Ed Mylett & Steve Siebold - Morning Ritual

Ed's morning routine and a one-on-one interview with Steve Siebold. Steve Siebold is a former professional athlete and national coach. He’s spent the past twenty-six years studying the thought processes, habits, and philosophies of world-class performers. He's a writer, speaker, and consultant on the topic of mental toughness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 P.M. And my third day, 6:00 P.M. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time, too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it waiting weeks on a big bank for capital. Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Ed Mylett is one of the top business leaders and peak performance experts in the world today. Leading and coaching the elite in business, sports, and politics.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  Welcome to Champions Forum, hosted by Ed Mylett.

• 1:52Ed Mylett?

  Hi, this is Ed Mylett and welcome to the program. I am so glad you decided to join me today, champion, on the first broadcast of the Ed Mylett Show. My ambitions for this program are bold and big, but simple. I want to be able to deliver to you on this show, great ideas, tactics, strategies, hopefully some inspiration that can help shape and transform your areas of your life that you want to improve, whether that's your body, or your mind, or your business, your family. And that we share those ideas, and I'm going to give you the things that I do in those areas of my life that I hope have made me successful. And then I'm going to bring in friends of mine, or partners, or people that I coach in the areas of sports, in psychology, in business, in politics, in entertainment.

• 2:34Ed Mylett?

  And I'm going to bring them in, and I'm going to interview them, and I'm going to get the best out of them. What are their tactics, their strategies, their thoughts, their ideas, their routines? The way they think exactly about specific topics, and bring you that value. What I hope separates this show is that the host has actually done some of these things. I'm a big player on congruency. I believe in it. I believe you ought to do the things you say you do, and you know, walk the walk in your life. And I'm going to try to always lead by example, and just tell you things I know that work because I've done them, or that I've observed in the people that I'm interviewing, that I know what they're telling you are the things they've actually done. And that maybe what separates us is I've actually done a few things. One of the reasons I created the program, quite frankly, is, and I should say this to you,

• 3:16Ed Mylett?

  people find me on edmylett.com. We've got nearly a million subscribers there. There's hundreds of thousands of people that follow us on Twitter. I've got a Facebook fan page, a YouTube channel. You can find me on all these places to get access to value and information, and hopefully some inspiration as well. But all these questions come in all the time, and I want to be able to help people. But I'm running my own business. I've got my own life. I just don't have time to answer them all in a way that would be effective. And so, people have encouraged me for a while, you know, podcasts, frankly, and blogs nowadays are a dime a dozen. Everybody's got one. But it's rare that somebody has one that's actually done something. You know, the more I listen to these bloggers and these podcast folks out there just discerning information to people, that they've not even done these things. They've not accomplished any things. They're using their blog or their podcast.

• 4:01Ed Mylett?

  to brand themselves and then become successful. But wouldn't it be nice if somebody that was successful came along and did it in reverse? And so I'm hoping also what separates this is I don't have any ambitions of being more famous or branding myself more. I don't need to monetize this. I'm hoping to keep this as low cost or maybe free forever. So that we can just have an exchange of ideas as friends and hopefully help just a little bit transform and bring value to your life. And so I'm so excited to be with you. The whole idea of you becoming more successful in the areas that matter to you captivate my imagination. They captivated mine. You know, one of the things that I'm doing right now in my broadcast, you might be able to hear the waves. I'm in my, my bar outside here and I'm looking at the Pacific Ocean. I live on the ocean here, one of the places we have.

• 4:46Ed Mylett?

  And I'm watching the waves crash. And I think, you know, as a little guy, I dreamed about living somewhere like this someday. And then to actually be living those dreams in my life, I do, I pinch myself often about how life has begun to turn out and I'm optimistic about where it's going and feel like we haven't accomplished anything yet. But every once in a while, I kind of pinch myself and say, man, this thing's starting to turn out the way I dreamed it, literally when I was a little boy. And what I want you to hear more than anything as we begin this journey together is that I, like the people I'm going to interview in this program are like you. In fact, I've spent more of my life unsuccessful than I did successful. More of my life wanting to accomplish something and actually accomplishing it.

• 5:29Ed Mylett?

  Most people that you listen to on the show or even in life, when you see them, you think they've always been this way. They've always thought this way. They've always been, or maybe you think they're special or different and they're not at all. They behave differently. They think differently, but they're no different than you. They're a man or a woman, just like you are from the same God, the same place, the same DNA from the same king. You've got absolutely the same opportunity in the same world with your special giftedness and blessings that God sowed into you, special to you, that are different than theirs, but equally special. To win in your life. And so I want you to know, I spent the majority of my life not successful. So I know what it's like to sit there. I relate to it. I also know how great it is to get to the other side. And I want to do everything I can to help you

• 6:12Ed Mylett?

  come to this side, the winning side, the championship side, the make your dreams happen side, the influence side, the contribution side. I want to help you get here, quick. And so let's do that together. And I just want you to know, I'm optimistic about you. And I believe in you because I know where you come from. And I know if you're listening to this, you want it. And that already separates you. You know that, right? Just the fact that you're seeking it makes you special. 85, 90% of the people in the world are just floating through their lives, just sort of existing. They don't even have the, the desire like you do to do this. And the fact that you want it, the fact that it bothers you that you're not where you're supposed to be, where you know you can be and should be and need to be, makes you special in and of itself. So we got these 10 or 15% of us that are listening to this podcast. And that's where the dogfight's going to be. That's

• 6:56Ed Mylett?

  where the separator's going to be, is who can implement the strategies, who can get the best ideas. And so, and implement them as well. And so I want to know that today. You know, it's, people think, well, yeah, everybody could be successful. Yeah, it's nice to have natural giftedness. You know, one of the guests I'll probably have on here is John Elway. Does it help that John was not five foot six and 160 pounds? Sure. It probably helped him go to five Super Bowls and win two and win another one as a general manager and go to another Super Bowl as a GM. Does it help being 6'4", 240, run a 4'4", 40? Absolutely. But you know what? There's a whole bunch of guys who are 6'4", 240, who could run, that haven't won two Super Bowls, that aren't legends, that aren't Hall of Famers. What separated him? How did he get to become the, one of the greats of all time, when others didn't? And so, his giftedness might have been his size and speed

• 7:41Ed Mylett?

  and strength. Well, your giftedness could be your kindness, or your intellect, or your desire, or how relentless you are, how good you are with math, or nurturing, or kind, or how you think critically, or how you articulate, or your passion. I don't know what those gifts are, but you have yours. And what we got to do is find out how to make your gifts win for you, in your particular areas that matter to you, whether that's body, soul, spirit, finance, sports, business, you name it. So let's do that.

• 8:07Ed Mylett?

  And I want to start talking today first about the primary questions that I get. And what are the things that I see that separates you? One of the things I see first, I want you to know, is how people think. And so my special guest today, that you'll hear this interview in a little while, is one of the great minds in all the world. And my favorite business author on the psychology of winners, on world-class thinkers, of how rich people think. And that's the incredible author Steve Siebold. And that interview will be forthcoming, and you're gonna hear an in-depth, really detailed exchange. No fluff, no surface stuff. Deep dive, detailed stuff into how world-class thinkers think. And you'll hear that exchange. The other thing, though, that separates champions,

• 8:51Ed Mylett?

  and we're gonna talk about today, because it's one of the questions I get asked the most about, bar none, is habits, is the routines of the champions. Of the people that I know that win, they are more disciplined people with better habits. I want you to hear me on that. The people that I know that win, their separator is what they do and what they think. Steve and I will talk about the thinking part. For now, I want you and I to focus in on what they do, their routines, their rituals. So let's begin with that. The number one thing I want you to know, whether it's an athlete that I've coached, someone in politics that I've worked with, an entertainer, someone in my own business,

• 9:31Ed Mylett?

  myself, I am more routine and ritualized than an average person. In other words, I rely more heavily on my habits and my routines, what I call rituals, than I do my discipline. Discipline is a fallacy. Discipline will let you down. Habits and rituals are what carry you through when your disciplines don't. When you are weak, when you are tired, when you're not focused, you go into habitual mode, you go into habit mode. And when you have habits that serve you, as opposed to habits that don't serve you, that's the separator, is that difference in the habits and the routines. And so I want to talk to you about some of these high-level ideas, these separators of these habits. I want to recommend a couple of books to you to begin with. I'm rarely gonna recommend books unless I really think they're outstanding.

• 10:15Ed Mylett?

  So I want to give you two books that you should go get and you should read. The first one is called The Perfect Day Formula, okay? By Ballantyne. Just get that book, The Perfect Day Formula by Ballantyne. It is an outstanding book about how specifically disciplined you need to be and structured in your life to win. I'm telling you that the top athletes I know, the top business people I know are far more structured and disciplined than the average ones. The second book on habits that I'd recommend you get is called The Power of Habit by Duhigg. Specifically, what I get asked an awful lot about are routines, particularly my daily routine. What I find is that if I can control the routine I have in the morning, if I can control

• 11:00Ed Mylett?

  the beginning of my day and I can control the end of my day, there's a far higher percentage of chance that I'm going to be able to control and dominate the middle of my day. I think you'll agree with that. Anything in life, you can control the beginning and the end, the middle is sort of a foregone conclusion. Most people lose control of their life the first 10 minutes of their day. That is a fact. And so I want to share with you some of the things that I focus on very specifically early in my day. First thing is this, I want to talk about sleep with you. Here's a good rule of thumb, I want to give you a few rules of thumb. Number one, if the sun is up before you, you are losing to the winners.

• 11:38Ed Mylett?

  I don't care how early you go to bed at night, or how late you go to bed at night, if the sun beats you up, you're behind. Well, failure sleeps and it's caught, success is up busting it already in the morning. Failures sleep in past sunrise. I'll just tell you straight up, the elite that I know, very few of them, sleep a lot. I'm just going to be very specific with you. I want to couch this by telling you that I'm not a doctor, I'm not a psychologist, I'm a leader, I'm a winner. I know leaders and winners. And so, some of this is probably not even scientifically accurate, I'm just telling you, real world application, this is a fact. People who sleep a lot, lose. People who sleep a little, win. And that is a fact. And so, what does that mean to me? The first thing is this, I think you need six hours of sleep.

• 12:24Ed Mylett?

  Seven on the outside. I know every study you're ever gonna read is gonna tell you that you need eight. I operate on five or six hours of sleeps. Now I'm gonna bring you into my world. What do I actually do? I get five to six hours of sleep a night. Typically, I try to get six. I will tell you that on six hours, I am on the longer end of sleep of people I know that win. Why? Nothing good's happening when I'm sleeping. I'm not calling people, I'm not winning, I'm not influencing people, I'm not making money, I'm not changing the world. I'm sleeping. So I'm, do I need to rest to win? Yes, but the amount of rest you need to win is overrated. Even though every scientific in the study, study in the world will tell you that I'm wrong, I'm just telling you, everybody I know that wins doesn't sleep a lot. They're up early. So I like to get up before the sun does. It doesn't matter in your life when you do or how you do it,

• 13:08Ed Mylett?

  but I like to get up around 4:30 or 5 o'clock in the morning. That's my time I like to get up. One of the reasons I like to get up early is I know most people are sleeping. I've already done stuff that winners do. I'm already beginning to do things by getting up earlier that people that lose are unwilling to do, and that builds confidence. I get that amount of sleep on an evening basis, and I will tell you that there are some reasons that I can get away with. Number one, I do have a makeup day on Sundays. I know studies will tell you that doesn't work. I'm just telling you, it's worked for me. So I do sleep in longer on Sundays. I try to get my full eight hours one day a week as a makeup. People say, great, Ed, I would love to sleep less. I do sleep too much. I do sleep in. What, one of the problems with sleeping in is the minute you've overslept, the minute you sleep a little bit too long, when you wake up in the morning, you're already panicked, you're already behind, you're already, oh my gosh, I'm behind,

• 13:51Ed Mylett?

  and you've gone into a state of reaction for the rest of your day, rather than being proactive. Champions are proactive. People that don't win, I was gonna say losers, the average in the world, react. So if you're up late, you react. If you're up early, you proact. You do need to decide how you're going to do that. I'm gonna give you some very specific things that I do in the morning that help my day be proactive, that get me going, that are the secret habits of the mega successful people that I know. And you can read about anybody, you can read about Oprah Winfrey, who operates on four hours of sleep. You can read about people that do that. You need to sleep enough that you're comfortable with it, but I'm just telling you, I think it's overrated, and many of you are getting eight and nine and 10 hours. And

• 14:32Ed Mylett?

  people say to me, well, what about REM sleep? R E M, right? And, and that's the deep sleep. There's a couple of things you just need to know. Number one, when you're an adult, when you're a child, 50 to 80% of your sleep is R E M sleep. As an adult, it's only 20% of your sleep anyway. And studies now tell us that somewhere around 90 minutes into being asleep, you enter your first stage of REM sleep. REM sleep is the deeper sleep. It's rapid eye movement sleep supposedly, and there's not even any proof that this is true, that is the sleep that actually rests you the most. There's not a lot of proof that that's true. In fact, there's some studies that indicate now that REM sleep is more stressful sleep, that your muscles are more rested, your blood pressure is lower in non-REM sleep. So don't let people use REM sleep as an excuse to tell you that you need tons of sleep.

• 15:17Ed Mylett?

  You'll be into your first stage of REM sleep. Studies tell us within 90 minutes of being asleep anyway. So that doesn't mean you need to wait six hours until you hit that level of sleep. So number one is six hours of sleep is where I would try to guide you to go. Here's the mistake people make in attempting to take less sleep. They hear an audio like this, "I've done this." They go, "He's right, tomorrow morning, 4:30." But you usually get up at 7:00. You will be so tired by 3 o'clock the next day and the rest of the week that that will last two or three days. It's the same principle applies to people that when they're working out. They don't work out a lot, it's New Year's, they go, "I'm gonna get in shape," and they start trying to go to the gym for three hours, nine days a week. You can't do it that way. You've got to incrementally work yourself into a routine that happens, or you'll blow it up and go back to normal. So I want to give you some recommendations.

• 16:02Ed Mylett?

  If you're interested in reducing the amount of time you sleep, let me give you a tip. Reduce it by 15 minutes a week. So right now, if you get up at 7:30 in the morning, do not try to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning. You will fatigue yourself, your body's not on that clock. It will give you too much pain and fatigue, and within three or four days, you will simply go back to sleeping in. Or you just won't be productive. You'll be too darn tired at 2, 3 o'clock in the afternoon to make yourself a functional person. So the way we get less sleep is we do it incrementally. So I want to challenge you to go 15 minutes less the first week. So if you get up at 7:30 normally, now you're gonna get up at 7:15. The beauty of that is you will not miss 15 minutes. You will not miss those 15 minutes.

• 16:47Ed Mylett?

  You won't even know it happened, yet you just picked up 15 minutes. And if you can do that for a week, 7:15, 7:15, 7:15, you won't be more tired, you won't have missed that time, you won't even know you did it. But all of a sudden... You start saying, "I'm up earlier, I've made progress, I'm doing what champions do, I'm starting to get a routine that serves me." Then the next week, you can back that off to 7 o'clock in the morning. And you go another week for 15 more minutes at 7 o'clock in the morning. You know what'll happen? You'll never miss those 15 minutes from 7:15 to 7 o'clock. You will never miss them. You won't even know they weren't there. You won't be tired in the afternoon. It won't seem like a major change, but you've woken up and in two weeks, you've shaved 30 minutes off your sleep. That's a powerful, powerful thing to do. And then the third week, you can shave 15 minutes more off.

• 17:31Ed Mylett?

  Now you're up at 6:45, you won't miss those 15 minutes. And the next week, you can do 6:30. You've now shaved an hour off of your sleep. Now, just to give you an idea, why does that matter? Number one, you've picked up one hour. But you know what you've actually done? You've picked up 365 hours that year. Extra time to win. And over a five-year window, that's 1,825 hours. You've picked up extra to win. That is an extra 76 days over those five years you've picked up awake. Just put your mind around that for a second. That simple strategy of saving 15 minutes the first week, 15 the next, 15 the next, 15 the next. You've picked up that one hour. You have now picked yourself up.

• 18:14Ed Mylett?

  76 full days of being awake and living and dreaming and winning and experiencing life over just five years. Now, you ask yourself a question. One person has 76 full 24-hour days of being awake over another person in the exact same sport, the exact same business, the exact same field of entertainment. Who's gonna win? You're darn right, you know who it is. Never mind the fact, if you can shave 90 minutes or two hours off over that time, can you imagine how different your life would be? So be careful, be strategic, and how you reduce the amount of sleep you get so that it can be a permanent change. So that's number one. That is a ritual that winners have. Successful people get up earlier than unsuccessful people.

• 18:56Ed Mylett?

  Next thing I want to do, I want to talk to you about what happens when I wake up. What do I do in the morning? I want you to write something down, just so we remember this together. And I'll remind you of it in a second. Cold morning, warm night. Cold morning, warm night. Why do I tell you that? So what do I do when I get up in the morning? The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is right next to me is a liter of water. And what I try to do is drink between a half liter and liter of water upon waking. At least a half liter, I drink water, I hydrate myself initially. It's the first thing that I do when I wake up in the morning. Number two thing I want to do, I want to do something cold. Something cold. What does that mean? I do something where I get my body in a state where all cellular activity has kicked in.

• 19:41Ed Mylett?

  Fight or flight response happens and I am fully awake very quickly. And so what that means for me is I do something cold in the morning. You're gonna be, you're gonna find this is a secret of many winners that most people don't know about. So you ever do that when you're really tired? What have a lot of you do? I'm so tired, you splash cold water on your face. You ever had your parents tell you that when you're a kid and you're having trouble getting up in the morning for school? Or even now when you're tired, splash some water on your face. Well, why does that work? It actually, there's a scientific principle behind it because what happens is when the cold hits your body, your body changes its state immediately. And there's a whole nervous system engine that's kicked on when you do that. Full cellular activity takes place in your body. And you can go from a level one to a level 10 like that, boom.

• 20:20Ed Mylett?

  Fight or flight takes place, your nervous system kicks in and you are now fully alert and awake in a peak state of performance immediately. So what that means for me, I live on the ocean in one of my homes. Another one of my homes, I live in a lake. That means I am in that water cold in the morning. Quickly, boom, wake up. Everything's turned on immediately. Or I jump in the lake. If I can't do that, I jump in a cold shower. Be careful not to hurt yourself, but I turn on a cold shower for, it could be up to a minute. And it immediately alerts me, wakes me up. And I don't have any fatigue issues. I'm not dragging, as you might say in the morning. We're talking cold. I've had people tell me, they've woken up in hotels before. They say, my gosh, the hot water was out. And a man, the shower was so darn cold this morning. And I'll tell them at breakfast, lucky you, you're fully awake, aren't you?

• 21:04Ed Mylett?

  And they'll say, you know, it's funny you say that. It was uncomfortable, but man, I am awake and I was awake early. I said, that's because of what's happened cellularly in your body from the cold. My friend Tony Robbins actually built in his backyard a cold Pool that's just big enough that he can jump in it's 54 degrees and he jumps in that pool every single morning. You say, my gosh, that seems extreme. It probably is. I'm just telling you that that's what I do. So, and if you're saying, well, that's too extreme for me, then I want you to start out by doing basic things like splashing cold water on your face, taking a cold towel and putting it to your face or putting it around your neck. You will find when you go cold in the morning, you will wake up better. Be careful not to catch a cold. Be careful not to do something that'll make you sick. And over time, you'll build that up to what I do. It could be a cold bath, a cold shower, lake

• 21:48Ed Mylett?

  or pool, but I do something cold for a very short window of time after having drank some water. And that changes things for me. I don't like to get up immediately and watch TV. I don't because it makes me tired. I don't like to read in the morning because it makes me tired. I know many of you that are like me, you like to be in your scriptures and pray. I believe that's different. When you're in a prayerful state and you're reading, that's different than just reading something and fatiguing yourself. You're gonna let your own decisions happen. How you can do that, you're probably gonna start by splashing cold on yourself, but you'll find a one minute shower and you'll start at a certain temperature of cold and over time, just like the sleep thing, you'll make it colder and colder and colder. And you'll find yourself fully awake and your day will be so different just from those two very simple tactics. Then what I like to do is I like to do some very quick

• 22:31Ed Mylett?

  stretching and breathing exercises that you can get anywhere online. You can Google breathing and stretching exercises. I'm not gonna waste time on them today. I do them very quickly. And then I do do my prayer. I take prayerful time. I'm not getting into the specifics of that part of it. But I do like to take time, be grateful, pray, thankful, scriptures, etc. for a period of time. And then what I do, I like to control my thinking to begin the day and what I'm going to be focused on. So I have a series of morning questions that I ask myself every single morning. Why do I do this? It points my mind in the right direction. It gets me focused correctly. And it allows me to get my mind looking for the things throughout my day that serve me as opposed to things that worry me. Because

• 23:13Ed Mylett?

  what we need to worry about in the morning is this, our words, our body and our thoughts. Write that down. Words, body, thoughts. The first thing I do, boom, I drink my water and I get cold. Now I've activated my body. The second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to do some prayerful time and stretching where I get my body and my thoughts together and I'm connected with my spiritual being. I'm connected to my Lord and I begin to get my thinking correct. And then I want to control my words by the questions I ask myself. Controlling thinking, thinking is the process of asking and answering questions to yourself. So what I try to do is control what those questions are to begin my day. What do most people do? They wake up, they don't have a routine, right? Now they're lost, they're stressed. What do I have to do? When's my first appointment? What am I worried about?

• 23:58Ed Mylett?

  What bill do I have to pay? And they start a day in a reactionary stressful state and they're tired. What do I do? I wake up, hydrate, cold, fully alert, boom, pray, stretch. Now let's control what I'm thinking about, control my day so that my mind goes to look for these things as opposed to what I'm worried about. Whatever your mind is thinking on early in the morning is what it will go find throughout the day. If it's, if your mind is focused on what it's worried about, what's bothering you, what you're stressed about, what you must have to do that's painful, it will go see those things. If you can get your mind, your thoughts by using your words to think about the things you want, you will go see those things throughout your day and the entire trajectory of your

• 24:41Ed Mylett?

  day and your life is altered because you're controlling the beginning of it. So the key is develop a pattern of questions that empower you to begin the day. But mine are just designed to help me create a little bit more happiness, a little bit more pride, gratitude, joy, commitment, love in the beginning of my day. I think gratitude is the most powerful emotion you can have early in the day. It's the antidote to fear. It's the antidote for worry. So I just have seven very simple questions. Number one, what am I most happy about in my life right now? So as I'm stretching, when I finish my prayers, I just think about what I'm most happy about. What about that makes me happy? How does it make me feel? And I literally see in my mind what I'm most happy about in my life at that time. The second thing I ask myself, what am I most excited about? What am I fired up about right now? What am I optimistic about?

• 25:25Ed Mylett?

  What excites me about that? How does it make me feel? So I'm thinking about all the things that I've got going that are great, that I'm optimistic and excited about, that's possible. So I'm seeing that. Why do I do that? Because what I'm now gonna see in the beginning of my day, throughout the day, my reticular activator in my brain sees the things I'm happy about, sees things that excite me. Third question, what am I most proud of in my life right now? What am I proud about? What about that makes me proud? How does it make me feel? And I see those things I'm proud of in my life. And what happens is my brain then wants to go find more things that day that would make me proud, that would make me excited, that would make me happy. Do you see what's starting to happen here?

• 26:06Ed Mylett?

  And yeah, one day it helps, three days it helps, but 50, 60 days down the road, your brain is now designed all day long to be looking for things that make you happy, proud, and excited. Fourth question, what am I most grateful for in my life right now? What am I grateful about? How does that make me feel? Really, what does it make me feel like? And I see those people, places, and things of what I'm so grateful for. I'm not reading my goals out loud just yet. I'm thinking about the major things in my life. Goals are small compared to the big things in life. Fifth thing, what am I most enjoying in my life right now? What do I enjoy the most in my life right now? What are the things I'm doing and seeing and being that I enjoy the most? You can see where this is going. How does that make me feel?

• 26:49Ed Mylett?

  Sixth, what am I committed to in my life right now? What about that makes me feel committed? How does it make me feel to be committed to those things? And I think about the things I'm committed to. That's when my goals come in. That's when the three or four things I'm focused on, that the people, the different things I want to accomplish, come in right there. And then seventh, who do I love? Who loves me? What about that makes me loving? How does it make me feel? And so I ask myself those seven questions to begin my stage. If you want to create a shift in your life, you make this part of your daily ritual. Because by consistently asking these questions, you're finding access to your most empowering emotional states in your mind on a regular basis. And what it does, it creates mental highways in your brain where your brain is seeking

• 27:31Ed Mylett?

  things to make you happy, excited, proud, grateful, to enjoy, to be committed to, to deliver your goals to, people to love, and things to love, and reasons to love them. And so it is a powerful, powerful way to begin a day. And then the last thing I try to do every single morning in my life is I work out. I do something physical. I go to the gym five or six days a week and I spend 60 to 90 minutes there doing cardio, doing weights, moving my body, being physical. For me, the center of that's my body. It's getting physical. It's, I believe nowadays, your modern business person is a business athlete. They treat themselves great. They treat themselves like an athlete. They train and prepare like an athlete in business. And so I work out.

• 28:15Ed Mylett?

  I go to a gym every single day during the work week, five to six days a week. People say, well, do you have to go in the morning? No, you don't, but you do need to do something physical in the morning. Now, I go in the morning because I have time to go in the morning and I get up early enough that it doesn't affect my day, number one. Number two, there is a benefit hormonally to working out earlier in the day. It's, it's nominal, but there is better because your hormones are at a higher level when you've been, been sleeping and you're awake. So you get a double bang for your performance there in terms of return on your investment in the gym. But for you, yes, I'd like you to go to a gym and work out, but if you can't, you need to do something physical to cap off this morning routine. That could mean you're going to go take a walk. You could take a jog. You could have a bike in your bedroom, uh, you know, a stationary bike, an elliptical machine.

• 29:00Ed Mylett?

  If you can't do that, you can jump rope. If you can't do that, you jump up and down. You do pushups or situps, but you do something physical. I do an hour to 90 minutes. If you haven't been doing that at all, then invest yourself 30 minutes and do something physical. Start doing situps, start doing pushups, start jumping rope, start taking walks, start taking a run, start with a walk and end up with a run. And then I eat. I obviously eat and when I eat, that's the time when I do actually watch some news and get caught up or read online about what's going on in the world, but I don't let any of that into my mind until I've got everything in a peak state. I don't read. I don't watch the news. I don't watch television. I don't get stressed out about some political thing or what's going on in the Middle East or some thing on Capitol Hill. I'm going to have another audio where I'm going to go through another podcast where

• 29:45Ed Mylett?

  well, actually what do I eat? Actually, what do I do for working out? That's a different story. But for today's purposes, the morning needs to be about hydration, getting cold and being alert and waking up, your prayerful state and stretching. Then you controlling your morning questions and then something physical and then eat something. And when you've done that, I do, I eat a small amount of protein and a little bit of carbs early in the morning. I try not to, I try to eat actually well in the morning because it gives me sustained energy throughout the day. It's probably the biggest meal I eat is actually my morning meal, but that's another conversation. So I hope that helps you get a routine for your morning and your life's going to transform, absolutely transform. Let's also now talk about our evenings a little bit too. By the way, I should go back and also one of the things I like to utilize in the morning is music.

• 30:29Ed Mylett?

  Because I think it helps change your state. So when I'm working out, I am playing music when I'm working out. I don't like to listen to books on tape or stuff like that when I'm working out because I want to be in a peak athletic state. And so I try to generate that because there's things I'll teach you later about triggers and anchors and music can bring you to places and states that words cannot. And so I also use music. So let's talk a little bit about the evening. Remember mornings cold, evenings warm. I now really want to take control of this part of my day as well. And I want to take you through some of the strategies that I use later in my day. The first thing I want to share with you is just some basic things. Um, I, and scientifically you could even argue otherwise that when you get something warm or hot, it actually increases blood flow, et cetera.

• 31:10Ed Mylett?

  But I'm telling you, the successful people I know and myself, my routine at the end of the day involves getting warm and getting hot. It slows the body down. It sends a message to your body that it's time to wind down and sleep deeply. So a few things strategically that I want to recommend to you. Number one, water, drinking water is important, but being around water late in your day is a wonderful way to wind down. If eventually you can afford to have some sort of a fountain near your home or something that even in your room, a little device that just sort of drips water, it will relax you. It slows your body down. It slows your blood pressure down. And even running water, running a bath, running a shower, running the sink, believe it or not, that concept of running water slows the body down.

• 31:53Ed Mylett?

  So I want to challenge you to do that. So what do I do late in my day? Number one, I am going to do something warm. That means I'm going to take a sauna, or a steam, or a hot bath, or a hot shower of some type. I do that every evening because it soothes my body. It loosens up the muscles. It allows me to rest deeper. And so I do that. Now, the type of baths I take, when I take a bath, I do do, I like to do magnesium baths. I pour magnesium salt into my baths. Helps pull the toxins from my body. I always feel better after I do that. The only thing I want to warn you, if you're going to do anything at the end of your day, where you're doing any sort of salts or magnesium salts, you need to make sure you drink even extra amounts of water. The worst thing you can do is to go to bed dehydrated, or wake up dehydrated. And so it's important

• 32:39Ed Mylett?

  that you drink water late at night as well. It's so important that you do that. With all the medications we take and vitamins and pills and salts in our food, the amount of water we need to take throughout the day is so much more than we think it is. It's unbelievable, particularly because of the salt contents in almost everything we eat now for flavor. So drink lots of water. So do something hot at the end of the day. I'm gonna tell you something interesting. I sleep better clean. I know that sounds funny, but I love to have taken a bath and some of you, I know that I can hear the guys going, oh, great. Yeah, I got time to take a bath. My kids are screaming, my kids are, maybe you can't. You know what you can do? You can take a five-minute hot shower. Once in a while, take a sauna or a steam if you can get one at your house. If you've got a jacuzzi at your pool, go into the dad gum backyard and sit in that thing for 20 minutes before you go to bed. Man, will you sleep great.

• 33:24Ed Mylett?

  I promise you, your life will change if you start just doing something hot at night. And I want to talk to you about this. Going to bed clean, you'll sleep deeper. Ladies, you know this. If some of you've had one of those nights where you didn't take your make off bath before you went to bed, you don't sleep as well. You wake up the wrong way. So something hot, sauna, steam, spa, jacuzzi, shower, bath, you name it. Every once in a while, treat yourself well and get yourself a magnesium salt bath. You can even get people, just so you know, there's sprays that I use. When I don't have time to take a bath, maybe once a week, I spray the magnesium salt on myself. You can get these. And then I just wash them off in the shower and I'm just far more detoxified and well rested. Next thing I do, drink a tea at night.

• 34:07Ed Mylett?

  I want to recommend two teas to you that help you sleep because sleep is so critical, especially if you're going to start getting only six hours of sleep. Needs to be good sleep. And so I do, I take two different teas. One is called Celestial Seasonings Sleepy Time Tea.

• 34:22Ed Mylett?

  And that will help you sleep at night or Bigelow Sweet Dreams Tea. Bigelow Sweet Dreams Tea. Both of those are two teas that I'll drink after I've taken a hot bath or a hot shower. And I'll drink one of those teas just to start to warm my body up, slow it down. These things help you sleep. I think you'll feel better. I then go through kind of a checklist of stuff that I want to get set for the next day. And so I get ready so I don't have any pre morning issues. So I stretch, I stretch again. And if you've ever had a massage, you get tired after a massage. It tells your body it's supposed to rest. So I do some more stretching in the evening. It can be five minutes, it could be 30 minutes, but do some stretching. Make sure you're drinking your water and then preempt any morning panic. So here's what I do. I make sure little checklist, I have my full bottle, rather.

• 35:07Ed Mylett?

  A liter of water sitting next to my bed that's ready for the next morning that I'll also drink throughout the night if I wake up. So I've got a bottle of water sitting there. It's just done. I plug in all of my electronics. I like to read late at night because it helps me sleep. I also, and then my mind is working on what it read and those great messages in the books I'm reading are playing throughout my mind. I like to clean up at night. I like to tidy up around my room. When you wake up to a clean room, you will have slept deeper and have a better morning than when you wake up to a messy room. So it preempts morning panic. I pick out my clothes for the following morning. So I'll do little things like, is there coffee beans in the machine? Have I picked out my workout outfit? Are my gym clothes ready for the morning? Are my kids things ready to go for school? I make sure all that stuff's done so I don't have to worry about it in the morning. So I don't wake up reacting. What am I going to wear?

• 35:52Ed Mylett?

  What am I going to do? What do I do for the kids? All that stuff's done. Plug in my electronics, get my water ready, have my alarm set. One other little tip I want to give you is I do also use something called a Solaris Health Blanket. S O L A R I S. It helps me wind down. You can Google it. If you like it, get one. You don't need to. I wrap it around my body and my head. It keeps you warm and it puts me in a kind of meditative, very sleepy state. Cause like me. Many of you are wound up achiever studs. You're always wound up. The harder part of my day is the evening to wind down. And so these are things I must do, or I don't sleep well. You don't want to lay in the bed for two or three hours and not be asleep. So taking a hot bath or shower, drinking some tea that helps me sleep.

• 36:35Ed Mylett?

  Maybe going into my Solaris blanket, doing some stretching, getting the room a little bit clean. Having my clothes picked out for the following day. And then what I like to do is I like to review the following day. I'll look at my day timer for tomorrow. I begin to see that day happening, see the successes happening, see my goals. And I'll be looking at my goals at that time, the appointments I've got. I visualize me winning. I visualize them going well. I visualize the handshake from them when we've bought. I visualize the, the thank you after a meeting and I see that day. Go through my morning routine and then go through my evening questions. Because I want my mind focused, my unconscious mind going in the direction of what I want it to when I'm sleeping. So the last things I do is I'll read, then I'll go through my day tomorrow and see all of those things happening.

• 37:20Ed Mylett?

  And then my evening questions, my evening questions are real simple. Number one, what was great about today? And I have my mind go back through the great moments of my day and seeing them like a highlight reel you'd see on SportsCenter. A lot of you guys come home and watch SportsCenter, right? Well, that magnet on that TV, you looking at your telephone only makes it harder for you to sleep. If you're going to do that, do that very early because the hour before you sleep should all be about reading and controlling your thoughts. And so what was great about my day? What did I love about today? What have I given today? In what ways have I been a giver today? What did I learn today? How was that added value to my life? In what ways did my life improve today? And I just give myself credit. I see that this got better, this got better, that was great.

• 38:04Ed Mylett?

  What did I do today towards reaching my goals? And what can I do tomorrow? And then I've just visualized that day that I've just looked at. And so I review that day and I plan accordingly. The only part of my day where anything negative would be is when I say, what did I learn? Because then I can go through things that didn't go well, but what did I learn from that experience? So again, what was great about my day? What did I love? What have I given today? In what ways have I been a giver? What did I learn? How is that added value to my life? How did my life improve? And how am I getting closer to reaching my goals and I'm seeing those goals and what can I do tomorrow? Really helped me control my life and my day. Now the middle of the day is all mine. What about drinking? Do you drink Ed? I do drink and I do have a couple glasses of wine a few days a week before bed. I actually find that wine helps me sleep.

• 38:48Ed Mylett?

  At least I've convinced myself that it does. And I know that there's sugar in that wine that could potentially keep me awake. So what I try to do is I try to have my last glass of wine, if I'm have two glasses of wine, at least an hour prior to going to sleep. So those sugars, I don't like drinking it because it's carbohydrates, you're storing fat. But if you're asking me what I do, I do love to have a couple glasses of wine a few days a week. Particularly on the weekend, I'll do that. And I actually think that it does help me sleep, it does not keep me awake. So what I want you to take from this today is that there's a routine to the beginning of your day. There's a ritual to the end and these habits, what starts to happen when you do this. Forgetting all of the benefits of what I just told you. Let me give you the biggest benefit. The biggest benefit is that you become more self-confident. Did you know that?

• 39:30Ed Mylett?

  Because the way we build self-confidence is we begin to keep promises we make to ourselves. And if you begin to promise yourself about getting up earlier or just the fact that you're going to have a routine. When you begin to control of certain elements of your life, you feel like you can get control of more elements of your life. And so my self-confidence, listen to me. Did not stem initially from external results I produce like making a lot of money. Or gathering a lot of clients in my business or necessarily a lot of people following me in business. My self-confidence came from me beginning to get control of myself. And when you can control yourself, when you begin to keep the promises you make to yourself is when you build real, true self-confidence.

• 40:11Ed Mylett?

  And the biggest difference in business, in sports, in politics, in entertainment, bar none, is self-confidence. If I give my children one gift other than their spirituality. Which leads to their integrity and their character and all those much more important things. But next to that would be self-confidence. Self-confident people win. And self-confident people trust themselves. They keep promises they make to themselves. There's all of these other benefits to doing what I just told you. But the biggest one is you begin to believe in your That you can begin to control yourself, you can begin to not discipline yourself, but manage yourself, lead yourself. And that's that part of the audio that I started with today where now you can be congruent. When you begin to do the things you tell yourself you're going to do,

• 40:55Ed Mylett?

  and you have self-congruency, which is what we started out today's audio with, you are now becoming a self-confident person and before your eyes over time, you are transforming your identity into a champion. Never mind the fact that your brain starts saying, my gosh, I'm doing things that almost nobody does. I'm doing the things the average won't do, so I deserve to get the things that the average won't get. And so there's all these extra benefits to doing it, but the biggest one is your own self-confidence. So this is what champions do for a routine in the morning and end of their day. I don't know what business you're in. I don't know if you're in in sports listening to this, a business person or a salesperson, or you're in my firm, or you're a banker. But I know this, all of us can control the beginning of our day in the middle,

• 41:38Ed Mylett?

  build self-confidence, dictate what happens and begin to transform our lives. So excited about it. Want to take this time now for you to hear from some of our sponsors and then we're going to get into a great interview with Steve Sebold.

• 41:50Speaker 04

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• 42:33Speaker 04

  As a special offer for those listening to Ed's podcast, you can go to rotaryswing.com/Ed and view four of our most powerful videos that will help you shave five, even 10 shots off your game. Go to rotaryswing.com/Ed and you'll learn how to never slice again, how to master tour pro quality transition, how to add 30 yards off the tee, or you can watch our brand new series on Jack Nicklaus's putting secrets. These four videos are so powerful and effective, we can only keep them free for the next two days. So go to rotaryswing.com/Ed today and start impressing your clients and closing more deals on the course.

• 43:27Ed Mylett?

  Okay, my guest today is Steve Sebold. And Steve is one of my favorite authors in the entire world. And for those of you that aren't familiar with Steve, he's a former professional athlete, he's a national coach, he's become one of the top authors and speakers on mental toughness in the country. His books are absolutely outstanding. You've probably seen Steve on all over the media, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Today Show, Good Morning America, you name it, he's everywhere. And I asked Steve to be a part of the show today. And Steve, thank you for being here, by the way. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Really grateful you decided to take this time. Steve is, he's written so many great books. He's written probably my favorite book of all time. The reason I asked Steve

• 44:10Ed Mylett?

  to be on the show, my 14-year-old Max, I give him all these personal development books and mental toughness books to read. And I was asking Max, who should I have on the show? And he said, well, Dad, what's your favorite business book of all time? And I said, well, Think and Grow Rich. He said, well, you ought to interview that guy. So that's going to be tough to interview Napoleon Hill. And he said, "Of all the thousands of other books you've read, what's your second favorite book?" And I said, "Of all of them, in the history of every book I've read, is 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class, which might only be trumped by How Rich People Think", which has both been written by Steve, and so that's how I feel about his content. Steve, one thing I told you as we were starting, what I love about you is the content of what you present is so strong, it becomes the star.

• 44:54Ed Mylett?

  Most speakers, they try to make themselves the star. Steve leads people and brings value in such a way that he's obviously becomes the star of the show, but the real leader is the content and the people that get the value or the group. So I know it's gonna happen again today, Steve. So again, thank you so much for being here today.

• 45:13Speaker 05

  I appreciate the invite, yeah.

• 45:14Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, it's great to have you. Okay, let's talk a little bit, let's go through your stuff. Let's talk about How Rich People Think a little bit. I want to encourage everybody to go get that book if you've not, and I also know you ought to have 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class. They're both outstanding, and I've reviewed them. They're so good, Steve, that, you know, you get a highlighter out in most books, I find, you know, and you highlight, you know, there's a page here, 25 pages later, there's something else you want to share with somebody. The problem with your books is, I'm serious, every page I'm highlighting 80% of every page. And so it just gets to the point where you just go, "Read the book", right? You gotta read the book. So I want to encourage people to do that. But talk about how rich people think, because there's two things everybody on this call wants to be. Okay? One of them want to be mentally tougher and become world-class, and they'd like to be rich.

• 45:59Ed Mylett?

  I think most people would like to be rich. And so what is the primary difference in your mind? If you could sum it up, or some of the primary differences between how rich people think and everybody else thinks?

• 46:12Speaker 05

  Well, I think primarily it's the relationship that people have with money, rich people, prosperity, you know, wealth, whatever, you know, all these different things that surround being rich, whatever rich means to people personally. It's the relationship they have with money. I think most of us are taught that that money is, you know, a necessary evil and, you know, the rich are gaming the system. And we're like in the political climate where they say, well, the rich aren't paying their fair share when they're paying, of course, most of the taxes. As we all know. And all these different things. So they have this negative relationship with with money and prosperity. And so you think about it, why would any of us really? Go out there and try to acquire something for, you know, that we have, we've been taught to have such disdain for.

• 46:54Speaker 05

  So we don't. And we have this terrible relationship with money and, uh, and we, we, as a result, we struggle our whole lives with money. Whereas the rich are on the other end of the spectrum, they've got this positive relationship with money. You know, they see it as opportunity and freedom and all the great things that money provides. Not that it makes you happy, but it certainly provides a lot, solves a lot of problems in life if you have money, obviously. And, uh, and they just keep getting, the rich keep getting richer and they're going to continue to get richer. And I think the middle class can come along at any time and, uh, and join them. It's just a matter of choice, really, at the end of the day.

• 47:25Ed Mylett?

  Why do you think it's something everybody wants? That's so interesting what you said, but yet it's demonized, it's become popular culture to demonize rich people or or people who become even successful. Why do you think that is?

• 47:40Speaker 05

  Well, I think there's a lot of envy. There's a lot of envy of the rich. And again, I think we're taught, we're taught by teachers and, you know, coaches and you know, family and friends and all kinds of different people say, well, the rich are, there, there's no way people are worth millions of dollars that no one can be actually worth that much money. They're, they're somehow they're cheating the system or they're not paying their tax. We hear this even from people running, you know, for people running for president of the United States. We hear this that it's wrong to be rich. It's somehow less than, uh, like it's, like it's more noble to be poor or to struggle than it is to be rich. Where the rich, without the rich, you don't even have America without the rich. They built this country and they fund this country. And yet they're demonized and so. I think that we grow up thinking, "These are nasty people. Why would I want to be a nasty

• 48:24Speaker 05

  person?" So I want to be a nice person, and so I'll just struggle my whole life with money. And it's really just a shame.

• 48:28Ed Mylett?

  I think you're right. I think that, it's interesting, it's almost like, in the political climate now, it's "the other." Everybody's the other. You know, one party makes the other somebody who looks different, or has different preferences. The other party makes the other people that are just different than you in terms of their socioeconomic status, or their career. Corporations are bad, you know, rich people are bad. It's always the other. And I think if people began to get a different relationship with being rich and understand, "These people aren't other. They're not different than you. They just think different than you. They've got different ideas, different concepts, most of all, different beliefs and behaviors, right? They're not other. You're just like them." And I think this climate of, almost

• 49:09Ed Mylett?

  that successful people have gotten their success through ill-gotten means, you know, they're looking askant at them. Whereas, what I'd like people to know, and I know you feel this way too, is that actually, the way most people become successful is by actually helping other people with problems they have, solving other people's problems, giving them ideas they've not thought about, helping other people prosper. Which kind of leads me to your other content too, about how rich people think. I was reading in your book, and I'd like you to talk about this just for a second, the difference between world-class people, which ultimately, many of them become rich, either emotionally rich, psychologically rich, or financially rich, or all three, right? And so, they think differently. They've

• 49:49Ed Mylett?

  got different beliefs. In 177 Mental Toughness Secrets, you talk about world-class thinking. In fact, it's the second rule, right? Second secret. What is world-class thinking? What does that mean?

• 50:01Speaker 05

  Well, I think seeing things through the eyes of love and abundance, as opposed to fear and scarcity. Where all the different levels, the other levels, you know, whether it's the middle class being the biggest level, the poverty class level, or the working class level... Even the upper class level, the ego-based, you know, upper class level, the person that says, "I'm the biggest, I'm the best, I'm the strongest, I'm the fastest." They all operate from fear and a scarcity-based mindset, whereas the world-class seem to transcend that level. And they operate from this love and abundance mindset, and really, they do exactly what you said, Ed, which is, they're solving problems. And, and they're solving problems for lots of people, in some cases, millions of people. And they're being, they're being justly rewarded financially for solving those problems and yet people demonize them.

• 50:46Speaker 05

  But that world-class consciousness, I think, is, it goes abo- it goes beyond just financial success, as you just mentioned. It goes on to emotional success, spiritual success, because they're operating from this, this love-based, you know, abundance consciousness that says, "Hey, join us." You know, they're, you're just like us. If you want to be successful, you can be successful. If you want to be happy, you can be happy. Come with us. There, there's no limit to what you can do, or what you can have, or what you can be, or what you can learn. There's no limit to anything. Come with us. And, uh, it's just a whole different way to live. They're, they're amazing people.

• 51:17Ed Mylett?

  Wow. That is, that is very powerful. Speaking of that, the, the fear-based mentality versus an abundance mentality, one of the things you say, well, that's so good, by the way, so good, is that in 142 in the book, I know these laws, these secrets, you say that world-class people, because they are abundance people, they are loving people, they're not addicted to the approval of others. Whereas people that operate out of fear and scarcity, they're constantly addicted to people's approval. They're, they're the ones that, you know, they gotta post 3,000 selfies on Facebook so that someone will like them, and someone will say something good about them, or they think they have to achieve in order to be happy. Instead of, once they have an abundance mentality and they're happy, they would achieve.

• 52:02Ed Mylett?

  And so, talk about that for a second, is how world-class people aren't addicted to the approval of others, and that people that-

• 52:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is a-

• 52:10Ed Mylett?

  Go ahead.

• 52:11Speaker 05

  So, sorry, yeah, this is just such a big thing. I'm glad you brought this up because we've been doing research on this for, for over twenty years and we work with psychologists all over the world on this where, and we've got a big study we're funding right now, um, out of Las Vegas about approval addiction. You know, what the psychologists basically say is we, we, we become addicted to the approval of other people because we grow up, even when we're infants, we realize that if we get the big people's approval, well, then we'll get what we want and it works. And they say that's the real problem. The approval actually works. So, we grow up as kids and of course teenagers are masters of, you know, getting approval and getting what they want. They're, they're ninjas at it almost, you know? And then we become adults, yeah, and we don't even realize, we're, this is what the psychologists, the research shows, that we're, by the time we're twenty-one

• 52:54Speaker 05

  years old, we are full-blown addicts. And what the researchers say, the psychologists say is, addiction, we have a level of addiction on a scale of one to, the psychological scale of one to seven, seven being most addicted, like a drug addict or an alcoholic or someone at that level. That's how most of us, almost everyone in society is, uh, a seven, a full-blown addict. And so, when people, you know, don't like us on Facebook, as you mentioned, or, or they don't like, they say something, they disagree with us, well, we're, we're, we're addicts. So, we respond so negatively, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, we just have this terrible response because we're like a drunk. We're addicts. And if we don't, but the world class seems to transcend that fear-based addiction. They realize that, you

• 53:38Speaker 05

  know, people are not gonna all agree and, and, you know, we're, we all have our, our, you know, our, our places of expertise and, and our places where we're beginners and we're intermediates and, and they don't really, they're not focused on other people's opinions of themselves. They sort of transcend it. Not that they don't care, but it just doesn't really mean that much to them. So, as a result, they're not limited to taking action based on the opinions of other people. So, they're unlimited in what they can really do and there's no emotional price to pay when someone says, "Well, I think you're wrong," or "I don't think you should do that." They say, "Well, that's, that's really great. Maybe you're right. I don't know. I'm gonna do it anyway, but thanks for your opinion." And it doesn't even affect them in any way. So, there's no cost. To the the the disapproval because this person is not an approval addict. They've transcended the addiction.

• 54:21Ed Mylett?

  Well, it's so true. You just made me think of something. The price you pay for that addiction, that approval to others is so great because what it does is it unconsciously causes you not to take actions where you would potentially be rejected. And those are the very actions requisite in becoming successful. It it is probably today the single greatest impediment to somebody becoming successful is their lack of willingness to accept some form of rejection from another human being. Right? And I I think you are right on that about this addiction. And if you're listening to this, evaluate that. That is that is something that you must break. And I think the antidote to it is one of your other secrets. I think the antidote to being so addicted to the approval of others is increasing your

• 55:06Ed Mylett?

  own self-confidence. And one of the things that you said in that I I was reading recently, because you said that self-confidence is along the lines of self-esteem is a reputation we acquire with ourselves. And I say all the time, I agree so deeply with that. I probably even got it from you. But I say, really, self-confidence is established by beginning to keep promises that you make to yourself. And as you begin to build upon that foundation, the greater and greater your confidence grows, the less and less you need approval from other people. Talk about that for a second of self-esteem, self-confidence is this reputation you acquire with yourself. How's that work?

• 55:44Speaker 05

  Oh, I think you're completely right. And I think you you nailed it. I mean, I think it's about, you know, keeping your word to yourself over and over, doing the things you tell yourself you're going to do. If you're going to stay on the diet, then stay on the diet. If you're going to save money, then save money, et cetera. And you start believing yourself. And with with belief, I think with self-belief, you know, comes a comes self-confidence and um and self-esteem as well. I think they go together. And then I think if you take the self-esteem and the self-confidence, that you push yourself into those. Potentially, uh, re- uh, re- uh, disapproval situations, if you will, whether it's selling or prospecting, or, you know, building a business, or anything, be- asking someone on a date, for that matter, wouldn't matter what the potential rejection is, you keep, you keep exposing yourself to the, the rejection event.

• 56:29Speaker 05

  What the psychologists call it is they say the process of what they call systematic desensitization takes place, or in other words, you know, systematically, because you keep putting yourself in that rejection situation, or potential rejection situation, you systematically become emotionally desensitized to hearing the word no.

• 56:47Ed Mylett?

  Hmm.

• 56:48Speaker 05

  And, uh, hell, you don't feel, there's no cost, there's no emotional pain when someone says no, you say thank you, and you move out of it, you don't even think about it, and that's when people become dangerous, because now they're not afraid.

• 56:59Ed Mylett?

  Do you, do you think there's a difference?

• 57:00Speaker 05

  And it just changes a lot.

• 57:01Ed Mylett?

  Is there a difference, I just noticed a distinction you said, I just want to ask you, is there a distinction between self-esteem and self-confidence? Do you see a difference between those two things?

• 57:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so, I think it's, like, for instance, the way I look at it, it's a slight distinction, that self-confidence, I think, is the, is the, the confidence in your, in your abilities to do things, whereas self-esteem would be your confidence in, in your, in your own, in your own integrity, let's say. In other words, just like you said, you do the things you say you tell your people to do, I think it's a slight distinction, I mean, they're certainly in the same family, but maybe a little bit of a difference.

• 57:33Ed Mylett?

  Talk about that for a second, um, let's keep going on that, though, I love that point. You talk a lot about not only the immediate approval of others, but you also say, twenty, in twenty-six, you say, this, uh, world-class people don't require immediate compensation. What do you mean by that? What, what is that all about?

• 57:50Speaker 05

  Well, I think, you know, in society, as you know, we, we have this kind of microwave thinking, where everything seems to happen instantly, we expect instant results, we put the, put the food in the microwave, but I do the same thing, and the chicken pot pie, and a minute later, it's heated up, and as you know, success doesn't work like that, especially major league success, where you're able to, to, to do things like you've done, write your own ticket, and live the way you want to live, and be free, and go anywhere you want to go, and do anything you want to do, it doesn't come instantly. You know, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a microwave kind of instant success, and I think the great ones really have mastered the art, if you will, of delayed gratification, and I mean emotionally, they're, they're, they're ready for the marathon as opposed to the sprint, and they realize it's going to take time, and they're, and they're gonna have to be disciplined emotionally.

• 58:36Speaker 05

  To go the distance as long as it takes and it's probably gonna take longer than they think, but they continue to go. They're expecting a fight as opposed to expecting this to happen overnight. I think that's the difference.

• 58:49Ed Mylett?

  I do. I think you're right. I think, again, it's the sign of our times. Things happen so much faster now with, you know, social media and access to information faster. I think people just expect access to success faster. And one of the differences I see between world-class achievers and those that aren't yet there, and I want you to talk about this for a second, is you actually talked slightly about this in 14, where you say they make do-or-die commitments. And I want to lead in with this with a thought. I've been thinking a lot about this lately because I think that people that aren't world-class are constantly in their mind negotiating the price they have to pay. In other words, you know, what's this gonna cost me? They're constantly going through the sacrifice they're making as they're going it.

• 59:32Ed Mylett?

  And I think they're always negotiating in their mind whether or not they should continue to pay this price. And I think there's a subtle difference. I'm writing about this right now. I'd like to hear your opinion on it. But I think there's a subtle distinction between price and worth. Meaning, I think people that aren't world-class yet are negotiating the price they're paying. What's it going to cost me to do it? And I think world-class people negotiate its worth. In other words, if it's worth doing this, the price is inconsequential. Because what I'll be acquiring is so much more great, so much more valuable, than what it is I'll have to spend to do it. So that the world-class person focuses on worth. And it's a subtle difference. It's one of those things you don't see.

• 1:00:15Ed Mylett?

  But the person who's middle-class, or poverty-class, or even upper-class, they're focusing on what the price is. Price and worth are subtle distinctions. So what is a do-or-die commitment that the world-class make? What do you mean when you say that?

• 1:00:29Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, and I couldn't agree more with everything you're saying. There's so much evidence to support what you just said, psychological evidence. Again, we do so much psychological research with major corporations and then we sell them contracts to help them go to the next level in terms of increasing their sales through psychological training. So much of it, you know, what the psychologists like to call it is they call it approach avoid. You know, so in other words, I approach the goal because I'm in the excitement phase of the process. I'm excited and I approach the goal. Then I hit phase number two, which we call the season of pain, where it gets tough. And I thought it was going to be much easier than this. And I'm sort of shocked at how difficult this is, or how tough it is, or how many hours I have to put in, or how much money it costs, or whatever the

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  reason is. And so, when I was approaching before, I was moving toward the goal. Now psychologists say I start to avoid. I start to back up. Well, then I get excited again for some reason. Some catalyst intervenes and I get excited again. Then I approach and then I go back to the season of pain and I avoid. Whereas to your point, the world-class performers are making these do or die commitments. To them, it's a zero, success is a zero-sum game. It's they decide what they're going to do and then they do it, or they die trying. And there is really no middle ground. And I think at some point, you know, they just keep moving forward like a bulldozer and they won't stop. And there's no, to your point where you were saying about negotiating the price, I don't think that enters their minds. Or it certainly doesn't seem to enter their minds as often as it would the average

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  person. Where they have not made this. They say, well, I'll have a plan B. Well, the world-class, they really don't have a plan B. It's plan A, or it's die trying. I think that makes the difference.

• 1:02:05Ed Mylett?

  I think it does too. I was thinking about, that applies to what you did prior to what you do now. A lot of people don't know this, but Steve coached junior athletes. He was not only a tremendous athlete himself, but he started out by coaching junior athletes, some of the most successful athletes of all time. A guy like Andre Agassi. One of the things I've read about him and his family was, you'll have to describe this with these junior athletes you worked with, but a Tiger Woods, or a Rory McIlroy, or an Andre Agassi, or a LeBron James when they were young. There was no plan B, was there, when you were working with a guy like Agassi for his family? They all in, all invested. This is what he was going to do. True?

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. And Andre, when he was a kid, he wasn't all too crazy about that either, when I knew him.

• 1:02:46Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 1:02:47Speaker 05

  But, uh, but he, he did have that plan and the family had that plan and of course, they, they pulled that off. And yeah, they, they tend to think in those absolute zeros. They, they take a lot of time, from my research anyway, in determining what it is they want. But, once they lock in on it, boy, you'd better, you'd just better get out of the way because they're, they're going toward it or they're gonna die trying. And they have that philosophy and no matter how tough it gets, they just keep moving forward. They're like machines. It's, it's, they're very machine-like in it, in terms of, you know, cognition, in terms of the way they think.

• 1:03:15Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  Uh, they're almost machine-like and no wonder they succeed.

• 1:03:17Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, and the application of it is obviously far more profound with an adult than it is a child. We ought to let our children find their own way, obviously. But, it goes to show you that even a guy who was resisting it, when a, in spite of his personal resistance, when a family is all-in on something with no plan B, you end up manifesting the results. You mentioned earlier, a lot, a lot of people that listen to this, or several of them, are friends of mine and they're CEOs of large organizations or middle-sized organizations. They run big companies and they've got people that are in their stewardship. And you mentioned this Mental Toughness University that you have. And just elaborate on that a little bit. If I'm a CEO and I'm listening to this, or I'm a, I'm in charge of sales somewhere of a large organization, middle-sized organization, how could I find you? How could I become

• 1:04:00Ed Mylett?

  involved with Mental Toughness University? And how does it work and what is it?

• 1:04:04Speaker 05

  Well, basically, for the last 20 years, I worked with athletes for the first 10 years. And in the last 20 years, our firm has worked mostly with Fortune 500 companies, giant sales teams like Johnson & Johnson, or Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble, et cetera, companies like that. And basically, we go in and do one thing. We train them how to think like world-class performers, world-class salespeople, world-class athletes. And the things you're talking about, that you and I are talking about today, that's what we teach them. And it's, and what we found is, most people don't have that kind of training. Another group we've worked with are the Navy SEALs, for example. As of a couple of years ago, we couldn't even talk about our work with the Navy SEALs. But, the government trains the SEALs to do what they do physically, and we're one of the firms that train them to do what they do mentally when they go into combat. And we take all that, well, we've

• 1:04:48Speaker 05

  been doing that for many years. And we take all that kind of training, we bring it to the salesperson to determine, through research first, what's the salesperson thinking before the interaction with the customer, during the interaction with the customer, and then after, post-sales call, oh, interaction with the customer, and how that, how that thinking is going to impact that sale and the sales. Uh, you know, they're subsequent to that. And then we teach them, we show them the disparity between the best performers in the world and their results that we find in the research. And we help them close the disparity gap by teaching them the tools to make them world-class performers.

• 1:05:21Ed Mylett?

  Hmm. What I like about it, probably more than anything, is it's not a warm bath. It's not a, it could be, it could be a speech you give, but oftentimes it's, it's not a warm bath. It's an ongoing commitment you make with the organization that can run two, three, four, five, 10 years or, or more. Is that true?

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, we, our contracts usually last three to seven years. Our longest one was a class of Smith Plan, which was about nine years. And of course, the SEAL program, we've been involved with for a long time. And so we, we bring those kinds of, you know, and like you say, it's, it's not, it's definitely not a warm bath. It's, uh, it's tough love, but it's, it's critical thinking at the highest level. And then the highest level programs, like the, what we do at the Navy SEALs, for example, uh, we do, we do with executive teams of, but again, same kind of large corporations where you've got a, you've got a, an executive team that has 150,000 employees and there's 10 people running all those employees. Well, how, how do those guys get training? Well, we bring them critical thinking training. And, uh, and that's the, that's the high, just like we do with the Navy SEALs. And that's

• 1:06:17Speaker 05

  the highest level training we do. It's sophisticated process, but, uh, it's a, it's a process we've developed over the last 20 years. It works real well with the company.

• 1:06:25Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, it's worked real well with me. I told you when we were getting ready for this call, just the enormous impact. See, I, I said in the beginning of the call too, with everybody, that it, the content's the star. I mean, people can tell from listening to this, this is the stuff you hear from a motivational speaker, or, you know, some guy giving you a pump up session, or, you know, quoting some saying on Twitter. This is real valuable training that changes the way people think and perform. And one of the other books you wrote that I love is, um, and I, I gotta be honest with you, the new one I've not seen, but I love the name of it, Fat Loser. And I love that it gets to the point. And the reason that I love that is because I, you know, you, I, I see people all the time, they'll, they're, you know, they're saying, you know, I really ought to lose a lot of weight, you know, I'm getting a little bit portly. And it's like, no, you're not portly,

• 1:07:10Ed Mylett?

  you're a fat ass. Like, you know, and the more clearly you define, really, it's true, the more clearly you define, in fact, the more pain you associate, the more you're real about your current state. Is to the extent that you're gonna take action to change it. And so you talk, Steve has these, I'm not gonna give you all his stuff, he has these 10 rules for success. The fifth one is live in objective reality. And so you, I don't know if you can relate that to fat loser or losing weight or getting fit, but I think everyone knows I'm a proponent of fitness and I know you are as well being an athlete. What does living in objective reality mean and can you give me an example of it?

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  Sure, I mean, there's only two ways to really think in that context. You know, you've got objective reality, which is the way things are. And you've got subjective reality, which is the way you perceive things. But it's one or the other. And when it comes to the fat loser process, I'll give you an example. This just happened about 10 days ago, I was speaking in Chicago. And I was on W, I was being interviewed on WGN before my book signing. And, uh, and I was being interviewed by a, by a gal who's probably in her early 40s. And then a guy, the guy was in fantastic shape. He had a customs suit, he looked fantastic. And she was probably 60, 70 pounds overweight, nice looking gal, nice person. And so this was live on the air in front of 2 million people in Chicago. And she says to me, she's right, she's right next to me and she says, "Well, what if, what if I'm just big boned? What if I just, you know, my family's just big boned? What would you say to me?"

• 1:08:30Speaker 05

  And I said, "I'd say you're delusional." I'd say lose 70, and I didn't say this, this part, I just said you're delusional. I stopped because I didn't want to really embarrass her. I'm TV in Chicago, on the biggest station in Chicago. But, so I didn't. But what I really, if it was off the air, I guess I didn't want to embarrass her, obviously. But I, if it was off the air, what I would have said is, "You know what? Lose 70 pounds and then look in the mirror and see how big your bones are." I think you're gonna find they're not big at all. They're like our bones, they're like everybody's bones, you know? It's a delusion that we, and, and I think most people when it comes to success, are not living in objective reality. Most companies are not. I mean, major corporations, we, we do, you know, we do a lot of research. We do four weeks of research before we even speak to a company. And we, and we interview people, we do surveys anonymously and find out, you know, what they're thinking.

• 1:09:14Speaker 05

  And for example, they'll, they'll, what we find is the great performers underrate themselves. Usually grossly underrate themselves. We ask them to rate their performances, and based on results. And then the, the, the middle-class performers and the low performers grossly overrate themselves. And it's predictable, and a lot of it's just delusion, psychological delusion.

• 1:09:33Ed Mylett?

  Wow, that is so true. And those of you that may be listening to this, and that sounds a little harsh. The reason that I'm willing to go there with you, and Steve is too, is that you're not, you are not a fat person. You've become fat. And so, that's not your identity. You don't, you don't need to stay where you are. Your past does not equal your future. You ought to not be down about where you are. You ought to be optimistic and driven and relentless about changing it. And there's absolutely no shame in changing a condition that you're not satisfied with. The shame would be staying in it. And so, I want to challenge you. Listen to that, let it set in, and take an action. So, I really appreciate how you said that. I would like to continue to talk to you, because it's like your books.

• 1:10:18Ed Mylett?

  We could go on and on. I'm gonna have you finish with something, Steve, but I want to make sure everybody can find you. Because I know after listening to just 25 minutes of this, they're thinking, "I want more of this guy, I want more of his content." So, do they go to Twitter? Is there a website? Tell us where to find you in order to have you come speak, or get your books, or Mental Toughness University. What's the best way to get access to you?

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, the best way probably is Mental Toughness U, which is just the letter U. MentaltoughnessU.com, that's our Mental Toughness University site. And of course, the books, all the books are on Amazon. That's probably the easiest place to get the book.

• 1:10:53Ed Mylett?

  Okay. Yeah, and I hope everybody takes advantage of Steve and his content. You can hear it, it's backed up by research. It's not just fluff. This is the real stuff. Let me ask you, if I'm someone listening, and I could get five minutes with you, and let's put them in that couple minutes with you now, doesn't need to be five, but... And I got to ride in a car with Steve Siebold, or sit at lunch, or sit next to you on an airplane, and I could ask you, "Hey, I have a drive and a desire to be somebody. I want to change the conditions of my body, like we just talked about, my finances, my entire life, my business." What advice would you give me? I mean, if I only could answer, ask you one question, and I know that's broad,

• 1:11:35Ed Mylett?

  but what would you say to me if you only could say one or two things to me? What would it be?

• 1:11:41Speaker 05

  I think the first thing would be learn to be very decisive. Make, make fast decisions and change them slowly and know that you're capable if you screw up the decision, you make a poor decision, that you have the, the ability to recover from that bad decision. But be bold enough and strong enough to make decisions and become decisive. And I think you, you learn that by making decisions quickly and, and bold decisions and, and sticking to them. And if you, if you make the wrong decision, you either make it the right decision or you fix it. I think that's the, that's the number one thing I see of people that are trying to succeed, but seem to, to, uh, and of course I've done the same thing over the years. It's easy to fall into is that they're not decisive enough. And, uh, and when they decide, they kind of go, oh, maybe I made the wrong decision. Well, maybe you did, but you'll fix it. But for now, go full blast.

• 1:12:25Speaker 05

  And I think that's the, the first thing I think people have to start with when it comes to mental toughness.

• 1:12:29Ed Mylett?

  Very good. You know why that's true? I was going to tell you, no one has their A game all the time. You don't, I certainly don't. And I notice, I notice one of the symptoms, I just so agree with you. I noticed one of the symptoms that will tell me I'm getting off track is I find myself being less decisive. I find myself evaluating too much information. I find myself hesitating. And so I totally agree with you. I think making a powerful decision and taking immediate action, followed up with that decision, by the way, is what successful people do. That's how they know they've made that decision. I think that's how they know they've made a decision. So I got to tell you, Steve, uh, this is one of those podcasts that I think people will listen to over and over again and want more of.

• 1:13:13Ed Mylett?

  And so I'm hoping that I can get you back sometime later this year and we can just continue the dialogue. And I'm hoping that people will go find you because I put my highest stamp of approval on Steve and what he teaches. And you, you've heard other podcasts, folks, where I interview somebody. I think they're wonderful and, uh, and I refer you to go get their content, but not to the extent that I am with Steve. I think Steve's stuff is absolutely applicable and can make you make changes quickly. So Steve, thanks so much today and, uh, can't tell you how much I appreciate you. And I know the people listening to this are grateful for the value you brought as well.

• 1:13:45Speaker 05

  Hey, I appreciate it, Ed. You know, I've always been a big fan of yours. I was just talking about you on stage the other day in Denver to the crowd and, uh, and I appreciate, uh, you know, the chance.

• 1:13:53Ed Mylett?

  Good stuff, brother. Thanks.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  Follow Ed on Twitter, edmilet.com and Champions Forum Podcast.