#342 - The Four Agreements | Always Do Your Best (4/4)

0:00Welcome back to the fourth and final part of our book club series on the four agreements. Today's agreement is for anyone who has ever felt like they should be doing more or being themselves up for falling short. Mike, uh, that bring about you. Me? No. No, no. No, let's get it to it. Like this beautiful. Before we get into today's episode, though, a little quick announcement. It is each out of me kidding me. How was that one? Was that a good one? You really got to go to another approach because I'm scared you're going to pass out one day. Yeah. And um, I have blood vessels about to pop out of my brain when I do that. But five star Friday for those who don't know. And it's your first time hearing me be a complete psychopath is the one time a week where we take a few seconds to ask you to take a few seconds to do us a gigantic favor, which is to leave a five-star

1:01rating on the podcast. If you honestly think that is what the podcast is worth. Have you been in listening every day and you've been enjoying the show and getting a lot of value from it, maybe even sharing episodes with friends, then it would really mean a lot. If you could take that time to do us that favor, it's the best free way you could support the show because it helps the algorithms, get it out to more people so that we can help more people get their minds right. And now I'm going on and on and I will stop there. But if you can do us that favor, we would really, really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. So back to regularly scheduled programming at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, a marathon runner from Tanzania named John Steven Aquari fell very badly during the race. He injures his knee and his shoulder, but he gets back up and he keeps going. By the time he gets to the finish line, he is an hour behind everyone else. Everyone else has already finished. The first place guy already got his medal to ceremony is over. The crowd's already gone. And this guy still just refuses to stop running and he completes the race regardless. And when he's asked,

2:03why the hell wouldn't you just stop running and like give yourself time to heal? Like why would you run injured? He said, my country did not send me all the way here. He said, my country did not send me thousands of miles away just to start the race. They sent me here to finish the race. And I think the moral of the story here is that your best is going to look different from day to day. There are going to be times where your best looks like getting first place in the race and there are going to be times where you are dealt cards like an injury for him, for example, where your best is going to look like just simply finishing the race. I think it's the perfect setup to bring us to the fourth and final agreement, which is to always, always, always do your best no matter what. And that's a great, this is a great one. And the author Don Miguel Raleigh says, your best is going to change from moment to moment. And I think that's what this is really about. But as you were telling that story, it really brought me back to me and you in the hay fields on the amazing race. And that

3:04day, our best was continuing to look for that little tiny bracelet that we could not find until Phil showed up. Yeah. If you have no idea what we're talking about, Nick and I were on the TV show, the amazing race, were teams of two race around the world. And there was one challenge where we had to find this tiny little bracelet in this gigantic field is hey, and it was like one of the most embarrassing moments on TV when we literally spent seven hours in the blazing heat in the middle of Sophia Bulgaria, yeah, trying to find this thing. But going back to what you're saying, when I look back at that moment, I don't regret anything because I know that we did our absolute best that day, right? We didn't give up. And that's what our best was that day, similar to this guy who finished the marathon. And how does that relate to everyday life? Well, I think it's all about like goals, to be honest with you. I think that's what this episode is really about, at least for me. So like our goal was to finish in first place when we were competing on the amazing race. Yeah. This guy's goal was to finish in first place with the

4:08marathon. Neither of us hit our goal, right? We he didn't finish in first, we didn't finish in first. Yet we still went home feeling like winners. The question is why? Why did you go home feeling like a winner, even though you did not hit your goal? Because you knew that deep down, you gave it everything that you had. All right, you did everything that was within your control. You did, you are very absolute freaking best. And when you do your absolute very freaking best every single day, no matter the circumstances, you go to sleep happy that night because you know that you did your best, no matter what the results were. And I think so often we attach our identity to the results that we get. We let ourselves feel like losers. If we don't get the goal that we said we wanted to get. Yeah. But we can't feel like losers. If we know deep down in our hearts that we did our very freaking best. So you're basically saying put more attention on the effort than the result. Absolutely. Put all of your attention on the effort because that's the only thing in your control. Yeah. I also feel like something that we often get trapped with is taking our very best day and

5:15making it a standard of what every day should look like. And if we don't reach that standard of our best possible day, then we get disappointed. And I think what this is really all about is just understanding that the best changes from day to day in the circumstance is one of the most helpful things we can do when we wake up in the morning is ask ourselves, what does my best look like today? You know what I really love for this to make it super practical. So we interviewed Sahil Blum on the podcast and he talked about having like an A, B and C plan for his daily disciplines. Right. So he said like my A plan, I'll give you an example like that I've kind of adopted this. My A plan for daily exercise and daily movement bare minimum every day no matter what is 10,000 steps like that is my A plan by B plan. If I feel like I have some more time is to go to the gym and work out and get my 10,000 steps. My C plan is to go to the gym, do weightlifting and do a cardio and do my 10,000 steps. That's like my very best when I had the absolute time to do it. Right. So

6:16having these fall black back layers of like here's my bare minimum very best today. I think is super helpful. I think that's such a practical way of applying this to your life. I love that. All right. Well, let's recap this series on the four agreements real quick. So agreement number one might be impeccable with your word. Be careful with how you speak to yourself, how you speak to other people and the promises you make. Yes. Agreement number two, don't take anything personally. Remember that people respond to you through the lens of their own experiences, emotions and beliefs. And that hurt people. Yes. Agreement number three, don't make assumptions. Stop treating the stories in your head like facts. Ask questions and say what you mean. And agreement number four, always do your best. Your best will change. But you can keep showing up with an honest

7:17effort. So you can go to sleep tonight knowing you did your best. Then it was a good day. Yeah. And I think the cool action here is to write down these four agreements on a post it and put it on your laptop or something you can. I saw you do that. I did do that because I wanted to be a man of my word. And I do think that there's such simple reminders and people might say like, oh, I already know this. I know that. But repetition is the key to actually changing behavior. Like Tony Robbins said repetition is the mother of skill. Exactly. So I think the cold action is to write these four down. Keep them top of mind and use them in your everyday life. And I promise you you will have more joy and happiness in your life. For show. All right. Have an awesome weekend. We love you. Peace.