Jeff Corrigan: Welcome back to Habit Masters. I'm Jeff. I'm Sheldon, and today we have a very exciting episode for you. We're getting a little bit out of our normal routine because we are supposed to be starting Action Catalyst for the month of November, which you're going to love.
But after our conversation with Richie, which you hopefully heard both parts over the last couple of weeks. We're very excited about this idea of commitment and becoming who you really want to be living life right now instead of putting it off until later. And so we really wanted to talk today about reversing what people call Yolo isn't actually Yolo, right?
You only live once. People use that term all the time, when in fact what they mean is FOMO. They have a fear missing out. Yolo, on the other hand, is actually about committing to something to see the results come, it's not about doing whatever you want in the moment and taking big risks that are unnecessary.
It's about being courageous enough to take steps in your life that lead to a better future for you, and hopefully for those around you.
Sheldon Mills: Yeah. So let's start it off with the story. We have to thank. The Happiness Lab podcast. Don't put a link in the show notes. There's, there's an episode called You Only Live Once.
So Commit. And they interview Mickey Har. He's the drummer for the Grateful Dead cuz he's, the one who coined this phrase, or the first person, recorded person to have coined Yolo. Right. And basically this whole episode is about how. YOLO is this philosophy, like do whatever in the moment, you know, keep your options open,
But the way he thought about it, the way it was originally coined was exactly the opposite. And he shares a story about him and his wife trying to find a place, and there's this ranch that was up for sale and then, Gone. And they tried to find out and the listing had like disappeared. They decided not to sell and they literally, you know, got the information, drove out there and convinced the people to sell it to him.
And this was before he was like famous.
Jeff Corrigan: Famous, the
Sheldon Mills: big name, right? Yeah. Yeah. And he was like, frankly, we couldn't afford it. Like it was above what we could afford at the time, but it was our. , right? And so we said Yolo, right? You only live once. So commit, right? So we, we were committed to make it work. And that's this is kind of the epitome of what we're trying to say is like commitment is gonna open up far more doors and lead used to success much quicker than trying to keep your options open.
And I think we do that far more often than we realize. It's like, yeah, we don't commit. It's like a commitment to nothing. It's commitment to not movement, you know,
Jeff Corrigan: well, whether you commit or not, you're making a commitment, right?
Yeah. And we, there's a million examples we could throw at you right now, but a couple that came to mind. Imagine you're standing at a crossroads, and this is what happens to us a hundred times a day, is we have to make decision. We have to commit one way or another. And more often than not, when we don't commit, we actually do commit.
We end up going down a road. It's usually just not the road we wanted. You literally can't in life stand at the crossroads and see some kind of result or success or growth. It just doesn't happen, right? You end up stagnating and to using another example if you're on a boat, right? It's not the blowing of the.
That matters. It's the set of the sale. And when you refuse to set the sale, if you don't put up the sale, the waves just carry you wherever they want. , like you have no idea where your destination is. And to use our garden metaphor, which we love so much, and you guys have come to love with us, hopefully, is imagine you've got a whole pass of seeds, but you refuse to plant any of them cuz you're just not sure.
You're like, well I've only got so much garden space, I don't, I don't know what I wanna plant. And when you don't plant anything, what. Weeds grow. You grow weeds, right? So in life, the first step to any goal or result is commitment. And too often we start out thinking we can swim by just dipping our toe in.
You can't swim without getting in the water. It's impossible, right? . So today we wanna share with you a few things around how to make commitment a positive thing in your life. And, not live in this constant fear of missing out on everything you didn't choose.
Now by choosing, you are making a choice, right? You are making, you're choosing a direction, but you can always see what's going to happen now. So without it, you can't ever see the end and it becomes really challenging to. Change the direction. Yeah. Go ahead. We were
Sheldon Mills: talking about, you know, what is the worst case scenario of committing, right?
The worst case is, you made the wrong decision and is that really such a bad thing? Okay, you're at the ice cream stand and you decide I'm gonna get chocolate today. And by definition that means you didn't get strawberry. You didn. Banana, you didn't get all these other things cause you chose chocolate.
Right? So there is very a literal sense of like, that is the path you've chosen, right? Worst case scenario, you find out that you didn't like chocolate, right? You learn from it that I think this is the epitome of fail fast, fail hard, you know what I mean? like it's through The obstacle is through making decisions and commit.
That you actually learn and you actually grow. Cause if you don't, it's like you're never the man in the arena. You're just a spectator. You know what I mean? It's like you're always to the side analyzing, trying to figure out, we wanna help you realize commitment isn't this scary. And the quicker you can commit to things, the more you can figure out if it's really what you want or not.
If it's really the right path, do you know what I mean? It's like you gotta go down those paths and entrepreneurship I think, sometimes is like, it's obvious cuz there's a thousand different things we could do. And, and obviously we think about it a lot. We try and figure out what's the best way to grow our podcast or whatever, you know, your jewelry store, Jeff, and we go down those things we think is best, but you have to commit and you have to go down those roads before you know if it's right or not.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah, it's that age old comment I think you just made is fail fast, fail often. Right. And I, I like this idea that without commitment there can be no growth. . Like until you plant the seed, nothing grows or weeds grow I grows by conscious decision. Yeah. You know, like inevitably something is going to grow.
Inevitably the wind is gonna blow you somewhere. But are you deciding where that is? Your in decision is leading you to places you don't want to go. And then you wonder how you got there, like, okay, here I am. And we all do this. Like this isn't me judging you. This is me saying as people, this is a common thought and flaw in our thinking is thinking that by not deciding, we somehow keep our options open and , we kind of remove ourselves from the fear, I call that, so there's a common phrase that we use nowadays, like the comfort zone. You see that everywhere. Like get outta your comfort zone, da, da da, da da. And I was talking to Sheldon earlier, and I, I honestly don't believe that the comfort zone exists.
We've mislabeled it just like we've mislabeled, yolo. It's a fear zone. It's an area where , we are remaining stuck based on our indecision. Until we decide who we wanna become. And that doesn't mean you'll get the exact results you want, right? The future is uncertain. And actually, we have a great quote here from Richie Norton.
If you want to be free, you must be willing to advance your life into uncertainty. Yeah. That's the essence of what we're trying to say right now, is to really free yourself, to give yourself the best chance of results. You've gotta be willing to commit to something you don't know what the result is going to be.
Yeah, you think, you know, you plant a tomato and, and it turns out, oh well now the bugs came and destroyed it and whatever. Like, you don't know what's all going to happen in the future, but it's still worth the risk cuz otherwise you'll never taste the fruit. , you'll never get the ice cream, right?
You just walk away from the stand and say, I can't decide. , right? Mm-hmm. , I can't decide what ice cream I want, so you don't get to try any of them.
Sheldon Mills: It's funny cause it judge me nuts with my kids. It's like, well, which do you want? You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know. You tell me what I want. I don't know what you want
You have to decide what you want, you know? Exactly. Make
Jeff Corrigan: a choose. Yeah, make a choice, right? It's like I can only give you recommendations and, and on this show, all we're giving you, like, it's your dream. We're just giving you the tools and hopefully some direction on ways that you can make that dream a reality in your life and start living that life.
Now, just like you heard from Richie Norton last week and the week before is , it's not unheard of. It's not untouchable. You guys can get all of these things. They're within your grasp. It's just a matter of committing to something.
Sheldon Mills: So this is where it really connects, the goal of our podcast is to help you move toward your dreams on a daily basis, to achieve them, to take those, those habits, those baby steps.
It's like Big Mo on your back, right? And the way you do that is whatever your, your wishes, your dreams, your goals is like you ha frankly, we have to be more committed. We have to commit faster, we have to commit deeper. Right? So the question I wanna pose to you, Jeff, and you know, we're obviously gonna talk about this a little bit more, but I wanna pose it to everybody out there, right?
Because we're not, obviously there's a lot of ways to answer this question is, how do you get more committed? How do you commit faster? How do you make, you know, how do you get more.
Jeff Corrigan: How do you get more committed? Yeah. It really just starts with one step. It, we talked about this a couple of months ago with assuming a new identity when we talked about identity uhhuh, but it really comes down to who is it that you wanna be, right? It's like, and, and, and claiming that as. As the here and now.
Rather than saying, oh, eventually I wanna write a book, or eventually, or someday I'm gonna do this, or tomorrow I'll accomplish that. It's no longer going to bed each night regretting not having taken action. Instead it's saying no matter how small the step I, I moved towards. My future self today, right?
Yeah. I am my future self today because I acted in such a way. Maybe that's, I wrote my blog post. I wrote pages from my book. I ran a mile. You know, whatever that looks like for you and your goal in becoming your future self is taking a step today that moves you in that direction. The stuff you've been putting off for months or maybe even years at this point.
Sheldon had a thought.
Sheldon Mills: Yes. Fact. The question is, so how, how do you get more committed? And we were talking about this earlier. The answer is to get invested. Investing gets you committed. Time, money, resources. The more you invest, the more you're committed.
You really are. So I would say a very practical, a practical way to get more committed is to invest more. And you invest more by throwing your hard earned money at it. You know what I mean? Cause you're not gonna put money into something unless you're invested in it.
Right. That's, that's the one way to commit, or your time or your resources there's lots of ways to, to invest more and whatever it is you say you're committed to. And by investing more. You will get more committed to it.
Jeff Corrigan: Absolutely. And not only that, I think it forces you out of your comfort zone in saying, I am committed to this thing.
And especially if you pull the Richie Norton model and you say, I'm committed to this thing by a certain date. He calls it a forcing. Where it forces you to come up with creative ways of how you're going to accomplish this, what it is that you would need to do or not do even better, and have someone else do who already knows how to do it to get there.
It helps you start to rely on not just your own powers and your own willpower and all those things, but it relies on everything around you to make it possible
Sheldon Mills: .
I think you're right though. Our identity is what you're most committed to.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah. Well, and and it does, it starts, it starts with knowing your, your final cause. Like what's the why or purpose you have in mind, right? I, I've heard this
Sheldon Mills: before. I think Ben's going to argue this, like your commitments are your identity, right?
Yeah. So the things that you are most committed to, that's really who you.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah, absolutely. Cause what else is
Sheldon Mills: there, , what else is there?
Jeff Corrigan: Right? And, and shockingly, there is a common thread going through our world which says, don't commit. We're all confused about who we are. And part of that is because we have never committed to anything. Right. We refuse to commit. And then we wonder why we're confused about who we are or where we're going, or what it is we want outta life or what our purpose is here.
And I think it comes down to that answer what, what Ben Hardy's saying is your identity is what you're most committed to. And so when you refuse to commit,
Sheldon Mills: you're committed to, to being confused, .
Jeff Corrigan: So we're getting a little cerebral on you here, but I, I think in, in essence, commitment is so valuable and something that we've all kind of overlooked and lost in our culture and we've kind of been supporting the opposite, like, oh yeah, like no need to commit and, you know, people don't get married, people don't like, there's lots of things that are happening in the.
That would allude to the fact that people are, are afraid of commitment, when in fact you should be afraid of the opposite. You should be afraid of not committing. , like the real fear should come from realizing, oh, if I don't commit to anything, I, I literally don't have an identity. I don't know who I am or where I'm going.
, and sadly, that that ends up in a lot of sad, depressed, individual. And the reason why progress stops in organizations and cultures and countries and families and all of those things, until you know where you're going or where you want to go, at least
it's hard to see any kind of growth or progress. Sorry, let's end on a positive note. Positive note. How do we commit?
Sheldon Mills: So ultimately, We want you to have less fear about commitment, because committing to things, committing to the wrong road will get you where you wanna go faster than analysis by paralysis or paralysis, paralysis by analysis, trying to figure out which is the best one, which one's the right one.
Do you know what I mean? We, we shouldn't be afraid of committing and, and, and taking action,
Jeff Corrigan: right? So the takeaway for today is to commit to taking one step towards your bigger goal. What is that thing you've been putting off? What is the thing you regret not doing yesterday or that you keep saying, oh, I'll do it someday, or I'll do this.
It's like, what if you could steal that, like Richie talks about from the end of the timeline and create it here and now to actually live your life rather than hoping for a life to live someday? I think the message of this episode is really, that is commitment is about living your life now rather than waiting to live your life someday.
Ooh, that's actually pretty good. I wish we had said that in the beginning, but , so you can take that dream from the end of the timeline by taking a practical step today. How could you start living that dream now? Even if it doesn't, doesn't mean like, oh, I see all the results now. It's planting the seed, as it were, it's assuming the new identity.
He's writing that first page of your book, right? Or even the first sentence of your book. Whatever that looks like for you. What's possible
Sheldon Mills: subject matter. So next time we're gonna talk about something and it relates to this, but it's, it was important enough, we feel we need to talk, give its own episode, and we're gonna talk about how we need to ask life for.
Essentially we, we need to dream a little bigger. Like all of us. We need to, we need to start asking life for more, right? I can't tell you how I feel this even, I think Jeff and I are relatively big dreamers, if I'm honest, . But we were discussing this and trying to dig into it, and we'll go over this more next time.
About how much, again, just the course of life. Life is hard nature. It is just like we settle for. Less for, for not what I think life is. We talked about opportunity. That's a phrase. Opportunity knocks. I don't think it really does , right. I think he's waiting behind the door and we have to knock. But opportunity is quick to open.
Yes. Right. And, but it's not knocking on our door. It's waiting for us to knock on.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah. And so you often times you have to knock on a lot of doors. Yeah, right? You gotta commit . Yeah. You gotta commit. Go knock on doors, make this happen. And that's what taking steps towards your dreams really, is. It's knocking on doors and seeing what opens.
Because I guarantee you, once you commit, once you make a decision, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, the world cons, the universe conspires to make it happen. Right. It's like, is that what he said? ? Yeah. Some quote like that. I, I just messed up the quote, but, Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Yeah. And that's all about commitment. Like until you commit, it's no wonder you're sitting and wondering, , right, where am I? And why is nothing happening? Where is opportunity? I've been waiting for him all day, , or all year or all decade, whatever, that they can commit
Sheldon Mills: to something. And even if it's the wrong door now, you know?
And you learned, oh gosh. You gotta commit and you gotta fail, like fail fast.
Jeff Corrigan: These are lessons learned by us as well, guys. I actually, for years I have been watching and reading and taking courses and I've been dipping my toe in to the coaching realm of being like, oh, you know, I don't need a coach. I should just get a course or get a training or do this and I'll, and I'll spend money and endless time on those things.
And it's taught me. But it's been two x growth, I would say, and maybe even five x growth. But if I've realized that the next step for me in getting to 10 x growth in my life and pulling those levers that create mega results for those around me, and all the people that I'm trying to serve is hiring a coach.
And so I did today, I hired a coach.
Sheldon Mills: But Jeff, who is this? This coach of yours.
Jeff Corrigan: I hired a coach to help me get to the next level and and to now I've never done it because I've always felt like, eh, it's not for me. Until this week, I realized that's what's holding me back is my belief that I can do it without someone else who already has been there, knows what to do.
So, There you go guys. There's one example. committed. Okay, I committed today. Committed, put my money down. And
Sheldon Mills: he did that by investing.
Jeff Corrigan: I did, right? I invested some cash. Ho .
Sheldon Mills: Yeah, cashola. And again, that's, you know, the financial term, but we invest by anything. We're putting our time and resources. It's, it's watering, you know, whatever we're focus is on, I mean, money is a powerful investment.
You invest by committing your time, by committing your focus , you commit by making a decision.
Jeff Corrigan: Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
Sheldon Mills: Wrap it up. Good episode Again, we will talk more about Action Catalyst this month, but these two topics were just so important we had to address 'em.
Thanks for joining us. Again, action catalyst for November, but these were just too important not to talk more about.
And we love reviews, trying to get to a hundred reviews, apple podcast and the course, the course my friends, it's good , it's getting better as more people take it, feedback, adjustments, like it's really good. So please let us know. Send us an email. You can have it for free. We're just trying to get as many people through it.
Daily steps to living your dreams.
Jeff Corrigan: Absolutely. It's time to start living your best life.
