126: How Every Choice You Make is Predicting Your Success

In this episode, I'm covering the significance of daily choices and how they cumulatively shape our success. It emphasizes the power of consistency, self-awareness, and intentionality in achieving long-term goals. I'll also explore the challenges and strategies for maintaining discipline during disruptions, such as travel, and the importance of making proactive decisions that align with one's broader life objectives. CHAPTERS 01:00 The Power of Significant Life Choices 02:38 A Day in the Life: Travel and Podcast Recording 05:17 The Life-Changing Decision of 2014 10:23 Defining Success and the Role of Consistency 34:12 The Importance of Routine and Daily Choices 37:22 Travel Observations and Healthy Choices 55:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts PRE-ORDER MY UPCOMING BOOK HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://bpn.team/member 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?

  All right, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is titled, "How Every Choice You Make Predicts Your Success." And this topic came to me yesterday as I was traveling. I was traveling to Montana for a podcast with Andy Stumpf, the Cleared Hot Podcast.

• 0:33Nick Bare?

  And what I want to share today is just some of the things that I was thinking about, and why I believe I have achieved some of the things I have achieved in my lifetime up until this point. I'll be 35 years old this summer. This August, I'll be 35.

• 0:54Nick Bare?

  What's even crazier is my daughter is going to be three and my son is going to be one.

• 1:00Nick Bare?

  But our life as a whole, where we end up, what we accomplish, what we achieve,

• 1:09Nick Bare?

  our life is the sum of a ton of different choices.

• 1:15Nick Bare?

  Some of those choices are monumental, and they can literally shift the trajectory of our entire life.

• 1:26Nick Bare?

  Like the day that I founded Go On More, or the day that I decided to train for my first Ironman, or the day, the moment I decided that I wanted to join the US Army. Those are some of those significant life decisions that have literally changed the course of my life forever. When I die one day,

• 1:53Nick Bare?

  my life would have and will have looked significantly more different, for better or worse, if I would have made different decisions or made different choices along the way on some really big, needle-moving, significant...

• 2:17Nick Bare?

  Times and places. But there are other choices we make every single day that don't have the same significant impact. But it's the consistency of those choices that end up mattering a lot. The consistency in which we make decisions and choices. So yesterday, I landed in Montana. And I called an Uber, got in the Uber, and I took that Uber to the Black Rifle Coffee Company coffee shop.

• 2:55Nick Bare?

  Andy owns the Black Rifle Coffee Company shop in Kalispell, Montana. So I met him there before going to record the episode. And I'm making small talk with this Uber driver. And he's asking what I'm doing, where I'm traveling from. I explain, I'm coming in from Austin. It was a quick trip. It was a day trip. Literally, I flew in the morning and I flew back to Austin that same night. So my flight left yesterday morning out of Austin at 5:00 a.m.

• 3:36Nick Bare?

  I went from Austin to Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City to Kalispell. And then at 6:00 p.m., after we were done recording the episode, I flew from Kalispell to Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City, back to Austin, landed at 12:30 a.m., and got back to my house at about 1:45 a.m. and fell right to sleep. It was a long travel day. So I'm talking to this Uber driver. I'm explaining, I'm here for a few hours, literally, from Austin, Texas, to record a podcast.

• 4:14Nick Bare?

  And he goes, you're here just to record a podcast. You traveled all the way here for a few hours to record a podcast. He couldn't grasp just like what was going on in that moment. I'm like, yeah, it's, it's to have a conversation with this gentleman named Andy Stumpf, who was a former Navy SEAL, has this big podcast called Cleared Hot Podcast. I'm in the process of promoting my book titled Go On More that launches June 24th. I have this business, all of these things we're talking. And then he goes, what makes you so special and significant and unique to be doing a podcast with someone? And I thought

• 4:59Nick Bare?

  it was a great question. Who am I to spend the time, the money, the resources to travel

• 5:12Nick Bare?

  a long way to have a conversation, conversation with someone and record it?

• 5:18Nick Bare?

  And I answered, sir, in 2014, I picked up a camera and it changed my life forever.

• 5:29Nick Bare?

  And from there, we started talking and discussing and diving a little bit deeper into what that means. But that was a decision that I made in 2014 that changed my life forever.

• 5:46Nick Bare?

  Many of you guys know the story. And I'm not going to go deep into it, but in 2012, I started BPN out of my college apartment. And those first couple of years were tough. I told my dad I was going to make a million dollars in 2012. And he said, Nick, if it was that easy, everyone would do it. And then he proved me wrong, where that year one, I did $20,000 in revenue, year two, I did $20,000 in revenue, year three, I did $20,000 in revenue, far off, well far off from $1 million. And I had to learn the hard

• 6:25Nick Bare?

  way that it wasn't going to be easy. And generating seven figures in revenue was going to be extremely challenging. Little did I know, it was going to take five years until the brand crossed the seven figure revenue mark.

• 6:42Nick Bare?

  But in 2014,

• 6:45Nick Bare?

  after spending a year at Fort Benning, Georgia, and all of my training and getting stationed at Fort Hood, I had $500 left to my name. And I spent that $500 on a camera.

• 7:01Nick Bare?

  Because I realized with BPN, I had the supply. I had the product, which at the time was just flight or pre-workout. But there was no demand. It was my responsibility to generate and create the demand. I didn't have people that could help me. I didn't have money that I could put to work. I spent all my money on the inventory that I had. I had $500 left to my name. And I spent that money on a Canon T3I DSLR camera and a 50mm lens. And I started filming, documenting, editing, publishing, sharing everything on YouTube.

• 7:47Nick Bare?

  And it didn't take off right away. It took years to pay off. I'm still in that payoff period.

• 7:57Nick Bare?

  But that decision, that one decision,

• 8:02Nick Bare?

  changed my life forever. I would not be sitting here right now, recording this episode. I don't know if I'd be in Texas. Who knows if I'd be married to Steph? Who knows if I would have two little kids? I mean, who knows?

• 8:19Nick Bare?

  What I would be doing if I didn't make that one choice? If I didn't decide to go all in? That is the power of, the power and the responsibility of the choices we have.

• 8:35Nick Bare?

  When I realized that, it put a whole lot into perspective. Take, take one step back. Whatever you're doing right now, put down, take one step back, literally, physically, take one step back and just look big picture at your life.

• 8:53Nick Bare?

  Think about where you're at right now, what you're doing.

• 9:00Nick Bare?

  Where you were five, 10 years ago, where you thought you'd be right now and where you're heading in the future,

• 9:08Nick Bare?

  the only thing that's going to get you to where you want to be is the responsibility of choice, decision, and awareness.

• 9:20Nick Bare?

  There is so much power in our decisions, in our choices. And I think we go through life

• 9:28Nick Bare?

  on autopilot because we become very distracted. We become very busy in that we're blocking and tackling, and we're just reacting and making decisions on the fly that allow for and facilitate convenience and comfort and ease. But sometimes those decisions that we're making that facilitate that that convenience and comfort and ease, they are leading us far away from where we wanted to be

• 10:05Nick Bare?

  five years ago, looking 10, 15, 20 years in the future.

• 10:13Nick Bare?

  Every choice we make, every choice you make, every choice I make predicts our success.

• 10:23Nick Bare?

  I think we need to define success in the context of this discussion, this podcast, this conversation. Success is not the collection of things or the sum of your money. If you open up your bank account right now and you look at the digits that are in there,

• 10:43Nick Bare?

  that is not what I'm talking about. That is not the success that I am mentioning here. Success in this context

• 11:00Nick Bare?

  is achieving the things you say you want.

• 11:05Nick Bare?

  It is doing what you said you were going to do and then going and doing it. And it's resisting the temptations that come and keep you from accomplishing those said things.

• 11:19Nick Bare?

  That's the way we're describing success in this context. There's something you want to do, so then you go and do it. And if you do it, that is deemed, that is considered success. If you don't accomplish it through either failure, mistakes, misses, or you just give up or don't do it altogether, that is, in this context, considered unsuccessful.

• 11:48Nick Bare?

  So how do we increase the likelihood and predict our chances of success?

• 11:57Nick Bare?

  While doing things we said we were going to do? And how do we increase the likelihood of those things? It's being very consistent, it's working really hard, and it's making the right choices. It's choosing the right path. I mean, that requires a lot of self-awareness. It requires a lot of positioning yourself in a proactive state as opposed to a reactive state. It requires clarity and intentionality and looking into the future. I mean, forward-thinking and backwards-planning. I talk about that frequently and I have for a long time because

• 12:42Nick Bare?

  when you forward-think and then backwards-plan, you can make decisions that set you up for success and predict your future success because you're making choices, you're choosing things that increase your success

• 13:02Nick Bare?

  into the future, not what feels convenient, comfortable, and easy right now.

• 13:12Nick Bare?

  So yesterday,

• 13:15Nick Bare?

  as I was saying, I did podcast with Andy Stumpf.

• 13:20Nick Bare?

  And

• 13:24Nick Bare?

  it was a crazy day of travel.

• 13:28Nick Bare?

  And I often don't try to condense and squeeze my, my travel days into an out and back in the same day. But there's a lot going on right now.

• 13:42Nick Bare?

  You know, the, the business is in a really hyperactive growth phase, especially coming off of the Go One More Ultra a few weeks ago and the launch of GMM Sport Plus.

• 13:57Nick Bare?

  We have our annual summer sale coming up in a few weeks that we're preparing for. Heading to New York in less than two weeks to do a media tour for my book, Go One More. So I'll be on some podcasts and some TV shows and I'll be spending a few days in New York. I'll actually be speaking on June 24th at the Brand Formance Summit, uh, which is hosted by Google and YouTube. And I was asked by their team to come and speak

• 14:34Nick Bare?

  to be one of keynote speakers on behalf of a creator and a founder of a business, a brand that

• 14:45Nick Bare?

  grew that business and, and achieved levels of success

• 14:53Nick Bare?

  by documenting and sharing everything on YouTube. Building a brand, building a community, showcasing products.

• 15:03Nick Bare?

  I would have never been asked to come speak at the Brand Formance Summit in 2025 if I didn't pick up that camera in 2014.

• 15:20Nick Bare?

  Eleven years after, I mean, if you would have told me in 2014 when I was picking up a camera, my first camera, and I was so nervous and awkward and shy and embarrassed about holding a camera and filming myself and talking to it when no one else was around. It was a very uncomfortable chapter and season of my life. But if you would have told me back then that based off of the success of what I was about to do,

• 16:00Nick Bare?

  that YouTube and Google executives were going to ask me to come speak at a summit in front of 400 plus middle market executives from the fastest growing companies around the world. I would have said, "Not a chance, not a chance." When I picked up that camera for my first time, it wasn't this natural, organic, comfortable relationship between myself and this, this piece of machinery and technology where I'm, I'm speaking into it. I'm talking to it like it is a person.

• 16:45Nick Bare?

  When I speak into a camera now, I'm speaking into it

• 16:50Nick Bare?

  as if there are hundreds of thousands of people on the other side of it. And I'm speaking to people. I talked to a, a piece of plastic with circuit boards and wires and memory cards and hardware and software like it is a real person. But in 2014, it, it wasn't like that at all. My relationship between creating and editing and documenting was so awkward and uncomfortable. And I just think back to those early days and there was so much growth from those moments then to now.

• 17:32Nick Bare?

  But that's because I was just very ruthlessly consistent, learning how to refine my craft and my skill of documenting and storytelling.

• 17:48Nick Bare?

  And during my conversation with Andy yesterday, one of the things we ended up talking about, it was probably a two and a half hour conversation. It was a long conversation. It was a great conversation. We, we, you know, I've done a lot of podcasts over the years and some podcasts you go into and it is very black and white in terms of there is a interviewer and then there is an interviewee. Where there's a question asked and there's a response and there's a question asked and there's a response. And it's kind of cold and it feels very transactional. I've been a part of, I've been the interviewee

• 18:34Nick Bare?

  in many of those situations before. And to be honest, those are the worst. They're not fun. They feel scripted. You know exactly where the conversation is going to go. That was the opposite of what the podcast and conversation was like with Andy Stumpf. He's a great podcast host. I won't even call him an interviewer because it just felt like a conversation. Maybe it was two and a half hours. Maybe it wasn't. I really wasn't keeping track of time, but I believe based off of when we went in the studio and when I left, it was roughly around that amount of time, but it felt like it was 45 minutes. We covered so many different topics. He's really good at what he does.

• 19:16Nick Bare?

  And I have a lot of respect for people who are really good at what they do.

• 19:22Nick Bare?

  Because I know in most cases, they weren't always that good and it might feel and look like it is

• 19:32Nick Bare?

  very easy and just comes natural to them. But you know, on the other side, there have been years of refining a craft and skill to get to that, that point. Andy is extremely good at what he does in terms of the podcast space.

• 19:48Nick Bare?

  But we ended up talking about bucket list adventures. He asked me, do I have any bucket list adventures? And I went on to explain that I do, but I also don't because I'm so hyper focused on a few, a few things right now that these bucket list adventures that I will want to explore at some point in my life, they're not a priority right now. So I don't spend mental energy exploring them at all. So he asked the question, are there mountains you want to climb? Are there countries you want to visit? Are there these crazy adventures that you want to endure?

• 20:30Nick Bare?

  I was like, yeah, I think so, but not enough

• 20:37Nick Bare?

  to an extent that I spend a lot of mental energy or research on these things. Because I'm so focused on moving the needle in my life on a few select things right now. That is my business, that is my family, that is me showing up as a father and as a husband. There's my faith and taking care of my body, my health, my fitness, my diet, my nutrition, my recovery. But I did mention, I said,

• 21:15Nick Bare?

  at some point, at some point, I would love to get into some backcountry hunting. Kind of like Cam does, Cam Haynes. After having some conversations with Cam about hunting and his hunting experience, that seemed

• 21:34Nick Bare?

  very interesting. I could see myself at some point in my life really getting into hunting, especially like backcountry hunting experiences, like elk in the way that Cam hunts. You're stalking these animals for sometimes days. And then when you finally

• 21:57Nick Bare?

  take the life of that animal, you have to pack it out miles and miles and miles sometimes, which could take hours to get it back home safely, take care of the meat, take care of the animal and respect that entire process.

• 22:16Nick Bare?

  But I'm not exploring that right now. I'm not spending mental energy on it because I am not a dabbler.

• 22:25Nick Bare?

  And I never have been a dabbler. I'm not a really good dabbler.

• 22:30Nick Bare?

  And some people can dabble in a whole lot of different things. And what I will say to this is to each their own. I'm not saying what I do is the right way. I'm just saying this is the way that I approach life and my priorities and my focus. Maybe it works for you. Maybe you can relate to it. Maybe you don't relate to it all. And that's okay. That's completely okay. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying what I do.

• 22:57Nick Bare?

  I don't dabble. I'm not a good dabbler because when I find something that I enjoy and I'm passionate about and I want to learn more about, I go all in. And when I go all in on something, whether that's a new passion or an old passion, the result and the consequence is that I have to, by default, spend less time on other things in my life. Because I'm not going to just tinker and I'm not just going to dabble. I'm going to go all in. All the way in. For better or worse.

• 23:41Nick Bare?

  And me and Andy were talking about this for a little bit and he felt the same way. He agreed. And Andy's reason was because you can't dabble in hunting, especially backcountry hunting.

• 23:58Nick Bare?

  Because

• 24:00Nick Bare?

  one of the biggest reasons he pointed out, it is irresponsible.

• 24:06Nick Bare?

  Inhumane and unethical to the animals. If you're going out to kill an animal, take the life of an animal.

• 24:18Nick Bare?

  First off, you need to respect the process. Second off, you need to be skilled and proficient enough at your skill and craft to have an ethical, clean kill.

• 24:32Nick Bare?

  You don't want to shoot that animal in a part of the body that's not going to be a clean, fast kill.

• 24:41Nick Bare?

  Because you're just doing more harm to that animal. You're making it suffer. The intent of hunting is not to make an animal suffer. It is to kill that animal. So you can harvest the meat and share it with your family and celebrate the life of the animal that you killed. That is a responsibility we have. The things we decide to pursue, where we decide to spend our time, energy and money. That choice requires commitment and an appropriate amount of time that can be dedicated to the craft and skill.

• 25:21Nick Bare?

  That's the power of choice. That's the power of decision. I'm not just going to dip my toes into something and try it for a little bit irresponsibly. If I'm going to do something, and I think hunting is a perfect parallel example. Because there's a responsibility to do it ethically and to honor the life of an animal that you were trying to take down. I'm not just going to dip my toes in there. I'm going to go all in. You can only go all in on a select few things that your life, in your life, in a given time.

• 26:07Nick Bare?

  So if you make this bucket list, and this bucket list is 100 items. Again, to each their own, whatever works for you. But this is the way I approach it or think about it. If I have a bucket list of 100 items.

• 26:24Nick Bare?

  There's all of these other things that are going on in my life all the time outside of this bucket list. If I decide and I make the choice that I'm going to go pursue my bucket list over all other things, there's collateral damage and there's consequences to that. There will be sacrifices to other parts of my life, relationships and people. So maybe there's one, two, three bucket list items within a season or chapter of my life that I'm going after and planning for so that I'm not creating consequences and collateral damages to my other priorities in life. It's just one way to think about the power of choice.

• 27:08Nick Bare?

  Where we spend our time, what we pursue and how those choices predict our success.

• 27:19Nick Bare?

  Because if you say, all right, I wanna, I wanna set my family up for success for the foreseeable future. Say I have a wife, a few kids, a dog. A goal of mine is that I want to buy a house. I want financial freedom. I want my family to know they're taken care of and that my kids can go to a good school when they graduate high school one day. And if they plan to go to college, I can help support them. So that's what success looks like. It's accomplishing those things, those commitments that I say I want to achieve.

• 28:03Nick Bare?

  But in that process, in that pursuit,

• 28:07Nick Bare?

  there's this passion that sparks, these multiple passions, these bucket list items that you begin to pursue in the process. And your time, your money, your resources, your energy is redirected towards these bucket list passions. And you take your eye off the prize of what you're trying to achieve. True success as you defined it.

• 28:35Nick Bare?

  Five, 10, 15 years later, you knocked out all these bucket list items, but you didn't achieve the things you said you wanted to. You don't have financial security. You didn't save enough money to buy the house. You're not prepared to send your kids to school when they graduate.

• 28:54Nick Bare?

  That is unsuccessful. And it's unsuccessful because of the choices you decided to make along the way. Misguided, unfocused.

• 29:12Nick Bare?

  Success can be predicted, not just by the choices we make, but the consistency of the choices we make. I think one of the best things that Jeff Cunningham has ever said on this podcast or has ever told me, and Jeff has had a million amazing one-liners. Jeff is the king of one-liners.

• 29:33Nick Bare?

  When he was on the podcast a few years ago, and he said, "It's better to be consistently good rather than occasionally great." I'm not sure if Jeff was the first person to ever say that. And I'm sure it's been said before Jeff. But the way he was describing it, and at the time, around the context of marathon training, but it's so applicable to everything else we do, that clicked for me, and not only me, but so many other people that listen to this podcast and the content and Jeff and myself.

• 30:11Nick Bare?

  It's better to be consistently good rather than occasionally great. Our success can be predicted by the consistently good decisions we make day in and day out. I want to take a quick break in this episode to talk to you guys about my newest book launching June 24th, 2025, and that is Go One More.

• 30:40Nick Bare?

  And you can order this book, you can preorder on your favorite sites such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, any major book retailers. And I would greatly appreciate if you guys preordered it, but supported the book launch, like I've said, is June 24th, 2025. And this book is all about how Go One More, those three simple words have transformed and changed my life. But more importantly, how those three words have evolved for me over time. Where when I founded Go One More, it was built off the foundation and principles of just being in action.

• 31:21Nick Bare?

  And what I've learned over time is that Go One More is an outcome. It's an outcome that we can experience and achieve by making very intentional decisions that are provided and guided through clarity. So in this book, I share lessons and stories about how Go One More has evolved for me and how I show up every day making intentional, life-changing choices that guide me to the outcome of Go One More. So I would greatly appreciate your guys' support with this book launch through pre-orders and then purchasing the week of launch. Go One More, it's coming soon, available in hardcover, paperback,

• 32:06Nick Bare?

  and audiobook. So thank you, guys, and back to the episode. There are the ones that I referenced earlier on were the choice that I made to pick up a camera and start documenting my life. When I founded Go One More, when I decided to train for my first Ironman triathlon. There have been these decisions that I've made, and you will make as well along the way, that truly do shift the course of your entire life forever. They are significant. They are life-defining. They are revolutionary.

• 32:51Nick Bare?

  But that's not the everyday. Every day, we're not faced with these monumental decisions that are gonna shift the trajectory of the outcomes of our life and success. But every day, we have to make a ton of decisions, a ton of choices.

• 33:09Nick Bare?

  It is an individual responsibility to take ownership

• 33:15Nick Bare?

  of those decisions and be consistently good with each one of those decisions that gets us to where we want to be, to achieve the things we say we want to achieve.

• 33:31Nick Bare?

  To win, to succeed. That's how we get there.

• 33:41Nick Bare?

  You can spend a few days with someone,

• 33:45Nick Bare?

  just a few days. And you can watch their habits, you can watch their routine, and I guarantee you will, I know I can, predict how likely they are to achieve their commitments based off the way they make decisions in everyday life.

• 34:04Nick Bare?

  Not these big needle-moving decisions, but the small decisions in everyday life, because the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. This is why I run six to seven days a week.

• 34:19Nick Bare?

  When I wake up in the morning, and this is maybe why people cold plunge too, or have a morning routine. When I wake up in the morning, oftentimes, the last thing I want to do is go for a run. My alarm clock goes off 4:30 a.m. I roll out of bed, I go into the kitchen, I drink my G1M Sport Plus, my G1M Sport,

• 34:47Nick Bare?

  I give Nico a bottle, I put my shoes on, I go log my run. And I do that six to seven days a week. Because I know that that is a choice that I am responsible for.

• 35:05Nick Bare?

  And the way that I do one thing is the way that I do everything. And if I start my day off with making a choice and a decision that resists the temptation of falling into the habits of convenience, comfort and ease.

• 35:23Nick Bare?

  If I choose convenience, comfort and ease,

• 35:28Nick Bare?

  I will apply that same decision-making model to a lot of other things throughout my day, a lot of other things throughout my life.

• 35:36Nick Bare?

  That's the main reason I run almost every morning. Because that first choice, that first decision, sets a standard and it lays the foundation for everything I'm gonna do after that.

• 35:53Nick Bare?

  Meet someone who wakes up really early every single day

• 35:59Nick Bare?

  and goes and trains or goes and works and logs the hours, logs the miles, does the things that they know they need to do, not necessarily the things they know they want to do to achieve success. Find people that do that and you will be able to predict the likelihood of their success in the future. I promise you that. I promise you. The people that I know that wake up early every single morning and they go and train or they have a morning routine and they work and they put in true work,

• 36:43Nick Bare?

  whether that's literal or figurative miles, they achieve the things they say they're going to achieve in all aspects and areas of their life. You can predict their success. I'm not saying you can predict their financial outcomes and what their bank accounts say and how many commas are in there and what they drive and all of those things.

• 37:09Nick Bare?

  Because that's not the context of success in this conversation and discussion. But I can promise you that they are going to do the things they say they are going to do consistently.

• 37:22Nick Bare?

  I had some observations in the airport yesterday.

• 37:28Nick Bare?

  And this is not meant to be judgmental. It is purely observational. And it sparked a thought.

• 37:36Nick Bare?

  So I'm not judging.

• 37:39Nick Bare?

  Kind of judging. Not judging, assessing. Assessing and observing. Judging would not be Christ-like. So I don't want to use the word judging. I'm not judging. My question is,

• 37:57Nick Bare?

  how committed are you to making consistent choices every day, even when your routine might be slightly disrupted? I think this is when most people have a hard time

• 38:12Nick Bare?

  sticking to consistent choices and decisions. And they fall victim to the temptations that come along when their regular routine is disrupted. Travel is a clear example. See, I thrive in opportunities and moments when my regular routine is disrupted. Because that allows me to put a plan into action.

• 38:38Nick Bare?

  Every single day when I'm in my regular routine and maintenance,

• 38:44Nick Bare?

  there are a lot of decisions that I make that are not hard decisions, but they're almost autopilot decisions. And they're the right decisions because it works within my routine. It allows me to feel good, operate well, perform strong, sleep better. Mentally, I'm sharp. So I get into some of these things.

• 39:08Nick Bare?

  I'm just in autopilot when I'm in my regular routine. When my routine is disrupted, like yesterday when I was traveling all day. I have fun with that. That's where I'm like, oh, okay, now I gotta make a plan. And like, let's see how disrupted my routine can become and how resilient I am to adapting to a disruption in my routine. I almost gamify it.

• 39:35Nick Bare?

  But I'm walking in the airport

• 39:38Nick Bare?

  yesterday during my layover in Salt Lake City. And it was like 8:00 AM.

• 39:47Nick Bare?

  And I'm walking through the terminal and there's people

• 39:53Nick Bare?

  drinking beers and having cocktails at 8 a.m.

• 39:59Nick Bare?

  And I'm thinking, what, what are you doing? What do you do? I'm, I'm just thinking of, and trust me, I enjoy a good beer and a cocktail.

• 40:09Nick Bare?

  But it's at night when my day's responsibilities are over. And these people didn't look like they were on their way to vacation. They looked like they were on their way for work, travel and a business meeting. And a cocktail and a beer at 8 a.m. Is that the decision you should be making? That's going to increase your likelihood of success of accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish. There's a time and place. There's a time and place to, to celebrate. There's a time and place to

• 40:51Nick Bare?

  have some fun, let loose.

• 40:56Nick Bare?

  Make the convenient, comfortable, easy choices. There is a time and place. I, I respect that and I understand that. But there's also not a time and place. And I'm speaking to those moments, those times and places when we have to be making the right choices to honor our commitments to increase our likelihood of success.

• 41:24Nick Bare?

  As I'm walking through the terminal, there's all of these like convenience shops, like the Hudson Newses, right? They're, they're all over the place. And you walk in and there's bags of candy.

• 41:40Nick Bare?

  Everywhere. And my first thought was, well, just because it's here doesn't mean people are buying it. But if it's still hanging in there, it it's being purchased, it's being consumed. People are buying it and eating it and a lot of it. How awesome would it be? And there's this one.

• 42:00Nick Bare?

  You know, occasionally in airports, you'll find a gem. I think the Austin Airport has some really good food options. The San Francisco Airport, I was there a few years ago, I remember that, having some really good food options. Actually, the Detroit Airport. I want to say it's in like the Delta Terminal has this market called Plum Market that has really good options. You can get grilled chicken breast, grilled salmon. I don't know if I trust grilled salmon in an airport, but I bought it before and it was delicious. You can buy like salads and quinoa bowls and fruits and all this stuff in these plum markets. There are options there.

• 42:43Nick Bare?

  But sometimes you walk through airports and you're thinking, holy smokes, like, what can I eat? I went into Hudson News yesterday, looking for just a quick snack. And the only thing that was available that I wanted to buy there was some cartons of pineapple, just cut up pineapple, looking for some fruit. And it's sometimes really hard to find healthy food in an airport, which is typically why I will bring food with me.

• 43:16Nick Bare?

  But I'm just walking through the airport yesterday, just looking at all the poor choices people are making.

• 43:24Nick Bare?

  And you you you want to think that, well, this is just a rare occasion. This is the occasionally bad for most people. But I have to assume that that is the consistent choice that people are making every single day.

• 43:44Nick Bare?

  Now you might be listening to this thinking, you're not the person who goes to the airport on a regular Tuesday and drinks a beer at 8 a.m. while you're waiting for your flight. Or you're not grabbing a bag of Twizzlers, a bag of Sour Patch Kids, and a chocolate bar at the Hudson News with a soda before getting on your flight. That might not be you.

• 44:13Nick Bare?

  But if you all at your life, there might be some choices you're making on a regular and consistent basis that is holding you back from achieving the things you say you want to achieve.

• 44:26Nick Bare?

  You are holding yourself back. What can you change? What choices can you make differently that are going to predict a different likelihood of success? And what's holding you back? Like what, what, what decision and choice you making consistently right now? That is holding you back from the things that you want to achieve? Start by changing that. Like start right now by changing those things. That is an individual, personal responsibility. And until you fix that, you're not going to be able to fix anything else.

• 45:11Nick Bare?

  I was thinking about this yesterday when I was flying.

• 45:16Nick Bare?

  And as I was on the plane, I'm thinking, if, if I was given the choice, another choice here, if I was given the choice, and I'm curious to your guys' thoughts too.

• 45:32Nick Bare?

  Obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably eat healthy and you train hard. You do two of those things, like me. But what if someone told you you can only do one? You can either eat healthy or you can train hard. If you train hard, you can't eat healthy. And if you eat healthy, you can't train hard. Which, which one would you choose? I would choose to eat healthy.

• 46:01Nick Bare?

  Because.

• 46:04Nick Bare?

  When I'm dialed in with my diet and I'm eating healthy and I'm making the right choices, every other part of my life improves and gets better.

• 46:14Nick Bare?

  Outside of training as well, obviously, training gets better, but my sleep is better, my relationships are better, my mind is more clear, I have more focus, I have more energy, I have more fun.

• 46:29Nick Bare?

  And you can't out-train a bad diet.

• 46:35Nick Bare?

  Food, nutrition, has the ability to transform our life.

• 46:41Nick Bare?

  Short term and in the long term, has the ability to save our life. And there are days, like yesterday, where I didn't get the opportunity to train at all, which is pretty rare. It's rare for me to take a full off day. I'm either running or I'm lifting.

• 47:01Nick Bare?

  Sometimes not both in the same day, one or the other. But yesterday was one of those days because I woke up at 3:00 to be at the airport on time, a flight left at 5:00, didn't get back to the house until 1:45 a.m.

• 47:17Nick Bare?

  And it was, you know, two flights to get to Montana, got to Montana, full podcast day, went to the airport, two flights, home, no opportunity to train.

• 47:33Nick Bare?

  Which crushed me. But my diet was dialed in. As inconvenient as the day was in terms of travel, my diet was dialed. Here's the way that I approach it. Again, forward thinking, backwards planning.

• 47:54Nick Bare?

  Forward thinking and backwards planning. I had a plan going into yesterday before I even arrived to the airport. So yesterday was Tuesday. Monday night, I had a general overview plan for the way that I was going to eat the following day, so I could make the right choices, set myself up for success, and allocate the time that was required to make sure I can get the foods that I wanted to get. So here's the way I approached yesterday's diet while traveling.

• 48:31Nick Bare?

  In these circumstances, I eat when it's convenient and the food is available, not necessarily when I'm hungry. So I woke up at 3 a.m.

• 48:42Nick Bare?

  I was out at the door by 3:15. It was wake up, brush teeth, change, grab my stuff, go. So I prepared overnight oats the night before, knowing that the morning was going to be tight. So I did a half cup of old fashioned oats. I did a scoop of our chocolate whey protein, a scoop of our chocolate plant-based vegan protein. I mix those two together just because I like the consistency of both. The plant-based protein kind of thickens it up very nicely. I mix it all together with some milk and then I topped it with blueberries and pumpkin seeds. Threw that in the fridge Monday night.

• 49:25Nick Bare?

  So Tuesday morning, I had a spoon already laid out. I grabbed my bag, grabbed my overnight oats, grabbed my spoon, and hopped in the truck, drove to the airport. I didn't want to have to carry that food into the airport and eat when I was hungry. I was not hungry at 4 a.m. when I got to the airport, but again, I take the approach of eat when convenient and food is available, not when you're hungry while traveling. So I ate those overnight oats. I drank 20 ounces of water with my creatine, my electrolytes, took all my supplements,

• 50:06Nick Bare?

  my strong multi, strong omega and uh, strong omega and um, strong joints, multi omega and joints.

• 50:19Nick Bare?

  And then uh, my greens and reds.

• 50:23Nick Bare?

  So I consumed all that before going to the airport. And then all my layover between Salt Lake City and

• 50:33Nick Bare?

  well, my layover in Salt Lake City before going to Montana, Kalispell. I grabbed some pineapple at Hudson News. I got some, some fruit and a coffee. And then my plan was, okay, I did some research. There's a Chipotle really close to the airport. I can stop there on my way to meet up with Andy. So I had an Uber driver take me to Chipotle before going to meet Andy. Got dropped off. I did a bowl that was white rice, black beans, one serving of chicken, one serving of steak. Pico de gallo. That's it. Simple. I didn't need to add on

• 51:14Nick Bare?

  the guac, sour cream, cheese. I didn't need the tortilla, all that stuff. Just keep it simple. Rice, beans, meat, some salsa. And then I did a podcast with Andy. Uh, when I was in the Uber going to meet up with Andy, I was already researching where I was going to get my dinner before going back to the airport. So I found this really cool uh, like organic natural grocery store called Mountain Valley Foods in Kalispell, which was absolutely amazing. So as soon as the podcast was over, I Ubered to Mountain Valley Foods. I got

• 51:57Nick Bare?

  organic chicken breast. I got a quinoa and kale salad. I had a Greek salad and I got dried mango. It was so good. That food was really, really good. And I knew it was legit, legit. Because all of the organic dried fruits they had in the shelves didn't have like custom branding on it. It was packed up in Ziploc bags. And on it was written organic dried mango. That, that's all that was in it. It was like some of the best dried mango I've ever had in my life. But I had a plan. I had a plan going into yesterday. So that I mean, I had to eat my dinner at like a 4:30 PM.

• 52:41Nick Bare?

  I wasn't necessarily hungry at that time, but it's when it was most convenient. Food was available and I didn't want to have to eat.

• 52:51Nick Bare?

  While I was in the airport.

• 52:55Nick Bare?

  That was my approach to eating yesterday while traveling.

• 52:59Nick Bare?

  Because I made the choice. I made the decision that I wanted to stay on my diet. It required some planning. And I'm sure people are saying, all this preparation, planning and decision making. Sounds exhausting. Just live your life. Maybe you're right.

• 53:19Nick Bare?

  But if achieving the things. That you say you want to achieve matters to you. If you want to honor your commitments. This is how you do it. It works. It's necessary to achieve our commitments. And more than anything else, it is self-awareness. You don't have to always be on.

• 53:43Nick Bare?

  But you have to be aware of the decisions you make and the opportunity cost that comes. With the opposite decision.

• 53:52Nick Bare?

  When I'm out to dinner, for example. And I've described this before.

• 53:58Nick Bare?

  If it's not like a celebration dinner, it's just a regular business dinner. So many people fall into this habit, if you travel a lot for work. And you have to do a lot of business dinners. It's like you do. All the appetizers and then you get the steak. Covered in the. Compound butter and then you get the dessert and you have a few glasses of wine and a cocktail and. You're doing this three, four nights a week and yeah, it's fun. It tastes really good. It's enjoyable. But after a year, you realize you gained 30 pounds and it's. What did I change that I gained 30 pounds? Well, it's the choices you made. So when I go to dinner.

• 54:40Nick Bare?

  A work dinner, for example. It's not a big celebration. I forward think backwards plan and it takes seconds. I think really quickly, here's the menu.

• 54:53Nick Bare?

  Here's what sounds good. This burger sounds really good with the truffle fries and the aioli sauce. But here's this simple, simply prepared chicken dish with rice and broccoli on the side. For example, I quickly think in the future. Okay, I want to run tomorrow morning. I want this run to feel good. I have some meetings tomorrow morning. I want to be mentally and physically ready. What decision that I'm going to make right now is going to set me up for success tomorrow morning for these things.

• 55:25Nick Bare?

  It's not the burger fries and aioli sauce. It is the chicken, rice and side of veggies. Boom, that's my choice.

• 55:36Nick Bare?

  Forward think backwards plan. It takes literally seconds. It's not this massive pros and cons list and plugging all these things into my fitness pal and tracking the macros. No, it's the awareness to consistently make the right decisions when you know it's what you have to be doing.

• 55:59Nick Bare?

  That's what I wanted to share today.

• 56:03Nick Bare?

  There is so much power in this. And when you realize it and you harness it and you apply it, it will, yes, change your life, but it will increase your likelihood of success.

• 56:19Nick Bare?

  We all want to succeed.

• 56:22Nick Bare?

  We all want to accomplish the things that we say we want to accomplish and are going to accomplish. That is honoring our commitments. But that comes down to the personal responsibility.

• 56:35Nick Bare?

  Every choice we make, every choice you make, every choice I make predicts our success.

• 56:44Nick Bare?

  That's the episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. See you guys in the next one. And as always, go one more.