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The Infinite Game Podcast exists to capture yesterday's and today's wisdom to help us all play life at a higher level. With topics of mental health, spiritual health, and physical health being the focus for pursuing mastery in the game that matters the most: life. There will be two styles of shows, one, with Henry and Harrison talking, the other, hosting guests to glean insights from them!
The Infinite Game is a project that believes the expansion of our capacity and the shouldering of personal responsibility is the key to changing culture.
Henry, how are we doing? Doing well. Full day of not resetting the orientation, but
I jokingly commented on one of our players' posts in the You Project app. A fast current
you can't see your reflection in, but a still pool, like the water is very calm. And a Sunday
is almost to just let everything settle down. And for me, just going deep reading. I mean,
the first five hours of my day, I didn't move. I was just reading the whole time. And then
I did a lot of podcasts. So full day of study. I feel like I have a renewed lens, not even
a different lens, just upgraded in many ways. Yep. A lot of planning for the week. My topic
today, what I got from Chesterton. Amazing application. Obviously this is coming out
on Monday and Sunday's great. Obviously for planning the week, figuring out where those
decision points are, where you can take more ground, what I can do better, where am I focusing
on? What are the clear objectives that have to, have to happen? Where's the standard?
I love the way, and I'm just going to hop right into it on the GK Chesterton, continuing
to read it. He lays out, I'm calling it life at the crossroads, where every single week,
you want to figure out what are those crossroads? That's really where it matters. And this is
not direct writing from GK Chesterton. It's almost like a literary criticism pulling in
a bunch of his quotes. And there's a few, there's three that I want to focus on. The
first one, he goes, Chesterton is good and sure guide because he knows where the reference
points are. And there are eternal reference points. What makes a great work of literature
interesting is that it's always about the state of a person's soul. It is about life
at the crossroads. I think those two points, one is he's a great guide because he has awesome
reference points. I'm always thinking at the start of the week, I'm making sure my reference
points are in place. Meaning I'm reminding myself what's been possible in the past, some
incredible, unbelievable achievements by men that have gone before us, the capacity, the
power, the energy, the confidence, the enthusiasm, the resourcefulness, always have to be reminding
ourselves yourself of that. Literally, I'm just trying to flicker into my mind. Make
sure your relative, your standard is relative to the right measure, the bars. Yeah. Your
comparison group has to be admirable, exciting. And so I love that he's a good guide because
he's got reference points and their eternal ones, their incredible ones. That's the importance
of one reading history, but to always be learning from biographies, from stories. So I love
that first one, but the second one is what I love too. It's always about the state of
a person's soul, life at the crossroads. Yeah. There's so many moments throughout the whole
week where one decision takes you one way and the decision whether to do or not do something
takes you another, whether it's in virtue or habit. And there is that ripple effect,
which things compound, but in the very real sense, waking up to do something versus not
results in a very different day at the end, I mean, winner loss. Yeah. One of the main
monologues that changed my life or changed my life. Eric Thomas actually might've been
inky. I think it was inky Johnson. And he was going on this tirade about you have no
idea decisions you make in the moment, how they're going to ripple across time and affect
your character that once you alter your character in a negative way, you've put a new pattern
or a new standard. It's just slipped a little bit, not in the right direction. You don't
know how that could delay things two years, five years, seven years, it might actually
just break the possibility of that one thing happening happening. If you let that pattern
kind of stay in place, and there's a great book, Jaco willing, obviously, extreme ownership
is first book. And there was a page about snoozing the alarm going back to bed and how
that is the first win of the day. And it ripples into all of the other decisions. That's life
at the crossroads. That's I think when you can tell a high performer, because they're
focusing on such small details, such small details about and they believe the details
matter. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The foundational, it's not even orientation, it's like intention
and energy of action. And understanding that five to 15 minutes matters like that difference,
that muzzle velocity somebody that we listened to, I love when he says it, it's like once
you got muzzle velocity, you got to keep going. Like you've got it. That is a necessary and
powerful variable, muzzle velocity and momentum. But life at the crossroads, you have to see
what are those decisions, especially again, this is coming out on a Monday, I'm thinking
about through my day, what, where's the crossroads? And usually it's in these transition moments,
you know, where you go from one thing to the next, how much procrastination is taking place
there? How much are you breaking frame and disorienting yourself? How much distraction
are you engaged in procrastination? How, how tight are the details? How are the details
I was reading through Friday, I was reading today, the Battle of Gettysburg. And I didn't
bring the book up, I will one time. The details of what these soldiers survived, the amount
of musket wounds they had, their coats were shot through three or four times. All they
had was hard bread, a shot of whiskey in the morning, boiled some coffee at night. I mean,
it was unbelievable. And when you talk about moments of crossroads, these men had unbelievable
presence of we charged and it was as if the hand of God was behind us or we held little
round top. And you could like the moments of courage where one of the generals writing
it said he went, went through a house and there were a bunch of men hiding as if they
were like bunnies scared. And his presence kind of just like got them to stand up and
just charge again, or the stories of the crossroads in these pivotal moments that led to like
the actual formation of a more perfect union that would have just dissolved is insane.
Yeah. Once you're onto your life, you have as significant points all the time. Now, tomorrow
morning, I'm going to wake up to my alarm, zero doubt about that. But if I didn't, it's
not like it makes your break whether success happens. But there is this domino effect of
you complete that charge or you start the day. Well, it leads into momentum that allows
you to have higher thoughts about yourself. That leads you to have greater plans for the
future. And the opposite effect is you don't wake up, you're not looking at yourself in
the mirror as confidently. You go about your day, you have more self-defeating thoughts
about yourself, which then you contract your dream a little bit. You settle for more. The
domino effects are crazy in both directions, which is why I think Harrison can give a lot
of our success and confidence to just keeping momentum going. Now, the thing too is the
key is you're not going to be perfect. And so upon the loss, you have to recognize it
as the loss. And that's not the standard. Point it out very clearly. And then I personally,
in a journal will articulate what the crossroads is and the correct decision next time. It
has to be clear. The decision points, the crossroads, where the two roads diverged in
the yellow woods, I took the one less traveled. It has to be clear. That is I think the most
important thing because yes, you might not win. Every decision will not be a win, but
when it is a known loss, it cannot be rationalized as okay. It's got to be like, shoot, man, slip
there. There's one slip there. That's not good enough. There's one part of self-reliance.
Emerson's writing about the divinity, which is in all men. And he says, if our young men
miscarry in their first enterprise, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men
say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges and is not installed
in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston and New York,
it seems to his friends and to himself, he is right in being disheartened and complain
the rest of his life. But then Emerson writes this to remind you, like you have the divinity
of God in you. Like you are meant to just rise and rise and rise and rise. You have
to be more bold. Self-reliance. That's all about boldness and the eternal quality of
courage that can be lost. That essay is unbelievable. And it points out to how rare it is for a
man's confidence to go from failure to failure without drawing back. Yeah, it's so strongly.
So hard. Elon in one of his addresses to like a Stanford business class said the number
one predictor of success is the ability to endure pain. Yeah. And this is to piggyback
what you just said. Emerson writes, and truly it demands something God like in him who has
cast off the common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
Yeah. And I think I love that. I love that. Yeah. I think that's one of the things that
although we lead a hundred plus players a day and tell them four hours can change everything.
Four hours can make dreams possible. We'll never say that you're not supposed to leave
here and decide your own fate. Like you have to go home and do wall ball, go home, take
care of your nutrition. Meaning he writes about you are your own taskmaster. Even if
you have a, a boss and a great leader in your life, the leader is only giving you the tools
for you to make the final decisions on what needs to be done. Oh yeah, absolutely. One
of my favorite things is the ability to, if someone asks you, why are you doing that for
you to say, because I said so because I have established this as a practice, a standard,
a ritual, a routine, a regiment, whatever it may be, may seem unreasonable for a short
period of time. But if you're forcing yourself through growth and adaptation because I said
so might be the thing that has to get you through it. You have to be a taskmaster that
you respect and you adhere to. Cause if you can't keep your own word word, who, who else
is going to? Yeah. Yeah. Right after that. I mean, this is exactly what you're just saying.
It says high be his heart, faithful, his will clear his sight that he may in good earnest
be doctrine society law to himself. That a simple purpose may be to him as strong as
an iron necessity to others. Yeah. Which like that, amazing. That is the definition of someone
who imposes their will on what they're doing and the circumstance around them for someone
that doesn't for us, like waking up and doing what we say we're going to do executing this
week on things we want to see happen. Like that may as well be good as iron necessity.
It's necessary that it happens. No, the sad thing about that essay is the importance of
understanding an equation has one side and then the other you have divine providence.
Other side human agency. This is the ultimate self-reliance. If you have not read it, Emerson
self-reliance, Emerson compensation there, Emerson circles nature. I mean, every single
Emerson essay, maybe not every single one, but his top six are must reads because it's
such a bold vision of the right side of the equation, human agency. Now they're of course
on the spiritual side of things. He's the enlightenment that wants to take down the broader institutions.
But it's the perfect balance and amazing balance. A priest, a spiritual director could point
at that and be like, it's absence of obedience. It's absence. I mean, could really point at
those things and knock them, but I never, I never see signs of, uh, of that in his essays
that he is not, um, submissive to authority. I think he's more calling man to a higher
nature than he was at his time. Yeah, it was a different time for when he was writing that
it's incredibly enlightening and empowering to read it now because we've lost that level
of courage, boldness. I love when he, he has a line, it might be in self-reliance where
he says the roses of today do not reference the roses of the past. They stand tall today
and there's something about people and men. I think he says like a man does not stand
with his chest out without referencing great men of the past, but he's, he, he's not willing
to just be great today. There's something awesome about that. Now it's funny that, uh,
I say that as we're quoting great men of the past, I mean, we've obviously talked about
the G K chest and Chesterton reference points, you know, you have to have the references.
I think you have to have that, what you're trying to derive greatness from to a degree,
meaning you need to know the, the, you have to be properly calibrated. So I don't think
he would critique that be like, yo, stop quoting that stuff. Stop reading. It's like, no, I
mean, he talks about in the American, uh, scholar, the importance of reading, but what
a book is, it's not to escape. It's to get you closer to life, to give you a greater grip
on reality. And so that when you go act, you act with so much more intention, uh, and focus
that idea, steadfastness of purpose that is actually in alignment with what not so much
the world needs, but he has this awesome line and I wish I knew it verbatim, but it's something
along the lines of genius is recognizing where the masses are pointing and going there like
charging their first all of all of the world. They're pointing there. They don't know it
yet though. And you're just kind of head. You're that first mover. You're, you're the
person who gets to kind of taste the problem first, or you're feeling the friction first.
And then you, you get to it and it takes, you have to have the self-reliance. You generally
have to have the self-reliance. There is that idea of trying to understand reality, which
is a humble pursuit for literally all of your existence likely. But I think that is the,
the role of an athlete, the role of like the players that were around every day. How quickly
can you actually understand your reality? Because a lot of them are in a false reality.
Yeah. No, I love the line by Carl Jung where he goes, what character resides in you or
what story are you living? You know, GK Chesterton, the last kind of insight here. So I returned
to it's about life at the crossroads, understanding what those decision points are, where in the
past did I go left? I want to go right. I slept down the hill. I want to charge up the
hill figuring out what those are, especially for this week. Now he continues. He goes,
so what choice will the character make? We cheer him on, hoping he will make the right
decision. We want him to defeat the evil enemy. We want him to win the love of the woman he
desires. Modern literature has become boring and unreadable because it has left out the
eternal drama of the soul. Literature has no longer anything to do with the soul, the unknown
quantity in man. Nothing is important except the fate of the soul. And there's something
about, yeah, there's, there's qualitative things that are important to, to measure throughout
the day, um, I guess, but I think what matters to start the week, especially, I mean, we're
recording this on a Sunday, but on a Monday, you got to get the story straight. Yeah. You
got to get that macro story straight and not like archetypally. I mean, it's not constructing
of the, I'm the hero. It's just, there has to be some sort of great movement of the will,
I think, like genuinely have to be, you have to feeling like something's important. There's
magnitude in every single moment. You're not just thrown into the world, meaning, oh my
gosh, there's thousands of years of human history before me. There's going to be thousands
of years of human history after me. None of this matters. Like, no, no, no, you cannot
allow yourself to be thrown or feel, uh, feel thrown. It has to be genuine. Uh, you're a
link in a chain and you must feel that there's a link behind me and there's going to be one
day a link in front of me and I better be a strong part of it. So yeah, well, it's one
of those thought exercises we used to do with players all the time, which was your story
has to make sense and would lay out the hypothetical. Uh, she never woke up to her alarm. She didn't
do any extra work and wobble. She didn't take care of her diet, care about sleep and nutrition,
but achieved her dreams. Did that story make sense? No, the story has to make sense. You've
got to see the narrative, the end state. Are you engineering success towards that? That
actually adds up. And if you are sincerely pursuing taking care of the people around you,
you are liked, you were loved, you admired, you listened to the people that are giving
you advice, you, uh, give a full effort the most you can daily. Like that story makes
sense to an end, which is going to be one that you're proud of. And I think that's something
most people lie about what they're currently writing. They aren't looking what their, their
lines, the lines they're currently writing are. Oh yeah. It's tough to look at yourself
from third person perspective and ask, you know, would, if people were to watch me like
a movie, would they cheer for me? Or would they be like, ask guys a fraud, you know,
wasting time here, lying here, being manipulative here, hiding his intention here. If you can
ask yourself that truly, I mean, and get to the bottom of those answers and want those
answers to be pure and right. Uh, that's powerful. I mean, there's so many obviously studies
about what's called imaginal. It's like an imaginal intervention to where if you teach
someone the power of saving money, the likelihood of them actually doing it is basically zero.
But if you were to have them sit down and continually for a span of time, visualize
their older self and see them grateful that there's a nest egg left for them, you know,
that they're financially good. And basically they, you have to, you have to envision it.
You have to see it, you have to feel it. And there's something to always, you know, even
in when someone walks in, say you're at target and you kind of see yourself on that TV, those
plummeted the rate in which people steal stuff. Now, depending on the inner city, if depending
on the city or in people are still going to steal stuff, but seeing yourself having that
immediate reflection, mass massively impactful, but all very solid life at the crossroads,
figuring out what those crossroads are, putting your, making sure your macro story, like you're
saying makes sense. You know, I'm heading towards not a clear North star, but at least
a North star. Yeah. And all of it is so real. None of this is, a lot of people will open
up a philosophy book, they'll read Proverbs, Serac. Those are actually pretty realistic
and the advice they give, but a lot of the Eastern wisdom, I think it doesn't, it's not
as human as just thinking about what does this mean? Like literally, what does this
mean when you read something? It has to, Harrison always said, the North star has to touch earth.
Like these have to be very real things that, and then also something we talk about all
the time. You need to be doing things that give you feedback loops so that, okay, my
plan this week is I'm doing 10 minutes of wall ball every single day. The feedback loop
is am I more confident in training? Do I make less mistakes of mistakes I've made in the
past? What are the quick feedback loops? I'm going to start hydrating more this week. Do
I have more energy in the afternoon? Like there's little things that you will do and
you need to see what are these checkpoints and how high does the water rise? Is it doing
better than it was yesterday? And that's when you start to become what we say, the scientist.
You need to be the scientist of his success in your life because there is this, there
is this thing Emerson talks about, which I love. And it, he has this hypothetical, hypothetical.
If someone offered you all the knowledge in the world, you could know everything, but
you couldn't share it. Would you still want it? And he's like, no, you do things in order
to share it. If you're not a scientist of the success that you're having, how are you
going to hand it on either to the people that you're mentoring to your kids? Like it's so
important for you to be as aware as possible of the results you're trying to achieve. Cause
if not, you're no help to anyone. You did it for yourself. No, it's completely selfish.
Yep. Can't be hypothetical. Actually has to be real. Now that last line, last thing I'll
say, nothing is important except the fate of the soul. That is a big grandiose, almost
poetic line, but where it touches earth in your life and my life is should be so clear.
So clear of like, okay, what has me, what has me hooked? What, what from the past or
what is not, uh, the basing is what comes to mind, but it's not even, it's like, it's
what makes you thoughtful. What's what makes you thoughtful? What makes you envious? What
makes you jealous? What makes you, what makes you angry? What makes you resentful of people
that have more, like there's a million different sins that you can draw from it. 100%, 100%.
We all have addictions and we have to find them and root them out. Yeah. Go all the way
down to the bottom and to ask yourself that sincerely. It's like, no, it's not okay to
have those. Uh, or if you, it's okay to have them, it's not okay to tolerate them forever.
That's what I was more saying. It's a worthy prayer is Lord, increase my, like increase
my desire to remove this. There there's a, there's a tolerance of this that that needs
to be fixed. There's a classic line that we tell the players that make a mistake, which
is after they make a mistake, they put their head down and we say, Hey, there's a time
that happens for the last time. Like there is a time that happens for the last time.
As long as you don't quit, you made some sort of mistake that embarrasses you. Uh, something
set, someone said something about you that, uh, disturbed your piece. Eventually you will
get over it. You will achieve the skill, your acquire the skill and it will happen for the
last time. As long as you don't quit, that's the most important thing. And it's the same
thing you keep in the hopeful sense. Maybe this is the last week I wake up and this like
you're, you're just hopeful. You're hopefully, oh yeah, you're living in a chain can be broken
and then never, never pick back up. Solid. My friend, make sure you have reference points
for this week. Flash them back in your mind. If you need some more, I encourage you start
at the book endurance or any Goggins book. I mean, those will wipe any excuse away from
your life. Think about life at the crossroads. What crossroads are you walking up to? And
I love the Robert Frost two roads diverged in the yellow woods. I have taken the road
less traveled by that has made all the difference. There are going to be splits in there. The
road this week, make sure it's crystal clear which ones you don't want to travel back down.
I'm getting clear Sunday night. Right now I'm getting very clear on what my Monday,
the next, the ideal Monday looks like. And then also too, Hey, if somebody who's watching
you, would they cheer for you? You know, what character, what decisions does that character
need to make this week for it to feel like, yeah, yeah. I think if people watched, they'd
be rooting for this guy. They would be absolutely rooting for this guy. And then there's nothing
as important as the man. I was going off of memory right here. And then I forgot this last
line, the fate of the soul, fate of the soul. No wonder those points. So got anything Henry?
Is that it? Good. That's good. God bless my friend. We will see you next time.