START TYPING AND PRESS ENTER TO SEARCH
Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
Filter by Categories
Business
Entrepreneurship
Life
Manhood
Marriage
Money
Personal Growth
Personal Story
Success

Destruction

About five years ago, I read a book called, The 4th Turning. In the book, the authors discuss how the world operates in cycles. Similar to the yearly cycle of the seasons. Each cycle lasts 80-90 years in the book, and each season lasts 20 years approximately. You can either read the book or look up the 4th Turning on youtube. There are some great videos.

We are currently in the winter cycle, which started in 2008 and will last until around 2030, approx.

The winter cycle is all about the destruction of our current systems and beliefs. Our businesses, structures, ideas, politics, and pretty much everything we have known over the last 60 years is collapsing and will need to be rebuilt. And we will have the opportunity to rebuild it better than the previous cycle. The world is going through this together.

We are watching the destruction roll out from one industry to the next. If you think about what has happened since 2008, can you imagine what will happen in the next nine years? Eye-opening, disturbing, and exciting at the same time.

The collapse of many institutions and companies will happen unless we bail them out. But do bailouts fix the issue?

Bailouts add another band-aid to the broken leg.

Our society has a broken leg. We keep adding band-aids to it, thinking we are fixing it. Adding band-aids doesn’t allow the leg to heal and correct itself.

For example, in the United States, the narrative has been we are unable to provide health care for everyone. How are we going to pay for it?

We printed over $6,000,000,000,000 (trillion) in the past year and a half.

Look at that number. It is a giant band-aid, and we have a massive broken leg. With this figure, we could have easily provided healthcare.

Our society is at a turning point we have never seen before in my lifetime. Granted, I am only 38 years old.

It can be overwhelming for me when I look at the global scale, so what can I do?

That has been a question I have been asking myself over the past year, and there has been one consistent answer coming to me.

Get my house in order while I keep moving forward.

My house includes health, finances, family, relationships, mindset, community, emotions, and beliefs.

Before I can reach out and help other communities or support someone else, I have to get my shit in order. If my stuff isn’t in order and I try to help other people. I am the one with the broken leg. Make sense?

Daily, there is little I have control over. But I can control those things listed above.

As this destruction happens around the world, it is hard to watch and witness. It is excruciating to watch people be so cruel to each other.

Insecurity, unhealed trauma, inability to love my neighbors, and desire to be loved are what I am referring to about getting my house in order. These lead to the belief I am better than someone who doesn’t look or act like me.

As a cisgender man in this society, emotions and vulnerability are weaknesses. Remember, we are the ones that are fighting the lions for the food in the woods and bringing it back to the community.

As men, until we come to grips with the damage we have done, this destruction will continue and might even wipe out the planet.

I know that isn’t an uplifting perspective. It isn’t supposed to be.

Destruction is nasty, unkind, and cruel.

There is a different way, a different path, but it won’t begin until we can look ourselves in the mirror and honor where we are at this moment. Once we honor it, we have to start the healing.

Once we begin the healing, the world will start to heal.

Men without our healing, the world will not survive.

The destruction will win.

My desire is we make it through this wintertime and be able to see the spring.

Love ya.

Watts

How a Great Friend Taught a Lesson of Patience

I recently learned a very important lesson from a good friend of mine, Manny, who’s been going through some big transformations in his life. He just started a new job and came to some realizations about health, nutrition, money, and the importance of where we put our values. He was like, “Man, when it comes to food, nutrition, sugar, what they’re putting in the food, and GMOs—did you know they do this, this, and this?” And I said, “Manny, you know I’ve been talking to you about this stuff for like 8 years, right?” Because I started my business in 2009, so food and nutrition have been a focus for 8 years. And he said, “I know!” But it had just now hit him.

And I thought that was such a great life lesson—for me and for anyone else out there whose mission is to help people live a better life, whether that’s your business, career, job, or what you do on the side—you never know when it’s going to hit somebody, when information that you’ve been sharing and putting out into the world is actually going to resonate with another person. Because it might take 8 years.

It was such a great reminder to me to keep going, to keep doing what I’m doing, to keep building our business the way that we’re building it, to keep learning new skills because you never know when they might come into play. I listen to a podcast called Icon Athlete, a group of Crossfit Coaches in Park City, Utah, and they were talking about how long it takes to become an expert in that world, which was another great reminder that it really can take a while for people to change their perspective on the world. It was very informative to me and encouraged me to keep moving forward because people are listening, they will eventually be affected by your message, and we need more good being put out in the world because goodness does spread. My friend Manny was in a world that was very negative, and now he’s creating something more positive for himself in all areas of his life.

So keep consistent in your mission and promotion, keep on doing your thing – because you never know when your message might hit.

How To Start Making Quick Decisions

Today I’d like to share my thoughts on the value behind making decisions quickly.  

This past month, Kate and I had to move out of our current home much sooner than expected. We were put in a situation where we needed to find a new home in a short period of time and do a complete move.  Within a few days we went into action, made those important decisions and found a new place to live.  We made the decision quickly with confidence, signed the lease and moved onto the next big thing.

[Hear more about our move and decision making process! Check out Episode 040: Quick Decisions on Project Life with Mike Watts]

To some people, this situation sounds stressful and something that would take them tons of time.  We don’t exactly think that way. What would have happened if we stressed, went back and forth multiple times, mulled over the details that each home had to offer?  The result probably wouldn’t have been that much different.

Here’s my quick how to guide on making quick decisions:

  1. Recognize that decision fatigue is a real thing and it will stop everyone in their tracks. If you don’t commit to making the decision quickly from the start, it will slow you down. 
  2. Be okay with the possibility that you might make the wrong decision.  Even with a poor decision comes the silver lining of personal growth and development. You grow when you make a decision, especially if you have to go back and fix it.  Spending your time dwelling on a single decision for days, weeks or months on end will keep you stuck in one place with no room to grow. 
  3. Have perspective.  Whatever your decision is regarding, always keep the bigger picture in mind. Life is not meant to be spent in a perpetual state of limbo, there are more important things to focus your energy on. 
  4. Look forward. Focus on what is ahead and take action! Action is what keeps us moving forward and it’s the only way we can evolve.


What is your process for making decisions? Let me know in the comments below!

Average Actions Produces Average Results

Average is the sum of a list of numbers divided by the number of numbers in the list. 

– Average household income

– Average weight & height

– Average career results

– Average………. (Fill in the blank)

The most common trait in life, I hear, is the average.  I have never liked the word average, and when anyone tells me I am average, it drives me nuts.  

Right now, every person I talk to who has a baby says he/she is above/below the average for height and weight. I know it is only a guide, but who really wants to be average? (If you care, Penelope is under the average for both of these.) 

Taking average actions will deliver average or below-average results, yet people wonder why they are unable to get ahead in their business. 

For example, we have a network marketing business, which I started in 2009 (Kate in 2000), so let’s talk about average actions and average results in this business. 

When I started my business, I had no idea what I was doing. I previously ran a small business before but not a serious business. You know, it is like saying you want a kid as opposed to actually having one – two completely different experiences. 

When I started my network marketing business, I was working 70 hours per week at Philip Morris and attending classes all day on Saturdays for my MBA. I made over 50 calls per day for weeks. I traveled to every event for our company in the United States. I traveled to Florida multiple times to learn from my mentor about building a business. He was so gracious to open his house to me.

I was laid-off from Philip Morris one month after I started my business, so I went all in. I held meetings at my house, I met people at restaurants and coffee shops, and I put out hundreds of signs in North Carolina, Florida and Arizona with a number for people to call if they were interested. (Ask Kate about our first date.) I hung over 1000 door hangers on front doors in Florida. I stood outside of Target in North Carolina and asked people about which supplements they consumed. I tried anything and everything to create interest in my business.   

I was green, I was new, I didn’t know any better, but I had the hustle and desire to never work for anyone else again in my life. The fire was burning hot. 

I decided to take the biggest leap and move to Florida. I moved into a house with my mentor and my buddy. I sold my house in North Carolina and gave up everything, loaded up my truck with clothes and a ladder. I drove down I-95 to start this new adventure with new roommates. I lived in Florida for 8 months then decided to move to Arizona to learn from another one of my buddies about building a business. Then 8 months after that, Kate and I started to travel the United States for 10 months. We spent 6 months in the Hamptons (Eastern Long Island), then we moved to Maine, got married and had our first child. 

Oh yeah, and we built a multiple-6-figure business over the past 4 years, which is well above average.

When I was starting out, my income was far below average: right around $8,350. I had the fire, but I also had a rough couple of years when I was beginning to build my business.

I will never forget sitting at a table in San Diego at an internet marketing event. There were six of us including myself: three of them made over $1million per year, the other two made multiple 6-figures per year, and me – who cleared around $35,000 that year.  

I asked myself when I left, how the heck did I end up here? 

I have never believed in taking average actions in anything in my life because I never considered myself average. 

Those unusual actions I took along the way, many of them described above, allowed me to travel the world with my wife-to-be Kate for 1.5 years.  I paid off $132,000 of debt in 6 years, I haven’t been back to work for someone else in 4 years, and I am able to stay at home every day with my 7-month-old daughter. 

This happened for me and thousands of others, so please start to take those unusual actions.

When you think about your business, are you taking unusual actions? Or are you taking average actions? 

Are these actions producing the results you desire? If not, what can you do differently? 

Create your desired results with your desired actions.