#325 - Think Like Leonardo da Vinci (Part 3)

0:00Welcome to day three of DaVinci week on the pod. Today we're breaking down how Leonardo refused to let his past define what he can become and a simple mindset shift that can help you do the same. Like this beautiful. So today we're talking about Leonardo's ridiculous resume. All right. It's the early 1480s Leonardo's around 30 years old and he's living in Florence and by this time he has an extremely accomplished artist in Florence. He's trained at the greatest workshops. He's painted amazing things. He sculpted amazing things. This guy is like the cream of the crop when it comes to the art world, right? But he's getting to the point in his life where he just wants something different. He needs to change. He needs a little change, right? So more specifically though, this dude, he wants to move from Florence to Milan and he wants to work with the powerful

1:01ruler of Milan, a guy named Ludovico's Fortsello. So Leonardo writes him a letter, right? And when you think about what this guy would write, you would think this letter is like, hey, dude, I'm an amazing painter. I'm amazing sculptor. I could come to Milan. I could do all this great shift for you. Like really beautify your place, right? But that's not what he does. We actually have the letter and he pitches himself as a military engineer. He tells this guy, I can design bridges. I can show you how to attack fortresses. I could design arm vehicles. And then he ends the letter and he says, oh, and by the way, it can also paint really well. Okay. Okay. And I think that's the beautiful part of this story that's useful for us, which is Leonardo had something a lot of us slowly lose as we get older. He gave himself this permission to change, right? We have this tendency to turn our past into our identity. We take evidence from where we've been and we use it to decide what we're

2:04allowed to become. And Leonardo didn't do that, which brings us to lesson number three from Leo, give yourself permission to reinvent yourself. This is a really, really good one. I like it a lot because when I look back in my life, I realized just how much I've actually done this and applied this and given what I saw, I mean, so like I remember pre discovering personal development. Yeah. So I was in high school and I was just like a normal average Joe living in middle class family. Like, I don't know, as bad as like status quo as you can be living in America, uh, there was no entrepreneurs around me. It was just like my plan was to go be a physical therapist, go to college, become a physical therapist, start a family, just have like a normal average Joe life. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but no, not that there's anything wrong with that at all. But that was just what my identity was was to like be a physical therapist and that was

3:07about it. And then I discovered personal development and you introduced me to the slight edge, which was one book by Jeff Olson, which I loved. And then there was a thinking girl rich. And then it just there was out of when friends and influence people. And then I'd like once you get the personal development bug, you can't freaking stop. And now my mind is exposed to all of these new people that are doing all sorts of amazing things. And then I discovered Tim Ferris, the podcaster, and how disciplined he was. And then I started learning about all these other people, Tony Robbins. And all of these people that I was starting to look up to were basically telling me, you have to be super disciplined. Like every morning, I wake up and I journal and I meditate and then I read I fill my mind with positivity. And then I go and I do this and like I have these routines and every night before I go to bed, I set my three priorities for the next day. And as a kid, as like a kid in college, like in a fraternity at this point, I'm looking at that. And I'm like, all right, I'm never going to be at this level. Like I'm never going to be able to like have that level of discipline where I'm doing the shit every single day. And then over time, like

4:11year over year, I've like kind of built that discipline muscle. And today I can actually stand in front of you and tell you like, I am that guy. Like they're, I don't miss days anymore. Like I literally every night set my three priorities. I won't go to sleep without doing it. Every morning, I meditate, I like won't miss a freaking day. I've become those guys that I look up to. So you reinvented yourself from someone who doesn't have quote unquote discipline to someone who does have discipline. Yeah. And the way you did that you're saying is by giving yourself the evidence that you are that person, you didn't just stand in a mirror and say, I'm disciplined. I'm disciplined. I'm disciplined. No, you gave me over time, little by little action by action. I gave myself, I, I feel like I have that as well in my own life when it comes to my dyslexia. I because of it growing up, I had this label that I placed on myself that I hate reading. Yeah. I hate reading. And now I think about who I am now, I have, I'm literally sitting in front of a bookshelf of over like 200 books behind me. And I am obsessed with reading. So I completely reinvented myself.

5:18And it just started by reading 10 pages a day. No, it changed that entire identity. Yeah. It's like staring up a Mount Everest. And you're just totally overwhelmed. So you never even take that first step, right? But once you take that first step, it leads to a second step and a third step. And over the course of a few years before you know it, you just climb fucking Mount Everest. It's that's how behavior change and identity change actually. Why does this matter? Why is for the person listening to this right now? Why does it matter for them? Like, because chances are there's something about you listening that you want to change. And chances are you have been operating under this assumption that it is something that you just can't change because you've tried over and over and over and over and over and no matter how many times you've tried, you just can't change that thing. You can't become that new version of yourself. There's just something that continues to hold you back. And so after a while, you probably just gave up on that thing. And I think the real lesson here is don't give up on that thing. You

6:19still can change. And the way to do that is not by thinking your way into that new identity. It's by actually acting your way into that new identity. So if you want to be fit, go and do something that makes you feel like you're fit, even if it's just one thing and then do it over and over and repeat it over time. And the more you do it, the more you will start to look back and say, wow, I'm actually kind of fit. And eventually you become that thing. Yeah. And I think an important distinction to make going back to Leonardo's story is that when he pitched himself as this military engineer, he wasn't just talking out of his ass as like, oh, I've never done any of this before, but this is what I want to do in his spare time. He was actually designing bridges and war machines and helicopters and all of this stuff. So he was giving himself this evidence to create this new identity for himself. And that's what I think you're talking about. And in this day of AI, where everything is about to get disrupted, it's more important now to think ahead about

7:23reinventing yourself because more likely than not what you're currently doing is going to change. So be prepared to reinvent yourself and give yourself the evidence that you can do that. Yeah, you know, I'm going to make the call to action specifically for my wife today. And I'll tell you why because I think it's the perfect case study of how you can apply this. My wife has been wanting to create content. She's a speech language pathologist and she's been wanting to create content and build a community to sell a product for speech language pathology is something like she's like her dream. And for the longest time, she keeps telling me, but I'm not a creator, but I'm just like, I don't make videos. I don't do that like you do. Like you're the you're the creator. You're the you're the guy that does that. I'm like, you can do it. Just literally make one video and you'll see you're a creator. You could do it. So whatever that identity is that you want to become, whatever that identity is that you are dreaming of, just go and take that first step. It's not Mount Everest. Once you take that first step, it'll get the it'll get smaller and smaller. The more you just do. Yeah, I think more specifically for her example,

8:24she doesn't have to identify as a creator yet. No, she just has to make one video. Yeah, I'm gonna make another video. And then after it'll become a creator, it'll be easy for her to say. I'm a creator. Exactly. All right. Well, thanks for hanging out with us. We love you. See you tomorrow. Peace.