how to be successful – Abacus Fitness and Money

Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship

I love when things come easily.

Growing up, school was fairly easy. Getting along with other people was easy. Staying alive was easy! Achieving a level of success academically and athletically was fairly easy. (Small town. Medium fish in a little pond!)

Even now I shy away from things that are outside my areas of proficiency. It just takes so much time to make any progress when you’re not naturally talented at something.

I would love to do woodworking…in theory…probably. It is captivating to watch someone really skilled complete a beautiful project with wood. I dare you to enter the rabbit hole of YouTube by looking up woodworking projects. Guys like FourEyesFurniture and JayWoodworking come to mind right off the top of my head. And there are tons more! But in reality it takes years of practice and patience to develop even mediocre skills. You’ve got to learn about the tools, the wood, the techniques, the glues, preparing a design, and more! This is not something you pick up over the course of a weekend or a couple months. As a result, I rarely do anything resembling woodworking. It requires a level of commitment and effort and patience that I am not willing to give.

I think we come to that conclusion too quickly in general. Especially when it comes to exercise and managing our money. We accept a relatively low level of commitment, fail to see the results we desire, and decide it’s too much so we quit. Somehow, like me, we mentally set a level of expected effort required for a level of expected result. It’s arbitrarily plucked out of thin air, probably based on unrealistic factors, and yet we allow it to determine our whole outcome.

I have no idea how we have become so accustomed to relative ease. It’s not even worth guessing because our stories likely differ. But the habits of starting something with good intention and a lack of grit run rampant in first-world cultures. This of course is not the story of everyone, there are people who have loads of grit and push through any number of challenges to reach a goal. If you are one of those people, congratulations, and please write me a message! You are a unicorn of discipline and strength and the rest of us can learn from you. Heck you should probably start a blog or YouTube channel to tell your story.

The extra-deceptive nature of this weak “attempt-briefly-then-give-up” routine is that we likely are telling ourselves a different story in the thick of the “attempt” phase. I do this! I don’t pause to question my commitment or grit for even a moment. I tell myself things like, “This is something I am going to DO! Period. Lets go and do more of it. Lets go buy all the gear and the books and the accessories needed to really get fast and proficient at the activity. Lets jump in with both feet and not look back.”

I’ve jumped, I’ve bought, I’ve not looked back! But the reality is more like this: I do some “research” online by watching incredibly skilled people do their activity with poise and excellence and want to mimic that. Totally overlooking the concept of many years of struggle and hard work that got them to that point, I decide on a subconscious level of expectation for both commitment and progress. “Hmmm, if I buy XYZ equipment and watch a few more videos, I bet I can do that same thing! Lets do it! I should be able to do something like that in 2-3 attempts!” Do you see the gross oversight!?

Maybe you’re like me and just gloss over the most important part: putting in the time and accepting failure as a teacher, not a deterrent. It’s the hardship that forges us into the instrument we want to become, not the easy successes. It’s all the terrible woodworking projects these experts online made for years before that showed them how far they had to go! We need to make hundreds of mistakes to notice what we need to improve on. We need to make a table like Michael Scott in The Office and live with it for a while, notice it’s ridiculous, then try and make a better one!

Michael Scott’s woodworking skill (or lack thereof)

It can be a little embarrassing along the way. The “learning curve” is awkward by nature. Especially if you’re doing it in the presence of people who are able to identify your faults and expect better from you. But it’s 2020. The world is full of people who criticize first and think later. They are probably just like us and overlook the long arduous process of learning through hardship. They just expect perfection or at least excellence because that is what they see most. It’s the norm. A TV show/podcast/etc… that is done badly and/or is about people who aren’t skilled does not gain popularity.

Maybe our stumbling, slow, modest, almost imperceptible progress can help change that expectation. Through our vulnerability and passion for the activity, we can show that we aren’t good at this yet but are able to enjoy the growth and struggle associated with whatever stage we are in. Maybe we can’t change the expectation, but either way we have to face the struggles head-on to grow and push through them.

I don’t plan to make a valiant effort toward woodworking mastery. That ship has largely sailed. But the lesson still stands. 20% commitment paired with a bunch of purchases can never amount to proficiency or excellence. The only way to arrive at those levels is through the path of hardship. For now I am choosing other hard things to attempt to foster growth in general.

These current growth-practices include:

Running every day for 30 days.
Making a new YouTube video every day for 30 days.
Reading 2-4 books per month (audio books of course).
Setting money saving/investing goals.
Budgeting: tracking every single thing we spend, save, invest, or give.
Planning the next 30 day exercise challenge. (If you have ideas, send them my way!)
Tracking the days I successfully refuse junk food.
Tracking the screen time I spend on my phone each day and slowly working towards decreasing it.
Setting professional goals for advancement and taking small steps every week toward them.
And many more. You should see my spreadsheets! Ha!

How are you engaging with the hardship, the struggle, the friction that is required for growth?

Are you stuck in the cycle of “20% commitment paired with a bunch of purchases”? Take a step back and really think about the last couple good habits or hobbies you have tried and failed to adopt. What exactly happened? Why did you stop? Are there tiny little steps you can take in the right direction to re-start that journey?

If you’d like to think about this topic more I just made another YouTube video about it:

Abundance Vs Scarcity: Mindset is everything

The old way of comparing of a “glass half full” vs a “glass half empty” is a cheap and annoying way of explaining optimism vs pessimism. It’s nice and simple, but reality is not nice or simple. I think that we often treat our mindset as a fixed entity like gravity or aging. We can’t escape it, it’s just the way we are programmed and the lens through which we view life. FALSE! We CAN change it. We can change it whenever we want.

In recent and not so recent history, this idea of changing our mindset to one of optimistic abundance has been infectious. Napoleon Hill wrote books and gave speeches in the 1930’s and 40’s about this very topic. Since then a virtual explosion of popular books have become bestsellers. The Secret started the real snowball and since then there have been a slew of successful self-help books claiming you just have to believe that you are worthwhile, successful, and whatever else seems attractive to you….and those things will manifest themselves in your life as if by magic! How convenient! Like some cosmic mind-reading genie just slowly delivering my deepest wishes to my life like an Amazon package.

By and large I think this is complete and utter falsehood. But the inputs are not. The decision to change your own mindset to one of hope, optimism, and abundance has been one of the most powerful shifts in the last 10 years of my life. It’s not because the cosmic genie delivered good things to me. It’s because the things already in front of me began to take on different meanings and I began to act differently.

The alternative to abundance thinking is scarcity thinking. Along those same lines are pessimism, finite thinking, victim-hood, and excuses. Blaming outside forces for the bad things in your life is toxic. And expecting good things in life to happen to you just because you think about them or made a nice vision board for your closet is actually quite similar thinking. Either way, you are expecting something else to meet your needs and change your circumstances to suit your taste.

I want to argue for a shift in mindset as a beneficial and necessary practice long before any circumstances change. Please do not read this as accepting rose colored glasses as the new norm and just pretending like everything is great. Divorcing reality is not the aim and it is obviously going to create more problems than it solves. Acknowledging your feelings of pain, suffering, anger, hurt, or disappointment are still allowed and encouraged. But they aren’t the theme any more. The gap between what you imagine would make you happy and where you stand today is no longer the focus. The things you don’t have are not the song playing in the background of your day. Let’s get into it.

An abundance mindset welcomes challenge.
- A scarcity mindset holds on to the comfort of staying comfortable.
An abundance mindset accepts failure as a means to learn.
- A scarcity mindset is afraid of failing and avoids it by not acting in the first place.
An abundance mindset seeks growth.
- A scarcity mindset isn’t even concerned with growth.
An abundance mindset asks questions.
- A scarcity mindset states excuses.
An abundance mindset uses fear as a motivator.
- A scarcity mindset is tied down by fear.
An abundance mindset keeps a person moving, even if very slowly.
- A scarcity mindset keeps a person stagnant.
An abundance mindset focuses on what could happen, and what is possible.
- A scarcity mindset focuses on “can’t’s”, “don’t’s”, and “won’t’s”.
An abundance mindset is more open to the unknown and the accompanying discomfort.
- A scarcity mindset is locked into the known and comfort of the familiar.
An abundance mindset holds ideas open-handed and accepts new ways of thinking.
- A scarcity mindset grips the same old ideas and ways of thinking with rigidity.
An abundance mindset is willing to break away from the norms of the social group to do something new, different, and “unusual”.
- A scarcity mindset accepts social norms as the allowable boundary and mirrors what everyone else is doing.
An abundance mindset is willing to risk and give.
- A scarcity mindset hoards what is in hand.
An abundance mindset is courageous.
- A scarcity mindset is cowardly.
An abundance mindset takes ownership.
- A scarcity mindset blames.
An abundance mindset acts before anyone can comment on it and despite criticism.
- A scarcity mindset waits for permission or approval.
An abundance mindset innovates.
- A scarcity mindset repeats what has been done before.

I feel like I can be critical of the scarcity/victim mindset because that is the way I thought for the bulk of my life. The interesting and counterintuitive thing here is that despite the scarcity mindset I held, I was also eternally optimistic. It seems like these 2 things are at odds and couldn’t coexist, but that is faulty thinking. We have to accept the nuance and variability of the way we think. We have been trained to process in different ways by family, friends, teachers, coaches, leaders, bosses, coworkers, entertainment, and our own innate bend on life. All of that mixes together to form complex cocktails of processing power. Be slow to label yourself as one or other of….anything.

Remember, this is not totally binary. We aren’t 100% in one camp or the other. Odds are good that you will be a gradient of the two. Some situations may trigger one form of thinking. It’s an interesting experiment to observe in yourself once you see the mindsets for what they are. Watch how you react to good or bad things happening. What how your parents or siblings react. Watch how your spouse reacts. We all betray our philosophies of thought in our language and communication methods.

As I mentioned, growing up I was very optimistic. In fact a way that I learned to cope with difficulties was to point out the “bright side” or the silver lining. Well, that sucks that your car was totaled, but at least you get to go buy a new car now! (Not helpful) Despite the perpetual optimism and positivity, I also held onto an underlying rip current of victim-thinking. It was much more subtle and sinister than I realized until very recently. Labeling things as out of my control, something I didn’t know how to do, or as “just the way it is” polluted my thinking. If I’m honest this was behavior I accepted from my social groups growing up. Seeing “those” people as successful was like watching lightning strike. An amazing natural phenomenon that you could only sit back and observe. The optimism even contributed to the scarcity thinking in a way, because we would work to accept everything as good or decent or worthwhile. Thinking everything is good seems positive, but in reality it doesn’t label anything inferior as such. You can’t identify areas of opportunity and grow them. You can’t set a goal to change things because why do they need changing at all? They are already good. As the famous saying goes, “Good is the enemy of great”.

Finally, after 31 years of living this way I began to realize that the most successful people in the world don’t just happen into their success. The best athletes train immensely hard, optimize their lives around their craft, and do everything possible to be the best. Entrepreneurs work day and night to get their new company off the ground and find ways to force it into existence. Virtually anyone who has accomplished something noteworthy, impressive, interesting, or difficult has a work ethic that dwarfs my own. Somehow the concept that I alone am standing in my own way never occurred to me. I alone choose NOT to work on that side business. I alone choose to stop working out. I alone chose too eat unhealthy food. I alone choose to stay up too late on my phone instead of getting the rest I need to perform at my best. I alone can choose to reverse those habits and start opting for better inputs. No one has a gun to my head and is telling me I have to do or not do anything. At most, perceived (not overt, outspoken) social pressure may shift my mindset. That’s it! Who is here to stop me but myself?! No one! Once that reality started to sink it, a lot of things changed.

I realized that if I wanted to be more effective at work and have the potential to advance professionally, I needed to change the inputs. There was no use waiting for a supervisor to notice the work I did well and hope that sometime that might amount to a promotion, raise, etc… That’s not a strategy. That’s insanity. Keeping the same inputs and expecting a different result. Instead, I chose to work harder than I ever had before. I was focused and driven to get everything done as quickly and accurately as possible. Work tasks got demolished as soon as they hit my desk. I was even more focused and driven than my boss. He had to quicken his pace to keep up. Emotionally there was a big shift too. Before, I was open to socializing with coworkers and looked for ways to bring up common topics and chat. Now, I only held conversations that added value and kept socializing to a sentence or two. My habit before was to mentally comment on the times that I was “bored” and wanted things to change. I would expect other people to bring me things to do, tell me how to do them, and help me whenever I had a problem with them. Then I’d wait patiently for more. Now I knocked out everything in front of me, then went hunting for more. How can we do better in this area? How can I track our progress? How can I get started on something that we will need to do anyway next week? Where is the next opportunity? What are we not paying enough attention to? How can I understand our business better? And on and on.

It was a professional maturing period that was far overdue.

After that I realized that I was making excuses for my physical health and fitness declining. As I navigated my early 30’s, my body didn’t naturally stay in shape like it did a decade before. A belly was developing. Any leg muscle that remained from past years of exercise was in a state of atrophy. My arms were undefined and lanky. My cardiovascular fitness was at absolute zero. Was it work stress, buying a house, navigating married life, and anything else external that stopped me from being healthy or in shape? NOPE. It was just me. Wanting to watch Netflix and eat a couple pounds of gummy bears every week. Things had to change and I had to change them. Running long distance has basically been the opposite of my natural tendencies forever. And that’s what I chose to start with. A single mile was a painful grueling slog. After a few weeks it got a little easier. Then 3 miles became the norm. After a few months, I actually ran a little over 6 miles! Which was the longest run of my life. Before too long 10+ miles was happening…somehow. The culmination of my running was helping a friend during his 50 mile ultramarathon by running the last 21 miles with him. It took a while but it wasn’t even that difficult overall. Since then I’ve started a fitness (any money) related blog. You know this because you’re here. I also have an Instagram account @Brendan_fitnessandmoney where I post most days. And the best of all, my Youtube channel. It’s been a lot of work but has been a blast connecting with people online. I’ve committed to fitness challenges and have helped inspire other people to make better decisions with their own health and fitness.

These are just a couple examples of the areas where this mental shift has radically improved my quality of life as well as my success with goals. I’m working on things that are really satisfying and am more disciplined than ever. My time is spent on things that actually matter, which is probably the most satisfying overall. Knowing you can look back at the day, the week, or the year and feel good about the choices you’ve made and the impact they bring is so fulfilling. I want this for you. I want you to be happier, to produce more, to achieve more goals, to have some goals worth achieving! This is the kind of life I think we were meant to live, not the kind of passive, excuse-filled, victim-hood existence we often choose instead.

How are you choosing a mentality of abundance or clarity?

What do people around you choose to believe?

How were you taught to think when you were growing up?

What makes the people around you successful? How do they think the same or differently that you?

What have you known you should do for years but haven’t made progress?

What could you accomplish if you had a new mindset?

Motivation predicts everything

How can you advance your career in a matter of weeks or months with a mindset change? Especially if you’re a millennial like me? I’ll share my shameful but effective learning process with you to save you the time and trouble!

No this isn’t some silly fru-fru “I believe I can fly” positive self reinforcement B.S. But your mindset is very important and plays a major role in how you progress in your career and how successful you are in general.

I’ve recently experienced a massive shift in my mentality around work and motivation and it’s made a huge impact on my success therein.

My story: I’m in my early 30’s and have been working in the construction management industry for about 8 years. Before that I spent a few years in a retail management position and before that dabbled in sales. I’ve never been terribly successful professionally, until recently when I made this shift in my mentality.

I grew up as one of those kids who is naturally inclined at most things. Good grades, excelling at sports, making friends, etc… all came without much struggle. Being a millennial, whatever proficiency I displayed was always reinforced by participation ribbons, pats on the back and encouraging words. PLUS I grew up in a small town, so there was less competition. I was the “Valedictorian” of my junior high class of 27 students. Not a major accomplishment compared to a normal sized school!

To be honest I never thought about the incessant positive reinforcement we all got growing up but it inevitably shaped the way I thought. That environment reinforced the belief in myself that (you may also share) “you SHOULD be successful at the things you do”…basically always. But that expectation has a very limited lifetime and once you enter the real world of a career, it comes crashing down.

So as I entered the workforce it’s not that I wasn’t adding value or doing well, it’s that I was bringing less to the table that I thought I was. I was expecting a level of proficiency, and the associated rewards only reserved for those with levels of commitment and experience far greater than mine.

But that was a lesson I only learned through shame. Let me tell you that story:

A little over a year ago I got called into the boss’s office. I had been working on construction sites for the last 5 years, so getting an ambiguous meeting scheduled meant only 1 thing: promotion time! I had been doing a great job, was managing construction projects really well, no one had been seriously injured on my projects, they generally finished on time ( I even finished a project 2 weeks early!), and there could be no other real reason for a legitimate meeting except to formally announce that my career was going to the “next level”.

Orrrr so I thought.

I sat down with a smile, and readied myself for the big news. BUT instead of a shower of compliments and a new job title or bloated salary I got vaguely negative feedback. Something about how “I hadn’t arrived yet” and “wasn’t quite there”. Not that I had been doing a bad job, I was actually doing a good job, but it was definitely not “great”. It didn’t make sense to me….I zoned out trying to grasp what was happening….

Finally, the realization set in that this was going nowhere good. And even with clarifying questions I still didn’t really grasp where my performance wasn’t going well or how I could improve. In fact I began to get angry. Really angry. Not only did I not expect this but the least they could do is be direct! What does that even mean to “not arrive yet” or not quite be “there”?! Where the heck is “there”?

I reacted. Poorly.

I told my 2 bosses how hard I’d worked and how intentional I was. That my methods were probably the best way that the job could be done! I explained that this job wasn’t even a good fit for me. We’d talked about that in the past. About how it’s not very well suited to my strengths and they knew that. It was a blur. A frustrated, sweaty, tense, blur. I may have yelled. (Actually if you can’t remember whether or not you yelled, you probably yelled.)

I yelled.

This was a small office. Maybe 10’x15’. We were very close to each other. An arm’s length away. So my yelling was right in their faces.

To this day, to this very moment I can picture their surprised and disappointed facial expressions toward me. I can close my eyes and see them. Finally the meeting ended and I trudged out.

At the time the company needed building maintenance done so I was stuck doing manual labor for weeks afterward. Everyday I climbed up ladders and did roofing repairs. First, sweeping and pressure washing to clean them, then patching obvious holes, repairing and reattaching metal parapet cap material, then finally re-coating the entire roof surface before moving onto the next building and repeating the process. Alone with my thoughts… chewing…grinding…writhing alone on those rooftops with the boss’s feedback swirling around in my head. FURIOUSLY replaying those conversations in my head. Thinking about all the things I could have said. All the rebuttals I should have made.

While roofing, I was passing the time listening to audiobooks. (Using the free Libby app through the public library system, which is awesome by the way) Business books, leadership books, entrepreneurial books, autobiographies of successful people, etc…. Hearing these people tell stories of overcoming their surroundings, becoming masters of their industries and fighting to succeed all started to sink into me.

What made them different from me?

Did they have “conversations” with their superiors like I did? Probably not.

What did they have that I lacked?

Somehow these successful people didn’t wait for their boss to give them some promotion or expect permission to advance. They just found a way. There was no rule book for the paths they took toward success and toward their goals! Obstacles didn’t stop them, they were mere speed bumps to navigate. If they had no contacts: they made contacts. If they didn’t know how to get a product made in a foreign country: they went out and discovered how. If they didn’t know how to sell their product: they worked tirelessly to get it placed in a major department store with untold amounts of creativity.

Basically they didn’t take their circumstances or their external factors of any kind as the final word. They had their goal and every morning they woke up and sprinted toward it no matter what.

Their goal. Their purpose. Their own source of motivation.

Why couldn’t I be driven like that? I had goals. I had a sense of who I was and the kind of person I wanted to be. What was I doing waiting around for someone else to give me what I wanted? Or to present me with the resolution to my goal or current obstacles? Whose fault was it that I was being held back and limited?

“No way!”, I thought. My goals won’t happen if I wait for someone else to make them happen. I need to go out and reel it in myself. I need to be the one to force this goal into existence whatever that means. (Obviously within the boundaries of what is legal and ethical but hey those are really huge and open boundaries) The company I work for and the people there can’t be the thing that I am waiting on to help me and I can’t allow them to slow me down either. The challenges in my work don’t have to be terminal or even huge. I can choose to mow them down one at a time and not look back.

Once that realization hit me fully, I knew I had to take action.

Ultimately this self motivation I was finally discovering had other names that I didn’t like and wasn’t happy with: Accountability. Ownership. Obedience. Discipline. These felt stodgy and limiting before but I had to come to terms with the FACT that they were the only means I had to overcome my doubts and my excuses.

I am accountable for my own success. I am the owner of it. I am the only person who has to make it happen. No one else has that on their radar and they shouldn’t. I am the person responsible for my own future and the discipline it takes to make it a good one.

It was like a door that was locked suddenly swung open. I was unleashed. Okay that sounds cheesy. But seriously, my whole perspective on life literally was changed from that time forward.

After this crazy realization and many roof repairs, I had another opportunity to work more closely with those same bosses that witnessed my feedback tantrum. But because my motivation had shifted so strongly from external factors (like them) to internal factors (like my identity as a highly capable and focused individual) I just put my head down and worked. It was fast, focused, and accurate work. I didn’t care about anything but getting the work done and learning like crazy.

Lets just say they noticed. Big time. They didn’t know “what happened to me” but wanted more of it. (Notice that language even falls into the commonly held belief that “something must have happened” to me like a terminal illness or I suddenly had to support a child etc…an external circumstance forcing a change on me.)

You can make a similar change and tap into a spring of motivation that was otherwise unused! Here’s how:

First you have to stop believing in extrinsic motivation.
- Extrinsic Defined: “not part of the essential nature of someone or something; coming or operating from outside”
- We blame someone else for not keeping us engaged and motivated. We blame our circumstances for holding us back. We blame our bosses for not recognizing the time and effort we put in. But then we stay in that cage we’ve made out of excuses. We act paralyzed because of those things, not realizing we have the power to create change for ourselves.
- You never will have enough extrinsic motivation. Your tank is always only ¼ full and it can only be filled by factors outside of you.
Next we have to change our fuel source from extrinsic to intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is different because it lives within you and feeds on the stuff YOU give it. It has less and less to do with other people.
- Intrinsic Defined: “belonging naturally; essential.”
- You decide what drives you based on your own goals, metrics, and qualities of character.
You decide WHO do you want to be? You are “this kind of person” so you’re driven and motivated in these ways. It’s woven into your identity and is inseparable from your actions.
- Example, “I am a hard working person who is driven to be successful and to bring excellence every day.” Now it’s personal. It’s reflective of who you are as a human being. You want to work hard on that project because it is just in your DNA to work hard. To be committed. To take its outcome personally. Yes you don’t know exactly how to do what needs to be done and that’s scary, but “afraid” isn’t in your core identity. The point is, you are staying true to your own integrity who you are choosing to be and what you care about. The only natural result of that is to live in line with that “new” identity. Be that person.

This is exactly the change that happened in me. Unfortunately for me the catalyst was negative feedback and the shame of my horrific reaction ruminated during weeks of manual labor on rooftops….

I want you to be able to recognize this in you now and change it.

Here’s an easy test: If you’re waiting on anything or anyone to become successful…you’re extrinsically motivated. (at least somewhat)
-Me

Here are more qualities of extrinsic motivations:

Focused on your effort
Waiting on someone or something to happen to allow you to be successful
Excuses outside your own choices
Circumstances are responsible for allowing you to progress or holding you down
You aren’t accountable
When you don’t know how to do something you Stop
Before committing you ask: What am I going to get out of this?

More examples of intrinsic motivations:

Focused on your results
Are only held back by your own drive or limits, no one else
You don’t believe in excuses
Circumstances come and go but you keep moving forward
You are accountable
You learn what it takes to continue and don’t stop
Before starting you ask yourself: What value am I bringing to this?

My challenge to you is to sit down for a few minutes and really be honest with yourself.

Where are you?

Are you in the extrinsic camp or the intrinsic camp?

What do you allow to slow yourself down?

What obstacles have you accepted as terminal?

Who are you waiting on to give you the golden ticket to success? If it has been of any value please send it to someone you know who it could also help.