From Good to Great: 5 Pillars of Success for Men

From Good to Great: 5 Pillars of Success for Men

In today's fast paced world, the path to success can seem overwhelming and elusive. But what if there were five, count them, five fundamental principles that could drastically alter the course of your life? On this episode of the Fallible Man podcast, we're breaking down the essential strategies every man needs to know to achieve true success.

From mastering your resources and optimizing your days, to the power of delayed gratification and the importance of action and connections. These are the keys to unlocking your potential. Stay tuned because this episode might just change your life. Here's the million dollar question. How do men like us reach our full potential growing to the men we dream of becoming while taking care of our responsibilities, working, living, being good husbands, fathers, and still take care of ourselves?

Well, that's the big question. And in this podcast, we'll help you with those answers and more. My name is Brent and welcome to the Fallible Man podcast. Now success isn't just about having the right opportunities or the perfect plan. It's about mastering the basics that guide every [00:01:00] decision around the actions you take.

Today we're diving deep into five principles that every man should live by to achieve lasting success. We'll explore how to maximize your resources, optimize your days, embrace delayed gratification and take decisive action and build meaningful connections. These aren't just tips. They're building blocks of life.

Well lived. Now, before we jump into that, my name is Brent, and this is the Fallible Man podcast, your source for all things, man, big shout out to our longtime listeners of Fallible Nation. And if this is your first time, thanks for checking us out. There's a lot competing for your attention these days. And so from the bottom of our heart, we really are grateful that you're giving us a chance.

I hope you'll let me know what you think about it. Be sure and connect with me at the Fallible Man on most platforms. I'm specifically active. On Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn the most, but let me know what you think. And if this registers with you, share it with a friend, that's the biggest compliment you can give to us.

[00:02:00] Also, if you have time, leave us a review. If you really enjoy the show that helps us reach more people. Now, guys, I could do an episode on each one of these five points. So this is going to be a high level overview. Let me know either in comments or DM me or whatever. If you want me to go into detail on each one of these points, and I could break it into five separate shows because truly there's that much to it.

So this is the high level overview. I'm going to break it down for you, but we're not going to go into great detail on it because the show would just get too long. So let's break down these five things together. Number one is you need to maximize your most important resource. Now, if you don't know your most important resource, it's you, you are the power play guys.

You are your most important resource. A lot of people. Don't understand that the most valuable [00:03:00] thing you will invest in that you will build, that you will develop is yourself. So here's a few options for maximizing your most important resource, optimize your sleep. It is actually probably one of the biggest needle movals movers of this entire list.

It's one of the reasons I've worked with some of the sponsors that we worked with over the years. Because quality sleep is a game changer, but we're not talking about just quality sleep. We're talking about optimizing your sleep pattern. I know it may not seem like a lot of fun, but try going to bed at the same time every day and getting up at the same time every day.

Make sure you're hitting that optimal pattern for yourself. Other things on the list include optimizing your diet, get healthy, work out, just weightlifting three days a week actually decreases your overall mortality rate. And your chance of surviving cancers by factors of over 60%. It's incredible. Never [00:04:00] stop learning.

Read every single day. You don't have to read forever, every day. But read a non fiction book, five to ten pages every single day and just keep building that mind of yours. Spend time in your own mind. You can pray, you can meditate. You can just have some quiet time. I like to do it when I'm out for walks, but spend some time in your own head.

If you never let your mind have some downtime, it actually kills your creativity and it distracts you from dealing with things you need to. Your brain will tell you what you need to deal with. If you let it. But you got to listen to it first. Focus on your purpose. Once you get your purpose down and figure out what that is, and I've done shows on finding your purpose.

So check into those, but focus on your purpose because once you know what that is, you can move everything else into alignment with that and makes decisions and everything else much easier. And then know [00:05:00] what you stand for, what you believe in, what you die for. I did an entire show just on that one thought.

Because as a man, you need to know where you stand. You need to know what your core foundational beliefs are. And that's part of it. Number two, guys, optimize your days. What do I mean by optimize your day? Well, you've heard it said many times that everybody has the same 24 hours from Joe blow the bum on the corner to Elon Musk.

You have the same 24 hours. What is different? Well, the people whose names, you know, automatically, they've learned how to optimize their day. You have 24 hours. You can optimize your day. Will you be the next Elon Musk? Maybe. Don't know. Will you not? I don't know. You might be, you might not be, but optimizing your day gives you the best opportunity to [00:06:00] reach those goals and leach those lofty heights.

So how do we optimize our day? Number one, you need to figure out when your peak performance hours are. Some people call it your genius hour. Some people call it other things, but there is a time period in your day. And for you, that might be different. Mine is in the morning, early mornings. That is my genius hour.

Okay. This morning, guys, I got up the first four hours of my day from 4 a. m. to 8 a. m. I got more done than some people do in a week. No, I'm not bragging, but really like my production levels just decline declines from there. My efficiencies just declined from there. I get more done in that first four hours than I will probably get done the rest of my day.

And likely in the next two or three days, except for during that time period, everybody has that moment. My wife, her moment of genius is usually in the evenings or at [00:07:00] night. We're totally opposite on that. So I'm not going to say you have to get out of bed at a certain time. Get out of bed about an hour before your genius time and work from there.

Find a productivity style that is most effective for you. It might be the Pomodoro technique. If you don't know what that is, you can look it up. It might be time blocking. There are all kinds of techniques. There isn't one that is perfect or right. It's like a diet. What you can do and what's most effective for you is probably the correct way.

Be ruthless with your schedule. Set hard boundaries, say no and eliminate distraction guys. This cell phone I'm holding in my hand is one of the worst inventions ever for productivity, unless you work on your cell phone. So make sure it's out of the way. Make sure you have time where you don't have those distractions.

Don't check. Email randomly have set times a day. You [00:08:00] check email. Those distractions cost you massively limit your availability. I'm down with setting hard boundaries in a big way. So be very clear about your availability because people will just try and grab you all the time and it will screw you up.

Have clear goals. Be decisive when you make decisions and prioritize and optimize tasks that are mentally more intensive for the earlier part of your genius hours. Because you want to tackle them. We have the most mental energy. The third thing that we're talking about today, guys, is you need to embrace delayed gratification.

Now I know I got red flags going off in a lot of people's heads right now. A lot of things feel like shit before, but are absolutely amazing after. Likewise, a lot of things that feel great [00:09:00] right now, you feel like crap afterwards. All chosen instant gratification in the moment before that donut tastes really great now, but it has repercussions for your body.

Later sleeping in past my normal time waking up because I have a set sleep schedule and every now and then, not very often, I'll snooze it or I'll say, you know what? I don't have to get up and I'll sleep in and it feels really great in the moment. And then I spend the rest of the day stressed out. I've stopped doing this very often because.

I spend the rest of the day stressed really bad because I feel like I'm super behind the rest of my day. When you're feeling behind, you're less productive because you're stressed out. We live in this crazy world of instant gratification where we can stick anything in the microwave, we can have money now, we can do this now.

There's so much instant gratification. Most things that are instant [00:10:00] gratification aren't really great for you. And most things that are great for you, take a lot of time. If you've read Atomic Habits, you know what we're talking about. So let me give you a few examples. Working out can be intimidating and exhausting beforehand.

Afterwards, you have increased energy, better mood and sense of accomplishment, and you overall feel better. Practicing breathing techniques feels time consuming and kind of worthless and a little hokey and like you're dumb before, but it leads to reduced stress, greater focus, and better productivity afterwards.

Getting quality sleep and maintaining a strict sleep schedule feels limiting and restrictive, like you can't be just spontaneous, but it leads to better health, improved cognitive function, and more energy. Practicing financial discipline in the moment feels confining and kind of lame. You really want to spend that money because I know that's hard for me, [00:11:00] but it leads to financial stability, which reduces stress and helps you feel more in control of your life.

Later sacrifice can feel like a shit sandwich in the moment, but it can pay dividends later. So the world is full of evidence that the best things in life take time and work and usually a lot more both than you want to put in. But if you can learn to appreciate delayed gratification, it will take you up a notch and set you far ahead of the normal crowd.

Number four, actions win. The world is full of ideas that are never fully realized. Even half ass plans with action and hard work will trump 90 percent of people because most people just will never do. You can call it analysis by paralysis. You can call it laziness. but most people will just never do bad plan or even a cockamamie plan with a lot of hard work and immediate action will [00:12:00] actually get farther than most people ever do.

I don't know if this is a quote by anybody else. If not, it's a first Brent quote. It's better to fail at doing something than to fail to do anything. Someone famous probably said something close to that. And you're going to accuse me of ripping it off. I actually had that thought come to mind this morning, totally on my own.

So I'm going to call it a Brent quote, but you know, whoever actually said it, I'm sure someone else did. Right. Cause somebody said everything already. So guys, let me break this down. Make a plan, but don't wait for it to be perfect. Perfectionism kills the best ideas in the world. Fail hard, fail fast, fail often and learn from it.

Failure is actually an optimal result result if you want to improve because you can't fail if you aren't doing anything. So therefore you're not improving because you're going to have some failures. Hard work will fill in the gaps of a plan [00:13:00] over and over and over again. You can amazingly work your way through a lot of imperfections and a lot of whoopsies in a plan.

Don't get paralyzed in the planning or dreaming phase. We will never actually know what greatness was lost to this fact of people just getting paralyzed. Before it ever lost their mind or before it ever left their mind and took flight. And the last one I want to talk about on that is just consistency and resilience are critical to your plan.

So don't quit so easily show up and persist. Most people give up before anything great can really happen because of this instant gratification world we live in. So don't quit so fast. Most people are dropping out just before something truly amazing happens. Number five, guys. Fifth principle, connections matter.[00:14:00]

Connections can improve you, they can drain you, or they can absolutely stop you in your tracks. People sink themselves all the time by their connections, but the right connections are what will actually empower you for success. So here's some guidelines to the connections matter. Limit your availability.

Be shrewd in your friendships. Be highly selective. Don't share your most intimate secrets. Even your closest friends, most people do not need to know the details of your plans, or even that you have plans, your goals, your financial situation, your love life, or anything of the same ilk. Most people don't need that information.

If they don't add to your life, then whether you see or not, more than likely they're taking from your life. That might be actually taking time, that might be taking stuff, that might be just taking emotional and mental energy. So if they don't add to your life, it's time to rethink it. [00:15:00] Have a reason that you're involved with people.

I'm not kidding. Be sure to your friendships, be really selective. There should be a reason that person is your friend. Yes. Friendship is two way street and you should be giving back to them as much as they're giving to you, if not more, but have a reason that you're involved with those people. Don't just be involved with them because they've always been there or, You've known him since high school or whatever.

That's not a reason. The idea that you're the sum of five people you spend the most time with gets thrown around a lot and it may not be scientific, but anecdotally is correct. 99 percent of the time. Healthy relationships improve you. Unhealthy relationships drain you. The adage of crabs in a bucket is actually true.

I watched a video of a bucket of crabs one day and was absolutely amazed. That's a thing. Without strong connections with a few people, Life is [00:16:00] always going to fill empty, which will lead to the downfall of many great individuals. There are a lot of people who've gotten really far in life, or at least from the outside, we see they got really far in life only to fall a lot farther.

because they didn't maintain valuable connections with a few people that make life worthwhile. Because the truth is life is actually about the people you impact and the people on that journey with you. That's what makes it all worth it. All the shit sandwiches, all the hard times, all the ups and downs, the journey to greatness people is what makes that worthwhile.

Just be really selective about those connections. Now guys, I ran through this at a lightning pace. Because like I said, I could honestly deep dive about every single one of these five pillars. I think that's what I call them. Uh, I wrote this early this morning, so yeah, I could deep dive on all five of those pillars about [00:17:00] success because each one is more than its own show.

Like there are some of the points under those. I could just go through on those and do entire shows. And I've done shows on a lot of these things. So you guys should go check those out. I'll have some recommendations for your next show carefully curated, curated. At the bottom of this, the show notes are on the description, whatever platform you're joining us on.

Those five principles are the key to success in this world as a man. Now guys, as we wrap up today's episode and land this plane, it's clear that success is built on a foundation of intentional choices and actions, and those choices and actions are an everyday thing, whether it's optimizing your resources or honing your daily routine, forging strong connections, each of these principles plays a crucial role.

in your journey towards success. Remember, it's not about being perfect. It's about making progress one step at a time. We're big into incremental improvement here because that's [00:18:00] reality. Keep these principles close. Watch how they transform your life. Pick one specific one to get started on and add a little bit to your life every day.

Guys, until next time, keep pushing forward. And remember, be better tomorrow because what you do today. And we'll see you on the next one. This has been the fellow. Man podcast, your home for everything man, husband and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www. thefallibleman.

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