Different Life | 010 | Why Winning and Losing Are Lies (And What Actually Drives Success)

Episode Summary:
Winning and losing feel like clear indicators of success, but they often lead people in the wrong direction. In this episode, we break down why outcomes are unreliable and how focusing on short-term results can sabotage long-term progress.

Through real-world examples in fitness, sports, and business, we explore how people misinterpret results and reinforce bad habits. Whether it’s weight loss fluctuations, performance setbacks, or business decisions, the outcome alone rarely tells the full story.

The real driver of success is the process. When you shift your focus to consistent execution, learning from failure, and long-term thinking, you build a system that leads to sustainable results. This episode will help you reframe failure, detach from outcomes, and commit to what actually works.

Key Topics Discussed:

Why winning and losing are misleading indicators
The concept of “resulting” and flawed decision-making
How short-term outcomes distort long-term success
Weight loss and fitness as real-world examples
Coaching athletes through failure and pressure
Building identity through process, not results
The importance of long-term thinking and consistency

Chapters with Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction and book discussion
02:20 – Money mindset and experience vs saving
09:00 – The quote: winning and losing as imposters
12:00 – Sports example: failure compounding mistakes
14:30 – Health coaching and misleading outcomes
16:45 – Why the scale can lie in fitness
19:00 – Building trust in the process
21:30 – Identity and outcome attachment
23:50 – Becoming who you want through process
26:00 – Business growth through repeated failure
28:30 – “Resulting” and decision-making explained

Notable Quotes:

“Winning and losing are outcomes, not truth tellers.”
“You can win with a bad process and lose with a great one.”
“Failure is not failure. It’s learning.”
“Process is who you’re becoming.”
“If you can take pleasure in failure, you can succeed at anything.”

Resources Mentioned:

Die With Zero by Bill Perkins
https://www.amazon.com/Die-Zero-Getting-Your-Money/dp/0358099765
Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Money-Life-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0143115766
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216355
Rudyard Kipling (Poem “If—”)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

Connect With Us Here:

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Website: https://wholehealthsolutions.life/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wholehealthsolutions.life
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholehealthsolutions.life
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/whole-health-solutions-sports-performance

Creators and Guests

Host

Gary Donia

Gary Donia, MSPT is a physical therapist and Chief Operations Officer at Whole Health Solutions and Sports Performance. With more than 20 years of experience, he helps individuals and athletes recover from injury, build strength, and improve long-term physical capability. Gary focuses on identifying root causes, creating practical plans, and guiding people toward sustainable health and performance. In addition to his clinical work, he coaches high school and Legion baseball, applying movement principles to develop resilient, confident athletes. He lives in Townsend, Massachusetts, with his wife Jessica and their two sons, and is passionate about helping people build healthier, more capable lives both on and off the field.

Host

Peter Brouillard

Peter Brouillard, DPT is the Founder and CEO of Whole Health Solutions and Sports Performance. As a physical therapist and strength coach, he works with individuals and athletes to recover from injury, build strength, and develop long-term resilience. Peter takes a whole-body approach to health, integrating exercise, lifestyle habits, and performance principles to help people exceed their goals and unlock their potential. His focus is on practical strategies that create lasting change, not quick fixes. He is passionate about empowering people to take ownership of their health and build lives defined by capability, confidence, and meaningful progress.

What is Different Life?

Most people don’t need more motivation. They need a different approach. Hosted by Gary Donia and Peter Brouillard, Different Life draws on years of experience helping people navigate pain, movement, recovery, and performance — but the conversation goes far beyond health alone.

We talk about:
• Strength training as a life skill
• Back pain, mobility, and injury recovery
• Pelvic floor health and durability
• Sleep, stress, hormones, and energy
• Performance and longevity over 40
• Discipline, habits, and identity shifts
• Parenting and modeling health
• Relationship-based healthcare

We discuss these not as isolated topics, but as part of a bigger question: What does it look like to live differently, not just try to live better?
If you feel stuck in patterns that no longer fit who you want to become, this show is for you. Because better often keeps you in the same cycles. Different changes your trajectory.

Gary Donia (00:01.102)
Hello and welcome to different life. Welcome back baby. How do you like that voice? That's my like commentator voice. sultry. Yeah, hello, welcome to different life. So Peter. Yes. A few episodes back. finally got you onto audible. Oh, you did it. Remember? you were a few weeks in and you hadn't done That was such a barrier. Meanwhile, I was tracking my calories like a sucker for You and Gianna got way ahead of Yeah, and so I was doing good. You had done nothing. Gianna was doing laundry.

You were tracking your fat. So I believe live on the show, if I remember correctly, like you were like put it on and then you downloaded the book. Have you had to make it happen? Yeah. So have you actually started reading said book? Yes. You gave me a list of like, I think like 10 or 15. Yeah. I think there's more. I've added a couple of cents. Perfect. Great. I just went down the list and I just want like the first thing that jumped out at me because again, like my goal with this was just to get going. I didn't really care which one it was. Yeah. Um, so, so I just picked like die with zero. Right. It's a great example of marketing also.

What's that? I mean, it got your attention. Die was zero. Yeah, sure. Right. You know what mean? Like this good job by that guy. I wasn't trying to analyze it. I was just like, what's the thing that jumps out? Okay. Die was zero. Press play. Um, I've been consistently listening to it during my morning routine. give myself like an hour to get to work intentionally because I want to just chill. And so that gets an easy time for me to just listen to You're not in the car for an hour. This is your morning routine of making breakfast. up, do the breakfast, I sit around, you know, whatever. Right. So I just try and relax before I get to work.

Yeah, I've been listening to it. I'm probably three hours in. What are your thoughts? So I loved that book. Loved it. It actually changed the way I thought about money. When did you listen to it? This is like, remember we talked recently about how like I've my views on like money changed recently. So that's one of the books. I felt like you listened to it a long time ago. So was a few years at this point. Oh, it's only been a few years. This wasn't like a 10 year old book. I'd have to go back to my good reads and

I don't know when the book was written. I can look that up. I actually read it, I want to say I read it like towards the end of our last, when we were doing the Fat and Broke podcast. I remember, I think I might have alluded to it on there. If not, was there. Yeah, it was within the last five years, but it was sort of the seedling that started me thinking more about just the way I go about things. But anyway, what are your takeaways so far? What's fascinating is it's kind of, it's a little bit of the opposite of the fire movement in the sense that

Gary Donia (02:24.258)
Like I think as a society, it's so ingrained in us to think like money equals success. Right. Just for people who don't know, fire means financial independence, retire early. So people who are trying to aggressively save their money to essentially stop work. Right. Yeah. And so for people in those communities, like if you have a regular job, you're kind of sacrificing most experiences and most things for the most part. Correct.

in order to save as much so that you can then say. hardcore fire people after they do for the idea that, I want my time back, right? I want to stop working, giving my time to work, which I think that this is a similar idea, except it's with more of the context of it's not just about money. It's also about the investment into experience, into memory, because in the end, all you have is your memories. When you think back on your life, it's like, well, what have I done?

What is the feeling that my friends and family have about me and like the experiences we've had together? And we use money as a way in which to have those experiences, right? You don't- It's kind of like your tombstone idea. It's like, are they going to put on your tombstone? Is it going to like write Peter, physical therapist? Yeah. You know, sure. great. Great. Thanks. Well, I lived a great life. You know, not that people write a whole lot, but you know, the idea of what would they or what would they say in your, in your eulogy.

Peter was a great physical therapist. Yeah, and it's usually not, you don't want it to be around. The end. Right, yeah, sure. So it's kind of like being intentional with your money, not saying like frivolously spend your money, but it's being intentional. Let's be responsible with saving, but also understand that as a successful person, you're going to make more as your skills increase, as you gain in age, so on and so forth. So maybe it's not the smartest to scrimp and save as much as possible when you're not making as much because

at some point you're going to make a lot more. So use some of that money on experience, right? And if you're in a position where you can do that, please be intentional about it. Like please decide, hey, these are the things that I would love to experience with the people that I love and then make it happen. like, I've been in this stage where I've been complaining about, I don't know how to vacation for a long time. And it's true. And it's like enough, like I just, enough. I'm going to start having- Yeah, because some of that was you didn't want to spend money on it.

Gary Donia (04:37.966)
Correct, well. Some of it. Yes. You you were like, oh my God, it's like to fly here and stay at a hotel and to do like go to Disneyland or whatever, like that's gonna cost me like $10,000. But that's how it started. Can't I just go to the pond down the street, you know, or whatever, right? Because I couldn't though. Like years ago, I couldn't. I lived on one income for most of my life. It wasn't until only very recently. So really honestly dude, until like my mid 30s, I basically like was living very lean because I had to.

And the challenging part about that is that I've built up the habits and the muscle around that. you don't just get to be like, well, now I have money, I can spend it. That's not how that works. The mind is so used to pulling back on everything that I've had to intentionally decide, I am going to spend this money intentionally because I can and because it would be an enjoyable experience for everybody. I'll have you know, I no longer mind tipping.

and spending a lot of money. Whereas before- Tipping, is that what you said? Like in the sense that- Tipping bother you before? I would tip, but it would be like a thing where like it bothered me because like I was such a cheap ass. The same with spending money at a restaurant. I'd be such a cheap ass. Get the cheapest thing on the menu. Or you'd be doing the math in your head like I can make this at home for like $1. Correct. And not enjoying being point is that yes, so going to a restaurant in the past would be a stressful experience.

Whereas I've intentionally been trying to work on it for the last couple of years and I'm happy to say at this point, it's no longer. I'm happy to just do it and I notice that it's just way more enjoyable for me and then therefore everybody else around me. Anyways, it's a mindset like anything else. So I'm really happy to have started listening to the book and I'm looking forward to get through it. Yeah, I think I would suggest maybe your next, well, if you want to get away from money, pick something else.

But I would say the next one that's kind of in line with that is maybe even a precursor to that book would be Your Money or Your Life, which is sort of like one of the foundational books of like people who are in the fire, most people who are in that movement will listen to that book. I mean, sorry, we'll read the book or listen to it. But it's funny because it's...

Gary Donia (06:50.838)
It's interesting. I just say it's like a little different take on then Die with Zero, but a lot of similar like foundational pieces. But I think you also really enjoyed that one. And I think people who listening to this would really enjoy that one too. Maybe that can be the second one, like to build on it. Yeah, if you want to do that, if you want to get away from just sort of the idea of like finances for a little bit, go with one of the other ones I gave you. Yeah. And then come to this one like second, just give yourself some variety. Or if you want to just kind of keep leaning into this, I would go with, you know, your money or your life. I think that's a

That's a great one. So, good. I'm glad you're reading. Well, thank you for holding me accountable to that. And just to reiterate, reading doesn't have to be physically picking up a book and turning the pages. Listening to it is fine. It's why they make these things. It's just gathering knowledge and information. Sometimes people have this real barrier around like, well, you're listening to it, that's not reading it. Yeah, it is. Like calm down everybody. In the end, still getting into your head. You're still absorbing the information. And some people do that better. Like some people can...

hear and absorb information better. do. for me is laborious because it takes longer for me to process, whereas hearing it's not so. Right. And there's also the barrier of going to get a book. Yeah. And they're not doing anything. And whatever, whereas you can just press the button on Audible. Like for me, I love to hold a book. Like I love it. I love the paper. I love the smell of the book. I'm like weird like that. Like I love going to a library. I love all that. Maybe not weird. There's probably a lot of people like me. So for me, I want to actually read it. But for you, that was a barrier.

So let's get rid of the barrier and then accomplish the thing that you wanted to do and you're doing that. I Okay. I'm to read you a quote. Okay. And give you a quick sort of modern interpretation of the quote and then ask you what you think it means. Okay. So the quote is from 1895 and I believe it's from a poem called If and it's from Rudyard, which I always have trouble saying his name. Rudyard. Kipling, which is a famous, you know, writer, poet. Okay. Yeah. I'm sure you knew that.

You come out with crazy words all the time, but yet you I don't know authors at all Just imagine once you've read for like a couple years and all the words you're gonna know it's gonna be insane. It's gonna be amazing It's gonna be like pedantic. All right, so the quote is a quote from Rudyard is If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same and Then a modern interpretation of that and I'm not sure who said this there was there is somebody who said it I didn't

Gary Donia (09:06.744)
take a note of it, but that winning and losing are imposters or winning and losing are liars. Okay. They are not reliable indicators of truth. Okay. So, so we haven't talked about this at all in the past. What is your interpretation of that quote? I actually like his a little bit better. If you can meet winning and the imposters of winning and losing the same, just the same. So if you can meet with triumph and disaster, which is winning and losing, if you can meet with winning and losing,

and treat those two imposters just the same.

Gary Donia (09:41.634)
I think, okay, so I think so often when we win, we get excited and there's a lot of euphoria around that and we can think maybe highly of what we have done. When we lose, it's the exact opposite. You're devastated, it can really affect your mood. And then therefore it can maybe affect your behavior. I guess the way that I would interpret that is winning and losing, in my opinion, is just learning and it's just a function of the process. And so don't take winning and losing personally. Look it as learning experience.

I care what people say about you. You're a pretty smart fella. Thanks buddy. Is that reasonable? that's the core idea. So winning and losing are outcomes, not truth tellers. They're just an outcome, So you can win with a bad process and you can lose with a great process. Yeah, totally. And outcomes are generally like noisy, whereas the process is honest. I believe that fully. Right? And so I know for the kids that I coach, they're young teenagers, high school age kids, this is very hard to...

you know, you don't understand actually had this conversation yesterday with a kid who, who he's a young kid, he's a freshman, and he fielded a ground ball at third, like the ground ball was hit to him at third base, he bobbled the ball, right, they hit his glove and it landed on the ground right in front of him. And he immediately sort of slapped his glove with his hand, right, like kind of angrily, like, I can't believe I just missed the ball. Yeah. And sort of threw his head back in the air, like, like, like, like,

discussed. Meanwhile, the ball was still sitting right by his feet. Oh, it was still in play. It was right there. Oh my god. And I and I was like, Hey, I was like one, like you still had an opportunity to make a play. Right? Like, you gave up on the play because you bobbled it. Yeah. Right. You already determined an outcome in your head, you still had a chance to actually we didn't even have base runners, they're simply just pick it up and throw it to first. We're just practicing, right? so he sort of gave up on it. He eventually picked it up like a few seconds later and kind of like,

he threw it made a bad throw because now the runner would have been a first already. Wait, very much a first. Now he would have been at second or third because he threw it way past first base, right? Because he allowed the thing that happened. So it bobbled. He got disgusted and upset, you know, hit his glove, threw his head back and then picked it up and just threw it without focus to first, which then it went over the first baseman's head and then was like way out of bounds. Right. So now this runner is just going to keep running. Right. So anyway, he the loss.

Gary Donia (12:05.304)
compound into the next thing. it worse. So I pulled them aside like right after and I just said to him, I said, Hey, like you're supposed to fuck up. that's why we're doing this. is part of the process. Like if you were like, like I would be super bored as your coach. If you just did everything right every single time, you wouldn't even need us to be here. Like all of these kids just wouldn't need anything. Like as a byproduct of being here, you should fail a lot. Yes. I was like, so

So this is what you should be doing. That is exactly what you were, the antics after were not. The bobbling of the ball is literally exactly what you were supposed to do. Thank you for doing that. Now let's see what we can learn from that and do it next time. go, what you need to not do is those other things because you allowed that one thing turn into something even worse, right? Plus you look like an idiot. And he was like laughing, but it's hard to get this message across to those kids because they grow up in a world.

perfect where everything is like graded. Isn't that school school helps to facilitate that so that mindset, right? So everything has to be perfect. And they're under this like a tremendous amount of pressure to not ever. This goes back to we talked on the last episode about the toxicity of you sports. So much pressure even from their parents to just be perfect all the time. You know, God forbid, like you walk somebody, whatever, right? So much pressure. I actually view my coach most of the time my job as coach. Most of the time is just to kind of make them laugh.

Don't you play worse? Like when you have all that pressure on you? my God. Like you play so bad. Like you're tight and then like in the professional sports world, always tight. The moment is too big. You're worried about screwing up as opposed to just being in the moment. Correct. And the compounds. Like once it gets in your head, you know, I've talked to my younger son about this. He struggled with this a little bit. One mistake compounds and next compounds and next. So you have to have strategies around like doing that. But you have to like release the mistake. Totally. And just live in the moment. Right. And so just kind of bringing it to what we do for

for work, especially I thought this would be a good topic. wanted to bring it up with you because I hear you doing something like this, this not saying this quote, you're not quoting Rudyard Killing. But you do talk to a lot of your clients about like this idea of, know, sometimes they'll come in, they're upset because the week didn't go great. They didn't have a perfect like weight loss week or they ate some things, maybe they, you know, we agreed that they shouldn't so on and so forth. And of course, they take it so personally, they think I'm going to be upset.

Gary Donia (14:30.156)
because like they failed and it's not it's literally learning like failure is learning great you should have had that experience so that you can then intentionally okay great what am I going to do the next time this comes up how am I going to strategize right or the opposite someone like me comes in and says hey like I went out and had pizza and beer with Gianna and we both lost two pounds and you're like

That's not how that works. Like, asshole. Like whatever, right? Like you get all like you're in the corner and you're like stewing like this, this asshole is like, you know, figuring out, but it's the same thing, right? It's this idea of resulting, right? So, so clearly the process of eating pizza and drinking beer is not a long-term solution for like maintaining a healthy weight. Did you lose weight that morning? I did. You did. It was great. But congratulations, you cheated the system. You lost some water. But over the course of time, that's probably not gonna Yeah, that's gonna make you gain weight. So I'm letting the result of the two pound weight loss in one evening. Yeah.

tell me that the process was okay. Correct. And that's a lie. When it's clearly a lie and vice versa. can do everything. So in my case, I did everything wrong and had a good result. You could do everything right and have a bad result. It happens all the time actually. Right. Which I think happens with your people all the time. Sometimes I have trouble understanding that. It happens in the first month. So this is the struggle with a lot of our health coaching clients is like, let's say you come in and you're like 50 pounds overweight and you haven't been exercising and you want to change your life around.

and you start exercising with resistance training and you start dieting, the scale doesn't move. And in fact, sometimes it goes up because you're now starting to like gain muscle mass. You're retaining water a little bit. Sometimes if you have enough body fat on you, dude, like you even kind of look fatter because you're building muscle and you're pushing everything out. Right. I think that's what I do.

That's not true. That explains everything. what my process is so dialed in that I've literally just made my fat look fatter by getting more muscle. No. Yeah. So success. So that's what's like this, right? So to them, the outward signs is that they're failing. Yeah, they don't. It's so tough for people in the beginning to look at the real long term process that like, I am aware because of all of my experience that this is the way it needs to be. But the only way you can get buy in is if you get by into the

Gary Donia (16:47.63)
really long term because like in a year from now, this is gonna be so insane what your transformation is. But if you only look at the scale day to day and even week to week, it can be a liar, right? And so in the, guess to your point in the end, it's not the mistakes that were made in the moment. In fact, like you should look forward to those mistakes because then you can say, okay, here's what I did wrong. Here's how I can correct it. And so now you're making these like micro improvements that compound to massive changes long term. So what are the strategies that you give people then?

you know, to, cause it's, it's one thing is it's like words coming out of your mouth, right? And like you have figured this out over 20 years and you're consistent and you do all the things, right? And when you're sitting across from somebody who's really struggling and in their mind failing, they hear you, right? But they're probably in their head thinking like, okay, Mr. Muscle Man, know, Mr. Perfect, eat chicken every day. He doesn't get it. He doesn't get it. So how, how do you, are there other things that you give them?

I don't know, are there other strategies? Do you use a frame of reference to something else? How do you get them to believe you, I guess, or to continue? How do you get them to not want to just quit because the process in their mind, even though you know because you can see it, you're watching them on the app and stuff, you can see they're doing everything, right? But maybe the thing that they care about the most, the outcome, the scale, the mirror, whatever, is not there yet. How do you get them to continue through that stage? And it depends upon the stage they're in. In the very beginning,

there's so much language about the super long term, like they have to buy into the super long term, because I promise you that they will not get the reinforcement short term. And in fact, like, what I often do is I'll use like previous clients, and I'll show their weight loss journey, and I'll show how the scale daily will go up or down like plus or minus two pounds even sometimes. And so you have these huge swings in weight loss, where like suddenly you're up two pounds, but I had an amazing day yesterday, I did everything right.

And I got on the scale this morning, I'm up two pounds, what the hell, right? That's that's defeating. And but that's a super, super short term focus. And so I try really hard to get buy in through showing other people's success and what success looks like, and how daily success doesn't, you know, it's not like you can't see it on the scale. But then I also show them the long term success of where that goes over time. So they have to buy into like, what is it? What does the next year look like?

Gary Donia (19:12.376)
They have to buy in, trust the process that I know what I'm doing and I promise you this is going to work. We're going to get it right. And then I also have them buy into the process of failure is good. I hold them accountable, meaning like, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? Okay, this is what we did like wrong. This is how I failed, but good. What can we learn from this and how can we improve? And so it's, and then, so I can't convince them by telling. I can only convince them by showing and showing requires a few months. And if I can get someone to that second month.

they're kind of in because they really start to feel it. They start to see it. They're like, okay, I have a routine. I know what this is, but you initially have to first get that by and have people trust the process by showing them success that other people have had and getting them to buy into the idea that the long term is where it's at is what I find is what helps with success with that. Right. Yeah, I would agree. I think I see the same thing in baseball, but one thing I see a lot in sports too, especially with young kids and maybe you and I'm curious to see if you, if you see.

The same thing is that they attach their identity to the outcome. So you hear a lot of like, suck or I'm a loser or I, a lot of like, just attaching it based off of whatever the outcome was versus attaching it to like, okay, well that was like, the outcome was bad, but I worked really hard, I did everything right. They don't really identify with that, they just identify with the outcome. Do you see that a lot? Yeah, of course. It's always about the wins and losses. so like, so for instance, I've been working with Kaiden for a long time.

My son. Yes, your son Kaden who plays hockey. For those who don't know, I have a worldwide audience. They don't all know my children, but yes, my son Kaden. Your son is involved in high level hockey. been working with him since he's 12. And what I've always tried to stress to him and all of the kids that I work with is the games and the outcomes and long-term success has everything to do with the process and that the outcome of the game is largely determined by all of the work done between now and the game. Right? the end and then between now and the whole season, between now and next year.

How much are you doing on your end to secure your physical improvements? How much muscle mass you have, how athletic you are, your sports skills, your conditioning, all of those things we have control over. We don't have as much control over the outcome of the game, but the outcome of the game or the performance is always improved by the process and the things that we've done along the way. And so I guess it's like, it's hard because yeah, like especially coming from a parent, like a parent telling their kid that.

Gary Donia (21:36.32)
is not going to come off as well as like a coach, right? Where their coach is more trusted, they have more authority in the kid's life. But if you can work with them and you can get them to feel it and understand, and then it translates into improved performance during the game, which happens over like weeks, months, and years, then you can get that kid dialed in. But I think as a concept for kids, I think it's unbelievably challenging to get them to understand by you just telling them. Right. I would agree. Yeah, they have to certainly see it.

I find that typically even here, when I have, maybe I have somebody come in for physical therapy and they've had like this back pain that seems like it's the worst thing and you know, they're never gonna get better. If I can point to another person that I've helped and said, this person did this process and look at them, like look at what happened. Social proofs big deal. Yeah, like social proof, right? And so I show them, this is what happened over like just over course of two weeks and they're right there, go talk to them, you know, whatever.

that I find that I can get buy in from that person more quickly to then commit to the process and not just be like, okay, well, I did that one thing that you did today and I still have pain right now. Either just attached to the outcome of one intervention or whatever. Coming in today doesn't necessarily mean that you might have pain tomorrow. Oftentimes it's not the case. It may be true that like because of today's treatment, you may have like less pain, you might have more. It's the same as the scale. You might have done everything right and it might hurt a little bit more.

I think it's the same exact process. It's like trust in the long term. I've been doing this a long time. Here's how it usually works. Let's get through the work, right? I agree. And I saw another quote type thing along as I was getting ready for the show and it said winning and losing our moments. Process is who you're becoming 100 % dude. And I think that that that really kind of hits home. I think that's like if we can get that message across to people and understand like it's like, okay, all along the way all along the process of who you want to become. you figure out like what

is right. Who is it that you want to become whatever it is you want to become a person who reads? Yeah. Right. Yeah. So so you the process is to start showing up and you know, started off by downloading an app and then getting a book and committing to that and now it's showing up each day to do the thing and over time you'll start to identify you probably don't yet you probably don't do not like if you met somebody on the road today and said you know, what are the things you like to do you probably would not say reading that never right. That's not even a thing. Just like me an exercise.

Gary Donia (23:54.018)
But along the way, if you're consistent with it, you show up, you do the thing, and you follow the process over time. I will become a reader. It is who you become, right? so I think if getting that message or understanding that message, and I would say for most people, I would say like, you if I was working with health coaching people like you do, or maybe when I work with my PT people, if you can point to something else in their life that they've done that for. Yeah. So you can say like, well.

you know, you're a runner, right? Like you ran a marathon like last month. Well, at one point you weren't, right? But you started, you committed to it, you showed up, you were consistent over time, you had a process to become a runner. Now you're a marathon runner. So if you want to get stronger, or you want to be a reader, or you want to do the same, it's the same process. You trusted it for that, you need to trust it for this. That's a great way to tie that in. And along the way, you're going to have like, you're going to have a, you know, good and bad outcomes along the way.

You know what mean? you're that's just I love that the nature of point to the thing that they're an expert in their life. Yeah, because everybody has a thing right there. They're really good at and they weren't always they weren't always and to learn it they had to fail and when they started they sucked when they started they had no information and this is everybody ever and this is just it's the exact same thing. It's just it's the idea of perpetual learning. One of the things that I take away that I think is one of my biggest strengths is I don't care what it is. If I feel like I want to get good at it, I know that I can.

because I've had the success many times before. I'm not having any idea what the hell I'm doing and just starting at whatever, knowing I'm going to suck for a long time. And then after the repetitive thousands and thousands of failures, I'm not so bad anymore. It's like when you started this business, like two years ago, you knew nothing. What was it like literally the first, like you told me this one time and I remember laughing. You're like, first thing you did when you were like, I'm going to start a business. What'd you do? When I just, when everybody gave me the okay and I said, okay, this is happening now. I sat down on my computer and I said,

to Google, how do I start a business? But that was the first step. Yeah, that was the first step. we're 12 employees later. Two years later. And many thousands of square feet and like whatever, but it was just started with that one. It was the everyday effort over the last two years that has created this. And it was the bazillions of failures and the continuous failures along the way and the iterations and learning to be better that has created this. If I allow those failures to affect my self-esteem,

Gary Donia (26:15.838)
or like, this is gonna suck and fail, then it probably would have. But I never look at a failure as a failure. I just look at it as a way to learn and improve. I mean, just this morning, you were like, I'm pretty sure we don't have any workman's comp anymore. I can't wait to get better. Because you had no idea whether or not you paid for it. I did it a year and a half ago. Yeah, it's just, it's so weird. So yeah, once again, but tomorrow we will. So what better every day? Yeah.

So anyway, so I thought that was a good conversation. Thank you for that. I I think I deal with that a ton in sports, but as I was thinking about it, I was like, well, this is clearly something that applies everywhere. Everywhere, all the time to anything. Right, and I think a lot of people struggle with this. Yes, this is one of the biggest things in life, man. If you can just find a way to take pleasure in failure, you will succeed at anything that you want. It's a mindset more than it is like,

a mechanical thing. You just have to believe that you'll do well. Just continue to problem solve. All of a sudden you'll be way better than you were and that process continues infinitum. Yep. And before we sign off another book, I'll add it. I think I added it to your list. You have your phone. It's on the floor. Pull out your phone. If it's not, we're going to add it right now. So it's called thinking in bets. So I'm going to go to my notes and then books for Peter. I don't share a of notes with people. No, this is one of

You said thinking in bets? Yeah, is that on there? No. Okay, so we're gonna add it to your list. It's for Annie Duke. She's a poker player. She wrote a book called thinking in bets and it's along the same lines and she loves to gamble. created like a well she coined a term called resulting inside of this book which is essentially what we just talked about. It's like attaching the process to the result and a lot of times like when I talk to the kids.

at sports and to get them to understand this, use like an extreme example, I always tell them like, hey, if I went to like a bar right now and I got really drunk and I drove home and I made it safely, is that good or bad? Like, know, like, well, clearly you shouldn't have done that. Like, right, but the outcome was great. I made it home. Nobody got hurt. Like, what's wrong with that? Well, it's clearly a horrible process. Right. And I happened to get lucky or whatever. But I would be in that case, I'm resulting. I'm attaching like this.

Gary Donia (28:37.174)
If I were to say that was a good process because the outcome was good, that's resulting. The whole book is about this. That's one portion of the book. It's a really, really good book about how to think about life in terms of bets. Because in poker, there's a lot of times you get lucky. You just get lucky. But your process, your decision making could be totally flawed and you still win, but you shouldn't repeat that decision on the next hand because chances are you're going to lose. You know who that affects tremendously and then we'll close is really, really, really freak out liar athletes?

Yes. Right. Those, those are often like they never have to do anything to actually be the best in the room. Or they do horrible things like Marshawn Lynch, I believe used to eat a bag, entire bag of giant Skittles before every like practicing game. Like literally everything you would tell a person not to do like, well, he loves Skittles and, he was one of the most amazing running backs to ever play the game. That's not something I would be like, Hey, like Kayden or Ashton like

But Marshall and Lynch does this, so we're gonna give you skittles before every And you just don't have to then train or you don't have to do the right things and you're still amazing. And then your process is horrible, but because you're so naturally gifted at a thing, you're in a sense getting lucky based upon your genetics, not because you're doing it right. And then people will then copy your fucking nonsense. And then they'll think that because you did it you're so amazing, well, this should work for me too. That's not how that works.

So I think we'll end, just repeat the quote, I love the quote, I think it's really nicely said, if Roger Kipling is a lot smarter than we are, and then that will be the end of show. If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same. I agree, I love it, that's great. Alright buddy. See ya.