Personal Transformation Blueprint

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services. Of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. At the end of the day, it's not about what you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up, who you've made better. It's about what you've given back.

0:44 Thanzel Washington, Welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Dan, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and on different sides of the planet, but I love how technology makes it possible. Toy, Oh, you know, it's wonderful. It's amazing to me that you know here. I thought you might be in the UK. Now you're in New York and as you say, you've been traveling all over so it's great that we can do this. Yeah, I'm was getting smaller. I would love for you to share with the audience kind of who. You are and the story behind what helped you to reach this point in your life and what you're doing and why you're doing what you're doing to help other people.

1:34 Beautiful. Okay, So let me see if I can give you a good answer to that. Because I'm forty five years old and who I am I think still is evolving and I'm starting to grow into myself a little bit. If you look at the kind of professional side of me, then I'm a speaker and trainer. I speak a lot on the ideas of sales and psychology. I'm a behavioral scientist, and effectively I teach salespeople how to help people make good decisions and typically good decision and are aligned with purchasing decisions around sales. So that's kind of the corporate space. I apply those same psychological principles to my own life. I'm a bodybuilder, a natural bodybuilder, and I'm kind of preparing for ant of the competition which I have in four weeks, which is the world title. So I'm kind of currently in that kind of headspace to really challenge myself and push myself outside of my comfort zone. And then if you ask family who I am, I'm Dan.

2:28 I'm like the hyper competitive one that likes winning all the board games. It probably it's a little bit too much cake. When I come to visit typically has a good word to say, but because sometimes get a little bit cranky. How else when people talk about following those kind of things. So yeah, so that's kind of me. And I'm a dad and I have an amazing daughter. We're like I say, We're currently based in New York Coast. School is literally within earshot, so if the microphone isn't controlled too much, then you can probably hear a screaming running around in playground. And that's basically how I spend my time. In any other part of me, which I'm still trying to grow into, which is the interesting piece and we'll probably talk about this today, is this idea of being an author. So I've written two books over a period of ten years. I was a period of ten years in between when I started to realize that I can actually do this stuff, and I just write on my third one. But there's that aspect of me is still growing, It's still one that I don't haven't fully grown into. So if you asked me in a year who I am, it'll probably be slightly more focused on the authoring and the writing. But for right now, I'm kind of this hodgepodge of talk about sales, do some bodybuilding. I'm slightly different color. You may be able to see on the video slightly orange eer orangeer is that the word will go with it from the fake town from last week's competition. But yeah, I just enjoy life.

3:50 I like to live at both ends of the spectrum as much as I possibly can and not rule anything out. So I'm as comfortable listening to hip hop, nineties hip hop and RMBA. I am going to a theater and we went to see The Lion King on Broadway. The night is my mum's birthday present, So you know, I think we can all have lots of different experiences. I'm comfortable with that. Okay, so major bodybuilder and you're in a competition. I think that's cool. I keep struggling to try to do that better, but we're not going to talk. About that today. So what was there an aha moment that you've had or was it just a gradual to where you you know, started writing your books obviously to reach out to other people.

4:34 What what caused you to decide that you really wanted to do what you're doing in helping people besides the business part and really helping people. Now the latest book is your latest book, the Personal Transformation blue Book Blueprint. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so that was a documentation of kind of how my mental journey for the bodybuilding. Yeah. Okay, there's slice a lot of difference. All right, So what was that aha moment or was it just edle that you kind of decided that I, right, I want to really help the community. I want to help other people. So I've been in I guess the personal development self help space for a very long time. That's how it started. In this whole training journey. A friend of mine gave me a CD you guys know Anthony Roberts, the Personal Power CDs from back in the day, and I was at the time, I was training athletes, I was working in sport in personal training. He said, hey, listen to this, I think it will help, and it really did. Like I found it extremely interesting, so much so that I went and studied neural linguistic programming and did my master practition all those kind of things, and then that led to a business kind of engagement and they said, how can you go and teach this to some people over here?

5:41 And I said, okay, sure, and that kind of started my sales training career. So I started teaching neural linguistic programming to business people and salespeople across Europe and UK and eventually all over the world. In that time, I wrote goals. You've probably written goals right and occasionally and there's a little scraps of paper on the notebooks that you write there. And there were certain goals that always came up right. And one of them was sub teen percent body fat because you know you've got to have abs and all those kind of things, and you know, kind of get programmed. Never hit that goal. Never up until recently we were talking about that. Another one was write a goal goal setting book. I wanted to write a book on goal setting. It's tons of the night.

6:26 There never happened, Never happened. Had like every year I'd write these same goals down. For some reason, it never happened. I wrote other goals, some of those you know, we're able to happen, but these two were always out of reach. I don't know why. And then so coming back to your question, was there a moment. There was a moment and it was buying three years ago and we were on the beach I don't know. You know England, there's an amazing beach called Western super Mare. They have to add the super I don't know why, but it's not that super but as great as a year you grow up near the Bristol coast and we were there. We were there with the family and it was a sunny day. And I remember this because we had the daughter's like first one and the first experiences at the beach. He's running around in the sound, maybe a couple of years old.

7:11 Family there and it's a decent day. So take the shirt off, enjoy the sun, running around the shorts. It get splashed, but yeah, it's far fun of being the beach. Heay, end of the day. Get the photos and I see this one particular photo of me just standing there with no shirt on, and something different hit me. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever looked at a picture of yourself, You see yourself in the mirror and it's just you, right, it's you, but this one. I don't know why, but I saw something different and I saw somebody who said a load of good stuff but never really followed through it. It's weird. I don't know why. But it was like very average, Like it's an average body, average relationship, average career, just average everything. And I looked at it and I was like, my average, Like is that what I am?

8:02 If I settled to be average? I talked about all these kind of go out and do these things and challenge yourself and push yourself. But there was this weird disconnect that had and all I saw was someone who had loads of excuses for reasons for not doing things. I can't put it any more than that. Just this one photo triggered this idea that I just make excuses and I never challenged myself and I've never really seen anything through as far as I possibly could. And that was kind of a kick in the butt, you know that. It was kind of a moment of like oh okay, And so I had a choice. I was like, okay, well, are you gonna just stay average or are you going to go and do something about it? And that was that's kind of if you say, was there a moment. It was one single photograph that triggered it all off.

8:45 Wow wow, Yeah, and it's amazing. I'm really curious because I noticed in your bio and you've talked about the fact that you have that master's degree and behavior but it's behavioral decision and I've not heard of that particular one. For I know that the behavioral sciences, but the behavioral decision what what is that? Why is that distinguished? You know? I guess there's probably two answers. That one is the marketing answer, which is the university probably had to put some spin on it to make it sound a little bit more interesting than others. But for me, the reason I like that is there's there's behavioral science, so we can look at things like nuds. You know, you can you control people and can you encourage them to do things by creating environments where they make choices that make sets of better choices. You know. So us having this conversation with a friend of mine, you other there, he's very libertarianism. He's like freedom for everyone, everyone make the same choices. I'm like, that's great, But they still put warnings on domestic cleaners not to drink them right, So we have to control people. People aren't People aren't done, but they don't always make great decisions. So there's this idea of paternal libertarianism, which is, you have freedom of choice, but we're going to guide you if you don't know it. So, for example, if you install a computer program, none of us a computer programmers. So we also hit the default option because we trust that that is the best option for us.

10:06 Is it? I don't know, but only you, say, five percent of people ever update the basic setting. So we have to trust that some of the choices that have been made for us are good, and then the rest of the choices are ours to make, right, or we at least think there are ours to make, and yet we make some howless, we make some absolutely terrible decisions. And for me, the reason to study this is twofold. Right. So first of all, I teach salespeople to influence people's decisions, I should probably understand how people make decisions. But then the second part is, hey, Dan, look back across your life. You made some terrible, terrible decisions. What were you doing, like, what were you doing? What was going on in your head?

10:46 And on the other side of that then is how can I make fewer terrible decisions moving forward? But everything that we do comes down to a moment of choice, right our choice of what to do, what to have for breakfast, what to spend doing during our day? How do you know what clothes do we wear? All of these things are choices and they influence us moving forwards. We can't do anything about today, all of those decisions have been made that bring us up to today. But for tomorrow, and if we want to change, and again coming back to that photo, if I want to change who that person is I see in the picture. Can't change the history, but I can change what I do from today moving forwards. But it's got to be conscious.

11:29 If I just go with my automatic programming, if I go with the status quo, then tomorrow I'm going to wake up and it's going to be the same met And if I'm happy with the same me, then great. But if I want to evolve, I want to change on something different, then I need to make different decisions. And so that that's kind of the thing. I guess it's really understanding why do we make decisions? And how can we make better ones? Okay? And how do you find the correlation because I find this very interesting. You know, you work with bodybuilders, and you know, as we as we look in general at all of the activities to go on with football and baseball and all all those activities bodybuilding and so forth, you know, you see that and I know that based on a lot of interviews that I've done, that the body, using the body to move and to do all those things really can help in a sense of being able to make some changes in our lives and understand what's going on. At the same time, you read some of these incredible stories that are just a nightmare where you know here they are, and yet they're not making good choices.

12:34 What have you found when you're working with people in business, for instance, where you know in NLP. Obviously for the folks that don't know what that is, I think it can be used in a couple of ways. One, if you're in sales and in business, NP is really amazing on how you can help people to make decisions, all right, and then I'll not go any further than that. But NP also if you get more into the personal aspect, is you're able to help people understand why they are making the decisions that they're making, and if those decisions are negative or not really helping the individual, then using some and LP processes, you're able to help remove, identify, and then remove some of those subconscious belief systems that are literally causing the decisions to be made. What are your thoughts on that?

13:29 So so many things in there, and just for people who are listening. So NP is this idea of new linguistic programming. It's come up with. It was designed way way back by two people. One of them was a computer programmer and one of them was a linguist. And this idea of can we use language in the same way that we can program computers and effectively understand the coding and the way we code processes and up bring So just for understanding, that's all it is. It's a pattern of language or language patterns that we can use and then you can obviously build different programmings. So like you said, we can change people's limiting beliefs or understand programs by using this kind of common phrasing or language. And so I'm also an appy. I used to be a sports person. I used to play American football as a brick that's not very common, but I've kind of played sport. My current challenge is bodybuilding. I tried trying to run out iron round for once. That was not a good choice. But yeah, you make life choices and sometimes you learn from them don't repeat the pattern. So I think the question was what was the question is what if I find and it's like the crossover I guess between sport and business and how we can use all these things. And I think there's there's a few things, and it's really the first step is always awareness, right, first step is always awareness is look at the situations and try and understand the situations that we're in. And the biggest, the biggest thing I think in in kind of understanding situations is that we we actually don't make decisions.

14:52 We don't we go with default or what I have to deal with a lot in sales is status quill so state quo biass quo. Bias says, it's really hard to get going Newton's first law of motions, like a object arrest tends to stay at rest like that that that kind of idea is that unless something comes in and kicks us in the butt or as a force applied or something that we're not going to do anything. We're just going to stay the same. And this is what this is, ironically, this is what I call the trap of average, is that most people are in a situation where average is okay, and we don't have this burning need to change. We're not you know, life isn't failing.

15:34 We're not down and out, we don't have all these problems. We see all these kind of rag to riches stories. We're like, oh, our life isn't that bad, so we're okay. But we're also not happy enough to be able to celebrate. So we're in this kind of weird, no motivation zone that never kicks us in the butt unless something happens right, and we wait for these life events like a diagnosis or you know, somebody telling us something that we had no idea, or something completely comes out, were fired or something like that. We wait for these things to happen to nudge us out of the status quo bias salespeople is the entire job of sales. But my job is to call you and nudge you out of your status quo. Like everything was good until the salesperson arrived. Now I have a problem, thanks Salespeperuse why people don't like salespeople because they just introduce if they're good, they introduce problems that I now have to fix enough problems, Thank you very much, salesperson. But that's the hardest thing, right, So most problems are typically caused by status quad because we don't take proactive action, like, for example, how did you do you have? If it's late? I've got my coffee, right, so here's my coffee? And on New York mug, how do I take my coffee? How do I take my coffee?

16:42 I probably have that the same way as I always do, you know. And for years that was a lot of milk and a lot of sugar and syrup. And then one day something happened to ruin that. And do you know what happened? Starbucks put calories on the menu. Thank you, Starbucks. You absolutely ruined it. Because I went in and think, coffee, Hey, is coffey? What's the worst that can happen? Apparently five hundred calories is the worst that can happen. That was like my kind of grande latter caramel frappucino with extra shot of all of these things. And now suddenly I'm like giving some new information, which says it's probably not a good idea. And so this is what's the challenge with states caused we never get out of it. So the first thing for anybody to look at is to evaluate where they are. And if it's like, I mean a lot of people, hey, my job, home, my career, I've got a conversation. In a little while, I was like, oh, I've got these opportunities, Like what should I do? I was like, okay, well, look at the states called where are you? And how did you get there? And is there a pan that you keep running through to get into this situation where you feel stuck or annoyed or frustrated, And look at the decisions that lead you to this point?

17:47 Are you doing something every day that kind of creates this this treadmill effort? So that's that's the kind of the first thing. The second thing I say, Okay, well what do I need to change? Do I need to make a different decision? Do I need to change my behavior? And if I do, then what is that transition? What does that gap look like? Right? Where does that go? And typically, if we're going to do something, then we need to change. We're going to do something sustainable, We need to change our identity, right, We need to think of ourselves as a different person and then behave in accordance with that. We can tie our shoelaces differently or we do something very superficial, but that isn't going to create lasting change. So anytime you want to create lasting change, it's an identity thing. So for me, like I said earlier, everyone want to be an author. I have to think of myself as an author and that I have to act as an author. But there's a gap, and that gap is imposter syndrome. And that gap is that little voice that says, yeah, but Dan, you're not an author, like you know, you're not healthy, you're a terrible writer.

18:48 And I can even hear my English teacher's voice from back in the day. It's like that. And so we have to overcome that. And a lot of people can't overcome that, that imposter syndrome, or we doubt ourselves, or we kind of do it a little bit and then we're like, don't hope people don't see us, and we kind of diet it back. So that's that's the big challenge of coming. Yeah, and you know, as you were, as you were studying the behavioral sciences. Did you get. Involved or have you got involved in any of the analyzes that help people to understand their personality and their profiling and so forth. And you know what I find really interesting and I want to get into something that you talk about a little bit, and and that is this imposter syndrome.

19:33 Okay. And as I've used that profiling the way that I happen to use it on an individual basis, I really look at how you know we are who we are. I mean, there is that innate individual that oftentimes we have no clue who we are. Then there's that social who we need to be personality, and I think that becomes the definition of the impostor syndrome. We are who we think we need to be. We are who the society tells us we have to be, who religion, whose school, who everything tells us we need to be, and then ultimately we are who we really truly. Choose to be.

20:14 And how many people do you find are literally living in that imposture syndrome and don't actually even realize that they're doing that. If you look at the research for imposter syndrome itself, about seventy percent of people have imposter syndrome. I would love to be one of those thirty percent that just goes around this unbelievable self confidence or naivety in my own lack of ability. But it's about seventy percent, and it is contextual, right, It is contextual that you know, sometimes I feel very confident in an area. Sometimes I feel out of confidence, and you know, so sometimes I'm really good things. Sometimes I'll follow through. But typically at least seventy percent of people with experience imposts syndrome from time soon that's a stung thing. Well, the court of questions is.

21:08 Well, well, let's go a little bit further. You know when when people you know you you make the comment and I love it, and we're all in this you know situation where you're you're still trying to figure out who you are. And you know that's why I love that question. You know who are you? But you know who am I? Who? When we ask that question of ourselves, who am I? And then we start to watch our behavior. I have a saying and it's it's somewhat religious. So for those of you that are not religious, I apologize, but you know, from a Christianity standpoint, I every once in a while when someone really gets into you need to do this, you need to do that, this is how you need.

21:51 To do it. And you know, I'll just say, okay, have a question for you. For those of you that understand who Christ is, did he do what he did to become Christ? Or did he do what he did because he was Christ? And then I bring that into you know, as we look at our behaviors, we look at our actions. Are we doing that because we hope to become something? Or do we do that because we already are and therefore we do And if we notice then that you know, we want to change that a bit. As you talk about then what that really means is we need to figure out how do we change that internal and make person to become so that it becomes a natural fluid go to result.

22:41 So let's take let's take that example. And as Silaious and I grew up as in your Christian family, in my family Silver church, I'm still yet to decide, and I don't necessarily believe in labels, but let's say there is definitely something out there and we'll call it something different to avoid fighting in each other. But let's take this example right is it comes down to a moment. Christ is there and he's like, I could get out of this, right, this is the he has some amazing, crazy superpower, a marble who could only dream of. But he's like, I could get out of this, Dad, I need a favor, get me out of this crazy situation, and right to put me off on his cross, hammer me into this thing with nails, get me out of here. There's definitely that option. There's definitely that option. And yeah, he chooses in that moment choice right to go through.

23:27 He follows through with whatever path was said out. Okay, but this is this is what people forget that. That's that's one thing. Let's rewind. Let's rewind. Let's look at all of those moments in his entire life where he had to act as if that person, right, he had to act as if he was a son Christ, right, because he was like, hey, I'm the son of Christ. It's like come on man, Like everybody doubted him. Everybody was like there's no such thing as son Christ. Like we have this god over here, there's a different one. He's better than you. Look at these temples so much money, like how can you you can'try that you're poor. You just make a little kind of figurines on the side of the road like what you're not come on, And at any point and on that journey, he could have gone, yeah, you're right, I'm just a carpenter, like pretending, you know.

24:15 So over time he had to reinforce his belief. He had to keep saying it, and there would have been times and you know, you hear about this. I think it was a temptation in the desert or something like that, right, forty days or whatever it is. And I think that's where Lend comes from, is he was tempted by the they will like for forty days to kind of renounce all of this idea, and he's like, now I'm sticking with it. I'm gonna stay with my story. Now just that's that's as far as I go into the Bible. So let's stay with that. But let's think about what people, what people and their challenges do. So let's say I set this goal my ambition, and I'll tell you, I'll tell you my bodybuilding story a little bit. Is I said, right, I'm going to do this bodybuilding challenge. I'm going to step on stage and I'm going to kind of, you know, fake tan myself up and do all these kind of things, and I'm going to say I'm theodybuilder. And I had to say I was a bodybuilder long before I stepped on stage. I think Muhammad Ali has his quote. He said, I told people I was the greatest long before I even stepped in the rank. Right, you have to declare something before it even happens. But up until that point, you have no reference, you have no proof, you have no concept, you have no understanding, you don't have the experience, you haven't got any reason to say that you're that thing.

25:23 So I tell people that I'm a bodybuilder, but I've never experienced bodybuilding, and so in my head there's this moment, No, Dan, you're not a bodybuilder. You haven't done anything like well, you keep t having people your body boarder. But I had to say it. I had to say it because I had to act as if. And then the way to overcome that imposter syndrome is just to do it. Is to have discipline, to show up and to make choices every single day that allow you to eventually realize that goal. So I come back to mine, it was every single day or not every single day. But my training plan, I would go to the gym every day and I did this for fourteen months. Every day day I would weigh the exact amount of food that I would eat, like literally down to the ground. I'd like take little tweezers and take one oh out of a not quite but you know. But for fourteen months, I weighed every meal. Like I go to dinner with a family and I say that much, there's that much that and those kind of things, and nobody could see that.

26:19 Nobody sees any of those aspects. And so there's there's public decisions and then there's private decisions, and that typically there's more things that go on behind the scenes before you ever get to that point. And for me, there was a crossover, like there's a moment in that journey where something happened that actually filled me with beliefs. I worked from imposter syndrome to yeah, I can do this. And it was one of those mornings I can't waken up and wipe the sleep out of my face. I trained in the morning before the family wake up right super early. I go downstairs, do whatever you do in the morning, and then kind of step on the scales and weigh yourself and you know, you take off the clothes because it makes you a little bit light and like stepping on scales. You're like, am I there? And as I did that, I looked up and I saw a face in the mirror that I didn't recognize and like some chairs and shoulders. I'm like, WHOA, what's that?

27:13 That's what I want to look like and I can't I can't explain it. But it was this weirdness. It's like, oh, that's me by And from that point I was like, maybe I can do this, Maybe I am gonna be this thing. And that was that moment. And I don't know, I've had it in I've had it with writing, like I've had it with people like oh God, like you that's amazing, Like did you chat GPTs? Like no, I actually type these things out and it actually came more together. There were moments in everyone's career where something just clicks and it feels like it's working and all of that effort up until that point suddenly seems worth it. But up until that point, all of that effort seems to be going nowhere.

27:58 But when you do it, yeah, as you became all of a sudden you were doing. And you know, I love the idea of setting goals, and I wonder sometimes, I know there's all of us talk about affirmations and so forth, But the reality is, isn't a goal really an affirmation if you do it the correct way? You know, I am a bodybuilder. I am a bodybuilder, and there has to be that belief that you literally have that capability, otherwise it never happens. But when you have that belief and then all of a sudden you become because your behavior is you're doing what you need to do to become that very thing that you have affirmed that you are, all of a sudden, there you are. And isn't that really the secret for anyone that wants to overcome whatever is going on in their lives and recognizing that, you know what, this is not what I want. I want something different than it takes a little bit of you know, self awareness and introspection to figure out what that is.

28:58 Yes and no is the answer. And the reason I say that, and I come back to the point from earlier is who we are today is a result of all the decisions we've already made. We can't change the person's day, and I've been looking back and going that was a good decision, that was a bad half hard decisions of luck. All right, let's kind of go with that. So and we are a product of like you said, genetics, our environment, our social circle. So who I am today is a result of so many different aspects. But that doesn't have to be me tomorrow. And so if I'm in this point now where I'm like, Okay, well I want to do something different, I'd say I've realized that there's more for me to experience in life as like challenge myself, set a goal whatever that is, or I want to change direction or do something that's more in line with who I am as an individual, or like you say, not living someone else's life, but actually I want to do something that is more aligned with me.

29:49 Then from this moment, I can start to act as if and I can start to be the person that that person is. And so that's where you're saying, right, I am this and you're going to have that gap. There's a disparaity right between the person who you want to be and the person that you are today and this person and by you know, this is where the kind of neurology comes in, is this person is well ingrained, Like for me to even change my coffee takes a lot, you know, It's like and that's a tiny little decision. It's just like that is ridiculous, Like just do something different when you coffee? Yeah, I know, but I'm attached. I like it like that. And when we get attached, right, we have this is called endownment bias. Like the things that we do we attach ourselves too, and we have our identity to it. So let go of that identity is scary for many people because that's certainty, that's comfort, that's who I am. We have people attached that, we have relationships to attach that we have meaning, we have memories, we have all these things. And so for me to change who I am says fundamentally, I'm not happy, which is tough. People don't want to say that. And this is this is this is the battle, because we're as soon as we do that, we can compare ourselves and say, ah, but at least we better than Bob. Bob bad Bob has it? Bob like, oh my god, do you know what happened to Bob's Like, our life isn't that bad?

31:09 Take it easy. It's like okay, and then we take the pressure off, and now we're not going to change because we compare ourselves. And so the challenge is to say, I'm not happy, like I'm not where I am or where I want to be, but I'm still good like I can, i can feel grateful and I feel appreciation for all of the experiences that have come. And so we're not doing change out of a position of anger and frustration, because then we do something super crazy, but it's disparate kind of we fight everything and nothing at the same time. And so the idea is that we say, okay, well let's let's go here, let's go in disdirection. And what does that person have to do act, behave, think, eat, drink, sleep, all of those things in order to live like that person. No, we're not that person yet, except for the decisions that we make today. That's the and so then that's that's discipline.

32:02 So showing up every day in the same way, it's sacrifice. And I don't mean goats and virgins as well. I want to talk about throwing things into volcanoes and hoping things get get better, but sacrifice like chess. So I'm going to sacrifice a porn so that I can get something else. So strategic sacrifice. We can't have everything. If we're going to change something, balance has to shift. A lot of people try and do this and maintain life balance. It's like it's not gonna happen. You're gonna have to change something somewhere. And so for me, I sacrifice some food, Like I can't eat candy chocolate ice cream. I have a four year old daughter who wants to eat candy chocolate ice cream. So I'm looking, ah so, but that's a sacrifice, right, I sacrifice, but it's only for a moment, a window, and then I can go and do some of these things and we have fun in different ways just don't involve food. But I can't have my cake and eat it. I literally I have to sacrifice. I have to wake up earlier than most people because that's the time when my family life allows me to do these things. So I can't change and keep things the same at the same time, but I can adopt new habits and I can change my routines. And You've made a really interesting point earlier, which is about the people.

33:15 So there's a model that's called the theory of plan behavior, and it's this behavioral change model, and it effectively factors in three things. That says, if you want to change your behavior, there are three factors. And those three factors don't change behavior, they change the intention to have a behavior. It's crazy, right. So if I want to stop smoking back in the day, I don't know sort of thing. But if I want to stop smoking, I have to have an intention to stop smoking before I stop smoking. And my intention to stop smoking will be based around three things. It will be based around my attitudes towards the behavior. If I still think of smoking as a social thing, as an engagement, as a relaxation. If I think that way, my attitude towards the behavior is that I'm not even going to have an intention to change.

34:00 I've got to rewire, I've got to reprogram my thought process. The second one is what they call societal norms or like social norms, which is your peer group. So if I'm surrounded by people who smoke all the time, do you think I'm going to change my behavior now because all the people around me are going to do these things? You know, we hear this thing that you're the average of the five people you spend most of your time with. Well, yeah, like that's going to happen. And then there's this one, which is self belief or self efficacy, which is can I believe? Do I believe that I can do this? Do I believe that I can do this? And this is where a lot of psychology work and kind of neur linguistic and coaching and stuff really be done is in this belief pattern. And actually belief has two aspects.

34:42 Number one, it impacts the intention but also has a major impact on taking intention to behavior. Maybe you look at the models. So this is where self perception and self efficacy, self belief, all of those things really play apart. And so if you want to change your behavior, like this is this thing. So you have to change your attitudes, which we can do, we can start to differently, we have to change the people. This is the tough one. We have to that's a tough one, not necessarily, but be intentional about who we spend time with. So if I want to be an athlete, we're going to go and hang around with people that are fitter than me or who are going to challenge me to think about how I do things. Yeah, which is why you know, I don't necessarily believe in them, but things like weight watchers groups, is you're surrounding yourself by people who have a common goal. You're going to stay focused on that goal, and you're going to act as if not just necessarily because you want to do it, but also not to let other people down. So finding a society or a group or a network or peers that are doing something similar.

35:37 So I'm trying to find writers at them knows any writers in New York? Then you're love to hang out. But then the other one is this this idea of self belief, and that is there's a few ways we can do it. But one of them is just break your goals down into lots of little pieces that allow you to feel success on a regular basis. So can I feel successful today as an author? Yeah? I think I can. If I can write five hundred words or a thousand words, I can call myself today an author like I can comfortably say that I do I have to sacrifice things? Do I have to give stuff up to find time to write five hundred words? Maybe I'm not gonna be able to have my same routine, same things, So I have to consciously step out of six quo, do something consciously differently, but then I feel good. And this is where there's a lot of talk about habits, right, habits are super important. So if I do something every day, I'm consistent, then I don't know what the timeline's going to be like when the next book comes out, I don't know when that's going to be, but I'll be an author in that all that time, I'll be an author.

36:37 And this is where coming back to your point is I am because I act that way I wasn't and I'm okay with that. I've made my peace and except that that actually has given me very strong foundations to do what I'm going to do next. Well, and you you really describe something in my mind at least that that is talked about a lot, and I'm not sure how well understood it is. And that's this concept of mindset. And you talk about mindset mental toughness, but to me, that's what you're describing is that I'm going to develop the mindset that I'm not going to have the ice cream, which yeah, is a tough one, but I'm not going to have the ice cream. I'm not going to do that but I am going to do this. I am going to do that. And as you say, I love the concept of, you know, writing the goal and then breaking it down into little steps.

37:27 So many people, I think, write a goal and then they try to achieve that goal without ever breaking it down into little steps. I know when I was doing a little bit of consulting with small businesses, it's like, all right, this is what I want to accomplish. You know. Okay, let's go back now. If this is what you want to accomplish, what would be the step right before that accomplishment occurred? Well, blah blah blah. Okay, what would have had to happen right before then? And all of a sudden, you're going backwards to the point where you get to the true All right, here's where you start, and now you all that step little by a little. And as you say, gratitude makes such a difference. When we can start to be grateful for those little whims and for those little things that happen in our lives, it makes such a difference versus beating ourselves up because we didn't accomplish what we thought we should accomplish.

38:18 Yeah. Well, the thing with golfs This is where I love them and find them for a certain time. Is they always have to be timed. Smart goals, right, just a specific miserble, time bound. And let's say your consulting thing, I want a ten million dollar exit, Like, that's that's my thing. We haven't sold one product yet, Bob, you know, I was always Bob, I don't know what, Dave. Let's do it. We have sold one product yet, Dave, And you want a ten million exit. I think that's a worthwhile thing. But let's break that down. What do we need to have to have a ten million million evaluation? How do we do that? Let's get the client, so then how do we get client number one? But when it gets client number one, it's like, oh, we're on the board. Let's go because then one needs to do and it's so it's the idea of breaking things down.

38:58 But yeah, the mental toughness is the idea that we've got to show up. We've just got to show up. That's for me. That's half the battle, Like it probably is more than half the battle, is you know, is the quote is the success is ninety nine percent perspiration, one percent inspiration. Something along those lieses great ideas coming along all the time, but it's are you willing to work at it? So I could have said I'm going to be a bodybuilder, but another you know, did two or three workouts a week and maybe changed from like you know, milk to skim milk or something like that, that that's not going to happen. I'm going to go crazy. I'm going to go And you know, there's this idea of passion to obsession which a lot of people don't like. Is it takes obsession to get to the point where like you're going to be massively successful. Most people look at it and go, Dan, isn't that a bit weird?

39:45 Even my mom right, my mom's over for the birthday this weekend. She's like, you're gonna have arrest sometime, right, Like, you know, you can't just push yourself like this all the time. Why not? Why? Why not? Like you can't you don't want to, but why can't? I? Like, the human body is capable of doing some amazing things. And I've got five weeks till four and a bit weeks or whatever it is to should check that to get ready, Like I can rest in four and a half, can rest the day after the competition. In fact, that ice cream you're talking about it, I'm preparing it now for that four weeks one day. I know what I'm going to eat and where I'm going to eat it, and i know who I'm going to be with is there.

40:26 But for this phase of my life, this goal is important to me. Nah, I'm okay to sacrifice that. And this is where kind of the goals come in. So it's is know what you want, but don't set a timeline like not always sometimes to put the pressure on. But for something like a business exit, there's too many external factors. Just show up today, show up today, do the thing. Like you're tired. I know we're all tired, right, there's distractions, You've got a million things that you could be doing. Don't go and do the thing. It's easy. Do the thing that you need to do, like face your challenges, do all these things. And it's that's the mentality. And this is where athletes, like if come back to the sport thing, this is where athletes know it. They know if I trained in the gym today and I put my heart, soul and I do everything and I bleed an arm, then tomorrow when I step on the field and maybe after a couple days rest, I'm going to be able to do some amazing things. And so this is this idea, is I invest my time and invest in the things that I know are going to lead to the goal, even though in those moments it doesn't feel like I'm getting anywhere. So if you're a business owner, prospect, make the cold calls, nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen for making one cold call, sending one email. But in six months time, someone's going to send you a message, Hey are you still doing that thing? Because I need some help now. Oh.

41:49 So this is where momentum comes in. So all of those things like I have cut my calories by two three hundred to day, nothing is going to happen on scale. Nothing I walk down the steps and said of taking me outovates and nothing is happening today. But in six months, all of those activities at up and I'm like, hope, how did I get here? How did I get well? And isn't it interesting you take that focus and then imagine you take exactly what you're talking about from a business perspective, and all of us and achieving goals or whether it's you know, weightlifting or whatever that happens to be bodybuilding. And now let's put that very same methodology into personal development and overcoming that life that you don't want to have. You're not happy, you know, I talk to people about, you know, look at what you are right now? Is this what you want? And if it's not, how do you change? And as you say, you know where for you it's diet and exercise and training and all of that. It's the very same thing for people who need to then diet away from certain behaviors and they need to start to make those changes. And if they spend the same effort that you make, and you're talking about here, all of a sudden, they're going to experience an entirely different life. And as you say, it has to go step by step, and it may take months, it may take a few years, whatever that happens to be.

43:17 But as long as that goal is still in your mind and you have that mindset and that mental toughness to accomplish it, there you are. So as we close, and I always hate the fact that time just goes by so fast, But if you could share just a brief message with the folks, what would that be. I think the message would be this it We all get stuck from time to time. We get stuck in patterns of decision of circle, feeling like we're on the treadmill. It's not awful, right, We're programmed. Our psychology, the decision science, genetics, all of these things are programmed to keep us in place.

44:00 It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Like, if you want to change your life, if you really want to have something that you know, you kind of look back and you're super proud of, then it's not going to happen by default. You've got to go and do something. You've got to get outside that comfort zone. And there's kind of three elements. There's number one is raise your expectations. Think more of yourself. You are capable of more even though you date yourself. The second one is as soon as you set a goal, you're going to date yourself even more because you haven't been that person up until now. But that doesn't mean you can't be that person today and every day moving forwards. And then the third part is you've got to work. I know sorry about that. This is the disappointment is that we can't have our cake and eat it. We can't have work life balance, not during the come up. All right, we have to sacrifice, but be smart, give something up to get something. And if you have that mentality over a period of time, and you keep showing up and you're disciplined and you're consistent and you put in the work, you're going to be somewhere and there's going to be a lot closer to the person you're pride of than where you started.

45:00 I love it, Dan, Thanks so much so. This has been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate your insights. This is great. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you. It's taking me a while to get here, but I hope the journey of me trying to figure stuff acts help some people today. How can people find your books and how can they find you? So people can find me on danstory dot com. That's the website, and my books are all on Amazon. So if you look for Dan Story or look for the Personal Transformation Blueprint, you'll find that. I also have a podcast, which is the Personal Transformation Podcast, where I get to have these conversations with other people who when I look at those three aspects of changing expectation, dealing with imposter syndrome, and sacrifice and putting the work in. I want to explore those a little bit more as well. And then, just as a little teaser for listeners, the next book is going to be literally Unstuck. It's about how do we how do we understand our psychology, you know, wiring, so that like I said, it's not our fault, but it is our responsibility. So that's coming out soon and that again will be my journey as an author to bring that out. Wonderful.

46:00 Thanks so much, Dan, I really appreciate it, and folks, thanks for listening. I hope this has made a difference for you and we look forward to having you join us again soon. This is doctor Doug saying, no Mista