Podcast Transcription: Ted Talk 167: The Biggest Lesson I learned In 2022

Ted Ryce: So, we’re a few weeks into 2023, and I want to ask you, how are your goals going? Are you pushing forward? Are you making things happen? Or are you already experiencing setbacks and obstacles and wondering how long you can keep up what you’re doing?  

Either way, let me tell you, I’ve worked with clients for years, and I see that even if there is a period of time during the year where it’s easy to get to the gym and eat the right things, there’s always a transition to a more challenging time. It always happens.  

So, if you’re a person who wants to learn how to be consistent, and if you want to learn how to build that rock solid commitment to making it happen no matter what, this episode is for you. Welcome to the Legendary Life podcast. I’m your host, Ted Ryce, coach to executives, founders, and other high-performing professionals.  

And what we do on this show is two things. Number one, I share my best strategies from over 23 years helping high-performers get into the best shape ever. And I share them in a simple and effective way. The information I share with you here comes from experience, comes from helping countless people break through and get to the next level of health. It’s not chat GPT AI.  

You know what I mean? We’re living in this world today where people, they come up with information and it sounds good and people like it and love it and reshared and comment on it and say, “Oh, this is so amazing.” But it’s just bullshit. I share from experience, and I want you to avoid a lot of the sexy-sounding stuff that is put out into the Internet and get real results.  

And two is if you’re an entrepreneur, a high-performing professional, an executive founder, I want you to think of me if you ever get to the point where you’re ready to take the plunge and hire a coach to get those next level results faster than you ever dreamed.  

So, let’s get into today. And I want to tell you this: I was struggling last year, struggling with my business, also struggling with staying in great shape. Now, I’m always in good shape. That’s the level of automaticity I’ve created for myself. It would take an accident or a sickness to knock me off my consistency with a certain level of exercise and adherence to eating the right amount of calories, protein, etc.  

But I wasn’t doing great. I’m not annoying you with stories of veins on my abs yet. I’m getting close, though, and I was really struggling with business. And when I say struggling with business, I want to be clear here. I love the coaching aspect of what I do. I go to my group and my one-on-one coaching calls. I feel uplifted afterward. It’s such a beautiful thing.  

But there are parts of my business I don’t love so much. And one of the things that I’m tackling right now is content creation. I want to make this podcast better. I mean, you keep coming back to the show because presumably, you feel like I’m helping you and doing a great job, but for me, I feel like I’m just doing okay.  

And I feel the best about my podcast, but with writing content and creating eating social media content, especially on Twitter, whoa, it’s a struggle. Your weight loss journey, your health journey. I guarantee you it’s very similar, emotionally speaking and consistency speaking, with my journey of content creation and growing the business in that way.  

And I want to give you an example. On January 2022, we had one of our best months ever, had the highest income, somewhere around $40,000 in one month, which for us, we’re a small business. That that’s a lot for us. And then the next month, zero sales.  

Now, of course, we still have money coming in. We have clients, but zero sales. And not only did it happen in January, February, but we didn’t have another zero month after that. That was a wake-up call. It’s like, how can we have a zero month? Not one person.  

We’re one of the best, if not the best, coaching business for entrepreneurs, executives who are in their 40s and 50s and 60s. How could we not have one client sign up with us? How could that happen? And as we began to look at the trends during the year, something became really apparent. And we noticed that there were some trends on Gisele’s side, my business partner, but on my side, I noticed something very specific.  

In fact, I had a conversation with my business coach, and I told him, hey, I’m going to be traveling to—I forget where I was traveling to. It’s probably either Brazil or to Lisbon, portugal. Those are the two places that I’ve spent the most time in 2022.  

And he said, “Ted, I hear you great that you’re traveling, but I’ve noticed a pattern. Every time that you travel emotionally, you’re a mess. Work wise, you’re a mess. You get off track, and it takes you a while to get back on track. So it costs you to travel. Not just financially. Pays money is one thing, but you’re paying a lot more because you’re losing momentum in your business.” 

I said, “Wow, Mike, thanks for telling me that, because we all have blind spots.” I’m a coach, and I’m a world class coach. Like, seriously, I am. So it’s one of the few points. I’m very hard on myself probably like you are. But when it comes to how good I am as a coach, I rarely have moments where like, “Man, I suck as a coach.” 

Of course, I have those moments where I’m like, “How can I not help this person? Or what do I need to do differently?” But most of the time, I feel like, whoa, I just knocked it out of the park for that person. Not because what I said, but because how I showed up and helped that person solve their problems and get in better shape.  

But when it comes to the business side and being consistent, it’s tough. And so… I kind of lost my train of thought there. Sorry, folks. But what I’m getting at is this. Mike told me there is a pattern that I have. Oh, yeah, I remember my point now.  

My point is, even though I’m a world class coach, I have blind spots, because every person has blind spots. There’s not one person that I know who can’t benefit from some type of coaching, mentorship, therapy, etc. because we have those blind spots.  

And when he told me that, I was like, “Man, you’re right. This emotional upheaval that I’m experiencing every time I travel, it’s actually a pattern. It doesn’t come out of thin air, even though that’s what it feels like. It’s a pattern I have.” 

And he’s like, “Yeah. And you know what? No matter what you’re going through, whether it’s a breakup or travel or sleeping poorly or insomnia or jet lag or whatever it is, your success in business comes down to the habits and routines that you have and that you follow no matter what.” 

And when he’s told me that, I was like, “You know what? I’ve been using excuses a lot. Oh, I’m jet lagged. Oh, I’m tired. I’m going through a break up,” which I’m not going to open up that can of worms and share that conversation, but I’ve been back and forth with a woman all 2022. It was crazy. And we’re still kind of back and forth. Story for another time, folks.  

And I realized that every time that I paid this price for traveling and arriving to a new place and figuring out, okay, where am I going to go food shopping? Where am I going to go to the gym? Where am I going to get a massage? How am I going to do something fun so that I can keep my energy levels up for my clients and also for content to creation?  

How am I going to drive my business forward no matter what? And there’s a price to pay there. But I also noticed that even though there’s always a price to pay, you lose productivity, or I lose productivity when I travel. I also learned that emotionally, I just wasn’t getting on the ball and getting back to it.  

And the big shift, the big lesson that happened for me last year was, I’m going to do this no matter what. Oh, I’m sad. I don’t care. I’m going to do it no matter what. I’m going to sit down and write the content. Oh, but the content isn’t good. I don’t care. I’m going to do it no matter what.  

In fact, you know what? This is the third time recording this episode because I feel like I’m not in the zone, and I hate putting up an episode where I feel like, you know what? I don’t want people to listen to that. I feel like you’re giving me your time. You’re giving me your attention. I need to deliver for you.  

So instead of saying, “Oh, my gosh, I did a terrible job, I got to record three times.” I don’t care. Just record it again. Just delete the other one. Record it again. Just stop caring so much and focus on that commitment. And it’s not easy to do. It’s not easy to have that type of commitment.  

So where do you get that from? Where did I get it from? And I’ll tell you, it came down to this. My dad died, as I mentioned a hundred times, in 2020, October 3, 2020. And it got me thinking. It’s like, you know what? At the end of my life, I want to make big things happen.  

Not just for my ego, although certainly part of it, so I can be proud of myself. But also, I want to try to help people. I want to make a difference. Okay, maybe it’s a small difference. Nobody’s going to remember my name in a hundred years, but who cares?  

I made a difference now for some people, and if I can help a thousand people or, you know, there’s a lot more people that listen to this podcast, but let’s say 20,000 people, 50,000 people, 100,000 people, and then those people, it starts rippling out. That makes me feel like, you know what? I did a good job in life.  

And so at the end of my life, looking back, am I going to be happy about the times I whined, about the times I complained, about, the times that I suffered jet lag because of my choice to travel, my choice to go somewhere new, my choice to start over?  

I could find a place in the United States, hunker down and just get to it. But I choose to do this life. It’s my choice. Just like it’s your choice to live whatever life you want. “No, it’s not my choice. I got to go to work.” No, it is your choice. It’s our choice. We’ve chosen to do this life that we live.  

We’ve chosen to have kids or not have kids. We could leave our job. Of course, that has consequences, and you may not feel like you can or start a business over, but it is a choice to stay. So, for me, it’s like I’m choosing to do these things. I need to own it. And I am not going to look back at those moments when I’m on my deathbed and say, wow, I’m really glad I gave in to the whininess. I’m really glad I gave in to the negative emotions. I’m really happy about that.  

And I want to say something else because I want to get clear about the message that I’m saying, because I’m not saying that you shouldn’t grieve or shouldn’t take time off. We’ll get to that in a second. I’m talking about the negative emotional state that we can slip into when life gets too hectic or when we have a setback or when there’s an obstacle that we weren’t expecting.  

And what I’ll tell you is this: for you to do big things and accomplish what you want. And more importantly, I think, have a peace of mind, have a sense of fulfillment about your life. Here’s a secret. If you’re not happy now with the obstacles, the setbacks, even though, you know, of course, your car is going to need to be taken in.  

Of course, someone’s going to have a problem that you’re going to have to help them with. There’s going to be things that come up. And it’s not that you look at those things and go, yes, my car has a flat tire. But it’s how do you roll with the challenges, obstacles, setbacks, negative emotions and just push right through and get back on track quickly?  

Again, we’ll talk about grieving and having fun and those things in a second. But for me, I learned, you know what? For the minor things, I need to railroad through them and put myself back in a good emotional state. And I want to share with you what that looks like now.  

But before I do that, I do want to say this: I’m not talking about grieving. If someone died in your family or if you lost a pet…I had a client, her pet died, and she said, “No, I feel like I’m coming up with excuses, but I was feeling really bad after my pet died.” I’m like, “That’s not an excuse. You have an emotional connection with your pet.” 

Or if it’s a person in your life and they died, it’s a huge deal. You need to grief. It’s just you can’t let yourself get stuck, and that’s not an excuse. And I feel like a lot of high-performers, they don’t do a good job of distinguishing between reasons and an excuse. An excuse is usually when you’re in a situation where “I’m too busy. I’m too busy to eat the right things. I’m too busy to focus on my health.”  

It’s like, okay, but if you had a heart attack, would you focus on your health? Or would you just keep going? What would you do there? And everybody would focus on their health. “Oh, my gosh. I didn’t see that coming. I’ve got t...” Exactly. That’s what happens.  

So, what I want to tell you is this. What I learned was the travel experiences that I have, going to a new place, feeling the loneliness, having the challenges there, making friends, then leaving friends and making friends, then leaving friends. I realize it comes with some negative emotions.  

And what I learned is also this: negative emotions... And again, we’re not talking about grieving big things here. We’re talking about the negative emotions, the whininess that comes up. At least that’s how I look at it.  

For me, when life doesn’t go perfect or when, for example, I was in a good zone in Mexico creating content. And then I went to see my family in Texas for Christmas and then I flew to Brazil. It really took me off the game of creating content.  

And so what do I do now is this. I realize every time I travel, I’m going to have these negative emotions come up for me. I’m going to go through a bit of a thing, a negative emotional thing. And so what I need to do is—it goes back to what my Coach Mike said, what are the habits and routines I need to establish right away to get into, one, a good emotional place and two, get into a good place with productivity?  

And the answer is very simple. As soon as I get to a place now…Before I get to a place, I make sure I’m renting a place that has a gym in it. I’m renting a place that is walkable so I can walk to get a haircut, walk to get my food, walk to go get a coffee.  

The next thing is, as soon as I get to a place, I’m figuring out what am I going to do? Am I going to do a float tank? Am I going to do a massage?  

Because those are the things that I figured out that help bring my negative emotional state back to a place of balance, so I can show up for myself. Because, folks, this is all an emotional life, it’s just managing the emotions. Another way of saying that is managing stress.  

Too much stress crushes your feelgood emotions. Not enough stress just never gets you happy because you don’t have enough stress, right? Too little stress actually leads to too much stress. Kind of ironically. I don’t want to break take that down because I’ve talked about stress a lot.  

But learning a new language is stressful. Lifting weights is stressful. So you need some stress to feel and perform your best. Too much, though, crushes how you feel, and other types of stress, what I learned was, the jet lag, that’s a stress to your body. Long days of travel. God, I had a 24-hour travel day. It was stressful to my body. I showed up. I didn’t feel great.  

Poor sleep stressful to your body in a way that’s not productive. So, you have to manage those things fast. And so one of the first things I do when I get to a new place is I go get a massage, especially if there was long travel or a time zone change. I get a massage, and I’ll get one, two… I don’t care how many. I will get as many massages as it takes to bring me back into a good emotional place.  

And the other thing, I will sit down and I will crank out content. I think I shared a bit earlier. This is the third time I’ve recorded this episode, because the other two times—and when I recorded the first time, it was long. It was longer than this. It was 40 minutes.  

And I was like, you know what? That kind of sucked. I mean, it wasn’t terrible because I don’t feel like I put out terrible content these days, but it wasn’t the type of content that I want to put out and be proud of, or I wouldn’t be proud of if I put that out. It was too long. It was too rambly.  

So, what I hope you’re taking away from this episode is that... Let me summarize it for you, because I do feel I’m still a bit rambly. But again, I’m doing my best. This is as good as I can do. And this is my third take. I could wait ten takes, but then the podcast would go up late. And that is it, my friends. We can be perfect, but it takes too long to be perfect. And we can’t be perfect, right?  

We’ve got to get into action and make things happen. And sitting down and doing the work and the commitment to the habits and routines and establishing them and saying, you know what? It doesn’t matter if I feel like shit. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t sleep well.  

It doesn’t matter that I’m jet lagged. I’ve got to sit down. I’ve got to do the things that put my body first into a good place, because it’s so much easier to feel good psychologically when your body is in a good place.  

So what do I need to do for my body to put it in a good place? The right food, exercise, sleep, and some type of stress management. And then the next thing for me it’s sit down and do the work.  

Because if I was cranking out great content in Mexico and now my content, it’s not that it’s terrible again, but these days, it’s more competitive than ever for attention. I need to sit down. I need to start putting in the reps, and I can’t complain about the setbacks I’ve had because I chose to do this.  

And so my point to you comes from… I have a friend of mine, Sterling Hawkins. He’s been on the show a few times, and he’s got a saying, he’s, like, “Accomplish it no matter what. Get back on track no matter what. Feeling down, go to the gym. Feeling down, eat the right amount of calories. Doesn’t matter. Feeling down, sit down and do your work anyway.”  

And once you get to that point where you just don’t care about how you feel. It’s not about not honoring if you need rest. I want to be clear about this. It’s not about not honoring if you need rest because I said, go get a massage. Go do something fun. Go scuba diving. That’s what I do at least. I went on a tour the other day. Honor those things.  

But when you’re sitting around sulking and not doing anything and just binge watching a series that you can’t even focus on or doom scrolling on your phone, that ain’t the life that you want to live. Push through that. Get back on track. Do the things anyway.  

And what’s interesting about this that I’ve noticed as I’ve started to apply this to my life, I feel better. I feel better faster. It takes less time to recover from the travel. It still costs me. And maybe you’re not traveling as much as I am. Maybe you have other issues. Maybe you have kids and they’re in school and out of school, or maybe they come back from school because they’re in college.  

Maybe there’s periods at work that are busier than others. You’ve got to find a way to commit to doing the things that are really important to you, no matter what, and not letting your emotional state dictate it. And it’s a tough thing to do. It’s not easy. For me, it took a coach to tell me. And not only just a coach, Mike’s an excellent coach. He’s a world class coach. 

In fact, I signed up for another year with him because he’s so damn good. And so it took many, many, many conversations to figure out what was going on and what I needed to do about it. And as a result, we’re more consistent with our income.  

I’m sitting down, and I’m doing the things, even though I get scatterbrained and I lack clarity. I wake up and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, what am I supposed to do again today?” I push through that until I get clear again. And I also realize my choices and how they’re playing into what I’m doing.  

Like I said, it’s my choice to travel. I could stay in the United States or try to immigrate somewhere else. It’s my choice to do this. And I get kicked out of countries every three months. I mean, you know, kicked out. It’s when the visa ends, so I’ve got to leave every three months.  

And so that commitment to getting back on track is what helped me, and I know it will help you, too. And I want to suggest something to you, next time you’re feeling like, you know what? I don’t really want to go to the gym, say, you know what? Go and do it anyway.  

I don’t really want to. I just want to just eat what I want to eat. Okay, well, that’s okay sometimes, but if you’re trying to lose fat, you need to, most of the time, eat the things that you need to eat to lose the fat or track the calories. That’s what we do in my coaching program, so we can squeeze in those deliciousness, those delicious meals and desserts.  

But making that commitment to do it no matter what. That shift will change your life. It will change your health. And if you are struggling with it in business, it’ll change your business as well.  

So that’s what I want to leave you with. I hope this helped you. Not just to show you that I’m a person who’s still struggling. Even though I give the appearance sometimes—at least I think that I have it all together, but I don’t. Nobody does.  

I’ve worked with Richard Branson. I know his family. He doesn’t have his shit together. I mean, he does, but there’s parts of his life where he doesn’t, right? I’ve worked with Robert Downey Jr. I’ve worked with a lot of high net worth individuals. Not one person I’ve ever met. It’s like, whoa, they’ve got it all together.  

In fact, if there is a person, they’re probably not trying to make big changes in the world. They probably live a much more simple life, and even then, they’re probably struggling. So, there is no getting around this struggle. There is no there is no getting rid of this struggle. It’s, we get better.  

So, I hope that is the takeaway from listening today. And I would ask you, what is the thing that you can take from listening to today’s episode and apply in your life? What can you do differently? That’s the thought I want to leave you with. The question I want to leave you with. Hope you have an amazing weekend, and I’ll speak to you next time.