Alchemy For Life

Author Mark Bradford
  • 4.8 (18)
  • MENTAL HEALTH
  • UPDATED SEMIMONTHLY

Welcome to the Time, Energy, and Resources Coaching and Podcast! Our coaching style and podcast are all about helping you make the most of your time, energy, and resources so you can achieve your goals and live a more fulfilling life. Whether you’re looking to improve your productivity, reduce stress, or simply make better use of your time, we have the tools and strategies you need to get started. Join us on this journey and discover how to take control of your time, energy, and resources and unlock your full potential.

  1. FEB 1

    Why your resolutions failed and how to fix that.

    If your resolutions failed this is why, and this is how you can have success in 2026. The New Year’s Resolution Check-In It’s February 1st. How did you do on your New Year’s resolutions? I know. I know. Here we go. But it’s not something I’m ever going to stop talking about. and we’ve had at least one, if not two or more episodes on New Year’s resolutions and how I feel about them. So, let’s just jump into it, shall we? If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I try to compress a lot of conversation. And I say conversation because I feel like you get to say something and think something. I compress a lot of that into 10 minutes. And one of the ways I do that is by using pause. And I think it’s an amazing tool to be able to use. So, I say something and then I ask you to pause and then you have infinite amount of time to think about or work through what I just said and then you restart it again. So, we’re going to do this a lot this time and it’s going to be based on this sound. If you recognize that sound, it’s the sound you get when you check off an item in check mark. So, how did you do on your New Year’s resolutions so far considering that the entire month of January has passed? If your answer was not great, then why do you think that is? Give that some thought. So, do you think it was because you didn’t try hard enough or because of something else? Well, let me tell you this. If you decided to stop doing a thing, like I’m not going to be late anymore or doing a thing a lot more, then you’re only considering the action itself. The Limits of Free Will and Willpower And the action is always motivated by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. And now you’re going to say, “But Mark, we’re not just some tiny binary combination of fervently seeking pleasure and running away from pain.” Well, that’s not what Freud found. That’s not what I found. And that’s not what the monsters and unicorns told me. But Mark, we have free will, don’t we? Um, yeah, kind of. Kind of, sort of. Um, but it depends on your definition because our free will is modified by those constantly running programs. If you’re late all the time, there’s a reason behind the action. And that’s literally what the word because means, the reason for the action, which is why I called the book BeCAUSE!. And you can say, well, Mark, I can just do it. I just have to do it. So then you’re describing using your strength of will. And strength of will is very powerful. Well, it’s sort of powerful by itself. What happens if you say, “Look, I have this thing that really annoys me. Um, I’m I’m not going to do that anymore. Period.” and you go, I’m exerting my free will right now and my strength of will. Well, what your strength of will is going to then do is it’s going to panic and be going, “Okay, we’re doing this, but man, this is tiring and oh my god, I can’t do this constantly. There’s got to be some reason why. What? There’s got to be some reason to allow me to do this. There’s got to be some motivation.” And then the monsters and unicorns kick in. The seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain. That’s how you get it done. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s how these things happen. So if you say, “I don’t want to be late anymore. You can try to use your strength of will, but your strength of will will search around for something or someone to help it.” And both the monsters and the unicorns, the seeking pleasure, the avoiding pains, can help together. You can actually have multiple unicorns and multiple monsters holding hands together to get it done. And in fact, most of those insurmountable things that you have done in your life that you look back on and you go, “How? Oh my god, how did I even do that?” They were because you were holding hands with monsters and unicorns at the time. Identifying the Motivation Behind Your Successes So then, let’s think about this with the next pause. If you were able to adhere to a New Year’s resolution this year and it has gone successfully and continues to do so, and now that you’ve done the 30-day mark, you’re pretty sure this is set in stone, think about the why of it. What was the reason behind that action? Okay, if you’re one of the lucky ones who actually did make a difference in your life, even if it’s a tiny one, you think, well, this was kind of trivial, but you know, I’m really glad I don’t do that. I’m really glad I decided not to always finish my plate even if I’m not hungry. I’m really glad that I eat slower or I’m more sensible or that I show up on time or what have you. You have just identified the monster andor unicorn that helped you. So, here’s a crazy thought. What if you could identify the monster and the unicorn before you know what action it’s modifying? Finding Your Recurring Monsters and Unicorns Because you will find with your monsters and unicorns, and again, seeking pleasure, avoiding pain for those who don’t like the mental image, but I love the mental image. Thank you very much. You’ll find that a certain unicorn keeps showing up. A certain monster keeps showing up. And they’re responsible for multiple things in your life. They’re responsible for multiple good things that you’re proud of. They’re responsible for multiple bad things that you’re not so thrilled with. Yeah. I tend to such and such. Right. Let’s do this. What What feeling or thing tends to make you look at the ground and go, “Yeah, I tend to da da da. It’s something I deal with. Okay, let’s do the opposite. What thing do you do that you say, “Well, yeah, I really like such and such.” And it seems to affect things. If you’ll notice, I was sort of vague with both of those things because again, monsters and unicorns can modify behavior in such a way as to make you do something that you are proud of or make you do something you’re not so proud of because neither is good, neither is bad. They are just programmatic features of the way our psyche works. You can get a lot of absolute joy in helping children or helping people learn or giving. You can get that same absolute joy in having a lot more ice cream than you should. Or deciding that dinner was delicious. I’m going to keep eating cuz oh my god, is this great and fun. Or it’s so much more fun to not work than to work. And again, the same is true for monsters. It can give you an absolutely terrible feeling to feel that you’re not being a good friend. But it can also give you an absolute terrible feeling to feel that you don’t want to work anymore. I don’t want to work anymore because working makes me feel like this. And that’s the same way it makes you feel when you’re a bad friend. What? Right? Because they’re neutral. Clarity Through Identifying Your Drivers I can’t stress enough, even though you may disagree, I can’t stress enough that these driving forces need to be identified in your life. And once they are identified, a lot of things will give you tremendous clarity. And I can tell you with my coaching system that I built, and it’s not just a system, but it’s a system the the I’m meaning a system as a way of doing things, but a system as a programatical thing I made online. So anyway, I’ve actually modified that system that has worked really well to include the concept of monsters and unicorns seeking pleasure and avoiding pain to make it a lot easier to help me to identify the paths and the ways for people to succeed. You can do the same for yourself without involving me. If you want to involve me, that would be awesome. But you don’t have to involve me. You can do it yourself if you identify the monsters and the unicorns. And again, if you’ve had some failure with New Year’s resolutions and you’ve and you’ve said, “I made that New Year’s resolution this year again,” then you know that you’re targeting a behavior and not targeting the things that power the behavior. And power is really an uh apppropo word. All the energy to do a thing comes from that. Pleasure and pain generate energy. They can both generate the same amount of energy but in different ways and with different feels to it. What Will You Do Differently? So one last pause for us. So my question is now that we’ve discussed this and now that you’ve thought through your New Year’s resolutions and maybe you did indeed come up with one that really you hit a wall on knowing about the monsters and the unicorns, what will you do different to attack this issue? Well, all righty then. I think we had a really good conversation this time. I really do. So, thank you as always for listening. Take a look at BeCAUSE! it’s a quick read and it makes a lot of sense. And um keep listening and if you think this was worth sharing, please do so. I would really appreciate that. And happy February.

    10 min

  2. JAN 24

    Taking the “fun” out of “funnel.”

    The Discomfort of the Sales Funnel Have I said how funnels feel icky to me? Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like funnels? I don’t mean like for refilling your oil or delicious funnel cakes. I mean, well, let’s let’s talk about this. So, as many of you know, there’s a concept called the sales funnel. It’s a process where you get someone into a process and kind of help them along the way to purchase your product. Now, you don’t see this that often with physical products. There’s a whole different way of dealing with that, but you do see it for services, especially certain kinds of services. And sure enough, if it’s a service that kind of gives you pause, it’s probably one that has a funnel associated with it. Funnels don’t feel good, no matter how well they’re built. And if you’re like me, you know right away when you’re in one. Are you in one now? Are you thinking that right now that by listening to my podcast, you’re in my funnel? Because if you’re listening to the podcast, doesn’t it mean that you’re starting to kind of buy into how uh I approach things, which means you might actually buy one of my books and then you might actually hire me to speak or to coach you. So, Mark, isn’t this a funnel? Well, not intentionally. I mean, there’s nothing making you move forward. Nothing in this podcast builds momentum. There is a bumper at the end right when you normally turn it off that says, “Hey, if you like this, you know, you can buy my books or do this or do that or whatever, but it’s not really a funnel. My books tell you a little bit about the other stuff that I do, but mostly they just say, “Hey, here’s the other stuff I do.” And uh if you want to rate this, that’d be great. I don’t go out of my way when it comes to coaching people to shove them into a funnel either to get them to pay, to get them to buy. I want them to make an informed decision. So, does that make me definitely not an expert on funnels? It definitely makes me someone who doesn’t construct them very well because I’m too focused on the product. Funnels vs. Professional Processes Attorneys don’t really need a sales funnel because they have sort of a a process in place. You go talk to \ the receptionist or their secretary and then make a plan to have a consult and then go from there. There are engagement letters and so forth. The same is true for real estate. If if you’re looking at a home, then typically the site you’ve looked at the home on is already tracking you, your IP address, everything. It’s very detailed and it’s kind of cool and it’ll keep reaching out to you and touching you and saying, “Hey, uh, you know, you looked at this 3 days ago, blah blah blah.” So, that’s a a funnel. A Personal Encounter with a Pushy Funnel Having said all of that, let me tell you about the experience I just had which is prompted me to do this for you. As you know, if you’re an avid listener that some of these recordings are 10 minutes long about things like this that we can learn together with and some of these recordings are about an hour long and there are people that I find super interesting that I hope you find as interesting. Sometimes I have to pursue someone for a while and it’s just because they’re very popular. They’re public figures. They’re busy. they have a certain kind of schedule or, you know, they may need a little bit more vetting of me to finally get back to me. But all in all, it it works pretty well. And again, as I said in the CEO mindset, people of the kind of mindset that I typically ask on the show where people will say, “Okay, let’s do it.” And then 2 days later, we’re doing it. In addition to having people on my show, I typically appear on other podcasts and shows. So, every so often I’m approached and I have a service uh that I use and every so often I get an email that says, “Hey, would you like to be on the show?” and and so on so forth. And different people have different processes. Some people are like me where they are the booker as well as the person conducting the interview. So, other some people have some buffers in between. Well, I recently agreed to one of these fact-finding 15-minute meetings only to find that the meeting was actually 30 minutes and only 15 minutes was spent on me and the rest of the time was trying to shove me into this person’s funnel in which this person sort of sold something that they believed I would benefit from. and it only cost $10,000. Now, for me, they would do $9,000. It was obvious to me from the moment the first question was asked, I knew that question had nothing to do with my appearance on the show and had everything to do with this funnel. Have I said how funnels feel icky to me? because I’m naively under the belief that you can actually have a customer interaction in which you sort of vet them while they’re vetting you and you’re not shoving them into a funnel. Because again, I think a funnel is something different than a process. A process is just saying, “Hey, you know, I kind of I kind of want to talk to you. You seem to be interested.” And you could argue and say, “Well, Mark, that is a funnel.” But a funnel by its physical shape kind of shows you how you get to the point where you’re falling. You’re you’re you’re you’re trapped. You’re you’re being plunged faster and faster until the end of it. The Financial Pressure Cooker And that’s how I felt for a number of minutes. At the very tip of this funnel, where I was swirling at nearly the speed of light, I was then told that I could pay for this using credit cards and that I should put the total on a credit card to give to them. And then I should put that total from that credit card onto another credit card and keep rolling it around. And that way I could, and I quote, avoid the interest. Oh, now correct me if I’m wrong, if you disagree with me, but if you’re telling someone how to pay for something and you’re coming up with very clever ways to do it, you’re not really focusing on the process or the solution. Now, of course, if you have a payment plan in place, if it’s something that you can do via subscription, if you have various products, and everyone does. Everyone from real estate to banking and so forth, typically have some sort of product or financial product. People who sell higher ticket items typically partner with merchant accounts. The very basic level is that you accept credit cards and then it gets better from there. you actually accept bank transfers and you actually accept different kinds of payment methods like Apple Pay and so on and so forth. Even in banking, there are products or different kinds of savings accounts. But if you’re wrangling someone to sort of go into a gray area financially, you know, sometimes very not that often, I I sort of wish I did the video portion of this because you’d see the look on my face. It was just incredible. Integrity Over Tactics So, I think this is a really spicy lesson for for myself and and for other people. If you do have something like a service that is sold using what you call a funnel or your boss calls a funnel or your company calls a funnel, then I think it’s the most mindful thing to do to consider how your customer sees it. Does your customer see the funnel or is it invisible? I’m sure there are people who are sales experts who talk about that all the time where they say if you can’t see the selling then you’re doing it right. I don’t know how to make you a million dollars overnight. I do know how to show you how to have integrity and to have a good product. I can tell you that human beings want to be treated as human beings. And I can tell you that you, someone who’s listening to this podcast, is probably someone who knows all of that right now. It’s probably how you conduct yourselves. You are probably someone who really does operate with integrity that you will probably even pass up what some would consider to be an easy sale because you know in the long run it’s probably not a good fit for your client and might actually cause some hardship. So I want to say if you’re that kind of person and my bet is on the fact that you definitely are that kind of person and kudos to you. Kudos to you for having integrity and trying to just have the best product or service or both and not the best funnel and thanks for allowing me to share that with you. I appreciate you Thought-Provoking Questions About Your Sales Funnel Does your sales process feel like a helping hand or a trap door? Think about the customer journey. Is it a series of informed decisions they make willingly, or does it feel like they are being pushed faster and faster toward a transaction they might not be ready for? Is your funnel “visible” to the customer? Can your potential client feel the mechanics of the sale happening to them? If they can sense that your questions are designed solely to qualify them for a sale rather than to understand their needs, the integrity of the interaction is compromised. Are you prioritizing the product or the payment method? If a significant portion of your sales conversation is spent explaining clever or gray-area financial gymnastics to afford your service, have you lost focus on the value of the solution itself? Would you pass up an easy sale for the sake of integrity? If your funnel works too well and captures people who aren’t actually a good fit, do you have the integrity to let them go, or does the system demand you close the deal regardless of the long-term hardship it might cause the client? Would you think a simple to-do list that allows you to throw things into the future for follow up would help you feel less pressured to keep nagging people? If so, check out checkmark.

    10 min

  3. JAN 15

    The Last Episode

    Transcript of episode: Well, hey there. Welcome back. Why We Remember Firsts But Miss the Lasts There’s a lot of talk about the first time you do something. You remember your first time at something. But the reverse isn’t exactly true because it takes a bit of time to realize it truly was the last time because in some cases there’s a chance you might do it again. But thinking back on the last time can be rather jarring, emotionally draining, but sometimes can make you smile. Sometimes it can make you sad. There was a last time that you rode your bike as a 12-year-old. You put in the garage or or just put it down against the fence or what have you and that was it. You never rode it again. There was the last time you played with your Legos and then they got packed up and that was it. And yes, I know there are tons of adults now that do Lego stuff, so maybe not the best example. There was a last time that you did an art project as a kid. A last time that you wrote in a old paper journal with your favorite pen. A last time that you had a certain treat that your grandmother used to make. There was a last time you slept alone or a last time you slept with a partner. A last time you heard the laughter of your children when they were little. Even the last time you flipped a burger before you hung up your hat and went on to bigger and better things. Thinking about first times is easy because you can only have first time at something once. Your first kiss, your first love, your first time trying something. When you’re a beginner learning something, it’s your first time setting foot in a new area or even a new piece of software. If you do it again, you know it’s not your first time because you’ve already done it. But the last time is a little more difficult to record because as I said, you you don’t think about it at the time because at the time you think you’re going to do it again at some point because you’re used to doing it over and over again. But it truly becomes the last time until you look back on it 10, 15, 20, 50 years later. The Sudden Finality of Loss: Reflections on Recent Goodbyes What made me really think of this is in the last couple days, two people I knew have passed away. And for both of them, I thought I was going to be able to speak to them again. I didn’t realize the last time I talked to them was literally the last time. One of them was Scott Adams, someone uh that I had interviewed. And though I knew of his declining health, I was hopeful that we were going to talk again and sort of catch up on things. The other was a longtime client of mine, someone I’d got to know. I’d got to know both he and his wife, and I very much appreciated seeing them interact in front of me as I was interacting with them for business purposes. I always got a kick out of him and them and it was almost sitcom-esque in the way the environment felt with always being a happy ending in which I was waiting for the studio audience to start clapping and laughing. The sense of loss that we feel at a funeral is not just missing the person, but it’s the realization that you cannot interact again. that everything was a last time. Any and every interaction you’ve ever had with that person is the last final time you’ve had it. Living in a Culture of “Do-Overs” and Reboots That finality is something that we don’t experience that often in life. In fact, one could say a lot of our current culture, especially powered by social media, is one that really doesn’t allow for finality because there’s always a doover. You can always go back and rewatch something. There’s always a revival, a reboot, and what have you. Sometimes we don’t truly appreciate the finality in which life moves. It’s something to respect, to expect, and to I guess appreciate on a level. And it makes me wonder just what aspects of life we are ignoring the finality of. What parts of life are we moving in? Business, personal relationships, what have you, in which there’s some finality. there’s a last time that we aren’t really appreciating. If you’re in a relationship that doesn’t seem like it’s going to end, do you think about the last time, the last embrace, the last brushing by someone as you walk through the kitchen? If you have a client, do you think about the last project, the project you’re on right now? Is this it? Is this the last project I’m ever going to do for them? The last representation in court, the last design, the last article. Finding the Balance Between Morbidity and Gratitude Does this sense of finality make us morbid? Well, perhaps that’s what causes us to avoid indulging ourselves in it too often. We have an awareness of it, but we don’t want to live it daytoday. We don’t want to live in fear and in aversion to this thing just abruptly ending it. It’s not a way to live. But the other book end that we’re squeezed between is the one in which we completely ignore the possibility of finality. If you go through life thinking everything is futile, that what’s the point? it’s just going to end anyway. You create for yourself a relatively cold and miserable existence. But if you live on the opposite side of the spectrum in which you believe that everything is infinite and you can take things for granted, then you’re not truly embracing the importance and the magnitude of mortality. I think in my humble opinion that living somewhere in the middle is probably best that we are aware of the last times that happen but that we also embrace the present moment. A Personal Moment of Outsider Perspective I’ll tell you something odd. A long time ago, when my kids were little and I was married, in the middle of winter, I took out the garbage. And before I actually came back in the house, I stood outside in front of the window. They didn’t know I was watching. And with the very cold wind blowing, I looked inside of the house to them happily playing together and thought about what it was like to be an outsider, what it was like to be cut off from that. I did that on purpose because I wanted to see how that felt and I wanted to make sure I appreciated that it wasn’t my current position. I I never told them that I did that. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever spoken about it in 10 plus years. And now my kids are grown up and moved out and I am now divorced. But at least at that time, it really drove the point home of what I had. And I appreciated that I did that. And I still appreciated that I did this regardless of the outcome. Preparing for the End to Appreciate the Now So even if it’s as simple as the last time you use your kurig or a favorite frying pan to a conversation with a dear loved one, the last time can really have meaning in your life. And if you stop to think about it before it’s the last time, it can not only make you appreciate things, but can prepare you for the actual last time. Who knows when the last time will be that you hear my voice on this podcast. I’d like to think it’s not this time. And I truly hope you keep listening. So, thank you. If it is your last time, I appreciate you. And if I’m going to see you again, I appreciate you as well. Take care of yourself. Thank you.

    10 min

  4. 12/28/2025

    Limitations

    You do less, but you get more. Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you have any limitations? Oh, yes, of course you do. Let’s talk about them. And I think your first reaction is, “Well, here we go. We’re going to explore how I’m not good enough at something or how I don’t even do a thing.” Nope, we’re not doing that at all. In fact, we are going to look at why limitations are so important and how they actually make a product, a business, and a person better. What is this? Real life? Yes, I’m here to tell you yes, it is. The Danger of Trying to be Good at Everything in 2026 I read a book a while back called The Myth of Excellence. And one of the things it says in the book, and I’m paraphrasing, is the best way to sort of destroy your business and go out of business is to try to be good at everything. Years ago, I worked at a firm that had that same motto. And they tried to be good at everything and tell all of their clients that they could do anything and everything that their clients were asking. And they couldn’t. In their quest to be good at everything, they were essentially good at nothing. The Success of the 10-Minute Podcast Constraint When I started this podcast—and we are approaching 300 episodes in 2026—when I started it, the very first episode, I set a rule for myself. I set a limitation and the limitation was I would keep the episode if it was just me to about 10 minutes. I have adhered to that and every so often I go over to maybe 11 or 12 minutes and then I apologize profusely. That limitation has helped me to have a better show. It has helped me to have a show that’s better because it forces me to be more concise, but it also makes my show very different. When people find out that my show is only 10 minutes long, they’re shocked. And they’re shocked in a very pleasant way. They’re like, “Oh, I can digest that. Oh, I’ll just go empty the dishwasher and listen to your show.” “Oh, okay. Wow, that’s it.” I’ve had multiple people come to me and say, “Oh, yeah. I listen to like seven of your episodes.” Wow. Like so that’s really a cool thing that limitation has been very advantageous. Defining Strategic vs. Self-Improvement Limitations At the time of year that this podcast episode is coming out is we’re we’re we’re ending the year and it’s when everyone is making New Year’s resolutions and saying they’re going to be better and this and that. They’re probably looking at limitations as something they’re going to overcome. And yes, there are certain things that you want to improve. You want to be better at weight loss. You want to be better at at consistency at this that the other thing. Yes. So, you’re sort of overcoming your scale and you’re saying, “I want this to be a seven when it’s only a three right now.” That’s fine. What I’m talking about are limitations that are typically self-imposed for a reason. If you’re running a business and you set limitations, you will find that very comforting. You will create a sort of comfort zone for you, your skills, your people, and yourself. You can do that for yourself as well where you have a limitation in something that you do whether it’s well when people ask for rides or they ask for favors I have a limitation of such and such and it can help you to maintain consistency and integrity and you’re kind of shaking your head right now going wait I never really looked at it that way it’s a positive thing yes it’s an absolute positive thing. Maintaining Professional Integrity with Time Limits Getting back to my use of it when I interview people and I am exceeding exceedingly grateful for the chances I’ve had so far with interviewing people. When I interview people, I always start it by telling them when I first approach them, I’m only going to use an hour of your valuable time, no more. I promise. And I’m surprised at how many of those people view that as they they act like this is a new thing. Like no one has ever approached them for an interview and said, “Here’s our time limit.” And there are obvious reasons for that, right? If you are running a show and you get somebody that you think is going to be really good, you want to squeeze every single delicious minute out of them that you can. So, you are actually doing yourself a disservice in their shortsighted view of it of saying, “Hey, I I told the guy it was only an hour, but he was willing to go longer. Darn it. Why did I do that?” Well, if he is willing to go longer, then you can go longer. And I had a guest that easily did an hour and a half and wanted to actually do more where I actually had to push back and say, “You know what? Why don’t you come back?” So again, a limitation simply related to the podcast and timing. And I want to stress again that these limitations, unlike self-improvement limitations per se, are self-imposed limitations that have to do with something that you think is a good thing. Like for example, this is not, oh, I’m just going to limit myself to have only one and a half cakes. No, I’m not talking about like limiting your eating and things like that. Those are just that’s a different concept. This concept is there’s a thing that I do or enjoy or or could do, but I don’t. The Business Advantage of Scarcity and Brand Recognition Getting back to the business again, if you’re a creator and let’s say you create 3D printed objects, you may limit yourself to things that are not so fragile or things that are small or things that are really easy to ship. Can you create and print the larger things? Absolutely. Are those high ticket items? Absolutely. Are those things that people request? Sure. But you may just say, “No, I limit myself and I don’t do those. Maybe if I do a a in-person fair somewhere, I may print those and bring those with me. But when it comes to my online store, I limit myself to only doing the little tiny things.” Could Chick-fil-A be open on a Sunday? Yes, but they limit themselves and they’re not open on a Sunday. Not being open on a Sunday costs them an estimated 1 billion with a B dollars of revenue, but they actually gain more than that because it gives them more brand recognition. It increases scarcity because people think, “Oh, I want, oh, it’s closed. Oh, I better go there on Tuesday then.” So, it’s a net gain for them limiting themselves of actually not allowing their customers to buy their products on one day every single week. Hobby Lobby is the same way and they both create a certain image in the mind of many consumers, an image that they cannot create without creating that limitation. Setting Social Boundaries to Protect Your Time and Energy If they say, “Oh yeah, we have morals and ethics and this and we want our people to be taken care of.” Sure, any business can say that. But a business that actually forces itself to be closed on a specific day can say that you too can create that perception. And I don’t mean just a perception like it’s false. I mean a perception in other people of your behavioral patterns by enforcing a limitation. You can present yourself as someone who’s very friendly to your friends and say, “Oh yeah, I’ll help out anytime. Just call me.” Okay, but a lot of people say that. But if you say, “If you want me to help you, let me know.” but you’re going to give me some lead time or I can’t help you. It shows them that you’re serious. It shows them that you actually are committing to helping them, but they are going to also have to come step up to you and say, “Hey, you know, I didn’t just think of this out of nowhere. I actually need help and I’m going to do some planning.” You know, do emergencies happen? Of course. But I’m saying by pushing back and forcing a limitation on your kindness in a way it can help people to say, “Oh, he’s actually serious about that.” Conclusion: Why Doing Less Allows You to Get More Banks, restaurants, retail, etc., etc. The list goes on. There probably isn’t a business out there that doesn’t have a limitation that they self-imposed. There isn’t a business out there that some of the people in a round table, CEO, CFO, what have you, see people, marketing, what have you, sat down and said “well you know we could do this right?” and the answer was yes but we’re not going to and we’re not going to because it is a limitation that we are imposing and there’s usually push back of yes but we’ll see this increase in revenue yes but it’s just not part of our brand or it’s just moving forward not something we really want to do. Imposing limitations on yourself, your business, etc. can be extremely valuable. It can be something that reduces your stress, reduces your time, energy, and resources. Again, it’s one of those things I try to introduce in these podcasts where you do less, but you get more. And it shouldn’t work that way, but it does. So, what in your life is something that you intentionally or unintentionally have realized you’re setting a limitation on? And if you’re a business owner, this may be something that is a 50-page document, your operating agreement. Or if you’re a person running a human being, yourself or your children, it may be something that you’ve just come to realize is something that you do. So, what do you do? What what do you not do and why? It’s something worth looking into. And again, if you’re using the CheckMark™ app, then this podcast will automatically have its own little worksheet built in that you can click and copy to your clipboard and then kind of go through the homework of this. And it’s not homework per se, but it’s something that is a really cool thing that allows you to kind of go through review of this episode. And I I don’t really know of any other podcasts out there that that try to give you a lot of good information in 10 minutes and that

    11 min

  5. 12/20/2025

    Top 10 things you can do NOW to be successful in 2026

    Getting unstuck Before you can move forward, you have to get unstuck a bit. Part of being stuck is worrying. Some people are really really good at it. Oh I’m sorry I’m raising my hand. Check out the how can I stop worrying episode. Sometimes life can get you really stuck. Circumstances can be such that you really just wanna give up. I feel you. And mental health is a delicate subject. If you’ve ever thought of truly giving up, check out depression and throwing away the container. You may be stuck because you think everything you’re doing is failing or you lament all of your failures as 100% your responsibility. If that’s the case, then the reverse is also true. You are also 100% responsible for your successes. Perhaps it’s time to start taking responsibility for those. That’s such an odd sentence isn’t it? If it feels weird to say that out loud then you’ll benefit from the episode taking responsibility for the good in your life. Sometimes being stuck isn’t necessarily running into a wall, but rather being at a place with lack of direction. And that can manifest as feeling like you don’t have the energy or desire to do something or you literally don’t know what to do. I created a simple and very effective way to find your way back and in the process get something as a gift to yourself. If you’ve ever lost your way, check out the episode called UPS, my secret for avoiding depression being more productive. Growing If you want to grow in 2026 you may have to learn. You may find that there are things you know quite well in fact, so well you take it for granted. And in doing so that can make it both a challenge to learn and a challenge to teach. If you adopt a beginner mindset in which you are completely open to learning, it makes it a very enjoyable experience to learn new skills and it’ll make you an excellent teacher. Check out the beginner mindset makes you a better teacher. On a related note—a lot of people equate success with productivity. After all if you’re being productive, it means you feel good about what you’re doing and you’re producing something that at the bare minimum makes you happy and is aligned with you and hopefully it’s also profitable. It may surprise you that this is one of the times in your life in which selfishness is a really good thing. If you tailor your productivity selfishly to what really makes you happy you’ll end up with a really good product and maybe surprised at how many other people enjoy the benefits of this specificity. Check out why selfish productivity may be the best productivity. We tend to present our success as milestones, but we forget we built those milestones layer by layer. If your goal is to do a certain thing, but you ignore the steps to get there you’re making it much more difficult for yourself than it should be. Everything we do in life is layer by layer. It’s iterative. You can learn a great lesson about this by listening to live your life iteratively Gaining control & Managing your energy Part of moving forward in 2026 is probably gaining some control. If you don’t have any control over your environment or yourself, nothing is going to happen. Every so often I ask myself a question that drives me crazy until I answer it… and that driving myself crazy usually ends up with me manifesting an entire book after much research and experimentation. This time it manifested itself in the form of an app that runs on both your phone and your browser. Check out what I figured out in the episode I think I found the perfect question. We are bombarded with social media and we tend to compare our successes to others. How can we not when everything from LinkedIn to Instagram shows us just how happy and successful everyone else is. But the energy you put in to showing off is energy you’re not putting into improving. Check out the silence of success and after it, you may not be putting more effort into being successful, but your effort will be more effectively applied to what’s best for you. All work and no play as they say. I actually started this podcast because I needed to learn what balance was in life. It was a comment from a psychologist I was visiting with my very young kids because of the turmoil of what was happening in the household related to the divorce. I wanted to make sure they were OK. “But what are you doing for you,” she asked. That comment truly sent me on the path to find out what life was made of and how to have balance.  If you go into 2026 thinking you are going to work yourself to death and make something happen, you need to consider feeding more to your brain and your soul than just work. The problem is that people who tend to be high achievers don’t wanna just stare at a wall or trash TV to relax they need to be equally engaged. If you’re one of these special people then check out engagement fiction for your type a brain. Bonus. More items: Subscribe to this podcast. It’s free, and only ten minutes. Spotify, iTunes Youtube and my mailing list. Get invited to my invite-only productivity app. The app is AMAZING. it’s a solid todo list with fantastic features you can use on your phone and your desktop. Hire me to do a seminar at your company. My seminars are two hours or half day, draw from 10 books and 300 episodes of knowledge. Like getting a teacher that comes with his own library. I also have patent-pending behavior mapping software. Hire me to be your coach. A 15 min call will see if we are a fit. It’s free, no obligation and we will only engage if you decide to call me back. The CheckMark™ app – limited time offer for people wanting a successful 2026 Until the end of the year, you can join CheckMark and have the app on both your phone and desktop, for free. It’s a daily todo ap that’s super simple to use but also has: Long Term Goals Built-in motivations Project lists for common things you want to get done A buddy system so you and a friend can motivate each other Color coding Regenerating tasks A leaderboard The full list of these podcast episodes Go to: https://alchemyfor.life/checkmark/join.cfm Use code Mark8 Ends on January 15th or until the limited codes run out! Definitely a good thing to do in 2026 for success. The main CheckMark screen showing your todo list Expanded achievements keep it fun and earn you gold! You can use pre-made project lists top get things done. The MARKetplace allows you to upgrade and power up with even more goodies.

    9 min

  6. 12/07/2025

    How Can I Stop Worrying?

    There’s such a stigma that we can’t even talk about it. Well, hey there. Welcome back. The Stigma of Private Worry What are you worried about? No, really. What are you worried about? Maybe you say nothing. Maybe you say, “Oh, the usual, you know, the things everyone worries about.” We deal with life and concerns and we take objective measures to reach goals in public. But then in private we worry and sometimes the worry doesn’t match our outward demeanor does it? Worry has a stigma to it just like suicide does. And I talked about this in my episode called throwing away the container. There’s such a stigma that we can’t even talk about it. We don’t even allow ourselves to talk about it. We wave it off as a few moments of weakness or we just think everyone feels the same way about this that or the other thing, but we don’t really address it for the most part. Now, you may feel that you have a worry about a certain thing and then you decide you’re going to take action. And when you do that, you actually feel a lot better. But it doesn’t happen often, does it? The stigma and guilt prevents you from really exploring it. And if you’ve noticed through a number of episodes and even my books, I tend to push really hard in the direction of, well, no, let’s just do that. Let’s feel that. Let’s let’s see what that’s like. Let’s not hide. Let’s not shove things into the dark recesses and not deal with them. Because that’s how they get their power. That’s how they fester and get stronger because we push them into a corner and we don’t deal with them. Saying It Out Loud: The Power of the “Third Voice” It’s typical for someone to feel bad and embarrassed if they say out loud to someone, I am worried about this because it almost feels so unnatural to just say it that way. And if you’ve read three voices, it means you’re saying it in your third voice. We like to say it in our second voice all the time, which is our inner dialogue and monologue. Because like many other things, fears, paranoia, and so forth, they sound silly when you say them out loud. Well, then why wouldn’t you say them out loud then? If it sounds silly and sort of dispels it. Here’s the contrast. This does not apply if we’re worried for someone else. If we think to ourselves, “Oh, I’m worried about Susan. And Susan being someone you work with or Susan being your daughter or your cousin or your sister. Now you’re concerned. Oh, that’s so much better. Well, I’m just concerned for her.” Well, it’s sort of silly for you to be worried about that. But I’m sure she’ll be fine. Yeah, I’m just worried about her. Aw, it’s really nice that you feel that way. It’s really nice to have all that empathy towards someone who isn’t you. Do you see how odd that is? If you’re worried about Susan, you may just have coffee with her and sit down and say, you know, how have you been? What’s going on with that? It’s you won’t even say I am worried about you because you know that’s a full paw. You’ll say, “So, what’s going on with Rick?” or “What’s going on with that thing that you were dealing with? How’s that going?” And then you’ll assess what you need to do, your empathy and your your advice and so forth based on that. If you’re born with male psychological genetics, you will think, “I’m hearing a problem. I want to fix that.” If you’re born with female psychological genetics, you will think, “I’m hearing that someone is hurting and suffering. I want to help them. I want to listen and make sure that they feel heard. But neither of these things is applied to yourself. And again, you may hear this and think, “Oh, okay. I get it that some people worry, but I don’t do this. This is not me.” And you know, if you’re true, if you’re accurate, then cool. Then good for you. I’m actually thrilled. If this is something that doesn’t apply to you, that you don’t find yourself in a in a corner or in a a self-perpetuating loop or something that rules your brain anytime it has free time, then you’re doing pretty well. Bringing Worry Into the Light But a lot of people aren’t. A lot of people experience this. And as with so many things, it’s something that we can deal with. It’s not something that’s part of the human experience per se. I mean, worry and concern and all that stuff and fear, yes, it’s all part of that human experience, but only to a degree. We can deal with the stuff that is, as I said, the loop or things that are shoved into the corner. We can bring them into the light. And again, how do we do that? As always, we raise awareness of it, which we’ve just done. So, here’s some thoughts on dealing with worry. And again, if you’re using the app, all these things will be in the project library, and you can just click on it, and boom, you’ll have these on your little clipboard. Cuz I like when you’re lazy. Sometimes I’m lazy, too. What if you just said out loud all of your worries? Like I’m a big proponent of waking up and saying I’m grateful for and then you list the things you’re grateful for. I do that in the morning. I stumble around half asleep and my feet hit the ground and I’m immediately saying I’m grateful. Your feet hit the ground, Mark. Don’t you have carpet? Sorry. My feet hit the carpet. I’m grateful. I love myself editing. Don’t you? The “Worry List” Exercise But what if you just wrote down I’m not saying first thing in the morning, don’t do that. I’m saying once you’re awake or whatever time of the day that you have a lot of cognitive ability and you’re and you’re clear-minded, what if you sat down and you made a list of everything you’re worried about? Not projects, not goals, not stuff you want to take care of, not even stuff you want to think about, but stuff you’re worried about. And isn’t it odd that those things may not be the same list? Isn’t it weird that you go, “Well, wait a second. The stuff I’m worried about is stuff I don’t want to deal with. The stuff I’m worried about isn’t even related to me. Like, I worry sometimes about this or that or the other thing. But what if you brought it into the light? What if you wrote it down? What if you made this list, looked at it, and then went back to it, and then noted how realistic each one of those was? What if you went back and you wrote a why next to it, like, why am I worried about this? Tracing the Origins of Our Fears And what if we took a page from my book BeCAUSE! and we tried to trace it back to where it actually comes from. If you grow up poor, you can have a worry about having enough money. Even though you have enough money, even though you have more than enough money, even though you have everything in place to keep you safe and comfortable and prosperous, you may still worry about money because in your childhood, that’s all you did. Do you not think that bringing that to the light could dispel that? that the monster that’s pushing you away from the pain of being poor, the pain of not having enough isn’t really needed because everything’s okay. Now, granted, maybe things aren’t okay. Maybe you are in a a downturn. Maybe you see a pattern and you really are kind of hard on your luck right now. And I’m sorry if you are. And so, the monster’s warranted and he’s doing his job to to protect you. But this can apply to so many things. And again, it gets back to the book Because where you pull it backwards and you say, “Well, what’s propelling me to feel this way. It’s it’s a self-reflection and can be a selfrevelation. I mean, the coolest thing from this could be you lit you literally listen to this silly 10-minute episode, then you write a bunch of stuff down and you go, “Oh my god, I’m not worried about that anymore.” The Goal: Just One Less Worry What if this one episode took away just one of your worries? just one no matter how silly it is because the silliness of a worry does not dictate its intensity. It does not dictate its effect on you. You can worry constantly about the silliest of things that have no business being in reality and it will hurt you and it will make you suffer. And as you know, one of my themes is I don’t want people to suffer. If there’s something I can do with my voice or my actions or something I create for them that can help them to not suffer, that is part of my mission with this podcast. So, think about that. Even if you don’t write stuff down, even if you don’t use my my productivity app and you click on the little thing and you get the nice little list that goes along with this episode, just leave this episode thinking about that. Feel free to listen to it again, but I hope you leave with one less worry. Outro And as always, thank you for listening. Take care. This episode is available in the Task Projects page of CheckMark™!

    10 min

  7. 12/01/2025

    What is Friction and When is it a Good Thing?

    Well, hey there. Welcome back. Redefining Friction: Physics vs. Process What does friction mean to you? For most of my life, friction has just simply described a physics concept in which something rubs against something else in some way, causing a slowdown and causing heat. But now, and now is variable depending on what sector of work you’re in. Friction describes the same thing, but it’s metaphorically for processes. And you know, I’m all about systems and processes. Intentional Friction in App Design Here’s an example. In the new app I created that allows you to get stuff done. When you add to-do items, you can actually swipe them forward into the future. So, if you swipe it to the right, it appears on tomorrow. There’s also an arrow that you can hit to go to the next day and the next day and the next day. So, if you want to place something, let’s say a week ahead of time, you actually have to hit that button seven times. Friction. And people could say, “Well, Mark, what if I want to push something 25 days into the future? I have to hit that button 25 times.” Correct. It’s friction by design. I want it to feel like you are putting it off all that time because if I didn’t do that, you could just type in a date or use a selector to grab a date and go there. It’s gone for a month and a half. Well, if you’re pushing something that far into the future, it should really be a calendar item. But if you’re pushing something into the future, it should feel like you’re pushing it into the future. In building this app, I learned a lot about intentional friction. I learned a lot about removing it, which is what I always try to do in any process I create. But I also learned about where it’s actually appropriate. My Typewriter: Friction to Prevent Failure I have a vintage Remington number 12 typewriter. I actually wrote my first story on it. And no, I’m not that old because it was created in the 20s and 30s. Every key is connected to a rather slender, thin piece of metal that has a little hammer at the end that matches the key that you hit. When you hit the key, it swings upward and hits the ink tape and creates the image onto the piece of paper. Now, on a piano, the keys do something similar. They have hammers that hit strings. On a piano, though, all those keys and hammers are parallel. You can hit as many keys as you want and they’ll all hit at the same time and not interact with each other. Not so for the typewriter. If you hit two keys at once, they will try to meet each other at the very top and they can get entangled. There’s an old tale about the design of the keyboard, which is the modern one we use today, being designed so that you would type slower. It actually was a designed to intentionally create a lot of friction and slowing you down. Well, so the truth is it’s not exactly like that. Yes, it does slow you down, but the reason being is they tried to separate certain keys so that you wouldn’t easily hit two of the keys that would smash into each other. Again, intentional friction. Identifying Unintentional vs. Intentional Friction One of the most exciting things for me is that when I’m introduced to a process, a system, whether it’s a person and how they conduct their life and try to get things done or an actual business and their systems in place is when I find unintentional friction. I find something in place that slows something down. They go down an avenue. They go instead of going ABC, they go A X Z B and then they come back to C and and we’re able to remove that and say no ABC. See, no more friction. But you have to respect the friction that’s in place because some of it’s intentional. Now, some of it works that it’s worked itself into it to be intentional. And you can look at a process and think, well, that’s inefficient. We’ll just do this. But if you remove the intentional friction, you can find that the system will actually break. Why Some Processes Need to Be Slow: Divorce & Marriage Let’s use another fun example. Oh, let’s say divorce. If someone wants to file for divorce, they don’t make a phone call. And then the people on the other end say, “Hey, thanks for calling. Why don’t you guys just pop down? We’ll take care of that.” The friction that’s in place typically is that you fill out a bunch of paperwork and then they place something on the calendar and they sort of hope that you don’t show up for it because if you don’t it gets removed from the calendar and the divorce isn’t even happening. That’s intentional friction to make it harder for people to just say, “Yeah, I don’t want to do this thing anymore that I said I would do forever.” I’m not in any way, shape, or form disparaging people who have gone through a divorce, but that is the system in place, and it does make some sense. And the same, of course, is true for marriage, for getting married. Now, granted, you can do drive-through marriages in Vegas and so forth, but that gets to something that I talked about in my podcast episode called become ceremonious. And when you have a ceremony attached to something, it slows it down and it makes it more important. It creates more friction. And again, your mind might be saying, “Well, that’s not a bad thing.” No, friction is not a bad thing. It’s a neutral thing. Just like the monsters and unicorns you may have learned about recently. As human beings, we have speeds. We slow down. We speed up. And again, there’s a podcast episode on the the speed of your life. And many times we talk about that. We say slow down, you know, take time to smell the roses and all that stuff, you know, apply some friction. Apply some friction, slow down and do that. Applying Friction to Relationships and Work One final example is the sword and the sunflower. It has a lot of friction in it. It It is a slow read. It’s a slow read because if you pay attention, you get a whole bunch of payoffs. When I wrote it, did I say, “Oh, I’m going to put some friction in here.” No, that was just the way it was written. Let’s talk about you. You may have some business processes in place or a way the reason or the way that you cook the way that you do. Or when you approach relationships with someone, you may introduce intentional friction to slow down the beginning of the relationship. So maybe you can savor it and enjoy it and make sure it’s the right thing for you to do. This may be applied directly also to new hires at your company where there’s a certain amount of friction to make sure they’re the right person for the job or even when introducing a new task, a skill, responsibility to someone in your workplace. There’s some friction involved in that. And you may be thinking right now, wait a second, there’s no friction at all. People are kind of like floundering. Maybe this is why people are floundering. We just sort of let them go with that. we don’t push back a little bit or apply friction. And you’ll find the paradox of like slowing something down in that way or applying friction can actually make it a better thing. And that’s one of the eye opening things of really discovering the friction in your life is when you discover the things that are slowing you down or in place intentionally. This intentional friction I mentioned and how what a wonderful thing it is. Taking Action: Evaluating Friction in Your Life So, as always, we raise your awareness about something and then we say, well, what are we going to do about it? And I would say the what are we going to do about it part is you should look at your life and look for intentional and unintentional friction. the way that you deal with your kids, the way that you prepare prepare meals, the way that you deal with your spouse or loved ones or friends, the the way that things are done in your workplace, the stuff you have control over, and the stuff you don’t have control over. And you may find that you are intentionally going around friction that you feel unnecessary in your workplace. No, I don’t fill that out. No, we just sort of skip that form. It would behoove you and give you a much more enjoyable life to remove the unintentional friction and respect the friction that’s in place. You may even find that, hey, there’s a place in my life where I need to put more friction. Now, if that sounds crazy, you could say, well, it’s way too easy for me to run to the refrigerator and grab that stuff that makes me not so thin. So, if there was friction between you and the refrigerator, friction between you and accessing that, then it would be harder for you to overeat or go off your diet. Actionable Homework with CheckMark™ If you’re using CheckMark™, my productivity app, you’ll find this episode listed under the episodes list on the dashboard. And here’s something really cool. You know, I mention homework in these episodes a lot where you pause it or what have you. I really hope that people think about them later and so forth, but I can’t exactly expect people to like whip out a notepad or what have you. Now, you don’t have to. If you go to the project library screen, you’ll find the this episode and all you have to do is click on it and hit start project and all the homework or things you need to think about from this episode will automatically be applied to your clipboard. Boom. Instant actionable episode notes. pretty cool stuff. So, thank you for listening as always and take care of yourself and I will see you again. This had been entered into the CheckMark projects list!

    10 min

  8. 11/13/2025

    The beginner mindset makes you a better teacher

    The beginner mindset makes you a better teacher—and it’s fun too! Well, hey there. Welcome back… to everyone who is an old pro at this podcast and those who are just beginners because at some point you are a beginner and we tend to forget that don’t we? In fact, there’s a phenomenon I would like to raise your awareness on and then do our usual discussion of. The Expert’s Curse: Forgetting the Beginner’s Mindset So, let’s think about this. There are skills and methods and things that you have immersed yourself in, things you’ve gotten better in, things that you have been doing for quite some time, things you take for granted. And one of the interesting things that happens when you are really good at something or you’ve amassed a certain level of skill in something or you may have put together some disperate skills and abilities and created a brand new thing and because of that you forget what it was like to be a beginner. To me, you get so far ahead in your skill, you just completely become out of touch what it even feels like to not be good at it, to be nervous about it, to wonder what you’re doing wrong, to wonder if you’re doing anything right, to even search to find answers to how to be better at it, or to look at someone who’s really good at it and think, “I could never be like that.” If you are someone who’s really good at something, and I know you’re really good at more than one thing, you may have become out of touch with what it’s like to actually reach the level you’re at, to be at the very beginning stage. The Excitement of Starting From Scratch Here’s the interesting thing. Being a beginner in something can be really kind of well, exciting. If you’ve played video games or really any games, including cards or board games, you know what it’s like to sort of reset and start from scratch. Now, board games and card games may be a little bit less intense of an analogy because everyone kind of starts at a at an even playing field, but if you’ve amassed a lot of something, whether it’s wealth or knowledge or skills or experience, it can be sort of exciting to have that voluntarily, let’s underline that, taken away from you. or if you voluntarily decide not to take advantage of it. But see, if you still have the knowledge that you have the skill or the wealth or what have you, it’s not exactly the same thing. Truly feeling like you don’t have something and then needing to go forward with it is the feeling I’m talking about. It’s the beginner feeling. And it’s that beginner feeling that someone who’s excelling in something gets disconnected from. Why Experts Often Make Bad Teachers So here’s what happens with that from the position of the let’s say the learner. Let’s say you are a beginner and you’d like to learn something from the master. Well the master can be excellent at what they do but they can be completely out of touch with how to relay that because they may process things very very quickly. And you’re probably thinking about this in in your own world of of whatever it is that you’re really good at. Something that takes you a minute to do that would take them an hour or maybe they’d never be able to do it because they simply haven’t learned that particular method that you know. Uh, hey Mark, write a fivepage article on this subject. Oh, okay. You can’t use chat. No, I’m not going to use anything. I’ll just sit down. Can Can you leave me alone for just a few minutes? I mean, someone else would say, “Well, wait, what’s the subject again? And why do I like this? And what’s the outcome? And and can I research this? And I don’t know what all sounds the same, and oh my god, I can’t get started. I don’t know what the first sentence should even be. Is how does this even work?” Like, those are all questions that are instantly answered in someone’s mind if they’ve used to doing that, including writing books, including creating a podcast episode. I’ve actually worked with a few people recently about starting a podcast and had some interesting discussions with them about what to talk about. Also, the the length of it uh what format should they be visual? Should they just be audio like me since I have a face for radio? Thank you very much. But we are learning and adaptable to a fault kinds of beings. It’s especially notable at the two ends of the spectrum. Uh the the hands-on trades and the cerebral pursuits like being a professor, a teacher, etc. In the hands-on trades, you have the old guy who’s been doing this forever that somehow can just get through something. He does something with his hands and there there you go. Might even seem like he doesn’t measure a lot and yet it’s always perfect. In the other end of the spectrum, there’s the professor that seems to know the answer to everything. You can’t trip them up. You can’t confuse them. They just happen to know. But in both cases, statistically speaking, they make really bad teachers. The True Skill of Teaching: Becoming the Beginner And you can say, “Wait, Mark, you just said a teacher could make a really bad teacher.” Well, yes, because people who are professors sometimes aren’t really teachers. To me, teaching is a separate skill unto itself. And part of that teaching is putting yourself in the mindset of the beginner because you can’t just be aloof as a professor and say, well, you know, read this and read this and you come back to me when you understand that or be the the old hands-on guy with grimy giant fingers that says, oh, you got to work at that. You’ll figure it out. Neither of those things are helpful for the person who is in the beginner mindset. And how do you cross that gap? Well, you as the teacher become the beginner. This is all probably sounding very zen to you. And it sounds zen to me. You know, the the teacher must become the learner and stuff like that, but it’s very true. I spend the majority of a podcast episode like this being the beginner. I want to see it through the eyes of you and say, “Okay, well, if I’m listening to this, I don’t know any of the stuff I know. I what would I what would I want to know and and in what order? And how quickly would I need to ramp up?” And that’s part of my my goal of saying, “Okay, I want to raise your awareness and then talk about what’s next.” So the raising of your awareness means I sort of drop my awareness because if I didn’t do that, I would just say, “Hey, you know, there’s this thing that’s happening here. Here it’s called this. Let’s talk about it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” But if you don’t know what it is, you don’t know how to even look for it. And so that’s the raising awareness part of these 10-minute episodes. From Fear to Excitement: Embracing “Level One” So the the bullet list would be you are an expert in something or extremely good at it to the point where you may have forgotten what it’s like to not even know that to be at square one. And and just thinking about square one might not be exciting to you as it might be to someone like me. It might actually be kind of scary. And it’s that being at square one that can scare people in many ways. If they’re starting out in a relationship, if they’re retiring, you I have a number of episodes on that. They’re starting a brand new job, they’re starting in an entirely different field. But the scary fear of not knowing something and once again being a beginner can quickly turn to sort of excitement in which you start learning and you start going up the levels and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s how this feels. It feels really good to learn things cuz now I look back and now I’m sort of a level three on this and now I learned this stuff and oh my god, this part was driving me nuts. I read it in a book over and over and over again.” And then I talked to another person who does this for a living and they and they told me something that I that that allowed me to make the connection. Oh, well that makes sense. How to Be a Better Teacher (and a Better Learner) So from the perspective of the teacher. So if you’re put in the position and hopefully you are because everyone should be teaching something to someone. If you’re in the perspective of teaching someone, whether you’re onboarding someone new at your company, you have a friend, you’re helping, it’s your kids, you’re mentoring, what have you, understand that you need to be in the mindset of the beginner, it will make you a far better teacher. If you are the beginner in something, and hopefully everyone continues to be a beginner in something because that’s a very exciting life to lead. Try to embrace the excitement of being the newbie. Don’t put yourself down and say, “Yeah, I’m new at this. This is dumb.” But understand that if you’re working with others and they’re in a position to help you a little bit, you don’t need to put yourself down. You could just simply say, “I am new at this and I’m willing to learn.” It’s a very powerful mindset to be in. Sometimes we put ourselves in this position quietly alone in a vacuum. You learn something from YouTube videos. You research something. You get selftaught. As someone who’s a self-taught individual in a number of ways, I spent a lot of time learning something in the dark, if you will, without a lot of human interaction. I learned things and just kept learning it myself. And there are times when you’re learning something new where you you tend to beat yourself up like, “Oh my god, why can’t you do this? Why is this so hard for you to learn?” Well, sometimes it is. So combining the understanding the beginner mindset with be being both a teacher and a learner can be very fulfilling in your life. It can make you a better teacher. It can make you a better learner…and everyone wins. So if yo

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About

Welcome to the Time, Energy, and Resources Coaching and Podcast! Our coaching style and podcast are all about helping you make the most of your time, energy, and resources so you can achieve your goals and live a more fulfilling life. Whether you’re looking to improve your productivity, reduce stress, or simply make better use of your time, we have the tools and strategies you need to get started. Join us on this journey and discover how to take control of your time, energy, and resources and unlock your full potential.

Information

  • Creator
    Author Mark Bradford
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    250
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Alchemy For Life