Here is today’s Game and what’s going on.
Today, we’re starting Dave Hollis‘ book, Get Out of Your Own Way. Hollis is the CEO of the Hollis Company, a company that exists to help people build better lives. He is husband to New York Times best-selling author Rachel and father to Jackson, Sawyer, Ford, and Noah. Together with his wife, Dave hosts the podcast Rise Together, the #1 health podcast on iTunes. Dave was previously president of distribution for the Walt Disney Studios until he left to apply his experiences to the expansion of the Hollis Company. Dave and his family live in Austin, Texas, where he drives a 1969 Ford Bronco named Incredible Hulk and has a mini schnauzer named Jeffrey.
Today’s highlights and declaration come from the book’s Introduction. Let’s jump in:
- Do you want to grow, or do you want to die? Do you want to rise to the level of who you know you could be? Do you want to have an exceptional marriage, be a present father?
- Pain can be incredible leverage. The possibility of underutilizing your potential can be incredible leverage. So can brutal, obvious truth. The idea that you could be more but got in your own way should wake you up in the middle of the night. The idea that you could have been more and might look back at the end of your life with regret should be the single greatest motivator you can tap into.
- Do you want to grow, or do you want to die? Do you want to rise to the level of who you know you could be? Do you want to have an exceptional marriage, be a present father?
- Pain can be incredible leverage. The possibility of underutilizing your potential can be incredible leverage. So can brutal, obvious truth. The idea that you could be more but got in your own way should wake you up in the middle of the night. The idea that you could have been more and might look back at the end of your life with regret should be the single greatest motivator you can tap into.
- As much as it is possible to change your life for the better, before any of that can happen, you have to dig into what is keeping you from a more exceptional life in the first place. You have to do the hard work of identifying and acknowledging the stories you tell yourself that control your life and keep you running in place.
- Here’s the truth: You can stick to your guns and keep believing that “real men don’t . . . ,” or you can be fulfilled. You can feel uncomfortable about asking for help, or you can grow. You can feel strange about letting your guard down and becoming vulnerable (gasp), or you can connect with the people you love on a level that actually matters.
- All of us could benefit from reaching for more internally, from improving our mental health. All. Of. Us. Even you.
- Self-help is not for broken people.
- In fact, none of us is truly broken. We can suffer through seasons of hardship—we all have areas that are or have been fractured—but we are not broken in and of ourselves. If we know this bigger picture, we can admit the places where we are damaged and apply a salve to those wounds. And, once we get out of our distressed places, self-help is also for whole and healed people who want a fuller, richer life. It took admitting where I was damaged and applying that salve to see how it could help. That evidence revealed a huge gift: once I was out of my rut, I saw that the continued application of those tools can also take a healthy version of me further than I’ve ever been before, as a husband, as a father, as a man.
You can find things short-term to make you happy, but if you want to truly be fulfilled you need to be growing. And in order to grow, you need to put in the time, do the work, and learn to kick the lies putting limits on who and what you can be.
