Emotionen steuern, statt von ihnen gesteuert zu werden

0:00One of the one of the biggest breakthroughs that I had from a from a mental perspective was actually defining emotions for what they are operationally. So sadness comes from a lack of options, or rather a lack of perceived options. And that's why it feels like hopelessness because you don't know what to do. When I realized that sadness meant that I didn't know what to do, it meant that another way that I could define sadness was ignorance, and that is solvable.

0:25And so whenever I feel sad now, it's been my trigger to immediately think, "What do I not know? What option do I not see?" Because the opposite of that is anxiety, which is you have many options and you have few priorities. Looks like you have many paths that you could pursue and you just don't know which one. And so being able to operationalize what these emotions felt like. So if you feel sad, it just means that you need to go learn more, and that you can do. And then all of a sudden the learning more becomes the option, and then you don't need to feel sad anymore.

0:56And that was like one of the biggest breakthroughs for my like mental health or whatever you want to call it, mindset, um that set me free. And I've taken a lot of effort to try and operationalize emotions so that I can either get out of them or lean into them. So like patience for example, right? I'm only bringing this up because I think it might be relevant to some people, is that most goals are attainable if you expand the time horizon, even enormous ones. Like you can do anything in 10 years. You could walk to the moon. You could do There you go. You can do anything.

1:23And so for me, I am I would say a naturally impatient person. Like I tend to want things immediately now. And you know what? You probably are, too. But once I defined patience as figuring out what to do in the meantime, it allowed me to control what I did. Because now, like you and I are being patient for your stock investments. Right now, as we're on this podcast, we're being patient for that because we're doing things in the meantime. And so whenever I felt impatient and wanted to change course, I had to just redefine what do I need to do today? And if you are sad and impatient, then it means that right now you need to learn what the option is that you need to go pursue.

2:03And then that makes it very much under your control. And so step-by-step each of these emotions over time I spent a lot of time trying to define them out so that they no longer control me and I know how to solve them. And then and then now it just becomes a faster and faster muscle. It's like, "Oh, I feel anxiety. That means that I have many options that I don't have priorities. Okay, what's my priority?" And then all of a sudden what used to take days of anxiety and feeling this, you know, frog in my throat was just, "Oh, I need to make a list of all the things that I'm looking at. Which one's the most important? Ignore the rest." And then I'm good. And what used to used to take days takes minutes.

2:37One of yours is choosing the plan isn't hard. Doing the plan isn't hard. Sticking to the plan is hard. Charlie Munger said, "The money isn't made in the buy, and it's not even made in the sell, it's made in the wait." And that that like I just feel like that's such an elegant way of thinking about it. It's like the hard part about the plan is sticking to the plan. Like the plan wasn't bad. Your first plan was good because it's easy to go say, "I'm going to work out three days a week for the next year."

3:08And it's a good plan. Pretty good plan. It's a pretty good plan. And the interesting thing is that like a mediocre plan that's stuck to always outperforms an amazing and perfect plan that you never stick with to begin with. And I know this obviously from the fixed fitness world, but it applies to everything. And so like the stick-to-it muscle is the one that you have to flex. And that's why like if you're going through thing is you have especially in the earlier days. Like I remember I used to start and stop and start and stop. And I try this thing, I try that thing.

3:33It's normal because you haven't you haven't been reinforced enough of sticking with something. Right? But the thing is it's like you have to stick it out long enough that you get that first carrot. You get that first cookie. And then all of a sudden everything that you did to get there you're like, "Oh, more of that will get me more cookies." And that's and And then, then it just becomes this self-perpetuating cycle, and then you get addicted to work. >> [laughter] >> Yes, and and and and then you do a launch to 500,000 people, and you lock yourself in a closet 6 hours a day for 2 years. Yeah, that's exactly that.

4:02Because I've been rewarded in the past, because the first time I actually spent a lot of time on a presentation, and I felt good when I walked on stage and didn't feel anxiety. I was like, "Oh, I want this every time." And then I had this the second thought, which is the much scarier thought, which is, "Now I have to do this every time." This is the new bar. This is the new bar. Look, if you're a business owner, and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had, and what stages of growth they went through, and more importantly, where they got stuck, and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages, and we made this little kind of quiz thing, where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at, and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business, and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can book a call with my team, and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas, and we'll do this in person, live.