Transformation Tuesday: Goals and Gratitude

On this episode of the podcast we are giving you a sneak peak at our Transformation Tuesday webinar.
 
This week we talked about how to balance being grateful for where you are while finding the motivation to push yourself towards your goals. We quote experts and authors on how to strike that balance .

Stream the John Tesh Sports Album now. Available on all platforms.

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:00):
Alrighty. Hello everybody, and welcome to one of
my favorite days of the week. Iknow I say this every week, but
it is. It's true. Welcome totransformation Tuesday. It is
just me today. For those of youon the Thursday call, I told you
guys this was going to be thecase today, because if you have
not been paying attention, ormaybe you don't watch the you

(00:23):
don't watch the what's it calledthe Today Show. You may not have
realized that John is on theToday Show today. He performed
this morning. It has aired onboth coasts, and I was going to
play some clips from it, but Ifelt like that might not you can
find might not you can find thatstuff online. So he performed

(00:46):
round ball rock in anticipationof the start of the basketball
NBA basketball season. Those youagain that are not aware NBA the
NBA basketball coverage, NBC hasrelicensed round ball rock.
John's iconic theme from the 90sabout for basketball. So he they

(01:07):
have realized that for the NBAon NBC coverage, that is, that
is starting today. So he's onthe Today Show this morning. You
can find, again, there's aninterview component to it also.
So he played the song live onthe air with a couple of the
musicians from his regular bandand a couple of musicians that
he hired locally in that's alittle behind the scenes, little

(01:28):
how the sausage is made, couplemusicians that he hired locally
in New York, off of Broadway andstuff. So it's a pretty good
pretty good performance, prettygreat performance, pretty
excellent performance. Andreally a cool time for us in
anticipation of the start of theNBA season. So those there are
two games tonight. There is athunder game and then a warriors

(01:53):
Lakers game. And those are onNBC. You can find those tonight,
and you can hear the theme rightnow. I know, I know they are
looking for the right Sports Barin Manhattan to watch the
coverage night. The issue thatthey're having in New York right
now is finding a sports bar thatwill play the audio for the NBA

(02:15):
coverage loud enough in thesports bar. So they are they're
trying to find a way to watch ina public setting, the return of
the theme, and they're prettypumped about it over there right
now, I am here holding down thefort. I'm here doing this. Oh,
thanks, Chrissy, Chris he'sputting the performance link for
the Today Show in there. There'san interview component as well,
to coincide with both the bookrelentless, you tell some

(02:38):
stories from relentless andalso, also the release of his
new album sports. For those ofyou that have not checked it
out, it is on most, if not all,streaming services. You guys can
find it on those streamingservices. You guys can play it,
listen to it, give us yourthoughts. I work out to it. John

(03:00):
works out to it. It's a it's asports themes album that is sort
of anchored by the return ofround ball rock. So some really
cool new sports themes that thatare out there, and pretty
excited about that being in theworld, and John's pretty excited
about the promotions that he'sdoing right now. And it's a good

(03:21):
time. So I know sometimes youguys get worried when it's just
me and know John on these shows.
And I just want to tell you,it's all good things. You know,
he can't be in two places atonce. So he is, he is handling
that on the East Coast rightnow. Okay, in the Thursday call
last week, I made a reference tosomething that kind of stuck
with me. I was, I was talking, Ican't remember exactly I was

(03:42):
talking about, but basicallyit's this, we're at a unique
time in human history in termsof comfort, and we've talked
about that in terms of our foodchoices on this show. We've
talked about it in terms of our,you know, our creature comforts.
And I, I just it's, it'simportant to remember, because,

(04:04):
again, our our motto for fortransformation Tuesday is
getting you from the place youare to the place you want to be.
And I often struggle with thisidea of having goals, having
things that I want to grow in,things I want to improve. I want
to get better. I want to improvemy life. I want to improve the

(04:26):
life of my family, et cetera, etcetera, et cetera, while also
maintaining a posture ofgratefulness, of gratitude, of
happiness with where I am. Andit seems like those two things
are in conflict. But there is away of navigating those narrow
straits, in terms of ouremotional gratefulness, our

(04:47):
anticipation of progress, whilealso, again, while maintaining
that balance between those twothings, pushing ourselves out of
our comfort zone, movingourselves forward. Yeah. Yeah,
and I want I in preparing fortoday, I was reminded of just
how and again, this does notmean that you don't have real
problems. This does not meanthat there are not real setbacks

(05:10):
that we are all dealing with ona regular basis, but it does
mean that we are in a time wherewhere life is better for us, for
the average, particularly forthe average North American or
the average European, but, butacross the whole globe, more
people are living with morecomfort than you know,

(05:31):
incredible the equivalent ofincredibly wealthy people in
human history, kings did nothave access to the kind of
comfort and and ease of life incertain in terms of our in terms
of our ability to just get upevery day and be comfortable.

(05:54):
They did. They didn't have whatwe have. It took a servant staff
of hundreds to maintain thequality of life that we get by
just the appliances in ourhouse, and sometimes we need
that reminder. Here is he's acomedian. He is a shocking
comedian, but I happen to likehis hot takes on things that

(06:15):
he's really smart, and I thinkhe says things to intentionally
make people uncomfortable. But Ialso think he's an incredibly
good observer. His name is JimmyCarr, and here he is talking
about how unbelievably good wehave it, and how to take a
second and appreciate it. Thisis not his comedy. This is just
him talking about, you know, thequality of I find him to be a
good observer of human nature.

(06:39):
You getused to how great your life is.
No one had a hot shower until 50years ago. So I try and do this
thing when you stand in a hotshower. George Mack, my friend
pointed this out to me when,well, look when you stand in a
hot shower, just for a moment,just go, Well, no one that you
admire from 100 years ago hadthis simple pleasure in life.
And when you look at world thatwe live in, we're like you're

(06:59):
doing. There's been 100 billionpeople ever, right? We are in
the top, top percentile in termsof the luck that we have had,
but the lives, like thecalorific intake that we just
take for granted, the fact thatour children don't die, you
know, in the first year, themodern medicine and and our
lives and our the entertainmentthat we get, we're living like

(07:22):
kings, and yet life has neverbeen objectively better and
subjectively worse, because thenature of humanity is our
desires are memetic. So we'vegot this thing where we sort of,
you know, how happy are you?
Well, it's, it's your quality oflife, minus envy. That's how

(07:43):
happy you are. And it's easy tolook at everyone else and how
they're doing and not takepleasure in what you have.
It's easy. It's easy to seepeople living a certain way, and
and these things, these thesecell phones, they make it

(08:04):
disgustingly easy to be able tofind, to find the life that you
don't have out in the world, tosee the person that you barely
know on their third trip toItaly in The last year, and go,
Why don't I have that? Why can'tI be like that? And the point

(08:25):
he's making is that ourhappiness, our core happiness,
is the quality of our life,which is for most of us,
objectively better than mostpeople in when I say most
people, I don't mean 51% I mean,99.9% of human history was worse

(08:47):
than you are right now, thatperspective is lost on us on a
day to day basis, and that's thepoint he's making. Is that for
most of us, we're in that top1/10 of 1% in terms of human
comfort, in terms of our lifeexpectancy, in terms of our our
day to day, happiness andsafety, top 10th of 1% and yet

(09:09):
we're not happy because we envythat point zero 1% if we were to
look at that objectively, wewould see how foolish we are
being. It doesn't take away thereal emotional feelings that we
have about it. So how do we moveforward? How do we take that
idea that we are in one of thebest positions a human being has

(09:32):
ever been in each of us? I mean,you guys are all on here because
of technology that was oncebeyond the capacity of nations,
let alone the capacity ofaverage individuals who are able
to communicate over largedistances via video
teleconference. I mean, thinkabout that alone. We're having
this conversation in a way thatwas not possible, not even I

(09:56):
mean, like 20 years ago, wecouldn't have done this. You.
Uh, people could do it, butthose people were multi
billionaire executives, right?
That's who was. That's was ableto do what we're doing right
now, only to talk about thingsthat were important to the
bottom line of their stockprice, and yet, we are able to
do that now. So we have to takea second and breathe and

(10:18):
appreciate where we are, butyet, how do we use that? How do
we take that not just rest onour laurels? How do we not just
sit there and say, I'm grateful,I'm grateful that I can find
calories that will sustain mefor the day within arm's reach,
pretty much 99% of my day I'mwithin. I mean, I had I had

(10:38):
breakfast, egg bites. I didn'traise chickens. I didn't I
didn't do the work that it tookto get that. I have abundant
access to eggs in my home rightnow, and part of that is, I buy
a lot of eggs because I like, Ilike them and but I, you know,
but I don't have to do any ofthis stuff. I didn't have to
grow the grain to feed thechickens. I don't have to have

(10:58):
the land and the chicken coopand protect the chickens and all
of that, which for so much ofhuman history would have been
required. So how do we do that?
How do we maintain that? So thisis a guy. This is a lens that I
want you guys to start thinkingabout, because when we look back
on our lifetime, we don't lookback. I don't know if you guys
have read I was just listeningto an interview with the author

(11:20):
of Tuesdays with Maury. What isit? Bomb? I forget his last name
and and just about how you know,what are we doing when we want
to look back on the stuff thatwe accomplished? Very few of us
think about the extra the extralate hours that we did. We what
we do when we're living, whenwe're in our prime earning years

(11:44):
when we're in our prime, goalfocused years what we what we
do, what we do, in order tothink that we to make ourselves,
put ourselves in that positionof like, Oh, I'm doing the best
that I can is very rarely theactivity that when we look and
reflect back on our lives, thatwe are the most excited about,

(12:08):
the most primed about, becausewe're not we don't have that
perspective. So this guy is, Idon't know how to pronounce his
name, Gib or mate. He's aTurkish physician who wrote one
of the preeminent books on ADHDand a lot on human psychology,
and he's taught Mitch album.
There it is. I knew his bomb.

(12:30):
Thank you. He here he is talkingabout the lens through which we
should view our priorities andand how that relates to the 100
Acre Wood and Winnie the Pooh.
If I were to choose to live mylife over again, I wouldn't live
it in this way. Do you knowWinnie the Pooh? Yeah, the end

(12:53):
of that book would bring tearsto my eyes for years.
Christopher Robin, the littleboy now has to go to school, and
he's telling his friends the toyanimals that he won't be able to
play with them so much anymore.
And what I wasn't aware of whenI went to medical school and
when I was a physician is howdriven I was to justify my
existence in the world. I wish Ihadn't worked so hard. When

(13:15):
you're driven to work too hard,you actually ignore what
matters, and what matters iswhat you were telling me last
night about how much it mattersfor you to spend time with your
family. So every summer, youtake a bunch of weeks away from
your podcast and you just spendtime enjoying your kids and your
and your wife and your family.

(13:37):
And I didn't do that. I alwaysfelt I had to keep working. And
the book ends with thestatement, and whatever they do
or wherever they go in theEnchanted Forest, a little boy
and his bear will always beplaying together, and that phase
would bring tears to my ass foryears, because play is so
important and joy is soimportant, and that's what these

(13:59):
people are talking about peoplesacrifice their playfulness,
their joyfulness, for the sakeof being accepted and being
successful and all that. It's ahuge one. Being driven by
unconscious needs to validateyour existence. And where does
that come from? Again? Thatcomes from childhood trauma. In
that sense, we can all be Winniethe Pooh and Christopher, we can

(14:25):
always keep playing in theEnchanted Forest. And that's
just essential. I thinkwhat he's talking about there is
finding your why. And we've saidthis before, if you can find
your why. You can endure anyhow. Most of us our Why is
something ribbon thin? It ismeaningless. We want admiration

(14:51):
from our peers, not even ourpeers, from people we don't even
like to justify, as he puts it,to justify our existence.
Existence. But the reality isthat when we look back on our
existence, we realize that themost perishable inventory that
we have is our time, and we'renot even good about being lazy.
We view not working in order tospend time with our children. We

(15:18):
view not working in order to, inorder to show up, you know, and
fix light bulbs at our old ourgreat aunt's house, as laziness.
We're not, we're not focusing onproducing for the economy. We're
not focusing on our goals. Andyet, when we when we look back

(15:39):
at that time, those become themost important times of our
life, and the amount of timethat we waste staring at our
phone, worrying about things wehave no control over, listening
to 24 hour news cycles and andand stressing about not matching
up to the stuff that we see onhere. How many hours are we

(16:01):
giving to these things? We'rebad about being lazy. We give
hours to that stuff. And I'vebeen saying this from a position
of authority. I am just asguilty of this. I have been
staring at my phone or staringat my computer trying to finish
work while my kids are asking meto go for a bike ride. And I

(16:21):
guarantee you, based on on whathe's saying there, and what
everything that I've readTuesdays and more, all of that,
that at the end of my life, Iwill, I would, I would give up
every inch, every ounce oftechnology, every dollar in my
bank account in order to go forone more bike ride with my
childhood under 10, aged son andmy and my daughters and and one

(16:46):
more opportunity to talk to themand see the world through their
innocent child like eyes for oneone more opportunity to do that,
and it's gone like that.
So when we talk about our goals,when
we talk about what we want, whenwe talk about getting to the
place we want to be, we have toput it through the lens of what

(17:09):
is most important to us. And Iguarantee you that whatever that
goal is shareholder value,right? The the driving mantra
that runs our economy is notgoing to be the number one most
important thing, and you willhave looked back on your life

(17:31):
and realized that you've wastedit in the name of shareholder
value, as opposed to maximizingthe amazingness of the time that
we have, and many of us wasteour time on bad habits. We find
comfort in the same newsstories. We find comfort and the

(17:55):
algorithm knows. We find comfortin the algorithm. We find
comfort in staring at our phonesand having fake communication
with fake friends, and it drivesus, on a daily basis, towards
unhealth. It drives us to beunimpressed with our lives as
they are when we haveimpressive, amazing, comfortable

(18:19):
lives. And more than anythingelse, it drives us to give away
our most perishable inventorytime. And if you re think your
hours in the day, the time thatyou have through that lens, that
doesn't mean that you don'twork. It doesn't mean that you
don't have goals. If you can recontextualize everything that I

(18:42):
said it just it means that yourgoals are now reframed with a
different purpose, and if yourgoals are not reframed with that
purpose, you're not going to getthem and you're not going to be
happy when you do. And that ishow we find that navigation
between contentment andgratefulness and striving and

(19:03):
goals. If our why for our goalsis in the right place, if our
appreciation for where we are itcomes from understanding how
perishable our time is, then webegin to become very precious
with what we give our time to,and that includes undoing the
bad habits and building the goodhabits that will get there. And

(19:25):
I mean that, you know, forexample, I like to go for a run,
and I've never regretted goingfor a run, and I have had times
had to step away from my familyto go exercise. But I know that
there's a greater purpose tothat. I know that me spending 45
minutes exercising, going for arun right now means that I will
be healthier, longer and betterable to be there in my

(19:47):
children's lives and my grand,hopefully future grandchildren's
lives, all of that. So I aminvesting my time into something
that gives me more time intheory, right? Mm. I there is a
lens through which I view that,and I don't regret my runs. I
don't regret the times when I'vebeen like, I'm gonna go
exercise. I mean, sometimes youhave to be, you know, a little

(20:10):
bit militaristic about it inorder to maintain your focus all
that stuff. I get that. Butwhat? What my I don't regret
investing in myself in that wayin order to be able to have more
time with my kids. Here is so wegot to build those habits. We
got to build those habits thatget us to that place. Here is

(20:32):
Chase Hughes, who is he's aninterrogator and psychologist
talking about how to reprogramyour brain to build the habits
that you want.
Reticular activating system,whatever you want to change in
your life, anything you want tochange in your life, jam it down

(20:52):
into that part of the brain. Andthe way to jam it down in the
part of the brain is, how can Icommunicate? This to a dog?
It requires imagery, emotion,smell and then repetition, just
training a dog.
There's a formula that I used toteach for actual brainwashing,
and it works the same tobrainwash ourselves out of a
behavior or into a new behaviorthat's focus emotion, agitation

(21:16):
and repetition. So agitation,meaning I'm going to change my
environment very regularly, somy brain doesn't go into I'm
familiar with this mode, so it'slike, wow, these walls are a
different color in my office, mycouch, my living room, is in a
different place. I continuouslymove things around to force the
lower brain to say things arenew. You need to pay attention.

(21:37):
Yeah.
So he's talking aboutintroducing novelty in order to
get more of your brain engaged,which is something we've talked
about from a different anglebefore. And this idea is that
the more novelty you can inject,the less your brain is on
autopilot, which means the moreof your brain you can engage.
And we have an abundance ofenergy, abundance of calories,

(21:58):
so we actually don't need thosesystems in our brain often that
make life easier. So if you canchange things up in order to get
more of your brain activated,you can then use more of your
brain to build the new habit.
And what's cool is the new habitcan actually become something
that goes into autopilot, and sothat you can use your new brain,
your more active brain, in orderto develop new habits. So the

(22:19):
other cool side effect ofintroducing novelty is that it
slows time down. One of thereasons why your life from age
you know, four to age 10 feelslike it was an eternity, and
your life from graduating highschool till now feels like a

(22:40):
blink. Is because everything youdid from age five to 10 was a
novelty. Everything was new, andso your brain slowed time down.
It took in more of thesurroundings, and it felt like
those, those five, six years ofelementary school was half your

(23:01):
life. And for many, or most ofus, it's, you know, it's been
decades since we were in highschool, and yet it doesn't feel
like it's been decades. Thatfeels like a shorter amount of
time than the time that I was achild. I'm speaking from
personal experience, but myreading is that is, and
conversations is that that's anit's a shared experience. This

(23:25):
idea that childhood takesforever and adulthood is a
blink, and part of that isbecause we don't manage our time
well and we don't introduceenough novelty. So he's talking
about tricks, where yourearrange the furniture in your
house, where you redo thingsthat the in terms of your your
daily patterns, where you youmove things so that you have to

(23:47):
use more of your brain in orderto begin to groove new dendrites
and form new habits. And that isa great way to do that. And one
of the cool things that happensas a side effect, again, is that
it slows your brain down. How dowe now determine how to take our
new, more activated brain andput it to good use? Google is a

(24:09):
famously successful company.
Google has not just famouslysuccessful in terms of
shareholder value, but but alsoin terms of what it has, what it
in terms of employeesatisfaction, in terms of its

(24:30):
growth, in terms of its abilityto build and retain talent. And
one of the one of the coreconcepts, is this idea of 7020,
10, and it has to and I've had,I've had many friends who have
worked at Google, and the this,this concept that that is about

(24:52):
to be talked about from SergeyBrin is actually a good model
for how to build your lifetowards. Life of purpose that
you want.
Sergey, 15 years ago, came upwith a concept called 10% of the
budget should be on things thatare unrelated. It was called

(25:13):
7020 10, 70% of our time on corebusiness, 20% on adjacent
business, and 10% on other andhe proved mathematically, of
course, he's a brilliantmathematician, that you needed
that 10% right to make the sumof the growth work. And it turns
out he was right, right?
So it's a simple concept, 7020,10, 70% of your core business,

(25:37):
that is your job right now. Thathelps you pay your rent, pay
your mortgage. That is theactual fundamental comings and
goings of getting to doctor'sappointments, etc. 20% on the
adjacent stuff. You got to havedinner. Well, you got to cook,
you got to chop vegetables, yougot to, you got to do all of
that kind of stuff. 20% on thissort of like, you know, personal

(25:59):
maintenance. You got to bathe.
You got to you got to do thethings that allow you to work on
the 70%but many of us take that last
10% and we waste it.
That 10% goes to watchingtelevision, that 10% goes to
doom scrolling, and that 10%goes to enviously looking at

(26:20):
other people's Instagram feeds,and my encouragement to you this
week as we come to the end ofour time, and I'll read some of
the comments in a second here,as we as we end, is for you to
take what we've talked abouttoday in terms of how to reframe
your thought process, How toreframe the value of your time,

(26:42):
and take that 10% of your timethat we are wasting right now,
and I don't mean just you, andI'm sure you're gonna tell me
all of the things. I promiseyou, there's 10% of our time
that we are all wasting, and Iknow I do it, and use that 10%
to build and invest in the stuffthat gives us the playful

(27:07):
purpose, the 100 Acre Wooddancing with poo, the idea of of
how far we can go in terms ofour sense of ourselves, how far
we can go in terms of living thelife that we want in a way that
aligns with our core values,that when we look back on our
lives, that will be the stuffthat we realized was the most

(27:28):
important to us. Spend your 10%of your time doing that. So, you
know, for for 24 hours in a day,that's, you know, 2.4 hours. Can
do we have 2.4 hours that's,that's, you know, two hours and

(27:48):
20 minutes, two hours and 20minutes every day, working on
those goals that build ourplayfulness. A couple of things
that people have said one that Iwant to point out, that what
I'm, what we're talking abouttoday, falls in alignment with a
group called under earnersanonymous. And I have a friend

(28:11):
who's actually an under, underearners anonymous. And the idea
behind that is that many of us,we are squandering, we are
squandering our most valuablepossession, which is time, and
we squander it because we it'susually for for smart people or
people who are in a similarposition to what motivated us to
join this group, but usuallyit's this is using the 12 step

(28:33):
program, which is, we are notunhappy, but we are not at the
place that we want to be. Wewant to be. We believe that
there's something that we needto unlock in ourselves, the 7020
10 rule April, is that 70% ofour life is going to be spent on
our core business by Google.
It's Google is a search engine.
Google has Google Docs. Googlehas YouTube, which is also a

(28:56):
search engine. By the way. It'sthe second most popular search
engine in the world, behindGoogle itself. Google is a
search engine, maintaining thequality of the search,
maintaining the servers that itneeds to run the search, selling
the ads around the search terms,all of that that is their core
business for you, that is yourday job, that is the logistical

(29:17):
nature of getting to and fromwork. Mean, you know, all of
that, 20% on the on theancillary parts of the business.
So again, I said, for Google,it's maintaining the servers as
part of the 70, but it's forGoogle, it's making sure that
their searches, their search isconstantly, is never down. It's
making sure that some of theside parts of the business. So

(29:39):
for Google was like buyingYouTube, right, realizing that
searching through video is justas important as searching on
text. And so they bought theybuy YouTube, and then they build
that into the number two searchengine world. That's the 20% on
the side. So for an individualthat's keeping your car
maintained, making sure that youcan get to and from work,
that's, you know, going to yourtooth clear. Meaning every,

(30:00):
every 12, six to 12 months, andgetting your annual physical,
all of that stuff. That's all inthat 20% but then the 10% is the
dreamer, and we waste ourdreamer time. And when we look
back on our lives, that dreamertime is the most important to
us. What we do with that dreamertime, is it creating experiences

(30:23):
for our children that we willlook back on with fond memories
that they will then pass on totheir kids? Is that what we do
with our 10% is it building thethe chair of the business that
funds the charity that takescare of sea otters? Because we
love sea otters, whatever thosethings are, that 10% is

(30:46):
fundamentally what the mostimportant part of our life
becomes. And I want to encourageyou guys to rethink your
schedule with that 7020, 10 rulethis week, to reimagine how
comfortable your life really is,and to take that with you every
single day. So that's your goalthis week. Figure out what your

(31:08):
10% is, what you're going towork on it and cut out the rest.
Cut out the stuff that you'rewasting in that 10% thank you
guys, that is our time today.
John should be back. I mean,John will be back. I guess he
gets in either tomorrow orThursday. So I don't know if
he's going to be on the Thursdaycall or not, but he but he will
be back in the saddle at leastby next week, probably by

(31:29):
Thursday. Thank you guys forbeing here, and I look forward
to seeing you guys next week.
You.