Alchemy For Life

What is a vision board? What is an anti-vision board? Transcript Well, hey there. Welcome back. What’s your vision? The Traditional Vision Board So, here’s a question. Have you ever used a vision board? A vision board is typically a physical place, almost like a bulletin board. It’s usually something larger than a sheet of paper that people place pictures, words, and inspiration. It’s something that they create that they can look at and it inspires them. It’s their vision of the future. It’s the house they want to live in. It’s the relationship they want to have. It’s the success that they want to gain. And it evolves. In the olden olden days, people would essentially cut pictures out of magazines, nice glossy pictures that they would then place on this board with with a pin. And people still do that, but they tend to be more digital. For example, Pinterest can be a vision board and is probably used like that for most people who have one. Granted, there are people who use Pinterest specifically to sort of gather ideas when they’re doing renovations or their nails or what have you, but it’s a cool thing and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it and a lot right with it. The only thing I would say would be wrong is if you just make a big giant square of pretty pictures, but you don’t let it really help you to go where you’re going. Now, how would a big box of pictures help you go where you’re going? Well, let’s talk about what the vision board represents in my book BeCAUSE! I talk about monsters and unicorns, which are the faces of us seeking pleasure and avoiding pain based on Freud’s pleasure principle. So, when you’re looking at a vision board, you’re essentially looking at a whole bunch of unicorns, saying, “Doesn’t it feel good to imagine yourself in this house? to imagine yourself in this relationship” I mean, they’re all good feelings. That’s what the vision board is. It’s about you moving towards the pleasure of having, experiencing, knowing, embracing, and all that wonderful stuff. Introducing the Anti-Vision Board I started thinking about vision boards when I was looking at my CheckMark™ app. And if you haven’t checked it out, you should because I built a vision board into it. Uh, you can use your camera on your phone. You can upload photos to it and arrange it on your phone. It’s kind of cool. Mind you, it’s a small screen, but it’s kind of ever-present, which is cool. And you can look at it on your computer when you get back to your office. I broke the boards down into a number of boards like relationships and health and so forth. But that got me thinking. I felt like there was a board that was missing. What if you flipped everything around and you made a board of all the things you didn’t want? Now, if you literally made a board of the things you don’t want, that would you’d run out of board. Obviously, there’s a million things in life we don’t want, then there are probably just a few things that we really do want. But what if the things we don’t want are sometimes the things we have, right? Like if you’re in a job that you really don’t like, well, that’s something you’d put on that special board. And let’s call it an anti- vision board, right? It’s not my vision. People tend to move away from things that cause them pain. So, if the vision boards are all populated by unicorns, then the anti- vision board is essentially driven by monsters, right? The monster of avoiding the pain of being in a house that’s cramped or in a neighborhood you don’t want to be in or in a dead-end job or a lack of relationship or a toxic relationship or something that just isn’t a good fit for you. So, do you think an anti-vision board would be just as helpful as vision boards? Perhaps in some ways it would be more helpful. When Monsters and Unicorns Work Together You see, a lot of the things that I’ve discovered when I think about monsters and unicorns is that a lot of them do have a flip side. If there’s a if there’s a...

Disclaimer: this episode is based on my proprietary behavior mapping system. This system is used in conjunction with a discovery conversation I have with an individual. In the case of mapping public figures this is purely an independent analysis and opinion based on publicly available research. See citations below article. Transcript: You’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. (see below!) Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk Elon Musk. But before we do that, let’s talk about behavioral mapping and my book BeCAUSE!. Freud’s Pleasure Principle: Monsters and Unicorns Okay, wait. We have to back up from that and we have to talk about Freud’s pleasure principle. If you are an old fan of this show, you’ve probably heard me say this a bunch of times, but let’s sum it up really quickly. Freud’s pleasure principle is based on the fact that we are binary individuals. We seek pleasure, we avoid pain. Everything and anything we do is broken down into those things. I’ve had a number of episodes on this and the book BeCAUSE! is based on this, but I give the seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain a face. The seeking pleasure is a unicorn and the avoiding pain is a monster. They are neither good nor bad. They are not devils and angels. They simply are. Visualizing Behavior: My New Mapping Software After the book BeCAUSE! came out, I ended up developing patent pending behavioral mapping software. It’s software that allows me to actually map this stuff out. And you’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. This episode might be a little bit longer than my self-imposed 10-minute limit, so please bear with me. Paradoxically, when I talk about Elon Musk, I actually want you to not be thinking of him, but to be thinking of you. Every episode of this podcast starts out as an article on Alchemy for Life. This one is no different, and you’ll be able to see the visual mapping on the site if you’d like. You can follow along on there or if you’re listening in your car, you can just visualize based on what I’m telling you. Deconstructing Elon Musk: The Childhood Trauma Most people are familiar with Elon Musk. He’s a rather polarizing person. He’s someone who won’t stop talking about going to Mars and now the moon. He’s someone who created an empire. He owns Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, now X, the Boring Company, and X AI. He’s had some romances. He’s currently not married and he has a lot of children. What most people don’t know is what I actually found out in the map showing why all of this is happening. And again, because audio is literally linear, meaning you talk in a straight line, you stop it. You can’t go into branches and things like that. It’s a little harder in audio to tell you what something on a screen can tell you, but I’ll do the best I can. When he was young, the family dog bit him. It was actually a pretty vicious bite, but he was terrified that the dog was going to be put down. He needed medical attention, but he kept refusing it because he said, “You need to promise you’re not going to put the dog down.” Unfortunately, they put the dog down. And this was a very traumatic thing. And I can imagine for myself, and I’m sure you’re thinking about this, too, that’s a very traumatic thing to have to go through. You blame yourself. You think, well, maybe there’s something I could have done to not have the dog bite me. It’s horrible, horrible feeling. And it’s a feeling of losing something and someone that’s really important to you. You feel like you’re literally responsible for the death of a living creature. and that you have no control. So imagine that. It puts a pretty strong pleasure center. It puts a pretty strong unicorn in place that says, “Hey, follow me and you’ll have more control. You want more control.” Yes, I want more control. As with a lot of things, sometimes you also have the opposite in place. You have a monster that says, “It really feels bad to lose control.” And I’m sure you can...

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk about the dark side of things. I don’t mean the dark side of everything, even though that sounds kind of exciting, doesn’t it? Okay, let’s rewind. The Psychology of Motivation: Monsters and Unicorns My recent book because talks about fundamental building blocks. In simple terms, it’s built on Freud’s pleasure principle. And in simple terms, Freud’s pleasure principle states that we basically do everything based on two sort of drivers. One is to seek pleasure in all forms and to avoid pain in all forms. These two driving factors are neither good nor bad. They are neutral and sometimes they’re used to great success and sometimes they’re used to your detriment. In the book, I take those semi-intangible concepts and I give them a face. The avoiding pain takes the form of a monster. The seeking pleasure takes the form of a unicorn. But the book goes farther than that. I then go on to talk about something that really separates all high achievers from everyone else. And that is essentially repetition. And there are many books out there and I cite some of them talking about this repetition and how you become an Olympic athlete by repeating. But the thing that everyone else forgets about or ignores is, well, how do they repeat so much? What drives them to repeat? And of course, it’s the monsters and the unicorns. The Secret Weapon of High Achievers And I have always said to myself, or rather recently, whatever you repeat, you enhance, you create, and you achieve. At least that’s what I tell myself. And that’s what because is about. It’s about repeating something over and over and over again. And and it doesn’t have to be a 4 secondond action. It can be something that’s fairly long term, something that takes days or something that requires a lot of nuance, but if you continue at it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and stick at it, you will achieve it. You can do great things this way. You can make amazing changes this way. But like the monsters and the unicorns, repetition is neutral. Think about that. The very concept of repetition doesn’t carry with it good or bad. It doesn’t carry with it constructive or destructive. It’s both and neither. So swimming almost constantly will make you a better swimmer. Practicing speaking will make you a better speaker. Studying and practicing repetitively and diligently will get you your realtor license, your pilot license, etc. The Dark Side of Repetition: How Unconscious Habits Hurt Us But my friends, let’s talk about the dark side. The dark side of repetition. And you know what’s interesting about that is that from a lot of people’s perspective, the dark side is actually what they know better. And I’m not saying it’s because they live in the dark side of repetition, but it’s because that sort of has been their perception of it. Stop making that face. If you keep making that face, it’s going to stay that way. Do you remember that? Did your parent ever say that to you? How many of you grind your teeth? It’s also called bxism. That’s a repetitive thing that people do with their teeth where they just clench down or they grind them side to side and it has tremendous negative impact on your health. Ergonomics is based partially on people repeatedly doing something that’s bad for their body. You can sit in a bad chair for a little while and not a lot’s going to happen. But if you spend hours and hours in a chair that’s slightly tilted or lifts your legs off the floor and puts a lot of pressure on your arteries and so forth, it can have really devastating health effects just just from sitting. You can eat good food and even in smaller portions, but if you eat it fast, it can also affect your health. Eating it fast once isn’t going to do a lot, but every time you eat, if you eat fast, it’s going to affect you. You will find or probably have found that you have aches and pains that are actually caused by you. And they’re caused by you in a way...

Tell me the problem in three words. Well, hey there. Welcome back. The “Favorite Three” Listening Game Today I want to talk to you about something that was a communication tool and kind of a game. And it all centers around the number three. When my kids were younger, I used to play a game with them in the car. And the game was Favorite Three. And it was such a natural hit that we would use it at parties.. And it really is kind of a not only a cool icebreaker, but it’s sort of a demonstrator of how well people listen. It’s a game you can play with your staff and in meetings, too. If you have a staff meeting and you’re waiting, you can play Favorite Three. It kind of sharpens your mind a little bit in the process, too. So, here’s how this works. Favorite three basically means you pick your three favorite things. Someone asks you your favorite three things. I mean you can say what’s your favorite dog breed? What’s your favorite Italian food? And what is your favorite state? You go around the room and people answer. They don’t say well my favorite state is… No. In the order that they were asked they need to answer. Usually, there’s a long pause while people’s gears are turning. Seriously, try this. So, the person asking the question names the person who needs to answer and they start and go around in a circle. Many times people actually forget and they’ll say, “Well, wait, what was the second one?” It’s literally three things that you have to remember, but for some reason, for some people, it’s actually quite hard to keep track. So in the example that I just said, the next person would say hopefully husky pizza Colorado and then it would go to the next person and so forth. And those people are devoid of context. They just know the answers of the person in front of them. all the amazing things that we do in life, all the things that we can work through, reading entire novels and keeping track of screenplays and and all the complexities of your job, you may actually have difficulty with that. So, play it at your next event and tell me how it goes. Using Three Words for Conflict Resolution So, here’s the other thing centering around the number three. This helps in conflict resolution. And again, this is something that I used with my kids when there’s a conflict or when they had a conflict and there was a lot of back and forth. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of two people talking over each other and screaming and emotions and things like that. I would pick one to start and I would say, “Tell me the problem in three words.” That was it. And then the other person would go and tell me the problem in three words. And it’s really easy to figure out which person is stuck in their emotions and which person is just trying to convey a point. And it’s all because of the three words that they choose. And this is something you can do in your relationship. I mean, if you’ve been married 20 years, you can still do this and say, you know, tell me in three words. Now, people don’t like to have their communication filtered, adjusted, or controlled. So, it may be difficult for some personality types, especially in the heat of the moment, if you tell them, “No, you’re not allowed to communicate to me in sentences. You need to tell me that in three words.” So, use carefully and wisely. But even in your job, if you need to do conflict resolution, this may be really eye opening and you think, “Mark, they’re just going to take three verbs.” No, they’re really not. You’ll be shocked at which words they choose, especially the first time. And when they sort of get the gist of it, they’ll choose better words. They’ll say, “Ah, okay, I need to clarify.” M. And it’s that focus on the cerebral act of clarifying which allows for the emotions to leak out to go away because the focus is on communicating now instead of you know sarcasm or taking a shot at the other person and so forth. You don’t have the room for it. You literally have three words to...

If your resolutions failed this is why, and this is how you can have success in 2026. The New Year’s Resolution Check-In It’s February 1st. How did you do on your New Year’s resolutions? I know. I know. Here we go. But it’s not something I’m ever going to stop talking about. and we’ve had at least one, if not two or more episodes on New Year’s resolutions and how I feel about them. So, let’s just jump into it, shall we? If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I try to compress a lot of conversation. And I say conversation because I feel like you get to say something and think something. I compress a lot of that into 10 minutes. And one of the ways I do that is by using pause. And I think it’s an amazing tool to be able to use. So, I say something and then I ask you to pause and then you have infinite amount of time to think about or work through what I just said and then you restart it again. So, we’re going to do this a lot this time and it’s going to be based on this sound. If you recognize that sound, it’s the sound you get when you check off an item in check mark. So, how did you do on your New Year’s resolutions so far considering that the entire month of January has passed? If your answer was not great, then why do you think that is? Give that some thought. So, do you think it was because you didn’t try hard enough or because of something else? Well, let me tell you this. If you decided to stop doing a thing, like I’m not going to be late anymore or doing a thing a lot more, then you’re only considering the action itself. The Limits of Free Will and Willpower And the action is always motivated by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. And now you’re going to say, “But Mark, we’re not just some tiny binary combination of fervently seeking pleasure and running away from pain.” Well, that’s not what Freud found. That’s not what I found. And that’s not what the monsters and unicorns told me. But Mark, we have free will, don’t we? Um, yeah, kind of. Kind of, sort of. Um, but it depends on your definition because our free will is modified by those constantly running programs. If you’re late all the time, there’s a reason behind the action. And that’s literally what the word because means, the reason for the action, which is why I called the book BeCAUSE!. And you can say, well, Mark, I can just do it. I just have to do it. So then you’re describing using your strength of will. And strength of will is very powerful. Well, it’s sort of powerful by itself. What happens if you say, “Look, I have this thing that really annoys me. Um, I’m I’m not going to do that anymore. Period.” and you go, I’m exerting my free will right now and my strength of will. Well, what your strength of will is going to then do is it’s going to panic and be going, “Okay, we’re doing this, but man, this is tiring and oh my god, I can’t do this constantly. There’s got to be some reason why. What? There’s got to be some reason to allow me to do this. There’s got to be some motivation.” And then the monsters and unicorns kick in. The seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain. That’s how you get it done. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s how these things happen. So if you say, “I don’t want to be late anymore. You can try to use your strength of will, but your strength of will will search around for something or someone to help it.” And both the monsters and the unicorns, the seeking pleasure, the avoiding pains, can help together. You can actually have multiple unicorns and multiple monsters holding hands together to get it done. And in fact, most of those insurmountable things that you have done in your life that you look back on and you go, “How? Oh my god, how did I even do that?” They were because you were holding hands with monsters and unicorns at the time. Identifying the Motivation Behind Your Successes So then, let’s think about this with the next pause. If you were able to adhere to a New Year’s resolution this year and it has gone...

The Discomfort of the Sales Funnel Have I said how funnels feel icky to me? Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like funnels? I don’t mean like for refilling your oil or delicious funnel cakes. I mean, well, let’s let’s talk about this. So, as many of you know, there’s a concept called the sales funnel. It’s a process where you get someone into a process and kind of help them along the way to purchase your product. Now, you don’t see this that often with physical products. There’s a whole different way of dealing with that, but you do see it for services, especially certain kinds of services. And sure enough, if it’s a service that kind of gives you pause, it’s probably one that has a funnel associated with it. Funnels don’t feel good, no matter how well they’re built. And if you’re like me, you know right away when you’re in one. Are you in one now? Are you thinking that right now that by listening to my podcast, you’re in my funnel? Because if you’re listening to the podcast, doesn’t it mean that you’re starting to kind of buy into how uh I approach things, which means you might actually buy one of my books and then you might actually hire me to speak or to coach you. So, Mark, isn’t this a funnel? Well, not intentionally. I mean, there’s nothing making you move forward. Nothing in this podcast builds momentum. There is a bumper at the end right when you normally turn it off that says, “Hey, if you like this, you know, you can buy my books or do this or do that or whatever, but it’s not really a funnel. My books tell you a little bit about the other stuff that I do, but mostly they just say, “Hey, here’s the other stuff I do.” And uh if you want to rate this, that’d be great. I don’t go out of my way when it comes to coaching people to shove them into a funnel either to get them to pay, to get them to buy. I want them to make an informed decision. So, does that make me definitely not an expert on funnels? It definitely makes me someone who doesn’t construct them very well because I’m too focused on the product. Funnels vs. Professional Processes Attorneys don’t really need a sales funnel because they have sort of a a process in place. You go talk to \ the receptionist or their secretary and then make a plan to have a consult and then go from there. There are engagement letters and so forth. The same is true for real estate. If if you’re looking at a home, then typically the site you’ve looked at the home on is already tracking you, your IP address, everything. It’s very detailed and it’s kind of cool and it’ll keep reaching out to you and touching you and saying, “Hey, uh, you know, you looked at this 3 days ago, blah blah blah.” So, that’s a a funnel. A Personal Encounter with a Pushy Funnel Having said all of that, let me tell you about the experience I just had which is prompted me to do this for you. As you know, if you’re an avid listener that some of these recordings are 10 minutes long about things like this that we can learn together with and some of these recordings are about an hour long and there are people that I find super interesting that I hope you find as interesting. Sometimes I have to pursue someone for a while and it’s just because they’re very popular. They’re public figures. They’re busy. they have a certain kind of schedule or, you know, they may need a little bit more vetting of me to finally get back to me. But all in all, it it works pretty well. And again, as I said in the CEO mindset, people of the kind of mindset that I typically ask on the show where people will say, “Okay, let’s do it.” And then 2 days later, we’re doing it. In addition to having people on my show, I typically appear on other podcasts and shows. So, every so often I’m approached and I have a service uh that I use and every so often I get an email that says, “Hey, would you like to be on the show?” and and so on so forth. And different people have different processes. Some people are like me where they are the booker as...

Transcript of episode: Well, hey there. Welcome back. Why We Remember Firsts But Miss the Lasts There’s a lot of talk about the first time you do something. You remember your first time at something. But the reverse isn’t exactly true because it takes a bit of time to realize it truly was the last time because in some cases there’s a chance you might do it again. But thinking back on the last time can be rather jarring, emotionally draining, but sometimes can make you smile. Sometimes it can make you sad. There was a last time that you rode your bike as a 12-year-old. You put in the garage or or just put it down against the fence or what have you and that was it. You never rode it again. There was the last time you played with your Legos and then they got packed up and that was it. And yes, I know there are tons of adults now that do Lego stuff, so maybe not the best example. There was a last time that you did an art project as a kid. A last time that you wrote in a old paper journal with your favorite pen. A last time that you had a certain treat that your grandmother used to make. There was a last time you slept alone or a last time you slept with a partner. A last time you heard the laughter of your children when they were little. Even the last time you flipped a burger before you hung up your hat and went on to bigger and better things. Thinking about first times is easy because you can only have first time at something once. Your first kiss, your first love, your first time trying something. When you’re a beginner learning something, it’s your first time setting foot in a new area or even a new piece of software. If you do it again, you know it’s not your first time because you’ve already done it. But the last time is a little more difficult to record because as I said, you you don’t think about it at the time because at the time you think you’re going to do it again at some point because you’re used to doing it over and over again. But it truly becomes the last time until you look back on it 10, 15, 20, 50 years later. The Sudden Finality of Loss: Reflections on Recent Goodbyes What made me really think of this is in the last couple days, two people I knew have passed away. And for both of them, I thought I was going to be able to speak to them again. I didn’t realize the last time I talked to them was literally the last time. One of them was Scott Adams, someone uh that I had interviewed. And though I knew of his declining health, I was hopeful that we were going to talk again and sort of catch up on things. The other was a longtime client of mine, someone I’d got to know. I’d got to know both he and his wife, and I very much appreciated seeing them interact in front of me as I was interacting with them for business purposes. I always got a kick out of him and them and it was almost sitcom-esque in the way the environment felt with always being a happy ending in which I was waiting for the studio audience to start clapping and laughing. The sense of loss that we feel at a funeral is not just missing the person, but it’s the realization that you cannot interact again. that everything was a last time. Any and every interaction you’ve ever had with that person is the last final time you’ve had it. Living in a Culture of “Do-Overs” and Reboots That finality is something that we don’t experience that often in life. In fact, one could say a lot of our current culture, especially powered by social media, is one that really doesn’t allow for finality because there’s always a doover. You can always go back and rewatch something. There’s always a revival, a reboot, and what have you. Sometimes we don’t truly appreciate the finality in which life moves. It’s something to respect, to expect, and to I guess appreciate on a level. And it makes me wonder just what aspects of life we are ignoring the finality of. What parts of life are we moving in? Business, personal relationships, what have you, in which there’s some...

You do less, but you get more. Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you have any limitations? Oh, yes, of course you do. Let’s talk about them. And I think your first reaction is, “Well, here we go. We’re going to explore how I’m not good enough at something or how I don’t even do a thing.” Nope, we’re not doing that at all. In fact, we are going to look at why limitations are so important and how they actually make a product, a business, and a person better. What is this? Real life? Yes, I’m here to tell you yes, it is. The Danger of Trying to be Good at Everything in 2026 I read a book a while back called The Myth of Excellence. And one of the things it says in the book, and I’m paraphrasing, is the best way to sort of destroy your business and go out of business is to try to be good at everything. Years ago, I worked at a firm that had that same motto. And they tried to be good at everything and tell all of their clients that they could do anything and everything that their clients were asking. And they couldn’t. In their quest to be good at everything, they were essentially good at nothing. The Success of the 10-Minute Podcast Constraint When I started this podcast—and we are approaching 300 episodes in 2026—when I started it, the very first episode, I set a rule for myself. I set a limitation and the limitation was I would keep the episode if it was just me to about 10 minutes. I have adhered to that and every so often I go over to maybe 11 or 12 minutes and then I apologize profusely. That limitation has helped me to have a better show. It has helped me to have a show that’s better because it forces me to be more concise, but it also makes my show very different. When people find out that my show is only 10 minutes long, they’re shocked. And they’re shocked in a very pleasant way. They’re like, “Oh, I can digest that. Oh, I’ll just go empty the dishwasher and listen to your show.” “Oh, okay. Wow, that’s it.” I’ve had multiple people come to me and say, “Oh, yeah. I listen to like seven of your episodes.” Wow. Like so that’s really a cool thing that limitation has been very advantageous. Defining Strategic vs. Self-Improvement Limitations At the time of year that this podcast episode is coming out is we’re we’re we’re ending the year and it’s when everyone is making New Year’s resolutions and saying they’re going to be better and this and that. They’re probably looking at limitations as something they’re going to overcome. And yes, there are certain things that you want to improve. You want to be better at weight loss. You want to be better at at consistency at this that the other thing. Yes. So, you’re sort of overcoming your scale and you’re saying, “I want this to be a seven when it’s only a three right now.” That’s fine. What I’m talking about are limitations that are typically self-imposed for a reason. If you’re running a business and you set limitations, you will find that very comforting. You will create a sort of comfort zone for you, your skills, your people, and yourself. You can do that for yourself as well where you have a limitation in something that you do whether it’s well when people ask for rides or they ask for favors I have a limitation of such and such and it can help you to maintain consistency and integrity and you’re kind of shaking your head right now going wait I never really looked at it that way it’s a positive thing yes it’s an absolute positive thing. Maintaining Professional Integrity with Time Limits Getting back to my use of it when I interview people and I am exceeding exceedingly grateful for the chances I’ve had so far with interviewing people. When I interview people, I always start it by telling them when I first approach them, I’m only going to use an hour of your valuable time, no more. I promise. And I’m surprised at how many of those people view that as they they act like this is a new thing. Like no one has ever approached them for an interview and said, “Here’s our time...

Getting unstuck Before you can move forward, you have to get unstuck a bit. Part of being stuck is worrying. Some people are really really good at it. Oh I’m sorry I’m raising my hand. Check out the how can I stop worrying episode. Sometimes life can get you really stuck. Circumstances can be such that you really just wanna give up. I feel you. And mental health is a delicate subject. If you’ve ever thought of truly giving up, check out depression and throwing away the container. You may be stuck because you think everything you’re doing is failing or you lament all of your failures as 100% your responsibility. If that’s the case, then the reverse is also true. You are also 100% responsible for your successes. Perhaps it’s time to start taking responsibility for those. That’s such an odd sentence isn’t it? If it feels weird to say that out loud then you’ll benefit from the episode taking responsibility for the good in your life. Sometimes being stuck isn’t necessarily running into a wall, but rather being at a place with lack of direction. And that can manifest as feeling like you don’t have the energy or desire to do something or you literally don’t know what to do. I created a simple and very effective way to find your way back and in the process get something as a gift to yourself. If you’ve ever lost your way, check out the episode called UPS, my secret for avoiding depression being more productive. Growing If you want to grow in 2026 you may have to learn. You may find that there are things you know quite well in fact, so well you take it for granted. And in doing so that can make it both a challenge to learn and a challenge to teach. If you adopt a beginner mindset in which you are completely open to learning, it makes it a very enjoyable experience to learn new skills and it’ll make you an excellent teacher. Check out the beginner mindset makes you a better teacher. On a related note—a lot of people equate success with productivity. After all if you’re being productive, it means you feel good about what you’re doing and you’re producing something that at the bare minimum makes you happy and is aligned with you and hopefully it’s also profitable. It may surprise you that this is one of the times in your life in which selfishness is a really good thing. If you tailor your productivity selfishly to what really makes you happy you’ll end up with a really good product and maybe surprised at how many other people enjoy the benefits of this specificity. Check out why selfish productivity may be the best productivity. We tend to present our success as milestones, but we forget we built those milestones layer by layer. If your goal is to do a certain thing, but you ignore the steps to get there you’re making it much more difficult for yourself than it should be. Everything we do in life is layer by layer. It’s iterative. You can learn a great lesson about this by listening to live your life iteratively Gaining control & Managing your energy Part of moving forward in 2026 is probably gaining some control. If you don’t have any control over your environment or yourself, nothing is going to happen. Every so often I ask myself a question that drives me crazy until I answer it… and that driving myself crazy usually ends up with me manifesting an entire book after much research and experimentation. This time it manifested itself in the form of an app that runs on both your phone and your browser. Check out what I figured out in the episode I think I found the perfect question. We are bombarded with social media and we tend to compare our successes to others. How can we not when everything from LinkedIn to Instagram shows us just how happy and successful everyone else is. But the energy you put in to showing off is energy you’re not putting into improving. Check out the silence of success and after it, you may not be putting more effort into being successful, but your effort will be more effectively applied to what’s best...

There’s such a stigma that we can’t even talk about it. Well, hey there. Welcome back. The Stigma of Private Worry What are you worried about? No, really. What are you worried about? Maybe you say nothing. Maybe you say, “Oh, the usual, you know, the things everyone worries about.” We deal with life and concerns and we take objective measures to reach goals in public. But then in private we worry and sometimes the worry doesn’t match our outward demeanor does it? Worry has a stigma to it just like suicide does. And I talked about this in my episode called throwing away the container. There’s such a stigma that we can’t even talk about it. We don’t even allow ourselves to talk about it. We wave it off as a few moments of weakness or we just think everyone feels the same way about this that or the other thing, but we don’t really address it for the most part. Now, you may feel that you have a worry about a certain thing and then you decide you’re going to take action. And when you do that, you actually feel a lot better. But it doesn’t happen often, does it? The stigma and guilt prevents you from really exploring it. And if you’ve noticed through a number of episodes and even my books, I tend to push really hard in the direction of, well, no, let’s just do that. Let’s feel that. Let’s let’s see what that’s like. Let’s not hide. Let’s not shove things into the dark recesses and not deal with them. Because that’s how they get their power. That’s how they fester and get stronger because we push them into a corner and we don’t deal with them. Saying It Out Loud: The Power of the “Third Voice” It’s typical for someone to feel bad and embarrassed if they say out loud to someone, I am worried about this because it almost feels so unnatural to just say it that way. And if you’ve read three voices, it means you’re saying it in your third voice. We like to say it in our second voice all the time, which is our inner dialogue and monologue. Because like many other things, fears, paranoia, and so forth, they sound silly when you say them out loud. Well, then why wouldn’t you say them out loud then? If it sounds silly and sort of dispels it. Here’s the contrast. This does not apply if we’re worried for someone else. If we think to ourselves, “Oh, I’m worried about Susan. And Susan being someone you work with or Susan being your daughter or your cousin or your sister. Now you’re concerned. Oh, that’s so much better. Well, I’m just concerned for her.” Well, it’s sort of silly for you to be worried about that. But I’m sure she’ll be fine. Yeah, I’m just worried about her. Aw, it’s really nice that you feel that way. It’s really nice to have all that empathy towards someone who isn’t you. Do you see how odd that is? If you’re worried about Susan, you may just have coffee with her and sit down and say, you know, how have you been? What’s going on with that? It’s you won’t even say I am worried about you because you know that’s a full paw. You’ll say, “So, what’s going on with Rick?” or “What’s going on with that thing that you were dealing with? How’s that going?” And then you’ll assess what you need to do, your empathy and your your advice and so forth based on that. If you’re born with male psychological genetics, you will think, “I’m hearing a problem. I want to fix that.” If you’re born with female psychological genetics, you will think, “I’m hearing that someone is hurting and suffering. I want to help them. I want to listen and make sure that they feel heard. But neither of these things is applied to yourself. And again, you may hear this and think, “Oh, okay. I get it that some people worry, but I don’t do this. This is not me.” And you know, if you’re true, if you’re accurate, then cool. Then good for you. I’m actually thrilled. If this is something that doesn’t apply to you, that you don’t find yourself in a in a corner or in a a self-perpetuating loop or something that rules your brain anytime it has free time, then you’re...

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Redefining Friction: Physics vs. Process What does friction mean to you? For most of my life, friction has just simply described a physics concept in which something rubs against something else in some way, causing a slowdown and causing heat. But now, and now is variable depending on what sector of work you’re in. Friction describes the same thing, but it’s metaphorically for processes. And you know, I’m all about systems and processes. Intentional Friction in App Design Here’s an example. In the new app I created that allows you to get stuff done. When you add to-do items, you can actually swipe them forward into the future. So, if you swipe it to the right, it appears on tomorrow. There’s also an arrow that you can hit to go to the next day and the next day and the next day. So, if you want to place something, let’s say a week ahead of time, you actually have to hit that button seven times. Friction. And people could say, “Well, Mark, what if I want to push something 25 days into the future? I have to hit that button 25 times.” Correct. It’s friction by design. I want it to feel like you are putting it off all that time because if I didn’t do that, you could just type in a date or use a selector to grab a date and go there. It’s gone for a month and a half. Well, if you’re pushing something that far into the future, it should really be a calendar item. But if you’re pushing something into the future, it should feel like you’re pushing it into the future. In building this app, I learned a lot about intentional friction. I learned a lot about removing it, which is what I always try to do in any process I create. But I also learned about where it’s actually appropriate. My Typewriter: Friction to Prevent Failure I have a vintage Remington number 12 typewriter. I actually wrote my first story on it. And no, I’m not that old because it was created in the 20s and 30s. Every key is connected to a rather slender, thin piece of metal that has a little hammer at the end that matches the key that you hit. When you hit the key, it swings upward and hits the ink tape and creates the image onto the piece of paper. Now, on a piano, the keys do something similar. They have hammers that hit strings. On a piano, though, all those keys and hammers are parallel. You can hit as many keys as you want and they’ll all hit at the same time and not interact with each other. Not so for the typewriter. If you hit two keys at once, they will try to meet each other at the very top and they can get entangled. There’s an old tale about the design of the keyboard, which is the modern one we use today, being designed so that you would type slower. It actually was a designed to intentionally create a lot of friction and slowing you down. Well, so the truth is it’s not exactly like that. Yes, it does slow you down, but the reason being is they tried to separate certain keys so that you wouldn’t easily hit two of the keys that would smash into each other. Again, intentional friction. Identifying Unintentional vs. Intentional Friction One of the most exciting things for me is that when I’m introduced to a process, a system, whether it’s a person and how they conduct their life and try to get things done or an actual business and their systems in place is when I find unintentional friction. I find something in place that slows something down. They go down an avenue. They go instead of going ABC, they go A X Z B and then they come back to C and and we’re able to remove that and say no ABC. See, no more friction. But you have to respect the friction that’s in place because some of it’s intentional. Now, some of it works that it’s worked itself into it to be intentional. And you can look at a process and think, well, that’s inefficient. We’ll just do this. But if you remove the intentional friction, you can find that the system will actually break. Why Some Processes Need to Be Slow: Divorce & Marriage Let’s use another...

The beginner mindset makes you a better teacher—and it’s fun too! Well, hey there. Welcome back… to everyone who is an old pro at this podcast and those who are just beginners because at some point you are a beginner and we tend to forget that don’t we? In fact, there’s a phenomenon I would […]

It sounds like I’m talking about the surface dwellers and we’re all the people who live underground. Well, hey there. Welcome back. The Discomfort of Partial Knowledge You may have figured out by now that I like to know things and I like to learn things. And I’ve probably figured out by now that you’re […]

Transcript I think I found the perfect question. Well, hey there. Welcome back. The Perfect Question I think I found the perfect question. No, really. I found a question I can ask almost anyone. It will elicit a genuine, honest, thoughtful response. It’s a useful subject. It’s something that they think about regardless of what […]

I had both the pleasure in honor of sitting down with Joseph Mallozzi, the Executive Producer and writer for Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, and Dark Matter in which he is the show Runner (he literally runs the show).

Have you ever noticed that when there’s something you really, really love and really speaks to you that when you look at the backstory for it, the person that created it said that they “selfishly” just made it for them? Here’s why selfishness, like the comfort zone, gets a bad rap it doesn’t really deserve […] The post Why selfish productivity may be the best productivity first appeared on Alchemy For Life.

The invisible barrier you must cross to switch modes and why it fools you into thinking it would take too much effort to complete a task. Transcript Revisiting Multitasking and the Energy of Switching Tasks Do you multitask? Wait, we we already covered this. In a previous episode, we talked about how energy is really […] The post The invisible Barrier first appeared on Alchemy For Life.

What’s your learning style? Do you know what your learning style is? Did you know you have one? For a long time I have known about the diferent ways humans learn. People not only have aptitudes (someone is good with mechanical stuff, or math, etc.) but also differ in the way they learn. Same resulting […] The post Learning styles and learning right in front of someone first appeared on Alchemy For Life.

Transcript What is Apathy? The Answer Might Surprise You Well, hey there. Welcome back. What’s this episode about? Who cares? So, many years ago, I was with a few of my friends and one of my friends said, “What’s apathy?” And my other friend said, “Who cares?” And it took a little while to realize […] The post What’s Apathy? Who cares. first appeared on Alchemy For Life.

Are You Truly Available? The Critical Difference Between Time and Energy I’m going to ask you a simple question: Are you available right now? Of course, you’re listening to this, so your immediate answer is “yes.” But are you? For years, I’ve talked about the constant negotiation between our time, energy, and resources. Today, I […] The post The Availability Gap: Why Your Energy Matters More Than Your Time first appeared on Alchemy For Life.