A way to think about New Year's resolutions | ATCF | Episode 16

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast, Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. So this is the last Vance Crow podcast of 2019. And ordinarily on Friday morning, I come to you with some thoughts, philosophies, and concepts that can help make you a tangibly better communicator. And we're gonna do that this week, but it's really not focused on communication. This week, I want to focus more on self-reflection, and I want to talk about how to look back on the last year of your life and kind of take stock about what you did well and what you wish you would've done differently, and then take those lessons and apply them to your resolutions for 2020. And we'll get into that. But I have a little bit of housekeeping that I need to get done, and it is that we are going to hold the Dante's Inferno book club meeting or session, or whatever you want to call it, on Sunday, December 29th, starting at 7:00 PM And I think I'm gonna try and do it for about 90 minutes. It just kind of depends on who do I get in the studio and how many people are participating. But I'm going to use the Instagram system that Jason Bachman talked about a couple weeks ago. I barely use Instagram. I I find it to be really frustrating. I don't know how all the buttons work. It doesn't seem intuitive to me, but the reason that I'm gonna do it on Instagram is because Jason has been making the case that that's a great platform and that I should spend more time there.

Vance Crowe [00:01:40] And all of the times that I have tried to dip my toe into it when people like Charlie Backer showed me how it works, I, I just haven't gotten it yet. It just hasn't really stuck with me. So I wanna give this a shot because it'll force me to try and use some of the other functionality and it will help me learn the platform a little bit more. And I know that I may be asking you to join a platform that you've been avoiding or one that you don't like, but I want you to try it because we're only gonna get better by learning more things. I, I don't anticipate that I'm gonna become a person that uses Instagram all the time, and I'm not expecting that you will either. But I think it's good for us to try it out on a new platform. So we're gonna hold that on Sunday, December 29th at 7:00 PM And if you're signing up for Instagram or you already have one, I'm very easy to find. It's just Vance V-A-N-C-E, dot Crowe, C-R-O-W-E. I am still in some need for an idea about how to conduct this conversation. How are we gonna do this? Are we gonna invite people on to come ask their questions? Who's gonna be in the studio? What's the chat function like? We just need to kind of think through it. And that'll probably come as a function of me practicing on Instagram. So that's it for now. On that, I hope to see you on the 29th. The at, during that session, I'm going to have Lyle Benjamin's choice for January's book. So if you wanna get a jumpstart on January, tune in there. Otherwise I'll, I'll let make sure everybody knows out outside of that Instagram post.

Vance Crowe [00:03:14] So this is it for the 2019 year of the Vance Crow podcast. I'm gonna take a little bit of time off for 2020. I have some goals that I know I want to do and some that I think I really wanna think through. So I want to give myself a nice holiday where I'm still getting some work done for the business, but I don't have the time pressure of getting out these podcasts. I'm hopeful that this will allow me to get some guests scheduled that I've been trying to get on the show and really think through how do I improve this and how do I streamline the whole effort? And I guess this kind of leads me to this week's as the crow flies. What I wanna do is talk about New Year's resolutions, and I wanna think about them in a way that maybe makes them more approachable. Because I know for most of my life, I rolled my eyes at New Year's resolutions, and I used to think that the reason that I rolled my eyes is because I would say, look at those guys. They try and make changes in their lives and they can't do it. So it's so funny that people do New Year's resolutions. If I see a problem in myself, I just change it right now. But that's bullshit. That's not actually true because most of the time in our lives we are not spending the time that we need to, to, to really look and say, am I becoming the person that I dream of becoming? And that's the real power of using the new year to hit that reset button to resolve, to change something about yourself.

Vance Crowe [00:04:46] And many of you have heard me talk about my close friend Travis Liebig. He's the president of St. Louis Bank, where I'm a member of the board of directors. They're actually also a sponsor of the podcast. But Travis and I go back for nearly a decade, and since we met each other, we have developed over the years a very candid relationship where if one of us is getting off the path, the other one feels, it's their responsibility to say something about it, to speak up and to say, Hey, I, you know, I noticed you're doing this. Can we talk about it? Is this where you really want to go? And making sure that we're both getting up and getting fit and doing the exercises we need to do and thinking about who we are and how we're presenting ourselves in the best way possible. And so we've done this for years and years, but this year when I was meeting with Pete, who knows Travis quite well, Pete Scot, who I did the interview with last week, who is my mentor, 99-year-old guy in New York, he gave me an idea that I thought was rather brilliant. And I wanna share with you the idea that Travis and I are gonna put into play, which is we have decided that we're gonna give 10 minutes to the other person to help us develop a habit. And what do I mean by that? I mean, I have gone to Travis and said, you have 10 minutes of every day of 2020 for you to give me something that I should do, something that I could develop, something I could work on that you think is either a blind spot or something, I'm too stubborn to think of. I want you to give me a 10 minute activity and I'll do it as diligently as I can through the whole year.

Vance Crowe [00:06:21] And, and then he invited me to do the same with him. So I'm going to give him a task that every day for 10 minutes, no matter what happens, you've gotta get this task done. Now, I'm not gonna tell you what my thing was for Travis. I actually think this activity is really deeply personal, but I wanted to give you what Travis gave me as a 10 minute idea because it really was a great idea and it's something that I would not have thought of. He said, what I want you to do is to spend 10 minutes every day reading about local news and issues, get a couple of subscriptions to either the St. Louis Business Journal or some of the magazines or newspapers that are here. And just make sure that every day you have 10 minutes focused on the closest people to you, the thing that you have the most control over, whether it's people that you're able to meet for business or the local laws or changes that are happening to your group. If you're not paying attention to local news, you don't know what's going on and you can't participate. And I thought that that was particularly insightful because Travis is really aware that I spend a huge amount of time traveling. I'm thinking about biotech and agriculture and changes to culture and international negotiations all the time. But my head is up in these big spaces where you can't always make the biggest difference. And if I'm going to try and realize change in the world, the way that I'm going to do that is by acting locally. And if I'm not paying attention to what's going on locally, I'm not prepared to do that.

Vance Crowe [00:07:56] And so I am pretty excited about this. I have a little bit of dread because I, I know that I am always pulled towards larger big picture thinking. And I think that this 10 minutes a day just focused on local may become a little tedious for me, but I'm looking forward to it. And I will keep you posted about how that goes. And you may want to try to consider giving 10 minutes of your time every day to a friend or a spouse or a mentor, somebody that you admire, and offer them the chance to help you develop a skill that you are either not insightful enough or you're too stubborn to, to develop in yourself. And that may be a good way for you to think about some changes that you could make. But I actually don't think that that's big enough. That's a start, right? That's going to somebody that you know cares about you and you're asking them to help you get better. And that that's a great thing to do. But it's also good to have a deeper level of reflection. And for those of you that have been keeping a journal, this is one of those times when you really should reserve some amount of time when you're in a good mood, when things are simple and you have a break from many of the obligations that you normally have. And a lot of times that happens over the holidays. Take some time to, to really sit down and reflect on 2019. And we've been doing some journal prompts. I have to say that I promise that I was gonna give more journal prompts and I haven't, so I'm going to be more dedicated about that.

Vance Crowe [00:09:32] But for this exercise for reflecting on 2019, these are some questions that I'm asking myself, and you might find it valuable to you. So the very first one is, what was the part of my life that I was the most disciplined in and probably the most proud of? And I, I'm going through my list of the things that I've tried to apply discipline to my eating, how I spend time with my family, whether that's, you know, exercising or paying attention to Annie's questions and concerns about her new business, or my spending time with my in-laws who I love dearly, or going up and visiting my parents. Did I take the time to make time for them? And then also was, did I have enough foresight to make sure that I was going to use that time with them valuably? Another thing area that I tried to apply discipline to was my reading. And I noticed that at the beginning of the year for the first three or four months, I was very, very consistent about it. And then as travel began, when I started my new company, it fell off. And it isn't until we started doing Dante's Inferno that I started to be more dedicated and really reserving time for it. And the act of getting through Dante's Inferno has been amazing for me. And if, if you're a person that started a book, I'm just gonna do an aside. If you're in a person that started reading Dante's Inferno and then you said, man, this is just too damn complicated, or the words just don't match for me, that's okay.

Vance Crowe [00:11:04] Go read the cliff notes, go watch some YouTube videos about it. Just go get a sense for what's going on in that book and join us in the book club because we're gonna do lots and lots of books and they're all gonna be different. Some of them are gonna be really hard for you, and some of 'em are gonna be really easy for you and hard for me. And so the reason I bring this up is because I know that I fell off with reading, but once we started reading Dante's Inferno, I got way into it and it helped me get back into the groove of reading, which I am really, really way more satisfied with my life when I'm doing that regularly. Another area that I wanted to have discipline in was writing letters. And I did that very well this year. Writing letters to people is one way to think about how to journal and capture time and capture emotion and float it over to another person and allow them to have an experience with you. O only when they read it, they get to know, Hey, this person sat down, they thought of me. This is what they thought of me. This is what they shared with me. It will enrich relationships in my life if I do it. And so I, I wanna keep doing that. And then there's the question you should ask yourself, which is, what are the goals that I had that I fell short on? And that can be a little bit tough because oftentimes when we think about goals that we didn't achieve, we look back and we say, man, I wish X, Y, and Z didn't happen to me because I could have achieved that goal.

Vance Crowe [00:12:39] But in my experience, most of the time when I don't achieve a goal, it's not because an obstacle got in the way. Obstacles always get in the way. It was what obstacle got in my way that I used to allow myself to quit to fall short? And we've talked a little bit about this in the podcast, this concept of resistance. What was something that fell in the path that then my brain used as an excuse to not have to do this goal, this thing that was requiring discipline and sacrifice. And then finally, what skill do you have today that you didn't have on January 1st, 2019? And fundamentally, I think this is one of the most important questions that you can ask yourself when you're reflecting on 2019, which is what way did I push myself to get better, to make myself more full, to have a journey and an experience that is more fulfilling because I'm able to operate in a world with a deeper level of expertise. Now that could be anything from crocheting to some sort of fitness or some career goals that you have, whatever it is, what was a skill that you have today that you didn't have in 2019? And, and really think about this, what skill did I develop? How did I do it? And how much did it change in my life? Now, if you're looking back and you don't have any new skills, that's a big red flag.

Vance Crowe [00:14:10] You gotta go get some skills. But I'm guessing if you're listening to this podcast, you really are into figuring out ways how to do things more effectively and efficiently and more impactfully. So I actually have no doubt that you have developed some new skills. You may have trouble putting your finger on it, but really spend some time thinking about it. Did you start using some of the mirroring tactics that we talked about? Have you, have you started to approach people in a different way and start conversations at parties in a different way? Those are skills that you might not have had in the beginning of 2019, but if you've been putting in the time and the work to practice those skills, you probably have developed them a lot more than when you started. So write those down. That's the goal, right? Developing new skills, getting the discipline and the habits, and making the right sacrifices to become the person that you wanna become. And, and really when I think about 2019, I think the biggest change that's happened in me was leaving behind my childish concept of motivation. I am a person that in the right conditions, I am booming with energy, I have lots of enthusiasm, and I have an ability to focus on things that really gives me an advantage. I can learn things really quickly if I decide I wanna know about it. It's laser focus on what I'm reading, or high intensity on what I'm working on. And I'm able to go ask experts these things. And so I know the experience of starting something new and using the momentum to get you going.

Vance Crowe [00:15:46] But most of my life, when I learned things that way, I eventually got to a point where it got a lot harder, the curve to get better got way steeper. And so I would give up or let it fall away. And so while I am really good at a lot of things, I am a master of very, very few things. Perhaps the only thing that I have a real mastery of is communication and, and really specifically taking really complicated ideas and making them simple. And that conversion doesn't require me to know things on a really deep level. It requires me to have a skill of being able to parse information and know what other people can understand and be interested in. And so that's not exactly the type of person that I want to be forever. And so that's why I've done some of the things that I've done, is I did the running of 500 miles. I started the regular podcast, I'm doing juujitsu, and I put away the concept of being motivated to get it done. And I've built up the concept of discipline. I've built up the idea that it is the routines and the habits that are what empower you to make lasting change. And I, I am delighted with the person that I can become when I'm, when I have discipline, and when I'm focused on making sure that I don't cheat on my routines and I don't get out of my habits. And I think that that could probably be true for you.

Vance Crowe [00:17:20] And you know, the running one was hard because I thought that what I really had to do was get my mental self ready just to get out into the cold and go run and do something miserable. But as I've talked about before, it's not, it's not hard the first, second, third time, it's when you go to put your shoe laces on the fourth time and you go to, to wake up early in the morning on the fifth time and it's no longer exciting and there's no longer that rush of adrenaline. Now it's getting up there and doing it even when you want. Don't wanna do it even when you know exactly what's going to happen. And then making sure that when things started coming up that could get in the way, I made sure to route around it to build my schedule so that I could work out in hotel rooms, that I could get out on the weekends at the right time. And another big thing was paying attention to injuries instead of ignoring them, you know, I got a little foot pain or I got a little knee pain. I'm very fortunate, my wife is literally one of the best physical therapists in the entire world, so I can go to her with these challenges. But it helped me to think about running is not just about running, it's about the details in between. Are you doing the right exercises to have the muscles built up so that you don't wag your hips too much or kick your legs around and is your form correct so you don't get injured? The ability to look at the skill of running was improved by the fact that I, I pushed myself to not ignore the details.

Vance Crowe [00:18:53] And that's something that I learned in a big way this year. It's like you, it's not just that you're gonna go out and do this running activity, you gotta pay attention to the details that allow you to run today, tomorrow, and five years into the future. And I think maybe the biggest lesson of all that I learned from doing this long running goal was that the most joy that I got out of the whole thing was not running. And it wasn't even being done with the run when I'm huffing and puffing and breathing. It was when I sat down with my Excel sheet and I added in that I ran three miles today or ran five miles, or every once in a while I'd run seven miles and I had an Excel sheet that automatically ticked down from 500 miles. And that gave me tremendous satisfaction, putting it in there, watching me get closer to my goal, and then texting my friends who are also on their own path of fitness and business success and family success. And they would celebrate it with me. So finding a way to make yourself get joy out of those experiences was, was really, really important to me. You know, another big thing was the regular publishing of the podcast. And the only thing I wanna say about this, the thing that really made a huge difference to me on the podcast was the fact that this podcast has, has made me into a gravity well, where really smart people that are driven, that are working on things that are trying to improve themselves, come to the podcast and they listen and they know a lot about what's going on with me and some of my past, and they reach out and they talk with me.

Vance Crowe [00:20:29] That feedback loop that comes from putting out one way content on the podcast has been something that I really didn't expect. I have gotten to meet extraordinary scientists, farmers, people that are making popcorn in Columbia, Missouri. I, I'm, there are a lot of you that have reached out to me and talked about what's going on and shared what I could do to get better and have even offered me advice and insight on things that they heard me say in the podcast. And that is amazing. And one of the ways that I think that this applies to you is as you are putting together your goals for 2020, you need to make sure that you put yourself in a position where you can get positive feedback about what you're doing. And, and when, when I say positive feedback, I don't mean that it's all complimentary. I mean positive feedback in, in the way that people will tell you things that allow you to get better. And that's an important component of achieving your dreams and becoming something that you're not right now. It's getting yourself in the position where people that you respect or people that you should respect, sometimes you get advice from people and you're like, what do you know? And then you find out later, even though they didn't seem like they knew what they were talking about, the advice they gave you was applicable. But anytime you can get into that place where people can help you get better and better, that is where you wanna be. It's gonna make you better faster. So for this upcoming year, I want you to really spend some time looking back on 2019 and don't be too hard on yourself.

Vance Crowe [00:22:08] Make sure you're looking at the successes that you had and you're feeling good about it, and you're looking for, what were the patterns? What were the routines and habits overall? What is the discipline that I developed so that I could become this better person that I wasn't at the beginning of the year? And I hope things come to mind for you. I'm sure that they will. Then I want you to really think about 2020 and who it is that you want to be. You only need to have a vision of something that you want to be that's different, and then start on the path. And the hardest step is always the first one. And I know personally, very, very deeply the shame that comes with taking that first jog when you're fat and you're outta shape and you, you know, you're gonna look funny to the anybody that sees you. And you know that it's gonna be hard and you can't go anywhere near as far as you could. I know how it feels to look stupid in your running clothes. I know what it's like to walk into a gym and know that everybody there can lift more weights than you. And you're gonna look funny trying to figure out how all the equipment works and where things are located. That feeling is normal. That feeling is the one that you should have because you're going into a place and you don't know how things work. But it's okay to be the weakest person in the room. And it's okay to look like that flabby, middle-aged person that's trying to get out there and change their life.

Vance Crowe [00:23:40] 'cause you know what you are. And every single person that's out jogging and every single person that is in the gym had that experience that you're about to have if you wanna make some big change. But if you let those kinds of things block you, you will never master anything new. And so don't waste any time. You should start figuring out what is the thing that I'm want the most, but I'm also the most afraid of? And try and become a master of it. You can only become a master at something if you're willing to look like a fool. So for 2020, what is it that you wanna master? What dream of being a musician or an artist or a builder, or an entrepreneur or a fighter that you have always had but you never went after? 'cause you were sure that you wouldn't be able to get all the way there. 'cause in 2020 you can get there. You start out by saying, what is it that I want to become? And then begins moving forward. When you write it down and then it becomes real. The second time you show up to build upon a skill that you don't have walking in the door the first time, that's a fear. That's something you're there. But the person that keeps coming back, the person that gets there the second time, now you're on the path and you're moving forward. We are building a tribe here. You know, it's the pound, pound tribe. The tribe of people that find others that want the best for them, the tribe that knows that you have to learn and practice new skills.

Vance Crowe [00:25:16] If you wanna find some form of contentment and satisfaction in life. If you wanna feel good about who you are and what you're contributing to the world, you've gotta master new skills. And that's what this tribe is all about. This tribe values, learning how to communicate. And you gotta be humble when you walk into this tribe because each one of us knows that none of us were born excellent. And the way you become excellent is by working your ass off. It's the only way to do it. It's the only way to control the person that you will become, is to develop the discipline and make the right sacrifices. And you can do it because I assure you, I have nothing special about me. I am as ordinary as they come. And the things that I have been able to do have only come because I practiced and I get out there and I do 'em. And I know that if you're listening to a podcast that is focused on things like we're focused on here, then you can develop the discipline and the ideas and the goals and the dreams that will not only change your life, but it'll make the whole world better. So merry Christmas, happy holidays. Have a fantastic new year, and know that we are gonna keep charging on into the future getting better, and we will be back here in all of 2020 doing the Vance Crow podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I am so glad you are here.