045 | GEAR (W3W) with Toby Brooks

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It is Word to the Third, my reflections on purpose, life and growth.

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I'm Toby Brooks.

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I'm a speaker, author, professor, and forever student.

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Each week on Becoming Undone, I bring you guests who've dared bravely, risked mightily, and grown relentlessly.

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High achievers who have transformed from falling apart to falling into place.

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But every third episode, it's my turn to reflect, refine, and reprocess. Onward to the third.

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It is yet another great day to get better. I am super excited to share an idea with you that I've been working on for quite a while.

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A few years ago, I was reading several different leadership and personal empowerment books and they all pointed me to complete a mission, vision, and core value assignment for myself.

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It was hard.

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Through the process, I burned through more than a few versions before I finally settled on what I thought was a good one.

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That is, until I read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

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If you haven't read the book, full stop.

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Order yourself a copy right now.

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It's fairly short, albeit a heavy read.

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It was actually written twice.

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You see, Frankl was a Jew who was imprisoned during World War II by the Nazis.

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And while he was in several concentration camps, he hid notes to himself in the lining of his coat.

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A psychologist by trade, he planned to use the notes to write a book about what he'd seen and learned in the concentration camp.

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Eventually, the coat and the notes were lost.

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But upon being liberated, he worked feverishly to recreate the work, and Man's Search for Meaning was born.

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While my takeaways from the work were too numerous to mention in one episode, one thing I realized toward the end was that my mission, vision, and core values were all wrong.

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They were clunky, they were too wordy, they were too hard to remember.

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Frankel later became a professor in the US, and in the updated version of the book, a story is told of how he once posed a question to his own students.

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He was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life.

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He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written.

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After some moments of quiet reflection, a student raised their hand and surprised Frankel by saying, The meaning of your life is to help others find meaning in theirs.

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That was it exactly, Frenkel said.

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Those are the very words I had written.

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I was moved to tears.

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For two reasons, really.

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First, I knew the abomination of my own purpose statement had to be redone.

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Secondly, the fact that his students A. recognized his purpose, and B. knew him well enough as their professor to be able to produce it like that on demand, a little sobering.

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I knew I had work to do on both fronts.

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What I came up with at its core is what I really believe is the reason I'm still here.

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I believe that my purpose in life is to help others discover and pursue their own.

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Frankel's an inspiration, and in the three years that have passed since I revised it, I've tried to live each day aligned with that exact purpose in mind, which leads me to today.

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We are now seven full months into the show and closing in on 50 episodes.

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I've absolutely loved getting to interview incredible people.

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I've enjoyed learning new skills when it comes to podcast production.

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I've really liked even getting my studio space set up.

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I finally feel like I've got the skills and the stuff I need to produce a top-shelf show. What I haven't had until now is a direct alignment of the show with my purpose. Oh sure, it's been wonderful hearing inspiring stories and maybe some of my guests have given you the nudge you needed to do big things for yourself. Or maybe not. I don't know. Because until now I've simply been a third party trying to encourage you from afar.

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But that isn't enough.

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If I'm truly aligned with my purpose at work, I'll be having these conversations with my students, with other faculty members and staff, which I have.

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But when it comes to the show, it's been a pretty hands-off approach.

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What I want to do instead is to connect with like-minded people, and eventually, in turn, connect them with one another.

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So that's where the idea for GEAR came up. GEAR is an easy to remember acronym that describes what I plan to do. If you're an aspiring high achiever, a recovering procrastinator, or somewhere in between, GEAR UP is for you. Over the past five years I've accomplished things I've wanted to do through the credo of strategic and purpose, relentless in pursuit. If I had a dream, I named it. After I named it, I dissected it. I reverse-engineered it.

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And I put actions in motion to achieve it.

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Now, I haven't done it all. Some of it is still in progress.

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But that's how this show was born.

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I'd spent at least five years wishing I had a podcast, but never knowing where to start.

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So I connected with a few people. I laid out a plan. And I executed on it.

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Along the way, the plan changed. My initial goal was to produce 150 episodes this year.

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Ironically, thanks to an interview with Dr. Ramadas that I did in episode 38, I've taken a detour. I've started on a new degree. I recalibrated that podcast goal to a more realistic number, and I'm back to work. Anyhow, here's what gear up is. First, you define your goal or goals. Want to write a book? Awesome. Let's do it. Want to start your own podcast?

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Absolutely. I'm down. I can help. Simply want to improve your health fitness and nutrition habits? Me too.

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Goals are the first step in gearing up.

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Next you need some encouragement. I'll walk you through the steps that I take to build a scorecard and I'll share the tools that I have to keep you on track as you work toward those goals and the timeline that you'd like to use. The E equals encouragement. Next up, accountability. You set the goals, you set the timeline, you decide what and when, and you give me permission to call, text or email to check in with you as often as you wish.

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I don't want to nag anyone. One of my favorite quotes comes from Kobe Bryant.

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I'll let him tell you.

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If I got to fight to get you in the gym, that's a problem.

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That's a problem. You want players that are gym rats, players that want to be in the gym, that want to work, and then from there you build on top of that.

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But if you're lazy, man, I don't want to talk to you. I won't deal with you.

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You're going to make me feel dumber. You know, you know, you're gonna lower my level. I don't think so You can go with it By connecting with you and your big goals, you're actually gassing me up to get after mine the a equals accountability The last one for me is currently the hardest to conceptualize, but I'm hoping you can help me with it My initial idea is to launch Gear Up as a monthly cohort program.

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At the first of every month, we get a group together and you go through Gear Up as a unit.

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Like a mastermind group where I can connect with you.

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But I can also facilitate virtual meetups where you connect with others who can help you as you refine your goals, encourage you, hold you accountable, and then ultimately you take responsibility to get that stuff done.

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Interested? Here's how GEAR UP works.

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It's super simple.

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Go to undonepodcast.com backslash gear G-E-A-R and fill in your name and your email.

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That's it.

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That will put you on the mailing list.

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From there, you'll get a survey emailed to you where I'll ask you some more info, like how you'd prefer that I contact you, how often you want to connect, and what you hope to gain from the program. It's 100% free.

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I'll never try to sell you anything and I don't make a dime off of any of this.

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It's my commitment to you, my early becoming Undone family. I get the ability to live out my purpose serving you while also developing a system and a resource that eventually I think can help hundreds of thousands of people see, define, and achieve their goals in the future. In the meantime, the only other thing you'll need to do, and I'll warn you there is a small cost for this but I don't get anything, purchase and install the Dunn Habit Tracker app. Go to the website at thedunnapp.com I'll put a link in the description or one similar.

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It's the one I use off and on. You're gonna hold me accountable and I'll be using it on.

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It's free for seven days and then it's 60 bucks a year after that. So for less than five dollars a month We'll be able to share streaks talk stats and track good habits You're trying to build bad habits. You're trying to give up and tap into the accountability piece of the gear puzzle Who knows maybe one of my goals is to create an all-in-one app of my own just for gear up But for now, this will have to do the job. So that's it. You want in you got the courage it'll take to say yep gear me up if so Let's roll go to undone podcast.com slash gear and sign up now Bricks and buckets each week on becoming undone. I reflect back on the highs and lows of my week in bricks and buckets.

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Bricks are attempts that miss the mark, while buckets sail through the net clean and true.

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It's kind of like the basketball equivalent of roses and thorns or happies and crappies.

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Brick this week?

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Conference realignment.

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In a move only television execs and SEC fans seem to be happy about, the college athletic landscape looks like a crime scene today. I spent three years in the then Pac-10 conference. It was beautiful. It was symmetrical. It was logical. My first road trip with gymnastics was to Seattle for a meet against UW. We later hit the Bay Area with meets at Cal and Stanford, Oregon State, UCLA and USC, and Phoenix to face our rivals at ASU. The only Pac-10 city I never got to visit was Pullman, Washington, as they didn't have a gymnastics team and my only season of football we played them at home in Tucson.

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But that's all dead now.

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I'm sad for the student athletes and the staff members who now have to pay the price with unnecessarily brutal travel and matchups that only make sense for football, and even then only make sense to the accountants.

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It's been a rough week.

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My bucket this week?

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A reminder to have gratitude.

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Kristi and I watched a rom-com on Saturday night, and we stumbled upon Happiness for Beginners.

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It was a fun and entertaining couple of hours, but one of the characters used a technique that I'm going to start using myself and with my students, called Three Good Things.

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Helen, with an H, played by Ellie Kemper, Aaron from The Office, if that helps, goes on an adult hiking trip, where she heads off into the woods with a group of others, all looking to reconnect and recharge.

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One of the characters, Wendy, a psychology student, helps Helen learn one of the many secrets to happiness.

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It's not very hard. You have to train your brain to focus on the happy rather than the sad.

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And you begin with writing three good things that happen to you every day.

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In a way, I've been doing this with bricks and buckets, but it got me thinking.

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Maybe it'd be better if I started looking for three buckets every week and leave the bricks alone.

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We'll see.

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What about you?

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What are you working on?

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What are you waiting for?

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And what are you doing in the meantime to get better every day?

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I'd love to hear about it.

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Surf on over to undonepodcast.com and drop me a note.

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For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web.

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Just go to undonepodcast.com backslash EP45 to see the notes, links, and images related to today's show.

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If you enjoyed the show or know someone you think might be interested in getting themselves in gear, I've got just one simple request. Would you be so kind as to share with them?

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It would really go a long way in helping me spread the word.

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Surf on over to UndonePodcast.com where you can click the gear up link to sign up for the program, or click the contact tab in the top menu and drop me a note.

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Coming up, I've got motivational speaker Tim Kite, as well as University of Washington strength coach Ron McKeafrey.

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Also on deck, former American gladiator, Darren Malibu McBee, and my friend and cancer treatment expert, Dr. Phil Anton.

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So stay tuned, this and more on the coming undone.

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I'm Toby Brooks.

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If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone, contact me at undonepodcast.com. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn at becomingundonepod and follow me at Toby J Brooks. Listen, subscribe, and leave us a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time everybody, keep getting better.

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