What I'm Doing At 33 To Avoid Regrets At 63 #570

Mentioned On Today's Show:
🤝 Critical importance of making conscious choices in your 30s to craft a fulfilling life by the time you hit your 60s
🤝 Prioritising progress, purpose, and supporting loved ones takes center stage
🤝 'if-then' fallacy

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:00

Have you fallen into this trap? Welcome back to the man that Can Project podcast. Today, we are diving deep into a really exciting topic. It's one that I'm gonna share with you, things that I'm prioritizing now at 33 that are gonna help me avoid regrets or mistakes when I'm 63. It's a very important thing to think about, because we're gonna start talking about long-term thinking and how you, as a man, can get more out of your relationship, your hobbies, your health and earn more money at the same time.

Speaker 1: 1:30

So, as you can see for those who are watching on YouTube, I'm away. I'm traveling again, and I was talking about this on social media that I'm in a phase of my life where the long-term thinking is we've come over here to support my wife's career. I want to say yes to as many opportunities because I know this is a season. Eventually, I'll move into a season where we have children and we're not traveling as much, so I want to maximize this, and I've now found myself at a good buddy's place. We just went fishing, which was awesome, and I was like I'm going to record my podcast after this and some work's getting done to the house, so I'm sitting down under the house beautiful view, birds are chirping. So if you hear the birds and the nature, it's because I'm standing outside for those who are listening on Spotify or Apple. So great to have you here.

Speaker 1: 2:15

But let's dive into this episode Now. You're not too different from me, right? You grew up and you were sold this dream life path that includes going to school, getting a job, building a career, getting married, starting a family, purchasing that dream home and then eventually retiring where you. If you're in Australia, you grab yourself that caravan and you cruise around the country. People flock to this because it gives them some order in their life. It gives them some structure Throughout our life. We get told what to do, we get told we have to be at class, this is what we're going to learn, this is when we get to eat lunch, and that order brings a sense of calmness, almost peace, to our life, which isn't a bad thing. But when we go out into the big, bad world by ourself, a lot of us crave that structure because when you have an abundance of opportunity, it can get quite overwhelming. So that's why that I need to go to university. I then need to get the house, I need to get married, I need to have the kids I need to settle down is so attractive to so many people. You love progress, I love progress. It truly gives our life purpose. And if you've ever played video games, right, it's the exact same scenario. We don't choose what the next level looks like, but we trust it's moving us to completion of the game. Right, it sucks us in and it steals moments in our life.

Speaker 1: 3:35

So the big problem that I have with this path is that they never talk about the order and the impacts that it has on your life. Right, it didn't appear to be working well for people. When I finished school and I was looking around and I was seeing divorce rates going through the roof. I was seeing people who were drinking a lot of alcohol and escaping from their families heading down to the pub. They just did not seem happy. And as I got into coaching, I obviously got to speak to a lot more people and I sort of backed that up and recognized that, hey, they aren't happy. People are trying to escape from their lives, and I didn't really like the idea of that. I thought, well, we've only got one life. Isn't it supposed to be exciting? Isn't this why we went to school? Some of us are getting our tertiary educations, we want to really just enjoy our time here.

Speaker 1: 4:23

The people who believe that by achieving that next milestone it would solve their problem, it would make them feel happier, they were just giving themselves a little dopamine hit that would go oh man, our relationship isn't falling apart because now we've just had a kid or we've just bought a house. But it was no different to me when I was extremely insecure. My life was at rock bottom. I had just been through a breakup and I decided hey, this is how I'm going to solve this problem. I'm going to move over to France and play rugby, and I thought that would solve everything. But what happened three months later was the insecurities, the jealousy and the mental demons that I was facing came back right. They followed me.

Speaker 1: 5:07

So when I started experiencing that for myself and I observed other people were going through it, I realized that this life path and following these milestones and ticking it off didn't guarantee success or didn't guarantee happiness. Right, because a problem will always rear its head if you don't deal with the issue at hand, whether that is financial, whether that is in your relationships, whether that is with your health, whether that is with your career. You know, I've worked with over 79 men one-to-one, hundreds, over 800 to close to 1,000 now in group scenarios within our academy. Most of the men that I work with one-to-one have done extremely well financially, but they've now found themselves in a position where they don't have anyone that they love enough to share the success with. They don't have the strength and energy to be able to pursue their hobbies and do the things that they told themselves that they would do when they achieved that outcome. They focus so much on building wealth in their career that it's caused them to lose the things that really mattered. And it got me thinking what is chasing money really costing me? Have you actually ever thought about that? Because it's the reason why I have molded my life at 33 years old. That's what I am now to make sure that I'm doing these things daily now, while I'm still pursuing success. I'm still pursuing my financial goals so that when I am in my 60s, I have a great life's resume.

Speaker 1: 6:34

Now one client that I worked with for around three years taught me some really incredible lessons. He ran a global company. He had all the execs, he had the bloody PAs, eas, all the executives and assistants, yet he was constantly working and I would scratch my head because I'm like, from the outside looking in. You have the nice cars, you have the nice watches, you have the nice houses, you have the private travel man. It looks awesome. I want that.

Speaker 1: 6:58

I thought I wanted that, yet he would constantly yo-yo with his health. He would be bouncing from relationship to relationship and would mentally break down every couple of months and I wondered why somebody who had all the financial resources that you needed to be happy or at least I thought so still struggled so much. It was so hard to watch. I like to think that I helped give him some form of structure to guide him back on track so he wouldn't completely derail. But he was just stuck in this cycle and I truly believed his pursuit for success in Korea and the fact that he wasn't willing to compromise in order to get a great relationship, get his health on track, really was the downfall there.

Speaker 1: 7:44

But this confirmed to me that money doesn't buy you happiness. Regardless of how much you have, doing things that make you happy brings happiness. Look, money can buy you time and it can buy you experiences, which are both great things that can bring you happiness. Right, but you have to afford yourself of that, and what I mean by that is that you need to physically, mentally and emotionally allow yourself to be happy. So many people that I've worked with they'll be doing something. They might be on their holiday or their honeymoon or anything, and then mentally they're not there. They're thinking about work, they're stressing about money and they're just not present.

Speaker 1: 8:23

So to me, is that happiness Ability to emotionally, the ability to physically, the ability to mentally allow yourself to experience happiness is something that you need to work on. It's something that you need to have the daily deposits on, and that means you have to do it in the present in order to experience it in the future. I think about it in the context of if I'm spending so much time building my business and I'm not developing the skills or continuing to build the connection with my wife, I probably can't expect that in 30 years time, when I retire and we get to spend X amount of time together throughout the day, that we're just going to hit it off and it's going to be this incredible relationship. It just won't work like that. We need to do the daily deposits to build the connection, to know that we're there for each other to share value, to share our wants, needs and desires in order to build that connection. So all of these things that I'm talking about so far is something that I guide men through within our self-discovery program that you can find on our website at the man that Can Project. But I believe far too many men lack logical long-term thinking, right? So that is logical long-term thinking. I get it.

Speaker 1: 9:37

You may be focused on your career because you believe it's going to set yourself up and your family up, and then you can have the holidays and get your health in order. It's the. When I achieve X, I will then do Y holidays and get your health in order. It's the. When I achieve X, I will then do Y the if, then or then when fallacy, which never seems to happen. The likelihood of this happening is extremely low.

Speaker 1: 9:58

We are what we repeatedly do Every day. You neglect exercise. Every day you neglect relationship. Every day that you neglect your hobbies is another day that you forget how to do that. And I don't mean you lose a skill. You may lose your confidence with the skill, but you lose the mental bandwidth to be focused on the tasks that are new right. We are hardwired to build routines. We are hardwired to develop habits and these allow. You know, ultimately we do this because it saves us time and thought, but then we can get better results with less energy.

Speaker 1: 10:36

But for me personally, I experienced this when I was starting in business. I stopped watching sport because, hey, I thought, if I stopped watching football and that I can spend that cold calling and developing my business. And as a result of that, I became socially awkward and socially anxious and I was losing my ability to be in social settings. And I started then justifying that to myself. I started saying, oh man, I'm just introverted and I recharge at home and that allowed people to go. Oh cool, lockie just needs to recharge at home.

Speaker 1: 11:06

But because of this logical, long-term thinking, I knew that I wanted connection in my life and I'll go back and I'll give you the framework in a moment. But I knew that that was important. So I recognized that I had to get my confidence back in social settings. The only way you're going to get confident in a social setting get in more social settings, learn to communicate, learn to build rapport, learn to sit in the uncomfortableness of it all and you will become more confident and comfortable in that situation and or environment. So think about that. Confidence is built through the repetition, the thing that you want to become or build upon. You must do more of Expose yourself to it. There are more men than ever who are overweight, depressed and socially anxious, and I was no different. I was depressed, I was socially anxious and I really fucking sucked in relationships. But it wasn't until I started thinking about this logical, long-term thinking about my life that I started changing my actions. I started building new skills and building a better life.

Speaker 1: 12:13

I'm going to give you the framework to map this out now. If you're listening to this and you're driving, continue to listen, but check out my newsletter on the website and you'll be able to take this framework and plug it in, because, as I was speaking about before, I think anything that I say, the things that I'm working on in my 30s now may not be the things that you want to work on, because what a good and great life looks like for you may be different for me, but you can take the frameworks that I can give you in our programs and make them for you. That is what I believe leads to a great life, because otherwise, if you just follow exactly what I do my morning routines or how I build a business, or how I podcast, or how I network. You're just plugging into another system, like that traditional life plan system that we all build into the one that I mentioned at the beginning around going to school, getting a good job, getting married, having the kids, and that may not be the plan and the trajectory for you. I want you to be able to personalize this. I want you to make the plan and the trajectory for you. I want you to be able to personalize this. I want you to make your life unique and special for you. That's what we're here and that's what I'm about, because I believe far too many men are following a plan that doesn't excite them. They're unhappy, depressed and overweight as a result of that. So if you've been following my social media content for a long time, or the podcast as you're listening to now, it is no secret that I believe in doing things today to be better for tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 13:36

The things that I do today are to make sure that I don't set myself up for a life of regrets. Now, full disclosure. We're always going to regret stuff. We don't really know whether we will regret something until we do it and we don't really know 100% what we want from our life until we start living it. So I have an idea of how I think I want to live my life. I have an idea of what I think I will regret, and when you get options you can have or make a decision around, I think I'll regret this one more than this one. So therefore, I'm going to do that, okay. So I hope that makes sense for you and it really puts you in more control.

Speaker 1: 15:05

And the challenge with that is when you're taking responsibility, you're going to reap the success, but you also got to deal with the failures. Okay, that is the trade-off. There is always a price of admission. Everyone I've met, my own experiences and the people that I've interviewed have all taught me things, but they have also guided me on what not to do. And I hope that if you reflect on your lifestyle and I have this story framework, which is in the self-discovery program that you can develop your timeline to use that to reflect upon, to go. This is what I value. This is what I don't want more of. But that's the beautiful thing about continuing to speak to people, continuing to have experiences. You can leverage that to build a better life right To have more certainty around what you want. It's given me an understanding of the things that I want to do now so I can avoid having regret in my 60s I'm sure you probably can experience this. That's why you relate to this, that's why you're listening to this podcast.

Speaker 1: 16:05

But my desire to live a great life had me filling time, or my time, with things that the gurus said I needed to do. You know the morning routines, the networking, the work meetings, and the list kept growing. I kept becoming busier and busier and I had no time for the things that I wanted to do, and you may be in that situation right now. I had moved from one system to the other, as I was mentioning, from that traditional life one to the guru system, because I thought that would be the thing that made me live a good life. But if I'd kept this up until I retired, I'd be thinking did I really enjoy this? Have I just missed the best years of my life trying to live a great life when I should have just actually done the things that would have allowed me to live a great life? Hence why I'm out here fishing and skiing and playing poker this week, because this is life. I've built this life that allows me the flexibility and the freedom to do these things. If I only focus on work because I want it to grow, because I want to grow a bigger business, to earn more money, to live a better life, then I'm missing out on the life. So I hope it lands with you there.

Speaker 1: 17:12

This lesson that I learned is that all the things that I tell you to do, that I recommend that I do, may not be the things for you. Try them, and if they add value, you can choose to continue doing them or you don't have to. But if they aren't working for you, stop doing them. They're just making you busier. In order to live a better life, a more productive life and a more fulfilling life, you need to do less. You need to declutter, give more energy and focus to the main things. Right, I knew I needed to do less. You need to declutter, give more energy and focus to the main things. Right, I knew I needed to do different because I didn't want to continue living such a busy life, and that's what has led me to build my life in a way, so I don't have regret for when I'm 63. So let me talk to you about this logical, long-term thinking and then I'll share with you the things that I'm focused on right now.

Speaker 1: 17:57

So the logical, long-term thinking, essentially vision setting let's just assume it's when you think five plus years into the future and you define what you would like to have or could have in your life. Then you work backwards to achieve that right. It doesn't need to be complicated. An example is in five years time I'll have children. I want flexibility to travel and to be at home while still making time for the experiences that I love. Right, that's quite vague, but you get the idea.

Speaker 1: 18:25

Potential questions that you could ask yourself would be will my career allow for that? How much money do I need to earn to sustain that? How do I get my family on board if you have a family or if you're choosing to have a family in that time? And the answer to those questions will bring new questions and action steps to build upon that. It's what's been happening for me since 2014.

Speaker 1: 18:49

When I met my wife, or 2013, I knew she was traveling a lot, so I knew that I wanted to have a flexible career so that I could travel with her and get to experience life together. Career so that I could travel with her and get to experience life together. So I started asking myself will my career allow for that? At that time it wouldn't, because I was working as a builder. I had to be on site. I was living in a different town, so I had to make some changes. I then had to go.

Speaker 1: 19:14

Okay, working for myself seems like a pretty good strategy. How much money do I need to earn in order to do that? What kind of business will I have? How much will I charge? How will I market myself? And you get the picture right. It's just an accumulation of questions and answers and giving yourself things to do to make sure you're moving closer to the outcomes that you want. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. But this is where the real work starts. You don't wake up with a great life. You must build it.

Speaker 1: 19:44

So I became obsessed with building a great life, as many of us do. We like the idea of it, but I really made sure I put it into action. It's why, 10 years later, I'm standing here in America living really my best life, and I'm so grateful for that. I'm so proud of myself and I want to inspire more men like you to take control of your life in whatever context that looks like. But to really dive into how I created the logical, long-term thinking framework, let's have a look at it. So there's five steps and it's very simple and, once again, if you write this down, you can work through it yourself. But if you want help with it, go and enroll in the self-discovery program. You get a discount for being a member and you can see that in the show notes or being a podcast listener.

Speaker 1: 20:30

Sorry, but the first one is your story, so reflecting on your past and your current situation to set the stage. The second one is your values Identifying the core values to guide your decisions and your behaviors. The third one is envision your best life, so imagining the most fulfilling and successful future you can have for yourself. I've spoken about this a lot over the last couple of weeks and I talk about this on my Instagram a lot as well. When I was at rock bottom this was 2013, as well.

Speaker 1: 21:06

When I was at rock bottom this was 2013, 2012, sorry, 2014 when I was just sort of starting to do personal development work, my coach at the time said what do you want your life to look like if you could really dream, and at that point I was struggling to pay for petrol. So the one thing that I got super excited about was just having $1,500 a week coming in. That would have covered everything, and that was a big goal for me at that time. And fortunately, joel said dude, that's awesome, but that's not going to get you jumping out of bed. That's not going to be something that compels you, because you'll achieve that quite comfortably. Really, go out and think what do your relationships look like? How does your physique, what you know? If you're writing for your own, your own life story, what would be the things that you want to put in there, almost like a bucket list? This is something I'll talk about over the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 1: 21:50

The next step is your impact. So, considering your legacy and the influence that you want to have, I think it's very important to think about that, because that's when we start thinking bigger than ourself, if we only focus on ourself. Actually, let me shift this. If you're having a bad day, the best way to get yourself out of that rut is to do something nice for someone else. So if you're having a bad run in life, start thinking bigger than yourself. You may go help out at the local food shelter or, if you've got your own business, you may do philanthropy or work with charities, with the man that Can Project. We raise funds for Movember, we raise funds for the Mental Awareness Foundation because we know that we've got resources and people in our network that we can do more for other people, for people in need. And finally, is your statement so you summarize the above elements into a concise and motivating statement right? You've got essentially your vision statement as such that you can just read and it lights you up, it motivates you. So this does take time to go through and it does take time to cover these things and do them well. But if, like me, you love frameworks, you love step-by-step things, just go to the self-discovery program and enroll in that. It's like measuring. You know, I used to be a builder, but you measure twice and cut once, just so you make sure you get it right.

Speaker 1: 23:16

I see too many blokes who only think about how money is going to impact their future. They underestimate the importance of giving time to their health, giving time to their wife, giving time to their hobbies, whether it's surfing or running or golf even. But how will that impact your life in the long term if you don't give time to it. How will it impact your life in the long term if you do give time to it? If you feel like you don't have time to do this or you don't believe it's valuable, I challenge you to stop and I challenge you to reflect on the last five years of your life. If you continue in this same trajectory, will you have connected relationships? Will you feel comfortable with your t-shirt off? Will you be excited for adventure or will you be tied to your career? I have an idea of what I want my life story to be. Like I said earlier, I only have an idea. I'm not 100% certain. I don't think anybody is.

Speaker 1: 24:11

The experience gives us the feedback, but it's not dedicated by material things. It's looked at through values, and the things that I'm focusing on now, at 33, that are going to help me avoid regret when I'm 60, are these, and they're not material, as I said. The first one is health. Right, I think about will this improve my health so that when I'm 60 plus, you know, going on to my older years I still have a great quality of life? Currently, I'm running marathons. It's keeping me fit, it's keeping me active and it's keeping me excited. Right, I'm learning a lot about recovery. I'm learning nutrition, sustainability, longevity, but previously I've played rugby, crossfit, road and so much more, and all of these are adding to my life story while keeping me healthy, so that, for me, is always going to continue to evolve and grow. I might get into a bit more golf as I get older, or who knows what's next.

Speaker 1: 25:04

The second thing that I am really prioritizing in my 30s is connection. So I think, does this person bring value to my life? Do they care, challenge and leave me feeling energized? I'm hanging around like-minded people, those who value health, growth and freedom of their time. As I'm moving into a different season of my life, I'm hanging around more people who have families and people who travel with their businesses. That's the season of life that I'm going through and something that really lights me up.

Speaker 1: 25:34

The third thing that I'm prioritizing in my 30s is freedom. Will this allow me the financial means to do what I want, or does it allow me to have the flexibility with my time? Two things that are really important when it falls under that freedom banner. Now, my business has been built online for that exact reason. I love being in control of my income, and I absolutely love being in control of my time, being able to design my days how I want, so that I'm actually living life. I'm not living for work, and I've been building my business for 10 years to be in this position, and this is what I mean by the fact that you don't just wake up with a great life, you build it.

Speaker 1: 26:15

The fourth one and the fourth pillar that I'm focused on in my 30s so I don't regret it in my 60s is adventure. Do I experience new things, do I meet new people and do I add to my life story? I'm currently living in America. I'm traveling all around and every day is a new experience Traveling to different states, meeting so many epic people and this is an adventure of a lifetime, but it's also a season. My wife and I will often be laying in bed and we're scrolling Instagram or chatting with some of our buddies back home and they've got their young families and their beautiful homes and we're like, man, I want that. That's exciting and that's a great way to live, but then we've got to remind ourselves hey, we're in a different season and this is an adventure for us right now. When we hit that moment, that'll be a different adventure.

Speaker 1: 27:04

So don't wish away what you've currently got. So I have removed all the busyness from my life so I can give time and energy to the things that matter, and I would highly encourage you to do the same. As I've said, life is not what we're building. It is what is happening. If you can take away one thing from today's episode or this newsletter, what are you currently neglecting in your life that you will regret in the years to come? Invest in it now. It could be time with your wife or your friends, or on your health. It could be building an online business. It could be learning to communicate. Whatever it is. It could be doing crazy challenges, like I've done my 30 marathons in 30 days, and I've got another big one that I'm working on at the moment that I'll let you guys in on probably in three to four months time, but it is huge and it's a world first. But that's where you want to put your time. That is what life is about. So I want to thank you guys for listening.

Speaker 1: 28:00

In this week, as I said, I hope the birds haven't been too noisy. I'm outdoors, but I'm also really enjoying doing this outdoors, but this week was hard to write. I've been in South Carolina, atlanta and currently in Kentucky. The experiences are amazing, but I guess giving time to have a big chunk to write has been hard because there's been so much happening. But I've still made it happen. I'm still committed to achieving what I want while living my life.

Speaker 1: 28:29

If you're ready to build the life that you want, enroll in the self-discovery program today. Head over to themanthatcanprojectcom and you will see, under work with me, the self-discovery program there. Click on it, get started. You will have an absolute blast and you will come out the other side with more clarity around what you need to do to build the life that you want. Finally, be sure to check out my latest podcast with Ryan Drake. We spoke about how to turn your passion into a business. Very exciting conversation, as always. Do something today to be better for tomorrow. My name is Lachlan Stewart and you're listening to the man that Can Projects podcast. Thank you.