It\’s time for the We Are Better By Design podcast, a podcast that looks at and honors the small, simple decisions we make that result in life changing outcomes. With inspiration, tangible actions and stories from others that you can bring into your day so that you, too, can live a life that is better by design. I\’m your host, Andrew Sharp, it\’s time. Let\’s go!
Welcome to episode number one of the We Are Better By Design podcast. This is going to be a ton of fun. My intention with this podcast is to create some bite sized episodes, probably about 5 to 10 minutes. With a bit of inspiration, some tangible actions, some stories from others, all of which hopefully empower you. And, of course, a whole lot of cheering you on. Why? Because you deserve someone telling you how awesome you are. Because you are! It\’s your natural state. You are amazing! And I\’m happy to be spending this time with you.
You know, the idea for a podcast, it really came out of this moment where I\’ve been planning a course I\’m developing to help people build their online presence. In my business I work with solopreneurs and entrepreneurs. And one of the things that I really strive to do is understand what it is that they\’re going through and what it is that they\’re experiencing. And so I\’ve been working with a fair number of people who are doing podcasts, and I thought for me to better understand it and to better serve them, maybe I should create a podcast.
And this idea kind of organically came up out of that process. And so here we are creating a podcast. When I started thinking about what would I want to create a podcast on, the idea from this really came from my own realization that small changes to my beliefs or my habits were really impacting how my life has been playing out. I wanted to both capture these choices for myself and also be able to connect with others to understand how that was happening in their lives and also be able to share these things with you guys and the hopes that some of this resonates with you, too.
So we\’re right about the halfway point in 2020 and what a crazy year it\’s been. And I want to talk about the commitments that we made to ourselves at the beginning of the new year. Now, before we start judging ourselves, one of the core values of the We Are Better By Design podcast is that we are really developing a compassion and an awareness for ourselves. There\’s nothing but love here for ourselves. We\’re not going to judge. We\’re just going to observe. At the beginning of last year, I was so fired up, ready to make some really big changes in my life. I set some really huge fitness goals for myself. I wanted to do, I can\’t remember what the specifics were, but it was like I was going to try and do like 20000 push ups. I think it was 40000 pushups, 20000 pull ups.
I was ramped up and ready to go and I hit the ground running. I was doing an incredible job keeping up with things, going to brag on myself a little bit. And I had this idea one day when I was looking at it, I had mapped everything out, figured I need to do X number of these every single day. This is what\’s going to happen. And I had this idea that said, you know, if I want to get to that goal even faster, maybe I should ramp up the number I\’m doing every single day of push ups and pull ups. And I spent one day and I really pushed myself. And what ended up happening is I got hurt, I aggravated some of my muscles so badly that for the next couple of months I couldn\’t do any push ups, couldn\’t do any pull ups. I just got stuck. And I recognized that when I set big goals, I sometimes set them in a way that almost sets me up for failure instead of focusing in on the habit or really the identity that I want to create. Because for me, setting a goal is really about changing identity, who I am, what I\’ve been doing, turning that into doing it in a different way. Starting this year, though, I made a change. And this change, it actually came out of came from a podcast that I was listening to. I tuned into the Joe Rogan podcast and he was interviewing Firas Zahabi.
He was talking about training MMA fighters. Now, stick with me if that\’s not really your jam, because what he said is really applicable to all areas of life in the way that we approach it. I\’ll put a link to the episode in the show notes as well so you can check it out, too. But essentially what he talked about was the way that he trains people is that they don\’t focus on pushing to the outer limits consistently. What they really try to do is show up around like 50 percent, 60 percent and do that consistently every single time. And what happens is that they avoid injury. And because they\’re showing up all the time, the amount of effort, the amount of time that they\’re putting in over the span of a year is significantly more than somebody who pushes themselves and then has to pull way back to kind of recover. They don\’t really have recovery phase. Instead, they\’re just constantly being able to do this. It\’s the same kind of concept that maybe you\’ve heard about with the one percent rule. One percent in finances or one percent change in your life, that this compound effect ends up being that over the span of a year, if you just change things slightly one percent every day, the end of the year, you end up with a 3741% increase, which is huge! So think about that in maybe your fitness, maybe your finances, maybe even in your relationship.
If you found that one little thing that you could say, \”I\’m going to do this every day. I\’m going to turn in, tune in and I\’m going to tweak this in my life.\” You end up with just massive change by the end of the year. And so for me, this year, I made some fitness goals and like I said, this can apply really to anything. I\’ve taken it and applied it to business, to sales process, all these different things. Instead of huge, lofty numbers, my goals are set to do specific things every day. I\’m really trying to create habits and have those habits turn into my identity of who I am. So I got to active fitness goals and I\’ll use those just because they\’re really easy examples to kind of talk about. The first one is that I\’m set to do 20 or more pushups, 10 or more pull ups and one round of M100s every day. And I have to say, I\’m a brag of myself a little bit. I\’ve consistently accomplished these goals every single day of the year so far.
I\’m actually going to interrupt myself. I recorded this podcast previously, and in that in-between we actually moved and I took a significant break from my exercises. So as much as I want to brag on myself, I also want to be straightforward and honest about where I\’m at. And so I took a couple of months off, but I am back at it and it\’s going very well. So the wonderful thing about this is that you can take a little break and come back to it if you need to. All right, back to the podcast.
I\’ve avoided injury by setting my goals low. And here\’s another little secret you may have noticed when I said it, 20 or more pushups, 10 or more pull ups. That \”or more\” is that idea that I\’m going to grow and I can add more. But ultimately, what I want is just the consistency every day that says I\’m doing this and it\’s happening. And I got to tell you, it\’s working. I\’ve been applying this to my business, too, and it has been incredible. Those simple changes of simple habits, that\’s really what it is that we want to identify. Now, I have just like a simple worksheet that I print out for myself and I pencil it in. But my commitment is that the things that are on that worksheet, I am committed to do them every single day before I go to bed. I can do in the morning, I can do a midday, I can do them late at night. But no matter what, I\’m going to make sure it happens and I just get a little checkoff and so I\’ll put a link in the show notes. You can download that form and I would love to know what it is that you were committed to doing. The changes that you are making in your life.
When you do that form, what you want to do is just make a commitment in the direction you want ahead. If you want to improve your relationship, beautiful, do it. If you want to improve your health and fitness, do that. If you want to make something right with your finances and get those under control, do that, find some small commitment that you can make and then just show up every single day. That consistency mixed with time will yield a massive result for you.
Well, I\’m so grateful for each one of you listening. I hope that you got some value out of this and that you have an incredible rest of your day.
Thank you so much for joining me. I have one request if you could share this podcast with a friend or go ahead and leave a review. I would so appreciate it if you\’ve never done either. Check out the show notes and there\’s links in there to easily show you how you can do this. One of the best things you can do for this podcast and really any podcast is to do either of those things. It helps us grow. It helps more people experience the fantastic content that we\’re putting out all the time. And, of course, feel free to connect with me on Instagram. I am @sharpteambetterbydesign, and I\’m always happy to answer any questions about business or life. I love being able to connect with you, and I firmly believe that you too can be better by design.
Show Notes
Thank you for joining me on this journey. I firmly believe that you have massive potential and that the choices you make on a day to day basis will set you up to experience the most incredible life.
Free PDF Daily Commitment to Yourself to be who you want to be.
https://sharpteamdesign.com/wabbd-daily-commitment
Firas Zahabi on Joe Rogan Podcast
https://youtu.be/xDsoWp743gM?t=4706
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