202 - Excellence Changes With Every Season

In this episode, I talk about something I've been thinking about a lot lately: what excellence actually means.

For a long time, I thought excellence looked the same every day. Wake up early. Train hard. Work harder. Stay disciplined. Keep pushing.

Then life changed.

My health changed. My energy changed. I'm preparing to become a father. And I realized something that I hadn't fully understood before.

Excellence isn't one fixed standard that stays the same forever.

Every season asks something different of you.

That doesn't mean lowering your character or making excuses. It means being honest about the season you're in while continuing to keep promises to yourself.

In this conversation, I share what I've learned from running, marriage, disappointment, my parents, and the challenges I've faced over the last year. We also talk about why discipline still matters, how to avoid letting your identity become tied to performance, and why your standard should be built on character instead of circumstances.

I don't think the goal is to become someone who impresses other people.

I think the goal is to become someone you respect.

If you've been in a season where life feels different than it used to, I hope this conversation gives you something to think about.

Thank you for listening, and if you enjoyed the episode, I'd really appreciate it if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with someone who might need to hear it.

Keep Getting After It.

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You're not lazy. You're not lost. You just know there's a gap between the life you're living and the one you're capable of — and that gap is getting harder to ignore.

Every week, I pull apart the mental patterns that keep capable people stuck — comfort disguised as patience, avoidance disguised as strategy, mediocrity dressed up as balance. I bring in philosophy, personal stories from the trails and the trenches, and conversations with people who decided to stop waiting.

This isn't a show about hacks. It's about the harder work: getting honest with yourself, building the discipline to act on that honesty, and becoming someone you'd actually respect.

Keep getting after it.

Transcript

Welcome Back And Arizona Heat Scare

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My friends, happy Monday. At least when this episode comes out, it will be Monday, but you might be listening to this on a Tuesday, Thursday, or maybe a Saturday. But welcome back to the Getting After It podcast. I am excited to talk to you about what we're going into today. As I have been thinking about the future episodes of Getting After It, what's important to me, what kind of conversations I want to have. If you remember last week I talked about how I want to create episodes that are a little bit more um beneficial to you that rely on other people's teachings and just give you my thoughts about them. And uh today we're gonna be doing that. Uh and really quick, so some housekeeping items, as they say. I just got back from Arizona. I was there with my family for uh a wedding. My cousin got married, which is pretty weird. Uh, but I was there where wow, I can't speak apparently, too. Um I was just there with my family and um really enjoying my time out there. One thing I will say, Arizona is hot as hell. Uh there were three days where I ran outside, and I, you know, thinking I'm strong, thinking I'm, you know, oh yeah, I run outside all the time. I'll be fine. Um it was 108 degrees. That was probably the average temperature while I was there. And there was one run in particular that I thought I was gonna die. I decided, hey, okay, I'm gonna run seven miles. Seven miles, not bad. I do that all the time. Uh, and I went out there, um, started my run. And what I like to do, I like to do out and backs. So really, that means I run, you know, uh for that run specifically, it was three and a half miles out and then three and a half miles back. But the reason I like to do that is because it kind of forces me to stay in the whole run, to do the whole thing. Um, that run I brought a small water bottle with about a thousand milligrams of sodium and other electrolytes, all that good stuff. And uh I had ice cubes in my water bottle, okay? And as I'm running, I'm not even kidding you, about two miles in to this thing, my water bottle that was super cold when I left was hot. And when I drank it, it literally tasted just like I left a water bottle outside. It was disgusting. But, anyways, so I ran the three and a half miles out, and I was like, oh boy, maybe this was a bad idea. Because at that point, my mouth was so dry, it was hard to swallow. Um, the heat was so intense, and the sun was just blaring onto me. This is at like 3 p.m., mind you. So kind of stupid on my part to decide to go out and run at that time. Um, but you know, we learn from these things, we try and get better from them. And anyways, I was out there and I I ran under an under underpass, which I'll put up a photo right here. And I just remember thinking, like, okay, this could be it. Um I might not make it. Of course, I was safe. But I ran by a canal the whole time, just with the thought that if I worst case scenario, I needed to cool off, I was gonna jump in the canal. Um, so really random, but like, man, the heat makes you feel like you are unbelievably weak. And uh that's just something I wanted to open up with because I think, you know, I'm happy to be here. I I'm not saying I like legit would have died, but um, it felt like it sometimes. And um, a lot of the times, you know, when you are running, sometimes it does feel like you're gonna die. And just want to let you know that hey, I still struggle with that stuff all the time. So, uh, anyways, why did I share that story?

Excellence In A New Season

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Well, today we're gonna talk about excellence, and I have been thinking a lot about what this means, especially for me right now, um, and for me in different seasons of life, because uh I think for the most part, a lot of us um we expect ourselves to be excellent in in some way. We we have this definition of excellence that we learned when we were younger or we saw on social media, and because of that, we try and uh keep our lives to be something or try try and live up to those expectations, to that level of excellence. And sometimes it's it's hard to do so. Um and I I think that's fair. Like it's it's very fair to be like, oh, well, it's hard to do what I used to do now. And if you've listened to the podcast in these most recent weeks, you know that my testosterone is down to 136. I think it's getting better now because I've been on shots for the past three weeks, um, but it takes about like four to six weeks to actually kick in and and help me feel regular. So um, but during that time, like I if you asked me to do what I was doing previously or what I was doing two years ago now, I don't think I'd be able to do it. Um again, the last time that I had testosterone levels this low was at the beginning of Valley and I's marriage, but back then it was 160. So I'm lower than I am now than I was back then. Um but before we get into all that, I do want to read something.

Daily Dad On Self-Respect

SPEAKER_00 5:27

So I thought this would be kind of a fun thing to do every episode. This book is called The Daily Dad. Now, this is a book by Ryan Holliday, but what it is, it is 366 meditations on parenting, love, and raising great kids. And leading up to the birth of my son, I think it'd be kind of cool every single episode to find something that um is relevant to the topic that we're discussing, uh, but also kind of paints the picture out a little bit. So I love this book um already. Like I've gone through, I've read some of the sections, and I can already see how it's gonna be very valuable and very practical. And I want to start off by going to an entry for January 15th, but it's called If You Want Your Kids to Respect You. That's what it is. That's the title. And it has this quote at the beginning You will earn the respect of all men if you begin by earning the respect of yourself. Ooh, okay, so that quote alone kind of paints the picture with what we're going into today. But let's read this entry. So every parent wants to be listened to. We want our advice to be taken seriously, we want to be looked up to. Most of all, we want to be respected. Well, if you want your kids to respect you, be worthy of respect. Just think about it for a second. Why would they respect advice that you don't live by? Why would they admire you when you're not living up to your own potential? Why would they look up to you when you yourself are dealing poorly with self-esteem issues? When you have accepted the lies of imposter syndrome and allowed them to affect how you act as a parent. Get your stuff straight. Be the parent you know you can be, be the person you know you can be. The rest will follow. And if it doesn't, then at least you'll be strong enough to deal with whatever comes. So I love that because in this section, I mean, there's a couple things that I want to call out. The first thing is if you want your kids to respect you, but you could say anybody, if you want to earn respect, you have to be someone who is worthy of respect, which means you have to respect yourself. And then it he talks a little bit about hypocrisy and how you know if you want your kids to do these things, to do great things, then you need to be doing them too. You can't just tell them to go out there and and get straight A's or like go out and and make varsity in the team if you're not also pushing yourself, if you're not leading by example. And I love what it says here. When you um why would they look up to you when you yourself are dealing poorly with self-esteem issues, when you have accepted the lies of imposter syndrome and allowed them to affect how you act as a parent? That's pretty powerful. And I mean, I'm not sure what your life is like, but I can tell you a little bit from mine. Imposter syndrome is something that I feel pretty strongly, not as much as I did in the past, but um definitely with this podcast, like imposter syndrome has been there. Um and I have learned to instead of think that I am an imposter, to say that, hey, I am willing to learn publicly, and I'm gonna document my journey while I do so. And that is where this is coming from. It's not, hey, Brett is going to teach you all these lessons that he's gathered. It's more of like, hey, I'm going to bring you on this journey of education that I'm I'm taking myself, and hopefully, along the way, you can learn too. So that's where that comes from. Uh, like I said, I'm gonna be doing a little snippet of that book every time uh we do a podcast just until Winston's born, and maybe, you know, if you guys like it, we'll continue that until who knows when, when we finish the book, maybe. But again, so today's topic is all about excellence. And as we do that, let's crack this open. This is the um special edition FIFA Coke Zero. I've been watching a lot of FIFA with my wife, it's actually been awesome. Um, I'm not a big sports guy, but I feel very invested in FIFA, especially with Brazil. Go, Brazil! That's that's who we're rooting for here. Um, but let's get back into the topic of excellence.

The Instagram Version Of Excellence

SPEAKER_00 9:58

So I think when people hear the word excellence, it can sound very intense. Like that is the person that they think of who is waking up at 4 30 in the morning, they're eating chicken and rice, they're cold plunging, they're reading 80 books a year, and they're making a million dollars and running marathons, and somehow they never get tired. I think with social media, that has become a lot of people's definition of excellence. And I'm not saying that that is inherently bad. In fact, if you're able to do those things and you're happy and you feel fulfilled, then good on you. That's great. But I think most of us, that expectation is a little bit too unrealistic. Um, that is not what I'm talking about today. Because honestly, that version, it does feel a little bit fake to me. It feels very Instagram, uh, or at least a little bit incomplete. Maybe that's a better way to say it. But I have been thinking about this a lot because my own definition of excellence has been changing, and that has been uncomfortable for me, honestly.

When Your Body Stops Cooperating

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Because for a long time, excellence was easy to define. It was wake up early, train hard, run a lot, and work hard, record the podcast, read, journal, keep on moving. And when I was feeling good, that standard made sense. When my energy was high and my body felt strong, when my testosterone was normal, when I could wake up at 5 a.m. and just go, excellence felt pretty clear to me. But this past season has been difficult and it's been different because, like I said, now my testosterone dropped to about 136, my energy has has fallen off, my strength has dipped, my body didn't feel like my body anymore. It just one day I like it's hard to explain, but it doesn't feel like my body. And things that used to be easy now became hard. Waking up felt impossible some mornings, and running felt harder, staying lean felt harder, training felt harder, and even just feeling like myself and journaling and doing all these things that I I talk about very openly or recording the podcast, all of it felt harder. And that messes with you, especially if you are someone who has built your identity on discipline and consistency and talking about fitness, talking about doing hard things, and then when your body starts pushing back, you have to ask yourself a very hard question that I I do not like asking, and that is am I losing my standard? Or is this season asking me to define excellence differently? And so that's where this whole idea for the episode came from today is I just I've recognized that I am not an anomaly. I think there's a lot of people who go through certain life changes or they they are in different seasons where excellence for them is going to be different than what it was before. It also might ask of it might ask more of you, but it might ask less of you. And I want to make something very clear. Do not get me wrong, I still believe in high standards. Getting after its message has not changed. The principles are the same. But I still believe in pushing yourself, I still believe in doing hard things, and I still believe that you should expect a lot from yourself. But I also believe excellence is being honest, and it has to match the season that you're in. Like, that does not mean you are lowering your character, it does not mean that you're becoming soft. It means asking yourself, okay, what does excellence require from me right now? Not five years ago, or not when life was easier, not when you had more energy or fewer responsibilities right now. What is it asking? Because your standards should grow with you. And sometimes growth, it does look like adding more, like more miles, more work, more discipline, more output. But sometimes growth looks like adapting. Sometimes it looks like being patient or taking care of your health or being present with your wife or preparing to become a father, or doing less, but the right things more. And that has been a hard, that has been hard for me to accept, honestly. Because I like effort, I understand effort. It's it's easily measurable, and it makes sense to me. If there's a problem, I want to do something about it. If I feel weak, I want to train. If I feel behind, I want to work. If I feel anxious, I want to move. And that mindset has helped me a lot. Do not get me wrong. It has helped me a lot, and it has helped me reach certain goals, like running the sub-three marathon or running my first Ultra or starting the podcast. But that is because I I was much more focused on output at the time. And it has helped me build a life that I'm proud of. But in a season that I'm in now, and throughout seasons of life, I'm sure I will come to understand this, there are seasons where effort does not fix everything. And that is a very humbling place to be. Because you realize that excellence is not just output. It's not just performance, and it's it's not just hitting numbers. And as I was prepping for this episode, I was really trying to figure out okay, in one sentence, how can I write this out? How can I make it as clear as possible with whatever my definition of excellence is? It might be different from yours, but as I came through, I wrote this down, and I think this is my own personal definition of excellence.

Excellence Equals Keeping Your Promises

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Here it is. Excellence is keeping promises to yourself while becoming the kind of person that you respect. That's it. That's what I believe excellence is. And those promises, they will look different depending on the season of life that you're in. Like, there's no question about it. They will look different. Like when I was younger, excellence looked like pushing hard, like I said. And I felt like I needed to prove something to the time, really to myself, that I could keep promises to myself. I needed to become someone who I could trust. And really, that is one of the most underrated things in life is self-trust. Um, you do it by like following up with what you you say you were going to do. Like nobody can give that to you. Like you cannot fake that, you cannot read your way into it or listen to a thousand motivational podcasts and finally have the answer. You build it through action. Small action, but consistently. And a lot of the times it's things that nobody really sees. Like you wake up when you said you would, or you train when you said you would, you tell the truth, you finish your work. And in my opinion, that is where excellence starts. It's not on Instagram, it's not on a stage, it's it's not in some huge life-changing moment. It starts in the tiny decisions where you either become someone you trust, or someone you have to negotiate with. And I don't want to be someone who has to negotiate with himself every single day. That seems exhausting. Because I've been that guy before, and I know it is. He's the guy that says, Oh, I'll just start tomorrow, or hey, I'll just do it later. Or man, I deserve a break. I'm so tired. And listen, sometimes, yes, you are tired. Sometimes you do need to rest. That's fine. But you know the difference. Deep down, you know there is a difference between rest and avoidance, between grace and excuse making and adjusting the standard versus abandoning that. But those differences matter. That's a very important thing that you need to understand. That I had to understand in a very difficult way. It was by living both of these lives. And because once you start lying to yourself, even in small ways, you do start losing respect for who you are. And that is a dangerous trade. I don't think anybody d deserves to make that trade. That is hard. You might get comfort in that moment, but you lose something deeper. You lose that self-trust. And once you lose trust with yourself, everything gets harder. Like everything. Your goals get harder, your relationships get harder, your faith gets harder, and your confidence gets harder to maintain. Because confidence is not just feeling good about yourself. That's that's part of it, but confidence is evidence, and it is the memory of you doing hard things and keeping your word. So when I talk about excellence, I'm really talking about becoming someone you can trust, someone you can respect, and someone who you don't need perfect circumstances to do the right thing. That's why I started out with this little snippet from the the Daily Dad, because I think if you want to have your kids respect you or fill in the blank there, have this person respect you, have anyone respect you, you first

Self-Trust Builds Real Confidence

SPEAKER_00 19:30

need to respect yourself, and you need to earn that through self-trust. And that takes time to build. But I have learned this from a lot of people, and I would say the first example would be my parents. Like as a kid, I watched them live in a way that made me want to be better. Like they were not perfect, nobody is, but they showed me what it looks like to live with values, and that is something I can never repay them for. They taught me how to work hard, how to care about your family, how to keep going when things are difficult, and to live a life that you can be proud of. And when you grow up around that, it really does shape you. Like you might not see it at the time, you're just a kid, but you don't understand the weight your parents are carrying. Like you don't understand the stress that they have or understand bills that they have to take care of, or or really their private sacrifices to give me the life that I lived. Like you don't really see that stuff. It's not until you look back and realize, oh, they were teaching me the whole time. Not with speeches or or um books every night they were teaching us through that. No, it was it was with how they lived, and that matters because excellence is contagious. And I've come to realize so is laziness, so is bitterness, so is excuse making. So I feel I feel very, very blessed to have parents that I grew up around who not only sacrificed things that they wanted for for our well-being, but they also showed what it means to live a life of values, to care about one another more than they care about money, or show their kids that they have a faith in God and teach lessons around that that make us all a better, better kids, better people. Um the way that you live, I think gives other people permission. And that is a heavy thought because I'm about to become a father. And Winston, he's coming here in September. We're gonna meet him soon. I'm actually so excited for it. I know there's a lot of people out there who are like, Oh man, you're in for it. I am in for it, and I know it's gonna be great. Like, sure, there will be times where it's difficult. But that's why I run ultra marathons, guys. I want to do hard things, so I'm ready for this kind of stuff. Um But I really have been thinking a lot about him. And soon that I won't like I won't just be talking about standards. I will be modeling them for him. And that is different. Like Ali has seen me try and do the same thing for her. But with a child, it's completely different because he doesn't have any opinions. He doesn't know any different. And my son will not care what I say on a podcast if I don't live it at home. He won't care if I tell people to be disciplined while I'm careless with my own life. Or if I talk about faith and I don't live with faith. Like he will not care about marriage if I don't love his mother well. Kids are smart. That's one thing I've learned from nieces and nephews. They're they really are smart. They pick up on a lot. They watch and they absorb. They're sponges. They notice what you do when you're tired. And they notice how you speak when you're frustrated. Or whether you keep your word. And that has really been on my mind. It's been weighing on it quite a bit, which I think is a good thing. Like I want to feel that pressure. I want to feel that pressure of becoming a dad because I know I'll mess up plenty of times, but at least I want to be cognizant of my actions and present in the moments that matter most. And I know fatherhood is going to change my standard again. There will be less sleep, less free time, and less control while adding responsibility and interruptions and moments where my plans don't matter. And honestly, I know there will be parts that are hard for me. And I like routine, I like structure, and I like knowing what my day looks like. But a baby doesn't care about my calendar. You know, a baby does not care about when I was planning to record a podcast or if I wanted to get eight hours of sleep or anything like that. And honestly, I think that's good for me because it will force me to grow yet again. Excellence as a father will not always look like doing more, though. Sometimes it will look like being patient with my son at 2 a.m. when I'm feeding him, or sometimes it will look like changing another diaper when I've changed 10 that same day. I actually don't know how often babies are uh going through diapers, so 10 might be a lot. Um I mean I'm not taking 10 poops a day. So, but babies are also smaller. I don't know. You guys in the comments tell me. Um but it's going to look like me adapting through the whole thing, and I think that's what real excellence is. And it's it's the private kind, it's it's where nobody applauds, like I said. That's that kind of life is the one I want to build. And I know, like I said, it's gonna change a lot of things, but again, that's that's something that for me is 100% worth it. Because not only am I going to have this little baby who I love more than anything, and who I want to provide the best life for, that's gonna motivate me to really dig deep and say, okay, how can I emulate the best values for this little kid? So he knows that his dad always worked hard, so he knows what to do in situations like this, or I don't know, I just I'm really excited for it. And I know it's gonna test me, but I welcome that test more than anything else. And um, it's kind of funny. Allie and I were talking the other day about this and how really the podcast um has been a form of me journaling over the past four years. It has been lessons that I've learned, it's been me documenting my own experiences and talking about things that I've I've had to go through at certain parts of my life and what I did during those times. And I was thinking, man, how cool is it? You know, maybe maybe I'm dead and Winston is is 40 years old and he doesn't listen to the podcast until that point. But how cool would it be if he sits down and he's like, man, I wonder, I wonder what dad was going through at this time. Like, what was he like at the beginning of his marriage? Or what was he like when when I was getting ready to be born? Like, I want him to see all these things and at least get a glimpse of uh what it was like when I was 28 or 2024. Um, and that's kind of a cool thought for me. But I want to emulate all those, all those values, all those principles. And the only way to do that is through actually following through them. And that's why I said like self-trust is one of the most important things that we can have. Because the more that we trust ourselves, the more confident we'll be. The more that we trust ourselves, the more that we will understand what our potential is and understand what our capabilities right now are, understand where we can refine ourselves to get even a little bit better. Um, that's important. But, anyways, let's go back to the topic of excellence. Uh, because there's another person who I have to shout out, and this probably won't surprise you, but I also learned excellence through

Discipline Equals Freedom With Caveats

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Jocko. Like, yeah, like I said, it's not gonna surprise anyone who's listening to the show, but Jocko taught me discipline, and he didn't he wasn't there teaching me discipline by my side. It was more through how I observed him, which is another reason why I think it's so important to be the person that you want to be, uh, because your kids will pick up on that. Like, Jocko doesn't even know I exist. I met him one time, but I guarantee you he forgot. He meets a lot of people, and I have observed him over the past seven years, eight years, and he has helped me put words into something that I've already felt. One of his famous quotes is discipline equals freedom. That idea alone has changed how I've I've seen a lot of things. And I don't think discipline is a punishment anymore. If you would have asked me that when I was 12 years old, I thought discipline was literally you get disciplined. Like that's what I thought it was. I had no concept of what Jocker was talking about with discipline equals freedom. Like, it is not being mean to yourself. In fact, I think discipline gives you options, and discipline, in my opinion, is the highest form of self-respect that you can give to yourself. Like when you train, your body gives you more options in terms of the things that you can do, or when you save money, your future has more options. Or when you tell the truth, your relationships build more trust, and you can take that in for a while. Or when you wake up early in the morning, you have more space throughout the day to get things done that you needed to. Like, discipline gives you a life that is not ruled by some impulse, and that is powerful. But I'll also say this like you do have to be careful, and I want to make the distinction here. Because sorry, because if you're not careful, discipline can become another way to beat yourself up. And I've done that, I've been there, and there is a fine line. Like, I have taken a good standard and turned it into a weapon. I've had days where I've missed a workout and it felt like I was failing as a person. Like, that is not healthy, that is not excellence, that is ego dressed up as discipline. And there's a difference there. Like, excellence should make you better, it should make you stronger, it should make you more honest, and it should make you more useful to the people around you. But if your standard makes you proud, cold, impatient, self-obsessed, or impossible to live with, then something is off, and discipline is not being used the right way. That is a lesson that marriage has taught me.

Parents Values And Contagious Habits

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Um Allie has taught me a different kind of excellence, and I want to spend some time talking about her for this, because she truly has really redefined my definition of excellence. Because if you were to ask me before marriage, I thought excellence was mostly personal, you know? And it makes sense why I think that way. You know, they're my goals, it's my routine, it's my work, and my fitness and my growth. And then I got married. And I realized pretty quickly that you cannot bring a selfish version of excellence into marriage and expect it to work. I tried that, not intentionally, but I did. And early in our marriage, I thought I could be the same guy I was before, with the same priorities, same habits and routines, and then just add a wife into the picture. And that is a stupid way to think. At least I can say that now looking back. That is a dumb way to think. Early Brett, early marriage, Brett, you're an idiot. I just gotta say it. You're stupid. And marriage is not just adding someone. That is not it. Marriage literally changes what excellence requires. Like being a good husband means that your life is no longer just about your goals. It means that you learn how to listen to your wife. You learn how to notice things, you learn how to support someone else's dreams with the same energy that you give your own. And it means you stop acting like your routine is sacred and everyone else has to work around it. At the beginning, that was hard for me because I've had been living a lifestyle of intense discipline for the past five years up to this point. And then I threw Allie into the picture, and it took me a while to really learn that marriage is not just about me, it's about one, growing together and being committed to that growth, but then two, trying to become the best version of ourselves that we can be. And you can't become the best version of yourself when you're married if all you're thinking about is you. And that's something that took me a while. And I liked to be driven. I liked chasing things, I liked that feeling of being locked in. But if I'm locked in on everything except my wife, then I am missing the whole point. No podcast goal matters more than my wife. No race matters more than Allie, or no business idea matters more than Allie. No personal ambition matters more than the person I promised to love. That does not mean I stopped chasing goals. And it means that my goals have to fit inside the kind of man I want to be. And that is the new standard. What I didn't realize back then is that I was setting new standards for myself. But they included Allie in them. And honestly, Allie has made me better because of it. Like she has taught me that excellence is not just intensity, it's about learning how to listen and being patient and turning your phone off or asking, How are you really doing? Like, talk to me. You okay? And it's sitting at the dinner table and being fully there, not halfway there, not on your phone, but physically present while mentally mentally focused on the person that you love. And that was again, was hard for me in the beginning. But I think ambitious people have a tendency to live in the future. You know, they're thinking about the next race or for me, the next episode of the podcast, or what their next conversation at work is going to be, their next business deal. But that can rob you of the life that's right in front of you. And I do not want to do that. I really don't. Especially if the point of excellence is to continue to raise your standard and to continue adapting, then when I have little Winston, I don't want to miss anything in his life. Because I know it's going to be so short, that little window where I get to watch him grow up. That's wild to me. Like it's kind of sad how little time we get with our kids, but you know, that's important to be present of. Because I know this much.

Fatherhood And Private Excellence

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Or if it costs you your peace with God, again, too expensive. Like, excellence that makes you less kind, less patient, less honest, and less present is not the kind that I want. And you can easily get that way by chasing goals that are out of your your reach, or if you become selfish, or if you become um a hundred percent focused on yourself. I guess that's selfishness. But you know what I'm saying. Like, that is a danger. And you you really can't forget what is important in life if all you're thinking about is how can I get to the next thing, or how can I be the best in running, or whatever it is. That's dangerous. And so I think you have to adapt. But another thing that has taught me excellence, and this is an interesting one, as I was going through and thinking about like, okay, well, who's taught me how to be excellent besides Bill and Ted? If you guys know the quote, be excellent to each other. That's a great quote. But another way that I've learned excellence is through disappointment. Of all things, disappointment has taught me excellence too. Probably more than success has, honestly. Like, success feels good, but disappointment tells the truth. You may have heard the quote that failure is not failure, it's data. And disappointment, I think, falls into that category. And it shows you what you actually believe. It shows you whether your standard was real or just convenient. And running has done this for me many times. Like when a race goes well, it's easy to talk about discipline. It's easy to talk about the things or the challenges that you face during a race and how you overcame them. And it's easy to talk about the process. But when a race goes bad, when your body quits or when your asthma flares up in in the Las Vegas marathon and you DNF, or when you don't get the results that you wanted, that is when you find out what your standard really is. Like, do you become bitter? Do you make excuses? Do you blame everything? Do you quit entirely? That is the question. And that is what disappointment brings up to surface, which is really interesting. Like, life gives you plenty of those moments. Infertility was one of those for me. You guys know this. And that was not something I could muscle my way through. I couldn't outwork it. I couldn't outdiscipline it. I couldn't wake up earlier and fix it. And as a man, that was incredibly hard. I talked about how I struggled with my masculinity during that time. It was really hard. Being told you have zero sperm does something to you. I don't you probably don't understand until you've gone through something like that. But the other thing is being told that your testosterone is extremely low, that does something to you. Like 136, I haven't done research on this, but I can almost guarantee you most women have more testosterone than that. Like you start questioning yourself and you start questioning your body and start wondering if something's wrong with you. And in that season, excellence has to change. It had to change. Like right now, my life, it's not 100% focused on performance. It is about how I handle suffering. Can I stay faithful in God? Can I stay close to Ali? Can I avoid becoming bitter? Can I ask for help when I need it? Or can I keep on moving without pretending everything's fine? That is excellence in the season that I'm in right now. And it doesn't look super strong. It's just being honest with myself because that matters. Honestly, that matters. Because sometimes different seasons in life will take away the version of excellence that you prefer. Like I said, I love output. I love going out and actually doing something difficult and seeing the results there, right? You can easily quantify that and say, oh yeah, well, I ran for two hours today, I got X amount of miles in. I'm feeling good about myself. That was excellent. But in a season like this, where I have to adjust the bar, because that old version of me isn't here now. I want him to come back. I'm working on him to get back. But I have to be patient. And I think you can say that being patient, that's excellent. Being or having the ability to at least show up even when you're exhausted, that is excellent. Or when you barely get any sleep because testosterone affects your sleep, like doing what you can, that is excellent. And it makes me think of the Tim Tim or wow, Tim Tim race. Um the Team Tim race that my wife is planning to run in December of this year, November, December of this year. But really the whole goal of this is that we are going to get together as a group. We're going to host a race. And the whole point is that for two hours, you are going to do what's hard for you. And that might look like you run three miles. It also might look like you run 15 miles. Like it doesn't matter. Whatever's difficult for you is what you're supposed to be doing, doing during that time. And so, you know, there might be someone who's never really ran before, and they show up to the race, but they walk 10 laps. And that's great. It doesn't matter what you're doing. As long as you are pushing yourself. That is the whole point of Team Tim is doing hard things. And if you're listening to the show, you know that doing hard things is relative. Some people's heart is not going to be yours, and your hard might not be someone else's. Everybody has a different version of hard. That's what makes us unique. And right now, my standard has adapted to really just survive a bad season. And I guarantee it'll change shape again. But there's also something that I always have with myself that you've heard before, but they're called my non-negotiables. And they're pretty clear. Like I can forgive myself for a lot of things that I've done. For being tired or missing a workout when I really needed rest or having a bad day or needing to adjust. I can forgive myself for all those things. But what I can't respect myself for is someone who lies. I can't respect myself if I actually quit and threw in the towel or if I neglect my family, or if I make excuses all the time rather than try and solve the problem itself. If I blame people, if I avoid hard conversations, or if I stop trying. Those are my lines. And notice in each of those, there none of those was I need to run 60 miles a week or I need to record three podcasts every single week. None of those were number-oriented.

Marriage Turns Excellence Outward

SPEAKER_00 41:10

There was not an I need to do X to get Y. All these are things that I cannot negotiate with. I will never neglect my family. I won't blame other people. I'm not going to avoid having the hard conversations, and most importantly, I will not stop trying. That is crucial. You have to always continue to try, even when that looks different. Like, I think everybody needs lines like this. You don't need 500 rules. You don't need a giant list of impossible standards that you yourself question if you can even hold. You just need clear lines. The kind that tell you who you really are. Because without them, I've noticed that you can drift, and drifting is very easy to do, especially now. Nobody wakes up one day and says, Hey, I want to become someone I don't respect. That sounds fun. No, no one does that. It happens slowly. It's one excuse at a time, one lie at a time, one broken promise at a time, and one lazy choice at a time. And then you look up and wonder where the old version of you went. You say, Well, man, I used to be this crazy guy who used to run ultra marathons, but now I'm really good at eating lays on the sofa. I don't know. I keep seeing Lay's ads because it's the World Cup, like I said. And there's this one ad where Will Farrell's driving around in a semi-truck and he says, Hey, jump on the bandwagon. And uh he's eating Lays. So there you go. But I don't want to wake up 10 years from now and realize that I became soft in the places that mattered most to me. Like, I mean soft in character, soft with the truth or responsibility or with faith, with fatherhood and marriage. Promises that I make to myself. That is what I want to avoid. And that's why setting a standard matters. Like, not because I'm trying to impress anyone, not because I want everybody to look at me and say, wow, that guy is disciplined. Who cares? Seriously, who cares? Like, people's opinions are unstable anyway. They change them all the time. But your opinion of yourself should not. You should always trust yourself. And you are trying to become the person that you would want your kids to become. The kind of person your wife can trust. The kind of person your younger self would be proud of. The kind of person your future self will thank you for becoming. That's the aim. That's the whole goal here. And this is where I think a lot of people get lost. They let someone else define excellence for them. Social media does this all the time. If I'm being completely honest, I thought Jocko's definition of excellence, where he was waking up at 4 30 every single day, even if he got three hours of sleep, he was still showing up to the gym, getting it done, never. Eating anything bad. I thought that was the standard of excellence. And it wasn't until I actually learned that some of those things don't serve me well. And Jocko would be the first to say, Good. I'm glad you figured that out. Do what you need to do to become the best version of you that you can be. I'm not trying to become like Jocko. There's some things I've taken from Jocko that I apply to someone else's life. But I think, especially when you open up things like Instagram or social media in general, you think excellence is, you know, someone else's body or someone else's house, marriage, business, morning routine, or their highlight reel. And if you're not careful, you start chasing a standard that you never chose. That is exhausting. Because now you're not even trying to become your best self. You're trying to become a collage of other people. A little bit of this fitness influencer, of this uh entrepreneur, this podcaster, this productivity guy. And eventually you become anxious because you're choosing or you're chasing 10 different lives at once. And that is confusion, in my opinion, not excellence. You need to decide what your own standard is. If it helps to write it out, then do it. But in order to do so, I think it's helpful to consider these. You need to ask yourself these questions. What kind of man do I want to be? What kind of husband or spouse? What kind of father? What kind of friend? What kind of follower of Christ? What kind of worker? Once you have all those, you can understand what your standards are. Because, like I said, most of your life is not going to be public. Most of your choices will never be praised. Nobody's going to clap when you tell the truth. I wish they would. That would be kind of nice. But nobody's also going to make a highlight reel of you being patient, just sitting around. Like, it doesn't sound exciting. Nobody's going to give you a medal for cleaning the kitchen. But you know it has to get done. And nobody's really going to see most of the reps that build your character. But you will. God will. Your family will. Your life will reflect those values. It will reflect those standards. And that is enough. That is what we should all be working towards. And I think that is where excellence becomes less about achievement and more about integrity. Achievement is good. I love goals. I love races. I love building things. But achievement can become a trap if you use it to avoid the deeper question. Who am I becoming? Because you can achieve a lot and still be someone that you don't respect.

Disappointment Infertility And Honest Faith

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You can be successful and dishonest, fit and selfish, rich and miserable. That is not the life that I want. I want the full thing. I don't want it to be perfect. That's not real, but I want it to be aligned. I want my actions to match what I say I value. That is hard. And I have failed at it. I still fail at it. I still get distracted or impatient. I still waste time. And I still fall short of my own standards. Like, but I am trying. That is what is important to me. And I think trying matters more than we think. Because it's like I'm not saying it in a weak way. I'm saying it in a real way. Because life is not going to be all daisies and roses 100% of the time. It is not going to be easy all the time. Things will come up with your health, things will come up with your family. Things will come up at work. But the goal is to always continue trying to become that best version of you. And you don't arrive there one day and just stay forever. That's one thing I mentioned last week's episode was I think that you just continue you have to continue to keep on choosing it over and over again. And you're never going to arrive at some theoretical spot to where, you know, all of a sudden you've made it. And everything else can take a you can take a step back, you've made it, you're good to go. You don't have to work as hard in these areas. I wish it happened like that, but it doesn't. It doesn't happen like that. We have to consistently choose to get better. You can get better for a year, but as soon as you decide, hey, I'm I'm taking a break, you're gonna decline real quick. You're gonna drift. And that drift is much easier than all the work that you put in to get to where you are today. And I wish there was a point where you could say, all right, I did it. I'm excellent now and I can relax forever. But you know that's not how it works. You are always becoming. Each day is a vote. Every choice is a vote, and every private action is a vote for who you want to become. And over time, those votes become your identity. That is why the so small stuff matters. It's why I talk about consistency. Like the run matters, the journal entry matters, the prayer matters, the hard conversation matters. It all matters because over like it's going to stack up against itself over time. And it's the repeated choices that do this. And that is where I think the standard is built. It's slow and it's quiet, it's one step at a time. That's why I always say that running is a great metaphor for life, because it really shows you that if you want to get from point A to point B, the only way to do that is to take one step and then another, and then another, and then another, and keep doing it until you finally get there. And here's the other thing: once you get to that point, once you get to point B, you're thinking about the next run. You're thinking about, okay, let's let's let's amp this up a bit. And that's how life should be too. With our standards, with our goals, and they will change from time to time. I'm really excited for Winston to be born because also for this podcast, I'm going to document everything in terms of how I feel at certain times. And I'm going to talk about how I've had to adapt my goals, but I'm still in the game. I'm still trying. I'm still pushing myself, and I'm still trying to become the best Brett that I can be because I

Non-Negotiables And Defining Your Standard

SPEAKER_00 50:17

want Winston to have a dad that he can look up to. And I would say that overall, with the the if I think about a challenge for this episode, I want it to be simple. I want the challenge to be very simple. And it's just to ask yourself, what is my standard? Not the standard that I post about, or not the standard that I pretend to have, not the standard that I've I've copied from someone else. What is your actual standard? What do your actions say that you value? Where have you been making excuses? And and where have you been too hard on yourself? Those are uncomfortable questions. But they should be. That's good. Because growth should make you honest. And after you answer those questions, define what your non-negotiables are. Keep them simple. And for me, it's something like you know, tell the truth, don't quit, don't neglect your family, don't blame others for your life, don't avoid hard conversations, and never stop trying. That is a standard that I carry into any season. If my testosterone is 136 and I'm incredibly tired, or if I'm on top of the world and I'm feeling healthy and strong and I just finished an ultra marathon, those standards will not change in between that or in each of those sections of my life. That standard can come with me anywhere. The output might change, the habits might change, the schedule will change, I'll tell you that much. But the character cannot, and that is the whole point. Because excellence changes with every season. Character does not. And maybe, maybe that's what I'm learning right now. I'm learning that I can still have high standard without pretending I'm the same, I'm I'm in the same season I used to be in. Or that I'm learning that adapting is not the same as quitting. I'm learning that patience can be part of excellence. And I'm learning that the goal is not to become impressive, the goal is to become someone who I respect. So set the standard and keep it. Adjust when life changes, because it will. It's going to. But do not abandon your standards. Do not become someone who lies to themselves and do not become someone who blames everyone else. Your life is built by what you repeat. Your character is built by what you refuse to compromise. And your future self is watching, either through nostalgia or regret. So give them something to be proud of. That's all I got for today, guys. But it really is standards and character, all these topics are so important to me because they have been the definition of who I've become. Like, yes, it's great that I've been able to run ultra marathons or that I qualified for Boston. But none of that matters if I'm a huge piece of shit. You know? None of that really matters. No one would want to be around me. No one would listen to the podcast. Your standards are more important than you think. And I think a lot of us, we overcomplicate it. Myself included. Like I definitely overcomplicated it when I was trying to figure out okay, well, how am I going to be the best version of myself? Like I said, I had my own version of Jocko's version. And you got to figure out what's important to you. And I think from there you can really refine who you are and

Final Challenge And Listener Requests

SPEAKER_00 53:44

be the best version of you that you can be. So I really appreciate you guys for listening to this episode. Um, let me know if you guys like the little snippet from the Daily Dad, and I'll keep it in the next one. But um, thank you for listening. Thank you for being here this whole time. Thank you for staying to the end. It means a lot. And if it helped you at all, please leave a little leave a little uh rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That goes a long way, and I really appreciate it. Leave a comment. I also read those all the time. So, but seriously, you guys are the best. Get out there, figure out what your standards are and hold them. And until next episodes, my friend, keep getting after it.