Achieving The “Unreasonable” | Elite Performance Podcast #10

Itamar Marani 0:00
Two friends, two entrepreneurs are sitting together having a meal. And one of them tells the other his goals, and doesn't what he wants to achieve and what he's looking to accomplish both in his business and his personal life. And other guys says him, man, I don't think that's reasonable. It's a bit of an unreasonable expectation. And it's a very common situation. There's obviously a made up story. But it's a very common one, where you have somebody telling somebody else that what they want is unreasonable. Now, usually, what happens is that somebody will listen and be like, Oh, maybe I do need to change what I want. Maybe I need to be more reasonable. But the reality is that the reason most people think that something is unreasonable, is because they also have their own fears and insecurities. They're projecting onto your situation. Yes, it is unreasonable, perhaps to achieve certain things, if you're weighed down by such immense insecurities, by fears and by self doubt, every time we tried to do something that is also there in the background. So yes, it is perhaps unreasonable to accomplish all that if you have that dragging you back. But what happens is when some people don't have that, and they're being told by other people that what they want is unreasonable, will cause them to doubt themselves. And something that I see way too often. And that's what I really want to talk about today. How you can achieve what most people will think is unreasonable. And why if you're not doing things that most people think is unreasonable, there's probably a problem how you're living your life, in my opinion.

Dr. Emil 1:20
Yeah. And you know, you mentioned one conversation there, actually, it's society at large will have this feeling of unreasonableness, and what is acceptable and what isn't. And that permeates into people as kind of a narrative as to what they can and can't do. So as you say, you know, average, by definition is what most people are. Therefore, if you are being held that if your what you are doing seems unreasonable, that's probably a good indicator flag or marker to head towards it. Yeah. And on an individual level, when you have these individual conversations, then the another motivation for people to drag you down is because they fear that if you get better than they'll have to do something about themselves. And the ego doesn't like that.

Itamar Marani 2:07
Yeah, I think, even if you get to go deeper than that, you're challenging a foundational worldview of what they think is reasonable and unreasonable to that. Yeah. And that's the real stuff that why people get so defensive, and something's been so aggressive about this, like, No, you're being unreasonable. But they're really saying, and they without recognizing, and they're like, you're challenging me here in a way that I am not comfortable with. Yeah, because what I think is reasonable for me, is not what you just said. Yeah. So either you're very wrong, or you're pointing out something that I don't like to hear right now. Yeah. And that's really the big thing about it.

Dr. Emil 2:39
Yeah. And I might actually have to do some work. And then I risk failure. And that would be bad. And this is all subconscious, I feel, I don't think this happens at a necessarily at a conscious level. A really classic example is when someone goes on a diet and tries to lose a bit of weight. Everyone's like, No, you don't need to lose weight, you look fine. Everything's okay. You know, and that's subconsciously dragging people down. Because they don't want to have to do anything about their own health. Just super common, super, super common. Yeah,

Itamar Marani 3:06
I think it is. People will. People don't like having their beliefs jobs. Most people don't, unless you're very, very intentional about it. And when you say like, this is where I'm going to call your shots, so to speak, I'm going big, this is what I'm going to accomplish. And for them, it seems unreasonable like that they can't do it. They immediately like get defensive about because what does this mean about me if this person is doing, and I think what I've seen is that what it probably means about most people, is it they haven't done the work to clear the debris that's caused them to not be able to do that. It's like when we look at entrepreneurship, really about really clarify what creates a really good entrepreneur, someone who's able to identify problems really, really well, and then solve the correct problems and do it in a way that's pretty audacious, those three things, if you do those, well, you'll grow. Now, if you have two people, one who that's all he needs to worry about. And then you have another person who also has to worry about his own self doubt and insecurities and how he puts his projection of sense of self onto each and every problem in the business. What he will be able to achieve, will be far less than the other person. So the other person that he's going to be able to use is going to seem unreasonable to that guy. And he's going to label them as unreasonable. And if he tells him what he wants to achieve, that's going to make this other guy mad. Because he's going to feel like unreasonable. Why can he do why can I do it? And you get defensive? Does that make sense?

Dr. Emil 4:29
Yeah, yeah. And I think it manifests as discomfort as anxiety is stresses resent as multiple things. Maybe not anger.

Itamar Marani 4:38
I've seen people mock other people sometimes. Offensive mechanism.

Dr. Emil 4:43
Comedy joking self deprecation. Yeah. Right.

Itamar Marani 4:48
And that's the thing. So it's like it. I think anger people mock. That's how these authentic comes out. That's what I mean by that. Like people mock each other because it's like, it's just their stuff, but they're trying to project it onto you. They are not, like I said, aware enough to be able to say, You know what something is poking me, I don't like it, I need to work on myself, the easier route is to just kind of dismiss it in a way to dismiss it as by mocking,

Dr. Emil 5:11
yeah.

Itamar Marani 5:13
100 now, so that was a little tangent I wanted to open the pod with. And what we really want to do today is, I want to share the framework that I've found that helps people really become unreasonable, and achieve unreasonable things, but most people think is completely unreasonable. And what I mean by that is not just being able to tunnel and only do one thing and be single to focus and exceeding that, but really have this kind of life, that seems unreasonable to a lot of people, and to call the shot and basically say, This is what I want, and actually go forth and succeed. And it's going to be kind of a six part, it's called a six pillars to this kind of process. And that's what I really want to share today and give you guys really, the concrete framework of how you can achieve something that most people will think is really unreasonable.

Dr. Emil 5:53
So I'm gonna just yeah, this sounds great. And I just want to recap for my own benefit. So the three things that you mentioned that people need, on beat to be a good entrepreneur to be audacious.

Itamar Marani 6:05
So again, there's a lot of things but I think that when I was talking about how, if you're weighed down by personal ethics, or you need to be audacious, you have to have an relations goal, to really do something big, that's just a prerequisite. Yeah, then you have to like, logically, you have to be really capable of identifying the problem correctly, what needs to be resolved, and then you have to know the correct solution to it, and you have to be able to execute. Now, all three of those things you're gonna get, really, you're gonna get really, really compromised, if you also have all this internal baggage that you're projecting onto every decision you make in the business. Well, if we make this mistake, or if we do this or that, well, that mean about me, real people judge me? Am I good enough? All that kind of stuff? And so going for the big things that are going to stretch you and will, by definition, cause you to slip up a little bit here, there. That seems unreasonable, because you can't handle it.

Dr. Emil 6:56
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That so for having been through this process before myself, you know, having these the three things is like the rocket ship. And then what you're going to describe now is like taking the weight the ballast off, to make it easier to take off and to keep moving. Now,

Itamar Marani 7:14
we're gonna go beyond that, like we did that in one of the previous episodes. What I want to do today is give a whole arc like, how do you do that from start to finish? How do you become that individual that can achieve what most people think is unreasonable? What's the process to take from step from step one to step six, you're gonna kind of have to rinse repeat as you go up and up and like levels of the game. But this is like a framework that if you keep using, you will keep going up and up and up. And this what I've seen just what I've seen works.

Dr. Emil 7:37
And I think it's worth just highlighting that bit, as well as this isn't a six step thing that you do once and forget about, because you're at a certain level one is at a certain level right now. So the first cycle will take you to here. And then there's new baggage, new problems, new things on surface. So then you do another cycle, you get to the next level, and it keeps going up. So this is an ongoing thing. But each time you're rising to a higher level, yeah.

Itamar Marani 8:06
Then you'll see as we talk about it, it's not just the baggage, it's even something as simple as goals. And like I said, it's cycles, I call it seasons, it's like, you're gonna have a certain goal for a certain season, you're gonna reach that goal. And we're going to talk about, like, the six step process can help you reach that goal. But once you reach it, you're gonna have to readjust, you're gonna have to have a new goal. You don't have to, but you will probably want to have a new goal, and then everything's gonna have to adjust that as well. Everything kind of grows with that. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, let's go. Great. So, first thing you got to do, if you want to have something unreasonable, you gotta clarify what that is, you got to set your target, like, if you don't have a target, you're not going to hit it, you got to get clear on what your end goal is, and what you want. And I'm saying that not from a place to inspire you or for it to be like very kind of like fluffy and woowoo, and get a vision board, but to say, this is what I'm trying to do. So this is what I'm trying to do, I can now start to understand how I need to be who I need to become, that could achieve this kind of thing. And what you want to do to hurt time cycles and seasons, you want to get clear on what the end goal is, but also like, what's the actual target for the next season for the next cycle? For the next six months? What do you want to accomplish? Because if you have that very clear, you can start distilling Who do I need to change into and evolve into in order to accomplish that? Is this making sense phase one?

Dr. Emil 9:26
Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. And what I would just add in there is that you're first iteration of what you want to achieve will be different from your second and third and fourth iteration, not just because you're hitting goals, but because you are able to see the potential as being much much bigger.

Itamar Marani 9:48
Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna get to that is you're gonna see how it all wraps together. And I think that's phase six. We're going to talk about that, but there's a reason it all flows together.

Dr. Emil 9:56
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Mr.

Itamar Marani 10:01
Alright, so that's phase one, you first got to identify like, what the end goal is, what the seasonal goal is, and then set as a standard, what you need to do and who you need to become, what is this kind of person that would make achieving this goal of yours and the end goal, kind of inevitable, because honestly, external success is a downstream effect of who you are internally. So if you can figure out who internally you need to be, that success will come might take longer, I'd be a little shorter, but it will come to downstream effect. So after you have that wrapped up, you got to figure out your effective mindset. Now, we've kind of talked about this before a little bit, there's no such thing as a really the good or a bad mindset. There's a mindset that's effective in getting you towards a specific goal, and an ineffective mindset of getting you towards that specific goal. Like we do a gap analysis. And we say, this is where this person currently is this where he wants to get to. Kim, specifically, this is where he is, this is where he wants to get to, and you got to figure out what's gonna be the effective mindset is gonna be the bridge to help him cross that divide. What does he need to focus on? How does he need to behave? This making sense so far?

Dr. Emil 11:06
Yeah. And that's step two, right?

Itamar Marani 11:08
That is step two. Okay. First of all, now, we got to figure out this kind of the operating system, the internal operating system he has, how do these think, what does he do?

Dr. Emil 11:17
So so the goal who you have to be to reach that goal is the kind of one in the same, but then the mindset of that person who you need to be to reach that goal is then step two. Step two

Itamar Marani 11:26
is how you actually break that down. Yeah, like not just like a high level psycho, I need to be someone who's really audacious, someone's great, or someone who delegates, whatever it may be. But that's how you really break it down. And you've been through the arena, the way we do it is pretty simple. We say, Okay, if this is the kind of person this is the standard you're trying to meet, what are the top three values that you should hold? And what we absolutely do not ask ever is, what are your top values? We don't do that. Because what we're trying to say here, it's again, we're always trying to force an evolution and internal revolution where you can grow and asking somebody, what are their top values? It's like, it's a nice question. It's a fluffy question, because it makes everybody feel really aligned. But it doesn't actually push the envelope. It doesn't say, okay, how can you grow here? Because we're saying there's a gap here, like we said, we did a gap analysis, there's a gap. What values are you missing in order to evolve from the person you are today into the person you need to become to achieve what you want?

Dr. Emil 12:17
That that's the key difference, I feel because when people identify their values, they kind of see things which either they have, or they would like to have. And it's like, yeah, integrity, blah, blah, blah, whatever. They find these lists and pick out words, which make them feel warm and fuzzy inside. But this seems specifically, okay, I've got a goal, I need to get to it. What is missing? For me to get to that? What do I need to embody every day? Yeah, to get to to this. So the values are actually your, your weaknesses or your gaps? And those are the things that you need to focus on.

Itamar Marani 12:52
Yes. And it's like you're saying it's hyper intentional. It's hyper intentional for this work currently. And this one I'm getting into the next season. Like, for example, one of my values, I do this for myself as well, one of my values for this past quarter after I was really burnt out, I a lot of traveling, I COVID. I got lung COVID. It was really bad. One of my primary values was recovery. Doesn't my values. One thing is I need to value recovery. I need to be disciplined about this. It's not my natural tendency to take a step back. But right now, what will serve me and getting me to the next level is to recover and go slow, so I can really go fast later. Yeah. So it's like, it's all about understanding that and putting into perspective, what do you need right now to get to the next level, as is what is a nice value to have? As a general question.

Dr. Emil 13:35
Yeah. And as is kind of obvious, these will change over time, these will change with seasons with goals. And that's okay.

Itamar Marani 13:46
It's, I want to say like beyond that, it's okay. It's like if it's the problem? Yeah, yeah. It's the season. Let's just also to clarify, I like to view the season in six months periods, every six months, you should kind of do this framework again, and figure out what your where do I need to go? What things needs to change? Because things will need to change as you evolve. That's just, it's just what it is. So it's phase number two, clear the effective mindset.

Dr. Emil 14:10
phase number two is clear. And I think might be jumping the gun somewhat, but just values are great, but they need to be associated with actions.

Itamar Marani 14:21
Yes. Oh, sorry, we didn't clarify that. So after you figure out the values, you got to distill rules. And you got to figure out, okay, what specific rules will enforce these values. For example, if my value was recovering, one very clear rule I have to have is that I finished working by four. I can't play around with that. Another very simple rule I need to have is that I go to the beach every other day with my dog and we go for a long walk, because that helps me unwind. These are rules that say if I follow these rules, it's very hard to argue that I'm living this value Yeah. And like you saw, it's they're very tangible things, the things that I can measure, they have a quantitative measure to them. It's not just like, oh, I tried to take it a bit easier. If that doesn't help anybody else, but always be ask yourself. Yeah, exactly. So that's really the big thing. Is this making sense?

Dr. Emil 15:16
Yeah. And just to double, double double emphasize that they have to be real world real time actionable things like, where in the last week, did you compromise this value of recovery? And how can you fix it this next week, and for you stopping work at four o'clock, boom. And every time you don't do that you're compromising your core values. So no shit, you don't reach your goal. It's a brutal and whatever measure what you want to achieve, like,

Itamar Marani 15:45
is this clear? The point of having an effective mindset and getting this stuff really clear, is that in order, like evolution isn't easy. But when it's complicated, and it's vague, it becomes infinitely harder. So if you can create clarity and really simplify, what are the things that you need to do and just say, if I live by these nine rules for the next six months, I'm going to evolve? Again, it won't necessarily be easy, but it'll be infinitely simpler. And that simplicity does add a measure of ease into it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Great. And I think finally, kind of what we're getting into this is that you also have to have a system to track this, you have to be able to measure it, like these are not this is not something you do once and then you forget it. This is something that you keep doing consistently in order to track your progress. And also, in order to keep awareness, keep a certain level of awareness. And what we'd like to do is, once a week, people have this tracker where we figure out all the rules or values. And once a week, we go in, like, how are you doing one set? And serves two purposes, one to really debrief and see why is this not happening? What's going on here, which we're gonna get into in a little bit. And also like, just to keep them top of mind, the something you're trying to optimize for, don't forget, we know you have your natural tendencies, we're trying to build new tendencies that get you to the next level. So you need to be aware of this, these need to be top of mind. Yeah, that makes sense.

Dr. Emil 17:05
The other things to add there as well is that, you know, this all seems very straightforward up till now, and it is straightforward. But when you define these rules, that also feels warm and glowy. Inside the crunch point is when it gets to four o'clock, and you're like, just one more email just one more call, but it's really important bla bla bullshit. That's when you have to have the, the the courage, the whatever it is to draw a line, despite the consequences, because this is what you have defined. And for me, that was one of the biggest game changes. Just this concept of courage. I mean, Courage doesn't mean anything. Courage is this fluffy, horrible word that everyone throws around. What is courage, courage is taking the action in the moment when you've got a difficult decision. And taking the hard choice. Right. So hard choice, easy life, easy choice, hard life. And that's, that's literally it. And for me, once it was broken down to that level of granularity, I was like, so that is how I improve my life, I wait for these little difficult decisions to come up. And I take the appropriate action, how ever difficult it is.

Itamar Marani 18:13
And I think the beauty of it, what you saw is that it made it easy for you to take the hard choices, because at least knew what they were like, This is what I mean by that, though, it's like it's, it's so when something's difficult, it's so easy to be as herself out of it. It's so easy, because we can always justify it somehow, like we've talked about this in previous podcasts, we can always tell this kind of some kind of story to ourselves and bullshit our way out of it. But because you've done the legwork ahead of time and really clearly defined that, you know, actually no, I know this what I should be doing. Yeah, I know, this is the right thing. I know that in hindsight, I'll be happy that I did this. We proud that a goodness.

Dr. Emil 18:47
Yeah, and, you know, to add the another layer there, when you don't do it, there isn't the time to beat yourself up to call yourself names or whatever. It's a point at which you reflect. Okay, why was this week my keeping to the value of six out of 10? Okay, because these were the decisions that I didn't hit. Why did that happen? What can I adjust for the week going forward? If you weren't perfect the first time you iterated? You would be superhuman. So we're not. I mean, we're not expecting perfection. But iteration is the key here. So okay, that was awful. No shit, it was the first time you did it. How can you improve it next time? And that improvement is what's going to change the game rather than being perfect and and beating yourself up when you're not.

Itamar Marani 19:27
So I kind of disagree? No, hit me. Let's do. I think that iteration is not the optimal way to do it as the reason so I think the reason and we're gonna go into phase number three is basically clearing up any emotional issues that could be getting in your way from acting out on that. So in phase one, we clarify the end goal phase two, we clarified like how do you need to conduct yourself in order to get to that end goal? If you were a machine if you were a robot, that's all you needed? Target programming good, but the reality is, we're all humans, and we do have our emotions. We have our doubts, we have all this things that make us safe, sometimes other people unreasonable, whatever it may be, we have all that stuff that gets in our way. So, if you don't clear that out, that's usually the primary reason you're not able to live out in these new values, these new rules, because you might want to say, like, for example, for me, I knew recovery was a big thing. I knew I had to take bullet for walk every other day. But I also still had an insecurity that if I don't work hard, I'm not gonna be able to achieve success, because at one time in the military, I quit. Like, that still rings in there. So that's something I have to be aware of. Because that's what can pull me in the wrong direction. And beyond just trying to reiterate and trying to say, Okay, I didn't do this, why didn't I do this value really helps me get to the core of it. It's also know that like, every day at nine, when I want to take both for a walk, I'm gonna have that voice in my head. It's gonna tell me Itamar, you need to work hard, otherwise, you're going to fail, you're going to suffer. Because in in knowing that, and the ability to anticipate that, it makes it so much more doable. It's like being able to like know, okay, you're gonna go into an ice bath, instead of just getting a bucket of ice water, like thrown into your face first thing in the morning? Is that difference? Does that make sense?

Dr. Emil 21:07
It makes perfect sense. And you said it yourself. It's going to make it so much easier. And what you've described as multiple ways of making it as easy as possible. The reality is, yeah, no fucking hard.

Itamar Marani 21:19
Exactly. We're just really, success is hard. And that's the thing. It's like, yeah, really climbing a mountain top. And like getting what you want life or doing things that are reasonable, it's still hard. There's only two bullshit about that. Yeah. But you want to make as much effort as possible to make it as easy as possible. And again, removing that away, getting clear on where you're going, all that these are things that give you the best possible opportunity to achieve something that is difficult.

Dr. Emil 21:43
Yeah, without without this system, it's impossible. It's It's literally impossible,

Itamar Marani 21:48
out of unless they're there and people have achieved by the making of it. I'm not

Dr. Emil 21:52
saying you're this system is unique and special. But it's, you know, a variation on this system of, you know, setting goals, living to certain values, you know, whatever, however you want to word it. Like, if you if you have a fluffy goal, you're never going to achieve it, you're not going to stumble over x. And it's exactly, yeah. So this is this system makes it as easy as possible to reach the goal. It's still difficult, because success and doing unreasonable things, by definition is difficult. And I think all I'm saying and we're saying the same thing is on that off chance that we human and stumble and not 10 out of 10. All I'm saying is, how do I do better next time? Yeah, there's no you know,

Itamar Marani 22:32
so let's, let's go forward, and then we're gonna go back to this and it's gonna sink in together really? Well, let's do it. Okay, so phase number three, let's get into phase number three. phase number three is mental block awareness, mental and emotional block awareness. Like how we said, I know I have these insecurities, I have these issues. It's first bringing awareness to them and flushing them out. And we've we've done previous episodes on this, so we're not gonna get into too much. And then phase number four is we also have resolution, the toolkit that we give you and how you can figure out like, Okay, this is what happened in the past, this is how I think, is it true? Is it not? Can I let go of this and how can I also catch this as it comes up, if there are situations that I'm not prepared for. Now what you want to do, we said, like, you have to have a system, how we use a tracker. On the left hand side, you have your values that boil down into rules, and you give yourself a one to 10 on them. On the right hand side, you have your insecurities are your primary biases that pull you in the wrong direction, the top three of them, and you say on one to 10, how much of these have been affecting me. Because if, for example, you're doing really well on the tracker, but these are still like flaring up, they're really, really affecting your insecurities and your doubts. You need to focus on them, if they're not affecting you anymore, but still something with your tracker is like you're doing everything well, but you're not achieving the results you want something in your tracker has got to change. And it's a really good way to understand that as long as these two things are working and your goals are being achieved, you're on the right path. But if something is just completely out of whack, so you can get focused on because in theory, if you have these two things locked in, you know exactly what you should be doing, and you're doing it correctly. And none of your internal stuff is pulling you in the wrong direction. You should be really streamlining towards your goal. And I think always seen that front and center, it really gives you that clarity. Okay, this is what I'm anticipating, like we said, it's gonna make it easier because I know I'm gonna anticipate these kind of pulls against me. And this is also what I should be focusing on. keep my eyes on the prize, and let's go for it.

Dr. Emil 24:26
Yeah, I can't remember what you called them in the in the arena when I did it, but it was you must have these programs, these pre programs when you get into a situation how you how you overcome. When this happens then,

Itamar Marani 24:38
yeah, the mental models, mental models and models. Yeah, we had mental models and we had indicators. So mental models, what he was saying is that there are some really high impact events that you want to prepare for. Like maybe like once a week you have the big staff meeting that you're nervous about. You have to fire this employee you have to hire this employee you have to have that tough conversation with your spouse or like honestly even with yourself sometimes. Those are things that you can prepare ahead of time in because I know when I'm going to have this, I'm gonna have a bit of a flare up emotionally because I have this kind of insecurity, this kind of fear or this kind of doubt around it. And when that happens, I'm going to behave in a certain way, because I know I shouldn't live by that that was false. This insecurity shouldn't hold me like that. And then what we also have is indicators, indicators is a way for you to know when your emotions are starting to flare, when you're getting away from a logical place and more towards an emotional place. It's not serving. For example, some people you know, clench their jaw, some people have a tense stomach, all of a sudden, some people have certain thoughts that go on in their head. Some people just feel a certain way, they feel really anxious, they feel really scared, if you're really nervous, if you're really excited, even like in a weird way. So knowing those kinds of things, you can also catch it in the moment you say, Oh, if I'm having this thought, right, now, I need to take a step back and catch my breath for a sec, because that probably means I'm getting emotional. I'm not doing logical things, and it's gonna steer me away from what I know it should be doing in order to evolve to the next place I want to evolve. Yeah, that collagen together well

Dr. Emil 26:01
know for sure. So it's a couple of ways of identifying when the effective mindsets, could potentially fail. Exactly. And it's either through, you know, situations which have caused it in the past, and then you kind of preempt it with a program with it with a medical model. Or, if it's happening on the fly, you know, when I clench my jaw, or when I pace, then I'm agitated and emotional. And I need to stop myself, bring myself to the moment, bring awareness to what's going on and see if I can figure something out on the fly.

Itamar Marani 26:33
Yeah, or even just pause this situation? Yeah, it looks anything. Like we don't always, even if I'm having a tough conversation and say, with my spouse, and I recognize that I'm getting emotional. There's nothing wrong with me saying, Hey, hon, you know what, I think I'm getting a bit heated here. Do you mind if we take a break for a second? Because I don't want to put anything on you. That is not fair to you? Because I don't know. It's okay. I think that'd be appreciated from the other side. And to kind of summarize what you summarize for me, one is a way to be proactive, and one is a way to still be effectively reactive.

Dr. Emil 27:04
Yeah, fair. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Itamar Marani 27:07
Great. So we have phase one, clarify what you want to create effective mindset. Three, be aware of what mental blocks, you have. Four, resolve them as best as you can, and at least know how to be effectively reactive. And then we move on to phase number five, phase number five, after you've done all this, like, again, things are pretty good. But you can't take everybody with you to the mountaintop. There's a quote I love by Colin Chapman. He's the founder of the f1 Lotus team. And he said, to add, add quickness, create lightness, power makes you faster on the streets. But like this makes you faster everywhere. And basically, this is the whole model that we did about addition, by subtraction. There's all this stuff we've built up in our lives, that is weighing us down. Some of it is external stuff, like let's say certain people that we have around us certain things in our environment. And some of it is internal stuff. It's the habits that we form, the stories or excuses that we tell ourselves certain identities or labels that we put on ourselves, like, Oh, I'm an introvert. I'm not good at this, or I can't do that. And we got to figure out what about do we need to eliminate with a throw away because it doesn't serve us. And something that we have to get rid of?

Dr. Emil 28:30
Yeah, cut loose the weights, the extra weight, the baggage. Yeah, mental and physical.

Itamar Marani 28:36
Yeah, and I think this one is a really hard one for people this part of the process, because all of a sudden, it's not about just putting on more stuff. It's about really aggressively removing something. And the way I say that we see this a lot with entrepreneurship, it's like, instead of cutting the project, that doesn't work, it's much more tendency to throw a bunch of different things at it, instead of just, this doesn't work. And especially also when you get into human connections, when a lot of people have these back at friends back at home friends, or first day of school friends, these are people that you've known for a long time, not because you were intentional about saying these are people that I really value, either because I really have a great time with them and they lift me up, or because we just it, they're good for me. They're just people that we happen to know. And we grew up with them, or we were like, next to them when we just started entrepreneurs journey or whatever it may be. And we're still with them. Even though they don't do the opposite of lift us up. And I think for a lot of people saying I need to cut these people out of my life in order to make room for people that can lift me more and can be a more positive influence for me, is not something that we give ourselves permission to do. And for me, the biggest thing that's been helpful to help what I've seen help a lot of people is coming at this from a place of humility. I am not an asshole because I'm telling you, oh, I don't want to be with this person in my life anymore. I don't want them in here anymore. I'm gonna cut them off, it's not that I'm being an asshole. It's that understanding to embrace humility, and accept the fact that if I have this gap here that I'm trying to bridge and I want to climb this mountain top, I'm not Superman, I can't put everybody on my back and expect to take them with me, especially if they don't even want to go, especially if they don't want to go. And it doesn't also have to be forever. Maybe I can get to that mountaintop, and then I can really see who wants to come and I can help them come with me. I can bring them up then. And I think embracing that humility is what gives most people the permission to cut things off of the need to cut off.

Dr. Emil 30:39
Yeah, that's Bo, that was a huge one. For me, in particular, and one experience, which I found helpful was, you know, there's, there's people that you know, aren't serving your goal, and you don't want to let go, and it takes an extended period of time to let them go. Eventually, you get to that point, and you drift apart or, you know, whatever happens happens. And then you can see with hindsight, that should have happened, many months years. Most people will have an example like that in their lifetime, which is awesome. Use that as an anchor, and then look up the people who you're doing that with currently, and maybe accelerate that process, because like it's going to happen anyway, dragging it out is just going to make it more painful and less likely that once you reach the goal, you're going to be able to rekindle that relationship if you want to.

Itamar Marani 31:30
And it's like it doesn't serve anybody drag it out, there's gonna be some kind of subconscious resentment going both ways. Exactly. You're going to resent them, because you feel like they're holding you back. They might resent you because they don't want to change and you're putting something in their face, they don't want to see it. Like it's just it's about recognizing that certain point, it's not a fit anymore. And this is what it is. Yeah,

Dr. Emil 31:50
people don't. People don't necessarily want to be dragged up, for whatever reason, but that's their own shit to deal with. You can't coach them into that you can support them, you can inspire them, but you can't.

Itamar Marani 32:04
It's not your responsibility. It's not your responsibility, responsibility. That's the thing to accept. So that was kind of the personal side. And I want to give a kind of running list here. I do want to share this because can be helpful to some people. On the personal side, the thing I tell people to think about is like what habits do you need to remove that you've accumulated? That, again, just random habits that weren't attached will happen to you from here to there? What excuses do you need to eliminate? Well, we just talked about what social commitments are people? What behavior of yours, or certain character you exhibit, like jealousy? Anger, jealousy is a big one. I see a lot of times, a lot of guys, instead of thinking, Oh, this people around me are succeeding, this should be inspiring me. They're like, Oh, why can't I do it? What did they get to join, you got to let go of that. You got to throw that away and say, Okay, these are actually people that can lift me up, I'm happy about, thank God, I have these people around me. Then we talked about the story stories that we tell ourselves, because I'm one of the podcasts, we can always justify certain things by telling us these kinds of stories, like, Oh, there's more pride and doing it alone. It's bigger accomplishment, all these kind of nonsense stories. And then finally, again, that kind of identity are the labels like I'm an introvert, or I do this, I'm the kind of person who does this. Like, you have to always be ready for a state of internal revolution, if you want to change. And if you want to get the effects of change, positive effects. Those are internal things, the personal level, then on the business level, you got to figure out what also do I need to let go up? Again, like your business might have been at a certain point when you started, or maybe even a year ago, or six months, and it's repeated up. So now things have to change with it. That venture idea that you were going to pursue that you started already pursuing. Forget about that sunk cost fallacy. It doesn't serve you anymore, where you currently are on your level of your business. That's irrelevant. That product it might have to go, you got to think about it. That employee as well, that I hired the wrong employee back then. Was this employee now in the wrong seat, and it needs to be changed? Regardless of the fact that I'm connected with him that I feel uncomfortable having this conversation like, what's the truth of the situation here? Are certain KPIs certain goals, there really needs to be let go up? The dirt is out of ego, because Oh, it's hard to let go of this. We've already started that whole sunk cost fallacy stuff.

Dr. Emil 34:20
A nice tool for the sunk cost fallacy is to say to yourself, if you know what, you know, now, would you do what you did, then?

Itamar Marani 34:29
Yeah, I love that I think about a bit differently. Like if you weren't involved in this right now, if you weren't involved at all, yeah. Would you want to start it? Would you want to take it on your plate? I think that's a question. That's a it's a very pokey question, guys myself that sometimes I get mad at myself almost like, this puts the truth in my face. So obviously, but I think it's very powerful one.

Dr. Emil 34:49
Yeah, you know, whichever framework works, but if someone externally comes in and says, Why is that guy employed there? Yeah, you know,

Itamar Marani 34:56
that's a great thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's Step five, in step five, clear crystal, crystal. Alright, so now we go into Phase six, phase six, how you're saying, like your goals are going to change. And when we started about talking to phase one, this is where they change. This is where you really step into who you are, is now that we've gotten clear on what you want, we got an effective mindset, we removed a lot of emotional clutter that's getting in your way that's weighing you down. And we also remove any internal and external baggage that you gotta get out of your life. You have to reprocess be like, wait, wait, who is this person in front of me in the mirror? And what should they be achieving? And that's when we go through that kind of person X. And there's been another episode, I think, episode five or six with Ben McAdams, and he talked about it. And there's a great breakdown there if you want to go deeper into this. But basically, you have to look and assess. Who am I right now? Honestly, not how do I feel about myself? But who am I right now? What are my current current abilities? And what should I be looking to achieve? both on a personal level and a business level? Like what does my business forget about how I might feel as a CEO, my love of comedy, my level of confidence, whatever it may be, what is my current business right now? What are the assets that it has its ability? What is the reputation has all these things? What's your business like? That? has its goals? Yeah, as long as that forces a lot of reality, it's like, oh, wow, I have been playing small.

Dr. Emil 36:23
You know, you've said this before, and it fits here perfectly. If someone else had my exact skill, set, mindset, assets, business, blah, blah, blah, whatever. What are they achieving? Could they achieve more like, why am I here? And someone else is here with the exact same everything or even less sometimes?

Itamar Marani 36:43
Yeah, it's because they go for it. And I think a lot of times, we don't give ourselves permission to go for it. And the point of this, this last pillar, is to force you to see reality, what should you be going for? Because now you're armed with a toolkit, you're not do this is a skill set. You've learned how to do this, this is a skill of getting clear on what you want creating an effective mindset, you learn those skills, getting clear on what blocking what's blocking you emotionally or mentally, there is a skill, learning how to resolve it's another skill you picked up, you put in your toolkit boom, and then find out so learning to remove things are getting in your way. So now that you have all those skills, once you can also clarify what you should be doing. Because when you assess things logically, like rationally just black and white, write these things on paper, then you can really see oh, wow, okay, I can go to a whole new level. And that's when the cycle starts, again, because they're gonna go out this whole new level, that's the goal. So if that's the goal now, what is my effective mindset need to be in order to reach that? And if that's what I'm trying to do, what potential mental blocks will I reach here? Well, I see here, this height, this will come up. Exactly, yeah. And you'll probably see that it's the same thing in a different way. It's like we have an expression, he was like, same lady different dress. It's kind of like that is you're going to be similar things, but just in a different way, they come out. And you now have a toolkit if you do this, to really become unreasonable, and live an unreasonable life and achieve unreasonable things like this is what I found is help the most amount of people. And there's a reason this arc exists as well. I think he wanted to bring this up before. Before we got on here. We talked about therapy and this and what's the difference? And I think you wanted to bring this up a little bit.

Dr. Emil 38:17
Yeah, so I resonate. I like therapy therapy is great. I resonated with this from achieving things points of view, because it has very distinct steps that you follow, which make logical sense and which drive you in an upward motion. Step Therapy is fluffy, it doesn't necessarily have a goal, you just kind of float and it, it has a place. I don't want to poopoo it because I love it. But this is very, very different. This is very action, goal oriented and focused. And it will it will help you heal things it will help you level up it will help with personal development. It is powerful.

Itamar Marani 39:03
Yeah, I want to say from a different perspective, I have seen it has a basic thing it has a continuum to it. There's a progression to it if

Dr. Emil 39:09
you will, there's a path and a progression. Yes.

Itamar Marani 39:13
And the reason that we don't first and people have asked me this like why don't we do first the whole stuff for like getting clear on your mental blocks and and getting results getting those results so that you can see more your goals more clearly and all that why don't we do that first. And because then you have a problem. What happens a lot of times in therapy is that people go into their past they try to fix things and they do they sometimes they're able to heal and let go of a lot of things. So basically what happens then is that they remove the foundation of their beliefs in the world and how they operate, what they shouldn't be doing, how they should be thinking. And then they kind of stare into this abyss their whole foundations become very very shaky because there are no more foundations are taking them out. So what we do and the reason we're doing this order is because we want to like basically have pre built in foundations that you can just slide right in. Once you remove this stuff that's not there. Anyone shouldn't be there anymore. You have to is no such a slide, right? Because it's there, things don't feel shaky, they actually feel really exciting. Instead of like, first trying to remove those foundations, and then it kind of being lost was a lot of people feel like in therapy that I don't know where to go from here. I don't know what to do next, we figure out what to do next ahead of time. I see you're rubbing your face.

Dr. Emil 40:18
No, no, that's, that's just kind of something's just clicked there. That's super, super interesting. Because, you know, therapy, I suppose was developed initially for pathology for illness. And the goal was never, for people to achieve great things, it was just to get people back to a baseline and just remove some shit. So goals, they didn't care that you were left a bit wondering at the end of it. It's like when someone has a heart attack in a hospital, you give them aspirin, and you throw them out. And of course they want they're left wondering because you haven't done anything. I'm just brought them back to a rough baseline. And then like, right, next, whatever, yeah, but when you build this around a goal, then you have it like it's like a structure for this personal development to happen. It has to happen in some shape, or form. But if you drive it towards a goal, it gives you this structure, it gives you this concrete reason to do it, and it accelerates it, honestly, because you're like, Well, when I fix this, then this happens. And I can measure it with this. And then I can do the next level and you will you will heal stuff. Yeah, yeah. So that was that was big. I enjoyed that. Cool. Yeah.

Itamar Marani 41:23
Sarah is one of my in the one that we talked about a couple episodes ago, he said that, what do you have a therapy in the past that he would look like he would the therapy would help him look at his past. But he would just get caught staring at it, so to speak. And he didn't know how to move forward. That's the problem a lot of people have, because like what therapy does all times you go into your past and kind of look at it, but then just kind of caught staring, you don't know how to move beyond that, how to look beyond that. So what we try to do is preemptively create the foundation of what you look at that, well, you have to look forward to this, you can be this person, let's just get this stuff out of the way. And then you become that person, you just step into it. And that's really the beauty of it.

Dr. Emil 42:00
Yeah, so both therapy, and the first rounds of this will create an awareness. But then necessary, not the therapy will necessarily do anything beyond awareness, whereas this will drive you through the first cycle. And then each time you go again, it's a new goal. It's a new set of blocks. It's a new mindset. But it gets easier, because you've practiced that you've done it once. So this is something to be done multiple times on repeat, because there's constant development. Each time it gets easier. There's new problems, which come from, you know, what's deep down, but by the time you've done this 10 times and hammered the same insecurity. Yeah. Gone.

Itamar Marani 42:37
I was gonna say it's, it's, I think it's the same problems that manifests in different ways.

Dr. Emil 42:41
That's what I mean. Yeah, once you hit it 10 times on 10 different cycles, you really got down to the root cause not just in a row. I really know what happened to me, but I really know what happened to me. I identified what I needed to do day to day to fix it and through getting countless reps in. I'm now it's maybe it's still there. Maybe it's healed, but it's not affecting me anymore. I'm still achieving higher and higher things. Yeah.

Itamar Marani 43:04
The the word you said there the biggest thing, it's not affecting anymore. Yeah, people talk a lot of times like I have this, this mental wall that I feel like I'm hitting that what you do is you turn that wall into a tiny little bump along the road, that at first you feel and the more you go up and up. You're like, Oh, I know that bump is there. Okay, that's cool. No worries. Oh, good. Until it

Dr. Emil 43:21
just becomes an ornament that you just yeah, it exists. But yeah, it's okay. Yeah. That was that was that reached? Yeah.

Itamar Marani 43:31
Yeah, that was a big one. So I want to leave this on a bit of a different note, because like, we've given you the tools right now. And I want to go back to where we started to the whole unreasonable part. Because I think it's a really big thing. Like, I do not like it when people call me unreasonable. I used to really get angered by it. But now I've kind of been able to be at peace with it, because they're okay, I recognize their stuff. It doesn't mean that I to question myself. And the question I would love to leave the audience with is, what are you afraid to do? Just because people tell you, it's unreasonable? And when are you going to stop letting their stuff interrupt the truth and what you really want? If you can answer that, it's probably going to be a time to drive yourself into some action. Fair,

Dr. Emil 44:17
I have nothing to add.

Itamar Marani 44:22
Awesome. Alright, so I hope you guys enjoy this episode, and we will see you on the next one.

Dr. Emil 44:27
Thank you so much, guys. See you next time.