#84. Maria Pastorelli: Tools For Clarity
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. Check out the description below if you want to reach us. And if you've been enjoying this podcast, you know what to do. Go ahead, comment, subscribe, rate the show.

We got a return guest today. She is a coach, writer, speaker. She helps all sorts of people with productivity, time management, and just being more effective with the hours we have in a day and reaching our goals. We talked to her about our relationships with time, managing priorities, why multitasking is no good, journaling, reevaluating your so-called healthy habits, and finding that one thing to make everything else easy.

We also talk about her new book called Clarity, easy guidelines to help you feel less overwhelmed and achieve more. This was a great conversation hosted by myself, Howie, and Eric. So without further ado, please give it up for Maria Pastorelli. I love you so much.

As long as we're drinking it. This is the Scotch malt whiskey. Sounds fancy. It's very fancy.

La-di-da. The Honest Drink Whiskey Society. Anyway. You guys could do one of those. Maria, welcome back. I'm so happy. Thank you for having me again. So nice to see you again. I'm excited. So how have you been? I've been really good, right? How long has it been since I've been here? What, it was like October-ish? September-ish? Really? I thought it was longer than that.

I remember that it was like definitely was warm and I had been back to China for just the... Like a month or something like that. Yeah, like a few weeks. Yeah, yeah. So maybe it was like September because I came back a half of the middle of August. Wait, of 2019, right? No, it was 2020. 2020? You were here in 2020? Oh my God, my memory is so fucking bad. Because I spent seven months of 2020 locked out of China. So I'm extremely happy to be back in China and back here. Great. Cheers. Cheers, everybody. And I get to meet more people.

today yes full team today there you go yeah i feel like i don't know like i don't know if it's just my own memory that's been like really bad or it's just that maybe everyone's going through this because the last year has been like a vortex of like pseudo reality almost right and it messes with you and i think it speaks to like our relationship with time and it's such a subjective thing i feel

But for you as a coach, like how, I guess if we're just going to dive right into it, like to the big question is like, how do you view like our personal relationships with time?

It's a very difficult question to answer just with a sentence. Time is the only thing that we physically can't make more of. It doesn't matter how much money we have. Time is the same for everybody. It doesn't matter how rich you are. It doesn't matter where you grew up. You can't create physically more time. It's the great equalizer. It is. It is. Time and death, I guess. Yeah.

And everyone, I don't know, in the last few months, really, I keep hearing everybody saying like, oh, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. And I'm like, are you? Are you really? Are you busy doing what exactly? Like we have this concept that like, oh, we never have enough time because we're always busy doing something.

I honestly don't think that's true. You want to challenge that belief. Absolutely. One of my missions is to try to stop people from saying I'm busy. I've honestly been trying to do that. I might slip up sometimes, but since last year, I think I've been trying very, very hard never to say I'm busy.

Trying to come up with alternative sentences is hard, but I'm trying my best. - But do you think, so actually what you just said hits home to me because I mean, you guys call me out all the time 'cause I'm always walking in whether I'm hung over or I've been missing an action 'cause I haven't been able to be on the podcast is because I'm too busy. And if I really think about it, actually there's two things that pop in my mind of why do I say I'm too busy, right?

One is probably because knowing myself, I am busy to a certain extent because I have prioritized certain focuses in my life. And for me to add in another focus or throw in another focus within that, it perturbs me. I can't throw that extra thought in my mind.

Even though technically if I did allocate a little time to think about it, I would be able to allocate time to do something or finish something or whatever. Because let's say I'm on a project. Let's say I have to write a script. And if that's my priority right now, maybe the script, if I just sat down and did it really hardcore without any disturbances, I can get it done in two hours, let's say. But then I...

becomes a two-day thing, you know, because I'm, you know, taking a walk here and I'm not feeling inspired or, you know, doing something else. My mind kind of wanders, you know, a text comes in, but it's just the focus. It's like the idea of another focus coming in or... Or you get distracted or you procrastinate. Yeah, yeah. It's just, I just, I would feel guilty. I'm like, I cannot, I cannot, you know, split my time to do something else because of priority or because of, you know, yeah. Murray, why does that

notion of people saying I'm too busy bother you? Because most of the time is used as an excuse for not doing stuff. Like, for example, how many times have you heard people say, oh, I can't, you know, eat right or I can't exercise or I can't do whatever I say is my priority because I'm too busy. And I'm like,

It's not true. Like you're not busy. You don't have the right priority at the moment or you're not making time to prioritize whatever it's important. Going back to your example, like I 100% understand the feeling of I know I have something to do. It's in my head and I feel that everything else that comes in is just distracting me. Right.

Because our brain is made to process things. It's not made to remember. Well, it's made to remember up to a certain extent. But by the time that everything comes in, your mind feels like it's too cluttered to process. But at the same time, things take the amount of time you give them to. If you give yourself two hours, you will do the script in two hours. If you give yourself a month, it will take a month.

So it fills up. It does because like it is, I mean, time, the weird thing about time is that it is set, right? We can create more. But going back to what Justin was saying is that the perception is so, so, so personal, right? You heard everybody say, you know, oh, this five minutes felt like three hours, you know, or time flies. It's all about how you feel about whatever you're doing.

I heard something similar when I was starting to pick up the habit of running a few years ago. And what helped me was using the Nike Plus running app with the Headspace coaching combination. So Nike and Headspace, Andy Puttycomb got together and they would do these 30-minute run sessions. And Andy Puttycomb and the Nike coach would coach you through it.

And there was a pet peeve of the coach. And it reminds me of what you're saying. He said that I don't believe in the phrase people saying, oh, I can save time. He was very much against that kind of like what you were saying with like, I'm too busy. He's like, you can only use the time, but you can't like save time.

And it reminds me of that a little bit. Oh, absolutely. Like saving time usually means that you're trying to do two things at the same time. And that's usually a terrible idea. I don't remember if we talked about this last time, but one of my huge pet peeves is multitasking.

Oh, no, we didn't get into that. Okay, well, I really, really, really don't like multitasking. Well, how much time do you have? We have plenty of time. There you go. So it really depends how you define multitasking, because of course, we can do two things at the same time, right? You can run and listen to Headspace. But that is not the same thing as watching a movie and texting.

Or writing an email and, I don't know, listening to a podcast or talking to someone. Like, for me, multitasking is when you're trying to get the same parts of your brain to do two different things. If you're walking and listening to a podcast, you don't need your ears to walk. You don't need your feet to listen. So you're basically, a friend of mine calls it multitasking.

time multipliers. You're doing more with your time because you're using two different abilities that don't compete with each other. Same thing, you're washing the dishes and listening to music. You're walking the dog and taking a phone call. Those things can be together because they're not competing. For me, the multitasking that I really, really don't like is using your brain to do the same parts of your brain to do two things and you know you're not doing either of them properly.

Because you're half watching the movie, you're half present in the conversation. You just don't have the bandwidth. You just don't. And people, especially in the corporate world, like in job descriptions, oh, we want someone who's good at multitasking. No, you don't. That's a terrible thing to say. You don't want someone who's really good at doing three things badly because then you just have poor results. But why are you assuming those three things are going to get done badly? Yeah.

Is that just from your own experience? You've seen it over and over? I think that if you're telling people to do multiple things at the same time, it's not possible to do them 100%. Now, I understand what I'm saying that I might be generalizing. Definitely in my experience, I know that I work much more

effectively if I focus on something 100%. Like if I'm writing a script, if I'm writing an email, if I'm writing a book, for example. I know that I just need to dedicate two hours to do that and I physically switch my phone off. I try to take all the distractions away because I know that if I'm distracted, I will just not be doing as a good job. Now,

Is everybody exactly like me? Of course not. But I genuinely think that writing an email while chatting on WeChat, it just takes twice the time. So you might be getting at the same results, but then you're not even saving time. You're just wasting it. There's lots of modes at work that inherently compete. And one of the things that's starting to happen is that people, corporations are expecting your attention all the time.

either explicitly or implicitly because of the tools. And email was somewhat sort of like not demanding your attention all the time, even though it was like with black, starting with BlackBerry. But now you have all kinds of kinds of other tools that are real time and they're built on the premise of being able to stay connected and

every moment, like a Facebook, but they're building corporate tools like that. And there are multiple tools and they're all for different reasons. And so every corporation has these things. You have your intranet, you have your web-based portal, you have a chat tool, you have some knowledge repository, you have email, you have meetings. And the way everything is being structured is

precisely what you're saying is everything is competing with one another and you really can't perform because we all we all know like whether it's an art or music or whatever people who perform at a very high level are the ones that are best at focusing and so these tools are taking you away from being able to focus and then concentrate your mind to get into a flow exactly

Michael Csikszentmihalyi, is that how you pronounce that name? He read Flow, the book. That's really good. But that's exactly what you're saying. And I don't remember the exact statistic. And I probably should just memorize that because there was a study from MIT, I think,

I might be wrong, but it was a study that tracked the switching cost of task. And it takes like 25% more every time that you switch back to the task to get back into whatever you were doing.

So like if an email or a script or whatever takes you 20 minutes, if you get interrupted by minute five, then it would take you like, you know, a few minutes to get back into it. So instead of 20 minutes, it takes you an hour because every time you get a phone call, you of course switch attention to the phone call. And then to get back into whatever you were doing, it takes you, you know, we're not robots. It takes us, you know, maybe there's emotions involved. Maybe there's something you have to do. Like we cannot just switch in minutes.

Yeah, it's not instantaneous. It's like paddling a boat. If you stop paddling, you lose all that momentum. And then you have to start paddling from still water. It takes up so much more energy to get back to that same momentum you were currently at. Exactly. And how much harder it is to paddle a boat from standing still compared to the boat already going. 100%. You bring up kind of focusing on one task at a time and kind of dedicating your total bandwidth to each task.

I mean, that inherently has to is tied to priorities, right? Because if you're not going to multitask and you're going to work on each thing individually, then you're going to have to put some sort of hierarchy to what you're going to handle first. Absolutely. So it goes back to kind of the whole time management issue we're talking about and saying I'm too busy.

And my thought has always been this, like when someone says I'm too busy and I'm glad Eric and how we are here today, because I'm going to call them out. They are, they are two people that frequently say that and they are extremely busy people, but I feel like it's not for the average person saying I'm too busy is not being completely honest.

Right. We're talking semantics because I feel like I'm too busy is more of a narrative you're telling yourself rather than a statement you're actually making. Yes. So when you kind of constantly feed yourself this narrative, like, oh, I'm too busy, I'm too busy. Well, then you're going to be too busy. But if you can kind of try to do away with that narrative and switch the perspective of it's not that you're too busy.

I'm just not going to prioritize this thing right now. So I'm not going to do it. It's not I'm busy, but it's not a priority for me. Because if it was a priority for you, you would find a way, some way, somehow to squeeze it in, no matter how busy you are, right?

Like we said on the last part, if your house is on fire, you could be too busy, but you're not going to be too busy to go to your house and put that fire out. Right, exactly. I'm sad that I don't have my laptop with me because I just, like recently I changed the desktop background to a quote that says, actions define priorities. Which is, if you're going to do something, it's because it's either urgent or important, but it's something that you want to do because there's a reason. And if you keep procrastinating something else,

It's because at the moment, it's not a priority for you. Now, whether that's a good or bad decision for the result, time will tell, or, you know, depending how involved you are in that decision. But ultimately, I'm going to keep going back to, like, our brain is wired to like pleasure and dislike pain. If something feels like pain because you don't want to do it for a variety of reasons, you're going to procrastinate it.

That's why, you know, getting up in the morning, it's painful if you have to go to work and you don't want to. It's a narrative that we're telling ourselves. And usually if you try and hear when people say I'm busy is either in asking, oh, how have you been lately? I haven't seen you in a while. Oh, I'm so busy. Or you're telling yourself that you can't do something because you're busy.

So it's not that you just wake up in the morning and say, oh, today I'm too busy. Like, no, you're always like referring to something else either to justify it or to, I guess, rationalize things. It's a very important point. And the narratives that you tell yourself then ultimately determine what you end up doing and how successful you are. And I'm just thinking anecdotally, people that I admire and that are successful are

I don't feel like they use that narrative as much as people that are less successful. When I think about people that are really successful, people that by all accounts should be more busy than everyone. When you ask them that question, trying to be sort of, you know, overly respectful to them, like, oh, you're really busy lately. And sometimes they come back and say, oh, not really. Or like, no, I can handle it.

And it's those that probably have less control over their lives. And so that phrase is more also an indicator, a rough indicator of how assertive you are over your own life. And the danger, I think, with using this phrase is that you're not taking ownership of things and you're not looking at the root cause because the root cause itself isn't the time element. The root cause is what you're saying is that I don't want to do it even though I know it's good for me. And that's

always been a human struggle is prioritizing your long-term success over that short-term feel good and it's it that takes a lot of training and that's also something i'd love to maybe get your perspective on is that how do we train ourselves to be able to tolerate that short-term pain and reframe it into a way where we can take on more pain so that we can do more of what we want

In the past, so since we last spoke, I am now a person who wakes up before six most days of the week. This was not a thing I thought I could do. Even last time we spoke, you weren't doing that? Not as consistently, no. Because in October, I started going to FitFam, which means that I exercise outside at 6 a.m. at Fuxing Park a couple of times a week.

And then I do Monday morning motivation, which means that on Mondays we're online at 7 a.m., which means that I have to get up at six something, at least on Mondays. And now, because now it's June and July and summer, it's fantastic because, you know, it's easier to get out of bed. But getting out of bed and being outside in minus two degrees in the rain in January, it's not fun.

It's really not. And like, it takes a lot of, and I didn't realize I had that determination in me to be able to do that. Because when I say it, it sounds like I'm a crazy person. I'm like, yeah, I do that. And I actually enjoy it. Why? Well, because I realized that for me, exercising is an extremely important part of feeling like at ease with myself. It's challenging myself because I'm not an extremely fit person, but I do okay.

But I got there because I was challenging myself to be able to say, OK, can I do this? Well, I guess I can. So I'll keep pushing myself. Also, for me, like the community aspect is really, really important. Like I wouldn't do that to go running alone because I don't like running and also because alone is boring. But exercising with other people, I get to make connections.

And that is also important for me as a human being and having a social life, but also to just do something with other people and share the pain and share the challenges because that creates bonds. You can read all the books and do all the steps, but if it's not important for you, if you're not intrinsically motivated to do it, it's just going to fade away after a while. I mean, the very definition of priority means like not everything can be a priority. Mm-hmm.

So if you're trying to get a lot of things done, like how, how do you stack them in a way where, because often in times like we like to talk, like to simplify the discussion, we'd like to talk about like black and whites, right? Like there's, there's a priority and then there isn't priority. There's like one priority and everything else is belaboring.

below that. But often in life, we're faced with situations where there's many things that have to be prioritized all at once. And sometimes they all have to get done just as critically and just as urgently. And we don't have the luxury of being, oh, I'll do this one first and then get to that. Right. That's not real life. Right.

So there's an inherent paradox there in terms of how do you prioritize these things when everything needs to get done. Have we talked about the focusing question last time? No, what is that? So in the book, The One Thing, which by Gary Geller, I think, it's a very good book, but it's all about this question, which is called the focusing question, which is a very simple question, but it's one of the most powerful that I've ever come across, which is,

What can you do so that by doing that, everything else is easier or unnecessary? What can you do... That makes everything else... Easier or unnecessary. Easier or unnecessary. Because I hear what you're saying. Of course, in daily life, we have like a thousand things to do and we might have competing priorities. But if we stop for a second and think about a few of those things might be interconnected, right? Right.

It's very unlikely that we have like a thousand things that are all one standalone things that have nothing to do with each other. So one way to look at it is, okay, I have all these things. While most of them are competing for my attention, what is one thing that I can start with so that if I do that, maybe I don't need to do all the thousands. Like a common denominator? Maybe, for example, I don't know if you are looking at, I'm blanking out, examples, please. Well, first of all,

I would highly recommend and in fact I would almost just like compel you guys to read the one thing because neither of us will be able to articulate the contents better than you reading it but suffice it to say that it is a

it is a truly profound piece of work. And obviously it's written by someone that's extremely successful. If we were that successful, we'd, you know, so who is it written? Gary Keller, Gary Keller, the one thing, Gary Keller and Jay Papa's son. But, um, Gary Keller is the key guy. And, you know, he started his own real estate company in the U S and they ended up building it up to be like one of the largest real estate companies in the world. And he's probably in his sixties or something like that, right? That right now. And he's, his,

he's diversified his business. He actually has sort of a university arm of his business. He has like a whole group of people that then create seminars and do leadership coaching and stuff like that based on just all of his learnings. And the one thing is all about focus. And,

multitasking beings like, so there, it starts the book off with like the six lies or something like that. And it's like multitasking is one of them. It doesn't, it doesn't work right. All the scientific studies basically stay. First of all, your brain can only do one thing at a time anyways. And then the switching costs are so high that you're never going to be able to achieve any kind of efficiencies doing that unless they're not competing, of course. But the one thing would be something like, let's say that, you know, you,

are working on several priorities. Let's say they're all important to you. 'Cause I think that's another thing, right? I think if you're tackling too many priorities, then you have, there's trade-offs to be made to begin with, but that's another topic. So let's say there's five different things you wanna do and you don't have enough energy, time, whatever it is. For me, that one thing, and maybe for you, Maria, was exercise. And that's what Gary Keller talks about in most, almost every successful person. You ask Ray Dalio, you ask Gary Keller,

Obama, whoever it is, right? I would say if you ask them, 99.9% of them would be like, what's the one thing you can do to make your life easier?

what's the one thing you can do fundamentally and make that choice and prioritize that one thing over everything else and do it. And that's exercise. And for me, it was, you know, you guys know it's a game changer. And then the rest of the day starts. And then you can start applying the question to different realms. So like, let's say you work for a corporation or a business or whatever it is, right? What's the one thing you can do? And, you know, time after time in small ways, I've applied it. And like, if you're a salesperson, what's the one thing you can do?

And usually there's like one thing you can do, or there's one person you should be meeting or one conversation you should be having. And the power of the question allows you to actually identify a specific tactic. We look at your directing career. What was that one thing? And you can look back and say three years ago, what one thing should you have done first?

So that everything else was easier. I bet you could have found that one thing. And so it then assumes that everything has a sequence and it's a series of dominoes. And each domino is capable of toppling over a slightly bigger domino. And it starts the book with this brilliant analogy where each domino, if it could topple over a domino that was 20% bigger, eventually with enough dominoes, like 10 dominoes, you could go to the moon.

It's pretty crazy. But yeah, it's quite... So how do you identify that one thing? Because to me, it sounds like finding a needle in a haystack almost. Does the book give any insight on how to identify it? Let me ask you a question, Justin. So let's say this podcast, right? When we first started this podcast to get to this point,

What was the one thing that we did in the very beginning that we then later found out was like that key that made everything else easier? Um, drinking, drinking was one of them, but maybe that maybe even before that, the one thing was just finding the right three people and without finding the three people that could kind of click, um,

we couldn't have had the podcast in the same way. And so that one thing was actually finding us. And no matter how much time you spent on other stuff, if you didn't find the three people, nothing would have gotten started. And then at some point you got the equipment. And then that was like a key one thing in that moment, because you got the equipment, then we're all motivated to come and there was a whole slew of benefits. And so what it means is that in any sequence of things where you want to get to

an overall outcome that takes time. There's a lot of things that need to be done, but Maria, you captured it so well. They're not all independent things that are unrelated. There are certain things once you do it, it makes everything else easier. And you read the first couple of chapters and I think it gives you a bit of a better perspective on some of the tactical things that you can do, but there's a process to really think through and you have to sit down. And the one thing that Gary Keller says is that, okay,

Every morning from, for two hours, okay, he exercises and then he blocks out two hours and he doesn't let anything disturb him. And that's the one thing that makes everything else easier is giving yourself that space of two hours to think about things. Right.

I was literally about to say, Justin, when was the last time that you sat down and maybe made a list of all the things you had to do? I've never done that. And actually ask yourself that question and see out of the list which ones are connected and which thing might have to rise to the top. I honestly have started doing that lately where I was talking to a few friends and last year when I was in lockdown, I found that journaling in the morning really saved my mental health.

And lately, I've started two companies, by the way, since the last time we spoke. Which two? Congratulations, by the way. Thank you. Well, it's one in China and one in Europe and doing my consulting and coaching and training. So it's all based on what I do. So it's about effective productivity, cross-cultural communication, leadership, soft skills. I just finalized all of that in like a brand instead of just being my name. And...

Starting a company in China is challenging, turns out. Not as difficult as I thought it was going to be, but definitely has a few paperwork and headaches that have to go through. So the last few months have been mentally a bit stressful and a bit of things to go through. Nothing particularly earth shattering, but the constant thinking about step by step. And I realized that I wasn't journaling anymore and that had really had an effect on me. And so the last month-ish,

Now I journal every day before nine o'clock on a weekday and then before lunch on a weekend. And I do exactly that. I turn my phone off. I put on some like binaural music or like some very like low volume

uh lo-fi or whatever it's called and then i just i bought fancy new notebooks so that motivates me to use fancy pens and fancy notebooks and i just sit down at least for 15 minutes if i write three sentences or five pages it doesn't really matter but i give myself that time to just like write down whatever i'm feeling what i'm thinking about sometimes it looks like a to-do list for the day sometimes it looks like whatever i experienced the the day before sometimes it looks like a conversation i had or uh

a disagreement I had with someone and it looks very different every day, but that gives me the time. And I created that time for myself in order to process a few things. And that for me is one of the one things that I prioritized. Now, because I've been doing it for a little while now, it's a habit. And I think that the key of the one thing is that you have to ask yourself that question multiple times. It's not a one-off.

Because what is important or what was important three months ago might have shifted. So why you may not ask, well, I think in the book, I read it last year, so I don't remember all the details, but I do remember that there was an idea of like, you can ask that every day. What is the one thing I have to do today that will make my day easier? And you can use it in different sort of ways.

context like that. So let's say that you're just zooming in to like today, like a day. And I know that exercise just makes all the difference. Like it literally, like if I exercise in the morning, then anyone who meets me that day will be like, God, you, you, you having such incredible energy. I just don't know how much energy that you have. And if I don't exercise, I could be like, feel like the sleepiest person in the world the entire day. And I,

While it's still painful to wake up really early, I don't do the 6 a.m. ones. That's just too early. Come to the dark side. I know, like 6 a.m. We don't have cookies, but we have nice people. But I've been through that process where...

I, you know, I like working out at 7am is something that I think I built up a routine over the years. But just the fact that I could run at 6 or 7am was already a major accomplishment. But the one thing would be like running in the morning. And that was a breakthrough. That was an absolute breakthrough for me. I don't think I could have made it through the responsibilities that I had with my work the last few years without doing that. So that was key.

But they also give you techniques at a bigger level and they say, okay, well, choose something that's a year out or three years out. And we've done this exercise a little bit before and say, in a year, I want the podcast to be like this. Okay, well, let's then go backwards. Like if I want the podcast to be like this in one year, then six months before that, where do we have to be?

And what would be the one thing to get you to the next step? And then you keep working backwards and you're breaking it down, breaking it down. And you can all, you can go all the way to today. Like reverse engineering. Reverse engineering. And, and, and he's gives examples. So it's not just conceptual, like it's, you can really break things down and we kind of broke it down, right? We said we need to get great guests and content on the show. And that was the one thing you could do everything else. And it might not make a difference, but

But if you did that, that would truly make a difference. And then everything becomes easier after that. Yeah. I mean, many people have told me the benefits of journaling, right? And so what I'm hearing from you, Maria, is like, I feel I would have to assume because I haven't started journaling yet, but I would have to assume by doing so, it really helps you find that one thing in the sense that you can start noticing constants, right?

throughout your entire journey. And I think that's kind of a lot of what Eric was saying too, is like kind of finding that like common denominator, like what is that constant thing that's always been there for you? That's always been there helping you. And sometimes as we live life and we go through the busyness of our life, we don't really notice a lot of things we're doing. We take a lot of things for granted. But when you're actually having to put pencil to paper and write it down every day,

You can start mapping out and noticing a lot of constants that you might not have noticed were there before. And then all of a sudden they jump out on the page and you're like, oh, wow, I've been doing that for all this time and that's always been there. Maybe that is a common denominator that's been a one thing that I really need to keep doing. Absolutely. There's a lot of people, I think the other thing that jumps out a lot is when you ask successful people what they do in order to

preserve their mental energy is meditation. You literally go anywhere online and every person who has any degree of success will tell you meditation.

I tried it. I don't know if that's for me. My meditation is journaling. I'm a writer. I like to write. I like to make sentences. I like words. For me, the sitting in silence, it's a little bit more challenging. I'm sure that with practice, and if that was a priority for me, I would definitely make time for it. But at the moment, the journaling part is what helps me. And there's a few things. Well, first...

As you said, you put pen to paper. So instead of random thoughts in your head, you're forced to make sentences. And that is already a filter. And your brain is like kind of processing like, oh, how are you feeling? You cannot say, well, you have to like find a word. Is it sad? Is it frustrated? Is it happy? Like even just having a ballpark description helps you categorize what you're feeling. And it's a sense of accountability too, right? Because when you actually have to articulate it,

and record it down, you feel accountable for what you're putting down on that piece of paper. So you really put some genuine thought into it. And also like we were talking about this before, Howie and I, a while ago, we were talking about, it's like the same concept of

Sometimes you have an idea in your head and to you, while it's in your head, you think it's the most brilliant idea in the world. And then you're excited to tell somebody. But as you're saying it out loud to somebody, you have to actually articulate it. You realize it was such a stupid idea. But it's the same process when you have to write things down. Do you revisit and read? That's a great question. I do try every three months to four months, depending, to go back and just

take a look at what topics at least I mentioned because if there's something that keeps coming up then there might be something interesting in that maybe a relationship with some friends or maybe something maybe an idea that keeps getting stuck in your head maybe something you keep mentioning or if you keep saying I know I really had trouble sleeping last night you know then we forget but if you keep reading that for a week you always said I didn't sleep well

well, okay, maybe that's the indicator that something was up and you can always go back. And then you can do anything you want with that information. It's almost like a detective going back through crime scene photos. Going back, what did I miss there? And sometimes things click or jump out at you that didn't initially do. Right. And it is like a self-awareness work. It is kind of going back. And sometimes it feels like a completely different person.

There are probably so many different, really powerful benefits for journaling. And one, I mean, one of them is it's just like the mind is such a powerful, you know, it's such a powerful part of us that,

we don't fully tap into. And, and so journaling allows you to take some of your, of your, everyone's probably has some genius in them. And then it's not always just like bursting out because you have to be inspired. You have to be in a good mood. You have to be in the right physical and mental state. And it's those brilliant moments that everyone has where something kind of comes out and then you want to kind of like capture that.

in a bottle somehow. And, you know, that's definitely, I think one benefit. I think the, how you mentioned like articulating your thoughts, that's definitely another one because the brain's very messy place. There's like gold and diamond and all this stuff in there, but there's an awful lot of other stuff in there as well. And it helps you sort of sort things out. And I think finally you mentioned, and there's probably science behind this, I'm sure.

I'd like to learn more about this is that you mentioned the brain is better at processing than remembering. And so I think we're living moment to moment and we're really not building on top of things if we're just living in the moment all the time and you need to go back and actually capture certain things. If you think about building a building and creating the blueprint and designing it and building it, no one can do that in their head. Right.

You have to create the blueprint and go through this very, very methodical process. And you can't actually keep all that information in your brain. So again, it's your brain processing. And then you have to offload everything onto paper. So whether you look at like Supreme Court cases, scripts, no one, there are very few people have the type of brain that has the actual database in there where they can process and remember simultaneously.

And while we can do all the processing, we actually need something to capture the information. So before people could write, there was no progress in the world because we couldn't remember anything. And so if you look at mathematical formulas, science,

It requires us to outsource the remembrance piece onto some other physical medium and then process that information over time. And even a writer, most writers have to actually painstakingly work through sentence after sentence after sentence on paper. Absolutely. Yeah. One of the things that like journaling is definitely like the more narrative version of another tool that is called like a brain drain or a brain dump.

My friend John, who's also a coach, I went through one of his courses and a brain drain was the first thing he had us to do in the morning. And another friend of mine, she also recommended just going through in the morning, just take a piece of paper, just write whatever's in your mind. It could be about I really want chocolate or I want breakfast or there's a mosquito in my room. It doesn't really matter. But

The fact that you are downloading basically your brain, it gives your brain much more space. Literally, we're very familiar with old technology and you have to download stuff because your membrane gets full. Our brain is not that different. And if you keep all the stuff in your head, it's not going to be...

useful because that memory that remembering like why do we have to-do lists why do we have alarms on our phones why do we have things that remind us to do stuff is because we can trust our brain up to a point but at some point something else will come in that is competing for that attention so that information will drop and so that's why we have you know pebbles we have stone tablets we have everything just because like

we can't really remember everything. Yeah. That's such a great point. You said, and connecting just a couple of dots, um,

And you, Justin, a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about like an inner voice and how convoluted that is. And then you were saying it's kind of like defrag, defragging the brain. And this is basically that memory dump is like defragging. And then I think that another analogy is like, imagine like you're traveling, you're trying to go somewhere and you had to carry everything on your back. It would be like heavy. You wouldn't be able to go anywhere. Right.

And so being able to write things down in journal is sort of like having someone that can carry all your bags for you. Like a Sherpa. Like a Sherpa, exactly. Or like a support car on a bike race. Well, it goes back to your example, Eric, of using the court system, right? Or you said the Supreme Court in trials.

- Well, it's just like the same thing. Like you cannot, like what you said Maria, you can only rely on your brain up to a certain point, but after a certain point, it's very inconsistent and actually very unreliable. That's why,

In trials, eyewitness testimony is one of the most unreliable forms of evidence. Absolutely. Because eyewitness testimony is completely reliant on your memory of that time, but often our memories, when it comes to details, is majorly flawed. We can talk about how really do we believe that we can interpret reality differently.

because like the facts are the facts sure but everyone sees reality in a different way so like eyewitness on that side just that you should just not look at them like just don't even trust them not because they're lying because they're human beings and human beings by default they interpret whatever they see

With their own lens, with their own filters, which is just a natural human being process. The corruption happens at multiple levels. So imagine you're relying on facts to be able to make decisions and determine things. Facts is like the basis. So the input of facts is already corrupted.

because it's like the data is already corrupted to begin with because of human bias. And then over time, the memory to your point is fallible. And then the data, the file gets corrupted again. So then how can you rely on it? The data, the file itself is corrupted in the sense of digital corruption. Yeah. So what does that mean? Reality is that's mind F. Yeah. So it's like trying to get the information of like a floppy disk onto an iPhone and you're like, that's just not going to work. Yeah.

How many times have we spoken to each other about, do you remember when we did this? And then you're like, wait, that's not how it went. It was not me. That's not how it went down. But everyone has their own version. Of course, you experience things and of course, our memory is fallible. So you might remember that it was someone, that it was someone else. That's the basics.

But then you make a gesture and I interpret it in a complete different way compared to, you know, communication. Yeah. Like we could be here all day talking about, you know, a smile. What does that smile mean? Oh, I thought, you know, she was being nice to me. Oh, I thought she hated me because she smiled at me, you know.

Same gesture, a thousand different interpretations depending on how you feel about the person, what the situation is. If you're grumpy, if you're hangover, if you're tired, if you're happy, if you just, you know, whatever. It's so many filters that...

I mean, should we just question the nature of reality, really? Well, it's just unclear. And like, you feel like in life, you want to be able to understand like truth. You want to be able to understand like what's going on consistently. And it's all very messy and very blurry. And like our memories are super duper fallible. So how do you gain that clarity over things? Yeah.

Well, there's a theory that says that there is no such thing as universal constants when you're dealing with emotional beings. We're all emotional beings. We're all going to perceive things in different ways, different shades. So how can there literally be any universal constants there?

in that kind of world or in that kind of society. I think that math is probably like the easiest way to like see like the only constant in the universe because it's like, you know, like detached from context, from emotions. Or bias or opinion. It's just like that. Now that doesn't make math very exciting, but also it makes it the only thing that it's kind of, you know, like if you want to say quote unquote true in any situation. Yeah. But

On the contrary, like humans are not mathematical equations. We're much messier than that. Going into a whole different tangent here. Yay, tangents. Tangents are math. I know. We love tangents. I'm too busy for tangents. I like tangents. Do you believe that time is a linear thing? That's a great question. I wish that time was like the arrival time like that. That would be really, really cool.

Speaking from my personal experience, time is linear because I experience time as one day after the other. But it's also much more complicated than that. As we said at the beginning, time expands and contracts according to our perception. Well, Mariam...

I definitely want to save some time to get into your book. And let me just read off the title. Speaking of egos. Simple time management tools for clarity, right? The book is called Clarity. Easy guidelines to help you feel less overwhelmed and achieve more. Without, I guess, giving too much away. But like, what would be like the main kind of lesson or takeaway you wanted to get across in this book? Well, is that planning and like...

I know that mindfulness has been thrown out a lot as a word. And I'm not a big fan of it because a lot of people attach a lot of meanings to mindfulness. And it's cliche at this point. Yeah, I guess. The idea is just like doing things just for the sake of it or doing things just because you've been doing them for a long time.

doesn't serve you. Doing things because you decide to do it, whatever the motivation might be, it's definitely a much better way to go at it. And to decide what to do and how to do it, you do have to make the time to stop. Take that five minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, two days, it doesn't really matter. But I guess intentionality, it's a better word for it. As in like, instead of just, you know,

Following the flow and doing what everybody else is doing or doing whatever you've been doing for the last 20 years. Just intentionally decide what you want to focus on, what you want to prioritize, what you want to make time for. If the answer is whatever I've been doing before, great. You don't have to change if you don't need to. But I think that a lot of people don't realize that there's a different way to do things.

- It's like also reevaluating your habits, right? - Absolutely. - Looking at your habits and reevaluating like, "Oh, are these habits actually serving me anymore?" - And honestly, sorry Eric, the other thing is that I have a really hate and love relationship with my phone

and with technology in general, because of course we are so connected to everything. And of course to work, like I work online as well with my clients, in person and online. And of course, like technology is so, so, so important, but we've been doing a lot of things just because we had access to technology.

You know, like how a lot of people wake up and just look at their phone right away. Sometimes you do need to do that. For example, at 520, when you have to know if your Fitman workout is on or not, because outside is raining and you don't want to. And if the AQI is too bad that you just could turn your phone off and go back to sleep because you can and you're very happy about it. But other than that, like we wake up and we look at our phone because that's what we can do.

Not a lot of people stop and say, is that the best thing I can do to start my day? If the answer is yes, please. If that helps you, if getting your phone and looking at whatever you have to do or catching up with news is what makes your day better, please go ahead and do it. I'm quite sure there's a lot of people whose answer would be, no, my phone gives me anxiety. I want to stay away from my phone for the first half an hour of my day so that I can do something that makes me feel better.

And that goes to the intentionality of it. Just because you can't do it doesn't mean it's what you should do, I guess. So your habits, our habits, determine our future. And I think we're always lamenting the present or the past and worrying about the future. And that's just our... Especially Howie. Yeah, our inclination. And habits themselves are complex because...

On one hand, the notion of a habit determining your future is that you could continue to exercise the same behaviors to create momentum and progress to get somewhere better and have a better future. They can also be entrenched where you're doing the same things over and over and they don't serve you. And my question for you is that how do we stop what we're doing, break the patterns and intervene in our own lives and

All this stuff feels so good when we talk about it today and like learning from you and every time we get on the show. But how do we get to the point where we can create interventions for our own lives internally every single day and break the patterns so that we can break out of these entrenched behaviors? It's I think to me, that's the biggest challenge is that I just keep doing the same things over and over and over occasionally, you

I am able to surface a little bit and see something else, but I can't really break those patterns. Well, there's a couple of things that, and the first thing is that trying to change too many things at the same time is just challenging. Like, new year resolutions don't work for a reason because everybody on January 1st decides that they want to be healthier, smarter, quit smoking, quit alcohol, and you're like,

No. Be like a whole different person. It's not going to happen. Humans are creatures of habit. Like if you try to completely 360 change your life, it's not going to happen.

Unless you have a really, really, really strong intrinsic motivation. For example, if you go to the doctor and unfortunately your doctor tells you that if you don't quit smoking and start exercising tomorrow, you might have an extremely serious disease the next day. Of course, then fear kicks in and you go like, okay, well, I'll change everything. But luckily for most people, you don't have that serious trigger.

And so you're like, oh, well, you know, I want to change everything. And your brain goes like, no, why? I don't like it. I like to do things that I like. Like, why do you want me to change everything at the same time? And so then people get discouraged by, you know, like January 2nd or January 5th. And they go like, well, it was not worth the try. And so I'm not going to do it. So small incremental changes like that.

are definitely the way to go compared to big changes. That's like right off the bat. And how to create those changes, I think there's a couple of steps. And first is awareness, right? If you yourself are not aware of the behavior, you can't change it. Like, you know, we all have our own blind spots. If we don't realize or if other people don't tell us,

We don't know that that is something that we might want to change or that we even do. How many times people are like, you know, you do that. You're like, no, I don't. Of course, like, you know, because we're not aware. So that awareness is the first step. But then if you only have awareness, you're like, yeah, okay, now what? And I think it goes back to like, okay, now that I have this awareness, what do I want to get out of it? Like, now that I know that this behavior is something I do, again, is this serving me?

Usually if it's something you want to change, it's probably not serving you in the best way. So how can I modify it? And my suggestion would be, what is the smallest modification I can do that can bring me the biggest outcome? Because again, if you try to change everything,

Like, yeah, everybody could start running 5K every day for 10 years. Everybody can technically do that. But like, if you want to start to get fit, maybe, you know, walking to the subway instead of getting a DD to work. Like, that is a small change that can have bigger benefits. Something, a behavior that connects with what your current lifestyle is now without being a major stretch and that you could easily sort of do, like walking. Right.

So is this like goal setting? Is this similar territory? I guess, but it's not just about goal setting because I feel that goal setting, it's always like so much in the future that you were like, well, it's far away. So you give yourself like, you know, a same team, like how much does it take to write a script? Well, if you give yourself a month, it will take a month. If you give yourself two hours, it will take two hours. Well, just have a creation. You just, you'll be,

but in a more simpler way. Right? Like how to bring that 门槛, you know, lower, you know. 门槛, like the, and to that point, when you set goals, generally speaking,

You're thinking about something that's not tomorrow. You're thinking about something that's months or years from now. It's what you would ideally want to become. And going from not exercising to running marathons, that's probably a very conventional example. But it's too far in the future for you to make that change because the bar is so high. It's like me going from shooting...

you know, videos on my phone to being like Howie or Dennis or Christopher Nolan, right? But going from like not exercising at all to walking for 30 minutes a day is actually realistic because it doesn't require...

a profound change to my current habits. And so it almost seems like when you set up goals, they should be in the form of habits, but that habit should actually be reachable from your current habits. So whatever habits you have now, you're never gonna get to the other habit unless these two habits actually can connect with one another. - Connect the dots. - Stacking. - We always talk about connecting the dots. - It's called stacking. Like you stack, like when you want to get

a new habit, for example, you use a trigger. Like what is something you already do that can remind you to do something else? For example, a lot of people do mindfulness or like when you're brushing your teeth, like you all brush your teeth like every day, twice a day. It's something that you, unless you're, you know, like you don't skip. So,

If, for example, there's, you know, be mindful for two minutes a day. Well, why not do it while you brush your teeth? So every time you brush your teeth, you can do the exercise. You know, going to work, it's something that you do most days of the week, you know, most weeks a year. So going to work, walking instead of taking a taxi. It's something that it's already connected to what you're doing. And so you don't have to go out of your way. Yeah.

- Bring a new element in, right? - Exactly, 'cause like our mind doesn't like to put too much effort into things. Like the example that everybody gives, if you want to exercise in the morning, lay your clothes next to your bed the night before, because you know that if you have to get out of bed

and go to the closet and look for the clothes and look for the shoes. There's too many steps between you and achieving that small thing. Make your life easier. Just don't complicate your life. Taking this back to the one thing, though maybe the one thing that you can do is just put your gym clothes there. I actually did that. So that was a suggestion from some of these Nike guided runs.

And what I noticed was that any small resistance at 6 a.m. will keep you in bed. Absolutely. It amplifies. What am I going to wear today? Oh, fuck. That's just sweet, y'all. I know, right? It's a real example. When it's 5.20 and it's raining or it's rainy and it's January, you really do not want to be outside.

Like, I'm going to be very honest. I've been able to do that throughout winter because I have a good friend of mine who lives like next door to me. So we would like she would say, I'll meet you at 545 at the corner. And like knowing that she was waiting for me was definitely like a plus.

That was the one thing for you. Exactly. Like, cause like for me, like putting the clothes out was like, it was okay. But for me, it was like, I know that Becky's waiting for me. Like, I don't want to let her down. Also, I get to talk to her and exercise together. So like the community aspects and like, so for me, that made it easier. And that, and for you, community is huge. And going back to purpose and motivation, then you have to find like, if some things are going to be painful, no matter what,

There are runners that run ultra marathons and they say that every time they go out, it's still very painful for them. That it's still very painful. And so if you find things that you enjoy and you kind of stack them, I guess, in some ways, then you can kind of get over that hump. For me, I went through this. I didn't have a Becky, unfortunately, next door. So for me, it was putting the clothes out. And I told myself, I said...

Just put your clothes on and go down to the bottom of the apartment complex. And if you're really that tired and you feel like a piece of shit, just go back home. Just get... The one thing was just... Just make it downstairs. Make it downstairs. And...

I have to say at that point in my life, and it was probably a year, I had 100% success in going out there. So you never turned around? I never, not even once. And when I got down there, of course, I felt like shit. And then I was like, okay, we'll just go out and run for 1K. I'd say like 98% of the time I made it to 5K. I really did. And even today running 5K is not easy for me after all that running.

But I would have to say that it's now I can actually do it consistently because I built up that muscle and it took years. I have a slightly related, I have a, I have a theory, right? That people who dread running or working out love that there is an AQI. Love the fact that they can easily access AQI and look it up the air quality index because it is the,

greatest like get out get out of jail free or like fall pass right because once that aqi is slightly just a little about like you can still do it you can still run but it's like still you love you you give yourself a built-in excuse but like well their quality is not good so you know i'm up i would work out if their quality was good but aqi is too high today so i'm not i'm gonna stay in actually i'm the opposite because i haven't ran i stopped running again so i was running before for a couple months ago remember i was telling you and i you know i did it for a couple months

And what happened was there was a string of constant really bad high AQI.

and obviously I'm not going to run when it's high AQI but my reaction was different my reaction wasn't like oh I guess I can't run it's more like fuck you know because I've already built this habit I don't want to break this habit I know it's going to take me so long to get back into this habit and then I remember it was like a week and then I started shooting and the next thing you know it went like a week or two without running and then I'm like fuck I'm out I'm out

now I gotta build I have to change my mindset to get back in again yeah exactly because like of course like it takes years to build like a sustainable habit that you can do like almost without thinking but that's why choosing easier habits to like keep going it's so important in the first place

part, right? Because if after a while you say, oh, but I'm just going to stop for a few days. But then you get out of that initial momentum and then it's going to be so much harder to go back because again, switching the cost is so much higher. That's my biggest fear all the time is once I build a habit and I'm really feeling confident, feeling good and then I slip off a little bit, oh,

oh God, it's so hard for me to get back in again and then I'm out. True. But at the same time, I think that is also like the mental trap that we get into. It's like, oh, well, I had this streak, you know, like all the apps now and like, you know, the little calendar. Oh, how he loves those apps. You know, like, you know, all the little streaks, you go like, oh, you got your badges. And like, I understand gamification. I do. I really do. It works with our brain. Rewards are very important. But at the same time, it kind of builds on like a perfectionism mindset.

tendency of like oh well I missed one day and now I'm terrible it's all falling apart now I'm lost now because I missed that day as a recovering perfectionist

I can definitely say that it's hard. Like, you want everything to be at the best. You want everything... Because I know I can do it, but if something happens, you're like, well, but now it's... I missed one day. Now it's ruined. Now it's ruined. But at the same time, you go like, yes, you missed a day, you missed two days, you missed three weeks. How...

important is for you to get back to it. And if it's important, like if you never get back to it, then you'll never really get whatever you're going, right? So it's not going to be the perfect journey, but guess what? Life is messy. You don't have a perfect record of anything. And for me, honestly, has been taking a lot of inner work to be okay with that because I was kind of the kind of person like, well, if it's not perfect, I'm not going to do it because I used to like just think that if things are not done perfectly, they're not worth doing.

And I learned that that's not true. It's also an excuse, actually. Absolutely. It's putting... Absolutely, yeah. It's just giving yourself like another way of getting out. Of not failing. Because you're not doing it. Yeah, good point. But I have that same issue. And it's been a real nightmare for me over my life where it's caused me incredible amounts of inaction in my entire life. And it still is a challenge for me is this whole thing, perfectionism and perfectionism.

and causing you causing an action. And there's, it's actually not OCD. I think, I think it's actually fear. It's because I fear something about myself. Going back to the habits piece. I think that like building a habit is not a one-time thing. Like by definition, a habit is something you have to constantly maintain. Everything in life that's worth doing requires maintenance. And there is that initial process that you described of those one things or stacking that allows you to

start building a habit. But to maintain a habit, you have to go through adversity. Because like, I'll show you this really interesting graph. This is the ultra runner guy that I talked about and he was writing on Outside Magazine and he draws this little chart, right? So for the listeners, it's basically like, imagine a cliff,

right? So something really a high mountain, but then if you take one step, you fall off the cliff, it's straight down. So he's basically drawn a cliff. He's standing at the edge. This guy's like an ultra marathon runner. He says, I don't know about other people, but I live my life on that edge of the cliff, like a very slippery slope. And at the top of the cliff, I'm meeting all my goals. And so

And so he has this quote, like, I'm the best version of myself. I'm doing everything. I'm perfect. I'm healthy, meeting deadlines. You know, I'm productive. But he's like, I'm actually just one small little breeze away from just pushing me over the edge. And this guy is way more accomplished than I am, for sure, in terms of

I mean, he's been invited by Outside Magazine to write for them, number one. And number two, he's completed all kinds of different ultra marathons and stuff like that. And he, even he, someone we view as really accomplished in this area, he's right on that edge. And so that's what habit, like first you got to get on the damn cliff. And so that's all the stuff that you talked about, right? You can't make it too distant. You got to build up. But once you get there, you're always going to fall off.

because of AQI or whatever it is, and you have to build that resilience.

The AQI thing, I just like... That's not... I've had lots of excuses, but AQI... Rain was one of them. Yeah. But AQI was never because I lived in Beijing and I was like... You run in high AQI. I don't give a shit. Really? You don't feel like shit after running? No. I feel like shit after running. Well, I don't run, so I just eliminated the problem. I've never checked the AQI. I purposely don't check AQI. Really? Because I don't want that to even be a factor. It's self-fulfilling prophecy. If you go out there and you think there's... It's not going to fucking kill you. Right? It's not like it's going to kill you. I don't know. I just know that being a...

doing fit fam workouts, fit fam workouts gets cancelled if the AQI is above 150. So I know that that is like a policy they have and you know. But it's definitely mentally an excuse. What I realized over time and I have lots of excuses and when like the Sunday 7am you know West Bund thing. It's like oh Shia you look so chill. I'm just like fuck yes. It's like a snow day when you're a kid. I don't have to be anywhere. But

I guarantee you like, and I know this is that every time they get canceled, I have five minutes of happiness and I probably won't work out that day. And it's 12 hours of just like sluggishness. And when I do get out there, it's 30 minutes of pain and it's 12 hours of just optimism for me. And you know, that's, it is what it is, you know? And so, but I, I was injured, um,

And I mean, like I'm speaking like I'm like some kind of major athlete, which I'm not. I did some running and I did a little bit of a longer distance in December and I probably got a little bit too much mileage on my knees and my knees aren't that good. And so I got a little bit injured and I wasn't able to run for a month and I came back from it. And, you know, now I'm like almost six months later, I'm kind of almost where I was before. And I never really...

you know, kind of experienced a lot of adversity and I'm the type of person who was like a little bit of pain. I'm like, oh, oh, oh, I need to rest. And there was a period of that one month where I couldn't exercise and I had to learn other alternative forms of exercise because I realized how critical exercise was in my life at this point and had been on that metaphorical cliff. And so I just had to find other ways and, you know, there's no excuses at that point. I just, so I,

Once I went through severe adversity and keeping the habit, it taught me some resilience. And I don't know if something's going to happen where I'm going to fall off this cliff, but I've already fallen off a couple of times. And coming back is the most important part. That's the most important part. Yeah, what the graph doesn't show you is that if you were to scan to the right, there's probably a set of escalators or stairs leading you back up.

so you can get back on, you know what I mean? - But sometimes you have to build your own escalator. Like it's not, like sometimes it's easier and sometimes you like the planning or the quote unquote the hack of life is building systems that allow you to get back on the horse

quicker than you would normally allow time. One of the two fundamental philosophies that I subscribe to are essentialism and stoicism.

And I was listening to Tim Ferriss' TED Talk the other day. He was talking about fear setting, which is a very good one. I hadn't heard it in a while. And there was a very good quote by Seneca, which is, hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. Which is like, at some points you have to do the hard work in order to simplify whatever you're going through. And if you don't, it's just going to get harder.

- Like you can't avoid, you can't like live your life avoiding hard choices. - And it's the same thing with like short term pain for long term success, right? It's like if you do, like you talk about, you talk to anyone who has like a business or who has like things that they want to accomplish,

you know that the beginning is going to be harder because you have to get into the habit. You have to set up systems. You have to find a client. You have to decide what you want to do. Like you have to, the first beginning is always the hardest part. But if you do that properly,

you will set yourself up for like doing things better. I still haven't finished for the second time. I'm reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown. And then the second book of his is Effortless, which I really look forward to reading because it looks fantastic. Yeah, I have it. I just haven't finished Essentialism. So I'm just working through that.

Well, I also like what you said, how you phrased the whole idea of stacking. That's one thing out of this conversation that really stood out to me too, because I've almost phrased it as connecting the dots. That works for me too, but I like the stacking visual because I kind of see it as like, you know, when we talk about incremental habits,

I see it as a building, right? You have to stack. You can't build the first floor and then immediately the hundredth floor. You have to build the second floor, the third floor, the fourth floor, so on until you get to the hundredth floor. You have to go through that process. There's no other way. Yeah. And like, I mean, well said and kind of to your point, and I've come to this conclusion is that, you know, the amount of pain that you're going to suffer in your life

is constant. It's not like some people suffer less pain or some people, like if you wanna live a good life, you're gonna have to go through these hardships. And the question you have to ask yourself is, do you wanna go through the hardship on your terms? Or do you wanna go through the hardship on life's terms? Let's say you don't exercise.

Right. And you don't build up that resilience. Then one day you're not going to be healthy and you're going to get your fucking ass kicked because we know that I've had little small health scares and they're so frightening. They're way more frightening than me going out for a three hour workout. Right. And so when I did started doing my I don't know if like if you've heard of temporary humans. Right. We work with it, fam, as well.

But I, we started doing these really hardcore workouts and like, I wasn't really up to them, honestly, mentally, but I had some really good friends in the community. And I was just like, what I told myself every morning on those weekends when I didn't have to do this was just like, look, do it on your terms. Like you're going to, life is going to be really fucking hard and go out there and choose to kick your own ass and

So because someone else kicking your ass is going to be 10 times harder. And if you don't have that, I love that. And if you don't do the things in your career that are going to get you to that point where you're really feel successful, you're going to regret that. And every day you're going to be beating yourself up constantly. Like you're a fucking loser. And imagine like living that kind of life. It's terrible. So the amount of pain and struggle and challenges that everyone faces is going to be the same. The question is,

Like, how are you going to face these things? And if you exercise, you do all these things and you're willing to kind of take the pain up front, you're going to have a much better life. Because if you don't do any of this stuff and you turn 50 and you're fucking in terrible health, you didn't do anything in your career, you don't have any money, you don't have family, you don't have good relationships, your life's going to really fucking suck and it's going to be too late to do anything about it. Absolutely. You know?

Having said that, of course, then the challenge is then to take those incremental steps so you can take control. And I think most, a lot of people don't. And in many areas of my life, I haven't yet.

I love that. I love that picture of like, kick your own ass so that life doesn't get a chance to. You know what I mean? Like, be preemptive about it. One of the reasons why I started my China company is that I thought for a long time that it was too complicated. I had other arrangements like I could work still because I was working with different companies. But I

but I thought that setting up my own legal entity was way too complicated. And then I was talking to a few friends who had their own company. They were like, go and choose the problems you want to have. Like, why do you want to live your life just reacting to problems? At least you know what problems you're going to go through.

So they're not going to be easier, but at least you know that you chose that so that you can have whatever you want. So you're more prepared. Exactly, right? And of course you cannot prepare for everything in life. That's ridiculous. But...

you know, going into one direction that you want to follow, at least you can preemptively say, well, I might run into X, Y, Z. And if X, Y, Z happen, and even if Z happens, at least, you know, well, okay, I know that it's because I chose to do this. So I wanted this. And of course, if it sucks too much, you can always like decide not to do it. You don't have to like box yourself into something.

But at the same time, it's like, okay, I'm not just passively reacting to everything that's happening to me. I'm going somewhere and I'm overcoming obstacles and I'm deciding time by time how to do it. But I chose to do this. And I really understand that

choosing to do things is also a privilege, right? But if you do have the opportunity to choose, then choosing your own problems is definitely a better way, at least for me, to go through life. Gratitude is so important. Oh, gosh. We forget it. Journaling, gratitude, that's like everybody who talks about journaling is like, what are three things you're grateful for today? What are three things that you're grateful for this week? Like,

I moved to a new apartment and like one of the first few weeks I was plugging in my TV and then my power went out and I was like,

it's a new apartment I don't know what to do and then like I sorted it out and then the next day I was like I am very grateful that there's electricity in my apartment because otherwise I would be very very very uncomfortable it's a very stupid thing but when you don't have it you noticed I'm gonna be really an asshole here for a second I'm so one second I feel like there's certain aspects of our personality that definitely connect but yeah definitely every morning you know like going on the subway all this stuff like I'm kind of short fused

And so when I was taking the subway, eventually I got to the point where like, what if the subway didn't work today? What would you think? What if the shower didn't work today? You know? Cause I'm a complainer, like a mofo.

Because complaining is easy. We all do it because it's our way to... It's a coping mechanism. It is. It is, absolutely. It's like, well, I don't like this, so I'm going to try to rationalize it in some way so I don't have to deal with it. And it's perfectly okay...

until it gets to the point of like, that's the only thing I'm doing. Because you can complain. I complain. Like when I was at 545 outside in January, I was complaining a lot. But that was my coping mechanism to get me through and still do it. If you just complain about it and don't do anything about it, then you kind of lost your right to complain. Because now I get to complain about being outside in the rain in January. And I'm proud of myself for having done that.

and complaining kind of helped me get through it. But, you know, just complaining is not going to help things. Choosing your problem allows you to have the solution-solving mindset. Right. Whereas complaining means that someone else is controlling your life. You're also like delegating responsibility. It's like, well, if I'm complaining and I'm not doing anything about it, it's someone else's problem. It's accountability. 100%. Yeah. And we want to get to Howie's stuff, but here's a chart. Oh, Lizzie and Mike.

molly i love them i love them just starting the book complaining about the problem talking about a solution that's why i feel like you guys do all the time about the podcast you guys complain about the podcast and i'm the only one trying to find solutions anyway i'm venting justin would you like to share something with the group justin justin allows okay justin allows this

us to be part of this amazing, beautiful, wonderful podcast. Justin is the one thing for me that allows me to participate in the podcast community. Justin is the one thing. Well, a good thing is Justin is not whiskey. But Eric and Howard are not the one thing. They're not the one thing. They're the one thing that give him headaches. Yeah.

Howie, you had something. It's not really being an asshole. I was just going to say. Please do. Because journaling, being grateful, stuff like that, meditation, these are all words thrown around. A lot. A lot, right? These are hot words for the past couple of years. And I am one, just like Eric, who has read up some of these books. He's much more than I have. And I did try.

This whole, you know, being grateful when you wake up, you know, one of the techniques was think of the three things that you're grateful for, right? The first thing you do when you wake up to set your day right, you know? And I did it for like a month, you know? And I felt like during that time, like trying to really analyze, like, has it really helped me in a certain way? And I felt like it didn't at all. Like it didn't do anything for me.

As a matter of fact, other things that I incorporate, like the cold shower and other things that I've incorporated. Oh gosh, cold showers. Do you do that? No. Howie is all about cold showers. We've had many episodes about it. Okay. No. No? Okay. I know that people do it. I do understand the theory behind it. I like my warm showers. Yeah.

As do I. Maria and I don't like pain. Yeah. No. I feel like you guys are long lost friends or something. I'm sorry. You guys are soulmates here. I'm trying to get smart about things. Like if I don't have to be in the cold, I prefer not to. Well, that goes to him choosing his own problems. Exactly. And that's fair. And that's exactly... Sorry, continue. Yeah, what I was going to say is that... So making it a habit to stop and think about things you're grateful for, for me, did not...

add anything for me what were the things that you said you were I'm not let me finish you were about to say shut the fuck up you were trying to be nice about it I was like but

Eric, when you mentioned about, oh, when I get on the subway and then I'm thankful for the subway. But when you're in the moment and that negativity comes out, right? Or where appreciation is needed, but you're not feeling it.

And you stop yourself and be like, okay, we don't stop it. Change it around. What are you grateful for? And that moment, then I can, then yes, that helps. There is a result that comes out of that because I've tried that as well. I've been like, wait, why am I getting angry? You know, change your mindset, you know, that, the blah, blah, blah. And then my mood changes and yes, that works. So all I was trying to say is that, um, you know, there's certain techniques that were shared in books or people, um,

Of like, you know, first thing in the morning, being grateful. It didn't work for me. It felt very empty. Because there's no lasting effect for me in that sense. Because I really thought about it. But if a moment happens and being grateful was appropriate...

it changed my mood and there was an effect, there was a result. That's what I was trying to say. - You're absolutely empowered to use the tools that work for you and share them out. And conversely, it's funny,

Actually, when I'm in that moment and I'm angry, gratitude sometimes doesn't actually work because I'm so furious. Being grateful on the subway, it's more of a preventative thing. So I get on the subway and if I can remind myself to be grateful, then if something's going to escalate, then I won't get to the point. Because you know when I get... It's Bruce Banner trying to keep the Hulk in. Right. Doing the breathing act. Trying to keep the Hulk from coming out. Before the Hulk comes out,

that's the best time to keep the Hulk from coming out once the Hulk comes out none of that shit works I mean and that's a habit isn't it like it's just like knowing like going back to what you were saying is like knowing what works for you and knowing yourself like this is something that I keep coming back in a lot of conversations I have with people is like how much do you know

what you want and how things work for you. Like just because we have a thousand self-help or self-development books and podcasts and TV shows and whatever's out there, it doesn't mean that first we have to read them all. Second, that they all work for everybody. Like the one thing is something, for example, that really resonated with me, like essentialism does, because that's the kind of mindset that I prefer to have.

It doesn't mean that every single person would relate to essentialism. Like I have a friend of mine and she defines herself as a maximalist. So like she does the exact opposite and that works for her. Clearly we have very wildly different opinions about stuff and that's okay. I would not try to quote unquote sell her on essentialism because that doesn't resonate with her.

And that's okay because she knows what worked with her. And that's why all these like theories and like we were speaking briefly before about cults, right? I think that the whole idea of like the social media spreading all this, you know, buzzwords like mindfulness and journaling and gratitude. There's a lot of just like empty sharing of like, yeah, just be grateful. Like, yeah, well, it's not that easy, is it? Just like, just be grateful doesn't really help me.

And again, I come back to intention. What do you want to get out of it? If you're just doing it because so-and-so told you that it's a cool thing to do in the morning, you're not really going to get anything out of it, especially if it doesn't resonate with you. Try it, of course. If you don't try it once, then you don't have enough data to know if it works. But

Try it for a little while. Give it honest time to see if it works. If it doesn't work, just drop it. Another thing that I often talk to my clients is the zero-based decision thinking. You guys know about that? Zero-based decision thinking? Which is like, we as humans, we often attach a lot of meaning to things we've already been doing.

So for example, if I've been in a job for 20 years, I'm going to find it much, much harder to quit because, but I already gave 20 years of my life to this, regardless of how I feel. Zero-based. Decision. I think it's zero-based decision thinking, decision making. Well, in a way, it's also the endowment effect. It's the endowment effect. It's a little bit similar to the sunk cost fallacy. Exactly. It is basically the same thing, which is like, that is just the spin on, if you have to make a decision, think about it,

Like forget about the sunk cost and think about it. If you had to choose to do this from scratch, would you do it? Which is something that Greg McKeown talks about in essentialism. It's like, you know, the Marie Kondo effect is, you know, they try to declutter your closet and then try to declutter your life. The idea is that, you know, get rid of things that don't serve you.

And one of the things that, again, Marie Kondo, also fun fact, someone told me I'm the Marie Kondo of brains. And I'm like, I'm going to take that title very proudly. But, you know, if... It's on your name card now. I definitely should have...

And, you know, if you're trying to declutter your closet is, you know, okay, this is pretty, but if you didn't have it, how much would you spend to buy it? Would you still pay the same price for it? Exactly. And if the answer is meh, then you just throw it off. Same thing with like, you know, getting on projects, making decisions, buying things, getting involved into whatever. If you were not already involved into something, how hard would you work to getting there?

And if the answer is, I wouldn't, then you know that it's something that is not important to you at the moment so that you can, quote unquote, give yourself permission to

to let go because it's not essential. Because if it's something you wouldn't fight for, it means that you're just doing it because, you know, it's at a status quo or because someone told you it's important or because social media told you that it's trendy. They try to conserve energy. Exactly. Well, I think this is a really important point. And this is one of the things I really appreciate about what you said about your book is that

the way I interpreted it was like reevaluate, reevaluating your habits. Right. And it's to make sure that we're not just going through the motions. Just like what you said, like reading self-help books. I, I assume that, you know, there might be a lot of people out there that read self-help books, business books, whatever books. But it's more that they get gratitude or they, they get some sort of,

They feel like they achieved something from just the act of reading it, right? Oh, there's a lot of self-help circle jerk. Because just reading them because everybody does it or just because it's a trendy thing to do, it's not going to be helpful, right? Well, that's one thing. But another thing is like we also get caught up in our own narratives that

the habits that we have in place are healthy, good habits, therefore we should keep doing them. And that's not always necessarily the case. It might start off that way, but like I had this conversation with Eric. I don't know if it was on a podcast episode or if it was off air or not, but you know, Eric has always been, you know, very practicing mindfulness. He meditates, he does all these things that are to him, very beneficial, healthy habits, you would say.

But we had this conversation, I think a couple of weeks ago where Eric was saying like the mindfulness piece has almost become just emotion for him. And he was doing it just, he caught himself doing it just for the sake of doing it. And it wasn't actually necessarily helping him anymore maybe. And he just,

I just feel like that's a really important thing. Like we instill all these habits in ourselves and we test them out, but we often don't realize that we need to experiment with them and adjust them. Whereas we get caught up in and buy into the whole narrative like, oh, well, everyone says this is a healthy habit. So I just have to keep it there and keep doing it. And we're not really thinking for ourselves like, well, is this really helping me?

Can I speak for three seconds about toxic positivity? Oh, yes. Toxic positivity. Right. As you guys know, I'm one of the co-founders with Janine who's been on the podcast of Monday Morning Motivation. So we have this community online where we do every Monday morning webinars with different speakers who talk about various inspiring or motivating topics.

And we have a community, which means on WeChat that we share a lot of quotes that are inspiring and motivating. And I've been honestly trying to steer away from the toxic positivity trend, which is like, just smile through everything. That's just, you know, everything's going to be fine. Like that's not helpful at all. Just pretend that things are not wrong. It's not working. Like that's how we got into messes in the first place, just pretending that everything was fine.

And so while not everybody has the bandwidth to go like into very deep self-awareness every single day, just acknowledging that things sometimes are not great is as valuable as telling yourself that, you know, creating good habits is important as, you know, like pushing yourself is important. But

Just the trend, and I speak this about especially social media, that we portray the best version of ourselves and everybody's always super successful and happy and sunshines and rainbows. But that has a very big impact on our mental health. It's like trying to acknowledge that things are not always great is also important. And that's why people...

Different people have different standards or different levels of acceptance. For some people, being okay with something just means like, okay, today I'm having a bad day. I'm acknowledging that and tomorrow is going to be better. For some people it's, okay, today I need help and I need to find qualified help.

And that is important. And I'm not just going to smile through it. I'm not just going to power through it because that's not going to help me. It can make you feel worse. I know one of my shortcomings sometimes is that this whole self-help stuff, I'm reading these books and they're really beautifully, elegantly written. And I treat that as a type of entertainment and escape sometimes.

And you don't want to ever get to a point where this is not helping you solve the problems in your life and really meeting them head on. And so then they become escapes every day, like, you know, do some meditation, you know, you do some reading. That's not solving your problems because you're actually going there to escape your problems. What you need to do is take the content in those and then meet your problems head on and then just like, you know, experience some suffering. Yeah.

In that moment. Like, you know, in the self-righteous way, like, oh, I'm reading self-help books two hours a day. Like, yeah, well, good for you. Are you doing anything about that? No. And this is like a lot of people.

And including myself at the beginning, I was like, oh, well, I feel much better than everybody else because I'm not scrolling to Instagram. I'm reading self-help books. Like, great, yeah, but I'm not really doing anything about it. So it's not really... It's falling in love with emotion, right? Yeah, it's also like trying to think like, oh, because this is better than Instagram. Don't get me wrong. I don't like social media. So I definitely think that reading any book is better than scrolling your Instagram feed. But...

That doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing anything with it. And if you're not doing anything with it, then it doesn't really make a difference. It's still entertaining, like a movie, hopefully a good movie and an understandable movie. Reading about how other people successfully solve their problems

It's not necessarily beneficial if you don't apply these techniques to solving your own problems. And I definitely, I'm guilty of that. I'll have to say, like, sometimes I'm reading about best practices of how to solve problems. And my problem is actually not applying these things to my own problems. How to self-problem that. Yeah.

Well, Maria, thank you so much for coming back on this show. Thank you for having me. Always a blast talking to you. It was so fun. I'm so glad Howie and Eric were able to attend this time. Yes, yes. But your book, Clarity, where can people get it? Amazon. Amazon. Yes, I'll send you a link. Okay, so just look for Clarity, just type in Clarity. Yeah, I think it's the whole thing, which is simple time management tools for Clarity and my name, and it should be okay. Cool. And if there's one thing that people will get

After reading your book, what would that be? Happiness? Clarity? Clarity. No, it's just like... Because I'm about to press the button. If you said anything but clarity. No, like... I'm about to press the button, so... What I honestly think is just like, that is a book that can help you see things that might be helpful for you, but you have to choose which things work for you. So this is just an awareness, help you get some awareness of some options, right?

And like, just don't buy into the common narrative sometime, right? No, just don't. Don't buy into the cliches. Please don't. Oh, God. Well, that was enough for me. I just pressed the button. Oh, you did. Thank you. You did just press the button. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it.

Alright Maria It was a pleasure as always Thank you so much you guys for having me It was a blast Just right before we go Where else can people find you? I'm on LinkedIn Maria Pastorelli And then at maria.pastorelli.com And then my company website is Bridgecoaching.online Bridgecoaching.online Yes Like ciao bridge Yes Yes

Alright guys, that was Maria. This is The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. I'm Eric. And I'm Howie. Alright guys, be good, be well. Peace.