Jay Papasan:
I’m so excited we have yet another Gary Keller episode this week. We’re picking up where we left off after we covered The Way last week, which is kind of the introduction to Bold. This week, we’re going to go through the 10 Bold Truths. As a reminder, Bold is a course here at Keller Williams that we’ve been teaching for 15 plus years. We designed it to be kind of a Masogi challenge–if you remember that from last week–a short burst of multiple weeks where you’re very intensely focused on guess what? You’re ONE Thing.
And for real estate entrepreneurs, that’s about building their book of business. And so, they have to work on their mindset, how do they feel about the work they’re doing so that they can get out of their own way, out of their own heads and do the actions that are necessary for huge success in this industry. And frankly, it works in any industry if you apply the right tools.
So, the 10 Bold Truths are 10, kind of, philosophical ideas that Gary created to kind of set up the whole experience. 10 laws to live by, 10 bold truths. They all line up with The ONE Thing. And after each, I’ll jump into the dialogue and share kind of some ONE Thing ahas that I have around it and maybe you do too. As a reminder, this was recorded live in February at our annual convention, so it’ll feel like a live experience. He was in front of probably 15,000 people when he did it. And everyone said it was one of their favorite, favorite events from the entire event. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the 10 Bold Truths with Gary Keller.
I’m Jay Papasan, and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
Gary Keller:
You have a choice about what you accept to be true in your life. You have a choice. I’m going to put forth today that fundamentally, there are 10 truths that you can build an amazing life around. And here’s kind of the way I process this in my head. So, number one, happiness is a choice. So, happiness is a word created to describe the most important emotions you could ever have, a positive emotion about how you feel.
So, when we think about happiness, it has three dimensions. Number one is how I feel about any moment in time? My emotional reaction to anything, right? I’m happy to see you, I’m not happy to see you. And by the way, you have a right to be happy or unhappy about any circumstance, right? You can walk in a situation and go, “I love that.” You can walk in a situation and go, “I am not happy with that. I don’t like that.” It’s okay to feel that way. It is, okay?
The second one is how you feel about all of your time on this planet. What’s your response to that? At the end of your life, were you going to say, “I’m happy with my life,” or “Unhappy with my life”? And the only way that you can resolve that is via the sense of how you’d have to live your life in order to be able to say that and then live your life that way, right? It’s that old saying of, I want to live a life of no regrets. I want to say I’m glad I did, not I wish I had. And if you study the thoughts, books and studies that have been done on people that are dying, the regret they have because they didn’t live their life. But in order to live their life, they’d have to first know how they wanted to live it. You have to make that decision. It’s a choice. If you don’t make the choice, you will literally at the end, on your deathbed, you’ll go, “I could have had a V8.” I could have, would have, should have, right? Yeah.
And the last one is, how I feel all of the time? All the time, right? Viktor Frankl literally is considered the father of this concept of finding happiness in the worst circumstances you could imagine. Still being happy in horrible circumstances, right? But you have to decide. The thing here is, is that if you’re going to be happy, and happy is an interesting word, contented, okay, right? There are lots of different words or degrees that you could use to describe, but you get to choose the emotional state of your life. You get to decide.
So, when we say choose to be happy regardless of circumstances, this is essentially what I’m saying. Accept that your happiness is your choice, first. Accept that it’s a choice. It is a choice. Number two, focus on the positive aspects of your life in the middle of any negative situation. There’s always a silver lining. There is. In the worst possible moments, there’s something, just a sliver, there’s something. Number three, change your mindset. Reframe challenges as opportunities. Just reframe it and you can practice gratitude, right? Appreciate what you have rather than what you don’t have. Okay? And the last one is just take proaction, take action, right? Actively live your life and promote wellbeing and think about it. It’s a choice.
Jay Papasan:
So truth number one, happiness is a choice. Here’s the thing, folks, when we choose the life we want over the life we’ve given, which could also be said as growth over comfort, we get to fully realize what’s possible for us in this life. And it’s just such an amazing, amazing idea. And happiness is part of that choice. We have to get out of our own way, out of the fears and out of the fear of discomfort and realize that we can be happy in so many circumstances.
We wrote about this a lot at the end of The ONE Thing. So many people are pursuing their one thing because they’re actually seeking happiness. And we kind of made the position that fulfillment is actually something that we should be seeking in terms of our greater mission in life.
And how does fulfillment happen? It happens as we reach milestones along the way. So, it’s actually a call to reach for the biggest life possible, because when we reach the finish line, we’re kind of like, now what? But as we hit the mile markers along the way towards the big vision that we’ve cast for our life, we get this sense of fulfillment, which brings joy and happiness in itself. But on a day-to-day basis, when we’re struggling, when we’re striving, when unexpected challenges show up, we have to watch our mindset.
And all of our books, if you look at everything that Gary and I have written, they almost always begin with mindset, and they always end with some form of accountability, right? And what’s a habit we can build to make this possible? But mindset is almost always the first bookend.
So, I love this idea that happiness is a choice. No matter what life is throwing at you now, you can choose to be happy. Gary mentions one of my all-time favorite books, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. And if someone under those extraordinary circumstances, literally living in a concentration camp, can make happiness a choice, all of us can too. I know that may seem like, “Oh, that’s really tripping you say that, Jay, but you haven’t heard what I’m going through.” None of us are gonna compare our journey to his. We all have our journey and your worst day is your worst day. That’s just a fact, but we can choose no matter our circumstances to look for something to be grateful for, to find the happiness in the moment, to be happy maybe, which is the progress that we’ve made no matter where we are today versus the gap that’s ahead of us.
So, happiness is a choice. Before we dive into the word, let’s make sure that our mindset is correct. When we set our mind, our mindset, everything else is easier. So, with that in mind, let’s go back to Gary as he walks you through truth number two, life is an inside job.
Gary Keller:
So, number two, life is an inside job. It’s that incredible magic formula of life, right? It’s inside to the outside. It’s thoughts become deeds; spirit manifests in the flesh; think and grow rich; as a man thinketh, so shall he be; ideas before results; belief becomes reality; when you believe it, you’ll see it; what you see is what you get; it’s mind over matter; it’s what you can conceive, you can achieve.
Now, by the way, those are the words of the ages. Said and written by people that lived before you and I. And what they discovered is we live two creations. We live a first creation inside and a second creation outside. That makes sense? Right? It’s your inside, it’s your spirit, your soul, love, thoughts, emotions, believing, and knowing. And it’s your outside experience, which is your body, relationships, money, behavior, results, and doing. So, it’s knowing and doing, right?
And in the end, your spiritual life determines your psychology, your physical determines your biology, and they both come together to create your biography. They literally write the story of your life, right? So, Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, right? Psycho, right? North by Northwest, great films. Someone asked him once, “How do you make such great movies?” And here’s what he said. He said,” I visualize the movie frame by frame in my mind. So, when I go to film it, it’s an afterthought.” I’m telling you, your entire life is afterthought. It’s afterthought. So, you gotta be careful what you think because it will determine how you behave and that will determine whether you get to live your best life or not.
Jay Papasan:
Life is an inside job. We also wrote about this at the end of The ONE Thing. If you remember, there’s an anecdote that Gary shared and I’ve heard him tell this story, gosh, for 20 plus years. And it’s about a man, his son wants to play with him that day, and he’s kind of really, really wanting his dad time, that alone time. And if you’ve had small kids, you know what that’s like. Like, how do I just get a little bit of me time before I go out in the world? And this guy wanted to be a great dad, but he’s just like, “You know what, I’m just gonna set a challenge for my son,” and he gave him a piece of the newspaper, and on it was a huge picture of the globe. And he kind of tore it in little bits, and he put it on the glass coffee table, and he said, “When you put this together, we’ll go out and play.”
And he sits down, he starts reading the rest of his paper, he’s having his coffee, trying to get kind of ready for his weekend day, and also probably looking forward to playing with his son after he’s had his me time. And before you know it, the son says, “I’m done.” And he looks up kind of shocked and goes like, “Wow, how did you do that so fast?” And the son says, “Well, if you looked on the other side of the picture, I discovered that there was actually a picture of a man. And when you put the man together, the world all came together as well.” And so, that’s just a metaphor that when we put ourselves together, when we focus on the inside job, what’s in our head, how we think about the world, everything else does fall into place better.
And so, again, kind of living on the very first truth, happiness is a choice, life is an inside job, and it’s about this idea of inner creation before outer creation. We have to envision it first. We have to believe it’s possible. We have to believe in ourselves and the people going with us. Yes, we have to see the challenges that we might face. That’s part of the game too, but we have to believe and we have to envision it. And when we really truly envision where we’re going, the pull that it creates for us, where we’re going becomes that much more powerful.
Just a great reminder that everything always begins on the inside. It starts inside of our heads, it starts with our vision, and that’s a great form of leadership for others and ourselves. So, let’s go back to Gary. He’s going to cover truth number three, what you focus on expands.
Gary Keller:
Number three, what you focus on actually expands. That’s the interesting aha. And this is rooted in a very simple truth. Whatever we give our thoughts and actions to tends to get done more than anything else. Now, you sit back and you go, “Well, I don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to understand that, Gary. I mean, that makes sense to me.” Sure, good for you. So now it makes sense. My question is, do you do it? Do you actually apply that idea?
That’s the trick. When we concentrate on something and give it our full attention, something very powerful happens. Stuff gets done, right? Focus is the only true difference between wanting something and getting it. It’s the only difference, right? Success is actually that simple.
Jay Papasan
So what you focus on expands. This comes up all the time in our ONE Thing training. We do group training called the First Domino. We have one-on-one coaching. We do workshops. And again and again and again, we hear people talking about what they haven’t accomplished instead of what they have. And this idea of what you focus on expand, that’s how it shows up more often than not in our ONE Thing training. People are so aware of the gaps, the things that they aren’t yet doing well, that they aren’t good enough at yet, and that’s where all of their focus is.
There’s a great book by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy called The Gap and the Gain. And it comes up all the time. It’s one of my most recommended books for entrepreneurs because nobody is more critical of their progress than an entrepreneur. And when we learn to focus on the gain instead of the gap, how far we’ve come instead of how far we have left to go, we can get out of this trap of focusing constantly on everything that hasn’t been done and kind of pat ourselves on the back for the progress that we’ve made.
The beauty of The ONE Thing approach, this is really the most important thing, is when we do our Extreme Pareto, when we look at all the things that we have to do in a week, a month, or even a day, and we truly prioritize it so that we know what our 20%, our one thing is that day, that week, or that month, it becomes so much more manageable. Now, we might still have 30 things on our to-do list, but we know we did our number one. And we get to take joy in that, we can take pride in that, we can say, “Man, I knocked out my number one domino, my first domino today,” and everything else is a distraction. It’s noise. We can fall prey to the trap of trying to check off everything on our list, and best guess what? The list never gets shorter. It never does.
During the day, you’re going to add more things to it than you’re going to get to that day. So, that feels kind of like a slippery slope, the myth of synthesis, where we’re pushing it up the hill every single day only to start over again. But when you look at it and you focus on what’s most important, did I make progress on it? Did I prioritize it? Did I give my first energy and focus to it? We get to live our days a little bit differently. We see the progress that we make.
So, here’s the call to action. Start understanding that when we focus on our own productivity, working on the things that actually matters, we actually can find relief on all of the other stuff that we know is out there, the noise. Let’s try to cut through the noise, focus on what matters, so that we give that our full attention.
And there’s a little thing, we do this exercise with people, it’s called the RAS, the reticular activating system. And we just do an exercise around their environment and people are always blown away. When we say focus on blue objects in your environment, people absolutely can name everything blue in their room or whatever the space is. But then you say, “I know I told you to focus on that, but now tell me everything that was red,” people are completely lost.
Even though there might be five or six visibly red things in our environment, I can see some in background, I got my blue shirt on on YouTube, if you’re watching, and there’s like two red objects behind me. If I told someone to focus on blue, they’d say your eyes and your shirt. If I said, but what else was red in that picture? They would miss the other stuff because we tend to blot everything else around it.
It’s a huge call to action. I know it’s hard to control. Sometimes our emotions get in the way. But if we can learn just a little bit to be a little bit better day by day, focusing on the things that matter, focusing on our gains instead of our gaps, I believe we’ll be a lot happier, a lot more fulfilled, and we’ll actually get a lot more done.
So, next up, we’ve actually got truth number four, the path is in the math. Let’s go back to Gary.
Gary Keller:
So, number four, and that is the path is in the math. So, from the moment our alarm clock goes off in the morning until the next morning, numbers and math play a role in our lives. So, what’s a number? It’s a mathematical object, right? Used to count, measure, and label. And it represents the quantity of something and it’s present in all areas of math. Well, what’s math? It does four things, add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Duh, right?
But here’s the thing, numbers and math are not the same thing. Numbers are the building blocks of math. Math is needed in every step of life and fundamentally, there’s no math without numbers. To live your best life, you’ve got to know your numbers. Numbers are absolutely the basic foundation building blocks in our life and math is what brings meaning to those numbers. If you didn’t have numbers in math, there’d be no time, there’d be no calendar, there’d be no buildings, there’d be no transportation, there’d be no recipes. Right? The list is endless.
Everything in your life has a number attached to it in some way, right? It’s not uncommon to hear people say, “I’m not a numbers person, I don’t do math.” Sound familiar? Yeah. But that’s never true. For example, if you stated your age, the way you got there is by consecutively adding the years that you’ve been alive. You just used a number and you used math to get there, right? Numbers are never discussed in a vacuum. Quite simply, all the experiences that make our lives what they are today would be no more without math and numbers. We are all numbers people. We are, right? And our path is always in the math.
I could go on and on because every physical thing or phenomenon in the universe can be described, measured or understood to some extent through math and numbers, right? Numbers in math are embedded in every aspect of our life in some way. End of discussion. You can’t escape it. They’re absolutely woven in fabric of life at every level which means what? Our path is in the math. Our path is in the math. Know your numbers, right?
Jay Papasan:
Okay, truth number four, the path is in the math. We actually always give credit. I remember my friend, Carissa Ocker, she finally conquered her P&Ls and balance sheets. She had some emotional things that were keeping her from it. She just didn’t want to look at it. It was tough. It was hard. It was new, it was uncomfortable. And when she finally broke through, I believe with the help of her coach, she suddenly saw her business in a whole new way.
When we learn to understand how to interpret the hard numbers of our work, our actual measurable progress, and then translate that back into the activities that make those things happen, it’s like a massive breakthrough in our worlds. Now we just see the numbers on our scorecard, call it your P&L or whatever scorecards you’re using. And now we know, “Hey, I know that that number is lower than I want it to be,” or “It’s higher than I thought it would be. What were the things I could do to make it better or that I did to make it better?” When we connect the dots between activities and the math, the actual quantifiable things, it’s a massive breakthrough because now we get insights from our business as we track it and we measure things going forward.
But as a general rule, especially in business or any form of high performance, how do we take the qualitative and make it quantitative? How do we take it, the kind of the big picture, how I feel about it and say, how do I measure it? How will I know I’ve been successful? You’ve heard this in lots and lots of our interviews. When we had Anne-Laure LaCombe on, and she was talking about timing experiments, even in her non-linear goal setting, she talks about the importance of measuring. You have to first measure what is the state before I do my timing experiment, and what is it after? She’s a scientist. It’s not just how I feel about it, what can I measure in this thing? It’s an amazing skill, and it provides tremendous insights.
When we can go from the qualitative to the quantitative, we can actually see where we’re outperforming and underperforming, and then do the right thing. We also talk about this in Goal Setting to the Now. For those of you who read The ONE Thing, it’s basically our way of… we believe the right way of setting goals is to set them backwards. We go into the future and we work our way back. When we can break things down quantitatively into smaller and smaller chunks, what will I need to achieve in five years to be on track for my someday goal? And based on my five-year goal, what will I have to do in one year to be on track for that five-year goal? And based on my one-year goal, what do I have to do this month to be on track?
And what do I have to do this week to be on track for a month? You see how that goes. We’re just making it smaller and smaller and smaller. When we can get to this quantitative measurement of our goals, which can be a bit of a skill, it’s not always easy in the beginning, it also gives us the gift of being able to break down our big vision into manageable steps.
One of the biggest challenges in life, and we wrote about this, is how do we be appropriate in the moment? I know I have a big vision for my life, but what does that mean about my behavior today? How do I behave today to be in alignment for that vision? When we get this idea of the path that’s in the math, we can break down our big goals and we can make it smaller and more manageable. I can tell you, it makes me feel more productive to know that I did a little something towards my big vision versus just going out and doing and hoping that it matters. It gives you clarity, it gives you purpose, and it also relieves a lot of stress.
So, that’s the big idea of the path is in the math. I know Gary went way broader than that, but I’m bringing it back to The ONE Thing. Now, let’s go back to Gary for truth number five, there is no try.
Gary Keller:
Number five, there is no try. It comes from Star Wars, right? The statement that Yoda makes where he tells Luke Skywalker, “No, try not, do or do not. There is no try.” And he’s been shortened over time to, there is no try, only do.
Now, if you go online and you start digging into this, man, Yoda, he is hated by a lot of people. I mean, there are professors, teachers, all kind of individuals going, “Yoda was a liar, don’t listen to Yoda.” And it’s so funny because they actually don’t understand what he was saying, right? When he said those words, he was talking about the importance of commitment and focus and taking action with a full expectation that you’re going to succeed, right? Many misinterpreted his statement as a rigid view on trying as a statement that failing is bad. That’s not what he was saying at all. He was drawing a distinction between that and half-hearted effort, right?
So, what did he mean? Fully commit yourself to your goal. If you back up for just a second and say, “I’m going to try something,” and then say, “I’m going to do something.” You know, you know those are different statements. And someone says, “Well, if you do it, you can’t guarantee success.” And you go, “Look, as long as I don’t stop, I haven’t failed.” It’s just a commitment that you will not stop. You will keep going.
If something matters to you, try is an inappropriate word. It’s an inappropriate word, right? So, why does being fully committed matter? By the way, it creates clarity and focus, right? If you’re all in, you’re all in, right? And it drives motivation, right? It creates determination because you’re all in, right? And it helps you overcome obstacles because you’re gonna find ways to get over it because you’re all in, right? And it sustains effort because when tough times happen, you’re all in. You’re not leaving, right?
Jay Papasan:
All right, truth number five, there is no try. And I know everybody’s got Yoda in their head right now. And that’s just something that we all have heard a million times, but like, what does it actually mean? And then, Gary is kind of going down this path of there is no try. Are we really going to do it or not? Are we committed to the journey? And we’ve heard lots and lots of try things, right? That like, there is no trying, right? We haven’t not done it until we quit on trying to do it.
So, this commitment to keep trying until it’s done, is it fundamentally something that’s non-negotiable for us one way or the other. Where does that come from? Is it just something that’s part of someone’s character? I think a lot of us have that in our head. “Oh, that Gary Keller, he can say that because he’s got so much grit. He’s got so much determination. He’s got so much drive.” But we do ourselves a disservice when we say things like that.
We all have the ability to tap in to a deep well of motivation, to try things that are scary, that may seem beyond our reach today, and the key there is probably the foundation of The ONE Thing, purpose, right? Why is that important to us? How is that connected to the future that we want so desperately for ourselves and our families? When we can connect the dots between what we’re doing and attempting and trying, and what we ultimately want from our life, it starts to pull us forward, past our fears, past our reservations, and towards the actual act of doing. And when we do, we get feedback. “Hey, I didn’t do it so good that time, but what if I try it this way?”
Only in the doing, right? That’s why we say, what can I do? Not could, should, or would in the focus in question, because we want people to get into action as fast as we possibly can. Action leads to results. Results allow us to evaluate and to regroup and try it again and again and again until we finally get it right.
Now, you’ve heard us talk about this in December. I did a great episode with my wife on core values, a shortcut to purpose, because I know some of you are like, “Well, that’s great for people who know their purpose.” A shortcut for all of us is to tap into our core values. In just 30 minutes, we do this all the time in our training, we help people identify their top three core values. For me, it’s impact, family, and abundance. That becomes my compass. When I can connect a task to something a little bit more specific than just the nerves and the butterflies and I get in my chest when I think, “Wow, that’s important to me,” a lot of times fear or nervousness or anxiety before we do things kind of is a sign that it’s important to us. That’s not because it’s scary, it’s because it’s important and we don’t want to fail.
Core values really helps us zero in on that. When I think of things that are gonna deliver on impact will keep me closer to my family and provide abundance for the people around me, I get really excited. No matter how hard it is, now I’m being pulled forward towards that vision versus having to force myself into some sort of motivational battle.
So, there is no try, it’s all about our level of commitment. And where do we find it? We find it in our purpose, in our core values. If you’ve been listening to The ONE Thing or reading it for a long time, you know those are the answers. Our job is to go tap into those things by trying to articulate our purpose or at the very least, discover our core values. That will give us all of the fuel we need to keep trying until it finally gets done. Now, next up, number six is life is not fair. Let’s go back to Gary.
Gary Keller:
Number six, life isn’t fair. I love this quote. The only thing that makes life unfair is the delusion that it should be. I love this one by Johnny Carson, “If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all impersonators would be dead.” We love Mel Robbins, right? Mel said, “Any world-class card player will tell you it’s not about the hand you’ve been dealt, it’s about how you play the hand,” right? So, life isn’t fair. Ta-da. Life is turbulent, it’s imperfect, it’s unpredictable. It’s unfair, right? Yeah. And these are just some of the external conditions we inherit every day, right? And whether any given day is good or bad, uplifting, discouraging, elevating, or disappointing, depends on us.
Bill Gates gave a speech at a high school and he shared the 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. By the way, his first rule was, “Life is not fair, get used to it.” I thought to myself, why did Bill Gates feel compelled to start off with that one? And I realized it’s because people have a difficult time with the concept of fair. They come out thinking that it’s fair. It’s not. Life is just life, okay?
You would look at the market today and say, “Well, this doesn’t feel fair.” It just is, right? The events that happen to us can either be good or bad, lucky or unlucky. But they’re just circumstances, you guys, with no intent of fairness or unfairness attached to them. Fair is about subjective opinions and has no place in the discussion about objective facts. Life isn’t a contest.
So, when you think about this thought of fairness, the requirement for fairness is when we’ve agreed on rules. So, if we’re going to play a game of football and we all know the rules and we have referees to enforce the rules, we can now talk about fairness. You with me? Because we’ve both agreed on that. So, if you agree with someone on what is fair and unfair, then you can have a conversation about it. But life itself doesn’t do that. Life doesn’t have any rules, right? Yeah.
So, one final thought on this, and that is the way you overcome this thing of, “It doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t feel fair, ” just live the accountability cycle because you have two choices in life, be accountable or not. So just think about it. You wake up in the morning and life happens to you, right? If you’re an accountable person, you immediately seek reality and say, “What’s happening?” And then, you’ll acknowledge reality by saying, “Well, okay, I see it, that’s the way it is.” And then you’ll own it, right?
If it’s up to me in sports, they do this, right? This, because they’re owning the mistake. And then they look for solutions. Well, what can I do? And then they get on with it. Okay, let’s get done. And by the way, the reason why an accountable person goes through that scenario is because they want change. They’re not happy with the situation. They want it to be different. So, they seek reality, they acknowledge it, they own it, they look for solutions, and they get on with it.
By the way, if you’re a victim, your first step is deny it, and then project it onto other people, and then deflect it away from yourself, and then just resign. Because you like the status quo, you don’t want to change, okay?
So, here’s the question, and that is, are you purposely choosing to be a victim, or purposely choosing to be accountable? Because by the way, if you don’t purposely choose to be accountable, I truly believe you’ll be a victim by default. Accountability takes effort. Because here’s the weird thing, in your life, everywhere you go, you fully damn well expect people to commit. Yes or no? Yes. You go to a restaurant, that chef better be committed to that food tasting, awesome, for the price they’re charging. Number two, the service better be amazing. They better be committed for me being happy with the service. Yes or no? A hundred percent yes.
And then, you walk out as a dumbass and aren’t committed to what you do. I’m not talking about anybody in this room, so breathe. But listen to what I just said, because I just don’t get it how you can go through life expecting everybody to commit to everything you do. I want that car to be perfect. I want that to be that. I want that to be that. And it takes committed people to deliver that to you. They’re not trying to do it, they did it. And they stuck with it until they did it. Yes. Commit. Just commit. And don’t be a victim. Take responsibility, okay? Be accountable.
Jay Papasan:
So truth number six, life isn’t fair, is really all about accountability, is in every situation, can we look for even the tiniest sliver of our own DNA in the situation that’s happening to us? Now, acknowledging that sometimes we fall prey to illness, some things we’re born into, right? That we just came into a situation that maybe our parents made for us, that we had no choice at all. That some natural weather disaster has created havoc in our lives. Those are things that are just part of life not being fair.
And I would tell you some of the most accountable people I know still seek, no matter how thin it is, to find some accountability. And here’s why. Every day, when we choose, we could choose one or the other, that life is happening to us or we’re happening to life. And if we can find our DNA in a situation, some choice that we made, that made this unfair thing happen to us, then we’ve controlled our agency. That means that we have some control here, which means that we should have some hope for the future.
So let’s just take a business situation. You believe that you’d figured it out. You’ve got the product or service that’s gonna take your business to the next level. And right when you’re about to launch it, the market shifts, the market falls apart. You know, we’re right now dealing with a lot of uncertainty with tariffs and all kinds of things. And you can say, “Man, the market is happening to me or I’m gonna happen to the market.” Change is going to happen and it’s not always gonna feel fair.
But when we choose accountability, “You know what? I chose this product, I chose this service. How could I have thought about it differently?” Well, you could have asked the question, “Am I making the assumption that the market I’ll be releasing this product or service in would be the same as the one I’m in?” That’s often what we do. We don’t ask the question, “Well, what if the market drops by 20%? What if the market is going up?” The upside is always good, but can we live with the downside? So we just need to ask maybe better questions of ourselves and our actions so that we can keep our agency. But when we do, I can tell you, it just brings relief. You know what? I made a choice. I made a bad hire. I made a bad decision. It wasn’t the worst decision. It seemed great at the time but now, in retrospect, I can see that I had a blind spot.
Now, the key here is finding your agency is great. Here’s where I contributed to this unfair thing that seemed to happen to me. That is awesome but we have to learn from it. When we learn from it then we can act on it in the future and that makes us more hopeful and more confident as we go into increasingly more uncertain situations. That’s part of a big life. If you have a big life, we want you to have an extraordinary one. Here at The ONE Thing, guess what? That may come with extraordinary problems. It’s kind of part of it. You don’t get all the good and none of the bad.
So life isn’t fair. You’ll get your share of both. You’ll get your lucky breaks. You know, some days, we do pick the shortest line. And some days, we pick the line that is absolutely the slowest at the grocery store. That’s just how life works. How we choose to look at it and deal with it will give us agency for the future and agency equals hope. So, always look for your accountability. Always look for your DNA. I promise you, if you build that muscle, it will serve you well, both in business and in life. Now, let’s go to truth number seven, that we fail our way to success.
Gary Keller:
Number seven, we fail our way to success. So, here’s the interesting thing. So, I always thought, in my 20s, I thought you succeeded your way to success. It was just a mental attitude I had about it. And then, I noticed that I was failing a lot. And then as I was working with people, I noticed they all failed too a lot. And then I noticed how they responded. And one day I went to my grease board and I wrote right beside my desk, I said, “We fail our way to success.” And I left it up there for maybe a couple of years. And I would just stare at it and then try to see if it proved out to be true or not. And what did I discover? We don’t succeed our way to success, we fail our way to success. And since luck isn’t a strategy, I came to understand that failing actually is.
So, what’s success? Success is getting what you want. We good on that? What’s failing? Not getting what you want yet, right? So, when you say you want something or want to achieve something, what is really going on is something much more significant. You are saying who you want to become, right? The goals we set reveal the person we want to be. Let’s just keep in mind that goals are not really about achieving something or having things, they’re about the kind of person you become as you work towards them, right?
So, it’s about becoming. You could say it differently. If you fear failing, you never even get started. If you don’t fear failing, you get after it. If you have no fear of failing and you have a fear of failure of ultimately getting it, you’ll keep at it until you have some level of success. Here’s the interesting thing. If you have no fear of failing, which means you’re going to get after it, but you have a fear of ultimate failure and a drive to achieve at a high level, you have the highest probability of succeeding.
Interesting thing, the high achievers are the ones that have the highest fear of failure, not the fear of failing, the highest fear of failure, and the highest hopes for themselves. Those are the individuals that have the biggest lives.
Jay Papasan:
So, here’s a little bit of trivia for you. Way back when I first met Gary Keller and I was interviewing for the job of being his co-author, I didn’t know it at the time, I went into his office and he laid out a vision for writing I think 13 books. And this was in the year 2000, it was June of 2000. And one of those books, and he had the title written down was Fail Your Way to Success. So, this is not a new topic to Gary. This is something he’s been thinking about for decades and decades and decades. And it’s a very important one for us, both in business and in life.
So, this idea that any success, it’s not, you don’t succeed your way to success, you’re going to fail your way. And we all know that. Like whenever we try something new, we’re not good at it, right? Unless you just get really lucky, but most of the time we’re only kind of good at it, or we’re just outright bad at it, and we are going to fail and fail and fail until we figure it out.
Now, I’ve written about this in all kinds of places, but we are taught at a certain age to view failure differently. And Dr. Carol Dweck wrote about this in Mindset and how do we have a growth mindset over a fixed mindset? And a fixed mindset says, “My failure says something about me.” And we start wondering, did someone see me trip before I walked up on the stage? Did they hear me throw in all those filler words? When I’m listening to this podcast, believe me, I hear every right, or you know, or like I have all the filler words that I know that I’m not supposed to.
But the truth is, everywhere along the journey, as we get better, we just notice different kinds of mistakes. As we get better at what we do, we notice them. But if you’ve ever raised a child, or you’ve got a cousin or a nephew, how do they learn to walk? They face plant, they just downright face plant again and again and again. And they don’t think anything of it. They don’t think, “Man, I’m not gonna learn how to walk. I just stink at this game.” It’s a game to them. It’s just part of the journey. It’s what learning looks like. They don’t judge it. They don’t think bad about themselves.
But somewhere along the way, we got something else in there. And we have to retrain ourselves to be kind of like the little kid again, that failure is a part of every success that we will ever have. And we have to treat failure as feedback. That’s one of the things we do all the time in our coaching is remind people that failure is not failure until you quit. Failure is just feedback, that that wasn’t the right way, that you do need to do it differently next time. Or we maybe got unlucky that time. Maybe we did everything right, and we need to do it again to see if it was just unlucky.
But failure is just feedback. It’s very hard to accept in the moment, which is why I believe having coaches and having people around us to remind us is so important. But failure is feedback, and it’s the feedback we need to get better on our journey to success. So, don’t over index on everything you got wrong. Remember that you got a lot of things right back to that gap in the game conversation. And it’s all part of the progress and part of the journey to ultimately getting what we want. Anything is possible for us when we treat failure as feedback.
Now, let’s take a look at truth number eight. It’s a really kind of an interesting one, and it’s this idea that fear and belief cannot live in the same space. Let’s hear it from Gary.
Gary Keller:
This is an interesting one, and that is, belief and fear cannot live in the same space, right? Why? Because belief and fear are completely opposing forces if held at the same time, and they create true cognitive dissonance. Belief and fear sit right underneath motivation and drive. And both of them can interact, by the way, to get you going. Belief is a thought you have that you accept to be true. Fear is an emotional feeling you have that something bad is going to happen. Belief is a mental stance with emotional aspects and fear is an emotion you feel with mental aspects. They are absolutely polar opposites. And what’s fascinating is they scientifically can’t live in you at the same time. You cannot say, “I believe but I’m fearful.” The second you say the word fear, it takes over.
Jay Papasan:
So, let’s talk about this idea that two emotions can’t live in the same space. Fear is the one that we really need to focus on here a little bit because it stops so many of us. Fear that we’re not enough, that we’re not good enough yet, that we need to learn more before we do. All those little things, right? You got the devil on your shoulder whispering in your ear, you’re not good enough, you didn’t do that well, you won’t be good enough, they will laugh at you. Whatever that is, how your fear manifests, how do we address that in real time? Because fear is there for a reason. It’s serving us, almost all of it. It’s trying protect us.
So when I’ve listened and tried to study this on my own, one of the techniques that I happen to believe in and I try to use with my kids and my team is go ahead and acknowledge it. Fear is there. It’s there to serve us, but it may not be the right time for fear to be there. So a lot of people will say, name it. “You know what? You’re afraid. You have to give a speech. You have to give a presentation. I’m going to flub it.” Whatever that dialogue is, stop and acknowledge it. Say, “Thank you, fear. I know that right now you’re trying to keep me safe.”
And a lot of times we catastrophize. We imagine that our failure will be so much worse than it possibly can be. But if we can pause and say, “You know what? I’m really afraid of giving this presentation. I’m really afraid to give him this speech. My heart rate’s going up. I’ve got the cold sweats. I’m just not sure I can even survive it.” And a lot of people, that is how fear of public speaking manifests. But if we stop and we acknowledge it, we name it, what good psychologists have taught me is then we just have to thank it for showing up. “Hey, I know you’re here to protect me, but I believe even though it doesn’t feel that way right now, that this isn’t actually a life or death. I know that you’re trying to protect me from making a bad mistake, but I also know that failure is feedback and any small mistakes I make here will just make me better in the future. So I’m just gonna ask you, fear, to get out of the driver’s seat and get in the back seat.. You can be along for the ride, but you cannot be driving.”
And that little inner dialogue, and it sounds so cheesy. And I believe Dr. Robyne talked about that in her really amazing podcast with us a few weeks back. Just acknowledging it, literally talking to yourself, naming that fear, naming that emotion, living with it for a second to acknowledge it will actually help you move past it.
Now, we’re trying to move from fear to a different state, belief that we can eventually do it, maybe do it the first try, but just trying to acknowledge that the fear is real, it definitely does stop us so many times, but if we can stop, we can acknowledge it, maybe even say a little thank you, but we got to get it out of the driver’s seat and into that back seat, so we can move forward and fail our way to success, maybe even succeed.
Now, let’s go on to truth number nine. This is a really big one. It’s the idea that no one succeeds alone.
Gary Keller:
Number nine, no one succeeds alone. There’s no such thing as a self-made man. You’ll reach your goals only with the help of others. Absolutely. So, the myth of the self-made person, the idea of the self-made person is a myth. While the idea of succeeding alone may sound appealing, you have this image, it’s just not true. It doesn’t actually happen.
Alex Haley, the author of Roots, had an unusual picture hanging on his office wall. It was the picture of a turtle on the top of a fence. Alex explained why he had it. He said, “Every time I write something significant, every time I read my words and think they’re wonderful and begin to feel proud of myself, I look at the turtle on the top of the fence post and remember that he didn’t get there on his own. He had help.” Well, what’s true for the turtle is true for us. Everybody needs a helping hand.
And by the way, we don’t succeed at our highest level by ourselves. The individuals working alone with no support of any kind can be very successful. If they get involved with a group, they actually become less productive. If they get involved in a team that’s reeling in the same direction, it’s always more productive than being alone. This idea that “I’m going to go succeed alone” is an internal lie driven by ignorance or ego. It’s not true, okay?
Being on a high-functioning team, you will always outperform, always outperform, by the way, and you should seek that. That’s why when we wrote The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, we quoted Newton and said, “If I’ve seen farther than others, it’s because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.” To achieve your best life, you need the help of others. And the last comment just to make, and that is, no one fails alone either. So, do not underestimate the destructive force of the wrong relationship.
Jay Papasan:
So no one succeeds alone is probably my favorite of the Bold Truths. I remember maybe I was on the Lewis Howes podcast, it was maybe Amy Porterfield’s, one of those where they ask you, what advice would you go back and give your younger self? And there’s two answers that I’ve typically given over hundreds and hundreds of podcasts. And the two things that I need to keep telling myself, one is start sooner because I tend to plan and procrastinate and strive for perfection before I’ve even started, and I have to get out of that and into action.
And the other one is no one succeeds alone. I tend to be resourceful. A lot of you who are listening to this, you’re capable, you’re managing your family, you’re managing your business. All the things that you do every single day have gotten you where you are today. And self-reliance is also a form of control. You know, I can do this. I don’t need to slow down and ask for help. But the reality is, if you’re striving for an extraordinary life, if you’re trying to do things big or small in most cases, you’re gonna need help.
And it doesn’t mean necessarily that you have to have a giant salaried employment team. Everybody has a team. We just have to acknowledge it, right? Maybe it’s our friends on the sidelines who are rooting us on and saying, “I believe in you.” Maybe it’s our spouse that’s in the background, helping clear a path so that we can do what we need to do and not feel bad about it. Maybe it literally is someone on your team, a contractor or an employee that you know that you can give them some work that takes it off your plate so you can focus on your one thing. We all have a team, we just have to actually step back and acknowledge it.
One of the things we teach new real estate entrepreneurs when they start out as a solo agent is that they have a team. They have a team in the brokerage they’re a part of, right? Because they have to hang their license in a brokerage. It’s just part of the rules of the game. So, there are people there in that office that they can just ask, “Hey, I’m writing my first contract, what would you do if you were me?” We all have mentors. Maybe we don’t see them, but they’re there. We all have a team. We have vendors that support us. Who can we look up to and reach out for help from time to time?
You won’t do it alone, especially if it’s something big and extraordinary. So look around you and acknowledge the team that you probably already have, but aren’t relying on. I don’t know why it is so hard for us to ask for help. Maybe we think it says something about us that we’re not enough, but I can tell you the most successful people in the world get past that. They start to learn to ask for help earlier and more often. And guess what? It is so much more fun knowing that someone’s along for the ride with you, that you’ve got someone in your corner, whether it’s a coach, a mentor, a friend, maybe a coworker that’s there on the journey. It’s always more fun. Do we give up some things, some control? Yes, but what we get is far greater. And then, the accomplishments that we create are even that much bigger.
So you are not alone. You can always look up and engineer your village. At any moment along the way, who is on this journey with me? Can I join a mastermind group? Can I join a group coaching program? You can literally go out and just subscribe to a community that’s on the same journey as you, and you will be so buoyed by the fact that everybody is in the same place you are. They’re facing the same fears, the same challenges, and people are so much more generous than you believe.
So, never fall prey for this trap that you don’t have a team. You do, we all do. We just have to identify it. Sometimes, we have to even engineer it on the fly, but there are people around us that are ready to help if we’re willing to ask for it. What is the one person, maybe, that I can ask for help so that I don’t have to do this alone?
Now, we’re getting to the finish line, truth number 10. Let’s go back to Gary and hear how love is always the answer.
Gary Keller:
And here’s the last one. Number 10 is love is the answer. Okay? And that’s a little weird one, right? Ray Bradbury once wrote, “Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything.” Lenin said, “Love is the answer, what’s the question?” From Einstein to Bradbury to Lenin, they not only believe love should be the driving force behind anyone’s decisions and their actions, but also that it’s the fundamental solution for all of life’s challenges, right?
No, you can never go wrong by caring about others. You can’t. There’s eight types of love, but if you break that down, which I did, you can actually just say it’s either self-love or love of others. Does that make sense? Yes. But here’s the interesting thing, and that is one actually feeds the other. So self-love opens the door for the love of others. And if you just try to love others and not yourself, it doesn’t work. You’re not as effective.
If you go study the great religions, which I have, all have love as a guiding principle, okay? The terminology is separate. It’s different, each one. But in Christianity, Jesus taught, “Love your neighbors as yourself and love your enemies.” Judaism teaches loving kindness as a fundamental value. The commandment to love your neighbor as yourself originated in the Torah, okay? Islam teaches the importance of compassion and mercy and encourages showing love and kindness to all of God’s creatures, creations. Buddhism promotes loving kindness, which is called metta, as one of its core practices, right? Hinduism, right, includes loving devotion, right? Chakti, as one of its main spiritual paths. Sikhism emphasizes love and compassion as essential virtues, and the Baha’i faith teaches that love is the uniting force. If you go study the great religions, one of the things that they all have in common is the love of others.
While the expressions and context differ, the underlying message that love, especially love extended to others, is powerful and transformative, okay? And it can be expressed through compassion and selfless acts, right? So, let’s just end on this. The fact that all major religions contain the concept of love as a central idea can be attributed to two things. One, the act of loving others in the form of compassion and kindness to others promotes harmony and cooperation and can serve as a counterbalance to the human tendency towards conflict and violence, right?
And then, the act of loving others is often seen as a way to transcend yourself and connect with something higher. How you live your life, love is always the answer.
Jay Papasan:
I’m gonna be honest with you. There’s not a whole lot I can add to that message. And I love that message, especially right now. We’re living in crazy times where there’s a lot of division, where there’s a lot of anger and unrest. And in this kind of moment, love feels kind of radical if I’m honest. And we all have an opportunity to be a part of the love game.
Now, last summer, I’ve shared on some of the podcasts and I’ve shared my writing on The Twenty Percenter, I had some losses. And I realized that I had to step more deeply into this game of love is the answer. And I made the decision that for the people that I loved, I was just gonna tell them more often. And it was so scary, folks, going up to someone who’s like maybe a close friend, but it’s more of a, “Hey, buddy, it’s so good to see you,” “Ah, man, I’m so happy we got to spend tonight together and have dinner and hang out.” But just adding three little words, “Hey, I love you.” You cannot believe how powerful it is for people to hear those words.
And you need to say it, because guess what? They’re gonna say it back to you. You need to know that you are also loved. And it helps us realize that we are not as alone as we sometimes think we are, and that there are more people that care than we ever imagined. So we can all be a part of this journey, not just realizing it intellectually, but doing something about it. Just go out there and maybe tell people that you love them.
Now, as we wrap up this episode, you’ve got 10 big ideas from Gary Keller, some that he’s been thinking about for decades and decades and decades. That’s a part of his journey and he’s sharing them with all of us. Where do you have the biggest opportunity to take action? Where do you have the biggest opportunity to maybe change your paradigm for how you’re viewing your life and your business? I can’t answer that for you, but for the challenge this week, I’m going to direct you to right where I ended.
My challenge to you is to think of someone that you truly love and just send them a text. Just send them a text, pick up the phone and tell them. You will never regret it. And it might actually spark something for them or for you, a little bit more hope, a little bit more happiness, a little bit more joy, that’ll get you through a tough time or them through a tough time. There is no downside to expressing love. And that’s my challenge this week. Just one person, just one person, reach out, tell them you love them, and that’s all you have to do between now and next week.
Now speaking of next week, we’re going to have a ONE Thing interview with Mauricio and Christine. They have been longtime practitioners of the one thing. They joined us through a random workshop, and then Mauricio went all in. We’ve literally had him on our stages at our live events. They’ve been living this at a ONE Thing. And they’re also people that almost anybody can identify with. They have no special advantages. There’s no silver spoon born on third base kind of story here. They’re just ordinary people seeking an extraordinary life. And they’re doing it through The ONE Thing.
There’s so much to learn, this husband and wife team, how they’re applying it at home with their family, how they’ve used it to start a business. I think you’ll find it inspiring. And I always believe that sometimes instead of hearing from the experts that maybe we don’t identify with, it’s great to just hear from the people that are in the bleacher seats with all of us too. So, next week we’ll hear from Mauricio and Christine on their ONE Thing journey. I can’t wait to share it with you.
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This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts and opinions of the guests represent those of the guests and not ProduKtive or Keller Williams Realty LLC and their affiliates, and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.
