I want to live.
The last words my father said to me as I’m holding his hand as he dies.
He didn’t say I don’t want to die. He said he wanted to live!
He was only 47.
Now why did my father say he wanted to live and not that he didn’t want to die? Because the truth is, he never truly lived.
How many of you grew up wanting to be just like your dad? Right?
So that’s what I did. That’s how I lived.
And here’s what happened to me.
By the time I was in my 30s, I was overweight, functionally alcoholic, smoking and struggling as a husband, father, provider and man.
And when I hit 40 I was in full blown midlife crisis mode.
Although, just like my father, from the outside looking in, you’d have never known it; beautiful family, career, money.
I had even produced two successful movies that you could watch on Netflix, and went on to become the founder and CEO of a sports video company, which I sold to Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and became a partner in a large insurance agency.
And…I remember the day like it was yesterday. It was my 10 year anniversary with my firm.
I am sitting in my 70,000 car, in the parking lot of my office building staring at my “reserved” parking spot sign that all the partners have, the sun is shining and it’s a million dollar day for a million dollar producer….
And I start to cry.
I’m paralyzed.
I physically cannot get myself to open the door. I’m having a full blown panic attack.
Ten years.
Here I am a partner in a big insurance firm, with a beautiful office on the 25th floor overlooking all of downtown Houston and a multi million dollar book of business to manage AND I am afraid to go inside.
Is this what my life has become?
And while I didn’t want to admit it, I’d reached that point in my life where I said to myself: “This is the best I’m ever going to look, the best I’m ever going to feel, the best I’m ever going to do and it ain’t that great”.
But it was actually even worse!
Because I wasn’t stuck in a dead-end job or struggling financially or really unhealthy or in a failed marriage and yet something WAS STILL MISSING!
I was MEDIOCRE –And mediocrity is really scary and once you accept it, malaise sets in.
Because when you’re mediocre, you feel insignificant and stuck somewhere between emptiness and untapped potential.
I’m in my car and I can’t move. I can’t breathe. And I can’t think of anyone to call who’d understand.
Have you ever felt like this?
To have had hopes and dreams and a vision of who you thought you were going to be in your life and to not ever realize them?
It is one of the worst feelings in the world.
I woke up feeling like that every single day…For years.
But on that day, in the parking lot of my office building, on my 10 year anniversary with my firm, I made a promise to myself that I was going to do the work necessary to transform from mediocre to maximized.
At 47 my father’s life ended. At 47, mine began.
And it started me on a journey of exploration to seek out the most influential voices across every single aspect of life.
And while I made a promise to transform myself, I didn’t know HOW. And many of us face this on a daily basis. The irony is we spend so much time on
“finding our why”, that once we’ve found it, we struggle with HOW to LIVE it.
How do we manage our time, health, finances and relationships better so that we can be the best versions of ourselves?
I leaned into not knowing HOW and launched my podcast – Because I figured if I don’t know the right answers, I could start asking the right people the right questions…
What would it really look like to transform my life and live better, longer, happier, healthier, wealthier, eliminate regret and have more fun at home, at work and every day?
58% of men in midlife report anxiety, loneliness, frustration, fear of aging and deep regret around the decisions that matter most. Identity and self-confidence are at an all-time low.
60% say they are not as fit as they want to be
61% are not as financially stable as they’d hoped.
43% say family life is not as happy as they’d like.
1 in 7 middle aged men don’t have a single friend.
30 years ago, a majority of men (55 percent) reported having at least 6 close friends. Today, that number has been cut in half. Slightly more than 1 in 4 (27 percent) men have 6 or more close friends today.
And 1 in 4 middle aged men feel they’ve already peaked!
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
What I discovered is that our best days are not behind us, they’re in front of us.
That situations and circumstances in our lives can defeat us or they can define us.
What I REALIZED is that Mediocrity happens by default, Maximization happens by design.
And what I LEARNED is that the signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change, the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.
So this Father’s Day, we’re all in this together.
And I’m going to give you the FIVE Rules that I developed & used to transform from mediocre to maximized myself and that will allow YOU, if YOU CHOOSE, to transform and live YOUR most maximized life.
They are 100% proven, real life tested and researched backed to help you go…
From exhausted to energized.
From passive to progress.
From unhealthy to making health a lifestyle.
From having empty relationships to deepening the connections that matter most
From living behind the facade of what others think success looks like to truly owning our own identity and authenticity.
Jim Rohn said “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”
When we’re finished here today…You’re going to choose which one you want to carry.
And I hope it’s the pain of discipline to follow these five rules
1. Knowing what’s important, is what’s most important
We’ve been taught that success is in chasing “salary & title”. It’s not.
The truth is success is in chasing total life wellness.
We get to define and design our own metric for success.
Nobody else. Full Stop.
We get to start living our lives in order of what’s really important to us and stop living our lives based on societal expectations.
I had a conversation on my podcast with Billy Mann, who’s the grammy winning songwriting partner of Pink! And Billy laid this one on me “Chase the hit life, not the hit song”…
Too often the milestone moments don’t live up – Billy talked about his first hit song. The pressure to write another one. And losing the joy in the process. He was right – I thought about producing my movie, selling my company to Michael Eisner, even my wedding, kids, exiting my firm.
None of these milestone moments lived up to the moments leading up to them and the moments that followed.
Instead of feeling like a success or failure based on my salary & title alone, I created my 6F’s; Family, fitness, finance, food, fashion & fun as a better assessment of my life’s total value.
These are the things that are truly most important to me, that I truly care about and that I began to prioritize over all else.
I made it my mission to turn my F’s into A’s and went to work on these every day.
- Family
- Fitness
- Finance
- Food
- Fashion
- Fun
It’s not important that you become the wealthiest, or the healthiest or that you win any type of award for having the most anything … .It’s important that you find a way to live a pleasant life. An authentic life, A happy, fun and full hit life. Knowing what’s important, is what’s most important.
2. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.
My friend Justin took me to see Cameron Herold speak at an event in Houston a few years back.
Cam got up there and not only talked about, but SHARED with us what he called his vivid vision.
It was crystal clear, made perfect sense, I could follow it and know exactly where this guy was headed personally & professionally.
So I grabbed a copy of his book Vivid Vision and I read it in an hour. It’s a short but life changing book..
Inspired by Cameron’s book, I wrote out my MAP; what I began calling my Maximized Action Plan.
What Cameron does is helps organizations level up by developing three-year vivid vision to allow them to maximize their operations.
I used it to transform and maximize my life and now as a tool to help as many men as possible maximize their lives!
I added pictures and graphics to mine, hired a designer even to make it look like a real guide. I started sending Cam’s book to guys that asked for help and as a gift to the guests of the pod.
It is a mission statement that lives and breathes. My action steps are clear and evolve to meet my biggest goals. I was able to approach my 6F’s with intention and purpose because I understood how it all fit into my MAP.
Having a MAP brings the future into the present, so we can have clarity on what we are building now.
It is a detailed overview of what my life will look like, feel like and act like three years out.
And then I reverse engineer into the daily steps I need to take in order to execute.
Because of their clarity, I now have all of my clients write their own MAP’s and help them to ensure they become reality.
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.
3. Aggregate, Curate, Eliminate
This has taken me years to develop, and is based 200+
interviews with high performing men, trainers, nutritionists, financial advisors, authors, chefs, artists, ceo’s, entrepreneurs, friends, and family plus 30 years of life experiences and being a performance coach for more than 100 men and I am still constantly aggregating, curating and eliminating to maximize my life more efficiently and effectively.
We tend to associate achievement, accomplishment & success with doing more and having more; money, things, status. It’s not.
Success is doing less with more focus. It’s having more by acquiring less. It’s focusing on quality over quantity.
I apply aggregate, curate, and eliminate to all areas of my life.
What I put on my body, in my body, who I spend time with, where I go…Everything with intention and purpose.
I spoke to Tom Brady’s stylist Andrew Weitz who helped me develop a personal uniform and aggregate, curate and eliminate in my closet and wardrobe.
I talked to Dr. Phil Goglia, the nutritionist for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he worked with me to aggregate, curate and eliminate what works/doesn’t work in my diet.
I hired a wealth manager because I’ve always been awful with money.
The truth is, it’s not what I was doing that made the biggest difference, it’s what I wasn’t doing; what I stopped doing!
Here’s my challenge to you: Find the best of what works for you, break it down to what’s essential to reach your goals and cut out the rest –
Simple, is hard. Which is why most don’t do it – but you’re not like most…
4. Show me your calendar, I’ll show you your priorities.
The New York Times recently released an op-ed entitled The Greatest Life Hacks In The World (For Now) and one was “Make the day, don’t let the day make you. Make sure you are setting your schedule, not just responding to others.”
I don’t read the times all that much or the news much at all anymore, but I do follow Jesse Itzler, since I booked him to rap at a frat party of mine 30 or so years ago – and I’m in his big ass calendar club!
I’ve got a wife, two amazing sons with school, sports, events,, multiple businesses, travel, workouts, coaching clients, podcasts to record, newsletters to write, speaking engagements, family dinners, family vacations, doctors appointments, date nights (yes, still talking about my wife here).
Like all of us, it stacks up and I struggle to keep up with it all.
It’s a running joke in our house.
Everything goes on the calendar. It starts with your personal non negotiables; prioritizing family & health, events and experiences and then reverse engineering to add only what’s in your plan.
If you don’t schedule it, you won’t do it.
So, take out your phone, open your calendar, right here, right now, look at it, does what you see represent your priorities? If not, today’s the day you start getting your calendar aligned with your priorities.
I used to dread looking at my calendar. Now I leave it open all day/everyday and look forward to it. It’s the first thing I check when I wake up and the last thing I check before I go to bed.
5. Grace Gratitude & Latitude
We’re too hard on ourselves.
Comparison, keeping up, thinking we have to do it all, have it all, hustle and grind 24/7, sleep when we’re dead to be successful…We don’t.
We overestimate what we can do in a day & underestimate what we can do in a year.
For many of us, we have developed habits and patterns that block us from becoming anything more than who we are right now.
We question how we can transform into people we want to be with more purpose, discipline, happiness, and significance?
And the answer is not so much about reinventing yourself as it is about releaseing yourself so that you can become your best self.
It’s not about a single big accomplishment. It’s about stacking the little wins each day.
And when you CHOOSE to live like this, with intention, preparation, accountability AND consistency, it’s not only possible, but highly probable that you’ll start liking yourself a whole lot more.
Self care is not selfish. In fact, it’s one of the most selfless things we can do to show up better in every area of our lives.
Everything we want in life is not only possible but highly probable if we are willing to put in the work and when we decide to get up, get naked, get real and take a good, hard, long look in the mirror and ask ourselves, How do we want to be perceived? How do we perceive ourselves? How do we want to show up today?
And then be that person
That is what every one of us can do.
My father’s life ended at 47.
At 47 mine began.
And I want to invite you, wherever you are in your journey, to make today the day you start believing that YOU have the experience, confidence and strength to never let anyone dictate how your life should play out.
We think that in order to transform from living a mediocre life to a maximized one; that we need to make changes and sacrifices that seem too far out of our reach, beyond our capabilities and capacities and would require changes that we’re unable to make due to our jobs, families, financial obligations, personal limitations and too many obstacles that have built up over the years.
The truth is that it’s simple –
If you don’t like how you’re living, feeling and acting; if YOU feel that calling to transform your life for the better, Today is the day you answer the call.
Our lives are limited only by the constraints which we place upon ourselves.
Today is the day you start living with purpose, authenticity, action and grace.
Today is the day you begin to put yourself first.
Today is the day you start writing the next chapter of your life.
Today is the day you invest deeper into the relationships that matter most
Today is the day you start living happier, healthier and wealthier.
Today is the day you don’t hit snooze.
Today is the day you swap out a soda for water.
Today is the day you put a dollar into savings.
Today is the day you kiss your partner good morning.
Today is the day you dress a little better and walk a little taller.
Today is the day you transform from Mediocre To Maximized.
In Health,
Greg
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Greg Scheinman
Founder, Midlife Male
52. Husband. Father. Entrepreneur. Coach
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