As I Turn 40: My Best Choices,
Biggest Regrets, and Hopes for the Future
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The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #545xp: As I Turn 40: My Best Choices, Biggest Regrets, and Hopes for the Future [Premium]

Jeff Sanders
Good morning and welcome to the 5AM Miracle Podcast, Premium Edition.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is a special episode.

About 10 years ago, I published an episode called "As I Turned 30," where I gave my best advice for anyone in their 20s.

Well, 10 years later, I am turning 40.

In fact, the day this episode goes live, August 2nd, 2024, is my 40th birthday.

And so I'm going to reflect this week on some of my best choices that I've made in the last 10 years, biggest regrets, hopes for the future, just some life lessons that I've learned.

Hopefully this is helpful, not just for those in their 30s, but those at any stage in life.

I think it's really important to reflect.

I talk all the time on this podcast about a weekly review system.

I also do monthly reviews, quarterly reviews, annual reviews.

Well, this is a decades long review, a life review, if you will.

And so I'm gonna be going through some of the biggest, most important, most significant life lessons I have learned.

This episode took a while to put together, really because I wanted to not just brainstorm a great content for you to hear, but it was really personal for me to think through, what has my life been about?

Who am I?

Where am I headed?

What is all of this?

I wrote a post that I put on Facebook and LinkedIn a few weeks ago, where I was reflecting on that night where I was really asking myself tough questions and the value of doing so.

You know, one of the things that I mentioned in that post was that my weekly review process is very small in the grander sense, right?

It's a very tiny focused decision-making process of looking at the last seven days and looking forward to the next seven days.

And what one area of weakness that I have now seen more acutely in that review process is the finite nature of thinking so small, of looking at your life in a very tiny perspective, of asking the question, what's the next action?

What is my task list for today?

Well, that fails to take into account in most cases, who are you as a person?

Where are you headed in the next 10, 20, 40 years of your life?

Not that we need to ask those questions all the time, but I need to ask that question of myself more.

And especially now as I'm officially over the hill, if you wanna use that term, or maybe I'm the old guy on the lawn yelling at the kids, I don't know, there's a lot of ways to me to view my current age.

But I think what's really important is to assess these questions on, are you living the life you intended?

Is there a better path forward, a smarter path forward, a more mature path forward?

And it's difficult for me because I want to be able to say, you know, I've checked all the boxes that I set out to check.

I've done all the things I set out to do, which of course is not true.

I have a gauntlet of ideas.

I have so many possibilities.

And so a lot of what I'm gonna reflect on this week is gonna be based on this idea of not just personal growth and improvement, but also in gratitude.

Also in the recognition of past successes and achievements in a way that is authentic for my life experience so far.

My tendency when I think about my life and my growth is one of the glass is half empty.

And you might think, well, Jeff, you're overly enthusiastic and positive.

How do you think in a negative sense?

Isn't the glass half full?

And technically, yes, I approach my life with as much enthusiasm as possible.

But when I think about my future, somehow my brain tends to go more towards fear than it used to, more towards what if things went wrong?

What if the worst case scenario were to happen?

More than it used to.

And that's both indicative of my current season that I'm in, but also I think that as I've aged, as I'm older now, I have more responsibility, more on my plate, more to own in my life than I used to.

Not just in the literal sense, but the metaphorical sense.

I am more responsible than I ever was.

And so I think because of that, I'm more aware of how things could go south.

I'm more aware of how things could fall apart.

And I wanna be sure that I have built systems and a lifestyle that is protective of the things I care about, but also future-focused with a big dream and a big vision.

So having said all of that, let's get to the core content of what I'm trying to get to now.

I was thinking about my 30s, the last decade of my life.

And the overall theme that I think that I have nailed down for what this last 10 years has been about is what I'm calling surviving the transition into adulthood.

Which might sound far too late.

You might think, well, Jeff, haven't you been an adult for a while?

Weren't you an adult at age 18 or something?

And the reality is age is just a number in certain cases.

And it certainly is when it comes to adulthood.

It certainly is when it comes to maturity, responsibility, and ownership of your life.

And what I'll get to here in a minute is this reality that my transition into adulthood took place in my 30s.

It didn't happen before then.

I did not own my life until recently.

So from that perspective, for that frame of thinking, let's discuss the top 10 choices that I made in my 30s that changed my life forever.

These are some of the biggest highlighted moments that I think stand out without question as some of the best moments.

After that, I will also discuss some of my top mistakes that I made.

I will give you some of my best advice, and then I will cap this off with hopes for the future.

And hopefully from this conversation, which will probably be a longer one than most, strap in, this is gonna be fun, I wanna be sure that I give a well-rounded response to where I am now, what my life is, where this is all headed.

And I think that we can start that conversation in gratitude with the top choices that I have made in the last 10 years.

So this is basically in order of events.

It's not in priority order.

This is just as things took place, top 10 list here.

So number one, the very first thing that I did literally 30 days after I turned 30 was I went full-time as an entrepreneur, and I did not do so by choice.

If you've heard my story, you know that I was a full-time employee.

And I had been in my late 20s, worked for five years at a college.

And when that school imploded, basically, it went bankrupt, it was bought out, and then they closed our campus, and that was it.

It was done for.

I was laid off literally 30 days after I turned 30.

And I had a choice at that point in my life.

This was a very pivotal moment in my life.

Do I stay in a career that honestly wasn't my future?

It wasn't where I wanted to go?

Or do I make the leap and become an entrepreneur?

It was, in theory, a difficult question to answer, but honestly, at the time, it was so obvious.

And I said yes initially.

Yes, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur.

But of course, instantly, there's self-doubt.

Instantly, there's this question of, can I do this?

Can I handle this?

And I was called about two months after I was laid off by my former boss, who had moved on to a new company, and was calling to offer me a job.

If I wanted to go back to the workforce, he had an opening for me.

And I said no.

I said no because I was fully aware by that point that I had drawn that line in the sand, that I was moving forward with my new plan, for better or for worse, I was in.

And here we are 10 years later, and I still work for myself.

I can say with confidence that I'm not confident that we'll stay that way forever.

There are no guarantees.

The one thing I've learned as an entrepreneur is how unpredictable the world of business can be, how much change is involved in all of that.

And so it's impossible for me to give any kind of guarantee to my own future in any respect, personally, professionally.

But entrepreneurship is a wild ride.

It is a roller coaster of chaos in so many ways.

I opted into it.

I said yes to it.

And I got the full brunt of what that means.

And I live through that every day.

But it was my choice, my first, most significant decision when I turned 30 to jump in feet first, and to work for myself, and to own my career, own my income, own my future.

And that's what I did.

And I do not regret that for a second.

Not for a second.

It was one of the most profoundly challenging and rewarding decisions I ever made.

And this podcast is a reflection of lots of choices that regard that pivotal moment in my life.

And so if you've enjoyed this podcast for years, if you want to enjoy it for many more years, just recognize that this is a reflection of my desire to take control.

I'm definitely a control freak, type A to the max.

And being an entrepreneur gives me that power and that freedom.

It's not for everyone.

Most days, I don't believe it's even for me.

In many ways, I screwed up with a lot of these choices.

But it has been one of the most significant choices of my entire life, without question.

All right, number two of the top 10 choices that I made in my 30s that changed my life forever.

Number two is I bought a house about six months after I went full time as an entrepreneur.

The timing here was terrible.

Just my wife, Tessa, and I, we wanted to buy a house.

Being laid off at first sounded like an impossible scenario to overcome.

How do you get a house if you have no job?

So we made a lot of choices to get our ducks in a row to buy the cheapest possible home we could get, leveraging my wife's job.

And it was all this finagling of paperwork and numbers, all legal, all ethical.

But we did what we had to do.

We pulled it off.

And we bought a house.

And we're in that same house 10 years later.

And it's been awesome.

And it was-- obviously, buying a home is one of the most significant purchases most people ever make in their lives, super significant, an amazing place.

My wife and I live in the Bellevue neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee.

And it's an awesome place to live, fantastic.

All right, choice number three was writing and publishing my two books, both "The 5A A Miracle" and "The Free Time Formula."

Becoming an author was a dream of mine once I discovered what authors actually did.

So if you know my story from my personal development days, my early 20s, essentially, I discovered John Maxwell and speakers and authors and the world of personal growth and decided at that point that that was the world I wanted to be in.

I wanted to be a content creator, a guy on stage, a guy with the microphone.

And so I set out to build that career.

And so once I had the opportunity to actually write and publish a book through a publishing house that was not self-published, it was a yes automatically.

I wanted that opportunity to take what I had learned, to encapsulate that, and share it with the world.

And so "The 5A A Miracle" was my first book published in 2015.

And it absolutely put me on the map in a way that I wasn't before and changed my career overnight in that sense.

And so the second book came out about three years later, "The Free Time Formula," and also kind of solidified me as a two-time published author.

Yay, OK, now I've got something of significance here.

Let's leverage that.

So for me, having the identity, the professional identity as an author is meaningful to me.

And it's something I want to do more of in the future and one thing I hopefully will be doing a lot more of in the next decade, which we'll get to in a minute.

All right, choice number four, which is totally unrelated to business, at least in theory, is that Tessa and I realized, discovered, found out that in order to have children, we would have to go through fertility treatments.

This was significant in the total opposite direction.

The first three things I mentioned here were all basically awesome.

Going through IVF is not awesome.

It is wacky difficult.

It's one of the most significant choices you can make or discover you have to make if that's the direction your life is going to go.

And so for us, it was financially challenging, emotionally challenging, medically, physically, relationally, like all the things, all the E's.

It just hit us in every direction as such a mountain to climb.

Not that it was impossible to do.

Some people do it all the time.

But when you're not expecting it, when you don't know it's coming, it's a surprise.

There's so many just unknowns in that world, so many lack of guarantees.

Everything's a gamble.

Everything's a risk.

It's a challenging world, but one that has produced two amazing girls.

Tessa and I are extremely grateful for having them.

It's been, of all the things we could have done, number five, as I'm going to have myself, number five on the list is that we had two kids.

The IVF worked for us, that we were able to have that experience of becoming parents and to do so in a way that has been just remarkably rewarding in so many ways.

But also, I will be impossible not to mention, the hardest thing we've ever done.

Having children upended our lives in a way that nothing else ever could.

And so I'm never going to just paint this picture with all roses.

Having kids is hard.

It is hard, but awesome at the same time.

And that's a through line of almost anything that is worth doing, is it's probably going to be challenging.

And it's probably going to push your buttons more than most.

But if it's a good choice for you, it does work out.

And I'll tell you, going through the pain of IVF to produce Maisie and Rosie, our two girls, it's awesome.

Awesome.

And then as a kind of a cap on that conversation, my wife and I, because of our IVF process, wound up with extra embryos that were fertilized and genetically tested and ready for us, in theory, to then also implant and have more kids.

But once we had two, we realized, that's enough.

We're done.

We have five extra potential children, if you want to call them that.

And so we donated them to the clinic in Nashville that we went through.

And so those embryos could become future children who are genetic siblings of our girls.

This is a story we haven't told on the show with a lot of detail.

But it is definitely one that it's a reality for us.

And it's a choice that we made pretty easily.

It took us a while to sign the paperwork.

But it makes a lot of sense for the future of the embryos we were not going to personally use, that another couple has a chance to do so.

So there you go.

All right, top choice that I made, number six, is back surgery to fix my slipped disc.

So I told this story with a lot of detail on the podcast back when it happened in 2019, so about five years ago.

I had a series of my-- well, I'll say this.

I had an entire season of my life with debilitating sciatica.

If you've ever been down that road, you know the feeling.

And it's-- oh, it's incredibly painful.

And I was very fortunate that due to the cause of my sciatica that there was a surgery available that could fix it.

And it did.

And it was very successful.

And I have had almost no sciatica since.

And the sciatica that I have experienced since has been much more minor and very easy to resolve.

And so of all the medical challenges I may have faced in my life, everything from panic attacks I've discussed here on the show to my ongoing issues with allergies and sinus infections, you know, common human stuff, back issues are just rock solid crazy.

And I say that meaning-- I read recently that the top two reasons why anyone goes to see a doctor for pain is back pain and upper respiratory issues.

And I've got both of those, right?

Back pain that led to surgery and, of course, my ongoing lifelong challenge with allergies and sinus problems.

And so I just-- I feel in many ways like I'm more human than I was before.

And that might sound like an odd statement.

But I think that if you look at someone in their 20s who has that sense of I'm invincible, right?

I can't be harmed.

Life is my oyster.

Here I go.

I'm going to kick butt and do great things.

And I can eat whatever I want and not gain weight.

This is my life story in my early 20s.

I can run marathons and not have problems.

Like, I had a season in my life where it felt like I can do anything.

And then my 30s reminded me that's not true.

My 30s reminded me that I am as human as they come.

And I have as many challenges as anybody would have.

And so having sciatica was a-- it's one of those cases where if you have pain, it reminds you you're alive more than anything else does.

It reminds you that you've got to take your health seriously.

There's a reason why this show is called The 5 AM Miracle, colon, Healthy Productivity for High Achievers.

The subtitle is Healthy Productivity.

Because of these experiences, right?

I'm not talking about this stuff just for fun.

This is for a reason.

Everything stems back to, in some way, a personal story of mine that I then get to share with you.

And you get to hear all about it.

So there's that.

OK.

Number seven is kind of a fun one, which is that I grew a beard.

Yeah.

So that may not sound that significant.

But what I did was I had wanted to grow a beard for most of my adult life, but never really had the guts to grow it out for more than a couple of months.

And so I decided about two years ago to grow a beard out for more than a year without cutting it, which is called a yeard, a one-year beard.

If you do two years, it's called a tweard, as weird as that is.

I did 13 months without cutting my beard.

And it was a heck of a choice.

But the reason why I wanted to mention that here wasn't just because it was a bucket list goal of mine.

There was some kind of, I don't know, under the surface meaning to it that was very obvious to me as I grew it out, and especially after I shaved it off.

What I discovered was an identity that I didn't know mattered as much to me.

When I grew the beard, I became someone else.

I literally was no longer the Jeff Sanders that I knew in the mirror.

I was a different guy.

And in many ways, the beard was a mask.

It was a shield.

It was an obstacle between me and everyone else I was talking to.

I felt embarrassed in public to walk outside of my house because I was afraid I was going to be judged.

I felt dirty.

The beard felt gross.

It felt unkempt.

It did not match the internal vision for me that I have.

And that became so obvious as I grew this thing out.

And so I knew for a long time it wasn't going to last.

I hoped that it would.

I wanted it to become part of my identity, but it was so clear that that's not the best version of me.

And so when I shaved it off, it was this refreshing sense of, oh, there he is.

There's the me that I've been missing.

That is the identity I want to attach to and what I want to double down on and what I want to amplify.

And so I think that in terms of life choices, learning more about who you are and doubling down on the best versions of you, that's going to bring out your best self.

And so personal experiments like growing beards are a great example of something simple you could do to learn more about yourself.

And I think it's great.

And I'm going to do more experiments like that in the future.

I've done tons of them in the past.

Everything from my diet to running marathons to launching businesses, writing books, all of these things are experiments.

And that's the real underlying message here is that one of the best choices that I made in my 30s was to continue a theme from my 20s, which is experimentation, which is learning more about myself and letting those realizations and discoveries guide my future decisions in a way that's more intentional than it's ever been.

And so I've really, really enjoyed that process of self-discovery just in a new and better way in so many ways.

Now, number eight on the list this week is all about skills.

So in my 30s, in the last 10 years, I learned how to woodwork, how to code websites, how to engineer audio professionally as a podcaster, how to speak on big stages, write and publish books, how to sell to people who don't know me, maintain and repair a house, raise kids, and keep moving forward through all of the unpredictability that my life has seen firsthand.

I think that when I was trying to reflect in a really authentic way to what the last 10 years have meant to me, it became very obvious that my life is more repetitious than it was in the previous decade.

There is more stability in that sense, but also more habits.

Life is more of the same in that sense of every day I do about the same things I do on most days.

And there's not a lot of variability aside from my kids getting older and changing schools and things like that.

But ultimately for me, it comes down to if my life is going to change, it's gonna be because I did something differently on purpose.

I was intentional about changing my routines, about changing my goals, about starting a new project, learning a new skill, that the buck stops with me.

That if I want a different life, it's on me to make that happen.

And so when I reflected back on these skills that I've gained, I realized that the skills that I learned were a reflection of the goals I had.

So if I wanted to do something like build a workbench in my garage, well, then I had to learn how to build a workbench to put in my garage.

No one else is going to build it for me unless I'm gonna go buy one.

And when I decided, no, I'm gonna build it myself.

Well, to do that, I have to learn how to do so.

To run my website, I had to learn how to do some basic HTML and CSS.

And then later on, much more advanced versions of those.

I had to teach myself what was required to get the job done.

And at first, I was a bit apprehensive about kind of taking on more than I thought was necessary.

But as I dug into each of these areas deeper and deeper over time, I realized the immense value in just gaining new skills and seeing the direct application of those in my real life.

So what I really love, let's use woodworking as a good example.

I love to build things that are practical.

I love to build things I can actually use every day, as opposed to, let's say an artist who's gonna make something because it's beautiful.

I'm gonna make something that is functional and then hopefully it's beautiful in the process.

But the goal is not beauty, the goal is functionality.

I, as a productivity guy, just tend to lean in that direction of, I wanna do things that mean something to me and have a direct impact on my daily life.

And when you learn new skills, you can put those things to use right now and you can change and improve your life today.

And I've just really doubled down on that and loved to see the impact of that over time.

It's a fun process.

All right, number nine, and this is a biggie.

This is one I alluded to earlier.

Number nine is I embraced my life as an adult, but that didn't kick in until I was 37.

So yes, I turned 18 more than 20 years ago, but I wasn't an adult back then.

I was still in high school, right?

I was definitely far, far, far from becoming an adult.

I became an adult after my second daughter was born.

It did not hit me that I was responsible for my life in that really acute, direct sense until then.

My daughter, Rosie, was about three months old and I had this very just distinct moment while I was taking care of her one day when I realized this is it, I'm now there.

Like mentally, it clicked.

Something just shifted in my brain and I knew I was there.

And I have been a different person ever since.

The way that I take on projects, the way that I take on responsibility, it's everything has shifted.

Embracing my adulthood and the responsibility of that makes me different than I was.

And those moments are super important to recognize when a shift like that has taken place and to see the before and the after.

It's empowering, it's powerful, it's scary in some ways, but also just that is the nature of aging and growing up.

And I'm glad I finally got there.

It took me long enough, but I'll take it.

Whenever it happens, better late than never, I guess, but here I am.

All right, and the number 10 choice that I made in my 30s, which of course was done actually in my 20s, was producing this podcast.

The 5AM Miracle was launched right before I turned 29.

So the vast majority of this show has all taken place in my 30s.

So the podcast is a reflection of my last decade, almost directly.

And that's a powerful thing to say that not only does the podcast reflect my own journey and growth and challenges, but that I'm still here.

I'm still doing it.

The show is still alive and well, still moving forward, still making things happen.

To that degree, if you're listening to this podcast right now, you're listening to the premium version.

This is an ad-free version of the show that I'm making available for free to everyone on purpose.

Because this topic is important to me and because I want to give you a sense if you've not yet joined premium, that you can and it's awesome and there are no ads and it's just me talking to you like this.

So from that perspective, me doing the podcast for the last 10 plus years, actually it's more than 11 now, is a through line, it's a heartbeat, a drumbeat of my life that is pivotal for me in terms of my own reflection, my own opportunity to have public therapy, which is what this show becomes quite often.

It's a chance for me to share with the world what I'm thinking, what I'm experiencing, lessons learned, how that has changed my life, how it's changed the lives of those who I work with.

It's a powerful thing to have that type of an expression in your life.

I don't know what else I would do if I was trying to replicate that outside of podcasting, but if you don't have something like that in your life, the chance to express what's going on and share it with others, I think it's very healthy to do so, whether it's gonna be blogging, podcasting, some form of artwork, something that allows you to again and again come back to this thing that means something to you and you can express whatever's going on and share it.

Sharing personal stories, personal struggles is meaningful.

Now, I didn't mention these stories previously about my back surgery and IVF and all these things just to have like a woe is me moment.

Like I tell those stories on purpose because we relate to others' vulnerabilities.

We relate to other people and we can see them as human, see them as flawed.

It's because of our quirks and weird opportunities that we make odd decisions and I have verbal mistakes on this podcast all the time.

It's because of those moments that people relate to others and why you may relate to me.

And I know that and I want to be as human as possible if I can because it's not gonna be helpful otherwise.

So from that perspective, thank you for being a listener to the show for the last 10 plus years.

Thank you for sticking with me.

I plan to do this podcast, honestly, as long as I can talk, I'll probably still be here in some capacity and it's a fun journey and it's fun to have you along with it.

So having said all of that, those were my top 10 choices.

Let's now shift gears into what I'm calling my top three mistakes.

These are ones that I would hopefully like you to avoid if you can.

I'm not exactly sure of the age breakdown of my listenership in total.

From that perspective, I recently looked at my data on Spotify, which kind of gives a nice breakdown of demographics.

And according to my Spotify data, which is about probably 40% of my listeners every month, I've got an audience that is more female than male and is more younger than I am than older.

And so now Spotify might tend to lean that direction in general, but I do think it's interesting to know kind of who's in the audience, who's listening this week, who listens every week.

Honestly, I don't know.

I really truly don't know.

If you email me, which you should do, jeff@jeffsanders.com, then I'll learn more about you.

Otherwise, all I have is these goofy charts that I frankly find very impersonal.

So make it personal.

Join the Facebook group, email me, say hello.

I would love to hear from you.

Okay, having said that, let's get to these top three mistakes that I made in my 30s.

And the number one biggest, most obvious mistake is forgetting the phrase that I learned from Brian Tracy years ago, that this too shall pass.

My 30s were exponentially more difficult than my 20s.

My 30s were without question, the hardest decade of my life.

And when you're in the middle of difficulty, it is so easy to forget that this is a season, that this is going to move forward, that this is, your life is gonna change, something's gonna shift, and whatever you're experiencing now, you're not going to in the future.

And oftentimes, the seasons of, let's say like my children are a good example of this.

You're told often as parents, whatever season of life your kids are in, for better or for worse, it's gonna pass.

They're gonna grow out of it, they're gonna move on.

And so if you're miserable right now because your kids are difficult, well, it's gonna pass.

If your kids are awesome right now and really cute and fun like they are right now for me, well, it's gonna pass too and they're gonna be back to being annoying soon enough.

So it's just, I think it's important to recognize that whatever season you're in is a season.

And wherever you are in your life, it's gonna be over at some point.

The job that you have now, the place that you live, the people you're around, it's all temporary.

Everything is temporary.

And we're all being renewed by the day.

Every single morning at 5 a.m. is a new chance to restart and to do something in a smarter, better, more mature way.

And I don't wanna forget that, that life is fragile, that seasons pass, and that I want to embrace those great moments and let the bad ones kind of fade because they're also gonna pass.

It's this extra sense of awareness that I would like to have every day, remembering how special every day is.

So don't forget, this too shall pass.

For better or for worse, that's how it works.

Mistake number two, and this is one that's still kind of biting me in the butt, is not preparing enough for the future.

This is something that I have heard my whole life, and of course, I didn't take it seriously until it mattered, but everything from my health to my finances, to my relationships, I think that one thing I have missed is the longevity nature of life.

Meaning, if I'm gonna be alive in 30, 40, 50 years from now, which is totally possible, I should do something now to ensure a better future.

I should take care of myself, my health, take care of my finances, my money, my future savings, take care of my relationships, the people that are around me that I love the most, who love me the most, I should deepen those.

I should spend time in the areas of life that are gonna carry with me for the future.

And the things that are temporary, I don't know, find a way to forget about them, to ignore them, I guess, and really embrace those things that are gonna mean something to you down the road.

And so I want to spend more of my time preparing for the future in more strategic ways than I have so far.

So that's been a big hiccup for me that I'm still working on.

And finally, number three is avoiding asking for help.

This is one of my personal biggest flaws and something I am still terrible at to this day.

And in fact, I just recently wrote a reminder down to hire a coach for a project that I'm working on.

And it's something I don't ever do.

I just don't.

I have this bullheaded mentality that I am the answer to all my problems, dang it.

And the problem with that is, is that it's just not true.

Yes, I've got a lot of skills.

Yes, I could do so many things in a great way, but I can't do it all.

And I shouldn't, and I shouldn't even try in so many places.

And so if you're the kind of person like me who likes to be that solution, you want to take it on yourself.

I am going to argue that just consider an alternative approach.

You might be the best person for the job in so many things, but you can't do all the jobs.

And that has become true for me in so many ways that there are key areas of my life I've identified, and my work especially, oh my goodness, my job.

I've identified certain things that are just going to be me.

I'm going to own it, no one else is going to touch it.

But then other areas of my life and my business where I'm kind of bad, and if I don't get some help, I'm going to be the one that suffers because of it.

And so on the one hand, the buck stops with me.

And on the other hand, because that is true, I need to get whatever help I can to allow the path to be smoother going forward.

So if you don't ask for help often enough, if you don't hire people to help you with things you need help with, do so.

Get the help you need, get the professional advice necessary, right?

See the doctor, hire the CPA, get the business coach, whatever the thing is, right?

Seek out advice from people who are smarter, who've been down that road before.

Listening to this episode, this podcast, might be that for you.

If you're in your early 20s or something, this might be a great fit for that.

So ask for help, it's a big deal.

Okay, now let's shift from there into what I'm calling my best advice.

It may not be that, but it's good advice.

Here are some five strategies to make your life fan-frickin'-tastic, no matter how old you are.

These are five things that stood out to me upon my reflection of the last decade.

And number one, you have heard already this episode, which is to double down on your favorite things.

You know, one thing that's become quite obvious to me over time is that as life passes me by, and it does, time passes regardless of what's going on, I wanna spend more time on the fewer things that bring about the most value to me.

And so, simple example, I love to exercise, but I don't like to do all things when it comes to working out.

I like to run the trails, that's my number one thing.

I love to run the trails, it is my thing.

And I don't spend enough time in nature, not enough time doing that thing that I claim to love so much.

And I end up spending most of my time doing other things.

And if you think about your life from that perspective of, if you made a list of here are things I love, and then just ask the question, well, how much actual time do you spend on those things?

Or spend with those people?

Or spend engaging in that activity that you claim you love so much?

Is your calendar reflective of those values?

And this is a common test when you look at someone's calendar and ask the question, you know, what do you claim to care about?

Your calendar will actually show what you do care about.

So as a simple example there, if you say, for example, I love to exercise, but then we look at your past seven days and you worked out only one time and spent five hours a day watching TV.

We can see right there that what you actually value is television.

What you actually value is downtime.

You might claim to love to work out, but your calendar shows that's not true.

Now, if you wanna change that narrative, then you have a chance to do so.

You can simply shift the number of hours you spend on one activity versus another.

If we go back to Brian Tracy again, one of my favorite all-time personal growth speakers and authors, he has a concept called the EVE ratio, education versus entertainment.

And his argument is that if you just shift that formula a little bit to say, I will spend more time in what he calls education, what he means is personal professional growth, activities that make you a better you, and less time in entertainment, whatever that may be.

The more that you shift that ratio to be more focused on what brings value to your life and the less on entertainment, imagine the impact of that down the road.

So for me to double down on my favorite things is a practical matter of calendaring.

It's a question of, well, let's look at what I've been doing 'cause that's reflective of my values.

Now let's say I wanna change that.

Well, then go to the task manager, go to the calendar, go to my goals, and let's make real change today.

Make it reflective of what I say I care about and what I do, make those things match.

That's it.

All right, advice number two.

And this is one that might be painful.

Take the risk now.

Rip off the bandaid, get to the thing you've always wanted and do it now.

It is undeniable that fear is the greatest obstacle for everyone, everyone across the board.

We hold ourselves back more than anyone else will ever hold us back.

And what's holding us back from doing the things we love is always fear, always.

And if you take the risk now to jump in anyway, to embrace the fear, to start anyway, right?

Rip off the bandaid, go, jump in the deep end, make it happen.

That's when the results can show up.

Now it's gonna require time to get better, build the skillsets, learn what has to be done.

But big goals take a while and they take even longer if you don't start.

So taking the risk now is just it.

Life is today, right?

Life is in the moment.

And the idea that you're gonna somehow have all your ducks in a row down the road is a lie because you probably won't.

And even if you do, you're gonna find another excuse why you don't.

This is why, to go back to my top of my thirties, when I was laid off from my job, that's when I became an entrepreneur.

It's because I didn't have the guts to quit.

I didn't take the risk.

I was thrown into the deep end forcibly, but then once I realized I was there, I stayed.

I didn't hop out of the pool.

I stayed in.

Sometimes it takes that.

Sometimes risk is thrust upon you and you have to choose to embrace it.

But either way, it's gotta happen.

Whether you pull the bandaid off yourself or someone else does it for you, it's gonna be for the better either way.

So it's a toughie, but it's worth it.

All right, best advice number three.

This goes right in line with taking risk, which is to face your fears on purpose.

You know, the pain of transition is rewarded through the transformation on the other side.

When you choose to embrace your fear, when you choose to say yes to something difficult, almost always there is pain involved.

There is discomfort involved in making that choice to learn a new skill, to start a new job, to shift your career, to go on a blind date.

Whatever the thing is you're doing that might be painful, the reward happens just on the other side of that fear and the transformation that takes place when you've made that leap.

And the only way any of this happens is by saying yes to fear.

The only way this happens is by finding a way to take a forward step in the name of fear, with fear right there.

That's what courage is, is action despite the fear.

It's not saying I'm courageous, therefore I have no fears, I'm not scared, no.

Courage is just moving forward with it.

And that's so much easier said than done.

But one thing that has shifted for me definitely in the last couple of years is I have been so much more intentional about acknowledging my fears, of recognizing when I'm holding myself back, calling myself out for it, writing it down, and then taking direct action towards it.

And when that takes place, then growth occurs, transformation occurs, change occurs.

And then I have hopefully a better outcome in the future, but at the very least, I face the fear.

And the more often you do that, the easier it gets over time.

You literally will build muscles that make you stronger and more resilient and more capable to handle the difficulties and the intentional challenges you may put yourself through.

So facing fears is powerful, and you wanna do that fairly often to make yourself as resilient as possible.

All right, advice number four, and this is one that I think I've actually done a pretty good job with, but one I still want to remind myself matters, which is to laugh, to smile, to dream and wonder, and find joy in everything.

I literally used to say every morning when I woke up, today is a great day, and I meant it.

I stopped saying it for a long time, and I think that was an indication that I had changed, and possibly not for the better, but it was such a moniker, such a heartbeat in my life to say today is a great day and to mean it and to go make that possible.

And so if you choose joy on purpose, laughing every day, smiling, dreaming, filling your life with wonder and possibility and curiosity and creativity and all of these wonderful things that we have the option to opt into every day, but in so many ways, this is a learned skillset, a learned default response.

Choosing to laugh, choosing to smile, choosing joy, it is a choice for so many of us.

We think it's a response to our circumstances.

We think it's a reaction to what's going on around us, but what if what goes on around us is a reaction of us?

What if our environment is reflective of us?

Flip that script.

You become the joy that you want to see in the world.

That's what this is.

And to choose that on purpose and to bake that into your habitual response system and for that to be you, it's a choice.

And it's a powerful one and it's a wonderful one to make, but it requires a, to some degrees, a daily reminder to get back to that.

But it's a great place to be.

And finally, number five for my top five strategies to make your life awesome is to surround yourself with people you love.

Honestly, this should be number one.

And I say that as someone who basically has isolated himself a lot more than I thought that I would.

This was especially true for me when I left the world of high school and college, where I was around lots of friends all the time.

When I made that pivot to graduate college and go into the workforce, I was not surrounded by people like I used to be.

I didn't have that support system I used to have.

And literally from that moment on, it has been a very different life trajectory.

And to surround yourself with people you love is much more of a choice now as an adult than it ever was as a kid.

When you're in school, you're surrounded by your friends, literally all day, every day.

As an adult, you're surrounded by your colleagues who may or may not be your friends, depends on who you work with, I guess, or what choices you make there.

You may see your family a lot, or like Tessa and I, we live quite a ways from our family, you know, over 450 miles from them.

And to spend time with them in person is a scheduled event.

So to surround yourself with people you love, especially as an adult, it's such an important aspect of your health, your joy, your connection, your mental sanity, all of these things really are derived from those who you surround yourself with.

And this goes beyond things like a mastermind group or smart friends.

I'm talking about people you absolutely can be yourself around, your true authentic self.

There are so few people I can just be me around without a filter, without a mask.

And you want to be with those people as much as you can be, because that's indicative of your comfort level and your connection.

And these are things I never, honestly did not value until I had kids.

It didn't make sense until then.

And now it makes a lot of sense.

Now it's very obvious how important that stuff is, how important those people are, those relationships are.

So take that part seriously, 'cause it pays itself back a lot.

Okay, I'm gonna wrap up this conversation with what I'm calling three hopes for the future.

And these are hopes that I have for myself, but I especially have these hopes for you as well.

These are things that I think, how do they speak to the life that I want to build?

And they speak to the experiences I want to have.

And so here they are.

Number one, find peace, not progress.

I am a high achiever.

I am caffeinated.

I am forward moving.

I'm the kind of guy who checks boxes and I love progress.

I talk about all the time.

But one thing I don't intentionally seek out is peace.

And I think that my attention to progress impedes my ability to find peace.

I think that my intentionality on being intentional might actually be an obstacle for me just being okay with where I am.

It's hard for me to find a moment to breathe, to be grateful, to be in the moment, to be at peace with where I am.

And I know that for my own mental sanity and for my, let's call it ultimate success, it's gonna be based on my ability to just sit alone in a room by myself and be okay with life, to find peace in where I am and not be as hyper-focused on checking boxes, moving forward, accomplishing goals, making money, whatever the thing is you're after.

Ultimately, peace is gonna win if that becomes a focus.

And it has not been for me.

So I hope that for you.

I hope peace is part of your future.

Number two, seek to love and be loved.

I don't tend to talk about these concepts hardly ever, or even think about them hardly ever.

But it was one thing that just struck me in my reflection of the last 10 years, that that is such a guiding force in the moments of my life that have been fulfilling and beautiful is that love was present.

Usually relationships, usually with people, sometimes with things, sometimes with experiences, but ultimately it's this connection, this human to human connection based in love, not in fear.

And I think that is the biggest battle.

I mean, it's a devil on my shoulder and an angel in the other one, the love and the fear.

Those are the two biggest forces we're fighting every day to hopefully have the love win out and the fear be extinguished, but that's the battle, right?

Always happening.

And I wanna seek more of the love.

That's one of my biggest hopes.

Finally, number three is to embark on a grand adventure.

I think this is really indicative of when I think about goal achievement, becoming a high achiever, grand success.

I think the word adventure speaks a lot to my 20s when I was doing a lot of personal experiments.

It speaks to a lot of my entrepreneurial journey, but it's just that, it's a journey.

That life is an adventure or it can be, as opposed to just a methodical process of go to work again and again, get the paycheck, buy the groceries again and again, right?

Life is just the same thing over and over.

I'm not interested in that.

I know it's a huge part of life.

It's 98% of my life, but what if adventure was a through line?

What if there was a new story to tell?

A story of your life that when looked back on the last decade, for example, you could really say that your life was an adventure, that big, awesome things happened because you took the risk.

You said yes to the fear.

You jumped in.

You dared to dream and to wonder and to live and laugh.

That life is not just a series of check boxes and chores, but it's much more than that.

I want more of my life.

I want a lot more.

And I think that one of the key concepts for that becoming true is embracing this idea that my life can be an adventure, that it can be a glorious sense of curiosity and experimentation and discovery and exploration.

Like, wouldn't that be a better life?

That's my question to you.

It's my question to myself.

Wouldn't that be better?

I think so.

I think it'd be a lot better.

And so I'm gonna set out to do more of that.

That is my hope, both for myself and for you.

I wanna make that happen.

Okay, well, that's all I've got for you this week on this episode, this special episode of this 5A Miracle Premium Edition.

But more than that, I think it's, I wanna spend more time on this podcast being less voiceover actor Jeff Sanders, which I think you hear every single week on this show.

Right, I have a degree in theater.

I was gonna go into radio as a career and I chose podcasting instead, but there's this element of performance that comes across on the mic every week.

And I think a lot of what I wanna shift in the next decade is also making this show less of a performance and more of a conversation.

Less of me, I guess in a certain way, less of a song and dance routine and more of a, here's what's up, here's my life, here's what's going on.

Let's just talk it through.

Let's find that connection.

Let's make things work.

No, we'll see.

But once again, it's all experiment.

I don't know what's gonna happen next.

We'll see, it's all an adventure.

So from that perspective, thank you for listening.

This has been a lot of fun.

Of course, email me, jeff@jeffsanders.com.

If you have ideas for the future episodes of this podcast, if you wanna connect, I would love to hear from you.

Let's connect like that.

Thanks a lot.

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