The 5 Most Dangerous Words You Say To Yourself

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Welcome to the Inner Circle here with Kevin Dahlstrom on Mike Brown. And we Every week, we break apart one big question. And this week, week is one of my my favorite topics. I think it's the five most insidious words in the English language, which is, I'll finally be happy when we spend so much time putting off our life, in service of some goal, imagining that when we finally reach that finish line, it's going to make us feel complete. So that's what I want to dive into today. Kevin, how do you take those words? And how do you think about this question? Yeah, this is what I've called some way, some day thinking and you know, the problem with some day thinking is that someday never comes.

And I give this is one of the topics I I talk talk, which I think you've seen. And I tell this story that was very impactful for me when I was young, I used to visit my aunt and uncle who lived in a small town in South Texas. My uncle owned a gas station. He literally pump the gas himself. It was a solo operation worked every day, seven days a week at their house. They had these five gallon glass jugs were all familiar with. And they, um, they had two or three of these jugs that were full to the top with change with nickels, dimes, quarters, whatever. And it, it was the change that, um, that my uncle would collect when people

paid for gas. You know, this was back in the day when people actually paid cash, cash for gas. And, and, um, they always said that, um, that money in those jugs was for a trip to Hawaii. You know, they were of minimal means. They probably honestly never traveled outside the state of Texas and their dream trip was to go to Hawaii someday as a kid. Those jugs just fascinated me because it seemed like an infinite amount of money. And then fast forward a bunch of years and, you know, sadly, um, my uncle in his early fifties, uh, died from cancer. And I remember going back to their house after the funeral and I peeked inside their bedroom and I saw those jugs. And I still get, I come to tears almost every time I

tell this story, because it's such a sad thing. To me, it's like the ultimate illustration of, you know, someday never comes. You know, they probably had enough money in those jugs. I think it was thousands of dollars that they could have done a trip to Hawaii or somewhere, but they didn't. And someday never came for, for my uncle. And so that's a powerful example for me, you know, um, of like basically the old adage of living in the present. Yeah. I mean, uh, uh, I'm, I'm passionate enough about the subject that I wrote an entire book about it coming out later this summer called be rich now. Um, and, this is the fundamental premise. My favorite quote on this topic is from Pema show drawn my my most gifted book when things fall apart which is

there's no such thing as the future. There's only now. And when the future comes, it comes as now. And this is, you know, the future is a fairy tale only exist in our mind. When I think about balancing the future with the present, right? Like if we're too present focused with our actions, like that, that results in hedonism. It's fun for a little while, right? If I'm spent, if I'm living paycheck to paycheck, yoloing my way through life, like that's fun, but at some point I got to take care of future me. Right? So I have to balance my present. Actions with taking care of my future self, but I think the trap is in delaying happiness or imagining that I can't be complete or fulfilled or insert emotion here until I reach those things. And you know, you

and I have both stood at the top, horrified to find out I was still the same person as I was the day before. And that's when the real work starts I think is I hope everyone at some point achieves a monster goal that they've set for themselves. But the punchline is it doesn't make you happy. Yeah, one of my very favorite quotes is from the great American writer and poet, Annie Dillard, who says, everybody has great days, it's great lives that are hard to come by. And it seems like a really kind of simple quote and it is, but it's really profound

the more you think about it because, you know the there you are right wherever you go, that you are and so for me the big epiph, for me was that, a great life is built on the mundane. It's like the simple joy, finding simple joy in the things you do every day and really crafting your life around living, having a great life every day.

And to your point, like, doesn't mean you can just like satisfy your every little little women urge it's not just about a life of leisure. You humans still need to work we need to do hard things. But within each of those things you do, you need to be able to find joy. So an exercise I love is at the top of the page but, I'll finally the happy when and then just start listing out all the places, you imagine you're going to be more happy, right? One that comes up for almost everybody I think, regardless of net worth is when I have more money, when I sell my company, when my ship comes in. And for me, I have an investment that's about to pay out. And I have definitely been anticipating the day

when that cash flow starts to come in. But the question is, what is the feeling I'm actually chasing? And for me, that feeling is ease, right? Removal of friction, like having more cash flow coming in does Actually allow this ease. And I think the critical distinction is, I can desire ease without making it conditional for my happiness. I can both imagine that Yes my life will be better when I have this extra cash flow coming in because it will remove some of the friction or move some of the tightness around money. But that's not a condition for happiness. Happiness is going and tucking my daughter into bed every single night and being totally present with her. I don't need one more dollar to do that. Yeah. And I think it's also important to interrogate

the stated desire. I have a little exercise that I call to what end? Where you You know, what's your goal in life? Well, I want to be worth $20 million and you just keep asking to what end until you actually get to the right answer. So okay, you want to be worth $20 million to what end? Well, I'd like to be able to control my time, to what end? Well, because, you know, I'm really into sailing. I'd like to go, you know, spend more time sailing to what end? Well, I just want to feel free, you know, whatever. That's just a kind of a stream of consciousness example. But what you're trying to get is a feeling and maybe you don't even need the $20 million to experience that

feeling. That was actually a very profound thing for me because you know, I'm I am like in a very tangible way. An example of someone who stepped on my hamster wheel and I quit my corporate job, walked away from a very large concrete sum of money. Because I realized that the feeling that I want to have every day doesn't require all that money. And you know, you have an exercise called the perfect day. I have a healing state that's really powerful for uncovering that you basically say, like, what does your perfect day look like? And when you put things down on paper, it's always interesting and revealing and eye opening because you look back at the list and you realize like most people in their ideal day don't list a bunch of like, I want to go sit

courtside at a Lakers game. I want to drive my Ferrari around. It's not stuff like that. It's stuff like I want want to hang out with my family and friends. I want to get outside and do cool stuff. You know that's what people are looking for and you don't have to wait till someday to do that in many cases cases. There's what you can find a way to do that now. That's the punchline to both of our exercises is when people do them, they look at in and they go you go, oh no, I can do most of the stuff for free. And look, there are you know, there are some things that require more money, but most of the things that bring us meaning and purpose in life are free and you know, family is I think the most immediate example for most of us. I mean, that's that's the fulfilling part. And yet we delay our happiness. We you know,

sacrifice our time, you know, and the greatest excuse in the world is I'm doing this for my family. But if you ask your family whether they would they rather be worth more or have you home for dinner, we all know what your kids are going to say. Yeah, it's funny that we're discussing this topic today because just this morning I had coffee with someone who reached out to me. He's my age. Exactly. He's 55 years old. He's made some movement toward the life that he wants. He's like, he's done the X he's done the ideal in state. He understands what it is. He's done some things, but he's still elected to remain on the hamster wheel and he's

trying to make trying to kind of live your two lives at once. And I told him and he took it really well. I said, look, you know, you're trying to stay on the hamster wheel and have complete control of your time and live this life and ultimately money is not what I do is like unwind stories and childhood traumas and all of these things that perpetuate the someday thinking. But ultimately at the

end of the day, the answer is often just stop it. Like you can just stop that right now and it's really helpful to have the insight of where it came from and where these patterns were created and all of that it's valid work and I think it needs to be done. But at some point, you've got to make the decision. All of this and today I'm going to choose happiness today I'm going to choose to be okay and there's always a leap. There's always a leap in a letting go to just say, you know what, like, yeah, all this all this stuff happened. But today's the day I'm going to be okay moving forward. One way that you can kind of do a trial run and hedge yourself a is something that your friend Paul Miller talks about a lot, which

is the power of sabbaticals. You know, sabbatical is a way to say, look, I'm going to take three months six recommend to people, you know, plan for it, but try a sabbatical. And that might be the thing you need to just feel, oh, it's not as scary as I thought to live this life.

And man, I don't think I can ever go back. And the reality is there's very few sliding door or, you know, one way doors in life. And another one I talk about often is moving to a new city. People are like, oh, I don't know if if I'm going to like it. If you don't like it, you can move back. Yes. It's so much better to try it and find out that you don't like it. And then you know, you don't have to live with the regret going, oh, I wonder what it would have been like. Right. And we we, we tend to make things one way decisions, very myopically, without actually looking at it and go, oh, no, I can actually just unwind this If I was really great at my job, like chances are they'll take me back or I'll finding an equivalent job somewhere else. 1000%.

I mean, that is probably, in my opinion, the most important thing people could take away from this little 15 minute episode is that there are very few decisions in life that are one way. Almost all of them can be reversed. And the one that you mentioned is the one that triggers the most fear of all, which is moving to another place. For some reason, you know, when people are unhappy in their career, they'll typically They're willing to make change, like they'll get another new role, whatever. Same with relationships. Eventually they'll make change. There's this one thing around where you live. And I preach about this a lot that triggers every fear in our minds. But it's also reversible. If you go somewhere, you know, I preach a lot about going and finding your happy place

and going living there, if you go and try it. It doesn't work out. Kevin, if someone's listening right now, and they're going, oh, man, I've been doing that, I've been saying, I'll finally be happy when, finally be happy when I sell my one company, finally be happy, you know, when I find a new partner, whatever it is, like, what's your advice? Whether you do the Mike Brown perfect day exercise or my ideal in straight, I I think it always starts with trying to figure out what you really want out of life. And you know, the thing I always say about my ideal in-state exercise is, like, a bulleted list of what your ideal state of being would be. It's not a bucket list or list of goals or accomplishments.

It's like, what do I, how do I want to live day to day? Like, on my list is things like get lots of sunshine every day, train toward climbing 514, work, work on creative projects with my kids, things like that, and then identify the gaps. Like, what is keeping me from being there today? Is it really money or is that a lie? I'm telling myself, is it the place I live that's keeping me from it? And then I think you've just got to take a hard look in the mirror and say, look, if I can't say I want this but not take any actions to get there. I don't know, do you have a different spin on that? Yeah, I mean, number one is, I think identifying conditions versus preferences, right? So there are some conditional things that are barriers to happiness.

One, health, right? It's really hard to be happy in a health crisis, acute financial crisis. Like, it's really tough to be genuinely happy when you're facing a bankruptcy or some major monumental event. Like there are a few untenable situations situations that are true barriers to happiness. So I'm not trying to suggest just be happy when you're facing some major crisis. That's not the answer here. But the reality is most of our list are preferences. Most of it is when I have six pack abs, you know, when I have a million dollars, when I have the Ferrari, when I have, you know, those things are all preferences. And I think it's important to note, like it's okay to have desires.

It's not okay to be ruled by those desires or to place our happiness or the present moment on this conditional achievement of these desires. And so the balance for me the middle way, if you will, is saying, yes, I have these desires and I can imagine that things might be slightly better when I hit these desires, but it's not not conditional to being in the present moment and, and looking around and waking up with gratitude and saying, yeah, like I'm Yes the last thing I'd say on this is, you know, to get the life you want is probably going to require some degree of bold change.

You're going to have to make bold moves and, you know, the best way to kind of get past that fear, in my opinion, is probably talk to a bunch of people who have done it. You know, you and I have devoted our lives to studying this issue. And over the years I've talked to the probably over a hundred people who have made bold moves, whether it's in their career relationships, where they live, just kind of rebooting their life in general. And I have to meet someone who regrets it even if things didn't work out exactly as they had hoped because at least they made a directional move. And yeah, maybe there's a couple of roadblocks along the way or things don't go exactly as planned, but things have a funny way of working out when

you, when you make bold moves for the right reasons. One of the ideas that I that I love is like, we'll never make a change until the pain of staying the same outweighs the perceived pain of change. But most of us are actually not willing to acknowledge the cost of staying the same. Right. We'd actually rather dance with the devil, we know and go, yeah, this is an ideal, but I I'd much rather do this than then actually take this bold leap. And what it's often comes down to is acute pain versus dull pain. Most of us are used to the dull pain of staying the same, but we fear the acute pain. And yes, moving to a new city sucks for the first six months. You don't know anybody. You have to find a new grocery store, all, you know, all of these, these things, but it will relieve the dull, sustained

pain of, of never knowing. Yeah. Well, bottom line is don't be a victim to someday thinking, you know, define what you want and be willing to make the bold moves to get there and tell yourself the truth. Right. Like the first step in all of this that most of us, that you and I talk about so often is honesty with self, like let's, let's get honest about the cost of staying the same. Amen. Good chat, brother. All right. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you guys next time. Yep.