Do it Now: Anything You Regret
Having Not Done 10 Years Ago, Do it Today

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #595: Do it Now: Anything You Regret Having Not Done 10 Years Ago, Do it Today

Jeff Sanders
Good morning and welcome to The 5 AM Miracle episode #595: Do it Now: Anything You Regret Having Not Done 10 Years Ago, Do it Today.

I am Jeff Sanders and you have reached the podcast that is dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, and to learn a whole lot more about that, head on over to jeffsanders.com slash speaking.

Now, in the episode this week, I'll break down why the answer to the big problems in life is always immediate action,

why your regrets don't have to stay regrets, and how to make a move today on a thing from your past that can change your future forever.

Let's get to it.

So earlier this year, I told a very lengthy story about my house falling apart.

In fact, episode number 573 is called $50,000 what my unexpected home renovation taught me about project management.

And in that episode, I went into a ton of detail about essentially a ginormous problem that for years, years, plural, I avoided dealing with.

So let's go back many years ago.

Approximately 10 and a half years ago, my wife and I bought a home here in Nashville, Tennessee.

It's our first home.

We still live here.

It's a fantastic place to be.

And the funny thing about this house and my experience with our realtor was I told Debbie, our realtor, I said, Debbie, I don't want to buy a house that requires DIY work.

I don't want to fix it up. I don't have any of those skills. I don't want to gain those skills. Give me an easy house. Like find me a home. That's the least amount of work possible because I have other things to do in my life. I've got marathons to run and podcast to record and books to write. I am busy. That is not on my to do list.

and she said, okay, Jeff, good luck with that.

And she found us a home that was fantastic.

This house has been great for us for a long time.

And I do not have regrets about the purchase of this home.

It was in really great shape when we bought it.

And for the first few years, it had typical minor issues, but really nothing of significance.

But of course, as time goes, yes, the house had problems.

Yes, those problems cost money.

Most of my approach at the time was to hire someone, hire a plumber, hire an electrician, hire the handyman to come in and do the work and make the problem go away.

There were some skills that I gained a little bit of DIY, but really the vast majority of my approach was this is a part of my life that I want to outsource and not deal with.

Well, that only goes so far.

And there are other problems that may escalate that even if your approach is to write a check and make it go away, that check might be pretty big.

And so what I discovered about two, three years ago, was that our house had a number of issues.

There were cracks in the wall. There were cracks in the tile on our kitchen floor.

There were clearly pipes that were leaking even slowly as they were.

And you could see that there is an issue here or many different issues here.

but I didn't want to deal with them.

I just didn't want to address the reality that I was staring at and living in each and every day.

And it wasn't until my father-in-law came for a visit about a year ago and he saw what was going on.

And immediately he called it out.

I said, Jeff, this can't continue.

Like something's got to be done at some point and that some point needs to be soon.

And I just looked at him and I was like, dang it.

I don't have to do this.

I did not when I have to address this issue.

Don't make me feel guilty about this.

But he was right.

100% right.

And the only approach at that point was to finally admit that I had procrastinated,

that I had tried to ignore a problem that you just can't ignore for too long.

Because otherwise, the problem just gets worse.

And so my approach for years was to just bury my head in the sand, do other things,

and hope the problem would go away.

But that's not an approach to problem solving.

That's not goal achievement.

That's not ambitious attempts to make your life amazing.

What that is is the common approach to difficult, challenging, expensive things

that we would just rather walk away from and hope for a better future.

But the actual path forward, the solution to anything along those lines,

especially the big stuff, is that no one's coming to.

to save you. There is no hero who's going to walk into your front door,

hand you a big check, solve all your problems, and you do nothing.

Maybe in life that happens sometimes, maybe, but those are really rare scenarios.

What we're talking about here is generalized goal achievement for the problems

you and I experience each and every day, and the person we're looking for to solve

them is the person in the mirror. We are looking for a solution from ourselves. We are

the hero. That's it. We are the ones who write the checks. We are the ones who

arrange others to do the work. We are the ones who spearhead the solution. We are

responsible. It is us. It is not someone else. Though you may outsource, though you may

hire, though you may find other creative avenues to solve any problem you have,

it's always you. The buck stops there. And this is the story of the episode.

this entire presentation today.

It's about regret.

Sure, it's about looking back and saying,

well, I didn't fix my house and now the solution costs a whole lot more than I wanted it to.

Yeah, it's part of it.

But the bigger part of today's story is the opportunity.

The opportunity to address the things that have been the back of our mind

or sometimes right in front of our face or under our feet, in my case,

with the cracked kitchen tiles.

Those things that are right in front of us, we get the chance to address.

we have the opportunity to solve a problem, move our lives forward, and finally do the thing that for 10, 20 years or more, we have just said, I don't want to deal with that.

Well, we're now going to deal with that.

We are now in that position where today is the day to say yes to the work.

So for the episode today, I'm going to run through a variety of scenarios to think through how to approach regret, how to approach big goals we don't want to deal with.

And I'll tell a variety of stories from my own life just in the last year of things that I have done to directly address the things that I personally ignored for a long time.

And I'm going to bring up stories from my life on purpose, mostly because I want it to be very clear that as much as I like to present myself as a guy with all the answers, I myself am human.

And I have all the same tendencies, all the same goals, missteps, failures, goofy, awkwardness.

I'm still a guy who just wants to have the easy path, even though I'm well aware that's the wrong one.

So with that in mind, let's discuss regret.

It's very common to read surveys of those who are older and looking back at their lives.

And when you see these surveys that are done, it's very common to ask someone as they're aging, what are your regrets?

What do you think that you made a mistake on?

What do you wish you would have done?

Like, why did your life not play out as you had envisioned, if that's the case?

And for most people, life may have been great, but there's always that, well, what if I had dot, dot, dot?

And the common theme that we see with those who look back at their lives and have these regrets is that they're not regretting their failures.

They're not regretting having done something and screwed it up.

They're regretting the things they never tried to do.

the things they never even attempted, the things that fear stop them from action.

You know, our bucket list goals can be achieved.

Maybe only in part sometimes because the bucket list goals are huge and ambitious,

but we can do something.

We don't have to have our story play out that we didn't even try because that's really sad,

but also extraordinarily common.

And yes, in life, we only have so much time and we cannot attempt everything.

And so the idea here is not to say that I'm going to literally put myself into the 24-7 work cycle of trying to do all the things.

No, that's exhausting and not productive.

The intention here is to be selective about the few things that you know you have not addressed.

And to finally bite the bullet and do it.

Your regrets don't have to stay regrets.

Your bucket list goals don't have to stay on a list somewhere that you might get to someday.

they can become your reality now.

Those dreams that you've had, those ambitions you would love to one day attempt

to pursue.

Why not now?

Why not today?

The episode is called Do It Now.

Like that's the title because that's the point.

Everything that I have done in my life that has resulted in success happened

because I finally said, I'm going to do it now, and then I did it now.

And then it happened.

And then it became past tense.

and it became a thing I have done, check, move on.

But that only happens because at some point I draw a lie in the sand and say,

I'm done waiting.

I'm done.

I'm going to move forward.

I'm going to take action.

It may be small.

It may be seemingly insignificant, but it's going to be a first step.

And that first step leads to a second, leads to a third, leads to a 30th, leads to a hundredth.

That's the process.

Let me tell you another story about the last year.

This story is one that has been a theme of this podcast for a long time, which is health and wellness.

And so about a year ago, before I worked on my house, I was in a really good season of exercise and exercise and

and weightlifting, and I had changed my diet a little bit, and I was really

focused on a lot of muscle growth, and then my house fell apart, and I decided

the best thing to do would be to put all my energy into home renovation and

fix the entire thing. And so for four solid months, I didn't go to the gym. And that

was a very intentional choice, and looking back at it, I made the right call because

the house was a lot of work, and I needed every single free moment I could possibly squeeze

from my day. And so that was a choice that I made. But of course, the consequence

there was that I didn't go to the gym for four months and my muscles atrophied

and I felt a lot worse. So as soon as the house was done and I felt really good

about it, I went full into health and wellness as my primary objective, changing my

diet, going back to exercise, being intentional about every single move that I made

to lower my stress and get better sleep and have better supplements and

better breakfasts with my power bowls that I created and to streamline all of

these systems to align to a better version of me. I got more serious about the

shoes that I wear and how I train in the gym to be more consistent to grow

muscles faster and every possible angle. And this is a story of my life in terms of

how health has played out, which is that health and wellness is a start, stop,

and restart process. I was just talking to someone last

week about the goals that she has had for the last two years with her health and

wellness. And she said that in the last two years, she has had three major

pauses in her progress, three big obstacles that showed up that delayed her ability

to do the thing she set out to do. And I looked at it and I was like, yeah,

that's life. I've been there myself for 25, 30, 40 years. Like, I know the feeling

of starting, stopping, and then being forced to restart again seemingly from

scratch. And it sucks. It's no fun at all to be able to say I had such good progress

and now I have to start over yet again. However, that is the story. The regret here

is not going to be that I was out of shape and stayed there. My regret is not going to

be that I was working out great and that for some reason I stopped and then I just

stayed this mushy version of myself for the next decades. But I'm not going to be that guy.

I'm going to be the guy who says, okay, things didn't go the way I'd planned,

I got off my schedule for whatever reason, whether it's on purpose or not,

doesn't matter, I'm going to go back.

I'm going to say yes again.

I'm going to get back on the saddle and do the work.

And this time, this restart will be even better than the last one.

This is the process.

This is how success is achieved.

We have these amazing moments of growth.

We have setbacks.

We grow again.

but this time a little better than before, and then another setback,

and then we grow again, on and on and on forever and ever.

And so when I say that I had all of these different systems in place to streamline

my supplements and my exercise and my sleep, yeah, these are not new things to me.

I've been doing these things forever, but I have to get reintentional yet again

to make sure that I'm living the life I want to live yet again.

Because I'm not going to have those regrets.

I'm not going to be the guy who said, I quit and I failed and it's over.

That's not my story.

And it doesn't have to be yours either.

We always have the choice to restart.

Now let's discuss what it means to start again, or really I'll call this the power of immediate action.

When you break the cycle of inaction and fear, when you finally say yes to taking that first step, it is incredibly empowering.

It is the kind of process that proves to yourself yet again that you have the ability to do something.

I end every single episode of this podcast reminding you that you have the power to change your life.

Well, what is change?

It's action.

It's you doing something differently than you did before.

And that's going to require some courage.

It's going to require possibly early mornings, possibly late nights, possibly getting off the couch and just saying yes to action and movement.

It's going to require something, a sacrifice of some kind.

But that initial sacrifice is so much bigger than the ongoing work.

The initial immediate actions are going to feel big and daunting and scary.

But the habitized systems of keeping those actions going for the long term,

well, that's actually really easy.

It's easy now for me to say yes to going to the gym because I go to the gym all the time.

Five, six, seven days a week.

I'm there all the time.

So going back again today doesn't bother me.

It's not a big lift.

It's not actually that hard.

I just go.

But I'm only able to say yes to that now so easily because previously it was difficult

and I had to use the power of immediate action to con myself into going when I didn't want to go.

Because it wasn't my norm.

Those four months off from the gym made me weak.

Those four months off made me physically and mentally weak.

Even though I was

productive, even though I was doing what I actually plan to do on purpose,

there was atrophy that took place there. And to get back to the gym and be my best

self again, I had to relearn how to be strong in that way. Strength is a kind of

quality that it can overlap to multiple areas of life, but not really. Like you

really do have to have specific strength for specific activities and relearn how to build

up those muscles, whether physical or metaphorical. We have to have that

kind of discipline and strength and regrow ourselves into the best version of

ourselves yet again because that's just the process.

I love the idea of when you take that first step, you're then able to see the

second one. And when the second step is taken, well, then the third one appears.

You know, right now I've got a number of projects going on where I don't know

the long-term implications of these choices. In other words, there are certain

kind of vague goals that I have, but I really don't know how it's going to play out

long-term. But the thing that I keep seeing over and over again is that every single

day I'll put in 30 minutes of work on that project, maybe an hour. And in that time

period, I'll work on the thing I set out to do, and I always end that work session

with more ideas. I've got so many more that pop up. And then the next day, I've got a whole

new list of things to work on. And the next day and the next repeats over and over

again, the actions reveal themselves. So you don't have to know how this plays out

for the next 20, 30 years. You really just need one more step to take. And then if you

know what that thing is and you do it, you will get the next idea. You will know

the next action to take. Action leads to more action. It always works that way.

So if you are considering not doing something, you will stay there.

If your current objective and your current plan is just to put this thing off,

then that's exactly what will happen indefinitely.

The only thing that will break that cycle of inaction is action itself,

which once again requires courage and discipline and a very tiny plan of a first step to start.

That's all this takes.

But it's amazing how well it works.

Another big story from the last year for me is a massive transformation that I have

had on the, what I call wealth management side of my life.

In other words, retirement plans.

So for a long time, I basically took a very sideline approach to long-term financial

planning.

Even though I've been an entrepreneur and I deal with money all the time with my business

and I run the finances for our personal lives, I deal with money every single

day. And yet for some reason, I just kind of ignored this whole area of my life.

And by ignored, I mean, I've had a plan in place, but it wasn't well thought out.

It was weak. It was really lazy, actually. I just did not want to do the work

to make it into something that I could be proud of, that could convert the stress

potentially of long-term financial issues into joy or opportunity. I just didn't do the

work until this year. And then this year, I finally, I finally,

I finally got serious about it, and I crafted a plan, a robust spreadsheet of sorts, because I love spreadsheets, where I outlined every account, balance, ongoing contribution, investment, estimated future growth, taxes, likely retirement date, all of these things that I finally took seriously and broke them down to the penny of what is possible.

And honestly, I really, for a long time, thought that the details would work themselves out in the future.

But as it turns out, the only way the details would have ever worked themselves out is if I did the work myself.

This is that hero of your story coming to save you and that hero is you.

This is the exact experience that I had.

I remember very clearly being in my early 20s, graduated college, was working my first few jobs, and people talking to me about retirement and talking to me about long-term planning and investing and literally just thinking to myself, like, that's for someone.

else. That's just not my story. I don't need this. I don't care about this.

I'm 24 years old, whatever. Like, that's not on my table right now. It's just,

I don't care. And I really thought that for a long time, I would care at some point.

I thought for a long time that money would just show up and the answers would just

reveal themselves. And technically I was right, but I was the one who did the work to

make that happen. I was the one who earned the money. I was the one who made the plan. I was the

who invested the money and set it all up.

Like, it was always going to be me.

Because once again, there was nobody coming to do it for me.

This is the story of regret, is that for a long time we think,

I'm going to do this, I'm going to figure this out,

but you just keep not doing it.

And the story continues until one day you draw that line in the sand and you break that cycle of inaction by taking the action.

It feels really good now, knowing that my house has been rebuilt, knowing that I have an amazing dietary and exercise plan in place, knowing that I have the confidence that my wife and I have a really rock solid plan for retirement.

Like these types of things make me sleep better at night.

Knowing that these things are true now that were not true a year ago makes me feel so much better because I did the thing that I knew I had to do.

and it makes future work even easier because I've built systems that are essentially

sustainable and easier to operate.

So it's going to be very likely that my house stays in really good shape for a long time.

It's very likely that my health will continue to improve.

It is very likely that my investment strategy will get better over time, not worse.

Because I did the work, because I finally addressed the elephant in the room.

That's how you turn the tide.

is you switch this from stress into joy, from fear into pride.

That's what is possible.

It's a fantastic process to go through.

And speaking of the process,

and one thing I heard years ago from Brian Tracy,

a very famous speaker and author and as a guest on my podcast just recently.

Brian Tracy is well known for saying that the time is going to pass anyway.

So you may as well just do something now.

I just love that phrase and I use it all the time from the context of patience.

From the context of saying, well, you know, this thing I want to work on could take three or four years to get done.

That's such a long time.

It's like, right.

Well, if you plan to stay alive for those three or four years, the time is going to

going to pass anyway. So you may as well begin that now. And then four years from

now, it'll be done. Past tense, completed, accomplished, box checked. Awesome.

Move on. Waiting longer will only cause you to wait longer. And the process, once again,

it could be a while. But that is not an argument to delay it. That is a very strong

argument to start immediately. Do it now. Do it today. Right now, today. This is the moment.

It's not an exaggeration.

That's not a metaphor.

That literally means now.

But of course, we always approach that as a metaphor.

If we hear someone like me saying these words, you keep listening, but are you doing it?

Did you pause this show just now to write something down, to schedule something to do it?

Because if you haven't yet, you have not yet paused this episode to do something, you're missing the point.

This is the time, literally in this moment.

I cannot say it any other.

way. Pause this show now and do something.

Okay, now that you're back, how'd it feel? How did that feel to do something?

Hopefully, fantastic. Another story for you. So back at episode 579 of this podcast,

I announced that I had been six months sober, and I really went into a lot of detail

about my history with alcohol and this whole thing about me really needing a break

and really needing to change my habits.

And so if you hear the entire story,

definitely listen to that one.

It's a really great one.

And I say so from that perspective

of the context of this episode,

which is that for so many years,

I was well aware

that consuming more alcohol

was not working for me.

I was well aware

that if I wanted to be

my healthiest and best self,

I was going to have to change.

And so at some point,

it just hit me that that moment was now,

that I had to walk

away and the only possible next step to take was one into sobriety and to stay there.

Now, if you listen to that story, you'll hear me say time and time again that I was not a

raging alcoholic. It was not a major source of a problem for me, but it was a bad enough

habit that it just ate away at me. It slowly chipped away at my potential and made me

into someone I didn't want to be. And I knew that if that habit was not broken, if a new

version of me did not emerge immediately, that I would stay that guy for the long

term, and it would only become more of a deeper ingrained rut, as opposed to a habit

that is filled with possibility and joy. Now, for a couple of years, I did test

sobriety, kind of on and off, trying to find out a couple of weeks, couple of months,

is this for me? And of course, I would always go back to it again, because it felt normal

and natural and social and fun. But at some point, that wasn't my

story anymore. At some point, it wasn't fun and social and great and refreshing

and stress relieving. It was actually the opposite. I felt worse. I regretted it.

I didn't want to do it anymore. It was expensive. I was wasting my time and money

and potential. I just, I knew with every ounce of me, this has to change. And so I did.

I changed. On an arbitrary Wednesday, I just say, you know what? That's it. I'm done. I just moved on.

And as of the recording right now, it's been 10 and a half months of being sober.

It's been great.

No complaints for me.

And in fact, the number one thing I could look back on and say, of course, is, I wish I would have done this sooner.

That is the subtext to the episode.

Anything that you wish you would have done 10 years ago, you're going to do it now.

That subtext is, I wish I would have done this sooner.

Fixed my house, changed my diet, gone sober, like made all these amazing.

changes, invested in these amazing stocks, whatever these you're doing.

There's a thousand things you could be doing.

But the fear is always, what if I waited too long?

What if, and this is the big issue, what if because I've waited 10 plus years,

I won't ever be able to achieve the goal I set out to achieve because I waited

too long.

I'm now too old.

I missed the moment.

I missed the mark.

What if that's the story?

It doesn't have to be.

Not at all.

I turned 40 last year.

I'm now actually 41.

And one thing that has been very clear to me in the last year and a half is that aging is not a choice, but it kind of is.

Yes, the clock will tell me my actual age.

But I get to choose what those numbers mean to me.

I get to choose how to respond to the reality of that number.

Which means if I want to choose to feel young again and take on new goals and be ambitious

have more energy and really say yes to new amazing possibilities, then I'll just do

that.

And I'm not going to approach my life as if I'm already dead.

That's not going to work for me.

It's not going to work for my goals.

It's not going to work for any future progress.

It's not going to work if you simply say, well, here's the excuse, Jeff.

Here's why I can't do this thing.

See?

Look.

I don't care.

I don't.

And I don't care because I know it's wrong.

And I know it's wrong because I've lived.

lived it and I have lied to myself for too long. And that's what this is.

Any story you've told yourself but why you can't do something is a choice and

it's a lie and it's harming your progress.

That's the most direct I'll ever be on this podcast, by the way. I don't say these

kinds of things very often because I very often don't feel the need to be that direct.

But in this conversation, I do. In this conversation, that is the, you know, the boot camp, drill sergeant, like here's the assignment

get to work. Because the alternative is not going to work. That's the bottom line.

The alternative of not saying yes is continuing to say no indefinitely. And of course,

that does not work. So if you want to take the weight off your shoulders, if you want to

take the plunge to face your past inaction and have that stress relief, this is your

moment. This is the time to step in and do those things. I mean, once again,

just in the last 12 months, I radically transformed my house, my diet, my investing

strategy, my sobriety. Also, just recently on the podcast, this whole story of ditching

coffee and this caffeine break that I took, go back to that one, fantastic episode there

because it was a massive transformation in how I live. And yes, for years I was stressed out

and really didn't know why.

But is that true?

I kind of knew.

I just didn't want to admit it.

I didn't want to believe that my theory would play out that way.

I was scared to go caffeine-free,

scared to take a break from this thing because I had an addiction,

because I had a terrifyingly stupid addiction to coffee,

and now I'm coffee-free.

It has been over two months since I had coffee as a full-time beverage,

and I'm now just on green tea and a tiny bit of cacao.

Really, literally, it is 14% of my previous caffeine levels,

a reduction of 86% of my daily caffeine usage.

That's where I am today.

You are hearing a Jeff Sanders on a tiny fraction of his previous levels of caffeine.

And I feel great.

But it took a long time for me to actually make that decision and go that distance

and become that new person.

But once again, this is action that I was scared to take, that I'm super glad that I did.

And it set me off onto a new path to become the new person I knew I could be.

That's the story here.

Your future success, your business growth, your education, relationships, career, family, your home, all of it.

Your entire life story is based on you taking or refusing to take action.

These are all choices.

Every single time we say yes to something, make that decision, we are cutting off all of their choices.

So if that decision you've made is to watch Netflix, is to sleep in, is to ignore reality, you get the consequences of those choices.

But if your decision is to say yes to the thing you ignored, if your decision is to opt into action and face that thing you know could change your life.

you get everything.

All the opportunities, all the successes, all the possibility, all the confidence to sleep well at night because you did the work.

Stephen Pressfield is an amazing author and a guy that I have recommended for years on this podcast, but not for a while.

I've gotten away from his books. I need to go back to them again.

He has very famous books, The War of Art, Turning Pro, and I'm forgetting the last one.

I'll get to it eventually.

Anyway, fantastic books that are really all about you admitting that you've been an amateur and you can turn pro.

That there is this force working against you.

He calls resistance and you can overcome it each and every day to sit your butt in the chair and do the work.

That is the story.

We have to set our butts in the chair and do the work.

And if we do, we get it.

We get all of it.

Everything.

And if we don't, then we don't.

Okay, I think I've said enough that you get my point.

Along the lines of this topic, I would love to hear from you specifically about what you are going to say yes to.

Please email me, jeffat jeffsanders.com.

I want to know what you've been putting off.

And I want to know what action you have now taken to say yes to that thing that you know you've needed to say yes to for a long time.

I think there's a lot of stories that could be shared here on this podcast about that courage that it took to overcome that fear and to move yourself forward.

And so if you have the courage to actually do it and to actually email me and you're willing, I can feature your story here on this show.

And hopefully then inspire others to be able to do the exact same thing.

There is so much power in the community aspect of goal achievement.

One big flaw of this podcast and of my perspective in general on personal developments is the personal element.

Yes, we're always talking about you having a better life, but one of the key things we tend to miss is the community aspect.

There's the fact that all this stuff does not have to be done alone.

You don't have to approach all this hard work by yourself or reinvent the wheel.

That is exhausting.

That is just purely exhausting and ultimately doesn't work nearly as well as having a

others to join you on that journey. So if you need someone on that journey,

reach out, ask questions. I'm here. I respond to emails less than 24 hours

every single time, no exceptions. So test me on that. Jeff at jeffsanders.com.

Let's go do something awesome together. It's going to be a lot of fun.

And for that action step this week, whatever you need to do,

do it today. Whatever you have put off, lean into it. Whatever you think you should

have done way back when, take a first step today. Whatever you think it's too

late to do, it isn't. There is still time. You can get started now, and you'll be so

glad you did. Of course, subscribe to this podcast right now in your favorite podcast app,

or go to 5am Miracle Premium.com for the VIP ad-free experience.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5 a.m. Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life.

And all that fun begins bright and early.

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