How to Find Excitement in Life
Welcome to Day 10 of the Titanium 16-Day Challenge, and let me tell you my friends, today we are talking about my favorite part of the wheel! There are 10 areas – this is my favorite part. Sorry honey, I am not talking about you and relationships. Sorry kids, I am not talking about your friends and family.
Sorry my gym buddies, I am not talking about health and fitness. My friends, today I am talking about the only part of life that really matter in the end, and that is fun and excitement. (I think my sound engineer is going to make adjustments because I’m yelling and screaming because I’m so excited.) I mean, we’re talking about fun, people. Right?
This is the part that we really want! This is the end-all, be-all. This is at the end of the day. This is the only thing that matters, is how much joy are you getting out of life? This is the part of the wheel that I love, and I saved it for you for a Friday, because I wanted you to get excited today and that I want you to have a great time today and this weekend.
Now, having fun doesn’t mean doing unhealthy things. Having fun doesn’t mean ruining your relationship. Having fun doesn’t mean leaving out the people you love the most. What it does mean is that you’re constantly focused on how can I push myself ahead in life by always dangling a carrot in front of myself?
The Carrot-and-Stick Motivational Technique
Listen very carefully: that’s what fun and excitement is in your life. It is the carrot that you dangle in front of yourself. You’ve all heard about the carrot and the stick, right? You realize where that comes from, right? The carrot and the stick – you put a carrot in front of a horse, and he’ll walk forward to go get the carrot, right? Or, you can hit the horse with a stick from behind and that will get him to move forward.
The bottom line is that carrot dangling in front of you is what should be pushing you forward, because let me tell you, trying to chase after a carrot hurts a lot less than getting hit in the ass by a stick, okay?
So whether it’s human beings or horses or rabbits or whatever thing you want to talk about, it’s a lot better to go towards the carrot, in my opinion, when I’m dealing with myself.
So here’s what I want you to understand: that’s what fun and excitement is all about. It pushes you forward. You use fun and excitement as the reward you get for doing the things you need to do in life to push ahead. See, you want to work out? Do you want to get to the gym every day?
Here’s the way I do it. I make deals with myself, where I’ll say, “If I go to the gym for 30 straight days, then on the 31st day, here’s the reward I get.” But what I do is I put these things together, and that’s what these challenges are about. I give myself multiple goals and if I achieve these multiple goals (and some of them are very difficult), then I get a big reward at the end.
And by the way, here’s the beautiful thing, and this is the key. You have to be disciplined because if you don’t take the steps, you don’t get the reward – and I have denied myself the reward multiple times and that’s what makes it work. Some people will dangle the carrot in front of themselves and say, “If I do X, Y, and Z, then I’m going to get the carrot.
Well, they don’t do X, they don’t do Y, they do a little bit of Z, and then they eat the carrot anyways. Uh-uh, not in Arman Sadeghi’s world. I have fun as a reward for doing the things I need to do.
So for example right now, every day you guys are being challenged to do a bunch of things, right? So we’re asking you to wake up at a specific time. Some of you are waking up earlier than you ever wanted to wake up before, right? I’m asking you to work out for 25 minutes each day. I’m telling you to enter your career zone at a specific time.
Don’t take personal phone calls, don’t do social media. I’m asking you to focus 30 minutes a day on your relationship. I’m asking you to make your car a mobile university. You’ve gotten rid of one thing in life that you really used to like, but it used to cost you money and you’ve cut that out. You’re doing your morning smile, you’re doing your gratitude or prayer or meditation or something at night, and you’re weighing yourself every day.
Positive Reinforcement Vs. Negative Reinforcement
So what’s the reward for doing these things? Well, we could do this two ways. One way, you could punish yourself for not doing it, and I could tell you that doesn’t really work as well. And even if it did work as well, it’s just not that much fun. I don’t like doing that to myself.
So what we did is we came up with a reward that you get at the end of this thing if you follow through with all of these things. That’s the beauty of it, and that’s what I’ve done in life to get myself to push ahead in so many ways.
I mean, there have been times where in a seven-day period where there was some deadline I needed to meet for my business or there was something massive I needed to do.
In a seven-day period there are times where I’ve literally worked 15-hour days for seven days in a row, or times where for 21 days in a row, I’ve worked an average of 14 hours a day. That is not an easy thing to do and I’ve given up a lot during those times. And sometimes at the same time, I’ve also given up all my Category One and Two foods, and I’ve worked out the entire time, and I’ve spent a little bit of extra time with my wife.
When you start doing that stuff, it’s like your day is just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, go, go, go! But the entire time I see this amazing thing in front of me, and it’s that fun and excitement. It’s why behind your doing things. You create why.
Why do you want to do the things you want to do? And sometimes why for say your business might be many years away. So what you do is you create this little fake why in front of you. If you’ve heard my time management concepts, it’s sort of like that fake urgency. See, in your mind you go, “Hey, if I can get up at 4:00 in the morning every day for the next 15 days, then I’ll take a trip to New York City and I’ll go spend a weekend in New York City.” Or, “I’m going to take some time and I’m going to go on a cruise.” Or, “I’m going to take three days where I’m going to do nothing but eat, sleep, and relax.”
Whatever it is that gets you excited, that’s what you do.
Or for finances, what if you made a deal with yourself? I remember when my wife and I wanted to buy our first house and we were trying to save money and be smart. It was hard to do and so we came up with this thing where we said, “You know, we’re wasting a lot of our money on stupid things that we don’t really value, but we value travel.” So what we decided to do was to cut those things out but then we were taking a trip every quarter, so four trips a year – four vacations a year, and one big vacation – and it was incredible.
We were taking all these trips. We went to Hawaii, we went to Alaska, we went all over the world literally. We went to Jamaica. We did all these things during that time, still saving enough money to buy the house and our expenses went down, because now instead of spending $20, $30, $40 a day on stupid things we didn’t need, we got rid of that stuff because we were looking for that exciting trip at the end, and that’s what this challenge is all about.
How to Add Excitement to Your Life
But you have to be willing to accept fun and excitement into your life. It is one of the most important parts of the wheel, so review your wheel right now. See what number you gave yourself under fun and excitement. And if you didn’t at least give yourself a 7, this is one that is your fault.
Fun and excitement is something that you get to give to yourself. It’s a gift you give to yourself, right? It’s not something that the outside world has to give you; this is purely a choice. Do you want to have fun, or do you want to be a frickin’ bore for the rest of your life?
Let me tell you, if you are in a relationship, what makes relationships work is fun, excitement, adventure, surprise – that’s how you make your relationship thrive.
Remember, human beings cannot sense velocity; they can only sense acceleration. Meaning, if you are in a relationship and you’re doing the same things you’ve always done, it starts to get boring and the love starts to fade, and the intimacy starts to fade. But create some excitement in your relationship.
You know, have a sense of adventure and surprise, especially for the guys out there. Surprise your girl, man! Do cool things for her. Do fun things for her. Plan things for her. You know, take charge.
And when I say, “Take charge,” I don’t mean take charge by being mean. I mean take charge by planning something super cool that you know she would love, even if it’s not something you would totally love. Plan that surprise for her. Plan the day at the spa if that’s what she wants.
You know, plan a trip somewhere. Plan a dinner somewhere. Plan a movie, plan something – anything. Surprise her with flowers, even if they’re flowers you pick for free or that you buy at the grocery store for $8.
You don’t have to go spend a ton of money; it’s not about that, but it’s about creating that adventure, that surprise, that fun. If you’ve always wanted to go skydiving, go skydiving!
If you wanted to go bungee jumping, go bungee jumping! I’ve been bungee jumping, I’ve done skydiving, and I love doing this stuff, and it’s because it gets me excited. It’s something that just keeps your relationship fun, it keeps your life fun.
The other thing is with family, right? If you have kids like me, what I’ve noticed is the easiest way for me to take care of my kids, it used to be – and my daughters are four and a half and five and a half years old now. It used to be that I thought being a dad and taking care of my kids meant acting the way that a dad is supposed to act.
I would sit there with them and say, “Okay, kids. I’m taking care of you today,” and it was useless. But then I was like, “Why don’t I just do what I want to do and see how it goes?” Now I have fun with my kids. This was a couple of months ago and I just decided we were going to have a movie night.
We came home and it was time to go to bed, and I have to go through the boring routine that I hate of putting them in bed. I was like, “I don’t want to do that, and they didn’t want to do that.” They’re crying and screaming, “I don’t want to go to bed!”
Finally, I was like, “Okay guys, fine! Let’s do a movie night!” And they were like, “Daddy, what’s movie night?” and I’m sitting there thinking, “Oh damn, what’s movie night?”
And so I decided movie night was we’d put a movie on TV, we’d get all the pillows and the blankets from all over the house – literally – throw them in the living room, jump on top of them, and cuddle up together and watch a movie. Now movie night has become a staple of my nights with my daughters a lot of times and I do this a lot with them and it’s amazing doing these movie nights!
Because I love watching movies and apparently, they love watching movies. Not that they don’t still fight and argue. Now they argue about what movie we’re going to watch and stuff like that, but it doesn’t matter. We have fun together, right? So it’s all about fun and family.
With your parents it’s the same thing. What if you could have fun with your parents? What if you could have fun with your siblings or whoever you love? Have fun with them and especially in your relationship. But most importantly for yourself, it’s all about fun and excitement. It’s that adventure.
Today’s Daily Challenge to Add More Fun and Excitement to Your Life
So today my challenge to you is this. I want you to do something – this is a Friday. We specifically decided to do this episode on a Friday because you’ve got Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This weekend I want you to do something fun that you have been wanting to do for a long time and you haven’t done it, something that you can make happen over a weekend, all right? So maybe you’ve always wanted to bungee jump.
Maybe it’s skydiving. Maybe it’s going to a movie you’ve wanted to go to. Maybe it’s ice skating. Maybe you’ve been wanting to go to a spa.
I don’t know – something that you would define as fun and exciting, something that for you and your values, that’s what you love to do. Maybe you’ve always wanted to be in a small airplane.
Well, I’m a student pilot and I can tell you, you can go and for a couple hundred dollars, you can get up in an airplane your first day and they’ll let you actually fly the airplane at one point in the flight.
So go do something like that. I don’t know what it is – something you’ve always loved to do. Maybe there’s a night club you’ve always wanted to go to. Go! Maybe you want to go to Vegas right now, and after this podcast ends, get off of this thing, catch a flight to Vegas. Go have some fun if that’s what you want to do.
Maybe for you a sense of fun, what you need is you want to do movie night with your kids.
Do movie night with your kids! Maybe it’s something with your wife or your husband or boyfriend or girlfriend or something by yourself. I don’t care what it is. This is your weekend to have fun, my friends.
And as you can tell from my energy level in this episode, this is the part of the wheel that I value the most, and it’s true.
The reason my body is in such good shape is because of fun and excitement, because I force myself to eat healthy and I force myself to work out, and my reward is the fun and excitement at the end of it. I take care of my wife because the reward is we get to have fun together.
All these things are all about this fun. This is the big carrot.
So today is really the carrot day, and I’m going to keep this episode short because there’s not much to say. I don’t know how you love to have fun, but I know you know how you love to have fun. So here’s what I want you to do.
Your Fun and Excitement Challenge
As soon as you end this episode, I want you to grab a piece of paper and a pen and write down (or your phone or wherever you like to take notes.) Write down some of the things that you’ve been wanting to do for a long time that you have not done. Make a list of them. Maybe it’s a list of five, maybe 10, maybe 15 things.
Then what I want you to do is I want you to write down when you can realistically make these things happen, because maybe one of the things you’ve always wanted to do is go to – I don’t know – you’ve always wanted to go to Brazil. Well, Brazil may not be a place you can get yourself to today, but then again maybe you can!
Hey, if you can, go today. Don’t wait. You know, flights to Brazil are available from all over the world – all days, all months, all times of the year – so who knows? Maybe that’s what you want to do. But some of your stuff is going to be stuff that’s a little more long-term.
Then you have the medium-term stuff and then you’ll have the stuff that you can literally do this weekend. I want you to pick one of those that you could do this weekend and I want you to focus on making that thing happen.
And then, don’t forget the end of this 16-Day Challenge, the point is that you get to give yourself a reward at the end, and I want to make sure that if you pick the reward at the beginning that wasn’t so exciting, now that you’re all excited about fun and fun and excitement and having fun in life and kicking butt and doing all that stuff, maybe you need to revise that, especially for those of you who have not been following through daily.
If you have not been following through with the challenge daily, maybe it’s because your end result is not something that fun and exciting, so give yourself something super fun and exciting to do after this thing.
So again, one of the most important parts to the wheel – and my life has always been this – and I want to tell you now. Guys, we have come on such an incredible 10-day journey together. We’ve covered consistent growth, we’ve covered intimate relationships, we talked about finances, we talked about your spiritual health, your career – whether you’re an entrepreneur or you have a job, we talked about physical health, fitness, nutrition, and now we have talked about fun. It’s sad that we only have three more of these areas of the wheel to go now.
Of course we have the weekend, so don’t forget to join me for those two quick, short episodes on Saturday and Sunday, so that gives us six days left to this challenge, and in those six days, there are only three areas of the wheel we’re going to cover. We’re going to talk about emotional health, we’re going to talk about contribution, and finally, family and friends. And my friends, this is going to be an incredible next six days if you allow it to be, if you allow yourself to grow.
If you’ve been kicking butt during this challenge, awesome. Keep kicking butt. If you’ve been a little slow, maybe you haven’t been following through with everything, today is the day to turn it all around, because it’s the day for fun! So go out there this weekend – today, tonight – this is your time to have fun, my friends. Get out there, have fun, and always while you’re having your fun, remember to lead with your heart.
