Your Hero Has a Choice
Embracing Your Role as the Ultimate Decision-Maker

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #542: Your Hero Has a Choice: Embracing Your Role as the Ultimate Decision-Maker

Jeff Sanders
For years, I believed that my success was dependent on someone else.

For years, I walked through my life as just a guy waiting for his big break.

I thought something would happen to me.

Well, it turns out that something was actually someone, and that someone was me all along.

This is the 5am Miracle, episode number 542.

Your hero has a choice, embracing your role as the ultimate decision maker.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful, lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer specializing in delivering high-energy, interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

Now in the episode this week, I'll break down why you are the hero of your own story, why trusting others is almost always a terrible idea, and how you can fully own your life, including all of the responsibility but also all of the success coming your way.

Let's get to it.

So let's go back to around 2006.

At this time, I am in college and I'm working as a waiter in my very tiny college town of Kirksville, Missouri.

And as a waiter, I love my job.

It is hectic, it is busy, it is high energy.

You can imagine someone like me who just loves to be in those types of environments where there's a lot going on.

I have to think on my feet, talk to a lot of people, make a lot of decisions.

It was a lot of fun.

I really, really enjoyed being a waiter in this particular restaurant environment.

But one thing that stood out to me were on our busiest nights, Friday night, Saturday night, lots of people, a lot going on.

And I'd be in the middle of this very busy shift and I would take these very intentional breaks where I would go back to the kitchen, I would grab a glass, usually of iced tea or something, and I would chug it in the back to get some energy, get some hydration.

And then I would stand there waiting for myself to kind of catch my breath and prepare to go back in to this busy environment.

And one thing that I was doing without realizing it was I was standing in a way that you might point out as what Superman would do.

Literally standing with my hands on my hips, my chest puffed in the air, and me kind of deep breathing as I'm preparing to go back in.

It was this very like stoic kind of presence.

And I didn't realize I was doing this until my boss pointed it out.

He came back multiple times over the course of a few months and he would call me out on this and say, well, there it is again.

You're doing it again.

And I was like, doing what?

What's happening?

And he was saying that I was kind of posing as a superhero in the back of this restaurant in the kitchen, just having this sense of confidence and preparation and intentionality.

And looking back at it years later, like I know exactly what I was doing.

I was preparing myself mentally, emotionally, physically to go do something that required my full attention and required my best self to get out there and do my thing.

And what I was doing unconsciously was standing in a way that was confidence building.

I was embracing the role as the guy in charge.

I wasn't the boss.

I wasn't the leader.

I wasn't, I had no actual official title.

I was just a waiter, but yet I was owning this presence of someone who said, you know, I've got my tables, I've got my people to serve.

I've got my section, I've got responsibility for something and I want to do my best.

Of course I want to make great money with tips, whatever the case is, but I wanted to be that guy, that superhero.

I wanted to own that sense of heroic power and having a great posture and performing at my best.

In effect, I became Superman and I have carried that over into my life ever since.

From my actual posture day to day to the way that I approach new goals to new conversations, whenever I walk into a scenario that is difficult for me, I want to embrace a new and challenging experience with a sense of confidence.

It may be misplaced.

Maybe there's too much ego involved, but why not approach my life with a grander sense of I've got this.

And I say all this to juxtapose the reality that I've heard many times over the years, which is that everyone is guessing.

No one knows what they're doing.

Everyone is just trying to make it up in the moment as we go through life.

No one really knows the answer to any of this.

And that may be kind of more philosophical than I want to go this week, but I think it really does point to this idea that people are looking to you for answers, looking to you for confidence in difficult moments.

People are looking to you to ask and answer difficult questions and be that leader, whether it's just in your family or in your community or at your job or in your business or even for yourself.

And that's the topic this week, is that the most important person for you to impress, for you to bring confidence to is to you.

I refer to you as a hero, and I have for the last probably six or eight months here on this podcast, talking about this concept that your hero has a story to tell.

That if you were in the middle of a difficulty, what would the hero of your story do in that moment?

Well, your hero has a choice to do the right thing, to do the wrong thing, to do anything.

And when you embrace that identity as the hero of your story, it changes things.

It changes how you approach your goals.

It changes which goals you're after.

Being a hero is saying that you've got some sort of secret skillset.

You've got some magical powers.

You've got something miraculous going on.

Well that miracles at 5am or not, it's up to you, I guess, but your hero is you.

That essence is inside you whether you tap into it or not.

And the goal of the episode this week is not just to identify and acknowledge that that's true, because I believe that it is, that there is a better version of you maybe hiding inside you somewhere, but that better version is there ready to emerge.

And the goal for us now is to identify it, embrace it, and then leverage it, and taking that role as the decision maker of your life and making bigger and better choices to ensure you have a bigger and better future.

Having said all of that, I've got three key ideas that I want to break down with a little more specificity to bring this to life.

And the very first idea is just what I said, that you are the hero of your story.

And I want to break that one down a little further and juxtapose that with the opposite point.

No one is coming to save you.

You're not going to win the lottery.

You're not going to find luck as your path forward.

And I say that with a lot of confidence.

No one is going to come save you.

If someone's going to, it's going to be you.

You're the solution.

Your hero is you.

Your pivot point, the time in your life when things shift, it will happen because of something you did.

It will not be because of circumstance.

It will not be because something landed in your lap.

What you are looking for is already here.

It's right in the mirror.

That may sound a bit trite or a bit ridiculous to say, but it is always true.

Yes, their luck does happen sometimes.

Yes, some people do actually win the lottery.

But to live your life as though that is your future, as though everything that you're pushing for is something out of your control, that's kind of an exhausting way to live.

You're putting a lot of pressure on systems you have no impact over, no influence over.

And then what happens when you don't get the luck you were hoping for?

Well, then your whole life passes you by and the whole time you were waiting, you were just in the shadows on the sidelines, never in the game, never doing your thing, never tapping into your greatest talents and skill sets and opportunities because you were waiting for someone else, something else to come along and save you from the difficulties of where you are today.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't people who are in situations that they actually can't control.

Everything from disabilities to personal challenges and circumstances that could be far beyond this conversation.

But if you hear what I'm saying right now, this is for you.

If you know that there are things you could own, this is for you and that your hero is you.

And that that pivot point we're looking for, that opportunity for you to say, wait a minute, I'm stuck in a difficult place now.

I want to be somewhere else going forward.

What's going to change?

The pivot point is that moment of change.

It could be mental, it could be physical, but there is a moment in time that you will be able to point to and say, here is the before and here is the after.

And this pivot point changed everything.

Now, from my experience, those pivot points are very small.

They're very simple, literally a single decision, sending one email, writing down one goal, taking one tiny action, getting out of bed at 5am on one random Tuesday morning, whatever the thing happens to be, that's when things shift.

And when they do, and you own the responsibility, you own the future, you own the problem, own the solution, you own it, everything.

Well, then going forward, yeah, you have a lot of work to do.

You've got a lot on your plate to take control of, but that's where the power is.

Having power, having responsibility, that all comes together and that's where the opportunity lies.

It lies in you saying, whatever's going to happen is going to, in some way or another, come through me as the person in charge of my life because nobody else cares about your life more than you do.

So highlight that point.

So recently I've been working on a number of systems in my business where I've been trying to change out podcast ad agencies.

I've been working with different podcast hosting companies, different teams to partner with, a lot of different shifts as far as who is involved in one way or another around the production of this podcast you're hearing now.

And the biggest shift that I have made, which I'll get to in more detail in a second, was owning my podcast again.

You might think, well, isn't it your show?

And I would say, well, yes, it is my show.

But who actually runs this show?

Who's actually in charge of this?

Not just who chooses the content, which is always me, but who chooses how the show is produced and who's involved with it and when things get done and where and how are the details worked out?

And for a number of years, I was in this massive delegation mode of, I'm going to find other people, put them in the driver's seat for all these various components.

And recently, one of the biggest shifts that I made was to bring all that stuff back in to my own wheelhouse.

The show is mine again in a way that it wasn't for a long time.

And I could get to lots of specifics on what that actually looks like.

But the reality is that there is a massive difference between saying, this thing is mine and I care about it versus this thing is shared with others, but they don't care.

To that point that nobody else cares about your life as much as you do.

None of these other companies or people care about this podcast more than me.

No one, not even close.

The only person on planet earth that cares about my show as much as I do is me.

Nobody else comes close.

And so when you have something as precious to you as that, whether it is a podcast, a business, a family dynamic, your own life, your livelihood, right?

You as an individual, nobody else cares like you do.

So if you want better results for you, the buck stops with you.

It has to because nobody else is involved like you are.

No one else has that at stake because let's say for example, my podcast disappears tomorrow as a tech problem, as a financial problem, the show's gone forever.

That would hurt me first and foremost and fully that that's, that's what that means.

The things you care about, the projects, the people, the systems, your life, it's you as the one who is emotionally attached to the outcomes and the possibilities.

And then when bad things happen, you're probably the one who also experiences the brunt of that emotional trauma from those difficult days.

So my first point here, you being the hero of your story and that no one is coming to save you and that nobody else cares as much about you as you do, that sets you up to be that solution to own that identity as the person who says, yes, this is my life.

Yes, I'm fully here.

Yes, it's up to me.

Point number two, which now builds upon the story I just told with the podcast, stop trusting others with things that are that precious to you.

You know, delegation is a wonderful thing.

There's plenty of things I'll delegate in my life and in my business, and that's awesome.

But delegation is only great until it's not.

And what you may find yourself in is a position of, of the blame game where somebody else was in control.

They messed up.

You're the person who got injured in that scenario.

And now you're just going to point fingers, which then also of course leads to playing the victim and believing that everyone's out to get you, believing that you are just simply a bystander and that bad things happen to you.

And that's the end of the story.

And the problem with any of that line of thinking is that it makes you so helpless and being helpless is such a weak position to take.

Now it might be true.

There may be scenarios where you actually are a victim and there are people to blame.

But even if that's true, being helpless, isn't helpful.

Pointing fingers doesn't allow you to actually move forward.

Then you just ruminate on negative emotions and the blame game and you spend this endless amount of time toiling over who to yell at as opposed to asking the question, what can I do now?

How can I trust myself?

How can I trust my abilities to move forward?

How can I learn the skills that I need to fill in those gaps?

How can I make an intentional plan so that I can map out where I am now and where I want to be and how to get there?

Knowing the whole way along that journey, the buck stops with you.

It's going to be your plan.

It's going to be your steps to take.

Even if the impetus of all of that started from you actually being a real victim or a perceived victim, who cares?

It doesn't actually matter.

The delegation of the responsibility in that respect may come back around to bite you.

And the goal here is to say, if I'm going to delegate something important, I'm going to delegate it to me.

I'll be the one who takes care of it.

I'll be the one who owns it.

I'll make the plan.

I'll see it through.

If I do assign, let's say a task to someone else, well then it's up to me to make sure that person followed through and did the job and did it well and did it on time and et cetera, et cetera.

But at the end of the day, you're the manager, you're the CEO, you're the one in charge.

You're the one with the plan who guarantees its success.

And so when I say stop trusting others, I don't mean fully.

Of course, life is a communal activity.

We're all in this together, but trust, but verify, right?

We have to make sure that other people are on our team, that they care somewhat as much as we do, that they're enough invested in the outcome, that they're incentivized to do the right thing if for no other reason, they just like you as a person.

And so I have to build systems and guardrails and successful ventures that are based on this idea that I'm in charge, my life, my business, my goals, my success.

It sounds like it's an ego trip or like it's all about you, but let's not kid ourselves.

Your life is all about you.

That's what we're talking about.

And if you want different results for you, then that's what this is and has always been about.

So that's step two, right?

We acknowledge first of all, that you are the hero of your story.

We've acknowledged that trusting others is a tricky game and you're going to make some wise choices there while always owning the problem and the solution yourself.

Which brings us to step three, identify where you are stuck and make a decision.

So the episode this week is called your hero has a choice, and we're trying to embrace the role as the one in charge, as the one who is making these decisions.

So when I say you're here as a choice, let me break that down for what this means to this context of being stuck in part three.

When you are at a fork in the road, when you have a choice to make, do I pursue goal A or goal B?

Do I try strategy one or strategy two?

We tend to find ourselves in those moments when we have tricky problems to solve or goals to achieve, or we're trying to strategize.

We need to be intelligent about what to do.

This is not just brute force action, which in some cases can be helpful.

But as I've realized, especially recently, strategy trumps everything.

It's more important to have the right plan in place than it is to just arbitrarily move really fast in the wrong direction.

So when I say your hero has a choice, I literally mean a choice of which path are you going to take?

Which goals are you going to pursue?

Which habits are you going to adopt?

What does your life look like and what kind of intentionality do you put in place to guarantee you get what you want?

This is ownership at a very practical level.

What does your calendar look like?

What does your task manager look like?

What does your actual day-to-day life look like?

How do you emotionally feel about it?

And identifying where things are going south and fix the problems.

I've had a real difficult time the last, we'll call it six to 12 months, with a variety of business challenges and financial issues.

And one of the biggest things that I've been trying to navigate is this question of how do I know what the right next choice is?

I know I want to make a good choice.

I know I want to move forward.

But how do I have the confidence of knowing that the next choice is the right one?

And the one thing that has been true over and over and over again is I would rather just make a decision and pivot tomorrow than not make a choice today hoping for clarity tomorrow.

In other words, I'd rather make a mistake in the moment now, make a choice and move, get the feedback from that decision, and then pivot as necessary because that path forward, no more possibly messy, complicated, will actually result in faster progress because you're going to learn in the moment, on the fly.

You make a choice.

It was the wrong one.

Okay, make a second choice.

It was the wrong one too.

Okay, make a third choice.

Oh, that one was better.

Okay, let's build on that and let's move forward in that direction.

It's this very active role of saying, I just need to, yes, take action, but it's the strategy behind saying, I'm learning, I'm involved in this.

It's a deliberate decision to be actively engaged in the process.

Cal Newport, the author of the book, Deep Work, as well as many others, has talked a lot about deliberate practice.

His kind of take on the 10,000 hour rule, which is that anybody who spends 10,000 hours in something becomes an expert, he basically refutes that in saying that 10,000 hours is not the point.

Amount of time isn't it.

What we're going for is deliberate practice, intentionality, being fully engaged and learning and growing and changing in the moment.

When that's the case, you don't need 10,000 hours.

You can do it in 10 hours because you're so actively, like your brain is so turned on.

You're so there that you learn so quickly.

You can find the right choice, put it into play and make it happen.

Along those same lines of the 10,000 hour rule, I remember years ago when my wife, Tessa, was a teacher here in Nashville, um, at a middle school.

One thing that she learned in her kind of educational experiences was that there was a very common trend for teachers themselves to start in their first year and grow quite a bit and their second year, they would continue their third year.

They would grow even more, but after their third year, they would stagnate.

And so a teacher who had been on the job for 30 years in many respects had the same skillset that they did after their third year.

And so they grew a lot in the beginning and they plateaued and they just stayed where they were for decades in some cases.

And so what does that reflect?

Well, that really just highlights the point that growth, sure, it's going to happen when you're new at something, but there is a point in time where you might stop, where you might just not make any more decisions about how to improve.

Now, in some cases you may say, well, you've mastered that skillset.

Sure.

That can be fine in some cases, but we're talking about your life.

We're talking about something that's much higher than just maybe a random job you might take on or random pursuit.

If we're talking about your life and this intentionality of growth and improvement over time, I don't want to be the kind of person who, you know, in my early twenties had three difficult years and then I just rode that wave the rest of my life.

Like it doesn't, that's not how life works.

It doesn't work that way.

Right.

We have new challenges, new goals, new opportunities to grow.

And so my like perspective on this now as the hero of my own story is to be committed to that process of deliberate practice, to be fully engaged in my own life, to have a sense of awareness that says, I know what's going on.

I know what the problems are.

I know what my solutions look like because I've mapped them out.

I have practical literal lists of here's what I'm doing to solve these problems.

Here's who I'm trying to trust.

Here's who I'm working with to make these things happen.

And then you hope for the best, but the whole process is not based on hope.

It's based on the hope that your systems that you currently have are going to work.

And if they don't, you fix them.

You're the one that's it.

It is once again about you.

I don't want this to sound like some sort of lecture.

I feel like I'm just kind of harping at maybe this theoretical version of who you might be.

But I think that what I've experienced, especially in these last few months, just points out to me over and over and over again, that my life is my choice.

My path forward is based on the choices that I make today.

And I want to make sure that not that I'm avoiding regret, but I think more importantly that I don't find myself in a downward spiral of those potential issues of pointing fingers, of playing the victim, of looking at failures in my life as a defining characteristic of where I've become or I've wound up.

I would rather say, here are a list of successes.

Here are a list of things that are going well.

And guess what?

Those things happen because I was intentional about my time and my goals.

And now I have a better plan for the future, bigger goals to achieve, grander things to do, more impact to be had, whether personally or communally.

We're looking for opportunities here to grow over time.

My take on personal development, personal growth has always been one of iterative choices, right?

Tiny choices every day that are 1% better, not necessarily in every area of my life at once.

It's kind of exhausting.

But at least to the degree of saying that, yes, I want to have that confidence that a year from now, I'm going to be better in these core areas that I care about because I spend that time to do a little bit of growth each and every day.

And that it's purposeful.

It's not mindless.

It's not random.

It's not some old habit that I just continue to do, but instead it's built on intentionality.

And I know it's a lot of words to kind of say the same thing.

I don't want to beat this horse to death, but I do want to make sure that it's very clear that if you are in a position now where you feel stuck, if you're in a position now where your career is stagnating, your health has been poor, your stress levels have been going up, that we can solve these problems.

All of this is figureoutable.

I think that's a Marie Forleo quote right there, but everything can be figured out.

Everything is figureoutable, which means that whatever problem you're going through, whatever issues are at hand, they all have solutions.

They all got something you could do to take action and own this and move it forward.

You don't have to feel worst case scenarios are going to take place or that you're stuck and you're always going to be stuck.

I say that from personal experience.

I know what the emotional state is to feel like you just can't quite get it.

And that sucks.

It's no fun to feel that way.

It's not a fun experience, but it is so exhilarating to be on a path where the actions you're taking are producing results you love and you can see that scaling over time.

You can see your finances improving.

You can see the weight falling off.

You can see the stress reducing.

You can see the results.

That's empowering.

That's self-reinforcing.

And then it's much easier to own your journey as the hero because when you see results coming in, it's pretty easy to be a hero.

Honestly, it's awesome to ride those waves as easy, but none of this conversation has to do with things being easy.

Let's not get ourselves there.

All of this is to say that when these challenges show up, when these issues are there, that's when we need to be at our best.

That's when the muscles we've built up need to really kick in.

That's not for the easy days.

We don't build big muscles to lift light weights.

That's not the point.

We're building strength here to be able to do the difficult carry, the big lift.

That's why you need the big muscles, metaphorically, of course, or otherwise.

But that's where we're going.

Build that strength.

Build those systems.

Prepare yourself for those difficult days.

Own that process.

Be your own hero. (upbeat music) And for the action step this week, yes, of course, become that hero of your own story.

Now that you know that you are the solution you've been looking for, it's time to fully own that identity.

Because you are a superhero, you can handle this.

This is your moment to grow.

This is your moment to make that first move.

Make that first action.

Make this happen.

Now, of course, be sure to subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5AM Miracle community by getting the premium ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5AM 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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