Chris:

Here's the famous quitter for you. I don't know if you know this from the book, The Dip. Michael Crichton graduated Harvard Medical School and then he decided after having gone through the dip to get into Harvard and to have graduated, he decided he didn't like the idea of being a doctor. He was not interested in medical career. He gave up what would've been a very lucrative career to do something totally unproven, which was to become an author.

Stefan:

Michael Crichton obviously worked out, and we hear about him and we go, "Look at that. The man had the vision." And then what if he'd written a, I don't know if you're a Simpsons fan, but what if he'd written Billy and the Cloneasaurus, he'd written a terrible book and then another terrible book and would've been a really good surgeon. And then if you go, Michael, how do you feel? Are you happy? And he goes like, you know what? Still love it. Living in a little shack writing these books that people tell me are terrible, I am enjoying my life. Then I would say that that's also a success. But also hats off to Michael Crichton. That takes a firm constitution, I would say.

Chris:

Even if he could have been successful as a doctor, I believe this very much in my heart, don't get good at something you are not passionate about. And I think it's very difficult to be world class, best in the world at something you're truly not passionate about. Because I find that people who are passionate about something, they have a degree of focus and joy of doing the things that most people would find to be super painful. Michael Phelps, one of the most awarded Olympians, maybe the most awarded Olympian of all time. That man swam in a pool for a gazillion hours every single day. He's practically part fish. And he just kept doing it over and over again. Now, for normal people, they would say, "That is insane." And that passion, that singular focus got him to that level of greatness. And now he can do whatever he wants.

Stefan:

What A, you're a hundred percent, right, and B, you're mentioning a thing that we've, I don't know that we've touched on it as directly as I think it needs to be touched upon. And that's the element of joy where in the sort of grit discussion, it's like you got to get through the pain, you got to get through the pain. But what it doesn't mention is you love what you do. I mean, unless you're the world's greatest actor, you love what you do. And I love what I do most of the time. And 90% of the time I'm like, "Yeah, this is really fun." And it's something that, as you said, somebody else might be "Like, oh my God, why are you in the pool all day long? That's horrible."

I think that's just a really important thing to stay focused on is pursuing this goal fun to you, even if it's physically painful or if it causes exertion. I don't want to use the word stress. If it demands much of you, is what is demanded of you bringing you joy? And then I think then you're good. If you're having a great time, it's like, yeah, yeah. You know what? I'm still at it at 4 o'clock in the morning, which was again like 60, 70% of my life. I was like, yeah, I love it. I love seeing the sun come up and still work on this thing. Then you're golden.

I think certainly in my life, the areas where I got into real personal trouble was when I got fixated on the outcome and I was like, "I got to do this and this and this and until, unless I get that outcome, I have failed, not just at this task, I have failed at being the person I should be." And I think that's where, for me, always the danger comes in and where I want to create pockets of grace, certainly for myself to give myself a way out because it's very easy to just get hyper, hyper-focused on without the outcome, it wasn't worth it. And I love the Grandma Moses story and I bet she just loved paint.

Chris:

I think that's what it is. Stefan, so when you're working to 4 in the morning, the sun's coming up, to the objective observer, they would sit there and say, "Stefan is insane. There's a screw loose." But you're like, "You know what? What time is it? I don't even care. I'm having so much fun. This is joy for me. And if I can just make my entire living doing this, oh, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life."

Stefan:

That's exactly right. And the funny thing is, it changes, and it's changed for me fairly recently where I'm like, oh, you know what? I still want to do certain parts of this. I don't want to do the 4:00 AM thing anymore. And it was a real struggle and I had to work through a lot of shame and feelings of failure because there was still a large part of me that was sort of the younger me from art school and the young designer going, yeah, yeah, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And then another part of me grew that said, you know? That's not the path I want to travel anymore. Or I don't want to travel the path in this particular way anymore. I still want to make great design and I still want to make things that bring people joy, but I want to maybe do it in a gentler way.

But there was a real part of me that's like, you got to toughen up, man. The friction and the exertion is part of the point. That's part of what makes you good at what you do. And it's taken me three, four years and I'm starting to get into, oh, I can do it another way, and it's not a shameful thing to change tack. I'm sort of harking back to what Nidhi was saying about creating a certain flexibility, which you've certainly had from the discussions that I've heard with you where you said, "Oh, then we changed tack and then we did this, and then we sort of moved over here because I saw the market changing." But I think it's a really difficult thing to pick up by yourself when you're just going by a lot of the titanic, the titans of industry narrative so prevalent.

Nidhi:

The shame that you were speaking to Stefan, I think that is one of the hardest parts for people as they're looking at shifting these priorities. What happens is that our self-worth becomes inextricably linked with our achievement. And I think that that gets programmed into us and when we are not achieving, when we're still, it almost feels like we feel guilty about it. We're like, "Oh my gosh, I must be doing something. Am I missing something? There's got to be something else that I should be filling this time with." Or we feel overwhelmed with all of the things that are on the to-do list that we just cram them in to the downtime. And so we never allow ourselves the opportunity to be still and to be bored.

And what research has found is that the most creative ideas come through boredom. So if we're not sitting and allowing ourselves the opportunity to really sit with our thoughts and our feelings and to just be quiet for a bit and not always be doing and achieving and maximizing and optimizing and all of those things, those buzzwords that we love to throw out there, I ultimately think that we're losing out, and that is where the shame spiral begins.

So the solution to that, right, is that we have to look at the different facets of our identities, and of course there's an intersection between those different elements of who we are, but we've got to make sure that there's a clear distinction between our work persona and who we are and our professional sphere and who we are in our personal lives and the opportunity to be able to distance ourselves from work and to not feel guilty and ashamed about it. And to instead reframe it as it's not a nicety, it's not something that would be great to have if we could engage in self-care. It is a mandation. It is a requirement. Because if we don't take care of ourselves, then we get to a place of depletion and guess what? We're not functioning optimally at work anyways.

So you got two choices. It's either you burn yourself out, you do shit work because you just can't keep up any longer, or you allow yourself the opportunity to, without guilt, take the breaks and show up wholeheartedly then when you're actually showing up, and then you could actually pour into others as well. So I just wanted to add that in there. I really love that share, Stefan, thank you for bringing, I feel like you're a fellow heart-centered person too, so I really appreciate that.

Chris:

I don't think there's any secret. I'm obsessed about a couple different things. One of which is how to create more compelling videos that people engage with. So I watch lots of videos on every platform and I study like an animal. And I noticed something. The videos that have really high views, the ones that at least I'm looking at, of course is a limited data set and it's highly biased because I'm looking for certain things, they tend to be around people who are also equally obsessed about whatever it is they're doing.

I see chef videos, people who love to cook, and there's a guy, he holds a bowl of ramen noodles, so they look delicious with a little bit of nori on top, like a perfectly soft-boiled egg and some garnish and a slice of pork belly on top, and he pushes out a bag of instant noodles. He goes and he waves his finger in the air like uh, uh, uh, and he shows how to make ramen noodles from scratch. It's a nine hour endeavor, and I'm thinking I would just go and order this at the store because this I appreciate, I respect, but I cannot do.

He's like doing pork and chicken bones in the oven. He's doing all kinds of prep. He's hand making the noodles for God's sake. Everything is hand done. I'm like, respect you friend. You are obsessed. I'm not sure of you're world-class, but I believe you're putting in the work necessary to be there. And these videos have millions of views where my videos have thousands of views. I see videos of people who are super fit and the amount of dedication focus, diet, single-mindedness, I respect. I want abs like that. I'm working on it. I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime, but I'm working on it still.

People will make miniature dioramas the painting by hand, dry brushing layers and layers of paint, resin, mold casting, all kinds of things, 3D printing, and I see this, I admire it. And so I think in Seth's book, the world admires those that are super hyper dedicated and focused. We demand proof of what it is that you're willing to do.

Now, I think I'm a sick individual in that I embrace the pain as part of the journey. Nidhi said, we reframe things. I tell myself a different story. There's things that I hate, things that I never thought in a million years that I'm going to do, but I do now because I want what's at the end of this thing. So I think I lied to myself. I tell myself this is good and that I like it, even though sometimes I look at myself, I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure?

So here's the personal story. As this is no news to anybody, we've been stuck at home self-quarantine. I've been sitting in my computer for longer periods of time, maybe with the exception of when I was at Art Center. I'm much more sedentary. I'm not going out to meet my friends talking. I'm not walking around the office. I'm not standing up doing four-hour workshops. I'm mostly sitting down. And so one day my wife's looking at me and she goes, "Honey, there's a little belly there. Might not look good on camera." She's not saying this because she cares if I'm fat or skinny or fit. She's just saying, "I think you care what you look like on camera. I'm just giving you that dose of truth." Damn. Okay honey, I'm going to work on this thing.

So we talk about it, I'm like, this is it. I'm going back on what people refer to as intermittent fasting, but it's really just time restricted eating. I'm going on these long walks. Instead of doing it once a week, I'm doing it three times a week. I'm back in my home gym and this morning I'm getting ready to do a live workshop. I'll throw on my pants, I'm like, damn, these pants, they're loose. My wife's in the bathroom. She hears this. She goes, "What do you mean they're loose?" She goes, "What are you trying to do?" I said, "Look at this. I'm back to pre-pandemic body." She goes, "How is this possible?" I rolled my eyes. I'm like, "Honey, you've been part of this. We both made this commitment not to buy food with sugar, to cut down on our rice and bread intake to do this time-restricted eating to go and work out together. The only difference is you broke it two days in. I'm one and a half months strong right now."

So do I want to do this? No. I would like to fill my face with blueberry pie, with pecan pie. I would really like to do that. Nothing tastes better to me than a beautiful, fresh baked artisanal loaf of bread or giant bowl of rice or ramen. These things are delicious. But you know what, I'm willing to say no to that. I want to quit that because I like this other thing more. Okay, I'm going to move this around. Ajani, go ahead.

Speaker 4:

Hi, Chris. Yeah, thank you for having me. This is a really insightful conversation. It resonates with me on so many different levels. I had an interesting conversation with my therapist yesterday and we were talking about helping me to quit on a daily basis. I can be quite obsessive, quite neurotic. So I was talking to my therapist about being more meticulous with my time blocking and putting hard stops on my work days and on my work-related activities and even activities related to personal development. Otherwise, over the course of the last 15 years, I would say I've had many days where I wake up 7:00 AM, let's say I blink, and then it's 10:00 PM The whole day went by. Even if I meditated and did other and engaged in other activities that cultivate mindfulness throughout the day, the day would just fly by because I wasn't placing boundaries. I wasn't quitting the activities that I was engaged in.

Also, before I started my career, I went to university for philosophy because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. So I went from being in a specialized arts school as a kid and a teenager, being immersed in the arts, loving it to making a full stop studying philosophy and essentially partying and disassociating different ways throughout university. So I quit the arts for approximately four years, and there was great benefit in that because it taught me that quitting the arts, quitting being a creative was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. And those four years off inspired the career path that I'm currently on.

Another thing as far as obsession is concerned and not quitting. I've brought many projects to fruition very recently that have taken in some cases 16 years to come to fruition. And I think that it's a lot of power in pushing forward with one's most meaningful goals. If you know in your heart, in your gut that a goal is meaningful to you, that a project is meaningful to you, that it brings great value to others and that you're passionate about it, it's incredible how long people can persist, and I'm living proof of that.

I raised approximately 70 K for a project that I started in 2006. It was rejected over and over and over again. I could not raise capital for it, I could not get press for it, and I just continued persisting and moving forward. And now it's going to be displayed at a major venue in Toronto in April after 16 years. So there's great power in not quitting and there's great power in quitting. I think it depends on the context, the timing, the individual, and their goals.

Stefan:

Ajani, that's such a great story and congratulations on the show and sticking with that. And there is a thing, I've always said that there's something very corrosive about leaving things half done, and that's sort of the how do you balance the things. I'm reading a book right now called Atomic Habits by James Clear. And one of the things we talked about is that the habits you form, bad habits to break and good habits to stick to, the most potent thing is if the habits are an expression of who you want to be as a person. And that goes a little bit to are you traversing the dip for a lifestyle? Are you traversing the dip for a goal? I think if the goal can be this is core to who I am, then I think it goes back to the thing I was saying earlier about just doing something that in some way brings you joy, that feels just important. And that seems to be exactly what you're doing, and congratulations again on the show. That's fantastic.

Speaker 4:

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Chris:

I was thinking about something about this idea about burnout, and there's this quote from Simon Sinek. He says, "Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress." I think that's where the burnout comes from. And he says also, "Working hard for something we love, that's called passion." So I think sometimes when we're doing something we feel burnt out, we have to ask ourselves, do we really need a break or is our body or mind telling us something different? Could it be that we're becoming disconnected or unclear about where the goal is? Or even if that goal matters to us? And one of the things why you would want to quit something is you have to ask yourself, why am I doing this? And for whom am I trying to make happy?

Speaker 5:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

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Speaker 5:

Welcome back to our conversation.

Chris:

All right, our friend Jessica is up here. Jessica, the mic is yours.

Speaker 9:

Hey guys, this has been great. I'm trying to wrap my head around the constantly think about when to quit and when to push through. And I'm thinking about a framework just listening to everybody. So if you think of two circles and they overlap, right? I'm thinking you have the intrinsic and the extrinsic, I'm going to call a signal.

So if you think of those circles, the intrinsic will be, I think the joy that was talked about multiple times is it's an important factor where you think, does this work actually bringing joy? And the other circle I think is really important to know, I'm going to call it an external factor, is the future value, the market, the reality that we talked about, the market mechanism. And I think the other circle, the extrinsic factor is the, Chris, you mentioned why you don't want to do thing that's mediocre because the market mechanism is that the market rewards the top disproportionately and that there is a lot of reality aspect of I know that things can bring you joy, but if you're doing this thing will mean you don't have the money to eat, which you still enjoy it?

So I think both joy and this future value, this market mechanism are equally important. Those are the two circle I think when we think about to quip or to push through, it's very important to think about. And then where it overlaps, I think it is goals. I think goals is where your joy meet kind of your reality, where you say, is this a goal worth striving for? And Chris, I'm going to bring up your story on you taking your boy for a hike because I think that's really interesting because I think in your head, your boy might be smarter than you thought because you think that your goal is climbing to the top of the mountain. And his goal might just be satisfy the old man's wish to climb so he can go back and play a Game Boy.

And so even with the same journey by setting different personal goals and wanting to achieve different things, your definition of success may not be his. And he might have achieved his because he made you happy and now he can go back and play games.

So in my head, I'm almost thinking that when we are thinking about whether or not one quit or push through, you want to think about what makes you happy because you can't beat somebody, I think Naval said that, to be competitive in the market, you want to do something that's enjoyable for you, but looks like work for others. So no matter how hard you work, you will not be able to beat somebody who truly enjoy it. And so joy just plays such an important part in making it big. But on the other hand, you also have to understand the extrinsic mechanism, the extrinsic market, so that you can actually be successful in the real world. And both of them come by, you set your goal and then you just look for signal. Don't quit for ego, don't quit for dopamine hits, don't quit for [inaudible 00:24:04]. And then with all these signal combined, then you decide when you quit and when to push through.

Chris:

So Dr. Sabiha, you have the mic. Go ahead.

Speaker 10:

Thank you. Thank you for being so generous. My question is Chris [inaudible 00:24:17], there is a time between where I feel I want to quit now and when I feel I want to still push through the dip. Now that space or that period in that space for how long I should be? To be honest, I'm confused there if I get some piece of advice from you, what should be the time span where I should stay? Where I'm not able to decide whether I quit or whether I push myself? That is my question.

Chris:

Okay, thank you so much. I think it's important for us to decide how much do we want to commit to a specific goal or idea? And we should do this before we start because if by design it doesn't make sense to us, let's not start this thing because it's going to be distraction from what we should be doing. Now many artists fall into this trap. I'm doing something, I think I'm making progress, and I'm starting to get bored because I'm in the dip. It feels like work. It's not as fun anymore. Oh, this thing looks like a lot of fun. Let me just switch gears.

Now before you switch gears, ask yourself, what does success look like for me? At what point will I quit? When I'm near bankruptcy? Well, I'm going to commit $50,000 towards this endeavor? I'm going to give this three years? Define that as best as you can and then try to imagine what the end goal looks like. If you're successful, what does that look like? And if you're excited about that, if you're like, you know what, this is an alignment with where I want to go in my life, in my career. Make the commitment and go for it. And when you make this commitment, it means you have to give up some other things. And also ask yourself, what are my constraints and what am I willing to sacrifice to achieve this? If you're not clear, if you're wishy-washy, don't go for it just yet. Really think it through.

I don't love setting the goalposts midway through the game because that goalpost moves around a lot. Some days when you're feeling great, it feels really close to you. And some days when life is kicking you, you feel like, "Oh my God, that goalpost is so far away." I would love for you to have clarity on the vision of where you want to be, how when you get there. In a mountain, you can see where you're supposed to go. You kind of can guesstimate how many more steps it's going to take and what kind of resources it's going to take for you to get there. But in life, we don't know what the mountaintop looks like, but we can get a better sense of it if we do some serious vision planning, if we're able to create a vision board, and we write down our goals, what is it that we want to accomplish? So that's the best answer I have for you. I hope that's okay.

Speaker 10:

Absolutely. That makes sense for me when you said about the mountain and then look how it'll be at the mountain. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

Chris:

All right, let's just keep this moving. So Arshad, I think you're up next.

Speaker 11:

Yeah, I just want to share what worked for me. But there are rules to this. So three rules. You got to know your passion, you love getting good at it, and there is a selfless purpose that's useful. And when you have these three things, you have a good indicator when you should quit. And a good indicator is when it feels like the reason why you're doing this is money. So yeah, that's worked for me so far and it's been pretty good.

Chris:

Great. I'm glad you brought up the whole idea of money. I've never made making money as my priority. Making money is the byproduct of me doing the work that I'm supposed to be doing. Jessica talked about the overlap, the goal, the intrinsic, the extrinsic, what gives you joy, all those kinds of things. I find that the more I'm able to do that, the more the money comes. But the money is not the first goal. I think it's Emily's turn now.

Speaker 12:

Thanks, Chris. So this is something that I love contemplating in terms of quitting and pushing through because it really is about discernment. And I think if you don't know yourself and really understand the cues of what does it mean when your body is at its limit, where you need to stop and when are you having an emotional response where if you could delay that emotional response, you could push through, but there's an emotional response is happening because you are moving out of discomfort.

And so a lot of what I meditate on and share and just the things that I go through in my own life all the time is seeing where is that level that I'm pushing through and where do I need to pull back because I am such a passionate person. And something that I learned firsthand. I think we learn these things over and over again, and especially when we share these things, we must learn them on deeper levels. And so I have learned in the past even six months what it means to pull back, to actually move forward.

And so what I visualized this summer was I was a bow and arrow. And even though I'm a very passionate person, I realized in order to push through, it wasn't about quitting, but it was like this in between. And I was pivoting and I was shifting the way in who I was serving and how I was doing it and branding all these things. I'm a branding nut. So Chris, you inspire me so much. But I realized I was the obstacle. I was getting in my way. The way I was branding my company, everything about it really was just like me not willing to let go. And so I needed that time to grieve the way that I was branding myself and putting myself out there and my design so that I could shift.

And it took just time to be in some stillness. But by doing that, oh my gosh, when I pushed through, it wasn't coming from adrenaline. It was coming from this pure source where it wasn't my polluted mind. It wasn't fractures of these ideas and thoughts and it wasn't distortions of my reality because I think a lot of times we can create some wounding and we can create from pushing through thinking that there's this imaginary person you need to compete with or there isn't room at the top. So if you imagine that we all have this mountain we're climbing in life, we all have our throne with our name like plated to this throne. It's like no one can take this throne. It is waiting for us. But in order to push through if we move, I think Jess had said if we move from ego, we're moving to compete with somebody else, we're moving because we're in a rush, then we are probably missing a lot of steps and we're probably missing some important things.

So sustainability, foundation, and really knowing the direction and the precision and where you're heading, like Chris, you had said about don't make your goal halfway through. It's really important every time I've set a goal doing this over and over again and seeing other people do this too. When you set your goal, you focus on that, but then how you get there may change. And so being patient in that process is really key. And at times you need to quit and you need to give up on something so you can give up the good for the great. And that takes discernment.

So I think there's a lot of times I've messed up, I've made mistakes, I've quit something and then needed to restart all over again because I realized that it was an emotional response. But the more and more that you actually go into that action place and explore your inner world, I think you can start to understand more quickly and you can accelerate that learning curve of is a time to quit or push through. But the bow and arrow really helped me understand that there is this space between the quitting and the pushing and sometimes pulling back is pushing forward in its own way. So that's just been my experience in these past few months.

Chris:

Thank you very much, Emily. Okay, I'm going to just throw the mic over to Angelique. So Angelique, how do you want to contribute?

Speaker 13:

Thanks so much. This is a full circle moment for me because when I first reached out to you months ago about decision making, this was the question that I was asking. It was at this moment of I really had all the signs to quit, and I thought, am I quitting because it's hard? Am I quitting because I am struggling to push through? And this is the moment that I proved to myself that I can push through. But all the signs were there and I was reading this wrong.

And Stefan, when you said about the compass, do we collect the pieces of our compass as we're growing up, and as we become an adult, we start to assemble it and put it together. And we don't know if it actually works until we start noticing that we think we're going north and other people are going north, but we're actually going in a different direction. So I loved your analogy about we have the same engine, we just have different navigating systems because I felt like that was exactly how when people would say, "Well, this is what I would do." I couldn't see it that way. And I think it was just because the pieces in my compass were different.

And I was trying to understand, well, which one of these pieces needs to be replaced? And it was really difficult when I was engulfed in those emotions to understand what's the piece that I isolate so I can really take a look at it? Because I didn't want to run away and I didn't want to quit. I didn't want to give up. I wanted to be successful. And I knew for a fact there was something here for me, there was a lesson in it. And so I started asking everyone, "What is the framework of which you make decisions? What is your decision making strategy? How do you make decisions?" I would ask it in so many different ways.

And it was so interesting to me that probably maybe 15, 20% of people could even come up with an answer to that question. And I thought, "Wow, we have a deficit in language in how we communicate." Even just with ourselves. But I think just our emotional intelligence, we do a lot of things without thinking about why we do them. I think that's just a normal thing. And it's time that maybe we start to shape some of these conversations so that we can start to have more intent in how we feel and our process for thinking. So we're not going through these loops trying to learn the same thing over and over again.

And that's where I started to focus on was what I thought I wanted, what success really looked like for me was where it was rooted in. If I really peeled back the layers, I didn't want any of that stuff. And I'm so grateful to have some of that exposed now. But I needed to go through this whole process because had I just listened to this room in those moments, I think it would've seated. I think I would've would've gotten some gems here for sure, because this was, wow, this is an incredible share. But I think I needed to go through that process and you have to be a willing participant to open up your compass and really start to understand how it works. And so I appreciate everything you guys have shared and just share just what that meant to me today. So thank you.

Chris:

Thank you so much. Stefan. Final thoughts from .you, sir?

Stefan:

Yes. Thank you so much for having this conversation with your community, which I think is so important. And thank you Angelique, for what you said. I wanted to just briefly respond to it. Because I think it is a nice wrap up is, yeah, we assemble the pieces of the compass from our lives, and so for each of us, the compass is going to look a little different. And I think if we can create, and I'm certainly going to write this down for myself, if I can create the space and the stillness to just say, "How can I make this into a functioning compass for me? And how can I find my way through the world with that?" Then I think that certainly is for me a way that I think I can live peacefully and with integrity. And I think at the end of the day, if you can do that, then you're okay. So thank you for bringing that back up. And again, Chris and Nidhi, thank you for having me and it's always such a pleasure. It's such always thoughtful and wonderful discussion. So thank you, thank you.

Chris:

Okay, Nidhi. Final thoughts from you to wrap it up?

Nidhi:

Well, first of all, thank you so much for allowing to be a part of this conversation. Stefan, it was great getting to meet you and hearing your wisdom as well.

I think my biggest takeaway is that I think a lot of people should no longer be willing to sacrifice their wellbeing for success. And I think that we can find a way to integrate our work and our life, but to also remember that our priorities are beyond just what we do professionally. And so I just thought that there were so many beautiful shares and I really want people to know that Chris, I think you made it really nicely clear in this conversation, that it's not about encouraging you to do something that's unhealthy or detrimental to your wellbeing. There are boundaries and there are lines and thresholds that we shouldn't be crossing, especially when it's at the cost of our health, our mental health, our wellbeing, our relationships, whatever the case may be.

So I just want to encourage people to have a separate identity and to really pay attention to how interwoven our professional selves can become with our who we are personally, and to try to have a line of demarcation between the two. Because we can't have our self-worth be completely reliant on what's happening in a professional sphere, otherwise we're at the mercy of the tides of our businesses. And that's a really tenuous place, I think, for all of us to be. So I just really appreciate this conversation and thank you so much, Chris, for your wisdom.

Chris:

Okay, some of my final summary thoughts here, I'm just going to quickly recap some of the big ideas. If you enjoyed this conversation, I highly recommend you read the book, The Dip, written by Seth Godin. I've taken three pages of notes from the book. I've reread it like four or five times.

Couple different things. There's a big difference between serial quitting and strategic quitting. Serial quitters, when things get tough, they keep changing. They go from position to position, from job to job, and they don't make a whole ton of progress. And you know what? If that makes you happy, if that gives you joy, do that. Don't worry about judgment, that's totally cool. But if there's something that's elusive that it's escaping your grasp of why you cannot achieve, there's a good chance that you're serial quitting, not strategic quitting.

Strategic quitting requires you to be strategic with your goals, to have clear benchmarks, to measure your progress, and to think through what you're going to do, what you're going to commit to, what your resources are, what the constraints are before you start. And if you determine that you can't be great at something that you're going to be average or mediocre, don't do that because that's a distraction. Success [inaudible 00:39:26] rights. Success goes to those who obsess, take that to heart.

And it's human nature for us to want to quit when it hurts. So part of my process, part of my success, and if you want what I have, is to anticipate the dip to know that parts of the journey suck, but those are natural barriers, and adversity is our ally because it keeps out those that are not willing to put in the work. Like I said, quit or be exceptional. Change the tactics, never quit the big idea. If it makes your heart happy, if you're passionate about it, find a way. The first way may not be the way. The 100th way may not be the way. Just find a way.

And if you stay focused, and if you articulate this goal, you will enroll others in the pursuit of what it is that you want. You magnetize yourself as Dr. Price Pritchett writes. Be clear about those goals and express it to as many people as possible because they will become your allies in getting there. The market wants to see you persist. It demands the signal from you that you are serious determine to achieve this thing. So rededicate yourself. Develop a strategy, break the problem apart, reexamine it, find a way.

And sometimes when you sit down and you amplify the long-term benefits, it'll give you a better decision framework as to whether or not you want to quit. Now, that doesn't mean you stay in toxic relationships, period, or to commit yourself to doing something that's unhealthy and not sustainable.

So a couple of questions to ask yourself. Am I panicking? Whose goal am I trying to achieve this for? Am I, are you, making progress? Are you moving forward, falling behind, or standing still? Measure your progress so you have data to help you to decide, not just a feeling. Before you start, ask yourself this question. Under what circumstances are you willing to quit and by when? With that, want to thank everybody. Appreciate all of you. That's it for me, everybody.

Speaker 5:

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 Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced by me, Greg Gunn. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sandborn for our intro music.

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