Mo:

Let's go with round number two.

Chris:

All right. You're Making all this content about Icky Guy, telling people to live their fullest potential and create money through their passion. I get it. It sounds great when I'm in your bubble, when I'm in California with you, and you're feeding me all this energy. But how does one muster up the courage to actually pursue it and commit to it with consistent action? Not like "I did the whiteboard session. Sounds great. Feels great. But how do I commit with courage and consistent action overtime?"

Mo:

I'm going to apply the concepts from round number one into now number two. Let's see if we can do this. Okay? So you're asking me "This feels good. It sounds good, but I don't have the courage nor the conviction to do this." And I can't fight your fight for you. I can't do your pushups for you. So all I have to say is this: when you have a decision to make in your life, you have to consider the option before you and the alternatives. So when everybody's like, "Go prove this to be true" well, why don't we look at what your alternatives are. See, relatively speaking, and contextually speaking, if this is the best option moving forward. So if you're doing something where it feels like you have to plan a vacation to escape from what you're doing, that's a pretty good indicator you're not doing what you love.
If you are not motivated to get up, if you're not motivated to give it the extra, whatever effort that it needs to go beyond what it is that most people do. And if you feel like you're dragging, if you feel like it's draining your life force, well, that's option number one. That's the current track that you're on.
So if you're feeling like something is off, but you don't know how to articulate it, what other option exists? All I do is try to present to you an option that if it logically and emotionally aligns with what you want in your life, then you have to determine "That's what I want", because I can't make you do it. The expression: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink", is the case. Now I know this. If you wake up every single day, filled with purpose, pushed by passion, to make something and then the profit will follow, but only you can decide that for yourself. And I know that as much as possible, if we're able to combine all our loves, our interests and the things that give us joy together, this would be an unfair, competitive advantage. And that's what the Icky Guy is about.

Chris:

I think you're on the other side of the Icky Guy.

Mo:

I am.

Chris:

And you've seen the fruits of the labor. And I think when people find their Icky Guy, there's a fork in the road. There's "What I know to be true right now, what I'm doing, and I know the consequences of it, whether negative or positive, so I feel safe there because I know the outcome. The icky guy, when I find it sounds great, but the outcome is so unknown. So maybe I'll try for a little bit; I don't get the results quickly. And then I stop and I go back to what I was doing, because it's giving me whatever immediate gratification that I need." I get it. I get it. Theoretically, passion, purpose, fuels, action, et cetera. How can I stay the course, even if I'm not seeing fruits to the labor early on?

Mo:

Yeah. So you want what most people want is assurance and guarantees. And I don't know how to offer that to you. We pursue the things that are in front of us because they're familiar, not because they're good. We do things out of habit and tradition, not because that's the right thing to do. That's the problem, generally speaking. Okay?
So when, when somebody is looking at their life and saying, "Well, I'm not ready to do that." I'm like, "I don't know how else to tell you." And if you say that "I want a guarantee," I can't offer you a guarantee either. But if we step back, if we look at the most successful people, and I've even done a little research on this, and the eight traits of successful people, and almost always begin with passion or purpose, that something bigger than you is pushing you to do this and you're committed to it. And from there, all things are possible.
And we've seen this, we've seen it in sports. We've seen it in lots of different things. When somebody's heart isn't in it; when they get into the dip, the valley, they break. They don't have the fortitude to push forward. And we see this in boxing. If it's a 12 round fight, they break when they feel that they can't win and then they crumble: their will to win is broken. And that's why it's so important for you to find that courage to ultimately align the things that you love in your life. So that's what you do, because then you will never quit.

Greg:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Welcome back to our conversation.

Chris:

So backup here. You say: you're always in the dip, so you're so used to that feeling; you're so used to, "Oh my God, shit could go wrong at any minute." What does a person need to do to get more acquainted with the dip because the dip is inevitable. I love what you're saying, but it's inevitable. And then what do I need to put my Chris recorder on in my head, so when I hit the dip, I'm like, "Stay the course." What does a person tangibly need to do?

Mo:

Yeah.
So imagine this is a graph; you can call it "the pleasure, the fun", whatever graph it is. And as you track along, it kind of gradually gets higher, so it's really cool. And then at some point it falls off and it looks like a cliff and it drops into this hole, this ravine, and then it goes way, way, way up. And so we're looking at it from this point of view, where we start off in our journey and we can see where we want to go.
We also realize there's a dip ahead and that's enough for us, for most of us, to not to take that first step. That we somehow imagined in our mind that it could be this fluid, direct, linear, frictionless path from where we are and where we want to be. And there's no challenges. There's no trials. There's no tribulations. There's nothing to test us.
So when we see that dip, we're like: "I don't want it. I want the perfect cleanest solution. Why do I start in the dip? And what does that really mean? I know there's pain ahead. I know it's going to be difficult Mo, and I want it to be difficult. I want the dip to be filled with crocodiles and piranhas, because I know that's going to make the competition or the barrier to entry so high that most people will quit before even starting on that journey. Or as soon as they dip their toes in the water it's too cold: 'Oh, I think there's something moving in the water. I don't know what it is.' And that's where I want to sit there and play a video game and jump on the crocodiles heads and get across that, because I know once I crossed this ravine it's going to be wide open. So I embrace that part of the process that almost everything I want is on the opposite side to fear, discomfort, and failure. I don't look at failure as a roadblock, I look at it as the building block to get to where it is I want to go."

Chris:

How can I recreate that mindset? Not me. I'm asking for the,

Mo:

Yeah. Yeah. I understand.

Chris:

How can I recreate that mindset? Because bro, you say a lot of things and maybe this is a challenge here. There's an assumption that everybody wants to think that way. I would argue some people just want to be comfortable. Some people don't want to feel all that pain. Some people don't want to go through the tribulation. So we'll put those people aside because they are objective and their goal for life is different, but for those that want to have the success that you have, or the success that they want, how can I embrace that mentality? What do I need to do?

Mo:

Okay. One part exposure therapy, one part micro trauma: they're related. The more we expose ourselves to something, the more resilient we become, the less it affects us and takes us down to a dark place. Right? So we know that in working out, if you're trying to build muscle mass, you're trying to create microtrauma, not to the point in which you tear your muscle and you can't do anything for months: that's not what we want. We don't want to push ourselves to bodily injury where now we can't stand up straight anymore where we have a crushed disc or something, but what we're doing is we're trying to stretch our body, and it's going to be sore. We're tearing the little tissues apart so that it can rebuild to be much stronger. So you kind of have to look at this: if you want to learn how to be comfortable in the dip, you got to expose yourself.
I'll give you an example. Okay? I'm watching videos about how coal therapy is actually good for your body, for your mind and for your skin. And so the habit is to take cold showers. Now, especially now in winter, when you jump into the shower and it's cold, it's going to shock your system and you may be shivering for a long time. Right? I get that. But the general idea is this: maybe you started off cold for 10 seconds, and then you gradually decrease the temperature, so it's even colder, and you increase the amount of time in which you're exposed to it. Then eventually your body adapts; the human body and the human mind are incredibly adaptive in terms of how it responds to the environment. You heard me say this before: luxury makes you soft. So when you have everything laid out for you, when you don't have to work for anything in your life, you become soft mentally and physically. So some of that grit is necessary. Some of the challenges are necessary to toughen up your mind, your body, your soul, and your spirit to overcome. And that's what it's about.

Chris:

Yeah, I lost this round.

Greg:

Thanks for joining us this time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Future podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced by me, greg Gunn. Thank you to Anthony Borough for editing and mixing this episode and thank you to Adam Sanborne for our intro music.

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