How to Be the Best Version of Yourself Every Day

What's good? It's Rob Cressy and welcome to Built For The Game where we talk about the system for being your best, doing what you love, and showing up powerfully in all areas of your life. And I just got back from four days of the most transformative and immersive experience called Creating Love and Power out in Santa Monica, California. And there is so much goodness and love and power and wisdom that I'm going to share over the coming weeks, months, and years because there is so much in there. I can't do it all in one episode. But here's where I'm going to start with. The thing that I can talk about with my eyes closed that I believe can have the biggest impact in your life.

And while we're at Creating Love and Power, one of the topics early on was all around being the GOAT, the greatest of all time. And for many people, seeing yourself as the GOAT may be a challenge. For others, they're on the journey every single day to be the best. And what I want to do is formulaically break down how I think about creating myself as the GOAT and you can too.

So let's start with this. When I think about being the GOAT, for me, the number one thing is about it's a one of one journey. I'm not comparing myself with anybody else and neither should you that being the GOAT is about being the GOAT of you. So Rob is the GOAT of Rob. And when you understand this, this is where all the power comes from that you have the ability to completely step into this state of being where you're saying, you know what? I am the GOAT of me and boom, you start to be on this frequency from your mindset.

But then what we're going to do in a second is we're going to reverse engineer this so that you can create the evidence for this because where a lot of people run into a challenge is they don't believe that they are the GOAT of themselves because we all know the fears, the judgments, the self-limiting beliefs, the unrealized potentials that we all have inside of us over the course of our lives. And when you're not operating on that air quotes level, it can be hard to convince yourself that you are the GOAT of you. But what I'm about to share with you is the fact that there is no convincing yourself that you need to be the GOAT because this is a state of being that you can step into right this second.

In the simplest way that I can put this is something that I do every single day and it's a mindset. And this has been a game changer for me in my entrepreneurial journey because remember, I was not always this person 13 years ago. I was not self-aware. I did not have a growth mindset. I was a work hard play hard ad sales party, bro. I loved having a good time in life, but I did not fill up all the buckets of my life. No one had entered. No one had introduced me to the concept of self-awareness. I was reading zero books and learning was not part of my journey.

So when I quit my job to go all in it being a full time creator and entrepreneur, I went to zero. No clients, no revenue. No one knew what I was doing. Cool. I'm sitting there at zero and I audited the success habits of the most successful people in the world. The people that I aspire to be like and do things like, I'm like, what are the things that they are doing to contribute to their success? And this is where I learned how to create a growth mindset and how to become self-aware.

Because I quickly realized, oh, on the very first day when I woke up in the morning, there was no one to tell me what to do, what to wear, when to work out, what to eat. Do I call anyone anything? And I was like, wow, everything is on me. And for a lot of people, that's too heavy. For me, I was like, holy smokes, everything's on me. Let's go.

So I knew that this entrepreneurial journey was going to be a long term one. I'm in this for the rest of my life. So there's the term burn the ships, which essentially says there is no plan B. You do not look back ever. It's only forward. So with that in mind, this is where the channeling of me as the GOAT of me began.

And I sat there and I was like, all right, if I don't make or create revenue today or this week or this month or this year, how can I guarantee that I'm still getting better so that my revenue isn't the only thing that is telling me if I am getting better? And now I was like, oh, well, let's make this nice and simple on ourselves. That by design, if I learn something new every single day, then I'm better today than I was yesterday. Well, that's a very logical thing.

Therefore, one way that I can guarantee that that always takes place is by creating a reading routine where I read a book for 30 minutes every single morning, first thing in the morning, because I saw the creation of my dreams on the other side of learning how to read. Because in the auditing of the success habits, I kept hearing the average CEO reads 60 books a year, the average CEO reads 60 books a year and I'm sitting there and I'm like, crap, I'm reading zero. I got to do something about this.

So I saw that me reading not only gets me learning new things, but I've guaranteed that I'm better today than I was yesterday. And I've done that exact same concept every single day, weekends included for the last 13 years. So when I think about creating myself as the GOAT, it comes from earned confidence because I know the work that I've put in every single day.

And this is just one example of it because what you end up doing is once you start to become on this growth mindset frequency where you're almost like Neo in the matrix where you can learn anything. So the first thing that it is like, wow, I can read books so I can learn this way. Well, what's the next thing that I can add to my creator tool belt of being the GOAT of myself? Well, I'm hearing this thing about meditation and it seems kind of woo-woo and I don't really relate to it. But once again, a lot of people are talking about it. So let me just experiment with this a little bit. Let me be open to it.

And at that time in my life, I discovered Tim Ferriss. He's got the four hour work week, but it was really Tim Ferriss's podcast. And he was constantly experimenting on himself. And this is a skill that I learned as a creator that was a game changer for me because so often people think that if I'm going to try meditation, that means I have to be committed to it for the rest of my life. No, what if I just try it for a month and say, listen, I'm going to remove all judgment. I'm just going to see what this thing is about because most people don't actually give something enough time to see if it'll work for them. They might meditate once and be like, man, didn't work for me. My mind doesn't stop talking. I get it. But how about we deepen our commitment just a little bit more to say, let me see if there's something there.

So for me, it was I'm not really woo-woo, but I'm open to this mindfulness thing to try and create more space because it actually spoke to me as a creator. And I went ahead and I meditated and I started really small just five minutes at a time. And guess what? I eventually liked it and I bought into it and I added that to my practice.

So then once I did that, you're like, wow, these CEOs and these people I look up to, you keep hearing about them waking up early and working out in the morning. And I'm like, man, I don't do either of these two things. I'm waking up at, I don't know, 7 30 and fitness isn't really part of my life a ton. And once again, I start to reverse engineer these things. And it's actually all super simple because the same way if you read early in the morning, you guarantee that you're better today than you were yesterday.

Well, with the fitness side of things, if you take a long term nature and you're like, listen, if I guarantee that I keep my health good every single day, then I'm in for the long haul. And if I'm going to be doing all this good work, this stuff that I'm excited about living my dreams, then it would really help for me to not only be healthy, but when you look good, you feel good. When you feel good, you're more confident. And I'm like, well, that makes complete sense. And at the time I was single and I was like, who wouldn't want to get jacked and look good and be more confident in the process?

So once again, cool, I'll work out for either 30 minutes or 45 minutes every single day in the morning because I know the later that I work out, the more distractions or excuses or things that can stop me from doing it. So this is where I became so fanatical about my morning routine because my morning routine of two or three hours guaranteed all of the things of the biggest buckets in my life, learning, mindfulness, health all got done before typically 7 or 8 a.m. And once again, did this every single day for 13 years.

So let's call it 8 a.m. gets here and I've been up for now three hours and I've primed my mind and I've read something and learned something new and I've worked out. How do you think you will operate when that is the way that you start your day? And I'm not saying that this is what you need to do because it took me years to implement this thing. I'm just condensing this into a very powerful, simple process for you to show you what I've done over 13 years to turn myself into the GOAT of myself.

And once I understood this, this is very systematic and formulaic. And the reason I call my program Design Your Best Self because you say, what would I love more of in my life? If I am looking at the GOAT of me and I encourage you to do this, you are the GOAT of you. You say, all right, what's the best version of me look like? This isn't what does the world want from you? This is you. What would you love?

You may say, I love yoga or stretching or basketball or weightlifting or listening to audiobooks or being in nature, whatever it is. Let's just start designing it because once you start designing it intentionally, one thing at a time, then you can start living it. You create the habits and the routines that say, you know what? I'm going to go for a walk every single morning. Why? Because I can be in nature. I can wake up and drink my coffee and I can listen to a podcast at the same time. Now all of a sudden we're habit stacking and you do this over and over and over again.

And what does this do? This creates earned confidence, confidence because you know the work that you've put in. And of course anybody who's done 75 Hard or the Live Hard program knows all about this, but the same is true for anyone who is run a marathon or so many journeys of going to school, getting an MBA, just you name it. When you've put in the work, you gain the confidence.

So really the only thing that is stopping you from being the GOAT of you is not doing nothing and not showing up with no intention whatsoever. And even if you sit here and you say, Rob, you know what? I have not been about this life, but I want to be about this life. Congratulations because the GOAT of you knows that change happens in an instant.

And even if you are starting at zero or even negatives where you look at your life and you're like, man, I am not where I want to be. There's a lot of things that are a mess. Well, here's the good news. The GOAT isn't always born only when everything is puppy dogs and rainbows. The GOATs are the ones who say, you know what? I am going to take ownership of my life right this second and I'm going to make things better and I am in control of this because this is part of having self-awareness and a growth mindset.

And then once we've understood that we can all be the GOAT of ourselves, there's no comparison to anybody else. There is nothing stopping you. So now let's just start designing yourself every single day to do more of what you love. And this doesn't mean you're perfect at everything that you do. This is a mindset, a lifestyle in a way of being. And when you understand that this is completely in your control, now you can start to look at this as a game. And this is why I get so excited about this because really this is a game or a playground that you can create anything that you want.

So if you can create anything that you want, let's do more of what you love and serves you that is aligned to your vision. How would you love to start living your days every single day? So many of the people that I work with are successful entrepreneurs who have been very successful in business, but they say, Rob, I've never invested in my personal growth. They just wake up, they jump on their phone, they start doing email and they start working. It's cool. I've lived that life for a decade. I know what it's like.

I know there is more when you say, you know what? I would love just to create version 1.0 of a morning routine or an evening routine or a fitness routine that just allows me to do one or two things every single morning that I want to do for myself. Because here's what I know to be true. The second you turn on the TV, look at your phone or jump on the computer, the world is going to be shooting arrows at you. There's going to be fear, judgment, comparison, self-limiting belief. There are companies out there that are designed to take your attention on their agenda. What about this? What about this? What about this? What about this? To where all of a sudden there's just so much noise in your life and mind.

So why not say, listen, I know once nine o'clock gets here, I'm cool jumping into the world. But before 9 a.m., that's my time. And you can do the same at the end of your day. We say, you know what? Once seven o'clock gets here, it's my time. I'm not living on the world's time. And you just slowly start to create this structure for you. And here's the thing, structure creates freedom.

A lot of people who are creatives are challenged around the term structure. And when I'm helping people launch a podcast, one of the things I often hear is, you know what, Rob? I just want to do this off script. I don't want a script. I don't want to sound like a robot. I don't want to be formulaic. But what they fail to realize is when you set the end point of where you want to go, it becomes a lot easier for you to hit it. And it doesn't mean you need to go exactly one, two, three. You can take a circuitous route. But the good news is you always have a GPS that you can go back to that says, you know what? This is the truth of who I am or what I want to talk about. Let's get back to that so we can hit that mark.

And there is so much freedom because anybody who has ever eaten at Cheesecake Factory opens up the menu and there's literally a thousand options and there's advertisements for other companies inside of a menu of a restaurant. It's freaking mind blowing. You're like ribs, chicken, shrimp, Italian, Japanese. You're like, yo, dog, this is way too much. And that's what a lack of structure can create in your life. It just so much that you get overwhelmed and paralyzed that you don't take action.

But if instead you think about your favorite sushi place and I'm actually glad that I circuitously found my way this way because myself and three other guys at Creating Love and Power went to a sushi restaurant called Sugarfish in Santa Monica. And it ended up being the greatest sushi of my entire life. And I've lived in Chicago. I live in Florida. I've traveled. I've gone all over the place. I love sushi. This is without a doubt the best of my entire life.

And when we open up the menu, it was super simple. It really only gave us three options. And on there it said, listen, if you're here for the first time, our menu is called Trust Me. And there's three different options, which is essentially a small, medium and large. And then when the waitress comes over, she says, listen, here's how it works. We encourage you to order off the Trust Me menu. Everybody does it. So here we are, a restaurant that has completely branded themselves saying we are taking all of the choice off of you. Will you just trust us so much so that they named it Trust Me? So the four of us are like, I'm going to trust you. We'll take the large version of this. And holy smokes, Batman, it was the greatest sushi of my entire life.

And it is such a simple analogy that the world has unlimited choices and it's nice. But that oftentimes can slow you down, whereas less can be more. And when you're designing the best version of yourself, it starts with one. One is always greater than zero. What is one thing you can do every single day? Align to being the best version of yourself. Once you've got one, cool, let's do two. Once you've got two, let's do three. Once you've got three, let's create a menu where you say, you know what? I got 10 options. If I can do any of these in a given day, man, it's going to be a great day where every single day you're doing more of what you love, you're showing up powerfully with intention because you've designed your life this way.

And the reason why I come off so energetic and passionate and confident about this is because I know I'm the GOAT. I know I'm the best version of me because I've cultivated this and created this in myself the hard way for 13 years every single day. And I can tell you it's the most amazing thing in the world because who would not want to be the best version of themselves when you're the one who gets to create this entire thing?

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