Turning Habits Into Rituals to Live an Effortless Life with Greg McKeown

We are men. We are warriors. We are dads. Dad's with a purpose. Dad's with an edge. We sharpen our skills so we can show up best for others. We have one shot in life to be a dad. Why not make it epic? Hey, what's up guys? Welcome to the Dad Edge Podcast. I'm Larry Hagner. Your host and founder of this show. Hope you guys are having a fantastic week. And I've got just an unbelievable podcast for you guys today. Many of you guys know my guests today. He is Greg McEwan. He's a husband, father, author, public speaker, leadership, and business strategist. He is also the author of books like Essentialism. I'm sure you know that one. And now the new book Effortless. He's also the CEO of McEwan Inc. He is renowned for being a linked in author for Harvard Business School Review. And his writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Fortune, and Politico. Greg's main purpose is to help people and teams discover what drives success and what doesn't. He also thrives off challenging conventional wisdom and focuses on what you really need in order to be successful. Hey, so today we are going to be talking about honesty, humility, and ownership. These three principles have allowed us to come back from our mistakes and to better ourselves so that we can strengthen ourselves and relationships that surround us. Living a mistake-free life is utterly impossible, and it would require a certain level of control that is too much for people to handle. You want to make mistakes in your life so you can utilize forgiveness and repentance as a relationship builder and manager. The main takeaway of today's show is to apologize quickly so that you can get back to living your life. The other thing I'll share too is Greg is going to go into a very personal story as it relates to one of his four kids. And today's show is going to pull on your heartstrings. It really will. The other thing that I got from today's show, that you guys will as well, is that we need to give ourselves permission every now and again to complain and to be negative. However, we need to quickly get out of that and to focus on what is good in our lives and the gratitude that's there. And the cool thing about this show is Greg gives us an actual system to do that. That is so simple. It's so easy. You guys will get a lot out of it. That much I can promise you. Before we jump into today's show, here is the iTunes Review of the Week. This week's iTunes Review comes to us from NLFson titled "An Unexpected Awakening," five stars. NLFson writes, "I stumbled across the Larry's podcast a couple of years back and I don't even remember what I searched for that brought it up. The podcast completely opened my eyes to things I didn't even know I was missing. Since then, I listened to a couple of his podcasts each week and it eventually drove me to the DEA Mastermind Group. That group, along with his podcast, has changed my view on so many things and makes me strive to live a legendary life. Keep up the amazing work, Larry. You are serving such a grand purpose." NLFson, thank you for your review. Larry.U. Nathan Brother, thank you so much for leaving me this review. Honored to you do live with us in the DEA. Gentlemen, we'll be talking a little bit more about the Data Deliance here in the middle of the show. But for now, here is my amazing podcast interview with the one, the only Greg McEwan. Greg, welcome back to Data Edge. Good to see you back here, my friend. It's great to be back. Thank you. And now another book. So that's pretty cool stuff. It's an exciting moment. It's lots to be grateful for. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, a book is a big project. It's not for the faint of heart. So I'm excited to dive into it. But hey, you know, before we do that, you and I were talking before we hit record. And just to give the men some context who listen to the show, obviously it's a dad-centered show. I'm curious about how you grew up. I know you had a full family. So talk to us about the mix of siblings growing up, what that was like. Growing up, there were, I was the youngest of five children, four boys and a girl. And it was terrific. I mean, we were just saying about, there's lots of wrestling that went on. And, in fact, I remember, we remember one time after dinner. This is when my oldest brothers were probably 17, 18, something like that. And there was a big wrestling match that took place between them and my dad, all friendly, all fun. But they managed to successfully pin him down on the table and draw a smiley face on his stomach. As like evidence of them having, you know, the dominance of this moment. And I remember even then as I, you know, I was young. Like I knew that the power had just shifted. That's a huge thing to witness. It was a big, it was a big moment to witness. So now I'm married to Anna and we have four children. The mix is different. It's three girls and a boy. And so there is less wrestling. And they have no one's managed to pin me down yet. But this moment is coming eventually. Well, that was actually my next question. You know, has that experience now happened in your house, right? To where you're like, wow, this whole thing has shifted a bit. I was pinned down now and this happened to me. So maybe this is like a generational thing. We've wrestled quite a bit, especially in the pool, we'll wrestle together. Since they were very little. And it was like, the dynamic has changed because in the early days, like my job is to course make it fun. But I just got to keep anyone from drowning all the time, right? So you're sort of always keeping them up over out of the water, but though you're dunking them, you're doing all of that. And that was sort of one experience. But as they've all got bigger rights, they're basically all teenagers now. Like, I am going to come out of that somehow. I'm going to come out bruised in some way. Like, I'm going to come out pretty damaged. And so it's not for the faint hearted now. They're not mean about it, but they're just clearly so much bigger now than they used to be in stronger. But it's been, I will say this, I will say that overall, the experience of being a dad has been much better than I expected it would be. And the experience of having teenagers has been much, much better than I expected it to be. Because I thought it would just be, I don't know, pretty rough. And actually, I've been pleasantly surprised at how the investments that we made earlier on. Yeah, I don't want to overdo that message because I know people have very different experiences. And I'm not saying every day is easy. Last night was like not one of my best moments. But just like as a whole, think if you invest right, your teenage years can be a lot easier. As someone said to me recently, they said, actually just this morning, they were talking about being a manager and they said, hire hard, manage easy. And I feel like there's something similar to that with parenting. It's like if you invest hard early on, then parenting becomes, I think, a lot easier later on. And that's certainly been my experience. It does without a doubt. You've got me curious though, so what happened last night? And by the way, if it was something not so good, I am absolutely happy to share. No, no, it's all within range. And I didn't want to talk about it, I shouldn't have raised it. But I was, we just got back from a trip. And so we'd say, okay, when we get home, you've got 20 minutes to unpack, put everything away, and then we'll go get in the hot tub together. And by the time, if some of them did it within 20 minutes we've done, and they were out there, if they had a nice time, and some of them took ages doing this fine, there's no problem. But it meant by the time they came out, then it was late enough that we were like, look, everyone needs to take a nap, we didn't get much sleep last night. So, and we'll get in the hot tub afterwards. But then it didn't work out that way. Like it just didn't turn that we were all able to get back in, so then that led someone to be obsessed about it, their reaction. At first I didn't even get drawn into it, but then when I saw the reaction, I was like, okay, you know, you're going to lay down the law a little bit here. And then that didn't go well. And so it just, it just felt like I would save for half an hour, maybe a little longer. This conversation just went, well, conversation was like an argument. It just, it did escalate. It didn't escalate to the point of damage of anything. Like I don't mean physical damage. I mean, I don't think people came out damaged out of the argument, but it was just like so frustrating for everybody involved. There's so much misunderstanding. We're still making sort of some headway, but it got to that point where I said it went by and like, listen, we everyone just take a break. We'll just come back in a bit. And I'm going to tell you what happened, honestly, is that somebody said, hey, listen, we should say a prayer. And we did. And it was like night and day afterwards. It was like, everyone just totally, we're like, no, no, no, we're not to do next. Let's just make a plan for tonight, just going to do it. We're going to watch this movie. And we all did it. We had a really nice time. And it was like, actually, was night and day different. So that's the story. But it just wasn't my finest moment because it just. I just felt like I came more defensive as the conversation went on and more frustrated about my being misunderstood and I think 80% of relationship problems are people feeling misunderstood. So, you know, that was the story. Well, first of all, I just want to acknowledge and appreciate you for sharing something I put you on the spot there. But one thing I've noticed about myself and gas and just men in general is that we tend to really, really like people even more when we can relate to their true authentic selves. To the good moments, the not so good moments, you know, and I want to acknowledge and appreciate you for sharing that. And if I get it, you know, I launched a course, an online course called Creating More Emotional Resilience and More Patients with Your Kids, right, it's a skill set. And the week that I launched that course, I lost my patience every night, had those really not so great moments every night. And I'm like, what is even happening here? I'm yelling, I'm reacting, I'm saying things I don't want to say. I just made a course on this, right? And yet here I am yelling and then I did a live video in our community and on social and they're like, dude, I love that. I love the fact that you're stating like, hey, these are skills, but they're not like going to make you impenetrable, right? You still, it doesn't matter who we are, we're going to have these moments that we're just not proud of. So I love that, man. And by the way, whose idea was it to do the pattern and the rough with the prayer? It was one of the kids. Amazing. I don't remember which one. I think it might have been maybe with Eve. I can't remember now. But as soon as they said it, it was like, yeah, that's what we need to do. You know, they interrupt it and it was a reset and the rest, like literally the rest of the night was great. And the child who had been most emotional and most, you know, just said the things that can do still hurt you, you know, as a parent, I think most children teams don't really know the parents of people. You know, even if they do, even if you taught that which we have, it's like this, yeah, you still are only sort of a you still seen as pretty impenetrable, like I can behave. You kind of want them in a sense to feel that, that you, that you can, that they can act out, life will be okay. This is a place they can be a little crazy and feel emotional so that they can be intact out there when there were other people and they're developing their life and so on. But the one that was the most of acting out twice before the end of the evening had come and specifically apologized to me, I actually wasn't even that good about, about receiving it to be honest. I wasn't like completely dismiss it, but I was sort of grunting in my response, like, yeah, it's okay. It was fine. You know, I think maybe I managed like, okay, I think if you, but it was like, it, what should have happened? And it took like my wife to tap me the second time was like, and you apologize too. And that was like harder for me last night, I was like, I didn't initiate any of this. This is like crazy. And so it took, it took like all of those conditions for me to like actually be able to manage it. So when, I mean, I was tired anyway when you're tired, you're less able to just be in your, your best place and, and so, but I still was the reason I even shed all of that is just I was impressed that she was able to express that so quickly after, after it all gone down. I mean, like, that, that's what you want. You're going to get it wrong, right? I'm going to get it wrong many, many times again in the future. So are my children. So like we all are. So, so to me, forgiveness, repentance, like these, these, these sort of principles aren't to back up plan, they're not plan B, they're plan A, like mistake free living is a very bad idea. I'm not interested in it for myself, I'm not interested if my children, this a very bad idea. And sometimes that's what we want is still like have no mistakes as a person, no mistakes for my children. That level of control that would be required to do that would be really violating to everyone involved. You want the stakes to happen. You want them to be as cheap as possible. One of the things you make them cheaper, although I didn't model it super well yesterday is like quick, sorry, quick apology. And as I said, I think that was actually modeled better by one of my daughters than it was by me, but it helps you just to get back, you know, of course it was easier to get back in a good place with them, with them sharing that. Two life lessons that are really emerging as you share that story is, well, three, honesty, humility, ownership, right? And for a teenager to acknowledge, I'm going to own this, I'm going to come up and be honest with you and I'm going to be apologetic for my behavior because I know it was wrong. That's a very mature thing to do. And I'm not just saying this, right, because I think when our kids emulate behaviors like that, that they are learning it somewhere, right? They're learning it somewhere and as fathers were super hard on ourselves, as fathers like am I doing the right thing? Am I teaching the right things? I kind of really know sometimes, sometimes I'm my own worst critic. Yet our kids will do things like that to where you're like, okay, at the core of who they are, that's pretty awesome, right? The same daughter has talked to me before that when there's an altercation that she is living for it the moment when I'm going to say I'm sorry, when I'm getting it wrong, when I've lost my temper, when I don't be freaking out, but it can seem like I'm yelling to, even if I'm not actually raising my voice, even if I'm not yelling, just as a dad, it's easy to be dominant, even when you're not trying to be dominant. Even if you don't feel dominant, you can have disproportionate power and so, but I love that when I'm getting it, when I messed up the most, right, my main mistakes that there's been enough times when there's an apology that she knows, okay, this isn't going to be forever, there'll be a point, he's going to say, hey, listen, sorry, for having handled it that way. That, you know, of course you want to minimize the number of times you get it wrong, certainly in a certain way, past a certain level, but I think it's, I think almost more important is how quick you are to put it right and that, to me, is the health, the health is how fast can you get back to things are good, how, what's the speed of recovery is more important than never having it fail. Right, because as you said, I mean, mistakes are they're going to, they are the process. It's not, it's not how do we live a mistake-free life or never doing anything wrong or it's what do you do with it at the end of the day, like exactly what you said, it's what do we do with it, how do we sit with it, how do we recover, right, and what's that even look like because you're right, the recovery process is going to be more important because the avoidance of mistakes altogether is not possible, right? It's not possible, it will create a toxic culture and so the question is how do you construct a culture that makes it, makes it, in a sense, easy to make a mistake, but it's easy to fix a mistake, right, you want that to be, that to be the culture, there's a, it's an interesting, what that set puts me in mind of is a story that I came across in researching effortless. It's not about parenting, but it's going to easily apply to it to being a dad and it's where, it's where this industrialist in the UK said, "I want to create human-powered fight." Basically, he's talking about like a bike with wings, he wants to be able to get people to be able to fly like figure aides around these two pylons up in the air without any engine and this is, this is just 10 years before people are walking on the moon. So there's like incredible aeronautical progress being made and he thinks it's going to be a pretty achievable achievement as he offers 50,000 pounds to be able to make it happen fast. And for 17 years, no one is successful, there's all these well-funded, successful, otherwise successful teams taking this on, producing beautiful machines and just everyone's, everyone fails. 17 years. Enter Paul McCreedy, who's broke, he is a dad, he, the only team he has is his family. He gets his young son to be his test pilot and he looks at the problem I've had. But why has everyone failed so long? And he suddenly goes, everyone's trying to solve the wrong problem. Everyone's been trying to build a beautiful machine that can do this figure eight and whatever. He said, the real problem isn't that. The real problem is, can you create a machine that can crash and be fixed, fast and cheap? That's the real test. He says, as long as we can do that, we're going to learn, fast, accelerate, fast. And so they built this thing that looked-- I mean, they just looked so amateurish compared to the competitors. But he said they would crash it within five minutes. They just stick a broom handle on this thing, tape it together, and they'd be up in the air again, testing it. And so they would get maybe four or five tests in one day, whereas the competitors might only have four or five tests in the lifetime of their machine. Year, two years, they would only have that many tests. So he was able to test, cheap test, cheap test, cheap-- so 123rd attempt, they won the prize. It was the ability to have learning-sized mistakes that was key. And I think that is so true for parenting as well, right? When we know that's true-- if you're trying to help a child to walk, we know that you want to create learning-sized mistakes. You don't want them walking in the middle of a road to state the obvious. No, you want them walking where it's safe. If they fall, they're not going to hurt themselves badly. They're not going to damage themselves. They're going to cut themselves. Do you protect them in this way? That's the physical safety. So there's low physical risk. But then there's also low emotional risk. You want lots of safety around them, lots of support. When they make-- when they fought, it's OK. We're here. We encourage you. We're supportive of you. And we know that that's how that learning takes place. This most remarkable ability to learn how to walk, that's an incredible level of intelligence required. And it takes-- we know the environment. There's a necessary to help them do that. But I think you fast forward into other phases of life. And it's easier to forget that process. You just expect, well, the teenager should know. But what if they don't know? What if you-- just because you know, or just because they're starting to look like an adult, we think that they must think like an adult. But they don't. And they're not there yet. That's why they still need you there. But to construct the same type of culture so that failure is cheap, so that there's a lot of safety, so that they come and tell you when they've made a mistake. They're confessing it quickly. I stayed up late. I went to watch the movie. I know I wasn't so hard to do that. I stayed up late reading. I mean, it's 1950s problem is fine. But we still have it in our home where people are reading late late into the night. We can't control that. So you want an environment where if they have to do it, you come and talk to us. We tell them all the time about all sorts of lists that type of mistakes that you could make in life. And if you do, you just come and talk to us. We're not going to beat you for this. We're not going to shame you for this. Just come and talk to us. And then we'll work out what to do together. You're trying to-- you want the stakes to be possible, but make them as cheap as possible. So you can learn and progress optimally. There's so much there to unpack. I love what you said, because a huge theme of what you're talking about is creating an environment of psychological safety where it's OK to take risks. And when you fail, not if you fail, you can land safely here. I had a previous guest who is a highly decorated Navy seal come on the show. And he said, if you really want to build confidence in your kid, number one, tell them failure is part of the process. Up the ante on the risk every time they try something new, as far as when they do something for the first time, the risk is super low. Just get them momentum, right? Second time, you up at a little bit more, then a little bit more, then a little bit more, then a little bit more. To the point to where then they realize that they can do whatever it is. And if they fail, they can recover with you maybe being a further distance out. But also, yes, that you're the go to for like, hey, I need support, I need some-- I need to recover. I need you to guide me through that, what that looks like. Quick story, if you don't mind. I think that this might be appropriate. My 15-year-old ran, a track meet last night. A track is very, very important to him. This is his first year doing it. He runs the 100, the 200, shop put in discus. He got last place for the first time in both the 100 and the 200, two out of three of his discus throws were scratches. And he was devastated. And he was, I was like, hey, let's go grab pizza. I took him out. And he vented to me, and this is your show, not mine. So I'm going to make this quick, but he vented to me. And basically what I said to him, like, look, it's OK to fail, man. In fact, I would encourage you to fail faster. And he looked at me, he's like, what are you talking about? He's like, I don't want to fail. I was like, yeah, but it's part of the process. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about Albert Einstein. Let's talk about Steve Jobs. Let's talk about all these people that did think great things in life. They all fail, but what do they have in common? And then we dissected it together. They failed faster, but they learned. They recovered, as your words, right? They recovered, they pivoted. They took the learnings from the failures and incorporated, how do I make that a success, right? Exactly like with the plane analogy. Like it's not necessarily the plane, and this flying object is how can we get the flying object to recover? How do we repair it faster and get it back up in the air? And I was like, and then if you do win, how do you replicate the wins, right? And then the third one is, don't give up. The people that ultimately fail are the ones that step away from whatever that thing is, ultimately, right? But I love that story of your kid's humility ownership, the story about the plane and having to recover the plane. And then yeah, that's how we grow confidence, right? Is creating those environments to where kids can fail, where the safety net, and we can guide them, not save them, right? But guide them through a process. - Exactly, and to construct where we can opportunities for failure, the, I wrote a piece for CNBC, that is also based in the book, but it's a story where Anna and I were, when the kids were younger, and we said, well look, we were reading a book about finances and teaching children, the books called the opposite of spoiled, and he has the suggestions that we started doing it where we would give our children an allowance. I hadn't grown up with an allowance, and some people are uncomfortable with that idea, well, it's like money for nothing kind of thing, and we've done it both ways, chores where they get paid. But we were persuaded that at least for a period, we would do just an allowance independent of work for this specific purpose, that they would get to experience money when the risks were low. So they would get, not a huge allowance, but they would get this allowance, and they would give them three glass jars, and they would divide it between charity, with a tithing in the first, second was short term spend and third was savings, and they could divide however effectively, however they wanted, I mean, 10% was tithing, but then whatever else. And so then they started having experiences with them, and I remember my son bought this, this car that was advertised, to be at a drive on the ceiling, and he'd seen it demonstrated, and it was very persuaded, $40 or something, and so he used up this money and saved up to buy this thing, but it was still quite a spontaneous purchase, where the thing broke within a couple of days, and just wasn't even, and then he didn't have the money to be able to buy a Lego set that he was really excited about, and so he had that disappointment. Do I want him to have that disappointment? Yes, I now want him to learn that before he's, whatever 25, he's making a huge financial decision, and that's his first experience with money, so the risks are so much higher there. No, you want him to learn while it's cheap, you want to construct a life where you can try something and fail, and there's no problem. And Charlie, I think is a great opportunity for that, because in teenagerhood too, like go try it. Well, we've talked, I try to, and even for when my children were young, I've tried to not dumb down how I would talk to them. I would try to introduce mindsets and mental models, and just describe the language, the language of psychology, the language of economics or the language, like whatever I was researching or studying myself, I would just try to share it with them. Of course, you have to figure out how to teach it to someone at various ages, but I wouldn't hold back in sharing those terms, and one of the terms that all my children, if they were here now, they'd laugh or roll their eyes at the term asymmetric risk. And like actually teaching them what an asymmetric risk is, if you can construct something where the downside is minimal or zero, but the upside is high or limitless, that's, you want to take that every day, because there's no downside. And what I think that they at least comprehend logically is there's so many things in life actually do approximate an asymmetric bet, where if you want to have more friends, then all you have to do is call more people up. There's a risk is so low. So what, so they don't want to come? Are they coming, you don't enjoy it? Well, the risk is almost nothing, that's hardly anything. It's a few minutes, a couple of hours and an afternoon, there's no risk, there's nothing. So trying to teach them, show them the risks are low, [BLANK_AUDIO] courage is someone to take action and and what I would describe as the courage to be rubbish because you know you're just you're gonna try and you're gonna learn and then you're gonna see what comes of it and then you're gonna try the next thing and go to learn. So asymmetric risks I think something that you can actually teach these stuff can be taught I think to even quite young people can comprehend it if you teach it and you explain it a few times. And one more time I just want to make sure the audience heard what you said. Rubbish what was it again? Oh the courage to be rubbish. A courage to be rubbish. I love that. As you say that I think that there's a lot of fathers out there. I used to be one of them. I'm not anymore. It's oh my gosh. Well no don't try and fail. Like don't fail for love. If do anything but don't fail. Like don't lose, right? And it sounds like your your mindset around that. And so his mind is like no be risky. Be courageous. It's okay to fail but let's most importantly let's recover and let's learn, right? We're learning machines. We're not we're not we're not perfection machines that never fail, right? So I love that man. Thank you for the stories. I love where this is obviously where we launched from. But I know you're here to talk about your brand new book, which by the way I loved your first book and when you came or your last book essentialism, you came on and talked about that effortless. So first of all, what was the what was the inspiration to write this book? Hey guys, we're taking a quick break here from today's show just to ask you a couple questions about just your life in general as it pertains to building a legacy and living legendary. Listen, most of us feel that we are here in a rut in some area of our life and we just don't know how to get out of it. And most of us really feel consumed by all the tasks in our professional life, how we can build better relationships with our wives and our kids and mastering our finances, our physical mental emotional health. I get it. I was there once myself. That's why we've created data to alliance to help you guys to help each other create the lives that we were meant to create. We help you create a legendary marriage, build an epic connection with your wife, master your finances, build your wealth, optimize your health mentally and physically to become the leader in your profession you were meant to be and to create an environment of psychological safety, patience and connection with your kids. We want to see you guys succeed and that's why we created data to alliance the community to hold you accountable to teach you some skills and have phenomenal results in your life. For more information guys just head on over to gooddebtproject.com/aliance, fill out an application, we will be in touch with you and the rest is history. All right, back to the show. What was the inspiration to write this book? Yeah, I mean, well let me answer that question specifically. So we moved as a family into a new pretty idyllic neighborhood place was built in the fifties as like the whole world moved on but no one told anyone here. So it's like white picket fences, it's more horseways than roads, there's no street lamps and it was just like this great place to be raising our children and they really thrived in it, they're out taking walks, they're taking the dog on walks, they're playing tennis, they're swimming, I mean, it's just like great. And one of my daughters Eve especially seemed to thrive, she's just loved being barefoot in the back garden, she's naming our chickens, yes, we have chickens at home, you know, she's just she's just she's always climbing trees, she's reading, she's she's articulate, she's she's funny and she cannot stay angry, if she tries to burst out laughing like this is a brown, have a long brown, brown eyes, slim mischievous grin, and all of that's working until she turns 14. And then she just sort of started slowing down and everything, she slowed down in her chores, she give us kind of shorts it, instead of giving us like 10 minutes of just an endless talk, it was like one word answers and and we were like, well, pre-age appropriate behavior really, so we just did we're not going to worry about this. But then on a routine physical therapy, there's that she failed a reflex test, which she they can't really fail reflex tests. And so Paul Annereside said, I said, listen, I think I would go to a neurologist, I don't want to alarm you, but I think I would. And and so of course you don't have to be one twice, so we went immediately. And then looking at the behavior, her behavior from a different perspective, we suddenly saw it differently. You know, well, what if this is part of a bigger medical challenge? And it was, I mean, it was neurological condition, undiagnosed basically. Well, for months, no, no named diagnosis, because every test came back in the normal range. Meanwhile, her capability is just like being just freefall. So she can't text hours to eat a meal, takes two full minutes to write her own name. 45 seconds to write three letters of her name. She, she right hand side of her body, it's not just doesn't work at the same pace as the left personality, gone neutralized, there's like emotions within just a very limited, really no emotions, but very, very limited emotional range. And on and on and this whole time, the neurologist cannot give us even the beginning of a diagnosis of what really is happening. And so in the midst of that, I really discovered that there were two parts, two ways to approach this. We could take a difficult situation and make it worse, or we could take the situation like make it lighter, the easier way of handling it. And it might sound obvious which part to take, but actually what we've felt inclined to do was the first. I mean, it is like, you know, poor miters reading, you know, every kind of diagnosis people send, well, maybe it's this, it couldn't be that, but she has, it couldn't be the other of these, you know, non medical professionals, but just people well intended. We could, we could blame life, we could curse God and die, we could, we could ask wilds, we could get consumed in the depression of it. Or I mean, you could, you could destroy yourself, your marriage, your family, and with it any chance of actually being able to help, because you're using all the assets, you need to be able to help. But that was still the temptation to take that part. And unfortunately, we sort of stepped down this other alternative way of living, right, where we are being grateful for anything and everything we can like relentlessly. So if you complain, after you complain, you say something you're thankful for, we, you know, we got around the piano and sang, we laughed together, we, we focused on what we could do something about. I mean, there was like a whole different way of living that we suddenly discovered was possible, even in the midst of this, that was necessary for getting through it. And, and I, I mean, I, I think I could just summarize this, that by saying that it wasn't enough to do the right things, you have to do it in the right way. And by finding a new way of doing things, we found that there was like an almost magical force at play and it just boiled us up. And so we were in a compared to what we could have been. It was like an almost, I don't know, it was a state of joy. I don't use that word lightly. And that's what sustained us as we went through this process that the, the first was four months before the first any round of treatment. I mean, they didn't even, no one was even offering any kind of treatment. So, so performance to them. But then after some, that was successful. The symptoms returned. It ended up being like a two-year journey as a this conversation. And, well, we're probably a little longer than that now. And so if you just take it in the most exhausting part, you're not even going to make it. You're not going to even survive the longevity. You don't know how long it's going to be. So you've got to approach it in a certain way, a particular way. I call that now effortless, right? I call that a way of thinking, a way of being that eases life's inevitable burdens. And, and out of what started as a, as a necessary way to survive, how to keep my, you know, as a father to keep things intact for my family. And, you know, I learned a lot of principles of practices. And then realized, you know what, I don't think it's just me. Maybe, you know, other people, fortunately, aren't only rarely dealing with a teenage daughter who suddenly has neurologically discombobulating condition and disease. But other people are dealing with challenges all the time. And so I realized that it was worth going on a sort of quest, research, to understand what would the mindsets and the skill sets be for helping with all of the normal difficulties of life. How can can we approach that effort was grew out of that experience and then that research. So that's sort of the story behind the new book. - Oh my gosh, man. My heart seriously just feels a ton of gratitude, man, just for talking to you right now about this, 'cause what you just did, especially a podcast, so centered around such an intimate situation and very, very hard situation, physically, mentally, emotionally, trying for not only your daughter, but you and your wife and the whole family unit, right? And to be able to, in that moment, or that period of time of darkness, right? And no one would, everybody would let you off the hook for like, "Yeah, man, this is really hard." And you know, be upset, be angry. You know, find the negativity, right? No one would blame you for doing that, right? But in the same moment, in the same breath, you're finding ways in your words to elevate this situation in your life, right? And to do it effortlessly. So let's really speak to this skill set systematically, right? So can you share an example of where maybe the, everything was just stacked against you, your family, or maybe in your business, to where you felt incredibly challenged. But you were maybe, you were able to implement this effortless strategy of sounds like relentless gratitude, which by the way, I love that relentless gratitude. How would that show up for you like in a situation? - Well, let me just give a little bit of structure on the model that grew out at this experience, right? Is three related levels, state, action and result. Effortless state, how do you get into an effortless state? How do you get into a place of being at ease, especially when life is really hard? So you would, it would be natural to get into a state of suffering, of complaint, and so on. How do you get immediately back into an effortless state? Answer it one or more ways to try and start doing that. But the key is that getting into the state really matters because out of that state grows a different kind of action, a whole different way to do. And out of that comes a whole different way of getting results, results start to flow to you. And so the state really matters. It's like the, it's the most important thing. You've got to keep coming back to it. And the moment you're not in an effortless state, which is very often, you say, okay, what do I need to do to get back in that effortless state? What's the fastest, easiest way to get back there? Now, we've mentioned, I mentioned gratitude, you've picked up on that. That's one of the ways to be able to get into an effortless state. You can't be fearful and grateful at the same time. You can't be angry and grateful at the same time. So if you can, it's an accelerated path to interrupt your state to say something you're thankful for. And I think I mentioned it specifically, but one of the things that we discovered is this simple habit recipe, right? After I complain, I will say something I'm thankful for. That's it, that's the recipe. Now, here's what I learned when I started doing that, is that I complained so much more than I realized. And I think of myself as a pretty positive person, quite optimistic. And yeah, as soon as I actually paid attention and had this little habit, I found I complained about just all the time. Just like, just a flow of complaint, small complaints. Oh, yeah, that meeting took longer than I thought. So, oh, you know, I'm concerned about this thing. I'm worried about that thing. And walking to a room, you catch the children see what they're doing wrong. Why are you wanting that? Why are you still on your phone? Why aren't you getting this thing? Get back onto that and that becomes the state of your life without ever realizing it, the state of your dadhood. That's who you are to people. That's how you're showing up. And so, this simple interrupt is simple. Find, complain, keep complaining. I don't, at first try and get rid of all your complaining, but every time you do, one thing you're thankful for. And the effect is literally instant. Not many stuff much in stuff in life that really is instant. This is instant. You just go to, you said, then the very next time you just do, oh, yeah, you know, that meets it a long time ago. Well, but I'm thankful that I had the meeting. Thankful that that opportunity is taking place. Next time you see the child, well, why are you on your phone? I'm thankful that you're here and you're my daughter, that you're my son. You see the effect will be instant. People will reflect, will have a positive reaction instantly. And so will you, it'll improve your state. And state is not independent. State affects the action you take next and the type of results you get. And so as soon as you improve the state, you will start to see these other things improve. So even in this catastrophic situation that I was in, well, at least what could have been catastrophic, it's still had an impact. Gratitude is a catalytic thing. It's not just a good thing, it's not just a nice thing. It is a causative thing and it produces an upward spiral. And so we've done it with our children even now, where I remember once my son, I think we've implemented it with them as well. And so he complained about something. I'm like, okay, give me three things you're thankful for. You know, and he says just like this, he says, I'm so glad. I'm so thankful that Dad wants to play this game, but we have to say something with them for every time we complain. He said it just like that. And we're all just laughed. And it worked even with that temperament about it. It didn't matter. That's how powerful it is. It just, it just works. And so we start getting in a grumpy mood, we're on some road trip, or we just start doing it. I've just started recently doing it where if somebody is critical to each other, which again, so those patents happen and they happen, there's not a day that goes by that people aren't critical with each other in our family. But as soon as they do, okay, or something you're thankful for about them. You find you, you do the critique, but now you've got to pay it back. They said, at least get to an equity between the two. And let me just summarize this with a single principle, which is that what I found is that when you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. And when you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack. And that's really the power of this idea of there being two parts at all, is that one, you're gonna lose more and more. It's gonna get heavier and heavier and harder and harder. And the other, you're gonna start gaining, developing assets, improving the relationship, improving the culture around you, improving your sense of optionality. And that all prepares you to be able to do better with whatever the next challenge is that comes in life. - I'm so grateful for this conversation. (laughing) - I really mean that. - Honestly, man, I really, really mean that I've done 700 interviews now to date. And if you look at gratitude practices out there, right? And I'm one of them. I love doing my morning gratitude. I have never thought until you shared this whole concept in your book about doing a gratitude practice in the midst of feeling absolute defeat and negativity. And then making that the trigger to do so. Instead of like, oh, it's morning, I need to list my three to five things that I'm grateful for and then I'm kinda done with it. And I'll do an after-action review at the end of the day. - Right. - But what happens in between is the meat of the day and the most important, probably, not probably, it is absolutely the most important times to practice that practice. So taking the themes away, making the feeling of complaining our negativity, the absolute trigger to then step into gratitude. That's what you're saying. - That's right. - Okay, I love that. - Yeah, and it fits with another theme, another practice in the book, but I don't wanna make it too complicated by combining these, but there's a difference between a chore, a habit, and a ritual. And the idea here is, if you can, right, chores are the worst, chores we wanna avoid chores. They're unpleasant, uncomfortable, and we'd rather run away from them, okay? So that's a chore. A habit is something that may still be unpleasant, but you've actually got into a routine. So it's easier because you've done it many times. And you do it because it's habitual and because of the outcome you want later, right? That's a habit. And there's loads to be said for habits, but there's a distinction between a habit and a ritual that is really helpful. A ritual is a habit with a soul. A ritual is something that you enjoy doing in and of itself. So you want the outcome, but you also want the experience of doing it. That's a ritual. That's what's so exciting about it, is that you, what if you can take something that's a chore and not just make it a habit, what if you can take something that's a chore and turn it into an enjoyable ritual? It's a complete game changer. And to illustrate it in my dad life, right? It's, we have quite a lot of positive rituals about dinner together. Like we dinner together, Yeah, I mean, I sit down and eat not every night, but I would say like 75% of the time. We are actually sitting down together and we do, we like toast each other at the beginning of the meal. We do like different cheers for each other like we've really tried to do it. Sometimes it's a disaster, but many times, you know, it actually works. But I'll tell you what the problem is, is right after dinner, is my children are like ninjas. They are like silently gone, right? It's time to clean up and they're gone. Somehow, it's great meals, that is nice, it's positive, cheer for whoever's made the meal today. And then it's over gone. And it's like, what? And now my job is cats and mouse, bringing them back, you know, let's make this happen. And it's a chore, right? That's what we mean by a chore. And even if we get it to a habit where at least we're doing it every night, that can still be miserable. And so I said, okay, how can we make it effortless, right? How can we make this, you know, a better experience? And one of the things we did is, okay, well, we just got a sheet of paper, Sharpie, divided up the roles from responsibilities. What does it look like? We got clear about that. Who's doing what? Okay, we divide this up, we train what's minimum acceptable standard, okay, we get the whole thing. We're ready to go, you know, Thursday arrives. This is launch day. Let me tell you what happens. Nothing. They just go back to how it was before. Ninja City again, that everyone's gone. And it wasn't until my eldest daughter Grace added basic karaoke music, like just loud Disney songs of how it started. Put it on loud. Songs like, you know, I don't know, let it, let me, is it? Let it go. Yeah. Right. It's like, it's getting mixed with the people's lead, but let it go. And it's like, it's, it's like, you know, I can't wait to be King from Lions King, whatever, like all these, and just put it on loud, that, you know, like someone starts singing. You're like, you can't not basically, because there's just so like, it's infectious. And so like, everybody starts dancing and they're doing the job. And that was the thing that met, that was the tipping point. So it was the, and the question that I think goes along with is like, well, can we make it fun? Can we make the, if we're going to do it anyway, can we make it fun? Can we find an enjoyable way to do it? And now it's like, it's like a little party. And whenever we forget to put the music on, it like immediately becomes a chore again. And it's like, oh, yeah, you know, we're going to do it. We're going to blend up now. But then as soon as someone puts on music, it again triggers it. And I thought, well, people won't believe me so like the other day when they were doing it, I took a video. I wasn't even there helping them, but they were doing it. Music was on it. And I captured a clip and I put it on Instagram. And because I was like, this is for real. It really worked loads of fails in my life, but this really worked. And so, so that's an example of how you can turn something from a chore, not just into a habit, but into a ritual that's actually enjoyable in and of itself. So you get the job done, but you know, it built your culture and it built your experience. And you look forward to doing it the next time. So it's another practice, I think, that can be helpful. If anybody wants me tonight around 630, I will be dancing in my kitchen with my whole family as we clean up. I'm just putting that out there. Yeah. Yeah, man, that is absolutely huge. And I've never heard that, again, I've all these shows chore, habit, ritual, and what each of those mean. It makes total sense. I'll share a quick example back to you and this is like my own, you know, imperfections and sometimes I'd show up terribly. My witching hour, I wake up before I am every day. My witching hour is usually between like 845 and 930. Like I'm so tired, I don't even know what to do with myself. And it's within those 45 minutes, we have my 15 year old, 13 year old, but we also have a seven and five year old. That's when my seven and five year old, they want to read books. Right. I love to read, but at that point in my night, I just want to lay down. But what I have found, so there are times where I look at that as a chore because I'm like, I just want to go to bed. There are times where I look at it as like, well, it's a habit and it's good for them. We should read, so we should do it, right? Because we get, and I even wrote it down, we want that result. The ritual though, here's where I have found joy in doing that. And I force myself to do it, but it's that state change you're talking about, and you know what, even as I say that loud, it's the gratitude state change because the moment that I'm like, I just want to go to bed, I'll look at the color of my kid's eyes, or I'll look at, I'll hear the sound of their voice as they read, or I'll listen to how they laugh when we get to a funny part, right? Or I think about how, I was literally thinking about this last night, what my five-year-old felt like on the right side of me is he leaned his head up against my arm and I thought to myself, there's going to come a time where he's taller than me, or there's going to come a time where he's not going to be right here anymore. So I'm just going to, as we read green eggs and ham, I'm thinking about this. And it was immediately that state change, but it didn't emerge for me what that actually wasn't until you just explained it. Right? Well, I love that example, and it's a really, it's a great illustration of like being in the state changes the experience. The experience actually changes because you're paying attention to those little things in the moment, and seeing that the extraordinary exists in the mundane, if you're paying attention to it, it's right there. That is the life, that is the richness of your life, it's not, it's not the future, something is going to be meaningful in the future, it's like it's already here. So I, you know, I really love that example. It begs, it begs one more thought for me, which is just maybe you already do this, but I found that, I found that my day as a dad has three, um, like acts to it, act one, act to act three, the morning afternoon evening, right? And my experience is that morning is easier than the afternoon and the evening is, I mean, the afternoon is easier than the evening. So that evening is the period, and unfortunately that's the period often where we spend the most time together with family, right? That's like, works finished, you're coming out, it's where you eat together, it's good, the bedtime routine, and so you can show up at that, exhausted, and it really is hard because exhausted state is not an effortless state, exhausted state is close to a state of suffering. I mean, we really, it makes it so hard, even to read a book. I mean, we're not talking about like, we're not talking about like, uh, you know, Anna Krenna here, we're talking about like green eggs and ham, but even that really is genuinely hard. I'm with you on that. I know that feeling. And so there's, there's a couple of things I wonder about that might be helpful. One is, uh, one is like building a napkin to your schedule, and I don't know if you do that. I'm not, I'm not, are they holding you on it? I keep hearing people say that these things called naps, like I just, I don't know. A lot, a lot of people think of them as quite childish and, and I know the over-enchiever knows doesn't want to do it. But I found, I've been napping less recently, uh, because of the book launch, so I've sacrificed that more often than I had previously. But even now, as soon as I feel that sleep burden grow, I'm like, I'm just going to take it right now when the moment comes. I can feel it, don't fight it, don't power through it. Just your body is in, is in, you know, follows rhythmic cycles. Not just through them, through the night. We know about those. The REM cycles and so on, the 90 minute cycles we go through in sleep cycles, the cycles continue all through the day. And so we shouldn't fight those, you're going to learn how to use them. One of the ways to use them is when you get into that sleep burden grows, you just go, I'm out, I'm just going to go close my eyes for a few minutes. And that gives me a burst so that I turn up better for the final act of my day. So that's one concrete thing. Another thing that I found helpful, especially in the pandemic, is to have a, um, an exact time that my work day ends. So I chose five o'clock. I was inspired by someone else who did the same thing. He read essentialism, got into it, and I write back a story and effortless, but he's Ben Bergeron, who works with like the fittest people in the world. He's like high performance guy, highly disciplined guy and he just chose a set time to be done. So even the pandemic, once I heard he'd done it, I wasn't doing that before. But when he, I was like, okay, well, I want, I want to be inspired by this essentialist. Um, and so I, I'm like a town cryer. I walk out my office and I'll yell out the time to the family as my accountability. I chose five o'clock, not because, I chose it because of like just self awareness that if I went later than that, dinner went later than that, then all these other cumulative problems, right? Where you're more exhausted, everyone else is more exhausted, everyone else gets hungry. And you're just making that last act of the day, you know, that much more unpleasant, much harder than it needs to be. If I leave at five, I can help with dinner, I can help get people together. they help them go in, they can help tidy up all of it works better. I'm doing that when I've still got some energy. So that's one more thing. And the final thing is just having a done for the day list, which is a little different than having a set time, but to design the day at the beginning of it, I don't do this every day. It takes a bit of thought to do this. I haven't got into a good enough routine to make it, make it effortless yet, but it's where you really say, look, when I've done these things on this list, I can feel satisfied with being done. After this, I'm not going to be on email. I'm not going to be on line. I'm not going to be doing sneaky work, right? You know, sitting in the hot tub while you're on your phone, you know, doing work. I'm going to be I'm really going to be able to say, yeah, that was that was good and sufficient work today. And so those are maybe there's a three suggestions. I think that can help with that last act of the day. I love those. It puts what we like to call containers, right? Those boundaries in there of, and I've been doing the end of work day at a certain time for a while now. That's super helpful. It also creates a super and incredible sense of urgency. And if you want a whole lot of urgency, it's like tie those things that need to be done most to that time that you're going to be done no matter what. And you'll get things done, right? Well, you and you don't and you don't keep trying to solve problems with just more hours. Right. You say, I want to hire a contribution, but I don't have more hours in my day because I'm not going to go into six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, two in the morning. I'm not having more hours. So you have to solve it in some other way. You have to solve it through delegation or better prioritization or just literally, literally asking what's the effortless way to achieve this? Because that question itself, we know this questions are answers. And if you ask a better question, you're going to get a better answer. And I know almost nobody who asks the question, how can this be effortless? And certainly I never did. But once you do, it's really quite remarkable how often answers will come to you that you're like, well, that really would be effortless. That would be an easy way to do this. And I've just been constantly think you tend to think most people, especially over achievers, tend to think if I want better results, I simply have to work harder. I want to double the results, I have to work double the hours and double the effort. And that's because you're just simply saying, how can I work harder to achieve these results? Well, your brain will give you answers. If you ask a better question, give your brain a better option. How could I achieve this result in half the effort? How can I make it effortless? We had a printer that we would replace our printer. I had the responsibility to get rid of the other printer. And so it's in my office. I've been there for two weeks. Every time I look at it, there's a little cycle in my head. Do I sell it? I don't know where to sell it. Do I give it away? Do I throw it away? I don't know where the digital recycling unit is. It's just like, there's enough effort stays on the floor in my office over here. And then I ask a different question. How can this be effortless? Literally, as soon as I ask the question, I look up at this and work is like down the ways a bit outside. I don't know who I don't know them. And I just like, well, I wonder if they want it. So I walk out. Do you want these printers in working condition? Yes. Walked in. Got it. Gave them. Within two minutes of asking the question, I didn't just have a solution. It had been executed. I'm like, that's, you can say that's trivial, but like life is made up of printers on the floor. You know, that made up of tasks to do. And we are doing it often a harder way because we're not, we're asking questions that produce a harder answer. And if you ask a better question, how can it be effortless? How could I make this enjoyable? What's the minimum number of steps to take that would be required to execute this? And that last one, I mean, I have a story on that too. This is, that's sorry, but I don't want to monologue him. No, no, you're good. You've got full attention, man. I'm loving this, please. Thank you. But the, my son, Jack, want set a goal to get his eagle scout before turning 14. It was 12 at the time. But that is a stretch goal. It was important to him. So it was important to me. And it became like our goal together. We're going to try and work out how to do this. At the time, it was probably a little behind where he would need to have been just even on a normal schedule. So this was like, as I say, a stretch goal. And we did a variety of things to try and make that experience enjoyable. We did camping together. We got other people involved with this whole series of things. But we actually got through everything, including the final scout project, which was an amazing experience. And the last piece of it, at least the main day was effortless. We had probably 35, 40 people turned up. It was like in the most amazing scene where it was 180 foot fence painted it all like everything done one day. And it was like, you know, pretty magical. This is where we're at now. For anyone who's scouting, that isn't the end. That is emotionally the end. But it isn't actually the end. The end is you've got to write up a report about your eagle project. And that last piece is enough to keep people from getting their eagle. I know someone personally who did everything but that report for like they went all the way to like a day past the 18th birthday to hand that in. And there's zero tolerance for one day past your 18th birthday. You have got to do it by the time you by before you turn 18 or they will never, they didn't and he never accepted it. He never got it. And like, we, yeah, this is like, he's still young. He's got years left to do it. But we start procrastinating. We're like, well, every time we think about it, so much. And then we start saying, well, why is it, why is making this so hard? We're not doing a done thing. So it's not the task itself that's hard because we're not doing anything. But we still feel exhausted every time we think about it. And we start to realize, well, we've seen some of these reports. We have, we've seen one that's absolutely magnificent. You wouldn't built in a wooden box glorious inside this thing. It's just a hundreds of hours of work has gone into this thing. We've seen these things on display. And so in our heads, it's just burdened by all of this second mile stuff that we've seen other people do. And it's just too much. We just go, oh, yeah, we just give up before we even begun the task. And so instead, we just ask different questions, well, what does Dunn look like? It gets you to the scout office and Dave accepted it. That's done. What's the minimum number of steps we need to be able to achieve it? What's the minimum, not the maximum? Maximum, we're never going to get that. The minimum number of steps, okay, we need some, we need a three-page essay. No more. Three-page essay, explaining what this experience was. And we're going to have some photographs of one line underneath explaining it. And we suddenly realized there were lots of things that we were thinking we have to do. But we're actually just, well, other people have done it. We could do it. But all these second mile stuff and we're like, not everything takes a second mile. So we reduced it. We simplified it. We then we said, well, what's the first physical step? Well, the very first obvious step is to get a three-ring binder. There's not the 50th step of actually handing the thing in. The first step is get a binder. Well, we can do that. And then it started to feel achievable after that. Because when you break these things down, there's a moment where physically you change where you go, I can do that. When people say that phrase, I think I can do that. Their body is in an effortless state. They're able to take the next action, because they know what to do and they can do it. And that's what we started to feel. And so we were able to actually take the next little step, little step. So within one week, we've done it. It was delivered. It was completed. He graduated. He got Eagle Scout one week before his 14th birthday. But we wouldn't have done that. It wouldn't have worked if we tried to do it over thinking it, over complicating it, over engineering it, over extra-miling it. We just never got that. And it would have been less enjoyable. And maybe we wouldn't even achieve the goal. And it would have gone on for years and all that unpleasantness of procrastinating something. So it's much better to make progress in like a streamlined approach than it is to be perfectionist about it to make no progress. Yes, especially with men. Men are extreme. We're full throttle or no throttle beings. I'm going to either go 100 or I'm not going to get in the car. And we tend to over complicate things. Well, if I'm going to write a book, it's got to be 500 pages. It's got to be 50 chapters. It's got to be this. It's got to be that's got to be all these things. Instead, no, it has to have these three lessons in it. And then how do I even make those lessons even simple? The last and final reflection is when you said that, how do I make this effortless? And then we're in that state. I literally felt like my physical being. It's almost like it's almost like before you jump off the high dive as a kid or do something big or drastic. It's like, I can do this. I'm ready. And even if I try and fail, I'm still ready to move forward. And it's that feeling of like, okay, man, I love how you you wrapped all these amazing lessons in your book through obviously the stories that you share because that's how we human beings. We learn best writers through story. And I absolutely want to make sure that all the men can find your book. I mean, obviously on Amazon, but I want to make sure where else How else can they find you, book, everything else you're doing in the world? I think if they want to one place, well, if they order effortless right now, they can go to essentialism.com and they get for free of 21-day essentialism challenge and that's like a master class. I mean, they can buy it anytime, but right now they get it free. So that's one thing and then, you know, of course, effortless is out. As you mentioned it, there's a podcast, the What's Essential Podcast, that's another free resource and Santa Bat just a few months ago and really enjoyed working with people to show how to apply these ideas. So those are some of the resources that are available to people. Well, guys, we're going to have all the links and the show notes for this particular show. Greg, this was so much fun. Just as a teaser, yeah, another book in the works or at least on the mind here, come inside. I do. I do, but top secret for that. I figured you'd say that. Well, I do have one. It's been great being with you. Thank you. You as well. Gentlemen, for all the show notes, to connect with Greg and his amazing work that he's doing in the world, go to gooddevproject.com/320 for this show again, gooddevproject.com/320. Greg, thank you so much for joining. It was so, so good to talk to you today. Thank you again. Back at you. Gentlemen, go out and live effortlessly. See you soon.