Episode 04: The Drift
In this episode of the Running Routes Podcast, Allen De Graffenreid explains “the drift,” the gradual slide from greatness into comfort, average performance, and what he calls “loserdom.” This is not about labeling people as losers. It is about helping winners who have lost momentum recognize the patterns pulling them down and build a practical system to start winning again.
Allen shares personal stories from his NFL experience with the Cincinnati Bengals and Kansas City Chiefs, along with a later season of being underemployed and overly comfortable after the mortgage market crash. In both situations, the lesson was the same: comfort can quietly replace the focus, effort, accountability, and community that helped you succeed in the first place.
In this episode, you will learn:
- What the drift is and why high achievers can slip into it without realizing it.
- Why comfort, routine, nostalgia, and lowered expectations can keep you stuck.
- How to recognize when you are no longer performing at the level you are capable of.
- Why your legacy should be built on more than accomplishments from your twenties or early career.
- How honest accountability can help you interrupt the drift.
- Why the people around you influence your standards, habits, mindset, and momentum.
- How to use community to elevate your performance and get out of a rut.
- How the ROUTES framework can help you assess your relationships, occupation, upkeep, training, enterprise, and spirituality.
- Why better sleep, physical health, learning, stronger relationships, community contribution, and spiritual connection can help you regain direction.
- How the Running Routes School Community and ROUTES Index can help you identify the areas of life that need attention.
You are not defined by a season of losing, a rut, or a period of underperformance. If you are a winner who has been drifting, the first step is to recognize it, change your environment and habits, and get around people who will challenge you to rise again.
Take the ROUTES Index and join the Running Routes School Community:
Use the link below to assess where you are across the key areas of your life, find the gaps, and begin building a path back toward purpose, growth, and momentum
https://allendegraffenreids7f7de.myclickfunnels.com/optin--c374d
Subscribe to the Running Routes Podcast for honest conversations about high achievement, life transitions, personal development, identity, health, habits, purpose, legacy, and building a meaningful next chapter.
Chapters
00:00 Good Is the Enemy of Great
00:57 What Is the Drift?
02:55 When Winners Start Losing Momentum
03:51 The Legacy Question Every High Achiever Must Ask
04:46 Drifting During My NFL Career
06:07 How Comfort Replaced Focus
08:01 The Coach Who Held Me Accountable
10:26 Why You Need Someone to Challenge You
11:46 Accountability vs. Comfort
14:10 The Real Problem: No System and No Direction
14:31 My Second Story of the Drift
16:06 Underemployment, Comfort, and Loserdom
18:26 Why Loserdom Feels So Comfortable
19:24 How Community Helped Me Raise My Level
20:23 The People Around You Shape Your Success
21:33 ROUTES: How to Stop Drifting in Every Area of Life
22:02 Relationships and Work-Life Spillover
22:31 Occupation: Become a Dog Again or Make a Change
22:58 Upkeep: Health, Sleep, and Mental Well-Being
23:27 Training: What Are You Feeding Your Mind?
24:24 Enterprise: Serve Your Community and Build Your Future
24:50 Spirit: Reconnect With Your Spiritual Life
25:50 Join the Running Routes School Community
26:18 Take the 18-Question ROUTES Index
27:01 Legacy Is Who You Help Along the Way
#HighAchievers #PersonalGrowth #GetOutOfARut #StopDrifting #LifePurpose #BuildBetterHabits #Legacy #SelfImprovement #LifeCoaching #RunningRoutesPodcast
0:00 [SPEAKER_00]: good is the enemy of great anybody knows that quote from Jim Collins he said for many times like I like to twist it around for my athletes and say the number one enemy of great is good when you come out here to be an athlete [SPEAKER_00]: Do your best, work hard, and work towards being great. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't just be good, like all your teammates. [SPEAKER_00]: You want to be better than not only your teammates, but people in the city, people in the state. [SPEAKER_00]: You want to be great, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So, for those of us that understand that, they understand being great, that's where we are at, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So, when I talk about us, I mean, I'm talking about winners. [SPEAKER_00]: Those of us that are winners, sometimes we spend too much time thinking about what we used to do when we were winners. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so the first question you have to ask yourself is when I said winners, did you say oh, he's talking to me or did you say I used to win a lot, but do I really maybe I don't win like I used to win like, oh, maybe that's maybe that's an issue.
0:57 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're that person, that's who we're talking about today. [SPEAKER_00]: So my name is Aldi Graff and Reed is the running routes podcast with Aldi Graff and Reed. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host. [SPEAKER_00]: So what we're gonna talk about today is what is going on with those of us that are winners that go through peers in our life where we just don't feel like we're winning. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like we used to do great work at our job, but now we're just kinda doing sort of kinda work at our job. [SPEAKER_00]: We're not kicking tail and taking names like we used to. [SPEAKER_00]: We've kind of fallen into this, this, I don't know what it is. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I do know what it is. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, what it is is just the drift. [SPEAKER_00]: So many of us have come from greatness. [SPEAKER_00]: We are great, but we find ourselves falling into what I call the drift.
1:42 [SPEAKER_00]: We all were doing great things and just slowly, slowly, slowly drifted to average. [SPEAKER_00]: Then we got down to mediocre and some of us have started to dip further and further further. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything I'm talking about today is hippo critical. [SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna talk about that because I've spent way too much time in the drift, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And the drift has gotten me to a place I like to call loser dumb. [SPEAKER_00]: So people that live in loser dumb, as we talked about before, are not losers because if you're a winner, you're a winner and winners that lose are not losers. [SPEAKER_00]: However, if you're a winner and you're losing and living in loser dumb, [SPEAKER_00]: The people around you might be like, eh, this guy's losing quite a lot.
2:29 [SPEAKER_00]: He's starting to look and resemble a loser, right? [SPEAKER_00]: But as winners, we need to always make sure that we're taking steps, stripes, to make sure everybody knows that we're winners, most importantly, us ourselves. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you are questioning whether or not you're winner or not, that's something we need to talk about. [SPEAKER_00]: Something we need to talk about is how to get you out of the drift into a system that's going to get you back to winning, knowing your winner, feeling like a winner. [SPEAKER_00]: and being the winner that you are, okay? [SPEAKER_00]: So, the real question you have to ask yourself is when you think about being in loser dumb and you hear that story where they say, so many men die at the age of 35, but they're buried at the age of 68.
3:13 [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, they kind of just kicked it in and just kind of gave up on life. [SPEAKER_00]: They got into a rut and just stayed there. [SPEAKER_00]: And the rut got a nice little groove. [SPEAKER_00]: And it just became a thing that trapped them. [SPEAKER_00]: And they never made it out. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're just living their lives. [SPEAKER_00]: They're just going through the motion. [SPEAKER_00]: They're not trying to be great at work. [SPEAKER_00]: They're not trying to be a great father or great husband. [SPEAKER_00]: They're just going through life. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the saying is, go along to get along, get along, just get along and get along. [SPEAKER_00]: They're not doing anything magnificent with their life. [SPEAKER_00]: They're just here to spend the rest of their time doing what they're going to do and when these days they'll kill over, kick the bucket and die, right? [SPEAKER_00]: What you all need to think about is what is your legacy? [SPEAKER_00]: Like when they're at your celebration, just funeral, whatever you want to call it, the end of your life.
3:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want them telling stories about things you did when you were 20? [SPEAKER_00]: 25? [SPEAKER_00]: I always said, if I pass away and I die in it, my celebration, they spend all their time talking about what a great athlete I was. [SPEAKER_00]: That was way back then, if I don't accomplish anything from the time that I'm a great athlete to the time I laid this earth, that's on me. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a huge failure, huge mistake on me. [SPEAKER_00]: So you need to make sure you think about your legacy. [SPEAKER_00]: When people are talking about you at your services, are they going to talk about what you did last year? [SPEAKER_00]: Three, four years ago, before maybe the ailment got to, are they going to talk about what you did way back in the day? [SPEAKER_00]: When you were young and vigorous and you were doing your thing, [SPEAKER_00]: Because if all I talk about is how great you were as an athlete or when you're in your 20s, what did you do with those next 30, 40, 50 years?
4:45 [SPEAKER_00]: What did you do? [SPEAKER_00]: That's where the town's comes in. [SPEAKER_00]: That's where the drift takes people over and it gets people trapped, pinned down, and taken care of, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So as I said, for me to say these things is very much hypocritical and we're going to talk today about a couple of times that I found myself in the drift. [SPEAKER_00]: Not so much lose of them, but in the drift, right? [SPEAKER_00]: The first story has been I'ms of the Bengals. [SPEAKER_00]: uh... at a college as many of you know i walked on a house state earned a scholarship after three years after that became a starter not a regular star me and christian this is going to a house these whole fame this next month uh... we tear time as a starter at the house fortunate i worked my tail off and i got picked up by the Cincinnati bingo so i spent my rookie year with the bingles [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm telling you through camp, I was a dog.
5:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever they need it done, I got it done. [SPEAKER_00]: I was the first guy out there running crazy routes, running fast, flying around, like I have my hair on fire, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And then at the end of camp, then they make the roster, and they say, okay, I'm gonna put you on practice squad. [SPEAKER_00]: One number one job in practice squad is to make sure the guys are ready to play on Sunday. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the Bengals, we weren't great at that time. [SPEAKER_00]: They're not great like they are now. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's still your job to get the team ready whether we win or lose. [SPEAKER_00]: And we had a lot of elves, took a lot of elves at year. [SPEAKER_00]: And what happened for me was, I went from being the focus guy that had to make it.
6:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And then once the check started coming in and I was on the team and they put me in the team poster, if I'm on the team poster, that means I'm on the team, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not how the NFL are not for long works. [SPEAKER_00]: and what happened is I started to slip. [SPEAKER_00]: I started to drift, drift, drift. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm sitting there, not thinking about, how can I sit down and figure how to become better as a receiver? [SPEAKER_00]: How can I maybe help these guys get better by running better routes or whatever else? [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of thinking that, I start thinking, should I go see my lady in Indiana this weekend when the team travels to California or should I have her come see me? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we probably, there's a nice restaurant there in Indiana where she is, you know, I started thinking about these things, and then you start thinking on Tuesdays, my day off, that new CD came out.
7:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I said CD. [SPEAKER_00]: That new CD came out. [SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm gonna go buy that CD. [SPEAKER_00]: Man, and maybe I'll get my tires rotated. [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of thinking about Wednesday, Thursday, Friday coming out there kicking tail every day, I started thinking about the other things, and it may be falling to the drift. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're not working as hard. [SPEAKER_00]: You're not lifting as hard. [SPEAKER_00]: Started the game weight. [SPEAKER_00]: Not the gaining weight was a big deal back then. [SPEAKER_00]: Started to put on a little bit of weight. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I slowed down. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, but my film wasn't as good. [SPEAKER_00]: And out of the blue, they cut me. [SPEAKER_00]: And when you get cut, and you're in the drift, you're more like, why would they cut me? [SPEAKER_00]: I was working so hard. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was such a valuable member of the team, instead of taking a look at yourself and realize it dude, you're being a bum out there.
7:43 [SPEAKER_00]: You should have been working harder. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, force them for me. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a great, great, had the greatest age and ever rich cats out of Cincinnati, and rich landed me with Kansas City Chiefs. [SPEAKER_00]: So obviously there's a difference between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Kansas Chiefs in that year. [SPEAKER_00]: Since the Kansas Chiefs are on their way to the playoffs, they want some extra legs that they brought me in. [SPEAKER_00]: And pretty quick, after I got there, I realized things were different, things were different and things were better. [SPEAKER_00]: And my coach was very different. [SPEAKER_00]: He, Al-san is the being, but you know, Al-san is a great offense coordinator with the cheese for a lot of years. [SPEAKER_00]: This dude was all me from day one. [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember early there, like, but then first two weeks of being there, we're in the facility and I'm running a go-round.
8:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm running 75, 80% down the field, and I look back and Matt Blundin's throwing me the ball. [SPEAKER_00]: So I find another gear, I drop it in the fifth and I go and get it. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, go out here, make this big play. [SPEAKER_00]: And I get back to the huddle and all the guys are like, you run like that, man. [SPEAKER_00]: They start calling me track out. [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, you run so fast, we get a track guy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're all celebrating me. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this is great. [SPEAKER_00]: This is great. [SPEAKER_00]: This is great. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is Albert Lewis. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going against Albert Lewis. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the greatest quarterbacks corn nerve backs I ever went against is a guy I'm going against. [SPEAKER_00]: So Albert is a dog, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm [SPEAKER_00]: glad to get by the guy, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So they're celebrating me, and I'm like, oh, this is great. [SPEAKER_00]: I love it here in Kansas City. [SPEAKER_00]: We get in the film, and Al Sondra puts that on the film, and he's running it back in, and he runs it back like five times.
9:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, yo, like, what's going on here? [SPEAKER_00]: He says, let me ask him, let me ask you a question now. [SPEAKER_00]: Alan, are you on this fast you can at the beginning of this route? [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, I didn't, it's kind of a, you know, wasn't the primary, okay, so you're not run as fast as can, sir, sir, nurse, no, sir, and he says, but then you also, you find a gear to do this. [SPEAKER_00]: He says, Alan, I've done the math on this thing, and every time you run down the field, we're paying you $100 for those who don't know $100, then is probably about almost like $1,000 now. [SPEAKER_00]: We're paying you $100 now every time you run down the field.
9:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Alan did I get my $100 worth there? [SPEAKER_00]: I said no, sir. [SPEAKER_00]: And he said to me, he said, Alan, well, for not getting $100 worth out of you, you know that what that means, right? [SPEAKER_00]: He said, you know where you end up when that happens. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yes, sir, I do. [SPEAKER_00]: And after that, [SPEAKER_00]: DeGraph was a dog, track guy was a dog. [SPEAKER_00]: I had nothing to do, I was giving him me and Dale Carter, me and Darren Anderson, we was going at it. [SPEAKER_00]: Every practice, they gave me the ball, they put me on the car and I'd do whatever the car said to do, I got it done, because fortunately for me, it's not coach's job to get me in line, but that coach got me in line. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's never receivers coach to get a guy to understand what he has ahead of him and what he should be doing. [SPEAKER_00]: It's their job to teach it to the plays so that you can go out there and perform.
10:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So I was fortunate that Al kicked me in my butt really quickly and let me know that it was time for me to step it up and get things done, right? [SPEAKER_00]: But in life, how often do we have someone in our life that's willing to kick us in our butt and tell us we need to change? [SPEAKER_00]: Most of us have that one friend and that friend will take will go out and maybe we'll grab beer or something like that and they're sitting there talking to you about, [SPEAKER_00]: Remember back when you did X. [SPEAKER_00]: Remember back when you did Y. [SPEAKER_00]: Remember how great that was when you're doing X and Y. [SPEAKER_00]: And instead of saying yourself, how can I go back to getting go back to being able to do X and Y? [SPEAKER_00]: Instead we say, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure was great back then when I could do X when I could do I really enjoyed that time of my life instead of figuring a way to get it done now and that ultimately our friend who's just trying to throw us a big hint finally just gives up and just moves on with their day, right?
11:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you just don't have that person in life. [SPEAKER_00]: So here's two examples. [SPEAKER_00]: I have one buddy. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm up. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm up in Worcester, go to Worcester, visit my buddy. [SPEAKER_00]: He's a farmer, Matt McCoy, play ball and college together. [SPEAKER_00]: And McCoy, where I'm in his truck and we're driving, driving out in the fields, do stuff like that. [SPEAKER_00]: He said, let's go grab something neat, so we're driving to grab something to eat, and McCoy, we kind of pull up to the restaurant, he kind of looks over at me, and he looks at me up, looks me down, and he greets over and he pats me on my belly, on my little belly, I said, oh, he said, oh, you are right, oh, he said, is that what's going on there? [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you, yeah, you right man. [SPEAKER_00]: That's something I gotta work on. [SPEAKER_00]: Now he's like, yeah, yeah, you do.
12:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Now that's my buddy McCoy kicking me on the butt, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And there's not a lot of people that have that personal life that's kicking them or butt. [SPEAKER_00]: So I tell you the other side of that same coin is, I've got nieces. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got all these gorgeous nieces. [SPEAKER_00]: And they love uncle Alan. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody loves uncle Alan. [SPEAKER_00]: Alan, uncle Alan walks on water. [SPEAKER_00]: My nieces love me like no other. [SPEAKER_00]: They love them some Alan. [SPEAKER_00]: My nieces are not ever gonna do anything that might hurt Uncle Alley because they love me, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm out to lunch with one of my nieces, and I say to her, yeah, I'm not eating as much because I'm trying to cut back. [SPEAKER_00]: I need to lose some weight, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I need to lose weight. [SPEAKER_00]: And she says to me, oh, Uncle, you're just a big dude.
12:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I said nothing in a way, wait, and I explain to her how much I weigh versus what I should weigh. [SPEAKER_00]: And she says, [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, but like you're just a big dude and Pizzy, you, you, you, you, you, you, you look and you, you're, you're, you're a big dude. [SPEAKER_00]: Auntie George doesn't care. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry about it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Now that's what my knee says to me because she loves me. [SPEAKER_00]: She wants me to feel good about myself. [SPEAKER_00]: So she doesn't want to be upset about how much weight I gained. [SPEAKER_00]: So she had her little cousin with her and I look at her little cousin who's like a fifth grader. [SPEAKER_00]: This dude is a fifth grader. [SPEAKER_00]: He's, he's cool a dude. [SPEAKER_00]: He's a fifth grader, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And I look at her and I say, [SPEAKER_00]: The amount of weight I need to lose is equivalent to his current body weight.
13:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So what I'm saying to you is, he's walking out here on this earth, and he weighs how much weight I need to lose to be healthy. [SPEAKER_00]: And she says, ooh, because he's not a little dude, he's not the smallest dude in the room, right? [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, ooh, uncle, you might need to do something about that. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I need to put it like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you probably need to do something about that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: When you're stuck in the drift, there's not a lot of people that are gonna kick in the butt and tell you, you gotta do something different. [SPEAKER_00]: You gotta find a new system. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're in a bad system or you don't have a system at all, that's probably what your number one problem is. [SPEAKER_00]: The challenge is that you are not using a system, you don't have anything going in your direction because you don't have a direction.
14:27 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a problem, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So let's get into my second story about drift back in the days I was a mortgage guy. [SPEAKER_00]: teammate of mine, Dennis Ma got me into mortgages and I said, hey, things are great in Ohio, but man, check out Arizona. [SPEAKER_00]: So me, I moved my family out to Arizona to be a mortgage guy and it was the Wild Wild West. [SPEAKER_00]: Man, the mortgages they were doing out there were ginormous so you're making all this money. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm making like five figures a month out there in Arizona doing mortgages, right? [SPEAKER_00]: That is the mortgage called the option arm. [SPEAKER_00]: Option arm gave you every month you had four options of what payment you wanted to make. [SPEAKER_00]: You can make a 15 year fixed mortgage rate. [SPEAKER_00]: You can make a 30 year fixed rate mortgage payment.
15:07 [SPEAKER_00]: You can make an interest-only payment or a number that was small and interest-only. [SPEAKER_00]: So the interest on the loan is still growing because you haven't paid enough to start getting the mortgage knocked down. [SPEAKER_00]: And the theory was that difference between the interest-only payment and the 15 year mortgage, those numbers you're gonna put into the stock market. [SPEAKER_00]: And when you put those into stock market, the stock market is gonna run, run, run, run, run, run. [SPEAKER_00]: So rich in 30 years that you could have paid the cash for the mortgage or whatever else, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, Wild Wild West, I could be on this podcast all night telling crazy stories about mortgage people in Arizona, but I guess I digress. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I do, I digress. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a mortgage guy and then what happened?
15:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The bubble burst. [SPEAKER_00]: You couldn't get the praises done. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything's just fell apart, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a guy that's out, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And I become one of those guys. [SPEAKER_00]: And I get a job at Grand Canyon University, GCU, [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm on the phones selling education to nurses of all people, it's like, oh boy. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not doing well, but everybody there loves me, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And this is where the drift begins. [SPEAKER_00]: So I go from making five figures a month to mid five, maybe a little bit high five numbers for the year. [SPEAKER_00]: So I got a problem. [SPEAKER_00]: So what do I do? [SPEAKER_00]: I get a second job. [SPEAKER_00]: So now I'm delivering pizzas for pizza. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty sure I said something about that before. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm delivering pizzas for pizza hut.
16:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And when you go into pizza hut in the after you go to your job one, you go to job two and you walk in the door and it's like cheers. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, hey, Norm, they're like, hey, Alan, how you do? [SPEAKER_00]: And everybody pizza hut loves you because you tell funny stories and you tell jokes and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: You're kind of the cool, older dude that everybody's like, I use preschool, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So it got so comfortable. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I was a king of getting tips. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with that. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm making what's considered really good pizza hut money and I'm adding that to my other income and the bills are getting paid. [SPEAKER_00]: My wife, I think, took on a part-time job to kind of help out with the bills, and it just got really, really comfortable.
17:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I would do my little hustle. [SPEAKER_00]: Pizza wasn't really like work. [SPEAKER_00]: It was more like a hangout, you know, you go talk to the people we dove in their pizzas. [SPEAKER_00]: It became super comfortable. [SPEAKER_00]: And then at Grand Canyon, I'm doing what I want to do. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm damn near manage in the team, but I'm not the manager, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm the one that's getting everybody to do with it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm the leader, but not the manager, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So I was what they call it at that time under employed. [SPEAKER_00]: So you got a guy that's supposed to be leading groups of people and making all this money, but now he's just a guy. [SPEAKER_00]: And he's not making any significant money, he's just a guy. [SPEAKER_00]: So I was what they called under employed. [SPEAKER_00]: So that was my situation, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So the warby got so very comfortable.
17:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was stuck in that warby for almost two years. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, loser dumb was my address. [SPEAKER_00]: My address was [SPEAKER_00]: One, two, three, loserdom street, loserdom state, loserdom country. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was in the middle of loserdom, but it was so comfortable. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have any real responsibilities. [SPEAKER_00]: No one was breathing down my neck to hit this number or that number. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, pizza, I like I said, damn, they're around the place. [SPEAKER_00]: It was like you did whatever you wanted to do whenever you wanted to do. [SPEAKER_00]: And there was no real responsibility. [SPEAKER_00]: And for a lot of us, that's the, they're really attractive of a part of losing them because we're at this level in our life. [SPEAKER_00]: And everybody knows we have this set of skills, but this set of skills, boy, it takes a lot of energy to create that.
18:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It takes a lot of work, a lot of this, a lot of that. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not easy, but we're at now. [SPEAKER_00]: With our skillset, this is a cake walk. [SPEAKER_00]: When the music stops, we're hoping to get us a cake. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where so many of us land. [SPEAKER_00]: You get stuck in the fog of it all. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like that movie, the bird box. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the bird box with Sandra Bullock. [SPEAKER_00]: And she's going along, fine, she's pregnant. [SPEAKER_00]: And all of a sudden, everybody starts going crazy. [SPEAKER_00]: And everybody else can see this thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And this thing is creeping in on everybody, but it's not creeping in on her. [SPEAKER_00]: Like where the reverse of that, the people that are in loser dumb, it's just crept in and got them and they don't have it just slowly crept up on them and it got them and it's taken them down, taking them out, it's, you know, loser them is a putt tough place to be.
19:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, I was fortunate after two and a half years of pizza that I started, well, my wife helped me along. [SPEAKER_00]: I figured out that I need to do something different. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, a lot of help from my wife, and I realized what I needed to do was start to get around people that were winning. [SPEAKER_00]: People that had skills, people that were here, something I'm not going to pizza up people. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to pizza up people. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not talking to Grand Canyon people. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying I started spending more time around movers and shakers. [SPEAKER_00]: Movers and shakers are people like I was a member of a group called Toastmasters and the people in that group were professional speakers, they were business owners, they were sales people, they were that type of thing and then when I got back around those kinds of people it allowed me to raise my level up.
20:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So two fears about who you hang out with, I want to share with you today. [SPEAKER_00]: Number one is they say the five people you spend the most time with. [SPEAKER_00]: your success will be equivalent to their success. [SPEAKER_00]: What they're doing in their lives is going to become what you're doing in your life. [SPEAKER_00]: That's theory one, is the five people you spend the most time around, whether it's family, friends, work, church, wherever it is, those five people are who are giving the influence to you and your subconscious to get you to do what you're gonna do. [SPEAKER_00]: The second theory is, you should spend the 30 of your time with people that are at your level. [SPEAKER_00]: You've just been a 30-year time with people that are beneath you or less than you, but you're helping them get to your level.
20:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So you're not talking bad about them because they're beneath you. [SPEAKER_00]: You're just giving them additional skills so they can get to your level. [SPEAKER_00]: And you spend a 30-year time with people that are exceeding what you're doing in an effort to get to their level. [SPEAKER_00]: So you're always working on getting in motion. [SPEAKER_00]: You're putting a hand down to help somebody up. [SPEAKER_00]: You're reaching up for a hand to get to the next level. [SPEAKER_00]: you're keeping yourself in motion. [SPEAKER_00]: You're getting yourself going and getting around people that can change what's going on with you. [SPEAKER_00]: So, community is a big part of getting out of loser dumb is because you stop hanging out with, you're not necessarily having our people on loser dumb that are losers, but it gets you to change your mentality so that you can get out of loser dumb and you can elevate yourself, take yourself to the next level and start working on your legacy, right?
21:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, can't in the podcast without talking about routes, R-O-U-T-E-S. Let's start with the relationships. [SPEAKER_00]: Why are your relationships drifting? [SPEAKER_00]: What are the things around drifting and relationships? [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of us want to talk about the relationship with our significant other. [SPEAKER_00]: But you also have to remember those relationships with other people in your life. [SPEAKER_00]: The one thing I will bring up about this is, if work is sucks, don't bring home the suck of work to home. [SPEAKER_00]: You leave the work sucks, leave that at home, and just bring yourself home. [SPEAKER_00]: Find a way to get back to some kind of you level so that you're not being an idiot to your family. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, relationships also, you have to think about the work relationships.
22:15 [SPEAKER_00]: If those are bad at a friction there, you've got to find a way to fix that so that work sucks less, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Let's do that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: With occupation, you wanna make sure your relationships are in your occupation, [SPEAKER_00]: But if your job is terrible and you hate your job, you're just drifting at it. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's because you used to be the dog in the office, but now you're just a guy in the office and no one's paying its into you because some young guy came in and took your shine. [SPEAKER_00]: Find a way to get back to being a dog or move on. [SPEAKER_00]: do something different to shake the thing up. [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a one-on-one with your boss, manager, whoever asked them, what can I do to be a dog around here? [SPEAKER_00]: What can I do to improve my situation? [SPEAKER_00]: And if there are honest answers, you can't do anything because you burnt, then you need to start finding exercise, do something different, right?
23:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But with upkeep, let's talk about upkeep from a health perspective. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're like me and you put on some weight because you're sitting around more, more, you got to find ways to get back into active, you got to find ways to get to working out, [SPEAKER_00]: doing some kind of training, eating right, all those things. [SPEAKER_00]: Also always like to talk about your mental health. [SPEAKER_00]: A bigger part of mental health than people think about is what is your sleep hygiene? [SPEAKER_00]: Are you getting the bed in a reasonable hour and getting upwards of eight hours of night? [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're getting less, but if it's systematic and it's regular, that still means your sleep hygiene is better than not. [SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the day, you have to find a way to get enough rest. [SPEAKER_00]: and you have to find a way to shut it down, like fully set your mind down so that you're not always running around on overload, right?
23:47 [SPEAKER_00]: That takes us to training. [SPEAKER_00]: Training is all about, what are you consuming? [SPEAKER_00]: Are you reading books? [SPEAKER_00]: Are you listening to podcasts? [SPEAKER_00]: Are the things you're listening to and doing are they positive things that are helping build you up? [SPEAKER_00]: Or are they negative things that are helping just kind of leave you in the plaza of being in loserdom? [SPEAKER_00]: Okay? [SPEAKER_00]: Then that takes us to enterprise. [SPEAKER_00]: Enterprise, the first thing I think you should do with enterprises, look at your community, are there problems in your community, if there are problems in your community, what are they, what can you do to fix them? [SPEAKER_00]: I myself spend a lot of time on my community. [SPEAKER_00]: I work with this organization called Second and Seven. [SPEAKER_00]: I go out and read the second graders to talk about literacy and how they should become great readers.
24:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I coach eighth grade football. [SPEAKER_00]: I do these things on my community because I think my community needs me. [SPEAKER_00]: Whether they do or not, they get me, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I think the community needs more of us to step up, get out and do that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So that's enterprise. [SPEAKER_00]: The other part of enterprise, of course, is when you look at your paycheck, is there anything else you're doing for self to build self? [SPEAKER_00]: be at a side hustle, be at a side business, be it something to make your legacy greater, something to take care of your family more long-term, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And the finally spirit's reality, are you a person that used to go to masks in a go-ok church? [SPEAKER_00]: Relicously, sorry, it's pun intended, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Or is that something you don't do anymore? [SPEAKER_00]: If it's something you don't do anymore, figure out why don't you do it anymore?
25:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Was it that specific church? [SPEAKER_00]: Was it that specific pastor? [SPEAKER_00]: Did something go wrong? [SPEAKER_00]: Should you find somewhere else to go? [SPEAKER_00]: Because you don't want to drift so far away from your spiritual life. [SPEAKER_00]: Only to find that you can't, don't feel like you can get back to it. [SPEAKER_00]: You can always get back to it. [SPEAKER_00]: But if you consider, if you decide you can't get back to it, obviously you can't, you can't. [SPEAKER_00]: then you've made the decision you can't get back. [SPEAKER_00]: So if that's the thing is going on with you, other spirits will have things like I said, get yourself centered by the end of the day, and that could be doing things like Tai Chi or just anything too relaxed or deep breathing, all those different types of things to get yourself back in line, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So that would be spirit as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So today we talked about the drift.
25:50 [SPEAKER_00]: and the big part of the drift is community. [SPEAKER_00]: I have started the Running Routs podcast school community. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not too many for you to be around other people that are like yourself. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they're on their way up. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they're in the middle of what they're going through or maybe they're already up there. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's a lot of positive communication that's going on in there. [SPEAKER_00]: We've got different courses that you can look into. [SPEAKER_00]: We've also got what I call the 18 question routes index. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what's going to break down your life into the different areas of your house. [SPEAKER_00]: Let you know where you're not doing as well, where you are doing well, so that you can really dig deep in the air as maybe you're struggling in, and you can find a way to improve your situation, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So down below, click the button, you can either jump into our routes, routes, school community, [SPEAKER_00]: which there's everything in there about the different indexes as well.
26:41 [SPEAKER_00]: But just join us, come talk to us, come chat, check us out. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm on the regular basis, every Friday we have a hangout, just to see what's going on. [SPEAKER_00]: People will see how people's weeks have been. [SPEAKER_00]: If anybody's setting new goals, we talk about those different things as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, check us out below, be sure and like this episode, be sure and follow us here at the Running Rounds podcast without any graph and read. [SPEAKER_00]: Always, always, always remember. [SPEAKER_00]: Legacy isn't what you've done. [SPEAKER_00]: It's who you helped along the way. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you and have a great day.