Welcome to Radical Urgency. I'm Cam Gallant. When we're young, we have a ton of vitality.
Everything is exciting. We're asking all sorts of questions - you know, like, "Why do I have
to clean the table?" "Why does my chicken nugget not look like a dinosaur?" We're full of life.
We're full of energy. But as we get older, we tend to lose that. We're maybe not as happy
as we hoped we would be. Maybe we're still waiting for that special somebody. We're
going to talk about bringing energy back. Let's imagine that we're watching a sports
game. And this is your favorite team; you are a huge fan. But you're realizing that
they really suck. The players are kind of halfheartedly moving around. They're hanging
their heads. One player just threw off his jersey. And even the cheerleaders, like the
cheerleaders suck. They are not cheering for the team. Well, they're kind of cheering for
the team. They're like, "We might be behind. Screw it. There's next time. Yeah. Wooh." As
a fan, you're probably going to be pretty upset and you're going to have a hard time
cheering for this team. You would expect them to be accountable to their managers, to themselves,
and to the fans, to keep trying even when it seems like the game has already been lost.
But here's the thing; every day, there is a game going on in our lives. And every day
we have a decision for how we show up. Even the days when nobody seems to be watching,
there's always at least one spectator. And that is you. The sports players that we get
really excited about exude vitality. Who are you being? Are you being that sports team
that's tearing off the jersey - that's being lazy just because you're a little behind?
Or are you being the sports team that people cheer for and go crazy over? Picture vitality
like a magnet that draws people in. If we want more - if we want more good relationships,
if we want more money, if we want more fulfillment for what we do on the day to day - we'll get
this by bringing more vitality into our lives. So here's how you do that. Step number one
is just being aware that something may be lacking. With vitality, we want to focus on
things that are going to give us energy. We had this when we were children. When we were
kiddos, we're bouncing off the walls, doing all sorts of crazy stuff, and we don't give
a shit about who is watching or what people think of us. And obviously, as we grow older,
a lot of this is corrected out of us. They want us to fit the mold. They want you to
sit and ask for a bathroom pass at school. And then they want you to graduate and go
to college, and graduate and get a job. And all the stuff, it's not bad. I'm not bashing
jobs, or college, or school in general. The problem is these can often have an unattended
side effect. And that is sucking the vitality out of your life. Step number two is leveraging
our time. You might be doing that right now. Maybe you're listening to this podcast as
you're driving, as you're at the gym or out on a walk. That's leverage because it's allowing
you to do more with your time. Another way to add more energy into our lives and utilize
leverage is to try something totally new. When you're doing something totally new, your
brain is forced to make new connections and to basically learn on super speed. One final
means of leveraging our time is getting real feedback instead of trying to think about
everything and model everything in our heads. When the iPhone was first introduced, it had
a small and scratchable screen. It had no front flashlight. You needed to download a
sketchy flashlight app. It had really poor service, and it was the best that Apple could
do at that time. Had they sat and continued to think about all the possibilities for a
better iPhone, they would not have come up with an iPhone that's as good as what we have
today. But by putting that out and then getting real-world feedback, they were then able to
make a better product. When we take a small action -nothing too crazy - but maybe a little
uncomfortable, we do the best we can right now. And by doing that now, one year from
now, one month from now, you are going to be better at what you do than you would be
if you just thought for a longer amount of time. Overthinking might get you marginally
better, but it's not going to get you substantially better. The third step, and this is the one
that ties it all together. The third step is following your curiosity. You have obligations
and I imagine right now you probably have very little time, maybe just an hour, maybe
a handful of minutes a day. So we need to capitalize on making that time worth it. And
what's going to be tempting that can fight the temptations of Netflix or Facebook or
TikTok. It's probably going to have to be something that you're excited about. It's
going to have to be something that gives you a wow. It's going to have to be following
the curiosity. James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits, talks about four different ways to
solidify a habit. And these are make something obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying.
Now we can see the things that addict us often do this. And that's why we need something
potent like following our curiosity. Something that by definition is going to excite us.
So what do you want? Maybe you know, maybe you don't. It doesn't matter so much because
you don't have to know definitively. Instead, focus on the smaller curiosities and explore
those threads and see where they take you. Right now you have the best data set you ever
will for today. Because tomorrow, 8 billion people will have made decisions that for better
or worse change the world in some small way, maybe in some large ways. So right now you
have the best information to act. If you wait until tomorrow, your decisions are 8 billion
decisions outdated. I want you to start thinking about your life in terms of energy and time.
When you spend a certain amount of time with somebody, do you leave that conversation feeling
more energized? Are you excited? Do you feel great? Or do you feel a little drained? It
doesn't really matter that we don't have everything that we're curious about become some sort
of passion. Right? You think of a plant, it might spread a thousand or 10,000 seeds and
only a couple of those maybe will sprout. But that is still enough for the plant to
reproduce. And heck, if you look at humans, according to Mayo Clinic, sperm density ranges
from 15 to 200 million per milliliter. But we don't really mourn the loss of sperm. You
have a kid and as the kid grows, you're not like, oh, I love the kid, but I feel so bad
for those 150 million sperm that never made it. No, you're like, wow, I love my kid. The
same is true with our different interests and our different curiosities. You might have
10, 100, 1000, 10,000 false starts, but in the end, you're not really going to mourn
those things that didn't work out. You're eventually going to strike gold and find the
thing for you that is captivating, is exciting, just like that almost tangible excitement
you had when you were a kid. That's what I got for you for today. If you liked this,
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