How To Find Your Purpose And Be Successful Featuring Scott Hansen

 

How do you align your goals to your true purpose in life? We sometimes find ourselves in a place we really didn’t want to be, that’s not aligned with our passion. Business growth expert Scott Hansen says finding your purpose is the key to everything. He shares his amazing story on how he got out of the corporate world and pursued his passion to become a coach, a speaker, and a trainer- someone that helps empower people. He talks about having a focus to your purpose — and than just doing it. Learn as he imparts wisdom about how you, too, can follow your path to be the best version of yourself.
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How To Find Your Purpose And Be Successful with Scott Hansen

I feel incredibly blessed as I do almost every day. I’d be lying if I said that every morning, I felt great. I’m a little tired. I came back from a bit of a travel stint. I did a TEDx Talk up in Lake Tahoe and then I had a speaking gig up in San Francisco to a big group of lawyers, trial attorneys. It was a trippy experience for me to go back and speak with my old colleagues about resilience self-care. That was wild and wonderful. I feel grateful for the opportunity to have done that. I feel grateful to be here with all of you for the new day, for this breath and for this opportunity to be. I don’t want to take that for granted. At this moment, I’m prepared to be happy and be grateful for my life.

I’m thrilled and I’ve got a guest on the show. His name is Scott Hansen. We’ll get into interesting, intriguing and maybe even controversial conversation. We might have some fun things to chat about and you get to participate in that however you’re doing it. I’m looking forward to this conversation. Before we get into that, let me say a little bit about this man’s experience and his life. He’s a certified small business growth expert. I’m a small business serial entrepreneur since I’m fifteen years old. I’m a fan of small business. It’s not that I root against big business, but I find myself rooting for small businesses. It’s a very difficult thing for anybody to follow their dream, to own their own shop and be their own woman and their own man. Anything we do to help with that, I’m always in favor of. He helps business owners outthink, outmarket and outsell their competition. When working with his clients, not only does Scott help them grow revenue and increased profits, but he’s also helping his clients create a business that affords them an amazing quality of life.

He prides himself with helping his clients get massive results by following the five-part profit formula doubling revenues and increasing profits. His work has been seen in Entrepreneur Magazine, NBC, Fox, CBS, Forbes, Inc. and Business Innovators along with being a guest in over 75 radio shows and podcasts. He’s also a nationally recognized speaker, best-selling author and the host of one of the top business and entrepreneurial podcasts on iTunes, listened to in multiple countries. Six-Figure Coach Magazine has labeled Scott as one of the top business coaches in the country to follow. Take a few moments, take a few breaths and get ready to learn some incredible things. I’m thrilled to have you on, Scott. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Adam. I’m looking forward to this as well. Thanks for having me. It’s been great.

You have an amazing bio and I know it took many years to create all that good stuff that shows up in that bio. What’s something that’s not in the bio, not in the intro that you would love people to know about you?

 

You started it off well to say that there are a lot of great things that I was able to do over the last several years. Anybody that’s reading is going to see how do I become known as the person in whatever field that they’re in? How do I get attention? How do I do things outside the box? It’s very important to think a little bit bigger in what you’re doing. You touched that you were in a speaking engagement with lawyers. If you want to be the best lawyer in your city or whatever it is that you do, you have to think a little bit differently. I remember when I wanted to get out of the corporate world and I wanted to become a coach and a speaker and trainer. A mentor of mine said, “How are you going to differentiate yourself from everybody else?” I said, “I’m pretty good at what I do.” That was my answer. He looks at me and said, “It’s going to be a lot more than that with the technology and everything else.” I took that to heart and I said, “How can I become as good, if not better, than anybody that’s doing it in my space?”

When you read off my bio, I strategically started to put things in place to say, “Scott Hansen isn’t saying how great he is, but maybe other third-party entities are doing the same thing.” When someone introduces me like you did or at a speaking event, it’s not just business strategist, Scott Hansen come on up. Anybody that’s reading this will say, “I don’t know how to get my stuff in ABC or NBC. I don’t know how to write for Entrepreneur.” I’d say just pick a lane and have a goal and you will achieve that. When I first started, I wanted to become a writer for Entrepreneur Magazine. I didn’t know anybody at Entrepreneur Magazine, but the universe opened. Sure enough, someone tapped me on the shoulder to say, “Would you like to be a contributing writer for Entrepreneur Magazine?” Away we went and then there are other things that I was able to do that allowed me to build up that bio. Everybody starts at one place called the starting point at one time in their life. I would suggest anybody that’s reading this to don’t try to be like Adam. Don’t try to be like me. Tomorrow, start putting down an execution plan of what you want to have happened and play the game and continue to do what you’re doing.

People have goals. We all have goals. We all have things we want to do. It’s a cool thing when you do concentrate. I was reading a daily book that I check out. It was an Emmet Fox book called Around The Year. It’s a spiritual book, but it also has a lot that’s outside of the spiritual realm. It’s very practical and usable in business. One of the things he was referencing and the reading I was checking out was about concentration. Clearly, your bio is a reflection of how you’ve concentrated. You focused on certain things. You don’t end up contributing to Entrepreneur in any of these things without deciding at some point like, “I want that. I’m going to put my focus on that.”

I did a TEDx Talk and it was the most challenging thing I’ve done since I had to study for the bar exam. To do an eighteen-minute talk, it’s very different than the kinds of talks I’ve given in the past. I’m usually very fluid. I take in information. I have an idea of what I want to say. I usually have something laid out. I’ve got slides or whatever it is, but I allow myself to be guided. This was eighteen minutes of monologue that took weeks and weeks to prepare. I didn’t want to get up there and wing it. I didn’t want to be in a position where my message somehow didn’t come through exactly the way I wanted it. A lot of folks, a lot of concentration. I assume that it has played a big role in the bio. Has that been the case for you?

The answer is yes. If I were to take myself back before that, we might get into my story. I was in the corporate sales arena and was good at what I did. There was always that itch or nudge from the universe, from Buddha, from God or whoever you believe the most, all the time. I didn’t know what that meant, but it kept popping up. I knew people would say, “You give great advice. You help a lot of people naturally. It’s naturally what you’re good at.” I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know if I could become a coach or work with people or speak on stage or whatever. I knew that whatever job would have, I would always be the guy in Barnes & Noble at the time or Borders books at the time. I am searching and hunting for spiritual alignment and being on purpose. I kept reading these psychology books and business books and success books and Oprah Winfrey’s of the world and these people like that. Once you find your purpose, that’s the key to everything.

Once you find your purpose, that's the key to everything. Share on X

If I didn’t spend years in panic attacks, anxiety attacks and emergency room visits, trying to think so hard about, “How do I fit in this place called the planet Earth? Why can’t I find my purpose and what’s missing?” This was my constant struggle daily for years. When I finally got into this space of coaching and speaking, I said to myself, “This is it.” I let go. This is something that you’re going to have to pull me away from kicking and screaming for a long time to get me out of this thing. I graduated from school, I graduated from college and all of a sudden, I became this success or this coach or speaker. As a matter of fact, it was just the opposite.

This is an interesting distinction right here because focus and concentration almost imply that things had been a straight line. People who got their focus or got their concentration like they got their communion or there’s some coming of age thing. I turned eighteen years old in addition to getting my driver’s license or whenever people get that. They also got their focus and concentration. It’s laughable because that’s not the case. I grew up with some kids who are like, “I want to be a doctor.” Twenty years later, they are a doctor. They’re like, “I want to be a dentist.” The seven-year-old kid says, “I’m going to be a dentist. I’m going to be a fireman. I want to be an astronaut.” 30 years later, the kid is a dentist. There’s no question that there are some people that for whatever reason, whether it’s in their DNA, it’s in their heart, it’s in their mind, they decide early on they want to do something. I know people as well who are doing things that when they’re 50 years old, they look back and go, “I’m doing this because my mom told me or my dad told me I’d be a great dentist.”

All of a sudden, twenty years later, they’ve been playing out that script in their head for what would they be great at, what would they love to do? Now, they’re 52 years old and they go, “This sucks. I hate doing this. This was great. It served me. All that is good.” I was a lawyer. I spent eighteen years a lawyer. I woke up in the morning, I put my feet on the floor and I used to have that anxiety that you’re referencing. I could feel my life energy slipping away and I could feel that 20, 30 years would go by and this is what I’d be doing. This would be my legacy and it wasn’t even mine. I knew why I did it. I was wanting to make a lot of money. I wanted to take guard to protect my family. I wanted to break out of the cycle in my own family of people that weren’t financially well-off. I wanted to not live in an apartment and have our kids grow up in a house. There’s no straight line is what I’m hearing you say and your life didn’t proceed on any straight-line path.

It is an interesting conversation because for years, I would never want to have this conversation. I would steer as far away as this conversation as possible. Now, I can embrace it. When I said the other side, I don’t mean necessarily the other side of wealth, but on the other side of purpose. When I get up every day, it’s something that I do spectacular. That I love to do and that I’ve been searching. I’m 45 years old. Up until I was about 38 or 39, I was still searching for sure. I would have steered so far away from this conversation for 25 years that people would ask me, “What is it that you want to do?” I get frustrated. I don’t know and I’d want to just crawl away and completely avoid the conversation. You went through it as well. A lot of people going through it. When you’re going through it, you think you’re the only person going through it because you see all of your other friends or family members going, “They seem to be happy.”

You’re a little bit younger than me. It sounds that we had a very similar path in finding ourselves in places, looking for answers, whether that was the Barnes & Noble. Who knows whether it be Barnes & Noble in ten more years? Now, it’s cruising the internet or whatever it is. Find some solution and some answers. We’ll feel better on the inside. I didn’t know what was bothering me. If you’d asked me, “What’s ticking you off? Why are you so angry?” I was a lawyer, so I was litigated. I had plenty of outlets from my anger, which is a funny thing. The truth is, I didn’t know and part of the pain was not knowing what’s bothering me. My wife that I married to now 29 years, the love of my life, four healthy kids, houses and all things to be grateful for.

 

I was grateful. It wasn’t that I’m not appreciative, yet not happy. There are a lot of people who are in that same place where they have things they’re grateful for and be foolish not to be. It doesn’t make sense, but yet still not happy, not fulfilled. Success in money, success in things, success in titles and all that. Any form of success without fulfillment doesn’t feel like a success. It feels like a failure. I felt like a failure. It sounds that you were feeling very much off kilter, off balance and not successful despite the fact that you had other things going well in your life. Is that correct?

I call it the itch. In my office, I would shut my door during lunch and I would start to walk around my office. I would just pretend as if I was speaking to a crowd of 500 or 5,000. If you were to look in my office, people would say, “This guy is intense. His fist-pumping and he’s walking around. He’s talking to a client. He’s on the phone and making the phone calls to his clients and customers or whatever.” The reality of it is, I was projecting into the future what that would be and what that would look like. We can joke about it now but at the moment, when you get up every single day, you have a feeling that you’re meant to do something different. You’re searching for answers and you don’t know what those answers are, so it starts to become this dog chasing its tail mentality. You start to get frustrated and then you start to go, “Am I the only person going through this and what am I doing? Should I discontinue to think about these thoughts and just go down this one path and shut your mouth, shut your brain off and just make the X amount of dollars?”

There were many times when I questioned my searching, “Does it make sense to just stop and be satisfied where you’re at?” I’m fortunate enough to say that I continued to search. I’m a big believer that when you get clearer about what you want, God or Universe or whoever you believe, starts to put things or opportunities in your place. I always thought, when I read a book and it was a successful book, that I was looking for that answer that you’re talking about. I was looking for a yellow or red neon sign like, “You should be doing this.” Circling, highlighting, pointing or whatever. It doesn’t come in that form. The form that it does come in is the little opportunities here and there whether you answered the bell and go and pursue that or not. In my opinion, the difference between the conversation we’re having versus the conversation that maybe would’ve never happened. If I didn’t start to answer those things, whether it was an opportunity like, “I got this new thing. Do you want to check it out?” We might get into this. I met someone who knew someone who directed me to where I’m at now. If I didn’t take that one call and that one meeting, we wouldn’t be speaking here. It’s pretty incredible.

It is and not predictable either. I’m recovering at certainty-a-holic or something that’s inside of me that is more comfortable when I know stuff and when I know what’s going to happen next. That’s not unusual, but it’s counterintuitive. Letting go of that attachment to knowing what’s going to happen next, what’s going to be around the next bend, what your life is going to look like a year from now, what your business will look like a year from now. That is a serious crunch. That is a seriously debilitating mindset. It keeps us very much more stuck than it gives us the opportunity to be agile and flexible and to make gains quickly. I want to go back to what you were saying about the searching being in a position where you’re looking for answers. There’s a lot of people who are looking for answers more now than when you were searching or when I was searching a few years before you.

The advent of social media and the opportunity to see on a daily basis through Instagram, through Facebook, through any number of different things, how people are living. You quote real friends and then the virtual friends that you have to see how they’re living through social media can be a real challenge that I didn’t face at the time. When I went into the bookstore, I went into my walks and things like that. I didn’t have a lot of references for how other people were living in my face every day other than my neighbors and my immediate family. Do you have any thoughts on how social media has either helped or created even more problems for people that might be in the situation that you were in, whatever that was ten years ago or eight years ago?

When you just go, pick a lane and focus on that goal, and you will absolutely achieve it. Share on X

It goes from adults all the way down to kids. Unfortunately, it’s been proven that kids are being bullied now more through social media than when you and I ever went to school. If you got bullied from the kid at school, that was it. You went home and you didn’t get bullied anymore. Now, it’s a 24/7 thing. I don’t have kids right now, but I have nieces and nephews and we had these conversations and it’s unfortunate. There is a saying that I tried to live by, which is, “Don’t compare yourself to others.” It’s not easy to do because if you’re on Facebook or if you’re on social media and you see people living a certain way, there’s a natural inclination and you maybe get a little bit jealous or say, “I wish I had this or I wish I had that.” I read an article and it was written by Darren Hardy who used to be the editor of the Success Magazine. It was this statistic that he quoted, “When you die, the likelihood of you having more than twelve to fifteen people at your funeral is pretty slim, which is so alarming.” He said, “The number one reason why someone will come or not come to your funeral, is the weather. If it’s raining, no one’s going to be outside watching over your grave in the funeral process.”

That hit me so hard because I do care what my neighbors think or my family thinks. I do compare myself. Here’s the ultimate response to that. If you’re so worried about how I look or what I say or if I start that new business, what am I going to be perceived as or whatever? The reality of it is, maybe ten people will show up to your funeral and if it rains, no one is showing up. Quit worrying and quit comparing yourself to other people. I do believe that what you see necessarily is not what you get. When you see someone with Ferraris and Lamborghinis and big homes, I would just be cautious who you’re following and who your mentors are and stuff like that.

I would pick one or two or three people at most and try to be mentored by them. I wouldn’t spend a ton of time on social media comparing myself. This is maybe a message that hopefully hits home with people. I try to compare myself to the best version of my potential self. When I meet my maker, when it’s all said and done, my vision is, “I’m going to have this vision of Scott Hansen.” That person is going to be the very best version of themselves and he’s going to say, “You can do a very good job living up to your potential or a nice job, come on into the pearly gates and I’m happy to get to know you.” I know that sounds a little bit deeper spiritual, but that’s how my belief is. I don’t need to compare myself to other people to know that I’m making progress to being the best version of myself.

I remember a speaker on our stage said, “The great shame would be on your deathbed or be at that point where you realize you’re going to transition.” You imagine meeting the person that you could have been on the other side getting that knowledge that you could have been. The programmed response for many of us is to compete. We see it in sports. We’re taught it from the time that we’re very young that we’re in a competition with a lot of things and a lot of people for scarce resources like the job, the money and some other thing. Reprogramming us as human beings to realize that there’s more abundance than we believe. That we’re more connected than we are separate. There’s more about us where we could be helpful to others and others can be helpful to us versus seeing people as a threat. These are things we’re brought up to believe. They’re programmed by a lot of things through the media, through some of the religious affiliations, through our parents and grandparents. It’s a tough road in that regard if you’re not a bit more self-aware. It sounds to me that part of your journey out of whatever you were doing professionally into what you’re doing now, is a journey of self-awareness. Is that accurate?

Yeah, I would agree 100%. That same comment would have come from me years ago. I played a lot of sports growing up and I am competitive. I play with my wife in ping-pong. I’m competitive in just about anything I do. I’m competitive and I do want to win, but I do believe that there’s the other side of me which has so much abundance. There truly is an abundance to be had. I’m not saying you shouldn’t want to compete or dominate or crush the competition or all those words. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I also believe that it adapts that straight lines into becoming the biggest best version of yourself. Is it a dollar sign? Is it a wealth thing? Is it an abundance thing? Is it how many homes you had? I’m never going to tell you that you should not think about owning three homes or five boats. If you want to do that and that’s your definition of massive success, go for it. If your definition of success is, “I want to spend more quality time with family.” You’re able to do that through monetary purpose and reasons, then do that too.

 

There are a lot of different definitions of success and everybody have to define your own level of success and what that means to you. I’m also a big believer in every single day trying to be better now than you were yesterday. Here’s the reality. My wife and I have been trying to have children now for a couple years and it’s been a tough road. You start to realize different things when you’re going through something like this. You start to realize that children are a blessing. Maybe some people would argue with that. Having a child is a blessing. We haven’t been very successful in the last four years, so we look at it much differently. That’s affected me to say when someone gets the shot, it’s what I call the tap on the shoulder in this thing called life. We got a tap on the shoulder to play.

What we do with that thing called life is where I like to impart my wisdom and my background and what I went through in order to help someone else get to the best version of themselves. At the end of the day, when it’s all said and done like you alluded to it and you’re sitting on that rocking chair thinking about your past life, do you want to say, “I wish I would have. I wish I would have asked her out. I wish I would have asked him out. I wish I would have tried this, did this, failed down.” Experience this thing called life in 360-degree level. That’s how I bring this whole thing back full circle to my life and my belief. For many years, I was just going through this thing called life. I’m confused, panic attacks and not sure what I wanted to do. Now, if I could impart and motivate and even inspires people to think bigger, to play different, to not take this thing called life for granted, then I think we’re doing some great things.

There are so many synchronicities in moments that we get to see how silly life is on one level and how connected life is in so many ways. If we could be able to see the bigger picture, be serious about life, be able to put focus and concentration into things that we want and things we think are important on the path that we’re on. Be able to laugh and find the humor in things and not take ourselves so seriously either. The moment you’re quite attached or that level of focus like waiting for the phone and ring or waiting for that client to call back and waiting for this thing to happen, it doesn’t usually. I’m not saying it can’t but it just doesn’t usually.

You bring up a topic that is one of the toughest topics that I dealt with and I’m sure millions of other people deal with every day. It’s called letting go. There’s one person reading this and go, “That’s easy for you to say because you’ve reached a certain area. How can I let go when I’m not in the position that I want to be in? Does that mean to hang out and let the universe take over and blow me around?” There’s a different distinction of what letting go is. When I heard that saying from successful people that I would read about or hear about, I would say, “How can I let go when I know I’m not where I want to be?” I want to continue to work harder, try harder and read more books.

There’s a different distinction between letting go and being in control. When we were kids, we came home from school and our parents said, “How did you do on the test?” The only thing that my parents were hoping for is, “Did you do your best?” If you prepped, if you studied, you took the test, that’s when you let go because you cannot affect the outcome once you already took the test. I fell into this for years and I’m like, “Yeah, but I want it tomorrow. Yeah, but I’m already 30. I’m 32, why is this happening? Why isn’t this happening fast enough?” There’s a level of letting go and then there’s a level of, “Do I let go now? What does it mean to let go?”

You used the word distinction. It’s a fine point for sure and we’re even a thin line between being attached to something and having that attachment get in the way and create interference. I don’t necessarily mean interference with the outcome, although it could. It’s interference on the inside. It changes our demeanor the way we experience life. I’ve had a couple of serious moments in this blog about the day and whatever that that’s going to be. I don’t personally believe in death. I believe that the body is no longer, but I don’t believe are our actual consciousness dies.

It’s a personal belief. Where it is that we transition whatever that looks like in actuality. I haven’t been there and I’m not looking to get there tomorrow either. I don’t want to be in a position where I look back at my life and there’s lots of evidence of people that had near-death experiences that have said the same thing. They get a life review. I don’t want to have my life review be that I experienced life on terms that weren’t of my choosing that we get to choose how we experienced it. You try hard, you are tenacious, you’re persistent and you want something. At a certain point, if that’s also got you in anxiousness, if it doesn’t feel right to you, then something is not right.

It might not be the thing that isn’t right, isn’t the thing you’re doing for a living or the thing that you’re pursuing. It could be just your approach to it. I was a lawyer for eighteen years and I was quite unhappy. I changed my career and changed my career path and then wrote a book called Pivot about that reinvention process. The truth is, had I known now what I know now, I would have had other options. I didn’t need to leave the law necessarily. I’m happy I did, but I didn’t have other options because my mindset was where it was at the time. That’s a lot of what we all experienced.

If we get too attached, if we can’t see the bigger picture, we can’t gain that greater perspective so we can loosen up a little bit and be a little bit easier with things. It almost like holding a rose. If you grip it too tightly and you open your hand, it’s no longer a rose. You’ve got to hold it delicately. It’s a question of pursuing something and then letting go of it at the same time. Your example was key. You try something you do at the best you can and taking a test, you study and you prepare. Once you’ve done it, you’ve got to let go of the outcome. Be able to see it regardless of the outcome that you received, whether you’ve got A or you’ve got a D, you’re still okay. You’re still going to experience yourself as something that is deserving of love.

We convinced ourselves that we’ve been programmed in some way from the time we’re young that when we win, we deserve love. When we get an A, we get love from our parents. We get respect from our classmates or from the teacher. Fast forward 35 years old and now, that A translates into, “I got a raise at work. I got a better job.” A lot of those accomplishments end up being the way we equate or at least size ourselves up as deserving or undeserving of love. If you went into the pool, I’ll jump in with you. Those are important concepts that are more important as we get older. Those realities become more the focus and less of the focus is, “Is my house 5,000 feet? Is it 6,500?” Any of the other ways in which we measure ourselves competitively against society, against our neighbors, against our brothers and sisters or whoever it is. That’s not so much a question. It’s an observation triggered by what you said and I appreciate you, Scott for bringing that up. Scott got a big poster-size cover of the book. Is that your book, Success Hackers?

That is the book and the name of the podcast. We have a book called Success Hackers. We wrote it a couple of years ago and the podcast came up before then. That’s the name of the book.

Tell us about the podcast. Give us a little essence of what that show is because people consuming this, they consume podcasts. This is Marketing 101 in case you don’t know it. I’ll sometimes ask this question very quickly. I ask it to everybody. Who do you want to sell coffee to? If you’re in the coffee business, who do you want to sell coffee to? When people answer that question, often they’ll say, “People who need caffeine. People that are studying for tests, college students, people who drive at night or truck drivers.” Those are the folks you sell coffee to. The answer is no. That’s not the answer. You sell coffee to people who buy coffee. That’s your market for coffee. For the people who are reading this, it’s so great because we’re going to introduce you to another great podcast that you’ll love and it’s called Success Hackers. Tell us a little bit about that, Scott.

I’ve been doing it for a few years now. I had 130 guests. We’ve been downloaded in eighteen countries. It’s almost three-quarters of a million downloads now on iTunes and Stitcher and everything. I started this coming full circle of how you opened the conversation which was, “How do you want to differentiate yourself from other coaches or other strategists?” A friend of mine was doing a podcast at the time and here’s the crazy story about life and letting go and following your path and your heart. I didn’t even know what a podcast was. My friend said, “I got all these listeners and I get geek up on coffee and I talked to the microphone and I go crazy.” I’m like, “That sounds amazing.” He’s like, “I’ve been doing it for a few years. It’s called the podcast.” I go, “What is a podcast?” He goes, “Are you kidding me?” I go, “No, I have no clue what it was.”

I started to interview successful individuals, thought leaders, locally and then it branched out into nationally and then globally. We’ve had Shark Tank winners on the show and successful individuals that are making things happen. We interview entrepreneurs and business owners. One of the focal points is what I call the fail forward stage. You’re talking about what is the one moment in your life that you failed forward and 130-plus guests later, every single one of them has said, “Which failure do you want?” The interesting thing about the Success Hackers podcast is finding out their story and finding out where they came from, then sharing the success hack. We have these experts in these certain verticals that we bring onto the show. Learning from their failure, the guy or the gal that’s going through their stuff, keeping it clean. They don’t know if they can get to the next day. They need a little inspiration. They need to know that this person who is super successful, at one or two or three or four times in their life, wanted to give up.

That’s the underlying message with the show. We bring on these experts that are in these types of industries and these types of fields, but please know that every one of them wanted to give up. For you that’s going through your stuff, we give some encouragement to say, “Keep going.” I always say the same thing to myself. I say the same thing to my coach and clients. I say the same thing to the audience when I do my little monologue, which is this, “Right now, think about the people you serve in your business, whether that’s one person, whether that’s 100 or a thousand. Think about the people right now you serve today. If you quit tomorrow, you can’t even fathom the number of people that you’re supposed to touch that you’ll never meet because you stopped.” People can think about, “If I stop today, I won’t be able to serve those five or ten or twenty clients.”

Let’s think bigger picture. What about the people you’re supposed to meet three years down the road from now? If you were to say to me, Adam, that I was going to have this podcast and be on shows like yours and be guests and also have my own and write books years ago, I could not see the first step in front of my face. I didn’t even know where to go. I didn’t know what to do. Anybody that’s reading this going through your stuff, I’m telling you right now, you can only see this much. When you take that off and realize that there are people like us that have been where you’re at. Just know that if you keep putting one foot in front of the other and you keep learning from your mistakes and getting better and better, one day you’ll be speaking on stage in front of thousands. One day you’ll be doing TED Talks. One day you’ll be doing podcasts. If you don’t believe in it, just lean on us to know that that’s possible.

Imagine seeing yourself in the mirror. It’s clear you’ve got a good view of yourself. Expand out a little bit maybe 100 feet up, you can see your apartment building, you can see your house, you can see a bunch of things. Go a thousand feet up, you can’t even see your house anymore. You can barely see your state and on and on. Ten miles up, you don’t see any of it. That’s just based on perspective. We blow our problems up, we make them into something because they’re right there in front of us. In the bigger picture of things, it’s not that they’re meaningless. I don’t want to be confused to thinking, “My problems are meaning, my life is meaningless.” It’s quite the contrary. The greater scheme of things, the greater perspective however you look at that, they’re not worth obsessing about. They’re not worth taking down your experience of living, meaning taking it down to the level of being sad or depressed or upset.

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Depression is a real issue. The opioid crisis is not a crisis because people are content or not in pain. There are a lot of people in pain. There are a lot of people who think they’re alone in that pain, whether it’s pain that emanates from the head or it’s in the body physically or wherever it is. I want people to know that you are not alone and whether you feel alone or you don’t feel alone, the bigger perspective of things is that all of us are in this together. However you look at that, we’re all in it together. Sometimes all it requires for us to get that greater perspective is to listen to something, read a book or listen to a podcast. Take yourself out of your headspace and listen to someone else drone on about their problems or talk about their failures and where was it they pivoted or changed or something. If you can hack one idea, one distinction, even if you could just take a break from it all so that you can laugh and breathe and be a little bit more able to let go of things, you’re in a better place.

I want to say thank you, Scott, for having a program that commits to helping people to do that. Give them greater perspectives and bring in experts and guests and people who facilitate that conversation. Thank you for doing that. The last thing I want to ask you has got to do with your own personal rituals. I believe that the quality of our lives have to do with the things that we do habitually. I’m not a big fan of the word habit because I don’t want to do things with a lack of consciousness. When I brushed my teeth the same way every day with the same hand, that habit is something I don’t have to think about and that’s great.

Rituals are more of a master habit. It’s a conscious creation of something for a purpose to meditate. It’s a bit of a ritual. It’s not a habit. I don’t meditate habitually. I make a point to sit down and I don’t even meditate. I can’t meditate, but I sit down to get still just to see if I can allow my mind to be still for five minutes or ten minutes or something. What are some of the rituals that you have that helps you to be happier and more productive? There’s a challenge on your side in terms of wanting to start a family and that not happening at the moment. Do you have certain rituals to help you to not be so focused on that result? What does that look like?

I think this is such an important topic and I’m bringing it full circle to say, I believe if you lined up 100 people on a sidewalk right now, how many of you want to have more money or become more successful? 98 or 99 hands will go up. I believe that everybody wants to have more or everybody wants to have more and become more. Setting goals are very important, but what we’re talking about right now is discipline. Having a ritual is arguably the reason why people become super successful or they get frustrated about their day-to-day activities. Then a year or two or five or ten years go by and they’re where they were ten years ago. This word discipline and consistency are the two biggest words when it comes to success.

Having a daily discipline is extremely important. What I do is I get up and I will sit in quiet and I will just do a little meditation. I’ll read maybe ten pages of a book and then maybe I’ll write out in a journal some affirmations. I’ll have my bulletproof coffee and get back into the day. Every single time I shower, I’m listening to something like this. I’m listening to a YouTube video. I’m getting inspired and motivated every day. People ask me all the time, “How do I get motivated?” Find someone on YouTube, put it in your shower. When you’re getting ready, you take a shower. All you need is ten to twelve minutes of something that motivates you throughout the day to get you in that right state of mind, then you can go out and do what you do best.

I thought it would just automatically happen. I do it a few times and all of a sudden, I create this habit or discipline. You got to do it every single day. Every single day you have to wake up knowing that these first ten, twenty, 30 minutes, no matter what happens, I’m doing this. It’s amazing because when I don’t do this, my day doesn’t operate nearly as effective or productive as when I do. When I do it, I don’t know how it works. I just know that it does work and my day feels more on purpose than if I don’t. That’s what I do or try to do four to five times a week. I work out as well, but the morning ritual is what I shared.

Thank you for that. We started this episode with gratitude. I’m always hesitant to say the word end anyway because it always feels like the beginning when we do. We sometimes deliver online content and webinar and some other teaching format. We stopped using the slide that says, “The end.” We used to put it in there just for gags and stuff like a movie. It’s the beginning. It’s important that we’re constantly beginning and because I don’t believe in an end. This is personal beliefs stuff. I want to ask a question of our audience and our community. What if you decided to love your life, what have you decided when went to speaking about rituals? When you’re talking about a daily discipline? What if you decided to love your life no matter what?

As many of you know, I have a daily morning ritual and it has three parts. The first part is that I wake up. That’s my decision right this moment that I’m going to wake up tomorrow and it’s also a prayer that we all get to do that because there’s no guarantee. My question is how many of you are willing to wake up tomorrow morning? I hope every one of you, no matter what you’re doing at the moment, no matter what’s going on in your life, that your answer to that question is, “Yes, I want to wake up.” You realize at that moment where you’re waking up, taking that first conscious breath of the morning, there are people who will be taking their last breath at that same moment. They’ll also be babies born and they’ll be taking their first breath of life. It is a sacred moment. It’s something that we can feel grateful for regardless of whether tomorrow involves you having to go to traffic court or divorce court. Maybe you’re going on a job interview or something amazing happening regardless of all that.

That breath is enough to be awake and alive at that moment and is enough to be grateful. That’s part two. Just sit in a state of gratitude and appreciation for yourself and then to be able to put your feet on the floor, to be able to stand up and declare something out loud that is an intention. It’s a powerful prayer of gratitude. The words that we use is, “I love my life. I love my life. I love my life.” What if you decided to love your life no matter what? It’s been a blessing, Scott, to have you on the show. I enjoyed this conversation. I know our folks will, as well. I want to let everybody know that we’re all in it together. Whether you know it or not, you are loved. I will tell you without being able to see you at this moment, that I love you and take care of yourself. Let’s take care of each other. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

If you haven’t yet subscribed, please feel free to do so. We love the reviews on iTunes. Leave a review or leave a comment. It’s easier for us to reply back to that as well. If you want to get involved in a community of people who are pivoting and are interested in the kinds of things we talked about, then feel free to go to PivotFB.com. That will take you right to the front door of our Start My PIVOT Facebook group. There are lots of amazing like-minded and like-hearted people there as well. It’s just a good place to be.

Important Links:

• Scott Hansen
• Around The Year
• Success Hackers
• Pivot
• Success Hackers – Podcast
• iTunes – The Conscious PIVOT Podcast
• PivotFB.com
• http://www.ScottHansenConsulting.com

About Scott Hansen