Episode #39
Oftentimes we find ourselves on autopilot where we slip into old habits and skip our morning routines & habits we set earlier…..quickly getting back into the hustle of work and busyness of life.
In previous episodes, we talked about the dangers of not having a structured routine. When we skip a routine and approach life from “autopilot”, we end up setting up our lives to serve our business instead of our business serving our lives.
We let this pattern continue for days without realizing it and if it goes on for months, it will greatly affect our decision making. We become more exhausted, our health starts to decline and you end up becoming more distant to the people you love.
In this episode, we dive deep into the importance of having a “self-check” from time to time. A time to pause and look at how you are currently operating VS. what your optimal state looks like.
Set yourself up for success by creating an effective support system and surrounding yourself with people who will constantly remind you to self-check & help you return to the right path. Recognize these patterns and do something about it.
The sooner we recognize it, the better. Find the triggers of this pattern, be accountable and take action.
What you will discover in this episode:
- How to stay on track
- Importance of self-checking
- Importance of having a support system
- Recognizing patterns and taking action
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Episode Transcript
Tim Matthews 0:02
When you do the work on yourself, and you’re able to stop judging yourself and beating yourself up, you’re able to catch these patterns a lot sooner with much more ease. Much less if Ugh I did it again grr, or, is what it is. You’re a human being, and we are not perfect. The difference between those and the listener is awareness, tools, and time.
Doug Holt 0:25
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man show. I am your host, Doug Holt, with my co-host, Tim “The Powerful Man” Matthews. How does it comes, bro?
Tim Matthews 0:40
Is that you’re presented voice.
Doug Holt 0:43
I promised in the last episode that I would do it. So I’m trying so hard not to yell into the mic because typically, I would if I was presenting. However, I wanted to give you the whole experience I promised the guys.
Tim Matthews 0:54
I wonder how much it cost him Michael buffer to do that one time.
Doug Holt 1:00
or his brother. I think I heard his brother makes more money than he does now.
Tim Matthews 1:05
Wow.
Doug Holt 1:07
You got Bruce Buffer and Michael Buffer.
Tim Matthews 1:09
Wow, they are doing the same thing.
Doug Holt 1:11
They do announce one does it for UFC, and one does it for boxing?
Tim Matthews 1:15
Oh, wow.
Doug Holt 1:16
Yeah. They both trademarked their terms.
Tim Matthews 1:20
And what was his brother’s term?
Doug Holt 1:22
Well, I can’t remember which is which ones? Let’s get ready to rumble.
Doug Holt 1:26
I think the other one is Bring it on. Are waiting. I have to think about it. Now all of a sudden, it’s out of my mind. But anyway, yeah, those guys both. I’ve heard them. I think it’s Bruce that has a whole room dedicated just to his throat. Right. So his house has got a certain level of humidity. It makes half a million dollars every time he does that. Oh my god. That’s what I read. It could be different now. But this is a while of government. Yeah. But look at we’re talking about it here. We have other things to talk about. So Tim, one of the things I want to talk about is a pattern I find myself going into periodically. It’s one I’ve worked on a lot. But it’s one I still can go into. It’s when I get, and I know what the triggers are for this. I’m not in it now. But I was into it recently. I caught myself, and you and I have talked about it. But what happens is, is I get in this mode of getting shit done; I call it GSD. Right, get shit done. I have typed that into a lot of comments or texts or stuff a staff hey, I’m in GSD mode. It looks something like this. Let me know if this is familiar to you and the guys listening; maybe you can relate to this. So I got a big project coming on. Usually, it’s the launching of a new company, we’re launching something with a powerful man movement, we just expanded something called the pack, which is a whole Another offering and group a great group of guys that are in there that are already The Activation Method and The Alpha Reset graduates, and we’re launching another program. So I go into gear, GS GSD mode, and what it looks like as I get up early, right, I’m getting up early for my morning routine, I’ll start to skip my morning routine. When I’m not all of it, but I’ll skip some key components. Yeah, I’ll do that one. Later, I’ll jump on a call with the UK or with Cyprus, or wherever some of our coaches are. I’ll work on my first cup of coffee, my second cup of coffee, my third which then becomes like my fifth cup of coffee throughout the day, maybe sneaking a power nap, maybe some by neural beads. But most likely, I’ll just have another cup of coffee. Then fast forward, I’ll be getting so much stuff done. But my stress and anxiety levels are equal to the amount of caffeine I drink, right? And they increase over the days, which goes over for periods. Now. When I wake up, I’m healthy; everything’s great, rocking and rolling doing the things that need to be done, skipping my morning routine, then comes the evening. By the evening time, I am so burnt out and caffeinated. Then I started to drink the first glass of wine, oh, have another one-second glass of wine. Maybe I’ll sneak in a third glass of wine to wind down the evening. Now I may or may not still be getting stuff done on the computer, depending on what needs to be done, touching base with somebody in different parts of the world, depending on time zones, but still in GSD mode. Then I’ll find myself exhausted fall asleep only to wake up to the alarm to repeat that cycle. Now, I let allow this to slide a couple of days, but after a while, this starts to build on itself. Now I catch myself. I’ve got great people in my life like you who keep me accountable or always keep me in check. But in the past, this may go on for months on end when I was doing this on my own. And business numbers are going up, but my health is on the decline because as I start to wake up, Tim, I need more coffee once I’m not sleeping as well as I’m drinking at night. Right, I’m also building up more of a tolerance of the coffee. So I’m not only more tired in the morning, drinking more coffee, but I’m getting more cranky moodier. This is affecting my decision-making process even if I don’t think so. so what I used to do is typically dip back into more caffeine, Drink more coffee, have an espresso drink, whatever it may be, I’m just having tea now. Then I’ll go right through that cycle, maybe go to a business dinner at the business dinner, and someone might order a bottle of wine or what have you. This cycle would perpetuate with the drink as much caffeine as possible. The night I would wind down with alcohol or something else to get me through. I repeat the cycle day after day. Quite honestly, I would even work Saturday and Sunday and do this. Have you ever seen this pattern before?
Tim Matthews 5:45
Have I seen it? Or experienced it? Either? Have I seen it? Yeah. Is it kind of a pattern of 99% of the men we work with? Have I experienced it? Yes. In a different way. But yeah, I’ve experienced it. I mean, Doug, you and I are both recovering hustlers. So I’ve been a recovering crack addict, it doesn’t work for me to go back to it.
Doug Holt 6:16
And a default of swords It’s, it’s kind of go-to when you fall out of integrity with your normal routine.
Tim Matthews 6:24
But the reality is, it doesn’t work because it, the reality is, it’s not sustainable. You burnt out. Some way you hit a wall, whether you hit a wall by your body shutting down, and you just having to rest whether you hit a wall with overwhelming anxiety, whether you hit a wall with business, because business numbers may go up for a short time. Still, you cannot lead the company that way. He just can. We like to think that we can, but we just can’t. Then while taking a lot more products and programs or whatever promotions, you try and keep it all in your head, and you’re then more anxious, and you lay awake at night. It’s just not possible to be in a mine or yours or anyone’s most productive place. There’s one. There are a few beliefs that underpin this, one of the main beliefs that I’ve found for myself, at least underpin this is when I get to a certain point, so let’s say like you we launch a product, or when the product launches, that’s when I’ll change this. Now I’ll be the excuse I’ll give myself to keep going even on No, and it doesn’t work. The reality is that point in time never arrives anywhere. Now, it just gets shifted. It moves to r1. Whenever the next point is and at that moment for me, the reality is my life estate to serve my business versus my business serve in my life. I have lost touch with what’s important to me in the priorities. I’ve stayed to get a lot of my significance through business because, ultimately, business is the thing in the place. What doesn’t answer back, it’s the place where I’m the boss; it’s the place where my word God, it’s a place where I can get my status and significance and pleasure and pride. So I got to hang out there and hide from all the chaos that’s been happening in my personal life because, as a result, I’m not working out, I’m skipping workouts, I’m not sleeping as well. I’m more distant from Amelia; I am more distant from my family and my friends. I do not have time to spend on the things that I love to do, everything then becomes about work is very, very unhealthy., for me, it was the story of my life for about 27 years, 28 years. Fortunately for me, I’m very grateful that I learned the lesson relatively early on. I know people who are 18,19,20,21 that have already learned this lesson doing phenomenally well in business. I’ve learned even earlier than I gave kudos to them. Yeah, that belief of living for someday, that belief in money, will solve it. That belief of significance and status through business and being in demand on demand. I’m busy, I’m important. No, it’s easy to be in demand. It’s very easy to make yourself busy doesn’t mean you’re important doesn’t mean that you’re a success either. So it’s, it’s one that I experienced less and less these days, but well not but and it’s also one that, quite honestly, has been a setpoint of mine for years and one that I’ve always battled with.
Doug Holt 9:46
Yeah, I mean, I was making up my story just to make everyone else feel better now.
Tim Matthews 9:52
Yeah, whatever.
Doug Holt 9:53
Yeah. So I mean, it is, I mean, it’s a total set point, and we go back to it with the belief system, and Something’s going to change. What happens for most men, it happens to me too. I talked to a lot of guys about this is; you wake up the next morning thing, it’s going to be different. You wake up going, Yeah, yeah, today, it’s going to be different, I’m going to have two cups of coffee, and I’m not going to drink tonight. Well, the afternoon hits, you get tired, when you one cup of coffee is not going to hurt. You have that cup of coffee. Then nighttime usually comes around three or 4 pm for most of the guys. Because like, Well, one drink, one drink is not going to be, but you get stuck in the cycle. It’s an addictive cycle. It’s an adrenaline cycle., and it’s a depression cycle. You’re spiking your adrenaline, your cortisol, and everything else. But you’re striking your stress hormones, and then you need to come down, you’re essentially giving yourself an upper legal upper., some of you guys are doing illegal uppers, but what I’m talking about. Then you’re bringing yourself down with you’re smoking weed at night, drinking alcohol, or doing something else. for some guys, it’s sedation a different way; it’s porn, it’s just watching TV or whatever else it may be. The formula is the same. The formula is very similar. It’s just you insert a different mechanism into that formula. It’s easy for all of us, as you said, recovering hustlers to realize and go back to that default. Now, Tim, when I look retrospectively at my life, when I’ve been the most successful in my personal life, and also my business life, so financially successful as well, how much money I have coming in, I am not in this pattern this year, nowhere. This pattern is sometimes a reflection of when I feel like I need to get more done or decide to, but oftentimes, I’ll go into this pattern when things feel too good. Uh, Oh, it’s going well. Now I need to go into this pattern because oftentimes, I’ll either add something else into the mix that doesn’t necessarily need to be added, I’ll take on more responsibilities. Or I’ll meddle in something else, maybe you’re doing a project and, you’re busy, and you’re, you’re on vacation, I’ll jump in because I want to help you out, and I’ll just take it on and put it on my shoulders. Right, that way, I get to blame you. So, and this idea, I’ll just take on more. But it’s almost because I’m so used to the default; as we talked about, people can get addicted to drugs, alcohol, those things. But we also get addicted to the hustle, and we get addicted to being victims. We can be addicted to whatever our stories are. If our stories become, I need a lot of coffee in the morning. Then I’ll mellow out with alcohol because as business owners do. That’s what my friends do. Everybody else around me is doing it. What have you? That just becomes a story. We all have the opportunity to rewrite that script. Hey, guys, I want to interrupt this episode because I want to talk to you about something important. We put together a case study on how almost 300 men have taken control of their lives and their 4x in their business revenues and have more connected intimate sex, all without sacrificing their relationships or health by using The Activation Method. Now a lot of you have contacted us, and they want to know how they’re doing it. We put together this short 11-minute case study just for you. So you can see how these entrepreneurs are achieving this level of success. To get this case study, all you have to do is go over to ThePowerfulMan.com/bonus Yep, that’s one. You can get the case study right now. All right, it’s only 11 minutes. It’s going to show you exactly how these men have done it. Alright, let’s get back to the episode.
Tim Matthews 13:49
Yeah, I love it. There’s a flip side to this coin, isn’t and that flip side is? Well, Harvey, consider a Flipside as you’re talking. I’m again I’m just reflecting on my life from my journey. For me, the flip side of the story is I love what I do. I love business. I love it. I love the creativity. I love leadership. I love the strategizing I love the challenges. I love it all like I would eat, sleep and breathe it as I love it. I do it for free, and what we do in The Powerful Man I do for free. Like I’m an entrepreneur, It’s who I am, I love it, lights me up, and there’s a fine line isn’t there is almost like where the line is. When your passion becomes a weakness, strength becomes a weakness; see, strength is business and getting stuff done. But then that strength becomes a weakness, and you overstepped the mark, and then you end up being in this place. Because the reality is you, too, Doug loves business. You love what you do. You’ve been in business for a very long time., we both love the challenge and the growth, and it is new; every day is awesome. I think for us, and a lot of the recovering hospitals out there is finding the balance to that isn’t it., when I get too immersed into business, and I go down a similar path to what you’re talking about there, and when I realize the way in, which I then get out of it, I’ve got unplug for a couple of days. I’ve got to just do something that breaks all of the habits, and it might be that I take myself away for a couple of days with Amelia. I have my laptop for a couple of days, and I change my workout routine. I don’t go to the gym for whatever, and there’s a whole host of different things; there’s no one set routine because, at that moment, I’ve very much just let myself do whatever I feel called to do. Do away with all structure, and our routine has been living by leading up to that point. What I’ve noticed for me is when I allow work to creep in on the weekend when I slowly but surely stop doing the things for me that I love to do, the hobbies that we had gone hiking on the weekend, playing golf, having a massage review my week, when I started to go to bed a little bit later, when I turn my phone off later than I usually would do when I’m on emails until later I’ve become very acutely aware of when I’m starting to go down that path, I’ve become very familiar with the pans that I have. I’m able to spot them sooner, which I’m very grateful for. I think a large part of that I want to give credit to Amelia as well. Amelia doesn’t drink. I think if she did drink, it’d be encouraged me to drink a little bit more, for sure. She doesn’t drink at all, which is what I’m very grateful for. Also, she’s very familiar spoken at length about my patterns. She’s witnessed them over the past few years. So she’s able to bring them to my attention much sooner. Of course, she brings them out to my attention, and I tell her she’s wrong. Now I’m not doing that again. It’s different this time. Of course, I do. However, just her mentioning, it still has me then check in with myself., do a little bit of evaluation and see whether or not I am going down that path.
Doug Holt 17:32
It’s always good to have those self-checks in place and the people around you. I think so all too often we can get in that mindset that we have our stuff together. Things are going great. We get in that mindset, and if everything’s perfect, you don’t have to worry about it. But it’s important to recall. People watching this and I know you comment a lot that everybody thinks we you and I, in particular, are perfect in the sense of like, Oh, we know what all we have at all, knowledge and application are one thing but, we’re human, you you, you reboot yourself, you go back to your defaults, you go back to those areas and having people that are around you like you have Amelia. Of course, you have all the other coaches that we have within The Powerful Man movements. Certainly, myself are going to keep you in check. If you’re drifting, they’re going to give you either verbal and maybe, in Emilio’s case, a physical bitch slap and get you to get you back on target. I know I have those people in my life, including you, as well.
Tim Matthews 18:34
Right? Yeah. Sorry. Very passionate about this, Doug. I’m thinking about the dashboard, I’m just going to say it’s like when you’ve got a car, and you don’t take him for a service. You’re driving it and driving and driving it, and then you get the warning signs off on the dashboard, oils will overheating, breaks need change, and whatever what happens if you ignore those signs, the car crashes we are very lucky to have those kinds of warning signs in our life through you. We keep ourselves in check. It’s amazing to be in business with you and be in this type of business. These conversations because we’re able to keep ourselves we’ve got the SR support structures in place the dashboard effectively, like you’re saying, to keep ourselves in check much sooner, much faster when you do the work on yourself. You’re able to stop judging yourself as well and beating yourself up, which, again, we still do from time to time but do a lot less. You’re able to catch these patterns a lot sooner with much more ease. Much less of Oh God, I did it again, Arghhh. Or just is what you’re a human being like Doug says, like you say we’re not perfect. The difference between those in the listener is awareness, tools, and time. So it is the amount of time we’ve been applying those tools and awareness, obviously the support system around us as well. Although I don’t know what the listeners have around them, we have a real support system as well, which years ago something I crib, so I’m very grateful for that completely stole your thunder there, and I am not sorry.
Doug Holt 20:17
I don’t feel like you stole my thunder at all. I feel very thunderous. So no, no worries at all. I think so gentlemen, what I will say to you is if you relate to anything in this pattern, the first thing to do is recognize that it’s a pattern. The second thing is to ask yourself the questions we’ve discussed in previous episodes, is this pattern serve me yes or no. Then take massive action. I recommend that you get accountability around it, surround yourself with other men. If you’re in the Facebook group, make sure you post on that. But obviously, The Powerful Man that’s what we do, and we surround and teach and motivate people is. It’s human, but it’s a man who is being human. It has faults, admitting those faults and taking action, and course correcting. So make sure you’re doing that as well. Guys, that is a wrap for us for another episode of The Powerful Man show; make sure you go over to the Facebook group. I love to hear what you got out of this episode with my sharing and your patterns. Especially for those who are successful business owners, like me, I’d love to commiserate with you a little bit on our patterns and joke around and not commiserate, but joke around on those patterns and see what we’re doing here. That’s a wrap, and I’ll see you next time on The Powerful Man show.
