#8: Making Success Predictable

Today we are at episode eight and I'm joined by a good friend of mine. If I had to sum him up in one word, it would be ‘inventive’. He’s done a whole bunch of interesting, I think, crazy things over the years. For example, he’s sailed the Atlantic twice on his own boat, which I think is absolutely insane. He’s sold a couple of businesses for multi million dollars, which I think is fantastic. He's managed to rescue someone out of Bangkok prison, which I think is just mental and I still don't quite understand how he managed to pull that off. He’s done some other - just things that people wouldn't be able to do. For example, somehow, he worked his way into attending the Grammys. He's escaped from pirates off the coast of Africa, which is just terrifying. And many other amazing things as well. 

AIDAN

So Rory Prendergast -  welcome to the call, it’s great to have you here! 

RORY

Thanks, Aidan - I sound really great when you say all that stuff, right.

AIDAN

You sound great and you’ve done some really amazing things, so just to paint a picture here and give people some background. I met Rory in Las Vegas which is not all that unusual because he is Irish, so it’s kind of his natural habitat to some degree. We were attending an ecommerce conference at the time which was hosted by my business partner, Steve Clayton. As soon as Rory I thought to myself he was kind of a little bit different. I don't know if it was just because you were unshaven from weeks at sea or what it was but I realized that Rory was someone who really grabbed life by the horns and made things happen. 

Fast forward 12/13 years ago and Rory and I have done quite a bit of business together. We've become really good friends, we’ve holidayed together with our families and we've built a franchise business, Pinpoint Local, with partners in the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and Rory was the CEO of that company and really the mastermind at being able to do all of that in an incredibly short space of time. 

I think most importantly Rory is someone who have grown to be able to rely upon to give me some real good words of wisdom when I most need it. So Rory is very much a friend in that regard. I've been very excited to have him here on the show today. 

Now, we’re going to dive right in. We’re going to talk about a book that Rory published and some of the concepts from it. The book is called The Game Changer Formula. You can pick it up on Amazon for like ten bucks or something - you can get it in print format, in audio format and I, by the way, have been through the book three or four times in both formats. Is there another format too, Rory?

RORY

Yes, there’s Kindle as well - so print, Kindle, and audio. 

AIDAN

The Game Changer Formula is about a way that you can bring predictable success into your life. You may have heard the expression ‘success leaves clues’, and I think it's really what the The Game Changer Formula captures. This is something that we could talk about for days - it’s a really deep topic. I think we can also talk about it for about 20 or 30 minutes and share some really really good information with people.

So Rory, maybe we can talk a little bit about different ingredients of the formula, and then dive a bit deeper into what each of the ingredients are. 

RORY

Yes, absolutely Aidan. So, thanks for that introduction. I just I never think of all those things you know, so when you say that like makes me feel great. The Game Changer Formula is something that kind of came together for me over a period of time because I felt that I was able to kind of build predictable success into my life in lots of different areas. 

I just went to work and asked myself: how do I break that down? Like what are the elements that create predictable success, because I wanted to try it out with a small group of people, which I did, and when I saw that that developed predictable success for them, I went “Aha, there's something in this.” And so that formula that I created is mindset + energy + accountability to the power of vision equals predictable success. So they're the main elements. As you say, we can kind of dive into any of those as one because I know they can mean anything to anybody. 

AIDAN

Let’s talk about mindset first: When you say mindset, what specifically are you referring to there? 

RORY

It's a good question because you know, everybody sees this differently but for me, mindset is a kind of set of automatic thought processes that I go through in my head that actually ends up making me do something or not do something. The way I look at this is like we all have a mindset, right? Some of us are working really well for us. And for others of us like some of its working with what's actually pulling us away from what we actually want to achieve. I think the first thing to understand is that we all have that mindset, and I kind of call that an operating system, right? So we all have an operating system, whether we like it or not, and we take automated actions all the time, whether we like it or not. 

What I want to do is I want to make sure that my mindset and that of anybody who’s reading the book -  that we can actually shift our mindset so that the actions - the automated actions they're taking, are taking them in the direction they want to go, rather than what's happening in a lot of cases today and pulling you away from what you want to achieve.

AIDAN

So there is a really good image in your book which I think captures this whole idea of mindset, and it’s a picture of an iceberg. And the point that is out of the water is the conscious mind and this is what we’re aware of. But then there’s this massive part underneath the water which is the unconscious and subconscious mind. I think that’s a great way to look at it because your conscious mind is only a small part of what triggers the way you think. In fact, it's probably the smallest of those three parts. 

So I think a lot of what you're talking about in the book - and in other conversations that we've had - that there are things that you can do to start to adjust and modify the unconscious and subconscious so that your operating system, as you put it, starts to be congruent and aligned with what you want to achieve. Would you say that’s a reasonable representation?

RORY         

I think that's absolutely right. And I think there's one element that might kind of gel this together for people. You just think about it this way: we think we're making our decisions with our conscious mind. Our conscious mind is trying to use as little energy as possible all the time. We take in a certain amount of energy through foods and that kind of thing and we're trying to make it as efficient as possible. Our conscious mind is relatively inefficient. Our subconscious mind is really efficient. It can do thousands of things at a time, right? Our subconscious mind has kind of automatically created these ways of doing things that we don't even know we're doing. So we think we want to do one thing, we end up doing something else. Why does that happen? It's because our subconscious mind has been programmed to do that, and programmed for a long time. I believe that we can actually change that subconscious mind to be more congruent, as you say, with the goals that you want to achieve or the vision that you have for your life. 

AIDAN

I sometimes feel that: if the subconscious and unconscious and conscious minds are not aligned with the vision that you have for your life, it’s almost like you're trying to swim upstream. It's like you're applying this brute force. You're kicking, you're moving your arms and you're swimming, and you're making progress but if you don’t have the unconscious and the subconscious mind aligned, if you don't have those mindsets aligned then eventually you will always report back to where the current is pushing you. 

One of the reasons why working on your mindset is an absolute no-brainer that it’s part of your equation here. So if we look at some of the things that people can do to try to train their mind or maybe adjust or be able to control more of the subconscious and the unconscious, what are some things that people can do there? 

RORY

Well, I think the first thing, Aidan, is to understand that we've got those two areas and that the subconscious mind is driving probably 80% or more of what we're doing everyday. So once you've started to get you to think differently for a start. 

I think the second thing then is to look at where these ‘stories’  that are actually taking us off in these different directions. I like to say - and this is a real oversimplification of everything - but the subconscious mind is a place that's full of stories. These are the stories that we've told ourselves over time and that we've learned over time that helped us at some point and the subconscious mind then took that story on and said “This is really going to work for Aidan because 20 years ago, I learned that this kind of worked for me,” and it probably did. 

But today you're a different Aidan and today I’m a different Rory, and maybe that story doesn't work for me anymore. So we've got some stories that are working really well for us, and a lot of stories that are probably pulling us in the wrong direction. If we can just identify those stories, it’s very easy to actually change them. One simple way of doing it: just listen to how we speak to others, but also listen to how we speak to ourselves. It might say to you Aidan we've talked about and alcohol earlier on, and I might say to you yeah, “If I go out if I go to a party, I just, I need to drink, I need to do that to feel part of the party and to enjoy myself.”  And that's a story that I tell myself. That story does not bring me in the direction I want to be going today, and I can change that story and I can change relatively easily. I can change it by creating a new story that replaces it.

AIDAN

And those stories often turn into triggers: I’m sitting down at the computer and I need to be having a coffee here and it may not be related specifically to you needing a coffee, it may just be a habit or a routine. I think daily routines are a great tool to use that people can use to improve their mindset. I’ll share a couple of other things that I do, some of these are taken from your book - if there are any other things that you’d like to add, we can do that. I feel like the people you hang out with, it's so important because there's an old saying that you become your five closest friends. So the five closest friends that you spend the most time with, the way that they are ends up rubbing off on you. So that’s one thing that I often think about. 

Affirmations: the way I use them is more in a sense of reminders and these are things that I work through every morning and this is part of the daily routine and we'll talk a little bit about this later. 

Meditation is one that I took on as a result of a conversation with you a couple of years ago. And I typically do 5 short 10-minute meditations through the week and I found them to be a great way to see to my mind, to regain focus, and look at things through an objective lens.  

Any other tools and tidbits we could leave people with, before we move on to the next ingredient?

RORY

Well, for me, having that kind of focus on where it is you're going - we’ll probably talk about that later - but like having this vision of where you're going, and constantly reminding yourself of that all the time is a big help. 

I often look at, if you take all the stuff you talked about there, that’s brilliant stuff, and I kind of look at it this way: is that you need to become the kind of person who's going to achieve the goals that you're going to put out for yourself. If you start to work on you as an individual -  I mean mindset is a big chunk of that - but if you start to work on youas an individual first before you start working on goals, everything is going to be a lot easier. 

AIDAN

Yes, that makes sense. Now the second ingredient there is energy, when you talk about energy in this equation for predictable success, what do you mean by energy? 

RORY

So what I mean by energy, like what is the kind of traction that we're going to put onto everything right so it's if we can have a fantastic mindset that's kind of aligned to our goals.  But if we're not taking action every day to work on that on that road and kind of create this person who's going to achieve those goals, then we're not going to get very far right. 

We actually need a substantial amount of energy to do that and I'm talking about physical energy and I'm also talking about mental energy and focus because if we don’t have that, it’s just so easy to not get enough done in order to get there. So for me, energy is really important and that comes down to really simple, basic stuff, like the kind of stuff we do anyway but just doing it a little bit more focused - making sure people eat the right food - and I don’t try and tell people what they should be - but people are smart enough to figure that out.

One thing people miss out on a lot of the time is how important hydration is. I always got water with me because if you start drinking more water, you'll notice your energy level going up, especially you’ll notice that you’ll be able to concentrate longer and that kind of thing. But then also physical exercise, because obviously we get stronger, it creates more energy but allows us to focus better and more. 

Those other things you mentioned earlier on too, the daily routine and that meditation and all that kind of stuff as well impacts on our energy, impacts on our ability to focus for longer and that kind of thing too. So that’s basically what I mean by energy. 

AIDAN

The other one there which I think is vitally important, is just sleep - and you talk about this a little bit in your book -  but it's amazing how valuable that really becomes and the detrimental impact that people can have when they don't get enough sleep. 

Again, just like food and exercise, people need to find what their own groove is here but there have been studies that show that if people get one or two hours of less sleep than what their body needs, then the chance of getting all kinds of illnesses skyrockets. The ability to focus on a task or be creative diminishes amazingly, exponentially. The secret is just to sleep a wee bit more. 

This is sometimes easier said than done especially if people are busy working long day jobs or people with families, but I think that when you make it a focus when you realize there’s a lot of good things that can come from getting a few more hours of shut-eye each day, that becomes a no brainer. Sleep’s a big one there. 

The other thing about exercise, so obviously, from a physical standpoint, I think this is really important for all the reasons that anyone can imagine. I find that it’s equally as important for me from a mental standpoint as well as  it really gets my creative juices going and oftentimes allows me to solve problems or just get past roadblocks, things that might be weighing on my mind.

As part of your formula - if I remember correctly, not the formula itself, but more like the daily routine - you've got exercise. It's something that you do first thing in the morning. What does that look like for you? 

RORY

For me, my exercise this morning is 5k run. I'm really lucky to live by the freezing cold sea here in Galway on the West Coast of Ireland. I've a 2.5 K run exactly from my house to the diving board in Galway Bay here and so I do that 2.5K, that kind of warms me up enough to jump in that water. So these days like at 6:30 in the morning, it's pitch dark, so I’m jumping into the sea in the pitch dark, and then run home again to kind of warm back up. So that's my daily exercise routine. 

AIDAN

So how long are you in the water for?  

RORY

These days it’s very, very short. I'm only in there for about three minutes these days.

AIDAN

Do you know what the temperature is?

RORY

I don't want to know what the temperature is. Like on a day like today where you know it's probably three degrees down there in air temperature, the water actually feels warmer. It probably is warmer. It’s the run home that kills you afterwards. 

AIDAN

Three degrees Celsius, just a couple of degrees above freezing. It's funny how when the air temperature get so cold, it does make it a wee bit easier on the day when you're immersing your body into that kind of water. 

I mean, you've got to have a good reason for doing it. I haven't quite gotten to your point of doing it every single day, but I've certainly embraced taking those opportunities to do whenever I can whenever I go to the beach or lake or river or whatever. When I'm close to that on vacation, I always make sure that I get up bright and early and go down for a dip, and also using cold showers which is something else we'll talk about at some stage. 

Have you tried using a cold shower? I guess you don’t really need to because of the sea.

RORY

I would have a cold shower sometimes when I come out at the sea if I had to get my car and drive somewhere afterwards, I'd have a cold shower there, but I don't have a cold shower at home. 

But you know the other interesting thing like when I go down there at 6:30 in the morning, right? So there's a space in the diving board that people can change it and it's full. When I get down there in the dark, there isn’t space to put your towel down. It's crazy. A lot of people are doing it.

AIDAN

I think when you get up and get moving and do something like that, some kind of exercise or cold water immersion, whatever ends up being your thing, I feel like it's the best way to start the day. I know for me I feel invigorated and I feel like I can do anything when I started the day in that way, whereas if I look at the other alternative to just sort of rolling out of bed, slowly getting going, spending half an hour on my phone, they're just like light years apart in terms of starting my day. 

RORY

Totally.  But you know what, I think the challenge here is, I don't tell people in the book like to go jump in the sea, it's not about that, whatever exercise works for you, but when I wake up in the morning, if I was to think “Rory, you got to get out and run 2.5K, jumping into freezing cold water and then run back before you do anything else,” I would say just “No way. I'm not going to do that because I just don't feel like doing it when I wake up” But it’s step by step, “Rory, go stand up.” That's the first step. “You got to put on your gear.” “Okay, I'll do that but I don't feel like stretching” “Okay, you've got to stretch.” So I'll do that next step. 

And then once I feel like stretching, and I feel okay, I go outside, and it's really cold so I go outside, I still don't feel like running but if I take the first few steps, that's okay. By the time I get to the diving board, then I feel like going in for a swim because I'm warm. It works step by step like that for me.

AIDAN

I think so much of that is designing little triggers to get you going. For me for example, if I know I'm going to be doing a workout in the morning, I’ll leave my exercise clothing and my shoes in a place where I'm going to get changed so that I'd see them there just by default and then once I've done that, there's one of these triggers, “Okay, I’ve got my exercise gear on. I guess I should go and do some nice exercise.” 

It’s just amazing how much easier that makes it. And even if I'm not doing exercise first thing in the morning, just by going through the motions of putting myself in that kind of mindspace, and makes it so much easier. I think that this can work for all kinds of areas in your life from your relationships through to your work habits and so many more things. 

RORY

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the other thing that kind of gets me up there as well is, I’m sure we'll talk about that in a moment, but it's the accountability piece because I am kind of known now for jumping in the water every morning, right? And so I'm in the sea every morning. 

So when I'm walking through town, I meet friends. They'll say to me, “How was the water this morning?” It's funny. I can't say I didn't get in the water this morning. I can’t do that because that’s me. Even if I'm traveling, I'm in a different city and where I can’t go for a swim, I feel bad if somebody calls me and says, “How's the water this morning?” 

AIDAN

Exactly. Yes. The accountability the next piece of the formula. So, so far, we've spoken about mindsets, and we've added energy to that. The next ingredient is accountability. So what do you mean by accountability in your formula? What I mean by accountability is having somebody external, who's going to be checking with you every day to make sure you're doing what you're doing. 

RORY

What I said a moment ago, I've got a community of people that expect me to be in the sea every morning, right? And so that's just one element. That's kind of accidental accountability. 

In the formula that I've created. I think that this is my theory, and I've seen it work. You know, it's worked for you. It's worked for many different people. But if you implement this process that I use in the morning, doesn't mean jumping in the sea, but if you implement that, you are going to have predictable success in whatever it is you're creating. All we need to do is make sure that somebody is checking in with us that we're implementing that routine every day because that is the key. If we do that, everything's going to work out okay. So this simplifies accountability all together. 

So I have one person that for the last few years, every morning I send them a text when I've come back from my exercises to tell them “Yeah, I'm on track for the day. I've done all my stuff.” If I don't send it to him, he's going to message me and say, “What's going on today?” And likewise, in the evenings when I plan out my day, which is another element of my routine, if he doesn't see the photograph of my plan that I send him in the evening time, he's going to text me and say, “Where is it?” I don't want to let him down. So that means I want to make sure I do this every day. And that's part of this whole formula because it is like a success in the end. 

It's just X number of days of continuous action in the right direction. And by having accountability, it makes sure that you show up for those days and you do what you're supposed to do. 

AIDAN

What do you think are some interesting hacks that we can all use to make that accountability a lot easier? For meditation, as an example, when I was getting started with meditation, I used an app called Headspace. I must have used that on my phone for the first I would say almost two years that I was meditating. It was only recently when I decided I don’t need the app anymore. I can do it in my own way. But that app had a counter on it and it would be counting how many days I've been meditating in a row, give me these statistics, and that allowed me to build the habit. 

I think building those habits around what you want to be accountable for is a really good hack. The way that you do this is a habit takes about 30 days, 30 repetitions, 60 repetitions or something, whatever the number is, to become a habit. And I think oftentimes, like getting up in the morning and doing something that might be difficult, achieving the point where you've got a new positive ability, whatever that is, positive action as a habit is something that's really really powerful. You really have to string together maybe it's 30 days, whatever the number is of repetitions, in your life and all of a sudden if you don't do it, it’s like “Oh my god, why didn’t I do it? What has happened?” Something just doesn't feel right. 

So there's a way of building that self-accountability. Different people need different levels of help with their accountability and the important thing is knowing where you sit on that spectrum. Me for example, I'm very much a self starter, but in some areas of my life, I really do need or want to have an accountability partner and for me, sometimes it's one of my team or a business partner, or even a friend or even my wife, in some areas of accountability. It’s understanding where you sit on the spectrum. 

Now you've worked with a lot of different people who must fit in all different areas of that spectrum. Is there any way that people can sort of figure out how much they need that accountability partner versus just being able to maintain accountability themselves? 

RORY

I kind of look at it a little bit differently. I think that accountability can be made so simple, that you might as well just have it all the time, right? In my kind of process that I use and implement, the game changer formula, like I have a way of doing accountability. You do it differently, fine, that works for you. But I found that when people implement this, it works really well for them. It just keeps them on track with everything. 

For me, it's like having a specific accountability partner and having a very simple way of being able to check in with that person, which is like just one word or one comes up in a day like that's all it is on a text message, no more than that. Then that person is not accountable back to you. I feel like if you were accountable to me and I was accountable to you for something, let’s say I dropped the ball and you have to drop the ball the same day, the whole thing is going to fall apart. It always needs to be one way so that you can’t break it together, if you know what I mean. 

And so we create these little structures sometimes of like you know three-way accountability, so A is accountable to B who's accountable to C who's accountable to A. In my friend circle or triangle, that’s the way we work. 

AIDAN

Also with accountability, like so many things we’re talking about here, it’s important that you are being accountable to the right things. You have to have the right goal. Otherwise, you're sprinting off in the wrong direction, and the goal could be anything, but you want to make sure that you are accountable in a way that is aligned with your vision. The vision is the next part of the formula. I sort of feel like vision is the most powerful part of the formula, but it's still limited by the other ingredients. 

So just to recap the formula, we have mindset + energy + accountability to the power of vision. If you've got a teeny tiny little vision, then you're not going to go much beyond just the mindset limitations that you've got there. 

Talk us through vision a little bit. What do you mean when you talk about vision? How do people think about vision? 

RORY

Okay, so for me, a vision is this kind of destination that we're heading for. It’s a difficult thing to get across, like in a few minutes on a podcast. I believe that we all have a vision within us somewhere. And it's not a case of actually creating something. It's actually discovering what you have inside of you, what it is that you want to achieve in your life. It's rare like that I think that your vision would just be around money like making books or anything like that. 

I think it's usually something much bigger than that, and often something that's maybe even hard to check off, like even hard to say, “Okay, I've done that.” Even simple things like you know, being the best dad I could be, for example, that's a very simplistic version of it, but you can never check that off, right? You could never say “Yeah, I am the best dad.” There's always more work to be done.

I like to think of it as a destination. A lot of what I talk about in the book has come back to like my sailing experiences. And for me, that was like having this destination that we're going to, be really clear about that, when we're supposed to get there. So then I'm willing to put in the steps to make progress towards that. In the book I talked about trying to make those 100 miles a day, so every day, just get another 100 miles, get another 100 miles, and get those under your belt so that you're actually getting closer to your destination. Vision, if I would simplify it into something, it’s the destination. It's where you going.

AIDAN

I think it's incredibly powerful to go through one of the exercises that you've got in your book, and just sort of map out on a piece of paper and there's a couple of times about where you want to get to because I think a lot of people, they just take their vision for granted and it's kind of like being on cruise control and ultimately getting to a destination. You do have the option of deciding and getting a bit more granular about where you want to get to. 

I ultimately got to something that's really simple in my mind for me to remember is my version. I think about it every single day. I think about it first thing in the morning and this lifestyle freedom and memorable moments, and that is my vision for my life. And that means something to me far beyond what I could convey here because it touches on my family, my business, my friendships, personal growth, and so much more. I was able to get to that because I took time to go through the process of really mapping out what my ideal life would look like in the main five or six different areas of my life. 

One of those, for example, is parenthood, how I want to be as a father. I feel like even the best can get better. What would the endgame of that be for me? How are you able to sort of tap into the power of vision on a regular basis?  Is there something that you do to awaken that? 

RORY

Very like what you say there, you touch in on it every day. And so for me, like my vision again, just simplified down to make bigger lives for a million people. That means something to me. I know it doesn't mean anything to people that are listening here, but I could break that out into like probably a half day conversation with you. I check in with that every day, but I've also created for myself a visualization that kind of encapsulates that. So there's many different elements in that. Let's just say the three elements are my son, my friends, and my business partners. We just take those three. There's more to it than that. I created this, this visualization for myself where, on my 100th birthday, I'm sitting in a room in this restaurant, and I could tell you exactly where it is, and all that kind of thing, but in the room are all the business partners that I've had in the past and in the present. That means I've had to maintain good relationships with all those people as part of the present. They're there. They're my friends and my friends are all there. I've managed to maintain my friendships with all those people, right? So that's another piece of work that I need to concentrate on. And my son is actually making a speech in that and I'm really proud of how he's able to speak and that kind of thing. I had to work that stuff with him. So there's just like a part of my daily visualization that I go through. 

I just go run through this film in my head of this picture, and I kind of go through it in the book in more details. That really helps ground me and make sure that I'm focused on all those different roles, like you mentioned earlier on, about being a parent, being the friend or being the business partner, and all that kind of thing. So that's kind of one of my tricks for doing that. 

The other one is having a simple phrase that I can keep using all the time. My files are named after that. There's a “Make bigger lives” on my main folder on my computer, so that makes me think about that every day. My strategy has that at the top of it and I just keep talking about it, and the more I talk about it, the more it becomes ingrained, the more focused I am on this. 

AIDAN

Firstly, imagination is really, really important when it comes to unlocking some of the power of the mind and just being open to new ideas and thoughts and visualization is something that I use as well. If you want to see just how powerful this is, one of the examples you gave in your book is to sort of close your eyes and then imagine for a moment that you're biting into a big, juicy lemon. If you just imagine that in your mind, you'll probably start salivating or you’ll have some reaction to imagining this big, juicy lemon, and that's the power of imagination. 

I think studies have shown that your mind can always differentiate between reality and imagination. I think this is one of the reasons why it's so important. Just a personal story about a year ago, I had a helicopter come land at my backyard at my holiday home in New Zealand. It picked up my dad and I along with my brother-in-law and his dad. It flew us must have been about 150 kilometers south to a beautiful wine region in New Zealand, which if I were to get there a by regular means of transport, I would have had to drive 100 km over the mountain range, and then either fly across the area of sea separating the north and south New Zealand, or jump on a ferry which would take a few hours. 

Now, in my head, this idea of going by chartering a helicopter for the day and doing this amazing wine tour with my family for the day and they came to me when I was sort of forcing myself to think. It's not overly expensive to do something like that, but it's a memory that will stick with me forever. I remember that time when my son was four years old and I was able to take him on a helicopter ride and I was able to go with my dad too to the South Island of New Zealand and do a day of wine tasting with a private guide and all that stuff. This is an example of something that came to me when I forced myself to think outside of the square a little bit and it really ties back to the memorable moments part of my vision there. In my mind, what works for me, the things that I get the most enjoyment in life are those kinds of moments. 

If I actively seek to create more or less enjoyment, then I become happier. That's an example of the kind of thing that can come out of this when you start thinking a little bit. I’ve got another visualization where I’m in a ski chalet in the French Alps, a scenario that I know very, very well and I know the exact town and everything. I've got kids coming in there and my wife is there, some of our friends are there. It's this incredible moment, anytime I think about it, even if it hasn't happened, it brings incredible enjoyment and satisfaction for me.

I think imagination and the power of visualization and fostering this vision is so important and it goes way beyond any sort of airy fairy guru preaching. There’s some actual real science to it, so I think it's really interesting that a lot of people are not really aware of that there needs to be explored. 

RORY

One other thing there Aidan as we’re talking about vision, This whole thing is about predictable success, right? You touched on something earlier on and you said you could have maybe a smaller vision or something, but really if you think about this, if you're going to be able to have predictable success, well you might as well make the biggest vision that you could have, right? Why would you not? 

It's really worth putting the time into figuring that out because if you don't, as you said, you're going to end up somewhere, you might as well end up where you really want to end up. 

AIDAN

Exactly. There's no saying that at least you can think about it or believe it and there's no chances you're going to happen.  There's no chance I would have ever been able to go on a private helicopter unless I had that idea in the first place. You need to be able to have that vision. To your point, you may as well make that vision as exciting as you possibly can. 

Now, something really useful to tie all these different paths together, it's a 10 step, sort of ritual or 10 step of reminders that you go through, and these are detailed, much, much more in the book, so I'd recommend that people get that. Let’s talk through those briefly. 

RORY

First one is the mindset manual. As we touched on earlier, the mindset is like creating these new stories in your subconscious mind in order for you to be able to act in a way that's more congruent to you achieving your vision. I don't think I would probably go into the details of that. But basically, they're kind of affirmations that are written in a certain way, just change the way I think, right? 

AIDAN

I'm on my fifth mindset manual now, by the way, and this is really one of those habits that's now built into my day and I've got this little book that floats around with me and I’m on my fifth one. So I'm definitely an advocate for that idea. 

RORY

And it's a simple idea. And the next thing then is meditation. You touched on it earlier on, so the next thing I do in the morning is just kind of do my meditation. I do like 10 minutes a day. I still use the Headspace app. I just love the Headspace app and still use that all the time. 

Number three is imagination, visualizing where it is that you're going. For you, for the ski chalet or me having that dinner in that hotel. 

The next thing is what I call the daily review, so I want to be able to learn. I want to improve myself by some very small percentage every day. I do that then by reviewing what happened yesterday with a few very simple questions. Takes about a minute to actually look back on yesterday and say “Okay, what went well yesterday or could have gone better yesterday?” What do I need to do to do today to make it a 10 out of the 10 day?” and that daily review then make sure that we're learning all the time and moving on. 

Then I've got movement which is the exercise piece, so just whatever that exercise is for you, if it's you know, running or swimming or dancing or whatever it is, just to get the body moving and helps get the blood flow moving and all that focus that you talked about earlier on. 

Then I touched earlier on on the daily planner, which is kind of planning out your tomorrow today, so making sure that you know exactly what's going to happen tomorrow, both in work and personal life, getting that all down on paper so that it does a couple of things. Number one, when you walk out of your office, I have mine on 5PM when I leave the office, it means that it frees my mind of everything that's going on tomorrow. When I walk home, I'm not thinking about “Oh, I've got to do this and I've got to do this.” That's just gone. That's on paper somewhere, I’ve taken a picture of it. I sent it to Sean who’s my accountability partner and he knows I've done it, otherwise he'd be checking in on me. 

The other thing that does is because I've written it down and I do it by hand, not using an app or anything like that, it's really important to write this with a pen. It starts my subconscious mind kind of working on it. While I'm concentrating on other things and family and sleeping and all that kind of thing, my mind subconsciously is working “Okay, how are we going to do this tomorrow?” and it's putting all the steps in place. So when I come into the office in the morning, I'm really focused. I know exactly what's going on. There's kind of an element of “Oh, I didn't know I was that far ahead in my planning.”

Then the other two things like fuel, which is your food. So just making sure that you eat for energy and hydration then, as I said earlier on, that has a massive impact on our ability to focus and our energy. 

And then this accountability piece which is this daily check in that I do, for me it's with my friend Sean. I check in with him every day. He knows that I'm on track. And then finally, you mentioned sleep. I call it the early 8, just make sure that we get our eight hours of sleep. I get up very early in the morning, which means I need to prioritize getting to bed very early in the evening if I'm trying to achieve that. 

The 10 things that I call the Daily 10, and I feel that if you do those 10 things, then you will achieve predictable success. That is all I feel we need to be accountable for. Don't need to be accountable for a whole lot of other stuff. 

AIDAN

I think this does a good job of what I'm seeing on other books, systematizing the whole process in a way that is repeatable, like you don't have to really think outside the square in terms of going through this process and there's plenty of trial and error that people have done. Success does leave clues. There are thousands of people all around the world that have got some sort of variation on a system like this. 

This is a good starting point. You can start using it to find out things that seem to resonate at least with you, or maybe you're someone that gets enormous value out of meditation and you say that you want to do 30 minutes or an hour of meditation every day. Or maybe you're like me who just does 10 minutes or maybe you want to do just five minutes. Or maybe that's not part of your plan, but you need to find a way where you can reap the rewards and keep the benefits of what that is trying to do there because going back to what I said a few times, success does leave clues. Everything you're seeing here is based on building predictable success. 

This has been really fascinating call here today, Rory and I'm sure that our listeners would agree with that. We'd love to have you back again in the future to maybe dive a little bit deeper into some of these and focus in on them. I think there's a lot more value that we could discuss there. Thank you so much for being here. 

RORY

Yeah, it's a pleasure Aidan. It sounds like a lot of stuff but you know that it's actually not that much. It doesn't take that much. I wouldn't like people to be put off from doing it. You’re already hydrating, you're already eating, you're already sleeping and all those kind things. Just have a slightly different focus on that kind of stuff. 

Do you think that you can perform better if you're able to modify or adjust what you are thinking about in your unconscious and subconscious mind? Do you think that you could change course or be more effective if you focused on that? Secondly, do you think that in some way your beliefs or your past experiences are limiting you, and if so, do you think it'd be valuable to spend a little bit of time, 30 minutes, just working through with a pen and paper and sort of mapping out what you want to improve or what you want to achieve in your life or your vision? We've given you a few examples, and this is something that you could sit down for 20 or 30 minutes consciously thinking about what it is that you want to achieve and how you could get better at doing whatever is important to you in your life.