#33 The choice that is slowing you down and stifling your success

Terry: Hi, it’s Terry here. Welcome back to the passive income project. I’m back again with Ryan. Welcome mate.

Ryan: Good to be back ma and I’ll here. We’re doing shots again.

Terry: We are with own shots and think I did ordinary job of explaining shots the first time. So I’m gonna give you another take here. The reason we call them shots is because we want them to be like a shot, very small, but. And we wanted to provide content for people that are, maybe don’t have 50 or 60 minutes all the time to be able to do it.

So I wanted to give you the listener, an opportunity to kind of pick and choose between how much time you’ve got available and still go deep. Still provide a lot of substance, but just do it on one simple idea. And that’s kind of the purpose of these shots.

Ryan: Yeah, no, it’s more like micro dosing. Isn’t it. Rather

Terry: Yeah, exactly.

Ryan: taking the whole bottle? that’s good. And what’s the topic of discussion?

Terry: Yes. So let’s talk about it. We’re going to talk about this mental G2 trick that we play on ourselves. We see it in ourselves. I see it in you, you see it in me. We see it in people that are in the program. We see it in people that are wanting to get into the program. It’s just something that, you know, we’re part of our job is to hold people’s hands and, I guess show them how to defend and to fake this trick of them.

Ryan: Yeah. And you know, I think anyone that’s achieved anything. real merit that found a why to save through this self-delusion and I don’t think he can really create the life that you want by skirting around the edges, like you just mentioned. And so I’m excited by this topic. Yeah, I think the sooner that you can, the fate, this mental jujitsu trick that you called it, uh, the CRNA that you get on the path, the way you want to bay solving.

Terry: Yeah. And I’m like, I feel like it is a superpower. And like, if you’re listening and you’ve ever told yourself, it’s just not the right time. I reckon 90% of the time. When you say that to yourself, that’s the smoke screen for you diluting yourself in this way. So if you’ve ever said, oh, it’s just going to be the right time.

I’m just not quite ready. What we’ve found is like, there are very busy people in our program, very, very busy people with heaps of things on heaps of things. Aren’t Emma Sutherland. I’m talking to you. You get shit done. There are people in that program that get this stuff down.

It’s not a matter of time. It’s a matter of desire. It’s a matter of commitment. And so this is what’s in the why. So if you’ve ever told yourself, it’s not the right time, but I feel like I’m ready. All those kind of themes. That’s not true. Most of the talk it’s this problem. We call it the blue pill bliss. And it’s basically thinking that not knowing what’s going on is better than knowing. It’s kind of like going I want to fix this problem, but I’m also afraid of figuring out what’s actually happening here. So I’m going to ignore that. I’m going to delay. I’m going to, I’m going to do whatever I can to not figure that out. Would that be a fair observation?

Ryan: Yeah, I think so. And even just, I think there’s folks that know that they could be doing better, but the reality is by funding out, you do have to accept some realities and you have to collide the ideas and the stories that you have with. And then usually that creates a feedback loop that can not always be, a calming sort of feeling.

You know what I mean? Otherwise kind of rattles the cage a little bit. And yeah, what we’re talking about here is if you cannot become that, what does that mean for you?

Terry: if you find yourself in this position where you are obsessively, collecting more information, maybe you’ve listened to every single one of their episodes. Maybe you’ve even gone to our website. Maybe you want it to get involved and you’d be kind of skewed in the edges. The thing that’s in the way is not that lack of time. It is this problem. It’s the, oh, but I don’t want to know. I don’t feel good about it. And what I would say is the story that you’re telling yourself about where you think you’re at and what that means, what it says about you. Like it’s very rarely true.

We often find it’s, wrong both ways, isn’t it? So people that think they go on really well and knockout as well as I think they are. And people that think they’re not going well at all, or often don’t lie better than I think they are. The feeling is just, it’s not very correlated to what’s actually happening.

Is it?

Ryan: Yeah that’s that delusion that you mentioned earlier? Yeah, I would really go to kind of, I guess, paying attention to the wrong things and sometimes at the wrong time as well. And. Getting a good handle on the trajectory and the things that are important. and I think the big trick is you thinking that avoiding the pain is a path to more pleasure, which is role.

Yeah. if you continue to go down that path, then you’ve done it. Get to get the feedback loops that help you, correct. Course and help you kind of pivot and change. And, you know, it’s even true in a business sense, you know, it was a good conversation you have with lucky Smith, last episode, one of the things he said was about how you, you kind of just start out with your ideas and anyone that has a business idea has, this shiny objects idea in their mind that, could change the world, the fantasy, and then you put it out to market or you start having the conversations with people, or you pitch it to say, And you get notes and you get all, yeah, that’s interesting.

And it’s, you know, no one really buys into it like you do, but then what you start to do is you start to iterate and you start to refine things. They start to test things, they experiment, and that’s when you start to find out what does work and it’s the same with all aspects of your life. You need to find out the truth, find out the reality so that you can start to iterate and adapt from there.

Terry: Yeah, it’s massive. Isn’t it? If you don’t have it, it’s almost like you’re driving without knowing exactly where you are and where you’re headed. You just don’t have the cues. And like what’s interesting is there’s all this interesting research. And so is that humans in the absence of environmental cues, they walk in a perfect circle so that they drop people out in the day.

And they can’t see anything. There’s no trees on the horizon. All I see is sand in one direction and sand in the other direction. And then I just watch what they do. They’re trying to navigate their way out of the situation. They always walk in a perfect circle. And I think that’s pretty comparable to what happens in the absence of, you know, the truth.

Right? So if you don’t know where you are financially, you don’t know how things are going. You don’t know where you want to get to those things. Aren’t clear to you. You’re gonna be doing a lot of work. But you’re not going to be getting the award. I’ve never met someone. That’s not working hard.

Everyone’s working hard. It’s just whether you’re getting any bang for your buck and it becomes super demoralizing. Like you can fall into this kind of mindset where you’re like, ah, well maybe it’s just, I’m no good at this. It’s like a fixed fatalistic mindset that just, I can’t change this, this situation country.

And you tell yourself these stories to particularly you are like, I don’t have the time, or it’s not the right time. Like we said before, this doesn’t make sense for me, or it can’t make sense for me, or maybe I’m just going to out earn my money. Worries. I’m just going to earn heaps of money or it’s okay.

There’s going to be a time in the future where we’re just going to have this big windfall. Maybe it’s an inherited. Maybe we’re going to just win the lotto. And we start telling ourselves these stories and we’re telling ourselves these stories to make ourselves feel better because deep down we know that we don’t know the truth, that we’re not working with reality.

Ryan: Yeah. It’s like that marshmallow test, isn’t it. But on the psychological front, in the sense that we actually just want to receive the instant gratification, which is the reality that we can create for ourselves as opposed to what could be the short-term pain of finding out the truth.

No big the thing that serves you, but you know that by tackling it, head on that you’re going to rise to the top for you over time. And what you said before around you working just as hard for little reward. But you’re expanding effort the picture that came to my mind was instead of walking up the hill, you’re just walking around it and you just kind of doing a lap of the hill, but no naturally going any higher.

that’s. It’s such a short point and the opportunity cost the C’s every minute that you stay in this Sokal is another minute that you don’t break the cycle and move towards where you actually want to be. And so the sooner that you can tackle that head on and go, all right, I just want to say it for what it is.

I’m going to hold up a mirror to myself to say where I’m at the sooner that you can do. The sooner it is that you can actually start to deal with and adapt and change.

Terry: And the reason we’re calling a blue pill Bliss’s cause it’s kind of an analogy to this scene in the movie, the matrix where the guy’s like here, you can take the blue pill and go back to your fantasy or you can take the red pill and I’m going to show you what’s really going on and I’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes and we can figure it out there together.

So what we find is the people that come to us and take the red pill. They find out some good. They know that there are different things that are in their control. But the moment where you decide to choose that truth over that comfortable illusion that you’ve been living in, that is the moment where you start moving toward what you actually want. You sort of stopping walking around that hill, as you’re talking about it and you start walking up it and like you stuck, you said before, we’re still expanding effort, but now actually getting something fully effort. And we starting really small, but now at least for the one unit of habit, we’re getting some sense of progress.

And we know that as. That that sense of progress is the most powerful motivator. So for us, what we see in the program is as soon as that person comes in and they move past the red pill moment, and I stopped actually making a small sense of progress, it may even be like $50 a month. That’s changed in terms of whether they’ve been able to keep it.

Maybe they didn’t even know that we’re keeping money and now they do that. Is what, kickstarts the big change that happens over the next course of the next 6, 12, 24 months. You know, that if you can get to that red pill moment, move through that discomfort, then everything’s going to change for you.

those small decisions start to add up and it’s the compounding effect of those decisions because now those decisions are informed. Now they make sense in the context of what you’re trying to accomplish. Whereas in the past you had just kind of living in hope. Is this the right.

Ryan: And speaking from experience and through the experiences, Batman. Those little decisions are not from willpower, Adda. They’re not blue power to resist the temptations that are happening on a daily basis. It’s just that there’s a level of fortitude and conviction in what they’re creating and where that heading that all the other stuff, you know, those automatic sort of habitual decisions that stack up on a daily basis.

Those things just kind of fall by the wayside because I got. That’s actually not serving me and it doesn’t compel me like it used to, I’ve got something that’s in front of me that’s worth working towards. And so the other stuff just feels like waste and it doesn’t come from a dragon which is critical because obviously willpower is very limited.

And so yeah, when you can actually see that path ahead of you and, know that you’ve got that really good, strong overview of how money is moving through your life. You do pay attention to those nominal things and go hang on. No, that’s not serving me. You know, that’s actually not important. It’s actually not creating as much value as what I previously thought it was

Terry: that’s a good point. I love this quote from a guy called Joseph Campbell and he is, I guess he’s probably lot the guru of story. He’s, the guy who pioneered , the idea of the hero’s journey and the hero’s journeys , if you watch any Hollywood movie, you’re gonna watch the hero’s journey and, uh, we all have it and sort of an analogy for our life helps you understand the different phases of your life.

And he has this court, which is the cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure. You seek the cave, you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek. And I think that starts to point to the truth here and the solution. What do we need to do? We’ve got to go into the cave that we’ve been afraid of entering because that is where, what we want. Ease.

Ryan: The golden nuggets

Terry: Exactly. So it’s these moments of truth. These are the catalyst for change. And once you name the game that you applying, you’re like, okay, this isn’t working now we can do something different. And sorry, like we see in all the time I, when people come in now they get a real handle on their finances and they go, hang on a second. There’s one particular couple of like, hang on a second. We’re three months in, we’ve started to say that we’re spending $700 a month on alcohol. Does that align with what we want? Yes. So. And so then these decisions stop change, because you can’t really dilute yourself. You can’t really say, oh, I’m not doing that. This is not actually as bad as I think it is. You go, actually, that’s not great. And we can fix it.

Ryan: Yeah. And what, uh, probably quickly hot lot on that is we’re never telling people not to do those things. It’s more dislike holding up that mirror and saying, all right, this, this is what it is. And what do you want to do about it? It’s more conscious now. It’s kind of just bringing those things to the surface.

Terry: Yeah.

it’s so powerful mate. Like I’m doing this right now from a health perspective, I was laughing and joke with a friend of mine about the COVID and, uh, he’s just recently had his first kid and he’s like, man, my whole routine is gone nowhere.

We’ll just kind of laughing about the dad bonds. Like we had the dad wasn’t happy. And um, so I said, all right, he’s all we’re going to do every Monday. I’m going to take a photo of exactly where I’m at. And I’m going to send you a photo of this and I’m going to send you the measurement. And the main measurement for me is going to be good stomach girth.

Cause that’s the biggest one that’s correlated to health. So I know if I can get that down, I’m going to get. Ah, so every Monday I’ve got to send him that photo. He’s going to send me a photo. And the reason is we’re dealing with reality. So I’ve got to look at that every Monday. I know. Well, that’s, what’s going on.

I can’t say, oh, that’s not too bad because then you’re on this slow rot. You just become on the slow rot towards a place where you don’t actually want to get. And so it’s super, super powerful. And you know, even the fact that I’m talking about this now on a podcast, even just supercharges it. Right. Cause now he knows there’s been a social contract between him and I. Now there’s a social contract between you and I. So Ryan, and now there’s a social contract between you, the listener and me as well. So that’s going to just stiff everything up.

Ryan: Can I just hold you up for a second? Because I think we can Sue charges even further.

And is there a way for I and everybody listening to sign up to these weekly.

Terry: I don’t know if you want that mate.

Ryan: Can we drop an email

somewhere and

Terry: heavy, at this Hemet. These have been, I do a before and after I can give you the first I can give you the last. And I’ll tell you when the diet is the deadline for me, it’s going to be November 30. That’s the deadline for me. I want to be sub 90 centimeters around the girth in that time.

That’s where I want to be.

Ryan: yeah. Yeah. Good.

Terry: that’s my goal.

Ryan: Um, All right, so before and after no tenancy, is that right?

Terry: No takes no fake tan either.

Ryan: If I said, yeah,

Terry: But you know what? Look it’s, it’s bloody good. stopped doing it and you gotta starts to really focus your attention, your efforts, and the decisions that were made unconsciously now become really conscious very day that I say, well, we’re going to start to do that. I had to go grab some lunch. Now I’m on a, grabbed like a cheese and toasty or something like that before. And then I got to it. I was like, Hmm, just give me a protein shake. so those small decisions, it’s the compound effect of those small decisions over the time that makes the difference. And it’s like, there are a few stories of these two with our members more recently, like I’ve got a message from, shout out to Christian Mona up in Sydney.

And he sent me a message about a year and a half ago. These guys came into the program and got involved and, you know, really got across the money mapping really understood the systems put it all into. And he sent me a text and said, you know, we’ve always been wanting to buy this house and we wanted to settle up in Sydney he just recently bought a house up in DUI. So that’s really one good example of what can happen over the course of time. Right. It is the course of time that compounds this stuff.

Ryan: yeah, that’s awesome. And, um, you know, I been think about a comment we got in now group of their members earlier dial to. From Katie and James. So similar, I think they actually posted a, we’ve just passed at one year cashflow Cova Surrey, which was fun.

And sort of highlighted some of the things that they’ve done. And, there was a six month cash push and there was zero to, I think, 42 K in shares, funded, most of their wedding. I think it was pretty closed borders. And now saving about 50% of their income. And that’s a lot, that’s, uh, that’s obviously outsized, it’s gone to have results. But I think what’s interesting was, that was still making progress before they met us, but it wasn’t completely visible and they couldn’t really see. The link between the efforts and the trajectory, and the direction that we’re headed.

And so even just connecting those tos, that can be such an important part of, getting that true handle as well. Being able to connect that and say that our efforts are actually Stein to stack, because as I’ve told you about in previous episodes, progress is the greatest motivator for us.

Sometimes just getting a handle on the truth and saying, this is how we’re actually going, can be a huge motivating factor because it’s not all bad. A lot of the time it’s a chance to just speed things up a little bit more. And just know that yeah, you are heading in the right direction you are doing okay.

Terry: Yeah. I think, these are critical and it’s just, highlights the impact of Tom on these choices. It’s just over time, these massive results can occur because of that compound effect.

Track 1: All right. So let’s talk about what we’re talking about here and what we actually assigning. We’re saying you should seek out these moments of truth, stop running from them because these moments are kickstart the progress that you want and they will help you get there. the other pod where I think I’d love to hear your thoughts on this is just involve somebody else in the conversation, because I know for myself, I won’t do this for myself.

Having somebody else as a part of that to kind of walk you through it, I feel like it’s. Because if it’s left to you, you’ll just kind of be like, well, it’s not the right time. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow. It’s just, Yeah, we won’t do it.

ryan_monaghan-2021-9-14__10-36-28: Yeah, oh no, let’s split that into as well and say, I think you’re talking about having someone that you can kind of help keep you accountable. And, you know, always think about this in a football perspective, I still play football. And, if you want to know how you’re really going, how you’re really playing, what you call attributions is you ask the coach, you say, Hey mate, how do you think I’m doing?

Uh, like how have I been playing? What can I work on? But it’s hard to do that because it’s easy to just go through the motions and let yourself believe that you’re actually doing better than what you actually are.

And so yeah, you want to ask that person then you start to go, all right, I need to adapt. I need to change something. And then the other thing that just sprung to mind, as you were saying that. Just doing it for somebody else as well, in terms of, if it’s not accepting some of those truths or working on it for yourself, who is it for?

Is it for somebody else’s, it’d be a partner if you want for your children. So sometimes that can help us kind of step into those pains. Cause you’re like, Hey, the reward here is long-term for other people as well. Not just from myself

Track 1: Yep. You don’t have to do this alone and you probably won’t do it alone. Fucks people wide. So I try, that’s basically the point. Yeah. Get those moments of truth leading to that discount foot involves somebody else in the conversation and you will get what you want over a longer period of time, because those decisions are going to start to reflect what you actually want. Not what you.

ryan_monaghan-2021-9-14__10-36-28: Perfect.

Track 1: Good stuff. And I’ll shut down. Hopefully you like this farm. Tell us again, always give us the feedback. We’re really keen to find out what you guys are thinking and feeling about this stuff. We want to make sure that you keep getting value. So if you liked this episode and you want to tell us what you liked, awesome.

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