Matt and Kyle join me on this episode for a conversation about New Year resolutions and the power of your inner circle. We get into how to set goals you will actually follow through on, how discipline gets built one small decision at a time, and why the people you surround yourself with end up shaping who you become. It is a practical conversation about turning good intentions into real change, told the way three people who push each other would talk it through.
Matt and Kyle are guests who joined me for this episode to talk about New Year resolutions, goal setting, and the influence of your inner circle. The conversation is built around how three people who push each other think about discipline and follow-through.
The main theme is New Year resolutions and the power of your inner circle. We talk about why most resolutions fail, how to set goals you can actually keep, and how the people around you make or break your ability to follow through.
The conversation keeps returning to the idea that the people closest to you shape your habits, your standards, and your goals. Matt and Kyle talk about how surrounding yourself with people who push you makes it far easier to become the person you are trying to be.
We talk about discipline as something built through small, repeated decisions rather than a single burst of motivation. The conversation centers on committing ahead of time and removing friction so the right choice is the easy one when the moment comes.
While it is framed around New Year resolutions, the conversation is really about a year-round approach to goals and habits. The ideas about preparation, discipline, and the right inner circle apply whenever you are trying to change something in your life.
The start of a new year is when everyone sets goals and most of them quietly fall apart by February. I wanted to sit down with Matt and Kyle and actually talk through why that happens and what the people who follow through do differently. The two of them push each other, and that is exactly the kind of dynamic I wanted on the mic for a conversation about resolutions and the inner circle.
We have all set the goal and watched it fade. In this conversation we get into why that pattern repeats and what separates the goals that stick from the ones that do not. It comes down less to motivation than to how you set things up in advance. Hear how Matt and Kyle frame it in the episode.
The thread we kept pulling on is that the people around you shape what you become, your standards, your habits, your goals. Matt and Kyle talk about surrounding yourself with people who push you instead of letting you coast. Listen to that part.
We talked about discipline as a stack of small decisions rather than one heroic act of willpower. The idea of committing ahead of time and removing friction so the right move is the easy move came up again and again. Press play to hear how the three of us think about turning intention into action.
The day after we recorded, the thing that stuck with me is how much of this comes down to who you spend your time with. Goals are easier to keep when the people around you expect more of you, not less.
If you are trying to actually change something this year instead of just wishing for it, listen to the whole conversation.
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Matt and Kyle are guests on the Tom Rowland Podcast who joined Tom for a conversation about New Year resolutions and the power of the inner circle. The discussion focuses on setting goals you can keep, building discipline through small daily decisions, and surrounding yourself with people who push you toward who you are trying to become.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 74, Matt Lawson & Kyle Haren...
Tom Rowland: Alright, today is New Year's Eve, and I've invited a couple of my friends in to see me here. I've invited these two guys because they are in the book club — they are in my inner circle of people that I really look to and put a lot of confidence in. Everyone should have a group of people that they can talk to about their goals, the things they want to do, the things that are important to them, and help them get there in some way, shape, or form. Maybe it's just that they hold you accountable. Maybe it's that they are some sort of a mentor. Maybe it's that they offer advice that you don't get other places. Maybe they are just simply the only people in your life that will tell you how it is. They'll tell you when you're failing, and they'll tell you when you're succeeding. They'll be happy for your success, and they will help you get back on track on the failures. So these two guys, Matt Lawson and Kyle Haren, are part of a group that helps me do just those things. And if you don't have that group, I encourage you to find some people that you can surround yourself with that will be these people to you.
Tom Rowland: So what I wanted to talk about today was New Year's resolutions and goal setting, because New Year's Eve is the time when a lot of people think about them. What is it? How are you going to make next year different than this year? How can you write some failures? How can you lose forty pounds, get in better shape, spend more time with your family, make more money? This is the time all of those things happen — and it's in about a month that most of those New Year's resolutions are no longer resolutions, and simply things that people once thought about.
Tom Rowland: So what I wanted to do is invite two people in that I look to, because they've had great success with resolutions and goals, doing things in their life that they stick with and change, and are therefore very successful in goal setting. Kyle and Matt are joining me today. Matt has been on the podcast once before — he did SEALFIT Kokoro. Kyle's new. First of all, just to introduce you — this is Kyle Haren. Kyle and I work out together. And Matt Lawson, who's already been on the podcast one time before. So, anyway, what are you guys' thoughts on New Year's resolutions?
Matt Lawson: Hey, I think they're good. I think it should probably start before New Year's, but I think it's always a good time to sit down. Tonight with the family — my wife, Megan, mentioned yesterday about sitting down and trying to map something out, put some goals in front of us as a family for our daughter, Vivian, and our son, Mac, going into 2019. I think that'll be time well spent tonight as a family.
Tom Rowland: That's how you choose to spend New Year's Eve — setting goals and talking about things like that?
Matt Lawson: That's gonna be one of the things we do tonight. Yes.
Kyle Haren: I thought you were gonna say just drink whiskey all night long.
Matt Lawson: It will take us too long to set those goals. How's that?
Tom Rowland: Well, and what would that look like, goals like that?
Matt Lawson: That is a very good question. For our daughter and our son, as far as where they are in school — Vivi's involved with basketball, cross country, and maybe some volleyball, and Mac is doing baseball and basketball and maybe flag football in the fall — just staying active, and from a grade standpoint, what type of goals they want to achieve in 2019. For Megan and I, I don't really know yet. I have some ideas, but nothing concrete.
Kyle Haren: This is why Matt is such an inspiration to me — when I think about goal setting, I always get some of my best material from Matt. I like to use this time of year, the end of the year, beginning of the new year, to do some serious planning — business planning, financial planning, personal planning, setting goals in each of those areas, writing things down. But one of the things I don't do is sit down with the family and do this. I think that's next level, because it's really team building — getting everybody pulling in the same direction. I have a good friend and work associate, David Howell, who does a family dream board — a big whiteboard in the garage where the whole family gets to see it every day, and everybody in the family has a section where you put down three things you want this year if money were no object.
Matt Lawson: I love that. Megan and I have talked about a dream board — action speaks louder than words, and we haven't followed through on it yet, but it's something we've talked about, having the kids put together for themselves where they want to be, and put it on the board. I'm a big believer of that.
Kyle Haren: I'm huge into asking people what they're going to do different the next year, and challenging them on why. What's your reward? One of the things I've been good at is setting goals, and one of the things I'm not great at is giving myself a reward for those goals — and there's such power in that. One of the quickest goals I was able to achieve was in 2017 — I said, if I can sell ten new accounts, I'm gonna join the country club. That was something meaningful to me, and I wanted a reward for hitting the goal. By May, I had sold ten new accounts, because I wanted to do it so bad.
Tom Rowland: So there's a goal that you set out — ten new accounts. This is where I think a lot of people get a little off track. When I set a goal like that, I look at it in hindsight — what I ended up doing was set that goal and then set a lot of little goals that would get me to that. Is that what you do, or did you already know how to get there? I've done this before with big things and little things — you have a goal, and you break it down into, okay, by this date I should be here, by this date I should be here, and every day I should be taking these actions that get me closer to this goal.
Kyle Haren: You definitely can do that in sales. I'm a small business owner, but basically I'm in sales, so I know the activities that will yield production. Some of the goals are very results-oriented — ten new accounts, boom, X amount of revenue, boom. And other goals are effort goals, or beginning goals. One of the best examples — I forget what year, but in 2011 one of my personal goals was 'consider CrossFit as a weekly habit.' That was the year I turned 40, and I just wanted to try it because all my friends were in it, and I was like, alright, here's what I'm gonna do — I'll at least consider doing it as a weekly habit. That year, I participated four times a week beginning in March and haven't really looked back.
Matt Lawson: Wow.
Kyle Haren: It began as a thought to consider. So sometimes it's not a result, it's just a beginning.
Tom Rowland: There's power in that. I think that's another place where people get off track — you set a goal that is so big, like, I'm gonna work out five days a week, for somebody that doesn't work out at all. It could be, I'm gonna save $10,000 this year for somebody that isn't disciplined financially. A goal that seems so outrageous that people never take action on it. What you did there with 'consider doing CrossFit weekly' takes all the pressure off.
Kyle Haren: Well, I didn't know if I would like it. I didn't know if my body could handle it.
Tom Rowland: But you were committed to taking a step towards determining whether that's something you would want to do further, rather than 'I'm going to do this regardless.' Maybe your real goal was just, I want to get in better shape, I want to get stronger, I want to maintain my mobility — this could be a potential route towards that.
Kyle Haren: What do you guys think about — I hear people all the time say, 'I wanna lose forty pounds this year.' Sometimes those numeric goals are just kind of nebulous and intangible. But sometimes people say, 'I want to get into my high school jeans' or whatever.
Matt Lawson: I think it's creating those habits, changing those habits. If we can change our habits, we slowly change our lives. I've said it before, but I journal daily — I know that may sound a little odd. I do journal, and I write goals down, and I review them weekly and look at them, often twice a day — but I'm journaling my workouts every day, and journaling kind of a gratitude journal, what I'm grateful for every single day. I think that's a habit I've now been doing since 2013. If I miss a day — which I don't — or if I'm late in the day doing it, it's kind of a front-sight-focus thing that I'm gonna get done that day because it's important to me. Going back to the forty pounds — what little things can we change? What little goals, micro-goals, can we put in place where we change our habits? If you do something for thirty days straight, you've created a new habit, and that's something I try to work on.
Kyle Haren: Talk about the 1% improvement — is that still a thing?
Matt Lawson: I try to do that — that's kind of a Brad McLeod thing, with SEAL Grinder PT — get 1% better every day, in something.
Tom Rowland: What kind of makes that possible is, if I want to improve 1% in my deadlift, I probably can today, and might be able to tomorrow, and next week. But fifty weeks down the road, you may not be able to put 50% on your deadlift if you're already a well-trained athlete. What Brad is talking about is improving yourself in any area 1% daily. So I may be able to make that improvement physically, or read a book that gives me 1% more knowledge towards business or relationships. That's easy, because at the point where you know nothing, a 50% improvement over knowing nothing is very easy to get — when you're a super-trained athlete trying to put 50% on an already lifetime PR, it's very difficult. But what I like about that 1% approach is it gives you the freedom to go in any direction, and you're in constant learning and constant accomplishment mode.
Kyle Haren: The 'mode' part is so key. For those of you not in this room, Tom's wearing a t-shirt that says 'mindset is everything.'
Tom Rowland: That's right, baby.
Kyle Haren: That's a total mindset deal. If I want to improve 1% in everything, you're just constantly asking, how do I get better?
Kyle Haren: I talked about how Matt inspires me — I started the gratitude journal recently because he was sharing this with me. I was walking through Big Lots in November and saw a $4 hardbound notebook that said 'feeling blessed' on the front. It was right around Thanksgiving, so I picked it up and said, I'm gonna start the gratitude journal in 2019. I actually started it that week — I go about every three days and journal in it.
Matt Lawson: You're creating a habit.
Kyle Haren: Yeah — there's ten or fifteen entries already, and it puts you in this mindset of, okay, what can I be grateful for today, what blessing will I miss if I don't write it down. It gets you into gratitude on a different level.
Matt Lawson: On a different level. In my opinion, the more grateful we are for the things we already have — even the smaller things we take for granted — it seems like we attract more of those into our lives as we recognize what we do have. We have a tremendous amount, all of us, in a lot of different ways — mobility, our health, our mental health, our families. I struggle when I hear people complaining, even myself — I try to catch myself on that, because we have way too much to be grateful for.
Tom Rowland: You've been doing the gratitude journal since when?
Matt Lawson: '13.
Tom Rowland: And what do you think that has done for you?
Matt Lawson: I think it's increased my overall awareness on a daily basis — a little bit more grounded, open, and just more appreciative.
Tom Rowland: When Kyle told me he was incorporating this, I went home and talked to Cynthia, and said, here's a good idea for us for next year — why don't we each keep a gratitude journal and hold each other accountable for writing in it? And she said, well, how much do I have to write? And I said, no maximum or minimum, you can write one word, but I want it to become a habit of journaling — a daily entry, together with Cynthia. I find that on the days we start with the gratitude exercise, I feel better all day long.
Matt Lawson: Absolutely. Totally agree.
Kyle Haren: But you do the whiteboard stuff, though — right? The 'Beyond the Whiteboard' thing?
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I have a blog-type thing that I put those on. But it's one thing if you're sharing that with the world, and another thing when you decide that's just for you and your wife.
Matt Lawson: That's great, though, Tom. I'd love for Megan and I to have a gratitude journal back and forth — we've talked about it, and she's open to it. The format I use on my journaling is from SEALFIT, Mark Divine — it's got five questions, in a sense, and it's about your purpose. How are you moving the dial closer to your purpose-driven goals on a daily basis, and then, I'm grateful for X, and I'm looking forward to this. That's the format I follow — the gratitude, what I'm grateful for, and then what my purpose is and what am I doing every day to move closer to it. I enjoy it — it's good.
Tom Rowland: When you have that habit of going back and looking over the week, the month, or the whole last year of what you've written down — does that make you quicker to see that you are slightly off track?
Matt Lawson: Oh, there's no doubt — it helps center me, and hopefully I am better because of it. It brings me back every morning after my workout. I'll journal 90% of the time, and I believe in meditation too — at least eight or ten minutes a day.
Kyle Haren: What does that look like?
Matt Lawson: Mine is pretty much sitting down and relaxing and breathing, or lying down on the floor.
Kyle Haren: How do you get clear in those moments?
Matt Lawson: I don't, sometimes. It's not that it has to be perfect — it's just a habit of trying to focus on my breath and relax. You're gonna have all those crazy thoughts going around, and I try not to attach myself to them, just let them go and focus more and more on my breathing.
Tom Rowland: So what do you think a daily meditation practice does — and, if you're not watching this video, Matt is in investments.
Matt Lawson: We have a wealth management firm, Bill Winchester and myself.
Tom Rowland: It's not like you're some California, long-haired dude that believes in the woo-woo.
Kyle Haren: He's very buttoned-up.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, super buttoned-up. I think it's interesting that many professionals are embracing meditation. But I want to know what it means, what it does for you.
Matt Lawson: I think focus — centering, relaxation, calm. I really enjoy it, and I'll go through periods where I miss two or three days in a row and have to start all over. I used to struggle with sitting for ten minutes — that was a challenge — but now it's a lot easier.
Kyle Haren: You do it after journaling?
Matt Lawson: No, sometimes before. After the workout, before the journal, I'll do an eight- or ten-minute session.
Kyle Haren: Are you sitting in the easy chair?
Matt Lawson: I just lie down.
Kyle Haren: You fall asleep?
Matt Lawson: I have. Absolutely.
Tom Rowland: I do too — that's why I also think Wim Hof breathing has become my means of meditation, because you hear about meditation and think, what does that really mean? To me it means you have a moment where you put your phone down, you're not talking to another human being, you're focusing inward, and sometimes really amazing things happen. Sometimes all you think about is what you're gonna eat for lunch. Other times, there might be a problem you're trying to solve, and you come out of that and, boom, right there, you've got the answer. It seems like daily meditation, just like daily training, just like daily work, trains you to better respond at times of great chaos.
Matt Lawson: I've learned to stop resisting while trying to clear my mind — just to stop fighting the chatter. It subsides and goes away when you stop resisting, and you're not attaching yourself to any one thought.
Tom Rowland: The more time you can spend resisting attachment to that chatter, or actually clearing your mind — when it comes to the place in your day where it's most important, in my mind that's when you're dealing with your children, because that's the time you really don't want to say something you're gonna regret.
Matt Lawson: I agree. I totally agree.
Tom Rowland: At that point, with the daily meditation, you can all of a sudden go, oh, I'm getting worked up here, there's really not a need to — I'm gonna need to watch what I say right now. The more time you're spending there, the quicker you can catch yourself reacting emotionally, instead of making a giant mistake just because you opened your fat mouth.
Kyle Haren: Your awareness — your antennas are up for those things.
Matt Lawson: I'm not saying I've perfected it, because I have a long way to go.
Tom Rowland: I don't know that you can perfect it.
Matt Lawson: You can't. But it has helped me — I've seen positive outcomes from doing it, but I still have a long way to go, which is part of every process.
Tom Rowland: What about visualization? Do you guys do any visualization?
Matt Lawson: Yeah, I'm a big believer in visualization.
Tom Rowland: I love that dream board idea you were talking about, Kyle. There was a time I spent more time with a dream board — basically just a piece of poster board where you find a picture of a car, a house, a beach vacation, whatever it is, and put it somewhere you can see it all the time. It's a very effective way to keep you motivated.
Matt Lawson: I think one of the best examples I've ever heard is actually from Kyle — he played football at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Kyle Haren: Go Vols. I went to a UT game when I was a sophomore in high school and thought, man, wouldn't it be great to do this one day. I saw a guy, Mike Kelly, who looked like me, just a kid from Chattanooga, Tennessee, on the roster, and I thought, if I was gonna do this, I'd probably have to play linebacker. I started looking at the roster and saw guys like Dale Jones from Cleveland, Tennessee, and Nate Middlebrooks, a tight end from Chattanooga — and I thought, these are guys that live where I live, maybe I could do this. I took that roster and kept it by the toilet for like two years, then carried it in my pocket for another year — I actually tore it out of the book — and I began to visualize my name on it. I wore Dale Jones' number, 54, because he was my hero, but by the time I got to UTK I ended up with number 60, the only number left. Five years later, I was doing what my dream was — I was a redshirt sophomore and made the travel team, doing special teams. But what occurred to me is that after my sophomore year, I felt like I'd kind of done it, and I quit the team. I didn't have a second-tier goal — I hadn't visualized being a starter instead of a kickoff guy playing eight or ten plays a game. I wasn't super talented.
Matt Lawson: But you achieved what you had wanted to achieve.
Kyle Haren: Right — I checked it off the list, but didn't have a plan for the next level. It's not a regret, because I'm where I'm supposed to be, but I wonder sometimes what if I'd had a next vision — maybe learning enough to be a coach one day, an SEC defensive coordinator. I believe very much in visualization, not just big-picture stuff but the here and now. I was reading a book called The Mindful Athlete, about a mindfulness coach Phil Jackson used with the Jordan-era Bulls and the Kobe-era Lakers — he'd have the team meditate and visualize during working hours.
Matt Lawson: So they would play the game already in their head.
Kyle Haren: Yeah. I play pickup basketball every Tuesday morning at a gym downtown, and sometimes I'm just a spaz, running the floor, throwing up bricks — and other times everything's like slow motion, but I'm moving fast, jumping high, and it just seems effortless. I thought maybe my mindfulness wasn't where it needed to be, so one day I spent five minutes before I walked out the door and thought, I'm gonna be slow at the rim today — not physically, but mentally. I'm gonna see it and execute. And, man, I played above my level that day. It was just taking five minutes to see how I really wanted to execute.
Matt Lawson: Well, that's worked really well for Phil Jackson — ten championships.
Tom Rowland: There are so many examples of visualization. One that comes to mind is Michael Phelps, when he dove in and his goggles were leaking and filled up with water. He's the best swimmer in history, so it's no mystery he goes down the pool perfectly straight, knowing exactly how many strokes he's supposed to take. But at that level, you're talking about hundredths of a second — it could take a hundredth of a second for him to blink and think, oh no, my goggles have leaked, and lose because of that hesitation. But he didn't. He dove in, did everything to plan, finished, and the sportscaster asked, how did you win the race with your goggles leaking? And he said — I may be butchering this — basically, I've already won that race a hundred times over. He had visualized it, and nothing was going to stop him. It later came out that his coach would routinely make him swim with fogged goggles, because that's something that could happen — maybe 30% of the time. It didn't surprise him one bit that he won, because he had visualized it over and over, every night before bed. The more you visualize yourself doing something, the less surprised you are when it actually happens, because you've already done it a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times.
Tom Rowland: I believe very strongly in visualization. I think I've told this story on the podcast before — I'm sitting on the floor with Turner and Hayden as babies, watching ESPN, and the fishing shows come on. Tommy Sanders, the host of ESPN Outdoors, says, next we're gonna go down to Key West and fish with my good friend Jose Wejebe for tarpon. I sat there and thought, man, how cool is that — and I said, that's — he's gonna say that about me one day. A year later, almost to the day, the Great Outdoor Games happened, and I was on a bunch of those ESPN shows. I didn't really know Tommy Sanders, but almost a year to the day that I'd said I wanted him to say that about me, it happened — on a show called Fly Fishing America. That was so profound to me — like, wow, you can make things happen with your mind.
Kyle Haren: People talk about manifesting, or speaking it into the universe, and it always sounds hokey.
Tom Rowland: I don't know, man — it happens. I've heard it a thousand times over, from elite athletes, from regular people, from someone on the boat who catches the fish of a lifetime after thinking about it and thinking about it — they say, it's exactly how I thought it was gonna happen.
Matt Lawson: Flip it on the other side — you come across people who all they talk about is negativity, worry, anxiety, and they seem to attract that, and they seem miserable, in that perpetual cycle. If you flip that to positive visualization — not sticking your head in the sand, but speaking something else into existence — I think that's a game changer.
Tom Rowland: I think it's like being on a train track. If you're just out there with no goals, no aspirations, no road map, you're just drifting aimlessly. But if you set something — I don't care what it is — as soon as you set that, you're in motion, and everything you're doing, consciously and subconsciously, is pushing you toward it, if everything's lined up right.
Matt Lawson: And you could speak to this — things come into your life to help you along the way that, when you started the process, you had no idea about.
Tom Rowland: If you didn't set that goal, it wouldn't happen — these things are coming into your life.
Matt Lawson: You just wouldn't recognize it for what it is.
Tom Rowland: Exactly. Have you ever decided you want a new car, and then everywhere you look, there's that car? I want a brand-new black F-150 — and everywhere you go, there's a black F-150. But until you set that goal, you didn't notice them.
Kyle Haren: I never thought about that — so it's not like you're attracting it out of thin air, it's all around you.
Tom Rowland: I think it's all around you all the time, and you become more aware of what it is that you want. Some people would say the universe is sending you these things — whatever, man — there's plenty of opportunity out there, and all of a sudden you see a brand-new F-150 for exactly the amount you have in your bank account, and you buy it. Were you just more perceptually aware of what's going on, noticing these opportunities rather than as just another car in your way?
Matt Lawson: And you're taking action, too, along the way.
Kyle Haren: You married the action to the vision. You've got this overarching vision — for me it was a five-year vision to make it onto that field — and as things come into your life, you're able to sort what aligns with it and what doesn't.
Tom Rowland: And you organize your life so it's aligned with your goal. If you don't write your goal down, if you don't journal, if you don't have a dream board, if you don't have a group of people holding you accountable and telling you how it is — like, dude, you said you wanted this goal, and you're out partying all the time, that's not how you're gonna get there — well, it takes a special friend to tell you that. A lot of people surround themselves with people who just say, oh, it's good, you'll get there.
Matt Lawson: That's right.
Tom Rowland: Maybe that kind of person doesn't even want you to get there. It's the craziest thing, to surround yourself with people who don't actually want to see you accomplish your goals. That's why I think it's so important to surround yourself with people supportive of what you want, not judgmental about it.
Kyle Haren: You know what's crazy is when you find people feeding you negativity, and you recognize them as an antagonist — not that you have to eliminate them altogether, because it may be a relative.
Matt Lawson: They won't leave them. That's right.
Kyle Haren: Think about people caught in poverty — people are pulling them down so they won't leave.
Matt Lawson: In small doses, you minimize them.
Tom Rowland: That's true. But there's also people purposely pulling you down because they don't want to see you succeed. And then there's the other kind — people who love you so much they don't want to see you get hurt, and your goal seems so audacious that they see you're just gonna fail.
Kyle Haren: I would think that's the more insidious, because you don't notice it happening.
Tom Rowland: But the person doing it doesn't notice it either — it can be coming from a good place, but it can still be the thing that steers people off track the most. Your mom said this, your dad said this, and they say it from a place of love, but they don't know any better.
Matt Lawson: They don't know about your goal.
Tom Rowland: A lot of times, it's not even important to know how you're gonna get there — what's important is that you have a why. If that's important enough, a good why will overcome any how. That's what SEALFIT says, and it's absolutely true.
Tom Rowland: I think we jumped over what this day is for so many people — I want to make a change, I'm gonna call it a New Year's resolution because the slate's getting wiped clean, and I'm gonna start tomorrow and lose forty pounds. I have mixed feelings on that. You've spent forty, fifty, sixty years developing the habits that got you to wherever you are right now — so I think a New Year's resolution has to be a little deeper. A resolution or goal doesn't have to come on January 1 at all. If you take a day or two, go camping, take a long hike, spend time by yourself, and look back on the year and say, this is where I failed, this is where I succeeded, this is what I want — that period of retrospection is super important, to see not only where you've succeeded but where you failed and why. Having that period of retrospection, and then determining what you actually want, is probably more powerful toward getting you there than just setting a goal.
Matt Lawson: No, I totally agree. Writing that goal down is a big step, and speaking to that goal, thinking of it, and then taking action to back it up.
Kyle Haren: What did you say — speaking?
Matt Lawson: Speaking, talking about it aloud, from an accountability standpoint, and then taking action daily — what are we doing to move that needle closer to the goal? Like moving all this stuff out of the way when you had the goal of making the football team at UT Knoxville — everything else falls by the wayside.
Kyle Haren: So what about language — the speaking part? It was crazy — you read these Bible stories from the Old Testament, the Jacob and Esau story, where Esau comes in after Jacob's stolen his birthright and says, just give me a blessing, and Isaac says, I can't, it's already gone. He believed so much in the language he used that once it was spoken, it was released, and there was nothing he could do to get it back. And now we say things like, man, I'm such a loser.
Matt Lawson: Or I'm so fat — I think that's so dangerous.
Kyle Haren: We don't believe in the power of language like we used to. We'll say things like, that guy is such a douche — we're speaking this out there, and oftentimes we're harder on ourselves than on others.
Matt Lawson: If we treated other people the way we treat and talk about ourselves, it's horrible.
Kyle Haren: And the closest ones to us will say the most rotten things too.
Matt Lawson: Absolutely.
Tom Rowland: A gypsy curse, if you want to call it that, you put on yourself with your own language. My kids have heard this all their life — as soon as they say, well, I can't, I'm like, no, we don't say that. As soon as you say 'I can't' to anything, your brain just goes, can't — it's like flipping a switch, off, shut down. If you say, well, I don't think I can do that right now, that's a whole different deal, because you still have the possibility that in the future you may be able to. But as soon as you say, I can't fly, you've shut off all creative thought to how you might be able to fly. The moment you accept that something can't be done, it's over. Elon Musk — if he just said, well, you're right, you can't colonize Mars — I don't think he has 'can't' in his vocabulary.
Matt Lawson: I don't think a lot of successful people have 'can't.'
Kyle Haren: I used to work with a guy who had a great way of turning creativity back on — he'd ask me a question, I'd say, I don't know, and he'd say, well, what if you did know? It was just a way to get me thinking.
Tom Rowland: Same kind of thing when you're talking about business ideas — what would you do to accomplish this goal if money was no object? Then oftentimes you realize that doesn't even cost that much money — so why don't you do those things?
Kyle Haren: Are either of you guys working on a radical goal for the year — something that's gonna change the way you work, the way you think about life?
Matt Lawson: One goal I have for '19 is fifty books. I don't know how radical that is, but fifty books in '19, roughly a book a week — a big undertaking for me, so it's kind of radical, and hopefully the things I learn from those books will be beneficial.
Kyle Haren: One of mine was the gratitude journal — that's something I've already started. Another one — this seems radical to me, and it came out of an epiphany about a month ago, where I was in a place I didn't want to be but felt some guilt about being there. I remember thinking, I don't want to be here, why did I say yes to this — and I physically got up and left. I didn't make a scene, I just went and did something I really wanted to do. Out of that epiphany, I said, in 2019, I'm gonna act in freedom.
Matt Lawson: That's pretty courageous.
Kyle Haren: Meaning I'm gonna do things I want to do — maybe for someone else, not all self-centered — but if I can act in alignment with my goals, dreams, my purpose in life, I'm gonna live each moment in absolute freedom, doing exactly what I want to do, either for me or for someone else, but with a pure motivation. This is kind of the way I've raised my children — when they ask, well, so-and-so's parents let him go to this, it's an automatic no, because there's an entitlement and a guilt feeling to that. I began to tell my children, I listen to WIIFM — what's in it for me? You've gotta learn to communicate in a way that helps me achieve what I want, so you can get what you want. In sales, that's what we do every day — you help enough people get what they want, you get what you want. Zig Ziglar said that a million times. If I can be exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I want to be doing every moment — what's a fuller life than that?
Tom Rowland: Did you read the book we read in book club, Living with the Monks, by Jesse Itzler?
Kyle Haren: No, I read his other book — the thirty-days one.
Tom Rowland: I really like Jesse Itzler — he's almost exactly our age, just turned 50. He's got two books — Living with a SEAL, when he invited David Goggins to live in his house, which is the physical one, and Living with the Monks, the mental or spiritual one, where he lives in a monastery for a month or so. One of the things he comes away with is that there's no reason he needs to be doing anything he doesn't want to do. He develops a different relationship with time — his example was, his parents are 80, and if they've got twenty years left, most of those years won't be great, so really it's fifteen. He only sees them one week a year, so that's fifteen weeks with his parents — and in that week, two or three days where they don't really do anything, so it's more like twelve days. He realized he's only got so much time, and he's not gonna do needless, meaningless business meetings anymore — he's gonna spend his time with his parents, his children, and friends, in a way he wants to.
Matt Lawson: What a great perspective.
Tom Rowland: It was the best part of the whole book — the underlying theme was this different relationship with time. He's like, I've only got twenty years left if I'm lucky, and ten of those I'm gonna be in really awesome shape — so if I want to climb mountains, now's the time. And that doesn't have to be all selfish — he also talks about wanting to provide for the community, but not being forced into things he doesn't truly believe in.
Matt Lawson: Kind of guilted into going to something.
Tom Rowland: That's a different perspective. You should read that book, it's really good — Living with the Monks, Jesse Itzler. You'll burn right through it.
Kyle Haren: One more thing — I want to try this initiative, I call it the work-from-home initiative, where one day a week, maybe Friday, I don't want to go into the office at all. I may still go to appointments, make sales calls, do recruiting interviews — I just don't physically go into the office. I change my scenery at least one day a week.
Matt Lawson: Great.
Kyle Haren: That doesn't sound radical, but when I think about it, it makes me kind of tense up.
Tom Rowland: What if you did it like a stair-step approach? I watched this happen with one of my clients — a surgeon who came down to Key West and said, I'm down here for three days this year, and each year I'm gonna add a day. Over twenty years, he's spending almost a month in the Keys. It's not that easy to just jump straight to it, but it is easy to add one day a year, incrementally. So for your goal, what if on Friday you spend a half day in the office, and cut out an hour earlier each week? You're just choosing to work in a different way — I think doing something different and keeping things fresh is hugely important.
Matt Lawson: More sustainable, doing it incrementally. I'm gonna try to figure this out — that's a great idea. What's the worst that can happen? You just go back to what you were doing.
Tom Rowland: Worst case is he comes to one of these meetings and we tell him he failed and needs to not go to the office on Friday.
Kyle Haren: That's tough — the accountability. I made a goal two years ago to see five movies in 2017 during working hours, at the theater. I told you guys, and you were like, we're in — and we saw the first movie together that year.
Matt Lawson: Yes, I thought I was in for one, not all five.
Kyle Haren: What would have been better is if we'd assigned first, second, third, fourth, and fifth — then I'd have had a partner for each one. I saw the fifth movie on December 29th, 2017 — the last working day possible.
Tom Rowland: I have you guys at this table because that's a very simple goal, but here's the difference — you accomplished it, at the eleventh hour, on December 29th. How easy would it have been to say, that's a stupid goal anyway, it's not a big deal, I proved I could do it? But you didn't — you followed through. And it doesn't matter what the goal is, because if you can do that, you could set a goal for anything and accomplish it. When I thought about who would I get to sit down and discuss goals, you guys are the ones I thought of right away. Because Matt, for his attempt at the complaining challenge—
Kyle Haren: Did we talk about that on the podcast?
Matt Lawson: No. That was something — it took me about six months to actually achieve thirty days of no complaining.
Kyle Haren: Who did you let in on it?
Matt Lawson: My wife knew about it, Tom knew about it, most of my coworkers, my parents. I held myself accountable, because I thought, that can't be that hard — but no complaining for thirty days was very hard.
Tom Rowland: So what's the definition of complaining? If you go outside and say, oh, it's cold out here—
Matt Lawson: Anything negative, in a negative context. If it's cold, say, hey, it's cold outside, this is great — not, oh, it's cold, I'm so cold outside.
Tom Rowland: So how much is that okay?
Kyle Haren: It was more about the physical act of complaining — being more aware of what you're saying.
Matt Lawson: That was the big challenge — being cautious about what's coming out of your mouth. You may have it here, but don't speak it.
Kyle Haren: The importance of language — that's it.
Matt Lawson: Absolutely. It may cross my mind, but I'm not gonna speak it into existence.
Tom Rowland: That's super important — the other shirt I almost wore today says 'attitude is contagious.' When you're complaining around other people, you're bringing everybody down.
Matt Lawson: Who wants to be around people that complain and make excuses? No one.
Tom Rowland: What is it with people who come up and say, oh man, I was just in this awful traffic jam, I don't understand what's wrong with people — that person thinks they're making conversation, but they've just shot you with a giant stream of negativity.
Matt Lawson: By doing that challenge for thirty days, you're so much more aware of that — I actually tried to move out of those conversations.
Kyle Haren: My wife started saying, stay away from that. She'll say, do you think my exercise is working? I say, baby, you look great, your body's changing for the better. And she says, you don't think I look fat? I've begun saying, we don't do fat talk. I'm trying to eliminate all fat talk and complaining — I like having goals that are positive. If there's anything in my goals that says 'don't do this,' I reframe it to be positive.
Matt Lawson: I wasn't sticking my head in the sand ignoring negative events — that's unrealistic. I just chose not to complain, not to speak negatively, and to try to be more deliberate in being positive.
Kyle Haren: I bet there were times you found yourself literally biting your tongue.
Matt Lawson: It made me think of other ways to have a conversation, which was also very positive.
Tom Rowland: That's like when we talk about 'can't' — as soon as you complain, you shut yourself off from the opportunity that this challenge could be an opportunity rather than a challenge.
Matt Lawson: It's going back to Ryan Holiday's book, The Obstacle Is the Way — a super, super book. Instead of complaining about things, try to view them as opportunities. I'm not saying they don't exist or skipping around saying everything is perfect — it's just the way I choose to respond to everything.
Tom Rowland: What did it look like when you couldn't hold your tongue anymore, and had to start a new day count?
Matt Lawson: You get to a certain point, and it's like, okay, I'm good, back at it now. Just lack of mindfulness, getting caught up in the moment, not really being aware of what I'm doing.
Kyle Haren: I need to start with a week — I'm so positive, I still think—
Tom Rowland: It's a small thing.
Matt Lawson: It's a small thing — traffic, weather, or somebody saying something, and I respond without thinking.
Kyle Haren: That's the big thing — you have to be mindful.
Matt Lawson: You have to slow it down. I am way too quick to react — as opposed to, let's slow this down, have a pause, and then respond. It was really, really tough. I've heard of those ten-day silent camps.
Tom Rowland: I'd like to do that. Despite my job as a professional television host and podcaster, my comfort zone is not saying anything at all — I'm way out of my comfort zone talking all the time, and I'd be perfectly happy not saying anything for ten days. That would maybe be my favorite vacation ever. Though I do believe it would be far more challenging than you'd think — the one time you thought of something really good and couldn't say it, sitting with yourself. I think it'd be a great experience, though — it would take some people as far out of their comfort zone as public speaking does for others. Some people fear that more than death. I'm somewhere in the middle. Sometimes I'd have a customer get on the boat and say, listen, I talk to people all day long, I really don't want to say anything unnecessary on this trip — and I really enjoy those long two, three hours of silence, you just point a fish out when it's there. We got along great.
Tom Rowland: I've been trying to incorporate no phone when I'm talking to someone — mostly when I'm around my family. We have a place where we charge the phones, a little closet area — you plug it in, close the door, and that's where they sleep at night. I've been trying to be 100% present when I'm talking with my wife or my family, and I'd like to see that extend into any face-to-face relationship. Honestly, this is my favorite part about the podcast — we've been sitting here for over an hour, and not one person's picked up their phone. It's a face-to-face, eye-to-eye conversation that's not happening very often in my life.
Matt Lawson: I'm as guilty as anyone, especially at home with the kids — it's a horrible example. Megan and I talk about it, the example we're setting when they see us on our phones. It's kind of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do, and we're trying to take steps to improve that. But the kids see us do this, then they do it too.
Tom Rowland: The worst thing is even worse than that — when your kid is telling you something and you just have a quick little, somebody's waiting on you to say yes or no on an edit for a TV show, and my son's sitting there going, hey dad, do you know what we did today, and I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh, but I'm looking at my phone. That's a message received loud and clear by your children — that this is more important than me.
Kyle Haren: What do you do when someone's doing that to you? Do you stop talking?
Tom Rowland: It depends — if it was you and Matt and we're having a conversation like this, I'd say, come on man, our time's valuable, we've set this time aside — if you're not into it, maybe today's not a good day for this. At work, everything is social media and looking at how many people are looking at whatever — it's necessary for a certain part of the day. But my focus is, is it necessary for the rest of the day?
Matt Lawson: Would your family be in the core?
Tom Rowland: The family is the most important part. But the time at work has to become more efficient — I work from five in the morning until I fall asleep around ten, and that whole time is working of some sort — thinking, writing emails, writing texts, communicating, waiting for somebody to communicate with me. And the balance is, how does that work when your family's there? On one hand, what I do offers a tremendous amount of freedom — I can go see a football game or a wrestling match, because I have that phone in my pocket, and if somebody needs a yes or no, I can do that anywhere in the world. That is a great benefit, and I don't have to be strapped to a desk. But how does that translate into everyday life, and does it become a habit that is a weakness?
Matt Lawson: I'd agree — it's easy to pick up that phone, and it becomes a habit where, if I'm not doing anything, I catch myself just picking it up, opening the interface, scrolling, and closing it right back, thinking, what did I just do, why did I do that?
Tom Rowland: You did exactly what we do, except I hit Instagram and spend an hour looking at that — which could easily be work, since I do make a living like that.
Matt Lawson: Is it always productive, though? I'm wondering how much time I'm wasting my life just looking at that screen. Have you seen the screen time thing? I just got mine yesterday — it says I average a little over two hours a day, and I don't know if that's good or bad.
Kyle Haren: An hour and fifteen minutes for me — I was feeling like I was looking too long.
Matt Lawson: That's great — but you've got a content-driven business.
Tom Rowland: Of course, of the business — but there is a significant amount of time on there that doesn't need to be spent.
Matt Lawson: I'd say half of mine's wasted time, just out of habit.
Tom Rowland: I don't look at the amount of time, because that's how the business is run. From the time I'm working to the time I'm not working and around my family, what I care about is the quality — how much time am I spending face to face with the people I love the most? If I wanted to change one thing in my life right now that would make the biggest difference in every relationship, it would be to come in the door, put the phone in the closet, charge it, and don't touch it again.
Matt Lawson: There are times Megan and I are both sitting there on our phones, and I look over and think, is this healthy? No — don't have it.
Kyle Haren: You should send her a text while you're doing that.
Matt Lawson: I have. And I think, this is not good, and she knows it — it's just a bad habit that everyone is sucked into in this day and age. The phone has become so important, and we're a half step away from technology being completely wearable, or inside our bodies.
Tom Rowland: Can you imagine looking at somebody face to face, eye to eye, but really doing all kinds of other things, like sending emails and looking at Instagram, just pretending like you're looking at somebody?
Matt Lawson: The book Abundance talks about the technology out there, where you could think something mentally and it would pull it up through a search engine.
Kyle Haren: Did the Google Glass not take off?
Tom Rowland: I don't think so, because they were dorky-looking, but we're so close to having it happen — and it's one of the scariest things for interpersonal relationships.
Matt Lawson: Do you think face-to-face communication will be a premium, if it's not already?
Tom Rowland: All you gotta do is look at how texting has changed your phone habits — would you rather text someone or call them? Most people say text — it's easier, but very impersonal, and I'm number one on the list of people who abuse it for that reason. I'd rather not talk to anybody, ever.
Kyle Haren: Text, or do you tap it in?
Tom Rowland: I tap it in.
Matt Lawson: Same here.
Tom Rowland: That's because I have text hooked up to my computer, so if it's a triple paragraph I'm on the computer. If it's on the phone and I'm fishing, it's a quick, hey, what do you think about next week.
Matt Lawson: That's a good goal, Tom — minimize the screen time with family.
Kyle Haren: You have to say it positive, though — maximize face-to-face.
Tom Rowland: Be 100% present in all my interactions with my family.
Matt Lawson: That's a challenge for everyone.
Kyle Haren: A way to quantify it is, I'm not gonna be on the phone while I'm talking to people.
Tom Rowland: But it's not a challenge if the thing's going off all the time in your lap — it's only a challenge if it's gone or off, and then you find yourself going right back to your regular habits of face to face, eye to eye.
Matt Lawson: What are you really gonna miss by putting your phone up for four hours or so?
Tom Rowland: It could be significant in my line of work — an editor trying to make a network deadline could have a question about whether a sponsor's billboard is correct, and until you answer, that show sits stagnant, and so does the next one. That can cause a massive traffic jam in the edit bay, and all they need is a thumbs up or thumbs down. So there's real responsibility to answer the phone on occasion. But if phones had an automatic shutoff around the world at seven, everyone would just know, it's getting close to seven, I better send that text now. I think you have to tell the people who might be texting you for work, look, I'm going dark after five — whatever we need to do, we do before five, and you can get me again at 4:30 in the morning.
Matt Lawson: I know people who say, I'm gonna answer emails once a day, between six and seven — during the day, there's no response.
Kyle Haren: It's like a time block.
Tom Rowland: They've got a lot of people working for them, answering emails for them. Think about if your next employee was a driver — you time-block your drive time to stay in contact with people, and you're completely productive.
Matt Lawson: Essentially using Uber.
Tom Rowland: That could be incredibly valuable. I had an attorney who fished with me for a long time who had a driver. My dad was one of the first people I knew with a cell phone — the kind mounted in the car. He was an insurance salesman who spent a tremendous amount of time driving to see people, and it clicked with him right away — if I had a phone in the car, I could be making all the calls, setting up meetings on the way.
Kyle Haren: My dad had a portable suitcase phone that cost like $2,000 — he was a doctor who wanted to play golf on Saturday, and it would ring like a house phone in the back of the golf cart.
Tom Rowland: Being able to afford that technology afforded you freedom back then — you could be away from the office. Now I feel like we've gone from freedom to—
Matt Lawson: Handcuffs. That's the discipline aspect, being able to step up and minimize that where we need to — it's mindfulness. Easiness makes you weak, in a sense — it's easier not to do it and let it dominate your life. I've got to set some boundaries — it's not a good example for the kids, or for relationships in general. I've gotta become more disciplined and aware. I'm as guilty as anyone.
Tom Rowland: I'm probably the worst — so that's where I have the most room for improvement. I set myself up for success by picking what I'm worst at and having a 1% improvement per day.
Matt Lawson: If not talking off the phone.
Tom Rowland: Anyway, this was awesome, guys. As always, I truly appreciate both of you being part of my circle, that holds me accountable, and that I can share things with that seem really crazy, that seem impossible. If you surround yourself with a group of people like I have with Matt and Kyle, you can make the most profound changes in your life, or keep yourself exactly on track to living the best life you could possibly live. I really believe that having positive people around you is the most important thing. You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. So pick those people carefully, and hopefully you are as lucky as I am and find some people like Matt and Kyle. Thanks a lot for sitting down and talking about this — I hope it's been as productive for you as it was for me.
Matt Lawson: Take your time. Thanks, Tom, appreciate it.
Tom Rowland: Alright, man. We'll see you guys.
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