As high-achievers, we work hard to build careers and businesses that we believe will bring us a fulfilling life. The irony is that we convince ourselves it’s necessary to work hard now so we can enjoy life more fully later. So how do we avoid this trap of simply “getting through the day” in order to appreciate some ever elusive point in the future?

The secret is to create space to learn, work and play, every day.

In this solo episode, I dive into strategies to help you do just that. I also delve into how to increase your self-awareness, so you can identify when you’re depending on external circumstances of happiness. In this way of thinking, we can view life through a more holistic, experiential lens, and ultimately approach our days as opportunities for growth and enjoyment, rather than mere survival or advancement.

View full show notes here.

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Adam: You know, what does it really mean to learn, work and play every single day? I think, you know, we all try to set up our lives so that the minute we wake up, we don't feel this discomfort. That we can feel pleasure and kind of avoid the pain. And we all do this. Every human being wakes up and you have an inner experience that you instantly become aware of.

And they're like, oh, it's fine. I'm like, well, do you have any dreams last night? And they're like, no, I go, how do you not have any, you know, that you have any dreams? And I, they finally get in there and they go, because I just didn't remember any. I go, well, who is that that didn't remember any? And you just, they kind of look at me and they go like, yeah, okay, I got it.

Right. Like this thing is just so important for us to continue to remind ourselves as adults as to who you are, because in order to learn, work and play every single day, you have to understand who you are so that none of these things become attachments. But they become things that you do. So the minute you start to wake up, you instantly start to go to a mental checklist of what's going on in your day and how many, and instantly you start to go to the things that are going to disturb you the most.

But anyways, the events that are actually causing us discomfort are like 1 percent of the 99 percent that we cause from the thinking of what's going to happen with that. And we all know that's true. And there's nothing wrong with thinking through a solution and using your mind that way. But we all know there's a difference to going two times two is four.

And that's a thought pattern of how I can write that out versus going, well, what are they going to say? How am I going to interact with this? What if they do this? What if that person comes in there? What if that person finds out over there? What if they post something on there? I mean, dude, this is what we do.

This is where our minds grab ourselves to. So we have these, we instantly wake up and start to go through the mental. Checklist of all the shit that is going to happen so we can experience it first thing in the morning. And therefore, if it happens to actually happen, we won't feel it the same way. Well, think about what you're doing to your life that way.

I just caused myself a tremendous amount of suffering. I woke up and I was like, I wonder how her friends are going to react to her today. I wonder how her experience is going to be. And it's like, what happens if they do that? Well, I paused for a second. I go, hold on. Hold on a second here. I'm not going to allow myself to go through this suffering, which is then going to cause me to be at a lower state and not operating as high as I can or not bringing my full self to the whole situation.

And I'm going to find myself literally just having a terrible inner experience because I'm worried, concerned, all those different things that are going on for something that she needs to go through. I can coach her through it. I can help her through it. I can have conversations with other people. I can, I can be there as a coach.

And I go, and, and by the way, she came home and it was a great day. So like I would have suffered all day, not been in the top position that I needed to. For that situation, I go, well, how many, how often are we doing that? Not just about our kids, but what about our life or our partners or our business or employees?

And there's so much going on with there. This is what I love when we think about learning, working and playing every day. You know, most people in their life have these ideas around the boxes of their life, meaning I'm going to spend the majority of my life learning, right? And that's childhood education, middle school, high school.

And it's either one of these, and we'll explain that in a second, but you get in this work zone and whatever you do, so he's like, again, you may get out of college and go, well, I'm not just going to work for every company, that's fine. You just, you can go out there and share the experience, but we buy into this, I need to go work and I'm going to stop learning.

Or I'm only going to learn through the work that I'm doing, which is fine. That's, that's one of the things, and I'm going to be able to play. Once I get to X level, it used to be, I'm going to go play once I get retirement and I have retirement. And then everyone sells me these commercials of people, very happy looking, super healthy in their mid sixties to late sixties, walking on a dirt road or riding some, you know, electric bike up the hill.

At some point you wake up and you go, what if I learn, work, and play every day? Not only do we not know how long we have, but wouldn't that be the whole experience? That can't everything be learning? Can't everything be working? Can't everything be playing? Let's define what work actually is because I love to exercise to keep my body there.

And sometimes it's work. Sometimes it's play. I love working. I, the traditional work sense, I love contributing in. Helping others in building something. It's fun to not have your talents hidden inside so that you die with them. I don't know how else you want to define work. It's not just about keeping your talents in there so you can get what you want.

I'm just, you don't have to buy into any of these examples. I'm just trying to get you to think differently about how we look at these things. So, and what about, again, we talk about learning. Like learning can be listening to this. It's listening. If you want to learn how to play the piano, you're learning that.

If you want to learn how to ski race, you can learn how to ski race. If you want to learn a more about leadership, there's Tons of leadership books out there. You want to learn techniques about meditation. There's plenty of teachers and they're all wonderful, right? So again, there's all these different learning things that you can do.

These modules. In fact, my son, I mentioned in the last podcast, you know, we bought a 3D printer and we spent a couple of days kind of putting it together. I actually wanted to learn. By the way, during that phase, I found my mind. Literally like being like, why are you having to set this thing up? And this is the most frustrating.

Is that done yet? Is this where I'm like, oh my God. Like, you need to stop yelling in my ear about this. And finally, I was like, look, okay, here's what you can do to help. You just get clarity on this. I really appreciate you wanting to be here with me. Whatever it is you have to say. And so again, that's, I put this thing together and I learned how to do that.

It was fun. You just have a different experience. I've never really dealt with 3D printers and it was a, it just became a learning part of And it was actually also play too. So that's the beauty about this stuff. And so again, playing also when you're, when you're 65 or 55 or 70 is different than playing when you're in your 20s or your 30s or your 40s or your 50s.

That you're having each day. So it is literally about learning, working, and playing each day. And so you can, you can then take a mechanical nature to this and structure your day this way. So you can, again, for me, I start anywhere between on the early side, 3. 30, depending on the day and the exercise to 4.

30. That's me, by the way, I wasn't always a morning person. I used to sleep in, especially when I first started business, I would sleep into like 7. 30. I would get up and I was working at 7. 45. I mean, that's literally like how I did it. I think a lot of people do that. And eventually I just started modeling other people to that allowed them to prime themselves to show up and do whatever it is that they were doing in a better position.

Well, I would argue that cold therapy and eight sleep are two things that can change your life entirely. And I don't have any interest in any of those companies, but they have certainly helped change mine in terms of getting a better quality sleep to be able to do these different things. But if you, if you just get 10 percent from each one of these, think about the 30 percent difference you can have in your life, 40%, 50 percent difference you can have in your life.

That's the whole point of all this, is that you're just distracting. Not about being the most productive you can out of life, like it's like a, it's like this rigid, how much can I extract from this? It's how much can I experience from this? Again, and that may look like extraction, but what you're really doing is experiencing, learning, working, and playing every day.

And you feel that inner experience, you go, Oh, that's going to suck. Whatever it is. You just, just take that and get it out. It does no good being in there. You either got to deal with it or you're not going to deal with it. And I'd rather be clear and not suffering all day if I have to deal with it. And then if I don't have to deal with it, I'd rather be clear and not suffering all day and then not feel relieved that I don't have to deal with it.

And whatever it is that seems to help me a lot. I use Evernote by the way, because I don't like writing with a pen or anything like that. I like to use a keyboard because it's just really about getting the things that are swarming around in there off on paper. And then kind of letting, it's my way of just letting them go so I can be clear and just.

Have a better inner experience, right? I mean, that's the entire point of evolving here is to have better inner experiences. It's so that consciousness can experience life through itself, which is what you are. You're a conduit. Your body is not you. We all know that. Your mind is not you. It's a tool. Your thoughts are not you.

Those are things that are just floating through there that you happen to pick up inside your brain, which your brain is a Just like a computer, it's a functionality of things, right? And so you have all of that, but that's not you. So it's, how does it experience itself? Because when you create something, it's fun to experience yourself and it's fun to experience what you create, right?

And it's no different. Just like you can experience life through your ears, through your eyes, through your senses. We've got like six ways of experiencing life, right? And the universe, God has, I mean, infinite numbers that we can't even comprehend of experiencing itself. And it happens to be one of them right here.

Which is experiencing from you and Johnny and Joe, just like you experience it from your left hand to your right hand. You touch a hammer with your left hand, you touch it with your right hand. It's two different experiences, but you're still experiencing them. So again, that's, that's the whole part of experience.

So it's just, it's a natural expression of what that is. And that's where we, we get into this learn, work, play. It's just their natural expressions for you to experience it and something to contribute to and work towards. And again, you know, I've talked about this before, but karma is similar to your life's education, right?

That's the way I like to think about it. It's literally you act. And then life will give you feedback and feedback comes in many different varieties of ways and you go, okay, there's some feedback. That's really what karma is. We'll talk about it as an action and then you come back in there. It's true. It does come back, but it's really you take an action.

So when we think about structuring our life again, so then I get the journaling and then I exercise for A couple hours a day, depends an hour to three hours to four hours, depending on weekend. Sometimes I go a lot longer. If it's a really big powder day in, uh, in our area that we live in, I might, you know, it might be 10 hours of exercise in there or whatever that is.

That's just, that's just my thing. I'm also listening to Audible a lot of times when I'm exercising as well, too, especially when I'm mountain biking or graveling. So anyways, that's just kind of my, my morning. And then I Here for my kids, I see them in the morning, I say goodbye to them, and then kind of, that's again, so just in that first four or five hours, I'm learning, I'm working, and I'm playing.

I guess the point of me doing this podcast was I see too many people. I've, I've just leading people in one on ones. They're just, I need to get through this week. I need to get through this next day or whatever it is. It's these type of conversations. Isn't it? Oh man, this week's going to be tough. I just need to get through this day.

For what reason? Once you through the day, then what? Then you're going to try to get through something else? Then when do you stop and live life? When do you stop and learn work and play? Isn't that all of it? Well, it's a really tough day, Adam. Okay, great. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to work through this.

Because you'll never stop that pattern. And what you're really doing is you're going, it's almost like, okay, I just got to keep thinking and visualizing what it's going to be like. And you do this movie rehearsal. I always like to think of it that way. I feel like you put the play on inside and go, once I'm done this day, man, sitting on my couch is going to feel wonderful.

And it's fine. I get it. We do that. I do that sometimes too, especially when I'm exercising, like, oh, when I'm done, this is going to feel great. And I go, well, hold on. You're going to wish you're back here right after. It's true. At least for me, but it's the same thing. You know, I was reading this article about, um, Jeff Bezos and how he still has his, actually included this in my Tuesday emails, uh, No, if you don't have my Tuesday email, you should, it's kind of fun.

We do it 100 percent inner and outer world. It's fun to put those things together, but we, um, Jeff Bezos uses his, you know, he still has his desk of like a, of a door that he went and bought at Home Depot way back in the day. Cause it was cheaper to put that on his desk. And, and it talks about how, you know, he really wouldn't trade those early days of all the suffering.

I mean, sure, you can go out and start another company, but it's not the same when you don't have any money versus after you have money. One easier? I don't know. One harder? I don't know. That's up for you to decide. But the reality is that they're all experiences that you can do. It's the same thing. Like I don't really try to get bought up into chapters of lives with my kids.

I just appreciate every phase that I'm going through with them. Just like I appreciate every leadership phase that I go through. Some I'm, I'm spot on and some I'm failing. And so you just appreciate all of the different leadership phases that are in this. But if you take this concept of no longer going to have these boxes in my life of like these decades of getting through, of learn, working and playing.

So that, okay, great. I'm going to go bike ride with my friends Monday, Thursdays, four o'clock. That could be play. Wonderful time for you. You should put that in there. That's part of the phase of it too. I'm going to get really focused on my work product from seven o'clock in the morning to 11 and that's going to be the biggest part that I'm going to work on.

I do that every single day on my one thing. Again, I'm making up these times, but you can do this as more of a mechanical step. To what I need to do to learn, work and play every day. And then I'm going to set aside time every evening or every morning, um, to spend time with my wife, my partner, my kids, whatever, my friends, or alone time.

I structure time in my business for the people that are there. So that becomes the gift here is that you just, you can, you can put these things in there, but it's really about how I want you to approach these things. Because once you start approaching them in the, in the, in the way that you can, you can look at these things, it'll be easier to fill the gaps in what this is.

Some days may require 12 hours. Some days may require two. And I say that in any category, 12 hours of play, 12 hours of work, right? It's just this, you're constantly counterbalancing between the two. So you can, you can again, and live this wonderful life. And I say the wonderful life has really nothing to do what you're doing outside.

That's essentially, I'm just going to say that again, and if you all just hear that, we should all take stock in this because how many times have you listened to the mind and you went and did it and you felt relieved or you felt good for a moment only to find the mind then told you to go do something else.

So, it just doesn't work over time. It's not permanence. It's not a state of consciousness. It's something you can achieve momentarily and then it fades away. I'm not really interested in anything that can fade away. I'm interested in pure states. What you don't realize is that inside every one of us, there is a beautiful energy that flows for no reason.

I get it now. And it's almost like trying to tell me this, almost like pay attention to it, but it's trying to make sense of that being like, there's, there's things that are happening out there outside of the world. And yet I feel this great inner peace. This inspiration, that's it, right? I mean, and you're going, but why?

I didn't do anything. It didn't happen the way I wanted it to. And you go, well, that's the piece of past is all understanding. That's the knowledge that we can bring to it. And you go, I want more of that because nothing has to happen outside, therefore, then you can learn work and play every day and you're just in a wonderful state of consciousness.

You're able to then show up differently. You're able to remember, I always talked about this from early on, that spirituality is never about changing what you do. It may be, but that's not why you're doing it. It's changing the part of you that's interacting with it. So if your mind or your self concept slash ego is interacting with what you're doing, that's going to be suffering.

And you no longer are. And so, therefore, you bring your full self into the experience that you're having. And that's the whole essence of 200 percent Life. That's why we break this down in the book, which is, it's not about 100 percent living in this spiritual realm where I go hang out in a cave next to a fire reciting haikus.

Or is it about going out there and building a billion dollar business so I can have a bunch of money? If you miss both of those, you've missed the experience of life. But one comes before the next, right? I've heard Eckhart Tolle say this is that, you know, being always comes before doing, but it's not about just being.

So you always remember there's a, there's a, I remember walking into Michael's place, Michael Singer's house. And, and actually he has it in his temple. Um, there's a picture from 200 million miles. I think it is a way that one of the satellites or one of the things took. And it just shows us it's black, the whole thing's black, and it's got this tiny dot, like it's somebody that took a pen and went, boop, right in the middle of there, and that's earth.

And he says he keeps it up there, it's because he looks at it every morning and every night. He goes to his temple every morning and every night, and he looks at it and just reminds himself that we are spinning around in the middle of nowhere. Having this experience that we're having for a very short period of time.

But really what you're doing is you're bringing awareness to the fact that you can bring experiences and you can bring yourself into every situation that you are. And that becomes the gift. The gift of having every experience. And it's only the mind that says. I feel sad. Well, can't it say, I feel happy?

If it's the mind that says, I feel sad, can't it say, I feel happy? So this concept of buying into the fact that my inner state is going to rely on whether or not my mind says, I'm happy or I'm sad is false. You can make it say whatever you want it to. So when you say, I'm not really feeling good about this, you should say, I feel great about this.

And that's part of it. And that is this whole surrender or awareness or present moment is all it's bringing. It's getting you situated in a position where you can go, I see what's going on here. I'm aware that I'm aware that I was paying attention to this mind. Okay. So two things take away. Number one, look at your calendar structurally.

Have you set up alone time? Have you set up work time? Have you set up play time? Right? Have you set up, um, learning time? Again, when you're listening, when are you doing these things? Because that's part of the structure it is, and then you're going to just show up and appreciate the experiences that you're having.

Like many of us do and many of us suffer while we're working because we go, I shouldn't be doing this and I should be doing this. It's like, you shouldn't have a rather club. I'd rather be skiing. In my mind, I love skiing. I love exercise. My mind will say that sometimes like, oh man, you should be skiing.

And instantly I go, no, I shouldn't. No, I shouldn't. I'd rather not be rathering, and I'd rather be right here. I'd rather be having this inner experience because there's times when I'm skiing going, and I really should be working or vice versa. I'm working, like, again, it doesn't matter. You're doing all these different things.

So, I'm going, nope, hold on, hold tight. We're not playing that game anymore. That's part of it. That's how you use it. So, enjoy work on these things. I appreciate you listening. We'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.

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