161: 5 Valuable Life Lessons I've Learned In The Last 5 Years

Over the last five years, I’ve learned five lessons that changed how I lead, train, and live. In this episode, inspired by Pastor Craig Groeschel, I break down purpose, leadership “altitude,” selflessness, pride, and the cost of a rushed life through the lens of building BPN. We’ll hit the difference between complex vs. complicated problems, the dopamine drive, and how to build a culture that empowers people. I also share personal reflections, what I’m working on next, and how these lessons translate into real decisions at work and at home. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 01:40 Purpose 18:52 Rise/Dive 30:38 Selflessness 37:53 Pride 45:13 Hurried life 58:14 Final thoughts ORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠ https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutrition IG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠ YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

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

• 0:06Nick Bare?

  Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's podcast title is five valuable life lessons I've learned in the last five years. And this episode, this discussion was inspired and motivated by a recent podcast I was listening to. This was a Craig Rochelle podcast and it was all about the most challenging lessons he learned in leadership in his multiple decades of leadership and being a pastor.

• 0:48Nick Bare?

  And I'm also going to reference one of his that he spoke about. But as I was listening to him speak, I was on a run, it was a five mile run and I was listening to this podcast and it really spoke to me and really connected with me. And I started reflecting just back on how much I have grown as a leader over the years. And the experiences and lessons that I've learned. So I got back from the five mile run, it's about two weeks ago, and I just started jotting down some of the things that that I've learned and I believe have been extremely valuable to not just my professional life as the founder and CEO of BPN,

• 1:31Nick Bare?

  but also applied to my personal life and being a husband, being a father and ultimately leading myself as well. So we'll start with number one.

• 1:43Nick Bare?

  We need purpose and meaning to truly be fulfilled. I think we all know this, but oftentimes glance over it because we get lost in the day to day.

• 2:00Nick Bare?

  And I once heard a fellow founder and entrepreneur describe the day to day of building a brand and building a business. And they described it as blocking and tackling.

• 2:15Nick Bare?

  You know, we have this big vision for our life and we have these massive goals that we're trying to chase down and accomplish.

• 2:24Nick Bare?

  But life is complex and complicated. And over days and weeks and months and years, we might work towards this objective, this vision and these goals.

• 2:38Nick Bare?

  Big picture, you know, perspective and approach. But in the day to day, it sometimes doesn't feel like we are making progress because we are literally blocking and tackling.

• 2:52Nick Bare?

  Obstacles pop up, problems arise, distractions are placed in front of us and we are in a defensive position, battling, fighting, blocking and tackling things as they pop up, get in front of us, we're trying to get around them.

• 3:13Nick Bare?

  From the day to day, uh, it's easy to glance over and miss purpose and meaning and fulfillment. Because for many of us, some days feel like we're just trying to survive. Yeah, I saw this, uh, this Instagram post the other day and it really connected with me, really spoke to me.

• 3:38Nick Bare?

  And it was this, this dad who has young kids and he was filming himself running in the dark, in the rain. And the caption summarized, can't remember exactly what it said, but summarized, it said that for all you other parents out there with young kids who are getting five hours of sleep a night, I see you.

• 4:03Nick Bare?

  And don't try to compare your life to someone else's life who doesn't have as many responsibilities.

• 4:14Nick Bare?

  And that really just like hit home for me, spoke to me.

• 4:19Nick Bare?

  As a husband and father with two young kids, you know, I average six and a half hours of sleep a night, but there are nights where I'm not sleeping nearly enough or as much, but still waking up and getting after it day after day because if it matters to you, you will make time.

• 4:44Nick Bare?

  And when you're in those moments trying to survive day to day, getting a little bit of sleep, taking care of your kids, spending time with your family, show up to work, building your professional career, it's challenging and it's really easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, the things and things that really do matter, truly do matter. And if we're not careful, we will get lost in the day to day. We will become distracted in the day to day. We have to be rooted in a greater calling, a larger purpose and

• 5:29Nick Bare?

  meaning in life to truly be fulfilled. One of my favorite books, and I've shared this before, is Halftime by Bob Buford. And it talks about how the first half of your life is focused on success. And after many of us experience a halftime moment, we have this renewed mind and we realize that the second half of life is no longer focused on success, but it's focused on significance. And I've also heard people describe the first half of your life as you are working to build

• 6:10Nick Bare?

  and accumulate. In the second half of your life, you are working to give it all away to people you love and friends and family and your kids. That could be materialistic things. It could be your money. It could be your time, your energy, anything. But in the book Halftime by Bob Buford, he says that people are at their largest, their noblest and most virtuous when they are given over to a cause, something larger than themselves.

• 6:44Nick Bare?

  We are at our best, our largest, our most noble, virtuous, when we are working towards and for something larger than ourselves. True purpose, true meaning. I'm also a really big fan of Arthur C. Brooks. He teaches a very popular class, I believe at Harvard, on happiness. And this class, it books out every year, instantaneously. And there is a waitlist to get into this class of hundreds of people.

• 7:26Nick Bare?

  He is also an author. He has multiple articles published on happiness and fulfillment. And one of his books called From Strength to Strength is one of my favorites. And it talks about life transitions and how to navigate and manage the many life transitions that we go through. And he talks about happiness a lot. And happiness is something that a lot of people want to learn about, want to experience, want to hear how to be happier.

• 8:07Nick Bare?

  This is one of the reasons his classes fill up so fast and there's a waitlist from hundreds of other people. Brooks says that happiness is not a feeling. Happiness is a combination of three things: enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. We need purpose. We need meaning, not only to be fulfilled, but also to be happy.

• 8:38Nick Bare?

  And you need a portfolio, from what Arthur C. Brooks says, of four happiness, or four habits, excuse me, to experience happiness.

• 8:50Nick Bare?

  Your portfolio of four habits are faith, family, friends, and work.

• 8:58Nick Bare?

  Faith, being a perspective, a piece on life much larger than you. You need to get small in order to be happy. You can't be, you can't be God, and never will be God. You can't be the cause, you can't be the purpose, you can't be the meaning of not only your life, but everyone else's life. That makes you selfish. We have to get small in order to have a much larger cause that we are living for.

• 9:37Nick Bare?

  A purpose, a meaning, faith, family, friends, and work. Those are the four habits within our portfolio that contribute to our happiness.

• 9:52Nick Bare?

  I'm gonna

• 9:54Nick Bare?

  keep leaning into some of Arthur C. Brooks's work here for a second. He also talks about the difference between complex and complicated problems that we experience in our life. And I share this because I hope this gives some perspective of why you may be struggling and why I have in the past struggled with feeling or experiencing fulfillment, contentment, because my purpose and meaning in life wasn't secure, it wasn't rooted, it did not have an identity.

• 10:33Nick Bare?

  Brooke says that there's two types of problems that we experience in life. Complex and complicated, and they're different. Complex issues or problems cannot be solved or fixed with technology, apps, or quick fixes. They can only be experienced, managed, and lived daily. Complicated problems have technical solutions, whereas complex problems are relational, emotional, and unpredictable. Happiness and purpose are not puzzles to be solved, but rather ongoing, messy processes. And true enjoyment requires a mix of pleasure, people, and memory.

• 11:17Nick Bare?

  And true satisfaction comes from the struggle toward a goal rather than just achieving it.

• 11:25Nick Bare?

  So that first valuable life lesson that I talked about, we need purpose and meaning to be fulfilled.

• 11:32Nick Bare?

  I think at this point, we know what purpose and meaning is. Purpose and meaning is something much larger than ourself.

• 11:41Nick Bare?

  It is like Bob Buford said, a cause, something larger than ourselves that we are living for, that we are serving, that we are glorifying. We have to get small. Faith is getting small to then have a purpose that is rooted in something larger. So we've identified what purpose and meaning is, but what is fulfillment? What does it mean to be truly fulfilled? And to be fulfilled, we need satisfaction.

• 12:15Nick Bare?

  Like author C. Brooke said, happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. Well, what is satisfaction?

• 12:24Nick Bare?

  Satisfaction is the joy that you get from an accomplishment after a struggle.

• 12:30Nick Bare?

  After struggle, this is why it feels really good to set these really big, ambitious goals and then work towards them. Whether that is, man, building the dream life that you want. Maybe that's the house with a dog out front and the white picket fence and the family with with two kids and there's like that tire swing in the backyard. You know, the, the, the ideal American dream.

• 13:05Nick Bare?

  Maybe that's what it looks like that you're working towards. Maybe it is a fitness goal. Maybe you want to lose 30 pounds. Maybe you want to run a sub three hour marathon. Maybe you want to do your first Ironman or first 100 mile ultra marathon. If it's a job promotion that you you want to achieve or a business you want to build. The reason that it feels so good to work towards those things and then achieve it is because of the struggle. Without the struggle and just achievement, we, we actually can't experience satisfaction.

• 13:43Nick Bare?

  You need the struggle in between saying, I want to go pursue this and then achieving it. In between, we, we need, we require the struggle to actually experience satisfaction. But what happens when we actually achieve the thing?

• 14:06Nick Bare?

  Is that we experience satisfaction and then satisfaction dissipates. It's really hard to maintain satisfaction. So it's to keep working on it and towards it.

• 14:21Nick Bare?

  And if we don't have purpose and we don't have any enjoyment, but we just have satisfaction, you're going to end up on this continuous loop, this hamster wheel that is being driven by dopamine of needing to constantly achieve and achieve and achieve to actually feel anything.

• 14:47Nick Bare?

  You need purpose, you need meaning, but we also need struggle and we need goals. You need to work towards something and we need joy, enjoyment, fulfillment.

• 15:03Nick Bare?

  You know, one of my favorite books that I've ever read and I've read it multiple times because I love it so much and I've referenced it multiple times.

• 15:12Nick Bare?

  It's The Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long. I referenced The Molecule of More in my book titled Go On More.

• 15:24Nick Bare?

  And it's all about dopamine and how dopamine controls everything in our life.

• 15:31Nick Bare?

  And in the book, there's, there's two quotes I want to share.

• 15:37Nick Bare?

  The first, "I arise in the morning, torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

• 15:54Nick Bare?

  Dopamine desire drives us towards wanting to experience something and it's oftentimes more. While we want to be content, when we are content and relaxing and comfortable, we then want to go achieve and do more. And when we go and achieve more and we're working and then we struggle, we also want to be content. I think this, this quote here describes the way many of us feel on a daily basis. We want to go out and, and gain and achieve and do, but simultaneously be content in the, in the process.

• 16:36Nick Bare?

  And it's achievable, but it's also very challenging at the same time. "I arise in the morning, torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." And the second quote I want to share, "From dopamine's point of view, having things is uninteresting."

• 16:57Nick Bare?

  It's only getting things that matter. If you live under a bridge, dopamine makes you want a tent. If you live in a tent, dopamine makes you want a house. If you live in the most expensive mansion in the world, dopamine makes you want a castle on the moon. Dopamine has no standard for good and seeks no finish line. The dopamine circuits in the brain can be stimulated only by the possibility of whatever is shiny and new. Never mind how perfect things are at the moment. The dopamine motto is more. The molecule of more, that is dopamine. That is in our bodies, that is in our brain.

• 17:38Nick Bare?

  It is driving us towards more and more and more and more. And without purpose, without meaning, we will never be fulfilled because naturally the biology and chemistry of our bodies naturally wants more. Naturally wants more. So if we're not rooted in a purpose and a meaning much larger than ourselves, a cause much larger than ourselves, if we aren't willing to get small, we will get stuck in

• 18:17Nick Bare?

  the driven disaster of living for dopamine. And that's a dangerous place to be. We need purpose and meaning to be fulfilled. Because if we don't have that, we're going to live chasing an endless pursuit of the next thing. More, more, more, and it's never enough. The next valuable life lesson is to know when to rise and when to dive.

• 19:00Nick Bare?

  Like I said in the beginning of this episode, this inspired this entire episode.

• 19:08Nick Bare?

  As I was listening to a Craig Rochelle podcast, he was talking about leadership altitude. And he posed the question, what deserves altitude? And what deserves attention? You have to know when to rise and when to dive. In the last five years, five years ago, it was 2021.

• 19:37Nick Bare?

  My life looked significantly different.

• 19:41Nick Bare?

  Recently married, no kids yet. VPN was much smaller. In 2021, we maybe had

• 19:52Nick Bare?

  10, around 10 employees. If I had to guess and remember properly, somewhere around that. So, running the business and the way that I had to lead was much different than than it is now. I've learned a lot and I've learned a lot through failing, specifically in in what I'm about to talk about right here.

• 20:20Nick Bare?

  Craig Rochelle says that while it is natural to feel that you must be involved in everything, staying too low for too long can cause you to lose perspective. While staying too high for too long can cause you to lose connection with your people.

• 20:39Nick Bare?

  So when you rise, you are working on big picture, visionary,

• 20:48Nick Bare?

  strategy, objectives. You are leading. You're working on the business

• 20:56Nick Bare?

  or on the project as opposed to in it.

• 21:01Nick Bare?

  That's rising. It allows your subordinate leaders to lead and do their job. It allows individuals in teams to have ownership over their work and their responsibilities because of trust, because of confidence and competency. But when you have to dive, this is when you get into the weeds. And as Craig Yashell says, staying too low, meaning diving in the weeds for too long, can cause you to lose perspective, big picture.

• 21:39Nick Bare?

  And while staying too high for too long can cause you to lose connection with your people. This is a really tough balance. And it just takes time and experience and repetition of what I've, I've learned over time.

• 21:56Nick Bare?

  As a leader, whether you're leading your family, your marriage, your children, a business, a small team, whatever it is, whenever you are leading people, the balance between knowing when to rise and when to dive is absolutely essential and critical.

• 22:17Nick Bare?

  It will lead that unit to success, but it can also lead that unit to failure and create problems relationally, trust issues, stepping on people's toes, not empowering people, not allowing people to take risks and try and fail and then learn from those failures. This one, like I said, it inspired this entire episode because this was really hard for me early on as leader and it took a lot of just exposure and repetition and making all the mistakes. Like there have been a lot of times where I have been too high for too long

• 23:02Nick Bare?

  and I've lost connection with people and I've gone too low for too long and I've stepped on people's toes and I've lost trust in people. And I wasn't able to empower them and actually try and learn and fail. And in, in staying too low for too long, I lost big picture perspective. You know, when you're in the weeds on certain things, like you're head down, you're focused.

• 23:28Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I think like one way I'm thinking of it right now visually.

• 23:33Nick Bare?

  If you are a captain of a boat, a big boat with lots of people. You are steering the boat.

• 23:42Nick Bare?

  This is when you are rising high. You're at the top of the boat, right? You're the top boat, you're steering. You're making sure that the boat is on the right course. You're making sure you don't run into some sort of obstacle in the water or other boats. You're managing, monitoring the weather, all the things. You're focused on big picture perspective. If something happens down below in the bottom of the boat.

• 24:11Nick Bare?

  And you go and fix it. You then dive.

• 24:16Nick Bare?

  Well, you're not in the captain's chair anymore. You're not steering, you're not watching out for obstacles in the water or the weather. Or the course, for example. And if you do that and you go down below and you don't delegate other responsibilities. And you lose that big picture perspective, you go off course, you crash. There's a lot of things that can go wrong because you dove. You were too low for too long. You lose the ability to guide the unit, guide the ship, guide the people.

• 24:53Nick Bare?

  When you fly high, you fly high to focus on vision, strategy, team development and long-term outcomes. You step back to empower people. Empowering people is one of the greatest things you can learn how to do.

• 25:10Nick Bare?

  I've learned that the hard way.

• 25:14Nick Bare?

  Because chances are, if you're in a leadership role, if you are a manager, you're a director. There's things you can do and you know how to do it. You can, you can run a business with a thousand people and you can jump into everyone's role and do all of those roles. But what's going to happen is you're going to lose trust, you're going to lose confidence. Because people don't feel empowered or trusted or competent. Learning how to empower people with responsibility, truly trusting them, giving them the keys, giving them the reins to own something.

• 25:50Nick Bare?

  That goes a long way. Empowerment, that's flying high. When you dive deep and get the details, you might have to do that from time to time when culture is drifting, as Craig Gershaw says. And sometimes a key leader needs support or to make major decisions. And that's when they have to dive deep into the weeds, in the details. You can also utilize strategic absence so that you don't become the bottleneck and allow space for your team to grow and take ownership. This is something that I've incorporated the last couple of years, the last five or so years, that I have found extremely beneficial

• 26:34Nick Bare?

  and useful. There have been times where I have strategically stepped away in terms of, not the business, but not going to certain meetings or involved in certain projects and allowing teams and people to make decisions on their own, empowering them. So that I don't become the bottleneck in certain decisions that have to be made, in certain plans that have to be established, in certain operational execution that needs done. It allows space for your team to grow and for individuals to take ownership. Some of, like I said, my greatest failures

• 27:18Nick Bare?

  in building a business, being a founder, being a CEO, being a leader, has been when I've stayed high for too long. I've lost connection with people. And when I've been too low for too long. I step on people's toes. I don't empower them and I lose big picture perspective. If I look back over the last five years, 90% of my mistakes, leadership mistakes, have been in these two situations. Too high for too long, too low for too long. And I've learned that just because you can fix it, just because you can do it, doesn't mean that you should.

• 28:01Nick Bare?

  You can allow other people to learn, even if you can do it.

• 28:11Nick Bare?

  This is what builds a really strong culture. And what is culture? I think the term culture is thrown out a lot.

• 28:21Nick Bare?

  For me, culture is a shared set of beliefs, values,

• 28:31Nick Bare?

  goals and purpose. And when people align with those things, they become a part of your culture. And the way that you build a really strong culture is clearly identifying

• 28:47Nick Bare?

  beliefs, values, goals, purpose.

• 28:53Nick Bare?

  And if everyone is aligned within a culture on those things,

• 28:59Nick Bare?

  your culture is generally stronger, more unified.

• 29:06Nick Bare?

  One of the ways that you destroy culture when it comes to being a leader is

• 29:15Nick Bare?

  stepping on people's toes, being in the details for too long,

• 29:22Nick Bare?

  doing people's job that they can and should be doing,

• 29:28Nick Bare?

  not trusting individuals, not trusting teams, not trusting people. When people feel empowered, when people feel trusted, when people feel like they can own their rule and they know what success looks like,

• 29:47Nick Bare?

  there is a measurement for success, they can thrive. And when individuals are thriving, when teams are thriving and culture is clearly defined, man, things are just humming along.

• 30:04Nick Bare?

  But when people aren't trusted or empowered and culture isn't strong and core values and beliefs and purpose and goals aren't clearly defined,

• 30:14Nick Bare?

  that is walking aimlessly in the woods, looking, hoping for the answer, hoping for a win.

• 30:28Nick Bare?

  When there is no vision, people perish.

• 30:34Nick Bare?

  You gotta know when to rise and when to dive. Selflessness is a keystone to life. This is the third valuable life lesson.

• 30:47Nick Bare?

  Gandhi once said,

• 30:51Nick Bare?

  "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

• 30:59Nick Bare?

  "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

• 31:06Nick Bare?

  You can either be selfless or selfish.

• 31:12Nick Bare?

  Selfish puts you in front of all others.

• 31:19Nick Bare?

  It is focused on yourself, serving yourself, glorifying yourself.

• 31:26Nick Bare?

  If you win, that's all that matters.

• 31:31Nick Bare?

  I've learned over these last five years that,

• 31:36Nick Bare?

  one, leadership is everything.

• 31:39Nick Bare?

  But,

• 31:42Nick Bare?

  in my case, to be a man, what's it look like to be a real man? I heard Pastor Joby Martin talking about this before.

• 31:53Nick Bare?

  A true man is selfless, is a servant to others, lives to serve others, not himself or themself.

• 32:06Nick Bare?

  That's what selflessness is. And why is it a keystone to life?

• 32:11Nick Bare?

  So, little backstory here.

• 32:14Nick Bare?

  We were in Pennsylvania two weeks ago for the Pittsburgh Marathon kickoff. This year, we are the on-course nutrition sponsor for the Austin Marathon, which is in February.

• 32:28Nick Bare?

  And we've been a partner with the Austin Marathon the last couple of years now. And we are also an on-course nutrition partner for the Pittsburgh Marathon in May, May 3rd. So if you want to run a marathon this spring, you should definitely sign up for the Pittsburgh Marathon. Our whole team's going to be there. I'm going to be there. We're going to be running it. We're showing up in a huge way, really activating around the city in that race. And it means a lot for me because I grew up in Pennsylvania. Palmyra, Pennsylvania, right next to Hershey, Pennsylvania. I went to school at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which is about an hour away from Pittsburgh. And Pittsburgh just feels like home. Pennsylvania is home.

• 33:11Nick Bare?

  And as soon as we flew into Pennsylvania two weeks ago, me and Steph, we met up with the BPN team. I told Steph, man, this feels like home. You know, Texas has been home since 2014, but coming back to PA, it just feels like home. And while we were in Pittsburgh, we made a trip over to IUP, where I went to college. And we were able to visit and tour the Army ROTC department there, which was surreal because to be honest, nothing in that entire building changed.

• 33:52Nick Bare?

  It felt like I was, I was, you know, back there in 2013 when I graduated. Nothing changed. Everything was exactly where it was. It was wild to see and experience. And the IUP Army ROTC logo was on the wall. And part of the Pennsylvania logo is a keystone. It's a keystone state. And growing up, I didn't ever really put much thought behind the keystone or what is a keystone and the significance of the keystone. It was just like we knew Pennsylvania was the keystone state.

• 34:36Nick Bare?

  So I was curious, like, what is a keystone exactly?

• 34:41Nick Bare?

  And a keystone is a central principle or part of a policy or system on which all else depends. A keystone is a central stone at the summit of an arch. So if you look at an arch, stone arch, the keystone is at the top of the arch and it locks everything together. It is essential. It holds everything together. Everything depends on that one stone, the keystone. Without it, everything else falls apart.

• 35:21Nick Bare?

  And I was also curious, this is some additional knowledge, why is Pennsylvania's marked the keystone?

• 35:28Nick Bare?

  And the answer is because it is the central location among the original 13 colonies and it had a crucial role in holding the new nation together.

• 35:38Nick Bare?

  And this perfectly illustrates Pennsylvania's essential role in maintaining the unity and stability of the early American Union, figuratively and also from a geographic perspective.

• 35:55Nick Bare?

  The keystone locks everything together. All else depends on it.

• 36:04Nick Bare?

  Selflessness, being selfless is a keystone to life.

• 36:12Nick Bare?

  Living a life of meaning and purpose and fulfillment.

• 36:18Nick Bare?

  Helping other people.

• 36:21Nick Bare?

  Putting others before yourself, being selfless. Without being selfless, you really, you fall apart. Like Gandhi says, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

• 36:43Nick Bare?

  When you commit to this, you'll be tested and you'll be challenged. And, you know, from, from my point of view,

• 36:55Nick Bare?

  I try to be selfless in everything I do every day, but I'm not perfect. And I, I mess up and I make mistakes. And sometimes I, I act out of a selfish character or make decisions that are rooted in selfishness.

• 37:17Nick Bare?

  And it typically

• 37:20Nick Bare?

  guides me in the wrong direction. Doesn't always feel good, but selflessness always feels good.

• 37:31Nick Bare?

  It's to serve others. It is the keystone to life.

• 37:37Nick Bare?

  And when you eventually realize you can't do it all on your own

• 37:41Nick Bare?

  and you surrender the ego that drives that thought process, you unlock exponential growth in all areas of your life.

• 37:53Nick Bare?

  That leads us to

• 37:56Nick Bare?

  the fourth valuable life lesson I've learned in the last five years, which is pride is the ultimate source of self destruction.

• 38:11Nick Bare?

  Pride is ego. And the opposite of pride is humility.

• 38:22Nick Bare?

  John R. W. Stott once said, I'm going to say this twice because I think this is really important. And it's not just a quote. It's not just this, this nice fancy saying, you should write this down somewhere and live by this.

• 38:42Nick Bare?

  Because we will all struggle with pride and ego at all different chapters and intersections of our life. And it will destroy us, and it does destroy us. John R.W. Stott said, "Pride is your greatest enemy. Humility is your greatest friend. Pride is your greatest enemy. Humility is your greatest friend. The opposite of pride is humility. It is being humble." Now, there's a difference between being proud and having pride.

• 39:22Nick Bare?

  Proud is a feeling that describes a state of being, feeling satisfaction or honor from one's own or another's achievement, qualities, or possessions. You can feel proud. It's a feeling. You know, your, your son makes the varsity baseball team. You feel proud. You know how much work went into that. You, you get a job promotion. You feel proud. Your, your wife starts her own business and it launches and it's successful. You're proud.

• 40:07Nick Bare?

  It's a feeling. There's not much or nothing wrong with feeling proud about what you've done, what you've accomplished, what others have accomplished. But pride is an identity. It's an identity that describes an excessive sense of one's own importance or superiority, leading to arrogance and ego. Pride is an identity. When you're prideful, it is, "I'm better than you. I'm the best.

• 40:49Nick Bare?

  You are inferior to me." Arrogance, ego, "I know everything. Let me tell you what I know, what I've done. Let me belittle you."

• 41:05Nick Bare?

  You know, like we go back to

• 41:14Nick Bare?

  talking about the four habits you need in your portfolio to experience happiness.

• 41:23Nick Bare?

  Faith, family, friends, work. Faith is you need to get small to be happy. When you're prideful, you inflate yourself. You are larger than everyone else. You're larger, you are smarter, you're better, you're wealthier, you're more important. Pride is self-destruction.

• 41:47Nick Bare?

  You know what drives cancel culture?

• 41:50Nick Bare?

  Like, social media and the negativity on social media and cancel culture. What drives it? It's pride. I'm above, I'm better than you. Thus, I will make you feel little online. All these arguments that happen online.

• 42:09Nick Bare?

  All these ridiculous, immature

• 42:15Nick Bare?

  battles that happen on social media and the internet and in the world. They are driven by arrogance, ego, and pride. It's destructive. Pride is your greatest enemy. Humility is your greatest friend.

• 42:32Nick Bare?

  You know, we were at the Pittsburgh Marathon, like I said, two weeks ago, and a gentleman walked up to me after we did the shakeout run.

• 42:42Nick Bare?

  You can either run

• 42:45Nick Bare?

  a 5K or a 10K, you know, 3.1 miles or 6.2 miles at the Pittsburgh Marathon kickoff run. And after we finished running, a gentleman came up to me and talked to me. And he asked me, in the most

• 43:06Nick Bare?

  honest and respectable way possible, said, "How do I give myself credit for what I deserve and what I have earned?"

• 43:16Nick Bare?

  And

• 43:19Nick Bare?

  you know, I saw my younger self in this gentleman as he was asking me this question. I'm working so hard and...

• 43:29Nick Bare?

  I don't give myself enough credit. Like, how do I give myself credit for what I deserve and what I've earned?

• 43:35Nick Bare?

  And I answered with, you don't.

• 43:41Nick Bare?

  And I believe it was coming from a very vulnerable and humble place, actually.

• 43:47Nick Bare?

  But the question was

• 43:52Nick Bare?

  driven by I should have an ego, I should be a little arrogant, I should be prideful in what I'm doing and what I've done.

• 44:04Nick Bare?

  So I answer with, you don't give yourself credit

• 44:09Nick Bare?

  for what you deserve and what you've earned. You just keep going.

• 44:15Nick Bare?

  Why do you want and need the credit?

• 44:18Nick Bare?

  Why do you require the validation?

• 44:22Nick Bare?

  Is it to feed your ego and your pride and your arrogance?

• 44:29Nick Bare?

  Yeah, give yourself a little pat on the back. Be proud of what you've done and what you've earned and where you're at. But keep going. Make yourself little, make yourself small. Because the cause, the purpose, the meaning, which is much larger, maybe that deserves some of the credit.

• 44:55Nick Bare?

  Let's put the credit towards the meaning and the purpose. And let's just keep working. Let's just keep doing it. Be proud, but eliminate the pride.

• 45:08Nick Bare?

  Pride is your greatest enemy. Humility is your greatest friend. In the fifth valuable life lesson I've learned in the last five years, the last one I'm going to discuss, a hurried and/or rushed life misses moments.

• 45:29Nick Bare?

  Man, I've messed this one up the most, probably out of all of them. And it was a hard lesson to learn. If someone was to ask me right now, what is the vision for your life? What do you want it to look like? What, what is an ideal day look like for Nick Bear? I would say a day where I'm not rushed and I'm not hurried. My schedule is full and productive.

• 46:00Nick Bare?

  But I'm not missing out on the moments.

• 46:03Nick Bare?

  I'm enjoying the process. That's the vision for my life and my days.

• 46:11Nick Bare?

  But if I think back to how I used to live five years ago and before that, it was hurried, it was rushed, it was get one thing done and on to the next. And I would skip out on conversations or these moments to connect with people or time with my family because I had to keep working. I had to keep driving forward. I had to, I had to go, go, go more, more, more. And I missed a lot of moments. Moments that I can't get back.

• 46:43Nick Bare?

  But I've learned from that.

• 46:46Nick Bare?

  I want a full life. I want a busy life. I want a productive life. I don't want a hurried life and I don't want a rushed life.

• 46:56Nick Bare?

  One of my favorite books, another one that I highly recommend by John Mark Comer is called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. This is a book that you should read every single year. The beginning of every year as just like a foundational principle in your life. As a reminder, slow down, work hard, but slow down.

• 47:22Nick Bare?

  In the book, John Mark Comer says, "Because what you give your attention to is the person you become." Put another way, "The mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to." "That bodes well for those apprentices of Jesus who give the bulk of their attention to Him and to all that is good, beautiful, and true in His world, but not for those who give their attention to the 24/7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama,

• 48:04Nick Bare?

  or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip and cultural drive. But again, we become what we give our attention to, for better or worse."

• 48:20Nick Bare?

  We're called to create margin in our life. Margin is the space between our load and our limits.

• 48:30Nick Bare?

  This spoke to me a lot when I came across this.

• 48:35Nick Bare?

  How do we slow down in life?

• 48:38Nick Bare?

  Create margin. Many of us live lives with little to no margin. The space between our load and our limits. We are looking at our days in terms of 24 hours, and we fill all 24 hours. If 24 hours is the limit, and you can control the load, if you fill your 24 hours being the limit with a 24-hour load, you have no margin left over. The margin is where you rest. It's where you recover.

• 49:16Nick Bare?

  We have to control the rhythms of our life and it's easier said than done. Because I'm not telling you I have this perfect, I don't. I'm still trying to figure this out. The rhythms of our life. It's a principle that I know that is harder to apply than to conceptualize. I'm just being honest there.

• 49:39Nick Bare?

  The rhythm of our life is the balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system is the fight or flight response. The parasympathetic nervous system is the rest and digest state.

• 49:55Nick Bare?

  When you're in the parasympathetic, you're at ease, you're calm, you're resting, you're recovering. One of the things I was just telling the BPN team here earlier this week.

• 50:06Nick Bare?

  I said, when you leave work after the day.

• 50:11Nick Bare?

  When you get home, you have to find a way to turn it off.

• 50:17Nick Bare?

  I don't want or expect you to be working 24/7. I don't want or expect your mind to be thinking about BPN 24/7. Because what ends up happening is that you don't actually rest and recover. And if you don't rest and recover, when you show up to work the next day. The hours and the work that you spend here are not productive. They're not effective, it's not your best work, it's not helping us. And I've seen it happen to so many people over the years where they don't find ways to turn it off. And they feel they have to keep it on all the time. And then they naturally start hating their work.

• 51:02Nick Bare?

  And become resentful towards the workplace and the people and the organization and the system. Because they didn't instill a healthy rhythm of rest and digest and recovery.

• 51:21Nick Bare?

  That comes down to the margin. We have to create boundaries and in place a margin, which is the space between our load and our limits. And what I think is a really important topic to touch on when we talk about the hurried and the rushed. I think many of us can can relate to what it feels like to be living in a hurried and rushed season of life.

• 51:53Nick Bare?

  And it feels like you're missing out on a lot of moments. Like you're there, but you're not there. Sometimes you're in zombie mode because it's from one thing to the next, the next, the next. And there's no margin. There's no margin between the load and the limit. And you end up being on autopilot. And I found myself here before. And this is why I share it. And I think it's really important. You know, I'm a fan of of planning and being proactive and prepared. And I'm a big fan of having rituals and habits.

• 52:32Nick Bare?

  I am.

• 52:35Nick Bare?

  I love my routines.

• 52:38Nick Bare?

  But a hard lesson I've learned over the last couple of years is that if you put your routines in front of your responsibilities, you're going to dishonor your responsibilities and your priorities and the people in your life.

• 52:54Nick Bare?

  So it has to be responsibilities over routines. Because if you're like me, routines feel really good.

• 53:04Nick Bare?

  Routines are comfortable and they're familiar and it allows us to get a lot done in a little amount of time.

• 53:14Nick Bare?

  Like for me, my morning routine, waking up at 4:30 and red lighting for 15 minutes and going for a run and coming back and making breakfast and getting my Bible reading done and catching up on emails and work before the kids and the family wakes up, that feels really good to me.

• 53:34Nick Bare?

  And sometimes I become so rigid and stuck to those routines that breaking those routines is actually harder for me than sticking to them. It's not, it's not hard for me to stick to those routines. The routine is comfort. It is familiar. It is predictable. But when we become over optimized and every part of our life has a routine, in a ritual, in a habit,

• 54:03Nick Bare?

  I think that's actually a more dangerous place to be. When we're over optimized.

• 54:13Nick Bare?

  Routines don't actually limit us by themselves. They limit us when they quietly turn into autopilot.

• 54:23Nick Bare?

  When we become zombies, we become autopiloted because our routines walk us through every part of our life. That's when it's a problem. That's when it limits us.

• 54:39Nick Bare?

  A few notes on routines.

• 54:42Nick Bare?

  I'm not saying routines are bad.

• 54:47Nick Bare?

  Routines can be great, but

• 54:51Nick Bare?

  if routines are placed over responsibilities and we find ourselves in autopilot, they can become bad. And they can lead to a hurried and rushed life where we actually stop living life itself and we're living for the routine.

• 55:09Nick Bare?

  Routines can trade awareness for efficiency. The brain loves routines because they save energy. Once something becomes habitual, the train stops evaluating it.

• 55:22Nick Bare?

  Routines can create identity cages. Over time, the routine becomes your self-concept. And once identity locks in, change feels unsafe.

• 55:36Nick Bare?

  Routines are good servants. I love this. Routines are good servants, but terrible masters. Structure is not the enemy, but unexamined structure is. Routines should be tools for growth, rails for discipline, and containers for focus. But when you don't regularly break them, they become cages, scripts, and spiritual sedation.

• 56:03Nick Bare?

  Spiritual sedation is what happens when your soul is awake enough to function, but not awake enough to feel, hear, or change. You're not dead. You're just numb. You're a zombie. It's a scary place to be.

• 56:20Nick Bare?

  You know, one of the books I'm reading right now, I reference a lot of books in these podcasts. I know I do. I read a lot of books, and I've read a lot of books over the years.

• 56:32Nick Bare?

  And sometimes you take a lot of weight from some, and sometimes you don't, but

• 56:39Nick Bare?

  I love reading. I do. And one of the books I'm reading right now is "The Energy Bus" by John Gordon.

• 56:51Nick Bare?

  And I'm enjoying it so far. And

• 56:56Nick Bare?

  in the book, they say, or he says, John says, "They asked a bunch of 95-year-olds, I don't know where they found them, Florida, I guess, but anyways, they asked them,

• 57:13Nick Bare?

  if they could do it all over again and live their life again, what would they do differently? And the three things that almost all of these 95-year-olds said were, number one, they would reflect more, enjoy more moments, more sunrises and sunsets, more moments of joy. Number two, they would take more risks and chances. Life is too short not to go for it. And number three, they would have left a legacy, something they would live on after they die."

• 57:57Nick Bare?

  This is all to avoid a hurried and rushed life. Because a hurried and rushed life misses moments. And one of the ways you experience the moments is by creating that margin. It is the space between our loads and our limits. Those are five valuable life lessons that I've personally experienced and learned in the last five years. And I hope it connects with you on some level.

• 58:27Nick Bare?

  And that you're able to experience these valuable life lessons as well. So I appreciate you guys. I love you. As always, go one more.