134 UnF Yourself: Conclusion-Step Up, Then Think

We close out the book’s final chapter with a clear call to move from mantra to motion, to treat growth as a loop—think, act, learn, repeat—and to choose deliberate trade-offs instead of waiting for perfect timing. Stories, tools, and a simple challenge help you shift from can’t to won’t to done.

• mindset loop from internal assertions to external action
• sacrifice and invisible work behind visible success
• stop waiting for perfect timing and change current behavior
• can’t vs won’t reframed with yet and tiny actions
• fewer books, deeper application, repeat for recall
• time capsule practice to track progress and identity
• Agile Brain assessment to explore subconscious blockers
• seize moments, not just days, with deliberate swings
• next book reveal: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

If you want to learn how to do this or you want me to help you set it up for yourself, reach out to me or Sam
If you message us and say that you heard about it on the show, we'll send you a free assessment and then we'll set up a discovery call so that you could see what the assessment reveals for you
We'd really like to ask you to share them with others. Comment so that we know that you're getting value from them. Send us notes

Chapters

• 0:00 Last Chapter: Where Next?
• 3:34 Mindset Loop: Think, Do, Repeat
• 6:32 Stop Waiting: Trade‑offs and Sacrifice
• 10:29 Invisible Work: Momentum and Consistency
• 13:24 Stops and Freedom: Change What You Do
• 16:29 Can’t vs Won’t: Small Actions Compound
• 19:09 Drink Deeply: Fewer Books, More Doing
• 22:24 Time Capsule: Measure Your Progress
• 24:44 Action Over Intention: Do, Don’t Just Plan
• 28:54 Step Up to the Plate: Practice, Swing, Learn
• 31:29 Agile Brain: Unstick Subconscious Blocks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:17

Welcome to What's on Your Bookshelf, a life and leadership podcast where we live out loud the pages of the books that are on our shelves. With your host, Denise Russo and Sam Powell.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of What's on Your Bookshelf. This is our life and leadership podcast where we're living out loud the pages of the books that are on our bookshelves. I'm here today with my friend and co-host Sam Powell. And it's always happy and sad when we get to the last chapter of a book, but we are in the last chapter already of this book. So Sam great to be here. I can't believe it's over.

SPEAKER_02: 1:56

I know it's crazy. I feel like this one went by really fast, even though it's been, I mean, a few months at this point. But yeah, I'm excited. And this last chapter is called Where Next? So we've gone through all of the um internal mantras, the personal assertions, as he calls them, that you should be telling yourself. And this is really, so now what?

SPEAKER_01: 2:24

So now what? So it starts this chapter by saying it's really simple. In order to improve your internal world, you have to start by taking action in the external world. You get out of your mind and get out into your life. And so I found that to be an interesting way to start this last chapter because he's saying to fix your insides, you have to start with the outsides. But I wonder if it's to fix your outsides, you don't start with your insides. That's what the whole beginning of the book was about.

SPEAKER_02: 2:51

Yeah. And I think it's I think theoretically, we'd start with our insides, right? We'd get our mindset right, we would do all those things. But I think in reality, humans are messy. Like we are messy, messy creatures. And so we'll get stuck if we try to get everything right and then get into action. So I think his his big thing is get out of your head and into your life, right? Like get out of where you're just spinning your wheels, work on it, and then get it back into your head, right? It's almost like create a loop instead of a line. You know, and I think that that's really his, you know, his encouragement. And if we look at the seven ascertations he gave us, is you know, started with I am willing, I am wired to win, I got this, I am, I embrace the uncertainty. I am not my thoughts, I am what I do, I am relentless, I expect nothing and accept everything. So those are all the uh episodes and chapters that we went through. But I think if I look back at that list, I really think of like this is all mental stuff, right? All of this are mindsets, but it's about taking that mindset and doing something with it. So it's like that, you know, think, believe, go out and do, right? Think, believe, go out and do. And like again, like sort of this circular repetitive thing, right? I'm willing. And so go be willing, right? What does that mean to be willing in an action sense? And then what do you learn from that? And then go back in and right, and then be wired to win, and then be, you know, then think you got this. And you know, I think that if you build on that, it's sort of this compounding effort.

SPEAKER_01: 4:34

I think that you're right on all of a sudden. Love how you just described it as a circle because life isn't just linear. Maybe your age is, but your circumstances, your obstacles, the way you move your career around isn't just a blueprint that is easy to follow. He talks about in here that sometimes we get stuck waiting for something. Oh, I'll I'll do this when my uh kids grow up, I'll do this when I buy a house, I'll do this when I graduate from college, I'll do this when I get promoted at work instead of realizing that why are you waiting? And he says in here, if you want your life to be different, you have to make it happen. And that's so common sense, not commonly applied. But I wonder if, Sam, sometimes we say we want something different, but we aren't really ready to make the compromises that get us there. I was at a conference one year with John Maxwell where he was talking about how somebody had said to him, I want to be just like you. And he said to the person, uh, I've been doing this for 50 years. You've been here for like a day. And you don't know what I had to do to get to where I am, to be who I am. And those things, if you're willing to make those sacrifices, then maybe you can have your own blueprint of doing what I've done to get where I am to have what I have. But if you just look at somebody you aspire, maybe it's somebody with a big title, maybe it's somebody with some sort of popularity. You don't know what it took for them to get there. In fact, this last couple um weeks ago, I guess by the time this episode comes out, Vincent and I went to this leadership conference. It's one of my favorite leadership conferences of the year. It's called the Global Global Leadership Summit. And it's hosted by this uh leadership expert named Craig Rochelle. There was a speaker there, one of the keynote speakers on the first day, uber successful according to culture's terms of what success is as far as the title and the money for the job. But the woman that was in the in the speech, she sacrificed Sam everything. She talked about in her speech how she wasn't there for her kids, or she would be like looking through her phone, doing work emails while her kids were talking with her and saying, Yeah, uh-uh-huh, yeah, okay, give me just a minute, give me just a minute. And there's it struck me because I know there's been times that I did that. In fact, I have a lot of regrets from when Vincent was a baby because I didn't have a choice. I had to work in order to have health insurance and stuff. And yet he then had to have a lot of hours in a daycare that I think really hurt him, even in his little subconscious being as he got into his toddler years. So, what sacrifices are you willing to make to get what you want? So, if in this chapter it says what's next, for me, it's a question of what do you really, really, really, really want to have next, and then go back to our other episodes and figure out what obstacles do you need to remove and what habits do you need to break and create.

SPEAKER_02: 7:44

Yeah, yeah. And he says in here, right, here's the thing future you is not going to regret a lack of achievement or absence of any one thing in your life. The only thing you'll regret is not trying, not striving, not pushing through when the going got tough. Right. And I think that goes back. I've heard John Maxwell say the same thing, right? Like, if you want to get where I am, you have to be willing to do what I did essentially. And I remember hearing him say that when I was like at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, and now a few years into it, like I feel it on a totally different level, right? And I think anybody who's worked towards something, right? Like set a goal and said, I want to do this, I want to be this, I want to have this, and then they put all the work into it, you can, I think experience that in a different way of like the work, the sacrifices, the trade-offs, the decisions, the mistakes, the you know, late nights, early mornings, attention being split in ways that maybe you don't necessarily want it to be. But nobody sees any of that, right? Nobody sees those struggles, those things, those, oh my gosh, what did it do? All they see is the momentum when it finally catches, the results when they finally come out, you know, and and things like that. And it's funny, I've talked to a whole bunch of people recently, just checking in, you know, kind of middle of the summer. Hey, how you doing? What's going on? And um, all of them have been like, oh yeah, I see you on LinkedIn. Like, I'm you know, I'm really seeing all your stuff. And I'm like, well, one, it's good to know people are actually seeing the stuff that's going out because I don't know that for sure, right? I've got metrics, but like that doesn't actually tell you if somebody's seeing it and you know, taking it in. But it's funny because I've been posing on LinkedIn for years. Like, and now all of a sudden people are seeing it, and it's because nobody saw the work that went into it, the strategy, the adjustments, the tripping, the you know, mistakes, the this didn't work, the oh my gosh, this is I'm never gonna make this work, thoughts, right? All of that. But it was in doing those actions, right? In getting into the game, in you know, taking the steps and you know, really striving and trying, like he said, that you learn the lessons to move forward, to make the changes in your life that you really want to make, to get to the goals you really want to get to.

SPEAKER_01: 10:12

I love the things that you're putting out online, and I'm glad people are maybe starting to recognize them or re-engaging with them because it's great content. So, friends, if you're not already following us on LinkedIn or following Sam's content that she's putting out on Substack, I highly encourage you to go check it out because you not only will get value from it, but you'll be able to change something in the way that you're approaching whatever you're going through. And some of even what this book is talking about is you just have to do it. Meaning, he says there's some stops. Stop buying yourself off, meaning like convincing yourself you can't do something. Stop blaming your past. The past is past, and you can't predict the future. You can only really live in your present. So what you maybe you took a wrong turn, maybe you changed jobs, maybe you took a break, maybe you decided to do something that didn't work out the way you wanted it to do. But he says, so what? It that's in the past, you can't get trapped there if you're going to move forward. And so then he goes from these stops into how do you get freedom from this? And there's these two steps. Well, number one, sounds simple, but it's hard. Stop doing what you're currently doing. So if you don't like the results you have in life, we talk about this on, I don't know, every episode. If you don't like your results and you have to change the things you're doing or not doing that are giving you the results you have.

SPEAKER_02: 11:39

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that he he talks about like, why are you why is it you show more passion for your past than you do for your future, right? And it it keeps us clinging to these things that we need to stop in order to move forward, right? Like, oh, this is the way it always worked. This is, you know, the thing that I know, this is the comfort. Why do we like have all these, you know, nostalgic feelings? And like you and I know that that can increase happiness, right? Reminiscing and things like that is one of the 12 things that helps increase happiness measurably. But if you're not showing that same amount of passion for your future, then it's hard to stop doing what you're currently doing, right? It's hard to do that because you don't want to change. And he says that in here, right? Like if you did, you'd be doing it. Call yourself out on this. Like it is, you know, like, you know, and it goes back to what he said really early on in the book is that you have the life you're willing to accept, right? So stop accepting the things you don't want to accept, the things that don't build you in the direction of your future, the things that only serve what got you here today.

SPEAKER_01: 12:52

I think it's interesting how he contrasts, he doesn't exactly say it this way, but the gist of it is he talks about what's the contrast between can't or won't. How many times do we say, Oh, I can't do that? I can't do this, I can't do that. Is it really that you can't, or is it that you really won't, or you really don't want to? You might say you want something. It's like saying if you wanted to uh like an obstacle is or not obstacle in Atomic Habits, where there were the chapters you were teaching us about how if you want to be known as something, then you have to do something about it. You have to just start. You just have to start, and then tomorrow you have to do it again, and then you have to do it again, and then you have to do it again. If you want to get stronger, you don't just go to the gym one time and then put the weights down and you're done. It's about these repeatable actions over and over again that have a compound effect. And so it seems like in this thing about reflecting in the past, the compound effect of reflecting on the things you didn't do or thought you couldn't do, trap you into thinking you still can't do those today or tomorrow. Yeah. Or even the glory days, right? How many people there's movies about this about people that just live in the past of their high school glory days when they were on some championship team and now they are just people that sit at home and watch sports on television.

SPEAKER_02: 14:07

Right. And like what this reminds me of like adding the word yet to something. Like, I, you know, I haven't done this, I can't do this. And if you throw yet on it, it opens up the future a little bit, right? It's like, oh, I'm, you know, I haven't lost the weight that I wanted to. And like if you end the sentence, then you're stuck there, right? Like, oh, I haven't been able to, I don't want, you know, like it's just it's not working for me, right? You get into that mindset. But if it's I haven't lost the weight I want to yet, right? I I don't have the morning routine I want yet, then it moves you and propels you forward to like the second step that he's got, which is start taking the actions that propel you forward, right? So stop doing the things that keep you stuck. And if you're having a hard time breaking that, throw the yet in there as the bridge, and then start thinking about what moves you forward. And I think we I think I mentioned this in one episode, but I had seen this thing on the internet that was that was talking about how, you know, we everyone knows about the butterfly effect. Like if you were to travel back in time and um, you know, you sneeze on accident, and then all of a sudden your, you know, your great-grandmother doesn't exist or whatever, right? And so like these little tiny actions have these huge impacts to the present, right? If you were to travel back in time, but we don't think about it of those little tiny actions now impacting the future in the same way, even though it's the exact same thing, really, right? And so it's that how do you think about what actions, what movements help you move towards the future you want, right? And if you need help with that, atomic habits and the whole thing we did there is the way, you know, is is one way to get started, right? Hack that movement, those habits, the you know, things that you kind of do automatically.

SPEAKER_01: 16:00

One thing I have found in our episodes is I read the book before we did the episodes, then we read the book together while we recorded the episodes, then I listened to the episodes when they came out, and I still find myself, even after three iterations, not fully remembering everything. And so going back into these things is like where uh Pat Williams was teaching in the Coach Wooden book about how Coach Wooden's dad said, you need to drink deeply from these books, meaning, what can you take away from this? I've been seeing these ads all week long for like read a hundred books in a year, but do you really know? It's one thing to say you have a goal, but what why is the goal to just have more words in your head if you're not digesting them, really metabolizing them, putting them into action in your life, getting value from whatever money you spent on the book or the library that you got your book from, why not just take a few? That's why we only do like four, five books a year, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 17:07

We do it for that reason, right? So that we can really put them into practice. And I've I found the same thing as you that if I don't go back and listen, right? If I skip that step of it, you know, or like don't do it for a while and then binge it all at one time, it's hard to take it in action because it's just it's the internet problem, right? Of input, input, input, input, input, input, and not turning around and doing something. And that's really, I think, like what he encourages us here is like take the minute, make this mindset shift, and then go do something about it, and then do the next one and the next one and the next one, right? Like you've got to put it, like we said, like into the cycle, not in a line. Because if you go down the line, you've forgotten what happened at the very beginning of that line. But if you make it into a system, into a cycle, then you've got a chance of like really kind of growing and getting bigger. And really to me, it's like the little circle gets built. Like you're the circle, and you get bigger and bigger as you cycle around and around and around and like pick up things that you're learning and inputting them like into your life.

SPEAKER_01: 18:07

I think sometimes we forget how far we've come with certain things. I had this fun exercise I've all I've done for years with people that report to me called a time capsule. And the way that it works is you could pick your favorite date. It could be your birthday, it could be Thanksgiving, it could be today. But basically, you send yourself a future appointment for the same day next year. And in the appointment, you write out everything you're feeling, thinking, and doing right now, and the things that you perceive and dream about for what you think you would like next year to look like. And there's some people that that formerly reported to me that still have it on their calendar perpetually. And somebody wrote to me recently that hasn't reported to me for years, and wrote to me and said, Denise, I just got my time capsule and everything that I set out from last year to this year, I achieved and more. And it was kind of like a little virtual pat on the back of you can do it if you start taking actions that propel you forward. But how sad it is to get to that time capsule and open it and think, man, I didn't do any of those things. Or how interesting it is when you open the time capsule and think, wow, I didn't do any of these things. But guess what? I did do I did all these other things that I didn't even imagine were going to be a part of the next 365 days. If you want to learn how to do this or you want me to help you set it up for yourself, reach out to me or Sam. We've both done the time capsules together. And it's a really, I think, profound exercise. And the book, this book says a quote by Carl Jung, who I've seen this quote many times. And it's very, again, simple but hard. You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.

SPEAKER_02: 19:51

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It reminds me of the saying, I don't know who it's by, but the rogue to hell is paved with good intention, right? Like you can say you want to do something, you can think you want to do something, you can write down beautiful vision boards and goals and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you don't put it into action, he says in the book, but ultimately you've got to step up to the plate and put what you know into action, then it's just a lovely idea. It's just a lovely dream. It's not you building the life that you want. And he says a little bit earlier in the chapter too like the only difference between you and the person who's living the life you want is that they're doing it. They've built that life and they're living it, right? So if you find these people, that's where I think books um, like uh biographies, autobiographies are really great because if you find somebody you're like, that's I want to have pieces of their life. Nobody, nobody ever wants somebody's full life, but I want pieces of their life. Go read how they did it, right? What are the things? What is the discipline? What are the actions? What are the steps? What are the things that happened for them that you know made that happen? I think that's why we appeal so much to personal stories from people, right? It's like, well, I want what they're talking about, and then let me hear the story of how they did it, because maybe there's something, a piece of that I can put into action in my own life I can do that will, you know, really work for, you know, for people. I've had that conversation from this podcast, right, with friends of mine. They're like, oh, that thing that you talked about, you know, I, you know, I tried this, you know, that was kind of similar or whatever. And it's just interesting to see that happen. And I think that's really where life begins, is when you step up to the plate, when you get in the game, when you when you start to take the moves.

SPEAKER_01: 21:41

Vincent's organization is called Step Up to the Plate. It's part of Save the Earth projects. And he named it that originally to build community gardens to help kids live healthier lifestyles. And I remember when he started it, he was only 10 at the time. And when he came up with the idea, it was kind of like because he was playing soccer and doing taekwondo and he was playing little league. He was an athlete. And step up to the plate was this analogy, just like you have with Lead the Game, where when you step up to the plate in baseball, it's that you have to be ready. You've practiced, you've prepared, you've swung the bat, you have um practiced running the bases. But when it's your turn to step up to the plate, and if you're not ready, you're gonna strike out. Now, you might be ready and still strike out because maybe the pitcher just pitches better than you can hit at that particular moment, or maybe you're off in that one moment, but you luckily in a game get more than one chance to try it.

SPEAKER_03: 22:39

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01: 22:40

And so stepping up to the plate means that there's a lot that comes before the action of swinging the bat. There's a lot that comes before that. And so this book is talking about how you have to take the action, but you have to get your mental mess right first. And one of the things that I've been finding over the last several weeks that's really helpful is we talked about it off microphone, is agile brain. It's about really diving deeper into the subconscious emotions that we have about ourselves, about our past, about our present, the things that could potentially not predict but dictate our future. And if you're listening to this show and you think you know how you want to take action, but you're still feeling stuck in that I can't mode, and you want to investigate your emotions at the subconscious level, then reach out to Sam and myself because we are offering complimentary agile brain assessments. It's a two to three minute assessment. Sam, it was really easy to take, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02: 23:38

Really easy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:39

And we're gonna do that for you, listeners, for free. If you message us and say that you heard about it on the show, we'll send you a free assessment and then we'll set up a discovery call so that you could see what the assessment reveals for you. He ends this chapter with something that sort of segues into that, which is Napoleon Bonaparte of all people, dictators said, take time to be deliberate. But when the time for action comes, stop thinking and just go in. So as we end this series and this chapter and this book, it's important that you stop thinking and start doing, but it doesn't mean you stop thinking forever. It just means that you have to add this action-oriented step to what you're doing. He ends this book by saying, Nothing I've shown makes a single difference in your life unless you act on it, and you have to make that difference by making it happen.

SPEAKER_02: 24:34

Yeah. And I love his this isn't about seizing the day. This is about seizing the moment, the hour, the week, the month. This is about seizing your effing life and staking a claim for yourself as though your life depended on it. Because the reality is it does. And I and I think that that's so true, right? Like to think about your stepping up to the plate analogy and that it's not about just stepping up to the plate. It's about stepping up to the plate with the right mindset of I'm gonna hit the ball and then swinging, and then swinging again and again and again, and then striking out or getting on base and getting around the basis or getting out, right? It is about just continuously moving forward. And then when it's your turn again and that moment arises, you step up again and you're a little more ready, a little more ready with each, you know, at the plate appearance, because you keep in action because your life depends on you doing that. You can't be a baseball player if you're not willing to step up to the plate and swing, and then go run the bases, and then go do all of the things. And, you know, I think that's really if there's one thing you do today, friends, it's go get into action. Pick one of these, you know, mindsets, these assertions that he gives you and go do something about it.

SPEAKER_01: 25:55

Just go do it, just go do it, and don't be afraid if you strike out or foul out, right? Like that's part of the game as well. I think there's some stats that say, you know, Babe Ruth struck out more times than he had home runs. Michael Jordan missed more shots than he made. They're still, you know, all-time superstars, legendary in their sport. My very first John Maxwell book was called Failing Forward, and later he wrote another book called Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn. And it's about how in those times when you don't have perfect success, that you're going to learn better, new, faster, different ways of accomplishing the thing you wanted to do. But if you never try, then you never get.

SPEAKER_02: 26:36

Exactly. Exactly. And uh in baseball, a hall of famer hit makes a hit 30% of the time. 30. That's it. 70% of the time they strike out or you know, get you know, get an out in some space. So it's about failing. It's about like I think we started at this beginning, like we're messy, we're messy, messy creatures, and we learn in the messy, right? We learn in the sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but you know, as John Maxwell calls it, learn, right? So go out there and just take the action, even if it is a hot, hot mess, it doesn't matter. That's that's where the goodness happens. Yeah. Because then when that 30% hit happens, it's it's hall of fame, right? It's it's really something magic.

SPEAKER_01: 27:27

We're gonna give you a couple of of weeks so that you could get the next book. It'll be the last book for the year in this part of our series, but we have some special edition episodes that are also going to come up before the end of the year. So, Sam, why don't you just share really briefly with the listeners what our next book that they'll get in the next couple of weeks is?

SPEAKER_02: 27:49

Yeah, so the next one is The Four Agreements, which was a book you and I both already had on our shelves, and I had never picked up before, but had wanted to, but it's by Don Miguel Ruiz. And I'm, I think, only the introduction into this book so far. And I just keep going, yes, oh my gosh, yes. This is these were the words to the thoughts that I had, but couldn't put the you know like just couldn't piece it together into some kind of coherent thought process, but the it's really something different, and it's definitely a different turn, right? From this very direct uh unf yourself book into kind of a more of a I would say like spiritual plane type of you know uh thought processes and thinking. And it's really, really something special. So definitely go get it. It is a very short book, like very, very tiny if you can see on camera, but um definitely worth it. So go grab the book, we'll have a link to it, and um, then read along with us because I think that's that's where the real richness happens, is when you're a part of the journey going through it with us.

SPEAKER_01: 29:01

I'm super looking forward to that series with you. And just to give you all a little secret, we started talking even about what our theme for next year is going to be. I can't even just really believe as we end this episode that when we look back to where we started this entire show to where we're headed, everything has been so serendipitous and so aligned so well. I don't know if it's just because it's sort of like this effect that these books just happen to be um part of things we're experiencing life right now. But I'm really looking forward to that one with you next time as well. So, friends, if you are enjoying these episodes, we'd really like to ask you to share them with others. Comment so that we know that you're getting value from them. Send us notes, that also is helpful as well. And maybe there's books on your shelves that you'd like to share with us as well. And Zach, thank you to Zach, our amazing Zach Elliott, producer of What's on Your Bookshelf for producing the show and getting this ready for you week after week. We couldn't do it without you. Thank you for being here with us today. My name is Denise Russo, and on behalf of my friend Sam Powell, this has been yet again another episode of What's on Your Bookshelf, and I think that's a good idea.