Ever wondered why some people seem to excel effortlessly while others struggle? It's not magic—it's the power of consistent action and intentional practice. Join me, Jordan Edwards, as I unravel the secret behind true mastery through relatable personal stories and practical insights. From my time in the gym to my unforgettable first skiing attempt, you'll learn how repeated efforts, rather than natural talent, pave the way to success in every area of life, whether it's fitness, cooking, or your professional career.
Pushing through challenges is more than just a character-building exercise; it's a transformative journey. I dive into the grueling 75 Hard challenge and how committing to rigorous daily tasks reshaped my mental toughness and discipline. You’ll also hear about my marathon running experiences and the lessons learned in maintaining focus amidst distractions. This episode is packed with experiences that underscore the importance of saying no to what doesn't serve your long-term goals and the compounded benefits of consistent effort.
Maximizing your potential isn't a sprint—it's a marathon. From my involvement in philanthropy to an epic travel adventure with Madison, who later became my fiancée, discover how intentional actions can turn dreams into reality. Whether you're striving for better relationships, financial stability, or personal growth, the principles we discuss will help you harness the power of compounding improvements. So, let's embark on this journey together and make every action count towards a more fulfilling life.
Ever wondered why some people seem to excel effortlessly while others struggle? It's not magic—it's the power of consistent action and intentional practice. Join me, Jordan Edwards, as I unravel the secret behind true mastery through relatable personal stories and practical insights. From my time in the gym to my unforgettable first skiing attempt, you'll learn how repeated efforts, rather than natural talent, pave the way to success in every area of life, whether it's fitness, cooking, or your professional career.
Pushing through challenges is more than just a character-building exercise; it's a transformative journey. I dive into the grueling 75 Hard challenge and how committing to rigorous daily tasks reshaped my mental toughness and discipline. You’ll also hear about my marathon running experiences and the lessons learned in maintaining focus amidst distractions. This episode is packed with experiences that underscore the importance of saying no to what doesn't serve your long-term goals and the compounded benefits of consistent effort.
Maximizing your potential isn't a sprint—it's a marathon. From my involvement in philanthropy to an epic travel adventure with Madison, who later became my fiancée, discover how intentional actions can turn dreams into reality. Whether you're striving for better relationships, financial stability, or personal growth, the principles we discuss will help you harness the power of compounding improvements. So, let's embark on this journey together and make every action count towards a more fulfilling life.
you're not bad at something. You just haven't done it enough. This is Jordan Edwards, host of the Hashtag, locked In today and there's not going to be a guest today. I'm going to be talking about a concept about compound interest, but it might not be the way you think about it.
Speaker 1:
So what ended up happening to me was, a few days ago, I went to the gym and when I went to the gym, a friend of mine looked at me as I was doing my chest workout and he goes you're very, you've always been strong, you've always been muscular, you've always had a big chest. It always comes easy for you. And I started sitting there as we were going in the pool and I started to realize that the concept of it always becoming easy for someone is someone else sitting there going wow, I don't know if I could do that. Like, it's got to be inherent for them. And I started to sit there and I'm like where else is this relevant? It's obviously relevant in physical fitness, but where else is it relevant? And I started to realize that when people look at retirement financially, when someone's in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 30s, 20s, wherever you ask the question of like, how did that person accumulate $3 million and it's like that almost seems impossible. But when you start to realize it you're like, oh, they started with $10,000 and they put $1,000 in a month and they had $3 million 30 years later. Makes sense, but what we don't see is the consistent action. So I was curious if I was onto something, because to me this was very interesting.
Speaker 1:
So I decided to bring this concept to my group when I do the group coaching and I said to everyone what comes easy to you, and people named off a bunch of different stuff. It was things they do for work. It was different concepts, different ideas. And I started sitting there and I'm like are these things that you do very frequently? And everyone answered yes. And then we realized they're good at it because they do it a lot. Yes, some of it's inherent, born, yes, but a lot of it is that you do the reps all the time. So when you're listening to this, what are you guys good at? What is something that maybe you have worked on?
Speaker 1:
And the reason I wanna bring this up and I think it's so important is because if we can get intentional about what we want to be good at, that can change our whole life drastically. For example, majority of the time in the family household you have someone who cooks, so you might have one person who cooks all the time. You might have one person who cleans. That person who's cooking is theoretically getting better at cooking each and every time they cook. That person who cleans is getting better at cleaning each and every time they clean. But is that the skill they want to improve upon? So I started asking myself what is the skill that I want to improve upon? Part of it? Things came to mind where I want to get better at advertisement, I want to get better at sales, I want to get better at the operations of the business, of how to do these different activities. But then I also sat there and looked back at my life and thought about when were times in my life where I used this skill to create hardening and calluses inside of me, where I have become more mentally tougher because I'm able to do this?
Speaker 1:
One more example, before we get started, is when you go skiing for the first time and maybe you grew up in an area where there wasn't skiing available and you go ski for the first time and now you're 23, 25, 49, whatever age and you ski for the first time and you're having a lot of difficulty with it and you see a kid, who's probably no older than seven years old, flying up and down the hill. That child and you sit there as your ego is coming out, where you just sit there and go I'm better than that kid. I'm better. You're not. You're absolutely not in the skill set of skiing or snowboarding, because the truth is this is your first time doing it, so you're basically a baby. It's like your first time trying it ever. That kid probably grew up on the hill. They probably ski 50 times a season. You do that from when they're four, five, six, seven. They've already skied 200 times. You might not even ski 200 times in your entire life. How do you think you're even comparable to them? But a lot of the time we grow up and we get ourselves in these ego-based areas where it's like I'm good at everything and it's like you're just not. You're just not. So you have to do things that challenge you mentally to grow and or develop new skills, whichever direction you want to go.
Speaker 1:
So for myself, when I was reviewing back on my life so inside of Edwards Consulting, there's five pillars. It's mental health, physical health, community service, philanthropy, spirituality and relationships. And when I was sitting there, I was thinking about it and I was like what did I do? That kind of hit on a couple different pillars. So the first one I want to talk about is in 2020, want to talk about is in 2020, I decided to do 75 hard with my buddy, franz Bernard. Shout out, franz. And what that led me to was mental toughness. It showed me that I have different levels to myself and as you start working on yourself and doing harder and harder challenges, you can take on more.
Speaker 1:
And what ended up happening 75 hard is when you have to take a progress pick. Work out twice a day, one inside, one outside 45 minutes each. Drink a gallon of water, eat clean. So for me, that was no desserts, no alcohol and take a progress pick every single day and read 10 pages of a personal development book. So you sit there and you're like, yo, that's seven or eight things. That's not an easy task, you would be correct. And what ends up happening is what that actually worked on was my mental toughness one, but also my discipline, my ability to say I don't care, I'm doing this activity.
Speaker 1:
And what ended up happening was week two. We started waking up at 4 am, not because we wanted to, but because you needed more time. You need more time to get the activities you wanted to done because it would take so much time. So what ended up happening was over that period of time, over those 75 days, you become so astute to what you say yes to and what you say no to. In regards to you have a ton of intentionality. It was my mental health. I was feeling clear because I'm taking in new insights. I'm not listening to anyone's news, I'm not getting caught up in drama, I'm not doing anything because I'm so focused on the goal at hand.
Speaker 1:
And what that ended up coming to was, as I was getting to the end of it, I became astutely aware to random drinks I would have. I became very astute to when you would drink for no reason, and that's never left me. It's still something that's very common and ever since then I've really caught back to drinking. Now that's not saying I don't drink, but I'm just saying it's cut it back a lot and that was a great reset for me. But if I didn't put myself through that difficult challenge, I wouldn't be able to come out on the other side with the ability to go.
Speaker 1:
I'm good, don't need that without the insecurity, because during those 75 days, I practiced saying no so much more often than I usually would, because I prided myself on living this exciting life where I always say yes, but instead I was just like no, I'm not doing that. I got to do my stuff. And it's like do you have to do your stuff every day? Yes, of course I do, because each time you do that, you become more of who you want to be, because you're following your word and becoming that type of person you want to become. So when you're thinking about what is it that you want to work on, pick something that's going to help you in one of those categories and develop skills for you that are going to be better. Like alex or hermosi says it all the time where it's, if you want someone to be persistent and you want someone to be patient, don't make it it easy for them. Make it take a really long time to get the thing they want and they'll practice patience. So when you're going through these activities and building who you are, you're learning so much about yourself because you're developing skill sets of a person that you'd actually want to have.
Speaker 1:
So what I'm getting at here is, when you look at these new activities, it might be okay, I want to get new clients. Okay, what does new clients look like? Or I want to gain, or I want to lose 5% of body fat. What does that look like? What is that action that requires you to go there? Does that mean that you have to meet with the nutritionist three times a month? Like, what is the activity? Because when you get the underlying of like what you want to accomplish, then you just drop it down a notch and you're like what is that activity that I have to do.
Speaker 1:
So for the second one, I want to talk about physical toughness. So we're going to talk about physical health and then also philanthropy and the way I came up with this one was in 2021 and relationships. If we're going to talk about it in 2021, I ended up running the New York City Marathon. It was the 50th one and I ran it with my brother. But the other part that we don't know about is that you had to raise money for colon cancer, so you had to raise this money for colorectal cancer $4,000 each, so that's eight grand. So now we're doing philanthropy work cancer $4,000 each, so that's a grand. So now we're doing philanthropy work, so we're getting involved in that. We're also working on physical fitness and we're working on our relationship, because now we're talking, because we're more towards a unified goal. So my point being here is that whenever you set up these things in your life, you can create opportunities for your family, for the people around you, to create a beautiful experience, because you're working towards something.
Speaker 1:
So in that one obviously physical fitness a marathon is 26.2 miles. That means that you have to run. Like the way it works is basically you're supposed to run three times a week. So you do two short runs, maybe three to five miles, and then, as you get further, you'll do seven, eight, nine, 10. And you just do it for five miles, and then, as you get further, you'll do seven, eight, nine, 10. And you just do it for weeks and weeks and weeks until you get to 20. And then you taper down and then you do the 26.2. Or at least that's how I did it. My point being here is that I'm training for three, like three, months. You're waking up. These 18 mile runs take like three hours. So it's just a lot of training and it's a lot of time and you're tired, but you push yourself to the caliber of like I can do this, like you push yourself to the mental capacity of I can do this and you see how much further your body can go. So if you never put yourself through these challenges where you need to grow, then you never see what you're capable of.
Speaker 1:
So when I started thinking about this and realizing that the compound interest that I'm creating while running is, oh my God, I lowered my heart rate down to like 45. I'm getting in this insane shape. I'm getting in better, I'm showing up better, I'm being more present, I'm being more clear, I'm being patient, because these aren't instant results. And then in the philanthropy department, it's me calling people, calling friends, family hosting and just being like hey, would you mind donating? Do you want to donate? That's working on sales, it's working on reach outs, that's working on raising money for a cause.
Speaker 1:
I ended up having the president of the Colorectal Cancer Alliance on the podcast too, because I was like what are we raising money for? And I just wanted to learn about it and get to know about it and get involved, because there's so many times when we're raising money for something and we don't even have the reason why or what the organization does or how they make an impact. So you have to understand these things deep down to understand what you're trying to accomplish here. So, as we're looking at this, compound interest in our life, it's what do we want to build in our life, what are the types of lives we want to build and what are maybe some of those challenges we can do that will help us grow that, and what are maybe some of those challenges we can do that will help us grow that? And the marathon was incredible. It was amazing, it was an awesome experience and it helped me get through a lot of those things.
Speaker 1:
But we don't realize that our day-to-day work, we're always working on something and if that's sitting on the couch for two hours a night, you're working on that skill. You're compounding your ability to sit longer. I'm in a standing desk right now because I don't want to sit that much, because sedation is the death of Americans nowadays. It's causing people to die the sedentary lifestyle that we're living. So it's like if I can become more aware of that, if I can abstain from that and if I can overcome that, I'll stand Great Opportunity. So it's these little things that cause us to. What are you compounding in? Are you compounding in the fact that you love to have your chocolate ice cream every single night? Probably, maybe, I don't know. But whatever you're compounding in every single day, we are compounding in something and we just have to see what we're working towards and, if it's something that we don't want to do, change direction. Maybe come talk to me and we can have a call and figure out what that change is for you.
Speaker 1:
So the final one I want to bring up is when COVID happened in 2020 and my ability to realize an opportunity and decide to work remotely and not in the same location, but to travel. So I put myself out there because what ended up happening is years before, if you look at it, I was traveling like in 2017, I ended up happening is years before, if you look at it, I was traveling like in 2017, I ended up going to israel and all around rome because I was studying abroad, or that was actually, yeah, that was 2016 or 2017, and then 2018, I went to thailand and then in Cambodia, 2019. Oh, barcelona I was visiting my brother studying abroad and Madrid, and in 2020, there was no travel because everything got closed down in March and me and my buddy, we actually had a trip to Peru planned, but we didn't. We ended up doing that, but we did it in 2021. Either way 2020,. I was priding myself on the fact that I really enjoyed travel.
Speaker 1:
Travel was something that I really wanted to keep going and keep going. So I actually had some buddies visit and they brought up this idea about because it all happened in March, late March and then in May they came down and they were telling us about people who were actually traveling, just leaving a location, traveling around, and I'm like, what a cool concept. Like it made sense to me, it clicked right away and I said I'm going. So my lease was up in August and I'm like I'm going. And I told my buddies and they're like we're in. And then I started checking on them. I'm like, are you guys in? And they started dropping off. And then I started asking other on them. I'm like, are you guys in? And they started dropping off and I started asking other friends. I'm like, do you want to come, do you want to do this? Everyone said no, but I still kept going because I was going on this trip and then, lucky enough for me, I was actually dating. Um, I wasn't dating, like we were kind of seeing each other.
Speaker 1:
Uh, who's now my fiance, madison, and she decided to come on the trip with me. But she was very back and forth because it was a lot. She's like we've only known each other for a little bit. Should we go? We ended up going and it was the trip of a lifetime. It's the trip where we fell in love. It's the trip where we were able to become boyfriend, girlfriend. It was the trip where we were able to live in like 15 different states.
Speaker 1:
Like it's crazy what ended up happening. But the thing is and we haven't really left our side since. But the crazy thing is, if I don't push myself, if I don't go through that mental toughness challenge of 75 hard of being on my own, even though Franz was there then when I get to this experience, as I start feeling rejection, I start saying no, but instead of that I go feeling rejection. I start saying no, but instead of that I go, yes, I'm going, it's not, it's not, it's already been decided, I'm already doing this. And those are the people in life that make things happen. They create opportunity. Of course, adversity happens. It happens all the time. But I'm like I'm going on this trip happens. It happens all the time, but I'm like I'm going on this trip and we ended up living.
Speaker 1:
We went to Dallas for a night. We were staying in Denver for a month, salt Lake City for three weeks, nashville for six weeks. Then we each went home for a little bit and then we went to Seabrook, south Carolina, and we went to St Augustine and all these different places and the thing was that we pushed ourselves. Well, I was pushing myself because I mentally knew that I could do this and this is what I wanted to do, because when you put your back against the wall, you have to get it done. So there's so many times in our life where we just get more and more complacent and we don't want to grow and we don't want to keep pushing forward and we're not really sure what we're compounding.
Speaker 1:
So, in life, figure out what you want to compound, figure out what you want to grow. Figure out what you want to be so good that people look at you and go that must be easy for you. You got lucky, that's easy. And the thing is that people do that. With relationships where people have been married for 45 years. They go. Oh, that must be so easy for you Little. Do you know that they have dinner every single night. They have one date night a week. They go to their dance club. They do all these things and these activities that nurture the relationship. And it's funny when people go. It must be easy Because it's the furthest thing from the truth. There's very few people where they just got lucky and you're like, oh wow, how did you do so? Well, in that, the thing is that we practice and practice and practice and practice and grow and get better.
Speaker 1:
So again, I'm going to ask you guys what are you compounding on? What do you want to grow and how are you taking actions on that every single week? If you want to do it financially, start saving five bucks a week and put it into a high-yield savings account. Do whatever you want, like. If you want to do it financially, start saving five bucks a week and put it into a high yield savings account. Do whatever you want, like. If you want to do it fitness wise, do five pushups a week, five pushups a day, like. Whatever you want to be done, figure out what it is and work towards that, because whenever you want to develop a skill and whenever you want to develop anything, you have to do it often and you have to see the results often, because the results probably won't show for a very, very, very long time, which is why it's so important to do it every single day, because you're proving to yourself and you realize that you're getting stronger each day, and I share this just because it was so empowering to me having this realization, and then it was even more empowering when the group revalidated it that I was like I have to share this in a podcast.
Speaker 1:
I have to let people know that they are compounding on activities and it is resulting in everything. It's related to absolutely everything we do. Whether you drive the car more, you're getting better at driving. Whether you drink all the time, you're getting better at driving. Whether you drink all the time, you're getting better at drinking, and we just call it your tolerance went up. You get better at reading books. You get better at watching TV. You get better at every single thing you're doing.
Speaker 1:
So be very conscious of what you're improving on, because you don't want to be improving in the wrong things. So if you need help, reach out today. I'd be happy to speak with you and I can't wait to see how this reacts to people, because I know it was massive for me and everyone that I've spoken with and I'm excited, excited to share stuff with this and if this is something you like, let me know, because I enjoy doing these one like by myself podcast, because I think they're very meaningful and, with me being 180 episodes in, it's me really finding that voice and bestowing that knowledge onto you guys, because I just want to share, I want to make sure that we're all getting to a better place, so let's all have an amazing day, night, morning, whenever you're listening to this. And I wish you the best and I hope you keep clocking in.