Ready to redefine success in your life and pivot towards a path of true significance? In this episode, host Matt Bennett sits down with Paul Epstein, an expert in building unshakable confidence and a purpose-driven leader, to share game-changing insights that you won't find in your usual self-help books.
Find out more about Paul, and find the tools we spoke about in the episode, at paulepsteinspeaks.com.
š Why Listen?
If you've ever felt stuck, unmotivated, or just in need of a different perspective, this episode offers actionable tools and thought-provoking insights that could be your first step to a breakthrough. Tune in and take your confidenceāand your lifeāto the next level.
Support the Show: Buy Me A Coffee!
Website: SecondMix.net
Email Me: matt@secondmix.net
REFLECT, REVISE, and REMIX your life and business with the MONTHLY Second Mix Newsletter covering GOAL MASTERY for Real Estate Professionals. Your business gets better as YOU get better! Sign Up Now
Ready to redefine success in your life and pivot towards a path of true significance? In this episode, host Matt Bennett sits down with Paul Epstein, an expert in building unshakable confidence and a purpose-driven leader, to share game-changing insights that you won't find in your usual self-help books.
Find out more about Paul, and find the tools we spoke about in the episode, at paulepsteinspeaks.com.
š Why Listen?
If you've ever felt stuck, unmotivated, or just in need of a different perspective, this episode offers actionable tools and thought-provoking insights that could be your first step to a breakthrough. Tune in and take your confidenceāand your lifeāto the next level.
Support the Show: Buy Me A Coffee!
Website: SecondMix.net
Email Me: matt@secondmix.net
REFLECT, REVISE, and REMIX your life and business with the MONTHLY Second Mix Newsletter covering GOAL MASTERY for Real Estate Professionals. Your business gets better as YOU get better! Sign Up Now
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? I know that you've worked with the 49ers yeah. So a lot of the world will know me as a former NFL and NBA executive. So what that means is from an entry to executive level for three NBA teams and a global agency that was owned by the Yankees and Cowboys, that somehow lands me in the NFL league office to head up revenue for multiple Superbowls. And we shattered a record for one of them. Then I head out to the Bay area, open up a billion dollar stadium and Levi's stadium. And all that is just a magic carpet ride. But that was what I would call my career. And now I feel like I've stepped into my calling and my calling is to inspire and breathe life into others. And I do that as a keynote speaker, as an author, as a podcaster like you, and just as a thought leader, like I, I really just think of myself as somebody that's on a mission to lead people in places better than I found them. It's really inspired by my late father who I lost at 19. And to this day, my measurement of success is that I make them proud. And if the answer is yes, and it was a great frigging day. And so, yeah, you know, we can take this conversation wherever you want, but really the world kind of looks at the sports industry, 15 or so years that I was there and I, that's why I wrote the leadership playbook, the power of playing offense, it was really. An effort to democratize leadership. Like I'm not one of those that thinks leadership is rank role title authority, but that's what the Webster dictionary says. Right, right. From my perspective, I thought, how awesome would it be if every single person in the world could have a seat at the table of leadership? And so I democratized it by saying, this is a playbook for how to lead yourself. Because you don't need a title to lead yourself. Every person in the world can lead themselves. And, and then once you can effectively do that, now you step into the leadership of others, and leadership of teams, and cultures, and organizations. But, I think we skipped that first step, you know? Like, I never got a playbook for how to lead myself, so I decided to write it. It literally was the playbook that I never had. Um, and so that's a, a bit about my life, past, present, future, and we can take this wherever you want. So that's specifically what precipitated you to write the book was you were, were you already putting this stuff together? Like, do you journal or take notes or anything like that? I wish it would have made the writing process a lot easier. But that said, okay, I've got two comments on that. One was It was not the most difficult book to write, but that was because of a world circumstance. So I don't have a crystal ball. When you go all in on keynote speaking in January of 2020 and then two and a half months later, the world stops spinning and events go away. Well, it sucks in so many ways, financially and other, but here's the flip side. The silver lining was I wrote the power of playing offense in 90 days. From April of 2020 through June, I cranked it out because there was literally nothing else on my plate. And so when you think about the power of focus and the power of intentionality, and meanwhile, my second book that's launched in September, 2023. That thing took me a year and a half, two years, and I actually knew what I was doing, but you know, the world opens back up. But, but to more specifically answer your question, I was not journaling my lessons or insights as they were happening over that 15 year run in sports. It really was a reflective look back less on the times of success. More on the times of what the world will call failures. But for me, I just think of them as building blocks. Yeah. You know, I view them purely as growth mechanisms and growth experiences and rock bottom experiences that really mold you and groom you and shape you. And so, you know, that was what really did it. After I organized the book, I asked myself. Where have I fallen flat in this area? Where have I had bad days, weeks, months, or years in this area? But on the flip side, where are there some trophies in that area? And where did I have a transformation? And I'll leave you with this thought because a coach of mine once told me, so Rory Vaden, he heads up brand builders group, and he's really advised me a lot of my personal brand, and he has a phenomenal saying him and his wife, AJ, who are both wonderful people. They say you are best equipped to serve who you once were. I'll repeat that. You are best equipped to serve who you once were. So when I wrote the power of playing offense, I wrote it for the Paul of the past because my thought was, if this was the playbook that I never had, how many leaders in the world need this? Well, that's fantastic. And that's really interesting too. Like I am, I am trying to figure out exactly my niche and where I belong and where I can best teach and help people. And, uh, You know, sometimes it's difficult because you say like, okay, this is my niche. And then it doesn't sound interesting to you anymore. Like you picked something so narrow because that's what the marketing world is telling you to do is pick something so narrow. I really love personal development. I've got thousands of pages of journaling that I've done. What do you journal specifically? Do you journal the same things every day? I have a series of questions that I wrote that I asked myself to make sure that I'm on the right path. And it basically it's, it's about health relationships, my impact, uh, how am I treating my resources? Like my house, my car, my payments, my personal bills. Um, and then, and then my personal development, like, how can I get better? What, what do I need to be working on? How can I, I need like, even today I was like, you know, and I've got all this education, the things that I want to learn. And I'm excited about learning. But because I haven't planned them, I haven't done them. Like I haven't sat down to take any of the courses that I purchased or anything like that. And so now I'm like, let's sit down and, and, and plan those things. Yep. Love it. Love it. But I, but I am at a crossroads because that really is, where I'm, I don't know what my next steps are. Things are, things are, things are, um, you know, I'm working with real estate and I don't want to spread myself too thin. Um, I want to keep the podcast going. Online stores, like all these kind of things are like being thrown at me and it's like, which one do I choose? Well, I mentioned the Vadins earlier. Another one of their classic pillar points is diluted focus equals diluted results. And I will tell you, not because of what I just heard from you, where perhaps, and I'm not, I don't know this, but there might be diluted focus, but I don't know that. What I can tell you for sure is I. Have struggled with diluted focus for a big chapter, especially of my entrepreneurial journey. I would say this is one of the first years that I can confidently say that I'm not chasing every shiny squirrel, you know, that whole squirrel. And when you're in such a space of passion and everything feels amazing. Like I love, I, I would love doing 50 different things. I like most people can't find one thing that they want to do at work me. There's 50 things I want to do. So I have the opposite problem and it's a really different, I think both problems are very difficult. One is, Hey, like I haven't quite figured out what I'm passionate about or like what, how I want to put my purpose in all these things. And to me that my advice there would be start with curiosity, right? So curiosity leads to passion, potentially that leads to purpose, but start with curiosity for me. It was the opposite where I'm chasing too many things and they're all exciting to me and bandwidth and time are so scarce. So I read a book essentialism toward the end of last year.(Greg McKeown) Yeah. Yeah. And that's what got us connected. And he endorsed my new book, better decisions faster. And I mean, just one of my favorite reads of all time. And I needed it. Like I was not focusing only on the essential. So when I read that, it really not only trimmed my list of things to do. It expanded my impact. And I think that was the whole philosophy of you can do more by doing less. And for me, if my measurement of success is making a difference and leaving people better than I found them, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I am touching way more lives. And bettering so many more people, even though there's less commas in between what I do, I may be focusing on a couple of things. Now I used to do 10 things. I would argue my impact is almost like five X what it was last year and revenue and all that to be included. Okay. Well, that's really good to hear, actually. That's the, uh, you know, that's the crossroads that I'm at. Like, do I push with the podcast? And I was thinking about starting a mastermind and doing all these things just to help people because that is what I'm most passionate about. Anyway, that's where I'm stuck, but I actually think that your book is going to help the, uh, the. Heart hands is fascinating. If you want to tell people a little bit about that. Yeah. The head, heart, hands equation. Frankly, it got me out of the, one of the darkest storms in my life. You know, I really struggled now there's a happy ending to the story as me being a dad and, and all of that. But I struggled for the first six months of being a dad, just wearing that hat. You know, I, my expectations and wanting to be the hero, like my dad was to me and just what all my friends told me. And so in the book, we call this a yellow light. The simple way of thinking about it is if your head is mindset and your heart is your truth, it's your authenticity and hands are action. So the head art hands equation is how we make better decisions faster. This is really the application method inside of the book. So the equation is. Head plus heart equals hands. And the basics are kind of like a familiar signal in our life. The traffic signal, there's green lights, yellow lights, and red lights. When your head and heart are on board, that's a green light head and heart on board mean green light, take action. When neither is on board, no head, no heart. red light, either stop doing it or don't do it. And then a yellow light is when one of the two is on board, head or heart. And so when I tell you about me struggling with fatherhood, that was it. My heart was all in, but my head hadn't joined for the party. You know, I had to untangle some of that, the noise that was from the neck up. And again, there is a happy ending to the story, but I really had to kind of apply this before I ever called it the head, heart, hands equation. It dug me out of this yellow and transformed it into a massive green. And once I realized like how much it helped me, I then started to socialize it in my coaching work, in my training work as a speaker, and I started to populate this theory of head, heart, hands, mindset, authenticity, action, green, yellow, red lights. And it was so simple and so memorable and people started using it in a number of ways. Like I have CEOs that say when I'm choosing between strategy a or B. This is my go to equation. I have sales folks that are big into the partnership space, and they really stress over which are the right deals to do or not. And as an entrepreneur, I mean, the right deal can be even, who do you hire? Who do you fire? All these A versus B things, relationship, am I in or out? And we get paralyzed at these forks in the road and we're so stressed and we're so anxious. And if you're a leader out there. Decision fatigue and decision overwhelm are a real thing for all of us. We struggle with paralysis, not just by analysis, but sometimes it's like we're at this critical fork in the road and we. Over, overthink about, am I making the right call? Is this the best call? And so when I wrote Better Decisions Faster, it was how to step in to those critical forks in the road with unshakable confidence. And the equation is my recommendation because a green and a red, you would know exactly what to do within seconds of applying it. And the yellow is why I wrote the book. So you write the book to attract more green in your business, in your work, in your life, you write the book. So now that we're aware, we stopped running reds because if you run reds for a couple of years, you end up burned out, stuck, lost, fatigued, not happy, not fulfilled. And then the yellows are the messy middle, like my dad's story, you know, like my, me struggling story. And that is something where we would need much more than one podcast to break down the yellows. But for those listening in, if you're struggling with a yellow light where either your head or heart is on board, that's why I wrote the book, better decisions faster. Well, yeah, I am going to read it again in more detail. It, it just, it's interesting that it came at the perfect time in my life. And that's why I'm, I'm, I'm kind of relating my own story here. I think there you go. We're going to listen and say, wow, that's me. Like right now I've got kind of yellow lights everywhere. Like it is just the uncertainty. It is just the uncertainty of what is the next right step. And I can rationalize and justify any decision that I make. Yeah. Well, you know, what's crazy, Matt, is you and I. This is a research stat for the two of us and everyone listening in. The average U. S. adult makes 35, 000 decisions in a day. I did not know that until I started doing all the research for the book. Now, the majority of them are on autopilot. Hey, I'm going to brush my teeth. I'm going to turn left into the driveway. Things that don't require a second thought. The head, hard hands equation does not need to be used for those things. Just continue autopilot for the non consequential stuff. But for those things like for you, or you're like, Hey, I'm at a crossroads right now. I'm stuck at a decision, or I'm struggling with a yellow light, which. I believe about 70 to 80% of decisions. If you just kind of put them through this filter, you end up in the yellow. So that's why I say you write, you write the book or you do the speech or you do wherever you can help the most amount of people. And for me, green and red are just about awareness. You know what a green light is. It's a hell. Yes. You're in right? Like maybe I made you aware and I gave you a term of a green light, which is awesome, but you know, a green light. And you also know when you're heading harder, both not on board. Yeah, it's the reds are pretty obvious too. I'm just giving people a framework because I think we unconsciously run a lot of red lights in our life because we haven't had this head hard hands equation as a filter to run it through. But the yellow is tricky. The yellow is tricky and, and, and the insight I would share there is when your head is on board and your heart is not, that can be a very slippery slope and it's dangerous because at least with a red, you pull the trigger and you're out. You don't take action or you stop doing it. But with the yellow, where your head is in and your heart is out, you lose the time. So if it takes you four years to get out of that bad job or bad relationship or whatever, your heart's not going to change. So that yellow will never become a green. Your heart is not going to change. So I'm writing the book to expedite those decisions that it's like, dude, you know, your heart's not on board. What are you doing? And let's just say that maybe there's not a solution tomorrow. But at least now, you know, wow, this is a dead end yellow and I'm going to bleed out if I don't get out of this thing versus the opposite. When your heart is in and your head is out. My message there would be it's an 80% rule. It's not all the time because sometimes there are some yellows, even in that category that don't have a happy ending, but 80 to 90%, when your heart is in and you just got to get your head on board and it might take days, weeks, months, years, that's one that I recommend staying in the fight. Because your heart being on board is so rare that you can't waste that opportunity. Like don't walk away from that signal where your heart is literally telling you I'm in, and now you just got to try to figure out the headpiece. And a lot of those insights are inside of the book. That is really good advice. I like that. It's a measuring stick to keep you from living your life by default. Hmm. Drifting on default. Yeah. I think a lot of folks, myself included in a former chapter of life, we just drift and we largely do it on other people's terms. This is what my parents said I should do. This is what society gives me trophies for. This is the ladder that I'm climbing. So it doesn't mean drifting means no success. What I find is drifters don't feel purpose. If you're drifting on default, you're not going to feel alive. You're not going to feel vitality. You're not going to feel purpose. You're not going to feel sustainable happiness or fulfillment or joy. Because you're just on autopilot. But if you can live by design, you can curate, you know, everybody has a business plan. How many people have a life plan? And if you don't have a life plan, that's how you live by design. Everybody out there says, I want a business plan. I want a career plan. I want to, how about a life plan? And your work is a critical part of your life, but it's not your entire life. Your life is like a stock portfolio. You mentioned it earlier, mad. You have a journaling process and there's five, six, seven, eight things in there. That's awesome. That's your portfolio. And at different points, you're going to be crushing it in one area and maybe not crushing it in another area. Also, if you purposely intentionally say, I'm going to go all in on this area, let's say your health or whatever it is. Well, that might require some time in which case. That's could be the best decision for you, but there's trade offs. A minute spent on X is a minute, not spent on Y. And if you're doing that with intention, do it. The problem is I think most people are living randomly and drifting, and I know what it's like to not have a plan. And then you don't measure not only results. Like I'm not an outcomes guy. I'm an action guy. And I find that we lack intention in our actions and confidence. When we don't have a plan that we can routinely plug into. Let's talk about purpose for a minute then. Cause you brought that up. Uh, you have, you have a way of finding your purpose. I didn't hit, there's a QR code in the, uh, In the pdf copy that I was sent for the interview. I didn't go to that yet. I didn't even know if ever I didn't even know if you know It'll be all live around the book launch day. So yeah, you're good there. That'll be a a gift for another day for sure yes, exactly, but uh so Do you think that people have? A purpose, like a specific purpose, or do they, you get to choose your purpose or it needs to be based on certain factors in your life. So I'll give you the quick backstory and then I'll double down on the response. Cause I feel very bullish about, I have a strong opinion about what you just asked. And it's based on. Life experience. So I would still be in sports if it wasn't for a life changing retreat. Back when I was heading up revenue for the 49ers, this is August of 2016 team president, who was my boss and all of his reports, we go offsite for two days. And those two days I've never been the same since we worked on our inside game, our inner game of why of core values of trying to identify our purpose. And I knew that something special had happened when this was the first time that I call the time out in my life to really understand who I am on the inside. What do I stand for? How can I show up with more intention? And that's really the rub is I think a lot of people feel like we have a single why and a single purpose and we have a reason for being and why am I here? And I think that can get dangerous because. It's then it feels like a very distant North star and life is so hard. Business is so competitive and so hard. The world is only getting more complex and more challenging. And when people are frazzled or we feel overwhelmed, we're not focusing on our North star. We're focused on winning one day. We just want to win. So when I built my community of win Monday, that was really the premise. I'm just about attacking one day, one decision, one action at a time, because people can grab that. They, if I say, here's your game plan to win Monday, I don't care how broken anybody might feel on the inside. They can say, Oh, I can do that, Paul. What's the plan I'm in because I'm not saying go find your North star. I think that's where purpose gets a little bit of a, a bad rap is because it just feels too out of touch. And I also think of purpose in this way. I think there's vitamins and I think there's painkillers and when we're struggling, we want painkillers purpose. To me, the perception of it is it's a vitamin. Oh, it's nice. I wish I had purpose. But I got to pay the bills. Hey, we had to lay off 40% of our team, like some people in a, in a crisis moment or in an, in adverse circumstance. They're not thinking about the North Star. They're thinking about getting through the day. And so where I've tried to meet people where they are is I don't talk about purpose anymore as a North Star. I used to, and I lost people. I talk about it as purpose and action. Purpose is your 365 operating system. It has to be tied to your decisions and actions. And for me, the part that changed my life after that retreat. I literally started to coach why and values and purpose inside of the 49ers. They, they coined me the why coach of the 49ers, which is crazy, like a passion project, a side hustle, but that's what they knew me for. And that's eventually I fell more in love with my passion project than my day job. That's what leads to the Jerry Maguire leap out of sports. But now that I've been paying the gift of purpose forward ever since. I don't do the North Star thing. I do the 365 action thing. I do the decision thing. I do the action. So here's what it is. There's a formula for this. Values to me are what changed my life. The why got me to be inspired enough to take the first step. Values connected to my daily decisions and actions. And now that I fly all over the globe to talk about closing the confidence gap, to me, confidence is the ultimate. It is like our secret weapon that when we can become the most confident version of ourselves, we can't lose. My formula is. Confidence equals values times action because values is who you are. And the multiplication in that is how consistently you do it. So if I know who I am values, and I consistently do those things every day by taking action, that's confidence. Show me a person that takes consistent action on their values. I will show you a confident person, period, point blank. And that's how I take care of purpose is I don't make it about a North Star. I lock in on identifying one thing that you're about. And then I give you a process, which I'm more than happy to share in this conversation. It's a journaling process that guarantees that you put your values in action. And once you do that and habits form, you become the most confident version of yourself. Okay. Wow. I like that. I am very glad that I asked that. Um, I, I do want to know that process, but first I, I, you know, I don't, I don't want to dig too much on purpose. Um, I mean, you, you, I'm happy to share it. It's very fast. No, let's, let's give it to everybody. Let's do it. Once a week, sit down. This will take two minutes. You lock in on one value. So three ways you could find a value. One is think of a word that really resonates deeply with you. Uh, two is ask the five people that know you best to describe you in one word and see if something resonates from that list. The third option is just Google common set of core values. You'll get a list of 50 or a hundred. You'll look at that list and just choose the one that jumps off the page. So those are a couple of ways that you can identify. One core value. And then once you have that word, here's the journaling line. I will live my value of blank by blank. So remember high level confidence equals values times action. So this is how. The process of putting your values in action. You will journal. I will live my value of blank by blank. The first blank is the value that you chose. The second blank is an action, a single action that you will do that week connected to that value you just chose. So let me give you two examples. Let's say you chose. Joy. So I will live my value of joy by cooking my favorite meal. Cool. Small, simple, anybody could do it. Now let's raise the ante a little bit. Let's raise the stakes. Let's go with courage. I will live my value of courage by having that challenging conversation that I've been putting off. You're not having the conversation because Paul said. You're having the conversation because courage is your core value. That is the process. And then the studies show that habits form of any habit. The reason new year's resolutions don't work. We don't stick with it long enough. We don't have a process. We don't have a system. And I think it's a lot of head and no heart. So those are a couple reasons why, but the studies say that if you create a process and if you do something for three to four weeks, that is the fast pass. To have it formation. And that's how rituals are born. So if you're telling me three to four weeks creates muscle memory and I internalize it and it sticks, which I can vouch for that to be true. If you journal, what I just said, stay on one value and do it for consecutive weeks. So if you chose joy, I'm going to journal joy this week and choose an action. The next week, stick with joy, choose a different action. Rinse, repeat week three, rinse, repeat week four. I promise you, I promise you. That joy will become more of this gift that keeps on giving because you're taking consistent swings of the bat by taking actions that give you joy. And after three weeks, and when that fourth week hits, it just gets locked in. And after a while, you can move to a different value and a different word, and you're still going to be doing things every week. That give you joy because you created muscle memory and patterns and your mindset is locked in. So that's when I coach people how to become confident, I get them to lock in on a value, take four weeks swing of a bat through that journaling process. And I kid you not, it has worked every single time. Wow. And this is just working on one of those at a time. Am I right? Yeah. I stick with one word for at least a month. Yeah. Don't do joy one week, courage the next week. No, no, no, joy for four consecutive weeks, courage for four consecutive weeks, like one word for one month. Wow. That's amazing. Cause you do that for a year. And you've got like 12 new habits. You're probably an entirely different person in your, in your mind in a year. Yeah, just say like, what do I want more of in my life? I, I want more joy. I want more, um, I, I want growth. I want greater Optimism. I want greater gratitude. Like, think of each word as a muscle, and you gotta flex a muscle consistently to grow it, and you gotta tear through the muscle, and we all know how that works. I think of anything you wanna grow in life as a muscle, and this journaling process gives you four weeks to hit the gym for that one word. Wow. Okay. Well, I am going to try that. I am going to start doing that when I journal at night. I think, yeah, I think that's fascinating. That is, thank you for sharing that with us. I think that that tool, that's what this podcast is all about right there. If, if everybody started doing that, picking up that one new thing every four weeks and just going hard at it, uh, amazing life changes I could see coming out of that. Um, now in all of that though, if we, Do you have any kind of way to define a purpose where I know what I'm going toward? Like, do you know what I'm saying? Like, if I just start picking those values and start living them, I will be happier for a while till I realized I may not really be headed toward a certain point. Well, I think of purpose not as a wave of wand. I don't think you're one retreat or one activity away from identifying purpose. I think it's a marathon. It's a process. And I believe that it can be built. And, and so a couple of things on how to get there. For one, you could describe another way that I just said the formula confidence equals values times action. If you're consistently doing this, it's not random action. Values are a part of your purpose. And so I would say you could reframe it to say confidence. How about this? I would say this confidence and values. Equal purposeful action, right? Like, yeah, confidence is the result of putting your values in play. And if you put your values in play, you have purpose in your action. There's intention in your action. You're not randomly choosing things. I'm not telling you, choose a word that means nothing to you. If you choose a word that means a lot to you, there's purpose baked into the word. And if you're taking actions, some of those actions. Let's say that you're an entrepreneur, high growth founder, but you're having some personnel issues. Well, some of these actions might help you become a better leader. May help you inspire a more positive culture in which case there's purpose in that action. Now let's take the reverse side of it. What if you're a disgruntled employee and you hate where you're working, your boss is an a hole and all this stuff, but you go through the same process. Well, what if some of these actions were getting your resume together, take care of that new cover letter? Hey, every uh, every week I'm gonna commit four hours to searching for new opportunities. Hey, I might wanna pivot industries. So these actions can be tied to giving you more purpose in a future state because you're not feeling purpose in your current state. So these are not random actions. They're actions that lead you closer to purpose, no matter what, because you're choosing a value. So that's where this is not just choose any word from the Webster dictionary. That wouldn't work. It wouldn't mean anything to you, but like my five core values in no particular order are impact, growth, belief, authenticity, and courage. I did this process for those five words. And that literally is what ended up changing my life. That's how I made decisions to leave an industry. That's how I made decisions to become an entrepreneur. That's how I made decisions that led to losing 25 pounds. That's how I led to decisions to say yes to kids. I mean, like literally like you're just like all these big decisions. I baked it into this process. That Paul, that is a fascinating, fresh look. I think that this could really shift some people's paradigms because we hear about, okay, you got to come up with your purpose first and then people have trouble finding their purpose or they're praying to ask God for their purpose and, and, and don't hear anything. And so they live their lives, like not really doing anything. If you're, if you're placing, let's say your top five values at the top and saying my purpose. is to excel at these five values. That's it. That's my five months to do that value. One month, one value, two months in less than half a year. You can change your life with this process in less than, and by the way, I know you were saying earlier, just making up numbers. Hey, over 12 months in 12, I actually would recommend stop at five, like, like I actually think there's only so many values that can mean a lot to you. My recommendation, four to six is the range. So let's split the difference. I would say, just choose five and just choose one at a time. Great. I did my growth month. Now's my authenticity month. Now's my courage month. Now's my, so I would do it like that. And I. I like, I don't do this process anymore in the sense of like, I know what my core values are. I'm not going to try to make something up because it already led me to feeling more purpose in life. And at work, it already did that for me. So now I've shifted and now I just coach it to others. Okay. All right. And this confidence gained from doing that, from, from actually going through that process, the entire thing, not just journaling, but actually doing the actions that are required of myself heading toward, let's say, integrity was my integrity was the value that I start shooting toward. So I'm going to increase it. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Matt, I want to jump in here too, because that's where. So I want to give a gift to everybody listening in because you just said the magic word of confidence. And if confidence equals values times action, I actually have a resource where the process I just shared, it's on paper. You can literally get it emailed to you. And the way I did this was I created a confidence quiz and it's free. It's on my website. So you could see it. Everybody could go to paulepstein speaks. com. And in the main nav bar, you'll see confidence quiz. It's a five minute quiz. It's free. It'll give you a confidence score. Of one to a hundred and two call outs there. One, your confidence is not a light switch. It's a dimmer switch. It's not on off. You're not confident or not confident. That would be a light switch dimmer switch is like, maybe this quiz tells you you're at a 72, maybe you're at an 84, maybe you're at a 48. Okay. That's your starting point. Now the dimmer switch can go up one, up two, up three or down one down. So bad things happen. They rattle you. They shake your confidence is going to come down a little bit. Good things happen. And you're taking more consistent action on your values. You're raising that dimmer switch 1, And that's how it works. So. My goal is to set as high a bar as possible so that when I come down, it's not too far. Hey, if I go from a 94 to a 90, it's still a pretty good life, you know, but we got to work our dimmer switch to get as high as possible so that when negative things happen, we still stay pretty darn high. So, so again, That's the confidence quiz. Here's the beauty. When you get your score emailed to you, there's a PDF attached to it that I call the 12 keys to build unshakable confidence, Matt, those are the same 12 values that we talked about, uh, that you said you appreciated those 12 promises of decisions faster. That's going to get emailed to everybody. And in that resource, the journaling exercise. Is in that PDF. So if you take the confidence quiz, I'll do the hard work for you. You don't need to even bust out a piece of paper, just print the PDF that's on the backend and that's your worksheet. So again, Paul Epstein speaks. com confidence quiz, and that journaling exercise is all baked into the email app. Well, Paul, thank you for that resource. That is, that is excellent. I am looking forward to checking that out. Now let's, I kind of want to circle back to the beginning. Um, I mean, I know I'm not trying to make this all about me, but I mean my journey and, and seeing all the ways that I've changed as the podcast group grows, I think people have been watching that journey, but let's say right now that I am in the I am in the process of trying to figure out where my next steps are, what I'm going to do. Let's say that I said, you know what? I'm like making enough money right now. I'm doing everything I need to do. I am going to focus on these five things. Do you believe that five months from now, I'll be able to more confidently make a decision about my next step. If I work on those five values for five months and just say, I I'm really going to bust my butt, work on the values. And then I'm going to relook at the opportunities that I have available to me and decide. I guarantee you will become more confident in that process. And here's where I would say, Matt, I don't believe you're going to have to wait five months for the fruits of that labor. If you put in the labor. Meaning 20 journaling sessions, 20 commitments, 20 weeks where you are literally locking in four weeks on value. A four weeks on value B four week transformation happens in the journey. It's not a pot of gold at the end, even within a 30 day window on a single core value, here's how I know this to be true. The first week is going to be a little funky and you might struggle to be like, Oh gosh, like what's one action I'm going to take this week with that value. And then the second week, it's going to get a little easier. What I find with all my clients is sometimes it's week three, sometimes it's week four. And for other, Hey, some people crack the code in week two, but they don't stop at just one action. Because what I recommend starting in week two of a month. You almost do an audit as well, like, Hey, what did I actually do this past week? Did I do what I said I journaled last week? Did I do anything else that brought me joy? Did I do anything else that was courageous? Did I do? And that's kind of the piece for you, integrity, using your word. You would say week one, I will live my value of integrity by fill in the blank action. But then a week later. Audit it a, did you do what you said you were going to do integrity wise a week ago, and then ask yourself, what else did I do this week of, oh yeah, that conversation buying closed doors. I feel like I had some pretty darn good integrity there. And so you're, you're building your muscle of confidence by saying. Matt, dude, you are swinging the bat consistently with more integrity and now you're aware. So funny example, but we all know the metaphor of once you buy the, the Tesla, you start seeing Teslas all over the road. You buy a yellow car and all of a sudden the yellow car stick out. That's our RAS, our reticular activating system in the brain, just calling out what it is because now it means something to us. It's familiar. Same thing happens here. You're conditioning your brain where right now, Matt, maybe integrity is important to you, but this process is going to remind you ding, ding, ding integrity. You just did it ding, ding. It's like you're giving yourself integrity cookies, you know, like you're just eating and eat, but like good, right? Like it's like, man, it's so you're building your muscle. And then by week three, you're like, oh my gosh, I just audited this past week. I did five things. I took five actions with integrity. That I can journal now. And then fourth week you did eight things and this momentum doesn't stop. And all of a sudden you look back six or 12 months later and you're like, holy smokes, my relationships in life and business have exponentially gotten better. And it's because you stepped into every day with more integrity. And so people trusted you more. And because people trusted you more, you built better relationships. The compounding effect of these actions is infinite. All I'm doing, I'm just giving you, it's like a financial planner saying here's the first 30 days of how you build wealth. And after that, the compounding interest will just keep feeding you the rest of your life. But you had to do those initial deposits for the first 30 days. Right. Wow. Yeah. That is outstanding. This is, uh, maybe one of my favorite podcast episodes ever right now. Uh, well, it was, you know, it. Uh, your take on all of this is so different than what is out there and it's so different than You know, I read a hundred books a year on this stuff and you have thrown out Uh something completely like out there. I I heard, uh, tim ferris, I think say Uh, to go after five feelings, like, don't think about goals. Think about five things that you want to feel in your future and go after those things. So that, that kind of, that's as close as I got to what you just said. And so I'm actually fascinated to try this out in my own life, to start heading toward those things and not worry so much about what I'm going to be doing to make money or how. You know, what kind of an impact I'm going to have, like in the online world, like I'm not too worried about that right now. I'm just going to go through these steps and see what I become. You know, what's cool too, Matt. And by the way, I think that Ferris process can lead you to a very similar, he may not have had the journaling component that I said, but. I think if I was to ask myself, Oh, that's interesting. What five feelings do I want? I bet you, I would land on some of my core values because not all their feelings, but a lot of them are. So it's there. I would call those cousin recommendations, but, um, remember the head, heart, hands equation. So head plus heart equals hands. Think of it as think, feel, do, right? Head is think and heart is feel and hands are do. I don't really need to remind people to think more. I think we overthink, okay? I think we have a problem overthinking in this world. And I also know that every single day we take actions. We may not have intention with those actions. We may be drifting on default, but I think there's this over index in the world on head and hands. The gap is the heart. So when I advise people, teams, companies, cultures, I say, if you lead from your heart, you will win because it's become a forgotten art leading from the heart has become a forgotten art. And it's so important because these values are your heart. Your heart is who you are. Your heart is your truth. Your heart is your authenticity. So for me, my five core values of growth, belief, impact, courage, authenticity. That's my heart. If I do those things every day, I literally cannot lose. I will be happy. I will be fulfilled. I will feel great purpose. So what I'm doing, I'm bubbling all of these wonderful processes up to say, who are you in your heart? I don't care what your partner thinks. I don't care what your boss thinks. I don't care what you were told as a child. Who are you? What do you want to do that you want to do? And why is it so important to you? And we don't have clarity or confidence in those answers. So all of these processes make our heart more confident to be bold and to be ourselves and to lead from our heart. I don't say head or heart equals hands. It's head and heart. So my point being, if we don't use our heart enough, now I'm giving you the missing weapon here. I'm giving you the gap. I'm plugging the hole and I'm saying, continue to think also check in with your heart. And now act with your hands. That's really kind of where a lot of this boils in. I need to help more people reconnect to their heart. I don't need to convince people to think more, do more. I need to make sure that their head and their hands are connected to their heart, and that's where the solve is. here's what I'm going to do. And let me see if this is amenable to you. I am going to employ this. I I'm actually going to start doing everything that you just said. I'm going to probably tonight sit down and look and just choose like what, what values, what are five things that I just ultimately. Value at the top and then I'm going to start this journaling process. I'm going to, uh, I'm going to use all your material to do that. And, uh, in a few months, I'm going to call you back and see if you want to be on the show and talk about what has happened. I'd love to, I, I, I would love to, and we can almost treat it like a live coaching session, if you will, where we, I, I would love this. I've never been offered this opportunity. I wish I was. So this is music to my ears game on and let me just tweak one potential thing because if you sit down tonight or whenever you sit down, but sounds like you're going to do it ASAP, which I love if you get to five awesome, but I don't want to put too much pressure. I would say this. At least get to one. I only need one right now because one is gonna keep you busy for 30 days anyways. So if you get to five tonight, cool. But if you are like, man, I'm kind of stuck, or there's eight that I'm considering, no stress. Pick the one. Pick the one and you're gonna lock in for the next four weeks on that one. That would be my recommendation. Okay. All right. Well, I will do that. There is before we go one question that I ask all my guests that are on the show. I don't know if you've got the question pre podcast or not, but if you had the entire world on the line for 43 seconds and you got to tell them anything that you wanted to tell them, what would you tell them? If I had 43 seconds, I would say this is the key to shifting from a life of success to significance and this is the key to redefining your daily scoreboard because daily wins Can't just be about outcomes. They can't just be about success and trophies and achievement. So I've created what I call the principle of E. I. R. Experience, Information, and Relationships. At the end of every day, you ask yourself, what experience did I gain today? Then what information did I learn today? What relationships did I build or enhance today? And if you can consistently answer positively to those things. You literally will become the most confident version of yourself because you can stack daily wins and the compounding interest of leveling up your E I R your experience, information and relationships. That is a path, both success and significance. Thank you, Paul. That is awesome. All right. Well, thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate having you here. Yeah. Loved it, Matt. And game on. We'll do it again after you fire up this journal. Absolutely. I'll let you know when, when I'm stuck or running to, or when everything's working. It's all good. I'm here.