[00:00] And you might be going right now as you’re on the treadmill or driving home or wherever you’re at, walking your dog and plastic a bag on your hand. And you’re picking up poop right now. But, but are you gonna do something with this? Are you going to actually hit the pause button, take a productive pause, and do the work to define your Olympic gold medal moment?

[00:19] Welcome to another episode of Success Through Failure, the Show for successful people and for those who want to become. Successful, the only show that reveals the true nature of success. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I’m bringing you a solo episode. We’re gonna be talking about how to live your limitless life.

[00:38] This is a life without limits, where there are no self-imposed limits, where there are no limits from the outside. How do you, how do you live? Your life without these limits. How do you throw off the chains of, of self-doubt and limits that are whether internal or external? This is the topic that we discussed at my retreat, the Pathfinder Retreat.

[01:00] This is my third annual retreat. We just hosted this in May. It was up in Beacon, New York goes absolutely incredible and I call it the Pathfinder retreat cuz the name of my coaching program is Reveal Your Path and we lovingly. Call the members and the community pathfinders, and so this is the third one we’ve done.

[01:16] It was a really cool venue that we had. We had a, an amazing hotel, the Roundhouse in, or the Roundhouse Hotel in Beacon, New York. We rented out an entire co-working space in downtown. We had the entire thing for the day. We had all these. Breakout sessions and whiteboards, and we brought in a speaker, Dr.

[01:33] Nate Zinsser. He is the director of Performance at West Point for about three decades. He used to worked with, you know, Eli Manning. He was a two-time Super Bowl mvp. He’s worked with Olympic medalists and of course, many, many soldiers and high performers just in, in all walks of life. An amazing book he wrote, by the way, called The Confident Mind, and you can go back and listen to my interview with

[01:55] Dr. Zinsser on this podcast back in episode 336, but I asked all of the attendees, I said, What is your biggest takeaway? And I asked them to give me their biggest takeaway so I can bring these to you, to the listener, so you can kind of get from a high level, what are the biggest things that came out of this.

[02:13] Now, these are a bunch of high performers, you know, generally successful in what they do in one or multiple areas of their lives, but they wanted to come together to level up, to get some real clarity on how they can go from where they’re at to where they wanna go, right? Because these are folks who, they’re operating at a high level, but they know there’s more.

[02:31] They knew they can do more. They know they can accomplish more, and that’s really what we wrestled with. And we started out on Thursday evening with a Jeffersonian dinner. And a Jeffersonian dinner, if you’re not familiar, it is a dinner where you get everybody around the table and you have one dinner conversation around one topic that is identified in advance.

[02:51] So I create, I identified some questions around living a limitless life and what that means to you. And we went around the table and everybody shared their responses and we created discussion. But it was always just one sort of intentional discussion. It’s such a, such a cool way to have a meal, to share a meal and to really share some, some deep stuff in each other’s lives and and gain clarity into how to break through the limits that we have in our lives.

[03:12] So that’s kind of how we started on Thursday, and then on Friday we had this all day session and had Dr. Zinzer join us for part of it, and then on Saturday. Everybody kind of broke up and did sort of some different options. And, one was to run a Spartan Trail race. I did a trail race. It was a half marathon trail race, which was awesome.

[03:29] I didn’t feel like I was ready, but I felt great on race day and finished much, much higher than I thought I would finish. So it was, I was really happy about that. And then, some folks did a hike of, it’s called Trail of the Fallen. And it’s a, a trail, a hiking trail just outside of West Point.

[03:46] You know, if you were in the service, in the military, you bring, a rock from the bottom and in memory of some service members who, you know, who have, who lost their lives in battle. And, one of the guys there was, he is a combat wounded veteran. And carried two rocks to the top, and put ’em on a, a big pile that’s sort of a, a makeshift memorial at the top and, in memory of a couple of his, his fallen comrades.

[04:11] So, anyways, an amazing experience for all of us. So I, when I’m bringing you at the top 10 takeaways that my attendees, the attendees, the pathfinders shared with me to share with you, okay? So I’m gonna go through these 10. But I don’t want you to get overwhelmed and think you have to go do 10 things or try to remember all of these 10.

[04:30] First of all, you never have to remember anything cuz you can get it all in the action plan. And second of all, if you try to remember 10 or try to, to take action on 10, you’re gonna get overwhelmed. You’re gonna, you’re, you’re busy, right? I know you’re busy, just like I’m busy and everybody else is busy.

[04:43] So I want you to identify one, maybe two takeaways. You can utilize and follow up on, take action on quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this into your life, just go to JimHarshawJr.com/apply to see how you can get a free one-on-one coaching session with me.

[05:04] That’s JimHarshawJr.com/apply. Now back to the show. All right, here we go. Number one of 10. Reframing, reframing your story. And for me, I get to reframe a failure story that I have in my life. And it’s very easy to look back at your life and see your failures and your adversity and your setbacks as reasons why you think you can’t live a limitless life.

[05:31] And we start to impose these limits based upon what we think is possible. But for me, I get to share, for example, a, a significant failure story that I had that. Because I’m a speaker, because I’m a coach, because I’m a podcast host. I get to reframe this all the time. I’m always telling this story and constantly reframing it in my head, but you are probably not in the same line of work as me.

[05:56] And so you have to really be intentional about reframing this. So my story is, When I raised Angel Capital, built a technology company, we developed a software, and about two years into this thing, we had a failed business. I mean, we had revenue riot sports marketing. For those of you who were in my universe, way back when we had revenue, we had clients, we had a great product, but it just, we couldn’t kind of get over the hump and generate enough revenue.

[06:18] So end up having to shut the business down and this was a very easy thing for me to say, see, I can’t be an entrepreneur. I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough, I’m not capable enough. I can’t do this. This is a big mistake. All of that, and that’s how most of us walk around with this sort of unconscious thought and feeling that.

[06:39] These failures define us, but I get to redefine this all the time as this stepping stone for success. For me, it is where and why and how. I determined and discovered the reveal path coaching framework. That is the centerpiece of my coaching and my community right now. Because of that, I’m here. Talking to you and found success, not despite that failure, but because of that failure and I get to reframe that all the time and look back and find the positives in that story.

[07:10] Would I wanna relive that? Absolutely not. If it was gonna create amazing success for me again, yeah, I guess I would. But gosh darn man, that was, it was painful. It was embarrassing. It was financially a huge challenge that, I mean, it affected my marriage and my health and wellbeing. I get to reframe it all the time.

[07:29] So how about you? Are you getting a chance to reframe? So Kurt, who’s one of the attendees, this is what he said. He said, from your cauldron of thoughts, be selective about the ones that you let into your bottle that defines you. All right, this is reframing. All right, so thank you for Kurt for that.

[07:48] Takeaway number two, the Yaba Syndrome. Eliminating your Yeah. Butt. So Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, I dunno if you’ve ever read the book Outliers, but these guys have a reason to believe that. Yeah, they just got lucky. There were several technology leaders including Steve Jobs, bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, who was the c e O of Google that were born right around the same time.

[08:15] And in the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he talks about basically how these guys kind of got lucky. I mean, sure they were smart, they worked hard, all that, but they were born the right time in history. To be positioned to take advantage and learn technology early on. And by the time they hit sort of, a critical point in their career, they were old enough to be leaders, but young enough to still really have grown up around this technology and, and developed with this technology.

[08:42] And so the, it’s a really great chapter of the book Outliers, but you can go, oh my gosh, these guys, they’re just lucky they didn’t have a Yeah. But syndrome, right? Tom Brady. He could say, yeah, you know, I’m, you know, I’m the goat. I had all these great weapons around me, Gronkowski and Edelman and Walker, Randy Moss, like all these great players, hall of Famers around me, these weapons, you know, I had this, you know, the Hall of Fame coach and Bill Belichick, like, yeah, but, you know, maybe I’m the goat, but Yeah, but I, but, but, but, but he can doubt himself, right?

[09:12] But he didn’t. Like myself, I think of it the same way. Like, like my earliest clients in my coaching program and my consulting, my leadership consulting were because of people who I know it’s easy for me, it was easy for me to go, yeah, but these people know me. You know? Yeah. But it’s like, I don’t really have a, a business until I’m starting to get clients who, who don’t even know who GI Harshi is.

[09:32] These people were like friends or acquaintances. To be honest, it should have been more validation like people who actually know me are hiring me as opposed to people who don’t know me. But we can always default to that. Yeah. But if you want to live your limitless life, eliminate the Yeah. Bud Syndrome. I go into depth on this in episode 202.

[09:52] All right, so that was number two. The first one was reframing. The second one is eliminating the ya, but number three. Define your Olympic gold medal moment. What is that Olympic gold medal moment for you? Have you actually defined it like in athletics? I always point to athletics as this microcosm where we can see success and failure and goal setting and perseverance play out in front of us and we know.

[10:20] That Olympic gold medalist have this moment in their mind where they’re getting their hand raised or getting the gold medal, they’re winning at the highest, highest level. What is that for you? It’s so much harder to define that in the real world, but you have to do that in order to live your limitless life.

[10:35] You have to know what does that actually look like? You might be going right now as you’re on the treadmill or driving home or wherever you’re at, walking your dog in plastic bag on your hand you’re picking up poop right now. But, but are you gonna do something with this? Are you going to actually hit the pause button, take a productive pause, and do the work to define your Olympic gold medal moment?

[10:54] If you do, it’s gonna help you move towards living your limitless life. If you don’t, if you just listen to this podcast, if this is just another podcast to listen to, now keep in mind this is what we help clients do because most people. Don’t actually take the time to do this. So we help them do that. So that’s number three, defining your Olympic gold medal.

[11:13] Moment number four, gratitude in the journey. You’ve heard this before. Gratitude. This is a secret weapon used by the highest performers in the world. Jeff at the retreat, he came up with the phrase, joy in the machine. This is the infrastructure that you need to build in order to live your limitless life.

[11:35] Finding joy in the machine, finding gratitude in the journey, the process of getting from where you’re at to where you want to go. Because to be honest, most of your life is not gonna be on the top of the proverbial gold medal podium. It’s gonna be in the journey. So you’ve gotta find joy in the machine.

[11:53] So thanks to Jeff for that little piece of wisdom. Number five is impact. We’ve all heard the phrase, give a man a fish. And he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime. Well, how about this next level, which I hadn’t heard before. I don’t know where this came from. Someone shared this at the retreat, but I think this come from somewhere else.

[12:11] But the next level of that is give a man a fish. He eats for a day, teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime. But there’s one more level to this. It’s teach a man to teach others to fish, and that’s where your legacy comes from. That’s where incredible impact in legacy comes from. That’s where your limitless life.

[12:30] Lives and comes to fruition teaching a man to teach others to fish. I’m using man only because that’s kind of where this, this quote comes from. But teach a man or woman to teach others. How to fish. That’s where you leave your legacy. That is how you live your limitless life. All right, that was number five.

[12:49] Let’s get to number six. Intention. Success doesn’t just happen. Living your limitless life doesn’t just happen by waking up today and doing the same thing today for no better reason than that’s what you did yesterday or waking up tomorrow and do doing the same thing tomorrow for no better reason than that’s what you did today.

[13:03] That’s not how you’re gonna get to live your limitless life. It has to be intentional. You have to hit the pause button. Do a productive pause for a long time listener, you know how to define that. That is a short period of focus, reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind.

[13:18] That means asking yourself, how do I win the day today? Or What are my biggest goals? What do I wanna accomplish in the next 12 months? What’s the 20%? That gives me 80% of the results, right? What are these powerful questions that break through the noise and help you live with intention so that you can live your limitless life?

[13:39] That’s number six. Let’s get to number seven. This was a huge takeaway for me. Positive thinking versus productive thinking. Positive versus productive. Now, this came out of our session with Dr. Zinzer at the retreat. And we’ve all heard about positive thinking, but you ever have a failure or a setback and man, it’s, it’s hard to think positive right after that.

[14:02] Or I always go back to my wrestling career. You step off the mat after losing. It’s so hard to think positive in that moment, but you can think productively in that moment. It’s a big shift there, a big mental shift in what we’re talking about. Like it’s not just this toxic positivity that people are talking about, but how about having.

[14:21] A productive thought, and it may not be, you know, positive and like, oh boy, I’m, I’m gonna learn from this failure. But it’s, the productive thought is, I can learn from this. It sucks. I’m hurting right now emotionally, but something good is gonna come from this. Right? Just the mindset shift of thinking, I’m going to think positively versus I’m going to have a productive thought right now, or make a productive statement.

[14:46] Okay. Again, that’s from Dr. Zinzer episode 3 36. He was a, an amazing addition to our retreat again this year. All right, that was number seven. Let’s get to number eight. Amor, fati, amor fatty. If you’re a fan of stoicism, you’ve heard this term before, ahor. Fatty means love your fate. And this was brought up by

[15:04] Dr. Mark McLaughlin. He’s a neurosurgeon who was at the retreat, interviewed him in episode 2 23. He’s the author of book called Cognitive Dominance. A brain surgeon’s quest to outthink fear, incredible book, incredible human being. And he brought this up, this concept of amor fati. When you live by this, it takes away the pressure and the fear so that you can live your limitless life.

[15:29] And this, this was the mindset that I discovered my senior year of wrestling. I was sitting in a hotel room in Morgantown, West Virginia. It was the night before the very first competition my senior year. And I realized that I. I don’t know if I can actually achieve my goals. I thought there was something that I was missing and I spent my whole off season trying to figure out what that, what it was that I was missing.

[15:52] Do I need to learn new technique or lift a, a different muscle group that I’m not lifting enough or better conditioning, whatever it was. I never figured out the secret that I was missing. And so in that moment, I gave up. I gave up on the outcome, and I just felt this concept of love your fate. I didn’t know it back then, but I’m more fatty.

[16:08] Love your fate. And I said, whatever is gonna happen, I’m gonna be okay with it. I’m gonna love my fate. And it allowed me to put down the baggage and the fear and the pressure of competition and the fear of losing in failure, and it just allowed me to be free and go compete. And that’s what you want.

[16:25] That’s what you need in your life to live a limitless life. Where are you holding yourself back? By not loving your fate, by being afraid of what could happen, right? That’s number eight. Number nine out of 10, John shared this takeaway. John said, it’s not enough just to set goals. You need to align your mindset, your internal dialogue, and ultimately confidence to support those goals.

[16:52] Now, in Dr. Zinn’s book, he had a different way of saying a, a similar concept Here is. Is your current way of thinking consistent with the success that you want to have? Is your current way of thinking consistent with the success that you wanna have? And that’s what John’s talking about here, is it’s not enough just to set the goals.

[17:10] You have to align your mindset and your internal dialogue, which affects your confidence to support these goals and to help you live your limitless life. That was a huge takeaway for me. That was number nine. All right, last but not least, number 10. And by the way, I’m gonna go through these real quickly, just 30 seconds or less, go through all 10 again, and I’m gonna give you one last takeaway point that is the exclamation point at the end of this episode.

[17:35] All right, so number 10 is, Failure. Failure is feedback, failure is data. Failure is information. You heard Tim Ferriss say this when I interviewed him, actually republished that episode just a couple episodes ago, back in episode 4 0 6. That was a condensed, republished version because that one was kind of getting cobwebs on.

[17:53] It was way back in the archives from several years ago. We, we brought that one back up because such an amazing interview with Tim. But Dr. Zinzer shared this concept again. And you may have heard this before, but failure is feedback, failure is data. Failure is information. Can you remove the emotion from it and identify the benefits, identify what you can take away.

[18:15] Can you have a, maybe not a positive thought about it, but a productive thought about failure. That is how you live your limitless life. Okay, I’m gonna review these 10 again really quickly and give you one last bullet point to take with you here. Number one was reframing. Number two was eliminating the yeah, but syndrome.

[18:38] Number three was defining your Olympic gold medal moment. Number four was gratitude in the journey or joy in the machine. Number five was impact. Give a man a fish. Feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish. Feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to teach others to fish. That’s where your legacy comes from.

[18:57] That’s where your impact comes from. Take the focus off yourself. All right, so that’s number five. Impact. Number six is intention. This stuff doesn’t just happen. You have to be intentional. Number seven, positive thinking versus productive thinking. Number eight, . Love your fate. Number nine. Is your current way of thinking consistent with the success that you want to have.

[19:21] And number 10, failure is feedback. All right, one last point to bring this home, and this was from Sean at the retreat. He shared this. He said, we are closer to our limitless capabilities than any of us Believe. Every day someone breaks a record who is less skilled, less capable, and less intelligent than we are.

[19:43] Are they any better? No. They merely decided that they were going to do it. Now it’s our turn. And for you, the listener, now it’s your turn. What now? Pick an actionable thing. What can you do? Right now at the retreat, we created a 30, 60, 90 plan as well as 180 365. Okay. 30 day, 60 day, 90 day, six month, one year.

[20:08] We have a plan to follow through on this. You need one too. If you wanna have that conversation with me, let’s talk. Go to JimHarshawJr.com/apply, but take some kind of action out of this. Good luck. Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar JimHarshawJr.com/apply, where you can sign up for a free one-time coaching call directly.

[20:37] With me, and don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more often. You would totally make my day if you give me a rating and review. Those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience.

[20:57] Just open up your podcast app. If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast a rating and review. Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today.

[21:15] Good luck and thanks for listening.

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