording my thoughts feelings and lessons for you so that you can continue or start chasing the awesome life. So I said in the intro today that I am sitting under a blanket. So let's talk about that. Why am I sitting under a blanket? What the hell am I talking about? Why are we here? What's the purpose of all of this? So
These podcasts, I said, are recorded on kind of standard issue equipment. There is nothing fantastic, nothing crazy special about it. I'm not doing any editing in GarageBand. There's no sound effects. There's no changes to any of the things that are happening. I literally hit play, actually record, if you will, and I start talking. Now, occasionally I might take a
a few cuts and I might say, you know what? I got five minutes into it and I said something really dumb and I might start over. But you know what I don't do?
I don't sit down and say, it's time to edit this and make this sound a little better and make that sound better. I'm probably going to. And in fact, in every one of my podcasts that you've probably listened to so far, I've said something either inappropriate, incorrectly. I've stumbled over my words. I've made mistakes. I've definitely used bad grammar. I'm really bad when it comes to using the English language. But the content is there.
the knowledge and the theories and the tools and the tips and the things that you can use, those remain the same. Whether or not I say it correctly, if you will, quote unquote, to me doesn't ultimately matter because none of us are perfect. We're just striving to be the best versions of ourselves. Heck,
Hence the reason I'm sitting under this blanket. So flashback about a week ago, I sat down with my buddy Arcadio and Chris, sat down with the two of them, and we were talking about how we could all be better at podcasting. How can we improve our podcast? And they asked me, hey, Nick, where are you recording? I said, sorry, guys, I'm not doing anything fancy. I'm not bougie and crazy.
crazy, technologically savvy like you two are. They're recording things in apps and GarageBand and all sorts of things and they're saying words that I don't even know what they mean. And you know what?
I appreciate the fact that they're doing it differently than me because I'm learning from them. That's why I'm sitting under this towel because they asked me, hey, where are you recording? How does this work? And what are you using to record? I said, I just sat in my office with my iPhone and my headphones and just kind of said shit and
Moved on. They're like, you should sit under a blanket. And I kind of looked at him funny, like, what are you all talking about? You want me to sit under a blanket? Chris went on to tell me about how he had a roommate in college who would literally record music under a blanket with his guitar because it eliminates the echoes and it makes the sound quality a little bit better.
Look, you need to figure out, folks, what it is that even though your life is raw and unedited and imperfect and, you know, you shouldn't be striving to be perfect. What can you do to sit under a blanket? What's your blanket? What is it that you can do to make a small change that will make a large difference? You know, you're not going to walk out of your house tomorrow morning or today and completely change all of your behavior, right?
I say to people all the time, you can't change the world until you can change yourself. And when I say change yourself, I'm not talking about going out there and purchasing all of the absolute best, most expensive equipment to be doing podcasts. Cover yourself with a blanket and it's going to make a difference. And if you go back and actually listen now to, and I can tell you I've tested this, go back and listen to the last five podcast episodes versus this one.
Now, you're not going to notice a drastic difference and be like, oh, my God, it sounds like Nick is being professionally recorded by some podcast phenomenon. No, it sounds like I'm sitting under a blanket and there's less echo and it sounds a little bit better. But you know what? That little bit better time and time again is going to make a difference. You know, it's these small changes that are repeated over and over and over again that make a big difference.
That's what I'm talking about. Now, the key is that you don't try and find the perfect answer and solution because I could have gone out and invested in all of this amazing equipment, but it ultimately wouldn't make a difference because I don't know how to use it.
So the same thing goes for your life. You can sit down and you can, you know, invest in going out and taking some course or certification to make yourself a better leader, to make yourself a better coach, to make yourself a better fill in the blank with whatever certification you've just spent time and energy and money on. But does that really matter if you can't put it into practice? I would say it doesn't.
I say in some of my Field of Teal trainings, and I said it even today in my session with Blue Green and Champion Autism Network here in Williamsburg. I said to these people, look, I can speak, y'all, until I'm blue in the face. I actually said today, and I thought it was kind of cheesy and cute, and they laughed at that. I said, y'all, I can speak until I'm blue green in the face.
But I'm right. That would be where if I was doing some like fancy editing, I would edit in like some joke sound. I ain't got time for that shit. So I said, I can talk until I'm blue green in the face. But does it really matter if you don't go out there and do something with it? And the answer is no. And that's the same for your life. You know, you can very easily sit down and try and make all of the changes or you can sit down and make one change.
But the key is you're making the change. Because a lot of times people talk and talk and talk about what they're going to do and they're never willing to actually do it. It's much easier to talk about what you're going to do than it is to actually do it. You know, a lot of times people will say, well, but isn't this stuff common sense? And what I would say in response is, yeah, it's common sense, but it sure as hell ain't common action.
And I am the poster example and I'm the poster child of that, right? It's easy to create a podcast. There's resources out there, but I still put it off, right? Because even though it was common sense, plug your phone and just do it. You have the content. It's not hard. I still didn't take that common action. And I think that's something we all struggle with is what is the common action, right?
And for me, it's a simple common action. It's covering myself with a blanket and spending 10 minutes sharing my story and sharing why I'm doing this. Your life, much like this podcast, is unedited. But your life can also be made better and more awesome with simple actions that make a difference. You don't have to change the world. You just have to change yourself.
That's what this is all about, y'all. Figure out what is your blanket? What are you going to do to cover yourself up to be just a little bit better? Not sure what it is? Reach out. Ask a friend. Ask somebody for help. Like I said in my last episode, stop gift wrapping your life and start gift bagging your life. Find the simple, easy little things that make a big difference.
Don't make this shit complicated, y'all. I'm not saying it's easy. It is absolutely not easy. Again, common sense doesn't mean common action. This shit ain't easy, but it ain't complicated. It's simple. Cover your head in a blanket and get out there and do something awesome. I'll see y'all next week. Have an awesome day. I just remember thinking to myself, holy shit, there goes my tire. This isn't good.
