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Hi, everybody. This is my third solo, quasi-solo duo episode for the podcast. I'm
I'm getting a little bit more comfortable doing it, not completely, but a little bit better. I was just saying off camera that is, by the way, it's freezing in LA. It's been freezing here for weeks and I'm always wearing like 60 sweaters and parkas and my foil, who I, aka Shawnee, otherwise known as a foil,
She's like a guy. It's so cold in here and she's like, it is so hot. It is so hot. It is 68 degrees. Let's get to 68. We fight over the temperature. It's like 60 degrees in here. You're from Canada. How did you survive? My blood has become super thin where I feel like I literally now, it's been like the North Pole. I feel like I'm in Antarctica for the last two and a half weeks. It's been really rainy and gloomy here. I'm not complaining about that. I think we need the rain, but
I think that my blood, I've become so acclimated to living in California that now this has become like, it's become so cold. Like my blood is so thin.
I used to live, by the way, for those of you who don't know, I'm from Winnipeg where it was literally minus 40 with the windchill minus 40. It's probably one of the coldest places on the planet. Imagine you there right now, you would die. I would probably, I would actually probably die. To be fair, you do get very blue. Like you, you,
My lips turn blue. Yeah, so I could see that you're very cold. I'm sorry. Well, I just feel like I've got poor circulation. That's what it is, obviously, because my appendages and my lips turn blue. It looks like I had like a Jolly Rancher or like a Jawbreaker. Perhaps a trampoline would solve it. Maybe. That's more for your... Well, it's good for circulation. Trampolines are actually very good for circulation. They're also great for your lymphatic drainage system, like for...
It's great also if you're constipated because it gets things moving along. I love the trampoline. I have like... By the way, another little fun fact. I have like five trampolines around the house. I have a couple outside. I have one in my office. I have one in the gym because...
Actually more because I have a friend who works at a trampoline company and he just keeps on giving me and my kids trampolines, but they're super, they're a great way to kind of get your blood, you know, your energy change, the mental state of your mental state changed, the blood circulating. We're totally digressing. This is not what the podcast is supposed to be about, but...
Yeah, that's just a quick shout out for Jump Sport. I love them. That's not a paid ad. That's just me really liking a trampoline. But anyway, that is not what we're talking about today. Today we're going to be talking about...
failure and the benefits of blowing it and reframing how we think of failure so that we can go out and conquer and go after those goals that we want to go after and basically create the life we want. And so that is what we're going to be dealing with today. And what I
what I've been doing with this, with these solos is picking something out of the book that I think that a lot of people can relate to, that it can resonate with a lot of people and then basically expanding on it or just talking about it. And, uh, I think failure is a really big one because all of us at some point have failed. Most of us fail regularly like me.
And I think it's really important to reframe how we think about that. And I like to say that the
really a great way that worked for me in my life is that when I think about failure, I think about it as like an attempt, like my first attempt at something, you know, my, my first attempt, my second attempt, my third attempt. And that way we don't look at it as such a jarring, you know, jolt to our system. And I think a lot of things in life is perspective and how we think about things and how we reframe things in our thoughts and,
And therefore our thoughts become our actions and vice versa. But it's really a shame when we, we count ourselves out before even giving ourselves a shot because we are so afraid of that rejection and that failure that we don't even attempt to
So from now on, I call failures attempts. And I think that is something that you guys should try who are listening to this podcast. And I think that could be very helpful and beneficial moving forward to whatever you're trying to achieve. And this can be both professionally, this can be personally. One thing...
you know, again, I want to make a mention, um, the, this, my, this, why I'm doing this, why I wrote the book, why I had this podcast. It's, it's, of course, it's about leveling up your life and, and self-actualizing and, uh, I guess technically being quote unquote, a better version of yourself. Um,
isn't only for success vis-a-vis money, career, power. It's not, that can be for some people, but I think that success is very different to everybody. And you have to figure out what success means to you and what's important to you. And then you reverse engineer about how to get there. And then you've got to be really bold about going after it.
And that is how you create the life you want and not just kind of acquiesce to the life in front of you.
And part of that is about failing and the idea of reframing and changing the way we look at failure. That's why it's so important because it's inevitable. Everybody fails. Everybody. Shani, I bet you've even failed once or twice. I failed many a times. Yes. Picked myself back up, failed again. And failed again. And this is something else I want to say that we...
actually, and in fact, actually, I believe this to be a major, major pillar is that, and I talk about this too, is the fact that the people who are more mediocre, people who are more average, actually,
are much more adept to failing because they had to do it over and over again. And that has actually helped to serve you later on. Like I'm very average in everything. I'm not really exceptional really in much. I'm not exceptionally talented. I'm not exceptionally brilliant. I'm not exceptionally anything. But because of that, it's actually like I've had to learn to be resourceful. And when I failed, now when I fail, the fall isn't so...
far down that I'm so much more susceptible. I'm not, I become like desensitized and immune to what the feeling is. So I keep on going after it. So don't just think because you're not, you know, talented or smart or whatever it is that, that, that we should, that shouldn't deter you from trying to do whatever it is you have to do. In fact, look at it as a benefit. That's what I also wanted to say. Hmm. I like that.
Thank you. I like that a lot. I mean, we can talk a little bit more about mediocrity too. Yeah, because that's a big theme that you always discuss, right? You don't necessarily have to have the talents, the skill, the beauty, the this, that, the other, that you can just be bold.
You just have to be bold, but 100%, it's all about being bold. I think boldness is the secret sauce to success. But one of the principles in my book is about how mediocrity is a strength because it is a strength, like I just said. You know, the people who are too smart tend to have gotten things wrong
They never had to work as hard as other people, so things kind of just always happen for them so much more easily. So when they do fail or something doesn't work out, the fall is so much more grandiose and so much more heart-wrenching. So it's much harder to get back up a lot of times. That resilience hasn't been built into their system or their DNA because they haven't had to work that muscle as hard as much.
versus the people who are much more mediocre, who've grown up having to struggle a little bit more and to like work harder and figure out the window to go through because the door was shut. Like, it's like that whole ability to be more nimble and resourceful basically comes from mediocrity because you had to figure shit out.
And so that's why to me, I think that if we can, again, it's all about reframing and how we see things, the perception of how we see things, how we think about things really does change the way we then act. So, uh, perception is so important to ourselves. Not so much. I'm not talking about the perception, like what others I'm talking about your own perception or how you kind of, um,
explain things in your own brain like doing a lot of talking in my brain is very important like if I if something happens and I'm unhappy about it which happens with life all the time and then I think about another way I can think about that thing in a way that kind of makes me feel better and then I it changes your entire mental state absolutely so it's a paradigm shift it is a paradigm shift right these little things are you a big breather like do you breathe a lot
I do. As a breathing, I mean like breath work. Yeah, as an exercise. I don't read you go around the world like holding your breath. I do tend to breathe, you know, from time to time. I've been known to breathe. I do. I like to breathe a lot. I had, there was that book a while back that I forget. James Nestor? Yeah. Breath work? No, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, where he talks about paradigm shifts.
And that really helped me a lot in terms of like that. Did you ever read that story about how like there was these crazy kids on the subway that were really like going crazy and they were bothering everybody and people thought that it was insane and the dad wasn't doing anything about it. And the dad just seemed like unfazed. And then somebody spoke to him and the guy was like,
The dad said, sorry, we just left the hospital. Their mother just passed away. Like my wife just passed away. I'm kind of just like dazed. Like I just don't really know what to do. Do you know what I mean? And it just makes you think like you never really know what's happening in someone's day or in reality. And when you paradigm shift anything, you can do that with your day-to-day life. Like it can really change everything. But yes, breathing. I do breathe also. I like to take a deep breath from time to time. Yeah.
I'm talking about, yes, okay, thank you. Yeah, you're talking about like the breathing, like the Wim Hof-y vibes. Not just Wim Hof, there's a million breathing techniques and I think we can get too fancy with this thing, that thing. Something super simple that people can do is just like four deep breaths in and then...
and then holding for a count of four, and then a four-second breath in. I'm sorry, not four deep breaths. I mean, one deep breath in for four seconds, holding for four seconds, and then exhaling for four seconds. It's called like 4-4-4. Yeah, we do that at jujitsu. Yeah, it's a big one. I think it's an easy one to adapt and anyone can do it. We don't have to be super...
I don't know. Like it doesn't have to be fancy. You don't have to like take a course. Right. It doesn't have to be like, Oh, like, you know, like now I'm going to take like this like nine week course on breath work. Yes, you can if you're like super interested in it and you want to do it, but like just doing something super basic, like,
The basics always work the best, in my opinion. They always work the best. And yet people try to over-fancify, if that's a word, like over-fancy things that are just like simple at its core work just fine. Yeah. That's like the fitness business too. Yeah. At the end of the day, the fitness business is really broken down into very, it's very basic. It's a squat, it's a lunge, it's a push, it's a pull. Yeah.
And it's like, you know, that's based at a plank, you know what I mean? And like some core move, which is, you know, and then you kind of like create some variety around that. You can do a reverse lunge, you can do a forward lunge, but it's all, those are the core, those are the basic moves and then you just kind of build on them. But yet this entire, this is a whole other thing altogether, but the entire movement
multi-billion dollar industry of fitness is based around selling people magic bullets and giving people this like idea of how to make it, how do I like change the most, like the most basic things into some kind of marketing schema where I can make money when it's all the same, any exercise program. And I've done every single one. I've tried them. I've seen them. I've wrote about them, whatever else.
They're all the same. It's just like a different order of exercises. Instead of doing the variety of a squat first, you do the lunge first. You know what I mean? Like as long as you're moving and exercising, who cares what you're doing? But just it all is coming down to the fundamentals. So...
save your money is basically what I'm saying. Do a squat, do a lunge and be done, you know? Yeah. And fail at the squats and lunge and then just get back up and do them again. 100%. Just do them again. And do, if you focus on anything, just do it really well. Like focus on the form, you know, like the Kobe Bryant would always talk about, you know, he, he,
spent what, like hours a day just shooting, just like standing there and just shooting the ball into the net. I mean, that's what it was over and over and over again, because how do you get, if you can't do the fundamental basic thing first, how do you move on to doing something else? But like, sometimes like the basics are,
Number one, just master the basics. Don't start doing a squat with like a hundred pound weight if you can't even do a proper squat with a body weight or like a body weight squat. Like it's more effective to do a really, really good body weight squat properly than doing a squat with a hundred pound dumbbell and doing it with imbalance and bad form. You're just going to hurt yourself and you're going to be injured and no one wants that.
How did we start talking about this? I don't know, but you know what's really hard to fix is butt wink. Like I think that we should do a video about that, by the way. What's butt wink? You know when you do the squat and you get to the bottom and then you sort of tilt inward and like it's so hard to fit. It took me years to be able to not do that. I have no idea what you're talking about. I'll show you an example after. But anyways, yeah, we did get on this topic. I'm not sure how. I don't know.
Let's go back. So basically, if you fail, just look at it differently and keep on going. That's all. That's the moral of the story. Yeah, the moral of the story is, you know, be a failure, you know, and the more you fail, the better you're going to be at it. If you're mediocre, all the power to you, that means you're going to be something one day. That's basically the moral of the story. Yeah, that's a good moral. And join the Facebook group, please. Link is in the description. Right. Join the Facebook group. And oh, yeah. And also...
buy the book if you haven't already. It's called Bigger, Better, Bolder. I have 16 principles broken down about how you can be more bold. And I have a workbook to keep you accountable, to keep you or get you to where you need to be. I'm not just like yammering on like I am right now, but there's actionable things that I put you to work to get you to be better at being bold.