The Graffiti Machine

This is something I've been aware of for some time, especially after reading The Untethered Soul : a lot of the time, my inner voice is my enemy. It's the voice that talks me into skipping workouts, stressing out over what might happen in the future, or telling me to relax when there are tasks that need to be done. Even after years of being aware of it, it's always persisted. It almost felt like I had no control over it. This weekend I had a weird breakthrough that seems to be sticking. I woke up and the voice started right away: sleep a little longer, skip the walk with the kettlebell, skip the burpees after the walk. I kept pushing it off, but it kept talking. I grabbed my dog's leash and the kettlebell and headed for the door. The voice kept going: "Maybe skip the burpees after. I'm a little sore." "I can just do a short walk." "This kettlebell is heavy as fuck." As I opened the door, I said in my head, "Shut the fuck up," and headed out. The voice got quiet. Any time it crept in, I said it again. When I got back and put the mat down for the burpees, the voice came back. I said it again and did them. The voice started again this morning and I remembered something Jocko Willink says. I told the voice, "You don't get a vote." This is just what's working for me right now, but it's been powerful. How many times has your inner voice kept you from doing what you know you need to do? — Bus

A while back I saw a drone video of two wolves chasing a rabbit. The camera follows them for a while. Total chaos. Every few seconds it looks like the wolves are going to catch him. The rabbit never slows down. Full speed, hard cutbacks, quick changes of direction. It uses everything it has until the wolves finally give up. The reason it stayed with me is because our lives don't feel like that most of the time. We're not out there getting chased. Because of that, it's easy to relax on our health and fitness. But just because it doesn't happen often doesn't mean it can't. Being in shape makes normal life better: more energy, less stress, better mood. But it also matters in those rare moments when things get serious. An accident. A fight. A situation where you actually have to move, run, push, or fight harder than you have in years. That's not the time to realize you're not ready. You don't have to live like prey every day, but it's worth asking: if something heavy hit tomorrow, would your body be able to back you up? If the answer doesn't feel great, today's a good day to start changing that. — Bus

I did an interview with a guy named Marcus Anderson some years back and he said something that stuck with me: "There's only one level of commitment. Total." That's a pretty powerful way of looking at things. We can only commit to so many things. It's easy to catch myself wanting to be an expert in a lot of areas, but it isn't possible to fully commit to everything. Some people spend their whole lives being a musician, an artist, an entrepreneur. You can get pretty good at a lot of things, but most likely not world-class at all of them. If you want to be world-class at something, it probably takes a level of commitment that's far greater than we think. It's worth asking: what's the one thing you're willing to go total on? — Bus

Taking action is the best stress reliever I know of. Sometimes I wake up with a feeling like time isn't just ticking away, it's slamming away. Like the arms of a giant clock; every second the giant arm slams into place with a thunderous sound. The main thing that usually worries me is running out of time before accomplishing my goals. On these mornings, I take action quickly. As soon as action is being taken—real action—I start feeling the stress lift away. Get a workout in, start knocking off tasks from your list, chip away at the things that are plaguing your mind. It's not always the things outside of our control that cause the most stress. It's often the tasks we're avoiding.

I heard this quote in a Jim Rohn audiobook this morning and it hit me pretty hard: "An ounce of discipline weighs less than a ton of regret." On one hand, I write a list of tasks to accomplish and I knock them out. I do this seven days a week. But there's still a part of me that knows I'm leaving things on the table. I'm not a "hustle culture" kind of dude, but I have a lot I want to get done in the short time I have on this planet. An ounce of discipline can simply mean chipping away at your goals. You don't have to grind yourself into the ground; in a lot of cases, that's unproductive. The question is: how do you use discipline to make real progress? Focus on what you put into the hours rather than how many hours you put in. What tasks move the needle the most? That's where the ounce of discipline should go.

I've seen a lot of weird supernatural shit since I was a little kid. This is a departure from the normal stuff we talk about here, but I wanted to document it and figured some people might like hearing these stories.

I have a little ritual in the morning. After I walk my dog while carrying a kettlebell, I make a cup of coffee and read while drinking it. A lot of times, my dog interrupts the reading session. She's still hyped up from the walk and gets excited when I sit down. She'll jump on my lap and get pets. Sometimes I just want to get my reading done, but I have to remind myself that one day I'll miss her interrupting the reading. Nothing is permanent in this life. It's hard to remember that we won't always have everything and everyone we love. Don't waste the moments. One day you'll miss them.

In the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, he talks about how we feel the strongest resistance when the task is the most meaningful to our soul's evolution. This shows up as different things like procrastination, fear, doubt, and excuses. This can be both a blessing and a curse. The curse is it's so hard to make ourselves do the things we want to do when resistance is so strong. The blessing is the resistance can help identify the things you should be focused on. There are many ways to overcome, but that doesn't make it easy. One thing he talks about is shifting your mindset from amateur to professional. An amateur will stack all kinds of reasons to not do the tasks. A professional gets it done no matter what. This is one of my favorite quotes from the book: "How many pages have I produced? I don't care. Are they any good? I don't even think about it. All that matters is I've put in my time and hit it with all I've got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance." Professionals get the work done regardless of how strong the resistance is. — Bus

We all can find ourselves in a rut from time to time, lacking motivation and having difficulty getting things done. When this happens to me, I try to remember the best way to find motivation is to make progress. While motivation might pop up from time to time, that isn't reliable. The most reliable way to find motivation is to create it with action. If you feel like you can't get yourself to move forward, just write a list of a few things that will move you forward. A little bit of progress and checking the tasks off the list will not only create motivation over time, it'll compound. A little bit every day turns into a lot over a week, month, or year.

I saw a quote today that felt like it would be helpful for people. It said, "don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't ask for advice". In recent years, criticism doesn't really bother me, but when I first got serious about posting content around 2019, it did tend to bother me. Before posting a video, I would wonder how it would be received and often second guess it. If I had this quote back then, I feel like things would have been easier. Most of the negative comments are either from anonymous accounts, so those don't matter at all. The ones that you can see are never people I would take advice from. I would imagine you will find the same. If criticism is holding you back on anything you want to do, be sure to ask the question: Would I take advice from this person? Then act accordingly.

I saw this video the other day. It was a race car driver saying "I'm just gonna put my foot on the floor and I'm not lifting until I see god or the checkered flag". It got me thinking about this kind of all in mentality that can be really difficult to achieve. How do we get this kind of mindset when the shit we need to do is the last thing we want to do? I'm still trying to crack that code—one thing that might help is to shift our thinking to focus on the payoff of the action rather than the effort. This was something a guy named Scott Adams talked about. The reason a lot of us don't go all in on things is we get trapped into thinking about everything it will take. The actions aren't fun. The work is hard. If we focus on the payoff, it might push through the procrastination.

A couple months ago, I woke up with this crazy feeling and thought 'I'm running out of time!'. I must have had some crazy dream or something. The thoughts were about running out of time to accomplish my goals and things of that nature. At 51 years old, I'm pretty fit and healthy for my age, but you never know how much time you have left regardless of your age. Then I saw a video that changed my perspective. It was an 80 year old man hitting a heavy bag. This dude had super clean strikes for someone at any age. The caption said something like, "if I stopped training at 50, I would have missed out on 30 years of staying fit". Nothing wrong with staying urgent and aggressive about getting your shit done, but we may have more time than we think!

Lately I've been paying closer attention to what gives me energy and what drains it. The biggest thief? My phone. In this episode, I break down how scrolling kills momentum, what I've been doing to snap out of it, and a simple trick to get back on track fast.

We use the term 'Prioritize and Execute' at the shop all the time. It's from Jocko's Laws of Combat. Find the priority and execute. Once complete, there's a new priority. Then you handle that. This is the antidote for overwhelm. It's easy to get bogged down with the big picture of getting everything done. You can't do it all at once. Take a step back to detach. That'll help you find the next step you need to take. This can be applied to all aspects of life. When you're feeling overwhelmed, detach, identify the priority, and run the play. Before you know it, you'll be moving forward. Forward movement generates momentum. Now you're off to the races.

I was thinking about some concepts that are seemingly at odds with each other, but they aren't. We're only alive today. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow hasn't happened. Living in the present is all there is, but does that mean you can't learn from the past or plan for the future? No. Let's break it down. How do you use today to make your life better? If you have regrets from the past, you can use today to reflect on them, learn, adjust, and grow from those things. For the future, how do you live in the present and plan for the future? Isn't that going against living in the moment? I don't think so. We can use today to visualize our ideal future. It sets a target for where we want to go. Once you have that vision, you can then identify what you need to do daily to move towards it. What does today look like? We've decided what we've done in the past that we don't like, identified things we want to change, and now we can do things differently. We've created a vision for what we want in our future. That should give us some general ideas on what we need to do daily to move towards it. We don't need all the answers, we just need to move forward with that target in mind. Write down a list of five things that'll move you forward. Those things can be action steps to get you closer to your future, could be habits to correct past behavior to become the person you want to be, or habits that your future self needs to get you where you want to go. Knock out a list of 5 things that move you forward every day. You're living only today while working towards the future and adjusting based on lessons from the past. Is it easy? Hell no. But it's worth it.

Most people think personality traits—like confidence, patience, or staying calm under pressure—are things you're either born with or not. But the truth is, you don't have to stay the way you are if you don't want to. First, you think about the kind of person you want to be. Then you start doing the things that person would do. And eventually, you become them. It doesn't happen by accident. You train it. And the repetition is what turns it from effort… into identity. You can change into the person you want to be. And it might be simpler than you think.

Being able to build and keep momentum has been huge for me. We all go through phases—on track, off track, fired up, burnt out. That's life. The hard part is getting back on track when you're off. That's where building momentum comes in. Forget waiting for motivation or inspiration. Just start, even if it's small, and don't sweat the outcome. Consistency beats perfection. The flywheel effect is real. When you keep pushing, momentum starts working for you. And if you fall off? No problem. Just repeat the process. It's all about building momentum over and over.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about energy management —specifically, what feeds our energy and what drains it. How many times have you had a bad interaction with someone, only to stew over it for hours, days, or even longer? Social media makes this even worse. One negative post can trigger a response, leading to a back-and-forth spiral that eats up time and energy. But here's the question: How much energy is being wasted in those moments? And more importantly— how could that energy be used to build something better? If this resonates, take a hard look at the people, habits, and environments in your life. What's fueling you? What's draining you? Then ask yourself: What could I create if I redirected that energy? This podcast is available on all your favorite audio platforms and on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@busmsk

I read the quote 'What's it going to take?' in the book Market Outrageously. It was talking about actually looking deep at a goal and trying to get to the bottom of what it would take to accomplish. Even seemingly impossible goals are worth trying to break down. In my life and business, I have goals that are overwhelming to think about. When I read this part of the book, I was inspired to actually dig into it much further. Things start seeming much more achievable once you start breaking it down into smaller chunks. Ask yourself this question about a goal you have, then sit down and try to figure out what steps you need to take to make it happen. There is a lot of clarity that can be achieved with this.

I heard Alex Hormozi say this, and it stuck with me. When things get hard, most people give up. The idea of consistently getting better in all areas of life is not the norm in society. And in some ways, that's fine—if you're happy with where you're at. But the way I see it, most people aren't happy with staying the same. We want something more for our lives, but pushing ourselves into discomfort is hard. The truth is, doing the hard things is what's required to make our lives better. Where in your life do you feel like quitting—but know you need to keep pushing?