So the other day I lit $20,000 on fire.
What?
No, it didn't go down like that, but it sure felt like it. So the story is,
earlier this year, I hired a consultant to help me fix a big problem in my business. Now,
the guy I hired was someone I'd known for years, someone that I felt was aligned with
my values. I'd met in person, and to be straight up, I just considered a front.
And of course, most importantly, he appeared to be an expert in solving problems just like
mine. So he sent me a proposal. Everything looked good, and we got started. Now the
first month of us working together, things were good. He brought energy to the meetings and was
focused in on our biggest problem. In fact, we made a lot of steps towards solving it.
Unfortunately, a month or two progress seemed to stall. I'm a metrics driven guy. I believe what's
measured can be improved. Yet despite asking for key performance indicators multiple times,
I couldn't get any. It seemed like there was a lot of talk, but little progress. Now,
I'm a patient trusting guy who believes in clear communication, but I was.
Pretty clear as to what these problems were and that we needed to solve them asap. But
the reality is, by the end of month three, I could see that change wasn't
gonna happen. So I decided to wrap things up, pay for the last month of service,
and give him miss 30 days notice, and that is when things got worse.
Unfortunately, I don't think he took this too well. Within days I received a response telling
me that the reason the engagement didn't work out is because what I wanted was. All over the place.
Simply put, it was my fault that he had failed and that final payment for the last 30 days, which I
had paid in advance, that's a disconnection fee for him pulling out of our company.
Now, Jens, I don't normally lose my cool, but the tone, the way these messages were
sent to me and this disconnection fee, I was pissed off. I felt stupid. I felt betrayed.
I felt taken advantage of. I literally spent enough money to buy a car and I had nothing to
show for it. In fact, I had wasted months of my own time and the time of my team.
So what should I do? I had a lot of ideas running through my head. Reach out to my
credit card company and dispute the charges. Call my lawyer, take 'em to small claims
court. Call up an old sniper button. No, Jens. I didn't do any of that. Instead,
I asked myself a simple seven word question. Now, gentlemen, what I love about the technique
that I'm about to share with you is, number one, it's incredibly simple.
And number two, it's been around for over 2,500 years. Seriously,
the seven words I'm gonna share with you can be traced back to mindfulness,
which goes back to Buddhism, which is over 2,500 years old. And in case you're not familiar,
mindfulness, Is the practice of maintaining a non-judgmental state of heightened or complete
awareness of one's thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment to moment basis.
These seven words also have a foundation in Socratic questioning. The Socratic method is
a form of systematic. Inquiry used to stimulate critical thinking and to expose the contradictions
in one's beliefs. Socrates love talking to people who thought they were really smart, and he would
just simply ask deep thought-provoking questions about a belief or assumption,
and then we would come to find out that this person knew a lot less than they thought they did.
On top of that, what I also like about these seven words is they pull from stoic
philosophy about. Third century bc. Now, stoicism is a way of thinking,
has really had a resurgence in the last few years, thinks to guys like Ryan Holiday,
but in case you're not familiar with it, it's a philosophy that teaches that we don't have control
over and cannot rely on external events that we can only control ourselves and our responses.
Stoics believe that by focusing on personal virtues, And acceptance. We can then strive
for internal peace and acceptance. And as that we're talking about stoicism,
it's worth talking about cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT was developed
in the 1960s by Dr. Aaron T. Beck, who borrowed heavily from the stoics.
But basically his big point is that people are disturbed not by events,
but interpretation of them. So I dragging this video out. What are the seven words?
What advice? Would my future self give? Now, before I talk about why
these words are so powerful, I wanna talk about the technique of self distancing.
Human beings at times can be incredibly intelligent and give solid advice,
especially when they are removed from the situation
and they're giving it to someone else. However, there's a problem with this,
a glitch in the system when we try to give advice. To ourselves. When we try to do this,
when we try to make a decision for ourselves, our brain has trouble separating logic from emotion.
Now, the studies on this stuff are really interesting cause not only is it clear
that self distancing actually works, but it actually measured the activity in the
brain and that whenever you go through this process, the activity of the self is less
activated. So you are clearly actually looking at this detaching the emotion.
And you're looking at things more objectively simply by going through
the technique of removing yourself, by asking the question, by stating the phrase,
by thinking about things from an outsider's perspective. Now, for self distancing to work,
you have to be able to remove yourself from the emotional intensity of the present situation.
I found for me, giving myself a bit of time between the situation,
I didn't react immediately and then asking that question again. And again, what advice would my
future self give enabled me to be able to create a bit of a psychological distance on top of that,
what I love about this question in particular is I am asking advice of the person I trust most.
Now, this is key because unless you're bipolar or have multiple personalities,
the majority of us we trust. Ourselves more than any other person in the world. Now,
a big part for me is probably ego, but no, the reality is we know ourselves
better than anyone else. And if I could go a year into the future and talk to a smarter,
more emotionally removed, perhaps even wiser, and Antonio, why wouldn't I take his advice?
Cause this guy knows all my secrets. He knows. All my insecurities, all my fears,
all my hopes, all my dreams. And the advice he would give me would
for sure be aligned with my best interests because they're his best interests. So when
I asked myself this question, there were other questions that actually popped up.
I mean, what are the potential consequences if I go on the offense? If, if I attack,
what happens? People defend themselves. People usually have a reason for taking their actions,
and I don't know what's going on in this other guy's life, but you know,
do I wanna start a fight? And the answer was no. Next up.
What are the facts? Now, the reality is I am still a bit emotionally compromised about this,
and I'm viewing it from my perspective, but I did ask everyone on my team to lay out what did they
learn? What did they pick up? The reality was it wasn't a complete loss. We actually moved over
to a new system. We brought in a few things and made a few adjustments, got some introductions.
Was it worth the amount I spent? Not in my opinion, but the fact is we actually did get
some value from the engagement. The next question I asked myself, what's the bigger. Issue here. Am
I afraid of something? Why am I reacting in this way? And this one was a big one because I realized
the reason I felt stupid is I had actually put together a system for hiring people.
And I did not follow that system. When I made the hire, I didn't follow up with references,
I didn't actually compare him to everyone else I was looking at. I made the decision really
quick. And the reason I felt stupid is because I had really made a lot of
mistakes on my. Own part. In addition, I had spent more money than I should have.
Instead of spending money, I'd already budgeted, I actually put this on a credit card,
so I took a risk here, and that's what was painful. I had gambled and I had
lost. So what actions did I take? One. I just professionally ended the engagement. Next up,
I shared my frustrations with three of my closest business friends.
I probably spent an hour on the phone with each going through the story and just getting their
feedback and you know, it was more, they're on my side. They definitely like, yeah man,
you know this, this, but it's great to know that you got people in your corner. Third, I took and I
take full responsibility cuz I'm a big believer and I've talked about on this channel before,
whenever you take responsibility, you take back the power to make change, to improve yourself.
Next up, I explain the situation to my team. We made the adjustments and we started to move on,
which led me to the fifth action. We made immediate improvements over the last month on the
channel, and I did find a way to be able to get my money's worth sort of Now gent for some reason,
if you were let down by those seven words, you're like, come on, Anton, gimme something better.
I created some alternative questions for you. What advice would I give a friend in
this situation? What would the wisest person I know. Do. How would I handle this if money
wasn't a factor? What decision will make the best story for my grandchildren? If I was at my best,
what would I do? What choice aligns with my core values?
In fact, that leads me to an even bigger question. Do you know what your core values
are? Mine. Honor, courage and commitment. Gents, have you checked out what we're doing over at
Mission Fragrances? Guys, over at Mission Fragrances, we're leveraging the science of
scent to help you improve your state of mind and become the man you know yourself to be.
If you're tired of being ignored, if you want to build confidence, if you want to get noticed,
well gents, you need to work on your inner game, and that's what this set of fragrance is. Helps
you do to learn more, go to mission fragrances.com or use that link in the description of today's
video. All you have to do is enter your email and you'll be notified the next time we launch.
So what video to watch Next? Let's talk about loneliness. In fact, I share a lot of my stories
dealing with loneliness and, uh, I think that's an important video. Guys, you wanna check it out?
Boom, right here. Loneliness and, uh, what's going on with guys in today's modern world?