In this sixth and final part of the six-episode special series, Jeffrey Saad and his business coach and mentor Steve Shull explore the true essence of coaching: getting serious about going on a journey of constant learning. They talk about constantly learning new things and improving yourself without sacrificing the opportunity to live an authentic life. Jeffrey and Steve go on to discuss the power of reframing your perspectives, understanding your life’s purpose, and doing things outside of your usual priorities.
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Conversations With My Coach (Part 6 Of 6)
I’m with my co-host, Jeffrey Saad.
It’s good to be here. Everyone does need a coach. It’s so true.
Obsession With Learning And Getting Better
That’s where I wanted to start off. One of the things that I think we share in common is this obsession about learning, growing, and getting better. That’s what coaching is all about.
That’s exactly what it is, Steve. It’s an obsession. I saw a little clip on Instagram from Kevin Hart a while back, and I loved what he said. He goes, “Why do people keep asking me why I can’t stop? Why I keep striving. My question for you is, why aren’t you?” It just makes life better. I think innately, you are a happier, healthier person if you are striving. Within balance, of course.
That’s why I wanted to do this with you, because you just embody, in everything that you do, being healthier, being happier, being more joyful. If the readers can get one thing out of this, it’s learning how to do that because it doesn’t happen by accident.
The beauty of it as well, Steve, is that it makes everything else in your life better. That’s the wild irony. It makes you a better whatever it is you want to be. It makes you a better husband, makes you a better wife, makes you a better friend, makes you a better father. When you are elevating yourself, you bring everybody up with you and you show up better because you’re in a good place because you’re feeling better. Whenever I’m feeling a little bit off, I read something because the second I’m taking in information, I feel elevated. It’s like learning is a natural high.
It doesn’t take much. You can read 1 page, you can listen to 5 minutes. We’re all going to get off track, guaranteed. That’s life. The thing that you can work on is taking longer to get off track so you’re on track longer and then being able to get back on track quicker. That’s why when you have a favorite book or a favorite podcast or whatever it is, you only need to read 1 page or listen to 5 minutes and you can shift right back into where you need to go.
I love what you just said. We all need better rails. That’s it. There is no derailing. It’s just better rails and you’ll derail less often. I love that. That’s really it. I think the biggest mistake anybody can think is that like, “It’s all perfect. If you just do what Steve and I do, we’re perfect.” No. It’s like, “We’re just striving. That’s it.” The human condition is everyone’s got their baggage, everyone’s got their stuff, nobody’s got it perfect. If you got it perfect, that’s a disaster by itself because then you’re really out of touch.
It’s absolutely progress, not perfection. Constant, never-ending improvement. I want to go back to something for a second. Not only does being healthier and being happier and more joyful doesn’t happen by accident. It’s not based on your circumstance, either.
I am passionate, but I try to put rails around it about not being a victim because when you have that victim mentality, automatically, you’re basically giving yourself a pass to have a great life. You’re somehow identifying that the way I was born, where I was born, what happened to me makes me not eligible for happiness, makes me not eligible to be better. That’s why I love that quote. If you start by assuming that everything is your fault, there’s nothing you can’t affect. It’s really a powerful thing. If your first reaction is, “How can I do better,” versus, “Why did this happen to me? I can’t believe he or she did that,” already, you’re at a better place.
Understanding Purpose Vs Passion
I’ve got a lot of topics to dive into and just wanted to get your thoughts. You’re obviously a very passionate person. However, in reading, is it purpose or passion? Which is more important or are they both great and it really doesn’t make a difference?
That’s the ultimate question. I think Ryan Holiday said it or whatever, that passion is like purpose with boundaries or something along those lines. That’s the thing too. My wife Nadia, if she was sitting there right now, she’d be like, “Forget this passion stuff. It’s nonsense,” and she says that because she doesn’t have an innate passion for anything except me, I hope. You don’t have to have this pretend spark. It’s okay if you get up and you don’t just have this passion for something. That’s fine too. As you said, purpose is identifying what matters to you in life. If you can’t identify a purpose, that’s another episode. You’re in trouble. We all need a purpose.
Purpose is identifying what matters to you in life. If you cannot identify it, you are in trouble. Share on XI think when you have purpose, you automatically end up passionate. One of the best things I ever read is said, “Don’t try to find a passion. Just focus on what you’re good at.” If you’re an amazing mathematician, you will become the best in the category. All of a sudden, it will be your passion and you will be fulfilled. It’s funny, I think some people fight what they’re naturally good at because they want to do what they think they’re supposed to do. One of my favorite quotes is, “Who could you be if you weren’t who you thought you were?”
Going back to purpose, Michael Singer will tell you your purpose in life is to let go of everything, which, again, is another form of reduction. Just letting go. Basically, what you’re letting go of is the past and letting go of any thoughts about the future so you can reduce your life to the moment in front of you and give everything you have to that moment. That’s the ultimate recipe for reduction.
You’re amazing. You’re like the fisherman. You take this net with any concept and you just run it through the ocean and apply it to every single fish. It’s beautiful. I love what you just said. I can’t believe it. Eckhart Tolle did say that’s what presence is. You just nailed it. Presence. That’s the perfect reduction. Everyone’s weighted down, straining their neck, looking backwards, trying to figure out what’s going to happen next.
That’s the thing, too. Storytelling is adding water. People love to tell story. It is mind-blowing to me. It’s like it doesn’t exist. Why do that? You can start your day reduced if you just don’t start telling stories. The second you start telling stories, the water’s pouring in, the flavor’s getting lost, the effectiveness is getting diluted because you’re on the story instead of the reality.
Choosing Between Survival And Living
Tying this together, the difference between survival and living. Survival is all about watering everything down and being busy and being all over the place and telling yourself an awful story. Living is something completely different. The thing I like to say, going back to this whole idea of purpose, everyone needs to sit down and really think, “Why am I here? What am I doing here?” We are not here for a long period of time. It is short. As cliché as it is, death is random, unpredictable, and inevitable. Nobody escapes that one.
I find death so enjoyable and joyful that way because if you embrace what you just said, it takes away a lot of the water because you can’t affect it anyway. Just do what you’re going to do. In 100 years, everyone, whoever loved you and knew you are gone. You’re forgotten. It’s all gone. The house, the thing, that’s it, so make this delicious.
Just do what you have to do. You will be forgotten in a hundred years, so make your life something great. Share on XI was just at a memorial service and the pastor said something that caught my attention. He said, “We died three times. We take our last breath, that’s death one. Death two, when they stick you in the ground. Death three is the last time anyone ever says your name.” It just got me thinking, are you going to do anything here that people remember? Most people, within 2 or 3 generations, that’s it. Gone.
It’s always the saddest thing to me, funnily enough. You remember David. They said something similar to that. What was so sad is there were hundreds of people there. There are tears, mine included and all this stuff. You almost feel guilty because it just fades so fast. Of course, when you think about them or anybody you love that’s gone, there’s a moment. The reality is life goes on.
It does. For anyone, if we disappear now, what changes? Nothing.
You see that with realtors. I look back and I think about the couple that owned Upper Bel Air before we did. They’re history now. We’re going to be history next. It just goes. All these legends, they go.
We’re all going to be history.
That’s why I always say don’t be afraid of dying. Be afraid of not living. That is it. I thought you were going to say the first death is not living your fullest life.
Do not be afraid of dying. Be afraid of not living. Share on XEverything Matters Vs Nothing Matters
Which is the most tragic death of all. Let me hear your thoughts. Agree or disagree. On the one hand, everything does matter. On the other hand, nothing matters.
Perfect Steve-ism. I love that.
That is life. Everything we do matters. In the end, none of it really matters. If there is one thing I think that matters, did we enjoy our time here? Did we go for it? If all we’re doing is surviving, if all we’re doing is being busy, if all we’re doing is getting by, going through the motions, hoping not to drown. Again, Michael Singer, and I am a Michael Singer fan. He talks about most people are drowning in a six-inch puddle of water, face down. All they need to do is just pick your head up and you’ll be fine. Let’s talk about everything matters. Nothing matters. Yay or nay. Where do you come out on that?
I love that, Steve. That’s so powerful. When it comes to the result, you have to think nothing matters. In a real estate deal, the most success I have is when I think I’m a billionaire, even though I’m not, and I don’t need the deal. It doesn’t matter. It’s okay. If they don’t buy it, it’s okay. It falls out of escrow, it’s okay. If you have that nothing matters attitude, the irony is it puts you in a mental place to actually do what matters.
Exactly. You’ve got to start with nothing matters to be able to make everything matter because if you’re attached to the outcome, then you’re going to tighten up. This is something you’re very familiar with. In terms of if you’re surfing, if you’re tight and anxious, what happens when you’re out there? You’re going to get your ass kicked every time.
I go back to this passage. I read it well over 100 times because I do this on calls all the time. “Life rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to. If we stop and think about it, that makes perfect sense. The scope of life is universal. The fact that we are not actually in control of life’s events should be self-evident. The universe has been around for billions of years and the processes that determine the flow of life around us did not begin when we were born, nor will they end when we die.”
“What manifests in front of us at any given moment is actually something truly extraordinary. It is the end result of all the forces that have been interacting together for billions of years. We are not responsible for even the tiniest fraction of what is manifesting around us. Nonetheless, we walk around constantly, trying to control and determine what will happen in our lives. No wonder there’s so much tension, anxiety, and fear. Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation.” That’s the only paragraph I need in my life. I don’t really need anything else.
You did nothing, which you’ve been doing. Focus on this book and your life will be amazing. I used to say this with my restaurant managers. We used to have dozens of restaurants and I’d had all these managers and I’d work with them on business plans. This is what I finally learned. What they do is, “Here’s the goals, the business plan, it starts here, it ends here.” Without exception. When they get them out here, they do a new plan.
They never get to the end. Not all of them, of course, but it is a challenge. I think this is what people do in life. “I read The Power of Now. It’s going to be my thing until,” the next book comes. I drop that and I start with this one. I’m the master of nothing, but I’ve been exposed to everything and I feel lost. That’s what happens. It’s like, you’ve got to decide, “I’d rather be the master of three books than a jack of all trades with 20 or 50 books.” That’s why I’ve done this. It makes people uncomfortable. When anyone tells me they’ve read a book, the first thing I say is, “What are you doing differently? How has it affected your life?”
I do something similar. “What did you learn? What was the point?”
Nobody cares that you read the book. Who cares? “I saw this, I heard of that.” People love doing that, but how have you ingrained it into your being? If you believe in it, and if it matters, ingrain it. Don’t just pass over it. I think that by itself is one of the biggest opportunities. Why do people do that? I think they do it. You coach a million people. Why do you think people do that? What is the nature that makes us do that?
To me, everyone’s always looking for magic. They’re always looking for an easier way that just doesn’t exist. We’re sold a bill of goods in our life. Going back to this whole idea of more and more. Somehow, more is the answer to everything. More is not the answer. More is more. How you get to more, again, getting back down to reduction, that’s important. I just see it every day. I joke all the time in my coaching practice, my favorite question is, “What else can I be doing?” which is simply code for, “I’m not going to do anything you told me to do. Give me another option.”
“Thanks so much for these six foundations of real estate that you’ve proven over 30 years that absolutely work,” then they go, “What else?”
I just had this. The power that we need, the thing that will truly empower us, give us energy, and unlock what we’re capable of achieving, is we find that power in doing what we don’t want to do. That’s where the power resides. Doing what we want to do doesn’t make us more powerful. It makes us less powerful. Doing a steady diet of what we don’t want to do, and again, you’ve had to go through this in surfing, you just don’t go out in the ocean, jump up on a board you got to do a lot of things that are scary.
By the way, putting a wetsuit on when it’s half dark and getting into freezing cold water never really sounds good at face value. Guess what? I do it anyway. When you get out of the water, you’re like, “Yeah.”
Walking Into The Unknown
One of the guests we’re going to have is Jody Clegg. Jody’s a surfer and that’s why I want to hook you guys up here. She was talking to me. She went out and she had to paddle through the fog. You don’t know what you’re paddling into. When you don’t know what you’re paddling into, that’s when you feel alive. We have to do some version of that every day in our lives because, for all of us, we’re always walking into the unknown every day. That’s what we do every day. Universal. We walk into the unknown. The question is, how are we walking into the unknown?
Two thoughts on that. First is, that’s why I cold plunge because I always say, if I start the day doing the thing I want to do least that sounds awful, you crawl out of your warm bed into an ice bath, if you start your day that way, the rest of the day is a cakewalk.
That is so true, because that’s the muscle. One of the favorite things I read was this article by Albert Gray, I think it was written in 1958 or something like that, called The Common Denominator of Success. He had an insurance company and he studied success for years and years. The conclusion that he arrived at, the common denominator of success, successful people do the things that failures aren’t willing to do. It’s not because they want to do them, either.
The most valuable things in my life, I’m forcing myself to do. I don’t naturally want to do them. The other side of that, what I find fascinating is we all live in the same city and in the same world essentially. Yet, depending on who you talk to, you think, “We must not be in the same place,” because, like for you, it’s the end of the world. For me, it’s rainbows.
I think one of the biggest things is really training yourself to look through a different set of lenses. That’s it. I really do believe that’s the absolute difference between being happy and being very anxious. It’s how you choose to look at things. This real estate changes with this NAR settlement is the greatest example.
The majority of people are looking at it like it’s some tragic end-of-the-world scenario. The second I heard it, I was like, “Bring it on, baby. Here we go.” I just looked at it that way because I thought when there’s a shift, there’s an opportunity. When there’s a shift, I get to adapt and be better. It’s like who wants the same thing every day. If I were sparring somebody and every day, they just threw ten jabs, it’d be like, “I want the hook kick. Make me duck.”
If we’re being brutally honest here, Jeffrey and I are in the world of real estate. Every agent is freaking out right now because what this whole NAR settlement is about is everyone’s now looking at you as a realtor and what’s your value? The reason why people are really freaking out is they’ve got to get better. Now, there’s more pressure on agents to get better, which is a good thing. It’s not a bad thing.
I am loving this. What’s funny is, again, how you look at it. Most people are looking at it as, “There’s a whole new set of forms.” I haven’t even thought about the forms. I waited until two days before to even look at them because I knew they’d change. It’s about strategy, not, “What are the forms,” but, “How am I going to approach this now? What’s the opportunity here? What are the questions going to be?”
It is not about getting what you want. It is wanting what you have. Share on XMy wife always laughs at me because we’re sitting around a night having a glass of wine and I’m like going through five different scenarios of what this interaction will look like. She’s like, “Why are you going through all this?” I go, “Because then I don’t have to do any, any of them.” I’m thinking through it so thoroughly from every angle that then, when it comes up, we’re dialed. Most of the time, you don’t even need it. That’s the funny part.
Always Be Thankful And Feel Wonderful
You said earlier, I wrote it down. “Most people are seeing the end of the world. You’re seeing rainbows.” Again, we don’t control what happens. We control how we experience what happens and how we respond to what happens. It just goes back to some of the things you talk about all the time. When you came in this morning, “How are things going?” “Always wonderful.” Same old, wonderful. I know you feel this about yourself, which is you feel like you’re the luckiest guy in the world. You walk around with that feeling.
Giddy. It’s for one simple reason. I wake up and I love my life and I’m grateful for it. That’s what I’ve worked to build. It’s like that has been my litmus test. It hasn’t been, “Do I have the Ferrari yet?” It hasn’t been, “Am I number one at something?” It’s been, “Do I wake up and love my life?” It’s not what getting what you want. It’s wanting what you have.
Also, if you’re going to tell a story, tell that story. Again, I’m not going to put a Band-Aid on it in case I might get cut. I’ll wait until I get cut. Just like with these changes in real estate. Why are you already in triage when it hasn’t happened yet? Why suffer twice? I’d rather expect the best and suffer once if I’m wrong. I’ll react accordingly and I’ll be better able to react because I won’t be like, “See, I knew it. The world’s over. I told you.” I’ll be like, “Okay. All right. What am I going to do now? How do we affect this now?”
Change your story, change your life.
It really is amazing. It really is.
Let’s end it on that note. Thanks.