Becoming Legendary: A Framework for Every Season of Life

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Tyson Gaylord [00:00:02]:
Own every piece of your life. Virtue over validation. Master yourself or be mastered. Legendary is a standard you execute, never a place you arrive. Welcome to the Social Chameleon Show, where our mission is to help you learn, grow, and transform on your path to becoming legendary. Today we're going to talk about the framework you need to structure your life's path to becoming legendary. I'll share how I think about this and the choices and decisions made to craft my personal path. And with that, you'll have the framework to do the same for yourself.

Tyson Gaylord [00:00:36]:
So at the end of every interview episode, um, for maybe the past year or so, I've been asking the same question to the guests: what's your definition of becoming legendary? I've never answered this question myself. I was always prepared for the guests to ask me the question in return. Nobody's ever had the thought or brave enough, whatever it is, to ask it back. But today I will answer that question. What we're going to explore, we're just going to explore the map, how I came about this, how I con— I, I want to say constantly, but how I continue to refine this. I think it's quite refined now, which is why I'm sharing this. Uh, there I'm gonna present 2 different ideas on what legendary means. Because it means something different to all of us.

Tyson Gaylord [00:01:23]:
And like I tell my guests when I ask them to ask this question, this doesn't have to be a grandiose thing. It doesn't have to be Napoleonic. You're not— you don't have to conquer the world or have a billion-dollar startup. We're going to go through those different paths, how I see that. Uh, we're going to discuss the Stoic Law if you're unfamiliar, uh, the standard underneath everything that I do. which is the Stoke Law. Why work-life balance is a misnomer. I think this all plays in quite well to this, to this.

Tyson Gaylord [00:01:55]:
So I want to talk about a little bit about, about that, why I believe so. And then the 2 honest paths to replace it. Finally, I'll introduce the legendary blueprint. Then it's going to have 6 blanks you can fill in tonight, and at the end You will have your own answers on a path you built yourself, then it's on you to walk it. So let's start here with the basics. So we are working from the same definition, what legendary means. This is what I have crafted. Uh, this is probably the 3rd or 4th version now as I keep refining it.

Tyson Gaylord [00:02:32]:
Becoming legendary means owning every piece of my life. I don't choose what happens. I choose who I am when it does. Virtue over validation. Purpose over comfort. No excuses. No autopilot. Master myself or be mastered.

Tyson Gaylord [00:02:49]:
It's simple enough, right? But all those things are the traps we can fall into in life. That's why I have this framework. When I feel like I'm slipping or I'm sliding back a little bit, this is something I can reference. And as I evolve, I'm sure this will continue to evolve as well. So how did we get here? How did I come up with this? Uh, if you guys, uh, read the Substack and whatnot, I definitely have talked about this a few times. This is where I'm bringing it all together. So a post I did, um, a little while back— you can check the show notes or the Substack— it was called 314 Days. And in that, there's this question called the tombstone question.

Tyson Gaylord [00:03:30]:
Right. I gather lots of questions. I, I think it's fun to, to gather. I have a pretty big document of questions, you know. Sometimes I ask them to podcast guests, I ask them to myself. Nowadays, uh, I have AI interview me with these questions, and I kind of talk through it and express my ideas, and then helps me distill them down and whatnot. So the question I asked in that 314-day post that I wrote about, um, in the interview session One of the questions was, in 6 to 8 words, how would you like your life to be summarized on your tombstone? And that— the constraint is part of the process, right? There's a few words because you could ramble on for quite a while, right? So these are some of the things as I was babbling to Claude, drafts were, He helped when I needed help. These are things I'm kind of thinking out loud, right? Like, what would I want to— not a question I've really ever put a lot of thought into, but I think there's something there, right? So I hate to say leaving your legacy because that could feel, um, somewhat self-centered, right? But it's, it's just about the framework for living our life.

Tyson Gaylord [00:04:41]:
So, you know, these are the things I was thinking about, like, what, what do I, what do I think people would say about me, right? Basically. Uh, so He helped when I needed help. He was a stand-up guy who lived by Stoic principles. He inspired and motivated me. And each one of those described an effort on someone, an effect on someone else, right? All of those things are outside of my control, which makes it a poor thing to carve on a stone, right? I was thinking about all these external things that I do not have control over. And I think we kind of get caught up in that. It's an easy way to default to thinking, right? Like, what is— what do other people think of me? But all these things are outside of our control. And then what it really distilled down to when I— as I rambled was what the one thing I actually meant was, he did what he said he would do.

Tyson Gaylord [00:05:33]:
7 words and nobody else's behavior required it. Said it at first and then I talked past it. It was— It was also the exact inversion of the 314 days I had spent not writing the LTG, Legendary Transformation Group, mission statement, which is what this post is based on, my procrastination there. And when I hit a roadblock, you know, this is something that kind of came up, right? So the 68-word limit is the point, right? It would not let you list your virtues. It forces one claim. So that's kind of the power of that question. You know, in 6 to 8 words, what would you like your life to be summarized on your tombstone? And like I said, this has got to be something that you control. You can't worry about other people's, um, views on you or whatever it is.

Tyson Gaylord [00:06:27]:
You gotta— you can't worry about external things. You've got to worry about only the things you can control. Legendary is the chase, right? So my definition from the 314 Days post was It's not a destination. There is not one. It is, it is the chase, the path. You do not arrive. And knowing that is not depressing. It is the whole appeal.

Tyson Gaylord [00:06:47]:
It also means you can't claim legendary for what you intended to do, only for what you did. And that's something I think about a lot. I, I have lots of ideas and lots of ambitions and lots of things, and I, I do lots of things. So that's, I think that's why I kind of was thinking about that. Like, I have a tendency of— I don't want to say not doing what I said I was going to do, but I have a tendency of starting lots of things and never finishing them. So I'm trying to hone in on that and getting better at that. So that's why I wanted— I kind of went with that tombstone phrase, because I want to start honing in on finishing more. Um, last— was it last year or the year before? Something like that was my word of the year.

Tyson Gaylord [00:07:25]:
I was like, I want to finish things. Like, I had a list of all these things I never started. And I want to go through them. Either I'm gonna finish them or I'm gonna get rid of them because I start lots of things, right? They're fun. You start things, especially now with AI and stuff. It's, it's very easy to start things and it's also easy to finish things now. I do notice I get more things done because when I hit some of these roadblocks and some of these things, um, when typically I would, you know, things get hard, right? We just give up. So typically when I would give up on the thing because there was something hard or something I just didn't want to do or whatever it was, now I just kind of unleash AI on it, and, uh, it helps me get through that, that sticking point now.

Tyson Gaylord [00:08:00]:
So that's why I kind of wanted to keep kind of harping on that, that concept and, you know, keep doing it. Um, in general, I'd like to say I'm a man of my word. If I'm telling you I'm going to be somewhere, I'm going to do something, um, I'm going to help you with something or whatever, I'm going to do it. There's very rare occasions where I'm not, and if, and if I'm not I'm typically, um, either I'll just grit through it and then I'll just let you know, like, listen, I'm not doing this again. Or I'll let you know, like, hey, I, I said I was gonna help with this and I'm sorry, I know, I, I'm really just not going to. Um, but in general, I'd say I'm pretty generous with those types of things and I do like to help out a lot and whatnot. And I like to be a dependable and reliable person and, like, I, you know, like to do what I say I'm gonna do. Um, but That's more of like on the maybe physical personal side versus what— when I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about all these things that I say I'm gonna do or I wanna do that I never actually finish.

Tyson Gaylord [00:08:59]:
So that's kind of what I'm thinking about with that. And then here, so the 2 different definitions we can play with for, for legendary, uh, one I like from, from, uh, writing band as they call themselves, the Category Pirates, uh, in their book Thinkers High in chapter 10. This is how they kind of, uh, phrase that, that, that statement here. This is their definition. Legendary doesn't mean flashy. It doesn't mean something— it— sorry, it doesn't mean flashy. It means something meaningful. It means differentiated.

Tyson Gaylord [00:09:31]:
It means something that creates belief, spreads by word of mouth, and moves the category forward. Then they have a— they do talk about lots of examples of different companies, um, like Patagonia's Don't Buy This Jacket, Apple's Think Different. And things like that. This is in the business sense. I think it also applies maybe in the work sense as well, this definition. Maybe something people, um, generally think about when they think about this word. And so their test is, if it, it is, if it is not legendary, why are you doing it? That's legendary measured from the outside by what other people remember and repeat. So I think especially for a business sense, this is a good things.

Tyson Gaylord [00:10:10]:
Like, a lot of times in business, and I think if you're, if you're in business and you're working with AI, if you're not careful, this is what you're finding out, right? Like, why are we doing all these things? And now we're automating them. And this is like all these things, they're not necessary. If it's not legendary, if you're not producing legendary outcomes, if you're not at a legendary standard, why are you doing it? So that's one kind of level of a definition. You can choose to work with that one if you'd like. Where I work from is— this would be my thinking, my definition of this— virtue over validation, right? So we're always looking for external validation. We're looking at these things, you know, and not that we're immune to this, right? But we're cognizant of it. We recognize like, ooh, what game am I playing right now? Am I virtue signaling? Am I playing like, am I looking for validation? Like, oh, look at me, look how cool I am. I'm volunteering here.

Tyson Gaylord [00:11:02]:
Oh, look how much I donated. Or look at the things I did. Look at the new Rari, you know, like, look at these things. Right. So like, you're gonna, you know, this is for me to catch myself in these things. So virtue over validation. I measure legendary by what I executed, not by who noticed, right? Tombstone drafts show the problem with the outside version as a personal standard. You can't control whether any, whether anyone remembers you.

Tyson Gaylord [00:11:29]:
We have no control over that, right? 99.9% of all of us, the most famous person right now will be forgotten about in 100 years, maybe even less than that, maybe 10, 20 years after they're dead. Almost nobody will ever remember them. So we can't judge ourselves by those metrics. We have no control over that, right? Measure legendary by what I executed, not by who noticed, right? So, and I produce a product, can I bring something into this world? Can I help a neighbor and not have to brag about it, not have to tell anybody You knowing about it does not matter to why I did it, why I continue to do it, or anything else, right? That is only the things I can control. All those other things outside of my control— nope. No. So there's no thought race. No, you're— I'm not doing anything because this will make a great social media post, or, or I'll look great in front of this committee, or the board will, will see me in this.

Tyson Gaylord [00:12:26]:
No. That's not, that's not how I like to operate with that stuff, right? Both are true, right? So 2 things can be true at once. So we gotta understand that, like, it's not either or, it's not left right, it's not, it's not binary, right? There are many things can be true at once. The point is, which one are you picking? Which one are you weighting over the other? Okay, so impact is the output, the standard is the input. I only control the input. And that's what we need to focus on, right? What is within our control? We can influence things, we can inspire, we can motivate. Those things we gotta understand are out of our control, right? The impact is the output. The standard is the input.

Tyson Gaylord [00:13:11]:
I only control the input. It's an interesting way— anecdote, I guess, to think about this or whatever. So the archer. The Stoics had a tool for holding both, the reverse clause. You fully commit and add if nothing prevents it. On Mark Manson, on his podcast, uh, Solved, when he talked about the Stoics on the Stoicism episode, um, he used the analogy of the archer. You control the aim and the release. Once the arrow leaves, the wind gets a vote, right? Legendary is Impact is a byproduct.

Tyson Gaylord [00:13:47]:
Chase the standard and let the impact land where it lands. Right? And these are the things, like I was saying in the beginning episode, I'm constantly evolving this. Maybe yearly, maybe biannually. I review these things quarterly. Whether I make changes or not doesn't matter, but I'm checking in, right? I'm always checking in. I have— A plan for the quarter. I have a plan for the month. I'm not a big-time planner person, but, uh, for me it helps me at least just kind of check in a little once in a while and, and see like, have I gone way off track, right? So I'm sure I've talked about this before, you've probably heard this before, you know, when you're, when you're, you're flying a plane, you're on a ship, and you know, you're just a little, you know, you're a tenth of a degree off, you're half a degree off, you're one degree off, if you just let that go, you're gonna miss your destination by miles and miles and miles, right? But if we're constantly checking in— and it doesn't have to be maniacal, like, ah, you know, every, every day, every week.

Tyson Gaylord [00:14:46]:
Some people, they like that, right? I don't like that. It's too— to me, that's too much fluff, too much, uh, time and energy and whatnot. But we do have to check in. We have to, we have to, you know, check the GPS. Like, are we still— are we still on track? I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, you know, Tighten up a little bit. I gotta come back, come back 3 degrees, you know, come back, you know, go back the other way 2 degrees, you know, constantly just checking in, making sure we're on the right path, right? A great book that illustrates this point, uh, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Hopefully I didn't mess that up too much. But the Four Agreements are to be impeccable with your word.

Tyson Gaylord [00:15:25]:
This is one of the, uh, agreements, impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, and always do your best. The first one is my tombstone line, right? Don't take anything personally is a Stoic law's catalyst because the event isn't about you. Always do your best is the baseline, right? Can we, can we set a minimum standard, right? There's a minimum standard that your industry may I may not do, but what is your minimum standard? Uh, it should be— to me, it should be above the industry's minimum standard, right? These are things within your control. I'll link these books and whatnot and resources, the podcast episodes and everything, if you're interested to dig more into these things. Um, I think The Four Agreements is a short book, very, very powerful book. I highly recommend if you haven't read it, read it. If you haven't read it in a few years, reread it. And so then the next pillar in this thing is the Stoic Law.

Tyson Gaylord [00:16:25]:
This is something I invented as a way of, first of all, getting my mind around something. I thought that— I thought a Stoic Law, you know, like a Parkinson's Law and like Moore's Law and all these things where, you know, Isaac Newton and Einstein, they have these things that— these like phrases or these things that really kind of condense these ideas into, you know, simple sentence. So I wanted to come up with something, um, for myself, and then I, you know, I thought it was kind of clever. So I, you know, when I'm putting out— there's a post on the Substack as well for the Stoic Law. So, you know, why I built it, to me, it's an operating system for the moments you actually live in. Traffic, the lost client, the diagnosis, the unexpected check, the argument at 9 PM on a Tuesday. The premise in one line: there are good events, There are bad events. They are all only tests.

Tyson Gaylord [00:17:17]:
And the law is bound by infinite time and fixed reality. Every event is solely a test of our highest standard, the execution of virtue. That is the standard, right? We want to execute our virtues. Read it again one more time. Bound by infinite time— sorry, bound by finite time. I, I I think in infinite time, right? Bound by finite time and fixed reality, every event is solely a test of our highest standard. Execute the virtue. It's the only things you can control, right? You only control when you react, right? You respond or you react.

Tyson Gaylord [00:17:57]:
You react, you lose control. You respond, you're in control. And then the constraint, right? Finite time. Fixed reality. Your time is expiring right now. We're all actively dying, right? Doesn't have to be a morbid thing, but it's reality, right? The present moment can't be edited because it already happened by the time you noticed it. Wishing it were different is a math problem you will always lose. Energy spent on what's gone or on what you wish were true Never arrives at the work.

Tyson Gaylord [00:18:33]:
All things out of your control. So then the catalyst. Every event is solely a test. Events carry no meaning on their own. We assign them. We do this, right? Failed launch and a 6-figure deposit are the same prompt. So is a flat tire. So is missing a flight.

Tyson Gaylord [00:18:52]:
The label you slap on the event is yours. The event itself is neutral. And there's— there is, and it's there to measure your response, right? So the baseline, you control one thing, your execution. Can you stand by your execution? Can you stand by that? Was that your best work? And it's okay, you know, if it's not your best work and it wasn't— it wasn't a good execution, that's okay. Figure out why. Why did you— I will not execute great on things because I don't want to do them, right? And so that's an opportunity to identify that and say, I need to outsource this, I need to get rid of it. I would bet so many things we can get rid of in our life because there's some arbitrary reason we're doing it or something like that. Always subtraction, subtraction, always subtract, right? We gotta subtract, subtract, subtract.

Tyson Gaylord [00:19:42]:
That should be your baseline. Always be subtracting things. And then if you find something that's critical, then you can add that back, right? So many times we layer on so many things that don't need to be there because of it's the way it's done, or it's the way we've always did it, or that's how I learned, or whatever. That's something we gotta, we gotta learn to get rid of. But when you see yourself slipping the execution, question that, right? Why did I do this? What's the reason? Was I just being lazy? Was I short on time? Did I not plan right? So many, so many things we could, we could find that's in our control. And if you're saying to yourself, that wasn't my fault, Bob from accounting never got me the thing, okay, how can you take responsibility for that? Okay, that's the thing. It may not have been in your control, but it's your responsibility. What could you have done? Does Bob need help? Was Bob overwhelmed? Did Sally not get the stuff to Bob and Bob couldn't get to you and everybody didn't really say nothing? Maybe you didn't ask questions like, how can you take responsibility for what's that? How can you take ownership of when and why and how so you can execute at your standard? So the standard is virtue.

Tyson Gaylord [00:21:01]:
The 4 virtues the Stoics laid down 2,000 years ago. Most people hear virtue and think soft. Stoic virtue is operational. Each one has a job. So the 4 virtues: wisdom is practical logic, separating what's in your control from what isn't. Courage is friction endurance, acting while fear and resistance tell you to stop. Justice is— justice is systematic Integrity, doing the right thing without extracting from people around you. Temperance is disciplined restraint, spending exactly the energy required and no more.

Tyson Gaylord [00:21:48]:
The short version: wisdom sees clearly, courage moves through friction, justice keeps the move clean, temperance keeps the move efficient. Okay, so when we're working from these these baselines, these are just the pillars that hold up everything, and you're, you're going through them. And then you have, you have something to, you know, set your sights on, a standard to, to, to draw from and, you know, and say, hey, you know, I'm falling short in this category and that category, whatever. And then you can, you know, when you have these things, you can shore up what's happening, right? You can, you can identify the lack or overcorrection or whatever it is. So that's why we need to keep these in mind when we're doing things, have them written down, and, and, you know, somewhat on a constant basis keep reevaluating them, making sure you're living up to your standards you set. So here is the 3 steps with an example. First, identify the test, strip the emotional label out of it. Client just canceled.

Tyson Gaylord [00:22:49]:
That's just the event. I'm ruined. That's your story. You made that up. You invented that. Second, accept the reality. Stop fighting facts that already happened. Acceptance is not approval.

Tyson Gaylord [00:23:04]:
Refusing to waste energy on what can't change. Third, deploy the standard. Make the next move with all 4 virtues. It's the thing, right? We, uh, our brains are story-making machines. Make sure you try to strip that story back when you hear it. It's okay. You're gonna hear it. Identify identify it, have that feeling, and then be like, all right, oh, and it canceled.

Tyson Gaylord [00:23:28]:
It's not the end of the world. Maybe her kid's sick, maybe she got into a car accident, maybe she's ill, maybe there's something— and like, there's so many things that can happen. Don't attribute it to malice, which can be easily explained, you know. Something like that is the quote. People, the benefit of the doubt, right? Move on with your day, you know. Hey, you got 45 minutes extra in your calendar now because that 30-minute meeting is no longer there and the 15-minute buffer or whatever. Take it. That's great, they canceled.

Tyson Gaylord [00:23:59]:
I'm gonna fire off a message. I hope everything's great with you. I'd love to reschedule. Here's my calendar link. Find a spot that works with you again in the future. And you know, to me, if they cancel a second time, then we're just not going to work together. That's just not— it's not reliable. And I don't I don't need the stress in my life.

Tyson Gaylord [00:24:17]:
That's how I operate. But because I'm, you know, we're working from these 4 virtues, right? So the 4 engineers were the Stoics. This is kind of a little bit of a history on it real quick. If you want to learn more about that, I'll link to the episode I did on the Stoics. So we have Zeno. Uh, he was a merchant who was a very wealthy guy. Uh, he lost his cargo in a shipwreck and wandered into Athens bookshop and started teaching from a public porch called the Stoa Poikile. Sorry, I guess the translation is the Painted Porch.

Tyson Gaylord [00:24:55]:
Porch gave Stoicism its name, which is, I guess that's what that means. Stoic is the Painted Porch. And so then we have Seneca. He was a Roman statesman, a very, very wealthy man as well, very politically influential. Uh, he was Nero's tutor. Nero's an emperor. I think he was kind of actually bad or something like that. But, uh, Stenica's job mission was trying to minimize damage as much as possible from within.

Tyson Gaylord [00:25:23]:
Um, Jocko talks about something similar to that, like, you know, you can't influence, you can't have any, any say over anything if you quit and you just, you know, run away from uh, benevolent leaders and whatever. So something you might want to explore there. And then we have— Seneca was a Roman statesman and Nero's tutor, and his Letters from a Stoic is the easiest entry point. I do think, to me, Seneca's a little dark, uh, a little depressing-ish, um, but he wrote these to people, so it's— it is an easy kind of reading. getting the vibe of things. I will link to resources, books, and everything, like I said, for all these guys you want to take a deeper dive in. Uh, Seneca was— I'm sorry, Epictetus was born a slave. He's, uh, probably my favorite because he was a slave.

Tyson Gaylord [00:26:17]:
I think that's just a— I mean, if there was any level of ascension in life, started off as a slave, and then his student Arrian wrote down his lecture. So Epictetus never wrote anything. He doesn't have any books or anything. Everything that survives from Epictetus are his lecture notes. Uh, and then his central idea is the cleanest in Stoicism: some things are up to us and some are not. And then we have Marcus Aurelius, probably the most famous of the Stoics. You've probably heard tons of things from him and other people talking about him. He was Emperor of Rome.

Tyson Gaylord [00:26:54]:
He was considered one of the 5, like, great emperors. Um, he kind of set a lot of the standard as the empire was starting to be in its dissension in, in that time frame. He did a lot of, uh, unorthodox things as an emperor. I mean, you gotta think this guy was the most powerful person in the world at the time with the most powerful army and immense access to wealth. And he— the things he wrote about is just like, dang, this guy is— he's down to earth, you know, that, you know. Uh, he wrote Meditations, which is probably what you've heard. It was his private journal. It was never meant to be published.

Tyson Gaylord [00:27:25]:
It was just notes and thoughts to himself, um, while he was out on military campaigns. Uh, my favorite Stoic that's overlooked is Musonius Rufus. Uh, he, he's got a great short little book. Um, you probably will never hear about him, but he's got some great, great stuff. Like I said, I'll link to all that if you want to dig deeper into that. And so the objection, you're gonna, you know, people hear Stoic, uh, what we'd like to call the small S version, and they think emotionless. Um, the small S version of Stoic, that's kind of what that is. But the capital S, which is what we're talking about here, is not emotionless, right? Um, Mark Manson, he talked about in, in the Stoicism podcast that he did as well, uh, the Stoics were not statues.

Tyson Gaylord [00:28:12]:
They were sailors. Uh, the waves are the world, your mind is the ship, stoicism is the rudder. And then from, uh, another post I did, this is the first kind of my first foray into writing about this, was, um, The Legendary Life Playbook. Um, that'll be linked in my Substack as well. Uh, stoic resilience is emotional honesty without emotional slavery. You feel the hit, you do not let it decide who you become. Again, this goes back to what I was saying earlier, right? If you're assigning these stories to these things, then you're allowing— you can allow yourself to be devastated by things. Yes, bad things happen.

Tyson Gaylord [00:28:57]:
There's some Stoic exercises and also other people. Tim Ferriss has fear setting. I'll link to fear setting for you guys if you want to go through that exercise. It's very similar to Stoicism. The Stoics do talk about, you know, the one thing that really just struck me, and I've told the story a few times if you've heard it. When I first was reading Stoicism, Seneca or Epictetus, I can't quite remember, but they're saying, you know, when you kiss your child, you know, good night, understand they're mortal and they might not wake up in the morning. It's like, damn. But the point is, if you go through this thought like, hey, listen, you know, your dog's gonna die, your, your Mom and dad and grandparents, they're gonna die, right? When you recognize that and when you're not in that tragic state, you can be a little bit more rational and whatever.

Tyson Gaylord [00:29:45]:
You can go through this, you can kind of play this out. When the actual event happens, you have, in a good way, diminished response because you've already played this out. You know how it's going to be. You can be a little bit, um, less reactionary, right, to, to what's happening because you've already gone through it. You've kind of had a little bit of the emotions, you've had the up and downs because you've practiced this. And then your story can be different and be better. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through that one more time, right? Stoic resilience is emotional honesty without emotional slavery. You feel the hit, you do not let it decide who you become.

Tyson Gaylord [00:30:26]:
'Cause you've played this out and you've gone through this, you're gonna have a better chance of not becoming an alcoholic, not turning to drugs and different abusive and addictive behaviors as a way of coping with this tragic event. We wanna shield ourselves from these things as much as possible so we can continue to go on and be of assistance and help to the people that are still with us, including yourself. most importantly yourself. You're not ready if you're not emotionally well and you're not able to kind of carry on with the world. That's going to be a drag on other people. It's going to be a drag on yourself. So let's make sure we do not, you know, become emotional slaves to these, these things. We practice these things.

Tyson Gaylord [00:31:12]:
I have created a, a new thing to help with this. Um, it's launching with this episode. You're gonna get an exclusive here a few days before it launches officially, um, through all the other social channels and whatnot. It's gonna be— it's called the Field Card. Uh, so I turned this whole Stoic Law and everything into a one-page, uh, printable PDF. And there's also a fillable version, so if you want to do it on your phone or your computer, you don't want to print it out— I really do recommend printing it out, handwriting. Um, if you're not familiar with that, it's more powerful to write things by hand. There's a lot of, uh, some science that goes into that.

Tyson Gaylord [00:31:46]:
So, you know, but not all of us have access to printability. Um, sometimes you want 2 versions, so I, I made both available for you guys. Uh, it, it has the law, the 3 components, the 4 virtues, and the 3-step sequence. And there's a 7-day test log with checkboxes. Uh, it's good. It's gonna be free. Um, it'll be available on Substack, so you know, check the link in this show notes, head over to Substack, and you can get that officially launching October 22nd. Like I said, you're gonna get an early look at this if you are a few days early, um, with the show notes here.

Tyson Gaylord [00:32:23]:
And so why I made this is because a framework you don't run is just a poster. And we can print this out, we put on our wall, and it's great. And in a couple days or a week, you're just— it's just going to become background noise. So I want this framework to not be a poster that you put on the wall and it looks great and people walk by. And we talked about that earlier, right? What are you doing? You looking for validation, or are we looking to execute virtue? Framework you don't run is just a poster. We don't want posters. I mean, we do. We want to execute them.

Tyson Gaylord [00:32:56]:
All right. And then let's get into work-life balance. This is probably the big one. I'll probably have people mad at me. That's all right. Instead of firing off in the comments because you could be mad, I want you to take that in. What are you upset about? Listen to what is being said here, and then if you have something to add, that's fine. We can talk about that.

Tyson Gaylord [00:33:17]:
Not a problem. But I don't want you spouting off emotions and unexamined thoughts you just spout off into the comments. Okay, so correct balance is a misnomer. That's my position. I'm gonna stick to it. Reject the premise. In the Category Pirates book Thinkers High, this is something they say that I definitely resonate with here. Every category— category is in businesses is like soda, right? SUVs, these things, these are the categories, right? Every category is found on invisible assumptions.

Tyson Gaylord [00:33:52]:
Keurig rejected coffee is made one pot at a time. Roomba rejected. More vacuum horsepower is better. The invisible assumption in work-life balance is that work and life are separate events you do every day. Nobody lives like that, right? We don't live that way. A launch week isn't 50/50. A newborn isn't 50/50 as a daily ratio. Balance is bullshit.

Tyson Gaylord [00:34:20]:
I like it, right? So now we've identified this, right? We got this notion out of our heads that it's going to be this 50/50 nonsense. So many areas of life, this 50/50 nonsense does not work. You know, 50/50 negotiations do not work. 50/50 in your marriage does not work. 50/50 with your friends does not work. This notion doesn't— 50/50 work-life balance does not work. Okay? There's always going to be outsized gains and contributions. There's going to be asymmetries.

Tyson Gaylord [00:34:49]:
That's life. That is nature, right? There's not 50-50 distribution of all the same— of all trees in the forest. No, there's, there's scattered distributions. That's where the 80/20 principle comes from, uh, Pareto's Law, I believe it is, whatever, because that's what the observation was. Uh, 20% of the plants produce 80% of the fruits. That is nature's distribution. Okay, so let's get this out of our head. There is no such thing.

Tyson Gaylord [00:35:14]:
Okay. And like I said earlier, more than one thing can be true at the same time. Balance as a daily ratio is a myth. A balanced life is also a legitimate choice. I'm holding both, and there are 2 honest paths. This is what I'm gonna go— I'm gonna give you, okay, as a thought process. I'm not prescribing nothing. These are, these are 2 things to choose.

Tyson Gaylord [00:35:37]:
You can live on one of these paths. You can also cross between the paths. It's not Binary, this is not a thing. So let's talk about the 2 paths. This is how I think about this, is what I've identified. Path 1 is a steady path. Do good work, get it done, and you leave work. You go home to your family, your hobbies, your video games, your movies.

Tyson Gaylord [00:35:58]:
You don't care to be exceptional at work, uh, and I don't mean that as a knock, okay? You just want to be a great worker, necessarily want the aspirations of a CEO, whatever. You just want to go home, go to work, get good work done, right? But we, we've established what our minimum standards are, and that baseline— if, if your industry has a standard, that's your baseline. I encourage to go a little bit above that. You'll be exceptional. Uh, you're gonna— you'll avoid layoffs. You'll, you know, when, when shifts and stuff are short, they're gonna choose you, right? So I would advise Just be a touch above minimum standards. You'll make yourself a little bit more resilient in the workforce. Then, so this path is legendary when you choose it on purpose, right? You do good work, you get it done, you leave, you leave work at home.

Tyson Gaylord [00:36:50]:
You don't got Slack and email on your phone. Work is over. I go home. You have a family, you go home to your family, you do family things, you go home to your hobbies. You go home and you play video games. You go home and you watch movies. You binge Netflix. Whatever you chose your life to be.

Tyson Gaylord [00:37:09]:
We're not just throwing this in the default, okay? We have chosen this. I'm gonna be a movie buff, and I'm gonna go home, and I'm gonna, you know, save my money, and I'm gonna get a fabulous TV. I'm gonna get a fabulous sound system. Maybe a separate room of your house or something that is like a home theater. because that's your thing, right? You're gonna go in your garage because you got a killer hobby at woodworking. You, you know, you do these things, and it doesn't have to be like a side hustle, right? Unless you like that, it's cool. Sometimes turning your hobbies into side hustles destroys the hobby. The point here is you— the path is legendary when you choose it on purpose, right? So break this down a little bit further.

Tyson Gaylord [00:37:52]:
We have Um, sliding versus deciding. This is what I'm talking about here. This is the test for the steady path. Uh, psychologist Scott Stanley and— I'm gonna— sorry, I'm gonna butcher this name— Jelena Rhodes named it. And Mark Manson on his, um, Solve podcast, he covered it in the commitment episode. Sliding is staying in a career because quitting felt frightening, or moving in together because the lease expired, right? These, these are the things you're just doing, these things on default, right? Deciding is choosing the same thing with your eyes open and your weight behind it. Same job, same life. One is autopilot, one is ownership, right? If you're, you know, you— if you're feeling frightened to quit Examine that, right? If you're just moving in with your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, it's because the lease expired.

Tyson Gaylord [00:38:51]:
You gotta examine that. I got caught in a relationship one time where I just kind of was like, ah, you know, I just kind of— and I stayed in that way too long because I kind of let it go on autopilot. Let's not do that, right? But it's okay if this has happened to you. It's happening right now. It's okay. Now you know. Now you recognize this is not the path. This is not the career.

Tyson Gaylord [00:39:12]:
This is not the life. This is not the thing you chose. Let's switch it now. Let's start get untangling this. Let's start doing all these things and create ownership for the path you want. If this is the path you like, that's fine. Okay, the steady path guardrail, um, from the values episode, they talk about this on the Mark Manson Saw podcast. I'm sorry, I'm referencing this a lot.

Tyson Gaylord [00:39:35]:
They do these massive deep dives. They're like 3, 4 hours. So it's great, great information to be mined from these episodes. That's where I did mine some of these things when I was looking for additional people's thinking on this. So if you find that one priority in your life, maybe it's a career success, and this is eclipsing everything else you care about, well, then it may be time to step back and reevaluate. This is what they talked about in that episode. This is what I'm trying to talk about as well, right? It's okay if you're there. We don't need to get down on ourselves.

Tyson Gaylord [00:40:09]:
We're just now recognizing, and we're gonna start putting in steps. We're gonna start getting our resume together. We're gonna start putting out feelers. Um, we're gonna have a difficult conversation with our significant other, uh, or whatever it is, right? Whatever you're— you've accidentally gone on autopilot. Maybe your parents wanted you to be a, you know, a nurse or a doctor, whatever. You're like, God, I fucking hate this, but I got all this student loan debt. I got this thing. I spent all these years doing this.

Tyson Gaylord [00:40:32]:
That's okay. It's in the past, right? That's, you know, don't, don't, don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy, right? Yeah, you spend a lot of time and money on this. That doesn't mean keep going. Doesn't mean throwing good money after bad money. We got to cut it off. We got to stop, stop and reevaluate this. Maybe you would like to continue to be a doctor. Maybe that's it.

Tyson Gaylord [00:40:50]:
You know, I just hate where I'm at right now. Maybe that's the thing, right? But you've— now that you sat down, thought about it, you know, I don't dislike being a doctor. I just don't like being this kind of doctor. You're like, okay, what can I do then? What? No, there's 5,000 different things you can do right now. You can start sitting down and saying, what would, what would bring joy in my life? What would make me want to be at work? What would I do if I wasn't paid to do this? What if no, if nobody was looking, nobody cared what I was doing, what would I go do? That's your, that's your step into, into this thinking. Okay. And so we have path 2. The builder path.

Tyson Gaylord [00:41:27]:
You're chasing something exceptional, right? We all don't have to be here now, okay? Not everybody's meant to be a CEO. Not everybody's meant to be a number one man. Not everybody's meant to be the lead seal, okay? That's fine. If you want to be a number 2, dude, that's— we need numbers. We need Scottie Pippen, right? We need— You know, everybody can't be, you know, Steph Curry. Everybody can't be Michael Jordan. That's fine. need number 2s.

Tyson Gaylord [00:41:53]:
You know, we need a good wide receiver and a good quarterback. We need number 2s. Okay, so that's fine. But if you're chasing something exceptional, this is my path. This is what— this is where I want to be. Okay, excellence happens across seasons, not in a single day. You protect a few things no matter what— the baseball game, the Little League championship, dinner at home. And after bedtime, you get back to work.

Tyson Gaylord [00:42:22]:
You name the season you're in and you accept the drops. Okay, I think this is where a lot of people get caught up, and this is where this work-life balance bullshit comes from, because there's these people that want to do something exceptional. Those people are told, oh, you're neglecting your relationship, you're doing something— I'm fucking building something right now. I got a short window of time. This is before this goes away. And at the end of that time, then I can chill a little bit. I can take some stuff. I can go take 3 weeks in the Bahamas, right? But I've got to be here.

Tyson Gaylord [00:42:53]:
So you gotta tune these fucking fools out that are telling you this stuff because they don't understand the choices you've made, the non-negotiables you set up, right, to keep your family together or to keep your fucking sanity. They don't understand what you're doing. They don't understand the choices you've made. Okay, and you just ignore these fools. And you know, I'm in the season right now of this, and I got a few things I'm gonna keep hold of, but all the other shit's gonna drop off. I'm not gonna talk to my friends because I ain't got time for that shit. I gotta be, you know, I gotta be doing this stuff after dinner, early in the morning, whatever. You've made the choice.

Tyson Gaylord [00:43:28]:
Okay, so the cost of the Builder Path, again from the commitment episode of Solved: every real commitment contains A small act of mourning for the lives it rules out. Your commitment contains a small act of mourning for the lives it rules out. Choosing this means some version of your week doesn't happen. Okay, you're not going to make every birthday party, you're not going to make the dinners. You probably don't give a shit about it, but you feel maybe socially obligated, or you, you feel like, well, I went to that thing, well, then I'll have some work-life balance. It's bullshit, right? Just understand where you're at right now. You're just not in that season right now. And the people and the friends and the family don't understand that, that's okay.

Tyson Gaylord [00:44:10]:
Don't talk to them very much anymore. Just, just don't bother with them right now. It's not a big deal. I'm not saying you got to be mean to them, cut them off. Just diminish what they're saying. Just let it— you got to let it roll off your back. You got to let it slide off. You're in this season right now.

Tyson Gaylord [00:44:22]:
You understand it's a season, right? Winter comes and winter ends. When winter ends, you can go snowboard. You're not gonna go snowboard anymore. You're gonna go surfing now. Whatever. You know, you know what I'm saying? Like Let this— the seasons come, they go, they come. Let these other fools be. Example of this, uh, Clayton Christensen.

Tyson Gaylord [00:44:41]:
He is a Harvard Business School professor and the man behind The Innovator's Dilemma. Is in a lecture he gave, he talked— we talked about his peers, uh, they, they were world-class executives, wealthy and powerful and miserable, uh, broken marriage, estranged kids. Their boundaries protected the wrong things. He was offered a prestigious consulting contract. It would have boosted his career, and it would have meant missing every one of his daughter's soccer games that season. His colleagues said he could make it up later and that an opportunity like this will never come twice. Christian knew— this is his quote— Christian knew that later never comes. You don't get these years back.

Tyson Gaylord [00:45:27]:
His daughter wouldn't be 9 years old ever again. He said no. I mean, with a life that high profile, still made that call. You can too, right? Maybe there could have been— I don't know the discussions here— negotiation that said, I'm gonna take this project on, but I'll let you know right now, this is my daughter's soccer schedule, non-negotiable. I'm not available on these times. Maybe I'll be traveling, whatever. Lay that out. That could be an option, right? This doesn't have to be all or nothing kind of situation.

Tyson Gaylord [00:45:57]:
A lot of times these things are negotiable. But when you have your priorities set, you have your calendar blocked off, and you know this is not negotiable time, be worked around. It can be, it can be negotiated, right? And if you're like, wow, Tyson, no, no, my job would never allow this. Have you asked? Uh, people also said we'll never be able to work from home. That became a thing, quite a popular thing. It has regrets, but it doesn't matter. Can you still say, hey boss, uh, you know, it's my, you know, whatever, son or daughter's baseball season, uh, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be cutting off at 5 o'clock on, on Thursdays. That's their, that's their game day.

Tyson Gaylord [00:46:43]:
And If you need me, I won't be available back till 7. I know we typically work till 6. I'll make this up on Thursday. I'm gonna stay till 7 every day. Is that cool? You got a problem? Have these conversations, like, whatever, right? You know, let them know, like, I know we work Monday through Friday, but I'd like Thursdays off, and I'll come in on Saturday. It's something you can negotiate. I don't know. Or just say, Hey, um, I'd like to only work 4 days for the next 3 months, um, because, um, my daughter's, uh, soccer games are the most important thing in my life, and I need, uh, Wednesdays off because it's a lot, you know, they typically travel, um, within town, and I'm just gonna work 4 days from now and I'm gonna take the pay cut, and, you know, that's what's up.

Tyson Gaylord [00:47:31]:
Or I'm gonna work half day in the morning from home. I mean, there's a thousand scenarios we can come up with. have the conversation. And maybe part of the conversation is, you know what, this isn't the place for me anymore. I have— I'm in a season right now of this. My, my kids, uh, in this example, she's 9. She's only been 9 for 1 year. 1 time she's gonna be 9.

Tyson Gaylord [00:47:50]:
Just, just 1, just 1 time. Uh, I'm gonna go work somewhere else. Uh, I'm gonna go out on my own. I'm gonna, um, be a one-man band. I'm gonna, I'm gonna work my own thing. Or whatever your choices. But when you're— when you understand this, when you set These non-negotiables, you set the expectations up, you can work this around. What I personally do, I go on my son's school calendar, I block off his breaks, his holidays and stuff, just so I don't accidentally schedule myself.

Tyson Gaylord [00:48:17]:
I'm not saying I'm not working, but it's now— it's constant, it's on my calendar. So things can't just get scheduled. I just don't accidentally schedule something when he's home and off, and maybe we do nothing. And that's fine. Uh, but when I'm scheduling things, when I'm doing things, I see what's there. Um, his football games right now, he's, he's playing football. I got— this is, you know, you know, the time of recording is the end of his sophomore year. I got junior, senior, and that's it.

Tyson Gaylord [00:48:45]:
He's off to college, you know. And then I'll have to— I'll be in a new season. I'll have to reevaluate what I do for college, how I'm gonna navigate that, right? So this is, this is how I'm thinking about this. And I'm not the greatest plan— I'm not a planner kind of guy, right? But unless blocked off on my calendar. I see it, reminds me, it's front and center, it's there. Now, see, season I'm in, and everything I do is worked around that. I'm fortunate that I can make my schedule. Uh, my wife, she's, she's a regular nurse at a hospital.

Tyson Gaylord [00:49:16]:
Um, and in this season, she's talked with her, her supervisors, and she doesn't work on Thursdays. She just make her schedule not work on Thursdays. And that season's coming to an end, and she'll go back to working on Thursdays if, if she's needed. So these things are possible around the world if we're, we're not boxed into the story of, I can't do that. Oh yeah, you can do that. Oh yeah, you've got the money to do— you've got the flexibility. You stop that bullshit victim fucking thinking, okay? Let's get creative. Let's go have these difficult conversations.

Tyson Gaylord [00:49:51]:
And don't have this in isolation. You've got a partner, a spouse, wife, husband, whatever. You guys gotta have this conversation together. Let them know Like, hey, this is what's priority right now, and you guys can work and do, do the different things, okay? And then we have the family clock, right? This is kind of what I'm talking around here. Uh, I wrote a, I think, a great post about how many summers do you have left. When you frame things in, in, in that, like, how, how many Christmases do you have? Whatever your thing is, right? How many more summers do you have? Um, if you have kids, you only get 18 summers. That's it, right? And then they're typically gone somewhere. So, but when you think about like, just, I got just 18 summers, that's a different way of framing.

Tyson Gaylord [00:50:31]:
It feels less, which is good because then we can appreciate them because you only know there's only a few left. I got 2 more, 3 maybe, and, you know, all my kids are gone. So, so if, you know, if you're lucky You get about 70 summers in your life. You get about 18 with your kids, like I said. But you never know in the moment that something is the last time. You never know. There's no announcement saying, uh, Dad, I don't want to go trick-or-treating anymore, you know. Uh, I don't want to go to the water park anymore.

Tyson Gaylord [00:51:08]:
It just, it just stops, you know. Uh, your kid jumps in bed. Last time you go see best friend. Last time you go to your parents' house. Last time you go to that favorite restaurant before it burns down. You just never know, right? Things just happen. You only find out in hindsight. Um, this was the first summer my, my son wanted to go hang out with his friends and not do anything with me.

Tyson Gaylord [00:51:29]:
I never realized it was the last summer we did anything. It was last summer. I didn't, I didn't know, but I had already known this. I treated each event knowing this could be the last time we do it. And I made sure we had fun and we had a good— we had a good time. And then we also have the career clock. So starting at about 25, you know, some people get into it a little earlier, some people get into a little later, that's fine. And retire, let's just call it 65 right now.

Tyson Gaylord [00:51:54]:
Typically I think people are into the 70 range-ish now, right? Um, and the average career of years per role, so that's about 8 real at-bats in a whole career. Uh, you know, think about that. So if you only get 8, you can't afford a bunt, right? You can't afford this half-ass effort because you're only gonna get about 8 shots at the role you're gonna want and stay in and whatever. So we think about this, right? You know, you're not thinking about, I got 40 years of time to work. Seems like a long time. You start— it's easy to procrastinate. It's easy to kind of put that things off. You're like, I got 8 shots at goal.

Tyson Gaylord [00:52:37]:
A different conversation you're gonna have with yourself, right? It's like, let's just say you're, you're my age, uh, I think I'm gonna be 47 soon. Only got 3, maybe 4 shots left on goal to change careers or change jobs or whatever, you know? So when you're thinking about that, that's a different conversation versus like, oh, I got like 30 more years before I really want to kind of slow down or something, right? It's a different conversation. So frame these things in these types of, uh, buckets. Then you can— there's 2 clocks going to be running at once, right? That, you know, the family and the career. Whatever family is to you doesn't necessarily mean kids or whatever. Could just be you and your spouse, or you and whatever part of your family you want to— these 2 clocks are gonna be running at once. Clocks are running right now. Wherever you're at, if you're 18, you're still home with your parents, that family clock's still running, right? And your career clock is about to start, right? Or it is starting.

Tyson Gaylord [00:53:30]:
You got your first kind of job or something like that, right? So, and that's the real tension, not work against life, spending summers and at-bats at the same time. You can't get either one back, right? That's when you got to make decisions. You got to make non-negotiables. You got to set up your calendar and whatnot. Because you got to balance, you know, you know, balancing, you know, right, you know, right now school's in, I'm gonna go 90% in the career, and then, you know, Christmas break's coming up, well, I'm gonna ramp down, I'm gonna go 60% family right now, I'm gonna ramp, I'm gonna ramp down, you know, and boom, you're back and forth, right? You're going up and down, making those conscious decisions, not letting these things just pass by because you're on autopilot and you're stuck there, right? Uh, so what syncs both paths? Part 1, autopilot. No excuses, no autopilot. Either path works if you choose it. Neither works if you're drifted into it, if you just autonomously fall into that path and you wake up one morning and, fuck, how did I get here? I got a mortgage, I got 2 car payments, I got fucking student loans, I got a lot of— I hate my job, I hate Like, let's not go there.

Tyson Gaylord [00:54:47]:
If we are there, we've already talked about steps to get rolling, getting out of there. Okay? And then so in— and then part 2, we have the rational lies. Boy, I live here sometimes, right? So in 314 Days, I talked about this. A rational lie is a true statement or can be a true statement. Doing dishonest work. My son really does have a couple years left at home. That's true. I also used it to cover for not writing the mission statement that I talked about in 314 Days.

Tyson Gaylord [00:55:20]:
Family time can be a real priority or a rational lie. You have to be honest about which one it is. I do. I did. I do try not to. I do kind of use that excuse when I feel a little bogged down or I feel stuck. I'm like, well, you know, Yeah, I gotta go pick up my son from practice in 2 hours. So, you know, I'm just gonna wind things down, like, because I feel stuck, right? But, uh, that's when we gotta go take a walk.

Tyson Gaylord [00:55:46]:
We gotta not quit on emotion. We'll get into more of that a little bit later. And then we have part 3, we have the comparison. Uh, the builder looks at the steady person and thinks lazy. The steady person looks at the builder and thinks neglectful. Both are wrong. Uh, in Thinker Size, they, they say this: legends force a choice, not a comparison. Social comparison points, uh, in the Solve podcast on social comparison, it points to research by Wilson and Ross that found comparing yourself to yourself, to your past self, builds motivation better than comparing yourself to other people.

Tyson Gaylord [00:56:27]:
We can't live without mirrors, but we can choose which ones we stand in front of. Games— social media makes it super easy. Damn, this guy got a new Lam truck, man. I'm fucking over here working 80-hour weeks. Hey, no, not playing his game. And so the check— we're talking about boundaries, right? So if you say you value something but never protect it, you don't actually value it. You just wish you did. Same, um, thing with, uh, the, the busy person.

Tyson Gaylord [00:57:00]:
You don't have priorities. That's why you're so busy. 9— I bet you 9% is just trash you can get rid of. Okay, same concept. So to check yourself, uh, use a time and energy audit. What I want you to do is write down where your hours went in the last 7 days, right? Each activity. From 1 to 5 for how much energy it cost you, how much it gave you back, right? So 1 didn't take a lot of energy, gave back a lot. 5 sucked the living hell out of me, I got nothing out of it.

Tyson Gaylord [00:57:32]:
Okay. And, and then compare where your, your week went against the season you say you're in. Where's the mismatch? What things are sucking the life out of you and not giving you anything back? Versus the things that are energizing you and pushing you forward on the things you wanna be pursuing right now. A great book to explore this concept more, Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. He has 3 principles, are do fewer things, you work at a natural pace, and you obsess over quality. Work at a natural pace is the seasons idea, right? Intense stretches and lighter stretching sessions. Intense stretches and lighter stretches on purpose. This is the ebb and flow, right? We talked about— we ramp up, we hit this 10-week sprint, we get this project done, we get this knocked out.

Tyson Gaylord [00:58:27]:
We come back down, we need to rest, recover, right? You don't smash the gym as hard as you can. You don't run 50 fucking ultramarathons back to back to back to back without recovering, right? So we ramp up, we slow down a little bit, we take a rest day, uh, we take a light— lighter workout, and we go. We do this on purpose, okay? We don't, we don't, we don't get into burnout because we understand we ramp up, we ramp down, ramp up, we ramp down. Living, living on purpose. And then we come to the blueprint. So all of this kind of brought together, this is where you get involved now, and these are the questions you're going to answer. What it is, 6 blanks you fill in, define what legendary means to you. 6 blanks you fill in to define what legendary means for you in this season you are in right now.

Tyson Gaylord [00:59:21]:
Yes, we identify that first and then we go. So here, so write it when the season changes, never when the mood changes. I would recommend picking, um, something Quarterly, biannually, annually. Do you want to do weekly, monthly? I think daily might be a little much, but hey, I don't know. I don't know you. I'm not telling you what to do. Just telling you pick something, right? And then readjust. You want to do— some people do 10-week sprints, 12-week sprints.

Tyson Gaylord [00:59:47]:
Um, some people do quarter things. I, I do quarters. Uh, it just depends what you're up to, okay? When the season changes, never when the mood changes. LTG, Legendary Transformation Group, I, I have over on school. Um, that's another thing we'll talk about a little bit more about a little bit here is where you, you work through it with other people. This is the group I'm trying to build where we, we get together in a community. We have these lessons and we have the, the community to help each other, uh, work through these different things. So number 1, my standard, your standard, okay? In 6 to 8 words, my life should read Blank.

Tyson Gaylord [01:00:26]:
This is the tombstone question turned into a daily rule. It's how you operate no matter what happens. Mine is no excuses, no autopilot, only what I control. 2, my season. Right now I'm in a season of blank. So name the chapter you're in. Seasons change you, right? So change is the social investment principle, right? Where personality researcher Brent Roberts— committing to a serious role with a partner, a parent, or a leader is one of the strongest drivers of adult personality change. So when you're committing to a serious role with a parent, partner, or leader is one of the strongest drivers of adult personality change.

Tyson Gaylord [01:01:18]:
So use this to your advantage, okay? Mine is, I'm in a season of building and enjoying the last few years with my son at home, okay? My non-negotiables. Your non-negotiables. This season I protect— these are the few things you do not trade, even when work gets loud. These are things that don't fall off. They're gonna be— they're gonna be hard. You're gonna miss a day. The adage is don't miss 2 days, okay? Don't beat yourself up, don't miss twice, okay? So when work gets loud, okay, every no protects a deeper yes. We have to always be subtracting.

Tyson Gaylord [01:01:58]:
Um, I would, I would encourage you to adopt default no. Just no. And then step back and think, I'm sticking with no. I can, I can, I can do this. I have, I have, I have room in, in my schedule. I have room on my plan. Go ahead and say yes. But I would encourage you to start with default no.

Tyson Gaylord [01:02:18]:
If anything, subtract, subtract, subtract, subtract. Um, you know, so many successful people talk about this, you know, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, all these types of guys, they talk about subtracting, right? It's the things you say no to, right, that that leaves room for yes, leaves room for the big project, leaves room for these things to come out, right? If Steve Jobs worked on the iPhone and iPad and iPod all at the same time, they'd all be just average trash products, right? But saying no to the iPad, 'cause I gotta work on the iPhone first, so traction, right? Every no protects a deeper yes, okay? Mine is I protect his, my son's activities, games, also my health, fitness, and well-being. Those are the non-negotiables for me. It's every day, it's movement, it's getting in the ice bath, it's taking a walk when I feel overwhelmed, taking a walk, taking a break when I'm hitting a wall, right? Making sure my calendar is such that I never miss a game. I haven't, and I don't plan on it. As long as I have control over that, not happening. And then my trade, I choose blank over blank. Every boundary is a trade-off.

Tyson Gaylord [01:03:40]:
Every trade-off is reality— is, I'm sorry, every trade-off is really a declaration of value. Saying it out loud means you stop pretending you have— you can have everything. Mine is I choose virtue over validation. I choose purpose over comfort. It's easy, easy to stay on the couch. It's easy to give up when things get hard. It's so easy. And the crazy thing about that is, um, time you choose easy, there's this little part of your brain that deteriorates, and easy just gets to be easier.

Tyson Gaylord [01:04:18]:
It's just the hard thing. So you do hard things, you build that part of your brain. I'll put in show notes if you're interested in it. I don't remember off the top of my head, but that, that part of your brain, when you, when you do the hard thing, when you don't want to, that part of your brain grows and enlarges. And a lot of times the story we tell ourselves, the story I tell myself, oh my God, when then you get it done, it's like, oh, what was I complaining? What, what, where did I come up with this nonsense? I spent 3 weeks on this story to not do this thing. It took me 6 minutes. Like, oh my God. So have that in our mind, right? I've— my test: when blank happens, I will blank.

Tyson Gaylord [01:05:00]:
This is the Stoic law turned into an if-then plan. You decide your response before the test shows up, right? How we've chosen all, all the things, we understand the virtues, we understand this thing, right? So what you're not deciding in the moment Don't raise to your expectations, you default to your training, right? You don't raise to this level that you think you're going to do, you default to what you've already kind of decided. You've got these things in mind, so keep that in mind, right? You're not— you're just not how we're wired. This is not— we're not going to do it. Um, so mine is when a project stalls, I don't quit, right? I quit on data, never on a bad day. That's my quit rule from, um, Stop Waiting, uh, to Feel Calm. You can read that on my Substack too if you're interested in going through that or whatever. So we set a metric and we set a date, uh, you know, 3 to 6 months out.

Tyson Gaylord [01:05:58]:
And then when the date comes, ask one question: did I honestly put in the work? If yes and the numbers still aren't there, Then we can quit, right? That's quitting on data as a decision, not quitting on a bad day or a bad mood. So sometimes we got to kill projects. We got to kill these things. We think it's going to be this. And when you do this in advance, you're like, you know, if we don't get to X by the end of the year, that gives you the— this is not working, right? You make sure you don't fool yourself because you're the easiest one to fool. Don't be like, well, if we did this— okay, that's a strategy then, but you need to set new metrics. Okay, so like, okay, we didn't hit these metrics because— and don't be like, well, we're gonna keep going now because when we do this new social media strategy, now, now we got it. Now, now, now we're good to go, right? Okay, that's great.

Tyson Gaylord [01:07:01]:
Again, but in that moment you also say, okay, now we're going to launch this new initiative. Okay, now, um, after, you know, Q1, we're not at where we say we're going to be. Now we're killing this project. We're just fooling ourselves now. We're bullshitting ourselves. We just can't— we just want to keep playing this game. Okay, so be careful there. And then 6, My mission, your mission.

Tyson Gaylord [01:07:28]:
Keep doing blank even if nobody paid me. So in Thinkers High, they say this: the greatest gift you can have in life is a problem that matters to you. It works at home too. Coaching my kids is a mission, right? The greatest gift you can have in life is a problem that matters to you. You're gonna go after that so hard To solve that, to scratch your own itch. And you're going to do stuff when— even if nobody's paying you to do it, and nobody's watching, when you're not looking for validation. So coaching my kids' team is also a mission. You are choosing.

Tyson Gaylord [01:08:07]:
That's fine. You want to do path 1 and coach your kids? That's fantastic too, because you're choosing. And then you assemble this all Put it in one line. Becoming legendary in this season means blank, or becoming legendary means blank. What I got is becoming legendary means owning every piece of my life. I don't choose what happens, I choose who I am when it does. That's the metric I like to go by. So to continue the thinking here, I have some journal prompts.

Tyson Gaylord [01:08:50]:
Um, I'm not a big journaler. However, I do know the power of it. I do. My version of journaling is rambling on to AI, but then pestering a friend, and it's a whole lot cheaper than therapy or somebody sitting across from you. Um, not discounting those. You can get a friend. to talk these things through, that's the best. Somebody that can just listen to you, not necessarily give you advice per se, but somebody you can connect with and listen to.

Tyson Gaylord [01:09:19]:
That's the best. Maybe even your buddies or your buddy or your whatever, you guys sit down and you guys talk about these questions together. So I'll have the whole list in the show notes for you, but I wanna go through a few of these real quick to get your mind going on this episode right now. Why do I think what I think? In Thinkers High, they talk about this. It says most of us suffer from learned laziness, where thoughts have us instead of us having thoughts. Asking this breaks the spell. It's how you catch beliefs you never chose. Think about that.

Tyson Gaylord [01:09:52]:
Why do I think what I think? So many things are beliefs, and all these things we learned in school, we learned from our parents, we learned from life. Have you evaluated them? Are they still true? Were they ever true to begin with? Not here to answer that for you, but I want you to think about it. I almost guarantee a lot of things you hold as beliefs, the things you think you think, they were implanted in you. This is not necessarily a malicious thing, just what happens. Were implanted in you and you never evaluated them. So think about that. Is this legendary, or am I just staying busy on your calendar? Busy feels like progress. Look at your to-do list and circle what actually moves your standard forward.

Tyson Gaylord [01:10:35]:
Also, another in this realm as well, um, what would, what would this, um, be if it was easy? What does it look like if it was easy? Tim Ferriss talks about this. Um, so, but, you know, on your to-do list or something like whatever, which one of these things could I do that would eliminate or make irrelevant all these other things? That's another thing as well. But no, don't be busy for busy's sake. That's somebody without priorities. True fact, am I using to dodge a decision? Uh, this is the rational lie test I talked about from the 314 Days post. Um, the fact is true. The question is what's covering for it, right? What— and we all do it. And just because you know about this doesn't mean you're not going to fall for it.

Tyson Gaylord [01:11:21]:
But when you do fall for it, you You can catch yourself. And that's, I think, where we need to try to be at. Some, you know, a lot of these things, we're always going to fall for it, but we have the ability to catch ourselves when it's happening. So what true fact am I using to dodge a decision? For me, um, when things get hard and there's a difficult step, when you're in that dip, um, when you're in a hard place, this is when you start coming up with this bullshit. And, you know, you're gonna come with the bullshit and it's gonna maybe start believe in it for a little bit. This is— you got a chance to go, oh, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm dodging this. I'm using this as a way of not doing the hard thing right now. How many summers do you have left with people who matter most to you? How long will you wait before you demand the best from yourself? This is from Epictetus.

Tyson Gaylord [01:12:08]:
I think it's a great litmus test for so many things, right? Epictetus asked his students this. And it's, you know, it still stings because the answer is usually later. and later never comes? How long will you wait before you demand the best from yourself? From external sources, or people want from you, or want of you, or want you to do— when are you going to talk and think about yourself? Okay, last one here for right now. What's the strongest case against what I believe right now? From Thinkers High as well. This they talk about here: more than one thing can be true at the same time. You can't argue the other side better than the people who hold it. You don't fully understand your own position yet. A lot of times, that's a good thing about little kids.

Tyson Gaylord [01:12:54]:
We know things, or we feel like we know them. You try to explain them, you realize you actually don't know. And if you embrace that, that's an opportunity to get a deeper level of understanding in what a word means, what a concept means, what you're thinking. So don't shy away from that. There's a bunch more. I'll leave them in the show notes for you guys. I encourage you guys Maybe once a week or something like that, pick out one of these, talk about it, think about it, talk to your AI, get a buddy that you trust that's not gonna, you know, fucking give you shit or whatever, not gonna be a dick about it. You guys can have a good, honest conversation about this question.

Tyson Gaylord [01:13:25]:
Honestly sit there and listen. And sometimes it's just listening is all it needs. You don't have to say shit back to go back and forth. You can pose a question, somebody can talk. Damn, thanks for sharing, buddy. I appreciate that. Didn't know that about you. And then You fire off your version and, you know, you guys have a sandwich, you guys have a beer, you guys have a cigar, whatever.

Tyson Gaylord [01:13:45]:
You guys go home, shake hands, whatever. Take this opportunity to evaluate your life. Um, do hard things, right? Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. Uh, Gregory something or another, great quote. I love that. And then as we come to a, you know, wind down here, you know, my answers to these things Um, the question I never answer because I've never asked it in return is, is my personal definition of becoming legendary. I'm going to repeat it again here for you guys here to kind of end things off.

Tyson Gaylord [01:14:21]:
Becoming legendary means owning every piece of my life. I don't choose what happens, choose who I am when it does. Virtue over validation. Purpose over comfort. No excuses. No autopilot. Master myself or be mastered. If you want to dig further into this thought process, um, Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene, one of my favorite authors.

Tyson Gaylord [01:14:47]:
I recommend reading all of his books. In that book, Greene argues that you're governed by human nature whether you understand it or not, uh, starting with your own nature. Don't master yourself, your impulses, and other people will. That right? You don't choose, somebody's gonna make a choice for you. Not choosing is a choice. Somebody's gonna impose that on, on you. I will link all, um, the relevant episodes if you want to get down deeper into these things, um, from the show here, from my— this podcast. Uh, I'm gonna link the articles if you want to dive deeper into those articles.

Tyson Gaylord [01:15:25]:
You know, check out Substack. Hey, if you're interested, subscribe. You'll get more of these delivered directly to your inbox. I will link, uh, books I feel are relevant. Uh, I talked about an episode, The Four Agreements, Laws of Human Nature, Slow Productivity, also 4,000 Weeks. This talks about, um, that's about the average person lives about 4,000 weeks. And I think, again, when you think about it from that, I only got 4,000 weeks. I think at my age, I think I'm like 2,000-something weeks.

Tyson Gaylord [01:15:50]:
I think I crossed 2,000 weeks of a year or so ago, but whatever, something like that. And start thinking about it in these, uh, giant— you're like, oh, years feels like a lot. Weeks, you're like, well, fuck, I only got 2,603 weeks left. Like, oh shit, like, fuck, I'm kind of over halfway. Like, you think 18 summers, right? You know, you start thinking about these things a little bit different. You know, is that 8 career changes we talked about earlier, right? You start thinking about these, um, not necessarily compressed time window, but kind of, right? Where numbers, uh, they feel different, right? These other numbers, they're vast, they're huge. It's hard for us to imagine, you know, what does a million people look like? That's a lot you probably will never see. So, you know, when— that's why people say, oh yeah, stadium.

Tyson Gaylord [01:16:31]:
You can— every kind of, kind of think of a stadium, like a football stadium, soccer stadium, you know, a basketball arena. You can think about those sizes. That's why people use these measurements, right? So 4,000, um, Weeks, great book. You know, meditations, Man's Search for Meaning. I, I will link Um, the category Pirates Thinkers High. Uh, this is gonna be a weird one because it's not like on Amazon or nothing like that or whatever. I will find it. It's a great book.

Tyson Gaylord [01:16:54]:
It's just, it's a kind of a summary of a, of a massive amount of their work they put into this, to this. And I, when I was reading, I was like, oh, these, these quotes and some of these things are gonna, they're gonna come into this episode. This is absolutely amazing. Essentialism. This is something great. Subtract, subtract, subtract. Um, Greg McKeown, I believe that's how you say his name. Letters from a Stoic from Seneca, we talked about this.

Tyson Gaylord [01:17:18]:
Uh, Discipline Is Destiny by Ryan Holiday, uh, a little bit on Stoic theme all around discipline. Uh, like Jocko, Discipline Equals Freedom. I'll link those as well. And then, uh, Jim Collins, he's a great author. His newest book, uh, What to Make of a Life, um, that'll also help. you crystallize thinking and whatnot around this. And then this week's legendary challenge: build your legendary blueprint, fill in your 6 blanks and assemble them for your one line, and then run the Stoic Field Cards 7-day test log. Uh, blank 5 is gonna be your first test of this.

Tyson Gaylord [01:17:58]:
Uh, log each one neutral, no story, steps you used real quick to go over the 6 blanks. 1, what's my standard? In 6 words, my life should read— that's just the tombstone question. 2, my season. Right now I'm in the season of blank. 3, my non-negotiables. This season I protect blank. 4, my trade. I choose blank over blank.

Tyson Gaylord [01:18:26]:
Uh, what— that's, you know, your trade-offs. Blank. 5, My test: when blank happens, I will blank. This is the Stoic Law in action. This is supported by the field card. And then 6, my mission: I keep doing blank even if nobody pays me. And then all assembled together: legend— becoming legendary in this season means— or legendary means blank. That's your challenge this week.

Tyson Gaylord [01:18:53]:
And then, you know, To wrap here, um, episode gives you the blanks to fill in, you know. Uh, LTG, Legendary Transformation Group, that's the classroom, right? This is where school's in session. This is where we're learning together. The group I'm trying to build, the community I'm trying to build, um, this is kind of a brand new thing. I talked about this. This was the challenge from 314. This is where, you know, I stalled out for a year or so, you know, just I got stuck on some hard things and then other things took over. And so this is the classroom.

Tyson Gaylord [01:19:24]:
This is where, uh, you refine what you filled in, in, in the things. You test it and then you rewrite it with the new season. Uh, the mission of Legendary Creation Group: it exists to help people take ownership of their— of a life they never chose, design one that is unmistakably theirs. Oh, said another way here: it exists to help you take ownership of your life, design that you never chose and design one that is unmistakably yours. That is the mission. Uh, it's the shift from who you are, who you're meant to be. We want to prepare, reflect, and integrate. We name the season, the project.

Tyson Gaylord [01:20:02]:
We review, um, the past day, the past week, whatever. We make adjustments to course correct and stay on track. You're interested in getting in on, on the ground floor? Uh, check out Legend Transformation Group on Skool. I will link it in episode. And remember, legendary is a standard you execute, never a place you arrive. And you're also never going to arrive at a paywall. You're not going to have to get premium plus social media content because it doesn't exist. We give everything to you up front here, and all we ask is in return, if you found any value from this episode, any of our posts, any of our things, share at least 2 other people.

Tyson Gaylord [01:20:44]:
Get together, have a conversation, discuss some of these things, discuss these questions. Um, life is better with friends. Life is better with people. Don't get stuck behind the screen. Get out and share this with people. Have a discussion with people. Have your own group. Have your own meetups.

Tyson Gaylord [01:21:00]:
Discuss all these concepts, these things. And if you're looking for a place In between that, on a screen, check us out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, your favorite podcast player for past episodes and links to everything we've discussed here today. Head over to thesocialchameleon.show. You can come learn with me by subscribing to our Substack for show notes, legendary life posts, and the monthly rewind delivered directly to your inbox. Don't forget, join the Legend Transformation Group where we help people take ownership of a life they never chose, design one that's unmistakably theirs. Until next time, keep learning, growing, and transforming your path to becoming legendary.