Fast Five for Friday: Fitness First, Surfing the Chaos, and Reframing Life’s Setbacks

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:41 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners. And this is your Fast Five for Friday. All right. Number one, I recently caught a compilation podcast recently. from a guy that I respect so deeply, Shawn Stevenson, the model health show, probably my favorite health and wellness podcast. And that is coming from someone who was a former professional for many years in that space. Love him, love the podcast. But he released a compilation on YouTube and one of the episodes featured in the compilation, the whole thing was health and fitness over 40.

1:24 how to get it right from six different experts. Number one was Mark Sisson, who is a foundational mentor of mine in the space of health and wellness and fitness. And one of the things that he said, I thought was so poignant because we sort of tiptoe around this and the role that health and fitness plays in our lives as entrepreneurs and business owners and crazy people who do things that other people don't do. And he said something that was so simple. And in my mind, I believe he is absolutely right. Health and fitness should be job number one. You know, he talked about, you know, knowing how many people like they're talking about, oh, I've been spending the last several years just making money and building my business and da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

2:11 lovely until you're not taking care of yourself and you burn your freaking body to the ground. All the money in the world is not worth your health. All of the success in the world is not worth your health. If you don't have your health... You have nothing. So number one, take that, heed that today. And let's start acting like that. By the way, even as somebody who loves health and fitness, I even fall in the trap of deprioritizing this. So it got me fired up today. Let's recommit. Health and fitness should be job number one. All right. Number two. Rob Dyrdek talks about a stunt that he did.

2:53 And if you don't know who Rob Dyrdek is, just go YouTube him. Last name is spelled D-Y-R-D-E-K, Rob Dyrdek. He talks about a surfing stunt that he did, and he didn't know how to surf. And he gets swallowed up by this massive wave, and it's the one time... that he's really, really, really been afraid that he was going to die. He basically says he was certain it was over for him. But he talks about being in the water and he can't even figure out how deep he is now or how far out he's gone. And there's panic and he's flailing around trying to get to the surface.

3:34 And as he was describing this, I was just thinking to myself, my God, doesn't business feel like that sometimes? I mean, it really does. There are those moments where everything seems to be going wrong. We're panicking. We're flailing around. We don't know what to do. We're desperately scratching and trying to, you know, claw our way to, quote unquote, the surface just to make everything OK. And I want to encourage you to do something. When you find yourself in spots like that, and I say when because it happens to all of us at one point or another if you stay in business long enough. When you find yourself in a spot like that, take a deep breath.

4:17 Take a deep breath because just like what happens in the water, the more you panic when you're deep down in the water, the more chance you have of actually not making it. And the only way that you're going to be able to make it is if you calm yourself and you start to move very intentionally and slowly toward the surface. Navy SEALs have a saying that I love, love, love. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. In moments of chaos, that is what you need. And. You need to slow down, take a deep breath, get very intentional, and just put one foot in front of the other, moving toward the surface.

5:01 Number three, this quote, I love this. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present. That's Bill Keen. I had never heard this before. It is brilliant. And there's rhyming in there. So I double love it. But it's so true. And it's such a great reminder that we get so caught up, don't we? And looking backwards. We all know what happens when we're driving our car, looking at the rearview mirror or in constantly looking forward, like so far forward.

5:42 We're constantly chasing a horizon that, by the way, we're never going to reach. And we forget to be present. And the present truly is a present. It is a gift from God. And so this is your little reminder today to be present. Be present in the place that you're in right now, even if it's not perfect. Ed Milet has a saying that I steal often, and I always credit him for this one, but I love it. Blissful dissatisfaction. Maybe so. But allow yourself to be blissful in the moment that you're in. Be present wherever you are, with whomever you're with.

6:24 Give others that gift. Give yourself that gift. And enjoy and embrace the present moment before you get so hasty to move into the next one. All right, number four. Brooke and I just did a great episode that preceded this one, in fact, as we talked about, you know, the five ways that you can get yourself out of and or avoid the mid-year slump. Well, I've got a very pertinent question for you today, and it's this, my friend. What is your level of urgency? in getting to your goals right now? What is your level of urgency in getting to your goals right now? This is one that personally, I've gotta check in with myself on.

7:07 I know that it's a habit of mine to, or I don't wanna say it's a habit of mine, but, I find that I fall back into patterns where I start to go through the motions on things and I'm kind of just doing the daily things like we do. And I forget the real reason why I'm doing it or why it was so important. And before I know it, I've lost momentum. And really, I've lost momentum because I've lost the sense of urgency. You know, one of the things I used to talk about all the time in health and fitness is And I just started working with people and I was really drilling in the reason why they're doing what they're doing with their health and their fitness and their body.

7:52 And I equated it to, you know, the analogy I like to give on this is like if you're a parent and you're, you know, you're driving down, driving towards home and you kind of round the corner onto your street and as you get closer and closer, you see smoke. Yeah. And then you see a fire. And the next thing you know, it's your house that's on fire. And you know that you left your two children in that house. Like, what do you do? Do you think about, like, whether you're going to do something about it? Do you think about whether you're going to get out of the car? Do you think about whether you're going to run in the house? No. You fucking haul ass into the driveway, get out of the car like you're on fire, and go in there knowing that you could die.

8:39 Because the reason why you have to do it is that strong. But there's also a level of urgency. Oh my God, if I don't do something about this right now, then my children might die. Now that might seem a little bit extreme. But Brooke and I talk about this often, guys. Here's the deal. When we lose that sense of urgency, we lose a lot of our power because we forget what is possible. We start telling ourselves these bullshit lies about what we can and cannot do. And really, it's not that. It's just that we've lost our sense of urgency and we're either A, not willing to do that, or we're not acting...

9:22 as if we have urgency behind us. So check in with yourself. What's your level of urgency towards your goals? All right, number five, personal story. So this week, my mom got into a pretty bad car accident, literally ran her car into a brick wall. Car is totaled. Thank God. Thank God. I feel so lucky. She was able to walk away almost completely uninjured. A little bit of... you know, facial injuries. But generally speaking, she is very healthy and we are all very, very lucky. But I had this conversation with my mom directly afterwards. And, you know, she's 73 years old. She's been having a little bit of trouble lately with her driving.

10:03 She's backed into a few people. It's it's it's been a little tough lately with the driving. And this was a big wake up call that the discussion about not driving might need to be had at this point. And she said to me, Yeah, but Ryan, I can't give up on that. I can't give up on driving because if I give up on driving, then I'm giving up on everything. Wow. I mean, it hit me like an absolute ton of bricks. And as you would imagine... I went directly into coach mode with no permission frame. I went, Mom, that is a bullshit belief if I ever heard one before.

10:45 And here's the thing. The truth is we all do this. Things happen. And by the way, life is going to happen. We are going to happen. We are going to happen. And in the process of all of that, it's not about what happens. It's about what we make it mean. And the truth is the meaning that we put around our circumstances is always going to define our experience. The meaning that we put around our circumstances is always going to define our experience. And so if you're in a moment right now, whenever you're in a moment where things are tough, And you realize that you're making it mean one thing. And quite frankly, you desperately need it to mean something else.

11:27 Like my mom. Look, I'm not done with my mom. And she doesn't need to be done either. And the last thing that she needs or her family needs is for her to give up on life because she can't fucking drive. Well, guys, we all do this. We all make these kinds of meanings. And what I want you to do in a moment where you're in that struggle... is I want you to go out and find references. Your job is to go out and find references of people who have succeeded despite extreme difficulty. And the world and history is littered with them, you guys. We have to do that. We have to go and give ourselves the evidence that not only can we get through what we're getting through, but that circumstantially, it's not that bad.

12:12 Because for most of the things that we go through in everyday life that feel like an absolute, you know, emergency or disaster, there is something far worse than that that somebody else has overcome. So make sure that when you find yourself in those moments, check your meaning. And in addition to that, make sure that you go find strong references for people who have overcome so that you can put yourself in exactly the same position. That is it for me today. That is your Fast Five for Friday. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Until next time, take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.

12:54 And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.