897. RAF Vault: 1,000 Days (Pt. I & II)

On today’s episode, we revisit two of the most important episodes we’ve ever released. In this special two-part throwback, Andy breaks down why thinking small is a trap laid by society, how to build a solid plan for your life, and how to take complete control of your next 1,000 days.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:16Andy Frisella?

  Let me ask you a question. And I want you to be honest. I want you to think back. I want you to think back over the last 1,000 days that you've had on this earth. I want you to think back on those thousand days. And I want you, I want you to be honest. I want you to be real honest with yourself. I want you to ask yourself. Have you done what it is you needed to do over those last 1,000 days to produce the life that you want? Be honest.

• 0:58Andy Frisella?

  Not many people will be honest answering that question. The last 1,000 days. If you could look me in the eye and tell me that you've done every single thing you could possibly do, and you're still not even close to where you want to be, you're not even on the track to where you want to be. You're a liar. Right now, it's real confusing time in America and across the world. Right now, we have the victim culture shoved down our throats everywhere. Everybody's a victim about everything. There's no denying that.

• 1:41Andy Frisella?

  Everybody wants something for nothing. Everybody wants to compete about how hard their life has been. They want to complain. They want to scream. They want to shout about the disadvantages that they've had. They want to talk about their story, and they want you to hear their story about how much harder it's been for them than it is for everybody else.

• 2:12Andy Frisella?

  That's what's popular. That's what is produced from a culture that rewards children, not for winning, but for participating. That's what happens when a culture tells people that everybody wins when they don't. That's what happens when we're inundated with advertisements of all different sorts from all different fields that convince us that we can have the life of our dreams

• 2:52Andy Frisella?

  in 21 days. We can lose 100 pounds in a month. We can become a millionaire from our basements in two weeks.

• 3:06Andy Frisella?

  But you can't, and you know you can't. And most people are going to spend their entire lives wondering why their life looks nothing like they want it to look.

• 3:24Andy Frisella?

  When, if we took the last 1,000 days and we played that video up here on the screen in my room right now, and we were honest, and we sat down and we looked at it, and we said, okay, well, let's, let's take inventory over what you did for the last 1,000 days. I can promise you that the people who did execute and the people who have come to the plate and took big swings over and over and over again, every single day, regardless of how they felt, regardless of what the circumstances are, regardless of how much they wanted to or didn't want to, they still showed up, committed to taking those swings.

• 4:08Andy Frisella?

  I promise you, if we watch that video, the results would tell the story. And where you are right now has nothing to do with your ability or your inability. It has nothing to do with what race you are. It has nothing to do with what gender you are. It has nothing to do with what sexual orientation you are. It has nothing to do with anything other than what you've chosen to spend your time doing these last 1,000 days. Now, I'm not saying that the thousand days will have you exactly where they want. Because I could tell you, for the last 1,000 days, I have executed. Am I where I want to be?

• 4:53Andy Frisella?

  No, I'm not. Am I tremendously further than I was 1,000 days ago? Yes, I am.

• 5:02Andy Frisella?

  And so, my point to you in all of this chaos that's going on in the world is to realize a couple of things. One of them is this: Time is still ticking. And eventually, all this crazy shit that we're all dealing with right now is gonna subside. It's gonna go back to being a situation where you have to go out and make something of yourself.

• 5:33Andy Frisella?

  And when that time comes, and when that time happens,

• 5:38Andy Frisella?

  are you gonna just automatically switch it on? Do you think that that's gonna be the time that you start? Because I would argue that that's not true. That's gonna be like every other time in the history of your life where you've waited. You've waited for circumstances to be right. You've waited until after that vacation. Until after that wedding. Until after that girls' night out. Until after that guys' trip. Until after that wedding, or that birthday, or that holiday, or that happy hour, to start getting your shit together.

• 6:20Andy Frisella?

  The reason you aren't where you want to be, and not even on the fucking track you want to be on, has nothing to do with society looking at you and punishing you.

• 6:33Andy Frisella?

  See, we're under the impression now that society really cares about us and our hardships and our struggles. And let me tell you something, it doesn't. No matter what anybody says on TV, no matter what any politician says on TV, no matter what any celebrity says on TV, nobody gives a fuck about you. That's the truth. Now, they might tell you a story to make you feel like you're at a disadvantage and make you feel like you can't build what you want to build. But why are they telling you that story? Have you ever thought about that? Why are they telling you that story?

• 7:15Andy Frisella?

  Because I know why they're telling you that story. They're telling you that story because they can't be them without you being who the fuck you are right now. You have to stay at that level that you're at right now so that you can look up to them and they can be something. We're convinced and we're told and we're indoctrinated with the idea that only certain people get to build the lives they want. We're told that from the day that we are born through adulthood until we die, we're told success is for other people.

• 7:54Andy Frisella?

  Success breeds success. We're not told that we can be the person who becomes that. And that's why you don't believe it. Sit back and evaluate why you believe the things you believe. And I want to bet if you're honest with yourself, the reason you have the beliefs that you have right now, I'm not talking about the shit you post on the internet, I'm talking about the shit that you feel in your heart. The reason you feel those things and the reason you have these doubts is because the

• 8:34Andy Frisella?

  people who raised you, and I'm not just talking about your parents, but I could be talking about your parents. The culture that raised us told us that we would never be good enough. And so my purpose in bringing this simple concept to your attention of the last 1,000 days.

• 9:02Andy Frisella?

  Is for you to admit to yourself, the reason you're not seeing the progress you would like to see at the rate you would like to see it is because of the consistency, or lack thereof, of the last 1,000 days of your life.

• 9:21Andy Frisella?

  Did you give everything that you could, seven days a week? The answer is automatically no. I already know the answer. Did you give it five days a week? The answer is no. Did you give it two days a week? For most of you, the answer is still no.

• 9:40Andy Frisella?

  And you know I'm telling you the truth.

• 9:44Andy Frisella?

  So,

• 9:46Andy Frisella?

  when you sit there and you start buying in that you're some sort of victim, before you do so, I'd like you to take inventory of what your last 1,000 days look like. Because if you can look me in the eye and you can say that you gave every fucking ounce of everything that you have for the last 1,000 days, and it still didn't get you closer to where you want to be, and it still didn't get you on the right track, and it still hasn't immensely improved your life, I'm gonna have no problem calling you a liar to your face.

• 10:24Andy Frisella?

  The biggest person that holds you back from every fucking thing that you say you want is you.

• 10:30Andy Frisella?

  That's not some motivational rhetoric bullshit. It's practical fact. And we are being sold a bill of goods as a society that just isn't true.

• 10:46Andy Frisella?

  All of us have the opportunity to improve, to get better, to become something. There's evidence of this everywhere you look.

• 10:57Andy Frisella?

  Everywhere.

• 11:00Andy Frisella?

  You just haven't looked. And the reason you haven't looked is because it's easier for you to believe that someone else has suppressed your entire life than it is for you to go out and execute for a thousand fucking days in a row. So my challenge is this. Before you talk about how unfair shit is, before you talk about how much you're fucked over, before you talk about how the man is sticking it to you. And I know what you're thinking. I know you hear me. A rich white dude. Talking about how hard a thousand days were and you saying, well, you don't know what my thousand days were like.

• 11:46Andy Frisella?

  You don't know how hard my thousand days were. And you know what? You could be right. Your thousand days could be a lot harder. That's the truth. But I guarantee you one thing for sure. I could find a million motherfuckers that had harder thousand days than you. They still got it done. Here's the deal. All right. Like I said in the 1000 days podcast, we have people, especially right now in society, pointing fingers, looking around, blaming every single person except themselves for what problem they happen to have going on in their lives.

• 12:28Andy Frisella?

  The accountability in humanity and in society is what I believe to be at an all time low. Okay. People like to bitch. They like to cry. They like to scream. They like to scream at the top of their lungs to anybody who will listen about all their problems and whose fucking fault they are. But the truth of the matter is, and you know what's coming, is it's your fault. All right. And here's the proof. Let's look back at your 1000 days, the past 1000 days. And what do we do? We didn't execute on all those days. We didn't do what we needed to do.

• 13:11Andy Frisella?

  We didn't get up when we didn't feel like getting up. We didn't go to the gym when we didn't feel like going to the gym. We didn't eat the foods we know we needed to eat. And skip the things that we didn't need to eat. Why are you surprised? Why is the world surprised that we aren't where we want to be?

• 13:38Andy Frisella?

  And I think the answer is because we don't know how. Okay, that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about how so we don't repeat the last 1,000 days over this next 1,000 days. Right now, we live in this world of chaos. All right, lots of stress, lots of anxiety, lots of pain, lots of confusion, lots of negativity consistently fed into our brains every single day. And while everybody else is in a panic, this is an opportunity for you to get everything together so that these next 1,000 days get you to where you want to go.

• 14:22Andy Frisella?

  And if it doesn't get you all the way there, it definitely gets you on the right track. Okay, so what I want to do today is I want to break down three key parts to making your next 1,000 days look the exact opposite as your last 1,000 days. Okay, so it's very simple. It's three steps and you're going to want to write these down.

• 14:47Andy Frisella?

  The first step is this. You've got to make a decision. Almost everybody in the world overlooks this step. Okay, but it's important.

• 15:00Andy Frisella?

  Where is it that you want to be? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your body to look like? What do you want your significant other to be like? What do you want your income to look like? What about your career? What kind of car do you want to drive? Where do you want to go on vacation and with who? What kind of clothes do you want to wear? What kind of fucking haircut is going to look cool on you? All these things matter. You might be giggling right now, but they matter. Because the reason most people never get where they want to go and never commit to doing what it is they need to do is because they don't

• 15:41Andy Frisella?

  take the time to make an accurate and firm decision on where they want to be. They never plan. And the first step to getting where you want to go is guess what? You gotta make a fucking plan. And it sounds cheesy. It sounds motivational guru, you know, cheese sandwich. But the truth is, how the fuck are we supposed to get where we want to go if we don't know where we're going? You don't just get in your car with no directions, no map, no idea and hope to end up where it is you want to go. That's not how life works. We all know this. But that's how most people treat life. They show up. They move around. They talk about how busy they are with no plan.

• 16:25Andy Frisella?

  And then they're surprised at the result. Guys, you know, this doesn't make sense. I know you can feel this right now. You're shaking your head. You're saying, yeah, it fucking makes sense. All right? When people don't know what to do, guess what they do? Nothing. Then they're mad that they end up in a place they didn't intend to go. It's all very logical. There's no magic to this. Connect the dots. One to the two to the three to the four. Okay? And you don't need to spend the next year figuring this out and go on some fucking bullshit vision quest to figure it out. Pick a day.

• 17:06Andy Frisella?

  Dedicate one day. Sit down, write down your goals in detail. Okay? Think about where it is you want to be. Ask yourself the questions I just asked you. Get to a point where you can see this vision very clearly in your brain about where you're going. That's the first step. Nobody does it. Okay, we just built this crazy headquarters. You guys have seen it if you're following me on Instagram. It didn't just come out of the fucking sky. We didn't draw it on a napkin. That may have been how it started, but it took planning. It took a concrete plan. And it took a year of work to actually have it come together.

• 17:48Andy Frisella?

  You know, people walk in and they look at it and say, holy shit, man, this is crazy. Well, it's not crazy to me. I've already seen it. I saw it in my head. I planned it years ago in my mind. I took notes. Okay, this isn't a fucking accident and nothing in your life is either. If you start to make an actual plan, there will be no surprises about where you're going. And guess what? You won't be shocked when you end up there either. Because you will have seen this in your brain years ahead of everybody else seeing it. Okay, there is no magic to this. There's no luck to this.

• 18:27Andy Frisella?

  This is inputs and outputs. It's math. It's cause and effect. It's one plus one equals motherfucking two. What you do will produce a result. So do the things that are going to produce the result that you want. Okay, but to get to the point of having the result that you want, you have to know what that result is. And that's the first step, right? Make a motherfucking plan. Step two, we gotta execute on that plan. Now, everybody thinks this is the hardest step. It's not. The first step is, and you've already done that. A win plus a win plus a few more wins is a fucking winning streak, guys.

• 19:11Andy Frisella?

  Okay, episode 16 in this feed, it's called the power list. How to win life on a daily basis. It's about taking your goals, breaking them down into actual actionable steps that will contribute to your wins on a big scale. And guess what? You're not going to be perfect every single day, but that is your goal. Your goal is to keep the streak going. Okay? And even if you get an L every once in a while. Guess what the streak is now? It's zero and you start again and you go from one to two to three to four and beyond. Okay, this is a game. This is a test. This is a test of your

• 19:52Andy Frisella?

  mental fortitude to be able to execute consistently. When you give up, you become like everybody else instantly. Okay, but the powerful thing about this thing that we call the power list here, which you need to go back and listen to is that if you keep track of this, you can go back and see physically why it is that things aren't materializing at the rate you expect them to. You know, let me give you a little hint on that, too. Nothing ever, ever, ever, ever is going to go as fast as you want. It's always going to take more time and it's always going to take a lot more work. Okay, but when you can go back and look at your actual percentage of days you

• 20:34Andy Frisella?

  won versus days you lost, it gives you an idea of why it is things are where they are. It also gives you perspective to make changes if you need to. I'm going to get to that in a minute. All right. But how many days out of a thousand do you need to win to get where it is that you decided you want to go? Most of them, guys. Most of them. But here's the thing. Once you figure out where you're going and once you figure out how to create these streaks by using the powerless tool, you're still going to go through times where you don't feel like you're making progress. You're going to go through times where things aren't moving at the rate

• 21:16Andy Frisella?

  you want them to move. Times where you don't want to do anything. Times where you feel stuck. Times where you forget what it is and why it is that you're doing this. That's the point of a powerless. It's going to show you day by day by day where you went off track and show you the actual statistics of wins versus losses, allowing you to make better decisions. And if you don't make better decisions, you're going to know whose fucking fault it is that you aren't where you want to be. Okay, you're going to look back and you're going to say, okay, over the last 100 days, I I missed the mark on 10. That's 10% of my days. 10% away from where I should be.

• 22:00Andy Frisella?

  You're going to understand in very specific data, how much you do the right way and how much you do the wrong way. Okay, but you have to understand during this time of execution, when you're going through these tough times, when you're going through these times where you don't feel like you're making progress, or you don't feel like you're moving at the rate that you want it to go. Okay, which is going to be a lot. You're gonna have to go back to the plan. What's the plan? What's the vision in your head? Are you visualizing it in your head? Or did you just write it down? Because I'm gonna tell you right now, I visualize where I'm gonna be in a thousand days every single day. Okay, I make it part of my routine.

• 22:44Andy Frisella?

  If you follow me for a long time, you know I do this right before I go to bed. I take 10, 15 minutes to visualize what my life is going to look like at the end of that 1,000 days. And I would suggest that you do the same. Okay, because what this is going to do is it's going to help drive home the idea of what it is you're trying to get to and reminds you of why it is you're trying to get there. Okay, so take time to reflect and adjust every single day. Because where you decide you want to be and where you actually are going to end up is going to evolve over time.

• 23:27Andy Frisella?

  Which brings me to the third step. Reflect and adjust. Now, I struggle with this step, especially the reflection part. Okay, when we get stuck, when we get mad and constantly say, man, it's not happening. Why isn't, why isn't this working? Why am I doing all this fucking work and I'm not where I need to be? We have to go back and look at what we actually did so that we could say, well, I've done everything I was supposed to over the last 100 days. This is just taking a little longer than what I anticipated. And that's okay, because you may not be at the end, but once you reflect, you may realize that you're way further along the path than you thought you were. And that's a good feeling. Okay, you're not at the end, but you're on the way there. You're on the right path.

• 24:11Andy Frisella?

  This is a good place to be and having this reassurance that you're on that right path is very comforting. It's motivating. It helps us stay to the plan. Okay. And most people, regardless of what you see online, when they get alone, they have trouble giving themselves credit for things. I do especially, okay? Most of us get too caught up in celebrating what we did temporarily, and it takes us off track for where we need to go in the long run. We have to stay mentally focused on that goal and not let these little mini celebrations get in the way and push us off track. We have to stay mentally focused on the end goal. Okay, we have to see the mental picture of where it is we are and then compare it to where it is we're going every single day.

• 24:56Andy Frisella?

  And we have to look at that in detail all the time. For me, that little mental picture that I play in my head every single night before I go to bed, guess what? That's been pretty spot on. Okay, everything that is my life that you see, I created in my head years ago. And it wasn't by accident. It wasn't luck. I didn't get here by, you know, good fortune. It's because I take everything seriously. Okay. And we have to take what we do every single day seriously. Why wouldn't you? Why would you not take your day on a regular basis and analyze it to see if it was a closer or further away from where it is you want to go?

• 25:40Andy Frisella?

  All right, so reflection, that's the first part. But what's the second part? That's adjustment. Okay, that's the part that's tough for most people. You have to be able to understand, are you getting closer or further away from that mental vision that you play in your head? Are you moving towards the goal the way you thought you would? Or is your plan not working? And you have to be able to logically and accurately delineate between a faulty plan.

• 26:11Andy Frisella?

  Or is it you not being able to stick to the plan or not giving it enough time to materialize? All right. I like to talk about this in terms of baking a cake. Let's just assume that you have the best cake recipe in the world. Let's just say you got it from Martha Stewart and she gives you all the exact ingredients to make the best award-winning cake recipe that she has access to. And you not knowing shit about baking cakes. You go buy the exact ingredients and you mix them up in the bowl and you pour them in the pan and it calls for 400 degrees at 40 minutes.

• 26:53Andy Frisella?

  But you, because you're smart, even though you don't know shit about baking a cake, you say, well, I want the cake in 20 minutes instead of 40 minutes. So instead you turn the heat up to 800 degrees.

• 27:10Andy Frisella?

  And what happens in 20 minutes?

• 27:14Andy Frisella?

  You've got a burnt cake. It comes out burnt like a crisp. This is what people have trouble understanding. And the point I'm trying to make to you is this. Time is a part of the equation. You can't outspend it. You can't outwork it. You can't eliminate it. You have to work with it. It's part of the process. A thousand days is not that long. It's going to go by much faster than you think. And you have to understand that that time is passing no matter what. So do you want the time to be working for you? Or do you want the time to be working against you? Because that's what we're really talking about here. We're talking about how to make time work for us. Okay.

• 27:59Andy Frisella?

  This is why you have to let the plan pull you through the hard times. All right. If you execute just on the days you feel like it, you're going to have about a 10% win rate. That's the truth. Most of the days that I win, I don't fucking feel like it. I'm tired. I'd rather be doing other things. I'm stressed. I have a million things going on in my brain. But guess what? My plan still gets executed against. And so what happens when you go through, let's say, a hard time like most people are going through right now where? Life is in a state of chaos. A lot of people are highly anxious. They're frustrated, they're angry.

• 28:44Andy Frisella?

  Okay. And let's just think about how many of those people are actually executing in spite of how they actually feel. I would say not very many. Okay. But what if you learn how to harness the power of this plan that you made in step one and execute on this plan that you made in step two?

• 29:09Andy Frisella?

  And then learn how to execute it on the days you don't feel like doing it. What's going to happen to you? You may go through times of frustration. You may go through times of pain. You may go through times where you don't feel like doing shit. But guess what happens when you keep executing? You finally pull out of those ruts and you look up and you look around and guess what? You're in a better place than you were, even though you still felt like shit like everybody else. Okay, this is the power of discipline. This is the power of a plan. This is the power of eliminating emotions when it comes to execution. Every single day, day in and day out, no matter what, no matter if we feel like shit

• 29:53Andy Frisella?

  or we feel like a trillion dollars. That's the beautiful thing about discipline. It doesn't matter how you feel. You might be able to go two months, three months, maybe even six months of a shitty time like right now. Okay, where no one wants to do anything. But if you've been disciplined, you're going to look back when the sky is clear and say, holy fuck dude, that's some of the best time of my life. This is real power. You have to understand these three steps that you need to do if you want to gain a leg up on what everybody else is going on. If you don't want your life to be dictated by the world, by the chaos, by the emotions,

• 30:34Andy Frisella?

  by the ups and downs, you have to understand these three steps. Plan. Like I said, most of you never plan properly. Most of you have never taken that time. Most of you are okay taking what the world gives you. And if that's you, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting. That's just the way it works. So you have to stop and say, this is where I'm going to go over the next 1,000 days. Step two, execute. A lot of people are afraid of this, but it's not that hard. We have to break it down into bite sized days. Every single day you win is a step closer. Every single day you lose is a step further. So when you can get through this winning 95% of your days,

• 31:18Andy Frisella?

  you're going to be pretty fucking close, at least on the right path to where you want to go. Okay. Reflection, giving yourself credit for the progress you're making. Assessing, are you actually executing? Or am I executing on the wrong plan? And then making the adjustments when the plan isn't the right one. I've been in business for 22 years, guys. You know how many bad fucking plans I made? A fuck ton, a ton of bad plans. But you know what happened whenever I realized the plans were bad? I adjusted them. I made adjustments. I changed things that we were doing as soon as I recognized that it wasn't going to lead to the end result. I made adjustments.

• 32:01Andy Frisella?

  Now, I was careful and I'm always careful to try and establish the truth. Am I just frustrated? Am I just having a bad day? Is this just extremely hard? Or are we actually making bad moves? Am I making bad moves that's getting us off track? Guess what? Sometimes you're just going to be frustrated. You're going to say, fuck dude, I'm being impatient. And that's normal. I actually think that's a great thing. It's a great thing to be impatient because it keeps you intense. It keeps you focused. It keeps you on your game because you want to win. And it says that you fucking care. And that's always a great thing, but it can be destructive when we can't recognize it.

• 32:43Andy Frisella?

  And sometimes you're going to look and say, yeah, you know, we've been working really hard, but I think I've been doing the wrong thing. I've been eating a few too many calories. I don't think I've been training long enough. I think I've been doing this or that. And it could be a million different things, but we have to understand the difference between being frustrated and a legitimate adjustment that needs to be made to our plan. And that's what, that's what we have to understand. So in closing, guys, I want you to understand this. This time, our life, the time that we're here on this planet, it's gonna go by regardless. This time is just like all the previous 1,000 day stints you've had in your whole life, which you've probably had a few if you're listening to this podcast. You know, there's not too many eight-year-old kids listening to this.

• 33:27Andy Frisella?

  All right, you've had a number of 1,000 day stints in your life. So you have to understand that that time is gonna go no matter what. It's not necessarily about how the time is going to treat us. It's more about how we are gonna treat that time. A lot of people have a victim mentality when it comes to time. Time doesn't treat you good or bad. You could say it does, but it doesn't. Time just passes. It's what you put into the time that actually shapes your life. You put good shit into the time, you're gonna get good shit back. You put bad shit into the time, guess what? You're gonna get bad shit back. That's the fact of the matter. So 1,000 days from now, you can do one of two things. You could say, you know what?

• 34:11Andy Frisella?

  I did exactly what I set out to do over the last 1,000 days. My life's a million fucking percent better. I made more progress than I ever wanted to make. Or you could be the guy who's like, you know what? I really fucked off that last 1,000 days. I didn't do my work. I didn't do what I needed to do. I didn't execute. And those are the only true things that you're gonna have. That's reality. Most people will do the third thing, though. What's that? It's my mom's fault. It's my dad's fault. It's my job's fault. It's my boss's fault. It's my kid's fault. It's Donald Trump's fault. It's fucking everybody's fault, except my own. We all know how this works out. Just look at the world right now.

• 34:56Andy Frisella?

  That's what we look at most of the time. Most of the people blame every single thing about their lives on everybody else. Everything they're dissatisfied with is someone else's fault. Imagine living like that. Imagine how powerless that existence is. And that's the entire fucking problem that we have going on in the world right now.