Ever wondered how an NFL player’s mindset translates into becoming a top coach? Join Jeffrey Saad as he talks with Steve Shull, former NFL player and renowned coach, for a conversation about mastering the art of control in life and business. Steve shares his incredible journey from the gridiron to building a thriving coaching practice, reflecting on how the principles of the “circle of control” have shaped his own path and the guidance he offers others. He dives into the building blocks of success, the pitfalls of chasing external validation, and the power of embracing the journey, not just the destination. This episode is packed with wisdom and inspiration for anyone seeking to achieve peak performance and live a more fulfilling life.
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An NFL Player Becomes The Greatest Coach: Lessons From A Fulfilling Life With Steve Shull
Here we are with truly one of my dearest friends and partners in business, Steve Shull. It’s wild, Steve, I smile sometimes when I think about how you’ve had relationships for decades. We are old enough to say we have had relationships for decades, evolved together, separately, and then back together.
What’s cool is the relationship keeps growing and growing and growing and it’s one of the greatest blessings in life to be part of your life.
It’s mutual, truly. I met this guy as a new realtor, 30-something years old, all excited to conquer the world with zero roadmaps. If it wasn’t for you laying out that roadmap, it changed the trajectory of my business and what I love about having Steve Shull on I will let him tell you more about himself, the guy’s an NFL player, and that tells you everything you need to know about his mindset and energy. You are the master of pivot too. From finance to opening a brokerage company, to always consistently which is going to be a great part of talking about the circle of control. Your ability to have this underlying coaching business. There is nobody on earth that has coached more people than you, not dollar-wise. Value-wise.
I can say that with confidence. I have logged over 60,000 hours of one-on-one coaching and they talk about the 10,000-hour rule. I’m way beyond it. I hope I know what I’m doing by now.
The Circle Of Control
It’s such a blessing because what I tell people about your coaching is it’s not to grow your real estate business it’s to be a better human and to live a better life and that’s what’s so cool and that’s what I want you to start with talking about how the circle of control, what your challenges are, and what your wins are for yourself with the circle of control and then we can talk about a lot of your clients because that’s so symbolic.
I always tell that story years ago. We were thinking we would move to San Francisco for a year spinning out with all these things, and you finally said, “Make the decision first. The rest are the details they’ll fall into place.” That was an example of me getting way outside the circle of control, weighing things that can’t be weighed. You can’t weigh the future. It’s like, “What do you want to do right now? The rest will figure itself out.”
We can all overthink ourselves into doing nothing all the time. You nailed it with this concept of the circle of control because it’s where I want to focus on my coaching, which is the inner world. After all, if you don’t get your head on straight, nothing else matters and the truth is, most of us don’t have our head on straight because if we didn’t get some lucky genes to begin with and figure it out right from the beginning or didn’t get parenting or mentoring, no one teaches you this stuff. They teach you all the wrong things, which is you can do anything, you can have anything, work harder, be more focused, be more disciplined, and not that those things are bad. However, in life, we are not in control of the outcome. End of story.
Michael Singer says it best in The Surrender Experiment. We are not responsible for even the tiniest fraction of what is going on in our lives. What’s going on in front of us is the result of billions of years of evolution. We don’t control what happens. What we can control is how we experience what happens and how we respond to what happens and that’s where I love to focus most of my coaching.
The real estate part is not difficult. That’s why I wrote the book Real Estate Is Not Rocket Science because it’s not rocket science. What’s interesting about that book is where I landed. It took me almost 30 years to get the 6 core building blocks after so many different versions and the 6 that I have landed on are 1) Practicing mindfulness 2) Optimizing time 3) Cultivating relationships 4) Implementing standards 5) Mastering communication and 6) Acting strategically. Those are the six exact things that agents don’t want to do. The recipe for life, if you want to have a rich full life is doing what you don’t want to do. End of story.
From NFL To Coaching
I love the way you’ve pivoted because what’s so amazing about you is you are famous for being scary in the past. I don’t know if I can handle coaching with Steve because I hear like, “Here he is.” Your physical presence as an NFL player. The method is what made you successful. What I love about you is you pivoted and what you are saying is you can read all those things and teach all those things, but we all know. None of it’s going to happen if the head isn’t in the right place. It doesn’t matter. It’s like the greatest fighters. They know all the skills, but what matters is they have this mindset of, “There’s only one outcome that’s going to happen here.” That’s what I love to watch. You have pivoted to these soft skills, which in our world sounds like a bad word, but it’s brilliant because you, to me, have mastered the art of slowing down to speed up.
If I look back at what I was coaching several years ago, it’s embarrassing compared to where I am now. It is what it is.
I always say this one thing I preach. If you can’t cringe at your former self every five years or so, you are failing. Either you are oblivious because you don’t see what you were doing wrong, or you are not evolving. Cringing is something to be proud of.
The truth is the truth and when I hear the truth. I have no problem going 180 immediately. It’s been an incredible journey. I have seen the whole arc of a career. I have seen careers go from the beginning, the middle, to the end.
You’re coaching realtors’ kids that are realtors now.
I have seen this whole thing unfold. Now that I see what the ending looks like, it’s a big wake-up call. We are talking about real estate. However, this applies to everything. The people in real estate there’s this implied promise. No one ever articulates it, but it’s there, which is that if you sell enough homes, you are going to be okay, and that’s what everyone buys into.
The whole industry is so focused on this one thing, production. They measure agents by their production. They rank agents by their production. They pay agents by their production. However, the problem is you are not in control of your production and the outcome. There are so many external factors that enter into the picture and yet, that’s how you get paid. It’s an interesting dynamic. However, what I have seen is that selling more homes creates more headaches, stress, suffering, and negativity. It’s not what anyone pictures it to be and it’s not that more is bad. We are not saying that. It’s how you get there.
I love that you’ve been able to see that clearly because for you, “Just pay me. I will keep telling you what to do. Whether you do it or not, it’s not my problem.” You don’t think that way. You are like, “No, guys. We need to think differently.” I’m so excited about the book we are writing together. Super exciting. Anybody reading please stay tuned and keep an eye out for it because we are so proud of what this book is going to be to help everybody in any facet of life.
What I love is that what’s been going on in the real estate business that you described is the opposite of what we are writing about. It’s the opposite of the show that we’re coming out with as well because the journey is what makes life great, and real estate is defined to be the opposite. It’s supposed to be some big pot of gold at the end, and along the way, you are suffering. A lot of people are like, “We all enjoy it,” but there’s too much of the end in mind instead of the journey.
Every day I listened to people talk about this need for money. It is an absolute sickness. Everyone is thinking, “I need one more deal.” It’s addict talk. That’s all it is. One more deal doesn’t change anything. It may provide momentary relief. It’s temporary, and then, you are right back saying, “I need another deal.” This shows how bad the problem is. I have a client with a big team. They are going to do 250-plus transactions. I remember when this agent did four deals and all that. I remember I challenged this agent way back when she was approaching 100 deals, and I said, “You can do 250 deals,” and she looked at me like, “You are crazy,” but she went along with it, and here she is doing 250 deals.
However, I was talking to her sales manager, and they came in front of the salesforce. This was in October 2024, and she said to the team, “We have got to do 70 more deals in the last 70 days of the year.” She thinks that’s good. She’s going to hate me. It’s symptomatic of the industry. She thinks that’s a good thing, that it’s going to lift sales a little bit. However, the internal pressure you are trying to control is something you have no control over. The fact that I say I want to sell 70 homes in 70 days, what does that mean?
It is throwing it to the wind.
“The universe is going,” What are you nuts? The universe doesn’t care what you want. The universe is doing what it does based on billions of years of evolution and has nothing to do with you. If you leave, what changes? Few people might be sad for a little while, but nothing’s going to change. Life keeps going on.
The universe doesn't care what you want. The universe is doing what it does based on billions of years of evolution. It has nothing to do with you. Share on XThe three amazing things you just said, first of all, what’s comical about real estate is it’s all about the top line. What business on Earth doesn’t focus on ROI or the net? We somehow are proud of the top line and a lot of these teams. They were better off when they were doing 40 deals alone. First of all, they are not focusing on it.
Why is she pressuring them to do 70 deals in 70 days? She’s not making enough money.
She wants to get back to that profit she had when she did 40 deals a year. The second funny thing is that I have evolved into myself and we need to be focused on the emotional. The ROI by itself is fine. I’m making X dollars but what’s the emotional return on your investment? Are you waking up, as we talk about in the opening of our book, loving your life? Someone screaming, “We’ve got to do 70 deals in 70 days” It’s very Wolf of Wall Street. It’s fun to listen to for a minute, and it probably gives a temporary pump, but then everyone leaves. The anxiety that creates, what’s the point?
This is one example of many. I’m not pointing at one person here. This is why you and I are writing a book. This is why you and I are doing a blog. What I see in you, which I don’t see elsewhere and I’m not saying you are that special. What I see in you is what you talked about. How do you wake up every day and be joyful with whatever is happening? The only thing you should want in life is what you have because if you can’t enjoy what you have, how can you enjoy what you don’t have? You are exactly right. We are not against more.
On Being Not Good Enough
No. I always say things like I have a nice watch, it’s not that I own the watch, I don’t let the watch own me. I look at it. It’s beautiful. I love it. I’m proud of it. I like nice things, but they are not defining my life. If the watch is gone tomorrow, other than a minute of, “That sucks,” I’d be okay. Everything that drives me it’s not for stuff. It’s like when people buy that new pair of shoes and they wait six months to wear them with the right outfit, on the right day. I’m like, “Pop that grape bottle of wine on Tuesday with a burger. Wear those shoes to the park tomorrow.” Life is a special occasion. What are you waiting for?
I’m talking to at least 25 people every day. These are committed human beings who want to get ahead in life.
In addition to the hundreds on all the calls.
Individually five days a week, every day, and what I hear are the common themes. What is everyone struggling with? The biggest thing they struggle with, and this is the root, in my opinion, of why people aren’t as happy as they could be is they don’t think they are good enough. If I don’t think I’m good enough, then that screws everything up. When things don’t happen, then it’s on me. I’m not good enough, or I’m not doing the right thing. Whenever we look around and you’ve heard this many times you say, “Comparison is the thief of joy,” because we always compare up. We never compare down. We are always looking to get someone who’s doing better or no matter who we are looking at even worse we think they are doing better.
The root cause of why people aren't as happy as they could be is they don't think they're good enough. Share on XThat what you said is the real magic. I will never forget. I even fell prey to it. We were in the office for the last couple of years, and so-and-so was the talk of the office. Another listing. They look like, “They are crushing it.” At the end of the year, you see the rankings, and they are like 40 places below us and you are like it was such a wake-up call. Look what that does to you. It ends up not even being the truth anyway.
I always say this at best, when you are looking at someone else’s life, at best, you are only seeing 49% of what’s going on. You are not seeing the majority of what’s happening, and then you are forming your conclusions. This idea of, “I’m not good enough,” is the root. That’s the conversation that I want to have with everyone because the thing I love to say is that we are the pure essence of who we are, which is so much greater than who we’re trying to be.
Who we are, our true essence which is perfection, and why are we perfect because we come from the same life source as the universe that created all this, and who could create this? I’m not going to get into that, whatever you believe, but this universe got created somehow and the perfection of the universe and we are part of that. Our nature is perfection. We are also an expression of infinite possibility. Look at what we have created. It’s unbelievable the things we created, and we are one with life, again, because we are all part of we all come from the same source. That’s who we are. We don’t embrace that. We don’t think in those terms.
I’m not doing the 250 deals that she’s doing.
We are not and why don’t I have this? It’s not our fault. It’s the way our whole society, the way we’re programmed, the way we are conditioned, the way we are trained all that. It’s all this BS and people kill me for this. If you look at Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, to me, that’s like the Bible of the self-help industry and this idea, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” BS. You got to do the work and there’s no guarantee of what’s going to happen and Napoleon Hill was a fraud. If you read about Napoleon Hill’s interviews.
It’s all fake interviews. I loved that book as a young kid.
He made his money off of the book because we all want that magic. We all want to think, “If I sit around and visualize, chant, say my mantras, and affirmations, and again, not that these things are bad, you got to do the work and the work that we are talking about is doing things that are uncomfortable. We talked about it in our writing session. Life is going to punch you in the face again and again and you’ve got to learn how to take a punch.
Maybe duck now and then, or see it coming and don’t even show up to the fight if it’s not a fight worth fighting.
Pivots
That’s what you learned in all your martial arts bob and weave. That’s a life skill that we have to learn because the universe, again, is this nonstop tidal wave of change and challenge and we all know we don’t like change. We talked about the pivots I have had to make in my life. Most of them come because I fail at something. I look at my whole life. I love it when I say this people listen to it and think very differently. I failed at everything I have ever done. If we are going to judge success and failure, I fail at everything. If life is about getting what you want, I failed miserably. I fail miserably. However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything. That doesn’t mean I haven’t accomplished anything. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a great life. If we measure it this way, if I could write out exactly what I want, I’m a failure.
The universe is this nonstop tidal wave of change and challenge. Share on XThe idea is you are a wild success. You are a failure because you went outside the circle to story-tell. This is what a good life should look like, but the irony is, as an outsider looking in, you are a wild success, and what a beautiful life. What a great wife, great kids, a beautiful home, a beautiful business, and somebody who keeps getting better. I look at failure like you have two choices. Either it’s a ding on your armor, and it makes another layer of metal, or people take off the vest and walk away because failure’s going to happen. It’s a matter of what you decide to do it for.
It’s a cliché. If you are not failing, it means you are not trying. If you are putting yourself out there, you are going to fail over and over and over. What does failure mean? It means there’s an opportunity to get better at doing something. If I go back here’s a great example. I played four years in the NFL Miami Dolphins.
With one of the most famous coaches on Earth.
This was a dream from early on. I always wanted to do that. I grew up playing football, baseball, and basketball. I always watched sports. My mom was always trying to diversify, have me play drums, piano, whatever. I too was afraid of what I was doing because I was so focused and so one-dimensional.
That’s a beautiful thing when you are trying to achieve something.
It wasn’t so much that I wanted to play football. I was always fascinated by trying to be as good as I could be, pushing myself, challenging myself, and always wanting to be better.
That’s you. You are the mastery. I read something and I loved that it said, “Mastery is the one thing the rich can’t buy, the thieves can’t steal, and nobody can fake. Mastery is the ultimate goal because mastery is you.
I will take mastery over power any day.
It is the ultimate power.
I had this dream forever. I’m 6’1, and in college, I weighed 185 pounds. I wasn’t exactly a candidate for the NFL. By the time I got to college, that dream had begun to slip away because I didn’t think I was big enough, fast enough, or any of that. Then, in my junior year, one of the guys I played with, Jim Ryan, who was a senior, and we were very similar in size, ability, and all that he ended up making it as a free agent with the Denver Broncos. When he made it, all of a sudden, I thought, “If he made it. Maybe I could make it.” I ended up getting a free-agent opportunity. I’ve told the story. I went to the mini-camp, and I had a broken wrist and shoulder surgery. I couldn’t do a lot during the mini-camp. I was about to leave, and they pulled me into the director of player personnel’s office and put a contract in front of me.
This was 1980, everyone. My signing bonus was $500. My first year was $25,000, and my second year was $30,000. I looked at this contract, snotty little 21-year-old, and I had an agent. I said, “I’d like you to negotiate with my agent on this.” His name was Bill Davis, and he looked me square in the eyes and said, “Son, if you don’t sign this contract, I’m sure we can find someone who will.”
Then, he came back, and back then, it was eight weeks of training camp. Very intense, two-a-day practices are very different from what they do now. They brought in 90 people, and they only kept 45. I had no shot to make this team at all. In practice, I might get in for four plays in an entire day. I was not getting to practice. However, when the preseason started, guys were getting hurt, and I would play. I was lights out.
They had the first cut down to 70, then the second cut down to 60, then down to 50. I was still in it. As a rookie, you are counting, and they used to keep eight linebackers. After the third cut, there were only eight linebackers left, and I was thinking, “Maybe I’ll make it.” Then, we go down for the last preseason game. We’re playing the New Orleans Saints Archie Manning. Not Peyton or Eli. I’m playing against their dad. I had a sack in that game and a big play on special teams. I’m thinking, “Maybe I got it.”
I go into training camp the next day. There’s a guy they call the Turk. When you walk in, if he asks you for your playbook, that means you got cut. I walk in, and he says, “You need to bring your playbook and go see Coach Shula.” I was devastated. I was trying to bargain. I was freaking out. Shula said to me, “You did a great job. Do me a favor and stay around for one more day.” I went back to my room that night. I closed the drapes. I had a pity party. I could hear all the other rookies who had made the team. They were partying. I’m sitting in the dark. It was devastating.
Talk about the ultimate test of being in the right place at 21.
The next day at 1:00, I get a knock on my door. I’m back on the team. They had taken an offensive lineman, John Giesler, and put him on reserve. They opened up a roster spot. They looked around the league, and there wasn’t anyone else who had gotten cut like me that they wanted to bring me in, and I’m back on the team. However, all my bravado, everything like that, I had been before getting cut, went out the window. Now, I don’t want to get cut. This is a life lesson when you start playing not to lose and you don’t do anything.
That’s so not who you were anyway, which shows you how it can shift.
For the first five weeks of the season, I didn’t do anything. It was week six, playing the New York Jets, from walking out to the practice field. Shula is in front of me, and this is Don Shula. The winning coach.
I don’t even know sports that much and I know that.
He’s got the job, and the look, he’s the real deal. He’s in front of me, turns around, again, another little sermon, looks me in the eye, and says, “Son, you aren’t doing what we put you on the team to do.” He turned around and walked away. He’s telling me I’m getting cut again. He’s giving me that label. This was a long-winded way of getting into the story.
I’m about to walk on the practice field. I stopped myself outside. There’s a chain link fence. I stopped and I took stock, and this is where I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life. I decided at that moment because I was eating up for five weeks. All I could think about was not wanting to get cut. To have this dream, your whole life, to let go of the dream, to have the dream come back, to get there, to get cut, to be brought back. It’s an emotional rollercoaster. This is everything to me, and I stopped myself. I was eating up though. I was suffering big time.
The power of the detail you remember and the names, how many years later, that shows you what a real lesson and experience feels like.
I stopped myself. I said, “I’m going to give my best effort. If my best ever is good enough, great. If my best effort isn’t okay.” I literally had that conversation with myself, and I let go. That’s where I learned not to be attached to the outcome. If you do any reading or any spiritual, big thing, don’t be attached to the outcome. That lesson burned through me at that moment, and I let go. I can’t count how many times I have gone back to reminding myself, and every time I feel myself getting attached, I go back to that and let go.
The real point I want to get to and this goes back to not feeling good enough. Here I am. I played plenty of years in the NFL, and I never felt like I belonged. I never felt for real. It’s hard and I never saw myself as a starter. I can remember when I first walked in that locker room and looked around the locker room. Here I am. I was not drafted. I’m a free agent. 90 guys down to 45, and I said to myself, “How am I going to make this team? What am I going to do?”
I figured out I would be the best special teams player. Let’s kick in the game and different parts of the game. Like I never even said to myself, “You could be a starter.” I didn’t go there. I counted myself on day one, and I pigeonholed myself into it. Now, did I become the best special teams player on the team? Did I become a captain? Was I in a Super Bowl? Was I captain for that day? All those things happened, but I put a limit on myself right from the beginning. We all do that to ourselves.
It falls into the category. Talk more about that. You and I talked about this for our book and everything, storytelling. Everything you described is storytelling. You and I both joke, that Eckhart Tolle had it all figured out. Every book could be one page. Be present because when you are present, everything you described goes away because all you have to do is tackle that guy in front of you or block that guy or whatever it is. That’s the rest. Talk about how that’s evolved with you.
Steve’s Last Game
The last game I played in was the Super Bowl in ‘17 against the Washington Redskins. An interesting story in that game again, I’m on the special team. I was captain. You’ll get a kick out of this. I had it in my mind that when you went out for the coin toss, you would get the coin. Always think that. It’s like you in your story of Foothinkk, when you thought you were going to win.
When they flip the coin, I’m waiting to get the coin back. I don’t know if it was the first kickoff. It may have been the first kickoff of the game. I’m blocking my guy, and usually, a play only lasts for a certain period. There’s a timing aspect, and I’m blocking and it felt like a long time. I let up, and then our return guy was still running. My guy came off and made the tackle, and I said to myself, “That’s not that’s not going to happen again.”
The one thing that Ie about the Super Bowl, even though we lost, there is no comparison between winning that game and losing that game. If you win, that’s forever. No one’s interested in the team that lost. The thing that I can say about that game, in that moment, I realized that I committed myself and that I’m going all out the rest of the game and I had the biggest hit of my career in that game.
I remember seeing that video clip. That was awesome. “Shull takes it.”
Talk about your fifteen seconds of fame. I had my fifteen seconds. The NFL Films does a thing. Crunching block by number 52, Steve Shull. They have the arrow, and I hit this guy so hard, it knocked him out cold and it was exactly how we drew it up before the game. Beautiful thing. I can always go back to my little clip and watch that. That was the last game I played in. Usually, you only watch the games after the game. Since the season was over, we didn’t come in to watch the game film.
I never watched the whole game. We lost 27 to 17. We were winning going into the fourth quarter. John Riggins went off tackle. It’s a very famous play. This was years after. I got on YouTube and found the whole game, and I watched the whole game. In watching the game, I realized I was as good as any of those guys. I sold myself enough.
What did that feel like in that moment?
We have these wake-up calls in life. I’m watching and I said, “Look what I did to my storytelling.” Look what I did to myself. Storytelling. I did that to myself. Nobody did that. No one ever said to me, “You weren’t good enough to play, be a starter.” No one ever said that. I said that. I made that determination, and I watched that game. I said, “What?” I committed myself to watching that because now, I’m a real estate coach at a time when I would never do that to myself. As a real estate coach. I would always think of myself where or strive to be the best of the best. Call me cocky or whatever you want. I feel I am the best real estate coach in the world. Bar none. No second choice.
Your Personal Constitution
It’s only because I have owned it, and I have owned the responsibility of, “If you want to be that, you’ve got to put in the work.” This whole idea of working harder gets blown out of proportion. There’s hard work involved. You’ve got to do the thing. I borrowed this from you. It was you talking about your personal Constitution. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.” That’s wrong, and that’s how I want to start off our book because imagine everyone, imagine waking up every day truly believing you were the luckiest person in the world.
Even when I started real estate. I remember that was the thing I said. “I’m the greatest agent in the city. Brand new, never sold a house. I didn’t even know where Beverly Hills was,” but I put that in my head. I had to.
I love telling that story. New agents always said, “I don’t have a reputation.” I always say, “When Jeffrey Saad started it out, and if someone would have asked Jeffrey on day one whether he was a top agent, the answer was absolutely. I may be new to real estate, but I’m not new to life.” I have shared that story hundreds of times. It’s been a long journey because I was the classic, “The Grass Is Always Greener.” I was always looking over here, over there, always, and I have graduated from that. I wake up every day, and there’s not anything I’d rather do than what I do.
It shows. That’s what’s great about you too. You keep getting better, and I have never met anybody more relentless on the actual mission. A lot of people are relentless on success or money, but you are relentless on the mission. You need people to get it. You are still getting the same check, but you need people to get it.
You want to crack the code. That’s my attraction to you because the outcome is living with joy every day. Going back to Michael Singer and if you haven’t read Michael Singer, I strongly encourage you. Listen to podcasts. The last time I was listening to the other night, he was talking about, “We’re meant to live in ecstasy. That’s how we are meant to live.”
We don’t live in ecstasy. We live in the exact opposite. We live in misery most of the time and we might have moments where we experience joy, and this is what I see in you and this is why we are doing a book to wake up every day and experience joy, that’s why we are here. To feel ecstasy. A different way of saying it is waking up feeling, “I’m the luckiest person in the world.” That’s ecstasy, and it’s not dependent upon anything. It’s not because “I feel I have everything.” “I feel like I have the love of my life.” I feel this. I feel that. No. I wake up that way because I have rewired my brain.
We don't live in ecstasy. We live in the exact opposite—in misery. Share on XIt’s a state of mind. I always say, “Be careful what you say because you’ll hear it.” Especially what you are saying to yourself, and words do matter. It doesn’t make a difference, it’s the programming. There’s no way around the hard work, and what I’m excited about with our book is we are going to merge all these concepts. Yes, you still have to work hard. Yes, it’s nice to have money. I would say if you are going to be miserable, it’s better to be miserable poolside. All that stuff matters, but it’s the state of mind and the way you go into it that changes everything.
That’s an interesting story. That almost makes me want to have a whole chapter. If you go back and watch the movie of your life, what are you going to see? Be honest about what that movie’s going to look like. Are you the villain, the hero, the endless storyteller? Are you the cheerleader on the side with pom-poms in the air, loving life? Who were you and what does that look like?
It’s important, though, not to judge yourself. Just be aware. I did that, and I’m going to change that going forward and this is what I see with you. Going back to the circle of control. Your constitution, that’s what you control. It’s the only thing you can control in life. Meaning how you want to live your life. You don’t get to control the circumstance, who comes in, or who doesn’t. You get to control how you want to show up to life, and the good news is with our brains, even though we are hardwired for survival that’s the way we are hardwired. We are hardwired for prehistoric times. We are still hardwired for dinosaurs.
Now all the dinosaurs are strictly mental and emotional. There are no actual dinosaurs, and fear is like my big, big thing. I love diving into the whole concept of fear because underneath every fear is the fear that I’m not going to be okay. That’s what we are so afraid of, but we never do that. We never put a flashlight on our fear. We tell stories, and all the stories are negative. If we look at our actual life and all the fears that we have, we have gotten through every single one of them. There was never anything to fear.
Funny people look back at their life. They say, “Those were the good old days.” They say that because all those fears they had then never came true. All they see is the good part. We need to learn to do that. How many of those fears have ever come true? Even when you told me stories, you told yourself, even then, the fear still didn’t come true. You played in a freaking Super Bowl with the greatest team and the greatest coach ever.
This is not new information. The thing about fear, again, is imagined. The things we fear rarely happen. It’s not to say they don’t, however, when they do happen, our experience is typically very different. This is the whole thing. This is like the shift that I’m so focused on right now for my life moving out of fear into curiosity. Looking at what you are afraid of and getting curious. Let’s let that thing happen and see what transpires because we are so afraid that if this bad thing happens, this bad thing that we have made up. If it happens, we are not going to be okay. What if we start recognizing that, A) It rarely happens, and B) When it does, are we always okay because the truth is, we are okay and we are going to be okay?
Nothing in life is anything until you label it. Nothing’s good or bad. It is. The only reason it’s potentially bad is because we label it that way.
We have our personal preferences. We have this idea of the way life is supposed to be and, going back to what was your thing? Cooking without borders. That’s an example of you wanting to experience everything. Most people cook in life with borders. “I only want this. I’m not doing this. I’m not doing that. I only want this and I get upset when I can’t.” Your thing is to experience it all, and we are here to express our infinite possibilities and to experience the infinite possibilities that life gives us. Express and experience. We are not here to control anything.
Isn’t it such a relief when you can embrace that?
When you can. That’s the journey.
It’s the weight of the world and it can be gone if you start working on this stuff.
What you are left with is joy.
Like you said, your true essence, who you are, is good enough.
When we let go of this need to control the outcome, then the joy is already inside of us. We don’t have to go find it. It’s not out there. It’s already there. I got this from you. It’s the whole principle of reduction. We are constantly watering our lives down with not feeling good enough. We are watering our lives down with the sickness of money, and we are watering our life down, letting our fear run the show.
Joy is already in us. We don't have to go find it. Share on XThose three things, not feeling good enough, the fear, and the money thing water our life down and dilute our whole experience of life. It keeps us from living in the present moment because all we can think about is the future, and it’s never a good story that we are telling of what we do as human beings. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s the way we’re programmed and conditioned.
Parents only know what they know. They did the same stuff.
All we do is keep thinking about what the next bad thing is going to happen, and how we are going to suffer when that thing happens. That consumes our minds. What you’ve done you’ve rewired your brain in a completely different way. It’s not the story you are telling yourself anymore.
It started with the simple idea years and years ago that I need to die any day and be good, and that’s my litmus test because isay I can leave this show, get hit by a car, and my last thought will be, “Thank you. What a great life.” I will bless them. That’s what I got to do. If everybody stops and says to themselves, “Is that true right now? If you are gone tomorrow, are you good?” If the answer is no, then there’s the opportunity because ‘s the wake-up call that we are so about the end result instead of the journey.
We can get caught up in sounding like just a cliche. However, if you are not ready to go right now, when are you going to be ready to go? I remember when you once said, your goal is to put your head on the pillow every night and be at peace, and that’s the goal. If you don’t wake up in the morning, it’s okay. Getting there, you don’t get there by accident. You don’t get there without real intention. You get there by working every day to live in a very different way. The whole idea of your constitution. Everyone who’s watching this needs to read this, and I mean that seriously. You want as much injection of this guy as you can get because you got it right. You do. It doesn’t mean you are perfect. Stumbling.
We can bring my wife and you see exactly how not perfect I am.
Mine will tell you more. You are an absolute joy to be around. It’s always such a treat.
I get that from you and the people I’m with. You are the real deal. You’ve inspired me for decades, and this is the beauty as we keep giving it back. To wrap it up, Steve, there’s so much we have talked about, there’s so much we believe, but what do you think is the thing you’ve accomplished most about the circle of control, and what’s still the thing that you think is the most exciting opportunity?
To define the circle of control if you stay focused in your circle, the circle expands, and your life keeps getting better. If you put your energy on things you can’t control outside the circle, you’re shrinking your circle, you’re weighing down your life with all the stuff you’ve been talking about. What are the two fields?
It’s one thing. It’s just you understanding who you are. We don’t change. We are the same person our whole life. Our essence, our spirit, and our essence, our spirit doesn’t need anything. Who we are doesn’t need a new car, a new house, or more money in the bank. I don’t need that the whole idea of need is a construct that we created. One is to understand who we are, and you’ve got to study. You’ve got to do work, you’ve got to listen, you’ve got to read, do whatever to understand who you are, and then.
Once you have a better understanding, you need to begin embracing that and living from that place, living from happiness. Happiness is not a condition. Happiness is a choice and we need to choose unconditional happiness, no matter what’s happening. We need to practice non-resistance. Again, because what is happening is happening and it’s never personal. It’s not about you, and it’s always temporary.
Happiness is not a condition. Happiness is a choice and we need to choose unconditional happiness no matter what's happening. Share on XWe need to practice non-resistance, and again, getting back to the principle of reduction, we need to let go of all the stuff that’s watering our life down. Our book is going to be about creating your constitution and then letting go of everything that doesn’t support that way of being. When it comes to your mind, time, relationships, work, money, when it comes to fun. If there’s anything in your life that doesn’t support the way you want to live, we talked about living with flavor. We talk about living fearlessly. Then you’ve got to let that crap go and you can’t be afraid to let go.
This is what I love about this guy. I have known him intimately for many years. I’m fired up right now. I’m leaving more excited than I got here. I swear. It’s probably my favorite show now, and I should have already known exactly what you’d expect from you, but you still say it with such deep conviction and joy. I’m so excited about that next chapter. Thank you for being here. Thank you for this.
Thank you all.
That’s Steve Shull.
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