7 Life Lessons Learned TOO LATE [0:00:00]
The only true freedom a man has is the ability to make up his own mind. Here’s the reality,
gents. Most men have not given any thought, they are not thinking about what they’re
doing, what they want to accomplish with their life.
And, I get it, gents, making up your mind can be tough because you’re distracted by
your phone, your parents are telling you to do one thing, your girlfriend is telling you
to do another, the same time you’ve got to make money. You’ve got to find a way
to make it through today. So, sometimes, yeah, you just put off thinking about your life
and you put your head down and you do what you’re told to do.
Gents, you can’t outsource this, you can’t hand it over to someone that you feel is smarter
more responsible than you. You’ve got to make the decisions here in your life. And,
the scary part about this is you’re going to make a lot of mistakes, you’re going
to fall down. But, gentlemen, the sooner that you take control
and that you take a step back and you think about where do you want to go in life, what
do you want to do with this precious gift you’ve been given, all of the sudden you
can start to take responsibility, you could start to take ownership.
Yes, you’re going to fall down and you’re going to make mistakes, but you’re going
to start having the strength and the power to continue on and to go after what you really
want in this life. The next life lesson learned too late, you
slept through life. I’m talking about going through life and not having anything you’re
passionate about. Sleepwalking through life, gentlemen, is not a way to live your life,
and we do this all the time. I fall into it because guess what? These electronic devices,
they’ve turned us into zombies. We’ve got our kids around us. Our kids who
will never be at this age again, who are they wanting to talk to wanting to share a story
with us. And what do we do? We fall into our phones. So, one of the best things you can
do, guys, turn your phone off at a set time during the day. I know you’ve got to use
it sometimes to communicate, but do you always need to be on it?
Find a way to break free. Find things that you’re passionate about. Set up appointments
to go out and go explore nature trail with your family. Here’s the thing, gentlemen,
if you’re not passionate about your job, I get it. We can’t – oh, and I’m very
practical about this, maybe find our life calling in our work, but we can look for it.
We can actually go out there and try to find it.
Whatever it may be, gentlemen, put in the effort to find your passion, so that you could
live your life with vigor because this is who you’re going to answer to, not me, yourself.
On your deathbed, you’re going to look back and say, hey, was I able to do, was I able
to explore. Maybe, yeah, you had a job that you can’t really say much about, but you
love scuba diving and you always found time to take your family out scuba diving, you
introduce them and you kind of built a little reputation a name for yourself because you’re
so passionate about it and you explored all these areas. That is something worth living
and worth going out there and doing. Do not sleepwalk through life. This is your one life
your one chance, you’ve got to live it with vigor with passion.
The next life lesson learned way too late, we spend a lot of time worrying about things
that never happened. Gentlemen, fear keeps us from trying and going after so many things.
You need to find a way to overcome fear because fear is smart, fear is going to be logical.
It will break out exactly why you do not want to do this.
Fear is going to be emotional, it will find a way to get in the back of your mind and
just scream at you, so that, yeah, you’re scared to try. And, yes, it’s okay as men
we are scared of things, we, you know, try to find excuses not to do things. And, one
fear I’m okay with is the fear of regret. I do not want at the end of my day to have
regret that I didn’t try something. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt that said,
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” And, I love this quote because
it talks about fear as human nature. It’s a very natural thing. But, we’ve got to
find a way to overcome it if we want to reach our full potential.
The next life lesson most men learned way too late, stop complaining stop blaming. And,
guys, I get it because you worked really hard all day and you come home and, gosh, she expects
me to do all these? Yeah, I’m going to, you know, I’m going to complain this. You
know she needs to actually put in the effort. Or, at work, I get it, you put in all that
work all that effort and people on your team, they’re not picking up. They need to be
seeing this, too complacent, why didn’t they do a better job, it’s definitely not
your fault. When you’re always complaining when you’re
always blaming others even if it’s warranted, you fall into the trap of not being able to
change yourself because you’re expecting others to change. And here’s the deal is
you cannot change other people. They can only change themselves in the same way that you
can only learn from this experience that you can only take a step back and say, okay, am
I seeing everything here? I’m coming home I’m complaining to my
wife that she doesn’t have things together. My girlfriend, you know, oh, wait a minute.
She actually was taking care of the kids and two of them were sick all day. And she had
all these other stuff going on. When you stop complaining and you take on the responsibility,
you’re no longer trapped. You now have the power to change yourself.
The next life lesson learned way too late, you can see the future by knowing your past,
by studying your history. So many guys do not realize that if you study history, if
you study human nature, you’ll be able to oftentimes see what people are going to do.
[0:05:01] You can accurately predict if you understand
that we are this – we have the same genetic material that our grandfathers and our great
great great great great grandfathers had, so why not learn from their mistakes, learn
from their experiences. And, guys, understand your history. There
are so many great options out there. I love autobiographies. This one by Felix Dennis.
He’s the founder of Maxim. What he talks about what I love are his real experiences,
the pitfalls of drugs, how he fell into that, what his thoughts were, how despite having
all these money how did he waste tons of that money. He talks about all these and that’s
why I love about a good autobiography. Some of them, yes, they’re going to be written
by people that are incredibly famous and they’re trying to project an image. Other times, you’re
going to find ones that are incredibly raw and give you an insight to the human condition,
the human soul. What you start to understand here is that human beings, we think we’re
very, very similar and that we fall into these traps, we – men have, you know, throughout
history have made very – have made the same mistakes again and again and again.
And, if you want to decrease the likelihood that you’re going to fall into those mistakes,
you can simply go back and read how did these people fall into this and how can I take steps
to make sure I don’t make those mistakes and that I take steps in the right direction
to get where I want to in life. This information is not just in books. You
can go out there talk to some people that are in your own company that have been at
that company for forty years and have made their way up and learn from them. How they’ve
been able to, you know, figure all these out. They want to impart this information on you.
Some that retired fifteen to twenty years ago. He’s sitting around, he’d love to
tell you more stories about how he built up and started three businesses and you know
is now incredibly successful. These type of people are out there and they’re a lot easier
to reach than what you would think. The point is the information is out there. The experiences
you can learn from, so you don’t go out there and make mistakes which you could have
avoided. The next life lesson that too many men learned
way too late is that the precursor to being successful is being prepared. I was a Boy
Scout, that’s our motto, “Be prepared.” I picked up my eagle by the way. I had a great
time, and I did learn that if you’re going to go out camping, you took out the right
gear. If you are going to go on a 25-mile hike, you pack the right gear. You’ve got
the right shoes, they’re broken in, otherwise you are going to suffer.
It’s the same thing in life. So many people think that they can just go through life and
put off all the mundane tasks, that they don’t need to spend the time preparing their wardrobe,
ironing, washing, cleaning, making sure their clothing looks good. That they don’t have
to go in and think about and lay out and prepare things not just at their home, but also at
the office at work. They think they can walk in and they’re
going to be able to show up to a presentation and be able to rely on natural talent. Guys,
I will tell you, the person that’s persistent, the person that puts in the effort, it wasn’t
just about prep time, it was about you building relationships. You going out there and doing
your research talking to people on the other side, so when you give that presentation,
these guys actually have already seen it because they’re part of the presentation. That presentation
solidified a deal which took your company to the next level. That is the type of being
prepared I’m talking about. And if you want to have success in life, you
know that it’s putting in the work, it’s putting the effort and there are no excuses,
there are no shortcuts to getting to where you want to be if you really want to reach
the top. The next life lesson most men learned way
too late is that there’s no reason to suppress their emotions. If you want to express love,
if you want to express gratitude, if you want to express thanks, if you want to simply just
give someone a sincere compliment, do it. We start to think about, oh, what are other
people going to think? I’m going to sound stupid. I can’t express this. They already
know it. Don’t worry. Guys, that’s not the case. These people aren’t mind readers.
If you wanted to express maybe a feel – you had feelings for her for a long time and you
know that she – you guys have talked, there’s something there, simply say it.
Worse case, yes, you will sound stupid and she won’t share the feelings, but what about
the best case? What about if this is the start of that relationship that you know you’ve
got to give it a shot? What about with your son? You never tell him you love him. Oh,
he knows that. But, what happens if you have a heart attack? What happens if you are hit
by a bus and he never has heard it not in the last year? You want to have the courage.
You need to have the strength to be able to express yourself.
And, yes, you may not know what to say, you may have to write it out. Maybe it is something
you just give him a note, but find a way to be able to express sooner than later. In fact,
don’t wait, express to people how much they mean to you because you’re going to find
– and not only – not only affects them, but it affects you and it enables you to live
I think a more fulfilling just better life. So, what video to watch next? How about alpha
male habits that are completely toxic and you need to avoid? Guys, I had a lot of fun
with this video and I talk about things that some guys think are alpha male habits. No,
these are things that no guys should be doing. Check it out.
[0:09:59] End of audio