104: 6 Things to Stop Doing To Take Back Control of Your Life

In this podcast episode, I discuss six key things to stop doing in order to regain and take control of your life. Drawing from my own personal experiences and mistakes, I'll emphasize the importance of stopping certain behaviors that hinder personal growth and control. The six things highlighted include not waiting for change, avoiding assumptions, setting anti-goals alongside goals, distinguishing between busyness and productivity, seeking validation from external sources, and not letting others set the conditions of your life. These insights aim to help the listeners lead a more directed, productive, and fulfilling life. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview 00:48 The Importance of Doing Less 02:33 Acknowledging Life Circumstances 04:30 Stop Waiting for Change 11:32 Living Life on Autopilot 17:10 Stop Making Assumptions 29:18 Stop Making Assumptions and Start Asking Questions 29:59 Set Anti-Goals Before Setting Goals 33:18 The Importance of Family Time 39:15 Stop Being Busy and Start Being Productive 48:39 Seek Internal Validation, Not External 54:07 Take Control: Set Your Own Conditions 59:20 Conclusion: Six Steps to Take Control of Your Life MENTIONS: Half Time by Bob Buford https://www.amazon.com/Halftime-Significance-Bob-P-Buford/dp/0310344441 Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/pages/bpn-membership?srsltid=AfmBOorlpjVeag2kkt3eZ5UpWcFA5Bb2v5V_93lmO47Vn_Y8DRdLwDLL FOLLOW: 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.

• 0:00Nick Bare?

  I don't think that we should do things to prove other people wrong. For some, that works. Like, that can be your fuel. You're gonna be successful because you want to prove all the haters wrong. You're going to make this much money, you're gonna buy this house, you're gonna drive this car. That drives a lot of people. That does not drive me. The things that I want to do, the things that I want to accomplish, the objectives I want to pursue, it's not to prove others wrong. It's to prove to myself that I can, to prove myself right. There's a will, there's a vision for it, and now I just have to apply the action to actually do it. Prove yourself right. If the purpose behind what you do is to prove other people wrong,

• 0:41Nick Bare?

  it's to receive the validation from external sources, other people. You're living your life for others, for the acceptance, for the approval of others. Not to help them, not to benefit them, not to show gratitude or generosity. No, you're doing it for the acceptance, to conform to society's norms, not based off what you believe in, what you want. Stop doing things for the validation of other people.

• 1:17Nick Bare?

  What is going on, everyone? And welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is titled, "Stop Doing These Six Things to Take Control of Your Life." Six things to stop doing to potentially transform your life so that you are in the driver's seat. You're no longer a passenger in a car that you were picked up by through an Uber app, and you're just coasting to wherever that driver wants to take you. Now, you're in the driver's seat. Now, you are in control. But to be in control, you gotta stop doing these things.

• 2:04Nick Bare?

  I personally have made the mistake in the past where I thought in order to change my life, to improve, to get better, to take control, I had to add things on to. And I tried that before and I failed at it because I found that as I added more things on to my, my day, my routine, my schedule, there are more responsibilities, I had more obligations.

• 2:33Nick Bare?

  It made it harder to get things done within that window of time. And the things that I actually wanted to work on, the things that I actually needed to work on, I couldn't dedicate or commit the energy, the effort that I wanted to because I was trying to do too much. So I found that the solution, and I think we all know this, I always knew this, I just didn't take my own advice. What we have to do is do less, do more with less, stop doing some things.

• 3:06Nick Bare?

  I'm going to share six things that I think you could stop doing to take control of your life, six things that I have stopped doing that have changed my life. And a lot of these things that I share on the podcast, as you know, and as I've talked about before, the things that I'm sharing, the things that I'm talking about are things that I am personally going through, have experienced, am experiencing in real time, and I'm sharing, I'm documenting because the things that helped me, I want to help you. The things that have benefited me, I want to benefit you. And the mistakes that I have made, I want you to avoid.

• 3:50Nick Bare?

  And before I dive into any of these, I want to make it well known that I acknowledge, I truly acknowledge, there are life circumstances that prevent us from making immediate changes. Right now, it could be...

• 4:07Nick Bare?

  Financial constraints, it could be health constraints. You could just be in a situation in life where you can't make immediate change right now. And I acknowledge that.

• 4:20Nick Bare?

  But I also know that there are some people who position themselves as the victim when they are not the victim and blame why they haven't, why they can't, why they won't, why they shouldn't, because they are positioning themselves as the victim in a circumstance or a situation where they're not the victim.

• 4:46Nick Bare?

  So until you stop seeing yourself as the victim and playing that card to the world's problems, to your problems, to the problems of people around you, none of these six things that I'm about to talk about will make a difference.

• 5:02Nick Bare?

  Again, I acknowledge that some people are in very unfortunate circumstances. And I am sorry that you are in that circumstance or that situation. That might be very tragic and horrible. But for many of us, the situation we're in is not as bad as we think. And we're just positioning ourselves as a victim and not taking the responsibility, the accountability, the ownership to change our life, to control our life.

• 5:39Nick Bare?

  So here's six things I've stopped doing that have made a significant impact on me personally.

• 5:46Nick Bare?

  The first one is to stop waiting for change and start making a change. I was thinking about this on my run this past weekend. I had a 14 mile run. I'm currently in week two of marathon prep for Grandma's Marathon, which is in late June 2025. This is going to be a long marathon prep because as you know, and I've shared, I'm going for a 230 marathon, being coached by Jeff Cunningham. So we're in week two of prep right now. This past weekend, my long run on Saturday was 14 miles, 14 easy miles.

• 6:27Nick Bare?

  And I was thinking of this concept of stop waiting for change and start making change.

• 6:38Nick Bare?

  And if we look at life like a river or the sky

• 6:48Nick Bare?

  or the ocean.

• 6:51Nick Bare?

  And say, for example, you are a canoe. And you get placed into a river.

• 7:00Nick Bare?

  And you'll have an oar, you don't have anything to guide your direction. You get thrown into this river and you go with the flow. You are allowing the river to take you wherever it takes you. There are twists, there are turns, there are rapids, there are currents, there are obstacles, there's, there's rocks and there's dams. You might hit a dam and you get stuck and you get stuck forever. Because you can't physically maneuver your way out.

• 7:31Nick Bare?

  Or there's a fork in the river. And you want to go left because going left takes you to the final destination. But the current takes you right and you can't change direction, you can't do anything about it, it just takes you there.

• 7:47Nick Bare?

  Or if we think of the sky, like you throw a kite up in the air. That kite is going to go in whichever direction the wind is pulling it towards.

• 7:58Nick Bare?

  And you can't do much about it, the kite is just, it's just going with the flow. Or a sailboat in the ocean. Put a sailboat in the ocean.

• 8:09Nick Bare?

  You don't touch any of the controls.

• 8:14Nick Bare?

  You can't guide the ship, but you throw the sail up. And wherever that wind is blowing, it's going to take that sailboat.

• 8:23Nick Bare?

  If we just go with the flow and let life take us wherever we want, whenever we want, we're gonna end up wherever that river, wherever that wind, wherever that ocean takes us. We're not guiding the direction. We're not in control. We're not in the driver's seat. And if you're living life where you're just waiting for the change to happen because you're going with the flow, you don't know where you're gonna end up. That's a scary idea. That's a scary concept. You're just letting life take you wherever it takes you.

• 9:08Nick Bare?

  In five, 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now, you're 70, you're 80 years old, you're looking back at your life, you're thinking, how did I get here? Well, you got there because you let life take you there. You didn't step in. You didn't guide the vessel. You didn't direct the ship. You didn't, you didn't direct your life. You didn't start making change, the necessary and required change to guide and direct your life to where you wanted it to go. So because you just went with the flow, you ended up at some random place in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing.

• 9:51Nick Bare?

  Reflecting back on the journey, thinking, this isn't where I wanted to be. I thought that change would just happen naturally in my favor on its own, but it doesn't work that way. We have to stop. We have to guide. We have to redirect and we have to make the change. I just finished reading this book called Halftime by Bob Buford.

• 10:18Nick Bare?

  And I can't recommend this book enough. I mean, it came into my life at the perfect time. And it was dropped on my desk by one of BPN's newest employees, Taylor. She works in the warehouse. Her father gave her this book to give to me. She came to my office a week ago. She dropped off this book. It was a present from her father. And he said that because of the life experience that I recently went through, getting hit by that vehicle on my morning run, completely shifting my perspective, waking me up,

• 11:03Nick Bare?

  slowing me down, making me, forcing me to truly recognize what I have, what I should be grateful for and what I was unfortunately neglecting and not realizing the magnitude of awesomeness that I just had in my life. So Taylor drops off this book. I started reading it that same day and I read it straight through until I finished it. Halftime by Bob Buford. And it talks all about how in life we have, not all of us, but sometimes a lot of us have the opportunity to have two chapters.

• 11:48Nick Bare?

  And you can only live that second chapter if you go through a halftime experience. This halftime experience is self-awareness. It's questioning your drive, your motives, your incentives, your purpose, your why.

• 12:10Nick Bare?

  And he talks about in this book how the first chapter of your life, typically when you're younger, obviously, is focused on success. It's setting yourself up personally, professionally, financially.

• 12:26Nick Bare?

  And then you go through a halftime experience where you have the opportunity to live a second chapter. And that second chapter is no longer focused on success, but it's focused on significance. From success to significance.

• 12:43Nick Bare?

  And there's this quote in the book by Bob. And he says, "For the second half of life to be better than the first, you must make the choice to step outside of the safety of living on autopilot. You must wrestle with who you are, why you believe, what you profess to believe about your life, and what you do to provide meaning and structure to your daily activities and relationships."

• 13:14Nick Bare?

  Two key takeaways there for me. You must make the choice. You have to start making the change. Intentionally, like you have to consciously make the choice to step outside of the safety of living on, and here's the second part that I want to take away from this, autopilot. Don't live your life on autopilot. If you're living your life on autopilot, and I've been there, I've been living on autopilot before. And you're doing things because you have previously done them out of inertia, out of momentum, out of habit, out of routine.

• 13:54Nick Bare?

  You can be doing things that are very uncomfortable. You can be doing things that are really hard, really challenging, but because it's routine, because it's habit, it is comfortable. It is easy.

• 14:08Nick Bare?

  Living your life on autopilot, if I think of a vehicle on autopilot.

• 14:14Nick Bare?

  It has no thought process, it can't adapt. You can't change speed, you can't change direction. There's no response. It's just locked in. It's plugged in. There's one direction. There's one speed. And it's waiting for change. And that change could be something very abrupt that it hits. It could be an obstacle, it could be a wall, it could be anything. But the way to live life is to take that vehicle, take yourself off autopilot

• 14:52Nick Bare?

  and make the changes required before you hit that wall, before you hit that obstacle. Stop waiting for change, start making change. I'll never forget this lesson someone told me once before. And they said, and I think this was in response to, I was, this was years ago, years and years and years ago. And I was probably complaining about something that I was going through or, or part of my life. And someone said, if you don't like what you're doing, change it. And if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. See, like this lesson right here, this quote for me,

• 15:37Nick Bare?

  it eliminates the ability to put blame or responsibility on, on anything or, or anyone else. And the responsibility gets placed back on yourself because if you don't like what you're doing, change it. Yeah, but my life circumstances and my financial security and my family and my job and this and that. Okay, well, if, if you can't change it because of something that's happening in your life, then change the way you think about it. Shift your perspective. Start making that change. Because what good is it? Who benefits from you complaining or

• 16:21Nick Bare?

  hating something you're doing or the environment you're in or where you're living or the job you have or the things that you have to do? No one benefits from that energy. No one benefits from that pessimism. No one benefits, yourself included, from.

• 16:40Nick Bare?

  That attitude you have around the situation. So change what you think about it. Change your perspective. Find good in the bad.

• 16:49Nick Bare?

  Again, stop waiting for change to happen.

• 16:54Nick Bare?

  Because it could be years and years and years. It could be decades. It could never happen. Change could never come if you're just waiting for it. So make the change. Right now, if there's something you know or you want to change. And I'm sure you have a list of things, like write them down. What do you want to change in your life? What needs to change for you to, to achieve the things you want to accomplish? What do you want to change to be happier? What do you want to change to be more fulfilled? What do you want to change to be more passionate?

• 17:26Nick Bare?

  Do it. Right now, make the change. It's really hard. It's really uncomfortable. But if you want to, like Bob Buford says, if you, if you want the second half of life to be better than the first, you must make the choice to step outside of the safety of living on autopilot. Wrestle with who you are, why you believe what you profess to believe, and what you do to provide meaning and structure to your daily activities and relationships.

• 17:59Nick Bare?

  Okay, the second thing to stop doing. And I used to be horrible at this. Horrible.

• 18:08Nick Bare?

  And I still make mistakes. But I've learned from many mistakes. The second thing to stop doing is stop making assumptions. What are assumptions? Assumptions are preconceived notions about someone or something

• 18:28Nick Bare?

  formed without verification.

• 18:32Nick Bare?

  So first off, how do we, how do we solve this? How do we, how do we fix assumptions right off the bat? We fix making assumptions. We, we find solutions to problems with making assumptions by just more clear and open communication. It is the key. Clear and open communication is the key to overcoming the habit of making assumptions. And honestly, what I found is you will remove wrong, negative, incorrect assumptions by asking better questions, asking more questions,

• 19:13Nick Bare?

  asking better questions, be more clear, be more open. Practice candor. Candor is a beautiful thing and it goes both ways. Candor is not a monologue. Candor is a dialogue. Feedback is a dialogue. It is not one person talking to another person. It is a conversation. Ask better questions, seek clarification, receive verification and openly express thoughts and intentions. Assumption mistakes, I mean, just think of, of your life right now.

• 19:53Nick Bare?

  I can think of my life right now where I'm actively making assumptions around someone, a type of person, another business, someone in my business. The, the current status of some of our product sales based off market trends, what people are working on here in the business, what people aren't working on. It's so easy to make assumptions. You know, you see someone, for example, I'm sitting in my office

• 20:32Nick Bare?

  and my office here at BPN HQ has one wall of all windows and looks outside of the building. And the way that our business park is set up is that We are operating in three different buildings right now, based off of the growth of our, our brand the last couple of years. So our operations team,

• 20:57Nick Bare?

  our fulfillment, systems, customer service, customer experience, they are all in one building. Across the business park

• 21:08Nick Bare?

  is where the leadership team sits, warehousing, our gym, our content hub and studio. And then in the front of the business park is where our entire brand team sits.

• 21:25Nick Bare?

  So

• 21:27Nick Bare?

  we're really spread out across this big

• 21:31Nick Bare?

  business park. And what's awesome for training, for working out is there is this road that goes around the business park that is a perfect 800 meter route. So if you want to do a speed workout, if you want to add in some intervals as part of your, your workout, or your high rocks training, or your marathon prep, for example, we have a perfect 800 meter, fairly flat track route that wraps around HQ. And sometimes throughout the day, if it's really nice out, people will do laps, they will walk around the business park in that 800 meter loop.

• 22:14Nick Bare?

  And as I'm sitting in my office, I'll look out sometimes, I'll see someone walking around and I could easily, and I used to make the assumption that this person was slacking off. They were just going for a walk in the middle of the day. And I'd see them doing multiple loops and laps. And in my head, I'm thinking, this person doesn't realize, I see him. They're just walking around, they're just escaping work right now. They're slacking. What are we paying these people for?

• 22:45Nick Bare?

  And then you have the conversations with these people and you realize they're on a call. They are listening into a meeting. They are thinking creatively about a project they're working on right now. They had to just get out of the office for a little bit to think more deeply. They're working, but the assumption made is that they were slacking off because I didn't ask the critical questions. I didn't seek clarification. I had a preconceived notion formed without verification. And if you allow assumptions to build and build and build in your mind,

• 23:25Nick Bare?

  they can turn into resentment, they can turn into disruption, they can be a distraction. You can form these negative thoughts around other people or other things because you never receive clarification or verification. Assumptions are made when you don't understand the how, the why, the what. People are doing things or you're assuming without context, without understanding the task, the condition, the standard, or the timeline. They got an example here of how making assumptions, I mean, there's so many different ways that making assumptions can just

• 24:09Nick Bare?

  erode your life. I mean, they like, if you allow assumptions to start in your mind, they can amplify into this big festering problem that just occupies so much of your mind, so much of your brain. And you could solve so many problems, you could create so much more mental capacity and bandwidth by just asking more questions, asking better questions to receive clarification, verification. The example I wrote down here is,

• 24:52Nick Bare?

  you know, like right now I'm building out Bear Ranch. Bear Ranch has been something I've wanted to build out for years now. I mean, I have literally walked dozens of ranches over the last five, six years.

• 25:11Nick Bare?

  In hopes of finding the perfect property to build out this ranch. It's always been a dream.

• 25:18Nick Bare?

  And we finally found the perfect location. It's 240 acres. It's 20 minutes from my house. There is the home on there that we are currently remodeling. We're building a barn gym. We're gonna eventually have animals out there. We're hosting races there, like the Go One More Ultra Marathon that we're hosting in May will be hosted on Bear Ranch. So it's this project that I'm going to be building out over the next couple of years on 240 acres of beautiful central Texas hill country land. It's filled with huge oak trees and pastures.

• 25:59Nick Bare?

  It's it's had grass fed cattle operations on that property for years before I occupied it. And I truly view this land as a place to gather and celebrate, bring people together. I do feel like I've been I've been called to find a piece of property and build it out, not just for my own use, my family's use, but to bring people together.

• 26:27Nick Bare?

  And for fellowship and mentorship and connecting on like a really intimate, deep, meaningful level. I feel called to this property to to do this.

• 26:45Nick Bare?

  And as I'm building out Bear Ranch, the first project that we're undertaking with our general contractor, who we're working with Billy Russo, is one, we're remodeling the house that's on the property. And two, we're building out this this beautiful barn gym. It is 2,400 square feet. It's 60 by 40. We gotta lay a a concrete foundation. And then over the next couple of months, we'll build out this barn gym. And we're going to take all the existing gym equipment that's in BP and HQ gym right now, move it over there, because when we move into our new HQ in April, we're building out a new gym with new equipment partnering with Play.

• 27:33Nick Bare?

  And when I first went to Billy, I sent him these images of my vision for what the barn would look like. I sent these images over, a bunch of different pictures. I said, this is what I'm envisioning. This is what I wanted to look like. Let's build it. And he came back to me, we had a meeting, and he had two pages worth of questions, very in-depth, very detailed.

• 28:03Nick Bare?

  All these questions from how much do I want the the foundation to extend past the entrance in the garage doors of the barn? What kind of wood? What color wood? What kind of brackets? What do I want the garage doors look like? What do I envision putting equipment so we can move beams around? How high do I need the ceilings? What do I want the lights positioned?

• 28:33Nick Bare?

  All these different questions. Like I said, two pages of questions. And at first I was like, oh my gosh, man, like, just just take the vision of these photos that I sent over and just like, let's just build this. But you know what would have happened if I just would have said, go build this barn based off these images? When the barn was done, I probably would have looked at and said, well, why didn't we? Why did we use this wood? Why didn't we use a different kind of wood? Why are the brackets this color, but the hardware on these doors is this color? Why are the lights 12 inches in diameter, but they're 10 inches in diameter?

• 29:14Nick Bare?

  Well, it's because I assumed that someone would read my mind. We assume in life that people are reading our minds. They are in our brains, and they can visualize exactly what we visualize.

• 29:26Nick Bare?

  They know exactly what we want. They know exactly what we expect. Everything is aligned from intentions, to perceptions, to opinions, to ideas, to wants, to needs, to all the things. People can't read our minds.

• 29:44Nick Bare?

  People can't assume,

• 29:48Nick Bare?

  or we can't assume that people know exactly what we want and what we need. So the way that we get around this, that we solve assumption problems and mistakes is by asking more questions, more meaningful questions. We have to get better at asking questions and stop making assumptions that people can read our minds, that people know exactly what needs to be done, that people have the same values and intentions and ideas and opinions as us. Because chances are, they don't. When you stop making assumptions about how something is going to be done,

• 30:27Nick Bare?

  about what someone's intentions are, about people, things, ideas in general, stop making assumptions and start asking more questions. It will significantly

• 30:43Nick Bare?

  improve the meaning of our life and allow us to take more control of our life. Before we continue with this episode, I want to take a quick break to talk about BPN's new free membership program we just launched. And by signing up for our membership program, you unlock a massive amount of benefits. And all you have to do to sign up is opt into our SMS program. That's it. When you opt into our SMS program, you unlock 20% off subscriptions for life. There are subscriber-only free shipping windows and flash sales. You get access to exclusive apparel and hat drops. And all you have to do to get started is go to bpnsubs.com,

• 31:28Nick Bare?

  follow the neon green banners, opt into SMS, and you are officially a BPN member. I think the best part about this membership program is the 20% off subscriptions for life. Because for a lot of people, myself included, these products work, our training works, our diet works when we are consistently good, as opposed to occasionally great.

• 31:56Nick Bare?

  And by offering 20% off subscriptions for life for these great products to you guys, you can be more consistent, you can reach your goals and truly achieve your full potential by maximizing consistency in your supplement routine, your training and your diet. So head over to bpnsubs.com to get started today and take advantage of this opportunity to become a BPN member.

• 32:26Nick Bare?

  Number three, stop setting goals without setting the anti-goals. So I recently had Sahil Bloom on the podcast and that episode is actually coming out after this episode because we're releasing that episode closer to when his book launches and his new book is titled, The Five Types of Wealth. And this whole concept actually is something that I've been practicing for quite some time now, but the way that Sahil explains it, I think puts like a really nice bow on top of it and he calls them anti-goals.

• 33:06Nick Bare?

  And anti-goals are these things that we aren't willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of our goals.

• 33:19Nick Bare?

  So say for example, like we sit down at a table and regardless of what else we have going on in our life, our other responsibilities, our other obligations.

• 33:31Nick Bare?

  We make this list of goals, the things that we want to accomplish.

• 33:36Nick Bare?

  And you dream big. It's like, I want to, I want my business to make X amount of money with X amount of profits. I want to run a 230 marathon. I want to complete my first Ironman. I want to climb Mount Everest. You just start making like this bucket list items of, of goals that you want to accomplish. Really big, ambitious, bold goals.

• 34:08Nick Bare?

  But what typically happens that, and I've, I've, trust me, I have made this mistake way too many times. Set these big goals and I go out and accomplish them and those big goals, whether you want to recognize it or not, whether I've wanted to recognize it or not, they, they come with sacrifices and collateral damage. And typically that collateral damage comes at the expense of parts of your life that are really important and meaningful. Clear example. I've set really big fitness goals before and I've bit off more than I can chew in terms of stacking multiple fitness goals and business goals, personal and professional

• 34:53Nick Bare?

  goals in a small amount of time.

• 34:56Nick Bare?

  And I go and start pursuing these goals. And I realize I've bit off more than I can chew and I am forced to sacrifice time, but specifically like the, the quality of time with my wife, with my kids, with my friends, on my business. And it has collateral damage. So before we go and set our goals, we can't set goals, we shouldn't stop, we shouldn't set goals before we set our anti-goals. So stop setting goals without setting the anti-goals first. The anti-goal

• 35:37Nick Bare?

  is where you first establish, okay, what am I not willing to sacrifice? I am not willing to sacrifice like I'll, I'll, for me like right now,

• 35:49Nick Bare?

  I am not willing to sacrifice one, like the time that I spend, consistent time that I spend with my family. But more importantly, like the energy that I have, the vitality that I have when I'm with my family. Like if, if my family gets the, the scraps, the end of the night where I'm dead tired, there's nothing left, my brain is mush. But they get two hours of me at the end of the night. But I'm just on autopilot in zombie mode. That's not the, the time that I want to give to my family. I want to give my family the, the best of me.

• 36:30Nick Bare?

  So for me,

• 36:33Nick Bare?

  I want to be with my family when they wake up. That's why I wake up extra early to knock out my run. I'm done running before they are up. And I'm at home with my wife, with my kids, to help with breakfast, to help them get ready for the day, to set the conditions that everyone starts the day off on the right foot.

• 36:55Nick Bare?

  That's a priority for me.

• 36:58Nick Bare?

  I, I, I need to have that. I want to have that. And I want to be home as much as possible in the evening after work is over to help with my kids down at night, to spend some quality time with my wife. I want to sit down at the dinner table and eat a meal together. And on the weekends, I want to spend as much time with them as possible. That is a huge focus of mine right now. I have two young kids. My daughter is almost two and a half years old. My son just turned five months old. So now when I go to set my goals, I will set my goals based off of my anti-goals. Like right now is probably not the season of life for me to pursue an Ironman triathlon because I know

• 37:41Nick Bare?

  how much time and energy goes into that training.

• 37:47Nick Bare?

  There are certain business objectives that I'm going to chase down and pursue. But there's certain ones that I'm not going to that require excessive amounts of travel during the week or the weekends because I want to spend the mornings and the evenings with my family. I want to be there for dinner. I'm only going to go to a few business dinners a month. Because when I'm gone too much during the week and in the evenings, I know what kind of stress and pressure that puts on my wife with two young kids.

• 38:23Nick Bare?

  So I'm going to set my goals after I set my anti-goals. Because in the pursuit of your goals, what aren't you willing to sacrifice?

• 38:34Nick Bare?

  It's going to look different for everyone.

• 38:38Nick Bare?

  You know, maybe for you, an anti-goal is that you are not willing to sacrifice your, your physical.

• 38:47Nick Bare?

  Health and wellness, eating quality food, healthy quality food and working out daily, consistently, that's an anti-goal for you, meaning you are not willing to sacrifice that in pursuit of your goals. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, I know a lot of professionals who will set this big goal professionally and they will be a hard charger to go after it, but in that pursuit, they're eating all their meals at fast food, they're picking up Mickey D's, they are skipping the gym, they're not working out, they're not sleeping.

• 39:27Nick Bare?

  So yeah, they achieve this big professional ambitious goal, but in the pursuit, because they didn't establish anti-goals, they neglected their health, their physical fitness. You have to be honest with yourself when you're setting up your anti-goals. And this is honestly a mistake, again, that I made early on is I set up my anti-goals based off of what I thought I should say that I wasn't willing to sacrifice. But when it came down to it, what am I, what am I, what are you actually not willing to sacrifice?

• 40:08Nick Bare?

  Be honest with yourself, really honest with yourself, brutally honest with yourself. Use this goal to visualize what you want your life to look like and what you don't want it to look like. In the conversation with Sahil last week, he asked me this question, which is a common popular question, but maybe now with two younger kids, it cut a little bit deeper. He said, "Do you know who's going to remember how much you worked the most as you were building your business, as you were building your career? It's not your

• 40:50Nick Bare?

  employees, it's not your team members, it's not your boss, it's your family. Your family's going to remember how much you worked and how much you were gone because you weren't with them."

• 41:04Nick Bare?

  So first, set up your anti-goals and then set your goals. The fourth thing to stop doing is stop being busy.

• 41:18Nick Bare?

  There's a difference between being busy and being productive. Many of us know this.

• 41:25Nick Bare?

  But it feels very rewarding when we fill our calendar. Now, when you're really busy,

• 41:38Nick Bare?

  from the outside looking in,

• 41:43Nick Bare?

  it almost seems like you're really successful. I was listening to this podcast last week, and they were talking about how, you know, when you go to a

• 41:55Nick Bare?

  a business dinner, or happy hour, or cocktail party that is networking focused of professionals in your space, in your industry, someone will ask, "Hey, how you doing?" And the other person responds with, "Oh, great, busy, really busy, but you know, really good. It's good." And sometimes like that, that comment is throwing in, "I'm busy",

• 42:25Nick Bare?

  is a way for someone to say, "I'm successful. I'm doing well because I'm busy."

• 42:35Nick Bare?

  Busy isn't the goal.

• 42:38Nick Bare?

  Busy isn't the North Star.

• 42:42Nick Bare?

  Productive is.

• 42:45Nick Bare?

  Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors when it comes to entrepreneurship and just being a very intentional

• 42:55Nick Bare?

  entrepreneur, author, leader. And I love Seth Godin's blog on his website. It's very simple, it's very effective, it's very clear. It doesn't have any of the fluff or unnecessary stuff. It's very straight to the point. And he had this blog post on January 7th of 2025, so just a few days ago from this recording. And it was titled, "Busyness and Leverage."

• 43:27Nick Bare?

  I'll read a few lines from this blog, not the whole thing, but as Seth says in this article, "Busy is a morally superior distraction."

• 43:40Nick Bare?

  Busy gets us off the hook. Busy is a great place to hide. I love that. Busy is a great place to hide. That's so true. So true.

• 43:51Nick Bare?

  On the other hand, productive can be scary. When you're buying someone else's skill and time, you're making a different sort of commitment. Your job might not be to do your job. Your job might be to make the decisions and commitments needed to lead other people to do your job. The calculation is simple. If the project is worth doing, what's the most direct, cheapest, and fastest way to get it done? Well, there's nothing wrong with hiring yourself to do things that you enjoy, and it's imperative that you embrace leverage to get projects done. You produce work you're proud of.

• 44:35Nick Bare?

  But my guess is that most of us settle for a pattern of leverage that we're used to, a pace that we've become accustomed to, a day filled with tasks we think we're good at. If you're serious about the project, it's time to give yourself a promotion and to hire yourself to do work that's yours and yours alone to contribute. It's also certain that there's someone cheaper, faster, and yes, better at the work than you are.

• 45:08Nick Bare?

  Busy is a morally superior distraction. Busy gets us off the hook. Busy is a great place to hide.

• 45:16Nick Bare?

  I think sometimes we, we keep ourselves busy. We fill our calendar with things.

• 45:24Nick Bare?

  Because it allows us to hide from the things that we really should be working on and towards. Those things are probably more challenging. They're harder. They're uncomfortable. And one of the ways that you stop being busy and you start becoming more productive, as Seth says here, is you start leveraging what you're good at, what you should be doing, what you want to do, but then what you could delegate or hire someone else to do.

• 45:59Nick Bare?

  I mean, that, that is truly, I guess I'll call it a skill that I have worked on for quite some time now, for years, and it has opened up my schedule significantly, where I'm really not that busy. I am really focused on things that I'm working towards. I'm trying to work on and solve these bigger, complex problems or ideas. And don't get me wrong, earlier on in the day when I first started BPN, I had to do everything and anything because I couldn't afford to hire anyone else to, to help me. I had to do everything.

• 46:44Nick Bare?

  I was forced to. I had no other choice. But over the years, as I've, I've built my business and hired more people, and I've learned the power of delegation and handing off responsibility, and honestly, hiring people who are much better at parts of the business than I am or ever will be. So there's no reason that I should even be spending my time learning that part of the business because I'll never be as good as some of our employees are at what they do.

• 47:14Nick Bare?

  And learning how to delegate and hire and outsource and empower others to help me build what we're building. It has opened up so much time for me to actually be productive with my time. And if there's a skill that I want to learn, if there's something that I want to do because I enjoy it, even though I might not be the best at it, it might take me longer than someone else can. Financially, it makes no sense, but I enjoy it. Well, that's still a win for me personally, because I get a lot of fulfillment out of it.

• 47:57Nick Bare?

  But in the pursuit of trying to be busy, because it makes you feel more successful, or you think it's more impressive to other people around you, like, look at my calendar. Look how full it is.

• 48:12Nick Bare?

  That is not the win. I actually, I heard this, I was listening to this Alex from OZ podcast a few weeks ago. And I have not been able to get this like story out of my head. Cause it really just, it called to me. So he was, um, I think he was here in Austin, Texas, actually. And he was looking at some either properties to invest in, or he's working on a project with someone. And he started sparking up a conversation with someone who was with him on this, this site. And this individual was trying to get Alex to come on his podcast.

• 48:55Nick Bare?

  And all day, he's like, he's, he's begging, he's pestering, he's asking, come on, man, like, just give me 60 minutes, just give me 45 minutes, just give me 30 minutes, just give me 20 minutes. A quick episode, just want you to come on the podcast. And Alex pulls out his, his phone, he pulls up his calendar. And he says, you see my calendar? There's nothing on it today. And I want to keep it that way.

• 49:21Nick Bare?

  And it was not by any means a way of him saying like, "You don't deserve my time." But he was very productive or protective of his time. He was able to have a calendar that was empty because he didn't pursue busyness. His goal wasn't to fill his calendar from the time he woke up every morning to the time he went to sleep. He's able to think on and work on these big initiatives and ideas and projects because he's not jumping from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next.

• 49:57Nick Bare?

  That openness, that lack of busyness allows him to be so productive and maximize the things that he's working on.

• 50:06Nick Bare?

  And he understands how protecting that, how prioritizing that, how meaningful that is. So stop being busy because busy is not the answer. It is not the goal. Number five. Stop doing things for the validation from external sources, being other people. You got a James Clear quote here that I thought was perfect.

• 50:33Nick Bare?

  And James Clear says, "Most people don't want accurate information. They want validating information. Growth requires you to be open to unlearning ideas that previously served you."

• 50:48Nick Bare?

  Growth requires you to be open to unlearning ideas that previously served you.

• 50:56Nick Bare?

  Stop doing things for the validation from external sources. Stop doing things for the validation of other people. Stop doing things for other people.

• 51:07Nick Bare?

  Stop doing things for other people. That sounds horrible, doesn't it? Stop doing things. You could like refine this. Stop doing things for the validation from external sources. Stop doing things for the validation of other people. Stop doing things for other people. Stop doing things for people. Oh, that's brutal. That's rough, right? No. This does not mean stop doing acts of service for others.

• 51:35Nick Bare?

  This doesn't mean stop showing gratitude to others. This doesn't mean stop helping others or impacting others. Stop doing things to please other people. So you feel better about yourself because you're doing it for the praise, the validation.

• 52:01Nick Bare?

  External validation is an unhealthy dependency. And honestly, with the rise of social media, it is a crutch for people who depend on external validation for their identity. It's a vanity metric game.

• 52:24Nick Bare?

  I think how pretty disgusting and sad it is that social media is used to validate how important we are based off of followers, off of likes, off of comments, off praises. And the opposite is, comes from haters and criticism and negative feedback.

• 52:50Nick Bare?

  And social media has created extremely unhealthy dependency on external validation.

• 53:00Nick Bare?

  And a few years ago, I guess it was probably two years ago now, we launched this brand campaign called Prove Yourself Right.

• 53:09Nick Bare?

  The entire concept of Prove Yourself Right was for this reason and this reason only.

• 53:19Nick Bare?

  I don't think that we should do things to prove other people wrong. For some, that works. Like, that can be your fuel. That can be your drive. Like, you are... You're gonna be successful because you want to prove all the haters wrong. You're going to make this much money, you're gonna buy this house, you're gonna drive this car, you're gonna wear this watch because you're gonna prove all the people wrong that said you couldn't, you wouldn't, you shouldn't. That drives a lot of people. But I will tell you, like, that does not drive me. The things that I want to do, the things that I want to accomplish,

• 54:00Nick Bare?

  the objectives I want to pursue and chase down and mark off, it's not to prove others wrong. It's to prove to myself that I can, that I would, that I will, to prove myself right. There's a will, there's a vision for it, and now I just have to apply the action to actually do it. Prove yourself right.

• 54:25Nick Bare?

  I wrote down this quote

• 54:29Nick Bare?

  that I am going to remember, I want you to remember. And it's that "A chip on your shoulder can provide an edge, but it can't provide the purpose." If someone says you can't do something, it might give you a little bit of an edge, it might give you a little bit of drive to say, "Okay, watch me."

• 54:52Nick Bare?

  That might add a little fuel to the fire. A chip on your shoulder can provide the edge, but it can't provide the purpose. If the purpose behind what you do is to prove other people wrong, it's to receive the validation from external sources, other people, you're living your life for others, for the acceptance, for the approval of others. Not to help them, not to benefit them, not to show gratitude or generosity. No. You're doing it for the acceptance,

• 55:30Nick Bare?

  to conform to society's norms, not based off what you believe in, what you want.

• 55:39Nick Bare?

  Stop doing things for the validation of other people.

• 55:46Nick Bare?

  And the last thing to stop doing

• 55:50Nick Bare?

  to take control of your life

• 55:54Nick Bare?

  is to stop allowing others to set the conditions. And this is similar to the way we started this. Stop waiting for change, start making change.

• 56:06Nick Bare?

  This one's a little different. So here's here's a story to paint a picture for what this means. Stop allowing others to set the conditions.

• 56:19Nick Bare?

  We are responsible for much of the direction and speed of our life. That is what we are in control of. The direction and the speed.

• 56:32Nick Bare?

  Speed at which we operate, we move, we make changes. And we're directly responsible for the direction.

• 56:42Nick Bare?

  A few years ago, we were living in a house that we're no longer living in. It was right before we moved to Nashville and we were building a pool. And this pool project took 18 months. Much longer than it should have or needed to. We hired a pool builder

• 57:01Nick Bare?

  who was a contractor. And I just assumed that they had everything in-house. But what I came to learn much later than I wish I wouldn't have is that they had no one working in-house for them. It was like a skeleton crew of a company. And they would hire subcontractors for every part of the job. So the reason this pool project took 18 months is because well, first, this company that we hired would reach out to the subcontractor to do the first part of the job. And we were waiting on their timeline. So if they had four other projects in the queue, they couldn't get started for three weeks. Nothing was getting done for three weeks. And then they go do their part of the job.

• 57:47Nick Bare?

  And then, once that was done, the company would go hire a new set of subcontractors to do the next part of the job. But they had eight pools in the queue and they couldn't start for another six weeks. So the pool would sit with no one working on it for six weeks. And then the next crew would come out and get started. And so on and so forth for 18 months until this pool was completed. There were weeks, there were months, literally months where no one was working on this pool project. Because we were allowing other people, this company, these subcontractors, to set the conditions for the speed at which we operated.

• 58:33Nick Bare?

  And as long as you do this, you are not in control. You are not in the driver's seat. That is living your life as if you were an Uber passenger

• 58:47Nick Bare?

  going on a roulette trip of not knowing where you're going, how you're getting there, at what speed. You just hop into a random Uber. Say you're leaving a concert one night. You hop in a random Uber. It wasn't your Uber, just some random Uber of, of some other random person trying to get home from this concert. You just hop in. You don't know where you're going. You don't know how you're getting there. You don't know how long it's gonna take, at what speed, at what direction, nothing. If you want to live your life like that, that's one option. It's a really dangerous way to live.

• 59:29Nick Bare?

  Who knows where you're gonna end up? I mean, you could, you could have hopped in an Uber in Colorado and ended up in California a few days later, for all you know. Or you can be the driver.

• 59:43Nick Bare?

  I want to be the driver. I want to set the conditions.

• 59:48Nick Bare?

  I want to control the direction and the speed as much as possible.

• 59:55Nick Bare?

  When you allow others to set the conditions, you can't do X until they do Y.

• 1:00:01Nick Bare?

  It's gonna take a long time. And sometimes by the time you get there, the direction is so off course because you've had to make sacrifices along the way based off of changes in speed that it's so far off from what you expected or assumed it was going to be that it wasn't worth it. But if you're going to be the driver, a driver requires direction, a driver requires competency and skills. A driver requires tools and resources. A driver requires motivation to get from point A to point B.

• 1:00:44Nick Bare?

  And a driver requires a timeline. Put yourself in the driver's seat. Control the speed and the direction and stop allowing others to set the conditions for what you achieve and accomplish and when. Those are the six things to stop doing right now to take control of your life starting today. Hope you guys enjoy this one. And we'll see you in the next episode.